drippedonpaper

You know the drill, and you probably even know where you can ask questions if you have 'em :D

Favorite installment of a video game series or a favorite standalone video game?

Ha, I love being asked about favorites, because invariably my mind goes blank and all I can think is, "I have never enjoyed a videogame in my life..."

A handful, both standalone and not, in no particular order:

-The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Cyrodil is beautiful, alchemy is broken and fun, and the mages guild quest and the Dark Brotherhood quests in particular are very fun. Parts of it are extremely silly (the speechcraft minigame comes to mind), but on the whole the game is immersive in a way that I did not find Skyrim to be, and it's just...fun. It's fun to pop it open on a very gloomy day and bop around Cyrodil for a while, picking flowers, following whatever catches my fancy, and just generally dipping in and enjoying myself.

-Stardew Valley. I've achieved Perfection twice; I think that speaks for itself? Ha. I love the game — it has a nice rhythm to it that, once established, makes it very easy to sink into it and enjoy yourself. No matter what you do, it's almost impossible to fuck stuff up to the point where you break the game. (Not completely impossible, but very difficult!) Plus there's just something extremely satisfying about growing giant cauliflower. :D

-Slime Rancher. You ranch slimes and explore. The slimes are cute, the map is pretty, the puzzles are satisfying, and the overarching story (yes, there IS one) is queer-coded and very bittersweet.

-Strange Horticulture. You grow plants! You solve tiny puzzles to figure out what plants will solve different people's problems, and then you give them those plants! You have a cat! It's very fun, and the branching story is satisfying.

-Baldur's Gate III. The companions are good, the storyline is excellent, the mechanics are very fun...yeah. I mean, yeah. It deserves the praise it got, is that enough? :D

-Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Okay, look, sometimes you just want a hot nonbinary paladin to name you their noble...squire? and send you out on a quest to save the land. Sometimes you want that to come in a setting where you have guns that shoot swords and the goal is simply, Numbers Go Up. Wonderlands does that, and it also manages to be this actually incredible emotional payoff about loss and grief, growing up and moving on.

Other stuff, hmm.

Honorable mention to Portal/Portal 2, perpetual favorites. NetHack also gets a shout-out, I'm awful at it but it is probably the game I've played the most (and I do love it, though I cannot possibly explain why). Gone Home and TACOMA also deserve mentions for being wonderful (though they're very much one-and-done), and, like, y'all, I love The Room I-IV. Fable! Super Mario World (and more importantly, Yoshi's Island, the first games I ever 100%ed, without the benefit of a game guide or the internet). Super Mario 64, which I still remember all the cheats and warp points for! I played and loved the Pokemon games (I've played almost every generation, oddly, despite not thinking of myself as a "Pokemaniac" in any sense of the word :D ), I loved Breath of the Wild, and I enjoyed ACNH.

But I didn't think of them until just now, so. :D

silveradept

Let's begin with the understanding that your librarians are dealing with additional stresses than they had been in the past, and that the stresses they have been forced to deal with in the past are increased in velocity, size, and intensity. Beyond that, the current administration, after trying to zero out the funding available through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has explicitly made it so that IMLS will give preferential treatment to grant applications that are in line with the administration's political ideology, which is about as anti-library as he can get. (Unless, of course, your library is more in line with the traditional duties and ideologies that it had, employing white women as saviors to blacks, browns, and poors to teach them how to act properly white and give proper deference to whiteness.)

Now updated for 2026, Hazel Newlevant's SARS-CoV-2 zine.

Also, if you've used or updated your Notepad++ program within the last few months, you really want to reinstall it from scratch and check for signs of compromise, because apparently some state actors hacked the hosting provider for the program and inserted malicious code into it. So that will be fun for everyone who uses that program.

Under-rated ways of changing the world, which doesn't always mean they're easy, but that many of them are effective, and the kind of thing where you end up celebrating Petrov Day because you managed to correctly recognize a system was malfunctioning, rather than that the United States had decided to destroy the world. (#6 has a certain amount of appeal to me, as someone who doesn't work in a nondescript government office, but who has that kind of pathway available to themselves to make change in the world through boring, unflashy interactions with others.)

Every Olympic organizer has to deal with the fact that they are getting a lot of young people who are at the peak of their physical fitness and putting them all together in close quarters, and they try to plan accordingly to have enough prophylactics on hand. Milan-Cortina's suppy lasted three days.

( And more of people behaving badly, muppets in charge, and techbros being unable to read the room inside )

Last out for tonight, The ways that the mountie falls off the pedestal, and the way that everyone tries to be a bit more like the mountie in due South, which makes the characters and the show better all the time.

The passive-aggressive technique of triangulation, where a person uses a third party to express their difficulties with, or to engage in bullying of, another person. Which I have apparently been victimized by, and only found out after the person who was doing it had left the organization. Which I still have massive issues with, because I prefer direct feedback rather than indirect feedback as both as a "I can't fix what I don't know about" issue, but also because people complaining about me instead of to me was also things that the manager who wanted to fire me took into account. Without telling me there were problems.

And a laugh: Accusations of penis enlargement to provide more lift for ski-jumping costuming in the 2026 Olympics. Yes, we have gotten to the point where penis size matters. Clearly, the condom suppliers didn't get the memo.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: moody
Current Music: Gustav Holst - Mars, the Bringer of War

cornerofmadness

I've been thinking about writing hard to write emotional states, beyond say the actual words we can find in the emotional thesaurus (which is a great resource) How do we carry forward these states. I'm not sure I know the answer but I do have some examples.

