Like a shimmering of the dark air

Just here to say that I'm still alive. We're in the new apartment, but this has been a move of stages spanning the whole month and we're not quite out yet, though the exit is visible. I don't really know how to go about retroactively chronicling this process, but between the tornado level winds knocking out power at the house necessitating moving essentials and the cat early, Grey's ongoing medical problems and predictable major flare up of her anxiety around such a big change, my bipolar deciding to kick up a fuss and hit me with unrelenting rounds of depression and mania, work throwing a new hire at me with no warning to remind me that oh yeah, hey, you're still autistic and sudden change to routine is Bad, and just the usual stress of moving with some added layers specific to this move has resulted in A Rough Period.

Anyway. Here's what I've been stress reading to get me through it:

A Thief in the Night by KJ Charles. 4 stars. A nice bite-sized queer historical romance novella that features all of KJ Charles' strengths with very few of the weaknesses that can plague longer works.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Into the Dark by Claudia Gray. 3 and a half stars that in retrospect I think I'll round up to 4 stars. Deeply enjoyable, slightly bonkers (affectionate) SW read. I truly adore Gray's writing and she's once again served me an autistic-coded Jedi Padawan main character more than likely by accident, but I'll take it (I had the opportunity to ask her at a book signing if she meant to autistic-code Obi-Wan in Master & Apprentice to which she said she was glad I could see that in the character but that it was unintentional on her part).

Society of Gentlemen: A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles. 3 stars. Reread because A Thief in the Night put me in the historical romance mood but moving brain could not handle anything new-to-me. This does less-well as a reread, but is still solidly enjoyable.

Society of Gentlemen: A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles. 3 stars. Also less good as a reread, but the central romance remains compelling and a decent representation of kink, which is hard enough to find in historical romance.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule. 3 stars. Soule's writing is definitely more well-suited to comics than prose writing, so this was...fine. It's very much a first book, mostly preoccupied with setting up this era and the concept of the High Republic, but it never really succeeds at making me care about any of its arguably too large a cast of characters.

So, a lot of 3-star reads. I am hopeful for my current read (Heroes Die by Matthew Stover), because I desperately need a 4-star (or higher) read to lift my spirits.

Hello there from the other side of unemployment. I've finished my first full week of returning to my old job (technically, I've been back for a week and a half, but this was the first full Mon.-Fri. 9-5 work week). This has been an exercise in managing stress and pain levels, but thus far I have survived.

For coping reasons, I am continuing to reread the Thrawn trilogy. I finished Dark Force Rising on Thursday and have since begun The Last Command. Dark Force Rising is a marked improvement to Heir to the Empire in basically every sense, though I maintain that these books still aren't good, per se. It's fascinating, however, to see how Timothy Zahn extrapolated Clone Wars lore from the original films. It's wildly off what we eventually got from the prequels in most places, but the areas of overlap are intriguing. Zahn's take on clones, in particular, I find to be, if not compelling, than at least valuable for comparison to the prequels. I am here for any and all explorations of clone identity. Oddly, one of the elements of this trilogy that I like least upon reread is the character of Mara Jade. Her characterization is consistently shrill and two-dimensional at best. The added context of the Hand of Thrawn duology doesn't help matters.

[HOTD SPOILERS]

Anyway, the penultimate episode of House of the Dragon was something of a letdown. I have come to the conclusion that Sara Hess is going to be the problem writer for me on this show (for GoT it was, believe it or not, Bryan Cogman). I have intensely disliked events and choices in both her contributions to S1.

If there is a silver lining to this messy episode, it's that SOMEHOW HotD has turned me into utter trash for all three of Alicent's children. From the book alone, Aemond was already my Problematic Fave(TM) and he continues to be so, but there frankly wasn't enough of Helaena to form an opinion in the book and I had active disdain for Aegon II. My disdain for Aegon II has not budged, but the actor portraying him in these most recent eps has done such phenomenal work that he is utterly compelling to watch. Helaena remains the least developed on the show (HOW INTERESTING. I WONDER WHAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HER AND HER BROTHERS COULD BE. HMMM. :///), however the minimal fleshing out she has received has transformed her into an actual person in my mind, instead of just being The Tragic One.

[/HOTD SPOILERS]

In other news, Skate America has started, and I find that I just...don't care. I watched the Men's Short Program replay on 2x speed while reading, only slowing it down for the handful of skaters I still halfway care about it. But truly, I felt absolutely nothing at all while watching. I'm completely ignoring Pairs, and I'll probably only drop in for Chock/Bates in Ice Dance. I might bother with Ladies, we'll have to see. But...yeah. The ISU has finally broken me, I guess.

The book I was reading while pretending to watch Skam (which is the funniest/truest acronym ever) was Goth by Otsuichi because it's autumn and Halloween is nearly upon us. This is my traditional spooky season read. But I find that I'm not really in the mood this year? Idk, I'll probably give it a little more time because the first short story isn't a particular favorite anyway. I did, however, march upstairs and break out the green highlighter for "We were cruel, reptilian high school kids."

Reporting to you from what is hopefully, tentatively, maybe the beginnings of the other side of an insomnia episode worse than any I've had probably in the last ten years. So yeah, that's been super not fun, and it's been going for weeks now. I had legitimately reached the point of migraines, generally bodily falling apart, and alarming mental health dips. But I managed to get An Acceptable Amount Of Sleep last night, so we'll see how this goes.

Basically, this whole thing has been my brain not subtly informing me that some stuff needed to change in my life and that the way I was going was not sustainable. Message received, but like...could we work out a less painful delivery system, maybe??? Anyway, I'm taking steps to get my shit sorted, which is uncomfortable and I Don't Wanna etc., but as has been made abundantly clear to me recently: SHIT'S GOTTA CHANGE. My autistic ass deeply resents change and as such I am HIGHLY resistant, but well. A few weeks of straight up not sleeping can tend to beat one into submission.

