buffyversetop5 | Member Posts

Two bundles for the Champions superhero game - one a repeat, the other new:

Champions 6E (repeat from 2021) - the 2009 6th edition of the game with a lot of campaign and support material:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2026Champs6E

Champions Strike Force (new) - A revised and expanded collection of material based on designer Aaron Allston's long-running campaign

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/StrikeForce

Re Champions, in 2021 I said "very good value if you're a long-time Hero System or Champions fan who has been thinking about going over to the new rules, or adapting new material to the old rules, or a newcomer who wants to dive in with the latest revisions.

The down side to all this is that the Hero System has never been the simplest of games - the rules can get complicated and reward optimaxing. Some activities, most notably combat, play fairly slowly. In short, there are alternatives that may be more suitable for a newcomer or someone who prefers a faster style of play.

I'll be honest, I'm not enough of an enthusiast to want to dive in and learn it all over again, since I don't think I've actually played any of these games any time this century! If you're already using another multi-genre system you might do better to look at its superhero rules first, but if you're already using the Hero System this could be a very good buy."

Strike Force is new to me, and seems to have been a massively complex campaign which covered a couple of decades in playing time and game time, involving dozens of players and thousands of hours of play. The big problem, for me, is that I suspect that a lot of this was initially shaped by the personalities of a core group of players and the capabilities of their characters - while it may have broadened out considerably, some of the decisions that shaped the campaign would probably have been very different with other participants. Having said that, it's reasonably priced and you get a lot for your money including more than 7000 player handouts. Some of it has undoubtedly influenced other material published for Champions, so if you've ever wanted to see get an idea of the background that lead to the current incarnation of the game this may be very useful. However, unless you have a printer that runs VERY cheaply I'd recommend using tablets or other digital media for as many of the handouts as possible, this stuff gets SERIOUSLY expensive!

snickfic

Snowflake challenge #2: Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

The theme of this post is Gallaghers Being Cute With Animals. It's Mucca's fault, she enabled me.

Noel professes very much NOT to be an animal person, but look at him.

This is Boots, whom Noel wanted to name Mr. Whiskers. Not that he cares! Definitely not.

Meanwhile, Liam is an animal person all day long. He currently has cats Sid and Nancy and a dog named Buttons, who he adopted from a rescue in Thailand. He submitted an application through the regular channels, and the people there were half-convinced it was a hoax. The whole story is very cute.

Liam asleep with Buttons.

Liam awake with Buttons.

When he adopted Sid from a shelter in 2018, that was pretty cute, too. Liam Gallagher: can't resist rubbing his face all over a kitten, any more than the rest of us can.

In conclusion, a recent tweet:

adafrog

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snickfic

* I'm really delighted that there were fantastic Yuletide fics about Stebbins from The Long Walk for both the novel AND the show. I love Garraty and McVries, obviously, but Stebbins always intrigued me in the novel, and I think he might actually be my favorite from a fanworks perspective? I don't know why it's never occurred to me before to look for fic about him.

*

threesentenceficathon prompts open Jan 17. I am so excited. I've started each of the past two years with tiny fics, and I'm ready for a third year.

* I wrote 200 more words yesterday on some self-indulgent Gallaghercest. When things suck, the OTP is here for me.

* from

denise: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. 🧵 On her ffa thread, she added: Please spread this far and wide so as many people see it as possible, because I really don't see English-language LJ continuing in its present form for much longer, and I know some people may still have things they care about there. It doesn't matter how you get it backed up, but it's absolutely crunch time for getting it backed up.

adafrog

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linky

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kazzy_cee

It's time for a new sticky post to track my outings this year. Links will be added as the outings are written up. Most will remain open, but some may be friends only.

Coming up:
6th January: Marie Antoinette Style - V&A
16th January: London Transport Museum, Acton guided tour
13th February: Walking tour - Diverse London, City Public Art by Refrugees and Immigrants
18th February: Samurai - The British Museum

Question a day meme:
January questions are here

There's another alphabet challenge run by Flickr, which I'm hoping to complete this year. It starts on 4th January. If anyone wants to join in, the prompts are available under this cut.
( Read more... )

kazzy_cee

I decided to write a new meme for daily questions as I couldn't find one. I've only written January so far, but here it is under the cut. Links to the various months will be added to my sticky post as they are written.

