Reading

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: under attack by hungry cats

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2025: One Swap After Another || SIGN-UPS ARE OPEN!

Hello from this year's primary mod, Helen! Kat and Livi have largely stepped away this year, but are very kindly helping with some behind the scenes stuff. Most posts and emails will be from me :) This will be my first time doing a lot of the swaps process, so if you notice anything seriously awry, please let me know!

( 2025 schedule, links, and more! )

Questions? Check out the current FAQ. (Which will be updated this weekend to reflect international shipping issues!) If that doesn't help, feel free to comment here or email us at yuleswaps at gmail dot com!

When you want an AU but everyone else who wants that AU wants it for different reasons

In my reading of Game Of Thrones fic, I developed an urge for fic where Elia Martell Targaryen (why some married women are only referred to by their maiden names and some are always only referred to by their married names, I do not know) and her kids don't die. It would be interesting to see what it would change!, I thought. Surely it doesn't need to change a huge amount necessarily, but it would great to see it!

And so I went looking and found a bunch and it turns out.

It turns out that when you want fic where legitimate claimants to a throne survive, you get a ton of fic about Targaryen restoration. You get so many fics that are love letters to the Targaryens.

I don't care about Targaryen restoration! I don't like the Targaryens and see no reason why I should! (Except for Aemon, the Targaryen maester who is still alive at the Wall, I allow that he's really intruiging.)

Also I will admit the first time I saw the pairing of Jon Snow/Rhaenys Targaryen, I had a full blown "why? why the fuck?"

But yeah I get it, if Jon Snow is her long lost half-brother, then it's true Targaryen heritage to ship them. I don't see it, I don't even like the ship, and it's interesting how I have no problem whatsoever with Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, who were raised as half-siblings, but my reaction to Jon/Rhaenys is "I'm completely uninterested in reading this". Also I'm not really into Jon/Daenerys.

Maybe it's the whole enforced-incest of the Targaryens? IDK.

But also.

Reading the fic.

Okay so I am never going to read the books, I have long since been warned off from all the grimdark rape, and I am never going to watch the show, ditto.

I did not realize how small the amount of time the Targaryens have actually been ruling in Westeros. They only showed up like 300 years ago???? In a setting where people are like "my family has been ruling in this one spot for 10,000 years" or whatever, the Targaryens are new kids on the block who showed up with dragons, conquered everyone, had several (!) really bad rulers, constantly married each other (in violation of the local religion, and no one else was allowed to copy their behavior because they're special), seemed to do very little marrying out to the locals because who needs to shore up support, dealt with civil war/rebellion, lost their dragons, had a really fucking awful last king, and then, surprise, they were overthrown.

And you want those folks back? You are nostalgic for the wonderful days of the people who showed up five minutes ago and were generally terrible?

Also blowing my mind was, okay, I had been told over and over again that Baratheons all look a certain way since time immemorial and so that's why obviously if you look into it, Cersei's kids can't be Robert's.

But the Baratheons were founded as a new house by a Targaryen bastard. The looks of the Baratheons are the opposite of the Targaryens. Also this is also only like 300 years ago, and Westeros seems to enjoy a society where there are several pathways to ensure that only one or two of your sons are allowed to have children (maesters, the wall, endless wars).

So all this is kind of amusing from a "reading fic without knowing canon" perspective, the slow unfolding of, oh my god, what is going on in this canon. But also the mismatch of people who have actually read/watch this canon and what they want to write (Targaryen restoration, Targaryen incest) vs. me who has not done that, and what I want to read.

But actually what I want to write is a fic where Jon Snow actually is Ned Stark's bastard. Ah, yes, I see here that "Ned Stark is very honorable". Uh-huh. Well, he had an affair with a woman who is a sex worker/laundress/woman who was interested before his marriage and then, because he is so honorable, he took the child in and raised him, rather than leaving Jon Snow to live in poverty.

This explains nothing about why Ned Stark wouldn't tell Jon Snow about this mother but I'm sure we can come up with something (the mother was already married? who cares).

But I'm not writing this, entirely because I have no idea of a plot to go along with this. Oh and also I'm not reading/watching this, but I wrote an MDZS drabble without reading the book/finishing the show.

Current Mood: fond
Current Location: now exiting limbo

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yuleswaps 2025 announcement <3

[Update: Sign-ups are now live! New post here.]

Hello! A few people have been wondering in the Yuletide Discord whether we would have swaps this year... tl;dr it was dicey, but YES!

You may thank

morbane (even more than usual ;)) for following up on everyone's behalf; Livi and I had been having an extremely slow/distracted convo about it since early September, but as always, knowing people are waiting on us motivated me LOL. But neither of us will be your primary mod this year! It will be the lovely Helen (

patrokla), who started helping out last year. <3

Here is the lil statement I made in Discord, very slightly modified for DW:

Hi everyone! Official announcement (and thank you, Morbane, for playing go-between while we worked things out behind the scenes :)) -- yuleswaps WILL go forward this year, we hope, and we're sorry for the delay!

