buffyversetop5 | Member Posts

Not a great year here.

Books

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Dumez - terrifying historical look at how we've gotten into this mess

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins - I couldn't put this one down.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame - I have wanted to read this for ages and am very happy I did. It's the definition of charming.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - I think I had my standards up way to high for this. It was good, but it didn't knock my socks off.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster - A reread, specifically of the actual book I read when I was a kid at the library because it turned up in a library book sale. Wonderfully wacky.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl - Another reread, but as it's one of my favorites, I just let it speak to me.

A Capitol Crime by Carolyn Keene - Audiobook. Mom and I listened to this one together. Some plot holes were present, but in general, it was good old Nancy Drew.

Movies

I didn't watch a single new movie this year. Nothing. I watched one episode of Echo, one of The Night Manager, and I saw Hello Dolly, The Sound of Music (twice), and Singin' in the Rain.

My attention span is broken. Things have been both stressful and massively depressing, and I don't know how much worse it will get in the future. I miss reading, but I keep starting a book, then putting it down and never going back to it. It seems the only ones I can get through are children's books or books I've read before, sometimes both. As for movies, I'm not even bothering with putting together an Oscars list for the first time this year because I have seen literally nothing. Again, I miss watching things I enjoy. I don't know why I won't let myself do that. I sit and stare at my phone or go down a YouTube rabbit hole. I'd like to change that in 2026.

ETA: I just looked at 2024's movies. They were the same few old movies again. No wonder I feel like my life is stuck on repeat.

bookishwench

Yes, I'm very late with this. At least I'm getting it done.

( 21 under the cut )

19 MCU
1 Where the Wild Things Are
1 Gunsmoke
1 Hunger Games
1 The Wind in the Willows
1 To Catch a Thief
1 It's a Wonderful Life

4 crossovers (all in Worlds of Chaos)

3 challenges (Yuletide, Mischief and Mistletoe, Sifki Week)

7 Warfrost Loki/Sif
6 Frostiron Tony/Loki
4 Gen
1 Matt Dillon/Kitty Russell
1 Loki/Kitty Russell
1 Haymitch/Lenore Dove
1 Coriolanus/Lucy Gray
1 Francie/John Robie

21 fics is right about in the middle for me. 2023 had that very, very weird 87, the lowest was 2013 with 5. Out of the 26 years I've been writing these, 15 of them had fewer than 21, one year had 21, and the other 10 had over 21, and 4 of those 10 over 21 were the previous four years (2020 was only 9). So not huge, but not bad either. I've already written 3 in 2026, which is more than last year at this point, so we'll see how that goes.

I also wrote in a few new fandoms: Wind in the Willows, Where the Wild Things Are, Gunsmoke (did a drabble once), and To Catch a Thief.

I hit 300 fics on A03 this year with Paternal Pride.

linky

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linky

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snickfic

Wuthering Heights (2026). Young woman is torn between her love for the best friend she grew up with and her wealthy new-money neighbor.

I enjoyed this a lot. Emerald Fennell's visual spectacle is always on point, and in particular the costumes and sets are fantastic. There are a bunch of amazing set pieces, and the artificiality of Linton's mansion and the wardrobe he gives Cathy vs the organic squalor of her home and childhood were really effective IMO in contrasting several different binaries at once. I loved every single ridiculous dress. I was also really into Cathy and Heathcliff's starcrossed love. Heathcliff is so gone on her, and even when he's trying to be manipulative, he mostly comes across as desperate. (When he approaches Linton's ward Isabela in hopes of making Cathy jealous, he is the most gentlemanly ravisher you have ever met.) And Cathy is clearly equally gone on him, even if she gets in her own way sometimes.

I think the script could have used some work. For one thing, several secondary characters' motivations were left as exercises to the viewer (Cathy's father and especially her companion Nelly); like yes, I can form theories about why they did what they did, but maybe a little less subtlety here is in order. Also, just to make Cathy and Heathcliff feel a bit more complex as characters and/or to just make their relationship more toxic or at least complicated. Honestly, my main criticism here is that Fennell, against all expectations and especially considering her work on Saltburn, doesn't go nearly as weird and batshit as the story could support. The visuals yes, the character dynamics no.

Overall, though, a good time. I ship it and immediately went looking for fic. (There were 15 fics in the tag, half from before the movie even came out, and half the new ones were crossovers. RIP.)

--

The Tunnel (2011). An Australian mockumentary about a news crew that goes into abandoned subway tunnels underneath Sydney looking for a story.

