Is it a noodle?

It's winter, which means it's time to troubleshoot my own brain!

( under the cut )

Anyway, that's a lot of words. But the good thing is, I don't feel sad. I love not feeling sad in winter!

Hi! I'm alive! I've secretly been alive this whole time! For months now my brain has been refusing to engage with any task that has higher emotional stakes than organizing my vast and beautiful collection of bug photos, but at some point I'd like to get back to blogging again.

("I didn't know you were this into insects," a friend commented recently. In fact I've always been this into insects; I just normally also have other hobbies. As soon as work stops being stressful and current events stop being so eventful, I hope to have other hobbies again. It's been a long year, guys.)

A few quick housekeeping things:

- I'm sending out holiday cards again this year! If you got one last year and have the same address, I'm planning on sending you one, or have possibly already sent it. If OTOH you didn't get one last year and would like one this year, let me know. The comments on this post ARE NOT screened, so sending a direct message is probably the best way to let me know your address?

- About a year ago, it looked like Aethy was going to go down, so I migrated my Mastodon account to blorbo.social, where I plan to stay for now. For most of this year I hibernated from Mastodon too, but I've recently begun posting there again. (Mostly bug photos. But maybe fandom posts too in the future?)

- It looks like something hinky is afoot at Livejournal, so just in case it too goes down, I've backed my old old LJ account up at missitar. If you had me friended under that name on LJ and want to look back at our conversations from 2001-2007, let me know and I'd be happy to add you to that journal's access list; but currently, I don't plan to post anything new there.

Hope everyone is doing well, and that you have a safe and happy 2026!

It's still technically 2024! That means it's not too late for the annual:

Holiday Card Address Post

If anyone I know would like a holiday postcard this year, and especially if:

a) you have never requested one before, OR
b) your address has changed, OR
c) you expected to receive a card last year but it never arrived,

please comment with your current address to this post before December 31! (All comments are automatically screened so that only I can see them; you don't need a dreamwidth account to comment.)

I haven't sent off any cards yet, and I still have some spares in case anyone who doesn't normally request one would like one, so if you're thinking of requesting one or have a new address now is the time to let me know. I'm going to try to send cards out by the end of December, so hopefully they should get to their destinations sometime in January.

Reciprocation is, as always, wholly optional, but if you do feel like sending a return card, my address is available here on DW (friendslocked post, let me know if you can't access it)!

I know intellectually that my brain works better when I’m operating on enough sleep, but it’s still wild to sleep 10~12 hours two nights in a row and discover that suddenly, like magic, I can organize my closet! I can make myself eat the objectively delicious leftovers I had developed an inexplicable mental block against eating! I can effortlessly cross the street without thinking about it, instead of feeling like I’m playing a tricky platformer where I have to get the timing just right or be hit by a car!

(Will I learn from this experience and get a good night’s sleep every night? I should. But especially in these dark winter months, getting to bed on time takes a certain degree of coordination that I often lack.)

Also, hi! I’m alive! U.S. politics aside, 2024 was a pretty good year for me! Holiday cards are coming soon to anyone who got one last year, unless your address has changed, in which case you should shoot me a private message. (If you didn’t get one last year but would like one this year, you should also let me know. But is anyone even reading this?)

2023 was a year in which I watched maybe 5% of the total available selection of Thai dramas, but of that 5%, these were my favorites:

Shadow: beautiful cinematography, engrossing plot, a real zinger of an ending, and characters I can't stop thinking about, all at an extremely haunted Catholic school. Not BL, though it has several queer characters. (my liveblog tag)

Only Friends: all the terrible relationship decisions you made in your twenties, starring an extremely pretty roster of actors! Loved the characters, loved the performances, loved the relationship writing, loved the mess. Nick is my #1 blorbo of 2023. (my liveblog tag)

Laws of Attraction: imagine you're watching a mid-budget 90s procedural drama with a super shippy enemies-to-allies relationship between the two leads. Now imagine someone writes the perfect id-scratching slowburn get-together casefic about that canon. This show is that fic.

Playboyy: surrealist arthouse camp in beautiful empty buildings that simultaneously manages to be an absurd mystery-thriller and a clear-eyed portrayal of sex work as a low-wage service job with all the mundane complications of that. It does a good job of capturing the duality of sex as this larger-than-life feverish fantasy and sex as this ordinary, unremarkable, occasionally mediocre way to pass the time. You also get to hear actors who clearly aren't fluent in English deliver the occasional English line like "Goddamn! What in the thriller-fantasy hell is this shit?!" (my liveblog tag)

Other things I am currently catching up on: I Feel You Linger in the Air (7/12 eps), Dead Friends Forever (2/3 eps), To Sir With Love (3/?? eps), and thanks to a very accommodating friend I have now seen the first episode of each of The Promise, Bake Me Please and Be My Favorite

It's that most wonderful time of the year: time for the annual ...

