dragonofeternal

Further thoughts on The Ritual

2026-04-22T18:47:17Z

I finished reading The Ritual by Adam Nevill last week. I had geeked out some about the book's technical aspects when I was first starting to read it, and now that I'm finished I wanted to give my full review!

TL;DR no spoiler version -
The book is good, but takes a subgenre shift about 3/4 of the way through that I found to be a bit incongruous with the tone of the rest of the novel. It wasn't bad per say, but it was enough of a shift that it threw me out of the book and didn't leave me itching to keep reading the way the first chunk did. I'd still recommend it, but if you find yourself hitting the end of the first part of the book and feeling like you're slogging to get through the rest... eh, I wouldn't say you're missing much if you just pretend the end of the first section is the end of the novel. Tonally and functionally the book ends in much the same way the first section of the novel ends.

( More detailed thoughts with spoilers under the cut! )

Having finished The Ritual, I'm now on to a different sort of horror: the true-life horror of the opioid crisis, Perdue Pharma, and the dynasty of the Sackler family who owned and profited off the whole ordeal.

I lived in West Virginia through my teens and the first through years of my twenties, so I had a very front row seat to the crisis. I have clear memories of being in sixth or seventh grade when a doctor lost her medical license for letting clients pay her to write them oxycontin prescriptions. She was a friend of a family friend, and I remember said family friend rolling her eyes and scoffing at the conviction: "Who cares if she was taking money to write Oxy scrips? Isn't that all doctors do anyway?"

So far the book, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, is really compelling. Killian devoured it when they read it a while back, and I can see why.

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Writing Technique Geekery

2026-04-02T17:17:00Z

I picked up The Ritual by Adam Nevill a few months ago, but when I did I was just getting back into reading actual books more regularly, and I hadn't been up to reading something wholly fresh. A few books deep in nurturing my lunch break writing habit, however, and I finally started it last week.

The book is the basis for a movie that I hadn't realized was an adaptation but had been interested in seeing for some time because of that cool gifs of the monster that circulated tumblr for some time after the film's release.

( under a cut for reading page flow/in case anyone's not up to seeing gifs of a monster )

What prompted me to write this entry has nothing to do with monsters, though, lol. Instead, I'm bouncing in my seat geeking out about the CRAFT being employed by the book.

One of the things that I immediately noticed (and appreciated as someone reading it on their lunch break largely) is that the chapters in The Ritual are very short. Most I've read so far land somewhere in the 3-6 pages mark. It keeps the book feeling brisk and easy to sneak another chapter or two in while working.

Except, that is, for chapter 11. Chapter 11 is TWELVE pages long. It comes after the men have gone and gotten themselves fully lodged in a horror story, and the reader has had to endure both the horrors of the dark Swedish forest and creepy cabin they've decided to shelter in AND the horrors of watching four men in their mid-thirties squabble like assholes. Chapters 9 & 10 are something of a written jumpscare, in which the four men discover the horrifying taxidermied goat-idol with human hands in the bedroom of the cabin they're currently sheltering from the rain in. The book has been shuttling the reader along at brisk hurry up to this point.

And then in Chapter 11 it slows down, gives you an extended scene of the men both creeping each other out a bit more but also drinking, eating, teasing each other, and generally trying to diffuse the tension of their strange situation. It uses the time to give us some better insight into how our POV character sees his somewhat estranged friends now that they've reunited on this hiking trip gone wrong. A perfectly done calm before the storm that even starts to put the reader at ease.

The next four chapters are all one or two pages long: abrupt, jolting nightmares of scene that throw you into a panic by their very structure. The first two even open in second person, as opposed to the third-person limited the rest of the book is written in. You are being clawed apart by the branches as the shape descends upon you. You are kneeling before the idol in a pool of your own piss. You are half naked in the yard, staring at the trees. It's a highly effective shift.

Just. MMM! DELICIOUS! I love seeing the way technical structure can control tone!!! It's also a nice reminder of the way that short chapters can be incredibly functional and practical... I feel like when posting fanfic, there's a sort of "Sweet Spot" of chapter length (though that can vary fandom to fandom) usually somewhere around the 1.5k to 3k mark. More and people lose focus, less and people don't always have something to say. But the length of your chapters can also be a tool to control how the reader feels about the story, much in the way that varying sentence length can!

Ahh! I just love the craft of writing!!!!

I ALSO ended up stumbling on a really cool new AO3 workskin to play with after seeing a fanfic shared on twitter that used it.

