Reading

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Arknights - Operation Blade CC#2

Finally found what I was looking for. A place where I can be without remorse

Woohoo turned in one big freelance job and they were happy with the quick turn around. Still got another crunch week ahead of me and working another weekend to finish another freelance job but soon I'll be freed up again and have the money to pay the house insurance this year.

Excited to really play through Endfield when I'm free also getting back into working out again.

Some IS-6 Doodles

Entry tags:

Roundup

🏛️ Was on leave from work today to run some errands related to government paperwork. I'm old enough that there wasn't a way to track your social security payments online when I first got my social security number, so I immediately ran into a wall when I attempted to make an online account last year because I didn't have any of the requirements to even set up an account. Fortunately, I got that all sorted this morning.

🌺 TIL that TWINENGINE (the anime's producer) has been uploading weekly chibi Jigokuraku extras! They're pretty short but they do give additional insight into characters' relationships with one another. Ju Fa and Tao Fa seem to be favor one another more than I thought they did, and it was nice seeing Choubei teasing Touma like the gremlin older brother that he is.

🎨 Ended up spending an inordinate amount of time this afternoon/evening fiddling with my layout. Turned all my entry links into rainbows (1) to represent the zone as it's portrayed in Sk8 since I decided to go TadaAi with the layout images and (2) because why not? Implementing the gradient took me long enough, then I had to fix everything I accidentally broke in the process (entry tag colors, crosspost link colors, etc.).

❄️ I think I'm going to give up on trying to catch up with the rest of the snowflake_challenge days. I wasn't able to keep up with the regular responses because Life Happened and I've lost the drive to go back and answer the prompts for the days I missed.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Cranes - Move Along

Entry tags:

Resolution

On Saturday, I went into a print shop to buy a card and ended up with a handful of bookmarks and a lot of questions about a this picture by artist Tsuchiya Kōitsu, initially printed in 1934 and simply entitled Nezu Shrine. I am uneducated, friends, I don't really understand art or art history, and I recognise enough that anywhere that sells "prints" of "famous pictures" is mostly for people searching for souvenirs of time spent away from home or reminders of places they once knew, but I keep thinking about this picture: why is the lady standing alone in the snow? Who is it that is ahead of her? Are they together? Do they know each other? Are they lovers who cannot be seen together or are they simply strangers that arrived at the same time in the dark amidst the virgin snow? The lady is looking ahead but it almost seems to me that such forward focus comes only after a time of looking back, she seems like she has just turned her gaze to the path again, that she is reluctant to go ahead but she knows she must. I imagine it is New Year, maybe, that this is a hatsumode, if you like, that this lady has reached some crossroads, that she has made some resolution.

I'm reading a lot into this. It's 5:33am on a Monday morning. In my sleep, I kept waking and thinking of the snow at Nezu shrine.

The Damage Is Irreversible

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5751

and nothing of value was learned

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5751

Current Mood: busy

Happy to see Arknights events here

Made a card for a SKPort event!

Books I picked up Dana reccomended to me:
WACO
The Road to Jonestown
The Mastermind
The Indifferent Mind Above

Books I picked up for a Darksoulsy read:
Gardens of the Moon
The Gutter Prayer
The Shadow Of The Torturer

Also went to the Endfield pop-up shop in Little Tokyo!
( Read more... )

Entry tags:

a reckoning of swords

A Reckoning of Swords 24

Wrote 600 words of the 2003 NaNo re-write. This means I have started and that is possibly the most important part? It's a complete overhaul so far but I suspect as I go along, I'll be able to keep full chunks and quite a bit of dialogue. I also see other fine lines to walk as I go; hopefully I won't fuck them up too badly.

Posted to

inspiredby, posted the event info for the

small_fandoms Drabblethon coming in February, posted the

no_true_pair annual schedule...

Got the email inbox down to 240 messages, got the DW inbox down to 47 pages. (On a fuzzy goal of 240/54. I'll take it!)

While I was looking for the 2003 NaNo on the Wayback Machine, I kind of died a little at some of my old website front pages. So sparse, so simple! The one with like four! fandoms, original fic, and a links page was definitely my favorite, lol.

Back to archiving. I'm not going to 'catch up' this weekend, but if I can get down to ~a week behind, I'll be really happy.

As usual, if there's a section you'd like me to wake up, let me know and I'll do it.

