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Worldbuilding Exchange will not be running in 2026

Hi friends - after taking a hard look at our schedules and our commitments, the Worldbuilding Exchange v.2 moderators have decided that we don't have the capacity to run this exchange again this year.

While we won't rule out running another round in the future, at the moment we are not planning to do so. Anybody interested in running a Worldbuilding Exchange v.3 is welcome to pick up the baton! (And if you do so this year, please let us know, and we'll spread the word.)

Apologies, especially to those we had told we were going to run again this year.

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Stuff I Love: Ten Standalones

A weekly February challenge via

dreamersdare, who was inspired by

corvidology! Here’s an explanation of the overall challenge.

Week 1: Make a Top Ten list for your favourite standalone media and tell people exactly why you love it. This can be in any format - movies, one shot dramas, novels, short stories, plays, something else not mentioned here. Whatever you like!

I picked: Ten Favorite Neo-Noir Films.

Neo-noir is a rather amorphous term, but I'm not sweating it. My research consisted of googling that my picks are generally considered neo-noir. I removed one (Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dogs, with a baby-faced Toshiro Mifune) as it was made in 1949, putting it firmly in the noir camp.

Also! There are so many fantastic neo-noir films on my to-watch list, including Ash is Purest White, Deep Crimson, Pigs and Battleships, Dog Day Afternoon and Mulholland Drive. (Hangs head in shame. I also can’t believe I haven’t watched those last two. In my defense, I only returned to movie fandom a few years ago, after decades away. I've got a lot of catching up to do.)

Anyway, as

dreamersdare notes in their original post, these are not meant to be rec lists. This and the following lists, fingers crossed, are celebrations of things I love.

( In Chronological Order, Earliest to Latest, the Winners Are... )

Now it's your turn. Tell me about your favorite neo-noir!

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GenPrompt Bingo: A Moment of Clarity/Understanding

AO3 Link | Hunting Gone Wrong (1144 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Suicide/Suicidal Ideation
Characters: CC-1119 | Appo, Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Suicidal Thoughts, Child Murder
Summary:

Appo is on a death world, hunting, but maybe he was the prey... and the wrong one at that.

Hunting Gone Wrong

They were being hunted, picked off one by one on this death world. Appo wasn't certain what he'd done to anger his Lord, but being sent to hunt a Force User had seemed easy enough on the data pad.

The reality was proving brutally different, and he was down to just two members of the original six that had followed him here to capture the rogue Force User for Lord Vader. Nor could he just comm for back up; the Exactor was pursuing the rag tag Rebels that had been in the system when they dropped.

Appo pulled up a map of the world, narrowing in on the fissure-laden landscape of this island. The Force User had taken out the other drop ship while they were in atmo before ditching from the ship and letting it crash. A small part of him decided it was rather fitting that they were all marooned, and Appo's chances of a pick up were a lot better than the Force User's.

TK-1138 let the world kill him, spooking at a noise and falling into one of the hissing fissures. Appo looked at the last surviving man of his squadron and ground his teeth inside his helmet. They might only be fleshborn, but he'd spent time fine-tuning the training that CC-2224 sent them out with.

They had to be the best to be 501st, after all. That had never stopped being true, from the before-times to now.

"Stay here, get the communication unit pieced together. Fleet should be back any time now."

"Yes sir."

Was the trooper relieved? Hoping Appo was the next victim? It didn't matter. Appo had to catch this karking —

The pain in his head came back, as that slip into his first language usually sparked it.

It was bad enough he held tight to his name.

He'd forgotten what it was like to hunt by himself. Even in his plastoid, it was easier to move and hide and track than when he was half-focused on keeping a squad alive.

He thought he was closing in on the Force User. He was fairly certain they were even injured. All he had to do was clear this climb, and he'd be close enough to be sure. Just a little more to climb —

— and a noise drew his eyes up, to see a face with white marks on bronze skin, blue and white marks on the horns and headtails alike, but eyes like his own staring holes into his soul.

The Jedi were traitors, manipulating the whole war, killing his brothers to cling to their power. The Chancellor said so, and he was their Supreme Commander. The General believed it. Appo followed orders, led the men up the stairs, and they started quartering the Temple, clearing out the traitors of all shapes and sizes.

