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mecurtin posting in

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Sunday, December 28, to midnight on Monday, December 29 (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #34015 Daily check-in poll

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 26

How are you doing?

I am OK
17 (65.4%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now
9 (34.6%)

I could use some help
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single
9 (34.6%)

One other person
12 (46.2%)

More than one other person
5 (19.2%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

luzula

Day 28: Alibi sentence. Still lots of family time, now at my parents' place, so no farm news. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 27:

the_siobhan,

badly_knitted,

goddess47,

trobadora,

sylvanwitch,

sanguinity,

china_shop,

chestnut_pod

Day 28:

luzula,

china_shop

pairatime posting in

smallfandomfest

Title: His Something
Author: pairatimr
Fandom: Defying Gravity (1997 Movie)
Pairing/Characters: Trip/Scotty, references Pete/Griff
Rating/Category: R
Prompt: Griff/Pete; Event of the movie as seen from the point of view of someone else in the fraternity
Spoilers: the movie
Summary: Scotty and Trip deal with finding out about Pete, the houses reaction, and watch as Griff confronts Doogie
Notes/Warnings: the f word is used, and I don’t mean fuck.

Link:AO3

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

Two years ago, I did a picspam/quiz about shoes and ever since then I've been meaning to do one for hands as well. There are so many striking close-ups, so many iconic moments - but also many not so easily recognised. And some great visual parallels/motifs. So let's have some fun with this!

The challenge: identify who's being depicted, and which scene it is!
Hard mode: without looking at the comments first. :p

Sometimes it's easy to tell who it is, but not necessarily when; sometimes if you know who, you know what scene it has to be. Please post your guesses in the comments!

Without further ado (as usual, click for full size): ( 44 pics to identify! )

I'll post the solution next weekend. Good luck, everyone! Looking forward to some guesses! Or if you're not playing, enjoy the picspam! :)

jesse_the_k

In the News

Why some people are devoted to particular aspects of popular culture is a fundamental query in fan studies research. One common and familiar answer is that fandoms are like religions. A recent article offers a different approach to understanding the emotional intensity of fan devotion, suggesting that while fans often describe their devotion in terms that sound religious, this comparison “has some lingering issues that hamper the field.” The authors contend that we can compare specific elements of fan experience (e.g., rituals, symbols, shared practices, and collective identity) to “sacred experiences” without needing to imply that fandoms are literal religions.

We believe it is more accurate to conceptualize fan devotion as part of a broader landscape of sacred activities that transcend the concept of religion.

Elliott and Mowers assert that their results provide powerful evidence that many fans experience their interests as sacred.

Their interests occupy a unique and special place in their lives: They derive purpose and inspiration from them, they learn important values from them, they involve something powerful and important, and they inspire them to believe in something larger than themselves.

To support this claim, the researchers analyzed information gathered from surveys, interviews, and fan experiences at Comic Cons and identified a new framework for determining what makes fan experiences sacred-like. They argue that by studying and measuring these “sacred dimensions,” especially in contexts like conventions where fan devotion takes on almost ritual-like patterns, scholars can reevaluate the religion metaphor, focusing instead on analytic models that consider the complexity of fan experience. Through this process, researchers can better understand fan devotion and how fandom is shaped by this collective identity. This analysis helps frame fandom as a cultural practice with emotional, symbolic, and communal depth.

Reports from fan conventions across the globe reinforce the idea that physical gatherings become collective spaces where fans create meaning through shared experiences. In one example, recent reporting on Bengaluru Comic Con highlights the convergence of more than 50,000 fans gathering to celebrate their shared love for fandom. A Times of India article describes fans coming together in a vibrant pop culture playground: cosplaying, celebrating shared passions, and building community through creative expression. “For many attendees, Comic Con was as much about community as it was about pop culture.” In another report, Shefali Johnson, CEO of Comic Con India, explains how the fans are what make Bengaluru Comic Con so special: “People here come to listen, learn, connect and experience.” A story in the Deccan Herald describes the con as “a living mosaic of fandom,” where participation is an act of joy:

For many, the message was simple: this space belongs to everyone, regardless of age, fandom, or experience.

Events like these allow fans from all over the world to connect and share their passions, creating new sacred experiences together and building a strong collective identity.

OTW Tips

Transformative Works and Cultures, a project of the OTW, is an international, peer-reviewed academic journal that seeks to promote scholarship on fanworks and practices. The journal is published at least twice each year and invites submissions of papers in all areas. For more information, visit the TWC website.

Did you know the OTW attends fan conventions? Our volunteers represent the OTW at cons around the world. The OTW’s Con Outreach team, a division of the Communications committee, coordinated attendance at 10 gatherings across three continents in 2025, meeting fans and sharing games, gifts, fic prompts, and of course, our popular rec board, where everyone is invited to take a fic rec and leave one of their own. Our volunteers love to talk about fandom, so come see us and say hello!

