So back in 2012 there was the first Big Egg Hunt in which there were more than 200 eggs to be found all over London, and then a year later thare was another one and then somehow 12 years happened and now this year it is back! This time with 120 eggs and raising money for Elephant Family again.

( Eggses )

The rest are here. Still one to add because I skipped it when I did the City eggs because it's at Tower Hill, one of the bits of London that I hate the most due to it being Tourist Central, and then it was taken away for repair and several weeks later has yet to return. Only one week to go, so not sure if it will be coming back :(

Via sophia_sol most recently! And this reminded me that I haven't done the April hits meme yet, oops.

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

1,158

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

3,109,186. Caveat that this includes a lot of co-written fics, including a very long one where I didn't write much on it overall. Knocking out the stuff I didn't write myself probably removes about a million words.

3. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Scenes From An Inconvenient Espionage Love Story. - Les Mis/James Bond - 2,581 kudos as of this writing
2. Earthlings Gonna Earth. -- The Martian -- 2,450 kudos
3. Things To Do In New York City When You're No Longer Brainwashed. - Avengers - 1,478 kudos
4. The Family Dursley. - Harry Potter - 1,310 kudos
5. Interstitial. - The Martian - 1,104

4. What fandoms do you write for?

Complicated question, but my actively working on WIPs are Vorkosigan fandom and Harry Potter at present. Other fandoms on WIPs started in the last 3 years's folders in scrivener (2023-2025): Discworld, Westing Game, The Parent Trap, Pride & Prejudice, Hero Elementary (a spitefic sequel to the spitefic Hero Elementary fic I've already posted), and Glass Onion.

5. Do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Sometimes. I used to try to reply to all comments and I do not do that anymore.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I've done some stuff to characters but possibly the one that qualifies most here is not actually angst but one that someone asked me about the ending specifically for reccing for a specific person reason and I had to say "do not rec this to that person dealing with this stuff": Not Like I Faint Every Time We Touch. (Star Wars), which is Jyn Erso having a crush on Leia Organa, who is straight.

So it is not angsty! But also I tagged it "The Most Accurate Thing I Have Ever Written" and I am not one to overuse freeform tagging in that manner.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

So this is cheating but the Petyaverse has the happiest best ending in the world because it all built up to that (with diversions) and once I got to the end, it was all definitely over, so that was nice. Happiest for me, happiest for the characters, happiest for the ability to do a character and story arc!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yep.

9. Do you write smut?

Yep.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yep.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep! There was, apparently, a college newsletter in Alberta (?) -- somewhere in Canada, I think it was Alberta -- that had a segment called Tim (as opposed to Time) and they ripped off one of my LOTR fics. Just reproduced it entirely without attribution (but with the same title). To this day I have no idea why. Like, certainly it was to mock fanfiction, that goes without saying, but it also didn't seem to have any mocking? Did someone just submit it as a gag? As an original story?

Someone in fandom gave me some lawyerly things to say to them and I sent it to them and they took it down.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yep!

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yep!

14. What's your all time favourite ship?

I mean. I haven't read it in at least a decade, but Aragorn/Boromir really was something, wasn't it. Many fond memories.

15. What's the wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Teenage Single Dad Gregor Vorbarra, earliest notes date in the file is December 2016.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Action and description.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I used to do this and then it was like, why. Why do this. When I could just write "X said in Y language" right after it. Also then you have to deal with translations. Plus getting someone to give you the phrase in the other language in the first place, or rely on Babelfish (but I date myself). Not worth it!

When I read a fic, by the way, I am never looking into the end notes for translations, and since I read a lot on my phone, I also can't hover for them. Either I can work it out by context or it's not actually important to the story or it's so incessant that I give up and close the fic. Those are the options. Me keeping the end notes open in another tab and going back and forth is not happening.

How does this mesh in with the glossaries I usually remember to add to fics in Yinglish? Absolutely it doesn’t but also Yinglish is English, right? Right? :P

(Also those fics are short and the Yinglish is the point, the glossary is just there to be helpful, but it's not like oh hey, this character is French, let's have a discussion in French.)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

My favorite child is I scrolled through the entire stats list on ao3 for this question and I am settling on Hogwarts by Allen Ginsberg. It's probably my best pastiche and it was harder than the Fight Club one.

