drop ★ pop ★ candy

☆ Ahh where does the time go? I've been working on catching up with my reading page; I haven't been able to comment as much as I want, but I have been reading every post! I need to get into the habit of reading more frequently because I WANT to keep up to date but then I get lazy and don't do anything on DW for a week. Then I learn about all the fun stuff going on too late. :(

☆ The library was closed to the public on Friday so we could do our PC replacement, which we do every few years. Of course there was an issue with the server replacement in the morning which delayed things, and we ended up with a bunch of issues that we're still dealing with this week. Our poor IT guy... I don't know why they do this stuff on a Friday and then peace out for the weekend. I'm so glad I wasn't scheduled to work then lmao.

☆ I did hit up a Bath and Body Works soap sale though, they lured me in with their cheap soaps plus additional coupons. I'd been doing so good not buying stuff from them!! But I don't feel too bad because I actually use up the soaps unlike my piles of candles and creams and such. I ended up with 7 soaps and 1 hand cream for my mom that only cost a total of 17 bucks so now I'm all stocked up again. I do love the spring/summer scents, I got a lot of fruity and/or lemony ones this time around.

☆ The week between fic exchange submissions and the collection opening is so stressful I want to know if my recipient likes the fic!! I keep forgetting I'm actually getting something too sjdhfskhf so that's also exciting. I have a second exchange I signed up for so I need this one to be officially "done" so I can put all my focus into the new one lmao. It's nice to be writing again though! In addition to the exchange stuff I also wrote something short for PhoenixFlare Week. I wanted to do more days but I didn't have the time, alas. But at least I got one thing done which definitely counts as progress for me.

☆ Does anyone have any tips for de-cluttering? I reallyyy need to start a long-term project of just getting rid of ancient stuff I'm keeping for no reason, but starting is so daunting and when I actually do try to clean up, the nostalgia gets to me and I end up keeping old stuff I don't need. (Like last time I tried to make space on my bookshelf, got rid of a bunch of books, moved all my newer books into the empty space, and now it's completely full again dammit.) I know I should just start small, empty a single drawer or clean a single shelf, but I have no impetus to even take those small steps.

☆ Did about 1.5 hours of work today before we had to close for a plumbing issue lmao. I'm technically on call to go back in if they are able to re-open the building before this evening, but I feel like that's optimistic given that this has happened before and they definitely didn't fix it that quick. At least I hope things are fixed by the weekend because we have our biggest annual fundraiser party happening and I have no idea what they'll do if we don't have working restrooms by then.

☆ I took the extra time off to finally clean my bathroom and play some Honkai Star Rail. I haven't played for a while but my coworker got me hyped about Aventurine only for me to patch and boot up the game and then realize whatever's going on with him is locked behind a main story quest I haven't beaten yet jshdfskjfhs I'm still on the Xianzhou Luofu!! That's what I get for being lazy I guess. I'm probably not going to pull for him, I've had terrible luck with 5-stars in this game and I'm eyeballing Boothill even though I know nothing about him except that he's a cyborg cowboy and I already love him for that. Good luck to anyone who is pulling for Aventurine/Jingliu though!

☆ Lately my hands/wrists have been hurting even more than usual, and I know it's from too much computer use/gaming but it's basically impossible to not use a computer and stuff!! A friend recommended compression gloves so I bought a real cheap pair to try and see if it helps any. I have a feeling I'll ditch them after a couple days like I did with the wrist brace I tried BUT hopefully not. These last few days have been real bad though so I'm willing to try anything, I couldn't even work on the fic I've been writing because typing was too much of a pain. 😑

☆ While I shouldn't be spending more money so soon after my previous pin purchases (the FFXVI pins arrived a couple days ago and they're even more gorgeous in person), I'm sooo tempted by this Pokemon sweets enamel pin Kickstarter by leaphere. I've bought Pokemon merch from them before and everything is so cute, and they're a really nice/helpful seller! They've got a couple of my fave Pokemon in this Kickstarter set so I'm like oh no... I may end up pledging for a couple pins anyway lmao. I definitely recommend their stuff if you're a Pokemon fan!

