adawritesfic | Network

Yuletide very pleasant; usually I get a comment on an old fic or two in a fandom someone has rediscovered through Yuletide and gone on a deep dive for, but not this year!

About three or four inches of snow (7-10cm) fell overnight and I shoveled my front sidewalk and steps, because the snow removal guys had done next door but not us (?), and then tromped down to my assigned house in the neighborhood, where I shoveled the longest driveway in Rhode Island and enough sidewalk for two houses and what felt like two flights of front steps. Thank goodness it was light and powdery, and almost all of the above was in good repair so I didn't have to fight the asphalt like last year, but I earned every bite of the steak and eggs and homefries (not nearly as good as last time) at the diner.

And then C. and her kid and I went to the ZOO and saw CREATURES. Macaws! Ibis! Elephants! A two-year-old giraffe who is already trying to fuck the other giraffes in the enclosure (this is a good thing, they want genetically-diverse babies from him) but he's not tall enough yet! An anaconda 99.8% percent in the water in its tank, I wanted to boop its snout SO MUCH. Red pandas that were so fluffy they looked fake. The river otters were having so much fun in the snow and splashing in their pool. The docents were super friendly and the French fries were delicious. Would 100% zoo again.

Then a hot bath and a nap. Bliss.

loganberrybunny

Public

330/365: Hagley Hall, Bewdley
Click for a larger, sharper image
It was off to the Severn Valley Railway today for a few hours on the trains. The rain just about held off, although it became very murky and gloomy by mid-afternoon. The trains were pretty busy, and I had to stand for half my first journey. Bridgnorth town centre was also packed, but fortunately the station refreshment room had space for me to have a coffee and a beef and veg pasty. Quite a relaxed day overall, certainly compared to the big gala events I'm more used to attending, but that was part of its appeal. Here's my first train of the day, 4930 Hagley Hall (which turns 97 in May) arriving at Bewdley station.

Current Mood: chipper

kaberett

I am now noticing that it is in fact Fairly Consistent that I can Do More in terms of Pilates if I'm doing it at a rate of Two Full Sessions A Week rather than three. I am Somewhat Dismayed at now needing to go "okay, this clearly means I'm not fully recovering doing what I'm currently doing at a rate of every other day-ish, which means I will derive more benefit if I do less of the activity"; I am trying to cheer myself up by persuading myself that what it Actually Means that I get to play with a greater variety of Colouring Things In on The Sticker Chart.

I am amused that I am about as Oh No This Is Terrible about Officially Reducing My Mat Time as I am about getting onto the mat. Brains. Brains!

$wychwood: road sign is excited (gen - \o/)$

wychwood

Christmas was good but also SO MUCH. By the end of Boxing Day lunch I was trying to work out how much longer I had to stay in company, but I ended up in my mother's living room where she was silently playing a game on her new tablet and my sister's fiance was silently playing a game on his phone, and I just sat there silently reading on my phone for an hour and felt much better.

Family updates:

my sister is engaged! this came as a surprise to me and the brother who doesn't live near her, although mostly because we thought they were already engaged (there have been casual discussions about weddings going back some years)
my sister's endometriosis op in the autumn revealed that she does not in fact have endometriosis, but she did have a nasty tumour-y thing which was not cancer but apparently also not not cancer and now she is down one ovary and fallopian tube, which is particularly upsetting for her because all of this was part of the fertility investigations they've been working on
my middle nephew is dating a boy! He is definitely the least surprising candidate for this out of my niblings. Apparently he is not presently interested in labels, only in dating the person he likes, which seems perfectly reasonable to me, particularly since he's fourteen

Apparently I made a good decision to leave when I did on Christmas Day since several family members were already pretty drunk, and it sounds like it got significantly worse after I left! Not in a bad way - my family are generally very well-behaved drunks, they just enjoy themselves - but at least one person apparently needed considerable help to get upstairs to bed. Mum said "they were singing all sorts of things to Dad's guitar! Oasis and Simon & Garfunkel and lots of things!"; I said that sounded nice and she said "IT WASN'T" (I gather they were fairly raucous...)