Would you like to see the OTW at your local fan convention event? Contact our Communications committee and let us know!

We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-december-2025/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=274344

oursin

Last week's bread held out adequately.

On Wednesday I made Angel Biscuit dough (this year I had active dried yeast) which was enough to provide for Christmas, Boxing Day and Saturday morning breakfast. Turned out rather well.

For Christmas dinner we had: starter of steamed asparagus with halved hardboiled quails' eggs and salmon caviar; followed by pheasant pot-roasted with bacon, brandy, and madeira and served with Ruby Gem potatoes roasted in goosefat, garlic-roasted tenderstem broccoli (as noted with previous recent tenderstem broccoli, wish to invoke Trades Description Act re actual tenderness of stem), and red cabbage (bought-in, as not only is it an Almighty Faff, making it from scratch would involve ending up with A Hell of A Lot of Red Cabbage). Then bought-in Christmas puds with brandy butter and clotted cream.

Boxing Day lunch: blinis with smoked salmon, smoked Loch trout, and the remaining salmon caviar, and creme fraiche with horseradish cream, and a salad of lamb's lettuce and grilled piccarello pepper strips, in a walnut oil and damson vinegar dressing. Followed by mince pies.

Yesterday lunch was the leftover blinis and smoked fish. For yesterday evening meal I made the remains of the pheasant into a pilaff, served with a green salad.

Today's lunch: chestnut mushrooms quartered in olive oil, white-braised green beans and cut up piccarello peppers, the Phul-Gobi (braised cauliflower) from Dharamjit Singh's Indian Cookery, and blinis made up from the last of the batter, a bit past its best.

boxofdelights posting in

wiscon

This year has been an amazing year for WisCon, all thanks to our volunteers & supporters! Drop one goal you have for the new year. We’ll see you in 2026 for WisCon Online!

#WisCon #WomeninSFF #feministconvention

hrj

(This is the promised separate review of my favorite book from 2025.)

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is not simply my favorite book of the year, but is my candidate for Best Book of the Year overall. This is not simply a book about history but is a book about the process of history. It demonstrates the fractal messiness of the people, places, and events that we try to tidily sort into specific eras, and especially how all those people, places, and events are braided together into a solid fabric. Palmer doesn’t shy away from pointing out how thoroughly our understanding of history is shaped by the prejudices and preoccupations of historians; she embraces this aspect noting at every turn how her own take is shaped by her love of the city of Florence and especially its most controversial son, Machiavelli.

But what makes this book great is the humor poured into the cracks around the politics, violence, and art. (A recurring feature is little comic dialogues that summarize key events in a narrative style familiar to anyone on Twitter or Bluesky. I desperately want to see these presented in visual format, whether as live theater or animated shorts. It’s hard to pick a favorite line, but the top two are “Maria Visconti-Sforza: I’m standing right here!” and “King of France: You Italians are very strange.”)

The book concludes with what I can only describe as a stump speech for the importance to the contemporary world of studying and understanding history, embracing the necessary messiness of “progress,” and the hope that we can indeed continue the Renaissance project of reaching for a better world.

This is a very long book, though paced in manageable chapters. When I decided to read it and found that the audiobook was the same price as the hardcover, I went for audio (at over 30 hours!) and listened to it while taking the train home from the International Medieval Conference. The narration is top-notch, capturing the emotional range of the text perfectly. The side benefit is that the combination of material, voice, and length made it perfect to add to my “sleep-aid audiobooks” collection, which means I get to enjoy it over and over again (in the bits and pieces I consciously hear). But of course I bought the hardcover too, not only so I could get Palmer to autograph it, but because I needed to be able to track down my favorite bits and check out the footnotes.

larryhammer

This has been a Yuletide of abundance — five gifts in three fandoms, including a surprising amount of poetry. My matched gift was appropriately titled:

Gifts (1212 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker
Additional Tags: Fae & Fairies, Bargains With Fae & Fairies, Unwise bargains With Fae & Fairies, Becoming a real boy, or otherwise - Freeform
Summary: Humans, give a little something. Give me something, get a present. Humans, give me, just a small gift —

A fae of dubious credibility asks the human models of several flowers (in alphabetical order) each for a gift, just a little thing, to help it become real. The tag “unwise bargains with fae & fairies” is accurate. Beautiful, seductive, and more than a little dangerous.

I also got a Flower Fairy treat, in this case a poem:

Flower Fairies of the Gone Woods (193 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker
Additional Tags: Fae & Fairies, Botanical accuracy, Biographical liberties, Poetry
Summary: The berries are not to be eaten
She says in a marginal note
Miss Barker, she asked you to listen
So what’s that bright thing in your throat?