It creates dynamic letters that open on hover (desktop) or click (mobile), and it adds some really neat visual interest to an epistolary fic. I think that author tooled around with the base code the original to make it a little more responsive, as well as to make a "postcard" version that flips between front and back.

I want to play around with it some for a fic but I'm not sure what I want to write for it yet. The original tutorial collection has some other cool stuff to play with too - I'm intrigued by the code that makes text appear retroactively and how it could be used to play with a point of view character who is either unreliable or who has a less than accurate grasp on what is going on around them.

All in all! Writing! Words! I like them!

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KANATA MAYOI AND NOZOMI IN THE ENSTARS APRIL FOOLS TEASER????

2026-03-31T04:45:45Z

IS IT MY BIRTHDAY??????

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The end of Stargaze was BAD

2026-03-28T23:53:36Z

( I had tried so hard to remain hopeful. )

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puka~ puka~

2026-03-19T06:57:07Z

I have just about finished the wig for my Meteor Impact Kanata cosplay! I still need to do the ahoge but after that it's largely adjustments and fine-tuning. Killian's going to help me trim the bangs while I'm wearing the wig so we can make sure they sit right around my face, and we're thinking of adding a little more long hair to the back so that it looks a little more natural. Right now it matches how it's modeled in Element and styled in the stage play, but uhhhh.... that looks a bit silly on an actual person.

I'm super proud of how it turned out though!!! Now I just have to finish our MI cosplays....

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hopital,,,,

2026-03-18T19:05:14Z

Went to the ER yesterday because I was having chest pain on the left side. Thankfully it turned out to just be a pulled muscle and not that I was having a heart attack, but I'm proud of myself for actually going and not just sucking it up. Even if it turned out to be "nothing," I'm trying to be better about not downplaying my own suffering and actually asking for help when I need it.

( To that end, I also went to the gyno today to address the absolute bullfuckery I've been dealing with for my period. )

In good news though, I started working on my Meteor Impact cosplay again!!! I had been going strong, but then missing the target con + Lumos getting a lot sicker/dying really killed a lot of my momentum, so it's just been sort of floating around in pieces since then. I've spent the last two nights working on the wig though, and I think it's really starting to come together nicely!!!!

puka~ puka~
It's kind of incredible how much styling you can do with heat alone... I like a more naturalistic look to my wigs when possible, so I'm really enjoying using the fact that it's basically fancy plastic to shape it how I want it to look, no hairspray required!! Finer details will get some hairspray/glue as necessary (like the ahoge), but I'm very pleased with how my fluffy jellyfish wig is turning out so far.

I also bought some dye resist to start dying things for Kohaku's first feature scout but uh.... no dye yet oops XD One thing at a time.

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MADARA MIKEJIMA WHEN I GET YOU----

2026-03-11T17:35:13Z

For his final tweet on the FanThanx twitter account, Mama finished his sign off by saying "but it looks like I might be making another appearance🤭"

SIR.

SIR WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN.

DON'T YOU FUCKING 🤭 AT ME!!!!!

They CANNOT do this Double FacePs after the ship tease at the end of this FanThanx story, with Mama and Kohaku planning on going on a trip around Tokyo together. They cannot play with my heart like this. This is illegal. And yet. AND YET!!!! ISN'T A DOUBLE FACE REUNION OF SOME SORT THE MOST NATURAL THING TO THINK ABOUT A TWEET LIKE THAT??????

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cracks my skull open

2026-03-04T21:49:08Z

The up and down weather means I have had an absolutely BLINDING migraine for most of the day, and I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate it. The droning of the white noise machines at work doesn't help either because it's the exact sort of noise that feels like my poor autistic brain is getting raked over hot coals.

At least the work day is almost done tho, and then I will be free to do as I please. I'm currently feeling the urge to go home and work on cosplay, because a focused handicraft is obviously the right thing if my head hurts. Counterpoint, however, is that I have been experiencing the unique agony that comes from having not done enough little crafts or art things that makes your brain turn itself inside out for other reasons sooooooooooooooo..........

Yeah XD

Maybe I'll try to work on my Meteor Impact Kanata wig to ease myself into it, since I know where our hair cutting scissors are right now, AND I have a tutorial I'm gonna try to follow....

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Intern wrangling is always so involved

2026-02-25T03:57:14Z

So we have intern at my work, earlier in the year than usual this time because he's not here through the normal summer program we engage with and... ughhhhhh....