One of the harder ones to write is naivety. So often naive ends up reading as stupid. That's not the same thing. two examples Mrs. de Winter from Rebecca and Charlie Morningstar from Hazbin Hotel. Both of these ladies I believe are meant to be naive (especially Charlie)

They are similar in how this naivety is shown. They make mistakes but they don't learn from them. The nameless Mrs de Winter is a passive twit without a brain in her head (which is a different problem) She is meant to be young and naive and caught up in the manipulations of older, vicious people but at what point do you learn from this and move on. 250 pages is almost it for her (which she immediately turns around and nearly ends up dead but that's another story as well) Without a character learning and moving on, becoming less naive you end up with a character who comes off dumb.

I see this again with Charlie. She is a sheltered princess of hell. In S1 she is naive but she seems to learn. Instead of continuing that, in S2 she digresses. She doesn't learn, worse she is so naively convinced she's right she listens to no one and then lashes out at them when it blows up in her face. This bad naive representation and it has had a high cost. The character is getting tons of hate and many fans left over how bad she came across.

Conversely, Luz from The Owl House is naive. I mean it's portal fic and she has a whole world she has no knowledge of. Like the other two ladies, she makes mistakes. But she learns from them. She apologizes when people get inadvertently hurt because of her lack of knowledge. And maybe this is the difference. Luz uses her naivety as a place to start learning. She's not a passive nitwit. She's not a wellmeaning person who refuses to own her mistakes.

I don't know. What about you? What would make/break a naive character for you? How do you handle one?

Open Call

5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in February 2026

149 Review: Now Seeking Submissions

Unsettling Settings Stories with a dark environmental setting, where the setting itself plays a significant role

Earth Resists and Reclaims Climate as an intelligent force, a reckoning, or an uncaring system ready for vengeance. Stories where nature is not necessary “evil,” simply done negotiating

Wyldblood Magazine March Window Speculative fiction (primarily of the science fiction and fantasy varieties)

Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores March 2026 Window.

From Around the Web

Six Ways to Keep Characters in the Danger Zone

The Big Mistake That Keeps Writers From Finishing a Novel

What Novelists Should Do After Rejection.

From betty

Five Common Mistakes That Put Your Heroes in the Wrong

Description Makeover: Creating Magical Atmosphere

Which of These Six Prose Styles Are You Writing?

Using Contradictions to Create Masterful Microtension – Part 1

The Playground Effect: Play Turns Readers into Ride-or-Dies.

Why Tough Choices Create Stronger Stories

Story Genius

Good News for Indie Authors – Bookshop.org partners with Draft2Digital

Coping Mechanism Thesaurus Entry: Seeking Balance.

Write What You Love: How Passion Can Shape Your Purpose as a Writer

What Writers Should Do After a Book’s Sales Slow Down

3 Things Writers Should Never Do on the Road to Publication

The Mirror Moment in Fiction: A Midpoint Method for Plotters and Pantsers

When Friday the 13th Meets Valentine’s Day

How to Make Use of Incidental Characters

In the Beginning

Write What You Love: How Passion Can Shape Your Purpose as a Writer

The Parent Trap: Regulations for the Fictional Parent

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Midsomer Murder

ofearthandstars

It was a pretty stunning day yesterday, and climbed into the lower 60s. We don't do much for Valentine's, but I have been itching to get out of the house and into nature, so we decided to head to Raven Rock. Given the number of people also itching to get out after weeks of bad weather, we took the less popular Campbell Creek Loop and Lanier Falls trails. It was a perfect way to spend a few hours getting out of our heads. The air was clear and cool and fresh, but it wasn't so cold that it hurt. And it wasn't a terribly long hike - only about 5 miles, but it left us tired in a good way.

Half of the loop follows the Creek, so you are surrounded by the light burble of water and rocky outcroppings. Much of the color in the woods right now is provided by moss and the few evergreen hollies and pines. ( +3 )

Of course, we always have to climb down to the bottom of the falls to sit by the water a bit - it's the reward for completing half the loop. There's a short video of the sound of the falls here.

Raven Rock 2/14/26 (Campbell Creek Loop)

hafnia

(As per usual, if you want to ask, you can do so here!)

Romance! Tell us about your fav romance media (books, movies, TV, etc.)

Ha, I guess it is Valentine's Day? :) (Not that Maximo and I did much except watch The Boy and the Heron and eat pots de creme!)

I'm going to be very casual about this and divide it roughly between books and films.

Books

So — I've read a fuckload of romance novels. Like, more than is probably healthy? Anyway. There's a few book-romances (not necessarily romance books) that will always get a nod from me. In no particular order:

-War for the Oaks, the romance between Eddi and the Phouka. It has, hands-down, one of the best descriptions of romantic love I think I have ever seen in a book — specifically, an exchange where Our Brave Heroine asks the hero how he can be sure he loves her, and he lays out a very specific list of reasons that is just...yeah. That's what I think of when I think about love.

The quote is here.

Reluctantly, she remembered her suspicion, that he was playing at being in love. She didn't believe it anymore, not really. But she heard herself asking the hateful question anyway. "How do you know it's love? Maybe you haven't learned anything after all.

