#I'm highly tempted to say “no” but somehow THAT is the thing I'm low key afraid people will think is too weird LMFAO

[prince-liest]

I love your fics so much, and the new chapter is fantastic as always!

Alastor is such a troll, but it's interesting to see that he does care, in his own way. I wonder if he even fully realized it yet, lol.

And also... There's a joke about blue balls somewhere in there and I'm surprised nobody got to that yet...

Hahaha, he's definitely realized it to a pretty significant extent - especially in the installment where he went off on Vox while getting his heart pumped, and also the hangover chapter. But it's a messy and ever-evolving set of feelings for him, and not one he's used to dealing with this extensively, so he's got more work to do.

And thank you so much!! <3 I'm very glad you're enjoying! I honestly have just been filled with radiostatic feelings lately and am indulging myself incredibly with writing these, so I'm consistently delighted that other folks are also enjoying them!

[dzpenumbra]

2/17/23

Back and forth a bit today. I woke up early, I had really vivid dreams. Again, I just... haven't been journaling them. I have seriously 3 dream journals by my bed, I haven't recorded a dream in months. It's a weird skill I had to train, it was very difficult for me but I got really good at it, I'm just very out of practice.

The key to it, for me at least, was to really set a clear intention to myself right before bed that if I dreamt, no matter what the dream was, I was going to hold on to details, do my whole... milestone marker tracking technique I developed, and grab the journal and my glasses quickly. It has to be like... a reflex. It has to be quick. Because the second you start gathering waking data, it's like writing over your short term memory, it's deleting the dream. So you have to be quick. And... I just don't have that reflex freshly trained, and I haven't been setting that before bed intention. Maybe I should, why not?

I don't remember the dream but I know it was about my mom, and my stress and problems hurting her, and me feeling a lot of guilt. And I'll process that at a different time. Honestly. She's choosing this and she can take space if my grief and pain are too much, I really can't do that for her.

So I started the day on low fuel. I moved downstairs to the comfy chair and passed out. That strategy works pretty well. I woke up to a Starcraft caster that was... saying some really weird shit. Like... he was comparing someone who was raging in a game to a yapping little dog, and going on this diatribe as though he was doing the world a service by putting these people on display, because it's like shitting on shitty behavior? And somehow that like... makes it good? Like laughing at people who are being abusive, in a public setting, as a gang... is... healthy? Is good? And... monetizing it? And making it a whole series? I mean... you're literally making money off of nerds with anger issues hurling racial slurs at each other. And yeah, man, I mean... if that's what you want to do... but like... Does anyone remember "two wrongs don't make a right?" Anyone? I feel like fucking 9/10ths of the human race just blinked and forgot every fucking moral lesson we grew up with.

Well... maybe they didn't grow up with it. And maybe I never heard their opinions until now. Because now literally everyone is on the internet, and you have to hear their unfiltered thoughts, when before they would just talk to people around them locally. That's probably it, honestly.

Yeah, that just set me off on a bad note. Again, specifically that he went on this like 5 entire minute explanation of how him putting shitty behavior on public display, shaming and mocking it, was really the best way to handle that. And that's like... so fucking far beyond wrong. Okay, I actually pulled the video back up to reference this, that's how much it stuck with me. He was saying that he made an entire series out of "making fun of idiots", and that it's not just to serve the purpose of making fun of idiots, but also to remind us that we also have been those idiots too and we all have moments like that, where we're tempted to be shitty to others... and by watching him publicly humiliate these people, it serves as a reminder that like... if you do vent on someone and say shitty things... maybe it will end up on YouTube with someone "commentating" it and publicly shaming you, with your name displayed for the world to see. Yep. See, he had me in the first half - and remember, I woke up to this sentence... - and I was like.. "yeah, definitely take that moment of self-awareness, definitely think before you say something hurtful, give yourself some perspective". And he just took a gigantic right turn with it and decided to stress that the primary reason why you should not be shitty to a fellow player of a highly competitive niche game with a small community full of like-minded individuals is because if you do... something really bad will happen to you. Super healthy. Bravo. Like, it made my skin crawl. If the only thing that's going to make you even think twice about being really shitty and hurtful to someone, and lash out at them over a fucking video game, is... the threat of someone being several degrees of magnitude shittier to you? ... You've got some pretty big problems to work on.

