Fancake is FIFTEEN

Dec. 11th, 2025 10:16 am
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun in [community profile] fancake

Photograph of a grinning Shiba Inu dog wearing a pink party hat with a 15 on it. Text: Happy Birthday, Fancake. On this day in history, [personal profile] jerakeen made the very first post to this comm. Happy birthday to us!

To celebrate [community profile] fancake's fifteen years of operation, we're taking a two-pronged approach, with thanks to [personal profile] full_metal_ox for suggesting the second prong:

  1. post recs to the comm for fanworks published in 2010 for amnesty (if all else fails, theme: old fandoms should probably cover you, but consider also theme: favorite fanworks, theme: fandom classics, and theme: underloved fanworks)

  2. comment on this post with what you were into when you were fifteen—or what you were into fifteen years ago—what you're into today, and how your tastes have changed—or not!—over the years, or share your thoughts in your own journal and leave us a link here in the comments

  3. a secret third thing???

Happy birthday, Fancake! Thank you for making this comm a community. 🎂

Intention paths

Dec. 11th, 2025 04:59 pm
dolorosa_12: (dolorosa)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
Today's December talking meme prompt is from [personal profile] edwardianspinsteraunt and it is: places which have had the greatest impact on you as a person, or which you strongly associate with a particular period in your life.

I think it will surprise no one to discover that I'm someone who feels a lot of intense feelings about specific landscapes and places, so when I saw this prompt, I felt a) very enthusiastic and b) a bit daunted, as there are so many places I could talk about here! So I've decided — to keep things manageable — to limit this to one type of place per decade of my life.

Cities and oceans )
minoanmiss: Minoan girl lineart by me (Minoan chippie)
[personal profile] minoanmiss in [community profile] agonyaunt
Content advisories: drunkenness, groping, unarmed violence, chaos, epic holiday partying.
Read more... )

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 12/10 Game

Dec. 11th, 2025 12:10 am
settiai: (Siân -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.
petra: Paul Gross in drag looking blank (Ms Fraser - Secretly Canadian)
[personal profile] petra
[personal profile] ride_4ever just let me know about a donation, so I wrote:

Make my wish come true (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski
Additional Tags: Drabble, Christmas Fluff
Summary:

Ray observes a holiday tradition.


*

If you donate 25 USD in cash or in kind to a food bank or food pantry, tell me about it and I'll write for you!
petra: A woman grinning broadly (Shirley - Good day)
[personal profile] petra
Happy "It's December Tenth" to all who observe it.

I have not written my Dark Outside pieces yet, far less addressed and sent the mail, so I will send cards When I Get To It.

I am still going to write for people; it'll just be in your email inbox come Solstice, not your physical mailbox come whenever. People who just wanted cards will get cards at some date TBD.

Rec-cember Day 10: Murderbot

Dec. 10th, 2025 11:33 pm
falena: [Generation Kill] Close up of the Iceman (iceman)
[personal profile] falena

Wikipedia has a pretty goog summary, for those who are not familiar with the books:

The Murderbot Diaries is a science fiction series by Martha. The series is told from the perspective of the titular cyborg guard, a "SecUnit" owned by a futuristic megacorporation. SecUnits include "governor" modules that control and punish the constructs if they take any actions not approved by the company. The ironically self-named "Murderbot" hacked and disabled the module but pretends to be a normal SecUnit, staving off the boredom of security work by watching media. As it spends more time with humans, it develops genuine friendships and emotional connections, which it finds inconvenient.

It's got humour, emotional depth, action; it's the perfect comfort read, because Murderbot grappling with what it means to have free will and catching human cooties feeling is weirdly heartwarming. Murderbot is the best protag, I swear. I can't believe I saw this series mentioned around for years and never checked it out because I thought it was going to be gruesome, since its titular character is called Murderbot, ha. It's now also a tv series,starring Brad 'the Iceman' Colbert Alexander Skarsgård. The tv series is fun, a good adaptation, really, but the books are far superior, imo.

