#Tales of Three Planets

[tomoleary]

Roy Krenkel - Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tales of Three Planets” (1964)

[shalvis]

Xenoblade 1 is the best game like ever fucking made and it has two of the most dogshit sequels ever fucking made

[valarhalla]

Ok tumblr friends. I’m trying to spend less time on the internet these days, and I LOVE reading non-fiction books, but trying to find recommendations for new books is a nightmare. Any time I try to look up good new non-fiction books the results are all like “would you like to read an autobiography of Paul Newman or New Reasons We’re All Doomed” and that just. Doesn’t Work for Me. So I’m asking for recs here. I’m open to books about literally any field or topic. Only caveats are that hard sciences have to be on a level I can understand as a humanities person, and medical stuff can’t be too gory (ie I loved Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene and The Song of the Cell, but can’t stomach The Mother of all Maladies). And nothing TOO miserable, but I have a fairly high tolerance for historical stuff. I’m particularly fond of micro-history and books that delve into multiple overlapping topics.

As a sampling, here are some books I’ve read and particularly enjoyed in the last two years:

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by Caroline Pennock

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Victims of Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

The Last Days of the Incas by Kim McQuarrie 

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Story of the Syrians who Boarded the Titanic by Leila Salloum Elias

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Yeats by Andrew Knoll

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristine Kobes du Mez

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that made China Modern by JIng Tsu

The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth by Adam Goodheart

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home by Anya von Bremzen

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

Fire away!

[theemporium]

[3.1k] after a spell goes wrong, you and lando are forced to hide the fact that oscar isn't quite himself during media day at the british grand prix. it goes about as well as you would expect ft. mediocre magic, a surprised max verstappen and a cute black cat.

[find other fright night specials here]

.

There was a lot more to being a witch than people expected. 

It wasn’t all hocus pocus, waving a wand and standing around a bubbling cauldron whilst chanting in an ancient language under the moonlight. Don’t get it twisted, that was still a part of it. But there was more than cliches and stereotypes, things were a lot more complicated than reading from a spellbook and swishing a stick around. 

It was hard. 

Sometimes, it felt like that one subject in school that just never clicked. You were reading the textbooks, doing the homework and listening to the teacher but, no matter what, you couldn’t seem to get it quite right. Sometimes, you would eventually get it. 

And sometimes, you were left in situations quite like this one. 

Ideally—at least in the eyes of your grandmother—you would have done what every other young witch did at your age. You would have finished school, joined a coven and trained under the watchful eyes of the elders until you had successfully and safely mastered your magic. Upon reaching adulthood, a witch’s magic became more volatile, more unpredictable, more potent. It was vital for her to learn to control it before it overtook her. 

Unfortunately for your grandmother’s sake, you didn’t want to settle down in a coven. You wanted to explore the world. You wanted to learn to control your magic through experience, not through old scrolls and grimoires. You wanted to live, not just survive and learn. 

You did not want to be chained down by ancient rules and practices. 

However, as much as it pained for you to admit it, you kind of wish you had listened to your grandmother around about now. 

It was a funny series of events that led you to meet the two Mclaren drivers. It was somewhere during two race weekends a year ago, a meeting that happened by chance but changed the trajectory of all three of your lives. It was instant connections, late nights spent in hotels and a passion that was far from fizzling after your two weeks together were over. 

And it bloomed. 

You wanted to travel the world and they wanted to show you the world. You wanted to experience life beyond a witch’s expectations and they wanted to share that experience with you. You wanted someone to share your heart with and they wanted to be the ones you trusted with it. 

It felt like the planets aligned, the stars shone and the universe worked its magic to help you cross paths with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. It felt the invisible string of fate weaving its way through your hearts to bring you together, to keep you together, to intertwine your lives to this very point. 

And, despite the stories whispered in young witch’s ears about the taboos of humans, Lando and Oscar accepted you for who you were, they loved you for who you were. The tales of humans hating and despising and disapproving of witches were squished by your boys in seconds. In fact, they were your biggest supporters in your journey to learn and control your magic. 

Maybe sometimes a little too supportive. 

“Oh my god.”

“Lando—” 

“Oh my god!” 

“Stop panicking!” 

“How can I not fucking panic?! Oscar is a fucking—” 

“Shhh!” You hissed, slapping your hand over your boyfriend’s mouth before he altered the whole McLaren hospitality. You could feel your heart pounding in your chest, the bubbling of feeling of ‘oh, I fucked up’ becoming more and more prominent. “Just…calm down for a second.” 

Lando let out a squeak of disbelief as he gestured towards the orange cat blinking up at the both of you, sitting in the spot where Oscar had been standing moments ago. 

“Fuck,” you whispered, staring at the orange cat. “Oscar?” 

The cat meowed in response.

“Oh my god,” Lando wheezed, his eyes comically wide. “I can’t believe you turned him into an orange cat. He is definitely more of a black cat, if anything.” 

You glared at the Brit. “Oh, sorry, let me just remember that for the next time I turn our boyfriend into a fucking cat!” 

Lando’s mouth parted. “Uh, babe—” 

“What?”

Lando only nodded back towards the cat, only to find Oscar the orange cat now very much black. 

“What the fuck?” You breathed out, the panic starting to resurface. 

“Change him back!” Lando hissed. 

“Okay, okay!” You rolled your shoulders, eyes narrowing slightly in determination as you stared at the black cat in front of you. “This is fine. I turned you into a cat, I can turn you back into a human.” 

“Ideally soon,” Lando added, staring at the cat with a suspicious glare. Like he didn’t quite believe it was really Oscar. “It’s Thursday. The media team is gonna want us to start filming stuff soon.” 

So, no pressure. 

…

Sometimes, you wondered if your grandmother placed a small, inconvenient curse on you to punish you for not listening to her advice about joining a coven straight after school. 

Because that was the only explanation you could come up with behind your horrendously, inconveniently timed bad luck that would be turning one of your boyfriends into a cat on media day of the British Grand Prix—arguably one of the most important for the team and the boys in the racing calendar. 

It was a purely unpurposeful accident that led to you accidentally turning Oscar into a cat, but you thought you had a little more skill and experience to be able to change him back with the same ease. However, forty minutes later and three breakdowns later—all from Lando, thank you very much—told you that accidental magic was a lot harder to fix than one would expect. 

Or, at least, than you expected. 

“This is pointless!” 

“Babe,” you sighed but the boy was already pacing the small driver’s room already. 

“He’s stuck forever! We will never see that stupid swoop ever again! We will never hear him say ‘Webbah’ ever again!”

“Lando,” you tried again.

“Oh my god, we have to tell Mark! We have to tell everyone! How the fuck are we going to tell everyone?!” 

“Lando!” 

The boy’s mouth quickly snapped shut, his wide eyes staring back at you as you pushed yourself up from your spot on the couch, crossing the room and gently cupping his face. Your thumbs soothed over his cheeks, feeling him relax a little under your touch. 

“Relax, baby,” you whispered softly, your lips twitching upwards as he took a deep breath. “This isn’t ideal but I have messaged my grandmother. She will call back and help us sort out this mess and nobody has to know.” 

“What about the team?” Lando questioned, his brows furrowing together. “They are gonna notice—”

“We will just have to cover up until Oscar is human again,” you said with a determined nod. “It can’t be too hard, right?”

“Right, yeah, of course,” Lando nodded. “Except for one minor problem.” 

You frowned. “What?” 

“Oscar is gone.” 

Your head snapped around, expecting to turn and see the black cat curled up where he was less than a few minutes ago. But he was nowhere to be seen, the driver room now empty apart from the two of you and the door out to the rest of the paddock somehow wiggled open.

“Fuck.” 

…

“If I were a cat, where would I be?” 

“Keep your voice down!” 

“I’m just trying to get into the mindset of Oscar right now,” Lando murmured in response, his lips turned downwards as he rubbed the spot of his arm you just slapped. “If he’s even Oscar anymore. What if he’s stuck with a cat brain forever?” 

You rolled your eyes. “Magic can’t do that. He’s still Oscar. Just…Oscar with very strong cat-like urges.” 

The two of you had managed to sneak out of Lando’s driver room without alerting anyone else on the team that something was wrong. None of them questioned where Oscar was, just simply waving at the two of you walking past as Lando panic-babbled some bullshit about wanting to go see Carlos in the Ferrari hospitality to sort out some details for a golf day before the McLaren media team stole them away for the rest of the day. 

Fortunately, they bought it. 

Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to look for a cat in a paddock when no one can know you are looking for a cat.

“Should we get treats?” Lando questioned, keeping his voice low. “Or like…a laser?” 

“Yeah, because that will be real subtle,” you murmured with a snort. 

“We need to get into the mindset of a cat,” Lando said with an odd sense of certainty. 

“He would probably be somewhere warm,” you pointed out, tilting your head back to look up at the grey clouds starting to cover the sky. “But that's more of an Oscar thing than a cat thing.” 

“Oscar did say the other day he was going to hog the tire warmer blankets if the weekend had shit weather,” Lando suggested, his brows furrowing together. “What are the chances he’s just…sleeping there?” 

You glanced down at his watch, your frown deepening. “Let’s hope high.” 

…

“Pspspsps!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” 

Lando glanced up, a sheepish smile on his face. “Trying to make him feel relaxed, you know? Like we are one of his people.” 

You raised your brows, taking in the sight of him crawling through the stacks of tires on all fours before shaking your head, deciding it was easier to just leave it rather than ask any questions. 

Your grandmother hadn’t responded to any of the messages, the team were starting to blow up Lando’s phone and the two of you have had to dodge a handful of McLaren employees scouting the paddock for their drivers. 

Safe to say your plan wasn’t working the way you intended. 

“Oscar!” You called out, crouched down as you joined Lando in searching amongst the tires. “Oscar! Come on! We have fish!” 

“Ew, we do?” 

You shot the boy a look.

“Uh, yeah!” Lando quickly cleared his throat. “We have a lovely piece of salmon just for you!” 

“Fuck, maybe we should have brought some fish,” you murmured under your breath.

“What the fuck are the both of you doing?” 

You let out a noise of surprise as your head snapped up, your eyes widening a little at the sight of Max Verstappen standing a few feet away from you. But more surprisingly, the sight of a familiar black cat curled up in his arms. 

“Osc—” You winced when Lando nudged your side with elbow. “Cat! You found him!” 

Max blinked. “Did you just call him Oscat?” 

You smiled sheepishly. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?” 

“Odd name choice,” Max commented, lightly scratching the cat underneath his chin. “I didn’t know you got a cat.”

“He’s new,” Lando retorted, quickly scrambling to stand up and brush his knees off. “Uh, where did you find him?” 

“I heard meowing behind the motorhome and found this little guy trying to puncture some spare tires,” Max grinned, cooing at the black cat. “He’s a menace, isn’t he?” 

“Tell me about it,” Lando grumbled before clearing his throat. “I mean, thanks for finding him! But we will take it from here!”

“You should bring him over some time,” Max said as he handed the black cat off to Lando. “Sassy probably won’t like him but Jimmy might—” 

The cat let out a god-awful screech before he could be placed in Lando’s arms.

“Bastard,” Lando glared at the cat.

“We’ll think about it!” You quickly spoke up, ignoring Max’s odd expression as you quickly took Oscar in your arms. You didn’t miss the way Lando’s glare hardened when the black cat easily curled into your arms, purring away like nothing was wrong. “But we have to go.” 

“Media duties,” Lando supplied with a grim smile.

“Tell Oscar I said hi.” 

Lando only hummed, glaring at the black cat once more before the two of you headed back towards the McLaren garage.

…

Lando was pretty sure his team were going to think he had food poisoning again considering he had told them he had needed to go to the bathroom before they started filming. 

And the fact that had been forty minutes ago. 

“We can’t stay here forever,” Lando muttered, staring at the black cat curled up on his hoodie. Despite refusing to be held by the Brit, Oscar seemed happy to nap amongst his clothes. Lando was trying not to take it personally. 

“I know, I know,” you sighed, frowning as you flipped through your notebook. It was no grimoire, but it had little notes and lessons and spells you had learnt over the years. Your grandmother insisted it was pertinent for a witch to record her progress properly, to take extensive notes to pass on to the witches after her. You were starting to see her point now. “Why have I never turned a person into a cat before?!” 

Lando paused. “Was that question rhetorical or…?” 

You lifted your head to shoot him a look.

“Rhetorical it is,” he nodded, slouching back against the couch. “What if you just abracadabra your hands at him until something eventually happens?” 

“Other than the fact that is an incredibly stupid and idiotic idea?” You retorted before sighing, flashing him an apologetic smile at your biting tone. “It wouldn’t be safe for him or me. I don’t know what spell I would be adding onto and we don’t know what effects it could have on Oscar. For all we know, it could make this change…permanent.” 

The black cat lifted his head to meow in response. 

“He doesn’t seem like a fan of that idea either,” you added, your lips twitching at the way Oscar managed to look so judgemental even in cat form. 

“He doesn’t have much of a brain right now,” Lando grumbled, shuffling away when Oscar hissed at him in response.

“Stop antagonising him,” you chastised.

“He’s the one who won’t let me pet him!” Lando huffed in response. “He’s my boyfriend too.” 

“Is this about Max holding him?” You deadpanned.

“Yes!” 

“Well,” you started, quickly turning back towards your notebook. “In his defence, it was your fault that he got turned into a cat.”

Lando blinked. “How?”

“You were the one who kept pushing me to make you an ice lolly!”

“And you were the one who fucked up the spell!” 

“And that was because you kept tickling me—”

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

The room fell dead silent as the three of you stared at the door. 

“Lando? Is Oscar with you? The press conference starts in five minutes, you’re both needed right now.” 

The Brit turned to you with a panicked look.

“Go,” you whispered with wide eyes. “Stall them. I’ll work on Oscar.”

Lando’s brows furrowed together. “Are you sure? I can—”

“Go, we’ll be okay,” you assured him, quickly leaning in to peck his lips. “Promise, baby.” 

“Okay, okay,” he nodded, swallowing harshly. “I can distract them. I can hold them off.” 

That was perfectly possible and capable. 

…

It was not, in fact, possible or capable.

The journalists were like vultures the second they realised the second McLaren driver was nowhere to be seen. Lando assumed his presence and the three other Brits on the couch would be more than enough for the media, especially for Silverstone weekend. It turns out he was wrong. 

So very wrong. 

“Question for Lando!” 

