Reading

Entry tags:

[#272 | Choose Your Battles] Challenge Post

Challenge 272:
CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES

...no, wait, that’s too many battles. Put some of those back.

Some battles need to be fought – maybe for ethical or moral reasons, maybe just for practical ones. But others? Well, maybe it’d be better to let those go.

Are your characters good at picking their battles, or do they want to fight every fight, no matter how small? Do their friends encourage them to get involved, or try to convince them to hold back?

Write a story about choosing your battles.

BONUS GOAL: Seeing Red

If your submission features the color red, it will earn an extra point to be tallied in voting!

Challenge ends Monday, September 8 at 9:00PM EST.

• Post submissions as new entries using the template in the profile
• Tag this week's entries as: [#] submission, 272 – choose your battles
• If you have questions about this challenge, please ask them here

Entry tags:

[#271 | In the Nick of Time] Results Post

Here are this week's votes tallied, and below the cut are our winners for Challenge #271 – In the Nick of Time!

( This week's finalists are... )

Total Challenge Words Written: 3947

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 271 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!

Current Music: Jack, "Cinematic"

I was never there, I only read the book, I only saw the film

A double-header at this afternoon's medical appointment: the tech not only expressed surprise at my calendar age, but assumed from my voice that I was either foreign-born or had spent significant time out of the country, specifically she thought in the UK. Given the current climate, I should be clear that she was curious, not hostile; one of her children had been a staffer in the Obama administration and two others had been some kind of federal employee and she had considerable feelings on subjects from vaccines to tanks. But after I had gone through the standard litany clarifying the rather pathetic fact that I have lived my entire life in New England and the Boston area for most of it, she still thought I sounded British. "You should go over there. You'd blend right in." She herself had an old-school Boston accent. "People from anywhere, they can tell where I'm from." I am not good at other people's ages, but I don't believe that I look younger than my early forties, especially after the last few ravaging years, and I expect to be heard as American by anyone who actually has one or more of the plethora of accents on offer in the UK. Weirdest instance of trying to place my voice remains the time I was told by a very drunk Australian that I sounded like a Norwegian. Someday the question of my vocal origins will come around again because it has been doing so since my childhood and I will answer "Lisson Grove" just to see what happens.

Entry tags:

Multifandom: Fandom With Benefits - September: Three Things prompts

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

daily: check in

Daily Check-In: Day 3

Good afternoon everyone! Did you get any writing done?

Yes
No
I've thought about it.
I'm busy right now.
I'm taking a break for now.

Entry tags:

Recent reading

Humbug: A Study in Education by E. M. Delafield (1921). I thought I should take the interesting chance of a Delafield novel I knew nothing about, and chose this one for the intriguing-sounding title. It is what the subtitle says, broadly interpreted—a study of how the upbringing of a young girl in Victwardian England constrains and stifles her character and happiness. It is not as miserable as Consequences or as nasty as The War-Workers, but it's also less effective than either of them. I really liked the family relationships in the early chapters, in which the main character Lily is favoured by their parents over her disabled sister Yvonne and both girls suffer horribly as a result in different ways—it reminded me of The Mill on the Floss as a precise and well-observed study of how awful the internal experience of being a child can be—but I thought the book went astray later on, became less interesting and less focussed, and eventually tried for a triumphant happy ending I felt it hadn't really earned. It strikes me that my favourite books in the 'upbringing of a girl in Victwardian England and how badly it's done' genre—Alas, Poor Lady and The Crowded Street—continue with the main character failing to fulfil the goals of her upbringing by remaining single, and in this one she does make a conventionally-acceptable, unhappy marriage and the book then tries to pull apart the failures it's criticising from within that structure, and perhaps that's part of why it didn't work for me.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles (1959). The edition I read has 'AN AMERICAN CLASSIC' in big letters across the top of the front cover, and what I think is that if Americans so badly want to write CLASSICS then they can jolly well learn to format and punctuate dialogue correctly. Anyway: If you took schooldays-era Raffles and Bunny, only they're the same age, and also they're American, and also it's the Second World War, you would not exactly have something like this book, but you might have something not entirely unlike it. I did not enjoy the book on the whole; a lot of the appeal of boarding-school stories for me is in the cloistered setting, the school as its own closed-off little world, and this book does not have that because the school setting can't be closed-off when the war keeps intruding everywhere, and this is a large part of the point of the book. However (wobbly grammar aside) it is a very good portrayal of a very specific kind of messed-up relationship, and indeed just a little bit gay even though the author apparently didn't mean it that way (?), and also very good at what it's trying to do vis-a-vis the war intruding on everything else in the world. Actually my favourite character was 'Leper' Lepellier, who is not involved in the central homoerotic relationship, but I think he deserves a nice boyfriend and also some more cool snails to make up for everything he has to go through.

