just killing time until the world ends

Arts and crafts roundup April/May

2026-05-17T13:55:23Z

Well, we're only halfway through May, but it's about time for another crafts update. Especially since I did some painting over the last few days. Guess I'll go through this mostly in chronological order - if I can still remember it, that is lol

I think I never posted photos of the Wen Ning doll I made, huh? He's technically also not my number one favourite character from Mo Dao Zu Shi (that is incidentally Nie Huaisang, if anyone cares), but I'm still fond of him because he's the cutest zombie ever and a friend of mine really likes him too. And, from a more practical perspective, I had a few skeins of this perfect undead skin colour lying around, so I just started working on his body before planning everything else. Then I had the great idea of buying some aluminium chains since I imagined it would look cool to use real chains instead of crochet ones. And well, it does! I like how he turned out, although the frazzled robe sleeves and torn bottom seam do look a bit weird. But it's the best I could do.

After that I immediately started two more dolls, but this time I wanted to make original characters. I initially thought of a pair of Chinese princesses, but then I found other yarn I could use for the hairdos in my stash and thus these two were born. The left one is kind of mermaid princess in human form, and it was a lot of fun to make all these braids for her hair. It now looks kinda snake-like too, so I unofficially called her Medusa. Her friend is supposed to be a pirate, but I guess she'd need a hat for that... Her hair is also pretty nice and I braided the top portion into two braids, which is admittedly hard to see in the pictures. For the laughs I referred to her as "Fergie" during the creation process...that's what her being a bit of a redhead and watching lots of old HIGNFY episodes with mentions of 90s British royal scandals does to you, lol.

Anyway, I now banned myself from dollmaking for the moment. I don't have space left for big ones anymore, but I might want to make a few smaller ones. I just recently dusted off the mid-sized ones and they are really quite cute...

Next up I moved on to a bunch of diamond painting kits I had lying around. I've got too many cat-themed ones when I don't even particularly like cats... The top one is pretty nice though (when I bought it it said that it's supposed to glow in the dark, but I don't think it does - still pretty), and even the bottom one turned out cuter than I expected.

Then I pulled out a colouring picture on canvas. This has also been lying around forever. I started to colour it in with acrylic paints, which didn't go terribly well. You can clearly see which bits of it were done with paint... I used alcohol markers for the rest and damn, they worked so well on a canvas! I could never quite get the hang of using them on paper for colouring things, but that was such a nice experience!

And so I continued to experiment with the markers. First off I did the smaller thing on some watercolour paper - well, it's alright too, but not quite as good. Then I used a canvas panel and made the picture with the weird irregular star shapes, lol. Also pretty nice! But a proper stretched canvas seems to work best. I don't have too many of those at home though, so I couldn't do any further experiments so far.

Which is why I moved on to a proper, acrylic painting. I meant to paint some kind of galaxy for a while now, and when I found pretty purple and silver rhinestones (I think that's what they are called?) at the crafts shop I finally did it. It's a bit hard to see, but I stuck the rhinestones on the darker spots in the middle of the painting. Sort of like star constellations. Looks nice in real life!

Finally I also fiddled around with some of the beads and pearls and stuff I got at home. I made some nice ear clips and a bracelet for myself, and a pearl necklace for my second big Finch plushie Birbie. (She says hello, by the way - I never properly introduced her in one of my "Paul's Diary" Finch posts, did I...)

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This is another rant post, don't bother with it

2026-05-13T12:40:35Z

( Read more... )

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cooperscreosote @ 2026-05-09T17:05:00

2026-05-09T15:14:21Z

Meh. I had such a wonderfully relaxed afternoon - I worked on a diamond painting kit while listening to one of my favourite ASMR artists - and then the incredible yelling woman started her bullshit again. She's still banging on about how disappointed she was about her last birthday and keeps telling me that she'll "always remember that". I know how vindictive you are, no need to tell me all the time. God, this is still all so annoying, but it's kind of freeing to talk about this from time to time, so please bear with me. I sometimes talk to something like a mental health counsillor, but I only have an appointment every few weeks and it's also quite hard to tell these things to someone in actual real life. Writing it down is easier, really.

Anyway. I would like to continue playing Tomodachi Life right now, but I can't because I don't want to play without sound and I can't link my headphones to the Switch because they need to be connected to the computer for white noise blasting, of course. Well, shit, I'm going to have to wait until later.

And just for the laughs, here's a picture of my current island population. I think it's pretty obvious which ones I designed myself and which ones I created using a guide I found online...