All these stories probably contain spoilers, so do not read them if you haven't read the books (you won't be safe if you've just watched the show, I supspect).

In Control. 8K words. Four times having a governor module fucking sucked, plus one time [REDACTED: FILE MISSING]. (Or: Murderbot has Emotions for 8,000 words. ART tries to help. So does Dr. Mensah, but like, in a decidedly less assholish way.)

Re-Initialization. 38K words. When the infamous rogue SecUnit of the Preservation Alliance gets captured, the corporate techs assigned to it expected to be able to get some juicy data, or at least some insights into its cracked governor module. They didn't expect something so… basic.

Changelong. 377 words. helpme.file: Changelog Various additions made by the units who pass along Murderbot’s governor module hack. Tremendously fun!

The Pitt

I adore how most of fandom has decided that Frank is a good guy, despite his many flaws, that he has fallen head over heels in love with Mel and that he'd do anything to be with her. Sometimes I like a darker interpretation of canon, though. In this vein, let me offer you my kingdon for a horse  14K. Langdon drives Mel home after the longest first day in the world. This is an amazing fic, so perfectly in character, hot and it packs such an emotional punch. The ending is absolutely brutal. It needs many more hits, kudos and comments.


yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods in [community profile] yuletide_admin
The default deadline has passed! Defaults after this date will require a New Year’s Resolution fic before you can sign up again. See more info about defaulting at our FAQ.

Original assignments and pinch hits #1-96 are due in a little over 6 days, at:

9pm UTC, 17 December
See when that is in YOUR timezone
See countdown

This is an international exchange, and deadlines are given in UTC/GMT. This deadline is also at a DIFFERENT TIME OF DAY to deadlines we've used in recent years. Please click the links and check when the deadline is for you. We appreciate it!


Good luck to all writing, and especial thanks to everyone tackling pinch hits! Check out [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits for requests currently in need of writers.


Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app

Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.

Silksong: the "epilogue"

Dec. 10th, 2025 08:57 pm
schneefink: Quirrel from Hollow Knight sitting on a bench (HK Quirrel on bench)
[personal profile] schneefink
I played very little Silksong in the past 1-2 weeks and did pretty much everything I wanted to in my first playthrough (before the DLCs come out) so now is a good time to post the "epilogue" notes.

Things I did after the true ending )

Some more thoughts )

LPs I watched )

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

(no subject)

Dec. 10th, 2025 02:47 pm
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
Ballad of Sword and Wine, vol. 6 by Tang Jiu Qing (translated by XiA, Jia, and amixy):

Read more... )

Slippery Creatures, by K.J. Charles

Dec. 10th, 2025 09:45 am
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
Will Darling's inherited his uncle's used bookshop and also a secret that everyone in London is trying to beat out of him. After Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan—handsome, charming, rich—rescues him from one of these numerous thugs, Will accepts his help in searching the bookshop for whatever it was his uncle was hiding. Sex, intrigue, and hats (it's the 1920s) ensue.

I don't know, gang, I just didn't vibe with these two, and the many sex scenes kind of demand that you do. I would have preferred a higher story to horny ratio; as it is, it's pretty much 1:1. But, personal tastes aside, it's not a bad book, and other readers have found it delightful, so don't let me scare you off.

Contains: explicit m/m sex, including some terms so deeply unsexy I can only assume they're historically accurate; violence; references to WWI, trench warfare, infectious disease, and biological weapons.

Wednesday Reading Meme

Dec. 10th, 2025 08:13 am
osprey_archer: (yuletide)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, which is actually a reread, which I realized fairly early on when the foppish country house owner explains that he’s staffed the place with murderers who have served their time. Just oncers, no more dangerous than the average man on the street, and anyway how else is he supposed to staff a country house given the servant problem in 1970s Britain? But I kept going, because Ngaio Marsh is always a good time, and also this book prominently features Troy who just happens to be at the country house to paint said foppish owner when the murder occurs… A Troy book is always especially a good time.

