Yuletide

Dec. 28th, 2025 02:33 pm
thisbluespirit: (joy)
[personal profile] thisbluespirit
I've been having a lovely [community profile] yuletide, in the right sort of place to do reading through it, if not much else! So much so, there should be a recs post to follow soon. But first of all, of course, my lovely gift!

It was for Enigma, which I was excited enough about just for that, but it is also excellent - a really well-done layered look at Tom & Hester running into Wigram a few years post-canon. Plus, my recip turned up to leave a comment on my assignment, so Yuletide 2025 is a win! \o/ (Even more so, as that other Enigma ficlet I mentioned? The author replied to my comment to say that they'd watched the film because of my promo post, so double yay and bonus outside-of-Yule ficlets!)

After the End (1472 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tom Jericho, Hester Wallace, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: Summer 1949. An encounter in a Parisian park.

Weekly (ish) check in

Dec. 28th, 2025 10:23 pm
fred_mouse: drawing of mouse settling in for the night in a tin, with a bandana for a blanket (cleaning)
[personal profile] fred_mouse posting in [community profile] unclutter

How goes the decluttering? Have you shifted anything out of the house? Found something to sort through? Had thoughts on things you can let go of?

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

Congratulations to everyone who has found and/or disposed on any clutter in the last week! I haven't had the oomph to come and post replies to celebrate you, but I cheer each comment notification when I read it.

ps: would anyone like a lowkey challenge for January? I have some ideas...

[syndicated profile] snopes_feed

Posted by Megan Loe

From fake stories about celebrities to an eerie tale about a supposed murderer, AI-generated misinformation flooded the internet in 2025.
glinda: local honestly (not a tourist)
[personal profile] glinda
It's the end of the year, and I’ve got time for one last album for this challenge.

In a year when it felt like everyone in my age bracket was obsessed with Oasis going back on tour, the equivalent band for me, Pulp, released a new album and went out on tour. (I was 11 going on 12 when I first heard Disco 2000, it was on a funny shaped sample CD that my dad got as a freebie somewhere, he brought it home, handed it to me and said ‘you’re going to love that one’ and I was hugely annoyed he was right. Different Class was the album that defined my teen years - it rewired something in my brain.) I’m mostly glad I didn’t try and get tickets after all, the surprisingly large number of clips of their Glasgow gig, were up in the gods of the Hydro which is realistically where I’d have ended up and overall if I couldn’t have been down on the floor, I was just as well just watching their ‘surprise’ Glastonbury gig. (It was the 30th anniversary of their classic Glasto performance when they were at the height of their fame.) I really loved both the singles they released from it - I was doing a lot of driving for work, and despite how much 6Music over played them both, I never got sick of either track - and the new bits I heard on the Glasto set so I fully intended to pick up a copy of the album - More. I just never got round to it, until the end of November when I was looking for a pick me up in HMV and spotted a ‘colour’ vinyl edition in the twofer deal - I got Air’s Moon Safari an album I’ve loved for years, but only ever had it ripped from an friend’s copy - and knew that was exactly what I needed.

(And because Pulp absolutely know their audience, particularly for the vinyl edition, there's an insert with both production details and all the lyrics - seriously bands underestimate how much added value having the lyrics provides. Also I got the 'green' vinyl addition and it's just a gorgeous shade of bottle green which makes a gorgeous contrast with the orange on the central label. Just nice simple design. When Jarvis and Candida from the band were interviewed by Jo Whiley after the Glastonbury gig, Candida noted that when they’d all got together to rehearse they’d felt excited to make music together again for the first time in ages and I think you can tell, it really feels like an album made by a band enjoying making music together. I mean they’ve been a band together for longer than my entire life, when they released their breakout album His and Hers in 1994 they’d been going for like 16 years! It’s nice to think they just get back together every so often because it’s still fun to make music together.)

It was a great choice. Got to Have Love and Spike Island are still clearly the stand out tracks - classic Pulp tracks - but listening to it on vinyl, just letting it play while I was doing other things was a great way to let the rest of the album soak into my brain. Tracks I’d probably have skipped over in digital format, or even just on CD for being a bit blah, have settled into my brain and become favourites. It’s such a middle-aged album and I love it, just listening to Jarvis’ wry dead-pan commentary on life and love, that mixture of cynicism and hopefulness that is their trademark, is soothing to me. The stripped back beauty of some tracks versus the lush production of tracks like The Hymn of the North an album that reminds me why I still love this band so much. I was going to pick out my favourite tracks to talk about - Grown ups and Background Noise - but the more I listen to the album the more I fall in love with it all the tracks. It’s not often that one of your favourite bands from your teens gets back together and makes one of their best albums - I’ve been lucky Skunk Anansie came back with a banger in the form of Black Traffic but that was 2013, I think, it doesn’t happen a lot - and I’m so glad they did.

