bring on 2026 - an introduction

1.8.26

no guys seriously how do you write a blog HAHA

but while i figure that out, i guess this is a good opportunity to talk about setting up this blog!

why blog? why now white girl?

garfield sleeping i think in my 20s, having finally transitioned my gender and shifted into social groups that i truly feel at home with, i have only just realised how much my life was built on coping mechanisms i developed to make things make sense and for the world to be a lot more bearable.

not that my childhood was explicitly traumatic or anything, i think i just always had an easy way out through things such as digital escapism and sunk a lot of my life into games, anime, and other entertainment with a sole purpose of 'passing time' until 'it got better'. now i'm 25 as of writing this, and in coming face to face with how much i rely on doomscrolling and ambient consumption to exist day-to-day i have made it my goal— nay mission! to defeat the evil of not touching grass... in layman's terms, my new years resolution (following from late 2025) is to just be a lot more intentional with the things i do and create. to me, i've identified it to mean seeking boredom without the crutch of the phone algorithms and making conscious efforts how to spend my time, albeit playing through a game on my ds, sketching, or writing. the blog gives me the opportunity to just write some bullshit, but also gives me the opportunity to reflect on my time spent and really identify if i want to do more, or less of something. simple, right?

the setup

setting up the repo i think i have some sort of IT-related trauma from my degree, it's complicated, but i'm so thankful to have an incredibly lovely friend who not only helped me set this blasted thing up for six hours, but also was one of the biggest encouragements in even entertaining the idea of a neocities blog in the first place.

we used the flamedfury guide for 11ty since one of my biggest pain points in the previous blogs (and a huge reason for their decay) was how much of a pain in the ass writing out blogposts in straight up html was, and i was told this is a more front-loaded solution that will make updates in the future painless! so far in writing this post, yeah, well... heh... let's justr say... it's pretty awesome... like being able to functionally just type in discord-syntax (which also uses markdown), being able to push changes instantly to a locally created copy, having github version control, plus 10x less annoying image linking than html all make me veryyy chuffed!

there's not a lot to be said about the technical nitty-gritty from a programming ape like myself, it was very nice to hear from my friend that the experience of running me through it all was pretty painless though! speaking of the experience, i kind of just wanna touch on how awesome it is to have friends with these sorts of skills and just spending the day in their element, learning from them and just spending quality time trying to figure out why one of the navs won't take any padding values for 30 minutes. jokes aside, i've always had this childhood dream that likely stemmed from my watching of seinfeld where i wished for an apartment where i could have friends over and we'd just shoot shit and work on things together for fun and learning new things. i fear this blog is just gonna devolve into jerking off my friends and saying how much i love them.

kamen rider ryuki

kamen rider ryuki

i kind of started getting really into kamen rider as a bit, but i fear that everyone in my life genuinely think i'm unhealthily obsessed now which is a little bit funny.

for context, i've seen a handful of heisei series (namely build, den-o, wizard and amazons) and having just finished up ryuki i think it sits neatly at the top of it all. the first episode alone is such a fantastic introduction to the early 2000s horror/drama tone and to shinji and akiyama as our beloved yaoi-riffic couple, and i highly recommend watching it to get a feel of the rest of the series. the sound-track is truly spectacular, having so many riders get thoroughly fleshed out alongside their motivations makes all the side plots feel a lot more weighty and neatly interconnected. there's not much more i can say without spoiling it, but i do absolutely adore shinji as the hopelessly optimistic main rider truly being checked at most turns of the story for his 'stoooppp fightingg!!!!' altruism against the very firm ambitions of the other riders.

it's always hard talking about tokusatsu in a way that's understandable to non-toku watchers, but i can highly recommend ryuki as an intro to the genre for anybody more interested in the dramatic and character-driven moments as opposed to the sheer shenanigans of shows like fourze and den-o. also zolda is so fucking cool, like it is hilarious how overpowered he is solely because he's the only rider who gets A Gun.

draw steel!