Holiday Card Address Post

If anyone I know would like a holiday postcard this year, and especially if:

a) you have never requested one before, OR
b) your address has changed, OR
c) you expected to receive a card last year but it never arrived,

please comment with your current address to this post before December 31! (All comments are automatically screened so that only I can see them; you don't need a dreamwidth account to comment.)

Cards will go out in mid-late December and should hopefully arrive within the month of January, which means they technically still count as New Year's cards. Reciprocation is wholly optional, but if you do feel like sending a return card, my address is available here on DW (friendslocked post, let me know if you can't access it).

Checking in on the current Thai BL season:

EXPECTED TO LOVE, AM LOVING: Shadow (have seen 3 episodes out of a currently available 7). Gorgeous to look at, spooky and atmospheric, compelling central mystery, interesting characters, creepy priest, a good dread-inducing time all around.

EXPECTED TO LOVE, AM NOT LOVING: Last Twilight (have seen 1.5 episodes out of a currently available 3, will probably drop). It's halfway to being a show I like (specifically the Mhok half), but the show's treatment of disability so far has been frankly pretty mawkish, and if I wanted to watch an inspirational tearjerker about a sighted guy teaching a guy who's going blind to ~love life again~ there are a dozen cliched Lifetime movies I could watch instead. Kind of a bummer, because I really liked how they handled Heart's deafness in MLC and that's the same director.

EXPECTED TO BE DUMB, IS DUMB: Pit Babe, my beautiful airheaded omegaverse baby (have seen 1 episode out of a currently available 2). It has scenting! It apparently has a plot! I don't know what that plot is, because I kept spacing out whenever the leads weren't getting it on in the locker room, but fortunately for me them getting it on in the locker room was like a good half of the episode. I don't understand why the love interest is doing anything he's doing but in a weird way that makes him more intriguing.

EXPECTED TO BE DUMB, AM LOVING: Playboyy (have seen 1 episode out of a currently available 2). I actually really enjoyed this?? It's like a horny fever dream, with a nice undercurrent of menace and a kind of unusual-for-BL focus on the seedier side of sex and romance. I was completely lost at times, but admittedly that's partly due to me struggling to keep everyone's names and faces straight, and either way it contributes to the fever dream feel. Takes some biiig stylistic swings, not all of which work (in particular, I get what they were trying to achieve with the hentai voiceover in the final sex scene, but the execution ....). Aside from that scene, I found the erotic scenes super sensual, but if you're expecting tender slo-mo lovemaking this is not that.

New Mainichi Seiten! New Mainichi Seiten! It's about Mayumi (yay), which makes me happy, even if the summary doesn't mention Yuuta at all and does mention some guy named Matsuoka who supposedly possesses an enigmatic countenance and a dark secret that I can already tell I'm not going to care about at all. (Although maybe that's being overly pessimistic. I did like the reformed teen delinquent in 花屋に３人目の店員が来た夏 well enough.)

Speaking of Mainichi Seiten!, thanks to the capricious favor of the resale gods I was recently able to acquire this doujin novel from the year 2000, which is about what if the Obinata siblings got forcibly separated following their parents' death and Mayumi was placed in a series of terrible foster homes until one day he runs away from his latest foster home and runs into Yuuta. I've only skimmed it so far but it seems angsty in a fun way.

This is just to note for my own future reference that in the past week the weather has finally cooled down (yay!), and that my mood has sharply nosedived (no!). Not sure yet if the latter is due to the changing seasons or to the fact that I have a few stressful work deadlines breathing down my neck, though the fact that August and September also had multiple stressful work deadlines and I didn't feel formlessly sad about them suggests it may be time to re-up my SSRI dose for the winter. But I'm going to wait for a week or two and see.

Other than the mood junk, it's been a good month (a good six months, really). I switched mastodon instances and am now posting all my bug photos here. I'm also watching multiple shows that I'm enjoying! I want to write about them when my brain doesn't feel like it's stuck in a tar pit.

- I brought my recent uptick in maudlin night thoughts to my psychiatrist, and she was like "sounds like we should maybe up your SSRI dose just for the winter," and we upped my SSRI dose and that stopped the maudlin night thoughts. Yay medicine!

- This week and last week at work I have had so many meetings. Meetings meetings meetings. Somebody please save me from all the meetings.

- I got bit by the fic bug in late January/early February, and when I'm not in meetings I have been Writing Things! They're not ready for prime time yet, but I'll link them as soon as they're presentable (and in one case, finished).

- All holiday cards except for the ones for my parents, which I will mail soon I swear have been sent out! If you expected one and still haven't received it by the end of February, give me a heads-up and I can send another.

- Does anyone I know have a mastodon account? I have a mastodon account here if you want to be friends. (Even if nobody else moves there, for now I'll be doing my microblogging there since I'm getting increasingly worried about Twitter's long-term survival odds.)

- ahhhh Pluto anime ahhhh