I appear to have read 87 books in 2025, my first year recording <100 books since 2018, although this just might be due to shoddy record-keeping; I didn't write down any of my 2000s YA re-reads, so that's at least 9 more? Top niche this year was memoirs— 12-15, depending on whether you count non-fiction with an aspect of tying the narrative to personal experience (Caroline Fraser's Murderland, Alexa Hagerty's Still Life With Bones) and/or autofiction (Patricia Lockwood's Will There Ever Be Another You)— followed by 2000s YA/MG nostalgia and People Having Bad Times on Boats.

My first book of 2026 was A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, which I finished in an afternoon: a solarpunk novella in which a human and a robot meet for the first time since, centuries before, robots gained sentience and disappeared into the wilds to live as they pleased and humans moved to a post-industrialized, post-scarcity society. Oddly enough, it kind of reminded me of Gail Carson Levine's Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, a childhood favorite— it was the world-building through charming descriptions of physical objects, but also something in the stories' shape and cadence, and in the main character's struggle to find their place in a world where people seem to have pretty specific callings...? (Here, the human, Sibling Dex, is a monk who travels from town to town serving tea and as a shoulder to cry on.) None of which is necessarily unique to either book, or used in the same way - for one thing, Chambers pushes back against the idea of people (or robots) having a specific purpose that they need to fulfill - but for whatever reason, the comparison popped into my head and I couldn't shake it. This book also checked the box of first character who's canonically my age that I encountered after turning that age in the record time of one week: early on, there's a line about how Dex - struggling in their vocational change from garden monk to tea monk - "now, at the age of twenty-nine, would like very much to return to the safe shelter of their childhood for an indefinite amount of time until they'd figured out just what the hell they were doing." What a mood.

Current Music: This Year - The Mountain Goats

shadaras

In non writing thoughts, by which I mean I wanted to talk about aikido and then realised that maybe I should mention watching a movie first, since I finally watched the new Benoit Blanc movie. xD

I watched Wake Up Dead Man today with

hafnia, who had seen it once before and was like "I am BITING MY TONGUE not to point out the REALLY GOOD FORESHADOWING", paused the movie at two points to tell me about (a) her opinions that the reading list in-universe could've been better (with her suggestions) and (b) A Science Complaint (while going "this is the only thing that annoys me about this movie"), and was delighted to agree with me about how well they used LIGHT. The cinematography was gorgeous, the plot was very fun, and I adored Father Jud and Martha and enjoyed going "ughhhh" about how awful many other characters were. The film quotes/references I caught were also great!

also my twin messaged me right as I was finishing the movie to tell me about a post he'd seen saying that the opening scene of the movie was filmed at the same location as Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video, including a tweet (bsky version) (bweet, my brain wants to say, but I think it's skeet. or just, y'know. tweet.) from Rian Johnson going "yes, it was, and I was the only person on set excited about this fact", which I thought was very funny in its own right and also incredible timing.

anyway, AIKIDO

Last night we had a new year's eve practice, and there weren't many people there, but—

There is so much joy in doing aikido on a mat where the practice is meant as meditation, and there are few enough people that you don't need to worry about throwing anyone into anyone else (or off the mat), and the people who are there are all advanced and so you don't need to worry too much about taking care of them (because their ukemi will take care of them).

( let me save your reading pages from how much I'm talking about aikido )

Sensei also was like "you could take nidan tomorrow and be fine" when I said that it was sort of frustrating knowing that in this, the lead-up to when I'll be taking nidan (at the end of May), I'll probably not be practicing more than once a week on average. She's right! I know she's right! I could take it tomorrow if I were asked to!

But it'll be better with more practice and active reminders of the stuff we don't do very often. Reversals (uke becomes nage). Weapon take-aways. Some nage-holds-the-jo, maybe? I'm solid on everything else, I think, though it's always nice to review koshinage. Working with friends on shodan prep last year means that most of it's in my body via taking ukemi, anyway, which is good.

gingicat

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

rmc28

I had Kodiaks practice on the evening of 30 December, which meant getting home very late as usual. I did get up and out for the last hot yoga class of my festive pass in the morning of 31 December. From there I did a run into town to pay in a cheque (a cheque!) to N's savings account on the last possible day before it expired. After I got home, I looked at how many tickets remained for the public skate I was booked on, did some subtraction and decided the rink would be too full and I was too tired, so I cancelled the Last Skate Of The Year, and had a nap instead. It was marvellous.

