Title: Fragility
Fandom: Call the Midwife
Rating: G
Length: 200 words
Summary: A reflection on Christmas Day's episode
Spoilers: Christmas Day 2025 episode

Posted by Kyle Orland

When we put together our top 20 games of last year, we specifically called out Civilization 7, Avowed, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Grand Theft Auto 6 as big franchise games we were already looking forward to for 2025. While one of those games has been delayed into 2026, the three others made this year's list of Ars' favorite games as expected. They join a handful of other highly anticipated sequels, ranging from big-budget blockbusters to long-gestating indies, on the "expected" side of this year's list.

But the games that really stood out for me in 2025 were the ones that seemed to come out of nowhere. Those range from hard-to-categorize roguelike puzzle games to a gonzo, punishing mountainous walking simulation, the best Geometry Wars clone in years, and a touching look at the difficulties of adolescence through the surprisingly effective lens of mini-games.

As we look toward 2026, there are plenty of other big-budget projects that the industry is busy preparing for (the delayed Grand Theft Auto VI chief among them). If next year is anything like this year, though, we can look forward to plenty more games that no one saw coming suddenly vaulting into view as new classics.

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wickedgame: (Sexy Guildford | My Lady Jane)
([personal profile] wickedgame posting in [community profile] iconic Dec. 26th, 2025 02:47 pm)
Fandoms: 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Lone Star, 9-1-1: Nashville, Good Trouble, Ransom Canyon, Six Is Not A Crowd, Stay By My Side, XO, Kitty

xokitty-2x01a.png staybymyside-1x07.png 911-9x03aa.png
rest HERE[community profile] mundodefieras 
 

maggie33: (infanta margerita 3)
([personal profile] maggie33 Dec. 26th, 2025 01:25 pm)
So it seems I slept through the great deanoning of Yuletide, heh. Meaning that there was a glitch that revealed all the authors for a short while, soon after works reveal. I missed it, since I was too tired to read my gift right away on 24th, and didn’t even look at the Yuletide collection then.

I received a lovely and funny Meet You at the Blossom fic about my favorite threesome. This is basically Outsider POV fic even though the author didn’t tag it as such. But I love Ousider POV fics, and I enjoyed Que Siming’s sarcastic comments and Jinbao’s sweet cluelessness here a lot.

Throwing Flowers into the River (4,861 words)
Fandom: 花开有时颓靡无声 | Meet You at the Blossom (TV)
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jin Xiaobao/Zongzheng Huai'en, Jin Xiaobao/Su Yin, Jin Xiaobao/Su Yin/Zongzheng Huai'en, Jinbao/Que Siming
Characters: Jin Xiaobao, Zongzheng Huai'en, Jinbao, Que Siming, Su Yin
Additional Tags: Weddings, Requited Unrequited Love, Polyamory Negotiations
Summary: Jinbao and his Miracle Doctor return to the Jin mansion for the wedding of Jin Xiaobao and Zongzheng Huai'en, but a light-hearted game played between the two of them uncovers a secret that could turn the entire wedding day on its head.


Apart from reading Yuletide fics, yesterday I watched Exhuma, that horror movie with Kim Go Eun I mentioned before. It was pretty good and Kim Go Eun was wonderful. And it was tense and gory, but goriness was on an acceptable level for me, so I didn’t even have to fast-forward.

I also started Yumi’s Cells, because I wanted something cute and fluffy after Exhuma. I watched an episode and a half, and it’s fine and amusing at times, but for now I’m not very emotionally engaged. I do plan to watch more though, because I’m still very much in my ‘in love with Kim Go Eun’ phase, and she’s so good, and sweet and pretty here.


I also watched the new episodes of Burnout Syndrome (very good) and Dare You to Death (rather meh). But wow, Joong and Dunk both look exceptionally beautiful in this drama, so for now I will be watching for this one very shallow reason. 😊

I also wanted to rec a Youtube vid with Dew, Gun, and Off’s reaction to episode 5 of Burnout Syndrome, because it’s very funny, and it made me laugh. More with the embedded vid behind the cut, because thumbnail images are spoilery for the last episode.


See it here.

