hello again: i mean it!

when i was studying abroad in japan, one of the french students in my program said something i'll never forget. the way i feel about it is not unlike the way the subject of tobias wolff's "bullet in the brain" feels about the phrase "they is."

we were at an izakaya with a group of other students from the program, and it was our first time ordering nomihodai (unlimited drinks within a set window of time). he turned to me, smiling, clearly blasted, then pointed to his temple and said, "my brain...it's in blood..."

that's sort of how i've been feeling lately — like my brain is "in blood." i've been really messy with my hormones over the past month, so i've been experiencing these mood swings that often level out to a dull stupor. i keep opening cabinets without remembering what i was hoping would be in them. but it helps to remember that frenchman's dopey smile, dangling over a collar drenched in sake and beer.

anyway, hello, dear reader —

if you're receiving this as an email, it's because you either subbed to my old substack or followed the links at the end of my essays on ffvii: rebirth or shadow of the erdtree over at bullet points. i'm going to start using this blog as a repository for my rinds, my husks, and my many molted skins. frankly: it might get a little indulgent. but i want to be true to the part of me that kinda wants an outlet like that. (i won't be offended if you ever un-subscribe for that reason, though!) i promise, above all, to keep it as real as possible.

here're some things i'm planning on publishing at an indeterminate cadence (except the first one, which i think i'll finish this week):

• "DLC" (an appendix of additional notes and other writing) for the shadow of the erdtree essay
• an essay i started a long time ago called "shotty snipers" — some personal writing about playing halo 3 with my friends after school, among other things
• "annotated tablature" of a goose pimple song (think i'm leaning towards "pink wall" at the moment) — a thorough monospaced chart along with some writing about it
• thoughts on blue reflection, which fucking rips so far?
• an essay i started about tunings a long time ago
• "DLC" for the ffvii: rebirth essay — the fragments i've written so far are about my bloody valentine's loveless and the in-game play loveless, plus orphaned paragraphs about yuri manga that were sliced away from the sections that ended up in the shadow of the erdtree essay
• sections from the sci-fi-ish yuri romance i've been writing at a glacial pace, which was originally an extension of the fiction from the ffvii: rebirth essay
• a close reading of isabel fall's "i sexually identify as an attack helicopter"

i also think i'll be publishing some diaristic posts throughout. it might be a little over-ambitious to list all this given the pace at which i usually write, but i want to practice writing a bit more reactively with respect to the things i'm thinking about during any given week.

also, if you originally subbed when i posted about this blog over a year ago, here are the major pieces i've published since:

• "how hannah diamond broke my heart in high definition" - ex research - a review and personal essay re: hannah diamond's perfect picture (2023)
• "flowers yet bloom in this rotted church" - bullet points - part personal essay, part criticism, and part "auto-fan fiction" re: ffvii: rebirth (2024)
• "every bedroom you've ever entered" - ex research - on guitars, tablature, and the internet
• "monster girls tease the zoetrope massacre" - bullet points - writing about elden ring's DLC, shadow of the erdtree (2024): monster girls, yuri manga scanlations, pvp intimacy

ex research is a newsletter i started with my friends, chris and clayton, after we all got laid off from the same agency at the beginning of 2023. we publish a weekly report on internet culture, games, music, film, TV, the manifold horrors of AI — it's really mostly just us writing about things we like. i'm honestly very fortunate to be co-running it with them.

anyway, i know this post's already running pretty long, but that's part of why it exists. i completely fess up: i have a hard time with brevity. it takes me a lot of words to feel satisfied with how i convey my thoughts, and it's a cumbersome feature of the way i speak in conversation. i mean, people have been telling me i babble my whole life.

so i'm grateful for the people reading this because they have the patience to hear me out. i don't have any illusions about how modest the size of my readership is — most of you are my friends, after all — but lately it's been validating to receive confirmation that even total strangers care about the things i write.

oh and lastly — i'm still messing around with the design of the blog, but let me know if any color or font choices make it inaccessible / difficult for you to read.

okay that's all the housekeeping i think i needed to do. thanks for reading <3