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee (1959). Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham was in my last reading post, and it kept reminding me of this (because ale/cider, main character called Rosie, and for some reason the only thing I knew about this book is that it's set in Gloucestershire and Somerset hence reminded me of that), so I decided to read it. Most of it I merely didn't get on with very well—the style favours rich impressionism over descriptive or narrative substance more than I like, and there's neither the perceptive social observation (Flora Thompson <3) nor the likeable narratorial personality that I think make for a good memoir. Also most of the way through the book I was getting a sense that the author was kind of dodgy about women. (If I say as a synecdoche that he uses the word 'voluptuous' too much to sum up what I don't like about Lee's writing, does that make sense?) Anyway, in the penultimate chapter it turns out that he is not slightly dodgy but horrifyingly awful, and I think that's enough books by straight men for me this year at least. If you want to read a beloved classic memoir, please read Flora Thompson instead.

Entry tags:

Fancake Theme for September: Food & Cooking

Photograph of steel spoons and spices in a dramatic setting with added text that gives it the look of a gourmet magazine cover: September 2025. Food & Cooking, at Fancake. Steel teaspoons are arranged in an elogated oval to suggest a fish, with the bowls acting as scales and some of the handles left visible to create the fins and tail, giving the creature a spiky appearance. The concave bowls are dusted with a powdery orange spice for color and one spoon at the front of the fish is filled with a coarse black spice to create an eye. The fish is on a black surface with a rough texture and around it are three skinny green peppers, a mound of salt, a mound of orange spice, and a dipping bowl filled with a clear amber liquid.

fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules.

This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!

Current Music: Lo! Peninsula, "Quicksand (Nuffin)"

Here we are half-awake

The second-best part of this highly mediocre day was a gyro on which I put a phenomenal amount of tzatziki, to the point that by the end of it the meat was probably the condiment. The best part was taking a walk with

spatch right before sunset. I remembered to bring my camera.

( A blizzard in the midst of a sunny day. )

I am not sure that Series 13 of Doctor Who holds together at all, but since Kevin McNally was playing essentially Marcus Brody if he had started in parapsychology instead of classics, I enjoyed him very much.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Cranes - Sun and Sky

Entry tags:

AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #193: Oshima Ryoka

In her last promotional picture in 2017, Oshima Ryoka looks a lot like Watanabe Mayu. Not, I think, that they are similar in appearance, but around this time, wardrobe and makeup were eager to smooth out all members into this sort of comparative Sakamachi series appearance, a hope that they might reverse engineer some of the increasing popularity of Sony's rival group. Rest assured, she really doesn't really look like that in her brief appearance in 2014's Sailor Zombie drama.

Ryo-chan!

Ryo-chan passed the auditions for AKB on the cusp of the group's big change and at the peak of their popularity. For a year, she numbered amongst the kenkyuusei, and then, in the big shuffle at Tokyo Dome in 2012 that comes up so much in these entries, as Maeda Atsuko bowed out from Team A, Ryo-chan joined their ranks, the team now under the captainship of Shinoda Mariko.

For a year, she remained with them, appearing in a campaign for JR East's Yokohama Line as part of the promotional unit, Team Kanagawa, alongside Okada Nana and Kawaei Rina, before eventually being transferred to Kuramochi Asuka's Team B at the next big shake-up at Zepp DiverCity in 2014. Later that year, Ryo-chan appeared in the senbatsu for the first time, standing alongside formerly graduated members, again with Kawaei Rina, for Kibouteki Refrain, which is a moment I've been thinking about a lot since oh my pumpkin! released.

By 2015, Ryo-chan had her first solo concert under her belt and had been appointed as co-captain of Team B, taking over from Oya Shizuka, and was one of the members to appear in Central Park in New York before 5,000 people as part of AKB's return to the city for the Japan Day celebrations. I can't imagine what it must have been like to stand on that stage; I can't even imagine what it must have been like to be in that crowd! Later in the year, she appeared one last time with Kawaei for the last single before the other girl graduated, the slightly overwrought Bokutachi wa Tatakawanai, the MV for which feels like Heisei era Kamen Rider and also marks the last appearance with AKB of Matsui Rena and Ikoma Rina. An interesting aside, but apparently Iriyama Anna was offered a role in the senbatsu for this single but she refused, possibly fearful of what attention it might bring after the attack on her and Kawaei in 2014. By this point, AKB was so big that the senbatsu for singles was functionally meaningless, an extra layer now added to the dynamic, the "media senbatsu", meaning that you could be in the line-up for the single and still not get the increased attention when it came to promoting it. Such was the case with Ryo-chan alas.