The boy resisted the urge to roll his eyes, instead slumping further back the couch in hopes it would open up and eat him alive. He noticed Alex and George sat to his left, snickering away with their microphones sitting beside them considering they hadn’t been asked a question in the last ten minutes.

“With Oscar out of contention for the weekend, are we to expect McLaren will be focusing on your standing in the championship?” 

Lando frowned. “Oscar isn’t out for the weekend.” 

“No one has given us a reason for his absence in this conference,” the journalists retorted. “We assumed he was unwell. Do we have reason to believe he isn’t here for another reason?”

Lando bit his tongue. 

“He was seen this morning arriving in the paddock,” another journalist added. 

“Then I’m sure you saw he was here and well,” Lando said, a fake and forced smile on his face. 

“Hey, if you need a driver for that second McLaren,” Alex spoke up as he tried to divert the attention away from Lando—because bless his heart, he is a good friend—after picking up his microphone for the first time in the conference. “I know a guy.”

Lando’s smile felt a little more genuine this time. “Yeah? There’s a few qualifications he needs to meet.” 

“Be slower than you?” Alex guessed, a few chuckles breaking out amongst the crowd.

“Yeah, if he could hold everyone back, that would be great,” Lando grinned. “Just swipe everyone out whilst I just zoom off.” 

Alex cackled, leaning into George as he shook his head fondly. 

“Lando!” A journalist called out and Lando felt his whole body tense up. “Do you think Oscar’s absence shows a lack of commitment to the team?” 

Lando could feel his face scrunch up. He knew his emotions were probably written very clearly across his face if the bubbling anger inside him was telling enough. But before he could lift his microphone and say something that would have the PR team sighing deeply at his snarkiness, the door to the conference room slammed open as someone came running in. 

“Sorry, sorry!” 

Lando’s anger quickly melted away, replaced with something quite like knee-buckling relief at the sight of Oscar settling onto the couch beside him, his cheeks flushed and his hair dishevelled on his head. But he was there and he was human and that was all Lando needed to know right now. 

At least, he tried to tell himself that as Oscar supplied the journalists with some very vague excuse as to why he was late.

“How?” Lando muttered under his breath, leaning into Oscar so the microphones wouldn’t pick up on their voices.

“Grandma messaged back,” Oscar said with a small smile. “She seems confident it worked fine. But she was also three drinks deep into happy hour so, take it with a pinch of salt.” 

Lando raised his brows. “Do you feel okay?” 

“Yeah, Grandma said there shouldn’t be any lingering side effects,” Oscar assured him, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m fine. Promise. I’ll explain later.” 

Lando only nodded in response, shuffling a little closer to Oscar until their knees were nudging against each other. Oscar was there and he was human and he was touching him now, and that was what mattered. He could wait another fifteen minutes before finding out more, before wrapping his arms around his boyfriend and muttering about needing to buy a black cat before Max texted him with more questions. 

Oscar was fine now and nobody knew the mess they had accidentally created. 

“Next question is for Oscar: did you just meow?” 

.

[thaoworra]

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association recently released the poems that made it to the finalist stage for consideration for the 2024 Rhysling Awards for Short and Long Speculative Poems of the year. Congratulations to all of the nominees! This will be the 46th year these awards have been conferred!

Short Poems (50 finalists)

Attn: Prime Real Estate Opportunity!, Emily Ruth Verona, Under Her Eye: A Women in Horror Poetry Collection Volume II

The Beauty of Monsters, Angela Liu, Small Wonders 1

The Blight of Kezia, Patricia Gomes, HWA Poetry Showcase X

The Day We All Died, A Little, Lisa Timpf, Radon 5

Deadweight, Jack Cooper, Propel 7

Dear Mars, Susan L. Lin, The Sprawl Mag 1.2

Dispatches from the Dragon's Den, Mary Soon Lee, Star*Line 46.2

Dr. Jekyll, West Ambrose, Thin Veil Press December

First Eclipse: Chang-O and the Jade Hare, Emily Jiang, Uncanny 53

Five of Cups Considers Forgiveness, Ali Trotta, The Deadlands 31

Gods of the Garden, Steven Withrow, Spectral Realms 19

The Goth Girls' Gun Gang, Marisca Pichette, The Dread Machine 3.2

Guiding Star, Tim Jones, Remains to be Told: Dark Tales of Aotearoa, ed. Lee Murray (Clan Destine Press)

Hallucinations Gifted to Me by Heatstroke, Morgan L. Ventura, Banshee 15

hemiplegic migraine as willing human sacrifice, Ennis Rook Bashe, Eternal Haunted Summer Winter Solstice

Hi! I am your Cortical Update!, Mahaila Smith, Star*Line 46.3

How to Make the Animal Perfect?, Linda D. Addison, Weird Tales 100

I Dreamt They Cast a Trans Girl to Give Birth to the Demon, Jennessa Hester, HAD October

Invasive, Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, Polar Starlight 9

kan-da-ka, Nadaa Hussein, Apparition Lit 23

Language as a Form of Breath, Angel Leal, Apparition Lit October

The Lantern of September, Scott Couturier, Spectral Realms 19

Let Us Dream, Myna Chang, Small Wonders 3

The Magician's Foundling, Angel Leal, Heartlines Spec 2

The Man with the Stone Flute, Joshua St. Claire, Abyss & Apex 87

Mass-Market Affair, Casey Aimer, Star*Line 46.4

Mom's Surprise, Francis W. Alexander, Tales from the Moonlit Path June

A Murder of Crows, Alicia Hilton, Ice Queen 11

No One Now Remembers, Geoffrey Landis, Fantasy and Science Fiction Nov./Dec.

orion conquers the sky, Maria Zoccula, On Spec 33.2

Pines in the Wind, Karen Greenbaum-Maya, The Beautiful Leaves (Bamboo Dart Press)

The Poet Responds to an Invitation from the AI on the Moon, T.D. Walker, Radon Journal 5

A Prayer for the Surviving, Marisca Pichette, Haven Speculative 9

Pre-Nuptial, F. J. Bergmann, The Vampiricon (Mind's Eye Publications)

The Problem of Pain, Anna Cates, Eye on the Telescope 49

The Return of the Sauceress, F. J. Bergmann, The Flying Saucer Poetry Review February

Sea Change, David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Ann K. Schwader, Scifaikuest May

Seed of Power, Linda D. Addison, The Book of Witches ed. Jonathan Strahan (Harper Collins)

Sleeping Beauties, Carina Bissett, HWA Poetry Showcase X

Solar Punks, J. D. Harlock, The Dread Machine 3.1

Song of the Last Hour, Samuel A. Betiku, The Deadlands 22

Sphinx, Mary Soon Lee, Asimov's September/October

Storm Watchers (a drabbun), Terrie Leigh Relf, Space & Time

Sunflower Astronaut, Charlie Espinosa, Strange Horizons July

Three Hearts as One, G. O. Clark, Asimov's May/June

Troy, Carolyn Clink, Polar Starlight 12

Twenty-Fifth Wedding Anniversary, John Grey, Medusa's Kitchen September

Under World, Jacqueline West, Carmina Magazine September

Walking in the Starry World, John Philip Johnson, Orion's Belt May

Whispers in Ink, Angela Yuriko Smith, Whispers from Beyond (Crystal Lake Publishing)

Long Poems (25 finalists)

Archivist of a Lost World, Gerri Leen, Eccentric Orbits 4

As the witch burns, Marisca Pichette, Fantasy 87

Brigid the Poet, Adele Gardner, Eternal Haunted Summer Summer Solstice

Coding a Demi-griot (An Olivian Measure), Armoni “Monihymn” Boone, Fiyah 26

Cradling Fish, Laura Ma, Strange Horizons May

Dream Visions, Melissa Ridley Elmes, Eccentric Orbits 4

Eight Dwarfs on Planet X, Avra Margariti, Radon Journal 3

The Giants of Kandahar, Anna Cates, Abyss & Apex 88

How to Haunt a Northern Lake, Lora Gray, Uncanny 55

Impostor Syndrome, Robert Borski, Dreams and Nightmares 124

The Incessant Rain, Rhiannon Owens, Evermore 3

Interrogation About A Monster During Sleep Paralysis, Angela Liu, Strange Horizons November

Little Brown Changeling, Lauren Scharhag, Aphelion 283

A Mere Million Miles from Earth, John C. Mannone, Altered Reality April

Pilot, Akua Lezli Hope, Black Joy Unbound eds. Stephanie Andrea Allen & Lauren Cherelle (BLF Press)

Protocol, Jamie Simpher, Small Wonders 5

Sleep Dragon, Herb Kauderer, The Book of Sleep (Written Image Press)

Slow Dreaming, Herb Kauderer, The Book of Sleep (Written Image Press)

St. Sebastian Goes To Confession, West Ambrose, Mouthfeel 1

Value Measure, Joseph Halden and Rhonda Parrish, Dreams and Nightmares 125

A Weather of My Own Making, Nnadi Samuel, Silver Blade 56

Welcoming the New Girl, Beth Cato, Penumbric October

What You Find at the Center, Elizabeth R McClellan, Haven Spec Magazine 12

The Witch Makes Her To-Do List, Theodora Goss, Uncanny 50

The Year It Changed, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Star*Line 46.4

Voting for the Rhysling Award begins July 1; a link to the ballot will be sent with the Rhysling Anthology, as well as with the July issue of Star*Line. More information on the Rhysling Award can be found here.

[the-starry-seas]

Hey, people who know Star Wars lore! I need to read up on Twi'leks and Ryloth for a fic I'm writing. I checked the sources section on their Wookieepedia pages and put together a list of the books named there. Anything that's missing, or anything here that doesn't actually mention much about them? Using both canon and legends material.

A Guide to the Star Wars Universe Day Wanna Wanga - The Tale of the Twi'leks Die Wanna Wanga: Encounters of The Twi'lek Kind Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds Much to Learn You Still Have: 7 Things You Might Not Know About Twi'leks Planets of the Galaxy, Volume One Planets of the Galaxy, Volume Three Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, Updated Star Wars: Alien Archive Star Wars: Aliens of the Galaxy Star Wars Bestiary, Vol. 1: Creatures of the Galaxy Star Wars: Complete Locations Star Wars Expert Guide Star Wars Fandex Deluxe Edition Star Wars: Galactic Atlas Star Wars: Geektionary: The Galaxy from A - Z Star Wars Inside Intel: Twi'lek Culture Star Wars Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to a Galaxy Far, Far Away Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary, New Edition Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide: Updated and Expanded Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary Star Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia Star Wars Trilogy Sourcebook, Special Edition The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia The Essential Atlas The Essential Guide to Alien Species The Essential Guide to Planets and Moons The Essential Reader's Companion The Movie Trilogy Sourcebook The New Essential Chronology The Star Wars Book The Star Wars Planets Collection The Star Wars Sourcebook The Star Wars Sourcebook, Second Edition Ultimate Alien Anthology Ultimate Star Wars Ultimate Star Wars, New Edition

[transformers-spike]

I cannot be the only one who wants to bang peepaw Alpha Trion plEASE TELL ME IM NOT ALONE 😭

I will never stop being an old man enjoyer. Give us your spike, peepaw

“I’m relieved we aren’t the only ones in this universe.” The words echo in his processor like sand in the desert wind. Fading in and out of consciousness under the rubble, he clings onto the softness of your voice, the faded edges of your smile burnt into his memory. He cannot make sense of your shape anymore, it’s a blotch of ink in his vision, something he recalls but cannot fully visualize. His mind reaches out to you, so close yet so far away. With every step he takes, you grow smaller, and still, you patiently wait for him with your arms outstretched. Like old times. You are dead. This he knows. Unequivocally dead. His digits twitch, warnings encapsulate his vision, reminding him each and every nanoclik of wakefulness that the next in-vent could be his last. He can’t help himself. Duty has led his life for so long, bestowed upon him by his creator, and he cannot fall back now and forgo his promise to protect Cybertron. But he is weak; pain receptors growing numb from the boulders crushing his frame, limbs quivering from a battle long lost. Primus forgive him, allow him this final comfort. Cycles ago, your crew had first established contact with Cybertron. It was a message sent across space, a simple signal that would tie your fates forever. The Council debated answering, fearing you could pose a threat to their planet, but there were only three ships with only a handful of members each. They chose fraternization over static silence. Communication was difficult, but somehow, someway, you understood each other just enough to arrive on their planet. Surprise struck him when he saw your kind, small, frail and soft to the touch. Your people were just as startled as them, but in your optics he saw something greater; a delight in meeting fellow sentient beings. They took in your crew and treated them like brothers and sisters, communicating through gestures and drawings. You could not speak their language, but they could learn yours. Knowledge was shared among you, tales of your worlds, their history, your technology, your people… Perhaps your place among your own was what drew him to you. Standing on the sidelines, you watched and took notes, occasionally serving as a sketch artist to exchange information. The others were mingling with the Council, asking questions, telling stories, showing what machinery brought you to them. But you kept your distance, politely nodding along and busying yourself with your notebooks. When he approached you, taking slow careful steps, you nearly dropped your pen in shock. His size was already intimidating by Cybertronian standards, but for a human? He could barely imagine the primal fear you felt when met with someone of his stature. You recovered quickly despite it, uneasy but maintaining your composure. Having knelt down to your level, he offered you servo, the sand within it shaping into a miniature version of your ship. You blinked, clutching your notebook to your chassis. Then, after a drawn out silence, you smiled, optics gleaming with wonder. That was the start of your companionship. You would sit in his servo, looking up at the night sky, speaking words he could barely understand but tried his hardest to learn. He recalls bits and pieces, meanings he managed to grasp through what you taught him. It wasn’t long until your time together grew intimate. As a prime, he was so focused on his duties that he barely got the chance to relax, much less interface. Things were… difficult due to the size difference, but there were workarounds. Charge runs through his fuel lines at the memory. How you would brush your digits against his valve, testing the waters so to say, before slipping your servo inside of it. There was no true relief in the interface, no way for you to properly satisfy each other. But you were both content, savoring every moment of your companionship. You would press your lips to his spike, working your servo in and out of his gushing valve. It made his frame shudder and his optics glitch.

He touched you much the same way, digits rubbing at the sensitive nerves between your thighs, gazing down at you lovingly as you grit your denta and arched your optical ridge in pleasure.

[aixeko]

──────‹𝟹 SINNERS SAVAGERY ༄ Ѽ✧

IF I'M YOUR SALVATION, WELCOME TO HELL.