Indeed I (Kat/Kindness on AO3/kindness_says) had some commitments in Sept/Oct and did not think I'd be able to prioritize swaps this year, and Liviania/anialove is also pretty busy irl atm -- but Helen/patrokla (a great longtime swapper who joined our team last year) is stepping up to give it a shot in spite of their own busyness! We're meeting tomorrow in hopes of getting sign-ups open by the end of this weekend and matches out in early November so as to stay roughly on the usual timeline. Perhaps ambitious, but we will try!

If anybody else was interested in running swaps, Morbane absolutely was speaking for me that we're not offended, and please feel free to ~~DM me~~ comment or email (yuleswaps at gmail) if you're interested in helping out. ESPECIALLY if you are at all code-savvy/great at answering emails efficiently/bursting with ideas for future improvement. <3

You might hear from me again, or you might not! I will def be helping on the backend, for at least this year/as long as I can, and we really appreciate your patience if we're a little slow or clunky this year as we try to sustain/transition. I also apologize to anyone who didn't get fully covered after January (haven't done 2024 cleanup yet... will try if there's time)!

I have LOVED running swaps, well mostly I have anyway ;) for the past 15 (!!) years. Back in the day I did not read coal but was always charmed when friends occasionally sent me screenshots of anons thrilled about swaps, and I similarly really enjoyed skimming like...1-2 years' worth of this discord not long after Morbane emailed me (was very tempted to answer some super old questions but refrained lol). Your enthusiasm has absolutely been the thing to make all the time and headaches worth it.

<3 <3 <3

So that's that!

Love/candy/books/drinks always,
Kat

P.S. For any newer Yuletiders who are interested (or just confused as to what Yuleswaps is), ~~here is last year's sign-ups post, which links to our FAQ, etc. This year's sign-ups post will come soon, if all goes to plan!~~ here is this year's sign-ups post, which links to our FAQ (soon to be updated)!

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Interactive Fiction (IF) For Yuletide 2025

Are you interested in text adventures, CYOA, Twine games, or other sorts of interactive fiction? Do you want to let your writer know you'd be happy to receive something along those lines? Are you looking for someone to write IF for? This post is for you.

(I copied and pasted this directly from last year which was also copy pasted from previous years. Let me know via comment or discord ping if any of the links broke or anything else needs editing.)

What is IF?

Interactive Fiction (IF) covers everything from text adventures through to visual novels, by way of all sorts of experimental works. It can be mostly a game, or mostly a story; it can be a way to immerse the reader, or to play around with the concepts of storyteller and audience; it can be an exploration of chance, or of fate; it can be a straightforward story, or something else entirely. From Healy's post:

[IF] is a term used for games which are made up primarily of text, like Adventure, Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and other text adventures, or more experimental hypertext works like My Father's Long, Long Legs, or even visual novels. Interactive fiction these days is generally divided into two groups based on how you interact with the game: parser-based IF, and choice-based IF.

Parser-based IF, more commonly known as text adventures, are controlled by typed in commands, like "GET KEY", "OPEN DOOR", "GO NORTH", "LOOK UNDER BED", and stuff like that. Not every command you type in will work, though, so they're hard to get used to if you haven't tried them before. To make things easier, here's a card of most of the common commands. Some good parser-based IF to try first would be Ryan Veeder's So, You've Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?, Admiral Jota's Lost Pig, Andrew Plotkin's The Dreamhold, and Adam Cadre's Photopia.

Choice-based IF is simpler; you just pick from a number of options. This can be done through hyperlinks and other clicky selections, though more rarely you may have to type a number from a list. Good examples of choice-based IF include Anna Anthropy's Star Court, Alan DeNiro's Solarium, the various games hosted by Choice of Games, and most every given visual novel.

Writing IF for Yuletide

IF is considered opt-in for Yuletide - please don't write it for people who don't want it. If you aren't sure whether it would be welcome or not, ask a mod to check with the intended recipient.

You are still required to follow the normal rules, such as focusing on requested characters (unless the recipient has said you needn't include them all).

It can be hard to figure out what word count an IF story really is - what you've written is full of code that doesn't count, and what your recipient sees may vary in length depending on their choices. If you're posting to the main collection, try to overshoot the minimum requirement a bit, just to be on the safe side. Say a minimum of somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Or probably about 10 to 15 minutes play through.

If your post to the main AO3 collection is under 1,000 words (e.g. you're just linking to an online playable version elsewhere), please drop the mods a note so they know it isn't someone posting something under the minimum, and provide them with an estimated word-count.

If you're writing a treat, unless it includes over 1,000 words of text and you're also sure your recipient would be happy with it as a main gift, please post it to Madness

Your recipient does need to be able to access what you've created! Please link to a suitable IF interpreter if required, or if possible make a web-playable version.

