Welcome to my Nightmare
Hi.
My name’s Kim, known in lukewarm corporate scenarios as Kimbahly, and
welcome to my nexus of great pain and agony (or, if you’re boring, what
they call a “blog.”) I’m a writer, pretend-journalist, otaku, reluctant
Sonic the Hedgehog savant, trans lesbian, and, perhaps worst of all, a
YouTuber. This article—the first one ever published—exists to introduce
you to myself and my future work on this blog, with aims of helping you
contextualize my writing and opinions with knowledge of the person and
drive behind them. My opinions, particularly critical views on media,
are best sought and assessed with abundant consideration of who I am;
for a particularly low-stakes example, I may not like every piece of
media that you do, but if I'm middling on something that finds itself in
a genre which I historically despise, that's immediately indicative of a
very high level of quality for someone who does like the genre. There
is no such thing as artistic objectivity; everything I do, write or say
in regards to art can only be best interpreted with my motivations and
tastes in mind. So, let's get acquainted.
A
lot of my work is personality-based, so, in my humble opinion, the
greatest way to get a feel for what I do and who I am is to read
some—but, in a word, my writing generally offers a plethora of queer and
feminist analysis of art and media, with the intent of bringing
awareness to underappreciated works of art (or individual aspects of
works of art), critically assessing the impact—present, past and
potential—of particular media and related current events and connecting
all of the above to everyday life. Instead of sporadically updating this
blog with random and disorganized articles, I’ve set things up such
that this blog primarily operates as a prison for numerous different
self-contained columns, all concerning different (though, rarely
overlapping) topics; I didn’t refer to my blog as a nexus for nothing.
In the list below, you'll see, in this order: each individual column’s
name, their three-letter calling cards (abbreviations used for sorting
and / or saving your fingers) and their descriptions, which contain
their release schedule, their contents, explanations of their primary
appeal, the average lengths of their articles, and, finally, any other
specifications that you may need prior to reading. Let’s begin:
Kimbahly YouTube Newsletter
(KYN) — A monthly (on the first day) status report concerning my poor,
sickly YouTube channel. Uploads are sparse, given how much time goes
into them, and, particularly when I begin accepting money for my work
over there (particularly through a service like Patreon), I feel
uncomfortable with letting such silence go entirely unpunctuated. People
deserve to know what's going on, and thus, KYN was born. These issues
are generally the longest of all columns hosted on this blog, given that
they, too, are comparatively quite infrequent. You can expect insights
into all ongoing video projects, disclosure of the approximate
percentage completed of the next video at every stage of development,
and fun stuff, such as screenshots, clips and behind the scenes material
of each video. While KYN uploads monthly, there may be additional
guerrilla articles concerning emergent events within the channel, such
as announcing the release dates of new videos, delays or similar
catastrophes impeding channel or video progress, and post-mortem /
retrospective reflections on new and old videos alike (these can read a
little bit like director's commentaries, if it's easier to think of them
that way). As previously stated, these strands of KYN are entirely
unpredictable and should not necessarily be considered canonical issues
of the newsletter, nor indicative of what it is typically like. To
differentiate these articles from "real" articles, they will be branded
with G's, for "guerrilla": for example, an article's title may be
"[Title] (KYN #G[Issue Number])." On an unrelated note, I should get
into ASCII art.
In Lilium (ILU) — A bi-weekly
(every other Friday) yuri animanga review / broadly yuri-themed essay
(if I'm feeling spicy). A nice little treat for all the himejoshi
supremes in my audience—which I know from who follows me on Bluesky is a
lot—and probably where you’ll find most(!) of that so-called
“feminist and queer analysis.” These are a fantastic avenue for
discussing a broad range of themes, but past that, it’s just fun—sure, I
could just write about these topics normally, but talking about girls
kissing is more fun than not talking about girls kissing, so why not
just talk about girls kissing? Going into ILU, you can expect a few
things: analysis and reviews of individual yuri anime and manga; musings
on the conception and reception of both explicit and non-explicit
lesbian pairings within anime, manga or (sometimes) games; analysis of
both intentional and unintentional homoerotic undertones in non-yuri
anime or manga, as well as their impact on the considered work’s legacy
and perception; broad talks over specific conventions and tropes within
anime (e.g. sexual objectification of women as fan-service) and how they
do or don’t translate into lesbian scenarios; analysis of the origins
and impact of specific yuri conventions and tropes; and more. It should
be noted that, while ILU is lesbian-centric, it won’t shy away from
other queer topics when they present themselves. Given my personal lived
experience as a transgender woman, I’d be amiss not to factor
conceptions of gender—particularly, but certainly not limited to, how we
define, evaluate, experience, and perform femininity—into my analysis.
I’d like to assure you upfront that it is not at all my intention to
exclude anyone with ILU; I’ve seen many lesbian-centric blogs,
magazines, publications or forums who regularly exclude anyone they
don’t view as a lesbian or a woman, and I don’t intend on replicating
that practice at all. Finally, and on a different, more light-hearted
note, given its comparatively irregular release schedule among its
“peers” on this blog (bi-weekly instead of monthly or weekly), ILU has a
lot more time to bake, and as such, articles will typically be longer
and more detailed than this blog’s columns that update more frequently.