IDK. There's fics I like and fics I'm meh on and fics I dislike, but I can't really come up with an all-time favorite.

I keep wanting to turn this into "what's the most experimental" or "what was the hardest" but anyway, actually, here are the most personal ones -- because that's quantifiable and easy enough to answer: And Enoch Still Walks With God. (Highlander) (if I were posting that today I'd be brave enough to use Chanoch not Enoch but anyway), the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse (Vorkoisgan), and Waiting For Methuselah. (Highlander).

As Labor Day approaches, four inhabitants of a New Jersey shore town are preoccupied with upcoming changes in their lives, as well as with questions regarding the death of their mutual friend, Julie Etler, in a fire in a horror house on an amusement pier. The questions multiply when one friend, Devin Graham, receives a message on his answering machine from Julie and when another sees her on the beach. Other inexplicable accidents and deaths compel Devin to explore the burned horror house.

The book starts out pretty slow, to the point that I almost gave up on it. I’m glad I didn’t. There’s a creeping horror connected to the old horror house that now sits, burned and abandoned, on the pier. Dread slowly builds, as the four friends confront the evil that has entered their lives.

There are many questioned to be answered, though unfortunately not all are, which is probably the greatest flaw in the book. I want to know why things are happening and why Julie is appearing to her friends. I want to know why the house burned down, and why it has suddenly turned evil.

I did like how the characters’ backgrounds and hopes for the future are intertwined with what is going on. Somehow, who they are is very much a part of that future, just in a way they have no way of knowing.




Mount TBR 2025 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
2. The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker
3. Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year #1) by T.J. Klune
4. The Traitor's Son by Wendy Johnson
5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
6. You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Thomas Hayman (Illustrations)
7. The Fireman by Joe Hill
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. Lark Ascending by Silas House
10. Memorials by Richard Chizmar
11. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
12. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
13. The Border by Robert McCammon
14. The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming by James Lawrence Powell
15. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
16. All Over the Town by R. F. Delderfield
17. The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig by John Ashdown-Hill
18. Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean #2) by T.J. Klune
19. Blood of the Children by Alan Rodgers
20. For Fear of the Night by Charles L. Grant







A Ghost Story
1. For Fear of the Night by Charles L. Grant

Tomorrow is the annual National Canadian Film Day. All around the world, let's stand up for Canada and sit down to some Canadian cinema!

If you watch a Canadian movie tomorrow and feel like coming back here to post about what you saw, please do.

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord! There's finally a canonical tag for reader-insert fic on AO3!

From the latest admin post:

During this round of updates, we tested a discussion method which permitted many related canonicals to be canonized at once, instead of each canonical having its own separate discussion period. This allowed us to canonize over 200 additional tags from one discussion.
Consequently, we've canonized many additional tags related to Reader-Insert. All Reader-Insert modifier tags will be subtags of Reader-Insert. The full list is available via tag search.

Let us hope that people start using this so that people who want it can find it, and those who don't want it don't have to deal with it!

They're also changing pregnancy canonical tags, so if you've got fic that deals with pregnancy you might want to check it out and figure out if you want to change how you have tagged it.

Title: The Dendarii Vorbarras.
Author: lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: The first thing Serg's boy says to me is, "hello, Grandmother".


( Still trying to give Gregor a support system )

In the small town of Green Hill, all the children belong to an evil, magical, and entirely secret cult. For generations, every child in Green Hill has belonged to this cult until he reaches puberty. Then all evil, and all memory of evil acts committed, disappears. Only the children know of the ceremonies that take place on moonlit nights and in the caves that lie underneath the town's foundations...

Ben Tompkins has never seen a nicer bunch of people than the ones he met in Green Hill. That’s why he decided to move himself and his son, Jimmy, there when his wife had a horrifying mental breakdown. Ben doesn’t know about the children of Green Hill. But Jimmy is about to discover their terrifying secret…and pay the price for that knowledge.

