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What's Making Me Happy Today: Flight of the Icaron
Jan. 6th, 2026 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
delphiThe actual-play audio drama podcast ![[youtube.com profile]](https://youtube.com/favicon.ico)
worldsbeyondnumber just started a short science fiction campaign, Flight of the Icaron, and the first episode knocked it out of the park.
Official Summary:
We have Aabria Iyengar as space mining mogul Kiki Davis, Brennan Lee Mulligan as engineer and father Andrei Dalca, and Erika Ishii as troubled young tragedy survivor Vera "Fishcakes" Lam—with Lou Wilson as GM, bringing some top-notch narration and NPC work that immediately has this feeling like a fully fledged universe full of characters with long histories and established relationships. There's a weight and rootedness to the worldbuilding and plot, but there's also still plenty of humour, especially in a recurring bit about trying to heist the good herbed Cheddar from a boring government party. I'm hooked, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series!
Official Summary:
This is the maiden voyage of the Icaron - Earth’s first S-Class Battle Station. This demonstration flight has been certified as routine by all relevant oversight bodies. Systems have been tested, personnel vetted, and contingencies reviewed. Passengers are reminded that the Icaron represents the highest standard of planetary defense engineering.
Please remain seated.
We have Aabria Iyengar as space mining mogul Kiki Davis, Brennan Lee Mulligan as engineer and father Andrei Dalca, and Erika Ishii as troubled young tragedy survivor Vera "Fishcakes" Lam—with Lou Wilson as GM, bringing some top-notch narration and NPC work that immediately has this feeling like a fully fledged universe full of characters with long histories and established relationships. There's a weight and rootedness to the worldbuilding and plot, but there's also still plenty of humour, especially in a recurring bit about trying to heist the good herbed Cheddar from a boring government party. I'm hooked, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series!
REC: I wish to save the world by cam (Pluribus, Manousos Oviedo & Carol Sturka)
Jan. 5th, 2026 08:24 pmdelphiFandom 50 #31
I wish to save the world by cam
Fandom: Pluribus
Characters/Relationships: Manousos Oviedo, Carol Sturka, Carol/The Hivemind
Medium: Vid
Length: 3:47
Rating: SFW (note: contains spoilers for all of s1)
My Bookmark Tags: drama, ambiguous ending, resistance, perseverance, survival, injury, loss, identity, minor character death
Song: "The Old Religion" by Florence + The Machine (slowed-down version)
Excerpt:
The editing choices are superb, focusing on the later episodes but deploying moments from the earlier ones to subtle but devastating effect to support the vid's thesis and to bring home the weight of everything that drove us to the finale. The combination of the music choice and the way Manousos and Carol's journeys up until now are portrayed—their losses, their struggles, their stubborn perseverance—gives me a new appreciation for everything that makes them them, and leaves me feeling incredibly tender toward these two Difficult (read: human) People.
I wish to save the world by cam
Fandom: Pluribus
Characters/Relationships: Manousos Oviedo, Carol Sturka, Carol/The Hivemind
Medium: Vid
Length: 3:47
Rating: SFW (note: contains spoilers for all of s1)
My Bookmark Tags: drama, ambiguous ending, resistance, perseverance, survival, injury, loss, identity, minor character death
Song: "The Old Religion" by Florence + The Machine (slowed-down version)
Excerpt:
"Maybe, in that last fleeting moment, you might just realize you treasure your individuality."I used the tag 'ambiguous ending' because I don't know where canon will take us from here, but oh man, does this video (rightfully) feel like resisting and continuing to exist as yourself against overwhelming odds and pressure is its own triumph. My heart ached, my heart soared.
The editing choices are superb, focusing on the later episodes but deploying moments from the earlier ones to subtle but devastating effect to support the vid's thesis and to bring home the weight of everything that drove us to the finale. The combination of the music choice and the way Manousos and Carol's journeys up until now are portrayed—their losses, their struggles, their stubborn perseverance—gives me a new appreciation for everything that makes them them, and leaves me feeling incredibly tender toward these two Difficult (read: human) People.
Dear Valentine (Candy Hearts 2025)
Jan. 3rd, 2026 11:12 amprimeidealHello! Thank you for creating for me. I'm primeideal on Ao3, and I'm requesting fic for all fandoms, art for Divine Cities and Stormlight Archive. Treats are enabled on Ao3.
As always, if you already have an idea in mind for these characters/relationships, go for it! This is just a starting point. I have many previous creator request letters from which this is copy-pasted and endlessly rewritten, feel free to browse previous versions. I would be equally delighted with gifts for any of these!
Loren & Tobias: Loren experiences one of the canonical bad reactions to morphing (allergies, Z-Space nonsense, etc.) post-book 49 and Tobias has to help her through it? AU where she raises Tobias, maybe with memories intact, maybe not--what changes? They get back together post-canon and try to build a family?
Debrief
Robert Alderidge/George Russell
Divine Cities
Ahanas/Voortya
Anything expanding on their relationship as portrayed in "City of Blades"! What does it look like to them, to their fellow Divinities, to contemporary worshipers? In-universe scholarship from people like Efrem and Shara trying to puzzle it out centuries later? Religious art combining symbols associated with both of them?
Farscape
Stormlight Archive
Any Radiant & Their Spren
Dalinar/Navani
Navani/Raboniel
Renarin/Rlain
Shallan/Adolin
Any Radiant Spren: Really just...anything about the spren and their outsider POVs on humans! Syl discovering what it means to grow and change? Pattern comparing everything to math? The irony in Ivory's name and the importance of free will? Glys' relationship to Sja-anat and the free will issues there? Pattern and Testament gossiping about Shallan's love life? All the spren!
