labingi

In 2025 I posted reviews of 44 games, of which 10 were replays, 1 was a revision of an old review, and 33 were games I hadn't played before.

( and here they are )

(I made sure to number them because when I went back to number my book post I realized I had shorted myself four books! It was actually 51!)

My ongoing gaming side-quest is to play games from different countries. This year my new countries were Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Peru, the Philippines, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan, bringing my total to 28. (At least the way I'm counting. I realize that "what is a country?" is a fraught question, but it's also a question that's way above my pay grade so I'm trying not to sweat it for such a low-stakes project.) My list of potential games to play includes 31 more countries. There are still lots and lots that I haven't yet identified a game for, including some seemingly low-hanging fruit, but since I'm keeping it to titles that would be of interest to me outside this project, the search for options can take longer.

My game list is a bit silly right now because I decided to add every game I could remember playing... ever. I love revisiting childhood games, and I enjoy searching for obscure titles and figuring out how to get them to run, so I'm okay with the list just being long. I actually do think it is possible, in principle, for me to review every game I played as a child, while attempting to do the same for books would be totally absurd. I've read a lot more books than I've played games, I started reading at a younger age, and I think I'm much less likely to forget a game than a book simply because I have a strong visual memory. Anyway, for future reference (I know I'll want to know next year) I currently have 280 games on my list.

Of the games I played for the first time in 2025, my favorites include: Until Then, Disco Elysium, Engare, I Did Not Buy This Ticket, The Last Door, and The Drifter.

lennymacb posting in

little_details

Howdy! My screenplay takes place in rural North Dakota in November 1996, and two teenage characters are fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I know the bat'leth as a weapon was introduced in the show long ago, but when did replicas and toys become widely sold? Would it be realistic for a working-class young woman to have a mini bat'leth she could use as a knife in that year? I also read that the mek'leth (smaller Klingon scimitar) was introduced in DS9 and also appeared in First Contact. How early were replicas of those available to fans?
Thanks a million to you all! Would also love to hear any other miscellaneous stories or details of the TNG+DS9 fandom of the 90s, to give some extra oomph and care to an underrepresented community :)

tellmewhatyousee posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3189/

They're not generally used for crewed spacecraft because astronauts HATE going around the corners.

https://xkcd.com/3189/

matsushima posting in

threeforthememories

There's a superstition in Japan that certain ages are unlucky. The year you turn 36 is unlucky for women. (There are only two options.) I turned 36 in 2025 and it was a bad year for me!

… which is why I'm starting with this selfie:

( 2025 in three photos )

I participated in this community in 2023 and 2024, too.

Current Mood: reflective

sixbeforelunch posting in

journalsandplanners

I don't know how interesting this will be to people other than me. I'm not the most artistic or creative person, not by a long shot, but I've decided to share my current primary planner anyway. This set up served me really well last year. This year I've made a few minor improvements, and it's possible that some of these ideas will be useful to other people.

The journal I'm using is the Panobook from Studio Neat. I love the wide landscape layout and the dot grid, and I can vouch for the quality of the paper. I use cheap ballpoint pens (I might experiment with fountain pens at some point, but I haven't yet), and also cheap markers. Neither bleed through these pages. The cover is sturdy, and the spiral binding is resilient. It's 50 sheets, 100 total pages long, which is enough for the entire year and then some. I stay on one side of the page, and then when I get to the end, I flip it over and start writing on the reverse side, so the spiral is always on the left side as I use the notebook. You could obviously just use both sides of the page as you go, but I found this works better for me. (If you're a lefty, in theory you could do the opposite and keep the spiral on the right as you go. The pages have no set orientation.)

( Image heavy below the cut. CN: brief mention of weight tracking. )

mific

OK, today is the day I'm going to talk about a topic other than Heated Rivalry, because something amazing just happened.

Back in high school when I was 17 and in the 6th form (as we called it then, same as junior year in the US), my first boyfriend was a US exchange student from Illinois called Dave, a farm boy from the vicinity of Springfield, south of Chicago.

This morning I was woken up by someone knocking on my door at about 9am. I'm a night owl so I'm not always up then. I staggered about calling out for them to wait, and after pulling on some clothes, opened the door to find an older guy asking if I knew [my name]. And it was Dave. Neither of us recognised the other at first sight, obviously.

So for the past 3 hours we've been talking, catching up and exchanging reminiscences, filling each other in on our lives. He was only in NZ for 3 months back in our high school days and I think it was a pretty intense experience for him, urban New Zealand (Christchurch, where I grew up) being very different from rural Illinois, and my family were more liberal than his so I was a bit wilder than the girls he was used to. We thought we were in love, of course, and he says he was heartbroken to have to leave me, and that he regretted never corresponding with me afterwards - I thought my heart was broken, too, and wrote to him a few times, then stopped when there were no replies.

