goodbyebird: SCC: Sarah makes PB&J while Derek watches. (SCC peanut butter and jelly)
goodbyebird ([personal profile] goodbyebird) wrote2025-12-23 10:07 pm

Ah yes, a red Christmas. In the most unfun of ways.

Alas, no [community profile] rec_cember entry today, buuuut...

I know tons of you are deep in the Heated Rivalry hole. Did you know a kinkmeme was happening? And a SECOND kinkmeme? Now you do!

GQ has an article out with some rather saucy images.

I've spotted some icons by [personal profile] wickedgame here.

Lastly, I'd recommend using the Explore/Site and Journal Search feature; I haven't seen DW be this vocal about a show for ages. I'm sure you'll find fellow fans to chat with.

Go forth and be fannish 🥳
snickfic: art of Mary Poppins flying with her umbrella (mary poppins)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-12-23 12:53 pm

2025 in review: movies

I will probably see a couple more movies before the end of the year, and I’ll update the numbers accordingly, but I think otherwise my answers will pretty much stay the same.

NB I have reviews for most of the movies in my movies tag.

What TV shows did you watch a season of this year?
Creepshow, which wasn’t even good! It just had good guest stars! My trend of one full season of TV a year continues apace.

What TV shows did you DNF this year?
Severance. I got it out of the library, and I still didn’t want to finish it.
Legion. I watched one episode and then got distracted, but I’d like to try again. I do love Dan Stevens.

How many movies did you watch this year? Any trends in genre/viewing format/etc?
I had a Regal subscription for over half the year, so I had a HUGE uptick in new releases watched. Movie stats overall this year (not counting rewatches except where noted):

2025 movies: 30 (plus one that’s technically 2026)
Older movies: 34

Movies seen in the theater (new and old): 33
Movies seen otherwise: 32

I also rewatched two 2025 movies in the theater, three older movies in the theater, and six older movie at home, for a total of 38 total visits to the theater this year. That is definitely the most I have ever been to the theater in a year in my life, and I had a great time. I cancelled my Regal subscription because I thought I was burned out, but it’s been expired for five days and I already miss it, so I will probably resubscribe. I got way more use out of it than I did my Huly subscription last year and probably my Hulu and Netflix subscriptions combined (both of which I have since cancelled).

What were your movie trends for the year?
Most-watched actor: Jeffrey Combs once again, mostly due to rewatches at this point, but Doctor Mordrid, Dark House, and Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls were all new.

Most-watched genre: Horror by a mile, thriller a very distant second.

Most-watched country of origin: USA, but Australia was second with three, so that’s neat.

What are your top movies you watched this year?
In terms of the sheer amount of joy and delight I derived from it, it’s probably Red Sonja. This is by no means the best movie I saw this year, but apparently it was the movie I needed.

Some other fave first-time watches, from this year unless noted:
- Cuckoo (2024). Weird weird xenobio shit, casually queer, Dan Stevens chewing the scenery. What’s not to love.
- Companion. Smart, fun comedy/thriller(?). Just so tightly written, and everyone was great, most of all Sophie Thatcher.
- Clown in a Cornfield. Another movie way smarter than it had to be, and with so much heart.
- Sinners. Gorgeous.
- On Swift Horses. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying Jacord Elordi was very pretty and sad and gay.
- The Long Walk. I didn't love it as much as the book, but it understood the assignment, and I respect that.
- Hell House LLC: Carmichael Manor (2023). For pure horror, this is the scariest movie I saw this year.
- Wake Up Dead Man. Despite the heavy themes, this was ultimately a good entertaining time, just like the previous ones. I want ten more. 🙏
- Silent Night Deadly Night. A late-year surprise. I went in knowing basically nothing, and I had such a good time. I NEED a sequel.
- Red Rooms (2023). French-Canadian movie about women obsessed with serial killers. Stylish, femslashy as hell, an extremely precise and careful movie.