Maud Hart Lovelace’s The Trees Kneel at Christmas is set in Park Slope, where one of my friends lives, so every few pages I was shrieking “I know that place! I’ve crossed that street!” So naturally I loved the book, haha. Our heroine Afifi hears a story from her grandmother about how the trees kneel at Christmas back home in Lebanon, and becomes determined to walk to Prospect Park at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the trees kneel in America, too.

I checked out Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 American Folksongs for Christmas purely because it was illustrated by Barbara Cooney, but found it unexpectedly fascinating. Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger) was, among other things, a collector of folk music, and this book is full of songs I’ve never even heard of, from the tradition of all-night Christmas Eve church singalongs, often in the South, where people would gather and sing till dawn.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started Tasha Tudor’s Take Joy, which is a compilation of Christmas stories/poems/carols etc illustrated by Tudor. The second story is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the world’s saddest pine tree. In the woods, the pine is too entirely focused on growing bigger (big enough to be a Christmas tree!) to ever feel happy. Then it’s cut down to be a Christmas tree, and it’s taken to a house and covered with ornaments and candles, and it’s all very strange and confusing, but the pine tree thinks that it will be able to enjoy these celebrations once it gets used to them… except of course its life as a Christmas tree lasts for just one night, and then it’s tossed in the attic and dried out for firewood.

What I Plan to Read Next

As I feared, I’m already running low on Christmas chapter books. However, Christie has a Poirot Christmas book and a Miss Marple that’s set at Christmas (although not perhaps a Christmas Book), and I have been meaning to to a Miss Marple, so…

If you have any other classic mystery Christmas recs, let me know!
22degreehalo: (GBH hotel)
[personal profile] 22degreehalo in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Night at the Museum
Pairings/Characters: Jedediah/Octavius
Rating: T
Length: 10,180
Creator Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] liviapenn
Theme: Amnesty, Cultural Differences, Enemies to Friends (to Lovers), Enemies Working Together, Missing Scenes

Summary: There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know. -- Henry David Thoreau

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
-- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Reccer's Notes: This is so much fun, charting the growth in these boys' friendship starting from their trek through the snow in the movie to their awkward, gradual romantic advances post-canon ❤️

Fanwork Links: if this was a cowboy movie (i'd give you my boots)

2025 Away from Keyboard post

Dec. 10th, 2025 09:27 pm
morbane: three exclamation marks, one of which is formed out of two guinea pigs (guinea pig)
[personal profile] morbane in [community profile] yuletide
Yuletide is coming! If everything goes well, we will reveal works in the main collection at 9pm UTC on 24 December, two weeks from now. Madness works are revealed a day later.

(Default deadline is 9pm UTC on the 10th; posting deadline is 9pm UTC on the 17th.)

In Yuletide, it's important to leave a comment on your gift (or gifts) to thank your author.

If you think you'll be delayed in commenting until late in the anonymous period (ending 1 January) or maybe not even until well into the new year, you can use this post to OPTIONALLY let your author(s) know about that delay ahead of time. You don't need to give a reason, but an approximate time indication may be helpful. Please include your AO3 name.

Thanks everyone! Good luck with writing, and please consider the beta post or [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits if you have capacity for beta jobs or pinch hits!

BG3: Glad Tidings by partingxshot

Dec. 10th, 2025 12:41 pm
22degreehalo: (Nutcracker and the 4 realms)
[personal profile] 22degreehalo in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3
Pairings/Characters: Wyll/Astarion
Rating: T
Length: 25,638
Creator Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] partingxshot
Theme: Amnesty, Black Characters, Characters of Colour, Character Development, Established Relationship, Family, Just Plain Fun, Marriage, Outsider POV, Politics, Post-Canon, Unconventional Format & Style, Working Together

Summary: You are ULDER RAVENGARD.

