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signups

Signups Open!

Signups are now open!

Please consult the tagset for the list of fandoms and relationships you can request and offer. If you can't find a canon you nominated, make sure to check Uncategorized Fandoms, which is where fandoms will be listed if they haven't appeared on AO3 yet or if I've had to alter the canonical tag.

Important: While the Relationships field on the signup form has a dropdown that, when you start typing, should connect with the tagset, AO3 always doesn't display all nominated relationships for a fandom. If the relationship you're trying to request/offer is in the tagset but not appearing as a selection that you can make, please copy-paste it directly from tagset into your signup form. This will let the system recognize that it's the same tag.

Remember, Character A & Character B is platonic, Character A/Character B is romantic/sexual.

There's a letters post, if you want to link your letter there, and you'll also be able to browse requests either on AO3 or the app.

Signups will be open until January 7, 11:59PM EST. Please see the signup rules here.

You can comment here or contact the mod email--candyheartsex at gmail dot com--if you have any questions.

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letters post

Letters Post

If you've written a Candy Hearts letter, you can link it here for easy perusal! These letters are optional, and your creator isn't obligated to adhere to them (though they must abide by any do-not-wants listed in your actual signup), but they can provide helpful extra details--prompts, general likes, descriptions of how you see the requested relationships, etc.

Please do not post a link to your letter here unless it is complete and unlocked.

For ease of reference, please record your details as follows:

AO3 Name:
Letter link:

Fandom #1:
Art &/or Fic &/or Podfic:
Relationship(s):

Fandom #2:
Art &/or Fic &/or Podfic:
Relationship(s):

And so on!

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recs

Yuletide recs (part III)

One last batch in before reveals! Nine recs, all on my journal. Fandoms include:

The Long Walk (2025)
Carrie
The Odyssey
Philadelphia Flyers RPF
Crash (1996)
19th Century Poets RPF
True Detective
Jaws
The Blue Castle

Current Music: The Mountain Goats, "Through This Fire"

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patreon

The ocean is faithful and the Devil's a liar

That was the year that was no good. I kept up with my website and my presence on AO3 and slept terribly and spent six days in hospital.

I published one new piece of fiction, although a meaningful one to me:

"Hyperboloids of Wondrous Light" in Not One of Us #81, January 2025.

Very little new poetry:

"The Ghost Summer" in Weird Fiction Quarterly Winter 2025: Ghosts, April 2025.
"The Burnt Layer" in Not One of Us #84, September 2025.
"Below Surface" in Not One of Us #83, June 2025.

One reprint:

"Twice Every Day Returning" in Afterlives: The Year's Best Death Stories 2024 (ed. Sheree Renée Thomas), Psychopomp, December 2025.

Nearly as much fanfiction as all of the above, counting the fills I transferred to AO3 and the one I left in place:

"Fall from the Sky" (Repeat Performance), January 2025.
"Floriography" (M*A*S*H), January 2025.
"A Good Accountant, All Right" (I Walk Alone), January 2025.

Very much less than I had wanted for Patreon:

Cover Up (1949), January 2025.
Decoy (1946), January 2025.
Grand Jury Secrets (1939), February 2025.
Lost Boundaries (1949), February 2025.
A Bomb Was Stolen (S-a furat o bombă, 1962), February 2025.
Black Kitten Micro-Thon 2025 [Final Offer (2018), "Come Back Mrs Noah" (1977), "Contact" (1981), Other Other (2024), Once in a New Moon (1934)], February 2025.
"Poison" (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1958), March 2025.
No Publicity (1927), April 2025.
A Bell for Adano (1945), May 2025.
City of Fear (1959), June 2025.
Ladies (2024), June 2025.
The Sea Wolf (1941), July 2025.
None Shall Escape (1944), July 2025.
I Won't Play (1944), August 2025.
The Gaunt Stranger (1939), August 2025.
The Perfect Murder (1988), August 2025.
The Hot Rock (1972), September 2025.
The Innocents (1961), September 2025.
Heat and Dust (1983), September 2025.
The Immortal Story (1968), October 2025.
Marooned (1994), October 2025.
Girl Stroke Boy (1971), October 2025.
Fear in the Night (1972), November 2025.
Enys Men (2022), November 2025.
Blind Spot (1947), November 2025.
Defence of the Realm (1985), December 2025.
A View from a Hill (2005), December 2025.

