meteordust | Reading

Yuletide works are scheduled to go live a little under five days from now, at 9pm UTC 24 December (if all goes well and there are no further pinch hits needed).

COUNTDOWN TO REVEALS

Treats

Treats in both the Madness and Main Yuletide collections are enthusiastically welcomed. You can post a treat for someone in the main collection up until 9pm UTC 24 December, and in the Madness collection up until 9pm UTC 25 December. There's more information about posting treats here. If you're hunting for inspiration, see also the mini-challenges tag at

yuletide, and of course, please consider treats for pinch hitters.

Pinch hits

We’re still looking for intrepid writers to take on post-deadline pinch hits. As of this post, we need writers for:

PH #184: Aveyond (Video Games), Quasimorph (Video Game), Geneforge

PH #198: even if TEMPEST 宵闇にかく語りき魔女 (Visual Novel), Flowers Series (Visual Novels), Lkyt. (Visual Novel)

As well as offers from writers, we're keen to hear (yuletideadmin@gmail.com) from anyone with tips on how to consume or review details of these canons!

Please look at our outstanding pinch hit details, and help if you can!

Beta requests

Can you help out a fellow writer by beta-reading their work? Please check the hippo-want-ads at the Discord server, or email mods if you can help with one of the following requests and we’ll get you in touch.

As of this post, beta readers are needed for the following requests (click/expand to view):

1.2K T-rated Mayor of Kingstown
15k+ E-rated Damien/Gerald Coldfire Trilogy
7k Batman Wayne Family Adventures
Racepicker and sensitivity reader for a 10k fic featuring a young Black English girl
4.7k slang and other dialogue choices right for a Gen Z Black Londoner, Rivers of London
13k Lunar Chronicles
2.8k fic for The Odd Couple (TV 1970)
4k Nicked by M.T. Anderson

We also have some less time-sensitive beta requests in the server's betas-wanted channel:
WH40k
The Witcher III/Chronicles of Narnia
The Stakeout from Inside No. 9
Daria (Cartoon)

Meanwhile, please check your work

Please check that you uploaded the right draft. Mistakes can happen to anyone, but checking that everything looks right is a crucial part of posting. Make sure your work has a title and that the summary doesn't say "tbd". Please check that all the text is there and you didn't post the version with [name?] and [thing goes here] notes. Any uploaded version must be a complete story that is readable as it is, even if you're still making edits between now and reveals. Please don't risk disappointing your recipient or requiring mods to seek a back-up pinch hit.

Please check that all required characters feature in the work. This is likely to mean all the characters your recipient tagged, not just the ones they wrote prompts for. Or, if they selected Any, a character from the tag set. They may have selected additional tags that give further guidance about which characters to include - please check that too. If your recipient selected Worldbuilding and you're not sure there's enough of it, get a second opinion - a friend, a beta. If there is any doubt about whether your story contains all the characters it needs to contain, please check with mods. Prompts alone are not automatically permission to leave characters out. The use of additional tags may still leave some grey areas.

Please review your author's notes. Yuletide stories are anonymous for one week - do not give your name or link to your personal sites or socials in your author's note. Do not promise expanded, future, or replacement gifts - your work needs to stand alone. And do not apologise for your work in your author's note, or talk about what a struggle it was to write. People often feel doubt as well as excitement when giving someone a story, but don't give your recipient your doubts as part of their gift. In your author's note, please follow the principle that if you cannot say something positive, don't say anything at all.

Please check your recipient's Do-Not-Wants. Yes, again.

Please check your story in general! You don't have to get it beta read, but please check spelling and grammar. Please make sure that it’s not a wall of text with no spacing between paragraphs - and, conversely, that there aren’t too many blank lines between paragraphs.

(And, having fully prepared for reveals - we hope that you are excited for them! We are!)

Miscellaneous

If you're unlikely to be able to comment until the end of the anon period or later, consider letting your author know at the AFK post.
You can find beta volunteers at this post or at the Discord server.

scintilla10 posting in

recthething

I've posted a few recs for amazing fanworks from the

ficinabox collection on my journal! All creators are still anonymous.

