magistrate | Reading

After finishing the Silent Hill 2 remake, I watched all the endings. They're all excellently done! But I was particularly struck by the new 'Bliss' ending, which you get if you drug yourself before watching the videotape. I absolutely had to write fanfiction.

Title: Trouble in Paradise
Fandom: Silent Hill 2
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: James/Mary
Wordcount: 1,100
Summary: James and Mary, living in bliss.

( Trouble in Paradise )

Anybody have any recommendations for recent Romance novels focused on holidays, specifically winter-type holidays?

Posted by Pamela Rentz

https://www.pamrentz.com/2025/12/my-pet-sourdough/

https://www.pamrentz.com/?p=4417

Watch on YouTube

Here’s a clip I took the other morning of the crows downtown. This accompanies my post from last month about the crows in Portland.

I keep finding notes for posts I intended to write last month but apparently never did.

I have a really old sourdough that I bake with pretty regularly all year long. Over the summer I really noticed how much more robust the sourdough is when the weather is warmer. I understand how sourdough works and I know my kitchen is cold. I have never successfully come up with a trick to help in the winter.

Tips often say to put in the oven and turn the oven light on. My oven is ancient and has no light. I’ve read other tricks and they seemed fussy or created other complications that didn’t work for me.

I thought I would just buy one of the fancy bread proofing pads but when I went to buy it, it was over $100 and I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much. In the process of searching for that I found another gadget that’s like a little plastic tent you unfold and can use for proofing bread. I went to put that in my cart and that was over $200!

Then I heard that there are heating pads for dogs and cats that aren’t as strong as the ones for humans. I went to the pet store and couldn’t find anything so I found someone to ask for help.

Him: What kind of pet is this for?

Me: Sourdough.

He did not miss a beat and took me to the reptile warmers that seems like they might be too warm so I settled for a terrarium heater for insects. I’ve only used it once and I need to refine my technique but it might work.

My friend Hannah said: That’s the most Pam story I’ve ever heard.

I might also try a seed warming mat.

https://www.pamrentz.com/2025/12/my-pet-sourdough/

https://www.pamrentz.com/?p=4417

I figured that I'd group these together as they're by the same author. I wanted to talk about this anyway, because this is one of the more gratifying experiences I've had with leaving comments on older fic. Basically, I commented on a long WIP that hadn't been updated in several years, and the author not only wrote the rest of it but ALSO, to my delighted amazement, posted another long fic in the same universe, and started posting some new fanart too. It was wonderful. ♥ Never be afraid to comment even years later; sometimes you not only make someone's day but get lovely fanworks in return.

( 3 Londo/G'Kar Babylon 5 recs (by the same creator) cut for spoilers )

We finally got around to watching the first Stranger Things new episode drop! Somehow I had remained completely and utterly unspoiled for it, to the extent of having even forgotten that there was a new season until suddenly a post with "stranger things spoilers" arrived on my Tumblr dash and I immediately blocked the tag. So I knew literally nothing.

( Random spoilers in no particular order )

An important task, given that I'm switching away from Spotify to Qobuz at this time of year: sifting through someone else's curated Trans-Siberian Orchestra playlist and pulling only about a third of the tracks from that to my own new holiday playlist. (There is a way to import Spotify playlists, but I haven't actually investigated it yet.)

My playlist is awfully random, really. I'm picky about Christmas music, but not in a way that follows much rhyme or reason. I like some boys' choir stuff. I mostly prefer older Christmas songs to more modern ones. But in practice, a lot of what I listen to is single-artist holiday albums, often by artists I don't really listen to otherwise. (The examples in my playlist so far are Annie Lennox and Sting and Idina Menzel, and maybe Mary Fahl counts, since I haven't heard any of her other solo work, just the old October Project albums where she was the lead vocalist.) If you have recs along those lines, feel free to throw them my way!

(Am I still entertained by the fact that Tori Amos put out a seasonal holiday album, uh...[*checks notes*] seventeen years ago? [WHY did I just date-check that?] Yep. Am I listening to it right now because it turned out that I enjoy most of it? Also yep. Still funny.)