Dalinar/Navani: Outsider POV on the scandal of their relationship? Cute moments taking care of little Gav? The Stormfather and Sibling bickering about how humans are the worst, and now they're inlaws? Accidental "time travel" to another era (via the Spiritual Realm flashbacks) and having to make senses of things there? AU where Navani chooses Dalinar instead of Gavilar back in the day? Does she meet the same fate as Evi?
Navani/Raboniel: Bonding over science and figuring things out together! Is the Sibling exasperated, or trying to set them up? Parallels between their grief for their kids? What if Raboniel had been more honest about what the Anti-Voidlight was for, and Navani realizes she doesn't really want Raboniel dead? For this prompt, I'd prefer no infidelity--so an AU where Navani/Dalinar aren't a thing, or Raboniel lives and reconnects with Navani after Dalinar's death?
Renarin/Rlain: When did Rlain first have feelings for Renarin? Early moments in Bridge Four, the biggest outsiders even among outsiders? What's next after "Wind and Truth"? Culture shock? Trying to make things work in the new listener society?
Shallan/Adolin: More adventures in the Cognitive Realm? Trying to keep in touch via the communication spren post-canon? Pattern, Testament, or Maya's POV on their relationship? I'm not super interested in Shallan's alternate identities, so I'd prefer if they weren't a heavy focus.
Crossover Fandom
Sazed (Mistborn) and Taravangian (Stormlight Archive)
Rowan (Steerswoman) and Shallan Davar (Stormlight Archive)
Mikhail Rodinovich Bykov (Debrief) and Alexander Molokov (Chess)
Cordelia Naismith (Vorkosigan Saga) and Rowan (Steerswoman)
Sazed and Taravangian: They both control two Shards now--Sazed's seem like inherent opposites, Taravangian's don't. What happens when they meet? Taravangian tries to talk Sazed into letting Taravangian combine more shards for the greater good? Sazed turns Taravangian's logic against him? Could they meet in some kind of pocket universe/Cognitive Realm nonsense/AU setting where their immense powers don't really come into play and it's just the two guys bickering at each other?
Rowan and Shallan: Both of them have conversations in their respective fourth books that hinge on a misunderstanding of "power," and it's just like...two nickels! Shallan stumbles through a weird portal in the Cognitive Realm and winds up in Rowan's realm? One of them happens across the other one's logbooks? AU where Jasnah is a Steerswoman and Shallan is her apprentice? (I imagine that the Steerswomen's prohibition against lying would be a disaster waiting to happen with Shallan's...everything.)
Bykov and Molokov: It might require a little timeline fudging, but I imagine Bykov being a mentor to Molokov and both completely hating their jobs. Molokov: "this is so dumb, they're making me go to a chess championship and pretend I care about chess, the indignity." Bykov: "stop complaining, when I was your age I was a handler for a double agent dealing with ghost shit." "There's no way that's real, that's just a legend to haze new recruits." "You probably don't have clearance to hear about the ghost shit, forget I said anything."
Cordelia and Rowan: Credit to pendrecarc on dreamwidth for coming up with this galaxy-brained prompt: what if Rowan's world was the long-lost Alpha Colony, and the Betan Astronomical Survey team rediscovered it instead of the events of "Shards of Honor"? Maybe Cordelia finally explains to Rowan what's up with the wizards, or maybe she accidentally winds up under the ban and gets very exasperated with "Alpha colonists!" How much do the "Christers" know about their homeworld, and what does Cordelia make of them? I'm fine with a / aspect to this relationship too. (I have not read beyond "The Vor Game;" I'm fine with spoilers if you want to bring in Vorkosigan characters/events from beyond that point, but some of it may be lost on me.)
--
As usual, all of this is optional, anything about these fandoms/relationships will be great. Thanks for creating for me!
As always, if you already have an idea in mind for these characters/relationships, go for it! This is just a starting point. I have many previous creator request letters from which this is copy-pasted and endlessly rewritten, feel free to browse previous versions. I would be equally delighted with gifts for any of these!
General likes
-canon-divergence AUs
-five things
-worldbuilding
-dialogue
-wit and wordplay
-nonstandard formats (documentation, epistolary, etc.)
-time travel
-happy endings
-sad endings (when providing some measure of closure or melodrama; I'm fine with character death)
General art likes:
-black and white art
-bright/bold colors
-traditional or digital art
-objects that represent/are strongly associated with characters
-fantastic/speculative worldbuilding elements
-in-universe artifacts/sketches that the characters might have drawn
General art dislikes (please don't consider these binding DNWs: if your interests or preferences lie strongly along these lines then feel free.)
-pastel-heavy palettes
-deliberately wildly disproportionate/chibi-like characters
-completely non-representational art
DNWs:
-second person POV (unless canonical--see notes for "Debrief"--or in something like interactive fiction)
-eye trauma
-explicit sex (but fade-to-black or innuendo is fine), explicit depictions of genitalia in art
-underage sex
-rape/noncon
-moralizing/didactic stories (characters Learning An Important Lesson about the value of tolerance, etc.)
-allegories of current events and/or contemporary politics (**Marco flirts with the governor of California: fine; Marco flirts with the governor and this is a metaphor for the Newsom administration: no thanks.)
-character bashing
-cliffhanger endings (see notes for "Debrief")
Animorphs
Aftran/Cassie
Aftran & Illim
Ax & Elfangor
Ax & Tobias
Elfangor/Loren
Tobias & Loren
Aftran/Cassie, Aftran & Illim: The early days of the Peace Movement; how does Aftran decide to trust Illim (or anyone else) with the Animorphs' secret? Illim trying to stay above suspicion when Aftran is suspected/disappears? How would anything post-29 have been different if Aftran had stayed either in Cassie or elsewhere in the human world? One of the "canon AUs" (the 41 dystopia, time travel stuff) if Aftran had been there?
For the Ax-Elfangor-Tobias-Loren family stuff, feel free to mix and match, I like these characters in any combination!
