Plotinus tl;dr Anon

...Hi?

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 03:49:28 GMT

Hey, it's been awhile, huh?

I blame FF14. There was the cosplay. And beating the MSQ before the new expansion came out. Which gave me another set of tragic apocalypse boyfriends. And then more cosplay (because of them), and I uh made an alt which inadvertently drew rather more attention than I was expecting, so now the alt has a house while my main is still in an apartment. Then there was the new expansion, and then I got into fishing...

...I don't even know where to begin trying to catch up. That's just a single fandom thing, not even getting into RL, which has largely sucked.

But FF14 may prompt me to start visiting DW again regularly because if I have the nerve to poke my head out of the caves where I've been hiding (playing on the alt in question is an absolute blast but also kind of digging up old fandom trauma at the same time), I may join a FF14 RP comm that just started here.

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Haurchefant progress! ...It's uh, pretty progressed.

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:54:44 GMT

I kept meaning to make a post about what I'd been working on at any given moment with this cosplay, and then when thinking about it, just went back to work on it more instead of posting. So there have been no posts.

On the other hand, there has been a lot of work that got done, and last night I finished attaching the shoulder armor to the chainmail. (Using the SECOND technique I tried - initially I tried sewing the straps to the rings and that was tedious and unstable. So instead I sewed an extra ring to each of the straps and used pliers to attach that ring to the mail, which worked WONDERFULLY.) Which meant the last pieces had been assembled, of everything from mid-thigh upwards, but I really needed to try the whole thing on to make sure it all stayed together, that nothing broke or fell off, that the straps were all the right length now that other things had been attached to them, and so on.

(And, um, to make sure that I could put it on by myself at all. It is a process that involves having to kneel down before something the armor is laid out on, and kind of shimmying my way in. Getting OUT is even harder, and requires me to pretty much turn myself upside down. I wish I had a squire. ANYWAY.)

I had to psyche myself up for this, because if something went wrong I would be devastated, and also because putting the whole thing on is a bit of an ordeal. Told myself I needed to do this, and I did NOT need to do make-up, wig, or even gloves. Just the tunic and the armor. But then, realistically, I had to admit that if nothing went wrong? I'd want to do the make-up, wig, and gloves, and grab the props, and so on.

...Yeah, I called that. The tunic/armor went on with only the usual difficulties, and upon seeing it in the mirror, I went for the make-up box and prosthetic ears and even the spirit gum this time. :D

( Pics behind cut! )

So next order of business: I am SO still masking at cons. So I need to make a mask cover for this cosplay. The obvious choices would be either the green fabric with gold stripes ala the bottom of the tunic, or black with the House Fortemps heraldry.

But for some reason when I first started thinking about this, I imagined him with one of those text-emote masks, to make him look like :3 ....And I could not stop laughing my butt off. So I think I'm going to make that one as well as one of the more serious ones, just to weird people out. I love cosplays where I get to break people's brains.

(Also an inclusive pride flag mask would be tempting. There was some twitter kerfluffle awhile back because apparently some Haurchefant RP account said some transphobic things and everyone who followed that account was like "WTF HAURCHEFANT WOULD NEVER, HE LOVES AND ACCEPTS WOL EXACTLY AS THEY ARE" and well, yes. But I have too many ideas for mask designs already. XD)

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Another quick update: FF14 progress

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 01:50:36 GMT

Once again before I dive back into FF16. (After taking a day off yesterday, because the night before I did the "well this is almost certainly going to go catastrophically wrong" but, and indeed it did - and then I spent the entire day off work yesterday trying to fix a computer and failing and I did not need more emotional damage, hahah. I mean, I joke about "I can handle pain, my favorite game is Vagrant Story" but that was enough devastation to make even me take a breather.)

Summary of things: Made it through Stormblood and would have started Shadowbringers apparently, except that right now I'm farming tomestones so that I can get armor that's a high enough IL to actually go into the last dungeon in the pre-Shadowbringers patches. -_-

( May contain irrational amounts of squee over GOSETSU of all people, but then, y'all know I have a type, right? )

As for character progress, funny thing: While hanging around with a couple friends on Sunday afternoon at ACen for an annual tradition we've shared for a few years now, we got to talking a lot about FF14, because they're both vets and were like "What do you think of this? Have you done that yet? What are you doing with this other thing?" And in the midst of the discussion we realized all three of us are Dragoon mains - one Au Ra, one Miqote, one Roegadyn, so we discussed the finer points of jumping and stabbing things. XD I'd only really only done anything with Dark Knight otherwise, but I mentioned having started Rogue because Zeph really seems like that would be her kind of thing. (I describe her as "Vaan, except huge and gay" so she's not exactly observant sometimes; she'd probably get to level 30 and then go "...Wait, you're thieves? D:") They were like "aaah yes you should work on that and get to Ninja!" but leveling was a pain in the butt when you're under 10 and all the content is 60+. They gave me some tips, and I made it to level 30ish so I could start just running dungeons with my Maelstrom Squadron for better EXP. So currently level 62 Ninja, level 72 Dark Knight, level 81 Dragoon.

I also had leveled up all the crafting/gathering classes to 70+ except that I hadn't even started Culinarian. So after finishing Stormblood, I sighed and started it, and basically did a speedrun to get that to 70 as well. Moogle tribal quests helped, I'm now at least "sworn" with all the HW tribes and have just started Ananta and Namazu.

There's probably a lot of other things that were significant or interesting, if I'd been posting regularly, but that's where I'm at now and some of the stuff I really really enjoyed in Stormblood.

...The Haurchefant cosplay is its own separate beast and I will do a post about that sometime, but suffice to say for now, it won't be COMPLETE by Otakon, but it may be WEARABLE for Otakon. :D

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Next update subject: Bunny stuff.

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 01:25:08 GMT

...Posting now because I really want to play more FF16 after having to leave off where I left off last night. And I am pretty sure once I start playing I will be doing that until I am too tired to play any more. (Non-spoiler explanation: I was doing a thing where if it actually went as planned, presumably the game would pretty much be over. Since I'm allegedly at 41%, and more and more "oh crap" things kept happening as we got closer to doing the thing, I am assuming that pretty soon things are going to go even more catastrophically wrong than they already have gone on this mission and there will be a lot of battling and/or cinematics, and likely cinematic battles. It was 12:30am and the night before a work day.)

So one of the other things I hadn't posted about... a LOT happened with the bunnos. Well, "the bunnos" as in rabbits in general, not all mine. For starters, one of my coworkers started fostering/volunteering with the rescue that picked up Emily last Thanksgiving, and asked if I could be her backup for website help, and I said sure! So I've been added to the rescue's various chat groups and... well, there is always talk about rabbits, and I can't see talk about rabbits without wanting to do something to help them or at the very least meet them. So there was already that going on, and "business" is booming due to jerks dumping their "Easter bunnies". :/

( pet death, medical emergencies/surgery, neglect/mistreatment - but also JOYFULNESS in the end :D )

This brings me up to 6 rabbits again (plus the cat), and I am 100% fine with this for as long as it lasts. Sage is also around 9 now, and has had a few stasis scares without any real explanation, and Logan is also 9-10 and we already know there's a large growth on his kidney; surgery at his age would be risky and he's asymptomatic so we're just... going to see how things go. Realistically speaking, I can't know how much longer they will be with me... but I'll do my best. And since neither Milo or Emily can be fixed, I'm thinking of introducing them to the new girls (both spayed) and seeing if one of them fits in well and we can make it a trio.

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Brief non-spoiler (if you know FF at all) commentary on FF16 progress

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 06:07:32 GMT

Me: I'm definitely having fun now, but does it "feel like FF"?
Game: *unexpectedly presents me with a door covered with glowy blue geometric patterns*
Me: Okay, that helps.
Game: *shows me what's behind the door that I have to fight my way through*
Me: Yeah okay so this is
Game: *epic battle that makes absolutely no sense and leaves me incredibly confused but it definitely was epic and satisfying*
Me: OKAY OKAY OKAY ALREADY IT'S FF

Also despite not sleeping Tuesday night due to FURTHER BUNNY EMERGENCY (boy do I have a lot to post about there and just got more updates this afternoon), I'm up at 2am because I only just now made myself put it down before I got sucked into possibly another long string of battles or cinematics or both. So yes, definitely enjoying it.

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Brief opening thoughts on FF16

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 17:59:06 GMT

...I have been so busy doing so many things that I am not sure when I will ever have the time to do a catch-up post on all of them, but I did start FF16 a little over 36 hours ago*, so I will start there.

