rivers_bend

I've been watching a lot of reactions to Heated Rivalry lately (between rewatching the episodes themselves), and there's one scene in episode 6 that has some people losing their minds in stress and dismay and other people completely taking it in stride, and I've been fixating on why I fall into the latter group, so decided I should write about it. I'm not interested in writing fic about it, so thought I'd dust off my essay writing skills (such as they are).

( Spoilers )

Here we are at the start of another year together, friends, and I am excited to welcome you to the Fitness Fellowship 2026.

For those who are unfamiliar with how this very low-key community works, it's pretty simple: You set personal short- and/or long-term fitness goals, defining fitness however you'd like, and then check in each week--or as often or as little as you feel like. Check-in is not compulsory. You may join us and/or leave us whenever you wish.

I promise, in turn, to offer support and encouragement. I do not offer unsolicited advice, and I never judge, and the same has always been true of the good folks who participate here.

Check-ins will be on Mondays, starting on 5 January 2026.

If this seems like something you're interested in trying, please feel free to leave your goals and plans in the comments to this post.

( My Fitness Goals for 2026 )


Please do join us if you're looking for some friendly accountability!

place holder, where my masterlist of posts will go. (Nothing to see here, yet!)

I know there was a book reading meme somewhere, but I can't find it so we're going a bit bare bones today. 😅


Total books I picked up to read: 51


Total DNFs: 14


Fave books

Sweep in Peace and One Fell sweep from Ilona Andrews' Innkeeper Chronicles series. They were the ONLY books I gave 5 stars to. Also loved Skyla Dawn Cameron's intense mystery set in the Canadian wilderness The Silent Places.


Biggest Disappointments

* Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll - A roman a clef abt the victims and survivors of Ted Bundy that was lauded everywhere. I still don't know WHO this book is for, LOLsob.

* Murder by Memory by Olivia Wilde - ANOTHER DISSENTING OPINION because the mystery was so weak that I decided to not continue the series. (But I'll continue to give this author a chance.)


Biggest Surprises

* The Wife Deserved It by Darby Kane - A shorter-than-expected novella that I enjoyed so much I'm going to read more books by this author.

* The Silent Places gets a tip of the hat as well cuz it was a good suspense novel that had the best ending I've read in a long while.


Worst books

* Make Room for Love by Darci Liao - Was excited abt a butch Chinese-American lesbian and a transgender Indian-American bisexual woman. But the story veered into a whole thing abt a student union and I ended up hating the whole thing.

* A Court of Deceit and Ruin by Jessaca Willis - Promoted as "a slow-burn sapphic fantasy romance perfect for fans of fairy tale retellings, dark magic, and star-crossed fates" --which turned out to be lies. The book WAS well-written, but this wasn't a romance, there was zero slow burn (again, NOT a romance), and the rest of the description is off. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

* Bitterbound by A.Z. Louise - An alleged "assassin x target romantasy" that had too many plotpoints that weren't quite resolved, a weak-ass romance, and a TERRIBLE ending (given the premise.)


Average rating for the year: 3. No idea how that happened.


Overall thoughts

It was a super strange reading year, NGL. I tried a lot of new-to-me authors (DNF'd a lot of them too, LOLsob) and had a meh reading year. Wished I'd tackled a lot more of my TBR and that I'd done Nonfiction November.

OTOH, I'm participating on two different reading challenges, so I'm going to not mood read as much as I did last year. :P


FICS

Total fics I picked up to read: 222 - I feel like this was lower than other years, huh.


Total DNFs: 103 - Way better than I expected given that there were months where I kept DNF'ing stuff left and right, LOL.


Total wordcount read: 2,126,551 - FTR, I don't feel one way or another abt this number. It's just interesting to know I've read 2.1M words, but there's no self-worth type of attachment from me toward it.


Highest reading month? January --which was 29 fics total. Makes sense to me!


Lowest reading month? April and August -- where I only read 9 fics each. IDK what distracted me in April, but I've got an idea that Summer SADs got to me in August.