She expected a joke, an impassioned protest, an airy denial. Instead he looked gravely in her face and replied, "I've no surety that it is. I know only the parts of what I feel; I may be misnaming the whole. You dwell in my mind like a household spirit. All that I think is followed with, 'I shall tell that thought to Eddi.' Whatever I see or hear is colored by what I imagine you will say of it. What is amusing is twice so, if you have laughed at it. There is a way you have of turning your head, quickly and with a little tilt, that seems more wonderful to me than the practiced movements of dancers. All this, taken together, I've come to think of as love, but it may not be.

"It is not a comfortable feeling. But I find that, even so, I would wish the same feeling on you. The possibility that I suffer it alone — that frightens me more than all the host of the Unseelie Court."

-The Flatshare, Beth O'Leary. This was one that hit me at the right point in time, I think — I was roughly two years out of the relationship with my ex, finally beginning to acknowledge how fucked the whole thing had been from the beginning, and here was this really lovely novel that was about, well, realizing that you'd been in a horrible abusive relationship but that there was light and hope and laughter on the other side, that you could love someone wholeheartedly again and it would be okay. Plus the initial little setup for it — communicating solely through notes — was really lovely!

-Uprooted, Naomi Novik. The scene with the rose illusion...whew. If you know, you know. Also it's just a great book, hands down, so. Yeah.

Honorable mentions to: Beauty by Robin McKinley (twelve-year-old me was rather obsessed with it), Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip (tho I'm not sure I would term it a "romance", romantic attraction is rather at the center of it, ha), myriad other books that I'm trying to think of and just completely and utterly failing at right now? The problem with reading a lot and reading widely is that I can think of zillions of things and then the instant that I go to write something like this about them, my mind goes utterly and completely blank. Whoops.

Film

Again, in no particular order, and being sort of loose and easy with what we consider "romance", ha, I do not promise that I have good taste:

-"His Girl Friday". Hildy Johnson, intrepid girl reporter! She hides a murderer in a desk! Cary Grant romances her! It's a weird screwball comedy and it's one of my, "I don't feel well and I just want to watch something where everything turns out okay" movies. I watched it when I was recovering from surgery in 2021. V good, highly recommend. ♥

-"Three Thousand Years of Longing". It's Idris Elba as a djinn, with Tilda Swinton as a bookish scholar, with story and direction by George Miller, and if that's not enough for you, well — fine; it's a beautiful, strange fairy tale for adults.

-"Notting Hill". I have...such a soft spot for this movie, ha. Various people over time tried to ruin it for me by pointing out that the relationship at the heart of it would "never work out, long-term"; I know that, but that's not the point. For people who are not familiar: Will Thacker (Hugh Grant, this is literally the only role I like him in!) is the owner of a bookstore in the eponymous Notting Hill. Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) happens to come into his bookstore, sparks fly, it all sort of spirals out from there? The romance itself is fine, very 1990s in a lot of ways — I actually love it specifically for the deep and abiding love that exists between the friends that Will has in the film. The other romances that we see in the movie are very sweet and read as very genuine, and his friends are wonderful and support him when he needs support, and tell him he's been a twat when, well, he's being a twat. :D Who couldn't use a friend like that?

-"Moonstruck". Again, it's one of those movies where I have a huge soft spot for it. Cher stars alongside Nicholas Cage as a widowed woman who is trying to convince her fiance's brother (Cage) to come to their wedding. Of course, it's not that easy — Our Intrepid Heroine knows that her fiance is wrong for her in every conceivable way, but she's afraid of actually falling in love again, because her first husband died very young, in a horrible way. Enter her fiance's brother, who is a weird tortured artist of a baker (of all the things!), with whom she falls horribly, passionately in love with despite it being objectively the worst choice possible.

The thing is, they make it work. It's sort of funny, like — you don't want to root for them (she's blowing up her life!), but sometimes the right choice is the one that looks wrong on paper, and the two leads have great chemistry and really sell the whole idea of "right person, wrong time, fuck it, let's go for it anyway".

Also Olympia Dukakis is in it, and she's absolutely wonderful. Big ups to the granddad, too — he's amazing. :D

-"But I'm A Cheerleader". I cannot believe how many people I have had to introduce this movie to, good lord. Natasha Lyonne plays Megan, a high school senior and captain of the cheer squad who gets sent to a "pray the gay away" camp by her parents, who are convinced (as are her peers) that she is actually a lesbian. This despite her having done everything "right" — like, she's got a hunky boyfriend (quarterback on the football team), she participates in traditionally girly activities, etc, etc.

Enter camp, where at first she's fairly certain she doesn't belong, until a group therapy session goes awry and she realizes that she is, in fact, a gigantic lesbian. Whoops.

It is notable for being one of the first films I saw that had a lesbian couple as the focus where nothing horrible happened and they in fact got their happily-ever-after (implied). (The other was Better Than Chocolate, which I barely remember, so. :) ) Growing up in Utah, well — this movie was revolutionary, and seeing Clea Duvall as Graham was extremely helpful in some aspects. Is it a good movie? No, but I saw it at the right time and I think that while it's imperfect it holds up okay.

I'm sure there's other media, including podcasts, etc, but I genuinely cannot think of anything off the top of my head, whoops. :x Oh, well, maybe someday this post will get a sequel?

cornerofmadness

I got to sleep in, I received the most lovely collage card from

stonepicnicking_okapi (thank you!!) for the holiday (I was crap at sending any out) I went to the coffee shop to have a chocolate covered strawberry mocha for the holiday fearing it would be packed. It wasn't. yay.

