Reading

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biggles,
fic

Fic: Unimaginable

Today's Whumptober prompts did not spark off any ideas, so instead in the spirit of the fest, I went off and finished a ridiculous whumpy fic that's been hanging around almost done for a few weeks.

This was inspired by a passage in

silversmith's utterly brilliant Biggles/EvS casefic Tendernesses, Imprecise which I adored and which everyone should go and read. Anyway, there's one paragraph in it:

He had entertained a small private fantasy during his early months in London. The Soviets came for him and took him away, demanded information on his rescuers; and he imagined saying nothing, and somehow, later (he was hazy on this part), Bigglesworth and his colleagues would come to hear of it: that he had not, after all, betrayed them; and they would raise a glass to his memory and his reclaimed honour, saying that, if they had not gained much from their trip to Sakhalin, at least it had not been an error.

And I read that and I thought, if that actually happened to him, it really wouldn't go like that at all, and then I had to write how it would turn out.

Unimaginable on AO3 (3900 words, gen, angst, torture, h/c, suicidal themes)

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Highlander: HLH_Shortcuts, the annual Highlander Fanfic Exchange

Sign-ups are now open for

hlh_shortcuts 2025, the long-running annual Highlander Holiday Shortcuts fanfiction exchange!

When:

Sign-up: October 1 to 11, 2025 at 11:59PM CDT on AO3
Receive assignments: By October 14, 2025
Default deadline: November 20, 2025
Submissions: By December 15, 2025 on AO3
Stories revealed: The first on December 20, 2025 (the winter solstice, Duncan's birthday) and the rest a few per day as long as they last, per tradition

How:

This year's collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/hlhshortcuts2025
Instructions: HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Sign-Up Guide + HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Submission Guide + HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Defaulting Steps + Find a beta-reader / be a beta-reader

Yay, Highlander fun and friends! Come play with us?

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Newberys about Boys Who Don’t Want to Do Classic Boy Things

I do intend to write about The Problem of Tomboys eventually, but the post is languishing as I struggle to come to terms with the massive amount of material. So in the meantime, I’m writing the companion post about Boys Who Don’t Want to Do Classic Boy Things, a topic to which far fewer Newbery books are devoted, presumably because the general cultural attitude is Who Wouldn’t Want to Do Classic Boy Things? Boy Things Are the Best Things To Do.

In fact, I only found two books that really fit the bill, and in both cases the Boy Thing that our Boy does not want to Do is killing. In Mari Sandoz’s The Horsecatcher (1958), our hero Elk has no interest in becoming a warrior. He wants to become a horsecatcher, which is still valuable and manly work but something you’re supposed to do alongside warrioring, rather than instead of.

Although circumstances conspire to force Elk to kill a raider, proving that he can kill and thus raising his status in the community, he remains true to his own path, traveling far and wide to meet other horsecatchers and learn their secrets. At one point he meets a pair of sisters who are famous for their horse-training skills, who plan when they marry to marry the same man: “We marry together.”

Because it’s 1958 the book of course does not SAY that in a few years time, the sisters marry Elk. But I like to think that sometime after the book ends, the three of them are happily married and surrounded by horses.

The second book is Jerry Spinelli’s Wringer (1998). Our hero Palmer lives in a town that is famous for putting on a pigeon shoot every year. Boys in town are expected to wring the necks of wounded pigeons to put them out of their suffering. Palmer doesn’t want to become a wringer, but also doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t want to become a wringer because he knows the other boys will think he’s a sissy.

This book was absolutely everywhere when I was a kid, and I never read it because the cover is so creepy (look at it!) and the premise seemed both repulsive and borderline incomprehensible. Why are the boys expected to murder pigeons? Why can’t Palmer just SAY he doesn’t want to murder pigeons? “If you don’t want to murder pigeons, then just say you don’t want to murder pigeons!” I would have shouted at Palmer. “NO NORMAL PERSON WANTS TO MURDER PIGEONS.”

Reading it as an adult, I did grasp that the point was the crushing difficulty of bucking gendered social expectations. But uuuuhhh also I did still feel a little “Palmer stop being so lily-livered and just say you don’t want to murder pigeons.” Sorry Palmer. I know this was very unsympathetic of me.

