in the moderate Aristotelian city

IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Hello! My name is on my journal, so I might as well say: hi, I’m Lee. I live in London. I’m a queer/ace trans man (ish). I’m autistic, ADHD and disabled. My main contribution to fandom, historically at least, is writing, and my main other hobbies are gaming, coding and music - I sing and play piano, and am considering taking up the tenor saxophone. I also knit a little, though it’s hard on my wrists so not as much as I used to!

My main fandom/obsession/lifestyle at the moment is Final Fantasy XIV, which is the current MMO. (There was also FFXI, which I played for a while, but not in a very long time.) I also love Doctor Who, DS9, Murderbot, Dirk Gently, Good Omens, and a whole bunch of other things. I used to be pretty active in a boyband RPF fandom.

I think that’s more or less me!

Snowflake Challenge #2: Goals

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I knew goals was coming at some point.

I already made a generalised goals post for 2024 (access-locked), so I won't regurgitate here. Fannish goals, one that I made note of in the list post, and another couple that have been floating around trying to get more solid:

1. Write some fanfic! I want to actually write some fanfic here. Visibility/hits/kudos aren't really necessary, I just want to get some output on my AO3. I wrote and posted 5 fics in 2023, I think I can do better in 2024!

2. Get active in a new fandom of some kind. This sure will help the writing, but it's also about having more social connections and especially more opportunities for social creativity.

3. Be more social/active in my exisiting fandoms. This can look like posting/reblogging more content on my fannish tumblrs, chatting more regularly to people I already know about fannish topics, making new friends in fandoms I already like, or whatever else I can think of.

That's a good number of things, I think!

Dear Candy Hearts Creator,

Thank you for writing or drawing a thing for me!

First up, my major DNWs, just to cover all my bases: please stay away from incest, major character death, noncon or dubcon, pregnancy (including mpreg) or breeding kink, scat or watersports, bigotry (especially homophobia, transphobia or ableism), toxic masculinity, and compulsory heterosexuality.

Second, the things I like!

*Queer love, especially m/m - I'm queer myself, and I love seeing queer love of all kinds depicted. (This does include m/f pairings where one or both of the partners is bi, pan, trans, ace, aro, etc.)

*Hurt/comfort - preferably heavier on the comfort than the hurt! You can probably get away with a fair amount of hurt as long as there's lots of comfort to make up for it and it's all better in the end.

*Lots of sensory detail, especially on how things feel/tactile sensations.

*Opposites attract/chalk and cheese pairings - I love when people who shouldn't get on, or haven't got on in the past, find unexpected common ground, whether the ultimate ending is sexual/romantic or not.

*Involuntary state changes - for example a character turning into a vampire or werewolf against their will, especially if it feels great and they hate it. (Though as above, please do stay away from all forms of pregnancy.)

*Fun AUs - I love a good Star Trek, SF or fantasy AU, or a modern-day/mundane AU for those canons that aren't.

( Individual requests under the cut! )

Hello! Turns out I'm doing a challenge for the first time in many years! Let's go?

( Detailed commentary on requests )


( Endwalker-specific stuff - spoilers abound! )

Hi folks!

I'm giving away a bunch of DVDs and books. Anything on this list is free if you want it. I'm still not really travelling anywhere at the moment, but I can probably manage Post Office trips. If you want a book/some books (or DVD/DVDs), I'm going to suggest we go halves on the postage.

I'm giving whatever's left to a charity shop on Tuesday 22nd September, so if you want something/several things, please let me know by then!

Great big list under the cut.

( Stuff )

Naming

Children are officially, legally and by cultural consensus genderless. They are named as babies, but this name is not expected to last until adulthood - except, often, within the immediate family.

At around 13, each person chooses their adult name, gender and pronouns. This is done in a coming-of-age ceremony called a Naming, which is usually facilitated by a trusted adult or group of adults in the person's life (often a parent or parents, but sometimes a teacher, religious leader, or other important adult or group of adults). As befits a coming-of-age ceremony, it's usually expected that the person in question will be as heavily involved in organising the event as possible, though usually with the adults involved covering any expenses (most employers don't hire unnamed people, so it's difficult to make money independently before your Naming; this can cause problems for some, as you'll see later).

