Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Sep. 9th, 2025 03:00 pm[personal profile] beck_liz posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
beck_liz: The TARDIS in space (DW - TARDIS in Space)
Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth Links
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Flesh and Stone, 2010
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – Doctor Who: The Zygons, 2025
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – Big Finish: Planet Krynoid Nightfall, 2025
Blogtor Who: Candy Jar’s ‘Just Sarah’ Celebrates 50 Years of the Doctor Who Companion

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Fanfiction
Complete
Too Complicated by [personal profile] badly_knitted (G | Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness)

Recommendations
[personal profile] paranoidangel recommends speedily in our days by AnonymousDandelion

Communities & Challenges
[community profile] tardis_festivities announces the schedule for the 2025 Doctor Who and Related Fandoms Festivities Exchange

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elisi: my heart <3 (Light in the dark)
"In the middle of this war and this madness, there is a flower inside the fire."

Saturday 6 September 2025

Sep. 6th, 2025 05:44 pm[personal profile] merryghoul posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
merryghoul: Ninth doctor smile (Nine smile)
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Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter, [community profile] doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-DW News
Blogtor Who looks at various upcoming BBC Books releases
Blogtor Who's Friday Video of the Day is a clip from Bad Wolf
nwhyte reviews Cutaway Comics's Inferno, set in the universe of the serial Inferno

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Communities and Challenges
[community profile] dw100: Challenge #1057: attention

Discussion and Miscellany
[personal profile] purplecat with the cover to the novel Endgame

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Completed
Looking Better by [personal profile] badly_knitted [Fourteen, Donna | G]

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Challenge #1057: attention

Sep. 6th, 2025 06:17 pm[personal profile] redwolf posting in [community profile] dw100
redwolf: (dw100)
Welcome to [community profile] dw100! Challenges are posted approximately once a week.

Challenge 1057 is attention.

The rules:
  • All stories must be 100 words long
  • Please place your story behind a cut if it contains spoilers for the current season
  • You don't have to use the challenge word or phrase in your story; it's just there for inspiration
  • Please include the challenge word or phrase in the subject line of your post
  • Please use the challenge tag 1057: attention on any story posted to this challenge
Good luck!
beatrice_otter: WWII soldier holding a mug with the caption "How about a nice cup of RESEARCH?" (Research)
... the more often I notice little details that are wrong in movies and books.

Like, most recently, I watched a few minutes of Saving Private Ryan, which included the delivery of the telegram about most of her sons dying to Mrs. Ryan. She is doing dishes in the kitchen when she looks out the window and sees a car driving up. She is wearing an apron. She goes to the door to greet the Official Men who are coming.

Me: ... why isn't she taking off the apron, or replacing it with a clean one, or flipping it around?

I have heard stories from multiple women about their mothers working really hard to always have a perfectly pristine apron whenever unexpected company showed up, the 1930s version of "we can't let anybody know we live here!" So, for example, women who would wear their aprons inside out, so that they could flip it around whenever the doorbell rang, and know the pretty side would be perfectly clean. Or women who would take their aprons off and stuff them in a drawer when they saw a car drive up, and pretend they hadn't been working in the kitchen or scrubbing the floor or whatever. Or run to the kitchen and swap out their everyday apron for the fancy one with the ruffles and embroidery or whatnot. In every case, the idea was for the apron to look like a fashion statement, and not an actual functional garment. 

But the thing is, no piece of fiction is ever going to be 100% perfect in its presentation of the past, no matter how much they try for accuracy; if for no other reason than that lots of the past simply gets forgotten about. Nobody can possibly know every detail about what life was like in an era before they were born, even if they've studied it extensively. (And the further back in time you go, the less stuff it is possible to know.) And even if you could be accurate, the accuracy might not fit with the story you're trying to tell; it might distract from an emotional moment, or it might signal something completely different to modern eyes, or it might just not register to modern people unless you took the time to stop and explain what's going on. All of which interfere with telling the story you're trying to tell.

So for me, it's a lot of "they're not wrong to do it that way, that I find it annoying is totally a ME issue and not an objective problem with the story.


Thursday 4th September 2025

Sep. 4th, 2025 10:26 pm[personal profile] usuallyhats posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
usuallyhats: The Second Doctor at the TARDIS console, Jamie biting his knuckles as he looks over the Doctor's shoulder (two jamie ohnoes)
Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist ([personal profile] doctor_watch).

Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth News
Blogtor Who's video of the day for yesterday was highlights from the most recent season
Details of September's B&M Doctor Who exclusives

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If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

Updateyness

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:52 pm[personal profile] elisi
elisi: Smile and the world smiles back (Charles)
How is it already Wednesday? /rhetorical question

On Saturday we watched the new Superman, and it is as delightful and uplifting as everyone promised. Also very silly, which is important I think. We need silliness to help ward off the horrors. ETA: It's already out on streaming, which made it a lot easier!


Promethia and I also posted the first chapter of a new Dead Boy Detectives fic:

The Song of Rowland, 10k

Summary:

Most ghosts didn’t celebrate their birthdays.

But Charles Rowland wasn’t ‘most ghosts’.

Indeed, Charles’ birthday was a high point of the year, a guaranteed day of fun for himself and Edwin. The fun always helped to push down the unvoiced emotions below: the loss, the unresolved pain of his death, the feelings of failure and inadequacy. Charles saw no reason why this state of affairs shouldn’t continue forever.

But then he turned fifty.

