I just did something I've had on the back burner for years: I emailed an acquaintance who's a tattoo artist about getting my first tattoo. 🥰

This post is related to my 2026 Life Bingo goals.

I've been wanting to get a new piercing(s) for literal years, but I also don't know exactly what I want to get? I know that I would like at least another set of lobe piercings on my ears, and maybe a cartilage/helix piercing?

Aside from that, I'm not even sure what all facial/head piercings are available?

Doing more research is likely in order. 

This post is related to my 2026 Life Bingo goals.

I'm pretty good at recycling, but I'd really like to up my game in terms of reducing plastic use and reusing/mending items I already own. (Kylia is giving me a little help in the mending department.)

I need to do more research on the best ways to accomplish these goals, but this post is a place to report back on this goal during the year. 

1/50

( the books )

Challenge #1

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

My name is Bat, although when I play online games I tend to go by Gone. She/Her. Bi with heavy lesbian leanings. Mass multishipper in multiple fandoms because I have no chill. I'm 39, have a son who's my nephew that I've raised since he was 3 weeks old (he's now 14yo!) and help co-parent another nephew (he's 12yo). I also have a cat who is happiest being my shoulder baby, hates pets but tolerates kisses, and is named after my mom at her insistence (despite me being the one who bought him - she also seems to be jealous of him on some level so now she doesn't like him, lol). I work as a Caretaker for my mom who's been reluctantly bedbound for a few years now (we're hoping PT will help her at the very least get up long enough to sit in a wheelchair). I've been in fandom since I was 15 and have no plans to go anywhere. =)

I'm doing this challenge because I had a few rough years recently where I struggled to make content and was in a bit of a depression state so I stayed away from DW for a while. Hated it and want to be active in both again, so I'm hoping this challenge and others help me get back to it on a more regular basis. 8^)

(so for this - where it says 'this year', I'm meaning '2025, and I'm doing all of the questions just for what I posted in 2025, rather than all time)

How many words have you written this year? I have written 159,573 words in 2025, which is absolutely fucking insane to me. It's also the second year running that I've hit my GYWO goal and I'm honestly completely blown away!

How many works did you publish this year? 59, which... have I mentioned just seems batshit? 3 Stargate SG-1 and 56 tennis RPF

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)? There's a handful of them, and I can't pick.
It’ll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar which was some Jannik hurt/comfort that started with him collapsing and coughing up blood on Wimbledon Centre Court.
Surface Tension which is a kind of gothic horror series revolving around the use of magic in the tennis world. It mostly centres on one of Jannik's coaches, and how the spells he casts interact with different surfaces, all of which have their own unique magical properties.
The Courage of my Convictions which is an basically a queer second-chance age gap small town/coffee shop forbidden romance between an injured tennis player with his tail between his legs, and an ex-tennis player who became a priest (instead of, as per the real world, where he became a coach. I may have a thing for coach/player LOL)

What work of yours has the most hits? With 2809 hits, it was In The Heat Of Your Electric Touch A Sincaraz pwp with some somnophilia and praise kink.

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? Probably You had to fight to have the upper hand which was a Darren/Jannik (age gap, coach/player) power play BDSM fic. It's a little over 10k, involves discovery of a kink, a lot of 'we shouldn't be doing this', getting into Jannik's head as he tries to figure out WTF he's feeling. I did not expect anyone to even read this so I was fucking delighted that people did. And apparently liked it.

Favourite title you used Ooh that's a tough one. So nearly all my titles are Taylor Swift lyrics, and it's kind of become a fun game for me to now to try to find the lyric that fits. I've got some fic titles that wouldn't look out of place as a Fall Out Boy song title ;) But I don't know if I have a specific favourite

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? See above

Pairing you wrote the most for this year? This I did not expect actually - I wrote 13 Darren/Jannik

Favourite pairing you wrote for this year? Oooh honestly, I'm really taken with my Team Sinner polycule fic, with the varying combinations of Darren/Jannik/Simone

What work was the quickest to write? I think it was probably Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you - that was written in an afternoon, and is based on a super cute fanart that someone posted

What work took you the longest to write? Of the completed fics, You had to fight to have the upper hand. It took about 4-5 months, but the editing was the longest bit - I'd written myself around in circles a little bit and had to unpick it
Of the WIPs? The Courage of my Convictions which I started in March and I'm 9 chapters/17k into so far and still going

