queerly_beloved | Member Posts

As mentioned previously, I don’t use streaming music services. So I do a DIY end-of-year wrap-up for my music listening. Obviously, I listened to music I already owned as well, but this is the highlight reel of the year’s new purchases.

I feel like this summary could just be a copy-paste from last year: more instrumental music, less pulled from the classics I missed in my youth. A lot of musicians I love had new albums this year, so I spent a fair amount of time listening to very current music.

I had a lot of weird one-offs, often found via poking around on Bandcamp. I often found that while I liked them enough to buy and listen to the whole thing, the albums did not tend to stick for me. That's okay--I know I sometimes come back to music years later and rediscover it when I'm ready. I don't mind.

Top album of the year was, without question, Djo's The Crux. If other albums this year lacked in stickiness, it's because this album was goddamn flypaper. The longer I listened, the more I got out of it, circling back around to tracks that didn't immediately grab me and suddenly finding something to love.

New albums* heard: 64--down yet again, I had fewer multi-album weeks, in part because I bought fewer short/light albums that needed to be bundled to make enough for a week's listening
*(discretely purchased music items, includes singles, EPs, and other short forms along with “full” albums)

Contributing artists: 54 (not counting multi-artist compilations)--same as last year

Oldest album: An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, 1972

Newest album: Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan (The Mountain Goats, November 7, 2025)

Top artists by albums: Louie Zong continues to lead in this category with four albums, but this wasn't a big year for me to dive deep into the back catalogs

Most repeated albums: Even In Arcadia (Sleep Token), This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway (Lola Young), The Crux (Djo), Coydog (Carter Vail)

Tracks of note: Stunner (Carter Vail), Nervous Dancer (Louie Zong), Anoana (Heilung), We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer), March of Cambreadth (Alexander James Adams), Charlie's Garden (Djo), Alibi (Hurray For The Riff Raff), Factories In Heaven (The Scoffs), SCRAP HEAP (Louie Zong)

Current Mood: cheerful

brithistorian

“By far the dominant reason for not releasing sooner was a reluctance to trade the dream of success for the reality of feedback.” (Kent Beck, software engineer)

I find I do this a lot. I spend time "planning" or "gathering knowledge," often until I lose interest in the thing before ever actually trying to do the thing. While I recognize that this is often an attempt to try to avoid the awkward phase where I'm learning the thing and can't really help doing the thing badly, it's still hard to put that recognition into action. I don't really do new year's resolutions, but I'm trying right now to try to more actively recognize when I'm doing this and take action to stop myself from doing it. So, with that being said, I'm going to take the air-dry clay that I got for Christmas out of its package and go make some awkward looking sculpture!

renfys

So, I started writing something and it's more worldbuilding than it is a story, but enjoy.
1630 words
Rated G
Fantasy setting.

Link to A03 or read below:

( Read more... )

tropicsbear

A gold snowflake ornament is nestled amidst pine boughs

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hi, I'm Bear! I'm a 30-something Filipina (she/her), who's been active in fandom since the 2000s. I've been reading and writing fanfic since I started being fannish, and I have a couple of ancient fanarts squirreled away on my computer. My intro post has a bit more information on where else you can find me on the internet.

I've participated in the snowflake_challenge for the last few years though I skipped it in 2025. Considering the new wave of users that recently joined Dreamwidth, I thought the challenge would be a good way to reach out, meet new people, and hopefully make new friends!

Thanks for dropping by 👋🏽

renfys

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I'm Ren, I'm in my 40s and a parent, I'm non-binary, married to an American, we live in Wales. I was born in Coventry but have lived in Wales for most of my life (and my grandfather was Welsh).

I have two kids, age 9 and 5, both idetinfyings as girls atm. Flower is all about lego and Tabby is all about cats (and well, Tabby).

I'm not really into a fandom atm, not in the way I used to be when I was younger. I tend to write and bootle about in whatever show I'm binging at the time, though Stargate remains my fave. I do write orignal stuff as well. I want to write more this year, more of everything, I haven't been writing as much as I used to.

