devildoll

I can't remember if it was January 26 or 27, but either way, I'm three years sober? I can't believe I've been on bupropion for three years, is the weirder part. I've been playing ttrpgs for that long! Wild.

My Pathfinder 2e adventure path actually ended (ish) this week -- we beat the BBEG of Age of Ashes in a really tough fight that didn't draw out as much as I expected, but I definitely threw everything I had at it, hero points, focus points, high level spell slots, expensive potions (to fly over the acid pool), the one single-target nonspecified damage spell I learned ages ago for no particular reason and never used because Kauri is a druid and leans elemental (Disintegrate), just. Everything. And I got the killing blow with a Pulverizing Cascade, which was really cool because it's the one water spell Kauri has continued to use even once we hit the level where we get 6th rank spells and I stopped using Hydraulic Push and Crashing Wave so often. Even after that, I flavored all my cold spells as drawing moisture from the air, so it's been a whole thing and it's nicely thematic. We'll see what we need to wrap up beyond that this Friday, but we handled pretty much everything else beforehand, so I will be making a character (or two?) for Season of Ghosts soon. I'll miss my baby though.

Fantasy High (the campaign I'm in, not the D20 series) also wrapped up its freshman year quest this past weekend, in session 50 just to be extra satisfying. We went to hell! And then to Annwn. I'm excited to see what

yarnofariadne does for our next quest, and what she continues to do with the Celtic mythology theme I dropped on her, if anything.

*

As far as my personal life, I'm... okay? Low on money, like my mom is gonna have to actually ask her sister or I'm gonna have to ask online for help with the electric bill low, but what else is new. I finally found the missing package from Springfield today; ( the ordeal )

*

Anyway. I'm gonna go back to my DungeonFog tutorials. I was hoping to make a little battlemap for the last session of my Friday group's Christmas Adventure, not sure if I'll manage that, but at least I'm getting through the tutorials. Don't think I've ever approached a thing this way but hopefully it will help with the feeling of 'oh god what do I do with this interface,' even if I picked the map maker that felt closer to what I'm used to. It certainly feels like the Correct Thing to do, like reading the manual before you fuck with stuff. But I have always been too impatient.

Have also been doing jigsaw puzzles and I sorted my sister's Arkham Horror puzzle last night, so I can fall back on that if the spoons really are gone. I try not to get started on the jigsaw puzzles before 8 PM because I'm very bad at stopping. I finished my previous one at 12:30 AM on Sunday with Ciri rolling over it and not letting me see the empty slots I had left. It was a fun extra challenge. I really love that puzzle to pieces, though. I'm very frustrated that I can't figure who got me it, but it was on my wishlist Christmas 2024 and I spent all of 2025 stuck on that one lady with the horse (really stuck on puzzling at all, I enjoyed the puzzle once I got started).

*

Puzzling has allowed me to watch The Pitt as it's airing so far (unsure on new doctor, love Mel to pieces, love the new nurse, love Mohan always and forever) and almost catch up on 9-1-1 -- I'm up to the second episode of S9. Honestly, puzzling while watching some of those S8 episodes made it more bearable, and then I locked in to enjoy Seismic Shifts because I do love me a good fictional disaster. I need to post some Buck/Eddie recs for

spikedluv at some point, I said I would for holiday_wishes and I've got a few but I want to list a couple more.

(As an aside... when did we embrace the portmanteaus, and why? It feels so wrong to use them. So fucking wrong. But they're so widespread that it also feels weird to use the normal slash form for pairings! What IS up with that, god.)

*

Oh, I posted some photos of my planner decor~

journalsandplanners here if anyone is interested! Still figuring out the day-a-page format. This page is my favorite so far, and I've gone through like, all my pens and markers to figure out what works for headings like that and doesn't bleed like a motherfucker. (There are some markers that are the perfect color but holy shit you can see them through TWO whole pages. And they're decent paper!)

Anyway. Happy Thursday! Hope things are going well for all y'all. <3

luthien

One more fill for

threesentenceficathon

Language!
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Pairing: Shane/Ilya
Rating: T
Prompt: being in so much pain that you’re swearing in multiple languages

“Jesus fuck – putain – Говно – Christ, I need more languages to swear in if the team keeps doing this sort of thing every time I’m out with an injury; watching this is even more painful than my actual MCL sprain,” Shane complained, jabbing a finger at the TV screen.

