Welcome to the new Fediverse Writing Month Community. This community is for the continuation of NaNoWriMo in spirit, without any connection or relationship with the original organization / organizers.
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Longform is a nice plugin, and requires some learning curve, though I think it's relatively easy once you get it (it even supports word count goals, surprisingly). I'd be happy to help you learn it somewhat if needed.
As for research, since you're not doing hard Sci-Fi (I actually did fantasy for my NaNo this year), depending on what you're looking at doing, I might have some ideas I could potentially help with.
I'm more just getting to terms with Obsidian at the moment... I looked at it a long time ago (like 7 or 8 years ago), and thought it was interesting at the time, but I wasn't happy with the syncing options, and felt like it was a bit too mind-mappy for my preferences.
At that time, I decided that Notion was the best option for me. But, then I found that Notion was too much of a tweaker's playground (ie, I spent more time creating new structures and forms, and developing different work flows, etc.). The final straw came when I ran into an issue with the editor (an issue for me - obviously not for everyone), and when I asked support they said there was never going to be an option to change (or fix) it.
So, at that time, I migrated to Joplin. Joplin is excellent - really fits my preferred model for writing / note-taking. But there are some things I don't like about it for novels.
Bottom line: I just have to see if I can make Obsidian fit my work flow. If I can get there with it, then I'll adopt it. If not, I'll keep looking.
"Worst" case, I'll fall back to my old system of using LyX for writing, and Joplin for notes...
I realize how late this is response.
Anyway, I think if it were 7-8 years ago, that would be Dynalist, Obsidian's precursor. Obsidian started up in 2020 during COVID, and has grown to be one of the best PKMs since (I hadn't even heard of it that much until I started reading Untraceable Digital Dissident).
I think I have my timeline messed up. I remember that in 2015 I ended up using Notion for a while, until I had two issues with it: (1) some quirky annoying behavior with their editor that I was told they would never fix, and (2) their Android app started behaving very badly - it was so heavy that it shaved 2-3 hours off my battery life. This was somewhere in 2016 or 2017, so that's when I started looking again, and I thought I looked at Obsidian -- but it was likely still Dynalist.
I ended up on StandardNotes for a while before I found Joplin. Once I knew Joplin had an Android app that worked well, and I was able to sync between all my devices without having to pay for a service I went all in on it. (Also, somewhere in here I messed with CkickUp for a while, but it seemed like a Notion knock-off that wasn't any better for my purposes.)
Hiding out from the stress of the holidays!
Yeah, that's kind of what I am thinking here. Although, for me, this is also the time that I can do some research wtihout too much pressure (no family or obligations that I have to handle).