Animorphs
Aftran/Cassie
Aftran & Illim
Ax & Elfangor
Ax & Tobias
Elfangor/Loren
Tobias & Loren
Aftran/Cassie, Aftran & Illim: The early days of the Peace Movement; how does Aftran decide to trust Illim (or anyone else) with the Animorphs' secret? Illim trying to stay above suspicion when Aftran is suspected/disappears? How would anything post-29 have been different if Aftran had stayed either in Cassie or elsewhere in the human world? One of the "canon AUs" (the 41 dystopia, time travel stuff) if Aftran had been there?
For the Ax-Elfangor-Tobias-Loren family stuff, feel free to mix and match, I like these characters in any combination!
Ax & Elfangor: growing up in Elfangor's shadow and resenting it? Coming to terms with Elfangor's legacy (and/or hirac delest?) post-canon? Not understanding weird human habits Elfangor picked up?
Ax & Tobias: Ax's misunderstandings about human culture? Tobias visits the Andalite homeworld with Ax post-canon? Some human developments encroach on the scoop and they have to move?
Elfangor/Loren: their time building a life on Earth. Elfangor's reaction to human tastes? How did they acquire DNA for him to morph? Are Tobias' aunt and uncle Loren's sibling(s)/that person's ex?/related to the fake husband that the Ellimist retcons in? Maybe they use the Time Matrix to go somewhere else--a new "pocket universe"? Elsewhere in the past or future of canon? Elfangor stays on Earth and they organize a human resistance as the Yeerk threat grows? Loren gets her memories back somehow (the hirac delest shows up? Something like the utzum ritual? Ellimist nonsense?)
Debrief
Robert Alderidge/George Russell
So on the one hand, RPGs can be kind of difficult to prompt for, in that everyone's playthroughs are different and will result in slightly different characterizations; on the other hand, I have so many feelings about these guys and would absolutely love any version. A retelling of your playthrough, what happened next, more backstory, fix-it, "fix-it" that makes it worse...
-I love the dramatic irony of seeing the same incidents from different POVs in the character sheets, and then trying to talk about it just makes it worse. (The Catholic Underground in Spain, Courtenay's investigation.) Anything expanding on those or another memory that they technically share but actually remember differently.
-From Alderidge's sheet: "Bykov has the distinction of being the only human on Earth, apart from George Russell, who has ever known you in any meaningful sense." What's going on with these two? How much does Bykov know about the OUC? Is there hatesex?
-Does any of this ever get declassified? How much do Dora or Jean, or the kids, ever figure out, correctly or incorrectly?
-Worldbuilding! What kind of research is the OUC (or the Soviets) doing into ghost technology? What are spirit mediums doing in other parts of the world? At rates of ~one in ten thousand, it's unlikely you'd ever run across another unless there was some effort--but there are also more people who acknowledge ghosts and auras even if they can't directly witness them.
For me, the disruptor was an important focal point of the playthrough--my version of Russell is increasingly horrified at the thought of using it on Alderidge, meanwhile, Alderidge is insisting that it's this great tool of mercy and it's not clear whether he's talking about himself. Then once my Russell admits to himself that getting Alderidge to cross over and get closure is more important to him than anything else, he gets his act together in kind of a ruthless Pascal's Wager-y way. The sense they both have of "okay well here's when I draw the line, it's different when it's you at risk" is part of what I love about this dynamic, so anything touching on that (or the disruptor in general) would be great, but obviously everyone's characterization will be different!
Feel free to lean into the shippy aspects, or not, as you prefer; I don't really want anything too anachronistic or setting-changey, but Alderidge's level of candor (or Russell's level of having-a-clue) can be anywhere on the scale, it's all good.
Note: some of the DNWs I've listed for other exchanges do not apply to this request. For instance, I think the use of second-person POV works very well in the character sheets, so I enthusiastically opt in to second-person POV fic here! (As well as first or third.) Also, go as dark as you want in terms of "possible outcomes include ghosts being destroyed forever with the disruptor, or haunting the world until they decay and lose all coherence."
Divine Cities
Ahanas/Voortya
Anything expanding on their relationship as portrayed in "City of Blades"! What does it look like to them, to their fellow Divinities, to contemporary worshipers? In-universe scholarship from people like Efrem and Shara trying to puzzle it out centuries later? Religious art combining symbols associated with both of them?
Farscape
Crais & Talyn
Aeryn & Zhaan
John & D’Argo Sun-Crichton
John/Aeryn
Moya & Pilot
Pilot & Aeryn
Crais & Talyn: Anything that leans into the tragic melodrama of canon would be great, but also, fix-it is good too. I'd especially like something that depicts Talyn as a character in his own right rather than just anxious beeping noises mediated through Crais--it doesn't necessarily have to be from his POV, but something that shows he has a POV, if that makes sense. How does Stark's temporary link with Talyn contrast with Crais' long-term bond? Does Crais explain his role in creating the hybrid program, and how does Talyn react? What does a relatively peaceful, happy day look like for them? Talyn's POV on their last couple episodes?
Aeryn & Zhaan: I love the contrasts between their backgrounds and the ways they approach problems. Anything contrasting these approaches, or where they have to earn from each other's strengths, would be cute. To what extent does Aeryn's relationship with Pilot factor into Zhaan's decision to sacrifice herself for Aeryn? How would the later seasons have been different if Zhaan had survived?
John/Aeryn, John & D'Argo Jr.: Post-canon adventures! Does D'Argo have the wormhole-making power? What does a "normal" day look like for John and Aeryn when they're not running for their lives? Do they ever return to some of the planet-of-the-week locations from canon? Contrasting POVs on canon events in the early days of their relationship?
