dswdiane | Network

goddess47 posting in

Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairings/Characters: Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale
Rating: PG
Length: 12K for the first story; 35K for the 5 stories series
Creator Links: DiscontentedWinter on AO3
Theme: Arranged Marriage

Content Notes:

Canon-typical violence

Summary:

To honour a treaty with the people of a strange land, Derek Hale, prince of the kingdom of Triskelion, has to marry Stiles.

Reccer's Notes:

A beautifully lyric and almost mystical work about an arranged marriage between Prince Stiles and Prince Derek where they have never met before the wedding and do not speak each other's language. What could have been either slapstick or tragic turns beautiful in DiscontentedWinter's hands... she shows us the beauty in learning about others and how the power of belief can stop armies.

The additional stories expand the world-building and show how two very different peoples can learn to live together.

Fanwork Links:

The Light in the Woods On AO3

pauraque

While collecting the necessary materials for my Le Guin reading project, I found she had a story which appeared only in the 1973 anthology Clarion III. This was a product of the 1972 Clarion Workshop, an annual six-week course for aspiring speculative fiction writers, taught by a rotating slate of guest instructors. Le Guin was a Clarion instructor that year, and while most of the instructors contributed essays on writing or on the workshop itself, she instead wrote a story.

Since I'd bothered to acquire the book, I figured I'd read the whole thing. But I took my time about it since Le Guin's story didn't seem important to the general arc of her career, though obviously it's significant that her stature had grown to the point where she was invited to teach. So although my reading of her work has progressed in the meantime to 1979 (and will continue from there if the person who currently has The Language of the Night checked out ever returns it to the library!!) we're going to take a short trip back to 1973 here.

Le Guin's story "The Ursula Major Construct; or, A Far Greater Horror Loomed" is a fictionalized version of an exercise she gave the students, using them as the characters and reimagining the whole thing as a SF experiment. I guess in reality she built a mobile out of found objects (the titular construct) and told the class to write about it. I'm sure her story was amusing to the people who were there, but out of context I found it impenetrable. (And hold that thought, because I'm gonna circle back to it.)

As for the student stories, I liked a handful of them, but most were either not to my taste, or seemed underdeveloped in some way, or were so steeped in 1970s gender politics and/or sophomoric "dirty joke" humor that the generation gap was too wide for me to cross. To be fair, these are student stories, but none of them sent me running to look for the authors' later work.

( discussion of selected works )

( full list of included works )

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

jo posting in

tv_talk

Noah Wyle gave a really interesting (and long!) interview to GQ. The original is paywalled so I've provided an archived link.

WARNING: It contains spoilers for the season 2 finale, so if you've not watched it yet, or are only part-way through season 2 or whatever, proceed at your own risk.

This one section really caught my attention (does not contain spoilers):

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience."

I hadn't even noticed that there's no music! And it is true that The Pitt is one of the shows that I pay full attention to while watching -- never occurred to me that the absence of music might be partly behind that.

aurumcalendula

Does anyone know if there's plans for a Wiscon Vidparty this year (and what the submission deadline would be, if so)?

osprey_archer

I watched the Alec Guinness Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with

skygiants and

genarti when I visited Massachusetts (a month ago now; where does the time go?), and I’ve been procrastinating writing about it, because how does one review perfection?

It’s so good. Quite possibly the perfect adaptation. Alec Guinness makes an amazing Smiley. Possibly not as plain and tubby as Smiley ought to be, but he’s projecting that as hard as he can nonetheless. And he’s just so good at Smiley’s style of sympathetic understatement where he might not actually be sympathetic to whatever line of bull his horrible loser interlocutor is trying to feed him, but it would take an awfully attentive listener to realize that, and most of the people around him never seem to listen at all.

Much is made in the books of Smiley’s amazing spy skills, and I have accepted this without ever exactly being able to put my finger on what those skills are, except maybe the patience to deep-dive in the files. But the miniseries suggests that Smiley’s other secret weapon is the ability to listen, and not only listen but radiate the aura of attentive, thoughtful, sympathetic listening that makes people want to keep talking.

