Susan

Accidentally got desperately earwormed by a random vtuber/pngtuber who does super queer fantasy/horror covers and animatics. This is how I'm starting 2026.

• Another Love Story by RafScrap ft Lyra Pyon — Look, I'm just saying I need the Princess Principal AMV to this immediately. Or like fifteen things with this vibe? I know that "Villain is violently murdered and then comes back to romance/'romance' the protagonist" is the plot of a bunch of villainess isekai and danmei, but what if more. (I've still not read Heaven Official's Blessing, but genuinely the thumbnail looks like monster!Hua Cheng fanart I've seen.)
• Masochism Tango covered by Rafscrap and Gezeus Quiryst — WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU MADE A HORNY VERSION OF A TOM LEHRER SONG. THAT'S ILLEGAL. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. ... It's going on my Disaster Lesbian Who Flirts With Every Woman Who Tries To Kill Her playlist though. For obvious reasons. (The obvious reasons also explain why I saw so many comments being like "Gomez and Morticia Addams ♥".)
• Monster High's Fright Song covered by RafScrap ft. Gezeus Quiryst & Mortius — Did everyone know that Monster High had a song? Did I just miss that one?
• The Serpent and the Starving Girl by Rafscrap — I'm 90% certain this song/animatic is "What if a gay devil tempts a woman who was cast aside by her duplicitous married lover during the Salem Witch Trials" and I'm... More into it than I expected? The way the rage cracks out over "Didn't he promise" is fantastic.
• Monster covered by Rafscrap and Gezeus Quiryst — I spent a solid two hours doing a dance party/tidying spree to this one song because it's got the right energy level for it. I'm also irrationally convinced that the originally song was a voicaloid song (based on the only other song I know by Kira being vocaloid; sorry Kira), so that would explain some of the scanning/syllable stressing going on.
• Goddess covered by Rafscrap — I really like the rhythm of chanting the goddesses' names, ngl. And even if I have no idea what is going on with the story, I'm enjoying the art and the body horror!
• Hell Again by Ironmouse — And just for the sake of this post not being one person: a different vtuber! XD I was watching the video like "Damn, this looks like RWBY," and then according to the comments the lead artist actually worked on RWBY. Yeah, fair, I guess that would do it! And would explain the fights looking pretty good!

GOT AN EMAIL THAT MY LIVEJOURNAL IS 21 YEARS OLD.

I HAVE BEEN IN FANDOM FOR 21 YEARS.

IF I'D KNOWN BEFOREHAND I WOULD HAVE PLANNED SOMETHING, BUT HOLY SHIT MY FANDOM LIFE IS OLD ENOUGH TO GRADUATE UNI, WHAT THE HELL?????

Thank you all for being my friends all this time! I can honestly say that I wouldn't be as happy as I am without you. <3

... Also my fannish progression is literally this, don't let your dreams be dreams!

I AM SCREAMING

SEVEN SEAS STARTED RELEASING A NEW TRANSLATION OF PET SHOP OF HORRORS IN FEBRUARY

AND THERE'S TWO NEW SPIN-OFFS

AND I LITERALLY ONLY JUST LEARNED ABOUT IT TODAY OH MY FUCKING GOD I AM FIRING MYSELF AS A FAN HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS

Today I left the house to go write with a friend, and I took my afternoon dose of my ADHD meds. Completely co-incidentally, I've been able to write for what feels like the first time since 2021, when my writing friends moved away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Funny how that works.

I aten't dead! I've been... Not writing. Not doing a lot to be honest – lots of video games while watching video essays about video games, because apparently this is who I am now? But also: thinking about writing. And thinking about why I've not been writing. Part of it is task cascade failure; I haven't done x so obviously I can't do y and oh god now z is going too! Part of it is using other things than writing as my work stims. Part of it is constantly being at home where the distractions are and not pulling myself away. But the rest... I think I needed to reset my reviewing brain.

I saw a post about paranoid readings recently and my brain stalled out. Listen, listen —

Essentially, paranoid reading approaches a work — whether it’s a story, tweet, TV show, photograph, or anything else that can be critiqued — from a defensive position. It anticipates bad actors and maliciousness, seeking out clues for them.

