𝔞 𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔶 𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔣𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔴𝔢𝔩𝔩 𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔩𝔡 𝔬𝔣 𝔓𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔞𝔫𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔦𝔡𝔢𝔰.

It's half past three here and considering it's only mid-June, the heat feels oppressive. By Danish standards, granted, which means it's 12 degrees Celcius, but I'm really sensitive to my sleeping spaces being anything but chilled, so I woke up feeling boiling hot, ngl. And thirsty. And needing the toilet.

Just that kind of night.

I'll make the best of it, though. When this entry is written, I'll sit down and see if I can't spit out a couple of scenes in my texting-style short story, I made a good indent into it yesterday. If I'm really good, I'll be able to finish it today, which would be great, because then I can send all three Marie-Claude shorts to my girlfriend tonight! That would feel like an accomplishment. Combined, there are about 15K+ words in there, just at this point, this texting short isn't done yet.



We had Thai-inspired chicken-stuffed tortillas for dinner last night. It's one of our favourite foods to make, not because it's easy to make (it isn't, the prep work is pretty extensive), but because it's so easy and smooth to eat, a real street food-style thing, greasy and tasty and soft. Yum. Lots of chili and garlic in it, too! I think I ate four, lol. I love when my girlfriend is in the mood to make it. I used to help her chop stuff a bit, before I fell, but atm I can't stand up for long enough to really assist much. It'll come back to that, I know, but with how I've had pains the past week, I've beaten myself over the head with it a lot.



Assisted living visit today. We'll be looking at some bank stuff, which always has my anxiety spike through the roof and I can feel it building already, although the appointment isn't until 11am, so a good few hours away. I've gained more control over my own finances since I fell, mostly out of necessity, but it still ignites a lot of old fears, insecurities and panic, which is something my assisted living person and I are working on, but it's currently an up and down learning curve.

Other than that one appointment, though, we only have some cleaning of the apartment to do (Friday is our cleaning day in this house) and the usual grocery shopping, all of which hangs mostly on my girlfriend these days for the same reason as mentioned above. I just can't lift stuff and move around as freely as I'd like. Especially not since I did talk to my physio therapist yesterday and she reckoned it was my Achilles tendon having been overworked that's causing the pains, so the only resolution not to aggrevate it is to relax a lot, "not to pull to a complete halt" as she put it, but slow down, fewer steps, less strain.

I really want this pain to go away, so there's nothing for it, I guess.



As I've been writing these Marie-Claude short stories the past few weeks, something has dawned on me. Since my conception of this character around the years 2012-2014, a decade ago(!), she has never grown or developed much. Marie-Claude has always pretty much just been Marie-Claude. There have been some details that have changed, like her relationship to her dad (probably a subconscious way for me to work with my own changes to the relationship to my own parents) and her relationship to Jean Louis (they've been through various stages of the 'lovers' category to their now much more sibling-like dynamic), but neither one nor the other has ever really caused her to move forward as a character.

Yet, I can feel her doing so now.

Why?

I fear the answer is simple, Sherlock. She came out of the closet. It's funny (or tragic or both) that for these past many years, I've always joked that Marie-Claude was my only really straight character, because I've always only envisioned her in relationships to men. Turns out, she is bisexual and, it seems, will end up in a relationship to a woman.

You have no idea how much this boggled my brain at first!! Due to her dynamics with her father, I always just assumed that she'd always be one of those women who tried repairing or recreating her relationship to her father in her romantic relationships, and only to some degree succeed, for better or for worse. While I still think she is pretty male-leaning (maybe for the above reasons, who knows), writing her with Sasha now has really opened my eyes to the potential for growth that Marie-Claude holds. How happy she can actually be (although, honestly, she isn't making it easy for herself) and I can't believe I'm basically having a big bi awakening on behalf of one of my oldest and dearest characters. It's like watching a dear friend finally find themselves after half a life of misery.



I'm happy for you, Marie-Claude. Go live your best life!

We're already halfway through the week. It's been a weird one, because Denmark held Pentecost-holidays Thursday through Monday, so the week didn't - in practice - start until yesterday. And so, mid-week, is also only the second day or the work week and all my routines are a bit out of the water due to that. Besides that, my foot has been hurting really badly (or, at least, more badly than it's done for months) since Saturday, so my thoughts have been very anxious and I've been hyperfocusing on it a lot.

