forestsofpine

So many delicious goodies. :') I hope to make at least one more recs post before writer reveals.

Two, Seven, Eight, Possibly in Michigan, 1.8k. The Beachwood Place Mall is not a great work environment. The canon is a bizarre 1983 short film about weird men in masks following women in shopping malls, possibly with the intention of eating them, which you can watch here; this fic is a series of incident reports and answering machine messages to and from a concerned perfume counter employee. IDK if it's possible to fully capture the fever dream quality of the film, but this takes a good stab.

an island made from fate, The Secret History, Camilla & Charles, 1.6k. Early on at Hampden, Camilla escapes a tedious house party and finds Charles. This is a great, elegantly written little character study of Camilla, who never got quite enough time in the book IMO, and really shows the fault lines of her relationship with Charles. Great stuff.

k2, p2, yo, k2tog, The Raven Tower, The Strength and Patience of the Hill and The Myriad, 1.2k. The Strength and Patience tells a story about a sheep, and The Myriad has quibbles. The story about the sheep is fun and feels very in keeping with the universe of the novel, and the reveal about why the Strength and Patience has chosen to tell this particular story is delightful.

la femme comme il (en) faut, Impromptu (1991), George Sand, 3.2k. George gets invited to a salon and attends despite her better instincts. I'm not familiar with the movie and found this via the historical RPF tag, but I really enjoyed this vivid portrait of the Parisian artistic community at this time period, and the last scene really elevates it, IMO, and ties the whole thing together. I love the subtle emotional arc of this, and now I kind of want to go find the George Sand biography the author mentionds in the notes.

More A Comment Than A Question, The Dispossessed, Laia Asieo Odo & Sadik, 2.3k. Every so often, Laia goes a little mad and hears a voice claiming to be from the future. It's been a long time since I read about these characters, but I enjoyed this so much. The device of visiting Laia at these various points in her life was very cool, and there's something so peaceful about this whole fic, too, the same sense of peace and simplicity I got from reading the novel years ago.

There's No Discharge in the War, The Long Walk - Stephen King, Stebbins, 12k. Stebbins walks, dies, walks again. Stebbins has always been a sneaky favorite of mine, and I love seeing him get a fic all his own here that fleshes him out and gives him his own unique horrific trauma! The author uses the time loop device to fantastic and creative effect, and it all adds up to a conclusion that I like more and more the longer I think about it. Absolutely spectacular work. One of my favorites this year.

Hyacinth Girl, Waking the Moon, Oliver Crawford, 7.6k. Oliver, before the Divine. The author tags this as "Tragic Backstory" and they are correct!! I read this book last year and yet feel as though I'm missing things in this fic; I can't quite tell how many of these elements were present in the novel and which the author invents here, but the result is gorgeous and heartbreaking. You've got fairy tale stuff, dysfunctional family, the Benandanti always menacing in the background, more literay quotes than you can shake a stick at, absolutely gorgeous imagery.

Knife, Rope (1948), Brandon/Phillip, 4.9k. Brandon and Phillip's class go on a camping trip, and Brandon discovers that Phillip is not just more wallpaper. This is obviously backstory to the movie but feels like a beautiful, self-contained little psychopathic romance on its own. Two weirdos falling in love via discussing murder scenarios!! I was compelled from start to finish.

boulevarddouble

Annnnnnnd we're back with more corporate scandal posting.

This is a copy & paste of a doc I wrote intended for non-kpop fans (read: my D&D group) and as such has some explanations that will feel "dumbed down" for those in the know. You'll survive. Also, this is very specifically the origin of the fight, written on April 28th, 2024 so it does not include any information after that date.

I'm posting it because some jpop friends saw the news about Danielle's contract being canceled today, and the suit against her parents, and were very confused by how this all broke down the way it did.

I'll do my best to get my thoughts together for a part 2 summarizing what has happened since April of 2024.

( The real TL;DR of this all is worst person you know makes a good point but both parties are the worst people. )

And that's how all this mess started. A lot has happened since April 2024, but it's good to ground yourself in the facts, especially since there was a massive PR campaign against MHJ/Newjeans that was very explicitly funded by Hybe which was revealed only weeks ago, well after they lost all their court cases.

profiterole_reads

Why on Earth: An Alien Invasion Anthology, created by Rosiee Thor and Vania Stoyanova and written by 10 more authors, was a lot of fun. Teen aliens on a rescue mission crash-land on Earth.

