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fic roundup

2025 Fic Roundup

Total Words Published at end of year: 19,763, which is a massive drop from last year's roughly 103k, which was already a drop from 2023's 162k. Normally I don't even include unpublished work, but the Ancient Arlathan Double Agent AU, which I started publishing and then withdrew, is more than double the word count of everything else I wrote this year combined, so it seemed silly not to include it.

Fandoms: DA mostly--which flickered and died as the disappointment from Veilguard really set in. I published or finished up a few Tolkien fics which had already been in the works and dropped a second chapter of a five year old Mass Effect fic. In spite of my ongoing love affair with Baldur's Gate, I simply haven't felt the urge to write anything for it.

Highest Everything (raw kudos, hits, comments):

Hits: One Morning (of Several) on the Citadel (914)
Kudos: One Morning (of Several) on the Citadel (84)
Comments: By Invitation Only (4)

New Things I Tried: N/A

Fic I Spent the Most Time On: Undoubtedly the Double Agent AU, which I still never got to a place I was satisfied with. It just became unwieldy and I realized it was going to take a lot more time to get it to a place I was happy with than I was willing to invest, so I shelved it.

Fic I Spent the Least Time On: Bonafide which was just some silly pseudo-political Elronduil make-out banter,

Favorite Thing I Wrote: I don't really feel strongly about any of this year's product, but the second chapter of One Morning probably is my favorite.

Favorite Thing(s) I Read:

Pray for Rain by mafalda_157 - Back in ancient Arlathan, when Elgar’nan is on the precipice of declaring himself god, he and Solas clash over what constitutes good leadership.
The Wolf, Bruised by bitterling - The Dread Wolf expected this. But he had hoped to be summoned, or to be found in private… yet it seems that the All-Father relishes these public displays.
A flash to the sun, the golden close of love by @adler-obsessed - “Darling Cassandra, do sit down before your legs give out. I do not want my rooms to become the site of a holy pilgrimage, where devotees pray at the resting place of Divine Victoria.”
Last Exit by macbethisms - The funeral of Esen-Temur, with live commentary.
As Little Might be Thought by our_ourobos - Given his first taste of freedom, Elros pushes the limits.
Queen of Peace by astardanced - Csethiro broke abruptly free of the pack and came sweeping towards him with hands outstretched, probably hoping to do damage control. “Serenity,” she said, ignoring her father, who seemed to be wanting to prompt her like a conductor. “We are honoured to have you here.”
All Your Sisters Wanna Fly by astardanced - an heir for the ceredada, at long last.
Unembittered by Arveldis - Findis makes a last entreaty.

Writing Goals for 2025: Find some inspiration...it is clearly lacking.

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

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?

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I hope it's not AN OMEN

Partner's substituted veggie burgers had to be panfried rather than ovencooked (we actually usually spend a fair amount of time making sure that they can) and have RUINED the frying pan with some adherent substance which scrubbing and soaking has failed to shift.

Fortunately we live in the future and I was a) able to consult Which about the best frying pans (they have quite recently surveyed these, yay) and b) order one for same day click and collect at the local Argos.

Even if we entirely failed in entering the details to get our Nectar points on the transaction.

In other news, it appears that there was SNOW some time earlier today or last night which was still lying in shadowed spots when I went for my walk. Bitterly cold out but very bright.

Parakeet disporting around the back gardens and adjacent park.

We have not seen anything more of the fox which came right up the steps from the garden to the back door, after a leisurely descent left its marker on the garden fence, and then got into it with next door's cat, which was sitting on the back fence going 'come and 'ave a go if you think you're 'ard enough'.

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tv shows

December TV shows

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.

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astvanor

Astvanor Session 177 (12/19)

( In which the party returns victorious to the druidic grove they just saved and important conversations are had, including one that ends in a kiss )

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monthly media

December 2025 Monthly Media

* = Rewatch/reread

Anime/Cartoons

Bob's Burgers 16.07
Dandadan 2.01-2.12
The Mighty Nein 1.05-1.09

Books/Short Stories

Nicked by M.T. Anderson
The Sugared Game by KJ Charles
Subtle Blood by KJ Charles
Copper Script by KJ Charles
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
A Winter's Earl by Annabelle Greene
Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
The Beauty's Blade by Mei Ren Jian
Ballad of Sword and Wine 6 by Qiang Jin Jiu
Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery
We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough
The Helios Syndrome by Vivian Shaw
The Chosen and The Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Manga/Comics/Light Novels