Other movies you saw this year that deserve more love
- Strange Harvest, a microbudget cosmic horror true crime mockumentary. Yes.
- Him, which absolutely did not deserve to get panned so universally. It had style and ambition, which is way more than I can say for lots of movies I saw this year.
- Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, a cheesy low-budget fantasy/horror movie with a lot more heart than it has any right to given how broad the comedy is.

Biggest disappointments
- Death of a Unicorn. >:( What a soulless, half-assed attempt at a horror comedy.
- The Conjuring 4. Even Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga couldn’t save this piece of dreck. Worse than 3, and that’s saying something.

Movies you finally got around to seeing for the first time
- Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Omg Chelsea of Dead Meat wasn’t being ironic; Leatherface IS baby. ;__;
- The Shining (1980). Fuck off, Jack Nicholson.
- Candyman (1992). Maybe trying to do too many things at once, but I was pleasantly surprised by how central the question of race was, and the romance/corruption arc was good stuff.
- Crash (1996). We definitely emphasized a different word in the phrase “erotic thriller” than I expected going in.
- Brokeback Mountain (2005). I respect it for what it was and meant at the time, but I did not love it. Heath Ledger was incredible though.
- The Mist (2007). It was fine.

Movies that you had the most fun talking about, whether they were good or bad
Probably either The Ugly Stepsister or The Long Walk, both because they have clear themes about (gross generalization here) characters doing their best in crapsack dystopias and showing how messy that gets emotionally for the characters. Lots to chew on in both of them, although I would say The Ugly Stepsister goes harder (which is impressive considering the other movie is the one where people get brutally shot in the head on screen every few minutes). The logistics of filming The Long Walk were also super interesting.

Did you rewatch any old faves? If so, which one was you favourite?
I got to see Re-Animator in the theater. <3 On film, with a recorded video message from Jeffrey Combs beforehand which someone played on their phone and held up for the audience to see. <333

What's the oldest movie you watched?
A Bucket of Blood, a 1959 thriller/satire.

What's the newest movie you watched?
LOL technically We Bury the Dead, which doesn’t hit wide release until the beginning of January. I saw it at a mystery movie screening.

Did you watch any movies outside of your usual preferred genre(s)?
Red Sonja is sword and sorcery, which I don't really watch, but partly because it doesn’t really exist as a movie genre these days. That may explain why it only got one day of theatrical release and zero marketing, which is a crying shame.

I watched indie drama Die My Love for Jennifer Lawrence and regretted it. I watched indie feminist/fable 100 Nights of Hero and… didn’t regret it, I guess, but I did think it sucked a lot on multiple axes. Every time I venture out of my horror niche, I end up thinking I should just watch more horror. :\

Any movies you're excited to watch in 2025?
I am aware of and excited about a surprising number of movies coming out next year!
Scream 7
Ready or Not 2
Dune 3
Wuthering Heights
The Bride
Iron Lung
thedarlingone: penguin captioned "I dived out of sight into an alleyway, gracefully" (frobisher alleyway gracefully)
thedarlingone ([personal profile] thedarlingone) wrote2025-12-23 03:44 pm
the cosmolinguist ([personal profile] cosmolinguist) wrote2025-12-23 07:46 pm

End of year meme

I started introducing it this way in 2023:

The questions here sometimes feel random and sometimes aren't very relevant to me (how many one-night stands, bless; that feels like such a fossil of the height-of-LJ days when I first encountered this meme), but I do like it as a way to think a bit differently than I normally do about my life, and some things that had a big impact on me (like what a dog-hospital year it was for Gary) barely show up here. I do find myself at random points through the year noting things I do that I haven't done before, or wondering what my musical discovery might be, or whatever.

So here we go for 2025

1. What did you do in 2025 that you'd never done before?:
Wrote an extensive as the writer and basically project lead on a report at work -- never did this before, did it three times in a row this year. Met a person from the internet and ended up having sex with them the same day. (Sorry if this is tmi, there will be no more details about it.)

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?:
I didn't call it a resolution but when asked later about what I'd like to have this year that I lacked the previous one, I said

Another sexual and/or romantic partner? This feels impossible but so do the last four years' worth of things and they all happened!

