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I wish I was a winter person, but every inch of my body disagrees. The period between january and april is especially difficult because at this point I've used every drop of mental and physical energy I've accumulated over the summer and I'm all dried out; I need to wait until the thermometer goes back up to 20°C to feel alive again.

I grew up surrounded by nature but I only started getting interested in plants (beyond just finding them calming and pretty) about a year ago, when I actually started to actively take note of them on my walks and slowly learn their names. I memorized over a hundred weeds and wild flowers in Ireland, and now that I'm in a different biome I'll have to do it again.

I have to say, caring about plants really helps getting through those bad winter feelings. I can feel sad and bored inside, but getting out of my own head and noticing what I see around me, I get motivated by seeing that nothing is really dead. From october to march, the landscape is continually changing and if you walk the same path once a week you will notice the process of renewal that the flora is going through. The same bush looks completely different in early, mid and late winter. It really puts thing in perspective when every day feels the same to me once I have to turn on the house heating and wear sweaters.

There is a narrow southwards path near my house that is completely clear on the western side and lined by a large wall on the eastern side. The area is not even two meters wide and yet the plants on either side get completely different nutrients, minerals and sun exposure. Because of this, as I'm writing this in February, one side of the path mainly has dead, bare and dry vegetation while the other side is already blooming with flowers and new green leaves. It's really fascinating to be able to watch the entire life cycle by just turning your head!

A picture of dead cleavers hanging on a wire fence

Baby cleavers on one side, with their cool helix pattern, dead cleavers and what's left of their cute fluffy fruit. Facing each other!

I'm very excited to see what my neighborhood will look like in mid-spring, when one side is in full bloom and the other already bearing fruits. I'm also excited for my back injury to heal so I can go and learn the names of the flowers that grow on the nearby mountains rather than only looking at what's inches away from my house. But in the meantime here are some lovely things that are within my reach…

A picture of a branch of Winter Jasmine

There's copious amount of Winter Jasmine lining the paths. I'm guessing people planted it in their own gardens to have some color during winter and it propagated itself in the wild. I wonder if the local insects are thrilled to suddenly have something to pollinate in a season where there's normally slimmer pickings?

A picture of a patch of Dog's Mercury

I didn't know this plant but thought it looked yummy, like super shiny basil. When I finally came home and googled it and found out its name was Mercury I was glad I never follow my instincts when it comes to what is and isn't edible. ☠

A picture of dead spindle branches with the pink fruits still intact.

A picture of dead spindle branches with the pink fruits still intact.

Spindle is more gorgeous in winter than in any other season. The dead fruits are so incredibly delicate and fancy, like something out of a fantasy movie. I haven't drawn with spindle charcoal in a while…

A picture of dead Honesty. The coin-shaped fruits have fallen but the frame around them is still standing.

A picture of dead Honesty. The coin-shaped fruits have fallen but the frame around them is still standing.

This is my first time seeing dead Honesty. The places I lived before were too humid for the fruit's "frame" to keep its shape after the fruit fell. It's so cute!?!? Looks like what a fairy would use to blow soap bubbles…

A picture of cuckoopint leaves

Every since coming here I've seen more Cuckoopint leaves than I'd seen elsewhere in my entire life. Does the mountain region just becomes covered in cuckoopint come spring, or are the big leaves just for show and will there be a normal amount of flowers??? I'll have to wait until June to find out…

A picture of budding laurestine flowers.

A picture of budding laurestine flowers.

A picture of laurestine flowers in bloom

Laurestine buds look like paper stars!

A picture of Butcher's Broom, leaves and fruit.

I had never seen this in my life before coming here. This is Butcher's Broom and when I googled it I found out its flowers grow ON its leaves. It looks so freaky and body-horror like, I'm overly excited for when this baby will bloom.

Now I just want to make a quick shout-out… Gone but not forgotten… My favourite plant, 💚Navelwort. It appears early, it has a squishy texture, pretty asparagus-like flowers, it becomes blood red in the sun… I've adored it since childhood, and Ireland was ripe with it. I was wondering why there wasn't any on the walls in my neighborhood… And I found out it has gone extinct in this part of France 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 oooohhhh if I knew it was going to be my last time seeing navelwort last time I saw it in Ireland I would have cherished it even more…

A picture of a small patch of navelwort that has turned bright red.

A picture of a small patch of navelwort that has turned bright red.

