Another from maevedarcy's 3 weeks 4 dreamwidth meme, Day 3:

This week I'm reading:   Ellery Queen mysteries. Only those I own already: some I'm keeping; but I'd say about half of them are going to go to charity.

My favourite book of all time is:   Impossible to say! I read far too much to have a single "favourite book".


My current favorite book (read or re-read in the last 3 months) is:   Same answer.


The last book I bought was:   Hugh Pentecost's Death After Breakfast, one of his Pierre Chambrun mysteries.

The first book I bought with my own money was:   No idea! It was a long, long, time ago.

The first book I received as a gift was:   Again no idea. A book was a typical present for my parents to give me, whether for birthdays or Christmas. It might have been a Milly Molly Mandy book (in which case it was The Further Adventures of Milly Molly Mandy); but it could equally have been a Noddy book or a Railway Engine book.

The last book I received as a gift was:   From me to me, last Christmas. I stacked up an even dozen of them.

The last book I borrowed from the library was:   Quite a few years ago. Our local branch is very small; and practically everything has to be ordered from another branch by interlibrary loan. I quit bothering years ago.

The book physically closest to me right now is:   A bit of a giveaway, since I keep referring to it as I work on my assignment for caseficexchange.



THIS OR THAT:

• Physical book or e-book:   Physical book.
  
  Used or new:   No preference, as long as the used one is a clean copy.
  
  
• Fiction or non-fiction:   Fiction for relaxation; but I read certain non-fiction for that too, if it relates to a hobby or personal interest area.
  
  
• Read at a coffee shop or at the park:   Neither, since I'm a real homebody.
  
  
• Paperback or hardcover:   Paperback, if I'm paying for it.
  
  
• Romance or Crime:   Detective stories, definitely.
  

YES OR NO:

• Stream of consciousness?   No!
  
  
• Poetry?   Hardly ever.
  
  
• Memoirs?   Depends if it relates to an interest area.
  
  
• Philosophy?   No.
  
  
• Thrillers?   Yes!
  
  
• Chronicles?   Sometimes, if it's history in an area that interests me.
  
  
• Travel logs?   No.
  
  
• Dialogue heavy?   Well, there tends to be a fair amount of dialogue in fiction; but I don't want something that looks like a play in prose. Description is essential, too.
  

From maevedarcy's 3 weeks 4 dreamwidth meme, Day 3:

Food related questions that will make you hungry


What is a food you loved as a child but do not enjoy anymore?   Boiled egg. When I was very little, my mother used to give me a boiled egg most days, for breakfast or tea. By the time I was seven or eight, I couldn't stand either the texture or taste. The funny thing is that I can remember liking it.

What’s a food you used to dislike but now enjoy? What changed?   Mushrooms. This is probably because my mother rarely cooked them when I was a kid; and, when she did, it was for the grown-ups. I suspect that's partly because she was watching money. I didn't try them until I was in my teens; but I quickly got used to the flavour.

If you could eat only one cuisine for the rest of your life, which would you choose?   Basic English, I suppose. It's what I grew up with. I'm not adventurous. Quite the contrary.

What food instantly makes you feel comforted or happy?   Mocha, the way I make it, i.e. with hot milk and a mocha mix. Or cocoa, which my mother often gave us when we were children—except that nowadays I don't sweeten it. Either way, we're talking flavoured hot milk.

What food reminds you most of your childhood?   Things like egg toast and beans'n'sauce that my mother used to make for children's tea.

Are there any foods you think are overrated?   Anything hot and spicy. I bite the food: I don't like it to bite back.

What traditional dish from your country would you recommend to a visitor?   Toad in the hole, especially if made with lamb chops rather than sausages.

Who is the best cook you know, and what makes their food special?   I guess that would be me—not because I'm a great cook, but because I cook the food I like.

I can't guaranteee I'll do this every day; but I thought I'd try maevedarcy's 3 weeks 4 dreamwidth 2026 meme.

Today's meme is about last things.

Movie I watched:   X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was on TV a week ago Friday; and, as I hadn't seen it before, I decided to try it. Pretty good! Mind you, like all the movies, it greatly simplifies what was a very complex story in the original comics.