His not-at-all secret weakness is his adored wife Anne, who is sleeping with a Who’s Who of all the important men in London. Just about everyone Smiley meets taunts him with this in not-very-veiled terms. (“Give my love to Anne,” says an obnoxious acquaintance in the first episode. “Give everybody’s love to Anne!”) Amazing example of a character who is hugely present despite not actually showing up till the final episode, during one of the rare sunny moments of a show that takes place mostly in clouds and rain and darkness. Anne actually is one of the bright spots of Smiley’s life despite also being the bane of his existence.

But it would be a mistake to focus too closely on Smiley, because the whole ensemble cast is excellent, and the production really gives the characterization room to breathe. The first scene simply consists of four men assembling one by one around a table, smoking cigarettes, sipping coffee, flipping through folders of papers, clearing their throats… until at last the final man arrives and the meeting gets started and you see, “Ah, that’s the one in charge.”

That’s Bill Haydon. You don’t learn his name yet, and you also don’t learn for a while that he’s not technically the boss, but also you already know most of what you need to know about him.

The adaptation hews quite close to the book, but not slavishly so; clearly the product of people who love and admire Le Carre’s work but also recognize that the challenges of adapting a written work to a visual medium can require some tweaks.

They did make one change I absolutely loved, which was ( spoilers )

Just gorgeous. Absolutely amazing. I want to watch the sequel Smiley’s People, which has a reprise cast, but I’m also not sure that I’m strong enough to watch two Smiley adaptations in one year, especially since this is the one adapting the book with the most Karla (played by Patrick Stewart) (did not write about the scene in this series where Smiley and Karla face off and Karla just sits there, absolutely silent, and dominating the room in that silence) and I feel they may add a Karla bit that will bring me to my knees like the part under the spoiler cut above.

Clearly I’ll simply have to wait until I visit Boston again to watch Smiley’s People.

seleneheart posting in

fandomcalendar

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princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: grateful

boxofdelights posting in

wiscon

Our panel doors are wide open. Please check out the Panel Interest Survey! Log into your WisCon account at the top left corner of http://wiscon.net and click on Interest Survey. You can tell us which panels you would like to see at WisCon this year, and, if you really want a panel to happen, volunteer to be on it! If we don't have panelists, we can't run that panel!

You can fill out the survey before you register, as long as you have a WisCon account. If you have ever been a WisCon member, you have an account; if you don't remember the password, there's a link to get help.

For more info, there is a blog post here: https://wiscon.net/2026/04/12/panel-interest-survey-open/

sario528 posting in

bookclub_dw

Here's our May 2026 options:

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. 296 pages. High Fantasy. Viv the orc barbarian retires from the adventuring lift to try something completely new: opening a coffee shop in a city that's never heard of coffee. Trigger warnings: Arson, Stalking, Violence.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. 176 pages. Portal fantasy. Children sometimes disappear to have adventures in far off worlds. For the ones that come back, there's Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. No Solicitations. No Visitors. No Quests. Trigger warnings:Parental abandonment, Dead bodies, Death, Dismemberment, Murder, Gore (graphic), Transphobia.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells. 144 pages. Sci-Fi. An android security unit that secretly calls itself "Murderbot" hacks it's own governor module so it can watch media while doing it's job. When things start going wrong on planetary survey mission it's up to the SecUnit and a group of scientists to figure out what's going on. Trigger warnings: Blood, Body horror, Death, Injury, Mind Control (of androids), Murder, Prostitution (mentioned), Slavery (of androids), Violence.

Poll #34489 May 2026 book poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

View Respondents

What book should we read for May 2026?

View Answers

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
5 (21.7%)

Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire
7 (30.4%)

All Systems Red by Martha Wells
11 (47.8%)

cornerofmadness

So today was me talking about urogenital infections in microbiology class going wear. your. condoms!!

And I also told them for extra credit they can go to the health fair on campus and tell me one vendor they interacted with. So I go over there and there are just condoms all over, no less than three groups giving them out. One of them puts free condoms in the dorms but when I asked about it the students looked at me like I had grown another head.

