01 July 2025 @ 02:54 pm

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk



Have you ever been to a convention focused on a particular TV show? Or have you been to panels on one in a multi-fandom convention? What aspects are a draw for you?
 
 
01 July 2025 @ 09:19 am
Photograph with added text: Working Together, at Fancake. Workers in India use wide wooden paddles with long handles to shove a huge yard of drying grains into big piles. The grain, most likely rice, is a beautiful golden color, and there's a mix of western and traditional clothing among the seven men and women.
Our theme for July is working together!

This round is for fanworks that feature characters working together to achieve a common goal or—and this is not necessarily the same thing—fanworks set in the workplace.

The tag for this round is: theme: working together

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! )

 
 
 
30 June 2025 @ 03:18 pm
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
 
 
 
 
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Characters/Pairings: Harriet Vane & Mary Wimsey
Rating: Gen
Length: 1951
Creator Links: Beatrice_Otter on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Female friendship, Female characters

Summary: "I was complaining to my brother about how few friends I had, and he suggested that you might be an interesting person to know."

After Harriet is exonerated, she and Mary Wimsey meet for tea.

Reccer's Notes: A lovely, quietly perceptive story about two slightly lonely women finding commonalities and starting to become friends - one of Lord Peter's more successful machinations. It's beautifully written and the author's note at the end is interesting if you're a fan of the Wimsey books.

Fanwork Links: Tea For Two

 
 
30 June 2025 @ 09:48 am
Fandom: Deadloch
Characters/Pairings: Dulcie Collins/Eddie Redcliffe/Cath York
Rating: Explicit
Length: 5010
Content Notes: not kidding about the rating
Creator Links: kirazi on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Femslash, Polyamory, Friends to lovers

Summary: “This is not a good idea, love,” Dulcie says, keeping her tone level. “I know I said I’d try to be more open to change, and I hear and respect your opinion, I truly do, but this is — it’s like the hobby farm. It’s really not going to work.”

“I just think,” Cath says, bright-eyed and earnest, “that it would be a healing experience for me. For us both! To share that kind of intimacy. I am committed to working through my anxiety about you fucking your partner and I’m sure that would be so much more manageable for me if we fucked her first. Together.”

(Eddie needs a gruck. Dulcie and Cath offer to help her out.)

Reccer's Notes: This is a polyamory fic where Cath decides she and Dulcie should have sex with Eddie so as to manage her anxiety that Dulcie might be unfaithful with Eddie (as happened in the past with a former partner at work). There's some nice psychological and historical exploration as Dulcie tries to work out what's going on, and the eventual sex is hot and well-written. What I like most is the character voices and dialogue for the three of them, which are spot on. It's also very funny, as are Eddie's creative takes on the English language.

Fanwork Links: Keep On Gruckin'
 
 
 
 
29 June 2025 @ 01:18 pm
Babylon White by Kit Sun Cheah

The grand conclusion! Spoilers for earlier books ahead.

Read more... )
 
 
 
29 June 2025 @ 04:16 am
[community profile] allbingo provides a space for creative people to share their work, using bingo cards for inspiration.

[community profile] crowdfunding is a community for creators, patrons, and fans of cyberfunded creativity.

Further details below ...

Read more... )
 
 
Current Mood: busy
 
 
 
 
28 June 2025 @ 03:45 pm
Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?
 
 
Fandom: Midsommar
Characters: Dani Ardor, Hanna, Siv
Rating: T
Length: 4,212
Creator Links: [archiveofourown.org profile] Selkit
Theme: female relationships

Summary: In her dreams, dark smudges crowd the edges of the world. One looms larger than the rest, twisting into impossible shapes, morphing into a figure with many faces, all of them howling with rage.

When she jolts awake, the dream-figure lingers. She tries to ignore it. She’s no stranger to nightmares. Her whole life has been one ever since her family’s deaths.

But things are different now. This is a new life. A new family.

Right?

Reccer's Notes: I love seeing what happens with Dani after the events of Midsommar, and this is such a good look at the continued ritual of being the May Queen! I am a known ho for ritual, but especially building off of the existing worldbuilding in such a believable way. I really enjoyed seeing more of Dani interacting with the other women of the Hårga as she learns to be part of her new family and culture. Plus the parts with Maja’s (and Christian’s) daughter were just perfect.

