Electromagnetic Candy

Yeah, what the post title says.

Title: Bill Cipher Is an Outlier and Should Not Have Been Counted
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Characters/Relationships: Bill/Ford (in Bill's mind, at least)
Rating: Teen. Please see tags for warnings.
Tags: Possession, Toxic relationship, Book of Bill-related, POV Bill Cipher, Spiders, Swallowing spiders, Cruelty to animals (spiders), I cannot stress enough that this is about SWALLOWING LIVE SPIDERS – arachnophobes do not come for me because you didn't read the tags!
Length: ~1,100 words
Summary: Ford is definitely going to come around. If everything else didn't do it, the spiders certainly will. Plus, it's just a really interesting thing do in Ford's body.
Author's Notes: Written for Gen Prompt Bingo for the prompt "Spiders (Giant, Radioactive, or otherwise unusual) ." Admittedly, the spiders in this one aren't exactly unusual in and of themselves, but I really think they count as being in the spirit of the prompt.

Bill Cipher Is an Outlier and Should Not Have Been Counted

Happy New Year!

I'm still looking backwards into the old year for the moment, though. I only just recently remembered that I still need to do my usual year-end fic round-up post, and, of course, there's also the book log post for December. The former will probably have to wait until I have a little more time and energy, maybe tomorrow, but here's how my 2025 reading year ended:

( 81. The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian )

( 82. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn )

( 83. Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins )

( 84. Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow )

( 85. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick )

( 86. Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic )

( 87. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers )

( 88. The Age of Calamities: Stories by Senaa Ahmad )

( 89. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud )

( 90. Doctor Who - the Scripts: The Power of the Daleks by David Whitaker )

The new round of genprompt_bingo is starting up, and I have now posted two whole things for the previous one. Here's the second:

Title: Only Mistaken
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Characters/Relationships: Ford & everybody
Rating: General Audiences. No warnings.
Summary: People Ford has had or lost faith in. People who have had or lost faith in him.
Tags: Character Study, Drabble Sequence
Length: 606 words, counting the section headers
Author's Notes: A linked series of drabbles (the 100-word kind), written for Gen Prompt Bingo for the prompt "loss of faith." The title comes from a quote from Blake's 7: "A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken."


Only Mistaken

Here's a little thing I wrote as a treat for seasonsofdrabbles, after seeing it show up on a pinch hit list. Possibly I should actually do Seasons of Drabbles properly sometime. I do like me some drabbles.

Title: A Reevaluation of Prior Data
Fandom: The Orville
Characters/Relationships: Kaylon Primary
Rating: General Audiences. Spoilers for season 3.
Summary: Kaylon Primary may have a new perspective on the past.
Tags: Post-"Domino", Drabble
Length: 100 words
Author's Notes: Written for ToothpasteCheesecake. I saw the request on the Seasons of Drabbles pinch-hit list, but by the time I decided that, yes, I could write something for it, it had been claimed, so I posted it as an extra treat.

A Reevaluation of Prior Data

Thus endeth October, a month bookended (no pun intended) by two works with "Natural History" in the subtitle and some stuff about Charles Darwin and evolution between the covers, even if they're otherwise very different. Should I pretend I did that deliberately?

( 66. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson )

( 67. Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente )

( 68. How to Raise an Elephant by Alexander McCall Smith )

( 69. The World at Night by Babak Tafreshi )

( 70. Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen by Terrance Dicks )

( 71. The Cipher by Kathe Koja )

( 72. Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould )

Geez, I really do need to get going on this bingo card before it's time for the next round. So, fine. Here's a fluffy little bit of fluff to get the ball rolling

Title: Shooting Stars Break the Mold
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Characters/Relationships: Ford & Mabel
Rating: General Audiences. No warnings for anything. Well, maybe spoilers for Shrek.
Summary: Mabel keeps making Ford sweaters. Why does he keep not wearing them?
Tags: Mabel & Ford bonding, Sweaters, Ford's embarrassing neck tattoo, Family, Shrek, Fluff
Length: ~1500 words
Author's Notes: Written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "Jumper/Sweater/Cardigan." Because how could I not write something featuring Mabel for that? I sort of want to apologize for the title, but I don't see how I could have done anything else for that, either.

Shooting Stars Break the Mold

Not a whole lot of books this month, but, hey, one of them was very long.

( 61. My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan )

( 62. Doctor Who: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds )

( 63. Snow: A Scientific and Cultural Exploration by Giles Whittell )

( 64. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry )

( 65. Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker )

After many delays, Just Married finally went live yesterday! And, wow, what a great exchange this was for me. I got three gifts: a Three/Delgado!Master story, a Twelve/Missy one, and a Harry du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi one (with artwork). All of which are great in different ways.

