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Good things recently [Feb. 22nd, 2026|04:18 pm]
Was reading a fic and laughed out loud at it.

Am delighting myself writing Dollshops & Deathmages. I'm halfway done and happy with how it's shaping up.

Had an excellent peach kombucha to drink.

Have the house to myself for a glorious while, because my relatives are travelling.

Am enjoying a k-drama tremendously. Undercover Miss Hong. It's halfway aired, let's hope the rest of it is just as good. (You know those silly Hollywood action movies where there's a guy doing some kind of secret operation, and women who are in the narrative all have crushes on him, and he's too busy doing Important Stuff to notice? Imagine if it was the heroine doing stuff too Secret and Important to pay much mind to the men growing feelings for her, and you have Undercover Miss Hong. Trust k-drama to make something assuming *I* am watching the way other media industries make things assuming men are watching. And it features strong female friendships!)

Three out of the five things I have put down here are related to stories. 역시, whenever I'm happy, stories are usually at the heart of my happiness.
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What media are you consuming Wednesday! (For the last 4 wednesdays) [Feb. 18th, 2026|05:20 pm]
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What have you finished reading?


The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno - Clara gave me this book for my birthday, and I was excited to hopefully read something better than Wonton Soup. This, legally, was. But I'm still kind of medium about the whole book. Apparently it inspired the creation of the Venture Bros- its about a kid detective (a la hardy boys, boxcar children, etc) whose sister commits suicide and he can't figure out why. I loved the melancholy and agony, but as it goes on, weird supernatural stuff happens and the boy detective solves the case. I think it would have been better with an entirely different ending.

Fourteen Poems issue 17 Edited by Ben Townley-Canning - Its poetry! Poetry is always good for VD. :)



What are you currently reading?

Us: Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship by Terry Real - More about focusing more as a duo as opposed to two individuals. Which I think she needs to hear more than me. But its good.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville - I have a chapter I still havent read yet. I kinda forgot about it.

======================
What am I currently Listening To?

Here's my very belated list of The best ofs from the best ofs.

So at the end of the year, bandcamp has the top albums of the year, as well as lists divided into genres. ive always preferred bandcamp's recommendations over pitchfork because idfk it seems more human and maybe less pretentious. anyway, i listened to the ones for punk, metal, ambient/drone, experimental, jazz, and overall, and here are the ones i liked and will wind up buying, in case you care about my taste in music.

The best metal bands:

https://yelloweyes.bandcamp.com/album/confusion-gate
Confusion Gate
by Yellow Eyes
Black metal with a really driving endless beat

https://wolvesofhades.bandcamp.com/album/the-dreaming-prince-in-ecstasy
The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy
by Lamp of Murmuur
One person black metal project, lots of symphonic elements and i'mma sucker for a harpsichord

https://bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/the-splintered-oar
The Splintered Oar
by Weft
more symphonic metal, but ignore the neofvlk song at the end.

https://coronerofficial.bandcamp.com/album/dissonance-theory-24-bit-hd-audio
Dissonance Theory (24-bit HD audio)
by Coroner
Classic thrash metal with driving and iconic riffs. epic organ solo on the last track.

https://rwake.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of-magik
The Return Of Magik
by Rwake
Prog metal, also i love the message tbh

I think these were ambient or field recordings. Something like that:

https://ullastraus.bandcamp.com/album/hometown-girl
Hometown Girl
by U.e.
Sweet ambient drone. its really homey feeling. When i hear her humming, i feel like I'm hearing my old roommate, Katu, sing, which is a really great, cozy, nostalgic feeling.

https://elijahjamalasani.bandcamp.com/album/as-long-as-i-long-to-memorise-your-sky
,,, as long as i long to memorise your sky ,,,
by elijah jamal asani
lofi ambient jazz to study/relax to

And then the Punk Rawk:

https://earthgirltapes.bandcamp.com/album/ii-2
II
by SILO KIDS
short, fast, and loud femme-fronted (i think, anyway) punk

https://siltbreeze.bandcamp.com/album/eraser-hideout-lp
Eraser-Hideout lp
by Siltbreeze Records
femme fronted (i think again anyway) no wave punk with weird electronic elements. love this just wish it was longer

https://medicpunk.bandcamp.com/album/friends-in-high-places-ep
Friends in High Places EP
by MEDIC!
a little more melodic, but still very punk

===
What are you currently watching?