( Read more... )

frogfarm

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snickfic

I guess I might finish another book before year’s end, but this feels close enough to be pretty safe. NB I have reviews for most of these books in my books tag.

How many books did you read this year? Any trends in genre/length/themes/reading patterns/etc?
Books read: 25
Pages read (roughly): 7450

Relative to past years, more murder mysteries, more rereads (five), more older stuff (four before 1940). Less straight horror. Probably more textually queer stuff? I read a lot on airplanes. I took almost the whole summer off from reading and watched movies instead.

I had a mountaineering phase kickstarted by that one Jon Krakauer book, which also meant reading way more nonfiction than usual. Apparently the key to reading nonfiction is to have specific topics you want to know about, rather than just being like “I want to Learn Things.” Who could have foreseen!

What are your top 3 books that you read this year for the first time?
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Yes, it really is that good, just like everyone says.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge. Beautiful prose, top-notch worldbuilding, and some great horror moments.

A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. A shot STRAIGHT to the id.

What's a book you enjoyed more than you expected?
Maybe The Secret of Chimneys, an Agatha Christie novel that I probably read at some point but had forgotten basically all of. The other thing I’d forgotten: how fun Christie is when she’s really on her game. This was a rollicking delight.

Which books most disappointed you this year?
It was disappointing to realize how much worse the sexism was in the Pern books than I remembered. Just absolutely soaking in it. Ugh.

Also, wow, I hated Wild Spaces by SL Coney. Haaaaated.

And I reread Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys and didn’t enjoy it as much the second time around. There felt like too many characters, too thinly characterized. I still love Aphra and the worldbuilding, though.

Did you reread any books? If so, which one was you favourite?
I reread several this year, but the one that I enjoyed the most and definitely the one I spent the most time with was Moby Dick. The langague, gosh. Good enough to eat. Having reacquainted myself with the story, I think I’m going to keep just dipping in and out of it every so often. I found and bought a physical edition I really love, the Canterbury Classic "Word Cloud" edition that is just a pleasure to read and makes dipping in very appealing.

On a related note, I think this year was the tipping point to me becoming a prose snob. The prose in Moby Dick is so rich and chewy and worth reading and rereading. Sometimes it's basically impenetrable, but even so! Incredibly rewarding. And then I open so many new novels and quit on the first page because the prose is so artless.

It's not like I want every novel to be Moby Dick, which also happens to be a timeless work of literature: hardly a fair comparison for a random novel I pick up at the library. However, there are lots of authors out there writing prose that is graceful and evocative in their own ways. Frances Hardinge and Stephen King come immediately to mind, for two very different living examples.

I just cannot be fucked anymore with prose that doesn't show some skill. Life is too short. I suspect this might lead me to reading more classics, which I'm not mad about.

What's the oldest book you read?
The Unafraid, a 1913 adventure romance by Eleanor Ingram (with a textual gay side character!), is the oldest that I read for the first time. For rereads, Moby Dick was published in 1851.

What's the newest book you read?
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, published this year.

Did you DNF (= did not finish) any books?
My most emphatic DNF was the second book in the Briardark series by SA Harian. I reread the first book just to remember what all was going on, then got like fifty pages into the second one and was like, actually I don’t care about any of these characters or the cosmic horror mystery.

Some others I started and wandered off from:
- The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
- The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
- Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
- The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman by Niko Stratis
- Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby
- Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
- Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

What was your predominant format this year?
Still mostly dead trees around here, although I did listen to a mountaineering book and part of Moby Dick on audiobook, and I read a couple of ebooks during my travels.

What's the longest book you read this year?
Moby Dick, with 561 pages in my edition.

Did you reach your reading goal for this year (if you had one)?
I wanted to read more outside my usual fiction genres, which I really didn’t manage to do other than for a couple of specific items on the to-read list. Speaking of, here is all I read from the to-read list. Honestly five books from the January tbr is pretty good for me lol.

