Since trans headcanons and the portrayal of trans characters can be personal for many people, writers might be nervous to write trans headcanons without invitation. This mini challenge is for people to signal that they would love to receive trans headcanons, as well as to showcase their requested fandoms with canon trans characters.
Note that this exchange is open to nonbinary characters as well.
To participate, simply copy-paste the following into a comment:
AO3 name: Letter link: Likes and DNWs: Fandom: Characters: Details:
If you post a fic for Yuletide with one or more trans characters, tag it with TransTide so people can find it easily
Here’s a list of all poems (including ballads and traditional songs) in the 2023 tagset, with links to texts as best I can find, and a notation of original language if not English. Please let me know of any additions or corrections.
Today in one sentence: The Senate failed to pass funding bill for the ninth time as the shutdown entered its third week; a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from firing more than 4,000 federal workers during the government shutdown; the Trump administration blamed the ongoing government shutdown on Saturday’s “No Kings” protests; the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready to limit the Voting Rights Act; Trump authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela; House Speaker Mike Johnson called Portland’s naked bike protest “the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet”; and JD Vance brushed off the leaked Young Republican chats that praised Hitler and used racist and violent language, saying “kids do stupid things."
1/ The Senate failed to pass funding bill for the ninth time as the shutdown entered its third week. Republicans continue to push for a “clean” continuing resolution to reopen the government until at least Nov. 21, while Democrats insist that any deal extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. (Politico / CNBC / The Guardian)
2/ A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from firing more than 4,000 federal workers during the government shutdown. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the administration had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending […] to assume that all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” calling its actions “contrary to the laws.” She added that the government’s approach was “ready, fire, aim” and carried “a human cost that cannot be tolerated.” The order takes effect immediately and bars the government from issuing new layoff notices or enforcing ongoing ones while the case continues. Before the ruling, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said layoffs could grow “north of 10,000.” (NBC News / Associated Press / Washington Post / Politico / NPR / New York Times / Axios / CNN / Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg / CNBC)
3/ The Trump administration blamed the ongoing government shutdown on Saturday’s “No Kings” protests, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying, “No Kings equals no paychecks.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson claimed Democrats “are controlled by their radical left base,” and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett suggested the government could reopen “on the 19th.” Despite Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson kept the House out of session and said he “wouldn’t negotiate.” Organizers, however, announced the Oct. 18 protest date in Sept., before the Oct. 1 shutdown. Saturday’s nonviolent marches and rallies, planned in more than 2,500 locations nationwide, are expected to be the largest single day of protest in U.S. history – larger than the first “No Kings” rallies in June, which drew over five million people. (Axios / The Hill / NBC News / Media Matters for America / Time)
4/ The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready to limit the Voting Rights Act, questioning whether any use of race in drawing election maps is constitutional. During arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, several justices, including Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, questioned whether race-based remedies under Section 2 of the 1965 law should continue indefinitely. Since the Court ended federal preclearance in 2013, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been the main legal basis for challenging racial bias in maps and for creating majority-minority districts across the South. Louisiana and the Trump administration nevertheless argued that creating a second majority-Black congressional district in the state violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, while civil rights lawyers warned that the law remains necessary to prevent vote dilution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the administration’s stance would “just get rid of Section 2,” which would shift power over voting maps to state legislatures and weaken one of the last federal checks on racial bias in elections. (Associated Press / New York Times / Politico / NPR / Washington Post / ABC News / NBC News)
5/ Trump authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, giving the agency authority to carry out lethal operations against Nicolás Maduro’s government. The order follows at least five U.S. strikes on boats the Trump administration said were smuggling drugs from Venezuela, killing 27 people, including one strike that hit a Colombian vessel. Lawmakers from both parties said they have received little information about the intelligence, targets, or legal basis for the attacks. (New York Times / NBC News / CNN)
6/ House Speaker Mike Johnson called Portland’s naked bike protest “the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet,” saying the riders showed “abuse of law enforcement by radical leftist activists.” Johnson argued that the protest of nude cyclists reflected how “it’s getting really ugly.” The event drew over a thousand participants and was described by local outlets as peaceful, with no arrests reported. The protest was organized against Trump’s plan to deploy the National Guard to Portland, which is currently blocked by a federal restraining order. (The Oregonian / KGW-TV / Axios / Portland Tribune)
Los Angeles County declared a state of emergency over ICE raids, authorizing about $30 million in rent relief, legal aid, and a possible eviction moratorium. Officials cited families skipping work and lost income tied to ICE actions. (Los Angeles Times / New York Times / ABC News)
7/ JD Vance brushed off the leaked Young Republican chats that praised Hitler and used racist and violent language, calling the reaction “pearl clutching.” Rather than condemn the messages, Vance said they were “edgy, offensive jokes” and that “kids do stupid things, especially young boys.” Vance deflected to an unrelated controversy, saying that Democratic candidate Jay Jones’s 2022 texts about shooting a Republican rival were “far worse than anything said in a college group chat.” The Young Republican National Federation, meanwhile, said it was “appalled” and demanded that all involved “immediately resign.” (Politico / Axios / Politico / The Hill / Mediaite / Salon)
⏭️ Notably Next: Your government has been shut down for 15 days; “No Kings Day” is Oct. 18; the 2026 midterms are in 384 days.
It is time once more for the Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational!
Are you going through the tagset, thinking about your signup, and getting lured down plotbunny holes?