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? That's never worth asking. Never. I don't want to know. 175, give or take

What’s your longest work of the year? Currently at 17,455 words is   The Courage of my Convictions

What’s your shortest work of the year? At just 427 words, its hear my voice in the dark which is just some Sincaraz fluff

What WIP are you taking into next year with you? I have 6 work in progress that I'm actively working on
The Courage of my Convictions
Dancing is a Dangerous Game or... the one where Simone is Immortal, Highlander style
I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You which is Sincaraz as feuding booktubers
Surface Tension
Wolf-Tethered a Darren/Simone shifter AU
You wouldn’t take my word for it if you knew who was talking a Darren/mystery online Dom fic, mostly done in chatroom log style

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? Established Relationship with 21 fics

Your favourite character to write this year? Not to be incredibly cliché, but probably Jannik

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? Carlos. Every time I think I've got a handle on him, we learn something new about him which just completely changes how I look at him.

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? There is a lovely... something... going on between Priscilla Hon, Karolina Muchova and Amanda Anisimova which absolutely intrigues me and Bob! is pondering in the background

Which work of yours have you reread the most? Honestly, most of the Darren/Jannik stuff because they're my 🧡 and until like November no-one else had written any!

How many kudos in total did you get this year? 2,939 and that just feels fucking fantastic, not gonna lie. OMG!

Which work has the most comments? My... uhh... omegaverse crackfic written in the style of a serious anthropological paper A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack

Did you do any collaborative works this year? No, I'm very much a solo llama when it comes to writing

Did you write any gifts this year? Nope, not this year

Did you receive any gifts this year? Nope. I didn't take part in any of the exchanges that happened

What’s your most common category? We're all utterly shocked that it was m/m I'm sure

What do you listen to while writing? Anything, everything and nothing, and also all the things. Plus Bob!. And tennis. Generally not nothing. Just whatever's on at the point when I start writing.

Favourite work you wrote this year? I... don't know that I can pick? Probably Surface Tension or The Courage of my Convictions

Favourite line/passage you wrote this year? Oooh there's a lot of lines about the magical properties of the surfaces in the various Surface Tension fics but there's this one passage from Dancing Is A Dangerous Game which I so fucking love:

Jannik takes another breath, unsteady. “How old is he?”

A floorboard creaks, then a voice answers from the doorway.

“Three hundred and forty-six,” Simone says, his tone bone-dry.

Silence.

Jannik blinks.

“Years,” Simone clarifies, as if that helps. “Give or take a few birthdays. I’ve stopped counting.”

Biggest surprise while writing this year? That as much as I really fucking love getting comments and hits and kudos, and we always say that we write for ourselves... this year I've discovered that no, I do actually mean it. I could easily have sat here and cranked out Sincaraz PWP after Sincaraz PWP for the love, but I've settled down and written plotty AU fic that not many people are reading - specifically the magic series sadly - but I'm still going because I've got this story I want to tell and I'm really enjoying writing it

Snowflake Challenge #1 !!!! 


So grateful to have made it through yet another year. The past year was challenging, but here we are again to give it another go.

I'm Cyrano or Trixie, and I'm hopeful to do some insightful thinking about my past year in fandom, and the things I plan on undertaking and enjoying in 2026, since quite a few things have changed! I'm really looking forward to reading everyone else's posts as well, so I hope the start of your new year has been wonderful, and if not, I hope it gets there soon!

OK, baby steps.

Do a better render of what I had open yesterday.

I know there was a book reading meme somewhere, but I can't find it so we're going a bit bare bones today. 😅


Total books I picked up to read: 51


Total DNFs: 14


Fave books

Sweep in Peace and One Fell sweep from Ilona Andrews' Innkeeper Chronicles series. They were the ONLY books I gave 5 stars to. Also loved Skyla Dawn Cameron's intense mystery set in the Canadian wilderness The Silent Places.


Biggest Disappointments

* Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll - A roman a clef abt the victims and survivors of Ted Bundy that was lauded everywhere. I still don't know WHO this book is for, LOLsob.

* Murder by Memory by Olivia Wilde - ANOTHER DISSENTING OPINION because the mystery was so weak that I decided to not continue the series. (But I'll continue to give this author a chance.)


Biggest Surprises

* The Wife Deserved It by Darby Kane - A shorter-than-expected novella that I enjoyed so much I'm going to read more books by this author.

* The Silent Places gets a tip of the hat as well cuz it was a good suspense novel that had the best ending I've read in a long while.