(Would-be-funny-if-not-completely-horrifying: Every once in a while I remember Tom McRae saying that in the earliest days, his label thought his song "You Cut Her Hair" could be released as a Christmas track. "You Cut Her Hair" deals with the Holocaust. Very seasonal. Yes. o_o)

I guess it must've been back on the weekend that we made Smitten Kitchen's Mom’s Apple Cake, which was the first apple cake I was looking at a few weeks ago, but at the time we didn't have a tube pan on hand. (You can use a bundt, which we did have, but...I didn't opt for that.) It's very good. It's also LARGE. (Some went into the freezer.)

We cracked out the Burlap & Barrel Royal Cinnamon for it, and the cake is very cinnamony, but that presumably is at least equally due to the part where the cake calls for a tablespoon.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Tori Amos - What Child, Nowell

For reasons not worth exploring at this juncture (i.e. a friend asked which book to start with), I reread Jhereg earlier this week and then promptly tore through Yendi, Dragon, Taltos, quite a bit of Tsalmoth, and am now reading Issola. (Look, they're short books, okay.)

( Spoilers and speculation about Where It's All Going )

Continuing with the latest batch; also see previous post in case you missed anything.

9. Biggles/EvS forced to maintain close proximity by mad science

Responding to the prompt call with a Biggles prompt- Biggles and EvS are cursed or exposed to a mysterious mad-science substance that makes them have to maintain physical contact or very close proximity or else suffer increasingly debilitating pain &/ illness the farther they are apart- and now must work together in these constraints to fix this situation

Originally posted on Tumblr

( 900 wds under the cut )

10. Scotland Yard ladies gossiping about EvS

Biggles prompt! The Scotland Yard ladies chatter about that tall, dark & handsome foreign gentleman Mr. Boelke who comes round to Raymond's office once a month. Biggles is Extremely Normal about this.

Originally posted on Tumblr

( 500 wds under the cut )

11. Tied to a bed

Biggles prompt! There was only one (piece of furniture sturdy enough to tie a prisoner to and it was a) bed

Originally posted here

( 100 wds under the cut )

Unless I mistagged it, I don't think I posted ANY of these from the last half-year or so here; so if anything is familiar, I apologize; and otherwise, enjoy.

1. Biggles/EvS: Biggles's friends "subtly" attempting to be supportive

I don't know if you're currently accepting Biggles prompts, but if you are: Algy, Bertie, and Ginger all try to "subtly" feel each other out to make sure no one is going to cause problems for Biggles and Erich (if there were something going on) (which there clearly can't be) (obviously)

https://www.tumblr.com/sholiofic/786139943995064320/i-dont-know-if-youre-currently-accepting-bigglesPosted on Tumblr here.

( 700 wds under the cut )

2. Dramatic dying in Biggles's arms confession (contains no actual death)

Since you're officially soliciting prompts- A dramatic Dying-In-Biggles's-Arms confession on EvS's part turns out decidedly unlike his daydreams and in fact Rather Awkward when he does not, in fact, end up dying after all, having reckoned without certain Biggles-worthy levels of determination to save him.

Posted on Tumblr here

( 700 wds under the cut )

3. Only One (team cuddlepile) Bed

As seen in commentfic here

( 500 words under the cut )

4. Whatever it is that Algy does on the many occasions he's left behind to man the phones.

Originally posted at a bigglesevents commentfest.

( 700 wds under the cut )

5. Algy and EvS caretaking

Hey, if you're still open to prompts, please may I request some Biggles whump, someone beaten up and another taking care of them, maybe Algy and EVS but whoever you like really, thank you!

Posted on Tumblr here

( 400 wds under the cut )

6. Friendly fire with Algy and Ginger

Hi! If you're still taking prompts, how about a friendly fire incident with the Biggles gang? Thanks! :)

Originally posted on Tumblr here

( 600 wds under the cut )

7. Biggles left to die

A new prompt- in their noble adversaries era, EvS leaves Biggles in/places him in a situation he knows would ordinarily merely delay Biggles before an eventual escape- were Biggles not injured or incapacitated somehow, which, when EvS realises is the case, he rushes back from his own getaway to save Biggles. Not that this choice signifies anything regarding his feelings for him.