( Not exactly spoilery because I am not far enough into the game to know wtf is even going on (just got to, uh, Lostwind, I think it's called?) and my fave character so far is, um, named Cid )

And that is what I will post about today. Maybe in a day or so I will get to all the Haurchefant cosplay progress, or FF14 progress, or... well, lots of pet stuff, mix of good and not-so-good and "omg wut" has happened there and it's hard to even know where to begin on any one of these subjects. FF16 initial impressions was the easy one.

* As for why I didn't start until very late Saturday... that too is A Story. Pre-ordered from Squenix's site and wasn't too worried about playing it first day, because I was assigned to jury duty that day AND a work day if my group was dismissed (it was), plus I have FF14 to play in the meantime and am in the middle of Big Plot there (again something I mean to post about) - so the game arrived Saturday afternoon but I figured I'd do my FF14 daily tribals before starting. And in the middle of that, there was a (long story, I need to post about... lots of pet stuff and cosplay stuff) pet mishap which caused me to jump up from the couch with controller still in hand and lunge to catch something... and in the process, my PS5 controller fell into the cat's water bowl and was completely submerged. -_- It didn't actually make it through the rest of the cut scene I was in after I dried it off and... kept shaking more water out of it. I had to advance the text by using the keyboard to pop up an "auto-advance text?" window but couldn't select "yes" - but when I hit confirm to select "no" the text would advance. So the rest of the rather important cut scene, viewed with a settings window between every line of dialogue before I could exit the game. Sigh. Then out to buy a new controller, which was annoying enough because if I hadn't had some help from a friend, those things cost as much as the game. And then it had to charge before use. So finally at like 11pm Saturday night I got to start. Barely, before I had to sleep. :/

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Stuff I've been up to lately...

Mon, 15 May 2023 01:17:44 GMT

Haven't posted for awhile because mostly what I've been doing had been work, and trying to bash my way through what, 10 years of game? Since last time I posted about FFXIV, I passed Heavensward and got into Stormblood. Just met Hien - and like, everyone told me about the pretty elfboys, but this reminds me of when everyone told me I'd love Balthier in 12 and then I was like HELLO BASCH IS RIGHT THERE?! Hien is the hottest guy in the game so far IMO. ...I dunno how old he actually is but he has facial hair so I assume he can't be creepily underage or anything. Also Gosetsu surprisingly turns out to be not only "not just comic relief" but ohoooo right up in half my favorite tropes, wtf? Meanwhile the fandom seems to swoon over Zenos who is too much of an arrogant prick for me to find him the slightest bit appealing.

For the moogle tomestone thing, I resigned myself to doing multiplayer dungeons and after a few weeks of this (including some tanking with actual people, after tanking with duty support/squadron for practice) I am actually coming to realize... I'm not half bad at this. Racking up commendations even when I'm DPS - which apparently is not what people tend to do I guess? I don't even know. At any rate, I think I have to do four more duties (later tonight, probably) before I'll finish getting the tomestones for everything I want in this event.

I'm also level 80 DRG and level 69-70 DRK now despite not being super far into Stormblood. Oops.

And while I'm waiting for duty finder, I've been working on cosplay. Not for ACen (which is this coming weekend, I still don't really know or care what I'm bringing, just "whatever I have that feels right" because I'm by myself as usual and don't have anything new). Long term.

Becauuuse um. I thought I was okay after doing the Vault. And like a week or so later, "okay whytf am I getting weird about Haurchefant NOW?" Answer probably is: his family. His whole freaking family and how plausibly dysfunctional they are and realizing what he must have been dealing with his whole life and why he is Like That suddenly makes so much sense. ._.

Naturally this means (after asking around and being told that although everyone loves Haurchefant and sometimes you see a casual cosplay and people go nuts over it, it's rare to see a fully armored Haurchefant cosplay) I was gonna cosplay him.

And that means that a book I got about chainmail at a ren faire when I was like 15, and never actually did anything with? The knowledge therein finally came in handy. I don't know where the book itself went but I still remembered some things from it. Like how to make rings with wire and a dowel. And although I could buy rings, then I'd have to wait for them to ship, and pay shipping for a box of metal. So uh. I started making rings, and putting them together.

( Refs/progress under the cut )

So that's what I've been up to. Fic... I've been thinking about it, but also there is like 10 years of fandom AND additional canon, so anything I think I want to write has likely either been written a million times, thoroughly debunked and become non-canon-compliant, or is just straight up something that no one is interested in. For example, WoL/NPC ships are apparently common and welcomed! But considering the relatively few examples a search turned up for WoL/Ysayle, I don't think anyone wants to read angsty hurt/comfort femslash, hahaha. I am writing it anyway because it would not leave my head but probably won't post it anywhere. Same with the platonic "Haurchefant flirts with Zeph because it's how he copes, she's like 'ummm actually I have a huge crush on the admiral', the two of them have platonic snuggletime anyway" story. ~~I'm sure everyone's written Haurchefant/Aymeric/possibly!Estinien to death so uh I'll shelve that idea.~~

Also since I last posted, I did do a quick Vagrant Story bit for FFW: The Last Blessing, in which the challenge was "Je Ne Regrette Rien" and um. Sydney is pretty sure he would do the same again. Pretty sure.

Also I managed to recover my fic folder from my "good" laptop which I can't actually get to boot all the way up for the last month or so. So at some point I can get back to some VS and T&B WIPs. If I can stop actually playing games. Heh.

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Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:37:42 GMT

Yeaaah I'm not posting much these days since I've just been... drained of anything useful. Health continues to decline, and often I can only just BARELY sit on the couch to play FFXIV (and then I'm usually not actually "enjoying" it, but being in pain from doing something entertaining is better than being in pain and staring at the ceiling above the bed).

I keep getting half an idea for a story or whatnot, but the rest of it just never materializes. I've been drawing little things for people here and there, unrequested, just random "hey I drew this because I thought you'd find it amusing", of questionable quality, when stuff isn't too distracting. Tried to really draw an actual picture over the three-day weekend (spring break!) since FFW's challenge for the last period has been "cut" and I was like "....Well, I gotta do something Sydney/Hardin for that one." XD But I couldn't think of anything to write with that that I hadn't already written before, so possible illustration of any number of fanfic scenes I've written? (Note: not exactly SFW but not exactly NOT SFW since nothing's showing except some wounds. I'd consider it suggestive but possibly only because I know they're both enjoying it.) Didn't even have the spoons to find references and I don't know if I'm ever going to properly finish/ink/color, but it's a full page image that has some tricky angles so I guess it's something.

I gave in and bought the full version of FFXIV the weekend before because it was half off and I was tired of hitting the gil/inventory limits every five minutes. So now I have an apartment (in Mist, ward 17 because I like prime numbers and thus it would be easy to remember - and then they assigned me apartment 34, and I cracked up because if I'm already remembering ward 17, that too will be easy to remember!) and it's unfurnished aside from some flowerpots so I can grow things, potentially things to feed the chocobo.

Also have been working on my relic weapon, and everything was going really fast, like I'm at the books of tasks you have to complete and I was doing one or two of those per day... until I got to one where I have yet to ever see one of the FATEs spawn, and one of the others I'd seen pop up multiple times and then end before I could get there. Apparently you're supposed to keep some NPCs alive, but they're extremely weak, so if you're not right there when that one spawns, they die within 15 seconds. :P Everything else in the books has been easy, no problem at all... until these two that are impossible.

Between that, constantly being in pain while trying to sit up to game, and the fact that once you get to Ishgard none of your mounts can fly anymore while you're dealing with terrain with tons of cliffs that you thus have to go AROUND, at painfully slow speeds since you haven't unlocked faster mount speeds in those areas yet? Suddenly I'm not actually having fun and it's pissing me off. I'd just go do a bunch of crafting/gathering job quests but they keep sending me into those same areas and thus they too are pissing me off.

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It's like speaking in tongues.

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 13:49:56 GMT

This morning's amused epiphany: I posted on Facebook for the entertainment of my fellow FFXIV friends there saying that I was going to need to find something new to do in the game next time I played because, and I quote:

"I've spent the last few evenings just spamming Maisenta with mahogany lumber trying to get Gridania's lv45 carpenter leve rewards to reset until one of them would give me the bloody lance head."

And it occurred to me that there are only going to be two responses to a statement like that.