Like three days after I wrote this I started talking to somoene on the social media site that's basically a kinky version of Facebook which, like regular Facebook, you can only access if you have an account and I was getting memes and events linked to by a friend until I got fed up and made an account. Six months later, I got a random message from someone who wrote a comment that I'd "liked" (as with Facebook, it tells you when people like your shit and then you can go look at their profile and all that) and in August I met him and it was fun to have a no-strings arrangement with a friend.

Will I make more for next year? I'm not sure, I think the coming year is more about keeping what I have stable: work, house, relationships, friendships, life....

+47 )

50. What are your plans for 2026?
Laat year I wrote

Try to help everyone survive it with as much comfort and joy as we can manage, especially in the U.S. but everywhere really.

And I don't think I can improve on that answer either.

In a lot of ways it's been a rough year: the quick and steep decline of human rights in the U.S. has been hard to watch and harder to be affected by so personally. Work has been so difficult. I've had such a miserable experience trying to get referred for top surgery -- in the process bringing up so much medical fatphobia that I haven't even blogged about the whole saga, I can barely even think about it without panic or tears. Even my escapist hobby of MLB has been reminding me that billionaires feel

But in other ways it has also been a good year: it was really nice to be able to provide a safe landing place for [personal profile] angelofthenorth and Mr Smith, it was nice to get through a November without anything (new) and terrible happening. Connections with the local queers have been deepened and I'm delighted that D and I are now on the small committee of people who've taken over from the two founders who have reasonably been able to step back and enjoy the thing they made as the ordinary attendees the rest of us have gotten to be the last two years.

umadoshi: (cheese 02 (icarusfall1ng))
Ysabet ([personal profile] umadoshi) wrote2025-12-23 12:46 pm

Discord weirdness | Holiday dairy foods

A few months (?) ago, Discord updated on my computer and promptly stopped working. [It would technically launch, but the program window was just a blank rectangle.) Subsequent updates (which happen pretty much every time I relaunch my browser) installed cheerfully enough and made no difference. I grumpily chalked it up to not having updated my OS in ages (I'm very resistant, but usually enough things eventually get creaky or stop working that I give in and get [personal profile] scruloose to update the system), and since Discord was still working on my phone, I figured that was that for the foreseeable future.

Then a couple of days ago, I let Discord install its newest update...and suddenly everything worked again. o_o I certainly wasn't going to complain, but it surprised me enough that I mentioned it to Kas on the weekend, and having just dealt with some Discord shenaniganry himself, he had an answer: Discord has decided it doesn't play nicely with some VPN locations, and I had happened to change my location setting to one it liked.

I mostly lurk on Discord, but there are a couple where I make tentative attempts at being social, and my dislike of typing more than a sentence or two at a time on my phone meant I was even quieter than usual for a while there, so this is a good development. But also, WTF, Discord.

Did I forget to mention the new-to-me Christmas ice cream here? It looks like I did.

A local ice creamery (Dee Dee's) does Advent calendars, which I had largely forgotten about until I saw mention of it on Bluesky, at which point I was safe from ordering one (too late!), but it got me to look at their seasonal flavors. Next thing I knew, I was asking [personal profile] scruloose to stop at a local-groceries shop that carries their ice creams, because I had to know what the chicken bones* flavor was like.more about that, plus a cheese stash )
thedarlingone: Richard Dean Anderson captioned "pilot Rick blesses ur journey" (pilot rick)
thedarlingone ([personal profile] thedarlingone) wrote2025-12-22 09:19 pm

(no subject)

As people have probably noticed, I have been playing a bunch of video games since the Steam Winter Sale started, trying to figure out which ones I'm enjoying. (A friend gave me a gift card, which is allowing me to try out considerably more different games than I could wisely afford on my own.) Of course, I have trouble telling whether I'm enjoying things even when I'm actually doing them, so I am attempting to lay out some thoughts.

on games I have recently streamed )

And then, especially since I am attempting to figure out whether to refund Elden Ring and have some $40 available to spend on other Steam games, I am also wishing to lay out my thoughts on some games I haven't yet streamed and in some cases haven't yet bought:

under here )

