Babylon 5 2x07 "Soul Mates"
Jan. 15th, 2026 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sholioI rewatched this one tonight, mostly for the Timov of it all, but also ...
( Spoilers for the episode )
( Spoilers for the episode )
sholio
B5 color theorizing
Jan. 11th, 2026 11:46 amsholioI FOUND IT AGAIN. I read a post on Tumblr a while back on a particularly nicely done instance of color symbolism with Londo on B5, and I finally found it. (More beneath the cut.)
( Spoilers for the whole show )
( Spoilers for the whole show )
2026 Three Sentence Ficathon
Jan. 11th, 2026 02:14 pmrthstewartit's [almost] heeeeeeeeerrrre
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
threesentenceficathon begins 17 January.
Schedule is here.
Dust off those prompts!
threesentenceficathon begins 17 January.Schedule is here.
Dust off those prompts!
Pegasus Bridge, Normandy
Jan. 11th, 2026 01:12 pmrthstewartThe spousal unit and I spent 5 days in Normandy, France last year touring D-Day sites as well as Mont Saint Michel and a bit of Paris. We stayed in Bayeux (Tapestry!) and spent two days touring the British and Canadian becahes and sites, and then the American sites. We were able to go back and spend a full day at Pegasus Bridge and the Merville Gun Battery.
We had lunch at the Ham and Jam creperie right across the street from the sadly closed Gondree Cafe. It's so sad now to think of the US going to war with its French and British allies because Drump psychologically needs to invade Greenland.
NGL it was awesome to see the inspiration for my stories in real life and to realized that yeah, I got pretty damned close. I cried a few times, thinking of how much I wrote, how hard I worked at it, and wondering if I would ever get that again. Wonderful. And so personally devastating too.
A few pics below.
Château de Bénouville
Posters on Av. du Commandant Kieffer, Bénouville, France which crosses the Caen Canal where the original Pegasus Bridge stood and Operation Tonga
Major John Howard Avenue, Pegasus Bridge Sign, and Marker where Horsas crashed
Wally Parr's Number 1 gun "I didn't know it was going to be a quiet war."
Ultra report on Operation Tonga
And last, the gravesite of Lt. Den Brotheridge (maybe not the first casualty of D-Day). As it turns out, there's a very different tradition between American vs Canadian/British fallen. Americans are collected in single, solemn, uniform sites; Canadian and Britsh are interred where they fell. So Normandy is dotted with scores of tiny church graveyards with Canadians and British who died there.
The stained glass windows throughout Normandy churches, including the cathedral in Bayeux, are a mix of traditional Catholic iconography and signs and insignias of the D-Day operations, including parachutes, flying horses, St George and the Dragon, eagles, and service insignia, all in stained glass.
We had lunch at the Ham and Jam creperie right across the street from the sadly closed Gondree Cafe. It's so sad now to think of the US going to war with its French and British allies because Drump psychologically needs to invade Greenland.
NGL it was awesome to see the inspiration for my stories in real life and to realized that yeah, I got pretty damned close. I cried a few times, thinking of how much I wrote, how hard I worked at it, and wondering if I would ever get that again. Wonderful. And so personally devastating too.
A few pics below.
Château de Bénouville
Posters on Av. du Commandant Kieffer, Bénouville, France which crosses the Caen Canal where the original Pegasus Bridge stood and Operation Tonga
Major John Howard Avenue, Pegasus Bridge Sign, and Marker where Horsas crashed
Wally Parr's Number 1 gun "I didn't know it was going to be a quiet war."
Ultra report on Operation Tonga
And last, the gravesite of Lt. Den Brotheridge (maybe not the first casualty of D-Day). As it turns out, there's a very different tradition between American vs Canadian/British fallen. Americans are collected in single, solemn, uniform sites; Canadian and Britsh are interred where they fell. So Normandy is dotted with scores of tiny church graveyards with Canadians and British who died there.
The stained glass windows throughout Normandy churches, including the cathedral in Bayeux, are a mix of traditional Catholic iconography and signs and insignias of the D-Day operations, including parachutes, flying horses, St George and the Dragon, eagles, and service insignia, all in stained glass.
On the way out
Jan. 11th, 2026 11:54 amrthstewartNo, don't panic (if you're still here and reading) not out, out as in dead. but on Tumblr someone commented, essentially, whoa, rthstewart is retiring? I didn't know she was that old. Yep. I'm old. Yep, I'm retiring 12/31/26 and will return to fic and chasing wolves and bears in American national parks. I am reminded of the Bujold quote, "Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards". None of those really apply. In my field, reputation probably matters more than honor and if I don't stop soon, I won't outlive the bastards.
( about health )
Once you reach a certain age, I think we'd like to think there will be parties, balloons, and celebration of a 40+ year career. That there will be some sort of capstone. But, that doesn't seem to be the reality. ( short work blather )
So that's all the news here.
