#2023 roundup

[jengrayart]

Happy New Years Eve!

Or Happy, “Oh shoot, I put the wrong date on that” Next Couple of Months!

Here are some of my favorite personal posts from 2023:

Mermaids, a witch, a goosey gorgon, and fanart

[ladytabletop]

Game Roundup 2023: Part 3

Trying to squeeze in a couple more posts on this, but no promises! This one is going to have a laundry list at the bottom that I'm not going to give more detail on bc I lack time.

Bug Dish: Amuse Bouche by Ryan Khan

I cannot WAIT for the full version of this! Play as tiny bug chefs by collecting ingredients, making dishes, and serving customers!

HUNT by GilaRPGs

This one is one I picked up at GenCon. Play as an order of doomed knights hunting a beast. Uses the LUMEN 2.0 diceless system and grid-based combat, and it's a self-enclosed single session.

Our Haunt by Rae Nedjadi

Another delightful Belonging Outside Belonging game by @temporalhiccup! This one has the potential for a lot of poignancy or a lot of hijinks. Play as ghosts haunting a house.

Eyes on the Prize by Ira Prince

This may be my favorite game of the year, hands down. Play as a fake married couple trying to carry out a scheme! Try not to fall in love!

APOCALYPSE FRAME by @binarystargames

This mecha game is the right amount of crunch for me to play long-term (which i to say, less crunchy than Lancere and Beam Saber). It makes use of LUMEN to create a super tight, fast-paced game of mech combat.

Other stuff I've read that I'm not going to elaborate on at this time:

House Spirit

To keep ghosts alive

Our Farm Becomes the Battlefield

Apocalypse, Wow

Keepers of the Cards

Definitely Wizards

Neon Sundown

Death Sentence

Phanta

The Queen Returns

house

Tavern at the End of the World

MirrorMoon

Forecaster: The Body You Share

i want your bite

Our Love Can't Save The World

Love by the Quarter Mile

Dragonhearts

your body, an altar

Subway Runners

Part 1 | Part 2

[msmargaretmurry]

i wanted to write some fandom-related new year's reflections down and this felt like the best place for it! i miss livejournal every day!

i don't generally do formal new years' resolutions, mostly because i am always too busy around the new year to really sit down and think and reflect about what they should be and how i would want to measure them, but i do think the new year is a good time for a little mental reset regardless and i have been Pondering over the past few weeks about what i would like that to mean for me...... i have always complained that tumblr as a platform is terrible for making friends and i stand by that (i have met good friends on tumblr but the friendships flourished when we took the conversation elsewhere) but i do think this past year i have been #blessed in obtaining some really lovely mutuals and acquaintances On Here in a way that has made me feel more connected to hrpf fandom at large, which has been really nice ❤ so that is something i would like to continue in 2024. i hesitate to be like "i want to spend more time on tumblr" because i probably do not need to do that lmao but i do maybe want to try to be a little more proactive about making/maintaining connections and loose ties. my dear pal kasper @moregraceful has talked about fandom as community and that always resonates with me, because it can be so easy to feel like you are feeding Content into the Content Machine for people to Consume and honestly that is so miserable! i don't want that! maybe 2024 will be the year i finally post my thoughts on the interminable "bookmarks comments are for readers, not writers" discourse.

anyway. i know a lot of the actual fandom ~conversation these days happens on discord, which is am afraid of, but idk maybe i'll try to have more of an open mind about it this year. but maybe i won't. making no promises to myself there 😂 i am trying to be realistic about how much free time i will have for fandom in the midst of work and grad school and real life social life so i think the upshot here is wanting to be thoughtful and deliberate about how i spend the free time i do have for this stuff.

on the fanfiction front...... i came into 2023 in a pretty shitty mental place about writing, mostly due to how lonely i felt about writing-as-community in 2022 — it's just not fun to feel like your friends are having fun without you about things you thought you'd be included in! — and spent most of the year trying to pull myself out of it, with middling success. like, i enjoyed the head above water ficlets i added to that universe but i do still feel a little crappy that those were the only things i was able to finish writing. i have so many stories i want to get out! so i am also trying to look at this new year as maybe a chance to give myself a clean slate and say that no matter what writing goals i set for myself i will also try to be gentler with myself and focus on enjoying the writing process regardless of the end product. but i would also like to actually finish some real fics this year, lol. i might set some measurable goals, but that will not be happening until i get home next week.

in conclusion, idk what i want this year to be yet! a friend of mine recently mentioned the joys of using the julian calendar for her winter celebrations means the new year isn't until january 14, so the first two weeks of the year get to be kind of a "soft launch" of the year to figure out what works best and i did immediately steal the concept even though i am a gregorian calendar girlie. so i am still pondering, still percolating. if for some reason any of you actually read all this and have your own fandom- or writing-related new year's goals/resolutions, i would love to hear them ❤

[lurkingteapot]

2023 post round-up/summary

Lovely @twig-tea tagged me here, so I'll try my hand.