I enjoyed this vid so much. From Gun commenting about his and Dew’s height difference and saying “I literally only come up to his shoulders”. To the three of them arguing about who’s the biggest red flag in this episode, and both Off and Dew saying it’s Jira, because he fools and manipulates both Koh and Pheem. And to Off first getting hilariously jealous over Dew and Gun’s romantic scenes, and then cheering Dew on during the last scene. And all three reacted to the ending of this episode the same way all the viewers reacted: “That’s it? It ends like this? That’s so mean.” 😊

Title: Far Side Of The Island
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author: [personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Dr Paul Jordan, Varian, Scott.
Rating: PG
Setting: Vortex.
Summary: There’s only one way off the island, a portal on the east coast, but first they have to get there.
Word Count: 300
Content Notes: Nada.
Written For: Challenge 501: Amnesty 83, using Challenge 38: The Other Side.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Triple drabble.




nanila: me (Default)
([personal profile] nanila posting in [community profile] awesomeers Dec. 26th, 2025 08:09 am)
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
In the afternoon there was eggnog, in the evening there was roast beef, and after dinner with my parents and my husbands and [personal profile] nineweaving, there was plum pudding with an extremely suitable amount of brandy on fire.



At the end of a battering year, it was a small and a nice Christmas. There was thin frozen snow on the ground. In addition to the traditional and necessary socks and a joint gift with [personal profile] spatch of wooden kitchen utensils to replace our archaically cracked spoons, I seem to have ended up with a considerable stack of books including Robert Macfarlane's Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places (2020), Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch (2020), and the third edition of Oakes Plimpton's Robbins Farm Park, Arlington, Massachusetts: A Local History from the Revolutionary War to the Present (1995/2007) with addenda as late as 2014 pasted into the endpapers by hand, a partly oral history I'd had no idea anyone had ever conducted of a place I have known for sledding and star-watching and the setting off of model rockets since childhood. The moon was a ice-white crescent at 18 °F. After everything, as we were driving home, I saw the unmistakable flare of a shooting star to the northwest, a stray shot of the Ursids perhaps after all.
gwyn: (yuletide lights)
([personal profile] gwyn Dec. 25th, 2025 09:08 pm)
My house is redolent of anise and molasses and sugar and all the good spices from baking cookies all day. I have this ancient recipe from my mom's side of the family for these anise cookies that almost no one likes, and I used to make them with Dad all the time but I find it intimidating at the best of times, and these days aren't exactly the best. But I had to type it up a few years ago for someone on metafilter, and so I decided to try my hand at them on my own with a little help from mlyn, and while it didn't go great, it also wasn't a total disaster, so I figured I'd try again this year because I've missed them. There's just really nothing else out there like them, and much as I like pfefferneuse, it's not nearly close enough, though that's really the only thing in the spice/uncommon-in-America flavor profile cookie I know of. Also since I never really know if I'm going to be around in a year, I wanted to enjoy them while I could.

Back a few years ago when I made them, I asked [personal profile] musesfool, baker extraordinaire, for some advice on the recipe, because baking is just a mystery to me and I'm quite bad at it. She had some really good advice, but did I go look at it to refresh my memory before I began starting on the dough? No, I did not. So I made a lot of mistakes. Dad and I found it was best to let the dough sit in the fridge overnight, and the baked cookies are better when they sit for a day or two before icing, so it's kind of like a three-day extravaganza, and with my fatigue issues, I also have to constantly sit down. I am just fucking exhausted now and I still have more to do!

It makes so many cookies (and that was after my dad cut the recipe down three times!) that you're just baking and baking and baking. I had to shut the oven off and go sit for a while, in between big batches. But now they are baked and I will try to ice them all tomorrow, or at least as many as I can handle, so I can share them with the only people who wouldn't hate them. They don't taste terrible for all that I fucked up, but I can really tell I messed up mixing the early ingredients, and wish I'd read the instructions and musesfool's advice before I started. What a dumbass. Also, it's really a lie that turbinado sugar or succanat can substitute for white sugar. I didn't want to go out just to get sugar, which I thought I had enough of, but it does not turn out the same without white sugar and they are liars.

I bought myself some stuff to make a little Christmas dinner for one, but my stomach was roiling today for most of the day, and ended up just eating a bagel and some of the cookies that caught and were too burned to give away to anyone.

