xparrot | Reading

跨年快乐！🎆🥳🎉 I hope you'll all have a better 2026 than 2025! ♥

I haven't posted since October, somehow. I don't know why I didn't manage any posts in November (although... the latest farmboys mini-show was airing 😅), but I didn't post anything in December because

thevetia and I went to China!

Where: Hong Kong -✈️-> Hangzhou (iykyk) -🚃-> Shanghai
Highlights: meeting

grayswandir, going to museums in each city, going to Shanghai Film Park(!)
Weather: We were very lucky! It only rained during the day once (in Hangzhou), and the temperatures in Hangzhou and Shanghai were not as cold as we'd been bracing ourselves for. The weather in Hong Kong was warm and pleasant.

( Trip, part 1: Hong Kong )

( Hong Kong logistics/recommendations )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3189/

They're not generally used for crewed spacecraft because astronauts HATE going around the corners.

https://xkcd.com/3189/

sasheneskywalker posting in

fancake

Fandom: Disco Elysium, Death Note
Pairings/Characters: L/Yagami Light, Harry Du Bois & Kim Kitsuragi
Rating: Mature
Length: 36,039 words
Creator Links:

brawltogethernow
Theme: crack treated seriously, crossover, casefic, unconventional format

Summary: Harry hits Light Yagami with his car. (Based on a joke post, taken extremely seriously.)

Reccer's Notes: Murder mystery where Harry Du Bois investigates a murder he himself committed, putting him right in the middle of the Kira case. Very funny! The dialogue is perfectly in character, the art is fantastic, and I love how the entire fic is told in the style of the game.

Content Notes: major character death (Light Yagami is dead), graphic description of corpses similar to that of Disco Elysium canon

Fanwork Links: THE HIT AND RUN

lebateleur

Challenge #1

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

I really enjoy seasonal observances. August through New Year's Day is full of them and then...nothing, which is one reason why I look forward to

snowflake_challenge each year. I also love being fannish about things. That's harder to do once the yearly grind picks up around March and offline obligations start to eat up much of my energy, so if nothing else, I can get a little dose of fannishness in at the start of the year, and hopefully keep that energy going through the next 11 months.

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

これで以上です。

lebateleur

These have turned into more of a record of how duo keeps resetting my progress in these courses rather than my progress itself. On the other hand, it is interesting to have a record of how that enshittification plays out month over month, as 30+ minutes of daily practice each month results in less "progress" through each lesson that I'd recorded the month before.

Chinese — Finished 1/9 of Rookie Unit 8; legendary through Rookie Unit 3
Dutch — Finished 1/2 of Explorer Unit 3; legendary through Rookie Unit 6
Gaelic — Finished 1/3 of Explorer Unit 14; legendary through the Explorer Unit 10
Hindi — Finished 4/5 of Unit 1; backburnered to focus on the letters
Indonesian — Finished Explorer Unit 17; legendary through Explorer Unit 10
Japanese — Finished Trailblazer Unit 4; legendary through Traveler Unit 20
Korean — Finished 1/3 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through Rookie Unit 5
Latin — Finished 1/3 of Rookie Unit 6
Manx — Finished lesson 9 of the Loayr Gaelg 2 textbook
Welsh — Finished 1/3 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through Rookie Unit 3

これで以上です。

trobadora posting in

sid_guardian

For Yuletide, I wrote for Zhu Yilong's Thermos "Flower Series" commercials - if you're not familiar with them, they're worth a watch! Here's a playlist with most of them (though the first video is a bit atypical), and here's one more commercial.

Here's what I wrote (I talk a bit more about it on my journal, in case you're interested):

One story for the "Flower Series" commercials - this features Zhu Yilong's character as a dragon, and a white cat whose human form I imagined as played by Bai Yu::
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

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.
And one Guardian crossover for the above (a Guardian canon divergence/fix-it for the ending):
Dragon of Flowers, Dragon of the City (2,275 words)
Fandoms: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), Thermos "Flower Series" Commercials
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Characters: Da Qing, Zhu Yilong's Thermos Character, Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei, SID team
Content Tags: Canon Divergence (for Guardian), Episode Related, Episode 37, Fix-It, Hallows Shenanigans, The Wick of the Guardian Lantern, Magical Flowers, Cross-dimensional Wanderers, Saving Worlds with a Magic Bottle, Dragon City is named after a dragon

Summary:

Lao-Zhao leaned forward, resting an elbow on a knee. "I thought you got all your memories back."

