1996 Star Trek Merch

Howdy! My screenplay takes place in rural North Dakota in November 1996, and two teenage characters are fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I know the bat'leth as a weapon was introduced in the show long ago, but when did replicas and toys become widely sold? Would it be realistic for a working-class young woman to have a mini bat'leth she could use as a knife in that year? I also read that the mek'leth (smaller Klingon scimitar) was introduced in DS9 and also appeared in First Contact. How early were replicas of those available to fans?
Thanks a million to you all! Would also love to hear any other miscellaneous stories or details of the TNG+DS9 fandom of the 90s, to give some extra oomph and care to an underrepresented community :)

Entry tags:

mudlarking

Mudlarking 77 - New Year's Eve

Unexpectedly, I was let out of work early on New Year's Eve so rushed to the foreshore. My trains had engineering work so I had to go a different route but then got on the wrong train from London Bridge and ended up in Norwood Junction, far from the river.

I did eventually make it to the South Bank though. Security were making people detour around the back of Gabriel’s Wharf so wouldn't let me get down the steps to the foreshore there, so I walked back towards Blackfriars and finally made it down.

It was the last day of the year and as the sun set, I was on the foreshore, staring at the Thames.

I found a cowrie shell, which would have been used for trade, as they're not native to the Thames. This is the third one I've found.

I found a piece of Meakin Sol Ware with a sun logo, probably from around 1918 - 1963.

I found another piece of Express Dairies aster design.

I found a piece of Lovatt & Lovatt, Langley Mill, Notts, which would have been from between 1895 and 1930. I mostly find things from London or the Potteries in Stoke-on-Trent, not so much other places.

I found a piece of a Bovril jar! My second Bovril jar, but sadly this one was not in one piece.

I found a sherd that said "ich" on it. I assumed this must be German, but the Prince of Wales’ motto is "Ich dien" (meaning "I serve"), so it’s likely to be from that, maybe a commemorative plate.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

Current Mood: i don't need a vader icon
Current Music: Thy micturations are to me

Entry tags:

Podfic: Oh freddled gruntbuggly - Darth Vader reads his poetry to torture Leia

[Podfic] Oh freddled gruntbuggly (23 words) by peasina, MelancholyMorningstar
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leia Organa & Darth Vader
Characters: Leia Organa, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader
Additional Tags: Bad Poetry, Vogon Poetry (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes
Summary:

Darth Vader learned his torture tactics from the Vogons.

Current Mood: charmed
Current Music: If you've ever been a lady to begin with

Entry tags:

Recommendation: Luck, be a lady - due South fancomic by gjdraws

This due South comic is flippin' brilliant, and I don't just say that as someone who loves the way the artist draws RayV looking at Fraser.

( Other things I liked about it )

Ahem.

Give it a go. It's short! It's cracky! It's pretty!

And I have the right icon for it.

Current Mood: bananas
Current Music: When someone asks me, "What is that funny thing you've got?"

Entry tags:

The sum of ourselves - DCU story, co-written with Té

The sum of ourselves (468 words) by Petra, Teland
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Roy Harper & Koriand'r & Jason Todd
Characters: Roy Harper, Koriand'r (DCU), Jason Todd
Additional Tags: Nostalgia, Crack, Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Canon
Summary:

Red Hood and the Outlaws sit around chewing the fat after their first successful mission.

Current Mood: versical
Current Music: But as year turns year, I'll always be here, in springtime or wintry weather

Entry tags:

poetry: sonnet

The great callipgyian spheres - sonnet for minoanmiss

There is no stagnation in the heavens;
They spin on, shedding their light, as we watch.
So too, below, change both kneads and leavens,
Now squashing flat, now lifting heart and crotch.
The dearest lover's touch, once memorized,
Arouses in absentia, but its shade
Can't match the novel zing of lust surprised.
The chaos factor that brings us arrayed
To catch new paramours, or woo the caught,
Is lightning flash astonishment that's chased
In renewed union and a clinch red-hot,
With new-found passion or love long-embraced.
So bring to bed good novelties and play,
That you may keep love fresh, as dawn starts day.