Well, if you are entranced by tiny canons, luscious fandom promos, or letters with prompts that you absolutely adore, and you've got to do something to appease the itty bitty plot bunnies that are nibbling at your ankles, the Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational is back to meet all your "I don't have time or brain enough to do 1000 words, but that idea is still keen" needs.
How does it work?
Write drabbles or drabble series for Yuletide Madness. Proper ones, where the text of each drabble is exactly 100 words, please. Ficlets are fun, but not all ficlets are drabbles in just the same way as not all poems are sonnets. (You can, of course, post a 1000 word tale told in drabbles, where each chapter/bit is exactly 100 words to the main Yuletide collection, if you like. Just be sure that it is eligible to fulfill the main gift rules for that recipient.)
Give them to people.
Add "yumadrin" or "Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational" to the tags.
That's it!
*******
As of the start of Yuletide 2025 we have created 939 drabbles, the oldest ones from 2013 when the Invitational. We are so close to a thousand! These little mini-gifts are a lot of fun to give, and to get, and they're fun to create as well. Check out the tag to see what we mean!
There are many ways of queering texts and characters. This challenge is for any and all of them! The widest possible definition of queering is used here. If you think your prompt counts, then so do we. To participate, leave a comment on this post linking to your letter, so anyone interested in queering your canon for Yuletide can find you. Tag any fics for this mini-challenge with Queering The Tide. (I suggest you tag both Queering the Tide and TransTide if the two happen to overlap.)
You can copy/paste this form below for your comment.
<strong>AO3 name:</strong>
<strong>Letter link:</strong>
<strong>Fandom: </strong>
<strong>Any specific fandom details, preferences, comments, etc:</strong>
I'm meh on the lyrics and music, but the video...! So here it is, with a couple of other videos that inexplicably got skipped last time I posted a lot of videos.
Also, another one of our furnace pipes has developed a leak. Every time we fix one, the next one goes. I've patched this one, so with any luck (and with our keeping the heat pretty low) it should last until we can call in a plumber.
(Does anybody know a plumber who will accept payment in semi-feral kittens? There's a batch around the corner, very adorable, very healthy, and willing to warm up to anybody who feeds them! They do need to be just a little bit neutered, defleaed, and probably dewormed as well, not to mention vaxxed, but that's surely no big deal for the right family! Actually, I think it's two litters, so that should be ample payment for a little bit of plumbing work.)
Stick out your tongue and say “ahh!” for author Caitlin Starling’s newest gothic novel,The Graceview Patient. Follow along in her Big Idea as she recounts all of her real-life experiences in the wild world of hospitals that led to the inspiration and creation of this medically based horror story.
CAITLIN STARLING:
I feel like I’ve written a variation on this essay several times already, for various purposes and varied audiences. At first, I felt a little embarrassed–for my past works I’ve had a wide spread of topics to write about–but then I realized that this focusing effect really proves there is one Big Idea behind The Graceview Patient:
how stressful, complicated, and terrifying being a patient is.
My own hospitalization was almost routine. I had a kid. I very dramatically had a kid, but even without the drama, I would have been treated to at least a day or two inpatient, and that might have been enough to plant the seed that would become The Graceview Patient. It is a credit to my care team that the drama was manageable; I came out of a thirty-six hour induced labor (iv penicillin sucks, by the way), an urgent c-section with a surprise failed epidural, lots of meds being slammed into my veins very quickly, and some light hemorrhaging, and some strange blood pressure wonkiness feeling pretty okay with what had gone down.
This, I suspect, is not the norm.
And why should it be? Being reminded of the fallibility and idiosyncrasies of your body, being confronted with your mortality, having to cede control and even awareness, occasionally, of your physical self–it sucks. If anybody claims it doesn’t, I have questions. I do not like the missing time I still have between when the midazolam really hit me post-delivery and coming back to a very unreliably shaky body in the recovery room, even though I’m also very glad I was not aware of a lot of went down in the interim. It’s a funny story in hindsight, but it wasn’t great watching the IV tech try to get better access for a blood transfusion and fail because my veins decided to collapse every time she got near. Getting that blood transfusion (eventually) was great for experiential research, and the weird red phone we had to lift off the hook so that the door out of the NICU would slowly open is a fantastic sensory detail, but, on the whole, I wish we could’ve skipped both.
And that’s a lot of what being a patient is, right? Things we wish we could skip over. I was raised accompanying my mother to clinics and visiting her during hospital stays. She had AIDS, and it was the 90s, and she got to try a lot of experimental regimens. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some royally sucked the whole way through. Maybe having a front seat to all of that is part of why I’ve had this fascination with medicine my whole life, or why I feel oddly comforted being inside a hospital even when the specific experiences I have aren’t the best.
At any rate, I think we can safely say that I am drawn to writing about the body. About the medical. I’ve written Victorian surgeons (The Death of Jane Lawrence) and ill-advised enucleations (Last to Leave the Room) and logistically reasonable but capitalistically horrifying bowel surgeries (The Luminous Dead). Now, for The Graceview Patient, I decided to go all in.
It was time to write a hospital book. A gothic, in particular. The hospital as haunted house, as living setting, as mystery and threat and enticement.
And I immediately was hit by a problem. I did not want to make the doctors and nurses and techs and hospital staff evil. That’s often the way it goes: the sinister nurse, the sadistic doctor. Both bother me a great deal. We already have a lot of tension here in the US when it comes to medicine. It seems like, after a brief wave of treating healthcare workers like heroes (note: the definition and practice of that treatment deserves some discussion too, but perhaps not here), we overcorrected all the way towards disdain and distrust. I did not want to add to that.