1: "...I understand most of the words in that sentence but I still have no idea what you're talking about."
2: "Ohhhhhh, I know exactly what you're working on! [insert advice on how to get additional Savage Aim III materia]"

...I've been trying to farm it from the armor I got from the Dragoon questline despite having the Garlond Ironworks stuff now but only got one to drop so far, and it's slow going when I'm level 57 and too powerful for everything. I think there's a quest in Mor Dhona that I scoped out back when I was trying to get the right kinds of lv3 materia for all the lv50 crafting quests though...

.......Also based on the number of logs I had when I started doing this, and how many I harvested after I ran out, I gave Maisenta at least 50 pieces of lumber before this worked. One at a time. While sprinting back and forth across Gridania each time. I am so glad that's done.

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I'm not sure if I have excuses this week or no excuses this week. >_

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 03:12:27 GMT

On the one hand considering I literally only worked for half the week due to ice storm, I sure should've had a lot of spare time to maybe do something creative!

On the other hand, Sunday night I pulled out of my driveway and saw that a cat had been sitting underneath where my car had been parked. Paused because I was afraid I hit it, but it scuttled off towards my back yard after a second, so I continued on my way, there are roaming cats all over in this neighborhood, just usually they know better than to stay under a car when it turns on and starts moving.

When the same thing happened Monday night though and the cat DIDN'T move, I started getting worried, got out and the cat just LET me pick them up... this is not normal outdoor cat behavior. But well, outdoor cats are everywhere, so when it started wiggling a little I let it down and it slunk behind my roses and hunched down in some cold wet leaves. Where it remained until I got back from my errand.

...And I went inside, being hit with a blast of warm air, and looked at my own cat happily burbling at me from the top of the stairs, and went "...Nope." Picked up the cat and it LET ME put it in a carrier to bring inside into the warmth. Initially I thought it was sick or hurt and was afraid it was going to die alone and cold, but more knowledgeable cat folks told me it looked more like a case of the cat being terrified.

So much of my week was eaten up by dealing with this. Getting the cat set up in my basement (separated from my Baxter since I don't know this cat's medical history), taking him to the vet to scan for a chip - which he had, so I then put in a report with the chip registry service, and also put up a bulletin on the local Animal Control website, and with a third-party service that posts to your local Facebook lost and found pet group...

In the meantime, we had an ice storm starting Tuesday night, so Wednesday my job closed at 1pm and... we never reopened because the main campus still didn't have power on Friday and the estimation was Saturday. So I used that downtime to try to get the word out about this cat who was definitely not an outdoor cat and a sweetheart that probably had humans looking for him. And in between, to sit around playing FFXIV when I felt up to it.

My phone's battery is screwed and the thing randomly turns off if it's not plugged in, but it heats up fast if it is, so at some point Friday I observed it had turned itself off and turned it back on to find multiple missed calls from two numbers, a text message, and an email. All relating to the cat. Turns out that it was both halves of a couple whose cat had gotten out last Friday while they were bringing in groceries. He and his brother both slipped out, his brother came back, he didn't. They sent a picture that definitely looked like the cat in my basement - and the "thumbs" were even visible. (Six-toebean cat!)

So this seemed like an almost certain match, and we were like "Great, let's meet up! So if you're in the same area, I'm on X St.!" "Oh awesome, I'm also on X St.!" ...Turns out they were literally two houses down, so I just walked into my front yard with the cat, looked south, saw a guy come out of that house and get a HUGE smile when he saw me walking his way with a pet carrier. XD

I kind of feel dumb for bringing the cat inside when he was SO CLOSE to his actual home, but 1) had no way of knowing that, 2) he'd been under my car for over 24 hours and showed no signs of intending to go anywhere else, 3) there was a winter storm warning active and he already looked miserable. The entire time the ice storm was coming down, I kept thinking to myself... thank goodness I decided to bring him inside, and he's not out in that.

So that was much of my week. Also played a lot of FFXIV with my time off! ...Still not at Ishgard, because after a high-level friend ran through the dungeons/bosses that were required to progress the plot, I progressed the plot... until I was told I had to do some Crystal Tower BS to progress the plot further. >:|

Instead with my unexpected time off I've been doing tribal quests, and I started the Hildibrand nonsense which is... um. Wow. I get the impression there is probably a subset of FFXIV players who will blacklist people on sight for using the emote I received earlier. :D The kobold quests were awfully silly too, and I just beat that plotline tonight and received the COMPLETELY ABSURD AND AWESOME MOUNT. Not sure what I will do next, because Crystal Tower looks to be a complete fiasco for a n00b who really prefers to avoid playing with other actual people. :/

And then this weekend was the Hoenn Tour in Pokemon Go. Not a ticketed event this year, and the first day was kinda... lackluster, since they didn't have any of the awesome perks that we got by purchasing a ticket for the first two tours. But darnit I wanted to finish my Hoenn pokedex, and shiny hunting when you know literally everything has a chance to be shiny is still fun, so I wasn't displeased by this free event.

Day 2 began and uhm. Somehow I wound up with 4 shiny Latias. They just KEPT SPAWNING around me. o_o Also got some other fun stuff, including the Relicanth I needed to complete the Hoenn dex, but 4 shiny legendaries in one day is kinda wild. :D

But ugh I walked around A LOT the last two days and I am tired, and my body with its poor circulation should not have spent that much time out in chilly windy weather, and my head that had been on the edge of a migraine all weekend didn't appreciate the incredibly bright sunshine.

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I missed a week... well, didn't miss much.

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 04:43:40 GMT

Work has had me so busy lately that my weekends are just spent exhausted and lying on the couch playing FFXIV... until my body starts misbehaving too much even for that and I just lie in bed with my eyes closed for awhile until I can lie somewhere non-heated again and open my eyes. -_- Soooo many meetings, and so many things that people want that I'm the only person trained to do.

FFXIV has been amusing. I finally went in and beat the quest that was giving me "last dungeon" vibes, and ... yeah, it was, and with cut scenes and credits it took almost three hours. Except of course since that was only ARR, I knew I still had Heavensward waiting!

...I did not realize that there had been half a dozen or so patches between ARR and Heavensward with more content, so uh. I basically did nothing else this weekend and I'm still not to Ishgard. >:| (All my GC provisioning stuff and crafting has dried up since I need things from Western Coerthas and Dravanian somewhere, and apparently you have to go through Ishgard to get there or something. Literally first thing I did after unlocking flying mounts was take my dear chocobo - who is now my personal white mage - and just fly right the frack over those gates in Coerthas. ...Invisible barrier. Sigh.)

Anyway. Flying is fun. And being faced with "the Great King Moggle Mog XII" as apparently a great threat was highly amusing. Having to wait 15-30 minutes in hopes of getting a party together is not and really takes the fun out of the game for me whenever it requires me to play with other players instead of using a party of NPCs. :/ At least when it's just boss battles I don't have to wait and THEN embarrass myself by getting lost somewhere in the dungeon.

Oh, I have to say, I freaking love Merlwyb. So, so much. The conclusion of the level 50 armorer quest (finally found the right materia!) was... hilarious, though she's kind of terrifying. :D And then I got to the Leviathan part of the story and it's like...

Enemy: This power... it's transcendent!
Merlwyb: *just shoots him*
Me: OMG AHAHAHHAHAHAH

Also yesterday I accepted a random quest just because I needed a break from the serious plot stuff and oops suddenly I'm a blue mage now? o_o Zeph is SO not the mage type, and I have no mage gear because I had no intention of ever teaching her any magic. (I figured I'd make an alt for that.) She looks really adorable in the starter outfit though. :D

On the creative side... still pretty dry. Getting lots of vague rumbles of frustration from Hardin these days due to randomly hearing a song I hadn't heard for many years on the loudspeaker when I went grocery shopping. But I have already written on the subjects he's rumbling about. So... I dunno.

I did draw my boys for the Vagrant Story 23rd anniversary though. <3 I really wanted to clean it up and ink it on Friday DURING work, and meant to after work, then was just too worn out to do anything but that necessary grocery shopping (I hadn't been to the store for like a month and was running out of the few things I can swallow).

Also briefly did a "Valentine's Day Yuri" shoot to make a Twitter friend laugh, it actually came out decent for a closet cosplay I threw together in half an hour because "Well, it's 11:30pm, I don't have to sleep RIGHT now and they deserve something fun..."