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Finally a way to live out my god complex...

2026-05-07T12:47:43Z

...aka the full version of Tomodachi Life finally arrived on Tuesday and I spent the last two days doing lots of stupid things in the game, haha.

I literally can't look at this picture without giggling uncontrollably. SHEEPIES!!!

Well, anyway. I'm super bad at recreating characters and celebrities for the game, but it's so much fun even if they look weird. There's a lot of wacky stuff going on and I love how the food and other items look super realistic in contrast to the cartoony characters themselves. Speaking of cartoony, just look at some of the gays I created for my island so far (there's such a lack of women on the island so I really had to make most of them gay or bisexual for some romance to happen lol):

But of course one thing that happened is especially important:

Whoops, sorry, wrong picture! It's actually this here. Congrats on the marriage, guys <3

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Merton Monday #7.5

2026-05-04T12:30:18Z

We can't really count this one, can we? But it was too tempting to give another Tomodachi Life demo update, lol.

Insane things are happening on Demo Island (lol) (no, I still don't have the real game but it was shipped today aaaah):

First off Ian and Paul had some great fun. Well, they do like frolicking through fields, so why not a fun game of tag? (Ian kept tripping over his feet though lmao)

And then Paul wanted to give me a nickname. I guess we'll announce our wedding soon /blushes

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To make this post less pointless...did you know that Paul called Ian "daddy" once? 8D Here's proof!

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My Finch made me do this

2026-05-03T16:09:08Z

Today's task for the monthly Finch challenge is to send a song to someone I am thinking about. Well, I'm hereby thinking about you, dear Dreamwidth friends ;) So here are two songs I picked from my current playlist. Apart from the occasional K-pop I mostly listen to very old stuff these days...

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Monthly reads: April 2026

2026-05-02T15:21:09Z

Still a bit too much nerdy stuff for my tastes, but I just can't bring myself to read anything else these days. I wish I could get back into all of these classics on my TBR pile...no such luck so far though.

Books

Legend of Exorcism vol. 4 (Fei Tian Ye Xiang)
I...honestly can't remember a lot about this because I read it at the start of the month, which feels ages ago, lol. There was some intrigue at the beginning and then it had a very steamy sex scene I did not expect...and then it petered out a little. Li Bai was very funny though, I do remember that very vividly. Anyway, I'm really going to wait until all remaining volumes are out until I continue reading.

Joyful Reunion vol. 1 (Fei Tian Ye Xiang)
I liked the first volume well enough - it was great that the story wasn't lingering too much on Duan Ling getting bullied in his childhood, that's something I hate so much in fictional stories. (I read a few before where it was described in meticulous detail and...thanks but no thanks)
Anyway, then I saw some spoilers for the next volume(s) and flipped through vol2 and immediately lost all interest, lol. What do you mean, I have to read 5 more volumes with the MC having to hide his identity even from his love interest and has to suffer to who knows what while someone else assumes his identity? That does not sound good at all :/ Meh. Unfortunately I bought the first three volumes before knowing about this and now I really don't know. Guess I'll read something else first, and maybe come back to this later. Or not, who knows. I'm definitely not in the mood for this kind of plot now - and maybe never. The writing is good as usual though, so maaaaaybe I can muster the motivation somehow.

Twin Jades of Jiangdong vol. 1 (Fei Tian Ye Xiang)
Alright, so this one is also a perfectly fine series and I liked the historical bits of it. Unfortunately I just don't care about the main couple. They're friends and maybe brothers, but I cannot see them as a couple, sorry. So, dunno. This is only a two volume series, but I might not buy the second volume since I really don't need to know what happens to these guys. Well, maybe when I'm bored.

The Wife Comes First vol. 1 (Lv Ye Qian He)
Oooooh, I really enjoyed this one! From the blurb on the back I thought there would be more relationship trouble between the two, but they deal with that pretty quickly and actually talk about their misunderstandings. Whoa! (Ironically the volume ends on a huge misunderstanding, but I'm sure it will be cleared up right in the first chapter of the next book, so I don't mind.) All the court intrigues in this story are also very, well...intriguing, so I'm looking forward to more.