Mom and I had two of my brothers over last week, which was the first time we've had guests in...Awhile(TM). It was amidst an insomnia migraine haze for me, but otherwise it was quite nice.

On the media front, I finally finished reading Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil and now I don't know what to do with my life. These books have been so important to me, especially considering that the Ascendancy Trilogy has exclusively been released during The Age of Covid. Genuinely the best thing to come out of Star Wars as a property changing hands has been new Thrawn books. This permutation of the titular character is not only a vast improvement over the original Legends version, but also these six books have been some of Timothy Zahn's best work (that I have read) to date.

All that said, Lesser Evil ended up being...not quite a letdown, but not as good as I might have hoped for. Which is not to say that it was bad. But I do feel that it's overly long for the actual story told and included some side plots that ultimately weren't necessary, as evidenced by the fact that they never truly resolved or went anywhere (spoilers: Thrawn's long lost sister is found, but not by him, and he never finds out about it, so like...what was the point?). But, man, did that ending have me in my feelings. And now, ridiculously, I have the urge to reread the first (new canon) Thrawn book, even though I had reread it to prepare for Lesser Evil in the first place.

To try to fill the gaping hole in my life left by my favorite blue man, I'm giving Oaths of Legacy by Emily Skrutskie a second chance. I loved the first book, Bonds of Brass, a truly inordinate amount, which probably resulted in my being overly harsh to Oaths when I first tried to read it. But now I think I've got enough distance, so I'm enjoying the second attempt. The sequel is less obviously Finn/Poe Star Wars fanfic than the first book, but the universe and its world building still remains thinly veiled just barely not SW. None of which is a criticism. On the contrary, for me, those are selling points.

On the writing side of things, I've finished the sixth draft of the first act of Novel 1 and have begun work on act two. This draft is taking a lot more time than previous ones, but I don't see any point in not being thorough at this stage, so I'm trying to keep calm about it and not freak out about how much time it's taking. Typically, I work ridiculously fast, so actually my pace right now is probably more reasonable/normal, but to me it feels glacial.

We're experiencing a heat wave, which around these parts at this time of year means it's averaging 100 degrees and above. I'm focusing on keeping the upstairs as cool as possible for Grey (the cat) and keeping myself hydrated. I'm running on very little sleep because of all this since I have to leave the (extremely loud) window unit running overnight. The payoff is that my day started at 7 AM, so I've already crossed a lot of things off my to-do list for today. But that balances out with the price of being exhausted by 2 PM.

I finally finished rereading all the new canon Thrawn books leading up to Lesser Evil, so now I can begin the aforementioned new(er) installment. I'm finding it hard to focus on Lesser Evil, though, in a bitter twist of completely predictable irony. I'm having better luck with some academic reading; a biology course and reading Orientalism by Edward Said for funsies. I'm also working my way through a collection of Brothers Grimm fairytales in the original German (Andrew Lang translations are Bad, theory confirmed).

Went by the fabric store yesterday and picked up some needle threaders (the ancient one Mom and I had been sharing finally met its honorable end last week), and then, because I have no self-control, I got some sparkly yarn that was on sale. IT WAS CHEAP WITH PRETTY COLORS AND SPARKLES, WHAT ELSE WAS I TO DO?? Do I have a project for it? No. But I will think of something, I'm sure.

The figure skating rule changes from the ISU congress are coming down and they are a predictable mixed bag. Raising the age limit, good. Reducing the program components from 5 to 3, BAD. Honestly, with the upcoming season, I am seriously contemplating ceasing to follow the sport. I'm not at all interested in watching "figure jumping" and the ISU seems determined to head in that direction unto its own destruction. However, I know myself, and I know that so long as Shoma Uno is still competing, I will be unable to completely walk away from the sport. But I am at the very least going to reevaluate how much time and emotional investment I put into the sport, because I can only take so much nonsense and the last Olympic quad had me at my absolute limit.

 Operation Get All My Friends On Dreamwidth: Underway.

Notwithstanding, I really do prefer it here. Feels less high stakes, and I've missed feeling the freedom to actually talk about things.

To that end, I've found myself smack in the middle of a depressive episode. I honestly didn't notice until the middle of the day yesterday when I realized the day was half over and I hadn't like, done anything. And the thought of doing anything made me want to curl into a ball and cry. It's been about the same today, although I did drag myself out of the house to do yardwork. It's roughly a billion degrees outside right now, and basically feels like I'm living on the surface of Arrakis, so that understandably took it out of me. I say "understandably" in order to half-convince myself, because afterwards I predictably got quite down on myself for not feeling like doing anything else, which I know is counterproductive, but I've never claimed to be particularly well-adjusted.

My executive function is quite low atm, so I also get this terrible decision paralysis. I become overwhelmed by questions like what to read next, so then I just don't do anything. Eventually, I kicked myself out of bed and shuffled into the study to start rewatching The Legend of Vox Machina (which is more time manageable than starting C1 while also scratching that itch), which at least succeeded in making me laugh.

Thankfully, there were leftovers to heat up, so I didn't have to make dinner. After that, it was a shower and making some herbal tea.

Still, this is one of those days where I have to remind myself that I have been productive. For instance, I finished rereading Thrawn: Treason, wrote a review for it on Goodreads, and started listening to Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising while I did the yardwork. I've done laundry (though I've yet to fold it). Etc. And yet, it still feels like I'm "wasting time." Always there's this sensation of a ticking clock and the feeling that I owe my time to something or someone, without a clear idea of what or whom.

Oh well. I'll probably spend the evening crocheting the hat I'm making for a neighbor and watching more Critical Role, and desperately trying not feel like I'm a waste.