Ryo-chan!

2016 was a quiet year, with Ryo-chan averaging an appearance in the senbatsu once a year. Tsubasa wa Iranai is very much indictive of the AKB of that era, Mukaichi Mion in centre position, Iriyama Anna returning once more to stand alongside Okada Nana and Kato Rena, AKS's first misguided push of NGT members. It feels a sad note to end mention of Ryo-chan's activities.

Growing up alongside Aigasa Moe, pretending to be AKB members in middle school before both girls made became part of the thirteenth generation, Ryo-chan and her peers made AKB what it was in that moment. We kind of gloss over these years now, thinking of the era of the Kami 7, and then the explosion of Team 8, and eventually, where we are now, the Oguri Yui era, but in writing these entries, I hope I can preserve a little of the AKB we too readily forget.

Entry tags:

Multifandom: Festivids Rare Fandom Vidding Exchange

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

A 2025 Experiment: Increasing fandom slots for nominations & requests

As we all start planning our nominations and requests, mods have been reviewing our rules around the number of fandoms that can be nominated and requested.

Traditionally, Yuletide has allowed participants to nominate a maximum of 3 fandoms to the tagset, with up to 4 characters each. We increased that to 4 fandoms in 2023 and got positive feedback about that change.

During signups, participants have been required to request at least 3 fandoms, and up to 6 fandoms if they choose. They must offer a minimum of 4 fandoms.

We've needed to limit the tagset size due to a combination of AO3 technical limitations as well as the logistical effort to confirm each fandom is eligible while avoiding duplicate fandoms. The good news is that we’ve found AO3’s tagset interface loads the moderation tools a bit faster lately. We've also developed more scalable processes and a group of wonderful, experienced volunteers to help with that checking. We think we can handle more nominations this year, but we won’t know until we try!

Change to nominations:

For 2025 only, we are going to increase the number of tagset nominations from 4 fandoms to 5 fandoms per person. The maximum number of characters will remain at 4 per fandom.

We’ll see how this goes, and whether the additional workload seems manageable to us, before deciding whether to keep the increased limit in 2026.

Change to requests:

For 2025 only, we are also going to increase the maximum number of fandom requests from 6 to 8. The minimum of 3 will not change. This means you must request at least 3 fandoms, and up to 8 fandoms if you choose.

Everything else remains the same: for each fandom, you will still be able to request up to a maximum of 4 characters. You will still be required to offer at least 4 fandoms with a minimum of 2 characters each.

Again, we will evaluate how it goes, and how this affects our workload, before deciding whether to keep the increased limit in 2026.

We hope this opens up some exciting possibilities for you in the 2025 round! Please stay tuned for our usual eligibility and evidence posts.

Rest in Power Graham Greene

I think there will be more in depth obituaries to follow, but here's a couple I liked.

CBC: 'Like watching Gretzky play hockey:' Colleagues remember actor Graham Greene.

CBC (Video): Remembering Graham Greene (interview with Jesse Wente).

I just saw him in Sweet Summer Pow Wow last week. Hard to imagine he's gone.

Entry tags:

Sunflower_auction 2025

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Music: The Divine Comedy, "Assume the Perpendicular"

We just want to go to a stately home built in the Georgian style

In lesser catastrophes than the general planet, I have been noticing over the last eight months that while the majority of my audio transferred successfully from the archival hard drive that was for fourteen years my beloved Bertie Owen, certain artists seem to have gone incompletely and inexplicably missing, generally to be discovered by trying to cue up a track which no longer exists on my computer, which is what happened last night with Neil Hannon. Of the six albums by the Divine Comedy that I used to own along with a handful of random tracks and singles, the sole full-length survivors are Promenade (1994) and Bang Goes the Knighthood (2010), which are neither chronologically nor alphabetically even next to one another. The consolation lining is that at least I didn't lose one of my favorite songs which can be found on the latter, "Assume the Perpendicular." Like much of its composer's catalogue, it's a chamber-pop character sketch, wittily written and performed with a sincere straight face: trying to fix its position on the irony slider is pointless. "Slip on your Barbour jacket, jump in my old MG" sets the class bracket of its band of day-trippers, while the tenor of their conversation is nailed with equal concision by the architectural divisions of "Lavinia loves the lintels, Anna the architraves / Ben's impressed by the buttresses thrust up the chapel nave." Aside from the narrator who thought of that last line and delivers it with cheekily Coward-esque crispness, none of these people sounds like the most exciting company for a heritage day out with their diffident intentions to "make complimentary sounds and talk about nothing in particular." And yet as the song catchily progresses, these pretentious characters find themselves falling into the fun of their excursion, meandering the hedge maze, bouncing on historical beds, swinging around the library's railed ladders, and the music loosens right up along with them, the neat hand-clapped piano joined first by a brisk roll of drums and then a flourish of brass that unreel from a marching tattoo into a loose-jointed jam, until by the time a music-hallish banjo has ricky-tickied in on the action, the self-conscious distance of the original chorus has turned into "wild ecstatic sounds" and everybody including the listener is having a wonderful time tearing around this stately home where playing at aristocracy has given way to goofing off. It all ends in a little twiddle of electronica like a punch line. It doesn't really matter if it's sending up the sightseers who aren't even interested in the cider in Somerset, what it feels like as it winds down from that explosive high of exploration is a genuine invitation that I can play twenty times in a row, even if my closest examples of the Georgian style are not so much country houses as random historical registers and the occasional Revolutionary museum that I pass on the way to my parents or a supermarket.

