Flash Fiction Ex: Fandom Promo
Mar. 9th, 2026 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
embraideryFlash Fiction Ex is a semi-flash exchange for written canons such as flash fiction, short stories, and novelettes (no longer than roughly 30,000 words)! Tell us about the stories you hope to see requested or offered.
Promos! Classics with Tropes
Date: 2026-03-10 09:31 pm (UTC)I believe this is the first story to introduce the sedoretu, that type of marriage on O where two Morning people and two Evening people marry each other (making four pairs out of four people). It's also a sort of time travel and parallel reality story. It's full of subtle observation of human interactions along with the fun cultural worldbuilding and mind-bending sci fi elements.
Bloodchild - Octavia Butler
Aliens who need to eggpreg other creatures use humans because their usual egghosts aren't available. The humans, who usually survive the process, have different and interesting reactions to this. Is it a great responsibility and privilege, or a horrific kind of abuse, or maybe a little of both? The story's got a lot of angst and also a great deal of opportunities for teratophilia content.
Solitude - Ursula Le Guin
A story about a woman who goes to be an anthropologist of sorts - a first contact person with a distant human-inhabited planet - and absolutely hates the society she's trying to learn about. It's even worse because her daughter goes native and not only does not want to leave, but grows to embody all that her mother can't understand and can't tolerate about the world and its people's ways, especially how they eschew most social interaction and any attempt to persuade anyone of anything whatsoever, which they view as dangerous magic.
Freely available online!
Date: 2026-03-10 09:54 pm (UTC)Selkie Stories are for Losers - Sofia Samatar
Available here: https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/selkie-stories-are-for-losers/
For losers, definitely - selkie stories told by those whose loved one escaped, despite all their attempts to hold on. The narrator's mother left her father and left her, how dare! But maybe she couldn't help herself? The narrator makes friends with Mona, whose mother suffered quite a different unpleasant fate. They may become more than friends? A good potential f/f ship here, plus the parents for dark m/f of various flavors, plus the fairy tale motifs. I wrote a fic for this story for Sufficiently Advanced one year.
Love is the Plan the Plan is Death
Available here: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-the-plan-is-death/
This is also a classic, but it's free online so I put it in here instead.
Creatures (somewhat insectoid) of an alien world only manage to keep their intelligence when it's warm enough, so when it's too cold, their instinct takes over. This makes their lives rather stressful, as you can imagine. The life of one of the males of the species is given from babyhood to ending. I wrote a fic for this story for Fic in a Box one year as a pinch hit.
Sharp Undoing - Natasha King
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/king_01_23/
The crime lord ("the Nero") sends his men out hunting people to steal the knowledge and skills right out of their minds. But one of their catch isn't the helpless prey they think. Instead, the narrator's a trap that will be the undoing of the Nero. It's a very cool dystopian story. I got a gift fic for this story in Summer of Horror.
Quirky!
Date: 2026-03-10 10:04 pm (UTC)Sonata for Harp and Bicycle - Joan Aiken
It is absolutely forbidden for anyone to stay in the office building after 5 pm. So you just know the main characters are going to. But they manage not to succumb to the horrific fate that would happen if it was a horror story. No, it's much weirder than that, and cuter, too. A charming M/F love story, really, but not the usual thing at all. I read this once when someone else requested fic for it, and loved it!
Two Spacesuits - Leonard Richardson
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/richardson_04_22/
When a certain sort of alien has two minds in their head, but is being transferred across the galaxy by a sort of long distance transporter, and something goes wrong, they end up on Earth - in two separate bodies. This is a big problem! One they have literally no idea how to solve. Strange stuff ensues. I've requested this, but not received any fic for it yet. Here's hoping!
The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu
https://reactormag.com/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere/
Truth water! It falls on you from nowhere. Also m/m shipping all over the story. It's an exploration of what happens to human relationships when lies are instantly revealed by that titular water falling. Matt is scared to come out to his family, and for good reason, they are not at all open to him marrying a man, but Gus really loves him. Matt knows because no water fell when Gus told him.
