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Current Mood: mellow

Entry tags:

been stuck at sea so long that we have simply gone bananas

so unfortunately I've done that thing again where I forget to talk to people for weeks, and then I avoid going back to talk to them because I'm embarrassed that I've missed any updates they gave, and then I get stuck in that loop for a while.

The wedding went ahead in September, so I am now officially An Spouse. People ask me what married life is like but since The Husband was already living with me and we've been cooped up in here since before the wedding, it's...pretty much the same as not-married life. Except now we get to reference 'my wife' or 'my husband' in conversation and goggle at that for a bit.

The wedding itself went about as well as it could have considering the circumstances - most of Husband's family couldn't come along with a great deal of mine, and a few could come to the outdoor ceremony but not the indoor reception. The reception in particular wound up with about 30 people, when we had initially planned for around 80. but we had guests, and the guests had a good time, and the venue gave us some nicer food and drinks since we had fewer people than our original estimate, and. You know. It would have been nice if we could have had our wedding in a normal, non-plague year, but it was still a joyful day in a year short on that.

Since my normal job is managing travel and there’s not a lot of travel happening, I’ve had stretches of time with little to do. Which on the one hand is very nice! I like it a lot better than the alternative where I was doing the job of two or three people and tearing out my hair! But after a while it mostly made me listless since I couldn’t be far from the computer in case there >was something I had to do, to say nothing of guilty and also vaguely worried I was going to get fired once I was ‘found out’ (despite no indication of that occurring). Fortunately in the meanwhile I’ve been placed on detail to another department that is giving me more to do, to the point where the new department would apparently like to poach me from my current one! With a pay raise! It’s nice to feel wanted.

(Of course that also means having to formally apply through the incredibly slow and opaque application system, but I can put up with that for a pay raise, I think.)

----

As for what I've been up to in between all that, I wish I could say I’ve been writing but I have not. Not for lack of trying. Doesn’t help that while I’ve been playing plenty of video games and watching things, I’m either not finished with them or they’re not the kind of thing I’m really inspired to write about. Which isn’t to say I’m not enjoying them! And one thing I have been trying to do is make sure I’m spending my time specifically doing things I enjoy, like playing video games, instead of just staring at a computer in a half-hearted attempt at writing. Which is also why I haven’t been on much, lol.

Working on my balcony garden has made me discover that I really like gardening, actually. I’m no garden guru yet (I just lost a plant recently because I forgot I had a spray to fight powdery mildew until said mildew had already killed the plant, and I keep overwatering my rosemary), but last year I got a periwinkle plant that bloomed and seeded and I managed to grow three more healthy, blooming children from its seeds. It feels good, watching them grow. Seeing them inch up and spread new leaves and open their blooms little by little helps to mark the days; that in turn makes me feel less adrift in time, less like I’ll blink and it’ll suddenly be two years or five years or ten years later.

(I managed to revive two dying winter plants too! One of them even has new buds! I’m so proud.)

----

Things I’ve been into:

Super Mario Odyssey (I love 3D platformers SO MUCH OH MY GOD)

Animal Crossing New Horizons (I am still playing it every day because I don’t have every one of Flick’s bug statues yet and I want them)

New Pokemon Snap (I had no real opinion on Bidoof before playing this game but now I love them very very much and think they’re great)

Horizon Zero Dawn (A game that makes me want to go hiking despite having done that like. Twice.)

Carrion (An indie game from Devolver Digital where you play as a horrible carnivorous meat creature attempting to break out of its containment - like The Thing but the titular Thing is you. It’s very gross and a lot of fun!)

The Murderbot Diaries (Halfway through Rogue Protocol and oh god I hope nothing bad happens to Miki don’t tell me if it does)

Star Trek Deep Space Nine (Husband has been showing me a best-of selection of season 1-3 and it’s been interesting finally seeing some context for the gifsets people post. Also Major Kira My Beloved.)

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Despite the link up top I have not managed to rewatch Muppet Treasure Island and I really should fix that.

Entry tags:

life,
writing

completely unrelated but the sonic forces soundtrack slaps

I figured out what needs to happen to get me writing things again! What needs to happen is I need to wake up at 3am two days in a row for no reason.

I've been falling asleep at a normal time but waking up super early for a while now, and every time I do something to fix it (extra/heavy blanket, cutting off music for a certain time before bed, etc) it works for a little while before it starts over again. It's happened regardless of if there's anything in particular I'm stressing out about too, though it may be some kind of background stress due to *gestures vaguely at everything*.