That's not nearly all the games on my Steam wishlist, but it's nearly half past three in the morning and it's the ones I mainly wanted to think out my thinky thoughts about. Hopefully I haven't hit some kind of character limit.
silveradept: A dragon librarian, wearing a floral print shirt and pince-nez glasses, carrying a book in the left paw. Red and white. (Dragon Librarian)
Silver Adept ([personal profile] silveradept) wrote2025-12-22 11:24 pm

December Days 02025 #22: Magister

It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

22: Magister )
the cosmolinguist ([personal profile] cosmolinguist) wrote2025-12-22 11:07 pm

44

Thanks for the nice comments on the previous entry. They, along with just writing it out in the first place and D holding me tight (normally I am the big spoon but he did a great job at it last night!) helped me have an okay night.

D had asked me, after we turned the lights off, if there was anything I wanted to do today -- the family had no real plans beyond making the homemade vegan wellington for my birthday dinner that D's sister had suggested and I'd gotten excited about before I remembered quite how much work it was last year, oops. But D and I helped and it felt a lot less of a production this year.

Anyway, before that we had no plans and I thought it might be nice to get out of the house and see something of Birmingham. We didn't actually make it as far as the city centre but the local high street allowed D to browse charity shops while I got a long-overdue haircut (I went from the longest hair I've had in quite a while to the highest skin fade I've maybe ever had, so it feels like a dramatic difference!), and we went for a very nice birthday lunch.

My birthday present from D might still be trapped in DRM hell but he told me what it is, and The Feminist Art of Walking by his old pal Morag goes very nicely with the birthday present I've already gotten from [personal profile] angelofthenorth, of short walks/hikes around Greater Manchester. I also got a bookshop.org voucher from D's mum, which can be added to the one that comprised the other part of my birthday present from Miriam, so I have to decide what to get there too, which is so fun.

Weirdly, my birthday also marks a year since Gary died. It feels so long ago but also I can still conjure him so clearly in my memory, and there probably hasn't been a day all year that I haven't thought of him. I still miss him so much.

I've had a much better day, and I'm looking forward to being home tomorrow.

lydamorehouse: (Renji 3/4ths profile)
lydamorehouse ([personal profile] lydamorehouse) wrote2025-12-22 03:20 pm

Life and Such

Yule Log 2025
Image: Classice Yule Log with three white candles, bedecked with boughs and ornaments (surrounded by silver reindeer).

HAPPY SOLSTICE to all who celebrate. And those who don't? I hope you had a lovely Sunday all the same. 

Our Solstice was much as it is most years--a quiet, family affair. We have some traditions, the first of which is making rosettes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosette_(cookie)). I have attached the Wikipedia article if you have no idea what a rosette is--it is, in fact, a deep fried cookie. Personally, if done well, I think they taste amazing, like sugar and AIR. Because, basically, the batter is ultra, ultra thin and you use a cookie iron to to crisp up a lot of vanilla and sugar-flavored nothing. Our recipe actually comes from a class I took on Christmas cookie making several years ago, but very likely (this being Minnesota) comes by way of Norway, though possibly Sweden or Finland. 

The cookie making class is memorable because I was the youngest person in the room. I really figured that probably I'd be the oldest, since I presumed things like rosette, pizelles, krumkaka, etc., were the sorts of things that grandma would pass on and, maybe, it skipped a generation. Nope. It was me an all older ladies and on older guy who kept telling everyone that he took the class hoping to pick up a lady. (Yep, he was that old.) Anyway, me and all the older folks all had a lovely time and I was really only there for the hidden rosette knowledge because everyone agrees there is "a trick to it." 

And, there is.

The trick is making sure the irons are hot first--but also not too coated in oil. But that little layer of hot oil will, in fact, help them come off. In fact, ours often just fall off the iron into the bubbling hot oil. So, we always have to have tongs to hand.

Mason and I making rosettes 2025
Image: me patiently waiting for the bubbles to slow down the appropriate amount. Mason in the forground. Our kitchen all around and a few exampes of the cookies drying on the paper towels. The irons come in a lot of shapes--star and flower/rosette shown. Not pictured is the Christmas tree. 