You may have noticed that neither of these boys want to do girl things. They simply wish to be excused from committing indiscriminate slaughter and do other, slightly less manly boy things. To the best of my recollection (which is of course imperfect), there aren’t any Newbery books focused on Boys Who Want to Do Girl Things. Maybe 2026 will be the year.

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Kingdom Hearts: The Anonymous Kink Meme

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Okay, this is very cool

Guardian: Nearly 100 years after her death, Oxford’s first female Indigenous scholar honoured

Reading the lost diary of the first indigenous woman to study at Oxford (by her descendant June Northcroft Grant, who accepted Papakura's MPhil certificate at the ceremony)

What a cool person and fascinating life; really interesting and impressive to see someone succeeding in doing academic scholarship on an Indigenous group from within that group, in that time period.

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OH SHIT IT'S HAPPENING

Someone's finally cast Francesca Mills as Ophelia:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2025/oct/01/hamlet-national-theatre-hiran-abeysekera-shakespeare-in-pictures

Which I have been saying should happen for six years, since seeing her in Barrie Rutter's Two Noble Kinsmen as the Jailer's Daughter (a role which I described as "semi-comic shitty-first-draft Ophelia"). Also Juliet now please, casting directors.

Ships20in20 • Round 02

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Whumptober Day 2: Sewer (Murderbot)

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 )

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Kink Hub Theme of the Month: "Kinktober"

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Out of Air, by Rachel Reiss

Just in terms of the premise, this is The Secret History meets Shadow Divers: a poor girl scuba diver falls in with a group of rich kid scuba divers, and they end up bound together by a shared deadly secret. There's other works it also reminded of, again just in terms of the premise, which are more spoilery: ( Read more... )

In the present timeline, Phoebe aka "Phibs," a poor aspiring underwater photographer, discovers a hidden underwater cave while on a diving trip with her four rich best friends, Gabriel (hot boy she likes), Will (Gabriel's fraternal twin, a joker), Lani (lost three fingers in past timeline, now afraid to dive), and Isabel (Lani's girlfriend). That is all the characterization Phibs's friends get, though Phibs herself gets a little bit more, or at least more backstory: she's the sole caretaker of her grandmother with dementia, and the women in her family have a possibly uncanny knack for finding things.

In the past timeline, Phibs finds five gold coins via the family knack, and something happens that led to Lani losing fingers and someone dying. In the present, Phibs finds a beautiful underwater cave with an air pocket. She and Gabriel rest and kiss in the air pocket... and then learn that there's a legend saying bad things happen to people who breathe the air in the cave. It seems to be true, as deeply creepy things begin happening to their bodies...

The plot and premise are great, and the diving and body horror/transformation scenes are really well-done. Reiss is a professional scuba diver, and you can tell. But the pacing feels a bit abrupt and choppy, which is not helped by the dual timelines cutting between the past and present, so that events that actually are set up still sometimes feel like they come out of the blue. I had a hard time figuring out the geography of anywhere that wasn't underwater, which is not a common complaint I have about books - for instance, I wasn't sure for most of the book whether the island base in the present storyline was a tiny island with only one house on it, or a large one with a town. And of course there's the mostly-nonexistent characterization, which is really the biggest problem with the book. If this had actual characters rather than "hot boy" and "Lani's girlfriend," it would have been so good.

I didn't mind that nothing is explained about what's actually up with the cave and Phibs's family knack, but in case you would mind: nothing is explained. I did enjoy reading the book but more attention to character and taking things slower could have made it excellent rather than just an enjoyable read with some standout elements.

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Rainbow Connection Flash Exchange (Sign Ups Open Soon!)

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Wednesday Reading Meme

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Sorche Nic Leodhas’s Heather and Broom, which is accidentally a reread, because I bafflingly forgot to record it the first time I read it. I suspected this from the first story and was sure after the second, which is about a woman who bakes marvelous cakes who gets kidnapped by the fairies. Bake us a cake, they said! But of course, the woman said craftily. I’ll just need my big mixing bowl… and my spoon… and all my ingredients… and I can’t stir at the right rate without the thump of my dog’s tail to guide me, and can’t focus without my baby here so I can see he’s all right (the baby begins to cry incessantly), and ooooh did you remember to get me an oven??

At which point the exhausted fairies send her home, and the baker (as kind-hearted as she is clever) promises to leave them a cake once a week on the mound.

So you can see why I decided to keep on and reread all the stories over again. That one’s my favorite, but they’re all a good time.

