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Photograph of the aurora borealis taken in Norway, text: Amnesty, at Fancake. The northern lights are a bright green scribble that stretches over the horizon, along a snowy mountain ridge, and up into the starry night sky.

As always, our theme for December is amnesty. This month you can post recs for any past round—from any year—as long as the work hasn't already been recommended for that theme. Refresh your memory with a spreadsheet of previous rounds or search the comm for past recs.

Be sure to tag your recs with theme: amnesty in addition to the relevant theme(s).

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.

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Reblog on Tumblr | Reskeet on Bluesky | Retoot on Mastodon

susandennis

Yesterday, I ventured from my apartment one time. I took some trash to the shoots - two doors down. And that was it. It was lovely. Martha came by for Amazon help. She wanted to join Prime for her free month so she could Christmas shop. It was not entirely straightforward but we got it done. And I had the conversation I've had with others around here about banking online.

"Aren't you worried about getting robbed?"
"Nope. I check all of my accounts first think in the morning. If they try to steal from me, they won't get much for long. How often do you check your accounts?"
"Oh, I check them every month when I get the statement."

So, bank account robbers... feel free to hit up all old people the day after the statement comes out. You have a month to enjoy the profits.

Plus, in texts last night, she said she could not find an 8x8 pyrex dish with lid on Amazon. I found about 20 of them. So she called around and will drive to downtown Bellevue today to pick one up from The Container Store. "I hope it's ready before 2, I hate that traffic."

Different strokes for different folks.

After she was here, she was on to drop off a photo for the newsletter this week. She and Richard have a wedding anniversary coming up and they wanted their wedding picture. She showed it to me and, frankly, it's about the most perfect wedding photo I've ever seen. And they look just the same but older. And Richard had a whole lotta hair back then. Next year will be their 60th. (I'll grab a copy Thursday when the newsletter comes out and post it.)

I was so very tempted to copy yesterday today and not leave this apartment. Some non-volleyball mornings, I wake up ready to swim but on the days when I'm not, I'm hesitant to force myself. I don't want to not like swimming. This morning was nice and foggy but it did not look like it was going to last so before I could spend any time in debate, I just slapped on my suit and hit the road. It was a very good swim so I'm glad I did.

I tried Movie Sunday yesterday. I have MADD. Movie Attention Deficit Disorder. I tried watching 4 different movies and did not last 30 mins into any of them. They all had potential but I didn't have the patience. I'm just not a movie person.

Biggie has, apparently, worked through his issues with the egg crate foam topper and has now taken to sleeping with me again. The lights go out, he hops up and snuggles into the bowl my spoon makes. We settle in. And here comes Julio who tries to settle in but cat words are exchanged and they both leap up and leave. I go to sleep. When I wake up to pee, Biggie is there and, usually, Julio and they stay the night although Julio usually gets up first. Then me. Then Biggie.

One side effect from watching TV news is exposure to commercials for every weight loss/diabetes product and there are a million of them. It occurred to me last night that the good news is all those fat dancers who couldn't get work because they were fat are now fully employed because they are fat. Sweet.

Ok, it's after 9 and I really do need to get dressed and make my bed.

oursin

There was hoohahing going on last week on bluesky anent people pirating books on account authors do not need the money and should be creating for Love of Art.

And I will concede that when it comes to Evil Exploitative Academic Publishing Empires, I cannot get my knickers in a twist over people downloading papers for which they have not paid the extortionate fee, none of which goes to author of the paper or the reviewers who reviewed it for the journal in question (wot, me, bitter?) - in fact I will be over here cheering or offering to use such library access as I have to get access and offer a copy.

But honestly the Average Author of fictional works is not making molto moolah but is probably supporting themselves by doing something else or being supported by someone else (hey, Ursula K Le Guin? e.g. mentions somewhere she was a housewife when she first started out) and writing is not their sole occupation or source of remuneration.

And even writers who we look back on as Important and Successful had their money problems: Hardship grant applications to the Royal Literary Fund... show authors at their most vulnerable:

Nobody goes into writing for the money: today, professional authors in the UK earn a median income of £7,000, according to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. Looking at the starry names awarded grants through the RLF’s history makes clear that the challenges are not new. However, Kemp thinks the problem has become more acute in some regards. “The kinds of deal you get with a publisher as a mid-list fiction writer has gone down, down, down, down, down.” Twenty or 30 years ago, such writers could survive; it is now much tougher, he says. Big publishers are “paying large amounts of money to a small number of writers”. A “tiny percentage actually survive on what they’re making from writing.”