Tomorrow, my assisted living person will come visiting, but unless my pain has gotten a lot better, our plan of taking the bus definitely won't go anywhere, because I honestly think my leg needs the rest and no additional stress. So no walking to the busstop. And no getting in and out of a vehicle that moves.

Unless it's gotten better, of course. From yesterday until today, it's already improved somewhat.



My girlfriend's article got approved for the magazine it was written for! She was so overjoyed and I was endlessly proud of her. We need to celebrate it, when she's done the final editing work, I've promised I'll buy us takeaway and we can have a nice dinner at home.

She'll be working on it tonight. I think, to keep in time with the editing vibe, I'll reread The Lover of Lilith, my submission call short story, and maybe write a companion piece or something. Nothing big, just to hold on to the themes and style of the short. I have a few ideas already, just haven't really sat down and worked on them, but if she is going to work on her article, I can work on this.

I have started a new Marie-Claude short story, too. It's in the epistolary style, but like text messages. I think it'll be good, but it's very slow in writing, because there is a lot of formatting to do, plus some themes of parental neglect that always get to me when I write them, so I have to take it in little bits.

However, I like it and I'm developing her voice a lot like this.



My girlfriend has also promised to buy me a new notebook for the Marie-Claude and Jean Louis project we're doing, and my love has befallen the new The Little Prince design that Paperblanks is releasing the 1st of July. To get free shipping, we have to buy a few extra things, so I've made a list of stuff I want, now that we're already ordering, including 3 bookmarks, 2 pencil sets, a canvas bag and an extra notebook, because I prefer having both one that is unlined and one that is lined, since I use them for different things.

It'll be expensive, but because a friend of mine just bought something off their website, I have gotten a 10% off coupon that I can use, and then it'll be slightly less terrible.

I also have some books to pick up at the local bookstore, but since I am not going into town until later in June, that's a headache for then.

Plus, there are also the library books I need to turn in...



Saturday, I'm having a friend over and her dog. K. is out with one of her friends, so we'll both be social and hang out with people that aren't one another for once, and I'm glad for us.

Overall, things have been good. But I'm seeing my therapist today and I finally, now, 40 minutes before we're meeting up, know what to talk with her about. I've been drawing a blank for days.

Not because everything is fine, but because everything has been exactly not fine enough that nothing seemed worse than the rest. If that makes sense.

I've been sick all day. No fevers or anything, but general fatigue and lethargy, I think I've slept half the day away at the least. My girlfriend caught something a few days back and it has been riding us like a mare since. I truly hope our entire weekend won't be completely ruined by it. Sigh. No matter what, nothing we can really do about it.



It's sucked big time, though, especially since I've been wanting to write or betaread or do something constructive with my time, but not had the spoons to. It's the worst feeling. Have managed to work a little on a Marcel flash fic as well as editing the first part of my current Marie-Claude short story, but compared to my usual workload? It's pebbles and grain.

I've had a nagging urge to continue the Marie-Claude piece. It would be my first attempt at erotic fiction in Danish and I kind of... stalled at the actual erotica, but I do know how I want to proceed, I just - again - haven't really had the mental energy. Double sigh.



Have I introduced you all to Marie-Claude? I introduced you to Marcel a few days back, and Marie-Claude is from the same general universe, bound to Marcel by her relation to Jean Louis, Marcel's lover. Marie-Claude and Jean Louis have a sibling-like relationship, both let down terribly by Marie-Claude's father, who besides his familial connection to Marie-Claude, served as mentor and substitute father figure to Jean Louis earlier in the timeline. So, they connect over their shared disappointment in him, while also both working in politics. At first, Marie-Claude worked as Jean Louis' speech writer, but eventually quit to start her own party and take her own place in the political lineup in their country. Still, they continued to be close - until it was discovered that Jean Louis had deep ties to the criminal world and had done truly atrocious things in his position as foreign minister. So Jean Louis flees the country and for a while, they're no contact. During that period, Marie-Claude becomes prime minister and takes over leadership, but when Jean Louis begins writing her in secret, she foregoes all security protocols and writes him back. Because he is still her brother in spirit and she misses him and for once in her life, she will do something selfish and stupid for her own sake.

