snickfic: Yon-Rogg has Carol in an arm lock (Carol why this)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-12-12 04:56 pm
Entry tags:

movies: Wicked 2, Dust Bunny

Dust Bunny (2025). A little girl hires a hit man (Mads Mikkelsen) who lives across the hall to kill a monster under her bed. Or, Roald Dahl meets John Wick.

This is listed as a "horror thriller," which I guess is true in the same sense that the Barbie movie is a "political drama." I would be more inclined to call this a dark fantasy/action movie. It's also rated R, and I legitimately do not know why; this is like a mid-tier PG-13. I kept waiting for things to get gory and justify the rating, and they never did, so I recommend managing your expectations on that front.

The aesthetic here goes extremely hard. Their apartment building is an absolutely incredible art nouveau confection. We visit other locales with similarly heightened decor, but honestly nothing is nearly as visually stunning, which I think is fine, because the apartment building is the heart of the movie.

The acting here is all extremely good. In addition to Mikkelsen and the child actress, who is fantastic, we also have Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, and someone I didn't know named Sheila Atim who is delightful.

This is fun ride and great time. I spent most of the movie having absolutely no idea where it would go next. If any of this piques your interest, I definitely recommend it.

--

Wicked: For Good (2025). First, props, the subtitling is clever. Anyway, this is the second half of the story of a good witch and a bad witch fighting/collaborating with the machine while pining for each other and also some guy who's just kind of there.

Honestly, "just kind of there" describes a lot of this movie. It doesn't really expand on any of the political motivation from the first movie, so I had trouble remembering exactly WHY the wizard and his henchwoman have decided to demonize the animals and by extension their defender Elphaba. Fiyero the awkward third wheel, whom I actually found quite charming in the first movie, got almost nothing to do here. No animal character got any kind of significant development; the closest we got was one of the flying monkeys, who didn't even get any lines for plot reasons. There's a subplot involving Elphaba's disabled sister becoming increasingly more unhinged and embittered by her romantic disappointment and probably ableist society at large, but then, you know, she dies from a house falling on her, so that's the end of that. There's a Big Reveal about Elphaba's parentage that literally everyone saw coming, but which Elphaba herself doesn't even get to find out about or react to. There are barely even any big musical set pieces and basically no dance choreography at all. The only song that made a real impression on me was Elphaba's big heel turn song No Good Deed, and I hear from the theater folks that it was kind of weaksauce compared to the live musical version.

All that said, this is the Elphaba and Glinda show, and they're great, honestly. Ariana Grande's comic timing is impeccable. The pining truly is spectacular; there's an amazing scene towards the end that must be seen to be believed. The shippers feasted.
glitteryv: (Default)
Glittery ([personal profile] glitteryv) wrote in [community profile] recthething2025-12-11 10:08 am

Community Recs Post!

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanart/podfics/fancrafts/fanvids/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here
glitteryv: (Default)
Glittery ([personal profile] glitteryv) wrote2025-12-10 12:55 pm

Fannish 50 S3 Post 63: Cortis and stage presence

LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISEN, I'll be the first one to own up to not quite getting Cortis' music when they began dropping songs a few months ago.

Part of it was that I legit CANNOT DEAL with their MVs (which are chaotic to the point of overwhelming me in the most negative of ways.) The other thing is that a lot (by which I mean over 50%) of the PR abt BigHit's newest group (yes, that's BTS and TXT's agency) was pushing how involved the members were in terms of songwriting and production. Per what I know of BH (and Hybe's agencies in general) is that they do tend to offer songwriting and production tracks for their trainees. A large part of the thinking comes from how BH worked with BTS (especially the rapline, but all 7 members have worked on their music since pre-debut era).

In any case, I do acknowledge that a lot of my 🤨 came from my own expectations on what Cortis' sound was gonna be like. I wasn't ready for any of it. That said, I sat thru all of the MVs (not having a great time, but still.) Even though I would 🙄 at the videos (which were co-directed by Cortis and some other guy), there was something abt the sound that kept me from outright dismissing the whole thing.

Then, some weeks ago, I happen to listen to Cortis' music on streaming and it was like something clicked in my brain. Suddenly, I got it. Have checked out a few of their live performances and have enjoyed most of them.

Anyhoodle, the 2025 Mnet Asian Music Awards (or MAMAs as they're known) were held over in Hong Kong two weeks ago. Not even gonna front, I didn't tune in for the live show cuz there truly wasn't anyone I was RARIN' to watch. Some years is like that, LOL. [Unlike the 2020 shows where I watched the show for, like, 6 hrs or so while waiting for BTS to perform, LOLsob. My one consolation is that there were millions of other ARMYs watching along. Small mercies and all that.]

Scrolled thru this year's performances once they were uploaded on YT. And my jaw DROPPED when I saw Cortis' stage. One thing to keep in mind is that this group has mainly young members; Martin, the leader, is 17 y.o., frex.

Trigger warning: lots of happy screams from the fans; A ton of fast camera movements (that are on par with Korean shows) including shaky-cams; Additional warnings for HEAVY STROBE LIGHTS starting 3:10 and going til the end.