Well all of january and the beginning of february was FOOTBALL BAYBEEEEE. I love playoff football so much. Super bowl was so fucking whatever minus bad bunny. bad bunny rules. I'm a lil secret tejano fan and a not secret cumbia fan and while reggaeton and i have complicated feelings, i was just there to have a good fuckin time and indeed, a good time was had. I miss football now, but, it'll be okay.

Cuz now its all olympics all the time. I'm super into all the sledding events. While I won't ever do Skeleton, I'd love to do the luge. On a smaller track ofc but, like, I wanna get good at that! It looks fun as hell!!


Playing?

I'm back on my Deltarune bullshit. chapter 4 is, like, hella long.
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[Feb. 18th, 2026|08:00 pm]
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My anger was defined as a monster
The only reason it knew it wasn't human
Was because people told it so

My anger was classified as a monster
It had black eyes that could turn red
And a large mouth that could scream loud
And gobble you up (if that was allowed)

My anger should have worn a cape
It always showed up right when it was needed
But capes were reserved for humans and superhumans

I don't think my anger can be satiated
If it was allowed to gobble you up
It would still sit and scowl at your bones until they disintegrated

Maybe that's why they decided it was a monster
The monsters on TV rampage and devour entire populations
And my anger is capable of eating humanity itself
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111 ☆ step 1 of 1000 of my decluttering project [Feb. 17th, 2026|06:27 pm]
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I acquired a new bookshelf over the weekend! It's just a cheap Ikea shelf basically made entirely of particleboard but the most important part is that it was free lol. I spent a while cleaning off the smaller shelf I wanted to replace and everything was soooo dusty because I literally never touch anything on it. Like solid layers of dust lmao it was bad!! But I cleared everything off it and put the new shelf in its place so now I have two large shelves instead of one large shelf and one small shelf. 🥳 I'll probably try to make space for the small shelf somewhere but that's a project for later.

The problem now is that I don't know how I want to organize anything lmao. I have a shit ton of manga from middle school/high school taking up space that I should probably get rid of, but I don't want to. 😩 But also 20 volumes of Fruits Basket takes up a lot of space!! (Also pissed at my younger self for not buying the last few volumes of several series like Fruits Basket back when they were released.) I guess I can start with the stuff I was never super attached to but I know that will leave me with more books than I should be holding on to haha.

I did also buy some book easels and a cheap plastic tiered display shelf so I'll finally be able to display some of the figures and special editions of books I just have stacked in a huge pile because I had no shelf space. It's hard being a maximalist with no room to put anything!!

Oh I almost forgot, for people who have a lot of trinkets and figures and stuff displayed, how do you keep it all clean? I haaate dusting but I cannot let things get as bad as it was on that small shelf after not touching it for years. Do I just get an actual feather duster and bat at all the figures every so often or what lmao.
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[Feb. 17th, 2026|02:54 pm]
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[feels: |Image hopeful]

I'm participating in a cozy fantasy anthology with several other cozy fantasy authors from the FaRo discord. It's kept me writing throughout the whole rigmarole with Amazon and Wise, and since the deadline is approaching, I'm prioritising it over drafting the rest of Project Fang/Bloodhunt Academy. My contribution to the anthology is titled Dollshops & Deathmages. If it sounds spooky-cute, it sounds about right!

My colleagues at the FaRo discord are also helping me figure out how to get Amazon to behave. They say going wide is a separate matter. That I shouldn't have to have a distributor like D2D take a cut from my Amazon royalties if I can help it, since I'm already facing Amazon's retailer cut and Wise's conversion+payment processing cut. Most wide authors go direct to the big retailers like Amazon and Kobo because the bulk of their income is made there and you don't want more cuts on that income than you can help. They use D2D to distribute to Smashwords, libraries and smaller retailers, when uploading directly to another platform is more trouble than it's worth.

I do think this experience has put me off KU. I initially decided on KU after I was laid off, and that decision made me feel less insecure at the time. Not anymore, though. Now I feel more insecure putting my eggs in one basket because the basket has flaws. Guess I'm going wide, although I've yet to plan exactly what that will look like.