I did add a potentially sinister pharmaceutical rep (my conscience allows that much), but even with Adam in play, I probably didn’t entirely succeed. I think, to write a hospital horror novel that avoided those tropes entirely, it would need to be from the perspective of the hospital staff themselves. Writing a book about a patient immediately creates an adversarial set up. Meg, our protagonist, has entrusted her care to people who come and go on shift, who have more insight into her body than she does at many points, that can administer medications that influence her perception of the world. And in a horror novel, the whole point is to delve into that adversity. To explicate on the terror and dread and risk of it all.
To reveal exactly how I solved this dilemma is, frustratingly, too far into spoiler territory for a release week essay. But I can say, at minimum: Meg’s care team are, first and foremost, trying to do their jobs. Meg will admit to you in the first chapter that she is unreliable. Oh, she’s trying her best. She is desperate to sort of fact from fiction, reality from hallucination. But she is, to put it bluntly, Going Through It. Even outside the realm of horror fiction, being a patient is extremely difficult. ICU delirium is a real thing. It’s easy to get disoriented, to grow frightened or angry or withdrawn. A good care team takes steps to ameliorate the problem, but there’s a limit. Hospitals are designed to help before they’re designed to be comfortable. The lights will stay on. The noise will continue. No, you can’t sleep through the night. Yes, it will eventually take its toll.
Something might be haunting Meg. Something might be haunting the entire hospital. There may be a grand conspiracy against her. Or…
Or maybe not. Maybe she’s just suffering. Maybe she’s confused. Maybe, in that confusion, she’s perpetrated horrible things herself. Care is difficult. Healing is not linear. And trust is fragile.
What is Family Matters? Unrelated to the sitcom (or anything else, actually), Family Matters is a mini challenge focused on sibling relationships. Whether that be traditional, half, foster/adoptive, or step siblings, siblings of all kinds are welcome. For the purposes of this mini challenge, I am excluding found family (unless there are sibling relationships within) and “I see them as a sibling” relationships (unless, of course, that statement is meant to be literal.) As I won’t be policing anything, please use your best interest and feel free to ask me any questions in the comments.
What about incest? This is NOT the incest mini challenge. Someone made one last year and I'm hoping, for all interested, that it's continues on. However, nothing and no one is stopping you from signing up to both if that’s what you want.
What if [character]’s sibling isn’t in the tagset? Good news! As long as at least one sibling is in the tagset (and you’re requesting them), this won’t be a problem.
How do I participate? Leave a comment with the following details: <strong>AO3 Username:</strong> <strong>Letter Link (if applicable):</strong> <strong>Fandoms & Requested Characters + Their Siblings (not necessary, but it might help to put if they’re in the tagset or not/if you’re requesting them):</strong> <strong>Prompts (optional):</strong> <strong>Any Other Details:</strong> How do I tag for this? The challenge, specifically? Yuletide Family Matters But in general, try some of these, if applicable: Siblings, Sibling Rivalry, Brother-Brother Relationship, Brother-Sister Relationship, Sister-Sister Relationship, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Step-Siblings
It’s a simple one: if you queried about a Big Idea slot for November and haven’t heard back yet, don’t panic, those will be addressed next week. I’m traveling again and punting a number of things until I’m back home. As one does.
In an exchange as large and diverse as Yuletide, it usually turns out that a lot of people would love to write or receive explicit stories but aren't comfortable asking for them or writing them without a little more information. Yuleporn is a mini-challenge that exists to help unite Yuletiders in requesting, writing, and reading the porn of their Yuletide dreams. Have no Optional Details fear, Yuleporn is here!
How Do I Participate?
Leave a comment on this post linking your letter if you are interested in getting an explicit fic for YT.
Add any optional details you want in the comment – additional prompts, favourite kinks, DNWs, &c..
If you don't have a letter or are a pinch-hitter, you can still leave prompts here, but make sure to include your AO3 name, your fandoms, and the characters you requested
When it comes time to upload, tag your fics with "Yuleporn" on AO3 so other interested parties can easily find all the good stuff when the collection opens.
Enjoy.
Here's a totally optional copy-paste form if you like forms!
As always, you don't have to participate in Yuleporn to write or request porn - it's just here to make things easier - and Yuleporn is 100% open to all kinks (or lack thereof).
(This post is mostly copypasta from time immemorial; please comment if anything should be updated! Credit to Morbane for this year's title.)
