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Photograph of the full moon encircled with added text: Uncommon Settings, at Fancake.

fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules.

This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!

brightknightie posting in

fandom_on_dw

Sign-ups are now open for

hlh_shortcuts 2025, the long-running annual Highlander "Holiday Shortcuts" fanfiction exchange! (The "Shortcuts" nods to the 500-word minimum, from the days when most events defaulted to a 1,000 word minimum.)

When:

Sign-up: October 1 to 11, 2025 at 11:59PM CDT on AO3
Receive assignment: By October 14, 2025
Default deadline: November 20, 2025
Submissions: By December 15, 2025 on AO3
Stories revealed: The first on December 20, 2025 (the winter solstice, Duncan's birthday) and the rest a few per day as long as they last, per tradition

How:

This year's collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/hlhshortcuts2025
Guides: HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Sign-Ups + HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Submissions + HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Defaults + Find a beta-reader / be a beta-reader

Yay, Highlander fun and friends! Come play with us...?

full_metal_ox posting in

fancake

Fandom: Nail Polish (Industry) (the AO3 tag, probably worded to disambiguate from at least two bands by that name. I’m calling it Nail Polish Blogosphere, since the characters are using and reviewing rather than manufacturing the nail polish.)
Pairings/Characters: Gen; OCs
Rating: General Audiences
Length: Only Once: 449; Only Once Remix: 1,960
Content Notes: modern in-universe folklore, nail polish connoisseurship, possible unreality, the sad beauty of transience
Creator Links: (AO3)

Sineala; (Dreamwidth)

sineala; (Tumblr)

sineala; (AO3)

woodpusher
Theme: Uncommon Settings, Folklore & Fairytales, Friendship, Magic, Social Media
Summary:

Sineala: The story of the most beautiful nail polish in the world.

woodpusher: Like a good manicurist, this story fills in some plot holes and smooths some rough edges from Only Once.

I was trying to boost my readership so welcome to the newly gifted.

Comments are welcome!

Author’s Notes: ( Cut_for_length. )

Reccer's Notes: ( Cut_for_length. )

Fanwork Links:
Only Once, by

Sineala for

Lysimache; Yuletide Madness 2011
Only Once Remix, by

woodpusher for

Sineala,

Meltha,

kuramas30,

Viridian5,

Qem, and

Lysimache.

brightknightie posting in

fandomcalendar

Sign-ups are now open for

hlh_shortcuts 2025, the long-running annual Highlander Holiday Shortcuts fanfiction exchange! (The name "Shortcuts" nods to the 500-word minimum, from the days when 1,000 words was the usual minimum.)

When:

Sign-up: October 1 to 11, 2025 at 11:59PM CDT on AO3
Receive assignment: By October 14, 2025
Default deadline: November 20, 2025
Submissions: By December 15, 2025 on AO3
Stories revealed: The first on December 20, 2025 (the winter solstice, Duncan's birthday) and the rest a few per day as long as they last, per tradition

How:

This year's collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/hlhshortcuts2025
Guides: HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Sign-Ups + HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Submissions + HLH_Shortcuts AO3 Defaults + Find a beta-reader / be a beta-reader

Yay, Highlander fun and friends! Come play with us?

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fancrafts/fanart/fics/fanvids/podfics/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here

otw_news_feed

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-427-0-9-432-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=269038

In September, we deployed a major upgrade to our HTML sanitizer (which interprets formatting tags) and introduced new features to collections! We also made a variety of fixes across different areas of AO3, including clarifying some confusing language and making new site elements translatable as part of our ongoing internationalization work.

Special thanks and welcome to first-time contributors brooke x, Jamis Gelvin, katieyang, Kylia Miskell, ömer faruk, Samridhi, and Yanpei Wang!

Credits

Coders: Bilka, Brian Austin, brooke x, Jamis Gelvin, katieyang, Kylia Miskell, Jo Kingswood (Littlelines), ömer faruk, Potpotkettle, Samridhi, sarken, weeklies, Yanpei Wang
Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, Hamham6, irrationalpie, redsummernight, sarken, ticking instant, weeklies
Testers: Allonautilus, ana, Aster, Bilka, Brian Austin, Lute, lydia-theda, megidola, ömer faruk, Pent, Sam Johnsson, Sanity, sarken, Teyris, therealmorticia

Details

0.9.427

On September 5, we deployed some improvements to get our HTML sanitizer up to date for HTML5 and fix a number of tiny but annoying parser-related bugs.