I also finished Jostein Gaarder’s The Solitaire Mystery (translated by Sarah Jane Hails), which I’ve been meaning to read for years, and… maybe I should have read it years ago, when I read Sophie’s World and The Christmas Mystery. Reading it now, I found the philosophizing repetitive (isn’t it amazing that the world exists at all! Well, maybe it was the first ten times you said it), and although the way the whole story fits together has a charming puzzle-box neatness, at the same time ( spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started A Cavalcade of Sea Legends, because I was under the impression that it was a story collection by Sorche Nic Leodhas, but in fact it is an anthology that showed up in my Sorche Nic Leodhas search because it has one (1) story by her. Reading it anyway because who doesn’t like a good sea legend! Started off with a bang with a story about a girl who gives up her soul to become a mermaid to join her drowned lover… only in giving up her soul, she brought him back to life, and now he lives on land and she in the sea and ne’er the twain shall meet.

What I Plan to Read Next

After the two aforementioned failed attempts, I will at last achieve my Sorche Nic Leodhas book with Sea-Spell and Moor-Magic.

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Whumptober day 1: Lambs to the Slaughter

A drabble for the first day of Whumptober. I doubt I will manage something every day, I'm not doing any writing in advance, just seeing what I can come up with if I have a slot of time on the day. Today I am on a bus in a huge traffic jam which works okay for writing drabbles.

( Lambs to the Slaughter, Biggles WW1 gen )

Nominations Queries Post 2

Query Post Two

We are ~93 hours into tag approving! We began with 6078 individual fandom nominations to sort (where if two people submitted the same fandom, that would count twice towards the total). We have 1449 fandom nominations still to sort. Please review the questions below to help us sort them quickly and correctly! And thank you very much for your help so far.

Please link your nominations page if telling us what to do about your nomination - thank you! Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened. (You can find your own nominations at this link; keep in mind this gives you an 'Edit' screen where you can't actually submit any edits, but if you delete /edit, that's the page we're looking for.)

If we've processed any of your nominations and something doesn't look right, please comment (with your nominations page) to tell us about the problem and how you think it should be corrected. Questions are welcome.

13th Century CE Plantagenet Dynasty RPF - this category contains Edward II and Piers Gaveston, who are also both nominated in 14th Century CE RPF. We intend to approve these under the former category like we did last year; let us know if you have concerns. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Akkadian Empire RPF - We would like to change this to the slightly more general Mesopotamian RPF, which also has a nomination for Enheduanna. Does this work for the nominator? (See also below for another Mesopotamian query.) Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Antiques Roadshow RPF - Nominator, we can’t find Melissa Meuwly. Do you mean Meredith Meuwly? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Batman: Arkham Shadow (Video Game) - we received evidence for this but would like more information, please. Could the nominator, or anyone else who knows this family of games, please help us understand how it is distinct? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

The Breakfast Club (1985) - Brian Johnson’s parents are distinct characters and so we are not willing to approve them as a unit. Nominator, would you like to pick a parent? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Brilliant Minds (TV 2024) - We have nominations for Nico Silva and Scotty Silva. As far as we can tell, these are names given at different times in promotional material for a character played by Al Calderon, and the character hasn't yet appeared on the show. Since the most recent information we can find refers to Nico Silva, we're inclined to approve as that, but please let us know if this may be a twin situation or something else is going on! Please also note that if we can't be sure this character is appearing in any episodes before the end of sign-ups, we may need to remove them from the tag set. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid RPF - Both Paul Newman and Robert Redford are also nominated under the fandom Post-Classical Hollywood RPF, so we plan to merge this to that fandom, since people will be free to request or offer only these two characters. Please let us know if you have any concerns. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold and World of the Five Gods - Lois McMaster Bujold - given that the characters nominated under the canonical tag include some from Hallowed Hunt & the Penric and Desdemona stories, we would like to approve all of these together under World of the Five Gods. Any objections? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Control (Video Game) - We can’t determine if the character “Oldest House” possesses enough sentience to be approved. Nominator, could you describe how the Oldest House is a character please? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Corbenic (Catherine Fisher) - We won’t approve Arthur's Company Ensemble (Corbenic) as this is a group with named members. Nominator, would you like to pick one or two (since you’ve only nominated two other characters)? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Dream Cycle - H. P. Lovecraft - All characters nominated for this fandom (other than Worldbuilding) were approved last year in the fandom Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft; as we have overlapping nominations, we’d like to combine again the same way. Nominator of Worldbuilding (Dream Cycle - H. P. Lovecraft), would Worldbuilding (Cthulhu Mythos) in the fandom Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft work for you, or would you prefer for us to approve Dream Cycle with Worldbuilding as the only character tag? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