A Final Fantasy VII Rebirth update! As of writing this, I am approx 50% through the game and have just reached North Corel. Sadly I had to give the game back to the library so I'm on a short pause until I can borrow another copy lmao. For now some thoughts adapted from the liveblog commentary I sent my friend while playing:

( spoilers, obviously )

In general, I'm having a really good time with this game, it's fun and silly and I love fun and silly. There's definitely a critique to be made about how it's a little TOO silly at the detriment of the actual storyline, which gets drawn out with all the side quests and things in between actual plot beats. But it still has me wanting to keep playing ughhh I want to get to the Gold Saucer!! Date night!! (I'm not aiming for anyone in particular I'm just going to let the chips fall where they may lmao.) I want to see Cid and Vincent!! I want to know what the hell is going on with the Zack alternate timeline or whatever that is!!

Snagging a fanfic meme from svgurl!

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there’s a pattern!

( click here for fics )

I also turned on AO3 kudos emails for the first time since 2012 or something after chatting with someone on here about them haha. I don't really care about kudos numbers but it's interesting to see what fics people are still reading after all this time. Like HOW are you people finding a 2012 Steve/Tony drabble in the absolutely ginormous sea of Steve/Tony fics on AO3. You literally couldn't even accidentally stumble upon it.

☆ Had a free weekend this week so I went out with my mom for lunch again today, this time to a new dim sum place that just opened. Very excited to have one near-ish because I hate going into the city for anything lmao. The food was good and we got a coupon to use on our next visit as a promo so I'm like yesss any excuse to come back. They have some soups and noodle dishes I'm curious to try out too. Afterwards we were going to stop at a place that sells bundt cakes but apparently they're closed on Sundays!! So that was a bust, boo. But as luck would have it there were Girl Scouts in front of a different store nearby so I got a couple boxes of cookies. My go-to is always Tagalongs/Peanut Butter Patties. Girl Scout cookie aficionados, what's your faves?

☆ I also started playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth! I'm only in Chapter 2, having escaped Kalm, and am now roaming the Grasslands... So I don't have many thoughts yet but for now: ( spoilers for the OG game )

☆ Other than playing Rebirth, basically all I've been doing with my free time is reading fanfic lmao. It's mostly all been FFXVI fic so far, but having finished FFXVI, Tsubasa, and Captive Prince all around the same time I've got like 500 tabs open as I make my way through various ships. I haven't read a real book in a couple weeks now oops. (I'm so sorry pile of library books I have just sitting on my floor...) And I also just discovered fluffityfluffexchange and now that I've opened the exchange floodgates for myself I'm like signing up for one more won't hurt...

At last I have finished Final Fantasy XVI. Took a couple days to try and consolidate my thoughts, but I feel like they're still not very coherent so I'm just going to throw this post together as I think of things. Spoilers under the cut!

( Read more... )

My brain has run out of thoughts, so I'll wrap this up here! If you made it through all that, congratulations. And even if you didn't, please share your thoughts I love hearing other people's opinions!! Plot commentary? Character thoughts? Gameplay comments? Fave ships? Fic recs? Or tell me what I'm wrong about lmao.

Oh also, I did write a couple short fics for Final Fantasy Kiss Battle 2024, which still has people prompting/writing so check it out!