Moby Dick
The Iskryne books (I read the first two)
The Book of Lamps and Banners (Cass Neary #4)
something by ECR Lorac

Any goals for 2025?
My immediate list of stuff I want to tackle or finish is:

Knock Knock Open Wide by Neil Sharpson
The Count of Monte Cristo?
Something… literary, maybe?? Maybe My Brilliant Friend or something by Anne Rivers Siddons.
The Draegaera books (starting with Jhereg)
Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle
The Coldfire Trilogy
Ammonite
Dublin Murder Squad
American Elsewhere
Perdido Street Station (reread)
A Zelazny collection (reread)
The Folly of the World
Maplecroft by Cherie Priest (Lizzie Borden + Lovecraft?!)
Craft Sequence – Max Gladstone

I would say the main theme here is "ambitious," for me if not the author. A lot of older stuff, or stuff that is beloved that I haven't tried, or stuff I've just been meaning to get around to. A couple of those are already on my shelf, and it'd be nice to knock them off the TBR.

snickfic

My year in summary
I posted 88k words this year across 31 fics and wrote more than 103k new words total. I posted 8 Oasis fics (including several very short ones), 5 original works, 2 Re-Animator fics, and 16 singleton fics for other fandoms.

Fandoms of my heart this year
Oasis, obviously. What a time to be alive.

I also rekindled some Re-Animator feelings earlier this year, between fic I was writing and getting to see the movie in the theater. On film, even!

Other fandoms I felt at least a little fannish about this year, whether writing, daydreaming, or what have you:
- The Iskryne books by Bear and Monette
- On Swift Horses, the 2024 movie
- Dune movies

( my year in fandom, in much greater detail, with a meme )

( other fannish things )

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snickfic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

snickfic

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

--

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

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

--

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

thawrecka

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

( List of all the fic I wrote in 2025 )

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

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

( Stats )

thawrecka

Yuletide reveals:

My assignment:
Hand to Hand (1202 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 永夜星河 | Love Game in Eastern Fantasy (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ling Miaomiao/Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi, Ling Miaomiao & Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi
Characters: Ling Miaomiao, Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Holding Hands, Fluff, During Canon, Post-Canon
Summary:

Four moments in time when Ziqi and Miaomiao held hands.

Looks like my recip was double assigned. When I saw the other fic they got, they hadn't commented on that, either, but I haven't checked since. TBH, they had no likes/dislikes/prompts/DNWs in their signup, so I assumed they'd be a no show, so this isn't a surprise. We matched on Love and Redemption, but I couldn't think of what to write, so I wrote Love Game in Eastern Fantasy... which the other person assigned to them also wrote.

On to treats:

Strange Feminine Secrets (1431 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jennifer Check/Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Characters: Jennifer Check, Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, back from the dead, Undead, Horror
Summary:

Post-canon, Jennifer and Needy find each other again.

Probably my most successful fic of the exchange! After I posted it I did start to think of what I could have done better, should I have written a longfic that covered their whole murder rampage, etc. etc. but actually I think it's fine.

Two Coffees, One Tea (1372 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Two Husbands One Wife
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shinpei/Mia/Takuzo
Characters: Satomura Shinpei, Yanoguchi Mia, Mitsuda Takuzo
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff, Domestic Fluff
Summary:

Scenes from Shinpei, Mia and Takuzo's life together.

I was so tired when I posted this that I somehow did not realise I posted it in Madness, not the main collection 🤣 Anyway, I was inspired by the prompt, especially as I'd just finished the show. Only one of my fics with a recip comment ❤️ Usually I just treat random people because I'm inspired by their prompts, but this is the first time I wrote a treat for a friend ❤️

I had a whole plan to write more treats than last but ended up writing fewer, because I was so tired. Kind of a quiet Yuletide, I think, though I might think that because my fic overall was less popular than usual. I think the delayed author reveals are also throwing me off.

linky

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kazzy_cee

Yesterday we went to The National Gallery in London to see their exhibition Wright of Derby: From the Shadows. It's a small exhibition, but included some lovely paintings.