Kawase Hasui: Capturing the Soul of Japan
I am a huge fan of Kawase Hasui's artworks, but unfortunately I never got my hands on the only other English-language book about his works that was released a few years ago. So I was happy to get this one - it was a delight to look at all these wonderful pictures and learn more about their creation process. I'm by no means an art nerd (although I did something like an arts GCSE exam and passed with the best grade :P), but his works just speak to me in a special way. So I'll probably get this book out every now and then to have another look at beautiful, calming Japanese landscapes <3

Manga

It's been ages since I started reading a manga series and really, truly loved it. Now it happened again when I finally started Wind Breaker. I've been meaning to give it a try for ages and now I finally bought the first few volumes. Well, I immediately had to buy more, because I enjoyed it so much! I love delinquent stories in general, but e.g. Tokyo Revengers had all the time travel stuff which I didn't always enjoy all that much (even though I still really like TokRev too, of course!). So I'm glad that this series has a more straightforward approach to the subject. I read that people were whining that the protagonists are actually "good delinquents" which is supposedly boring. To which I just want to respond: no, it isn't, lol. I actually quite like that approach, and how the series also deals with deeper themes like feeling like an outcast and having to fight until you find a place where you truly belong. That always strikes a chord with me, because I never found such a place or my people. Yet the manga didn't make me feel sad. On the contrary, it was even oddly uplifting. Well, and the battle action is amazing too. I wish I could buy the next volumes ASAP, but I really shouldn't for money reasons. But I think the arc I'm currently in is almost completely out in the German version, which I picked for this series. (Just because it's a bit cheaper, but thankfully the translation is pretty good.)

And since I was already in a shonen mood, I pulled some Boku no Hero Academia volumes from the TBR pile. I'm happy to say that I enjoyed the first volume of the manga more than the first few episodes of the anime - which I generally didn't like all that much, so dunno why I wanted to give the manga one more try. Maybe because I like the characters and would like to see more of them, despite my gripes about the series. Anyway, yeah, it took me a moment to get used to the drawing style, but it actually fits the theme pretty well. Next up I read the only volume I had of the spinoff Smash!!, which was pretty fun. Didn't expect that as it seemed rather silly at first. Not sure I'll read the whole thing though, because the volumes are kind of hard to get. Alternatively I continued with the other spinoff/prequel thingy Vigilante. I rather enjoy this one too, and the main characters are already growing on me. Very curious about what will happen next in regards to Knuckleduster and his daughter, really.

The rest of my reading were bits and bobs from the pile and also some newly released volumes I preordered and wanted to read (more or less) immediately. Manga Love Story was good fun as usually - I'm still amazed by the fact that a sad old possible asexual spinster like me read over 80 volumes of a manga about sex. Then again, I'm very interest in sex as a concept, even if I'm not practice doing it, lol. I also quite enjoyed the first volume of Ladies on Top - dunno, but you don't often read a story about a dominant woman and a submissive boyfriend (at least not in the non-hentai section). I think their relationship is rather cute and I hope they'll find a way to deal with their problems since they clearly love each other!

A manga that's also rather sexy is Atami Michinoku's Caligula series. This one had uncensored sex scenes and there aren't the usual black oblongs or light saber dicks obscuring the action, so it was a thrilling read too. Not just because of the sex, but also because of the story as one of the main characters get blackmailed. I also read another boys love one shot (or was it the beginning of a series? MAL says so, but there's so volume number on the book itself) which was pretty different: Send Them a Farewell Gift for the Lost Time. Here we meet a couple who is just going through the pains of a break-up. But as the love is still clearly there it might not be final quite yet. I enjoyed this different perspective on a relationship and couldn't help rooting for them. Honestly, I wouldn't mind reading more of this, but it also works perfectly well as a one-shot.

Finally there were three volumes of one of my favourite manga series ever: Young Bride's Story. It's just sooo good and somewhat unique. I mean, how many manga series tell the story of various women in 19th century Central Asia and their different struggles in finding a husband - and hopefully also happiness? The drawing style is also wonderful and every volume is a delight. I hope the German publisher didn't drop the series though as they still haven't announced volume 15. I know the series is on hiatus after that, but come on, just give me that volume... (I still need to buy vol14 though, lol.)

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This is but a hell of a dream

2026-05-01T14:47:29Z

It's not Monday, but: I had another slightly weird dream about Paul, although I can't remember a lot of visual details about it. Anyway, he was a contestant on Taskmaster (oh god, if we'd only finally see that in reality!) and so was I for some reason...at least I was there too and I don't think I was a member of the production crew or something? The two things that stayed with me is that Paul was sort of rude during the tasks, although in a funny way (I wish I could remember what the tasks were), but it felt a bit unusual for him. And the other thing was that I worried that people would think I was trying to copy him - which I totally was, as I remembered my dream self pulling the most silly/flowery shirts out of the wardrobe on purpose...and I probably mentioned it before, but I've got what I call a sort of 90s Paul Merton haircut like the one he has on this post's icon, lmao. Anyway, that was an experience. I was weirdly stressed out and anxious during the last days, so that was what my brain produced as a result, I guess.

