Reading

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Apple TV+

The last day of my free three-month trial of Apple TV+ is tomorrow. I have calendar reminders that have nagged me to cancel the subscription. I activated the trial so that I could watch Murderbot – and that was a success; I liked the series very much.

While I was in the free trial I had wanted to sample some of the other shows. But I rarely watch shows outside of anime (which consumes a lot of my spare time), so I didn’t sample anything until this week. The main series I wanted to sample was The Studio. I like smart humor. However, the entire premise and satirical take on the situation made me uncomfortable – and I lasted only 15 minutes into episode 1. I didn’t see myself watching an entire season.

I pivoted and watched the first episode of Foundation. I had read enough online to know that the series doesn’t strictly follow the books – and that’s fine. I read a lot of Asimov when I was a kid, and the Foundation series is in my library – although I don’t remember the last time I read it. One thing about Asimov – he’s not very good about writing characters. His characters are more about moving the story along. A version of Foundation that focused more on characters would be interesting.

Anyway, I really liked the first episode, and I’ve started episode 2. I guess this means that I’ll start paying for an Apple TV+ subscription – at least until I get through 30 hour-long episodes of Foundation. Given how slowly I watch TV, this could be a while. I don’t subscribe to Netflix, HBO, Paramount, Disney, or Hulu, so I guess I can splurge on one “normal” content provider. (Crunchyroll and HIDIVE are definitely not mainstream.)

I can’t even watch a full episode of Foundation in one sitting; it takes me two evenings to get through an hour. There aren’t enough hours in the day, strangely.

I did watch about 18 minutes of Wolfs. I had heard that the movie was so-so, but I’d still like to see Clooney and Pitts banter with each other.

If I keep the Apple TV+ subscription longer term, I’d like to watch the film The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. I’d also check out these shows: Dickinson, Bad Sisters, Severance, Slow Horses, and Sunny. For now – one series at a time.

(no subject)

Last week I was on vacation at Beth's family cottage, which normally would mean that I'd be reading a battered paperback. HOWEVER instead I was racing to finish Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets due to the unfortunate fact of it being triply overdue at the library.

A useful and worthwhile book; a compelling and depressing book; not, perhaps, an ideal vacation book, but so it goes. The book is composed of oral histories conducted by Alexievich in the years between 1991 and 2012 with various inhabitants of the Former Soviet Union. Alexievich is particularly interested in suicides, and several of the interviews/chapters circulate around people who knew or were close to people who took their own lives after the fall of communism; several others focus on people who were living in areas of the former Soviet Union where the end of the USSR led immediately to ethnic or nationalistic violence.

Many of the oral histories follow a pattern that goes

a. [recounting of an absolutely horrific personal-infrastructural tragedy or example of human cruelty that happened under Stalin]
b. but at least we had ideals
c. And Now We Have This Fucking Capitalism Instead And It's Not A Good Trade

and many others go

a. under socialism in [location] they said we were all brothers and I believed it
b. and suddenly overnight that changed and I will be forever haunted by the things I've seen since

Alexievich recounts the oral histories more or less as if they're dramatic/poetic monologues -- usually monologues of despair -- removing herself and the circumstances under which they were conducted almost entirely, except for a very occasional and startling interjection to make a point. (One oral history, of the horrific-things-happened-but-we-believed variety, is intermittently interrupted by anekdoty from the interviewee's son; Alexievich comments that no matter what she asked him, he only ever responded with a joke.) Some sections are compendiums of conversation gathered in a location, at a party or in a marketplace, sliding past each other montage-style. As a literary conceit, it's very effective, but I found myself wishing sometimes that it was a little less literary. It's rare that I read a nonfiction book and want the author to be putting more of themself into the narrative, rather than less, but I wanted to know what questions she was asking. That said, for various reasons, I'm considering buying a copy.

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Media consumption

Random stuff that I've read/watched lately that I don't have to say much about, but still wanted to mention!