It didn't matter that this one looked like the Commander. She'd been a traitor too. He brought his blaster up for a clean shot, waiting until she deflected two others to take his own.

He ignored the voice screaming in the back of his head that she had been just a kid.

Appo blinked at the bright light all around him, his concealing helmet (bucket, a piece of him remembered) gone, and him trussed him up as firmly as he'd meant to do to her once he caught the Force User.

She was tossing an EMP grenade in a hand, pacing in front of him.

Just as suddenly as she'd overcome him on the climb, she was there, kneeling in front of him.

"It would be more merciful to kill you," she said. "To you and to my father."

Clone dark eyes staring out of a face like hers.

"I don't feel like being merciful today." She clicked the detonator, and Appo's world disappeared for the second time in less than an hour, this time consumed by searing pain in his skull, the kind that came when he remembered the before times.

Vader's Fist.

Torrent Company.

Memories, like those of two different men, warred within him.

Torrent won.

He found himself retching up the nutripaste he'd been rationing himself since landfall. She at least tilted him with the Force so he didn't get it on himself.

Appo looked at her again, recognizing the hard jawline and set of the eyes as The Captain's trademark resolve. The lines of her marks might scream of the Commander, but he didn't think this one was going to try and make it all better like Commander Vod'ika had tried time and again, after the bad campaigns.

"So, when I take your binders off, I'm not going to stop you if you choose the easy way out," she said in a hard voice. "Didn't even know that kriffing monster still had any of you. Was supposed to be him I was facing down here."

"You… tried… to bait VADER?!" he asked, but of course a child of those two would be that brazen.

She didn't answer, just staring at him with unblinking anger at him for not being the right prey.

The easy way — he knew just what she meant, and as her features blurred with the earlier, rounder face of that child in the Temple, he thought he just might.

"You said your father," he managed to get out instead. "The Captain lives?"

"Somewhere out there. It's not like he and I could work together once I was old enough to go out on my own."

The binders fell away from him, and his gear was right there. A tiny piece of him suggested he go for his blaster, not to take the easy road, but to try and take her down, like he'd been told to.

Just like he'd been told to murder children. And atrocities that made that pale in comparison, ever since the day he followed his General into haran.

"What's the hard way?" he asked, and that got a blink, then a flex of the too-small lekku.

"I take you to a rehab specialist, away from the fighting, and you figure out if you can make peace with the man that chip made of you."

"Will he come there? Or her — kriff." The face and lekku had gone hard all over again on the pronoun. "She's gone?"

"It's why I joined up. He lived, when she didn't come back to us. And I'm not going to stop until he goes down."

"Small part of getting off this rock?"

"Got that covered." She turned to start walking down the easy side of the rise.

A few minutes later, he was following, with just the weapons and rations, hard as it was to leave the armor's protection behind.

She didn't say a word, and he kept following. Maybe, in her, in what she offered as the hard way, he'd find a way to his honor again.

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theme: free for all 2026

Free for All Saturday, Week 6 [DW Edition]

[ If you're interested in being a Tuesday-Thursday guest host, you can sign up here. Thanks! ❤ ]
↑↑↑ Available dates:
February 17 & 19
February 24 & 26
March 3 & 5

Hi there! ^_^ Welcome to this week's Free for All. There are no themes to follow for prompts or fills. If, perhaps, you missed a prompt theme that you liked, or you've had any ideas that didn't really work with Tuesday's or Thursday's posts, then today's your chance to prompt 'em. Be free, and have fun! ✎

Just a few rules:
1. No more than five prompts in a row.
2. No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
3. Use the character's full name and the fandom's full name for ease in adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
4. No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here. Unfortunately, DW doesn’t have a cut tag, so use your best judgment when it comes to spoilers.
5. If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the spoiler cut.
6. If your story has possible triggers, please warn for them in the subject line!

Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt

Are today's prompts not catching your eye? No worries, because we have plenty of older prompts that just might do the trick! You can browse through the comm's calendar archive (here on LJ or here on DW) for themed and Free For All posts, or perhaps check out Sunday posts for Lonely Prompt requests. (Or, you can be like me, and try to save interesting prompts as you see 'em... and then end up with multiple text doc files full of [themes + links + prompts] that you can easily look through and search for keywords.) Multiple fills for one prompt are welcome, by the way! Oh, and you are very likely to find some awesome fills to read as well, and wouldn't it be nice to leave a comment on those lovely little writing distractions? ~_^

We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2026 collection.

If you are viewing this post on our Dreamwidth site: please know that fills posted here will not show up as comments on our LiveJournal site, but you are still more than welcome to participate. =)

If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word! comment_fic

A friendly reminder about our posting schedule: Themed posts for new prompts go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day for new prompts of any flavor. Sundays are for showing Lonely Prompts some love, whether by requesting for someone to adopt them or by sharing any fills that you've recently completed.

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Speak Up Saturday

Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

(no subject)

Bodhi and Kayleigh have just been for a visit. Kayleigh went upstairs to do some resin work while I played with Bodhi downstairs. We were watching Pango on the computer and the fox character did something silly. So I said he was a silly fox. At which point I was soundly told off for using unkind words. So yet again, consider me told.

A few days ago

dine posted about the festivids being live so I went to check them out and found an excellent MCR video. I enjoyed it lots, and also enjoyed seeing the names in comments of many old bandom fans. It's nice to know they're still out there, even if they don't come here now.

There is also a great The Pitt one here. Just, be aware of the content notes, but you know, it's The Pitt, such a brilliant show, but it'll rip out your heart and stomp on it.

And a more up-beat The Pitt one here. But again, The Pitt so up-beat along with scenes of medical stuff, blood etc.

To end on three separate things, The Craft Shop posted photos of James' restocked shelves here on Insta if anyone would like to see.

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books received

Books Received, January 31 — February 6

With two books new to me, this just barely qualifies as books received. One SF, one fantasy and the SF novel is from a series.

Books Received, January 31 — February 6

Poll #34194 Books Received, January 31 — February 6

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus (June 2026)
16 (43.2%)

Lord of the Heights by Scarlett J. Thorne (July 2026
5 (13.5%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.7%)

Cats!
28 (75.7%)

How is the effective temperature going to be even LOWER at noon than it is now!?

What witchcraft is this?

****************

( Read more... )

The Dreamer by Dulcie Deamer

The wave yearns at the cliff foot: its pale arms
Reach upward and relapse, like down-dropped hands;
The baffled tides slip backward evermore,
And a long sighing murmurs round the sands . . .

My heart is as the wave that lifts and falls:
Tall is the cliff—oh! tall as that dim star
That crowns its summit hidden in a cloud—
Tall as the dark and holy heavens are.

The sad strange wreckage of full many ships
Burdens the bitter waters’ ebb and flow:
Gold diadems, like slowly falling flames,
Lighten the restless emerald gulfs below;

And withered blossoms float, and silken webs,
And pallid faces framed in wide-spread hair,
And bubble-globes that seethe with peacock hues,
And jewelled hands, half-open, cold and fair.

Sea creatures move beneath: their swift sleek touch
Begets sweet madness and unworthy fire—
Scaled women—triton-things, whose dark seal eyes
Are hot and bloodshot with a man’s desire.

Their strange arms clasp: the sea-pulse in their veins
Beats like the surf of the immortal sea—
Strong, glad and soulless: elemental joys
Bathe with green flame the sinking soul of me.

Downward and down—to passionate purple looms,
Athrill with thought-free, blurred, insatiate life,
Where the slow-throbbing sea-flow sways like weed
Dim figures blended in an amorous strife—

I am enclasped, I sink; but the wave lifts,
With all its freight of treasure and of death,
In sullen foamless yearning towards the height
Where the star burns above the vapour-wreath;

And a deep sob goes up, and all the caves
Are filled with mourning and a sorrow-sound.
The green fire fades: I rise: I see the star—
Gone are the triton arms that clipped me round.

Hope beats like some lost bird against the cliff—
The granite cliff above the burdened wave,
Whose fleeting riches are more desolate
Than gems dust-mingled in a nameless grave . . .