“There is no need for cursing; he did not miss the goal by so very much – only feet, not yards,” Ilya said consolingly, and leaned in to stop Shane’s mouth with a kiss before he had the chance to direct more swear words – whether in Canadian English, Canadian French, or very bad Russian - at Ilya.

“See моя любовь,” Ilya continued when he lifted his head – not from Shane’s mouth – sometime later, “we only need one language, and it has no words.”

luthien

We survived the high of 42C/107F yesterday - thank you, ducted air con - but I wound up with a particularly bad headache that snuck up on me over the course of the day. It was one of those days when I kept wondering why everything was so hard and I couldn't get anything done. Eventually, when the penny finally dropped and I took some painkillers, my first thought was: I can't think straight. I can't write! This is it. I'll never be able to write again.

I will just point out here that I have lived with chronic daily headache and migraine for literally decades - and yet logic still goes out the window every time I get hit with a bad one when it's been a week or two since the last one. The human mind - what can you do? I think I'll try to write something tonight, just to prove to myself that my mind while in the grip of a headache doesn't know what it's talking about.

Today has been much better. The headache has departed and the max temperature today was 'only' 35/95. You can really feel the difference in how less suffocating the air outside feels, even though the poor garden is still baking. It's going to get back up to 40/104 again tomorrow and the day after, though, so we'll see how I go. I'm having my weekly massage tomorrow, which should help stop my upper back from clenching up too much.

One other side effect of the hot weather is that we're only sleeping under a sheet atm, so no real surprise that I was awakened fairly early this morning by my feet being pounced on, not long after D had left for work. When I opened my eyes I was surprised to find that it was Abby, who is seven now, and not Olly, who is not quite ten months old. Then she growled, and I realised she thought my feet moving under the sheet were a moving kitten. Even after six months, she is still DEEPLY offended that Olly exists, and, worse, that he exists in her house.

So I rolled over and went back to sleep, and a while later I got woken up by another pounce. This time it was Olly. He didn't let up, so I had to fold the doona back over to protect my feet. Then, when I'd spoilt his fun, he jumped up to play with the blind cord. At that point I incarcerated him in his bedroom. (Yes, he has his own bedroom with his own special fluffy bed, blanket, litter tray, scratching station, water bowl and overnight snacks, partly because he's spoilt to death, and partly because every time we leave him free overnight, he wreaks havoc on the other pets and the house in general. I guess we're getting off reasonably lightly, though. As a friend pointed out to me, think how much worse he would be if he hadn't been desexed.)

Have some pics:
( Cat pics )

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

highlander_ii

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musesfool

In case you haven't listened to it yet: Streets of Minneapolis by Bruce Springsteen.

It's in my bsky feed and my tumblr dash and I saw it here on DW first (in a locked post), so I needed to have it here too.

And since I've been listening to it a lot lately, here's Help Save the Youth of America by Billy Bragg. Unfortunately always timely.

*

Current Mood: here
Current Music: Streets of Minneapolis - Bruce Springsteen

settiai

ACNH had a free update two weeks ago that added some new features to the game, and I've got to admit that I'm quite enjoying them. Considering it's an almost six-year-old game, I'm still a little surprised that they released such a big update after all this time, but I'm very much not complaining.

They've added a hotel which means you can have more visitors to your island every day, and they're all wandering around instead of staying in one spot like visitors who are at the campsite do. The only thing that I'm disappointed about is that there doesn't appear to be any way to get hotel visitors to move to your island like with campsite visitors, which made me very sad when Raymond showed up a few days ago. That said, I've discovered that former residents of your island remember you and talk about coming back to their old home for a visit, which is amazing. I'd forgotten that a few of them even used to live on my island until I saw them again.

I've currently put over 1000 hours into this game, which I quite honestly find hilarious. The four Dragon Age games beat that, as I've put around 1500 hours into them, but the four Mass Effect games are only around 980 hours and Baldur's Gate 3 is only around 820 hours. So far, at least. The way I'm going, it may be in the 900s at least before my birthday next month.

Considering this was my very first Animal Crossing game, I really can't believe that it's second only to Dragon Age when it comes to my hours played. I only bought it because one of the players in my Friday night D&D game made an impassioned argument to convince us all to get it so that we could play together during the early days of the pandemic. Yet here I am, almost six years later, still playing it regularly.

