06-08-26 09:05 PM
feeling: good! :)

1.

It’s been so long since I wrote a diary entry! I don’t even know where to begin. (Jump down to read about recent site updates!)

The last diary post I made was in April. For much of May I was busy looking for a new job, getting a new job, and then starting my new job.

I landed a gig at my old highschool as a janitor. It pays really well, has good benefits, and the hours are nice. During the school year it’s second shift, Monday-Friday. Summers are 6am-4pm from Monday-Thursday, so I have Friday-Sunday off!

I haven’t worked a full-time day shift job…ever. Getting up at 5am every day hasn’t been that bad honestly. The problem is going to bed! I’m trying to get to sleep around 10 or 11pm but that’s usually when my creative brain activates. I’m a night owl at heart.

This was our first week of four ten hour shifts. I’ve been taking naps after work every day lol. Not on purpose—I’m just so tired, I lay down to relax for a few minutes and end up crashing.

It’s a lot less stressful than my previous job (fast food shift manager) but way more physical. I quite enjoy the work, though. I like the vibe of blue collar stuff.

It’s great experience for manual trade labor. When I was younger I helped paint my dad’s house and my sister’s house, and I really enjoyed the work. Maybe one day I’ll get into industrial painting too.

I can already tell I’m bulking out a little. A couple friends from my old job want me to start going to the gym with them, and I’m considering taking them up on it!

2.

Although I haven’t been writing as much personal stuff here, I did publish a blog post that I’m really proud of, In Defense of FTM.

I posted some excerpts and a link to my full post on r/FTMMen, which garnered a lot of really great engagement, including people who agreed with me and people who did not. I want to make some edits based on their feedback, then post it to other trans subs.

I’ll make another blog post as a referendum of sorts. The original post wasn’t really meant to be a conclusive manifesto, but an outline of my initial idea following a collection of primary sources. I want the referendum to provide further concepts and help me elaborate on my points. I’m trying to think of it as an exercise in learning in public.

After more research, study, brainstorming, and feedback, my end goal is to produce a theoretical paper that I will submit to Transgender Studies Quarterly for potential review.

3.

I’ve been reading a lot lately, too! Here’s what I’ve read in the past month and a half:

• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• Artemis by Andy Weir
• The 100 Things Challenge by Dave Bruno
• The Enlightened Experience: Collected Teachings, Volume 1 by Lama Yeshe
• The Accidental Buddhist by Dinty W. Moore
• The Color Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft
• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

I really fell in love with Andy Weir through PHM! (I’ve also become a massive Rocky/Grace shipper lol.) I borrowed it through Overdrive but I will eventually buy it to have a personal copy. Afterward, I found Artemis on sale on Kobo for like $3. It isn’t as great as PHM but I had fun with it! Next I wanna read The Martian. (I guess I’m working backwards through his bibliography haha.)

I picked up The Accidental Buddhist from a used bookstore in April. It’s the first personal non-fiction book I’ve read since highschool probably. Very chill. It inspired me to pick up more personal narratives, so I checked out The 100 Things Challenege on Overdrive while looking at decluttering/minimalist books on my KLC.

Right now I’m reading Slumrat Rising by Warby Picus. It’s a cyberpunk LitRPG book. I’ve never read any LitRPG and I’m having fun with it. :) Someone on Discord gave me the .EPUB. I’ll probably pick up the rest of the series too. It’s got a lot of cool action and some funny humor. Sorta reminds me of wacky adventure shounen animanga like Chainsaw Man and Dandadan. I anticipate it’ll probably get dark and esoteric like those titles, too.¹

4.

Besides reading and writing essays, I’ve finally gotten back into writing fanfiction, picking up some old projects I put down a few months ago. It’s been really great, I’m having so much fun!

Unfortunately I lost some files, I have no clue how. I looked through my PC, external HDD, and my USB drive. So I’m going to have to rewrite a couple chapters of a fic I haven’t updated since November. It also happens to be my most popular one atm.

I told myself I’d be okay writing as I post since I was giving myself a few buffer chapters while I wrote. I didn’t think I’d lose the files themselves, lol. Oops.

I want to work on some original fic too. And write for other fandoms besides my OG one. I’ve got a bit of a following in that fandom but I don’t want my work tied to my website or original fiction. Starting fresh with some new fic that I can also host here on my site would be pretty cool. I’ve got a few ideas already…

