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Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

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Another FastCAT!

Bella got to go to another FastCAT today!

(I was at work... had to go in early, with the understanding that someone would come in and cover the second part of the day so I could leave early. She did come in... and then said she had to leave early to take her fiance to the airport. *sigh* So I had a long day, having to go in early and stay late. But theoretically I get to leave early tomorrow! Still, would rather have been at FastCAT, ha.)

Beaft.

Look how good she did!

Neither is her fastest time, but this is the first time that both her runs have been under 11 seconds. Yay, Bella!

(Both pictures are from Alex.)

Alex said he might take her back on Sunday to run again, just to take advantage of the opportunities before it gets too cold. I think there are usually still some events being held over the winter, but if it's too cold, no one wants to stand around waiting to run, haha.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

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Monthlyish pet pics - 3 of 3 - The invertebrates!

Part three of the periodic pet pictures. This time, the invertebrates!

We still have all three of the katydids.

They still love their green beans!

Three and Green Bean II had been clicking at each other quite a lot. While she'd never really responded to Clickbait, she was replying to Three when he'd click at her. So we let them have a "date" in the same enclosure for a while, and within about five minutes they got down to it.

Two pictures of sexy katydid sex:

That's Three in front, and Green Bean II behind him.

And you can see the uh... gift, he handed back to her.

After that we separated them back to their own enclosures.

But later evidence of their success:

Some fresh katydid eggs!

Generally the eggs overwinter. None of the ones laid last year hatched, which could be because they weren't fertile, or it could have been because they didn't get a chance to overwinter properly, and staying at room temperature all winter wasn't enough for their development. We may try putting these in my mom's garage for the season to see if they'll hatch in the spring.

And one more invertebrate:

The unnamed spider:

I accidentally kidnapped this poor spider several weeks ago. I went out to cut some new branches for the katydids and accidentally brought it inside, so I put it in a spare enclosure for the night. But then it immediately got chilly, and I was afraid of freezing the poor thing...

So now he's been staying in the spare habitat eating some of Guava Splash's fruit flies.

One more spider pic:

Delicious fruit flies.

So there's the pet updates!

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in which I say something nice about my job while knocking on wood

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Fannish Fifty #34: Highlander (reboot yay!)

I loved Highlander the first time I saw it. I won't claim it's great cinema, but it's an solid B action movie with a fabulous soundtrack. And the Queen album Some Kind of Magic is one of my favorites.

The follow-up movies, some good, some incredibly painful and horrible. It's a franchise that's always had my affection, despite its missteps.

I really enjoyed the TV series until the last season. Adrian Paul, so hot. All the various takes on immortality and what it would mean to live so long, very interesting. Stan Kirsch killing himself, still so heartbreaking.

Eh, less thrilled about The Raven spinoff. There might have been an animated series? I didn't see it.

I was definitely fannish about the franchise, though I never read a lot of the fanfic. Now I wonder why I didn't fall into Duncan/Methos, because they were definitely appealing.

The reboot is in pre-production. I saw first that Henry Cavill would play Connor, seems an excellent choice. Looking today at the rest of the cast... Russell Crowe in the Sean Connery role of Ramirez. I assume he will do a better Spanish accent, since he can't do worse. (Though Sean being a Spaniard with a Scottish accent is one of the movie's charms imo.) Karen Gillan as Connor's love Heather, she can nail a Scottish accent. Dave Bautista filling Clancy Brown's role as the Kurgan. Hmmm. He's certainly big and powerful, will he be as good being evil? Can anyone be as good at evil as Clancy?

My biggest hope is that they decide to keep the level of 'cut away as the sword is raised and of course, there's no blood afterwards.' Highlander 2 had to show those rolling heads, one of the reasons it was horrible.

And I hope some nod to the original music, everyone should watch Freddie being the consummate showman he was.

Watch on YouTube

I don't know when it's coming out, but unless there's something incredibly weird about the trailer, I will be there first week.

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daily life

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Current Mood: excited

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fic or treat

Fic or Treat!

ficortreat

Riella's Door

DW username:

autobotscoutriella

Light is on for: Anybody wandering by! Feel like stopping by twice? Go right ahead.