I thought it was because they didn't have them there. Apparently they were shocked I knew about bowls of condoms like their little Gen Z butts invented the things. Ha. Actually I loved the key chains that contained condoms. If I had any need I'd have snatched one of them up.

Talked to health care providers of all types especially mental health ones. They had a trans rights group that I spoke to just to be sure they were okay because this is NOT a LGBT of any kind friendly place. They gave me tons of stickers.

The doctor's nurse called me again this time to find out if I had read the echocardiogram. Yes. No I have no questions because I can see it's the same as it was 10 years ago. Oh that's what the doctor said too. Yes I DO have questions but they can wait until I see him and ask directly

I had to take a book back to the gallipolis library (not my usual one) and FINALLY saw the Lego exhibit before they take it down next week. 120 exhibits all on travel. There were space ships and chariots and stage coaches and a bugati and a silver ghost rolls royce (all the history on plaques I couldn't squat down to see, made for kids of course).

The showstopper was the Titanic, 200,000 pieces built by 3 Lego masters over four months. Only 10 of the exhibits have actual instructions. They almost all were built by artistic talent. I have tons of photos on my camera.

I was going to share them but the night went sideways. had a hypoglycemic attack in the exhibit, went to dinner to stabilize, came home, went to unwind with some June's Journey. Apparently fell asleep sitting up only waking up when my limbs went numb and painful.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: The Sunshine Murders

sovay

Under very few circumstances while watching Ishirō Honda's Atragon (海底軍艦, 1963) does one have to hand it to Agent No. 23 of the Empire of Mu, the shoregoing operative of a barbarically advanced civilization gathering itself from the bed of the Pacific to reclaim its former colonies which in the millennia since its Atlantean sinking had the temerity to strike out on their own as the nations of Earth, but he is played by Akihiko Hirata in a gold-glint of dark glasses and an out-of-season scarf tucked against the chill of the surface world and when he is held at gunpoint with his back to the tide-line, he only smiles in the slightest of farewells before leaping into the day-for-night-blue surf without even taking off his shoes. "He escaped into the sea?" His introductory getaway was more technically audacious when he drove a stolen taxi straight off a quay, but if he were human he would look like a suicide and once he's in the water instead he rejoins his phosphorescently submerged comrades without so much as catching a bullet. In a high-concept blend of lost-world pulp and post-war politics, he's a wonderfully uncanny touch without special effects, which is not to deprecate the film's ingenious panoply of images from hydronauts in a looseleaf of silver scales to a dragon coiling like a moray from the side of an oceanic trench to the crimson-clouded detonation of a geothermal sun. The people of Mu run hotter than seals: the sea smokes like a geyser around them, a wrench turns red-hot in the agent's contemptuous grasp; one of his colleagues appears capable of generating an eellike stunning charge. "We have special energy. It's useless." Elsewhere their civilization resembles a sort of Egypto-Minoan fusion by way of Verne and Haggard, its laser cannons sheathed in the coils of bronze ceti and the blinkenlights of its enormous computer banks carved around in cyclopean bas-relief. The empress of Mu looks like a nascent anime design with her hood of clementine-colored hair and new wave eyes, a casual ransom of pearls collared over her brilliant draperies and finely ringed mail. Humanity's last, best hope if it can be repurposed from a dream of militaristic nationalism to the defense of global ideals, the Atragon-class submarine of the title suggests a garfish down to its countershading, a sleek leviathan of spy-fi industry artfully equipped with a few indistinguishably magical tricks of its own. When Mu calls in its marker on the land, the inevitable destruction of Tokyo is a one-two doozy of practical and animated effects—business districts jolted to flinders by a precisely triggered earthquake, container ships set ablaze by an enemy sub's lancing ray—but the eye candy doesn't crowd out the food for thought when the sunken empire makes such a successfully fantastical double for the imperial past that Japan must explicitly repudiate in order to inhabit its international future. I wouldn't kick any of it out of bed for eating seaweed crackers, especially not the first glimpse of the sea-dragon Manda, a thick shield-wall of scales, seemingly endless, breathing. I just remain enchanted with the liminal simplicity of Agent No. 23 in his anonymous dark suit, a Magritte figure whose very ordinariness makes him surreal. His voice will narrate a history of his empire from a spool of 8 mm and deliver its modern ultimatum on reel-to-reel. "Admiral, this earthquake isn't a coincidence. Remember me?" He'd be namelessly memorable even if I hadn't loved his actor since Dr. Serizawa. This sea brought to you by my special backers at Patreon.