I loved doing the challenge before and wanted to do it again, plus I thought it would be a good way to connect and try to un-isolate myself. I tend to be pretty insular nowadays, both on and offline. Between the anxiety and the kids and my physical health (firbomyalgia), I haven't done much outside of go to work. I started archery last year and started writing again though.

I have a longer about me for my friends list here.

Happy to have more friends on here!

fayanora

I think I'm coming down with a cold again. How the fuck is this happening? I go the last twenty years without getting any kind of communicable disease, catch a cold going to Multnomah Falls, and then less than 6 months later, I'm apparently getting one again. WTF?

Symptoms: mildly sore throat, occasional need to blow my nose.

Truly, this is baffling. I thought that my constantly being sick with colds and flus for most of my childhood had given me a lifetime immunity to the common cold, given that it seriously was like 20 years that I went without getting a single cold or flu or any other kind of communicable disease, not counting the UTIs that I had for a year or two, years ago. But apparently not.

And I truly have no idea how this happened because I woke up yesterday like this and I hadn't left the house for several days before that. So where the fuck could I possibly have gotten it from? I was at the library a couple times, a few days before yesterday, could that be the source??? If so, I don't really see how unless... what's the incubation period for the common cold?

hindsightseeing

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I am terrible at putting myself out there, so this will likely be brief.

Hi! Old user, new journal, hence the emptiness of this space at the moment -- I'm still moving in! I'd been AWOL on my old account for long enough that starting completely fresh seemed less intimidating than having to apologise for an(other) extended absence to a friendslist who had probably forgotten about me.

As to Snowflake, well... I used to take a stab at it every year, and it's always been one of my favourite events. It's a great way of getting back into using DW if you've backslid into inactivity, and a great way of meeting new people and seeing how much the place has changed -- or not -- over the last year or so.

This year specifically, I'm very much leaning into the 'meeting new people' side of things -- as I mentioned, my journal is pretty empty at the moment, so I'm especially looking forward to the friending meme that usually comes around at the end... and, really, just to see everybody take on the various challenges.

Anyhow! That is way, way longer than I'm usually comfortable talking about myself, so I'll end this here.

Hi again, and thanks to the wonderful mods and volunteers for continuing to run this event every year!

Current Mood: nervous

michifugu

Happy New Year, everyone!
I never expected I’d make it to 2026, but time really is flying.
I don’t really have any resolutions or anything, I just hope something better happens to me this year, especially when it comes to my career, job, and finances.

I hope everyone’s wishes and resolutions come true, and I hope this year is a better one for all of us!

Current Mood: cheerful

maryquitecontrary

December 2025
1,454 books total
250 read (17.2%)

scintilla10

I signed up for

rarefemslashexchange! Very happy with my assignment, currently enjoying canon review. :D

I'm thinking of signing up for

candyheartsex, too! Is anyone else planning to do this one? Only 300 word minimum! I try not to have too many simultaneous open exchange assignments for myself, but this feels within reach. :D

Buuuuut also

seasonsofdrabbles will be running a round in January-February. I love drabbles, so this is tempting too! But three assignments (even ones with short minimums!) seems like it would be overwhelming, so I might stick to treating for this one.

Finally,

fandomtrees is seeking help creating gifts (2 for each recipient) before reveals, which are currently scheduled for Jan 10. If you're inclined to check it out, there's a handy spreadsheet of needy trees linked at this post!

Are there other exchanges, bingos, or similar challenges you're participating in that are coming up soon?

maryquitecontrary

✔ Read 45 min. per day.
✔ Drink something while reading. (Soda.)
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✖ Read an owned, unread book.

Cute Girlfriend spent the night, which was nice. I got some chores done, but now I have a headache.

Current reading: "The Ancient Magus' Bride, Volume 14", by Kore Yamazaki
Minutes read: 49
Pages read: 180
Progress: 100%
( Read more... )

swingandswirl

Here are my answers to this week's Friday Five!