In other news, I realized I never shared a particular highlight. I finally made it to Normandy! It was magical. I'll post some pics of my time (2 DAYS) at Pegasus Bridge, Bénouville.
Here are two pics of the doggos! Kili and my Christmas present, Big Book of Bread, which is fabulous
.
And Kili and Komo at Christmas
( about health )
Once you reach a certain age, I think we'd like to think there will be parties, balloons, and celebration of a 40+ year career. That there will be some sort of capstone. But, that doesn't seem to be the reality. ( short work blather )
So that's all the news here.
In other news, I realized I never shared a particular highlight. I finally made it to Normandy! It was magical. I'll post some pics of my time (2 DAYS) at Pegasus Bridge, Bénouville.
Here are two pics of the doggos! Kili and my Christmas present, Big Book of Bread, which is fabulous
.
And Kili and Komo at Christmas
I am rapidly concluding that the B5 books are CURSED
Jan. 10th, 2026 10:17 pmsholioI don't think I posted about this at the time, but there was an absolute odyssey involved in getting the original batch of B5 script books that I ordered.
The original process was this:
I'd known about the existence of the B5 script books vaguely for a while, but hadn't really thought of buying them before. In October, when I came back from traveling, I googled it and found a massive site called "B5 Books" that had authorized editions of all the B5-related books available, which was a lot of them, not just the script books but tons of other stuff as well.
They had closed yesterday.
But wait! They were staying open through the weekend (like 2 more days) because they'd had technical issues. So I splurged and ordered an absolute ton of books (about 2/3 of the total script books out there, mainly focused on episodes I especially wanted to read about). I would have preferred to order just one to find out a) what the books were like, and b) what their customer service was like, but ... closing in 2 days! So I gave them my credit card info for a quantity of books that I don't want to think too closely about.
A month went by.
I got a shipping notice and a tracking number, and and then a box arrived .... with 2 books in it.
I contacted customer service (a bit nervously, in the hopes they'd still actually answer). To their credit, they were very quick to respond; evidently there was a second tracking email I hadn't received for some reason, for the box with most of the rest of the books in it. (They sent me a free digital book to make up for the emotional distress, too - they were really nice.)
This was back in December, and I was leaving on the 13th, Saturday, so I periodically checked the tracking info for the box. It showed up in Fairbanks over the previous weekend, and showed that it was supposed to deliver on Monday.
Monday came and went. About mid-week, the tracking info showed that it had traveled out of Fairbanks again. (Why??) I had visions of the box going all the way back to the sender for some reason. Meanwhile, I had planned to spend the last couple of days before I left diving into my new books, but as the week ticked down and it continued to tease me ... I guess not. Finally, on Friday, I got an actual "out for delivery" notice, and then a notice that a "pick up at post office" slip had been left. Also, Friday was our last day of actual mail delivery (we'd put a hold on it until after Christmas that started on Saturday and went for 2 weeks, i.e. about the amount of time that the post office will hold a box - you know, this box with $100s of books in it). I was headed to the airport Saturday afternoon, but I figured it should be possible to stop by the post office on the way.
I picked up the mail.
No slip.
I thought, okay, maybe I picked up an early batch (yesterday's? our mailbox is on the highway and both the mail delivery and our collection of it is kind of haphazard) so when Orion got home a few hours later, I asked if there had been a slip in the mailbox.
Nope!
So now my package is on hold at the post office, I GUESS, with no ability to redeliver and our mail delivery not starting until after the approximate return to sender date. We hunted all around the mailbox just in case it had been dropped. No slip.
I ended up printing out the tracking number and taking that to the post office on our way to the airport, and that DID work and they DID have the box and I got it, YAY. (Orion said that the slip spontaneously showed up in the mailbox when he was headed home after dropping me off, so WHO KNOWS what was up with that.)
Anyway, all of that ended up working out in the end, and I enjoyed the books so much that I went on Amazon to see if I could find used copies of the ones I didn't have. I ordered a few more, and I just checked the shipping info and discovered that one of them - from a 3rd party Amazon seller - was sent via Fedex and supposedly delivered on Thursday afternoon, i.e. 2 days ago.
Guess what I don't seem to have!
Orion says that Fedex often leaves deliveries in random places around the yard - he's found them on piles of construction supplies, left at the door of the shop instead of the house, etc. Inauspiciously, it snowed a few inches last night, so everything is covered with fresh snow. Also, it was dark. Still, we took flashlights and went and hunted high and low in all the places that a package might be, ranging from likely (covered with snow beside the door) to unlikely but possible (at the doors of the various outbuildings like the greenhouse, on top of random vehicles in the yard) to the highly unlikely (at our road sign, in our mailbox). Not a single sign of it! I don't know if it was delivered to some other house, mistakenly marked as delivered when it's actually fallen under the delivery truck seat, or if a very soggy B5 book is going to turn up four months later when the snow melts, but seriously, WHAT EVEN. I've never had a book go missing like this in all the time I've been ordering used books off Amazon!
