A couple of links
Dec. 12th, 2025 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sholioamperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:
“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”
Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.
Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:
“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”
Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.
[ SECRET POST #6916 ]
Dec. 12th, 2025 07:14 pmcase posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fandomsecrets⌈ Secret Post #6916 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #987.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Dec. 12th, 2025 01:45 pmrachelmanija
After a wet-bulb heat wave kills thousands in India, the UN forms an organization, the Ministry for the Future, intended to deal with climate change on behalf of future generations. They're not the only organization trying mitigate or fight or adapt to climate change; many other people and groups are working on the same thing, using everything from science to financial incentives to persuasion to terrorism.
We very loosely follow two very lightly sketched-in characters, an Irish woman who leads the Ministry for the Future and an American man whose life is derailed when he's a city's sole survivor of the Indian wet-bulb event, but the book has a very broad canvas and they're not protagonists in the usual sense of the word. The book isn't about individuals, it's about a pair of phenomena: climate change and what people do about it. The mission to save the future is the protagonist insofar as there is one.
This is the first KSR book I've actually managed to finish! (It's also the only one that I got farther in than about two chapters.) It's a very interesting, enlightening, educational book. I enjoyed reading it.
He's a very particular kind of writer, much more interested in ideas and a very broad scope than in characters or plot. That approach works very well for this book. The first chapter, which details the wet-bulb event, is a stunning, horrifying piece of writing. It's also the closest the book ever comes to feeling like a normal kind of novel. The rest of it is more like a work of popular nonfiction from an alternate timeline, full of science and economics and politics and projects.
I'm pretty sure Robinson researched the absolute cutting edge of every possible action that could possibly mitigate climate change, and wrote the book based on the idea of "What if we tried all of it?"
Very plausibly, not everything works. (In a bit of dark humor, an attempt to explain to billionaires why they should care about other people fails miserably.) Lots of people are either apathetic or actively fighting against the efforts, and there's a whole lot of death, disaster, and irreparable damage along the way. But the project as a whole succeeds, not because of any one action taken by any one group, but because of all of the actions taken by multiple groups. It's a blueprint for what we could be doing, if we were willing to do it.
The Ministry for the Future came out in 2020. Reading it now, its optimism about the idea that people would be willing to pull together for the sake of future generations makes it feel like a relic from an impossibly long time ago.
There Is No Antimemetics Division by Qntm
Dec. 12th, 2025 04:31 pmlightreadsThere Is No Antimemetics Division
4/5. A short novel about what it would be like to be an organization fighting anti-memes (powerful eldritch somethings that can effectively erase information from the universe, including from human memory). How do you fight a war for humanity when you keep forgetting a war is happening at all?
A very interesting mechanism of a book. I enjoyed watching its strangely-shaped gears catch one to the next, partly because this is the sort of story that my brain would not have come up with given several centuries of work. Not just the story itself, but the entire odd structure that makes it go. I do think I fundamentally disagree with one of this books premises about how human beings work, but sure, okay, I’m willing to go with the idea that the people who work at this particular organization are odd ducks who will, for example, have an entire decade of life scooped out of their head by a cosmic horror and who will just kinda shrug and go about calmly reconstructing their life from the evidence left behind.
I will say as a point of flavor more than a warning: this book has that particular approach to character where people are extremely unembodied. Indeed, you could be forgiven for picturing the entire cast as brains in a jar that go about acting on the world and on each other without much affect at all. People do have internal lives, but we glimpse them at odd angles and through narrow pinholes, like when we only get to know about a marriage when one of the spouses has forgotten the other and reads the surveillance reports on them. It’s all definitely a vibe, and not my style, but here it works.
Content notes: Cosmic horror, other kinds of creeping horror of knowing you’ve forgotten something terrifying, violence.
4/5. A short novel about what it would be like to be an organization fighting anti-memes (powerful eldritch somethings that can effectively erase information from the universe, including from human memory). How do you fight a war for humanity when you keep forgetting a war is happening at all?
A very interesting mechanism of a book. I enjoyed watching its strangely-shaped gears catch one to the next, partly because this is the sort of story that my brain would not have come up with given several centuries of work. Not just the story itself, but the entire odd structure that makes it go. I do think I fundamentally disagree with one of this books premises about how human beings work, but sure, okay, I’m willing to go with the idea that the people who work at this particular organization are odd ducks who will, for example, have an entire decade of life scooped out of their head by a cosmic horror and who will just kinda shrug and go about calmly reconstructing their life from the evidence left behind.
