Anyone want anything? Drabble, meta, rant, ridiculous lyrics that scan to I Had A Little Driedel, complete bullshit about a topic I know nothing about, etc? ;)


(These posts don't expire.)

As always, I'm having a great time with ficinabox, but there's still SO much of the collection that I haven't even glanced at. But I received an array of fabulous gifts, in a mix of fandoms and mediums!

Stranger Things
[fic] Jocks Are Weird (But Maybe Not That Weird?)
Steve/Eddie, 5071 words, rated E
Skinnydipping, jerk-off bets, mutual masturbation! Eddie is oblivious/disbelieving, Steve is trying really hard to seduce him. Delightful iddy premise, very fun and hot.

[fic] Hello, From Camp Winona Lake
Steve/Eddie, 6129 words, rated G
Epistolary! Twelve-year-old Eddie writes letters to Wayne from summer camp. Love young Eddie's letter-writing style! And clutching my heart over the ambiguity of the ending.

Original Work
[fic] No Shade in Shadow
Sensible Hedge Witch/Lonely Court Sorceress, 3890 words, rated G
Really lovely prose in this one! Fascinating glimpses of magic worldbuilding (tethered demons!), and a focus on a prickly, complex relationship where two very different people end up working together. Loved this very much.

[fic + logic puzzle] the love life project
Librarian in a Magic Library/Witch, 1771 words + puzzle, rated T
A librarian helps her crush figure out which book had the potion recipe she'd looking for. So charming!! The frame story is super cute, full of flirting and pining and love potions, and the puzzle is well-designed and satisfying.

[fic + logic puzzle] the search for moth man
Nobleman/Mysterious Man He Danced with at a Masquerade Ball Who Never Gave His Name, 3234 words, rated G
A pining young man and his sister work together to figure out which of the attendees at the recent masquerade he danced with! Such a delightful set-up for a puzzle! I really loved the siblings' banter and the society gossip that allowed for the clues to emerge. The puzzle was a bit tricky, which made it especially satisfying to solve. :D

Seen via kitarella_imagines a January art and comment bingo-styledfest

Link here: https://fanartfrenzy.tumblr.com/post/799939912764997632/introducing-fanart-frenzy

"Fanart Frenzy is a month-long bingo event designed to bring a wave of fanfiction-inspired fanart into the community, entirely free and unsolicited, as fandom is supposed to be, in order to stem the flow of these scammers, encourage our favorite fic writers, and liven up our fandoms. This event is anti-AI - real, human-made art only! Our first event will take place from January 1-31, 2026."

After visiting that page and using the sign up link you'll be in the queue for a bingo card.
"Then throughout January, you can make as few or as many pieces of art as you like - you can aim for a bingo, a blackout, or just pick one fic you really want to make art for. This event is about all kinds of art, not just traditional art - everything from playlists to gif sets to cookies to fiber arts, memes, and more. Anything artistic you can do inspired by a fanfic is perfect for this event.

If you don’t enjoy making art, the event also includes a Comment Challenge! During sign up, you can choose a bingo card with only art-related prompts, only commenting-related prompts, or a mix of the two. Non-artists can participate alongside artists by following the prompts to find fics in their fandoms in need of thoughtful, kind comments. (Ex. Leave a comment on a fic you’ve reread.)

You can also help us out by spreading the word! Please tell your friends and fandom communities about our event!"

I haven't done much crafting this year but what better time than Christmas? Under the cut are three projects, a needle felted bauble, a 'snowglobe' with papercraft and another 'snowglobe' with modelling clay.
( Read more... )

Thursday night we finally got our little trees up. I'd hoped to do it earlier in the month, but it kept getting put off, ha.

We have the extremely tiny silver tree, and the slightly less tiny black tree.

This year around Halloween, we got some Halloween-themed ornaments, sort of thinking we might put the black tree up around then... and we didn't. So this Christmas, we have a Halloween tree, and all the non-Halloween ornaments are crammed on the tiny silver tree, haha.


The silver tree is a bit overloaded, but I like it anyway, haha.


And in the dark.


This ornament is serving as the "star" this year. We bought this from one of the artists at the Spirits and Spirits event.


The black Halloween-for-Christmas tree! The purple lights do NOT show up on camera well at all, ha.


One of my favorite of the silly little Halloween ornaments. I love the multi-colored bats.


There are actually two strands of purple lights on the tree. One of them is also bats! (We've had these for a couple years, and keep failing to put them up.)


