solaciolum | Network

Day 7: Favourite friendship

I suppose the one that is most obvious in canon is Vila and Gan, which I do like a lot, but Avon and Vila is my favourite pairing - their interaction and dialogue is just so much fun to write. I can see it in S1 and S2: they seem at ease with each other and talk together more than with other people, and they work well as a team. Looking at body language, they often stand close together, and Avon touches Vila on the arm surprisingly often.

Sadly, it's not there later, though Avon does seem to trust Vila more than others, for example in Rumours of Death.

All the questions are on Tumblr.

oursin

Happy birthday,

marshtide!

sovay

Current Music: Pylon Reenactment Society, "Messenger"

I don't want to make any claims for stamina in case tomorrow when I have an appointment I can't leave the house, but for months it has reliably exhausted me to walk around my own neighborhood and after two days out and about I did spend most of this one curled up, but I also left the house in the midafternoon to acquire a plate of baba dip from Noor because I was jonesing for eggplant and later walked back out on a fish-oriented supermarket run in the thickening rain. I stayed an extra hour at my desk because Hestia was in full Llyan mode, swattily objecting when I ceased from petting her as she purred like a turbine underneath the mermaid lamp. The evening's bedmaking was similarly delayed by her commandeering of the clean laundry with her precise and possessively kneading small paws. It does feel like a change that I am not utterly wiped out by household chores. Now if my brain would just decide to rejoin the party. In that vague direction, I am continuing to enjoy Apple TV's Widow's Bay (2026–) which delighted me beyond measure this week not even by featuring a sea hag who explodes when spear-gunned into tide-flat brine—I treasured a Magic card along those lines—but by having shot a scene at Half Moon Beach in Gloucester. I recognized it from its boulders of Cape Ann granite: I have climbed over their tectonic jumble and dozed on them and been photographed on them by

spatch, the sticky basement rock of my local microcontinent. I am not used to fictitious islands confected out of coasts I know. It makes me want to visit them. In the meantime I read about the doused and sunken chain of the New England Seamounts.

queenslayerbee

Once again, back to 2018. This time with a one-shot I wrote for the Shadowhunters Rarepair Valentines Challenge that year.

Title: memories are bullets.
Fandom: Shadowhunters.
Character/Pairing: Isabelle Lightwood/Raphael Santiago.
Rating/Warnings: T, none.
Summary: As soon as he stepped out of his bed, Raphael knew it was going to be a bad leg day. He grumbled and complained under his breath, but he took the cane out of the closet.
Word count: ~1k.

read more

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As soon as he stepped out of his bed, Raphael knew it was going to be a bad leg day. He grumbled and complained under his breath, but he took the cane out of the closet.

It was the birthday of one of the elders at his sister's retirement home, and she had asked him to bring some pastries to the event. So he pushed through the pain, put on a light grey suit and a trilby hat and left his house.

His car was in the repair shop, so he walked to the nearest bus stop. It was a warm, sunny, slightly windy summer day, something which alleviated his joints and improved his mood.

When he arrived, the festivities had already begun. Most of the people attending surpassed the seven decades, so despite the music in the room —the biggest they had at the home—, with the exception of a few daring souls, they were all sitting down and playing board games. Raphael put his pastries on the main table, and after making a little chit-chat with a couple of the employees, he started looking for Rosa.

She wasn't too hard to find, as she was one of those brave souls, along with that Lightwood girl.

He'd seen her intermittently in his last few visits, and from what Rosa told him, she was there almost as often as him, helping the elders. He hadn't asked why such a young, lively girl was spending half her afternoons in there of all places; he still retained an ounce of decor in his body, despite what his sister had to say about it. His money was on community service. Those tattoos screamed gang from a mile away. He was almost sure he had seen them in other people too.

In any case, Rosa seemed to have taken a liking to the girl; she was always polite with him and exceptionally kind to his sister, so he found no reason to complain about her presence. At least not to her face.

Both women left the improvised dance floor, walking straight to him. Rosa greeted him with a hug, musing about the joys of youth and their energy.

"You know," she told Ms. Lightwood, "he was a much better dancer that I am. Even the people who were to intimidated to speak with him asked him to dance when there was a party in our neighborhood."

"She exaggerates," he said, rolling his eyes.

"I don't know, I believe the intimidating part."

