Black Rose

You guys, I love Yuletide. So many things I can read, I got great gifts, people are reading what I wrote... incredible. Here, have some recs.

First, my gifts:
Endless Night, True Detective: Night Country, Danvers/Navarro, 4.6k. My author took my prompt "what if the sun didn't come back" and ran with it. Great apostalyptic vibe here, and my shiiiiip. <3

The Inheritance of Imogen Dearborn, Kyle Murchison Booth Stories, Booth/Ratcliffe, 13!!!!!k. Booth needs Ratcliffe's help with an acquisition at a decaying house in the country, and things get weird, as they so often do around Booth. I freaking love this fandom's dedication to casefic*, and this is a wonderful example of a case that's great on its own merits and all the better because the relationship growing around the edges. <3 <3 <3

(*I'm developing the theory that the KMB stories are basically the perfect canon for producing casefic: the canon is already a series of casefics, already in prose, and they're nearly all pretty short. Put that all together, and writers have the perfect model to work from.)

And now for the other fics I've loved so far:
boot error, Companion (2025), Iris gen, 2.6k. Iris confronts life without an operating system. It was great to see Iris here, trying to figure out exactly what it means to be a person when one's whole personality is made of code.

Written in squid ink, Kraken - China Mieville, Billy/Dane, 3k. Not everyone in the Church of the Kraken was blessed with a tattoo in squid ink, but Dane was one of the lucky few, and at a young age too. I loved seeing an interpretation of soulmate marks specifically for this canon, and I loved all of Dane's weird fantasies and fetishes and imagined acts of religious devotion, and how they all got tangled up together.

Touching the Moon, My Sister and the Prince, Marie gen, 4k. This is how it happened; and what happened, after. The canon is a short film that is incredibly compelling considering it's two actors on one set for a single scene. You should watch it and then read this structurally creative and heartwrenching answer to the question of what came next.

Hunger, Dragonriders of Pern, Kylara/Lessa, 2.7k. Both Lessa and Kylara are Searched for Nemorth's final clutch. This Kylara feels exactly right to me: scheming, focused on her own desires and ambitions, fully aware of her own strengths and at least some of the weaknesses of others, and above all with an eye for opportunity. And the actual events, brief though they, promise a very interesting future for this version of canon. :D

The day the riders came, Dragonriders of Pern, OC gen, 1.8k. What if the dragons of Pern and the Impression bond were anything *but* benevolent? Or, alternately: what if the dragons were Lovecraftian horrors? This gets so dark in the best way, and the last line is a knockout punch.

I will probably see a couple more movies before the end of the year, and I’ll update the numbers accordingly, but I think otherwise my answers will pretty much stay the same.

NB I have reviews for most of the movies in my movies tag.

What TV shows did you watch a season of this year?
Creepshow, which wasn’t even good! It just had good guest stars! My trend of one full season of TV a year continues apace.

What TV shows did you DNF this year?
Severance. I got it out of the library, and I still didn’t want to finish it.
Legion. I watched one episode and then got distracted, but I’d like to try again. I do love Dan Stevens.

How many movies did you watch this year? Any trends in genre/viewing format/etc?
I had a Regal subscription for over half the year, so I had a HUGE uptick in new releases watched. Movie stats overall this year (not counting rewatches except where noted):

2025 movies: 30 (plus one that’s technically 2026)
Older movies: 34

Movies seen in the theater (new and old): 33
Movies seen otherwise: 32

I also rewatched two 2025 movies in the theater, three older movies in the theater, and seven older movie at home, for a total of 38 total visits to the theater this year. That is definitely the most I have ever been to the theater in a year in my life, and I had a great time. I cancelled my Regal subscription because I thought I was burned out, but it’s been expired for five days and I already miss it, so I will probably resubscribe. I got way more use out of it than I did my Huly subscription last year and probably my Hulu and Netflix subscriptions combined (both of which I have since cancelled).

What were your movie trends for the year?
Most-watched actor: Jeffrey Combs once again, mostly due to rewatches at this point, but Doctor Mordrid, Dark House, and Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls were all new.

Most-watched genre: Horror by a mile, thriller a very distant second.

Most-watched country of origin: USA, but Australia was second with three, so that’s neat.

What are your top movies you watched this year?
In terms of the sheer amount of joy and delight I derived from it, it’s probably Red Sonja. This is by no means the best movie I saw this year, but apparently it was the movie I needed.

Some other fave first-time watches, from this year unless noted:
- Cuckoo (2024). Weird weird xenobio shit, casually queer, Dan Stevens chewing the scenery. What’s not to love.
- Companion. Smart, fun comedy/thriller(?). Just so tightly written, and everyone was great, most of all Sophie Thatcher.
- Clown in a Cornfield. Another movie way smarter than it had to be, and with so much heart.
- Sinners. Gorgeous.
- On Swift Horses. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying Jacord Elordi was very pretty and sad and gay.
- The Long Walk. I didn't love it as much as the book, but it understood the assignment, and I respect that.
- Hell House LLC: Carmichael Manor (2023). For pure horror, this is the scariest movie I saw this year.
- Wake Up Dead Man. Despite the heavy themes, this was ultimately a good entertaining time, just like the previous ones. I want ten more. 🙏
- Silent Night Deadly Night. A late-year surprise. I went in knowing basically nothing, and I had such a good time. I NEED a sequel.
- Red Rooms (2023). French-Canadian movie about women obsessed with serial killers. Stylish, femslashy as hell, an extremely precise and careful movie.