Fanwork Links: on AO3
 
 
Fandom: original work
Characters/Pairings: powerful mage/warrior bonded to her
Rating: G
Length: n/a
Creator Links: creators have been revealed but the artist chose to make the work anon.
Themes: Female relationships, Femslash, Female characters, Characters of color, Magic

Summary: none provided

Reccer's Notes: Another gorgeous work from the recent Everything is Femslash exchange. It's in a fantasy setting, featuring a mage and her warrior. I love the warm earthy colours, and how, the mage being a little shorter, their faces and bodies fit together perfectly, and the way they're linked by the swirl of the magical bond. Beautiful. (Note that the post is locked to AO3.)

Fanwork Links: Always with you

 
 
 
27 June 2025 @ 03:14 pm


Link: Round 15 Sign Ups | Round 15 Themes

Description: [community profile] celebrity20in20 is a 20in20 community dedicated to making icons of actors and actresses. You have 20 days to make 20 icons about a celebrity of your choice, based on a set of themes for the round.

Schedule: Round 15 sign ups are open NOW. Icons are due July 17, 2025.
 
 
27 June 2025 @ 09:06 am
Fandom: DC Comics
Pairings/Characters: Pamela Isely/Harleen Quinzel, Bruce Wayne
Rating: Teen 
Length: 1,882 words
Creator Links: Unpretty on AO3
Theme: Female relationships, Canon lgbtq+ characters, humour, superpowers

Summary:
Bruce Wayne deals with supervillains almost as much as Batman does.

Reccer's Notes:
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy break into Bruce Wayne's office to stop Wayne Enterprises from doing evil corporate stuff. Or kill him. Bruce plays dumb. It's glorious. 
I love Harley and Ivy's relationship in this. They're so true in how they love and support each other but are definitely super-villains who will definitely kill and/or main whoever gets in their way. Also Bruce's line about how Pamela probably wants to kill him because Harley finds him hot :D Bruce being smart by playing dumb is one of my favourite things. 

Fanwork Links: Office Meeting
Also has a podfic
 

 
 
The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

Spoilers for The Traitor Baru Cormorant below!
 
The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus. 
 
The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch. 
 
In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work.  Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

Read more... ) 
 

 
 
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Characters/Pairings: James Kirk/Leonard 'Bones' McCoy
Rating: G
Length: n/a
Creator Links: storietellers on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Domestic, Femslash

Summary: "Having fun, Bones?"
"Just working out the tension. You really keep it all in your wrists. Keep reading, darlin'. I wanna know what happens next."

Reccer's Notes:
The 'Everything is Femslash' exchange has just revealed creators, and this is a gorgeous artwork of Rule 63 (always a girl) Kirk and McCoy chilling out. The lighting is warm and their likenesses are really well done. It's relaxing just to look at.

Fanwork Links: Relaxing
 
 
25 June 2025 @ 05:38 pm
I don't actually remember where I saw Catriona Ward's Sundial recommended, but it was somewhere and convincing enough to get it on my TBR. I finished the audiobook this week so it's time to reflect.
 
Sundial is a domestic psychological thriller which focuses on the relationship between the protagonist Rob and her eldest daughter Callie. Or at least, that's what the novel summary posits. A good 50% or more of the book is actually about Rob's youth and her relationship with her childhood family, primarily her twin sister, Jack. I didn't get that at first, which led to me being slightly frustrated by the length of the "flashback" sections until I realized that they were at least half the true focus of the story.
 
Ward excels in capturing the petty toxicity of a domestic environment gone sour. Especially deftly handled are the ways in which a partner can wound in such seemingly mundane ways. Many of the exchanges between Rob and her husband, Irving, come off as completely innocuous to an outsider, but to the two people in the relationship, who have the context for these seemingly nothing interactions, the full cruelty of them is on display. This adds completely believably to the tension between Rob and Callie, who has long favored her father, and who sees her mother's responses as hysterical overreactions, because she doesn't have the context that Rob does. Ward also very neatly portrays a truly vicious marriage, where both parties have given up pretending they want to be together, at least to each other, and where the entire relationship has become an unending game of oneupsmanship, trying to get one over on your spouse.
 
Adding to this suffocating atmosphere is Callie, a very strange 12-year-old who is starting to exhibit some very troubling behavior, particularly in her interactions with her 9-year-old sister, Annie. Rob has always struggled to connect with Callie—in contrast with Irving, who happily spoils her to force Rob to be the bad guy enforcing boundaries—but when Callie is thought to have attempted to poison Annie with Irving's diabetes medication, Rob decides it's time she and Callie have a real heart-to-heart. 
 
So she takes Callie on a mother/daughter trip to Rob's childhood home, Sundial, an isolated family property out in the Mojave desert.