At the Naming, the person being Named is officially bestowed with their name, gender and pronouns. This has three parts: the Naming itself (in which the name, gender and pronouns are announced by a trusted adult), the Consent (in which the person Named consents to taking this name, gender and pronoun set) and the Welcoming (in which gathered friends, family and community members welcome the new adult with their pronouns).

Renaming

As an adult, you can hold a Renaming at any time, announcing a different name, gender, pronouns, or any combination of the above. You usually organise and pay for this yourself.

A Renaming is structured very similarly to a Naming, with the same three key elements as a Naming. Unlike a Naming, a Renaming can be a joint ceremony (with one or several other people), since the most common use of Renaming is marriage. Multi-person marriages are possible and legally valid. The second most common use of a Renaming is divorce. Gender transition in adulthood, however, is not uncommon, and nor is the simple taking of a new name or new pronoun set.

At a Renaming, you choose a partner or trusted friend to bestow the new name, gender and/or pronouns upon you; at a marital Renaming, it is traditional (but not universal) for marital partners to bestow their new names upon each other.

Being nameless

In small towns and villages, where everyone knows each other, orphaned or abandoned children are usually taken in and raised by a family friend, community member or local church. However, in larger towns and cities, some children inevitably fall through the cracks. These children grow up wild and unparented on the city streets, stealing and/or doing menial work to survive. Since most of them don't have an adult who cares about them enough to help facilitate a Naming, many of them don't have one.

UnNamed adults are called "nameless" and - in a country where marriage is optional and single parenthood is unexceptional - this is the rough equivalent of being illegitimate. However, since having an adult name and gender is essential to operate in the adult world, most nameless people adopt these things without a Naming. There is very little central record-keeping in Cellsor, and certainly no one keeps central records of Namings, so being nameless is usually a private shame. But for most nameless people, there is a constant fear of being "found out", and they are usually not the only people who have this information (or can work it out).

Nameless people are also officially and by cultural consensus genderless (see below for more information on genders).

For nameless people, it is possible to hold a Naming even well into what we would consider adulthood, since they are officially still children. As such, it is considered appropriate for an authority figure or mentor to bestow the new (or existing!) name, gender and pronouns, rather than having a peer do it as with a Renaming.

Gender identities and pronoun sets

Each gender identity has an associated pronoun set, but it is possible choose a pronoun set that isn't the "default" for your gender identity. It is also possible choose more than one pronoun set. What with the normal change in pronouns at adulthood, the possibility of having more than one pronoun set (and the required pronoun set for a person sometimes changing from day to day), and the option to hold a Renaming at any time, most people are good at switching pronouns.

There are four gender identities:

Genderless
Associated pronoun set: They/them/their
This is usually for children and nameless people, and being genderless is strongly associated with not having grown up yet. As such, most people who identify as neither male nor female in adulthood choose the neutral identity instead; however, there are adults with a genderless identity. They face prejudice in some quarters because of the strong association with childhood.

Neutral
Associated pronoun set: Ze/zir/zir
Most adults who identify as neither male nor female choose this identity. People who identify as a combination of male and female may also choose this identity (however see the information below on gender states).

Female
Associated pronoun set: She/her/her

Male
Associated pronoun set: He/him/his

There are also three gender states:

Singular
You have a single, usually static gender identity.

Bipartite
You have a dual identity, whether static ("I am both neutral and male, all the time") or fluid ("I am sometimes neutral and sometimes male, depending on the day").

Tripartite
You have a three-way identity, static or fluid. Most people with a tripartite choose neutral/female/male, because of the childhood associations with the genderless identity. However, it is possible to choose genderless/neutral/female or similar if you like.

Gender dysphoria and physical transition

There is much less cultural association between physical form and gender identity in Cellsor than there is in our world - the above state of affairs has been the case for several centuries. However, there are not no associations, and some people do still experience gender dysphoria and wish to physically transition.

