yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
As we all start planning our nominations and requests, mods have been reviewing our rules around the number of fandoms that can be nominated and requested.

Traditionally, Yuletide has allowed participants to nominate a maximum of 3 fandoms to the tagset, with up to 4 characters each. We increased that to 4 fandoms in 2023 and got positive feedback about that change.

During signups, participants have been required to request at least 3 fandoms, and up to 6 fandoms if they choose. They must offer a minimum of 4 fandoms.

We've needed to limit the tagset size due to a combination of AO3 technical limitations as well as the logistical effort to confirm each fandom is eligible while avoiding duplicate fandoms. The good news is that we’ve found AO3’s tagset interface loads the moderation tools a bit faster lately. We've also developed more scalable processes and a group of wonderful, experienced volunteers to help with that checking. We think we can handle more nominations this year, but we won’t know until we try!

Change to nominations:


For 2025 only, we are going to increase the number of tagset nominations from 4 fandoms to 5 fandoms per person. The maximum number of characters will remain at 4 per fandom.

We’ll see how this goes, and whether the additional workload seems manageable to us, before deciding whether to keep the increased limit in 2026.

Change to requests:


For 2025 only, we are also going to increase the maximum number of fandom requests from 6 to 8. The minimum of 3 will not change. This means you must request at least 3 fandoms, and up to 8 fandoms if you choose.

Everything else remains the same: for each fandom, you will still be able to request up to a maximum of 4 characters. You will still be required to offer at least 4 fandoms with a minimum of 2 characters each.

Again, we will evaluate how it goes, and how this affects our workload, before deciding whether to keep the increased limit in 2026.

We hope this opens up some exciting possibilities for you in the 2025 round! Please stay tuned for our usual eligibility and evidence posts.

Rest in Power Graham Greene

Sep. 2nd, 2025 04:40 pm
muccamukk: Cluster of purple and white lilac flowers. (Misc: Lilacs)
[personal profile] muccamukk
I think there will be more in depth obituaries to follow, but here's a couple I liked.

CBC: 'Like watching Gretzky play hockey:' Colleagues remember actor Graham Greene.

CBC (Video): Remembering Graham Greene (interview with Jesse Wente).

I just saw him in Sweet Summer Pow Wow last week. Hard to imagine he's gone.

Labour Day

Sep. 1st, 2025 10:03 am
muccamukk: Text: Love > Anger, Hope > Fear, Optimism > Despair. (Misc: Canadian Politics)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Heather Cox Richardson: August 31, 2025.
Almost one hundred and forty-three years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade.

The Tyee: Why One Young Union Organizer Sees a Brighter Future.

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Book Log: Rick Astley - Never

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:05 pm
scaramouche: She-Ra's sword, animated (she-ra's sword is sparkly)
[personal profile] scaramouche
I was in the city over the (last) weekend, which meant that although I have an on-going resolution to not buy any books until I've cleared my still-unread book stack, this was an exception. A big exception! But an exception all the same because I rarely go into the city, so I got a whole bag of books that I will rotate in reading with the still-unread book stack, and one day, maybe, I will clear all of them.

Rick Astley's recent autobiography Never was not on my to-read list, but I picked it up on a whim, and as soon as I got home, apparently it was the one I was most excited about starting, so I did. I think because I'd recently enjoyed his cover of Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club", plus Dave Grohl mentioned him in his autobiography when I read it (and had to dig it up to reread his version of the same meeting that Astley mentions in his book).

So like, comparing to the handful of other musician autobiographies I've read (specifically: Dave Grohl, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner and Phil Collins), Astley's is very different in the sense that he really is Just Some Dude. He loves music and loves making music, but he isn't POSSESSED by the urge to make&perform music the way that's very clear for those other musicians I've mentioned, and since he got swept up in the commercial music-making machine when he was young (not very young, but young enough), he didn't get to cut his teeth performing on the circuit and figure out his own strengths. All musicians may be limited by commercial interests, but it seems to me that a consequence of that, plus the lack of a mentor, Astley didn't get much of a voice of his own that first time round as he exploded as a pop star, which gave a specific kind of hit to his confidence and perception of self (which isn't imposter syndrome, but something else). Boy was convinced most of the "genuine" musicians around him hated and/or wanted nothing to do with him, despite being proven wrong again and again.

