ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-10 02:07 pm

[sticky entry] Sticky: I Am Maybe Attempting To Migrate To Dreamwidth A Bit More

Twitter is going to shit, tumblr aggravates me these days, cohost is worse, discord is discord and for a different purpose, what's a man to do? I've mostly used this account to keep track of fan events and whatnot, but (so I figured) maybe I should give this site a try as a more active user. At the very least it seems less likely to be bought out by a billionaire manbaby.

So! I'm Ebonwinged_Nova, AKA Ebonwing, AKA ThatWindingPath, AKA many other names I've accumulated over the years that you may or may not come into contact with. If you want something short to call me by, Ebon will do. The pronouns are he/him. I'm in my twenties.

You can find me on AO3 here. If we start talking and find that we get along, I'll give you my discord. I'd offer my twitter too but lol, lmao.

I'm a writer and artist, both in fandom and for original works; you won't be seeing much if any of the latter here though. My main fandoms are Final Fantasy XIV, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (the entire series, really, but mainly 3) and, newly, Final Fantasy XVI. I like all sorts of other things too and may list them here at a later date, but these are the main ones I actively seek out and create content for.

I'm a fairly outgoing person, at least when I'm online, and generally down for a chat if anyone ever happens to find their way here and feels up for it. Just hit me up!
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-08-20 04:08 pm

(no subject)

Needlefelting is an amazing hobby if you need a gift for someone but augh, it is too hot to be doing much of it.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-08-02 11:42 pm
Entry tags:

The Downside of Writing about Food

...is that it makes me damnably hungry. I'm going to be looking at so much food and so many recipes as reference. Help.

(Not having eaten dinner probably doesn't help, though.)
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-24 07:38 pm
Entry tags:

Unexpected Developments

I don't know when and how it happened, but for some reason ffxiv frontline pvp has become my main destress distraction... whenever I feel like shit I just want to play that mode, even though it's total rng bullshit and half the tine you get sorted into a team full of muppets.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-24 11:25 am

Blargh

I spent the entire weekend convincing myself that my boss wasn't justified in screaming at me over minor code mistakes that didn't cause any damage on account of not being live yet in anticipation of him yelling again, and today he's calm as they come.

Somehow this almost feels worse.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-23 11:23 am

Fun With Job Applications

Wanted to apply to job. Had to register with the company's own recruitment portal. Logged into newly made account.

Website stops working the second I log in. This is consistent behaviour.

I guess I'm not applying to this one after all...

(This is a giant multinational company by the way.)
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-23 12:23 am

Waiting For Godot, or something

Back to fiddling with the Godot game engine. I still think the way it does signals are unintuitive but I seem to be getting the hang of it. I guess programming an "A Dark Room" clone is what I'm going to be doing in the near future.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-22 01:39 pm

Conlang Word of the Day

(...for a given definiton of "the day"...)

chel: illness

Derivated words:
cheleiz: ill
cheleinu: to fall ill
cheleina: infection
cheleinfica: source of infection; place where illness was contracted
cheltia: ill person
chelnacre: doctor (lit. illness fighter)
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-21 11:03 pm

Match made in hell

Boss: verbally abusive
Me: prone to internalising verbal abuse

I need a new job yesterday
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-21 12:32 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Octopath Traveller's breakboost system is honestly so ingenious in its simplicity. Without it, the combat system would be a pretty bog-standard turnbased system, fine to play but nothing that'd stand out. With the breakboost system, every single battle turns into a mini puzzle as I try to allocate my characters to take as few hits as I possibly can. I'm having more fun with it than the majority of all turnbased games just with the addition of these two very simple mechanics.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-19 10:38 am

I Am A Junior Dev

"Okay, change of plan, this feature now needs to be finished TODAY"

Thanks boss, really appreciate it, it's not like this is way above my paygrade to begin with. I really am starting to think I should ask for a raise.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-17 04:28 pm

Decisions Are Hard

But do I want to add Riku and Manana to the "Z hosts cutthroat kitchen" fic. On the one hand Manana and cooking is a natural fit and also Riku is a hilarious character, but on the other how many characters I need to make relevant do I really want to saddle myself with? I'm already up to ten and there's only so much space I can make in a story like this.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-15 07:43 pm

I Have Finished My Draft

Clocks in at about 45k words right now with one scene missing; the content itself should mostly be fine and only require some details editing. That took way too long, but sometimes that's just how things are. It's a postcanon xenoblade 3 fic with a twist, namely:

Click for ending spoilers
The worlds still separated, but instead of everything resetting to pre-Intersection, Origin dumped everyone into the corresponding world as they were at the end; also N is there because I wanted him to be.