It may have something to do with the fact that when I set my own bedtime I tend to stay up late; Fiance, meanwhile, goes to bed around 10:30pm pretty consistently. So maybe I'm waking up early because I'm not staying up as late as I used to? But he's had that habit since he moved in with me and the problem is newer than that.

I just hope I'm not becoming A Morning Person. I've never been A Morning Person! I don't want to be one! Morning People have, like, life plans and FitBits and stickers on their car about running marathons.

The writing's been nice, though. I should remember to do that first when I wake up early, instead of staring at the ceiling being annoyed.

Current Mood: content

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Sunday Six Times Two, 4/19/20

The last time I did one of these was in October and that's a little sad but also unsurprising. But! I have been writing a little bit while stuck in my house, so I figured I'd put it up here to mark my progress or whatever.

Two snippets this time, since I've written stuff for two different fandoms. First one is that Voltron fic I've been picking at for a year now and I should really just buck up and finish already; second is for Fire Emblem Three Houses (Seteth & Manuela) because I've written a bunch of things that might be real live fics if I could build them up a bit.

( Shiro/Allura/Lance, technically not written this past week but shhhh. )

.

( Fire Emblem Seteth & Manuela )

Current Mood: anxious

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well this sure the fuck is a thing that's happening isn't it

So. huh. last time I posted here there like. wasn't a worldwide pandemic and it hadn't been a week and a half since I left my house.

I'm okay - I'm actually very fortunate in that I'm able to work from home, I'm still getting paid, we're well-stocked on food and toilet paper, and i have Fiance living with me so I'm not completely alone. no one I know is sick so far, and my family's able to stay home as well; Fiance's family is also safe and well.

I'm scared - of course I am - but in a weird way it feels like the outside world is finally matching how I've been feeling since 2018 with the sense of looming doom and uncertainty/fear of the future, which ironically makes it way easier to talk to people about it and way easier to make logical preparations for emergencies and, i don't know. believe that i might be able to band together with other people and help each other or something.

I've been doing a lot of cooking and freezing soups to stretch out our necessary trips to the grocery, including trying some new recipes, and I'm in the process of disassembling some old bedsheets to make into masks and washrags. Saving scraps for compost and bones to make my own broth, and I was able to get some yeast on our last grocery outing so I can potentially make my own bread for the first time. It's not real self-sufficiency, not by a long shot, but it feels like a start, and one I needed to make.

Hope you're all holding up okay out there, and if you're stuck working the "essentials" you're able to stay safe.

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

Press X to Make Everyone Like You

To sum up my Fire Emblem Three Houses experience thus far: not only is it possible to plan your combat strategies based on which two characters you think should kiss, in the beginning of the game you are in fact encouraged to do so.

( *throws gifts at people* do you love me yet )

The other thing that's been taking up my time (aside from work and holiday prep) is making this year's MAGFest costume! I've going as Cassie Cage from Mortal Kombat 11, which may not be the most immediately recognizable costume but does match Fiance who's going as Raiden. He made the hat out of foam and pleather with a balsa wood skeleton! He's very proud.

Where last year's costume involved a lot of painting and shaping foam this year's is much heavier on the sewing; Cassie's outfit is similar to a flight suit, and my options for getting something premade was either to spend a lot of money for something from military surplus (which would still have to be adjusted) or spend a moderate amount of money for an itchy-looking polyester costume flight suit that I couldn't try on. So in my hubris I was like, hey, Simplicity makes patterns for a jumpsuit, I'll just make my own and then I'll know it fits! And then I remembered that denim (the material called for) is famously difficult to sew and the pattern pieces for a jumpsuit have to be huge for everything to be in one piece. I haven't even started the real sewing and I'm already feeling kind of done.

I never learned how to sew as a kid, despite my mother's efforts to the contrary, so I'm grateful to be getting the experience now. Maybe after this I'll be able to hem and patch my own jeans!

Still trying to figure out how to squeeze in Christmas shopping and wedding prep between all the fun stuff I actually want to do, but I do think it was valuable, spending time on these fun things. One thing at a time, I guess.