I love the set-up with Martin working his keyboard (with the additional work from MAMAs' PD team synching up the lightsticks to represent the lights of a soundboard/equalizer thingie.)

Then how it expands to just the five members doing their choreo in between singing and rapping. Yes, there was backing track (per what I saw of everyone's performances, there wasn't a single performer who didn't have it. However, unlike some of the other artists, Cortis DID sing and rapped live at least 60% of the time, IJS.).

FWIW, I'm aware that the production team has tweaked the sound a little to push the crowds' roar to the forefront. I did see a few tweets (now locked) that were fancams and the crowds were HELLA LOUD for Cortis. It was impressive; gave me chills, heheh.
snickfic: (S4)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote in [community profile] recthething2025-12-10 09:55 am

Fic in a Box recs!

There's a bunch of amazing stuff in the FIAB! I've made a couple of recs posts for fics I've loved so far.

My gifts (Red Sonja, Kyle Murchison Booth stories)

Horror fic recs (Cthulhu Mythos, House of Leaves, Original Work)
snickfic: Sam and Dean (SPN)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-12-10 09:49 am

fic recs: horror from FIAB

The Sorcerer and the Shadow, Cthulhu Mythos, Original Miskatonic Student/Original Sorcerer, 3k. Nathaniel Palfrey seeks a sorcerer's aid. Ambrose Corbin is more than happy to oblige. A twisty, nasty little horror story, full of layers. Really captures that menace Lovecraft's villains have while also being a literal gay seduction story. You love to see it. :')

HousesuoH, House of Leaves, 7k. Pre-canon horror fic about a contractor who agrees to do a renovation project on the house and really, really regrets it. This author has correctly identified the missing quarter-inch as the best/worst part of the whole book and has expanded on it. What a fun little horror story.

Yggdrasil Station: A 1-day Wormhole Hopper's guide!, Original Work, gen, 2.6k. Join interstellar travel blogger 1DAYWORMHOLEHOPPER as she guides you through the unique attractions of the one-time backwater Yggdrasil station! A delightfully terrible little story/blog/transcript of a cheerful vlogger trying out the gourmet dining experience of a meal prepared from a bodymodded human tree. Must be read to be believed. The author absolutely nails the voice of this particular genre of media.
snickfic: (Buffy desert)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-12-08 04:42 pm

FIAB fics!

[community profile] ficinabox reveals have happened, and after being a post-deadline pinch hit (and then a post-post-deadline pinch hit...) and being a little nervous about it, I got some great things. :3 More recs to come once I get a chance to explore the rest of the collection.

i said farewell (i meant don't go), Red Sonja (2025), Sonja/Petra, 7k. Petra survives the arena, goes traveling with Sonja after the end of the movie, and absolute does not pine or have any feelings about it (and then gets abducted by an eldritch cult, oh no). Jaded traumatized warrior women/young earnest warrior woman, what an excellent ship. :') The writing here is gorgeous, and the fic hits that good tropey goodness in a way that can be hard to find in femslash.

Probably readable canon-blind? If this sounds like your jam at all, I definitely recommend. This fandom is SO SMALL that the tag is unwrangled on AO3, and I worry that no one but me is going to find this fic and read it.

The Lonely Ones, Kyle Murchison Booth stories, Booth/Alexis Rigby pre-slash, 5k. One misterable stormy night, Alexis appears on Booth's doorstep, to their mutual surprise. This is the first fic for this ship longer than a drabble, and I am so delighted it exists. The writing is really delicate and lovely, and very careful, as it needs to be when writing Booth making new personal connections (whether he wants or not).

Reflections, Kyle Murchison Booth stories, Booth/Ratcliffe, 3k. Despite his best intentions, Ratcliffe loses touch with Booth and then starts to form some suspicions about why that might be. I love this premise of Booth being a kind of liminal being as well, which fits right in with some of the ways Monette treats time and setting in canon. A nice shippy little ghost(?) story.
precuretokumod: (Christmas Chemy)
precuretokumod ([personal profile] precuretokumod) wrote in [community profile] fandomcalendar2025-12-06 08:05 am
snickfic: Danvers and Navarro with their backs to each other, looking down (TD Danvers/Navarro)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-12-05 10:37 am

fic recs: femslash

Star Trek: TOS
Cheek to Cheek by [archiveofourown.org profile] septemberbells
Chapel/Uhura, 100 words. Very sweet. <333

The Haunting of Hill House
Oleander Square by [archiveofourown.org profile] galaxyofroses
Theo/Eleanor, 2k. Theo returns haunted from Hill House, maybe literally. I love this unconventional form of haunting. This has just great atmosphere, with lovely prose and such elegant imagery.

Original Work
Little Rat by [archiveofourown.org profile] ChocoChipBiscuit
Noblewoman/The Woman Her Husband Is Having an Affair With, 5k. A noblewoman goes to a her London townhouse, only to discover her estranged husband's newest bed-mate. I enjoyed the hell out of this. I love their dynamic, their mutual respect for each others' worldliness and practicality combined with their attraction for each other. Also: the smut is scorching hot. Just delightful all around.

