autumn in pluto.

Challenge #8: Talk about your creative process.

Hmm, my creative process is kind of all over the place...! If inspiration suddenly strikes, I drop everything and start doing that (or at least resist the urge until I can't hold it in anymore if I'm doing something else more important).

...earlier than expected, too!! I'm mildly surprised because I just finished my final chapter for the Blue Lions Big Bang (still just a draft; getting it beta-d), so I thought I'd be pretty dang pooped. Not to mention I'm a huge procrastinator. Woahhhh.

At first I was kind of dreading the thing because I've never written the ship before and was like, "oh man why'd I go and offer that, what if I don't do it justice and the recipient hates it," but the words just flowed easily and I ended up really enjoying writing their dialogue and dynamic.

I'm excited for when works are revealed!! I really do hope they like it, but if not... uh... I like it. And that's the most important thing! (+1 to things I say to console myself)

I think I have some friends here who speak Japanese or are learning, so I hope this is of any interest :"D

I came across a post on Bluesky that Dr. Wes Robertson's slang dictionary has been added to the New Jisho website. Dr. Wes Robertson is a content creator who frequently discusses the Japanese language, notably slang, and linguistics. I mostly see him on Tiktok but he is also on Youtube and Instagram.

It's also fascinating to note that this is New Jisho, a successor to the EN-JA-EN dictionary site, Jisho, by the same creator. New Jisho is currently in beta and was created due to several requests for the current Jisho (that's apparently 15 years old, by the way) that became hard to implement without literally just remaking the site instead. Spaghetti code, I guess?

Anyway, once New Jisho has dark mode, I might swap my current bookmark to that, instead. A shame they don't have a mobile app though; on iOS, I still use the app called "Japanese" (yes that's literally the name) to look up words but it's last update was 6 years ago. 💀

This goes so hard oh my god. Ado x Chibi Maruko-chan was Not on my 2026 bingo card (or on my 2025 one for that matter, as it looks like the cover audio was released on 2025-12-29 and the music video itself was posted less than a day ago).

I love Chibi Maruko-chan and I miss watching it on the TV. My mom made me stop watching it because Maruko acted like a li'l brat and she didn't want her attitude to rub off on my little brother, who was around 2 years old at that time. Idgaf mom she's fucking hilarious. /lh

In other news, Sousou no Frieren S2 is starting later this week!!! Toho Animation just posted this video of some more clips of the anime to the new opening song, "lulu." by Mrs. GREEN APPLE. I'm so excited! The animation is still superb and the lines made me emotional. Himmel...!

I read the manga starting from where Season 1 left off, but to be honest, my memory is so bad that when I watched the teasers, I couldn't tell what part they were adapting. That's probably for the best since I'll be experiencing it almost as if I'm an anime-only fan lmao.

Some journal updates + resources! -- Icons & mood themes because my journal's currently on paid time. Yippeeee

• I went ham and added so many icons to my account. Currently sitting at over 100/150 now. At first, I got real excited while icon shopping, but then I realized, "wait a minute, I can make my own icons, too..." so now uhhh we got a real hoarder problem on our hands. 150 slots's going to stop being enough at this point.
• I added a custom mood theme thanks to kissed who compiled/preserved some adorable mood themes formerly posted on LiveJournal her site. The good thing about custom mood themes is that, once I've applied it, it stays like this even after my paid time expires. It's just that I can't upload another custom mood theme after, nor can I switch out of it (I wouldn't be able to use the custom theme again until I resume paid time).

Here is a guide to installing a custom mood theme for those without the means to self-host:

I really recommend doing this on a computer unless you hate yourself... This also requires paid Dreamwidth time.

( 795 words; instructions + some notes )

Anyway, I hope this helped! Sorry if it's long-winded or complicated; feel free to direct any questions in the comments. Also, this is just how I did it; there's probably a more efficient way than this :"D If yes, I'd be happy to know what worked (or didn't work) for you. Hope you enjoy using custom mood themes!!

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!

Oh man, I struggled with this challenge lol. This is especially weird as I am like, terminally online, so I should be able to come up with something, right?

Hmm. One of the things I like doing is reading myself into rabbit holes, so that's good ol' Wikipedia, fandom wikis (bless the people who work hard to keep them up-to-date AND provide the exact source!!), Fanlore, and TV Tropes.

In the same vein, data mine sites are also super cool. I dunno if other games have these (with the exception of live service games that do have datamines but mostly for providing leaks/build data), but FE: Three Houses and FE: Three Hopes have one each, albeit the Hopes one is discontinued so it's kind of janky/incomplete. I like using them to read the side conversations between characters because it's so easy to forget things with a huge cast + multi-route game.

Data mine sites are super helpful for writing fanfics, not just for fact-checking, but also for inspiration purposes, because of the little factoids that crop up. Like, this character lives in a place known for dairy products but doesn't particularly like this cheese dish, but the character I ship him with likes that dish. Woah. Lightbulb moment!

Last year, I started using Ellipsus and also tried out 4thewords for writing. I stopped using 4thewords because the quotation marks turn out straight and not the "smart quotes" kind which was inconsistent with the rest of the fic I had already written, but I did end up writing a lot in the few days I tried it! If you're the kind who doesn't mind straight quotes and likes to gamify your hobbies, I think it's pretty good. I stick with Ellipsus because I like the UI and the snippet generator :)

Also, one tab I constantly have pinned now since I post lots on Dreamwidth is HTMLTidy; it lets me write with a rich text editor that converts to HTML so I can post raw HTML into DW easier. I don't really switching between DW's Rich Text Editor to Raw HTML because it sometimes messes up the formatting. If I don't have to use pics though, I just type straight into Dreamwidth using Markdown.

I icon shopped from various DW communities the whole day and got inspired to make icons myself. I haven't slept yet.

Anyway, check them out at joicon 💞 There's only 1 post so far, but I'll slowly work on it.

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

I mentioned somewhere how fandom had become an inalienable part of my life, and the same is true for shipping. I'm a multishipper by nature but some ships just have this chokehold on me that I couldn't leave alone, so have some cheesy letters addressed to my favorite ships.

My current fixation (BKDK/TDBKDK) not included.

As mentioned in this post (🔐), I was inspired by an irl friend to do weekly R.E.P.O.R.T posts (Reading, Eating, Playing, Obsessed, Recommending, and Treating). My life's pretty boring on most days so writing about it might be a bit tough (but not any less verbose), but I hope the habit sticks.

( 196 words )