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Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


This Week's Question: What are your crafting goals for 2026?


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

https://buttondown.com/the-rec-center/archive/the-rec-center-524/

Hello all! This week we have some coverage of the new Star Trek show, an article about Nancy Drew and censorship, and some cool Dishonored fanart. Also a multifandom grab-bag of fanfic recs, and more! — Gav

 

new stuff

“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Review: Star Trek Meets College Drama in This Fun but Frustrating Series” by Gavia at TV Guide
Gavia explores her mixed feelings about the new Star Trek series Starfleet Academy, a youth-focused spinoff with a likeable cast and rather muddled political themes. (Includes minor spoilers for the season premiere.)

“The Case of the Empty Bookshelves” by Tanya Roth at Contingent Magazine
Did you know that Nancy Drew books used to be a widespread target for library censorship? This article explains why.

“I Can Say Goodbye To Star Trek Because Star Trek Raised Me” by Dylan Roth at Aftermath
More Trek, but this time at a meta level: a thoughtful essay from a lifelong fan about reckoning with the franchise under the ownership of Skydance Media. In our era of massive media consolidation, this piece will probably resonate far outside Trek fandom. “You are at best a stockholder—at worst, a tenant.”

 

living in a world where the only two jobs are “gambling” and “murder” isn’t nearly as cool as Cowboy Bebop made it out to be

— Keifer (@dannyvegito.bsky.social) January 12, 2026 at 10:47 AM

 

older stuff

“Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online” by Gretchen McCulloch at WIRED
“The wrangler system is one where ordinary user behavior can be successful, a system which accepts that users periodically need help from someone with a bird’s-eye view of the larger picture.”

 

tumblr & beyond

Dishonored fanart by eika-gr

Paul McCartney is watching you.

“truly anything can be good if you do enough textual analysis”

pouring out for anyone attempting to navigate the internet rn WITHOUT an interest in Heated Rivalry

an extremely valid new offshoot of “he would not fucking say that.”

you’re about to be killed by Kramer Orcs

 

fanfiction

We’ve got a grab-bag this week! Thanks so much to everyone who sent in a rec. — Elizabeth

“promise you’re the last one” by wednesday. 7.6K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: DCU (Comics); Ship: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Recced by: Rosemarycat5
Backstory: Dick Grayson is the hero Nightwing. Slade Wilson is Deathstroke, the world’s deadliest mercenary. But here, Richard Grayson and Slade Wilson wake up in a Vegas hotel room missing a significant part of their memories. Assumptions are made.
Rec: The character work is brilliant, and the open ending has left me chewing this fic over in my head constantly since finishing. I think I’ve reread it twice already.
Content warnings: Dubcon, violence

“Cadence” by SixBeforeLunch. 1.7K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation; Ship: Will Riker/Deanna Troi
Recced by: Raktajino
Backstory: Deanna’s half human, so she’s not a full telepath like other Betazoids. She and Will (human) have a telepathic connection because scifi romance.
Rec: Lots of worldbuilding, a sweet pre-canon scene, and a classic Trek ending.
Content warnings: N/A

“The Longest Job” by emanthony. 24K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Hunter x Hunter; Ship: Hisoka/Illumi Zoldyck
Recced by: Laureninspace
Backstory: This shonen manga/anime sounds innocent enough (a boy who wants to be a Hunter aka adventurer like his dad), but has author Yoshihiro Togashi’s inherent darkness. The predatory clown Hisoka and controlling assassin Illumi are two of the formidable foes he faces.
Rec: Better than some books, this novella-length enemies to lovers fic pushes these two twisted villains together. The sexual tension is electric, the plot is engaging, and the pace is just right.
Content warnings: N/A