"Yeah, yeah." Da Qing waved a hand in the air, dismissively. "Not remember like 'I don't know my past', remember like 'where did I put my keys'. Except not my keys."

renay

There's a new issue of Intergalactic Mixtape! It's full of so many favorite book lists.

birdylion posting in

fancake

Title: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues, Soul-Stealing Bosses, and the End of the World at Work
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Pairings/Characters: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims; OC management advice blogger, OC internet commenters
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Length: 43626 words
Creator Links:

shinyopals
Theme: crack treated seriously, epistolary, no canon required, outsider pov

Summary:

I've recently been unexpectedly promoted to lead a department in my organisation, wrote the anonymous emailer.

As there was no one working here when I arrived, my manager, who is head of the organisation, had promised me the choice of my own assistants. However, without warning, he simply presented me with an additional assistant. This new assistant’s first act on his first day was to let a dog into the office. It took several hours to catch and clean up after this dog and it has only been downhill from there. I admit I'm not entirely sure what to do with this assistant now I'm stuck with him. I'm hoping you have some advice?

Kind regards,
New Manager

Abigail Bailey runs a successful management advice blog. One frequent contributor is from a workplace with some... issues.

Reccer's Notes:

The Magnus Archives is a horror audio drama in which the main character starts a new position as archivist in an organization named Magnus Institute that specializes on investigating strange/magical phenomena. Very soon, strange things start to happen to him too. Also, it turns out that his workplace itself is ... not what you could call safe.

This story starts with the idea that the main character writes to a management advice blog about the strange things about his workplace, and becomes a regular writer. The fanfic is told in the form of this advice blog as it could appear on the internet: We get the mails he writes in, and the bloggers answers, and also the comment section. It's hilarious, but also it's taken so seriously as the story progresses and gets darker.

As an outsider POV, it really brings out how horrible the whole Magnus Archives story really is. It also shows very well how the story starts so inconspicuous and then boils the characters in horror like a lobster it a pot - and in this fanfic, the character doesn't event write to the advice blog about what's actually happening (because of secrecy), only the workplace safety circumstances. It's such a fascinating outsider POV.

Since it doesn't expect any canon knowledge, it can be read fandom-blind. Even without fandom-knowledge it's a hilarious and tragic advice blog story and in my case, it was my intro to the story, which I listened to after finishing this fanfic, so it was great advertisement for The Magnus Archives. (Note that it contains out of context but significant spoilers if you're going in fandom blind. For me this added to the re-read factor of the fanfic.)

Content Notes:

depictions of outrageously bad workplace safety
(canon-typical) dysfunctional interpersonal relationships
lighter on the actual supernatural horror than the original canon
out of context (but significant) spoilers if read fandom blind

Fanwork Links: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues, Soul-Stealing Bosses, and the End of the World at Work on ao3

lebateleur

Last year was a bit of an unusual reading year for me. My fiction:nonfiction and new read:reread ratios were unusual, as was the fact that I read either very long books or very short books, and nothing in between. And virtually all of my reading was in English, which is outside the norm for me.

How many books read in 2023?
In 2025, I read 101 books cover-to-cover, i.e., I read every chapter, glossary, index, author’s note, etc. in the volume.( Read more... )

Number of in-progress books as of December 31:
I currently have 110 books tagged as in progress LibraryThing, and about half a dozen going this week.

What do you want to read in 2026?
There was something I was super excited about just the other day, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was now. Without doubt, it will occur to me at 3:00 am in the morning, at which time I will update this entry. I definitely want to read Adrienne Mayor's Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore.

Happy New Year, everyone!