Joseph Wright (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797) specialised in paintings focusing on light and shadow, and included many which showed the scientific discoveries of the day.

Here he is: Self-portrait in a Black Feathered Hat (c. 1770). A beautiful pastel drawing on blue paper.

More photos under the cut.
( Read more... )

It was a small, but very interesting exhibition.

On the way back to Charing Cross we saw the 25m (82') Christmas tree donated by Norway in Trafalgar Square:

And we went on a slight detour into Covent garden where we passed this Lego display *g*

thawrecka

What did I do in 2025? Hell if I know. A lot of people asked and about all I could say is I watched a lot of movies and TV shows and spent a bunch of time learning Chinese. I caught up with one set of friends and friends-of-friends for New Year's, and had a great time. I had non-dairy pizza, and non-alcoholic cocktails, and listened to people's opinions on the best superhero, and talked to a guy about Heated Rivalry and then his boyfriend played All the Things She Said during his DJ set.

I rung in the new year dancing to 3am! Something I am apparently still capable of doing! I am... very sore now, though 🤣

Happy new year, friends, and I hope 2026 treats us all well

snickfic

My third and final recs post. Another great year full of great fic. Amazing work, everyone. <3

but first they must catch you, The Long Walk (2025), Stebbins & Garraty & McVries, 8k. The last three are rescued from the long walk and start trying to build a new life on a decrepit farm in Vermont. This is so lovely and aching and hopeful, full of small moments of Stebbins continuing to live that slowly grow into a life over the course of a fic, or at least the beginning of one.

Disspelled, Carrie - Stephen King, Sue Snell & Carrie White, 1.4k. Sue Snell is writing a history report on the Salem Witch Trials. A really intriguing little canon divergence fic about Sue cottoning on to some things about Carrie just a little bit earlier.

homophrosyne, The Odyssey, Penelope gen, drabble series. This is absolutely gorgeous, and every drabble here is a gem. Just spectacular.

cut it out and then restart, Hockey RPF, Carter/Richards, 4k. Finally, after hockey is over for both of them, they can begin. This ship is a real blast from the hockey past, and this is an achingly beautiful look at them, finally touching each other as they've wanted for twenty years.

vanishing point, Crash (1996), Catherine/James/Vaughan, 2.3k. All their interactions hinge around the moment of future collision. I am in awe of how well the author captures the feverish sensuality of the movie, lingering on all these physical details that somehow become erotic in combination and through the framing.

Hypnos on the Primrose Isle, 19th C Poets RPH, Keats/Shelley, 6k. John Keats seeks solitude on the Isle of Wight to work on Endymion... but neither his work, nor his sleep, will be as solitary as he expects. I enjoyed the overall poetic perspective here from both of them and how they are both so attuned to beauty and romantic framings of their experiences and surroundings. Poor peevish beleaguered Keats, who in the end so enjoys being courted and seduced. :')

burned in kind , True Detective, Marty/Rust, 13k. Post-canon, post-recovery, Marty comes to Rust for help with a case of group suicide, and it might not even just be because he wants to keep an eye on Rust. I always love a casefic that acts as character development for the characters as well, and some kind of creepy entity that lures people to suicide is both right in line with the series' ambiguously-supernatural darkness and laser-pointed at Rust's issues in particular. Great voices all around and a great character arc.

all men will be sailors then, Jaws, Martin/Matt, 4k. Martin survived. Now there was just the matter of learning how to live with it. I always love some good post-horror trauma, and this was a great look at Martin trying to find his way to some kind of normal, making the best out of some bad options. His hookup with Matt feels exactly right, and all their interactions are great.

of wild honey, The Blue Castle, Barney/Valancy, 8k. Five times Valancy Stirling surprises Barney Snaith. In which we get to relive some of the key moments of the book from Barney's point of view, beautifully told, with a lot of lovely lines and bits of insight.

linky

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skargasm

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ffutures

Gacked from

daily_illuminator_feed

An American artist is making fully functional plate mail for mice. So far no mouse has volunteered to try it on...