Originally posted here

( 700 wds under the cut )

8. Erich abandoned by his associates

Biggles/EvS. EvS has not yet defected and is working a job with other Soviet agents in London. Said agents abandon EvS in a sticky situation, leaving him cornered to fight his own way out through British police. Raymond gets word of what’s happened and calls Biggles at Mount Street, who arrives at the scene to talk EvS down and convince him to defect.

Originally posted on Tumblr

( 600 wds under the cut )

(I have another batch from tonight coming soon, but I figured I'd catch up on the older ones first.)

Jagged Little Slayer by

periru3 and

Tafadhali.
(Link goes to series page; see individual vids for content notes.)

This is an ambitious project to vid Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the entirety of Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" album, one vid per song. A wide variety of pairings and characters are represented, and a lot of moods - dysfunctional and sad, uplifting and warm. I definitely have some favorites among these and some that weren't quite my thing (much like the songs on the album itself) but overall, it's an incredibly ambitious project, very nicely done, and there's probably something in here for almost every fan of the show. I didn't even realize I still had this much nostalgia for BtVS - it was one of those shows that I watched and enjoyed, but never really got into the fandom for - but wow, apparently I do, and this is a great tribute to all its ups and downs.

Thirteen-year-old Ali gets a chance to spend the summer with her aunt Dulcie and five-year-old cousin Emma at the family's long-abandoned lakefront property - over the strong objections of Ali's mother, who hates the lake. Ali is delighted to babysit Emma and get out from under her mom's over-protective thumb. But why do both her mother and Dulcie act so weird about the lake and their past there? Who's the mysterious girl who was ripped out of old family photos? And what's up with Sissy, the strange girl who hangs out at the lake and encourages Emma to behave badly and blame it on Ali?

Sissy's real identity won't come as a surprise to any readers over the age of 10, but there are some genuinely chilling moments and Hahn's trademark realistic family dynamics and exploration of guilty secrets and how parents' childhood trauma gets passed down to their children. I actually got stressed out reading about Ali trying to protect Emma while Dulcie blames Ali for all the weird stuff going on and accuses Ali of refusing to take responsibility for anything. (In fact, Dulcie and Ali's mom are the ones who are failing to take responsibility and projecting it on the kids.)

A good solid middle-grade ghost story with unusually complex family dynamics.

I've just finished the Silent Hill 2 remake!

'James, you can't keep doing this!' I exclaimed, as James prepared to jump down yet another seemingly bottomless pit. I paused for a moment to consider. 'Although he might be thinking the same thing about me. I always have to press the jump button twice before he actually jumps, as if he's going "are you sure it's a good idea to jump into this pit?"'

( Notes on the Silent Hill 2 remake, up to the end of the game. )

The ending stats screen gave me two stats that combined alarmingly: I'd been playing for 19h4m, or 1,144m. I'd checked the map 1,131 times. I can't believe I checked the map almost exactly one time per minute.

That's a lie. I can absolutely believe that. I'm frankly surprised it wasn't more; I love checking the map in Silent Hill. It makes me feel so much more secure when I know where I am and where I'm going!

I just darted into the sitting room, where Tem was hanging out, and picked up the Silent Hill 2 remake's box to bring back to my bookshelf.

Tem: Going off to be alone?
Riona: I was just thinking that it does look like that. 'James and I are going to go upstairs now.'
Tem: 'James and I are just going up to my bedroom.'

What a fantastic remake! It's so clearly built on a deep love for the original game, and that really pays off. I absolutely loved it. It's been so good to spend time with James Sunderland, one of my most longstanding and unfortunate blorbos.

A G'Kar vid! This well edited vid does a marvelous job of hitting the grace notes of G'Kar's arc without exactly recapping it. (Does definitely contain spoilers.)

Vid by

sandalwoodbox - I think it was Tumblr where I originally saw this, but it's posted on AO3 here.