Homage and critique, with a nice sting in the end.

Then I got two treats for another fandom, again a poem and a story. The poem is amazing, giving backstory using the stanza of the original:

The Vigil (1056 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning, Original Work
Characters: Childe Roland, Cuthbert, Giles
Additional Tags: Original Character(s), Backstory, Blank Verse, Time Loop
Summary: Upon this quest, there can be no release.
Unto that hallowed tower we must go...

I flail.

Three Knigths by the Dark Tower (2104 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Relationships: roland/cuthbert, Cuthbert & Giles, Roland & Cuthbert & Giles
Characters: Roland (Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came), Cuthbert (Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came), Giles (Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came)
Summary: Giles and Cuthbert follow their friend Roland even to the threshold of the Dark Tower, hoping to help him on his quest.

Cuthbert and Giles have not in fact departed from the quest, as Roland (at the end of his rope) had thought.

And finally, a treat on the Housman poem “Her strong enchantments failing,” being a poem cycle expanding a bit on the backstory and worldbuilding:

ILLUC VOLAT (278 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Her Strong Enchantments Failing - A. E. Housman
Additional Tags: Poetry, Inspired by Poetry
Summary: A series of poems inspired by “Her strong enchantments failing” by A.E. Housman, which re-tell the story of that poem in a new way.

Yessssssss.

More links and recs later, after I’ve had time to explore more of the archive.

---L.

Subject quote from Your Own Special Way, Genesis.

publicdomainreview_feed

https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/12/top-10-most-read-pieces-from-2025

From sublime spheres to hungry cats, a rundown of the ten most read of what we published this year.

https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/12/top-10-most-read-pieces-from-2025

scifirenegade posting in

betaplease

Fandom: Anders als die Andern | Different from the Others (1919)
Characters/Pairings: Else Sivers, Paul Körner
Rating & Warnings: General and gen
Estimated Fic Length: over 700 words
Notes: I'm mostly looking for SPaG, any inconsistencies in the writing and ways to better show the characters bonding. I feel the ending is quite abrupt too.
I understand if the source material is niche. The Wikipedia page has a pretty good summary.

edwardianspinsteraunt posting in

yuletide

Over at my journal! Fandoms are Winslow Boy (1999), Blue Castle - Montgomery, Carmilla - Le Fanu, The Enchanted April - von Arnim, The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley, Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen, and Toby Series - Dorita Fairlie Bruce.

peasina

The discord has now opened for this year's

voiceteam Mystery Box (VTMB), the winter mini-round of an event that’s kind of like

battleship but for podfic. This year I’m on team ‘Over The Top’, named for a team full of members who like to make lots of things! ^^

Earlier this year, I posted a list of personal goals for my participation in Battleship 2025, and it really helped guide me whenever I felt overwhelmed by the fast pace and variety of choices/challenges. So, I’m doing it again for VTMB! Here are my top ten wishes for this year’s event.

ONE: Record at least 5 femslash pods
Apparently, December 2025 has been the month of me getting into new femslash pairings, so I’d like to extend that to making podfic about them!

TWO: Repod one of my older pods
I got a comment from the author on a pod I made in Nov' 2020 recently, which was a lovely surprise. However, it reminded me that I’d always wanted to repod that one, as now that I have more experience, I believe could do it better. I’d like to give it a try and hope there’s a repod challenge this year 🤞 (I’ll still try to do it, even if there isn’t.)

THREE: Record at least three podfics that are over an hour in length
I’m aiming for 2026 to be my year of long pods, so it would be a good way to get started selecting longer things to record. With my pacing, a 1-hour podfic will be of a story around the 8,500 – 9,500 mark.

FOUR: Record gift pods for three specific people who aren’t playing VTMB
I’m combining my potential giftees into this one wish in the hopes I can manage all three. For now, I'll call them M, E, and W.

FIVE: Podfic my Night at the Museum fic ‘On Every Horizon’
I’ve wanted to podfic this one since I wrote it, as it’s probably the all-time fic I’m most proud of. I’ve always been intimidated to do so though (mostly because the character voices are so important for Jed and Octavius and I’m not so good at those) but if I can manage it, I’ll be so happy. It's also 15k so 😅

SIX: Record at least three Pokémon podfics
Just because it’s fun ^^

SEVEN: Record a gift for a member of my team I didn’t know before the event
Who knows who it will be and what they’ll be into! I hope I can deliver 💪

EIGHT: Make something physical for a challenge (crafts, baked goods, cosplay, etc.)
I’ve done this in prior rounds, making zines, wax melts, and cocktails. It’s soooo fun to ~~steal~~ use my podfic-related inspiration to make something tangible, so I hope to do it again this year.

