tiggymalvern | Reading

We took Miss Erzabet No Biting to the vet yesterday; despite her thyroid ear goo, she's lost weight, is still peeing and pooing everywhere, has been throwing up a lot, has been drinking a LOT of water, and has days of sneezing and being listless.

They drew blood, did x-rays, then gave her some fluids, vitamins, and steroids. The vet said that we'll have test results in a few days, but she has lost weight and just looking at her he's pretty sure there's something wrong. On the x-rays her kidneys looked smaller than they should, and her intestines "didn't look right", but he needs the tech to increase the contrast before he can make a diagnosis.

He used the phrase "be prepared in case of end of life procedures are needed". Not a phrase anyone ever wants to hear, and it sent me straight to my anti-anxiety meds.

For all we know, she'll be put on an additional med and she'll be healthy and happy for years. That's what I'm hoping for. Because while I love(d) all of our kitties, past and present, Miss Erzabet No Biting is the spiritual successor to my beloved Dread Beastie, and I'm not ready for her to leave.

Dear 2026, DO NOT.

silverusagi

Current Mood: tired

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silverusagi

Current Mood: tired

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cupcake_goth

No matter what I do, my hair isn't returning to its previous thickness. I'm loathe to ask my GP for any of the prescriptions that are supposed to help with that because I'm already taking eight prescription meds daily, plus the "as needed" ones, plus around nine or ten OTC supplements, so I don't want to add to that list.

So! I've decided to return to wearing a hat any time I leave the house. I just refurbished my black straw top hat; it now has a large plume of black ostrich feathers, a large antique lace bow with an antique rhinestone buckle, and pink faux roses tucked around the bow. I'm still dithering about if I want to make it even MORE over-the-top by adding a bat chiffon veil that would trail down from the back of the hat.

I'm also refurbishing all of my wide-brimmed hats, as carrying a parasol while using a cane probably requires more dexterity than I have. Everything is getting more veiling, and I'm dithering about if I need to order a few more crow skull replicas.

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Thanks to some things rolling across my IG feed, I've learned about the world of Kitchener Style Essences, which supposedly help you learn "where your style and personality blend!" So a more elaborate version of finding your color season. (Good lord, Color Me Beautiful is still going strong. What a flashback to my teens.)

In October of last year, a "lost" essence was "found"/created: Oneiric. "A softer, more melancholic edge that merges mystery and muted darkness. Something that had never been fully acknowledged, at least not widely." Do you mean: Romantigoth? Doing more reading about it, why yes, they mean Romantigoth. But of course, the people who have latched onto it are quick to say it's not goth. Of course, what a surprise. But it's fun to read about, and is a source for more makeup inspirations.

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Speaking of makeup, let me direct you to this post on Tumblr, where an absolutely adorable young lady demonstrates how to do a ghostly and haunted makeup look for folks with darker skin. Perfection.

kronette

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cupcake_goth

Work yesterday left me incredibly frustrated. The ducks that are nibbling me to death have mutated to giant size and with razor-sharp beaks. Because I was so frustrated, I decided I needed to reread one of the most disturbing sets of Hannibal AU fics I've ever encountered: A Gifted Student and A Letter to My Abuser. They're gorgeously, awfully written. (If you decide to read them, pay close attention to the tags oh god pay close attention to them.)

A Letter to My Abuser is, in some ways, the harder read for me, because when I first read it I tried to figure out why I identified so hard with a side character; Ollie, so giddy to meet his literary idol, but forcibly warned/ran off by this AU version of Will Graham. When I read it last night, my brain went "ohhhhh, yeah, Neil Gaiman", and then I had to read some fluffy fic to scrub my brain.

I hope his victims get closure. And that they win the legal actions against him, because they deserve the money they're suing for.

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EDITED TO ADD: I used to subscribe to FKAHerSweetness' Ko-Fi, as she left Ao3 and only posted her fic behind a paywall. I eventually ended my subscription because as time went on, I didn't enjoy how she wrote Will. She writes AUs only, and more power to her, but they became something I didn't want to read.

silverusagi

Current Mood: tired

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kronette

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cupcake_goth

(Thank you FOB/Pete Wentz for always providing entertaining song lyrics.)

Everything is ugh. My back is having one of its stretches of hurting and feeling fragile, so my life involves lidocaine patches and dipping into the stash of muscle relaxers and heavy-duty pain meds. I've been having an upswing in different types of migraines, and I suspect the main culprits are weather and stress. All I want to do is sleep, and my mood can generally be described by that Charles Darwin quote of "I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything". With a large side of "meh". I really want a doctor to prescribe the historical treatment of going to the seaside for a week (with the appropriate servants to take care of me and bring me dainty treats while I sit with my feet in the ocean).

Today is particularly ugh, as we lost three writers yesterday and I need to cover their work while we hire new writers for those positions. (Yeah, read between the lines there and you can probably guess what happened.) Thankfully, I talked to my boss and asked how this would work with my current projects, and she told me that my number one priority right now is to focus on the writing/being a writer, and once those positions are backfilled, I'll go back to my Program Manager work. So at least I don't have to worry that I'm being held to two sets of different standards. But still, stressful.

Meh.

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One thing that's been entertaining me is going through my Tumblr archives - prompted by a post going around asking people how long they've been on Tumblr oh my god 2010 really?! - and finding a lot of fun content and a lot of pink & black eye candy. But I realized (a bit too late) that I shouldn't read my text posts from 2011, because that was the worst year of my life. Dear Powers That Be, that isn't an invitation to go "hold my beer!" and try to overshoot that. I don't need that.

voidbeetles posting in

little_details

Hi!

I have a character in a sci-fi universe who ends up "shipwrecked" alone on a completely uninhabited planet for two years. The planet, and the specific environment he lands in, are perfectly habitable by humans (we are in soft scifi territory here, very Star Trek inspired) and he's able to survive with some effort. (The details of how are not really important to the story - I know at least that he's the kind of guy who'd be able to salvage some tech and emergency supplies from his wrecked ship, and I'm comfortable with brushing past the details of what exactly he brought with him - but if anyone's really interested in coming at it from that logistical angle, I won't stop you!)

What is more relevant to the story is how this experience would continue to affect him by the time he's back home safely. I think there are a bunch of possible avenues here and I'd love to see people's takes on how they would approach this or approach researching it. For example, here are some of my cursory thoughts:

PTSD is certainly a likely long-term complication
It's implied that his shipwrecking was not an accident/was engineered maliciously - I imagine this is something he has dwelt on heavily throughout the two years and will affect his ability to trust people (and to visit other uninhabited planets in the future!). Seems like it would be easy to get caught in delusional spirals in a situation like that.
I know that prolonged isolation can cause hallucination/psychosis in some cases, especially in solitary confinement, sensory deprivation contexts, etc. Is that as much of a risk in this case? And if so, do you think he'd still be experiencing psychotic symptoms after the fact?
One of his personality traits is that he's fairly attention-seeking - I think it's likely this incident will exacerbate that and make him more desperate for connection
It'll probably alter how he approaches social situations in the future in general; that's something I'll definitely be thinking about
Perhaps he got into the habit of talking to himself on the planet, and this never went away

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

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tiggymalvern

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March 2026

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Here's What You Thought

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I'm like a diamond on the inside / just add the pressure

Long-term psychological effects of physical isolation

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