📚 Read a couple of BL manga; Boku no Mii-chan and Hugpai (⚠️ the Hugpai cover is suggestive, in case there might be smol bebe eyes in the room). Both have NSFW chapters, though Boku no Mii-chan is more serious and story focused while Hugpai is more comedic and pretty NSFW throughout. The couples were both cute! (Sidenote: Thanks to Hugpai for giving me the motivation to dust off and finish writing Malleable.)

📽️ I haven't seen a Jurassic Park movie since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (which I can barely remember), so I wasn't sure what to expect for Jurassic World Rebirth. It was fine; straightforward plot, forgettable but likable characters, cool dinosaurs. I thought the (budding) friendship between Zora Bennett and Dr. Henry Loomis was nice. This was the first time I saw ScarJo starting to look older (the neck will always betray you). This isn't a dig; just something I noticed.

Current Music: JVK, "My Own Man"

I'm the left hand ticking on the timeless clock

Otherwise mostly what goes on around here is capitalism, errands, and interacting with doctors: the usual. Wishing I could vaporize people with the power of my brain.

I had missed this article on the photographs of Louis and Antoinette Thuillier, who memorialized on glass negatives, with a view camera in the improvised studio of their farmyard, thousands on thousands of soldiers and laborers from around the literal world passing through Vignacourt on their way to the British lines of the First World War. It started as a business; it became memory-work, ghost-work. They cannibalized their own windows rather than erase an exposure, the last and perhaps only record of the men who had marched on to the Somme. I was not surprised to read that they took no more photographs after the war, that the husband shot himself, that the wife did not destroy the collection but left it in the farmhouse's attic for history to deal with, too close to the epicenter herself. If I had ever seen any of their images, I had not known the story. The article makes much of the immediacy and casualness of their pictures, of which this one makes a shock of a calling card because only their uniforms and the tin hat one of them isn't wearing tell the time: their expressions aren't a century old. Time is plastic stuff. Don't even ask how long a decade ago feels.

I was in the car tonight at the right time to hear a live-in-studio set from local rockers JVK, reprising three-fifths of their debut EP Hello, Again (2022) for WERS. I get to feel slightly ahead of the curve discovering Tristwch y Fenywod at the start of this year, but I had not encountered Cerys Hafana's "Child Owlet" (2024), which without altering the ballad becomes in their telling a witch song.

The mango lassi pie from Petsi does not actually much resemble the experience of a mango lassi, but since it is constructed along the principle of a key lime pie except with mango, I love it.

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Evening Highlander list

To cheer myself up this evening, I looked at a list of Highlander episodes and have decided to rank the season openers and finales from my favorite to least for no reason except whim.

I threw The Raven on here, although it's at a disadvantage for only being seen once so far. I also treated all two parters as one.

Onward to my opinions, subject to change on my next rewatch. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Mets vs Braves on tv

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how that ball rushes up on you

I'm off work tomorrow and Friday - I have my annual eye exam tomorrow (they have sent me about 17 requests to confirm and I have each time but wtf) and I decided to just take Friday off for a long weekend - so I logged off work at 4:30 and ended up taking a long nap. I woke up to an intense thunderstorm with a truly shocking (pun intended) amount of lightning.

My brother had hip replacement surgery this morning and it went well - he is home already!

Baby Miss L loved the books - especially the Pete the Kitty goes to preschool one and I got adorable videos of her "reading" it.

Speaking of books, I did indeed finish the last 3 books of Dungeon Crawler Carl over the weekend and I was incensed that book 7 was not the end - there are supposedly 3 more books coming to wrap things up and ugh, I hate having to wait. This write-up on tumblr (vague spoilers for the whole series, as an enticement to read the books) is a great summary of why you should read it and then come talk to me about it. I am not even a cat person and I love Princess Donut! There is a wide array of female characters! There is a lot of gory violence and an unfortunate amount of fatphobia (i.e., any), but the anti-capitalist rage is real. I just hope Dinniman can stick the landing.

