drop ★ pop ★ candy

Ouaaaghhhh so I impulse bought two different commissions for my Rook from Dragon Age Veilguard and both are in now and they're so beautiful!! One is a gooorgeous bust artwork and the other is an adorable chibi drawing of Rook and Lucanis flying.

( click here for art )

In other news I realized in my sickness haze last week that threesentenceficathon started and I'm rattling the bars of my cage wanting to participate!!! I haven't had a chance to look at anything yet 😭 but hopefully this weekend I'll find some time. I've been very unmotivated writing-wise this month and it's killing me because I have so much stuff I want to write...

Spent the last couple weeks watching too much TV; I'm all caught up on Agatha All Along (up through ep 6) and I binged all four seasons of Miss Scarlet and the Duke so now I have to ramble.

( Miss Scarlet )

( Agatha All Along )


Oh my god I went on about TV so much lmao, that's enough for this entry. In other news, the reveals for fandomgiftbasket happened! I received two lovely fics--

New by flashforeward (When Among Crows, Dymitr/Niko + Ala)
Dymitr considers his life now.

The fantastic and wonderful evilinsanemonkey wrote me a When Among Crows fic! ♥ I'm no longer the only author in the fandom wahoo!! It's a lovely little found family drabble and was such a nice surprise to receive. 🥹

Braids by AutisticWriter (Final Fantasy VII, Aerith/Tifa/Cloud)
As Cloud sleeps, Tifa braids Aerith’s hair for her. Which gives Aerith an idea for how to playfully mess with their sleepy boyfriend.

The just as wonderful autisticwriter wrote me some soft Aerith/Tifa with a side of bothering Cloud. A very cute fic set during the downtime of their travels with an adorable ending. ♥

--and I did manage to write one fic for someone!

Sunlit Moments (Octopath Traveler II, Throné/Agnea)
Agnea takes Throné out for a relaxing afternoon in the sun, but things go a little bit downhill...

A first attempt at Octopath fic! It may have come out a little overly fluffy but I had fun with it.

I wanted to write more but I have just not been feeling any motivation lately... Hopefully that will change since I also signed up for yuletide! Which I've never done before, but it seems so popular and people always seem to enjoy it, so why not. I missed nominations by like, a day lol but some fandoms did catch my eye thankfully, so I decided to give it a try this year.

So au_challenge is now live! I advertised it on a couple fandom comms and it's gotten more interest than I expected; I guess people really do love those bingo cards lol. But I'm very glad, hopefully people will get some use out of it!

If you're interested in AUs, please check it out! It's a multi-fandom, multi-medium fanwork challenge that has prompt tables you can take and/or a bingo card you can request. No deadlines or anything, this is an anytime challenge you can work on at your leisure.


Le Sserafim's new EP dropped today and it slapsss. A lot of EDM and some hip-hop influence.

Brief thoughts on the tracks: ( + )


I've got a long weekend thanks to Labor Day so I'm hoping I'll be able to get some stuff done I've been putting off! Unfortunately I just started watching a new TV show and have been reading a wild amount of fanfic lately so I can pretty safely say that's how I'll be wasting my weekend. Anyone else have any fun plans?

*covers my face* Don't look at me this isn't the anime/cartoon post I keep swearing I'll write up. The Dragon Age: The Veilguard release date trailer came out and I'm hyped all over againnnn. Everyone looks so good still, I'm torn on who I'm going to romance first--obviously I may end up winging it when I actually play it, but right now I'm leaning toward either Lucanis or Neve... I've gotta thoroughly plan out my choices because I can say I'll replay this game multiple times for everyone all I want but I know I'll give up at two playthroughs or something. Hopefully it's as fun to play as it looks so I can squeeze some more playthroughs out of it!

I also finally dug up the info on my main world states from the previous games, I couldn't find info on my OG Warden anywhere, I guess I didn't blog about it when I was playing it?? But today I suddenly realized I had stuff uploaded to my DA Keep from when DAI came out and lo and behold!! I can't believe I forgot my original Warden's name lmao Aeneas I'm so sorry. So thankfully now I have my DAO and DA2 world state info to refresh my bad memory.