End of Summer (1998) - Nominator, please email us (see contact information in the footer). Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Game Changer (Web Series) - Nominator of Brennan Lee Mulligan and Sam Reich, we’d like to approve these characters but add them instead to the fandom CollegeHumor | Dropout RPF; nominator of Cerberus (Game Changer), Minotaur Brennan Lee Mulligan, Elaine Carroll, and Sam Reich, we’d like to approve these characters under Game Changer: Samalamadingdong (see below), with disambiguations for Elaine and Sam to indicate the fictional-ish versions they portrayed there. Alternatively, if you intended the actual versions of Elaine and Sam, we can move them as well to CollegeHumor | Dropout RPF as you do have a free fandom nomination slot - please let us know if you’d prefer that, or if you have any concerns. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Game Changer RPF - as the nominated characters are not RPF but rather characters from Game Changer: Samalamadingdong, we’ll approve them under this fandom - please let us know if you have concerns. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Hear Me Cry (1984) (CBS Schoolbreak Special) Craig and David’s parents are distinct characters and so we are not willing to approve each set of parents as a single unit. Nominator, would you like to pick two of the four parents? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

History Boys - All Media Types - Nominator, we won’t approve this nomination as All Media Types. Would you prefer the film or the play? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie and Translation State - Ann Leckie - Last year we approved Translation State separately and also approved the Ancillary Trilogy as its own fandom. Imperial Radch - Ann Leckie nominators, it looks like all your characters are in the original trilogy–any concerns with the same solution this year? Please link your nominations page when you reply. (edited slightly for clarity)

Mesopotamian RPF - this includes a nomination for the religious figure Avraham | Abraham | Ibrāhīm. We can see the logic but as the sources for his life are quite different to those of other figures nominated in this category, could we check what you were interested in, please, nominator? We note that Ea-Nasir is also nominated and that Ea-Nasir and Abraham have been discussed together; is there a specific source combining them you would be interested in? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Midsomer Murders - All Media Types - Nominator, we won't approve this nomination as All Media Types. Would you prefer TV or books? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis and To Say Nothing of the Dog: or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last - Connie Willis - To Say Nothing nominator, do you have any concerns about combining your nominations with the larger universe? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Palais de Reine (Visual Novel) - We can’t find the character “Astrud”. Nominator, is this “Astrad”, or is it just a different localization? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Strange Antiquities (Video Game) - Could we check please, is the nominated Thaumaturge the player character or the player character's mentor? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Terminator (Movies), Terminator: Genesis (2015), and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) - Nominators, please make your cases for splitting or combining these. Would it work to keep Genesis separate and combine (Movies 1984 1991 2019) for the rest, since Dark Fate follows Terminator 2? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Tron - All Media Types - We won't approve this nomination as All Media Types. Nominator, please pick a canon. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Previous queries

Aliens (1986) - Nominator, these characters are also nominated under the broader fandom Alien (Original Movies 1979-1997), so we would like to merge your nominations in with the rest of the original movies. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Bibi Blocksberg (2002) - Nominator, do you specifically only want the first movie, or may we approve this as the canonical Bibi Blocksberg (Movies 2002 2004)? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Dragonfly - Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin - Our understanding is that these are all in the same continuity. We are planning to combine Earthsea and Tombs of Atuan, especially as there is character overlap in those nominations. Dragonfly nominator, do you have concerns with folding that nomination into Earthsea as well? If so, we would appreciate help understanding exactly what you’re looking for and how to differentiate the larger Earthsea universe. Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede - We won’t approve the character nomination Morwen's Cats (Enchanted Forest) as they are all individually named. Nominators, could you please each choose a cat? (Scorn has already been nominated, and another nominator is fine with either Trouble or Fiddlesticks.) Please link your nominations page when you reply.

