magicasen

The funniest thing about watching* The Starry Night, the Starry Sea season 2 on youtube was following the comments. At the start, most of the comments were the same kind I'd been seeing on the Filipino teleseryes I've also been watching on youtube, i.e. excited comments of people who are watching the first time, supportive comments about how much they love the show and/or its actors, "who's still watching this in [year]", those kinds of simple things.

But over time.... ho boy! I don't know exactly when it happened, but there was a period where the positive comments slowly thinned out and then an outright tonal shift into majority frustration and complaints, because:

The Female Lead, who was introduced as spunky and rebellious against social norms for women's roles and crossdressed in order to pursue her dreams, turned into a weeping, helpless heroine whose only recourse to having any sort of agency is to cry and beg;

Which contrasts even more unfavourably with a side character who continues to be spirited and stubborn to stand up for what's right through the whole show;

Also the singular central conflict of the entire show is a long misunderstanding due to a single villain character who dies before getting any sort of comeuppance or realization. A long con by a villain may be typical, but there's usually other subplots and the conflict itself has its starts and stops, instead of a single pressing weight of stress that gets worse and worse as EVERYONE falls for the lies put into a place by a single mastermind. There's no storytelling rhythm to it, just frustration.

(*watching = I skipped a lot, especially towards the end when people kept dying and there was no catharsis.)

As for me, I thought the show was indeed frustrating for the same reasons, but I knew it would have a tragic ending from the beginning because it's a prequel! Obviously it's going to end badly. But I think most viewers did not and hoped that all that suffering would be rewarded by peace and happiness instead of a last minute rugpull of death. I think the uploader saw that wall of rage coming so they went and UNLISTED the final episode for the show outright.

The episode is still up, but I had to find it through someone else's playlist instead of their own channel. Which is, you know, fair enough if they don't want to get swarmed with negativity (not that they have to read it, but I understand). But that still made me go 👀

Current Mood: awake

patrokla posting in

yuletide

Here we go. Please watch this post! We will update here as each batch goes out:

Candy? COMING SOON (probably last)

Drinks? SENT (twice, lol) as of 6:51 PM PST!

Books? SENT as of 6:39 PM PST!

( INSTRUCTIONS & REMINDERS )

SENDING DEADLINE: Friday, November 21, 2025

Extensions/Defaulting: Pre-research your post office/courier service hours, and plan to send as early as you can! BUT if your best-laid plans fail, and you need an extension -- we get it! Please bypass the shame spiral and email us ASAP. We want to know what's going on but rarely hesitate to grant brief extensions, especially to historically reliable swappers.

And, of course, if you need to default for any reason, the above is doubly true!! Life happens, but if you let us know as soon as it does, we can help out your recipient AND probably have you back next year with minimal anxiety.

One More Time: don't forget to check in at Swaps Central! And a safe, merry Swapstide to all!

Current FAQ and very old resources post here, for anyone who needs them. Questions and comments here or via email, as always.

Kat & Livi & Helen

Current Mood: excited

scaramouche

Ahhhh remember when FuckYeah[Thing] was everywhere in the fannish parlance?

Anyway some years back I was an avid watcher of

NerdCubed's youtube channel, because as someone with horrible hand-eye coordination I found his irreverent skill and enjoyment at taking video games to their absurd limit really fun, and such LPs as I still remember for "Bully", "Shadow of the Colossus", "Psychonauts", "Outer Wilds" and one of the Jurassic Park games where you can actually build a theme park (and the raptors kept escaping, which enraged him to no end). These days I still have him subscribed but don't watch him as often, as there's way more content I follow now.

Regardless, back when he announced that he'd written a book, I ordered it as a way to say thank you for all those hours of entertainment, which is why I have a copy of Daniel Hardcastle's Fuck Yeah Videogames. It is, in my opinion, near incomprehensible if you don't already know Daniel and his brand of humour, as it is an irreverent list of various video games he loves and some he does not, the history ("history", in places) of various video consoles, plus a healthy dollop of semi memoir in the little stories he tells about himself, his family and friends, in explaining the way various video games make him feel. It's less a book and more like longform stand up in text form, I think. Maybe the audio version would be better, as someone who's enjoyed his rambling, but in text form I found it a bit tiresome.