Moya & Pilot, Pilot & Aeryn: There's no way that "our" Pilot can just be named "Pilot"--what was his identity before he bonded with Moya? What are their sensory experiences like, communicating with each other and with the crew? What's his POV on donating his DNA to save Aeryn; how does that change her? Did he vote for her to be captain in 4.6? We hear very little from Moya directly--I'd love to see something from her POV about the weird tiny aliens living inside her and the trouble they cause.
Crais & Talyn: Anything that leans into the tragic melodrama of canon would be great, but also, fix-it is good too. I'd especially like something that depicts Talyn as a character in his own right rather than just anxious beeping noises mediated through Crais--it doesn't necessarily have to be from his POV, but something that shows he has a POV, if that makes sense. How does Stark's temporary link with Talyn contrast with Crais' long-term bond? Does Crais explain his role in creating the hybrid program, and how does Talyn react? What does a relatively peaceful, happy day look like for them? Talyn's POV on their last couple episodes?
Aeryn & Zhaan: I love the contrasts between their backgrounds and the ways they approach problems. Anything contrasting these approaches, or where they have to earn from each other's strengths, would be cute. To what extent does Aeryn's relationship with Pilot factor into Zhaan's decision to sacrifice herself for Aeryn? How would the later seasons have been different if Zhaan had survived?
John/Aeryn, John & D'Argo Jr.: Post-canon adventures! Does D'Argo have the wormhole-making power? What does a "normal" day look like for John and Aeryn when they're not running for their lives? Do they ever return to some of the planet-of-the-week locations from canon? Contrasting POVs on canon events in the early days of their relationship?
Moya & Pilot, Pilot & Aeryn: There's no way that "our" Pilot can just be named "Pilot"--what was his identity before he bonded with Moya? What are their sensory experiences like, communicating with each other and with the crew? What's his POV on donating his DNA to save Aeryn; how does that change her? Did he vote for her to be captain in 4.6? We hear very little from Moya directly--I'd love to see something from her POV about the weird tiny aliens living inside her and the trouble they cause.
Stormlight Archive
Any Radiant & Their Spren
Dalinar/Navani
Navani/Raboniel
Renarin/Rlain
Shallan/Adolin
Any Radiant Spren: Really just...anything about the spren and their outsider POVs on humans! Syl discovering what it means to grow and change? Pattern comparing everything to math? The irony in Ivory's name and the importance of free will? Glys' relationship to Sja-anat and the free will issues there? Pattern and Testament gossiping about Shallan's love life? All the spren!
Dalinar/Navani: Outsider POV on the scandal of their relationship? Cute moments taking care of little Gav? The Stormfather and Sibling bickering about how humans are the worst, and now they're inlaws? Accidental "time travel" to another era (via the Spiritual Realm flashbacks) and having to make senses of things there? AU where Navani chooses Dalinar instead of Gavilar back in the day? Does she meet the same fate as Evi?
Navani/Raboniel: Bonding over science and figuring things out together! Is the Sibling exasperated, or trying to set them up? Parallels between their grief for their kids? What if Raboniel had been more honest about what the Anti-Voidlight was for, and Navani realizes she doesn't really want Raboniel dead? For this prompt, I'd prefer no infidelity--so an AU where Navani/Dalinar aren't a thing, or Raboniel lives and reconnects with Navani after Dalinar's death?
Renarin/Rlain: When did Rlain first have feelings for Renarin? Early moments in Bridge Four, the biggest outsiders even among outsiders? What's next after "Wind and Truth"? Culture shock? Trying to make things work in the new listener society?
Shallan/Adolin: More adventures in the Cognitive Realm? Trying to keep in touch via the communication spren post-canon? Pattern, Testament, or Maya's POV on their relationship? I'm not super interested in Shallan's alternate identities, so I'd prefer if they weren't a heavy focus.
Crossover Fandom
Sazed (Mistborn) and Taravangian (Stormlight Archive)
Rowan (Steerswoman) and Shallan Davar (Stormlight Archive)
Mikhail Rodinovich Bykov (Debrief) and Alexander Molokov (Chess)
Cordelia Naismith (Vorkosigan Saga) and Rowan (Steerswoman)
Sazed and Taravangian: They both control two Shards now--Sazed's seem like inherent opposites, Taravangian's don't. What happens when they meet? Taravangian tries to talk Sazed into letting Taravangian combine more shards for the greater good? Sazed turns Taravangian's logic against him? Could they meet in some kind of pocket universe/Cognitive Realm nonsense/AU setting where their immense powers don't really come into play and it's just the two guys bickering at each other?
Rowan and Shallan: Both of them have conversations in their respective fourth books that hinge on a misunderstanding of "power," and it's just like...two nickels! Shallan stumbles through a weird portal in the Cognitive Realm and winds up in Rowan's realm? One of them happens across the other one's logbooks? AU where Jasnah is a Steerswoman and Shallan is her apprentice? (I imagine that the Steerswomen's prohibition against lying would be a disaster waiting to happen with Shallan's...everything.)
Bykov and Molokov: It might require a little timeline fudging, but I imagine Bykov being a mentor to Molokov and both completely hating their jobs. Molokov: "this is so dumb, they're making me go to a chess championship and pretend I care about chess, the indignity." Bykov: "stop complaining, when I was your age I was a handler for a double agent dealing with ghost shit." "There's no way that's real, that's just a legend to haze new recruits." "You probably don't have clearance to hear about the ghost shit, forget I said anything."
Cordelia and Rowan: Credit to pendrecarc on dreamwidth for coming up with this galaxy-brained prompt: what if Rowan's world was the long-lost Alpha Colony, and the Betan Astronomical Survey team rediscovered it instead of the events of "Shards of Honor"? Maybe Cordelia finally explains to Rowan what's up with the wizards, or maybe she accidentally winds up under the ban and gets very exasperated with "Alpha colonists!" How much do the "Christers" know about their homeworld, and what does Cordelia make of them? I'm fine with a / aspect to this relationship too. (I have not read beyond "The Vor Game;" I'm fine with spoilers if you want to bring in Vorkosigan characters/events from beyond that point, but some of it may be lost on me.)
