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aaaand three minutes before midnight ALSO still counts!

+ Watched Wake Up Dead Man today, and out of the three I can safely say it’s my favorite. The setting, characters, theme, all hit home for me. Honestly one I wouldn’t mind rewatching.

Reactor Mag has an excellent article up on it: Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man.

Btw does anyone want some screengrabs to make icons from uploaded to

capshare? (Not the very best quality possible, but serviceable) If so, specific characters?

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 17

Gilmore Girls
They Go Just as Quickly as They Come by

petpluto (2,004 words). Richard dies. Emily goes on living.
At first, its emptiness wasn’t as pervasive. She accepted the house, and the stillness.

It hadn’t been so long. Not really. Richard had spent longer away on business trips. The house was empty, but not unfamiliarly so. But there came a time when, if Richard had been away on a business trip, he would have been back from it. And the emptiness pressed in until it is all she can see, all she can feel.

The house is empty.

She doesn’t wander the halls. She doesn’t throw herself at his portrait. She does not have a portrait made. She doesn’t shutter the windows and regress. She doesn’t dress in all black. She isn’t part of some maudlin tale, some piece of fiction Rory and Richard had once fawned over together. She is a graduate of Smith, after all. She still belongs to any number of groups, of charities and clubs and associations. She fills her days, just as she did before.

The house, though, is still empty, when she returns to it.

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books,
star trek

Kat Consumes Media

***

Kat Watches Things

The Dune: Part One - Rewatch. Hopefully I'll get to the second part one day. Anyway. Still extremely watchable. Still fills me with yearning for a Paul Atreides/Duncan Idaho fic with a very specific dynamic that I haven't really found yet in the existing fics.

The Art Detectives, Series 1 - DI Palmer works for Heritage Crime, tries to woo a museum curator and has an art forger for a father. He recruits a DC Malik to help him crack all manner of heritage related crimes. Which, because this is fiction, includes not a single case of metal theft from church roofs which is what keeps the real heritage crime unit busy. Also, they would never investigate murders no matter how many old paintings were involved in the plot. Anyway, reality aside, this was perfect comfort watching, not particularly emotionally taxing. I liked the episode in Belfast best, about Titanic memorabilia, probably because I've been there to the Titanic museum and it was nice to see the vibes.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Series 1-3 - ITV only had the first series but I abused H's Amazon account to get the next two. And enjoyed this a whole lot! And also, now I need to see Disco again. Anyway, post the events of that shit storm, Captain Pike, Spock and Number One carry on seeking new life and new civilisations. ( this got spoilery )

Kat Reads Books

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer - One of the reviews for the book called it 'brilliant and deeply strange' and I would sign that whole heartedly. It's difficult to describe the story. Is it a novel about dystopian future where environmental disaster, rampant biotechnology and unchecked capitalism have resulted in a collapse of all world order? Yes. Is it a tale of urban sci-fantasy with monsters and maybe-alien, maybe-other dimensional being. Also yes. Is this a deeply human story about what it actually means to be a person even if you're not human, and the fluidity of memory and identity and finding meaning in making connections despite it all? Definitely that. Is it body-horror about the unspeakable, visceral cost of survival in an environment where everything and everyone can and will hurt you, consume you, kill you for food, for salvage, for territory, for mindless aggression, or because that's what they were designed to do? Fuck yes. But also, it's a story about a woman who finds a strange creature and brings them home, raises them up, or tries to; a woman who remembers a different world but fights for her current one, her home, her lover, her survival. If you like strange, world building that does very little explaining and expects the reader to cope with that, dystopian struggle for survival and, somehow, a hopeful ending despite everything, this is a book for you.

Skein Island by Aliya Whiteley - Marianne receives an invite to Skein Island, a women-only retreat where her mother went many years ago and then never returned home afterwards. Once there, it's quickly apparent that the island guards a deadly secret, kept placid with the stories the women share. The book winds Greek mythology and archetypes, gender roles and relationships, and the power of stories, especially the small, mundane ones. This is an interesting story but also pretty caught up in gender essentialism given its core premise. There's a later short-story at the end that has a blink and you miss it hint about the protagonist being trans, so I got the impression the author themselves started thinking about the premise beyond the binary.

