madincraft

I picked up three pinch-hits for ficinabox!

Still Here Together for Shinzuku206
Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Laurence & Temeraire
Hurt/Comfort, Hospitalization, Plushies, Recursive Fic

After his injury, Laurence is confined to the hospital for many weeks. Temeraire bears up bravely — then Laurence, too, learns what it is to worry.

Direct sequel to shinzuku206's story, With You By My Side, in which Laurence is hospitalized with a broken leg, and Temeraire is very sweet about it.

I, of course, had to make it worse. ;-)

(Don't worry: despite it all, Laurence and Temeraire are still very sweet together.)

 

Privileges of the Purse for StableState
Doctor Odyssey
Max, Avery, Tristan, Original Character
Worldbuilding, Humor

Most people wouldn't put a CT scanner on a cruise ship. The owners of the Odyssey aren't most people.

Or: Max meets Hugh "Doc" Laurent.

StableState prompted:

Who put a full-sized CT scanner on a cruise ship? Not to mention the HGTV feature wall of unlabeled medication in glass bottles (on a boat. With waves.) or the gene sequencer. Even the usual equipment is oddly gold and sleek. They have to be custom-ordered, or medical design is very different in our world.

I read that prompt, laughed, and immediately grabbed the pinch-hit. "Privileges of the Purse" is my best crack at the first three questions.

(The final question is unaddressed in the story, but I assert there is a medical supplier out there who does fake-gold-plated medical equipment for a few select customers overly invested in faux-opulence; chief among them is the Trump Organization.)

 

What Does the Spleen Do? for stablestate
What Does the Spleen Do? ft. Harvard Medical School Class of 2016
Cryptic Crossword

A splenic (but not asplenic!) cryptic criss-cross.

Just after I finished my Temeraire story, a second pinch-hit came up for StableState. After I confirmed with the mods that my "excess" 600 words from the first pinch-hit could be applied to this one, I picked it up. After all, there had been a second prompt of theirs that had interested me: one for a music video about spleens.

Fic In A Box has options for non-traditional fills: in addition to stories and art, it's possible to create works that fit various format or media opt-ins, one of which is cryptic crosswords. Which StableState had opted into for the spleen prompt! And what a lucky coincidence, I had just that week downloaded a course on how to do cryptic crosswords! I had read the first three chapters! Surely that was enough knowledge to design my own cryptic crossword??

(grrlpup laughs and confirms that I have always been like this.)

So I sailed in and did my best. It was fun! My grid was sub-standard (and I need to figure out how it is that people make up good grids), but it was neat to try to make up clues.

Happily, I had the wisdom to ask seekingferret, who is well-versed in all things puzzles, to beta. He warned me off the worst of my errors, kindly informed me that what I had created is called a criss-cross and not a crossword, and confirmed that it was in fact solvable.

(I am... not sure that anyone has solved it who isn't Ferret? But the recip left a nice thank you, and I shall be content with that.)

Frederik Sonck (illus. Jenny Lucander, trans. B.J. Woodstein), Freya and the Snake (2023 / 2025)

Finnish children's book about the snake that lives in the rockpile, a father's earnest but unsuccessful attempt to avert a fatal conflict between the snake and his children, and his children turning on him after he finally resorts to killing the snake.

"Snake murderer," they say. They will not eat ice cream with a snake murderer. Also, murderers do not get to attend the funeral.

I loved this book. I loved how judgemental the kids are, how exasperated and slitherer-outer the mother is, and how harried the father is. I of course would have preferred textual confirmation that the snake was venomous, but it's reasonably clear there was no great solution here -- just as it's clear that level of nuance is not gonna fly with these kids.


Dee Snyder (illus. Margaret McCartney), We're Not Gonna Take It (1984 / 2020)

Illustrated version of the famous Twisted Sister song, in which the rebellious anti-authoritarian teenagers of the music video have grown up to become authoritarian parents of toddlers -- toddlers who do not consent to such brutalities as baths and bedtimes.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. I associate the original version with freedom of gender expression and rebellion against abusive parents, and there's still a thing going on here about the tyranny of parents, but now that's a joke. The parents know what's best and eventually the babies go to sleep and dream happily, and... hrm. The whole thing is very defanged and cute and I'm not sure I'm quite on board for it.


Octavia E. Butler (illus. Manzel Bowman), A Few Rules for Predicting the Future (2000 / 2024)

Illustrated edition of Butler's 2000 Essence essay on the art of science fiction predicting the future, originally written in the context of the then-recently published Parable of the Talents, the sequel to Parable of the Sower, both of which forecast a United States that never addressed the developing problems of fascism and climate change. This volume was published in 2024, the once-future year that Sower is set. While Butler's vision for 2024 doesn't match what I see out my window, we are very much reaping the harvest of our runaway fascism problem. (If you can use "reaping the harvest" for an ongoing and advancing situation.)

Which is to say. This essay has aged very well. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to give it another think, and in fact I have re-read it twice since checking out this volume. I like her stress on there being no silver bullet but a multiplicity of checkerboarded solutions -- one for each of us who chooses to apply ourselves to it! -- and likewise her observations on the generational effect of what looks reasonable and preposterous, both looking ahead and in hindsight.

I'm a little mixed-feelings about the volume itself. It's very pretty and the paintings are gorgeous, but there's only four of them, so as a stand-alone edition it feels a bit... thin. Then again, it got me to read her essay again, so in that sense, it's a success.