--
As usual, all of this is optional, anything about these fandoms/relationships will be great. Thanks for creating for me!
Yuletide/Madness/Tagmod Nonsense 2025 Reveals
Jan. 2nd, 2026 12:05 pmprimeidealSo I've been working on a long project which continues to be...in progress, and in part due to that, my main collection output was not particularly prolific, but, events conspired in such a way that I produced plenty of tiny ficlets!
My original assignment was for "The Frugal Wizard's Handbook to Surviving Medieval England." When I first read it, my reaction was: "There's also a tantalizing offscreen subplot hinted at involving the "Waelish" who preceded the Anglo-Saxon arrivals, but despite my guesses and extrapolations about what was going on there, it didn't really turn out to be as prominent as I'd expected." The Waelish leader is a King Arthur expy! Which is interesting! But then he just...doesn't play into the overall plot.
Anyway, as a tagmod, I get to be privy to discussions in tagmod chat as nominations come in. One of my fellow tagmods took a screenshot of this book, nominated with the only character "The Black Bear," and commented "this is also making me laugh. Probably it's clear! It's just funny. The only character." So immediately I responded:
Anyway, someone requested him and was interested in his POV on the conflict/other Arthurian allusions, so I was very excited about offering that, and then that was what I matched on! Like I mentioned before, canon review was relatively quick (the Bear is only mentioned in a couple offscreen places), it was just a matter of procrastinating until I finally wrote it. In a world where the monotheists are Zoroastrians instead of Christians, presumably they'd go on a quest for the sacred fire rather than the Holy Grail!
Very loose correspondences to the Arthurian knights, somewhat based on notes I took on Le Morte d'Arthur years ago:
Also, 2023 me noted: "There are a lot of illustrations/marginalia (especially for the in-universe portions), done by Steve Argyle, which I think I'll be able to better appreciate when I get a hard copy." Well, this was my first time reading the hard copy cover to cover, and sure enough, in the inside back cover, there are pictures of the characters in the post-canon era. Runian and Sefawynn getting their happily-ever-after while Logna looks on from a distance, etc. And there's also one of Yazad...with a bunch of windmills, implying he succeeded in teaching that technology to the locals <3
The True Tale of the Black Bear (1681 words)
Fandom: The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England - Brandon Sanderson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Black Bear (The Frugal Wizard's Handbook)
Additional Tags: arthuriana
Summary: Come, all you Keltmen, and hear of your hero, most feared in the forest! Accept no slanderous skop's substitutes, none of Logna's lies.
Then for Steerswoman, some in-universe mythology based on one of the stories Rowan hears at Rendezvous (and later tells Steffie).
Outcast (1156 words)
Fandom: Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: In-Universe Mythology, Outskirters, Ghosts
Summary: "Rowan heard of...a haunting, where the spirit of an uncast man killed his tribe's goats, one by one, until his body was found and given proper rites." -The Outskirter's Secret
Madness:
I saw a request for crossovers with the Snake Fight Thesis Defense, and the requester linked to a list of 100 influential books. Scrolling through that I was like...this person has great tastes, all of these academic types should fight the snake. So I turned it into a drabble sequence. (Crossover fandoms are: Gödel, Escher, Bach; Kairos (Murry-O'Keefe) books; Oxford Time Travel Universe; Vorkosigan Saga; Steerswoman)
Not An Exact Science (526 words)
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Drabble Sequence, 5 Things, Crossover
Summary: Five worlds where the snake fight thesis became a tradition.
I have been super into Slay the Spire for the last few months, so I figured I'd write something for the Merchant. It turned out to be a one-sided conversation between the Merchant and the Watcher.
Masked Man (674 words)
Fandom: Slay the Spire (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Merchant (Slay the Spire), Watcher (Slay the Spire)
Summary: Only two things are certain here, death and my completely arbitrary sale prices! But mostly death.
My first stab at the Steerswoman fic was on the shorter side, so it was like, "maybe I'll write several pieces of in-universe mythology and collect them into an anthology-type thing." Then when I wrote "Outcast" it was like, okay, this is already 1000 words, fine. So I posted this separately in Madness. It's a...very different kind of in-universe mythology story.
The Cloven Men (424 words)
Fandom: Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: In-Universe Mythology, Canon-Typical Sexism
Summary: Steerswoman have gathered all sorts of stories, from Inner Landers and Outskirters and even Christers.
Anyway, we have the devil. He makes deals for people's souls. He goes to Boston. The subway cops get mad. If you are like me, and familiar with goofy songs via Yuletide osmosis, the conclusion is obvious.
Counterproposal (100 words)
Fandom: The Devil Came Up to Boston - The Adam Ezra Group (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Devil (Devil Went Down to Georgia), Sully (Devil Came Up to Boston)
Additional Tags: Drabble, yumadrin, Crossover, Canon-typical language
Summary: And you thought the subway cops were mad before.
Anyway, then Yuletide came around and the fics revealed and we all got our gifts and lived happily ever after OH WAIT there was a weird glitch and the authors revealed. The mods and tagmods who were around did yeopeople's effort in getting things fixed and re-anonymized, I get zero credit for this because I was going to Christmas Eve worship. But then they were like "what causes the glitch, can we test it, let's do science." And then they set up a mini-Madness type thing for tagmods to treat each other, basically just treating it as "any fandom I've requested before" via the autoapp.