***

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fandom: events

(no subject)

and now i have defaulted on yuletide too, ugh

in terms of exchanges... this hasn't been the best year for me (fulfilling my part, not the gifts. the gifts have been awesome)

Current Mood: busy

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fic recommendations

Some highlights from Fic in a Box

I received four lovely femslash fics for

ficinabox!

For Someone Adored - InuYasha, Kikyou/Sango [Explicit]
Kikyou has her suspicions on why Kohaku's sister is trying to get close to her, but it's nice to pretend they aren't true.
(I have been requesting this forever and someone finally wrote it, including a delicious hot spring scene, and I am so happy!)

The Gleam of Bronze - Dragonriders of Pern, Kylara/Lessa [Mature]
Ramoth does not choose Lessa. It is a bronze dragon who does so instead.
(An intriguing AU where Lessa and Kylara end up as Weyrleaders after Lessa impresses Bronze instead of Gold.)

like an ocean made warm by the sun - Raya and the Last Dragon, Namaari/Raya
At the dawn of a new era, Namaari finds herself wondering what else she could wish for on her nameday.
(Post-movie fluff!)

The Heart and the Fang - Raya and the Last Dragon, Namaari/Raya
For six years, all Raya had thought about was saving her father and fixing the world. It had consumed her every waking moment and most of her dreams as well. She hadn't considered what came after. Luckily, she was not alone.
(This one was practically made in a lab to appeal to me!)

---

I don't know most of the other fandoms in the collection, and haven't had a ton of time to go hunting, but here is another story I enjoyed:

i said farewell (i meant don't go) - Red Sonja, Petra/Sonja
Petra had known for quite some time. But she hadn't thought Sonja would do anything about it. Not before it had time enough to burn out, to crumble to ash and blow away. And by the time she knew she had been wrong, well, there was not much left to be done.
(More femslash in a hot spring! With a bonus of some of the best violence/action writing I've seen in a long time.)

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My Most Reread Fics of 2025

I had another slow year both for new fics and rereads, but here's some of the fics I returned to most often in 2025:( Read more... )

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Blanche - The World I Used to Be Afraid Of

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online life for 2026

I decided to tweak how I engage with online life for 2026, and have been busy the last couple weeks trying to get it ready so I can test it before the new year actually starts.

So:
1. Switch back to posting on DW as my main journal (external blog will close)
2. Move website from pixietails.club to tozka.fyi (partly to save money on the domain renewal cost lol)
2b. Website will be more for evergreen content and not so much tracking content. So pages like a list of what I read this year will be deleted from public and kept private instead, but all my tutorials and fanlistings will still be there.
3. Self-host RSS feed reader (done), link collector (done)
4. Set up Obsidian as my personal hub (done). This'll be where I keep my tracking stuff, personal data, whatever.

So basically be a little more private with my info, be more proactive with keeping my own data, and settle back in to the communities I want to engage with.

I liked having my own little blog domain but it felt very exposed, which made me not want to post. Dreamwidth is more cozy! Even if I post in public here, I don't feel like the eyes of the entire internet are on me. Also tbh when I posted from my blog first it didn't give me an incentive to come over here and actually read my friends page, so I've gotten very behind on my correspondence.

Further changes: I want to get away from AI intrusions a bit more, so I've installed Linux on my main computer (Manjaro) and deleted Windows entirely.

And while I've stopped using most social media besides Mastodon, I still visit Facebook a lot for the groups. I'm going to make it a priority to join and engage in forums instead.

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Movies: Silent Night Deadly Night, 100 Nights of Hero

Movies: the nocturnal edition, I guess!

Silent Night Deadly Night (2025). A nice young man who sometimes puts on a Santa suit and murders naughty people as directed by the voice in his head meets a nice young woman who sometimes really loses her temper.

This was a delight. I had the BEST time. It's a remake of a 1980s slasher I haven't seen, but the premise of that one sounds like it's played straight as a "guy in a santa suit goes on a psychotic killing spree" kind of thing, and this one is a lot more complicated/enjoyably weird in its execution. The lore of this movie is absolutely bananas, just total nonsense, but is never overexplained, which it seems like is where so many of these kinds of bonkers movies fall down. The script is surprisingly smart overall, I felt, with a lot of care and affection for its characters. It doesn't hurt that I adore Ruby Modine, who previously had smaller parts in Happy Death Day (the roommate) and Satanic Panic (the daughter). And the ending is *chef's kiss*. I would watch the hell out of a sequel that follows what happens next.