I have been doing that. Not just that, but trying to anticipate things that other people would find objectionable so as to pre-empt any "Susan likes this thing and didn't criticise x about it!" judgement. Which, to be clear, has never happened to me. I've seen other people point out things that I missed before, and people who have said that the positives I found in a work didn't cancel out the flaws for them, but if anyone came to me and went "How can you not criticise this thing!" then I've deleted that memory from my brain. Instead, I've somehow created this straw-boogieman in my head that is going to Do Something if I don't correctly highlight all of a protagonist's moral failings. Which is especially fun when you consider that the things that I really love are all about characters who are morally questionable at best and explicitly, deliberately monstrous at worst.

Not decided what to do about this yet! I know the answer is "Just review with your heart and damn the torpedoes," but it's haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. I don't think I want to go fully into reparative readings, but... Maybe I can find a mid-ground for myself. Maybe I can write little reviews and build up to having full opinions again. Goal for 2025: that????

(I think everyone I spoke to at Worldcon was just like "Yeah, I miss doing things on the internet" as well. Simultaneously glad and sad that it's not just me.)

For extra fun: I've been looking back at my old files, and genuinely going "Wait, I wrote that?" at some of it. Some of these ideas are great! Some of the jokes are funny! Past me, what were you doing? Didn't you say we were bad at this? Maybe I can... Go back to writing fic????? Maybe reaction shots? The world could be my oyster. If it works: see you again, space cowboys. ♥

Managed to dodge it for four years! Masked up the entire fucking time! Was convinced that work was where Covid was going to get me, what with the whole "We can get like 6000 people through the doors in a day" thing!

No. Two of Lex's coworkers tested positive after a work event, and here we are.

I'm mainly mad because I did everything right and STILL got the damn plague, but also because I got the damn plague while I'm off work anyway so I'm not even getting time off for it! I just wasted my holiday from work being asleep! Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Like, I mainly felt like I had the gnarliest cold there has ever been? Sore throat, trying desperately not to cough because it made my brain throb, bouncing between sleeping ALL OF THE TIME and not being able to sleep at all, because it was also shark week. In case there wasn't enough injury for this insult. e_____________________________e

I'm okay now, Lex is okay now, but UGH. Covid is bullshit and I hate it.

Happy seasonal depression new years for April! I celebrated by being confused by daylight saving time and tidying up my living room like an adult.

Okay, so, haven't posted since January, because 2024 has been a wild ride already!

• My uncle died at the start of February. You don't need to condolences or anything, we weren't close, but my mum was upset and that was what we were all focusing on. ( Read more... )
  
  
• As part of visiting my mum for the funeral, I finally got to learn things about my grandparents! I'm thirty-four years old and didn't even know their names until this year, but now I know that my mum's dad was a boxer and a mechanic who worked on planes during WWII and swore he got torpedoed in Malta, and after the war he worked on a racecar and his boss took him and the car to Silverstone. My nan was a... I can't remember the word, but she was a computer operator in the ATS. My mum found a bag of photos of them stuffed under the sofa in my uncle's house, and now I know what my grandparents looked like!


• (I also looked up my dad's family on Ancestry because free trial gets you document access, and I legally don't have a grandfather on that side. The only name on my dad's birth certificate is his mum's. Like, I always knew I didn't have a granddad on that side because of the family lore, but it's weird to have that confirmation, I guess?
  
  The family lore is that his mum was having it away with an american serviceman after her husband died in WWII, which made it REALLY AWKWARD when her husband came back. But I know her name now too! Her name was Elsie. And I feel weird knowing that, like she's suddenly a real person who existed even though I never knew her. Ugh.)


• Lost a month mainlining the subs of Digimon, because it turns out they're on crunchyroll now! My impression is that the jokes are funnier in the subs, but the dub music is 1000% better. And the characterisation feels a bit more consistent across the series, but that could just be because they're not having to delete anything that could even hint at Japan so the script isn't getting gutted.
  
  • Random thing: Taichi's dragging Hikari out when she's sick is somehow more heartbreaking in the sub because he specifically goes out to play with her, when in the dub he's going to play with his friends and takes her with him so he can babysit.
  
  
  • THERE'S AN EPISODE WHERE PUPPETMON JUST CRACKS OUT A FUCKING GUN.
    
    I'M NOT JOKING. PUPPETMON'S LIKE "OH, WHAT SHOULD I USE TO KILL THE KIDS? I KNOW! A FUCKING .44 MAGNUM. WHAT SHOULD I GIVE THE SIX YEAR OLD TO MAKE THIS INTERESTING? AN SMG!"
  