My gifts
Stranger Things (2 fic)
Original Works (1 fic, 2 logic puzzles + fic)

Recs for

womansplace
Andor (fic)
DC Comics Wonder Woman (art)
Original Works (art, board game reskin, plushie pattern)

Art recs
Discworld (pottery)
DC comics (art animation)
Original Work (3 art, 1 pottery, 2 comics [note the final rec is NSFW])

lannamichaels

Summary: Benoit Blanc investigates a locked room murder mystery taking place in a Catholic church on Good Friday, the victim is a Catholic priest named Wicks that no one really liked. And then Wicks rises from the dead, and more people die. An extremely convoluted movie, which I enjoyed.

Spoilers and the rest behind cut.

( Read more... )

dolorosa_12

Tomorrow is my birthday, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to use this week's open thread as a chance for all of us to do some good. Behind the cut, I'm going to recommend some concrete political actions for causes that matter to me — charities, campaigns, resources — and if you feel so moved, please do take the suggested actions.

Alternatively, use this prompt as a way to highlight in the comments causes and actions that matter to you. Two requests if you do take this latter option:

Be specific when describing your causes. If they are focused on a particular country or region within that country, name it, rather than expecting people to intuit that your cause is US-specific, limited to rural Australia, or whatever.

If you are asking people to part with their money, only recommend initiatives to which you have personally donated or would be comfortable donating. Organisations rather than individual fundraisers are generally safer in this regard.

( Charities, campaigns, resources )

Please do recommend your own actions in the comments.

mgsx_mod posting in

fandomcalendar

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dolorosa_12

We're back for another December talking meme post. This prompt is from

nerakrose: quintessentially Australian books.

This is not really a week in which I feel much like talking about quintessentially Australian anything, but I'll do my best.

I need to start out with a caveat, though. I haven't lived in Australia for more than seventeen years, and I often feel a bit out of touch from the country's contemporary politics, culture, and so on. So my answer reflects, in some ways, an Australia frozen in the 2000s, and many Australians who do actually live there now, and who have lived there in the intervening twenty-ish years may feel that my answer doesn't reflect their current reality.

( With that disclaimer out of the way, here's my answer )

glitteryv posting in

recthething

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

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

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

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

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

amberite

So, despite having not a lot of money, I've lately been able to get a ton of random stuff I've wanted. Small electronics, art supplies, home organization supplies, more different kinds of purple clothing than I imagined existed - you name it. (The main limitation is that our apartment is very small.)

This is because earlier this year I got on Temu to buy some business supplies, mostly in the interest of divesting from Amazon. Now they are giving me a deal where, if I spend $200 in a sitting, I literally get the entire price of my purchase refunded except the sales tax and sometimes shipping (but not inflated shipping! That would make too much sense!) And then sometimes they don't manage to ship me the items in time so I get credit for delays, which covers the sales tax. It's kind of absurd.

Why this is happening, I have several theories. I'll share them here, in the order of "most similar to mundane economic activity" to "kinda wild but OK."

I suspect multiple of these are true to some extent.

1. Maybe most people fail to complete the rebate process correctly. The process is rather fiddly. If you miss logging in for a day, you lose a big chunk of the money back. If you order less than $200 at a time, you don't get the full rebate. At that point, you are paying for regular discounted goods, a decent deal but nothing special.

....BUT I'm completing the process correctly, and they keep giving me the rebate, so that can't be the whole story. (Also note that previous Temu deals have been known to kick people out of the promotion eventually if they claim too much of the money successfully.)

Very well, more theories:

2. This is the equivalent of a brushing scam, without the scam. The algorithm has figured out that I leave useful, honest reviews and leave a lot of them, so they're sending me free shit in the knowledge that I'll likely respond, naturally on my own, by improving the credibility of the platform. This certainly might explain why they're still giving me the rebate deal despite my reliability at claiming the money.

3. Temu is trying to inflate its Q4 sales figures. There are many reasons why this could benefit them - investment, taxes.

4. Temu is engaged in some form of money laundering. What form and why, I got nothin'. (Well, okay, I got a wetsuit, a tattoo gun, and a lifetime supply of 2gal plastic ziploc bags.)

4b. The Chinese government is throwing money at Temu, which in turn is throwing it at its customers. This works reasonably well in concert with 3 or 4a. The motivations could be: undercutting Amazon, establishing monopoly, spiting Trump over the tariffs, or - and I'd bet it's at least a little bit this, because it's the right style of "communism-capitalism cookie sandwich" for them - ensuring the manufacturing economy continues to keep workers employed.

