[ChicletPrime]

/stretches

okay! i think we're back in biz-ness, baybe. between the ruckus that was my two weeks off, recovery from said ruckus then this week of straightening out the tragedy that was going back to work and excavating through what my coworkers did in my absence... i am chomping at the bit to splash land back into LaDS.

the extra tickets we got this morning (woo!) for the game winning some sort of award was fantastic and came at the perfect time. i used those (and about 7 more with diamonds) to splash-land Sylus' beach card and Caleb's swimsuit. i was really hoping just to get the swimsuit box which would have left me sitting VERY pretty for the next limited pull, but i am not disappointed that Sylus threw himself into my arms like a proper boyfriend should.

do not hold me to this - my intentions are always stellar but my followthrough sucks like a thing that really sucks

- add new screenshots to the front rotating page
- do the same to the individual boys pages on my personal website
- watch and giggle over Sylus' card and take a billion screenshots to arrange and re-arrange
- do a couple of more World Down Under stories
- do all the runs with Lumiere / Xavier in Kahli to tick off all those completion boxes because they feel so good

less important but: 
- play in photo studio with the beach background that i got this morning!
- maybe do some writing? i have ideas. i have a mild case of imposter syndrome.
- i still need to figure out ReShade in the LaDS environment to see if alpha channels can work

i think that's all? that should be enough to keep me busy for two days, along with pesky things like food and sleep.  i also gritted my teeth (i did not grit my teeth but i did focus fairly hard for about a half hour) and got a VPN installed so I can pretend i am in some other country and bypass a region lock on Fangs of Fortune, so now I can hopefully continue watching with gleeful popcorn.

[Coldsaturn]

Oh I love Sylus beach card, congrats on getting it! I'm dramatically resisting pulling because I'm 9 pulls away from a 5* and I just know that if I use even just one tiny ticket it will trigger a card and I'll find myself back at square 0 with the pity system for the next banner, so I'm proving to myself I can stop whenever I want. I swear, I can.
Also my condolences for going back to the non-vacation side of reality. Things are still slow on my end because so many people here still have to come back from their selected holiday time, but it's only a matter of days before we hit full force again.

So many screenshots! I shall wait for them very eagerly. Also yay World Underneath! I'm doing Xavier's runs on Kahli as well, I'm taking my time because the story is interesting enough that it deserves to be read properly.

The beach background! The sea actually moves! I somehow was expecting it to be a still background, like a cheap cardboard cutout, but here I stand pleasantly corrected.

From what I've been able to see of your writing, imposter syndrome isn't something that you should be worrying about or letting stop you. I ended up throwing myself back into drabbles because reading yours got my fingers itching and everything.

[ChicletPrime]

I'm dramatically resisting pulling because I'm 9 pulls away from a 5* and I just know that if I use even just one tiny ticket it will trigger a card and I'll find myself back at square 0 with the pity system for the next banner, so I'm proving to myself I can stop whenever I want. I swear, I can.

bwahahah! I KNOW THESE FEELS! and you have traditionally had the worst luck on trying to squinch closer to the finish line on the pity system so stay strong, my brethren, hold that line.

The beach background! The sea actually moves!

holy shit, really? now i'm super excited! i pretended i was flush with money like a rich person and bought the red swimsuit for the girlfriend (along with the yellow one i got with the free box) so I'm gonna lounge like a real beach babe in my artfully stylized thirst trap shots.

imposter syndrome isn't something that you should be worrying about

so easy to say, so hard to do sometimes.

to be kind of real for a moment, i personally love my writing. is that okay to say out loud? i love the way i think narratively speaking and i love the things i have to say and i love watching the characters drive themselves at full speed into brick walls. they always say "write for you" and i take that to serious heart, i re-read my own favorite pieces all the time and think to myself "that was perfect, i wouldn't change a single word".

except... i do. i am forever agonizing over sentence structure and debating the merits of "grip" verses "convulsed".  i wrote a smut piece for Reylo that i personally think is the hottest thing ever because it hits all MY buttons for angry yearning.