Both my parents stayed home from the Boxing Day walk this year, which meant that for the first time in years I was not solely responsible for the cooking, and was surprisingly stressful (Dad: "Oh yes we can cook all six of those things in the last half hour before lunch!" Me, silently: YOU CAN FIT A MAXIMUM OF TWO THINGS INTO THE OVEN, AND I DON'T BELIEVE YOU HAVE ACCESS TO TIME TRAVEL). However my mildly panicked promptings did cause enough things to happen early that it wasn't a disaster (three or four things were cooked while we were eating and brought up as additional items, but that's fine). They didn't want to cook things early and let them get cold waiting around, which is very reasonable, but also if you are trying to cook:

three trays of sausage rolls (vegetarian spanakopita; sage and onion; cheese; chorizo; black pudding; "Chinese takeaway" (with five-spice, hoisin and soy sauces); homemade by my sister's fiance and apparently all very delicious - obviously I only had the spanakopita ones)
two trays of cheese potatoes
two sticks of garlic bread
a tray of pigs in blankets
three small trays of brie and cranberry parcels
a pack of chicken goujons
a small tray of beef and stuffing Yorkshire puddings(?!?)
a Greek omelette / fritatta thing

you cannot in fact do them all at once even if you have a four-oven Aga. Something is going to be lukewarm and this is simply a fact of reality. Particularly since the temperature starts dropping when you keep opening and closing the door, cooking lots of frozen items in it, etc etc, so the cooking times on the packaging become more and more distant from reality (the 17-minute brie and cranberry parcels had I think 35 minutes in the end and were only barely beginning to brown then).

Mum was pretty down about food things because - well, ok, she has pretty much spent six months during her chemo eating the exact same meals every day at the exact same times, which has been working for her, but means she does not yet have any real idea how to calculate the appropriate medication for meals with different food in them, or how to arrange them around eating at different times, or how to schedule everything so that she can still eat her before-bed weetabix to prevent any overnight hypos. I'm fairly sure this is a one-time problem, because by next year she'll have varied her diet and activity sufficiently to be able to work it out better. But right now she's feeling very confronted by how not-"normal" her life is, and it's been no fun for her.

But everyone had enough to eat and there were left-overs, so it was a success. Then I came home and did nothing and talked to no one and hopefully tomorrow I will have energy to start on my to-do list backlog.

musesfool

Christmas was lovely! On Christmas Eve, it was just me, my sister, and my brother-in-law, so we ordered in and watched a godawful Hallmark Christmas movie with Teri Hatcher in it. Then they went to bed and I did a Die Hard rewatch - I hadn't seen it in some number of years and for all its flaws, it is still a good time.

Christmas morning, my niece and her husband came over so Baby Miss L could unwrap the first set of presents - she still gets bored with it and wants to play with whatever she's opened instead of opening the next gift, so it's a process - and she LOVED the 30 second dance party button, as I knew she would. I am SO HAPPY I saw it somewhere (Wirecutter, maybe?) and ordered it, and that it arrived in time for me to see her play with it. (The adults got a kick out of it too, but it was hilarious watching her run up and press it each time it ended.) She liked the dinosaur cape and the books (especially "The Little Book of Cheese," which is in the same series as "The Little Book of Pasta," which I got for her last year and which she LOVES - apparently she will just bust out with "FARFALLE!" at any given moment), but did not care about the wings at all. Also when Alyssa told her I would be there, she said, "books!" so she knows I am the books and clothes aunt. *g*

The while elephant swap was pretty hilarious too, and my niece Nicki ended up with the cat-shaped measuring cups and spoons that were my contribution. I got a waterproof bluetooth speaker I'm going to have to set up in the bathroom to have tunes in the shower.

The funfetti cupcakes were a big hit. (I made sure to put cream cheese frosting on the ones for my sister; she tried one with the American buttercream and made the same face I made when I tasted it - it's disgustingly sweet.) There's picture of this year's selection here.

As for gifts, I received a handful of gift cards, a KRYPTO squishmallow from Baby Miss L, a pair of earrings made from chips of vintage pyrex, a stand mixer tree ornament, a copy of Dorrie's Anytime Cakes, some candles, and a pair of super warm and fuzzy grippy socks. I also bought myself a new winter coat, a new 9 x 13" pyrex baking dish, a new vibrator, some new bras, and a new pair of black ankle boots, so I'm doing all right in the gift department. *g*

Yesterday, I got home early and vegged out for most of the day. And then it snowed, just like they said it would!