By Astley's own admission he feels that he doesn't "deserve" to write an autobiog because he doesn't have that much music out, but that's just not true, man. His experiences are fascinating because it really is a case of luck coming in to revive his career (he had juuuuust the amount of psychological understanding of the Rickroll to, uh, roll with it, which took off after he dipped his toes back into the industry), and although he can't go back to the heights of the 80s, his second go-round has been firmly on his own terms and been so much more freeing for him to express himself, through writing and producing his own music, performing as a drummer again in his punk band, and embracing nostalgia performances. Which is neat! And reading about that is also neat.

Though also reading about the 80s pop machine from someone who lived it is also super neat and actually terrifying, which is the meat of the book. He's really lucky in that he got out of it relatively unscathed (which he's well-aware of) and that glimpse into how easy it is for a sheltered person to be dumped into a world you don't understand and be taken advantage of because you just don't know any better and don't even know you can say no to things -- it's a tale as old as time, but still good to read the someone's actual lived experience in a specific place and time period.

While reading the book, I listened to some of his newer tracks, and I quite like some of 'em! Most of them recorded at home and with him performing all the instruments, even.



yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
It’s time to start thinking about Yuletide! Here is our schedule for this year. Please note that the time of some deadlines has changed from last year. This may mean the date in UTC has also changed, or that the date relative to your own time zone may have changed.


2025 Schedule

Monday 15 to Friday 26 September: Nominations (end 9pm UTC 26 September)
Tuesday 14 to Friday 24 October: Sign-ups (end 9pm UTC 24 October)
Sunday 26 October: Assignments out (may be earlier)
Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

Please check back closer to the time if you want to be sure about deadlines! Deadlines in other timezones may be closer than they appear. If your region has a seasonal time shift during the above dates, your relationship to the deadline will also change. We recommend using timeanddate.com to check when each deadline is for you before it occurs.

New Year's Resolutions

We just sent an email to everyone who took part in Yuletide 2024 and who needs to complete a New Year's Resolution story before signing up again.

We use the email that's associated with your AO3 account. This is a good time to check what that email is! If you have any doubts about whether you received it, you're welcome to check your status with us by emailing yuletideadmin@gmail.com. Please include your AO3 name.

Who needs to complete a New Year's Resolution

If you took part in Yuletide and defaulted after the default deadline, or you submitted an incomplete story at the posting deadline, or you defaulted in Yuletide twice in a row, we generally ask you to complete a New Year’s Resolution story before you sign up again.

See the rules for defaulting on AO3

If you defaulted in a previous year, we will not have sent you a new reminder. We issued a general amnesty for ordinary defaults before the 2023 round, but if you were told you needed to complete a NYR due to turning in a placeholder story or a similar problem, you are probably still on our NYR list. Please check with us if you aren’t sure!

How to fulfil the requirement

Stories written for the purpose of re-qualifying for Yuletide must be posted to the New Year's Resolutions 2025 collection before you sign up to Yuletide 2025. They must be over 1,000 words, written for a specific person's past Yuletide prompt, and given to that person. You can write for any Yuletide 2024 prompt, or you can choose an older Yuletide prompt as long as the fandom in which you write is small enough to still qualify for Yuletide (that is, there are fewer than 1,000 fics on AO3 that are in English, complete, and over 1,000 words long).

Purpose of New Year's Resolutions

The NYR system exists for several reasons:
  • It's an incentive to encourage people either to default early, or, to push on through and post something

  • It works as a warm-up, or as practice, or as a way of proving to yourself you can finish a story to a prompt

  • It's a contribution to the project of getting more stories written in tiny fandoms

  • It's a way of ensuring that past prompts don't get entirely forgotten.


If you had to default in a past year, we are aware that this may have been for a carefully-considered reason or in a difficult time. Needing to complete a NYR does not mean we think you're terrible. Even members of the mod team have needed to write NYRs in the past. We hope you use it as an opportunity to write something you enjoy.

People are also welcome to write NYR stories just for fun! The collection will stay open for late fills until Yuletide 2025 sign-ups close (approx Oct 24).

2024 prompts



Prompts for Yuletide 2010-2024 can be found through the relevant individual collections and the NYR collections (see the Yuletide parent collection).

Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits | Discord


Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.
scaramouche: Kerry Ellis as Elphaba from Wicked (elphaba reaching)
[personal profile] scaramouche
Another weathered book from the back of the unread books drawer, and not very thick, so it's a light read I finished pretty much over a weekend I was away from home. John Michael Greer's Apocalypse: A History of the End of Time follows the history of what he describes as "the apocalypse meme" (the book was published in 2012), as in the infectious idea of the apocalypse, which Greer argues originated proper by Zarathustra, by adding the idea of "An End" to the understanding of the the cyclical nature of the seasons, years, and cosmic movements.

Very fun read, as Greer goes all the way from Zoroastrianism to the 2012 Mayan calendar scare (that really was everywhere for a hot minute), covering various famous and some less-famous (to me) apocalyptic movements in history, including Millerism, Heaven's Gate, Y2K, Kurzweil's Singularity (is that tied to the current AI movement? I should look it up). Though because Greer gave good early depth to apocalyptic concepts as developed by post-Babylon exile Judaism and later New Kingdom Christianity, I thought he would do the same for Islam and other Eastern beliefs but uhhhhh no, the book is Western-centric, I don't know why I keep playing myself.

But still a good, brisk read, and I do like that he explores exactly (though not too deeply) what it is about the apocalyptic meme that attracts people so, with the promise of justice in an unfair world, and being able to let all of your problems go to the promise that it will all be resolved by someone who is not me/you/us. And with that note he ends quite critical of that, by arguing that we need to help each other and protect each other, which is difficult work but necessary every day.
cap_ironman_fe: (Default)
[personal profile] cap_ironman_fe posting in [community profile] cap_ironman


Title: The Florist and The Captain
Artist: DragonK
Writer: Hkandi
Universe: MCU
Rating: Gen
Fic Wordcount: 6647
Summary:
Steve comes across Tony's flower shop and starts to buy flowers for himself. Tony find himself with a massive crush on his new favorite customer, who Pepper swears is Captain America. But as Tony tells her, “Yeah, Pep, Captain America totally came in on a random Tuesday morning for flowers after happening to see our van,” he sarcastically said. “Of course it wasn’t him, just a ridiculously handsome guy who maybe looks a little like him, I guess.”

Link to DragonK's art and Hkandi 's fic on AO3

Recent non-fiction reads

Aug. 26th, 2025 01:39 pm
marinarusalka: Hermione reading (HP: knowledge is power)
[personal profile] marinarusalka
By which I mean "recently read by me", not "recently published."

1. The Lost Flock by Jane Cooper. One of my favorite genres of nonfiction is "expert on obscure topic rambles enthusiastically about their passion." Much of the time, the expert is a scientist, but not always. Jane Cooper for example, is just a super-enthusiastic knitter who became interested in wool sourced from rare British breeds of sheep, and fell into a research rabbit hole that led to her moving to Orkney to become a sheep farmer tending a flock of Boreray sheep -- a super rare breed that has survived mostly unchanged since the Stone Age. It's a fascinating story, and Cooper tells it well, conveying her love for the sheep and for Orkney itself. Definitely worth picking up, even if you're not a knitter.

2. Owls of the Eastern Ice: the Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght. Slaght, on the other hand, is a scientist, a wildlife biologist who spent five years tramping about in the wildest regions of north-eastern Russia tracking and studying the Blakiston's Fish Owl, which I'd never even heard about before I picked up this book, but which I now love even though I'll probably never see one. Slaght writes vividly not just about the birds, but also about the challenges of doing science in a hostile wilderness, and the motley crew of eccentric and frequently drunk Russians who helped him deal with those challenges. He apparently has a new book coming out in a few months, about Amur Tiger conservation, and I'm totally adding it to my TBR list.

3. The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery by John Swanson Jacobs. So, years ago I read Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as background research for a fanfic. Then recently, I came across a Tumblr post informing me that Harriet's brother, mentioned a few times in Incidents, had also written a book, which was published in installments in an Australian newspaper and lost for a long time before being recently rediscovered and published in full. And as luck would have it, my library had a copy on Libby! Who says fandom can't be educational? Jacobs' book is short, more of a pamphlet really, but powerfully written. The editor fills out the volume with a foreword, a lengthy biographical section of Jacobs' life before and after the book, a collection of his letters, and tons of copious end notes. Unfortunately, the editorial sections, while informative and thoroughly researched, weren't nearly as well written as the book itself. There were a lot of places where I felt like the editor was trying hard for pathos -- something that Jacobs himself angrily rejected. Still, I appreciated getting a fuller picture of his life, from slavery to escape to his career as a firebrand anti-slavery lecturer, a gold miner and a sailor. Powerful stuff, and well worth seeking out.

