lupos!

- was the only one to get an A the first grading period. had to stop them from putting me on their shoulders

- became the official classroom mascot on account of i was the only girl. this meant i was an integral stop on any and all workshop tours. was referred to as “Our Lady Helena” on these occasions

- almost set myself on fire once bc my prof stood behind me watching me try a skill he’d just demonstrated and he shouted very suddenly very loudly. restarted my heart and asked WTF WAS THAT FOR JOHN and he called me a “goddamn wonder”. i almost got third degree burned over a compliment

- mentioned offhand ONE TIME that swords were cool. also mentioned my birthday offhand ONE TIME. one of The Guys remembered both instances and also happened to find a sword in a dumpster so he gave it to me for my birthday

- came in fifth in an arm wrestling competition

- french braided my hair in class bc i didn’t have time to do it beforehand. ended up with an audience of like 5+ guys trying to figure out how tf i was doing it

- told The Guys my college friends call me barbie. Mistake. suddenly had all 12 of them calling me Barbarian

- had some down time and made a silly little sculpture with some scraps. The Guys were endlessly intrigued by this and demanded to see some of my art school stuff. had a small crowd around my phone cheering loudly every time i swiped to a new picture

- accidentally mentioned the cafe i worked at. Mistake. several days later all 12 of them came in to bother me

I struggle to make fandom friends on Tumblr, and sometimes I worry that it is because people in their 20s think they can't be friends with someone in their 40s. That I'm uncool, weird, cringe, intimidating, or just too different from them.

But things don't change as much with age as most think. Older people still are silly, awkward, overwhelmed, enthusiastic, confused, playful, irresponsible, obsessive, dumb, cool, horny, and all these other things young people think we stop feeling or being as we get older. We're just humans. I am really great friends with someone on here more than 20 years younger than me because we have so much in common! You can't tell that we're different ages when we chat.

And also—you can be friends with people who you do NOT have much in common with! Because fundamentally, you always have humanity in common.

Years ago, there was this lady in my community who was maybe 30 years older than me and who I knew was far more conservative than me. I dismissed her as someone I didn't want to spend any time with because she was obviously too different than me. But, I was forced to spend some time with her (long story), and guess what? I became really good friends with her! Because I found out I was wrong about all those things that made her different than me? NO! I was right about that—she was just as annoyingly conservative as I had suspected. BUT that wasn't the whole of her person. She was so much richer than that. There were lots of things I didn't know about her. A few of those things were commonalities, but overall, we still didn't have much in common—but that didn't matter. We could still be kind to each other, help each other, respect each other, even enjoy each other's company if we stuck to topics where we didn't clash too badly. I feel really bad for judging her, and I'm so glad I gave her a chance.

Recently, I’ve spent some time consolidating my ebooks in Calibre (freeware ebook library management software). One of the things I had to import and organize was my archive of downloaded fanfiction (saved fics can be imported into Calibre as files or one can use plugin FanFicFare for it)

I wanted those files to have some nice looking book covers, so I’ve created a special AO3-edition of my book covers template. Those are to be used with “Generate Cover” plugin, that allows more control over the generated book cover, with an option to create your own design.

Download for free here + get instructions on installation and usage:

https://www.blog.private-universe.net/2025/03/03/calibre-book-cover-templates-ao3-edition/

The new magic stops working after three days and every spell uses proprietary runes.

There’s an interactive map where you can post your sightings and I’m also very pleased by the one reported harbour porpoise sighting around the O2 arena area.