Shadows in the dark

I read 89 books in 2025, which is very much on the low side. This year has been A LOT, and with the move and with how much support Jenny has needed with everything going on, there just wasn't enough time or energy to read.

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October was a pretty good month, with my favourite being Emily J. Taylor's The Otherwhere Post. I always love playing with the multiverse, and I thought the characters in this one were really great, even the side characters that only showed up on a couple of pages made an impression. The writing-based magic system was so cool and the emotional arc really satisfying. Definitely worth a read.

Favourite quote of the month:

Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I - we're just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?

(Becky Chambers - A Psalm for the Wild-Built)
This duology was really worth a read at well; just the softness of it. You'll leave the book feeling a little better about the world, with a little more wonder and awe about existence. It's so worth it.

I wrote something!!

So early September I finally got the chance to see Dear Evan Hansen live. It's one of my favourite musicals and this production was just- amazing. It was in the Netherlands, which made me a bit hesitant (there are quite a few Dutch musical translators I think are ... pretty bad at their job), especially because when we saw The Prom a couple of years ago, it was such a disappointment.

But this one!! Gods, it was all sorts of amazing. The translation was phenomenal, the staging was great, very intimate, most of the actors were great (wasn't a big fan of the actress playing Heidi, but that was okay). The actor playing Connor was especially great, his background work was amazing. I cried so many tears!

Anyway, I got inspired. I set out to write a post-musical Zoe/Evan story, and while I sort of did that, it mostly became a Zoe character study as she figures out how (and whether) to grieve someone she never knew, and with having feelings for someone who lied to her so much. I ignored the epilogue and started my story just after Zoe finds out Evan never knew Connor at all.

Your rhythm is a mess is 4,000 words of grieving, dealing, and moving on.

I was raised Christian. Protestant, Reformed (Liberated), to be exact. I didn't think we were very strict, but your mileage may vary (actually, it's one of the ways in which it is so easy to see within our family that different children from the same family grow up with different experiences; my sister definitely deals with religious trauma. But I digress). We were devout, though; church twice on Sundays, catechesis on Tuesdays, youth group every other week on Wednesdays for a couple of years as well.

There was this family in our church who was way stricter than we were; they didn't have a TV at home, for example. And when Harry Potter really rose to fame, it became very obvious that Good Christian Girls would not read that Pagan drivel (I keep finding it ironic how someone whose work I was hardly allowed to read as a kid is now pushing such a traditional Christian agenda; but I digress, again) but would read Narnia. I'm not even really sure how that fact became so obvious; my parents let me read pretty freely, but it must have been something I picked up from things I heard around me in church and/or op-eds in our Christian newspaper.

It will come as no surprise that I, at that point already an enthusiastic Harry Potter fan (discovering the book series just before the hype) and a PDA'er besides, quickly decided I would not read Narnia.

All that to say, when I finally did pick up the books a couple of months ago, mostly out of this feeling that with how much I'm enjoying portal fantasies I wanted to give this quintessential example of it a read, if just to pick up on references and stuff, and besides, I needed something easy on my mind, with all the move stress and everything, I was aware this would be a Christian book. I knew, vaguely, it was a Christian allegory.

My friends, nothing, nothing, could have prepared me for how very. not. subtle. Lewis was. I think part of me still expected it to be something of a well-known and -accepted interpretation of the story, like it was a hidden meaning that was clear only on close read.

As I kept reading on, I just kept on being bowled over by how obvious it is, from start to finish, up until the point in the last book (spoilers, I guess?) where everyone is saved except Susan because she'd stopped believing in Narnia and yet no one cares, because hey, it's heaven and everyone is happy and who cares about non-believers anyway? They just stop existing. (I liked most of Narnia just fine. The final book though made me a little nauseous.)

I did go in publishing order (the omnibus I used actually was organised in chronological order, but I find that extremely weird, so I sort of jumped back and forth to read it in the intended order). I *adore* Lucy. Funnily enough, I've read the last one almost a month ago and there's not much scenes I specifically remember, but I do remember the one where Lucy sort of meets the mergirl. I felt that connection in my bones (is there any fic about them? I feel like there should be). None of the other characters really stuck with me, though I did like Digory (interestingly enough, I do think The Magician's Nephew is one of the better Narnia stories; I just think it's a strange place to start; just because the bible starts at the creation of the Earth, doesn't mean the Chronicles of Narnia has to start at the beginning).

Fic alert! It's actual fic! That I wrote!

This is one that's been in the works for a long time. The first 3,200 words pretty much wrote themselves, but the ending, gods, the ending. It was impossible, I tell you. I would pick this one up, try a few sentences, realise it didn't work, erase, leave it be for a month. Rinse and repeat for at least four or five times.

I'm not 100% sure the ending works now, but I think that's mostly because it's the nth version and I've lost perspective.