• Adventure Time fanfic with aged-up Finn/Tiffany, set in post-canon Ooo. Slow burn frenemies-to-lovers.
  • I’ve loved Finn/Tiffany since I was younger, I think it’s such a fun ship!
  • I headcanon Tiffany as FTM
    • His name
    • His appearance/voice
    • His general insecurity
    • His constant comparisons between himself and Finn
    • Per the AT wiki: “In the Latin American Spanish, European Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Russian and Arab World dubs, Tiffany is female.”
  • It’s also a lot of fun writing Finn as FTM, but idk if I’ll include that in this fic too or not
    • Writing Finn as cis and Tiffany as trans would highlight their contrasting dynamic well, and play into some fun characterization stuff, with Finn being a “typical hero” and how that affects his self-image and mental health versus Tiffany, an “atypical” dude who can’t live up to the same standard he envisions Finn does (spoiler: Finn doesn’t actually live up to them either)
  • I have more headcanons but I’ll make a separate post one day
  • I think Finn/Huntress Wizard is fun too, but in this fic I would probably make them friends with benefits. HW seems very independent and I could see their relationship evolving to a casual thing, where they care about each other (and FUCK) but they aren’t exclusive or anything.
    • Honestly this makes me wanna brainstorm maybe… Finn/Huntress Wizard/Tiffany!!!!! Now THAT’S an idea lol.
    • Another weird AT ship I want to write is Simon/Abracadaniel, considering Ice King and Abracadaniel were friends. I think it’d be cute!
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time fic, Link/Zelda or rather Link/Sheik! Post-canon
  • Basically a Zelink fic with FTM Zelda/Sheik
  • Post-canon; Zelda tries to resume her duties as leader of Hyrule, while bottling up her gender dysphoria now that she’s back to living as a woman
  • She sneaks off sometimes to live as Sheik, either visiting villages she helped in the past or going incognito and just being fulling anonymous as a man
  • A concerned Link eventually tracks her down and realizes where she’s been going off to
  • Features cheeky Impa, who keeps Zelda’s secret but also assists Link in finding answers
  • I wrote this same story A DECADE AGO on AO3, but I want to take another go at it since the idea never left me and I’ve got an extra ten years of writing experience
    • I spent like 15 minutes poking around AO3’s search filter until I finally hunted the fic down. I orphaned my old account, so it was hard to find. You can read it here. At some point I’ll save it and archive it on my site.
• Pokemon fic, Silver/N
  • Another idea that I’ve had for over ten years, easily!
  • Soul Silver and White are my favorite games. Gen 5 is my favorite generation and I love the Unova region. Silver and N are my favorite rivals. Sooo…
  • They both have daddy issues, bad childhoods, and are sympathetic rivals who eventually came to understand the protag. I think where they differ provides a cool dynamic as well
  • I wrote some stuff for this when I was like seventeen lol. I’m not sure exactly how I’d want the plot to go. I originally wrote N flying with Reshiram and landing on Mt. Silver but that feels kinda dramatic now lmao. I might just have him traveling the world and he runs into Silver while visiting Johto
• Star Wars Sequel Trilogy fics
  • I’m not sure exactly what I want to write yet, but I love the ST so I want to start writing some stuff for it. Way back in the day I wrote a couple Stormpilot fics but they were trash. I’d definitely do something Rey-centric.
  • I’m not a huge shipper tbh. I think Reylo is cool and I don’t mind its inclusion in the films but I’m not a die-hard Reylo person. I read a lot of Rey/Finn/Poe stuff when I was younger.
  • I think Reylo is cool but I hate how most people write it. Kylo/Ben is just this brooding sexy dude and Rey is usually submissive etc. A lot of it just feels like she’s a self-insert lol. As a HUGE fan of her character I can’t get behind a lot of Reylo stuff. So I’m thinking I should just…write my own! Lol
  • Another fic I’ve always wanted to write is FTM Rey. She is my favorite Star Wars character and one of my fave characters ever—I think writing her as FTM, especially post-canon as an adult with all she’s been through would be really cool. But I worry how it looks to write a female protag as a trans man lol. (I have the same idea for Sakura Haruno from Naruto. Which brings me to my last idea…)
• Naruto fics
  • I’ve written Naruto fics on/off since I was a teenager. It’s one of my OG fandoms. Of course I am a huge Narusasu shipper but I also still have a soft spot for Sasusaku I’m ngl. I think it suffers the same problem as Reylo, only worse bc Kishimoto can’t write female characters well to save his life lol. I’ve always wanted to put my own spin on Sasusaku and Sakura’s character as a whole—I like her a lot!
  • I also really like Rock Lee, and I’ve developed a penchant for Sakulee too. I think it’s really cute and compliments their characters nicely. Also fills in the gap left behind by Narusasu lol.
  • Speaking of Rock Lee, I’ve wanted to write him as FTM for awhile too. I think it would work with his character well.

Uhh I think that’s it for now! haha

5.

Okay, last thing!! Site updates!!

I’ve done a lot of work on the site even though it doesn’t really look like it!

I moved my cliques, fanlistings, and webrings all to their own pages.

I made a few cliques, too, including:

• Text cliques
  • Midwest emo
  • Mantra
• Pixel cliques
  • My Little Pony G3
  • South Park
  • Star Wars ST

I have a lot more clique ideas that I’ll get around to making soon.

I also implemented a “reader mode” for the site. As much as I like my site design, I am really infatuated with text-focused sites. I find their simplicity so satisfying and pleasant to navigate and read.

For a long time I considered making a subdomain and having it be a text-based archive of sorts. But that would’ve been a lot of work. So instead I decided to have my cake and eat it too!

The reader mode isn’t on mobile yet because I have to clean up the code. For now it’s desktop only. It’s persistent between pages, too. So you can leave it on and freely navigate between blog posts, notebook entries, etc.

Here’s some screenshots:

Right now reader mode is available across the whole site besides my index, shrine pages, and sketchbook pages. Honestly part of me likes it better than my base site! Lol.

Next up I want to rework my index page and make it more content-focused and balanced!

6.

That’s all for now… I could write more but I’m so fucking beat from work man. Four ten hour shifts stripping/mopping/waxing floors all day with no A/C is tough work! The three day weekends make up for it though for sure.

Hope everyone is doing well! Take care!! :)