And now I'm working on my comedy career, because I really want to be on Taskmaster one day :P

(Also, new HIGNFY episode today! I really enjoy the current series!)

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I uploaded a bunch of new chapters for my dumb HIGNFY pirate AU that had a total wordcount of over 30k, all more or less written during April. I really am insane, especially given that I still feel very ashamed for this story. But there are some nice new additions, like one of the protagonists turning into a merman (guess who) and a female pirate called Frances Drake. I am very proud of this one, lol.

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As a final thought, here's a funny screenshot I made today when playing Genshin Impact. This is how it feels to talk to a lot of younger people online when you're in your 30s, haha. (I love Ororon though. He can call me his granny any day 8D)

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Merton Monday #7

2026-04-27T14:49:59Z

Oh whatever, I'm just going to give the damn things numbers now!

Today's issue of Merton Monday is going to be a bit silly and really only sort of related... But anyway, I heard about a newly released game called Tomodachi Life. Never played the old version on the Nintendo DS (or was it 3DS? I really didn't give a toss lol), but now I found out that the game is available for the normal old Switch and not just the Switch 2, so I got curious. And of course my first idea was to create not very accurate looking versions of Ian, Paul and Angus :D Unfortunately the physical version of the game is currently sold out everywhere and I don't like digital-only versions, so I decided to have some fun with the demo version for now. And now you have to look at all the fun I had, lol.

So, here we go.

The number of times I dreamed about ruffling Paul's hair when it looked especially cute on the show...this is my kind of niche content already!

He would never! >:D

I did what I could when I created Ian, which was unfortunately not very much, haha. Anyway, they're best friends after like 5 minutes, they're going to be a couple in no time (or they would if that was possible in the demo version). And I taught him "blimey" as some sort of catchphrase, lol.

Entirely possible! (then again, how would he recognise the real Ian from the guy he knows lol)

He might do that actually...

Shady means? I gifted you the bloody thing, nothing shady about that!

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cooperscreosote @ 2026-04-25T17:16:00

2026-04-25T15:22:36Z

I KNOW I said I wouldn't rant anymore, but damn. Just don't read this or something.

My mother keeps banging on about how she saw some stupid woman from the neighbourhood (and that woman is indeed stupid & we've been having trouble with her since I was a child lol), and how she runs around with her daughter and grandchild and how much she abhors them, yadda yadda. I wish she'd cut it out because it's a) boring me to death because I don't care and b) because I strongly suspect that she's at least a bit jealous. And I don't need a constant reminded of how much of a failure I am as a daughter. I'm not even a real woman, let alone attractive enough to ever find a man and have children. Not that I want children - my health problems would make me unable to care for them in a way they'd deserve and to ensure that they'd grow up in a better way than I did; and I also really don't like children, sorry. (Plus I'm a bit too old to have children anyway as I'm already in my 30s.) I would probably consider it to make her happy, but it's just not something I can provide for her, like so many things. Well, damn, I really am a failure, I guess.

Speaking of being in my thirties: the shittiest day of the year aka my birthday isn't far away. Well, three months or so, but...I'm still hoping for some miracle to happen so that I don't have to live through this day since I'm going to hit the middle of this decade this time. (Just writing that is enough to make me want to puke!) It's just too much. I don't want to be this old and still be a huge loser, I'm way better off not being there at all! So that's at least something to wish for, I guess.

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I'm also trying to be more respectful since my mother keeps complaining that I talk too much and that she often forgets what she wanted to say because "she can't get a word in". Which is very much not true, I should say - yes, I sometimes babble too much, but when she wants to say something I always immediately pause and tell her to go first. But as this clearly wasn't enough I'm now trying to wait to say what I want to say until she is quiet for a few moments - however, I found that it's now me who can't get a word in. Sometimes I try to say something that's longer than one sentence or so and am constantly interrupted, so that I ultimately don't bother. Well, I guess I should learn from that and don't tell her things anymore. She never minded me babbling about my hobbies, but I guess these golden days are over. Now it's just her getting angry and randomly repeating her usual phrases in the middle of conversations. At least the one thing I am good at is giving in, haha.