I'd abandoned tumblr for about 4? 5? years 2016ish through 2020, had a short stint with it again in 2020, took peeks and vehemently disagreed with much of what I saw in 2021-2022, and grudgingly settled back in in 2023. I wasn't going to interact. I wasn't.

Jan-April: *crickets* I was being strong!

Then, I saw people moaning about how they'd learn Thai if only it was on Duolingo, and you know how spite can be funnelled into positivity? I did that! Result:

May

Popular: Free Thai Language Learning Resources, most popular by a landslide. This pleases me greatly, as I put a lot of work into it and always hope more people start picking up this language.

Favourite: maybe my thoughts on Ming, piggybacking off @kenmakaashi's post?

June

Popular: my musings on translation and how it relates to fannish reception of media, which was my most popular post of the year and 'broke containment', if only in a very small way. Some of the additions in the tags and reblogs are fantastic, do go have a look if you like!

Favourite: toss-up between my attempt at showing a parallel between a silly moment in Our Skyy 2 x BBS and a scrapped shot from BBS proper and this rant about Romanisations of Thai and why G**gle translate is the devil (that bit is in the conversation downthread), which let me meet @plantsarepeopletoo.

July

Popular: Summary of James Welker's 2006 essay "Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga"

Favourite: the offerings are slim here … let's go with the one in which I once more was salty about the way folks talk about BL

August

Popular: Only Friends' Ray isn't just The Drunkard, but also The One Who's basically Given Up On Himself, as per his title card (this one was so popular it got stolen and reposted – without credit or permission – to twitter 🙃)

Favourite: Thinking about Drama, the Romance genre, and tropes, and how those relate to our perception of BL (good additions from various folks in the notes; conversation with @visualtaehyun in reblogs and @twig-tea in the replies).

September

Popular: IFYLITA Ep 6 poem context notes

Favourite: toss-up between complaining about badly machine translated content in Love in Translation and musing on the name of Khun Yai's favourite bar

October

Popular: my long-winded answer to @zimmbzon's ask "Hi, how would a non-binary person (me) get around the binary gender rules and vocab in Thai?"

Favourite: uhhh … maybe my musings on honorific translations in kimi ni wa todokanai? (yes, technically a reblog from sideblog, shh)

November

Popular: most popular was this throwaway therapy vent containing food for thought and while I guess this meme is mostly fannish I'm linking it anyway because it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to (or something)

Favourite: when I called out the resemblance between the Last Twilight trailer and Intouchables (2011). Literally no one cared, but then @my-rose-tinted-glasses independently came in strong with receipts as soon as the actual first episode aired and made me feel validated af.

December

Popular: Why I'm pretty sure Last Twilight's "fried rice/false rice" joke was funnier in Thai

Favourite: the saga of the songs in Ep 4 of Last Twilight

I didn't do any round-up posts, but I'll include the other category @twig-tea added:

Five other posts that I want to highlight because I can:

BL Favourites Tag Game (July 2023)

Link to fujoshi.info with information on WHY you should check out that site if you're interested in having an informed opinion on BL and the genre's history.

contemporary issues in Thailand as mentioned in Only Friends ep 1

Thoughts on code-switching in Step by Step

Reply to @mynameisnotthepoint's comment-via-ask on my anti viki rant

I'm not going to tag anyone because I'm completely lost – I was mostly off tumblr for nearly three weeks; if you made a post like this you'd like me to see, please link me/tag me! <3

[cyprinella]

Quilting (and other crafts) round up: I finished six quilts from start to finish this year. I've got three unfinished tops, finally put a binding on one I quilted in 2022, made something like 100 bird toys, and two ties, one of which was silk and a GIANT pain in the ass. Kudos to people who work with silk on the regular. It sucks to sew.