This book is called an "anthology" but it's more of a collaboration (like my beloved Grimoire of Grave Fates). Rosiee Thor and Vania Stoyanova wrote the prologue presenting the aliens, then the other authors wrote stories about them encountering human teens, or sometimes just about humans dealing with the existence of the UFO. It's labelled as YA, but the writing feels MG to me.

The aliens choose their own genders, and don't necessarily stick with it. There are several enbies (among both the aliens and the humans), a trans boy, as well as some m/m, f/f and f/nb.

maggie33

ClaireBell

I admit I was a bit underwhelmed by the finale. I don’t really know why, because I generally liked what they did with it. But something in me wasn’t enjoying it as much as the previous seven episodes. Well, apart from one thing. That thing I enjoyed so much.

More with spoilers here.

And that one thing was what Bell did to get Top arrested. That was very satisfying. I even said “Hell yes, you deserved it, you coward” aloud. 😊

I also liked that Dao decided to keep the baby. IMO it felt very in character for her, knowing what we know about her fraught relationship with her son. Maybe I would feel differently if she was supposed to be in prison for a very long time. But we don’t know how long she’s supposed to be in prison. As far as I remember they never mentioned that in the show. So it might be just a few years.

I also liked Deedee’s sort of redemption arc. And that she did change for the better just a bit. And her cute something with Porsche made me smile.

I also absolutely get why Claire did what she did to Kae, even if that meant prolonging her stay in prison.

Now that I think of it maybe I was a bit underwhelmed that everything was tied with a neat little bow. All the villains were appropriately punished. All the good and goodish people got their happy, or at least happyish, ending. Which was nice, but I guess I was expecting something maybe a little bit messier?

Heated Rivalry

In general I liked the show well enough. And let me repeat that I’m very glad that the show like that is so popular. And I for sure will be rewatching the 3rd episode a few more times in the future. And the ending of episode 5, of course. And Scott/Kip tag on AO3 makes me very happy, too. 😊

Minor spoilers for the finale here.

Scott’s speech made me teary-eyed. And I really liked Shane’s talk with his mom after his parents found out about him and Ilya. That was very well done and very touching.

I also finally finished reading Heated Rivalry the book. It was meh for me. And I found Ilya so annoying in the book. At least in the show Connor Storrie has charisma and charm that make Ilya’s annoyingness easier to swallow for me. But yes, I don’t really care for Shane and Ilya’s romance.

I started reading Tough Guy – Game Changers book number 3. I read five chapters for now, and it’s rather meh, too. But I will give it a few more chapters. And if I won’t like it more by then I’ll drop it and try the next book in the series.

And I’m still very in love with Kim Go Eun, and I’m in the middle of the 1st season of Yumi’s Cells, which is very sweet and fluffy, and such a relaxing watch. And I started The King Eternal Monarch rewatch (two episodes for now, still as entertaining as I remembered). I’m thinking I might try Goblin again next. I found it boring the first time I tried it a few years ago, and dropped it after watching four episodes. But maybe I’ll like it better this time? 😊

And I still have a few interesting Yuletide fics to read, but I wanted to rec two fics from those I’ve read so far. First one is a perfect post-canon fix it fic for a background couple from the Thai BL drama Dangerous Romance. And the second is a sweet and lovely and very touching post-canon fic for Some Like It Hot.

Man of Many Talents (12705 words)
Fandom: หัวใจในสายลม | Dangerous Romance (TV 2023)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Saifah Homchan/Name Thanadol Vattawut
Characters: Name Thanadol Vattawut, Saifah Homchan, Sailom Homchan, Kanghan Krittin Sukprasert
Additional Tags: Post-Prison, Home Improvement, First Time, Domestic Bliss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary:

Name goes to prison and then gets out of it. And just like he promised, Saifah is waiting.

Twice Over (6992 words)
Fandom: Some Like It Hot (1959)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Jerry "Daphne"/Osgood Fielding III, Jerry "Daphne" & Sugar Kane Kowalczyk
Characters: Jerry "Daphne", Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, Osgood Fielding III, Joe "Josephine"
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Found Family, Marriage Proposal, She/Her pronouns for Jerry "Daphne", Canon Compliant, Trans Character
Summary:

Three months after their escape from Miami, a girls’ day out with Sugar becomes a reminder of how drastically Daphne's life had changed since she and Joe had fled Chicago - and how much of a perfect dream it had become.