Requesting IF for Yuletide

If you would be happy to receive IF this year, please leave a comment below, following this template:

IF Canons Nominated for Yuletide

Plenty of IF canons get nominated for Yuletide! While it's still important to ask before writing IF for someone, someone who consumes IF already will probably be more interested in getting it. (Some of these canons were adapted into other mediums, so it's possible that someone who's interested in one of those isn't at all into the IF side of things. Thus why it's important to ask.) Consider requesting or offering one of these if you're interested in IF for Yuletide. For 2025 moontyger thoughtfully composed a list of IF canons in the tagset, available here: Interactive Fiction in the 2025 Tagset!

Some IF Tools

A * means they can make web-based games.

Parser-based

Inform*: One of the biggest development tools for making parser-based IF. Has an English-like code. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Quest*: Another big IF development tool. Has a click-and-point editor with the option to check out the code. For Windows and web.

TADS*: A long running engine for writing interactive fiction, though generally not as easy to use as Inform. The latest version can make web-based games, although they need to be hosted on a non-https address or on the IFDB.

Choice-based

Twine*: Very popular tool for making choice-based IF. Has a visual editor, with some code-y bits for variables and the like. Can be extended with some Javascript passages. Available for Mac and Windows, and Twine 2 is web-based. See this comment for more notes.

ChoiceScript*: Used by the fine folks over at Choice of Games. Uses simplified Javascript to make games. It's very stat heavy. Requires a text editor. See this comment for notes.

Ren'py: Engine for making visual novels. Uses a simple scripting language. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and can make games for all those platforms.

Inklewriter*: A completely web-based engine for making CYOA-style games.

Current Mood: tired

Entry tags:

mini-challenge

Season's Treatings mini-challenge

Do you love receiving or writing end of year holiday stories? Are you prompting a snowed in Hanukkah celebration or an Australian New Year's beach party? Season's Treatings may be for you!

This mini-challenge is all about November, December and January holidays, traditions, and cultural celebrations big and small and all over the globe--and perhaps some fantasy worlds, who knows. If you want to prompt it, someone may want to write it.

When you comment, please include:

AO3 Name:
Letter Link (if applicable):
Holiday(s) Requested:
Fandom and character(s):
Prompts:

When you upload, tag it as Season's Treatings so we can all find them.

Current Mood: exhausted

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Wednesday Reading Meme

What I Just Finished Reading

Once again, nothing. I have had a migraine for 48 hours and counting. (It comes and goes, which is why I am typing this post now. But you can tell I have one, because I clearly don't understand narrative enough to be reading comics and/or am too tired to type much.)

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Fantastic Four #4, Ultimate Spider-Man #22, Ultimate Spider-Man Incursion #5, Ultimates #17 )

What I'm Reading Next

Hey, whoever it was who wanted me to review the sequel(s) to Fourth Wing and I said I wasn't going to do that because only the first book was on Kindle Unlimited and the library ebook waitlist was long and there was no way I was paying money for anything in this series?

Yeah, so books 2 and 3 are on Kindle Unlimited now, so at some point when I can stand to read lengthy original fiction books again (I do not know when this will be) I am willing to read and review terrible fantasy books because I love dragons too much for my own good. Clearly.

So this will probably not be the next thing, but it's on the list.

Entry tags:

Dear Yuletide Writer

Thank you for writing a story for me! I am

Isis on AO3. As long as you generally stick with things I like and avoid things I dislike, I will enjoy your story even if it doesn't take on any of my vague prompts, which are really just suggestions. All my prompts are at least mildly spoilery so you may want to take care expanding those sections.

If you're not feeling inspired about your assignment and want to try something else, the British Airways "May We Haveth One's Attention" Safety Video is literally a 5-minute fandom (okay, 5:22), Il Gattopardo | The Leopard (2025) is 6 1-hour episodes, and you can write my request for the Fractured Europe Sequence based only on the first 2 books (out of 4). For my Shardlake request, you need only the fifth book, but my request is highly spoilery and ideally you should read the book before looking at my request, which seems like a big ask!

Treats are enabled and welcome! I've included general art likes in the "nattering" section for artists interested in making Wrapping Paper treats (and if you draw me a treat I'll try to write you the story that goes with it!).

Likes: I like historical (if appropriate) and worldbuildy detail, scenery porn, what-if AUs, original characters (along with, not instead of, any requested ones, unless otherwise specified), pastiche of canon style, time travel, bodyswap, bodysharing, ghost/afterlife stories, mythological and supernatural elements, and magical realism. (These fantasy elements are welcome in canons that don’t have them, unless specified.) As you can probably tell from my specific fandom details, the setting and worldbuilding are as important to me as the characters, so I'm not a fan of AU that completely changes the setting, but if you have a brilliant idea, go for it; I would prefer "interesting" to "mundane" AUs, e.g., in SPAAAACE yes, coffeeshop no. (Coffeeshop in SPAAAACE, okay!). I would like happy endings and no major character death, though feel free to kill off original or minor characters as your story requires.