But looking back over the history of the fund:

“On the one hand there are people like Joyce and DH Lawrence, who are early in their careers, and indeed Doris Lessing, who are struggling to get going, who have made a mark but are finding it hard to make ends meet. And at the other end there are people like Coleridge, and more recently Edna O’Brien, who have had stellar careers, and you’d have hoped actually were doing OK, but the vicissitudes of a writer’s life mean that sometimes it goes to pot.”

I wonder how far the All More Complicated Stories behind the need are in the documentation, though:

Many documents show writers at the most vulnerable times of their lives, often in precarious positions early in their careers; everything from feeble book sales to illness to messy marriages to grief is chronicled here.... Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, wrote in an August 1914 letter that the shock of her husband’s death “overcame me completely and now my brain will not do the poetry romance and fairy tales by which I have earned most of my livelihood”.

She was, as I recall, the principle breadwinner of their polyamorous menage and support of its offspring. (Personally we should have danced on Hubert Bland's grave.)

james_davis_nicoll

2024: Scutigera coleoptrata become established in the UK, a Trident missile suffers performance anxiety during a test and refuses to leave its sub, and Labour sweeps to victory in the General Election, with surprising little effect on the subsequent frequency of cruel and vindictive legislation.

Poll #33896 Clarke Award Finalists 2024

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

View Respondents

Which 2024 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
0 (0.0%)

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
0 (0.0%)

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner
1 (16.7%)

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
6 (100.0%)

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
4 (66.7%)

The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
1 (16.7%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2024 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

lightreads

All That We See or Seem

3/5. Marketed as scifi, but it’s actually a near future AI tech thriller about the loner hacker who gets tangled up in the search for a missing woman whose job is weaving AI-enhanced mass dream experiences.

Meh. A lot of the AI speculation here is really interesting. It’s all extremely plausible – the internet mostly just bots shouting at each other, everyone with means having a personal AI assistant who is trained to think specifically like them, what new kinds of art really draw people in as authentic, etc. – but speculates about these things while touching lightly on how they are bad and how they are good. Letting it be complicated with AI, can you imagine? Is that even allowed? In the era where I have been told that I’m a “traitor to humanity” for occasionally finding a particular AI powered accessibility tool to be extremely helpful in ways no prior tool has ever come remotely close to? Oh but surely we can’t have nuance in these conversations, oh no.

Unfortunately, everything else about this book is meh. The villain POV (please stop), the weirdly flat delivery of events that are supposed to be tense or upsetting, the main character and the shallow thriller treatment of her trauma, the “twist” in the epilogue.

This makes me not want to read his fantasy, actually. Does it have the same problems, or is he trying too hard to write like a thriller guy?

Content notes: Violence, slavery.

peasina posting in

holiday_wishes

Hello friends,

I’m pea, a 30-something podficcer, Pokémon-fan, and craft-lover from the UK 👋 This is my eighth time participating in Holiday Wishes, and I look forward to the kind, wholesome interactions this event encourages all year. Thank you so much to anyone who grants any of my below wishes. You’re amazing!

1. DW Points – This was my first year having a paid DW account, and I love having access to extra icons, polls, and the search function! Any number of points you’d be kind enough to gift me would be extremely appreciated.

2. Female YouTuber recs – It’s always lovely to find a new YouTuber to binge, and I’d love to support more women making videos about topics I enjoy such as crafts, hobbies, LGBTQ+ themes, video games, and Pokémon. Some of my current favourites are: brattyxbre (zines), Emma Thorne (religion, LGBTQ+ rights, conspiracy theories), Karen Puzzles (jigsaw puzzles), Kyra/Strawberry Pokémon (Pokémon TCG collecting), Memoria (video games), Royalty Soaps (soap and candle making), and Shiny Catherine (Pokémon shiny hunting).

3. Paid Discord things – If you have any of those free trials of Discord Nitro to give out, I’d love to be the lucky recipient of one, especially from 22 Dec onward (when I’m taking part in a Discord-based fan event that’s always easier with Nitro.) My Discord username is ‘alittlesunshine’ – feel free to friend me. I also have a wishlist associated with my account with two cute profile add-ons I’d love to have, if you’re feeling extra generous.

