Shoebox of Dreams Kept Under My Bed

Sunday, 18 January 2026 15:02
glinda: a road through a snowy forest of tall fir trees (wintery)
[personal profile] glinda
Speaking of making a good start on some new year’s resolutions, I thought I’d break myself easy with the re-read/re-watch project with something fairly short.

I was, for reasons, re-reading a bunch of raven’s fic the other night and came across and re-read their Piranesi fic from yuletide (I think?) a few years back. It reminded me how much I enjoyed the book and made me want to re-read it. In a remarkably sensible move, given that I was just sitting at my computer reading fic and chilling to classical music, I got up and grabbed it from the shelf, sat back down and started reading it, planning just to read the first chapter before bed to get me started on the project. I read half the book that night and the rest of it the following morning. (I pretty much only didn’t just stay up stupid late because I got uncomfortable in my desk chair and in getting up to decant to the sofa realised the time and reluctantly made the sensible choice to go to bed.

Spoilers say: Read more... )
muccamukk: text: "Scientia Potestas Est (Science Protests too Much)" (RoL: Science Protests too Much)
[personal profile] muccamukk
(I've got so many links right now I'm splitting it up. The depressing shit one to follow in the next few days.)

[personal profile] magnavox_23: The One With All The Icons From All The Fandoms...
These are gorgeous! All the fandoms being: Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death, Doctor Who, Xena: Warrior Princess, Reservation Dogs, Star Trek TOS, Heated Rivalry, Hazbin Hotel, Hellava Boss & What We Do In The Shadows...

With the Dawn by [archiveofourown.org profile] SweetSorcery
Fandom: Kidnapped! (Davie/Alan)
Word Count: 1,300
Rating: General
Summary: Alan's own safety is worth very little to him, if it means leaving David behind ill and defenseless.
Notes: I've missed so much fic in this fandom, and was really happy to read this one from last year. The sweetest lil h/c missing scene from the book. Great voices for both of them, and very tender.

The Worst Part of Waking Up by [archiveofourown.org profile] Sanguinity
Fandom: Hornblower (William/Horatio)
Word Count: 6,600
Rating: Teen
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.
Notes: More very excellent h/c featuring Horatio Hornblower being Olympic levels of Bad at Feelings. Also extremely sweet, once he gets his shit together. I love the tag: "When He Made This Bed He Wasn't Expecting to Wake Up In It"!

[tumblr.com profile] ThatDisasterAuthor: Put the light out. | Turn the light on.
Gorgeous Lighthouse | Fire Tower art!

Tractor Beam: The Valley in Thaw by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall and Xiang Yata.
Beautiful graphic short story about a soil remediation robot and a band of humans who survived the apocalypse. More like this, please.

Humble Bundle: Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror.
Great selection, open for another couple weeks. You get epubs, not the weird kobo link thing.

CBC Books: The Canada Reads 2026 longlist is here.
I really wish they'd announce this earlier so you could take a proper shot at the long list before they drop the shortlist. I'm like half way through one of these. Lots of hockey books this year. Hmmmm.

University of Pennsylvania (for some reason?): "Introducing Myself", 1992 by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Extremely funny and extremely gender.

Fantastic Mr. Fox on Bluesky: A Recipe for Disaster.
This meme is such a whole entire mood.

In Which Sanguinity Receives Many Lovely Things

Saturday, 17 January 2026 18:54
sanguinity: Amanda Root as Anne Eliot from Persuasion 1995, enjoying a cup of tea (Persuasion - Anne with Tea)
[personal profile] sanguinity
Today is Christmas, three times over!

1.

[personal profile] luzula finished Far Frae the Bonny Hills and Dales, a Flight of the Heron longfic that I have been following for the past eighteen months. AU where Ewen is transported and sold to the Caribbean sugar fields. There are tragic parts to the story (note the "major character death" warning), but it ends in a good and satisfying place. One of the things I love about [personal profile] luzula's writing is that she makes her characters earn their happy ending -- and they do.

Congratulations to [personal profile] luzula, and happy Christmas to me!

2.

[community profile] fandomtrees revealed! I received some beautiful maritime-fandoms icons (William Bush, Frederick Wentworth, and Anne Eliot), thank you to [personal profile] sarajayechan and [personal profile] chewingbottles! I am looking forward to using them!

I also made a half-dozen things (which will have their own reveals post later), and that's been fun, too.

3.

Family Chistmas celebrations got delayed twice, first by weather, and the second time because my brother called up and said he was still waiting on my Christmas present to be delivered. He insisted he had ordered it in good time, but repeated shipping delays, it was supposed to be delivered any day now, etc. etc. And I was all dude, it's fine (while wondering what the big deal was, but whatever, if he wanted to hold off so we could do it all in person, that's fine, too.) I get a long weekend for MLK Jr. weekend (for non-USians, this weekend), so we pushed it all back to today, when we convened at Mom's house for delayed Christmas celebrations.