[AO3-5801] – We changed the sanitizer and parser to use Nokogiri’s newly available native HTML5 features.
[AO3-3282] – If your summary or notes had formatting followed by blank lines, extra blank lines would appear each time you edited those fields. Now the spacing stays the same, like it’s supposed to.
[AO3-4599] – We prevented the parser from modifying the formatting inside of <pre> tags, since that defeated the point of marking text as preformatted.

0.9.428

On September 8, we deployed a lot of changes by first-time contributors. If you’re interested in contributing code to AO3, check out our GitHub Contributing Guidelines.

[AO3-5552] – We removed some unused code as well as the tests for it.
[AO3-7110] – We fixed an automated test for the database data we use for development, which was failing intermittently.
[AO3-6921] – We made it so the commas used in series browser page titles are now translatable.
[AO3-6924] – The browser page title translations for some user-related pages (e.g., the Change Password page) were in the wrong place, so we moved them to the right locale file.
[AO3-7089] – We cleaned up some duplicate code in our automated tests.
[AO3-5769] – We updated the phrasing of the text you see when you hover over the “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” icon in the work blurb.
[AO3-6581] – We changed the title on the page that lists works you’ve marked for later to “Marked for Later,” so you don’t get it confused with the overall history page.
[AO3-6914] – We clarified the error message site admins may see when updating language codes.

0.9.429

On September 15, we did a small release to improve the technical implementation of how certain AO3 pages are accessed.

[AO3-5953] – Some actions, such as marking a work for later or switching back to the default site skin, could be performed by simply visiting a URL. That isn’t great for a number of reasons, including security, so we’ve updated those actions to use more standard routing.

0.9.430

On September 26, we moved collections to Elasticsearch and added collection tags and better filtering options when browsing collections.

[AO3-6026] – We added collections to Elasticsearch for better filtering capabilities, made it possible to tag them, and also automatically added tags to existing collections.
[AO3-3748] – We changed the Collections page to also list subcollections, not just top-level collections.
[AO3-7122] – We updated the default value of two database columns in the collections table to work better with Elasticsearch.

0.9.432

On September 28, we made two more changes as part of our collections upgrades as well as a few low-impact updates that were easy to get done at the same time.

Additionally, our deploy script accidentally bumped us a release ahead and skipped 0.9.431 so this ended up being released as 0.9.432 instead!

[AO3-7141] – When we moved collections to Elasticsearch, we inadvertently started sorting items on users’ Collections pages and collections’ Subcollections pages by date. We’ve changed the sorting back to alphabetical order.
[AO3-6133] – The service we were using to deploy code to our testing environment will be discontinued in 2026, so we switched to using GitHub Actions instead. This switch also brought us some sweet speed improvements and better integration into GitHub and Jira, so it’s a win all around!
[AO3-7117], [AO3-7118] – Our friendly dependency updater bumped the version of two GitHub actions.
[AO3-4698] – We added a missing hyphen to the browser page title for the New Challenge Sign-up page.
[AO3-7123] – We added the ability to filter for collections based on whether they are marked as multifandom.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-427-0-9-432-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=269038

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carenejeans

Here's the final tally for September. But first —

Quote of the Day:

"It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is just having written."

— Robert Hass

From the quotation book The Truth About Writing (2018)

Tally

( Days 1-29 )

Day 30:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

If I've missed anyone, please let me know.

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recthething

Continuing with my goal to make fifty rec posts in my journal this year, here's a roundup from July-September.

( 1 x Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho! Art (Daisuke Bucklesby/Monty LaMontgomery) )

( 1 x Karaoke Iko! / Famiresu Iko Art (Narita Kyouji + Kyouji/Oka Satomi musings in rec) )

( 1 x Our Flag Means Death Fic (Izzy Hands/Benjamin Hornigold) )

( 1 x Our Flag Means Death Vid (Izzy Hands + Izzy/Ed Teach breakup) )

( 1 x Star Trek Vid (multiple show ensembles) )

kingstoken posting in

fancake

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Pairings/Characters: Stede/Ed and Stede/Ed/izzy
Rating: G
Length: 2252 words
Creator Links: charlieloverboy
Theme: Uncommon settings, unconventional format & style

Summary: FOR PUBLIC RELEASE
Video title: “Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED”
From WIRED Entertainment

Reccer's Notes: This fic is written like it's the transcript of a WIRED interview, the ones where the celebrities answer google's most searched for questions about them. It's a modern AU where Ed and Stede are rock stars and its implied that Izzy is Ed's manager. I'm not sure how the author did it, but they got the tone and how most celebrities speak in these interviews spot on, while also telling us a narrative about Ed and Stede and heavily implying Ed/Stede/Izzy.