I sat down to write. First up, I sent my vampire story out for consideration and then went looking in my blog and that's when the bottom fell out. I was thinking about reaching out tonight to

spikedluv because I haven't heard from her in nearly two weeks and I usually hear from her daily. Her mother was in extremely failing health and I thought maybe she had passed and it's always weird with the do I reach out now or do I wait a bit thing.

And then I ran across

kingstoken's blog to let us know

spikedluv had passed away. I was stunned to say the least, gutted. I couldn't quite take it in. Someone had posted in Spiked's last blog entry
here about her death and her obituary. It was sudden and I am going to miss her. She was a big supporter of me (sent me lovely things when I was hospitalized), loved talking writing and had just gotten into Murder, She Wrote and was happy to have someone to talk to about it with.

So I was pretty much sad the rest of the day and the parentals didn't help. Dad can't be wrong. About anything. Ever. It was the dumbest conversation about the youtube algorithm and then mom called me back to tell me about a show she thought I might like. We're not on the phone 60 seconds and he's in the background screaming at her to shut up he's trying to watch his show (which he could just fucking pause and he knows this) this is the man who will give you stink eye if you even dare sneeze when he's watching tv but thinks NOTHING of coming in when you're watching a show and talking to you so you can't. She hung up on me to go scream back at him.

Things I learned today both Dracula (1931) and Silence of the Lambs were both released on Valentine's Day and Svengoolie is showing the former tonight. Why do I love both of these movies so?

Some things from science Saturday

The Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree Is Unique, Psychedelic, And Very Real I've wanted one for so long

Mercury: The “Cure” That Killed

Studying Music Can Increase Brain Gray Matter In Older Adults

Viking Age mass grave holds mysterious mix of dismembered human remains and complete skeletons, including a 'giant' who'd had brain surgery

Scientists infiltrated volunteers' dreams to boost their creative thinking

Canada could remove 5 times its annual carbon emissions by planting trees on edge of boreal forest, study finds

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Dracula

cornerofmadness

I wanted a disturbing Valentine's Day card from way back when but then I disturbed myself. So have that one and I hope you have a nice day whether or not you celebrate the holiday.

Current Mood: busy

hafnia

(As per usual, if you have a burning question, you can ask here!)

A science fact everyone should know and/or that is cool.

Oh, gosh — the difficulty with being someone with expertise in chemistry is that I never know what people do/don't know, because stuff that I take for granted might be something that everyone does, or it might be something that makes everyone sit up and go, "what the fuck are you talking about?"

Suppose I can be a little self-indulgent, since it's my journal, and say —

The history of synthetic dyes is really interesting stuff. We'll settle on that, because it's weird and fun.

We're (probably) all familiar with the whole thing about how purple is the color of royalty because for centuries, purple/violet dyes were incredibly difficult to come by — think Tyrian purple, which was labor-intensive and required thousands of snails to create.

As alchemy became chemistry, with chemists moving more toward natural science and away from transmutation, part of the shift in approach was a desire to understand what gives rise to different natural products. How do we make them, what's their structure, etc. Not dyes so much as medicines and other valuable products that can be found in nature but that it might be nicer to be able to synthesize.

Starting in the early 1800s, we're getting a better grip on the periodic table, etc (though it isn't a table, yet) — we've been able to isolate some of the elements, we're beginning to have better understanding of different reactions, especially organic reactions, and what leads to the products that are desired. There's an interest in understanding how plants like indigo are able to work as dyes — can we isolate what molecule it is that gives rise to those dye colors. A lot of work is done to identify that molecule — one that gets called aniline — though the interest in it is less in using it as a dye (since it's not useful as one) and more in using it as a precursor for other chemicals (like eventually, polyurethane).

So.

Fast-forward to 1856. William Henry Perkin is a student at the Royal College of Chemistry. His PI, a guy named August Wilhelm von Hofmann, was an important organic chemist (he coined the term "synthesis" and if you have ever taken organic chemistry you are certainly familiar with his work) who had done a great deal of work on aniline and was hellbent on synthesizing quinine. He had a scheme that he thought would work to create it, and like all great PIs, he shoved it off on one of his students — in this case, Perkin. "Go do this and see if it works" — nice to know that some things never actually change, ha.

The synthetic scheme itself was unsuccessful — instead of making quinine, Perkin made what we would charitably call "black goop". Trying to clean it out of the flask he'd done the reaction in with alcohol, he was surprised to realize that the liquid was bright purple. Some initial tests showed that it could dye fabric, and so Perkin dropped out of college to patent it, selling it as "mauveine", and kicking off the synthetic dye frenzy. Mauveine was cheap and easy to make — after all, we'd figured out how to make aniline industrially — and so here was a color that had previously been unattainable, suddenly everywhere. People went a bit nuts for it, you had everyone running around wearing mauve, to the extent that different satirical publications wrote about the "mauve measles", and chemists everywhere sat up and went, "If that asshole can do it, I bet I can, too" — the real basis of scientific discovery. (TRULY.)

The craze for mauveine would eventually die down, as other aniline dyes (as they were called) were discovered, and other colors became available, but mauveine was the first. Despite its drawbacks (it's carcinogenic and prone to fading), it was the first commercially significant synthetic dye, and it really did kick off a huge line of work in organic chemistry.

