Blog Post

I awoke in the middle of reading "The Last Motor Race of the Empire," a deeply interesting little piece of history by an Estonian museum about a motor race which took place in the baltics in 1914 just days before World War 1 in Europe kicked off. I say I "awoke" in the sense that, before this, I had been kind of doing a lot of things with a strange certainty that was not really backed up by anything too concrete. Maybe I "realized" would be more accurate, but to me, in that moment, I broke through a certain fog and began to consider what I was doing and why. Why was I reading about 1910s motor racing in Eastern Europe? I wanted to be able to answer concretely the question I had been asking for over a month now: this will "fix me." Reading more bizarre early to late industrial era trivia is what I *need* to be able to write again. I had this thought again when looking at hobbyist website for models of Russian-made cars. Obviously, I *NEED* to look at the toys. It will fix me. It will make me write again. I thought about this again when I started watching a Very Long video about The Last Express-- a 1997 adventure game that takes place in the days just before World War 1, also. (That game has lesbians! Wow!) Obviously. I'm doing everything for a reason. I don't do things arbitrarily like a dog or ghost. I do things deliberately, as part of a concerted effort to get my readers the best possible art I can make.

I wrote a few blogs already about things I'd done. Obviously-- I did this because it would fix me. I write blog posts almost less for an audience and more to understand myself better. The act of writing demands frameworks, narratives, and cohesion. All of this is a stepping stone on the bright and beautiful path to fixing me. Fixing me means exactly one single thing-- that I write and publish fiction. Writing and publishing fiction is the absolute only thing of value that I do and every waking moment my stupid brain harangues me with fictionalizations of everything around me to remind me that I could be writing a narrative Right Now for my beautiful readers. A narrative that people would read, and then tell me: "it was okay. I read better books for my queer fiction thesis." (People sometimes tell me my writing is Good but I do not let myself believe that out of a personally weaponized Toxic Humility.) A handful of people told me that they liked those blogs, outside of the fact that I wrote them on the long road to Fixing Myself and finally becoming Productive again. I received exactly One Email about those blogs (madiha at unjustdepths dot com-- if you know any good scholarly articles about Detective Fiction please email me, they can be about literally any aspect of Detective Fiction but man, if you got queer readings of that shit, I've got eyeballs that would look at it.)

Exactly four people told me that they felt those blogs helped them with their writing or creativity or thinking about their writing or creativity. I replied to most of them very briefly. To prevent myself from saying something less humble or more stupid. Then I began to engage in other activities which would Fix Me and Make Me Productive. If you look back at the SHEER VOLUME of activities which I have documented in these blogs, all of which ABSOLUTELY contributed at least an iota to my future Productivity Quotient and to my overall Self Fixing Progress you might INACCURATELY surmise that I must now be a veritable Machine of social value and creative productivity.

There is always more fixing yourself that you can do.

So the fixing continued.

I started watching "Tropical-Rouge Precure!" Precure absolutely rules. It's an absolute joy to watch. It's incredibly colorful, very fluidly animated, and full of extremely energetic voice acting. The girls are constantly making funny faces. When a fight with a motivation-draining monster sent by the Procrastination Witch (wait-- huh-- what do you mean--) breaks out, the Pretty Cures transform and literally beat the shit out of them. They punch and kick and suplex them. I already Knew that this was what Precure was like-- I watched Heartcatch Precure a million years ago in the prehistory of my life, and I also lived in the world, hearing things about anime from people, back when I knew more than ten people, and talked with more than five of them a week. I already knew Tropical-Rouge Precure would be awesome, because Pretty Cure is about hype moments, and aura. It's also a really positive show with great little conflicts. Watching a Pretty Cure show is just a beautiful little pop of sugary joy in your life. I did the dance with Ending Song every single time. Every episode a different precure beckons you to dance with the ending song. I figured-- this is a show for 9 year old girls. The choreography has to be something they can learn and follow along with. But it's really not. It's actually kinda complicated. For a non-child woman who has a bad back and knees. Despite these challenges, it was immensely fun. I literally put the show back on for the ED and just kept trying to do the dance for a little while. It felt like I understood something about creating television for children in that moment.

