longmirror lake

So far dnc is my favourite dps class in and out of battle. I'm sorry drg, but to be fair I've barely spent time gposing drg.

Lv 80 glam before I rack my brain to come up with one worthy of the Hades weapon.

We Want What We Want

Somehow I've ended up reading a good amount of short story collections. I'm not entirely sure what the theme of this collection is, other than what the title says, but perhaps desire?

One quotation I noted:

Kelsey had suggested eloping - she thought it would be funny if they got married at city hall and then went through the drive-thru at In-N-Out in a white dress and tux - but Graham was convinced that ultimately she'd look back on it with regret. He didn't want to begin their life together with no sense of occasion. He believed in the need for symbols and trappings, the consecration of moments. Otherwise life was a mess of emotions, fraught and terrible, lacking form to contain them. Kelsey said, "If it means I get to taste a lot of cake, I'm okay with it.

mothercrystal

Some snippets from readings that I forgot to post:

(The Haunting of Hill House)

(I don't remember, is this from Seasons of Blossom?)

Also, why does the Goodreads mobile website not automatically add the date when you mark a book as read -_- I guess I'll track the number of books I read this year through Libby.

You Are Eating An Orange, You Are Naked

I saw in the description of this book that it is similar to Murakami, that's all it took to convince me to read it. Though I didn't mind much similarities, other than the overall vibe maybe? The style is not even too close. The book does give me a very uncanny feeling because 1) the main setting is Toronto and I've been to a lot of the places mentioned and 2) the asian-canadian experience. 

Nonetheless I enjoyed the book, and this quotation in particular because it is far too relatable:

I still wonder if telling you the story "Snow in June" when we returned to Toronto was the right thing to do. I told you this story, and then you quit your job. I don't know where you are right now. But whatever. Maybe debating whether something was the right thing is not the right way to go about this situation at all. I told you a story, and afterwards you quit your job and went somewhere, and I haven't heard from you since. The three events have no correlation. Maybe, as in the story itself, there is no right and wrong. Most of the time, all there is is coincidence.

clover

 I'm so glad that I bought my shoebill minion before EW came out, it's like 700k now??

empyrean

 Wishing I can be like Kiku and be relaxing in a hot spring ;o;

mist

I don't usually do casual glams but for P3S my static decided to do either a summer or metallic orange theme. Pretty happy with how the summer one turned out~ We don't need to talk about the metallic orange one since that was a last minute effort.

Amaurot

Oh woah I can't believe I forgot to post about this. My first ever art commission, motivated by an intense bout of not knowing what to do with all the feels from 5.0 to 5.3.

By the super lovely @starstray

Also got a super cute avatar from the sketches:

Like Water for Chocolate

ok this is my new favourite work in the magic realism genre. Not actually sure what my previous favourite is...probably Love in the Time of Cholera. These two are actually decently comparable. Like Water for Chocolate is definitely an easier read tho, more straightforward. The writing is not as beautiful, but that could be a translation thing. But I guess the plot won me over? The side characters are treated well too. But most importantly each chapter is intertwined with a recipe, and a lot of the magic is conveyed through the food that is prepared by the main character. I love how domestic the book is, is this a late 20s thing? Nesting desires are very strong haha. 

One analogy I really enjoy:

As you see, within our bodies each of us has the elements needed to produce phosphorus. And let me tell you something I've never told a soul. My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it.

Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

bookmark

 Welp transferring photos from phone to laptop without airdrop is such a painful first world problem. 

Anyways, I thought I wouldn't have so much things to pack, but I've underestimated how much stuff hoards when you stop moving every year. I didn't feel like being too ruthless with editing, I'll let the next move take care of that. 

Some snapshots:

I'm slightly surprised at the mute tones of my sweaters since I look better in colors with stronger contrast, but I guess winter lighting be like that. Happy with my collection of striped tops tho!

Also surprised at the lipsticks that I own, I already got rid of a few with dominant purple tones but there seem to be a few left as well. The color is also very different swatched on my arm vs lips. One day I'll have to willpower to reduce their numbers by half.

Shoes that were actually worn in the past 1.5 years at home, plus my stan smiths that are gunked with melted roofing bitumen thanks to a roofing assessment in like 110F weather.

Glorious Frazzled Beings

 (I'm really not sure how I'm gonna hit my goal of 30 books)

After Big Summer, I intended to read another work by the same author but the one that had the most interesting premise isn't available in Toronto's public library. Instead I went down a recommendations list by the library and ended up with a whole bunch of holds. The first one is this collection of short stories.

The few that I enjoyed the most are:

• "The Town Carmen Found"
• “The Teeny Ghost People and Their Garments”
• “Understanding Groceries”
• “The Pregnancy Test”

I was drawn to many of the stories around the theme of motherhood, I suppose its a bit of a sensitive theme to me as the conflict over wanting children was reason for my break up with Jeff. It's quite interesting to see the complex medley of emotions that accompanies motherhood.

Favourite quotations:

The town Carmen found was always ravelling and unravelling itself, and in this it was like Carmen, who was like all living creatures: a continuous compendium of death, regeneration, joy, fear, waste, and fury. She longed for things and when she was not longing, longed for longing itself. Unlike those of strong faith, she was not content to serve others, to continuously give in service of an ideal. Spiritual fulfillment did not come for her from the crevasses of humanity. Carmen's spirit was filled in the dream world, in her forest wanders, and the town Carmen found was rife with the stuff in which spirit could flourish, embedded thickly in the divine.

There is a little bit of fear, it licks the borders of elation.

[Hot fear] tenses the body to pounding and sweaty palms. Sometimes there is cold fear, which tenses the body differently. Hot fear rages. It builds out and wants to clack against things loudly. Cold fear shrinks the body in, a worminess wanting to crawl itself inside. Warm fear is not so raucous. Warm fear can be a little bit glittery, a little bit compelling. A little bit warm. Comfy fear. That's the kind of fear Tina works for. Tina's little girl would call it trickle-rainbow-unicorn fear. It's like when you get mad and scared and you're not sure which comes first and you have to fight about it, then you start to feel less mad but you're still a bit scared and your face wants to love again but

your body isn't ready yet. Trickle-rainbow-unicorn fear is when you want to resolve yourself back in to love but still feel shaky about it, all tossed up and vulnerable, but there's a bit of light in it so the colours get all hoppy and refract off your sad madness and you think of unicorns to help you remember magic. Magic helps. It makes you feel real but not crazy.

The writing style is also quite unsettling, perhaps better described as uncanny in a very matter-of-the-fact way.

the forgotten knight

 I do really enjoy picking one location, one battle animation / emote, one camera angle / lighting and trying to get the most variety out of the combination. I spend entirely too much time doing this while doing the magic DPS role quest, no regrets. 

The rdm lv 90 job artifact set might be my favourite out of all the classes. whm is a close second.

the last virgil

I miss being in Ishgard ever since removing it from my favourite teleport locations due to gathering in EW. Fingers crossed I win a housing lottery and can have a cheaper teleport point here ;o;

For being my favourite city, I've taken very little screenshots here. It's time to start remedying that, starting with the abundance of spires.

Ishgardian night sky and sun rises aren't bad at all either.

studium

But I still like Sharlayan sunsets the most.

Slowly getting use to gposing with a focus on the character rather than the bg.

But glow-y weapons are a pain. I wish freeze motion also froze the glow animation. Or even better if their animation frames can be independently adjusted ;o;