2024 Halloween Event | Art credit: Efferwescent on Twitter

𖤐 SINNERS SAVAGERY | or ERISETOBER  is an event that is a mix of Kinktober, Whumptober and Flufftober in a nutshell SMUT, ANGST & FLUFF with Halloween aspects. All prompts are made by me but some of the ones that inspired me are whumptober ofc, and this list. 

𖤐 ONLY HONKAI STAR RAIL AND GENSHIN WOMEN For this year

𖤐 This will be my first time doing the October prompts stuff + I have another event going on so bare with me haha.

𖤐 !! WEEK 1 starts 6 to 13 !! !! WEEK 2 starts 13 to 19 !! !! WEEK 3 starts 20 to 26 !! !! WEEK 4 starts 27 to 31 !!

WEEK 1 | MONSTER AU | | ONESHOT

| Film | TILL DEATH DO US PART | Starring | Kafka as alien symbiote “Venom” x Host!Reader  | Synopsis | A livelihood ripped away by the greed of humankind and faced with impending doom, an alien symbiote by the name of "Kafka" entered your life and made you her host. Originally, the monstrous being harbored one goal: to destroy everything planet Earth had to offer, but plans changed upon meeting you and thus, with her power, you both do whatever it takes to save the planet. Loathing was all that was bestowed toward the extraterrestrial parasitic, but as time passes, a long-lost feeling resurfaces, one that hasn't manifested since your heartbreak; of course, you would rather be brutally killed than confess your endearment. Unbeknownst to you, the woman has suspected you of such intimacy and, with her incredible adaptability to the complex human emotion, has a ploy to make you profess those three special words.

| Film | YOUR LORDSHIP | Starring | Yelan as Leviathan x Mortal!Reader | Synopsis |  When the tempestuous waves crash against the shore and the sky turns a foreboding grey, human shells cower in fear as the mighty lord of the seas, Leviathan, awakens from the darkest pit of the deep, seeking for a human companion to aid her lonely voyage.

WEEK 2 | MYTHOLOGICAL AU | | ONESHOT

| Film | BEYOND THE IMAGINABLE | Starring | Clorinde as Medusa x Blind!Reader | Synopsis | Despised and misunderstood by the world, she was a victim of a scandalous man's wrongdoing, unfairly punished by heaven despite her innocence. During one fortunate day, the woman whose heart had turned to stone melt under the accursed spell of love, wholly captivated by a blind mortal who fell in love with her for who she truly was; even without sight, the virtuous human saw the very essence of her, the beauty within her soul.

| Film | OFFERING OF PURITY | Starring | Raiden Ei as Hades x Mortal!Reader | Synopsis | The townsfolk tell tales of a legend that speaks of how, once in a century, the moon would adorn itself in a deep crimson hue and illuminate its shade onto the world. Under its wrathful light, the god of hell emerges to wreak havoc, and the only way to banish such evil is to offer a youthful virgin mortal; only then will humankind live in another century of prosperity and peace.

WEEK 3 | ANIMATRONICS AU | | SMUTSHOT

| Film | FIVE NIGHTS AT STAR RAIL | Starring | Kafka, Himeko, Blackswan, and Acheron as the FNAF Classic Animatronics x Night-guard!Reader | Synopsis | A newspaper arrives at your doorstep, featuring a job opening for a night guard position at the famous Star Rail Pizzeria. Struggling financially, you quickly seize the golden opportunity. The job's only requirement is 5 nights of work, and if you succeed, you'll be hired as an official employee; what could possibly go wrong?

WEEK 4 | SLASHER/SERIAL KILLER AU

| Film | MINDFUCK | Starring | Slasher!Arlecchino x Investigative-Psychologist!Reader | Synopsis | Demons linger where shadows play; in silence, hearts betray, whispers echo, and desires catch fire in the haunting depths of the night. With every kiss, a scythe may cut, in which terror envelops one's gut; together they dance on the edge of fate, finding beauty in a love that is too late. So let the night weave its spell, for in the dark they know so well, and though demons are whispering fright, in their twilight, the lights are ignited.

[blackbleedingrose]

Long Lost Morningstar - Part Two

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel

Pairing(s): Charlie x reader (platonic), Vaggie x reader (platonic), Charlie x Vaggie

Genre: Fluff

Warning(s): minor cursing.

Notes: This is the second installment of LLM. This one will be going more in depth in (Y/N)'s life in Heaven and her relationship with Michael and Charlie. I will also be working on another Hazbin mini series (the one I mentioned in my last post) so part three will take a little longer - so, please, bare with me.

Words: 2215

"This is one of the reasons why I wanted to meet you in the first place. . . My full name is (Y/N) Demiurgos. Daughter of Archangel Michael Demiurgos".

(Y/N) Demiugros have lived in Heaven her entire life among the archangels, seraphims, and winners (human souls who ascended into Heaven after they died).

She, herself, was a seraphim - one with very large and beautiful wings; six in total.

Her father, Michael, was one of Heaven's archangel's and one of the Seven Virtues. He was the one who had created her from stardust.

At least, those were the stories she's been told her whole life.

Though, it was strange. . .

Her father had crafted her in his likeness and yet the two couldn't be more different.

Not to say Michael was a complete stiff or was lacking any sense of humor - in fact, all of the archangels had their own strange quirks. (Y/N) loved being around them and often shared their humor.

The problem here was. . . her curiosity.

She was a naturally curious being and would often dream of things most of Heaven would frown upon - like six-winged ducks.

As a child her curiosity would sometimes get the better of her and she would try to venture beyond the archangel's castle (where she lived with Michael and the other archangels).

Of course, Michael was always there to stop her from wandering too far.

It became evident that (Y/N)'s curiosity and wonderous spirit would only get worse if he didn't stop it right there and then.

He didn't want her to end up like her real parents.

What (Y/N) didn't know was that almost everything she has ever known was a complete lie.

Or that Michael was not her real father/parent.

That title rightfully belonged to Lucifer and Lilith Morningstar.

But, of course, no one who knew ever planned on telling her; so, instead they twisted the truth.

Michael told her all about what Lucifer and Lilith had done and how the two brought evil into humanity. An act that got them a one-way dropped elevator ride straight to Hell.

Obviously leaving out the part where Lucifer and Lilith were her real parents, and instead told her they were her estranged uncle and aunt.

He had hoped telling her this would stifle her growing curiosity and wandering enough to keep her out of trouble and from ending up exactly where his twin brother and his lover had all those years ago.

It also helped that ever since Lucifer and Lilith's trial, Heaven has been cracking down on teaching their residents obedience and the consequences of straying too far.

And for a long time it worked.

(Y/N) was one of Heaven's top students and a role model seraphim to all angels alike.

On the outside she was grace, obedience, and perfection personified - just as she was taught and just as Heaven wanted.

But on the inside, she was still that curious and wonderous spirit who would secretly write her dreams in a private journal she had to hide away in a pocket dimension with her magic.

(Y/N) yearned to venture outside of Heaven and explore all the different realms to see what they had to offer. Like the ones she's read from the books in Heaven's restricted section that she may or may not break into in the dead of night (she's a sneaky little sneaker :P).

Tales of archons, unique planets, and realms with distorted human desires would fill her head - her heart yearning to one day travel to those places herself.

But for now, her life was in Heaven as a role model seraphim whose curiosity and wandering was kept in check.

. . . Until she caught wind of the Princess of Hell's meeting by her fellow seraphim, Emily, during their weekly hangout.

(Y/N) was aware Lucifer and Lilith had a child born in Hell, but she never expected her demon cousin would ever be granted permission to enter Heaven.

She couldn't help but wonder what her cousin wanted with Heaven.

Whatever it was, it was big enough to warrant a whole trial with the Head Seraphim, Sera.

Oh, no - there goes her curiosity.

(Y/N) knew her father would frown upon her interacting with the daughter of the ones who damned humanity. . . but she couldn't help it! She really wanted to meet her cousin and see what she was like.

Maybe people in Hell weren't as bad as Heaven made them out to be.

Luckily for her, Emily was quite the chatterbox and told her all about how she and Sera were going to give a tour to the Princess of Hell and her partner, the hotel they were staying at, and the exact room number.

Before she went on her way, (Y/N) managed to get one of her doting simps friends to cover for her and her duties to avoid raising suspicion.

When Emily and Sera had finished talking to Heaven's demon guests and brought them to their hotel room, (Y/N) was hidden away in the hallway waiting until they left.

As soon as she was sure Sera and Emily were gone, (Y/N) quickly rushed to the door.

She silently psyched herself up before knocking.

Charlie and Vaggie, who were skeptical to hear a knock so fast, hesitantly opened the door.

"Uh. . . Hello?".

When Charlie opened the door she definitely wasn't expecting to see a very tall angel with long blonde hair, purple eyes, red cheek circle's, and a big smile on her pale face standing outside. For a moment Charlie could have sworn she was almost looking at her mother.

"Hello! You must be Charlie and Vaggie! Emily's told me all about you - well, the only things that she knew before meeting you. Haven't had the chance to ask her about you after meeting you, but since I'm here now I might as well as you yourselves!".

(Y/N) snapped out of her trailing thoughts and rambling, "Oh, shit! My bad! I got a little carried away and forgot to introduce myself. Sorry. My name is (Y/N). I'm a seraphim. It's so nice to finally meet you!"

Charlie and Vaggie had to recover from the whiplash of the seraphim's personality and onslaught of words. Not wanting to offend her and mess up her chance before the trial, Charlie invited (Y/N) inside. (Y/N) eagerly accepted and walked into the room admiring it - she's never been in a hotel before.

"So. . . why are you here?" Vaggie asked rather rudely suspicious of why a random seraphim would go out of their way to talk to people from Hell. "Vaggie!" Charlie whisper-yelled afraid she offended a potential high authority in Heaven.

"Oh, well, I was hoping to get a chance to meet you both. When Emily told me about how the Princess of Hell wanted a meeting in Heaven about her hotel to redeem sinners, I'll admit my curiosity was peaked and I knew I had to see who you were in person".

Charlie gasped, her eyes shining, "Does this mean you think it's possible to rehabilitate demons?!". Vaggie glared at the angelic being, "Why would a seraphim care to meet people like us?".

(Y/N) gave the two a gentle smile, "Well, I tend to be a naturally curious individual - which I'm sure you can imagine isn't something Heaven is too fond of. As for redeeming sinners - I'm not sure. Personally, I would love to see souls in Hell given the chance to be redeemed and enter Heaven. Especially the ones who truly do not deserve eternal damnation. Which is why I'm excited to see how your trial ends. Hopefully you have evidence to prove your hotel works. I mean, if the Princess of Hell is willing to vouch and put in the effort on giving sinners a better chance at an afterlife in paradise, then maybe not all demons are bad after all".

Charlie and Vaggie were awestruck. Sure, Emily was really nice but (Y/N) was the first angel to actually be willing to give them a chance. Charlie had tears in her eyes, "D-Do you really believe that?". (Y/N) smiled and laid her hand on Charlie's, "I do".

Charlie and Vaggie smiled at the seraphim. It was nice to see that there was one angel here in Heaven who wasn't going to shut them down right away - someone who genuinely supported their cause.

The three chatted some more - mainly Charlie and (Y/N) with Vaggie chiming in from time to time. Now that the three got more comfortable with each other, the conversation was going a lot smoother. Despite just meeting one another, Charlie and (Y/N) felt like they've known each other for years.

"So, what do you do here in Heaven?" Charlie asked (Y/N). "Oh! Well, I sometimes help the archangels with their duties, but I mainly work in court trials", (Y/N) answered. Charlie's eyes lit up, "Court trials?".

(Y/N) immediately caught on. She shook her head, "Oh, no. Not in the actual trials; that's for the higher seraphims. In this case, Sera and Emily. I'm just a stenographer and record keeper. I help keep and maintain the court records and sometimes record the trials in person".

Vaggie raised a brow, "A seraphim as a stenographer?". (Y/N) nodded, "It's actually a very important job. . . but, I won't lie and say it was my first choice for a job. It was my father's idea. His way of keeping me busy, entertained, and out of trouble".

Charlie blinked, "Oh! Who's your father?". (Y/N) bit her lip nervous, "This is one of the reasons why I wanted to meet you in the first place. . . My full name is (Y/N) Demiurgos. Daughter of Archangel Michael Demiurgos". Charlie and Vaggie's jaws dropped.

"Archangel Michael?! A-As in my dad's twin brother?!".

(Y/N) nodded fiddling nervously with her hands. Charlie did a double take, "Woah, woah! Wait! Then doesn't that make us-" "Cousins," (Y/N) confirmed. Charlie gasped placing her hands on her cheeks, "OMG! That's amazing!". (Y/N) smiled in relief, "Yeah. I guess it is".

"Who's your mom?" Charlie asked eagerly. "Oh, I don't have one," (Y/N) said rather casually. This made Charlie and Vaggie feel a bit bad, "Oh".

(Y/N) waved her hands, "Oh, it's not like that! I've never had one! You see most angels are typically created here in Heaven using stardust, which is how my father created me. He used his likeness and the female reference of Lilith - your mother. And thus, I was born".

"Oooh - that makes so much sense! Now, I understand why you look so familiar!" Charlie smiled at her newly found relative. She couldn't believe she had a cousin in Heaven. One so kind and beautiful.

(Y/N) was relieved at how fast Charlie accepted her. She was worried she might not be too fond of having an angelic relative.

Vaggie was a bit nervous to discover that (Y/N) was the daughter of a higher ranking angel, but it quickly went away when she saw how happy her and Charlie were talking to each other.

She's only known (Y/N) for a short while, but she truly believed the seraphim had no ill intentions towards them and genuinely wanted to get to know them.

In fact, (Y/N)'s personality reminded her a little of Charlie.

(Y/N) admired her cousin for her big heart and the confidence she had in her own dreams. She was ashamed to admit she was a little envious.

How she wished she could act on her dreams like her little cousin; but, Heaven would never allow it. Her father always had to remind her not to stray too far, or she might end up just like her uncle and aunt. . . Fallen.

This was why she had to always keep up appearances when she was in public. No one other than those closest to her knew of the dorky, cheerful, and quirky side of her personality. To everyone else she was poised, graceful, and elegant.

When Charlie had asked her about her dreams (Y/N) told her seraphims weren't allowed to dream, or at least have dreams that would go against Heaven's rules.

Despite trying to hide how much that bothered her, Charlie and Vaggie noticed the small shift in her behavior. They felt bad for her wishing Heaven could be more open minded.