*

Entry tags:

reading,
viewing

wednesday reads and things

What I've recently finished reading:

1984 by George Orwell (reread, but first read nearly 40 years ago, so.) This book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief; it's more of an allegory of fascism, an exaggerated cartoon version, than it is actual fascism. But that's the point, I think. It's the authoritarian nightmare writ very very large, and I hope that enough people are reading it now to be scared into fighting the authoritarian nightmare which is slowly establishing its tentacles across the US. (And that they don't get so chilled by the downer ending that they believe that it's impossible to fight...)

A few things stood out to me about this book written in 1949. First, it's interesting that ideology isn't actually important here; the object is to amass and retain power, and I think that's true of our current regime. Second is the importance of stamping out every bit of creativity and independent thought, even getting rid of words describing creativity and independence, such that even the books and songs produced by the government are created by computers (cough AI cough) and lightly edited by humans. Very prescient and chilling! And of course the thing that brings this book to mind and has put it on so many contemporary reading lists is the idea of editing information about the past to bring it in line with what the government wants people to believe - which is what the regime is attempting now.

I mostly enjoyed it (if "enjoyed" is the correct word) though the protagonist's view of women was a bit madonna/whoreish, kind of weird, and I wondered how much it reflected the author's feelings. (However, it's obvious to me that the in-universe view of Jews is very clearly intended to be part of the throughline connecting to Nazism, so I am not sure why I feel more uncomfortable about the portrayal of women.) Also there's a whole section in the middle which is a lengthy quote from a purported book by Goldstein, the leader of the Resistance, and that's just ugh boring clunky exposition in the middle of what is for the most part powerful prose. But otherwise, I'm glad I read it again, in these times, where we are led by small men who want to amass power for power's sake, and be cruel for cruelty's sake, and put their boots on everybody's faces.

What I'm reading now:

My hold on the third Emily Wilde book by Heather Fawcett came in at the library, so I'm reading Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales. The beginning was terribly confusing but I'm starting to get into it.

What I recently finished watching:

We finished Arcane, which - I have mixed feelings about. Actually, it kind of reminds me of Andor - no, not the downtrodden rising up against the elite (though okay, there are some elements of that) but the plot veering off sideways and jumping around and things that seem like they're important getting dropped and things coming suddenly out of nowhere. (So maybe it was supposed to be a longer series that got canceled so they had to cram everything into the second season?) I am still not sure what Viktor's whole deal was, or what exactly the "arcane" is, or the invasion at the end, or...and then I looked up the game it's based on and it's a battle arena game, so I am not sure where this plot came from! Anyway, I loved the art, liked a lot of the characters and their relationships, didn't really care for the way the story evolved in S2.

What I'm watching now:

Untamed, which is the Netflix murder mystery miniseries set in Yosemite, not the Chinese drama - that one has a The in front of it. Eric Bana and Sam Neill are in it but we're really watching for the lavish scenery porn, which is definitely amazing. (Also some of it takes place in Mariposa, so it makes me think of

rachelmanija, though I don't know if it's actually filmed there or if it even makes sense to be taking place there.)

Entry tags:

Restroom of Terror [Sasaki/Miyano; PG]

Title: Restroom of Terror
Fandom/Pairing: Sasaki to Miyano - Sasaki/Miyano
Summary: There are strange rumours at Miyano's school, whispers that Hanako, or some other ghost, has moved into the all-boy's school. Of course, Miyano gets the honour of investigating the matter...
Rating: PG
Content: Teenage boy romance, ghosts, spooky stuff...
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters, they belong to Harusono Shô. I'm just borrowing them to act out my fantasies, while not earning any money whatsoever from it.
Notes: 1700+ words. It's just a little ghost story for Obon 2025... Many thanks to my friend

zabimitsuki for cheering me on and beta-reading this piece for me. :)

Read it here: DW | AO3

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murderbot

Murderbot rec

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Current Mood: awake

Victory is mine

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Sanders' Union Fourth Reader

Sanders' Union Fourth Reader by Charles Walton Sanders

Despite the titles, this is more recent than his New Fourth Reader. It repeats three or four readings from the earlier works, not all of them from the fourth reader.

Interesting nowadays chiefly for the views of edifying works and science of the time.

