beatrice_otter | Recent Entries

You do not understand how amazing this is.

I have had my cat for over a decade. In all that time, the only person to successfully get medication into her was the vet. Stella is a) very suspicious and willing to defend herself and b) not at all food motivated.

By "not food motivated" I mean that the best I've ever found was food that she would tolerate. like. "I guess I have to eat this, so I might as well." She will eat kibble. She will not eat wet food; she licks it, but won't eat it. But even then, it doesn't excite her. It's more "well, I guess, if it's there, I might as well." Gravy without food is the same way. And she's perfectly fine with going hungry. Consequently, I haven't bothered to try and find a treat she would enjoy for years because you can spend a lot of money doing that and everything I ever tried ranged from "wouldn't eat" to "would eat if it happened to be there." And "would eat if it happened to be there" isn't enough to get medication into her. It's just not.

But she's been losing hair and drinking a lot of water and peeing way more than usual, so I took her to the vet, and she was just unhinged. Couldn't get her out of the carrier, much less examine her or take a blood sample. So the vet and I talked, and the vet a) didn't charge us for the visit, b) gave me a thing of liquid sedative to give her before we try again next week to examine her and c) also gave me a bag of different cat treats and special foods to try out. And one of them--a gravy mousse thing--actually worked! It was the first time I've ever seen her get really into eating anything!

So this morning I mixed a sachet of the gravy mousse thing with the sedative and she ate most of it! (The vet said to give her a dose a couple of days in advance to make sure we could do it before trying to bring her in--didn't want us experimenting the morning of the visit.) I now have a very sleepy cat and I know what to buy to treat her! I have found a food she actually likes! And that means that if whatever is causing her problems right now requires medication, I have a way to get it into her!

Hey, btw, if you're waiting for an invite to either Squidgeworld or Ad Astra let me know, I have invite codes.

I just realized that while my fic is on several archives and not just AO3, AO3 is the only one in the links list on DW. That has been fixed!

Besides being on AO3, all my fic is at Squidgeworld, and my Star Trek fic is on Ad Astra.

I also have all my fic bookmarks on Pinboard. You can browse that and copy fic links into Archive.org to see if they're there, and if they're not, drop me a comment or dm with your email and I will send you a copy of a particular fic. I have archival copies saved of all the fics I bookmark. BUT this is on condition that you do not upload the fic to a google drive to share it publicly.

Title: Safe Harbor
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series
Pairing: Scotty/Uhura
Length: 1397 words
Written for:

bardicraven in Classic Film Exchange 2026

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Ad Astra. On Tumblr.

After the fal-tor-pan was over, and they'd celebrated Spock's return to life and Doctor McCoy's recovery as best they could in a Vulcan monastery, Nyota had fallen into bed. The day had been long and difficult, scrambling to get things ready for the Bird of Prey to land on the mountain at Gol; the night had been long and anxious, as they had waited for word of whether or not it would work, if Spock could be saved, if McCoy could be healed.

She slept through the heat of the day and woke again in the late afternoon.

Admiral Kirk was in the courtyard outside the guest house. "Ah, Uhura, good!" he said when she emerged. "They want us to get the Bird of Prey off their sacred mountain as quickly as possible, said you'd know who to talk to to arrange our next berth?"

( Read more... )

I use the same name everywhere so I am

beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.

I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for a long time and am usually very happy with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

( General Likes and Dislikes )

Star Trek Specific Likes
I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication). I love moral quandries and stories where philosophy matters and you're left with a lot of thoughts.

My headcanon on Vulcans was shaped by 80s Trek novels but I also enjoy trying to fit the Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcans with ... everything else we know about Vulcans. One thing I will point out, though, is that while there are a lot of things about Vulcan culture that seem/are sexist, the most powerful Vulcans we see throughout the series are elderly women. I love Pon Farr, but mostly dealing with the implications of it (both before and after) and not the sex part.

I love Klingons, PARTICULARLY when they're written with depth. The warrior ethos shapes their entire culture, but it's not the only thing about them. I love the perspective Martok and the others had on mental illness when they were trapped in that Dominion prison camp, that mental illness is an enemy to fight and it takes a lot of strength to fight an enemy in your own head.

As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.

I haven't watched modern Star Trek, you can bring in stuff from that if you want but feel free to ignore it if you want.