(Y/N) quickly waved it off claiming she was okay and that she was used it. She understood her father just wanted to keep her safe and out of trouble.

Soon it was time for (Y/N) to go to avoid making her father suspicious of her whereabouts.

Before she left she and Charlie shared a tight loving hug. (Y/N) wished her good luck in her trial and that she would be rooting for her.

Hearing her cousin support her dream and wish her luck made Charlie feel a lot better about the trial.

Being around (Y/N) made her feel comfortable and safe. She felt familiar, which now makes sense seeing as the two were family.

Her dad couldn't be here, so it felt good knowing there was someone in her family here in Heaven who believed in her.

With those thoughts in mind, she was ready for the trial and positive she would change Heaven's mind and prove the hotel's credibility.

. . . Too bad things sometimes don't go as we hoped.

Taglist:

@soobryu @kyo-kyo1 @miyako-night20 @charliecharlie65 @unknow-sama @myluckymoon @lbcreations-blog @moonchaos18

[bunkoos-mole-enthusiast]

Weekly Jungkook Fanfic Recs

Some fine JK fics for your reading pleasure. 🔞 Please show your appreciation to all the wonderful authors:) Sleepwalking: Due to unfortunate circumstances, you ended up managing your ex-boyfriend's band. You thought you've both made peace with it, but suddenly he's very eager to prove to you that first love never dies. https://taexual.tumblr.com/post/728185560199577601/sleepwalking-1-jjk

I'd Love To Stay But That's Simply Insane: Jungkook is an uncontrollable lead vocalist of the campus band, and you're a goal-oriented top student that's known his rich and complicated family since childhood. You don't want anything to do with each other, until each other is exactly what you want to do. https://taexual.tumblr.com/post/616477412997414912/id-love-you-to-stay-but-thats-simply-insane

Pub Golf: One night. One stupidly hot man, who just keeps appearing in every pub you go to. Six friends. Nine pubs. Nine drinks. Ten million stupid rules. Let the chaos begin. https://taleasnewastime.tumblr.com/post/667208016185212928/summary-one-night-one-stupidly-hot-man-who-just

Yes Coach: You play in a local netball team and as a new season starts you have a new coach. Enter Jungkook, he may look soft, but he turns out to be a hard taskmaster, one who ruffles your feathers when he makes some changes to the team. Tensions grow between you through the weeks, until they finally reach breaking point. https://taleasnewastime.tumblr.com/post/653257951195365376/yes-coach

Tempter: 𝐓hey told tales of the twilight creature to the loveless ones that roamed the woods at the sun’s setting hour. When the orange rays crept through the living, breathing trees and painted the soil gold, made the poison ivy too beautiful and inviting to 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩. They spoke of a beauty that they could not describe, of a voice that reflected the purity of heaven alongside the burning fires of hell as he prayed upon them. https://themfchase.tumblr.com/post/615289283146842112/%F0%9D%90%93%F0%9D%90%84%F0%9D%90%8C%F0%9D%90%8F%F0%9D%90%93%F0%9D%90%84%F0%9D%90%91-%F0%9D%98%9B%F0%9D%98%A9% F0%9D%98%A6-%F0%9D%98%9B%F0%9D%98%B8%F0%9 D%98%AA%F0%9D%98%AD%F0%9D%98%AA%F0%9D%98%A8%F0%9D%98%A9%F0%9D%98%B5-%F0%9D%98%8A%F0%9D%98%B3%F0%9D %98%A6%F0%9D%98%A2%F0%9D%98%B5%F0%9D%98%B6%F0%9D%98%B3%F0%9D%98%A6-jjk

Raven Unit: With your life at risk and several people around you dead, your loyal head of security makes sure your safety is taken care of when he’s out of the picture. Three ruthless, dangerous and deadly men take on the task to protect and hide you, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok and the one in command, Jeon Jungkook.  https://themfchase.tumblr.com/post/189288109708/raven-unit-i-m-jjk

Hate Me: You really do hate Jeon Jungkook. You hate everything about him. From his strong veiny arms to his obnoxiously pretty face.   https://themfchase.tumblr.com/post/632321712395026432/hate-me-m-jjk The Art Of Wanting: You find a baby in your store and in turn, a dilf finds you. https://www.tumblr.com/venusiangguk/643372881526554624/pairing-jungkook-x-reader-dilfjk-x-grocery?source=embed

Down The Rabbit Hole: Yoongi's sister buys tickets to the Autumn ball held within the Meadows, a notorious city known for its hybrid inhabitants where she hopes to meet a certain bunny princeling. https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781145 Rabbit Season: Predator met prey like an Animal Planet rerun of lions devouring antelopes in large, unremorseful bites. He took every aspect of this game seriously. He was competitive where most might not think so in this particular arena. His behavior projected through television, even while in person, was an act, perhaps the best he’d ever performed in front of his every day audience. https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781727

[bones4thecats]

Hi I see you’re request are open can I ask of transformers animated Optimus x female bot Vaggie reader , she use to be an elite guard but after she spare the life of an decepticon she was punish by her superior (sentinel spark mate) by cutting her optic and taking away her position

TFA! Optimus Prime w/ Vaggie-Bot! S/O

Character: Optimus Prime (Transformers Animated) Requester: 🩰Anon A/N: I'm gonna call you 🩰Anon, unless you're one of my other Anons. Which if you are please tell me and I can change it! Anyways, I hope you liked this! Also, there is no mention of the Lute-ified Cybertronian being Sentinel's sparkmate, but if you want her to be, you can imagine it. ⚠️ Spoilers/Trigger Warnings for: Mentions of body mutilation, attempted murder, death, murder and trauma ⚠️

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗

╚═════ Optimus Prime ══════════════════════════╝

⚔️ Graduating alongside your old friend, Napier, you began to serve your Captain, Supersonic. Who, despite the fact he had a large processor, was a very good leader when it came to any kind of military issue

⚔️ Now, many cycles after your first day alongside the two Elite Guard members, you were now working with a space-bridge repair crew lead by your sparkmate, Optimus Prime, you were happily watching over Sari while her father worked

"Hey Y/N!" The young girl yelled from the ground.

"What's up, Sari?"

"Why do you have that patch on your eye?"

⚔️ Your one good optic widened as you reached up and felt the metal patch covering your opposite optic. The straight-edged black metal with a rose-red x on it making your digits repulse slightly

"It's a long story, you really don't wanna know." You said nervously.

"No! No! No! I've wanted to know as well!" Bumblebee said, standing up from behind the human child.

"Know what?" Bulkhead asked as he walked in.

"What happened to Y/N's optic."

"Oh yeah! Me three!"

"Now, now, you guys. If Y/N doesn't feel comfortable telling the story, they shouldn't have too." Optimus said as he laid a servo on your shoulder.

"I concur." Prowl said.

⚔️ Sari, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead all awed as you smiled gently and laid your servo on Optimus', assuring him that it was fine for them to ask you since they were far more innocent with the cost of serving underneath Ex-Captain Supersonic

⚔️ Motioning for them all to sit down, even having Ratchet join in right before you began the tale, much to his fake chagrin. You felt Sari finally situate her blanket around herself and lean into the large pillow she held to look at you and listen

"It all started during one of our patrols to check for any rogue Decepticons..."

»–•–«

⚔️ Walking side-by-side Napier, you smiled and nodded along with her rambles. She was speaking about how troublesome some of your previous classmates at the Autobot Academy were since they were joining your regiment under Supersonic

"Lieutenants Y/N and Napier."

⚔️ Turning around, you saw one of your Captain's mechs bowing lightly before standing and telling you that the titular mech wanted you and her to speak with him in his office

⚔️ Nodding along with his words like you did with Napier, the three of you walked down many halls towards the golden-office, stopping only until Supersonic allowed the door to be opened

⚔️ Sitting down with his pedes up on his desk as he sharpened his axe-like weapon, you bowed alongside your friend

"Captain Supersonic."

"Ah, just the two I wanted to see! We have an incident that needs immediate care."

"What seems to be this 'incident'?" Napier asked.

"There are some Decepticon signals being caught on this planet- uh... what was the planet's name again?" He asked the Bot who had escorted you both there.

"Bov 05UC, sir."

"Yeah! Bov 05UC. You two need to go there and arrest them, bring them back, and you'll be on my good side even more! How does that sound?" He said, leaning back to continue sharpening his weapon.

⚔️ Staring at Napier, you nodded before announcing your agreement to the departure

"Alright! You are both needed in the ship in... a megacycle. You might wanna get packin'."

"Understood, sir." Napier said.

"Have a good rest of your cycle, sir."

"Yeah, yeah. Get out."

»–•–«

"Wow! He sounds like a big scrap-head!" Bulkhead said.

"Well, you're not wrong. Captain Supersonic wasn't the most polite Cybertronian back home. I remember one time he literally came to me injured during the war and expected me to treat him like some prince! He was beyond arrogant with his title." Ratchet admitted.

"Anyways, Y/N, do continue," said Prowl.

"Yes, well, when we arrived on the planet, that was when the incident occurred."

»–•–«

⚔️ The sound of swords clashing was all you could hear besides the screams of the inhabitants of Bov 05UC running away from the fighting

"Y/N, that 'Cons getting away!" Napier yelled, pointing her sword at a runaway Decepticon.

"I got 'em!" You yelled back, chasing after the enemy.

⚔️ Landing from the jump before the alleyway, you watched the short Decepticon turn around. It wasn't a grown Cybertronian, it was a young one... a sparkling...

⚔️ Sorrow filled you as you lowered your spear from attack mode from seeing their fearful optics

⚔️ Stepping towards him, you hushed him in an effort to keep him safe and quiet so that Napier or another guard couldn't hear you sparing his life

"Go. Run now!" You whispered as the little one ran off.

⚔️ Hearing steps behind you, you were shocked to see both Napier and Captain Supersonic there. Napier then grabbed your arm, pulling you towards her, before striking you down with her own sword

⚔️ You screamed in pain as she stabbed your fallen optic into the ground

"Decepticon-sympathizing filth like you has no place in the Elite Guard." She said, ripping your title and honor away from you in a single action.

⚔️ As the two walked away, you struggled to walk off. Only to be found by a random Cybertronian, one you didn't recognize. They kneeled before you with a shock-filled expression before covering your energon-bleeding wound with a large cloth from their carry-on compartment

»–•–«

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! So your friend, who you grew up with just- tore your optic out and took your position away from you like it was nothing! Who does she think she is?!" Sari yelled.

⚔️ Optimus looked at you and wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you closer to his side as you smiled and patted Sari's little head with your digit

"It's fine now, Sari. I have a great life now. I have a real family. You guys care about one another like nobody ever did back in the Elite Guard. Well, at least the subgroup that Supersonic once led."

"You keep talking about him in past tense, did he like retire or something?" Bumblebee asked.

"Something of the sort..." You nervously answered.

⚔️ Ratchet stood up after you drifted off topic, finishing your answer honestly himself

"He went offline during another battle against Decepticons. Though, those ones were forced to be obedient against their will. Napier, by what I remember, was sent to prison for attempting to kill her fellow soldiers during a state of rage-driven madness."

⚔️ Sari's eyes widened as she looked back at you and Optimus

"You also said that you have a real family now... do you consider us family?" Bulkhead asked.

"Of course! Prowl's the oddball, Ratchet's the grumpy old-mech, Bee and Bulk are the younger siblings, Sari and Isaac are basically like the friends of the unit-"

"And you and Optimus are like the parents!"

"Huh?!" "What?!"

"Too much?"

"Just a tad..."

[fen-luciel]

The witches' covenant

Part.1 part.2

Here's the smut story I promised. It was supposed to be short, but of course, I dragged it out. I'm not yet sure if it will be divided into two or three parts, as the original draft is becoming darker than initially intended.

I hope you enjoy it.

WARNINGS!

Smut/Manipulation/coven/dubious consent

Witch reader X Sith Qimir

There are things you take for granted in life.

Breathing is a rhythmic movement of the body, automatic but fundamental. Maybe no one ever explained to you how or why, but you know it works that way. It's natural. Maybe you've never asked yourself because you take it for granted.

Growing up in a coven of witches led to asking a lot of questions to which you often didn't get an answer, at least not a sensible one. I still remember the first times I asked my mother about the thread, actually, I don't remember her answer, but I do remember being confused. I think she wanted me to find my own logic, and if needed, she would correct me. But I was ashamed, afraid of saying something stupid, and I felt embarrassed when the older members gave me that amused courteous smile after I had said something silly. I know they didn't mean to judge me, but the knot in my stomach that formed every single time was suffocating. So, I developed a bad habit.

I stopped asking. I would nod, at most I would ask to have the explanation repeated, but I never took the first step. "Do you understand?" I would nod. "Do you have any questions?" I would deny.

Yes, I had questions. I had a lot of them, many of which kept me up at night, like doubts about the thread, about our coven, about our planet, about what was outside the galaxy... but I didn't ask.

I tried to give myself answers. As the years went by, I realized that I wasn't the only one without answers. It was clear that many, like me, blindly followed my mother's will as the head of the coven.

Do you have a doubt? Talk to Aniseya.

Don't know what to do? Aniseya.

Are you suffering? Talk to Mother Aniseya.

Everyone sought answers from my mother, and I could understand why, she was... ethereal.

Always calm, with a warm smile, a gentle hand... she made you feel safe.

When I was younger, one of the things that terrified me the most was the fear that something bad would come to harm us one day. I was too young to give a real shape to the evil, it was more an unpleasant sensation that I imagined, and my mother could perceive it without me saying anything.

So, sometimes, in the evening, when everyone else was asleep, we would go out into the woods alone, with a small light to guide us, and we would reach the golden tree.

I loved that place even though it was another one of those things I couldn't explain since it seemed to be the only tree of its kind. I would rest my head on my mother's lap, and as she gently stroked my hair, she would tell me a lot of different stories, fairy tales, adventures, legends. She seemed to know an infinite number of them. I would have liked to ask her where she had heard them, but even in that case, I didn't ask. And so, every time, the next morning, I would wake up in my room, comfortably lying under the covers, the nightmares completely forgotten... at least for a while.

Growing up, many of those childhood fears disappeared, or I managed to answer them on my own thanks to years of study. However, other doubts occupied my mind.

For example, why were we so isolated from the rest of the world?

Why could we use the power of the thread?

Where did our traditions come from?

How ancient were they?

And how were other witches born?

I had seen pregnant women in the village, I had heard the cries of childbirth, the first cries of the babies, the birth of new life in the world was fascinating even though I had never seen the act in person, being too young or unable to help. But it was what happened before that confused me.