On a personal note, as someone who loves Christmastime but has had less opportunity/excuse to indulge in it as I've gotten older, I really enjoyed the over the top Christmas theming of this.

It does have a couple of awkward lines about gender(tm), which maybe are trying to do a thing, but do not succeed in my opinion. There's also an incident with a white supremecist which would have felt more successful if we'd seen, like, a single non-white person by that point in the movie. The movie also does not look great; it's kind of all sludge. Oh well, we can't have everything.

I think this movie is already almost out of theaters. If it sounds fun to you at all, I would absolutely recommend chasing it down for some Christmas-flavored horror cheese.

--

100 Nights of Hero (2025). In a misogynistic dystopia, a young married woman (Maika Monroe) whose inattentive husband is away on business must cope with a would-be suitor (Nicholas Galitzine) with the help of her maid and best friend (Emma Corrin).

I checked this out because the descriptions I saw were sending gay signals, and indeed, this is very gay! Monroe and Corrin's respectively repressed and hidden gay longing is great. It also, unlike the movie above, is beautiful and stylish, even though they were clearly working with a fairly small budget. The aesthetics are top-notch. And Galitzine (of Red, White, and Royal Blue, among other things) does a great job playing a hot himbo whose sense of menace is undercut by how dumb he is.

Unfortunately, the actual story a) is not my kind of thing and b) IMO sucks pretty hard on its own merits. If I had realized quite how much of a satirical fable it was, I would not have gone to see it. This takes place in a universe where women are killed for such sins as literacy, extramarital sex, and not getting pregnant within nine months or so of getting married. This last one is the key for our sad wife Cherry, whose husband and the villain of the piece simply declines to have sex with her, even when the local Puritan-flavored but fictionally religious order says she'll be executed if she doesn't hurry up and get pregnant.

I do get that we're trying to critique men's control of women's bodies, but like... this is not a scenario that has widespread analogue in the real world. Men refusing to have sex with women, even when the women's lives are at stake, is not a thing! RL misogyny is bad enough, you don't have to make shit up! The fact that it's suggested (but not confirmed) that the husband is either gay or ace makes it worse, as he's the only possibly queer man in the movie, and it makes it much much much worse that he's also played by the only actor of Middle Eastern descent that I noticed. In fact I think he's also the only character of color still alive at the end of the movie; all the various women of color have died. (Including Charli XCX's character, who along with her two sisters is executed for knowing how to read.)

This movie makes the Barbie movie look subtle. I would say I don't know who it's for, but apparently it's for the other five or so people on bluesky who've seen it, all of whom gave it gushing reviews. IDK man.

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Reading Wednesday, the Dog Days of Summer Edition

These are probably going to be short and sweet, given I read them in late August through September. I'll hopefully catch up to where I am now by the time next term starts, and I go back to only reading stuff for school. Expect a bunch of books about gender, followed by all the romance novels I read on my off time, lol.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, narrated by Jefferson White
I had only the vaguest memories of the account of Haymitch's games from Catching Fire, or anything else from Catching Fire, for that matter. I never did read the other prequel. If Haymitch is one of your favourite characters, and you just want backstory on all the olds who show up later in the original series, this is solid fun. Collins did a good job of thinking through where everyone came from, and how they got like they are when Katniss meets them. Effee showing up is especially fun. We also get confirmation of several queer characters (which I assume she wasn't allowed to do in 2008), and an interesting note about the Capital banning generative A.I..

I enjoyed all the themes of the amount of groundwork needed to put into a revolution, and how the lives of the people in this story eventually led to the events of the first books. Especially how the characters themselves feel like they've failed and wasted everything, but the reader can tell how it's more a process of (horribly) figuring out what works and what doesn't.

