sol ☼

ok first some context for those who are chronically offline: a couple years ago, minho mentioned that he would want a lizard as a pet. and today jisung revealed that the minsung dorm has a new member! i crashed out about it to approximately 6 different people and i thought. Hey . i haven't used tumblr in a hot minute. might as well combine EVERY SINGLE headcanon i had into one nice list.

enjoy :D

minsung have spent the past few months discussing gecko logistics over dinner

they take it very seriously. picture first-time parents reading books on gecko care, researching best terrariums/lamps/food on forums, watching terrarium building videos on youtube, the works

jisung is also very serious about teaching richard her ancestry via his plastic dino figurines

richard also gets a little custom dog bed (gecko? bed?) on their couch for when they watch tv together

richard ipad baby...

when she sheds for the first time it's a huge milestone. jisung gets really teary eyed and he's like "minho 😭 min ho hyu ng 😭 she's growing up i'm so proud of herrrrr rr rr 😭" and he shows the molt to minho and minho's like "give it back she has to eat it" (he learned from instagram reels that geckos eat their own molts sometimes)

oh yeah and their algorithms are both completely fucked. it's just reptile pet content. it's taken over their phones completely with no chance of them ever being normal again

Yang Jeongin goes over to minsung's house and is like oh haha lizard. it kinda looks like me. and then he sticks his face next to hers and they have matching bread smiles and jisung nearly starts sobbing because they're so cute

changbin is a big fan of richard (as her godfather, he has to be) but also because he's not allergic to her

ok ok starting with the ones i want to keep:

writing: still going strong! i have a lot of projects i have planned out this coming year... with a separate post about this planned out!

reading: i have another post about why i'm gonna read more found here.

blog? posting?: i don't know what to call it but i want to keep doing it. i think it's a really great way to sort through and slow down my thought process!

digital drawing: this is something i've been gatekeeping more, only because i'm not too confident in my abilities quite yet. specifically in 2026, i hope to be able to share some more!

embroidery: this is something i discovered this year! super super fun and i've done so many projects and yet. i'm still itching to do more

plants: i want more greenery in my house. always. typically that means getting to steal cuttings from my friends (isn't that cute? i have a bit of my friends whenever i'm at home now, as long as that plant is alive!)

hobbies i want to revive:

ceramics: i was suuuper into ceramics all of high school, and for the first year of college. unfortunately i got pretty busy after that and abandoned it, but i still hold so much love for everything pottery! my school has a pretty cool art studio open to the students so i hope to sign up for a studio slot sometime in the spring :)

building simple electronics: again, a high school hobby. i was really into building mechanical keyboards, but this time i want to expand on that. i want to build mini computers (tinkering with raspberry pi)!

going to... the gym: not really a hobby but i'm still putting it in here. ugh. i was super active in my childhood and teenage years and did multiple sports that brought me joy. cue the sports injury. cue the year of rehabilitation. cue the hesitance in trying again in fear that i'll get injured. but that's all in the past. i was pretty consistent in going to the gym this past month and i want to go more! if you're someone like me (needs to exercise or they'll go crazy) i highly suggest finally accepting your gymfriend's invites and become gym buddies hahaha

sewing: i used to sew all the time. sol lore drop but i've made every one of my halloween costumes from ages 10-17! (after that i just got too busy around halloween and usually just pull together what i have by using fabric paint and thrifting haha) but this is something i'd love to get back into. a lot of my friends are actually fashion design majors so i'm grateful to have them to lean onto while i learn!

stamp making: this is a really niche one but i used to carve into those pink erasers to make stamps. they came out looking wonky but i loved them. anyway i keep getting those wooden stamp carving videos on my instagram so i thought... this is definitely something i need to get back into

hobbies i want to try:

cooking: i'd say i'm pretty good about cooking for myself, but i definitely need some work. i rely heavily on recipes and i'm not confident enough. and i want to fix this, because i love the idea of feeding my friends and family! i just bought an emulsifier for black friday so i'm hyped about finally getting to make my own cream soups...

glass art: i've done this a total of One time (i blew glass and made a cup) and i want to try it again... it was so fun! i keep seeing people make tiny beads or sculptures of animals and i think it's so awesome...

rock climbing: oh yeah. the canonical asian american early twenties trap. sue me. i wanna try it too.

cocktails??: i kind of already do this- i love making different teas and nonalcoholic drinks... i just need to find someone to drink my drinks because ya girl is a serious lightweight and cannot handle more than like. 2 drinks. before i'm sloshed

sending letters to people: i have way too much stationery that desperately needs to be used. and i need to do that soon or my stickers will lose their stickiness!

i think that's all??? this is a really crazy list but even crazier, i really think it's doable... i definitely won't sustain all of them but i think it's better to just keep in mind what i really like... for the future!

i've had a few conversations with a few different people about starting to read again. there's a couple reasons for this.

first, i miss it! when i was in middle school, i read a hundred books a year. no exaggeration, i kept a chart in my composition book of every book + my rating + dates i read them. in high school, that number dwindled down to half- around fifty books a year. now, i'm at a grand total of (staring at my goodreads account) four.

i was having some trouble looking for new material to read- the last time i seriously committed to reading as a pastime, i was solidly the target audience for the YA genre. now, with every year that passes, i'm outgrowing it! so recently, i've been asking my friends (some english majors, some hobby readers) for their own recs so i can hop back on the reading train...