Not a type of dig he wasn't used to —mainly because it was true—, but she seemed to speak good-naturedly, he gave her that.

"You should dance," Rosa told him, pointing to the girl and to the dance floor, "you used to love it."

He didn't miss the quick glance Ms. Lightwood directed to his cane; it was probably the first time she saw it. He nodded, agreeing, not knowing if it was to please his sister or out of pure stubbornness.

He reclined his cane against a table and accompanied the girl to the center of the room. The song playing was soft, moody, slow, typical of a classical ballroom dance; such music hadn't been among his favorites in his youth, but he knew how to dance it. They positioned themselves for it, dancing to the rhythm with only minor awkwardness —she had always seemed forward, but finding oneself in close proximity to a man almost four times your age could do that. His joints seemed to complain, but it wasn't an active enough dance to really bother him.

"Oh crap, they finished all your pastries?" He raised his eyebrows, more surprised at her immediate embarrassment than at her swearing. "Rosa always says you're a great cook, I wanted to try them."

"I'll bring some the next time I come," he promised. "You're really good with her, you know."

He knew for experience that not everyone was wired to deal well with her sister's memory issues. Sometimes even he wasn't as patient as he would've liked.

"She's great, it's not a problem, honestly."

Raphael nodded, deciding that was enough emotional conversation for the moment. Then, just to show off, he spun Ms. Lightwood and dipped her as much as his old body allowed. She laughed, a little too loudly, enjoying herself.

"Rosa is right, you must have broken so many hearts in your neighborhood."

"Luckily, I think my personality prevented that."

When the song ended, they both went back to Rosa, entertaining her for the evening until she told them she was tired. While Ms. Lightwood took her to her room, Raphael was handed the pastries plate, along with food containers he'd brought with previous meals. He said his goodbyes to a few people and proceeded to walk to the bus stop.

He heard hurried steps behind him, and was only slightly surprised when Ms. Lightwood caught up with him and asked him if he wouldn't mind if she carried the food containers.

"This is my line anyway," she said, pointing to the bus signal.

It sounded like a lie, but carrying them was harder with a cane, and since it was a lie that served both of them, he yielded.

She paid for her bus ticket and sat next to him. Raphael was amused when he realized she seemed to be struggling to find a conversation topic.

"So. No Mrs. Santiago then? Or a second Mr.?"

He answered, a little taken aback by the question. "No. Never."

"Never?"

"I've been told I was too picky. It just didn't seem the point to be with someone if they didn't completely turn my world upside down," he shrugged. A long time ago, he might've shied away from the frankness of his words, but age cures all shame.

Ms. Lightwood cleared her throat, seemingly touched by his candid moment. "I can understand that."

They traveled in silence the rest of the way, and then she walked with him to his door and handed him the containers.

"Goodbye, Ms. Lightwood," he told her, tipping his hat.

She smiled, uncharacteristically sad. "Goodbye. Mr. Santiago."

What a weird girl, he thought, closing his door.

A/N (2018): This story came to me when I read a spoiler about the books series. Basically, without getting into specifics, there's a character that loses their supernatural status and their memories, and I wanted to explore that with Raphael, even if it would be almost the opposite of what I want to happen in canon LOL. Since the story is from his POV, I don't think anyone needs to worry about possible spoilers from the tv show, if you're like me and that's the only thing you follow.

2026: The show kind of did this to him huh? Not the aging and memory loss part, but some of it xD.

Funny enough, I've now started reading the book series (in French, because of Reasons), so eventually I will get to that part of the books. Way down the line though, I'm only doing a chapter per day.

svgurl

I snagged this from

maevedarcy, who came up with it.

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people comment with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it!

My WIPs

-platonic hanahaki (eddie & christopher)
-(what if we) rewrite the stars (buddie/eddie musician au)
-it's easy to pretend (that we don't have something real) (clois fake dating)
-i'm superwoman (clois role reversal)
-hallmark au (lois/lana)
-i'm not yours (but i want to be) (clark/oliver amnesia/fake engagement)
-pining social media (hollanov)

svgurl

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allbingo is running Greek Myth Fest through the month of May. There are pre-made cards or you can come up with your own using the available prompts.

justunrequitedex, an exchange focused on one sided attraction/unrequited feelings, is open for sign-ups until May 8th, 9:59PM UTC. Additional info, including a link to the collection, is HERE.

