see punk run

So I posted my Star Trek fic: Maybe He's Born With It (Maybe It's GlaxosEpsilonYor)!!

Going by file dates I started that one in 2020, so compared to all my other wips, it was relatively new. It took a lot of writing to finish because when I started it was really just a couple of paragraphs and then five handwritten pages. I quickly had a first draft, but it needed a lot of editing to connect the themes and refine Jim's voice. It's at the very start of his career as a captain and he's still a hot bro-y mess, and even though I found myself resisting his self-centeredness, I needed his actions to reflect that selfishness, and I think I hit a good balance of bro and personal growth. He can be taught! Spock, of course, is perfect. No notes.

Next up in my endless list of neglected WIPs: It should be my Pinto fic—which, as I recall, is all but done except for the last lines, fuck you, last lines—but instead, it's the G-rated Stargate Atlantis kink_bingo non-sexual knifeplay fic about an extinct Satedan fruit. I gotta be me.

Looks like I last opened this in 2011 and it's basically complete. Let's gooooo.

A quirky, stylish, and emotional Japanese movie about food, a woman determined make the best ramen she can, and also, in its own way, a Western, as a handsome drifter rides into town, starts a (noodle) bar fight, and shakes up the complacent townsfolk. This was wild and wonderful. It mainly focuses on the owner of the ramen shop—the titular Tampopo—and the band of weirdos she accrues to help her improve her cooking and her business, but while it's doing that it also weaves in short vignettes about the ways other people connect with, and through, food. Recommended!

Contains: lingering shots of food and people eating, first person dentistry (root canal), a murder, two fistfights, some of the weakest bullying I've ever seen on film (almost hilariously so), and a sex scene that incorporates—among other things—live prawns.

More screen time. I watched all of these on Netflix.

Hostage: The British Prime Minister's husband is kidnapped in French Guiana while working with Doctors Without Borders. I watched two episodes across several days, mostly for Julie Delpy as the President of France, but I just didn't care about these people's problems. And then Julie Delpy did a public end-run around the prime minister to get French troops stationed on English soil to stop migrants from entering France from the channel and my entire being just shriveled up and died with how much I didn't like that.

Minx: The evolution of an erotic feminist magazine in the early 1970s. A fun and raunchy show that wants people to succeed and be kind to each other—mostly. The main character, Joyce, is kind of a pill, but part of the fun is watching her become more flexible as she's exposed to new perspectives. The first season is about building a team and putting a magazine together, but the characters lose their way in the second season as they give in to fame and power (or are alienated by it) and the show similarly becomes muddled; appropriate, maybe, but it also felt very unfocused and even cruel at times, quite a departure from the first season. Contains: drug use, nudity, and lots of dicks.

The Staircase (2022): The thing about The Staircase (2004) is that it will make you detest Michael Peterson. Did he kill his wife? Well, an owl certainly didn't do it. Guilty or not, the man is an odious narcissist, and Colin Firth nails him right down to his way of speaking. So I hated him immediately of course. But not in a fun way. The series also stars Toni Collette! And wastes her! Outside of a death scene so raw I wanted to look away, she mainly spends her time drinking and being quietly sad, except for a scene with a leaf blower and two more death scenes that are similarly awful, but similar enough to the first that it kind of dulls the effect over time. The whole thing is pretty tedious, which might be excused in a documentary, but not in a drama. If you've seen one The Staircase, you don't need to see the other, and really, you probably don't need to watch either. It was really great to see Juliette Binoche again, though. Contains: a lot of blood; violence.

I read 47 books last year with MY NEW GLASSES. Still really proud of myself for finally getting that done. Last year at this time I was running out of arm to get the book far enough away to read. Weirdly, after several years of that, I'm still holding books way out in the middle distance even though I no longer have to. It's like they're too close now, like, get out of my face, bro.

Did my reading have a theme? Fiction, mostly. I've been avoiding the news for my whole body health, like, get that reality out of my face, bro. I can barely handle the pressures of day to day living, bro. Please understand I'm doing the best I can, bro.

Here are the best things I read in 2025. Links go to my reviews here on Dreamwidth.

Fiction:

The Hunter, by Tana French: Sequel to French's The Searcher. I enjoyed them both, their interesting characters and a small town setting that's claustrophobic and idyllic in turns, but this one has three narrators rather than one and it creates a beautifully balanced story.

Fly Trap, by Frances Hardinge: Another sequel that I liked even more than the first book. It, too, is filled with interesting characters and a setting so real you feel like you're there, but in a kind of ye olde fantasy England.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty: Pirates! Sea monsters! A middle-aged Muslim woman with a bad knee!

The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin: This is science fiction and fantasy and filled with textured worldbuilding, incredible characters, and high stakes relationships.