Entry tags:

[MULTIFANDOM] PolyamShippingDay - September 2025

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

Two things

I'm not recovered from going out last week, but hopefully I will be soon, or at least before I have to go out again next week. Anyway, two fannish things:

1. People may remember a few Yuletides ago, I wrote We'll Burn That Barn When We Come To It, aka the first Harold/William the Conqueror fic on the archive (how???)* because a) Irresistable Request and b) childhood obsession with all things 1066.

Anyway, the BBC have made a big epic about William and Harold! I have tried 10 minutes and so far it seems decent and though it did the standard opening with Grimness, just to show it was that kind of thing, it was all right & I liked everything else so far, so yay. As far as I know, the last time the BBC did a thing about William the Conqueror, it was the 60s and it had Julian Glover in so never in my lifetime, omg. Don't let us down...

(I was wary and slow to start it because ill and also the preview made it look a lot like The Last Kingdom, which was too much for me, although tbf to TLK, I hear it got more interesting as it went, but I was there for Matthew Macfadyen and then they killed him in the first episode and I was too ill for all the Vikings. Matthew Macfadyen led me to Spooks after being great in v different ways in a small role in Enigma and as Felix in The Way We Live Now, but he has worked hard to stop me ever since Tom Quinn walked into the sea, damn him.)

The BBC have apparently paid attention to historical detail like the size of the ponies but somehow missed the fact that the one thing we can all see in the Bayeaux Tapestry is that the Anglo-Saxons have epic moustaches and the Normans are clean-shaven by deciding to give all the Normans moustaches and have the Anglo-Saxons clean-shaven, but you can't have the French wandering around without a proper goatee to show they're French, sacre bleu etc.

Watch on YouTube

Matilda and William just mentioned Emma of Normandy in a way that suggests she should be Significant, so I got v excited. I await her actual appearance with anticipation. \o/

(Someone has already dropped a fresh kudos on my fic, because there are still only 3 William/Harold works in the world. I look forward to it becoming a tiresome large-sized vessel soon, as Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is playing William, so that should bring some people in, right?)

2. I just found that

daibhidc wrote a really great Miss Marple ficlet based on my Miss Marple is a goddess fic (talking of Yuletide hits of yore), which brightened up the week no end:

Nemesis the Virgin (614 words) by DaibhidC
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jane Marple
Additional Tags: Historical, Anglo-Saxon, Miss Marple is a Goddess
Summary: An Anglo-Saxon priest has a strange encounter with a parishoner.

(We are TECHNICALLY on Ro3 for Goddess Jane Marple now, except one of those is a translation of my work so it doesn't really count. Hmm...)

I shall stop typing now because I am still not really up to it, but lo a post, a positive post. With 1066-ness and Miss Marple in it!

* and it was a Modern AU, what a terrible person I am. ;-p

Entry tags:

daily: check in

Daily Check-In: Day 2

Where are you at in your fic?

Planning/Outlining/Researching
Writing down some rough drafts
Editing it right now
Sending off to my beta-reader for proofreading
Adding some finishing touches
Posting it right now

Entry tags:

[r] 15,
promotion

SFBB15: Community Promotion

Would you like to help us promote Small Fandoms Bang? Simply copy the code in the box and paste in your journal/community/anywhere ads are allowed that fit the challenge! Thank you!

A 10,000-word big bang for small fandoms!

FAQ | Rules | Author Sign-Up | Beta/Cheerleader Sign-Up | Affiliate

(Author sign-ups are open now through October 31; Artist sign-ups open November 1st.)