He's not stupid, but there's this absolute inability and/or refusal to engage in reflection and deeper thought past the initial information. This boy is in his last semester of undergrad! He should be able to go deeper than that, right???

I've been slightly concerned that some of the work he has turned into me has been produced with the aid of generative AI, but it may be that he is just at that level of engagement himself. Regurgitate the facts in a slightly different order, but don't interpret or reflect beyond that.

I'm trying to figure out how to address it because I don't want to seem like I'm harping on him, but I also don't necessarily have the time to sit him down and explain why what he's turning in is insufficient, when I *THOUGHT* I had already explained it to him sufficiently when asked him to redo some of his work. I'll probably talk to my supervisor about it tomorrow and see what she thinks...

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The curse of immortality...

2026-02-22T18:16:26Z

So apparently I started writing an entry about the new Paranormasight after playing the first little bit of it, but I have NO recollection of it:

I've only had Paranormasight: the Mermaid's Curse for four hours, and I already love it. Once again, robust characters from jump, with a good variety of girls on cast. The new housewife and eye candy boy pair is very different from Harue and Richter, but I think they'll still end up as show stealers.
LOL
That said, Hi I finished Paranormasight: the Mermaid's Curse in around four days, and I fucking loved it. Once again, it's a tightly woven mystery that gives you the pieces to put it all together, and the characters are similarly excellent. I did indeed end up loving Yumeko and Sodo (our new housewife and eye candy boy pair), and I would happily watch/play an entire series of the two of them going around solving supernatural crimes. (Perhaps in the third game we can see Yumeko and Sodo cross paths/team up with Mio from the first game?)

There are some elements I think I liked more or less in one game or the other, but nothing that's like "this was objectively better." While they feel tonally consistent and definitely take place in the same world, Mermaid's Curse is a very different sort of story than The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, and the two have different needs narratively. I would have maybe liked to see a few more meta tricks, but the one key one we got + the variety of minigames served the purpose well enough. I would have liked to see the mechanics of those minigames get use outside of their single section, but I also recognize that the game was made by a TINY team, despite Squenix's name being tacked on as the distributor.

~~seriously, when we reached the first ending and watched the credits scroll we were like "....hahah wait is that... is that all the people that made this?????"~~

I feel like I want to say more, but I don't want to spoil things, and also my head kinda hurts so I feel stupid XD

The vibes in Paranormasight are so good, but I always leave feeling so appreciative of how well the women are written. Both games have a decent amount of girls on cast, and each one feels distinct in their motives, background, ambitions, etc. Like I made the joke of "housewife and hot guy" duo above because it did make me laugh a bit to see that surface-level dynamic repeated between the two, but the two pairs couldn't be more different. Honjo's Harue (easily one of the best characters in that game) is dead inside, lost after the gruesome death of her son and trapped in a loveless marriage that has left her with only the singular pursuit of vengeance as her goal, while Mermaid's Yumeko is an enigmatic woman who is hard to read, save for her boundless love of her husband and her uncannily broad knowledge of the supernatural. Richter, Harue's arm candy, is a paid detective with a flashy style and a certainty that he'll get things done, whose presence highlights Harue's emptiness and single-mindedness by sharp contrast. Sodo, on the other hand, feels more like an extension of Yumeko and her love for her husband; a talented psychic in his own right (more powerful even than Yumeko), he is nevertheless deferential to her, as her husband served as his mentor, and the two move like a unit.

And, again, the teen girls! They feel like teens, and more than that they feel like FRIENDS, people who do legitimately really trust and love each other.

And, of course, there are the mermaids....

Paranormasight: the Mermaid's Curse is well worth picking up if you like mystery, horror, or VNs. Doooo iiiiiittt~

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Blood and Stars

2026-02-18T08:38:18Z

I saw Iron Lung last Wednesday, and it was a lot of fun! Or, hm, perhaps "fun" isn't the most accurate descriptor -- I spent pretty much the entire runtime CLENCHED with anxious terror. I went in totally blind. The sum total of my knowledge was what the movie poster looked like, that Markiplier was attached to it in some manner, and that it was a horror movie.

( Thoughts on the movie under a cut for length! Nothing super spoilery. )

The rest of the week was sort of a blur -- it was my birthday last week, but I also have been beset with really bad period cramps and generally struggling with my brain being a fucking hater. There's been some good stuff going on! My brain is just like ksshhhhshhskkkhshhh.....

Absolute Perfection has hit the English server of enstars, which is WILD to me. This was the first event I got the 5* from when I first started playing on the Japanese server two years ago, and at the time it seemed like it would be an ETERNITY until it hit English. But here we are! T'is a little surreal.

