Thursday, April 30th, 2026 06:07 am

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.


Over the last week...

Posted and commented on [community profile] bnha_fans.

Commented on [community profile] vkotd.

Commented on [community profile] art.

Voted for the next book in [community profile] queerbookclub.

Posted on [community profile] 3weeks4dreamwidth to promote the Themed Rec Fest we're hosting on [community profile] bnha_fans for the event.

...Promoted [community profile] 3weeks4dreamwidth and DOING IT AGAIN NOW!!! XD Join the comm, participate in events, create stuff you keep only on Dreamwidth for 3 weeks, have fun! :D

Wednesday, April 29th, 2026 08:23 am
*screams into cushion* I love this story so much

It feels so good to step into this world again and spend time with the characters. I think it's one of the most original settings I've ever created and I'm enjoying it so much. I'm describing places and thinking, "I want to visit there too!!!" Later, I know I'll be describing a haunting location where many people die and I won't want to visit, but! It's still a cool building that I'd like to see from afar!! This is such a good time.

I think it also feels good to simply be writing words again. I have a bunch of stuff to rewrite, missing scenes, and so on. Stepping into a character's mind and experiencing the world from their perspective feels so nice. I spent most of March planning these revisions, and most of April finishing up the editing and proofreading of the Cursed Witch. (We do not talk about how far behind I am on my GYWO pledge 😨) It's just nice to putter around with words again! And thanks to all the planning I did last month, it feels like informed and useful changes rather than the kind of editing where I sputter about, unsure if my changes really improve anything or might not be making things worse actually. Of course, I could be lying to myself about that, but that's okay! I'm still embracing the good feels :D
Tuesday, April 28th, 2026 07:32 am
Turns out that when you sit down and write things to come out. But you like. Do it, instead of thinking of doing it. Don't know how to explain it but whatever. What matters is that I won't be finishing the month off with very little to work with.

I'm now also thinking of adding more stats to my monthly wrap up in writing. Not sure how that will go but I'm gonna think more about it in like 2 days because I kinda have some stuff to do now that can't wait much for uni.
Monday, April 27th, 2026 08:59 pm
I wanted to watch Avengers Endgame today but like always I am worn at night.
Monday, April 27th, 2026 03:40 pm
Games: This was a busy weekend for games. We spent ::mumblemumble:: hours playing a session of Eldritch Horror, and actually managed to vanquish the Ancient One 💪 so the sleep deprivation winning entailed was ultimately worth it. Twenty-four hours later at a gathering at Favorite Indian Buffet, we decided to reconvene to spend another ::mumblemumble:: hours playing Wyrmspan.

Both games are great fun. I like Eldritch Horror even more than Arkham Horror, I think because its whole-of-globe canvas just feels like the appropriate setting for 1920s pulp/supernatural horror to my brain. And while both Wingspan and Wyrmspan are both gorgeous and I love birds, I really love fantasy dragons, so I'm an easy mark for the latter. Nor did it hurt that I'm currently reading Novik's Buried Deep (and am about to start Brennan's Onyx Court) and so would have had dragons on the brain even if there weren't a few Temeraire-verse stories in the anthology.

Movies: The anime fan-subset of the Geek BBQers wrapped up our Rebuild of Evangelion (re)watch. As one of the viewers who watched the original anime back in the day but had not seen any of the remakes before, I was not quite sure what to expect (and still have vivid memories of watching a bunch of very upset and equally committed otaku protesting the release of 2.0 at the movie theater across the street from my workplace in Kyoto). I enjoyed it! It was definitely a nostalgia trip but also interesting to watch knowing 1000 percent more about Japan's domestic experience of WWII versus viewing it through the lens of adolescent angst (Everything is so hard and no one understands me!) We tackled Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo and Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time during this session, meaning I was wholly out to sea as to what would happen in many places. But it felt like the new stuff dovetailed really well with the original, the new additions were fun, and (without spoiling anything) there was a lot about it that I felt improved on the original while still keeping its patented "psychological turmoil as interpreted through Christian mysticism by someone who did not grow up Christian"-weirdness vibe.

Music: We saw Carpenter Brut and Health at the "Okay but not great" concert venue. Carpenter Brut was fabulous We got our tickets months ago when the show was first announced and were bemused to learn that it had sold out in the meantime. As a result, we did not arrive early and did not have great sightlines on the stage for the first half of Carpenter Brut's set. But honestly? There was not much to be seen anyway, given that Carpenter Brut is primarily an auditory experience. And it was an experience: his music is eerie and foreboding enough on a set of earbuds or speakers. In a proper venue it is wicked.