( Crossovers )

( Original Vulcans and Klingons )

( DS9 )

( TNG )

( Enterprise )

( Voyager )

( Star Trek Crossovers )

Global Trade and United States Navy, by Bret Devereaux

This is a fascinating (and scary) read, and I learned a lot about how the world actually works that I did not know.

Here's a summary:

Trade between nations is about 1/3 to 1/2 of all global economic activity. This includes developing nations.
Many nations depend on importing food, and this includes poor nations. If international trade declines, the price of food goes up and poor people go hungry. Some starve.
Despite the fact that corporations and larger nations can be predatory, international trade is actually the quickest way for a developing nation to move up the economic ladder from low income to middle income.
80% of all goods move by sea.
Shipping by sea requires sea lanes to be open. That is, piracy kept to a minimum, local nations prevented from putting high tariffs on goods moving past a local chokepoint.
The US Navy is the only navy in the world capable of keeping the sea lanes open.
American foreign policy now doesn't care about keeping the sea lanes open, and this is actually very very bad for the entire world, not only for the US but also especially for developing nations.

I just had the pleasure of cheerleading and betaing a delightful Star Trek TOS fic, which you should all go read. It's funny and sweet with really interesting Vulcan worldbuilding.

West-Running Brook (14671 words) by Laura JV
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Spock/T'Pring (Star Trek), Stonn/T'Pring (Star Trek), Spock & T'Pring (Star Trek), James T. Kirk/Spock, James T. Kirk & Spock
Characters: Spock (Star Trek), T'Pring (Star Trek), James T. Kirk, Original Vulcan characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Parenting, Episode: s01e21 Tomorrow is Yesterday (Star Trek: The Original Series), Vulcan Culture (Star Trek)
Summary:

In which Spock has to parent his son, withhold important information, and fix the Enterprise computers, all at once.

For Fandom 5k 2026 (which is, alas, the last round of

fandom5k) I wrote a Star Trek Original Series genfic starring Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu. It required copious amounts of technobabble, for which I am indebted to

sixbeforelunch and the Ad Astra discord.

Title: The Storms of Gamma Huvrai
Author:

beatrice_otter
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series
Characters: Sulu, Uhura, Chekov
Written For:

RisalSoran in Fandom 5k 2026

Summary: "Matvei Mironovich understood the perversity of the universe," Pavel said. "And so do I. Which is why I know that our entire command staff will choose to explore planets by shuttle in this system where we cannot use transporters safely and hand-held communicators will be useless across anything more than short distances. And there will be a surge in ion waves at the critical moment and the shuttle will be damaged, and so will the ship, or some other emergency will arise, and we will not be able to rescue them or call for help."

"Come on, our luck isn't that bad," Hikaru said.

"Luck, Mr. Sulu, is not a phenomenon that exists," Mr. Spock said.

At AO3. On Ad Astra. At Squidgeworld. On tumblr. On Dreamwidth. On Pillowfort.

The briefing was scheduled for 0900, which gave Nyota time to check in with both the gamma shift communications officer as he went off-duty, and the alpha shift officer who would be covering for her during the briefing. It was nothing she hadn't anticipated; the system they were approaching was a red dwarf system near to a quasar, and the resulting interaction with local solar winds led to several standing ion storms in key places around the system that would interfere with just about every system on the ship, in one way or another. Most relevant to her job, it would make communications difficult both within the system and outside it.

There were things a skilled officer could do to compensate, of course, and they had the best equipment the Federation could produce to punch through the interference, but it was still an extra headache.

"Good morning!" Hikaru said cheerily as she entered the briefing room. "How are the communications systems faring?"

"We should be able to get critical messages through to Starfleet, but don't expect any personal mail until we're out of the system," Nyota said. "If the Federation ever wants to talk to anyone in this area of space, they're going to need to invest in heavy-duty relays a lot closer together than normal." One of her jobs, while they were in the system, would be to collate data and figure out what equipment would be needed for a long-term communications presence to and through this part of the sector. As of right now it was all theoretical; they didn't have any contacts out this far, nor any plans for colonies in the area, nor any pressing strategic needs … but any of those factors could change easily, depending on what they found in their survey.

( Read more... )

I had a lot of fun writing for the Casefic Exchange! Irina was invaluable help in bouncing ideas off of to plot the case. I almost got Miss Climpson in, too, but was stymied because I didn't have much for her to do and also she's hard to write.