Watch on YouTube

A sensitive, well-written novel about a young girl coming of age at the end of the world. 11-year-old Julia lives in California suburbs with her doctor dad and fragile mom when the Earth's rotation begins to slow, and gradually gets slower and slower and slower.

Days and nights stretch out. Birds fall from the sky. Some people become severely ill, apparently from disruption of circadian rhythms. Crops fail. But life goes on, and Julia experiences all the ordinary milestones - a first love, her parents' marriage breaking up, becoming more independent - against a backdrop of larger loss and change. It

This is an apocalypse novel almost entirely without violence, apart from some light persecution of a scapegoated neighbor. There's some death, but it's all from natural or accidental causes. It's science fiction but marketed as literary fiction, and feels a lot more like the latter. The book has that melancholy, nostalgic, sepia vibe of looking back on times when you knew something was wrong but were young enough to be focused mostly on yourself, and knowing you'll never be that innocent ot experience the same time or world again.

The season's first storm is heading our way, although our bit of the province is expecting way more rain than snow. (Now it rains. But I think it mostly hasn't been too cold yet, so hopefully the rain will help the water table etc. recover some more after the summer/fall drought.) Maybe

scruloose can get the hoses indoors (or drained, if that's the plan) when they get home from work, before the weather arrives.

I've finally gotten weary enough of my natural hair color to buy permanent OTC dye, as opposed to the semi-permanent attempts I've made since it became obvious that covid has settled in for the long haul. ( TL;DR: purple permanent dye has been purchased but not yet applied )

C&Ping and expanding on a bit from Bluesky last night: ( an Advent calendar + supplementary chocolate )

So this is for

rec_cember, a month-long reccing event that I mentioned a couple of days ago! I don't currently know if there will be roundups or some other way to see what other people are reccing. Weekly check-in posts have been mentioned, but that's all I know about! Anyway, I signed up for daily reccing, so I'll see how long I can keep it up. I will also occasionally round these up over at

recthething.

(BTW, as per the previous poll, there was enough interest in cutting Babylon 5 spoilers that I will do that, as well as anything else significantly spoilery in my recs for other fandoms.)

I'm starting off on easy mode and reccing a short Murderbot TV-verse fic I read the other day that I enjoyed!

Rubberducking by

writingmonsters (Murderbot TV w/some book elements, Gurathin + Murderbot, gen, 979 wds)
Rubber duck debugging (or rubberducking): a debugging technique used in software engineering, wherein a programmer explains their code, step by step, in natural language—either aloud or in writing—to reveal mistakes and misunderstandings.

A cute little slice-of-life genfic in which Gurathin talks through a programming problem by using Murderbot's drone as a sounding board.

I genuinely can't believe I finished this BUT I DID.

book cover with a magpie holding a Christmas ornament in its beak

The cover is .... there. It may need work.

Anyway - another Fated Mountain Lodge novella arrives for the holidays to answer the question everyone is asking: will the lodge's reservation system work any better this time than it has in the previous four books?

Download from Bookfunnel if you'd like a copy! It comes out on Dec. 7, so the link will stop working then.

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/lzcdk6pga8

Under the cut: a brief history of how this book came to be written.

( Click for details )

I wonder how much of an entry I can write on my phone before it gets too annoying. Still a bit amazed that the best-for-me swipe keyboard I've found is literally still in alpha. (I almost always strongly prefer to use tech/programs that are solidly out of beta, and yet.)

Bucky the Christmas tree has been revived from cold storage! I do still miss some elements of having a real tree, between the traditions and the evergreen scent, but it sure is nice not to have the time constraints of "how long will it look alive?" when deciding to put it up/take it down. And I'm also finding that I like the feeling of This Is Our Tree. Hello, Bucky, old chum. Good to see you again. You look well!

Anyhow, as of yesterday* he's in his place, built-in lights all aglow. No ornaments yet. Plenty of time for that.

*Ginny is not what you'd call a Christmas fan, so I told myself firmly that there was no call to put Bucky up on Saturday right before she and Kas would be coming over.