And on top of that, someone as their entry did a podfic of my Disco Elysium story from a previous round, "Do, Did, Will." Which I'd really been looking forward to hearing ever since they asked me for permission to do it some time ago. And they did a great job with it! I especially like the voice they do for Harry, which very much evokes the one I imagine for him in my own head. You know, it's happened several times now, but I don't think I will ever, ever stop getting a huge kick out of people podficcing my stuff. Partly because it's always such a flattering surprise that anybody wants to do it, but also because listening to the result always feels like encountering my own stuff from the outside for the first time. Like, it's this thing that's just out there in the world and I sort of have to actively remind myself that, hey, I did that, I made that story exist! Which is bizarre-feeling and fascinating and cool.

I swear, it keeps taking me longer and longer to actually finish books. Yet another victim of the 21st century's infinite distractions, I suppose. Anyway, here's what I did manage to read this month:

( 46. The Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy 2022 edited by Rebecca Roanhorse )

( 47. The Truelove by Patrick O'Brian )

( 48. Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry )

( 49. The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier )

( 50. The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap )

( 51. Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown by Shaun Bythell )

Look, I finally, finally finished my genprompt_bingo card for Round 27! Now to figure out what to do with the card for round 28 that I've already had sitting here untouched for a couple of months...

Title: At Least You Don't Have Food Poisoning
Fandom: RimWorld
Characters/Relationships: OCs
Rating: G, or I guess PG for some strong language if anybody actually cares about that.
Summary: Sometimes life on the Rim sucks.
Tags: bad day, looming mental break, first person, double drabble
Length: 200 words
Author's Notes: Written for Gen Prompt Bingo for the prompt "We're Surrounded!" I had no idea what to do with this one, until I realized I could use my latest video game obsession. About time RimWorld gave me something back for all those hours I've spent mostly failing at it!

At Least You Don't Have Food Poisoning

Here's my offering for Into a Bar this time out! Although the community mod is mostly incommunicado for a few days, so it'll be a little while before it shows up there.

Title: We Don't Talk About That Here
Fandom: The Orville/Gravity Falls
Characters/Relationships: Sheriff Blubs, Isaac, Blubs/Durland, mentioned Claire/Isaac
Rating: General Audiences. Content warning for police abuses treated entirely non-seriously. Also contains spoilers for both shows.
Summary: Isaac wants information about interdimensional rifts so he can get home. Sheriff Blubs just wants to uphold the law. And eat peanuts.
Tags: Gravity Falls post-canon, the Orville post-S3, interdimensional travel, cops, the Never Mind All That Act, mentioned Claire/Isaac, crossover
Length: ~1600 words
Author's Notes: This was written for A Ficathon Goes Into a Bar, the challenge where you pick a character and have to write them going into a bar and meeting a randomly chosen character from one of your other fandoms. Sometimes, you get character combinations that lead to fascinating interactions and new insights into both participants. And then sometimes you get... this.

We Don't Talk About That Here

Or, rather, what Astro's just finished listening to, not counting a couple of long Q&A wrap-up episodes, because I literally just finished it a few minutes ago, and I do not know when I will recover.

So, TMA fans, horror aficionados, podcast peeps, you've... you've all already listened to The Silt Verses, right? I mean, surely, right? Because I can't really remember anyone talking about it, except maybe very briefly in passing, but I know it finished up a year ago and maybe I just wasn't paying attention before I very belatedly started listening to it. It still seems sort of astonishing to me, though, because my main reaction to the whole thing is pretty much, "OMG, why isn't the title of this thing on everyone's lips? Why haven't they made up entirely new awards just to give them all to this show?!!!"

Because, geez, you've got top-notch, deeply affecting horror. You've got fantastic characters, complex and flawed and evolving. You've got exceptional worldbuilding, with possibly the best take on the idea that gods are created by humans and need worship and sacrifice to survive that I've ever seen, and, yes, I am not even excluding Sir Terry Pratchett there. You've got incredibly good voice acting. Well, all, right, there's a place or two where you listen to some of the minor characters and think, whelp, those were some acting choices, for sure. But the main cast are incredible, especially Méabh de Brún, who really should just get handed All the Awards Ever. You've got fantastic writing and fantastic production values that work hand in hand, and a format that really, really works for me, blending internal narrative, dialog, and soundscaping a in a way that artfully and artistically conveys to the listener everything we need to know. Which is incredibly important for me as someone whose suspension of disbelief goes SPROING the instant a character starts narrating their own movements out loud or describing things everyone with them can see perfectly well.

And it's incredibly meaty, with themes involving faith, corruption, war, politics, death and how we meet it, ambition, the legacies we leave behind, the difference between reality and the stories we tell about it afterward, capitalism, exploitation, love, defiance, hope, betrayal, cruelty, kindness, the near-impossibility of changing systems when you're bound up inside them, and undoubtedly a whole bunch of other things.