A slightly more true-to-life picture of the black tree, without the purple lights blinding the camera.


And one happy jack o' lantern.

Festive!

A few art recs for Stranger Things!

Putting the first few behind a cut because even the titles/descriptions have minor spoilers for season 5.

click to expand

[Steve & Dustin] by bluismie (SFW)
Devastating Steve & Dustin hug that gave me all the feels omg.

[Rockin' Robin] by wichuizz (SFW)
Poster promoting Rockin' Robin (and her radio board operator Steve). Love the retro comics style of this!

strawberries & clementines by bunnypeony (SFW)
Super sweet, flirty Robin/Vickie! I love the soft colours. And there's hand-holding!

halloween means season 2 AUs 🎃 by toktopus-art (SFW)
Steve, Max, Dustin & Eddie (implied Steve/Eddie). Very funny and cute reactions to Steve with his baseball bat!

clothes swap, as a treat by mollymurakami (SFW)
Steve/Eddie, dressed in each other's clothes! Love this, very fun.

'This Is Music' Inspired by J.C.Leyendecker by thediktatortot on bsky (SFW)
Fabulous portrait of Eddie Munson with his guitar.

I'm behind where I'd hoped, but I am still planning to send out holiday cards to... at least a handful of people!

If you'd like a holiday card from me, please let me know! I've screened comments on this post, or you can send me a DM with your address if you'd like one. <3

GetYourWordsOut: Year Eighteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

I did't do this last year but I've done it most years since 2017. For the last few times I've been doing habit goals instead of word count goals (counting days you write instead of words) but this time I'm going back to counting words for added motivation - I hope.

but james Krampus is so adorable - why would I want to escape?
Thank you for the awesome and adorable card ♥

Man, I hate underlying psychological issues that just keep coming up.

This keeps creating problems in my life, and I have got to figure out how to get over it. It's like... a pathological avoidance issue, and I *recognize it* and why isn't that enough to make it *stop*?

Basically... if I get behind on something, or leave something undone, or am unable (for whatever reason) to do something for long enough, I get so embarrassed/feel so ashamed for not having dealt with it *already*, that I become increasingly unable to do it... even as the original issue just snowballs into worse.

A big one that's finally mostly been sorted out was my dental stuff. A decade+ stretch of no insurance that meant no professional dental care, overlapping with several years living in my car that meant very little routine personal dental care... and my teeth were fucked. Years later, when I finally did get dental insurance through my job, I felt too guilty about how long it had been, and too scared of how bad it might actually be, so I just... kept not getting care. Years later, I finally went in... and yeah, I needed a lot of fillings. Somehow I had avoided needing anything more drastic than fillings, though if I'd put it off longer, it would only have gotten worse. If I'd taken care of it years before, when insurance was first available to me, it could have been far less bad.

In the past, this is how I had medical bills from an ER visit sent to collections. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't pay, because I wasn't insured, and was living in my car, that... I just kept ignoring it, never even tried to get on a payment plan of any kind, and just let it go to collections and fuck my credit permanently.

A current one is the truck. Vehicle stuff makes me inordinately anxious, typically due to cost. So many times, when something has gone wrong enough to need fixing, it's been so expensive that we can't afford it, or can barely do so. Preventive maintenance then gets trapped in the same anxiety of "what if they find something else wrong?"
I've been smelling a coolant leak for a couple of months, and have just... not done anything about it. I finally asked a coworker and his neighbor (both of them car guys) to take a look at it, and despite really wanting to put it off until after the holidays (because I love having a justification to put the dreaded thing off), we set up a time, and they looked at it on Monday. There is a crack all along the radiator, and it is *hemorrhaging* coolant all over basically everything under the hood. More worryingly, the truck was basically entirely out of oil, which was damn close to being catastrophic, and not even something I'd been even slightly concerned over. (And my coworker was very nice when I told him that I was embarrassed, but also gave me The Look about not taking the care that I should.)
[This does frustrate me mildly, because I do almost literally no driving, and just sort of leave it to Alex to keep an eye on things like that, but I need to be checking it myself.]
We need to replace the radiator (plus unrelatedly, it needs the pump for the windshield wiper fluid replaced.) They'll order the parts, give us a break on the labor, and get the work done as soon as possible. They also want to ultimately give the transmission a flush, as well as replacing the differential fluid. (Which it should get - we're over 200k miles at this point.) The same work would likely have been needed if I'd gotten it looked at right away, but putting it off only made it worse, and meant that the oil got that much closer to being catastrophic. We'll be able to afford what needs doing, but it was *so close* to being something that would have been disastrous.