What The Fuck Just Happened Today? (wtfjht_feed) wrote2025-10-1404:13 pm
Today in one sentence: Trump threatened to permanently cut more “Democrat programs” as the government shutdown entered its third week; North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders will vote next week to redraw the state’s U.S. House map to add a Republican-leaning seat; the Supreme Court will rehear a major voting rights case that could limit how race is used in drawing election maps; the U.S. military killed six more people in a strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela; nearly every major U.S. news outlet refused to sign the Pentagon’s new press access policy, saying it “undermines the First Amendment”; Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed would likely cut rates again this month as job growth continued to slow and key data remained unavailable during the shutdown; and Trump posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
1/ Trump threatened to permanently cut more “Democrat programs” as the government shutdown entered its third week, promising to name the “most egregious, socialist, semi-communist” programs for elimination on Friday. He said Democrats are “getting killed” and that the targets would “never going to open again.” Speaker Mike Johnson backed Trump and dared Democrats to “bring it” and challenge the moves in court. Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, breaking with her party, called House Republicans “weak men” who mishandled the shutdown and were “afraid of strong Republican women.” She said Johnson and other Republican leaders had sidelined conservative women while “rewarding” men who refuse to challenge the leadership. The Office of Management and Budget said it would “batten down the hatches,” continue layoffs, and keep paying troops and law enforcement. (New York Times / Bloomberg / Politico / The Hill / Washington Post / Axios / Wall Street Journal / NBC News / Associated Press)
2/ North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders will vote next week to redraw the state’s U.S. House map to add a Republican-leaning seat. State House Speaker Destin Hall said, “President Trump earned a clear mandate […] and we intend to defend it by drawing an additional Republican Congressional seat.” Republicans currently hold 10 of North Carolina’s 14 U.S. House seats. The move follows Texas’s passage of a map adding five Republican-leaning seats and California’s pending voter referendum on a Democratic-favored map, while Missouri’s revised map intended to help Republicans pick up an additional seat faces court challenges. (Washington Post / Associated Press / New York Times / NBC News / The Hill / Democracy Docket)
3/ The Supreme Court will rehear a major voting rights case that could limit how race is used in drawing election maps. The case, Louisiana v. Callais, asks whether Louisiana violated the 14th and 15th Amendments by creating a second majority-Black district to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana and the Trump administration argued that “race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution” and claimed Section 2 of the law has become “electoral race-based affirmative action.” Courts had earlier ruled that Louisiana’s original map diluted the power of Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act and ordered lawmakers to draw a second majority-Black district. A federal court later blocked that new map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. (CNN / Washington Post / Bloomberg / New York Times / Associated Press / CBS News)
🔎 What’s at Stake? If the Supreme Court weakens Section 2, the main federal check on maps that dilute minority votes would be rolled back. States could then stop drawing or preserving majority-Black and Latino districts, allowing legislatures to split those communities up, and reduce their ability to elect preferred candidates while leaving fewer federal tools to police racially biased maps.
4/ The U.S. military killed six more people in a strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela – the fifth such operation since September. Trump claimed that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” and “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics.” He said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the “lethal kinetic strike” in international waters and that no U.S. troops were harmed. Despite having killed at least 27 people so far, the Trump administration hasn’t provided evidence that the boats were carrying drugs or linked to terrorist groups. (The Hill / Wall Street Journal / New York Times / The Guardian / Bloomberg / Associated Press / ABC News / CNN / Washington Post)
5/ Nearly every major U.S. news outlet refused to sign the Pentagon’s new press access policy, saying it “undermines the First Amendment.” The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Reuters, the Associated Press, and Newsmax (!) said the rules would restrict their ability to report freely on the U.S. military. The 21-page policy requires journalists to acknowledge that they won’t seek or publish information not approved by the Defense Department, including unclassified material, or risk losing credentials. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections,” the five major broadcast networks said in a joint statement. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, defended the rules as “common sense” and posted a hand-waving emoji to several outlets on Twitter/X after their refusals. Only One America News said it had signed. (Washington Post / Bloomberg / NBC News / CNN / The Hill / New York Times / CBS News / Axios / Associated Press)
6/ Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed would likely cut rates again this month as job growth continued to slow and key data remained unavailable during the shutdown. “There is no risk-free path for policy,” Powell said, admitting that the Fed “won’t be able to replace the data we’re not getting.” The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, said Trump’s tariffs were weighing on global growth, warning of “increasing signs that the adverse effects of protectionist measures are starting to show.” (CNN / Wall Street Journal / Axios / New York Times / Bloomberg)
⏭️ Notably Next: Your government has been shut down for 14 days; “No Kings Day” is Oct. 18; the 2026 midterms are in 385 days.
✏️ Notables.
Trump posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom on what would have been the activist’s 32nd birthday, calling him a “fearless warrior for liberty” and “martyr for freedom.” The ceremony came a month after Kirk was fatally shot at a Utah college. Erika Kirk accepted the medal on behalf of her husband, saying the honor was “the best birthday gift he could ever have.” (Axios / Associated Press / CBS News)
The State Department revoked visas for six foreigners accused of mocking or celebrating the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying the U.S. “has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that “If you are here on a visa and cheering on the public assassination of a political figure, prepare to be deported.” (Associated Press / Wall Street Journal)
Leaked group messages showed Young Republican leaders across several states using racist, antisemitic, and violent language, including “I love Hitler” and “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.” The 2,900 pages of Telegram chats spanning more than seven months showed Young Republicans joking about rape, slavery, and the Holocaust while referring to Black people with racial slurs and mocking women and LGBTQ people. Some of the leaked messages also echoed Charlie Kirk’s past rhetoric, including a comment about a dark-skinned pilot that closely resembled Kirk’s own remark questioning the qualifications of Black pilots. (Politico / New Republic)
House Republican leaders called Saturday’s planned “No Kings” protests a “hate America” rally and linked them to “antifa.” Tom Emmer said protesters “do not love this country,” and Mike Johnson called them “the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people,” while Steve Scalise tied the demonstrations to Senate Democrats during the shutdown. Organizers have promoted nonviolent action at events planned in about 2,000 locations and urged participants to “seek to de-escalate” and to not bring weapons. (The Hill / New Republic)
Trump attacked Time magazine for using what he called “the Worst of All Time” photo on its cover featuring his Gaza peace deal. He claimed editors “disappeared” his hair and made it look like a “floating crown,” saying the image “deserves to be called out.” Russia, meanwhile, also condemned the photo, calling the editors “unhealthy” and “freaks.” (Washington Post / Politico / Axios / The Hill)
Two for One is an annual mini-challenge to help people who like crossovers and/or fusions find one another's requests.
