i am sooooooo happy d20 fantasy high is back :) ❤️‍🔥

2023 recap! it's been a little bit of a quiet year over here. i sometimes go into phases where hobbies have to feel 'productive' to feel worth doing - it's not a GOOD phase, i don't recommend it, but sometimes our brains are a box of cats and what can you do - but drawing time suffers because so much of my drawing time is me spinning my wheels. which is part of the fun, and the point, but i also know sometimes it means i gotta focus on other things for a while and then come back to it when the cats have worn themselves out a bit. as always i appreciate y'all being here, and cheers to hopefully being more productively unproductive in 2024 <3

and i posted another steddie fic this year! - no reason, 31k, E. eddie kisses steve before he dies, but then he doesn't actually die, even though, in retrospect, that seems like it maybe would have been easier. 🙃

14. Favorite book you read this year?

Tough!! TOUGH!! I WEPT reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I loved Hell Bent, the sequel to Ninth House, even more than the first book. I went down a rabbit hole of David Grann's books and devoured Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager in a fury and am currently halfway through The Lost City of Z. But honestly as far as just incredibly pleasurable reading experiences go I'm giving it to Dark Heir, the sequel to Dark Rise. I read the first book when it came out a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it but hadn't read it again since. My friend E came in from out of town for Thanksgiving which coincided with the release date so I let her read DH while I reread DR to refresh my memory and the absolute pleasure of reading a book while your friend is reading the sequel and just GAAAAASPING in delight/horror/surprise the whole time next to you is just, like, the MOST fun way to read a book, and she pretty much stared at me as I read it and did all the same gasping in delight/horror/surprise. I love tropes, I love tropes done on purpose, I love reading with friends, I love getting to finish a book and putting it down on the bed and laying first face into the mattress and screaming and your friend going I KNOOOOOOOW. I've reread the last few chapters of the book like at LEAST four times already. Also I enjoyed DR soooooooo much more on the reread, it went from 'really enjoyed' to 'loved,' which is also a wonderful way to experience a book.

19. What’re you excited about for next year?

well a few of us lost our minds and bought overpriced tickets to that fest where my chemical romance is going to play the black parade front to back, and there's a good chance i will straight up explode into tears! it's gonna be great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

9. Best month for you this year?

so obviously going to japan in the spring was up there but i've already talked about it a lot so i'm actually going to give a shout out to july, which had some of the more frustrating parts of this year (fighting with my landlord, someone hit and running my car, other stupid bullshit) but included: an absolutely incredible family beach trip that was one of our best family trips of all time, and that even includes the part where my SIL accidentally set a toaster on fire and almost burned the condo down and i had to fire extinguisher it on the floor of the kitchen and we had to throw out all the food that was out, EVEN THEN! THAT'S JUST MAKIN' MEMORIES, BAY-BEE! AND a trip to british columbia for a cousin's wedding which was a hoot n hollerin good time, AND a friend's taskmaster-themed birthday party which was. deeply unhinged.

i hate summer, and my good friend hates summer, and so this year we decided that we would NOT hate summer, we were going to become the kind of people who LOVED SUMMER, we would love summer SOOOOO much, even if it was out of spite, and we literally sat down and made a list of fun summer to-do's (we love lists. we love to check things off a list. it's fun. what is the problem here.) and by god we checked a lot of things off that list, which rolled into just having like. a ton of fucking silly fun, lmao. we ice dyed. we made spaghett (miller high life. campari. lemon juice. it's good i swear!). we sat in a creek in the woods on a hot day. we floated in a pool. we went to barbie movie opening night. we got shitty perfect drumstick ice cream cones from the gas station that melted down our arms as we walked back to her house. we went to a midsommar screening where everyone was dressed up like the may queen. we rewatched all the scream movies. i literally made and presented two powerpoint presentations about wrestling and friends listened to them WILLINGLY. i swear!! anyway sometimes it turns out that if you force yourself to have fun you will in fact have fun. fake it till you make it ☀️

11. Something you want to do again next year?

i wrote fic this year, and i'm working on another one right now that is tough but that i'm enjoying, and there's no way it's done before the end of the year but i'd definitely like to post it at some point. hopefully. who knows! 🫠

this year i learned that i am apparently mildly allergic to cat hair - not enough to keep me from being in the same room as them, but potentially enough to not be able to have a cat of my own, and i have long dreamed about having a little black cat called bug so i'm PROCESSING. also that i'm much better at doing the chores i hate (washing dishes, brushing my teeth, taking my trash out to the dumpster) if i'm listening to podcasts, that there is a point where my work nemesis is just never going to like me and that's honestly just her loss, because i'm very nice to her but she's got her own shit going on, and that sprite zero doesn't have caffeine in it, SORRY I DON'T READ LABELS, CAN'T BELIEVE HOW OFTEN I DRANK IT AND THOUGHT 'MUST JUST BE IMMUNE TO CAFFEINE I GUESS', just living in a fantasy world of my own creation