I’ll speak candidly about the fact that this is one of the things I’m
most excited about with this blog, along with SQZ (which you’ll read
about shortly). With a scope so terrifyingly wide and a premise so
deeply personal, the opportunities presented are as vast as they are
clear. I hope In Lilium can become something great, and hopefully, one
day, it can mean a lot to you. Happy girlkissing!
Sonic Quarantine Zone
(SQZ) — A weekly (every Wednesday) spotlight on anything and everything
surrounding the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise or community that I find
worth talking to people about, from analysis of the designs, narratives,
music and more of Sonic media to spotlights or analysis of fan works,
character studies of beautifully dubious mainline compliancy, broad
analysis of everything in between under a certain theme or question, and
more. Given the name, you can likely (and correctly) surmise that this
blog exists to keep my Sonic ramblings outside of everything else I do
on this blog—so, if my Sonic opinions are all you care about, which may
be the case for a lot of people, this is where you’ll find them. The
“quarantine” is not to say I’m ashamed of being a Sonic fan, even if I
joke around about that being the case; I just feel like there’s very
little overlap between my Sonic thoughts and everything else I do on
this blog, sans ILU or, incredibly circumstantially, TVT, and I’d like
to give my Sonic thoughts as much respect and room to breathe as humanly
possible. It’s only incidentally nice that consolidating those thoughts
into one place means that so-inclined readers can easily avoid or
ignore them entirely. I once had someone block me specifically for being
a Sonic fan; it’s a serious offense to some people, apparently. Anyway,
this, along with ILU, is one of the offerings of this blog I’m happiest
to write for. I mean it when I say that I could talk about this
franchise and everything in its circle for a long, sporadic and entirely
uninterrupted time, and do it nearly certainly incessantly. With that,
average article length varies wildly based on what I’m talking about
that week—it’s quite hard to come into a standardized “groove” with this
premise, especially in comparison to some other columns here—but you
can expect them to be fairly detailed. I hope you enjoy reading them as
much as I enjoy writing them. Or, um, leave them alone. Ha! Just, uh… me
and SQZ. No readers here. It’s okay… it’s fine… we don’t need Sonic…
get rid of him…
"Mr. “Ant” Tenna's Marvelous Mystery Stream" Roundup (TVT)
— That's a mouthful, so you can call it TV Time. Weekly (every Sunday)
reviews of and musings on all media screened at my exclusive Deltarune:
Chapter 3-themed anime* club, which takes place every Saturday with
friends (by the way, if we're at least mutuals on any social media and
you'd like to join, talk to me privately). It’s a long story, but it
comes down to this; on a usual night, the Stream screens two subsequent
episodes of TV, followed by a feature length film—all typically anime or
anime adjacent, though that’s not a horribly strict limitation. The
following day, my thoughts on each piece of media screened will be
compiled into a breezy, easy-to-digest roundup. Given that themes vary
wildly from stream to stream, it’s difficult to sell TVT as anything
more than a wild-card section: if you want my advice, don’t go into TVT
with any unified expectations—just let it take you where it wants to. I
find that the variety is the best part of the whole deal. For me, it
means that I get to write, even if briefly, on themes, topics and even
individual pieces of media that I would seldom be able to touch upon
naturally otherwise. For you, I think it’ll just be fun to see what I
talk about next; I make a point to make the next selection almost
entirely unpredictable based upon the last, so there’s truly never a
dull moment (and if there is, I’ve failed horribly). Finally, be warned
that we may skip weeks due to various extemporaneous circumstances. I
run this event at a mild loss of my time, given that I need to come up
with themes, edit together fitting bumpers and make other assets,
acquire what I’ll be screening, assemble all of that into the final
playlist, and then set aside time on my weekend to watch it with
everybody. There’s a lot in life that can interfere with any of those
components at any time, so please understand.
That’s all
of them! Once again, Kimbahly YouTube Newsletter issues go out on the
first of every month, In Lilium issues go out every other Friday, Sonic
Quarantine Zone issues go out every Wednesday, and “Mr. Ant Tenna’s
Marvelous Mystery Stream” Roundup issues go out every Sunday. Specific
publication times (as in to the hour) aren’t standardized, by the way.
Too much stress—this blog is a massive time-sink as it is (not that I
mind), and hourly deadlines are not something I’m interested in throwing
into the ring.
