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[ SECRET POST #6927 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6926 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 34 secrets from Secret Submission Post #989.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Three for the Memories Coming Back Next Month!

3 for the Memories' 2025 session will be open for posts on January 3, 2026 and will run for 3 weeks until January 24. Event participation is as follows:

1) Three photos only per person during each annual session. Members are encouraged to discuss the reason for their choices.

2) Photos can be hosted at Dreamwidth or elsewhere, and should not be larger than 800 px width or height.

3) All three photos should be in the same post. Cut tags should be placed after the first photo.

3 for the Memories is not a competition, and entries are not being judged. Rather, participants are encouraged to share photos they took in 2025 that they find meaningful in some way or which represent how they experienced the year.

Questions? Visit the announcement post at

threeforthememories

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New + Outstanding Pinch Hits

We have 4 Pinch Hits in need of a home. See below for general details. More specific information can be found by clicking the links.

All current pinch hits are due by 11:00 AM UTC on 25 January 2026.

This year, we will do a pinch hitter treats sign-up post, so that anyone creating a pinch hit fanwork who is not signed up for the main exchange is able to potentially get a treat made for them - you can check this post for more info.

Before you start your assignment, please make sure to familiarise yourself with the exchanges rules, including fanwork minimums.

( #2: Riverdale (TV 2017), Glee (TV 2009), Person of Interest (TV) )

( #4: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Borderlands (Video Games), Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions )

( #5: The Elementalists (Visual Novel), Heart of Battle - Fay Ikin, Havenfall is for Lovers (Visual Novel) )

( #11: Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga), Jurassic Park - All Media Types, DC Animated Universe (Timmverse), The Flintstones, KPop Demon Hunters (2025), Date Everything! (Sassy Chap Games Video Game), Persona 3, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney Animated Movies) )

If you're interested in claiming any of these pinch hits, send an e-mail to holly.poly.exchange@gmail.com with your AO3 name or reply to this post. (Comments are screened.)

Collection: https://ao3.org/collections/holly_poly_2025
Tag Set: https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/25541
Tumblr: https://holly-poly.tumblr.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/holly_poly_ex
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/holly-poly.bsky.social
Google Groups - Holly Poly Updates: https://groups.google.com/g/holly-poly-updates
Google Groups - Holly Poly Pinchhits: https://groups.google.com/g/holly-poly-pinchhits

Current Music: the Ramones

(no subject)

I seem to be finally getting over this dumb flu I've had for the past few days so I went to Trader Joe and got groceries including fruit and candy to pass around at the apt bldg Xmas party. These parties have been mostly lame for a few years now but at least I get some free food out of it. I miss the parties I used to have at Xmas with my friends. Those were way more fun.
Thank you so much to my friends who sent me Xmas cards! They were all super cute!

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music monday

Music Monday: Aint that a Rockin

This is a song that Minor's choir did last Thursday night.

Watch on YouTube

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Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol.

+ Had an extended family dinner today and got to listen to my lovely aunt and cousin talk about how great ChatGPT is, how she's using it to plan a girl's trip to Italy, and how helpful it'll be for writing the speeches at my grandmother's funeral. Fucking shoot me into outer space strapped to a rocket.

+ Got to see the latest Avatar movie at the cinemas. My least favorite of the three, lacking the genuine awe and beauty of the world. What they did try just felt forced, and one character in particular should have been left to die in the second movie ugh.

+ Big plus for the cozy and hazily lit curtain fic promo trailer thingy they did before the movie. IYKYK. Kinda made me wish I had an ear to the ground in that fandom still.

+ I think I've successfully broken through my iconning block!! Shout out to dysfunctional vampires and dysfunctional lesbians.

+ BIG psa: Apple shifted Pluribus to air on the 24th, two days earlier than usual. I'll have to get up extra early to see it before 2 Nøtter Til Askepott, because if not I'll be thinking about it and wanting to all day lol. It's been such a good series for me to watch? There's this whole thing where there's two wolves inside of me, one appreciating the thought and care put into every decision, and how slow it's allowed to move, the second wanting to pick into every detail and tear through it. Both enjoyable in different ways!

I have watched every episode a minimum of twice. It may be my new comfort watch show?¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 22
Pluribus ( I'd say spoilery for last week's episode. )

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The Kraken Wakes?