“Summers of Peace” by Beatrice_Sank. 17K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Derry Girls; Ship: Sister Michael/Janet Taylor
Recced by: breathedout
Backstory: Derry Girls follows the hijinks of a group of Catholic high school students in Ireland during the Troubles; the perpetually put-upon nun Sister Michael is the headmistress of their school. In one episode, for a trust-building “Friends Across Barricades” retreat, our protagonists meet up with a Protestant boys’ school and their headmistress, Janet Taylor. This fic traces a gradually-developing attraction and relationship between the headmistresses over the course of three summers of the program.
Rec: This is the type of rarepair fic that completely sells you on the pairing and makes you crave to read about them in hundreds more fics... which sadly don’t exist. The heartbreak is worth it, though! This story captures the densely-written humor and sharp characterization of the show pitch-perfectly, while at the same time drawing Janet and Sister Michael as real-feeling, guarded but ultimately vulnerable people whose mutual attraction is completely believable (and, incidentally, very hot).
Content warnings: A little light drunkenness

“Be Here Now” by Bluestem. 258K words, rated Explicit.
Fandoms: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars - All Media Types; Ship: Poe Dameron/Finn
Recced by: cyclamental
Backstory: Taking place directly after The Force Awakens, Finn comes to terms with his brutal First Order upbringing while trying to adapt to life on D’Qar. The one constant through it all is Poe, who helps the wounded ex-trooper find his feet again. As the two grow closer to one another, a surprising lead takes them on a journey towards the heart of the Dark Side.
Rec: This is what SHOULD have happened after TFA! Finn is the star here, and there’s a deep exploration of character, adventure, excitement, and EXCELLENT spice. Everything you could want for a long read!
Content warnings: Creator chose not to use archive warnings

“5 Times the Raptors Tried to Kill Miriam, and 1 Time They Didn’t” by JulisCaesar. 2K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Jurassic Park; Ship: Gen
Recced by: anon
Backstory: A scientifically accurate rewrite of Jurassic Park that replaces Chris Pratt with a much smarter queer woman.
Rec: I’m not personally bothered by the fact that Jurassic Park used the wrong velociraptors, but it comforts me to know that there’s someone looking out for the people who are.
Content warnings: Blood, medical treatment, period-typical homophobia, antisemitism, minor character death

 

the entire population of England in 1086 will return in... Avengers Domesday

— Jack Bernhardt (@jackbern.bsky.social) January 13, 2026 at 9:56 AM

 

FINAL THOUGHT

Halfway through January, it’s time to start thinking about…Femslash February! Please start sending in your one-off recs, marking them as F/F or Femslash February in the themes/tropes field for my reference. And if you have an idea for a whole list (a ship, a fandom, a theme, or just your favorite batch of 5-7 F/F fics) please get in touch! elizabethandgav at gmail dot com. — Elizabeth

 

https://buttondown.com/the-rec-center/archive/the-rec-center-524/

In this engrossing historical novel, three storylines converge on a single target, a female Nazi nicknamed the Huntress. During the war, we follow Nina, one of the Soviet women who flew bomber runs and were known as the Night Witches. After the war, we follow Ian, a British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter, who has teamed up with Nina to hunt down the Huntress as Nina is one of the very few people who saw her face and survived. At the same time, in Boston, we follow Jordan, a young woman who wants to be a photographer and is suspicious of the beautiful German immigrant her father wants to marry...

In The Huntress, we often know what has happened or surely must happen, but not why or how; we know Nina somehow ended up facing off with the Huntress, but not how she got there or how she escaped; we know who Jordan's stepmom-to-be is and that she'll surely be unmasked eventually, but not how or when that'll happen or how the confrontation will go down. There's a lot of suspense but none of it depends on shocking twists, though there are some unexpected turns.

Nina and Jordan are very likable and compelling, especially Nina who is kind of a force of nature. It took me a while to warm up to Ian, but I did about halfway through. Nina's story is fascinating and I could have read a whole novel just about her and her all-female regiment, but I never minded switching back to Jordan as while her life is more ordinary, it's got this tense undercurrent of creeping horror as she and everyone around her are being gaslit and manipulated by a Nazi.

This is the kind of satisfying, engrossing historical novel that I think used to be more common, though this one probably has a lot more queerness than it would have had if it had been written in the 80s - a woman/woman relationship is central to the story, and there are multiple other queer characters. It has some nice funny moments and dialogue to leaven a generally serious story (Nina in particular can be hilarious), and there's some excellent set piece action scenes. If my description sounds good to you, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

Quinn has written multiple historical novels, mostly set during or around WW2. This is the first I've read but it made me want to read more of hers.

