change the pear vol. 34 15 Dec 2025

hello! the end of the year is approaching, and it still doesn't feel right to me that the sun is shining down here in the southern hemisphere, but what can you do. 2025, for me, had lots of ups and downs: all the wrinkles that come with adjusting to life in a new climate and new continent, with some fun health stuff thrown in the mix. but i made it through, and my word for 2026 is settled. i'm wishing you all a peaceful end to this year; thanks for keeping me company out here. i'd love to know what your intentions and hopes are for the next one.

on repeat

forget spotify wrapped or apple music on repeat, EYE know what songs left the biggest impression on my psyche in 2025, and here they are.

if you’d like to make a similar playlist and share it with me, feel free! through zoë’s i’ve already discovered a fun new quebecois album about becoming a werewolf. let’s explore our music tastes together!!!

currently watching

we all know what i’ve been currently watching… the gay hockey show that is taking the internet by storm. when two men kiss on screen, i am aware of it. i was in fact aware the moment the trailer hit the internet, and (as you may remember) i read all the books back in october so now i’m dispensing facts that i wish i didn’t know, like “scott and kip [side characters in episode 3 of the show] started off as stucky fanfiction. yes she did indeed make bucky barnes a smoothie shop employee. however while ilya and shane [main characters] are definitely based on real life hockey players, heated rivalry was not to my knowledge published as a fanfiction on the internet.” my one wild and precious life etc.

anyway it’s fantastic, i’m having a great time, every episode i make a very strong gin and tonic and sit there with my hand over my mouth absolutely dumbfounded at what i’m seeing, connor storrie is a generational talent, let’s go to that mfing cottage!!!

last seen

SLOW HORSES IS BACK! i love my cringefail flops, love the grey bleak shades of london that it captures with such depressing clarity, love gary oldman acting circles around everyone else in the entire film and tv industry. seriously, the look he gives roddy in episode 2 after roddy says “we’ve always had a mutual respect, you and i”? come collect your emmy sir. honourable mention to my queen kristin scott thomas (can’t wait for her to gaslight gatekeep and girlboss even more now she’s first desk) who eats up her role as always.

i seriously love this dumb show so much—hana and i watched the entire season in 3 days. however, i felt like this season was a lot more slapstick than previous ones; maybe it was just the mood we were in, but we were laughing pretty much every episode, from river working out in the dark “on account of his issues” to roddy’s monologue prior to interrogation to the sadiq khan liberal mayor saying “let’s make london londerful again”, to “a crackpot, a drunk, a psychopath, whatever the fuck that is… and all of them more functional than you”. comedy gold. the plot… let’s not mention the plot. i will say that i find it interesting in what it tries to convince the viewer of—in this season, it was the nigel farage character and his EDL friends being set up on the total opposite side to the “deep state”. now why would they possibly want us to think that!

reading

i said i wasn’t going to write about taylor fitzpatrick’s work in depth in here. i lied. sorry. i want to talk about always in tandem, her ongoing story about two exes forced to play for the same team together and the resulting psychological torture nexus. we’re first introduced to these characters in another story, so i already knew they were exes and had Incredibly Toxic Vibes, which led to me sending a message to shireen that read, “yeah i’ll probably give this one a miss.” [cue audience laugh track and a jump cut to me a month later tearing my hair out and messaging everyone the link so they can suffer alongside me]

my reasoning for initially avoiding always in tandem was that, well, i don’t really like exes-to-lovers stories. i think the prevailing message, one along the lines of “well maybe the person who loved you best all along is actually the person you dated in high school and if you just get back together then you’ll be happy” is incredibly bad for my psyche, as someone who finds it very, very difficult to let go of relationships. i really don’t need further encouragement to continue to keep people in my life who don’t make me happy, to reach out to people who are beyond their last chance. but anyway lol. my point is, is that these stories often oversimplify and underdeliver. if two people break up, and then get back together without any work put in, it’s unsatisfying. either the breakup feels pointless or they absolutely should not be back together.

robbie and georgie’s breakup was definitely not pointless. spoilers ahead. georgie cheats on robbie five times towards the end of their thirteen month long relationship, and robbie hates him. deeply. the story begins when georgie is suddenly traded onto robbie’s team. the last time they saw each other, robbie walked in on georgie cheating on him. i can’t stress enough how abject and miserable this is for both of them. robbie is furious, and yes, hates georgie, but also hates himself for trusting georgie. his crippling lack of self-esteem and the fact that he never believed he was good enough for georgie means he blames the cheating on himself. meanwhile, georgie is also being tortured because he’s finally coming face-to-face with how much robbie has been hurt by his actions. and he feels like he deserves every single bit of it.

then, because they are idiots, they start sleeping together. this is a catastrophic mistake. neither of them has dealt with their feelings regarding the breakup AT ALL, robbie immediately develops clinical depression, and georgie is in hell because robbie has been transformed into a bitter, miserable, angry husk and he knows it’s all his fault. still, neither of them can bring themselves to walk away. these parts are hard to read: watching two people mutually destroy each other because they would rather have these bitter horrible scraps than nothing at all. eventually, georgie breaks it off, and asks robbie to get help. he cries in front of robbie, and for the first time reveals how miserable he was when he cheated on robbie; how he felt abandoned by robbie and left behind (they were in a ldr at the time, and robbie was pushing him away because he was jealous of georgie’s perceived success. meanwhile georgie was drinking himself sick and being bullied by his team. more on this later). it’s not an excuse, to be clear, but it does provide context for georgie’s actions and how badly he fucked up.

