lina (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
younglegends) wrote2026-01-02 12:19 pm
younglegends) wrote2026-01-02 12:19 pm
the year
My dw is littered with private draft entries from the year; only two of them were published. This will be the third and this will have to be it. The net, the trawl. Here are the pieces of the year I want to keep.
reading
By far my favourite reading experience this year was reading the entirety of One Hundred Years of Solitude out loud to my sister this spring, over a period of three months. In car rides, at home, on call while she was in her hotel room on vacation. Kind of the book of all time made to be read aloud. Loved it from beginning to end, the cycles, the weight of the past pressing down on each and every word, the denseness of the sentences, the feeling. Burst into tears at the line: "How awful, the way time passes!"
I also read to her My Brilliant Friend and we stopped to stare at each other in anguish at the reveal of the title drop. We are currently about 60% through A Story of a New Name, been deeply mired for ages now in the abject horrors of Elena's failsummer at Ischia. When we move onto the third book I'll be reading it for the first time too and am excited and apprehensive at the thought of what the story brings next!! She gifted me the deluxe version of the Neapolitan Novels (all the volumes in one book with the most gorgeously ominous cover ever) for Christmas :]
I also asked for and received The Mirror & the Light from my friends' secret santa this year and I am sooo happy and excited. I did start reading this back when I finished Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies last year but I didn't make any real headway because even though 95% of what I read is ebooks, sometimes long novels are just so much more pleasant to read in physical form. And what a treat it will be to finally read this book and finish the series!!
Other than that, reading The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar genuinely saved me this winter, in that it revitalized my love for beautiful words, prose, language, and it made me want to write and be ten times more interesting and free with my sentences, just do whatever the fuck I want, describe everything, feel everything. Was captivated instantly reading Tav's opening: I thought of the school and what it might be like and how soon I would die and how it would feel, but these thoughts made me more excited and more awake. So I began to think of horses. The places they loved became places I loved, the landscapes and the people and the traditions and the histories. Tialon: Fanlewas informs us that the Ideiri believed the Sea Goddess rescued Solin. For them, the dead girl was a minor hearth goddess. Her symbol a chain. Seren: Let's go! Write faster! Let's go riding. Throw me onto the back of your saddle like a stolen bride. Throw me. Steal me. Let's go faster. Fly. Siski: And she feels herself becoming, with triumph, with glee, with a kind of delirium, the dangerous girl of a novel, the one who loves no one. Their words, their language, etching and interpretation and song, their regret and freedom and love.
I'm currently reading and enjoying her other book set in the same world, A Stranger in Olondria, and while again the sentences and settings are magnificent it's ultimately no quartet following the lives of four vastly different women through war, through memory. I want to reread it again already.
Overall I finished reading 26 books according to goodreads. Meant to read more classics but only pulled off Morrison's The Bluest Eye, during which I had the distinct thought that this is what writing is for, and Steinbeck's East of Eden. Will try again next year. I tried and failed to read Moby Dick, will probably try and maybe fail again. I read and loved Luminous by Silvia Park on buses in the rotten heat of summer; it was that specific flavour of character-focused science fiction that I eat up, that immerses me, that breaks my heart every time. I loved the sentences in The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, specifically depictions of the sea and descriptions of lists. My favourites:
Lastly, favourite fic I read in the year: The Ending of Han Sooyoung by yellow_caballero, which I loved to death. I'll be real idk if there's anything more serious than doksoo to me. The beautiful kind of pairing where adding yjh to it just makes everything blow up with fireworks in my heart. This moved me so much it made me want to, and ultimately, return to my gsnk yhk wip again... it's so serious to me.
music
☆ oklou - choke enough: gets the crown for the year because it became my running album lmao. I did fall off running (I am always falling off running) but there is always pleasure in the return every time, too. Like the seasons! The album length is just about the perfect length for me to run 5k and there is something so euphoric in the way blade bird comes up at the end and I know I'm almost done. If I hear one of the songs in a different context I get a classically conditioned desire to run.
☆ FKA twigs - Eusexua + Afterglow
☆ Jade - That's Showbiz, Baby! + the encore
☆ Rosalia - LUX
☆ Wolf Alice - The Clearing
☆ PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
☆ Ezra Furman - Transangelic Exodus
☆ SPELLLING - Portrait of my Heart
☆ NMIXX - Blue Valentine, Fe3O4: Forward
☆ Seulgi - Accidentally on Purpose
I went to five concerts. My ranking:
writing
Wrote two fics, both of them in the summer.