Maybe not the worst horror story I’ve read, but it comes pretty close. I really could have done without the explicit torture. He especially seemed to have a thing about torturing animals, though the main character goes through so much I don’t really see how he could have survived. I had to skim a lot of that.

All that is too bad, because the premise showed promise. But much of it went unexplained, so the reader is left with some basic questions unanswered. Plus, the characters, the children especially, were pretty two dimensional.

I’ve read other books by this author and enjoyed them. So maybe this being his first novel has something to do with it not being up to par. Fortunately, it’s a fast read.




Mount TBR 2025 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
2. The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker
3. Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year #1) by T.J. Klune
4. The Traitor's Son by Wendy Johnson
5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
6. You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Thomas Hayman (Illustrations)
7. The Fireman by Joe Hill
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. Lark Ascending by Silas House
10. Memorials by Richard Chizmar
11. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
12. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
13. The Border by Robert McCammon
14. The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming by James Lawrence Powell
15. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
16. All Over the Town by R. F. Delderfield
17. The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig by John Ashdown-Hill
18. Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean #2) by T.J. Klune
19. Blood of the Children by Alan Rodgers







Frightening Cover
1. Blood of the Children




APR- “Spring Cleaning”

Read a book that’s been on your TBR (to be read) list for two or more years.

Blood of the Children by Alan Rodgers

In March I got delightful postal mail from sidleypkhermit! It was a combination of two cards -- one card inside the other -- and a bunch of intensely adorable stickers. Great timing about the stickers because earlier this year someone gave me a sticker book -- which is the first time I am assembling my stickers all in one place and with an eye to some kind of intentional organization -- and now I'm going to make one section of the sticker book specifically "stickers from fen".

Had almost forgotten it was back tbh but I guess it is that time of year

( Glitch )

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.

I wish I could say I loved this book as much as I did the previous one, but I can’t. Maybe because, oddly enough, I found the characters less real this time around. Arthur and Linus are constantly going on about how much they love each other, which is fine every once in a while but not all the time. And I found the children’s passages a bit too saccharine, as if Klune doesn’t know any children to base them on (though he hit it more on the mark in the first book.) Not to belabor the point, but he might try reading some King to see how it’s done.

I did enjoy a lot of the book, mostly when Arthur was interacting with the people of the village. They added some realism. I wish they had had larger roles since learning to live in the rest of the world seemed to be a major issue.

And I was somewhat disappointed with the ending. I kept waiting for a real crisis but things came to a head very quickly and the ending was rather flat. As much as Klune belabored how the people from DICOMY were terrible people who didn’t accept those who were different, their role is actually quite small.

Still, I enjoyed returning to Marsyas Island, warts and all.




Mount TBR 2025 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
2. The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker
3. Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year #1) by T.J. Klune
4. The Traitor's Son by Wendy Johnson
5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
6. You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Thomas Hayman (Illustrations)
7. The Fireman by Joe Hill
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. Lark Ascending by Silas House
10. Memorials by Richard Chizmar
11. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
12. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
13. The Border by Robert McCammon
14. The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming by James Lawrence Powell
15. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
16. All Over the Town by R. F. Delderfield
17. The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig by John Ashdown-Hill
18. Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean #2) by T.J. Klune

So everyone probably knows that Trump and his cronies have been pumping and dumping the stock market this week, getting grotesquely richer, and not being subtle about it, right?  Turns out that spooks the global financial markets pretty bad!  The value of the dollar is tanking as we speak, and US treasuries are spiking when they should be going down, indicating that investors and foreign governments (Japan confirmed yesterday) are selling off our debt at low low prices.  The r/stockmarket bros are freaking out, as this is NOT NORMAL.  A few days ago it was looking like the next Great Depression was likely to hit later this summer, but now it seems that our future might look more like Argentina’s 20 year and counting debt crises.  They had 100% inflation this year alone!  