[doctorhelena]

Doctorhelena's 2023 Fanfic/Fanart Roundup

It’s that time of year again! Here is my annual fanfic/fanart roundup. (And here are the 2018,  2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 versions!)

This year I posted:

4 different stories, with a total of 41,964 words 

8 different pieces of fanart (including one that was actually four separate drawings grouped together)

and 1 - other thing. A graphic, I guess! 😂

Fanfic:

1. Until Then (We'll Have to Muddle Through, Somehow)  (Peggy Carter / Steve Rogers) - 24586 words Five times Peggy and Steve carved out small moments of happiness, and one time they didn't have to.

2. Hopelessly Stuck on You  (Peggy Carter / Steve Rogers) - 4234 words Peggy's attempt to distract Steve after a difficult mission doesn't go quite as planned.

3. Sweet Dreams  (Peggy Carter / Steve Rogers) - 4305 words The Howling Commandos place a little bet about Peggy's knockout lipstick.

4. A Stutter in Time, chapters 16 and 17 (Peggy Carter / Steve Rogers) - 8839 words (in these two chapters) 1945 Peggy Carter appears in Tony Stark’s lab, and immediately throws a wrench into everything.

Fanart:

1. Valentine's Day, 1950 (Steggy) A valentine from Steve to Peggy

2. Just one of the ways they like to get sweaty together (Steggy) Peggy and Steve working out at the boxing gym.

3. “Happy 102nd (or possibly 104th) birthday, Peggy!” (Steggy) Steve pops out of a cake, with Live Peggy Reaction.

4. A stolen moment (Steggy) Peggy and Steve kissing behind the stage after the rescue of the 107th.

5. Married Superhero Problem #4 (Steggy) Accidentally bringing each other's shields to work.

6. Going to a Halloween party at Tony and Pepper's Mojo Dojo Casa House (Steggy, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff) The Cap Quintet goes Barbie-themed this Halloween.

7.  An autumn walk (Steggy) What it says on the tin. Post-Endgame (or Steve never crashed).

8. Welcome 1950 (Steggy) Peggy and Steve on a New Year's Eve date.

Other:

1. Shared Life Experiences (Steggy) A few of Peggy and Steve’s less-often-remarked-upon shared life experiences.

[doodlingfoolishness]

Artist vs. art 2023 - Star Wars and non-fanart editions 💜

[themazewomen]

the maze women 2023 roundup:

oh, what a wonderful two months of maze women content we’ve had! it’s been incredible to see how many people got involved with the event and maybe even created wlw content for the very first time… you all did an amazing job, and i hope it won’t stop here.

women in the maze runner may be few and far between, but there certainly wasn’t any lack in content these past two months. let’s take a look at how we did 💗🤍

an incredible 18 of you contributed to the event!

and between you all, we had 67 new creations made!

to break that down, we had:

34 new fics, drabbles, and snippets. these totalled up to 35,354 words! find the ao3 collection here.

24 new edits, moodboards, gifs, outfits & playlists!

9 new pieces of fanart!

and now for our winners!

a massive congratulations and huge thank you to our full board winner and #themazewomen2023 champion:

@itsthemxze!

molly, you did an incredible job fulfilling every single prompt & giving us so much new wonderful content to enjoy. thank you for helping to keep the maze women spirit alive!

congratulations to our other amazing bingo winners:

@thominho-incorrectquotes

@newtswonderland (me!)

@subjecta5theglue

@newtedison

*round of applause* you can all be extremely proud of your achievements, thank you for all your contributions!

and of course a big thank you to everyone who participated, whether it was 1 creation or 25! seeing all the wonderful things you created has been an absolute joy. we now have a whole new lot of wlw maze runner content because of all of you 💗🤍

here’s to women & the wlw’s! 🥂

special thanks to tea (@its-tea-time-darling) for all the event-running advice, and to laura (@azura-bookclub) for all the moral support. this event wouldn’t have happened without both of you!

— alice (aka newtswonderland)

[ani-coolgirl]

2023 Writing Roundup

I was poking around my stats page on AO3 and thought it might be cool to do a little yearly roundup for 2023.

My longest fic last year was my Wincest Reverse Big Bang entry Disobedience with 14,321 words! It's season 2 AU where Dean dies in Cold Oak instead of Sam. The gorgeous original art that inspired me was done by @yoannspn.

