toothpastepancake | i'm just waiting for something cruel to happen.🎵 (Reply)

Hey, DW. Back to my usual format of splitting up fandom and personal stuff that I. Forgot. To do last time :') By the way, thank you all for the kind comments. I forget to reply and then time passes and I feel like replying after weeks and weeks would be... awkward. But I do see them!! They mean the world to me, thank you.

Finally been feeling a little better lately. Not 100%, but a good 70% better. I'm still trying to decide what I want to do about college. I am signed up for classes, but like... I spent all of today asleep because I could not control my energy levels and I fell asleep without meaning to every three seconds... And then walking to the living room my back gave out and I fell and now I can barely move... and also I have been putting off doing basic school things like contacting my advisor because even thinking about it feels insurmountably stressful...

Is school for me? I've tried so many times, you'd think I would realize it's not for me after my 4th dropout. But I want to learn. I love learning. I just can't handle pressure or deadlines or whatever. I hate that aspect of me but I don't think its something I can ever change. I can improve enough to function in daily life I think, but something as structured and important as school? Maybe not. At least, not for a while. I go through this dilemma every day when a new semester at the local CC is preparing to start, and every time I come to the same conclusion, and then a few moments later I go "but what if it was different this time tho" and repeat.

Y'all, I don't think it's going to be different this time. I need to focus on being kind to myself and developing a balanced, healthy, enjoyable life first. I cannot do that by forcing myself into stress. Maybe I shouldn't say never, but definitely not now.

And I think that's, like, okay. I think I can deal with that. I've been trying to do a lot more new things; I embroidered my first piece, a Nahla/Caleb quote patch!! And I'm starting to get back into reading. If anyone wants to add me on Storygraph, I'm telescopefish. I am working on learning to make electronic music and I've been working on my personal novel a lot more consistently too, which I am really proud of, which I thought of a super good title for and I'm so excited in general for.

It's funny because my adventures back into reading were Junker Seven, which I thiiiiiink I have talked about disliking on here before, and Valente's Comfort Me With Apples, which I also did not like at all. And now I'm reading Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps, which, as one Storygraph writer accurately put it, "The way this book is written feels [..] like warm, wet velvet: it feels wrong." I do not necessarily care for it so far, but I cannot put it down. To my friends I said: "like this is a Bad Feeling to read and it feels like slowly dissolving into a vat of acid or watching someone die frozen in shock unable to move, and yet I can't pull away." Which.. I think is a very meaningful and useful literary experience in and of itself. Sometimes maybe things aren't supposed to be traditionally good, but rather are supposed to eat at you, and that is what this book does for me, the gnawing.

I also am finding I really like reviewing books? I think I might be good at it? Even if I'm not, it's fun. I can point out exactly what about the writing and plot I didn't like and explain it in a way that makes sense. I just feel bad putting my harsher reviews publicly on Storygraph :P I might start putting them here.

Do you have book recs? I like horror, literary fiction, and the space opera mostly, but I'm eager to read anything if it's good. Just please no animal death-focused things. (I am very glad I did not pick up On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous like I wanted to, because I heard about the gruesome animal cruelty in it and it still makes me nauseous to remember. I cannot handle that. I am sad though, because I love Vuong's work.) I like queer and disability and mental health themes a lot too. I'd love to hear what you are reading these days.

TL;DR: It's crazy how everyone says life gets better when you do more than just scrolling most hours of the day and it's crazier that they're actually right about that. Like extremely right, wow. Even just adding crafting and reading into my routine has been immensely helpful. Who could have guessed.

I started watching Cloak and Dagger and I'm so into it. Thank you to the person who got me into it <3 I've only seen four episodes though because it does stress me out and I am trying to minimize stress. But like. It's a stress born from being really attached to the characters and world almost immediately, if that makes sense? I'm just sooooo obsessed. Tandy is absolute blorbo material to me.

I have been making progress on some of my prompts. I'm halfway through with 10trueloves for Nahla, and I am thinking of just. Continuing to claim characters for it after I finish Nahla because it's such a fun comm. I am such a multishipper, LOL.

I haven't been... doing a lot of fandom stuff lately? I've mostly just been writing my novel. I have been thinking a LOT about a Nahla/Caleb fankid AU, because I love fankids so much and I fucking can (and because with their Themes and History, Caleb accidentally getting Nahla pregnant would be SO INTERESTING). I haven't written it yet though. I've also been rewatching Lower Decks and getting really into Tendi/T'Ana. I have so many ideas but the only inspiration I have is for original stuff---which literally never happens, actually, so I should be happy about it, but alas.

Putting these outside the cuts for evil promo purposes:

Sunset, the fanfiction archive I run for femslash and sapphic ships, is hosting its first exchange (not by me!) You can check out the info at