My walk to work has me crossing through grass with a lot of different early blooming flowers: violets, veronicas, very young groundsel (my favourite flower!!!), and a droopy white one that I haven't identified yet. But I'm always running late lately so I haven't been able to take pictures. Well, all of them should still be here by the time I get my shit together!

Current Mood: TRYING
Current Music: sense is - hemlocke springs

In any media from before 2010 (and most media after that, but the death of long TV seasons took down slow burns in its fall) the "he was a boy, she was a girl" was inevitable, was it? It used to make me groan so much that whatever opposite gender character was introduced right after we meet the lead would be, no matter what their actual compatibility are, their love interest for at least a couple of seasons.
In movies, I feel like I've built a tolerance to it. Maybe I'm getting older and don't have the energy to yell "OMG! All of your characters would make more sense if they were gay!" like I would every time when I was 17. I don't usually LOVE IT but it doesn't distract me from the story anymore cause I just got numb to it I guess.
However I think the younger me would have downright disappointed to see me lap it up. Completely enjoy it. Even the current me is surprised.
Hi everyone. How is your beginning of year going. I am watching Fringe and I think Olivia and Peter's will they won't they is really cute.

🚨Fringe watch! (ep.13 out of 100)🚨

It's been a couple of years since I tackled a longer series like this (even with books and all, I tend to go for one-shots…) so sorry but just like when I was watching Lost or PoI this is going to be all I talk about for a while. I'm not really binging it (one episode a day rn while I'm part time, and will probably watch even less when I'm back to working full time in February) but I can really see myself downing all of it quickly enough.

Things I love about it so far:

💚 THE HORROR AND GORE. Usually, "case of the week" shows about supernatural stuff register as kind of goofy to me? Even classics like Xfiles, it's fun to watch but it's still all very corny and campy in the end, and that's what I was expecting from Fringe. So I was really taken aback when each supernatural element turned out to be disgusting, disturbing and downright terrifying with very little tone shift. It's a very stressful show and I really appreciate the dedication to giving you the creeps. And the body horror is so lovingly designed, the practical effects are really good.
💚 The directing art. For a procedural everything is really deliberate. There's not one useless shot, lots of very clever plays on staging to make you understand that something's wrong without outright telling it, not too many cheap shortcuts… It's really nice to see something lovingly crafted like that.
💚 Anna Torv as Olivia! She is so so so so cute omggggg and I love a main character with this much intensity.

Things that grated me at first but grew on me like a rash and now I find it endearing:

😁 The horribly y2k sassy dialogue.
😁 Olivia/Peter… Maybe the show caught me at a very emotionally vulnerable time of my life (it did) but I think they are really sweet and I really want them to be ok…

Things I don't like so much:

💔 The copaganda (well, fedaganda) is insane. I don't watch a lot of procedurals so I kinda forget that they're like that.
💔 There needs to be other female characters omg I love Olivia but she needs girls to interact with… Astrid is cute and her actress is doing her best with the two lines she gets per episode… Olivia's sister's only-child actress is giving Folgers commercial which was funny the first two times… Nina is OK if she is the massivamics mastermind but if it does turn out she's doing all that for a man then it's nothing… That can't be the only three.
💔 The investigations are very repetitive… It's basically fetch quests… I think PoI spoiled me when it comes to clever ways to close in on a mystery because this just feels like tutorial fetch quests in an RPG. Find the body, give the body to Walter, Walter needs a thing, Olivia gets the thing, etc… I guess this will matter less when the plot picks up, which I guess will happen early season 2 like it does for most procedurals.

I'll be back later for more #Fringewatch.

📺 Tv Talk

I didn't do a TV show rec list last year and won't do one this year either. I just don't watch enough shows for that to be interesting, but also… I feel like it's been hard to find good shows. Everything I tried watching in 2025 fell very flat.

I guess the highlight of the year was watching Heeramandi (Bollywood show about politics and rivalry among courtesans in the 40s), I fell in love with the villain (vengeful obsessive scheming potential lesbian) and it's the only recent show with a focus on female characters (what I've been looking for!!!!) that I thought was actually good. The music and the directing were great (a little below what I expected from Bhansali but hey it's TV vs Movies), but I'm not sure about the decision to renew it for a season 2… Sounds like a complete betrayal of the season 1 ending. I will be watching anyway if Fareedan returns because I love her so much.