Your son is completely besotted with his fiancé, but you can’t figure out the appeal. He’s spoiled, and petty, and seems chiefly concerned with draining the Ravengard coffers. You are, frankly, at your wits’ fucking end.

Surely the only solution is to declare an INSANE SECRET WAR on him before he can ruin the MIDWINTER'S EVE BALL. This cannot possibly backfire.

[A choose-your-own-adventure Astarion son-in-law simulator. Happy Holidays! Or possibly the opposite of that.]

Reccer's Notes: This is just so much fun 😄 The notion of how Astarion would fit in at Wyll's childhood home is a common topic for Wyllstarions, and this is such a fun take on it!! It's remarkably coherent no matter which paths you take, and there are so many fun running jokes or weird endings to find! (And also, if you enjoy the writing style... Might I have a particular webcomic called Homestuck to recommend? Because it was very clearly an inspiration :D)

Fanwork Links: Glad Tidings

I need a Baldur's Gate fandom tag please, mods!!
22degreehalo: (J&W !)
[personal profile] 22degreehalo in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Blackadder Goes Forth
Pairings/Characters: Blackadder/Darling
Rating: T
Length: 20,605
Creator Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] nomadicwriter
Theme: Amnesty, Casefic, Cuddling Snuggling & Bed-Sharing, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies Working Together, Forced Proximity, Historical Settings, Just Plain Fun, Old Fandoms, Rare Pairings, Pretend Couple, Small Fandoms, Time Travel, Uncommon Settings, Undercover as a Couple

Summary: Darling's remarkable resemblance to French traitor the Duc de Darling - no relation - sees him unwillingly sent to infiltrate a German-occupied château. Blackadder accompanies him even less willingly, especially when he learns exactly what it is they're looking for.

(Baldrick is also there, but no one bothered to find out if it was willingly or otherwise.)

Reccer's Notes: This is just so fucking good. It has been an age since I last watched Blackadder but this fic brought me all the way back immediately: the character voices are just chef's kiss! It really feels like it could've been a special episode, except with added totally in-character shippiness! 10/10, perfect characterisation, perfect dynamics, perfect silliness, no notes ❤️

Fanwork Links: General Relativity

The sea sighed, and kept its secrets

Dec. 9th, 2025 07:49 pm
dolorosa_12: (seal)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
Today's December talking meme prompt is from [personal profile] yarnofariadne, and it's a great one: favourite folktale or fairytale, and why.

I like folktales about crossing places, and moving between one state and another, and above all women transformed, and I feel a very intense set of feelings about the sea, so it probably surprises no one that my absolute favourite folktale of all is the story of the Selkie Bride, in all its variants.

It's a hard story, and a cruel story: at its heart it has such a monstrous violation — the selkie woman, trapped on land, in human form, and in marriage by a man who steals and hides her sealskin — and the resolution is cruel, too, since although the woman regains her freedom and her shapeshifting ability, she has to part with her land-born children as a consequence. (The touch in many variants of the story — that the woman's youngest child is the one to discover the hidden sealskin and innocently gives its existence and location away to the trapped mother — is just the final, brutal twist of the knife.)

(It feels gauche to link to my own fic here, but I've tried so many times to write stories that grasp at what it feels like for those children in the aftermath, standing on the shore, and my AO3 account has many variations on this theme, plus stories for other fandoms that are essentially 'woman has emotions triggered by, about, and near body of water.' It's my very, very favourite thing to write.)

What I love about this folktale in particular is how it's all about the relationship between people who live at the water's edge, and the sea that lives beside them, and about the way those watery tideline places have a sense of liminality and blurred boundaries, and that the beings of the sea, and the humans on land can sometimes cross over, in both directions. The sea sustains those coastal communities, but it can also be violent, unpredictable, and dangerous. It gives and takes, but remains fundamentally unknowable.

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