Anyway, further updates from the B5 script books are coming soon, and maybe I'll have this particular book eventually, or maybe not.
The original process was this:
I'd known about the existence of the B5 script books vaguely for a while, but hadn't really thought of buying them before. In October, when I came back from traveling, I googled it and found a massive site called "B5 Books" that had authorized editions of all the B5-related books available, which was a lot of them, not just the script books but tons of other stuff as well.
They had closed yesterday.
But wait! They were staying open through the weekend (like 2 more days) because they'd had technical issues. So I splurged and ordered an absolute ton of books (about 2/3 of the total script books out there, mainly focused on episodes I especially wanted to read about). I would have preferred to order just one to find out a) what the books were like, and b) what their customer service was like, but ... closing in 2 days! So I gave them my credit card info for a quantity of books that I don't want to think too closely about.
A month went by.
I got a shipping notice and a tracking number, and and then a box arrived .... with 2 books in it.
I contacted customer service (a bit nervously, in the hopes they'd still actually answer). To their credit, they were very quick to respond; evidently there was a second tracking email I hadn't received for some reason, for the box with most of the rest of the books in it. (They sent me a free digital book to make up for the emotional distress, too - they were really nice.)
This was back in December, and I was leaving on the 13th, Saturday, so I periodically checked the tracking info for the box. It showed up in Fairbanks over the previous weekend, and showed that it was supposed to deliver on Monday.
Monday came and went. About mid-week, the tracking info showed that it had traveled out of Fairbanks again. (Why??) I had visions of the box going all the way back to the sender for some reason. Meanwhile, I had planned to spend the last couple of days before I left diving into my new books, but as the week ticked down and it continued to tease me ... I guess not. Finally, on Friday, I got an actual "out for delivery" notice, and then a notice that a "pick up at post office" slip had been left. Also, Friday was our last day of actual mail delivery (we'd put a hold on it until after Christmas that started on Saturday and went for 2 weeks, i.e. about the amount of time that the post office will hold a box - you know, this box with $100s of books in it). I was headed to the airport Saturday afternoon, but I figured it should be possible to stop by the post office on the way.
I picked up the mail.
No slip.
I thought, okay, maybe I picked up an early batch (yesterday's? our mailbox is on the highway and both the mail delivery and our collection of it is kind of haphazard) so when Orion got home a few hours later, I asked if there had been a slip in the mailbox.
Nope!
So now my package is on hold at the post office, I GUESS, with no ability to redeliver and our mail delivery not starting until after the approximate return to sender date. We hunted all around the mailbox just in case it had been dropped. No slip.
I ended up printing out the tracking number and taking that to the post office on our way to the airport, and that DID work and they DID have the box and I got it, YAY. (Orion said that the slip spontaneously showed up in the mailbox when he was headed home after dropping me off, so WHO KNOWS what was up with that.)
Anyway, all of that ended up working out in the end, and I enjoyed the books so much that I went on Amazon to see if I could find used copies of the ones I didn't have. I ordered a few more, and I just checked the shipping info and discovered that one of them - from a 3rd party Amazon seller - was sent via Fedex and supposedly delivered on Thursday afternoon, i.e. 2 days ago.
Guess what I don't seem to have!
Orion says that Fedex often leaves deliveries in random places around the yard - he's found them on piles of construction supplies, left at the door of the shop instead of the house, etc. Inauspiciously, it snowed a few inches last night, so everything is covered with fresh snow. Also, it was dark. Still, we took flashlights and went and hunted high and low in all the places that a package might be, ranging from likely (covered with snow beside the door) to unlikely but possible (at the doors of the various outbuildings like the greenhouse, on top of random vehicles in the yard) to the highly unlikely (at our road sign, in our mailbox). Not a single sign of it! I don't know if it was delivered to some other house, mistakenly marked as delivered when it's actually fallen under the delivery truck seat, or if a very soggy B5 book is going to turn up four months later when the snow melts, but seriously, WHAT EVEN. I've never had a book go missing like this in all the time I've been ordering used books off Amazon!
Anyway, further updates from the B5 script books are coming soon, and maybe I'll have this particular book eventually, or maybe not.
Sholio Vids
Jan. 9th, 2026 11:45 pmsholioSince I'm getting back into vidding again, I decided to put my vids (that are on AO3) in a collection for easier browsing.
Introducing Sholio Vids!
I tried doing it as a series at first, as I've seen some other vidders do, but this really didn't work for me because it means the oldest ones stack at the top, unless I do them in reverse order, I guess. Also, since I'm wildly multifannish in my vidding habits, making it a collection makes it very easy to pick and choose by fandom, as most people would probably want to do.