NINE: Write something
I don’t care what it is! It could be a drabble, a tutorial, a rec post, but if it’s words, and let’s say… over 300 of them, then it counts. I’d prefer fic, but my writing mojo has been all over the place this year, so my goal can be a little all over the place too :P

TEN: Make new friends!
Voiceteam is great for this 🤞🤞🤞

spikedluv

I did not go downtown today. Instead I was out shoveling the sidewalk by about 7am. (At least the snow was over so I only had to go out and shovel once.) Pip, sick as he is, was blowing snow (the driveway and walking trails). And then he went up to the garage to plow that out.

I did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, ran a load in the dishwasher, swept and mopped the dining room and hallway, went for a walk with the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, scooped kitty litter, and showered. We had more of the chicken noodle soup for supper.

I read fanfic and watched some HGTV programs. Dr. Pol was my evening background tv. Today I tried the pomegranate tea. It was good, though I was familiar with the flavor because I've had pomegranate tea before when I went to the local coffee shop (that is no longer there). It came in a tin, I think Harney & Sons, or something like that? I looked it up, their Pomegranate Oolong.

Pip had cold sweats this morning and wasn’t able to keep his breakfast down, but he seemed to do better as the day progressed.

Temps started out at 17.4(F) (a whopping 10 degrees warmer than yesterday morning!). According to the ruler I stuck in the snow in different areas, we got about 8" of snow overnight. Thankfully it was not wet and heavy, but even light snow is a pain when you’ve got go shovel 8" of it! Temps reached 25.3.

Mom Update:

Mom sounded pretty good when I talked to her. She’s actually eating more! More being relative. She had some protein drink for breakfast, and some mashed potatoes and peas for lunch. Eating anything solid like that has been a real trial. She was thinking about what to have for supper when I called. One of her friends visited and Sister A called her so she did have some social time.

delphi

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delphi

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Dawn

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Page Summary

mecurtin in fandom_checkin - Daily Check-In
luzula - Write every day: Day 28
pairatime in smallfandomfest - Fanfic: Defying Gravity (1997 Movie); Griff/Pete; Event of the movie as seen from the point of view
trobadora in sid_guardian - Picspam/Quiz: Hands
jesse_the_k - Rosie Heydenrych Crafts A Guitar for Martin Simpson
vriddy - New K-9 fic: Making choices (Ren/Oboro/Fujimaru/Kagari)
spikedluv - Fandom Trees 2025: Needy Trees
fanhackers_feed - In this past calendar year, we kept telling you about research we found interesting. Now, a prompt&h
otw_news_feed - OTW Signal, December 2025
oursin - Culinary
boxofdelights in wiscon - (no subject)
hrj - Books I've Read: Book of the Year
larryhammer - “you, you have your own special way / of turning the world so it’s facing / the way that i’m going”
publicdomainreview_feed - Top 10 Most Read Pieces from 2025
scifirenegade in betaplease - Beta Needed: Anders als die Andern | Different from the Others (1919)
edwardianspinsteraunt in yuletide - Nine recs in seven fandoms
peasina - Voice Team Mystery Box - Goals
spikedluv - The Day in Spikedluv (Saturday, Dec 27)
delphi - DRABBLE: Seven, Eight (Famiresu Iko, Narita Kyouji/Oka Satomi)
delphi - FIC: Things Wondrous and Divine (Our Flag Means Death, Frencie/Izzy Hands)

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Style: Enchanted Forest for Ciel by nornoriel

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Page generated Dec. 30th, 2025 09:00 pm

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Network

Daily Check-In

Write every day: Day 28

Fanfic: Defying Gravity (1997 Movie); Griff/Pete; Event of the movie as seen from the point of view

Picspam/Quiz: Hands

Rosie Heydenrych Crafts A Guitar for Martin Simpson

New K-9 fic: Making choices (Ren/Oboro/Fujimaru/Kagari)

Fandom Trees 2025: Needy Trees

In this past calendar year, we kept telling you about research we found interesting. Now, a prompt&h

OTW Signal, December 2025

In the News

OTW Tips

Culinary

(no subject)

Books I've Read: Book of the Year

“you, you have your own special way / of turning the world so it’s facing / the way that i’m going”

Top 10 Most Read Pieces from 2025

Beta Needed: Anders als die Andern | Different from the Others (1919)

Nine recs in seven fandoms

Voice Team Mystery Box - Goals

The Day in Spikedluv (Saturday, Dec 27)

DRABBLE: Seven, Eight (Famiresu Iko, Narita Kyouji/Oka Satomi)

FIC: Things Wondrous and Divine (Our Flag Means Death, Frencie/Izzy Hands)

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December 2025

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