Worst books

* Make Room for Love by Darci Liao - Was excited abt a butch Chinese-American lesbian and a transgender Indian-American bisexual woman. But the story veered into a whole thing abt a student union and I ended up hating the whole thing.

* A Court of Deceit and Ruin by Jessaca Willis - Promoted as "a slow-burn sapphic fantasy romance perfect for fans of fairy tale retellings, dark magic, and star-crossed fates" --which turned out to be lies. The book WAS well-written, but this wasn't a romance, there was zero slow burn (again, NOT a romance), and the rest of the description is off. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Bitterbound by A.Z. Louise - An alleged "assassin x target romantasy" that had too many plotpoints that weren't quite resolved, a weak-ass romance, and a TERRIBLE ending (given the premise.)


Average rating for the year: 3. No idea how that happened.


Overall thoughts

It was a super strange reading year, NGL. I tried a lot of new-to-me authors (DNF'd a lot of them too, LOLsob) and had a meh reading year. Wished I'd tackled a lot more of my TBR and that I'd done Nonfiction November.

OTOH, I'm participating on two different reading challenges, so I'm going to not mood read as much as I did last year. :P


FICS

Total fics I picked up to read: 222 - I feel like this was lower than other years, huh.


Total DNFs: 103 - Way better than I expected given that there were months where I kept DNF'ing stuff left and right, LOL.


Total wordcount read: 2,126,551 - FTR, I don't feel one way or another abt this number. It's just interesting to know I've read 2.1M words, but there's no self-worth type of attachment from me toward it.


Highest reading month? January --which was 29 fics total. Makes sense to me!


Lowest reading month? April and August -- where I only read 9 fics each. IDK what distracted me in April, but I've got an idea that Summer SADs got to me in August.


Fandom I read the most: BTS. 😋 77 fics with Yoonjin being the ship I read the most (35).


Other fandoms 41 fics total split between Seventeen (multiple ships), TXT (multiple ships), TCGF (Hualian), BTVS (Buffy/Faith, Faith/Other), Shinee (Minho/Key)


Fave fics I read in 2025

* the last person i could ever love by miraclesofpaul (BTS, Explicit, Omegaverse, endgame ship is Jin/Yoongi, other background ships, 152k total ) - This fic was rollercoaster of LOLs, DRAHMAHZ, and many sweet moments. *Chef's kiss* due to it being a TRUE Enemies-to-Lovers AU.

* Interlude by duets (BTS, Rated Teen, Jin/Yoongi, 2.4k words total) - AU in which BTS never happens, but Yoongi ends up as a famous rapper and Jin is an actor. LOVED THE MIXED MEDIA format.

* You have seven [7] new calendar invites by andlovetoo (Mature, OT7, 5.8k words total) - BTS trying to sync their calendar is all you need to know abt this wonderful chatfic.

* Stacks by tender_tenderly (Explicit, RM/V, 9.8k words total) - A librarian AU of win with one-sided rivals-to-lovers, heheh.

* Growing Toward The Sun by Nevaeh - Non-Idol AU abt the ups and downs of queer life in Seoul. I loved the balance of angst and fluff.

* Break Thru Everything by aceaceaceace - (Rated Teen, established Minho/Key, 11.5k words total) SHINee's Key starts to organize with other queer idols to come out as a collective. Loved everything abt it (including the mentions of other idols who did come out too.)

* Sediment by belledamn (BTVS, Mature, Buffy/Faith, 27k words total) - A perfect Noir AU in which Buffy's a PI, Faith's a sex worker, and they have a hella complicated relationship. I liked the way the author integrated other characters into the story.

Hello snowflake_challenge

I'm Cassie. I’ve been on Dreamwidth (and LJ before that) for a long time, and blogging has always been one of the main ways I make sense of my life, even when I drift away from it for stretches at a time.

Current state of the llama: my life right now is mostly tennis, fandom, fanfiction, books, and school, with a generous helping of 'my brain is doing too many things at once'. It’s busy, a little messy, and very online in a fannish way. I keep thinking about things, reading things, having Opinions™, and then realising I don’t actually have anywhere to put them.

That's why I'm doing Snowflake. Not to be impressive or disciplined, but to ease back into showing up here. Snowflake feels like a gentle nudge rather than a demand - an excuse to write something and see what happens. Not polished posts, not content-for-an-algorithm - just having a place to put my thoughts, ramble a bit, and exist on the internet without performing. Snowflake feels like a gentle, low-stakes way to show up again.