Loved the new Severance season, even though I think the plot holes are starting to get a bit too visible I have my Gemma/Devon goggles on to the point where I've deluded myself into thinking it will be addressed in canon for season 3.

Other than that, hated the new season of From, hated the new season of Yellowjackets, hated Pluribus, somehow still watched all three of those to the end but jesus christ.

Last week before starting Fringe I actually started watching The Seduction. I was extremely excited about Vincent Lacoste (he's one of my favourite actors) playing Valmont (one of my favourite literary characters). I didn't even make it to episode 2. This was so shit and such a waste of a good source material and a good cast, it was infuriating. It turns Valmont/Merteuil, one of the most fascinating villainous friendships in the history of fiction, into a "girlboss gets revenge on the fuckboy who broke her heart!" bash with HBO style rape scenes and zero substance. It's awful, and I really was waiting for this to come out… ugh

A picture of Valmont and Isabelle from The Seduction.

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN THE CASTING DECISION OF THE CENTURYYYYYYYYYYYY

I didn't watch any animated show save from the one I worked on, which I won't say the name here but I thought the two seasons we completed were really good. But I changed jobs and am working on a show for toddlers now so I might pick some adult animation back up. I've been eyeing "Common Side Effects".

I'm also 2/3rds done with my Utena rewatch. Which. If you followed me on tumblr, you'll know it's been going on for a year and half, and you'll also know lately I only watch anime while I'm doing my cardio. Does it mean that it took me one year and a half to do cardio 30 times? Hummm… No it doesn't… I exercised without watching RGU, sometimes… Don't think about it too hard…
But now I decided I could also watch it when I do arm stuff so maybe I'll actually finish rewatching soon. Can I work out ten times before the year is over? Surely yes. I'm wondering though, when it comes to the movie that goes after the ending, do I do one HUGE workout session to watch it all in one go? o_o

I'll have to pick another anime for after that. Not a rewatch this time, something new. I've been thinking about trying out Kiddy Grade because as a teen I was obsessed with the soundtrack but never actually watched a single episode. Problem is I don't think my adult self has the tolerance for… Well, google what the main duo look like and you'll know what I mean. And the red one is supposed to be 16……………… But I want something in that vibe, like, retro, action-packed but not a shonen, and loads of female characters. And GOOD MUSIC. That's so important for working out.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: I've been listening to Don't Start Now on loop lately like it's 2020...

No one is there to stop me from judging books by their cover so last year I began to regularly use a new method to discover music. I'd go to bandcamp, pick the genre I most felt like listening to that given day, and then sort by release date instead of popularity. Then, out of page 1 (or page 2 as well if I needed many hours of music) I'd open a bunch of albums based solely on how much I liked the cover and listen to them start to finish.

It was a very fun activity to me: the feeling of window shopping at a candy store, just scrolling through pretty images and clicking on the ones I fancied, combined with that little pioneer pride of knowing that I was one of the first people ever to listen to those records… Some of them stayed very confidential releases, and even months later only have a couple of listeners on most platforms, some of them turned out to be more of a hit; still, having heard them completely fresh out the press like this is an exhilarating feeling. Now I'm excited to start working again at the end of the month so I can buy some of them during the next bandcamp Friday.

Anyway, since my music listening is all over the place (bandcamp, youtube, spotify when I'm on browser, web radios, real radios, CDs…) I'm not very good at making definite lists of albums but I wanted to see those covers come together so I made a little list off the top of my head. I think it's funny because even with such a small chart you can very clearly see the kind of cover I'm likely to click on, and probably even predict, from a box of CDs, which one I'd grab.

Those are all albums I've picked based on appearances only and ended up really enjoying and listening to a bunch over the winter (even that children's lullaby album on the top right corner… I was looking for something to fall asleep to and was just so intrigued by how crazy-looking this one was).

At first I wanted to make a blurb for each of them for anyone looking for music recs but maybe the true way to go is to also let you decide to click on some or not based purely on visuals… So I made the image clickable! (I hope it works. It's definitely not mobile responsive but hey. I deluded myself into thinking I could count and therefore code the image map without actually looking. It's just dividing by 4, right?)

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: the latest addition to the chart: rightmost second row

Ok so this truly truly is the last of my "best of 2025" lists. She's finally done!