Tomorrow, back to work and I already know one thing I'll be doing because I'd been putting off the "low priority/longterm" stuff for the last month, which means someone has been waiting for a particular thing for about that long. -_-

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Another week where I did nothing creative.

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 23:58:48 GMT

I waffle between thinking the last three months of just writing everything out as fast as I could before it disappeared burned me out, or thinking that maybe since my life was just consumed so much by it, I'm subconsciously afraid to start writing again because I'm afraid it'll happen again. (That was also how I wrote "The Ore of Legend" and "Escapeway", so it's not like it's unforeseen. I think I also remember an awful lot of meme fics happening that way.)

In the meantime, I'm brainstorming ideas...? I did think of something else to write with Sydney and Hardin that I somehow have not written yet, even though it's just sort of been there as a "yeah, this totally did happen" in the back of my mind as I was writing certain scenes between them. I have a handful of um... Tiger&plotbunnies? Mostly involving Yuri, but This Is Sternbild is doing a rewatch that started yesterday, where every week folks will watch an episode and discuss it. So I watched the first episode of season 1 yesterday and posted a very very long thread on Twitter while doing so and am all hung up on Kotetsu again. And Kotetsu/Barnaby.

(It's never been that I don't write them because I don't freaking love them and consider them basically inseparable. It's just that everyone does, so the fandom doesn't really need more of that unless I come up with something really unique, which I haven't yet. :P)

Anyway, I had a pretty... adultish week at work. I think it was... Wednesday? Tuesday? A meeting scheduled for the week before got rescheduled for then, and I thought it was going to be Zoom, but then the person who scheduled it needed to remote into their computer to show the other people at the meeting what they were working on, so they couldn't use Zoom? I am not sure this actually holds up, but at any rate I had to phone in. And was on the phone for more than two hours. But I was there to offer solutions because I am "the expert" on the system they were working in, and I actually did come up with something that no one else present was aware of that would solve a particular problem. And it involved spreadsheets. So that seemed very adult and professional, hahah.

And by Friday I had been dealing with this system (which I loathe) all week so I was like "nope taking a break from these projects and going to see if this thing that I think is feasible actually is." And spent all morning staring at the code in about 6 different files and feeling horribly unqualified for my job. Until I had a breakthrough and hammered the details out really quickly and spent the rest of the day feeling brilliant because I could actually put it live right then and it solved a bunch of different problems we'd been having.

I have also still been playing FFXIV, and I guess I'm close to being done with the ARR portion of the story. So naturally I am procrastinating and have spent the weekend doing things like... knocking out achievements. Hunting for Timeworn maps. Crafting different items for no other reason than to have more unique/HQ items. Using the whereabouts/times of Unaspected Crystals in my gathering log to find all the things that are listed in the gathering log that I haven't found yet.

Also, stumbled across Tribal Quests. And I know there are more than just the sylphs, but I don't care, I love the sylphs so that's what I'm doing. Honestly if people wanted to get me to play the games before they could've just shown me a picture of the sylphs and their village and that would probably be enough, hahah.

Yesterday I was mulling over going to buy more bunny litter after the T&B rewatch, and then happened across a Facebook post from the rescue that saved Emily, saying they were doing an event at the pet store I go to. So uh. She came along with me so I could say hi to them, and they could see how well she's doing. At least two of the people at the event had been out at the site where she and two dozen other rabbits were caught, and one had pics on her phone that she pulled up, the same ones I'd seen as part of a video about the situation, and I was like "Yeah, that's her! Can you believe this is even the same bunny?" And we talked about her vet visits, and possibilities for spaying/neutering (they have a vet out of town they use that's far less expensive than the clinic I usually go to) and I got to meet other bunnies even though I couldn't take them home. :D

And that was my week, up until today, which was Noibat Community Day in Pokemon Go. I didn't really feel like going out, so I played from bed and still got 3 shinies and a hundo, plus a lot of candy, and called it good enough. Now have just relaxed in a hot bath, and am figuring out what I want to do for the rest of the night... maybe try to write or draw something. This creative drought is kind of making me nuts.

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Weekly report

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 23:50:54 GMT

I did NOTHING AT ALL CREATIVE this week. Unless you count stuff I did for work. Because that story was finished last weekend and I... honestly don't know what to do with myself, especially since I'm kind of still burned out. (Like I want to answer comments/reviews on fics! But every time I look at my AO3 inbox I just feel like a crushing weight on top of me. I appreciate the comments but I do not remember how to communicate like a normal human at the moment.)

So instead I have been throwing myself into FFXIV. That's something I don't need to communicate to do (since I'm avoiding the dungeons that you have to do multi-player). This afternoon I rescued Cid's airship (and lol, my past with FFRK served me well; as soon as I saw his face and "something" peeking out from under the hood in the cut scene where they start hinting something's weird about this guy, I was like "Oh! That's Cid!") and that caused me to hit level 50 dragoon, so I went and did that side quest immediately! And I got the rest of my armor! And another whole set of armor! And they both look awesome!

They also both cover my character very completely. Which, uh... I did intentionally make her appearance rather androgynous to begin, and she's on the short side for a Roegadyn, so about the height of a tall man of other races... So a bit ago I was questing in Aleport and while running around getting info on why no one wants to go to this one area, I noticed that someone had apparently blown me a kiss. So I looked around, and this cute viera girl ran up and blew me a kiss again. And I was like... okay... so I waved, and she waved back, and blew me another kiss. And my character would totally be okay with cute viera girls trying to get her attention and blowing her kisses, admittedly... but also I'm trying to quest here and this is kind of awkward? So I bowed courteously to her and ran off... she probably thought I was a tall guy anyway, hahah.

Also today I only JUST figured out how the botanist/miner abilities "Truth of [X]" worked when I was curious if I could figure out when a particular thing would spawn, since I had it listed as appearing in a certain area... and then I went to that area and an "unspoiled" location popped up as soon as I arrived. And not the one I was looking for. So I was like... OHHHHH, it just STAYS ACTIVE, you don't have to keep checking manually! And then I spent an entire day and a half of Eorzean time teleporting from place to place to see if any rare items spawned at that time. :D

One nice thing about realizing I hit the gil cap for a free trial - I can teleport everywhere again instead of trying to save money to buy an apartment once I reach the next rank in Maelstrom. Because I will never be allowed to have enough money to get an apartment. (Just in case I decide to pay on this account though - and that is a whole long discourse that bummed me out for most of yesterday and maybe I'll detail it here sometime - all the quests that are giving me gear as an option are offering stuff that is lower-level and weaker than the stuff I got for the Dragoon quests or the gear I made myself before I got cool dragoon armor... so I'm choosing the coins and stowing them in my chocobo's saddlebag. So about ten minutes after I pay, if I do pay, I'll be a gillionaire. XD)

Also I did one dungeon today (Stone Vigil?) with a bunny on my lap and it's a good thing they let you use a party of NPCs for the plot stuff, because Emily (the girl I acquired on Black Friday) decided to get antsy just before the boss encounter, so I was trying to fight while a bun was climbing all over my chest and shoulder. XD I cannot truthfully say my mind was on the fight.

...I really need to figure out what to write next though. Progressing in a game is keeping the "but I'm not being productive at all" at bay, but I miss having stuff to brainstorm while I'm trying to fall asleep, or driving along a boring predictable route.

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FFXIV shenanigans.

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 04:19:17 GMT

Since people have apparently found some comments I've made about my time in FFXIV amusing, a couple of my favorite "wtf did I just do" moments thus far.

( Can you die from fall damage in this game? ...Well, see... )

( Why I don't like doing even 'safe' things multiplayer... because I make them not safe -_- )

So this is the kind of person they're relying on to save Eorzea. Just so you know. -_-

(As I have noted elsewhere, the personality that somehow developed for my character while I was creating her (somewhat androgynous Hellsguard Roegadyn, except I'm not sure Roegadyn can be androgynous within Roegadyn standards, the dudes all seem to be REALLY BEEFY) is basically Vaan from FFXII, if Vaan was a huge buff lesbian, with less inclination towards thievery. ...So far. I do kind of want to start her on Rogue as well as her starting class of Lancer because it would just fit her personality. She's just kinda like "Hey I have no idea what's going on, but that's okay, we'll figure it out, it'll be fun!")

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Still so burned out...

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 04:28:59 GMT

But I finished that fic. Clocks in at just under 140k words. I didn't even know if I was going to write more than the first chapter. Hahaha.

Someday I will try to catch up with comments but I am just so tired.