Anyway, now that I've established that they really are reliably sending my money back & I have most of the fun things I want, I'm ordering useful stuff. This has its own hilarious economic caveat:

- Most of the brand-name practical expendables on Temu are actually drop-shipped from Walmart, Target or Amazon.

You know how you used to sometimes buy stuff from a US web storefront and find it was actually shipped from a random Chinese seller? Well, now they're doing the opposite. The telltale signs of this are that the item ships from a domestic origin point and costs more than normal. It's harder to find these items on the platform than it is to find clothing and bling, they go fast, and I wouldn't normally order them at this price point, but... yeah, money back...

For example, I "spent" $35 on an order containing a small box of Tampax tampons, a large box of Band-Aids, and a bottle of Neutrogena body wash. These items would have probably cost a total of $25 in the store. I ordered them knowing that I would be refunded all but the tax. Some 3rd party vendor sent me a Walmart package and pocketed the difference.

Other things I've been ordering a lot of this way are brand-name supplements and essential oils. (I still want to start doing perfumery again someday.)

I've also started ordering altruistically, because I'm sure this deal will end eventually and I'd like to make other people happy. One of our homeless friends down at the beach, who deserves a whole post or two on here himself - he's the one who made me realize that Venice Beach is basically a town full of urban fantasy protagonists - is always wanting to borrow my phone to play music because he can't hang onto one without getting rolled for it. I ordered him a music player and speaker. Got a big box of hand warmers and emergency blankets to give out, too.

And I've just picked up a cat carrier to donate to a rescuer who's been doing work to help us gradually resolve a friend's Infinite Kitten Hell problem (poorly educated immigrant parent adopted a bunch of strays without realizing how important it was to spay/neuter. Predictable events ensued & every vet in LA is backed up on spays, so you have to know someone.)

(P.S. - anyone up for taking on a spare kitten or cat? My friend's family are decent people and caring for the ones they've brought into the world, but it's not really a healthy number of cats to have.)

Current Mood: thoughtful

skygiants

Everything I've previously read by M.T. Anderson emotionally devastated me, so I despite the fact that Nicked was billed as a comedy I went in bravely prepared to be emotionally devastated once again.

This did not happen .... although M.T. Anderson cannot stop himself from wielding a sharp knife on occasion, it it turns out the book is indeed mostly a comedy .....

Nicked is based on a Real Historical Medieval Heist: the city of Bari is plague-ridden, and due to various political pressures the City's powers have decided that the way to resolve this is to steal the bones of St. Nicholas from their home in Myra and bring them to Bari to heal the sick, revive the tourism trade, and generally boost the city's fortunes. The central figures on this quest are Nicephorus, a very nice young monk who had the dubious fortune of receiving a dream about St. Nicholas that might possibly serve as some sort of justification for this endeavor, and Tyun, a professional relic hunter (or con artist? Who Could Say) who is not at really very nice at all but is Very Charismatic And Sexy, which is A Problem for Nicephorus.

The two books that Nicked kept reminding me of, as I read it, were Pratchett's Small Gods and Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland. Both of those books are slightly better books than this, but as both of them are indeed exceptionally good books I don't think it takes too much away from Nicked to say that it's not quite on their level: it's still really very fun! And, unlike in those other somewhat better books, the unlikely companions do indeed get to make out!

I did end it, unsurprisingly, desperately wanting to know more about the sources on which it was based to know what we do know about this Real Historical Medieval Heist, but it turns out they are mostly not translated into English. Foiled again!

thawrecka

On the weekend I went to a showing of the 4k restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock, oddly suitable given I was halfway through the book at the time. Which I have now also finished, and enjoyed, though it's very weird and of its time.

The homoeroticism is off the charts; not just all the school girls being in love with Miranda, but also whatever was going on with Mike and Albert. I honestly had not remembered much about those characters in the movie, so seeing the level of homoeroticism there, and then discovering it's even more intense in the book was a surprise! There's stuff in the book I'm glad isn't in the movie - the fate of the Lumleys and all the stuffing about with Irma and Michael would have been a bit too soap operatic for the dreamy, vaguely horror-toned vibe Peter Weir was going for. And I do like the tighter focus allowing the vibe of 'the real horror is the school', though there is some nice atmospheric prose in the book.

