jennaria | Reading

No rain today until evening; I should have mowed the front meadow, but I did do some sweeping up of leaves (after the wind came up and shifted at least half of them for me). It was dry enough that Monty came out to watch me, and accepted food.

Apparently the storm a week ago was bad enough to do serious damage at the observatory on Mount Hamilton, above San Jose. I had no idea.

tellmewhatyousee posting in

fandomcalendar

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hitokage

Challenge #1: The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

For those who may be new, hi! I'm Lise, also known as Selah, Yuuana, Jagu, and/or The Kpop Abuela, grandmother of six but also a genuine Fandom Old. Queer (NB she/her) Latine/Chicana professional Tarot reader, semi-pro writer of queer fiction, amateur music journalist, and hobbiest in an array of other arts and crafts. I'm also a moderator for the writing challenge

getyourwordsout (pledging is still open, come join us!), wildly pagan, and a semi-retired feral cat rescue/foster mom (we're not taking in anyone new if we can help it, but we still have the local colony we keep eyes on).

As for why I'm doing Snowflake ... it's one part tradition, one part journal refresh, and one part interest in making new connections. My journal is mostly locked these days for various privacy reasons, but we can still chat and maybe even make friends out of this crazy time.

matsushima posting in

threeforthememories

There's a superstition in Japan that certain ages are unlucky. The year you turn 36 is unlucky for women. (There are only two options.) I turned 36 in 2025 and it was a bad year for me!

… which is why I'm starting with this selfie:

( 2025 in three photos )

I participated in this community in 2023 and 2024, too.

Current Mood: reflective

museaway posting in

fandomcalendar

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yourlibrarian posting in

threeforthememories

threeforthememories is now open! You can join and share your photos at any time between now and January 24th. Please refer to the 3 rules in the profile page, and feel free to ask anything here.

Let's all share 2025 memories!

sasheneskywalker posting in

fancake

Fandom: Disco Elysium, Death Note
Pairings/Characters: L/Yagami Light, Harry Du Bois & Kim Kitsuragi
Rating: Mature
Length: 36,039 words
Creator Links:

brawltogethernow
Theme: crack treated seriously, crossover, casefic, unconventional format

Summary: Harry hits Light Yagami with his car. (Based on a joke post, taken extremely seriously.)

Reccer's Notes: Murder mystery where Harry Du Bois investigates a murder he himself committed, putting him right in the middle of the Kira case. Very funny! The dialogue is perfectly in character, the art is fantastic, and I love how the entire fic is told in the style of the game.

Content Notes: major character death (Light Yagami is dead), graphic description of corpses similar to that of Disco Elysium canon

Fanwork Links: THE HIT AND RUN

snickfic

I guess I might finish another book before year’s end, but this feels close enough to be pretty safe. NB I have reviews for most of these books in my books tag.

How many books did you read this year? Any trends in genre/length/themes/reading patterns/etc?
Books read: 25
Pages read (roughly): 7450

Relative to past years, more murder mysteries, more rereads (five), more older stuff (four before 1940). Less straight horror. Probably more textually queer stuff? I read a lot on airplanes. I took almost the whole summer off from reading and watched movies instead.

I had a mountaineering phase kickstarted by that one Jon Krakauer book, which also meant reading way more nonfiction than usual. Apparently the key to reading nonfiction is to have specific topics you want to know about, rather than just being like “I want to Learn Things.” Who could have foreseen!

What are your top 3 books that you read this year for the first time?
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Yes, it really is that good, just like everyone says.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge. Beautiful prose, top-notch worldbuilding, and some great horror moments.

A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. A shot STRAIGHT to the id.

What's a book you enjoyed more than you expected?
Maybe The Secret of Chimneys, an Agatha Christie novel that I probably read at some point but had forgotten basically all of. The other thing I’d forgotten: how fun Christie is when she’s really on her game. This was a rollicking delight.

Which books most disappointed you this year?
It was disappointing to realize how much worse the sexism was in the Pern books than I remembered. Just absolutely soaking in it. Ugh.

