A Little Bit Evil

So I have chronic insomnia, right? It’s pretty normal for me to still be awake at 2, 3 in the morning. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 stars)

Insurgent is an interesting but uneven middle book - one that kept my attention without ever fully winning me over.

I'm very aware that I'm not the target audience for this series, and I think that colours my response here. There's a lot in Insurgent that will work well for readers invested in the characters and the world, particularly the escalating stakes and constant forward momentum.

At the same time, the novel often feels busy rather than deep. The plot is packed with movement, faction politics, and shifting alliances, but emotional beats are rushed through in favour of action. As a result, moments that should land hard sometimes pass by without much impact.

That said, I was intrigued. The world-building continues to raise interesting questions about control, identity, and rebellion, and the series' larger ideas kept me turning pages even when the execution didn't fully work for me. Tris remains a compelling central figure, even if I never felt as emotionally connected as the story seemed to want me to be.

Ultimately, Insurgent is a solid, readable sequel that does what it needs to do to move the story forward. It didn't quite click for me, but I can absolutely see why it resonates with its intended audience.

It has been a week, y'all. It has been a week

I quit my job.

There isn't a shiny next thing lined up, no dramatic leap to a new role, no tidy narrative arc where I immediately land on my feet. Just... an ending, and the quiet (and slightly terrifying) space that comes after it.

A lot of this comes down to the airport and the ongoing issues there that have been grinding me down for a long time. Throw in the recent sale and murmurings of 're-organisation (but apparently our jobs are safe... uh-huh, not my first rodeo, my dude). Add in my disabilities - the ones that don't get better if you just push harder, the ones that flare when the world decides to be loud and unpredictable and physically demanding - and something finally clicked into place this week.

Full-time, on-site work is no longer sustainable for me.

That's not an easy thing to admit. I've circled around it for ages, tried to negotiate with myself, told myself I could just adjust one more thing, power through one more rough patch. But the reality is that the cost keeps getting higher, and I'm the one paying it with my health.

Li and I talked it through properly - not in a panicked way, but in that calm, practical, loving way that says okay, let's actually look at what life needs to look like now. And we've landed on a plan that feels... doable. Not perfect, not magically fixed, but realistic.

I'm going to start looking for either:

• full-time remote work, or
• part-time work that gets me out of the house without breaking me in the process.

It's a shift. It's also a bit of grief, if I'm honest - for the version of me who could just do full-time work without it costing everything else. But it's also a relief. Naming the limit instead of constantly crashing into it feels like an act of self-respect, even if it's a hard-won one.

Right now, I'm trying to sit in the in-between without spiralling too far ahead. Rest a little. Breathe. Let my nervous system unclench. Trust that making a choice in favour of my health isn't failure, even if it doesn't look like success the way it used to.

If nothing else, this week has been a reminder that I don't have to keep proving I can survive things that are actively harming me. I'm allowed to build a life that fits the body and brain I actually have.

More soon, probably. But for now: this is where I am. 

One of the things The Time Hop Coffee Shop does particularly well is sit with nostalgia without romanticising it.

Nostalgia is seductive. It smooths edges. It filters memory through warmth and familiarity, making the past feel safer than the present. We remember how things felt, not how they actually were - and even then, we remember only certain feelings. The ones that comfort us. The ones that reassure us that there was a time when things made sense.

But comfort is not the same as happiness.

In The Time Hop Coffee Shop, the chance to revisit the past isn't framed as a gift without consequence. Returning to old moments doesn't magically restore joy or fix what went wrong. Instead, it exposes something quieter and more unsettling: how easy it is to confuse “I miss this” with “this was good for me.”

There are moments in our lives that glow in hindsight because they belong to a version of ourselves that felt younger, more hopeful, or more certain. But that glow often comes from distance, not truth. When we look closer, the happiness we think we're remembering is threaded with anxiety, exhaustion, compromise, or unspoken hurt. Those things didn't disappear - they were just edited out of the highlight reel.

The book gently suggests that nostalgia is less about wanting the past back and more about wanting relief from the present. When life feels uncertain, heavy, or unkind, the past becomes a refuge - not because it was perfect, but because it's finished. Nothing new can go wrong there.

And yet, revisiting the past doesn't offer the safety we expect. It can't give us the things we didn't know to ask for at the time. It can't make people behave differently, or turn near-misses into fulfilled dreams. What it can do is show us how far we've come, and how much we survived without realising we were surviving at all.

