Laughter Through Tears

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:02:45 GMT

I wanted very badly to write that my knee is mostly better, but after two days of steady improvement, this morning I was awoken at 4:30 by pain and was not able to get back to sleep. Pilates, a little walking, and a hot shower improved it a lot, but it's still pretty bad.

We'll see what my doctor says. She's never seen me like this.

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Just tired.

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:14:05 GMT

I'm exhausted today, mostly because of things that I don't want to talk about, but also because this morning, for the first time in literally years, I woke up with a stiff right knee and mild, twinging pain. Nothing like the pain that I used to have (circa 2007 or thereabouts), but I've been limping most of the day, and seriously restricted in Pilates, this morning.

Still watching endless Blue Prince VODs on YouTube, both from Cracking the Cryptic and now also Dr Gluon. Also slowly rewatching all of The Mentalist over the past month or so, in lieu of watching anything new that I need to focus on. And lately, also, reading the novel version of The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine, since the manhwa's new season i getting translated, too. I felt like I'd forgotten a lot and wanted more background material + a refresher.

It's an intriguing case study in something that's technically a romantic fantasy, but with heavy action fantasy elements, an overpowered female protagonist, and some intriguing supporting characters. If I was less worn out, I'd try to write something sensible about it.

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Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:16:49 GMT

Last-minute siren, maybe an hour before the ceasefire was officially declared. But this morning, everyone in the household slept late.

I am still trying to get some work done, even through the holiday and the war. We'll see how well this one holds. Previous ceasefires haven't been very promising.

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Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:06:02 GMT

The thread I'm hanging by is gossamer-thin, but I'm hanging.

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Mice

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:36:49 GMT

Everything is bad *jazz hands* but on Sunday I managed to replace my janky mouse with one that has a functional thumb-operated scroll button. One that doesn't periodically freeze, jump, uno reverse, or play other similar psy-ops on my cursor. Unbelievably irritating, especially when gaming.

Though I still intend to eventually get an ergonomic controller to attach to my PC, for gaming purposes. Eventually.

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Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:46:37 GMT

I dare not put my hopes on paper (virtual paper), though plenty of other people have filled the pages of newspapers with their fears. And yeah, the worst case scenarios I can think of are pretty damn bad. But I'd like to think that, even in our world, not all change is for the worse.

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Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:06:42 GMT

Normally when I need to quote a song to describe a mood it's either "You Can't Always Get What You Want" or one other one.

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games games games

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:29:30 GMT

Steam is doing a whole event centered around upcoming games, so I had a little browse and downloaded a few demos.

The first demo was a bust, despite a promising concept. The interface was difficult and I just wasn't enjoying myself.

The second game was much better. A mystery puzzle game called Secrets of Suburbia, it features an amateur teen detective in a late 90s setting, focuses on teens' online lives, and captures the spirit of the late 90s internet to a downright alarming degree. I haven't gotten far enough in the mystery to comment on that aspect, but its subject is a girl who went missing. The game is physically very dark, as in, even when the lights are turned on (there are light switches in every room) the light is still very low and washed out. There is also spooky music, so the low light is probably meant to enhance the horror/mystery vibes. It even starts with the teen protagonist home alone while the rest of the family is out.

I've also downloaded a demo for a game called I'm Making a Monster, but I haven't tried it yet.

Then there's Islantiles, a kind of deck-builder/city-builder type game, but I've been playing that demo for a while, so it's not new. The game is due out Q2 2026, so possibly soonish, and the demo just updated, too.

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Sun, 22 Feb 2026 12:57:07 GMT

Day 5 of a cursed head cold.

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Seven Dials

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:02:02 GMT

I first tried watching Seven Dials a while ago, with my mother, but she got bored and quit partway through. I was intrigued, and I usually enjoy Agatha Christie adaptations, so I watched all three episodes today, back to back.

It has the bones of a rather fun and intriguing story with three potentially clever and compelling characters. But unfortunately, it is not that story. Instead, it's a bit plodding, misses many of its swings when it comes to emotional beats, and has overwritten dialogue of the kind that makes allegedly clever characters appear rather foolish. Helena Bonham Carter in particular was disgracefully wasted.

Although I wanted to like it, I found the whole thing to be rather a waste of time.

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Sun, 15 Feb 2026 06:37:52 GMT

Windows 11 is so phenomenally shitty that they managed to ruin Notepad, arguably The single most useful basic all-purpose program. You could just open any text file in it. You could use it to edit properties files, configuration files, XML, HTML. You could write entire Java programs in it if you were enterprising. It was quick, lightweight, and had all the features it could possibly need, which was almost none.