Fandom I read the most: BTS. 😋 77 fics with Yoonjin being the ship I read the most (35).


Other fandoms 41 fics total split between Seventeen (multiple ships), TXT (multiple ships), TCGF (Hualian), BTVS (Buffy/Faith, Faith/Other), Shinee (Minho/Key)


Fave fics I read in 2025

* the last person i could ever love by miraclesofpaul (BTS, Explicit, Omegaverse, endgame ship is Jin/Yoongi, other background ships, 152k total ) - This fic was rollercoaster of LOLs, DRAHMAHZ, and many sweet moments. *Chef's kiss* due to it being a TRUE Enemies-to-Lovers AU.

* Interlude by duets (BTS, Rated Teen, Jin/Yoongi, 2.4k words total) - AU in which BTS never happens, but Yoongi ends up as a famous rapper and Jin is an actor. LOVED THE MIXED MEDIA format.

* You have seven [7] new calendar invites by andlovetoo (Mature, OT7, 5.8k words total) - BTS trying to sync their calendar is all you need to know abt this wonderful chatfic.

* Stacks by tender_tenderly (Explicit, RM/V, 9.8k words total) - A librarian AU of win with one-sided rivals-to-lovers, heheh.

* Growing Toward The Sun by Nevaeh - Non-Idol AU abt the ups and downs of queer life in Seoul. I loved the balance of angst and fluff.

* Break Thru Everything by aceaceaceace - (Rated Teen, established Minho/Key, 11.5k words total) SHINee's Key starts to organize with other queer idols to come out as a collective. Loved everything abt it (including the mentions of other idols who did come out too.)

* Sediment by belledamn (BTVS, Mature, Buffy/Faith, 27k words total) - A perfect Noir AU in which Buffy's a PI, Faith's a sex worker, and they have a hella complicated relationship. I liked the way the author integrated other characters into the story.

Привет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)

Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.

I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!

С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!

Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️

Here we are at the final check-in for 2025. The next time I post, we'll be looking at a whole new year of personal fitness goals and challenges.

For this post, please do share how your week has been, as usual, and if you're so inclined, feel free to summarize your overall progress since you joined the group, whenever in the year that might have been. Of course, you're welcome to skip commenting altogether or only do the bit you like. No pressure, no judgement, only cheerleading.

I will make a Fitness Fellowship 2026 GOALS post on 1 January 2026. I will post the first check-in for 2026 on Monday, 5 January 2026, to keep with our Monday routine.

( My Week in Review )

May the New Year bring us the energy we need to be better than we've been in all the ways that most matter to us. *hugs*

I don't know where the year went. I don't know where I went. Many things. I don't know. Saw TAI in concert. They're coming to the PNW next year, so will see them again (twice). Hockey, whirlwind trips, Christmas, whatever. Everything. I don't even know.

How are you?

I have next week off as well (school holidays are the best). It is not chill, despite the hoped for chillness. So many things. I have not come up with my 26 things for 2026, so that doesn't bode well. Read 75 books this year (well, 73 1/2, but there's still time!). Haven't figured out what exactly to fill my time with now that school (school-school) is done, which means lots of sitting around brainlessly.

Favorite bb!hockey continues to wear a Yankees cap (a new one! wtf!), so he is no longer my favorite (lies). I'm looking for a new favorite though, because he's terrible (lies). We have a great team this year. They are the most dramatic of boys though. Come from behind wins, shoot-outs, overtime, everything. My blood pressure is not good during hockey.

Woke up at 4 AM with a very sore neck that is not responding to advil or tylenol, so that sucks. Kind of want to go back to bed, but fear it will only get worse.

Anyway, I am boring.

Whew! We're almost there! Time has moved so strangely for me this year. It doesn't feel like any time at all has passed, yet here we are with only a handful of days left.

I'll save the retrospective questions for next week. For now, as usual, please do share how your week has gone, fitness-wise and/or otherwise. We're here to listen, cheerlead, and not judge. :-)

( My Week in Review )

I hope the holidays have been going and/or do go easy on you, friends!