It has been 2026 for eighty-four years.
I spent the entire first month of the new year paralyzed. Not physically, but psychically. It felt like indecision paralysis, but of the spirit. I cannot look away from the atrocities happening in my country, shielded as I am by my ivory tower of privilege. Especially because I am shielded. I must bear witness, carry messages, provide aid, and protect the vulnerable. I must, and yet. An overwhelming sense of powerlessness clouds my determination. I call my representatives, I donate to mutual aid, and I feel like it is not enough. I think of Ernest Fraenkel, and his theory of the dual state. My everyday life is lived in the normative state of legal norms and regulative safety, while my neighbors live in the arbitrary violence and cruelty of the prerogative one. The injustice of it all strangles me, and through the haze of impotence, I struggle to figure out how best to serve.
The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.
Andor, Season 1, Episode 5, “The Axe Forgets”
Little did I know when I first watched Andor back in 2022 that it would perhaps be the one of the best pieces of anti-fascist art ever made. I find myself thinking of it again and again as my country descends further and further into authoritarian hell—of how it doesn’t romanticize resistance and revolution with grand heroics (although there is plenty of that), of the aching humanity of its characters (even the non-human ones!), and of how it might provide a blueprint of how to fight back, if we only had the courage to take action. Atheist though I am, I was radicalized by my Catholic education. My high school’s motto was Actions not words. Strange then that I chose to be a writer. I feel as though my gifts are insufficient, a paltry and palliative offering in this moment of need. What could I possibly say that hasn’t already been said? And by those whose voices carry more weight than mine? I am uninterested in performance; actions not words means that moral clarity without proof is empty. This is the root of my spiritual paralysis. I am not Nemik from Andor. I am, at best, one of the guests at Mon Mothma’s fundraisers, contributing to resistance with the contents of my pocketbook.
There is, of course, the necessity of finding joy amidst troubled times. But joy has never been difficult for me. January was filled with small joys. Watching Castor and Pollux frolic about in the snow. Scoring tickets to see BTS on their world tour (multiple times!). An upcoming trip to Tanzania with Bear on a medical teaching trip. I know how to find delight in the mundane and not-so-mundane. This, perhaps more than writing, is my real gift. I just wish I knew how to share it. Not my personal joys, but the gift of finding it within yourselves. My joy fuels my faith and my hope.
But perhaps that is a greater shield than all my privileges.
So I continue to act in the ways I can. Bear witness, provide aid, and carry the messages of others to those who need to hear them. To exercise the rights I am afforded in my normative state for the protection of others. Until I can’t anymore.
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. This creative life
4. What I’m reading
5. What I’m watching
6. Other things of note
lexical gap: 막나귀 🧩
When I had a corporate job, I used to say that my house had “evil threshold magic,” meaning that once I crossed the front door after work, I wasn’t leaving again until the next day. If I wanted to the gym or meet my friends for dinner, I would either have to go directly from work or hang out somewhere until it was time to eat. Turns out that “evil threshold magic” still exists even when I work from home; the amount of inertia I have to overcome to leave my house is incredible.
this creative life ✨
Last year, the card I pulled the most often in all my tarot readings was the Eight of Swords.
There are a lot of meanings assigned to this card—powerlessness, victimization, a feeling of futility—but for me, it signals doubt. Well, specifically self-limiting beliefs, but I shorthand that to doubt. The imagery of the card frequently features a person blindfolded and bound, surrounded by blades that form a prison.
I feel hemmed in by self-limiting beliefs.
After finishing SUHWA, I started noodling with Rope, which started as a sort of unserious idea that I hoped will be fun and frivolous. All of my projects have begun this way—Wintersong was a “fuck it, I’m going to write 50 Shades of Labyrinth” and Guardians of Dawn was “I miss that 4 o’clock feeling of watching Sailor Moon on Toonami after school.” Maybe it’s the inherent fangirl in me, but I can’t help but pluck an idea or a concept from another form of media and attempt my own take on it, the way I used to write AU fanfics when I was in high school. However, none of my ideas stay unserious and frivolous; something happens during the writing and thinking process where I end up using the premise as a vehicle to untangle some thorny philosophical problem I’ve been mulling over for years. For Wintersong, it was asserting the wholeness of humanity in the mentally ill, and for Guardians of Dawn, it was about collective responsibility.