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/27/nx-s1-5622020/mouse-armor-artist-jeff-de-boer

The last time I used this title someone was making 3D printed hats for sea urchins, as substitutes for the sea shells they use to protect delicate areas of their bodies in the wild.

https://www.boredpanda.com/sea-urchins-tiny-hats/

ffutures

This is a repeat offer of The Dread Thingonomicon compendium from Raging Swan Press, a single volume containing "hundreds of system-neutral lists for every GM." It's a complete 476-page compilation of all the "20 Things" lists Raging Swan has published for seven years.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Thing2025

Last time this was offered I said "Not really my sort of thing for multiple reasons, but it looks usable if you like that sort of thing (or these sorts of things), and pricing works out around a cent and a half per page." I don't think any of this has changed much.

linky

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maidenjedi

A quick Yuletide rec:

Ever Dared to Dream Before - Daisy Jones and the Six, a Billy/Daisy story that reimagines their end-of-canon reunion. I really loved this story. The author let Billy deal with all his issues and Daisy be the settled, real version of herself that kept getting buried under drugs and wild youth. Every bit of this was what I wanted after seeing the series and reading the novel. This was my Yuletide gift and it is perfect!

ffutures

This is an offer of material for the RPG The Burning Wheel by Luke Crane. It's described as "the landmark indie RPG of dynamic characters and searing choice-driven stories."

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/BurningWheel

While I have no problems with indie rules systems, I'm not very keen on games that ask all of the players and referee to be familiar with the rules and avoid using "house rules" or simplifying things. I'm not playing pure fantasy games any more, so haven't gone into this one in any detail, but the general consensus I have on it from friends who have played it is that it's rules heavy and fairly complex, which really isn't my style of play. The price seems reasonable for the amount of material you get, more than 1000 pages, beyond that I recommend looking at reviews before making a decision about this one. There's a reasonable video review here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj30rzCgO5o

snickfic

So many delicious goodies. :') I hope to make at least one more recs post before writer reveals.

Two, Seven, Eight, Possibly in Michigan, 1.8k. The Beachwood Place Mall is not a great work environment. The canon is a bizarre 1983 short film about weird men in masks following women in shopping malls, possibly with the intention of eating them, which you can watch here; this fic is a series of incident reports and answering machine messages to and from a concerned perfume counter employee. IDK if it's possible to fully capture the fever dream quality of the film, but this takes a good stab.

an island made from fate, The Secret History, Camilla & Charles, 1.6k. Early on at Hampden, Camilla escapes a tedious house party and finds Charles. This is a great, elegantly written little character study of Camilla, who never got quite enough time in the book IMO, and really shows the fault lines of her relationship with Charles. Great stuff.

k2, p2, yo, k2tog, The Raven Tower, The Strength and Patience of the Hill and The Myriad, 1.2k. The Strength and Patience tells a story about a sheep, and The Myriad has quibbles. The story about the sheep is fun and feels very in keeping with the universe of the novel, and the reveal about why the Strength and Patience has chosen to tell this particular story is delightful.

la femme comme il (en) faut, Impromptu (1991), George Sand, 3.2k. George gets invited to a salon and attends despite her better instincts. I'm not familiar with the movie and found this via the historical RPF tag, but I really enjoyed this vivid portrait of the Parisian artistic community at this time period, and the last scene really elevates it, IMO, and ties the whole thing together. I love the subtle emotional arc of this, and now I kind of want to go find the George Sand biography the author mentionds in the notes.

More A Comment Than A Question, The Dispossessed, Laia Asieo Odo & Sadik, 2.3k. Every so often, Laia goes a little mad and hears a voice claiming to be from the future. It's been a long time since I read about these characters, but I enjoyed this so much. The device of visiting Laia at these various points in her life was very cool, and there's something so peaceful about this whole fic, too, the same sense of peace and simplicity I got from reading the novel years ago.

There's No Discharge in the War, The Long Walk - Stephen King, Stebbins, 12k. Stebbins walks, dies, walks again. Stebbins has always been a sneaky favorite of mine, and I love seeing him get a fic all his own here that fleshes him out and gives him his own unique horrific trauma! The author uses the time loop device to fantastic and creative effect, and it all adds up to a conclusion that I like more and more the longer I think about it. Absolutely spectacular work. One of my favorites this year.

