Arctic Light

It's 2026, and the winter-spring exchange cycle is getting underway!

Candy Hearts / candyheartsex is now in signups! This is a low minimum relationships exchange (gen or ship) that reveals on Valentines Day.

purimgifts is also in signups! This is a low-minimum exchange for fanfic and/or podfic with a side helping of art, focused on characters who are at least one of: women, Jewish, or persecuted (preferably by evil viziers).

traumaticexperiences is a new exchange currently in nominations. Does what it says on the tin (an exchange about characters dealing with trauma).

amperslashexchange still has two lingering pinch hits, if anyone is interested! One is for Guardian (book, show, or RPF); the other has some various video game and book fandoms. At the current time, PHs are due on Jan 2 for a hopeful Jan 3 opening, but another extension is possible.

In other news, it sounds like LJ might be in its final death throes - see this bluesky thread from rahaeli/synecdochic about it. She recommends that you save anything off there that you want to keep.

I've kept my LJ account all this time despite being aware of the risks because a) I want to keep my blog links active as long as possible since I had so much fic posted on there back in the day, and b) I don't want to lose the ability to manage the various communities I used to run or co-run (sgagenficathon and stargategenrec among them) just in case of a troll takeover or similar. It's still useful for me to be able to log in occasionally to view locked posts, and I've really appreciated LJ's continued existence as a fic archive as I've gotten into some older fandoms over the last few years. (Torchwood was especially that way - a *bunch* of fic was only on LJ and had never been ported over to other archives.)

So I was feeling a little wistful about no longer having that option in future fandoms, but then I got to thinking about the sheer longevity of it. It was 20 years ago when I got into LJ, circa 2005 or so. 20 years before 2005 was 1985. In 2005, almost nothing about the internet as I had known it in the mid to late 90s was still the same. So the fact that I could go dumpster diving for 15-year-old fanfic in Torchwood fandom was really extraordinary compared to the experience I would have had in 2005 looking for fic from 1990. The most important rule of the early internet for me was that nothing lasts forever, and while it's been nice to have the longevity of certain aspects of its current incarnation, all things internet will still pass eventually.

Still, if there's anything over there you want to save, of your stuff or someone else's, now would be the time.

Edit: As per a question in the comments, does anyone know a way to save an archive of pictures from LJ without having to do it manually? A tool, technique, etc ... this is not for me, but I'd like to help if possible!

We watched Silo (AppleTV) seasons 1-2 over the past week or so. General reactions:

Click here

Draggy and depressing first season, really fun and engaging second season with an infuriating letdown of a season ending. (Even sudden surprise Jessica Henwick could not salvage that hot mess. Which apparently is the books' fault, but still.) I enjoyed most of the season two character arcs enough that I'm pretty happy to consider it a satisfying 2-season show. Maybe I'll write up more details later?

Feel free to ask me questions in the comments. I have not read the books it's based on, though I get the impression the show follows the book trajectory pretty closely.

Exchanges:
- Currently have a placeholder signup in for festivids. I need to finish my signup (closes on Oct. 3).
- Almost certainly signing up for amperslashexchange, currently in nominations.
- I haven't signed up, but extremely tempted by Back from the Dead Flash Exchange, currently in nominations/signups (til Oct 3).
- Biggles holiday exchange is definitely running again! Planning post and polls here at the comm.

I don't have plans to do Yuletide this year, unless the FOMO gets to me too much.

summerofhorrorexchange revealed today! I got an astonishing 15K(!!!) Biggles fic (!!!) which I won't be able to properly start reading until tomorrow, but I cannot WAIT, it looks amazing and I'm dying to read it!

Obligatory reminder that I have a fic in the exchange as well. Deeply mysterious, hid my tracks amazingly as usual. And there is a lovely selection of other horror fic as well!

Earlier today, before all of that, I posted yet another Murderbot TV-verse fic, System // Handshake (2500 wds, gen, post-canon). Summary is spoilery for the finale; it's loosely springboarded off another fic I'd read earlier.

There's also this seriously adorable short interview with the whole Murderbot cast (link goes to Tumblr) in which they talk about playing the Bitter/Sweet game from the show on the set. HOW ARE THEY SO CUTE, I DIEEEEEE

And, longer and more serious, but I really enjoyed watching this David Dastmalchian interview; he talks about the show, as well as some of his other projects (Dune; comic book writing) and is so adorably excited about the show and invested in it.