Title: Mice Will Play
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey
Characters: Mervyn Bunter, Charles Parker
Author:

beatrice_otter
Written For:

greerwatson in Casefic Exchange 2026
Betaed by: Irina (

sinkauli )

Summary: While Lord Peter is undercover, Bunter finds an item in an auction catalog that should not be there.

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On tumblr. On Pillowfort. On Dreamwidth.

Mervyn Bunter sat at the table in the kitchen and read the newspaper with his morning tea, as he had most mornings for the last eight years.

It was a decent kitchen, equipped with all the modern conveniences, and it was arranged with as much eye to practicality and usefulness as Mervyn could make it. There was no denying, however, that it was rather small—though the rest of the flat at 110A Picadilly was large and luxurious, the servants quarters were as cramped as such things typically were.

About once a week, Mervyn considered taking his breakfast in the flat's dining room, a large and airy room with good light and space to lay the paper out in full. The flat did, after all, legally belong to him at this moment in time.( Mervyn refrained not out of any sense of feudal spirit, but rather because if he kept to the kitchen and his room, he could pretend that Lord Peter had merely stepped out for a few hours. )

For

caseficexchange I received an AMAZING podfic:

[Podfic] 'Goodfellow' by Beatrice_Otter (109 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Peter Grant & Thomas Nightingale
Characters: Peter Grant (Rivers of London), Thomas Nightingale, Danni Wickford
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Organized Crime, Podfic, Podfic Length: 1-1.5 Hours, Audio Format: Streaming, Audio Format: FLAC
Summary:

Podfic of 'Goodfellow' by Beatrice_Otter

There had been thefts at three successive Goblin Markets, and one incident of serious vandalism, before Robin Goodfellow had deigned to call in the munificent arm of the law—in this case, the Special Assessment Unit, colloquially known as the Folly, and disparagingly called the Isaacs by the demi-monde. Which just goes to show that after over a century of alternating condescension, neglect, and active persecution, it takes more than a few years of community-focused policing to change community perception. Even when that policing is being done by a handsome and charismatic DC such as myself.

But there are also a lot of other great fics which you should totally check out! My favorites are:

( Murderbot, Babylon 5, Elementary/DCU, TOS, Andor )

There's a really interesting fic on AO3 called The Ribbon by

Heidi891 with an AU premise I've never seen before, and which has sparked my creative juices going about how I'd write it if I were going to do it. This is often what happens when I read a fic with an interesting premise; I keep getting distracted by "but what if they did that instead ..." even when the fic in question is very good as it is. But I'm never going to write my own version of the basic idea, so I'm getting it down here instead.

The basic premise: Wickham abandons Lydia in London, but a minor character from the novel (Mr. Pratt, another officer, mentioned only twice) happens to stumble across her after she has been recovered by Mr. Gardiner. Mr. Gardiner and Darcy pay Pratt to marry Lydia instead of Wickham, because that salvages her reputation. The story (20k so far, at 9/13 chapters) is about their life together.

If I were writing it, there would be three major differences that would make it a very different story indeed. First, I would want to bring in more of what Pratt's life is like in the regular army, which would require more research than I am willing to do. Second, I would handle the money part of it differently. And third ... while Lydia's characterization in the fic flows very naturally from the book, I have a different perspective on her. Pratt we know so little of that he is practically an OC, but I'd take him in a different direction.

( On Money )

On to characterization!

( Characterization )
I think I might send Pratt's regiment off to fight, and have Lydia go and live with the Gardiners, and have some sort of epistolary contact between him and Lydia. But that's where this peters out for me, because I would not want to do the research necessary to write that part.

I use the same name everywhere so I am

The Naboo royalty is one of the most fascinating bits of the worldbuilding the Prequel Trilogy gives us, because it's so weird. And people don't really ... grapple with that very much, even in fic, but tend to take it for granted. We have an elected monarch (and why give an elected official a hereditary title?!?) who wears elaborate ceremonial robes and elaborate ceremonial makeup that literally nobody else in their society wears. This person has a reign name that is not the name they grew up with, and which they will keep as their primary professional name even after they are no longer monarch. And even their personal name seems to have changed. (There are two choices--either all the handmaiden's names were changed to match Padmé, or all of them including Padmé changed their names.)