Music Monday

Aug. 25th, 2025 10:04 pm
muccamukk: Orville Peck in a red Nudie suit, singing and playing guitar, while a pink and white musical score swirl behind him. (Music: Orville Peck)
[personal profile] muccamukk

Obsessed with the guitar here, for real.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

cap_ironman_fe: (Default)
[personal profile] cap_ironman_fe posting in [community profile] cap_ironman

Title: Crisis Averted (Or Five Times Social Media Caused Problems and One Time It Didn't)
Artist: BladeoftheNebula
Writer: meshkol
Universe: MCU
Rating: Teen
Fic Wordcount: 6579
Summary:
When Tony wakes up and joins the other Avengers for a Bruce-made breakfast amidst shattered windows and a god-sized crater in his floor, he has to suffer Pepper’s fond exasperation and Steve's confused hurt before everyone remembers that Tony’s default state is dramatic with a side of unseriousness, obviously, and Jameson is just asking for a lawsuit.

Still, social media posts always come with the possibility of misinterpretation or miscommunication, even if it comes with a side of laughter.

Link to BladeoftheNebula's art and meshkol's fic on AO3
justmarriedmod: (Default)
[personal profile] justmarriedmod posting in [community profile] yuletide
[community profile] justmarriedexchange is a marriage-themed multifandom exchange for marriage tropes of all kinds: convenient, accidental, undercover, arranged, forced, and so on. The requirements are 1500 words for fic, clean lineart on unlined paper for art, and a complete recording of 1500 words or 10 minutes for podfic.

We have some post-deadline pinch hits, currently due August 29th 11:59PM UTC (countdown), or negotiable.

PH 48 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)

PH 49 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 鸣潮 | Wuthering Waves (Video Game), Limbus Company (Video Game)

If you might be interested in one of these pinch hits, you can find more details or claim the pinch hit at the post here. Thank you very much!
muccamukk: The PresAux team hug Murderbot, who looks confused. (Murderbot: -hugs-)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Humble Book Bundle: Martha Wells' Murderbot and More by TOR (pay what you want and help charity):
This multi-Hugo Award-winning series includes standout titles like All Systems Red and Artificial Condition. Plus, a portion of your purchase helps support World Central Kitchen.

The full bundle includes all of the Murderbot novellas and novels plus two short stories, the two stand-alone fantasy novels, Witch King, the first two Ile-Rien novels, and the middle-grade adventure novels. Doesn't include any Raksura novels or the Ile-Rien trilogy (which I guess Tor doesn't have the rights to yet?). Obviously doesn't include the tie in novels.

I already own all of these, but it's a good deal if you don't!

Should be available for the next three weeks.

Works in the US and Canada, not sure where else.
muccamukk: Haymitch staring morosely into his drink. (HG: Drowning Sorrows)
[personal profile] muccamukk
to signal boost anyway: due to new legislation, social media sites that either morally object to or can't afford to run age-verification software on all users are starting to block IPs from Mississippi. This currently includes BlueSky, and may soon include Dreamwidth, as per [staff profile] denise on BlueSky:
I expect to see a lot more social media sites blocking MS in the weeks to come -- we're probably going to have to as well :/

Mississippi residents, get your VPNs now! I can recommend ProtonVPN as caring about protecting your privacy: they don't keep records and they don't sell your data."
[link to source]

Last Links List of the Summer * †

Aug. 22nd, 2025 10:53 am
muccamukk: Text: Specificity is the soul of all good communication. (MM: Communication)
[personal profile] muccamukk
These go all the way back to May, and I've yeeted the time sensitive ones. Some of the politics ones might be a little dated, but I think their points still stand, even if the news cycle has moved on.

WorldCon Fuck Ups:
(Why does this have to be a category nearly every year?)

Grigory Lukin: When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident.
Lyrical description of the harm caused by othering, with receipts.

Cora Buhlert: Some Comments on the 2025 Hugo Winners – with Bonus Tall Ship Photos.
More chronological account of events. Also, tall ship pictures.

ETA: Miri Baker: On the Perennial Embarrassment of Worldcon.
Most conventions, even those run by imperfect humans, do not have a widely-accepted 'Days since the Con Embarrassed Itself' counter.