I'm always interested in mockumentary horror, as opposed to your standard found footage, so I was excited to check this out. Unfortunately, the longer I sit with it, the less I like it. First of all, the whole point of the mockumentary aspect is to add depth, context, and contrast to the found footage, but IMO the interview clips here were almost extraneous. There were one or two nice moments, like when they have the anchor listen for the first time to what another crew member in the tunnels had heard through his head phones, but there was very little else that we couldn't have gotten from the found footage itself. The news investigation framing all felt a little off as well; the supposed pretext for going into the tunnels feels a little overheated. "Politicians fail to give updates on big proposal" does not feel like the red flag for a huge scandal, and various other aspects that were treated as potentially newsworthy just weren't, IMO. Also, surely the most terrifying part of underground horror is the threat of getting lost? I was astounded by how little a concern this was in the movie, even when they were running around without any care whatsoever for where they were.

What really killed this for me, though, was the gender politics. As with so many found footage type movies, there's one female character, the news anchor, and everyone else is male. (Why is this????) There are repeated assertions from the guys both in the found footage and the interview segments that the anchor doesn't know what she's doing, doesn't deserve her position, and probably is fucking the station director. And what do you know, they're right, several people die because of her ambition and poor judgment, not to mention how she goes into crying hysterics several times. In 2011!! Just brutal.

There's a behind the scenes doc about the movie that I managed to watch five minutes of, and before I turned it off, it was entirely about what genius fundraisers the creators were, and how they "disrupted" the Australian film funding model by "inventing NFTs before they were big." (They raised funds by ~selling frames of the movie to donors.) So... yeah.

The movie isn't entirely without merit; there's some great found footage moments. If you just want to watch people stumble around underground being chased by unknown monsters, you could do worse. But a very qualified rec.

--

Prince of Darkness (1987). Per Shudder, this John Carpenter movie "follows a group of quantum physics students in Los Angeles who are asked to assist a Catholic priest in investigating an ancient cylinder of liquid discovered in a monastery, which they come to find is a sentient, liquid embodiment of Satan."

NGL, I watched this because I really really wanted to see a movie about the liquid embodiment of Satan, and now I have, I guess. This was just bad. There are some memorable moments; I loved the dripping fluid floating upwards and that the canister (OF FLUID) was locked to "only open from the inside." The dream transmissions for the future were honestly rad. The bugs and creepy-crawlies everwhere were really effective sometimes. There's also a fun sense of claustrophobia as the night goes on and things close in around the characters. Also, frankly, the devil and Jesus as extraterrestials who came to take over and warn Earth, respectively, was neat! I wish the movie had gone harder on that!

OTOH, the eventual romance began with the guy being such a creeper that I was sure he was being set up as a villain, and then he's a big old sexist to her right before he asks her out, and I hated that. The demon instapregnancy was so predictable and tedious. One of the guys repeatedly has homophobic comments made to and by him, and also he's weirdly racist to one of the girls, and this is all for no apparent reason except as a characterization note. And overall the movie was just slow and lacking in charm. I would love to see this exact premise from someone who was actually good at writing characters.

I definitely wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they were interested in specific elements of the plot or if they're a John Carpenter completionist.

ffutures

I've signed a good few online petitions over the years - but there are some I won't sign because there's only a very brief summary of the text and a "sign this petition" button. I've now set up a petition asking for it to be compulsory for all sites with online petitions to link to the full text of petitions without having to click a "sign this petition" button.

Needless to say the link they have sent me DOESN'T say that it's a link to the text, rather than making you sign, but I've checked and it does just link to the petition page.

Want to be the second to sign? Press the link below if you dare... And yes, I know that there's a missing "to" in the title of the petition, I noticed too late and can't change it...

Press Me

kazzy_cee

Yesterday was a chilly day here in the South East of the UK, but we braved the freezing cold wind and lower temperatures (4ºC/39ºF, although it felt colder) and headed out to the train station. We walked up to the British Museum from Charing Cross station. It's about a mile, so it took about 20 minutes, as we had to stop frequently to wait for the traffic lights to change on all the roads.

The exhibition charted the history of the Samurai from its beginnings as a fierce warrior class known as 'bushi' in the medieval period, which moved on to gain political standing by the 1100s. This then moved on to become an elite social class from the early 1600s. By the late 19th century, the hereditary status of the Samurai was abolished, and the 'way of the warrior' (bushido) became the driving force behind their military exploits. By the 20th century, the myth of the Samurai had become idealised and crossed over into the West, where it was incorporated into film and graphic novels, and even influenced fashion.

There were a lot of exhibits ranging from armour, weapons, art, everyday items, woodblock prints, and examples of how the Samurai lived and governed during the height of their power, right up to the way the myths still influence present-day Japan and beyond.

Noguchi Tetsuya Duck and Man mixed media sculpture (2025), more of what caught my eye under the cut!

( Read more... )

I've hardly touched on what was in the exhibition - it's a fascinating and very detailed history of the samurai, and well worth visiting. It closes on 4th May.

linky

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ffutures

This is another fantasy bundle described as an "old-school hexcrawl campaign," in which the characters are given a ship and a dead master, and have to make the best of things: "You were thralls. Now your master lies dead in the bottom of a raiding vessel, equipped for adventure. You are free."