[personal profile] grrlpup and I got everyone a lot of Japan souvenirs -- my brother got squeaky-toy katana and a whole big box of the bubblegum he had adored as a kid (which, fair enough, took us WEEKS to find, it no longer being in every convenience store like when we visited Japan as kids) -- and we also got some beautiful hand-made art from my sister-in-law. I thought present-opening was done. When my brother dropped in my lap a great big box the approximate size, shape, and weight of an autoharp. Although a bit heavy for an autoharp? Weirdly balanced for an autoharp, too. (Not that he would ever get me an autoharp!)

Lo, this was my brother's Christmas present to me:
color me dumbstruck )

I am very much blown away by the gift, and yes that was very much worth delaying celebrations for and also making sure he could watch me open it in person, I very much get it now.

Either he won Christmas or I won Christmas, I'm not sure which, but either way, Christmas was indeed won.

Brief thoughts.

Saturday, 17 January 2026 20:54
hannah: (Laundry jam - fooish_icons)
[personal profile] hannah
Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works.


In fic, I'll pretty much always give wingfic, superpowers, and mpreg a try. I rarely turn down outsider POV or post-canon explorations. Fics that peer around the corners of the canon to look at what's lurking there are usually worth checking out. There's not much else that I'll click on pretty much every time I come across it - what I want in Top Gun fic is very different from what I want in Scrubs or Deep Space Nine, and there's certain tropes that I'll deliberately seek out in some fandoms and work to avoid in others.

In terms of general media, some that I always get a kick out of are a bunch of people from very different backgrounds thrown together, which I generally see ensemble casts, but not always - it depends on the circumstances, with less of it in The Wire than MASH. Urban fantasy is something where my tastes are pretty narrow, so I'm willing to check it out fairly regularly in the hopes I've found something new in that narrow range. I enjoy extreme competence and awesome Jews are always welcome.


Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring an image of a wrapped giftbox with a snowflake on the gift tag. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
January 17 - 'If you could wave a magic wand and get a new season of a show or new book (or movie) in a series, what would it be? And why would you pick it? (i.e. did it end on a cliffhanger, or you always wanted more, etc)' for [personal profile] donutsweeper

Read more... )

(there are still slots open for the January Talking Meme here)

Hope You Find Someone Better Than Me Tonight

Saturday, 17 January 2026 23:38
glinda: I want everything I've ever seen in the movies (movies)
[personal profile] glinda
Ooooh fandom_trees got revealed, I went looking for a needy tree over the holidays, found one looking for Edge of Tomorrow and thought ‘oh I have that, I should rewatch it’ and wrote this. It was my last watched film of last year and my first finished fic of this year which is pleasing to me. A nice end to my film rewatch project from last year where I pretty much wrote a fic for each film I re-watched.

Possibly/Probably (The Best Friend You've Never Met) (1599 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: William Cage/Rita Vrataski, William Cage & Rita Vrataski
Characters: William Cage, Rita Vrataski, Dr. Carter (Edge of Tomorrow)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Friendship, final 'first' meeting
Summary: It’s a cliche often repeated, that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Cage tries all the same.

Saturday 17 January 2026

Saturday, 17 January 2026 17:53
merryghoul: Ninth doctor smile (Nine smile)
[personal profile] merryghoul posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist ([personal profile] doctor_watch).

Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter, [community profile] doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-DW News
Blogtor Who's Friday Video of the Day is a clip from The Next Doctor
Blogtor Who's Saturday Video of the Day is a clip from Class: Nightvisiting
Blogtor Who previews Doctor Who Magazine #625

(News from [syndicated profile] blogtorwho_feed and [syndicated profile] doctorwhonews_feed, among others.)

Communities and Challenges
[community profile] dw100: Challenge #1075: frilled

Discussion and Miscellany
[personal profile] purplecat with a photo from Fury From the Deep

Fanfiction
Completed
Essential Supplies by [personal profile] badly_knitted [Eleven, Amy, Rory | G]

Icons & Graphics
[personal profile] magnavox_23 with Doctor Who icons in a multifandom post

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

Snowflake Challenge 2026: Day 5 Challenge

Saturday, 17 January 2026 20:22
brokenmnemonic: (Default)
[personal profile] brokenmnemonic
two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Top 10 Challenge.

The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favourite show, top 10 characters in your favourite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

Can't think of 10 of anything? That's okay, 10 is just an abstract. It's totally up to you.


