Promptfic from Tumblr 2: Babylon 5 edition
Apr. 10th, 2026 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sholioThe other prompt fill I wrote today ended up being full-story-length (~1100 wds) for Babylon 5, posted on AO3 as Exercises in Linguistics.
The prompt was: G'Kar and Londo (slash or gen, up to you!) and Language. Set in early season 5, probably between about 5x02 & 5x06.
( Exercises in Linguistics )
The prompt was: G'Kar and Londo (slash or gen, up to you!) and Language. Set in early season 5, probably between about 5x02 & 5x06.
( Exercises in Linguistics )
And this blue and green ball keeps spinning to the beat
Apr. 10th, 2026 10:54 pmsovayThe better part of my afternoon was spent sitting on a park bench with rushthatspeaks in the classically balmy sunshine, watching a classful of kindergarteners shriek and clamber all over the climbing structures, the fountain, and the swings. One edged his way over to us with his school tablet on which he showed us the groups of things he was learning. I saw another with a pinwheel, another with a fanny pack, another with a baseball cap made of duct tape, crouching with a friend to pry open a maintenance hatch in the fountain with a stick. We agreed that we miss tire swings and feel nostalgically toward metal slides which had to be insulated from thigh-scalding summer with pieces of cardboard or brown paper bags. FiDO Pizza turns out to deliver all the way from Allston and while I recognize the garlic honey and chili zing of the richly soppressata-studded Doc, the anchovy-forward collards and kale of the Braised Greens over Parmesan cream tasted like an entire kelp forest and I ate it like one. We had cookies left over from Pesach for dessert. Especially at the end of a scrambled week, it was a low-key, springlike, lovely time. We have made plans in the newly discovered directions of All She Wrote Books and Dani's Queer Bar. In the evening we saw that Artemis II had safely splashed down.
rushthatspeaks in the classically balmy sunshine, watching a classful of kindergarteners shriek and clamber all over the climbing structures, the fountain, and the swings. One edged his way over to us with his school tablet on which he showed us the groups of things he was learning. I saw another with a pinwheel, another with a fanny pack, another with a baseball cap made of duct tape, crouching with a friend to pry open a maintenance hatch in the fountain with a stick. We agreed that we miss tire swings and feel nostalgically toward metal slides which had to be insulated from thigh-scalding summer with pieces of cardboard or brown paper bags. FiDO Pizza turns out to deliver all the way from Allston and while I recognize the garlic honey and chili zing of the richly soppressata-studded Doc, the anchovy-forward collards and kale of the Braised Greens over Parmesan cream tasted like an entire kelp forest and I ate it like one. We had cookies left over from Pesach for dessert. Especially at the end of a scrambled week, it was a low-key, springlike, lovely time. We have made plans in the newly discovered directions of All She Wrote Books and Dani's Queer Bar. In the evening we saw that Artemis II had safely splashed down.Biggles promptfic from Tumblr
Apr. 10th, 2026 07:51 pmsholioCatching up on some older prompts now that I'm in between books.
1. EvS on Sakhalin
Prompt: EvS, that last night on Sakhalin between when Biggles first speaks to him and his escape the next day.
Posted on Tumblr here.
( Under the cut )
2. EvS & Algy (Biggles/EvS implied)
Prompt: Set post defection in London. A misunderstanding leads to Biggles being told that Erich is cheating on him. After some angst and h/c, their relationship is even stronger.
This went in a Direction. Also posted on Tumblr.
( Under the cut )
1. EvS on Sakhalin
Prompt: EvS, that last night on Sakhalin between when Biggles first speaks to him and his escape the next day.
Posted on Tumblr here.
( Under the cut )
2. EvS & Algy (Biggles/EvS implied)
Prompt: Set post defection in London. A misunderstanding leads to Biggles being told that Erich is cheating on him. After some angst and h/c, their relationship is even stronger.
This went in a Direction. Also posted on Tumblr.
( Under the cut )
Mood Theme in a Year: Second Medium Track Run
Apr. 10th, 2026 09:50 pmsoc_puppet posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_community_promoHello, everyone! Over at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
moodthemeinayear, the second Medium Track run has just started.
For those not familiar with the schedule over there, the Medium Mood Track lasts about three months, and covers all of the higher-level moods: The fifteen absolute minimum moods you need for a complete custom mood theme, and the next nineteen that have moods that branch off of them (plus two extra). If you want to create a custom mood theme that's fairly well filled out but don't want to go for the whole 132 graphics, the Medium Track may be for you!
If you want to try and min-max your mood theme, on the other hand, the Minimum Track has also restarted; it lasts six weeks, and takes you through the bare minimum fifteen moods you need for a complete custom mood theme, plus the next three most populous higher-level moods, so you get the most image diversity for the least amount of work đź‘Ť
Feeling ambitious and want to go for the whole thing? Jump in now and follow along with the Medium and Maximum Tracks simultaneously! The Medium Track will catch you up to all of the moods the Maximum Track has already covered, while the Maximum Track covers all of the moods that aren't in the Medium Track.
