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It's elf time.....

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I love running the Owl House photoshoot at DragonCon every year, and this year was no exception. It's been a rough one, and the kindness and creativity everyone brings to this fandom always makes me smile.

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I haven't had an actual celebrity interaction at a con in a long time -- usually it's just not my thing -- but today I tagged along with a friend to meet Cissy Jones and told her how much it meant to me that she recorded the little bonus audio confirming Lilith as aro/ace and she was so incredibly kind and genuine in saying that it meant a lot to her to hear that, so that's.... really cool actually.

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the horrors persist but my friends write beautiful fanfic

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Rock and Roll, DragonCon!

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"I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself."

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Mossy stones

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Still have to install hardware, but Marty's jacket is otherwise done!! (And just in time, too)

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If you don't know these songs, consider giving them a listen before you vote– maybe you'll discover a new favorite!

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Like many people, I've been deeply peeved by the fact that the internet is bad now. While DuckDuckGo or StartPage are vastly better than Google at this point, I've still been on the hunt for something that really consolidates the good results while allowing more fine-tuned surfing.

I'm up here on my soap box to gush to you about Kagi, a paid, ad-free, privacy-based search engine with a mere 50k users at the moment despite the fact that it provides the most useful and productive search experience I've had since, idk, 2018. Kagi allows you to block, deprioritize, prioritize, or "pin" websites to make your searches more relevant. Pinning is especially neat: it means I can pin Bookshop.org, and anytime I search for a book, that will be my top result. I can prioritize reddit and deprioritize Pinterest. I can pin my favorite recipe websites so I'm not wading through AI cooking blogs. You can auto-filter out AI images. There's a "small web" feature that allows you to query small, hidden gem websites. They'll intentionally pull interesting articles or older articles you wouldn't otherwise find. You can search PDFs only, or forums only, or academic sites only. Their AI features are opt-in only. My subscription money goes to things like providing Kagi free to public libraries. Have I adequately conveyed my enthusiasm yet?

If I search "Star Trek" on Google, I get AI "people also asked" questions I didn't want, an AI overview unhelpful to me as I'm already a fan, and corporate websites. No fan websites or small web sites in the first two pages. If I search "star trek" on Kagi, it gives me the official site, a few recent news stories, a Wikipedia page, one new trailer, a quick bullet points collection of "interesting finds" that includes a link to this collection of all commercially available chairs in Star Trek, and a collection of articles specifically pulled because they were published many years ago. Multiple small web sites come next, then some game sites, and a hackaday project for making a DIY communicator. Publication dates, when available, are highlighted right by the URL.

Anyway, well worth $5 a month from me, especially since their pricing is so transparent and they're entirely user funded. They also do zero advertising, which is part of the reason I made this long post. The five bucks a month is genuinely so worth it to me. Maybe it'll be worth it for you, too. You can search 100 queries for free, but I also highly recommend their random small web link, which is like StumbleUpon but for small web sites. (It's free.)

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Progress on my stained glass Narsil.

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I am gently taking your hands and begging you, BEGGING YOU, to understand that humans are not inherently harmful to the planet. We are animals who are part of the ecosystem. We belong here. This is our home. We belong here. You belong here. Yes, you belong here.

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Holy shit guys.

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2025.08.14 - Mt. Hood national Forest

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Got my jacket front assembled and I'm getting excited. This is really starting to look like something!

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How do you deal with prolonged anxiety like that? I’m about to start taking adhd meds again, and I know they’re going to make me anxious as hell for a while before my body gets used to them again. How do you deal with anxiety induced by medication/hormones?

I will be real with you a great deal of how I deal with it is simply trying to embrace the "do it scared" mentality, even if it is maybe a little more like "do it so so scared." For years, before I found an anxiety medication that worked for me (which took a long time, hashtag psychiatric medication resistance), I dealt with anxiety so severe it regularly kept me from eating, among other things, so I simply had to figure out how to be a person despite it. Even these days, whenever I run out of meds, I end up re-experiencing the horrors, so none of this is wildly unusual for me, unfortunately.

That said, I do have at least some actual tips. They are very rooted in my extremely physical experience of severe anxiety and yours may differ in some ways, but here are some of the tangible things that can help with managing a period of extreme anxiety:

Try to have some simple, high-nutrition but sensory-friendly "safe" foods around, so that if your anxiety makes you feel too sick to have anything else, you can at least get some nutrients. Everyone has different preferences, but things like broth or small amounts of crunchy snacks tend to be okay for me.

If you have any crafty hobbies, it's a good time to indulge in them -- for example, I've been working on sewing today, partially because I have a cosplay to finish for a convention next week, but also because sitting down and seam-ripping engages both my hands and brain and is less likely to trigger a full-blown panic attack than doomscrolling.

On that note. Try to cut out any unnecessary sources of anxiety you can. Sure, there are some anxiety-inducing things that you have to do (the emails, for example), but it's probably not a great time to be getting into fights on the internet, for example.

Do some extra little nice things for yourself. Get that little treat if you can, watch some of your favorite movies/TV episodes, take intentional time to hang out with friends (maybe schedule it in advance, if reaching out to people is a source of anxiety for you), and generally try to be kind to yourself while you're dealing with extreme levels of anxiety.

I wish it were easier to deal with or there were better or more tried-and-true ways to make it more bearable, but you're absolutely not alone in having something like medication trigger a severe anxiety response, and I hope you're able to treat your brain and body with the kindness they deserve while you wait for things to calm down. <3

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I do think it's kind of funny that a lot of guys will say that their mood evens out a lot on hrt, that it actually has a slightly calming effect (or at least that when they're low, like right before their shot, they can often tell from the irritability), that it helped them a lot with their mental health, etc.

And for whatever reason, testosterone takes one look at me and is instead like. Killing you killing you killing you killing you.

Ah. I see my least favorite testosterone side effect (the Fear) has decided to make itself known again.