Hyacinth Girl, Waking the Moon, Oliver Crawford, 7.6k. Oliver, before the Divine. The author tags this as "Tragic Backstory" and they are correct!! I read this book last year and yet feel as though I'm missing things in this fic; I can't quite tell how many of these elements were present in the novel and which the author invents here, but the result is gorgeous and heartbreaking. You've got fairy tale stuff, dysfunctional family, the Benandanti always menacing in the background, more literay quotes than you can shake a stick at, absolutely gorgeous imagery.

Knife, Rope (1948), Brandon/Phillip, 4.9k. Brandon and Phillip's class go on a camping trip, and Brandon discovers that Phillip is not just more wallpaper. This is obviously backstory to the movie but feels like a beautiful, self-contained little psychopathic romance on its own. Two weirdos falling in love via discussing murder scenarios!! I was compelled from start to finish.

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.

snickfic

You guys, I love Yuletide. So many things I can read, I got great gifts, people are reading what I wrote... incredible. Here, have some recs.

First, my gifts:
Endless Night, True Detective: Night Country, Danvers/Navarro, 4.6k. My author took my prompt "what if the sun didn't come back" and ran with it. Great apostalyptic vibe here, and my shiiiiip. <3

The Inheritance of Imogen Dearborn, Kyle Murchison Booth Stories, Booth/Ratcliffe, 13!!!!!k. Booth needs Ratcliffe's help with an acquisition at a decaying house in the country, and things get weird, as they so often do around Booth. I freaking love this fandom's dedication to casefic*, and this is a wonderful example of a case that's great on its own merits and all the better because the relationship growing around the edges. <3 <3 <3

(*I'm developing the theory that the KMB stories are basically the perfect canon for producing casefic: the canon is already a series of casefics, already in prose, and they're nearly all pretty short. Put that all together, and writers have the perfect model to work from.)

And now for the other fics I've loved so far:
boot error, Companion (2025), Iris gen, 2.6k. Iris confronts life without an operating system. It was great to see Iris here, trying to figure out exactly what it means to be a person when one's whole personality is made of code.

Written in squid ink, Kraken - China Mieville, Billy/Dane, 3k. Not everyone in the Church of the Kraken was blessed with a tattoo in squid ink, but Dane was one of the lucky few, and at a young age too. I loved seeing an interpretation of soulmate marks specifically for this canon, and I loved all of Dane's weird fantasies and fetishes and imagined acts of religious devotion, and how they all got tangled up together.

Touching the Moon, My Sister and the Prince, Marie gen, 4k. This is how it happened; and what happened, after. The canon is a short film that is incredibly compelling considering it's two actors on one set for a single scene. You should watch it and then read this structurally creative and heartwrenching answer to the question of what came next.

Hunger, Dragonriders of Pern, Kylara/Lessa, 2.7k. Both Lessa and Kylara are Searched for Nemorth's final clutch. This Kylara feels exactly right to me: scheming, focused on her own desires and ambitions, fully aware of her own strengths and at least some of the weaknesses of others, and above all with an eye for opportunity. And the actual events, brief though they, promise a very interesting future for this version of canon. :D

The day the riders came, Dragonriders of Pern, OC gen, 1.8k. What if the dragons of Pern and the Impression bond were anything *but* benevolent? Or, alternately: what if the dragons were Lovecraftian horrors? This gets so dark in the best way, and the last line is a knockout punch.

thawrecka

I haven't fully finished reading through the collection, but all I have left is longfic so I'm flagging and will probably crash out tonight. I won't say I've read every fic 5k or under in the main and madness collections, but I've read a lot of them. That said, fic recs:

( Anime canons: The Summer Hikaru Died, Karaoke Iko!, The Apothecary Diaries )

( Movie canons: Hustlers, Edge of Tomorrow, Sinners, The Nightmare Before Christmas )