So... Top 10 Boardgames )

Weekly proof of life: mainly media again

Saturday, 17 January 2026 14:44
umadoshi: headshot of a young Chinese woman with short white hair (webcomic art) (AGAHF - Rachel 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
I finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (which according to the acknowledgements clocks in around 800 pages in hard copy) and wound up in that all-too-familiar place of "that was interesting, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the sequel". (Although by definition, I imagine the sequel must be telling a very different kind of story.) No idea why it is that I can often tell only partway through a book that I probably won't pick up its sequel and yet still want to finish the current one.

I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)

There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.

So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.

And that bit got long, so just quickly:

--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.

--[personal profile] scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)

--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials

Saturday, 17 January 2026 18:24
profiterole_reads: (Kings - Jack and David)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
Agatha Christie's Seven Dials on Netflix was excellent.

It doesn't star Hercule Poirot, nor Miss Marple, but a young lady played by the delightful Mia McKenna-Bruce. <3

Apparently, these characters also appear in an earlier novel, so I hope they'll adapt it too.

Multi Fandom Icons

Saturday, 17 January 2026 23:58
magnavox_23: A close up of the 13th Doctor and Yaz hugging (DW_Doctor/Yaz_closeuphug)
[personal profile] magnavox_23 posting in [community profile] fandom_icons
68 icons from Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death, Doctor Who, Xena: Warrior Princess, Reservation Dogs, Star Trek TOS, Heated Rivalry, Hazbin Hotel, Hellava Boss, What We Do In The Shadows + misc actors

  

Check our the rest here. <3

Not great, Bob.

Saturday, 17 January 2026 13:38
goodbyebird: Xena: Xena takes a sip from a goblet, then feistily spits it out. (Xena run to your master puppy)
[personal profile] goodbyebird
+ Of course the actual post got swallowed before I found internet again. Weather absolute shit, Internet shit, boat very warm, zero fish, zero internet in my cabin with the new setup. I can't be fucking bothered to write it up again.

+ One of the things open in my tabs was the latest friending meme at [community profile] friending_memes, and maybe time without internet was a good thing there. Came to the conclusion that actually, my circle is pretty damn great and I don't feel I get around to commenting as often as I'd like. So skipping the meme, but since I fiddled with the response a bit I'm copying it over here. Read more... )

I did appreciate that the meme made me dig back through the year for my happiest memories, and I'm thinking it's a good idea to try and note those days down more. They really do fade into the blur if not.

+ While I may not have the internet to grab the latest Fallout episode - *grumps again* - you can all head on over to [community profile] retro_icontest to see the results of the icon battle me, [personal profile] naushika, and [personal profile] narnialover7 had.



H E R E

Pyra Cantha D&D: Summary for 1/16 Game

Saturday, 17 January 2026 00:20
settiai: (Kes -- settiai (TriaElf9))
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Old Skills a Little Rusty

Friday, 16 January 2026 22:13
glinda: SIX exclamation marks!!!!!! (punctuation)
[personal profile] glinda
This week I've been working on making a good start to one of my resolutions, to start a new recipe notebook. (When I first started learning to cook in an organised fashion, while I was going my post-grad, I took a nice notebook I had and wrote down all my succesful recipes in it. It's a multi-coloured decade's worth of recipes that I refer to regularly even now that I'm a vegetarian and many of the recipes aren't one's I'd ever cook now.) I've been meaning to start a new one for a few years now, but never got round to it, because, well I had my tablet and most recipes I was cooking that weren't in actual cookbooks were on the internet and it was just easier to look them up, but it's really come home to me in the last year when I've gone to look something up and it's just gone. (Not even random people's food blogs, but places I'd expect things to be like the guardian or the good food magazine page.) So I've started in on recipes from my 'cook new recipes' challenges from the past few years, and a significant percentage of them are lost to link rot and paywalls.

But the other thing I've noticed - and part of what makes me want to keep the project up - is that my handwriting is really rusty. I've had to make fairly heavy usage of my tippex mouse because I keep missing letters out of words, not even in the analogue version of typos just I'm so out of practice of writing by hand that I'm half-forgetting how to form the letters properly. I used to have a problem with missing out letters when I wrote essays because I was writing so fast to keep up with my brain - the main reason I switched to typing, as it's much easier to keep up with the speed of thought/ideas that way - but I'm just copying out recipes here. Though on the plus-side, forcing myself to slow down, to form the letters properly is making it a more meditive experience than I expected it to be.

I've always prided myself on having nice handwriting. Ever since we did a unit on the Victorians and spent that whole term perfecting copperplate script I've written a minorly adapted version of that. (I adjusted some letters to be more easily read by modern eyes, so I wouldn't get marked down for mis-spelling words because my teachers that didn't recognise my old-fashioned letters.) All through secondary and university my preferred method of studying was to make notes and the rewrite my notes and I still have piles of notebooks about the place in neat multi-coloured copperplate. So it's both weird and minorly upsetting when my handwriting isn't neat despite my best efforts. No doubt with regular practice it'll improve but at the moment I'm falling a low way short of my own high standards for my handwriting.