My most popular fic was 008 - cheeky, an early entry in my Every First Time series. As of this posting, it has 4,133 hits, 366 kudos, and 36 bookmarks! That's impressive for a silly fic about spanking!

However, a special shout out goes to What You're Looking For, a sad Dean Jr. POV one-shot written for the Wincest Wednesdays prompt "lost." It currently has the most comments of my 2023 fics, sitting at 26 comments! I'm proud to make so many people tear up, and I know it made the rounds on Tumblr as well.

So, what were your favorite works of mine from this past year? Which Every First Time entries you're looking forward to? Any challenges you think I should participate in? Let me know!

[otemporanerys]

2023 Year-End Fic Round Up

Got tagged by @cr-noble-writes and @swaps55 - thanks both!

Words written (published or not, WIPs totally count too!): ooof. So according to AO3, I published 118,559 words. I also did a lot of work on the Playing the Long Game rewrite, but as I keep all the chapters in separate word docs, cba to add them up - so maybe add an extra 40k or so there?

Smut scenes written (if applicable): Let's see, there's 4 in the bits of LBEL I published this year, then I did three very smutty oneshots. Call it 7.

New things I tried: Not fic, but I did the NYC Midnight Microfiction Challenge! It was a lot of fun.

Fic I spent the most time on: Oh absolutely LBEL, but it was definitely worth it! Finished my first novel-length fic 🙌

Fic I spent the least time on: Priceless sprung from my head fully formed like the goddess Athena. I love it so much

Favourite thing I wrote: LBEL, obviously, was a great achievement, but I'm having lots of fun poking away at the childhood friends rewrite

Favourite thing I read: OTHER than my Spec Recs gifts (thank you all so much) and Generational Talent by @misseffect (I think I'd read it all in beta before it was posted 😅) - I really enjoyed Illicit Affairs by @jtownnn and Waiting for Yesterday by @kalliesa

Writing goals for next year: I would like to get to a point where I feel all right posting childhood friends rewrite. Also I'd like to finish the species swap-verse Vakarian parents fic! It would also be great if my witcher motivation came back from the war

Tagging @misseffect @dispatchwithlove @diaphanouso @dwarrowdams and anyone else who wants to play!

[alyssalenko]

2023 Year-End Fic Round-up

I was tagged by @pikapeppa and @illusivesoul for this one! You guys are the best! thanks for thinking of me!

Words written (published or not, WIPs totally count too!): Published: 27,845 & in WIPs: 4,282

Smut scenes written (if applicable): 12 distinct smut scenes

New things I tried: Oooh. I wrote a full-on sexy spanking scene in Bossy, and a werewolf half transforming during sex, both of those were really fun and challenging. I also wrote a pegging scene for the first time ever

Fic I spent the most time on: Well, I did get the next chapter of Curious up, which was 7 years in the making, but other than that I would say Omega's Greatest ASSet because I'd never written pegging in my life and it took me some time to get it right.

Fic I spent the least time on: Shame on Me. I knocked it out in five days because I was inspired and had a deadline 😆

Favourite thing I wrote: besides the above mentioned werewolf scene definitely A Dose of Vitamin Me--the smut was super hot if I do say say so myself 😉

Favourite thing I read: I didn't read much last year because I did 6 exchanges one right after the other 3 of which I had two assignments each. And then BG3 released August 3rd...but In Amber by @underdark-dreams because the BG3 chokehold is strong. As well as The Naughty List by @vorchagirl because a little Shenko silliness was just what the doctor ordered to recover.

Writing goals for next year: the same as last year. Get through some WIPs and try some new smut scenes ;)

I will tag: @randomlygeneratedstring @kittynomsdeplume @wickedwitchofthewilds @commander-krios @hazelestelle @spacebunshep @cr-noble-writes and anyone else who wants to play!