DNW: I do not want fic focusing on pregnancy or children (mentions of either are fine), A/B/O or BSDM dynamics, mundane modern AUs, or major character death (other than canon deaths). I do not want anything that contradicts the characters being cisgender as presented in canon, unless they are canonically not cisgender. I do not want fic that uses neopronouns (e.g. 'xie') – please use 'they' for nonbinary or agender characters, or whatever these characters use in canon. I do not want nonstandard capitalization or punctuation other than in the title. I very strongly prefer past tense; if you feel your story really needs to be in present tense for stylistic reasons that's fine, but I want it to be a conscious choice, not a default.

I do not want unrequested noncanon ships involving canon characters even in the background, other than those I've specifically mentioned I'm okay with. Canon ships, mentioned past relationships with OCs, and implicitly canon ships (such as people’s parents) are fine, as are OC/OC relationships. Please don't break up any specified relationships or put my requested characters in relationships other than the ones I've mentioned I like.

Other general nattering about my tastes - characters, crossovers, style, sex likes, art likes

Characters: The characters I've chosen are the ones I want the focus on, but the choice of what kind of story to write and who to include in it lies with you. Feel free to take things in whatever direction you like and/or include characters I haven't mentioned, including original characters, though please keep the focus on my requested characters (except as noted). For worldbuilding requests, feel free to use canon characters or original characters as you choose.

Crossovers: I love crossovers, but if you choose to write one, please make sure (either through checking my fic, tags [reading will find books, viewing will find movies and TV shows, games will find games, and some fandoms have tags as well; also you can check my Goodreads 'read' shelf for books, though I haven’t updated it in a while], asking my friends, or asking one of the other mods to ask me) that I know the other source. I have a particular soft spot for crossovers with real historical characters in historical-fiction fandoms.

Style: I generally prefer plot (as in, things happening; doesn't have to be elaborate or long – as contrasted with character studies), past tense, and lots of dialogue. But these are preferences, not hard DNWs, and if you have a brilliant idea that requires present tense and no dialogue, go ahead. My only hard preferences are for conventional pronouns (he/she/they as appropriate), capitalization, and punctuation. I'm happy with epistolary fic, journal entries, and other nonconventional formats, and if you want to create interactive fiction (second person is fine for this, or otherwise as you prefer), go for it! I have no preference on story length - make it as long (or as short) as it needs to be.

Sex and relationships: Explicit sex okay, non-explicit sex is okay, no sex is okay, but any sex should be in believable language for that era or fandom. UST, gen, het, slash, femslash, whatever. It's all good. I don't care for PWP, as I need at least a little context that establishes the world and those characters. I also prefer sex scenes that focus on emotions and perceptions rather than on the mechanics of what goes where: think M-rating rather than E-rating, and I'm totally fine with fade-to-black. I am rather vanilla in my preferences where kink is concerned: mouths, hands, genitals, toys, all are fine, but I am not interested in BSDM, bloodplay, watersports, spanking, or fetish play. I like kissing, touching, oral sex, penetrative sex, frottage, pegging, mutual masturbation, outdoor sex, indoor sex, and pretty much any position two bodies can contort themselves into. I am not interested in threesomes, moresomes, or poly fic in these fandoms. I am absolutely fine with a gen work in any of these fandoms.

Wrapping paper challenge art treats: I would love art for any of these fandoms! I like both serious portraits and funny little cartoons. I have a soft spot for art in which one character is doing something typical-but-alarming, and the other is rolling his or her eyes, or reacting with horror, or getting ready to douse them with a bucket of water, or whatever. Stylistically, I love interesting and experimental compositions, unusual perspectives, emphasis on textures such as hair and clothing, and scenery porn (Mountains! Trees! Cliffs with water crashing on them! Brooding ruins of an ancient castle!) and I like line drawings as well as full color. I really like stylized artwork that depends on a limited color scheme (my favorite colors are blues and greens; I also like black-and-white and grayscale), and not-too-detailed sketches that feel dynamic. I like art-pastiche such as playing cards and tarot cards, posters, and so on. If I receive any art treats, I will do my best to write a ficlet for the artist based on the art!

And now, on to the prompts!

British Airways "May We Haveth One's Attention" Safety Video: Any (Georgian Queen, Anne, George, Scots on Horseback, Worldbuilding)

I watched this homage to British costume drama (and airline safety video!) and was instantly charmed. Feel free to take it anywhere along the crack continuum that you like: is this a strange alternate world in which airplanes were invented much, much earlier? Did the historical characters time-travel forward, or the flight attendants time-travel in reverse? Did a real queen isekai into the filming of an airline safety video and just deal with it with royal aplomb? Why are Anne and George sitting in airline seats in the parlor? (Do they invite the flight attendants to their wedding?) And, the most provoking question of all: how did the Scots get seatbelts on their horses?

Additional DNW for this fandom: don't break up Anne and George! However, any other relationships here are fair game, and I'd be intrigued by something like Scot/flight attendant or Queen/pilot.

The Fractured Europe Sequence - Dave Hutchinson: Worldbuilding

I first read Europe in Autumn and Europe at Midnight nearly 10 years ago, when the "Xian Flu" was a far-fetched SF imagining and the "Global War on Terror" was not nearly so global. I'm re-reading these books now in preparation for reading the rest of the series, and let me just say it's landing rather differently.