Now that I am so exhausted and the house smells so good, I think I'm going to head to bed early--I stayed up too late last night anyway, because it's my tradition to always watch It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve and then I was poking around in the Yuletide archive for far too long. I was so shocked that it opened in the middle of the day yesterday! I didn't see a whole lot that looked intriguing, since I'm so out of the loop on fandoms these days, but there's definitely some stuff to read and I was really thrilled to see that Rose Lerner's book True Pretenses had a fic written for it this year! So I had to read that one immediately.

Anyway, I hope you had a great holiday if you celebrate, and a very nice Thursday if you don't, and I will respond to all your kind comments on my last post soon, I promise.
Tags:
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 posting in [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits Dec. 26th, 2025 06:39 pm)
The following pinch hit (1k words, focusing on requested characters, avoiding DNWs) is due as soon as you can post it - please contact yuletideadmin@gmail.com with your best offer!

This pinch hit has been claimed, but you are still welcome to post treats! Please contact the mods for instructions on how to post them now that reveals have occurred.

CLAIMED - EPH #1: Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard, Лето в пионерском галстуке - Елена Малисова и Катерина Сильванова | Pioneer Series - Elena Malisova & Katerina Silvanova, The Paris Express - Emma Donoghue
Request 1 by Shizuku206
Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard
Characters: Cliopher ""Kip"" Mdang (Nine Worlds), Artorin Damara | Fitzroy Angursell (Nine Worlds)
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)

I have read HotE, Petty Treasons, Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander, RoFA, and AtfotS. Please NO SPOILERS for books I haven’t read.
I definitely want Kip & HR to be a focus but please feel free to also include additional canon characters!
HotE ate my entire brain. I LOVE Cliopher. I love his devotion and love for his Radiancy, his desire to make the world a better place, his stubbornness and determination, his deep connection to his family, home and culture despite his long years so far away, his utter competence and unshakeable ethics… I love HR and his humor and mischief and longing to escape the confines of his position. I love the special bond they obviously have and which obviously means so much to them both, and my god the pining, I want them to be able to be together in all the ways they want to. I obviously ship them romantically, but if you are more moved to write about their love platonically, that is completely welcome as well. I am absolutely on board with canon divergence of the flavor ""Kip is sexually attracted to HR"" OR canon-level aroace Kip. I would adore fic that has the five friends living in Kip’s house in Gorjo City after they retire, something slice-of-life or working out who they are apart from their jobs. I’m imagining some silly roommate fluff/humor like HR making nothing but fruit salad every time it’s his turn to cook (because he loves fresh fruit!! And he doesn’t know how to cook anything) and everyone else is like “again?!”
General likes: hurt/comfort, pining, mutual pining, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, couples who super dislike each other on first meeting, alt-POV canon scenes, missing scenes, fix-it, whump, smut, fluff, cuddling and snuggling, helping lovers recover from past trauma, neurodivergence (canon or headcanon), lovers accommodating characters’ neurodivergence especially when the ND character doesn’t even have to ask/assumes they don’t deserve accommodations/doesn’t know what accommodations they need, neurodivergent traits celebrated and loved (e.g. infodumping, special interests, hyperfocus), characters oblivious to the fact that they’re in love, tender caretaking, wearing each others’ clothes, sleeping together, only one bed/forced proximity due to circumstances, crying, crying on each other, angst and comfort, anxiety and reassurance, rescuing each other, taking revenge on someone who wronged their partner, found family, love declarations, commitment declarations, sweet gestures of affection especially from normally reserved/prickly characters, “mom friend override” (normally anxious/nonconfrontational character going in guns blazing because someone they love has been threatened), background characters being queer, happy endings, waking from a nightmare and their partner is there, grief/mourning and partner helping them cope, catharsis, trying to come out but whoops the person already knows you’re queer, supporting characters accepting and affirming the canon ship as a matter of course especially if MCs were trying to hide it, queer culture/safe queer spaces to escape period homophobia & be openly affectionate.
Smut likes: Experienced partner/inexperienced partner, gentle first time, explicit consent, enthusiastic consent, negotiating, ongoing communication about consent & likes/dislikes, trying new things, role play and dressing up, hurt/comfort sex, normally anxious/reserved character finding their voice in bed/taking charge, height difference, partially clothed, undressing each other, caring for each other as foreplay/afterplay (e.g. hairwashing, baths, etc.), nipple play, orgasm delay, blindfolds, lots of buildup, characters desperate and begging, so horny they can’t wait/semi-public sex, not conventionally attractive character being desired, rewrite of canon scenes full of sexual tension to instead be ‘what if they just went for it’, restraint, light pain play, sharing of fantasies & then partner planning to fulfill them, disability/neurodivergence accommodation during sex, use of magic during sex, consensual somnophilia.
 