これで以上です。

kingstoken posting in

fancake

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Pairings/Characters: Crew of the Revenge, Israel Hands/Roach (it's tagged this, but it's very blink and you miss it)
Rating: T
Length: 2182 words
Creator Links: sweatervest
Theme: crack treated seriously

Summary: A single artichoke appears onboard the Revenge, and Izzy Hands is nowhere to be found. Naturally, the crew draws the most logical conclusion.

Reccer's Notes: The crew finds a single artichoke on the Revenge and draw the very erroneous conclusion that Izzy has been turned into a vegetable by a sea-witch. This is delightfully funny, as the crew try to protect the artichoke from getting eaten, among other things. It very much fits in with the silliness of season 1 of the show.

Fanwork Links: AO3

sholio

It's 2026, and the winter-spring exchange cycle is getting underway!

Candy Hearts /

candyheartsex is now in signups! This is a low minimum relationships exchange (gen or ship) that reveals on Valentines Day.

purimgifts is also in signups! This is a low-minimum exchange for fanfic and/or podfic with a side helping of art, focused on characters who are at least one of: women, Jewish, or persecuted (preferably by evil viziers).

traumaticexperiences is a new exchange currently in nominations. Does what it says on the tin (an exchange about characters dealing with trauma).

amperslashexchange still has two lingering pinch hits, if anyone is interested! One is for Guardian (book, show, or RPF); the other has some various video game and book fandoms. At the current time, PHs are due on Jan 2 for a hopeful Jan 3 opening, but another extension is possible.

In other news, it sounds like LJ might be in its final death throes - see this bluesky thread from

rahaeli/

synecdochic about it. She recommends that you save anything off there that you want to keep.

I've kept my LJ account all this time despite being aware of the risks because a) I want to keep my blog links active as long as possible since I had so much fic posted on there back in the day, and b) I don't want to lose the ability to manage the various communities I used to run or co-run (sgagenficathon and stargategenrec among them) just in case of a troll takeover or similar. It's still useful for me to be able to log in occasionally to view locked posts, and I've really appreciated LJ's continued existence as a fic archive as I've gotten into some older fandoms over the last few years. (Torchwood was especially that way - a *bunch* of fic was only on LJ and had never been ported over to other archives.)

So I was feeling a little wistful about no longer having that option in future fandoms, but then I got to thinking about the sheer longevity of it. It was 20 years ago when I got into LJ, circa 2005 or so. 20 years before 2005 was 1985. In 2005, almost nothing about the internet as I had known it in the mid to late 90s was still the same. So the fact that I could go dumpster diving for 15-year-old fanfic in Torchwood fandom was really extraordinary compared to the experience I would have had in 2005 looking for fic from 1990. The most important rule of the early internet for me was that nothing lasts forever, and while it's been nice to have the longevity of certain aspects of its current incarnation, all things internet will still pass eventually.

Still, if there's anything over there you want to save, of your stuff or someone else's, now would be the time.

Edit: As per a question in the comments, does anyone know a way to save an archive of pictures from LJ without having to do it manually? A tool, technique, etc ... this is not for me, but I'd like to help if possible!

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

mekare posting in

nirvana_in_fire

Crossposting from my journal:

I made a thing for Nirvana in Fire Exchange!

nemainfothewater had an irresistible prompt for more Jingyan/& Lin Chen and I chose to go in the post-canon direction. Look, I find the idea of Lin Chen stealth-sending his pigeons directly to the Emperor very funny. You know, instead of sending them to the Royal Pigeon Tower or something. When pigeons no longer suffice, Langya Hall's master needs to attend to matters personally. He promised Mei Changsu, after all.

Title: The newly (self)appointed royal physician‘s prescription…
Previews:

an emperor's desk with a pigeon leaving tracks.

Jingyan in emperor robes being handed an orange from out of frame.

( Read more... )
AO3 Link

I also got an amazing gift by MorkaisChosen!

Title: idle Hands, Loose Lips
Relationship: Nihuang & Meng Zhi
Summary: As the court's thoughts turn towards the upcoming tournament for Mu Nihuang's hand, her regular sparring partner faces his greatest foe yet: the rumour mill.

