soc_puppet | Network

I thought I'd just get dropped off at the train station after our session (and the all-important debrief in Costa) was finished. But I should've known: my lovely colleague has sight loss herself and assured me that they -- she, her husband/PA, her guide dog -- would wait until I was safely on a train.

But first, I needed to pee, so I got directed to the gents' and I was only gone for a few minutes but when I walked back up the platform I saw those two (three, counting Flick the dog) standing with two other ladies chatting away. As I got closer I'd have guessed they were people R knew from work; one of them mentioned another charity that's known to us. I was happy to chill while they did that "Oh you know Nick?" kind of thing. But it turns out they didn't know each other; these women had just been at some sight-loss related event but one of them just spoke up when she saw the guide dog because she always does and is clearly the kind of person who'll talk to anyone. They had made friends at a local society for blind people, and had just come from, of all things, a funeral for someone they knew from that group. The chattier one told us about her eye condition, Homonymous Hemianopia -- and R and I said "that's the one we couldn't say before!" when we were going through a list of them at the session earlier; we both know about hemianopia but neither of us could get the word out at the time.

Then the other person said "And I have optic nerve hypoplasia."

And then I said "Shut up!" because I was so surprised. That's what I have! And even among other blind people, no one's heard of it. It's an odd, rare thing. I literally don't think I've ever met anyone else who's got it.

They and I ended up getting on the same train for the first 15 minutes or so, by which point the chatty one had made friends with the conductor and exchanged numbers with me.

My hypoplasia pal lives in Runcorn and says she comes to Manchester regularly; I said she should let me know if she wants to hang out.

Such a goofy coincidence, but an uplifting end to a day that could've gone better. (It was fine, it just...well, I'm too tired to explain it now. But it was fine. Just, could've been better.)

glitteringstars posting in

writethisfanfic

Another day, another word count goal!

How did writing go today?

ysabetwordsmith

New sodium ion battery stores twice the energy and desalinates seawater

A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.

This is super exciting because of its double benefit: battery materials and drinking water. Also awesome, unlike rare minerals used in many batteries, sodium is something Earth has in great abundance. \o/

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cooler, but still unseasonably warm.

I fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows and a male house finch.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/19/26 -- I saw a fox squirrel at the hopper feeder.

EDIT 2/19/26 -- I refilled the hopper feeder.

I raked off the leaves from the goddess garden. There I found one lavender crocus in bloom along with many more sprouts.

Oddly the honeybees are not visiting the crocuses as usual. Instead they are nosing around the seeds in the hopper feeder. Go figure.

EDIT 2/19/26 -- I started raking leaves off the daffodil bed on the east side. So many shoots now!

EDIT 2/19/26 -- I finished raking leaves off the daffodil bed on the west side. Just as I wrapped up that activity, it started drizzling rain. *sigh* I was hoping to gather up leaves later and put them somewhere, possibly behind the log garden.

.

Current Mood: calm

potentiality_26 posting in

100ships

Title: Safe at Home
Rating: General Audiences
Type: Fic
Size: 200 words
Prompt: Blue
Fandom: Astrid et Raphaëlle
Ship: Raphaëlle Coste/Astrid Nielsen
Warnings: None
Notes: Also written for the Half A Moon prompt: Her Sanctuary
Summary: Her sanctuary.

Read it on AO3

6/100 (Table here)

Tags needed:
f: astrid et raphaëlle

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/19/the-big-idea-gideon-marcus-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59533

On occasion, you know the ending of your story before you start writing. Most other times, you find the path as you go, each twisting turn appearing before you as you continue on your merry way. The latter seems to be the case for author Gideon Marcus, who says in his Big Idea that he wasn’t always sure how to wrap up his newest novel, Majera.

GIDEON MARCUS:

What’s the big idea with Majera? That’s a hard one, because there are lots of threads: the unstated, obvious, valued diversity of the future, which helps define the setting as the future. That’s a familiar technique—Tom Purdom pioneered it, and Star Trek popularized it. There’s a focus on relationships: found family, love in myriad combinations. There’s the foundation of science, a real universe underpinning everything.

But I guess what I associate with Majera most strongly is conclusion.

Starting an exciting adventure is easy. Finishing stories is hard. George R. R. Martin, Pat Rothfuss. Hideaki Anno all have famously struggled with it. When Kitra and her friends first got catapulted ten light years from home in Kitra, I started them on a journey whose ending I only had the vaguest outline of. I had adventure seeds: the failing colony sleeper ship in Sirena, the insurrection in Hyvilma, and the dead planet in Majera, but the personal journeys of the characters I left up to them.

I know a lot of people don’t write the way I do. I think writers mirror the opposing schools of acting: on one end, the Method of sliding deep into character; on the other, George C. Scott’s completely external creation of an alternate personality. In the Scott school of writing, characters are puppets acting out an intricate dance created by the author. In the Method school of writing, of which I am a member, the characters have independent lives. I know that seems contradictory—how can fictional agglomerations of words achieve sentience?

