Reading

Entry tags:

books,
reading

Wednesday reading

Finished since the last reading post
When Will There Be Good News?, which I liked.

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker. I think I've enjoyed the previous two in the series more than I did this one, but it was still good.

Currently reading
Started reading Co-intelligence by Ethan Mollick. Also started reading The End of Innocence by Simon Garfield. I don't think I've made progress with anything else.

Reading next
I've got a library book waiting

Dear Yuletide Writer (2025)

Placeholder - please check back later.

Entry tags:

Heads-up to old-school XF fans

feroxargentea would like to spread the word that the AO3 is archiving all the fanfic from the 1990s paper-and-ink X-Files fanzine "DTA" (Dreaming the Answers).

If someone whose fic was published in DTA wants username/contact info updated, added, or removed, or doesn't want her/his fic archived, please reach out to them. More info here and also here.

I worry about the huge gulf between what was normal to do with wallet names in decades past and what is safe today. Look at any vintage kids' comic book, and you will find not just the full names but the full street addresses and ages of small children printed in the letters columns, just like the full street addresses of adults on letters to the editor in newspapers. No one would do that today! The '90s and '00s were a time of transition between an old reality and this current one.

Entry tags:

signalboost

No Kings Day on Saturday, October 18, 2025

This is my fannish space; I rarely mention non-fannish things here. I'm going to share one now:

If you can, tomorrow, Saturday, October 18, 2025, please consider attending a peaceful, patriotic, pro-America, "No Kings Day" gathering. To easily find a grassroots local event near you, try this map: https://www.nokings.org/#map .

You don't have to do anything except show up and be present with your neighbors. Let's thwart the gaslighting and reassure each other that, indeed, we are the majority, this isn't the way things are supposed to be, and constitutional values still matter.

Thank you.

Entry tags:

TrickOrTreatEx seeking more pinch-hits

trickortreatex has posted a new list of needed pinch-hits, which some of you may be interested to know includes Forever Knight (TV) and The Lost Boys (movies). Check it out.

Entry tags:

fest:hlhshortcuts

HLH_Shortcuts sign-up deadline is 11:59pm Central Time Saturday night

If you're planning to sign up for

hlh_shortcuts '25, you have ~10 hours from when I'm writing this. I got my sign-up in this morning.

At this time, the sign-ups summary and requests list show 15 players, with 15 requests and 14 offers for the main TV series, 4 and 5 for The Raven, and 8 and 5 for the movies. (If you're into the comics, novels, cartoon, or other subsidiary properties, just say so; someone else is likely to be, too.)

Entry tags:

london,
shopping

Made a trip to London today

The last time I went to Knit + Stitch, or the Knitting and Stitching Show as it was, was in 2019. No matter how much I enjoyed my day there, I've never quite forgiven it for giving me what seemed like a mild cold for a week, which was swiftly followed by what I think was bronchitis during the time I was also covering for my colleague (away doing jury service) in the lead-up to a release.

So today was the first time since. I hadn't really planned to go until about a couple of weeks ago, so by then it was more or less pointless to look at workshops and stuff. So I didn't. The journey to Alexandra Palace is a bit of a trek but it went fine in the morning. I've previously used the shuttle bus from Wood Green tube, but this time I skipped the tube and took the Elizabeth line (Paddington to Farrington) and Thameslink (Farrington to Finsbury Park) and Great Northern (Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace) trains instead. And I treated the walk up from the train station as useful hill training. I had planned a shopping list of sorts but nothing really caught my eye. So I didn't actually buy anything and didn't stay very long.

Afterwards, given I was already in London, I went out to look at backbags because my larger one is starting to fall apart. I've had it for years and used it all the time, so that's no wonder. The other day at work, a colleague was praising her Roka backbag so I was curious to see the options. But looking at them in person showed they weren't quite what I was looking for. But I found one that I liked, so I bought it.