That is the starting point of my girlfriend's and my July project. That is where the correspondance between Marie-Claude and Jean Louis begins.

We're both very excited about it, I think it will develop these characters beyond anything either of us have ever done with them before. Hopefully. I also just look forward to sharing this process with her and, I believe, producing a worthwhile piece of fiction.



If you want to meet Marie-Claude, just take a look at Sonia Petrovna in Indian Summer. She is the spitting image of how I imagine Marie-Claude looks, just slightly older. Marie-Claude is in her mid-thirties at the beginning of the novel, though she looks fairly young still.





The rest of the day, however, is going to be spent making dinner at some point soon and after that, rewatching The Prince of Egypt which is one of my favourite films of all time. True comfort entertainment. Speaking of claiming faces, Miriam could be a really good face for my version of Mary. Just saying.

Watch on YouTube

Listening to this tonight.

The whole album, Music for People in Trouble, is amazing, but this is one of my favourite songs on it. It's raw and atmospheric, poetic and haunting. I've used it for the part of my OIFDEO/ESVST universe that takes place in Norway, where Marcel and his partner, Jean Louis, end up after years of corrupt and criminal living in an unnamed part of Central Europe. Even emperors retire, is the tagline.

I came to think of Marcel yesterday, feeling an urge to reread OIFDEO, my novel about his late teens in Amsterdam, but at the same time I just wasn't in the mood for that much tragedy and his very narrow mindset. I love him as a character, but he is extremely flawed - and at his worst during that time.

Twenty years later, he lives on a run-down farm in Norway with his long-term lover and former business partner, and during that period he grows as much as he's capable of and becomes as happy as it's possible for him to get. My girlfriend and I have a saying that goes, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you get, which we came up with due to these two specifically. And now I feel like exploring that part of Marcel's life some more.

It's around the same time that Jean Louis and Marie-Claude correspond, so timeline-wise it runs parallel to that and would work fine as prep for the July novel writing project. I'll have to ask my gf if she feels like diving a bit into it with me here in June. Will also need to reread some old drabbles and fics I've previously written from that era - or I might just go from what I remember and start from a blank page.



One of the things I've continuously used as inspiration for this universe is the poetry of Anise Koltz, a famous Luxembourgish poet - back from when the story took place in Luxembourg, rather in an unnamed imaginary Central European country. I love her poetry so much, I had a friend of mine who studies French translate some of her poems to Danish, to be able to continue to use her work as basis for my stories even as I changed languages. I have 10-15 ones as reference, most of them relate to Marie-Claude, but this one is very Marcel and Jean Louis. Especially in their Norway days.

*** by Anise Koltz

My deep-sea diving brother
can no longer walk

Flanked by sharp fins
he rejects the polluted and corrupt
non-aquatic world

He sides with the sharks
and attacks anyone
who enters
his waters

Visually, I stumbled upon this on Tumblr and it reminded me a lot of the surroundings around Marcel and Jean Louis' farm in Norway, a winter landscape. So I saved it as reference.


Frits Thaulow (1847-1906)



I should be asleep, but my anxiety is sky-high, I'm extremely conscious of my foot, nervous about something being wrong, although precisely nothing is alarming. Just one of those nights, I guess. It has been an intense past week, so maybe this is also just the reaction to that. It'll probably take the remainder of this week to really settle back into a routine again.

I must just do the best I can and make the best of it.

Anxious this morning. Extremely body-focused and feeling a lot of health-related anxiety. Nervous about my foot. Flashes of panic about my teeth or getting cancer. Most of it entirely unreasonable. Yes, my ankle is broken and it swells when I use it, but I have a physio therapist who's telling me that's completely normal and will continue for a couple of years, although to a lesser and lesser degree. My teeth is a recurring fear I have, and I think mostly a symptom of my other issues. The cancer thing... same.

Anxiety is a strange thing. It wants me to be afraid, but not to be constructive about my fears. I have to do that work myself and sometimes it cripples me so much, I can't. It's gotten better and I have various coping strategies now, but on mornings like this where I just wake up hit by it... Yeah, it's difficult.



