Two years of blog
It's been a while!
It was naive of me to think that I would keep up the pace of one post a month I initially expected of myself this summer. Still, I think celebrating two years of this blog is a perfect occasion to get back into blogging at least a little bit. So, hello! Thank you for being here as this blog turns two!
Contrary to last year, when I was silent in part because I was busy writing some particularly long posts, I've spent a lot of this summer drifting away from blog writing. So here's a glimpse at other stuff I did instead, plus draft projects and blog perspectives, where I'm at, and miscellaneous thoughts.
Random things I did recently
toki pona
In the early summer, I participated for the first time in a yearly writing contest for the micro-language toki pona, which I've been enamored with for over two years now. My shortform submission, mi tu li soweli (which could broadly be translated as "the two of us are creatures"), was an opportunity to write about lesbian love1 while also enjoying toki pona's non-human-centric approach to personhood2. I've actually come to use a few of the language's words related to animals, like soweli or akesi, in my everyday speech - because I find like they capture how I feel, as a foxgirl, in part like a nonhuman creature, and the joy that comes with that.
I got third place for my writing, amidst over twenty entries for the short writing format, which made me extremely happy. This year the contest also included a text-with-pictures category, which led to some great entries too.
Scanlation
On another topic, the last few months have also been an opportunity for me to delve into scanlation, the process of fan-translating and editing manga into English.
Scanlation is something I've been deeply admirative of for years. After all, I spend a sizeable amount of my time reading yuri in the form of fan releases, either before switching to their official English and/or French publication, or because such official release isn't in the cards at all. I've always found the process deeply altruistic and I've been dreaming for a long time of contributing to this joy of making something available to new audiences (and to nitpick for hours over translation choices, too).
So recently, I've done that! I realized that my two years of learning Japanese were often enough, with a dictionary by my side, to start reading manga in Japanese here or there; and I've also been getting the hang of the drawing software Krita, which made for a perfect match to try and scanlate stuff myself. (and I'm lucky to be proofread by some more experienced scanlators and benefit from their resources, too.)
Curiously, my first scanlation pick - Café Frontera, by Chome - isn't yuri, and it may seem a bit unassuming, even if I really like its art style and vibe. But I picked it because I've been really crushing on the author's Spirited Away-like, yuri subtext oneshot A Record From the Underground Library earlier this year: that made me want to start reading and translating more of what she did. So I talked it out with that oneshot's scanlators, and I got the okay to do more myself!
So far I love how Chome's works consistently delve into some kind of magical realism intruding upon reality. I'm far from having read everything she's done, as I'm scanlating as I go, but I'm eager to see more3. Some more experienced people may do this better than me, but so far I'm enjoying myself greatly, and I think that's still something.
Fanworks
The remainder of my creative energy of the past few months has been going into various kinds of fanworks.
I've found my ability to write in general (essays, writings, posts...) diminish significantly in recent months, but I've been back into writing fanfiction on and off, which is an endeavor I had found myself estranged from for quite some time. It's very nice to be doing that again, even if I'm not sure what of it I'll be eventually posting online. It's just fun to plan multi-chapter projects for fictions I like.
The rest of my energy has been channeled into making AMVs, which has become by far my biggest way of making fanart for the past two years. To give you a sense of scale, I used to make around one AMV per year before early 2025, as an occasional thing; but I've made 7 last year, and already 14 this year4 (what the heck. I never counted and didn't expect this big a number, honestly. whew.). I'm addicted to the hyperfocus and the joy of it now.
(... Also the fact that almost half of those AMVs are of Revolutionary Girl Utena is probably telling something. Whoops.)
Where I talk about math stuff, surprisingly
A few words on my relationship with math
When I started this blog, I was honestly thinking I'd post more about math curiosities; since then, I've only reposted one post from back when I was on the dead social media website cohost, and I haven't made more5. I think part of it is due to my difficult relationship with math: while many of its branches and small results fascinate me, and I love trying to explain to others what feels magical about it, math is still mostly my job, which tends to wear down part of the fun.
That same relationship has also become more toxic as I've been struggling to obtain a stable researcher position, and getting through various periods of unemployment. I'm skipping details here, but I have lots of conflicted feelings around a topic I still love but a job I've grown to resent at times6, and this has also been weighing on me in various ways.
Surviving generative AI in research
A very recent development that has also contributed to clouding my thoughts regarding math research has been the large-scale use of generative AI by a lot of researchers to prove conjectures. I see this with the same horror as I see generative AI implemented almost everywhere, and particularly in artistic fields.