Otherwise my goal for next year is to complete orv gsnk au... My last big fic WIP, carried now mostly by the momentum of all the feeling I've distilled into it. I already did most of the hard work, my dear self of past years. I just have to get it where it's going.
films & tv
Tacking on that "& tv" just so I can mention that I'm currently, again, rewatching Mad Men. I will probably always be rewatching Mad Men. It feels so fitting to watch it in the winter. We're nearing the end of season six, love the way after every episode we just sit there like okay, Let's Reflect And Interpret <3 Recent standout was s6e09: The Better Half, loved Betty and Don's post-divorce-and-remarriage hookup at their son's summer camp, how exciting it feels vs. the dead stifling agony of their relationship when they were married to each other because for once she's using him back, for once they can see and choose each other clearly, for once it feels like she knows more than he does. Her scorcher of the line She doesn't know yet that loving you is the worst way to get to you. And in the morning she's eating breakfast with Henry, doesn't even glance at him across the room, and it feels like she's won. Don needs to die a hundred deaths btw <3
Meanwhile the summer belonged to Better Call Saul. Which I have already written about. Otherwise for new releases I enjoyed the first seasons of Pluribus and I Love LA.
Watched 96 movies this year according to letterboxd. Standout first-time watches were:
Our second subject was Paul Thomas Anderson (we didn't finish)... Technically a breathtakingly impressive filmmaker but I've watched enough of his movies now to know that I don't usually like or align with him on a story level, I think. Favourites are There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread (though we didn't get to The Master, Inherent Vice, and Licorice Pizza).
games
Year of the puzzle game for my sister and me. Here's my half-assed ranking I wrote up earlier this year:
+
Main thing about this year is that I moved in with my sister, and later with our parents lol for temporary reasons. It's been a learning and growing experience! But I'm grateful for everything, all the love I am lucky to have and am surrounded by, especially with some family health scares right at the end of this year, and considering some things that did not survive. Happy new year!
reading
By far my favourite reading experience this year was reading the entirety of One Hundred Years of Solitude out loud to my sister this spring, over a period of three months. In car rides, at home, on call while she was in her hotel room on vacation. Kind of the book of all time made to be read aloud. Loved it from beginning to end, the cycles, the weight of the past pressing down on each and every word, the denseness of the sentences, the feeling. Burst into tears at the line: "How awful, the way time passes!"
I also read to her My Brilliant Friend and we stopped to stare at each other in anguish at the reveal of the title drop. We are currently about 60% through A Story of a New Name, been deeply mired for ages now in the abject horrors of Elena's failsummer at Ischia. When we move onto the third book I'll be reading it for the first time too and am excited and apprehensive at the thought of what the story brings next!! She gifted me the deluxe version of the Neapolitan Novels (all the volumes in one book with the most gorgeously ominous cover ever) for Christmas :]
I also asked for and received The Mirror & the Light from my friends' secret santa this year and I am sooo happy and excited. I did start reading this back when I finished Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies last year but I didn't make any real headway because even though 95% of what I read is ebooks, sometimes long novels are just so much more pleasant to read in physical form. And what a treat it will be to finally read this book and finish the series!!
Other than that, reading The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar genuinely saved me this winter, in that it revitalized my love for beautiful words, prose, language, and it made me want to write and be ten times more interesting and free with my sentences, just do whatever the fuck I want, describe everything, feel everything. Was captivated instantly reading Tav's opening: I thought of the school and what it might be like and how soon I would die and how it would feel, but these thoughts made me more excited and more awake. So I began to think of horses. The places they loved became places I loved, the landscapes and the people and the traditions and the histories. Tialon: Fanlewas informs us that the Ideiri believed the Sea Goddess rescued Solin. For them, the dead girl was a minor hearth goddess. Her symbol a chain. Seren: Let's go! Write faster! Let's go riding. Throw me onto the back of your saddle like a stolen bride. Throw me. Steal me. Let's go faster. Fly. Siski: And she feels herself becoming, with triumph, with glee, with a kind of delirium, the dangerous girl of a novel, the one who loves no one. Their words, their language, etching and interpretation and song, their regret and freedom and love.
I'm currently reading and enjoying her other book set in the same world, A Stranger in Olondria, and while again the sentences and settings are magnificent it's ultimately no quartet following the lives of four vastly different women through war, through memory. I want to reread it again already.