Actually "watching more short films outside of festivals" was one of my 2025 resolutions. I sometimes go to movie festivals for work and once I'm there I usually binge screening after screening sometimes adding up to 6 full hours of short film watching in one day, but during years where I don't get to go to any of those, I just end up not watching a single short film 🧍‍♀️ like in 2024, I only went to one short film screening during spring and I think I did not watch a single one after that 🧍‍♀️ But I think if you like indie works, short films are a pretty important thing to keep up with, right? They are so much cheaper to produce than longer works so a wider variety of artists is able to make them and take risks. I ended up watching a bit over 50 of them (+ two pro screenings that were honestly pretty mediocre compared to the random stuff I found online). It's not a lot of runtime all of them combined but it's a lot more than 0.

🩸The best nine minutes of your year:🩸

Watch on YouTube

Homemade Gatorade (2025)
A woman struggles to sell her homemade gatorade online.
So good that for a moment I almost wanted to start making animation shorts anymore. Beautiful crafty aesthetic, creepy horror, funny dialogue and depiction of just how weird normie internet is. I am so so so so so in love with this short.

💧Runner-up that molded a new part of my brain:💧

Watch on YouTube

New Game (2022)
A woman plays a video game.
I don't know how to explain why I love this short so much but I probably watched it enough times that the total amount of time I spent watching it is tantamount to the length of a feature-film. It kind of captures exactly how games (and electronics in general) work in dreams and also brain fog and things of that nature and it sooooo soothing. This is cocomelon to me I just watch it on repeat because it FEELS nice.

Other good things:

Inherent (2021): A lonesome teenage girl meets a boy. She becomes conflicted between her budding bond with him and the thing that lives in her attic that she has to feed. The ambiance was nice and it was creepy, but the real highlight of this for me was the main actress' performance, super raw and believable and fitting in with the horrors.

Awers i Rewers (2020): The interaction between a painted picture and its flipside. Barbara Rupik made one of my favourite shorts of all time and instead of binging all of her work I'd decided to pace myself so I still get to experience a bit of it each year. This is incredibly beautiful and her sense of composition, color and texture never ceases to fascinate me.

Snooze Quest (2025): PJ tries to go to sleep in a world plagued by social media hysteria and enforced self-censorship under the guise of "mental health". Extremely manic and fast and full of shit you'll want to watch frame-by-frame, even by usual vewn standards, but this is my favourite thing she's ever done. The worldbuilding is very blatant in what it's denouncing and yet very eerie and funny in its own right.

Rainbow War (1987): Three monochromatic kingdoms enter a war of colors. This was making the rounds on tumblr during the Splatoon boom lol and I finally decided to give it a go. The effects are really stunning and super charming, even though the story is pretty simplistic and has been done a million times across children's media.

Il gatto (2019): A man opens his door to see a severed head and a dead cat. This was a lot more clever than I expected and is a very nice little horror story the way I like them.

La jeune fille qui pleurait des perles (2025): A poor boy in the early 20th century sleeps in an abandoned house. Next door, he hears the cruel neighbour's daughter's cries, and her tears turning into pearls when they hit the ground. I feel like this was one of the "big" animated shorts of the year that got a fair amount of attention. I mainly watched it for the aesthetic which was very pretty but then I got invested in the story and… I usually don't like a "fuck you! the story's not about what you thought it was about!" ending but in that case it goes so strongly against every overly sentimental principle animation has been obsession over … I really liked it!

A screenshot from La jeune fille qui pleurait des perles

Most of these are available online for free, and almost all of those have english subs, I think! Unfortunately those with no links are no longer online. I'll post a lil update if they come back up someday!

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Richard Thompson Mock Tudor album

More end-of-year posting! It cheers me up to make those kind of lists to ground myself and focus on nice things while in the midst of moving out stress. This season is perfect for short-form reading, right? Lots of having to stay home because of bad weather and for some folks lots of traveling.
I tried to be better about reading fic & non-professional fiction this year. I made a folder in my email inbox to keep track of my own comments and set a yearly commenting goal. I generally read more books than fanfiction, this was still true this year but less so. When I write fic and short internet stories, I want people to read it, so I wanted to be better at returning the favor rather than throwing my own stories online and then exclusively reading professionally published fiction.
If you don't share any fandoms with me don't leave yet! This list also contains original short stories that I've had a lot of fun seeking out this year. I'm also only reccing one fic per author, but most of them have a spectacular catalogue you should definitely check out <3

🌸Touhou fandom highlights:🌸

Inopulent Rideshare in Modern Rurality - Sunshowersy: An ongoing minute by minute description of a house party in a post-barrier Gensokyo from the POV of an anxious and out-of-place Reisen. Super good if you like AUs that take a little bit of mundane and a little bit of magic and mix them up.