Now the thing about Yuletide mods and tagmods is that they have exquisite tastes in fandoms. So it was very "senpai noticed me!" when I got recruited. And there would be a zero percent chance of me creating for all the possible recips I could, even if I had all of the Yuletide creation period. But! Because it was so short-term and low stakes, I was able to relax enough to just do some short ficlets (which I put on my 3SF/art sock) and not worrying about making it epic masterpieces. (This was Christmas Eve night for me--less busy for my family than previous years but that's another story.) I was able to focus enough to treat the mod-mods, and the newest members of the tagmod team.
What if Baze and Chirrut (from Rogue One) were nohecharei (from The Goblin Emperor)? That's it that's the fic.
Firsts in War (235 words)
Fandom: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Characters: Baze Malbus, Leia Organa
Additional Tags: Fusion
Summary: The first nohecharis has a favor to beg of Her Serenity.
Prompt was for Shara and Olvos from Divine Cities, but it's from Tatyana's POV. (I may have been too coy about who Olvos is. Hazard that comes with writing for old prompts.)
Eternal Flame (360 words)
Fandom: The Divine Cities Series - Robert Jackson Bennett
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tatyana Komayd, Ashara "Shara" Komayd
Summary: Parents worrying about their kids is a universal.
Another prompt was for A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), horror. Hmm, do they have Christmas in ASOUE-world? I think I remember reading somewhere that that setting seems to be more culturally Jewish. Maybe they have Hanukkah. Maybe from a certain point of view, Hanukkah lends itself to horror tropes.
Wick(ed) (477 words)
Fandom: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Violet Baudelaire, Klaus Baudelaire, Sunny Baudelaire
Additional Tags: Hanukkah, Horror, Lemony Snicket Narrative Style
Summary: One person's miracle is another person's horror story.
And then for a fellow roguelike appreciator, FTL! Anything silly that would work in the FTL setting? What if the Biblical Epiphany story was an FTL encounter, that seems like the kind of absurdity they would go for.
Star of the East (310 words)
Fandom: FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Christmas, Biblical Epiphany Narrative
Summary: Wise beings have traveled a long way for this. Like, a really long way.
I already knew that mod pendrecarc enjoyed Divine Cities and Steerswoman, so clearly more exquisite tastes, but also I had just written for those so I was kind of in the mood for something different. And then I saw this extremely galaxy-brained prompt: what if Rowan's world was the long-lost Alpha Colony, and Cordelia Naismith (from the Vorkosigan Saga) had discovered it in the Shards of Honor era? Yes please. This is totally a premise that deserves a 10k epic, but a 400 word ficlet is what we're getting, so there. Also there was still time to nom it for Candy Hearts so...yes, I will be plagiarizing some prompts there.
Shards of a Guidestar (436 words)
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Rowan (Steerswoman)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Canon-typical levels of dysentery, Dubauer can't catch a break on any planet, Religion
Summary: Cordelia gets stuck on a technologically primitive planet. You know how this goes.
Of course when I went to post this on my sock I was kind of tired and I just kind of...forgot about...the "post to collection" button. So I just hit "post" and did it the normal way. Which meant it was not anon and pendrecarc, who came up with the idea in the first place and was the original collection maintainer, got an email notification. From an unfamiliar username, not the one I normally use in the tagmod channel. So while we were trying to troubleshoot the anonymity glitch, it was like, "what's going on now." "Nothing interesting, just user error, sorry." "Oh okay!"
And so then we lived happily ever after.
My original assignment was for "The Frugal Wizard's Handbook to Surviving Medieval England." When I first read it, my reaction was: "There's also a tantalizing offscreen subplot hinted at involving the "Waelish" who preceded the Anglo-Saxon arrivals, but despite my guesses and extrapolations about what was going on there, it didn't really turn out to be as prominent as I'd expected." The Waelish leader is a King Arthur expy! Which is interesting! But then he just...doesn't play into the overall plot.
Anyway, as a tagmod, I get to be privy to discussions in tagmod chat as nominations come in. One of my fellow tagmods took a screenshot of this book, nominated with the only character "The Black Bear," and commented "this is also making me laugh. Probably it's clear! It's just funny. The only character." So immediately I responded:
i have that book and can fact-check (i don't remember that character)
ohhhh is it the [spoiler tag]king arthur expy[/spoiler] who never appears on screen 😠
(i wanted that character to be more of a thing than he was 🙁
yeah, he's an offscreen bad guy. [spoiler]the Waelish king[/spoiler]Anyway, someone requested him and was interested in his POV on the conflict/other Arthurian allusions, so I was very excited about offering that, and then that was what I matched on! Like I mentioned before, canon review was relatively quick (the Bear is only mentioned in a couple offscreen places), it was just a matter of procrastinating until I finally wrote it. In a world where the monotheists are Zoroastrians instead of Christians, presumably they'd go on a quest for the sacred fire rather than the Holy Grail!
Very loose correspondences to the Arthurian knights, somewhat based on notes I took on Le Morte d'Arthur years ago:
- The Boar ~ Sir Bors
- The White Shoat ~ Helin the White (Bors' son)
- The Peacock ~ Sir Persaunte, the Indigo Knight
- The Lark ~ Dinadan
- The Turtle ~ Tristram
- The Otter ~ Lancelot
- The Cub ~ Galahad
- The Bull ~ Palomides (Zoroastrianism celebrates a "primordial bovine"!)
Also, 2023 me noted: "There are a lot of illustrations/marginalia (especially for the in-universe portions), done by Steve Argyle, which I think I'll be able to better appreciate when I get a hard copy." Well, this was my first time reading the hard copy cover to cover, and sure enough, in the inside back cover, there are pictures of the characters in the post-canon era. Runian and Sefawynn getting their happily-ever-after while Logna looks on from a distance, etc. And there's also one of Yazad...with a bunch of windmills, implying he succeeded in teaching that technology to the locals <3
The True Tale of the Black Bear (1681 words)
Fandom: The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England - Brandon Sanderson
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Black Bear (The Frugal Wizard's Handbook)
Additional Tags: arthuriana
Summary: Come, all you Keltmen, and hear of your hero, most feared in the forest! Accept no slanderous skop's substitutes, none of Logna's lies.