I felt happy.

I meet with my friend Esther a few times a week. (Happy belated Birthday, Esther!) (I told her it was her birthday at midnight on the day that would become the day that is her birthday. I'm not only doing it in this blog. I'm not THAT big an asshole, unlike what these blogs might attest to.) She's the person I have most regularly hung out with for the past Decade. We often read magazines together (shout out to Internet Archive "The Magazine Rack" insane place if you like mags about pornographic video games in Japanese) or watch anime or play games. We sometimes window shop together for merch we're not going to buy. I love to window shop on internet websites and I hope I infected her with it too. Anyway recently we played VRChat and had an interesting conversation. She told me that sometimes she thought about lockdown and how a bunch of people suddenly had free time that they spent on hobbies and art that they did not pursue before and might not pursue again-- we talked about this while wandering through a beautiful little proof of concept map for a skybox literally made in May 12 of 2020. I related to my friend Esther my own feelings about 2020, which I will not reproduce in full because they're not novel and kind of a bummer and I'm sure you've read a million things about 2020 and its significance from like every other creative person you've interacted with.

I will tell you though, not what I *said* about 2020 to her-- I will tell you what I immediately thought when she said "2020."

"2020-07-03."

I thought about how in 2020, I published Unjust Depths. Was this then, my "hobby that pursued in 'lockdown' that I might not pursue again"?

I made a vent tweet in my locked twitter account. I wrote:

"the unjust depths lady got deeply mentally ill and just started professionally wasting her time for an entire year and counting. bummer for her fans"

Then Esther and I went to "big booty island"-- a pirate themed gooner hangout map. There was a lot of fanart of Mast from Goddess of Victory: NIKKE in that map. Good taste!

Hey by the way I should promote this to you all, this might actually be positive for you-- install VRchat! You can play it on PC! And mobile I think I don't know. I play on PC. You don't need VR! It is a little weird without VR but it's fine for what I do in it. Don't talk to the people. Like just don't use it to actually hang out in public maps they're full of 12 year olds it's weird. Go invite-only and take a single friend you cherish, to maintain some liminality. Find a single friend and do some digital urbexing. Visit some little hangout maps. Visit people's erotic roleplay bedroom maps. Visit all the wonderful like, digital art installations, and little games, and other stuff, that people just do for fun on VRChat. Visit the giantess fetish map. Visit maps by my favorite VRchat creator, "Fins" (@vrfins.bsky.social). Talk to your friend while you do this. Visit a janky reproduction of the entirety of Silent Hill 2 in VRChat with your friend. Do this after going to the Avatar Search and becoming your favorite Wuthering Waves character. I've played 355 hours of VRChat with my friend Esther. You can have a friend Esther you do this stuff with. It's been one of the most rewarding experiences that I've had with a video game. I didn't even know I was doing "digital urbexing" (shout out to Segan Hawkes, cool youtube horror guy, for the term) but I was and that shit is fun as hell.

Anyway. All of this matters-- for fixing me. Because you need inspiration. Clearly inspiration is what I was missing.

There is something semi-axiomatic about "inspiration"-- which is kinda a contradiction if you are rigid in your word-understanding, but makes total sense if you allow yourself to live in the present of the world. You kinda do need "inspiration" to write-- as in, you need concrete things in your head to write *about*. Nothing comes out of a vacuum. When you read the biography of Alexander Pushkin and then you read all his stories about young ensigns looking for the love of delicate women with beautiful feet in the fringes of the Russian Empire, you understand that human beings write about stuff they care about, and weave things into their narratives which appeal to them in some way. It is entirely possible to write bloodlessly, about things which you neither know or truly give any shit about-- people engage in this hackery so much that we frequently levy this insult, and frequently say that you should "write what you know." I find this piece of advice annoying. To me, what you must do is write about things you "care about". Be curious about things, learn about them, imagine them, and place yourself in those moments, and then draw upon that to create stories that say what you *want* to say. You don't necessarily need to invoke *exclusively* experientialism-- god knows I love a dry technical paragraph about a gun barrel or whatever the fuck-- but you ought to get at least a little hard about what you're writing about, in my view, and in whatever way you choose to write about it. You have to want to explore. You have to want to care.