In the evening we had a little family movie night with drinks and snacks:

Chicken Run (which everyone but Nico had seen before)
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (which only Nico had seen before) - fun, but omg there were bad parenting choices, and excessive ~suspense~ due to even more bad choices in the final action sequence
Wake Up Dead Man (which Nico was uninterested in, but the other three of us enjoyed)

We managed to finish the last film with about fifteen minutes to go before midnight, so I put on BBC One on iPlayer and we watched some Ronan Keating and then the fireworks from London, and then I left Ronan Keating providing background music while sending and replying to HNY messages on my phone until I decided sleep was a better plan.

This morning I got up and used a free gym pass to get to a weights class, and confirm my opinion that I want to return to a regular gym routine. I met friends M, J & K for pub drinks this afternoon, and spent a bunch of time afterwards sorting out logistics for ice hockey games on Saturday (Kodiaks 1 are away in Chelmsford, Kodiaks 2 are "home" in Peterborough).

Tomorrow I will take Nico to a pantomime in the morning, work a half day in the afternoon, and go to Warbirds practice in the evening.

chocolatefrogs posting in

iconthat

https://res.cloudinary.com/dc2cefbey/image/upload/v1767310555/tshrh_b8msot.jpg

Next picture: Elphaba Thropp (Wicked)

shadaras

Start of a new year, fun! I hope it's a good year; certainly I'll try and work to make it good for me. <3

hafnia got me to sign up for

getyourwordsout with her this year, which should be fun. I'm doing it as a habit pledge, because that's usually not very hard for me and tracking wordcount seemed exhausting. (Which also means that Write Every Day folk will start seeing me around again in those posts. xD I have missed that since my writing brain plunged into a hole over the summer! I think I've crawled out of it now!)

anyway, VERY IMPORTANTLY, Yuletide creators have been revealed, so I can talk about what I wrote for it! :D

My assignment was for

china_shop, and we matched on The Spear Cuts Through Water, a book I adore and which I offered because I was like "okay if someone requests this fantastic book surely they will have ideas for what to write" and also the idea of having an excuse to read the book while thinking about the voice and feel of the prose was exciting.

I wrote a brief epilogue fic, barely over 1k: After the Moon Rose Anew (T, 1,048 words, Jun/Keema, post-canon)

Judging by all the lovely comments, I succeeded in my goal of matching the novel's prose! Most people commented on the voice! Considering how beautiful and lyrical the prose is, it's truly a joy and a relief to know I could match it for even a thousand words.

Also, it was just fun to reference as much as I could of what I found really cool about the prose: the layered POVs, the omniscient style that drifted between POV easily, the occasional brief asides to background POVs... Honestly, the poetics are easier for me to be confident in! I know I can do poetic prose; it's the smooth movement between heads that seems natural and is easy to follow that I wanted to learn from.

And

china_shop liked it, of course, which is the most important part of a gift—especially one for a friend!

Which: The odds of matching to a friend in Yuletide are... not that low if you both know you're in the same tiny fandom and that you're both going to request it, but I hadn't realised that

china_shop was going to request The Spear Cuts Through Water until after I'd already offered it, and she could of course not know I would offer it! Certainly we'd talked about the book before, but it's still very special to have this kind of match happen by chance. <3

The other fic I wrote for Yuletide was a pinch hit.

wolffyluna went up for PH, and one of the fandoms requested was Oathsworn, an actual play podcast I love. I knew that if WolffyLuna had listened to it, it was because of my promo posting about it. So, y'know. The pinch hit went up one evening, and I told myself that if it was still up when I got home from work the next day I could claim it.

It was still up. So. I claimed it, and proceeded to spend the weekend mainlining episode transcripts and internally screaming about what even I was going to write, oh god, this would've been a lot easier if I'd gotten it as an assignment (which I could have! I'd also offered Oathsworn!) due to the time crunch.

I'm very pleased with what I came up with, especially considering the time pressure. And WolffyLuna liked it, especially the scenes I added post-deadline because I was like "WAIT I NEED THIS TOO", which made me very happy that I'd taken the time to write and add them. <3

I dream of what I'll become next life (3.5k, T, CNTW, Waloot-centric) is a character study of my favorite character, and also includes a dive into the chosen of the gods, a specific religion within the world, and also Waloot's whole deal of being an ordinary person who died, came back, and was one of the most magically powerful people in the area by the time the story concluded. She has a lot of angst. I gave her a bit of time with some weird horses (as WolffyLuna requested!) as part of helping her deal with that.