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ahorseofcourseexchange, an exchange that is centered around horses, is open for nominations until May 10th, 11:59AM EST. More info, including a link to the tagset is HERE.

fanmix_monthly is running a Mini Mix Meme, where you can comment with a fandom, ship, character, theme, etc. prompt and other fanmixers will reply with a song(s) that remind them of that

toothpastejuice is running Rarest of Rarepairs: Micro Edition, a prompt fest for ships with less than 35 works on AO3 (using the otp:true filter). It will run until May 15th.

fandom_empire has opened sign-ups for their Prompt Table Challenge until May 15th, 11:59PM UTC.

intoabar is open for sign-ups until May 17th, 11:59PM Eastern.

lyricaltitles is running Album Challenge through the month of May. The challenge is to take an album of your choice and for each song, write a fic, using a lyric from the song as the title.

3weeks4dreamwidth has a friending meme!

fancake's theme of the month is: journey & travel. Click on the banner below to learn more!

Photograph of things you might take with you, or pick up, on a trip, with added text: Journey & Travel, at Fancake. Items are neatly arranged on a rustic wooden table or door and photographed from above: hat, knapsack, barn coat, worn boots, folding knife, sunglasses, bottle, magnifying glass, as well as various maps, notebooks, pine cones, cameras, lenses, and rolls of 35mm film.

lassarina

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fanweeklymod posting in

fandomweekly

Challenge 300:
CEREMONY

n. a formal act or series of acts prescribed by ritual, protocol, or convention

Births, weddings and funerals, religious services, political and work events – there’s all kinds of ceremonies. Most people will experience at least one or two of those throughout their lives, but they probably won’t be quite the same! Ceremonies change over time, different cultures generally have different rituals and priorities, and some people care much more about ceremonies than others.

How do your characters feel about ceremonies? What kind have they experienced?

Write a story about a ceremony.

BONUS GOAL: All That Glitters

If your submission features gold or silver, it will earn an extra point to be tallied in voting!

Challenge ends Monday, May 11 at 9:00PM EST.

• Post submissions as new entries using the template in the profile
• Tag this week's entries as: [#] submission, 300 – ceremony
• If you have questions about this challenge, please ask them here

fanweeklymod posting in

fandomweekly

Here are this week's votes tallied, and below the cut are our winners for Challenge #299 – Uprising!

( This week's finalists are... )

Total Challenge Words Written: 3951

Congratulations to both of you, and thank you to everyone who took the time to cast their votes!

autobotscoutriella will be making this week’s banners, so keep an eye out for those next week.

You may now post your Challenge 299 entries to any additional communities, blogs, archives or sites as you'd like! We also have a FandomWeekly AO3 Collection if you'd like to add your stories there!

torachan

1. They opened an Ikea near us! Previously the closest ones were about twenty miles away, but this one is more like five. We need to get another shelf for in the garage (Carla's album collection has grown beyond the shelf its been sharing with my puzzles), so we're going to go check it out this weekend.

2. Yesterday at work I heard a song playing and shazammed it and found out that Damiano David of Manneskin has a solo career, so when I got home I gave his album a listen and it's really good! The song I heard at work was Zombie Lady and I think it might be my favorite off the album but there are a lot of other great tracks, too.

Watch on YouTube

3. Jasper being a brave boy at the vet on Monday.

$radiantfracture: Small painting of Penguin book (Books post)$

radiantfracture

Hello! Do you have opinions on this year's Hugo nominees? I would enjoy hearing them -- not for any reason other than the sheer pleasure of thinking about books. Comment freely with your opinions, predictions, and recommendations.

The Backstory

sabotabby got me hooked on the Ancillary Review of Books' podcast A Meal of Thorns via her post on the MoT episode about Ready Player One, and I've been traipsing through the back catalogue.

Last year, host Jake Casella Brookins and frequent guest Roseanna Pendlebury hashed through the Hugo short lists book by book in great toothy detail. The episode was a sublime listening experience as I wandered through the wooded trails around Pkols / Mount Doug a few weeks ago, mostly because I agreed with almost everything they said. (At least about the books I'd read.)

(Last year I happened to do pretty well on Hugo reading. Without trying very hard, I read half the books -- 3/6 novels and 3/6 novellas. This year, not so much -- I've only read Amal El-Mohtar's novella The River Has Roots.)