At the back he lists his 100 favourite games of all time and I was shocked to see Outer Wilds was not there (he introduced me to the game!). Then I checked, and oh the game came out in 2019 and he finished writing the book in 2018, which explains it.

Current Mood: tired

cap_ironman_fe posting in

cap_ironman

Title: Soul Flight
Artist: Dksartz
Writer: Neverever
Universe: 616, AU
Rating: Gen for art, teen for fic
Fic Wordcount: 5435
Summary:

After Tony Stark became Iron Man, he lost his connection to his daemon. But now she's showing up everywhere and he still can't talk to her. What is going on here?

Link to Dksartz' art and Neverever's fic on AO3

muccamukk

Adapted* from this spread by

thewitchoftheforest.

1. Honour: How can I honour my ancestors?
The Sun

2. Connect: How do I better connect with my ancestors?
The Tower

3. Shadow: What shadows do I need to confront?
King of Wands

4. Release: What do my ancestors want me to let go of?
Seven of Coins

5. Focus: What ancestral gifts should I channel?
Two of Coins

6. Guidance: A message from my ancestors.
Ten of Wands

* I think this is the first one she did, and it's a bit clunky, so I've smoothed out some of the wording.

cap_ironman_fe posting in

cap_ironman

Title: Picture This
Artist: superdecibels
Writer: Evildime
Universe: MCU
Rating: T
Fic Wordcount 5532
Summary:

Steve is quite done with hearing the quotation marks when the other Avengers talk about the 'relationship' between Captain Dad and Iron Mom.

Link to superdecibel's art on tumblr
Link to Evildime's fic on AO3

scaramouche

I've made my way through two different versions of this post before discarding most of the content and starting over. What happened was, I finished watching Crime Scene Zero, had mostly negative reactions and wrote that up, then started rewatching Crime Scene from season 1 and realized that hey, season 1 was not that great either so my feelings must be biased due to nostalgia goggles, but then I went through my favourites of season 2 and recalibrated again so here we are.

My most recent simplified conclusion is that Crime Scene Zero was fine overall, as I really enjoyed two episodes, was mostly positive on one, and didn't like two. (For reasons to get into shortly.) This seemed like a bad ratio until I rewatched bits of seasons 1 and 2, and realized that because those seasons had 10 and 13 cases each, compared to Zero's 5 cases, they FELT better because there were more cases I enjoyed, when the actual ratio of % per season enjoyed is similar to Returns and Zero.

Important to note that BOOOOOO, Hong Jin-ho didn't come back AT ALL, for either Return or Zero. He was an original cast member! Jin-ho, why! He probably has reasons, but I am still sad. But to my surprise, he has been in multiple episodes of Running Man, which I stopped watching ages ago, so maybe I'll.... find those..... maybe. I would've thought that Running Man isn't his style, but what do I know about the vagaries of reality TV celebs.

( Haha I got thoughts. )

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: EXID - Ah Yeah

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing. Such a surprise.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Imperial #4, X-Vengers #1 )

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. So many books, so many migraines. Books are not happening.

Current Mood: tired

scaramouche

I read Sarah B. Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves, which explores what daily life was for women of classical Greece and Republic Rome based on the thin historical record, plays, poetry and so on, for the purpose of illuminating an otherwise ignored or invisible faction of society. What rights did they have or not have, how were they viewed by and treated by the men who had power over them, what were the gender essentialist turned institutional mechanisms used to control them, and so on. Pomeroy argues that evolution towards increasing freedoms isn't a-given, with her analysis that ancient Greece had more freedoms for women, then a tightening of those freedoms after wartime and a reduction of the male population, then more relaxation of freedoms into the Hellenistic era.