This, and the gift WolffyLuna wrote for me (my suspicion that we'd be trading Oathsworn fics also factored into taking the PH), are the first works for the fandom on ao3! Yay for Yuletide! It's very exciting! I hope more people take a chance on this COMPLETE actual play podcast! An ongoing apocalypse, a last stand against the oncoming hordes, and a lot of people desperately doing their best to survive and be in community with each other despite not always liking each other very much!

duskpeterson posting in

ocrealm

Who are you? What name / alias and pronouns do you go by? Are you an artist, a writer, aspiring to be, or something else? Anything you find relevant to yourself.

I'm a writer, Dusk Peterson, they/them/their. I've hung out with the online fiction community since 2002.

Who are your main OCs? Are they part of a specific OC universe or fandom? What's their personality like?

I have so many OCs! So it's easier to talk about my originalfic universes. These are my main two 'verses:

Chronicles of the Great Peninsula

Chronicles of the Great Peninsula. A cycle of mythic historical fantasy series about a battle between cultures, Chronicles of the Great Peninsula is set at a time when a centuries-old civilization is in danger of being destroyed. The cycle is inspired by conflicts between cultures during late antiquity.

Turn-of-the-Century Toughs

Turn-of-the-Century Toughs. Honored seven times in the Rainbow Awards for LGBTA literature, Turn-of-the-Century Toughs is a cycle of gaslamp alternate history series about disreputable men on the margins of society, and the men and women who love them. Set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as in a future that never existed, the novels and stories take place in an alternative version of America that was settled by inhabitants of the Old World in ancient times.

What relationships exist between your OCs? Be it platonic, romantic, familial, or even enemies and so on!

All of the above. :)

Chronicles of the Great Peninsula is mainly about platonic life-partnerships; it also features friendship, family, romance (f/m and m/m), and enemies. Turn-of-the-Century Toughs is mainly about m/m romance; it also features platonic life-partners, friendship, family, f/m romance, and enemies.

For those who are interested, I've just posted a round-up linking to all my stories from 2025. The stories are T-rated, featuring friendships, platonic life-partnerships, and romantic pairings (f/m and m/m). Here's my boilerplate content warning. I'd love to hear what you think of the stories.

beed

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: intimidated
Current Music: midnight première - now or never

rmc28

New-to-me books read this year: 128
(Note for this exercise: I count audiobooks separately from paper/ebooks. I like both experiences but they are different experiences and different "books" to me, whereas reading paper or ebook feels interchangeable to me. My default is to read ebook, audiobooks and physical books are tagged as variations from the default.)

( Read more... )

Rereads: 19

( Read more... )

If you want to know more about a specific book I read in 2025, ask me about it. Or pick a random number between 1 and 147 and ask me to talk about that book.

Books acquired in 2025 and not yet read: 19

( Read more... )

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book

greghousesgf

Had some ginger tea. Had a great dinner last night and good drinks at the Irish pub but the band kept playing very boring songs so I left, had to wait over an hour in freezing rain for the stupid bus and got woken up at six in the morning (on New Year's Day??!) by yet another phone scammer, then some idiot in my apt bldg pulls the fire alarm four times.

Current Music: Jamiroquai

hamsterwoman

Happy New Year! I'm having a fairly pleasant 2026 so far, and hope you all are too! <3

Yuletide reveals! :D

I wrote two things this year (which, it's been a couple of years since I've managed a treat, and I'm very glad I was able to this year).

My assignment:

Voyages of the Valence: The Lanthanide Cluster Job (7862 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elements - Experiments in Character Design - Kaycie D., Object and Concept Anthropomorphism
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Vanadium (Experiments in Character Design), Chromium (Experiments in Character Design), Iodine (Experiments in Character Design), Rhenium (Experiments in Character Design), Sulfur (Experiments in Character Design), Carbon (Experiments in Character Design), Xenon (Experiments in Character Design), Helium (Experiments in Character Design), Dysprosium (Experiments in Character Design), Indium (Experiments in Character Design), Thulium (Experiments in Character Design), Rhodium (Experiments in Character Design), Yttrium (Experiments in Character Design)
Additional Tags: IN SPACE!, Space Opera
Summary:

Elements IN SPACE!