In other news, I tried out Fika as an alternative to Substack for my author newsletter. So far it's promising but lacking in some features I can't do without. I have less than a 100 subscribers now, but once the cozy fantasy anthology launches, it's going to be used as a newsletter magnet and I'll have to keep signups more organised. Fika doesn't show you which of your subscribers do and don't open your emails, nor does it show you how many opens a specific newsletter you sent out got (only your overall open rate). That won't help me trim inactive subcribers, and it's kind of important to do that so email services know I'm not spam. The technical term is sender's reputation. Substack shows me individual subscriber opens and clicks, plus stats per post, which will become necessary once I have a load of signups from people who wanted the anthology but don't necessarily want to stick around for news of what I'm writing next.

Last time, I asked for email service recommendations and switched to Tuta. It's great, and has made checking my email feel less anxious because no ads or clutter. Thanks to everyone who recommended it, [personal profile] yarnofariadne and [personal profile] octahedrite off the top of my head.

This time I would love your recommendations for newsletter services or Substack alternatives. Ease of use and economy are the main things, because I can't pay for a newsletter service. Perhaps it makes it easier that I don't need advanced features like list segmentation and so on. Mostly, I just need a welcome email that is sent to all incoming subscribers, individual subsciber stats, and good deliverability (don't want to end up in spam). Ideally would let me have a subscriber count of 1000 or so without having to pay a monthly fee, because I foresee quite a jump in subscribers once the anthology is out. (And ideally wouldn't be expensive in case I crossed the free range. Saw Ghost.org's pricing and balked.)

I'm okay with continuing with Substack in the absence of anything else that fits. I'm not going to monetise it, so it isn't going to benefit the shady guys at the top. But it's not ideal, given the shady guys at the top. And there are readers who don't want to touch Substack with a ten-foot pole.

Hence, I'm asking for recommendations! I think there might be something out there that I just haven't heard of.
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110 ☆ gamer yapping [Feb. 11th, 2026|09:30 pm]
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Two months later, finally posting about finishing Metaphor: ReFantazio. Looking back at my last Metaphor post I was only at the Dragon Temple on Virga Island, but looking at my notes on my phone I stopped writing anything down until near the end lmaoo.

So, thoughts overall: I enjoyed it. If you enjoy the format of a Persona game but would like it set in a fantasy world (dungeon crawling mixed with social links, turn-based battles with summon strategization) then you'll probably enjoy playing this too. The battles are fun but I think the characters are the real highlight of the game. Like with many RPGs, there's a colorful cast with lots of drama and heartfelt moments. I think Eupha and Basilio remain my faves, but I also really liked Hulkenberg and Junah too.

( Metaphor ReFantazio yapping continues )

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After beating Metaphor I finally started playing Hades II! It's just as fun as the first game and I'm enjoying the new stuff they added to the gameplay. I think my favorite weapons are the axe and the knives and the skull....but they're all pretty good except for that mecha armor thing I used it once and was so bad at it sjdhfkjsdf never again.

( Hades II yapping continues )

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Unfortunately the past few weeks my free time for gaming has been taken up not by Hades but by Overwatch instead. 😑 Every time I think I'm free... And now they've released 5 new heroes at once and this damn Sanrio collab!!!

( Overwatch yapping continues )
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Poetry: Knight in Shining Ardour [Feb. 9th, 2026|07:34 pm]
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[feels: |Image accomplished]

Knight in Shining Ardour
by [personal profile] adore

My rage clawed out of my chest
And stood looking around fiercely for the enemy.

He was a radiant boy,
Never allowed to be anything else.

He blazed so that my eyes were drawn to him, fascinated.
Avidly, I watched him for what he would do next.
He didn't disappoint.

When he destroyed something, I was satisfied.
I had always wanted to be rid of it.
But I'd had too much guilt or too little courage.

When he screamed, I fell in love with his voice.
He was my rockstar.

When he cried, I collected his tears in a shot glass and cheered
Before downing them in one go.
They were a tonic.

What he killed made him more alive.

He was my knight in shining ardour

And I loved him best
When he crawled back in my chest

To recover in the warm dark quiet.
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