Someone posted this quote from Fane in Divinity Original Sin 2, and I thought it was worth keeping.

If you have spent your life staring at a thing, you can write about it with knowledge. You can write about it with love. But it is almost impossible to write about it with wonder.

I've never kept Fane around long enough to get any of his banter, but maybe I should change that...

Title: What She Said Crawled Inside Me
Fandom: Doctor Odyssey (TV)
Pairing: Max/Avery/Tristan
Rated: Teen
Word Count: 2,293

Summary: After Avery tells Tristan about her conversation with Max, Tristan spirals and feels like he needs to walk away from both of them. Avery convinces him to wait until he can talk to Max again. A fix-it for the finale.

A/N: Written for Yuletide. My second Doctor Odyssey fic!

Fic on AO3

( Fic under here )

Here's a nice Friday Five before a weekend ice storm nightmare (hopefully hyperbole!)

1. What type of hair do you have? (Thin, Normal, Thick, Frizzy, etc.)
My hair is so frickin thick. When it's long it's heavy, it's hot, it's like wearing a wig that can't come off.

2. What color is your hair currently?
Very dark brown with quite a few silver strands - pepper & a little salt

3. What colors have you dyed/highlighted your hair?
I've never done that. I like to see what it does naturally.

4. If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be?
I wouldn't. When I was a kid it looked a lot more reddish but I don't think that would look right on me now. I like it really dark, and I think it will look cool as it gets more silvery.

5. What is your hair's length?
Right now, probably between 3/4 inch and 1 inch. Way too long, I can't wait til it's done freezing outside so I can buzz it back to 1/4 inch. Though it is fun to check on the color when I grow it this long for the winter :)

Stumbled upon this pet rat resource website. This is an old school site from 1999... But the front page notes the owner died in 2018 :(

http://ratfanclub.org/

This is another site that's been online for 30 years and still updated. I sent the owner an email because I discovered it in middle school via a rat care book.

https://wererat.net/

A


Zen raving about Iori to the old man's grave. 😂

We get to see Iori and Reo's first encounter. Iori answered his calls for help and then took him in.

Whenever his mother was around, he was selfish and spoiled to a fault, wanting to reaffirm that she cared about him despite her absence. Eventually, she stopped coming home altogether; then, his father vanished, too, and when he did, he left behind a mountain of debt with which Reo got saddled. Reo was the only one left, and he soon spent his days being hounded by debt collectors.

Damn...

Back then, Iori hadn't started using the phony kansai-ben in imitation of the boss

That's why he uses it?? Makes sense.

I understand why Reo and Satsuki get along the least now. They started off on the wrong foot and have different ways of communicating. But it seems Satsuki managed to draw Reo out of his shell.

LOL Zen getting jealous over Iori looking at a picture of himself and Yohei.

One of the reasons Zen got into training so much is because of a scar? Whooa what? Zen was a straight-laced police officer who went undercover in the Suiseki?! He couldn't lie to save his life so they knew, but they took a shining to him and he learned their principles, and he ended up taking a bullet for Iori..."Aniki, you think of me as a partner," Zen said. "Even after Yohei-san is gone, you've accepted me as your new--"

"Why do I feel like I'm dealing with a chick who's jealous of my ex-girlfriend..." Iori muttered.

He said it!

Aw, the part with Hokusai, everyone loved him in the Suiseki group.

Reo was at a loss for words. He was good at people-pleasing; he had learned how to flirt and sweet talk from his father, and while that was certainly a method of winning over young people and pretty girls, it wasn't exactly how you attracted people to a festival.

Hokusai saving the day as always...

Aw, the Suiseki old man listened to Yohei's music after he left to start rapping. 😭

Hokusai's great at drawing, somehow not surprised. Reo opens up a little. They'll think we're just freeloaders. And if I can't do anything on my own, if I'm a freeloader, then there's no way I'll be able to stay here...

So the Suiseki were giving money to Alter Trigger because it was supposedly going into researching ways to use phantometal to help the heard-of-hearing communicate?? Iori had doubts though.

"Zen... you can't tell him everything or else he'll go run off and blab, but if you just tell him one thing at a time, he'll go all-out to do whatever you tell him. And he's got a whole lot of faith in me, too... he's a real interesting guy,"

Such an apt description.

So Hokusai's rap name comes from what Iori calls him, Satsuki just heard 'Gaia' from somewhere and liked it, I'm surprised Reo was able to hold back from laughing his ass off.

Satsuki rushing ahead to save Reo, my heart. 😭❤️️ And I'm even more sad about Old Man Suiseki and the others deaths now.

Reo imagining seeing all of those who died around Suiseki's grave made me tear up like daamn.

Thanks to this story I learned that yakuza are involved in summer festivals.

Akan Yatsura comes from Old Man Suiseki commenting on how the boys are. I need a bandaid for my heart now. Really good story.