You all know by now that I need a Point in my art, and I’ve started identifying the Point earlier and earlier in the writing of all my books. But now I’m concerned that I may have started too early for Rope because I’m suddenly facing the enormity of what I want to say and the inadequacy of my skills. Hence, the Eight of Swords.
I never used to worry about these things. But the more I write, the more I think, and the more I think, the more I doubt. I wish I were thoughtless sometimes. Self-awareness is a curse.
My current state of spiritual paralysis isn’t helping matters either. I understand myself well enough to know that this will pass, and that the best way to work through obstacles is to take things one step at a time. Blinkers, in other words. Sometimes it’s too overwhelming to take in the big picture all at once; focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Sensory regulation. Keep my eyes on the next hill, not the whole journey.
I just gotta take the first step.
what i’m reading 📖
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. This was a reread, mostly because I needed reminding of how much Howl’s ridiculousness will be influencing my next MMC.
This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman. It is ridiculous how much I’ve cried in a such a cartoonishly violent LitRPG series, and yet. And yet.
Blank Space by W. David Marx. I really enjoyed Status and Culture by the same author when I read it at the end of 2024, but Blank Space didn’t quite deliver what I had hoped. Ostensibly this is an analysis of the cultural stagnation we have been experiencing in the United States in the past twenty-five years, but aside from Marx’s general argument that “Poptimism and omnivore monoculture ruined everything” I found it somewhat thin. Perhaps this is because I am somewhat of a poptimist myself, but I wanted more structural investigation of the commodification of culture, as well as the deleterious effects of capitalism on art. There were quite a few trenchant observations that I highlighted throughout the text, but the conclusion was a scant few pages that essentially amounted to “touch grass” as the antidote to the hyper-consumerist, hyper-connected algorithmic hell we’re all living in. Bro, we all know we should touch grass. That still doesn’t help.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. After being blown away by The Everlasting and her short stories last month, I decided to hunt down Harrow’s backlist. It’s interesting to see where she began and how she’s developed as an artist. Definitely looking forward to what’s next.
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. I’ve read quite a few of the Discworld novels, but never on audio, and I was in the mood for Sir Pratchett’s inimitable form of satirical observation, but delivered with a British accent straight to my ears. I picked Guards! Guards! because it’s one of my favorites, and it’s EVEN MORE delightful on audio than it is in print. Also, Sam Vimes is my husband.
what i’m watching 📺
The Pitt. I’m late to this party, mostly because Bear was uninterested in watching this with me. As a surgeon who has worked in Pittsburgh hospital, he said the last thing he wants to do is come home from work to watch more work.1 Fair. This show is indeed very good, although I’m sort of at a loss as to describe why. I’m personally not all that interested in realism in drama—I would rather watch a documentary—but I think it’s the immersion that makes The Pitt so riveting. Our healthcare system is fucked, and experiencing that through characters instead of learning about it from a more dispassionate distance is incredibly effective. Fuck capitalism.
other things of note 💾
TeamFourStar, “Toonami Abridged | Sailor Moon, Part 1.” TeamFourStar, YouTube, Dec 2025.
TeamFourStar, “Toonami Abridged | Sailor Moon, Part 2.” TeamFourStar, YouTube, Jan 2025.
Maher, Jackson. “The Pitt & American Burnout.” Skip Intro, YouTube, Jan 2026.
Olson, Dan. “This Is How You Get JARHEAD Sequels.” Folding Ideas, YouTube, Jan 2026.
Sideways. “Why Hellfire is the Best Disney Villain Song Ever.” Sideways, YouTube, Jan 2026.
Harman, Parkes. “The Thousand Faces of Cassian Andor.” ArTorr, YouTube, Jan 2026.
Le, Mina. “AI writing is ‘bad’…so now what?” Mine Le, YouTube, Jan 2026.
Shaniya. “What Happened to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl?” Shanspeare, YouTube, Jan 2026.
Yours entire,
He does, however, assert that Scrubs is the most accurate medical show ever made. Or at least accurate to the experience of training at a hospital.
Spot on. This builds so well on your previous Lexical Gap post. So relatable.