Math research, to me, is an artistic field. What matters is not the end result being proved, or X high-impact scientific papers being published per year; it's your journey to understand what you're working on better. It's like puzzle-solving: the joy is in finding your own ideas toward a solution, slowly increasing your understanding, potentially in conversation with others - not just feeding your question into a machine and being given a proof.
GenAI makes math research mutate the same way as art: it makes it a commodity, with the goal of a capitalist-minded "productivity" that actually eliminates the fun, difficult, rewarding learning process that is what actually provides purpose and a sense of personal growth in any activity. It also erodes a big social aspect of research: I've seen many researchers much more reticent about mentioning what they're working on, out of fear that colleagues will just give their latest interrogations to an AI and be done with it.
I find all this deeply disheartening.
... Last-minute addendum: a friend sent me this essay on genAI use in math by Max Weinreich only a few hours after I wrote the lines above. I think it deserves a read for everything it says better than my few paragraphs here regarding the philosophy of math research, while situating this "AI breakthrough" perfectly in the larger, horrifying context of the capitalist, technocratic vision of genAI industries in general. It also calls for resistance from all actors of the field quite efficiently. I can't agree with it enough.
On Yu Deng and the Fields Medal
To end this math segment on a more positive anecdote, this summer were announced new recipients of the Fields Medal7, considered the highest of all mathematical distinctions. Among them was Yu Deng, a researcher in partial differential equations, who happens to be... an impressively huge fan of yuri.
I welcomed the news with astonishment and pure glee: Deng mentions directly in interviews how yuri helped him survive the stress of his job, and if that wasn't enough, people scoured his social media profiles and noticed references to tons of stuff. This includes the multimedia license of gay girls in bands BanG Dream; the significant lesbian side-character Saeki Sayaka from the yuri landmark manga series Bloom Into You8; or a direct mention of Otherside Picnic among his favorite sci-fi novels9, a series I've been obsessed with for years despite deep-seated issues I have with it now.
Yu Deng also seems to be really, really into another of my specific interests10: the videogame series Touhou, which isn't exactly surprising considering its yuri overtones11. People have been analyzing the official Fields Medal communication video, and references to Touhou characters abound during Yu Deng's presentation - he even wrote at least one math problem with a setup using Touhou characters.
This feels mind-blowing to me. I've jokingly said to friends that this is suddenly giving me one heck of a chance to get the Fields Medal someday, if it seems to favor yuri fans that way.
Of course, I have my doubts in practice; doubly so when, with 68 recipients of the medal since its creation in 1936, only three of them have been women: Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014, Maryna Viazovska in 2022, and Hong Wang this year in 2026.
But anyway. My field of research is diametrically opposite to differential equations, but this makes me want to meet Yu Deng at a conference or something and talk about Touhou and yuri.
(... Also a small part of me expects him to transition someday. You know. It's never too late to realize you can be the lesbian you want to see in the world.)
Blog perspectives
Let's get back to the topic of this blog!
Email issues
First thing first: I discovered with much astonishment in the early summer that my blog-related inbox had ceased to notify me when I had new emails since at least early 2026. So I spent the last six months just assuming that no one had reached out to me; until I casually checked and realized that I was wrong! Many people had actually sent me emails about posts and stuff!
So if you've written to me somewhere in 2026, first: thank you so much! And second: I haven't answered yet, and I'm really sorry! I didn't expect this technical quirk and the resulting semester-long delay. It should be fixed now!
I didn't have time to get into emails this summer, and I'm still struggling with a lot of social anxiety that is also prone to slowing this process down... but I'll be answering, email after email, in the next few months. Thank you for your patience!
Post ideas
Now, regarding blog posts: I have tons of things I want to write about in theory; but in practice, I often lack the energy to do so and my ideas just sit as half-written drafts somewhere in my notes. Still, to provide you with some perspectives, here are a few post ideas I've been considering.
in-depth analyses of things that bothered me when reading/watching some well-known manga series - Frieren for its aggressive heteronormativity, and Witch Hat Atelier for its very clumsy management of disability;
a two-part post on some famous Vocaloid songs I've been loving at some point of my years within that fandom, along with contextual and historical elements around Vocaloid and vocal synthesizers as a whole - a project hinted at in a previous post that I'm still determined to bring to fruition;
an essay on how wrong the use of genAI in the Touhou series feels, and my heartbreak about that;
maybe an attempt at putting my thoughts in order regarding the last few volumes of How Do We Relationship?. This series has been my favorite yuri manga for years and I think it still is; but sadly its last third has a significant issue around a scene of sexual violence and its consequences, which is very much worth discussing.