The worldbuilding in this series delights and enthralls me! I would love anything about the splinter polities, about the Line, about the Campus or the Community or the Coureurs, on scales small (the discovery of an entrance to the Community) to large (a seemingly-stable country splitting into pieces). Past, present, or future; Europe, or beyond - what happened in Asia? In North America? while all this is happening in Europe? There are intriguing hints that the US has had a civil war, and that Texas has become its own country! The little bits of story with secondary characters hint at lots of things outside the scope of the novels that could be filled in. Or - and I don't know yet if these get answered in the books, but if it doesn't - how does mapping an alternate dimension make it spring into being? What was Mundt's "trick of topology"?

(Please note that as I write this letter, I've only read the first two books and about half of the third, but I will have read the entire series by Yuletime.)

Il Gattopardo | The Leopard (2025): Concetta Corbera di Salina

I enjoyed this costume drama set in the waning days of the Sicilian nobility and the rise of the Kingdom of Italy. I'm specifically looking for a canon-divergence AU here: please give Concetta a happy future. Maybe she runs off with Tancredi to America; maybe she runs off to Paris with Angelica! Maybe she gets married to Bombello after all, and it works out. Or perhaps she finds joy in her stewardship of the Salina estate, somehow, if you want to keep things closer to canon. I'd be intrigued with a crossover with historical RPF of the period, or any appropriate fandom I'm familiar with.

DNW a romantic relationship between Concetta and any of her siblings or parents, or Calogero, but I'm fine with her finding love with an OC, male or female, or a minor character ditto.

Warrior (TV 2019): Any (Ah Toy, Father Jun, Hong, Lai, Nellie Davenport, Wang Chao, Young Jun)

This show gave me vibes of Peaky Blinders set in the late 19th C San Francisco Chinatown Tong Wars, with a generous helping of Game of Thrones. I'd love a story about any of the nominated characters, particularly their backstory or an imagined future after the show (you are welcome to canon-divergence away canon deaths). Some specific things that interest me:
- How Ah Toy and Nellie navigate their romantic relationship (forbidden in multiple ways!)
- Lai's hero-worship of Ah Toy, her silent steadfastness, the way she blossomed at the vineyard
- Hong's ridiculous cheery attitude in the face of a thousand insults and injuries, his matter-of-fact approach to his sexuality
- Wang Chao's careful balancing act at the fulcrum of the warring tongs and the police
- The fraught father-son relationship of Father Jun and Young Jun

Please don't break up canon relationships. General DNW of unrequested noncanon ships involving canon characters applies here except for the following: I vaguely ship Wang Chao with Richard Lee (growing out of their developing understanding during their forced road-trip); Lai might be interesting with Penelope or Mai Ling, if you could figure out how to get them together, or an OC (male or female) or any other non-nominated character; Hong with an OMC or any non-nominated male character, before or after his time with Marcel. However, please feel completely free to write gen!

Matthew Shardlake Series - C. J. Sansom: Hugh Curteys

I read the first few Shardlake books a few years ago, and then read the rest of them in one fell swoop this summer. I feel like they just got better and better! Heartstone, where we meet Hugh Curteys, was possibly my favorite, because it contains one of my favorite tropes, and if you haven't read these books please stop here because MAJOR SPOILERS...

...I am absolutely weak for the "girl disguises herself as boy" plot, especially in historical contexts where women's lives are circumscribed by the prevailing social/religious attitudes. I really love the way Sansom has written Hugh here; he fully inhabits the character he has taken on for himself. Even once Shardlake figures it out, he still refers to Hugh with male pronouns, which implies to me that for Hugh, being male is not just his cover story but the identity he has chosen to live.

I'd really love a story about Hugh's new life in Antwerp working in the cloth trade, and I'm fine with it being set with him back in England talking to Shardlake, or epistolary, or just completely about Hugh with no involvement from Shardlake and the other characters. I'm fine with gen, or with him attempting a romance either with a man or a woman (original character) - it's up to you whether it goes well or disastrously, considering his secret and the setting. But please keep things firmly set within the historical context of these books.

Additional DNW for this fandom: No Hugh/Jack or Hugh/Matthew. I'm cautiously open to Hugh/Nicholas, and although there are not a lot of appropriate female characters in these books, if you can think of one, that's fine. Original characters are of course fine here.

Entry tags:

author: a,
fiction

Recent Reading: Private Rites

Last night I wrapped up another Julia Armfield novel, Private Rites. This novel is about three estranged sisters who are pushed back together when their father dies.

Very sorry I can't give this one a higher rating (I gave it a 3.25 on StoryGraph), because I loved the last Armfield novel I read, Our Wives Under the Sea, and this book shares a lot of similarities with that one. Our Wives Under the Sea was a meditative, slow-paced exploration of an evolving grief which hit me quite hard, but Private Rites comes off, if I can be excused for phrasing it this way, like it's trying too hard. Private Rites obviously really wants the reader to think it's Deep and Thoughtful and Literary, and it shows this desire too clearly for it to work, for me.