What's in the Bowl? Short ficlets/drabbles for Transformers, Ace Attorney, or Redwall, cat pictures, random shark facts

Let Me Know: I can write drabbles for just about anything Transformers Bayverse/Prime/Animated/IDW/G1, Ace Attorney 1-6, and any Redwall book, but please tell me if you want a specific character or ship (and prompts are very welcome). Otherwise I will be picking at random from my favorites and your odds of getting either Daryan or Blackarachnia are very high. :D Drabbles to go with any of my existing fics/AUs are also available on request. If it's got a tag on my DW, you can ask for it.

Cat pictures will be taken especially for you, but poses/expressions/etc. are up to the discretion of the cat in question.

Shark facts may or may not include photos as a bonus, depending on the shark fact.

Other info: No noncon/dubcon, extreme gore, or animal harm, but other than that if you ask for a sexy or spooky treat I'll do my best. Happy Halloween!

Current Mood: struggling

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Cursed struggle bus

Hopping onto the struggle bus again with the cursed witch edits, bear with me or just skip this one haha, I'm hoping whining a bit about it will help me move on.

So I knew chapter 2 would be an issue, and it was, and I got through it 😤 And I knew C2-C4 had their problems too, but I got into a good rhythm fixing them up especially because they gave me opportunities to smooth a couple of the major problems reported with the story, in particular a lot of the other characters feeling one-dimensional outside of the two MCs. So I found a lot of opportunities to introduce little scenes that give them more rounded personalities and life beyond interacting-with-the-MC, added a bit of mystery, and it was also satisfying because that involved a bit of writing here and there, and Writing Is Nice.

Now, I figured C5 should be around the time things get easier: all the structural work to introduce the Bigger Shit Bigger Fan element happened before that, so there weren't as many large changes expected, and most people really had a good time once things got way worse, lol.

( How wrong I was )

Currently trying to find the balance between "I need a bit of time to brace myself/find solutions to the remaining problems" vs "procrastinatiooooon ahoooooo." In the end, I think it's just that after "giving life to other characters" for a few chapters, what needs to be fixed now looks different, so I need to adjust to a different rhythm for these edits yet again. Just like when I will be done and return to revise the pacing: this time I will have to be more aggressive about cutting, which I have less experience with.

Editing in such depth sure continues to be a lot of learning!! >:'D

Evening edit: Whining worked XD I've begun wading through the new swamp. I'll get where I need to in time.

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dreamwidth: community thursdays

Community Thursday

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Cmmented on booknook.

Commented on common_nature.

Posted & commented on bnha_fans. New (and FINAL!!) season started!

Commented on anime_manga.

Signal boosts:

Via rionaleonheart, there's a new Kingdom Hearts Kinkmeme over at khkinkanon

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Experimental

Experimental

Summary: Franziska and Ema get kinky.

Fandom: Ace Attorney
Characters: Ema Skye/Franziska von Karma
Rating: E
Warnings: Under-negotiated (but very consensual) dom/sub
Notes: I'm doing Kinktober 2025 (using this list)! This one was for Day 3, nipple clamps, and ended up with some additional d/s and glove kink.

( Are you sure you want to do this, Ema Skye? )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

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habit tracking

Habit Tracking: Week 40 (September 28 - October 04)

This week, a bat-cat sticker from Sunset Road. Official start to Spooky Month!

This was a good week. Alex and I took a last-minute weekend (my weekend) trip, which was nice. (Eventually I'll get there in posting, but we went to the Sand Creek Massacre site. So... a bit somber rather than purely "fun" per se, but it was good to go.) Turned out I had a lot of stuff on my goal list for the week, and I did actually end up doing most of it. I wish I'd managed more writing, though felt like I did all right on reading. Looking back, it does feel like it was quite busy.

Goals for the week:

I finished reading Diavola
I posted my September book reviews
I posted my October writing goals
I did my September getyourwordsout check-in: 6498 words in September, bringing ytd to 85961
I only sort of worked on my reading page
We did get some outside time
I did not work on the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity
We didn't get rent turned in
I did pay car insurance through the end of the policy
I did my October tracking grids
I did not make my phone call
I did buy us event tickets for something we want to do for Halloween
I did start reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
I did not clean my bedside table
I did stop by my mom's house
I did not put my laundry away
We did get crickets
I did get new branches and clean the katydid habitats
I started an "October Devotional"

For the last few years, owing to my love for fall, but how often it feels like the season flies by without me getting to enjoy it, I've tried to do a "Fall Devotional" of sorts. Just trying to do something each day that feels to me like I'm appreciating the season. It's kind of mindfulness, and kind of a Dale Cooper "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present." This year, I hardly even noticed the start of fall, but I will try to do something for the season every day in October, at least!