Working on a "new" short story in Danish.

I still need to do a final read-through of the Lilith one, before I can send it to my editor, but I found the first couple of paragraphs for a short story that I'd started many weeks ago and I really liked it, plus it's from the PoV of my character, Marie-Claude, that I'll be writing for our summer writing project, my girfriend and I, so I thought I should dive back in.

And I have!

I'm halfway through now. It's three scenes overlapping each other and I'm starting the final part of the first scene today, hopefully able to finish that and maybe the next one, too. Maybe all three, but we'll see. I also need something to work on tomorrow, when I'm hosting an online event in our Danish writing Discord server.

On that note, I should also make a list over future scenes I want to write as preparation for summer...



My gf has some plans today, besides working on her article, so I will have plenty of time to write. Same about tomorrow, where she is babysitting her brother's four children.

I can't believe it's June tomorrow. Half a year since my fall. 2025 has kinda just disappeared in a rehabilitation fog, to be honest. I've come a long way, but it still feels like there's a long way to go. But as my assisted living person said, if this had happened one or two years ago, I would have handled it a lot differently and no doubt worse than I have now and I should remember that, be proud of how far I've come mentally as well, not just physically.

I can do a lot of the basic "adulting" things now that I couldn't a year ago, checking my e-mail, bank stuff... All of that has changed drastically and for the better. I'm just so focused on my foot that I forget.

It's the anxiety. It gives me tunnel vision.

But it helps writing it down here, then it exists somewhere. It exists.

I exist, with everything that I am.

Okay, since the last entry, posted, what, ten hours ago, a lot of things have happened.

1) I finished a short story. Yes, the short story, the Lilith one. 5800 words worth of first draft, meaning I have a 200 words wriggle room, which might or might not become needed. I'm really excited about it, but also - at this moment, I hate everything about that story, so can't feel too elated about it. I know it's got some good points, but because I'm in that post-writing frenzy low, I really can't see them. Tomorrow. I have the whole day off, no plans at all, and plan to just do a proper read-through of the short, edit what I think is necessary, maybe find an alpha reader or something... and then...

2) I have an online friend who is a professional freelance editor and I have approached her about the possibility of me using her as editor for this short. She isn't terribly expensive, I think about 60$ for the whole thing, and she knows my writing style from roleplaying, so I think she already has a grasp of how I write which is probably a good thing. I really want this short to be spiffy for when I turn it in for the Danish anthology. At least be sure my English is correct. I've begun really doubting my own grammar...

So, I think I'll do that. When I've polished up this first draft, I'm going to send it to her and see what I get back. I'm pretty nervous about it. I have never had anything I've written, especially not my English stuff, by a professional editor and I'm nervous about what I might have to realise about my own writing (aka, it sucks).

But as a friend of mine said, it's to get better and the editor is not out to get you, they're out to help. I have to remember that.

Besides, it's something I'm doing to myself. I'm asking for proper feedback, not just pats on the shoulder, the that's really good-kind. So, I'm allowed to cry once I get a lot of notes back, but then I have to square my shoulders and get to work.

I want this story to be good. I think it deserves that.

And I think I deserve to get better, too.

So, that's why I'm going forward.

The past couple of days have kinda flown by.

I was by my physio yesterday and I can now officially stop using my crutches both inside and outside (unless I'm taking the bus, which I can start practicing doing now, there I should still use one crutch), though the distances I can cover continue to be very short. We walked 200 meters together around the building and it took us 9 minutes and I was completely knackered afterwards, though my foot more or less behaved throughout the rest of the day. Not sure how necessary compression socks are anymore. Maybe I should test it today? Not planning on doing anything very taxing, just sitting around as I get a visit from a friend and then, maybe going to the library (by car) to pick up some books, depending on whether my gf would rather give me a ride today (evening) or tomorrow. We'll see.

All four books I've reserved at the library have arrived, very timely this time, sometimes it can take weeks when I order from out of town. They're three books on the history and writing technique of haiku poetry and one book I think is a non-fiction on how travelling Japan was done in the Edo period, at least that's what I'm hoping it's about, hahaha. If not, that's okay, too, but could really use some research material for writing all this fic about Natsu and Isamu travelling through Japan during those days.