* * * * *

Many happy returns of the day, dear heart!

Current Mood: it's a while till Mardi Gras
Current Music: And here's a tip from Blanche you won't regret

Entry tags:

Vids that will never be: Oh, Streetcar! + Interview with the Vampire (TV)

Oh, Streetcar! being the Simpsons' musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire, which also takes place in New Orleans.

If you haven't seen it this decade, click through first, to hear Ned Flanders belt "HELL" if nothing else.

Tell me Louis didn't think his life would be a Mardi Gras, once upon a time.

"I think it's supposed to symbolize her descent into madness."

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Asparagus and watercress and fiddle-ferns and lettuce

Entry tags:

snowflake challenge

Snowflake Challenge #1 - Introduction

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hi, I'm Petra. I'm a writer and avid reader, primarily focused on fanfiction and poetry, who will write damn near anything for a drabble or a limerick at a time in one of my many fandoms, and I currently have a writing offer open here if anyone has any relevant requests they'd like me to entertain.

I am still very stuck on Star Wars, but I have never been monofannish, so if something else on my list pings your brain, by all means, prompt me!

I don't write about my personal life much, so here's the tl;dr -- 40's, they/them pronouns, happily married, happily employed.

I like Snowflake Challenge because early January is dark and miserable in my area, and it helps to have something to look forward to.

Current Mood: time to comment
Current Music: This is the best life has ever been

Entry tags:

Yuletide Story Received Update - The Galavant Song!

Madalena's Ballad of Great Success provides the sheet music. And now, this link is where you can listen to the song! Come get it stuck in your head with me!

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Stories of tortures used by debauchers, lurid, licentious & vile, make me smile

Entry tags:

Yuletide Stories 2025 - Doctrine of Labyrinths x2

Look both ways (5531 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mildmay Foxe/Felix Harrowgate
Characters: Mildmay Foxe, Felix Harrowgate
Additional Tags: Brother/Brother Incest, bisexual awakening, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Yearning, POV First Person, Yuleporn, Everyone's A Little Bit Janus
Summary:

"Going molly, Milly-Fox?" Keeper asked in my head whenever I thought about Felix and what it'd been like when he kissed me. And no, I fucking wasn't. I still liked women -- soft-breasted, soft-bellied, soft-hipped.

But maybe I was going a little janus, 'cause Kethe, but Felix had me turned inside out.

*

My favorite part of this is not "Everyone's a little bit janus" as a tag but it's a very close second.

*

De corporis et anima (1000 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mildmay Foxe & Felix Harrowgate
Characters: Felix Harrowgate, Mildmay Foxe
Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Summary:

Most people's soulmarks can be covered by a simple band on the wrist. Felix is not so lucky.

*

I threatened to write the soulmark story when it first occurred to me a zillion years ago, so when there was an opportunity to put it on paper for a pinch hit, I was very pleased.

Entry tags:

reveal,
wrap-up

Yuletide 2025 Wrap-Up

End of Event
We have revealed creator names at the main 2025 collection and the 2025 Madness collection. (Reveals seems to be working as intended - fingers crossed!) The New Year's Resolutions 2026 collection will shortly open for posting. The structured parts of this year's event are over - but you can keep posting recs at

yuletide and commenting on works to let their creators know you enjoyed them.

Please comment!

Please check that you have commented on any gifts you received - you can search on your username at the Yuletide 2025 collection, or the Yuletide Madness 2025 collection, or check your own personal AO3 gifts page. We understand not everyone can comment immediately due to late-December commitments or unforeseen events, but please comment when you can to acknowledge the gifts you requested. Comments and kudos on other Yuletide works are also very welcome.

Thank you from mods and team
Thank you to everyone who took part in Yuletide 2025: writers, requesters, betas, pinch hitters, community coordinators, chatters, hippos and the hippo pool.

Thank you from mods to the tagmod team: these are the assistants who research and process tags, proofread announcements, brainstorm author questions, contribute specific fandom knowledge, check stories, and discuss how to solve problems.