This week's episode of Trigun is finally starting to get Good, and I hoped it would. I've joked about Stampede being "Trigun for people who want to see Vash and Knives fuck," but even beyond that, Knives is so central to Stampede that I think the team doing Stargaze really struggled to carry things along until Knives came back. But now he's here! Honestly, though, the real stars this episode were Legato and Elendira. While I'm still >:/ about them changing her into an evil loli, her vibes have grown on me, and getting to see her and Legato whining at each other like shitty siblings was delightful. Also the like... visceral force with which her nails hit him...?SOOOOO tasty. The bit of stagger, the sound, they had *weight* to their impact in a way that has felt missing from a lot of the fights so far. ~~Also I just love to see my favs get bloodied~~

Lastly.... I have sort of accidentally converted one of the chats I'm in to the super sentai way of life with Kyuranger XD It started with just one person, but then that person was streaming as they were watching and the chat tuned in for the episode of Balance's birthday. Queue the gradual chorus of "wait why is this good?" "oh no I'm invested!" "wait super sentai is good???"

Heheheheh local RyuseitaiP drags unsuspecting enstarries into super sentai~

(this is super rambling, woops, sorry not sorry)

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Call off the question from last post!

2026-02-10T04:09:53Z

WELP if nothing else the CSS of the site themes appears to have stopped freaking out. Yay!

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Emotions aside, there's a lot of good stuff going on~

2026-02-10T00:00:50Z

This week was sort of a weird blur. I've been having a rough brain-time lately; just general negative thoughts and struggles with focus/doing things that don't easily trace back to a single cause. T'is frustrating.

I did, however, have something good happen -- one of my favorite Persona 5 fics updated after a four year hiatus!!! I had actually reread it a few months ago because I recommended it to a friend and wanted to revisit it. I left a comment on the (at the time) last chapter, and apparently I happened to send it right as the authors were trying to start writing it again. They replied to my comment to specifically thank me and say that they kept going back to my comment for strength as they were writing the new chapter. ;;A;; NEVER DOUBT THE POWER OF A SINGLE NICE COMMENT I GUESS asl;kdfjsad;fl I'm glad I could help encourage them to update again!!

(The fic is i'll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies by Goumaden and blue_jean. It's a delightful fic. Akira wakes up ten years in the future, blissfully married to his would-be murderer. Naturally, he has to figure out what's going on, all while trying to hide from Akechi that he isn't the current version of himself that Akechi is married to. Except... Akechi has also had his consciousness transported from the past and is trying to hide this from Akira. Shenanigans ensue.)

(New chapter was great btw. Akechi threatened to gruesomely murder an eight year old as part of blackmailing someone.)

I also got the great news over the weekend that PARANORMASIGHT IS GETTING A SEQUEL! LIKE. THIS MONTH!!!! I raved about the first Paranormasight a few years back during Snowflake Challenge, and all my feelings on it still stand as strong as when I wrote that post. It's a great game and you should totally play it. If you hadn't played it yet, now's a great time to pick it up, since it's on sale for $5 on Switch, android, and IOS right now.

I suppose I'll have to start calling the first one "The Seven Mysteries of Honjo" rather than Paranormasight tho, now that we're getting Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse...

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm not really doing much for it since I didn't plan very well. This weekend we might go out to play arcade games at the spot that has unlimited play for a flat price, but idk. We'll see.

Sidebar- are the homepage and new entry pages of dreamwidth showing without CSS for anyone else???? Like my reading page looks fine, but all the dreamwidth "main" pages are borked and unstyled. BIZARRE.

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3SF Fill Roundup #1

2026-01-27T01:56:40Z

Yeahhhhh y'all know what time it isssss~ threesentenceficathon is in full swing, and I've been writing a bunch of fills.