Respite, Jill/Clive/Cid, G, prompt: Cid's never needed much looking after, but he doesn't mind it with them
Drinking Buddies, Otto/Cid, G, prompt: deep in their cups; payment for a good day's work

☆ After much hand-holding from you guys, I successfully signed up for unsent_letters_exchange! Assignments have gone out so all that's left is the actual hard part aka writing the fic. Thank you to everyone who gave me tips/explained things, I really appreciate it. :3

☆ I had the day off yesterday since I worked Sunday, so I went with my mom and brother to this all-you-can-eat sushi place for lunch. I've probably talked about that place before lmao it's sooo good, it's all made to order and there's appetizers like soup and gyoza and stuff on top of a variety of nigiri and maki. It's not suuuuper close so I don't go as often as I would if it were close by (which is probably good for my wallet, though honestly the lunch prices there are a steal considering what a single roll at a regular restaurant costs). This time I stopped myself before making myself ill eating too much so that's an improvement on last time I went sjdhfsjdhfs

☆ After that I was planning on finishing Final Fantasy XVI, but they dropped a shit ton of new side quests on me right before the very last mission!! Dion's over here telling me he's ready to atone for his sins with a suicide run to the final battle and I'm like "Yeah, sorry, my dog wants to show me our old tree house, can this wait?" Absolutely bonkers place to be putting all these side quests. So yeah I did the side quests but didn't have time to do the actual final mission so hopefully I'll be finishing up this game either tonight or tomorrow! (I'm worried about Dion and Gav lmao those two seem the most expendable, so if one of the Rosfields don't die some heroic death and they feel like they've gotta kill someone off...)

☆ What's really been eating my brain for the past few weeks is the Captive Prince re-read I've been doing as a buddy read with a couple friends. I read them originally about 7 years ago? And this is my first re-read, while my one friend had never read them before and my other friend has read them like, six times or something at this point lmao. So it was interesting trying not to spoil the one friend while freaking out about foreshadowing with the other. This series is absolutely wild on a re-read, honestly even better than the first time around. Knowing the twists ahead of time turns previously innocuous or unnoticeable sections into huge red flags. Genuinely one of my favorite series of all time. I just finished the last book in the trilogy and I still need to re-read the short stories, so once I do that I'll probably make a post about the whole series. I've basically just been ping-ponging Captive Prince and FFXVI feelings back and forth in my head these past few weeks and nothing else.

Sign-ups are open for that unsent_letters_exchange! I did end up submitting some nominations as I was debating in my last post, so now I sit here waffling on actually signing up. I feel like I can't back out now because what if someone wants to write one of my noms and I miss out on it!! So I did go through all the noms and made a list of possible offers/requests I could do at least... (Whoever nominated The Last Binding series PLEASE reveal yourself I need to be your friend.) Now I just need to figure out the etiquette for those dear creator letters...

At this point I am highly doubtful I'll get around to doing the snowflake_challenge in any sort of timely manner, so I think I'm crossing that off my to-do list lmao. Hopefully next year I'll give it a try on time! But I DO want to steal Challenge #10: Five Things and do a list of five of my top no-skip k-pop albums/EPs because I've been thinking about it too much not to just do it.

( Read more... )

This definitely isn't all my fave albums, for example Itzy and Dreamcatcher never put out bad b-sides, and a lot of good singers never do anything other than singles (Sunmi, my love, album? Full album?? Please?) so I could definitely go on about a thousand other songs/groups lmao. A lot of these are fairly recent too so clearly a recency bias happening but I already put too much time into this so I am stopping here sjhfskdjsf.

I think I only have like, 2 k-pop fans on my friends list, but what's everyone's favorite albums? Of any genre/country of origin! K-pop recs not required haha.

☆ Getting through my reading list as promised! I hate falling behind even though I always do, though I guess there's not really any rush here compared to other social media. The posts'll still be there when I get to them! I did stumble upon a fic exchange that looked interesting, unsent_letters_exchange. Nominations are still open for a few more days! I've never done an exchange before, but I used to be big into epistolary fic, so I'm kind of tempted. 👀

☆ I've reached chapter 150 in my great Tsubasa RC re-read, which is definitely past the point I had previously read in high school. The amount of shit that has gone down since my previous update... ( + )

☆ I'm making progress in Final Fantasy XVI as well! According to my PS5 I'm about 63% of the way through? ( + )