To participate, simply copy-paste the following into a comment: AO3 Name: Letter Link: Crossover Type: (ie. crossover, fusion, or either) Applicable Requested Fandoms: Potential Crossover Fandoms: (you may list specific combinations you're interested in, ex. Megamind/Treasure Planet, or generally request any of your Yuletide requests with each other, or list additional fandoms you'd be happy to have crossed with any of your requests) Prompts/Optional Details: (as many and as detailed as you like)
One of the fandoms in each crossover or fusion prompt must be one you are requesting for Yuletide; however, the other doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t even have to be in the tagset at all!
Some clarification about crossover types: Crossovers tend to involve Fandom A's characters interacting with Fandom B's characters or worldbuilding, with everyone retaining their canon backgrounds. Ex. Aurora and Red Riding Hood team up to defeat a villain, or Clark Kent falls into a portal that takes him to Tortall.
Fusions tend to be AUs in which Fandom A's characters have always existed in Fandom B's setting instead of their own, often replacing Fandom B's characters. Ex. Pacha and Kronk as contestants in the Hunger Games, where Kuzco and Yzma are referees. (A fic like this in which Hunger Games characters also appear would be a hybrid between a fusion and crossover.)
Three Turtle Doves is a mini challenge to help people who like poly, threesomes, and more find one another's requests. Though the challenge title includes the word "three", moresomes are welcome to join in. The more the merrier!
If you are requesting these, please let others know by dropping a comment here. Interested writers can browse and see what's out there that they might not have known about. This is also a great place to discover new fandoms with poly possibilities.
To participate, simply copy-paste the following into a comment: AO3 Name: Letter Link: Fandom(s): Rating(s): (here's a good place to put your ideal and maximum ratings) Groupings Requested: (list all combinations you're interested in in all fandoms) Prompts!: (as many and as detailed as you like)
Please tag any works you end up making for Yuletide with 'Three Turtle Doves' so interested people can find and enjoy your work!
Eras in the past had a focus on manners — a word that in itself was a code for something more controlling. For her novel The Doxies Penalty, author Madeleine E. Robins revisits a past era to look what maneuvers behind the manners, a thing much more interesting and possibly more sinister.
MADELEINE E. ROBINS:
One of the tasks adolescents face is trying to parse the rules of the world they live in — and the potential penalties. Not the say-thank-you or don’t-kill-people rules, but the subtler rules that may not be spoken but that can bring your life to a standstill if you run afoul of them. As a kid I knew they were out there, but figuring out what they were? How seriously to take them? What the penalties were? That’s a lot for a person already dealing with algebra and puberty.
So I suppose it makes sense that when I was thirteen and discovered Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels I fell hard. So many weird rules (a young lady at a party mustn’t dance more than twice with the same man! a woman who drives down St James’s St. is clearly a whore!) that made little or no sense to me. It wasn’t until I went from Heyer to Jane Austen that I began to understand. Many of the rules were there to “protect” women—which is to say, to control them. Flouting the rules could have life or death consequences. These odd, frivolous rules meant survival.
It’s all there in Austen: a damaged reputation could ruin a woman’s chances at marriage. And marriage was not just the presumed goal of every nice young woman, but an economic necessity. Mrs. Bennett obsesses over her daughters’ marital prospects because the alternative is a life of genteel poverty. Marianne Dashwood skates on the edge of ruining her reputation by making her feelings for John Willoughby so public. Both Lydia Bennett and Maria Bertram teeter over into disgrace and are only saved from being handed from man to man by the intercession of family and friends; others (Colonel Brandon’s first love, for instance) are not so lucky.
These unspoken rules, and the weight of their consequences, fascinated me. I began study the Regency: the rules and manners, but also the politics, the wars, the Romantic movement, the rising tide of technology. It’s an astonishingly rich period; the more I learned, the more I wanted to play in that sandbox. At the time I started writing, alt-history and mixed genre books were not a thing. To play in that period I did what was expected of me (I followed the rules!) and wrote Regency romances, with the manners and the clothes and the rom-com happy ending. But by the time I finished the fifth of my romances I was done with happy endings. I switched to writing SF.
But I wasn’t done with the Regency.
I conceived of Point of Honour, my first Sarah Tolerance mystery, as a “Regency-noir:” a Dashiell Hammett story with an Austen voice. I wanted to wander the mean streets that Jane Austen didn’t mention and most modern Regency romances ignored. The streets where the rules were broken, and where punishment for breaking them was inevitable.
In noir, the protagonist is “morally compromised”(in The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade is not a good guy—he’s just better than most of the people around him). But compromised can mean more than one thing. In the 19th century the word attached to any woman with a damaged reputation, a woman who had had—or was suspected of having had—sex outside of marriage. Or just dancing too often with the same man. Compromised, ruined, soiled, fallen, different terms for the same thing. Sarah Tolerance, Fallen Woman and Agent of Inquiry, has a sometimes uncomfortably solid moral compass, but by the rules of her society she is ruined: unfit for marriage or respectable employment.