  
  • WIZARDMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON! GATOMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON! ;_____; THEY LOVE EACH OTHER YOUR HONOUR.
  
  
  • Still not over how much less frustrating it is to watch as an adult because my brain goes "Ah yes, of course they're being idiots, they're ten."


• Accidentally got into cross stitch so my stims this year are apparently cross stitch and hidden cat games. Sure! Not gonna question it! Just gonna cross stitch psyducks and D20s to my heart's content!


• Work have basically cancelled all extra shifts for everyone, which is really awkward when we're chronically understaffed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It means that most of the part-timers have lost about £300 a month, so understandably none of us are happy.
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• I am so tired all the time. Like full-on "there are days where the only thing keeping me concious is my ADHD meds." How did I swing so thoroughly from "insomnia" to "narcolepsy" without stopping to pass go or collect £200.


• Shout out to Meguru Hinohana because discovering that Therapy Game was a sequel to Secret XXX cured my reading slump. She was my favourite BL mangaka anyway, she didn't have to give me 7+ volumes of guys going "Yes I know my feelings are irrational why are they still happening" but she did it anyway!

So yeah, I'm okay! Just a bit frazzled and taking so many fucking accidental naps. Be safe my dudes.

I MANAGED TO FIX (MOST OF) THE SEWING MACHINE MAT IN POST! The stitch in the ditch is still an omnishambles, but I've managed to fix what ailed the pockets. Once again, I'm not straight and the lines I cut aren't either.



And my original plan of "Oh just use fold-over elastic to bind it, that's what you've got!" lasted exactly long enough for me to remember that I had a bias-tape maker, so uhhhhhhhh I learned a new skill! I made whatever the equivalent of bias tape is if you just feed jellyrolls through it instead of strips cut on the bias! I've pinned all of the binding on, and now I just need to actually sew it! And uhhhhhh remember that I don't know how to sew the ends together, so I need to learn how to do that first.

So Karen From HR by unpretty is pretty good so far, by which I mean oh boy, the person who's really good at writing about suicidally depressed people knocked it out of the fucking park again so far. Corinne's such an unreliable narrator, but she's funny and done with everything and so recognisable in her "Okay sure I'm depressed and die basically every other week, but I'm FINE. I'm fine! Why does Bruce(!!!) Wayne(!!!) not believe me when I say I'm fine! Why are you asking about my trauma?"

(She even does the thing I did where it's like "My face is leaking but it's fine, I'm not upset! It just does that!" ... Wow it's really weird to have to go back and put that in past tense, what is that "improving my mental health" bullshit.)

Plus, unpretty is really good at world-building Gotham and writing about normal people living there. Like, Bruce Wayne being a very attractive cryptid who collects and becomes memes to upset his teenagers is good and my favourite thing about their fic in general, and "Oh shit I accidentally trauma bonded to Bruce Wayne and now he's both hot and IN MY HOUSE" is an arc, but! Normal people in a world full of superheroes! Gimme!

... I genuinely love it when people crack out their stories and OCs from when they were younger to see what they would do with them now. Yesssssssss please share what's creatively resonated with you at different ages! Show us the roots of who you are as a creator so we understand what you've grown from! ... Is that weird?[Caution warnings: suicide, depression, fatshaming, gun violence]

I made a crack about "'How did THAT trigger the romance: RPG dialogue options as a metaphor for an asexual experience' In this essay I will" and honestly am I joking. I keep trying to click on options that sound like "I like you and we're friends!" and then suddenly people are acting like I've declared my love or propositioned them? Genuinely starting to wonder if it's the game being weird or I just haven't calibrated my personal real life "This is a friend thing vs this is a romantic thing" settings properly. Do I need to start warning people that I'm not flirting with them, I'm just Like This?

Speaking of me being Like This: Offline Friend Chris apparently put £30 on my Guardian being a big half-orc woman and he won because I'm both predictable and gay. (Tav is very pretty but 100% less butch.)

ANYWAY: spoilers through the Underdark and act one.

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OKAY, SO, JUJUTSU KAISEN, LET'S FUCKING GO. Spoilers for everything from volume 0 to volume 23, so past the Shinjuku arc and into the Culling Game.

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