General DNWs:
-AI-generated content
-Noncon/dubcon
-Scat/watersports/vomit/blood kink. (Blood in general is ok, just not as a kink.)
-Guinea pigs being eaten or abused
-Under age 16 sex
-Time/setting change AUs
-Infidelity, breakup, heartbreak/sad ending, MCD
Canon divergence and AUs that add elements to the canon setting are welcome.
Treats are welcome!!

No letter

Request 2 by Shizuku206
Лето в пионерском галстуке - Елена Малисова и Катерина Сильванова | Pioneer Series - Elena Malisova & Katerina Silvanova
Characters: Yuri Konev, Vladimir Davydov
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)

Oh these boys!! I have only read book 1 and I want to see them have happy times together, it could be either in the original camp time, maybe they agree/decide to have sex before they part, or when they meet again, figuring out how to be together as adults.
General likes: hurt/comfort, pining, mutual pining, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, couples who super dislike each other on first meeting, alt-POV canon scenes, missing scenes, fix-it, whump, smut, fluff, cuddling and snuggling, helping lovers recover from past trauma, neurodivergence (canon or headcanon), lovers accommodating characters’ neurodivergence especially when the ND character doesn’t even have to ask/assumes they don’t deserve accommodations/doesn’t know what accommodations they need, neurodivergent traits celebrated and loved (e.g. infodumping, special interests, hyperfocus), characters oblivious to the fact that they’re in love, tender caretaking, wearing each others’ clothes, sleeping together, only one bed/forced proximity due to circumstances, crying, crying on each other, angst and comfort, anxiety and reassurance, rescuing each other, taking revenge on someone who wronged their partner, found family, love declarations, commitment declarations, sweet gestures of affection especially from normally reserved/prickly characters, “mom friend override” (normally anxious/nonconfrontational character going in guns blazing because someone they love has been threatened), background characters being queer, happy endings, waking from a nightmare and their partner is there, grief/mourning and partner helping them cope, catharsis, trying to come out but whoops the person already knows you’re queer, supporting characters accepting and affirming the canon ship as a matter of course especially if MCs were trying to hide it, queer culture/safe queer spaces to escape period homophobia & be openly affectionate.
Smut likes: Experienced partner/inexperienced partner, gentle first time, explicit consent, enthusiastic consent, negotiating, ongoing communication about consent & likes/dislikes, trying new things, role play and dressing up, hurt/comfort sex, normally anxious/reserved character finding their voice in bed/taking charge, height difference, partially clothed, undressing each other, caring for each other as foreplay/afterplay (e.g. hairwashing, baths, etc.), nipple play, orgasm delay, blindfolds, lots of buildup, characters desperate and begging, so horny they can’t wait/semi-public sex, not conventionally attractive character being desired, rewrite of canon scenes full of sexual tension to instead be ‘what if they just went for it’, restraint, light pain play, sharing of fantasies & then partner planning to fulfill them, disability/neurodivergence accommodation during sex, use of magic during sex, consensual somnophilia.
 
DNWs:
-AI-generated content
-Noncon
-Scat/watersports/vomit/blood kink. (Blood in general is ok, just not as a kink.)
-Guinea pigs being eaten or abused
-Under age 16 sex
-Time/setting change AUs
-Breakup/sad ending/MCD
-Focus on internalized homophobia/conversion therapy (brief mention of canon stuff ok)
Canon divergence and AUs that add elements to the canon setting are welcome.
Treats are welcome!!