How did that happen? At sixteen she fell in love with her brother’s fencing teacher and they eloped. Years later when her lover died, she faced the world with almost no options: the respectable jobs open to genteel women (companion, teacher, governess, seamstress) are closed to her. A fallen woman can be one man’s mistress, or prostitute herself to all comers. Neither fate appeals to Miss Tolerance
So she does an end-run around the consequence of her ruin: she invents the role of agent of inquiry, using her knowledge of genteel society, her facility with a sword, and her considerable wit, to do the jobs private detectives do: find people, answer questions, solve mysteries. She is out on those mean Regency streets, tracing straying husbands and acting as a go-between in sordid transactions, and all the while operating in a sort of liminal space in her society. She sees the way the rules of her world keep even the most virtuous women vulnerable. In 1812 a married woman’s money and property belonged to her husband, she didn’t even have a say in how her children were reared, unless her husband permitted it. Single women had it slightly better, but any money or property they had was likely to be administered by a man (who could do whatever he liked—and have her tossed into a madhouse if she complained). And women outside the pale of respectable society? They had only as much freedom as the system allowed—which meant that the poor and ruined were constantly in danger.
The Doxies Penalty is the fourth book in the Sarah Tolerance series. In the first three, Miss Tolerance has dealt with murderers, spies, criminals and courtesans. By now she has settled into her role as agent of inquiry and sometime protector of the vulnerable. Then an elderly woman comes to her with a problem: she’s been swindled out of the meager savings which she hoped to retire on. And because this particular old woman is Fallen, she has even less recourse than any other victim: no one to fight for her, no family to fall back on. Miss Tolerance takes the case seeking the swindler and discovers that her client isn’t the only one—that he has left a trail of victims, all of them elderly, Fallen, and defenseless. Soon, many of them are dead.
By the rules of their society these women don’t matter. They made their choices, they broke the rules, and now they have had the bad manners to survive to old age. Poverty and death are the expected consequence of a moral lapse. When a rule-breaker dies, the Law shrugs. Society shrugs.
Miss Tolerance will not. Even if she has to break the rules.
With the admission that I somehow missed it last year, probably because I have a head full of mostly cheese these days. That said, Whatever’s been on WordPress now for 17 years, both the blogging software and the hosting of the site, and in that time I’ve been absolutely grateful for WordPress’s platform stability and accessibility. The downtime I have experienced with WordPress has been so small that it’s genuinely surprising when it happens, and even then the issue is usually resolved in minutes, not hours — hours being what I would need to wrangle problems back when I was self-hosting Whatever prior to October 2008. It just works, which is a nice thing to be able to say.
WordPress doesn’t need my endorsement — a sizeable chunk of the internet uses its software and/or hosting — nor does it ask me to write this (mostly) annual post. I do it because I appreciate the service. If you’re looking to create a site, or move a site over from janky hosting, it’s an option I can recommend. Check it out and see if it will work for you.
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What The Fuck Just Happened Today? (wtfjht_feed) wrote2025-10-1303:42 pm
Today in one sentence: The Trump administration fired more than 4,000 employees across at least seven agencies on Friday as the government shutdown entered its second week; House Speaker Mike Johnson called the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies a “boondoggle” and warned the U.S. is “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history”; 41% of Americans blame Republicans for the government shutdown, while 30% blame Democrats and 23–31% blame both parties; on Friday, Trump said he would impose an additional 100% tariff on all Chinese goods, erasing about $2 trillion in U.S. market value; two days later, Trump tried to calm investors, saying “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine!"; and Trump declared “the war is over” after Hamas freed all 20 surviving hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, calling the U.S.-brokered ceasefire “a new beginning for the Middle East.”
1/ The Trump administration fired more than 4,000 employees across at least seven agencies on Friday as the government shutdown entered its second week. A Justice Department filing confirmed cuts at Treasury, Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Energy, and Homeland Security. Trump told reporters the layoffs would target “people that the Democrats want,” adding, “It’ll be Democrat-oriented because we figure, you know, they started this thing.” Unions, meanwhile, sued to block the firings, calling them illegal under shutdown law, while even some Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins, said the layoffs were “arbitrary” and harmful to government operations. (The Hill / Washington Post / NPR / Axios / Politico / Wall Street Journal / Associated Press / Axios)
poll/ 41% of Americans blame Republicans for the government shutdown, while 30% blame Democrats and 23–31% blame both parties. Republicans, meanwhile, hold a 4-point advantage on which party voters trust more on economic issues and a 2-point edge on inflation and cost of living. 75% of adults say Trump isn’t doing enough to lower prices. (Politico)
About 1,300 CDC employees were laid off Friday, but about 700 were rehired because the notices “were sent in error” and the affected workers “were never separated from the agency” due to a “coding error.” Approximately 700 were reinstated, while about 600 remain laid off. (Wall Street Journal / NBC News / CNN / Politico / New York Times / Axios / Washington Post)
The Education Department laid off about 20% of its workforce, or 466 employees. Nearly all staff in the office that oversees $15 billion in special education funding for 7.5 million students with disabilities were also laid off. (NPR / USA Today)
Trump ordered the Pentagon to use research and development funds to pay troops on Oct. 15, bypassing Congress as the shutdown entered its second week. The Defense Department said about $8 billion from last year’s budget would cover the payments, though the move excluded hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers. It’s unclear how long the workaround could last. (NBC News / Wall Street Journal / Associated Press / Washington Post / New York Times)
2/ House Speaker Mike Johnson called the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies a “boondoggle” and warned the U.S. is “barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history,” saying he won’t negotiate until Democrats “drop their partisan demands.” He said the subsidies, set to expire Dec. 31, should be reformed because, he claimed, the ACA “failed the American people” and was “created to implode upon itself.” More than 23 million Americans are enrolled in ACA plans, and nearly will all face higher costs if extra federal subsidies expire. Enrollment has doubled since Congress expanded the subsidies in 2021, with 57% of enrollees living in Republican congressional districts – mostly in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. Coverage has more than tripled in six red states and nearly half of enrollees earn less than 150% of the poverty level and currently pay no premiums. Without the subsidies, they would owe $27 to $82 a month. The Congressional Budget Office also estimates that up to 2 million people could lose coverage next year without renewal of the aid. Democrats, meanwhile, insist any funding bill must extend the subsidies, which caps premiums at 8.5% of income. They accused Johnson of “choosing vacation over fixing this healthcare crisis.” The Senate returns this week, while the House remains in recess and 1.4 million federal workers remain unpaid as the shutdown continues. (NBC News / CNN / New York Times / Associated Press / The Hill / Axios / Washington Post / Politico / New York Times)