Today's main excitement was a dental appointment. Everything looks good, apparently. Now to hope once again that this won't be the time I get covid out of it despite the precautions we manage to take.

Current Mood: okay

Another mystery with light horror/urban legend elements and a heavy use of images by the mysterious and pseudonymous Uketsu. If you like creepypasta, you will like this.

An abandoned blog with sketches of a woman's future child may reveal a horrifying secret. A child's drawings of his apartment building worry his teacher. A mountaintop murder has a clue in a sketch by the murder victim. How do the images reveal the solutions? Are these three weird stories related?

I enjoyed this very much. It's exactly as fun and bonkers as the first Uketsu book I read, Strange Houses, but feels more confident and assured. It also reads more like a normal novel, with actual scenes rather than solely relying on interviews and exposition.

I'm excited to read his next two books (forthcoming in English) Strange Buildings (originally published in Japanese as Strange Houses 2, which the translator says is more dark/disturbing than the first two) and Strange Maps, which the translator says is more of a classic mystery.

Content notes: Child abuse, animal in danger, brief but graphic violence.

Spoilers!

( Read more... )

It's time for the end-of-year fic meme! As is tradition, I'm doing this right at the start of December, because I'm impatient. Last year I ended up posting two more fics after doing the 'end-of-year' wrapup. I evidently learnt nothing from this.

I've written a lot of little ficlets throughout the year, e.g. for promptfests, but for the purposes of this meme I'm only counting fics I've posted to my main AO3 account, or I'm going to get overwhelmed by indecision.

Number of fics written in 2025: thirty. You can find them on my AO3 account:

Riona.

Fandoms: Danganronpa, Danganronpa 2, Danganronpa: Despair Time, Project: Eden's Garden, Final Fantasy XVI, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, Severance, The Hundred Line, Horizon Zero Dawn, Deltarune, Star Trek DS9, Kingdom Hearts, Metaphor: ReFantazio, House MD. Ten videogame fandoms, three television fandoms, one web series. Mainly things I've written for before; only four of these are new additions.

One crossover: Kindred Spirits (The Hundred Line/Horizon Zero Dawn), in which Yugamu and Nil bond over their shared passion for murder.

( End-of-year fic meme, 2025. )

Here's to the next year of writing! And... possibly also the next month of writing, because this is by no means the actual end of the year.

I just tried to post this, and the Dreamwidth post editor told me 'you can't post this, it's got an unclosed italics tag'. Which is a useful feature! Unfortunately, Dreamwidth did not specify where the tag in question was, and there are ninety-four italics tags in this post, so I had a real adventure tracking it down.

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Page Summary

rionaleonhart - Fanfiction: Trouble in Paradise (Silent Hill 2, James/Mary)
oracne - Holiday Romance Recommendations?
pamrentz_feed - My Pet Sourdough
sholio - Rec-Cember Day 4-6: 3 Babylon 5 recs [2 fic, 1 fanart] + a commenting success story
sholio - Stranger Things 5x01-04
umadoshi - Christmas music | Not-Christmas cake
sholio - Rereading Dragaera
sholio - Biggles ficlets from Tumblr part 2
sholio - Biggles ficlets from Tumblr (catch-up edition)
sholio - Rec-Cember Day 3: Vid(s): Jagged Little Slayer (BtVS)
rachelmanija - Deep and Dark and Dangerous, by Mary Downing Hahn
rionaleonhart - You Can't Try Bras On In Front Of James; He'll Find It Very Confusing.
sholio - Rec-Cember Day 2: Vid: Not Gonna Stop Me Getting Through (Babylon 5)
rachelmanija - The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thomas Walker
umadoshi - Impending weather | Impending purple | No-longer-impending Advent chocolate
sholio - Rec-Cember Day 1: Rubberducking (Murderbot)
sholio - Happy December! Have another free book!
umadoshi - Offhand mishmash: Bucky awakens | "Look, Ma!"
rachelmanija - Strange Pictures, by Uketsu
rionaleonhart - It's Hard To Be The Only Person At An Orgy.

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