Entry tags:

SFBB15: Betas and/or Cheerleaders Sign-Up Post

If you are not signing up as an author or artist, but would like to be involved with Small Fandoms Bang as a beta and/or cheerleader, please post your username in a comment here to receive an invite to the support community

smallfandomcafe.

Thank you!

Entry tags:

SFBB15: Author Sign-Up Post

My apologies for being a day late again. Once again I lost track of time, even though I've been counting down the days.

GENERAL RULES & INFORMATION

1. Please make sure you join the Small Fandoms Bang community at

smallfandombang. It will be the Author’s responsibility to watch or track the community to make sure you don’t miss anything.

2. Your fandom must be verified before you sign up. If your fandom wasn’t verified during a previous round (and hasn’t since grown too large to qualify), then you should comment here or at the What Qualifies as a Small Fandom post at our sister community

smallfandomfest to have it verified. The general rule for this community is that any fandom with less than 2,000 fic qualifies.

(For a list of fandoms that have already been qualified, please check the Qualifying Fandoms Database; for a list of fandoms that have already been disqualified, please check the What Qualifies as a Small Fandom post at

smallfandomfest.)

Don’t forget to check the list for fandoms that have been disqualified since the last round.

3. When you sign up please include up to three fandoms that you are most likely to write in on the sign-up form. If you decide at a later date to write in a fandom that you did not list you must contact us first so that we may verify that it qualifies and update our spreadsheet accordingly.

3a. Please note that by including three fandoms you are not signing up to write more than one fic; these are just the fandoms in which you’re most likely to choose to write that one fic.

4. Stories must be at least 10,000 words long. There is no maximum length.

5. All ratings, pairings (gen, het, slash, threesomes), and genres (from horror to romance) are welcome here.

6. AUs are allowed. Crossovers between small fandoms are allowed. Fusions between small fandoms are allowed.

New 6a. AI submissions will NOT be allowed. There will be no warnings; if you are caught using AI to create your submission you’ll be banned from participating in the current and any future round.

7. Stories must be fictional person fiction only; this challenge does not include real person fiction unless the real person has been fictionalized. (For example, if you’re writing Alexander the Great based on the movie Alexander, or Napoleon based on the Temeraire series.)

8. Stories must be complete and new – no WIPs or previously posted work will be accepted.

9. Authors may sign-up to write more than one fic, and/or to co-write a fic. Please read the FAQ before doing so as there are limits to the number of fic you may sign up to write.

10. If you choose to co-write fic, please only sign up once and list both user names in the form.

11. If you choose to sign-up to write more than one fic, please submit a separate sign-up form for each fic.

12. Please note that check-ins are mandatory.

13. Stories must not be posted anywhere on the web prior to your posting date, in part or in whole. You will be able to share snippets of your story at our support comm,

smallfandomcafe.

13a. The only exception is if you’re posting a chaptered fic during the posting period, in which case your fic should be posted in its entirety by your official posting date.

14. Authors may also sign-up to do art, but may not claim their own fic.

15. Authors, please note that you may be called upon to assist your artist with screencaps, character descriptions, etc. Since this is a multi-fandom, small fandom challenge there is a high probability that Artists will be asked to create artwork for fandoms they are unfamiliar with, so your assistance will be necessary.

For more information, please read the Rules and FAQ before you sign up.

SCHEDULE FOR ROUND FIFTEEN

Event	Date(s)
Author Sign-ups:	September 1 - October 31, 2025
Artist Sign-ups:	November 1, 2025 - January 31, 2026
Author Check-In No. 1:	November 1-7, 2025
Author Check-In No. 2:	December 1-7, 2025
Author Check-In No. 3:	January 1-7, 2026
Artist Check-In No. 1:	January 1-7, 2026
Rough Draft Due:	January 31, 2026
Artist Claiming:	February 7 - February 13, 2026
Matching Reveal:	February 14, 2026
Author Check-In No. 4:	March 8-14, 2026
Artist Check-In No. 2:	March 8-14, 2026
Final Drafts (Fic & Art) Due:	March 31, 2026
Posting Date Sign-Ups:	April 1 - April 4, 2026
Posting Period:	April 5 - April 30, 2026

To sign up, please fill out the Author Sign-Up Form linked below. Please include all the required information. After you have signed up you will receive a notification from Google containing the information with which you signed up. You should save this in a safe place in case you can’t remember which fandoms you signed up with.

You will also receive an e-mail to confirm that we have received your sign-up and an invitation to join our support community,

smallfandomcafe.

Author Sign-Up Form

Thank you for signing up!

If you have any questions about the challenge generally that aren’t answered in the Rules or on FAQ, please ask them at the FAQ post. If you have a question specifically about this round you may ask it here.