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/WolvesCoast

This probably isn't for me - I've more or less given up on fantasy games completely, and if I was to come back to them I'd probably be looking for something more exotic. I'm also trying very hard not to laugh at one of the three islands that are the heart of the campaign, which for some reason is named Ruislip - for those outside the UK, ours is a suburb of London just to the north of Heathrow airport...

Having said that, this looks playable if you like this sort of thing, it's just not my cup of tea.

linky

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Current Music: La Freak - Chic

thawrecka

新年快乐！

I meant to post yesterday but I've been feeling a bit tired and rundown this past week. Hopefully better by the weekend - I have lunar new year celebrations and a friend's birthday to get to. Not to mention my book club tomorrow night!

Things watched recently:

• Seven episodes of Isekai Office Worker: The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, an isekai BL anime about an accountant accidentally ending up in a fantasy world, reforming the royal accounts department, getting hooked on magical energy drinks it turns out he's allergic to... and being saved from an overdose by a handsome young knight in the world's silliest fuck-or-die scenario. And then continuing to make political waves with his accounting!!! power, which is just so satisfying to watch. DAMN THAT MAN LOVES TO ACCOUNTS. The subtitle of the show is correct, the other world's book do indeed depend on the bean counter, and not everyone is happy about him tracking their spending... I'm having so much fun with this! It's funny, but also in a strange way an office worker power fantasy, but also there's political fallout for everything and that feels right, too. Once the season's over I'll have to track down the books.

• All of season one of Lord of Mysteries, first in Chinese, and now I'm watching the English dub. I really will have to track down the novels, the first of which is already out in translation here (apparently the second is out elsewhere in the world but doesn't arrive in Australia until next month?? sigh). I'm hoping to track down that book tomorrow night, if the book store that claims to have a copy really does.

This is also a transmigration story, but it's a steampunk-y horror transmigration fantasy. The main character ends up in a world where people take potions to cultivate into eldritch monsters, basically. He spends the first episode bewildered (and so did I hahaha) but pretending he has any clue what's going on, and I think one of my favourite things is how both his Chinese voice actor and English voice actor give him the kind of voice that can trick you into thinking he's almost a totally normal guy... and then you step back and look at the facts and you're just like, wtf, Klein! He's a great character, but I also like a lot of the supporting cast; my favourite character is actually Leonard, a guy who once fell down a flight of stairs because he was distracted reading a book (relatable). Leonard regularly tries to act cool and mysterious at Klein, who keeps calling Leonard a weirdo instead of being impressed, and I'm very entertained.

I do have... extremely mixed feelings... about the evil secret sect of people who take potions that make them women which gives them more powers to do more evil things, and by mixed feelings I think that has very unfortunate implications but they are all unfortunately also so sexy.

• I watched the remaining episodes of Betrothed to my Sister's Ex, a really charming cinderella story type anime I started last year. Which is actually really good. I appreciate that it doesn't just have the charming romance of Marie coming to be loved by rich handsome dweeb Kyros and everyone else in the castle, as well as slowly learning to love herself, it also deals with how she and her younger sister were abused by their family in different ways, and the ending is a happy escape for both of them. I really liked it!

• I also finished This Monster Wants to Eat Me, a subtly yuri-flavoured anime about the main character's suicidal depression, and the monsters that would prefer her not to die, actually. And like, it really is very good, but it is also so heavy so it makes sense it took a while for me to finally get to the final episodes.

• Cosmic Princess Kaguya (2026), truly the superior of the animated lesbian space princess movies I've watched so far this year. It does zip through plot very fast, so it's not without flaw, but I loved this lesbian sci fi take on the tale of the bamboo cutter, and the scissoring handshake is just an A+ detail. Great songs, a lot of fun.

• Which means Lesbian Space Princess (2025) is the lesser animated lesbian space princess movie I've seen this year. The songs are okay. I was stunned to learn after the fact that the homophobic blokey spaceship was voiced by Richard Roxburgh. It is sometimes funny. The best joke was the Maliens and the thespian. I don't regret watching it, but like... eh.

• Scarlet (2025): Wow, it's amazing how IMAX can make a bad film worse. I didn't realise before going to see it that this was an AU version of Hamlet where Hamlet is a girl who meets a handsome Japanese man from the present day in the afterlife, so that was... strange. It's uh not good. Some of the emotional stuff would have worked better if those scenes had not been dragged out, and a lot of the animation is TV quality limited animation. Morally incoherent, which is a feat because it's so thin and slight. The bit with the imagined Shibuya dance sequence is uh... I don't even know. That sure was a film I watched.

adafrog

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yourlibrarian

1) Apparently I never mentioned here that my partner and I went to see The Harlem Globetrotters last month. He said he'd always wanted to see them. It turned out to be different from what we expected. ( Read more... )