It's a neat twist on truth pollen or whatever similar trope you might have in mind, and a fun piece of worldbuilding, all with a complex gay relationship at its center. I'd read this a while back and spotted it in the tag set!
The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz
Date: 2026-03-11 07:25 pm (UTC)This is a short but sweet f/f asexual romance between an AI repair tech and an old robot who runs a tea shop.
"When Clara stops by Sal's shop for lunch, she doesn't expect to find a real robot there, let alone one who might need her help. But as they begin to spend time together and learn more about each other, they both start to wrestle with the concept of moving on"
no subject
Date: 2026-03-13 02:33 am (UTC)The official blurb: "In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body’s limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, “The Destroyer” asks how far we’ll go to secure our own legacies — and how far we’ll run to escape them."
My review: a look at the complicated feelings of a daughter for her abusive, unstable, genius mother, growing up into a woman as her mother replaces her (the daughter's) body with cybernetic parts, one by one. Content note, ROT13 encoded for spoilers: oybbqyrff znff qrfgehpgvba bs rirelbar va n pvgl.
The Court Magician - Sarah Pinsker
A dark fantasy story about ambition and the real costs of real magic. Content note: gur pbfg vaibyirf gur zntvpny, cnvayrff ybff/qvfnccrnenapr bs crbcyr, zrzbevrf, novyvgvrf, obql cnegf, rgp.
The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library - Tobi Ogundiran (this links to a recording of LeVar Burton reading it--I haven't been able to find it online)
Official blurb: "A hapless salesman flees the librarian hell-bent on retrieving her lost library book."
My review: set in Nigeria, this is a fun story in which the horror creeps up on the main character. Content notes: orvat chefhrq, rngvat zlfgrevbhf fznyy perngherf nyvir, obql ubeebe (n furq uhzna fxva)
Promos!
Date: 2026-03-19 01:33 am (UTC)Promos for some of my favorite stories :)
All Summer in a Day - Ray Bradbury
A classic in the genre of stories you have to read for school that fuck with you more than expected. It's about a girl on Venus who desperately wants to see the sun during the only day it'll be out, but it is of course devastating. It's also one of the only ones on this list that is canonical on AO3 because people really want to give that poor girl a happy ending, I guess.
Five Views of the Planet Tartarus - Rachael K. Jones (link)
All traitors to the Sibyllines go to Tartarus to receive the only punishment for rebellion: eternal life.
A remarkably short story that I discovered in the Hugo nominations and that left me with so many questions and ponderings.
The Year Without Sunshine - Naomi Kritzer (link)
This is a story about an apocalypse, but really it's about community and hope and what can happen when people come together, and it always makes me feel better about the world.
Daycare worker at the end of the world - bixbythemartian (Tumblr post) (link)
You’re a daycare worker, watching over toddlers, when the imminent end of the world is announced. It becomes increasingly clear none of the kids’ parents are going to show up as the end inches nearer.
Another apocalypse story that's really about people caring for each other, and possibly my favorite Tumblr story of all time.
A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies - Alix Harrow (link)
A truly delightful story about magic librarians and the magic of books, both literally and metaphorically.
Jackalope Wives - Ursula Vernon (link)
(the sequel, in a way, is The Tomato Thief)
The moon came up and the sun went down. The moonbeams went shattering down to the ground and the jackalope wives took off their skins and danced.
What I love about Ursula Vernon/T Kingfisher is how she plays with fairy tale tropes in such a delightful way. This one is about a badass grandmother going on a quest, but more than that it's about love and care and righting what's wrong.
Abstraction Is When I Design Giant Death Creatures and Attraction Is When I Do It for You - Claire Jia-Wen (link)
Not to just throw out keywords, but it's a dystopian scifi lesbian romance between a mech pilot and a bioengineer designing the monsters she fights, so what's not to love?
Die Verwandlung | The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka (link)
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
I wasn't going to nominate this one, but then embraidery proposed that someone should write Ursula Vernon's Metamorphosis and now I'm hooked on imagining what this sotry would look like written in the style of any other author.