Round 177: Marriage of Convenience

Aug. 1st, 2025 10:32 am
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun posting in [community profile] fancake
Photograph of a young Vietnamese couple in a sunny urban environment, with added text: Marriage of Convenience, at Fancake. A bride in a white dress and sunglasses leaves her groom behind at a bus stop. The bride is smiling and carrying a bouquet of lilies as she hikes up the long skirt of her dress and walks away. The groom is in the background, wearing a dark grey suit and sitting on a bench. He's blurry, but it looks like he might be smiling at her.
Our theme for August is marriage of convenience!

These partnerships are made for practical, political, or professional reasons rather than personal ones, but they rarely stay that way...

Since this is a Flashback Round where we revisit a theme from the early days of the commβ€”marriage of convenience was a Cupcake Round back in 2014β€”this month it doesn't matter if a work has already been recced for this theme, go ahead and rec it again!

The tag for this round is: theme: marriage of convenience

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

Rules! )

Posting Template! )

Promote this round! )

Hotel Life

Aug. 1st, 2025 12:35 pm
settiai: (Aziraphale/Crowley -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
Welp. I've officially been living in the extended stay hotel for over a year now. I've gotta admit, that's definitely not what I was expecting when I first checked in on 7/31/2024.

Still, it is what it is. Hotel or not, it's at least a roof over my head, so I'll take what I can get.

Follow Friday 8-1-25

Aug. 1st, 2025 02:56 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] followfriday
Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

pronker: barnabas and angelique vibing (Default)
[personal profile] pronker posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Star Wars
Pairings/Characters: Kleya Marki & Luthen Rael from the Andor series
Rating: K
Length: 7,108
Creator Links: FFN Profile
Theme: Working Together

Summary: He was never meant to survive. So why is she risking so much to save the man who killed her family?

Reccer's Notes: Kleya does her duty, as does Luthen, in aid of the rebellion. When their wishes and deeds clash, it takes forever and a day to reach an equilibrium. I especially enjoyed the scenario of two rebels diminishing status once their seminal work concludes, because how do they fit in now? And do they want to? Fine characterization, and a what-if that we hope happens, in some other timeline, perhaps.

Fanwork Link: Questionable Provenance

July Challenge - Day 31

Jul. 31st, 2025 10:17 pm
pf_mod: modern pseudo-cubist painting of a red headed woman holding a book with a red cover (Default)
[personal profile] pf_mod posting in [community profile] poetry_fiction
From Curious

When you're in your house, baby
Tell me, what do you do?

July Challenge - Day 30

Jul. 30th, 2025 08:15 pm
pf_mod: modern pseudo-cubist painting of a red headed woman holding a book with a red cover (Default)
[personal profile] pf_mod posting in [community profile] poetry_fiction
From Open Letter to the South

Let us become instead you and I
One single hand
That can united rise

SGA: The Killing Frost by Sholio

Jul. 31st, 2025 03:53 pm
mific: (Shep - oh crap)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Stephen Caldwell, Elizabeth Weir, Laura Cadman, Radek Zelenka, Lindsay Novak - the usual Daedalus and Atlantis suspects.
Rating: Teen
Length: 100,449
Content Notes: Contains descriptions of serious injuries, animal attacks, extreme environmental conditions, violence, murder. No AO3 warnings apply.
Creator Links: Sholio on AO3, Sholio's old SGA website
Themes: Working together, Action/adventure, Competence, Hurt/comfort, Novel-length, Epic work, Genfic, Worldbuilding

Summary: When a scientific mission goes wrong, the Daedalus crashes on an ice planet along with Atlantis's top scientists and a ruthless saboteur. Will rescue come before injuries and the elements take their toll? Roughly season two era.

Reccer's Notes: This is a gripping, full-blown novel. The Daedalus crash-lands on a Gateless, uninhabited, icy planet while carrying a number of Atlantis personnel (Rodney, Radek, Elizabeth and Cadman), while back on Atlantis, realising something's gone badly wrong, John, Simpson, Carson, Lorne, et al try frantically to locate them, then to reach them by puddlejumper. It's a thriller about surviving both a disastrous crash and the freezing, inhospitable planet, plus searching for the saboteur or saboteurs who caused the crash. There's tons of detail about how the two groups separately work together to survive, and to find and reach the crashed ship, and then once the relief party arrives their troubles aren't over, with the saboteur still working against them and the logistics of only having puddlejumpers to perform a complex rescue. Sholio weaves it all together masterfully and it's an extremely good read with excellent worldbuilding, better than most pro thrillers. Highly recommended.

Fanwork Links: The Killing Frost on AO3, or here

settiai: (D&D -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
Since the DM and her wife are currently on their long-delayed honeymoon in France, the rest of us are playing a Daggerheart mini-campaign set in the same world as our main campaign. It's set in a different part of the empire and features different characters, but the world state is the same.

In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

July Challenge - Day 29

Jul. 29th, 2025 10:57 pm
pf_mod: modern pseudo-cubist painting of a red headed woman holding a book with a red cover (Default)
[personal profile] pf_mod posting in [community profile] poetry_fiction
From Lonely Nocturne

I lift my window
To look at the sky
Where moon kisses star
Goodbye.

/o\

Jul. 29th, 2025 09:45 pm
settiai: (Bilbo -- dark_jackal32)
[personal profile] settiai
Raise your hand if you're extraordinarily gifted and managed to fall while taking your boots off, landing in a way that scraped the fuck out of your left foot (both the side and the heel) when it slammed into the bedside table.

... just me, huh?

The timing is about as good as it can get at least. Monday and Tuesdays are my days in the office, and this whole mess happened after I made it home tonight, so my shoe wearing the next few days will probably be limited. And, hey, I'll take a scraped up foot over a sprained ankle any day.

But still. Oof. Only me. πŸ™ƒ

July Challenge - Day 28

Jul. 28th, 2025 09:09 pm
pf_mod: modern pseudo-cubist painting of a red headed woman holding a book with a red cover (Default)
[personal profile] pf_mod posting in [community profile] poetry_fiction
From Miss Blues'es Child

If the blues would let me,
Lord knows I would smile.

July Challenge - Day 27

Jul. 27th, 2025 09:29 pm
pf_mod: modern pseudo-cubist painting of a red headed woman holding a book with a red cover (Default)
[personal profile] pf_mod posting in [community profile] poetry_fiction
From Dear Lovely Death

This suffering flesh,
To make it either more or less,
But not again the same—