Series I finished: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Though there's supposed to be a second season, if they show it.

Book I finished:   Kate Sedley's The Plymouth Cloak. This is the second in her series of 15th-century history mysteries featuring Roger Chapman. I've been thinning out the detective stories, getting rid of those I figured I'd never want to re-read. After the first volume and then this, both of which I enjoyed, I've decided that I'll hang onto the whole series. Not the most deeply researched or complex, but quite fun.

Book I bought:   Stalag Luft III: An Official History of the 'Great Escape' PoW Camp. Originally compiled for the War Office at the end of WWII, this has remarkable detail on the various escape attempts that were made, as well as names and dates, and other such info that tends to be skimped elsewhere. It properly sorts out the different compounds' histories, which not all accounts do. A bit dry, but looks useful in its own way.

Book I received as a gift: N/A really. I mean, nowadays I buy all my books for myself, so they're not precisely gifts. Though I have to admit that I stacked up a nice collection late last fall and didn't start any of them till Christmas; so I suppose that's a gift of sorts, if only from me to me.

Food I ate: Breakfast. A wholewheat flaxseed pita bread with a mug of mocha, followed by a clementine. I'm about to go and make myself a belated tea/dinner.

Meal I cooked: Breaded shrimp. (Last night's dinner.) Though the toaster oven did the work.

Drink I had: Mocha latte. I blend up batches of mocha mix myself, more or less once a month, and make it up with hot skim milk.

Song I listened to: No idea what it is, but the aria currently playing on CFMZ.

Album I listened to: Not in years.

Playlist I listened to: N/A. I just turn the radio on.

Concert I went to: No idea. It would be too many years ago.

Game I played: Sudoku. (Dead easy: I do sudokus every day.)

Person I talked to: My sister. We skype every Sunday.

Person I texted: N/A. I don't have a cellphone.

On April 3rd 1999, we scattered my father's ashes in a small wooded area at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. He'd died a week or so earlier; but my mother took the fancy to do this on his birthday. He was just shy of 88 when he died.

If he were alive today, he'd have just turned 115. Which obviously not, of course—but, boy, how time flies!

My sister has just posted a reminiscence about him. He was a fascinating man, far ahead of his time in many ways.

Let me thank you right up front for whatever you are going to write. Although you've seen the tags on my sign-up, I know that most people like more than that to go on, so I hope this letter will prove helpful. I like all these fandoms equally; so I've just put them in alphabetical order.

If you're just looking for my general likes and dislikes, you'll find them at the end.

( Read more... )

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them. I read a lot of detective stories and watch cop shows on TV. Casefic is one of my favourite genres; and I'm very excited to take part in an exchange where that type of story is the focus.


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon / relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• In general, I like stories that are canon-compliant. Canon-divergent AUs are fine (including ignoring canonical character death). However, I don't want stories with AU settings (e.g. coffee-shop, fairy-tale, omegaverse).


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second person fic, please. First person is okay, especially for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

REQUESTS: ( Read more... )

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them.


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon / relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• I love casefic; and, more generally, I like stories that are canon-compliant. The general exception to this is ignoring canonical character death if you want. Canon-divergent AUs are also okay. (There may be other specific exceptions.)


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second person fic, please. First person is okay, especially for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

REQUESTS: ( Read more... )

Just a few days ago, denise posted to the fail_fandomanon community a warning about the likelihood of English-language LiveJournal posts being summarily deleted by the Russian owners of LJ.

Well, I ported over my whole LJ blog to DW when I started here, comments and all. So I wasn't worried about that. However, I did check on a couple of communities I'd been involved with. Some had full back-ups on DW.

But what about fkficfest?

When Fk Fic Fest started, it was wholly on LJ the first year; and, when brightknightie decided to run it on DW as well, she didn't port over the LJ site. Instead, she ran the two in parallel for a while. This means that stories posted to fkficfest in 2010 do not have copies here. A lot of people did later import or crosspost to AO3. However, I never imported "Attachments", the story I wrote for that very first year. Nor did I ever put it on my website.