I wrote the first draft before Future Redeemed so it's not compliant with that, but even if I hadn't I wouldn't have made it compliant, given my extremely mixed feelings about the entire DLC.

I'll be letting it rest for some time and draft something else before going back to it. In practice that'll be either the "I hurt N a lot" fic or the "Z hosts cutthroat kitchen" one. Languagefic, despite being much older than either of those ideas, apparently still needs time in the mental oven before I can knuckle down and actually write it (why do I keep insisting on writing slice of life, why do I do this to myself, I know I'm not good at it) and the FR rewrite... may or may not happen but I don't think I'm in the mood for that right now.

I'm leaning towards the cutthroat kitchen one. Despite being a more complex story (yes, there's a story to it) with a larger cast I have a clearer idea for how it'll go down.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-15 04:53 pm

Daily Conword because I realised nothing's stopping me from doing that

(May or may not actually be daily.)

Today's word in my High Entia conlang is ielu, to win. From there we can derive iele (winner), iela (victory), ieleiz (successful) and my personal favourite iele'le, second place winner; it literally means "little winner", so I think this might have a condescending ring to it, perhaps.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-13 08:32 pm
Entry tags:

Culinary experiment of the day

...was a full success. It's a good thing I always look at example recipes on food packaging, because that's where I got the idea from.

Get potatoes, ones on the large side, and boil them. You'll still want them to be firm enough that they don't crumble or deform when you pick them up. Let them cool down, cut them in halves lengthwise and then spread cream cheese on the flat side. Add finely chopped onion and garlic, season with salt pepper and whatever else tickles your fancy, then wrap a slice of bacon around them and slap them on the grill for 15-20 minutes, depending on how crisp you like your bacon.

(Or put them in the oven, as the recipe suggested, but I try not to use that in sunmer.)

I thought it'd get messy to wrap them or make a mess on the grill, but not at all actually. By the end the potatoes were still nicely firm and the cream cheese-onion-spice-bacon made them taste great. I'll definitely make this again in the future.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-13 01:09 pm

Harvestella Review

I've been talking elsewhere about getting back into reviewing video games, and then completely forgot to actually do it! but I took extensive notes on the game while I was playing and I remember it well enough, so I might as well do it anyway.

I played the Switch version of the game.

So! Harvestella is a jrpg-farming game hybrid developed by Live Wire and published by Square Enix. I've had a bumpy road with farming games in that I enjoy the underlying gameplay loop, but I get bored of it quickly if there's not enough content surrounding it to break things up. I'd hoped, after seeing the game on stream and playing the demo, that the fantasy world, story and combat would help with that.

The TL;DR of the review: Yes, it absolutely did that; I've never stuck with a farming game for as long or as happily as with this one, but it may or may not hit the same for other people.

Read more... )
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-13 12:10 am

I just like making words okay

I should do more conlanging. I want to make the High Entia conlang I was fiddling with into a more full fledged conlang, and I've been neglecting [name expunged to keep original work apart from fan presence].

Or to put the title in other words,

Liath zalia thia iaceizim lualm.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-12 07:41 pm

(no subject)

If my boss ever asks me to live debug code on camera again I'll...

...probably do it let's be real, but I am NOT going to be happy about it.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-11 10:03 pm

Why is he so cute anyway

I'm fiddling with Noah's 3D model for art references, and my total ineptitude at Blender makes this frustrating because I keep finding new issues I don't know how to fix but at the same time I am reminded once again how much I love his design. They were cooking so hard with it. Give me his jacket.
ebonwinged_nova: (Default)
2023-07-11 01:58 pm

(no subject)

My boss: leaves for vacation for two weeks, leaving me (junior position, only just out of trial employment) to develop a complicated feature mostly by myself with very little assistance
Also my boss: comes out of vacation and instantly demands I get a test version up and running by tomorrow
Unfortunately me and not my boss: finds a critical roadblock that prevents me from getting a test version up and running if I can't solve it

This job is going to kill me someday, man