Current Music: Arca, "Urchin"

skygiants

As I mentioned on my last Pern post, Dragonsdawn was always the most memorable Pern book for me -- for my sins, and sins indeed they are. That said, having reread it, I can understand exactly why I found this so compelling. This was the book that sold me on the fantasy of planetary exploration and colonization as a delightful and desirable experience! You could go to a beautiful new world and discover baby dragons and have random islands named after you! You could build a new Utopian society! Is Anne McCaffrey's vision of a Utopian society uncomfortably libertarian? Sure, but I was ten, I didn't know what libertarians were, I just understood that Sorka was having a very cool time as a happily free-range child exploring the Pernese landscape. I don't think it was until I read Mary Roach's Packing for Mars as an adult that I fully came to terms with the fact that going to space actually sounded like a deeply unpleasant time, logistically speaking, and let the faint wisps of the Dragonsdawn dream of First Feet Down on a beautiful new planet that's functionally just like Earth with bonus charming telepathic fauna dissipate into the ether.

I mean, it is sort of an open question though: early Pernese culture, potential paradise or libertarian cult? I do think McCaffrey knows that the colonist's blissful vision of If Everyone Has Enough Land For Themselves We Can All Just Be Chill And Not Actually Bother Society-Building is doomed to some degree of failure on account of bad actors, even before it's interrupted by Thread. She could have just made it a book about dealing with Thread and developing dragons about it, and it would probably be a better book if she did, but she's so grimly determined to put some bad actors in just to demonstrate she knows they exist. This at least is my theory of how we got Evil Sexy Avril Bitra, perpetrator of history's most inexplicable heist. "If I go on this fifty-year mission, I can steal some diamonds, steal an escape pod, launch myself back out into space, and get picked up back in a society that's moved on a hundred years from the one I left! Probably they'll still want diamonds and I'll re-adapt just fine!"

So, I can understand, I guess, why Avril Bitra. I don't understand and don't think I will ever understand why Avril Bitra's narrative foil is a would-be tradwife who nonconsensually aphrodisiaced her way into marriage with a man who has never shown any romantic interest in anything except cave systems and then spent the next eight years making a shocked Pikachu face about the fact that he continued to not be all that into her. Why is Sallah Telgar's plot in this book? What is it doing here? Why is Avril Bitra evilly torturing Sallah on the spaceship given so much page space and weird psychosexual intensity when literally nothing about this plot actually impacts the colony's situation IN ANY ACTUAL WAY? I thought a reread would leave me less confused about all this than I was when I was ten and in fact I think it did the opposite. Anne, please ... you must have had some thoughts about this, thematically, structurally ... I'm coming to you, hat in hand, asking for answers.

I do think it's very funny that in the years between 1968 and 1989 Anne McCaffrey decided that it was a bit embarrassing that she'd built biological differences into her dragons such that the queens don't breathe fire, and decided to blame it on the fact that the dragons were genetically designed by an Extremely Traditional Chinese Grandma instead. Is it also racist? Yes, extremely. But if we start talking about all the unfortunate well-meaning racism in Dragonsdawn we'll be here all day and I don't have that much day left. Racism aside I did find myself unexpectedly somewhat moved by the subplot I did not remember at all in which Kenjo Fusaiyuki, a guy who has made a Profound Mistake in moving to an isolated colony planet that's dedicated itself to being low-tech and abandoning spaceflight, desperately hoards fuel for as long as possible to put off the time when he will have to at last give up for good and all the thing he loves most and is best at in all the world.

And you know who could've saved Kenjo Fusaiyuki's life, if she had stopped to help the two guys Avril Bitra clonked on the head instead of uselessly pursuing her into space? YES, IT'S ANOTHER SALLAH TELGAR CRIME. Sallah Telgar, you have so much to answer for.