This week saw two vet visits (Tuesday and Thursday) with two buns each, to get wellness exams and RHDV vaccine shots. It was Emily's second shot, but Sage, Logan, and Oscar got their first shot and will be back in February to get their second shots. I still need to make arrangements for Milo - when everyone else's appointments were made, it was so far in advance that he'd been in fairly recently.. now he's due again.

The vet I saw was one I was seeing about 20 years ago with the two boys who were my second/third buns, but I kind of hadn't been in regularly because most of the buns have been in pretty good health and my finances sucked. So when she saw Emily for the "new bun found outside, we need to find out if there's anything that needs attention" checkup, apparently she thought she was my only bunny now. And then suddenly a month and a half later I bring in four buns in one week. Ahahah, honestly she should've known better - she saw how much I doted on the boys back then. XD

Everyone's looking good except that when palpating Logan's abdomen, the vet felt a hard mass near one kidney. Considering that his brother died a couple years ago from a tumor that was pressing up against his heart... well, that doesn't seem good. He is somewhere in the 8-10 years old range, though, so for a bun... not exactly a shock when something like that happens. So far he's showing no symptoms, and we'll see what the bloodwork says about kidney function.

Work is... sigh. Every couple months, it seems like one person brings up this one third party tool we use, which I'm "the expert" with, because we all hate it but someone has to do it. And after one person brings it up, like 5 other departments go "Oh right! That exists! We should ask for someone to make something in it for us!" and that someone is usually me, so after a couple months of nothing, suddenly I get multiple requests at the same time about it. Good news is that at least two people are interested in learning how to make things themselves instead of asking me to do it for them. Bad news is, that means I have to teach them, and I think I'd kind of rather just make the thing. XD So multiple zoom meetings for a couple weeks...

I am so tired. Still haven't talked about MAG, or the FFXIV shenanigans. And since I finished the fic that ate my last three months last night... I don't know what to do with myself. -_-

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Very very belated update

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:46:14 GMT

...I meant to have a weekly update last week, but I drove 10 hours on Sunday and got home around 10pm and spent the next couple hours snuggling pets and cleaning up and unpacking essentials and whatnot before falling into bed exhausted and getting right to work the next morning trying to catch up on all the things people had emailed me about since the previous Tuesday, so uh. Last week I didn't do much other than work and sleep.

Having said that, MAG was AWESOME, and my hotel was amazing (Residence Inn rather than the Gaylord, and I didn't even mind), and there's a lot of stuff I could post about but ... yeah didn't do much other than work or sleep.

Until around Thursday evening, when I finally had gathered up enough spoons to start writing down the next chapter of That Thing. 20 hours of highway driving (seriously, I'm a mile and a half from the on-ramp here in western MI, and after that it's just highway until I get off the Beltway south of DC and drive less than a mile to the hotel that is literally visible from the exit) really gave me time to let my thoughts wander while they had nothing to pay attention to other than my speed and staying between the lines.

I was not paying attention to my speed really, and got pulled over for speeding twice. And somehow was let off with a warning both times. I am very confused and have been worried for the last week that some kind of traumatic karma was coming, but...? So far, nothing, and I am not complaining.

So anyway, due to having worked it all out in my head during that long drive, once I started writing chapter 20, it all went smoothly except that there was more of it than I thought. So instead of being the last chapter, the fic will also get an epilogue, which I'm nearly done with a draft of now.

...And I have forgotten what life was like before I started writing this thing in a frenzy 3 months ago, hahaha oh boy.

Hoping to finish the draft tonight because uhh this week is going to be nuts. I had today off due to MLK Jr. Day (thank goodness, I know it is more significant than "day off" but I really needed another long weekend to recover some from the nearly-a-week of vacation), but Tuesday and Thursday I have trips to the vet, each with two rabbits that I'll have to wrangle on my own. Wednesday and Friday, work meetings (the one on Friday is me one on one trying to teach someone the basics of one of our external services which I and the other "expert" on our staff absolutely hate, so wheeeee). It will be exhausting and I suspect the next four days will similarly be mostly work/sleep/also vet visits. It would be nice to only have to edit the darned draft and maybe post it this coming weekend and be done with it.

Even if I don't know what I'm going to do after that.

Maybe at some point I will have the spoons to discuss MAG and my adventures in FFXIV (so far: "There's a plot? I can't stop gathering materials and crafting things long enough to tell!" sums up my experience).

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Last couple weeks, next week, etc.

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 03:27:38 GMT

Yeah, still working on that thing, which is now up to chapter 19 and over 120k words. I think chapter 20 is going to be the last chapter, and ... I don't know if I haven't started on it yet because I genuinely don't know where exactly to pick up after the decisions/epiphanies in chapter 19, or because I just don't really want it to be over (even though it has been eating my life for three months) and don't know what I'll do with myself when I don't have it to think about.

...Although I suspect I have to write a parallel Kotetsu/Barnaby story, because they factor into the plot here and there's a TON of stuff that happens with them that was only sort of touched on in the story because they're "minor characters". But they have their own lives, which are interesting.

Also for the last week my life has also been eaten by FINALLY starting the free trial of FFXIV, because I actually have "winter break", the college is closed, but thanks to salary I'm not stressing about not getting paid! So... I had a week to kill, why not?

Last Saturday I was fumbling around going "okay wtf there are too many buttons and none of them is doing what I want to do" and... okay I'm still doing that, and I can't communicate with other players because I don't have a keyboard for the PS5 and tapping things out by selecting letters with a cursor is miserable. So I am ignoring the fact that it's an MMO and just playing myself and already am up to level 28 Lancer and... uh, level 25 Botanist because plants, okay? My avatar unlocked dyeing gear (thank goodness, I had some nice armor that was PINK, and that just doesn't suit my semi-androgynous Roegadyn amazon okay?) and minions (running around with a wolf puppy, he keeps jumping up on the counters at merchants' stalls :D) and earlier today I entered a room and looked around at everyone and went "...Oh, I know ALL of these characters except one from Record Keeper, so I guess this is going to be an important cut scene."

And then there has been bunny stuff. Last weekend I was worrying about Sage, who went into stasis, but I apparently caught it early enough I could treat it at home - which is good because all the vets were full up until January. So I got her through that and was very relieved... then Friday the new girl had her follow-up visit and it turns out her teeth are looking good in back (where they couldn't see before because she was so jumpy) and the issues with her front teeth are looking better. It seems to be a case of her likely never having had hay before, so her teeth weren't wearing down properly, but now they can. Also got her first dose of the RHDV vaccine.

So yesterday when she had some digestive issues (I will spare the details), I chalked it up to stress and/or the shot. But then she had a few more issues today, which... is kind of unnerving, but also not the same sort of digestive upsets that Sage was having, and far less potentially immediately dangerous. After observing her all afternoon/evening (her enclosure is next to the TV so I could keep an eye on her while gaming), I am fairly certain she just has a touchy gut, and like Oscar, I'm going to have to limit her pellets to less than what a bun her size would normally get, so that she eats more hay. (This doesn't seem to be a problem. She's more interested in hay than pellets anyway.)

Hopefully there will be no more incidents, because Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, I intend to head off towards the DC area for MAGFest! After a TON of runaround, and cancelling THREE SEPARATE RESERVATIONS at the AC hotel, I wound up working my way up to a room at the Residence Inn right across from the Gaylord at MOSTLY the con rate. This is so much better than my initial couple of reservations at the AC - the first was only Thursday through Saturday, at $560 a night. The second was the whole con for $560 a night, so almost $3000. Third was the con rate, but I had a kind of lousy experience there the one year I stayed there, and the Residence Inn is a block closer.

Between the closeness of the hotel and the decent temps (upper 40s during the day?) I will hopefully not be too uncomfortable to wear some light costumes. Rydia and Celes were requested, I'm bringing Ashley because I just want to rep Vagrant Story if I can. All of those are light though, so I'm also bringing Aura Blackquill and Klavier Gavin from Ace Attorney for back-up/evening - they're long-sleeved and fully covered. And of course the Green Tentacle is sort of a regular at MAGFest, so that's in the car, along with bunny!Link from LttP, if I need to be entirely enclosed in warm fleece for awhile.

Back to work tomorrow (for a day and a half or two days), then a day-long drive and a four-day con... I think it's good I crammed as much gaming into the last week as I did because I'm not going to get to play again for a week and a half probably. :P And when am I going to have time to start chapter 20, let alone finish it? Argh.