Also, wow, I hated Wild Spaces by SL Coney. Haaaaated.

And I reread Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys and didn’t enjoy it as much the second time around. There felt like too many characters, too thinly characterized. I still love Aphra and the worldbuilding, though.

Did you reread any books? If so, which one was you favourite?
I reread several this year, but the one that I enjoyed the most and definitely the one I spent the most time with was Moby Dick. The langague, gosh. Good enough to eat. Having reacquainted myself with the story, I think I’m going to keep just dipping in and out of it every so often. I found and bought a physical edition I really love, the Canterbury Classic "Word Cloud" edition that is just a pleasure to read and makes dipping in very appealing.

On a related note, I think this year was the tipping point to me becoming a prose snob. The prose in Moby Dick is so rich and chewy and worth reading and rereading. Sometimes it's basically impenetrable, but even so! Incredibly rewarding. And then I open so many new novels and quit on the first page because the prose is so artless.

It's not like I want every novel to be Moby Dick, which also happens to be a timeless work of literature: hardly a fair comparison for a random novel I pick up at the library. However, there are lots of authors out there writing prose that is graceful and evocative in their own ways. Frances Hardinge and Stephen King come immediately to mind, for two very different living examples.

I just cannot be fucked anymore with prose that doesn't show some skill. Life is too short. I suspect this might lead me to reading more classics, which I'm not mad about.

What's the oldest book you read?
The Unafraid, a 1913 adventure romance by Eleanor Ingram (with a textual gay side character!), is the oldest that I read for the first time. For rereads, Moby Dick was published in 1851.

What's the newest book you read?
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, published this year.

Did you DNF (= did not finish) any books?
My most emphatic DNF was the second book in the Briardark series by SA Harian. I reread the first book just to remember what all was going on, then got like fifty pages into the second one and was like, actually I don’t care about any of these characters or the cosmic horror mystery.

Some others I started and wandered off from:
- The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
- The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
- Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
- The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman by Niko Stratis
- Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby
- Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
- Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

What was your predominant format this year?
Still mostly dead trees around here, although I did listen to a mountaineering book and part of Moby Dick on audiobook, and I read a couple of ebooks during my travels.

What's the longest book you read this year?
Moby Dick, with 561 pages in my edition.

Did you reach your reading goal for this year (if you had one)?
I wanted to read more outside my usual fiction genres, which I really didn’t manage to do other than for a couple of specific items on the to-read list. Speaking of, here is all I read from the to-read list. Honestly five books from the January tbr is pretty good for me lol.

Moby Dick
The Iskryne books (I read the first two)
The Book of Lamps and Banners (Cass Neary #4)
something by ECR Lorac

Any goals for 2025?
My immediate list of stuff I want to tackle or finish is:

Knock Knock Open Wide by Neil Sharpson
The Count of Monte Cristo?
Something… literary, maybe?? Maybe My Brilliant Friend or something by Anne Rivers Siddons.
The Draegaera books (starting with Jhereg)
Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle
The Coldfire Trilogy
Ammonite
Dublin Murder Squad
American Elsewhere
Perdido Street Station (reread)
A Zelazny collection (reread)
The Folly of the World
Maplecroft by Cherie Priest (Lizzie Borden + Lovecraft?!)
Craft Sequence – Max Gladstone

I would say the main theme here is "ambitious," for me if not the author. A lot of older stuff, or stuff that is beloved that I haven't tried, or stuff I've just been meaning to get around to. A couple of those are already on my shelf, and it'd be nice to knock them off the TBR.

senmut

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starwatcher posting in

ebooks

This is the list where you can choose different sellers. Here's the sale link --

https://earlybirdbooks.com/deals/1000-ebook-sale

**

Folks, I often don't open my laptop until noon or later. Since my timezone is GMT+7, that's awfully late for anyone in Europe, and these posts are fairly useless.

BUT! Note that there's a "subscribe" button at the top of the Early Bird Books page. If you subscribe, you'll get a daily email that lists a dozen or so discounted books, as well as early notification of these massive sales. (This one hit my inbox at 5:20 A.M.)