I admit, although the topic itself is interesting to me, I found the prose hella dry and the style tough to get through at points. But then I realized that the book was published in 1975, during a very different time of historical scholarship! I still find it dry and heavy-handed in places, but I can appreciate the groundbreaking feminist view of analysis, and the necessity of spelling things out clearly in order to argue against common perception of the time, even if it's tiresome to read now. Particularly enjoyed Pomeroy mentioning her male historian predecessors who made assumptions about women's attitudes back then due to the societal blinders they had about the women of their own time (eg. assuming women are happy with their lot).

One thing I will take away from the book with the glee is the description of how in ancient Athens, high class women were kept secluded at home and away from the eyes of men who weren't family, with exceptions to go outside behind a veil. That is... the purdah. Ancient Athens, birthplace of the modern concept of democracy, practised the purdah, the same way medieval Arabia did. (Low class women and slaves were allowed to go about freely without the veil, same as in medival Arabia.) That's rather funny, I think!

Current Mood: not feeling too good here, fam

sineala

Yeah, yeah, I finally get my brain together and it's a video game post. I'm doing the best I can, okay?

( I slew the Spire! )

Current Mood: dorky

marinarusalka

Ugh. Yesterday was one of the most mondayish Mondays ever. One of those days where a whose string of annoying things happens, each one totally stupid and trivial by itself, but they just keep coming until the whole day becomes one giant annoyance.

It started when I tried to use the Pvolve app to book my exercise classes for the week, only to discover that the studio I've been going to for the past 2+ years has abruptly closed. And I do mean abruptly -- I was there Thursday, and it looked like business as usual, no one said anything, and now, oops, their last day was Sunday. The peppy e-mail they sent out to announce this was all "Let's all gather at our location in Del Mar instead! Yay!" Well, I ain't driving to Del Mar for an exercise class, so no yay from me. And now I have to find another place to exercise so that I don't turn into a giant lump with achy hips.

Then, on my way into the office, I was juggling my laptop bag, my iced coffee and my key card as I tried to enter the building, and ended up spilling coffee all over the brand new white cardigan that I'd only bought the day before and was wearing for the first time. I did manage to wash it out in the bathroom before the stain set, but then I had an unwearable damp cardigan for the rest of the day.

The code that seemed to work fine when I wrote it on Friday suddenly wasn't working fine at all on Monday, so I ended up spending most of my work day wrestling with Javascript and PHP, two programming languages I hate the most, ugh.

Then Amazon claimed that they delivered my order, except what they actually delivered was an empty envelope. Whee. I've always wanted an empty envelope.

Anyhow, I was too annoyed with the universe to do any cooking yesterday, so I'm making it up by leaning into comfort food today. We're having this soup and this bread for dinner tonight, so the universe is forgiven for now.

Current Mood: annoyed

muccamukk

Very scattered, some references to U.S. Politics.

On the YouTubes (and a Podcast)

Schmowd3r: PI Investigates the Blake Lively "Situation" (3:42h).
Probably not a lot of new information on the Blake Lively piece if you've been following the case, but it's well laid out. The first section is largely about trying to detect bot campaigns, and he has some really interesting thoughts there. Also, he's an entertaining presenter, and am adding him to my subs.

LilShopofAli: Some of y’all still don’t understand desirability and it shows (1:40h).
This is a bit dated as it's about the topic du jour from a couple months ago, but I really like how Ali can take the discussion of the moment and expand it into a video about the wider cultural context. Very well done.

olurinatti: How “This Didn’t Age Well” Destroyed Media Literacy (0:42hr).
Great video about thought-terminating cliches and how they affect the way we talk about media.

ophie-dokie: censorship is coming for you next (& you're cheering it on) (1:02hr).
Can we stop running to cling ~~to mommy's apron~~ the state and demand stuff get cancelled? It's not going to end well.