I went with a friend to see the movie and we both laughed at the judgmental koala around Hanging Rock, lmao.

Though seeing some of the things non-Australians have written about this novel and movie has me like, sigh, can people try not to be weird and xenophobic about Australia?? It's not scary or strange for the southern hemisphere to have opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere, and you don't have to go on about how ~exotic~ and ~bizarre~ you find Australian things.

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

The deadline has passed, and the main collection is temporarily closed. ETA - now open again!

Congratulations to everyone who has posted! Pat yourself on the back, take a breath, and then please check wordcount, formatting, html; check that you've uploaded the correct version, and that all your text is actually there. You can get to what you've submitted from your Statistics page, or from your Works in Collections. Your story should be marked as "complete" rather than one or more of multiple chapters yet to come.

To all who didn't make it this year: it happens, and we hope you enjoy the collection reveals.

To all who are still working on beta jobs, treats, or pinch hits: thank you and good luck!

Pinch hits coming!!
Post-deadline pinch hits will be available soon at

yuletide_pinch_hits. This next round will be due at 9 AM UTC, 22 December.

See what time that is in YOUR timezone
See countdown

Beta requests
We have outstanding beta requests on the Yuletide Discord (please see the #hippo-want-ads channel), and more betas are always welcome at the Dreamwidth beta post.

There is also an Away from Keyboard post up on the participant community, for you to (optionally) let your author know if it'll be a while before you can read your gift.

If there seems to be an issue with your posted work, we'll contact you via the email address associated with your AO3 account. Please check you can access that!

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Hello everyone! You have two more days to slip your theme suggestions into the suggestion box for our rounds in 2026. I went ahead and added some more themes to the pool, taking popular suggestions from past years but also filling in a few more gaps in our coverage (vampires! aliens!), so take a look at the list and see if it doesn't shake something loose.

I'll close that post the morning of the 19th and put up the big theme poll on the 20th. If you're going to be out and about around that time, you can track the admin: poll: theme tag. Just click on the little bell icon or "track" link on any post with that tag, select "Someone posts an entry tagged admin: poll: theme," hit save, and you'll get an email when the big poll goes up. You'll also get an email every time I post a theme poll thereafter, which is monthly. If you don't want that, you can cancel the notification later; it's the same process, just uncheck the box and hit save.

ysabetwordsmith posting in

journalsandplanners

This year I've been running an experiment to see which type of pen lasts the longest for labeling plants outdoors. I have compiled links to the previous posts and added pictures from each month where I hadn't already posted them. Results: Sharpie Oil Pen lasted longest, Craft Smart Oil Pen was still legible at the end of the year, and Sharpie Permanent Marker faded very fast. If you're labeling plants outdoors, buy an oil paint pen, preferably Sharpie. If you want to test how colorfast or fugitive your journal inks are, you can run the same kind of test indoors on paper that is in a window with sunlight.

These are the other posts regarding the labels.
1/3/25 Photos: Testing Pens on Plant Labels
2/3/25 Photos: House Yard and South Lot
3/3/25 Photos: House Yard and South Lot
4/4/25 Photos: South Lot
5/6/25 Photos: South Lot
6/2/25 Photos: House Yard
11/3/25 Photos: Lantern Terrarium Assembly Part 2 Testing the Fit (labels at bottom)
Photos: House Yard 12-16-25

( Let's do science to it... )

Current Mood: accomplished

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: The Tomb of Dragons (Cemeteries of Amalo #3)
Author: Katherine Addison
Genre: Fiction, fantasy

Time and circumstance conspired to keep me from reviewing the second book in the Cemeteries of Amalo book, The Grief of Stones, but today I finished the third book, Tomb of the Dragons and I do have time to review this third and final book in the trilogy.

This is NOT a spoiler-free review.

Tomb of the Dragons retains much of what I loved about the first two books, including Thara’s character and his investigations into the underbelly of Amalo, with a healthy helping of Ethuveraz politics.

Thara is having to adjust to the events at the end of the last book, and here, I feel, is where we truly see how important his calling is to him—how he handles losing it. It gives some good perspective to why he is so dogged in pursuing his work goals—his calling really is his sense of purpose, his life. Watching Thara grapple with this change and its indefinite consequences was fascinating.

