Got inspired to write something after seeing that the official organization for NaNoWriMo is shutting down, which I'm honestly not too broken up about due to their embrace of AI last year. Despite being trapped in a kind of brainfog for most of March, the last week or so I've felt myself lift out of it and actually managed to write some drafts that may eventually turn into something I can post on AO3. Instead of waiting for November, I'm contemplating setting myself a weekly(?) writing goal to encourage me to stick with it. So far my bursts of inspiration the past couple of years have ended because I either put too much pressure on myself or none at all, so maybe landing in some kind of middle ground is the solution.

Doctor Who returns in a couple of weeks and I still haven't gotten around to finishing the Wilderness Years, which was definitely hampered in part from leaving Twitter where I hosted my threads with my first impressions. The trailer for the new season looks really good, but the way Disney has been handling its properties lately makes me nervous that the rumors of Ncuti Gatwa shooting a regeneration scene may have some truth to them. Regardless, I do have faith that RTD will step in if Disney tries to exert undue control over the show, or condition further funding on catering the show to a rightwing audience.

In my last entry I mentioned I started watching Twin Peaks. I've been enjoying it but it's been a slow burn (I'm not yet done with the first season). I've gotten in the habit the past few years of watching television while simultaneously doing another task, and Twin Peaks is something that really demands my attention in a way that doesn't really allow that. Not that I'm complaining, it's just taking me a bit to readjust.

I haven't posted to this account in ages, mostly because this year has mostly just oscillated between me being sick, playing Genshin Impact/Honkai: Star Rail, or both.

But now that the 60th anniversary for Doctor Who is within spitting distance, I'm getting back into the headspace I need to actually make my way through the rest of the Wilderness Years content (including the TV movie) I finish the undertaking I first started back in 2017. I've also held off on rewatching much of New Who until I finish this, so I'm looking forward to doing a big rewatch of that at some point, though I don't think I'll do a story-by-story review like I did for the Classic series (though maybe I'll write something).

Haven't been motivated to write much in general. I've tried gassing myself up a couple of times the past couple of years only to further fill my files with unfinished drafts. I'd like to polish off a couple of them before the year ends but we'll see. A couple of the most promising ones, in my opinion, are for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I haven't been in that headspace at all the past year. It was also partially fueled by Tumblr, which I haven't used much this year because I'm avoiding spoilers for all the TV and anime I haven't been watching.

Twitter is dying. I made a Bluesky account but it's still invite only so not a ton of people are on it yet.

Overall in the past week or so I've managed to make serious headway with the major mental hangups I've been dealing with this year, and I'm in a much better headspace going into the fall even though I have basically no plans as of writing this. Less pressure I suppose.

So it's been just over a year since the last time I've done this, and in the time since I've only published one (1) story to AO3, so I at least have not broken my yearly chain. Hopefully sometime this summer I'll be able to actually push out some of the drafts that have been gathering dust the last couple of years. Interested to see how things have (and haven't) changed.

( It's not my favorite activity, inventory management, but it's close enough. )

It's been a hot minute since I've made a more casual post, and I want to start doing more of these instead of exclusively using this account for giant Doctor Who reviews or motivating myself to write fanfic.

☆ Writing: I started a bunch of fic drafts last year (and the year before) that I never got around to finishing. New mini-goal for 2022 is to finish at least some of those (and fill in more spaces on the 100ships challenge). Also lowkey wanna start writing some Fortnite fic (because I am a clown) but I'm probably gonna have to untangle the lore a little fic first even if I just end up writing about Jonesy getting dicked down lmao.

☆ Gaming: Been playing a lot more Animal Crossing and just got into the Happy Home Paradise expansion. I'm also still in Fortnite hell, and I've started playing some Indie Games on the Switch because of a sale they had towards the end of last year. So far I'm really digging Figment and Wandersong but I'm hoping to play more once I've finished with those.

☆ Television: I'm halfway through the most recent season of You, but honestly I haven't been that inspired to watch much Live Action TV the past month or so aside from Drag Race (and Queen of the Universe and Drag Race Italia were pretty big letdowns imo). I'm excited for the new US season but I really feel like I'm in a rut... which may not be a bad thing? I was consuming a lot of content for a very long time so I could probably stand to slow down a little.

☆ Movies: Encanto and Spider-Man: No Way Home were great, but - especially with the Omicron variant - my big return to watching movies hasn't really panned out. Even before that I never got around to watching Dune, and I did see Eternals but thought it was really bad. Trying to jazz myself up to watch The Matrix and Scream movies for the first time but so far no dice.