Then for Steerswoman, some in-universe mythology based on one of the stories Rowan hears at Rendezvous (and later tells Steffie).
Outcast (1156 words)
Fandom: Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: In-Universe Mythology, Outskirters, Ghosts
Summary: "Rowan heard of...a haunting, where the spirit of an uncast man killed his tribe's goats, one by one, until his body was found and given proper rites." -The Outskirter's Secret
Madness:
I saw a request for crossovers with the Snake Fight Thesis Defense, and the requester linked to a list of 100 influential books. Scrolling through that I was like...this person has great tastes, all of these academic types should fight the snake. So I turned it into a drabble sequence. (Crossover fandoms are: Gödel, Escher, Bach; Kairos (Murry-O'Keefe) books; Oxford Time Travel Universe; Vorkosigan Saga; Steerswoman)
Not An Exact Science (526 words)
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Drabble Sequence, 5 Things, Crossover
Summary: Five worlds where the snake fight thesis became a tradition.
I have been super into Slay the Spire for the last few months, so I figured I'd write something for the Merchant. It turned out to be a one-sided conversation between the Merchant and the Watcher.
Masked Man (674 words)
Fandom: Slay the Spire (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Merchant (Slay the Spire), Watcher (Slay the Spire)
Summary: Only two things are certain here, death and my completely arbitrary sale prices! But mostly death.
My first stab at the Steerswoman fic was on the shorter side, so it was like, "maybe I'll write several pieces of in-universe mythology and collect them into an anthology-type thing." Then when I wrote "Outcast" it was like, okay, this is already 1000 words, fine. So I posted this separately in Madness. It's a...very different kind of in-universe mythology story.
The Cloven Men (424 words)
Fandom: Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: In-Universe Mythology, Canon-Typical Sexism
Summary: Steerswoman have gathered all sorts of stories, from Inner Landers and Outskirters and even Christers.
But there are other, ancient, stories, in this world, that no Steerswoman has yet heard nor seen.
The three-minute song/music video "The Devil Went Up To Boston" (a rewrite of "The Devil Came Down To Georgia") was linked on the promo post on September 16. I got around to watching/listening to it on December 22. Typical Yuletide procrastination. (In the video, Sully wears a Red Sox hat and the Devil wears a Yankees hat. Which is great, but also, Damn Yankees crossover potential?)Anyway, we have the devil. He makes deals for people's souls. He goes to Boston. The subway cops get mad. If you are like me, and familiar with goofy songs via Yuletide osmosis, the conclusion is obvious.
Counterproposal (100 words)
Fandom: The Devil Came Up to Boston - The Adam Ezra Group (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: The Devil (Devil Went Down to Georgia), Sully (Devil Came Up to Boston)
Additional Tags: Drabble, yumadrin, Crossover, Canon-typical language
Summary: And you thought the subway cops were mad before.
Anyway, then Yuletide came around and the fics revealed and we all got our gifts and lived happily ever after OH WAIT there was a weird glitch and the authors revealed. The mods and tagmods who were around did yeopeople's effort in getting things fixed and re-anonymized, I get zero credit for this because I was going to Christmas Eve worship. But then they were like "what causes the glitch, can we test it, let's do science." And then they set up a mini-Madness type thing for tagmods to treat each other, basically just treating it as "any fandom I've requested before" via the autoapp.
Now the thing about Yuletide mods and tagmods is that they have exquisite tastes in fandoms. So it was very "senpai noticed me!" when I got recruited. And there would be a zero percent chance of me creating for all the possible recips I could, even if I had all of the Yuletide creation period. But! Because it was so short-term and low stakes, I was able to relax enough to just do some short ficlets (which I put on my 3SF/art sock) and not worrying about making it epic masterpieces. (This was Christmas Eve night for me--less busy for my family than previous years but that's another story.) I was able to focus enough to treat the mod-mods, and the newest members of the tagmod team.
What if Baze and Chirrut (from Rogue One) were nohecharei (from The Goblin Emperor)? That's it that's the fic.
Firsts in War (235 words)
Fandom: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Characters: Baze Malbus, Leia Organa
Additional Tags: Fusion
Summary: The first nohecharis has a favor to beg of Her Serenity.
Prompt was for Shara and Olvos from Divine Cities, but it's from Tatyana's POV. (I may have been too coy about who Olvos is. Hazard that comes with writing for old prompts.)
Eternal Flame (360 words)
Fandom: The Divine Cities Series - Robert Jackson Bennett
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tatyana Komayd, Ashara "Shara" Komayd
Summary: Parents worrying about their kids is a universal.
Another prompt was for A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), horror. Hmm, do they have Christmas in ASOUE-world? I think I remember reading somewhere that that setting seems to be more culturally Jewish. Maybe they have Hanukkah. Maybe from a certain point of view, Hanukkah lends itself to horror tropes.
Wick(ed) (477 words)
Fandom: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Violet Baudelaire, Klaus Baudelaire, Sunny Baudelaire
Additional Tags: Hanukkah, Horror, Lemony Snicket Narrative Style
Summary: One person's miracle is another person's horror story.
And then for a fellow roguelike appreciator, FTL! Anything silly that would work in the FTL setting? What if the Biblical Epiphany story was an FTL encounter, that seems like the kind of absurdity they would go for.
Star of the East (310 words)
Fandom: FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Christmas, Biblical Epiphany Narrative
Summary: Wise beings have traveled a long way for this. Like, a really long way.