Content notes: Wartime-typical violence, gaslighting, a child in danger. The Huntress murdered six children, but this scene does not appear on-page. There is no sexual assault and no scenes in concentration camps.

I am absolutely flattened by work this week, and next week promises to be more of the same. It's the point in the academic year when all the Master's and PhD students have to hand in literature reviews and project proposals, and all of them suddenly panic and realise that the classes I taught them (carefully timetabled to coincide with the point at which they were meant to start work on their literature reviews and project proposals) actually contained crucial, useful information and they probably should have been paying more attention and doing the suggested follow-up activities while what I taught them was fresh in their minds. Because they haven't done this, they all, of course, contact me at once, now. It's good to be needed — I wouldn't have a job, otherwise — but I wish they didn't all need me so much and all at the same time.

Anyway, let's use another snowflake_challenge prompt for the Friday open thread: Talk about your creative process.

I know a lot of you have already answered this in your own journals, so feel free to link to your posts in the comments rather than writing things out again. Or, answer in the comments if this is a brand new topic for you!

( My answer )




What about you?

Posted by Maria Popova

https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/01/16/emerson-universe/

https://www.themarginalian.org/?p=86605

The astonishing thing is that even though we will never truly know what it is like to be another creature or another person or any configuration of chemistry and chance other than ourselves, we are made of the same matter as the granite that will mark our graves and share 98% of our DNA with the moss that will cover them. We share with them and with each other more than atoms — we share the wild luck of having drawn from the cosmic lottery this world of birdsong and waterfalls and lichen and spring, none of which had to exist, all of which could have been and can always be otherwise.

To know this, to place the firm hand of the mind on this banister of reality, is to steady yourself amid the daily shocks of living. To feel it is something else entirely — it is to press this perishable hand against the beating heart of the universe that made it and tremble with its pulse in your veins.

That is what Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803–April 27, 1882) offers in an exquisite passage from his journals, penned after visiting Paris’s famous botanical garden just as its new mineralogy gallery was being built to house six hundred thousand stones, gems, and fossils.

A century after William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, before William Henry Hudson saw “the wonderfulness and eternal mystery of life itself” in a nautilus, before Charles Darwin invited us to see nature as a living library of “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful,” the thirty-year-old Emerson writes:

The universe is a more amazing puzzle than ever, as you glance along this bewildering series of animated forms — the hazy butterflies, the carved shells, the birds, beasts, fishes, insects, snakes, the upheaving principle of life everywhere incipient, in the very rock aping organized forms. Not a form so grotesque, so savage, nor so beautiful but is an expression of some property inherent in man the observer, an occult relation between the very scorpions and man. I feel the centipede in me, cayman, carp, eagle and fox. I am moved by strange sympathies.

To feel this universal kinship bestows upon us a kind of moral obligation to live our own lives as fully and rightly as possible — something Emerson would come to articulate nearly a decade later in his essay “Compensation”:

The universe is represented in everyone of its particles. Everything in nature contains all the powers of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff… Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny.

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity, — all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act… The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point… Thus is the universe alive.

Couple with quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger on how to know the universe in you, then revisit Emerson on transcendence, authenticity, how to trust yourself.

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For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/01/16/emerson-universe/

https://www.themarginalian.org/?p=86605

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So! I watched Starfleet Academy last night. Only episode 1, because I'm watching with my mom who only does one "stressful" episode of anything a day, lol. I have lots of thoughts. In 2017 I got obsessed with the Kelvinverse Starfleet Academy minicomic, so I have been waiting for a Starfleet Academy series for NINE ENTIRE YEARS. It came... not in the way I expected.

SPOILERS BELOW YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

( Read more... )

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9-1-1: For some reason I didn’t care to watch the first ep back when it aired, but I’m all caught up now! ( spoilers )



Best Medicine: I’ve seen the first two eps and I’m enjoying it so far! (Though I didn’t realize it was an adaptation of a Brit show, Doc Martin. ( spoilers )

Talk about your creative process.