robbie starts going to therapy, and the first arc ends on a somewhat hopeful note, with he and georgie agreeing that they can’t be friends, when they still have feelings for each other, but that they don’t want to hurt each other anymore and they can be civil for the rest of the time they play on the same team. then we get georgie’s point of view.

if robbie has clinical depression, georgie has mental health problems that i have never ever encountered before in my 28 years on this earth. he is truly next level. i need him studied in a lab. i can’t even go into everything that happens in georgie pov (which covers the next ten years of the story) but let’s just say: it’s bad. it’s real real bad. i genuinely felt like i was an animal being hunted for sport. not an exaggeration!!! georgie’s main issue is that he is not over robbie and does not want to be, and his secondary issues are that he has not dealt with A) the situation that caused him to cheat nor B) their breakup and the subsequent fallout. and he continues not to do that… for ten years. this man puts us (the reader) through hell. he gets a girlfriend, has a baby with her, gets MARRIED, and is still thinking of robbie as the love of his life. it’s revealed that he practises all his smiles in the mirror so he can always be in control of his face and his reactions. he is NOT WELL!!!

georgie just… drifts through his entire life, especially after another trade means he moves away from robbie’s team to a different city. he is in the passenger seat for every one of the major events that follow his secondary breakup with robbie, including his own wedding. it’s incredibly painful to see someone completely shut themselves down and retreat into white picket fence heterosexuality in order to avoid their own failures. from the outside he has the perfect life: a beautiful wife, two kids, loving parents and siblings, he’s the alternate captain for his team. but all of that is what is expected from him societally; it’s not what georgie actually wants. which is robbie. but he thinks he isn’t good enough to have him back, and so the next best thing is just to do what everyone else wants and try to make other people happy rather than himself. and that’s how georgie’s whole life could have gone, except… ten years later, robbie gets traded back onto his team.

now this is where shit really gets real. i said earlier that exes-to-lovers can oversimplify and underdeliver. NOT always in tandem! taylor gives robbie ten years of therapy, a new (healthy) relationship that ends amicably, and he arrives on the scene not quite a new man, but immensely matured from robbie of ten years ago. and he immediately notices that things aren’t right with georgie, particularly after a team visit to cleveland, which was the city where georgie fell into drinking and cheated on robbie. and then it’s georgie’s turn to have a generational crash out! things become so bad that eventually, robbie asks georgie to tell him what happened back in cleveland, the full story, because he (correctly) surmises that there’s nobody else on earth georgie is going to tell about it.

so georgie talks to robbie, and finally lets go of some of the shame and self-flagellation that he’s been mired in for years. later in the season, robbie’s shoulder is injured so badly that his career is over (he’s 35 which is, by hockey standards, ancient). he sends georgie a goodbye email, and georgie sends one back. and that could be it: a line drawn, the two of them on different but amicable paths. but then robbie replies.

i truly can’t express how satisfying this moment is. it’s not “oh i guess i’ll just get back with my ex”. robbie has done the work (me and arenike were messaging like, this is a serious advertisement for psychotherapy) and he’s managed to find a place of relative peace regarding georgie. so when he continues contact with georgie, it’s reaching for this person he once loved, with affection for that person. even if he can’t admit it to himself, he’s begun to forgive georgie, because he’s willing to get to know georgie again, to walk toward something new with him. on georgie’s part, he starts therapy, and gets a divorce (HALLELUJAH), and he keeps emailing robbie back. ultimately, these two people understand each other on a level that nobody else ever will–for example, only robbie could have drawn georgie out of the hole he was in–but that doesn’t necessarily mean they should be together. i like that taylor fitzpatrick gives both of them space in the narrative to slowly, carefully figure out what they want, fifteen years down the line, and whether the other person can give it to them.

seriously, what a masterpiece. i felt sick to my stomach, i felt hollow and numb, my heart rate became permanently elevated, i had to talk to my own therapist about it, and now i wait for every update impatiently like a dog. i can’t recommend it enough.

miscellaneous

iranian kebabs with sima. ash asking me to help him make a plane. christmas post from em. kostas making us greek iced frappes. fresh cherries from the market. watching hockey highlights with alfie. three hours on the phone with arenike becoming increasingly hysterical about yaoi. hana curled up on the sofa saying “david chapman lives within me”. seeing my grandma in perth. drinks with michael, preety, marjory and kostas. msc writing with claire and stella and claire telling me to read my fanfiction out loud. saskia, dorothy, alex and lydia calling me at 7:30am on OUR christmas day. zoë sending me a video of a local otter. walking up mount painter with weggs. these oil paintings. tk dragging a pens player. hey! nice fucking mustache you fuck-. this nick flynn poem. this sue sinclair poem. this dalton day poem. this excerpt from the invention of love. this stanley plumly poem. this carrie johnson poem. this andrew hemmert poem. frank ocean’s foreword to moonlight.

bonus: main characters of 2025

• my car #mycar
• robbie williams
• fitzchivalry farseer
• chinese breakfast
• the pitt
• rice pottery
• asahi
• hockey yaoi

🍐 thank you for reading. i'll see you in the new year!