Also check out Bookbub -- https://www.bookbub.com/ If you sign up, you select the genres you like to read and your seller of choice. Then you get a daily email with approximately 15 to 30 discounted books in your selected genres. Bookbub doesn't have the massive sales like Early Bird Books, but often there are 3 or 4 titles "free" in the daily list. (At least, in the Romance genre.)

**

As always, feel free to share this post or info wherever you choose. Happy reading!

snickfic

My year in summary
I posted 88k words this year across 31 fics and wrote more than 103k new words total. I posted 8 Oasis fics (including several very short ones), 5 original works, 2 Re-Animator fics, and 16 singleton fics for other fandoms.

Fandoms of my heart this year
Oasis, obviously. What a time to be alive.

I also rekindled some Re-Animator feelings earlier this year, between fic I was writing and getting to see the movie in the theater. On film, even!

Other fandoms I felt at least a little fannish about this year, whether writing, daydreaming, or what have you:
- The Iskryne books by Bear and Monette
- On Swift Horses, the 2024 movie
- Dune movies

( my year in fandom, in much greater detail, with a meme )

( other fannish things )

autumninpluto posting in

getting_started

I noticed some people make their own closed communities to post/archive their fanfiction, and decided to try it out myself here: ficsimmy

I am trying to backdate the fics to when I posted them, and it generally works, however, the home page still shows the posts in the order in which I posted them. E.g. the most recent post is dated November 12, then the next one November 13.

Is this intended behavior? If so, does anyone have a workaround for similar use-cases? 😟 I have some fanfiction from 2013 that I want to back up here, but I do not want it at the top of my page in fear of people thinking that's still representative of how I write today 😅

I did find this FAQ article related to backdating + the "don't show on reading pages" button which says "This option is not available for community accounts", but I thought this just referred to the hide from reading page button.

It's a bit weird that I can backdate it, but it will show up in the wrong order on the home page, and in tags. Checking from the archive looks fine, they're all in the correct date I set them as.

Current Mood: confused

dolorosa_12

It's the first Friday open thread of 2026. In customary fashion, I'm going to use the following prompt, which I feel is the right question with which to start a new year:

What are you planning to leave behind in 2025, and what are you planning to pick up and/or carry forward into 2026?

( My answer )

On that rather fraught note, what about all of you? Do you have anything you want to leave behind, or carry with you?

issenllo

Thank you to dreaminghour for writing Today's Gonna Be the Day, HIStory3 Trapped, Jack/Zhao Zi. I do like this portrayal of Jack, the beginning and uncertainty of building their relationship.

I finally wrote a Yuletide fic this round! It's Obvious Things, Li Lianhua, Fang Duobing, Di Feisheng, Mysterious Lotus Casebook.

cakewrecks_feed

Posted by Jen

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/ive-got-a-baaaad-feeling-about-this-2026

"I'm sorry, what did you say you wanted on your cake, again?"

"Right, but didn't you want it written a certain way?"

"Ah, that was it! Ok, nooo problem.

"Now, what kind of decorations would you like?"

"Good, good, and what kind of cake?"

"Ok, great! I've got the order all written up, so you can pick up your cake tomorrow. And don't you worry; our baker puts the rest of us to shame." [wink]

****

The Next Day:

Thanks to Ashley S., Daniel S., Kelsey L., Dan K., & Jake H. who could, like, LITERALLY eat an entire cake right now.

*****

P.S. I just bought another pair of these sleep headphones, so time for another shout-out!

Bluetooth Sleep Headphones

I have the kind of insomnia old-timey bards would write songs about, so I listen to boring audio books on these every night to keep my brain from spinning out of control. Lately I've been wearing them like a sleep mask - like the model here - and WOW, that's helped even more than when I wore them like a headband! These things have been a life saver: comfy enough for side sleeping, not too loud like some of my old speakers, and they only cost $20. Plus my original pair lasted a good 2 years before one of the wires went loose.