MAIJO Otaro - Works - We don’t approve fandoms consisting of all of a creator’s works, and the nominated characters appear to come from at least 2 novels. Nominator, could you pick one of Maijō’s works to nominate, along with the associated characters? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

夢中さきみに。| Muchuu sa Kimi ni (Manga) - We also have a nomination for the Anime; the nominator of that fandom says they have not read the manga but believes these could be combined if needed. We've heard from two Manga nominators who are OK with combining under Anime & Manga; could we hear from the third please? Please link your nominations page when you reply.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth

Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

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How to collect my Biggles ficlets/promptfic from the past few years

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.)

Poll #33681

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

View Respondents

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%)

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The Essequibo (Buddy-ta-na-na, We Are Somebody, Oh): Pt 1 [cur ev, war, Patreon]

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1884180.html

0.

The Essequibo River is the queen of rivers all!
    Buddy-ta-na-na, we are somebody, oh!
The Essequibo River is the queen of rivers all!
    Buddy-ta-na-na, we are somebody, oh!

    Somebody, oh, Johnny! Somebody, oh!
    Buddy-ta-na-na, we are somebody, oh!

– Sea shanty, presumed Guyanese

Let us appreciate that the only reason – the only reason – I know about what I am about to share with you is because of that whole music history thing of mine. It's not even my history. My main beat is 16th century dance music (± half a century). But dance music is working music, and as such I consider all the forms of work music to be its counsin, and so I have, of an occasion, wandered into the New England Folk Festival's sea-shanty sing. Many people go through life understanding the world around them through the perspective of a philosophical stance, a religious conviction, a grand explanatory theory, fitting the things they encounter into these frameworks; I do not know if I should be embarrased or not, but for me, so often it's just song cues.

So when I saw the word "Essequibo" go by in the web-equivalent of page six of the international news, I was all like, "Oh! I know that word!" recognizing a song cue when I see one. "It's a river. I wonder where it is?"

And I clicked the link.

That was twenty-one months ago.

Ever since, I have been on a different and ever-increasingly diverging timeline from the one just about everyone else is on.

In December of 2023, Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, tried to kick off World War Three.

He hasn't stopped trying. He's had to take breaks to steal elections and deal with some climate catastrophe and things like that. But mostly ever since – arguably since September of 2023 – Maduro has been escalating.

You wouldn't know it from recent media coverage of what the US is doing off the coast of Venezuela. At no point has any news coverage of the US military deployment to that part of the world mentioned anything about the explosive geopolitical context there. A geopolitical context, that when it has been reported on is referred to in term like "a pressure cooker" and "spiraling".

The US government itself has said nothing that alludes to it in any way. The US government has its story and it's sticking to it: this is about drugs.

As you may be aware, the US government is claiming to have sunk three Venezuelan boats using the US military. The first of these sinkings was on September 1st.

To hear the media tell it, the US just up and decided to start summarily executing people on boats in the Caribbean that it feels were drug-runners on Sep 1st.

No mention is made of what happened on Aug 31st.

On August 31, the day before the first US military attack on a Venezuelan vessel, at around 14:00 local time, somebody opened fire on election officials delivering ballot and ballot boxes in the country Venezuela is threatening to invade.

And they did it from the Venezuelan side of the river that is the border between the two countries.

That country is an American ally. And extremely close American ally. An ally that is of enormous importance to the US.

And which is a thirtieth the size of Venezuela by population, and which has an army less than one twentieth as large.

You would be forgiven for not knowing that Venezuela has been threatening to and apparently also materially preparing to invade another country, because while it's a fact that gets reported in the news, it is never reported in the same news as American actions involving or mentioning Venezuela.

Venezuela, which is a close ally of Russia.

You may have heard about how twenty-one months ago, in December of 2023, there was an election in Venezuela which Maduro claimed was a landslide win for him. There was a lot of coverage in English-speaking news about that election and how it was an obvious fraud, and the candidate who won the opposition party's primary wasn't on the ballot, and so on and so forth.

You probably didn't hear that in that very same election, there was a referendum. If you did hear it reported, you might have encountered it being dismissed in the media as a kind of political stunt of Maduro's, to get people to show up to the polls or to energize his base. It couldn't possibly be (the reasoning went) that he meant it. Surely it was just political theater.

The referendum questions put, on Dec 3, 2023, to the voters of Venezuela were about whether or not they supported establishing a new Venezuelan state.

Inside the borders of the country of Guyana.

2023 Dec 4: The Guardian: "Venezuela referendum result: voters back bid to claim sovereignty over large swath of Guyana".