2) I also tend to work on a lot of jigsaw puzzles in December and January. It's nice to sit by the sunny window and watch TV in the background while working on them. I've now put away the jigsaw board and sold off the puzzles, but Ahsoka and Grogu were a favorite ( Read more... )

3) I was listening to the Mutant Enemy Writer's Room Reunion recorded on March 17, 2015. Over 10 years ago now, but at the time it was already a decade on from the ending of all the Mutant Enemy shows. It was a really interesting listen, in terms of how those shows were written vs. the writers' experiences on other shows (especially broadcast network shows). But it also amazed me how, while rewrites were apparently rare, it was also not at all unusual that scripts were unfinished even as episodes were being filmed. ( Read more... )

4) In recent months I've been listening to a radio show from the 50s and 60s that does a variety of non-rock/pop tunes, as opposed to stuff like mambos, sambas, novelty songs, and other stuff that doesn't tend to make oldies' playlists. Sometimes they have TV theme songs in there too. Not sure I'd heard the Route 66 theme before, but the version I was listening to sounded like The Simpsons theme in that the main repeated phrase was similar. Made me eyebrow raise a little since it's one of the most profitable show themes ever written.

5) The recent Fansplaining article The Success of Heated Rivalry Should Not Be a Surprise contains other surprises. For one, the author is bewildered by most articles on the show covering (for the 1 millionth time) the "women interested in gay sex" aspect, and then also why there are so many more connections to Asian BL fandoms rather than more close-to-home slash fandoms including RPF fandoms. ( Read more... )

Poll #34232 Kudos Footer-557

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ffutures

Underground and aerial fantasy adventures from Aaron A. Reed, the second edition of Downcrawl (going downwards) adding Skycrawl, for the upwardly mobile.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Downcrawl

I'm probably not going to find this useful, but if you run fantasy adventures it may be worth a look - it's cheap and seems to have some fun ideas.

maidenjedi

Husband went to bed feeling crappy and woke up certain he has the flu.

So I'm in the process of changing all the plans this week. Making meetings virtual, finding the masks I stashed in the house in case anyone absolutely must interact with someone this week, changing my daughter's lesson schedule, you name it. No one else has any symptoms but I feel like I need to get critical things done now in case I'm knocked down at some point. I would rather not be worried about my boss' social media if I'm running a fever and needing sleep, you know?

Air filter running, humidifiers newly cleaned, Emergen-C purchased, and my pressure campaign to get my husband to do a virtual doctor's appointment is underway.

I really fucking hate how efficient we all are now about illness, if I'm honest.

-

In totally unrelated news, the padawan got to watch Titanic last night and these were her initial take-aways:

1 - Actually a horror movie
2 - “Mom, WHY did you see this so many times* in the theater?!”
3 - Ismay was the villain
4 - She will never listen to Celine Dion again

* It was 9 times. Once on a date, next time with my best friend, and the rest with male friends who wanted to see it but didn't want to admit to their friends that they did.

She did tell me this morning that while the awful parts of the sinking kept her awake for awhile last night, this morning she's only thinking about the romance, so it didn't totally scar her for life, lol.

linky

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snickfic

Worry, Don't Panic, Over Trump's Efforts to Subvert the Elections by Andy Craig. A nice summary of Trump's possible angles of attack and their plausibility. Worth sharing with folks who think Trump is going to cancel the midterm election.

Stop Bullying J Cole (YouTube) by FD Signifier. I basically only know J Cole as the guy who stepped into the Drake vs Kendrick beef and then hurriedly stepped back out, but this made me feel a little defensive of him. I appreciate the uncool earnestness.

kazzy_cee

Yesterday afternoon, we went on a walk to see some of the many statues in the City of London. The theme of the walk was 'Diverse London - City Public Art by Refugees and Immigrants' and focused on the stories behind the art produced by first-generation refugees and immigrants to the UK. London has always been a home to immigrant communities, and whole areas of the city were built by those finding their homes here, so it's not surprising that we also have wonderful artists who have left their mark.

The day was drizzly and wet, but I took photos of the examples we saw, along with some of the other sculptures we passed, which form the Sculpture in the City trail. Under the cut for the photos and some history of the City of London area.

( Read more... )

I really enjoy walking around when there's a theme to the walk, and it was fascinating to see so many sculptures in the City of London by people who have moved here for whatever reason. It was a shame about the weather, but I'm glad we went.

linky

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maidenjedi

Howdy Spacer! So excited to be a part of the

space_swap exchange this year and thrilled that we matched on one of these fandoms.

I put some general ideas in my sign-up already and I'll put them below as well, but my general likes/dislikes/DNWs are:

Likes: character pieces, thoughtful world-building, plot that explores alternate beginnings and endings. Angst with happy or at least resolved endings. Closed door sex but public flirting and maybe even some cheeky foreplay. Dialogue. Apocalypse is always fun. Platonic relationships that have weight. In Star Wars, political intrigue, bureaucracy as both the intrinsic evil and ultimate downfall of the Empire (and yet a tool used by the Rebellion and New Republic!), canon pairings, non-canon or offscreen meet-cutes, and you can be as heavy or as light with Force mythology as you like. In Marvel, effects of the "blip"/snap are hugely important to me, especially how the trauma of time lost or time without loved ones is still something everyone is dealing with.

