1. 2026-01-25 / index
Hi. This is a new page I'm futzing around with. I deleted our Bluesky account yesterday for a handful of reasons, but the biggest one was that I was bored that just having that feed was keeping me satiated, uninterested not so much in "trying" other ways of being online, but in taking those ways seriously, giving them the kind of push and presence it takes to make a habit fit in your life for good.
I've been developing a lot of skills I want to try applying here. Right now the biggest one is setting firm guardrails down with delicate but strictly reasonable placement, so that the space inside is not just safe but... approachable, to play in, to express in. I think I'll figure out those guardrails intuitively but I want to write them down as I set them, so here are the first two: "all paragraphs in a reasonable length", and "plain text only". Those are writing-style walls, so I don't run off or get caught up in form and structure. Not on the level of prose. I love the art of prose, and loving any art makes that art more difficult. So I'm playing simple mode.
The other key skill I want to apply is judging for myself what I'm going to say out loud. Am I echoing what I just wrote? I'm afraid of running my mouth. I'm afraid of the words I say changing who I am. I must accept this on some level because I just keep speaking, but I would like to target the fear more directly. A month or two ago I practiced just keeping my mouth shut, disconnecting completely from having any impact on the world: I took a nap. I told myself the terms of this nap were that I couldn't share about the purpose of this nap. Just keep silent about it. Experience it, and let the results live only in me. Ostensibly I'm betraying old-me now, but I don't really feel that way. In what I hope is the same spirit, I'm not going to elaborate why I don't feel that way.
I'm not immediately setting down a guardrail about posting regularity. I don't know if that's something I need. I think what I am placing is: "no keeping this place private". If the goal is for this to eventually be public, then it has to be public from the start. So yes, find this post as I link to it, directly from /stuff/ and probably in your RSS. Maybe over DMs.
I sort of want this place to be conversational, because that's something I had some of on Bluesky, and would like to have more of here. In slightly more longform, slow-paced writing, I guess? It's not longform on any subject - that's something I expect, not an explicit guardrail, though "no headings" comes with "no plain text", so. I'm influenced by Piers Anthony's newsletters which I think are still online, but they're better on his old site. I don't think anyone I know prefers email or paper mail or anything other than how we already talk, but if you feel like starting a blog or pointing me wherever you already write - that's not social media - then please hit us with a link. I'll stalk your blog if you stalk mine!
Oh, the other guardrail is that at a baseline, I'm assuming (and marking) that everyone reading this is an adult. I think all my friends are at least 20 years old (I'm 22) so if you're a stranger, please be something like that or ahead, too. I enjoyed sharing art on Bluesky, including a lot of adult art. I think we're sticking around on Tumblr, but it's pretty strictly Sonic-fandom and general-audience stuff there. I don't know what I want to do here, but I know I can't do anything if I don't set a rule on who's allowed to look. Thank you, in advance, for respecting it, because I'm not bringing the rule up again.
So far I wrote in first person interchangeably for us, Nebula, and me, Lanolin. I guess you'll have to intuit one way or the other. If the others decide to write here then you'll probably just tell them from their voices. Since I'm touching on personal stuff now though, I'm me. Hi. (Again.)
I drew a drawing of myself and Whisper today. I'm being pretty firm about this "plain text only" thing, so here's just the link. This was while decompressing after having spent a handful of hours on our fledgling Dragon Quest XI wiki, also hanging with our mom over that time. I put on a video before anything (Cifesk - How Does the Hedgehog Engine 2 Work?), easy listening while I got our bed put back together and sharpened our really dull pencils (via yesterday's drawing). I gave into the sense of wanting to draw pretty quickly. I thought about taking a snapshot of the sketch, but didn't, sorry - it was just most of the form of both of us, except me legs down, and I took a break because my effort was getting to me, and I didn't want to mess up the rest by rushing to the end. I put her claws down then finished that video, and watched most of the next (Afterthoughts - For the people who watch my activism stuff (lol)). I think I drew most of the rest, but maybe had to pause while people were loud outside our room. I don't remember anymore, except that I haven't drawn something detailed and focused like this in a while, and... it was difficult!