We never want the rosette process to be arduous so we only make as many was we feel up to, call it good enough, and then I usually make a fun lunch like deep-fried shrimp.  We have charcuterie for our Solstice dinner meal, light our Yule log (pictured above), open presents, and then take a bit of the Yule light upstairs in a safe, insulated container and keep the light  burning for the longest night. 

I like to joke: if the sun came up on December 22, thank a pagan!



Our Solstice gifts are always books. There is a version of the Icelandic Yule Cat where the present you must recieve is not new clothing, but a book. We decided to adopt that tradition. Mason got a Terry Prachett book (and a gift certificate for Uncle Hugos) because he's been on a Pratchett kick lately; Shawn got the last and final Phil Rickman novel The Echo of Crows; and I got Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Hew Lemmy and Ben Miller. My gift is one I asked for because I've really enjoyed their podcast by the same name. 

Also as is traditional, someone's present must include the Solstice wrench. It has been Mason for many years, now, in part, I think because we started using it to baffle a child who could very distinctly tell the shake of LEGOs. 

Solstice Wrench
You can keep your King's Cakes, we have the Solstice Wrench!!  


By chance our friend John J. sent along a bunch of other book-related presents and so we opened those at Solstice as well.


Shawn inspecting a gift
Image: Shawn inspecting a surprise gift (one of many!) from our friend.

A lovely time all around. 

So, again, I hope you all had a lovely Solstice. If not, we can all enjoy the return of longer days. More sunshine! Hooray!
goodbyebird: Pluribus: Carol wearing a Santa hat and a decidedly grumpy expression. (Pluribus carol of the bells)
goodbyebird ([personal profile] goodbyebird) wrote2025-12-22 10:22 pm

Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol.

+ Had an extended family dinner today and got to listen to my lovely aunt and cousin talk about how great ChatGPT is, how she's using it to plan a girl's trip to Italy, and how helpful it'll be for writing the speeches at my grandmother's funeral. Fucking shoot me into outer space strapped to a rocket.

+ Got to see the latest Avatar movie at the cinemas. My least favorite of the three, lacking the genuine awe and beauty of the world. What they did try just felt forced, and one character in particular should have been left to die in the second movie ugh.

+ Big plus for the cozy and hazily lit curtain fic promo trailer thingy they did before the movie. IYKYK. Kinda made me wish I had an ear to the ground in that fandom still.

+ I think I've successfully broken through my iconning block!! Shout out to dysfunctional vampires and dysfunctional lesbians.

+ BIG psa: Apple shifted Pluribus to air on the 24th, two days earlier than usual. I'll have to get up extra early to see it before 2 Nøtter Til Askepott, because if not I'll be thinking about it and wanting to all day lol. It's been such a good series for me to watch? There's this whole thing where there's two wolves inside of me, one appreciating the thought and care put into every decision, and how slow it's allowed to move, the second wanting to pick into every detail and tear through it. Both enjoyable in different ways!

I have watched every episode a minimum of twice. It may be my new comfort watch show?¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 22

Pluribus I'd say spoilery for last week's episode. )
umadoshi: (Christmas - Yule candles (verhalen))
Ysabet ([personal profile] umadoshi) wrote2025-12-22 04:11 pm

Slightly belated Yule/solstice wishes + a very low-key update

Blessed Yule and solstice, friends. May this next turn of the year be better to all of us than the one that's just ended.

Impressively and unexpectedly, we didn't lose power on the weekend (so many people did!); not really coincidentally, Bucky remains undecorated. We also haven't put up any lights or the wreath outside (probably just as well, given the winds), and I didn't even think of that until maybe yesterday. Oh, well.