It's sort of funny, actually, but the first line of synthetic dyes would also lead (indirectly) to the discovery of sulfa antibiotics. :)

wayfaringwordhack

I suffer from migraines, trigged by a couple of things, but as a storm came in yesterday, I was painfully reminded of my sensitivity to barometric pressure. I know I exacerbated the migraine with my living room cleaning (allergy to dust mites), but the onset of the pain was ferocious and sudden, sending me to bed with painkillers. I fell into a fitful sleep where I dreamed of having a headache and needing to lie down. Dreams of being in a snow storm with risks of avalanches burying me where I was cowering with my headache were followed by me going from bed to bed in strange houses, seeking rest and relief.

I woke with the headache about an hour and a half later, long after the meds should have done something. Then, about 20 minutes later, the storm finally broke and the headache dissipated.

______

* The avalanche fears were probably brought on by nearvy construction work and noisy neighbors, which made me think of the several buildings that have collapsed recently in Lebanon.

cornerofmadness

All I did today was fail at the things I wanted to do so let's just do the fannish 50 recs. I did finish a story and I will bbl to share it because it's on my flash in another room and I will get up later to get it.

Oh one other thing, I want to use my 3 day weekend to catch up on like months of comments I owe. I have not been a great friend.

Title: Love Potion.

Summary: Angel’s on the job and to his shock a tremendously drunk and depressed Husk is in the audience. Worse, someone has one of Velvette’s love potions and Angel will be damned harder if he’s going to let some fool use that on his friend.

Rating: teen

Notes:Written for sarajayechan in three sentence ficathon for the prompt Hazbin Hotel, Angel/Husk, he knows what date rape drugs look like and he'll be damned if he lets some rando drug a depressed Husk
Also written for Huskerdust week 2026 for the prompt of inhibition/exhibition as well as for the allbingo prompt of ethical sluts and spikesgirl58’s 6 word challenge. The six words are Alluring, Trashy, Adhesive, Vague, Caterwaul & Uncle

( story above or under here )

A Collared Dog The Owl House

I May Be A Loser, But He Likes Me That Way Hazbin Hotel

Wet And Cold Torchwood

Feeling Down FAKE

Happy St Valentine's Day, Bodie
The Professionals

Undefined Fire Emblem Musou: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Not Letting Go Torchwood

beyond the borders. Fire Emblem Musou: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Blood Ties Hazbin Hotel

The Star of the Show. Starsky & Hutch

Intruder Alert Stargate SG-1

Wouldn't, Couldn't, Hadn't (Dulce) Hazbin Hotel

14 Days of Valentine's Day Hazbin Hotel

A New Life The Owl House

Zewu-jun’s secret vacation
陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Modao Zushi - Moxiang Tongxiu & Related Fandoms

Toxic Bliss Hazbin Hotel

we're going up (we'll never be denied) Fire Emblem Musou: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

To Be Known Merlin

Feeling Their Age Torchwood

perhaps not so incurable Fire Emblem Musou: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Eternity (Paz) Hazbin Hotel

untitled Hazbin Hotel

Through The Decades (Hola)

untitled Hazbin Hotel

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Death in Paradise

wayfaringwordhack

I'll leave it to your imagination to picture what our living room looks like as I sort through books, games, puzzles, cables, bric-a-brac... I wish I were the kind of person who could do this type of task neatly. But, no. It seems I have to have it all spread out in order put it in appropriate piles of giving (so many different categories here), taking back to France now, taking back to France later... Even the trash is not always straightforward.

I already threw away 4 sacks of art papers, things I had been hanging on to recycle, to use as collage, for nostalgia, but I have yet to go through all the supplies. I am sure I will have do a second pass, too, on things to keep or toss as time to go draws near and reality becomes sharper, cutting away the sentimental with the restrictions of space and weight. Many of my art supplies will go back this time in order to encourage me to finish what I have on hand and to paint things that are easily transportable.

I have hoarding tendencies which I excuse by spouting my philosophies of reuse and less waste. But the truth is that I have a lot of things I will never use. I was rather proud of myself yesterday and happy for a reason to get rid of a random object I had found and intended to keep, knowing full well I wouldn't actually do anything with: a discarded Lebanese license plate.

Out of the blue, a friend, who has returned to the States after many years of life in Lebanon, posted on one of our mutual WhatsApp groups that she was looking for a Lebanese license plate to put on her van. Someone from here is traveling to see her in a couple of weeks and could take the plate back, so could anyone on the group tell her where she could buy one? Voilà, I thought, perfect thing to do with my find. Pass it along! Now she is happy and I have less things to worry about and tote across the sea.

hafnia

(you know the drill, etc, etc. You can ask here! I will probably answer!)

Talk about fiber arts!

I'm skipping day 11 for now, since it turns out I have quite a lot to say :x but! We'll get to it later in the month, I promise.

Fiber arts!

My grandma was a quilter and did a lot of hand-sewing projects; my mom is also a quilter who does hand-sewing stuff.

My grandma taught me how to embroider, and from her and my mom I learned how to sew, which led to things like quilting and costuming as well as basic hand-sewing for clothing repair and alterations. (If you need a pair of pants hemmed, I'm here for you. :) )

In college, I learned how to knit, though as it turns out I'm absolutely terrible at it — tension is good and I don't drop stitches, but I'm just. Seemingly incapable of enjoying the process? Which is funny, really, because I also crochet, and I'm quite good at it and enjoy it a lot.