My main fandom space is Tumblr. And I love it for what it’s for. I have a really nice little tennis fandom space over there, but I am in a super niche corner of a very small fandom, and it’s not where long-form blogging lives. It’s also increasingly full of people who are… very young. Which is fine! I was once young on the internet. But now I am old on the internet. Sometimes I would like to finish a paragraph without feeling ancient (especially when pairings known as 'old man yaoi' are.. uh... about players younger than me)

What I’m hoping to get out of Snowflake is simple: momentum. A habit of writing again. Maybe a bit of reconnection - with this space, with people here, and with the version of myself who’s always processed the world by blogging about it.

If nothing else, I’d like to come out of Snowflake having written something, and reminded myself that this place can still be home.

Hello! I'm Nan! She/her, 39 (turning 40 in February, whoa), and I've been in fandom for most of my life (got started as a wee 13 year old). It has been my main source of friends and interaction through the years. I've been in many, many fandoms over the years; HP, MCU, Final Fantasy (primarily 8, 12, 15, and a Realm Reborn), LOTR. I'm currently neck deep in Warhammer 40k fandom but I'm trying to spread my wings, take in new and different media, and hopefully gather a fun little collection of fandoms. :D I started out as a fanfic author but nowadays I'm primarily a fanartist, although I would really love to get more words out in 2026. I typically ship m/m but I enjoy drawing porn, romance, and gen art. :3

I live in Seattle with cypher, four cats, a dog, and a bearded dragon. I work an extremely non-glamorous job that I enjoy a lot.

I want to be more present in fandom and on DW, as both of these give me sanity but man, am I terrible and staying focused (I have diagnosed ADHD), lmaoooo.

Links!
nan
lore-pls
BlueSky
The StoryGraph
Letterboxd (gonna try so hard to use this more this year!)

I usually try to get my end-of-year post in before Jan 1st, but this year I made my peace with the fact that it'll come after.

Mostly because I already know this new year will be hard. Personally and otherwise, it will be a difficult time, I have no illusions about that.

But, a year ago things were so much worse. Personally and otherwise.

I was unemployed, extremely broke, sick for a prolonged period of time, there was one more war directly affecting me than there is today, and mostly all of those things seemed endless. There was no expiration date, no way to budget mental or physical or financial resources. It was all just survival mode.

But this year... this year on Dec 31st I had a job. A job I actually took time off from to celebrate novyi god. A salary! Coworkers I like, a really good boss.

This year a close friend just had a baby. Another close friend is due in the summer. A niece will be born within the next month or so. My family tree is weird but this one will be as close as I get to being a "real" aunt.

The world is full of horrors, but there's one less war. One less fucking war.

Last year I felt mostly helpless, and voiceless, and like there was no place for me in the communities I grew up in. I haven't talked about that yet, not anywhere, I think I'm still processing it. But this year I feel less helpless and more angry and disillusioned. Which may not sounds like it's any better? lol but it means I have more of a sense of control over my life, which is a good thing.

And of course, everything old is new again, with the hottest fandom right now being a Sid/Ovi secretly-fucking-all-along fic.

Everything still feels so fragile, so brittle. Like I said, this year will be difficult, I already know that. But it's still so much better, already, than the situation I was in last year.

I painted my nails a festive color, with holiday themed stickers. I got my loved ones presents on time. I am... mostly mentally coping with my upcoming birthday.

May you be the light and receive the light, friends. Thank you for being here for another moment, another year, another tiny lifetime.

S novym godom.

Challenge #1

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

Hi! I'm Tammy. I'm in my late 30s, Desi, and have been in fandom since 2000.

I'm back on DW after a little over a year of a mostly unintentional break. I want to get back into the journaling habit, and be mindful and present when I post vs just doomscrolling. I'd also like to make some new friends!

Things I love:

Reading. Another of my goals this year is to read the books I already own. I mostly read romance, SFF, and light/cozy non-fiction. I've honestly tried litfic, but it bores me to pieces. I avoid the crap out of horror, dystopia, and anything too dark.

Podcasts. My favorites are the ones that teach you things, like Gastropod, Dressed, and Stuff You Should Know. I also adore Writing Excuses, which honestly is practically an MFA in podcast form. 