☆ Does anyone still play Overwatch? Unfortunately I do lmao. I've never been big into first-person shooters but I've always enjoyed Overwatch as a game. Unsurprisingly I'm a healer main with D.Va as my main tank (though tanking has gotten sooo much more annoying since they switched to a 5-person team single-tank setup). This new season they've reset everyone for competitive, idk why but I'm sure there's some explanation that I don't care about, so I was stupidly like eh okay I guess I'll place myself again. BAD IDEA I had to stop because I'm 1:3 and consistently the best player on my team which is not good because I'm average at best jshdfsjkdfs. So I guess I'll just jump back in later after more people get sorted, maybe... Would be nice not to get put into games where my team has zero kills amongst us and the enemy team has 15 elims each. (And this is for my healer ranking, I shudder to think how things would go as the sole tank...)

☆ Welcome new friends from the Snowflake Challenge friending meme! Which I still haven't actually done yet lmao, I have it bookmarked to do then keep forgetting... I've fallen behind on my reading page as well, this is not an auspicious start to going on a friending spree. My bad. Hopefully I'll be caught up in the next few days! I'm only finally writing up this post because I'm covering an evening shift for a coworker so I've got extra time just sitting on desk. (I work at a library.)

☆ I made a post a little bit ago about getting interested in (physical) journaling, and since then I have gone so far overboard with purchases!!! I ended up deciding on a Hobonichi Weeks for an actual planner, since it's smaller and I didn't really need the daily pages that that larger Hobonichis have. Then I temporarily lost my mind and also bought a journal from Notebook Therapy because it's sooo pretty, I adore the color and hydrangeas are my favorite flowers, it's just so cute. PLUS several orders of stickers and washi tape from multiple shops, a bunch of pens and highlighters, brush pens for calligraphy writing??? I haven't even written in cursive since like, middle school?? The journaling girlies on YouTube have completely gotten their claws into me; I see someone's gorgeous reading journal, I decide I need all the supplies they used, I make an order. Help me.

☆ Speaking of things I'll never actually get to, I grabbed a fic challenge table from elasticella's Femslash February salad bar challenge because it looks like a cute idea. Basically you mix and match different prompt types (the salad ingredients) to make 10 fanwork prompts, and you can mix them yourself or have them randomized for you if you request a table before the end of February. I'll probably not finish anything before the month's over, but I wanted to have a list on hand anyway to work on later. (Went with an AU prompt table for myself, I do love a good AU.)

☆ Ending with sad news--that online art TCG site I posted about before, NeonMob, is closing. :( Again, lol, they were going to shut down last year but got picked up by a new owner. So we got a little more time with the site, but nothing good can last, I suppose. I love the collecting and trading aspects of TCGs (versus deck building or battling), plus NM was really neat in that artists submitted their own art for the cards, so it's a bummer that they're closing for real. They gave everyone paid accounts for the last two weeks so we can try to finish up our collections, and the site will apparently stay up in read-only mode so people can still see their cards, so that's nice at least.

☆ I got so mad at Octopath Traveler 2 I had to come here to yell into the void. Agnea's last boss fight is driving me nuts I can't get past it!! The game's old school in that there's no difficulty settings or anything you just have to grind levels if you're stuck WHICH I HAVE BEEN and yet still I keep dying. I guess the only solution is to grind even more but I'm already above the recommended level so it's just super annoying. -_- Like I'm almost done with the game, I want to finish up so I can focus on FFXVI!!

☆ Anyway while I'm here, a weekend update? I was mildly productive on Sunday, I finished updating my spreadsheet for tracking indie artist purchases with pretty much everything I got over the past few years AND I cleaned up/consolidated everything that was just sitting in piles on my bedroom floor. So instead of 1,000 different mailer packets piled up I've got everything down to a couple boxes. Not ideal but at least it takes up less space. Maybe someday I'll finally get a big board or wall hanging or something so I can actually display all the pins lmao.