draw steel i am a big sucker for ttrpgs. you will learn this sooo quickly. but imagine my shock as the forever gm that i get invited to a pathfinder 2e game of season of ghosts one week, and then my old group's gm asking for an eoi to try out the new MCDM system draw steel. to say i was doing backflips would be an understatement.

draw steel is a self-described 'tactical heroic cinematic fantasy' game. basically what this boils down to is that it's a fantasy ttrpg that removes anything that does not support tactical, heroic, and/or cinematic gameplay. i was definitely intrigued in theory, but as with any concept it only goes as far as it's implemented— which thank god the designers have truly hit the nail on the head with it so far.

we're currently playing through the delian tomb starter adventure (very cutely designed after designer matt colville's youtube series on de-mystifying running ttrpgs: 'running the game') and so far the combat feels very reminiscent of LANCER in the best way possible, while the 'narrative play' of the game has employed the sacred art of 'it doesn't fucking matter bro'. what does this look like? well, if you go back to 'heroic, cinematic fantasy' you can kind of figure it out. tracking gold? is it heroic or cinematic to mark down 2sp to buy a drink at the tavern? not really, so draw steel instead denotes your general wealth with a single value (e.g. 1 is enough to afford necessities, 2 is lavish living, 3 is enough to own a nice house, etc. etc. you get it.). this trickles down to things like reputation as well, and a completely forgone equipment tracking system in lieu of 'kits' which represent your equipment but also alter your gameplay via changing your character's speed, actions, etc. it really wears the mantra on its sleeve and forgoes a lot of ttrpg traditions in favour of selling this very punchy and snappy experience of just being badass heroes kicking doors in.

at level 1, my troubador pregen walked into a room of a dozen goblins, power-slid into the room, played a power chord and slammed an entire squad of ~5 into a burning brazier and killed them instantly via environmental damage. and this was not even using my main action. this game is truly such a blast and classes all interlock with eachother to create awesome tactical scenarios, once again, in the tagline. having forced movement be so integral to class kits, and having rules for forced collision makes it such a fun bit of tactical gameplay where you're playing goblin bowling and tossing them around the battlefield and trying to mold the battlefield into an advantageous shape for your party's strengths. i haven't had much opportunity to delve into the proper rulebook outside of the trickling of mechanics in the delian tomb, but i've been told about some of the kiss-curse character creation mechanics and exciting things to look forward to and i'm definitely not saying no to another adventure or campaign run in this system as a nice break from the granularity of pf2e to say the least.

i can't wait for the next session, not only for my gm's awesome presence at the table and monster noises, but just to find out more about the system and this interesting take on stripping and rebuilding the unquestioned foundations of all these dnd-shackled fantasy ttrpgs.

how are you doing?

social experiment

the 'real' part of these blogs is always so odd to do for me. i have nothing against talking about myself but afterwards i always worry that i've 'misrepresented' myself or others for some reason. but this is an important part of the process too, i suPPOSE.

december was truly insane. without too many details i had a breakup that weighed so heavy on me that it kinda poisoned december and served as one of the most violent wakeup calls to date, which in hindsight perhaps was equally helpful as it was painful. it helped me identify a lot of the things i'll talk about in the next section but i think off the back of switching to estradiol injections changing my brain chemistry and an extremely stressful month of uni assignment crunch it dealt a death-blow to myself as a functioning person for november/december. even for me, the ruminator, i ruminated so much more than i think most people should in their entire lives and realised i need to make some long-awaited changes to my life.

publication??

yeah so this is a little crazy still, basically early in the semester i read out a writing excercise we did in class for about 5-10 minutes and a few weeks later my lecturer talked with me about getting that piece published because she enjoyed it so much (for context, i consider myself an above average writer, i think i lack the structural knowledge of a writer since i mostly do it to get thoughts and feelings out into a page, without much consideration of proper form and technique) so hearing this was definitely a shock from a lecturer who i respect an insane amount as a very knowledgeable and skilled writer. anyways, we talked about the timelines etc. and as much as i was terrified, i did want to start saying yes to more opportunities (especially ones as exciting as this) and so we shelved it until december when she'd open applications.