Now, onto something more personal…
Why I Do Any of This
As we wrap up this introduction post, I’d like to take a moment to
explain, with greater specificity now that we’re squarely in the weeds,
exactly why I’ve started this blog. Elsewhere and prior, I’ve talked
about how I was interested in starting a blog as a place to host writing
that I couldn’t, for whatever reason, turn into YouTube videos. That’s
still partially true—if I’m being honest with you, a lot of the initial
streak of articles in ILU or SQZ are recycled YouTube video ideas—but,
after a lot of reflection on the prospect, I felt limiting this blog to
that extent—to turn it into a recycle bin, where I’d regurgitate ideas I
couldn’t turn into YouTube videos (where, by this logic, all the “good”
stuff ended up), without expanding upon them and spitting them directly
into your mouth, like you’re a little baby bird—didn’t respect
anybody’s time. I wouldn’t read that, and if I wouldn’t read my own
blog, no one would. With that came a small shock that startled me into
either saving the blog idea, or abandoning it all together. More good
could come from saving it than from not, so try to save it, I did. I
felt the best way to save the blog was to put far, far more of myself
into it than I was initially comfortable with—and, in the process,
redefine what my perception of a Kimbahly blog could be. I’d always
viewed blogs (and similar publications) from a distance, entirely
separated from myself, my work and my goals in all of my creative
endeavors. As such, I didn’t understand what my blog would even
be. Fittingly, then, the solution was to put more me into it. I suppose
you can assess for yourself how that panned out.
I decided
upon feminist and queer analysis because those are far and away the
viewpoints, experiences and ideologies that mean the most to me. They
didn’t always mean so much; particularly from before I realized I was
trans—and even when my egg had freshly cracked and I hadn’t yet fully
lived as a woman—feminism and all things queer were practically absent
from my life. That isn't to say I was ever opposed to either of them, but I was disengaged.
Only upon progressing in my life as a man—a life I truly despised—did I
discover that femininity—the overwhelmingly beautiful thing that it
is—was what was missing from my life. Upon orienting myself around it
further and living, even simply online, as a woman, the stark and harsh
contrast between the concept and reality of femininity struck me. It
took experiencing misogyny first-hand to understand what the big deal
was—an understanding that only deepens with time. The women in my life
viewed femininity as a physically, emotionally and spiritually taxing
stain on themselves and their identities; femininity was something that,
in a lot of ways, had ruined their lives. In other words, in no way was
femininity something beautiful, and, above all else, in no way was
femininity something that you should desire, or that you should strive
to achieve, practice or portray—exactly what I was doing. They were
beaten down, quietly miserable. Almost every woman I knew—even those who
considered themselves feminists—had nothing but ill to say of
femininity. I knew some who found female “empowerment” only in fitting
themselves into regressive stereotypes and culturally conservative
ideals; no doubt, that response was a reflection of what they believed
femininity to be. I found it heartbreaking, but not particularly
surprising.
As someone who had seen and lived both sides
of femininity—the overwhelming beauty and the overwhelming horror—the
thought of doing something to help people—specifically, fellow women—see
that femininity, in all of its nuances, was of immense personal value,
and that it could bring immense joy—that their negative perception of it
was caused by the world around them and not the mode of being
itself—was incredibly appealing. Since then, between everything else
that I’ve been doing in life, I’ve made it a goal to, in some way, help
achieve that goal through my creative endeavors. Between YouTube and
this blog, this is one of the main things I want to do, and one of the
main reasons I put so much time and effort into what I don’t have to.
You may be asking yourself, “okay, that’s sweet, but how does talking
about yuri, or Sonic the Hedgehog, or the movie you watched with your
friends last night, do any of that?” That question is entirely fair; I’m
aware that, from the outside looking in, these topics look random and
entirely disconnected from my little mission statement up there.
However, past being personal interests of mine, each column in this blog
represents a part of my goal: as for yuri, though an innocuous genre of
literature and film, its core appeal lying in the romantic relationship
between two girls—itself a symbolic refutation of conservative ideas of
what a woman’s place in society, in romance and everywhere in between
should be—is an unabashed celebration, deconstruction and revolution of
femininity, the nuances of which deserve to be studied and considered,
as is the goal of In Lilium; Sonic the Hedgehog, though a children’s
media franchise consisting of anthropomorphic animals running super
fast, regularly boasts anti-authoritarian, anti-imperialist,
anti-police, environmentalist and feminist themes, to name a few, all
embodied in the umbrella theme of freedom that is universally meaningful
to all marginalized groups, as is showcased by the fan works of the
Sonic the Hedgehog community—all of the above, and more, being analyzed
and presented in the Sonic Quarantine Zone; as for TV Time, that can be
about anything. What I screen isn’t picked at random.
Simply, with this blog, I want to create something that can mean a lot
to people; I want to create something that, through consistency, can
positively impact people’s lives and give them something to look forward
to multiple times a week for months, years, or even decades.
With all that said, I hope you have a great understanding of who I
am, what I intend to do, and what this blog is all about. Hopefully,
this helps you contextualize my work more effectively. The blog formally
starts on May 1st, 2026, with the first issue of Kimbahly YouTube
Newsletter, followed by the first issue of “Mr. “Ant” Tenna’s Marvelous
Mystery Stream” Roundup on the 3rd, Sonic Quarantine Zone on the 6th, In
Lilium on the 8th and onward as normal from there. I hope to see you
there for all of them, and if you’re reading in the future, then the
blog’s your oyster. Happy reading!
-Kim