When all the wordless thirsts of Time are slaked,
And all Earth’s yearning hungers sweetly fed,
And the Sea’s grief is stilled, and the Wind’s cry,
And Day and Night clasp on one glowing bed—

Oh! in that hour shall clay and flame be blent—
Love find its perfect lover, breast on breast—
When dream and dreamer at the last are one,
And joy is folded in the arms of jest.

****

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Day 7: fanart, Bad Sisters - Angelica Collins

Title: The lover
Fandom: Bad Sisters
Characters: Angelica Collins (hinting at Angelica/Grace)
Rating: G
Notes: Done with felt tip pens, Chinese ink and graphite.
Summary: At the end of the day, whatever Angelica's actions, the truth behind them is only one. It bears Grace's name.

Over here, at my journal!

multifandom icons.

Fandoms: Bad Behaviour, Heated Rivalry, Legend of the Seeker, Maxton Hall, Nancy Drew, One Trillion Dollars, Saved by the Bell, Shadow & Bone, Stranger Things, The Expanse, The Wheel of Time, Twinkling Watermelon, Warrior Nun, We Were Liars, What It Feels Like for a Girl, Y Golau

rest HERE @

mundodefieras

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.fanfic

Day 7: Fic - Kamen Rider Gotchard - Kyoka/Lachesis

Title: Stargazing
Fandom: Kamen Rider Gotchard
Pairing/Characters: Kyoka/Lachesis
Rating: G
Word count: 1109
Author's note: Also for both the

tokufemslash prompt meme prompt of "any: any/any - blurry photos taken mid laughter" and my Fresh Femslash Salad Bar prompt of stargazing & 900 words!
Summary: Lachesis didn't understand the appeal of stargazing.
Also on Ao3, or read below the cut:

( Read more... )

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writing

Writing, writing, writing

There was the story I was planning to write, and then there was the much more out there (and potentially much longer) story idea that came up in conversation with a friend last night - when I foolishly said: "I could write that."

Guess which one I've now got 1500 words of?

*sigh*

The word "fuck" has been coming up in my online conversations quite a bit today, mostly coupled with "you". She's an utter menace.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Lady Gaga - Hold My Hand

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Book Log: Our Moon: A Human History

Rebecca Boyle's Our Moon: A Human History was a fun read! Clean prose but also poetic in places, with sometimes cheeky delivery that doesn't fully spell out the joke or the implications. She says things like, "The Apollo missions were designed to use the Moon as a tool. It was an instrument of might, just as surely as it was for the stone circles of northern Scotland, the Nebra sky disk, and the temples dedicated to Sin. Americans walked up there to show they could do it, and in doing so, demonstrated what glory was possible through democratic republicanism and white Protestant Christianity, rather than Soviet communism and godlessness." A journey of meaning, in a chain all the way back to the earliest times.

The book is split into three sections:

How the Moon Was Made, detailing the physical characteristics of the moon, what it's made of, how its physical characteristics are different from Earth, the Theia hypothesis, and a general overview of its movements in the sky;

How the Moon Made Us, detailing the hypothesis of how moon helped evolution via the tides which forced our sea ancestors into amphibious environments, and then of how the moon helped our human ancestors conceptualize time and time-keeping and future planning, which eventually led to civilisation;

How We Made the Moon, detailing our projections of religious, emotional and scientific meaning onto the moon, culminating in modern and future moon exploration, feat. the usual suspects of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, etc.

Lovely journey of exploration and very readable, though I did have to look up some things for better understanding, like the synodic month. I have such difficulty picturing such things in my head! And have to constantly correct the mental picture I have that the moon moves with the night sky, when we can literally see the moon in the sky in daytime. For me, it's somewhat similar to the perception of up and down, which gets tossed if I stand outside at night in low light pollution and the huge huge night sky makes me feel like I could fall into it.

There's also a section about how the moon may actually affect our health in very subtle ways, with reports on possible links to depression and anger. I initially doubletaked like, is she talking horoscope-type effects? But then I remembered how atmospheric pressure does cause migraines and arthritic symptoms, and I myself feel a stinging pressure along my old surgery scars when there's a thunderstorm coming. We are made of lots of liquid, after all.

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.admin

Day 7 Theme - The Lover

Today's theme is The Lover.