True Detective: Night Country
All Summer in a Day by [archiveofourown.org profile] Luna
Danvers/Navarro, 3k. Or: six months later, a reunion. This is the hot, gorgeous, atmospheric, character-driven, immediately post-canon shipfic at that random lake cabin that we all deserved! The writing here is so lovely, and the dynamic between them is complicated and full of sparks. I especially love the Danvers voice here. Wonderful stuff.
lucymonster: (eat drink and be scary)
lucymonster ([personal profile] lucymonster) wrote2025-12-05 03:09 pm

2025 entertainment round-up

Fandom: I'll make a separate post about my own year's writing later this month (once my last couple of exchange fics are revealed lol) but in general terms, this has been a really good fannish year for me! The Legacy of Vader comics have kicked my obsession with Star Wars back into overdrive (I still pinch myself every time I think about just how good to me they've been). I also found myself unexpectedly fannish about The Love Hypothesis, which turns out to have a thriving and quite active little fandom.

I only signed up to a handful of exchanges but received some truly gorgeous gifts - special mention has to go to [personal profile] ambiguityisnoonesfriend who 1) has never once written me a fic that wasn't an insta-fave but most especially 2) went and actually bought the relevant issues of the Kylo comic (which released barely before deadline) for the sole purpose of gifting me this perfect ficlet about my horrible new blorbo. Just opening the link again to copy it here has me grinning hard enough to hurt.

Books: This year I continued my streak of reading more fiction. According to my Goodreads tracking, I've read 29 new novels/novellas this year so far and will likely finish one or two more by the end of the year. (I don't track DNFs, rereads, books that are long-term in-progress reads, short stories, poems, or books that I've intentionally only read bits of.) I've also read some longform nonfiction, mostly Christian stuff, but for the purposes of this post I've only counted the fiction.

Trends of interest: most of my reading has been adult SFF, with minor forays into romance, mystery and horror. Virtually all of it has been by female authors, the sole exception being one single Stephen Graham Jones novel. This isn't an intentional project but an organic phase I seem to be going through in my interests - I'm just feeling far more drawn to women's voices at the moment. Most of this year's protagonists have been women, too, and all the romance has been M/F or F/F.

I'm not going to try and pick a favourite book of the year. I've read so much good stuff and am feeling very creatively nourished.

This has also been my year for audiobook adoption. I can still only really listen to books I've read before (or books that are really formulaic and easy to follow) because I tend to intermittently zone out, but pretty jigsaw puzzle + nice familiar audiobook has become one of my favourite ways to unwind on tired evenings.

Music: This year I managed to mostly quarantine the kids' music onto the Youtube Music app so that my Spotify stats actually mean something. (I need to get the fuck off Spotify and start buying my music again; I'm thinking of making it a project/resolution for next year.) That said, the stats haven't told me anything I didn't already know. I've had a fairly unadventurous year, listening mostly to the same few artists on repeat. Top three:
  • The Night Eternal, especially their album Moonlit Cross
  • Unto Others - I'm still hooked on Never, Neverland from last year
  • Iron Maiden (I don't need to link you guys to Iron Maiden).
I've also been regularly listening to Bolt Thrower, 1914, Rotting Christ and Sisters of Mercy. I went through a short-lived fad for pop cello music and an AFI nostalgia phase; I also generally tend to spin up my old mid-2000s emo faves on the rare occasions I get drunk. They no longer bring me much artistic satisfaction but they are very, very nostalgic.

I'd like to pay a bit more attention to new releases next year, but we'll see. I've been enjoying my stint of comfort listening.

TV and movies: I've barely glanced at the telly all year, let alone made it to the movie theatre. IDK, nothing has interested me that much and I'd usually rather be reading. The only things I was excited for were Murderbot and season two of Andor, both of which ended up being disappointments - but more of the 'I've moved on and forgotten about them' than the resentful variety.

I did enjoy watching The Terror, though again, I haven't thought much about it since finishing the last episode.
glitteryv: (Default)
Glittery ([personal profile] glitteryv) wrote in [community profile] recthething2025-12-04 11:14 am

Community Recs Post!

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool podfics/fancrafts/fanvids/fanart/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here
lucymonster: (kylo)
lucymonster ([personal profile] lucymonster) wrote2025-12-04 03:32 pm
Entry tags:

10 True Loves

[community profile] 10trueloves is a prompt challenge to create ten fanworks for one character, each work featuring a different ship (/ or &). I've chosen Kylo Ren (surprise!) and prompt table #9:

01. Safe. 02. Danger. 03. Limits. 04. Private. 05 Denial.
06. Reality. 07. Lies. 08. Wound. 09. Habits. 10. Flaws.
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
Punk ([personal profile] runpunkrun) wrote in [community profile] fandomcalendar2025-12-03 09:34 am

Fancake Theme for December: Amnesty

Photograph of the aurora borealis taken in Norway, text: Amnesty, at Fancake. The northern lights are a bright green scribble that stretches over the horizon, along a snowy mountain ridge, and up into the starry night sky.
[community profile] fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules.

This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!