i think i have a good amount collected to start with, and i'm optimistic, because it's kind of like learning myself again! i'm sure my tastes have changed, so it's a really exciting time for me because i get to rediscover all of that.

also adding onto this, in the past few years, i've been making so much stuff. writing fics, engaging in crafts, art, etc. i think i need to balance my creative hobbies with my more consumption-related hobbies (watching tv + movies included) because i'm kind of doing something or making something all the time that i don't have any time to consume anything!

second, see title above. that's right, i'm resorting to paperbacks so i can write Stray Kids Yaoi better.

in all seriousness, i started writing seriously in spring 2024. my first fic was published in june 2024, and since then i've been writing pretty much every week, for several hours. (for context, it's almost 2026 now if you're reading this after it was published).

my first year writing was pretty rocky. i had a lot to learn, and i spent a lot of time figuring out how characters interacted, how to make a story engaging, how to even build a whole new world with every fic. my writing improved exponentially with every fic i released (and i wrote a lot! almost 20 from 2024-2025!)

now that i'm used to writing, my writing has sort of... plateaued. i used to read a lot of fic and was able to improve simply by consuming, and recently, i found out that i've gotten to a point where i can't just improve from reading fic anymore! which is both a plus (because i've "graduated" from that) and a negative (because i don't know what to read anymore!!!)

this actually was a major cause in my recent writers' block. during this past summer, i was having a lot of trouble loving my words- nothing felt right and everything felt distressingly mid-tier. it wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good, either.

realistically, it was just because i no longer saw my skill shooting all the way up- i was improving, as one does when they practice a hobby, but it was at such a slow pace that i couldn't deal with it.

now that i recognize this, i'm excited to start trying different methods to try and mend that gap between my judgment towards my writing. one of that is by literally switching things up, by reading more.

in the age where consumption by fandom is arguably at an all time high, it's difficult to find that sense of community when there are no more message boards to discuss your favorite fics, and when the biggest platform for kpop rpf is twitter, a platform where you literally scream into the void with a couple sentences per post and hope people respond back. it's not ideal for community building, not at all. (like seriously. what happened to the art of blog posting? twitter even discourages that, with their word count limit. but i digress.)

admittedly, i'm pretty young. i'm in my (very) early 20s and therefore never got to experience message boards of the 2000s. i grew up taking anonymous fandom quizzes, saving screenshotted tumblr posts on pinterest, and found out about fanfiction through those sites. i wasn't even around for the tumblr golden age, and by the time i was brave enough for twitter, it had already been transferred to fuckass elon musk.

but here's the thing. before twitter, before tumblr, i was a discord user. and that was probably the closest thing i experienced to an early 2000s messaging board.

it was a bubble of response and appreciation. people posted their fanart and talked about fan theories instead of ragebaiting for engagement (because engagement literally doesn't matter in a messaging platform like discord). you could go beyond responding- it was a place where you could discuss. it was wonderful. it was magical. and when i joined a new fandom on twitter (yikes) for the first time, kpop rpf, i wanted to see if i could find the same culture.

i thought to myself, maybe because it was focused on writing and creating rather than just regular stan twitter it was different! maybe because i was sharing a space with adults instead of kids this time it would be better!

(i was. so wrong.)

like many people, i soon found myself getting sucked into the consumption mindset and reading completed-only, high-kudosed fics. i was reading So Many fics per week, an uncountable amount, really, and i couldn't remember any of them. i only read through, and kudosed. rinse and repeat. and i didn't see a problem with this because everyone else was doing it.

i feel like a lot of people (at least the people i talk to) participate in fandom as a form of stress relief. it's somewhere to return to at the end of the day, and writing is also a way to kind of relax and have fun. i guess reading fic was similar as well, so it's easy to just want to shut off your brain and just . Read.

(that's how they get you!!! that's how the only-consumption-no-engagement demons grab you and never let go!!!)

i was thinking to myself. I Am Not Enjoying Fandom in a way that i Want To Be. but i didn't know how to change my mindset! but that's where my lovely mutuals swooped in and started doing beautiful things with my timeline...

a few months ago, i noticed a few of them were quote retweeting fic posts with their thoughts. promoting the fic itself, giving the writer more of a platform, opening up a space where people could read and comment and genuinely fostering a community. some retweets were for rare pair fics, some were more popular pairings- it didn't matter, because they were doing something beautiful.

i was so mesmerized! wanted to join! i started leaving comments on every fic i enjoyed even mildly, and i think this is the thing that's most important. i actually cut down on my reading so much- i read only a few fics, maybe a handful on the higher end, per week now. and i remember all of them, because i'm taking the time to leave a conscious comment and promote the fic on twitter if i can.

leaving comments can be so beneficial- to both the author and the reader! the author, for obvious reasons, it motivates them to keep creating. and for the reader, it locks the fic inside your memory for a bit longer. you're literally using your synthesizing + paraphrasing skills and all that stuff you learned in high school english class to analyze + pick out parts you enjoyed. that's an actual skill you're practicing!

anyway, i've been so inspired by my fandom friends. i'm in the process of revamping my bookmarks for easier rec purposes- slowly adding notes + my own tags and whatnot. and it's a great way to re-appreciate the fics i've loved/forgotten in my past!