12 Yuletide Recs

Jan. 30th, 2026 05:09 pm
reeby10: an old school error pop up that says 'canon error' at the top and 'apply fanfic? ok' (fanfic)
[personal profile] reeby10 posting in [community profile] yuletide
A bit late, but I have 12 recs in 8 fandoms: Cherry Magic, Khemjira, Moby Dick, Never Let Me Go, The Old Kingdom, Perfect 10 Liners, Thai Actor RPF, and ThamePo Heart That Skips a Beat.

See them here.
hamsterwoman: (Livejournal -- HP -- Luna)
[personal profile] hamsterwoman
two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Challenge #15: How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go?

Pretty good! I’ve been doing Snowflake for about 10 years now, and it’s always a good time, one of the fannish staples I look forward to every year. As always, I enjoyed answering the challenges and the “ritual” of the month of fandom chat/squee. But I did feel less of a sense of community this year (which makes sense, given what else has been going on in the world in January 2026…), which is a little sad, since that’s also an important part of Snowflake for me.

Actually, let me talk about that latter part here, because here’s where it seems to fit best into the flow of this post. Snowflake Challenge 2026 sense of community musings )

I answered all the challenges, like I usually do, and enjoyed the mix of old favorites and new prompts.

Favorite challenges )

Old challenges I was looking forward to seeing again which were not repeated: I missed the Snowflake staples of “create a fanwork”, “try something new”, and “set some goals for yourself”. This is fine, though, because I can just do those anyway, as a challenge to myself – they do not require any creativity to SET as a challenge, and while I enjoy browsing people’s answers for them, the main reason I like them is the action I take in response, so I don’t really require a community for them. I’ve also missed the “rec something” / “rec yourself” type challenges – which I can still do on my own, since they don’t require creativity to set either – but a large part of those is definitely browsing other people’s answers. (I also miss the scavenger hunt, but that one’s not the same sort of staple as the others are, I think. And definitely not something I’m going to do on my own.)

So I’m just going to set myself those challenges anyway. The unasked challenges:

Make a fanwork:

I guess the moodboard and the primer are both fanworks, and I also made a fanwork for [community profile] fandomtrees during this month, so that one is technically fulfilled, but also I use Snowflake as my push to make some icons for new fandoms and/or new images I’ve come across during the previous year. I still plan to do this, but I will wait a little bit because there’s an installment of Taskmaster cartoons coming that I want to potentially include in that icon batch.


Try something new:

I did this naturally, by watching the first 5 episodes of The Goes Wrong Show that [personal profile] rionaleonhart has been writing delightful fic for and posted a primer for. I will post about it in full once I’m done with both series, but it has been a very fun thing to watch and, as I’d hoped and as Riona mentioned, does have a similar vibe to Taskmaster – not that it’s a similar format or anything, but, like, the low-stakes absurdist disaster feeling is similar – which is obviously great!


Rec some fanworks:

I have also done this a little bit in the course of completing the other challenges, like reccing the Taskmaster cartoons when I was talking about r/Taskmaster for community promo and reccing a brand new Elis/John longfic in the E&J fandom primer post. But here are things that did not come up naturally that I was hoping to have a chance to rec: Vorkosigan Saga, Murderbot, original art )

And, you know what, I am going to do some self-recs, too: chemistry anthropomorfic, Machineries of Empire poem, Monday Begins on Saturday )


Set some goals for yourself:

2025 Fannish goals check-in )

2026 Fannish Goals )

Sunsets and Woodpecker

Jan. 30th, 2026 03:29 pm
yourlibrarian: Crow Silhouette (NAT-Crow Silhouette - yourlibrarian)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


This photo wasn't the year's first sunset but rather the first one that was really a "wow". Loved the colors.

Read more... )
anneapocalypse: Ariane Clairiere, a wildwood elezen FFXIV character. (ffxiv ariane crystarium suite)
[personal profile] anneapocalypse

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV
Rating: Mature
Archive Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Urianger Augurelt/Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Urianger Augurelt & Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Ardbert & Urianger Augurelt, Unrealized Ardbert/Urianger Augurelt, Pre-Urianger Augurelt/Warrior of Light
Characters: Urianger Augurelt, Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Ardbert Hylfyst, Elidibus, Unukalhai, Tataru Taru, Minfilia Warde, Warrior of Light, Dewlala Dewla, Y'shtola Rhul, Yugiri Mistwalker, Thancred Waters, J'Rhoomale, Blanhaerz, Lamimi, Naillebert, Haneko Burneko
Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Angst, Religion, Isolation, Loneliness, Patch 3.4: Soul Surrender Spoilers (Final Fantasy XIV), Elezen Warrior of Light, Female Warrior of Light, Canon-Typical Violence, Guilt, Emotional Repression, Child Neglect, Childhood Memories, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Series: With Lilies and With Laurel
Length: 34,805 / 92,000
Chapter: 6/15

Summary:

Heartbroken after the loss of his dearest companion, Urianger labors to save two worlds in which he has never felt more alone.

Notes:

If you're new here, please start with Chapter 1!

Final Fantasy XIV is owned by Square Enix. This is a non-commercial work of fanfiction.

( Read on AO3 )

...or below! )


Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

shadaras: A phoenix with wings fully outspread, holidng a rose and an arrow in its talons. (Default)
[personal profile] shadaras
1.
The guy in my cohort who I work with (which is an excessively long way to frame who this is, but whatever) was talking to me this afternoon and then was like, "Hey, can I ask you a question? It might be uncomfortable." and proceeded to just be like "Uh. It's kind of personal? It's about you?" when I was like "idk, what's it about?" until I was like "Just ask already", at which point.

"So I was thinking about this the other day, and I was looking at your chest, and"—at this point I figure out what he's trying to ask—"I'm pretty sure you don't have boobs?"

I tell him that yeah, I had top surgery, and then am like "So, this would have been a lot easier if you started out by telling me you had a question about what I've done to medically transition." and he's like "wow you're so smart you have such good words about this" when it's more like "I have been immersed in this culture for nearly half my life, I'd better know how to talk about it in a way that's both clear and polite".

He's nice, and wants to know things because he's curious, and mostly I'm like "yeah I have zero problem talking about this, I do not worry about people overhearing, I know some people are stealth (for good reason!) but mostly I don't talk about it because there's no reason to."

anyway this conversation included: (a) me telling him what a binder would look like under clothing, (b) me explaining that "how far are you in the process of transitioning" is a meaningless question because everyone's path is different, (c) him going "yeah everyone thinks you're a man" while not knowing what I mean when I was like "yeah everyone thinks I'm a cis dude", and (d) saying "the polite way to ask if someone has further transition stuff planned is to ask that and not say so are you planning on having bottom surgery". (apparently he follows some trans guy on tiktok who's been chronicling his bottom surgery process? which is cool, and I'm glad that's a thing the trans dude is comfortable doing and that my cohortmate was comfortable asking, but also, my guy, this is such a personal thing and it's more polite to ask generally...)


2.
A friend on discord was like "oh god pushing myself to work consistently with full focus at my full-time job is hard and I'm getting home exhausted and how do I deal with this, ahhhhh", and I ended up going "...okay I have Thoughts", because, well.

Welcome to what I've been working out ways to deal with for the last year? The kind of drain is different (I know they do a more academic/mentally stressful job), but the effect is often the same.
copied text of the thoughts I put on discord- knowing that when I get home I will not be capable of doing anything until I (a) shower [necessity of physical job, but also just nice transition/feels-good thing], (b) eat [again, needful, gotta fuel the body], and (c) pet my cat who missed me very much and is going to demand to sit on me for a good 10-15min as soon as I sit down [this is why these things must happen in this order]
- accepting that there's going to be some time before I want to do anything again. for me this means not expecting anything of myself until like 4pm, when I've been home for about an hour
- knowing that I will probably only get One Major Thing done in the evening, and using that knowledge to prioritise. (sometimes this One Thing is like, required evening classes. or therapy. or aikido. sometimes this One Thing is working on a writing project. sometimes it's Friend Time. depends on the day.)
- I am deeply fortunate in that I enjoy cooking, but I also know that I do not have energy to cook every day of the week. this means that when I do cook, I make sure I make meals that generate leftovers not just for work lunches but for workday dinners, hopefully with enough variety that I am not eating the same thing for five meals in a row or the like. (I'm fine eating the same thing for every work lunch in a week so long as dinner is something else.) regardless, make sure you have plans for weekday dinners (takeout, leftovers, making food, frozen meals) and that you know what days you'll be capable of preparing for the days when you'll have less energy.
- accepting that some days you just... won't do anything other than poke around the internet reading fanfic and talking to friends?
- that said, if you know what you want to do and can scaffold that (like, having a friend to body-double with while you're doing chores/bookbinding/writing/whatever), making sure you know your limits is important. maybe don't expect more than an hour of "productive" time an evening right now, especially mental energy, since you're using a lot of that at work right now.
- if you know what you find restorative (showers, listening to music, reading books, petting your cat, etc), then explicitly scheduling time to do that after getting home and before doing something "productive" might also help, since then you can do something enjoyable before asking more of yourself.
- because I know my body will always wake me up at 4:30am (an hour before alarm), I require myself to be in bed around 10pm. so I'll get offline between 9-9:30pm so that I can get everything together for the morning, brush my teeth, do all my other bedtime routine stuff, etc. I'm usually tired by that time anyway! I am not doing anything useful! I still whine about it because I wish I could stay up later, but I've found that having a regular bedtime helps immensely with having the ability to cope with the next day. (sleep in general does, and for me that means enforcing my own bedtime, since my body enforces the other end.)

idk, sometimes I'm like "wow I feel so young and not great at adulting" but then friends who I know are older than me and who I think of as better at adulting were like "nah that was good advice <3" and I'm just. dunno. One of those things where it's really easy to see where you want to improve, all the places where you let stuff fall down, but that doesn't mean you're doing poorly overall?

Like, yeah, I would love to have a cleaner apartment. That'd be so nice. I do not have the spoons to do that all at once, and I sort of barely maintain the level of "this doesn't mortally offend me" cleanliness that I do. But it's something where if I really cared I could do something about it, I know how, it's just... prioritization. The only creature I share this space with is my cat. I almost never have friends over (partially because of feeling like the space is too much of a mess to host visitors, partially because it is my space and I don't want anyone else here).

...most of the conversation that spawned from me saying all that up there was about food and how much thought it takes to cook food, which: mood. so glad that my brain accepts variations of the same stuff pretty much all the time as being sufficient. (Doing other things would be fun too! But it isn't needful to me.)


3.
did I have other things.

a.
It's been COLD. It should hit highs of 32F-ish for a few days next week, though! That's very exciting and I'll be like "wow so warm" even though the likely lows on those days are forecast for uh ~10F. So, you know, warmth is relative. At least the storm predicted for this weekend seems more likely to swing out to sea than dump more snow on us?

b.
I've seen this song/music video linked a few place (re-found it most easily from [personal profile] donutsweeper), and it's very good: Bruce Springsteen - Streets of Minneapolis (which is about exactly what you'd expect, and contains video clips of said streets)

c.
Having a teacher go "the only reason I'm letting it slide that you're drawing in class is because you get good grades; don't let other students think you're getting away with something" is baffling to me. Like. Tell me to stop drawing on the school-assigned tablet during class and I will draw on paper instead. Nothing will change about how I keep myself from being bored during lectures that are 90% "I am reading text off powerpoint slides". (Also this is the only way I will focus, anyway.)

d.
As motivation to myself to write enough more of this to have something more fun to share by the end of the weekend, a tiny bit from the opening of That Novel I Want To Write:
[The letter] was, by Ames’ estimate, blunt to the point of being rude. He set the note down delicately on his desk and glared at it, as if that would grant him insight into the writer’s intentions. His skill with objects was in crafting them, asking wood and metal and stone to come alive in his hands and hold magic in their shapes, not in looking at what already existed and finding meaning in it like the Inquisitives of Tal-Tamorn did.
tehexile: (Default)
[personal profile] tehexile posting in [community profile] 100words
Title: Surprising Warmth
Original (or) Fandom: Octopath Traveler 0
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Tatloch, Delitia, spoilers
 


Read more... )

I'm not dead but I probably should be

Jan. 30th, 2026 01:12 pm
taichara: (abandon all hope)
[personal profile] taichara
Or something. Certainly feel it. Third 10 hr shift slogging through 15-30cm of snow incoming and that's only part of the mess all around me and yet nothing has happened to me personally so the brainweasels are also having a field day.

At least I finally stopped being a useless twat and got all the Lindwyrm parts plus a few blogposts formatted up and a cover on and a copy (+ a few promised) getting printed at Lulu. I guess that kind of counts as something?

I should be going to bed for work tonight but I'm just a lump.

Blegh.
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