yuniper

He's home! Barbatos looked fondly upon me today. I patched the game on my way to work, then quickly logged in. Teleporting to Windrise for the Anemo Archon's blessing, I threw 60 wishes on the banner and got my cute church boy to C2. Yay! I'm so relieved. There's this Dahlia fan account on Twitter that's been going for years; they spent 400 wishes and only got him to C1, so I was prepared to suffer a similar fate (only that I wouldn't have that many wishes, far from it, actually). But nope, everything worked out in the end and I also managed to avoid getting Skirk. Whew! Now I'm at 63 pity and mustn't spend a single wish the next three weeks until Emilie comes on. I'm down to only 2.9k primogems, which is rather shocking. I don't remember the last time I was so low. It really didn't help spending so much on the Chronicled Banner, but hey, at least yesterday I showed restraint and didn't whip out my credit card one last time to get Chiori to C6.

Anyway, I'm excited. I know Dahlia is considered useless, but he's Venti's friend and a funny, mischievous guy, so I'm glad I have him anyway. And I'm going to try him out in my Yoimiya team, though it's going to take me a while to get their artifacts and weapons levelled. And I don't even have artifacts for Dahlia yet. Guess I'll be visiting the Noblesse Oblige domain a lot in the next days.

As for my writing aspirations, I actually managed to get index cards yesterday. Unfortunately, I got the worst migraine ever after lunch, so bad even that I left work early, so I couldn't start organising my notes. At least tomorrow is another public holiday, I hope I'll find the time and motivation to get started then.

I did it! After doing my dailies in Genshin yesterday I was bored and finally noted down some ideas for my vampire novel. I came up with a few what I think interesting ideas, including a new character, the main antagonist of the story so to speak. Yay!

I'm still not sure how I want the story to end though. My main concern is whether a certain plot point would be too cliché. However, why do I even care? It's unlikely that I'll ever even write this book - Discipline, what's that? -, much less let it read someone, so who cares? I'm my own worst critic though, so I wouldn't want to write something too predictable.

As I'm still at the beginning of my planning, I shouldn't worry too much about it though, I guess.

What I really want to do is: buy index cards. I have this notebook where I write ideas down, but they're in no particular order and since it's a bound notebook, there's no way I can rearrange my notes. Hence my idea for index cards. Now you might say, why not just use an online document, but no. I don't want that. I actually set one up when I first came up with the general idea of a vampire story in 1900s Vienna, but I don't really like that. I need something "physical", tangible, something that I can touch and carry around with me. It might still not be a good idea, but it's what I'm telling myself I need to continue plotting.

I want to check the stationary shop near the office during my lunchbreak, but I doubt they'll have index cards of the size that I want (A6). We'll see. Otherwise I'll have to order from the "enemy".

I really want to make this my longterm project. Please, dear muse, support me in this endeavour!


PS: Only eight more hours on the Chronicled Wish banner. I'll restrain myself, but it's hard knowing that Chiori probably won't rerun for at least a year now. I'd kill for those two remaining cons. :/

I mentioned several times on here that I'm not just obsessed with vampires at the moment but also with fin de siècle Vienna (vampires in fin de siècle Vienna are thus the most perfect combination). So you can imagine my excitement when I found not just a book but a whole series of crime novels set in that period (no vampires in it though QQ). The author is American but claims to have lived in Vienna for a while.

Two days ago I started the first book in the series, but today I decided I'm going to drop it at 25%. It's just awful. The writing is seriously bad (like, I can usually ignore bad writing, but this was too much even for me) and he shows he's familiar with Vienna in the most obnoxious way. I can't give any examples now, but he dropped his knowledge in ways that just didn't blend with the story and/or felt completely unnecessary. What annoyed me most was when the MC said that from the accent he placed another character coming from Salzburg when it turns out he actually comes from Vorarlberg. Now, I don't expect anyone not familiar with linguistics and Austrian German to know how no one would ever mistake those two accents, but the author should have known better since he clearly thinks he's an expert on all things Austrian. Just don't include anything about accents if you're not sure about it...

So while this might seem like a minor nitpick, it's the whole package that was just too much for me and so I DNF the book. Which is something I hardly ever do (you remember, I finished that horrible "Negative Space" novel) and thus do feel a little bit bad about. However, life is too short for bad books. Next on my list is "Persuasion" by Jane Austen, which I bought during my stay in the Lake District. My MIL recommended it to me when I told her I haven't read a single Austen, so I hope I'll enjoy it. At least there's no doubt about the quality of the writing with Austen. ;)


Today is Venti's birthday, so happy birthday to Teyvat's best bard and most wholesome archon! <3 May you celebrate with all your friends, above all Dahlia! <3

Speaking Dahlia: we finally know the full banners for phase two that's starting on Wednesday, and I'm so very disappointed. Not only do I not want any of the 5 stars, but the other 4 stars are just horrible. Diona and Candace. All I want is one copy of Dahlia for collection reasons and because he's a cutie, but with those other 4 stars I'm seriously debating if I should pull on the banner at all. I have both Candace and Diona at 20 and don't plan on ever levelling them, so any cons for them are basically wasted. :/ Ah, it's tough... I really need my cute church boy. QQ

Ah, it's finally back. My annual Crywolf phase. He's definitely one of my favourite musicians and at least once a year I fall back into obsession with him. And now that we're back all I want to do is lie on the sofa and listen to his songs while daydreaming about my favourite characters/the stories I want to write. He's already given me some ideas to incorporate into my vampire novel, but sadly it's disjointed scenes that I'd have to fit in with the overall plot (*cough* that doesn't really exist yet *cough*). I should really take a day or so where I focus on plotting my story because I really want to write this novel. Not because I think I could ever publish it, but because I like the characters and want to prove myself again. After my gingerpilot longfic last year, I've only written short fics, but I'm itching for something longer again.

Unrelated, but I have a confession to make. I whaled. To get more Chiori cons. I thought I could be happy with C1, but nope, somehow she's charmed me into wasting so many primos (and quite a few €) on her. I've stopped now that she's C4, and what can I say. While my rational self reprimands me for it, my nerdy self is really happy. She's amazing at C4, critting for more than 30k and she doesn't even have good artifacts yet.



<3<3<3
She won't be around for a long time, but I'm quite tempted to take her to C6 she reruns the next time, because then she can be used as an on-field dps.

It's ridiculous, I know. The one time I whale it's for a sub-dps that isn't even considered all that good, but whatever. She's my favourite girl, she deserved it. :3