Current Mood: amused

celli

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musesfool

Today was super annoying because I had a very weird internet outage. Spectrum acknowledged that there was an outage in my area even! But it was only partial? Or intermittent? Just fucking weird. I could get to my work-related sites fairly frequently (outlook, sharepoint), but literally nothing else would load except for some reason gmail. Like, no news sites. No bank. No shopping sites. Bitwarden timed out trying to log into my password vault. I couldn't get anything at all to load on my personal laptop until I plugged in my phone to use it as a hotspot, which was greyed out and not allowed on my work laptop. Finally, around 4 pm when Spectrum said the outage was over but I still didn't have full service, I chatted with them and somehow their reboot of everything worked (even though I rebooted the modem and router several times on my own without any luck), so I was able to get full access to the internet on both laptops and on my TV. *hands*

In other news, I found that a stint overnight in the fridge greatly improved those cupcakes. I wasn't impressed by them at room temp (texture was super spongy), but they're really good with the extra time in the cold! So if you need vegan cupcakes, the KAB recipe is recommended, especially if you make them ahead of time.

Meanwhile, it looks like we might get a nor'easter this coming weekend? A big storm potentially, though with less snow and more wind. No warming of temperatures anyway. Oy.

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: When You Were Mine - Cyndi Lauper

settiai

It took forever for me to find the time to properly start catching up since I didn't watch the last episode of 2025 live (save for the cold open which I watched for Yuletide-related purposes), mostly because I knew it was going to be pretty much entirely combat which tends to be something I'm not very big on. I really needed to watch it so that I can then catch up on the two most recent episodes, though, so here we are.

As with previous posts about the current campaign of Critical Role, this will be a combination of quotes, random thoughts, and some speculation. And it's obviously full of spoilers (albeit vague ones in places).

( Spoilers under the cut. )

Current Mood: accomplished

settiai

Ah. It's officially one month until my birthday, and I've gotten the first "here's a birthday coupon so spend money with us!" from a company whose emails I'm subscribed to. Let the inundation begin.

This one is at least useful, I'll give them that much. It's for Adagio, and I drink enough tea that I can definitely put a coupon to use.

Current Mood: amused

luthien

It looks like parts of western Victoria have recorded the state's hottest ever temperature today. Right now, it's 48.9C, or 120F in the old money.

The forecast is for 42C/107F here tomorrow, which will be bad enough. I'm really glad I don't have any appointments until Friday. I'm not planning to budge from the house. I'm worried about fires, though. Where I live is just far enough from bushland that I don't have to worry about them for myself, but god. There were 900 buildings lost and a big chunk of land all burnt out in the heatwave a few weeks ago, when there were dozens of fires burning across Victoria and New South Wales.

How many fires are there going to be in this sort of heat?

(And still we have politicians trying to say that this is normal. I saw one leader of a far right less-and-less-fringe party call climate change 'rubbish' today. I won't dignify her words by attaching her name to them, but if you're Australian I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.)

luthien

I wrote a couple of fills for

threesentenceficathon. There could be more, but for now there's these two:

She Knows
Fandom: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Pairing: Percy/Marguerite
Rating: M
Prompt: she knows

( Read more... )

Rumours
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters: Hayden & Shane (Shane/Ilya implied)
Rating: G
Prompt: Have you heard the rumors about us?

( Read more... )

celli

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luthien

I've been intending to put together a Heated Rivalry recs post, but I think this one needs its own.

Haydenov Phone Swap by icopythefax is a series of three stories, and the premise is what it says on the tin:

After a mix-up leaves Hayden with the wrong phone for three days, he ends up learning more about Ilya Rozanov and his secret girlfriend, Jane.

The first story, I Like Jane For You, is told from Hayden's POV. Initially, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit that:
1. They would accidentally swap phones in a bar,
2. Neither phone had a passcode,
3. They would wait three days until they could meet up and swap the phones back, and
4. Neither of them saw fit to tell Shane about the phone swap.

HOWEVER, once you just roll with the premise, this story turns out to be an excellent outsider POV fic that is both humorous and heart touching.