Oglaf (ongoing webcomic)
Order of the Stick (ongoing webcomic)
Wilde Life (ongoing webcomic)

Movies/Documentaries

Amy Bradley is Missing (2025)
Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencers (2025)
Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
The Perfect Neighbor (2025)
Playdate (2025)
Sean Combs: A Reckoning (2025)

Theater/Concerts

Water for Elephants (National Theater)

TV Shows/Web Series

Abbott Elementary 5.07-5.08
Critical Role 4.08-4.10
The Residence 1.01-1.08
Revenged Love 1-2
Survivor 49.11-49.13

Video Games/Board Games

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

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my writing: fics: kn8

Kaijuu No. 8 fic update: Warm as life (Kafka/Reno/Narumi, Reno/Iharu, Kafka/Hoshina) - WIP 2/7

Feeling a lot more confident and happier now that Narumi also showed up. It's surprising how much easier I find it to write such a little clown of a character.

...perhaps because I, too, was actually a clown all along? 😮🤡

Warm as life | Kaijuu No. 8 | Kafka/Reno/Narumi, Reno/Iharu, Kafka/Hoshina | 3.8k words (WIP, 2/7) | rated M

Summary: The new threat posed by No. 9 weighs heavily on everyone. Under these circumstances, emotions run high and what starts as a way of relieving stress can easily bloom into unexpected feelings. Some people find that easier to admit than others.

Read it on Dreamwidth or AO3.

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Upcoming exchanges & events!

I signed up for

rarefemslashexchange! Very happy with my assignment, currently enjoying canon review. :D

I'm thinking of signing up for

candyheartsex, too! Is anyone else planning to do this one? Only 300 word minimum! I try not to have too many simultaneous open exchange assignments for myself, but this feels within reach. :D

Buuuuut also

seasonsofdrabbles will be running a round in January-February. I love drabbles, so this is tempting too! But three assignments (even ones with short minimums!) seems like it would be overwhelming, so I might stick to treating for this one.

Finally,

fandomtrees is seeking help creating gifts (2 for each recipient) before reveals, which are currently scheduled for Jan 10. If you're inclined to check it out, there's a handy spreadsheet of needy trees linked at this post!

Are there other exchanges, bingos, or similar challenges you're participating in that are coming up soon?

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my writing: fics: k-9

New K-9 fic: A bit of a break (Hidaka/Shigure)

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

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disney

2026 Disneyland Trip #1 (1/1/26)

The forecast was saying the afternoon would be clear, but we were still expecting some rain in the morning, but while there was some on the drive down, it had stopped by the time we got there.

( Read more... )

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comm: snowflake challenge

Snowflake Challenge #1

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

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

For those unsure what the heck the Snowflake Challenge is, it's a DW event through the month of January where they post a prompt every other day on

snowflake_challenge, and you can respond on your journal to whichever ones you want, at your leisure. (If that's unclear or you're curious for more details, feel free to ask me. I was very confused for a long time about how it worked.)

Anyway! Hi, I'm snick. I'm a fandom old who came to fandom via Buffy the Vampire Slayer a bit after the show had ended. My fannish evolution was something like:
1. Got into Buffy fandom, made my first fandom friends, wrote my first fanfic
2. Got into Supernatural, discovered kink memes, wrote my first porn
3. Got into hockey RPF, learned how to write. As mentioned above, I wrote before that, some that I'm still very proud of, but I feel like I really came of age as a writer in hockey fandom.

Since then I've spent time in the MCU, I got more into horror movies and sometimes into their fandoms, and I got into the band Oasis and have written a bunch of fic about that. I also got more and more into multi-fandom exchanges as a way to fill in the gaps (with mixed success) when I kept getting into smaller, less active fandoms.

These days, this journal is mostly for movie and book reviews and locked personal posts, but I do occasionally post unlocked about my writing or fannish events, that kind of thing. Every so often I even post news or meta about my fandoms, although that doesn't feel like what people do here on DW anymore, alas.

And to answer the other question, I'm doing the Snowflake Challenge because I really like seeing more activity on DW. I'm hoping for some prompts this year that will give me excuses to write about fandom stuff I'm excited about, which as mentioned above I rarely get around to doing. And I look forward to reading everyone else's posts and hopefully interacting with them more. <3

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Daily Happiness

1. It was rainy this morning but I managed not to get rained on. When I woke up, I could hear the rain and was not looking forward to going out in it for my morning walk, because then I'd get my shoes wet and have to wear wet shoes later, but I looked at my phone and the weather app said it was supposed to stop raining in five minutes and be dry for at least half an hour and it did and it was! I did get dripped on a bit by trees, but that was fine. And then later in the morning we went to Disneyland and it rained on the drive down, but stopped by the time we got there and was dry all afternoon and evening. We're still supposed to get some more rain here and there over the next few days, but at least it seems to be more sporadic.