Other movies you saw this year that deserve more love
- Strange Harvest, a microbudget cosmic horror true crime mockumentary. Yes.
- Him, which absolutely did not deserve to get panned so universally. It had style and ambition, which is way more than I can say for lots of movies I saw this year.
- Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, a cheesy low-budget fantasy/horror movie with a lot more heart than it has any right to given how broad the comedy is.

Biggest disappointments
- Death of a Unicorn. >:( What a soulless, half-assed attempt at a horror comedy.
- The Conjuring 4. Even Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga couldn’t save this piece of dreck. Worse than 3, and that’s saying something.

Movies you finally got around to seeing for the first time
- Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Omg Chelsea of Dead Meat wasn’t being ironic; Leatherface IS baby. ;__;
- The Shining (1980). Fuck off, Jack Nicholson.
- Candyman (1992). Maybe trying to do too many things at once, but I was pleasantly surprised by how central the question of race was, and the romance/corruption arc was good stuff.
- Crash (1996). We definitely emphasized a different word in the phrase “erotic thriller” than I expected going in.
- Brokeback Mountain (2005). I respect it for what it was and meant at the time, but I did not love it. Heath Ledger was incredible though.
- The Mist (2007). It was fine.

Movies that you had the most fun talking about, whether they were good or bad
Probably either The Ugly Stepsister or The Long Walk, both because they have clear themes about (gross generalization here) characters doing their best in crapsack dystopias and showing how messy that gets emotionally for the characters. Lots to chew on in both of them, although I would say The Ugly Stepsister goes harder (which is impressive considering the other movie is the one where people get brutally shot in the head on screen every few minutes). The logistics of filming The Long Walk were also super interesting.

Did you rewatch any old faves? If so, which one was you favourite?
I got to see Re-Animator in the theater. <3 On film, with a recorded video message from Jeffrey Combs beforehand which someone played on their phone and held up for the audience to see. <333

What's the oldest movie you watched?
A Bucket of Blood, a 1959 thriller/satire.

What's the newest movie you watched?
LOL technically We Bury the Dead, which doesn’t hit wide release until the beginning of January. I saw it at a mystery movie screening.

Did you watch any movies outside of your usual preferred genre(s)?
Red Sonja is sword and sorcery, which I don't really watch, but that's partly because it doesn’t really exist as a movie genre these days. That may explain why it only got one day of theatrical release and zero marketing, which is a crying shame.

I watched indie drama Die My Love for Jennifer Lawrence and regretted it. I watched indie feminist/fable 100 Nights of Hero and… didn’t regret it, I guess, but I did think it sucked a lot on multiple axes. Every time I venture out of my horror niche, I end up thinking I should just watch more horror. :\

Any movies you're excited to watch in 2025?
I am aware of and excited about a surprising number of movies coming out next year!
Scream 7
Ready or Not 2
Dune 3
Wuthering Heights
The Bride
Iron Lung

climbing bros, OW, 4k, m/m, omegaverse. On the side of a mountain, Davis's best friend goes into heat. I wrote for the tag "Male Omega in Heat/His Beta Best Friend Desperate to Help," and I needed something more to really get the (creative) juices flowing, so, uh, I decided to put all that mountaineering reading I did this fall to good use. Also, fun fact: the beta/omega BFFs relationship and backstory was lifted directly from a J2 HS AU I wrote over a decade ago. 😅

see to him, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 6200 words. In a BDSM AU, Noel does what needs doing (and has a lot of feelings about it). This is more or less my first posted BDSM AU in ten years and the first EVER in the Oasis tag other than some untagged ficlets in a larger collection from six years ago, which absolutely blows my mind. Liam has the biggest bratty sub energy of all time, how is there not tons of fic about this?!

adastreia originally prompted something like this for the H/C Exchange back in the spring, and I talked them into doing FIAB so I could finally write it for them. I knew exactly how I wanted the RL conflict from the 1996 MTV Unplugged show (in which Liam famously claimed a sore throat, leaving Noel stuck with lead singer duties, and then heckled him from the wings) to intersect with the BDSM stuff, but I struggled quite a bit with exactly how I wanted Noel positioned in this world of normalized kink, how he had thought about it in the past (especially with respect to Liam), and so on. I had to feel my way along, and I don't feel like I ever quite figured it out. IDK, more to unpack there. I also ended up writing no actual sex, and it occurred to me long after works went live that I should probably downgrade the rating from Explicit to Mature, lol.

I definitely feel like there's more juice to this AU. I would love to write a sequel. Also other people should write several hundred k of gcest BDSM AUs for me to read, please and thank you.

