Best 25 of 2025

For this post, a donation was made to my friend Marcy’s GoFundMe to help cover living costs for the winter. She recently wrote about Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence here, and is writing longer posts about Princess Arete on her blog here (her site is a little sluggish, switch to reader view!), a film I also love and gave a shout-out to in my 2023 wrap-up! You can follow Marcy on Bluesky and support her on Patreon, too. So long 2025, hello 2026! And hello to you, dear reader! It’s time for a year-end wrap-up post. I enjoy writing these because I get to reflect on which works stuck with me the most. Sometimes that means works that are perfectly crafted and executed. Sometimes these are works that manage to do one or two things particularly well. Sometimes they are works that, while far from perfect, show a glimpse of something real and true that resonated in a way that surprised me. The important step is giving time for everything to settle, find out what sticks. Hell, some of these…