What does succeed in Private Rites is the frustrating and heart-breaking portrayal of three estranged sisters struggling with the legacy of a complicated and toxic father. Isla, Irene, and Agnes are not particularly likeable people, and even they muse over whether this can be tied to their strange and un-childlike childhood, or if it's just natural to them. Armfield so captures the feeling of being trapped at a certain age around family, the notion that they are locked into their view of you at ten or thirteen or seventeen and never update that view to reflect who you are as an adult and how you may subconciously regress to fit that view around them. She also catches the frustrating feeling of knowing you are reacting irrationally to a sibling and not being able to stop yourself and how much emotional history undergirds these seemingly outsized responses.

The slow apocalypse happening in the background of the story feels like it ties in well with the emotional state of the three protagonists; a drowning of the world that takes place a little at a time over many years until things become unlivable.

However, as mentioned above, the book ultimately does not succeed to me at being engaging. It is incredibly introspective in a way that comes off as navel-gazing. The "City" portions of the chapters felt especially like Armfield begging us to find the novel artistic and creative, which was unnecessary, because there's plenty here to stand on its own.

The ending also felt like a complete non-sequitur. The seeds for it were sown throughout the book, but not prominently enough that I cared when it came about. Instead, I felt cheated out of an emotional denouement among the three sisters, which is cast off in a coup by this last-minute, poorly-explained plot point.

I also felt like Isla gets an unfair share of grief, and it wasn't clear why she among the three of them was singled out to be exclusively miserable.

Do love the queer representation here; Armfield continues to excel in that.

On the whole, there is a lot of good meat here and it approaches grief from a completely different angle from Our Wives Under the Sea so that it doesn't feel at all repetitive if you've read that one, but it also drags more and I found the ending unsatisfying.

Entry tags:

mini-challenge

MultiLingYule 2025

The MultiLingYule mini-challenge is for works in languages other than English.

Maybe there are very few fanworks in your first, second, etc language, and you'd love to connect with a fellow speaker who's also a fellow fan.

Maybe you're learning a new language and getting a gift in it would be a delightful way to improve your fluency.

Maybe you just want to talk about how much you love conlangs and invite someone to incorporate conlangs into your gift.

The possibilities are multi-ple!

MultiLingYule is an opt-in challenge similar to Crueltide and Interactive Fiction. Comment here to let people know

-if you are interested in receiving gifts in languages other than English
-what languages those are
-what you're prompting (link your letter; if you don't have a letter, you can link your prompts on the app after requests are revealed)
-any other useful notes.

With a Mod Hat On

On the requesting side: if you would be happy if a gift in a different language were your only gift, please also note this in the optional details of your sign-up form. This prevents mod panic when we go to check assignments and need to figure out if someone can actually read their gift!

On the creation side: unless someone has clearly indicated that a non-English work would suit as their only gift, gifts of that kind need be posted in Yuletide Madness, regardless of length. Works can only go in the main collection if they fulfil all the same requirements as an assigned gift.

Similarly, someone may be delighted to get a gift in a language you've just started to learn, and connect with you over enthusiasm for that language, but if you're posting a gift in the Main rather than the Madness collection, it should probably either be in a language you're fluent in or in a language you can call on fluent help for.

On the (tangential) beta side, people who can check text snippets, lines of dialogue, etc, in multiple languages are extremely valuable and appreciated, and if you can offer this service, please consider doing so when the beta post goes up.

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Entry tags:

mini-challenge

Babytide 2025

A mini challenge for people interested in fics regarding characters being pregnant, having babies, and raising children. Can be for a single character or a ship, fluffy or angst, good or bad parents! The sky’s the limit.

To enter, copy/paste and fill out the following form:

AO3 Username:
Letter Link:
Fandoms:
DNWs (if any):
Prompts:

Short-Form Fiction and Poetry 2025

Thank you to donutsweeper for finding many of these! Feel free to ask me to add canons that would fit.

Ballad of the Mari Lwyd - Vernon Watkins

Benlian - Oliver Onions

Casting the Runes - M. R. James

The Changeling - psychomachia

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Craobh-Òir agus Craobh-Airgid | Gold Tree and Silver Tree (Fairy Tale)

The Day Before the Revolution - Ursula K. Le Guin

Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen

Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad

FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns

For Sale: Baby Shoes Never Worn - Anonymous

Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti

The Green Hills of Earth - Robert Heinlein (Short Story)

Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers - Alyssa Wong

Jorinde und Joringel | Jorinde and Joringel (Fairy Tale)

La Barbe bleue | Bluebeard - Charles Perrault

Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke (short story collection)

The Library of Babel - Jorge Luis Borges

Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)

Lucifer's Wife - Eleanor M. Ingram

mulberry down!! - Nicole Kornher-Stace

Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad - M. R. James

Sandkings - George R. R. Martin

Seventy-Two Letters - Ted Chiang

Solitude - Ursula K. Le Guin

Sonata for Harp and Bicycle - Joan Aiken

A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman

There is No Antimemetics Division - qntm

Two Loves - Lord Alfred Douglas (Poem)

The Very Pulse of the Machine - Michael Swanwick

Wind Will Rove - Sarah Pinsker

Wulf and Eadwacer (old English, modern English)

Yudah Cohen Series - Rebecca Fraimow (one, two, three)

Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne | East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Fairy Tale)

Entry tags:

mini-challenge

Wrapping Paper 2025

The Wrapping Paper art challenge for Yuletide is an opportunity for those who love art to opt-in to giving and receiving art treats! Comment here to request art, and/or read the comments to find someone to treat.