☆ Doctor Who: I really liked Eve of the Daleks, but I didn't think it was remarkably better or worse than Flux like a lot of the takes have been. (Though admittedly I guess I liked Flux more than most?) I'm currently wading my way through the "Lost Season" season 27 Big Finish audios, before I figure out how I'm gonna tackle the actual Wilderness Years content and the TV Movie. I also finally started The Edge of Reality... but the controls on Switch are kind of difficult (and it's very obvious that it was originally designed as a VR game) so I kind of haven't gotten back to it. Either way, I'm happy that I still have a wealth of content to get through considering the next two specials seem to be the only New Who we are gonna be getting for quite a while.

First day of writing and finishing up old draft fics for 100ships is going pretty well! I already have one done that just needs to be proofread (and possibly britpicked) and two more I've made good progress on (and I'm gonna try to knock out a little more in the next hour or so).

I also have a couple of outlines/ideas ready for Merlin Bingo, and I think I'll be able to pair one of them to count for 100ships as well. (Maybe more, but my sudden urge to write Merthur fic has taken me a bit by surprise). I'm impressed by how active the fandom community still is considering the show has been over for almost ten years, and I feel like I'm gonna end up rewatching a chunk of it within the next couple of months in order to refamiliarize myself with some of the characters' mannerisms and speaking patterns. I think a Buffy rewatch is pretty inevitable too, which works since I'd like to finish two drafts I wrote (and am really happy with) for my failed Buffyverse Bingo.

I also have some Hetalia drafts that are close to a decade old and still mostly read pretty well!. I have a multichapter that I started back in July 2011 that I only need to knock out one more chapter for, so that's another short-term goal for this summer. I think I need to specifically set aside a day to devote to just that though, since it'll require immersing myself back into the story (don't want any loose threads after all this time!). The new season of the anime has also put me in a much better headspeace to write for it than in the last few years.

On a semi-related note, my landlord recently put some patio tables and chairs out near the front of my building, so now I actually have a place where I can sit outside if I want. Today is the first day I've utilized it and I can see myself hanging out here a lot. I just wish it wasn't right next to main road.

I've been looking through my large stack on unfinished and/or unpolished one-shots lately, and I stumbled across the 100ships comm currently being run by thisbluespirit, and I thought that might be a good, low-stakes way to get some of this stuff finished and actually published.

#01 – Adamant	#02 – Snow	#03 – Lion	#04 – Spark	#05 – Amber
#06 – Lust	#07 – Bronze	#08 – Mint	#09 – Arctic	#10 – Black
#11 – Moonlight	#12 – Sunlight	#13 – Blue	#14 – Navy	#15 – Tea
#16 – Neon	#17 – Twilight	#18 – Blush	#19 – Wine	#20 – Nude
#21 – Rhythm	#22 – Brown	#23 – Linen	#24 – Ember	#25 – Thistle
#26 – Cherry	#27 – Orange	#28 – Vanilla	#29 – Bone	#30 – Harlequin
#31 – Cadet	#32 – Chocolate	#33 – Peach	#34 – Lead	#35 – Cream
#36 – Sand	#37 – White	#38 – Crimson	#39 – Pink	#40 – Ocean
#41 – Dove	#42 – Platinum	#43 – Yellow	#44 – Earth	#45 – Midnight
#46 – Pearl	#47 – Frostbite	#48 – Pumpkin	#49 – Electric	#50 – Purple
#51 – Coral	#52 – Salt	#53 – Crow	#54 – Rainbow	#55 – Cloud
#56 – Flame	#57 – Red	#58 – Ash	#59 – Rose	#60 – Slate
#61 – Green	#62 – Ruby	#63 – Olive	#64 – Lipstick	#65 – Spice
#66 – Grey	#67 – Denim	#68 – Rust	#69 – Flirt	#70 – Sunset
#71 – Sable	#72 – Desert	#73 – Jade	#74 – Sage	#75 – Buff
#76 – Jet	#77 – Plum	#78 – Leather	#79 – Liberty	#80 – Metal
#81 – Sepia	#82 – Lavender	#83 – Scarlet	#84 – Crystal	#85 – Chestnut
#86 – Shadow	#87 – Lemon	#88 – Mystic	#89 – Silver	#90 – Coffee
#91 – Seafoam	#92 – Lime	#93 – Punch	#94 – Pickle	#95 – Champagne
#96 – Copper	#97 – Bittersweet	#98 – Honey	#99 – Candy	#100 – Gold

I'll update this post with links as I get stuff posted.