Come check it out, and maybe earn some Dreamwidth points while you're at it!
moodthemeinayear, the second Medium Track run has just started.For those not familiar with the schedule over there, the Medium Mood Track lasts about three months, and covers all of the higher-level moods: The fifteen absolute minimum moods you need for a complete custom mood theme, and the next nineteen that have moods that branch off of them (plus two extra). If you want to create a custom mood theme that's fairly well filled out but don't want to go for the whole 132 graphics, the Medium Track may be for you!
If you want to try and min-max your mood theme, on the other hand, the Minimum Track has also restarted; it lasts six weeks, and takes you through the bare minimum fifteen moods you need for a complete custom mood theme, plus the next three most populous higher-level moods, so you get the most image diversity for the least amount of work đź‘Ť
Feeling ambitious and want to go for the whole thing? Jump in now and follow along with the Medium and Maximum Tracks simultaneously! The Medium Track will catch you up to all of the moods the Maximum Track has already covered, while the Maximum Track covers all of the moods that aren't in the Medium Track.
Come check it out, and maybe earn some Dreamwidth points while you're at it!
she's wind through wild thyme
Apr. 10th, 2026 07:02 pmmusesfoolToday's poem:
The Other Woman
as I picture her
she has no basil
no cumin
no sun-hardened hyssop
nor sage around her eyes
she never catnips
but laughs comfrey
tansy with a primula smile
as I think of her
she's angelica
foxglove and jasmine
somewhat peppermint
not letting you see
all her saffron at once
one day I’ll meet her
that rue woman
that wild indigo teasel
somewhere neutral
free of woodruff and of dropwort
some summer savory
she's the nose
set to lavender
eye full of sesame
ear ringing rosemary
she's wind
through wild thyme
--Twyla M. Hansen
*
The Other Woman
as I picture her
she has no basil
no cumin
no sun-hardened hyssop
nor sage around her eyes
she never catnips
but laughs comfrey
tansy with a primula smile
as I think of her
she's angelica
foxglove and jasmine
somewhat peppermint
not letting you see
all her saffron at once
one day I’ll meet her
that rue woman
that wild indigo teasel
somewhere neutral
free of woodruff and of dropwort
some summer savory
she's the nose
set to lavender
eye full of sesame
ear ringing rosemary
she's wind
through wild thyme
--Twyla M. Hansen
*
VICTORY
Apr. 10th, 2026 10:53 pmkaberettBehold my works: today I went to the leisure centre, and went into the leisure centre, and went into the gym, and poked around a bit, and retreated to the stairwell to hyperventilate... and then WENT TO A CHANGING SPACE and CHANGED MY CLOTHING and went back into the gym. And picked! things! up!!! and put them down again!!!!!
I have now Touched Barbell, appear to have accidentally skipped most of Phase 2 of Liftoff in favour of Barbells, Apparently, but honestly the biggest and most exciting bit of this is that I did go back into The Gym and I did push through the social anxiety of What If I'm Doing It Wrong.
It is an excellent time of year to be doing this; the cherries on the way from the gym to the bus stop are in full and exuberant flower.
Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 10
Apr. 10th, 2026 10:20 amcarenejeansQuote of the Day:
"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
— E. L. Doctorow
My Check-In:
Neverending Project! It was a soothing break from the adulting, at least. 8-/
Tally
( Days 1-8 )
Day 9:badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, dswdiane, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora
Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!
"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
— E. L. Doctorow
My Check-In:
Neverending Project! It was a soothing break from the adulting, at least. 8-/
Tally
( Days 1-8 )
Day 9:
badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, dswdiane, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraLet me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!
Possibly I read too much crime fiction....
Apr. 10th, 2026 02:27 pmoursinBecause when I read this, I had Further Questions.
London pub thief sold £2.2m Fabergé egg and watch set to buy drugs
I am going, hello?
Enzo Conticello, 29, took the Givenchy bag belonging to Rosie Dawson as she stood in the smoking area of the Dog and Duck pub in Soho, London, on 7 November 2024.
Inside the £1,600 bag was an emerald-encrusted Fabergé egg and watch set belonging to Dawson’s employers, the Craft Irish Whiskey Company.
So, she had these items in her HANDBAG (going full Flora Robson as Lady Bracknell) and
went to the Dog and Duck pub in Soho. She was outside the premises in the designated smoking area, she put her handbag on the ground in between her legs, and a few minutes later she noticed her handbag was no longer there.
We observe that this was a £1,600 Givenchy bag, and while I do not think London is quite the crime-ridden hellhole some social media depicts, I might hang on to this a bit more carefully in Soho even did it not contain my employer's Fabergé.
Dawson had the Fabergé items because she had taken them for display at a work event earlier that evening.
Surely there ought to have been some kind of security procedure involved, like, 'take a taxi and put them back in the safe'?
(Am trying to think of any circumstances in which, in former days, would have been taking precious unique archival and manuscript items out of the building in the first place. When we had them out on display for visiting groups, they got put away pronto.)
I probably read too much crime fiction, but this reads like 'set-up for heist/insurance scam that went pearshaped'.