We're in the middle of a long weekend right now, and our shifts over the upcoming week are all short and shifted late - they basically aren't intruding on our mornings or evenings at all, so by extension, neither on our sleep. Happily, I can report that I slept terribly last night! We woke a couple times and took a while to return to sleep, short hours, the rigamarole. But today was gentle in the end, slow and steady. I'm still recharging from a quick-succession combo of unrelated rough experiences yesterday morning. I guess that's something everyone is saying every day of 2025 and 2026 (see: Afterthoughts video), but wow, it was more than usual. It's not easy going gently on yourself, but every small effort adds up, and I'm not unwell today.
Most days we act like just one of us is "at front", and I think that saying that essentially makes it true. We define our own experiences of ourselves, and we reinforce the boundaries between us, the outlines by which we call ourselves, however blurry or sharp. That's a continual process. It happens equal parts internally (how we see ourselves) and externally (how we present to others, and how others respond to us) - though we integrate those experiences quite differently. I think we're mostly quieter than we used to be. So today was just weird, being so loudly and almost exhaustingly me, yet having the voices of the rest of us often nearby, too. If you were spending time around me in person I like to imagine you could tell. Either way, we could tell, and I didn't do very much about it. Sometimes you just don't have the energy to decide stuff so trivial, textural, raw, with purpose.
So here's a way it hasn't been "just one of us" at, or at least near front. (It's the wolf. Lavender and Surge are the angel and devil on my shoulders. I think that suffices for them, today.) We're reading Ashley Rose - On Pines and Needles and, spoiler alert, a big narrative aspect has brought a really spiritual, past-connected Whisper into the text, there. When it hit us, I immediately had to put our phone down and - well, be there for her. We were safe in bed, so it was dark and quiet and we were alone together, which I think she needed. We were reading together, like we have been since coming back to this fic, so I felt it strike her so potently. It almost flipped our perspective on Lavender and Whisper's sparse, but lingering spiritual experiences - or, it feels like everything changed, but really we were just reattuned. From the start, didn't Tangle try to get into magic because she wanted to take after Claire, the old Diamond Cutters' Claire, the one who only existed in Whisper's memories, her heart, nowhere near her present? Wasn't it always a way of bringing that back, of letting Whisper have something familiar? It felt like that came rushing back, and mingled all at once with this idea that maybe Whisper herself, not just the image of her, the hope for her, but the actual Whisper, was centered, core, in all of Lavender's effort. In all of both their effort, shared, now, like it had never been Lav on their own. And suddenly Whisper felt like her silence, the absence of her own speaking, acting voice, had been necessary, but was no longer. It was a lot.
Or, you know, that's my best read on it, a couple nights removed, now. In the end I comforted her and we dropped the story for the night, and we reflected on the day because that's how sleep always comes for us, and we held each other, because that's how we always make it through. Sleep comes first. Here's a twist: I don't actually remember which of the two of us was "at front" that day. Was I holding the phone, or was it actually her? I don't know how many days I've been here, or exactly when we read. I don't keep track, I'm not checking the calendar. But clearly we were together, so I'm reflecting on my memory of it, and that must speak rounds for how discrete - or united, we are. Depending which way you read. It's both, really.
All that has been at the... what, the background-forefront? What sort of word encompasses both? It's been the fabric of these couple days, just as I'm also dealing with all the crud from yester-morning, and adjusting to the curious upcoming work schedule, and moving, so slowly, with 2026, all that entails. Most of last year was so much. Most of this year is going to be so much! So yes, we're taking this year slowly. I just hope it's slow and steady. I hope it's slow and firm. Slow and unsettled, because a lot in life needs unsettling right now. If we're going to bring ourselves through it, we have to take it delicately - but if we're going to take it delicately, we have to take it at all.
That's all I got tonight. This is no issue zero, it's an issue one, and I hope I'll see you for issue two, sometime probably soon.
Bonus paragraph? Let's try this - things I might have written on, but didn't: