flo_nelja | Reading

I wanted to post again earlier, but the end of the year turned out even crazier than I expected </3 so here I am now in 2026! I hope things were less hectic for you who's currently reading this!

Usually, I make a big end of the year post where I go over everything I made in the year, fic and exchange-wise... but to be honest, I don't feel like doing it this year, lol. Writing was so hard for most of 2025, I think looking back will just make me sad... and I've already come to the conclusion that I should take a soft exchange break, so I don't need to look over my exchange stuff for that.

At the very least, here's my art summary!

You can open it in a new tab to see it larger!
Kind of same old same old, but I'm excited for new opportunities to draw my blorbo... >:)

I will say, I'm still really proud of all the webdev stuff I did this year, and I'm hoping 2026 will be a web-intensive year for me again! I want to start new projects... I want to actually finish my personal site... I want to keep updating Lysandre Labs...

I'd also like to maybe make a post reflecting on 2025 more generally and figuring out what I'd like to get out of 2026. I think that'd be more encouraging than looking back on everything I didn't manage to write or draw o7 Speaking of, I haven't drawn anything yet in 2026... Looking forward to finding out what my first art of the year will be... (Probably Corbeau and Lysandre lbr...)

Anyway, just a quick post so I can stay in the habit! I'd love to know what you hope 2026 has in store for you! <3

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: メランコリーキッチン - 米津玄師

pf_mod posting in

poetry_fiction

Everyone should now have their prompt, so go forth and have fun writing in the new year.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. If you decide that the prompt isn't working for you, I'll be happy to give you another one! These are all chosen at random, so I know not every prompt is going to work out the way we hope.

delphi

"Imagine the Angels of Bread" by Martín Espada

This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges,
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.

This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.

sheliak

If you're here for

bestof_icons, icons 1-17 are from 2025. Icons 18-25 are from 2026, starting with the glass-punching.

( 15 icons )

sheliak

I've done all these images before; some actually pretty similarly, I just wanted to play with them again. (I did take the liberty of moving the lamp in the first one.)

duskpeterson posting in

historium

Hello to all, especially those of you I haven't met here before. I write noblebright novels on hope in dark times, inspired by historical settings. Nearly all of what I write is original fiction, though my Muse occasionally allows me to write fanfic. All my stories are free. My writings are available in various places: my website, blog, AO3, and SqWA.

I've just posted at my Dreamwidth journal the story summaries and links to all the fic (mainly historical fantasy inspired by late antiquity) that I released in 2025. The stories are T-rated, featuring friendships, platonic life-partnerships, and romantic pairings (f/m and m/m). Here's my boilerplate content warning. I'd love to hear what you think of the stories.

Over 100,000 words of new fiction.

shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

hamsterwoman

Happy New Year! I'm having a fairly pleasant 2026 so far, and hope you all are too! <3

Yuletide reveals! :D

I wrote two things this year (which, it's been a couple of years since I've managed a treat, and I'm very glad I was able to this year).

My assignment:

Voyages of the Valence: The Lanthanide Cluster Job (7862 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elements - Experiments in Character Design - Kaycie D., Object and Concept Anthropomorphism
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Vanadium (Experiments in Character Design), Chromium (Experiments in Character Design), Iodine (Experiments in Character Design), Rhenium (Experiments in Character Design), Sulfur (Experiments in Character Design), Carbon (Experiments in Character Design), Xenon (Experiments in Character Design), Helium (Experiments in Character Design), Dysprosium (Experiments in Character Design), Indium (Experiments in Character Design), Thulium (Experiments in Character Design), Rhodium (Experiments in Character Design), Yttrium (Experiments in Character Design)
Additional Tags: IN SPACE!, Space Opera
Summary:

Elements IN SPACE!

( Blathering )

The days leading up to story reveals were spent frantically beta-ing a couple of fairly long fics that required a canon primer, so I had given up on the idea of writing a treat. But I felt so blessed by my last-minute crossover treat and the fact that my main gift was in a much rarer fandom than I’d been expecting, that it gave me a sort of second wind – after reveals, obviously, but there was still Madness. And thus:

FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Magical Practitioner Examination (581 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peter Grant (Rivers of London), Thomas Nightingale
Summary:

Nightingale was aghast at my lack of ophidian knowledge.

( Blathering )

Full text of the ficlet, with the missing bit: ( under here )

*

snowflake_challenge is back, with lovely new banners:

Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

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

My intro post from a year ago was mostly current but was missing ~~Elis & John~~ a couple of things that feel too relevant not to mention, so, I’m including an updated one below. As for the other challenge questions:

I love the little bright splash of fannishness that Snowflake brings to the start of the year – it always leads to interesting fandom reflections (my own and other people’s), getting to read/watch/look at things I wouldn’t have come across or taken the plunge on otherwise (fic/vids but also trying new canons), creating things I otherwise wouldn’t have created (one tangible highlight: a couple of years ago I wrote a pantoum, a poetic form I hadn’t tried before, for Snowflake’s “try something new” day, and it was actually published this year, which is pretty cool!), and usually also new friends. Which I guess has also answered the question of what I hope to gain from it this year :)

( fannish me in 2026 )

*

YouTube now apparently also does a Wrapped: ( so here are my fairly predictable results )

*

( Fannish end-of-year meme #2 )

maevedarcy posting in

recthething

To end 2025, I took part in

rec_cember and I wanted to crosspost the recs here in case people want to browse.

Rec-cember #1: works under 1000 words

Fandoms:

The Raven Cycle
Doctor Who
Carmilla
The Hunger Games
Teen Wolf

Rec-cember #2: Podfic

Fandoms:

9-1-1
All for the Game
Goncharov/The Magnus Archives
Original Work
Sense8
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Teen Wolf
The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself
The Raven Cycle
Venom (movies)

Rec-cember #3: my top fics of 2025

Fandoms:

Sense8
Venom (movies)
All for the Game
League of Legends
Doctor Who
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Game Changers/Heated Rivalry
Teen Wolf
Cunk on Earth/Interview with the Vampire crossover

primeideal

Ada Hoffmann first came to my attention via The Neurodiversiverse anthology. This is the first installment in a trilogy. In a future where superintelligent AI are worshiped as gods, an autistic scientist accidentally causes a disaster on a space station. As a result, she's basically kidnapped by angels working for the god Nemesis, who need her help in tracking down her former doctorate advisor. Both the forces of Nemesis and the heretic Dr. Talirr have the potential to cause terror, so Yasira does a lot of bouncing between a rock and a hard place. "The Outside" refers to forces beyond our universe's space and time, which occasionally breach containment and cause "madness" in onlookers, but of course, "madness" is subjective. (In the acknowledgements, Hoffmann places this book within the stream of "Lovecraftian subversion.")

The worldbuilding of AI-as-gods requiring mortal trust to perpetuate themselves, and eventually absorbing human souls after they die, is fascinating. Ditto some humans' desire to build their own space stations without relying on godly technology. The glimpses we get of other alien species are great:

Your Boater dictionary had two words in it before you started drawing on my work. And both the words were variations on 'destroy the soul-eating abominations.'

...

However, any culture studied in sufficient detail will yield up a word, and often a fairly sophisticated system of safeguards and protections, for the things in this universe which are inherently incomprehensible to sentient minds. The semantics of the word chosen can be culturally informative. My favorite, of course, is the Spider term: Ȋsȋrinin-neri-ȋnik, or 'that which eats reality.'

Yasira comes from a culture that's comparatively accessible for disabled and neurodiverse people, and that filters through early. This description felt true-to-life:

Yasira's neurotype was supposed to be all about joy, about being so in love with science and knowledge and patterns that they eclipsed everything else. She'd been like that as a child, throwing herself into dusty physics texts the way other kids played games or ate candy. So excited when she tackled a new problem that she'd abruptly throw the book down and run around the house laughing. At some point, maybe in grad school, that had faded somehow. Who knew why? She was still good at the things people liked her to do, so there wasn't much wrong. Maybe it was just part of growing up.

I would have liked to see even more contrasts of how someone like Yasira might relate to angels or nonhuman entities differently than other humans would. This struck me as strange:

Akavi peered over Yasira's shoulder at the chart of the galaxy. This was unnecessary, since he had downloaded the chart into his head and could mentally examine it from whatever angle he pleased. But the physical signs of shared attention helped put mortals at ease.

The Outside, by definition, is outside ordinary understanding and language, so any depiction of it is inherently vague. It wasn't too much gross-out horror for me, but I'm not super into "we can't describe it, it was just some bizarre wrongness."

I would have liked more worldbuilding about what happens to humans after they die and how that relates to the gods. Yasira, quite understandably, is reluctant to do things that will get people killed; life, even life with some "madness," is better than death! But in a world where the existence of afterlives is common knowledge rather than a matter of faith, I imagine people's ethical calculations would be different in some circumstances. I didn't get enough of "how divine are the 'gods,' really" to feel like I necessarily understood Yasira's reactions.

( Vague spoilers )

Yasira's girlfriend, Tiv, comes from a culture with great names and nicknames: "Tiv" is short for Productivity, "Citizenship" goes by "Ship," etc. Yasira struggles to have faith in the gods or experience religious transcendence; she looks to Tiv as an example of how a "good girl" would behave. Unfortunately, most of the time she's offscreen, and it's mostly like "if you ever want to see Tiv again, you better do as we say." We don't get a good sense of what Tiv sees in Yasira; to me, these sorts of relationships can come off as "anxious autistic person and their emotional support neurotypical." I understand that some people will value seeing f/f romance depicted in these settings! In my entirely personal opinion, I would have liked to see other kinds of relationships in Yasira's life.

(There is also a very funny subplot involving an angel who's crushing on his clueless boss, featuring a great Ironic Echo resolution.)

Bingo: Gods and Pantheons, LGBTQIA protagonist, Impossible Places, Epistolary (almost every chapter starts with an in-universe epigraph)

rekishi

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glitteryv

I know there was a book reading meme somewhere, but I can't find it so we're going a bit bare bones today. Ended up making this one up. 😅

Total books I meant to read: 51

Total DNFs: 14

Other stats 62% of what I read I borrowed from the library, 24% was from Kindle Unlimited (when I had it for 3 months for free), and 14% was from my own TBR.

Fave books

Sweep in Peace and One Fell sweep from Ilona Andrews' Innkeeper Chronicles series. They were the ONLY books I gave 5 stars to. Also loved Skyla Dawn Cameron's The Silent Places.

Biggest Disappointments

* Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll - A roman a clef abt the victims and survivors of Ted Bundy that was lauded everywhere. I still don't know WHO this book is for, LOLsob.

* Murder by Memory by Olivia Wilde - ANOTHER DISSENTING OPINION because the mystery was so weak that I decided to not continue the series. (But I'll continue to give this author a chance.)

Biggest Surprises

* The Wife Deserved It by Darby Kane - A shorter-than-expected novella that I enjoyed so much I'm going to read more books by this author.

* The Silent Places gets a tip of the hat as well cuz it was a good suspense novel that had the best ending I've read in a long while.

Worst books

* Make Room for Love by Darci Liao - Was excited abt a butch Chinese-American lesbian and a transgender Indian-American bisexual woman. But the story veered into a whole thing abt a student union and I ended up hating the whole thing.

* A Court of Deceit and Ruin by Jessaca Willis - Promoted as "a slow-burn sapphic fantasy romance perfect for fans of fairy tale retellings, dark magic, and star-crossed fates" --which turned out to be lies. The book WAS well-written, but this wasn't a romance, there was zero slow burn (again, NOT a romance), and the rest of the description is off. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Bitterbound by A.Z. Louise - An alleged "assassin x target romantasy" that had too many plotpoints that weren't quite resolved, a weak-ass romance, and a TERRIBLE ending (given the premise.)

Average rating for the year: 3. No idea how that happened.

Overall thoughts

It was a super strange reading year, NGL. I tried a lot of new-to-me authors (DNF'd a lot of them too, LOLsob) and had a meh reading year. Wished I'd tackled a lot more of my TBR and that I'd done Nonfiction November.

OTOH, I've set my reading goal at 15 books cuz that's low-pressure enough yet doeble for me. OTOH, I'm participating on two different reading challenges, so it's possible I'll read the same amount of books this year as I did last. :P

FICS

Total fics I picked up to read: 222 - I feel like this was lower than other years, huh.

Total DNFs: 103 - Way better than I expected given that there were months where I kept DNF'ing stuff left and right, LOL.

Total wordcount read: 2,126,551 - FTR, I don't feel one way or another abt this number. It's just interesting to know I've read 2.1M words, but there's no self-worth type of attachment from me toward it.

Highest reading month? January --which was 29 fics total. Makes sense to me!

Lowest reading month? April and August -- where I only read 9 fics each. IDK what distracted me in April, but I've got an idea that Summer SADs got to me in August.

Fandom I read the most: BTS. 😋 77 fics with Yoonjin being the ship I read the most (35).

Other fandoms 41 fics total split between Seventeen (multiple ships), TXT (multiple ships), TCGF (Hualian), BTVS (Buffy/Faith, Faith/Other), Shinee (Minho/Key)

Fave fics I read in 2025 (i.e. the fics that I kept thinking abt even months after I'd read them.)

* the last person i could ever love by

miraclesofpaul (BTS, Explicit, Omegaverse, endgame ship is Jin/Yoongi, other background ships, 152k total ) - This fic was rollercoaster of LOLs, DRAHMAHZ, and many sweet moments. *Chef's kiss* due to it being a TRUE Enemies-to-Lovers AU.

* Interlude by

duets (BTS, Rated Teen, Jin/Yoongi, 2.4k words total) - AU in which BTS never happens, but Yoongi ends up as a famous rapper and Jin is an actor. LOVED THE MIXED MEDIA format.

* You have seven [7] new calendar invites by

andlovetoo (Mature, OT7, 5.8k words total) - BTS trying to sync their calendar is all you need to know abt this wonderful chatfic.

* Stacks by

tender_tenderly (Explicit, RM/V, 9.8k words total) - A librarian AU of win with one-sided rivals-to-lovers, heheh.

* Growing Toward The Sun by

Nevaeh - Non-Idol AU abt the ups and downs of queer life in Seoul. I loved the balance of angst and fluff.

* Break Thru Everything by

aceaceaceace - (Rated Teen, established Minho/Key, 11.5k words total) SHINee's Key starts to organize with other queer idols to come out as a collective. Loved everything abt it (including the mentions of other idols who did come out too.)

* Sediment by

belledamn (BTVS, Mature, Buffy/Faith, 27k words total) - A perfect Noir AU in which Buffy's a PI, Faith's a sex worker, and they have a hella complicated relationship. I liked the way the author integrated other characters into the story.

silveradept

Turns out I was wrong, it's not housekeeping, but introductions requested of us for the start of the series. Which usually means that the thing we can expect is "Hello, new people!"

Challenge #1

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

( Hello again! )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: ROZEN - Kokiri Forest

trope_mod posting in

trope_of_the_month

Happy New Year! As always, January is Amnesty Month, which means that instead of starting a new theme, you can create for any of the previous themes.

As a reminder, the previous themes are:
( List )

Posting guidelines are here. Please remember to tag your fandoms and themes!

If you have any prompts or recs for previous themes, you can leave them in the comments using the template below:

For recs:

For prompts:

The amnesty period will last until 31st January.

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Photograph of a young Asian girl using a manual typewriter in an office and looking very serious as she stares straight into the camera. Her black hair is slicked into a low ponytail and her round glasses are so big they extend past her face. She's wearing a shirt and tie and an adult-sized yellow blazer that fits her like a dress, almost as if she has been shrunk. Text, in a typewriter font: Crack Treated Seriously, at Fancake.

Happy New Year! Our theme for January is crack treated seriously!

It's time to put on your serious face because this round is for fanworks with ideas that are very, very bonkers, but approached with the utmost dedication to making it work within whatever passes for reality in that fandom. As with our crack round, I ask that you avoid using language associated with drug use and addiction in your recs, as this kind of language, even when used for fun, can be hurtful and alienating.

Now go bananas—but seriously.

The tag for this round is: theme: crack treated seriously

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

( Rules! )

( Posting Template! )

( Promote this round! )

Reblog on Tumblr | Reskeet on Bluesky | Retoot on Mastodon

heartsways posting in

scans_daily

( Read more... )

rekishi

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tjs_whatnot posting in

snowflake_challenge

Introduction Post*
Meet the Mods Post *

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

( Fandom Snowflake Challenge #1 ) And please do check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanvids/fics/podfics/fancrafts/fanart/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

Also wishing y'all a happy and healthy 2026! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