screaming into her tea

Sholio on AO3, fic blog is at sholiofic. Over 18 (a lot over). Currently feral about Murderbot, Babylon5, Biggles; other content includes Agent Carter, MCU, books, comics, whatever catches my eye.

[deepdwellingsteamboat]

BABYLON 5 1993 – 1998・4x02 Whatever Happened to Mr. Garibaldi?

[laylainalaska]

Okay, so what I learned from doing that fave fic meme is that I neeeeed to write more long iddy stuff and more complicated AUs in my current fandoms.

I feel like a lot of the fic I've written the last couple of years has been kind of, for lack of a better word, "underbaked" - like it would feel better to me, and satisfy me more, if I'd let it simmer a little longer and given it more editing and elaboration.

I'm currently signed up for Just Married Exchange, and I was thinking about whether to drop it since I'm going to be fairly busy during the writing period. I could drop it and write moar idfic instead? Hmmmm.

[laylainalaska]

Five favorite fics I've written

Tagged by @hetchdrive! Given my prolific writing ways, this was .... hard. Really hard. Obviously there are many fics I've written that I like and am proud of and reread a lot that aren't on this list. But as far as ones that really stand out to me, I guess we'll start with ...

Tin Soldiers (Agent Carter, Jack/Daniel + ensemble, 37K wds) Technically this is a fusion with the show Almost Human, but you don't really need to know anything about it, and in fact I changed enough that I really didn't borrow anything except a few concepts; it's set in a near future police state dystopia in which human police are paired with subsentient android partners, but some of them have crossed the threshold into true sentience/personhood. I was dealing with some really delicate issues in this, including police brutality and the nature of personhood and consent with someone who has no legal ability to give it, as well as building up the romance arc and some fairly AU character dynamics and worldbuilding and plot, and I'm just really delighted with how it all came together.

Balance of Trust (Captain Marvel, Maria Rambeau + Yon-Rogg, gen, 35K wds) This was written for an exchange (High Adrenaline, formerly known as Heart Attack) that I signed up for because I saw this relationship and thought, "Oh man, I could do something with that." I really did not intend to do 35K of that in two weeks. But this is another one where I'm just incredibly pleased with how the character dynamics worked out, especially since these characters never even met in canon but do actually know about each other. I feel like what I ended up with is very grounded and is kind of a redemption arc while feeling a lot more unusual than just being a straightforward redemption arc, and also builds a very delicate antagonism-to-trust arc between Yon-Rogg and Maria and Monica in a way I was ultimately very happy with. I always meant to write more in this 'verse, but never got around to it.

And Still of a Winter's Night (Ben January Mysteries, 11K, gen) Written for Yuletide, this is for a series with an incredibly distinctive narrative style and a very strong sense of place in 1830s New Orleans with characters who mostly speak French, and given all of that, I really feel happy with how well it came together; I feel like I nailed it, both the narrative style and the fact that this feels like it could be an actual mini-mystery from the books. Plus I had terrific fun with all the costumes and identity porn. The recipient wanted (among other things) Ben's sister Dominique playing a large role, since she rarely gets to in the books and her talents run more towards gossiping and fashion than mystery-solving and derring-do, so I had a lot of fun giving her an important role in solving a mystery while also having at least a little derring-do because you really do need that in this canon.

Shelter on a Foreign Shore (White Collar, 64K, gen w/canon pairings) I genuinely had soooo much trouble figuring out which of my longer White Collar fic to put on this list; I felt that one of them should be here, and The Measure of a Hero (superpowers AU) and The Right Way To Fall (guardian angel AU) were also top contenders. I went with this one because I really liked how the disability plot thread came out and also put a ton of work into the worldbuilding for the AU setting and character relationships - it's a canon-divergent AU in which Peter is badly hurt pre-series (loses an arm), and retires upstate with El. So he only knows Neal as someone he once put in prison, until Neal and all of Neal's various complications show up on his doorstep. This is another one where I felt like the AU relationship-building and the action plot threads and the worldbuilding all fell together really nicely.

Bodyguard (Iron Fist, Colleen & Ward, 29K, gen) So it was actually kind of a toss-up between this bodyguard AU and my Babylon 5 bodyguard AU, The Bodyguard Protocol. I went with this one by a slight margin because, while I'm also very happy with the AU worldbuilding and relationship-building in the other one, it's also mainly riffing off the end of canon, whereas this one goes AU from pre-season-one of Iron Fist and pretty much builds up the Colleen & Ward relationship from scratch, and as you may be getting an idea from my other picks for this list, when I can do that with the word count and handling to sufficiently pull it off, I tend to be really pleased with the results.