(NB El-Mohtar's episode of MoT on The Traitor Baru Cormorant is also excellent.)

On precedent, I've been eagerly looking forward to the MoT Hugos episode this year, but so far they don't seem to have one planned.

Hence my rough approximation. Let me interview you about the Hugo noms you read and your takes thereon.

I guess I'll go first:

I liked The River Has Roots a lot. I'm shocked to discover it's El-Mohtar's first solo long-form fiction -- her voice has, to my ear, such assurance, both here and in This is How You Lose the Time War. She knows what she wants to do with this story and she does it, piece by piece. For such a small book, the story feels spacious. It's economical but doesn't feel rushed or compressed to me. I would have liked to know a little more about how she was imagining the phenomenon of grammar. I enjoyed the chicken.

Now you! (If you want.) -- Any Hugo short lister is fair game, whether I have read it or not.

§rf§

sanguinity

Intro/FAQ

My check-in: I added 2k to the new fic since last we spoke! Apparently now that the groundbreaking ceremony is over, I decided to bring in a backhoe.

Day 6:

china_shop,

sanguinity

Day 5:

acorn_squash,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

luzula,

sanguinity,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 4:

acorn_squash,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

glinda,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

( More days )

When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!

kaberett

One: I have spent much of the day indulging the desire to Quietly Hyperfocus On Game and it has been a very relaxing autism to have.

Two: I have finished the questionable Ryvita we... somehow... came into possession of (I apparently object to things that are not salt & vinegar extruded potato twirls containing potassium chloride) and can now merrily go back to overpriced high protein crackers until such time as I get around to buying vital wheat gluten with which to make my own.

Three: two loaves of bread (because I strained a Lot of whey off the most recent batch of yoghurt), which are a slightly silly set of shapes but also extremely aesthetic. I am very much looking forward to extravagant breakfast featuring avocado and also scrambled egg. (New oven needs less time to do them than old one; new oven also would ideally get them rotated halfway through baking if I want them done evenly. I am trying to work out what the best way to freeze the second loaf is...)

Four: Adam brought me home British strawberries from the supermarket, all with their petals still attached.

Five: new Murderbot purchased. (When I will get around to reading it is another question, but the possibility exists!)

karlht

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: downtown

No, not me. But Kay is a dear friend of a dear friend, and US healthcare is a disaster on stilts.

As they say, every little bit helps: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-kay-benavrahams-cancer-treatment?attribution_id=sl:410ef37c-d05f-4a99-9682-2402777915c8&lang=en_US&ts=1777670467&utm_campaign=fp_sharesheet&utm_content=amp17_ta-amp20_control&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

(Those of you who prefer unattributed links can use this one.)

Thanks, folks. Look out for each other out there, ok? I love you.

sholio

I still like it! Woe! (Decided to add a tag for it, even.)

( All the rest of Crusade )

delphi

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shipperslist

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oursin

What I read

Finished Tales From Earthsea, The Other Wind and the pendant short pieces in The Book of Earthsea 'The Rule of Names', 'The Word of Unbinding', 'The Daughter of Odren', and 'Earthsea Revisioned'. I don't know quite what it is, I can see how good her work is, but the feeling is more of distant admiration than what I feel for my beloved favourites? Might even cop to preferring her criticism and essays to her fiction? (not the only author to whom this pertains.)

Started a Dick Francis, Bolt (Kit Fielding, #2) (1986)

- and then, feeling all a-wamble and fretted because of the insomnia thing, fell back into Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution, old favourite.

- and then returned to the horsies and the posh owners and the psycho villains.

On the go

Martha Wells, Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries #8) which arrived yesterday.

Up next

No idea, apart from the recently arrived latest Literary Review

lightreads

Platform Decay

4/5. A good outing. Murderbot does a complex rescue in corporate space, and there are juveniles, terrible.

Things I like:

Getting a nuanced and varied look at just what life in corporate space looks like, particularly for average people. And how those people deal with the various kinds of violence and oppression that surround them. A lot of this was extremely sketchy and gestural before, but this book does a huge amount of background work on adding texture to the world.

Wells playing out some of the consequences of the governor module hack code being out there now in ways that the fandom has been chewing on for a while.

Murderbot getting to snark a bit on the ways that Preservation’s utopia is also sometimes really full of itself and incorrect about its own righteousness, as utopias do.

