Whumptober Day 2: Sewer (Murderbot)

Oct. 1st, 2025 05:39 pm
sholio: murderbot group from episode 10 (Murderbot-family1)
[personal profile] sholio
This is one of those times when I just ran off with the prompt as inspiration and it's not actually whumpy at all. (At least not in any way except the most incredibly minor petty way.)

No. 2: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to dredge up all my fears.”
Prophecy | Sewer | Taking Accountability

Murderbot, 380 wds, gen, could be TV-verse or bookverse somewhere post-Exit Strategy
Also posted on Tumblr.

380 wds under the cut )

Daily Happiness

Oct. 1st, 2025 05:20 pm
torachan: john from homestuck looking shocked (john shocked)
[personal profile] torachan
1. The main downside of this cold is that I am fucking exhausted from lack of sleep. I did get more sleep last night, but still tossed and turned a lot. Today I am much less stuffed up, so hopefully it will be easier to sleep tonight. Carla was so miserable when she was sick, though, so I'm very glad I didn't get it as bad as her.

2. Gemma really loves this new box.

sholio: two men on horseback in the desert (Biggles-on a horse)
[personal profile] sholio
As per a conversation elsewhere, I think I'm finally going to try to get my circa 2022-2025 Biggles ficlets collected on Ao3, the same way I did with my Agent Carter promptfic and some others.

However, the AC promptfic was relatively easy because I was mostly writing them for Tumblr prompts.

The Biggles ones are just absolute chaos. Some are collections of fills for specific events (Whumpcember, Whumptober); some are commentfic written in response to other people's fic or stray comments; some are slightly more coherent fills for prompts on Tumblr or elsewhere.

For reference, here's how I did it in other fandoms, all in one document sorted by fandom.

With the caveat that I am definitely doing it at least SOMEWHAT like this (that is, as a chaptered fic with short prompt fills collected together, not 200 separate individual fics), do you have any opinions on how I go about doing this? (More complicated answers in comments welcome, of course.)

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16


What do you prefer? (Click all that apply.)

View Answers

Individual chaptered fics for each event (Whumpcember 2022, etc)
0 (0.0%)

Individual chaptered fics for type of event (a Whumptober document, one for Tumblr fills, etc)
2 (12.5%)

Sort them by pairing or trope, so all the similar types are together (e.g. all the Biggles/EvS fic, all the gen h/c fic) regardless of source
9 (56.2%)

One chaptered fic for everything, like with the Agent Carter ones
3 (18.8%)

I have no preference/I am good with whatever you want to do
5 (31.2%)

I like clicking boxes! Oh look, a box.
7 (43.8%)

sholio: airplane flying away from a tan colored castle (Biggles-castle airplane)
[personal profile] sholio
Starting off immediately with one of the alt prompts (since I struggled with the day one prompts). I learned when I looked up the history of zipties (aka cable ties) that they were invented in the late 1950s by the aviation industry to fasten airplane wiring together. Clearly this made the choice of which character gets ziptied entirely obvious.

No. 1: “Please don’t cry”
Lamb to Slaughter | Ceremony | Beg for Forgiveness


Alt: Ziptie
Biggles books, Biggles (& Algy), gen, 600 wds
Also on Tumblr.

600 wds of zipties under the cut )

Daily Happiness

Sep. 30th, 2025 08:33 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Finished another puzzle!



This is from the same new series as the Stitch one, but this one has proper square corners. Carla is actually the one who finished it (and worked on it a lot throughout), though I did do about half of it.

2. I continue to feel very stuffed up but otherwise not sick? I guess I'll take that over being properly sick, but it's not a lot of fun. My lips were so chapped today from breathing through my mouth and I only got about an hour, maybe an hour and a half of sleep last night because I was tossing and turning. Though if I felt properly sick I'd also feel like I could take off work, but since I feel otherwise fine and there's a lot of work to do, I've still been going in (masked).

3. Friday afternoon I was feeling really stressed and anxious about work, which caused me to just keep obsessively running over things in my mind all that night and through Saturday, which is not great when I just want to enjoy the weekend and not think about work, but this week has felt better, like we are making real progress and can meet the deadline and that things will be okay. It just feels like there's a lot on my shoulders at a very late stage in the game, and I don't love that.

4. Chloe's got the right idea.

Whumptober 2025 Master List

Sep. 30th, 2025 04:22 pm
sholio: Halloween candles (Halloween-candles)
[personal profile] sholio
The time is upon us! (i.e. it's October somewhere) I am definitely not going to make it the entire month - not the least reason being, I'm traveling for a couple of weeks mid-month - but I will definitely have at least a week or two of fills, spread across all my current fandoms. I'm using the prompts for general inspiration more than anything else, so sometimes you get h/c or whump/angst, and sometimes you just get the characters hanging out in some situation or other.