Overall I finished reading 26 books according to goodreads. Meant to read more classics but only pulled off Morrison's The Bluest Eye, during which I had the distinct thought that this is what writing is for, and Steinbeck's East of Eden. Will try again next year. I tried and failed to read Moby Dick, will probably try and maybe fail again. I read and loved Luminous by Silvia Park on buses in the rotten heat of summer; it was that specific flavour of character-focused science fiction that I eat up, that immerses me, that breaks my heart every time. I loved the sentences in The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, specifically depictions of the sea and descriptions of lists. My favourites:
The sea looked as though it would sound when struck.
“There’s the sea.” Like a door opening and closing.
Everything in the house tatted and doilied in the great art of the place, designs of lace waves and floe ice, whelk shells and sea wrack, the curve of lobster feelers, the round knot of cod-eye, the bristled commas of shrimp and fissured sea caves, white snow on black rock, pinwheeled gulls, the slant of silver rain.
Loops of fishing line underfoot, the snarl trodden into compacted detritus, a churn of splinters, sand, rain, sea wet, mud, weed, bits of wool, gnawed sheep ribs, spruce needles, fish scales and bones, burst air bladders, seal offal, squid cartilage, broken glass, torn cloth, dog hair, nail parings, bark and blood.
Full list of books:
- I Do Everything I'm Told, Megan Fernandes
- A Magical Girl Retires, Park Seolyeon tr. Anton Hur
- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison ♡
- Shanghailanders, Juli Min
- The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
- The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett
- Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins
- The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami
- Stag Dance, Torrey Peters
- The Long Walk, Stephen King
- Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez ♡
- Evenings and Weekends, Oisin McKenna
- Luminous, Silvia Park ♡
- Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney ↺
- The Starving Saints, Caitlyn Starling
- The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
- Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
- Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine
- Lonely Crowds, Stephanie Wambugu
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck
- My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante ↺ ♡
- Heart the Lover, Lily King
- Sweet Days of Discipline, Fleur Jaeggy
- Disappoint Me, Nicola Dinan
- The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar ♡
Lastly, favourite fic I read in the year: The Ending of Han Sooyoung by yellow_caballero, which I loved to death. I'll be real idk if there's anything more serious than doksoo to me. The beautiful kind of pairing where adding yjh to it just makes everything blow up with fireworks in my heart. This moved me so much it made me want to, and ultimately, return to my gsnk yhk wip again... it's so serious to me.
She prodded me with the lollipop stick again. “Come on. Take it.”
I took it. I mutely stuck it in my mouth. It tasted like summer and graphite.
“Seriously, though.” Han Sooyoung crossed her arms, looking me up and down judgmentally. I wondered what she saw. Probably nobody very impressive. “You’re not supposed to be here. Are you this bastard's new best friend or something? If you replaced me with this wet cat I'm gonna go Avatar State on your ass, Yoo Joonghyuk."
I smiled around the lollipop in my mouth. "Han Sooyoung…do you have a crush on me or something?"
Han Sooyoung screamed.
music
☆ oklou - choke enough: gets the crown for the year because it became my running album lmao. I did fall off running (I am always falling off running) but there is always pleasure in the return every time, too. Like the seasons! The album length is just about the perfect length for me to run 5k and there is something so euphoric in the way blade bird comes up at the end and I know I'm almost done. If I hear one of the songs in a different context I get a classically conditioned desire to run.
☆ FKA twigs - Eusexua + Afterglow
☆ Jade - That's Showbiz, Baby! + the encore
☆ Rosalia - LUX
☆ Wolf Alice - The Clearing
☆ PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
☆ Ezra Furman - Transangelic Exodus
☆ SPELLLING - Portrait of my Heart
☆ NMIXX - Blue Valentine, Fe3O4: Forward
☆ Seulgi - Accidentally on Purpose
I went to five concerts. My ranking:
- Ezra Furman:
- Sleigh Bells: because they've been one of my favourite bands of all time since I was 16, what can I fucking say, I'm ao3 user younglegends. First time getting to see them ever, I had the time of my life, everything I ever wanted. Went with my sister and had so much fun dancing with the people around me, and Alexis came down and danced through the crowd during Rill Rill, what a gift. They only played one song from Reign of Terror, I didn't even care! Thank you for my life genuinely.
- SPELLLING: So magical I immediately had to write a post about it. Favourites of the show were Magic Act + of course Boys at School which may have killed me.
- aespa: More for the experience of roadtripping down to Seattle with my friends. This was in January, went with aespa superfan T and we hitched a ride in E and J's car and it was so much fun <3 I remember it was a freezing yet relentlessly sunny winter day.