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Something something monday

2026-04-20T14:07:16Z

I really am not good at this title thing, lol.

Anyway, we didn't have a Merton Monday in a while. Thankfully my subconscious decided to send me a timely reminder this week: my dreams are usually a hellscape of memories from my horrendous school days with a bit of fun like getting stuck on lifts and encountering all sorts of stressful stuff mixed in. I almost never have dreams of, say, TV shows or games I'm currently watching/playing. But last night I actually dreamed of Paul, who was a bus driver for some reason and smiled at me when I talked to him. Aww <3 We also seemed to be familiar with each other and this dream was almost as good as the one when I was on some school trip and for some reason Ian was there and we talked to each other the entire time because everyone else annoyed us so much, lmao.

And to make sure that this isn't just a post about a silly dream I had, here's something from my folder of interesting Youtube stuff: a video of a young stand-up comedian called Paul Martin. Well, I guess his name is similar enough for him to get featured here ;D ;D ;D

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Ow, ow, ow...

2026-04-16T10:52:13Z

You know what despair feels like? When you've got an ongoing headache for three days or so and you want to watch an ASMR headache relaxation video, but you can't because a certain woman is yelling in the background. Seriously, she does not shut up even if she knows I'm feeling bad, which is kinda...selfish? Usually she's not a selfish person, but apparently my wellbeing doesn't have to be considered. Well, time to blast the ears with white noise - which makes the headache worse, but so does her yelling - and pop another pill then, even more than usual :/ (I know I complained about this just a few days ago, but it is an ongoing problem!)

To make this post less pointless, here are some ASMR videos I enjoyed so far. It doesn't help for super bad headaches, but sometimes the videos can give me some extra relief after I've taken a painkiller and wait for it to kick in.

( Read more... )

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I don't even know what this post is, honestly

2026-04-13T11:22:47Z

Started doing another doll because I had the brilliant idea that this grey yarn I bought a while ago would be the perfect skin tone for fierce corpse!Wen Ning. I'm even debating to buy some aluminium chains so that I can chain up this very dangerous zombie, haha.

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Is anyone here still doing Wordle? I am (and Worldle too, for that matter). Been doing it for ages, and I'm proud to say the times where I didn't guess the words can be counted on one hand. Given that I'm not a native speaker and that my English is rather bad that is sort of impressive.

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It's been over three weeks now and I still didn't get a chance to pay for that damn rename token. This is stressing me out so much since I'm really not good with being in debt - I always make sure to solve such issues ASAP and e.g. repay people on the next day so that I don't need to worry about it anymore. But since that wasn't an option here it's still weighing on my mind and I haaaaate it so much. (I also haven't found the motivation to manually transfer the posts I want to keep to a second account so that I can delete this one, but that's another matter aka me being lazy.)

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Tumblr really is the worst social media website around. The amount of terrible takes on this site is insane, you get insulted for the smallest things and the worst thing is, its userbase thinks that they are super open minded and nice when every second post goes like "anyone who does thing XY should kill themselves, really". Fucking hell, these people...

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Speaking of Tumblr, I saw this really sappy post about how your friends love you a lot more than you'd think. Well, must be nice to have such close friends, huh? I wish I would have been given the chance to be a good friend to someone, but alas, I was always the unwanted one at school and really everywhere. I mean, there is a reason why I'm pretty bitter - over 30 years of being universally despised by your peers does that to you.

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Oh god, it's another doll...

2026-04-10T14:43:17Z

Let's start this entry with a funny picture no one of you will understand. Except if anyone here has watched both The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi and Whispers of Fate?

( Some spoiler-y context for the curious )

Anyway, the gentleman on the left is my latest doll, and it's obviously Jiang Cheng. He's not my number one favourite from MDZS, but I always liked him quite a bit. And he wears purple, which is a great bonus, lol.

I love his little angry expression, haha. After all the smiling dolls it was time for something different - and he's clearly thinking of Wei Wuxian at the moment ;) I also meant to make Zidian for him, but a simple whip looks boring and I haven't yet found a good way to make it purple and sparking, so...

Well, anyway, he turned out alright. And let me finish this post with a guest appearance from Paul. He hasn't popped up in quite a while, huh? Poor little birb. Cheep!

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It's a pain!

2026-04-08T17:52:26Z

I probably mentioned before that my mother never shuts up or even just yells a bit less loud when I have an headache - which is admittedly pretty often, so I can't expect her to show consideration every single time, but it would be nice if I feel especially bad. Anyway, now she has an headache and I immediately quietened down because I KNOW how shitty yelling feels in such a situation. And what does she say to honour my consideration? "You be quiet and don't you dare annoying me now, today it's me who's got a headache!"