Search Engine Podcast: A Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet (0:47hr, no transcript?).
If the medium is the message, and the medium is algorithmically-driven short-form video, what messages are we dealing with right now? Thoughts on Gen Z, and the world they're stuck in.

I Failed to Think of a Theme, and Failed, so Random Shit Posted in Order Bookmarked:
Kyrianna: Portraits.
Surrealist watercolour portraits of people with disabilities, manifesting symptoms of pain and restriction on their bodies. Really beautiful and affecting.

The Tyee: Unifor Undaunted as Amazon Ramps Up Its Anti-Union Fight.
"A union leader says newly certified workers are keen despite the company’s legal counteroffensive."

Tom's Guide: How to disable Copilot in Windows 11.
This was quite easy, and I wish I'd done it months ago.

TGEU: International Day of Action for Trans Depathologisation 2025.
I thought the demand list was really well laid out. These folks are doing such important work.

Spitfire News: Survivors deserve better storytelling.
A call to improve how journalists and content creators talk about violence and abuse. There's an open letter linked, and Kat also helped set up

survivorstoriesdeservebetter.

CBC: 'A healing event': Heiltsuk doctor performs rare delivery of Heiltsuk baby in own homelands.
An early labour in Bella Bella, B.C., where the hospital isn't equipped to deliver babies, had a happy ending.

The AV Club: Spotify stands by ICE recruitment ads despite artist backlash.
A growing number of artists have boycotted the service over its founder's investment in military AI.

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

All Yuletide requests are now visible:
-at karanguni's app
-at the Yuletide 2025 collection on AO3
-in a spreadsheet
-in a text doc

Please check back later for pinch hitter prompts.

Enjoy!

Both the main Yuletide 2025 collection and the Yuletide Madness 2025 collection are open for posting works. Before posting your assignment, or posting a treat to either collection, please read the notes below.

( Posting, and to Which Collection )

Bonus!! Decoy questions/author questions

A few weeks ago, we made a post about the questions we send to recipients when authors need to clarify something about their recipients' preferences.

As a result of that poll, in a situation where an author has a fandom-specific question, we will now send questions for at least 3 fandoms in a person's requests, but will not generally make up extra/decoy questions for their full set of fandoms.

You suggested that curious authors could make up (some of) their own extra questions. While that could be helpful - if you want to - we ask you to keep the following things in mind.

Clear questions are the best questions. Several times in the past we've received extremely confusing questions and it turned out a participant thought they needed to disguise what they were asking from the mods. Please do not.

Avoid excessive detail, especially about plots you don't plan to write. Don't ask your recipient "Would you be interested in a story where they time-travel to meet five different generations of their ancestors, and also there are capybara zombies?" unless you are contemplating such a plot (and maybe not even then) - because you may make your recipient hopeful about something that won't arrive.

Avoid being disingenuous about things that are actually clear to you. Try to ask about points of reasonable ambiguity. If you ask your recipient things like "You said you don't want any mention of hospitals, but is it okay if a character has a headache?" you could stress them out by making them wonder if they need to re-write their DNWs, or by making them wonder if you have wildly misinterpreted other parts of their requests. Decoy questions require a little creativity… but not too much. Save most of your creativity for the actual writing.

And again - you are not obliged to provide decoy questions! If you need to ask your recipient something, all we need from you is: 1) what information you need, and 2) who you are. That's great! We can take care of the rest.

scaramouche

In my further adventures of "watching" Filipino mermaid-centric TV shows, I've started watching Aryana and the opening situation has a poor woman (Ofelia) and a rich man (Victor) having already gotten married despite the casual classist cruelty of Victor's mother (Elnora). You've got the regular shorthand of Ofelia not knowing how to handle herself in unfamiliar rich-people-enviroment situations (which is also Victor's fault for not helping her, not that these kinds of stories acknowledge that most of the time) which earns Elnora's ire and verbal abuse. Ofelia=good, Elnora=bad, as these things go.