3/ On Friday, Trump said he would impose an additional 100% tariff on all Chinese goods starting Nov. 1 in response to Beijing’s restrictions on rare earth exports used in advanced technologies. Trump accused China of becoming “very hostile” and warned there was “no reason” to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month. The announcement erased about $2 trillion in U.S. market value. Two days later, Trump tried to calm investors, saying “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment.” China, however, warned it would “resolutely take corresponding measures” if the U.S. “insists on its own way.” (Bloomberg / Washington Post / Associated Press / New York Times / Politico / CBS News / NBC News / Wall Street Journal / CNN / CNBC)
Goldman Sachs said Americans are paying about 55% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs so far. The bank warned the burden could rise to 70% if Trump follows through on plans to expand or double tariffs on China. The White House claimed the “cost of tariffs will ultimately be borne by foreign exporters,” despite six straight months of higher consumer prices. (NBC News)
The U.S. finalized a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina and directly bought pesos, a move Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said was needed to address “a moment of acute illiquidity.” Bessent denied the bailout was a bailout, but Treasury disclosed no terms or safeguards as critics questioned why taxpayer funds were aiding a close Trump ally. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “Trump promised ‘America First,’ but he’s putting himself and his billionaire buddies first and sticking Americans with the bill.” (CNBC / CNN / New York Times / NBC News)
✨ Well, that’s fantastic. Trump declared “the war is over” after Hamas freed all 20 surviving hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, calling the U.S.-brokered ceasefire “a new beginning for the Middle East.” Addressing Israel’s parliament, Trump said it marked “the end of an age of terror and death” and “the historic dawn of a new Middle East,” as lawmakers chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” He told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Now you can be a little nicer, Bibi, because you’re not at war anymore.” In Egypt, Trump signed the ceasefire document with the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. Netanyahu, however, skipped the summit and later said Israel’s campaign “is not over.” Israel’s defense minister, meanwhile, warned Hamas had failed to return all hostage remains, while Trump urged Israel to “translate these victories into peace and prosperity” and promised “a lot of money” for Gaza’s rebuilding. (NBC News / CNN / New York Times / Washington Post / Associated Press / Politico / NPR / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal / Axios)
⏭️ Notably Next: Your government has been shut down for 13 days; “No Kings Day” is Oct. 18; the 2026 midterms are in 386 days.
✏️ Notables.
The Interior Department canceled a Nevada solar project that would have powered nearly two million homes. The Bureau of Land Management marked Esmeralda 7’s environmental review as “cancelled,” saying the developers of North America’s largest solar project and the agency had “agreed to change their approach” so each company could file separate proposals. The 118,000-acre, 6.2-gigawatt project had advanced through permitting before the Trump administration stopped final approval. (New York Times / Politico / The Guardian / Bloomberg / PV Magazine)
JD Vance said Trump was “looking at all his options,” including using the Insurrection Act to send troops into U.S. cities despite multiple court rulings blocking the deployments. Vance claimed crime was “out of control” and accused critics of making it “OK to tee off on American law enforcement.” Judges, however, have found “no credible evidence” of rebellion, and police data show crime has fallen in Chicago and Portland. Vance, meanwhile, said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “should suffer some consequences” for crime in Chicago, prompting Pritzker to reply, “Come and get me.” (The Guardian / New York Times / NBC News / ABC News)
JD Vance denied that Trump directed the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, saying, “Him having opinions doesn’t mean that we prosecute people unless we have the legal justification.” Vance defended the federal indictments of Letitia James and James Comey after Trump publicly demanded their prosecution, calling criticism of the DOJ “ridiculous.” (Axios)
Lindsey Halligan secured a grand jury indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James without coordinating with Attorney General Pam Bondi or other Justice Department leaders. Bondi and her deputies had viewed the case as weak, citing prior prosecutors who warned against pursuing it. The indictment accuses James of misrepresenting a Virginia home as a second residence rather than an investment property, though a witness told the grand jury she lived there rent-free. Trump had publicly pressed Bondi to act and later installed Halligan to “get things moving.” (ABC News / CNN / New York Times)
Melania Trump said she has been in “direct communication” with Putin for months. She claimed eight Ukrainian children were reunited with their families after “back-channel meetings and calls” with Putin’s team. She offered no details on U.S. oversight of the talks and left the White House podium without taking questions. (CBS News / Politico / The Hill / Reuters / Daily Beast)
Trump’s doctor said that the president remains in “exceptional health” after his second checkup in six months. The memo claimed Trump’s “cardiac age” is 14 years younger than his 79 years and noted he received flu and COVID-19 booster shots. The report didn’t explain his earlier diagnosis of venous insufficiency or the hand bruising the White House blamed on handshakes. (Axios / Reuters / The Hill / Washington Post)
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that “children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism” because they’r “given Tylenol.” Medical experts and major health organizations, however, said the claim is unfounded and warned that acetaminophen remains the safest pain reliever for pregnant women. Tylenol maker Kenvue said “independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism,” and doctors called Kennedy’s remarks “dangerous anti-science.” (Snopes / USA Today / Washington Post / CBS News)
María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” the committee said. Machado, who has lived in hiding since Venezuela’s courts barred her from challenging President Nicolás Maduro, wrote that “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!” Trump, who openly campaigned for the award and has denounced Maduro as a “narco-terrorist,” didn’t win. The White House, meanwhile, said the Nobel Committee had “proved they place politics over peace,” saying Trump has “the heart of a humanitarian.” (Associated Press / Politico / New York Times / Axios)
The motto for the Olympics translates to “Faster, Higher, Stronger” — but in Gold Dust, author Catherine Asaro takes athletic competition to heights even the greatest of Olympians might not have ever dreamed of.