Yesterday I turned 30, and I ended up not doing much of anything (partially due to the pandemic, partially due to poor planning and foresight on my part). I did think a lot about certain milestones I hadn't hit on my fitness goals/writing/etc., but a day out it all feels just as arbitrary. Aside from the number on my social media changing it doesn't really feel like I'm in my 30s, especially since pretty much everyone agrees the past year has been a wash so I can still pretend I'm 29 if I want and society probably wouldn't judge me for it.

I didn't meet my arbitrary goal of finishing Classic Who before I turned 30 but that might be for the best, since I would have rushed through the Seventh Doctor era at lightning speed (and I'm enjoying it too much to do that). I also realized that I was so eager to see how'd they'd handle the regeneration I started Season 24 without reading those Companion novels like I'd planned, so now I think I need to go back and think about when I'm going to tackle those. (Especially since the Brigadier shows up in that and I know he pops back up in Season 26's Battlefield.)

July will be ten years since I started a particular multi-chapter fic so I think my immediate writing goal is finishing that up before anything else. I am in the midst of consuming a bunch of gay media (mostly Tales of the City) for Pride Month though so I may end up seguing into writing something more in line with that first. I have some Merlin prompts due at the end of the year that might be a good outlet for that.

It's been years since I've done any kind of actual posting meme, but I decided to snag this fromthisbluespirit because it looked fun, and it might help motivate me to actually finish up and post some of my drafts so this list actually looks a little different next year.

( My inner statistician jumped out )

Managed to finally fix my sleep schedule and get on a cycle where i don't have to drug myself to get to sleep and set six alarms to get up, but it's also coinciding with things ramping up at work so I'm still feeling a bit tense. It's been one of the few times this past year where I think I would actually benefit from being at the office.

I feel like if I can manage to get back on some semblance of a consistent exercise routine it'll do wonders I just haven't quite been able to make it over that hump yet. It's (finally) starting to get warm enough that I can walk around outside in a sweatshirt so maybe I'll try spending some more time doing that, especially now that I'm back to going through podcasts and audio productions and not just listening to the same five year old Waterparks song or Love Live deep cut on a loop for a week straight.

☆ Television: I finished Drag Race US season 11 and Drag Race UK series 1 and I think I might be burnt out on it a little. I'm almost caught up though so that's great! I can't really psych myself up to watch anything else though even though I'm behind on a bunch of anime, so we'll see how that goes I guess.

☆ Writing: It's nothing really publishable, but I'm writing snippets of fanfic again, which has been fun! Some of them have been off dw100 prompts so maybe I'll end up cleaning those up and posting them. I'm hoping I can get myself back into a headspace where I can finally finish off some projects that have been sitting in my drafts for years. Hetalia finally coming back next month should hopefully help motivate me with the fic for that.

☆ Gaming: I'm gonna try to pick up Animal Crossing again for the St. Patrick's Day event. I made a lot of progress in my BioShock playthrough last week, and I preordered the new Pokemon Snap and Story of Seasons games and I'm looking forward to taking a crack at those too. I forked over the cash for a monthly pass for Love Live All Stars but it's not bringing the same levels of serotonin as it had so I may stop that after this month.

I've had a rough week. My father ended up in the hospital (not with COVID thank god) and past the initial anxiety it's clear he's going to be okay but he's also going to be there a while, and it's going to continue to be a bit bumpy for at least the next couple of days.

☆ I distracted myself by binging all of Central Park and Emily in Paris. The former starts out shaky but gets really good as it finds its footing. The latter starts out bad and I think continues being bad, but you become used to how bad it is so at a certain point you just kind of let it wash over you. I'm currently halfway through The Queen's Gambit and it's clear why this show has been such a massive success, though I'm kind of surprised so many people were willing to give it a shot considering what could be a very dry subject matter. Speaking of dry, I'm enjoying the performances in The Crown but aside from some emotional moments in the second episode that really got me, I haven't been blown away by it. I'm only on the third episode though so I highly suspect that will change.

☆ I'm very behind on the anime I'm watching this season, and I want to catch up on some of it while exercising (I need to get rid of this holiday weight) but I haven't been in the mental headspace to really do that. I got a cavity filled today so that's definitely not happening tonight either. At least I'm current on Love Live! as I fall further into my addiction with the mobile game.

☆ Haven't written anything in a while. I usually get some inspiration around this time of year but with life stuff it's kind of zapped all my energy from me. Which is frustrating because I do have stuff I could finish off for the Buffyverse Bingo amnesty round but I don't know if I'll end up getting there.

☆ I signed back up for HelloFresh on a whim and I'm honestly glad I did, because I ended up cooking myself dinner again for the first time in weeks. I'm not sure I'll keep it for the first five weeks but it's nice not to have to go to the grocery store as often right now.