However! Ofelia tries to assert some financial independence by selling cheap lunch food, hawker style, and we're supposed to go, YAY @ her, and BOO @ Elnora for belittling Ofelia's efforts. But! Ofelia has chosen to sell food in the same dang office building, and I think it's hella tacky to take money from your VERY RICH husband's employees, even if you are selling food to them. It's not wrong, but if I were an employee I'd be side-eyeing that fam.

Current Mood: thoughtful

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

Assignments are out! You can find your assignment:

at your assignments page: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-USERNAME-HERE/assignments

at the sidebar of the collection

in your email.

You must write for one of your recipient's requests, including all of the characters they specified in that request (but see below). It doesn't have to be the fandom you offered.

Some recipients have selected several characters, but given permission for writers not to include them all using the Additional Tags checkboxes (the ones that start "My gift must…"). These tags are recent and we're still experimenting with their use, so please check through mods if you're not completely sure what your recipient means. You always have the option of including all the characters your recipient selected.

Your assignment is due at 9pm UTC on December 17. Note that this is an earlier deadline for 2025 as compared to the last few years and may be one calendar day earlier in your timezone.

Please click on that link right now! The date and time it shows may surprise you. Better to be surprised now than at the deadline!

Our reveals are earlier this year as well.

No Peeking (Or Squeaking) Until December 24th!
This is a secret exchange. Please don’t announce or hint what your assignment is. Don't say what you offered. Don’t reveal to your recipient who you are or what you plan to write for them. In fact, please don’t contact your recipient at all! You can send questions through the mods at yuletideadmin@gmail.com.

I have questions!!
Right! Send us an email at yuletideadmin@gmail.com, or, if your question won't give away what you offered or who you're writing for, you're welcome to comment here. We get tonnes of questions at this time, so please bear with us - it may take us a few days to reply.

Based on our survey about author questions and some internal discussion, this year we plan to include a questions for a few fandoms each time we contact a recipient, but we won’t necessarily include decoy questions for every single fandom. This may give the recipient a clue as to which fandoms they’re more likely to receive but should preserve some of the suspense!

Please don't ask us to poke your recipient to update a locked or placeholder letter until at least October 29.

When you send us a question about your assignment, please include your assignment link, which looks like: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2025/assignments/#######

Some of your questions may be answered by our next post when we reveal all requests. Please keep an eye on our admin community!

Pinch hits and all requests
The first batch of pinch hits will go out in the next day. In the next following days, after those pinch hits are claimed, we will make all requests visible and open the Yuletide Madness collection.

Check out the pinch hit community,

yuletide_pinch_hits, and sign up through Discord, a feed, or the Google groups mailing list to get immediate alerts for pinch hits. You don't have to be signed up to this year's round of Yuletide to claim a pinch hit.

The New Year's Resolutions 2025 collection is now closed.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app
Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.

scaramouche

I got my hands of the trade paperback of the first Superman '78 comic! A local reseller surprisingly had it in stock, so I pounced when I saw it. So now I have read both, the first story of which was published over 2021 and the second (which was the first book I got) was published over 2023-2024.

They're continuations of the Christopher Reeve Superman universe, and I was excited to read them, though when the plot kicked in I paused and had the very distinctive thought, "Oh no... bad things are going to happen to Clark! I don't want bad things to happen to Clark!" Even though bad things have to happen in order for there to be a story at all, but there was a funny mismatch in my brain because the Reeves Superman movies are so comforting and familiar and safe, while you don't know what you'll be getting with new canon! ("Canon", of course.)

Anyway both stories are charming and earnest and funny, but nowhere near as goofy as the movies were*, which I think is a consequence of trying to tell a story set in that era now, with our modern sensibilities and nostalgia and reverence tangled up in each other. Plus, it may just be the format, since there's no cinematic pauses or dramatic music to amp up the feeling, but I felt there was less weight to the stories, though the first story literally up-ends the status quo by ( spoilers ) Clark makes his typical choices and sacrifices in both stories, but he's noble and at most sad about it. He doesn't get angry or have break downs as he does in the movies.