For me, I've discovered, you do kinda need "inspiration." It does, as annoying as it sounds, help to just keep a bunch of pictures and snippets of paragraphs and links to articles and a map of the leningrad oblast in folder like a weird squirrel ferreting away things that catch her eye for the winter. Like a list of Imperial Russian prices for stuff in kopecks and rubles. Or official art of Yuxian from Zenless Zone Zero in that INSANE skin they gave her where she's got like a sportcoat bodysuit with tights and an incredibly vestigial little skirt-- they are trying so hard to get me back into Zenless Zone Zero y'all. (I actually did log in like a month ago to spend all my remaining currency from when I was actively playing to get Vivian Banshee, because her design is just pure candy for Madihas. There's not enough fanart out there of Belle blowing Vivian's back out. You know, I'm fascinatined sometimes with like the set of incentives-- gacha fanartists can have their favorites, but a lot of the ones kinda go along with whatever is current and being marketed because that's what people will be paying attention to. It's kind of perverse in a way. Anyway I don't think I'm logging back into Zenless Zone Zero for Yixuan.) (More like Zenless Zone Zero Out Of Ten.)

I'm a person with ultimately narrow interests. When I used to use social media, I would just mute people who got obsessed with a thing I didn't care about, and I just wouldn't tell them. After like, months, I would remember to check back on them and remove the mute when they were well and truly done posting all day about Undertale or whatever. Some people might call this behavior anti-social or unfriendly, but I think everyone has a right to enjoy themselves with their things wholly genuinely, without my input or observation. Using social media is like willingly stepping into a weird overcrowded box, and I think there's something wholly sensible about just distancing yourself from people when you just won't have positive interactions with whatever they're about today. There's only so few tools on social media to do this kind of limited run curation. When a fanartist you follow who doesn't know you starts drawing straight art instead of yuri art (this happens A LOT) you can just unfollow them. When a friend starts talking about straight shit instead of anything else, you can also unfollow them (I've done this when we're not *especially* friends) or you can mute them (I do this because I *care*.)

Nobody has ever accused me of being a person who is *easy* to get along with.

But the things I draw inspiration from can actually be kind of broad. Sometimes I will just literally go on shopping websites. And I will just look at all the crap in front of me and think about how people live now, and how people lived before, and how people might live in the future. I go look at accounts with liminal spaces photography, or watch drone footage of random European cities, and I try to establish a sense of place in my head. I literally try to retrace the steps of like POV urban walking videos in my head so that if I ever need to I can just reestablish that sense of place again without going for a walk myself-- which can be time consuming, and also, there's not beautiful European architecture to look at where I live anyway. I listen to music A LOT for inspiration also.