2. We had a really nice time today at Disneyland. The rain helped keep people away (especially in the morning), plus although it's still officially the holiday season through the weekend, the crowds are just not as wild as they were in the lead-up to Christmas.

3. The shopping center where the newest Tokyo Central is in Irvine formerly had a Persian market called Super Irvine. I had originally assumed they went out of business or something and that's why the space was for lease, but it seems like the property owner had wanted to completely raze the building and start from scratch, and the Super Irvine just moved to a new location, which just opened a couple months ago. We watched a video walkthrough recently and it looked really neat, so we've been wanting to check it out. There are a bunch of Persian shops in Westwood, which is very close, but nothing this huge (and because it's so large, it has a lot of other international stuff as well as just Persian). Irvine is just a short drive from Disneyland (especially on a day like today with no traffic), so we decided to go down there before going home, and had a lot of fun checking it out.

4. I don't really do resolutions, but there are a couple things I want to do this year. One is to try doing a wider variety of things. I like routine and it's very easy to get stuck in a rut and do something familiar, whether it's going to the same places or eating the same foods, but there are so many other things I want to do also, so I want to try and change that. So we'll probably go to Disneyland less often this year, but we go ridiculously often, so even if we go only 2-3 times a month that's still, objectively speaking, a lot lol. And it was nice today; we hadn't been in two weeks, and it felt fresher and less like just doing the same old thing.

The other thing I want to do this year is get a tattoo. I have wanted to get a tattoo forever. I have always thought they were cool and wanted one, but the problem is I don't have any strong feelings about what I want. Maybe something cat or dragon related. Maybe something rainbow/queer. idk. I have to think about it. But I'll be fifty this year and it seems like a good time. Also I find the whole process really overwhelming, in terms of finding someone and the design phase, etc. Anyone who has tattoos and has advice/suggestions about anything, please feel free to comment!

5. I wish Gemma wasn't always so suspicious of me, but she is very cute when she's suspicious.

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my fanfic

My Yuletide Stories

I wrote three stories this Yuletide. The first two won't make much sense if you don't know the canons. With the third, all you really need to know is that mushi are magical creatures and Ginko solves people's mushi-related problems.

28 Years Later

Memento Mori. Dr. Kelson creates his masterpiece.

I really liked the movie, which is extremely different from the first one (also extremely different from the second, which I don't care for) and also extremely different from the brilliant trailer, which introduced me to the astonishing recording from 1915 (!) of actor Taylor Holmes reciting Kipling's poem "Boots." It's a post-apocalypse movie that's partly a coming of age story, partly an action/horror movie, and partly a beautiful and moving drama about life, death, and remembrance. And then there's the last two minutes, which are basically parkour Trainspotting.

I actually matched on The Leftovers, but I liked the 28 Days Later prompt so much that I wrote that instead.

Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey

Hunger. Both Lessa and Kylara are Searched for Nemorth's final clutch.

I just really enjoy writing in this canon. I love the dragons and McCaffrey created a lot of very interesting characters even if she often ended up not knowing quite what to do with them.

Mushishi

A Turn of the Wheel. Ginko encounters an unusual mushi in a village known for pottery.

Mushishi is an incredibly beautiful anime and manga with a dreamy, wistful atmosphere. I saw a prompt for mushi infesting a piece of pottery and could not resist. This story was also inspired by having recently visited Japan in the summer, a time of year I very much do not recommend for a visit if you can possibly avoid it. It's like living in a sauna. Now imagine doing a kiln firing in that sauna.

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Yuletide fics I wrote!

I had a fantastic Yuletide this year. I got two great gifts. I managed to write FOUR things for the main collection, a personal best! (The closest I've come previously is three in the main collection and one in Madness, and that was back in 2013.) I got really nice comments on them, even the one for a fandom I didn't think anyone would know. <3 And then I had so much fun browsing the collection this year, and I found some really wonderful fic. Perfect experience, no notes, can't wait to do it again next year.

Interestingly, everything I wrote this year was for fandoms I watched or reviewed specifically for Yuletide. Like, the two movies are two I pulled out of the Yuletide tagset and put on my to-watch list. I always enjoy making those lists from the tagset, but I don't think they've ever borne so much fruit directly before. (Then again, most of my old standbys that I don't need to review, like Oasis and Re-Animator and Scream, are now too big for Yuletide. That's probably a factor.)

First, my assignment:
stave my soul, Moby Dick, Ishmael/Queequeg, 2.7k. A ghost story. Last year I really wanted to reread Moby Dick and write Yuletide treats, I got about a third of the way in, and then I bogged down and didn't finish. This year, I wanted the same but even more, to the point that I not only offered it instead of planning to just treat, but I got very brave and culled my offers until nearly all my matches were Moby Dick.

I got assigned to whalebone (yes, really) and wrote this in a few days. The idea came to me pretty much fully-formed, and it should have been relatively easy to write once I got a handle on the narrative voice, but it was one of those times where I was finding writing very hard and was really mad at my past self for putting me in the situation, to the point that I wished I'd defaulted before the default deadline.

But! I did manage to write the fic more or less exactly as I'd planned. And this was by far my most popular fic this Yuletide, with more comments than I've gotten in a week on anything since 2020.

--

fires of love, Moby Dick, Ishmael/Queequeg, 2.2k, omegaverse. Then I turned around and wrote a treat, and it was Moby Dick omegaverse. In fact, qkind's prompt for this last year was the number one reason I wanted to reread the book, and I was very happy that they prompted it again this year.

The big appeal here was describing an omegaverse scenario in Ishmael's inimatable prose, and I had a great time trying. In fact the first writing I did for Yuletide was some paragraphs of this that I got in the shower. Ishmael discoursing about omegaverse gender stuff was a hoot to write. This might be my favorite Yuletide fic I wrote this year.

I don't know if I'll write more Moby Dick; I feel like I've gotten those two high-concept fics out of my system, and I don't have any other burning ideas. I really have to get in the right frame of mind to tackle Ishmael's voice, and it's like I'm holding my breath the whole time and have to eventually come up for air. On the other hand, I definitely think there's room for more Moby Dick horror in the world, if nothing else.

--

a restaurant called karma, Red Rooms (2023), Clementine/Kelly-Anne, 5.6k. This is an independent French-Canadian film about two serial killer groupies attending the trial of a man accused of raping and murdering several teen girls. I'd been meaning to watch this for a while, but seeing a Yuletide request was what finally got me to do it, and then I wrote this post-canon getting-together fic in like a week. This is the first fic in the tag, so I wasn't expecting much of a response, but I've been pleasantly surprised at how many people know it and have commented on the fic. <3

It was actually almost 2k longer at one point; the day before reveals I wrote 2k of porn, then woke up Christmas Eve morning and decided the porn took the fic way off track, and I took basically all of it out and made the fic fade to black, all before 1pm. I don't know if I've ever done that before. It was not my favorite time-crunch editing session ever! However, I ship the hell out of these two now and I hope more people write them.

--

wreck, Crash (1996), James/Catherine, 1.1k. James gets in a new, more serious accident, and he and Catherine enjoy the aftermath. This was a quick little PWP of them being fucking weird together. I don't know if I really hit the "if he likes cuckolding, he'll LOVE being rendered impotent by a car crash" button as hard as I wanted, but hey, it's 1k, it's fine. And it turns out I and one other person in Yuletide inaugurated the James/Catherine tag on AO3, which blows my mind.

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Yuletide Reveal & Snowflake Challenge

Yuletide reveals! I wrote a Galaxy Quest fic! I'm kind of blown away at the lovely reception my fic got this year - more than I ever expected in terms of comments and kudos, and several very kind recs. I love writing for tiny fandoms-of-one-or-two, but writing for a widely beloved movie for this year was surprisingly fun.

Galaxy Quest: The Journey Continues: Season 1 Gag Reel (AO3 | DW)
Galaxy Quest | Gwen, Jason, Alexander (+ the rest of the ensemble) | 1867 words | rated T | no archive warnings apply
Tags: Post-Canon, Humor, Filming, Canon-typical shenanigans

"Sorry!" Guy said, flustered. "Shit, sorry, guys. As Crewman Number 6, I barely had any lines!"

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.

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

Today's the first day of the

snowflake_challenge! I enjoy this event, but I rarely manage to keep up with all of the days - so I'll keep any intentions to participate very low-key for myself, including not having expectations to share my posts on the comm itself (which sometimes makes me feel overwhelmed or self-conscious). Anyway, I've done some light clean up on my profile, access list, and sticky post, so I'll call that complete.

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Yuletide reveals post

This year for Yuletide, I wrote one fic:

The Doorway to Home (3677 words) by genarti
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Changeling - Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Martha Abbott/Ivy Carson
Characters: Josie Carson (The Changeling)

I'd never actually read The Changeling before, so it wasn't what my recipient and I matched on. But when I saw it on

deifire's requests, I suddenly remembered seeing Author of The Changeling! on the cover of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game as a kid. I loved and reread The Egypt Game multiple times, EVEN THOUGH it had betrayed me on the first read by not actually being about ancient Egypt, so that's a mark of its quality, and I thought, "Well, these prompts sound interesting and I do like Zilpha Keatley Snyder, so maybe I should take this as impetus to read it!" And I did, and I loved it to bits, and here we are.

This fall ended up being very busy, between assorted travels and illnesses and upheavals, and so what I actually did was read the book and then let it marinate in the back of my head for a while, and then do a reread as I put together a timeline of what happened when throughout the book, and then write the entire thing in a frantic rush right before the deadline. But I had a wonderful time nonetheless! It was one of those experiences where you start writing and it just flows.

skygiants as usual was a last-minute rock star about betaing, DESPITE AS I HAVE JUST LEARNED WRITING AN INCREDIBLE GIFT FIC FOR ME IN A SNEAKY NINJA WAY--

Current Mood: ecstatic

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FTH 2025 fic!!!

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

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Start as I mean to go on

I had Kodiaks practice on the evening of 30 December, which meant getting home very late as usual. I did get up and out for the last hot yoga class of my festive pass in the morning of 31 December. From there I did a run into town to pay in a cheque (a cheque!) to N's savings account on the last possible day before it expired. After I got home, I looked at how many tickets remained for the public skate I was booked on, did some subtraction and decided the rink would be too full and I was too tired, so I cancelled the Last Skate Of The Year, and had a nap instead. It was marvellous.

In the evening we had a little family movie night with drinks and snacks:

Chicken Run (which everyone but Nico had seen before)
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (which only Nico had seen before) - fun, but omg there were bad parenting choices, and excessive ~suspense~ due to even more bad choices in the final action sequence
Wake Up Dead Man (which Nico was uninterested in, but the other three of us enjoyed)

We managed to finish the last film with about fifteen minutes to go before midnight, so I put on BBC One on iPlayer and we watched some Ronan Keating and then the fireworks from London, and then I left Ronan Keating providing background music while sending and replying to HNY messages on my phone until I decided sleep was a better plan.

This morning I got up and used a free gym pass to get to a weights class, and confirm my opinion that I want to return to a regular gym routine. I met friends M, J & K for pub drinks this afternoon, and spent a bunch of time afterwards sorting out logistics for ice hockey games on Saturday (Kodiaks 1 are away in Chelmsford, Kodiaks 2 are "home" in Peterborough).

Tomorrow I will take Nico to a pantomime in the morning, work a half day in the afternoon, and go to Warbirds practice in the evening.

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2025 fanfic year in review

I kept a document open all year to paste these in as I went, but you can probably tell when that started to go awry...

( List of all the fic I wrote in 2025 )

The writing year in review meme:
Total words posted in 2025: 25,495 words
Total stories posted in 2025: 21
Longest story: The Ordinary Ever After Part: 5,552 words
Shortest story: Purring: 126 words
Story with the most kudos in 2025: Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man, 217 kudos (more than I expected!)
Story with the most comment threads in 2025: On His Mind, 10 comment threads
Story with the most bookmarks in 2025: Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man, 37 bookmarks
Personal favourite from this year: Probably Going Home, the Bleach Ichigo&Ishida gen I wrote after rereading the series yet again. I like the vibe of it! Either that, or the Pluto pinch hit I wrote for RMSE, which I feel really captured all my Paul Duncan and North no 2 feelings.

Overall thoughts: Weird year again! Didn't write much, and a lot of what I wrote didn't get much of a reaction. I joined a lot more exchanges in 2025 than in previous years, and they were marked by constant delays and not much in the way of comments. Not sure I'll bother much in 2026.

( Stats )

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reading

2025 reading summary

New-to-me books read this year: 128
(Note for this exercise: I count audiobooks separately from paper/ebooks. I like both experiences but they are different experiences and different "books" to me, whereas reading paper or ebook feels interchangeable to me. My default is to read ebook, audiobooks and physical books are tagged as variations from the default.)

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Rereads: 19

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If you want to know more about a specific book I read in 2025, ask me about it. Or pick a random number between 1 and 147 and ask me to talk about that book.

Books acquired in 2025 and not yet read: 19

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[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book