Not that I've crocheted anything noteworthy in the last couple of years, but, er.

I picked up cross-stitch during lockdowns because it was easy and didn't take a lot of brain. I've since gotten pretty good at it (the one in the background is also one I did).

The next cross-stitch thing I'm planning to do is this one. :)

I have some vague crochet plans for finishing an afghan I started literally years ago, but, well, we'll see?

cornerofmadness

The eye barely hurts and the swelling is down enough that I can open my eye. It's blurry still but getting better.

I will NOT be doing

fandomtrumpshate this year. I missed that the sign up was basically 10 days, no other warning after the first and I was too busy with my pro stuff but you know what I am okay with that. I can bid on people to help out and that is one less fan thing to distract me from stuff I get paid to do. I feel more relief than disappointment.

In the good news department The Owl House lives again in graphic novel form. I'm super excited for this

Watch on YouTube

Here's the fandom meme I've been wanting to do. I got this from [Unknown site tag] who mentioned there are two versions of this meme: one where you post the FIRST line/s of the FIRST posted fic of each month and one where you post the FIRST line/s of ALL the fics you've posted in a year. While I am making this a fannish 50 celebrating ME and my contributions to fandom (which I think we all should do from time to time) But since I will be here til next week trying to do ALL my stories, I shall go with the first story. Enjoy. Read if you're so moved.

January - Why Do Fools Fall in Love Hazbin Hotel, Angel adored the flying pole Husker had installed on his stage.

February Where Fashion Sits Hazbin Hotel, There’s more to her than anyone thinks but, in most ways, being underestimated suits Velvette just fine. (ha this is one of my

halfamoon stories from last year

March Sisterhood Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The thing about being a Watcher was Dawn never knew what would come next.

April Ephemeral Hazbin Hotel, Angel heard them ‘whispering’.

May Never Hazbin Hotel, “Are you really sure you wanna know, sweets?” Angel drawled to Charlie, as he squirmed in his seat next to Husk on the couch.

June Somebody’s Eyes The Owl House Edalyn folded up the door into its briefcase.

July Tear Up This Town Hazbin Hotel, He should have known it would end like this.

August Hurt So Good Hazbin Hotel, Angel stretched his legs out in front of him on his bar stool. NSFW

September Pushing Up the Ante Hazbin Hotel, This was supposed to be a friendly game of poker, something he’d tossed out there without thinking it through at the last overlord meeting.

October The Porn Star Murders Hazbin Hotel, “Thank you for calling me.” Rosie’s flat tone sent a shiver up Angel’s spine.

November Someone in the Dark Hazbin Hotel, Husk leaned on the bar, pain lancing through his back.

December Forget Our Memories, Forget Our Possibilities Hazbin Hotel, Dear Husk,
I’m sorry for everything.

Now back to watching my mystery still wishing that John Bacchus would disappear. Today he brings misogyny, islamaphobia and racism. Whee. (the saving grace is Gently takes it out of him every time he does this and I've been told he gets better. Hope that is soon)
s

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Inspector George Gently

ofearthandstars

The Endangerment Finding has been revoked.

This is just another enormously sad moment in the history of this country — and for science, for democracy, for the millions of people who will be affected by climate change in the years to come.

Although kudos to whomever entitled this article.

Potential outcomes - possibly taking years to unwind.

My heart hurts.

adoptedwriter

GOOD:

It’s “Friday Eve”!

Students have a 4-day weekend/Workers only have in service tomorrow plus 3 days off.

I’ve had 2 “warm up” days at the high school. It’s all good.

We got out for a real outside walk yesterday and the sun was out! ☀️

clean bathrooms

free samples at the bakery

It’s mani-pedi day!

MEDIUM:

rain coming, but ok for today.

low on free time, but better than the alternative.

There are a couple of adoption conventions I’d love to go to, but they don’t sync up with my spring break.

BAD:

The current US administration and how reading news about it makes me sick.🤢

sadly, a friend of mine for over 40 years said something shitty (via text) re the Bad Bunny Super Bowl show. She thought it was offensive. She never even watched it. She lives alone and in a vacuum. She loves Trump for some unknown reason which probably isn’t logical but get this…My friend was born Canadian! she was adopted by Americans who had her citizenship changed as a baby! she has birth family in Canada! I reminded her that by trade, I’m a Spanish teacher which means culture is part of what I educate about. That shut her down. I watched the Halftime show on YouTube since I didn’t get to see all of it on last Sunday due to eating dinner and socialising. It was no more or less offensive IMO than any other halftime show over the years. It’s Latino music and lyrics. It is what it is. Spicy yes. Offensive no.

cornerofmadness

So I managed to score an emergency visit to my eye doctor. He doesn't think my left eye is infected. However, it has inflitrative corneal-conjunctivitis. Whee. Basically my eyeball decided it didn't want a contact in it and threw a tantrum. (I've had this once before in college a billion years ago) The cornea isn't damaged but the inflammatory response is SO severe right now that my eyeball is so swollen I can barely open the lid and there is so much fluid IN the cornea (plus white blood cells) that I'm unable to see through it. He made me read the letters on the eyechart. Right eye, 20/40 (that's as good as my vision gets), left eye, are there even lines of letters? I can barely see a smear of something that might be black so even 20/200 is beyond my eyes ability right now. I have a second steroid eyedrop that is also antibiotic as well (just in case) Not allowed to wear a contact for pretty much a month. In the meantime the eye is just over there weeping all day, the color of a tomato and scared students.