Limitations on the length of LJ posts meant that "Attachments", which is some 60K words long, had to be cut up into nine chunks, each of which was posted separately. I wasn't sure how that would come out in an import. (I mean, I wanted them all together! It's one story!)

Well, it turns out that LJ imports nowadays can handle that sort of thing. Anyone who's not read "Attachments" in its original form can now find it here on AO3.

This is Natalie's take on the whole of Forever Knight, from her first encounter with Nick in the flashback to "Only the Lonely" right through to her last diary entry just before she heads over to the loft in "Last Knight". It's told through her secret diary, notes sent to Nick (and notes not sent to Nick but recovered later from her computer), letters to family, e-mails, Christmas cards—you name it!

Also there are my usual "Notes" at the end. A lot, since I extended plot arcs across episodes as well as filling in the gaps between seasons.

Once it was safely on AO3, I reread it. I was staggered to find that so many little things got slipped into the story in passing that, years later, were expanded into full-length fic. Quite a few of those stories were written for later iterations of fkficfest. Yet, when I wrote them, I had no memory that their genesis lay in the work I'd put into organizing "Attachments". It seems to have proved a veritable warren of baby plot bunnies.

Meme picked up from brightknightie and pj1228: From your AO3 Works page, look at the tags and find the answers to these questions.

Find me at AO3

1. Under what rating do you write most?

Gen (237)

Teen (43) is a very poor second. Seriously trailing are Not Rated (6) and Mature (2).


2. What are your top 3 fandoms?

1. Forever Knight (101)
2. The Charioteer (Mary Renault) (46)
3. MASH (16)

If I combine The Flash and DC's Legends of Tomorrow, which are mostly crossovers, I've written 18 Arrowverse stories.

I've also written 42 stories in "RENAULT Mary - Works", which are all ITOWverse metafic that potentially involves characters from any of her books visiting a metaverse. I've left them out because they're a fannish derivative in the same way that FK War posts are (and my war posts aren't on AO3, anyway, so wouldn't be counted).


3. Which character do you write about most?

Nick Knight (57)

Natalie (30) and LaCroix (26) are nearly tied with each other, and also with two characters from The Charioteer: Laurie Odell (25) and Ralph Lanyon (23).


4. What are the 3 top pairings you've written?

1. Ralph Lanyon/Laurie Odell (14)
2. Nick Knight/Natalie Lambert (8)
3. Nick Knight/Janette DuCharme (7)

From which you may correctly conclude that pairings are not my main interest when it comes to writing fanfic!


5. What are the top 3 additional tags?

1 Metafiction (44)
2. Backstory (40)
3. Historical (25)

Followed by Christmas (21), Futurefic (20), and Canon-Related (19).

(Technically, I ought to put "ITOWverse" as #2; but those stories are all also tagged as Metafiction, and actually comprise most of my metafic.)

I've just posted a little Halloween ficlet featuring Nick, Nat, and Schanke. Set somewhere in Season One, just a bit of mutual chat. Enjoy!

"Candy Corn"

It's also been posted to FKFIC-L and my website.

greerwatson on AO3.

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them. They're listed in alphabetical order, so as not to play favourites. (Treats are enabled and always welcome!)


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• I love casefic; and, more generally, I like stories that are canon-compliant. The general exception to this is ignoring canonical character death if you want. Canon-divergent AUs are also okay. (There may be other specific exceptions.)


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second-person fic, please. First person is definitely okay for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

( Read more... )

Once again, it's that time of year. The annual Yuletide gift exchange opened nominations last week. (See the post.) So I'm aiming this at Forever Knight fans. Yes, I know that I said last year that Forever Knight wouldn't be eligible in 2025; but there haven't been as many new stories posted as I expected. (Or maybe it's more that there weren't as many old stories cross-posted.) Anyway, at this moment, FK has 958 works in AO3 that are complete, in English, and over 1K words in length.

If there are other FK fans thinking of doing Yuletide this year, we should coordinate. When one is actually signing up for Yuletide, one is only permitted to request/offer characters in the tagset; so it's important to get in the ones you want to ask for.