W11 "Notepad" is a bloated monster that takes several seconds to load a file less than 1KB. I uninstalled it. For the first time in my life, I uninstalled Notepad.

This fucking timeline, man.

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Fri, 13 Feb 2026 07:26:44 GMT

Overnight, I got yet another notification for one of those scammy bot comments on AO3, shilling some bullshit "art" service, or something like that. I had one just like it, about a week ago, and I reported it for violating terms. However, by the time I got around to reporting this one (it came in while I was asleep), it was gone. Although the account is still active. I guess someone else beat me to the punch, since, as I mentioned, the bots tend to sweep through tons of fics randomly.

And it's a registered user, so it's not even as though locking my fics for logged in users would help. I hate this timeline.

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Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:33:15 GMT

This article about color symbolism in Kpop Demon Hunters is pretty interesting, apropos of nothing.

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Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:17:30 GMT

Jesus Christ, Windows 11 is complete garbage.

No, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want your links or recommendations. I don't want to hear about Linux.

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Reading Adventures

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 09:41:16 GMT

I did end up reactivating my old StoryGraph account, BTW. If anyone here is using it and feels like adding me, let me know. Especially if you have a different username there and you want me to recognize you, heh.

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Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:17:15 GMT

Sitting myself down and giving myself a stern warning that I'm only allowed to commit to Shiny New Story Idea if I'm still in love with it by Arbitrary Date.

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Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:23:20 GMT

Still being plagued by visions (story ideas) but also, I am going through some folders on my hard drive that time forgot and deleting a bunch of crap that I don't need and will never want. Feels like getting an overdue haircut in terms of the amount of mass lost vs. relief to neck muscles.

The second book I attempted to console with me went well for the first half, and then, early in the second part of the duology, I hit another scene that had me asking myself "should I push through this in hopes for good things ahead?" And eventually, I decided against pushing through. Reading is fun. Reading is a hobby. It will continue being a fun hobby if I treat it like one, not like some kind of solemn duty I have towards the books that I bought. Or something.

I am not interested in recs (at all!!), but what's the name of that site that was supposed to be a better alternative to Goodreads?

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Purimgifts 2026 letter

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:31:11 GMT

I'm posting this letter on Thursday the 8th (unfinished) so that I can complete my sign-up. I intend to fill in the details by Saturday the 10th (inclusive). If I have failed to do that, you, my assigned writer, have my permission to just use the sign-up itself and go hog wild.

My requested fandoms: ( Fandoms )

General likes: ( General likes )

General DNWs: ( General DNWs )

Fandom-specific prompts:

( Unpacking )

( Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem )

( Alpennia )

( The Ministry of Unladylike Activity )

( England Series - K. J. Charles )

( Beware of the Villainess! )

( October Daye )

( Long Live the Queen )

( The Saint of Steel )

( SPY x FAMILY )

( KPop Demon Hunters )

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Unsatisfying

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 14:33:57 GMT

By some chain of events that I'm not 100% clear on, on Saturday afternoon/evening, I went down a rabbit hole of searching for female-led fantasy books. Again. I can't count how many times I've done this, and yet the results are most often frustrating and unsatisfying, in a way that makes me feel like a weird gremlin.

Part of that is that I'm incredibly persnickety about what I'm looking for, and none of the people who have tried recommending books to me really gets it.

( a random sampling of some of my idiosyncrasies: )

So on a whim, I started reading Michelle Sagara's Cast in Shadow (published in 2005). I daresay it's quite a good book. It's well-written, and the worldbuilding is intriguing. Various mysteries are laid out meticulously and answered piecemeal. Conflict abounds. If I didn't have a series of incredibly specific sensitivities, I probably would have enjoyed it greatly. Followed by enjoying the next 15-20 books in the same series. About one a year since the first one, maybe? Anyway, it's a lot of books.

But 2005 wasn't a very good year for me, and something about the context of the book sent me back there in a way that I didn't care for. I didn't finish it.

I can neither recommend, nor counter-recommend it.

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Bidding farewell to the first half of the decade

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 08:38:51 GMT

Alarming to think that 2025 will be over in about 14 hours. Which means, in fact, that it's probably already over for someone who lives quite near the international date line, doesn't it?