4. Comments on any works in the PokePodProject collections — I co-mod

pokepodproject, an event that aims to create a fic and podfic for every Pokémon, and I would be delighted if the participants got more attention on their works. I’d appreciate it so, so, so much if you showed them (fic and/or podfic) some love. All are under 1k/10 mins. Here are some links to help you navigate:
Gen one: AO3 Collection | Spreadsheet of Works | Audiobook Anthology Downloads
Gen two: AO3 Collection | Spreadsheet of Works | Audiobook Anthology Downloads

5. Something to open for Christmas – I don’t really get gifts at Christmas, and not to sound shallow, but I do really enjoy having something to open. If you’d like to send me a little surprise, I’d be so grateful and will probably cry happy tears. Here’s a few things I like, if it helps: purple, pink, wax melts (citrus, coffee, sugary scents), stickers, sweets/candy, beads, handmade items (I LOVE crafts!! anything you made will excite me), Pokémon (especially steel and fairy types and any gen one Pokemon), and fruit-themed items. Please DM me for my address 💖

Thank you for looking at my wish list, and thank you again in advance for your kindness if you grant any of my wishes. Happy Holidays!

yarnofariadne posting in

holiday_wishes

Hello and happy holidays! May whatever your celebrations are be joyous, restorative, and blessed if they are religious.

1. Craft supplies donations for schools. Of course check with your local schools to see if this is something they really need, but I was until recently a TA in a special school and we were absolutely desperate for craft supplies that no one was donating. Fabric, even just in scraps, is especially valuable this time of year. Anything you have in your stash that you're not using, please see if you have a local school (particularly a special school) that could make use of it!

2. High quality, durable cat toys. My little guy is joyously destroying every toy he gets, and I simply don't have enough money to be replacing them at the speed he goes through them. I'd happily take recommendations (not Kong), or if you want to send me physical items, I'll have contact info at the bottom of this post.

3. Stickers. I'm long distance with one of my partners and we write lots of physical letters. I like to decorate the envelopes with stickers but my stash is running low and I'm having trouble finding cool stickers I like - most shops I find on Ko-fi and such are based in the US, and getting anything sent from the US is a very hit-or-miss prospect these days. I will again take recs - UK-based shops preferred, since I know most of the EU (understandably) won't ship to us either - or if you have spares you'd like to get rid of, contact info is at the bottom of this post. Themes I like: cats, mythology, folklore and folk art, vintage florals, spooky/witchy/Halloween things, hearts.

4. Washi tape. Same note as with the stickers - I keep finding local artists listing washi tape on their website and it must be going out of stock within minutes! No one seems to be able to keep it in stock, unless there is some vast washi tape-making supply shortage of which I'm unaware. If you have recs or any physical items you'd like to get rid of, I'm happy to take either.

5. Dreamwidth points. Always appreciated!

6. One more player for Vampire Heist. I'm running a homebrew D&D mini campaign on StartPlayingGames and we're one player short of starting. If you'd like to (fictionally) force the British Museum to repatriate some stuff, come play with us!

7. Anything off my Giftful wishlist. The wishlist is here and contact info's at the bottom of this post.

8. Commissions. I recently left my job because for a number of reasons it was killing me, and while I'm very happy with having given myself the gift of mental and physical health, I could use some work! I offer both writing and editing commissions, and I especially love editing, so if you've got some writing you'd like eyes on - anything from fic to novels - I'd be happy to help.

9. Eyes on my writing. It's really a struggle out there for writers trying to keep scrapers from stealing their work, and I've had to lower the visibility of my writing past what I would ideally have. All my writing is available for free on

yarnofariadne_writes, though you do have to join the community (I'll swiftly approve - I'm just trying to keep out the bots). I'm in the process of cross-posting to my website as well. My books are also available for very low prices, and I'm happy to send out review copies for reviewers.

10. Word of mouth. Following on from the above, if you enjoy what I write, please tell someone! Writing reviews on Goodreads/Storygraph/Pagebound is always a kindness, and even just telling a friend you think would be into what I write would be very much appreciated.

You can DM me here on Dreamwidth, or send me an email at victoriacaroline at tuta dot com.

goodbyebird

Ey let's start out with our beloved franchise that's getting a new mooovieeee :DDD

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 1

The Mummy
as wine pervades water by

betony (2,266 words). Delightful!
The last thing Rick expects to hear, when Evie opens the door at last, is a grim: “Darling, we’ve got to get married.”

susandennis

Still no cure.

sonia

It doesn't seem like posting every day in December is really a thing anymore on Dreamwidth, but I enjoy the challenge of it, so I'm going to try it again this year. I may miss a day here and there.

As is traditional, if you have questions or topics you'd like me to write about, please drop them in comments!

james_davis_nicoll

Impress your friends and potential significant others! Join the legions of James Nicoll Reviews supporters! James Nicoll Reviews is the only SF review that promises to be pyroclastic flow-free!

December 2025 Patreon Boost

mific posting in

drawesome

It's a busy month with seasonal projects and challenges. The seasonal card exchange is underway, and we're extending the fanartist rec challenge across this month as well.

text

Art Rec Challenge: Rec a Fanartist

Pick a fanartist you like and tell us why you enjoy their works - and link us to a few examples, and to their main site or sites.