Actually, recently, man-- did you know Nujabes is *crazy* good? I mean, I knew this already, like I just *like* Nujabes (RIP) but I had all my Nujabes music just on a hard drive somewhere and I never moved it to my new gaming PC which has more robust internal storage, so I can just kinda have all my music on the thing without worrying about it. Then I was listening to some random other stuff-- there's this guy called "Dated" that makes like "Dark Lo-Fi" that might sound kinda ridiculous, but I really enjoyed it, and then I thought-- man, there's like some WEIRD huge megabrands of Lo-Fi stuff on bandcamp aren't there? What's up with that? I have a bandcamp account (that gets followers for some reason? email me if you understand why anyone would follow someone else's bandcamp account if they aren't a band or an artist and are just buying trance and lo-fi albums). I remembered the backrooms themed album that the Jazzhop Cafe people cut recently, and then I saw that like-- everything the Jazzhop Cafe people do is about evoking this weird sense of place. Their albums are all called stuff like "POV: thinking about us" with an album cover of like a cartoon guy walking through a vaguely japanese neighborhood. It's kinda fascinating? They cut an album about like, evoking a sense of place with vaguely "Irish" flavor that I feel like would upset anyone thats actually Irish (without evidence at all-- I just assume the worst of Lo-Fi megabrands at all times.) I bought the entire discography of Neoncity Records who do like, sample-heavy weebish future funk stuff, because it was like 20 dollars for like 128 albums and I am addicted to value. I have found exactly ONE album of these that I really liked listening to, so far. It was honestly kind of a HUGE mistake for the usability of my bandcamp account, and now everyone who is following me on bandcamp for reasons that escape me will think I'm insane into future funk. They will not know that I'm primarily addicted to value for money-- (value--?)

But anyway, that got me thinking about instrumental hip hop just generally. So I went back to dig out my Nujabes stuff, and seriously every track he touched was gold. I've been listening A LOT to "Next View" from his 2003 "Metaphorical Music" and it was like exactly the vibe I needed. I told myself when I finally get back to whatever I was supposed to do I would absolutely listen to Nujabes while doing it. I never felt so happy rediscovering a track. Listening to it a bunch provoked a sense memory of a not too similar track by completely other artists, that I listened to A LOT when I was younger, "Slow Blues" from "Wu-Tang Meets The Indie Culture Vol 1." That was actually the first track I ever bought on iTunes. 99 cents well spent. Second track I ever bought on iTunes was "Breakdance of Yao" from The Shanghai Restoration Project. That was also a really good track-- 99 cents well spent! I listened the shit out of that track. I'm addicted to value for money--

(I tend to repeat play the same track over and over and over A LOT.) (Whenever Cosmograph releases a track for Goddess of Victory NIKKE I ended up listening to it ALL DAY.)

Man-- actually, Goddess of Victory NIKKE has some CRAZY good music. I listen to a lot of gacha game music when I'm writing actually--

You know what? Fuck it. Right here right now we are doing top ten gacha tracks of 2024. Let's fucking hit it.

10: Reforge

I wanted to include at least one Monster Siren thing because Hypergriph recently has been more of a music publisher than a game publisher to me. Like go look at Monster Siren on Spotify (under "塞壬唱片-MSR"). They cut SO MANY tracks. But 2024 was actually kinda slow for me, they haven't been putting out stuff that I gel with as much since like 2022 or 2023-- hey, just like Arknights itself! But I did want to include them here because of just how much gacha music they put out. And I do like Reforge! Bombastic music with female vocals is easy to get me with. Anyway, moving on now.

9: Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Feeling nostalgic for things that happened last year is kind of crazy work to be putting in for one's battered psyche. However, in the midst of the snorefest that has been the Amphoreus arc for me, where characters die constantly and yet I have zero feelings about it or look forward to anything else happening, I am actually drawn back to thinking that maybe Penacony wasn't so bad. I joked to my best friend Esther that it was actually Peakacony last night. And when I made that joke I remembered, exclusively, the part of the final boss fight when "Hope is the Thing With Feathers" kicks in and you smash the train into the boss for what feels like less damage than Firefly with a well-built team does to it. Anyway, this is one of those moments that is gorgeously aesthetic, and which Mihoyo saves up for a once per major expansion sort of experience-- the multi-phase boss with a dramatic cutscene before the last phase, which then kicks in an emotional vocal track to send you off amid the boss' final mechanics. This is the kind of moment that I wish I could somehow replicate in my own medium, which is the very definition of Inspo. Except that are other definitions of it too. Anyway, Robin's cute, I like the song.