Food. I am a competent cook at best, but I love thinking and talking about food and culture. Also, I am aggressively pedantic about that not all Indians eat naan and curry, damn it. Also that coconut anything does not belong in butter chicken. 

Music: I am mostly a pop, pop-rock, and feminist country girlie, but I'm looking to expand my horizons. I also unapologetically love Taylor Swift. 

My fandoms: 

Numb3rs: The fandom of my heart. I just love how KIND this show is, and how well it's aged, a few episodes aside. Also? So much shipper potential, lol. (Even if I do bear a grudge about the portrayal of Amita that's as old as the show at this point. In my defence, we're from the same subcommunity and the writers... did not do their research.)

Harry Potter: More specifically, the first four books and parts of the fifth. No shade to those of you who loved the direction the series went in in Six and Seven, but it was epically not for me. Also, JKR and her bigoted bullshit can take a long damn walk off a short damn pier, but damned if I'll let her take away this thing I've loved since I was nine. I refuse to support her monetarily; that's my line in the sand. I'm honestly mostly here for AUs and fix-it fic, lol. 

The Avengers: Specifically, the pocket universe post the 2012 movie where they're all in the Tower and also functional adults who are slowly learning to become a family. Not here either for SHYDRA or the whole 'my dad can beat up your dad' bullshit of the later movies. I'm a Stony girl at heart, but I'm willing to read a well-written Stucky. 

The Goblin Emperor/ The Cemeteries of Amalo: Maia and Csethiro are adorable, as are Thara and his circle. I especially love the canonical pairing, which I won't spoil here, lol.

Superbat: Look, these two have been special since their first appearance together. I've loved them since I was a teenager, and their dynamic of best friends and partners, two men who are so different yet are so close. 

Other more minor fandoms: Pride and Prejudice (love me some Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam), Check, Please!, all Sherlock variations, LotR and the Hobbit, the Electra McDonnell spy thriller series, and L.A. Hall's The Comfortable Courtesan.

 So. Uh. I didn't ACTUALLY intend to basically disappear from DW for over a year. But, well, Certain RL Things happened in November of 2024 and I needed a break from ALL social media that had anything even remotely US politics related on it, and then once I surfaced from that, I'd feel bad about how long I'd been away and somehow wind up not posting. /o\

But! It is a new year, and the lovely ilyena_sylph was generous enough to gift me some paid time, so here I am making an attempt to get back in the saddle. I realized that I need SOME kind of fannish social media that's not Discord, and Reddit was just not good for my brain, so good old DW it is.

I realized that one of the reasons I wasn't using DW as much as I meant to was that I was all up in my head about that I needed to have Something To Say to make a post, and I... often don't, lol. So this time, I'm allowing myself to use DW for long posts, yes, but also like I would the site formerly known as Twitter - for short, silly things, individual links, and just... interacting with people. 

I don't really want to do a 2025 recap, I'd rather start with a clean slate, but! I am very proud to say I published over 38k of fic last year, and some of it wasn't even for exchanges! It would have been over 40k, but I only wrote 7k for ficinabox rather than the required 10k. 

This year, I'd like to focus on things other than mindless doomscrolling - I want to get into new fandoms, since honestly, as much as I love the little corners of HP and Marvel I've staked out for myself and my co-writers (/waves to Rhi and Yena/) the broader fandoms do not spark joy and I want something new. Recommendations welcome, although no horror, dystopia, or C-dramas, please.

I also want to write more solo fic - while I love exchanges for pushing me out of my comfort zone (I would never have written P+P or The Goblin Emperor fic without recips who wanted them) - this year I would like to focus on writing more for me, since Gods know nobody else is writing Colby/Amita, lol. And very few people are writing Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam.  

But that's enough about me! What have y'all been up to? I've missed my friends! Tell me all the things! 

Started my revisit of the second Book of Dust volume. Again, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, and not looking at my original-reading reaction post from 2019 until I finish.

This has gotten very long, so I’m cutting off Roundup Post #1 after the big narrative turning point at the end of chapter 10. With 33 chapters total, that sets a pace for a total of 3 roundup posts. (Haven’t gotten far enough to know what would be a good milestone to end Roundup Post #2. I’ll keep an ear out.)

Held off long enough to make it my first post of 2026! That way, all the roundups for TSC will be posted in the same year.

Audiobook is 19 hrs 43 min. TBD how many times I pause it to comment/complain about something…

 

( Pantalaimon, the daemon of Lyra Silvertongue… )