Current Mood: accomplished

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[FIC] Speak Your Secrets, Stay Your Tongue [Fire Emblem Three Houses, Hilda/Claude, E, 2748 words]

So the reason I have not been around the past two weeks is because I've been nose-to-the-grindstoning this thing. It was the first time I've finished something in years and I wanted it done before my motivation tapered off and now here it is.

Posting and fleeing because it's late but now that I'm not doing this all day errday I will be around again to read things! Promise!

Speak Your Secrets, Stay Your Tongue (2748 words) by StuntMuppet
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan
Characters: Hilda Valentine Goneril, Claude von Riegan
Additional Tags: Femdom, Topping from the Bottom, Pegging, Post-Game(s)
Summary:

Hilda's tired. Claude's needy. A compromise is (mostly) reached.

Or, "How can I advance my Men Get Pegged agenda while taking Hilda's pillow-princess nature into account? Like this."

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

I continue to struggle not to spell it "l00d"

So since Fiance has been playing Fire Emblem Three Houses, which means I am getting Fannishly Into Fire Emblem Three Houses, because it's much easier for me to get into a fandom if I have someone to blather to about it in real life. And I have written part of a Thing about it!

Granted, the main reason I got the idea to write it was because ( behind a cut because it's Naughty. )
And so, since it was Lewd and since it was just something I was jotting down late at night, I started writing the thing on a Google doc on my phone. And now I've gotten it to almost 1500 words, but only when I write it on my phone.

I don't know why, but if I try to write it on my actual computer or even longhand, the inspiration dries right up. My current theory is that while it's on my phone, it still feels casual, like something I'm just dashing off and posting fast and not thinking too hard about. If I open it on my computer, then it's A Thing that I'm Writing and I have to put effort into it and it has to be Good.

As far as the actual game goes I mostly have thoughts on the characters and ships rather than the gameplay, but maybe that's for another post that I haven't hijacked to be all about my writing woes.

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Sunday Six 10/27

I feel genuinely bad that I only ever manage to post these here, but in a way it's a good sign - it means that I am in fact managing to write in my off time, which in turn leaves less time for writing posts. That said, I'm going to try to put something together on Monday ~~or possibly Tuesday when I have some work training thing that I'm probably going to zone out of lol~~.

Same fic as previous entries, because I'm sort of approaching a point where a Part 1 might be postable and I'm frankly pretty hype about it.

( Shiro/Lance/Allura, still worksafe )

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Sunday Six 10/20

I managed more than six sentences this week! Some of it was at 3am so it's quality is debatable, but writing it was.

( Same Shiro/Allura/Lance fic as before, worksafe. )

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Squeaking in under the Sunday Six deadline, 10/13

I tried to write something new this week. Didn't pan out. Only other thing I wrote this week was overheated romance novel prose but thankfully there was enough in there that I could post six-ish sentences with most of the really embarrassing bits edited out.

Did some planning writing, though, so maybe I can clean that up tomorrow while I'm off.

( Shiro/Allura/Lance; also if it weren't for emdashes and italics i probably couldn't write at all. )

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Sunday Six, 10/6

I had a whole section that I was inspired to write but by the time I'd finished the scene the dialogue I was first inspired to write no longer fit with the tone of the scene. I was very sad about it.

( Shiro/Allura/Lance, contains implicit lewdnesses )

Current Mood: sick

Entry tags:

It is time! To be a slime!

I am sick.

Fiance gets colds more frequently then I do and I generally manage, through fastidious hand-washing and withholding smooches until he's stopped coughing, to dodge whatever it is he brings home. I did not manage it this time. I am now on Day 5 of being full of goop and sounding like Tom Waits and right when I keep thinking I'm beating it it rolls back on in.

Worst part was I wasn't sick enough to skip work on Thursday and Friday (though I wasn't especially productive either), but I was sick enough to miss out on an outing I had planned today.

---

Fiance and I did go back to our local Renaissance Fair on Saturday, which was one of the two things I was supposed to do this weekend and which probably did not make my sinuses any better given how dusty it was. I've already been a couple of times this year and the part that I like best about Renn Faires are the artists and craftspeople selling things, so I've more or less seen everything new and made most of the purchases I can afford/have room for. Fiance is more into the dressing-up aspect of it, and I am as well, but my "costume" is a bit cobbled together and I've been hesitant to make the investment to make it more complete.