NYE is not really much of a celebration for me. Well, when I was younger, I would take it a bit more seriously. A few times, I went out with friends. More often, it was something like a small house party, with drinking and music and maybe some games. As we got older, a lot of us drifted apart. The ones who still celebrated NYE often preferred to do it with their families.

Well, I celebrate with my family, too. Sort of. 1/1 is my mother's birthday. This year, we're planning something a bit special, which entails some baking on my part, so this morning I went out for supplies. And tomorrow morning I'll be baking with my sister.

I hope everyone has a good NYE, however you do/don't celebrate it. And I hope that 2026 brings some good surprises.

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seasonality

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 13:06:17 GMT

8 more hours before Yuletide reveals, but since it comes out late at night, for me it's "one more sleep til Yuletide". I'm gonna have to make it an extra sleepy one, because last night I was up until 3 AM for no clear reason. Which means that I barely scratched out 6 hours of sleep. After a morning errand that was kind of draining, that means that even with an extra dose of caffeine in me, I doubt I'll be doing any writing today.

It's okay. Yesterday was a good writing day (finally working on chapter 2 of Project Ghoul, after extensive edits on chapter 1). I'm also quite pleased with my Yuletide fic, which I will link to in January, after reveals. I'd hoped to maybe write treats or at least drabbles, but realized eventually that it wasn't in the cards for this years.

Of course, as soon as Yuletide is done and dusted, it's time to switch seamlessly into Purimgifts mode. But I'm pretty busy with unrelated stuff, so I probably won't get into nomming or finalizing my sign-up for a bit. Even though I have approximately a billion new fandoms, due to reading quite prolifically this year (compared to previous years).

All in all, other than the sleep deprivation, I'm doing quite well on a personal level.

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Writing giving way to reading giving way to more writing

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:53:57 GMT

In between handling all of my boring (medical and financial) chores, this month, I managed to squeeze in a fair bit of reading and game-playing.

After finishing Loretta Chase's My Inconvenient Duke, I went back to reread the first in the series, A Duke in Shining Armor, which had been a favorite of mine when I first read it. I was curious to remind myself how the character of Jonesy had been handled, because I remembered him appearing (after having been a consistent character in Silk Is for Seduction and its sequels, which technically take place a few years later).

MID didn't quite give me what I wanted, but that might be because I was expecting something different. And I never finished the ADISA reread, for obscure reasons of my brain being weird. I often drop off when reading books, especially in the last third, and especially when rereading.

I also got the game Strange Antiquities on a whim, ostensibly as a reward to myself for being disciplined enough not to buy Blue Prince (which I've determined has a 100% likelihood of undoing all of my mental health/self-care progress, pretty much instantly). I played it relentlessly over one weekend, but have yet to go back for a second playthrough. The demo is extremely indicative of the gameplay. If you like it, you'll probably like the game.

Over the weekend, I started reading Tensei Shitara Dragon no Tamago datta: Ibara no Dragon Road, also on a whim. So far, it's a fun romp, slightly referential of the spider one, but the lore isn't as deep. Then again, I haven't read all of it, so maybe it goes deeper, later. Spider has the interesting property of gradually shifting from a survival horror game isekai to some kind weird existential horror myth arc. Then again, "reincarnated as a monster' is apparently a whole sub-genre. I mostly gravitate towards villainess romances, so I wouldn't know.

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Insomnia

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 14:02:51 GMT

October was all about writing, at various speeds and levels of productivity, until I reached my 30/10 deadline.

November, so far, is all about medical chores. Doctor's appointments, long-overdue tests, unanswered questions.

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Writing struggles

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 10:18:02 GMT

Yesterday was supposed to be a good writing day, but it wasn't. I'm trying to make up for it today, but I still don't know if I'll quite make it.

On the other hand, I did manage to weave in a wolpertinger reference, which was great fun for me. Not least because it's fun to say. Wolpertinger. Hehe.

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Yuletide 2025 letter

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 09:34:55 GMT

Hello, Yuletide writer! Please feel free to peruse my letters from years past for additional prompts and ideas, if none of what you find in this letter sparks inspiration. Especially for fandoms that I've requested before, like The Saint of Steel in 2024, or Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem, practically every year.

( General likes/dislikes )

( Opt-ins )

( DNWs )

Requested fandoms and prompts:

( Long Live the Queen )

( Galaxy Princess Zorana )

( Palia )

( The Saint of Steel - T. Kingfisher )

( Lego Castle Theme (Toys) )

( October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire )

( Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem )

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