This year, they've upped the number of fandoms one is permitted to request to five. Still only four characters per fandom. Obviously, FK has far more than that! However, by coordinating with one another, we can ensure that we each nominate different ones, thus getting a larger tagset. If we don't coordinate, there's a high probability of duplication.

Nominations are open until 26 September 9pm UTC. Note that local time for you will vary depending on your time zone.

To repeat: if you plan to request/offer Forever Knight for Yuletide, we should coordinate in order to get as many different characters as possible into the tag set.

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them. They're listed in alphabetical order, so as not to play favourites.

I'm also greerwatson on AO3. Treats are enabled.


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• I love casefic; and, more generally, I like stories that are canon-compliant. The general exception to this is ignoring canonical character death if you want. Canon-divergent AUs are also fine. (There may be other specific exceptions.)


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story or, for that matter, a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second-person fic, please. First person is definitely okay for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

( Read more... )

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them. I read a lot of detective stories and watch cop shows on TV. Casefic is one of my favourite genres; and I'm very excited to take part in an exchange where that type of story is the focus.


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon / relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• In general, I like stories that are canon-compliant. Canon-divergent AUs are fine (including ignoring canonical character death). However, I don't want stories with AU settings (e.g. coffee-shop, fairy-tale, omegaverse).


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second person fic, please. First person is okay, especially for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

REQUESTS: ( Read more... )

Mortal Love

The Nick and NatPack faction site. With the permission of the faction leader, now moved to https://www.foreverknight.ca/MortalLove/index.html

NOTE: archived within this site is Forever Knight - Canon & Trivia, now at https://www.foreverknight.ca/MortalLove/canon.htm


War V

Since Amparo Bertram's site has gone, the War V site (which she archived) has been moved to https://www.foreverknight.ca/WarFive/war5.html

As well as all posts, there is a drinking game and a page of quotations from the war.


Judith Freudenthal's Episode Guides

Now moved to https://www.foreverknight.ca/JudithFreudenthal/EpGuide/index.html

Before the deletion of the danaknight.com site, Judith's stories were uploaded to AO3; but the episode guides don't qualify for archiving there.

When I started this discussion of brown128.jpg variants, each page of graphics was colour themed since I was inspired by the gem prompts of the Sunshine Challenge back in 2022.  Because of the variety of colours in opals, I saved “Opal” as the prompt for my discussion of methodology.  However, that leaves truly multi-coloured examples out in the cold.  Of course, some have already appeared in earlier posts if I used them to illustrate methods of creating new graphics.  However, here in conclusion, I’m going to round up a selection of graphics with three or more distinctively different colours.  Some have appeared before; some are new.  It is a rainbow selection.

It’s hard to believe that these all derive from a pretty brown background texture that could be found in so many graphics collections twenty odd years ago!









Previous Days:
Prompts #1 and #2 (Amber and Topaz)
Prompt #2 (Rose Quartz)
Prompt #3 (Garnet)
Prompts #3 and #4 (Moonstone and Hematite)
Prompt #4 (Kyanite)
Prompt #5 (Peridot)
Prompt #5 (Bloodstone)
Prompt #6 (Aquamarine)
Prompt #6 (Amethyst)
Prompt #7 (Sunshine Jasper)
Bonus #1 (Turquoise)
Bonus #2 (Smoky Quartz and Onyx)
Bonus #3 (Rubellite)
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part One
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part Two
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part Two-and-a-half
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part Three
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part Four
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part Five
Prompt #7 (Opal) - Part Six

Copped off brightknightie, and clearly going the rounds:

Meme: Share links to your fics with the most hits, second-most kudos, third-most comment threads, fourth-most bookmarks, fifth-most words, and fewest words.