But the second story, Do Not Text Jane, oh MAN. It's the same sequence of events as in I Like Jane For You, but told from Ilya's POV, and it is a fantastic character study of Ilya. As well as explaining WHY he didn't tell Shane about the phone swap, it also shows just how much he loves and misses and thinks about Shane ALL THE TIME, as well as his more general loneliness and need for some proper friends. (It's probably not too much of a spoiler to say that he ends up with some, though the number remains debatable in the third story. Don't worry, it will make sense once you get there.)

SO YES, then there's the third story, Please Be Normal About This, set a couple of years later:

After the events of I Like Jane For You, the public reacts to Rozanov and Pike as secret friends. Conveyed through text threads, social media, and news articles.

Okay, so this is hardly the first story in this sort of format that I've read in this fandom, but it's the only one I've read multiple times.

Samirant and I read it together in chat and kept exchanging quotes as we went. It's so clever, and utterly hilarious. Ilya's media statement in Chapter 2 in particular is one for the ages, but it's truly one of those stories that if I tried to quote all my favourite lines I'd be pretty much quoting the whole story.

I have a tag on tumblr called Read This - and yes, yes you should.

settiai

First of all, relax! I'm far from being picky, and I can pretty much guarantee that I'll love whatever you decide to create for me. These are nothing but guidelines, for you to take to heart or ignore to your heart's content. Also, hey! You're writing me fic or drawing me art! That's automatically a good reason for me to love you, no matter what. So, please, keep that in mind. Trust me, you can pretty much do no wrong. ♥

Treats are always welcome but never expected.

( More details under the cut. )

Current Mood: accomplished

watersword

Is it possible to post about planning my big trip later this year, and how beautiful the park looks in the snow, and the pistachio biscotti I baked, while Minnesota is under siege by the federal government, who have hired thugs qualified only to lick freezing-cold metal poles?

I hung some calligraphic art yesterday, which has Pirkei Avot 2:16 on it, right next to my desk, where I can see it every day as I email my reps ~~Carthago delenda est~~ ICE and DHS must be abolished.

Stand With Minnesota.

highlander_ii

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petra

Lint rollers (200 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: White Collar (TV 2009)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey
Characters: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Satchmo (White Collar)
Additional Tags: Double Drabble, Psychic Wolves
Summary:

Peter and Satchmo make an arrest -- and a friend.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Let's misbehave

musesfool

I would guess we got about 7-8" of snow today before it either stopped or turned to rain (I'm not sure which), and my phone lit up with work chats because they did not make the choice to close the office and make everyone remote on Friday like they should have (in past years, these big forecasts have sometimes turned into duds in reality), so they had to do it today. I was wfh regardless, so it didn't matter to me.

I hope all of you in the path are safe and warm.

More delightfully, I also got pics of Baby Miss L in her Minnie Mouse snowsuit with big smiles on her face - and a video from earlier when she was all, "go in the snow, Mama!" and her mama was like, "We will, but not yet." But Baby Miss L insisted, "But snow, Mama!" Super cute! 🥰🥰🥰

I spent the whole weekend in pajamas, and today I finally tried out a couple of recipes I'd had my eye on for a while: vegan chocolate cupcakes (always useful to have) and whipped ganache (not vegan but delicious) (pics). The cupcakes are okay - a little spongier, texture-wise, than I like, so I'll probably stick with my preferred recipe unless I have a need for ones that are vegan - but the whipped ganache is delicious. It also has butter in it, which I haven't seen before - previously when I've whipped ganache, it's just been the chocolate/cream/vanilla version. As for the cupcakes, I made minis instead of standard, and I swapped in coffee for the water, but otherwise followed the recipe. I got 40 cupcakes out of it, and probably could have gotten a few more, but 40 was more than enough, since I am not taking them anywhere.

*

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Seahawks vs Rams on tv

with spoons enough to ramble, I guess, at the very least

One more three sentence fic

Weather, pets, life

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 1/29 Game

Snowflake Challenge #13

A city aflame fought fire and ice

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

books of the week

now i spend my time following him whenever he's with you

Critical Role: Campaign 4, Episode 10

T(ea) minus one month...

While the US Freezes, Australia Boils and Burns

Three Sentence Fics

my storm story

Heated Rivalry rec

Dear Spectre Requisitions Creator(s),

(no subject)

Snowflake Challenge #12

Lint rollers - White Collar + Psychic Wolves

why do you need two hands when you've got one that's like a suction cup

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December 2015

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