Fanwork Links: AO3

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yourlibrarian

1) Some TV stuff: I've been watching the KenJennings Jeopardy run, and enjoying it. It seems to me the questions were easier than some of the ones I've seen most recently, but I guess those were largely the tournament of champions so that makes sense.

I tried out Match Game, Weakest Link and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. ( Read more... )

2) Last week my partner went to Indianapolis for the weekend and on Sunday morning called me to say that the car wouldn't start. Luckily he was in the hotel parking lot and could just take his stuff back inside. All the dealerships were closed on Sunday but as he happened to be at an airport hotel, he took their shuttle there and I was able to get him booked for a week's car rental. ( Read more... )

3) Adding to fan image hosting woes: Imgur blocks UK access after the ICO notified it of a possible fine over its handling of kids' data

4) Thought this stat was interesting: U.S. streamers are increasingly sharing content catalogs across third-party services. In July, 39% of domestic titles appeared on two or more services, compared with 13% in the U.K. and 8% in France over the same period. ( Read more... )

5) I was amazed to see this story about boyfriend cosplay. "I cosplayed as the client’s chosen character and walked around with them, on the street, on a date. To be honest, I must confess that even as an experienced cosplayer, I found it challenging to act nonchalant in public while wearing a full costume and a light-colored wig. This difficulty was compounded by the specific nature of this commission: I was tasked with roleplaying as a romantic partner and caring for my "girlfriend." Though the date was challenging, I was obsessed with the sense of accomplishment I felt when I took care of someone and acted as their beloved character."

It certainly seems to be taking fanwork commissions to a new level...

Poll #33682 Kudos Footer-542

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
7 (100.0%)

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fancake

Fandom: Hilda the Plus-Size Pinup
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Hilda
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 100
Creator Tags: IN SPACE!, Drabble, wonder, Yuletide Treat, Yuletide Madness, Drabble Invitational
Creator Links: (AO3)

Missy; (Dreamwidth)

bring_me_sugar

Theme: Uncommon Settings, Drabble, In Space, Old Fandoms, Sense Of Wonder, Small Fandoms

Summary: Hilda makes it to space - the universe is vast, but she's one with it.

Author’s Notes: For Topaz_Eyes.

Reccer's Notes: Hilda takes her exploration of The Great Outdoors to the next level. This is a gift-wrapped illo-op; I’m envisioning her in a brilliant red Latex Space Suit with an emergency backflap—in homage to her winter longjohns.

Fanwork Links: Here I Am, by

Missy for

Topaz_Eyes, for Yuletide Madness 2020.

Current Music: ”The World Is Just Awesome”.

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fancake

Our theme for October is uncommon settings!

These are places you don't commonly see represented in fanworks, either in a specific fandom or fandom in general.

The tag for this round is: theme: uncommon settings

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

( Rules! )

( Posting Template! )

( Promote this round! )

Reblog on Tumblr | Reskeet on Bluesky | Retoot on Mastodon

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fancake

Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Diefenbaker
Rating: Teen
Length: 1929
Creator Links: seascribble on AO3
Themes: Food and cooking, First time, Friends to lovers, Domestic

Summary: Ray is actually starting to like oatmeal.

Reccer's Notes: Set towards the end of the quest to find the Hand of Franklin and afterwards, once their relationships's established, this story weaves together scenes featuring Ray Kowalski, Fraser, Dief, and food of various types - some delicious, some less so, and all telling the tale of their relationship. Lovely.

Fanwork Links: A Balanced Diet (or, Four Vaguely Interrelated Vignettes about Ray, Fraser, and Food)

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Madison Miller, Jeannie Miller
Rating: G
Length: 1552
Creator Links: Punk on AO3
Themes: Food and cooking, First time, Humor

Summary: Rodney doesn't know whether he should go for the ice cream or Sheppard's mouth.

Reccer's Notes: A charming first time story where Rodney's lust for a real-vanilla ice cream cone is transmuted into lust for John, with Jeannie berating and cheering them on from the sidelines. Fun, and an excellent outcome for everyone except the ice cream!

Fanwork Links:
Text on AO3: Vanilla
Podfic read by Punk: Vanilla [podfic]