( All other canons: Carmilla, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, When Destiny Brings the Demon, Soulmate Goose AU, Womens Literary RPF, Manchild (Sabrina Carpenter video)/Orpheus and Eurydice, Hamlet, French fetish terms )

frogfarm

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linky

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Current Mood: giddy
Current Music: WAR - Kyohei Shibata

linky

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thawrecka

The Yuletide collection had a glitch this morning where half the authors revealed way too early, but now that everything's gone back anon I'll link the gift fic I got:

Cat Distribution System (3809 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pet Shop of Horrors (Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jill (Pet Shop of Horrors) & Leon Orcott (Pet Shop of Horrors)
Characters: Jill (Pet Shop of Horrors), Leon Orcot, Count D (Pet Shop of Horrors), Original Animal Character(s)
Additional Tags: 1990s Era is its own character honestly, The Dirtbag 1990s, Stalking (light), Period Typical Attitudes
Summary:

A cat adopts Jill, in canon typical fashion.

It's cute!

I ended up writing fewer Yuletide fics than last year, between holidays in November and exhaustion, and I feel weirdly guilty about it, but I appreciate the earlier opening gives me time to browse the collection before I head off to family Christmas Day hell 🤣

linky

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Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Want You Back Again

snickfic

I will probably see a couple more movies before the end of the year, and I’ll update the numbers accordingly, but I think otherwise my answers will pretty much stay the same.

NB I have reviews for most of the movies in my movies tag.

What TV shows did you watch a season of this year?
Creepshow, which wasn’t even good! It just had good guest stars! My trend of one full season of TV a year continues apace.

What TV shows did you DNF this year?
Severance. I got it out of the library, and I still didn’t want to finish it.
Legion. I watched one episode and then got distracted, but I’d like to try again. I do love Dan Stevens.

How many movies did you watch this year? Any trends in genre/viewing format/etc?
I had a Regal subscription for over half the year, so I had a HUGE uptick in new releases watched. Movie stats overall this year (not counting rewatches except where noted):

2025 movies: 30 (plus one that’s technically 2026)
Older movies: 34

Movies seen in the theater (new and old): 33
Movies seen otherwise: 32

I also rewatched two 2025 movies in the theater, three older movies in the theater, and seven older movie at home, for a total of 38 total visits to the theater this year. That is definitely the most I have ever been to the theater in a year in my life, and I had a great time. I cancelled my Regal subscription because I thought I was burned out, but it’s been expired for five days and I already miss it, so I will probably resubscribe. I got way more use out of it than I did my Huly subscription last year and probably my Hulu and Netflix subscriptions combined (both of which I have since cancelled).

What were your movie trends for the year?
Most-watched actor: Jeffrey Combs once again, mostly due to rewatches at this point, but Doctor Mordrid, Dark House, and Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls were all new.

Most-watched genre: Horror by a mile, thriller a very distant second.

Most-watched country of origin: USA, but Australia was second with three, so that’s neat.

What are your top movies you watched this year?
In terms of the sheer amount of joy and delight I derived from it, it’s probably Red Sonja. This is by no means the best movie I saw this year, but apparently it was the movie I needed.

Some other fave first-time watches, from this year unless noted:
- Cuckoo (2024). Weird weird xenobio shit, casually queer, Dan Stevens chewing the scenery. What’s not to love.
- Companion. Smart, fun comedy/thriller(?). Just so tightly written, and everyone was great, most of all Sophie Thatcher.
- Clown in a Cornfield. Another movie way smarter than it had to be, and with so much heart.
- Sinners. Gorgeous.
- On Swift Horses. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying Jacord Elordi was very pretty and sad and gay.
- The Long Walk. I didn't love it as much as the book, but it understood the assignment, and I respect that.
- Hell House LLC: Carmichael Manor (2023). For pure horror, this is the scariest movie I saw this year.
- Wake Up Dead Man. Despite the heavy themes, this was ultimately a good entertaining time, just like the previous ones. I want ten more. 🙏
- Silent Night Deadly Night. A late-year surprise. I went in knowing basically nothing, and I had such a good time. I NEED a sequel.
- Red Rooms (2023). French-Canadian movie about women obsessed with serial killers. Stylish, femslashy as hell, an extremely precise and careful movie.