We dated for several weeks and were both virgins when we finally had entirely unprotected sex, not long before he had to return to the states. We had sex several times after that, ostensibly "going to the movies" but actually to a quiet park near where I lived, putting a blanket on the ground in a copse of trees. Apparently, (I have zero recall of this), I wrote to him after he got back home and told him that I hadn't gotten pregnant, thank goodness! (I do remember anxiously waiting for that period to come). His mother read that letter for some reason, and gave him hell! So I think he was kind of traumatised by that and never replied to me. He regrets that, now, and one reason for seeing me again was to apologise.

It's not like either of us has been carrying a torch all these years, but I think he really liked New Zealand and had fond memories, and he and his wife came back here as tourists in their fifties. He has a son back in the states and a daughter in Sydney, so when he decided to take a trip downunder he hired a private detective to try to locate me (as he's not great with computers and searches etc.) I'm not easy to google under my own name as although it's an unusual one, there's an Australian poet with exactly the same name, so all the hits are for her.

Anyway, eventually, through torturous routes via my old employment as a doctor, Dave got an address for me, but the street number was slightly wrong. (He wrote to me but it'll have been returned to sender). Luckily, today when he went to the wrong address across the road from me, a neighbour helped him to figure out the right number and he ended up on my doorstep.

So I was a bit muzzy, just woken up and no tea or breakfast yet, and my flat is a complete tip right now. Fionna who cleans for me Mondays is on a 3 week Christmas break, and every day I keep meaning to do a big tidy-up and put away dirty dishes and paper grocery delivery bags that are all in a big heap, but I hadn't gotten around to it due to a) painting seasonal cards each day, and, b) being obsessed with Heated Rivalry rewatches, fanfic, and art! Anyway, Dave didn't turn a hair at the mess, and frankly I'm past caring about that sort of shit these days.

We had a nice long talk, comparing notes about our lives.

I'm happily single - he was married, not very happily, had an affair then got divorced, then his wife died from cancer. He has twins - a son and daughter, in their 40s.
I'm staunchly leftist - he voted for Trump for specious conservative reasons and now regrets a lot of the Trump administration's bullshit. He didn't seem full-on MAGA but I told him I was anti-Trump so we wouldn't talk about that. He seems otherwise a nice guy, not bigoted, sings in his local choir, Christian in a social sort of way, cares about his kids, friends, and local community.
I was a doctor (a psychiatrist, then ran the local psych registrar training programme) - he was a farmer, then elected to the state legislature, then worked for a passenger rail company. We're both retired.
He's a prepper! He told me a little about how he's set up his farmhouse with a two year food supply and various other survivalist gear. I'm into apocafic, so weirdly we have something in common there, and have exchanged book recs for favourite post-apocalyptic series!
He's intrepid enough to still be traveling the world. He flies small planes and is having a space-age plane built. It's called the Samson Switchblade - a 2-seater plane that on landing, folds itself up into a fucking 3-wheeler sports car/bike! He plans to travel more widely in the states, once it's finished and delivered. Obviously he's well-off, from selling the farm's land (most to the government as flood mitigation rewilding), and a good pension after the legislature work. I'm also comfortably off due to a sensible superannuation plan (same as what he calls a pension) plus as an only child I inherited my parents' house, and sold my own. But I stopped flying anywhere after Covid, and never plan to get into an aeroplane again.
He's fairly trim, with just a knee replacement (used to be a runner), but he has Parkinson's disease, with a noticeable hand tremor. I'm generally healthy but also fat and profoundly unfit, with limited exercise tolerance.
He's not at all tech-savvy in terms of phones or computers, whereas I'm comfortable with all that and a lot "younger" than him in my internet activities.

None of those differences mattered - it was just nice to catch up again. We've exchanged emails, and I plan to write to him and tell him what a blast it was, seeing him once more after so many, many years. He's off to other parts of NZ now, and Australia.

I'm still feeling a little stunned, but that may be low blood sugar as I still haven't had breakfast.

Dave, thanks so much for remembering me and tracking me down. I hope you have a blast with your amazing transformer plane before the Parkinson's gets too bad (and that you never need that two year food supply).