Every five years, a meeting was held, after which ten women would leave the walls of the fortress, and after a few months, they would return expecting.

I didn't know what happened, what they did. I believed there was some sort of ritual I wasn't yet admitted to. I imagined that one day it would happen to me too. As the daughter of the matriarch, I had more responsibilities than the others, I would take my mother's place one day. I imagined I was obliged to participate in any ritual presented to me in the coming years. As I was the future of the coven, one day I would have to create the new generation.

When I was about twelve years old, I realized something was off in my mother's stories and finally decided to ask her a question.

"What is a man?"

The embarrassment was still there, under my skin, but she smiled at me gently. Her answer was cryptic as always, but it made me feel better to hear it. "Everything in the galaxy has its opposite. Light and dark, peace and chaos, ice and fire. Woman and man. And between these opposites, many shades that draw closer until they merge. We are opposites and the same thing at the same time"

I nodded, but as usual, more because I felt stupid asking further.

"So... are men evil?" I tried one last time.

She shook her head.

"Do you think you are pure? Gender is only a physical limit, not a mental one. Don't combine the two, it would be a grave mistake" I was ashamed of that question, but I felt better. I felt like I understood.

Years passed, I began to mature, to train more vigorously, to study even more. I was increasingly involved in meetings, though some were still off-limits to me. And the more I became aware of the thread, the more... something called to me.

At first, it was like an unwanted gaze. I would wake up in the middle of the night believing there was someone with me, but upon waking, the room was intact. I even took extra precautions, but none of the alarms went off. I thought I was just stressed.

But the sensation worsened. I felt chills on my skin when I was in the waking world ready to fall asleep, a light touch that grazed my bare skin. At first, I thought it was the wind. Then, the fabric sliding over me at night. Maybe a chill or pajamas tickling me unintentionally, but that wasn't possible.

It seemed like a physical touch, hands, perhaps a feather, I don't know. But it warmed my skin. I would wake up in the middle of the night, uncomfortable, with a damp sensation between my legs that I had never experienced before. Sometimes, I mistook it for other types of discharge only to check and realize it wasn't what I imagined. I blushed, seeing how wet my underwear had become, leaving a sticky, damp spot in the center, the same liquid trickling between my legs or down the cheeks of my butt.

One evening, whether by luck or misfortune, as I headed to the laundry to leave my panties, I ran into Mother Koril.

"What are you doing awake at this hour? And wandering the corridors, Moreover." her tone always harsh and imperious.

It took an enormous amount of courage to explain to her what was happening, but despite my worst fears, she simply nodded. "It's normal for a girl your age. You shouldn't resist it" She ordered me to hurry and go back to bed, then disappeared down the corridor.

But I didn't understand. Resist it? Resist what? It was just another doubt I couldn't answer.

But now the seed of doubt had been planted. I wanted to understand what she was talking about, to see if I could fix this problem that kept recurring every night.

So, one evening I lay down in bed, making sure I was securely locked in, and against all logical reason, I decided to wear only a light tank top, leaving my lower half uncovered.

The only protection was the bedcovers, but I didn't think it would be a problem.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

To this day, I didn’t know exactly what happened that first night. I have scattered and confused memories. I was aware of my body lying on the mattress, but it was completely dark around me, and I couldn't tell if it was because I had my eyes closed or if it was so dark that I couldn't see a hand in front of my face.

All I knew is that the tingling sensation returned, that shiver that ran through my body from my forehead slowly downwards, my nipples hardening as if a gust of cold air made me shiver and even lower on my stomach, finally settling between my legs.

It was a light touch, a slow, long movement that grazed my center externally. I could feel the wetness beginning to seep from my core. Normally, that would have been the moment when I forced myself to wake up, but I repeated Mother Koril's words in my head "let yourself go"

And so I did.

Instinctively, I spread my legs wider, bending my knees, that touch lingering on the bud between my legs that I had never dared to touch in my life, starting to tease me inexorably in a slow, circular motion. I could hear myself panting, my hips moving erratically. It didn't matter if I was trying to escape or seek out that sensation, that touch didn't stop. I didn't understand what was happening, but I could concentrated my internal muscle in one of those natural movements like when I breathed, I did it automatically.

My body knew what I needed, even if I hadn't yet processed it mentally.

It was only a moment later when that caress moved further down where a pool of juices wet my behind that I became clear-headed again.

A pressure pushing into my wet center made me react suddenly, frightened. I woke up, sitting up in bed in one swift motion, as if walking from a nightmare. Moving the covers, I immediately saw the stain spreading and soaking through the sheets' fabric.

I was so ashamed of it that I decided not to tell anyone, tried to dab the stain hoping that it would not be visible the next day, had to dry between my legs with numerous tissues and hissed when I indirectly brushed my still sensitive clit.

I went to sleep with a sense of dissatisfaction that I did not understand.

For two days I pretended that nothing was happening, when I lay down and started to feel that tingling sensation I immediately opened my eyes again, unfortunately in this way the hours of sleep were broken and I rested with more difficulty being slow in everything I did.

On the third day, my mother realised my discomfort and after a particularly bad training session, she took me aside.

"Koril informed me of your conversation the other night" she began.

I could do nothing but tighten my lips in discomfort.

"There is nothing to be ashamed of. Your body is changing as you grow. This is the connection to the thread that shows you the way. You don't have to resist it"

I replied with only a nod of my head.

I didn't understand what she was talking about, what I was resisting but I didn't know who to ask more of, I didn't want to look stupid.

But I trusted my mother.

So that night I tried again.

One thing I realised was that that touch had become more insistent on those evenings that I had run away from it. As if it was chasing me before I woke up, I closed my eyes and could already feel it between my legs.

Again, one new evening I tried against all my primal instincts to let go. One thing I realised was that the sensation I felt on my skin was actually an imitation of a hand's touch, the mornings I showered before joining the others had become a time of personal exploration where I tried to imitate that touch and soon realised that I could actually register that as the caress of a hand on my body. But I did not have the courage to do more.

Instead that evening as I concentrated on breathing in the darkness of my consciousness those phantom fingers returned insistently, they did not lose a second in teasing me by pressing directly on my clit, it was gentle yes, but firm. My legs instinctively spread wide, my hips in the air hungry for touch as that circular motion returned to tease my flesh.

I could feel a steady trickle of juices sliding from me and wetting the mattress as I trembled and tensed.

I gasped open-mouthed, little noises escaped my mouth, I wanted more even though I didn't understand what exactly I was chasing, and then again, that pressure where I needed it most.

There was no doubt when that itch opened my folds pushing deep between my legs, it was like feeling long, thick fingers digging directly into my womb, I panicked as I tried to wake up, but something was blinding me. Someone was tied to me in the wire holding me still and open to whatever was being done to me.

I was stuck with my legs open as that force pressed my inner walls, stretching and teasing me in a slow movement.

I could only continue to whimper as those fingers opened me inexorably.

Everything slippery, the sound of juices coming out noisily from the pressure as yet another caress returned to tease my bud, my swollen, wet flesh trembling from the stimulation, a hint of tears forming at the corners of my eyes, I wanted to look at what or who was doing this to me but it was all dark, I could only feel the mattress beneath me, my arms locked along my sides, my only outlet was in clutching the blankets in my fist.

I felt my body tense up in a vice bordering on painful before that touch continued to force its way into my folds even more deeper than before, I felt like I was going crazy not fully understanding how many fingers were in me, I moaned out loud for the first time as the soft walls stretched to make room, I held my legs open in a desperate search for something more almost hoping it might come in, harder, wetter, a ringing in my ears made everything muffled blocking out the rest of my senses.

And finally almost in a cruel gesture the touch on my clit became faster joining the thrusts in my core, a fire burning my skin, vibrating with a pleasure I had never felt before, a tide flooding my senses rhythmically until I reached the limit I cried out with no voice in my body, the walls contracted around those fingers almost as if they wanted to suck them inside me and these, covered by my fluids, slid easily in and out of me without leaving me a moment to breathe, my clitoris pinched hard one last time making more tears fall from my eyes, my hips galloping the air as I reached the first orgasm of my life.

Maybe I was crazy, but I swore I heard a low voice whispering "Good girl".

When I opened my eyes it was morning, it was like waking up from a nightmare in reality, I had dry skin around my eyes from spilled tears and between my legs a dirty, wet feeling, underneath me the sheet still damp in a stain under my bottom.

I didn't know what was happening, none of it made sense, why was this only happening to me now? And who was on the other end of the line?

By now I was sure of it, someone was luring me during the night hours by drawing my consciousness through the link, but I was still not good enough to be in control of what was going on around me, I was becoming vulnerable in the hands of someone I didn't know, or at least it felt like I didn't know.

Over the next few days I concentrated on searching for that signature in the coven, I found it hard to believe that anyone would dare use the power of the thread on me, I was the matriarch's daughter, I was respected, we were united and yet no matter how hard I searched nothing seemed to resemble what I had felt that night, not to mention that bond itself was silent.

On the one hand I was glad that it was no longer coming to disturb my sleep, but on the other hand... I blushed at the idea of feeling those shivers again, I had even (not without a huge dose of embarrassment) tried to do it on my own, but clearly I was doing something wrong, I was too hard, too hasty and in the end I was left with a sense of incompleteness that irritated me all day long.

I felt used, it seemed like whoever had sought me out had taken what he wanted and then left, it had been so persistent in the beginning and now? I needed... more.

And I knew I wouldn't fight it.

I wasn't a bad student, my mothers were proud of the results I brought I was consistent and diligent, but I improved even more after that experience, I studied harder, more intensely... I would never explain to either of them why I had changed.

And what was I supposed to tell them anyway?

Someone touches me between my legs at night and I realised I want more...? No it was better to avoid.

The subject of private parts was not taboo in the coven, in fact there were specific rituals regarding the sensuality of the body, I didn't know much about them since I wasn't admitted to those yet, but the body is a temple of physical and mental wellbeing and as such should be cared for.

I was simply too embarrassed to ask for more, as usual, I knew more about the medical side of it, but I had never wanted more, I hadn't even thought about it and there weren't really any girls my age to vent to.

All I knew was that by now I had made up my mind.

I would be the one pulling the strings this time and I hoped that whoever was on the other end would respond.

[novaursa]

Of Gods and Men (exodus)

Introduction

This is Dune/GOT/HOTD/FAB/ASOIAF crossover AU that you've voted for. If you always wanted to see House Targaryen in space, I got you. Please note how some of the lore of both universes is bent to blend in both worlds. This is my original idea that I've been cooking for at least two years. Be gentle with my work, and enjoy the ride.

- Summary: House Targaryen survives their ancient exile after being overthrown by House Corrino and the Bene Gesserit. Fleeing to the unknown planet Albiron, the Targaryens build a hidden civilization powered by drakaon crystals, reviving their dragons and creating advanced technology. Millennia later, whispers of their survival begin to surface as the Bene Gesserit confront a mysterious Red Woman on Arrakis, who warns of a coming Prince That Was Promised destined to challenge their control. The Targaryens secretly prepare to return, ready to reclaim their legacy.

- Pairing: reader!Daenys Targaryen/Leto Atredies

- Rating: Mature 16+

- Note: For more details about House Targaryen and their technology, please check out the masterlist.

- Next part: contact

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @alyssa-dayne @oxymakestheworldgoround

Millennia before the reign of the Padishah Emperors, before the Guild navigators learned to bend space, and long before the Bene Gesserit began their breeding program, there was another power, a House whose name was whispered with awe and fear across the stars—House Targaryen of Valyria.

In those ancient days, Valyria was a shining jewel of the universe, a world of towering spires and grand pyramids, whose mighty fleets ruled not one world but twelve. From the skies of Laansarad to the distant colonies of Qohar and Sarnor, their banner—a red three-headed dragon on a field of black—was a symbol of dominion, and their words, "Fire and Blood," were a promise. Their secret to power was not only their advanced technology or their skill in combat, but something far older, something the Imperium would come to call "unnatural." For the Targaryens were bonded to creatures of legend—dragons—whose very existence defied the laws of nature and technology.

But their power, their fire, had not gone unnoticed.

Once they emerged, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, ever-seeking control of bloodlines to further their goals, had long coveted House Targaryen's strength. Yet they could not penetrate the Targaryen bloodline, for the House was immune to the Sisterhood's manipulations. Rumors abounded that the dragons themselves had gifted their riders with an ancient magic that made them resistant to the spice and to the Bene Gesserit’s arts. The Targaryens did not bow, did not mingle their blood with the lesser Houses of the Imperium, and did not submit to the Sisterhood’s schemes. This isolation, this defiance, would be their undoing.

It began as whispers in the shadows of the imperial court of House Corrino, whispers that spoke of Valyria’s growing influence and its potential threat to the Emperor's rule. Fearing the power of House Targaryen and the dragons they commanded, House Corrino, in secret alliance with the Bene Gesserit and several other noble houses, set in motion a betrayal that would forever change the galaxy.

Without warning, the skies of Valyria turned dark as Corrino's fleets descended upon the planet like locusts. Great dreadnoughts unleashed their fury, raining nuclear fire upon the unsuspecting cities. The Targaryens, though powerful, were not prepared for such treachery. The star cities of Valyria, with their grand pyramids and towering spires, were reduced to ash in a matter of hours. Their colonies—once strongholds of the Targaryen vassal Houses—were similarly annihilated in the firestorm.

The Bene Gesserit, cold and calculating, had played their part well. They ensured that no Targaryen blood would escape their reach, confident that the ancient dragonlords were now a cautionary tale, a reminder that even the greatest Houses could fall.

But they were wrong.

In the chaos, a single fleet—a fraction of the once-mighty armada—managed to escape the inferno. Led by Aenar Targaryen, a visionary dragonlord, and his most loyal vassals, the remnants of House Targaryen fled into the void. Their dragons, too, escaped, fleeing with their riders into the unknown. With the enemy forces closing in, Aenar made the hardest decision of his life. He ordered the abandonment of the civilian starships—hundreds of them—that could not jump through space at the speed needed to escape. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children—innocent lives—were sacrificed to buy time for the chosen few. As the slow ships limped away at sub-light speed, doomed to be caught by their pursuers, the core fleet vanished in the blink of an eye, jumping to coordinates no one in the known galaxy had ever seen.

In their flight, they left behind only death and ruin, convincing the Imperium that House Targaryen was no more. The Bene Gesserit believed the bloodline had been wiped out. House Corrino celebrated their victory, confident that their throne was secure.