Prompt list on Tumblr

Or read the full list of prompts
under the details tag here. Whumptober 2025 Prompt List

No. 1: “Please don’t cry”
Lamb to Slaughter | Ceremony | Beg for Forgiveness

No. 2: “You’ve got a lot of nerve to dredge up all my fears.”
Prophecy | Sewer | Taking Accountability

No. 3: “I look in people’s windows, transfixed by rose golden glows.”
Isolation | Candlelight | Found Family

No. 4: “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.”
Non-Human Whumper | Iron Rod | Loss of Powers

No. 5: “My panic’s at the ceiling, but I’m face down on the carpet.”
Quivering | Dream Journal | Phobia

No. 6: “No grave can hold my body down.”
Caught in a Net | Medical Restraints | Pinned to the Wall

No. 7: “Tell me that you’re okay, and I’m fine.”
Trapped with the Enemy | Elevator | Pushed Beyond Breaking Point

No. 8: “Oh horror, oh horror, what did you see?”
Self-Inflicted Injury | Held at Gunpoint | Dissociation

No. 9: “We’ll make it alright to come undone.”
Touch | Flashbacks | Scalding

No. 10: “There’s nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do.”
Without Consent | Secrets | Lips Sewn Shut

No. 11: “Can you get through all the pain inside you?”
Hidden Injury | Laceration | Forced Reveal

No. 12: “It’ll be for nothing.”
Cardiac Arrest | Sacred Place | Withholding Medical Treatment

No. 13: “How dull is it to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished.”
Never Enough | Insignia | Forced Retirement

No. 14: “In the end, it’s worthwhile.”
Ignoring an Illness | Body Bag | Wounded Caretaker

No. 15: “You can take a break, if you just tell me that it hurts.”
Failed Rescue Attempt | Body Part in the Mail | Live-Streamed Torture

No. 16: “I’ve had the rug pulled beneath my feet.”
Repressed Trauma | Permanent Marker | Disorientation

No. 17: “Tell me there’s a hope for me.”
Internal Bleeding | Coma | Redemption

No. 18: “As the world caves in.”
Dystopia | Ruins | Environmental Whump

No. 19: “You’re on your own, lost in the wild.”
Dehumanisation | Living Weapon | On Patrol

No. 20: "That's New."
Symptomatic | Fancy Event | Resignation

No. 21: “Sold my soul, broke my bones.”
Kneeling | Makeshift Splint | Brainwashed

No. 22: “All the battles I want to win, nothing matters but giving in.”
Self-Sacrifice | Collar | Hunted for Sport

No. 23: “How’d I get to this place?”
Intubation | ICU | Choking

No. 24: “I must confess that I feel like a monster.”
Came Back Wrong | Painful Transformation | Amnesia

No. 25: “Have you earned your stripes?”
Lost Faith | Collision Course | Left to Die

No. 26: “Nothing like a relapse to rehash the kid who was scared.”
Relapse | Drawn Curtains | Power Cut

No. 27: “Would you even want me, looking like a zombie?”
Surgical Scars | X-Ray | Bedside Vigil

No. 28: “I could always see straight through you.”
Backstabbing | Constellation | Creative Restraints

No. 29: “I hope you see the sun someday in the darkness.”
Fainting | Broken Dishes | Last one Standing

No. 30: “I’m putting my trust in an entire half-empty glass.”
Burn it Down | Mirror | Confrontation

No. 31: “Even with the smallest cuts. You can still lose so much blood.”
Bleeding Out | Gunshot Wound | Rescued by the Enemy

Alternatives List:
"A smile so bright, he’s the devil in disguise.”
“I hear you’re alive, how disappointing.”
“If all my days are numbered, why do I keep counting?”
Concussion
Viral
Suicide
Immortality
Jealousy
Organ Theft
Ziptie
Deal with the Devil
Yearning
Innocent Bystander
Unreality
Soulless
“Hold my hand.”
“Oh. Oh.”
“I hate this job.”


2025 fills under the cut )

Spooktober, and 'The Cake'

NSFW Sep. 30th, 2025 09:46 pm
pushkin666: (Default)
[personal profile] pushkin666
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Rarepair Exchange delay

Sep. 30th, 2025 09:23 pm
trobadora: (Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan - broadcast)
[personal profile] trobadora
Just in case someone else missed it too - [community profile] rarepairexchange reveals are delayed. Instead of 5 October, they're projected to happen on 19 October.