I will say as a point of flavor more than a warning: this book has that particular approach to character where people are extremely unembodied. Indeed, you could be forgiven for picturing the entire cast as brains in a jar that go about acting on the world and on each other without much affect at all. People do have internal lives, but we glimpse them at odd angles and through narrow pinholes, like when we only get to know about a marriage when one of the spouses has forgotten the other and reads the surveillance reports on them. It’s all definitely a vibe, and not my style, but here it works.
Content notes: Cosmic horror, other kinds of creeping horror of knowing you’ve forgotten something terrifying, violence.
Update [me, health, Patreon]
Dec. 12th, 2025 06:49 amsidereaSo, I, uh, got my RSI/ergonomics debugged!* I then promptly lost two days to bad sleep due to another new mechanical failure of the balky meat mecha and also a medical appointment in re two previous malfunctions. But I seem back in business now. The new keyboard is great.
Patrons, I've got three Siderea Posts out so far this month and it's only the 12th. I have two more Posts I am hoping to get out in the next three days. Also about health insurance. We'll see if it actually happens, but it's not impossible. I have written a lot of words. (I really like my new keyboard.)
Anyways, if you weren't planning on sponsoring five posts (or – who knows? – even more) this month, adjust your pledge limits accordingly.
* It was my bra strap. It was doing something funky to how my shoulder blade moved or something. It is both surprising to me that so little pressure made so much ergonomic difference, and not surprising because previously an even lighter pressure on my kneecap from wearing long underwear made my knee malfunction spectacularly. Apparently this is how my body mechanics just are.
Patrons, I've got three Siderea Posts out so far this month and it's only the 12th. I have two more Posts I am hoping to get out in the next three days. Also about health insurance. We'll see if it actually happens, but it's not impossible. I have written a lot of words. (I really like my new keyboard.)
Anyways, if you weren't planning on sponsoring five posts (or – who knows? – even more) this month, adjust your pledge limits accordingly.
* It was my bra strap. It was doing something funky to how my shoulder blade moved or something. It is both surprising to me that so little pressure made so much ergonomic difference, and not surprising because previously an even lighter pressure on my kneecap from wearing long underwear made my knee malfunction spectacularly. Apparently this is how my body mechanics just are.
Choosing Health Insurance: HSAs: FYI re bronze, catastrophic plans [healthcare, US, Patreon]
Dec. 12th, 2025 06:17 amsidereaCanonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1890494.html
0.
Hey Americans (and other people stuck in the American healthcare system)! Shopping for a health plan on your state marketplace? Boy, do I have some information for you that you should have and probably don't. There's been an important legal change affecting your choices that has gotten almost no press.
Effective with plan year 2026 all bronze level and catastrophic plans are statutorily now HDHPs and thus HSA compatible. You may get and self-fund an HSA if you have any bronze or catastrophic plan, as well as any plan of any level designated a HDHP.
2025 Dec 9: IRS.gov: "Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill"
If you are shopping plans right now (or thought you were done), you should probably be aware of this. Especially if you are planning on getting a bronze plan, a catastrophic plan, or any plan with the acronym "HSA" in the name or otherwise designated "HSA compatible".
The Trump administration doing this is tacit admission that all bronze plans have become such bad deals that they're the economic equivalent of what used to be considered a HDHP back when that concept was invented, and so should come with legal permission to protect yourself from them with an HSA.
Effective immediately, you should consider a bronze plan half an insurance plan.
( Read more [3,340 words] )
This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
0.
Hey Americans (and other people stuck in the American healthcare system)! Shopping for a health plan on your state marketplace? Boy, do I have some information for you that you should have and probably don't. There's been an important legal change affecting your choices that has gotten almost no press.
Effective with plan year 2026 all bronze level and catastrophic plans are statutorily now HDHPs and thus HSA compatible. You may get and self-fund an HSA if you have any bronze or catastrophic plan, as well as any plan of any level designated a HDHP.
2025 Dec 9: IRS.gov: "Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill"
Bronze and Catastrophic Plans Treated as HDHPs: As of Jan. 1, 2026, bronze and catastrophic plans available through an Exchange are considered HSA-compatible, regardless of whether the plans satisfy the general definition of an HDHP. This expands the ability of people enrolled in these plans to contribute to HSAs, which they generally have not been able to do in the past. Notice 2026-05 clarifies that bronze and catastrophic plans do not have to be purchased through an Exchange to qualify for the new relief.