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Queensrÿche - Spreading the Disease

Entry tags:

FIC: Kamen Rider Black RX, Kamen Rider Ryuki - Long Long Ago, 20th Century

Title: Long Long Ago, 20th Century
Universe: Kamen Rider Black RX, Kamen Rider Ryuki
Character(s): Morita Yousuke, Kanzaki Shiro, Kishida Tomoko
Series: The Unspeakable Oath | Between To-day and To-morrorow | Pagliacci | The Ghost of a Flea | Dangerous Days | dérive | In Accordance to Natural Law | Shadow Moon | Wake Up the Hero! | Rêve | Channelling the Power of Souls | Evanescent Quietude | Pearls Before Swine | One Day Closer to the End of the World | The Nobodies | Breath, Held | Collectors | International | Vice-Versa | Lonely, Lonely Heart | Life Eternal
Rating: U
Warnings:
Summary: “I read your paper on Crisis technology,” the younger man continued. “I was especially interested in your personal experience with the Crossover Mirror Technique.”
Length: 974 words
Author's Notes: I have so many things I haven't posted yet and I'm desperately trying to force myself into sharing them. also: external link.

401

( Long Long Ago, 20th Century )

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A Reckoning of Swords 21-23

A bit of archiving, a lot of something. I realized that despite it being two and a half years since I started the new site, I hadn't moved any of my FFVII fic. Not a bit. I have now moved my two Crisis Core fics and will work on the rest sooner than later. But then again, I also had no Kingdom Hearts until I was nudged. (I think some of it is the sheer size of those categories? And knowing this is still a multi-year effort. Even if I manage five fics (or chapters thereof) a day for an entire year, that's only 1825 items, which is nothing compared to the ~2500-not-counting-chaptered-stuff on AO3 + all the original fic I couldn't post there because AO3 sucks and everything I've written since mid-2023. So, like, catching up is a task for the bastard child of Hercules and Sisyphus.)

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned some of the everything about my 2003 NaNo novel, too. How I went to archive it, realized I'd always meant to finish editing and expanding it a bit, but actually re-write it - meant to do it last year and, uh, last year happened. Anyway, dead set on doing it this year! Except the main copy was on the website that's gone. Oh, well, surely it's on my journal! Nope! Okay, to the Wayback Machine! Nope! I dug out the old php files and dumped it into some private entries for my future use.

Main things to do with it:
- less padding smut
- remove friend's cameo character
- words we don't use anymore
- remove some of the real-world canons and substitute some fictional ones*
- tighten up the expies a bit
- yeah idek it just needs a lot and that's okay

*the main reason for this aside from unlimited plot potential with the fictional fandoms is the story is set in 2003 and had plenty of commentary on things like Guilty Gear which made sense in 2003 but are a little jarring in the Year of Our Dude 202X.

I don't know if it'll end up being 50k words still, or shorter or longer. My original thoughts on the story were that it was too short for NaNo, and it possibly was hence a lot of weird padding and things just being... weird.

I also have one KH fic and one FFVII fic that I didn't archive on AO3 for Reasons and I'll have to eventually make decisions with those, too...

Claire Intensifies

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5750

her ears are burning

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5750

Current Mood: giddy

Once we start walking forward, the traces of our journey will always be there

I got my wife, also I'm at the part where I'm just going to farm for a bit and casually take story. Gonna let my farm run making bombs for a day so I'm well-prepaed for exploration and watch a couple lore vids as I work today.

Current Mood: blah

Blaaaargh

I have run completely out of brain to reply to people this week. I'm going to try and jump-start my reply-inator tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes.

Always Quicksave Before Important Dialog

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5749

Cute hanners :3

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5749

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Wake Up A Dead Man: Knives Out

Blowing the dust off this

Tried Livejournal for a bit but swinging back here again. Some doodles hanging w/ buds in Magma. I think the hardest thing is finding a online storage space to host images. Catbox seems fine for now.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Cranes - Adoration

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AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #206: Shimada Haruka

I first really became conscious of Shimada Haruka whilst Oba Mina was in disgrace. A member of the ninth generation alongside her former classmate, Nakamura Mariko, Mori Anna, Yamauchi Suzuran, Yokoyama Yui, and, of course, Oba herself, Haruu was brought in as temporary captain of Team 4 during 2nd September 2011 through to 4th January 2012 when Oba finally made her triumphant return. This wasn't her only brush with leadership either, as in 2015, she was appointed as co-captain alongside Kitahara Rie as she was moved to Team K, a position she held for several years until it was done away with in 2017 and she announced her graduation. Haruu was always a smart girl, having no catchphrase, just a simple "I'm Team K's Shimada Haruka," and having some prior experience of shepherding wayward members in her school's tennis club. It's no surprise then that she went on to become the CEO of clerical and IT related company DCT.inc, based in Shibuya-ku... wait, looking at this, maybe I should try and get a job here?