a much-belated list of things I've liked in 2025, just like I did back in 2024, and a future one for 2026 - an occasion to write about many things I couldn't dedicate a whole post about. I'm not sure I'll reach 25 things for 2025, and definitely not 26 for 2026, but hopefully I'll write something for both.
something on how easy it is to explain transidentity badly by relying on essentialism, and also something stressing the importance of a non-essentialist vision of lesbianism. Just general thoughts on those topics and how sometimes we learn about them in ways that actually have to be unlearned later.
sillyposting! I have so much Wikipedia trivia here or there I'd like to make into posts again.
I'll probably get sidetracked and write on other stuff too/instead, to be honest. Other vague ideas include praising a few 2000s manga and anime series I've been reading/watching (but they may end up in my yearly retrospective posts instead), long-winded considerations on the moment of love confession in yuri series at large, or dissecting the cruelty of the mermaid yuribait we got this summer anime season.
Whoops, almost all of these extra ideas are yuri or yuri-adjacent. What can I say.
Anyway, here's to more blog! At some point! Probably!
Take care, and have a sweet early autumn!
I believe that any language would benefit from more queer writings, and notably trans lesbian writings; and I really wanted to contribute to that for a language which only has a few thousand pieces of original literature in the first place.↩
my submission's final sentence, mi tu li ken melome sama jan ala, "we can be lesbians like humans are not", is also a nod to the visual novel Heaven Will Be Mine, which never completely leaves my mind when it comes to queer fictions. It's also kind of a theme - it's not the only queer fiction I adore where sapphic love embraces the nonhuman.↩
Also I learned while writing this post that her short stories collection would be officially released in English by Glacier Bay Books! No date yet, but maybe we'll have more details before the end of the year?↩
including my very first animatic, which was made clumsily but still pouring all my heart into it. I'm slowly getting into drawing, no matter my beginner level, and it's honestly a joy. There's true euphoria in learning how to make your own stuff, warts and all, and it also feels like a small gesture of resistance against the heart-rending erosion of artistic creation under the slop of generative AI.↩
I have, like, another small cohost thing I could repost, and a few other ideas in the form of brief notes in my phone. Maybe someday? I'm not sure.↩
... along with the concept of work itself. The fact that we have to work to deserve survival feels horrendous to me. I'd be unemployed if that was a viable thing long-term: devoting my time to my hobbies and the people I love feels much more meaningful than having a job. And then I wouldn't say no to doing tidbits of math research on the side! Just without the necessity to do that against remuneration to ensure my survival.↩
the Fields Medal is often compared to the Nobel Prize, but it has a few quirks of its own: most notably, it is only awarded every four years, and only to researchers under 40 years of age.↩
I wouldn't personally recommend Bloom Into You, because I've found it extremely unsettling regarding the deuteragonist's pushiness and her repeated disregard for the protagonist's consent in many a forceful kiss scene. Still, that series remains historically important in yuri, notably in how it treats queerness beyond the classic high school yuri setting of its time; and some parts of the story broach interesting aromantic and aromantic-adjacent themes. I've repeatedly heard good things on the side novels Regarding Saeki Sayaka, though, focused on a great lesbian side character of the main series. Seeing Yu Deng apparently obsessed with her character is almost motivating enough. Maybe someday.↩
the same mention of his favorite sci-fi novels also contains a series of novels by hard sci-fi author Greg Egan, who was a huge part of my own exposure to sci-fi as I grew up - particularly his short story anthologies. Anyway, it was weird and fun to see these two names side by side.↩
Well, in all honesty I've been having difficult feelings about Touhou since ZUN, its creator, used generative AI for backgrounds in the series' 19th and 20th installment. These frustrating news had some big impact on the community when this was brought to light when Touhou 20 released last year. Many other people have written about this already, but I'd still like to make my own post on the topic at some point. This mess hasn't made me drift away from Touhou entirely but it's definitely kept me away from most of the recent official stuff, or from giving ZUN any money... and it's been all the more infuriating to see ZUN double down on this and make his own beloved characters pro-genAI in-universe. Brrr.↩
I've seen people remark that considering Yu Deng's love of both Bloom Into You and Touhou, he definitely read the Touhou yuri fan-mangas made by Bloom Into You's author Nakatani Nio before her serialization debut. I find this a very fun thought.↩