This elected monarch is surrounded by body doubles/bodyguards who are not only good at fighting and can pass for the monarch in a pinch but who can also be the one making decisions and treated as the monarch in important diplomatic situations. Yes, sure, the reveal of the Real Padmé when dealing with the Gungans is cool, but why the fuck is the decoy the one leading the negotiations. Like. If Sabé-wearing-Padmé's-clothes-and-makeup had negotiated a treaty and signed it, would that treaty still be legally binding even though Sabé isn't Padmé? It sure seems so! Why didn't they swap Padmé back into the lead for the negotiations, and then back out for safety when the negotiations conclude?

( Read more... )

It has long been difficult to get healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank, and that has only gotten worse in the last few years. And the more complicated or specialized your need, the harder it is to get in Gaza. Cancer treatments and so many other treatments are often difficult if not impossible to get in Gaza.

So when Palestinians need advanced healthcare, they turn to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network. This has been the case for many decades, with the Palestinian Authority working to ensure access and funding for treatment in the EJHN. This hospital network always runs at a major financial deficit because most Palestinians can't pay, or can only pay a fraction of the cost of their care. The US government has given this hospital system money to make up the difference for the last 15 years--and this has had bipartisan support in congress.

As they're putting together the 2027 budget and voting on it, it would be really helpful if people in congress knew their constituents cared about Palestinian Healthcare.

The ELCA has a handy widget to email your congresspeople. Yes, the ELCA is a Christian group, but you can delete the word "Christian" from the letter you send. Please modify the letter so it looks like you put time into it; this makes it more likely to be counted by your congress people.

I use the same name everywhere so I am

My laptop is back from the shop. The reason that it was freezing and dying every so often is that it was overheating.

And why was it overheating, you ask?

Because of the enormous clump of cat hair inside it.

several inches of thoroughly packed cat hair.

So, uh, if you have a laptop that you like to use actually on your lap, and you have a cat that likes to sit on your lap or right next to your lap while you have the laptop on it ... it might be worthwhile to crack the case open every so often and see if there is cat hair in there to be cleaned out.

I mean, I'm glad that if it had to have a problem, it was something so easily fixable.

but also.

i wish i had figured this out myself and taken care of it before it was bad enough to need to be in the shop for a week.

Does anyone work on the Open Doors project at AO3? Or know someone who does? I am trying to do something similar on Ad Astra, and need some advice from someone who knows the OTW archive software better.

Specifically, there are a couple of people who had accounts and fic on the old Ad Astra archive who are now dead, and we would like to make sure that their works are preserved by transferring them to the new archive. We would like them all to have the same format that unclaimed works imported by Open Doors have on AO3--"by name [archived by archivist]". We have successfully achieved that with shorter works, but I'm trying to import a fic with 363 chapters and half a million words. It cannot be imported; the archive times out. I thought that if I imported the first chapter and then uploaded the rest of the chapters manually, it would work, but trying to import only the first chapter timed out the archive as well. Then I thought about importing another work that would import, changing the title and chapter text to the one I wanted, and then manually adding further chapters. But it's listing it as just "Archivists" in the author space, without the name of the original author.

Help!

ETA: figured it out myself!

Never mind, I figured it out myself!

The issue is that when you are uploading a fic for someone else, you are required to put their email in the box so they are contactable. This person is dead and I have no idea what their email address was when they were alive, so I put in the archivists' email. So the system decided that it was just by Archivists despite having the name of someone else and having the box checked that it was someone else's fic that archivists was posting.

I made up an email to put in instead, and it posted as "by name [archived by archivist]" just as it should.

For

highadrenalineexchange I got this absolutely delightful Fandom for Robots fic that was everything I wanted! Go read it.

Farther Adventures of Robot and Human (10233 words) by BardicRaven
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: bjornruffian & Computron (Fandom for Robots), Computron & Hexode (Fandom for Robots)
Characters: bjornruffian (Fandom For Robots), Computron (Fandom for Robots), Hexode (Fandom For Robots)
Additional Tags: Canonical Character Death, Canonical Abuse, Friendship, Robots, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Canon
Summary:

Computron is well aware that he exists on sufferance.

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I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY MEDICATED MY CAT!

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Safe Harbor

Dear Yulegoat

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Fic: The Storms of Gamma Huvrai

Fic: Mice Will Play

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P&P AU--Mrs Pratt

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Queen Amidala: Headcanon About Naboo "Royalty"

Action Alert: Funding for Palestinian Healthcare

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