- Wolf Alice: Great show but it was kinda the worst crowd experience of the year for me, not that anything specific happened but that everything just felt overcrowded and stifling and I was surrounded by tall guys standing completely still, at least the girls dancing behind me seemed to have fun!
Last week I saw Ezra Furman live and may have died. Stood in the centre third row, could have sworn she looked straight at me so many times, though where else is there to look, and you always think that in a show anyway, and I don't need or want it anyway but fuck if it isn't always so electric when you feel as if it's happening. During the first chorus of NO PLACE I felt full-body chills and almost started crying. At one point someone screamed EZRA YOU'RE THE BEST LYRICIST OF OUR GENERATION and without looking in their direction Ezra said Yeah, yeah, I remember my first drink too. During the final song of the encore TELL EM ALL TO GO TO HELL she said I love this part, when it's quiet before it gets loud, this place where you know that things are about to change. It reminded me of what Emily Haines said at the first Metric show I ever went to, years ago, a decade even: this is my favourite part, when it's all slipping away. Then Ezra added, it isn't Vancouver, under her breath almost, and everyone laughed so hard, because, well. Then she went loud again and ended the show on the floor and everyone screamed like crazy, so did I, I almost burst into tears, I stared slack jawed in awe at the empty stage even after she was gone. One of the best shows of my life and I stumbled dizzy and disoriented out of there into the cool night and the moon was huge and orange in the sky, what can you even say!
- aug 2025
writing
Wrote two fics, both of them in the summer.
- tigers blood: op, ace & sabo manifesto of my heart.
“Something you ate?” said Ace.
This was not painless to write, I remember. The structure of it kept giving me a needlessly hard time and I kept having to tell myself to chill out, it's literally fever dreams. Had to contend once again with how op is about rescue and being saved and having to free the world to free one person. I also literally love Sabo ? I'm sorry he's suuuuch a romantic character... kills me also that before he became part of the revolution his childhood dream was to write a book about the world. Like okay . - false images: better call saul, leftovers of everything, 5.6k.
She settled into the chair she was given. Weight of the box of cigarettes in her left breast pocket like a hand to the heart.
After our rewatch I was literally going to sleep every night being haunted by vast gorgeous images of the New Mexico desert behind my eyes. What else could I do, I wanted to live there longer. Some of my favourite memories of the summer, waking up early at seven AM just to write this on my laptop in bed. How easy it was! In the end excluded povs from Howard (unnecessary), Gus (boring), and Jimmy (haha yeah we're not getting that). My ending is perhaps overly optimistic. But I believe in something there about taking responsibility for the people we know, for the people we love.
Otherwise my goal for next year is to complete orv gsnk au... My last big fic WIP, carried now mostly by the momentum of all the feeling I've distilled into it. I already did most of the hard work, my dear self of past years. I just have to get it where it's going.
films & tv
Tacking on that "& tv" just so I can mention that I'm currently, again, rewatching Mad Men. I will probably always be rewatching Mad Men. It feels so fitting to watch it in the winter. We're nearing the end of season six, love the way after every episode we just sit there like okay, Let's Reflect And Interpret <3 Recent standout was s6e09: The Better Half, loved Betty and Don's post-divorce-and-remarriage hookup at their son's summer camp, how exciting it feels vs. the dead stifling agony of their relationship when they were married to each other because for once she's using him back, for once they can see and choose each other clearly, for once it feels like she knows more than he does. Her scorcher of the line She doesn't know yet that loving you is the worst way to get to you. And in the morning she's eating breakfast with Henry, doesn't even glance at him across the room, and it feels like she's won. Don needs to die a hundred deaths btw <3
Meanwhile the summer belonged to Better Call Saul. Which I have already written about. Otherwise for new releases I enjoyed the first seasons of Pluribus and I Love LA.
Watched 96 movies this year according to letterboxd. Standout first-time watches were:
- Being John Malkovich (1999) Genuinely went "holy shit" out loud as the credits rolled, I was not aware of your game etc. After this we immediately watched Adaptation (2002) which I did not like lmao.
- No Other Choice (2025) Got VIFF tickets for this and am sooo happy I got to see this on the big screen
- The Beast (2023) Kind of not enjoyable to watch at all but enjoyable to think about and analyze after lmao
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Red Rooms (2023)
- The Departed (2006) My first Scorsese...