Please note that these do run on the big side, but that works out great if you have a big head like me. :D

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot:

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/ive-got-a-baaaad-feeling-about-this-2026

dolorosa_12

Staying at home over Christmas certainly meant Matthias and I were able to finish up a lot of TV shows this past month: six in total (plus a three-part BBC documentary about 1990s/2000s girl bands which was very good, but didn't say anything you wouldn't have expected from a documentary on that topic, so I don't have a lot to say about it myself).

The other shows were:

House of Guinness, a glossy, soapy historical drama about the quartet of 19th-century siblings who were heirs to the real-world brewing empire. This is another Steven Knight vehicle, with all his hallmarks: stylised comic book sensibility, anachronistic music, very broad-brush engagement with the politics of the era (in this case 19th-century Ireland), and larger-than-life characters whose various attempts to deal with their considerable problems just keep escalating the situation and spawning new problems. I enjoyed this, although I felt the tension was slightly dampened by the fact that most of the characters were insulated from any serious consequences due to their wealth and social position.

The third season of The Diplomat, a blackly comedic geopolitical thriller starring Keri Russell as a career American diplomat who, after postings in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, ends up posted as the ambassador to the UK. She's expected to be ceremonial and decorative in a cushy job, but suddenly lands at the centre of an international political conspiracy and scandal reaching into the highest levels of power, and struggles to deal with her embassy's, her country's, and her own personal responses to the fallout. The balance between comedy and political thriller is much more on the political thriller side of things this season, although there are still some hilariously awkward moments, but ultimately what I felt it was really about, at its heart, is the appalling tension between the undeniable benefits and utter indignity of being an ally of the United States from the 'democratic West' (quote marks because geographically some of the countries I'm including here are located in the Asia-Pacific part of the world), even when its government is led by people who at least aspire to the ideals of the post-WWII international order.

Season 10 of Shetland, which I'm continuing to enjoy with the new leads. The mystery this season had an almost Icelandic saga feel to it (cycles of grief, buried secrets, and revenge in a small, isolated community), the landscape and settings remained as starkly gorgeous as ever — and more fun to me this time because literally every Lerwick location was now familiar, and Matthias and I had a great time spotting various landmarks.

The Beast in Me, a psychological thriller in which Claire Danes plays a critically acclaimed author suffering from writer's block and struggling under the weight of grief at the death of her young son, which ended her marriage. She's living in upstate New York alone with her dog in the family home, which is quite literally falling apart around her, when she becomes tangled up in the saga and scandal involving her new neighbour — a wealthy New York property developer accused of murdering his wife. This has an excellent cast (the neighbour is played by Matthew Rhys with brittle intensity), and the story is tightly told, if a bit too conveniently wrapped up at the end.

Season 3 of Dark Winds, the historical mystery series set in the 1970s and starring Zahn McClarnon as a Navajo Tribal Police officer investigating various murders that take place in his community. This was, as always, excellent, with a stellar cast, a tremendous sense of place, and a really subtly written undercurrent of the ongoing effects of intergenerational, colonial trauma, what justice really means in such a context, and the limits of such justice. It always takes ages for new seasons of this show to make their way to the UK, and I'm already impatient for the fourth season.

The final season of Stranger Things, which I'm counting as a December show, even though I only watched the final episode last night. I have to admit that I was losing patience with the show by the last season (I had no idea the fourth season wasn't going to be the last, found watching it something of a slog that I was doing for completion's sake, and then realised with a great deal of irritation that there was no time in the final episode of Season 4 to wrap up all the various plot threads, at which point Matthias informed me that there was to be an entire additional season), and when I discovered that most episodes of the fifth season were going to be the length of short films, it felt like a self-indulgent last milking of the cash cow. So my expectations were low: it was bloated with characters, overloaded with the weight of its mythology, and the idea that it would be able to find satisfying ways to wrap things up, conclude convincing character arcs, and tie up all the various dangling interpersonal character relationship threads seemed to me far-fetched — but I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed several of the middle episodes, the more clichéd emotional beats seemed perfectly calculated to appeal to me (the conclusion of Will's story this season in particular really hit me in the heart), and for the most part I felt the whole thing was handled in a satisfying way. I've never felt the slightest bit fannish about this show, so my investment is quite superficial, but on that level, although I was losing patience last season, the destination was, overall, worth the journey.