8: Absolutio Absoluta Absolutissime

It's a banal observation that a year feels, mentally, like a eternal expanse, within which you cannot identify any given event. Or at least, that is what I thought when I realized that Daddy was released in 2024. Arlecchino, the Knave, is an affably charismatic antagonist in Genshin Impact who took the world of erotic lesbian art of gacha games by storm. In Genshin Impact, battles against the "Harbinger" faction usually have two phases, and the second phase has a bombastic theme suitable for the boss' transformation into their final, strongest form. Absolutio Absoluta Absolutissime, which is a sick ass title, is the theme for the second phase of the Daddy boss fight. It rules. I want to say that it gives a sense of both overwhelming force and a sort of tragedy, which pairs well with the story context in which this fight transpires.

Alternative ranking for this track: 1. It's insanely good. I aspire to give off mean top energy anywhere near as much as Daddy's and I will absolutely fail. I do not have black, be-sigiled claws for fingers. I will never put three abyssal-powered knuckles in that pussy-- I might as well "game end" as the kids say. (Email me if you've got good makeup tutorials for the dexterity-challenged.)

7: Wrecking Storm

SHIFT UP has recently been a focal point of internet culture war stuff that makes your brain leak out of your ears if you take it too seriously. While I couldn't care less about Stellar Blade, which looks like a bad game that is also aesthetically displeasing to me, I really like Goddess of Victory:NIKKE. The story was a lot more serious and complex than I imagined, there are many charming characters, and the game is fun to play, particularly on your actual phone using your actual fingers-- it's a game where the mobile experience is immensely novel and it feels tailor-made to be on your phone. The music is *awesome* also: the moment I knew Cosmograph was going to be part of this project I knew I had to listen, and the other frequent contributors to Nikke's soundtrack such as NieN bring an incredible variety of auditory textures to the game's battles, cutscenes, and even the fucking menus.

If I had done one of these last year, the whole thing would've gone to Stronghold/Land Eater, a double-feature track I can't stop listening to even to this day. For 2024 though there is still an immensely strong selection. It was hard not to fill this list exclusively with NIKKE music. Wrecking Storm is so fun to me. It's like a boss track from an old Sonic: The Hedgehog game. The lyrics send me into the stratosphere. Can't block the vision / Obsessed the mission. Come try the focus in my eyes / the force field is not nice. Every so often I will look at myself in the mirror, with the deep dark circles around my eyes and my resting bitch face and I will say a line from this song and crack the fuck up. It's so daring and genuine. Where did this kind of boss theme go? I mean clearly to South Korean and Chinese gacha games.

But what are the rest of you doing?!

6: Heavy is the Desire

The music was released legally in 2025-- but it was in the game in 2024, so it counts as one of the hot tracks of 2024. Version 1.0... Back when Wuthering Waves fucking sucked. But as I've said a bunch times in recent blogs, Wuthering Waves actually fucking owns. The 2.0 storyline is CRAZY good, and giving credit to pre-2.0 stuff, the turn-around REALLY started in the 1.3 update in September 2024-- with the Black Shores region and its main story, which was REALLY good. Black Shores is when I was like, this game is actually special. Then the 2.0 content was like-- this game is actually really good and I will stick to it. I will drop Zenless Zone Zero (out of Ten) to just play this instead now. Wuthering Waves has Carlotta in it! Hello? Anyway. This is the Dreamless boss theme from 1.0. The Dreamless fight was actually pretty good! And this track fucking rules. That beat is super fun. Quintessential good boss music that has wormed its way into the rotation. I had to farm Dreamless so much for Havoc Rover.

