Pistachio Crème Brûlée

Welp, here I am again with a sick cat. As much as I hate having to do this--pride, it sucks--I need help paying off an emergency vet bill, plus provide cardiological care for my beloved cat, Skinny. Details are in the fundraiser information.

Any help you can provide, even just a reblog, is really appreciated.

SE Online Store Switch

At the end of May 2023, the Square Enix online store suddenly changed platforms with no warning or notice for their users (pretty on brand, really). This had the side effect of, on the user's view only, clearing out any order and pre-order history made prior to May 24, 2023.

The order history and any pre-orders are still there! You just...can't see them.

For me, this was a little stressful, as I couldn't find my confirmation emails for my FanFest pre-orders, they haven't been charged to my account yet (though that is an option), and I wasn't exactly expecting SE to nuke their site.

However, contacting the Square Enix US Store Support and filling in their email contact forms, and responding to their email and filling out more info for them, let them easily find my order and send a new confirmation email, and they reiterated the info about how the FanFest pre-orders work and expected ship dates.

So if you ordered from the SE store before the last half of May--like those looking to get their FF16 pre-orders--but don't see it on your account, there are plenty of FAQs and info, and the CS email help does seem to work, even without your order#, though they may as for a bit more in that case!

PSA for anyone looking for their confirmation emails: do a search for "Square Enix Store" or "pre-order" (with the hyphen!) in your inbox. Merch pre-orders opened on March 31 and ended April 21, so look for anything between those dates. In addition, you may have to search the trash folder separately, depending on which email service you use.

John Gaius is less interesting to me as someone who is just a shallowly awful person, and vastly, infinitely more interesting to me as an intensely human person with the powers of a god and that has fucked him up. The things he does to his friends are done out of grief, because he doesn’t want them to be gone, it’s out of the loss of those he loved that he brings them back, that there’s almost something numb about him until the depression or the rage or the sorrow hits, because like he’s Jod, he didn’t get to where he was by being able to die, and that’s terrifying for others, but I can’t help thinking that it’s really fucked him up, too, because all that power, it’s just there, it’s in him all the time, and when someone betrays you and you have the power and invulnerability of a god and you’re a hot goddamned mess because you’re still just a person who has lived through so much pain and grief and loss, you react like a human and you reform yourself out of your own atoms and permanently explode people and go, right then, either you’re loyal or you die, because you’re fucking pissed, and you don’t want to fucking deal with it anymore, because you don’t have to, you’re God, you have the power to say, no, this stops here, loyalty or die, make your fucking choice now, instead of continuing to walk that tightrope of lying to your friends but trying to make it up to them and feeling guilty but also feeling angry, all while you’re so fucking tired. But then you feel more guilt about it, because you’re a person and you’re not trying to be a dictator, you’re trying to make the galaxy better, you’re trying lighten the mood, because it’s ten thousand fucking years and if you don’t embrace your love of puns being hilarious, then everything’s going to be so fucking boring, and you’re still angry at the trillionaires.   You stop time and tell everyone to stop attacking each other because you’re so fucking tired and just don’t want to deal with it anymore.  You’re so fucking careful, even around your friends, not to bleed around them because you know what that can lead to. I feel like John is a character who isn’t evil so much as every step is an understandable one he made, each one is a very human reaction when you have the context of everything that happened before, and then layer a whole lot of depression and guilt and anger on top of all those decisions. Is he doing terrible things?  Yeah, and he’s fucking terrifying to be around, he tries so hard to be affable and gentle, but he has so much power and he’s Just A Fucking Guy, a guy who wanted to save the world and started out from a place that so many of us have started out from, each step he took to where he got and why he lied are understandable ones, the weight inside him one that I can empathize with, I too am not always the kindest when I’m depressed, I too am not always one to make the best decisions when I feel torn between wanting to help people vs how to actually get there, like if I was face to face with a real chance to save the world, wouldn’t I do some shady things to make sure it got done, because the world hung in the balance?  Wouldn’t I fall into depression when weighed down by all that responsibility to do something when I had the power/ability to do it?  Where is the single point at which he should have said no and turned back, given all that had come before? I don’t see John Gaius as a character who set out to become Necrolord Prime, that that was the intended arc, so much as he kept making one decision after another, decisions that come from a place of very human nature, and eventually we’re here, with the weight of all those decisions behind him and no one single place that really was a hard turning point.  And also a whole lot of depression. Anyway, he’s my poor little meow meow and I hope he’s dictator of the universe for life because it’s very funny and also gives me feelings.

I have absolutely no idea how to use tumblr

Daniel Henney photographed by Filip Kartous for Schön! Magazine (2021)

Welp, here I am again with a sick cat. As much as I hate having to do this--pride, it sucks--I need help paying off an emergency vet bill, plus provide cardiological care for my beloved cat, Skinny. Details are in the fundraiser information.

Any help you can provide, even just a reblog, is really appreciated.

trying out actual watercolours this time

↳ ELDEN RING | Liurnia of the Lakes [1/?]

Welp, here I am again with a sick cat. As much as I hate having to do this--pride, it sucks--I need help paying off an emergency vet bill, plus provide cardiological care for my beloved cat, Skinny. Details are in the fundraiser information.

Any help you can provide, even just a reblog, is really appreciated.

On a lighter note.

The main reason I ever wanted to write a Hungarian mythology-based urban fantasy is that I needed to see someone do Bread Magic in a mundane modern setting.

Bread Magic shows up in a variety in Hungarian fairytales. It works like this: when someone evil, usually the devil, sometimes a dragon, wants to come into your house and hurt you, usually by taking your children, what you do is put a loaf of bread on the windowsill. It will speak for you.

When evil demands admission, the bread will say: First, they buried me under the ground, and I survived. When I sprouted, they cruelly cut me down with sickles, and I survived. They threshed me with their flails and I survived. They ground me to flour with their millstones and I survived. They put me in a bowl and kneaded me, then they put me in a hot oven to bake me, and I survived. Have you done all these things? Until you do all these things and survive, you have no power here.

This is pretty powerful magic I think, and it makes sense in a country where wheat is the staple crop and bread is the staple food. If you have bread, you are alive, if you have no bread, you are dead, therefore bread is life. It was customary to refer to wheat as “life” well into the twentieth century, and not in high literary circles either: rural seasonal workers negotiated their wages in so and so many sacks of life.

And I totally want someone to do bread magic with a shitty store-bought muffin.

“They filled me full of toxic preservatives, and yet I can still nourish. They left me under harsh florescent lighting, and yet I can still bring comfort. The one who baked me will never see the one who eats mez and yet I can still convey some sense of love, of care.

Until you can have your nature so twisted, yet remember and hold to it still, you have no power here.”

Oooh. Damn, that’s Big Magic that could unFall an angel by sheer force of logic.

Came to FFXIV for the MMO--stayed for the Sylphs. Love these cabbages. uwu

Welp, here I am again with a sick cat. As much as I hate having to do this--pride, it sucks--I need help paying off an emergency vet bill, plus provide cardiological care for my beloved cat, Skinny. Details are in the fundraiser information.

Any help you can provide, even just a reblog, is really appreciated.

Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies

Do you think carbuncles get jealous?

@dragons-bones