First I need to find an idea for a fanfic, and there are two options
* I need to read this fic. No one does it. Or they do it, but by reading them I realize we have completely different headcanons. Oh I need to write mine
* Writing prompts ! Exchange fic ! Gifts !
It has changes with times. Now it's more of the second one. It was initially more of the first one. I think I'm reading less fanfics (and more novels, but I don't write novels). It's still a fix. I remember writing bad smut for someone I was courting as a young women, ha ha, and it might have been my second fic ever.

I'm mostly writing short one-shots, so the next part it thinking up themes, ideal, lines, lines of dialogues, all that motivates me to write the fic. Sometimes some new themes or narrative parallels appear by themselves as i'm writing. It's good.

I'm so bad with long form. So many things I have started and never finished.

The last line is very important to me, it needs to be good!

I'm so bad at titles. half the time, my strategy for finding a title is crying to me beta or another friend that I can't find one, and they give me a half-hearted attemps, and ti's still better than all I could have found in hours. So I'm taking it shamelessly.

 RL and my fffx  fic contrive to eat all my spoons, and next week does not portend to be any better, but here, have this utter delight of an ad: 

We already have 9 participants in the regular challenge and 3 participants for Team Omega. But there are still about two days until the end of week one. Jump in into the game and earn some points!

Post all your finished works at fandom_empire_workplace until Sunday, January 18, 18.00 UTC, but I will allow belated works until I've made the closing post Countdown here.

I'd like to think, yeah, still got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were desperately scratching around for somebody who'd even heard the name of the author of once-renowned and now pretty well forgotten, except by specialists in the field, sex manual. Which has its centenary this year.

Anyway, have been approached by a journo to talk with them about this work and its author -

- on which it is well over 2 decades since I did any work, really, but I daresay I can fudge something up, at least, I have found a copy of the work in question and the source of my info on the individual, published in 1970. Not aware of any more recent work ahem ahem. The Wikipedia entry is a stub.

My other issue is that next week is shaping up to be unwontedly busy - I signed up for an online conference on Tuesday, and have only recently been informed that the monthly Fellows symposium at the institution whereof I have the honour to be a Fellow is on Wednesday - and I still have that library excursion to fit in -

- plus arranging a call is going to involve juggling timezones.

Still, maybe I can work in my pet theme of, disjunction between agenda of promoting monogamous marriage and having a somewhat contrary personal history....

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We have now closed pledging for GetYourWordsOut 2026. If you did not submit a completed 2026 GYWO Pledge Form or did not submit a registered Dreamwidth account or OpenID that can access Dreamwidth, you are not a member for 2026.

The GYWO moderators are thrilled to spend the next year writing with 823 writers.

Those who have come by too late, we appreciate your interest, and we hope that while you aren't able to join us officially, you'll make your own writing goals and achieve them. You’re welcome to subscribe to the community to keep a look out for 2027 news, or follow us on gywo.bsky.social or gywo for prompts, writing advice, and resources. Pledging for 2027 will open in December 2026.

Have a great year!

Hello on Friday!  Looking back at the day today -- or yesterday, if today hasn't gotten going yet -- how did it go?

   - I thought about my fic once or twice
   - I wrote
   - I did some planning and/or research
   - I edited
   - I've sent my fic off to my beta
   - I posted today!
   - I'm taking a break
   - I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Looking forward, how are you planning to spend your weekend?

   - I'm going to make up for not writing all week by having a writing marathon
   - I'm going to keep writing at my current rate and see how it goes
   - I have other plans, but I might have time to get some writing in
   - I'm going to take a break from writing

Their last cunning scheme set apocalypse in motion. What wonders will follow Billy and Milly's next bold endeavour?

Their Kingdom Come (Night Eaters, volume 3) by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

Sign-ups for femslashbigbang end February 28. The info post is pinned to the top of the tumblr.

I considered signing up, since the due date is September that gives me plenty of time, but between now and then there will be another round of smallfandomfest and I plan to sign up for wipbigbang again and hope to finish TWO fic this round. So, not signing up, but thought maybe someone on my f-list might be interested.