Any fandom, but only fanartists please, not professional artists (it's okay if they're fanartists who do commissions or have a buy-me-a-coffee, though, as that's fairly common these days.) They can be from any era - from early Star Trek vintage to artists posting currently.

Tell us about just one artist per post, please - you can make more than one post if you want to rec two or three artists!

A round-up post for this recs challenge will be done at the end of December. Happy reccing!

schneier_no_tracking_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/12/banning-vpns.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71251

This is crazy. Lawmakers in several US states are contemplating banning VPNs, because…think of the children!

As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children” in A.B. 105/S.B. 130. It’s an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed “sexual content” to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN. The bill seeks to broadly expand the definition of materials that are “harmful to minors” beyond the type of speech that states can prohibit minors from accessing potentially encompassing things like depictions and discussions of human anatomy, sexuality, and reproduction.

The EFF link explains why this is a terrible idea.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/12/banning-vpns.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=71251

maju

From here: https://jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com/1690091.html

https://maju01.livejournal.com/2908849.html

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio, Diefenbaker, Harding Welsh
Rating: Teen
Length: 4590
Content Notes: The author chose not to warn. AU from the end of Victoria's Secret as Fraser wasn't shot and he left with Victoria on the train.

If you'd much rather know about major AO3 warnings and be spoiled for the reveal at the end, click the arrow at left. SPOILERS

Ray doesn't realise until near the fic's end that it's Fraser's ghost meeting with him, as Victoria killed him then ran for the US border. But with Fraser's and Welsh's help, they catch her.

Creator Links: MSSalieri on AO3, Salieri's old website
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Friendship, Cops and Crime, AU: Fork in the road

Summary: He’s in a booth around the corner, hands folded on the Formica table. It’s his jacket, the one he had on when he jumped onto the train, so Ray believes it’s him. But it’s not the guy Ray knew. His hair hangs to his collar. His eyes are dark with exhaustion, his face gaunt. He’s been gone nineteen months. It might as well be nineteen years.

Dief’s whine is thin, a little panicky. He’s shivering against Ray’s knee.

“Hello, Ray,” Fraser says.

Reccer's Notes: This is a tough story, but I keep going back to it from time to time because it's just so good. Set more than a year after Ray Vecchio stumbled and missed the shot so that Fraser left with Victoria on the train, Ray meets up once more with a very changed Fraser in a motel at the ass end of Canada, in a blizzard. It's sad, spooky, and wonderfully written. Powerful and haunting, and very much worth a read.

Fanwork Links: Dysmas on AO3, Dysmas on Wayback

rest_of_world_rss_feed

Posted by Mehran Gul

https://restofworld.org/2025/india-tech-talent-diversifies-beyond-us/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds

In recent months, there has been frenzied debate about whether the U.S. government’s unfavorable outlook toward immigration would curtail foreign student enrollments in U.S. universities and scale back overseas talent...

https://restofworld.org/2025/india-tech-talent-diversifies-beyond-us/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1888828.html

Hey, Americans and people living in the US going through open enrollment on the state ACA marketplaces who haven't yet enrolled in a plan for 2026!

Just about every state in the union and DC (but not Idaho) proudly touts an end date to open enrollment sometime in January. This year for most states it ends January 15th, but in CA, NJ, NY, RI, and DC, it's January 31st, and here in Massachusetts, it's January 23rd. (Idaho's is December 15th.) [Source]

That sure sounds like the deadline is sometime in January.

No, it kinda isn't.

( tl;dr: Just assume if you want insurance to start Jan 1, the deadlines are to enroll by Dec 8 and to pay for the first month by Dec 15. Important deets within. [950 words] )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

james

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zhelana

Checking in on goals

Finished This Month

Cook 12 times 2025

Progress this Month

Exercise every day in 2025
Brush teeth 360 times in 2025
Shower weekly 2025
Art Every Day 2025
Write in Spanish every day of 2025
Finish my memoirs
Write weekly 2025
Read 2 pages of Spanish every day 2025
Clean 2 minutes per weekday 2025
Clean 10 minutes per week 2025

dine

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Ricky Buchanan

Not Done Living!

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Round 181: Amnesty

Monday

'Twas ever thus....

Clarke Award Finalists 2024

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

Peasina's Wishes

season's greasons

(no subject)

Remembering

December posts invitation

December 2025 Patreon Boost

Admin Post: Challenges in December

Banning VPNs

100 photos

due South: Dysmas by MSSalieri

H-1B to Plan B: India’s top tech talent looks beyond the U.S.

Choosing Health Insurance: Two Unobvious Marketplace Deadlines [US, healthcare, Patreon]

December

140 in 1400 List

when 2 ppl argue online, I believe the one who spells correctly

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