I'm taking a brief break from the PSL my gf and I were doing from BLEACH, to instead write a crosscanon thread (roleplay between two characters from two different canons, in this case Star Trek and Spring Snow) because we both kinda needed to do something differently and were inspired by something else for a moment. So far it's working out quite well, but we'll see how it ends up, if we even finish. Sometimes these urges are short-lived.



I have two fics I want to write for my ADAZAKURA-verse rigt now. One is a shorter fic, basically just Natsu's father hiring Isamu to be her travel companion, a single scene. And then I have what I think could be an actual short story, about an alternate ending to the story where it isn't Isamu who dies on the road, but Natsu and him who has to return to Kyoto to tell her father that he has failed in bringing her safely back. I'm very excited for that one, but I need to know something about writing haiku first, before I can begin, because I want to include segment dividers that are haiku Isamu has written while on his return-trip to Kyoto, to tie everything together. I think it could work nicely.

Hence why I want to pick up the books as soon as possible, though of course I won't get to actually start writing until some time next week. RIP, my impatient self.



Well, now I think I'm going to try to grab a shower, see if I can do it without help. Would be nice not having to wake my girlfriend.

Some updates.

My interest in a project seems to have to be rekindled every three or four days, where my natural interest in working on it anymore starts waning. Some things can help averting this shift, like feedback on something I've written from the universe, having something waiting on the horizon, relating to it, in this case, with Adazakura, I have books waiting to be picked up at the library and two books being ordered from my local bookstore that should be ready for pick-up in two to three weeks. Such things can help my focus stay... well, focused. Yet, sometimes I just have to admit defeat and jump between projects. Like, I was very close to just changing my focus to my Sappho stuff today, but then I got stubborn, hahaha.

So, plans for today is riding that wave of stubbornness. Hopefully write some more fic for Adazakura, probably more Inu-centered stuff. I have a Natsu-centric piece waiting, for when I get my books home on haiku, but until then we're sticking to Inu's PoV.

Yesterday, I posted this epistolary fic, letters sent from her to Natsu. I'm very, very pleased with it, not going to lie.





Other important things have happened.

I quit Plurk. Plurk is a Chinese SoMe platform, a bit like Twitter/X, and it's a main platform for Dreamwidth roleplayers. I've had mine for ten years now, though only been active periodically, and the past year I've been very frustrated with it. I don't have a lot of friends on it, bc some drama happened a while back that made me cut a lot of people to avoid it repeating itself, and while that did help on the drama, it also meant that I didn't get a lot of responses to things when I posted. As in, often none at all. Talking into the aether like that never really feels very satisfying and I decided yesterday to stop using Plurk for at least some time - to focus my attention on things that actually energize me rather than drain me. So far, it's working splendidly.

However, what I also realized when logging out of Plurk was that most of the roleplay I do (in public communities), I do to "make friends". It's a social hobby anyway, right? But I'm tired of that. I'm tired of trying to appease the people I play with to have them like me enough to maybe create a social contact. So I'm taking a break from public roleplaying as well. I have a PSL (private storyline) going with my girlfriend and I'm sticking with that, but all the public stuff, begging for scraps, trying to be noticed bullshit... I'm done with that right now.

However, it's addictive and I've already almost caved in three times, going back to the main public RP community there is and get play, but every time I'm just reminded that it doesn't make me feel good, so why bother? Why waste energy on it, that I could use on a million other, more rewarding things. Write more. Read more. Relax more.

Those are the things I want to spend my time on. Not the other stuff.





So, today, I'll be rewatching Pale Dawn, the Japanese Takarazuka musical that started this whole Edo period craze, and I'll try to write either one or two Inu fics, one about a conversation she has with her father about marriage and maybe one where she and her childhood sweetheart, Natsu, reunite after a couple of years away from each other while Natsu has been out travelling.