Weyodi OldBear (on BlueSky): Next year's WorldCon is in Los Angeles, and the theme appears to be Westward Expansion or possibly Manifest Destiny.
There's also a picture of a Spanish Mission involved.

LAcon V: Statement from LAcon V Chair.
An apology.

*sighs*

I always have so much fun at these cons, and then they always seem to do shit like this. I find it exhausting. It's obviously much worse for the people who got their names mangled, etc.

It's worth mentioning that in the fall out of George R. R. Martin fucking up everyone's names, someone mentioned that the 2018 host, John Picacio, went around before the ceremony and personally made sure he was getting everyone's names right. So like, not fucking this up is a known thing. And yet.


United States and Canadian Politics: Go behind a cut! )


Fandom-Related Stuff!
[personal profile] magnavox_23: Multifandomonium Icons.
Including: Stargate (Various), Doctor Who, Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death, Sherlock (BBC), The Mandalorian, The Last Of Us, Star Trek (TOS), What We Do In The Shadows, Pikachu, The X Files, and related actors, misc actors & misc animals.

CultureSlate: Did The Marvels Deserve The Hate It Got?.
Answer: No. No, it did not.

CBC: 14 books to read for National Indigenous History Month.
Which was in June, but the list is still good.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach (on BlueSky): hey everyone, wanna watch my tv show the middleman on streaming with no added charges?
If you do, it's up on Archive.org. If you don't, you should.

[youtube.com profile] Aranock: The Author's Not Dead (58min).
Death of the author and separate the art from the artist have been increasingly used as thought terminating cliches, I want to examine why, as well as how we should engage with art made by people who've acted heinously. Deals with JKR and Orson Scott Card, among others.



* based on current rate of posting links lists.

† Also the first links list of the summer.

Book Log: The Pope's Daughter

Aug. 22nd, 2025 10:18 am
scaramouche: Kerry Ellis as Elphaba (elphaba blue eyed)
[personal profile] scaramouche
Caroline P. Murphy's The Pope's Daughter is another book I got ages ago, probably at a warehouse sale? I can no longer remember but the pages are weathered with time, which is a shame because I would've read it earlier if it wasn't stuck at the back of the drawer of unread books, under books I've been procrastinating over even more. The book is not about Lucrezia Borgia! It's about a lesser-known Pope's daughter (so is my impression of her relative fame), Felice della Rovere, illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Guliano della Rovere, later Pope Julius II, aka The Warrior Pope.

Murphy's book is well-paced and put together, though she uses conjecture quite a lot on Felice's motivations and emotional state behind some of her actions, and though Felice does on paper come off as consistent in action and intelligence, I'm not as much convinced by the declaration that she was definitely ambitious and arrogant to that level. But what makes Felice interesting, I think, is the contrast she makes to her peer Lucrezia (whose father was pope before Julius II), where when I read about Lucrezia (and Caterina Sforza) that makes Italy feel so vicious and violent and decadent, which it was, but then there's Felice who navigated that same world and didn't get into any scandals, and the major dramas of her life were (1) her youthful resistance to remarrying after her first husband died, though she did capitulate eventually for a husband she worked well with, and (2) her stepson protesting her power over the family to his detriment, which aren't really scandals per se.

Felice was good at politicking, networking, running businesses, running multiple estates, all with keeping a close relationship with Vatican both before and her father was in power. Felice patronized Michelangelo, lived through the Holy Roman Empire's sack of Rome, and saw multiple changes in the Vatican through her own ability to form relationships. She may not have had a passionate (second) marriage, but it was a functional one that worked. She was powerful, but also professional and well-behaved within the constraints of that power and her gender, which doesn't make for a popular historical figure to write about. It gives nuance to what it was like for powerful, intelligent women to live in that era and location, with her crossing paths with Lucrezia, Isabella d'Este and briefly a young Catherine Medici who was warded to her. And I think that's neat.

I love RAYE so much!

Aug. 21st, 2025 08:26 am
muccamukk: Elyanna singing, surrounded by emanata and hearts. (Music: Elyanna Hearts)
[personal profile] muccamukk

It's only half an hour of a 75 minute set, but it has all of her new songs, and she's really getting down doing Genesis live (in this case only Part II), which has taken a lot of workshopping over the last year.

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