At the same time, it didn't feel like a story of only moving pieces into place for the "real story" that will start later. It certainly doesn't read as a stand alone novel, but it does stand up as being about these characters in this moment. Haymitch is such a sweet kid when we first meet him, and is a bit more of a dynamic lead than Katniss (i.e., he actually likes people and wants to talk to them), and given the pile of characters we meet for the first time (because these games have twice the number of tributes), each of the new people get enough development for the reader to become least somewhat invested in what happens to them (spoiler alert: it's the Hunger Games, so...).

I always found the games themselves the least interesting part of the earlier books, which is largely true here as well, but the story still moves along pretty fast. They probably would've been more interesting if I remembered what the story was supposed to be, as Collins puts a lot into the contrasts and surprises. The post-games section did draaaaaaaaaaaaag though. Especially the recap of the games we'd just read about, and the part that was set up as this huge poetic tragedy. I think if you're like... 14, you'd be weeping through the end, but I found it overdone, and thought her editor should've made her stop.

Still, I'm happy to have read it.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I hadn't read these in fifteen years, so I thought I'd swing back through to remember what we were supposed to know about all the characters we met in the prequel. Enjoyed it. Games still dragged.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
So most of the characters from Haymitch's book actually show up here, it turns out. So I read this one. Enjoyed this too, though found the games section dragged a bit. The love triangle continues obnoxious, and I did myself the favour of not reading Mockingjay again.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
I've been hearing bits of this quoted since it came out, and it's quite good. I think the target is more people involved in public life, but it was still good to listen to, these being the times that were given to us. I know it's his area, but I wish there had been more examples from autocracies other than 1930s Germany, for the sake of variety, if nothing else (there were a handful of comparisons from the Soviet bloc, but it was very Nazi centric).

I think it's on YouTube for free, if anyone wants to listen. I'll probably go back to it later, so that I take more on board.

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke
Solid primer if you're interested in the a gender-diverse approach to Christian theology. Hartke talks to a variety of other trans and non-binary Christians, especially those involved in ministry, about their relationship with God and the Bible. Each chapter focuses on a few lines of scripture, which are largely clobber verses, and discusses how they can be seen as trans affirming. It's really beautifully expressed, and thoughtfully takes on some difficult parts of the Bible. Hartke does talk about how frustrating it is to feel like he has to spend so much time justifying himself and talking about the clobber verses, when he just wants to talk about religious gender euphoria. He's since put out a second edition, which might refine that approach, but I haven't looked at that yet. I really appreciated this edition is an intro, however, and helped me put together a church service for Trans Day of Remembrance.

Entry tags:

wednesday what i'm

Wednesday What I'm...

Reading

I read more of Clariel by Garth Nix. It's not grabbing me as much as the others, but it's still pretty good. I do think the setting is interesting, being so far in the past compared to the previous books.
I read some fic this week finally! A lovely We Are Phum/Peem fic I was gifted for ficinabox , and I also reread several KinnPorsche Arm/Tae fics.

Watching

The roommate and I finished Our Skyy 2. The crossover between Bad Buddy and A Tale of Thousand Stars was very interesting. Primarily it made me sad about Ohm and Earth now not playing brothers in Only Friends: Dream On, because they had a really good dynamic.
The roommate and I started watching Project Alpha. I'm enjoying it a lot! We of course know what the outcome will be since it's the show where LYKN was formed, but it's surprisingly stressful even so lol I am having a lot of fun seeing how the boys we already knew (LYKN, but also 3/4 of CLO'VER) are interacting with each other early in their relationships. Particularly Nut and Hong, since I am a shipper through and through...
The roommate and I watched the first two episodes of Idol Energy. I wasn't sure what to expect, being a reality competition in conjunction with a Thailand energy group, but it's been fun! I'm always happy to see both the JASP.ER and LYKN boys, and I'm looking forward to meeting the PERSES boys whenever they're finally on an episode.
The roommate, best friend, and I watched the latest episode of Goddess Bless You From Death. Really enjoying Thup/Singha's developing relationship. And Darin/Sey's! They're also starting to make me slightly sympathetic toward King, which I'm not sure I'm happy about lol
The roommate, best friend, and I watched the latest episode of Me and Thee. What else is there to say than that it's so, so good?? I'm loving William as Rome and his longing not-a-relationship with Mok.
The roommate, best friend, and I watched the latest episode of Burnout Syndrome. The relationship dynamics in this show are bonkers, and I'm loving that lol Especially loving Dew, who I hadn't seen before, but it's making me more excited for his 2026 show too.
The roommate, best friend, and I watched the latest episode of Melody of Secrets. Things continue to be weird and confusing and everything feels slightly off in a way that some people are unhappy about but I think will all come together when more of the mystery unfolds.