So far that has been:

01 - I started reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
02 - I made myself a pumpkin chai in the morning; we went and got Indian food for dinner
03 - We started watching Monster: the Ed Gein Story on Netflix
04 - We got a pumpkin pie

For tracked habits:

Work - 5/7
Household Maintenance - 6/7
Physical Activity - 4/7
Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 2/7 - one day of over 1000, one day of over 500
Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
Meta Work - 5/7
Personal Writing - 6/7
Other Creative Things - 2/7
Reading - 7/7 - I finished reading Diavola, and Alex and I finished reading Duma Key. I started reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and Alex and I resumed reading Dead Silence. I also started reading Bloodhunt Academy by my friend adore, plus I've continued with Dracula Daily/Re: Dracula
Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday we finished watching Clickbait; Monday we watched the Broncos game, an I listened to some Re: Dracula; Tuesday I also listened to Re: Dracula; Wednesday had a true crime documentary (Stalking Samantha) in the background; Thursday had some youtube on in the background and listened to Re: Dracula; Friday we watched an episode of Great British Bake Off, and then the first three eps of Monster; Saturday we watched a paranormal video, and had some other stuff in the background, though I fell asleep.
Video Games - 0/7
Social Interaction - 3/7

Total words written: 4720 on my book reviews from September and my writing goals for October

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Amperslash Exchange Letter

I love love love the concept for this exchange: blurring the lines between relationships and letting things just hang (temporarily or permanently) in this ill-defined middle is one of my very favourite things to do to my ships!! <3

Here’s a list of some takes on this dynamic that I really love to see:

( I'm so excited!!! I've been waiting months since I found out about this exchange <3 )

And here's my general fandom exchange letter for general likes/dislikes! <3

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

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September 18: Bright Nights at Four Mile Historic Park (Part 2)

Part two of three of the pictures from the lantern festival!

They had a series of the animals from the Eastern Zodiac, which were lovely!

The rat.

The ox.

The other ten animals:

The tiger.

The rabbit.

The dragon. (My sign!)

The snake.

The horse.

The goat.

The monkey.

The rooster.

The dog.

The pig.

At some point there'll be one more post of the lanterns!

Current Mood: amused

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rambles about life

(no subject)

Just turned off all my extensions to get a look at Tumblr's latest UI disaster, and I would just like to take this opportunity to thank Dreamwidth for never doing that to me!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

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Monthlyish pet pics - 2 of 3 - The amphibians and reptile!

Part two of the monthlyish pet pics! This time devoted to the coldblooded vertebrates.

This time we have:

Berry Mad!

In her most fashionable hat!

(You can see right in front of her that she has started to dig the water out of her pond to make mud for herself. Previously, she would push her dirt into the pond to make mud, but apparently this year, she has decided she likes this way better.)

Four more pictures of Berry Mad:

Sittin' in her plant.

Not the clearest, but 'tis the time of year where she starts to burrow.

Toad? What toad? I don't see a toad.

Buried in her self-made mud. But then I dumped crickets in, and she immediately sat up, haha.

Guava Splash!

So small it makes me want to cry.

Three more pictures of Guava Splash:

(This picture is from Alex. Showing off the other side of the tiniest frog.)

So small.

This picture is from just yesterday. Tiny frog is looking a little chubby!
(Which is actually a relief... I was worried about getting something so small to eat enough to stay healthy.)

And mom and Taylor's garter snake, who has been named Ripley!

(Ripley, because she looks "ripple-y" when she moves, but also because Alien is great.)

She's so cute. She likes her little plant.

Just one more of Ripley:

I love her and her cute little face.

Current Mood: accomplished

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rambles about writing

(no subject)

Well, I wasn't planning on doing Kinktober this year, but five days and five fills in...I need to figure out where I'm going to post these, I guess! A couple of them can stand alone, but most of them are just short scenes.