My major achievement of the last twelve months looks like not dying. More than one member of my family could say the same. Happy New Year. A healthy year, a more than endured one. Mir zaynen af tselokhes.

2025

What a fucking year, right? Every year, I'm like, hey, maybe next year will be better! But seriously, what the actual fuck was that?

Happy NYE!

And hopefully, let's all have a happy 2026!

Current Mood: Ready For It
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

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fannish_fifty

Fannish Fifty Challenge 2025: Post # 50: Fannish Fifty 2026 Sign-Up

Any blogger can challenge themselves to an annual Fannish Fifty without signing up to the Fannish Fifty Challenge on DW, but if you want to be part of the "official" Fannish Fifty click here to sign up.

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promo post

Fandom/Relationship Promo Post

If you want to promote your fandom or the relationships you want to request/create for, this post is for you!

How you write your your recommendations, enthusiastic squeeing, or manifestos is up to you, but please put the name of your canon in the subject line of your comment. Here--with liberal borrowing from Yuletide's promo setup--are some other things you may want to include:

Title
Medium (e.g., Book Series, Podcast, TV Show, etc.)
Approximate Length (e.g., page count, runtime, etc. This is also a good place to mention if only a specific installment of the canon is relevant to the relationship(s) you're requesting.)
Where to (Legally) Find It
Brief Description
What You Love About the Canon
What You Love About Your Ship(s)
Kinds of Things You're Planning to Ask For
Content Notes (e.g., incest, period-typical attitudes, noncon, torture, etc. These notes are optional and may not cover everything even if they're included.)

Please post a separate comment for each promo you do, so the canon title can always be highlighted in the subject line.

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nom queries

Final Notes

Signups will open at 12:01 AM EST on January 1! I'll put up a Fandom/Relationship Promo Post in a few minutes, and the letters post will go up soon after signups open.

The tagset is here.

Final Notes

Solo character nominations have been removed.

Fandom nominations without relationships have been removed.

Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker —> approved under The Mandalorian (TV).

Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda —> approved under The Mandalorian (TV).

Li Family Gen (Perfect Match) approved as Li Family Member(s) & Li Family Member(s).

Final Fantasy X nominations are now under Final Fantasy X Series.

女王的游戏：盛世天下 | Road to Empress (Video Game) nominations are now under 女王的游戏 | Road to Empress (Visual Novel).

Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World (Anime) nominations are now under Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 | Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World (Anime).

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: iKon, "I'm OK"

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love like burning

Dept. of Beginnings and Endings

Goodnight and Goodbye, 2025

I've been in pain all day, and the hours kind of ate up all the wonderful things I wanted to tell all of you.

I'll say more tomorrow, but for now, just know that I cherish all of you, and I hope that your New Years Eve will be, is being, or has been, as quiet or raucous as you want or wanted it to be.

I am so lucky to know all of you.

And may 2026 be good for all of us.

All my love,

The old blue-haired broad

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heated rivalry

Canon question

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

Frohes neues Jahr, happy new year, 新年快乐!

*wraps hands around mug of tea*

I just got back from my midnight walk - like every year when I'm spending New Year's Eve alone (which is most years), I went out half an hour before midnight, walked into the old town, and watched the fireworks. I wore the new coat I got just a few days ago - it's warmer than my existing one, and I wanted it for the very cold days. Which, uh, today actually wasn't, so I ended up pretty toasty. But still, tea! *g*

*belatedly remembers to clink ~~glasses~~ mugs*

Happy new year, everyone!

I hope you had a good slide^*, or will have one if it's still in the future for you!

^*) That's the idiom here - in advance, you wish people "einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr", a good slide into the new year. There are different explanations for it, but there's attested 19th century slang where sliding is used for travelling/going somewhere, so that makes the most sense to me.

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Some vid recs to close out 2025

Well, as predicted,

rec_cember went straight off a cliff, lol. I mean, to be fair, I was traveling for half the month, most of that time with other people, but I still hoped to get in another rec post or two than I actually did.