I did have to go to give that exam, the easiest I will give. 2 got 100%, 1 passed, 3 failed. Guess we're going to have a talk about time management, sports vs academia, come talk to me PLEASE come talk to me and that yes Cs get degrees but they DO NOT get you into grad school usually. (this is my I wanna go to grad school class).

The good news today was it was 10 degrees hotter than expected and yes most of the ice is gone off the parking lot so that's good.

I need to get my story out so I'm preserving what's left of my vision for that. No fun fannish 50 stuff but here's the reading at least.

What I Just Finished Reading:

When the Moon Hits Your Eye - meh

Parable of the Sower graphic novel adaptation of the Octavia Butler classic. I forgot how dystopic this was, not to mention the cringeworthy age gap between the MC (18) and her lover (57).

What I am Currently Reading:

The Final Problem - mystery set in the 60s (for some reason ALL my netgalley arcs are freezing up my kindle app. I'm going to have to try and redownload a lot of these using the netgalley app which annoys me

Dark Life - YA book (so far so good)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - okay I'm at the point of thinking Maxim isn't much better than Heathcliff, NOT a good place to be

Heavy Vinyl - graphic novel for the sapphic comic prompt on popsugar

What I Plan to Read Next: La Grand Familia Zombie Day Care and This Is How You Lose the Time Lord

Luna Park history - it was an amusement park in Pittsburgh around 1910.

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Music: The Olympics

wayfaringwordhack

Saw the surgeon this afternoon, and good news (at least to my mind), the angle of my bones does not merit an HTO. The angle is 0.8% past the allowed deviation, but still small enough for this surgeon to think it doesn't warrant that kind of correction. Instead, he thinks a partial knee joint prosthetic is the way to go. This seems less traumatic to me, has the same "life span" as the HTO, and has a much shorter recovery time. I will probably get the operation after we come back from France in March. Getting an estimate to run by insurance first. I am not sure I will get a second opinion on this one because, as the doctor said, I can get more injections, but they don't last long and do nothing to prevent further wear.

wayfaringwordhack

I really should post more. I cannot count the times that I have thought it, intended it, started it, if only in my mind. This is not an obligation I sense from anyone, not even myself, just a desire to have a better record of thoughts and happenings at this time in my life.

When I finally sit down to do it, it all seems so big. Too much to share, too much to sift through, which means I inevitably end up with the Bullet Point Post.

It is what it is. Let's just do a big one for now, with visuals, and then I will perhaps do myself the honor of respecting my sense of Should in the future.

Pottery:
I have not been inclined to do pottery since before Christmas. It just "weighs" too much in many senses of the term, and I literally set a mental block on wanting to do it because of the logistics of our move this summer. I am ready to put the wheel and kiln up for sale (if we can get a good price, this will save us having to ship them back to France where we could probably buy new ones for cheaper than cost here plus the shipping); J, however, is going to do a terra sigilata training with an amazing ceramist come May, and he wants to keep the material to practice. I have been thinking I could throw a few small vessels for him to practice on, too. Just to keep my hands in the clay. A couple of weeks ago, I did throw a tumbler for a friend to practice sgrafitto on, and it was humbling how much I felt like a debutant again. Silly to say debutant when I did, indeed, start less than a year ago. I do intend to get back to it, but when? Too much uncertainty about the future to hazard a guess.

One of the last things I sold:

Kitty
Pearl is doing well, already an indispensable part of the family with her own quirky character. She is, unbeknownst to her, getting ready to travel with all her shots and tests. She does NOT like the carrier, so we have to get a good calming agent for her. Picture of Pearl a the painting below.

Art
I have been painting a lot. I am also retaking a course that I was trying to complete when the war broke out in 2023. Aside from my classwork, I did a series of paintings of the kiddos.

Health
Ugh. I have an appointment with a surgeon today to see if he thinks I need to have a High Tibial Osteotomy for my arthritic knee. He had me do the x-rays last Friday to see how I bear the weight in my legs and proposed this surgery to correct it if it is what is causing the compression in the inside of my knee. I went into the appointment thinking he would say something totally different, so his prognosis was a bit of a shock. I still don't know how I feel about the procedure. I will get a second opinion.

Move
J's contract ends in July, and the kids and I will move back to France in June. Where we will go from there? Who knows. So far, J has applied for jobs in various French Overseas Departments. He can apply for another embassy post, but that will certainly mean waiting another year before he is assigned, whereas these other jobs could see him leaving as soon as September of this year. We are once again in the uncomfortable position of "sitting between two chairs," to use the French expression.

We will see where we land!

Travel
We have prepaid tickets back to France at the end of the month. We'll stay for three weeks and get the house ready. J's cousin will come back and take care of Pearl while we are gone. We still don't have her rabies clearance, so she can't come with us this time. Today we went to get our photos and fingerprints taken for our last Lebanese visa cards. If we had left Lebanon in Dec as we were supposed to as per J's first contract, we would not have had to do this. It was a painless experience*, so all is good. The officials assured us the paperwork will be done before we fly out, which is going to save us 200USD in fines for expired visas.