And yet, they do! I didn’t plan Kitra and Marta’s rekindling of their relationship. Pinky’s jokes come out of the ether. Heck, I didn’t even come up with the solution that saved the ship in Kitra—Fareedh and Pinky did (people often congratulate me on how well I set up that solution from the beginning; news to me! I just write what the characters tell me to…)

All this is to say, I didn’t know how this arc of The Kitra Saga was going to end. But I knew it had to end well, it had to end satisfyingly, for the reader and for the characters. There had to be a reason the Majera crew would stop and take a breather from their string of increasingly exotic adventures. The worldbuilding! All of the little tidbits I’d developed had to be kept consistent: historical, scientific, character-related. There had to be a plausible resolution to the love pentangle that the Majera crew found themselves in, one that was respectful to all the characters and, more importantly, the reader’s sensitivies and credulity.

That’s why this book took longer to put to bed than all the others. It’s not the longest, but it was the hardest. Frankly, I don’t think I could even have written this book five years ago. I needed the life experience to fundamentally grok everyone’s internal workings, from Pinky’s wrestling with being an alien in a human world, to Peter’s coming to grips with his fears, to Kitra’s understanding of her role vis. a vis. her friends, her crew, her partners. In other words, I had to be 51 to authentically write a gaggle of 20-year-olds!

Beyond that, I had to, even in the conclusion, lay seeds for the rest of the saga, for there is a central mystery to the galaxy that has only been hinted at (not to mention a lot more tropes to subvert…)

Conclusions are hard. I think I’ve succeeded. I hope I’ve succeeded. I guess it’s for you to judge!

Author socials: Website|Bluesky

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/19/the-big-idea-gideon-marcus-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59533

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/19/cover-reveal-monsters-of-ohio/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59522

Just look at this cover for Monsters of Ohio. Look at it! It is amazing. I am so happy with it. It’s the work of artist Michael Koelsch (whose art has graced my work before, notably the Subterranean Press editions of the Dispatcher sequels Murder by Other Means and Travel by Bullet) , and he’s knocked it out of the park. I am, in a word, delighted.

And what is Monsters of Ohio about? Here’s the current jacket copy for it:

In many ways Richland, Ohio is the same tiny, sleepy rural village it has been for the last 150 years: The same families, the same farms, the same heartland beliefs and traditions that have sustained it for generations. But right now times are especially hard, as social and economic forces inside and outside the community roil the surface of the once-placid town.

Richland, in other words, is primed to explode… just not the way that anyone anywhere could ever have expected. And when things do explode, well, that’s when things start getting really weird.

Mike Boyd left Richland decades back, to find his own way in the world. But when he is called back to his hometown to tie up some loose ends, he finds more going on than he bargained for, and is caught up in a sequence of events that will bring this tiny farm village to the attention of the entire world… and, perhaps, spell its doom.

Ooooooooooh! Doooooom! Perhaaaaaaaps!

If that was too much text for you, here is the two-word version: Cozy Cronenberg.

Yeah, it’s gonna be fun.

When can you get it? November 3rd in North America and November 5 in the UK and most of the rest of the world. But of course you can pre-order this very minute at your favorite bookseller, whether that be your local indie, your nearby bookstore chain, or online retailer of your choice. Why wait! Put your money down! The book’s already written, after all. It’s guaranteed to ship!

Oh, and, for extra fun, here’s the author photo for the novel:

Yup, that pretty much sets the tone.

I hope you like Monsters of Ohio when you get a chance to read it. In November!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/02/19/cover-reveal-monsters-of-ohio/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59522

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

When did you last . . .

1. Scrounge for change (couch, ashtray, etc.) to make a purchase?

2. Visit a dentist?

3. Make a needed change to your life?

4. Decide on a complete menu well in advance of the evening meal?

5. Spend part of the day (other than daily hygiene) totally/mostly naked?

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!

catandgirl_feed

Posted by Dorothy

https://catandgirl.com/the-institutionalists/

https://catandgirl.com/?p=10110

Our institutions are not hollow. If they were hollow we could crawl inside them, fill them with life - change their direction - call them our own. But our institutions are not hollow. Our institutions are not hollow. Yet.

https://catandgirl.com/the-institutionalists/

https://catandgirl.com/?p=10110

prisca posting in

fic_promptly

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

alightbuthappypen

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

oursin

Hampstead’s retro cafés fight back against a revamp:

“London is a muddle” as EM Forster once observed — but one whose complexity is enjoyed by inhabitants. This bitter row over cafés, with small operators objecting to a tendering process that rewards a chain, has pitted the Corporation’s efforts to modernise facilities against those who feel protective towards their homeliness.
....
But as the campaigner Jane Jacobs, who championed haphazard urban environments, pointed out, city life is inherently messy. Imposing more rigid schemes can destroy its vitality, what she called “the intricate social and economic order under the seeming disorder of cities”.

***

Shop windows tell the story of London’s revolutionary illustrated newspapers:

Printing on the Strand in the 18th century was a major hub of London’s popular print culture, characterised by vibrant publishing activity that wasn’t constrained by rules affecting printers within the City of London.
Key sites included Bear Yard, near present-day King’s College London, which hosted significant printing and publishing operations, and a King’s College exhibition, which is free to view through the shop windows, tells their story.
The printers moved away when the area was redeveloped, hence the exhibition title, the Lost Landscapes of Print, which is a mix of objects and stories from the printers’ trade.
Although Fleet Street is synonymous with the newspapers, two of the most popular newspapers of the 19th century were printed on the Strand, not Fleet Street. They were the Illustrated London News and rival The Graphic, both trading on their revolutionary ability to print pictures in their pages.