We look forward to running Yuletide again in 2026!

And now
There's a reveals post up at the participant community, if you want to chat about your writing process now that you can.

New stories can be posted to the New Year's Resolutions 2026 collection.

Feedback
As always, general feedback is welcome!

This year, we increased the nominations allowance from 4 fandoms to 5 fandoms. Since that worked okay, we anticipate continuing that next year.

We introduced a limited Do-Not-Match system. That was manageable so we're interested in repeating the same process next year - though it's possible it could grow beyond our capacity, so we don't want to guarantee it indefinitely.

We changed the deadline time and the reveals times. Those changes were based on mod availability, and it was really helpful to us to have multiple mods awake at the point of deadline and reveals. We'll need to base future deadline and reveals times on that priority, but since that isn't the only factor making deadlines and reveal times effective, we're interested to hear feedback too.

Next Yuletide, we may review franchise rules to make sure we're being consistent and fair. We may also specifically review rules for music videos.

As requested by a participant, we will also be adding a section to our rules on AO3 listing what you can expect from the mod team’s communications and conduct. We have had an internal Code of Conduct for several years but agree it would be helpful to share a public version.

Again, feedback on these or other topics is also welcome.

Thank you for helping to make Yuletide 2025 a wonderful event.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Entry tags:

New year, new bingo card of goals | Pruning the Japanese-language section of the bookcases

Happy New Year, dear friends! May this year be infinitely better than last for all of us.

Our NYE was very quiet. We ordered pizza with Ginny and Kas, and after they went home, it was just us and the clowder and a Christmas pudding with brandy butter. The clock is ticking on our vacation time, but at least we still have a few more days of it.

I've decided to take the bingo card approach of setting goals for the new year, and I almost have a full card. (Thinking of twenty-four goals is hard! I need one more, and have a couple of ideas.) Most of what I've put down aren't so much one-and-done things, although I've tried to make more of them list items that can be ticked off than things that are like "do [x] once a week"; this has led to a mixed bag containing both "watch twelve movies" (rather than "watch one movie a month") and "read one volume of manga each week". Six of the current twenty-three goals are media intake of various sorts. ^^;

This afternoon I took a bit of time and finally went through my shelf and a half of Japanese-related books (mostly language-learning, but a handful of cultural reference books) and pruned about half of them. That freed up a fair bit of space (for this moment, all of my cookbooks now fit on their bookcase!), but wasn't as big a cull as I'd sort of figured I'd manage once I got started. >.< I currently have no idea what to do with the culled books, though, so maybe I'll manage to prune some more while I get that figured out. Part of me still clings to this faint hope with no basis in reality that I might yet possibly someday take another stab at studying the language, so I've hung on to some of those books, but there are also a handful of language-focused ones that that could conceivably be useful for reference for work. (And I kept nearly all of the cultural cultural reference books. And both dictionaries...)

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: The things I do for love

Entry tags:

recommendation

Recommendation: Heated Rivalry vid - Role Reversal by Fikturya

Role Reversal (0 words) by Fikturya
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Canon Compliant, Angst with a Happy Ending
Summary:

Just another nancy boy. [fanvid]

*

Warning for flashing lights. Ilya is Going Through It.

Entry tags:

Recommendation: Wichita - Mad Men time loop

Wichita (1226 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Mad Men
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Bob Benson, Pete Campbell
Summary:

Pete can't get to Wichita.

*

Perfect Pete Campbell voice that made me howl laughing. I deeply enjoy his pain.

Current Mood: spiffing
Current Music: Ho-di-ho-di-ho-di-ho, sir.

Entry tags:

Recommendation: Jeeves and the Knot in the Tie of Time - Time loop

Jeeves and the Knot in the Tie of Time (8768 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves/Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Characters: Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, Reginald Jeeves
Additional Tags: Time Loop, Humor, Pining, Misunderstandings, POV Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, First Kiss, Bertie to the rescue! ...well sort of., he rallies as best he can, Yuletide 2025
Summary:

“I am trapped in a time loop, sir,” confessed Jeeves, at long last.
“Ah, these things are sent to try us,” said I.