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were written by

ideealisme.

1. What did you do on Monday?

2. What did you do on Tuesday?

3. What did you do on Wednesday?

4. What did you do on Thursday?

5. What are you going to do today?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #7041 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1005.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

rachelmanija

In a future Morocco, a young woman named Hariba with no prospects has herself jessed, a process which renders her loyal to whoever buys her, and sells herself as an indentured servant to a wealthy household. There she meets Akhmim, a harni - a genetically engineered human designed to be a perfect lover or companion. Hariba falls in love with him and runs away with him, but because she's jessed, she becomes extremely sick due to defying her loyalty implant.

Up until this point, the book had a compelling atmosphere a bit reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale in that it explored the daily life of people living with very little agency in the home of someone who owns them. But once Hariba gets sick, she becomes completely sidelined from the story and basically lies in bed suffering for the entire middle part of the book, while the POV switches from Hariba and Akhmim to first her mother, then her friend - neither of whom are very interesting.

( Read more... )

This is a well-written book with interesting issues that sags a lot in the middle portion when Hariba basically drops out of the story, and ends in a note of depression and gloom.

Though I didn't love this book, I'm sorry that McHugh doesn't seem to be writing novels anymore as I did quite like China Mountain Zhang and Mission Child.

condnsdmlk posting in

vidukon_cardiff

Submissions for Vidder's Choice, Premieres and the Themed Vidshow (Unfinished Business) are closing on Sunday, 19 April (23:59 UK time). We'd love to see your vids! Find out more about how to submit yours HERE. If you think you may need an extension, let us know.

Also just a quick note to say our AI policy is now up! We aren't fans of how generative AI, LLMs, agentic AI and related tech is being developed and made available for popular use, and we have good reason to believe that a large part of our regular attendees share our discomfort, hence the policy.

Lastly, sign-ups for the Vidding Workshop close on 20 April. If you'd like to participate in bringing this year's Frankenvid to life, you can find out more about it and sign up HERE.

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Poll #34481 round 186 theme poll

This poll is closed.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 99

Pick the next theme of fancake:

Collaborations & Remixes
25 (25.3%)

Journey/Travel
45 (45.5%)

Whump
29 (29.3%)

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fics/fanart/fanvids/other kinds of fanworks/fancrafts/podfics have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

marycrawford

I was watching zhu yilong's livestream: soothing and inconsequential as usual, he had to do his own hair for the stream and he doesn't know how, he loves snail soup -- and then I hit the moment where someone asked him an annoying question (I hate the 'describe thing in this many words' trope so much and I guess the fans copied the idea from the entertainment interviews?) and I'm DYING at his answer, but I won't spoil it.

ilu long-ge, never change.

Also, ~~is bluesky down for anyone else?~~ Looks like that's a problem for a lot of ppl right now, unfortunately.

Profile

dswdiane

April 2026

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Page Summary

goddess47 in fancake - Teen Wolf, The Light in the Woods, by DiscontentedWinter
pauraque - Clarion III: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction and Criticism, ed. Robin Scott Wilson (1973)
runpunkrun in fancake - Theme Reminder: Arranged Marriage
jo in tv_talk - Attention Pitt Fans! Interview with Noah Wyle
aurumcalendula - (no subject)
osprey_archer - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
seleneheart in fandomcalendar - Dreamwidth Book Club: April
princessofgeeks - Greece 2026
boxofdelights in wiscon - Panel Interest Survey Still Open
sario528 in bookclub_dw - May 2026 poll
cornerofmadness - Condoms everywhere
sovay - A kidnapper wouldn't jump into a cold sea
skygiants - (no subject)
anais_pf in thefridayfive - The Friday Five for 17 April 2026
case in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #7041 ]
rachelmanija - Nekropolis, by Maureen McHugh
condnsdmlk in vidukon_cardiff - VidUKon submissions deadline coming up! Plus, our AI policy & workshop signups
runpunkrun in fancake - Round 186 Theme Poll
glitteryv in recthething - Community Recs Post!
marycrawford - happy birthday long-ge

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