Edit: Because I just remembered! fairyring/traumereis has been blessing me with her awesome art while I've been writing the above fic.

Keith visiting Yuri in the hospital

The scene where Agnes also tries to visit Yuri in the hospital and finds out the two of them are dating XD

No Man is an Island - a short and amazing manga that's basically an AU of chapter 9, in which Yuri actually gets to attend his mother's funeral. Eeeeeee.

(The other day she was streaming while drawing and asked if I wanted to join and I did and hahah how did I know ONE of us was going to draw that scene from chapter 19...? :D)

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Slow week again.

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 00:45:56 GMT

I mean this thing keeps going and going and is now over 100k words, ooops. As I noted to someone on Twitter (lol what a mess that is) earlier, I am not sure how I got here when mostly I just wanted to write my favorite ship partner picking him up off the floor and hugging him for a long time.

I think I am getting close to something like an ending though. At least for this arc. There may be more fics set in the same continuity. Or maybe I will go back to the now-non-compliant "Timeline Where No One Dies (I Promise)" series. I had plans, darnit.

In other news, I managed to get a room for the entirety of MAGFest finally. At non-room-block prices. I am very unhappy about this and not entirely sure I want to go if it's going to cost that much. But on the other hand, I did no cons for a couple years and I would like to see some east coast friends (or friends who aren't east coast but go to MAG anyway). Tonight I tried on Celes and Rydia again since I hadn't worn them for a few years and there is definitely going to be a FF6 group and MAYBE a FF4 group - there are a couple tweaks desired, but they're both "wearable" as is. Might bring Ashley or Mullenkamp, since MAG is like... the one con where VS might be recognized. On the other hand, walking a couple blocks from another hotel in either of those in January... ehhhhh...

And in other other news, that work project I mentioned last week? Which initially I didn't even think was feasible but my coworker found a way to do what I was thinking about doing and then handed the raw output off to me? I basically have it in working form now. Auto-generates an index, and I set it up for pagination and search, each file has a timestamp listed in easily readable fashion and headers by month. Now I just need my boss to either okay the cost of making a new repository for it, or decide that Marketing is competent enough to search through the inevitable hundreds of files that will clutter their existing repository for the three menu-type files they already update regularly. (We tested it in our main repository, but we'd LIKE to hand this part of the site off to Marketing... and they are SO not getting access to the repository that can make changes sitewide, hahah.)

At any rate, I'm very pleased with this "please can we do this ASAP" idea I had actually working out, and so quickly. (And without buying a much more expensive package from the vendor that apparently would have caused us to have to rewrite our site. :P)

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In my defense, bunny. Also work.

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 03:56:46 GMT

Still plugging away on the moonsky monstrosity, of which I just posted chapter 16 this morning and... I think I'm getting closer to resolving it? Like. ALL OF IT. Though there are still some discussions that must be had and a few decisions that need to be made (I'm already writing the opening of 17 with Yuri having to do some soul-searching).

So uh, T&B2 cour 2 dropped on October 7th, I started posting this on October 10th, and just over 2 months later it's at 95k words. ...I guess I did NaNo accidentally this year...

And here, have this dumb meme I made halfway through writing chapter 15. :D This could pretty much be the cover image for that chapter...

Also as far as fandom goes, the other day it started snowing heavily towards the end of a work day, and my coworkers were posting pics of it covering cars in the lot... and I had gotten an idea during the first snowfall of the season a few weeks back, but by the time I thought of it, it wasn't actually snowing any more. Until that day. ...And by the time I got into the costume and put makeup on, it was not snowing much anymore either, so I think I'll have to hope for heavy snow again. Ideally on a weekend and earlier in the day, because half the shots wound up out of focus due to it getting dark out. :P But I did get a few shots, and in case I don't get another chance...

( I mean, it's safer than doing the canon thing and dancing in/around fire...? )

Also Vagrant-Story-related! I apparently did not mention here that (non-VS-related) due to the fact that T&B has licensed like 15 different sets of fine jewelry rings now, but NEVER A LUNATIC RING... a month or so back I happened across a set of rings that made me go "...hmmm, moonsky themed..." and went looking for a single ring with an amethyst (Sky High's color is purple) and moonstone (should be obvious). Eventually found one on Etsy and was like... why not, just got the job... so ordered it, and it pleases me to see it there on my hand, subtle fandom swag that no one but me knows is fandom swag.

But almost from the first moment I started thinking along those lines, I was like "Wait, I may have shipped those two for ten years, but I have a ship I've been shipping for over 20 years now..." and so naturally started thinking about what I would want for a Sydney/Hardin ring. Because all fandoms should do like T&B and make merch you can wear in even formal grown-up settings, darnit. So I started looking at mother/family rings that you can choose to customize with birthstones, and I knew I wanted gold-tone (nod to their high priestess), maybe sort of wide rather than dainty...

And I wound up with this. Gemstones are simulated (because I want the look, not the price tag), according to the headcanon zodiac signs and elements I gave them many years ago. Sydney is air and water, Hardin is earth and fire. Conveniently enough, I've headcanoned Sydney as a Scorpio, so topaz/citrine works as a birthstone for him, and Hardin as a Capricorn, so garnet works as a birthstone for him. And they may not be an exact match to the gems as they appear in the game - but aquamarine and topaz do grant water and air affinity, while emerald grants earth affinity. Garnet is the odd one out there, because fire affinity is granted by ruby or carnelian. ...But garnet is a close enough color to ruby I'm gonna say that a simulated red stone can be both/either. Not like anyone other than me is paying attention to the symbolism anyway. ;)

And since this model was designed to have a name engraved by each birthstone with no additional cost, I asked for a slightly different engraving - SxH, with the initials between their respective gems.

....Holy crap I am such a nerd. But I have shipped them for longer than any actual relationship I've been in lasted, and it pleases me to wear this subtle little thing for them.

As for new bunny: Still scared, but just today she let me pet her on the nose twice instead of running to the back of the enclosure when I reached for her, and she has eaten carrot directly out of my hands a couple of times now. This is good! Also had her first vet visit, and seems to be in good shape except her incisors are slightly out of alignment, and she was so jumpy the vet couldn't get a look far enough inside to see her molars, so we're going to do another appointment in a couple weeks, when we would be able to tell for certain if she's pregnant. If not, then we can sedate her (and get her the RHDV vaccine) without any worries about harming the babies and get a better look, as well as draw some blood without her wiggling and hurting herself.

And work... aahahaahahh Boss has really leaned into this full-time hire and referred to me the other day as "the senior Systems Analyst/Developer" and I was like lolol what. It's technically true? As of... I think this coming week I'll have been in the position for 12 years, just only full-time and counted as an employee for a month. At any rate, now he can feel validated in putting me in charge of various things, and I've been solving problems that ex-employees left us at a pretty quick rate. We finally did hire a guy as a replacement for one of those ex-employees, and I have no idea yet what he knows or what he's good at, but I'm supposed to shunt off some of the menial web work to him and focus on a couple third-party tools we're sort of stuck with, since I figured out more about how they work than anyone else on the team so far.

(Secret: This is actually kind of fun! Especially when one of our other guys figured out the one thing that was wrong in the test thing I made, and fixed it and made it output the raw data - and that let me get it looking exactly like I had intended for it to look, which bodes well for us using it for more things in the future.)

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No brain only bunny

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 20:16:09 GMT

Long weekend was eaten by bunny stuff of course, but there was some time before that, which was mostly eaten by that fic which has just become a giant narrative headcanon plotamari and is now up to chapter 13 and 73k words and about to address some things that honestly I think they might address if T&B gets a season 3 because they totally just left that potential sitting there...

Also trying to clear a little backlog of "things I've done but not posted" in the form of Yuri sketches mostly for the amusement of the Yuri-specific Discord server. XD

( Three pics. )

As for bunny that has replaced brain? The new girl seems to be settling in very well! Even a day and a half later, last night when I had to pick her up to trim her nails and do some brushing, she was wiggly rather than just going with it. This is a good thing! She has been through so many horrors in her life, and the last few days had been so confusing, it's not surprising that she let us handle her repeatedly without complaint at first. She was terrified, and had been terrified, and was probably so exhausted from being terrified that she had just stopped resisting. I want her to know that in this house, she's allowed to have her own opinion and tell me NO.