Current Mood: tired

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Anime Check-in:🦇Babanba Banban Vampire S1E3

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worldcon

Worldcon 2025

I will be at Worldcon this week, starting on Thursday. If any of you are going to be there and want to meet up, please DM me and let me know!

To Tame a Land

To Tame a Land by Louis L'Amour

You can do a lot of things in Westerns. This one is a bildungsroman.

( Read more... )

More Mandalorian

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Lectures de juillet

Je suis super-en retard pour diverses raisons !

( Thistlefoot, GennaRose Nethercott ) 9/10

( Légendes fantastiques charentaises et gabayes, Eric Nowak ) 7/10

( Au bord du précipice et autres nouvelles, Richard Matheson ) 6/10

( Sorrowland, Rivers Solomon ) 7/10

( D'obsidienne et de sang, Aliette de Bodard ) 7/10

Progression : 65/52
"Risques de lecture" : Thistlefoot, Sorrowland, D'obsidienne et de sang -> 29/26
Reddit fantasy bingo : 20/25

Current Music: Patrick Wolf, "Hymn of the Haar"

To cormorant to samphire to plover

I seem to have been the member of my family to introduce my niece to the Atlantic off Cape Elizabeth where I learned to swim. Since

spatch and I had the honor and the fun of driving her back to her father, we took the opportunity to stop off in Kittery for fried summer foods, York Beach for body-slamming waves and salt water taffy and soft-serve, and then Two Lights for climbing all over the ledges she kept making sure were not petrified wood before handing the tall child back at Kettle Cove where she had waded out to gather wet-shining lumps of quartz. I forgot to pack swim trunks and the cuffs of my jeans are full of sand.

( As we haul away to harbor. )

At Kettle Cove, I walked barefoot over the springing beds of knotted wrack and the emery bite of barnacles. I told my niece about the invasive tiny green crabs her father and I used to catch, which even under capitalism it is now ethical to consume. I dislike so very much of the wrench of the world, but I love that my niece has turned out to love the sea.

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Dear Crossworks Author

I use the same name everywhere so I am

beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.

I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

General Likes and Dislikes

other things to keep in mind:

I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
I like fluff
I like angst with a happy ending
I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
I like unreliable narrators.
I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.

I like plotty, gen stories, and plotty stories in general. I don't care for explicit sex, particularly when it's just thrown in for teh porn. I'm asexual; a lot of the time I don't even bother to read the sex scenes. Romance is awesome (as long as both are in character and the romantic plot doesn't hinge on one or both of them being an idiot). I love it when friendship is held up as important and not secondary to romantic relationships and blood ties.

Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.

I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.

Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.

I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.

Historical Fiction and Fantasy

The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
Kate and Cecelia - Caroline Stevermer & Patricia Wrede
Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Doctor Who 2005

With these fandoms, I'd be fascinated to see how the worldbuilding fits together. Is Middle Earth on the other side of the ocean from the Ethuveraz, and what's that clash like when they encounter one another? What do Tolkien's elves think of the Ethuveraz elves, and vice versa? (Is Dachensol Habrobar, the extremely-long-lived person who makes sigil rings in the Ethuveraz, a Tolkien-style Elf?) Do Elizabeth and Will meet up with Maia's sister the lesbian pirate captain? (James Norrington would do much better in an Austen story than in PotC.) Can an Austen heroine do magic? (What's Sir Walter Elliot's opinion of Mr. Norrell?) If there was a connection between the Bennets and the Elliots, would Mrs. Bennet try to cling on to the Elliots as tightly as Sir Walter clings on to his cousin Lady Dalrymple? (Of course she would.) With Mansfield Park, I'm firmly of the opinion that Henry Crawford would have made Fanny miserable in the long run, so if you don't like Fanny/Edward or Fanny/Mary, this is the perfect opportunity for a crossover pairing. Or no pairing, give her a dragon instead! Everything is better with dragons.

I specified Doctor Who 2005 and Goblin Emperor because you can't have two parts of the same canon in the same request, but I love all Doctor Who and the Cemeteries of Amalo books. So if you are inspired to do an earlier Doctor or stuff from Amalo instead, feel free!