☆ I also watched The Marvels this weekend. Definitely not their best, but I'd still recommend it solely for Kamala. The plot's mostly whatever and there's like...no character development? Or the world's smallest amount of development, I guess. But Kamala is sooo fun, I love her so much and her actress deserves the world. 😔 The bright spot of the film is for sure her interactions with Monica and Carol. And it seems like they're FINALLY trying to pull together a Young Avengers thing lmao call up 2012 me and tell her the good news!! Honestly I'll watch whatever they do even if it's a mess, the Kamala and Kate scene was so cute sksjhfs.

☆ I made it through a decent chunk of FFXVI, I'm up to the second time skip (the 5 year one).

click for spoilers

• RIP Cid we hardly knew ye. Absolutely hilarious of him to announce that he knew what the hell that thing was that's after Clive and then immediately die without telling Clive anything about it.
• Very interested to see what's going on with Ultima and those creepy guys though, I guess they're the Fallen?? Or related to those ruins somehow or something. That all definitely came out left field I was not expecting it at all.
• Also why has Joshua not told Clive he's alive lmao where has he been these last 5 years!!
• Hopefully Jill actually gets to do more now that the Clive and Cid show is over (not that I'm complaining about Clive/Cid they were fun). But she's basically just been following Clive around and getting in like 2 lines of dialogue, aside from that one good convo she and Clive had in the barn about being forced to kill. I'm pretty sure Torgal has had more to do than her so far.
• The second time skip really took me by surprise too like damn 5 more years?? They haven't changed their clothes in 5 years. OMG the Hideaway though :( thank goodness Cid died so he didn't have to see it get demolished.
• But yeah I stopped as soon as they got back to the new Hideaway so I'll see what's been happening during the time skip hopefully soon! I'm curious to see where this plot goes.

☆ Someone left a nice comment on an old fic I posted in 2016 so I took a moment to re-read the fic and found THREE blatant typos. I can never show my face on AO3 again.

January's reading round-up! This got too long for the previous post so I saved it for later and then spent several days not writing the like, last two paragraphs needed to finish. Instead I did very important things like *checks notes* playing more FFXVI and making a spreadsheet to keep track of all the pins/charms/stationery/etc I've bought from independent artists. But here we are at last!


( January Reading )

Aside from regular books, I've also been making my way through Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle because one day I was like I should actually finish Tsubasa?? I'm 11 volumes in so far, that's about 110 chapters, but there's 28 volumes total I think so there's still a ways to go. This is a partial re-read since I used to read this back in high school but never finished, but my memory's so shoddy I can't even remember how far I got before quitting, so this is basically all new information to me anyway.

I DO remember how much I loved KuroFai sdhfkjshdf CLAMP always knows how to make the yaoibait really hit. I've been sort of live-tweeting as I go on Twitter and it's basically just a KuroFai update thread lmao. That and the Ashura/Yasha arc RIP my sad gays. But yeah, unsurprisingly Fai is my favorite character, my poor little meow meow, my sweet cheese good time boy, etc. etc.

Tsubasa has also infected me with the CLAMP brainworms in general again so I am bracing for the inevitable full CLAMP catalogue re-read I will be inflicting on myself when next possible.

☆ Had work off yesterday since I worked the weekend, so I used pretty much all my free time to play Final Fantasy XVI. That's right, I finally unboxed my PS5! That alone was more trouble than it should have been, given that the little plastic legs needed to get it to stand horizontally WEREN'T WITH THE REST OF THE SUPPLIES and were in fact in a totally different part of the box that I would have thrown out if not for Reddit. So that was an excellent packaging choice. What's everyone's favorite PlayStation design? I think we peaked with the PS2 thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Anyway, FFXVI. ( + )

This makes it sound like I don't like it sjdfhksjhdf but I do! I've just gotta get further in... I've gotta bounce between this and Octopath 2 which I still haven't beaten, oops. I shouldn't have started FFXVI until I did, but what can I say, I have poor decision making skills. And with FFVII Rebirth coming out soon...