While we're waiting for h/c-ex to reveal in July, this just showed up on EAD ...

ANNOUNCING TERRIBLE TEMPERATURE TROUBLES FLASH FEST: a multifandom flash fest for all your terrible temperature troubles!

Nomination & Sign-ups: Now-June 30.
Assignments Out: July 2.
Works Due: July 10.
Work Reveals: July 11.
Creator Reveals: July 17.
All times at 11:59 PM Eastern.

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/temptroubles2025/profile
https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/23809

Hypothermia ... heatstroke ... etc ...

(And it's one of those 1-fandom minimum request/offer exchanges, I'M JUST POINTING THIS OUT, IN CASE IT IS RELEVANT TO ANYONE.)

I realize this would be a terrible time for me to sign up for anything because I'm leaving tomorrow and I'll be gone until July 4 (Mom stuff again), but there's still almost a week of writing time after that.

unsent_letters_exchange author reveals are out, and my shockingly unsurprising entry is Eloquent (Biggles/EvS, 2100 words).

In other recent exchange developments, I joined in the Mismatched Tropes flash exchange and got two lovely small gifts: A Safe Landing (Biggles wingfic) and Cuddly Circumstances (B5, Londo & Vir, literal cuddle pollen).

There is also this thoroughly satisfying snippet written by philomytha for a prompt I left her: Any Biggles characters, revolutions.

Hi! Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm very excited to see what you come up with, and I'm sure I'll like whatever you make.

Don't worry about whether you're sticking close enough to the requested horror type, or whether your story is horror enough. If the story wanders, that's fine. The prompts are for suggestions only and not meant to confine you to only writing those ideas. I'm fine with something short and atmospheric rather than plotty (but also love long plotty fic!). You can also feel free to mix and match prompts from different requests, as long as my DNW and pairing requests are respected.

I welcome treats!

( General likes )

( Horror likes )

( Horror Do Not Want )

Fandoms

( Biggles series - W.E. Johns )

( MASH )

( Babylon 5 )

Two new exchanges are currently in nominations!

caseficexchange is taking nominations until April 13. (Signups April 14-27; due July 11.) This exchange has a 3K minimum.

whumpex has the same nomination/signup deadlines, but a shorter writing period (due May 27) and a 500-word minimum.

Both of these have a 1 fandom minimum for signing up.

(Why yes, I am thinking about signing up for one or both of them.)

So this is actually NOT the fic of Ysande's from Closer Flash that I asked permission to write a follow-up to, but I was just kind of noodling on fic this morning and ended up writing a snippet following on from ysande's A Hard Bargain and specifically one of the comments (under the cut).

I'm posting it here rather than there so ysande knows there's no obligation to comment on it!

Under the cut: 800 words of Biggles-EvS-Algy post-awkward-gen-snuggling, maybe a little sad/wistful at the end, but in the same way that the fic is. I think you probably need to read the fic first for this to make sense ...

( 800 words of awkward morning-after-snuggling under the cut )

Just Married is revealed and I wrote a thing!

For Luck and For Love (Biggles/EvS + team, mature, 2800 wds)
A not-quite-legal wedding, with beauty and with love.

This was a treat, written at the very last minute (actually posted post-reveals). I wanted to write something to make up for all my recent defaults, and the "secret wedding" prompt called to me. (I also liked the idea of trying to write marriage fic in the canon world, as much as I adored the homophobia-free AU ones and have written my own, but I liked the challenge of keeping it canon-compliant, and it also felt very them to me to do something like this.)

I still haven't decided whether to sign up for ficinabox. So tempting! But do I really want to sign up to write 10K of fic during a summer when I defaulted on multiple exchanges due to Inability to Word? It seems like a bad idea!

But you know what I am currently eyeing:

....And Your Blorbos Closer flash exchange - forced proximity (one bed, handcuffed together, etc), 300 word minimum, signups close Sept. 2, 1-week writing period. I am TEMPTE. I may be brainstorming tags as we speak. (Signups open on Friday.)

Summer of Horror authors are revealed! I had to drop out of this one, but I want to reiterate my love for my excellent ghost-story gift and the rest of the Biggles offerings. (I'm glad my recipient ended up getting a lovely gift!)

At the moment, summerofhorrorexchange is running a poll on Oct/Nov deadline dates for a fall horror promptfest and I'm hoping to get in on that! Head over and vote on a date if this is something you might be interested in too.