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Early 20th Century Detectives and SF/F

Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Agatha Christie's Poirot (TV)
Agent Carter (TV)
Jeeves & Wooster
The Old Guard (Movies)
Young Wizards - Diane Duane
The Mummy (Movies 1999-2008)
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (TV)

All of these characters are interesting and eccentric, most of them solve mysteries (and the rest cause them), I want to hear about how they met or what they're like if they live in the same universe. Is Miss Climpson a Young Wizard-style wizard? She probably wasn't very powerful even when young, but then, she always did find that attention to insignificant details was at least as effective as the more flashy stuff. Does Peter or Harriet cross paths with Evy in academia, or while holidaying somewhere Evy and Rick are doing a dig? (Does Peter work with Rick on intelligence work during WWII?) Would Peggy Carter try to recruit Phrynne for the SSR? What happens if the Old Guard are at a country house party for some reason and someone tries to kill them--what happens to a mystery when the murder victim resurrects--do they pretend to be dead so they don't get revealed, do they try to tell the detective who killed them? What if Captain America is at a country house party for diplomatic reasons and people start dropping dead and someone tries to frame him and he has to work with the detective to identify the true culprit? If all else fails, most of them take place during/near WWII, and you can put together almost anyone either during a mission or while on leave back in England or something.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

AI and Wormholes and War

The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Doctor Who (2005)
Star Wars: the Original Series
Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monáe
Babylon 5 (TV 1993)

(Most of) These canons have things to say about personhood, power, government, culture, and doing the right thing, and I would be interested in seeing them compared and contrasted. While I only listed one Doctor Who (because we can't do things that might get us matched on two parts of the same fandom) I would be fine with any Doctor of any era. I want to know what Murderbot thinks of R2-D2 (and what R2 thinks of Murderbot). I want to know what ART thinks of the Cylons, and what the Cylons think about ART. (And if ART and Murderbot were to drop a virus into Cylon systems that revealed the truth about the Final Five and all the shit the Ones got up to, and trashed the governor modules on the Centurions on the way out, that would be awesome.) Or Murderbot getting trapped in the Colonial Fleet masquerading as a human because these people like constructs even less than most humans like SecUnits. How much can the Doctor fix (or break in a better way) before he/she leaves? What characters would make interesting companions? What would happen if the Colonial Fleet found themselves in Barrayaran space? (Or Cetagandan, or Jacksonian, or Betan?) What would Breq think about the Cardassians or the Dominion (or the Federation)? And, of course, everything is better with wizards.

What characters would make interesting companions? What are the wizards doing in the BSG world? (Can Cylons be wizards, and what would happen if one was? How would that work with their whole sharing memory/uploading/downloading thing?) What do the technomages think of the wizards, and vice versa ... or is "technowizard" a way of getting around sevarfrith status? What would Laura Roslin think of the Minbari, and would telepaths be able to sense Cylons? Did either the Vorlons or the Shadows have anything to do with the repeating cycle of evolution/Cylon creation/destruction that BSG is stuck in?

Some of these are easier to fit together than others. For example, Murderbot can pop up anywhere and fit into any canon, because if there's a difference in the sociopolitics or the way interstellar travel works between Murderbot canon and whatever series you're putting MB in, it can be handwaved away as "Murderbot doesn't care and therefore didn't notice." The Doctor can pop up anywhere, and wizards are also very adaptable. With Star Trek and Star Wars, both series show enough of the galaxy and enough of galactic history, and have different enough physics that it's a bit tougher. But still doable! Ye Olde Wormhole/Alternate Universe can work wonders.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Modern World, part 1

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Sense8 (TV)
Young Wizards
Stargate SG-1
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Superman Returns (2006) or Superman (Movie 2025)
Criminal Minds (US TV)
Pitch