Did anyone watch the new trailer that released with the demo? The most important takeaways: Barret sailor suit, Tifa and Aerith cute beach outfits, SOME GAME THAT LOOKS LIKE TRIPLE TRIAD, the dolphin, seeing my beautiful husbands Cid and Vincent, also Cissnei seems to be there for some reason, plus Roche is back to be weird at Cloud. ♥ And there was some plot stuff I guess but that's less important. I always pretend I don't care about FFVII as much as my faves but it's all lies, I love my stupid children...

☆ Speaking of watching things, I also watched this video by Mina Le about third places and friendships that I thought was really interesting. She does a lot of videos about fashion history, media fashion, pop culture, beauty trends, etc. that I think is fun to learn about so I definitely recommend her channel in general. This video discussed a bunch of different stuff about the lack of third places in modern life, how this affects building community, social media as a substitute 'third place' and the difficulty of maintaining friendships, and some other related topics tying in to all that. Interesting stuff to consider these days.

☆ I started writing up my January book reviews but they got kind of wordy so I think I'm going to just drop them in a separate post. I also finally bought paid time for this journal so I spent like the last three days just gathering and organizing and uploading icons lmao. Kinda surprised how hard it is to fill 150 spaces but that just means I'll have to keep hunting for more!!

☆ Thanks for the comments on my last post helping me brainstorm a good site to use for a media tracker! I decided to do a Listography for now since it's quick and easy to set up, so I brushed off my old page and cleaned it up. I ended up making one list as a chronological tracker and then separate sections for each medium to list out whatever I read/watched/etc over the year. I may add more to it, and I may still make that NeoCities one day since the formatting on Listography is pretty basic. (I'd maybe like to indicate on the chronological timeline whether something listed is an anime, book, movie, etc. but I'm not sure how to do that without making it even more cluttered...) But either way I think it's good for now!

☆ By some miracle I've mostly caught up on my reading list! Or at least as far back as it'll let me go. I kinda understand having some kind of limit on the number of posts it'll show, but why the 2 week time limit? :/ Regardless, if I check it more frequently I won't miss out on so much... I also made a post on journalsandplanners asking for people's thoughts on journaling materials and got some good replies! It seems like a fairly active comm for anyone who'd like to talk journals with people.

☆ I'm hoping to do a few write-ups on the stuff I never wrote about the last couple months, maybe an animanga update and one on general TV. And a January reading wrap up? I always plan a bunch of stuff to write about, let it pile up, then go 'oh no that's too much I'm not going to bother' sjhfsjdhf

☆ Question for those who love tracking random things as much as I do--any microblogging sites out there that you guys use for tracking media? Like I have Goodreads, Letterboxd, AniList, etc. for logging different media, but I've been thinking about having everything posted all in one place. This would be for basically no one's benefit but mine because I just like seeing everything neatly arranged with stats and all that, so I was talking with straightforwardly about spreadsheets because you could definitely do some cool stuff with stats that way. But even just a simple site that you could post short updates on, like Twitter except not because Twitter sucks and also because you can't tag things or go back very far on sites like Twitter.

Maybe this is what I can finally use Neocities for lmao. *has been trying to peer pressure myself into making a Neocities for months now* I guess if there's no general media tracking sites out there I can make my own simple status update page/calendar of sorts.

☆ Of course YouTube, as if reading this post I was drafting, just recommended me some journaling videos on my homepage. I've toyed with the idea of bullet journaling before, but I never actually did anything with it because I like the idea of a very neat, artsy bujo and I know I'd never actually put in the time or effort to make that sort of thing. But one of the recommended videos was by the channel Notebook Overload on commonplace books, which is a really old tradition of keeping a notebook for writing down quotes, notes, information, etc. that resonate with you or you want to keep track of. Kind of like scrapbooking but with text instead of photos. (Or in my case, a handwritten tumblr/twitter where I write down the quotes instead of reblogging them, lmao.)

