Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Atkinson Hyperlegible Updated

Couple years back I squeed about a lovely new font designed for maximum accessibility. I’m delighted to report it’s been updated to Atkinson Hyperlegible Next and Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono. Now it’s available in six weights—light, regular, medium, semibold, bold and extra bold, plus italic versions of each, for a total of 12 faces. (I was able to use the AO3 site skin wizard to cobble together AO3 Hyperlegible, but I haven’t replumbed the Dyslexic skin I mentioned then.)

Thanks to a post in ebooks, I installed Atkinson Hyperlegible on my Kobo Libra 2 e-ink reader.

Awesome Due South Fan Comics

petra not only writes excellent limericks and drabbles to your prompts, they frequently recs great stuff. Today it was gjdraws’s Try sometimes (and you might find) is a wonderful 7-page comic coda to s4, e8 Good for the Soul. Cheery and detailed full-color images capture the confusion and delight when Fraser meets RayK.

You can view all the Due South art on tumblr or on the AO3!

As befits a fandom old, they've got two pseuds trq and gjdraws

"We’re All Going to the Conclave Larp"

(I wish I could thank whoever linked me to this excellent essay from Adrian Hon)

The tragic passing of Pope Francis combined with the recent movie Conclave has turned minds to the notion of a Papal conclave larp. Think of the clothes! The pageantry! The intrigue! The voting! A Papal conclave larp is such a good idea, in fact, that it’s already been done many times.

[… snip …]

But the most impressive and rigorous conclave larp must be Ada Palmer’s annual event at the University of Chicago.

https://mssv.net/2025/04/22/were-all-going-to-the-conclave-larp

SF writer David Levine reports on a 3-day speed-run of Dr. Palmer’s Papal Larp before Chicago WorldCon back in 2022:

But by the end of the day I had found my feet and made good progress, and in particular I had set up a marriage between Alfonso and Joanna the Infanta of Castile, an excellent match which would create a strategic alliance between Ferrara and Spain. All that remained was to work out a few details about the dowry; the union would be finalized (meaning that Jo Walton would affix the cards representing the bride, groom, and dowry to the marriage contract with the Holy Stapler) first thing in the morning. I spent the night strategizing about how to exploit the relationship.

The next morning: disaster! I had a huge pile of mail, including a bloodstained letter from my brother the Duke which said, in effect, “It was, it was, it was… aaaaaaargh.” My brother had been assassinated by his younger brother Fernand (who had always hated Alfonso and me), who now squatted on the throne. So much for the alliance with Spain!

https://daviddlevine.com/2022/09/pope-larp-report/

ETA: 24 May 2025 correct pronouns

… witnessing us enjoying each other’s work.

I was so charmed this morning when I listened to anatsuno's delicious podfic of busaikko’s kind, sweet gen-ish fic A Mark of Time, where asexual John and sexual athlete Rodney find a happy togetherness in fursuits.

As I left a comment on busaikko’s fic (which includes useful background on how/why furries are reviled, and why that’s a bad idea), I learned that it had inspired bomberqueen17 to mention furry cuddling in an Atlantis-wide intranet RPS archive as part of her Two-Body Problem (WIP) series.

That fic is I ship it and it stands alone. bomberqueen17 creates an OFC, eager to join a gate team, who inadvertently goes on a fool's errand to sign up with Lorne, since he’s rumored to do all of Shepherd’s scutwork. Which ends up with a fake McShep kiss to give the new kids something to gossip about, as well as a true McShep kiss that’s what they deserve.