Today, I made a new batch of dough and tomorrow I'll finish baking off the fig cookies for this year. I also want to try those orange cranberry rolls now that I have room in the fridge to let them rise overnight. I still have so many eggs left over, though, so I see at least one frittata in my future, plus at least one batch of Nadiya's egg wraps, which are delicious and I recommend them highly!

Now I should look into having dinner and maybe watching the Rangers game.

*

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Golden - Huntr/x

luzula

Please check in here! It is late and I had a little alcohol, so I am too tired to write a proper post. Did not write. Will edit in the tally later. As for my farm news, we drank my homemade cherry wine, which came out great.

kalira posting in

smallfandomfest

Title: Rally the Pack
Author:

kalira
Fandom: Princess Mononoke
Ship/Characters: San & wolf brothers
Rating/Category: T/Gen
Prompt: Princess Mononoke, San, pack is everything
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: A curious cub ventures close to human children playing at the forest's edge, and San learns anew where her trust must lie - and where it never may.
Notes/Warnings: pre-canon with indeterminately young San and wolf brothers (for whom I have used the names Shou and Niiya, spinning off San read as three)
Wordcount: 850

Read on AO3

tozka

A puffy snowman sticker on a bright red pole. The snowman has a top hat, red scarf and little red mittens. It’s smiling!

📍Phoenix, Arizona - December 2025 / All Photos / Pixelfed

overmore posting in

fandomcalendar

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petra

I am going through my traditional "How many fests and challenges can I imagine in a week?"

I don't think I'm doing Psychic Wolves this year.

On the other hand, Té suggested a fest of blorbos touching the Rockstar Lestat and now I want it.

hannah points out that, if we want to know what Tom Cruise's Rockstar Lestat would have looked like, we have but to consult this video of Cruise in a jukebox musical singing "Pour Some Sugar On Me."

...it's been a really long time since I was sexually attracted to Tom Cruise, but apparently

hannah has the secret sauce.

Also, I now want vampires:

+ the New Burbage Festival (OMG DARREN NICHOLS) (Slings & Arrows)

+ on G-ERTI (they can only fly at night) (Cabin Pressure)

+ working for Oracle (Birds of Prey and a half)

+ visiting Chicago in the era of the Mountie (experimental hair for all who will) (due South)

+ what-ho'ing Bertram Wilberforce Wooster

+ in the world of the Five Gods (hello, is this The Bastard, I have your king shit devoté on hold) (Chalion)

+ dealing with the Light and the Dark, and falling somewhere between (Dark is Rising)

~~+ eating hockey players~~

+ being in the future and baffling Aral Vorkosigan with being a) not soldiers and b) hot AT THE SAME TIME (Vorkosigan Saga)

+ and Muppets (Lestat as lone "human"?)

+ in Narnia (Aslan would shit a lit. brick)

+ becoming Black Ribboners (time for a sing-song around the harmonium! NOT LIKE THAT, LESTAT) (Discworld)

+ in Night Vale (it's Tuesday)

+ mad, in a coma, AND back in time -- the Life on Mars trifecta -- let's see Lestat trying to eat Gene Hunt

+ calling Car Talk

+ hiring Neal Caffrey to do a spot of forgery (White Collar)

+ with war horses who correspond with Copenhagen and Marengo, gaily (Warhorses of Letters)

+ fit as a fiddle and ready for love (would they love or loathe Lockwood and Lamont?) (Singin' in the Rain)

+ come on Darth Vader gold glitter looks Great on you

+ choosing the lesser of two weevils (Aubreyad)

+ ...okay i just died a little over quentin coldwater fanboying the vampire lestat (The Magicians)

+ side-eyeing and being side-eyed by Magneto (X-Men)

+ and I had a good belly laugh at Lestat meeting Felix Harrowgate: battle of the asshole first-person narrators who think they are special

+ Zaphod! Beeblebrox! would so get it on with Lestat! (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

+ How do you reckon vampires get on with thalergy? Let's Find Out (The Locked Tomb)

+ How do you reckon vampires get on with constructs? Send Lestat to Preservation! (Murderbot)

+ okay hear me out Grantaire is weak for opinionated blonds but what if he met The Wrong One (Les Misérables)

+ it's already a doctor who episode innit but let's get some harkness up in this joint

+ Awful Sykes has a crush and so does Torquil (Archer's Goon)

+ RIVERS OF LONDON which body of water can we blame everyone on

+ Last Week Tonight: Our main story concerns The "Vampire" Lestat (of course John does quote fingers)

+ Jacky Faber met our hero at some point in her meanderings. I bet they shared a stage.