Health was a bit of surprise. I mainly knew them as "the guy that remixed that Crystal Castles track" and was surprised to learn that "that guy" was actually an entire band, and that said band has been around for about 20 years. We'd assumed, judging from the venue info and the tickets, that Carpenter Brut was the headliner (as did most of the crowd, who took off after Carpenter Brut's set ended) but upon realizing that Health was actually the main acted, said "Eh, we already paid for it" and decided to stick around. Their guitarist's cringe high school jock jokes aside, they're actually pretty good. Their vocalist sounds like the forlorn lovechild of maynard keenan and Brian Molko, and their music is clearly pretty heavily inspired by APC, NIN, and the like. Having only heard it once I have no real opinion on theme or lyrics, but I would certainly listen to it again.

Podcasts/Articles: Too many to mention them all, but I did revisit Patrick Radden Keefe's A Teen's Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld while I wait for my hold on London Falling to come in. (Guys, Keefe is one of my favorite nonfiction authors and I lust after this book. Luckily, I'm only about #17003 on 35 copies! 😒)

Roleplaying: Having Put Together A Crew(TM) from the star players of our various D&D homebrew and official campaigns, the GC held a pretty excellent Session Zero for a new Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. I am playing a fey swarmmaster druid, who I'm envisioning as a sort of fish-out-of-water by virtue of the fact that as a few amongst a bunch of human children in the feywild, she's the only one who 1) knows what's going on, but 2) doesn't know how out of their element any of the others are.

Television: AEW continues to be an absolute delight. My heart and soul increasingly belong to Thekla, who is about as close to an IRL incarnation of Karlach as I think this timeline can get. Her Collision match with Alex Windsor was fire. Pac versus Lio Rush was a verrrrry close second; I love how good Pac was at playing the straight man to Rush's Smeagol-brand creepiness, which made me an instafan. (Seriously, it's the best wrestling creepiness since Velveteen Dream. Also, Pac continues to be criminally underrated and underused.) Mina Shirakawa and Hikaru Shida's Japanese smacktalk is fabulous. Nick Wayne made Mox look both fast and not boring 😂, Brody King continues to dominate, MJF continues to be the consummate heel, and FTR and Stokely will always crack me up. This is an absolute match and storyline golden era, and not even the unnecessary reintroduction of Jericho can spoil it.

Video Games: It's been a dry period for me for video gaming, but I am casually spectating as the GC plays his way through Metaphor, which, hysterically, he keeps inadvertently referring to as "Persona", and which, hysterically, everyone still knows what he's talking about.

これで以上です。
Monday, April 27th, 2026 12:47 pm
On the eve of going to the theater with some friends who were driving up to go see Avengers Endgame in our newest theater in town with me, I was having a hard time sleeping!

Little did I know the once in a lifetime experience that would await me in that theater - nor my heartbreak as I watched Tony die protecting everyone he loved. To this day, I can't watch the last 30 minutes or so without crying my eyes out!

I can't believe it's been seven years!
Sunday, April 26th, 2026 11:24 pm
Thank you so much for writing for me! I am very excited to get any sort of fic, but don't be intimidated, I am fairly easy to please and would be happy with most anything.

My letters are usually fairly long and detailed, as I hope to cover enough ground to give you as much info in case you are not sure of what to write. As a general caveat, feel free to ignore most of this letter if that's where your heart takes you, just stick to my DNWs if something sparks you that’s not completely like what I prompted. I just want you to feel inspired and comfortable! Some sections of this letter are longer because there are more ships I'm requesting, or the canon is bigger with a lot more ground to cover, but trust me, I’m very into all these fandoms and would be happy to receive any of them.

I mostly use this journal as a private place to post thoughts I’m not comfortable posting on my tumblr, which is where I mostly hang out, making graphics and reblogging things—if you choose to visit, it’s good place to snoop to get a generalized glimpse at what I like.

Again, thank you for writing for me! I can't wait to see what you come up with.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIKES & DNWs
(General Likes | Dark Fic Likes | Smut Likes
Pregnancy & Kidfic Likes | Art Likes | DNWs)


general likes & DNWs )
Sunday, April 26th, 2026 06:45 pm
so the last time I posted here was at the beginning of the month, hm. well! hello, I still exist!

