If you are *too* open-minded it gets difficult to verify whether or not you are real. But I think I am, thefore--

Anyway, this is a post about how I'm doing and the things I've gotten up to.

Physically I am doing much better than I have been, albeit with a lot of problems sleeping. Mentally, I,

Anyway.

I've been reading fiction again here and there. I have a difficult relationship to reading fiction because I write it and I am weird about both of those things. But over the years my readers and various other people recommended me a lot of things to read that they felt evoked something similar to Unjust Depths or that I might appreciate in that capacity.

I am not reading any of those things.

Instead I am reading Wandering Witch: Journey of Elaina, a 12 volume light novel about a witch traveling the world and being high key kind of a jerk to almost everyone she meets. But sometimes, when she meets someone she actually likes, there's some awful twist behind it. I already watched the anime so I know we get some wild stories later, but the first volume has a lot of really lame ones. Still, I really like Elaina. She's awful, and she's a Shalikova (white/silvery hair, purple eyes), so of course she's delightful to read about.

Literally I read these across the day when I feel like I would look at twitter otherwise. Trying to wean myself off doomscrolling.

For that it's been perfect.

In addition to that I've been reading a ton of Lovecraft stuff-- I wanted to read some of his older stories in publication order. Nothing much to say on that front. The Alchemist was incredibly wacky, the Samuel Johnson story was unbearable, etc. What can you say about this anymore-- its the racist scary octopus man. You either don't like this at all or you eat this shit up so bad you read a siscon manga about Shub Niggurath. You've seen my writing (I hope) so you know the aesthetic fascinates me. You know I'm reading "The Doom That Came to Sarnath." You know I'm reading that instead of the lesbian novels y'all been telling me to read until I decided to log off all my socials. Can I just write "lol" here? I make the rules: "lol."

New Genshin Impact region coming out soon! I caught up on the archon story and now I'm ready for like underbaked South America or Polynesia or something. It's got a Nahuatl name but like one lady is based on a Maori goddess and I saw some posts that there's some African stuff thrown in there too, I dunno anymore. I am unable to contribute to the race discourse surrounding this one-- you see, after Drake got destroyed early this summer, I have been in hiding and staying my lane. I don't want to catch any lightskin heat. So anyway they put Himeko in it. We will be rolling. Honestly it looks-- fine. I am not particularly excited for this one but maybe when I see it in action it will grow on me. Like all Fontaine needed to do for me was to show me the underwater diving and I was immediately sold. Showing me Mavuika in those pants *helps* but like I know there will be hot anime women, it's Genshin Impact. So far what I don't really know is whether the new region will be fun to run around and do stuff in. If I'm still doing my dailies in Fontaine come next week it's so over.

Speaking of Drake I actually listened to every Kendrick album this summer. I had listened to good kid maad city a long time ago but it was like emotionally devastating to me. It just touched me and it was so raw that I couldn't listen without crying and thinking of things I would rather not process. So it took me until now to listen to "to pimp a butterfly" and "damn" and "mr morale" and all of them are incredible incredible albums. All of them are also just emotionally devastating. Not gonna have these on rotation until a special mood kicks in. I also listened to a lot of jpegmafia recently which is like: can I just write "lmao" here? I make the rules: "lmao." It's really really fun stuff. I'm the hoe and brother: I'm scared.

I started playing Neptunia Rebirth 1, and I installed all the other ones also. I was really, really charmed with these games in the early to mid 2010s. I love gijinkas and all the silly allegory and the designs are really attractive. I really love the relationship between Neptune and Noire. I was *crazy* about those two in like 2012. My like last attempts at fanfiction before starting The Solstice War were a few (unpublished, now destroyed) drafts of Neptunia yuri fanfic. Despite this, I've never actually finished most of them-- I remember Rebirth 1 and 2 both having weird difficulty spikes that I didn't want to grind to get through. But now I have all the time in the world to do whatever I want. So I'm on vacation to gooner gijinka gamerland.

Still watching Star Trek. DS9 has had higher highs than TNG but there are still so many like insultingly dumb episodes. I'm just not a syndicated show plots "we gotta have some shit for this week lets do a story about how theres a planet of aliens that are only alive for a week and then turn into ghosts" type girlie. I really like the political stories about Bajor and Cardassia. Another big winner lately have been the Ferengisodes-- any time the Grand Nagus shows up to bully Quark. It's hilarious. The subplot with Nog wanting to join Starfleet was like actually well executed which surprised me. I felt so bad for Nog and I really want him to succeed at this and like, not be a cartoon like Quark and Rom lol.

Also: evil bisexual tyrant Kira Nerys.

Also I have been writing. I've got an Unjust Depths chapter kicking around. I felt a certain anguish trying to put it together but it'll happen sometime soon.

I'm trying to think of this as something of a vacation. I am kinda hoping to get back to like twice a month Unjust Depths chapters but what I'm allowing myself right now is that if the energy isn't there it isn't there. If writing some other stuff brings me joy that's what I'm doing. I've got like 20k words of another project kicking around that's been a delight to write. I've got a *third* idea kicking around now. And getting to explore my creativity in these others ways helps me come back to UD fresh instead of like "aw man I've got to put something out this week."

Anyway that's what I got. lmao