(I no longer have any real hope of finishing a draft of this rewrite before Christmas, since I'm getting such a late start on work today and we have plans for much of Christmas Eve once [personal profile] scruloose's half-day of work ends. It's fine. I've been doing other things. *shrugs*)

A few nights ago I guess I ~slept wrong~, as I woke up Saturday with a very unhappy neck. Yesterday was better, and today is better again, and I'm lucky to not have this kind of thing happen more often (*knocks wood*), but it's so annoying as well as painful. Body, if you're taking damage while sleeping, why don't you move to a better position?! Does the conscious brain need to handle everything around here? (Thankfully no.)
silveradept: Salem, a woman with white skin and black veining over her body, sits at a table with her hands folded in front of her. Her expression is one of displeasure at what she is seeing or hearing. (Salem Is Displeased)
Silver Adept ([personal profile] silveradept) wrote2025-12-21 11:34 pm

December Days 02025 #21: Troll

It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

21: Troll )
scintilla10: Xenk wearing high collar and armour (D&D - Xenk in armour)
a scintilla of time ([personal profile] scintilla10) wrote in [community profile] recthething2025-12-21 04:59 pm

More Fic in a Box recs

A few more recs from [community profile] ficinabox, posted over at my journal! (I posted them while the exchange was still anonymous, but creators are now revealed.)

Fandoms include:
Discworld
D&D: Honour Among Thieves
The Mummy
Original Works
Red Sonja
Wonder Woman movies
snickfic: Oasis: Liam and Noel Gallagher, text "Some Might Say" (Oasis)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-12-21 03:40 pm

FIAB: things I wrote

climbing bros, OW, 4k, m/m, omegaverse. On the side of a mountain, Davis's best friend goes into heat. I wrote for the tag "Male Omega in Heat/His Beta Best Friend Desperate to Help," and I needed something more to really get the (creative) juices flowing, so, uh, I decided to put all that mountaineering reading I did this fall to good use. Also, fun fact: the beta/omega BFFs relationship and backstory was lifted directly from a J2 HS AU I wrote over a decade ago. 😅

see to him, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 6200 words. In a BDSM AU, Noel does what needs doing (and has a lot of feelings about it). This is more or less my first posted BDSM AU in ten years and the first EVER in the Oasis tag other than some untagged ficlets in a larger collection from six years ago, which absolutely blows my mind. Liam has the biggest bratty sub energy of all time, how is there not tons of fic about this?!

[personal profile] adastreia originally prompted something like this for the H/C Exchange back in the spring, and I talked them into doing FIAB so I could finally write it for them. I knew exactly how I wanted the RL conflict from the 1996 MTV Unplugged show (in which Liam famously claimed a sore throat, leaving Noel stuck with lead singer duties, and then heckled him from the wings) to intersect with the BDSM stuff, but I struggled quite a bit with exactly how I wanted Noel positioned in this world of normalized kink, how he had thought about it in the past (especially with respect to Liam), and so on. I had to feel my way along, and I don't feel like I ever quite figured it out. IDK, more to unpack there. I also ended up writing no actual sex, and it occurred to me long after works went live that I should probably downgrade the rating from Explicit to Mature, lol.

I definitely feel like there's more juice to this AU. I would love to write a sequel. Also other people should write several hundred k of gcest BDSM AUs for me to read, please and thank you.
thedarlingone: Third Doctor and a Dalek in a pond, captioned "Dalek tipping" (dalek tipping)
thedarlingone ([personal profile] thedarlingone) wrote2025-12-21 06:14 pm

(no subject)

Today I'm streaming the game Boyfriend Dungeon, in which you date were-weapons and level up your relationship by battling in a dungeon crawler with their weapon forms. [personal profile] virusq tells me it's very silly.
senmut: 3 blue seahorse shapes of varying sizes on a dark background (General: Seahorse Triad)
Asp ([personal profile] senmut) wrote2025-12-21 04:53 pm
Entry tags:

Various Links 12/14 - 12/21

Yesterday was eaten alive by yuletide pinch hits, so day late with these.

~ Samson and Delilah gifs - young Angela Lansbury the Hottie

~ Smokin' MoTown - Temptations, Miracles, Stevie, Smokey, Vandellas, and Supremes in one photo

~ Art of Dorian Pavus and the Iron Bull in a bath

~ Trans Art for Maevaris Tilani

~ Beowulf Essay titles? - anecdote from a professor

~ Xuanji Tu - A mathematical art of poetry