No letter

Request 3 by Shizuku206
The Paris Express - Emma Donoghue
Characters: Victor Garnier (The Paris Express), Guillaume Pellerin (The Paris Express)
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)

The Victor/Guillaume relationship was by far the most compelling part of this book for me. What's it like for them to be the loves of each others' lives, but with so much unspoken?
General likes: hurt/comfort, pining, mutual pining, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, couples who super dislike each other on first meeting, alt-POV canon scenes, missing scenes, fix-it, whump, smut, fluff, cuddling and snuggling, helping lovers recover from past trauma, neurodivergence (canon or headcanon), lovers accommodating characters’ neurodivergence especially when the ND character doesn’t even have to ask/assumes they don’t deserve accommodations/doesn’t know what accommodations they need, neurodivergent traits celebrated and loved (e.g. infodumping, special interests, hyperfocus), characters oblivious to the fact that they’re in love, tender caretaking, wearing each others’ clothes, sleeping together, only one bed/forced proximity due to circumstances, crying, crying on each other, angst and comfort, anxiety and reassurance, rescuing each other, taking revenge on someone who wronged their partner, found family, love declarations, commitment declarations, sweet gestures of affection especially from normally reserved/prickly characters, “mom friend override” (normally anxious/nonconfrontational character going in guns blazing because someone they love has been threatened), background characters being queer, happy endings, waking from a nightmare and their partner is there, grief/mourning and partner helping them cope, catharsis, trying to come out but whoops the person already knows you’re queer, supporting characters accepting and affirming the canon ship as a matter of course especially if MCs were trying to hide it, queer culture/safe queer spaces to escape period homophobia & be openly affectionate.
Smut likes: Experienced partner/inexperienced partner, gentle first time, explicit consent, enthusiastic consent, negotiating, ongoing communication about consent & likes/dislikes, trying new things, role play and dressing up, hurt/comfort sex, normally anxious/reserved character finding their voice in bed/taking charge, height difference, partially clothed, undressing each other, caring for each other as foreplay/afterplay (e.g. hairwashing, baths, etc.), nipple play, orgasm delay, blindfolds, lots of buildup, characters desperate and begging, so horny they can’t wait/semi-public sex, not conventionally attractive character being desired, rewrite of canon scenes full of sexual tension to instead be ‘what if they just went for it’, restraint, light pain play, sharing of fantasies & then partner planning to fulfill them, disability/neurodivergence accommodation during sex, use of magic during sex, consensual somnophilia.
General DNWs:
-AI-generated content
-Noncon
-Scat/watersports/vomit/blood kink. (Blood in general is ok, just not as a kink.
-Guinea pigs being eaten or abused
-Under age 16 sex (reference to canon instances ok)
-Time/setting change AUs
-Breakup/sad ending/MCD
Canon divergence and AUs that add elements to the canon setting are welcome.
Treats are welcome!!

No letter

genarti: ([legend] sujini stamp of approval)
([personal profile] genarti Dec. 26th, 2025 12:15 am)
This is just a quick drive-by post to say: hello! I hope that those of you who are celebrating Christmas have had a lovely one, and that those of you who aren't have had a nice Thursday.

We're at my parents' place having a pleasantly low-key celebration (lots of joy! but also, us plus two elderly people = a lot of lying around on the couch reading, and not a lot of impetus to go all-out for the decorations and feasting), and meanwhile the weather is giving us scenic snow all around.

And also! I got an INCREDIBLY GOOD Yuletide fic!

The Villainous Princess Saves Her Kingdom is a note-perfect post-canon story for Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born. I mostly enjoyed the heck out of that kdrama, in which everyone is a dramatic lesbian who cares deeply about their all-female melodramatic theater, but the heroine makes many incredibly stupid choices and there were various things that frustrated me about the ending. This story focuses on Seo Hyerang, a secondary character who does not care at all about our beloved stupid heroine (and that's beautiful to me), and it deftly and delightfully fixes almost all of my complaints, and made me cackle several times. It's everything I hoped and dreamed for in a Jeongnyeon fic! I'm so happy!!!

I think it's readable without canon knowledge, but you'll have to do a certain amount of piecing things together as you go, and the emotions won't hit as hard. I had many emotions, though. What a treat, what a delight!
.

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