Dislikes/DNWs: alternate settings unless requested (I don't really like modern AUs, for example), explicit sex of any kind, real-world politics unless it's a real-world property to begin with. Non-requested character deaths. Canon-typical violence is fine, gore or unnecessary/gratuitous violence is not. In Star Wars, I would prefer not to take the characters out of the Star Wars Universe. Would prefer characters not use the Force for coercive sex. In Marvel, strongly prefer canon relationships unless otherwise stated.

( Specific thoughts on requests by fandom )

linky

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linky

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ffutures

Yesterday I was wondering if I should sell on my USB Zip drive and remaining disks (100 and 250 megabyte capacity) because they're too small and unreliable to be useful and I last needed to recover data from one about a decade ago. But I decided against it for the same reason I always do - if I ever need it it would cost a small fortune to get a replacement.

And as if by magic, today's

daily_illuminator_feed has a link to someone's project to build a USB drive based on bubble memory with a staggering 128 bits of memory. For comparison, the first three words of this post, with spaces and the space after the third word, are 16 characters = 128 bits, the whole capacity of the drive... which looks larger than the main board of most computers!

The Illuminator post is here - https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-02-12

The project is here - https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/02/a-128-byte-core-memory-module-as-a-flash-drive-raspberry_pi/

adafrog

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linky

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Current Mood: proud

ffutures

This is a repeat offer of the cyberpunk RPG Neon City Overdrive from Peril Planet, last offered in May 2022

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2026NeonCity

Last time I said "Since I received this at about midnight and it only runs for a week I haven't had much time to take a detailed look. It's a system that looks reasonably playable, it's drawing on all the usual cyberpunk sources, and it's pretty cheap. I'm not sure I actually NEED another cyberpunk game, given how many I already own, but if you just want to dip your toes in the water I think it's worth a look. The usual caveat - I get to see this stuff without having to pay for it, if you don't your mileage may differ."

Since then I've taken a more detailed look - artwork is good (and credited to humans, not AI), and mostly avoids the tropes of the genre. Layout is a bit flashy but readable, and there is an emphasis on story-telling rather than rules. I think it's definitely a good one for a quick look at the genre.

snickfic

(This and the writing post were all going to be one post, but then I had so many Oasis things to say...)

+ LOL Noel won Songwriter of the Year at the Brit Awards for 2025, the first year in probably twenty or so when he did not release a single song. The Brit Awards also happen to be in Manchester this year. Did they give Noel the award to get him to Manchester? Did they put the awards in Manchester because they already planned to give him the award (since it clearly didn't depend on any work he actually produced last year)?

And most importantly: Is Liam going? His answer has varied, but the most recent one seems to be yes. In any case he definitely approves.

+ And they're definitely still talking. :') Here's Noel calling into his favorite sports show.

Noel: Our…our…our kid thinks we’re still.. Our kid thinks we’re gonna win the quad.

Andy: Honestly hand on heart, he does?

Noel: Well, that’s what he was telling me last night.

(And he says he's in the studio!!!!!)

+ Speaking of Noel in the studio, here's what Liam had to say about that. Don't tease us Liam!!

+ One last Liam tweet to send you off. ;____;

snickfic

+ I thought I might not be able to finish anything for Candy Hearts, but I got a new idea at the last minute, and when I read it over again today, I'm pretty happy with it, actually. Yay.

+ In a fit of optimism, I signed up to finish one of my Oasis WIPs for

crackthewip.

+ I also managed to write a thing for Bulletproof. Granted I wrote most of it at the end of December, so it doesn't even count as this year's writing, but I'm glad to have maintained my Bulletproof streak.

+ Anyway, NO MORE EXCHANGE SIGNUPS. I mean it this time. >:(

kerk_hiraeth

TITLE: Love in translation [for Halfamoon 2026]

AUTHOR: kerk hiraeth

FANDOM: Buffy the Vampire Slayer;

RATING: NC-17;

LENGTH: 650;

CHARACTER(s): Kennedy; Tara Maclay;

SHIP(s): Willow/Kennedy (future); Tara Maclay (past;

SUMMARY: Translating people's love language can, on occasion, make the Kobiyashi Maru look easy.

A/N: Still not sure I have a handle on which Buffyverse of mine this belongs in but, given the date when the Rupi Kaur poetry rupikaur.com/pages/milk-and-honey-books was published the earliest date for this scene is 2015. That, at least, fits in with the fic I posted for Day One's The Innocent Prompt.