1. Do you mostly drink tap, filtered, or bottled water?

At home, filtered, always. When out and about, I try to have a reusable water bottle with me, or ask for filtered water at restaurants, but sometimes I am forced to buy bottled water.

2. Is it safe/recommended to drink tap water where you live? If not, why?

Nope! I live in a developing country and while the water where I live is decent quality, it's still not potable. Most people use some kind of water filtration/purification system, or buy purified water from commercial vendors.

3. What does the tap water taste/smell like where you live?

Neutral, with a slight hint of chlorine from the purification process if it's from the municipal supply. I'm lucky to live somewhere with excellent groundwater.

4. Do you collect rainwater? If so, what do you use it for?

Rainwater harvesting is done by the municipality here and is standard. (I live somewhere prone to droughts.) It's used to replenish the water table.

5. Do you/have you ever had restrictions on water use where you live? What did you have to change about your lifestyle?

I have been lucky enough to never have had restrictions on water use, because my building has a borewell, so we were almost never dependent on municipal water supplies. There was a period of time where we supplemented the water from the borewell buy buying water commercially, but the thing with living in a drought city is that you're naturally careful about water use - to this day, I only take Navy-style showers, and have a deep and abiding hatred for golf courses. (Seriously, they should not exist in climes drier than Scotland. Why the fuck are there so many in Arizona?!) Seeing California ideas of 'restricted' water usage after growing up with people lining up to fill pots when the water tanker came was a trip, let me tell you.

mistressofmuses

This year really doesn’t feel much like a year has passed, y’know?

Not just in the “how has it been a full year? Wasn’t last January like ten minutes ago?” way, which… I mean, yeah, that too, but it always feels like that, ha. 2025 just felt really disconnected, even more so than I expected. Maybe it’s the abnormally warm weather, but Christmas hardly felt like Christmas, and still sort of feels like it didn’t happen (despite having a nice one), and it definitely doesn’t feel like we’re moving into a new year!

(Sure, there’s no literal reason that the move from December 31 to January 01 is a more meaningful change than any other day. But at least sometimes I feel a sense of closure when one year ends, and some enthusiasm for another one starting. That feeling is so completely absent this year, ha.)

I have stuck with habit tracking for another year, and I plan to do so again this upcoming year. I mostly plan to track the same habits, with one change. A couple years ago, I separated 2nd+ draft writing out from the rest of my writing, because I wanted to see how different my pace was for first vs second drafts. Now I’ve been having a terrible time getting anything written at all, much less to the point that additional drafts are a consideration, so that’s just kind of… a wasted category. Instead, this year I think I’ll split it into fiction vs other writing. I still count my other writing as writing: writing reviews, or other things that require a bit more effort than a typical journal entry. But for now, I think that’s a more worthwhile distinction for me to be able to look at.

A lot of my intentions for this year are pretty similar to last year. It doesn’t feel like a “new” year, and there’s not a lot that I truly want to do differently. The things I succeeded at are things I want to keep doing, the things I didn’t are things I want to try to do again.

I do still have the same feeling that I did last year, where the general State of the World meant that it feels… petty? inconsequential? to be worrying about little individual goals and things. The world definitely isn’t feeling better right now, but I’m trying to look at this the same way I did last year:
Setting these intentions is a way to say that I do have plans to stick around, and do more than stagnate. The things may be small, but… whether things get better or worse on the grander scale, at least I will have done good and worthwhile things on the smaller scale. Reading good books and going to good places will be good regardless.

That said…

( Here are the intentions I’m setting for 2026: )

20 intentions for the year, some of which are repeats, some of which are new. I still anticipate time management being the biggest struggle, since so many things take time and energy, and I can’t do all of them at once. That’s nothing new! The battle is ongoing.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

soc_puppet

This year, new

moodthemeinayear posts go up on Thursdays, just like the weekly recs post at

queerly_beloved; now I have two communities I might forget to post to on Thursdays! 😳

Current Mood: anxious

scintilla10

Yuletide reveals! I wrote a Galaxy Quest fic! I'm kind of blown away at the lovely reception my fic got this year - more than I ever expected in terms of comments and kudos, and several very kind recs. I love writing for tiny fandoms-of-one-or-two, but writing for a widely beloved movie for this year was surprisingly fun.