+ James Flint. BWAHAHAHA. WOULD HIT THAT. (Black Sails)

+ Falsettos: writes. itself. Louis IS the gay plague.

+ did you ever want to see Lestat fuck a muppet wearing leather? I DO I DO (Farscape)

+ truly Julian Bashir needs his not-boyfriend to run interference or he's gonna get eaten (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

+ and then I hit Battlestar Galactica (reboot) which seems like a Terrible place to be a vampire but they'd have fun eating Gaius

+ Pern! is in the future! it can have Vampires if it wants 'em! Weirdest Harper Ever.

+ What happens with MCU? I couldn't begin to tell you. But there must be a clever answer.

+ Community: the study group goes to a concert and they all crush, each in their own way. Annie gets... scary.

+ I very much want Ray Person singing The Vampire Lestat across Iraq, but given the givens it makes me want to cry right now. (Generation: Kill, RIP James Ransone)

+ Scott & Bailey -- the teenage girls and Aunt Rachel bond over their crushes

+ Pamela Dean's Tam Lin has immortals. I want to see them emoting at Rice's.

+ And our wailing wonder, Lestat de Lioncourt. // Why, thank you, Sandi. (QI, the other guests are Phill Jupitus and Sue Perkins, because it's a Musical Episode)

+ ST: TOS -- Chekov and Sulu both have posters.

+ Does Venom want one? And how!

Current Mood: inspired
Current Music: In the name of love

conuly

Before I say anything, A would like you to know how extremely annoying it is that they played those "Arabian Nights" riffs every time the snake (Barry) appeared, and it would be annoying even if the plot ( Read more... )

They wouldn't shut up about it, so there we go. They're not wrong.

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/27/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 12/27/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 12/27/25 -- I raked more in the parking lot. I had to make another line. It's exhausting and inefficient and not even making the stumps all that much easier to see.

EDIT 12/27/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I've seen a fox squirrel at the hopper feeder.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

karanguni posting in

yuletide

I bring a quick 7 recs in 6 fandoms at my journal for

The Bedlam Stacks (backstory! Keita! Merrick!)
The Way of the Househusband (domesticity! But also porn!)
Antique Bakery (Ono and Tachibana in the mountains!)
Wimbledon (Peter is an idiot! But sort of okay at tennis!)
Cthulhu Mythos (Dream Cycle Randolph brings horrors to the yard!)
Snake Fight Portion of Your Thesis Defence/Rivers of London (no more need said!)

princessofgeeks

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

Current Mood: happy

rachelmanija posting in

yuletide

Recs in Chalion/World of the Five Gods - Lois McMaster Bujold, Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey, Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin, FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns, The Long Walk - Stephen King, "The Lottery" - Shirley Jackson; New Yorker RPF, Lyra series/Caught in Crystal - Patricia Wrede, Mushishi, Some Like It Hot, Watership Down - Richard Adams.

At my DW, with commentary.

petra

The reason I got a tumblr in 2013 was hockey RPF.

I have been watching my entire dashboard lose its collective mind over Heated Rivalry.

I tried to read this fic, which has in-universe fandom, one of my favorite tropes, and has a retrospective slant on what the development of hockey RPF in-universe would be like. Petra-nip.

I got as far as an in-universe primer for one of the characters, and was swamped with the combined nostalgia/trauma.

They're fictional! They can't possibly be sekrit racists or abetting rapists or not-so-sekritly shaking hands with Putin! They're not real!

And I can't do it.

I hope you are all having a wonderful time with your sinless imaginary hockey bros. I just keep thinking, "But if they were Real, they'd have Secrets that would make me Hate them."

I guess I will continue not engaging, because if I can't read an imaginary primer about an imaginary hockey player, I would be completely pants at watching the show. Primers are how I learned about real hockey players! It's a great starting place!

But not for me.