But the Targaryens were not dead.

As the surviving ships jumped further and further into uncharted space, their surviving dragons roared in defiance. Aenar Targaryen vowed that his House would rise again. The fire that had consumed Valyria would be reborn, and one day, the red three-headed dragon would fly again over the stars.

Their enemies had only bought themselves time.

In the vast, unknown reaches of space, the last of House Targaryen sought a new home, far from the grasp of the Empire, far from the Bene Gesserit’s eyes. In their hearts burned a single truth: fire and blood. It was all they had left.

And it was all they would need.

Far beyond the reach of the known universe, in the vast and uncharted depths of space, the last of House Targaryen drifted. For weeks, their ships had traveled through the void, their destination unknown, their hopes tethered only to the coordinates embedded in their ancient star charts. Aenar Targaryen, now the sole leader of his House, stood at the helm of his flagship, his mind consumed by thoughts of what was lost and what might yet be found.

Then, the scanners caught sight of something—a planet unlike any they had ever seen. Its atmosphere glowed a rich, deep red, the color of blood under an alien sun. Its oceans shimmered like rubies, and its vast jungles, though strange and wild, thrummed with life. The planet seemed to call to them, a beacon of hope in the darkest night.

"This is it," Aenar said, his voice carrying the weight of a prophecy. "We shall call it Albiron."

As the Targaryen ships descended upon the planet's surface, they found a world brimming with untapped potential. The air was thick but breathable, rich with minerals that nourished the vast jungles below. Towering mountains stretched into the sky, their peaks capped with dormant volcanoes. Aenar made his home there, at the highest point, building a grand pyramid into the volcanic chain that would serve as both fortress and palace. Around it, more pyramids soon rose, connected by a complex nexus of pathways above the dark amber forests. Below, cities began to form, hidden by the jungle canopy, shielded from prying eyes.

Albiron was a world of secrecy, and House Targaryen would see to it that their new home remained unknown to the Imperium and its allies.

As they delved deeper into the planet's surface, they made a discovery that would change the course of their history. In the heart of a vast canyon, buried beneath layers of rock and time, they uncovered a crystal unlike any they had seen before. The crystals, translucent with a faint golden hue, pulsed with an energy that seemed almost alive. Aenar named them drakaon, in honor of the dragons that once ruled Valyria, and the power they held was nothing short of revolutionary.

The drakaon crystals, as they soon learned, could be harnessed as a new energy source. They could be used to fuel their ships, making long-distance space travel possible without the reliance on melange—the spice that had kept the Imperium in control of the stars. For the first time in millennia, the Targaryens were free from the constraints of the galaxy’s economy, free from the Guild's stranglehold on space travel. Their technology advanced rapidly, fueled by the power of the drakaon crystals, and soon, the Targaryens had fleets capable of crossing the stars without detection, fleets that no longer needed to bow to the powers of the known universe.

In secret, they thrived. The cities of Albiron grew more complex and advanced, their pyramids rising higher, their pathways extending further across the planet’s vast jungles. Their ships patrolled the unknown regions, mapping uncharted stars and ensuring that no one would find their new home.

But the greatest secret of all lay within the depths of their new world.

Within hidden caverns, deep beneath the volcanoes of Albiron, Aenar and his descendants built vast hatcheries. Here, using knowledge salvaged from the lost archives of Valyria, they revived their ancient bond with dragons. Clutch by clutch, new dragons were born, their eggs glowing with the same fiery life that had once illuminated the skies of Valyria. The first to hatch was a magnificent beast, its scales a deep, molten red, its eyes like twin suns. They named it Vexarion, a harbinger of the new Targaryen age.

As the hatcheries grew, so too did the dragons, each one bonded to a rider, as had been the tradition for millennia. Once more, the Targaryens flew on dragonback, their fire-breathing companions reclaiming the skies of Albiron. They were stronger, fiercer than ever, their lifespans prolonged by the spice, their health enhanced by the crystals, just as their ancestors had once done. The galaxy believed the last dragons had died millennia ago, but here, on this blood-red planet, they lived—and they thrived.

Under Aenar’s leadership, House Targaryen rebuilt its strength. They did not forget their defeat, nor did they forgive it. But they had learned patience. For now, they would remain hidden, waiting, watching, biding their time in the shadows of the Imperium. They would rise again, but not yet. For now, their future lay in the skies above Albiron, in the bond between dragon and rider, in the power of the drakaon crystals that flowed beneath their feet.

Thousands of years had passed since the fall of Valyria, and the known galaxy had all but forgotten the name Targaryen. House Corrino ruled unchallenged, the Bene Gesserit continued their manipulations, and the spice flowed as the lifeblood of the Imperium. The Targaryens, once feared and powerful, were now little more than a cautionary tale—a story told to remind the galaxy of the dangers of defying the throne.

But in the far reaches of space, beyond the gaze of the Emperor, beyond the Sisterhood’s influence, whispers had begun to circulate. Minor Houses in the fringe systems spoke in hushed tones of strange transactions, of peculiar spice shipments that defied the standard flow of commerce. Most notably, a small, unassuming House known as House Vex had begun to quietly sell a specific brand of spice to select, discreet buyers.

The spice itself was nothing extraordinary at first glance—reddish-brown in color, with the same faint glow that all melange possessed. Yet, when examined closely, it held properties that puzzled even the most skilled refiners. It resisted traditional refinement processes, requiring a unique method of rensfuration to unlock its full potency. And it was always purchased by the same anonymous entity, whose representatives never gave names, never left a trace.

Rumors swirled throughout the Imperium. Some said the spice had properties that could extend life far beyond what even melange could achieve. Others whispered that it had been tailored for use in genetic experimentation, perhaps even to create a superhuman race immune to the Bene Gesserit's influence. The most outlandish rumors claimed it was being used to resurrect a forgotten House, one whose bloodline had been immune to the Sisterhood’s powers millennia ago.

At first, the whispers were dismissed. Minor Houses always had their secrets, after all, and House Vex was hardly influential enough to warrant concern. But as more and more shipments of this peculiar spice quietly disappeared into the unknown universe, suspicions began to grow. The Spacing Guild noticed the irregularities in the spice routes, and the Bene Gesserit began to pay attention. Still, no one dared speak openly of it—House Corrino had no interest in encouraging the notion of a long-lost enemy returning from the shadows.

In truth, the rumors were closer to the truth than anyone realized.

Deep within the jungles of Albiron, the Targaryens had mastered the art of spice refinement—not for their own use, but for their dragons. The spice, in its raw form, had always been a valuable tool to extend human life and grant certain enhancements, but the Targaryens had discovered a very specific strain, a rare and potent variant that, when carefully refined, could do far more. It extended not just the lifespan of their dragons but enhanced their vitality, their strength, their fire. The dragons of Albiron, already magnificent creatures of fire and fury, became more resilient, more powerful than they had ever been in Valyria.

This strain of spice could only be harvested under particular conditions, and it required an even more delicate process of rensfuration, one that took years to perfect. The Targaryens had kept this secret for generations, using it only sparingly to ensure their dragons thrived in exile. And to maintain their anonymity, they allowed House Vex—a small House bound to them in loyalty for centuries—to sell a portion of the raw spice to the wider galaxy, hiding the true purpose of the refined strain.

The transactions were always discreet, the buyers carefully selected to ensure that no one could trace the spice back to Albiron. Yet despite all their precautions, the galaxy had begun to take notice. The mystery surrounding the spice—and the shadowy figures who bought it—grew with each passing year.

The Bene Gesserit, ever watchful, sensed a disturbance in the patterns of the Imperium. Though they could not put their finger on it, the Sisterhood had learned to listen for the subtle currents of power that ran through the universe, and something was shifting. The idea that a House immune to their influence could have survived all these years in secret sent a ripple of unease through their ranks. They began to dig deeper, their agents searching for any clue that might lead them to the source of the rumors.

House Corrino, too, grew wary. The spice trade was the lifeblood of the Empire, and any irregularity in its flow could have disastrous consequences. The Emperor’s spies were dispatched to the farthest corners of the galaxy, though none returned with answers.

Still, the rumors persisted. The spice that had no clear origin. The mysterious buyers from beyond known space. The possibility that a forgotten House might yet live.

In the halls of the Imperium, no one spoke openly of House Targaryen. To do so would invite questions that no one wanted to answer. But in the dark corridors of power, in the quiet whispers between those who dealt in secrets, the name began to surface again.

Targaryen.

Fire and blood.

The galaxy had forgotten them, but House Targaryen had never forgotten the galaxy. And as their dragons grew stronger, as their power in exile continued to build, they waited.

For one day, the whispers would no longer be rumors.

And when that day came, the stars themselves would tremble.

The scorching winds of Arrakis blew fiercely through the narrow streets of Arrakeen, carrying with them the dry scent of spice and the whispers of rebellion. The city, usually shrouded in an oppressive silence broken only by the occasional hum of machinery, now thrummed with tension. A crowd had gathered in the heart of the city, their faces hidden beneath hoods and veils to protect against the harsh sun, their voices rising in fervor as they listened to the woman who stood before them, bathed in the blood-red light of the setting sun.

She was known only as the Red Woman, a stranger from a distant corner of the galaxy, draped in flowing crimson robes that shimmered in the heat. Her eyes burned with an unnatural fire, and her voice, rich and commanding, seemed to cut through the dry air like a blade.

“Brothers, sisters,” she called out, her voice echoing through the square. “You have been deceived! For too long, the Bene Gesserit have whispered their lies into the ears of your leaders, guiding the hand of the Empire toward a future of darkness and death. But the Lord of Light has seen their evil, and He has sent me to show you the truth.”

The crowd murmured in agreement, their eyes locked on the Red Woman as she raised her hands, flames seemingly dancing at her fingertips.

“The night is dark and full of terrors,” she intoned, her voice growing louder. “But there is a light coming, a flame that will burn away the lies of the Bene Gesserit. The false messiah they prepare will lead to the deaths of billions! But the Prince That Was Promised, the true savior, will rise and deliver us from their evil.”

The crowd erupted into shouts of agreement, their fists raised toward the sky as the Red Woman’s message of salvation stirred their hearts. But not everyone in Arrakeen was so moved by her words.

From the shadows of a nearby alley, a figure emerged, flanked by a dozen Bene Gesserit acolytes. The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, her face etched with the lines of age and power, strode forward with the grace of a predator. Her sharp blue eyes took in the scene before her, the riotous crowd, the Red Woman at their center, and the burning passion in their eyes. She had seen such passion before, in other corners of the universe, and she knew well the danger it posed.

The Red Woman turned her gaze toward the Bene Gesserit as they approached, her lips curling into a cold smile. “Ah, the serpents come to silence me,” she said, her voice dripping with mockery. “Do you fear the truth, Mother?”

Mother Mohiam’s expression remained unchanged as she stepped forward, her voice as cold as the sands of Arrakis at night. “You have no place here, woman. You are not of Arrakis, and you bring only chaos to these people. Leave this world, now, or you will face the consequences.”

The Red Woman laughed, the sound high and sharp, cutting through the murmur of the crowd. “I serve only the Lord of Light, not your false Empire or your twisted Sisterhood. You, who claim to see the future, who shape the paths of men to serve your own ends, are the true servants of darkness. You pave the way for a false messiah who will bring nothing but death and destruction to the universe.”

The Bene Gesserit acolytes shifted uneasily behind Mother Mohiam, but she stood firm, her eyes locked on the Red Woman. “You speak of a prophecy you do not understand,” she said. “The future is not for the untrained mind to glimpse. You meddle with forces beyond your comprehension.”

“The future is clear to those who serve the Light,” the Red Woman retorted. “Your Kwisatz Haderach, your so-called savior, will be the harbinger of death. He will lead the universe into a war that will consume entire worlds, killing billions. But the Prince That Was Promised will come, and he will burn away the lies you have sown.”

The crowd began to stir again, their fear and anger rising as the Red Woman’s words took hold. Mother Mohiam could feel the pulse of the mob, the heat of their desperation, and knew that if she did not act soon, this riot would spread like wildfire through the streets of Arrakeen.

“You play with fire,” Mother Mohiam said softly, stepping closer to the Red Woman. “And fire will consume you.”

The Red Woman smiled, her eyes gleaming. “The night is dark and full of terrors, Mother. You would do well to remember that.”

With that, the Red Woman raised her hands, and for a brief moment, flames flared at her fingertips once more before she stepped back into the shadows. Her followers, emboldened by her defiance, began to chant, their voices growing louder as they echoed her words.

“The night is dark and full of terrors. The Prince That Was Promised will come.”

Mother Mohiam watched as the Red Woman disappeared into the crowd, her eyes narrowing in thought. She had faced zealots before, had seen the power of faith wielded as a weapon. But this… this was something different. The Red Woman’s words echoed in her mind, unsettling her in a way few things ever had.

As the crowd began to disperse, the tension lingering in the air like the scent of spice after a storm, Mother Mohiam turned to her acolytes.

“Find her,” she said quietly. “Find her and bring her to me. We must know who she truly serves.”

For a moment, she stood in the empty square, the wind stirring the dust around her feet. She looked up at the burning sky, the twin suns casting long shadows across the desert, and a chill ran down her spine despite the heat.

The night is dark and full of terrors, indeed.

And Mother Mohiam knew that the terrors were only beginning.

- A/N: Let's see how well this does before I post another part.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2024

I reviewed 26 books this year: 15 novels, 5 nonfiction books, and 6 graphic novels. Even though I feel perennially behind on my reading (and objectively, I do have 10 linear feet of "to be read" books on the shelf), I think this is a pretty good haul.

Books are pretty much the ideal gift, if you ask me. Of course, I'm biased as a former bookseller and library worker, and as an author (of course) – I had three more books come out in 2024 (see the end of this post for details).

I started a lot more than 26 books this year. Long ago, I figured life was too short for books I wasn't enjoying, and I'm pretty ruthless about putting books down partway through if I think they're not going to reward finishing them. I probably start 10 books for every one I finish. However, I do review more than 90% of the books I get through. It's rare for me to keep reading a book all the way to the end if I'm not enjoying it enough to unconditionally recommend it. I rarely review books I don't like – there's not really any point in cataloging the list of books I think you won't enjoy reading, and most books I don't like very much are broken in ways that are too banal to comment upon.

