Welcome to the Nirvana in Fire Fest!

Mobius | 不眠日
Finished this at the end of 2025. Based on 张小猫's first 逆时侦查组 novel, this is an action/thriller cdrama set in a ~*fictional*~ country where the world sometimes falls into a timeloop. Every loop day repeats itself four times, with the fifth loop becoming the "canon" event. Our MC is the only one aware of the loops and he uses his abilities to solve crime.

Thoughts

This was... okay, I guess? It has some neat HK action movie-inspired fighting and parkour scenes, interesting plot points, and a lot of missed opportunities. The show presents itself as a mystery in which the objective is to discover the true identity of a serial killer and prevent them from succeeding in their nefarious plan. The problem is that the show itself isn't structured as a mystery. The script had no idea how to relay information to the audience, create real tension, or set up suspects, and it treated every single morsel of information as a major twist. IMO it should have focused on the thriller aspects and highlighted the homoeroticism cat-and-mouse relationship of the MC and the villain. And also given us more angst a la the webtoon Surviving Romance where the MC had a lot of hidden trauma from dying and watching people die over and over again.

The soundscaping was also really funny. They only had like maybe 3 BGMs and they used the same Intense Music so much, sometimes in mundane situations, and once three times in a 15-minute span. Maybe they were just being true to form by making us reexperience the same level of intensity that the MC was trapped in. XD

PS. I skimmed the first chapters of the novel and it seemed to be a bit different, a more standard mystery/procedural with timey-wimey elements. And potentially more interesting conflict—the MC and the FL get together because of a previous loop, and are already together at the start of the CEO case where they have to pretend to not be dating. The plot aspects still seem largely similar, though.

Uketsu, "Strange Pictures" (tr. Jim Rion)
A.k.a. the green mystery novel that is all over #booktwt and my sign to stop following booktwt hype.

Thoughts

I really liked the gimmick with the drawings but after the first chapter (the mystery of the blog), it just fell off for me. It was neither a mystery nor a thriller, just a story that the author wanted to tell that they should have focused on developing. The "interlocking" cases felt forced into place, without sufficient plot logic or emotional build-up to make the "reveal" satisfying. The way the story is told feels like a cross between a Youtube true crime video and a videogame, like it was never meant to be a novel at all. As a visual person with information processing issues, the pictures, little diagrams, and timeline recap felt almost made for me but it gets to a point, you now? Must we bold every "important detail" like we're in an Ace Attorney dialogue box?


2/5 because it ended up being a slog for me, especially towards the end where everything was being explained in the dullest way possible. But I think it could have been a decent page-turner if the author was actually interested in the story as something more than a gamified series of events. The way the plot gives so much emotional weight to dubious psychoanalyses of drawings unintentionally shows us society's lack of regard for mental wellness and rehabilitation. I honestly feel like this would have been much better in any other medium. The writing (as far as I can tell from the translation) is so dry and the English is very stilted. Simple is fine, but the dependence on pictures and amount of emphatic handholding make it pretty obvious that the author has 0 confidence in his ability to write and communicate his vision.

Her Story | 好東西 (2024)
Directed by Shao Yihui, who also did B Is For Busy, which is apparently the "prequel" and touches on similar themes (though the POV character in B Is For Busy is a 50-year-old man who teaches painting).

This is a nice, low-key little movie that's not so much about feminism as it is about being a feminist and how your values interact with the real world. And how community is, at the end of the day, about trying your best. Everyone is just trying their best to be a good adult and it's really sweet.

Our characters are: Wang Tiemei, a very feminist single mom, and her neighbor Xiao Ye, a sound artist by day and band vocalist at night. They each bring their people to this new relationship—a precocious but troubled daughter, an ex-husband, a drummer, a situationship, and, well, the rest of Xiao Ye's band.

Thoughts

This was surprisingly restrained and focused—there were a lot of opportunities for big PSA moments that it takes in a more casual-conversational stride to let the different dynamics play out. The movie instead favors character chemistry and relationships, showing us how human connections fill up space and build rhythms into our lives.

Wang Tiemei's "love interests" are less love interests and more mirrors to her own feminist beliefs. Her ex-husband (played by Mark Chao) is a #performative male who gets into reading feminist literature and earnestly parroting lines about the patriarchy. He visits his daughter and his ex-wife often and says a lot of stupid things and gets folded into their growing community and accidentally bonds with his love rival (the drummer of Xiao Ye's band) in the process of competing with him. This is much more effective than writing him as a cartoonishly evil ex which is the standard easy path for the trendy faux-feminist/girlboss stories in East Asian web fiction.

The styling was very on-point, everyone dressing to their personalities so it's part of the characterization. Wang Tiemei's statement shirts and her statement novels (tbh I didn't actually notice them, but superborb did haha), Xiao Ye's charmingly messy rocker chic aesthetic, the drummer boy's tattered knit sweater (he doesn't have enough aura for this to be feel like a deliberate aesthetic choice) and the same black shirt that he wears on multiple days.

My favorite scene was the one where Xiao Ye takes Wang Moli (the daughter) to her workspace and makes her guess sounds! What starts out as a fun little exercise becomes, like Xiao Ye's other line of work, music, as she plays a series of recordings that are nothing but Wang Tiemei. SUCH a good scene and so much warm light.

CW: a brief (unintentional?) self-harm scene + conversations about childhood trauma

Dead Horses by Freya JN is now available for purchase physically and digitally! It was one of my favorite reads of 2025. In Twitter/meme terms, absolute cinema. Highly highly highly recommend it if you like messy catgirls, intentional worldbuilding, and storytelling that trusts its readers. CW: some violence and horror.

DEAD HORSES - a feline lesboviolence fantasy western about getting what you deserve

🐛Available now on physical + digital 🐛

Etsy

itch.io

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— Freya JN (goblinstunts) January 6, 2026 at 3:30 AM

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Life:

I've been doing Yoga with Uliana's 30-day yoga challenge. It's only 10 mins a day with a focus on gentle movement and mobility. As I still have lingering cough/cold symptoms this is the ideal level of exercise for me even though the inversions make me miserable. (•ᴗ•،،)

I've been trying to use the start of the new year as an impetus to fix my sleeping schedule for the sake of my physical health. It is: not going well. I'm still having trouble falling asleep (probably anxiety) and feeling attacked by how there is too little time in the day to do ANYTHING (...probably also anxiety). BUT I've been better at thinking about going to bed at 10PM.

Bird updates: the (narra?) tree across the street is going through its balding phase, and I've been seeing the little egret—which stopped hanging out on this tree in 2025 and appears to be favoring low areas, presumably near water sources—perch on its bare branches. So that's pretty exciting.