With these fandoms, I would love either worldbuilding (how do you fit superheroes and genius loci into one universe? Duane's wizards and Aaronovitch's? The Old Guard's immortality vs. Nightingale, Varvara, the Old Soldiers, and various other immortals of the demi monde?) or character stuff (put the characters in a room together, see how they get along or don't) or exploration of social issues that are implicit or implied in the canons. Also, wizards make everything better, and I am fascinated by the concept of sensate clusters. Take characters, make them part of a sensate cluster--preferably a diverse world-spanning cluster, like the one in the show. (OCs are fine as part of the cluster!) Or what would happen to any of the characters in any of the series if they died and became part of the Old Guard? Does Nile watch Genny Baker's games whenever she has a chance? Peter would totally be a superhero fanboy, and also, if Judgment Day happens, and Terminators have microchips, all of a sudden being a wizard is a superpower to save the world. On the other hand, what if Sarah and John et al ended up in Britain and got tangled up in a case? What would Peter make of time travel?

I love all of the Sense8 cluster, but my faves are Nomi, Lito, and Capheus. Of all the Old Guard, Booker is least interesting to me.

I specified Superman Returns here, but I would be just as happy to receive Superman 2025 crossed with any of these others.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Modern World Part 2

Calvin & Hobbes
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Batman: The Animated Series
Superman Returns (2006) or Superman (Movie 2025)
Sense8 (TV)
Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad

The main theme of these canons to me is young people, imagination, and hope. I'd love worldbuilding and fitting these stories together; I'd also love character moments. There's already an amazing "what if Calvin was a wizard" story, but another would be awesome. What would a wizard be doing in the Dirty Computer dystopia? Or Gotham? What if Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson were sensates? (Or, God forbid, Harley Quinn? Pity the poor cluster! OTOH, if they can convince her to get away from the Joker, that would be great.) What would the Timmverse Batman think of either the 2006 or 2025 Supermans? Could Computron be a wizard? What if Calvin ended up as a Robin?

I specified Superman Returns here, but I would be just as happy to receive Superman 2025 crossed with any of these others.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Modern World, Part 3

Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Superman 2025
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
Star Trek: The Next Generation

Robots being people! What does Murderbot think of Hyperdimension Warp Record? What does Computron think of the Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon? If either of them met up with Data, what would they talk about? If Computron is in the DCAU, are there other sentient robots? Is there anything Superman might need Computron's help on? What would happen if Murderbot needed to team up with the Justice League, or Batman? What if Camazotz came after Earth, and the Justice League or Starfleet needed Meg's help to defeat the IT? What if Charles Wallace and Computron got to talk for a bit? What if Computron got to visit the Fortress?

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Modern World -- Apocalypse Edition

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pacific Rim (Movies)
Sense8 (TV)
The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monáe
Dirty Computer - Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
Young Wizards - Diane Duane
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Sleepy Hollow (TV)

Yes, most of these are post-apocalyptic or dystopian in some way. But they also have at least the seed of hope: of escape, of change, of something better being possible. And they're also about personhood, about choice, about AI and civil rights and cancelling the apocalypse.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Current Music: The Fashion Focus - Starflyer 59

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Animation Check-in: Camp Cretaceous S5E3-5

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous
Season 5

Episode 3: Kenji's dad using his son's desire to be close to him after a life of feeling distant is so insidious.

Kenji your dad is trying to sell these 'weapons' to people okay with hunting down and killing children...

I get Kenji's 'righteous anger' in the face of his dad's gaslighting and his upbringing but it's still awful to watch. But he changed once before for the good, I believe he can still go back.

Episode 4: Sammy is definitely remembering her own betrayal in this conversation about 'how could Kenji do this to us'. 😅

And poor Darius in the leader role with everyone turning to him.

Darius's brother! Oooh it's been so long since I watched the first season I had to look it up to be reminded of those camp counselors. 🤣

Episode 5: Kenj, that guy only saved you because he was being paid, not because he's a good guy...

Brandon's going to get himself killed shouting and stumbling around like that orz

It makes it worse that Kenji's dad actually cares about Kenji.

It's almost funny how far behind Brandon's team are, they've long since left the camp.

Them using the vehicle to free the dinosaur reminded me of Jurassic Park 2.

I'm glad Darius was able to open up to Brooklynn. I really do hope after all this they keep in close contact.