Just one thing: 28 December 2025

Dec. 28th, 2025 07:48 am
[personal profile] jazzyjj posting in [community profile] awesomeers
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Motorsport Day Out

Dec. 28th, 2025 01:47 pm
kitarella_imagines: 2024 riders (MotoGP race)
[personal profile] kitarella_imagines
We just went to our local motocross track for a couple of hours watching the racing! Well, the riders were just practising as a special Christmas session.

A man online said 'if you like watching motor racing, go to your local track and support them.' So we did! I found the nearest track, a 10 minute drive away, and had a bit of fun watching the riders. It was very cold though so we didn't stay long.

And it was all free! Free parking, free spectating. We paid nothing! Which was a huge attraction.

We are experienced enough to know what to wear by now however. It is 5 or 6 layers, FYI. I had 2 layers of underwear, t-shirt, cardigan, thick coat with a hood. Knee socks, wellies, woolly hat, woolly tube scarf, gloves. If you go watching motor racing in any sort of cold season (i.e. September to April in Britain), that is what you need.

So we'll definitely do that again! We thought, even if we go and it's not fun, it was only a 10 minute drive. But it was fun, parking was easy and although we tried to be too clever finding a short cut back home that was down tiny country lanes, we made it there and back safely.

Murder For Two: Christmas Edition

Dec. 28th, 2025 11:58 pm
meteordust: (Default)
[personal profile] meteordust
I saw this musical at the start of December at the Hayes Theatre. I'd never heard of it before. I hadn't even planned on seeing it.

What I had planned on seeing was Merry and Bright, a play about a department store Mrs Claus, who gets sacked from her decades-long job right before Christmas, and decides she won't give up without a fight. Starring the legendary Nancye Hayes, for whom the Hayes Theatre is named. It sounded fun and heartwarming. Unfortunately the run had to be cancelled due to actor unavailability. So this show was the replacement.

The premise is a classic locked room murder mystery. The twist is that there are only two actors: one playing the detective, and the other playing all the suspects.

Unlike other musicals with actors playing multiple characters, there were no costume changes! The actors conveyed the different characters with changes in voice and posture, often switching between characters several times in the same scene.

This was done in a broad comedy way. There were cheesy accents (the wife was played with a Southern accent, and the psychiatrist was played with a German accent) and visual shorthand (like the niece standing with her hands on her hips and her feet planted apart, or the ballerina posed in a plie with a duck face expression). Some of it was a bit panto, but it was effective.

This is very much a theatre production that has to be a theatre production. Pretending other characters we couldn't see were in the same scene, made it feel like a game of make-believe the actors and the audience were playing together, where we're all suspending our disbelief.

It led to surprises like the sudden introduction of a boys' choir that had been in the room all along. Or the fourth wall break where the detective was speaking to one suspect and demanded to speak to another, but the first suspect refused to yield way and let the other suspect appear.

I enjoyed the genderplay of the actors playing characters of different genders. It helped make some of the noir detective tropes feel less cliched.

The mystery had its share of red herrings, everyone with a motive and a secret to hide, and a satisfying resolution.

The songs were reasonably fun and entertaining. But what I was most impressed by was the music. As the promo said of the two actors: "Together, they play every character. They also play the piano." The actors play the piano! Usually taking turns to play the background music while the other person is acting in the foreground, but sometimes playing a duet.

And the Christmas Edition thing? Apparently, it's just the standard version of the musical, but with festive season references shoehorned in, which they lampshade up front.

Yuletide!

Dec. 28th, 2025 01:27 pm
daegaer: (snowglobe cat)
[personal profile] daegaer
I got THREE lovely fics in Yuletide, two Hut 33 and one Saiyuki Gaiden.

Keeping up with the Fanshawe-Marshalls (8160 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Hut 33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Archie (Hut 33), Charles Gardiner, Gordon (Hut 33), Joshua Fanshawe-Marshall, Minka (Hut 33), Mrs Best (Hut 33)
Additional Tags: friendship if you squint, Canon Typical Shenanigans


Time flies like a knife (811 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hut 33, Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Minka (Hut 33), Archie (Hut 33), Charles Gardiner, Joshua Fanshawe-Marshall, Tenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Gordon (Hut 33)


Prince of Flowers (790 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Saiyuki Gaiden
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Konzen Douji, Original Characters, Tenpou Gensui, Son Goku (Saiyuki), Kenren Taishou
Additional Tags: gatherings and events, Gods, Attempted Kidnapping, Food, Temptation
Summary: At an event thrown by the Goddess of Mercy, Konzen and his charge encounter a very flowery deity.