5: Ghosts At Play

Infinity Nikki has like, almost completely fumbled the bag at this point, from what I'm hearing. I stopped playing in the literal second patch because while I found the main story to be an absolute joy to play with gorgeous visuals, incredible music, fun gameplay, and an interesting little story for 9 year old girls (but not as good as when Pretty Cure makes interesting little stories for 9 year old girls), I also looked at all the lore drops that they were doing for the future and thought-- there's no way I'm going to strap in for another multi-year globetrotting gacha adventure when I'm already 6 years or whatever into Genshin Impact. Nod-Krai coming soon man I don't have it in me to keep up with another one of these. Ironically a few months later I would become utterly absorbed in Wuthering Waves exactly as Infinity Nikki mutilated its new player experience to introduce co-op features that I, as a weirdo with no friends, would never want to engage with.

Anyway I love the funny ghost train level and I love the funny ghost train song. All the music is actually pretty good.

4: Arcana of Zipacna

The only Genshin Impact soundtrack that I've listened to end to end in the car on a long drive with my wife is "Land of Tleyaoyotl" and this track is really a standout. It's super vibesy. In generally I've really enjoyed the Natlan patches! I know that it's incumbent on Genshin Impact players to be professionally mad at all times and unhappy about the game they are playing every day-- and I understand the criticism of the character design in Genshin Impact. I would have liked to see darker skinned characters too. But the patch was fun generally. It had aura, and hype moments. They put Himeko in it!

3: Perfect Maid: You've always got me

This track is a sample overload. It has the think break. It has bed squeaks. It has camera shutter noises. There's a weird "bleh" in there. I'm pretty sure the vocal is itself sampled. It's pure saccharine chaos. I can't help but smile. If thinking about how I'll never be a hellcursed evil top with fire powers made me want to kill myself, Perfect Maid: You've Always Got Me gives me reason to live. No joke when this came out I was so insanely depressed, and after hearing it, I had it on loop so much that I was playing it in the car to my wife on the way to the hospital. I was and still am obsessed with this track. It buoyed my horrible mood. It still makes me smile. It's always got me. Unrelated but I love the illustration in the youtube video. Privaty is my favorite NIKKE, because I'm addicted to tsundere, and of course, her consternation at becoming a perfect maid is delightful. I want to bully her so so much. And Ade's gentle smile is so charming. Thanks NIKKE-- I *am* having the time of my life.

I couldn't think of a single thing to put in number 2. I'm sorry.

1: REDASH : Daybreak (ULTRA)

REDASH is one of those events where I was really like, okay-- NIKKE has ideas for what it's doing with its setting and story and it is doing something special here. The story isn't just good "despite itself" in some way-- it is genuinely captivating and fun and has good emotional moments in its own terms because of its setting and the ways the characters are positioned. It's not good "for the funny fanservice game" it is just a good story. And of course, the soundtrack helps sell these points. Cosmograph, NIEN and Varien (and assorted others) made what I consider like, the kind of fun boss music that seems to have gotten sucked out of every other video game I play and landed in gacha games now. It's so strong, it's so hype. When the song comes in and you start getting the vocals I get chills every time. It's so cool!

(The REDASH event was released in November 2023 but the soundtrack was publically released in 2024-- so it's THE hottest gacha track of 2024.)

Not In 2024 But The Real Winner: HOLY CRAB

NIKKE did a summer event and Cosmograph did a riff on Crab Rave for it. Like. What else can I say? It oozes fun. It's bumpin'. It's summery. It's got aura and hype moments. I love to listen to it. I listen to it legit every day.

...

Anyway, where was I? Right-- Inspiration.

Hey you know what's a good recent hip hop instrumental? I've been crazy about "Mandingo" from Black Samson The Bastard Swordsman: Instrumentals by the Wu-Tang Clan. I fear that despite my ancestry I do not have enough melanin to say the name of that track as many times as I maybe want to-- but it's really good! I have mixed feelings about Black Samson The Bastard Swordsman generally. We're never going to have "that 90s sound" back exactly anymore, and I think we tend to judge stuff more harshly because of our nostalgia for the things that defined our formative tastes. But also Black Samson The Bastard Swordsman is mid I've only ever listened to it once and never felt like doing so again-- except for the instrumentals. The instrumentals are pretty good. Actually like all the Wu-Tang instrumentals albums are pretty good maybe I just really like instrumentals? I've always had problems like understanding and remembering lyrics despite how well I can remember like. What tracks sound like generally in my brain?