Listening

The t-pop is going strong. I continue to listen to a lot of LYKN especially.
Still catching up on Ouija Broads episodes. Currently on a true crime episode, which is an interesting change from their normal stuff.

Writing

I wrote another holiday card ficlet, leaving only two more until I'm finished! Gonna try to get those finished this week so I can get all the cards sent before Christmas.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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BtVS Double Drabble: Safety Measures

Title: Safety Measures
Fandom: BtVS
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Cordelia.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 480: Amnesty 48 at

drabble_zone, using Challenge 476: Sunset.
Spoilers/Setting: The Wish.
Summary: Everyone knows how to stay safe, except Cordelia.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.

( Safety Measures... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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FAKE Triple Drabble: Appreciation

Title: Appreciation
Fandom: FAKE
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG
Setting: After the manga.
Summary: Dee thinks the NYPD should show more appreciation for his and Ryo’s efforts on catching a killer.
Written Using: The dw100 prompt ‘Reward’.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Triple drabble.

( Appreciation... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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Double Drabble: Feeling Ridiculous

Title: Feeling Ridiculous
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 896: Carry, at

torchwood100.
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Ianto is injured again and needs help getting back to the SUV.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.

( Feeling Ridiculous... )

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general talk

Trees

On the subject of trees, oaks and poplars hold the top spot for my favorite.

Oaks are lovely, and the acorns they drop are both fun to collect and good for the local wildlife - the deer go ham on those things every fall. They're famous for their high tannin content, and it's easy to find puddles and small springs that have turned black over time in woods where they predominate - basically forest tea!

Full blown streams and rivers that dark are much more rare, but I've seen them. They reflect their shores like a mirror, which is extra-beautiful in fall.

I love the shape of the oak leaf, which has always vaguely reminded me of a hand, and has a thick, slightly coarse texture to its surface.

I like Poplars, on the other hand, less because of the effects they have on the world around them, and more because they're just plain pretty. They have smooth, silver bark and are one of the first trees to leaf out in spring. They're hard to spot, but they flower about that time, too, and if you've got the grip to clamber up one in the early part of the year, you can find a thick, yellow-green blossom a little larger than the palm of your hand hiding up in the branches.

Poplars are also a hardwood, just like oaks, but have fine, white wood with small pores, which makes them very desirable for chopsticks! I've heard that a lot of the chopsticks you get from Chinese restaurants, and even a lot of the chopstick in China are made from American poplar. Chinese poplar exists, but my understanding is that they're more rare than the American variant of the plant. I think due to deforestation? Something like that.

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Three-Part "Messiah" Podcast

Making Messiah on Freakonomics. There's a transcript as well.

The podcast does have some advertisements.

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f: ballet

Ballet Experiences

In an effort to actually get some wear out of my formalwear, I have decided to take up going to the ballet. Here are the first two.

Carmina Burana (Paris Ballet Theater, Choir & Orchestra of Budapest)
I caught a matinee (16:00) at the Palais de Congrès and was basically the only person who was dressed up at all :'D Ah well. (Achivement unlocked: overdressed at the ~~opera~~ ballet in Paris.)

I reserved the tickets knowing absolutely nothing about what I was getting into, beyond "high culture", so I the fact that it was a ballet was a, uh, surprise.

Anyway. I loved it! There were basically two prima ballerina roles, and the music was great. More ballet should have a choir on stage. The, idk, multimediality? of having a soloist singer sing an aria while the dancers danced a pas de deux or variation was cool. All the drama was on point. I think this is a good production, and they're touring in the rest of France + neighboring regions, so if you can, I rec going!

I also bought the programme and basically everyone named, from production to roles, is from East of the Iron Curtain. (The one exception, The Temptress, is from Italy.) It's noticeable in how the style of dance is much more Vaganova/Russian school, with open shoulders and an engaged back. The same corps is putting on a Swan Lake in March/April that I will catch.