All are well worth your immediate attention!

I wrote four fics - I'd say "See if you can guess which", but given the Great Revealing it wouldn't be much of a challenge (wouldn't be anyway - as always, I'm visible from space).

Day 27 Summary Post

Dec. 28th, 2025 07:53 am
torino10154: Colored holidays lights (Xmas_Lights)
[personal profile] torino10154 posting in [community profile] adventdrabbles
Here's the summary of entries we got for December 27th. Do check them out and then give the creators some love. ♥

Harry Potter
[personal profile] digthewriter wrote Where He Belonged - Neville/Charlie
[personal profile] torino10154 wrote Observing the Formalities [AO3] - Harry/Draco
[personal profile] enchanted_jae wrote Mistletoe's for Two - Harry/Draco, ocs
[personal profile] goddess47 wrote Under the Mistletoe - Harry/Severus

Let us know if there are any omissions or errors. Thanks!
beanside: Alastor from Hazbin Hotel (Alastor)
[personal profile] beanside
Another early morning thanks to a small kitty who was determined that I should get up. I tried to tell her that it was Sunday, and I could sleep in, but nooo, I had to get up and feed her. She sat on me and yanked on my blankets with her little claws. She's very persistent. After I fed her, I tried to go back to sleep, but that wasn't happening. I was now Awake and Annoyed about it. So I got up. Now I'm sitting in the living room, just kind of relaxing. Jess and I may go out for lunch today, but that's the only thing I have planned.

Work yesterday was a blip. I took three calls in 4 hours. I spent most of the time chatting with friends both work and non. By the time 12pm rolled around, my phone was down to 50% from me being on it so much. Fortunately, I did get a new charger for my desk. I was charging it off my computer, but I'm paranoid about getting dinged for a security risk, so I just got a plug.

I was ready to murder my sister. Our freezer is full. She's seen me do the fridge tetris. So why in fucks. name would you order a bunch of non-essential frozen shit? Most of it is residing in the fridge. In trying to Jenga, she was making a ton of noise, dropping shit, and cussing. My desk is literally less than 10 feet from the fridge/freezer. I was working. What the ever living fuck?

Once I finished work, we relaxed for a little while while she showed us every cute dog and baby on her feed. I don't object to either, but as I was trying to watch a video on our cruise ship, it was moderately annoying.

Finally at 2:30, she went out and silence descended. We watched the last four episodes of Hazbin Hotel, which was great. I really enjoy the character in my profile pic. He's going to be a big. bad one of these seasons. His name is Alastor and he's amazing. Snarky, full of himself, and utterly hysterical. He was kind of the hero of the season, by being a manipulative, scheming little asshole. I'll be sad when I'm supposed to root against him, but for now, I love him so. He is my blorbo. No more episodes until 2027 I think. So that's sad, but I want them to let their animator's sleep and have a living wage, so I will wait. Amazon as already ordered the next two seasons, so that's awesome.

After that, we had dinner and watched some of the Ghost Rite Here, Rite Now concert. Unfortunately, about a third of the way through, the dog wanted to be taken in the bedroom and snuggled, so we laid in there and watched all the clips of the concerts as shown in Ghost's Ghoulbanger's Ball. It was nice, and we snuggled the dog and watched videos.

Eventually, my 5am morning caught up with me, and I had to go to bed. My sister got home soon after, so I'm glad Jess wasn't up until too late.

I was out for Comic Con the day they asked for volunteers for January Saturdays, and I didn't bother on Monday whe I got back, so I have no Saturdays in January. Honestly, the money is nice, but it's not so much that I'll miss it. Our bills are fine on what I get normally. It'll be nice to have the ability to sleep in on Saturdays.

I got a really sweet compliment yesterday from [personal profile] summerstorm about one of my homebrew worlds. They're helping me with their graphic design skills, making some maps for my next campaign. The world is barely fleshed out, with some of the basics worked in, but they were very complimentary, and that was really sweet. Totally made my day.

This is the game that I'm considering putting on Drive Thru RPG once I finish writing it, so that people can buy it and run it for themselves. It's nice to have someone who's not involved in the campaign that I can use as a sounding board. (They are of course, getting credit and profit sharing!)

Maybe I'll work on that this morning some. Part of the challenge is that I'm working on tying this into the players backstories, so I need to strip that out, yet still make it compelling. I think I can do it, but it'll be a lot of work. It cant be worse than some of the premade modules that Wizards of the Coast has put out.