Here are some ideas to get you started: She is the type of person that people want to be around. She has a passion for life and wants to connect with others. How does she express this love? What is her love language? Or conversely, is love something that she shies away from?

Just go wherever the Muse takes you. If this prompt doesn't speak to you, feel free to share something that does. You can post in a separate entry or as a comment to this post.

Want to get a jump start on tomorrow's theme? Check out the prompt list in the pinned post at the top of the page. Please don't post until that day.

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weekly chat

Weekly Chat

The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
or

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just one thing

Just One Thing (07 February 2026)

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

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Festive Round-Up

Was looking through the Yuletide and Festivids 2025 collections earlier and came across two baihe-related entries:

A Deadly Thread, a Legend of Yunze fic by sephstone
Vigor & Valor, a Couple of Mirrors vid by comm member extrapenguin

Let me know if I've missed anything from this or other festive exchanges!

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(no subject)

Oh man, I didn't mean to let almost a whole month go by between posts. To be fair, it's been a busy month. I'm even struggling to keep my physical journal updated, since whole days go by without me even sitting down at my desk!

The course I've been attending is almost over. Monday will be our last day together. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.
On one hand, there have been times when I've felt immensely out of place, and interacting with the people there always meant I needed to put up a mask of sorts. On the other, we've been together for almost three months. They're not bad people in any way, and we've shared some really emotional moments. I think I'm gonna miss them, but we're all such different people, in such different places in our lives, that I don't think we're gonna keep in touch all that much.
We're also all pretty exhausted by the rhythm of the course, so I do look forward to being able to relax a little... but I have to admit that having that kind of structure forced on me makes me function better. From Tuesday on, I'm gonna have to come up with my own specific structure, as I'm gonna have to start studying for something. I hope I can do it.

Since the start of the year, we've spent almost all mornings during the weekend at my aunt's place. My grandma moved there a few weeks ago. Well, "moved" isn't exactly the right word, but she's there now. Which means that it almost feels like a normal family reunion when we're all there, although (thank fuck) a few relatives are missing. It's insane how chill those occasions can be if you just take some people out of the picture.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: The Underworld
Current Music: Strange Way .:. Firefall

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[ 717 ]

Under the Oak Tree, Vol. 2 by Suji Kim

Series:
Under the Oak Tree (Light Novel)

Genre:
Manhua, Korean Literature, Fantasy, Romantasy, Light Novel, Romance, Historical Fiction, High Fantasy, Spicy Romance, Medieval Age, Asian Literature

Publication Date:
June 30, 2025

Pages Numbers:
416

Read Date:
February 5th, 2026 - February 6th, 2026

Rating:
5/5

Blurb:

Most fairytales end with a wedding and a happily-ever-after—but this is no fairytale. The updated and official translation of Under the Oak Tree, the #1 webnovel on MANTA, continues in this second volume.

As her first winter in Anatol turns to spring, Lady Maximilian finds herself confronting an unfamiliar hope. Her voice and her magic strengthen every day; the only parts of Calypse Castle left to refurbish are its gardens, which she plans to fill with blooming flowers; and the way her husband, the recalcitrant war hero Sir Riftan, looks at her from across their bedroom makes her feel, for the first time in her life, that she might be worthy of love and affection.

However, Maxi's life is never that easy. Just as she begins to feel at home with Riftan, Maxi receives a surprise visit from Princess Agnes, the renowned sorceress who might have become Riftan's wife if he'd decided to divorce Maxi after the Dragon Campaign. Not at all what Maxi expected, the princess stirs up complicated emotions and politics that could lead to monumental changes in Maxi and Riftan's relationship.

This volume collects chapters 77-133 of the original webnovel by Suji Kim.

Review:

I went to read the manhwa and I love Riff and Maxi together. The only thing I do have against their relationship is the way he treats her, not like a wife, but a child he needs to be put into time-out.

But I also understood Maxi too. Here was the princess, the one woman who Maxi believed could easily steal her husband from her. They had history. They were even engaged. So, Maxi's fears were real and understandable.

I can see why a lot of people see their relationship as toxic, but I also see the positive side of things too. I think in his own way he does love her but he's been out there slaying monsters, so he doesn't know how to approach Max, plus he is extremely protective of her.