What I loved most about The Time Hop Coffee Shop is that it doesn't shame nostalgia. It understands why we cling to it. But it also refuses to let nostalgia pretend it's happiness. The book treats memory as something to be acknowledged and honoured - not something to live inside.

Because happiness isn't a place we can return to. It's something that has to be built, slowly and imperfectly, in the present we're standing in now.

Sometimes the most meaningful thing the past can offer us isn't a second chance - it's permission to stop chasing one.

There's a particular kind of grief that Every Heart a Doorway understands instinctively: not the grief for something that died, but for something that *was real* and is now unreachable. A world that fit. A version of yourself that made sense. A door that opened once - and then closed.

Seanan McGuire doesn't treat portal fantasy as escapism. She treats it as truth. The children who come back from their doors aren't delusional or confused; they're bereaved. And the cruelty of the so‑called real world isn't that it doubts their stories - it's that it insists they should be fine now. That they should move on. That whatever made them *whole* somewhere else was a childish phase, best forgotten.

That insistence is where the harm lives.

Nancy's grief is quiet, bone-deep, and constantly misunderstood. She doesn't express her pain in ways that make adults comfortable. She doesn't soften it, decorate it, or rush toward recovery. Instead, she carries it with her - the stillness, the restraint, the refusal to pretend she wants what the world expects of her. And for that, she is punished.

What struck me on this read was how much of that punishment is rooted in gendered expectations. Nancy's refusal to be warm, expressive and compliant - her resistance to the emotional labour so often demanded of girls - is framed as a problem to be solved. She is cold. She is difficult. She is wrong. The school exists to help children who've returned from impossible worlds, but even there, the pressure to become legible, palatable, *normal* seeps in.

Normal, in this book, is not neutral.

Normal is enforced.

McGuire is especially careful - and radical - in how she writes asexuality. Nancy's asexuality isn't a puzzle, a symptom, or a phase to be corrected. It's simply part of who she is, as intrinsic as her longing for the Halls of the Dead. Yet it's precisely this refusal of expected desire - romantic, sexual, reproductive - that places her further outside what the adults around her are willing to accept.

There's an unspoken rule in our world that healing looks like reintegration. That recovery means wanting what you're supposed to want. That if you don't crave the right things - romance, ambition, domesticity, forward momentum - then something must be broken in you.

Every Heart a Doorway quietly but firmly rejects that.

The children who found their doors didn't escape because they were weak. They escaped because those worlds *recognised* them. Some needed logic, some needed chaos, some needed rules, some needed blood and shadow and endings. None of those needs is treated as lesser. None are pathologised — until the children are forced back.

That's where the real violence happens.

The book keeps circling one devastating idea: that being forced to abandon the self you were allowed to be is a form of trauma. And that pretending otherwise doesn't make it kinder - it just makes it lonelier.

What makes this hit especially hard is how familiar it all feels. You don't need to have walked through a literal door to recognise the shape of this grief. Many of us have known spaces - identities, communities, ways of being - where we were briefly, astonishingly at home. And many of us have been told, explicitly or implicitly, that those selves were unsustainable. Unrealistic. Inappropriate. Something to grow out of.

Queer people. Asexual people. Disabled people. Neurodivergent people. Anyone whose existence disrupts the tidy story of what a life is supposed to look like.

We're often asked to trade authenticity for acceptability. To sand ourselves down until we fit back into the world that never quite wanted us.

McGuire doesn't offer easy comfort here. The doors don't reopen on command. Not everyone gets to go back. Some losses remain permanent. But what the book does offer is recognition - and the insistence that this grief is real, that it matters, and that refusing to "get over it" can be an act of truth rather than failure.

There's something profoundly compassionate in a story that says: you were not wrong for loving that world. You were not broken for wanting to stay. And you are not obligated to desire the life you were handed simply because it's the only one currently available.

Some doors close.

That doesn't mean what was on the other side stops being part of you.

And maybe the quiet, radical hope of Every Heart a Doorway is this: that even when the world insists on normalcy at all costs, there will always be people - and stories - who understand the cost of that insistence, and who will sit with you in the grief of what almost was.

This week's reading stack feels very deliberately split between intensity and comfort, which honestly says a lot about where my head is at right now.

On one side, I'm continuing with Insurgent. It's fast-paced and emotionally charged, full of difficult choices and escalating consequences. I'm always struck by how much this book is about identity under pressure - how people behave when the systems around them are breaking down, and neutrality stops being an option. It's the kind of read that pulls you along whether you're ready or not, and it definitely demands attention.