I was so happy someone took up my prompt for anything with Meng Zhi (and my sub prompt of them sparring).

Go read it here and leave comments!

I haven't actually managed to go through all NiF Exchange works yet, but wanted to leave a rec which impressed me a lot:

NiF poetry with contrapuntal poems by erumelde - so good and very knifey!

awanderingcoyote posting in

sid_guardian

This is the fanworks round-up post for December! Please link in the comments to any Guardian (or related fandoms) fanworks you created or enjoyed last month.

all kinds of fanworks are welcome – fic, art, vids, picspams, etc. - including those made for exchanges and events
new chapters of WIPs count
meta or discussion posts, too
whether or not you've already linked these in a post of their own, we still want them here!

If you're linking to fanworks you didn't create yourself, please clearly mark these "REC", so there's no confusion about authorship/creatorship.

(And please still do link your fanworks, meta, etc. separately, in their own post, at any time!)

So ... what Guardian and related fandoms works did you create or enjoy in December?

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Photograph of a young Asian girl using a manual typewriter in an office and looking very serious as she stares straight into the camera. Her black hair is slicked into a low ponytail and her round glasses are so big they extend past her face. She's wearing a shirt and tie and an adult-sized yellow blazer that fits her like a dress, almost as if she has been shrunk. Text, in a typewriter font: Crack Treated Seriously, at Fancake.

Happy New Year! Our theme for January is crack treated seriously!

It's time to put on your serious face because this round is for fanworks with ideas that are very, very bonkers, but approached with the utmost dedication to making it work within whatever passes for reality in that fandom. As with our crack round, I ask that you avoid using language associated with drug use and addiction in your recs, as this kind of language, even when used for fun, can be hurtful and alienating.

Now go bananas—but seriously.

The tag for this round is: theme: crack treated seriously

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

( Rules! )

( Posting Template! )

( Promote this round! )

Reblog on Tumblr | Reskeet on Bluesky | Retoot on Mastodon

sholio

I enjoyed it! Haters to the left!

( Spoilers )

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

Привет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)

Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.

I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!

С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!

Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️

full_metal_ox posting in

fancake

Fandom: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Pairings/Characters: Gen; background F/M (Joe Sullivan/Polly Perkins; past (one-sided?) Female OC/Joe Sullivan), OCs
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Length: 12,448; 19 chapters
Content Notes: aftermath of torture, combat injury, period-typical ethnic stereotypes (Asiatic bad guys), genocidal scheming, gory battle trophies, gruesome Mad Science
Creator Links:

thebookishcat

Theme: Amnesty, Action/Adventure, Old Fandoms, Pre-AO3 Works, Research, Small Fandoms, Underloved Works, Worldbuilding

Summary: The authors(1) didn’t really provide one, so here’s mine: Joe’s old buddy, fighter pilot Captain Rock Masterson, is taken prisoner by air pirates—and darned if Rock isn’t Polly Perkins’ cousin, giving her sound reason to gatecrash the adventure! But little does Pirate King Dantes Blackbeard the Third suspect that his scheme for world conquest is being puppeteered by something even more horrific…

Reccer's Notes: (In which Full Metal Ox betrays an affection for dated media.)( Continue. )

Is it Great Literature? Or even necessarily Good Writing? No—but the authors know exactly where in Storyland they’re supposed to be, and I’m the niche audience it’s for; they’ve fried up a tasty sack of potato chips.

Fanwork Links: Sky Captain and the Extinction Agenda, by

thebookishcat on Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2108561/1/

Current Music: ”Lili Marlene”—Gaylord Carter

sholio

Well, as predicted,

rec_cember went straight off a cliff, lol. I mean, to be fair, I was traveling for half the month, most of that time with other people, but I still hoped to get in another rec post or two than I actually did.

But I'll close out 2025 by reccing some vids! Since I got back into watching vids this past year, there are a bunch of new-to-me ones to share. For the Tumblr ones, since it now defaults to dash view (which you need to be logged in to see) I've tried to provide a non-logged-in version where possible.

We Didn't Start the Fire by

beccatoria - ATLA & Legend of Korra
There aren't very many canons that are long, varied, and epic enough to vid to this song, but this works really well and the clip selection is A++.