This is very possible. Most of the transition options are magical; some are alchemical. Since the majority of the magical options are based on divine magic, these are usually freely available - as long as you can get to a temple with a sufficiently high-level cleric. (This will usually require getting to a large enough town; your best bets are Beletan, the capital, or Raveth, the enormous port city.) Since wizards and alchemists are usually not funded by the church, arcane and alchemical solutions are usually more costly, and some can run into the hundreds of gold pieces; arcane solutions are often faster than divine ones, and alchemical solutions, usually being a potion you take once a day for a number of days, are easier to fine-tune.

A typical naming ceremony
(Note: I'm using an example with a tripartite identity here, to demonstrate how multiple pronoun sets work. Elias, below, is being named by a priest.)

Priest: Friends, we are assembled to witness a Naming. [probably insert sermon here; he is a priest after all]

[Elias comes forward]

Priest: I name you: Elias Cuttle! You are tripartite: Neutral, woman and man. You are ze, and she, and he. Do you consent to this Naming?

Elias: I consent. I am Elias Cuttle. I am tripartite: Neutral, woman and man. I am ze, and she, and he.

Priest: We welcome Elias Cuttle!

Assembled crowd: We welcome zir!

Priest: We welcome Elias Cuttle!

Assembled crowd: We welcome her!

Priest: We welcome Elias Cuttle!

Assembled crowd: We welcome him!

I think that's it!

KJ Charles protagonists by Hogwarts house.

Gryffindor: Stephen Day, Archie Curtis, Richard Vane, Silas Mason, Nathaniel Roy, Jonah Pastern, Simon Feximal

Ravenclaw: Dominic Frey, Rowley Green, Crispin Tredarloe, Saul Lazenby

Hufflepuff: Harry Vane, Lord Gabriel "Ash" Ashleigh, Clement Talleyfer, Ned Hall, Ben Spenser, Martin St Vincent, Robert Caldwell

Slytherin: Lord Crane, David Cyprian, Daniel da Silva, Justin Lazarus, Julius Norreys, Francis Webster, Theodore Swann, Randolph Glyde

Which means we have:

Gryffindor/Slytherin x4, Gryffindor/Ravenclaw x2, Gryffindor/Hufflepuff x2, Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff x2, Ravenclaw/Slytherin x1, Hufflepuff/Slytherin x3

It's called spoonlessactivists and it does pretty much what it says on the tin - we are a bunch of people with limited energy, money, time or other resources who would nevertheless like to help make the world a better place whatever way we can.

All are welcome! ♥

(ETA: Assuming of course that you also want to make the world a better place. But I assume my readers do on the whole.)

I quit listening to the radio properly about ten years ago. Which means that with the exception of the very occasional new band or artist introduced to me by friends, I'm really out of touch with modern music.

I'd like to borrow the attitude of one of my characters - if you think it's noise and not music, that just means you haven't figured out how to listen to it yet. But I'm not sure I'm quite there yet. I have wide-ranging tastes but I prefer my music to have some kind of coherent melody - so...

Okay, I don't know the specific terms because my genre knowledge is crap. But I prefer melodic jazz to twiddly-rambly-improv jazz, I don't mind a bit of shouty metal but I like when there's melody along with the shouting, I like dance music but I prefer when it has a melody I can follow and not just decorations on beat-and-bass, for classical I prefer the stuff with pretty melody to the hyper-modern discordant jangly stuff. I'd like to learn more about the kinds of music that my ear doesn't hear as "melodic" and I'm pretty sure "melodic" is a pretty subjective term anyway.

And I'm not doing well right now at trying to figure out what I want to be listening to.

BUT. Having rambled a lot about the music I like, I'd like to hear your... top ten (or top three or five or twenty if either of those is easier) tracks or artists that you think I might not have heard.

You are very welcome to totally skip the bullet points below which I've stuck behind a cut - they're more detailed on the stuff I might have heard of but without listing every artist I'm familiar with it won't be comprehensive and I won't be offended if you rec stuff I already know!

( Here be further information which you are free to skip )

Have at it if you will? Thanks!