And although she had been needing to be syringe-fed at the rescue and foster home, she started eating well here Friday afternoon. Wouldn't take treats from my hand though, or eat when I was looking - I would have to leave the food where she could see it and then leave the room, then check back later. Until last night, as I was feeding everyone, she was staring down at me from the top floor of her enclosure. And just to see, I grabbed one of the longer pellets and held it up to the bars. She showed interest, then backed away, then crept back, then backed away, and so on for a couple of minutes while I just held it there - but finally leaned in those last couple millimeters to take it from my fingers. I fed her a few more that way, and she got less hesitant each time, so I am hoping that soon she'll trust me enough to take food from my hand even if there aren't bars between us.

Interested as she is in exploring the inside of her enclosure and running back and forth inside it and jumping from level to level, she doesn't want to come out. This makes sense, considering she went from having no space to move to being in a wide open space where she didn't know how or where to find safety. She's probably very glad to be able to run and jump and stretch out, and still feel safe. Leaving that place might lead to TOO MUCH space, exposure, losing access to that safe and comfortable space. I'm not going to push her, since she's clearly very happy with having the whole enclosure to herself and doesn't WANT more room at the moment. (And her litter habits are near perfect - which is crazy because I'm pretty sure she's never seen a litterbox in her life until at least Thursday.)

And last night I came across a video taken at the site of the rescue, where the rescuers got the guy who did it to confess and agree to let them take the ones he was still hiding. At the end they had a series of pictures of buns in the condition they were in right after being caught, and I saw a long-haired one and paused because "Wait, I think those are the same markings on my girl's left paw and her shoulder... Is THAT what she looked like when they caught her?" And since I was already going to give the rescue and foster an update on her, I asked, and they confirmed. The horrifying mess of matted hair and filth was in fact her when she was found, and they had some other pics that were worse than the one in the video... So, SO grateful to the rescuers and foster who took care of her and cleaned her up and brushed/trimmed her before she made it to me. This girl is getting SO MUCH LOVE to try to make up for what she went through. Never, ever has to go through anything like that again.

Yesterday while letting her just get used to "life in this house" I was doing things in her vicinity while not focusing on her - like working on the shelves in the living room that are currently displaying some of my figures. They were very disorganized, but after buying a few at Youmacon and a few more online to treat myself after getting the full-time job, I really needed to do something about that, so I did. Still a lot more to do, but there are some areas of my house that are now much cleaner and more organized, and more neat little things that are now visibly displayed instead of just sort of sitting haphazardly in various places.

Given that the house is entirely mine now and I don't have to keep anything "as it was for when they come back", I should really make some changes to the living room. But that's a big project and I've been at pain level 8-9 all weekend as it was (definitely on the "should I go to the ER?" level while writing all this up in fact, but I know they won't do anything if I did and I'd probably just catch covid in the waiting room), so no moving furniture around. In fact I'm about to roll over and just try to find some position that eases the discomfort a little bit. :P

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Best Black Friday acquisition ever

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 03:20:56 GMT

So today was not exactly the relaxing day I had expected it to be... Normally between the rabid capitalism and the fact that people just got together to share their meals and their germs with each other and then got up at 3am to stand in a line in the cold outside... ahem. Anyway, normally I just resign myself to staying home from Thanksgiving until AT LEAST the next Monday, because the stores will be full of people straining their immune systems for the sake of sales, and I do not want to breathe that air.

But last night just as I was turning things off to sleep around midnight, a friend msged me a FB post from a local rabbit rescue. ...I could share the horrifying details under a cut or something, but the short and vague version is: a terrible hoarding situation that the local authorities didn't do anything about turned into a terrible dumping situation that the local authorities didn't do anything about, therefore the rescue had volunteers out there who managed to catch 24 rabbits over the course of Wednesday and were completely overrun, no room for so many. (And the situation is still ongoing and more horrific things are coming out of it. :/) So the post had initially asked for help catching the rabbits, but then edited to include the number caught and "if you know anyone who can adopt or foster a rabbit..."

And, well... I've had one bunny enclosure sitting empty since Boomer died back in June. A couple times I've thought maybe I should look for another bun to live there, but held off because it's not entirely uncommon that someone I know sends me a message about "hey I/my friend found this rabbit that definitely isn't wild..." So turns out to be a good thing, because they were in a pretty bad situation at this rescue.

So I msged them, they msged back asking about preferences, I was like "I love all bunnies unconditionally, I guess I might lean towards a girl bun because right now I have three boys and a girl." And they were like "How would you feel about this double-maned lionhead?" and attached a pic of this BEAUTIFUL creature, and like... I do not understand how anyone could look at an animal so adorable as this and not want to give them everything.

By the time I got connected with the person who was fostering her to make arrangements for pick-up, it was 2am, so this morning I cleaned out that enclosure really well and got everything set up, then sent off another message and headed out.

And she is even cuter in person. It is unbelievable. I am going to have to learn some things about grooming long-haired buns though. Not that I mind. :D

( Pics under the cut. )

I haven't named her yet, in fact due to the absolute mess her hind end was when they found her, they weren't 100% sure she was a girl (and if she is, there is a chance she may be pregnant, so that could be... interesting), so I am letting her just rest comfortably and get used to the sounds and smells of my house today, and hopefully tomorrow she will be willing to be picked up and get her nails trimmed and a little more grooming done - and I can flip her over and see if I can confirm at that time.

So anyway. BUN. As I have been saying elsewhere since this started: No brain, just bunny. I am soooo looking forward to getting to know her, and I'm very glad I could help out at least a little with the disgusting situation she was rescued from.

Edit: Just checked the work discord in case any weird emergency came up while we were all off and there was something I might be able to do, and instead had a DM from a coworker who also has done animal rescue, and she saw the story on my FB and is going to foster a bun from this situation too. :D She said she might need to ask for bun advice, and I'm like... uhhh... yeah, try to STOP me from talking about rabbits... that is something I am more than willing to do. :D

Edit 2: Ah, this is back and... yeah okay I'll bite this year.

✨ holiday love meme 2022 ✨
my thread here

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Another week of stuff.

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 23:54:16 GMT

Work things first: meeting with the benefits manager was Monday morning, so last Sunday night I read up on the Benefits Handbook so I would be kind of familiar with stuff already. Turns out the reason I couldn't find the cost of dental/vision coverage in the handbook was because it's rolled into health. Also get life insurance equal to my yearly salary and disability free of charge, and the health insurance that includes vision and dental is literally 1/4 what one of the crappiest plans in my state costs through private insurance. Same company, less coverage, 3x max out of pocket, for about $400 a month... and that's a CHEAP plan. ACA covered about $150 of it but that still left me paying $250 a month. This new plan, I will be paying less than $100 out of my paycheck every month, I am boggled.

Also we discussed retirement and when she pulled up the info for the current stuff I've been enrolled in since I was hired, she was like "....Oh. You have THAT plan. They don't even OFFER that anymore. Um. That's really good. I mean, I never want to tell anyone what to choose when they're deciding on their benefits, but... if I were you, I would definitely stay with that." XD

And we had a snow day on Friday! Since I work from home on a laptop in bed all the time, I volunteered to do the honors so now my boss can call me at 5am when college is going to be closed for the day, and I can add an informative message about the college being closed at the top of the header, then go back to bed and sleep as long as I want, haha.

But I didn't actually want to sleep, because the fresh snow was gorgeous. And awhile back... I may have mentioned how I unexpectedly learned to knit on a loom in a weekend so that I could make a scarf in Lunatic's scheme to go with a winterwear Yuri cosplay? Okay so I just really liked the idea of him wearing a long dark coat and fedora and a very long scarf blowing around in the wind. And in addition to snow, there was in fact wind, and I had made the very long scarf, so I spent about 45 minutes wandering around the trails. (And at one point the tripod blew over so I had to dig it and the phone out of a snowdrift with my bare hands because I forgot mittens to wear between shots.)

( Winterwear Yuri photos, plus a ... bonus... )

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Last couple weeks of... stuff.

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 00:19:42 GMT

Fanstuff-wise, after Youmacon, got back to the moonsky fix-it fic. Yuri's awake now (or he was, briefly) and not terribly pleased about that. Chapter 10 pretty much took the entire week to write and edit because it by itself was like 7500 words. And since posting that late Friday night, I've managed to get 2500 words into chapter 11. (My NaNo was from 10/10 - 11/10 darnit.)