The reason I missed it: the delay was announced at the top of a pinch-hit post the day after the deadline (which was 21 September). I didn't even think to look at it at the time because I knew I didn't have time for any pinch-hits.

If that's you too, now you know. *g*

(Yesterday I happened to notice the new pinch-hit deadline, which is after the original reveals date, and got very confused. But the sticky post is up to date, which cleared up the current schedule, and then I tracked down the original announcement.)
mecurtin: two partially-excavated figures from the Xi'an Terracotta Army with the character 史 for History (chinese)
[personal profile] mecurtin
Purrcy was loving being petted while being as close to outside in the lovely fall sunshine and smells as he could get. Even though we're in NJ, we have *coyotes* as well as foxes, Great Horned Owls, & motor vehicles--it's much safer to be indoor-only, as well as better for the birds.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby lies on his back in the sunlight on a window ledge in front of a screen, looking up lovingly at his human. His pupil is only a slit in his light green eye, his nose is very pink, his whiskers long, his paws are folded like a bunny's, his belly looks VERY soft. You can tell the window is low to the ground, blurry leaves, stones, and a few plants are visible outside it.




This week (well, last week) Bret Devereaux continued his series on "Life, Work, Death and the Peasant" with Part IVd: Spinning Plates, about women's traditional work: household textile production. Devereaux's expertise is on Rome, broadening to the Meditteranean and premodern European more generally. I commented:
Women's textile production was *even more important* in China than in western Eurasia, believe it or not. The saying "Men till, women weave" was the classic expression of the gendered division of labor for more than 2000 years. Since the time of the Han dynasty at least both men and women were subject to taxation. Depending on the dynasty, either the household had to provide both grain and textiles, or each adult male was assessed an amount of grain, each adult female, textiles.

The cash value of the grain & textile taxes tended to be roughly equal (see, e.g. Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China, p. 186), but it's rare to see either primary sources or scholars admit it: the life-or-death significance of the grain tax, and the grain harvest, absolutely dominates everyone's thinking. But (as Bray shows) up until the Single-Whip Tax reform of the late 16thC (after which all taxes were rolled into one, to be payed in silver) women's textile production wasn't just a foundation of the home, it was a foundation of the *state*.

As is usual for premodern technology, most of the technical innovations Dr Devereaux mentions above were invented in China several centuries (at least) before they appeared further west. Originally, Chinese tax textiles were hemp in the north, silk in the south. Cotton became important starting around the time of the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, and spread rapidly. I don't know enough about the workflow for hemp and cotton textile production to know how much of it went to spinning. The workflow for silk production is very different: silk is "reeled", because it comes off the cocoons as long threads, several of which need to be twisted together to make a workable floss.
I linked to my comment on Bluesky, and suggested that Chinese peasant households were probably more *efficient* at producing textiles than West Eurasian ones were, because they HAD to produce surplus to the household's needs: enough for the family, plus enough for taxes.

I also pointed out that although, unlike in the west, Chinese women's labor was a crucial & explicit part of the state's tax system, and the marriage system relied on bride prices, not dowries (which are supposed to be better, maybe?, for women's rights)--yet neither factor gave women rights, respect or control.

I also got to tell someone about how Iceland used to use cloth as currency.

Daily Happiness

Sep. 29th, 2025 07:32 pm
torachan: my glitch character (glitch)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We had homemade nachos for dinner last night and they were so good.

2. I tried to go to the post office this morning, but even though it was a few minutes past when they were supposed to open, the doors were still locked and there were about ten other people outside so I just skipped it and figured I'd try again on the way home from work (this location is just down the street from work, so it's very convenient). Thankfully the second time was the charm, and there was only one person there before me.

3. I seem to have caught Carla's cold after all, but it seems much lighter than what she had. I'm just a little sniffly and stuffed up but don't otherwise feel sick, so I did go in to work today but just stayed masked the whole time I was out so as to not get anyone else sick.

4. Molly has discovered a new way to maximize fur distribution on the towels.

Updates

Sep. 28th, 2025 11:15 pm
sholio: pen and ink drawing of the four main Biggles characters (Biggles-team)
[personal profile] sholio
We watched Silo (AppleTV) seasons 1-2 over the past week or so. General reactions:
Click hereDraggy and depressing first season, really fun and engaging second season with an infuriating letdown of a season ending. (Even sudden surprise Jessica Henwick could not salvage that hot mess. Which apparently is the books' fault, but still.) I enjoyed most of the season two character arcs enough that I'm pretty happy to consider it a satisfying 2-season show. Maybe I'll write up more details later?