Well, what I mean to say is: these normal people who don't know a thing about chronic pain are truly fascinating. They often don't give a toss about people who suffer regularly, but then they feel bad one time and demand that the world stops turning because of them. Wow.

Oh, and guess what? She's still yelling herself despite having an headache. Amazing to behold, dunno.

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cooperscreosote @ 2026-04-06T12:30:00

2026-04-06T10:33:45Z

Look, I'm in the new Finch event! My head definitely has just straw and no brains inside (and that's certainly very embarrassing lol)

Anyway, I've been thinking about doing the stupid positivity posts again, the ones I did last year. But I don't know, just the thought makes my stomach churn. And so do most of the self-acceptance exercises I read about...it's sickening to think that I should just forgive myself for major fuck-ups like e.g. the recent rename token debacle or that lost bus ticket. How am I supposed to learn to be a good and responsible adult if I don't hold myself, well, responsible? What's with this namby-pamby approach of "oh, whatever, everyone does mistakes sometimes"? Can't wrap my head around this, it's just insane.

So well, I've got no idea if I should try giving this shit another try. In a way it just feels like torturing myself, and why would I want to do that? :/

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Monthly reads: March 2026

2026-04-03T13:02:45Z

Ugh, another month is over, which means another book post. Why are these the most boring posts to write? :/

Books

I'm not even the greatest Star Wars fan - or rather I wouldn't consider myself an actual fan at all - but I have seen the original trilogy. So there was an surprising amount of information I recognised when I read this chronicle of the whole saga. And well, I got the book for free, so it was definitely worth the read. Maybe I'll get back to Star Wars one day and actually delve deeper into its universe, who knows.

Well, and apart from that I only read a few danmei books. Recently I've been on a spree with those - I bought a few more first volumes to check out various series, but it was mostly the series by Arise Zhang that captivated me. Glad to see that Seven Seas licensed so much of his stuff - I've got volumes of three more series of his on my pile! Anyway. First I read through all three volumes of Dinghai Fusheng Records I had already at home. Honestly, I didn't think I would like it all that much in the beginning of the story, but then it really grew on me and now I really want to continue reading. Seems like Xiang Shu found out some certain important thing about Chen Xing right near the end there, so...this is going to be interesting. I can't read on right now since the next volume isn't even out yet and I really shouldn't buy more books before I'm done with the current pile, but yeah.
After I was done with that I switched back to Legend of Exorcism, and at first I was like, well, I enjoy this series but I would've preferred to go on with DFR. But then things heated up quickly and I enjoyed the read a lot. I like how both series have a doomed protagonists whom I expect to be saved through the power of gay love - but not before a lot of dramatic stuff happens to them, haha. I also found that I don't care so much about the relationship progress between Li Jinglong and Hongjun, even though I like them together. Strange. Well, I've got one more volume of this series around, which I'm currently reading...and then I might try to make myself wait until all volumes of the series are out for binging purposes. Same for DFR, really.

(god, that picture is shit...sorry)