Now on to........ IDK probably writing more fic! I've been getting back on the habit bit by bit

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Snowflake Challenge #4: Rec the contents of your last page

2026-01-22T14:44:27Z

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page
Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

Last community: Just as January means snowflake challenge, it also means threesentenceficathon! I've been having a grand old time prompting and filling, and I've written at least one fill almost every day the event has been open so far this year. I'll probably post a weekly roundup starting this coming Saturday.
Last sounds: I've been re-listening to The Magnus Archives while working on some of the more repetitive tasks at work. Most recently I listened to episode 87, "The Uncanny Valley." It's a fav that always gives me a bit of a chuckle; we stan the autistic-coded plumber who nearly completely missed the horrors because he was just single-mindedly focused on the work of unclogging the drain at the uncanny mannequin human mutilation factory.
Last article: I have been making my way through Delivering Results: 10 Years of the SAGE National LGBTQ+ Elder Housing Initative in preparation for a work conference next week where my work will be presenting in conjunction with SAGE for LGBTQ+ elder housing projects in our local area.
Last book: My TMA relisten has prompted me to also spend some time re-reading Sims' debut novel, Thirteen Storeys. I've been trying to read some fresh things, but with how stressed/mentally occupied I've been with work and home repair stuff, I figured it would do me better to stick to something familiar that I'll actually pick up to read without psyching myself out.
Last game: I have been THOROUGHLY consumed by Hades II. The loop of the gameplay is so satisfying. I've made it TO Chronos and Prometheus a few times, but I've yet to beat either of them. Soon though. I believe in myself.

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Trigun Stargaze Ep 2 Thoughts

2026-01-20T20:52:23Z

We rolled right along with the plot this week, answering most of my questions in some fashion or another. This week, though, my own thoughts are as much about fandom reaction as they are about the episode itself.

Again, spoiler warning for episode 2 of Trigun Stargaze + the original Trigun manga and anime.

( Let's get into it! )

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Snowflake Challenge #3: A Love Letter to Fandom

2026-01-20T20:22:28Z

Challenge #3: Love Letter
Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

To my most esteemed comrade in arms,

I write you today to tell you of an author whose writings I recently revisited, and whom I think you would really enjoy the work of. They truly seem to cut to the heart of what you like in a story, and although there are times where you can pick out a bit of funny pacing or a typo that really seems that it should have been caught in editing, they are overall a wonderful writer that I highly recommend you read.

I speak, of course, of you, my friend.

To drop the affected character voice, seriously, it can be easy to forget how good our own writing is, especially if we've not written for a while or, conversely, if we're fresh off doing battle with a WIP that felt like it would never be right and that we have had to finally give up on making perfect to shove out into the world. Writing can be hard work, and we're often our own worst critics, especially in the moment.

Take a step back, however? And the things we write are the things we wanted to write, the things we wanted to see in the world that ignited our excitement. They're full of our favorite characters, our favorite tropes, all our weird quirks of vocabulary and pacing and structure that make our hearts do a giddy little fannish squee to see click together. We deserve to be the reader we wanted our works to find.

And so, I send my love letter out to you, and to myself, and to all of us out there who write stuff. Go reread that shit. I heard the person who made it put a lot of heart into it.

Cheers,
dragonofeternal

PS I started writing this like over a week ago and I'm only finishing it now WOOPS ASLDKFLSAKDF life is hard.

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Snowflake Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

2026-01-12T23:28:49Z

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom
Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

Continuing on with my Snowflake Challenge catch-up, allow me to introduce a recent favorite fictional pet: Bloody Mary!

Bloody Mary is from Ensemble Stars!, and she is the in-universe pet of Hiyori Tomoe and Jun Sazanami. She's a rescue dog, so named because when two found her abandoned in an alley she was covered in blood. The two hid her in their dorm room, nursing her back to health and hiding her from anyone in charge of the school finding out. I like to think that although Hiyori postures about throwing Jun under the bus if they'd been found out, Hiyori's tenderness to Mary is part of what helped Jun see that Hiyori was truly a kind person behind his foppish, bitchy diva facade.

Due to Mary's abandonment and presumed former abuse, she is quite skittish around new people and especially skittish around other dogs. She's also frequently drawn to be... kinda funny looking XD

That said, I love Mary both as a silly anxious little doggy who gets doted on by the cast, and also for the ways she highlights Hiyori and Jun, especially Hiyori. She's their little princess, not matter how funny looking she might be. They're both so tender with her, and it's obvious that they love her a lot.

I just think she's Neat.

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Snowflake Challenge #1: Introduce Yourself

2026-01-12T18:10:21Z

Challenge #1
The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hello, hello~
I'm Liz, AKA dragonofeternal. I enjoy doing a variety of arts: writing, drawing, acting, graphics, etc etc... I enjoy video games, anime, various books, etc... Lately, I've mostly been involved in the Ensemble Stars!! fandom. With the new season of the Trigun reboot starting up, I'm expecting that I'll be making some stuff for it as well. I also enjoy listening to various horror podcasts, but I don't tend to be super engaged in the fandoms about them.

