I don’t intend to write about every game of Magic: The Gathering that I play but it has also been something that I have only slowly been dipping my toes into and the sheen as not worn off yet. It’s a fun and interesting game and I do intend to play more and have ideas for decks to construct, but I have just been putting my time into other things and I generally want to stick with just playing with friends when I have the chance rather than going to events with strangers. I finally got a third game last weekend while visiting Copenhagen against some new opponents: My partner who lives over there and her partner¹.

My partner was using a firebending-based deck with Avatar Roku, Firebender as a commander and her partner using a dinosaur deck with Pantlaza, Sun-Favored as her commander, while I was using my revised Seto Kaiba deck again. Roku struggled to get off the ground, with my partner taking several mulligans and playing with a starting hand of five cards instead of seven, but once she had a hand that allowed some decent starting mana she got going pretty quickly and played Descent into Avernus early on, which changed the entire game.

I have a lot of expensive dragons in my deck so it can be tricky to start getting things on the field (though treasure tokens from Descent into Avernus started to help after a few turns) and I used Show and Tell to put Hammerhead Tyrant out. Dino deck used it to put Bronzebeak Foragers out, immediately exiling my dragon, so I Power Word Killed it.

With Descent into Avernus in play I started hoping that I would draw Revel in Riches and the heart of the cards delivered. As such when I had changes to remove Descent into Avernus with Hammerhead Tyrant I simply left it in play, even though the Roku was starting to do some serious damage to us and was well ahead on life as all three of us were taking damage while gaining treasure every round.

So when my partner knocked out her partner and I was also one turn away from being wiped out by Avernus and some mana and treasure built up I played Revel in Riches, with Transcendent Dragon waiting in the wings to act as a counter-counter when it was immediately countered. With that played I had fifteen life, two treasure tokens and was due to gain eight tokens and lose eight life at the start of Roku’s turn. If I could survive that turn I would win on my next upkeep. I did not survive that turn. It wasn’t even close, I didn’t have any counters left and was immediately blown away.

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The next day my partner’s partner also introduced me to Dandân, a Magic: The Gathering format more like Exploding Kittens than a normal game of Magic. It has both players drawing from the same deck, which has a heavily restricted composition. It’s named after the card Dandân—a fish that requires both players to have islands on the field in order to attack—the only card in the deck that can deal damage, and then various 💧 sorceries and artefacts for drawing, reordering the top of the deck, countering and various ways of screwing over the other player’s fish, including kind of weird ones like Magical Hack, which I used to kill the first Dandân that was played by making it need swamps to live instead of islands.

I did have to be coached a bit on some of the specifics of priority and “the stack” but it’s not like I haven’t played games like this before. I did get lucky in that I was able to play Treasure Cruise twice over the course of the game (once so early on that there weren’t enough cards in the graveyard to make it as cheep as it could be), both giving me a hand advantage and later in the game letting me exile cards that, if they were taken from the graveyard, could have been a threat to the two-nil Dandân advantage that I’d managed to get on the field. I was also playing kind of spitefully, doing things like forcing cards to be milled with Vision Charm after my opponent got to arrange them with Spy Network, but it worked out for me, and once I had two Dandâns out and was quite in control of blocking anything else from happening my opponent conceded.

I both ended and started the year madly in love with a new partner. It would be nice to pretend that the middle part didn’t happen.

I ended my post about 2024 saying that I need to recover and heal and I am so tired now reading over that again. My general health is maybe doing a bit better than it was then, or at least I have figured out how to manage things a bit more. I mentioned replacing my mattress there. I have now replaced the awful pull-down wall bed that I had then with a more stable one. I thought, moving into a small house, that I should be optimising for space but I ended up doing so at the expense of my own comfort and long-term health and even then I ended up not even optimising for space very well. I think I am going to go for an even firmer mattress too; going back to Ikea for one was a mistake. Caoimhe³ has a new, firm King Koil mattress sleeping on it I feel an immediate difference. It is expensive but I am probably going to get one for myself.