2025 is ‘year of the octopus’ as record numbers spotted off England’s south coast:

The common or Mediterranean octopus, Octopus vulgaris, is native to UK waters but ordinarily in such small numbers it is rarely seen. A sudden increase in the population – a bloom – is caused by a combination of a mild winter followed by a warm breeding season in the spring. The ideal conditions meant that more of the larvae of the common octopus were likely to survive, said Slater, possibly in part fuelled by the large numbers of spider crabs that have also been recorded along the south coast in recent years.

(Oy! Ooo are you callin' octopus vulgaris?)

(We will just note that one of the novels by a certain Lady Anonyma featured Cornish wreckers and Sea Monsters.)

There were also

a record number of grey seals observed by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, as well as record numbers of puffins on Skomer, an island off the coast of Wales famed for the birds.... the first Capellinia fustifera sea slug in Yorkshire, a 12mm mollusc that resembles a gnarly root vegetable and is usually found in the south-west. In addition, a variable blenny, a Mediterranean fish, was discovered off the coast of Sussex for the first time.

Rather creepier stuff to do with animals (or rather, humans doing creepy things with animals) a little less further westwards: New Forest residents unnerved by man leaving animal carcasses by churches

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Tori Amos - Star of Wonder

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Slightly belated Yule/solstice wishes + a very low-key update

Blessed Yule and solstice, friends. May this next turn of the year be better to all of us than the one that's just ended.

Impressively and unexpectedly, we didn't lose power on the weekend (so many people did!); not really coincidentally, Bucky remains undecorated. We also haven't put up any lights or the wreath outside (probably just as well, given the winds), and I didn't even think of that until maybe yesterday. Oh, well.

(I no longer have any real hope of finishing a draft of this rewrite before Christmas, since I'm getting such a late start on work today and we have plans for much of Christmas Eve once

scruloose's half-day of work ends. It's fine. I've been doing other things. *shrugs*)

A few nights ago I guess I ~slept wrong~, as I woke up Saturday with a very unhappy neck. Yesterday was better, and today is better again, and I'm lucky to not have this kind of thing happen more often (*knocks wood*), but it's so annoying as well as painful. Body, if you're taking damage while sleeping, why don't you move to a better position?! Does the conscious brain need to handle everything around here? (Thankfully no.)

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Winter 2025 Master List!

Sorted by category and fandom, all the amazing fanworks created by this round's participants, for your perusal and entertainment and with names attached! Now comments can be answered and works reposted all over the web, and pimping shall commence far and wide! If you haven't added your fanwork to the AO3 collection, and you want to, you can add it here: Holmestice Exchange - Winter2025. If your work has been on AO3 all along and is in a fast-moving tag ("Sherlock (TV)" or "Sherlock Holmes/John Watson", for example), you might choose to update its publication date to today, so that your work has its turn at the top of the tag.

Please come back and join us for our spring/summer round! Sign-ups will open in March. You can follow us at

holmestice (twitter),

holmestice (tumblr), or

holmestice (dreamwidth) for updates!

And now, without further ado, the Grand Reveal!

( Art )
( Fiction )
( Podfic, Original Music, Fanmixes, and Vids )

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: DIE the RPG

The DIE roleplaying game designed by the Image comic's creators, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, plus three volumes of adventures for an unbeatable bargain price!

Bundle of Holding: DIE the RPG

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what I've been up to this past weekend

1. Removing my data from various Meta sites-- most of them were there for business purposes, but I want to put my business energies elsewhere AND I don't want Meta to have my stuff floating around to use in their horrible AI nonsense. I'm downloading copies of my data and then deleting the posts (which they make you do one by one). I plan to put up a "where to find me" post for people who may come looking, and I'll keep the usernames for business purposes, but I'm going to focus on my (business) blog (and later newsletter/shop) and that's it.

2. Settling into using Obsidian for my personal data stuff. I think I've got a system set up that I like, and now I just need to add in things. For instance, I'm adding my books read for 2025 into the system and I've set up fun views like this:
A collection of book covers organized in rows

A collection of book covers organized in rows

Which is built from a Base which is a table built from metadata in individual entries. So I'm adding books one by one, making sure the imported data is actually correct, and then copying over my notes/reviews. It's a little slow-going but it's fun to see everything in one place. And I've decided I don't care about counting how many pages I read in a year or even how many books I read in a month, just a general yearly total of books read is fine, so that'll make things easier going forward.

3. Listening to music from DEMO FEST 2025! Some recommendations: Error 804's ANGUISH, Morora's Kosovo, The Carringtons' Wild.