And here are 5 bonus runners-up besides those mentioned above:

The Cartography of Feeling (Torchwood gladiator AU with emotion-sharing, Owen & Ianto gen, 20K) - Look, this is pure distilled id and I loved every minute of writing it.

Something Old, Something New (Biggles, forced marriage AU, Biggles/Erich, 22K) - Another of those really iddy concepts that I leaned into full force and had a great time. (It was one hell of a toss-up between this and the werewolf AU, The Pack You Need, but I think this wins once again on complexity and the satisfying relationship arc that I had a lot of fun with.)

Gift (Babylon 5, Londo & G'Kar, season 4 AU, 3K) - Honestly I could've picked a lot of my fic for them on pure id grounds, but I just really loved the concept here and I feel like I could go a lot farther and a lot iddier with it.

Black Water Rising (Agent Carter, gen, 29K) - My first long fic in the fandom, and it did perfectly everything I wanted it to do.

Beads on a String (Black Panther/Falcon & Winter Soldier, Zemo & Ayo, 14K) - Another entry in the AU relationship-building category, in which the War Dogs task Zemo to do jobs for them, and Ayo, his handler, begins to develop more empathy for him than she was expecting.

Tagging @glorious-spoon, @alessandriana, @philomytha, @black-bentley, @sgatazmy, @babischlong-six and @dotsayers if you wanna do it!

[mortalstrife]

minvember 2022, prompt 2: dream

decided to go back and revisit this old minvember fill of mine because i've always felt it would look better with one of the drakh eyes framing longo and g'kar and i thought, why not just do it

[firesidefairy]

[sholiofic]

Prompt call - July 2026!

I am hereby declaring prompt amnesty on lingering prompts and asking for new ones.

Please send me prompts for:

Biggles books (any characters)

Babylon 5 (any characters; I tend to feel most comfortable writing the Centauri/Narn characters, but don't feel limited to them)

Murderbot (Gurathin-centric this time, please; though other characters can certainly be involved, including book characters!)

It's totally fine to send me prompts if you've sent some before and I didn't answer them. (Sometimes things just don't spark an idea; that's how it is!) You can also send more than one if you have them.

If you're having any trouble with ideas, you could send me something from the h/c bingo prompt list if anything appeals!

Please send me your prompts in the form of an ask at my sholiofic blog. This helps me keep them all in one place.

[theremharths]

This is a moodboard of some sort

[yumyumpod]

[thelordismylightandmysalvation]

Foggy Lake in Early Autumn

[the-quasar-hero]

You can tell a lot about a person by entering their mind palace and encountering their greatest fears and darkest hopes in a labyrinth reflective of their subconscious thoughts.

[animate-mush]

There are all sorts of posts on here about the tonal discrepancies between Deep Space 9 A plots and B plots, where the A plot is like war crimes and survivor's guilt and the B plot is some Ferengi hijinks BS

Now I present you Babylon 5 tonal discrepancies where the A plot is some standard sci fi thing and the B plot is the most devastating thing you've seen in your life. So in the episode I just watched for instance, it's like

A plot: a Mad Bomber threatens the station!

B plot: Londo and G'Kar are trapped in an elevator

Guess. Guess which of these will leave you gnawing on your own arm.

[federicagiordanophotography]

By Federica Giordano

[hetchdrive]

Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote) // A Late Delivery From Avalon // What Does He Want Of Me? // Z'ha'dum // Man of La Mancha Finale // Dust to Dust // Hogfather

[peonymoss]

Chief? Chief, what do we do?

Do as Peggy says!

[jenniferstolzer]

There is some comfort in dying in the arms of a friend…

[laylainalaska]

Rotating in my head after reading this meta: the way that some of G'Kar's moments of deepest emotional connection with Londo happen when Londo is being his absolute worst self. Thinking particularly of "Dust to Dust" - G'Kar's transformation in this episode, in some sense, has nothing to do with Londo; it's a personal thing. But this is also the episode in which he utterly and irrevocably becomes unable to see Londo as he has seen him up until this point, as a symbol of the enemy, the face of the enemy personified, and starts to see him as a person - an utterly terrible person, but a person nevertheless.

It's really interesting to think about, because the "easy" way here, I think - the simple way to write this - would've been for his mind meld with Londo to show him the sympathetic side of the Centauri (care, love, kindness - which they do have!). Instead he gets the absolute opposite of this. He sees Londo's lowest moments, the deal with the Shadows, the fact that he's a washed-up has-been, a joke of an ambassador. The Londo that he sees when he's in Londo's head is not the better person that Londo could be (and that we - and G'Kar - do see later); it's Londo as weak and pathetic and selfish and cruel and foolish. But that is where the empathy clicks over, and he'll never be able to see him as just a symbol of the enemy again.