It's a ridiculous thing to be having feelings about, I am aware, but nonetheless, I am having them. My handwriting isn't as nice as it used to be - less smooth, more effort for less pleasing results - and it annoys me. I'm feeling a little rusty here, it's a thing.

Fanworks Stats Meme

Friday, 16 January 2026 12:30
muccamukk: Ronon in a suit. (SGA: Respectable)
[personal profile] muccamukk
From [personal profile] snickfic and [personal profile] slippery_fish.

Go to your Works page on AO3, look at the tags, and see what the answers to these questions are. (Or any other site that has tags)

I'm going to go off both my fic journal ([community profile] feast_of_fanfic) and my AO3 page ([archiveofourown.org profile] Muccamukk). The DW has a handful more fic, and a slightly different rating/tagging system, but should be roughly the same.

  1. What rating do you write most fics under?
    DW: Teen.
    AO3: Teen and Up Audiences.

  2. What are your top 3 fandoms?
    DW: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 & tie of Babylon 5 and The Pacific.
    AO3: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 (then several subcategories thereof), The Pacific.

  3. What is your top character you write about?
    DW: Don't tag for characters.
    AO3: Richard Winters (BoB)

  4. What are the 3 top pairings?
    DW: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Band of Brothers Rarepair.
    AO3: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Andy/Eddie (The Pacific).

  5. What are the top 3 additional tags?
    DW: Drabbles!, PWP, Canon-Era H/C.
    AO3: Canon Era, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon.

  6. Did any of this surprise you? e.g. what turned out to be your top tag.
    Only giving each fic one genre each on DW skewed the tags much differently from AO3, for the last question. I've also posted a bunch of drabbles to DW that didn't make it to AO3, so that probably also moves the numbers (like tying B5 with The Pacific). If one includes HBO War and Marvel comics each as one fandom, it would go HBO War, Marvel Comics, Babylon 5.

    It also leaves out some of my most popular fic, which are for fandoms I didn't write for as much, but got a couple one hit wonders that sailed to the top of my stats page.


(Any word on DW figuring out what's wrong with the AO3 user profile logo? I gather it's some kind of import problem.)

Code for anyone who wants to gank:

Heron fic: Form'd for Idleness and Ease

Friday, 16 January 2026 11:20
sanguinity: Woodcut of a heron landing (flight of the heron - landing)
[personal profile] sanguinity
Still catching up on things I wrote in 2025, although I believe this is the last of them.

Most people who might care have seen it already, but for the sake of completeness: I wrote a Flight of the Heron story for the "Pomegaverse" square of Keep Fandom Weird Bingo.

What is Pomegaverse? According to Fanlore's page on Pomegaverse:
In these works, a human character experiences so much stress that they transform into a Pomeranian dog. They can only revert back to their human form if the stress is relieved via receiving love and affection from other people.

I haven't made a serious effort at the rest of that bingo card, but as soon as I saw that square, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it:

Form'd for Idleness and Ease

Keith & Ewen

Pomegaverse, Animal Transformation, Bad Things Always Happen to Keith, Let's Get That Man Some Affection For a Change, Or At Least a Mini-Vacay as a Beloved Lapdog

Captain Keith Windham's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day just got worse. Ewen, of course, is a perfect gentleman about it all.


Of course, this all demands an answer to the question of how the war proceeds if soldiers keep turning into lapdogs every time they get stressed out. (The Highland Charge continues to be effective -- perhaps even more so! Culloden... either gets that much horrific, or fizzles out for want of soldiers still standing.) I have no immediate plans to actually do this, but I am a little bit tempted to follow this mechanic through all five meetings of the book, just to see what happens.
umadoshi: (purple light)
[personal profile] umadoshi
As so often happens, I had several things I meant to post about and now they've mostly evaporated.

But I do know my tabs situation is staggering out of control. (Reliably over 1700 for at least the last couple of weeks.) Odds that I'll get to replying to all the posts I've read but opened in a tab to reply to later on...are currently very slim.

Have a link: Sarah Kurchak wrote about Heated Rivalry for TIME recently: "Heated Rivalry Handles Autism With Love, Care, and a Touch of Awkwardness".

Music Thursday

Thursday, 15 January 2026 23:29
muccamukk: Orville Peck in a red Nudie suit, singing and playing guitar, while a pink and white musical score swirl behind him. (Music: Orville Peck)
[personal profile] muccamukk

Based on how sad a lot of this album was, I had been wondering if William Prince was okay, but he sounds like he's doing well? This song is so pretty, anyway.

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usuallyhats: The cast of Critical Role sitting round a table playing Dungeons and Dragons (Default)
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