( Excerpt as per the usual. )

Of course as I've noted in other posts, Youmacon was not after all the big thing that happened in the last two weeks. Instead, full-time employment was! I put in my app/resume/cover letter on the job opening that was created just for me last Wednesday, worked a half day Thursday and took off for Youmacon in the early afternoon, got back Sunday afternoon and back to work as usual Monday. No news immediately, but it was Wednesday when I got an email from HR, with the official job offer letter attached, which I had to sign and return to their office. Presumably this could be done by mail, but I just wanted it done, so I mustered up enough spoons Thursday morning (mostly by just not eating or drinking anything and reminding myself I'd apparently logged 13,000 steps on Saturday and driven 3 hours on both Thursday and Sunday so surely I could drive 20 minutes across town and walk through the main campus building?) to go turn it in in person.

And since I was there, I was like "Hmmm I should go say hi to everyone I work with who hasn't seen my face for years" and headed over to that wing... and my boss was in a zoom meeting when I wandered in looking around. So he was like :O :D and waved and motioned to a chair he immediately pulled over into his space, so uh, suddenly I was in the zoom meeting too, hahah. So got to say hello to people from other departments also on the zoom meeting, who congratulated me, then after the meeting Boss introduced me to some of my coworkers I'd never actually met in person before but had talked to on Discord. It was all very surreal. My key card still works on the doors even though I haven't used it for like 8 years...

Anyway, by the end of the day, Stuff Was Happening. In our payroll thing they had shifted my old job title to have an end date, and apparently I'm getting 2 paychecks on the 15th. Everyone is paid twice a month, but hourly employees have timesheets which take a couple weeks to go through, whereas salaried workers just have the same amount every pay period, so no calculations. So on the 15th I'll get paid for the couple weeks of hourly work preceding Oct. 29th, and also for the salary I receive for Nov. 1-15. Hahahah. (Also, pre-taxes, each salaried paycheck is about $1000 more than my hourly paycheck working 40/wk. Post-taxes, more like $500. So like... a $1000 effective monthly raise for the same stuff I've been doing. And benefits. And vacation time. And medical leave if I need it which I probably will.)

So that is basically done and official and since I was pretty sure it was going to work out, I did splurge a little at Youmacon in the dealer's room, and I have also splurged a little on some frivolous things since. Because darnit, for nearly a decade I have been clawing my way back from house payments/car payments/utilities all on a single part time income when I had thought moving in it would be a two-income household. And I managed to do it. I still have the house. I still have the car. My lights have stayed on. I've been saving what I could towards eventually getting medical treatment - but now more of it will be covered. So I am spending a little bit on just plain fun right now because I've earned it.

I am still exhausted, and my hands hurt from changing weather/tons of typing, so I will leave off there and save a write-up of Youmacon (and all the cosplay stuff I did when I wasn't up to actually participating in the con itself) for some other time.

Although I will note in the realm of "changing weather", I was very pleased to wake up to the first actual snow of the year, even if it didn't completely cover the ground and was all gone by afternoon. ;)

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Further work updates, and con time

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 13:45:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who left congrats on the last post about the work situation! And good luck, because uh, yeah, it is still kind of a... bizarro situation. I was told I wouldn't need to interview, and some people in HR are apparently still saying this, while other people are saying I will have to. But, you know, whatever I have to do.

And my boss linked me to the job listing that only I will have the link to, and I went through the process... including references. I used other people on staff that I have done web updates/created new pages/utilities for on a regular basis (both of whom responded to my request with "YES OMG YES! It's about time!"), and one of my immediate coworkers who has the same job but specializes in other webdev tasks than I do, so we bump up against each other's work and hand stuff off to each other a lot if someone emails the wrong person. ;)

I also had to write a cover letter which was "required" for the online application to be submitted. I was tempted to just let it be like

Dear HR,

ABOUT TIME MFers!

Sincerely,
[pants]

But no, I was good, and pointed out several specific things I have already done and responsibilities I already have and "my references are some of our staff who I have a good and regular working relationship with", and then the closing paragraph was just like "If hired full-time, I will continue to do my job at the high level that my coworkers and org staff are accustomed to seeing from me - but for more hours per week." XD

I mean, I don't know if anyone is actually going to read the cover letter/resume (the most recent copy I could find was from when I applied 11 years ago - I got to update "ten years of webdev experience" to "twenty years of webdev experience" hahaha), or contact the references. I mean, they can just walk down the hall. And I've probably done stuff for whoever in the HR office looks at the apps anyway. Everyone knows me. :P

But at any rate, spent last night getting that all taken care of and submitted, and I'm using 8 hours of sick leave for tomorrow (to get to 40 - I wouldn't even have to use leave if I was still allowed 29, since I'm already at 27.5) so I only need to work until just past noon today... and then, Youmacon! I hope. If my body behaves. Hopefully Monday morning I will wake up from an exhausted sleep in my own bed to find out that things have moved along while I've been in Detroit.

As for Youmacon, it's pretty much all T&B all the time just like the rest of my life - season 2 Kotetsu, Yuri's civilian clothes and the Lunatic garb - but I also brought Laguna for the Square-Enix shoot Friday afternoon (since it's supposed to be warm), and Green Tentacle because it's fun and I haven't had a chance to wear it for awhile and I can wear whatever I like underneath it. AJ-era Phoenix Wright is also in the bag because it's very comfortable and if I don't feel up to wearing a "costume", tucking my hair under a beanie and putting on a hoodie and lounge pants is good. Also tossed in Bunny!Link (Link to the Past, if you don't have the moon pearl) in case it's cold at night but I still feel like doing stuff. Sadly due to logistics I don't think I can wear it to the Zelda gathering due to it being in the other building 1/4 mile from the hotel, and if I'm going to go to that other building, I'm going to be in the dealer's room... I want to be able to have peripheral vision in there.

...So that I can buy ALL THE TIGER & BUNNY MERCH. And maybe doujinshi. Hoping there may be some moonsky, but that's probably an unrealistic expectation...

Anyway, preparing for con AND speedrunning a job application in the course of one evening means I have been kind of overwhelmed. But I can blow this place in like three hours now, if I can manage to get all the little things packed between work emails.

Gonna miss the bunnies though. The most awful thing about cons is not being able to kiss and snuggle buns whenever I want. They'll be in good hands (my sis-in-law works a couple blocks over and will check in on them after work Friday-Saturday) but they won't be WITH ME. It's also kind of stressful for me to be apart from them these days because all my pets but Milo are seniors, but everyone seems very energetic and happy and comfortable this morning, so I really shouldn't worry...

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Work update! At last!

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 23:28:50 GMT

...How long have I been posting sporadically about how utterly messed up work has been with people quitting and HR making excuses why I can't be hired full-time?

Well, if all goes as planned, that ends tomorrow! ...Technically. Retroactively after the paperwork gets filled out.

Boss asked me this afternoon if I was free for a Zoom call and I was like "Yeah sure, what's up?" And when he didn't answer for a long time I was like "...ohhhhhh." And went and brushed my hair and stuff, and by the time I got got back he was like "Job offer, but don't let on I told you." XD

So the call was just us and the VP in charge of IT, who basically straight up lied because I know what you were doing. He was all "So I got a call from Finance, saying we have a para pro working 40 hours a week, and we can't have para pros working 40 hours a week, so we were trying to find a solution to that..." Yeah dude, the whole reason you have a para pro working 40 hours a week is because you suggested it to prove to HR that I could (and possibly force them to offer me full-time so they wouldn't get in trouble with Finance, but I can't prove that he was actually being that sly). Plus you asked the president. Not that I actually mentioned any of this, just silently laughed a lot.

Also they were like "And you can thank some of your ex-coworkers for ditching us and leaving a bunch of job vacancies. XD Yyyyyyep.

But regardless of how sly the plan was or how much of it was actually part of the plan, it worked. I get the feeling this is still not entirely aboveboard, apparently instead of just changing my job title/status, they're creating a job listing on the usual board, but it'll be a private one, my boss will give me the link, and I'll fill out the app. And then they will accept it without an interview. ...lol what? That seems sketchy, considering someone in HR accidentally switched me to a full-time position back in March - but what the heck, I'm getting benefits and I don't have to cram an entire week's worth of hours into 3 days during Thanksgiving week anymore due to the lack of paid holidays. XD

And oh boy I am hoping either this gets drawn out a little or very sped up since I'm supposed to leave for Youmacon on Thursday. I just got my badge in the mail today and put it on my "HeroTV Staff" lanyard. Not that I haven't been wearing that with other costumes, but it'll be nice to have it as a valid PART OF the costume again. ;)

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