CATHERINE ASARO:
With Gold Dust, I wanted to explore sports in the future, track and field especially. My interest in the subject has a long history. In my youth, ballet was my forte; I never considered myself an athlete. But for some reason in my teens, I decided to go run around a grass field in a nearby park. For the life of me, I can’t remember what possessed me to do it, but I got up at some absurd hour, like 6 in the morning, and out I went. After a few laps, I thought, “I feel tired.” Then I thought, “Might as well keep going.” (ah, to have the blithe durability of a sixteen-year-old again). After a while, I thought, “Hmmm. I don’t feel tired anymore.” I kept it up for about forty minutes. Then I went home, showered, and set off to school.
With that auspicious beginning, I decided to run every morning. I’ve no idea why; no one told me to, and I didn’t come from a sports-oriented family. But I loved to run. Back then, girls had fewer options in sports, and it never occurred to me that I could join a track team. Eventually my interest shifted more to ballet. Years later, in graduate school, I started running again, getting up every morning at some god-awful hour, 5 or 6 am. Eventually I stopped, and concentrated on dance instead, because I am very much not a morning person.
However, as a result, I’ve always enjoyed track and field, and as a science fiction writer, it felt natural to extrapolate it into the future. So Gold Dust came into being.
In the main plot, three interstellar civilizations vie for honors in the Olympics. Instead of countries competing, teams come from worlds or space habitats. More populous worlds dominate the Games. In contrast, the team from Raylicon, a dying world with failed terraforming, has one of the worst records anywhere. They draw only from the City of Cries, a wealthy city true, but still just a few million people.
Except.
The people of the Undercity live in ancient ruins below the Cries desert. In their culture, crushing poverty exists alongside great beauty. When your survival depends on how well you fight and how fast you can run, you can produce incredible athletes. The wealthy elite in Cries despise the Undercity, and the people in the Undercity keep to themselves, protecting the fragile beauty of their culture from outside interference.
Then Mason, the coach for the Raylicon Olympic track and field team, discovers the spectacular Undercity runners. When he convinces them to join his team, they encounter his above city athletes. They don’t trust anyone from Cries, and the people of Cries barely consider them human—but now they must all learn to work together.
As I wrote, I wondered if futuristic human enhancement would ruin the Olympics. I decided to have sports divide into two types, leagues that allowed augmented athletes and leagues that didn’t. Meets for enhanced athletes would probably become contests over who could create the most advanced cybernaut. In contrast, Gold Dust involves “natural-body” sports. Athletes not only have to take drug tests, they must also prove they haven’t had genetic modifications, cybernetic augmentation, or other enhancements. Sure, sports training and medicine improves, but those changes involve more basic additions, such a nanomeds that circulate in their blood to help maintain health. And those would be closely monitored.
I also assumed the current trends of women closing the gap with men in many sports would continue. Unlike in the paucity of my youth, women’s sports is huge now. Even in 1989, Ann Transon won the 24-Hour National Championship ultramarathon against all competitors, male and female alike. In the book, I extrapolated that trend to the limit where men and women could fairly compete together.
Another factor would also come into play for star-spanning civilizations. Differences will exist among human-habitable worlds. If you train on a low gravity world and then compete on one with even a slightly heavier gravity, what does that do to your performance? Nuances of atmosphere, length of day, and subtle differences like the hue of the sky or how much dust floats in the air will affect the athletes. That all wove into the plot.
Another aspect of running that struck me was the path to healing it can offer. Six years ago, I was grieving the loss of my husband. I also found out, not long after he passed, that I had cancer. Fortunately, we caught it early and the doctor got it all. But with so much happening, I stopped exercising, no longer dancing or even walking much.
So I started to run again.
This time, I’ve kept at it, mixing outdoor running with inside treadmill work, weights, and rowing—in the evening instead of the morning. It helped inspire my writing Gold Dust. I penned the first draft during the summer Olympics. What struck me as I watched the Games was how the Olympics isn’t just competition, it also represents a dream, using sports to bring the peoples of humanity together in peace. It can help heal a person—or an entire world. I like to believe we will carry that tradition into the future no matter how complex our civilizations become.
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