Honorable mentions:

• Gravity is the Thing, by Jaclyn Moriarty
• The Rivals, by Jane Pek (yet another sequel I liked better than the first book!)
• The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh

Graphic Novels:

• Skim, words by Mariko Tamaki and art by Jillian Tamaki
• The Deep Dark, by Molly Knox Ostertag

Poetry:

• They Never Asked: Senryū Poetry from the WWII Portland Assembly Center, edited and translated by Shelley Baker-Gard, Michael Freiling, and Satsuki Takikawa

Non-Fiction:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander: If you're only going to read one non-fiction book a year, make this one. It constituted 90% of the reality I engaged with last year, and I won't lie, it's a rough read, but Alexander makes it super accessible.

Cookbooks:

The Elements of Baking, by Katarina Cermelj: A beautiful cookbook and an excellent reference for free-from baking, with a framework for how to adapt recipes to be gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan, or a combination of these things.

You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible, by Margaret Eby: A cookbook, yes, but really more of a gentle hug.

For everything I read in 2025, there's my Goodreads Year in Books, though you have to be logged on in order to see it, or you can check out my book report tag here on Dreamwidth.

with lightning
one is not enlightened
how valuable
     -1690

Translation by Jane Reichhold.

( 俳句 )

Will Darling's inherited his uncle's used bookshop and also a secret that everyone in London is trying to beat out of him. After Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan—handsome, charming, rich—rescues him from one of these numerous thugs, Will accepts his help in searching the bookshop for whatever it was his uncle was hiding. Sex, intrigue, and hats (it's the 1920s) ensue.

I don't know, gang, I just didn't vibe with these two, and the many sex scenes kind of demand that you do. I would have preferred a higher story to horny ratio; as it is, it's pretty much 1:1. But, personal tastes aside, it's not a bad book, and other readers have found it delightful, so don't let me scare you off.

Contains: explicit m/m sex, including some terms so deeply unsexy I can only assume they're historically accurate; violence; references to WWI, trench warfare, infectious disease, and biological weapons.

An Australian epistolary YA novel of extreme tweeness where the format may almost forgive some of the hysteria, as much of the book takes the form of final exams written for a gothic literature course, but I found it childish, not only ridiculous in the way of teenagers, which felt true enough, but even the adults were being juvenile, and the way the privileged teen drama was played for comedy and took precedence over the actual problems of at risk youth irritated me. It does include some surprisingly stylish teen poetry, though.

Contains: references to child harm and sexual abuse; homelessness; underage drinking; suicide attempt; dementia.

A post-Earth society ruled by giant corporations called Concerns whose only goal is to spread vat-grown wage slaves out across the galaxy to exploit resources for profit.

A frozen moon shrouded in eternal darkness and heavy gravity populated by sightless creatures who evolved to live in both.

Like many of Tchaikovsky's novels, this is a story told from two perspectives: the humans whose pod has crashed on a hostile alien planet they can barely make sense of, and the locals who encounter a seemingly idiotic Stranger (a "savant clown beast") that bumbles around, communicates in grunts, and doesn't know enough to come out of the ammonia-methane rain.

The world building and the alien design are, of course, meticulous. The interaction and cobbled together understanding between the humans and the aliens was my favorite part because only the reader knows the full story. Unfortunately the humans, in their duress, aren't all that interesting. The middle sections that focus on them in their pod feel the weakest and, because of that, overlong, but the story picks up again in the last third.

I spent most of the middle in mild agony, thinking there was only one way this story could end, but then I remembered this is Adrian Tchaikovsky, and he doesn't write those kind of stories.

Contains: blood, violence, threat of genocide; no work-life balance.

Some screens I watched recently, in alphabetical order, all on Netflix:

Abstract: Each hour-long episode features a different artist in a different medium and examines their approach to making art. Totally fascinating. Highly recommended.

Another Life: Bad SF. I watched twenty minutes of this, but the writing was terrible, the world building vacuous, and my beloved Katee Sackhoff completely devoid of charisma. Does star that beardy Teen Wolf guy, though, if you're in the market.

Archer: I used to randomly watch this on FX, and so I sat down and started over at the beginning so I could see the whole thing. The comedy style is more insulting than I enjoy now, but I could listen to H. Jon Benjamin talk all day. This was also how I learned Jessica Walter died in 2021 and it hit me unexpectedly hard.

Diplomat: Watched season three, and it was so good I regretted not rewatching season one and two before the new season. Though how Kate hasn't figured out she's exactly like her husband is a hilarious mystery. Like the moment one of them isn't getting enough attention they do something completely fucked up. Highly recommended. Contains (in part): suicide.

Four Seasons: I felt pretty sure I wasn't going to be into these middle-age married people's problems (two white straight couples, and a mixed race gay couple), but it's Tina Fey so I had to try. I liked it more than I thought I would! It was a pleasant diversion and I liked the set up of two episodes per season (Earth seasons, not TV seasons) as these old friends get together for visits and vacations. Contains: divorce, grief.