Oh, and if I'm making this post a pitch for those who haven't listened to it yet, I'll first add content warnings for darkness and horror and lots of disturbing stuff. But I'll then add, because I know there are a lot you out there for whom it's likely to be a serious selling point, that this thing has two canonically trans main characters (whose stories are incredibly complex and deep and have nothing whatsoever to do with their gender), that a significant percentage of the people we encounter casually use they/them pronouns, and that while (rather refreshingly) the show entirely avoids romance tropes when exploring the ways in which the characters love each other, there are certainly queer relationships to be found in the background.

So, yeah. Fantastic stuff. My eyes are still kind of bothering me from how much the final episode made me cry, not gonna lie. I also find that I can't stop thinking about how, to put it without spoilers, the two-part finale here had a surprising number of elements in common with last week's Doctor Who season finale, despite being a very different kinds of storytelling, and, boy, does it say something that one of those two things left me going, "Ugh, OK, whatever, I guess?" at the end, and the other made me cry a lot and then write a rambling Dreamwidth post about it.

I do find, though, that this seems to be one of those things were I don't want fic and fannish stuff for it, because it's super satisfying to me as it is, and I don't want to mess with it at all. Hey, maybe that's the reason, actually, that it doesn't get the kind of attention TMA does, who knows?

So, that was the Doctor Who season finale.

( Spoilers for 'The Reality War' )

A while back, I was talking about the slightly weird experience of being my GenX self in a fandom that skews quite young, especially how I can't help noticing all the subtle things people writing fic set in the 70s and 80s keep getting wrong, even when they're really trying. But lately I've been noticing another issue that's genuinely really amusing me, which is that I get comments on my own fic that I have to sort of... decode. Like, I was pretty sure that the people who told me my fic "ate" were paying me a compliment, but I did have to check to be certain. And the first time someone told me they were "screaming, crying, clawing at the drywall," or whatever the exact phrasing was, my immediate thought was, "Are... are you OK?" My actual response was, "That's quite a reaction!" to which they answered with, "it's a meme." Well, at least they had the strength of will not to add "grandma" at the end.

The one that's really amusing me is that I've had a whole bunch of comments in recent months with people having, like, screamy emotional reactions and then adding "/pos." at the end. Folks, I am embarrassed how long it took me to figure out what the heck that "/pos" meant. "Positive!" It stands for "positive!" It's like those parenthetical emotional markers they'll use, like saying something teasingly and then adding "(affectionate)" to make sure it's not interpreted as actually mean. Which is a practice I quite like. But "pos?" Dude, I was wracking my brains over that one! For ages, the only answer I could hit on was... Well, look, back in my day -- and how much do I hate that I find myself saying things like that now? -- back in my day, "POS" did in fact have a meaning. And so I found myself repeatedly thinking, "It's OK, I got that you were having an appropriate emotional reaction to the fic and not actually yelling at me! You don't have to call yourself a piece of shit for it!" LOOOOOOL. I think in my mind, I was harking back to the period when all the youngsters kept calling themselves "trash" for being into whatever they were into. Which is probably already ancient history to The Kids Today, I guess, and good riddance to it, too, although I guess now they just describe themselves as "cringe," which isn't much better. Although, to be clear, it's the concept I object to there, not the language. Own your enthusiasms, guys!

Seriously, I have no desire to do that thing where old grumps complain about these dang youngsters and their ignorant gobbledygook. Because that is cringe, frankly. It was stupid and annoying when people did it at my generation -- "So, bad means good now? Oooh, everything is 'awesome' huh? You're overcome with awe all the time, huh? And why can't you, like, kids, like, talk without, like, saying like, like, all the time?" Gimme a break. Or gag me with a spoon, even. Nah, this is all just language doing what language does, but I'm finding the disconnect hilarious. And that's coming from someone who, thanks to the internet, probably understands more about youth culture now than I did when I was a youth, since I pretty much just spent all my teenage years holed up in my room reading books rather than actually talking to people my own age. And now, well, I'm still mostly holed up in my room reading books, but I'm also reading stuff on the internet, and I can see other people of various ages talking all around me. And also sometimes commenting on my fics telling me that I've eaten and they've damaged their drywall. Positively. Which, hey, I'll take it.

Creator reveals have happened for the Unsent Letters exchange, so here's the silly little thing I did for it:



Title: A Series of Notes Attached to a UNIT Equipment Requisition Form
Fandom: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Characters/Relationships: Third Doctor & Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: How hard is it to get your scientific advisor the equipment he clearly needs?
Tags: Epistolary, Humor
Length: ~1100 words
Author's Notes: Written for the Unsent Letters exchange.

A Series of Notes Attached to a UNIT Equipment Requisition Form