22. Favorite place you visited this year?

answering this first because it'll come up in all of these (and is not a surprise to anyone who knows me because I haven't shut up about it since I got back!) but I got to go to japan for two weeks earlier this year and I still think about it all the time. a few specific memories: the fushimi inari shrines in kyoto - we visited very early in the morning, before it was too crowded, and we hiked what felt like a thousand steps up that mountain but it was beautiful. my friend lost his mother earlier in the year and specifically wanted to go as part of mourning her, and it was really moving to get to be there with him. i also think about the weird airbnb we stayed in in osaka with a decibel meter in it that would sound an alarm if we talked too loud, the little park by our place in shinjuku, the little dive bar where the bartender heard me tell someone i was from new orleans and put new orleans jazz on for the whole bar, the night we went clubbing and my friend got so out of his mind drunk we couldn't put him in a cab and the trains weren't running so my other friend and i looped our arms through his and army marched him like two miles back through tokyo to our place as the sun rose, singing songs to keep him moving, and feeling so happy. a million places. i can't wait to go back one day.

12. Talk about a new friend you made this year

so the reason the japan trip was able to happen at all was because one of my best friends won a bunch of money and wanted to help pay for part of the trip and invited me along; I knew a lot of the people going on the trip but not everybody, and I knew there was the possibility (as there always is in situations like this) of personalities rubbing the wrong way. traveling with people is weird! especially people you don't know. there was someone on the trip i hadn't known before, but i know that anyone who my friend likes enough to invite on a trip like this is a good egg. but even knowing that, we did NOT start out on the best foot - i got a bad first impression of her, and there were a few situations where i ended up VERY frustrated, we did NOT mesh, and at some point i snapped at her in front of everyone harsher than i meant to. long story short, a few days in we ended up split off from the group at one point in a big museum and we had this moment where realized that a lot of her behavior was because her anxiety was just absolutely out of control, and that she really just needed a buddy, and i had to step back and reengage with her in a different way, and after that we were a team. we became each other's travel buddy and there were several little adventures that she and i ended up having together that were some of my favorites of the whole trip, and wouldn't have happened if we hadn't figured out how to mesh, and i'm so grateful!

18. A memorable meal this year?

so PART of my friend paying for part of this trip was that he made all the decisions about where we were gonna stay, which we were happy to let him do especially because he'd been to japan before. he really wanted us to go to a ryokan in a hot springs town (something he'd done before), but none of us had ever been before or really knew anything about it, so when he kept telling us that there was this DINNER that was happening we all just were like, sounds great! well we fucked up because we're idiots and read the train schedule wrong, and we realized that we were actually going to get into the mountain town about four hours later than we were supposed to, which meant we were going to get into the ryokan not just after our arrival window, but way after dinner time. and my friend kept being like. THE DINNER....BUT THE DINNER. and all of us were like, it's ok!! we'll just get something when we get there! trying to be cool but he was so sad. like the ONE thing he had his heart set on. the amount of times he'd say 'and they have this DINNER...' and trail off. so we're going to be late, and as soon as we realized he called them to apologize profusely and the staff was VERY disappointed on the phone and were like, well, you might just have to eat noodles in the cafe because it will be so late, and we of course have no expectations AND felt terrible about being late so we're like, that's fine!!!!!! we're happy to!!!!!!! we're so sorry!!!!!!!! anyway - cut to us finally getting into this town. it's late. it's beautiful. it's cold. the place is lit up. we have to take cabs up the hill winding up this road through the trees and you can see the lights near the river below us. it's this sprawling property woven into the trees. stunning. and we're all exhausted and we're expecting to get a keycard and eat train snacks from our bag for dinner and pass out. but we get to the ryokan and a bunch of the staff had waited up for us which - mortifying!! so kind!! but they were so, so, so lovely, and helped us pick out our yukata to take to our rooms and we thought that was it, but the attendant was like - no, we have your dinner! we kept it warm for you. get dressed! and we were like ?? okay ?? and hurriedly got dressed in our yukatas and followed her back down the hallway (it was late, so it was so quiet, we felt like we were sneaking around after hours) and she took us through this winding historical building with all these VIEWS and then suddenly into a beautiful room with a table just absolutely laid out in a feast, carefully covered with paper until we got there. and my friend was like. I. TOLD. Y'ALL. THERE. WAS. A. DINNER. which does not even begin to cover what a kaiseki meal is, with multiple courses and beautiful dishware and fresh sashimi and your own little grill, and and and. it's not just dinner!! we thought it was just - dinner!! but it was one of the best meals of my entire life - we were so tired we were loopy, the plum wine was amazing, the staff were so kind, every dish was beautiful. i kept the printed japanese menu they gave us and brought it home and pressed it into a scrapbook like a nerd. you have to be!! more!! clear!!!!!!!!!! about what 'dinner' means!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but also, WHAT a memory, what a surprise, what a meal.

i am not immune to a vampire with a fucked up backstory

a special privilege for the resurrected (56k, E, steve/eddie, complete)

it's been a year since i finished posting this fic after i spent a decade thinking i was never gonna write again so it has a very special (and bloody) place in my heart ❤️ i genuinely appreciate that s4 made me so feral i had to unzip my id and throw it at the internet and then like, rip apart a couch cushion with my teeth. thank u to everyone who's read, and if u are looking for a spooky-season-appropriate fic, i hope u enjoy 🫡🩸🗡️

nyahh