I already knew that mod pendrecarc enjoyed Divine Cities and Steerswoman, so clearly more exquisite tastes, but also I had just written for those so I was kind of in the mood for something different. And then I saw this extremely galaxy-brained prompt: what if Rowan's world was the long-lost Alpha Colony, and Cordelia Naismith (from the Vorkosigan Saga) had discovered it in the Shards of Honor era? Yes please. This is totally a premise that deserves a 10k epic, but a 400 word ficlet is what we're getting, so there. Also there was still time to nom it for Candy Hearts so...yes, I will be plagiarizing some prompts there.
Shards of a Guidestar (436 words)
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Rowan (Steerswoman)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Canon-typical levels of dysentery, Dubauer can't catch a break on any planet, Religion
Summary: Cordelia gets stuck on a technologically primitive planet. You know how this goes.
Of course when I went to post this on my sock I was kind of tired and I just kind of...forgot about...the "post to collection" button. So I just hit "post" and did it the normal way. Which meant it was not anon and pendrecarc, who came up with the idea in the first place and was the original collection maintainer, got an email notification. From an unfamiliar username, not the one I normally use in the tagmod channel. So while we were trying to troubleshoot the anonymity glitch, it was like, "what's going on now." "Nothing interesting, just user error, sorry." "Oh okay!"
And so then we lived happily ever after.
Post and Slam: "Imagine the Angels of Bread" by Martín Espada (1996)
Jan. 1st, 2026 03:05 pmdelphi"Imagine the Angels of Bread" by Martín Espada
This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges,
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.
This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges,
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.
(SFF Bingo): The Outside, by Ada Hoffmann
Jan. 1st, 2026 04:50 pmprimeideal Ada Hoffmann first came to my attention via The Neurodiversiverse anthology. This is the first installment in a trilogy. In a future where superintelligent AI are worshiped as gods, an autistic scientist accidentally causes a disaster on a space station. As a result, she's basically kidnapped by angels working for the god Nemesis, who need her help in tracking down her former doctorate advisor. Both the forces of Nemesis and the heretic Dr. Talirr have the potential to cause terror, so Yasira does a lot of bouncing between a rock and a hard place. "The Outside" refers to forces beyond our universe's space and time, which occasionally breach containment and cause "madness" in onlookers, but of course, "madness" is subjective. (In the acknowledgements, Hoffmann places this book within the stream of "Lovecraftian subversion.")
The worldbuilding of AI-as-gods requiring mortal trust to perpetuate themselves, and eventually absorbing human souls after they die, is fascinating. Ditto some humans' desire to build their own space stations without relying on godly technology. The glimpses we get of other alien species are great:
Your Boater dictionary had two words in it before you started drawing on my work. And both the words were variations on 'destroy the soul-eating abominations.'
...
However, any culture studied in sufficient detail will yield up a word, and often a fairly sophisticated system of safeguards and protections, for the things in this universe which are inherently incomprehensible to sentient minds. The semantics of the word chosen can be culturally informative. My favorite, of course, is the Spider term: Ȋsȋrinin-neri-ȋnik, or 'that which eats reality.'
Yasira comes from a culture that's comparatively accessible for disabled and neurodiverse people, and that filters through early. This description felt true-to-life:
Yasira's neurotype was supposed to be all about joy, about being so in love with science and knowledge and patterns that they eclipsed everything else. She'd been like that as a child, throwing herself into dusty physics texts the way other kids played games or ate candy. So excited when she tackled a new problem that she'd abruptly throw the book down and run around the house laughing. At some point, maybe in grad school, that had faded somehow. Who knew why? She was still good at the things people liked her to do, so there wasn't much wrong. Maybe it was just part of growing up.
I would have liked to see even more contrasts of how someone like Yasira might relate to angels or nonhuman entities differently than other humans would. This struck me as strange:
Akavi peered over Yasira's shoulder at the chart of the galaxy. This was unnecessary, since he had downloaded the chart into his head and could mentally examine it from whatever angle he pleased. But the physical signs of shared attention helped put mortals at ease.
The Outside, by definition, is outside ordinary understanding and language, so any depiction of it is inherently vague. It wasn't too much gross-out horror for me, but I'm not super into "we can't describe it, it was just some bizarre wrongness."
I would have liked more worldbuilding about what happens to humans after they die and how that relates to the gods. Yasira, quite understandably, is reluctant to do things that will get people killed; life, even life with some "madness," is better than death! But in a world where the existence of afterlives is common knowledge rather than a matter of faith, I imagine people's ethical calculations would be different in some circumstances. I didn't get enough of "how divine are the 'gods,' really" to feel like I necessarily understood Yasira's reactions.
I would have liked more worldbuilding about what happens to humans after they die and how that relates to the gods. Yasira, quite understandably, is reluctant to do things that will get people killed; life, even life with some "madness," is better than death! But in a world where the existence of afterlives is common knowledge rather than a matter of faith, I imagine people's ethical calculations would be different in some circumstances. I didn't get enough of "how divine are the 'gods,' really" to feel like I necessarily understood Yasira's reactions.
( Vague spoilers )
Yasira's girlfriend, Tiv, comes from a culture with great names and nicknames: "Tiv" is short for Productivity, "Citizenship" goes by "Ship," etc. Yasira struggles to have faith in the gods or experience religious transcendence; she looks to Tiv as an example of how a "good girl" would behave. Unfortunately, most of the time she's offscreen, and it's mostly like "if you ever want to see Tiv again, you better do as we say." We don't get a good sense of what Tiv sees in Yasira; to me, these sorts of relationships can come off as "anxious autistic person and their emotional support neurotypical." I understand that some people will value seeing f/f romance depicted in these settings! In my entirely personal opinion, I would have liked to see other kinds of relationships in Yasira's life.
(There is also a very funny subplot involving an angel who's crushing on his clueless boss, featuring a great Ironic Echo resolution.)
Bingo: Gods and Pantheons, LGBTQIA protagonist, Impossible Places, Epistolary (almost every chapter starts with an in-universe epigraph)