If you are shopping plans right now (or thought you were done), you should probably be aware of this. Especially if you are planning on getting a bronze plan, a catastrophic plan, or any plan with the acronym "HSA" in the name or otherwise designated "HSA compatible".
The Trump administration doing this is tacit admission that all bronze plans have become such bad deals that they're the economic equivalent of what used to be considered a HDHP back when that concept was invented, and so should come with legal permission to protect yourself from them with an HSA.
Effective immediately, you should consider a bronze plan half an insurance plan.
( Read more [3,340 words] )
This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
[ SECRET POST #6915 ]
Dec. 11th, 2025 06:09 pmcase posting in fandomsecrets⌈ Secret Post #6915 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 10 secrets from Secret Submission Post #987.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Year in review and next year's plans
Dec. 11th, 2025 12:23 pmsholioI normally do this at the end of the year, but I'm doing it early this year because I'll be out of town 'til the 27th, and I don't really expect much to change; all my publications for the year are publicated. See the tag for previous years' updates!
This year's cover grid:
3 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 collection. That's honestly much better than I was expecting; I spent most of the year clawing my way back from burnout, and the final two books were slammed out at the end of the year when suddenly my creative brain came back online.
( Checking in with last year's plan )
( Next year's plans )
( Edited to add: one more thing )
This year's cover grid:
3 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 collection. That's honestly much better than I was expecting; I spent most of the year clawing my way back from burnout, and the final two books were slammed out at the end of the year when suddenly my creative brain came back online.
( Checking in with last year's plan )
( Next year's plans )
( Edited to add: one more thing )
Community Thursday
Dec. 11th, 2025 05:38 pmvriddyCommunity Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.
Posted & commented on bnha_fans.
Commented on little_details.
Commented on endings.
Commented on goals_on_dw.
Signal boosts:
- moodthemeinayear is chugging along, and now has free points to offer for folks who complete part of a mood theme for Dreamwidth :D Even more motivation to learn!! Haha. See this post for more information.
- Via dray, a new comm focusing on original characters is starting over at ocrealm, if you have characters you'd like to chat about!
- Via shipperslist, there's a new comm to enthuse about any kind of audio-based narrative entertainment, see voiceinmyear!
Babylon 5 fic: Movie Nights
Dec. 11th, 2025 01:46 amsholioI finished something I started a while back!
Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.
Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.
MASH Christmas fic
Dec. 10th, 2025 05:31 pmsholioThis is actually something I wrote last winter, February or so, when I was bingeing MASH. I figured that although I could post it at the time I wrote it, I could also wait and post it at actual Christmastime.
Goodnight Moon (1816 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Christmas, Missing Scene, Episode: s09e05 Death Takes a Holiday
Summary: Hawkeye makes a discovery. (Missing scene for 9x05 "Death Takes a Holiday," the season 9 Christmas episode.)
Goodnight Moon (1816 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Christmas, Missing Scene, Episode: s09e05 Death Takes a Holiday
Summary: Hawkeye makes a discovery. (Missing scene for 9x05 "Death Takes a Holiday," the season 9 Christmas episode.)
[ SECRET POST #6914 ]
Dec. 10th, 2025 07:39 pmcase posting in fandomsecrets⌈ Secret Post #6914 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #987.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
RIP Hellcat
Dec. 10th, 2025 02:46 pmcodyneAs I feared, the Hellcat was dead when I got up this morning. I boxed it up, called the Health Department, and headed to the animal hospital to drop it off. They will send it off for testing and I should get the results tomorrow. The Health Department will authorize rabies treatment if necessary once they get the results.
Got home and spent a couple of hours cleaning up the cat room. Such a disaster, the cat had torn up two bags of cat litter and chewed up everything chewable it could find. I thought about what I could salvage and finally decided to just wash what could be washed, wipe down with Clorox anything that could be cleaned, and throw away the rest. I threw away the cat bed the cat had died in, and all the toys that had been strewn around, as well as all the cat litter and kibble in the floor. I could have washed some of the toys, but I decided to just get rid of them all and start fresh. Most of the ones in there he didn't play with anyway -- his favorites are all out in the rest of the house and he has plenty out here. I packed up a few things to be washed -- another cat bed I don't think the cat used, and the towels I'd brought in -- and they'll go in the laundry with the clothes I was wearing around the cat. Everything else got sprayed with Clorox and wiped down: the cat tree, the table and plastic chair, the carrier I used to bring the cat into the house, the stroller and the pile of carriers and stuff in the corner. I emptied the litter box and washed it out with bleach cleanser. Took about two hours and I'm exhausted. I remembered to buy and use gloves while I cleaned, but forgot to wear a mask, and stirred up enough dust to aggravate my allergies.