Why?

Eleven billion gallons of light, sweet crude: the highest quality of oil that commands the highest price.

(I can hear all of Gen X breathe, "Oh of course.")

It is under the floor of the Caribbean in an area known as the Stabroek Block.

The Stabroek Block is off the coast of an area known as the Essequibo.

It takes its name from the Essequibo River, which borders it on one side, and it constitutes approximately two-thirds of the land area of the country of Guyana.

Whoever owns the Essequibo owns the Stabroek Block and whoever owns the Stabroek owns those 11B gallons of easily-accessed, high-value oil.

Image from BBC, originally in "Essequibo: Venezuela moves to claim Guyana-controlled region", 2023 Dec 6

As far as almost everyone outside of Venezuela has been concerned, for the last hundred years Guyana has owned the Essequibo.

Venezuela disagrees. ( Read more [5,760 words] )

This post brought to you by the 219 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!

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Whumptober Day 1: [Alt] Ziptie (Biggles)

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 )

Current Music: My Morning Jacket, "Time Waited"

And the clock ticks faster every year

I made landfall chez

selkie around three o'clock in the afternoon and my godchild almost instantly wanted to show me the reorganization of his bedroom and take me for a walk as he biked with his familiar in his backpack and for the first time reciprocate in our time-honored ritual of my weightlifting him which I have been doing since he was a lankily small child and it took no effort at all.

( Well, no one except you and me. )

My early birthday present from Selkie is a rare copy of Leib Spizman's Women in the Ghettos (פרויען אין די געטאס ,1946) in timeworn but otherwise astonishingly sound condition plus a Gol/Them sticker which I am using as a bookmark. I have been fed chopped liver and lime-yuzu soda and a variety of proteinaceous snacks. I even managed to doze a little on the train once my seatmate disembarked at New York and left me room to stretch my legs out in. I could have done without lightly hitting my head on a chair likely out of sheer exhaustion, but I plan to get as much sleep out of the windowless pit as I can. As a last grace note of the night, I did not expect to find my flash fiction "Teinds" (2007) listed among Maria Haskins' "A Short Fiction Treasures Special: 2 x 25 Gems from Strange Horizons' Archives." May all of it be some kind of template for the year to come.

Entry tags:

multifandom: hotties haunting the narrative

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Entry tags:

Pinch Hits 47-58 (and repost of others)

Pinch hits are participants who are without creators; pinch hitting is the practice of volunteering to make a gift for a pinch hit. These pinch hits are all due on October 19 at 10:00 PM EDT.

Fic In A Box has a very unusual set of assignment requirements: everyone is owed (and is asking for) 10k of fanfiction, which by default can be given as one 10k+ fic or several 1k+ fics. Participants have also had the option to opt-in to other minimum lengths or to other formats of fanwork. The other fanwork mediums are given word count equivalents, which you can view on the medium ruleset post.

Additionally:

Fic In A Box creators may default after partially filling their assignment—say, if they discover that they can only write 9k of fic—and PHs can be picked up in 1k increments!
You may always swap all or part of your assignment for a PH, just let us know that's what you're doing when you post to claim the PH.
In the future we'll include details in the post, but for this post we're linking to the app for that to keep the post size down!

In order to pick up a pinch hit you need to either email us or comment on this post (comments are screened) with:

The amount of wordcount you would like to claim (even if you're going to do fanart or some other non-fic opt-in medium! If you aren't sure what the equivalent would be, we'd be happy to help you convert it!)
The exact username of the AO3 account you will be posting your fill(s) from (if you post from a different account from the one you give us, we won't be able to count the PH as filled unless you update us!)
An email where we can reach you (you might not be getting the AO3 assignment when you pick up a PH, so we need to know where to send the assignment!)