1.
I've been at a different work site for 2.5wks, which was a lovely break. Chill worksite, small job; just me and one journeyman who I enjoy working with. He was like "this is one of the best jobs I've ever worked" about it, which is a wild contrast to how the big job we'd both been working (and are returning to tomorrow) is one of the worst.

The little job isn't fully done, but we can't do anything else until they get all the remaining parts in. The hope is that when that happens (in a month, maybe...? nobody had estimates.) they'll call us back to finish it, since we know what's going on and what the plan was. This is especially pertinent because we were not given particularly detailed plans, and then proceeded to change a lot of it (memorably: one unit we were supposed to install couldn't be installed where they wanted it because of service requirements, so it had to be flipped and therefore everything coming from it had to be re-routed to accommodate that).

also, we just want to go back, since it was a nice job.

Back to the big job tomorrow, and...

well, not looking forward to it. In theory it'll wrap at some point this summer. idk when. But it's a job site where everyone always seems stressed and that trickles down and makes it so much harder than it needs to be.

(also, like, having lunch at 10:30am as the only break in the day is. not ideal? yes we get out at 2:30 but man the clock usually feels so slow between 11am-2pm...)


2.
I drew a cover for On the Lord's Estate the other week!
[Click to View Image]
Left to right: Mal, El, and Benny.


I've known more or less what I wanted to draw for bk2 since... mm, the halfway mark of writing it, maybe? Important to have all three of them together, important to show Mal happy, important to place it in the conservatory. I'm very happy with how it came out—especially Mal. <3 Mal turned out just as I was hoping as far as expression/vibe goes.

This also means that [personal profile] hafnia and I have started posting bk3! Of the Lord's Family is the happy ending. <3 featuring healthy communication, family feelings (if the title wasn't a giveaway), and everyone settling into their lives. It'll be the end of this trilogy, and then it'll be time for various stories about the kids.

(which means more thinking about what I want to do with Rhei, and also continuing to noodle about Tolly... many ideas, only so much time and energy, but also no rush beyond my own internal "BUT I WANNA HAVE THIS DONE SOONER" feelings. xD)


3.
I've been keeping up with the new Star Wars cartoon Maul: Shadow Lord, and it is such a funny example of Disney Star Wars Overconnected Bullshit in a few very specific ways.

a. No characters are really introduced. You are expected to simply already know who they are. Even as someone who has watched pretty much all the Star Wars cartoons, I was not aware of who some characters were because some of them were introduced in comics about Maul. (Additionally: the prequel comic series for this show has 2/5 issues out as of right now, as the show airs. I think this is hilarious.) HOWEVER.

b. Even the characters who were not previously introduced are given particularly in-depth introductions. This is mostly confusing because I expected them to be introduced somewhere, since it took until episode three for two major characters to have their names spoken on-screen. Their names have been known via promo material? But didn't show up in the show? This is fine if it's intentional but it's so weird when it's the same vibes as characters who were introduced in comics.

c. I mean this isn't a Disney problem specifically but it sure is very Star Wars: There is only one (1) prominent female character, one (1) prominent secondary female character, and one (1) tertiary female character allowed at a time. It was honestly really funny when the tertiary character got Sent Away and then a new tertiary female character showed up a couple scenes later?

anyway I like it well enough when it's not Fight Scenes, and sort of don't care when it's Fight Scenes, but since it's a show for like tweens I think it's forced to have Fight Scenes in every episode. Which, like, that's fine but I find it more fun to watch Maul attempt to seduce everyone into helping him than I do watching the flashy lights show of a combat sequence involving blasters and/or lightsabers.


4.
It is finally spring. Flowers are blooming, the trees are turning green with new leaves, and the weather is consistently above freezing! These are all good things!


5.
anyway while I'm thinking about it, right, I meant to post this (which I wrote like a month ago at least) and now I have! Mouse! :D

The Question of Crushes, 2.4k, gen, wherein a teenager is interrogated by a like eight year old about if they have a crush on the kid's oldest sibling.
Sunday, April 26th, 2026 12:20 pm
[personal profile] sanguinity spotted this challenge and pointed it my way; it was surprisingly meditative, approaching writing something with my primary focus being the syllabic length of the words, which managed to distract me from some of my usual indecisiveness that makes getting words from my brain to the screen rather like pulling teeth.

Title:
Xenk and Ed in the Yard
Author:
[Unknown site tag]phoenixfalls
Fandom: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Relationship: Edgin Darvis/Xenk Yendar
Word Count: 375
Rating: Explicit
Tags: PWP, Marking, Single Syllable Smut Challenge
Summary:

Xenk pulls weeds on a hot day. Ed turns red, but not from the sun.