Manga

Well, I made some progress with the TBR pile, but some of those were also preorders I read right away, so it's a bit of everything. My main read of the month was Edens Zero, which I still enjoy a lot. The manga sometimes veers into quite dark territory for a shonen series and I enjoy the afterwords by the mangaka. He says that he makes up a lot of plot and character stuff as he works on the manga, and I can really related to that as that's also how I write my stories, haha. Dunno, maybe that's why I like it so much. But now I'm wondering why I never continued the anime years ago. Maybe it just fell into that phase where I suddenly lost all motivation to watch any anime...
As for the rest of the stuff: A School Frozen in Time was a pretty dark read, with all the talk of suicide and other heavy themes. In the end it didn't really satisfy me though. Oh well, so we all feel pretty bad that our classmate died, and if we only had known then we would've cared about her more, but what we really care about is our other friend who's still alive and...well, yeah. I hope that wasn't too spoilery, but I didn't like that. The mystery was sort of compelling though, I have to admit that. I was disappointed to find out that the Langoliers incident isn't really an actual thing, like they pretended in the manga!
I also gave the Twisted Wonderland franchise a try. I'm too unmotivated to actually play the mobile game (who knows if my old phone could even run it anyway...), so the manga sounds like a good alternative. I am not a Disney adult at all, but I love the character designs and the whole theme and everything, so I enjoy it a lot. Unfortunately the German volumes are rather expensive because they are hardbacks instead of paperbacks like most manga, so I can't buy the final volume of the first episode right now. I want to know what happens though, aaaaah!
Detective Conan is a series I've been reading for so many years now, but I still enjoy it. Well, mostly - some cases are a bit boring and I keep forgetting plot points (all these secret identities and who is working for the baddies and the goodies again?). Still, it's good fun and one day I will reread it all. The same goes for One Piece - dunno, but I love this series. I'm not super thrilled about the new arc yet (Elban), but I don't doubt that it will excite me just as much as the previous ones if I give it a chance. I can't even imagine that this series will end one day, but we are moving towards the grand finale, aren't we? D: To finish off this shonen threesome, I also read the latest volume of Dragon Ball Super. I love Dragon Ball, what can I say? Yes, some episodes of Super aren't as good as the old stuff, but I still enjoy every new volume, so that's alright with me.
After all that shonen action I needed a bit of other stuff and went for...well, more action. Volume 4 of The War of Greedy Witches was just as great as its predecessors. This is just pure fanservice without a lot of frills, so I could see why some people might find it boring. But it's just exactly my thing and I love the way the mangaka portrayed all these great women from history! Speaking of great women, Gunsmith Cats Burst is another series with strong female characters. While I have sort of an interest of fast cars and weapons I'm not really an aficionado, but I enjoy learning a bit about car engines and various gun ammo types through this manga. So far Burst is just as entertaining as the predecessor, which is nice. And I know this three series theme is getting boring, but here's a third series with lots of women: Cat's Eye. I wasn't super excited when I read the first omnibus volume, but I'm glad I got the second one after all. It is an enjoyable read, and due to the episodic nature it's nice to read a chapter every now and then. Looking forward to more, the next volumes are already preordered.
To stay with the women theme for a further moment, I also enjoyed the latest volumes of Murcielago and Asumi-chan is interested in Lesbian Brothels! (Fun story: while tidying up my mother accidentally saw a volume of the latter series and read the title...now that was embarassing, lol. People already think I'm a lesbian because I like wearing plaid shirts, now she might as well join in in the allegations, haha.) The sexy brothel trips were steamy and exciting as usual (what else am I going to say about it?), but I must say that I didn't really like that one Murcielago arc about the crazed painter. That one girl who does online gaming streams - I mercifully forgot her name already lol - was too crazed even for this series standards :/ Thankfully the new arc looks better, phew.
Finally I also delved into some Boys Love. Delinquent Daddy & Tender Teacher is now over, which makes me a bit sad as it was a cute series. But I'm not too good with sort of realistic BL, so I'm not sure I'll re-read it. Same goes for Sasaki and Miyano, although I can stand this one better since it's about teenagers and not working adults and thus not as close to my own life. (Yes, I'm weird.) And then I tried the first volume of I Cannot Reach You. Dunno, but I expected this to be rather serious and dramatic (no idea why, just one of these misconceptions, I guess) even though it's actually quite funny. The constant miscommunication between them might get annoying quickly though, so I hope I'll actually enjoy the series as it goes on.

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Random HIGNFY thoughts

2026-04-02T16:11:44Z

The new HIGNFY series starts tomorrow, yay! I was a bit worried when I couldn't find any information on the new series until like two weeks ago, so it was a relief when the info popped up on Wikipedia. I mean, I rewatch the old stuff all the time so it wouldn't be super horrible if there weren't any new series anymore, but it's still great to have new episodes every time.

Speaking of HIGNFY, this is what mental illness looks like:

Yeah. I mean, what should I say about this? A sad way to spend the last three years of my life, but it's probably too late for regrets. There's still a bit of stuff in the pipeline too, so I'll reach the 100 soon... And I'm pretty sure the total wordcount is already higher than a million. My total wordcount on AO3 is about 1.7 million, and since many of the HIGNFYs are longfics...

And even worse, I started writing another episode for that horrible pirate AU. Guess who gets turned into a mermaid...er, merman by a magical pearl? Yeah. Well, I never said that I'm of sound mind, did I?