Early in the year I released that I was suffering from some sort of photosensitivity problem and had been since at least late 2024. Anti-migraine medication has not seemed to help with it but some prescription sunglasses have, as well as simply recognising when it is flaring up and turning down the lights. The cause remains mysterious. MRIs have revealed some demyelinating lesions on my brain and spine, but my neurologist says that they are not on the visual cortex or any other area one would expect to be causing symptoms related to vision and, thankfully, they do not seem to be progressing (though another MRI in April is going to be double-checking that). There is no known history of autoimmune disease in my family that would explain the lesions and apparently the damage not extensive enough to diagnose me with anything serious like MS I remain in that grey area of sick enough to have problems, not sick enough to have answers.

But, health issues and general burnout mounting, I did a spring clean this year and got a lof of things off plate. I stepped away from a local trans community organisation, some kink meetup stuff. I pushed myself to keep going with The the Ring Podcast until April because I had an April Fool’s bit that I really wanted to do but ended up putting it on hold after that and did not get around to returning to it for the rest of the year. Journey of the Monkey King has not had an episode for all of 2025, the second time it’s gone on a year-long hiatus. I do want to get back to them but I need to do it in a way that doesn’t just burn myself out again. I am definitely not going to try to stick to a schedule again. Episodes will get done and go out whenever we can manage. I also got formally diagnosed with ADHD this year and started taking methylphenidate which has been a big help and I felt that I getting my momentum back recently but I got suddenly quite sick again a few weeks ago and it knocked me on my arse. Thankfully, Caoimhe was here to take care of me, as she has been a lot this year¹, as Ellie was doing before she died.

The weeks after that were the worst in my life. I cannot describe the pain of it. But I had wonderful people helping me through it and I was fortunate enough to be able to take an extended period off work. My brother sent me a copy of Abiotic Factor as something to keep my occupied and I ended up playing it nearly every day with my friend Ruby for a while. Caoimhe was amazing as a shoulder to cry on and also just bringing me shepherd’s pies and the like to save me cooking. My other partner in Copenhagen was able to make it over a few times in the aftermath as well and I got to see her in Edinburgh in January and October in Copenhagen itself. I have a lot of wonderful people around me and it’s made it bearable.

I also flew out to a kink con for the first time in the autumn. It had been booked long before Ellie died and while I was not really emotionally up for doing anything with anyone I think it was still a very useful experience. I took a lot of notes that I have since brought back to Caoimhe and everyone was very lovely and understanding about me crying all the time. I did a lot of sexual exploration the past year and it has been a really positive and freeing experience. Not unrelatedly I have put in a request for bottom surgery through the public system. That will take a while but I think I do want to go through with it, scary as it is. I don’t think I’d be able to deal with the recovery period without a partner at this point, though. I have been living alone with just Easóg for a long time, but that has felt a lot lonelier since Ellie died.

But I still have people I love dearly, and we keep going. I got a few lines from a poem that Ellie would quote when she was struggling tattooed on my arms as a reminder of that and of her.

I love you, get up, we are going to keep going.

It could not kill me, I would not die.

I posted a diorama I made for Caoimhe³ yesterday. I like to make little things for partners sometimes.

My other partner has a strong fondness for the pokémon goomy and I have learnt that your partner identifying with an extremely marketable pokémon makes putting together silly little gifts pretty easy. A couple of years ago I got a little 3D-printed goomy figurine from an Etsy shop (that doesn’t seem to sell it any more), painted it myself and and paired it with a love ball from a more official toy as a gift for her.

She has also been, more recently, getting back into Magic: The Gathering and had put together a ooze deck which she used my printer to make proxies for. While I was doing that for her I threw in some little custom cards for the deck.

For the Slurrk card I used Poké Card Generator to fill in the basic rules then made more modifications in GIMP. For the token card I used Card Conjurer and put a photo of the goomy figurine over a swamp background made by Aveontrainer.

This review contains spoilers.

I was watching this show with a partner who moved abroad in 2023 when we were a couple of episodes into the third series. Finally finished it with them while they were visiting this week. It’s still really funny but the resentments festering with the characters is starting to feel a bit too real to the point where I really want a future series to have some emotional catharsis. Collin Robinson has also developed in a weird way that I am finding difficult to put into words. It feels like he’s developed more as a character but also that while the way he was offputting and annoying as a way of feeding has just turned into him being offputting and annoying as a person. I am not sure I would have minded if they had actually killed him off.

I was on holiday in Copenhagen last week. Here are some photos.