Last thing I'm going to do is steam clean the floor with my steam mop, after I rest a bit more. I already sprayed it with Clorox but I'm going to mop it as well. Then let the room air out for the rest of the day and put Davey's stuff back in it tomorrow. Meanwhile I'm keeping it closed so Davey can't get in. I suspect I'm being overly cautious (and Davey's had his rabies vax anyway, so he should be fine), but the room could use a good deep-clean anyway and I want to make sure all the kitty's germs are gone.
I only got one half-decent picture of the kitty in the short time before it became a rage demon. It was a cute little void cat with extra toes on its murder mittens. Poor kitty. I'm sorry it ended this way but at least it's not suffering any more.
Got home and spent a couple of hours cleaning up the cat room. Such a disaster, the cat had torn up two bags of cat litter and chewed up everything chewable it could find. I thought about what I could salvage and finally decided to just wash what could be washed, wipe down with Clorox anything that could be cleaned, and throw away the rest. I threw away the cat bed the cat had died in, and all the toys that had been strewn around, as well as all the cat litter and kibble in the floor. I could have washed some of the toys, but I decided to just get rid of them all and start fresh. Most of the ones in there he didn't play with anyway -- his favorites are all out in the rest of the house and he has plenty out here. I packed up a few things to be washed -- another cat bed I don't think the cat used, and the towels I'd brought in -- and they'll go in the laundry with the clothes I was wearing around the cat. Everything else got sprayed with Clorox and wiped down: the cat tree, the table and plastic chair, the carrier I used to bring the cat into the house, the stroller and the pile of carriers and stuff in the corner. I emptied the litter box and washed it out with bleach cleanser. Took about two hours and I'm exhausted. I remembered to buy and use gloves while I cleaned, but forgot to wear a mask, and stirred up enough dust to aggravate my allergies.
Last thing I'm going to do is steam clean the floor with my steam mop, after I rest a bit more. I already sprayed it with Clorox but I'm going to mop it as well. Then let the room air out for the rest of the day and put Davey's stuff back in it tomorrow. Meanwhile I'm keeping it closed so Davey can't get in. I suspect I'm being overly cautious (and Davey's had his rabies vax anyway, so he should be fine), but the room could use a good deep-clean anyway and I want to make sure all the kitty's germs are gone.
I only got one half-decent picture of the kitty in the short time before it became a rage demon. It was a cute little void cat with extra toes on its murder mittens. Poor kitty. I'm sorry it ended this way but at least it's not suffering any more.
The Night Guest, by Hildur Knútsdóttir
Dec. 10th, 2025 10:07 amrachelmanija
An Icelandic horror novella translated by Mary Robinette Kowal! I had no idea she's fluent in Icelandic.
Iðunn experiences unexplained fatigue and injuries when she wakes up, but is gaslit by doctors and offered idiotic remedies by co-workers. (Very relatable!) Meanwhile, she's being semi-stalked by her ex-boyfriend/co-worker, her parents refuse to accept that she's a vegetarian and keep serving her chicken, and the only living beings she actually likes are the neighborhood cats that she's allergic to.
After what feels like an extremely long time, it finally occurs to her that she might be sleepwalking, and some time after that, it finally occurs to her to video herself as she sleeps. At that point some genuinely scary/creepy/unsettling things happen, and I was very gripped by the story and its central mystery.
Is Iðunn going out at night and committing all the acts she's normally too beaten down or scared to do while sleepwalking or dissociating? Is she having a psychotic break? Is she a vampire? Is she possessed? Does it have something to do with a traumatic past event that's revealed about a third of the way in?
Other than the last question, I have no idea! The ending was so confusing that I have no idea what it was meant to convey, and it did not provide any answers to basically anything. I'm also not sure what all the thematic/political elements about the oppression of women had to do with anything, because they didn't clearly relate to anything that actually happened.
Spoilers!
( Read more... )
This was a miss for me. But I was impressed by the very fluent and natural-sounding translation.
Content note: A very large number of cats are murdered. Can horror writers please knock it off with the dead cats? At this point it would count as a shocking twist if the cat doesn't die.