Man, what a way to start the day!

museaway posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

missizzy

My family had our Christmas get-together a week later than planned today. Mom and I went over to my sister and brother-in-law's house, where we watched the highlights of Mamdani's inauguration (first time I've actually seen him speak, and he's certainly good at it), ate some good chicken, mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese, and then opened presents. Lots of practical ones, especially for my sister, who needed a lot of various articles of clothing, and I now have a working table lamp in a spot where I really needed one. Also, of course, books. Mom got me a few Mary Beards, and I also got the third volume of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. (Just in time, too, since I've started the final ten episodes of The Untamed.)
The tree will stay up another week; mom wanted to keep it until at least twelfth night. Then we are left to try to cope with 2026 as best we can. I've got a plan or two towards that end, though how they will unfold, it is currently difficult to know.

magicrubbish posting in

iconthat

URL

Next image -

The Leftovers

Current Mood: calm

yourlibrarian posting in

threeforthememories

threeforthememories is now open! You can join and share your photos at any time between now and January 24th. Please refer to the 3 rules in the profile page, and feel free to ask anything here.

Let's all share 2025 memories!

hafnia

Real entry to come, but!

Click the banner to join us and make some new friends!

FRIENDING MEME.

I filled it out and was perhaps overly honest (whoops), but you can and should fill it out too, if you're looking for new friends :)

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6937 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #990.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

snickfic

I guess I might finish another book before year’s end, but this feels close enough to be pretty safe. NB I have reviews for most of these books in my books tag.

How many books did you read this year? Any trends in genre/length/themes/reading patterns/etc?
Books read: 25
Pages read (roughly): 7450

Relative to past years, more murder mysteries, more rereads (five), more older stuff (four before 1940). Less straight horror. Probably more textually queer stuff? I read a lot on airplanes. I took almost the whole summer off from reading and watched movies instead.

I had a mountaineering phase kickstarted by that one Jon Krakauer book, which also meant reading way more nonfiction than usual. Apparently the key to reading nonfiction is to have specific topics you want to know about, rather than just being like “I want to Learn Things.” Who could have foreseen!

What are your top 3 books that you read this year for the first time?
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Yes, it really is that good, just like everyone says.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge. Beautiful prose, top-notch worldbuilding, and some great horror moments.

A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. A shot STRAIGHT to the id.

What's a book you enjoyed more than you expected?
Maybe The Secret of Chimneys, an Agatha Christie novel that I probably read at some point but had forgotten basically all of. The other thing I’d forgotten: how fun Christie is when she’s really on her game. This was a rollicking delight.

Which books most disappointed you this year?
It was disappointing to realize how much worse the sexism was in the Pern books than I remembered. Just absolutely soaking in it. Ugh.

Also, wow, I hated Wild Spaces by SL Coney. Haaaaated.

And I reread Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys and didn’t enjoy it as much the second time around. There felt like too many characters, too thinly characterized. I still love Aphra and the worldbuilding, though.

Did you reread any books? If so, which one was you favourite?
I reread several this year, but the one that I enjoyed the most and definitely the one I spent the most time with was Moby Dick. The langague, gosh. Good enough to eat. Having reacquainted myself with the story, I think I’m going to keep just dipping in and out of it every so often. I found and bought a physical edition I really love, the Canterbury Classic "Word Cloud" edition that is just a pleasure to read and makes dipping in very appealing.

On a related note, I think this year was the tipping point to me becoming a prose snob. The prose in Moby Dick is so rich and chewy and worth reading and rereading. Sometimes it's basically impenetrable, but even so! Incredibly rewarding. And then I open so many new novels and quit on the first page because the prose is so artless.

It's not like I want every novel to be Moby Dick, which also happens to be a timeless work of literature: hardly a fair comparison for a random novel I pick up at the library. However, there are lots of authors out there writing prose that is graceful and evocative in their own ways. Frances Hardinge and Stephen King come immediately to mind, for two very different living examples.

I just cannot be fucked anymore with prose that doesn't show some skill. Life is too short. I suspect this might lead me to reading more classics, which I'm not mad about.

What's the oldest book you read?
The Unafraid, a 1913 adventure romance by Eleanor Ingram (with a textual gay side character!), is the oldest that I read for the first time. For rereads, Moby Dick was published in 1851.

What's the newest book you read?
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, published this year.

Did you DNF (= did not finish) any books?
My most emphatic DNF was the second book in the Briardark series by SA Harian. I reread the first book just to remember what all was going on, then got like fifty pages into the second one and was like, actually I don’t care about any of these characters or the cosmic horror mystery.

Some others I started and wandered off from:
- The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
- The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
- Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
- The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman by Niko Stratis
- Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby
- Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
- Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

What was your predominant format this year?
Still mostly dead trees around here, although I did listen to a mountaineering book and part of Moby Dick on audiobook, and I read a couple of ebooks during my travels.

What's the longest book you read this year?
Moby Dick, with 561 pages in my edition.

Did you reach your reading goal for this year (if you had one)?
I wanted to read more outside my usual fiction genres, which I really didn’t manage to do other than for a couple of specific items on the to-read list. Speaking of, here is all I read from the to-read list. Honestly five books from the January tbr is pretty good for me lol.

