"the true first post"

this is, i think, the third time i've started this blog. its first incarnation was a substack i promptly abandoned following the service's refusal to deplatform neo-nazis.

i linked to the blog's second incarnation at the end of my piece about ffvii: rebirth for bullet points this past april, and i did so fully intending to populate it with additional writing that was too messy, self-indulgent, or otherwise ill-suited to publication elsewhere. i spent a couple of months setting aside orphaned ideas "for the blog," and i started threading together a very long piece about ffvii, loveless (the mbv album and in-game play), and yuri manga across various google documents and iphone notes – only to realize that i'd completely missed all the emails notifying me that my free trial had ended and the blog's URL was defunct following an extended period of inactivity.

i'm about to link to this blog again, so i figured i'd at least post something here to confirm that it's real, to prove that i'm committed, and to remind myself to close my eyes and post the deranged pao x aerith yuri auto-fan fiction that didn't make it into the bullet points piece. (i'll likely end up publishing the ffvii + loveless essay here in a piecemeal fashion as i continue to write it, but i wound up cannibalizing it in order to write about guitars and elden ring's shadow of the erdtree, respectively, so it's in a particularly unsightly state right now.) also – i'm excited to use this blog as an excuse to write in a less "precious" way, and i'm excited to get my grubby little hands all over the HTML and make the site look a little better.

i arrived in new york a couple of hours ago, and it's 4:40am here, so i'm sort of in a state of morning-mouthed delirium. i just knew i had to get something together on here before the bullet points piece went live!