Although it's a completely different situation, I feel like there's an interesting reflection of this in late season five when G'Kar goes with Londo to Centauri Prime to protect him, and because he believes in him to stop the war, not because Londo has just proven G'Kar's faith in him by doing something self-sacrificing or noble or diplomatic or kind. No, he does it right after Londo has been the absolute worst he's been in at least a season or so, antagonizing the Alliance board and blaming the Narns for everything and doubling down on every one of the Alliance's hostile moves with 10x of his own. As it turns out, G'Kar gets his faith repaid more than he probably expected, with Londo standing between G'Kar and his whole world, going to prison with him, and later rescuing him. But all of this happens after G'Kar made the decision to stand with him, while Londo was doing everything in his power to make him regret it, probably.

[animate-mush]

I was gonna try to start something asking about B5 vs DS9 baseball since both Sisko and Sheridan are into baseball but I realized that while DS9 had a whole baseball episode even though many of the characters were hilariously out of place, I can't imagine any power in the universe capable of wrangling the B5 command staff into baseball uniforms. My brain won't accept it. They simply would not.

[animate-mush]

Take Major Kira. When Sisko asks her to play baseball, sonething wildly beneath her and superficially very out of character, she does! Because he's her Emmissary, he's her Captain, and he's her friend. And because a big part of her character arc is about learning to live, not just to survive, and re-embrace fun and whimsy. And she looks mighty fine in that Niners uniform.

Now, Ivanova and Kira are very similar characters. They're both incendiary Jewish women. They're both no-nonsense military. They both can and will cut you. They're both bisexual. They both have trauma surrounding their mothers. And Ivanova is no less committed to her Captain and friend (and part time Chosen One).

HOWEVER

While Ivanova would die for Sheridan, entrust him with her deepest darkest secrets, submit herself to all sorts of professional indignities on his command, and even listen to his terrible terrible jokes, I genuinely cannot imagine her playing baseball for him.

...Marcus would though. But not if it meant changing out of his Ranger getup

[animate-mush]

IF Sheridan had the misplaced idea to give the RANGERS their own baseball team, with sexy black on black uniforms in a Minbari cut, I think

Marcus would go for it, because he serves only two masters, the One and Whimsy

Garibaldi would be in, unless he's in a part of his arc where he and Sheridan are Not Talking To Each Other

Zack Allen would do it if Garibaldi made him, but he would be awkward and uncomfortable. But I think he'd get into it

Lyta would participate if asked but she'd cheat

Delenn would NOT do it, but she'd watch Sheridan's tight pants both intently and unsettlingly. She would however make Lennier join in in the name of Cultural Exchange

Vir would be morbidly curious but neither inclined nor permitted to participate

Franklin would be like yeah sure okay but really tennis is his game and hexd bow out pretty quick because he has way too much real work to do

Corwin and Tech Techington could probably be bullied into it

Ta'Lon would listen politely and cheerfully to Sheridan's pitch and agree that it was a good idea and sounded like a good time and then be like "hahaha still no though." (Ta'Lon is the only Narn I can imagine even having this conversation. Ta'Lon is a fun guy and likes Sheridan a lot. Another person in the 'would die for him / would NOT play baseball for him' category. Like Ivanova, he's immune to those puppy dog eyes)

Ivanova: "with all due respect, Captain, someone has to run this goddamn station!" (She apologizes to G-d afterwards of course. She does not back down on the Baseball issue)

There is a Pak'Mara on the field. No one is sure how he got there but he seems into it.

Keffer would probably play the baseball but I already put this in Marcus times and also. Who cares. Talia would not play baseball.

Kosh would turn up and just Stand There Ominously

[thinkinginklingon]

For which non-Earth culture will it turn out that baseball closely parallels the cultural memory of some terrible event/battle/disaster in their past, causing some minor diplomatic issue? à la cricket in H2G2.

[itsachristastrophe]

Maybe the Drazi? Something about their purple/green binary political system strikes me as potentially baseball-flavored.

[animate-mush]

Chris I think you've actually managed to hit upon the "Ivanova Plays Baseball" scenario. Since they have no substantive political differences, Sheridan convinces Ivanova to convince them to work out their factional supremacy via a friendly game that is (a) zero contact and (b) notoriously long and boring

And yeah. I think the Drazi would LOVE it. I can picture them in baseball uniforms very easily actually

Baseball League of Non-Aligned Worlds