Outside of fandom spaces, I work for a nonprofit dedicated to LGBTQ health equity. This has, obviously, been nothing but fun with the current state of LGBTQ rights in the US, LOL.

As for why I'm doing Snowflake... it's sort of a habit for me. It is, if nothing else, the time each year when I somewhat consistently update my Dreamwidth, and this year, as every year, there is a hope it'll carry through to a more consistent posting habit. Whether it does or not, however, I think whatever posting I get done is worthwhile.

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Trigun Stargaze Ep 1 Thoughts!

2026-01-12T14:53:44Z

Yesterday was the debut of Trigun Stargaze! Crazy how time has flown and crawled in between the end of Stampede and now. We borrowed a friend's Crunchyroll and got up at 9AM to watch the simulcast broadcast when it aired.

"Simulcast" apparently meant "one hour after it airs in Japan," however, so then we had to wait another hour XD

My overall non-spoiler impression is pretty positive! It was great to have Milly there, and I'm interested to see where Stargaze's diversions take us. I like that they're not throwing us full tilt into things and instead taking at least a little time to set stuff up. With the imagery in the opening theme, I think they really might have been pulling some nonsense with saying this was the "End of Trigun" in that one trailers. There isn't anything shown there that seems to imply we're getting into end-game content. No Ark, no couch, not even that much Legato.

Gonna put the rest of my thoughts under the cut so I don't have to dance the line of what is and isn't spoilery.

( Spoilers ho! )

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My cat died, so into the toku rock quarry I go~!

2025-09-05T19:38:40Z

The last few months have been really tough. If you follow me on other social media or are also subscribed to *Borat Voice* mai waife~, then you may already have heard that my cat passed away.

( If you didn't know that already um. Yeah. My cat Lumos passed away. Putting the rest of the pet sickness/death talk under a cut for those sensitive to the topic. )

ANYWAY, with all that going on, I understandably needed a bit of levity in my life so I decided to take the "What Sentai Should You Watch" quiz that marinehaddock made for Snowflake challenge a few years back. It told me to watch Uchuu Sentai Kyuuranger, and honestly? Yeah I'm digging it so far. I'm still early, only about 10 eps in, but it's been the exact sort of campy, silly, melodramatic thing I needed. The props look so cheesy, the characters are enjoyable (especially Balance and Naga, who are rapidly stealing the show like the thieves they are), and overall it was exactly what I needed, even if jesus fucking christ that's too many rangers, show. Kyuuranger, you need to put some of those back on the shelf. Kyuuranger, your title implies 9 rangers, why did you make it less than ten episodes before contradicting that to add more? Kyuuranger, go home, you're so drunk you can't count.

Super Sentai and Tokusatsu are something that's always sort of floated at my periphery, tempting me with their questionable special effects. I loved (and I mean loved) the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers as a kid, and various shows have been fandoms-in-law over the years. But enstars honestly forced my hand because I fell in love with the super sentai themed unit. I am not immune to characters who have history with cults (thanks Kanata). But how am I supposed to write accurate fic if I don't have ready enough toku knowledge to properly write Chiaki's autistic hyperfocus fanboy ramblings? Obviously the only answer is that I must learn his ways for myself.

I don't have any sort of concrete plan for where I'm going after I finish Kyuuranger, probably just gonna go on vibes. Maybe I'll watch the original Kikaider, since I really enjoyed the anime adaptation when it aired on Adult Swim back in the 00s.

Last night, in sort of the same vein, I finally watched Takashi Miike's ZEBRAMAN, which I purchased on DVD like a decade and a half ago and have only gotten around to watching now. It was a lot of fun, and Miike's horror director eye for how to make a scene uncomfortable was lovingly at play in making us really sit in the lame awkwardness of the main character and his obsession with a short-lived 70's sentai as he rips his cosplay and fails to sneak out of his apartment without eating shit on the pavement before suddenly the alien threat prophesized by the show begins to come to life. I was worried that Miike's comedy might end up feeling meanspirited to the genre, but instead there's just a lot of love there. Also a CGI pegasus unicorn zebra with a laser horn. ZEBRAMAN was fun. XD

This entry has been kind of all over the place and is getting long so I'm gonna wrap it here ^^;;

...actually wait one more thing. I still have not heard back from Our Wars Have Ended, which I am choosing to take as a good sign that means I'm still very much in the running for a part. And, because anxiously waiting for one thing isn't enough, I also did some edits (that largely were me cutting things down for focus/tone) to a short story I've been fussing with for far too long, and submitted it to Three Lobed Burning Eye for potential publication. Fingers crossed!

