What could possibly go wrong?!

+ Had an extended family dinner today and got to listen to my lovely aunt and cousin talk about how great ChatGPT is, how she's using it to plan a girl's trip to Italy, and how helpful it'll be for writing the speeches at my grandmother's funeral. Fucking shoot me into outer space strapped to a rocket.

+ Got to see the latest Avatar movie at the cinemas. My least favorite of the three, lacking the genuine awe and beauty of the world. What they did try just felt forced, and one character in particular should have been left to die in the second movie ugh.

+ Big plus for the cozy and hazily lit curtain fic promo trailer thingy they did before the movie. IYKYK. Kinda made me wish I had an ear to the ground in that fandom still.

+ I think I've successfully broken through my iconning block!! Shout out to dysfunctional vampires and dysfunctional lesbians.

+ BIG psa: Apple shifted Pluribus to air on the 24th, two days earlier than usual. I'll have to get up extra early to see it before 2 Nøtter Til Askepott, because if not I'll be thinking about it and wanting to all day lol. It's been such a good series for me to watch? There's this whole thing where there's two wolves inside of me, one appreciating the thought and care put into every decision, and how slow it's allowed to move, the second wanting to pick into every detail and tear through it. Both enjoyable in different ways!

I have watched every episode a minimum of twice. It may be my new comfort watch show?¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

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Rec-cember Day 22

( I'd say spoilery for last week's episode. )

+ Been doing a poor job of lighting my Christmas incense, but I remembered today and the place smells cozy.

+ Know what you need right now? Funny animal pictures. Know where to find a whole gallery of them? Right here! Delighted to find there's an annual Comedy Wildlife Photo contest.

+ Humble Bundle is running a package with Vegas Pro 22, Sound Forge Pro 17, Music Maker 2024, and movie Studio 2024 Suite. The minimum is €48.56, and it supports the World Central Kitchen. Annoyingly, I cannot for the life of me find whether or not I can avoid the fuck out of Vegas' AI features (preferably deleting them entirely), but I've been missing a video editor for ages now. I know I never finish my vids, but definitely not if I'm missing the software.

+ Speaking of bundles: there's a Wholesome Snacks games bundle! And I know we could all use a wholesome snack or two. So I'll do a tiny giveaway, just comment which game you'd like and I'll do a random draw.

On Your Tail - You are Diana, a young detective who is obsessed with uncovering the small town's secrets. By day, you enjoy the cozy life, by night, you use stealth, observation, and deduction mechanics to secretly follow suspects and gather clues to crack the case!

NAIAD - An ethereal and meditative river journey game! You embody Naiad, a curious water spirit who awakens in a remote spring and embarks on a long, winding journey down a mysterious river to the sea.

Spirittea - After accidentally drinking mystical tea, you gain the ability to see and interact with mischievous spirits. Your job is to restore and manage an old spirit bathhouse, serving the quirky spirits, gathering resources, and building relationships with the fully voiced townsfolk, all while trying to solve the local town mystery.

Little Known Galaxy - A colorful cozy space adventure and life simulation game where you manage a spaceship and explore the galaxy. You take on the role of a new captain and work with your crew to improve your ship, explore new planets, and solve the mystery of an ancient relic.

SUMMERHOUSE - A small-scale, extremely zen building game and a love letter to lost summer afternoons. There is no management, no goals, no combat, and no failure states. You are invited to simply sit back and doodle whimsical castles, cozy cottages, and romantic ruins in tiny diorama settings.

+ I've just re-downloaded Disney Dreamlight Valley to see what the holiday decor is like. I am going to Christmas to the max dammit (says the one not bothering to decorate her own damn apartment). Also picked up a DLC for Rimworld and CK3 now that the holiday steam sales started.

+ My brother invited me out to help decorate their tree yesterday though! And both the cats vocally and physically greeted me. They live in constant Stranger Danger, making it extra heartening whenever they don't run for the hills.

+ It's not pouring rain outside hallelujah, this is a sign I should go buy butter chicken, isn't it? And find some holiday costumed Pokemon on the way, you say?

My grandmother passed yesterday morning. She's the last remaining of my grandparents. While dementia did claim all of her a year past, I guess it still hit me. I'll probably be a bit less responsive on here for a while.

+ Watched Wake Up Dead Man today, and out of the three I can safely say it’s my favorite. The setting, characters, theme, all hit home for me. Honestly one I wouldn’t mind rewatching.

