wild for to hold

✈ My roommate and I just watched Castlevania S4 and we're both emotionally destroyed now. It was SO GOOD. No spoilers, also because I can't even put any thoughts into words yet, but oh my God. Oh, God. FFFFFUUUU-- I'm so happy. The ending was perfect imo. <3

✈ Got my first shot of the covid vaccine last Friday! I was super nervous before the appointment itself, and double-triple-checked if I had all my paperwork in order, but everyone at the center was really nice and patient with me. Aside from a sore arm, I felt no ill effects at all, though I've heard the second shot hits you harder. My second appointment is in June. I will be SO freaking relieved once that's in the bag.

✈ My crafting has slowed down a bit. I'm joining lots of granny squares for my blanket & discovered I don't have enough yellow yarn to finish the stripes... so I may have to buy some after all, although I inteded for the blanket to be a stash-busting project.

I recently had to frog a big section of my Rosewood scarf because I'd dropped a stitch--half a stitch?--a couple rows down. I tried to ladder it back up, but just made it much worse until I decided to unravel to just below the dropped stitch. Then I discovered that picking Fisherman's Rib stitches back up is a pain in the ass, and essentially had to knit & twist every single stitch individually because I couldn't figure out how to do it all in one go. But the scarf is back on track now. \o/

✈ Fandom-wise, I'm back in MCU hell, currently reading a lot of Steve/Tony fic, trying to comment more, and somehow... collecting Darcy/Bucky and Steve/Bucky plot bunnies like I'm running a shelter. I've started writing some of both, and it's at the same time daunting and fun; I've never written MCU fic before, but I really want to try, so I hope that something publishable will come out of this. My main WIP, if it can be called that, is a post-CATWS Darcy/Bucky fic where the Winter Soldier pretends to remember his past life & Darcy finds out about his deception. Also, HYDRA chases him relentlessly while brandishing the trigger words. At one point it'll involve one of my favorite tropes of all time: a roadtrip where Darcy and the Soldier run from HYDRA together. There shall be seedy motels, only one bed, long hours on the road, near-misses with their pursuers, and lots of pining. \o/?

The Steve/Bucky I'm writing is pure, potentially embarrassing self-indulgence: they roleplay an encounter in which Steve 'saves' the Soldier and helps him remember his past. Look, I just write what my downstairs brain wants to read. I don't make the rules here. (That's a lie, I'm actually quite embarrassed for no good reason. But I really want to teach myself to feel less shame about the fluffy h/c fics I want to write. It's not even ~problematique~ content, ffs, I don't understand what I'm so scared of being judged for.

✈ I picked up Hollow Knight again, but I started a new playthrough because I'm frustratingly stuck on the Traitor Lord in my original one. :'D My main goal with round 2 was to get the Dream Nail asap, which worked out surprisingly well, and I had the pleasure of dream-nailing Hornet during our first fight. I also beat her on the first try??! The learning curve is amazing, considering how long I was stuck on her the first time.

✈ Resident Evil 8 is FANTASTIC. I'm watching jacksepticeye play it & so far I love almost every single thing about it; it's the first RE game I've felt the urge to play myself. The environments are stunningly beautiful & I want to take many screenshots & repaint them with gouache. <3 I love Ethan & Mia--I squee'd quite loudly when they revealed 8 would be a sequel to 7 just because I liked them so much. So far, the character that gave me the most feels was Moreau. ;_; I wanted to adopt him and shower him with love, okay. Mother Miranda can suck an egg.

✈ I've somewhat gotten into the habit of taking walks. I stopped running some time last year, and I haven't been able to kick myself back in gear so far, but I thought taking walks is better than nothing! I've downloaded a step-counting app on my phone & it's surprisingly motivational.

✈ Song rec! Baby Don't You Lie To Me by The Fratellis. ♥ I'm currently rediscovering The Fratellis; their music accompanied me through uni, but I hadn't really checked out their newer stuff, which I'm doing now. Most of it is SO GOOD. The urge to learn how to play the guitar is largely foreign to me, but I feel it when I listen to their music. :D

It occurred to me yesterday that Christmas is in less than two weeks (??!) and I have done very little in terms of preparations so far, so today I went shopping for Christmas cards & dropped off my best friend's gift in the mail. I've honestly been feeling quite stressed but I hope that'll lessen once I start sending out these cards.

I'm going to spend the 24th with my lovely roommate! We're gonna do a Lord of the Rings marathon--we'll watch all 3 extended versions back-to-back. That'll keep us busy for sure. Then on the 25th my mom is picking me up for a Christmas lunch with my parents, my nephew, and my parents' BFF. I feel conflicted about it. On the one hand it's ~tradition~, but on the other... stuff that involves my parents is always really hard on me, especially around the holidays. I just hope I'll get through it relatively unscathed.

On Monday night I finished Prey and I just

• What the fuck

That is all. -- At least some of my questions were answered in the end! I've been reading Reddit in an effort to better understand all the subtleties I missed & I think I now have a vague idea of what was going on. I also went into the AO3 tag and discovered to my horror that there's not a single Morgan/Jason fic out there! Now I have to write my thing. I've also got to buy the Mooncrash DLC asap. I heard we're gonna get to know another member of the Yu family & I'm really looking forward to meeting them, whoever they may be.

I've been thinking about maybe making a WIP post where I ramble a bit about the fics I'm currently writing. I tend to be fairly withdrawn and insular about my favorite hobby, which is a bit sad--I'm so envious of writers who can just... talk about their WIPs, damn it. I tried to chat about writing on my Tumblr but that website in general just tends to give me that dreaded AllByMyself.mp3 feeling because I know how quickly posts can get buried in a deluge of reblogs. So I'm hoping that DW is more suited to my blogging style. I have a lot of WIPs so that'd be quite a huge post, haha.

My To Do list for the weekend includes:

• write Christmas cards
• LAUNDRY
• work on some fics
• start replaying Prey as female Morgan
• play Overwatch
• maybe cook
• make birthday plans