This is the year-end category where I'm least likely to want to change my answers in the next week and a half, lol, so here we go.

Favorite new songs/albums of the year
- Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 by Lord Huron. Great vibes, a great progression, only one skip (“Digging Up the Past”). Dreamy and sad, suffused with existential horror, just weird enough both lyrically and musically. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from the new album, but this was exactly it. “Who Laughs Last” is probably my song of the year.

- Mayhem by Lady Gaga. When you're sixteen years into your career and can make a banger album like that this fits right in with your classics!!! The first six or seven songs in particular are an amazing run. “Perfect Celebrity” is probably my favorite, but it’s hard to choose.

- All the live tracks from the Oasis tour. I think this is the first officially released live version of Bring It On Down ever, and Wonderwall is the best live version since… idk, the one from Knebworth 1996 maybe? Or maybe ever? And this live version of Slide Away has finally brought me around on that song. Incredible stuff. (Full live tour album when???)

- "Van Horn" by Saint Motel. One of those songs I didn't really appreciate until I heard it live. Great fun. Also a couple of songs off their new album from the spring (as opposed to their new album for the fall).

- New Candys, which I stumbled across on Bandcamp. I got hooked on their single "Regicide", and the accompanying album The Uncanny Extravaganza is ideal "drowning out external noise" work music.

- All That We Imagine Is the Light, the new Garbage album. Some of the writing is a little dodgy, honestly, but the vibe is great. No Gods No Masters is still my favorite, though.

Disappointments
- I wish I liked Miley's new album more than I do. The tracks I like best are mostly her doing Lady Gaga, and that's not really what I go to Miley for.

- I discovered Dorothy Martin of the band Dorothy has gone full born-again Christian and is now giving interviews about spiritual warfare and the like. Bummer. We'll always have ROCKISDEAD, I guess.

Favorite new-to-me songs/albums
- This year I got really into the Monnow Valley and Sawmills versions of Definitely Maybe, which were released for the 30th anniversary last year. In some ways I like them better than the official album, or at least they've made me appreciate the official album more. Sad Song with young Liam on vocals is incredible, and I’m sad the official version left out that great electric guitar (bass?) hook.

- At the beginning of the year I had a month or so of listening almost exclusively to Doechii (mostly Alligator Bites Never Heal) and GloRilla (mostly Glorious and Anyways, Life's Great). Good times. TGIF is an all-timer.

Stuff I was really into for a hot minute and/or that I want to explore further
- Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo through their collab album In the Earth Again. I love the contrast of the menacing electric guitars and Pedigo's contemplative, melancholy acoustic.

- Ethel Cain, maybe? Or maybe I just like “Tempest” a lot.

- The singles from Charli XCX’s upcoming Wuthering Heights-themed album. Brat didn’t do anything for me, but these are very much my jam. I love when a pop artist goes weird, like she does on “House.” My most anticipated release of 2026.

- That new Rosalia album. I think I need to spend more time with it to fully appreciate it. “Berghain” is a hell of a track, though.

- Jonah Kagen, mostly that single “God Needs the Devil,” which is exactly the kind of rootsy bitterness I like sometimes. However, his full album later in the year gave me bad politics vibes, always a hazard with Americana and country artists, so I don’t know that I’ll explore him further.

Some other favorite tracks from this year
“Problems” by Yonaka. That last bit leading into the chorus for the first time!! Gives me shivers.
“The Fate of Ophelia” by Taylor Swift. This song is NONSENSE but it’s so catchy.
“Lucky” by Renee Rapp from the Now You See Me 3 soundtrack. A classic bop. Apparently it didn’t even chart, which surprises me, but the charts were wacky this year.
“Song for Henry” by Loren Kramer from the soundtrack for On Swift Horses. You know, the angsty heartbreaker song playing over Julius and Henry’s first sex scene.

Old Favorites - stuff I already loved and continued to listen to a bunch in 2025.
Kendrick Lamar! His Super Bowl show reignited all my enthusiasm. I watched that thing so many times. This coincided with my Doechii/Glorilla phase at the beginning of th eyear.

Miley Cyrus's older stuff, especially her 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation. I’d have said Plastic Hearts was the one I really loved, and yet at this point I think I’ve actually listened to ESV more times. I guess maybe it’s the right mood for more situations than Plastic Hearts. It kind of wears down towards the end, and I find the last two songs unlistenable, but until that point it’s a basically flawless execution of the thing it’s choosing to be.

Oasis, lol. They were my top artist of the year yet again. Mostly the Definitely Maybe anniversary release and the live tracks, as mentioned above, but also according to Tidal I listened to the Knebworth 1996 live album a lot. I don’t even remember this.

Best lines - New or old, on their own or combined with the music:
- I got a burning feeling deep inside of me / And don’t know where to put it (“Who Laughs Last” by Lord Huron)

- You said you really don’t dream anymore (“Life is Strange” by Lord Huron)

…I probably just need to do a whole post about this album, huh. Does anyone else here listen to them?