High Town: Set in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and filled with drug use, drug dealers, party queers, depressed fishermen, and cops. High production value and a hot gay woman of color as a lead (Monica Raymund as Jack), but after an episode and a half I didn't care about any of the characters. It's no The Wire.

Wayward: Starring Mae Martin. Also created, written, and executive produced by Martin, so me with my Mae Martin problem spent the entire time very distracted. But, my love for Martin's beautiful pointy face aside, this drama/thriller about a small town and its cult-like reform school lead by a chillingly maternalistic Toni Collette is very watchable. Also gory, violent, upsetting, and pointlessly set in the early 2000s, but the dog makes it. Recommended. Contains: drug use, shitty parents, child harm/death.

Wick is Pain: I've never seen a single John Wick movie, but I enjoyed this behind the scenes look at how action films get made, particularly this series with its signature gun fu style and, of course, Keanu Reeves, who does the majority of his own stunts and fighting and who is interviewed along with the directors, producers, and stunt personnel involved with the films. Contains: violence, guns, cinematic death of a dog.

The Woman in Cabin 10: Started this solely on the strength of Keira Knightley's presence, but even she couldn't rescue this glossy but limp woman-sees-something-alarming-but-literally-no-one-believes-her thriller. I watched this in twenty minute increments over three nights, swearing I was done with it every night until, on the third night, Keira Knightley did something so unforgivably stupid I immediately deleted it from my continue watching list.

an early winter shower
a rice paddy with new stubble
darkens just a bit
     -1690

Translation by Jane Reichhold.

( 俳句 )

fancake's theme for November is mystery & suspense. If you have any questions about this theme, or the comm, come talk to me!

Kentucky Route Zero is a creative and thoughtful interactive story about debt, grief, and the relentless march of capitalism, but also creation, repair, and community. There are enough dialogue choices that I felt like I was actually engaging with the characters, who all have their own thing going on, and you're even given some choices about who you can hang out with or where you go next. Some choices will give you a deeper engagement with the story and some just add further texture to this world.

Because it's a story more than a game, you can explore the environment and talk to the people you meet and accomplish tasks you're assigned, but it generally plays out the same regardless of your choices. There aren't any puzzles to solve except for the mystery of wtf is going on, and you'll do most of that on your own time.

The stylized art contributes to the mystery because you'll want to know more, but can't. You view this world from a set distance and because you can't zoom in to inspect the details, there's a kind of remove to it, like you're in a movie and just have to go where it takes you. It's best experienced in a dark room because it's literally too dark to see if there's any light around you.

The story is messy, with the past sliding through the present, and many questions are left unanswered as you attempt to deliver some antiques to an address you can't find. You start out with Conway, a big rectangle of a man, and his old dog, who you can name Blue or Homer—I went with Homer—and along the way you meet people who join you and bring their talents and troubles with them.

The dialogue between the characters slowly reveals their histories and concerns, and at times you can even talk to the dog as a way to talk yourself through what you're thinking. The dog doesn't talk back, but all the other characters have distinct personalities, and I felt like I was building real conversations—and relationships—between them through my choices.

However, I had a real problem with something that happened about halfway through the game that made me feel used, and it colored the rest of the play for me. I could have just stopped there, at the end, and parted with it unhappy, but I couldn't shake the feeling I was missing something and so the next night I started it up again and gave it a second chance, with Blue.

I still have a big issue with that aspect of the game (it involves alcohol, an alcoholic, and a choice that isn't a choice), but my second playthrough picked up a lot of things I didn't see the first time, and I'm glad I gave it a second try. It's definitely a unique story, filled with wondrous things.

Recommended, probably, if you like worldbuilding, games with low stakes—you can't really make mistakes here, though I somehow managed—interesting characters, found family, and a world that's punched through with mysteries: abandoned mines, hidden caves, a moldy computer, an underground river, and of course the secret highway—Kentucky Route Zero.

I've got content notes down below, feel free to ask me for more details. I played this on my Android tablet through my Netflix subscription.

Now for my chronological thoughts as I was playing. Vague spoilers for the game throughout.

( Homer )

( Blue )

Contains: (metaphorical) amputation (maybe); alcohol and alcoholism; debt, foreclosure; dementia and the impending loss of an old friend; repeated references to the death of a child; dead horses, on screen; an old dog who has seen better days but keeps on seeing them; some sounds (mainly discordant electronic ones) made me very anxious, but there's nothing abrupt, loud, or jump-scary.

Accessibility: The game has white text on a black background, which you can't change, but you can change the size of the text and remove some glitch effects. You also can control FPS on the video and turn on captions for the audio.