AND THEN THERE IS NOW. i have all these ideas and i try to write them and i am frustrated with every second sentence. its like... i don't have a grasp of what i'm actually trying to say? i like stories to say something, to highlight something, to showcase a feeling that exists for four seconds and then is gone again.  i am not prolific, my sweet spot is around the 5-10k mark because i like to hit a thing and then just contemplate the wreckage around it but i have ten different starts on things, some of which i posted here, and i look at them and feel... lost and crabby.

can i be lost and crabby? this is something i want to do but i'm tripping over my own damn feet worrying about it, halfway between having forgotten how to swim and being angry at the floaty water wings i'm wearing as i try and dogpaddle.

ALSO: if you are writing AT ALL, feel completely free to post a sentence here or there. you know. if you want. no pressure.

[Coldsaturn]

I'm holding it, even though the latest SHC is out to get me because with only 2 cards from the banner instead of 3 I can't reach the full DMG boost quota and I'm back at 29 stars. I haven't worked on upgrading protocores yet, so I might manage to gain a couple of stars in the next few days, but damn. Soloing SHC is hard without all the limited myths. And fuck that specific red stella card for Raf from his GoT myth (the solar 4* pair) that I still haven't gotten from the galaxy pool. Apparently it's notoriously hard to get, and do you remember my second account I was playing with on my computer as backup? Yeah well I abandoned it out of sheer rage when one (1) week in I pulled that red card from the pool. This translates to tragedy whenever it requires red teams because I miss all the red 5* they did for Raf in the past (the spicy cards), and I haven't found proper replacements yet.
Playing with 2 LIs is way better for SHC and open orbits.

"is that okay to say out loud?"
You didn't shout it loud enough IMO. It was lovely to read and should be way more normalized. Write for yourself, write what you want to read, surprise and entertain yourself first and foremost, and the best feeling ever is when you go back to something you wrote and you go "Damn I wrote that? Good job past me"

"can i be lost and crabby?"
That is also completely relatable. On my side, I was a heavy pantser when it came to writing, preferring long-ish one shots that sometimes went into 10k but were always starting in mid-res and ending in mid-res, the photography of a moment that I then left for another photography. I was happy with it so long as I had enough creative juice to go with the flow and lose myself for a bunch of hours only to come up for air with 20 pages full of /something/. But then if I didn't get into the flow or couldn't picture a scene past a feeling or vibe, I would hit a road block that translated into oneshots getting shorter or not being completed, fics left ongoing because I didn't know how to get to the next good scene I had in mind, sentences that I would write and rewrite 100 times because they didn't hit just right etc.
I've found my way of forcing myself out of those dead ends (which tragically meant limiting my pantser and perfectionist antics), but I definitely relate to the feeling of having lots of ideas and lots of starts but not exactly knowing what to do with them.

In general I would say that so long as the writing itself is entertaining to you, then it doesn't matter if the scene is unfinished, or just the start of something etc. You can always continue it later on, or change it in the future. You can just write something to showcase how beautiful MC and the LI are in that particular scene, even if it says nothing and goes nowhere. Sometimes those are little puzzle pieces that then manage to become part of something else down the line.

"feel completely free to post a sentence here or there"
I'm definitely thinking about doing it! I'm trying to think of the logistics with spoilers though. I know that I've thought "Hm, maybe I should make the scene go X so it's not a spoiler" at least twice and I'm not sure about that creative direction, so I'm stalling a bit.

[ChicletPrime]

in media res, my darling.  why here? because i said so. stop why? because i've finished. the rest is up to you to figure out, god bless, fly free.

i got sucked into a cdrama this weekend and its fucked me over for lore advancement in LaDS.  but i am starting the next WU story right after this so eventually "spoilers" will be a thing you don't have to worry about anymore and then i can wallow in YOUR five sentences :D

[Coldsaturn]

I... have NO idea where the "mid-res" is coming from, TWICE, I was 1000% sure I typed my usual "in medias res"
I was about to reply to you like the correction was the -s at the end of "media" and then realized that there's literally something different in my post. I am extremely confused, and I can't remember if I typed that from my phone and it did something nonsensical with the autocorrect again. Pretend you saw nothing.

Saw a few of your posts on tumblr! I hope you're having a great time watching it. I myself decided to check the anime The Apothecary Diaries, and that's where my weekend went in its entirety.