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I've enjoyed reading everyone's 2024 summaries and end-of-year memes! I can barely remember what I did two months ago let alone all year, so probably no yearly life wrap up from me lmao, but I do have some fandom-y memes I yoinked from y'all I may do at some point.

For now, here's my yuletide wrap up! (+1 extra fic I wrote but not for Yuletide.) This was my first time actually participating in Yuletide, it was so interesting to see the obscure stuff people requested. (I was too late reading The Will of the Many to nominate it this year, but I'm already sitting here thinking oh Yuletide next year? sdjfhshkf Maybe a fandom for it will exist by then.)

WHAT I GOT: I received this lovely fic for Freya Marske's Last Binding series! I let my creator choose which characters from the tagset to include and they went with all of them, which was a delight. The main pairings were present, but I loved the interactions between the less commonly combined characters, like Maud & Addy, Jack & Robin, etc. This really hit the found family aspect of the books super well!

Spinning a Family from Twigs by Vi0let_Baudelaire (Last Binding, Full Cast, rated T, 10k words)
A reflection on the meanings of family, and the stories of five people who joined the Blyth extended family.

WHAT I WROTE: And the fic that I wrote was also for Marske's Last Binding series, but it was pure PWP sjdhfjkshfs featuring a little magic, an unnecessary dance scene in the lead-up, Maud crossdressing, and a strap-on. Happy holidays I guess!!

Taking the Lead (Last Binding, Maud/Violet, rated E, 6.5k words)
Puzzling out the mysteries of Spinet House remains an ongoing problem. Violet tries to keep Maud's spirits up, but to Violet's delight, it's Maud who ends up taking the reins.

WHAT I WROTE BUT NOT FOR YULETIDE: I also ended up writing the world's dumbest Arcane fic for my friend for Christmas! This started as a series of jokes between me and her about obnoxiously supportive PFLAG ally Heimerdinger, spiraled from there as poor Jayce got dragged in, and then I banged out this fic in under a week as a surprise present for her lmao. I got another friend to draw a picture of Heimerdinger in an 'I ♥ my gay son' t-shirt. I think this is my life's magnum opus.

#1 Ally Jayce Talis (Arcane, Jayce/Viktor, rated G, 4.5k words)
When Jayce discovers that Viktor likes men, he wants Viktor to know he has his full support. Viktor wants more than that from Jayce, but he knows he'll never get it when Jayce is so clearly straight.

OTHER FICS I LIKED: Here's some Yuletide recs! Fandoms include: Buddy Daddies, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, The Last Binding, The Magnificent Seven (2016), Octopath Traveler II, Twelfth Night, A Taste of Gold and Iron, The Will Darling Adventures, xxxHolic

( Recs Below! )

Post-Christmas update... It's been very chill here, both at work and home. I had a couple days off for Christmas while the library was closed, but the following couple days was also very slow which was good because a bunch of people took off the whole week haha. I hate how slow it is around the holidays, I wish we could all just take off the last couple weeks of the year sjhdfksjfs Thankfully I made it through and now I've got a 5-day mini vacay because I took off Monday/Tuesday + we're closed Wednesday for New Year's.

Christmas was good! My parents gave me and the sibs money and I gave the parents a gift card to a restaurant so they'd have to use it for themselves lmao. We're not a very gifty family, which is fine with me now I don't feel bad about going overboard buying myself all that stuff this month. But I still haven't made or bought gingerbread cookies!!! Perhaps I'm cursed. (The curse is my own fault.) We've got plenty of candy though, my mom did give me one of those giant Ferrero Rocher boxes so I am living large now.

I already feel productive with my time off too, I finished reading a super long book I'd been hoping to complete before the end of the year! I think I owe this blog a two month reading update post, then I may do an end-of-year reading meme for 2024, either find a new one or just copy the one I did last year. If anyone has any saved, link me!


My first yuletide was a success, I'd say! I got nearly 10k of The Last Binding fic featuring pretty much every character (I let my creator pick whoever they wanted from the tagset) and it was super sweet. And my giftee seemed to like their fic so hey \o/ I also ended up writing my friend the world's stupidest Jayvik fic for Christmas, so this has been more writing than I've done in a while haha, I'm hoping to keep my momentum and maybe write some more Jayvik or Last Binding fic... Once Yuletide reveals happen I'll just post links to everything at once, I still need to browse more of the collection and see what else looks good.


Oh, I also watched the newest (last?) season of The Dragon Prince! tl;dr I liked it, though I think, like the whole arc overall, the pacing was a little all over the place. I feel like they dragged things out over the last few seasons and then crammed the entire actual final confrontation into what, 4 episodes? They're clearly setting things up for a potential third arc with that ending, and while I'd happily watch more (really curious to see what they'd do with a 7-year timeskip) I don't think they're going to get renewed...

But! Specific spoilery ramblings on S7: ( Read more... )

But yeah, I'm sad it's over because it was a fun show with a lot of great characters. I think they did a good job for a kids' show touching upon more serious topics, but of course the double-edged sword there is that it's a kids' show so, you know. It can be a little dumb at times lmao. I'd still recommend it though for anyone who enjoys diverse fantasy that's more on the lighthearted side.

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.

Firstly, an interview meme from svgurl!

1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed!

( my questions below the cut )

Secondly, creators were revealed for the unsent_letters_exchange! I went in a completely different direction than I initially expected and ended up writing 10k of original fiction (historical fantasy m/m arranged marriage) for my recipient, but I had a lot of fun with it. Literally haven't written original fic in years so I don't know WHAT came over me but it was clearly working for me lol.

And I received a sweet Star Trek (TOS) fic as my gift featuring Spock and Uhura talking about music. ♥ I love Spock and Uhura as besties so much and I think the author captured their dynamic really well. So yeah, my first exchange was a success! I'm glad I finally got over my reluctance to sign up for one.

☆ 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...)