Anyway.

I've written three outlines for chapters that I think are pretty good. I've written 10,000 words for the first chapter of The New Concept of Emptiness Effigied. I will have to edit the blurb in the page on the website because the story is not necessarily about that stuff anymore, but the imagery of the tree made of hands is still in the story and will still work. I won't have to buy a second logo for it and it is still called Emptiness Effigied, a title that still works. I've not written 10,000 words consistently. I've written them little by little, trying to get back into the spirit of writing.

When I can sit down and write, when the mood is right, writing is still fun and I like doing it. I wouldn't give this shit up. I like writing. I think you can do things with writing that you can't with anything else-- if you have imagination. I have, as I've painstakingly laid out for you, an *absurd* capacity for imagination. So for me, writing is a pure exercise in possibility-manifesting.

I've done a lot of stuff lately. As you now know. I don't know how much of it helped or did not help me write those 10,000 words and 10,000 additional words of worldbuilding, notes, and outlines. As you've now read over the course of the last three blog posts, which speak to each other and sort of form a trilogy with overarching themes and a certain narrative-- I don't know how to feel about the fact that I'm indulging in things like "having fun" and "interacting with new and different things" instead of neglecting my life and loved ones to "lock in" and write 24/7. It's been months since an Unjust Depths thing came out. It's been years since Unjust Depths stuff came out regularly. It'll be at least more years and certainly more months before more Unjust Depths comes out from me. I've already said I'm working on something different. I needed a change of pace. I got my change of pace. A change of pace that has entailed mourning the person I was before all of this happened.

In 2023 and 2024 and again in 2025, I was regularly sick. That is why I "fell off" my schedule in the first place and in a sense, it's also why I could never get back on. I suffered from an embarrassing medical condition in 2023 that has made me a too-frequent-for-my-tastes visitor to various hospitals and specialist doctors. It shouldn't, really, impede me working like I had been, but it did. Every so often I think, like a fucking goon-- I could've probably worked through all that mess. But maybe I couldn't have. My doctor took a look at me in 2023 and was very firm with me. In addition to the condition I will not talk about, the tests which she ran on me revealed way scarier stuff for my future, if not my immediate present. She told me that I was pre-diabetic, my cholesterol was horrifying, I was ingesting way too much sodium, I was drinking more than she wanted (doctors want you to drink Not At All) and she was aghast at my sleeping habits. I drank a lot of energy drinks, ate a lot of junk food, and did zero exercise. With my doctor's urging that I probably ought to do something about all of this, I have since turned it around. You might be pleased to know exactly two years since my doctor told me if I don't start taking care of myself better right now I will Literally Die, I am no longer pre-diabetic, my cholesterol is now way more normal, my heart health is back on track, and I sleep terribly, but better than I used to. I hardly even drink anymore! I'm pleasantly boring now, and aside from landing in the hospital a few times a year, doctors now look at me as a non-concern.