*now* I'm done for real.

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One goal down!

2025-07-05T01:03:19Z

I have successfully finished recording and submitting my auditions for Our Wars Have Ended!! Woo hoo!!! I randomly woke up feeling ALERT at like 10:30 this morning and went "fuck it" and busted them out.

I'm really hopeful for this- I know that there's probably a lot of people going out for it, but I think the line reads I did were really good. I now just have to figure out how to put it out of my mind and not think about it for the next month and a half XD

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Sunshine Revival #1: 2025 Goals

2025-07-03T20:18:02Z

Huzzah for sunshine_revival~!

Structured challenges like this are always great for making myself update more regularly, and I've been on an upswing so I want to build good habits while I have the energy! That said, here's my fill for the first Sunshine Revival Challenge!

Challenge One: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

Rest up and don't push myself this weekend so I can get over this fucking cold....
- (look I know that doesn't sound like a lot but I am really really bad about making myself rest)
~~Finish recording my auditions for Our Wars Have Ended and submit them before the July 14th deadline~~
- Completed 7/4!!
Remain engaged with Iron Crow Theatre and work with them for at least one show of their 2025-2026 season.
Submit at least one short story for publication.
Publish more fanfic!!!!
- Defeat the sense of "letting people down" if I'm fandom-hopping while posting fic.
- Defeat the sense of shame over writing fics that are outside of my normal purview-- I'm here to have fun!!!
- Take pride and joy in what I'm writing!!!!!!
Max out Stella Maris Kanata.....

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Let me speak first of revelations, then of dark deceit...

2025-06-09T17:17:18Z

So I've mentioned in the past how much I love The Silt Verses. I will continue to emphasize that I think it is one of the best horror podcasts out there, and honestly one of the best narrative ones in general if you have the stomach for it. Seriously, if you like horror, metaphorical critiques of capitalism and religion, slipstream fiction, and/or listening to a woman with a husky Irish accents who is just So Done, then please check it out.

HOWEVER, I'm not actually here to talk about Silt Verses at the moment, at least not directly- I'm here to talk about how they're currently doing casting calls for their new production, Our Wars Have Ended. EEEEEEEE!!!!!!

I've always been interested in doing more voice over work and being involved in a project like this, especially one helmed by this team, would be a fucking dream come true. It's been a hot minute since I last did much acting, especially acting that I'd be doing in a professional capacity, so I've been alternating between "I AM A GOD AND I'VE GOT THIS IN THE BAG" and "oh god oh fuck oh god I'm a fraud" lol. Auditions are, thankfully, being held in a pretty casual, semi-remote manner. Record some line reads for characters you're interested in, include a singing sample if you can carry a tune in a bucket, etc etc. Line read auditions are very much in my wheelhouse- for whatever reason monologue auditions always make me feel more anxious.

Since it's done remotely, and the production will be remote, I'm getting to play with the fancy new mic that we bought recently. It's a bit of an adjustment in terms of figuring out how best to speak/position myself in relation to the mic. I've found that so far I do better when I stand and speak into it because it feels more natural than sitting does. I also discovered that I have the opposite of stage fright, where trying to get going in an empty room without the audience or even the empty auditorium is more awkward to get started. As such, I have appointed a council of plushies to be my audience while I record. I think it's working XDD

Our Wars Have Ended seems like it's gonna have a pretty different, yet similar vibe to The Silt Verses. Again it is set in a world that is similar to our own, but not quite the same, this time with a Regency/Industrial Revolution era vibe. It maintains a similar eye on themes about the dehumanization and exploitation of workers, and on examining the scaffolding of "time honored traditional" power structures. You know, cuz it's set in a world where the dead have begun to rise up, letting the aristocracy become an undying cohort of tyrants and workers be worked to death, revived, and worked down to the bone once more. There's also a good bit of worldbuilding, talk of a revolution, and a sense of treachery and betrayal suggested by the audition materials. It's gonna be gooooood.

The role I'm probably most interested is mid-sized, and not a permanent cast member it seems (I hope they get to suffer a horrible fate because they seem to be just the most delightful bastard), but I wouldn't be... opposed? To getting one of the larger principal cast roles? I'm sort of nervous about time commitment, and again the up and down of if I'm "good enough," but I think there's some good meat that I could get into.