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The Finch app is bullying me

2026-04-01T12:16:55Z

Last month had such a nice spring cleaning challenge where you had to do a daily task to earn a badge. So I was looking forward to this month's challenge theme, but I was so disappointed when I saw it: it's friends! Calling your friends and messaging them to ask how their day was and whatever. Well, great, only that I don't have friends! Certainly none I could just send a message at random! Now my birb won't get his monthly badge and I feel I failed him as his human :'(

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cooperscreosote @ 2026-03-31T17:12:00

2026-03-31T15:15:39Z

Alright, so I went through all of my entries and fixed the image links. This is not something I want to do ever again, honestly :/ I have no idea whether there is any way to avoid this problem, but I think DW should at least mention it in the text on the "change username" screen. I mean, it's probably obvious that links would also include image links, but I think it would be pointing out for the especially thick part of the userbase (= me).

I also found out that I can simply copy the image links into posts of another account and they still work like normal. Which is another really obvious thing of course, but you can never know with this site...

Also, it's been more than 10 days and I still couldn't repay my debt for the rename token. This isn't doing me any good, frankly. I hope the situation can finally be resolved very soon. (I'm wondering if I should sent a second message asking for a payment option again, any thoughts on this?)

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cooperscreosote @ 2026-03-29T17:34:00

2026-03-29T15:37:57Z

Many thanks to bloody Dreamwidth for not telling me that all the embedded images would stop showing up in my posts when I changed the username! There was no mention of that on the name change site, so I thought it wouldn't be a problem. (I'm sorry for being fucking stupid, alright?) That's what I get for not being a bitch and hogging the damn name for myself by linking it to the new one.

Excuse the language, but I'm so fed up with this shit, really.

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Mediocre crafts, anyone?

2026-03-29T15:07:35Z

I still can't get the bloody crossposting to work :/ So before I despair over this stuff here's an update with the latest stuff I made. Not that anyone cares, including me, haha.

This is a case study in how far expectations and results can be removed from each other. I wanted the cute monkey from the box (and he really is damn cute!), but what I got is, well...not all that cute. I wish I would just learn something from my failures and stop buying these damn crochet sets! (The cute monkey though! I love monkeys!)

I also finally painted a bunch of styrofoam rabbits I had lying around since last year. It's fascinating how I couldn't use my best paintbrushes for this because the paint simply wouldn't stick, but using some old cheap things I keep as a reserve worked just fine. Huh.

Finally I painted a picture. Before anyone believes that I can suddenly paint well, this is again shamelessly copied from a Kawase Hasui piece. Although it looks kind of okay because I got the proportions and colours mostly right. This is the biggest painting I did so far by the way, the canvas measures about 40 x 50 cm.

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cooperscreosote @ 2026-03-28T16:45:00

2026-03-28T15:48:45Z

I can't figure out how configuring a crossposting account works. I think I'm supposed to enter the password for the target account, but somehow it keeps giving me error messages (mainly "invalid password"). Dunno if I'll sort this out anytime soon (hopefully), but I can't think right now for headache reasons.

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innitmarvellous -> cooperscreosote

2026-03-27T14:47:42Z

Oh damn, I'm going to hell for this. At least twice over, I just know it. There is just so much guilt my conscience can deal with and I hit my limit. Should've called myself "absconding debtor", really.

If anyone thinks the changed username is too close to another one you know I BEG you to tell me now, so that I can delete this account IMMEDIATELY before I have to run into the same passive aggressive accusations and trouble all over again. I can't go through all of this again. I LITERALLY BEG YOU. I will disappear from DW and from my whole online presence, just say the word. I did my best to check for any close spellings and whatever, but I just couldn't be 100% sure I covered them all. Please, please, please do not think that I am trying to copy anyone or pretend to be them to cause others pain and trouble. I would literally never even dare to do that. Again, please tell me if I fucked up again and I'll delete the account in the same second.

Well, and now that shit username is gone, but I can't say I feel a lot of relief since I just traded one problem for another, really. Really, how in the world am I ever going to repay this debt? Another situation where I just aren't given a chance to make up for my mistakes, and I find these especially stressful to deal with.

And now I am going to have a cry. Too much stress in the last few days.

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Help... #2

2026-03-25T22:50:04Z

I wish I had any clue about how this site works, but alas...

Is there any way to export posts from a DW account and import them into a new one? I would like to keep my posts when I delete this account and make a new one, but I couldn't find a definitive solution for this. There is an export function, but I couldn't find a guide on how to import the XML files into a new account so dunno if it's even possible (plus I'd love to have some information on what will be included in the files - e.g. will my photos, tags etc be gone since it sounds like it...)

Frankly, if all the stuff I posted in a year will be gone I might not even want to make a new account. That would be rather annoying, so it would be great if there's a solution.

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