Link:
On AO3

There's some delightful stuff in the collection as well; here are a few recs from what I've read:
Sunday, April 26th, 2026 07:22 am
In theory, I was planning to start on the structural edits tomorrow; in practice I feel like I'm being clever "cheating" by starting today. No, I have no external deadline. This is just My Brain vs My Brain and winning 😎 (maybe???), lol.

The feeling most at the surface at the moment seems to be a kind of terror, which obviously is not nice to feel but I'm also fascinated by it. Why do I feel like this? This is the first round of editing. I'll have at least the prose edits later to refine stuff, and proofreading, and then whatever changes happen after beta-reader feedback. That means while there's a ton of work immediately ahead, there's also not as much pressure around "MUST GET EVERYTHING RIGHT LAST CHANCE!!!" Yeah there's a lot to do, but I've been working on the Cursed With for nearly 3 years. I know I can put in the work. I'm using a new method of editing based on that workshop, but normally I'm excited to try new things, especially related to something I know I have difficulties with (clearly my way of doing structural editing for the witch wasn't good enough, considering how much structural rework I had to do again after beta-reader feedback). Is this overwhelm? Is this because, while I was proofreading the witch and noticing different ways subplots or other arcs could have been worked, I kept thinking "Well, at least I'll do it better for the Soul Thief!" and now I feel some kind of pressure around it?

I noticed before that when I transition between projects, there's always a few days feeling out of balance, paddling frantically without finding my footing. Sometimes it's because I'm doing something new, like figuring out how to handle beta-reader feedback when there is a ton of it and some of it requires massive rework. But even when I know how to do something, like the proofreading of the witch earlier this month, there's still a similar adaptation period, even knowing what I wanted to do (use text-to-speech) and having previous experience doing it.

It's interesting to reread that post about implementing feedback because I suspect I wrote the post with the same kind of feeling I'm swimming against today. So I must have started writing the post, and then I made a list of what I intended to do. And today I want to break things down like that as well. There's so much to do, and the very first chapter in particular needs a ton of changes.

The Plan! )

Okay, self. You got this. And look: there's still a bit of "oh-no-this-is-new-i-don't-know-how-to-do-this" dread, but nothing terror-like anymore. There's a plan! You follow the plan. And if it doesn't work, then you learn something from it and make a new plan.
Saturday, April 25th, 2026 10:30 pm
Last night marked the posting of the 9th chapter of Fish or Cut Bait on Ao3. With this chapter, the Highlander: the Agent series hit a milestone of 250,000 words.

To celebrate, Tornis assembled a list of stats.

Check them out here!

250,000 word celebration stats
Saturday, April 25th, 2026 05:22 pm
Writing for this month? I don't wanna talk about it. Reading for uni? I feel like i haven't read anything while reading everything. Studying? For a test I have next week? Kinda. Started today. Didn't get much done still. 

This is not my month at all lmao. 

Okay I did write, but I worked on original work. Still, it's not as much as I wanted to. I have so many fics on stand by and I haven't done anything since that one chapter update on the first. I'm just frustrated with everything rn. Can't even play games because they stopped working on the app I use on my PC and I can't seem to fix that in any way. It's worse because I didn't even do anything, it just stopped working once when it was fine the day before. It has been like this for like 2 weeks I think.
Saturday, April 25th, 2026 07:25 am

[community profile] 3weeks4dreamwidth is celebrating Dreamwidth's anniversary!
Come join in for fun, memes, activities, and more ♥


The three weeks event celebrating Dreamwidth is starting today!! \o/ There's already a fresh friending meme posted over the comm thanks to [personal profile] matsushima!

Over at [community profile] bnha_fans, we're running a Rec Fest again, and I posted the announcement on the first day for the first time in what feels like 70 years ;v; XD Sadly, it seems like the bug in which, if a journal or comm is set to default to nsfw/18+, it won't show up on the Latest Page feed for the event even if the post itself is marked "No Ages Restriction". Sad that the comm contributions won't show up there, but since this post will be, hey! Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia fans out there, we're running a Rec Fest if you're looking for new fanworks or have some you'd like to rec! :D

Looking forward to see the various ways people participate this year! :D If this is your first time (or not, for that matter), you might enjoy the blogging questionnaire [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith shared a few years ago. That was a good time, replying to a question a day and reading people's answers!