And on that note, if I'm going to work on it, I should do that. Everyone have an awesome Sunday!
linaewen: Girl Writing (Girl Writing)
[personal profile] linaewen posting in [community profile] writethisfanfic
 Hello on Sunday! What kind of a writing day has it been so far today -- or if today hasn't gotten going yet, how did you fare yesterday?
 
       - I thought about my fic once or twice
       - I wrote
       - I did some planning and/or outlining
       - I did research and/or canon review
       - I edited
       - I've sent my fic off to my beta
       - I posted today!
       - I'm taking a break
       - I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment
 
Sunday Discussion:  It's a new writing week, and the last week of the current month (and the current year!).  How are you doing so far with meeting writing goals for the month?
badly_knitted: (B5)
[personal profile] badly_knitted posting in [community profile] fan_flashworks

Title: Separate Pages
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author: [personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: G’Kar, Londo.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 250
Spoilers/Setting: No Surrender, No Retreat.
Summary: G’kar considers Londo’s proposal.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 501: Amnesty 83, using Challenge 472: Sign.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
A/N: Double drabble and a half, 250 words.





(no subject)

Dec. 28th, 2025 09:19 pm
thawrecka: (Default)
[personal profile] thawrecka
I feel like I've watched a lot and read a lot this week and achieved nothing. Which is great.

Like everyone else on the planet, apparently, I watched Heated Rivalry, which has great shot composition and editing and sound design and in general is just so well directed I'm in awe of it, but also it's a nice romance. Kind of want to rewatch just because I'm in awe of how well crafted it is! The romance is nice, too.

Watched two episodes of Dare You to Death, a cheesy Thai BL about a cop duo with belligerent sexual tension trying to solve a series of murders targeting a group of university students (one of whom one of the cops is related to). Which is not like especially good, but there's some interesting moments and fun styling.

And the leads of that are also in The Heart Killers, which I watched three episodes of. Which is, I kid you not, a modern Thai BL take on Taming of the Shrew but make it assassins that work in a burger joint. It's... uh... very stylish? I don't know if it's good or not? I'm not sure if I'm compelled when I watch it, and I'm mostly bewildered when I think about it, but also I know it has a lot of fans.

I watched 10Dance (2025), a gay Japanese dancesport romance film on Netflix, which has structural problems and utterly pedestrian direction. It's fine, I guess? There are interesting elements that are only vaguely touched on, and I'm given to understand those are covered more deeply in depth in the manga on which it is based, but I'm not interested enough to read it. Takeuchi Ryoma is very good in this, though.

One and a half episodes of Realm's Night Rain Dreamlike, a homoerotic wuxia mini drama that is clearly ripping off (among other things) Word of Honor, and I'm not mad at it. And as it's a mini drama, it's certainly not bloodless... Filtered to high heaven, though, to the point it almost seems kind of blurry, which is a shame.

...other things I'm not mentioning because I wrote Yuletide fic about them...

I cannot begin to tell you how much YouTube I have watched. I've literally paused a YouTube video to post this right now 🤣 A lot of which is watching and rewatching makeup videos, like 뷰티숨BEAUTYSOOM's videos going around the world and getting makeup done in different places (so many different styles!) as well as getting her makeup done in different styles in South Korea. It's always so fascinating watching the different styles and how they emphasise different parts of the face.

335 | rec-cember, week four

Dec. 28th, 2025 10:59 am
straightforwardly: a black & white cat twining around a girl's legs; both are outside. (Default)
[personal profile] straightforwardly
I’ve been going back and forth as to what my final [community profile] rec_cember theme should be, and I’ve once again decided to do something slightly different. I think it’s probably obvious that I love sharing recs, and it’s probably equally obvious that the vast majority of those recs are fic recs, because fic has always been my main focus in fandom.

But this time, I think I want to rec some animatics. Specifically, animatics made for the songs from EPIC the Musical. Back during the height of my EPIC obsession this past spring/summer, I was watching many, many of the animatics on youtube, and I had the intention of making a recs list of my favorites. Obviously, I never got around to that, but it’s been lingering on my mind, so… why not now?

For these recs, I’m drawing from a list of recs I sent to a friend on discord back in August, and arranging them in the order of where the songs fall on the tracklist. There are thirteen recs in total.beneath the cut )

December Days 02025 #27: Sysadmin

Dec. 27th, 2025 11:20 pm
silveradept: A head shot of a  librarian in a floral print shirt wearing goggles with text squiggles on them, holding a pencil. (Librarian Goggles)
[personal profile] silveradept
It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

27: Sysadmin )

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