I actually have a LOT of vids that aren't on here. I didn't start regularly putting them on AO3 until the late 2010s, so (for example) all my AC ones, my White Collar ones, and basically everything before 2017 isn't on here. (Except one Highlander vid for some reason.) And it looks like there were a few even during this time that I never put on AO3. Also, a lot of my old vids aren't online anymore: a lot of my old Youtube embeds simply Ceased To Work for reasons unknown, and I think the oldest downloads no longer work either.
I started posting vids in 2006 - I was already making them (that started in 2002 or so) but it was 2006, in SGA fandom, that I got confident enough to start putting them online. Which makes 2026 my 20th vidding anniversary (vidiversary?), and one thing I'd like to do is get most of those old vids back up online if possible. That's an ongoing project for 2026 - stay tuned for details!
(Also, I am FINALLY working on subtitles for my recent vids, the Murderbot vid at the very least! I eventually decided to just handwrite the SRT files, which really doesn't take too much time; it's just a bit nitpicky to get the timing synced. It's not up yet, but hopefully soon.)
Introducing Sholio Vids!
I tried doing it as a series at first, as I've seen some other vidders do, but this really didn't work for me because it means the oldest ones stack at the top, unless I do them in reverse order, I guess. Also, since I'm wildly multifannish in my vidding habits, making it a collection makes it very easy to pick and choose by fandom, as most people would probably want to do.
I actually have a LOT of vids that aren't on here. I didn't start regularly putting them on AO3 until the late 2010s, so (for example) all my AC ones, my White Collar ones, and basically everything before 2017 isn't on here. (Except one Highlander vid for some reason.) And it looks like there were a few even during this time that I never put on AO3. Also, a lot of my old vids aren't online anymore: a lot of my old Youtube embeds simply Ceased To Work for reasons unknown, and I think the oldest downloads no longer work either.
I started posting vids in 2006 - I was already making them (that started in 2002 or so) but it was 2006, in SGA fandom, that I got confident enough to start putting them online. Which makes 2026 my 20th vidding anniversary (vidiversary?), and one thing I'd like to do is get most of those old vids back up online if possible. That's an ongoing project for 2026 - stay tuned for details!
(Also, I am FINALLY working on subtitles for my recent vids, the Murderbot vid at the very least! I eventually decided to just handwrite the SRT files, which really doesn't take too much time; it's just a bit nitpicky to get the timing synced. It's not up yet, but hopefully soon.)
Fandom things
Jan. 6th, 2026 05:43 pmsholiocandyheartsex signups close tomorrow! I was going to try to do it this year, but ... I just don't think it's a good idea. I'm starting to really need a break from exchanges, so I'm going to take a couple months off (aside from the ones I already have, which will be over when Festivids wraps up at the end of January) and then show up again when H/C-ex signups open in March.Amperslash is still looking for two pinch hits! You can find the details here at the Amperslash comm.
• PH 3 - é•‡é‚ | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, é•‡é‚ | Guardian (TV 2018), é•‡é‚ | Guardian - priest
• PH 9 - Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, Honor Harrington Series - David Weber, The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
If any of those sound like you might want to write them, the exchange has already had several delays and fingers crossed it'll be able to get them filled and open on time! I know there used to be some Guardian people around here; I don't know if anyone's still actively writing in it, or might be able to advertise the PH in Guardian-centric fandom spaces?
Babylon 5 fic + a poll about the script books
Jan. 4th, 2026 04:05 pmsholioNew B5 fic, this one's just pure self-indulgence.
A Map on the Skin (Londo/G'Kar, 1700 wds, scars)
I have been thinking about how to handle posting material from the script books. There are 14 of them and scripts for all the episodes, plus alternate versions of some, so it's like. A lot. I figured I'd do a poll about what you want to see most. (Poll is under the cut for mild spoilers.)
( Poll about what you'd like to see from the books )
A Map on the Skin (Londo/G'Kar, 1700 wds, scars)
I have been thinking about how to handle posting material from the script books. There are 14 of them and scripts for all the episodes, plus alternate versions of some, so it's like. A lot. I figured I'd do a poll about what you want to see most. (Poll is under the cut for mild spoilers.)
( Poll about what you'd like to see from the books )
Babylon 5 script books, part 2
Jan. 3rd, 2026 10:43 pmsholioSome more random excerpts from the script books, currently going through season 2.
(At the present time, I've taken pictures of pages in the book and haven't transcribed it. Sorry for lack of legibility/accessibility! I will try to type them up later.)
( Spoilers for a lot of the show )
(At the present time, I've taken pictures of pages in the book and haven't transcribed it. Sorry for lack of legibility/accessibility! I will try to type them up later.)
( Spoilers for a lot of the show )