Most hits:
Dick Francis's 10-lb Penalty: "Back in the Saddle" (6886 hits) (2016, 1866 words)

Second-most kudos:
Georgette Heyer's Venetia: "The Rape of the Book" (121 kudos) (2016, 6350 words)

Third-most comment threads:
Mary Renault's The Charioteer: "Exit Stage Left, a Wounded Warrior: The Lost Chapters of The Charioteer" (17 comment threads) (2012, 12,429 words)

Fourth-most bookmarks:
M*A*S*H (TV series): "Dear Sister-the-Sister" (11 bookmarks) (2011, 1400 words)

Fifth-most words:
"Exit Stage Left" again (12,429 words).

Fewest words:
I'm going to omit those with zero words. Two of these are artwork (and hence not fic). The third is a picture book whose words are with the pictures attached to the pics and hence not counted by AO3. Counted up by hand, though, it has a lot more more words than the story below:

Mary Renault's The King Must Die: "I Leap the Bull" (96 words) (2015)

Actually, I think this was supposed to be a drabble. (Maybe I was counting the title in by accident.) At any rate, I also have another fourteen drabbles or near-drabbles, given that the word count can shift when one copies from Word over to AO3.

Let me thank you right up front for whatever you are going to write. Although you've seen the tags on my sign-up, I know that most people like more than that to go on, so I hope this letter will prove helpful. I like all these fandoms equally; so I've just put them in alphabetical order.

If you're just looking for my general likes and dislikes, you'll find them at the end.

( Read more... )

Challenge #15: Talk about an unexpected joyous moment you experienced last year.

When I had finished and uploaded my assignment for trickortreatex last October, I looked around to see if there were any prompts that appealed to me as possible treats. I don't usually write Original Works; but I had a vague recollection that someone had nominated the tag "Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III/Another Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III (M/M) (OW)". I once had done a lot of research into the treatment of Allied POWs in Germany in World War II; so I checked particularly for that and found that risalsoran had requested it.

You see, years ago I had missed a rerun of The Great Escape movie—and, if you've never watched it, I certainly recommend it! Very exciting! It's got OCs based more or less on the real people who were involved in a major escape from Stalag Luft III, a POW camp run by the Luftwaffe in World War II for Allied air force officers who'd been taken prisoner. Paul Brickhill, himself a POW somewhat involved in the preparations for the escape, had written the book, The Great Escape; so, having missed the movie, I borrowed the book from the library and read it. From there, I moved on to Eric Williams' The Wooden Horse (about a different escape from the same POW camp), and then started shelf-reading....

There's fanfic for The Great Escape on AO3; but, though I still enjoy the movie, I now know too much about the real escape to want to write about a fictional version of it. On the other hand, I also have no interest in writing RPF about Stalag Luft III either: it would mean getting into the heads of real people—people who actually lived, often until quite recently. Frankly, there are quite a lot of memoirs written by ex-POWs; and they're well worth reading. As for writing about the Escape itself (let alone the fifty escapers who were murdered!) ... well, sorry, but that's definitely not for me.

On the other hand, if there's one thing that most people who were there tend to avoid, it's talking about sex—or, at least, about homosexual activity in the camps. Granted, when food was desperately short at the start and end of the war, no one would have the energy. (I believe that.) However, it stands to reason that the percentage of gay men in the camp would be roughly the same as that in the population as a whole. And there are hints—no more than hints, mind you!—especially in the more recent memoirs. To a degree, therefore, one can try to guess how people might have managed, despite the lack of privacy.

So you can see why I went looking to see if anyone had requested the tag "Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III/Another Pilot POW at Stalag Luft III (M/M) (OW)". I could draw on what I knew about the historical camp, but write about OCs.

Of course, my memories of my old research weren't exactly up to date; so I had to do quite a lot of canon review. I wanted to get the details of camp life as accurate as I could manage. As a result, the story wasn't ready when the collection was opened on Halloween. However, it did get up as a late treat towards the end of the anon period.

Being late up, "Events Transpired" hasn't had a lot of attention. Still, judging by the lovely comment, risalsoran clearly enjoyed it, which is what really matters.

Challenge #13: Interact with someone in fandom you haven't talked with before.

Challenge #14: In your own space, create your own fandom challenge.

So ... I don't really feel up to creating my own fandom challenge. However, I have commented on a number of the challenges that other people have posted.