“Hair, “

Ignoring by the sound of her locker door being closed Kennedy; not bothered enough to cover herself, simply continued to towel herself down as she walked out of the showers.

She came to a sharp stop when she saw who was waiting there though.

Sat right in front of her locker.

She was just sat there.

Studying her.

Checking her out?

She barely moved as Kenn advanced on her carefully, until she was standing over her antagonist.

Bitch actually licked her lips; not bothering to pretend where she was looking, just slid out of Kenn's way so the slayer could get to her locker.

Instead of her underwear Kenn turned from her locker with a note 'twixt her fingers.

Why the fuck had phrase it like that?

“You were saying? “ She asked out loud.

Brazenly licking her lips again, Tara Maclay raised her eyes to meet Kennedy's before she stood; staring right into them.

''hair

if it was not supposed to be there

would not be growing

on our bodies in the first place''

Whatever that was supposed to mean had nothing to do with the obvious.

“Thus spake zarathustra, “ Kenn responded, at which Tara grinned.

Kenn had the feeling she had somehow passed some kind of test. Unable to stop herself she glanced down at her groin.

“You approve?”

Dilated pupils notwithstanding her antagonist said nothing, simply leaning in and laying a kiss on the Kennedy's cheek; away from the fingers holding the note.

Inaudibly, but for proximity, she simply stated, “She lied to you.”

She knew.

Then her eyes seemed to go quiet and she started to walk away.

Just as she appeared about to reach for the handle of the inner door she turned her head slightly; enough for Kenn to see a deeply saddened, melancholic, smile on her face.

“I didn't...”

Tara turned her face toward Kennedy; eyes looking pained and resigned.

“Take care of her. “

She spoke as softly she had when Kenn could feel her breath, but Kenn could hear her clearly.

“I don't understand why she'd want you to believe she was cheating.”

She snorted, or tried to stifle a laugh; Kenn couldn't tell for sure.

She couldn't find the words either.

Why... why would she?

Then Tara was standing right in front of her; reaching out and pinching the note from her fingers. Staring deep into Kennedy's eyes she unfolded the note; turned it text facing her and returned it to Kennedy's hand,

“She's not my problem anymore.”

Take care of her.

For me.

Kenn watched her; speechless, walk funereal over to the inner door.

Take care of her.

For myself?

Grasping the handle; door opening, Tara seemed to be pausing.

Considering.

Fascinated, Kenn watched the decision being processed.

She was still caught by surprise.

“You never stop loving her.”

Statement?

Warning?

Kennedy couldn't tell if she was even the one Tara was talking to.

Tara opened the door and, before she closed it behind her looked Kennedy in the eye again.

“Oxford.

Near Lady Margaret's Hall.

She won't listen, but tell her not to contact me.

I - I'll do that when I am ready.”

As she turned away for the final time she spoke once more.

“I broke up with her months ago...

and

Green?”

Then she shrugged and closed the door with a final wink and a smirk.

Kenn heard her ~ was she skipping? ~ walk away down the corridor to the outer door.

She was whistling.

Kenn had never heard her whistle.

Not recognising the tune*; sounded mediaeval, she found herself committing it to memory.

If Tara was sending her a message she probably needed to decipher this entire locker room talk.

She understood why this quiet, startlingly unassuming, woman commanded such fierce, and unswerving, loyalty at least.

When she gave in to the need to breathe the silence, interrupted, was suddenly deafening.

Kenn finally took a look at the note.

Whatever it meant it was not for her.

“losing you

was the becoming

of myself”

Kennedy let out a loud snort and glanced downward.

“Tell me something.

¿Por qué decidí teñirte?”

Goddess watch over you,

Rupi Kaur
~ foreword note,
'the poems
they're falling out of me
like Rain.'

(April 3rd, 2014. 10.33 pm)

{ right now I feel like I know what she meant }

kerk

* This www.youtube.com/watch is the tune that Tara is whisling at the end. Read into that what you choose.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: USS Rattray
Current Music: Paralyzed by NF (SKAM France S6 fanvid)

yourlibrarian

1) It's surprising to me that it's been a month since I last posted...here. I have been posting every week in communities, but simply haven't completed some write ups and reviews I wanted to make.

However speaking of communities,

marchmetamatterschallenge will be starting up again on March 1. If you've written meta, join in and copy your meta over to an additional location for both discovery and safekeeping! More details at the community link.

2) We were watching Colbert and his wife Evie was on. For Valentine's Day they read through her 12 year old writings about what she considered the perfect guy for her. Among her notes was that he should be "all man." This made my partner remember an event in hockey where a player was placed in the penalty box because his team had too many players on the ice. The TV caption however, as they showed him sitting there was "Too much man." I found this hilarious.

3) I daresay the article Stop Meeting Students Where They Are is relevant to various readers here. They key to me is that (a) younger online users are starting to intentionally reduce their time there, and ( Read more... )

4) Love how the same people scolding audiences for preferring to watch movies at home, don't go to the cinema even when it's free. "The Academy has long hosted screenings of Oscar-hopefuls for its members throughout the year in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York and London, and then again after the announcement of the Oscar nominations.