(Did Alter Trigger take out Reo's dad or did he really just run off?)

Hello!! Happy (belated) new years! I hope 2026 has been treating you alright so far.

I would like to do a retrospective of some of the things I’ve read/watched last year, but things have been hectic and I don’t quite have the brainpower for it now. But soon! Hopefully! So this post is mostly just links.

( Some events going on right now... )

( Article links... )

( Drawing )

Which is to say...mental health has beaten my ass down so badly the past 6 months that I basically dropped off the (digital) earth. Work was busy up until the store I was working at shut down, so I got all the stress of retail during the holidays and having to do store closing stuff!!! GREAT!!!!!!!! And then without the structure of work, I fell off of taking my meds and have been struggling basically since the beginning of the year.

anyway.

I'm not gonna make promises about being on top of things again, but I do want to try to, since dreamwidth really helped me keep track of time when I was unemployed last year.

So. idk where I'm going here, but I will hopefully see y'all around some more ♥

Can I just... Not be depressed? Holy fuck this is annoying!

Challenge #12

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

Is it silly to say that reading today's challenge actually kind of filled me with a genuine sense of dread? Imagine my internal sense of self running around my mind palace in circles, screaming, "NOOOO, BEING BAD AT THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I HAVEN'T STARTED RESPONDING TO COMMENTS ON MY WRITING AND ART UNTIL RECENTLY AAAAHHHHHHH"

But! I think it's important to make fancreators feel appreciated. There's been an issue worsening with the online climate, where people just want to consume, consume, consume, and then just... leave. Comments on fanfics are down significantly compared to the early days and, although I don't have any proof of this, in my experience, it certainly feels like fanart is being shared less. On Tumblr, this issue is especially bad, where likes don't even really do anything to help with reach. I don't like it. I don't like that the fandom community is feeling less like a community.

That's exactly why my New Year's resolution this year is to comment on fanworks (and general art) more. Specifically, I want to comment on at least one piece of art or writing, every two days. I've kept this up so far, and, you know, it's easier than I thought it would be! I spend most of my time on Tumblr where there's a very quick and easy reply feature, so I've just been replying to the art that I've come across that I think is especially impactful in some way. And that's the sort of thing that I like to do! Instead of writing thank-yous (and making myself throw up in the process, probably), I like to show that I'm thankful for somebody's contributions to fandom by supporting them in other ways (that don't make me want to throw up).

Does this response even really meet the letter of this challenge...? I dunno, but it's true to myself and how I interact with artists online, at least, hahaha!

Challenge #12: Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life.

I'm going to call one person out by name, and hope that I'm not putting her on the spot. beatrice_otter has been my primary beta and person I bounce ideas off of for almost 10 years now and she is endlessly supportive and willing to listen to me flail around, as well as helpful in catching plot holes and telling me when I've lost the plot entirely, and catching my myriad typos and homophone confusions. I'm not sure Pi'maat would exist without her help and occasional gentle head pats telling me it's going to be okay, and I am very glad to have her in my fandom life.

I'm also hugely fond of the people in both the Ad Astra and vuhlkansu Discords for having the sort of deep-dive worldbuilding conversations where, to take an actual recent example, you start out with someone trying to make a better representation of a canon map of an alien planet and end up trying to work out how plate tectonics could produce those mountain ranges and figure out what that sort of water-to-land ratio would really do to the climate.

And of course, Dreamwidth is fantastic. It really feels like a town, small enough to have a genuine community vibe, but not so small that you can't find new stuff from time to time. I genuinely appreciate all of you for being here, for listening to me talk about my various obsessions, and for posting about your own interests and creative pursuits. 💛

A lot of the credit for that has to go to denise and Mark for sticking with this project for 17 years, and sticking to their principles, not taking VC money, not monetizing the community, and generally being pro-social and decent humans, which is sadly not as common as it should be in people who run social platforms.

So, after a number of years on multiple waiting lists, I have my autism diagnosis

I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel about it, but there’s a lot of “oh… that explains everything” and a lot of relief that I’m not a bad or broken person.

I spent a long time thinking I was wrong somehow - cold, lacking empathy, too intense about the “wrong” things. It turns out my brain just works differently.

Right now I mostly feel... buffering. Numb, but not in a bad way. Like my system is quietly re-sorting years of memories with new labels.

I’m not ready to be insightful or inspirational about this. I just wanted to say it out loud.

I wasn’t a psycho. I was autistic, without the information I needed.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3 stars)

Insurgent is an interesting but uneven middle book - one that kept my attention without ever fully winning me over.

I'm very aware that I'm not the target audience for this series, and I think that colours my response here. There's a lot in Insurgent that will work well for readers invested in the characters and the world, particularly the escalating stakes and constant forward momentum.

At the same time, the novel often feels busy rather than deep. The plot is packed with movement, faction politics, and shifting alliances, but emotional beats are rushed through in favour of action. As a result, moments that should land hard sometimes pass by without much impact.