Reactor Mag has an excellent article up on it: Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man.

Btw does anyone want some screengrabs to make icons from uploaded to capshare? (Not the very best quality possible, but serviceable) If so, specific characters?

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Rec-cember Day 17

Gilmore Girls
They Go Just as Quickly as They Come by petpluto (2,004 words). Richard dies. Emily goes on living.
At first, its emptiness wasn’t as pervasive. She accepted the house, and the stillness.

It hadn’t been so long. Not really. Richard had spent longer away on business trips. The house was empty, but not unfamiliarly so. But there came a time when, if Richard had been away on a business trip, he would have been back from it. And the emptiness pressed in until it is all she can see, all she can feel.

The house is empty.

She doesn’t wander the halls. She doesn’t throw herself at his portrait. She does not have a portrait made. She doesn’t shutter the windows and regress. She doesn’t dress in all black. She isn’t part of some maudlin tale, some piece of fiction Rory and Richard had once fawned over together. She is a graduate of Smith, after all. She still belongs to any number of groups, of charities and clubs and associations. She fills her days, just as she did before.

The house, though, is still empty, when she returns to it.

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Rec-cember Day 14

Bound
Devil Never Saw the Likes of Us by scioscribe (2,958 words). Never was I ever not a Tilly fangirl, and Bound is just one of those movies I love to bits. This fic absolutely nails them.
It started right on their doorstep. Violet got out of bed Saturday morning and tugged a silk bathrobe up over her shoulders.

It was new. Almost everything she had with her had been bought since they’d left the city, but this was so new she’d had to snap the tags off it before she pulled it on. It had this swirly peacock pattern on it, like streaks of paint, and paint felt sort of like their lucky charm.

She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could add water to a mix like anybody else, and she decided to make blueberry muffins. She liked the little pastel-and-foil cups you put them in to bake: everything had its own little splotch of color. The old apartment had been nothing but black and white and steel, lifeless and cold. This place—their place—was different.

She was just sliding the tray in the oven when she heard the knock.

The fixation is hyper y'all. Headvids. Brain zoomies. Giddiness at good characterizations (and, for this particular fandom, the characters being ~an appropriate amount of Bastard~ 🤌).

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Rec-cember Day 11

vein by vein by morian (2,415 words). Not Lestat being jealous of the sun XD (don't let my comment trick you into thinking it's crack fic, excellent voices in this)
Before he died and was reborn as a creature, not a man, Louis preferred the night. In this city that stretches and groans and howls to life at dusk, he had no reason to favour the sun. His business was the night. People like him, that is to say pimps and grifters, came to bed long after dawn and slept past noon.

It wasn't until he lost the sun that he learned it was something that could be missed.

Though even winters in New Orleans are mild and summer nights leave shirt collars clinging to sweat-slick necks like desperate hands, there is a special kind of warmth in sunlight on the skin. It reeks of childhood and the garden and the roof, of sunrise with his brother.

“I don’t miss the sun,” he will say to a jaded reporter on the balcony of his Dubai altar a hundred years from now. “The reminders it carries.” And it will be true then. But here is a man who ran through the street and nearly burned to death on the first morning he carried the dark gift. And here is a man who grieves his brother, not just one life lost but a thousand possibilities with it.


More fic, vid, and icon recs below :DD

( Btw I'm going to need a vampire to greet Daniel with 'so you're the divorce papers I've heard so much about' in s3, thanks. )

I'm back at work for a couple of days, so throwing today's rec out early to avoid forgetting and ruining my ten (\o/) day streak.

Chosen by the very first hit of the Random Icon button... *drumroll*

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Rec-cember Day 10

Hawkeye / Thunderbolts
got me thinking she's so cool by explosivesky (6,983 words). Cute, through and through. Since it's December and at one point presents are mentioned, do I get to put another notch under Christmas Recs?
“Yes, I know of Ikea,” Yelena says. “I have been all over the world. I know it is a furniture store.”

“Okay, but have you ever been inside one?” Kate pegs. She even leans closer, as if searching for the crack revealed by the question.

Yelena shifts between feet. “No,” she mumbles grumpily. “I have not been inside one.”

“They have meatballs. Swedish meatballs. They’re delicious. We can get you, like, maybe a bookshelf, or a corkboard, or - definitely a bedspread, I honestly thought that was a large decorative boulder for some reason–”

“You want to bring color into my room, Kate Bishop?”