Ice Cream Man by

Pennyplainknits - Stranger Things season 3
I had a lot of problems with season 3 and Steve's sailor outfit was definitely one of them, but this is a very cute, fun, and playful vid about it!

80s horror summer by

legallybrunette1997 - 70s/80s slasher movies
Great editing and really goes for the retro vibe!

Human by

kaydeefalls - X-Men movies, Mystique
I'm going through a nostalgia phase for these movies after rewatching the first two back in October, and this is a lovely vid that does a great job with Mystique's arc across the various movies.

Pink Pony Club by

torchwood-99 - Torchwood, Gwen [Non-logged-in Tumblr link]
A wonderfully edited vid that does a fantastic job using the song lyrics to tell the two sides to Gwen's story on the show: she discovers her true calling and blossoms when the secret world of aliens opens up to her, but loses some of her humanity along the way.

Shake It Out by

delovelie - Babylon 5 (major spoilers) [Non-logged-in Tumblr link)
A vid about breaking and getting up again.

Anti-Hero by

cynicalangel80 - Babylon 5, Londo [Non-logged-in Tumblr link]
Great tragilarious vid about Londo's general everything.

What Was I Thinkin' by

tafadhali - Star Wars OT, Han/Leia
A fun, bouncy vid set to honky tonk country that (surprisingly? unsurprisingly?) works really well for Han Solo.

If I Had $1,000,000 by

januarium - Schitt's Creek
This canon/song pairing is INSPIRED and the editing and lip-syncing is great.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3188/

Anyone else watching this Youtube video in 1954? If so, my last trip definitely messed with the timeline.

https://xkcd.com/3188/

Profile

X-parrot

All my fic (on Archive Of Our Own)

June 2024

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Page Summary

sakana17 - 跨年快乐！(and trip, part 1)
xkcd_feed - Conic Sections
sasheneskywalker in fancake - Disco Elysium; Death Note: THE HIT AND RUN by brawltogethernow
lebateleur - Snowflake Challenge #1 - Icebreaker Challenge
lebateleur - December Language Roundup
trobadora in sid_guardian - Two stories (one Guardian-adjacent, one Guardian crossover)
renay - IGMX #34
birdylion in fancake - The Magnus Archives: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues [...] by shinyopals
lebateleur - 2025 Reading Roundup
kingstoken in fancake - OFMD: Thistle Teach ‘Em by sweatervest
sholio - Happy New Year!
umadoshi - New year, new bingo card of goals | Pruning the Japanese-language section of the bookcases
mekare in nirvana_in_fire - NiF art and two recs!
awanderingcoyote in sid_guardian - December Fanworks Round-Up Post!
runpunkrun in fancake - Round 182: Crack Treated Seriously
sholio - Stranger Things finale
denise in dw_maintenance - Привет! LiveJournal imports may be slow
full_metal_ox in fancake - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Sky Captain and the Extinction Agenda, by thebookishcat.
sholio - Some vid recs to close out 2025
xkcd_feed - Anyone Else Here

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Theme: Broad Horizons by timeasmymeasure

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Page generated Jan. 3rd, 2026 07:28 am

expeditions to other strange worlds

Reading

跨年快乐！(and trip, part 1)

Conic Sections

Disco Elysium; Death Note: THE HIT AND RUN by brawltogethernow

Snowflake Challenge #1 - Icebreaker Challenge

December Language Roundup

Two stories (one Guardian-adjacent, one Guardian crossover)

IGMX #34

The Magnus Archives: Ask an Exec: How to Navigate Cultish Colleagues [...] by shinyopals

2025 Reading Roundup

OFMD: Thistle Teach ‘Em by sweatervest

Happy New Year!

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

NiF art and two recs!

December Fanworks Round-Up Post!

Round 182: Crack Treated Seriously

Stranger Things finale

Привет! LiveJournal imports may be slow

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Sky Captain and the Extinction Agenda, by thebookishcat.

Some vid recs to close out 2025

Anyone Else Here

Profile

June 2024

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