I've never heard of these before but it seems really neat? And feels like it might scratch that itch of wanting a physical journal where all my previous attempts at keeping a physical planner have failed. I don't know, something to think about, I suppose. I did watch several other videos by Notebook Overload on journaling/planners because they were interesting, so I do rec the channel if you like that sort of thing! I love seeing other people's pretty planners.

It kind of feels redundant to keep a physical journal when I have all these online places to blog--this Dreamwidth, Tumblr/Twitter, all the media logging sites, the hypothetical Neocities--but I've always liked writing stuff by hand. I've written a lot of fic by hand because I enjoy the action of writing (and it forces me to edit during the process of typing up the finished fic) so I always end up coming back to the idea of keeping a paper journal. So yeah, maybe a commonplace book is the way to go. At least it'd give me an excuse to use one of the notebooks I've had lying around unused for years.

tinkaton's 2023 Reading Round-Up!



I found an end-of-year book ask meme on Tumblr and snagged the questions to use for a wrap-up post on books I read in 2023 since it's been a while since I posted any book recs. (Feel free to steal the meme for yourself!) There was a lot of stuff I was looking forward to being released at the end of the year, November/December was a time of excitement for me lmao.

( 2023 Reading Wrap-Up )

Phew, okay that took forever. If you made it all the way through that, thanks for reading!! Here's my Storygraph wrap-up stats and Goodreads year in books for anyone curious. (I use Goodreads more, but Storygraph has nicer stats and the buddy read feature is really cool.) For my fellow readers, what were your top books of 2023? Any recs? Let me know if you snag this meme/make a post!

Absolutely predictably, two weeks did indeed pass since I last said I would update. And now I'm going to talk about dragons.

☆ For the past month or so I've gotten really into Flight Rising again thanks to a friend. I don't know if anyone remembers that site, it was really popular back in like, 2013-2014, but it's a virtual pet site involving dragons! You can breed them, dress them up, battle with them, there's games and a forum, etc. I played it a lot back in the early years, took a long break, and now apparently I'm back at it lmao. There's SO many cool new breeds and genes since I last played, I've been burning through all the money I thankfully had hoarded from before buying new stuff. There's been some really nice QoL updates to the site too that makes things easier. I mainly like to collect fun-looking dragons and breed them, but some people get really into writing lore for their dragons or planning breeding projects to get dragons with really specific colors/genes. And the community is great, it's so nice getting random comments from people complimenting your dragons or thanking you for buying one of their babies and stuff.

My lair is here if anyone else plays/wants to add me, or just wants to look at my pretty dragons. Everything in the first two tabs are new buys, the second two tabs are my older dragons from when I played 10 years ago. A few older dragons I've sold off but I've kept most of them for sentimental purposes even if I'm not bothering to breed most of them anymore haha.

Some sample dragons below: ( + )

☆ Also in the gaming realm, I've gotten really into Hades again too! I'd gotten through one successful escape attempt before I stopped playing, but now I've got several more under my belt and I'm finally getting the plot rolling lmao. It's suuuch a fun game and I love the characters so much, I'm super excited for the sequel too. Hopefully I'll have actually finished this game by the time it comes out lol. I haven't gotten Thanatos or Megaera to love me yet so I've gotta keep playing and win over my beloveds...

I'm so into Hades that I redid the layout for my TCG site to make it a Hades one! It was a stylesheet so I didn't make it from scratch, but I did all the images, colors, fonts, and some other minor adjustments. Originally I tried to pick the colors from Zagreus's palette but it just wasn't looking good to me so I swapped to a Megaera-based color palette and now it's very bright haha. My favorite bit is that the boons on the main page are also randomized on refresh like the sidebar images, and whenever it happens to end up with the matching boon at the same time as the correct Olympian I'm like >:3c

Ugh, I've been terrible keeping up with anything on Dreamwidth, either posting or reading. With things being so hectic at work I just haven't felt like doing anything that requires extra brainpower, like I've been watching TV and stuff and then not writing up any of my thoughts about it lmao. Plus I used to use my spare time at work to type up an entry or catch up on the reading list and now I can't do that anymore.