Please be sure to post your treats to the Madness Collection; art is not permitted in the main collection. Please respect your recipient's wishes as to whether they'd like art as a treat. Tag your treats with "Wrapping Paper" to help them be found!

If you want to receive art, please provide this info in the comments:

AO3 Handle: Letter Link: Fandom and character(s): Prompts:

Happy treating!

(If you're here from the future in 2026 and want to post Wrapping Paper yourself because it's taken a while to go up: feel free!)

Entry tags:

Admin Post: Admin Post: Year-End Marathon 2025

At the end of the year, it can be tempting to give up on your writing goals. But giving up is not the Get Your Words Out way! We believe in writing. We believe in trying. We believe that any progress is good progress. So even if your big writing goals are out of reach, you can still reach a goal.

Let's set that new goal today.

Join us for the Year-End Marathon. And this is a special party, because we are inviting everyone!

Everyone—whether you're a current or previous GYWO member or have never even heard of this thing (is it a writing community? how do you pronounce "GYWO" anyway?)—EVERYONE is invited to join the 2025 GYWO writers in this marathon to the end of the year.

What Is the Year-End Marathon?

The Year-End Marathon begins Nov 1 and runs through Dec 31.

Make a pledge to write 15 Days each month (a total of 30 days) or 15,000 words each month (a total of 30,000 words).

Join other writers with the same goals on the GYWO Discord server in a set of channels exclusive to the YEM challenge where the moderators will be hosting special discussion topics and challenges for our YEM writers. YEM writers will also have access to GYWO writing sprints hosted on our Discord.

This year, we’re incorporating public, unlocked Dreamwidth discussion posts for you to participate in, as well as extra challenges and discussion posts on Bluesky, and a 30K leaderboard on Trackbear.

If you're new to GYWO, this can be a way to see if this community is right for you before our pledge drive for 2026 begins. And if you're a GYWO 2025 writer, this can be a chance to seize your goals and put in some concentrated effort at the end of the year so you can start 2026 on the right foot.

What Are the Requirements?

🤝 Like writers who sign up for the year-long GYWO challenge, you must have an account on Dreamwidth or through OpenID. GYWO usernames are based on Dreamwidth or OpenID usernames. New writers signing up for the Year-End Marathon will not have full access to the GYWO Dreamwidth community at this time, but there will be two unlocked discussion posts per month that YEM members may participate in. We hope you understand keeping our naming system consistent means the mod team doesn't have to sort duplicate usernames.

✍️ Write your words! The whole purpose of this challenge is to develop and maintain your writing life, so write something! All words and time counted toward your pledge progress must be your own work. Use of generative AI or passing off the work of a collaborator as your own is against the spirit of Get Your Words Out. See our website for an overview of what words count for the word count pledge and what activities count for a habit pledge.

🌈 Be a rainbow, not a pain-bow. We would love for you to participate in our Discord community and basically ask that you not be a jerk when doing so. Disrespect of the community and its members, along with hate speech, harassment, abuse, and endangerment may result in your removal from the community. We're pretty chill and ask that you be chill, too. (Also, if you have a problem with a member or find a conversation veering into uncomfortable territory, alert a moderator and we'll be on it as quick as can be.)

A monthly check-in specific to the Year-End Marathon will be posted for your own accountability, but attendance will not be taken and it is not a required part of your membership.
(Current GYWO writers—you're still responsible to check-in as part of your GYWO 2025 membership. Attendance is taken there, not on the Year-End Marathon check-in, so make sure to check in as usual.)

How Do I Participate?

To participate in the Year-End Marathon, complete the Year-End Marathon Pledge Form.

If you choose to join our Discord server, once your pledge has been processed, a moderator will assign you a pledge role to give you access to the YEM-exclusive area and writing sprints channel. Join other YEM writers to chat about the challenge, writing in general, and your writing life in particular.

On Discord: each week, moderators will post either a discussion topic or a writing activity for YEM writers. You can respond directly to the moderator as a reply or join in the wider discussion with other writers, depending on your comfort level.

On Bluesky: each week, moderators will post either a discussion question or writing challenge. Feel free to reply, quote post, tag us at getyourwordsout.bsky.social, or use the #gywo hashtag.

On Dreamwidth: twice a month, moderators will post discussion posts where you can talk about your progress and chat with fellow YEM participants.

All moderator-led engagement is crafted to support a wide range of writers, so whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, or poetry or you engage in horror, romance, absurdism, or fanfic we do our best to find something to support your writing life.