Or - Osgood wants to propose again, properly this time. Sugar helps.

rekishi

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paradisedinermod posting in

paradisediner

The regular weekly post for us to talk about any and all of our thoughts about the week's new releases.

Also - a reminder that our End of Year post is up!

Say My Name - UFO (ATTENT!ON)
Rolling Quartz - Masquerade
CNBLUE (pre-release)

New MVs are also added to an ongoing youtube playlist.

Last week's MVs: 22 December

Feel free to add new comments in the replies for songs/MVs we missed.

[ Rec Something Wednesday | WIP Wednesday | Monthly General Chat | Comment Fest ]

rekishi

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ysabetwordsmith posting in

fandomcalendar

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Current Mood: busy

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common_nature

3 for the Memories' 2025 session will be open for posts on January 3, 2026 and will run for 3 weeks until January 24. Event participation is as follows:

1) Three photos only per person during each annual session. Members are encouraged to discuss the reason for their choices.

2) Photos can be hosted at Dreamwidth or elsewhere, and should not be larger than 800 px width or height.

3) All three photos should be in the same post. Cut tags should be placed after the first photo.

3 for the Memories is not a competition, and entries are not being judged. Rather, participants are encouraged to share photos they took in 2025 that they find meaningful in some way or which represent how they experienced the year.

Questions? Visit the announcement post at

threeforthememories

shipperslist

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birdfeeding

Today is cloudy, windy, and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/28/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 12/28/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 12/28/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

It started raining, and the sky is weird colors, so I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

bluapapilio

[Official Site]

[Redeem Codes]

A Rainbow-Coloured Dream (Fina event):

It's always weird in these games when the MC starts talking for themselves with a personality you wouldn't necessarily choose when you're in control. Vita ribbing on Outsider so much is pretty funny though. X'D

Can't believe Vita took Fina outside without telling Outsider?? And she was 20 levels lower than the mobs, and Vita wasn't much help only using his sword.

I've always liked powers that can create from imagination, like Ronan's from The Raven Boys.

What were they doing with the kidnapped kids??

We didn't get all the details about what happened with the Glennvilles, I wonder if we'll get it with an Outsider quest?

Meeting Zhiliu:

*smh* That ticket seller in the theatre digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole. Hope he gets fired. "Thoughtless lips invite trouble." you mean loose lips ink ships? X'D

Lol why is Snow standing off to the side in the viewing box, there's plenty of room on the seat. How come it played Phantasio's singing when it was Violetta singing? They could've just played the melody without the voice.

Zhiliu's phoxichor sensor reacted to Vita? 🤔

I don't care one way or another for her design.

Current Mood: irate

shipperslist

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rekishi

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snickfic

You guys, I love Yuletide. So many things I can read, I got great gifts, people are reading what I wrote... incredible. Here, have some recs.

First, my gifts:
Endless Night, True Detective: Night Country, Danvers/Navarro, 4.6k. My author took my prompt "what if the sun didn't come back" and ran with it. Great apostalyptic vibe here, and my shiiiiip. <3

The Inheritance of Imogen Dearborn, Kyle Murchison Booth Stories, Booth/Ratcliffe, 13!!!!!k. Booth needs Ratcliffe's help with an acquisition at a decaying house in the country, and things get weird, as they so often do around Booth. I freaking love this fandom's dedication to casefic*, and this is a wonderful example of a case that's great on its own merits and all the better because the relationship growing around the edges. <3 <3 <3

(*I'm developing the theory that the KMB stories are basically the perfect canon for producing casefic: the canon is already a series of casefics, already in prose, and they're nearly all pretty short. Put that all together, and writers have the perfect model to work from.)

And now for the other fics I've loved so far:
boot error, Companion (2025), Iris gen, 2.6k. Iris confronts life without an operating system. It was great to see Iris here, trying to figure out exactly what it means to be a person when one's whole personality is made of code.