dine

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birdylion posting in

fancake

Title: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues, Soul-Stealing Bosses, and the End of the World at Work
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Pairings/Characters: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims; OC management advice blogger, OC internet commenters
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Length: 43626 words
Creator Links:

shinyopals
Theme: crack treated seriously, epistolary, no canon required, outsider pov

Summary:

I've recently been unexpectedly promoted to lead a department in my organisation, wrote the anonymous emailer.

As there was no one working here when I arrived, my manager, who is head of the organisation, had promised me the choice of my own assistants. However, without warning, he simply presented me with an additional assistant. This new assistant’s first act on his first day was to let a dog into the office. It took several hours to catch and clean up after this dog and it has only been downhill from there. I admit I'm not entirely sure what to do with this assistant now I'm stuck with him. I'm hoping you have some advice?

Kind regards,
New Manager

Abigail Bailey runs a successful management advice blog. One frequent contributor is from a workplace with some... issues.

Reccer's Notes:

The Magnus Archives is a horror audio drama in which the main character starts a new position as archivist in an organization named Magnus Institute that specializes on investigating strange/magical phenomena. Very soon, strange things start to happen to him too. Also, it turns out that his workplace itself is ... not what you could call safe.

This story starts with the idea that the main character writes to a management advice blog about the strange things about his workplace, and becomes a regular writer. The fanfic is told in the form of this advice blog as it could appear on the internet: We get the mails he writes in, and the bloggers answers, and also the comment section. It's hilarious, but also it's taken so seriously as the story progresses and gets darker.

As an outsider POV, it really brings out how horrible the whole Magnus Archives story really is. It also shows very well how the story starts so inconspicuous and then boils the characters in horror like a lobster it a pot - and in this fanfic, the character doesn't event write to the advice blog about what's actually happening (because of secrecy), only the workplace safety circumstances. It's such a fascinating outsider POV.

Since it doesn't expect any canon knowledge, it can be read fandom-blind. Even without fandom-knowledge it's a hilarious and tragic advice blog story and in my case, it was my intro to the story, which I listened to after finishing this fanfic, so it was great advertisement for The Magnus Archives. (Note that it contains out of context but significant spoilers if you're going in fandom blind. For me this added to the re-read factor of the fanfic.)

Content Notes:

depictions of outrageously bad workplace safety
(canon-typical) dysfunctional interpersonal relationships
lighter on the actual supernatural horror than the original canon
out of context (but significant) spoilers if read fandom blind

Fanwork Links: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues, Soul-Stealing Bosses, and the End of the World at Work on ao3

choirwoman posting in

yuletide

Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Floris (TV), The Court Jester, Piranesi, Miss Marple, Dragonriders of Pern, Lord Peter Wimsey, Columbo, The Princess Bride, The Secret Garden, Chalet School, The Goblin Emperor, Irn Bru Snowman Ads, Dark Is Rising Sequence, Murdle, Tiny Bookshop & Untitled Goose Game, Flower Fairies, Baby Shoes Never Worn. Here, at my blog.

Current Mood: bouncy

conuly

In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—

which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.

****

Link

Mind's Eye

D.O.P.-T.

Multifandom: No Romo Fest

3256. Snowflake Challenge time!

2025

Multifandom: Hey, Sweetheart

Three for the Memories Now Open!

Disco Elysium; Death Note: THE HIT AND RUN by brawltogethernow

2025 in review: books

Friending Meme

Today only -- Jan 2nd -- ebook sale.

2025 in review: Fandom

Backdating entries in communities

Friday open thread: picking things up, carrying things forward, setting things down

Yuletide reveal!

I've Got A Baaaad Feeling About This...

December TV shows

(no subject)

The Magnus Archives: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues [...] by shinyopals

25 recs in 18 fandoms

White-Eyes by Mary Oliver

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