I moved my 401k into mostly very safe investments before inauguration, but very safe used to mean US treasuries, so I’ve made some additional changes tonight, much of it based on the composition of historically recession-proof investment portfolios with some tweaks:

• 30% bonds - moved out of US treasuries and into foreign ones
• 20% equities - international index funds, and a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) fund which may be a mistake lol
• 30% cash - moved my money market (backed by treasuries and US corporate debt) to a high yield savings account at Vanguard.  If there’s a run on the banks I feel like they are the safest option given how massive they are.  Their rate was better too.
• 10% commodities - agriculture REITs 
• 10% gold - it’s at an all time high (and rising fast!) so I didn’t go the full 10% here

It’s not gonna save me, but better than riding index funds all the way to the bottom.  It’s not a bad idea to get cash out, either.  Apparently black Americans fared better during the depression because they distrusted banks and had cash on hand.

PART TWO.

( Read more... )

End of Sanhedrin! I am really amused that we're going to have Makkos (lashes) over Pesach, and Shevuos (oaths) over Shevuos.

This perek... this was so much agadata. So much. I kept getting behind, there was so much agadata and I kept having to follow various references, and it was so much agadata. On the other hand. The actual topic of the perek, I didn't care for. I recall many years ago, I was at a place, and this was long enough ago that having the entirety of mishna and gemara in my pocket was still a new thing. There was a piece of paper with some quotes and one of them was the kol yisrael yesh lahem chelek one, which is very familiar to me from constant pirkei avos. And then a person said to me, you know what comes after that right? And no I didn't recall, so out came my phone and I looked up the citation and-- yes, everyone has a chelek in olam haba. Except for this, that, and something else that honestly sums up to everyone. There was one time where it was saying the generation of the desert doesn't have, and I wanted to be like "including Moshe? You get that's including Moshe, right?". Alas no one brought that up.

So now that's up with invei hagefen that has been fully ruined for me via daf yomi. Oh well. C'est la vie.

My notes behind cut. On to Makkos! Which I have gotten emails about going "hey it's a great one to start with, it's 23 days!" Which is true, but a large percentage of those days is Pesach. So that's going to be exciting (tm) but at least Sanhedrin ended at the perfect time for those who need to do a Taanis Bechoros siyum tomorrow (not me).


...THIS IS TOO LONG TO POST. HAVE TO CUT IT IN HALF. GOOD JOB, AGADATA.


( Read more... )

The Last Days of Richard III contains a new and uniquely detailed exploration of Richard’s last 150 days. By deliberately avoiding the hindsight knowledge that he will lose the Battle of Bosworth Field, we discover a new Richard: no passive victim, awaiting defeat and death, but a king actively pursuing his own agenda.

It also re-examines the aftermath of Bosworth: the treatment of Richard’s body; his burial; and the construction of his tomb. And there is the fascinating story of why, and how, Richard III’s family tree was traced until a relative was found, alive and well, in Canada.

Now, with the discovery of Richard’s skeleton at the Greyfrairs Priory in Leicester, England, John Ashdown-Hill explains how his book inspired the dig and completes Richard III’s fascinating story, giving details of how Richard died, and how the DNA link to a living relative of the king allowed the royal body to be identified.

The book is a deep dive into how Richard saw his place, and the rebellions against him. He’s seen here, not so much as a tragic figure, but of someone who believed in what he was doing, but who, unfortunately, suffered the fate of all disposed English kings. We get a second look at what happened right after the battle and in the days leading up to his burial and beyond.

There’s also the search for his family’s descendants and the find that would be the linchpin in proving that the bones found under the carpark were, indeed, those of Richard III. That a direct mtDNA existed was a truly lucky break.

It’s an interesting read, even for someone who has read extensively about the man. My only problem was with the small print, which made reading the book a bit of a chore.




Mount TBR 2025 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
2. The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker
3. Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year #1) by T.J. Klune
4. The Traitor's Son by Wendy Johnson
5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
6. You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Thomas Hayman (Illustrations)
7. The Fireman by Joe Hill
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. Lark Ascending by Silas House
10. Memorials by Richard Chizmar
11. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
12. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
13. The Border by Robert McCammon
14. The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming by James Lawrence Powell
15. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
16. All Over the Town by R. F. Delderfield
17. The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig by John Ashdown-Hill







APR – Rest, Days, Upstairs, Sing, Shell, Starlight, Life, Couple

The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig by John Ashdown-Hill