But in recent years — particularly over the seven years since the Academy introduced its members-only streaming service, the Academy Screening Room, through which members can watch films at home — attendance at all of these screenings has markedly declined.... “an average of five members attended these screenings in the last two years,” ...which reportedly cost the organization thousands of dollars a pop. So the Academy decided to save resources by eliminating them altogether." Aside from the Academy members can view movies on the big screen at the many showings hosted by the nominating studios. They just choose not to, just like most other viewers.

5) We finished watching Bodkin, which I will agree was an interesting view, though I had trouble getting into it, primarily because I was not fond of any of the main characters. A few episodes in the mystery was developing and I was fairly satisfied with how that unfolded and its complexity.

My big problem was that Netflix had labeled this "Comedy." ( Read more... )

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linky

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Current Mood: frustrated

kerk_hiraeth

TITLE: When the clouds are in your shoes [Halfamoon 2026]

AUTHOR: kerk hiraeth

FANDOM: Firefly {post- Serenity the Movie};

LENGTH: 425;

CHARACTER(s): Zoë Alleyne; River Tam; Jayne Cobb; Oc (Saisyu Washburne);

SUMMARY: allpoetry.com/Here-Is-A-Wound-That-Never-Will-Heal,-I-Know by Edna St. Vincent Millay {No words that I can find would summarise this story better}

A/N: This was inspired by halfamoon's Big Damn Admin cmk418's Day 5 Firefly fic halfamoon.dreamwidth.org/567034.html ; mind was too busy writing stories in my head, including this one.

It's also inspired by the idea that when the show ended Zoë was unknowingly waiting to meet that beautiful baby she was talking to Wash about. This idea seemed to fit the post-movie Firefly better so there we are.

The title was inspired by the poem linked above and two songs Abba's 'Hole in your Soul' genius.com/Abba-hole-in-your-soul-lyrics and Nat King Cole's Smile genius.com/Nat-king-cole-smile-lyrics; all three came to mind while I was seeking a new opening line.

He'd never done it, but she imagined knocking the Shepherd to the floor for saying it.

Zoë watched River and Jayne; like co-parenting siblings, playing with 'lil Wash as she happily escaped one or the other's grasp.

A walking and talking knife in her soul.

Reminder of what her life had stolen from her.

A life she had chosen.

Until she had first held that child to her chest she had never truly known pain; not through the war; not when Tracey had died from the bullets they had carried; not even when the battle fever had finally ebbed away and she'd put on that gorram dress.

She had finally understood the pain her Captain; her Sergeant; her comrade; her friend had felt losing his faith. The moment the door had closed on the quarters she now shared with their baby she felt a pain she had foolishly imagined she was prepared for.

“Mā mī!”

Knife twisting in gaping hole where her heart had been, she hunkered down and gathered the waddling, giggling, chubby bundle of laughter in her arms.

She buried the pain deep; 'lil Wash would never know his face; never see her smile reflected in his eyes; never feel his warmth; never groan at his humor; never hear his voice.

She'd never know how much he could annoy her; nor understand her love for him every time she so riled at him she'd yell to bust her lungs.

Zoë could almost see him snickering the first time this tiny creature broke her calm and got herself yelled at the way she'd yell at him.

She could almost hear him too; thoughts interrupted, she looked up as Jayne lay a hand on her shoulder and she returned the invisible smile he had on his face that made him look so much like the preacher.

Her eyes closed before her gaze fell on River's expression but she knew it was telling her she would heal one day.

As much as she imagined River lying on the floor next to Shepherd Book, she knew she didn't want to heal.

She didn't want his memory ever to fade to where she didn't feel that pain.

That pain kept her man alive.

She found herself anticipating the day this child got her so riled up she wanted to shout at her just as she would her father.

She wanted to see him smiling at their child the way he smiled at her after a fight.

She wanted to see him in their child; their little girl; their Saisyu.

Goddess be with you,

天下無不散之筵席 { There is no such thing as a feast that never ends }

kerk

"Saisyu" most commonly refers to the Japanese word 最終 (saishū), meaning "last," "final," or "closing". In this case it is a compound name, 'Sai' being Cantonese for 'Wash' and Syu the Cantonese for 'Book'.

Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
But of a love turned ashes and the breath
Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
Its friendly weathers down, far Underneath
Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.
That April should be shattered by a gust,
That August should be levelled by a rain,
I can endure, and that the lifted dust
Of man should settle to the earth again;
But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
Between my ribs forever of hot pain.