*The plot and resolution of The Metal Curtain is goofy but in an idealistic way, where doing the right thing immediately has his "enemies" realizing that Superman has good intentions and doing a heel face turn. It's not goofy in a Superman-turns-back-time-by-flying-really-fast or throwing-nukes-into-the-sun-creates-a-sun-based-villain way.

Also! Very funny that the plot of the first comic sounds like what James Gunn said the second Superman DCU movie is going to be about, namely ( potential spoilers for a future DCU movie. ) That's this comic!

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Outer Wilds OST - Timber Hearth

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

patrokla posting in

yuletide

Hello from this year's primary mod, Helen! Kat and Livi have largely stepped away this year, but are very kindly helping with some behind the scenes stuff. Most posts and emails will be from me :) This will be my first time doing a lot of the swaps process, so if you notice anything seriously awry, please let me know!

( 2025 schedule, links, and more! )

Questions? Check out the current FAQ. (Updated November 2025 to address specific issues with international shipping.) If that doesn't help, feel free to comment here or email us at yuleswaps at gmail dot com!

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: under attack by hungry cats

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

Sign-ups for this year's event are now closed, with 1224 sign-ups. Welcome to everyone who's joined us for Yuletide 2025!

The Avoid Matching request form will remain open for another three hours for last-minute edits to your requests.

What will mods do now?
- Run matching.
- Contact participants who have no possible recipients, or where there's another matter to discuss.
- Update you on when assignments are likely to go out.

If we need to contact you, we'll use the email account associated with your AO3 account. (You can find it at Preferences -> Edit Profile -> Change Email.) We may also use this account later in Yuletide - for example, if your author has a question for you. Please check that you can access this email!

What should you do now?

Check and edit any letter you may have linked in your sign-up (please ensure it's complete by end of October 29th AT THE VERY LATEST, and consider adding it to the app and to the comments at the letters post). (If you didn't link your letter in your sign-up, it's too late now. Trust in your author!)

Please check your letter is accessible - log out of the platform where you have posted it and check that you can still view it, or ask a friend to. Tumblr in particular may cause issues with this and may require you to change your settings.

Keep quiet about what you've offered: Yuletide is anonymous until reveals.

Check that you can access your AO3-linked email.

Check out the pinch hit community, yuletide_pinch_hits, and sign up through Discord, a feed, or the Google groups mailing list to get immediate alerts for pinch hits. You don't have to be signed up to this year's round of Yuletide to claim a pinch hit.

Browse the promo post or even add a promotion.

Check that you're happy with your AO3 settings for treats / unassigned gifts - see an older post for more information. If your account is new, treats may be disabled.

Look forward to your assignments!

Congratulations to everyone who posted a story to the 2025 New Year's Resolutions collection, either as requested by mods or just because you wanted to fill a prompt. The collection will be open for roughly one more day, until we send out assignments - if you're planning to post, post soon! The NYR 2026 collection will open on January 1.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app
Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.

muccamukk

Someone stuck both my boostle fic on goodreads. Which... sighs. Maybe that's where all the traffic is coming from?

I should figure out how to get them taken down, but don't have the energy to care.

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magicasen

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Reading

The Starry Night, the Starry Sea (2)

Yuleswaps 2025: MATCH-UPS COMING SOONER OR LATER

Book Log: Fuck Yeah Video Games

Cap-IM Reverse Big Bang 2025: Team Nomad

Tarot Reading for Samhain

Cap-IM Reverse Big Bang 2025: Team Partners

Crime Scene Zero

Wednesday Reading Meme

Book Log: Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves

The Spire has been slain!

Nibbled to death by ducks

October Link List

2025 Requests + How and Where to Post fics + Author Question Update

Aryana

2025 Assignments

Superman '78

Database maintenance

2025: One Swap After Another || SIGN-UPS ARE OPEN!

Yuletide 2025 Signups Closed!

Boostle Update

Profile

October 2023

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