Other movies you saw this year that deserve more love
- Strange Harvest, a microbudget cosmic horror true crime mockumentary. Yes.
- Him, which absolutely did not deserve to get panned so universally. It had style and ambition, which is way more than I can say for lots of movies I saw this year.
- Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, a cheesy low-budget fantasy/horror movie with a lot more heart than it has any right to given how broad the comedy is.

Biggest disappointments
- Death of a Unicorn. >:( What a soulless, half-assed attempt at a horror comedy.
- The Conjuring 4. Even Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga couldn’t save this piece of dreck. Worse than 3, and that’s saying something.

Movies you finally got around to seeing for the first time
- Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Omg Chelsea of Dead Meat wasn’t being ironic; Leatherface IS baby. ;__;
- The Shining (1980). Fuck off, Jack Nicholson.
- Candyman (1992). Maybe trying to do too many things at once, but I was pleasantly surprised by how central the question of race was, and the romance/corruption arc was good stuff.
- Crash (1996). We definitely emphasized a different word in the phrase “erotic thriller” than I expected going in.
- Brokeback Mountain (2005). I respect it for what it was and meant at the time, but I did not love it. Heath Ledger was incredible though.
- The Mist (2007). It was fine.

Movies that you had the most fun talking about, whether they were good or bad
Probably either The Ugly Stepsister or The Long Walk, both because they have clear themes about (gross generalization here) characters doing their best in crapsack dystopias and showing how messy that gets emotionally for the characters. Lots to chew on in both of them, although I would say The Ugly Stepsister goes harder (which is impressive considering the other movie is the one where people get brutally shot in the head on screen every few minutes). The logistics of filming The Long Walk were also super interesting.

Did you rewatch any old faves? If so, which one was you favourite?
I got to see Re-Animator in the theater. <3 On film, with a recorded video message from Jeffrey Combs beforehand which someone played on their phone and held up for the audience to see. <333

What's the oldest movie you watched?
A Bucket of Blood, a 1959 thriller/satire.

What's the newest movie you watched?
LOL technically We Bury the Dead, which doesn’t hit wide release until the beginning of January. I saw it at a mystery movie screening.

Did you watch any movies outside of your usual preferred genre(s)?
Red Sonja is sword and sorcery, which I don't really watch, but that's partly because it doesn’t really exist as a movie genre these days. That may explain why it only got one day of theatrical release and zero marketing, which is a crying shame.

I watched indie drama Die My Love for Jennifer Lawrence and regretted it. I watched indie feminist/fable 100 Nights of Hero and… didn’t regret it, I guess, but I did think it sucked a lot on multiple axes. Every time I venture out of my horror niche, I end up thinking I should just watch more horror. :\

Any movies you're excited to watch in 2025?
I am aware of and excited about a surprising number of movies coming out next year!
Scream 7
Ready or Not 2
Dune 3
Wuthering Heights
The Bride
Iron Lung

ffutures

I wasn't expecting this today, but here's another RPG bundle in the run-up to Christmas. This is "the Cypher System horror game of an eldritch alternate Appalachia," which seems to be inspired by the work of authors such as Manley Wade Wellman - basically, small-town 1900s American horror - and by a series of podcasts describing an alternate history set against this background. I have no idea if the podcasts are readily available outside the USA.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Appalachia

I'm not really into horror much at the moment, but it's cheap, nicely presented and looks like a playable system. Mostly the mythology it draws on originates from Native American tribal sources and European legends. Since this is largely inspired by a podcast series I'm linking to it below, it might be worth checking it out before you decide if you want to buy.

https://www.oldgodsofappalachia.com/

ffutures

Unfortunately the true cost of the ferry trip to Santander turns out to be a lot higher than expected, even if I spend the night in the lounge rather than a cabin, and I have reluctantly decided to fly instead - it costs about £200 less and looks to be a lot less hassle apart from the usual airport nonsense. Many apologies to everyone who suggested alternatives.

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