FTH 2026 coming soon!

Yes, time once again to begin ramping up for our annual auction! This will be our tenth (!!!) year of mobilizing the power of fandom to make donations to vital progressive causes.

It's been a difficult year -- most of us are worn down and scared. But there have been some things worth celebrating, too. SCOTUS might be selling us out, but lower courts are consistently ruling against the Trump administration, throwing up meaningful roadblocks to his agenda and vendettas. In both New York City and Seattle, committed on-the-ground organizing helped two progressive mayoral candidates to victory, opening up new possibilities for those cities and inspiring progressives around the world. And all across the US -- especially in those cities that faced targeted violence from the government -- people stepped up to take care of their neighbors: with courage, love, community spirit, and in some cases a good dash of silliness.

In other words: it's not over yet. Not even close. We can't fix it by ourselves, but we can show up to support others who are doing the work, and show up for one another at the same time.

We'll be announcing the FTH 2026 auction calendar and supported orgs list soon. In the meantime, if there's a fandom you think we should be adding to our signup sheet this year, let us know in replies! (Yes, we have already added KPop Demon Hunters and Heated Rivalry.) As always, you'll be able to sign up in literally any fandom you want, but being listed in the dropdown menu makes the logistics of signing up a little smoother.

No googling, curious about something

Things are going well

Spoiler

Okay normally I'm on the side of "words mean whatever we need them to mean".

but guys, I don’t like the suggestion that it’s what is happening here. Being unfamiliar with the term, and guessing its meaning based on vibes, doesn’t mean you have equal authority on whether it’s “correct” with the community who actively use this word in a technical sense.

please do consider that if you haven't been exposed to the word in the context it's used in, "both are correct" and "you can interpret it differently" and “there is no right or wrong answer” and “it feels like it SHOULD be X” cannot be a fully realised take. Sure, linguistics recognises there are rules in which meaning changes - but “laypeople being unfamiliar with the word, and liking vibes better” isn’t one of them.

You can do that with most words, especially slang, and shape them to the needs of the majority, but this isn't like... a fanfiction word, invented for fanfic and, like, solely used for injured hockey players where it doesn’t matter if the injured limb swaps sides 4 times in a sex scene and phases through a stomach. It is, in its context, a bit more load-bearing (ha) than that.

It's fine to be unfamiliar with the context, and it's fine for words to change, but do just take a quick second to hear it in a native sentence!

One of the most common ways of using this word is to assess four-legged animals. "Favouring" is a specific grouping of behaviour - a hesitancy in gait, stiffness, reluctance to put weight on a limb. It’s often inconsistent, as the animal tries to compensate or conceal the pain. It may not be a full limp or obvious lameness, since prey animals especially will actively try to conceal this; favouring is a subtle reluctance, and a useful word for a very specific recognisable behaviour that the animal is usually trying to lie about. (That’s probably why it’s used in romance fiction, as it’s an interestingly romantic and stoic way to react to pain, and doesn’t mean the limb is inconveniently disabled. A fictional character favouring a wounded leg can wince attractively when it’s jostled, but it doesn’t matter too much if the author forgets and has them run to the door suddenly - “favouring” isn’t incompatible with “running” in horses either.)

The sentence “Favouring the off hind” is equestrian jargon: it means “pain behaviour on the back right leg.” It does not mean “opposite-pain in the not-on deer” and is not confusing in its professional register.

If you've only vaguely heard of "myeloma", and most people in a poll are guessing it's a skin cancer, that doesn't mean that myeloma and melanoma can now readily collapse into the same word - they're under active use in their native contexts, where the people frequently using them do need to communicate the difference between skin and blood cancer.

A poll of laypeople misunderstanding “myeloma,” or non-horse-people misunderstanding “favouring,” isn’t quite enough to indicate a full semantic shift and change of meaning of the term. The community that uses the term “favouring” in the context of “limb injury” - vets, farriers, farmers, commentators, equestrians - knows what it means and uses it consistently in the same way. They’re not confused. because to them, it isn’t a vibesy, sex-scene-hand waving word. It’s a cluster of pain signals.

If you aren’t familiar with that usage, then that’s really more about your own lack of familiarity. Not all interpretations DO carry equal authority, especially when one is just confusion/unfamiliarity. You just haven’t met it before, and that’s fine.

Tl;dr: I’m all for words changing meanings, but we shouldn’t be too quick to declare that when it’s based entirely on unfamiliarity and vibes-based readings.

"[L]inguistics recognises there are rules in which meaning changes - but 'laypeople being unfamiliar with the word, and liking vibes better' isn’t one of them."

anyway. official linguistics post

Little Blue Dragon

Little Blue Dragon by saltnhalo || @saltnhalo Rating: Explicit Word Count: 23.8k

Today’s fic is the perfect treat for anyone looking for a sweet, engaging, fantasy AU. It was easy to fall instantly for Dean as a blacksmith, proud of the shop he runs in the town market. Situated right next to his brother (witch!sam!!), Dean spends his days selling his creations, and his nights working on his art, haunted by blue-hued jewels and inspiration from a muse he doesn’t understand. 