But regardless-- I'm getting older. I have a lot of paranoia about my health. Also 2025 has been not good, if you noticed! It's been a psychically difficult year to exist in as the census demographics that I occupy, which are more despised than normal by the government under which I live. I cannot stay up until 3 AM for several days a week every week to make sure a weekly chapter of Unjust Depths happens at exactly 4 PM on Sunday. A person once told me Unjust Depths chapters come out at the perfect time for them to have something to do on their break at work the next day. I'm sorry that they are now coming out never. I'm being vulnerable here and saying that I do not think what is healthier for me is necessarily better for the art. What has happened is that less art has happened-- it is in vogue to agree that we should all only make art under good and healthy conditions, and that we should not romanticize working ourselves to death. This is a fine critique of art-producing labor under capitalism where the perverse incentives of business and the desperate need for material resources *force* the artist to grind themselves to pieces, not for making art, but for surviving capitalism when art is your job. I feel ridiculous when people assert to me that they are happy I'm taking my time and working more healthily, and assert to me that they know for a certainty that better art will result from this. That "my best work" came when I was rested or delayed publishing a chapter because I was sick. I really feel that the art is not better for this. I do not have a boss that makes me writes Unjust Depths-- not even you all occupy that role. Nothing makes me do this and so *I did not do it*. The unhealthy schedule came from me, but it's also what motivated me to make the thing you all loved. I feel that what has happened is I just don't make art because I'm dancing to the ED song for Tropical-Rouge Precure instead of being on my 8th hour of slamming my head into my word processor.

All of this has felt ridiculous to talk about. But I decided to talk about it because I feel like I understand myself better when I write about things. I see things in a different perspective. These blogs have been a form of story-making about myself. I've rendered this struggle, in these blog posts, into a narrative of ridiculous proportion that most accurately takes my poor readers through the kind of gordian knots of thinking that I frequently find myself in. People have told me that these blog posts have helped them with their creative introspection. I have no idea how this could have possibly happened. I have always known the prescription for my problems. I've always known in the back of my head how to fix myself and extract maximum value. Cutting the knot is to simply tell my wife I'm not watching television with her, telling my friends I'm not hanging out, telling my boss I'm taking a PTO day from work, making an excuse, and using the time to write all day. It's eating poorly, drinking a ton of coffee and energy drinks and staying up until 4 AM so writing happens one way or another in time within the framework of a ridiculous deadline that I gave myself. FOR FREE. Cutting the knot is not cooking healthy and balanced meals for myself and my wife. It's not baking any more bread, not walking several blocks out to the asian-style bakery on a beautiful sunny day to get a bit of taro-flavored pastry. What I'm doing right now is painstakingly untying the knot. I'm doing what was not done in the legend-- I'm doing what has not yet really worked, and I know that it will not yield the same result.

I have done writing-- I have writing down on the page. I will do more writing. Writing will happen eventually. It will never be like it was again. Behind the first prescription there is a note from my doctor that it is not possible for me to be that person anymore. I can't do weekly Unjust Depths chapters. Hell I haven't even done monthly Unjust Depths chapters! I have a very slow timetable set up for getting back into Unjust Depths. For now, I'm trying to take it easy and do this new project for me. I want to rediscover joy. I want to feel about writing like I felt about dancing to the ED with the Pretty Cures-- I want to feel compelled to do it because I'm just so damn happy when I do it. I'm not there yet-- but I actually feel a bit positive about it. Because I do feel inspired; I do feel excited. I've read more books in 2025 than I did total between 2020 and 2024. I've watched more shows. I've played more games. I picked up new skills. I have vastly expanded my life expectancy from the grim state in which it was back in 2023. My inner world has never been richer. But my word documents have never been barer. I use to write hundreds of thousands of words a year. People said it was insane I could write that much. We all have a bit more perspective on this now I guess. I'll never be there again-- but I'll continue to write. You're welcome to read I guess.

Artists always make shit weird and complicated, because the world is often stupid and simple, and it's up to somebody to create a bit of friction. I'm over here saying "yeah, I basically have never been living better-- and that fucking sucks." In a blog post that contained a fucking top ten gacha tracks list that isn't even complete, because I couldn't think of a number 2-- it's tough, what the hell is worse than 1 but better than 3, how do you land there. But anyway. I've guaranteed that I'll be living for a while more, so you'll see my writing again someday. Maybe email me or something if you have feelings about that or not. I'm like not on public social media anymore because I can't think of modes of writing between "saying nothing" and "gigantic, insane blog post."