Feel free to ask me questions in the comments. I have not read the books it's based on, though I get the impression the show follows the book trajectory pretty closely.


Exchanges:
- Currently have a placeholder signup in for [community profile] festivids. I need to finish my signup (closes on Oct. 3).
- Almost certainly signing up for [personal profile] amperslashexchange, currently in nominations.
- I haven't signed up, but extremely tempted by Back from the Dead Flash Exchange, currently in nominations/signups (til Oct 3).
- Biggles holiday exchange is definitely running again! Planning post and polls here at the comm.

I don't have plans to do Yuletide this year, unless the FOMO gets to me too much.
mecurtin: Clio, Muse of History as fully clothed young woman with laurel crown, writing in book & side-eyeing viewer as if unimpressed with your antics (clio)
[personal profile] mecurtin
An empty jacuzzi is an ideal spot for wild! shenanigans! And it's also great for slowly sneaking toward mom, like the mighty predator you are.

A slightly blurry action shot of Purrcy the tuxedo tabby in the empty jacuzzi bathtub, twisting around after his tail

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby has crept to the inside rim of the tub and is staring up with his big, light green eyes, very much like a stalking tiger. Beware!



Purrcy was very concerned, walking hunched and close to the floor, because there had been the distant sounds of a *very* large growling something out there in the sky earlier ... he REALLY hates the Thunder Growler, this is his Sad Face about it

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is standing on a wood floor, looking up with his head cocked. His whiskers are rather droopy, his pupils wide, his expression deeply worried. He is very concerned that the Thunder Growler may show up again.




My new icon is Clio, the Muse of History, from this painting by Dutch Golden Age artist Johannes Moreelse, because she doesn't look *at all* like a Greek goddess picking heroes, she's a young woman taking notes on your stupid-ass behavior.




Last week Bret Devereaux's Friday post was On the Use and Abuse of Malthus, and I commented:
The standard description of the demographic transition has a important counterexample. Birth rates in France started falling in the 18th century, before industrialization or a drop in infant mortality. Guillaume Blanc's 2023 paper, The Cultural Origins of the Demographic Transition in France, begins with a quote from Malthus, in fact. Blanc presents preliminary evidence that France's demographic transition was the result of secularization & anti-clericalism.

A reasonable level of birth control could be achieved using only materials found in the home (mutual masturbation, coitus interruptus--not to mention oral sex, sodomy, or the other thousand & one fun activities that are not PiV), once French people stopped worrying what God wanted them to do. The assumption that premodern people *had* to have as many offspring as possible is not supported by this evidence.

Faustine Perrin (2022) suggests that the Enlightenment/the Revolution/anticlericalism led to a rising level of felt equality for French women in marriages, so that they were better able to assert their desire to bear fewer children.

In the present day, this ties into the work of 2023 Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin, whose article on The Downside of Fertility I just read because she talked about Bujold's Vorkosigan series in an economics podcast. TLDR: Bearing & raising children is hard work, labor even, and women are reluctant to do it if they don't have help.

Daily Happiness

Sep. 28th, 2025 05:51 pm
torachan: (cartoon me)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Had a pretty chill day today. Mostly just reading and playing Donkey Kong.

2. After having such good success with a couple other local restaurants we'd been meaning to check out for a while, today we decided to check out another one, a pizza place semi-attached to a little Indian market. They have some interesting toppings as well as standard stuff, and the one that caught our eye was paneer pizza. It has mozzarella but also big slices of paneer, plus red onions and jalapeños. The menu says marinara sauce, but it did not taste like regular marinara sauce. All in all it was super tasty. We had meant to just get a slice each and eat there, but it turns out they don't sell by the slice on weekends, so we got a medium pizza and took it home to eat. My stomach could not eat more than three pieces, but my mouth really wanted to finish the whole thing (sadly I do not like leftover pizza, so Carla will be eating the leftovers instead). Definitely will get that again.

3. Look at this little guy!

Weekly Reading

Sep. 28th, 2025 10:39 am
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
Currently Reading
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentelwoman
14%. Sequel to The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. This one is very long (over 24 hours in audiobook form) so I'll be at it for a while, but I'm enjoying it a lot.

Death at the Fireside Inn
42%. First in a new-to-me historical mystery series, but it's pretty mid so I doubt I'll continue the series.

The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America
8%. Title is self-explanatory. I only read the first chapter so far, but it's interesting. Unfortunately I had to return it to the library, but I immediately put it on hold again and there was no one else waiting for it, so I should have it back soon.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
29%.