In the meantime I'm still playing though Inquisition, I think this is going to be my "official" DAI world state. ( + )


While it's fresh in my memory, unfortunately, there's also The Umbrella Academy season 4.....woof. That was bad. And I'm notoriously lax with bad television. (I watched every single episode of Once Upon a Time of my own free will.) Cutting this for complaining and major spoilers but these are probably the same complaints every other TUA fan had so lmao. ( + )

Anyway in conclusion don't bother watching TUA S4, just watch Dark on Netflix, which is a fantastic time travel family drama that does all the serious parts of TUA way better.


Uhhh I also watched The Fall Guy which is that Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt action-comedy movie, about a "stuntman working on his ex-girlfriend's directorial debut, only to find himself involved in a conspiracy surrounding the film's lead actor," and that was actually better than I expected. The plot itself is pretty average, but the action and stunts were fantastic, as one would hope from a movie about a stuntman haha. And Gosling and Blunt are both fun actors that jive well together. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes action movies/cool stuntwork.


A while ago I mentioned making an AU prompt comm because I couldn't find any, then never brought it up again. Well now it is made! Behold au_challenge! It's got both prompt tables and a bingo card option. I'm putting the finishing touches on the info posts but after that I guess I'll just go ahead and advertise it. It's very low maintenance/has no deadlines so hopefully it can be useful to some people.

Worked on Saturday so I had today off and I had a nice day out with my family! We went to a hibachi restaurant for lunch and then got ice cream afterward. Sadly didn't take any pics since I didn't order anything out of the usual for me, but it was all very good. ♥ I also got my purchase from Savenart in the mail today, which was sort of an impulse buy because I've been trying to behave and save money for the anime con this month!! But I'm a big fan of this artist and there were some sales I wanted to snag so I did make a small purchase.

( I did take a photo of that at least )

I saw a few people mention fandomgiftbasket so I checked it out and it seems like a fun, low-pressure "exchange" so I decided to toss my name in for a basket. The reveal date is a couple months away so hopefully I'll have time to write some stuff for people. Definitely check it out, signing up doesn't obligate you to create anything and there's still time to sign up!


Speaking of lowkey challenges, does anyone know if there's any sort of active AU bingo or prompt comm on DW? (I did find one that seems to be active but it's members only so I can't see exactly how it's set up but it seems to be a monthly prompt kind of thing.) If not do you think there'd be interest in a really casual one? 🤔 Like no specific timeline, just get a bingo card or prompt table and fill it out at your leisure sort of set up. idk I want there to be some kind of AU prompt comm but also I have no time to be running schedules or anything lmao. I just love AUs!!

A fic title meme taken from adriennefae!

Title Tag Game Rules: write out any fic titles you have that are based off of lyrics, list what songs they're from, and tag some writers.

Just scrolling backwards chronologically through my AO3 to see if anything sparks my memory because I'm pretty sure sometimes I steal song lyrics without realizing it-- ( Read more... )

Anyway holy shit that was a lot more than I expected, and that doesn't even include stuff pre-AO3 on LiveJournal and FF.net and such sjhdfksjds. This was enlightening in a terrible way, I didn't realize I did this so much lmao. But yeah, anyone who writes fic feel free to take this meme, may you also be enlightened by what you discover!


In more recent fanfic news, reveals have occurred for fluffityfluffexchange! I ended up claiming a pinch hit in addition to my original assignment, so I got to write two fics :D Both recipients left lovely comments and it was a lot of fun working on them because I went for two fandoms I'd not written any fic for before.

take my hand (now and forever) (Hades game, Thanatos/Zagreus) - AO3 or DW
Five times Thanatos watches out for Zagreus, and one time Zagreus does the same for him.

Renewals (Captive Prince, Ancel/Berenger) - AO3 or DW
Ancel liked to be pampered. Berenger liked to pamper him. It was an arrangement that worked out well.

Bonus points for the above meme, the Hades fic is also a song lyric title lol. The fic I got in exchange was also a Captive Prince fic, an Auguste-lives AU with a Damen/Laurent proposal and it was sooo cute!! I love me a stupid-fluffy-everything-is-good-actually AU 🥰

A Question Before a Question by chalk
Laurent and Damen have a private talk after Laurent finds Damen practicing with Auguste. There are details about their friendship that Auguste doesn’t need to know about, and Laurent plans to keep it that way. Damen, however, has something else in mind.

☆ 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...

☆ 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.

☆ 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

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: ( + )