4. Downloading interesting pattern images from the Smithsonian digital collections to use for icons and (if I can figure out how) website backgrounds.

I'm about ready to say something to the commenters to this fic

So, I'm reading something about an abusive relationship. So toxic, in every tiny respect. But the commenters! You've got a handful of them happily chirping things like "Oh, Abuser is trying so hard! He's really just controlling because he's worried, but look, he's trying to make Abusee happy!" and we've got another handful saying things like "I don't get why Abusee doesn't just leave. I mean, he's in public, is he scared of getting hit? In public? Like, geez."

Like... do you people know what sort of story you're even reading? Or, in the latter case, do you know anything about humans!?

Some people should not be allowed to comment on anything. WTF.

(Though, that having been said, the very first rule of running away and changing your name is never pick a fake name that has any connection to your real life. And because of this, our protagonist got kidnapped back by his abuser and his goon squad. Again. Well, the plot had to happen somehow, I guess, but still.)

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( Read more... )

(no subject)

Hippeastrum 'Wild Amazone', amaryllis (N.L. van Geest B.V., 2019)
©Bill Pusztai 2025

A black backdrop, textured. On it a very pale blue-green celadon plate. On that, a pair of the flat type of persimmons, still attached to their twig. They have been on the tree quite late and so are a bit beat up, with cracks, scratches, and spots. There are water droplets on the plate.
Diospyris kaki, persimmon
©Bill Pusztai 2025

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prompt 46

Challenge 46: Vulnerable

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

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solstice

I am drowning in unfinished and partly finished tasks so this will not be as detailed or vivid as my usual solstice descriptions. Also I have very few good photos because my hands were occupied and I didn't have a proper camera, so you'll have to make do with blurry impressions, I'm afraid.

The Longest Night was cold as balls, but tradition is tradition, and actually more of my friends made it out than is usual. We had the lanterns I made and they went over very well, which meant that basically we got drafted into the parade itself. There were new giant puppets (one in particular that I'll comment on in detail) and for the first time in years, the fire sculpture has returned to Alexandra Park. Giant puppets and lanterns are very important to me, but is it really solstice without a big art project that people worked very hard on getting lit on fire? I don't think so, and the fact that this happened again feels hopeful for the year to come.

( pictures but they're not great )

I'm hoping to have better pictures to share that other people took, as it was pretty well photographed. I do have one of me that

rdi took but this is a public post.

You can get a decent idea of the vibe (and how the fish and Mari Lynd looked in action!) in this video, if you have Instagram.

This post has photo and video of the Fire Finale.

As always, it was a beautiful night, and it looks like the sun is up, so we did a good job.

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admin,
awards

Be a Goldfish 2026: Awards

With just a week and change left until start, we wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that participants are eligible for some awards!

For anyone that shares fanworks, banners boasting a numerical summary of your contributions are available. Currently, we can host up to nine unique types of fanwork per banner. If you manage to create more than that, let us know and we will work with you to create a banner you're satisfied with.

For those who try something new with their fannish expression, you can request as many first medium tokens as desired. They will include your name of choice and whatever first [medium] you request (provided it's under ten characters long), be it fic, gifs, vids, meta, fanfoods, crafts, or anything else!

Finally, for anyone who completes a punch card, you may request a "punch out" sticker token that you can paste onto your banner, other tokens, icons, or wherever else you desire. Reminder that both commenters and creators are both eligible for punch card awards.

All awards can be requested upon event conclusion by filling out the Summary Form. They will be delivered as swiftly as possible and in order of request. Questions, comments, concerns? Comment on this post or send us an email at bagfishbang@gmail.com.

Feel free to join our community and/or follow us on tumblr

bag-bang. We hope you join us for this round of Be a Goldfish!

( See example rewards )

Current Mood: annoyed

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Ask a Manager, Update: "is this guy harassing me or just annoying?

( Read more... )

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Monday, December 22 - Animals (+ animal-like creatures)

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

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Treat for Ghostbees: The Uses of Solitude

Title: The Uses of Solitude
Recipient: ghostbees
Author: REDACTED
Verse: Granada TV Show
Characters/Pairings: Holmes & Watson
Rating: M (for humorous discussion of packers)
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Although Holmes always prefers to be hard at work, there are a few benefits to taking a holiday with Watson. For one thing, it’s a chance to work on certain unusual artistic endeavors which make him feel more himself.

Read on AO3: The Uses of Solitude