I couldn't know someone less
(title courtesy of Daddy Long Legs, as I try to create at least one fill for the current Lyrical Titles challenge)
is another The Prom fic, this one focusing on the relationship between Alyssa and her father, as I imagine a world where she is kicked out by her mother for being gay and figures her father owes her a roof over her head. Who she finds at her father's place, though, is not what she expected.

Yesterday I finished a book. It was good, well-written, I kept willingly coming back to it even though it took me over six hours to finish it - but it would almost always leave me in a bit bleaker mood. And I realised I don't want that anymore; and then I realised it felt childish to only want to read books that leave me feeling good. I mean- how messed up is that? How nonsensical is it that I would forbid myself from seeking out joy, as if it's a child's prerogative, instead of inherent to human nature?

I feel like joy has to be the antidote to how hopeless I feel most days, and somehow, that felt like a revelation. It feels so obvious in hindsight, and I think I did know it before phrasing it specifically that way, but still, realising it like that, framing joy like that, it's making it a little - a little - easier to chase it. I have decided to cull my TBR from books that I might appreciate (this one is getting 4 stars!) but will still leave me feeling sad. Just like I've started to be a bit more critical in the games I play, uninstalling ones that leave me feeling a bit emptier or a tad drained afterwards, even though I enjoy the game itself. My nervous system, my emotional system, is so sensitive that I have to be sensitive in how I care for it.

And yet, even writing that, a part of me goes, well, aren't you being precious. All my life I've heard my responses, my emotions, my reactions, are over; overexaggerated, over the top, all over the place. As if I'm just pretending. As if these things I'm feeling aren't real and thus should be ignored. It's become so ingrained into my very being, that fighting against that notion is such a process. But these emotions are real, these responses are real, and if I can tamper my suicidal ideation a bit by paying more attention to the sort of books I read, then ... wouldn't it be stupid to ignore that?

It's interesting, people are always so quick to point out how authentic I am, how great I am at being myself, and sure, that's partly true; yet here I am, struggling to allow myself joy ...

With half of my January books being mystery books, I really should stop saying I'm not a mystery reader. In my defense, though, I rarely care about the conclusion to the mystery, it's the character dynamics that really draw me in. Those were really great in Chasing Truth.

The Appeal ('De hoofdrol', I read the Dutch translation), though!! This will not be a blanket endorsement as I gave for The Lost Story, just because it's an epistolary, and I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. It really is mine though, and this became my first (very early!) six star read of the year. It was all kinds of amazing. The premise is as follows: two law students get a big file from their professor and have to sort through it all (e-mails, text messages, stuff like that). They - and, as a consequence, you - don't know what they're looking for yet, just that there's something in there that's important.
Loads of things happen between the various characters, secrets kept and secrets revealed, a lot of threads woven throughout it all. As the reader you know it's a murder mystery, so you have some leg up on the law students, but you only learn who's dead at 2/3rd, which I thought a great way of really immersing yourself into the world and the characters. After that point, you follow along with the discussions between the law students as they try to figure things out.
I love how well Hallett utilises the format, with tiny details here and there having meaning, and she knew exactly when and where to add the sort of 'filler' that make epistolary so enticing for me (no, seriously; I love the format so much that it even influences my job: I love translating meeting minutes, because it gives such a view into the life and the development of things at a company). Off to a great start with my I-want-to-read-more-epistolaries goal!

Favourite quote of the month:

You're at least a hundred different impossibles.

(Julie Cross - Chasing Truth)

1. Update your fandom information
I made some minor tweaks to my introduction post (updated age, removed Pokemon Go from the fandom list).

2. Your fannish origin story
I did a very personal and extensive fandom history in 2020.

However, 's way of looking at this made me look beyond the usual definition of fandom. And I realised, my fannish origins, before I'd had any notion of fandom at all? My mom, who would say to me when I'd complain about a book with an open ending: "Write your own". Eventually, that's what I started doing! Thanks mom!

3. A fannish opinion that has changed over time
This was a tough one, mostly because it's hard to keep track of what I used to think you know? But:

I believe I used to scoff at RPF once upon a time. Did I actually think there was something wrong with it? I'm genuinely not sure, but I did look down on it, that I do know. I'm not proud of this! I've come to realise that as long as nobody actually bothers the people involved (which still gets me really angry), there's truly nothing wrong with it at all. Also, I read quite a bit of One Direction RPF (Harry/Louis) these days, so ...

4. Goals
As someone with PDA, goals are always a tough one. I'll just leave this: I want to write more than last year. I only managed 6 fics last year, and not only do I miss writing, I'm also pretty sure writing is good for my mental health and I'm missing out on the benefits.

I read 143 books in 2024, which is... getting a bit ridiculous, really? It's my go-to low-energy activity and energy has been in short supply again.

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