Enter Castiel, a new customer who quickly becomes a regular until he disappears as the weather gets colder. Dean’s reaction to not seeing Cas anymore surprises him, and as he deals with the loss, he finds himself in a Situation that only gets more dire when he realizes he’s trapped with a massive blue dragon. 

I’ll say it again, I loved Dean in this fic and the way the author described his world and his little shop instantly made me wish I could visit, and buy one of his creations. I obviously don’t want to spoil the end of the story, but the twist at the end was a new play on the soulmate trope that I haven’t read yet so if that’s something that interests you, open a tab for this one!

On the Hood

Happy new year 2026!

Hope it will be better than last year

Don’t look to closely at the impala. I don’t now nothing about cars and it’s the best I could do 😅

Last year’s art Part 1 and Part 2

bye👋

the new york times is now charging money for my favorite chocolate cake recipe so i bought a subscription and screenshotted it and canceled my subscription and now it's here for you for free

i do a mixture of red wine and fresh squeezed navel orange juice for the liquid, plus the zest of one large orange. now you make the cake

Having dinner w friends tonight for new year & made this! Followed the advice to use orange juice & wine. Great cake 👌 thank you for bringing it to us

To-cat-ata in B by sympawnies

I wanted someone to play it as soon as I saw it and they delivered

new years eve!!! wooo!!! go crazy go wild! 🥳🥳🥳

People say about Gen AI ''well its going to be basically in every game in the next few years so get used to it" like, no... do you have any idea how stubborn I am? I will never play another new game in MY LIFE if that is the case. There are plenty of old ones I missed. "Oh what about books and TV?" SAME. I do not care. I will stop consuming new media forever if GenAI is going to be in everything.

Yes, This is absolutely the hill I will die on (AND WE WILL ALL DIE ON IF COMPANIES DONT STOP PUSHING AI AND BUILDING FUCKING DATA CENTERS EVERYHERE FUCK)

creeping warily into the new year

damn we got 2024 tomorrow

damn we got 2025 tomorrow

damn we got 2026 tomorrow

2025 in Mittens Fic

It’s once again time for the annual accounting of things I have written! This year has, by far, been my smallest total word count since I started posting fic in 2015, but there's a very good reason for that, which I'll have a minor breakdown over after we handle this year's business...

Until now, last year had been my smallest count, but this year's total came in at a puny 59,751 words. So honestly, if you ever thought "hey, maybe i can catch up on everything mittens wrote this year in like... a day," well, this is the year for you to achieve that!

For reference, past year end summaries can be found here:

2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | the closest thing I have to a 2015 wrap up post is the lil bit of text at the bottom of 2016′s post… even though my two most popular fics were from 2015 lololol

I posted FIVE fics this year, beating last year's total of four (even if the total word count was still shorter this year... again, more on that after we handle this business!)

First up was my Dean/Cas Pinefest, Cosmic Consequences (42,724 words, rated E) (and while you're there, please check out all the other awesome Pinefest fics and artworks from last year!) This was yet another canon finale fix it fic, for everyone who can't get enough of happier endings, and winning with the power of love.

Next up is my annual DeanCasversary story, Seventeen vs, the Seventeenth (5,566 words, rated T). A bit of time travel, a bit of freaky magic. It's also the first of the Dean/Cas Pinefest Evergreen Challenge prompt fills I took a stab at... and to all you authors and artists out there, the Evergreen Challenge is still open! Join us and have some fun with it! (rules and info about posting are right here!)

My second Evergreen Challenge fic is the wilderness, and other assorted death traps (3,924 words, rated T). It's a little AU snippet of hurt/comfort where Dean's a tv presenter (think Josh Gates) and Cas is his intrepid cameraman.

The third Evergreen Challenge fic I wrote is heaven or las vegas (3,347 words, rated T). An hour in Cas's life, set vaguely during his search for a cure for the Mark of Cain toward the end of Season 10. There's a casino and pie.

Last but not least, my annual holiday season fic, Julstaden (4,190 words, rated T). Post canon, everyone lives and is happy, and there are Christmas (and Thanksgiving) miracles.

And that's it for this year! If you're thinking, wow there was a really long gap between the pinefest and then a flurry of these tiny little vignettes, then you're paying attention! There's a very good reason for that!

I spent those intervening months writing... what has turned out to be the longest single work I've ever written-- fic OR original fiction. It's in the neighborhood of 180k, and will be posting in March for the 2026 Pinefest! And that makes me feel a HECK of a lot better about this year's measly total word count lol. But because I haven't posted it yet, it doesn't count for 2025. Oh well! Everyone will be able to read that soon enough (sooner if anyone wants to volunteer to give it a beta read lol...)

Technically I started using Ellipsus for writing in 2024, but I've pretty much entirely switched to it full time this year. I've been really happy with it, and encourage folks to give it a try if you're looking for an entirely ai-free alternative to gdocs. I've even moved my colossal To Be Written List over there, and yes, it's still growing, too.

Thanks again to everyone who’s read, kudos’ed, commented, reblogged, liked, rec’ed, and enjoyed anything I’ve written in the last year. I love you all. <3 See you in 2026!

people aren't even getting a little bit genghis khan anymore. you guys used to love getting a little bit genghis khan

better luck next year buddy