Back in Reading, I went to Waterstones to browse for a little while and emerged with two books. As if I didn't have enough piling up already. And I've got one in transit that I ordered online. Royal Mail are doing their best to deliver on days I'm not in. After the first attempt on Wednesday, knowing I was going to be in the office on Thursday since I missed Tuesday, I requested Friday, only for them to skip yesterday completely and try to deliver today when I was still in London. Looks like I'm going to have to go to the delivery office to pick it up, and the earliest I can do that is probably on Wednesday.

Entry tags:

HLH_Shortcuts 2025 "Dear Author" letter

Dear

hlh_shortcuts author,

Thank you for sharing your Highlander love and creativity this year!

TLDR: My personal tip-top favorites are: gen; PG-13 and below; first through third seasons; Duncan, Tessa, Richie, Darius; Duncan/Tessa; choosing the hard right over the easy wrong; choosing to care and to hope; the power of friendship; history, whether as setting or reference; grief and bereavement; fighting the good fight; and the immortality fantasy as hyperbole/metaphor for real life. I also enjoy many other things, so it's fine if none of these click for you!

No need to read on unless you really want to. This post is long. :-D

( Likes, dislikes, crossovers & character-specific prompts )

Again, thank you! Whatever you love best in HL, celebrate that, and I'm sure to enjoy it.

Entry tags:

New Grantchester Fic "11 October 1955" (for Spook Me)

Posting my

spook_me fic a little early, mostly because today is October 11th and the story is set on October 11th (though 70 years ago). My prompts were "ghost" and "graveyard."

The death of fifteen year old Abigail Redmond cast a long, long shadow across the whole of "Grantchester" season 2. The tragedies of her life, her death, and all that that followed spoke to the failures of the adults in the community.

One such adult was Daniel Marlowe.

Maybe that stayed with him. Maybe that stayed with her.

11 October 1955 (rated T; nothing above "show level," but be mindful that Abigail's story was a distressing one)

Entry tags:

rant,
work

Frustrating moments at work

While I welcomed the reshuffle in my work responsibilities in February/March time because it meant I could get more and broader experience in the tasks I'd done less until then, giving up the other half hasn't always felt that easy. The hardest part has been watching somebody with a significantly shallower level of product knowledge struggling to get to grips with doing that half. And product knowledge is a funny thing anyway: you can be effective even when you don't know that much but you do need to be curious and use the opportunities you get to learn. And exercise some critical thinking and judgement. Not seeing a lot of those is probably what feels hardest at the moment. The setup that this colleague works in is different from the one I had previously, but even so, stopping to think and question rather than just regurgitating without understanding would come in handy so often.

Entry tags:

Thundarr the Barbarian is finally getting a comic book

Thundarr the Barbarian (cartoon, 1980-81) will get a comic run, for the first time ever, starting in January 2026. This news broke at least as far back as June, but I saw it (at least to remember) only yesterday. Here's the CBR article. The publisher is Dynamite Entertainment, with writer Jason Aaron and artist Kewber Baal.

promo image

This cartoon re-ran for many, many years on Saturday mornings; I met it around '84, probably, and I loved it. I own a print-on-demand copy of the DVDs (its only kind of DVDs). I hope that this comic run will be all it should be; I'll probably dip my toe in with high hopes.

Yet I also feel caution. Two years or so ago when my beloved Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon, 1983-85) got its first comic run (from IDW, not Dynamite), the initial arc of stories was fun, though I had quibbles, especially with the too-obviously copy/paste-panels art, but the second arc made the sad mistake of trying to move on from what made the original series great. It casually, off-screen, gave the kids swords, breaking the prime no-offensive-weapons directive of the network censors that had forced the original series to tell stories in other ways and had shaped the characters and the audience. It also brought in a parade of name-brand guest stars from modern Forgotten Realms properties without making them really serve the D&DC story, which the original series had done with its much more occasional red-box NPCs.