However, it also retains in greater measure some of the things that I didn’t love about the earlier books, including Addison’s obsession with minutiae. I can only read about the characters traveling on this or that tram line so many times before my eyes start skipping lines to the things that really matter. This would bother me less if it didn’t feel like it came at the expense of more important things.

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith posting in

fandomcalendar

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Current Mood: busy

rionaleonhart

Every so often, I post an analysis of how I chose my recent fic titles! We're nearing the end of the year, which seems an appropriate time for another roundup.

In reverse chronological order, my fic titles since July:

( Rambling about why I chose fic titles. )

What's really striking me here isn't actually anything about my titling habits; it's the fact that my last twelve fics in a row have been shipfics! That's very unusual; about half of my fics tend to be gen. I'll have to come up with some gen ideas!

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Rating: Explicit
Length: 26,183 words
Creator Link:

mistresscurvy
Theme: Amnesty, First Time, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters, Research, Futurefic, Friendship

Summary: "Did it ever occur to any of you that I might not want to have my only sexual experiences be with someone who isn't actually interested in me?" Will asked.

He was met by three identical looks of confusion. "I mean, it would still be sex," Dustin said finally.

Reccer's Notes: Set after a season four where, yes, a lot of people died. But the kids are seventeen now, and Mike and Will are both virgins, which Mike is very concerned about: Cue the 80s teen sex comedy. Unlike much of that genre, though, this isn't gross or embarrassing, and everybody's having a good time. I adored Will here, kind of baffled by what Mike's gotten them into, yet excited about it too, and it's wonderful to see him stand up for himself, confident enough to be honest about who he is and what he wants. Plus it includes the entire crew, even Argyle.

Fanwork Link: Like a Virgin

flowing_river posting in

fandomcalendar

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meteordust

Clockwork Wings

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
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Page Summary

yuletidemods in yuletide_admin - Reveals approaching! Help us get there!
scintilla10 in recthething - Fic in a Box recs!
lannamichaels - Benoit Blanc Cinematic Universe: Wake Up Dead Man (2025), aka Knives Out 3
dolorosa_12 - Friday open thread: concrete political actions, birthday edition
mgsx_mod in fandomcalendar - METAL GEAR SOLID EXCHANGE - MGSX - SIGNUPS OPEN
dolorosa_12 - Stuff goes wild on the peripheries
glitteryv in recthething - Community Recs Post!
amberite - Interesting times, but dapper in purple.
skygiants - (no subject)
thawrecka - (no subject)
yuletidemods in yuletide_admin - 2025 Deadline Has Passed - What Next
runpunkrun in fancake - Only two days left to suggest themes!
ysabetwordsmith in journalsandplanners - Photos: Testing Pens on Plant Labels
rocky41_7 in booknook - Book review: The Tomb of Dragons
ysabetwordsmith in fandomcalendar - Signup Post: Fannish 50 in 2026
rionaleonhart - Hallucinations Are Very Much A Recurring Theme.
runpunkrun in fancake - Stranger Things: Like a Virgin, by mistresscurvy
flowing_river in fandomcalendar - Multifandom Exchange: Traumatic Experiences

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Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

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Page generated Dec. 30th, 2025 09:18 am

Falling Stars

Reading

Reveals approaching! Help us get there!

Treats

Pinch hits

Beta requests

Meanwhile, please check your work

Fic in a Box recs!

Benoit Blanc Cinematic Universe: Wake Up Dead Man (2025), aka Knives Out 3

Friday open thread: concrete political actions, birthday edition

METAL GEAR SOLID EXCHANGE - MGSX - SIGNUPS OPEN

Stuff goes wild on the peripheries

Community Recs Post!

Interesting times, but dapper in purple.

(no subject)

(no subject)

2025 Deadline Has Passed - What Next

Only two days left to suggest themes!

Photos: Testing Pens on Plant Labels

Book review: The Tomb of Dragons

Signup Post: Fannish 50 in 2026

Hallucinations Are Very Much A Recurring Theme.

Stranger Things: Like a Virgin, by mistresscurvy

Multifandom Exchange: Traumatic Experiences

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December 2025

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