On the other side of the stack is Time Hop Coffee Shop, which couldn't feel more different if it tried. This one is all warmth and whimsy — alternate universes filtered through steaming mugs, quiet conversations, and the discovery of the things in life that really matter can be surprising. It's gentle without being dull, and it feels like the sort of book you read slowly, letting it settle.

Together, they make an oddly satisfying pairing. One is about upheaval and rebellion; the other is about pauses, connection, and care. Big stakes versus small kindnesses. Sprinting through plot versus lingering in atmosphere.

I think that balance is exactly what I want from my reading right now - something to engage me fully, and something to remind me to breathe.

If you've read either, I'd love to know how they landed for you. And if your reading week looks completely different, tell me what mood you're in - I'm always curious how other people balance their stacks.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5 stars)

Every Heart a Doorway is a small book that carries an astonishing amount of emotional weight.

At its heart, this is a story about children who have been somewhere else - worlds that loved them, shaped them, and made sense in ways this one never quite does. Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children offers care, understanding, and the quiet acknowledgement that returning is often its own kind of loss.

What Seanan McGuire does so beautifully here is refuse to frame those experiences as delusion or escapism. The portal worlds matter. The longing matters. The grief of being shut out of a place where you belonged is treated with seriousness and compassion.

The writing is sharp, spare, and deeply empathetic. In a very short space, McGuire creates characters who feel fully realised, each carrying their own kind of ache. Themes of identity, belonging, queerness, and neurodivergence are woven into the story without spectacle - simply allowed to exist.

There's darkness here, and tragedy, but also a fierce insistence that every child's story is real and worthy of care. This is fantasy as emotional truth, and it lingered with me long after I finished.

Title: Begin Again
Fandom: Tennis RPF
Chapters: 1/1
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Darren Cahill/Simone Vagnozzi
Characters: Darren Cahill, Simone Vagnozzi
Additional Tags: First Kiss, Mutual Pining, Getting Together, Coffee Shops, Rain, Inspired by Taylor Swift
Summary: Eight months after a breakup, Darren has convinced himself that love only ever breaks and burns.

On a quiet Wednesday afternoon in a café near the courts, Simone proves him wrong.

Link to fic on AO3

(so for this - where it says 'this year', I'm meaning '2025, and I'm doing all of the questions just for what I posted in 2025, rather than all time)

How many words have you written this year? I have written 159,573 words in 2025, which is absolutely fucking insane to me. It's also the second year running that I've hit my GYWO goal and I'm honestly completely blown away!

How many works did you publish this year? 59, which... have I mentioned just seems batshit? 3 Stargate SG-1 and 56 tennis RPF

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)? There's a handful of them, and I can't pick.
It’ll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar which was some Jannik hurt/comfort that started with him collapsing and coughing up blood on Wimbledon Centre Court.
Surface Tension which is a kind of gothic horror series revolving around the use of magic in the tennis world. It mostly centres on one of Jannik's coaches, and how the spells he casts interact with different surfaces, all of which have their own unique magical properties.
The Courage of my Convictions which is an basically a queer second-chance age gap small town/coffee shop forbidden romance between an injured tennis player with his tail between his legs, and an ex-tennis player who became a priest (instead of, as per the real world, where he became a coach. I may have a thing for coach/player LOL)

What work of yours has the most hits? With 2809 hits, it was In The Heat Of Your Electric Touch A Sincaraz pwp with some somnophilia and praise kink.

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? Probably You had to fight to have the upper hand which was a Darren/Jannik (age gap, coach/player) power play BDSM fic. It's a little over 10k, involves discovery of a kink, a lot of 'we shouldn't be doing this', getting into Jannik's head as he tries to figure out WTF he's feeling. I did not expect anyone to even read this so I was fucking delighted that people did. And apparently liked it.