Or: In which time develops a knot, a valet does not know how to unravel it, and a young master suggests a household remedy from tales of old.

*

Top-hole Wodehouse pastiche with time loops, one of my favorite tropes.

Current Mood: open-handed
Current Music: Mister Sandman, man me a sand

Entry tags:

More Joy Day poems & drabbles offer

For More Joy Day (Jan. 8, 2026) it is my tradition to offer poetry and drabbles to anyone who is interested.

Here is my list of fandoms. Your OTP, weird crossover pairings, bananas tropes -- hit me up and I will see what I can do!

Prompt formatting:
Drabble/Poem/Author's Choice, Fandom, Character | Pairing | Group, Trope/Prompt.

Current Mood: ha -- h'm
Current Music: The Folgers incest commercial

Entry tags:

Recommendation: The Worst Part of Waking Up (Hornblower amalgam)

The Worst Part of Waking Up (6571 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hornblower (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: William Bush/Horatio Hornblower
Characters: Horatio Hornblower, William Bush
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, dying declarations, First Kiss, (is also the), Last Kiss, (or it should have been damnit), Everybody Lives, (as embarrassing as that is for some), When He Made This Bed He Wasn't Expecting to Wake Up In It, Episode: e07 Loyalty (Hornblower)
Summary:

At the end of Loyalty, Bush is too late to save Hornblower. With his dying breath, Hornblower requests a kiss from Bush…

…only to wake up a week later and discover he's going to live after all. Damnit.

*

Listed as Hornblower (TV) but 100% by someone who has read and despaired of Book!Horatio.

Current Mood: calm

Entry tags:

year in review

2025 professional output and media intake (link)

Ah, the end-of-year attempt to bundle everything into tidy categories.

I had twenty-two manga volumes out this year, which was a big jump from the last couple of years (when so much of my freelance time went to working on Guardian--twelve last year and fifteen in 2023). Here's the list!

The Ancient Magus' Bride vol. 20-21 (Seven Seas)
The Ancient Magus' Bride: Wizard's Blue vol. 9 (Seven Seas)
A Certain Scientific Railgun vol. 19 [pinch hit] (Seven Seas)
I Abandoned My Engagement Because My Sister is a Tragic Heroine, but Somehow I Became Entangled with a Righteous Prince vol. 3-4 [new-to-me series] (Seven Seas)
My Love Story!!, Vol. 14: In College!! vol. 14 (VIZ)
Now That We Draw vol. 2-3 [new-to-me series] (Seven Seas)
Pet Shop of Horrors: Collector's Edition vol. 1-4 (Seven Seas)
Queen's Quality vol. 21-24 (VIZ Media)
The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent vol. 10 (Seven Seas)
World End Solte vol. 4 (Seven Seas)
Yona of the Dawn vol. 43-45 (VIZ Media)

I also just did my annual update of my complete list of adaptation credits, which now includes Guardian and my pseud for it; at this distance, I don't really see any reason not to include it. (Please don't prove me wrong, world.)

As for media intake (not counting anything I may read or watch today), this year I read eighty-five (!) novels/novellas, seven of them rereads (all Murderbot audiobooks with

scruloose). You can see that list and my other media intake here.

And I have my 2026 media intake post set up and ready to go.

Entry tags:

media intake tracking

2026 reading/media intake post

( Media intake for 2026 )

Current Mood: victorious
Current Music: Violence and Variations, my favorite Bear McCreary track

Entry tags:

Progress on a long-stalled project & med testing

I have managed to unfuck a story I haven't progressed on in months by chopping off a chapter, changing my view on what the pairing situation was, and digging back in.

\o/ 30K on that one so far! Let's see what happens next.

*

In other news, Journavx, a new med, appears to do a pretty good job on my migraine pain. Now if I can figure out how to get more than 15 of the buggers, we'll be in business. It's only prescribed for acute pain, and mine is chronic, so prior authorization isn't a thing my insurance company is going for.

Given that, I am going to go back to the old standby painkiller for the evening. Another dance with Mary Jane.