That said, I was intrigued. The world-building continues to raise interesting questions about control, identity, and rebellion, and the series' larger ideas kept me turning pages even when the execution didn't fully work for me. Tris remains a compelling central figure, even if I never felt as emotionally connected as the story seemed to want me to be.

Ultimately, Insurgent is a solid, readable sequel that does what it needs to do to move the story forward. It didn't quite click for me, but I can absolutely see why it resonates with its intended audience.

Taking the opportunity to do 100ships as was intended: multishipping Wu Lei. :)

Five new icons - hover for fandom and pairing:

#37 – White	#45 – Midnight	#46 – Pearl	#65 – Spice	#76 – Jet

some comments

* 1) I keep thinking Wu Lei's dog is called Xiao Bai (bai means white), but it's called Xiaobei. No matter, the dog is white. :D
* 3) This is from the Dongji press tour. In all the pics I have, no exceptions, Zhu Yilong is between Wu Lei and Ni Ni. Sorry, z1l, I had to cut you out of this one.
* 4) Made from my favorite Zhao Lusi/Wu Lei manip (I am nearly 100% sure that it is a manip, but I did not make it and I don't know who did, sorry).
* 5) The text (black on black, hard to read) says "Fly to your side".

The table is here: https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/704185.html. There are currently 53 icons in it.

I'm happy to receive all kind of comments, including concrit! All icons shareable. Credit for brushes and textures I use can be found here in my resource post.


Previous icon posts:

A Bit of a Stretch is funny, furious, and quietly devastating in equal measure.

Written as a diary of Chris Atkins' time in prison, the book is sharply observational and often laugh-out-loud witty, even as it documents a system that is chronically underfunded, overcrowded, and casually cruel. The humour never blunts the reality; instead, it makes the injustice land harder.

Atkins is particularly good at capturing the small, grinding absurdities of prison life - the bureaucracy, the petty rules, the boredom - and showing how they erode people over time. What makes the book so effective is its refusal to sensationalise. Violence is not the point here; degradation, neglect, and indifference are.

There's a clear awareness of the author's own privilege and the ways it buffers him from the worst excesses of the system, and that self-reflection adds weight rather than defensiveness. The book is angry, but it's also humane, empathetic, and deeply concerned with how easily society accepts cruelty once it's hidden behind walls.

The only reason this isn't a full five stars is that the diary format can occasionally feel repetitive - though that repetition arguably mirrors the reality of incarceration itself.

A compelling, important read that manages to be entertaining without ever losing sight of the human cost of prison.

Big Mood (Board)

CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).

I've never done a digital moodboard (have done physical collages, back in the day) and this sounded fun, if a little challenging to manage with limited laptop time. As I've been burbling about The Prisoner of Zenda quite a bit recently, I thought I'd stick with that. All the images came from Wikimedia Commons.

I can never make DW images play nicely, so I'm just sticking this under a cut and hoping for the best. I hope it doesn't come out too huge!

( Read more... )

One of the things The Time Hop Coffee Shop does particularly well is sit with nostalgia without romanticising it.

Nostalgia is seductive. It smooths edges. It filters memory through warmth and familiarity, making the past feel safer than the present. We remember how things felt, not how they actually were - and even then, we remember only certain feelings. The ones that comfort us. The ones that reassure us that there was a time when things made sense.

But comfort is not the same as happiness.

In The Time Hop Coffee Shop, the chance to revisit the past isn't framed as a gift without consequence. Returning to old moments doesn't magically restore joy or fix what went wrong. Instead, it exposes something quieter and more unsettling: how easy it is to confuse “I miss this” with “this was good for me.”

There are moments in our lives that glow in hindsight because they belong to a version of ourselves that felt younger, more hopeful, or more certain. But that glow often comes from distance, not truth. When we look closer, the happiness we think we're remembering is threaded with anxiety, exhaustion, compromise, or unspoken hurt. Those things didn't disappear - they were just edited out of the highlight reel.

The book gently suggests that nostalgia is less about wanting the past back and more about wanting relief from the present. When life feels uncertain, heavy, or unkind, the past becomes a refuge - not because it was perfect, but because it's finished. Nothing new can go wrong there.

And yet, revisiting the past doesn't offer the safety we expect. It can't give us the things we didn't know to ask for at the time. It can't make people behave differently, or turn near-misses into fulfilled dreams. What it can do is show us how far we've come, and how much we survived without realising we were surviving at all.

What I loved most about The Time Hop Coffee Shop is that it doesn't shame nostalgia. It understands why we cling to it. But it also refuses to let nostalgia pretend it's happiness. The book treats memory as something to be acknowledged and honoured - not something to live inside.

Because happiness isn't a place we can return to. It's something that has to be built, slowly and imperfectly, in the present we're standing in now.

Sometimes the most meaningful thing the past can offer us isn't a second chance - it's permission to stop chasing one.