***

More and “Better” Babies: The Dark Side of the Pronatalist Movement - we feel this is the darker side of an already dark movement, really.

***

Apparently this was found to be missing recently from Le Guin's website but has now been restored: A Rant About “Technology”:

Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.

***

And talking about people getting all excited about 'technology' me and a load of other archivists and people in related areas were going 'you go, girl', over the notes of cynicism sounded in this article about the latest Thrilling New Way Of Preserving The Record (it is to larf at): Stone, parchment or laser-written glass? Scientists find new way to preserve data.
Admittedly, I can vaguely recollect an sf novel - ?by John Brunner - in which an expedition to an alien planet found the inhabitants extinct but had left records in some similar form.

turlough posting in

common_nature

We've had a very persistent winter here this year and this has happily meant that I've had lots of visitors at my bird feeders. Today I had the opportunity to photograph this adorable little Long-Tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus caudatus) while it was hunting for seeds on the bike-shed roof just outside my window.

Click to enlarge:

small black and white bird with very long tail feathers

( one more photo... )

Current Mood: okay

lassarina

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

james_davis_nicoll

TTRPG campaign idea.

PCs are field agents in charge of finding and dealing with arcane occupational safety violations. That six-sided summoning pentagram? Flagged. That storeroom where the universal solvent is next to the lemonade? Flagged.

That deadly-trap-filled dungeon abandoned by its creator when the maintenance fees got too high? Red tagged.

This isn't the same as my recent FabUlt campaign. That was about discouraging the worst excesses in a world run by oligarch mages and there weren't really regulations. This would be set in a regulatory state, and would be more an exploration of normalization of deviance.

ashelterofpages

So, in a couple hours I'm going in for my first tattoo consolation! I'm So Nervous, folks. Like, also excited, and I know nothing is going to happen, but still. I have pictures of both work the artist has done in the past that i like/makes me think of what I want, as well as other images for reference of the things I'm actually looking to get done, but still. Vrrrr.

After that, I'm headed to S's house for the weekend/some of next week for house-sitting. I'll be all alone for the weekend that's going to be great. I'm going to try and get some writing done, but also I have some beta work I need to get through for a friend.

Oh, speaking of writing, I did get through all those stories I mentioned last weekend. I already got a rejection on one, but that's fine. I wasn't entirely sure on it, even though I really did like what I'd come up with. I wasn't sure it hit what they were looking for as well as I'd hoped it would.

I need to do some more zine work soon too. I have all the text worked out, but I want to go through some public domain image sites and get a few to mix into the zine itself. My plan is to go through the text I have, then make a list of things that I can search for and see what I can find/maybe do minor edits on. If I were a better artist, I'd try and draw stuff myself, but I'm a much better writier than I am anything else.

goddess47 posting in

1character

Character: John Sheppard

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis

Theme set: Gamma

Rating: PG

Warnings: none

Also on AO3.

( 50 sentences about John Sheppard! )

cimorene

‘Sir,’ intoned Dr. Fell, drawing the napkin from his collar and sitting up in dignity, ‘let me assure you I have been listening with far closer attention than my admittedly cross-eyed and half-witted appearance would seem to indicate.'

—John Dickson Carr, The Dead Man's Knock (1958)

(I rate this book 2/5, however.)

conuly

and then read the books, and I gotta say, I think the author and I fundamentally disagree on a key principle of storywriting.

I believe, strongly, that if you have two viewpoint characters, or two love interests, or two viewpoint characters who are also love interests, then they need to have balanced problems - and, ideally, the interaction of those two characters should affect those problems in some way - by making them realize that they have problems, by making them realize that those problems aren't so bad, by solving or exacerbating those problems - who knows? But they need to start off with the same level of problems, and then by the end of the plot those problems need to have been changed in some way.

And pretty much that never happens in these books. Just look at the two that make up the TV show. We have two couples.

( Read more... )

This opinion on problems was brought to you by: The Overnight Shift! I have so much time on my hands, guys!

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 fanvids/fanart/fancrafts/other kinds of fanworks/fics/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.

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Pronoun Trouble

Network

What are the odds? And some of us are very odd

Check In: Day 19

Energy

Birdfeeding

[#13 - blue] Astrid - Raphaëlle Coste/Astrid Nielsen

The Big Idea: Gideon Marcus

Cover Reveal: Monsters of Ohio

The Friday Five for 20 February 2026

The Institutionalists!

Challenge Week 02.26 - Day 4

New Year Goal Update:

More bits and bobs

tiny long-tailed tit

I swear it had not actually been this much time

All Regulations Are Written in Blood

(no subject)

About John Sheppard - Stargate Atlantis (PG)

Or as much dignity as you can with a walrus mustache

I watched Heated Rivalry

Community Recs Post!

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February 2026

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