Recently Finished
The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science
This was fun. A little on the too wacky side for me, but enjoyable. I'll check out the sequel when it's out.

Lone Women
Highly recommended. I really liked this a lot.

Murder on the Marlow Belle
I don't know why the US release of these books is so far behind the UK release. It's in the same language! But it is, and that's annoying. This was out in January in the UK and only came out in the US this month. The next one is out soon in the UK but I assume I'll have to wait a while to get it here. :(

Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites
We watched someone on youtube talking about one of the dishes in this book and he mentioned that this is where he heard about it. The book sounded interesting, so we ordered it right away. It's only 130 pages and some of the dishes have recipes to make at home, so it's a very quick read. I should look and see if there's something like this for LA.

Kaikai Gigigigigi vol. 1
New series by Uguisu Sachiko. I like all her stuff so of course I bought it. To be honest, it seems very much like a retread of You Will Hear the Voice of the Dead, but I loved that series so I'm down for it. Protag is a very ordinary boy who keeps finding himself at the center of supernatural happenings in his town. Each chapter is basically a stand-alone horror story with a thin overarching plot linking them.

Kubikari vol. 1-4
Short four-volume horror manga that I only finished because it was so short. A group of high school kids go to an old hotel in the middle of nowhere to film something for their social media channel, only to get trapped there while people start dying. The motivations were very flimsy and the whole thing was just not very good, but since it was short I wanted to see how it ended.

Daily Happiness

Sep. 27th, 2025 09:07 pm
torachan: charlotte from bad machinery saying "oh the mysteries of the moth farm" (oh the mysteries of the moth farm)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It was nice and overcast again today. Still very muggy, though. (It even rained a little overnight again.)

2. I beat Donkey Kong Bananza tonight. It's definitely a fun game. Looks like there's a ton of post-game stuff to do, and then there's a (paid, boo) DLC as well. I also want to play Final Fantasy Tactics, which is out at the end of the month, but I'll probably hold off on that and keep playing Donkey Kong for a bit first.

3. The lady at the farmers market had passionfruit bars again. They were soooooo good last week, I was really hoping she'd make them again. And the almond stand was back, so I was able to get my orange almond butter.

4. Jasper's posing for his mall photo.

2025 Disneyland Trip #64 (9/27/25)

Sep. 27th, 2025 06:39 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Since it's been cooler and overcast, we did a late morning/midday trip, which meant the park was at its most crowded, but honestly it wasn't too bad. And the weather was very nice (though still muggy).

Read more... )

A walk in the fire zone

Sep. 26th, 2025 10:47 pm
sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
[personal profile] sholio
This was actually around a week and a half ago - a week ago last Tuesday, Sept. 16 or so - but I've been deep in the word mines and I'm just now writing it up. (Click to embiggen photos.)

We enjoy doing walks in the fall when the weather is nice, and we decided to walk out and explore something interesting. I don't remember if I wrote about it at the time, but we had a little wildfire scare at the end of June, when a lightning-sparked wildfire started a few miles from our house. It got an all-hands-on-deck suppression approach (because it's so close to town and adjacent to several subdivisions), and was extinguished after burning about 15 acres or so. We watched the water tankers dropping loads on the blaze from our house.

This fall, we decided to try to walk out and find the location and have a look at it. We tried it once and failed, but after looking at satellite maps we decided that we were headed in the right direction, just turned back too soon. It involves walking down an old road cut - utility access road? who knows - that mostly looked like this:

one-lane dirt road with fallen gold leaves

But occasionally more like this.

dirt road with huge puddle reflecting trees

And we found the fire zone! Once we were there, it was unmistakable. The rest of these pictures are under a cut because some might find them distressing, although I mostly found it eerie and fascinating; it was nothing like any place I've ever been before. (All burned trees, no vehicles or structures.)

Photos under the cut )

Daily Happiness

Sep. 26th, 2025 10:16 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I got tickets to see MCR next October (2026) at the Hollywood Bowl! I didn't realize they were going to be coming back to LA so soon, but [personal profile] gorgeousnerd mentioned it on bluesky the other day so I checked it out and there are three shows here, which went on sale at noon today. I was in the waiting room about fifteen minutes before and then in the queue itself for another ten to fifteen minutes or so. It was surprisingly painless. The last two times I bought tickets for them was much more of a struggle. This time both Carla and I are going, so that will be fun.

2. It was so nice and overcast today (actually rained a bit overnight, but not much) that I took a walk at lunchtime and there was no sun blazing down on me at all, and I was able to do a mile walk without getting sweaty or warm.

3. I interrupted Tuxie mid-groom.

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