( Blathering )

The days leading up to story reveals were spent frantically beta-ing a couple of fairly long fics that required a canon primer, so I had given up on the idea of writing a treat. But I felt so blessed by my last-minute crossover treat and the fact that my main gift was in a much rarer fandom than I’d been expecting, that it gave me a sort of second wind – after reveals, obviously, but there was still Madness. And thus:

FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Magical Practitioner Examination (581 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peter Grant (Rivers of London), Thomas Nightingale
Summary:

Nightingale was aghast at my lack of ophidian knowledge.

( Blathering )

Full text of the ficlet, with the missing bit: ( under here )

*

snowflake_challenge is back, with lovely new banners:

Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

Challenge #1: The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

My intro post from a year ago was mostly current but was missing ~~Elis & John~~ a couple of things that feel too relevant not to mention, so, I’m including an updated one below. As for the other challenge questions:

I love the little bright splash of fannishness that Snowflake brings to the start of the year – it always leads to interesting fandom reflections (my own and other people’s), getting to read/watch/look at things I wouldn’t have come across or taken the plunge on otherwise (fic/vids but also trying new canons), creating things I otherwise wouldn’t have created (one tangible highlight: a couple of years ago I wrote a pantoum, a poetic form I hadn’t tried before, for Snowflake’s “try something new” day, and it was actually published this year, which is pretty cool!), and usually also new friends. Which I guess has also answered the question of what I hope to gain from it this year :)

( fannish me in 2026 )

*

YouTube now apparently also does a Wrapped: ( so here are my fairly predictable results )

*

( Fannish end-of-year meme #2 )

maevedarcy posting in

recthething

To end 2025, I took part in

rec_cember and I wanted to crosspost the recs here in case people want to browse.

Rec-cember #1: works under 1000 words

Fandoms:

The Raven Cycle
Doctor Who
Carmilla
The Hunger Games
Teen Wolf

Rec-cember #2: Podfic

Fandoms:

9-1-1
All for the Game
Goncharov/The Magnus Archives
Original Work
Sense8
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Teen Wolf
The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself
The Raven Cycle
Venom (movies)

Rec-cember #3: my top fics of 2025

Fandoms:

Sense8
Venom (movies)
All for the Game
League of Legends
Doctor Who
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Game Changers/Heated Rivalry
Teen Wolf
Cunk on Earth/Interview with the Vampire crossover

tjs_whatnot

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

Challenge #1

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

Hello! I'm TJ. I accidentally chose the pronouns any/any at my new job (remind me to tell you all about that later! ) and now, the more I think about it, the more I like it. I never really liked they/ them (but get why others do) but I really don't mind either he/she him/her.

I'm old. I've been here forever. Started doing fandom in 2009. Started doing the Snowflake Challenge in 2014, and accidentally got put in charge of running it in 2024. 😱😱 So, technically I'm here because I have to be. 🤣🤣 But really, I'm here because it's how I start the year. It's where I met my friends (either as reunion or as adoption). It's where I get inspired in my geek soul. I've carved out a queer space in my real life. I've carved out a writing community (and even a queer reading community) in my real life, but there is nothing like a geektastic, weirdo-centric, fan community to really make me feel less alone and ostracized.

Things I'll probably be talking about here for the next month (and forever after):

TJ Klune's Green Creek series (and probably other books he's written)
Cat Sebastian's and Alexis Hall's entire library of books
Murderbots
Queer media in general
Reading/writing in general

nerakrose

reveals are now up! I received this wonderful, lovely gift:

Autumn Leaves Lie Thick and Still (2581 words) by yeats
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez
Characters: Duncan Hunter, Jimmy Perez
Additional Tags: Football, Slow Burn
Summary:

Scotland, at long last, qualifies for the World Cup. Jimmy and Duncan, at long last, figure some things out.

there are a lot of things to love about it. for me I can't stop marvelling at how the football game is written - the tension, and how it breaks - and how it works as both the metaphor (callback to the end of s5!) and vehicle for bringing them together. lovely stuff.

shewhostaples

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

I've been an occasional participant in this challenge for several years. (I changed my handle this year; I used to be el_staplador, which was feeling increasingly less funny.) My profile is, miraculously, still more or less accurate.

This year feels like it needs a little more in the way of apologia, since I'm very out of touch with fandom at the moment, and have indeed fallen off many of the online platforms that I used to frequent. There are plenty of reasons for that, ranging from the very personal to the global, and I'm not actually upset about most of it. But I am feeling the pull towards more connection, particularly in person, but online too.