[selkiefinalist]

2023 (Writing) Year in Review

y’all it feels weird to throw this together because a.) it’s been 84 years and b.) who cares BUT it’s an old practice and i’m doing it, so:

after two years of not getting anything across the finish line, i wrote, finished, and posted things this year! 79,110 words worth of things, according to ao3!! plus i got to break a bunch of new pairings which is always satisfying, and i created a not-very-secret sideblog to write some lil tumblr fics when the mood strikes, which is not very often lol

maybe so (and maybe not) - newhook/nieto, 5k, E. this one came into being only because my partner in life told me i should start writing again and just write small things to ease back into it and oh, also, should write something featuring newy and nietsy that also featured the phrase “no ******* on the ‘stache” and if there’s one thing in life i like to do, it’s meet people’s expectations, so. that’s what happened.

made up - manson/macdermid, 13k, E. welp, this one just straight-up filled me with delight from concept to execution. it’s flawed in lots of ways i am sure but i do think my sweet spot in writing is probably that 15k-25k zone. that length gives me enough rope to work with but not so much that i cat’s cradle myself into knots with it, and is a realistic length to crank some stuff out in the limited time i have for writing these days and not feel too bad about it.

every new shade of green - ej/nate, 57k, E. ohhh the writing of this was so hard, which honestly i knew was my own fault because i wanted to do something hard. and i did it! and it’s done! there are a few pairings in my fandom history that really just do one over on me and this is one of them, and i think navigating the importance of the pairing itself with the length of the fic and what i wanted to accomplish with it as well as who it was gifted to is what made it so difficult. anyway you should all read it and validate my suffering.

one closed eye - macdonald/renouf, 2k, E(ish), alien au. wherein i circle back to the plan from earlier in the year and just write a small thing. is there anything more romantic in two call-ups finding love in a hopeless place, and one being immediately traded at the end of the season? they were so in love. jmac come back to us.

never (gritty) enough - gritty/nj devil, gritty/sanny, 1k, E, idk. i amused myself greatly with this concept yesterday after that one post circulated on my dash, wrote it fueled by exercise endorphins and then posted it fueled by late night, who cares? endorphins, it is perfect and beautiful in every way and also i am a genius

also created my first fest! very low-stakes low-participation but felt good to give back to fandom in a different way, i have always done best writing for fests because i love a deadline and hate letting people down. it’s still not too late to finish your stuff - prompts are available.

[burtonsdoodles]

2023, A year of Newsies Doodling…

My goal at the start of 2023 was to try do something creative every week so I didn’t lose touch with that part of me… I honestly think I wouldn’t have managed to achieve that goal if it wasn’t for the inspiration Newsies has given me this year - it kept me creating and it’s helped me grow in ways I never imagined… I am so very grateful for this show and can’t wait for news of its return to come this year! 🗞️

And to those who have been kind enough to support my little doodle shop this year, I want to say a massive THANK YOU! Your support has meant the absolute world to me and made 2023 into a pretty incredible year. I’d never have imagined it turning out the way it has and that’s thanks to all of you - whether that’s through buying something, or liking or sharing on socials - it is all so so appreciated and I’m immensely grateful! 🥰 So… thank you thank you thank you thank you!! You’re the best! 🫶🫶🫶

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE, here to whatever 2024 might bring! 🎉

[msmargaretmurry]

11 and 18!

answered 11 here!

18. A memorable meal this year?

ohhh this is definitely recency bias but a few weeks ago before caps/rangers, me and @stromesquad and @postoperation and a couple other pals went to jaleo for tapas and it was sooooo good and also so fun because multiple people came over to our table to tell us they loved our dylan strome jerseys 😂 delicious and memorable for sure

[amazonmandy]

2023 Cosplay Roundup! I got more done than I thought this year! I thought about doing a roundup for commissions, but there are dozens so nah.

[bisexualchrissycunningham]

📚 my year in books 📚

my personal best of.. general nonfiction

Evan Ross Katz, Into Every Generation... Danielle Deillinger, The Secret History of Home Economics

my personal best of.. nonfiction graphic novels

Art Spiegelman, Maus Kate Beaton, Ducks Joe Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza

my personal best of.. fantasy, young adult & romance

Alix E. Harrow, The Once and Future Witches Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries Kerstin Gier, A Castle in the Clouds Emily Henry, Happy Place Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

my personal best of.. literary fiction

Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea Susanna Clarke, Piranesi Katy Hays, The Cloisters

my personal best of.. thrillers, mysteries & horror

Julia Bartz, The Writing Retreat Jesse Q. Sutanto, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice

honorary mentions

Bridget Collins, The Binding Katherine Arden, The Bear & the Nightingale Matt Haig, The Midnight Library Ava Reid, Juniper & Thorn Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman P. Djeli Clark, The Haunting of Tram Car 015