Favourite title you used Ooh that's a tough one. So nearly all my titles are Taylor Swift lyrics, and it's kind of become a fun game for me to now to try to find the lyric that fits. I've got some fic titles that wouldn't look out of place as a Fall Out Boy song title ;) But I don't know if I have a specific favourite

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? See above

Pairing you wrote the most for this year? This I did not expect actually - I wrote 13 Darren/Jannik

Favourite pairing you wrote for this year? Oooh honestly, I'm really taken with my Team Sinner polycule fic, with the varying combinations of Darren/Jannik/Simone

What work was the quickest to write? I think it was probably Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you - that was written in an afternoon, and is based on a super cute fanart that someone posted

What work took you the longest to write? Of the completed fics, You had to fight to have the upper hand. It took about 4-5 months, but the editing was the longest bit - I'd written myself around in circles a little bit and had to unpick it
Of the WIPs? The Courage of my Convictions which I started in March and I'm 9 chapters/17k into so far and still going

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? That's never worth asking. Never. I don't want to know. 175, give or take

What’s your longest work of the year? Currently at 17,455 words is   The Courage of my Convictions

What’s your shortest work of the year? At just 427 words, its hear my voice in the dark which is just some Sincaraz fluff

What WIP are you taking into next year with you? I have 6 work in progress that I'm actively working on
The Courage of my Convictions
Dancing is a Dangerous Game or... the one where Simone is Immortal, Highlander style
I Had the Time of My Life Fighting Dragons With You which is Sincaraz as feuding booktubers
Surface Tension
Wolf-Tethered a Darren/Simone shifter AU
You wouldn’t take my word for it if you knew who was talking a Darren/mystery online Dom fic, mostly done in chatroom log style

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? Established Relationship with 21 fics

Your favourite character to write this year? Not to be incredibly cliché, but probably Jannik

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? Carlos. Every time I think I've got a handle on him, we learn something new about him which just completely changes how I look at him.

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? There is a lovely... something... going on between Priscilla Hon, Karolina Muchova and Amanda Anisimova which absolutely intrigues me and Bob! is pondering in the background

Which work of yours have you reread the most? Honestly, most of the Darren/Jannik stuff because they're my 🧡 and until like November no-one else had written any!

How many kudos in total did you get this year? 2,939 and that just feels fucking fantastic, not gonna lie. OMG!

Which work has the most comments? My... uhh... omegaverse crackfic written in the style of a serious anthropological paper A Field Guide to the Sinner Pack

Did you do any collaborative works this year? No, I'm very much a solo llama when it comes to writing

Did you write any gifts this year? Nope, not this year

Did you receive any gifts this year? Nope. I didn't take part in any of the exchanges that happened

What’s your most common category? We're all utterly shocked that it was m/m I'm sure

What do you listen to while writing? Anything, everything and nothing, and also all the things. Plus Bob!. And tennis. Generally not nothing. Just whatever's on at the point when I start writing.

Favourite work you wrote this year? I... don't know that I can pick? Probably Surface Tension or The Courage of my Convictions

Favourite line/passage you wrote this year? Oooh there's a lot of lines about the magical properties of the surfaces in the various Surface Tension fics but there's this one passage from Dancing Is A Dangerous Game which I so fucking love:

Jannik takes another breath, unsteady. “How old is he?”

A floorboard creaks, then a voice answers from the doorway.

“Three hundred and forty-six,” Simone says, his tone bone-dry.

Silence.

Jannik blinks.

“Years,” Simone clarifies, as if that helps. “Give or take a few birthdays. I’ve stopped counting.”

Biggest surprise while writing this year? That as much as I really fucking love getting comments and hits and kudos, and we always say that we write for ourselves... this year I've discovered that no, I do actually mean it. I could easily have sat here and cranked out Sincaraz PWP after Sincaraz PWP for the love, but I've settled down and written plotty AU fic that not many people are reading - specifically the magic series sadly - but I'm still going because I've got this story I want to tell and I'm really enjoying writing it

I've missed blogging.

And I don’t mean that lightly. Blogging was a huge part of my identity in my twenties - LiveJournal, friends lists, comments that turned into conversations that turned into friendships. It was where I learned how to think in public, how to process, how to belong.

Which is… mildly horrifying, actually, because my twenties were a terrifyingly long time ago now.

snowflake_challenge starting tomorrow feels like the right moment to come back. Not to recreate old-school LJ (because time and the internet both move on), but to reclaim the part of me that likes having a home for my thoughts. A place that isn’t chasing reach or views or polish or relevance, that isn't a slave to an algorithm.

And if all I end up writing about is fanfiction and tennis and books and school? That’s fine. That is my life right now. Those were my LJ AND DW staples once upon a time too, just with different fandoms and different obsessions and the same intensity.

This is my Dreamwidth. It gets to be personal, fannish, repetitive, niche. It gets to be a place where I show up as I am, not as I think I should be.

So. Hello again. I’ve missed this. Let’s see where it takes me now.