Notre Dame de Paris (Paris Opera Ballet)
This one was at the Opéra Bastille, and people did dress up! (Not all tho; I spotted several people in jeans and t-shirts, puffer coats, or sweatpants. Also a random old lady told me I was truly magnificent.) Sartorial observations below.

This ballet didn't end up working for me. Some of it was synchronization issues (several in the corps de ballet, but also one in a pas de deux between Esmeralda and Quasimodo), some of it was the costuming (all the women were in microskirts and the styling made them look at most 15), but mostly it was I think the fact that it's a French production.

You see, the French style of ballet is all about clean lines, exact positions, control, #chic, #cleangirl. It is fundamentally incapable of adapting Notre Dame because it is fundamentally incapable of depicting horniness. Phoebus and Esmeralda both lost their shirts during a pas de deux and it was not horny, Frollo was just an evil sorcerer who had a stick up his ass in an unhorny way, the prostitutes were unhorny and so was Phoebus dancing with them. I have seen hornier Swan Lakes. Everyone needed to go on a vision quest to find their inner Odile. The Quasimodo & Esmeralda worked, because that's based on innocent sentiment, but the Phoebus/Esmeralda and Frollo -> Esmeralda didn't come across properly at all. Also Frollo came across as sympathetic (99% sure unintentionally) because there's something just that pathetic about having a dude solo dance one half of a pas de deux while two people are dancing the actual pas de deux.

Esmeralda, in a microskirt, being not at all seductive.

However, this does choreographically give the entire corps de ballet (in fact, everyone but Phoebus) some movement stuff to do that's usually reserved for jesters, so this is the production to put on when your corps de ballet has jester envy.

Not super impressed with the company, but I guess I'll catch at least Romeo and Juliet in Apr/May before giving up. Also kinda want to see La Bayadère in Jun/Jul because I've never seen that before.

anthropological observations on clothing
The average Frenchwoman is rail thin, but more of a pear/spoon type – not much beneath, but even less up top, if you will. As such, the "dressy" clothing seems to be elevated pant + elevated shirt + nice scarf. Any dresses are cut incredibly straight in the skirt, at max a very drapey A-line. The goal is to look ~effortlessly put together~, i.e. spend an hour of effort to look like you simply pulled out the first two items from your elegant, curated closet and put them on without thought.

(The person sitting next to me was wearing an actual nice dress with a pleated skirt. Then her similarly dressed friend turned up and turns out they're Russian.)

(By French standards, I am tallish with a broad ribcage. I also objectively have broad shoulders, and an amazingly athletic butt and thighs. There is no way I am able to give the same vibes as the locals lol. Anything I wear will look more playful, intentional, and/or dramatic.)

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!

I am late this week, which I attribute mostly to being a lazy slug. Where my definition of 'lazy' consists of 'I had a competition last weekend', which went very well! My synchro team now has a base IJS score that we can improve upon! 😊 In other news, I continue to have zero energy, even though the weather has warmed up. These short days are just killing my motivation this year. This week is the last week I'm working until after New Years, and I should be looking forward to my vacation, but nope! I'm just relieved that I get to stop trying to care about work. So...yeah. I'm just not doing a great job at anything at the moment.

Here's what's the what:

Exchanges due in November/December (fffx, ficinabox part deux, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I'm now at 6/7, YT is done, woo-hoo! That means FFFX is all I have left, and my goal is to write 3k on that a week until it's done, too. I've also been doing lots of reading/commenting on FIAB, but I may have hit my stamina limit on that, which makes me sad, but it is what it is. Hopefully, I'll get at least one more burst to look at some cool things!

Exchanges due in January/February: candyheartsex nominations just opened, and I threw in my usual suspects - I will definitely be doing this one again, and hope I get some energy back for treating! au5k, I'm pretty sure I'm skipping at this point. highadrenalineexchange doesn't open nominations for a bit; waffling on whether I'll want to sign up for this one or not.

Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...