I could do a multi-chapter fic on AO3 to collect them (they're almost all for the same ship, so it would just be a bunch of Klavdar porn fics), but I don't really love doing those, and I also don't want to post twenty-odd short fics. (I know both of those are allowed and a lot of people do them, I just don't like them for me.) Or I could just do what I've been doing with the FFA 100-words prompts and put them all up on Dreamwidth...

"I don't know where to post all of this writing" is a pretty good problem to have, so I'm not too worried, haha. Still, why do the logistics have to be so much harder than actually writing the fic?

(If you saw the unedited version of this, shh, no you didn't, Mirage was Helping.)121

(Edit #2: I see those extra numbers, but when I tried to remove them she stepped on the power key, so I'm leaving them in tribute.)

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QOTD: On historiography

Today's quote of the day is actually three quotes, all on the practice of writing history, come from Bruce W. Dearstyne's "The Progressive President and the AHA: Theodore Roosevelt and the Historical Discipline," published in the September 2025 issue of Perspectives on History from the American Historical Association.

The first two are from early 20th century historian Allan Nevins[^1] (1890-1971):

"The world at large will sooner forgive lack of scientific solidity than lack of literary charm. The great preservative in history, as in all else, is style." — from his 1938 book *The Gateway to History

"With the demise of the romantic, unscientific, and eloquent school of writers, our history ceased to be literature." — from his 1959 AHA presidential address

Dearstyne shows that these issues are still relevant by following these quotes with a quote from contemporary historian Jacqueline Jones:

By making stories about the past available to all sorts of publics, scholars seek to counter mythmaking and contribute to a broader educational enterprise — one that is essential to the future of history and, indeed, democracy itself." — from her 2021 AHA presidential address

While I agree with these quotes as to the necessity of making history entertaining so that people will want to read it, I don't think that this has to come at the cost of accuracy. If fact, I think it must not come at the cost of accuracy. If only Jones had deleted the words "stories about" when writing this sentence — thus making it clear that accuracy is required when writing history — then I could agree with it wholeheartedly.

[^1] I found it interesting to note that Nevins had only an MA in history, the same as me, and yet he was able to become president of the AHA in 1959, whereas today an MA in history is (in my experience) basically useless.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: my apartment

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September 18: Bright Nights at Four Mile Historic Park (Part 1)

Back on September 18th, Alex and I decided to go do a fun splurgey thing. We went to the Four Mile Historic Park's "Bright Nights" lantern festival display. :)

Four Mile Historic Park is a historic farm in Denver (which was once a stagecoach stop, which is where the Four Mile name comes from, I believe.) They're typically closed on my days off, so we never end up going, but they had a booth at Pride, and we picked up a flyer for the upcoming lantern festival.

It was lovely!

The entrance. (Though I took this picture on the way out; it was still slightly light in the sky when we got there.)

Should have gone back over once it was fully dark, but I do love the peacocks. (The sign about this particular display talks about them representing love. They are, of course, both male, haha. And have a giant rainbow heart. Love my pride peacocks.)

I really loved this fae creature on their throne. <3

Twelve more pictures:

I was, of course, very taken with the jackalopes.

Fun fantasy deer... seaweed? creature.

Some charming little mushrooms.

It's probably zero real surprise, but the rainbow butterfly lights "room" was probably one of my favorite spots.

A kitsune!

Armadillo!

There were a bunch of interactive displays. This one has a crank at the front, and turning it moves the machinery to move the segments of the dragon's body up and down.

The dragon's face.

Some were like this, intended to be photo frames. Very pretty!

Birds and lotus flowers.

I really liked the bluebirds and bluejays in the tree.

And one final jackalope!

I'm splitting the pictures from the lantern festival into a few different posts, since otherwise it'll be very, very long.

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qotd

QOTD: Charles Baudelaire on regular work

"Inspiration is merely the reward for working every day."

— Charles Baudelaire (in Curiosites Esthetiques [1868])

Certainly not the first or only person to say some variation on this, but I think it's an aesthetically pleasing statement of the concept.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Metroid Prime Remastered - Credits

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(no subject)

It is one in the morning and I just kicked Metroid Prime's ASS

(no, technically that's not a super hard game to beat, but have you considered that I am extremely bad at video games and I no longer have access to a younger brother to handle all the boss battles for me)