The same thing happens about much lower-stakes issues, too:

Last year, I had taken so long to get some editing work done for a friend, that I just... kept not working on it, not talking to her, and stewing in my guilt over it for months.

One I vaguely mentioned a month or so ago: looking at things like... books I want to read. There are a lot of classics that I want to read, like Tolkien and Le Guin, but because *I feel guilty that I haven't read them yet*, I've put off reading them *at all.*

Basically, this is a STUPID pattern, and I wish that knowing it was stupid was enough to make it STOP.

I'm trying to make sure that I push through when I recognize it happening, and so far the most major disasters have been avoided. Eventually taking the plunge to deal with the thing has almost always been significantly less bad than the knots I tie myself in for weeks/months/years beforehand, AND YET.

It sucks and I hate it.

Aaaand, another piece of art for my current obsession!



On AO3 and tumblr

It's Friday tomorrow, yay!

Dine and Killerweasel, I received your cards today, thank you both very much.Oddly the one from KW had been opened. There was no notation to indicte when or where or why. As I recall when I used to buy off ebay any parcel coming from the states was stamped to indicate it was opened at the border. Maybe the pretty ribbon that had a thin strip of wire triggered a beep from something. Who knows? In any event, alls well, but I just found it a bit strange.

I played very little Silksong in the past 1-2 weeks and did pretty much everything I wanted to in my first playthrough (before the DLCs come out) so now is a good time to post the "epilogue" notes.

( Things I did after the true ending )

( Some more thoughts )

( LPs I watched )

I already know what I want to play next: Hades 2, of course. (But probably not this year, I have a huge backlog of books etc.)

I've been feeling more strongly about trying to get reading done than I have been getting writing done lately, while also staring in dismay at how long that TBR list is growing. (The more books I read, the more I end up hearing about, and the more I end up wanting to read. Somehow.)

One of the things I've been considering as I look back at my reading for this year is... I think I need to be a bit meaner on my rating scale, haha.

And I think "mean" is the wrong word: but it feels "mean" when I give anything under a 4 out of 5. As such, I've given way more 4s than any other rating, even when a handful of those were books that I really did end up feeling fairly neutrally toward, which really should be more of a 3. At least a few of the things that I have given 3s to really should be 2s, because in some cases I have remained salty about how much I didn't like it, haha. Even a few of the 5s should probably more properly be 4s, but because they were better than some of the should-have-been-3s, their ratings got nudged up. Basically, the whole scale is out of whack.

Tumblr user "aromanticduck" shared the following chart to explain how they give ratings:



"Spicy" on the chart indicates that the work inspires some strong feelings, where "bland" indicates that it doesn't leave much of a lasting impression. (I quoted this chart a couple months ago, recalling the spicy vs. bland 3s, but have now actually found the original.)

I really like this chart!

As they explain in their reasoning, this makes 5s and 1s both fairly difficult to achieve, because there's only one way to get there. 3s are easiest to get on the chart, and would theoretically be the most common rating.

Now, I don't think that a 3 necessarily has to be the average rating that I'm giving. I am curating my reading list, and minus a handful of wildcards, I am trying to read things that I expect to enjoy. It would make sense for 4s to be pretty common, if the things I think will appeal to me actually do so! Even so, I know that in some cases I've been giving 4s because I really liked something, and sometimes the 4s mean that it was just... fine.

(Of course, blah blah, I always reserve the right to add in my subjective feelings. Like... Maeve Fly was a 2.5 for me, because I don't like the subgenre. For someone who likes that subgenre better, it could be an easy 5! I thought the writing and character work was great; I just didn't like it. It was subjectively wrong for me, which is not objectively saying "there were too many things wrong with this". Vice versa, there are things that could be an objective 3, but I had such a great time, I'm going to give it higher.)

I think I'm going to go back through my reviews from this year and try to reassess some of them, really trying to keep the chart in mind, because I want to be able to look back at things and see a fairly accurate view of what I liked or didn't.

I really do have to get over feeling like giving a 3 is mean, though. Even when I like the author, even when there were good points to the book, even when it's part of a series I enjoy...

(I think I've been poisoned by the way star ratings work for businesses, where basically anything under a perfect 5 gets some employee yelled at, and a 3 can get you shut down...)