And that is why I'm doing this challenge. I don't expect to have the time to get into any fandom the way I used to, but I miss being fandom-adjacent. Snowflake feels like as good a way as any to return to the Internet the way I enjoy using it.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: back home
Current Music: New Year's concert, Vienna Philharmonic

rmc28

Books on pre-order:

Platform Decay (Murderbot 8) by Martha Wells (5 May 2026)
Radiant Star (Imperial Radch) by Ann Leckie (12 May 2026)

Books acquired in December:

and read:
1. Last Victim of the Monsoon Express (Baby Ganesha) by Vaseem Khan
2. Harmonic Pleasure (Mysterious Arts 6) by Celia Lake
and unread:
1. Park Avenue by Renée Ahdieh
2. Wounded Christmas Wolf by Lauren Esker
3. Gift of the Magpie (Fated Mountain Lodge) by Lauren Esker
4. Claiming the Tower (Council Mysteries 1) by Celia Lake
5. Apt to be Suspicious (Liminal Mysteries 2) by Celia Lake
and previously read:
1. The Green and the Grey by Timothy Zahn
2. Triplet by Timothy Zahn

Books acquired previously and read in December:

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
The Lost Hero (Heroes of Olympus 1) by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus 2) by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
The Mark of Athena (Heroes of Olympus 3) by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus 4) by Rick Riordan [May 2016]
The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus 5) by Rick Riordan [May 2016]

Borrowed books read in December:

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson [3]
Bad Day at the Vulture Club (Baby Ganesha 5) by Vaseem Khan [3]
Inspector Chopra and the Million Dollar Motor Car (Baby Ganesha) by Vaseem Khan [3]
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
The Demigod Files by Rick Riordan [3]
The Demigod Diaries by Rick Riordan [3]
The Red Pyramid (Kane Chronicles 1) by Rick Riordan [3]
The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles 2) by Rick Riordan [3]

I was right about how much I could read this month when I bought books, I was wrong about how easily I was going to get diverted by reading borrowed books instead. I finished up the Inspector Chopra series and intend to move on to the Malabar House series by Vaseem Khan once I've read and returned more of the Rick Riordan backlist.

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

trobadora

Yuletide author reveals have happened! I had one story in the regular collection and one in the Madness collection this year.

For my main fic, I matched on a request that I'd been eyeing for some years - for Zhu Yilong's Thermos Flower Series commercials. (Here is a nearly-complete playlist, lacking only the lily of the valley one, though the first on the list is a bit atypical.)

There's only one regular character in this series of commercials, but there is also a white cat that appears in several. So those were the two characters I decided to write about:

Zhu Yilong's character, the man with the magical thermoses, who I decided is a dragon (with some canon support, given the little cartoon dragon on the thermoses :p), and whom I named Ao Xing (after the dragon kings of the four seas, who are all "Ao Something").

the white cat - I decided this is a cat spirit, called him Xiao-Bai, and gave him a human form that - no surprise - looks like Bai Yu. (This Bai Yu, to be precise, which I knew my recipient would appreciate. *g*)

I didn't tag this as "Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong Character Combinations", because it isn't that, and I didn't tag it as Guardian RPF, because it isn't that either, but it's still Guardian-adjacent and Weilan-adjacent, after all. *g*

And I had a complete blast with this, worldbuilding and all! Tying things like the magically appearing flower decorations on the thermoses into the worldbuilding, inventing flower worlds of my own, and of course developing the relationship between the two characters - it really was a lot of fun. :D

And I did a fun thing with the narrative voice where the beginning of each chapter starts in a more distant/mythic, omniscient voice and then zooms in on the POV character, which I hope worked well!

I think this one's completely readablewithout canon knowledge, btw. Hardly anyone has read it (it really is niche even for Yuletide), but I hope a few more people will give it a chance. I'm pretty proud of how it came out!

**

Heart-Seed, Heart-Flower (8,465 words)
Fandom: Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Zhu Yilong's Character (Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials), White Cat (Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials)
Content Tags: Magic Flowers, Magic Waters, Dragons, Cats, Shape-Shifters, Multiple Worlds, Lonely Wanderers, Magical Quests, Saving Worlds with a Magic Bottle
A/N: Many thanks to

china_shop for beta-reading, and to

douqi for double-checking the character naming!

Summary:

The bottle was plain and unadorned, the lotus pattern that would have signalled the success of his quest nowhere in evidence.

He'd failed.

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

End of Event
We have revealed creator names at the main 2025 collection and the 2025 Madness collection. (Reveals seems to be working as intended - fingers crossed!) The New Year's Resolutions 2026 collection will shortly open for posting. The structured parts of this year's event are over - but you can keep posting recs at

yuletide and commenting on works to let their creators know you enjoyed them.

