roughly in the middle

⚠️ Mild spoilers

Personal rating 9/10

There were some very interesting story beats this season even if we didn't get much movement on the Operation Strix front!

( Cut for mild spoilers. )

No confirmation yet on a fourth season, but I'd be very surprised if we didn't get one.

Link nabbed from goodbyebird!

Botswana shows how smarter cattle herding can save lions, reopen ancient wildlife pathways

More than a decade later, the situation is radically different. The lion population has rebounded. Cub survival rate is up. And cattle losses are dramatically down. It’s the result of years of hard work: restoring traditional herding practices, collaring and tracking lions, and, most recently, establishing a market for ‘wildlife-friendly beef.’ This serves as a model, wildlife advocates say, for other parts of southern Africa where modern grazing practices have collided with big cats’ appetites.

This bit about naming the lions also got a laugh from me which I know I shouldn't have 😅 but it's very in line with my spiteful tendencies: As conflict persisted, some people gave them rough names like Kufakuduze, which means, ‘If you come for my cattle, I will find you.’ I hope Kufakuduze is alive and well.

Right when I thought things were settling down and I could get back into my routine, my body decides it's a great time to get sick. Started with a dry/itchy throat around Sunday night, eventually built up to feeling feverish and lethargic yesterday, along with a sporadic cough and the sniffles. Took a sick leave yesterday afternoon and today. I think I can go back to work tomorrow, but I'm going to be working from home to be safe.

Getting sick this time is weird because I feel shitty enough to not want to go to work but not shitty enough to spend most of my day sleeping and/or whining. I mean, I did spend most of my time sleeping yesterday but I was actively trying not to sleep this afternoon because I woke up with the type of headache I only get when I oversleep and I didn't want to experience it again. I even have an appetite! So weird.

Whatever this is, it looks like it also hit Sister T. She didn't feel as bad as I did, but she decided to take today off to be safe. I think it might be due to the weather changing from cold-as-fuck in January to I'm-being-boiled this March.

It seems that dropping off of Dreamwidth is unavoidable when I take a long-ish vacation somewhere because of the disruption to my routine. Yet another reason why I'm not fond of out-of-town trips.

I want to write about what I've been up to lately—because I want to be able to go through my entries in the future and not think, "What was I doing back in 20xx?"—but I also have a list of random things I want to post about while I work on that.

First up, "Llorando se fue" by Los Kjarkas:

When I was younger, it seemed like all the trucks and jeepneys played the same exact snippet of music whenever they were backing up instead of a generic beeping sound. As I got older I realized that it sounded like it came from J. Lo's "On the Floor", which I personally think is highly improbable. I guess you could argue that there are truck and/or jeepney drivers into J. Lo's music but?? I had my doubts.

This year I finally decided to do some internet sleuthing and found out that "On the Floor" sampled "Llorando se fue" and that's where the snippet came from! You can listen to the sampled part here, at around the 12-second mark.

(I don't know why I have an easier time accepting that Filipino truck/jeepney drivers like Bolivian folk music vs. them liking J. Lo's music 😂 I don't have anything against J. Lo.)

Listening to the song on YouTube made me feel oddly nostalgic; I can't remember the last time I heard a truck/jeepney using the song as their replacement backing up sound.

Personal rating 9/10

SPY×FAMILY is one of those manga that's been to my to-read list for long enough that it got adapted into an anime and I still haven't gotten around to reading it 😂 But I decided to finally start watching the anime in November because I went to buy milk tea from Serenitea and I saw that they had SPY×FAMILY reusable bags for sale and who am I to ignore a sign from the universe?

The series starts by introducing us to Twilight, a highly competent super spy who is assigned to work on Operation Strix. The goal of Operation Strix is to prevent a war breaking out between Westalis, Twilight's home country, and Ostania, where he's currently located. To do that, Twilight must get close to politician Donovan Desmond. And to do that Twilight must ... create a pretend family and have his pretend-kid enroll in the same prestigious school as Desmond's son. It's a premise that's ripe for shenanigans! And spy shenanigans were had. But also, family and friends fluff, and a sprinkle of serious contemplation.

( How did this get so long? )

You'd think the shenanigans, fluff, and seriousness would be too much, but I think SPY×FAMILY is able to balance it all nicely. I think my only nitpick so far is that I wish the serious Operation Strix subplot would move a bit faster.

Random stuff:

• Me, seeing Damian for the first time: Ah, the rare male tsundere. Don't quote me on this, I don't actually know the gender ratio for tsundere characters.
• I am extremely fond of Bill Watkins, the 6-year-old that might actually be 30. At first I was, "Is no one concerned that this child eats steroids for breakfast?" and then I saw how cute(??) he was with his dad 😭 (who might be M. Bison???)
• Yor during the Luxury Cruise Ship Arc! I'm so happy they gave my girl her time to shine. Wishing for more of Yor absolutely annihilating her enemies and anyone else who stands in her way.
• The reactors I follow for SPY×FAMILY are not fans of Yuri 😂 They seem to take his siscon weirdness at face value which ... I don't think Yuri legit wants to marry Yor. (Though I also wouldn't be surprised if there are Yuri/Yor shippers. More power to them, it's not my ship but I respect it, etc.)
• If Yor didn't exist, I would ship Twilight/Nightfall so hard. I legit teared up at the end of the episode where they introduced her and she was crying in the rain. I hope you find your own husbando, Nightfall!!