The Testaments (1.01 - 1.03
Apr. 10th, 2026 11:19 amselenakThe first three episodes of The Testaments have been dropped in my part of the world on Disney +. It's an adapatation of Margaret Atwood's novel of the same name, which is a decades later written sequel to her famous dystopian classic The Handmaid's Tale; when it was published, I reviewed it here. Just to make their lives more complicated, though, the show is also a sequel to the tv series The Handmaid's Tale. The first (very good) season of which I watched, but not the later ones, as word of mouth about diminishing quality and lack of time have detained me, but I did osmose this presents a problem because not only is the backstory the showin its later seasons developed for one of the central characters (Aunt Lydia) very different from her backstory in the novel, but the timeline of another central character is different as well. With this in mind, my spoilery reaction to the first three episodes is beneath the cut. Above cut: those first three episodes are well acted and produced and make some interesting choices re: adapting the source material - and I don't mean "interesting" as a euphemism for bad -, but haven't revealed yet how they'll solve the Lydia problem.
( The perils of being a female teenager in Gilead )
( The perils of being a female teenager in Gilead )
A lonesome highway is a pretty good subject
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:01 pmsovayEntirely apart from it now apparently being business as usual for my killing joke of a government to start wars in whatever sovereign nations it feels like and threaten the annihilation of entire civilizations on capricious deadline, I have had a weird and fairly scrambled week in which I was not able to avoid talking to doctors after all. I can feel suitably noir-poisoned for recognizing some location shooting in The Rockford Files (1974–80) from Desert Fury (1947). The sky this afternoon suggested that it was trying to be autumn.
rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.
rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.A few fandom things
Apr. 9th, 2026 07:11 pmsholio1. New Dungeon Crawler Carl book comes out in just a month! I'm wondering if I should reread the previous book before it drops, because these books have about a zillion characters and I'm confident that I have forgotten most of what happened in it.
2. The thing which happened to me on Tumblr today was so weird that I'm going to describe it under the cut even though I already complained privately to friends. (Murderbot fandom is so freakin' weird. Seriously.)
( Awkward! )
3. Speaking of Space Swap, they are still looking for some pinch hitters!
2. The thing which happened to me on Tumblr today was so weird that I'm going to describe it under the cut even though I already complained privately to friends. (Murderbot fandom is so freakin' weird. Seriously.)
( Awkward! )
3. Speaking of Space Swap, they are still looking for some pinch hitters!
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:07 pmskygiantsMade a extremely silly decision this past weekend, which was to break up our long drive to and from Philly by Exactly long enough to see one (one) show in NYC on the way down, and another on the way back. Literally put the car in a garage by the theater, went into the show, got the car out of the garage, and kept driving. And to make matters even sillier the show that we saw on the way down was Bad -- and we knew it was going to be! Or at least we had a reasonable suspicion! But were we not going to go out of our way to see Norm Lewis play Villefort in a Count of Monte Cristo musical? Of course we were. The path before us had simply been prepared.
Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.
Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.
Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )
Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.
Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.
Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.
Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )
Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.
"seeing her face in town was like springtime coming around" (meredith edwards)
Apr. 9th, 2026 05:46 pmstarandreaAs soon as I said, "I think the dahlias are going to be fine," this happens.
That is, I had largely written off the remaining seven containers of unsprouted dahlias, since by now even the latest starter is six inches tall, and I knew going in that three of the containers had likely duds. I figured four more were unexpectedly the same.
NOPE. What am I going to do with this one? It's in the "spa room" with the ivies for now, as there is no more room on the dahlia shelf in the closet.
( picture )
(Good work, little dahlia. I'm very happy to see you.)
Also, the Solomon's Seal is back in the patio garden! I planted it under the porch (with some ferns) the year after we moved in, so it knows it has to get an early start if it wants any sun before the other plants show up.
(The picture isn't tilted. The Solomon's Seal grows at an angle to lean into the light.)
Plus some crocuses (yay!) and Daphne helping out in the garden like she does.
( sprouts, blooms, and paws )
That is, I had largely written off the remaining seven containers of unsprouted dahlias, since by now even the latest starter is six inches tall, and I knew going in that three of the containers had likely duds. I figured four more were unexpectedly the same.
NOPE. What am I going to do with this one? It's in the "spa room" with the ivies for now, as there is no more room on the dahlia shelf in the closet.
( picture )
(Good work, little dahlia. I'm very happy to see you.)
Also, the Solomon's Seal is back in the patio garden! I planted it under the porch (with some ferns) the year after we moved in, so it knows it has to get an early start if it wants any sun before the other plants show up.
(The picture isn't tilted. The Solomon's Seal grows at an angle to lean into the light.)
Plus some crocuses (yay!) and Daphne helping out in the garden like she does.
( sprouts, blooms, and paws )
Recent Bookmarks Rec Post
Apr. 9th, 2026 05:56 pmravensilversea posting in recthethingJust made my monthly rec list of my recent fanfiction bookmarks over on my journal! 6 Katekyou Hitman Reborn recs, 2 Honkai: Star Rail, 2 My Hero Academia, and 1 rec each for Leverage, October Daye, and Kpop Demon Hunters