Galaxy Quest: The Journey Continues: Season 1 Gag Reel (AO3 | DW)
Galaxy Quest | Gwen, Jason, Alexander (+ the rest of the ensemble) | 1867 words | rated T | no archive warnings apply
Tags: Post-Canon, Humor, Filming, Canon-typical shenanigans

"Sorry!" Guy said, flustered. "Shit, sorry, guys. As Crewman Number 6, I barely had any lines!"

Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it. [Here.]

Today's the first day of the

snowflake_challenge! I enjoy this event, but I rarely manage to keep up with all of the days - so I'll keep any intentions to participate very low-key for myself, including not having expectations to share my posts on the comm itself (which sometimes makes me feel overwhelmed or self-conscious). Anyway, I've done some light clean up on my profile, access list, and sticky post, so I'll call that complete.

scrubjayspeaks

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I'm Jay (he/him). I'm a fandom old, though my fannish contributions have been thin on the ground for a few years due to life things. I write and post original fiction regularly, though. I also talk about music, which I'm always open to recs for, and gardening.

Snowflake is a nice, low-pressure way to potentially meet new people. I look forward to it as a touchpoint for each new year. There's usually a good mix of prompts for looking forward and looking back. In place of setting resolutions, I think of this event as my yearly taking stock activity.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Louie Zong - Rain In The Valley

shadaras

In non writing thoughts, by which I mean I wanted to talk about aikido and then realised that maybe I should mention watching a movie first, since I finally watched the new Benoit Blanc movie. xD

I watched Wake Up Dead Man today with

hafnia, who had seen it once before and was like "I am BITING MY TONGUE not to point out the REALLY GOOD FORESHADOWING", paused the movie at two points to tell me about (a) her opinions that the reading list in-universe could've been better (with her suggestions) and (b) A Science Complaint (while going "this is the only thing that annoys me about this movie"), and was delighted to agree with me about how well they used LIGHT. The cinematography was gorgeous, the plot was very fun, and I adored Father Jud and Martha and enjoyed going "ughhhh" about how awful many other characters were. The film quotes/references I caught were also great!

also my twin messaged me right as I was finishing the movie to tell me about a post he'd seen saying that the opening scene of the movie was filmed at the same location as Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video, including a tweet (bsky version) (bweet, my brain wants to say, but I think it's skeet. or just, y'know. tweet.) from Rian Johnson going "yes, it was, and I was the only person on set excited about this fact", which I thought was very funny in its own right and also incredible timing.

anyway, AIKIDO

Last night we had a new year's eve practice, and there weren't many people there, but—

There is so much joy in doing aikido on a mat where the practice is meant as meditation, and there are few enough people that you don't need to worry about throwing anyone into anyone else (or off the mat), and the people who are there are all advanced and so you don't need to worry too much about taking care of them (because their ukemi will take care of them).

( let me save your reading pages from how much I'm talking about aikido )

Sensei also was like "you could take nidan tomorrow and be fine" when I said that it was sort of frustrating knowing that in this, the lead-up to when I'll be taking nidan (at the end of May), I'll probably not be practicing more than once a week on average. She's right! I know she's right! I could take it tomorrow if I were asked to!

But it'll be better with more practice and active reminders of the stuff we don't do very often. Reversals (uke becomes nage). Weapon take-aways. Some nage-holds-the-jo, maybe? I'm solid on everything else, I think, though it's always nice to review koshinage. Working with friends on shodan prep last year means that most of it's in my body via taking ukemi, anyway, which is good.

maryquitecontrary

I just did something I've had on the back burner for years: I emailed an acquaintance who's a tattoo artist about getting my first tattoo. 🥰

haunted_cherries

Snowflake Challenge: Three men wearing santa hats standing on the beach at sunset

AH SHIT, HERE WE GO AGAIN xD (Context: I was around for Sunshine Revival and now WE BACK!! I meant to do a promo post for the event but LIFE BE LIFIN LET'S PRETEND IT'S THERE xD)

Challenge 1: The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

tbh I’m not really good at introducing myself butttttttt l’ll do my best!