Emotional self-awareness (oh no, terrible, how could a murderbot have a worse fate).

So yeah, pretty good, even with the tragic absence of most of the usual main cast and crew.

snickfic

Trad Wife (2026) by Saratoga Schaefer. A would-be tradwife influencer wants a baby for both personal and professional reasons, but her husband won't have sex with her (because he's clearly cheating on her), so instead she has sex with the shadow creature in the well on edge of the property. This plan obviously has no flaws whatsoever. AKA: the trad wife novel that ISN'T about time travel.

This was fun and a quick read. It leaned harder on the monsterfucker element than I expected, and where I was expecting mostly psychological horror with elements of the supernatural, no, the supernatural stuff was front and center. I appreciated how our tradwife has depths that she is progessively less able to keep hidden, and I was just as mad at the past and present men in her life as the book wanted me to be. Her husband is just the woooooorst.

That said, ( spoilers )

I also felt that the degree to which she's consciously, actively deceiving herself about what's happening with her pregnancy was just kind of silly. I would have liked subtler writing there.

--

Roadside Picnic (1972) by the Strugatsky Brothers. A man makes a living sneaking into the "Zone," a restricted area full of dangers and treasure left by a one-time visit by aliens.

I completely coincidentally got interested in this and the adaptation Stalker almost simultaneously, without realizing they were related. In both cases I went in with, it turned out, unfounded (but different!) expectations of what I was going to get. Stalker isn't really a cosmic horror movie, alas, although the bones of one are there, and meanwhile this isn't very interested in the Zone at all, at least not as a setting, which if nothing else is a big contrast from the movie! I can see why people say it's a very loose adaptation.

This novel is actually about the daily life of a guy trying to steal forbidden alien artifacts and sell them to the black market, his dealings with various shady characters, and how hard this all is on his family. There are a lot of themes of hopelessness and corruption. It feels very 70s in its mundane focus with Big SF Ideas relegated to the background.

Unfortunately I was super uninterested in most of this. The grimy details of social corruption as seen through our lead's gross sexist lens: not what I came for! I came here for the weird horror shit, the "hell slime" that disintegrates your bones and turns your limbs into rubber, the gravity traps that crush you flat, and the various other hazards of the Zone, which we get only at the very beginning and very end.

I can definitely see why it's a classic: it generally accomplishes what it's trying to do, and it treats its characters and their reality with total unironic seriousness. But it was not what I wanted, alas.

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May 2026

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Page Summary

vilakins - 30 Days of Blake's 7 - day 7
oursin - (no subject)
sovay - The moon still rises on everybody else
queenslayerbee - FANFIC: memories are bullets (Shadowhunters)
svgurl - wip meme
svgurl - current fandom events
lassarina - What Are You Playing Wednesday
fanweeklymod in fandomweekly - [#300 | Ceremony] Challenge Post
fanweeklymod in fandomweekly - [#299 | Uprising] Results Post
torachan - Daily Happiness
radiantfracture - Hugos Invitational Opinion Post
sanguinity - Write Every Day: Day 6
kaberett - some good things
karlht - Fuck cancer (this is not how I had planned to return to posting)
sholio - Crusade - done!
delphi - FANMIX: All Deck on Hands - The Mix (Our Flag Means Death, Izzy Hands/Crew of the Revenge)
shipperslist - Reading Wednesday 2026, #18
oursin - Wednesday had a lot of trouble logging into Official Persona Email
lightreads - Platform Decay by Martha Wells
snickfic - Trad Wife and Roadside Picnic

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Fellow Travelers

Network

30 Days of Blake's 7 - day 7

(no subject)

The moon still rises on everybody else

FANFIC: memories are bullets (Shadowhunters)

wip meme

current fandom events

What Are You Playing Wednesday

[#300 | Ceremony] Challenge Post

[#299 | Uprising] Results Post

Daily Happiness

Hugos Invitational Opinion Post

Write Every Day: Day 6

some good things

Fuck cancer (this is not how I had planned to return to posting)

Crusade - done!

FANMIX: All Deck on Hands - The Mix (Our Flag Means Death, Izzy Hands/Crew of the Revenge)

Reading Wednesday 2026, #18

Wednesday had a lot of trouble logging into Official Persona Email

Platform Decay by Martha Wells

Trad Wife and Roadside Picnic

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May 2026

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