It's just after the end of October, and we'd love to have you check in and chat with us. How have things been with you since August? (having just realised we haven't had a check-in post for a while, oops, sorry!)

Did you sign up for or take part in any fandom activities in the past three months, or have you been working on any personal art projects? Are you looking at a bunch of end-of-year deadlines? Feel free to share upcoming art challenges that have got you excited, any frustrations you've been experiencing, possible goals for the next month, and so on. There's probably been a lot happening since it's been a while since we did this, so feel free just to give us the highlights!

Congrats to those who took part in this challenge!



Entries submitted for Drawing Challenge #74 - Drawtober 2025:

Too many to list! So just follow the challenge tag to see them all.

As usual, this challenge as well as all of our previous challenges will remain open, so you can continue to submit entries to the community any time after the Round Up date. Be sure to tag your art post with the challenge name, so that it can be added to the list.

Thanks to all who participated in this challenge! :D

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (tagged both books and Granada)
Pairings/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: T
Length: 11,539 words
Creator Links: Unpainted Canvas (RatTale)
Theme: mystery & suspense, casefic

Summary: During a hard case Holmes and Watson part ways after an argument, and now Holmes suddenly has more to worry about than missing children.

Reccer's Notes: After they have a terrible row, Watson is kidnapped by bad guys to prevent Holmes from pursuing a case.  The entire story is from Holmes POV, and there is a lot of worry and tension as Holmes tries to solve the disappearance of his friend.  It's a good casefic, as well as the circumstances leading to realization of feelings by Holmes.

Fanwork Links: AO3

Spooky season's not over yet because our theme for November is mystery & suspense!

The tag for this round is: theme: mystery & suspense

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! )

Fandom: Dark Shadows

Pairings/Characters: Barnabas Collins, Julia Hoffman, Elliot Stokes, David Collins, Elizabeth Collins, Roger Collins, Angelique Bouchard Collins, Harry Johnson, Willie Loomis, Maggie Evans

Rating: T

Length: 37,304

Creator Links: archiveofourown.org/users/SusanRains/pseuds/Carey%20Kasdot

Theme: Unusual setting

Summary: A dumbwaiter system found in the house unleashes a baffling illness which turns pleasant friends into infatuated screwballs. Meanwhile, games with the dumbwaiter bring Hallie and David nights of terror. With the addition of an afghan that roams the house at will and a houseguest no one wants, Collinwood hits the height of mayhem.

Reccer's Notes: You'd be pretty hard put to discover a stranger, more unsettling setting than a dumbwaiter in which an intrepid soul or two ventures to travel. Add to this Halloween rec the inimitable spookiness of the great estate of Collinwood and you've discovered a delightful read with stellar characterizations and the usual undercurrent of Things Unseen in the fandom.

Fanwork Links: The Lunatic Yarn (Dark Shadows 1971) Book 2 - Carey Kasdot (SusanRains) - Dark Shadows (1966) [Archive of Our Own]

stripysock, in response to the photo below: This must surely be the most satisfying fandom you've ever been in, for real time live content

me: Yes. I will never have it this good again.



This is from their official socials, by the way.

Happy Halloween! Have a recs update:

unfitforsociety has been updated for October 2025 with 8 recs in 5 fandoms:

* 5 Batfamily
* 1 Avatar: the Last Airbender, 1 Dungeon Crawler Carl
* 1 The Pitt/ER crossover

*

So does anyone know why the AO3 icon doesn't show up anymore when I do the "@ username . ao3" thingy here on DW? I've been noticing it for months now, but kept forgetting to ask.

*

Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi
Pairings/Characters: M/M; Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian; Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, Lan Sizhui, Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng, Jin Ling, Wen Qing, and others.
Rating: Explicit
Length: 193,252
Content Notes: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, animal death, body horror, bullying, conspiracy, domestic violence, Scenery Porn, Scenery Gorn, Smut
Creator Tags: Horror, Spooky, Opposites Attract, Fluff and Angst, Gore, Ghosts, Necromancy
Creator Links: (AO3) darkterrible; (Threads) tucsonodd; (Twitter) darkterrible666

Theme: Uncommon Settings, Casefic, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters, Cops & Crime, Fandom Classics, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery & Suspense, Novel-Length Fic, Psychic Powers, Uncommon Settings, Urban Fantasy, Worldbuilding

Summary: Wei Wuxian can see the dead. Weird happenings ensue.



Author’s Notes: I really struggled with putting this back up again (sorry I know I'm a flake) I have a love/hate relationship with it. But here it is.

This is a repost (it's all over the internet in various formats and languages) but it is mine.

I wrote this a looong time ago, before I really had a GREAT understanding of the naming conventions used in the untamed. Some of it might be incorrect.

Reccer's Notes:: Although November’s Mystery & Suspense theme would apply, I’m using Uncommon Settings to shoehorn in this beloved modern-with-magic paranoir fic in time for Halloween; the intrigue-haunted waterfront city of Lotus, patterned after Venice, is very much a character in its own right. (Note that, despite the geographical inspiration, nobody seems to have been whitewashed.)

medium blues has a history as cryptic and elusive as its subject matter: for various reasons (including having been targeted in the fandom’s 2020 cyberbullying scandal) the author—along with this fic—has periodically vanished and resurfaced under a succession of pseudonyms.