Moby Dick
The Iskryne books (I read the first two)
The Book of Lamps and Banners (Cass Neary #4)
something by ECR Lorac

Any goals for 2025?
My immediate list of stuff I want to tackle or finish is:

Knock Knock Open Wide by Neil Sharpson
The Count of Monte Cristo?
Something… literary, maybe?? Maybe My Brilliant Friend or something by Anne Rivers Siddons.
The Draegaera books (starting with Jhereg)
Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle
The Coldfire Trilogy
Ammonite
Dublin Murder Squad
American Elsewhere
Perdido Street Station (reread)
A Zelazny collection (reread)
The Folly of the World
Maplecroft by Cherie Priest (Lizzie Borden + Lovecraft?!)
Craft Sequence – Max Gladstone

I would say the main theme here is "ambitious," for me if not the author. A lot of older stuff, or stuff that is beloved that I haven't tried, or stuff I've just been meaning to get around to. A couple of those are already on my shelf, and it'd be nice to knock them off the TBR.

hannah

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I'm Hannah wherever I can manage it, and I don't know if I'm a fandom old yet or if I got into fandom young enough I've just been around for a long time. I've certainly been doing this challenge a while, and I admit I look forward to it every year - it's a good way to ease into a new calendar cycle and, as a bonus, I usually pick up a couple new people to talk to before it's over. Because talking to people is the biggest reason I've stayed around this long.

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Get Along - Mike Doughty

cephy

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

winterfirelight

snowflake_challenge
Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Wow, it's been a while since I posted! Oops. It's been busy. Anyway, hello again! I'm joining the challenge to try to get back in the habit of being active here, and hopefully to make some new friends and connections. I am a lurker by nature, so I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone and share more.

Extra bonus (for me, though I recognize the broader circumstances of this are not great) - we have so many new Russian friends here on Dreamwidth! As good an excuse as any to brush off my Russian, so I'm going to try to do Snowflake Challenge: Double Challenge Mode and translate my posts into Russian.

Снежнике-Вызов
Вызов 1:

Игра для знакомства: Представьтесь. Расскажите, почему вы принимаете участие в этом вызове и что надеетесь получить от него.

Вау, было давно, когда я публиковала! Ой. Eще раз здравствуйте! Я принимаю участие в вызове чтобы вернуться к привычке быть актывным здесь, и надеюсь знакомиться с новыми друзьями и знакомыми. Я по натуре наблюдатель, так что я попробую выйти из своей зоны комфорта и больше публиковать.

Экстра бонус (для меня, но я признаю, что общие обстоятельства не очень хорошие) - у нас есть здесь в Dreamwidth так много новых русских друзей! Такая же хорошая причина, как и любая другая, чтобы тренироваться в русском языке, так что я попробую Снежнике-Вызов: Режим Двойного Вызова и буду переводить посты на руссий язык.

Прошу прощения, если мой русский неверный. Скажите мне, пожалуйсте, как я могу лучше писать! Мой последний урок русского языка был шесть лет назад, и я много забыла.

starwatcher posting in

ebooks

This is the list where you can choose different sellers. Here's the sale link --

https://earlybirdbooks.com/deals/1000-ebook-sale

**

Folks, I often don't open my laptop until noon or later. Since my timezone is GMT+7, that's awfully late for anyone in Europe, and these posts are fairly useless.

BUT! Note that there's a "subscribe" button at the top of the Early Bird Books page. If you subscribe, you'll get a daily email that lists a dozen or so discounted books, as well as early notification of these massive sales. (This one hit my inbox at 5:20 A.M.)

Also check out Bookbub -- https://www.bookbub.com/ If you sign up, you select the genres you like to read and your seller of choice. Then you get a daily email with approximately 15 to 30 discounted books in your selected genres. Bookbub doesn't have the massive sales like Early Bird Books, but often there are 3 or 4 titles "free" in the daily list. (At least, in the Romance genre.)

**

As always, feel free to share this post or info wherever you choose. Happy reading!

starwatcher

Profile

labingi

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Base style: Five AM by winterfish
Theme: Prose by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 3rd, 2026 11:22 am

Network

2025 game roundup

1996 Star Trek Merch

Multifandom: No Romo Fest

Conic Sections

2025

my 2026 planner and tracker

Blast from the past!

Multifandom: Hey, Sweetheart

(no subject)

Pass It On 6

Three for the Memories Now Open!

(no subject)

[ SECRET POST #6937 ]

2025 AO3 wrapped

2025 in review: books

Still the same.

Blah Blah Blah Game

Snowflake Challenge: Challenge #1

Today only -- Jan 2nd -- ebook sale.