💀 The self-inflicted psychic damage of reading old journal entries and seeing one where I talked about lending my EHD to a coworker and forgetting that my doujin folder was there. I have no idea what she saw and she never mentioned anything, so. A memory I'd like to lose to the sands of time.

💼 A work meeting went around an hour over the allotted time. It was definitely past my end of shift by the time we wrapped up, but I can at least claim the time as credits for time off in lieu. I ended up having to cancel my gym session, though, because my stomach was screeching at me and I could feel the creeping fingers of an impending headache.

📺 Finished SPY×FAMILY S02! I need to set aside some time and gather my thoughts about the first two seasons, but they can be summed up as, "TWIYOR RAAAAARGH SO CUTE," "Why does Anya have so many weird faces lordt," and "I will stab anyone who attempts to hurt Bond."

👧🏽 While on the way home, my tricycle drove past a family on a motorcycle (little girl squished between her parents). With a complete deadpan face and her mouth slightly open, the little girl waved at me. I decided to wave back. The mom blinked at me in surprise then smiled when she realized her daughter was waving at me and I was returning the gesture.

Like Day 3's prompt, Day 7 felt familiar so I went digging and found the entry back in 2020. I'm opting to skip Day 7 since I can't think of anything else I'd like to list, and I don't want to just reuse what I already said.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

This one's a bit tricky because I don't really have a creative process 😆 But I'll do my best to outline what I do when I want to write fanfic.

1. (Usually) wait until it's after dinner so there's less chances of people interrupting me.
2. Close my door and if it's already night, I close all my shades. No one can perceive me, doesn't matter if I'm writing filth or fluff.
3. Look for whichever WIP file piques my interest at the moment, based on the filenames.
4. If I'm just starting out, I review whatever notes I've thrown into the file and begin writing from the very start of the story. If I've already written something, I'll re-read what I have so far.
5. Follow the vibes throughout. Go with the flow of consciousness and see where it takes me.
6. Delete anything that doesn't fit with the current vibe I'm trying to go for. If the section's already pretty long, see if it can be salvaged and reused for a different fic.
7. If stuck or running into writer's block, do a quick canon review of the specific moment that inspired me to write the fanfic. Get distracted and end up going on a mini-binge-watch/binge-read of canon.

Honorable mentions:

• I used to not be able to write without some sort of music in the background but these days I go without.
• Very, very rarely I'll have a very rough outline for the fanfic. If I do, I'll go through one bullet point at a time, fleshing it out before deleting the bullet point.

Day 1 * Day 2 * Day 3 * Day 4 * Day 5 * Day 6 * Day 7

Guess who didn't anticipate that life would suddenly get so busy! It's me!

Challenge #6: Top 10 Challenge

The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

( Cut for length. )

Day 1 * Day 2 * Day 3 * Day 4 * Day 5

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

Oh lawd. This one's going to be a struggle too. Most of the stuff I want are physical—physical volumes of manga, figures, etc.—and that'd be too much of a hassle for any of y'all reading this.

1. Comments on any of my fic (AO3 has the most complete list right now but a handful are also mirrored on SqWA and sigaw). Please don't feel obligated to comment if you honestly didn't enjoy it or are unfamiliar with any of the fandoms I've written for. That would just make me feel so awkward /o\

2. More people (that aren't mods/admin) posting in communities. I know I can't bemoan this too much—I'm hardly as active in comms as I used to be when I was younger—but as someone modding a couple of comms, it does feel lonely sometimes 🥲 I do my best to post whenever I have something to share in the comms I'm part of, so I'll just keep doing my best and hope other people feel encouraged to do the same. I remember some newer DW users a while back sharing that they don't post in comms because they felt like that was a mod-only privilege. No disrespect to whoever told you that, but no. Comms are meant for all members to share their fandom squee! They're not meant to be a mod's personal soapbox. (Unless that's stated somewhere on the community profile, in which case that's a "personal" comm and a different conversation altogether.)

3. If you can afford it, premium paid time for anyone on DW. Support your friends and the site we're all on, win/win!

Day 1 * Day 2 * Day 3 * Day 4

Challenge #3

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

Today's prompt felt somewhat familiar, so I poked through my old entries and saw that I'd answered an iteration of it in 2018. The vibe of that 2018 entry is very "I didn't have the energy to write anything, but I still wanted to complete today's challenge so here's this half-baked response that's unintentionally prickly." I don't know whether to laugh or just ... sigh deeply.

That wasn't a great year for me, mentally.

I'm not really sure what I want to write for this prompt. Finding my 2018 post threw me into a melancholy mood and that's not really what I want to talk about right now. But at the same time, I couldn't really think of a topic/focus even before I started feeling down.

For now, I think I'll settle for a declaration of war of continuing devotion. (That's romantic a la love letters, right?)

At this point in time, I've spent more than half my life in fandom, being various levels of fannish through various mediums. I can't see myself ever stopping being in fandom, I can't see myself ever stopping being a fan of something. It's not an exaggeration that I can't imagine being a "normie." I want to one day be that old fandom lady that the Youths write about on whatever future version they have of a fandom platform, I want to be known as that one old lady who's keeping her ancient fandom alive by posting a fic every so often for it.

I entered fandom in the early 2000s because I wanted to and I'll exit it whenever I want to. And I don't want to exit fandom.

Day 1 * Day 2