The list below is pretty great, but if you're looking for more, here's the haul from 2023:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review

NOVELS

I. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

A fucking banger: it's a taut, unguessable whuddunit, painted in ultrablack noir, set in an alternate Jazz Age in a world where indigenous people never ceded most the west to the USA. It's got gorgeously described jazz music, a richly realized modern indigenous society, and a spectacular romance. It's amazing.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/04/cahokia/#the-sun-and-the-moon

II. After World by Debbie Urbanski

An unflinching and relentlessly bleak tale of humanity's mass extinction, shot through with pathos and veined with seams of tragic tenderness and care. Sen Anon – the story's semi-protagonist – is 18 years old when the world learns that every person alive has been sterilized and so the human race is living out its last years.

The news triggers a manic insistence that this is a good thing – long overdue, in fact – and the perfect opportunity to scan every person alive for eventual reincarnation as virtual humans in an Edenic cloud metaverse called Gaia. That way, people can continue to live their lives without the haunting knowledge that everything they do makes the planet worse for every other living thing, and each other. Here, finally, is the resolution to the paradox of humanity: our desire to do good, and our inevitable failure on that score.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/18/storyworker-ad39-393a-7fbc/#digital-human-archive-project

III. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

A dreamlike tale of a public-private partnership that hires the terminally endebted to invade the dreams of white-collar professionals and harvest the anxieties that prevent them from being fully productive members of the American corporate workforce.

We meet Jonathan as he is applying for a job that he was recruited for in a dream. As instructed in his dream, he presents himself at a shabby strip-mall office where an acerbic functionary behind scratched plexiglass takes his application and informs him that he is up for a gig run jointly by the US State Department and a consortium of large corporate employers. If he is accepted, all of his student debt repayments will be paused and he will no longer face wage garnishment. What's more, he'll be doing the job in his sleep, which means he'll be able to get a day job and pull a double income – what's not to like?

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/08/capitalist-surrealism/#productivity-hacks

IV. The Book of Love by Kelly Link

If you've read Link's short stories (which honestly, you must read), you know her signature move: a bone-dry witty delivery, used to spin tales of deceptive whimsy and quirkiness, disarming you with daffiness while she sets the hook and yanks. That's the unmistakeable, inimitable texture of a Kelly Link story: deft literary brushstrokes, painting a picture so charming and silly that you don't even notice when she cuts you without mercy.

Turns out that she can quite handily do this for hundreds of pages, and the effect only gets better when it's given space to unfold.

It's a long and twisting mystery about friendship, love, queerness, rock-and-roll, stardom, parenthood, loyalty, lust and duty.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/13/the-kissing-song/#wrack-and-roll

V. Lyorn by Steven Brust

The seventeenth book in Steven Brust's long-running Vlad Taltos series. For complicated reasons, Vlad has to hide out in a theater. Why a theater? They are shielded from sorcery, as proof against magical spying by rival theater companies, and Vlad is on the run from the Left Hand of the Jhereg – the crime syndicate's all-woman sorceress squad – and so he has to hide in the theater.

The theater is mounting a production of a famous play that's about another famous play. The first famous play (the one the play is about – try and follow along, would you?) is about a famous massacre that took place thousands of years before. The play was mounted as a means of drumming up support for the whistleblower who reported on the massacre and was invited to a short-term berth in the Emperor's death row as a consequence.

The plot is a fantastic, fast-handed caper story that has a million moving parts, a beautiful prestige, and a coup de grace that'll have you cheering and punching the air.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/09/so-meta/#delightful-doggerel

VI. Till Human Voices Wake Us by Rebecca Roque

A teen murder mystery told in the most technorealist way. Cia's best friend Alice has been trying to find her missing boyfriend for months, and in her investigation, she's discovered their small town's dark secret – a string of disappearances, deaths and fires that are the hidden backdrop to the town's out-of-control addiction problem.

Alice has something to tell Cia, something about the fire that orphaned her and cost her one leg when she was only five years old, but Cia refuses to hear it. Instead, they have a blazing fight, and part ways. It's the last time Cia and Alice ever see each other: that night, Alice kills herself.

Or does she? Cia is convinced that Alice has been murdered, and that her murder is connected to the drug- and death-epidemic that's ravaging their town. As Cia and her friends seek to discover the town's secret – and the identity of Alice's killer – we're dragged into an intense, gripping murder mystery/conspiracy story that is full of surprises and reversals, each more fiendishly clever than the last.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/16/dead-air/#technorealism

VII. The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein

Randall "XKCD" Munroe pitched me on this over dinner: "All these different people kept recommending them to me, and they kept telling me that I would love them, but they wouldn't tell me what they were about because there's this huge riddle in them that's super fun to figure out for yourself. "The books were published in the eighties by Del Rey, and the cover of the first one had a huge spoiler on it. But the author got the rights back and she's self-published it."

How could I resist a pitch like that? So I ordered a copy. Holy moly is this a good novel! And yeah, there's a super interesting puzzle in it that I won't even hint at, except to say that even the book's genre is a riddle that you'll have enormous great fun solving.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/04/the-wulf/#underground-fave

VIII. Moonbound by Robin Sloan

Moonbound's protagonist is a "chronicler," a symbiotic fungus engineered to nestle in a human's nervous system, where it serves as a kind of recording angel, storing up the memories, experiences and personalities of its host. When we meet the chronicler, it has just made a successful leap from its old host – a 10,000-years-dead warrior who had been preserved in an anaerobic crashpod ever since her ship was shot out of the sky – into the body of Ariel, a 12-year-old boy who had just invaded the long-lost tomb.

This is doing fiction in hard mode, and Sloan nails it. The unraveling strangeness of Ariel's world is counterpointed with the amazing tale of the world the chronicler hails from, even as the chonicler consults with the preserved personalities of the heroes and warriors it had previous resided in and recorded.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/11/penumbraverse/#middle-anth

IX. Fight Me by Austin Grossman

Aging ex-teen superheroes weigh the legacy of Generation X, in a work that enrobes its savage critique with sweet melancholia, all under a coating of delicious snark. The Newcomers – an amped-up ninja warrior, a supergenius whose future self keeps sending him encouragement and technical schematics backwards through time, and an exiled magical princess turned preppie supermodel – have spent more than a decade scattered to the winds. While some have fared better than others, none of them have lived up to their potential or realized the dreams that seemed so inevitable when they were world famous supers with an entourage of fellow powered teens who worshipped them as the planet's greatest heroes.

As they set out to solve the mystery of the wizard who gave the protagonist his powers, they are reunited and must take stock of who they are and how they got there (cue Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime").

The publisher's strapline for this book is "The Avengers Meets the Breakfast Club," which is clever, but extremely wrong. The real comp for this book isn't "The Breakfast Club," it's "The Big Chill."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/the-big-genx-chill/#im-super-thanks-for-asking

X. Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby

Kristen is the "Chief Emotional Manager" for Wuv, a hot startup that has defined the new field of "affective computing," which is when a computer tells you what everyone else around you is really feeling, based on the irrepressible tells emitted by their bodies, voices and gadgets.

Managing Sumter through Wuv's tumultuous launch is hard work for Kristen, but at last, it's paid off. The company has been acquired, making Kristen – and all her coworkers on the founding core team – into instant millionaires. They're flying to a lavish celebration in an autonomous plane that Sumter chartered when the action begins: the plane has a malfunction and crashes into a desert island, killing all but ten of the Wuvvies.

As the survivors explore the island, they discover only one sign of human habitation: a huge, brutalist, featureless black glass house, which initially rebuffs all their efforts to enter it. But once they gain entry, they discover that the house is even harder to leave.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/13/influencers/#affective-computing

XI. The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy

A queer coming-of-age tale in the mode of epic fantasy. Lorel wants to be a witch, but that's the very last of the adventurous trades to be strictly gender-segregated. Boys and girls alike run away to be knights, brigands and sailors, but only girls can become a witch. Indeed, Lorel's best friend, Lane, is promised to the witches, having been born to a witch herself.

Lorel has signed up for witching just as the land is turning against witches, thanks to a political plot by a scheming duchess who has scapegoated the witches as part of a plan to annex all the surrounding duchies, re-establishing the long-disintegrated kingdom with herself on the throne. To make things worse (for the witches, if not the duchess), there's a plague of monsters on the land, and the forests are blighted with a magical curse that turns trees to unmelting ice. This all softens up the peasantfolk for anti-witch pogroms.

So Lorel has to learn witching, even as her coven is fighting both monsters and the duchess's knights and the vigilante yokels who've been stirred up with anti-witch xenophobia.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/24/daughters-of-the-empty-throne/#witchy

XII. Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson

A story that will make you drunk on language, on worldbuilding, and on its roaring, relentless plot. The action is set on Chynchin, a fantastic Caribbean island (or maybe Caribbeanesque – it's never clear whether this is some magical, imaginary world, or some distant future of our own). Chynchin is a multiracial, creole land with a richly realized gift economy that Hopkinson deftly rounds out with a cuisine, languages, and familial arrangements.

Chynchin was founded through a slave rebellion, in which the press-ganged soldiers of the iron-fisted Ymisen empire were defeated by three witches who caused them to be engulfed in tar that they magicked into a liquid state just long enough to entomb them, then magicked back into solidity. For generations, the Ymisen have tolerated Chynchin's self-rule, but as the story opens, a Ymisen armada sails into Chynchin's port and a "trade envoy" announces that it's time for the Chynchin to "voluntarily" re-establish trade with the Ymisen.

The story that unfolds is a staple of sf and fantasy: the scrappy resistance mounted against the evil empire, and this familiar backdrop is a sturdy scaffold to support Hopkinson's dizzying, phantasmagoric tale of psychedelic magic, possessed children, military intrigue, musicianship and sexual entanglements.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/20/piche/#cynchin

XIII. Julia by Sandra Newman

Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both The Wind Done Gone and Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.

For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.

This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic

XIV. The Wilding by Ian McDonald

McDonald's first horror novel, and it's fucking terrifying. It's set in a rural Irish peat bog that has been acquired by a conservation authority that is rewilding it after a century of industrial peat mining that stripped it back nearly to the bedrock. This rewilding process has been greatly accelerated by the covid lockdowns, which reduced the human footprint in the conservation area to nearly zero.

Lisa's last duty before she leaves the bog and goes home to Dublin is leading a school group on a wild campout in one of the bog's deep clearings. It's a routine assignment, and while it's not her favorite duty, it's also not a serious hardship.

But as the group hikes out to the campsite, one of her fellow guides is killed, without warning, by a mysterious beast that moves so quickly they can barely make out its monstrous form. Thus begins a tense, mysterious, spooky as hell story of survival in a haunted woods, written in the kind of poesy that has defined McDonald's career, and which – when deployed in service of terror – has the power to raise literal goosebumps.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/25/bogman/#erin-go-aaaaaaargh

XV. Polostan by Neal Stephenson

Not a spy novel, but a science fiction novel about spies in an historical setting. This isn't to say that Stephenson tramples on, or ignores spy tropes: this is absolutely a first-rate spy novel. Nor does Stephenson skimp on the lush, gorgeously realized and painstakingly researched detail you'd want from an historical novel.

Polostan raises the curtain on the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, AKA Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva, whose upbringing is split between the American West in the early 20th century and the Leningrad of revolutionary Russia (her parents are an American anarchist and a Ukrainian Communist who meet when her father travels to America as a Communist agitator). Aurora's parents' marriage does not survive their sojourn to the USSR, and eventually Aurora and her father end up back in the States, after her father is tasked with radicalizing the veterans of the Bonus Army that occupied DC, demanding the military benefits they'd been promised.

All of this culminates in her return sojourn to the Soviet Union, where she first falls under suspicion of being an American spy, and then her recruitment as a Soviet spy.

Also: she plays a lot of polo. Like, on a horse.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/04/bomb-light/#nukular

NONFICTION

I. A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

Biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith set out to investigate the governance challenges of the impending space settlements they were told were just over the horizon. Instead, they discovered that humans aren't going to be settling space for a very long time, and so they wrote a book about that instead.

The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that every aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What's more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool).

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

II. Dark Wire by Joseph Cox

Cox spent years on the crimephone beat, tracking vendors who sold modded phones (first Blackberries, then Android phones) to criminal syndicates with the promise that they couldn't be wiretapped by law-enforcement.

He tells the story of the FBI's plan to build an incredibly secure, best-of-breed crimephone, one with every feature that a criminal would want to truly insulate themselves from law enforcement while still offering everything a criminal could need to plan and execute crimes.

This is really two incredible tales. The first is the story of the FBI and its partners as they scaled up Anom, their best-of-breed crimephone business. This is a (nearly) classic startup tale, full of all-nighters, heroic battles against the odds, and the terror and exhilaration of "hockey-stick" growth.

The other one is the crime startup, the one that the hapless criminal syndicates that sign up to distribute Anom devices find themselves in the middle of. They, too, are experiencing hockey-stick growth. They, too, have a fantastically lucrative tiger by the tail. And they, too, have a unique set of challenges that make this startup different from any other.

Cox has been on this story for a decade, and it shows. He has impeccable sourcing and encyclopedic access to the court records and other public details that allow him to reproduce many of the most dramatic scenes in the Anom caper verbatim.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/04/anom-nom-nom/#the-call-is-coming-from-inside-the-ndrangheta

III. The Hidden History of Walt Disney World by Foxx Nolte

No one writes about Disney theme parks like Foxx Nolte; no one rises above the trivia and goes beyond the mere sleuthing of historical facts, no one nails the essence of what makes these parks work – and fail.

The history of Walt Disney World is also a history of the American narrative from the 1960s to the turn of the millennium, especially once Epcot enters the picture and Disney sets out to market itself as a futuristic mirror to America and the world. There's a doomed plan to lead the nation in the provision of an airport for the largely hypothetical short runway aircraft that never materialized, the Disney company's love-hate affair with Florida's orange growers, and the geopolitics of installing a permanent World's Fair, just as World's Fairs were disappearing from the world stage.

In focusing on the conflicts between different corporate managers, outside suppliers, and the gloriously flamboyant weirdos of Florida, Nolte's history of Disney World transcends amusing anaecdotes and tittle-tattle – rather, it illustrates how the creative sparks thrown off by people smashing into each other sometimes created towering blazes of glory that burn to this day.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/15/disnefried/#dialectics

IV. Network Nation by Richard R John

An extremely important, brilliantly researched, deep history of America's love/hate affair with not just the telephone, but also the telegraph. It is unmistakably as history book, one that aims at a definitive takedown of various neat stories about the history of American telecommunications.