- Bugonia (2025)
- Black Bear (2020)
- Bring Her Back (2025) Watched a lot of horror movies this year and this was the one that made me sob uncontrollably like I was dying after the credits rolled
Our second subject was Paul Thomas Anderson (we didn't finish)... Technically a breathtakingly impressive filmmaker but I've watched enough of his movies now to know that I don't usually like or align with him on a story level, I think. Favourites are There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread (though we didn't get to The Master, Inherent Vice, and Licorice Pizza).
games
Year of the puzzle game for my sister and me. Here's my half-assed ranking I wrote up earlier this year:
- LORELEI AND THE LASER EYES. Haven't even finished this yet but I love it, couldn't believe I'd never heard of it until a throwaway rec at the bottom of a reddit thread. Eerie, beautiful style, with themes of art and creation and performance and memory and time and fate (kind of reminded me of Alan Wake 2, which I started and never finished). Exploring the secrets of a mysterious hotel. AND MAZES!!! I was impressed by the sheer amount of different types of puzzles they were able to fit in this game; the magician's computer disks + the video game debugging + the quiz club labyrinth were most delightful to me personally. I also had fun reading the in-universe articles and scripts and film reviews. It's honestly refreshing to play a game that has so much love for art, writing, creation.
- BLUE PRINCE. The big one... It's an incredibly well-made game and after hundreds of hours and even "beating" the game by achieving the main objective and getting to the credits screen, we are still not finished! In terms of nonlinear puzzle design it can't be beat. So many good memories of discovering twists and uncovering secrets and succeeding (or failing lol) in strategies.
- THE CASE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL + THE RISE OF THE GOLDEN IDOL. Point-and-click mystery game wherein you interpret details from scenes to fill in the blanks in your deduction of what happened, and the plots and worldbuilding get pretty intricate ngl. Very simple in that aspect but very fun and scratches the itch of putting pieces together. Also loved the stylized distinctive and at times grotesque art style. Very interesting also to play with my sister and find out which puzzles we are better at (I like deducing characters' identities, relationships, and motivations; she likes decoding and logic puzzles. Duh!)
- VIRGINIA. Not a puzzle game but we randomly chanced upon this on sale for four dollars (CAD) and thought the trailer looked intriguing for how little it showed of the gameplay. Turns out that's because it's a walking sim. You can already predict the 3.0 rating on Steam. Not from me tho! For a game with no dialogue I loved the story and how effectively it was told. It's also the first time I've experienced a walking sim that uses jump cuts and I found it very effective in tone and style--especially when:
[spoilers from here on out]
in the climactic sequence you finally walk uninterrupted through a tunnel for a while. Loved the dream + imagined sequences, the Lynchian inspirations even I could pick up on as someone who's only watched a few episodes of Twin Peaks, loved the drama and tension at stake--I didn't pick up on it right away and when I realized I was investigating my partner I gasped irl--and the version of the future where you doom her and everyone else and eventually yourself was harrowing. Which makes the fantastical sequence that follows all the more desperate, all the more necessary. never getting to know the secret you burned to ashes in the incinerator. The vision of the missing kid stumbling upon a UFO in an alien encounter and embracing them with open arms; the reality of the ending where you drive away from the town and pass him walking along the side of the road, leaving. And you, too, leaving. - CHANTS OF SENNAAR. Fantastic game involving language translation, only on the lower portion of my list because it's pure pattern recognition/deduction and by itself it's not my favourite to play.
- PROXIMATE. Not a puzzle game either but an interesting little game about capitalist exploitation and technology and toxic coworker situationships between people who are dying inside and/or literally. And monsters. Yay!
- dnf: THE CURSE OF THE OBRA DINN. I'm sorry to everyone who loves this game but it gave me eye strain and a headache.
+
Went skiing and a friend, impressed with the progress I've made since my first time last year, called me fearless. Not the right word at all but it still stuck with me.
- feb 2025
I turned 29 and convinced four people to come run with me in the morning; E and J ran 3k (their first time running in years! Yay!), S ran 8.5k, and A ran 10k with me (also his first time!). It was a really beautiful day, the first day since last autumn I didn't have to wear a jacket while running, and I got a new PR of 1h11min (shaved off 4 minutes--not bad for my first 10k run since November!). Afterward we ate at my favourite Sichuan restaurant and every dish was delicious. My sister baked me the most beautiful cake I've ever seen. That night my extended friend group surprised me with my birthday gift: all 7 of them had pooled together money to buy me new running shoes. It was one of those rare days you recognize even in the moment as perfect.
- mar 2025
Main thing about this year is that I moved in with my sister, and later with our parents lol for temporary reasons. It's been a learning and growing experience! But I'm grateful for everything, all the love I am lucky to have and am surrounded by, especially with some family health scares right at the end of this year, and considering some things that did not survive. Happy new year!