Please comment!

Please check that you have commented on any gifts you received - you can search on your username at the Yuletide 2025 collection, or the Yuletide Madness 2025 collection, or check your own personal AO3 gifts page. We understand not everyone can comment immediately due to late-December commitments or unforeseen events, but please comment when you can to acknowledge the gifts you requested. Comments and kudos on other Yuletide works are also very welcome.

Thank you from mods and team
Thank you to everyone who took part in Yuletide 2025: writers, requesters, betas, pinch hitters, community coordinators, chatters, hippos and the hippo pool.

Thank you from mods to the tagmod team: these are the assistants who research and process tags, proofread announcements, brainstorm author questions, contribute specific fandom knowledge, check stories, and discuss how to solve problems.

We look forward to running Yuletide again in 2026!

And now
There's a reveals post up at the participant community, if you want to chat about your writing process now that you can.

New stories can be posted to the New Year's Resolutions 2026 collection.

Feedback
As always, general feedback is welcome!

This year, we increased the nominations allowance from 4 fandoms to 5 fandoms. Since that worked okay, we anticipate continuing that next year.

We introduced a limited Do-Not-Match system. That was manageable so we're interested in repeating the same process next year - though it's possible it could grow beyond our capacity, so we don't want to guarantee it indefinitely.

We changed the deadline time and the reveals times. Those changes were based on mod availability, and it was really helpful to us to have multiple mods awake at the point of deadline and reveals. We'll need to base future deadline and reveals times on that priority, but since that isn't the only factor making deadlines and reveal times effective, we're interested to hear feedback too.

Next Yuletide, we may review franchise rules to make sure we're being consistent and fair. We may also specifically review rules for music videos.

As requested by a participant, we will also be adding a section to our rules on AO3 listing what you can expect from the mod team’s communications and conduct. We have had an internal Code of Conduct for several years but agree it would be helpful to share a public version.

Again, feedback on these or other topics is also welcome.

Thank you for helping to make Yuletide 2025 a wonderful event.

umadoshi

Happy New Year, dear friends! May this year be infinitely better than last for all of us.

Our NYE was very quiet. We ordered pizza with Ginny and Kas, and after they went home, it was just us and the clowder and a Christmas pudding with brandy butter. The clock is ticking on our vacation time, but at least we still have a few more days of it.

I've decided to take the bingo card approach of setting goals for the new year, and I almost have a full card. (Thinking of twenty-four goals is hard! I need one more, and have a couple of ideas.) Most of what I've put down aren't so much one-and-done things, although I've tried to make more of them list items that can be ticked off than things that are like "do [x] once a week"; this has led to a mixed bag containing both "watch twelve movies" (rather than "watch one movie a month") and "read one volume of manga each week". Six of the current twenty-three goals are media intake of various sorts. ^^;

This afternoon I took a bit of time and finally went through my shelf and a half of Japanese-related books (mostly language-learning, but a handful of cultural reference books) and pruned about half of them. That freed up a fair bit of space (for this moment, all of my cookbooks now fit on their bookcase!), but wasn't as big a cull as I'd sort of figured I'd manage once I got started. >.< I currently have no idea what to do with the culled books, though, so maybe I'll manage to prune some more while I get that figured out. Part of me still clings to this faint hope with no basis in reality that I might yet possibly someday take another stab at studying the language, so I've hung on to some of those books, but there are also a handful of language-focused ones that that could conceivably be useful for reference for work. (And I kept nearly all of the cultural cultural reference books. And both dictionaries...)

Current Mood: thoughtful

nanila

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Somehow I was under the impression that I didn't do much travelling in December. Making this video reminded me that I went to London twice as well as Harwell and then Norfolk for Christmas. I didn't fly, but I certainly spent a lot of time on trains and in the car.

The full year video reminded me that I flew to new places for conferences: Hamburg (Germany), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Larnaka (Cyprus). I visited my parents in the USA. I went to Paris (France), Darmstadt (Germany), and Frascati (Italy) for workshops. We travelled as family by train across Western Europe to go to a conference in Vienna (Austria). We holidayed in Wales and Norfolk. I went to Maui (USA) for a conference. It was an incredibly busy year.

( Full year - 12 min 30 sec )

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got_quiet

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New year, new bingo card of goals | Pruning the Japanese-language section of the bookcases

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