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Because we decided to be "Knights"

2025-05-29T07:34:54Z

DESPERATE CHECKMATE WAS SO GOOD, I LOVE THEATRE RAAAAHHHHH

*ahem*

So as my last few posts have chronicled, then new enstage play is out and after some trials and tribulations I managed to get it to work: ^^ Yay~ And tonight Killian and I sat down to actually watch it.

I think this one may have come for Track to Miracle's "Best Stage Direction/Design" crown. The lighting was impeccable and did great things to highlight the emotional states of the characters. There was less projection in this one than in some of the other enstage plays, but I LOVED the way that they used the moveable stairs. They serve a couple different roles throughout to build the different spaces for the play, but I think one of the most impactful was a scene towards the end where Eichi and Leo talk. Eichi verbally corners Leo, pushing on his insecurities. When Leo tries to blow him off and leave, he turns around only to be stopped by the fact that the center stage passage he had entered through is gone, blocked by the stairs shifting to literally trap him in conversation with Eichi.

This great lighting/blocking design also includes a part of the play I was worried about: the lack of Madara from the cast list. Mama's stage actor unfortunately already had commitments to the Blue Lock stage play that's running right now too, so he was unable to be in Desperate Checkmate. He does, however, provide voice over for Madara.

But, Liz, you may be asking, how does that work for scenes where he needs to physically be there? Why, they dress up a member of the ensemble cast as him, kill the lights on almost all of the stage, and have him appear in silhouette with his back to the audience! It REALLY adds to the air of menace that Madara has in the play- he's this faceless, shadowy figure with a booming voice that overtakes the whole space whenever he appears. VERY choice. VERY fitting for the scenes he's included in. BIG approval from me.

Also just. Damn, there's a lot of Sena pining. Like yeah, I know, Checkmate's pretty gay to start with, but the stage adaptation solidly centers Sena as our POV character/narrator on the events, and so his internal monologue and perceptions color the way that Leo is framed throughout the play. And that framing is Gay. XD

The play does, however, have a similar-but-worse problem to Meteor Impact where there's so much angsty PLOT PLOT PLOT going on for the runtime that there isn't an easy way to insert musical numbers into the play. We get a shortened version of a new stage-only song, "Desperate Checkmate," as our opening, an impassioned performance of "I Hope Meanie Sena Grows Mold All Over His Body And Dies," and "We'll Be Knights" and uhhhhh.... that was about it XD So, again like in Meteor Impact, we just have a mini-concert at the end, featuring not only Knights songs and the new stageplay only enesemble number that we got as our opening, but also a new stage-exclusive duet between Eichi and Tsumugi. Killian and I screamed XD

Or, no, let's be honest: the fannish screaming was saved for "Singin' Shine!" There had been another, slightly less 8D YAAAAY 8D toned new song for the whole cast that felt like it was meant to be an "ending theme," so Killian and I were like, "Oh... :c I guess it makes sense they want something less incessantly peppy for an ending for this and Human Comedy later in the year." BUT THEN IT STARTED UP AND WE SCREAMED SO LOUD IT SCARED OFF OUR CAT XDDD

I just love Singin' Shine, okay, HappyEle plz add it to the game. Why can I only play this song if I go to one of the places near me that has the modded Wacca machines with all the songs unlocked?? Plz all my dias to put it in the game thanks

Anyway, OBS Studio was being a fussy little bitch so we're gonna have to try again to record it, hence why you don't get screencaps to accompany all this rambling. I'm sleepy now so imma sleep and troubleshoot in the morning.

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dragonofeternal

Further thoughts on The Ritual

Writing Technique Geekery

KANATA MAYOI AND NOZOMI IN THE ENSTARS APRIL FOOLS TEASER????

The end of Stargaze was *BAD*

puka~ puka~

hopital,,,,

MADARA MIKEJIMA WHEN I GET YOU----

cracks my skull open

Intern wrangling is always so involved

The curse of immortality...

Blood and Stars

Call off the question from last post!

Emotions aside, there's a lot of good stuff going on~

3SF Fill Roundup #1

Snowflake Challenge #4: Rec the contents of your last page

Trigun Stargaze Ep 2 Thoughts

Snowflake Challenge #3: A Love Letter to Fandom

Snowflake Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

Snowflake Challenge #1: Introduce Yourself

Trigun Stargaze Ep 1 Thoughts!

My cat died, so into the toku rock quarry I go~!

One goal down!

Sunshine Revival #1: 2025 Goals

Let me speak first of revelations, then of dark deceit...

Because we decided to be "Knights"

The end of Stargaze was BAD