Smile - Mimic_Teruyo: Very nice grounds for some ReiSana but mostly just a deep and good Sanae character study <3

The Woes of an Organic Gardener - kitzaral: Yuuka/Shion written for the randomly generated crackship challenge with a super creative writing style that reads almost like a poem.

Flights, And A Layover - fantasytree: Reimu/Akyuu stays winning with this nice piece of fluff about them. It also features one of my favourite things which is Akyuu and Marisa bickering over Reimu's attention.

Stratigraphy of the Lost - GrimoireOfAlice: Smart and real af fic about butch loneliness featuring Ariya & Mokou. Good-ass dialogue and POV.

The Puppeteer's Little Gardeners - freshlybakedspiderbread: Good little original incident featuring Alice and Yuuka, a sunflower maze, doll programming, fairy powers and lots of different ways to use magic. Will make you want to see it animated, or like, as a storybook.

🎨Original stories! Quick and nice reads, no fandom knowledge required🎨

What do you do with a restless spirit? - Eccentric_Hat: I'm far from objective because this one was written for meeeee <3 Folksy ghost story about a lighthouse in Brittany with a lovely spunky heroine. To read and then retell around a campfire!

Nothing Worth Having - VSSAKJ: High school girlfriends are the last two people on earth after a mysterious mass-vanishing event. SUCH lovely POV writing that delivers reveals like punches with so much tough love in every word.

Static Angel - goldenswordfish: Urban fantasy female reader/weird glitch angel romance with some super inventive and creepy worldbuilding and a frantic city described with the appropriate amount of neons and sweat.

Auto-Aggressive Imitation - CheshireParade: Vampire femslash with a focus on anatomy, biology, vampires as an animal, a species. Such a fresh take on the lesbian vampire seductress, and cool explicit monster smut.

👩‍❤️‍👩Femslash corner! Femslash from various fandoms.👩‍❤️‍👩

[Pentiment] her endless reflection - melencolia: an incredibly beautifully written Illuminata/Zdena fic set in the game's route in which Zdena gets an abortion. This is rich with added backstory and a superb Illuminata point of view.

[Severance] Sunshine - adella green & keeping a garden - lenaios: Two short Gemma/Devon fics detailing these two meeting and falling in love with the same kind of warmth that their canon interactions have. Perfect to revisit those rapidly growing GemDev brainworms that we all experienced when watching Chikhai Bardo.

[Severance] I have considered the lilies - fortheknife: INSANE Gemma/Devon cheating on their spouses trilogy. Words cannot express how much I love this fic and think everyone should read it. I think people who haven't watched Severance should go watch it so they can read this fic. It has everything from loving literature references to hot cheating smut to heartbreaking backstory crafting. It is written with the point of view alternating between Gemma and Devon on a line-by-line basis rather than a chapter-by-chapter basis which is genius and used masterfully. You NEED to read this I'm not kidding.

[Thoroughbreds] The Difference Between Giving and Taking - natsinator: Post-canon Amanda/Lily with a dark and funny tone that matches the canon perfectly, plus some really smart worldbuilding and a very believable way of these two reconnecting in the future.

[Thoroughbreds] Inside the Noise - scioscribe: Amanda/Lily epistolary smut through prison visits and erotic letters. SOOOOO good so hot and so in character.

❓Something else I liked that doesn't fit in those categories❓

[Ace Attorney] I'll Wait For You To Become New - maningning & don't be an idiot - Stellarete: Two really good Lang/Shih-na fics with a heartbreaking Lang POV. Both neatly pack everything that's fascinating about this ship in different ways.

If you read and enjoyed some of these you can let me know ~ Tell me if you read fics recently that you think I'd like as well. I might be yapping on this blog again before the year is through but I hope that next time you'll hear for me I'll be all cosy in my new apartment and ready to live a bit more steadily after having moved out four times in one year 😌 Happy last leg of the 2025 journey y'all <3

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Buckle" from Florence's new album. On loop.