i watched the first season of the dragon show (spoilers abound)

House of the Dragon feels distinct from the disgraced legacy of the original series. I didn’t expect this show to succeed, and truly, when the first stills of episode 7 were put forth, I didn’t expect anyone else to think it would succeed either. I sneered, rolled my eyes, made my peace with how HBO and every other streaming service were grabbing bags of money and burning them in a pyre to recreate the high fantasy entertainment delusion.

Then the first episode came out in late August to above-average positive sentiment, and I largely ignored it. The episodes premiered every Sunday, and out of a stubborn, perverse curiosity, I’d roam the Sunday night commentary on Twitter. Just to see how poorly a follow-up adaptation could fare. I was vaguely familiar with characters who didn’t make sense to me, and had some recognition of the actors garnering acclaim for their performances. The moments the internet was reacting to and fixated on didn’t make sense in a vacuum. I’d see clips of it appear on my timeline, interests of my interests completing the closed loop. Here I am, having lived alongside the last stretch of the first season in another cultural moment of ours. I forgot how enthralling it is to follow watercooler television every weekend.

I think I’m mad about how much I enjoyed this. As if it had no right to be as compelling as it was. They did time jumps and recast two leading actors and shrunk the political subterfuge down to a single family, yet they still pulled it off. The joke is on me, I get it; they really did it.

The inimitable Taylor Swift released her twelfth album and we all lost a little sleep over it. In anticipation of a third re-recording, she graced us with a concept album. An album that reverberates into the darkness. She’s grown up and now she’s dreaming, dancing, drinking the night away. If Karma was purportedly the secret album between 1989 and Reputation, then maybe Midnights found her in dreams / nightmares in all her sleeps since.

No preface, just an all-consuming eagerness to read and watch television once again. Languid afternoons in a room, settled in quiet interiority.

• i’ve been to the year 2014: i built myself in the image of this year
• words of worship: wordship, or i read a really good thing
• screaming crying throwing up: you had to have been there

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Autumn is upon us. I had trouble sleeping for a few weeks in August because I was overcaffeinated from green tea. I agonized over, then purchased an expensive memory foam pillow on a consumerist quest for better neck support. Taylor Swift announced a new album during a thirteenth anniversary. I watched the skies above the bay break open and rain on for a full Sunday afternoon. I contemplated what it meant to spend a year in one place, and interrogated my impulse to upgrade all the little touches that make a habitat closer to home.

The leaves hardly change in San Francisco, but the people do. Ever-changing; something different every time anyone looks a little closer. They turnover and uncover new pieces of themselves to expose to the autumn air. At parties last fall, I’d ask what keeps you up at night? into the din of the room, an attempted shortcut into the inner psyche. Here are the things that keep me up at night.

In the Austen tradition, the marriage plot is a story construct designed around two individuals destined to marry. Courtship is never a linear path, but the destination is a well-paved inevitability.

I’ve been working on this one for a while, because there’s nothing quite like the comfort of the romance genre. This one is about the defensibility of the genre, a dearth of leading love interests, romance podcast english classes, and logical girls that live for the messiness of a fictional romance.

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