Heylo, and nice to meet ya!! Trishelle’s the name, and the simplest way to describe me is “that fog creature that you can use gummy bears and Dr. Pepper to summon her from her home in the fog”. xD

There’s also my intro post here if you wanna take a gander at that, too!!

Jokes aside, I’m a Fandom Old that usually keeps to myself and am more of an observant lurker these days, but I still get a lot of joy out of talking about OCs, writing fic, music, roller skating, and reading!

Fandom-wise I’ve been in and out of fandoms since the dawn of time! When I was younger, I used to go out of my way to be active/vocal in fandoms, but nowadays I use the term “fandom” much more loosely. As far as I’m concerned, “fandom” is me, a few close friends, some cool mutuals, and a few creators we all enjoy! Not to say that I don’t occasionally interact with folks outside that bubble and peddle my wares in the form of fic screechings, but that’s about it!

Why am I doing this challenge? Hell, why not? It seems fun and I missed the chance to do it last year, so ROUND 2 xD That and I won’t say no to more journaling as I haven’t exactly been around in the last few months thanks to The Horrors™ (that and journaling usually inspires me to write so I can free all my WIPs from the Gaping Maw so I'm certain it's all gonna work out somehow)!

Back into the fog I go! Thanks for stopping by, and see you at the next prompt! ^ o^)/

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: IYKYK - illit

mistressofmuses

[I like to end my tracker at the end of the year, and begin again at the start, which means that most years there are partial weeks to end and start on.]

This week, a sticker by my friends the Atomic Pixies. I like the blue fairy, and it felt appropriately wintery and peaceful for the close of the year.

The time between Christmas and New Year's always feels a little weird. This span of four days was easy - two and a quarter of them I had off. I did manage to get a lot of what I'd hoped to completed - reviews, end of year stuff, etc.

Goals for the week:

I did finish reading The Fragile Threads of Power
I started reading Manhunt
I worked on my reviews for December books
I posted those reviews
I did write up my 2025 reflections
I declared a goal of 75000 words for 2026 at both getyourwordsout and inkingitout
I mostly finished my reading page
I didn't send thank you cards... there was apparently some drama that means I should no longer send anything to one part of the family
New Year's Eve happened!
I did my final getyourwordsout check-in for the year: 15034 words written in December; 116015 for the year
We went and got crickets and more fruit flies

Tracked habits:

Work - 1.75/4 - Monday/Tuesday are my days off, and we closed a couple hours early on Wednesday
Household Maintenance - 3/4
Physical Activity - 1/4
Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 2/4 - both days over 1000 words
Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/4
Meta Work - 4/4
Personal Writing - 4/4
Other Creative Things - 3/4
Reading - 4/4 - I finished The Fragile Threads of Power and my ebook side-read; I started reading Manhunt
Attention to Media - 4/4 - Sunday we watched some snow storm chase; Monday watched paranormal stuff and reviews; Tuesday had storm chasing and reviews in the background; Tuesday we watched a livestream counting down NYE stuff.
Video Games - 0/4
Social Interaction - 3/4

Total words written: 8592 on reviews and reflecting

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: my apartment

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Queerly Beloved

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Queerly Beloved

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2025 Music Wrap-Up

QOTD: On actually doing the thing

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Snowflake Challenge 2026 Day 1

Snowflake Challenge 2026 # 1

What the hell?

And so it begins.

Happy New Year!

My Personal Library

Upcoming exchanges & events!

75 Booked: Day 11

2026 Friday Five #1

Intentions for 2026

Ack!

Yuletide Reveal & Snowflake Challenge

Snowflake Challenge #1

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Snowflake Challenge 2026 Challenge #1: Introduce Yourself

Habit Tracking: Week 52.5 (December 21 - December 27)

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