I managed to cleanse the palate. Yoga was very calm and nice and then escalated super quick in like the last third. It was nice overall and actually opened up some spots in my shoulders that I've had suspicions have been problem areas for a while that have been pretty severely neglected.

I cooked "breakfast", first time in a while. I used to cook breakfast every day, but... the pets' medical shit and the move put me in a "quick meals" mentality that I quickly got used to. So it was nice to make some eggs and sausage again.

I got started on my mom's mala, which ended up being a whole-day project. I just finished it about an hour ago. It's very big, I have no idea how you're supposed to wear it, but... it's done. I spent most of the day working on the guru bead. I needed to drill a third hole in it, to pull the ends of it through. I tried my shitty dremel... I swear to god, this thing... using a drill bit... on full power... was struggling to drill through soft cheap pine wood. I finally got two somewhat good (though the holes are not lined up properly). I took hers and painted it with the gold metallic paint I got and let it dry as I showered.

I did some pretty cool basic floral mandala designs on it, it looked pretty cool. Then I started the Mod Podge. I did 5 layers. After dinner - yep, it took that long - I got started with the process of smoothing it. Since I had problems last time, I went with 600 grit wet sandpaper instead of 400 grit dry. And... I once again somehow sanded through the Mod Podge all the way to the wood. I have no idea how. And the bead was basically ruined at that point, because the gold was sanded off too. So... I started to pick at that spot a tiny bit and... lo and behold... I was able to remove pretty much the entire bead worth of paint in one coat. The acrylic just pulled right off the bead. So, strategy for next time... mid grit sanding - like... 200-400 grit? - before painting. These beads are probably too smooth and need something for the paint to grip on, I think scuffing it first might help. That's my theory, at least. Worth testing. That was super frustrating though.

It ended up working out, because I just said fuck it and went with an organic wood bead, not a painted one... and I think it works better. The mala is on a thin hemp cord, knotted between beads. The primary beads are 8mm garnets, the marker beads (at 10 and 20) are 10mm moonstone with copper crimps to keep them stable, my knots there were too small. So, honestly, I think the wooden bead might even work better than the gold one would have. I used the beeswax/walnut oil finish on it, it looks pretty. And then I made a tassel out of variegated hemp twine, wrapped in black. Still on the fence whether the black was a good choice but... as a whole, I think it looks nice. It's a bit heavy, and the knots added a lot of length to it, but I think it came out great.

So... that's been most of my day.

I got some unpacking done. 2 months after moving in, but still... I got some wooden crates that I stacked as a bookshelf of sorts, now I have something to actually put my shit in. So I sorted most of my books and stacked the crates. But... okay, my apartment is basically one big downstairs room and a loft bedroom upstairs. All my art stuff, music stuff and computer are against the right wall, where I am now. The entire left wall is just lined with other boxes. And my TV is hovering somewhere in that area, still sitting on my display case coffee table because I still don't have a TV table. Or a futon. Or like any of the furniture my mom and I were planning on getting me set up with back in early October. So... the space looks odd, and it's hard to figure out like... where to put the crates. It's just 3 wooden crates leaning against a big empty wall. Hard to describe, but it's weird and hard to plan around. But... I guess it's not the end of the world, because I can just move that shit around.

And, while sorting, I put some stuff into that walk-in storage space I have. So I actually got shit off the floor. Pretty happy with myself for that.

I might need to get a solid inventory of my stuff... then take another trip to Michaels for more of these crate things. I don't know. I really need a worktable for art stuff. But... I have a sinking feeling it's just going to be this drafting table, once my computer desk that was supposed to be a christmas gift finally gets here. It's not the end of the world, this drafting table has gotten me through... college and beyond... Legit, I think I got this thing in like... 2008? My only problem with it is... it's not steady. It wobbles. No matter how I try to get it set up properly, it always wobbles, so doing any kind of work where I need a steady surface, or something to clamp a vice to... this table just disappoints me.

I guess I'll try to take it one chunk at a time and just knock out home design that way. But it's coming along, and that progress is really big for me, so I'm celebrating that.

I'm extremely tired, bye.