The one thing I have sort of been keeping up with is the no_true_pair fanwork challenge that's been going on this month. I've skipped a few days but I've been writing Grishaverse fic for it, and it's the most fic I've written in a while so I'm counting that as a success. I decided to start posting new fic going forward on my new writing comm fairykiss as well as cross-posting it to AO3, just to have a little backup.

Other than that, here's a quick roundup of the stuff I've been watching and some thoughts on each of them!

Good Omens season 2 (and a re-read of the book): ( + )

What We Do In The Shadows season 5: ( + )

Star Trek: Voyager working through season 5: ( + )

Gundam: The Witch from Mercury season 2: ( + )

☆ Nothing too exciting's been going on this month, mostly just been working, though I'm at the end of a long weekend off right now which has been nice. On Friday I went with my mom and brother to this great all-you-can eat sushi place, which I always regret afterwards because I never know when to stop myself sjhdfksjf but it's so worth it. And then I got suckered into going to Bath and Body Works and buying more soaps because I had coupons again. I did get a cute little leaf patterned soap holder for free since I had a reward that was going to expire soon. (Right now they have this SUPER cute fox pattern candle holder and a really cool-looking snake and roses soap holder, but I never pay full price for this stuff so I'll just have to hope they're still around when all the autumn stuff is being discounted lmao. Doubtful the Halloween one will be but maybe the fox holder...)

☆ Genshin Impact dropped an update with the next world location, Fontaine. I can't say anything about the main quest story because I'm actually not out of Liyue yet lmaoooo I haven't actually even unlocked Inazuma. I brute forced my way into Sumeru when it dropped and now I've just jumped into Fontaine. I really need to get back to the main storyline but it's like, there's always sooo much to do in this game I just log in to do event quests and stuff and then call it a day. But Fontaine is really cool so far, I love the underwater exploration. And the character designs for the new/upcoming Fontaine characters are so good. I know they make their money off the terrible gacha but it's wild that you can play this game totally F2P when the world is SO big and intricate, the jungle areas of Sumeru are gorgeous and now Fontaine is super pretty too.

☆ Star Trek update: I finished Strange New Worlds season 2! I loved the crossover with Lower Decks and the musical episode lmao I love when Star Trek gets a little silly. And they continued the proud Trek tradition of using those silly episodes to bookend an episode about the lasting trauma of the horrors of war. Overall it was a pretty strong season, though there was far too much heterosexual drama. All of it reads to me like a bunch of self-insert shipping with established male canon faves sjhfdsjkdf like you're telling me they couldn't throw us a bone with Chapel/La'an or something. Or finally make Chapel/Uhura canon like come on if you're going to break up Spock/T'Pring in front of me at least give me canon Chuhura.

☆ Okay ending this post with a manga rec! Our Dreams at Dusk, or Shimanami Tasogare, is a 4-volume manga about a gay teen, Tasuku, who discovers a community center where he meets other LGBT people and learns to accept his sexuality while volunteering to help restore vacant houses with them. It's a mix of coming-of-age drama and magical realism and it's incredibly thoughtful and beautifully drawn. Through the various people Tasuku meets at the drop-in center the story touches on gay and trans issues and the different ways people shape their identities. Since it is a realistic series it does involve serious topics like suicide, being outed, misgendering, etc. but it's a positive and hopeful series overall. The first volume nearly made me cry while reading on my lunch break at work lmao, the lesbian storyline with Daichi and Saki hit particularly close. But the whole manga is incredibly good, I highly recommend it!

Summer reading post! I'm finally sitting down and going through what I've read in the last few months so I can do a reading update lol. It's mostly been graphic novels and romances of varying genres because I'm predictable. Summaries and thoughts under the cut though I may be lazy and do some copy-pasting from my reviews on Goodreads...


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