Written in squid ink, Kraken - China Mieville, Billy/Dane, 3k. Not everyone in the Church of the Kraken was blessed with a tattoo in squid ink, but Dane was one of the lucky few, and at a young age too. I loved seeing an interpretation of soulmate marks specifically for this canon, and I loved all of Dane's weird fantasies and fetishes and imagined acts of religious devotion, and how they all got tangled up together.

Touching the Moon, My Sister and the Prince, Marie gen, 4k. This is how it happened; and what happened, after. The canon is a short film that is incredibly compelling considering it's two actors on one set for a single scene. You should watch it and then read this structurally creative and heartwrenching answer to the question of what came next.

Hunger, Dragonriders of Pern, Kylara/Lessa, 2.7k. Both Lessa and Kylara are Searched for Nemorth's final clutch. This Kylara feels exactly right to me: scheming, focused on her own desires and ambitions, fully aware of her own strengths and at least some of the weaknesses of others, and above all with an eye for opportunity. And the actual events, brief though they, promise a very interesting future for this version of canon. :D

The day the riders came, Dragonriders of Pern, OC gen, 1.8k. What if the dragons of Pern and the Impression bond were anything *but* benevolent? Or, alternately: what if the dragons were Lovecraftian horrors? This gets so dark in the best way, and the last line is a knockout punch.

bluapapilio

Using my movies boardgame.

I completed 4/5 movies from my last challenge, the highest rated was booksmart at 4/5 stars. Not the funnest challenge, coulda been better but I'm not in the biggest mood for movies tbh.

Avatar:

Action (Tremors)
Skill: If you land on a tile you don't like: roll a dice, if even go forward one tile, if odd go back (doesn't work on the trap tile)

Roll #1

Heree we go again, a 7 which is the trap tile so I had to go back. Oh, a 12 now, ok. Prompt: weapon on the cover. I am going to chose based solely on the prompts versus my feelings because nothing will get chosen otherwise. Alright, there's a gun on the cover of Dust Bunny.

Roll #2

A 7, prompt: favorite genre (fantasy). ('24) The Little Mermaid,

Roll #3

A 4, generate from PTW tile. #64, Trunk - Locked In.

Roll #4

A 5, prompt: horror element. Beyond Loch Ness,

Roll #5

Reward: Flight of the Living Dead.

Movie PTW List:

[Thriller/Fantasy/Action] Dust Bunny
[Horror/Fantasy] '24 The Little Mermaid
[Thriller] Trunk - Locked In
[Mystery/Sci-Fi/Horror] Beyond Loch Ness
[Horror] Flight of the Living Dead

Current Mood: hot

bluapapilio

For my PTW challenge:

Dangerous Animals ('25): It might seem heavy-handed to some, like the part where she makes a joke that the worst spot on a dick is the man(?), and the part where the shark didn't attack her for some reason but then attacked the bad guy, but IDC, she and her boyfriend survived and that's more than most shark movies. If you didn't guess, the dangerous animals in question turned out to be men, not sharks. I'm not going to rate it because I skimmed some parts (like the part where she did things to her thumb to escape the cuff, ick). Honestly I'm not sure I was in the mood to watch this and that's why I skipped through.

Thirteen Lives ('22): The movie adaptation for the Thai cave rescue. I don't remember feeling so uncomfortable for the water scenes in the mini-series, I actually had to skip through most of them because they were too claustrophobic. It showed the Seal's death in explicit detail, too. The mini-series definitely fleshes out the characters more, especially the Thai ones but this adaptation had a lot of tension and fleshing out of the non-Thai characters. The boys are barely shown in the movie adaptation whereas we follow them a lot in the mini-series. I just found that while this was in production, another movie adaptation of the rescue came out and now I'm curious (it's higher rated, too). That's three adaptations! 2/5

A Perfect Getaway ('09): Multiple red herrings and a mid-movie twist. I skimmed because I'm so frickin' tired I can't handle too much tension, so I'll keep it on my PTW.

booksmart ('19): Some scenes really made me laugh, some made me WTF and others made me think. I'm glad I watched it! 4/5 stars

Lady Bird ('17): So this came out 2 years before booksmart, I didn't realize Beanie Feldstein was a main character in them both. I ended up having to DNF a third of the way through, I just wasn't connecting enough. I do relate to the resentment and even self-harm that resulted from it that Lady Bird was feeling towards her mom.