Here are the author’s original summary and tags:

( Continue. )

Fanwork Links: medium blues, by darkterrible.

(Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20220625040644/https://archiveofourown.org/works/39589791?view_adult=true&view_full_work=true

(Archive.today): https://archive.ph/cJARF

Frontispiece by mojoflower, from her review on wangxianficrecs: https://wangxianficrecs.tumblr.com/post/643044937390325760/medium-blues-by-darkandterrible-e

Batfamily

Free Child (Adoption Not Included) by raven_of_hydecastle
Bruce and Dick find a lost child and decide to take care of him while they look for his parents.

Stop looking at them like that, Alfred. It’s not kidnapping. Really. This is ridiculous and hilarious.

Home Is Where the Heart Is by LittleLadybugs
the one where Slade steals Dick after his parents die and raises him as Renegade, but he escapes as an adult and is in Bludhaven when the family finds him. Highly enjoyable!

a hundred different ways to say the same thing by a_alene
Dick and Jason are very normal people with a very normal sibling-ish relationship. A brief glimpse at how Dick and Jason communicate (or don't). <3

living ghost, forgotten memory (you are worth remembering) by silver__butterflies
Tim Drake is cursed to be forgotten by everyone he meets, over and over again. Somehow, Jason Todd is the only one who can remember him. A little overwrought in spots but overall I enjoyed this, especially the Dick-and-Jason-ness of it all.

the witching hour by merils
Kon, Tim, Cassie, and Bart end up in a house that's haunted, alright. And it's not inclined to let them go. A good Core Four adventure for Halloween.

*

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Heat, Wait, Steep, Repeat by Haicrescendo
Zuko screws up his life and in the process of fixing it, figures out some tea wisdom along the way. <333 #i'm not crying you're crying

*

Dungeon Crawler Carl

ERROR CODE: TERM NOT RECOGNIZED by the_hemlocked
"As far as I can tell," you say, "there is currently one person in here that could hope to know what the fuck that feels like, even just a little. He also has very beautiful feet, and he's very good at killing things, which are like, my two biggest kinks."

(A System AI character study.) This is an excellent look at the system AI. Highly recommended!

*

Crossovers

The Pitt/ER

Like Brothers We Meet by Siria
After a chance encounter, Robby finds out that he's got a half-brother he never knew about—an emergency physician from Chicago called John Carter. This is fun!

*

doodle4doodle has some open pinch hits! Check them out here. You can state your preferences for a treat in return on a special post for pinch hitters too.

Title: Bridge of Stars
Artist: chacusha
Rating: G
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Characters/Pairings: Odo/Quark
Content Notes: Another suggestion from a friend -- did this as a kind of bookmark design. *dramatic reach!*

Art on dA | Art on Tumblr

Title: Masks
Artist: chacusha
Rating: G
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Characters/Pairings: Odo/Quark
Content Notes: One last suggestion from one of my friends. Some silly sketches of Quark and Odo wearing masks.

Art on dA | Art on Tumblr

That's it for me for Drawtober!

Fandom: due South
Characters/Pairings: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski, Diefenbaker, Victoria Metcalfe, original characters
Rating: Explicit
Length: 19,093
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings
Creator Links: thehoyden on AO3, luzula on the Audiofic Archive
Themes: Uncommon settings, Friends to lovers, First time, Working together, Complete AU: academia

Summary: "What the hell is this, an Austen novel?"

Reccer's Notes: Complete AUs are unusual in due South, and this is that rarity, a dS AU set in academia. Fraser is a new professor, looked down on by his colleagues as he's from the University of Guelph, and only Ray Kowalski, a punky, nonconformist professor, befriends him. They both have offices on the unpopular top floor (Fraser as he's bottom of the pecking order, and Ray as he likes to get away from the rest of the department), which helps kickstart their friendship. The story is about the highs and lows of academic life and there are some great sections showing Ray's unconventional teaching style which the students love, and Fraser's more traditional, but solid, approach. There's academic politics and also drama with the return of Victoria, Fraser's ex and his academic rival. It's about character development, and about Fraser and Ray's friendship which blossoms gradually into much, much more. The fic's beautifully written, and an extremely good read - highly recommended.

Fanwork Links: Academic Punk on AO3, and the excellent podfic by luzula is here

Title: Glitter
Artist: mekare
Rating: G
Fandom: Dead Boy Detectives (TV)
Character: Crystal Palace, Charles Rowland
Content Notes: ink



Title: Glam
Artist: mekare
Rating: G
Fandom: Dead Boy Detectives (TV)
Character: Charles Rowland, Edwin Payne
Content Notes: ink lineart for a fic, I made up my own prompt for this



Title: Propped Up V2
Artist: mekare
Rating: G
Fandom: Dead Boy Detectives (TV)
Character: Charles Rowland, Edwin Payne
Content Notes: watercolour



Title: Noise
Artist: mekare
Rating: G
Content Notes:ink