{Edna St. Vincent Millay}

Current Mood: groggy
Current Location: USS Rattray
Current Music: Meaning by Cascadeur (fanvid for SKAM France S6)

ffutures

This is a bundle of two-player RPGs for Valentine's day, the fourth such offer from Bundle of Holding. They come from a variety of authors and publishers, genres range from Georgian romance to far future exploration and horror

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ForTwo4

This isn't really my preferred style of play - I prefer a larger pool of players - but if you like a more intimate approach to gaming the bundle is pretty cheap and may be worth a look. My personal favourite from these is probably Retired: The Ordinary Life of a Former Supervillain, which looks like it could be a lot of fun, and might be expanded to a larger group of characters, but several others look entertaining.

snickfic

The Housemaid (2025). A recently released felon (Sidney Sweeney), takes a job as a housemaid in hopes of stabilizing her life, but lady of the house Nina (Amanda Seyfried) is abusive and unstable, and things escalate.

This is once again Paul Feig directing a dumb enjoyable trashy thriller about woman, following the Simple Favor movies with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. Glad you found your niche, dude! Keep it up! I think parts of this might be even dumber than A Simple Favor, and it didn't matter at all. The plotholes are gaping, and we do not care, because we are here for women who Survive and ultimately Fuck Shit Up, and that is what we get.

Also like A Simple Favor, there's a husband, although at least here he's plot-relevant.

( spoilers for that )

In addition to being dumb as fuck (affectionate?), I will say this movie would have been better if maybe 20 mins of it had been cut. The middle kind of dragged.

Interestingly, this was a slow burn success at the box office; I think it's up to about $335M worldwide, which is huge for a little thriller like this. I foresee a sequel in our future, and honestly I'm here for it.

--

Iron Lung (2026). An adaptation of an indie video game, this is about a convict sent below an ocean of blood in a tiny submarine to look for... stuff.

This movie was self-funded, directed, and edited by Youtuber Markiplier, who stars. For all that, it's a pretty credible first effort. There's a lot of great atmosphere, and things go full Sam Raimi in the end in a way I enjoyed.

OTOH, I felt it really struggled with pacing and flow of information. Sometimes I had to infer key facts (like "what is his objective through the entire middle of the film") from stuff said way after the fact. Even worse, nearly all the exposition is delivered via distorted radio, and it was very frustrating to have the sense there was important stuff that I wanted to know that I straight up couldn't hear properly. There's also just too much plot and backstory and lore here for a movie with this little dialogue. The video game is barely an hour and has no characters; we don't need most of this!

Fellow youtuber hbomberguy (of the James Somerton plagiarism video fame) posted quite a long letterboxd review and made some points I appreciated, especially that Markiplier probably feels a certain personal connection to the idea of sitting in a small room trying to do an ill-defined job while unsure of one's purpose. Overall, though, my feelings align more closely with my charts guy Dan Murrell's take.

Anyway, I hope this movie is a gateway to more people discovering indie horror films. There's so much stuff out there, and a lot of it's good and weird and trying new things, like this is.

--

Whistle (2026). Some teens, including newcomer Chris (Dafne Keene) and future doctor Ellie (Sophie Nelisse) blow an ancient death whistle that causes their fated deaths to happen early, one by one.

That description does not make it sound like a good movie, and in fact it isn't, but it was trying harder than these kinds of dumb supernatural slashers often are. The cast is all very charming; I have a huge crush on Nelisse, it was great to see Keene again, now all grown up (she was Laura Kinney in Logan), and honestly all the main teens are likable, even the obligatory asshole jock. Nick Frost and Michelle Fairley are also here! Frost in particular is very fun and I wanted more of him.

There are various notes (Chris's past drug use, cousin Rel's nerdy comics obsession) that clearly were trying to add up to something. With several more rounds of script edits, this could have been this year's Clown in a Cornfield: a surprisingly charming teen slasher, greater than the sum of its parts, and with a sweet queer romance. For the first forty minutes or so, I had real hope! The setup was good!

Unfortunately this movie didn't get those edits, so it sort of tries to say something about dying and living, but also people's "deaths" are disfigured versions of themselves gleefully chasing them to ground like cats playing with their food. The cousin feels like three different characters in a trench coat. There's a time paradox thing going on with Chris's future death that just confuses the issue. It does have a queer romance, and you could argue that seeing Keene and Nelisse finally kiss is worth the price of admission, but I found it underbaked. There's also a drug dealing youth pastor with a switch blade for some reason.

Unlikely as it is with a premise this dumb, this could and should have been better.

adafrog

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nondenomifan

I'm getting ready to post the next challenge in

fandom10in30, but I need sample icons for the theme. The theme is "Hearts N Flowers." If you have icons you think fit the theme or can steer me toward some, please comment with image and unformatted link on this post.

Remember: The above-mentioned community does not consider stock alone fandom. Sorry, but that rule was created before I agreed to help moderate.

Anyone who helps will get thanked in the community post, and the icon makers will get proper credit (of course!).

Thank you in advance for any help.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Men's Figure Skating, Primetime on Peacock (USA)

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