K. has piano lessons tonight, so it'll be a long day mostly on my own, meaning I have time enough to fiddle around with.





I dreamt about my parents last night. I had a dream where I tried to talk to them about the things they've done wrong in their handling of me, as a kid and as an adult. I don't remember how it went or what I said, what they said, but I remember them sitting in front of a low, Japanese-style table, in seiza, the traditional Japanese way of kneeling with your weight on your heels. I don't know what it's that detail I remember, when all the rest is fuzzy, but it at least amuses me somewhat.

I know why I dreamt it, though.

Yesterday, my mom called, wanting to talk to me about them having sold the house. Which was initially fine. It's nice for them that they got the house sold in less than two months, knowing the market as it is at the moment.

However, then she wanted to know whether I would be able to change the date of our next in-person meeting (June 6th), because dad had made other plans. This is itself not weird, because - hang on - my mom hasn't told him we were meeting up. Not as in, she forgot. She deliberately didn't want to tell him that we were meeting up, because it had to be a father's day surprise. This was her idea, by the way, not mine. Anyway, she wanted us to move the date, now that he unknowingly had made other plans, to the end of June, but possibly the next date for our Discord writers' meetup will be in one of those two last weekends of June, so depending on what the result of that is, I can't. My mom knows I'm pretty rigid in terms of planning and changing things stresses me out, she even said so over the phone, but she still wanted us to - instead of her just telling my dad she'd arranged for the three of us to meet and give him the chance to decide whether he thought his new plans were as important as that or not.

And now that we've made a halfway agreement on a new date, she still doesn't want to reveal to him what's going on. She drives me nuts. She never shows any consideration for my position, especially when she's triggered or stressed. She becomes a total child and expects me to be her parent.

I hate it.

That was why I had that dream.

I need to do something about the situation, I know. K. insisted last night, because I'll look like the unwilling daughter in the end, if we have to keep postponing due to my mom's crap issues. So, yeah... I need to figure out how best to handle this, I guess.

Sigh.

The story of me not being able to sleep, chapter 300.

K. had her friend over again last night (Friday) to watch Star Wars and drink. I stuck to myself throughout most of it, because it had been a fucking draining day with both cleaning the apartment, a shower - which is still a complicated process due to me not being able to stand up in the shower cubicle - and delicious but very slowcook food with lots of elements for dinner and then, the friend dropping by.

Besides that, I have my own friend coming over later today as well.

So there has just been a lot of stress and anticipation going around.

My answer to that is, as always, to bury myself in my comfort media and right now, that is the Takarazuka play called Pale Dawn which is a traditional Japanese-style play based on a book called Sabu, a historical novel originally published back in the 1970's. I recently ordered it from my local bookstore along with a collection of Basho's haiku in English. It's research - Sabu is mainly to be able to understand what's going on in the play, not going to lie, but the haiku collection is because I'm working on a new universe now, writing-wise. The working project for the project is "Adazakura" (meaning 'ephemeral things'), though it'll probably not be the final title. I have three main characters, Natsu, Inu and Isamu, and although Natsu was originally meant to be the main character, I've really fallen in love with Inu, so I think she might end up becoming my PoV character, at least for the main pieces. I've already written one ficlet for the verse, a small thing from Isamu's PoV and I will probably also eventually write some haiku from Natsu's, but the rest... Yeah, probably all Inu.

I have mixed feelings about doing this project. I'm not Japanese and my understanding of Japanese culture is restricted to my consumption of Japanese media. I have read a lot of Japanese literature, but most of it is Murakami, so very little historical stuff - Adazakura takes place in the Edo period, running roughly from 1600-ish to mid-1800's and it's not a time period I have worked with before. I feel I generally do good research and catch on to things quickly, but of course I could never write about this the way a Japanese person could who's much more intimately familiar with Japanese history. That's where the mixed feelings are coming from. Should I then not touch it at all? What if it's not something I intend to publish (aside from closed Internet forums) and earn money on doing, does that make it more okay?

And if I do do it, should I then not share it with anyone?

I know it's cultural appropriation and I don't endorse that, but at the same time, this idea is eating up the insides of my brain. Is it enough to acknowledge that's what it is and accept any criticism, should any arise?

I just don't know.

We'll see if I end up pursuing it regardless. I do have plenty of other projects I could work on, granted.

Anyway, my foot is ouch-y and swollen, I should go lie down again.