Hi there. Long time no see.
I’m not really sure how to start this, so I guess we’ll just start.
2023 has been an interesting year full of… Life changes? Life adjustments? Life somethings.
A few of these life somethings has been really cool, and what have made good blog posts, but maybe at the time I wasn’t sure how I wanted to talk about them, or which parts of my life I wanted to put on the Internet.
Another few of them have been less cool, including the extended period of creative burnout I went through in the middle of the year that I’m still creatively recovering from. I said creatively twice, but it’s my blog and I can do what I want. It was the most intense version of this kind of thing I think I’ve ever pulled myself through, both in its duration, and the actual physical experience of it. (Pro tip: start paying attention to your mental health before you start going to work on four hours sleep a night as like, a habit. Also, maybe setting yourself reminders to eat is either useful, or a bad sign. Jury’s still out on that one.)
The larger point here is that I’ve gotten through it, and I’m fine, all it really required was rest and sensible amount of sleep, but he did kind of throw off the schedule for every single creative endeavor I’ve ever had. For those wondering about my podcast, it’s a bit of a disaster zone, but I’m working on getting it back into working shape by the end of the year. And this is a blog post, so I’d call that an improvement.
But why is this post titled the way it is? I’m so glad you asked.
I’ve taken a hard left turn that hasn’t been quite so unexpected back into my Percy Jackson phase (as if I ever left). With the Disney+ show coming out next Wednesday, please know that I am prepared and completely ready to make this my entire personality for the next 6 to 8 weeks, or longer.
For those not in the know, Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a middle grade fantasy series from the early 2000s involving kids with ADHD, swords, and Greek mythology. Also blue food and fantastic humor. I love those books to death, and they have yet to let me down. Whenever I want to read something, but nothing is really keeping my attention, I turned to those. They were useful during the Burnout Period, Deliberate Capital Letters.
Blah, blah blah, the actual point is, I’m getting very excited and making a Thing about it. Fully prepared to talk to the young kids in my life about it, because this is actually aimed at them, getting my hands on some blue sugar cookies for the premiere, and slowly converting every person I know into a Percy Jackson fan. I’ll get you eventually if I haven’t gotten you yet.
Books fully reread in preparation, blue nail polish on standby, and fan podcasts (plural) downloaded for offline listening, please know that I. Am. Ready.
Here is a bookshop.org link to a box set on which I earn commission, if you are so inclined to get your hands on the novels, and to support this blog, despite my months of inactivity.
But there’s another show here. I would apologize for this post being long, but it’s the first one in a while. This is fine.
Fantasy High: Junior Year is the third installment in an ongoing series of what might be best described as high fantasy meets The Breakfast Club seasons of a show called Dimension 20 where a bunch of improv, comedians, play Dungeons and Dragons for a living. That sounds wild, but I love it so much. It is my favorite show in the whole wide world. Any season of Dimension 20 is fantastic and amazing and each one of them is different, seeing as it is an anthology series where each story has a different vibe and genre and setting and tone-- shoutout to the noir set inside a guys head that aired during the worst of The Burnout-- but Fantasy High was the first one, and the one to get me back into playing D&D, which is how I’ve made so many friends, and so on and so forth. I love it so much.
That comes out in January, but I’ll link season 1 and season 2, which are available for free on YouTube. “Improv comedians play Dungeons and Dragons professionally,” is slightly more niche than “popular children’s series published by Disney gets turned into television show,” as far as pitches go, but know that comes January, the Bad Kids will live in my brain rent free once more. It might not make it on the blog, I will be monumentally excited.
This might not be the most structured or defined thing I’ve ever written, and it might be a little bit superfluous, but it feels good to write again. And It feels good to be excited about some shows. As I said, big wins for weird nerds.