✅To participate in the monthly check-in specific to the Year-End Marathon, you'll need to have access to the GYWO Discord server. The link to check in for the YEM challenge will only be posted on Discord. Check-in is optional but recommended.

Have you picked your pledge for the Year-End Marathon?
Remember, your choices are 15 Days per month (30 days total) or 15,000 Words per month (30,000 words total).

Pledging for the GYWO Year-End Marathon Ends Nov 7, 2025.

Pledge for the Year-End Marathon

If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them!
For more information about Get Your Words Out, please visit our website. Pledging for 2026 will open around December 12.

Entry tags:

canon roundup

Interactive Fiction in the 2025 Tagset

This is a roundup of IF in the tagset, with links and nominated characters. There aren't many, but they're spread over a few categories, so can be hard to find. There are a few things I weren't sure if they counted or not, so this is just the ones I was certain of. Let me know if I've missed something and I'll add it.

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds

1. Claire (16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds)
2. Lucy (16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds)

Changeling Charade on Choice of Games website or Steam

1. Alistair Farrington
2. Rowan Forester
3. Valentine Dupont
4. Worldbuilding (Changeling Charade)

Freshman Magic: Spellbooks and Tangled Sheets Choice of Games website or Steam

1. Alistair (Freshman Magic)
2. Halim (Freshman Magic)
3. Main Character (Freshman Magic)
4. Worldbuilding (Freshman Magic)

Keeper Series - Brynn Chernosky (tumblr link, but it has links to places to play in the sidebar)

1. Astrid Adtaz (Keeper Series)
2. Cressida Monroe (Keeper Series)
3. Female Main Character (Keeper Series)

Lady Thalia series (interactive fiction)

1. Margaret "Mel" Williams (Lady Thalia series)
2. Matthew "Yorkie" Barker (Lady Thalia series)
3. Oscar Knight (Lady Thalia series)
4. Theodora "Thalia" Knight (Lady Thalia series)

Stay? - E. Jade Lomax

1. Esteban
2. Myka
3. Jo
4. Worldbuilding

Type Help (Video Game)

1. Annie Beaumont (Type Help)
2. Damian Maseko (Type Help)
3. Eleanor Galley (Type Help)
4. Oswald Galley (Type Help)
5. Richard Longley (Type Help)
6. Rupert Galley (Type Help)
7. Victoria "Vic" Maseko (Type Help)
8. Worldbuilding (Type Help)

Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives - Jeffrey Dean Choice of Games website or Steam

1. Arundel
2. Qui
3. Robert Ward

Entry tags:

canon roundup

Podcasts/Audio Series in the 2025 Tagset

I started listening to so many great things last year thanks to making this list, so I'm back at it again with a compilation post for podcasts, audio dramas, actual plays, and radio shows in the tagset with links on where to find them on the internet (they can usually be found in your favourite podcatcher with little issue). I've also included links to transcripts when available.

Please comment with anything I've missed!

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

astvanor

Astvanor Session 172 (9/26)

( In which the party defeats an ancient green dragon and the ranger learns more about her past and her family )

Entry tags:

mini-challenge

Unconventionyule

Unconventionyule is a mini-challenge to help people who like unconventional formats find one another's requests, whether that’s poetry, epistolary, spreadsheets, social media, puzzles, or other unusual mediums. Please remember that works in the main collection must still be at least 1000 words, but shorter works can be submitted to the Madness collection!

To participate, simply copy-paste the following into a comment:
AO3 Name:
Letter Link:
Requested Fandoms:
Format(s): (e.g. epistolary, poetry, spreadsheets, social media)
(Optional) Prompts:

Tag your work with Unconventionyule and/or Unconventional Format to help others find your works!

Entry tags:

mini-challenge

Chromatic Yuletide 2025

Chromatic Yuletide is a collection post for Yuletide requests that include characters of colour. Posting here doesn't obligate you to do anything, but it helps writers find your requests and treat you.

Posting requirements:

Your request centers around at least one character of colour.

(I acknowledge there are some shortcomings with the "person of colour" descriptor. I'm also not going to police who is or isn't a character of colour; please just use your best judgment.)

To participate, simply copy-paste the following into a comment:

AO3 name:
Letter link:
Fandom:
Characters:
What is it? description of canon or a link to a canon promo (optional)
What kind of thing am I requesting? also optional

AO3 name: Letter link: Fandom: Characters: What is it?</stong> description of canon or a link to a canon promo (optional) What kind of thing am I requesting? also optional

If you post a fic for Yuletide with one or more POC characters, tag it with Chromatic Yuletide so people can find it easily!

Entry tags:

Webcomic fandoms you can offer/request in Yuletide 2025

A roundup all the webcomic fandoms in the 2025 tag set (plus all the characters you can request for each one), including links to where you can read them online. Fandoms are in the order/format AO3 puts the tags in.

I tried to flag everything that was (a) NSFW and/or (b) at least partly paywalled. If I missed any examples of that, please let me know!

( Comics, on the web, (mostly) free to get and easy to read )