cut to a month ago now, after the semester has wrapped, and me checking my student email to follow up some enrolment issues and lo and behold a two-week old email from my lecturer following up on publishing that piece. with a deadline in a week. whoops. thankfully it's a short 500~ word piece, but writing it was very cathartic in that most of my writing being glorified vent-pieces have a very melancholic/gutwrenching tone and i have used it as a very potent crunch in most of my writing, and this piece was a firm attempt into writing something more meditative and hopeful. and so well, i ran it by a few friends and my lecturer and have gotten some shockingly good reception! the piece in summary is just a meditation on my experience as an immigrant walking through an asian grocer and how the space serves as a 'cultural bunker' from rampant globalisation and the assimilation a lot of these communities are forced to due to fewer cultural spaces for them to exist in. i had a lot of fun writing it, and from the sounds of it, it's probably being published early next year? not for a major thing, of course, but still as my first publication i've had to seriously consider if i want to pivot into a writing pathway especially with all these actual writers in my life, including my roommate, and forego teaching. i am on the fence about it, leaning to no. i think writing has always been a medium that has never felt intimate to me, but more like the most familiar pen in the drawer that i always reach for.

BIKE!

hoooly shit guys. as my city's number one public transport warrior, getting a bike has been life-changing.

i live in the city and usually have to bus around or take 40-min walks to get places, but having a bike i can reach anywhere in the city in sub-15, and can even ride out 20km pretty comfortably on this thing. it's served as both a way to rehab my busted knee for volleyball preseason but also it's just been wonderful to go fast down a hill, feel the wind on my face, and just forget about the world for a little bit. since late november, i have ridden my bike every day without fail and not even as a challenge or anything, i just have because it's so much fun and so convenient, some days i ride for hours in total.

the community aspect too, of having a lot of friends who ride bikes and even inspiring some of them to get back into it/get into it in the first place, has been so exciting and i've been in the talks of doing a big group 'bike dyke' ride with them and potentially making it a regular thing. at this point, i've just been mostly riding with the friend who helped set up this blog and it's been extremely lovely to strap a speaker to the back and just go. bikes are so efficient it actually is insane, and i absolutely get it now and am unironically thinking about getting a fuck-off bike tattoo now.

boombox

i got an mp3 player earlier in 2025 as a half-assed attempt to decentralise a lot of shit off of my phone and inconvenience myself a bit more so i'm more intentional with my consumption. unfortunately she hasn't been used a single time lol. but one of my friends held a big music trade and i ended up getting recommended some cds which took my ass into gear to getting an actual cd-player and thinking about starting a physical music archive of sorts.

now, with a boombox poetically gotten on nyd, it's been so nice to just chuck an album on in the kitchen and do something whether it be cooking or cleaning without the hassle of a bluetooth speaker or needing to touch my phone. that's about all for this thought, it's just a nice separation, kinda like having a designated office to work in vs a home office and has encouraged me to listen to a lot more music properly. it's good!

next steps

two bikes well, now that i have a working skeleton of the blog. all that's left blog-wise is to freshen up the css, get it looking like not a temu version of my friend's blog, and get to writing!

outside of the blog, i half-jokingly made a 'ins' vs 'outs' ny resolution list which honestly in doing so on the back of life events has actually proven very useful:

ins:

outs:

mostly there's just a theme of not holding myself back, i think because i grew up around the 'nerdy kids' and on the internet, i typecasted myself into that stereotype and even when i fell in love with sports in highschool i just assumed that was a weird glitch more than anything. only in finding this new group of friends and continuing my volleyball pathway have i actually realised that i actually unfortunately do need to touch grass and i feel infinitely better cresting that initial embarassment of failure and the unfamiliar... how damning... but i have a feeling 2026 is going to be a year of a lot of movement, new experiences (but actually, not like in a trashy way), getting dripped the fuck out, and wrestling my friends.

it is 2:44am as of finishing this non-stop stream of consciousness, i did suddenly have the thought of having a new blog-section for poems i write in a cute layout— but i fear that may step on the toes of the 'vitamin deficency' and 'bad injury management' parts of my resolution, so i will concede to bed and push up this post. good night.