Current Mood: traumatized
Current Music: Which eliminates B and which leaves us with A

xdiorix posting in

amplificathon

(If you'd like to see previous years' master lists, 2011 is here, 2012 is here, 2013 is here, 2014 is here, 2015 is here, 2016 is here, 2017 is here, 2018 is here, 2019 is here, 2020 is here, 2021 is here, 2022 is here, 2023 is here, and 2024 is here.)

Happy 15th annual #ITPE!!!! Thank you for bearing with us despite Tumblr sabotaging us not just once, but twice.

Here’s some stats and highlights from this year’s #ITPE!

We had 73 participants this year, and you made 293 podfics for a total run time of 124 hours, 16 minutes, and 4 seconds–that’s over FIVE DAYS of audio!

We have 4 simulpods this year! Incredible things happened in The Queen’s Thief fandom with

deepestbluesky podding a gift for

likethetrench, who recorded the same story for her recipient

feelingsandtaxes, who in turn podded that story for

lady-sci. Classic #ITPE antics!

flowerparrish and

tinybluebirdcloak gifted each other the same story as a treat, with flowerparrish also receiving a podfic of a story ze gifted to another recipient. Finally,

jeremyknox |

kbirbpods and

opalsong both podded the same story for their recipients.

By far our most prolific gifter this year was flowerparrish, who (on top of modding duties) not only made 4 gifts for zir recipient (including a nearly 11 hour podfic), but also picked up 2 pinch hits and made 57 treats. Not far behind was jeremyknox | kbirbpods who also picked up a pinch hit and made 15 main gifts for faer recipients and 16 treats! Opalsong had a relatively restrained year (for her), but still made 10 gifts (nearly 10 hours of audio) for her recipient!

rhea314 was also a generous gifter this year, making 8 main gifts for her recipient and 10 treats!

pezzax was another of our prolific gifters this year, making 22 treats! We also had generous treaters in

blackestglass,

wanderingjedihistorian,

chaoskiro,

j03-05, and

wilfriede! Honorable mentions to

popcornfairy28 and

reena-jenkins for the 3 and 5.5 hour (respectively) podfics they made for their recipients, and to

betrayedbycinnamon for treating despite not being signed up to the exchange!

Finally, we'd like to extend some thank you’s to:

-Data mod

flowersforgraves for converting all the sign up data to airtable which makes matching so much easier.
-

Asymptotical and

Dragonflies_and_Katydids for creating the coding we used to generate distribution day templates.
-Our pinch hitters

alliaskisthepossibilityoflove,

flowerparrish and

jeremyknox |

kbirbpods
-And as always,

exmanhater for ITPE’s permanent hosting

Now let’s get on to what you’re really here for…..the masterlist!! Here’s the masterlist spreadsheet for this year’s exchange!

Happy listening!!!

fflo

and the back, if you're interested:

(as always, click for bigger)

ateolf

After work, Mary Beth and I went on a walk around the neighborhood. In the evening I finished reading Midnight Baby by Dory Previn. This was a book that Mary Beth had read most of to me earlier in the year, so I picked it back up to finish the rest of it. It's an extremely excellent book and having read it makes me surprised it seems to be as little well-known as it is. We ended the night with some STTNG and that's about it.

Current Mood: alright
Current Music: Jaco Pastorius - Word of Mouth

Page Summary

watersword - *yawn*
loganberrybunny - Riding the rails again
kaberett - [movement] in which I get to follow mine own teaching
wychwood - i love my family but now i need to hibernate
musesfool - but now that's how i'm getting paid
luzula - Write every day: Day 27
kalira in smallfandomfest - Fanfic, Princess Mononoke, San & wolf brothers, pack is everything
tozka - photo: spotted on my morning walk
overmore in fandomcalendar - multifandom: rewrite-a-fic 2026
petra - Happy liminal spacemas, couches!
conuly - Finally saw Zootopia 2!
ysabetwordsmith - Birdfeeding
karanguni in yuletide - 7 Recs
princessofgeeks - A few random thoughts about Heated Rivalry
rachelmanija in yuletide - Yuletide Recs!
petra - Today in Stories I Wish I Could Read
titconao3 in fandomcalendar - FRATTWEEK 8 - December 29 to January 4
xdiorix in amplificathon - #ITPE 2025 Masterlist
fflo - Postcard of the Day
ateolf - Last Fifth

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