( PH 4 - 2k - Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon), Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (TV), Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Resistance (Cartoon) )

( PH 5 - CLAIMED - Christian Astrology - William Lilly, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), 龍の国ルーンファクトリー | Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (Video Game), Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses )

( PH 7 - 10k - Only Murders in the Building (TV), Roseanne (TV 1988), Red Band Society (US TV), Degrassi the Next Generation, Win or Lose (Cartoon), Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth, The OC (TV), Short Term 12 (2013), Turtles All the Way Down (Movie 2024) )

( PH 12 - 10k - 鹿鼎記 - 金庸 | The Deer and the Cauldron - Louis Cha, 鹿鼎記 | The Duke of Mount Deer (Hong Kong 1984), 老洞 | The Old Miao Myth (TV) )

( PH 14 - 2k - Neon Genesis Evangelion, Final Fantasy XII, Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, i could command you be cruel to you compel you - jonphaedrus (Exchange Disambig), Don Giovanni - Mozart/Da Ponte, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson, Crossover Fandom )

( PH 16 - 3k - 阴阳师 | Yīn Yáng Shī | The Yin-yang Master (Movies - Guo Jingming), 陰陽師 | Onmyouji (Anime 2023), 밤에 피는 꽃 | Knight Flower (TV) )

( PH 18 - 7k - The Fixer Series - Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Earth Girl Series - Janet Edwards, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, The Librarians (TV 2014), Crossover Fandom )

~~( PH 19 - CLAIMED - Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Voyager, Crossover Fandom )~~

( PH 20 - 10k - Wahkonda (Band), Wahkonda (Band), Wahkonda (Band), Springtime (Band), Mind Your Language (TV), Münchener Freiheit (Band), Wahkonda (Band), Springtime (Band), Men's Football RPF, Wahkonda (Band) )

( PH 22 - 7k - The Good Wife (TV), Fresh Meat (TV), Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, Guardians of Time - Marianne Curley, Crossover Fandom, Crossover Fandom )

( PH 25 - 10k - Stargate - Live Action, Kolja | Kolya (1996), Cesta do pravěku | Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), Crossover Fandom )

( PH 29 - 10k - 단금지교 | Dangeum and Jigyo (Webcomic), Star Control (Video Games), Chang Feng Juan | I Promise to Return (Webcomic), 고진감래 | Go Jin and Gam-rae (Webcomic) )

( PH 30 - 6k - Green Hornet (TV), Crossover Fandom, Ghost Whisperer )

( PH 47 - CLAIMED - 英雄伝説閃の軌跡 | Sen no Kiseki | The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Series (Video Games), 英雄伝説黎の軌跡 | Kuro no Kiseki | The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak Series (Video Games), Star Ocean: The Second Story | Second Evolution, 찌질한 서브공이 되었습니다 | I Became the Lousy Side Top (Webcomic), Ensemble Stars! (Video Game), 龍の国ルーンファクトリー | Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (Video Game), Original Work, Original Work, Chrono Trigger )
( PH 48 - CLAIMED - Crossover Fandom, DCU (Comics), Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, DCU (Comics), Towards Zero - Agatha Christie (2025 TV), Modesty Blaise - Peter O'Donnell, Crossover Fandom, Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Inception (2010), Midsomer Murders (TV) )
( PH 49 - CLAIMED - Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, 19th Century CE RPF, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers Series - Alexandre Dumas, Heads of State (2025), Battlestar Galactica (2003), NCIS (TV 2003), Our Flag Means Death (TV), North and South (UK TV), KPop Demon Hunters (2025), 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020) )
~~( PH 50 - CLAIMED - Voltron: Legendary Defender, Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Hannibal (TV), Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies) )~~

( PH 51 - 4k - Dreaming of Sunshine - SilverQueen (DFE), Crossover Fandom, Beware of Chicken - Casualfarmer, Assassin's Creed - All Media Types )

~~( PH 52 - CLAIMED - Captain America (Movies), 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù )~~

( PH 54 - 2k - Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Surrender Denied by SassySnowperson (DFE), Starian Cycle - Iris Foxglove, Original Work )

( PH 55 - CLAIMED - 罗小黑战记 | Luo Xiao Hei Zhan Ji | The Legend of Luo Xiaohei, 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, Crossover Fandom, 화산귀환 | Return of the Blossoming Blade (Webcomic), Naruto (Anime & Manga), 哪吒 | Nezha (Movies 2019 2025) )

( PH 56 - 3k - The Pitt (TV), Andor (TV), The Musketeers (2014), Inception (2010), Succession (TV 2018), Conclave (2024), Original Work )

( PH 57 - 4k - Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson, Luther (TV), Severance (TV), Succession (TV 2018), Mission: Impossible (Movies) )

~~( PH 58 - CLAIMED - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Helluva Boss (Web Series), Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga), 幽☆遊☆白書 | YuYu Hakusho: Ghost Files (Anime & Manga) )~~