Or:

How a medieval poem changed Charles’ afterlife forever.



(Only 2 chapters in all, amazingly not everything I write turns into an endless WIP!)

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Sep. 2nd, 2025 04:34 pm[personal profile] beck_liz posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
beck_liz: The TARDIS in space (DW - TARDIS in Space)
Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth Links
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – The Whoniverse Show, 2025
Blogtor Who: Doctor Who: Wicked! – Coming Soon from Big Finish
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Every Use for the Psychic Paper, 2025
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – David Tennant on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, 2025, where he talks about Doctor Who Coincidences, Anxiety Management & Embracing Your Inner-Child

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Discussion & Miscellany
[personal profile] nwhyte on The Devil’s Chord, by Dale Smith
[personal profile] purplecat went into Wish World/The Reality War knowing it was likely to be a hot mess and was not wrong.
[personal profile] purplecat with Costume Bracket: Quarter Final, Post 2

Fanfiction
Complete
Doing What's Right by [personal profile] badly_knitted (G | The Doctor)

Communities & Challenges
[community profile] dw100 announces Challenge #1056: flannel
[community profile] tardis_library announces the September Theme + Request Post

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siderea: (Default)
Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1882100.html



0.

With all the eager discussion of the possibility of Trump dying in office, I am in the delicate and unfortunate position of not actually being in favor of it.

Don't get me wrong. I, too, would enjoy to seeing something very bad happen to Trump. What I'd best like is him getting his just deserts – ideally being arrested, indicted, tried, found guilty, sentenced, having appealed, the appeal failing, appealing again, having that appeal fail, petitioning the POTUS for clemency and it not being granted, him being duly executed by the state as the traitor to the Republic and the Constitution he was proven to be. I'm not generally a big fan of capital punishment, but I am in fact willing to make exceptions; he seems to think he's an exception to a lot of things, and here I would agree with him.

But that's not going to happen, not in this time-line, and it's probably for the best that it doesn't.

Perhaps he will simply keel over dead, and I confess I will take at least a little bitter satisfaction in it.

And it's certainly not that I don't wish us all to be spared even another moment of this Trump presidency. Of course I do.

Alas, as much as I hate to crush the pleasant fantasy of us being redeemed by the deus ex machina of artheriosclerosis finally doing its job and carrying off our oppressor: Vance is worse. Much, much worse.




1.

It's perhaps understandable that you would not realize this.... Read more [6,770 Words] )

This post brought to you by the 219 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

Code deploy happening shortly

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

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)

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.

Challenge #1056: flannel

Aug. 31st, 2025 08:25 pm[personal profile] mad_jaks posting in [community profile] dw100
mad_jaks: 6th Doctor in profile (06)
Welcome to [community profile] dw100! Challenges are posted approximately once a week.

Challenge #1056 is flannel.

The rules:
  • All stories must be 100 words long
  • Please place your story behind a cut if it contains spoilers for the current season
  • You don't have to use the challenge word or phrase in your story; it's just there for inspiration
  • Please include the challenge word or phrase in the subject line of your post
  • Please use the challenge tag 1056: flannel on any story posted to this challenge
Good luck!

Saturday 30 August 2025

Aug. 30th, 2025 05:46 pm[personal profile] merryghoul posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
merryghoul: Fourth Doctor (Four)
Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist ([personal profile] doctor_watch).

Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter, [community profile] doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-DW News
Blogtor Who looks at the latest special issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Gothic Horror
Blogtor Who reviews the standard UK release of the Series Two Blu-ray set
Blogtor Who: Spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea pushed back to sometime in 2026

(News from [syndicated profile] doctorwhonews_feed and [syndicated profile] blogtorwho_feed, among others.)

Discussion and Miscellany
[personal profile] purplecat with the cover to the novel Palace of the Red Sun

Fanfiction
Completed
Daughters by [personal profile] badly_knitted [Fourteen, Donna, Sylvia Noble | G]

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

This one will be [curr ev]

Aug. 30th, 2025 04:20 am[personal profile] siderea
siderea: (Default)
Current rumors engulfing Bluesky have me recalling an old Communist-era Russian joke:

Every day, a man walks to a news stand and pays for a copy of Pravda, unfolds it, looks at the front page, and throws it in the trash. Every day he does this, for months, until finally the news seller asks the man, "So what is it you are looking for on the front page every day?"

"I'm checking for an obituary."

"Comrade, the obituaries aren't on the front page."

"Oh, this one will be."

Thursday 28th August

Aug. 28th, 2025 06:44 pm[personal profile] usuallyhats posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
usuallyhats: The Second Doctor at the TARDIS console, Jamie biting his knuckles as he looks over the Doctor's shoulder (two jamie ohnoes)
Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist ([personal profile] doctor_watch).

Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth News
Blogtor Who's video of the day for yesterday was the best moments from season 1 of the Sarah Jane Adventures
Blogtor Who's video of the day for today is a clip from Class's "For Tonight We Might Die"
Nicholas Whyte reviews Una McCormack's novelisation of "The Robot Revolution"

(News via [syndicated profile] doctorwhonews_feed and [syndicated profile] blogtorwho_feed among others.)

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.
beatrice_otter: Me in red--face not shown (Default)
I use the same name everywhere so I am [personal profile] 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 keeep 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.


Fandom For Robots )

Rivers of London )

Goblin Emperor )

DS9 )

Star Wars Legends )

Enola Holmes )

Babylon 5 )

Enterprise )

TNG )

Sense8 )
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