The monopolies that emerged in the telegraph and then the telephone weren't down to grand forces that made them inevitable, but rather, to the errors made by regulators and the successful gambits of the telecoms barons. At many junctures, things could have gone another way.

Most striking about this book were the parallels to contemporary fights over Big Tech trustbusting, in our new Gilded Age. Many of the apologies offered for Western Union or AT&T's monopoly could have been uttered by the Renfields who carry water for Facebook, Apple and Google. John's book is a powerful and engrossing reminder that variations on these fights have occurred in the not-so-distant past, and that there's much we can learn from them.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

V. A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown

A frustratingly hard to summarize book, because it requires a lot of backstory and explanation, and one of the things that makes this book so! fucking! great! is how skillfully Brown weaves disparate elements – the unique house he built in Austin, the wildlife he encounters in the city's sacrifice zones, the politics that created them – into his telling.

This series of loosely connected essays that explains how everything fits together: colonial conquest, Brown's failed marriage, his experience as a lawyer learning property law, what he learned by mobilizing that learning to help his neighbors defend the pockets of wildness that refuse to budge.

It's filled with pastoral writing that summons Kim Stanley Robinson by way of Thoreau, and it sometimes frames its philosophical points the way a cyberpunk writer would.

The kind of book that challenges how you feel about the crossroads we're at, the place you live, and the place you want to be.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/17/cyberpunk-pastoralism/#time-to-mow-the-roof

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. Death Strikes by David Maass and Patrick Lay

"The Emperor of Atlantis," is an opera written by two Nazi concentration camp inmates, the librettist Peter Kien and the composer Viktor Ullmann, while they were interned in Terezin, a show-camp in Czechoslovakia that housed numerous Jewish artists, who were encouraged to make and display their work as a sham to prove to the rest of the world that Nazi camps were humane places.

Death Strikes was adapted by my EFF colleague Dave Maass, an investigator and muckraker and brilliant writer, who teamed up with illustrator Patrick Lay and character designer Ezra Rose (who worked from Kien and Ullmann's original designs, which survived along with the score and libretto).

The Emperor's endless wars have already tried Death's patience. Death brings mercy, not vengeance, and the endless killing has dismayed him. The Emperor's co-option drives him past the brink, and Death declares a strike, breaking his sword and announcing that henceforth, no one will die.

Needless to say, this puts a crimp in the Emperor's all-out war plan. People get shot and stabbed and drowned and poisoned, but they don't die. They just hang around, embarrassingly alive (there's a great comic subplot of the inability of the Emperor's executioners to kill a captured assassin).

While this is clearly an adaptation, Kien and Ullmann's spirit of creativity, courage, and bittersweet creative ferment shines through. It's a beautiful book, snatched from death itself.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/23/peter-kien-viktor-ullmann/#terez

II. My Favorite Things Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris

The long, long delayed sequel to the tale of Karen Reyes, a 10 year old, monster-obsessed queer girl in 1968 Chicago who lives with her working-class single mother and her older brother, Deeze, in an apartment house full of mysterious, haunted adults. There's the landlord – a gangster and his girlfriend – the one-eyed ventriloquist, and the beautiful Holocaust survivor and her jazz-drummer husband.

Ferris's storytelling style is dazzling, and it's matched and exceeded by her illustration style, which is grounded in the classic horror comics of the 1950s and 1960s. Characters in Karen's life – including Karen herself – are sometimes depicted in the EC horror style, and that same sinister darkness crowds around the edges of her depictions of real-world Chicago.

Book Two picks up from Book One's cliffhanger and then rockets forward. Everything brilliant about One is even better in Two – the illustrations more lush, the fine art analysis more pointed and brilliant, the storytelling more assured and propulsive, the shocks and violence more outrageous, the characters more lovable, complex and grotesque.

Everything about Two is more. The background radiation of the Vietnam War in One takes center stage with Deeze's machinations to beat the draft, and Deeze and Karen being ensnared in the Chicago Police Riots of '68. The allegories, analysis and reproductions of classical art get more pointed, grotesque and lavish. Annika's Nazi concentration camp horrors are more explicit and more explicitly connected to Karen's life. The queerness of the story takes center stage, both through Karen's first love and the introduction of a queer nightclub. The characters are more vivid, as is the racial injustice and the corruption of the adult world.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/01/the-druid/#

III. So Long Sad Love by Mirion Malle

Cleo is a French comics creator who's moved to Montreal, in part to be with Charles, a Quebecois creator who helps her find a place in the city's tight-knit artistic scene. The relationship feels like a good one, with the normal ups and downs, but then Cleo travels to a festival, where she meets Farah, a vivacious and talented fellow artist. They're getting along great…until Farah discovers who Cleo's boyfriend is. Though Farah doesn't say anything, she is visibly flustered and makes her excuses before hurriedly departing.

This kicks off Cleo's hunt for the truth about her boyfriend, a hunt that is complicated by the fact that she's so far from home, that her friends are largely his friends, that he flies off the handle every time she raises the matter, and by her love for him.

Malle handles this all so deftly, showing how Cleo and her friends all play archetypal roles in the recurrent missing stair dynamic. It's a beautifully told story, full of charm and character, but it's also a kind of forensic re-enactment of a disaster, told from an intermediate distance that's close enough to the action that we can see the looming crisis, but also understand why the people in its midst are steering straight into it.

Packed with subtlety and depth, romance and heartbreak, subtext that carries through the dialog (in marvelous translation from the original French by Aleshia Jensen) and the body language in Malle's striking artwork.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/25/missing-step/#the-fog-of-love

IV. Bea Wolf by Zach Wienersmith and Boulet

A ferociously amazingly great illustrated kids' graphic novel adaptation of the Old English epic poem, which inspired Tolkien, who helped bring it to popularity after it had languished in obscurity for centuries.

Weinersmith and Boulet set themselves the task of bringing a Germanic heroic saga from more than a thousand years ago to modern children, while preserving the meter and the linguistic and literary tropes of the original. And they did it!

There are some changes, of course. Grendel – the boss monster that both Beowulf and Bea Wulf must defeat – is no longer obsessed with decapitating his foes and stealing their heads. In Bea Wulf, Grendel is a monstrously grown up and boring adult who watches cable news and flosses twice per day, and when he defeats the kids whose destruction he is bent upon, he does so by turning them into boring adults, too.

The utter brilliance of Bea Wulf is as much due to the things it preserves from the original epic as it is to the updates and changes. Weinersmith has kept the Old English tradition of alliteration, right from the earliest passages, with celebrations of heroes like "Tanya, treat-taker, terror of Halloween, her costume-cache vast, sieging kin and neighbor, draining full candy-bins, fearing not the fate of her teeth. Ten thousand treats she took. That was a fine Tuesday."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/24/awesome-alliteration/#hellion-hallelujah

V. Youth Group by Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris

A charming tale of 1990s ennui, cringe Sunday School – and demon hunting.

Kay is a bitter, cynical teenager who's doing her best to help her mother cope with an ugly divorce that has seen her dad check out on his former family. Mom is going back to church, and she talks Kay into coming along with her to attend the church youth group.

But this is no ordinary youth group. Kay's ultra-boring suburban hometown is actually infested with demons who routinely possess the townspeople, and that baseline of demonic activity has suddenly gone critical, with a new wave of possessions. Suddenly, the possessed are everywhere – even Kay's shitty dad ends up with a demon inside of him.

That's when Kay discovers that the youth group and its corny pastor are also demon hunters par excellence. Their rec-rooms sport secret cubbies filled with holy weapons, and the words of exorcism come as readily to them as any embarrassing rewritten devotional pop song. Kay's discovery of this secret world convinces her that the youth group isn't so bad after all, and soon she is initiated into its mysteries, including the existence of rival demon-hunting kids from the local synagogue, Catholic church, and Wiccan coven.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/16/satanic-panic/#the-dream-of-the-nineties

VI. Justice Warriors: Vote Harder by Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson

Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.

So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).

What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/11/uninhabited-zone/#eremption-season

As I mentioned in the introduction to this roundup, I had three books out in 2024; a new hardcover, and the paperback editions of two books that came out in hardcover last year. There's more on the horizon – a new hardcover novel (PICKS AND SHOVELS) in Feb 2025, along with the paperback of my novel THE BEZZLE (also Feb 2025). I just turned in the manuscript for my next nonfiction book, ENSHITTIFICATION, which will also be adapted as a graphic novel. I'll also be shortly announcing the publication details for a YA graphic novel, a new essay collection and short story collection.

If you enjoy my work – the newsletter, the talks, the reviews – the best way to support me is to buy my books. I write for grownups, teens, middle-schoolers and little kids, so there's something for everyone!

I. The Lost Cause A solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency. "The first great YIMBY novel" -Bill McKibben. "Completely delightful…Neither utopian nor dystopian…I loved it" -Rebecca Solnit. A national bestseller!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause/

II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation A detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle Big Tech. "A passionate case for 'relief from manipulation, high-handed moderation, surveillance, price-gouging, disgusting or misleading algorithmic suggestions. -Akash Kapur, New Yorker. Another national bestseller!

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

III. The Bezzle. A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash. "Righteously satisfying…A fascinating tale of financial skullduggery, long cons, and the delivery of ice-cold revenge." –Booklist. A third national bestseller!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle/

[shukraastro]

Vedic Astrology - Future Spouse Prediction:

Name Meaning part 2

In the 1st part of this series (which I will link below) I explained how you can check for the planet that is ruling the Nakshatra in which your 7th house lord in the D1 chart is placed in and how that planet and the next chaining Nakshatra lord planet can give you clues about the theme of you spouses name meaning. To demonstrate how this technique works I have taken Brad Pitt as an example in part 1 and have given you themes of Sun and Ketu. In this part I will give you some more celebrity examples and the themes of the other planets.

Justin Bieber

He has Taurus in the 7th house in his D1 chart, therefore it is ruled by Venus, so we look in which Nakshatra Venus is placed in. His 7th lord Venus is placed in Purva Bhadrapada Nakshatra which is ruled by Jupiter. Jupiter is the 1st planet we take note of. Next we look again in which Nakshatra Jupiter is placed in. His Jupiter is placed in Vishakha Nakshatra which is also ruled by Jupiter. So what this tells us is that the meaning of his spouse's names will revolve around the themes of Jupiter. Now let's look at the themes of Jupiter.

Jupiter: anything related to wisdom/spirituality, learning/teaching, philosophical/mythological tales/stories, various deities, nature/outdoors/wilderness, travel, adventure, optimism/boldness, luck, abundance/expansion, morality and many more...

If we look at the meanings behind the names of Hailey Bieber's full name before she was married, we can see the themes of Jupiter playing out.

Hailey Rhode Baldwin

Hailey in Irish means wise one

Rhode has various meanings which fall under various Jupiterian themes. One of them is clearing in the woods (nature themed). The other meaning is where roses grow (also nature themed). The other one is the Greek island Rhodes which has a Greek mythological story behind its name.

Baldwin means a bold and brave friend (boldness themed)

As we can see all three of her names fall under the Jupiter archetype.

More example: this time predictive ones

Jungkook

He has Gemini in the 7th house in his D1 chart, therefore the 7th lord is Mercury and we look at the Nakshatra where his Mercury is placed in. His 7th lord Mercury is in Purva Phalguni Nakshatra which is ruled by Venus. We take note of Venus as the 1st planet and look further in which Nakshatra his Venus is placed in. Venus is placed in Chitra Nakshatra which is ruled by Mars and we take Mars as his 2nd chaining Nakshatra planet. Now we look at the themes of these two planets.

Venus: anything related to love, beauty, aesthetics, feminity, romance, desire, pleasures, elegance, flowers, music, poetry, art, wealth, justice/fairness, balance and many more...

Mars: anything related to war (fighting/soldier/weapons/conquering/land/fire), anger, passion/motivation/aspiration, masculinity, strength, speed, support/protection, hero/savior, and many more...

The meanings of his future spouse's first, (middle) and last name could revolve around the themes of these two planets Venus and Mars.

Bangchan

He has Scorpio in the 7th house in his D1 chart, therefore the 7th lord is Mars and we look at the Nakshatra in which his Mars is placed in. His 7th lord Mars is in Anuradha Nakshatra which is ruled by Saturn. We take note of Saturn as the 1st planet and look further in which Nakshatra Saturn is placed in. His Saturn is placed in Revati Nakshatra which is ruled by Mercury, we take note of Mercury as the 2nd chaining Nakshatra planet. Now we look at the themes of these two planets.

Saturn: anything related to time, nostalgia, discipline, life lessons, karma, maturity, struggles/hardships, serving/servant, work/careers, limitations/restrictions/rules/laws, ink, metals (but gold and silver are mostly ruled by Sun and Moon still), icyness, stone, firmness and many more...

Mercury: anything related to words/numbers, speaking/writing, intellect/cleverness, colors/vibrancy/creativity, geometrical forms/shapes, petiteness/youthfulness, children, joyfulness, a message/information, skills/crafts and many more...

The meanings of his future spouse's first, (middle) and last name could revolve around the themes of these two planets Saturn and Mercury.

Mingyu

He has Sagittarius in the 7th house in his D1 chart, therefore the 7th lord is Jupiter and we look at the Nakshatra in which his Jupiter is placed in. His 7th lord Jupiter is in Shravana Nakshatra which is ruled by Moon. We take note of Moon as the 1st planet and look further in which Nakshatra Moon is placed in. His Moon is placed in Purva Bhadrapada Nakshatra which is ruled by Jupiter, we take note of Jupiter as the 2nd chaining Nakshatra planet. Now we look at the themes of Moon, because we already discussed Jupiter before.

Moon: anything related to the moon itself, emotions/feelings, water, purity, sparkling, night, dreams, wishes, intuition, healing, sensuality, nourishment/care, home/mother, motherliness, calmness and many more...

And Jupiter (see themes mentioned above)

The meanings of his future spouse's first, (middle) and last name could revolve around the themes of these two planets Moon and Jupiter.

Other planet's themes

Rahu: anything related to exoticness/foreigness, the sky, clouds/fog/smoke/shadow, heights, illusions, uniqueness/unconventionality, rebelliousness, taboo, fame, mystery and many more...

Also as for names with cardinal directions in their meanings:

Sun is East. Mars is South. Venus is West. Jupiter is North.

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With that I have covered all the planets and their themes. Of course there is so much more to say for each planet but these are the ones in the overall frame so you can get an idea of what the names could be like. I hope this was informative and well explained.

Thanks for reading. See you soon.🌺