But I'll close out 2025 by reccing some vids! Since I got back into watching vids this past year, there are a bunch of new-to-me ones to share. For the Tumblr ones, since it now defaults to dash view (which you need to be logged in to see) I've tried to provide a non-logged-in version where possible.

We Didn't Start the Fire by

beccatoria - ATLA & Legend of Korra
There aren't very many canons that are long, varied, and epic enough to vid to this song, but this works really well and the clip selection is A++.

Ice Cream Man by

Pennyplainknits - Stranger Things season 3
I had a lot of problems with season 3 and Steve's sailor outfit was definitely one of them, but this is a very cute, fun, and playful vid about it!

80s horror summer by

legallybrunette1997 - 70s/80s slasher movies
Great editing and really goes for the retro vibe!

Human by

kaydeefalls - X-Men movies, Mystique
I'm going through a nostalgia phase for these movies after rewatching the first two back in October, and this is a lovely vid that does a great job with Mystique's arc across the various movies.

Pink Pony Club by

torchwood-99 - Torchwood, Gwen [Non-logged-in Tumblr link]
A wonderfully edited vid that does a fantastic job using the song lyrics to tell the two sides to Gwen's story on the show: she discovers her true calling and blossoms when the secret world of aliens opens up to her, but loses some of her humanity along the way.

Shake It Out by

delovelie - Babylon 5 (major spoilers) [Non-logged-in Tumblr link)
A vid about breaking and getting up again.

Anti-Hero by

cynicalangel80 - Babylon 5, Londo [Non-logged-in Tumblr link]
Great tragilarious vid about Londo's general everything.

What Was I Thinkin' by

tafadhali - Star Wars OT, Han/Leia
A fun, bouncy vid set to honky tonk country that (surprisingly? unsurprisingly?) works really well for Han Solo.

If I Had $1,000,000 by

januarium - Schitt's Creek
This canon/song pairing is INSPIRED and the editing and lip-syncing is great.

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Fic reading stats & fanwork recs, December 2025

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

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recs

Yuletide recs

10 Yuletide recs in 8 fandoms: Valdemar series, the Coldfire Trilogy, Cthulhu Mythos, Dimension 20: Escape from the Bloodkeep, The Goblin Emperor series, Rivers of London, Type Help, and Yami no Matsuei

https://harukami.dreamwidth.org/816011.html

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new years

Happy New Year (a bit early)

Here, have the most delightful tradition from Denmark - the whole country watches this comedy sketch every year. <3

Watch on YouTube

Here's to 2026!

ETA: Realised I should have added more context - no one in the UK knows this sketch, but people in Scandinavia, Germany... [insert random countries] have a tradition for watching this stretching back years.

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Last fanfic(s) of 2025

First of all, I finished the Murderbot gen action WIP that I've been posting in installments. (It also ended up being the longest thing I've put on AO3 since 2022 ...)

Combat System Critical (Murderbot TV-verse, 20K wds, gen)
SecUnit is on Preservation when an attempted assassination on a PresAux team member turns a quiet retreat at a backwater university into a fight for survival.

Brief spoilery notes on the Murderbot fic

I've had the idea of Gurathin's augments allowing him to survive being shot in the head with an energy weapon since I've been writing fic in this fandom, so that was the detail on which this plot pivoted. Of course then it took me absolutely ages to actually get to that part! I was a little worried that some other fic would do it in the meantime, and honestly I'm a little surprised that no one has.

And my annual New Year's fic is up! Babylon 5 this time.

Five Kisses at the New Year (Babylon 5, 4300 wds, mostly gen)
What it says on the tin. 2257 to 2278.

Brief spoilery notes on the B5 fic

I went back and forth on whether to keep the final Londo & G'Kar scene (or maybe include it as apocryphal, or an outtake), and end on the hopeful note of Lochley and the new Ambassadors instead. That final scene is just pure self-indulgence (and maybe a bit of emotional h/c), but I decided to keep it; is it really a proper B5 fic if it doesn't stab you in the heart at some point?

I also liked the idea of doing B5 for my New Year's fic this year since the show itself is arranged around the turn of the year.