Hadeer Elsbai's Blog

2025 was the year i fully got back into anime, and i watched twenty-three anime in total. here’s the full list:

dandadan, chainsaw man, demon slayer, jujutsu kaisen, love of kill, naruto, naruto shippuden, neon genesis evangelion, noragami stray god, talentless nana, the apothecary diaries, the case study of vanitas, the summer hikaru died, wind breaker, yona of the dawn, bungo stray dogs, mashle, hunter x hunter, frieren, orb, gachiakuta, blue lock, horimiya

out of these, i’ve chosen my ten favo...

i have nothing to report, really, or even muse upon; december — particularly the second half— always feels like a month of imaginary days, as we flit from one holiday to the next. i always try to just finish things i’ve started, so let’s get into it.

anime (+1 live-action); blue lock (season 1 and 2);

well, this show really snuck up on me. i’d started season 1 last month and was enjoying it, but i didn’t think i’d reach a point where i loved it so much. it’s still a crazy, wild ride, but with fair...

i read 50 books in 2025, and it was overall a fantastic reading year. i attribute that to a few reasons:

my continued willingness to dnf books i’m not vibing with

this year, rather than trying to thin out my shelves by reading books i already own regardless of whether or not i want to or creating random tbrs, i focused solely on mood reading

i read a ton of adult fantasy books, and that has always been my preferred genre

i gave up on reading hyped and popular books that i know are not for me (mainl...

a few months ago, i started a brand new work in progress, an adult high fantasy. i wrote with a fervor i hadn’t experienced since writing the first 10k of the daughters of izdihar in 2017. i wrote with complete abandon, and i had fun, so much fun. i was coming off a lot of anime that had inspired me, and i was writing the story like an anime, with lots of color and banter and humor. i wrote about 20k words with very minimal worldbuilding, but i had a good grasp of my characters as people. the vi...

though nanowrimo no longer officially exists, there are still plenty of people who embark on an unofficial nanowrimo during november and attempt to write 50k words a month. i learned long ago that nanowrimo was not for me, for various reasons, and so i didn’t even try to attempt it this year. i did, however, commit to something like rebecca mix’s gentle nanowrimo, though even that i did not entirely succeed at. basically, i worked on worldbuilding.

worldbuilding is a tricky thing. you don’t want ...

this is the first october in a looooong time where i haven’t felt compelled to read and watch only spooky content. my brain has been in an epic fantasy mood for a few months now and i’m riding the wave. also, i just haven’t felt the holiday mood this year, probably because of tabby’s loss. everything still feels a little off-kilter.

but! i did have a great halloween weekend. i dressed up as momo ayase from dandadan and had a late night out. i haven’t dressed up, or gone out for halloween, as an a...

i read a lot as a kid, way more than i do today, and i was not supervised even a little bit, so i probably read a lot of stuff i shouldn’t have, and it has all greatly impacted my various hyperfixations and writing tendencies and even writing styles. and so, here are ten authors and series that i read somewhere between the ages of 11 and 15 that greatly influenced me as a reader and writer.

(p.s. obviously, harry potter was one of the biggest influences on me, but alas, we will not be giving it a...

i read a lot as a kid, way more than i do today, and i was not supervised even a little bit, so i probably read a lot of stuff i shouldn’t have, and it has all greatly impacted my various hyperfixations and writing tendencies and even writing styles. and so, here are ten authors and series that i read somewhere between the ages of 11 and 15 that greatly influenced me as a reader and writer.

(p.s. obviously, harry potter was one of the biggest influences on me, but alas, we will not be giving it a...

my younger brother got married this month, and it was a lovely and intimate wedding. it was also the biggest thing to happen this month aside from me seeing the new demon slayer movie TWICE in two weeks. i don’t think ever done that in my life for any movie. i had an incredible time both times. there is something so novel about seeing anime on the big screen.

otherwise i’ve had a quiet month, settling into a rather busy routine. i work a part-time job in addition to my full-time one, and my shif...

this will likely be a shorter, somewhat more subdued roundup this month because my brain is clouds; possibly, probably, this is the grief. my cat tabby died one week ago. he has been my cat for 17 years, his whole life, and over half my own lifetime. he’s been there as i graduated high school, graduated college, got my first job, moved twice, published two books, went through the death of my best friend. 17 years. my house feels somewhat like a stranger’s; i hate walking into rooms empty of my l...