BNHA: I'm finished! *sniff sniff* Also, I watched almost all the movies/OVAs now, I should finish this week. This fandom has eaten my brain again, and if I have extra time, I might just write some fics in it for...fun? Like, not in an exchange? Whoa! 😝

The Deer and the Cauldron by Louis Cha - Not much progress on this, since I'm a slug. I'll have more reading time when I'm on vacation.

Dear Door - Not much progress on this either, see above.

White Rural Rage: The Treat to American Democracy by Thomas Schaller - Finished, well enough written, but nothing new or insightful that I hadn't heard before, and no real practical solutions, either. Meh?

Goals for next week: 1) 3k of FFFX. 2) Finish movies/OVAs for BNHA. 4) Resume reading things, now that I'll have some break time.

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Wednesday Reading Meme & Books 101 & 111 of 2025

What I Just Finished Reading: Since last Wednesday I have read/finished reading: The Serpent on the Crown (An Amelia Peabody Mystery) by Elizabeth Peters and Killing Field (A Jack Reacher Novel) by Lee Child.

What I am Currently Reading: I haven’t technically started it yet, but the next book on my list is Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall.

What I Plan to Read Next: I have two library books to pick up, so probably one of those.

Book 110 of 2025: The Serpent on the Crown (An Amelia Peabody Mystery) (Elizabeth Peters)

I enjoyed this! ( spoilers )

I liked this book and have already requested the next. Sadly, I think it's the last in the series that doesn't look back at the ‘lost seasons'. I'm giving this one five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥

Book 111 of 2025: Killing Field (A Jack Reacher Novel) (Lee Child)

I enjoyed this book, but I wasn't sure I was going to. The authors writing style, with all those short, choppy sentences, drove me nuts. ( spoilers )

I liked this book enough to check out the next in the series; I'm giving this book four hearts.

♥♥♥♥

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The Day in Spikedluv (Tuesday, Dec 16)

I hit Price Chopper, the Pharmacy, and CVS (for mom) while I was downtown.

I did three loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for several walks with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, scooped kitty litter, and shaved. I made him cheese sausage for supper (one of the guys at work had it and he thought it looked good).

I watched two more eps of The Pitt. Secrets of the Zoo was my background tv in the evening.

Temps started out at 21.4(F) (it was supposed to be 10, so that was a nice surprise; still cold, though) and reached 31.3. It immediately started going down, but there was no wind (and no more snow clogging the trails) so the walks were actually nice.

Mom Update:

Mom was doing about the same today. ( more back here )

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books

Reading Wednesday

Just finished: Censorship & Information Control: From Printing Press to Internet by Ada Palmer. This was really good. Feels like even though it's pretty recent and deals mostly with history, it could use an update as the technology for censorship has advanced rapidly in the past few years, so I hope she/her students are still doing some work around it.

Currently reading: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Usually in December, after I've hit my Goodreads goal, I read something that's gratuitously long and would otherwise fuck up my goal if it didn't spill over into January (yay for anything and everything in my life being quantified and gamified, love that for me). This year's winner is my high school English teacher's favourite book, which he recommended but said that we wouldn't get until we hit middle age. Well, now I am middle aged so I'm reading it.

It's a curious book. I always hit the literary classics and go like. Oh. Haha. This is stranger and funnier than I imagined.

Me: I guess I will finally read literary classic The Magic Mountain.

Thomas Mann: Allow me to introduce my himbo failson, Hans Castorp. He is pure of heart and dumb of ass.

Am I enjoying it? I dunno, as much as you can enjoy a 1000+ page book which goes into detail about the breakfast, second breakfast, rest period, lunch, dinner, second dinner, etc. of the character. Which is the point, really—the mountain in question is a liminal space where in theory, the tuberculous patients can leave, but don't. But it's a slog.

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9-1-1 Fic

I wanted to post something in honour of Buddie getting to 50k fics on Ao3, so I had a look through my WIPs and polished off this fic that I started writing... in May 2024. I have a plan for what I want to happen next, but I'm really not a longfic writer so the chances of actually continuing it are pretty low. And I didn't even get to the Buddie part of it! Oh well, here it is anyway:

Title: slate blue earth below
Warnings: Past Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts
Summary: Buck gives therapy with his parents another go in the lead up to Maddie and Chim's wedding.
It... doesn't go well.