_______
*This is my 5th time doing it, and I have had to wait an hour (instead of the five minutes it actually takes) before on two occasions because the lady taking care of my papers had to chat and chat and chat with friends, totally ignoring me in favor of her personal drama.

hafnia

(You know the drill! You can ask here if you have a question you'd like answered!)

Favorite dessert to make?

Ha. So — I love to bake, but I am not really a Dessert Person. Like, there are specific desserts I like eating, but more often than not, I will just buy them because I apparently have fancy taste and my desires exceed my skills (or, you know, certain stuff is just annoying to make).

Anyway, all that to say, the list of desserts I have made and enjoyed making is pretty short, but we'll go ahead and run through it...

1). Chocolate Pie.

This is, as it sounds, chocolate pudding in a pie crust.

I don't like making pie crust, but pie crust that you make yourself at home is worlds better than anything you can buy frozen (alas!), and so I Suffer and Endure and Make It. :D

Chocolate Pie is Max's favorite and so I make it for him every Thanksgiving and sometimes for Christmas. These are the two occasions he knows it is safe to ask for chocolate pie.

2). Tiramisu.

It's not really baking, but! I have a solid method in my back pocket which does not involve raw eggs (eww), so.

Hard to go wrong with coffee, ladyfingers, and brandy (or rum) layered with whipped cream/marscapone and chocolate. Yum. I made one this year for Max's birthday and it was gone within about two days. :D

3). Macarons.

...I feel like someone is going to come out going WHAT at me, because I just said my desires exceed my skills, but!

Macarons are Just Okay. THERE, I SAID IT.

Anyway I wanted to prove to myself that I could make them, so I did. It ended up being surprisingly fun; they were not picture-perfect (I needed to whip my eggs more), but I am actually planning to make some apricot ones here in a couple of weeks and see if they work out better this time.

(I made blueberry and raspberry last time, per the request of the person I was making them for; they were Aggressively Fine, but if I'm doing jam, I want it to be strawberry or apricot. Certain People may laugh now.)

4). Danishes.

Again, this is one where I feel like people are going to go, what, but!

Laminated pastry is actually fun to make, though if I'm making puff pastry I prefer to use it for things like chicken pot pie or apple turnovers (which I don't add much sugar to, so I suppose they're borderline acceptable to eat for breakfast).

I made Danishes for my dad for Father's Day the last time I was out there for Father's Day, and the entire plate of them was gone within about thirty minutes. My brother-in-law ate, like, six. (They were, to be fair, not huge, but still!)

At some point in the next few weeks I am also planning to try my hand at making eclairs again, now that I've actually got the equipment for it (specifically, nice piping bags and such), so I guess that + the macarons will be it. Eclairs are probably the thing I buy most often at Safeway that makes me go, "ugh I do technically have the ability to do this but I'm lazy."

(To be fair to the Safeway nearest the house, though, their bakery is quite good. The eclairs I get there remind me of the ones I used to get from the bespoke bakery my mom's friend ran in Salt Lake, which is not something I can say of any other grocery store bakery I've gotten stuff from.)

Anyway.

Frequently, if it's Just Me And Max and it's not a special occasion but I want something dessert-y, it's cookies. I have a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe memorized and have had it memorized since I perfected it when I was, like, 10.

("Perfect" according to my grandfather, who was Very Picky about cookies, but I digress. I'm fond of it! I don't think it's to anyone else's taste, but Max likes to dip them in coffee, so.)

There you go. :D

cornerofmadness

It started out well. Students showed up, did what they're meant to and meeting a prospective student went well.

and then the day fell off a cliff. I was insanely busy.

then I can't find the agars I need to my research students. And when I finally did I don't have the budget for this. sigh.

Then the roof started leaking. Everywhere. I mean everywhere. every lab. every classroom. people who building flat roofs in a snowy area should have their balls kicked repeatedly

My building has issues before this. Got an email. We need a list of what needs fixed in your lab. by tomorrow. well thanksI

Then the online stuff stopped working again just like last year

Then I was reminded my first thought today was I wish I was retired or at least I never did my sabbatical because it was a taste of retirement

Came home. everything is now ice because it was 60 and all the snow is gone but the ice was too thick for that. Looking forward to my death tomorrow

I haven't been wearing my contacts lately because I can't see to read any more and since I read a lot all day it's not worth the reading glasses headaches. Had them in today. Was doing great. Took them out around 7 without a half hour my eye was beet red and I haven't been able to keep it open for nearly 4 hours. I have NO idea what happened. The contact came out easily. it feels more like it rolled up under my eyelid. Flushed it with both my steroid drops and saline but nope. Going to bed early and hope this heals up overnight. Do not want pink eye. Do not want to go to urgent care tomorrow.

Was going to do a cool writing meme but since it feels like someone is removing my eyeball with sandpaper

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Music: Graham Norton Show

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Reading

Talking Meme Month - day 15

It all never really ends - Early February 02026

Writerly Ways

First Year's Hike

Talking Meme Month - day 14

It's been an emotional day

Happy Valentine's Day

Talking Meme Month - Day 13

Barometric Brain

Fannish Friday

Bombsite, No Visual Included

Talking Meme Month - Day 12

On the mend

The End of an Era

(no subject)

Functionally blind in my left eye for the next several days

Knee update

An ever-present Should

Talking Meme Month - day 10

Days that make you want to cry

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