Haruu joined AKB in 2009 as a kenkyuusei member and several months later debuted in the theatre during a revival of Team B's fourth stage, Idol no Yoake, during which she performed Itoshiki Natasha, a song that also featured on Sashihara Rino's debut single, Soredemo Suki da yo. As with Kato Rena, the only A side she appeared on was Manatsu no Sounds good!, yet that didn't stop Haruu from fast becoming popular with fans even if she wasn't able to rank in the successive general elections that followed. In 2010, however, she was moved to Team Unknown, and from that moment, the irrepressible Team 4 was born.

In 2012, having returned captaincy of her team back to Oba, she was moved to Yokoyama Team K during the fateful Tokyo Dome Team Shuffle, and from here she built her career as a Team K stalwart, appearing frequently on B sides during the years before she announced her graduation during a 2017 SHOWROOM stream. Having taken a break from the entertainment industry, Haruu has gone from strength to strength, with the establishment of DCT.inc, her marriage in 2023, and the birth of her first child in May 2024.

Since last year, I thought briefly of maybe staying in Atami for a longer period of time than just a daytrip. When I discovered that Haruu was the owner of a guesthouse in Atami, I thought very briefly about what it would be like to stay there, but I really don't have the courage for guesthouses, let alone guesthouses run by former Team 4 captains, I'd absolutely make a fool of myself.

Yet still, maybe one day...

Haruu!

Entry tags:

A Reckoning of Swords 19-20

Got some archiving done! I'm still a couple of weeks behind but, like, have you seen the last couple of weeks?

I'm trying to get better at picking at things when I have a few spare minutes, instead of feeling like I need a block of time to code/write/whatever.

The Lemonade Cafe's twenty-third (whut?!) anniversary is somewhere in the next couple of weeks. Looking back, it's traditionally been celebrated between the 30th of January and the 7th of February, so it's very much an anniversary week and not a firm date. This is basically because the original site was coded for a class project for a one-credit web-dev class I took my last semester of university. Once the class was over and the site (a fairly general KH site, tbh) graded, I promptly swapped it over to hosting the fanfiction I'd been writing for an entire month at that point.

I don't actually have any anniversary plans so um, help me make some?

Current gunpla/plamo kit is [redacted] for a contest so mostly all I can yell about is glitter and rhinestones, lol.

The Giving Gloop

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5748

Moray is doing her best :)

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5748

Current Mood: dammit!

(no subject)

Fffffffuuuuuck, I just remembered some other ficlets I need to rescue from LJ.

...I'll probably be fine if I have a nap first, right?

Entry tags:

gunpla

Gaming Group

Five plastic robot models stand around a brown table piles with books, games, a map, drinks, and more. The group includes the pale grey 30 Minute Fantasy Priest, the dark grey 30 Minute Missions Horse, green SD Dynames, white HG Calibarn, and pink RG Justice. They are playing Lindwyrm, a real game.

They need a few more accessories and a more permanent location but here's the gaming group!

Social Grace

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5747

aaaaaa

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5747

Entry tags:

Snowflake Challenge 2026 Day 8

Like Day 3's prompt, Day 7 felt familiar so I went digging and found the entry back in 2020. I'm opting to skip Day 7 since I can't think of anything else I'd like to list, and I don't want to just reuse what I already said.

A gold snowflake ornament is nestled amidst pine boughs

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

This one's a bit tricky because I don't really have a creative process 😆 But I'll do my best to outline what I do when I want to write fanfic.

(Usually) wait until it's after dinner so there's less chances of people interrupting me.
Close my door and if it's already night, I close all my shades. No one can perceive me, doesn't matter if I'm writing filth or fluff.
Look for whichever WIP file piques my interest at the moment, based on the filenames.
If I'm just starting out, I review whatever notes I've thrown into the file and begin writing from the very start of the story. If I've already written something, I'll re-read what I have so far.
Follow the vibes throughout. Go with the flow of consciousness and see where it takes me.
Delete anything that doesn't fit with the current vibe I'm trying to go for. If the section's already pretty long, see if it can be salvaged and reused for a different fic.
If stuck or running into writer's block, do a quick canon review of the specific moment that inspired me to write the fanfic. ~~Get distracted and end up going on a mini-binge-watch/binge-read of canon.~~

Honorable mentions:

I used to not be able to write without some sort of music in the background but these days I go without.
Very, very rarely I'll have a very rough outline for the fanfic. If I do, I'll go through one bullet point at a time, fleshing it out before deleting the bullet point.

Day 1 * Day 2 * Day 3 * Day 4 * Day 5 * Day 6 * Day 7