Plus, I went in costume for the opening weekend this year and that was the weekend I thought I'd lost my engagement ring and spent an hour bawling on my friends' shoulder while a crowd of other people looked for it, and I was so ashamed at being emotional and not helping to look that now I'm nervous to bring my costume back out in case anyone recognizes that I was The Crying One.

(We did eventually find the ring - someone found it in the same place we lost it and contacted the Fair lost and found and we got it back the next weekend - which of course made me even more embarrassed about having a meltdown about it. I've been drinking less at Fair after that weekend.)

---

As a way to mitigate my own stress about environmental news, I've been looking at more vegetarian or low-meat recipes, and as a birthday gift my brother got me Jose Andres' Vegetables Unleashed cookbook to aid in my ventures. It's a fantastic book, full of stories and scrumptious-looking photographs, but there's the small hiccup that the average recipe in the book requires a) a grill, which I don't have, or b) two to three hours of prep time, which I rarely have. There are some that could be doable on a weekend that I'd like to try, though. And for all its elaborately-prepared recipes the book also showed me how to cook corn on the cob in the microwave, so that was a timesaver on its own.

I've also been using bok choy more in stir-fries and as a side dish (since the grocery store near me has it in stock now) and while I greatly enjoy its flavor I do not enjoy that cleaning and slicing it takes approximately a year. Am I being finicky and over-trimming it? Is that what's going on?

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I have been good about keeping hydrated and eating easy to digest things but if my throat is still gross by the end of today it may be hot toddy time.

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Sunday Six 9/22 belatedly!

I promise at some point I will make an actual entry instead of just posting writing snippets. It's just! Writing a whole post means I'd have to think of something to post about! And then I might have Thoughts and I'd have to take time to figure out what I wanted to say or post and then it would go on even longer! You can see the dilemma I'm in.

Anyway have more polydin snippets.

( Shiro/Allura/Lance, more freewriting-y than usual )

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Sunday Six 9/15

Missed it last week but didn't get a ton written this week, so have something left over from then.

( More VLD Shiro/Allura/Lance )

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In lieu of a real post have a stream.

Impromptu Death Road to Canada stream!

https://www.twitch.tv/stunt_muppet

Going live in a few!

(apologies for radio silence; I've been a bit fried this week.)

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Sunday Six on a Monday, 9/2

One of the things I've been doing on Tumblr is the Six Sentence Sunday from AO3 Comment Of The Day. From their description:

Six Sentence Sunday is a writing thing where, on Sunday, you post six sentences from an unfinished work. It can be a new fic, a new chapter of a WIP, or even something you’re not sure you’ll ever post.

Choose an excerpt from any section (and it doesn’t have to be six sentences) and post it, letting people know what it belongs to or indicating that it’s something you’re working on.

I'll be backdating and posting previous Six Sentence Sundays from Tumblr (though possibly not tonight because it's late), but I wanted to at least start posting them here too. That way I'll get back in the habit of posting here and keep up my writing! Everybody* wins!

(*It's me. I'm everybody.)

Six Sentence Sunday for this week is below the cut. Voltron Legendary Defender fandom, Shiro/Allura/Lance, nothing nsfw at the moment.

( Snippet behind the cut. )

Current Mood: embarrassed

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Maintaining multiple social networks is hard it turns out.

It sort of hit me the other day that between content aggregators like Pinterest and blogging sites like this I have five different active social network accounts and on any given day I remember that I have maybe two of them.

I've been a little less active on any of them recently anyway and I'd like to say it's because I've been having exciting adventures but it's mostly because I've been playing video games.

Entry tags:

been stuck at sea so long that we have simply gone bananas

completely unrelated but the sonic forces soundtrack slaps

Sunday Six Times Two, 4/19/20

well this sure the fuck is a thing that's happening isn't it

Press X to Make Everyone Like You

[FIC] Speak Your Secrets, Stay Your Tongue [Fire Emblem Three Houses, Hilda/Claude, E, 2748 words]

I continue to struggle not to spell it "l00d"

Sunday Six 10/27

Sunday Six 10/20

Squeaking in under the Sunday Six deadline, 10/13

Sunday Six, 10/6

It is time! To be a slime!

Sunday Six 9/22 belatedly!

Sunday Six 9/15

In lieu of a real post have a stream.

Sunday Six on a Monday, 9/2

Maintaining multiple social networks is hard it turns out.

Sunday Six Backlog, 8/18

Sunday Six, 8/4

Sunday Six Backlog, 7/28