These episodes dropped during a busy time, so I'm only now caught up. ( Spoilers behind the cut )

My tree is up at fandomtrees! I always have a blast with these kinds of events, so looking forward to perusing all the trees soon. :D

* * * * *

A trio of epistolary recs for rec_cember!

#toobadsosad by DontStopHerNow
Selfie, Eliza/Henry, 1100 words, no archive warnings apply
This is a hysterical texting fic with sharp, funny character voices! And it makes excellent use of timestamps and emoji to add to the story.

Eliza 9:18pm : Freddy and I broke up again. #toobadsosad
Eliza 9:18pm : It's really for good this time.
(Read by Henry at 9:36pm)

A gentle man and a scholar by isevsianne
Our Flag Means Death, Ed/Stede, 7500 words, no archive warnings apply
Modern AU consisting of a series of emails about letters. Contains outrageous flirting and even more outrageous obliviousness. Very cute and fun!

Stede Bonnet unearths potential evidence that his 18th century ancestor could be the Gentleman Pirate, and contacts a top pirate historian Edward Teach, an expert on the dreaded pirate Blackbeard, to get to the bottom of it. An email correspondence sparks something more than just academic research.

from the mortal realm by mixtapestar
Dimension 20: A Court of Fey and Flowers, Lady Chirp & Lord Squak, 500 words, no archive warnings apply
Delightfully charming and fun post-canon letter, featuring excellent puns and an excellently frothy Chirp voice.

Lady Chirp Featherfowl's letter to her dearest cousin, Lord Squak Airavis.

I realized today that a lot of my friends don't know about what I've gone through this year.

Last year in June I moved back to Minnesota to look after my dad. My mom was in the hospital for a month and then moved to a nursing home with sudden-onset dementia (B1 deficiency) secondary to cancer.

I intended to support them temporarily but decided to make it a more permanent move to support them and their many animals. I struggled and kept expecting other family members to step up, but they did not.

I was hospitalized in May 2025 after a seizure. (Two seizures in 3 years means a new diagnosis of epilepsy.) I am missing about a week or 2 of memories from directly after that experience, so I don't know for sure what happened. I was busy looking after my dad and the animals, and then coordinating a move for my parents into assisted living, which I mostly did myself, While recovering from a seizure, with a broken rib.

I don't know why-- again, I don't remember (likely from medication side effects), but no one from the family came to help me directly after the seizure. My dad (who has dementia) and I did it alone. I'm angry about it and need people to know.

I supported my family for a year and half and did not receive any funds, no salary, very little emotional or logistical help from my brother, his wife, or his 4 healthy teenage kids. There is a wider extended family and they didn't show up either. We got some occasional visits but it wasn't enough.

Since moving my parents into assisted living, I have continued to support them in many ways, including looking after their farm and animals, again with no funds.

This week I asked my brother to help me advocate with my dad, to get me some money. He said no. He believes we should sell the farm (where I am now living). He made no mention of any provisions for me.

I'm obviously very upset, but the anger is at least helping me communicate about what is happening. I am reaching out to friends and various family members and trying to raise the alarm to protect myself.

I am safe for the time being but it is not the best idea for me to be living alone. I had intended to find roommates to come live here with me, but there are some barriers, including me not being the property owner, and the house being a bit of a mess. My next step is to directly talk to my parents about this situation. They both have dementia but I think they are capable of understanding my position.

I am currently unsure what the best course of action is moving forward. But I at least want folks to know what is going on. It's been very helpful to talk on the phone with friends who are affirming to me that this is a fucked up way to be treated. It's been a bitter pill to swallow, realizing that my family is exploiting me.

Warm thoughts, mail, messages are all helpful.

My Xmas Playlist on YouTube. (ETA: I fixed the access.)

 Two weeks before I'm off for the holidays. I'm grinding through edits, and have gotten to the section of 4 chapters that need full rewrites. I'm starting to feel the pressure of getting this draft done.

What I'm reading: Babylon's Ashes and The Man Who Died Twice. The latter is a reread/listen and is my falling asleep audiobook.

What I'm playing: Still Stardew Valley. This is the first time I'm going for perfection since the last update. Just got the Big Clock and full friendship with Leo.

What I'm watching: We're onto Nova episodes on Youtube for our low stakes watching. The one problem is many of these were made in lower resolution and/or then futher compressed when they were uploaded so it's like watching without glasses on. But they're cool. I reccomend the one about the Kite structures in the middle east.