#May Reading Goals

[nerdynatreads]

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may tbr || Content Pieces? -- May Monthly Reset || Bookshelf Organizing, Content Planning & Plan with Me

are you buddy reading any books in may?

I’ve got so many buddy reads and book clubs this month and I love it— buddy reads just always make the reading experience better. I’ve also got quite a range of genres, thankfully, after reading so much fantasy and so many comics last month.

PS: I totally forgot to include Ace of Shades by Amanda Foody!

[cocoawithbooks]

May Reading Wrap-up: Top-Notch Audiobook Narrators

I experienced my first Maycember this year with all of my kids finally in elementary school together. And June is not indicating that there will be any slow downs. However, I was able to read everything on my Reading Goals TBR. That, my friends, is a rare feat for this busy mood reader. Through the power of audiobooks I also finished a few more! I recommend every audiobook that I listened to this…

[fisheito]

I started reading beastars so now HE's reading beastars .wait

THEY'RE reading beastars

[uncanny-tranny]

Choosing to be alive is a hard task sometimes, so I'm always so proud of people who choose to live for "weird" reasons.

Like, yes! Live to watch your favourite show for the millionth time! Yes! Live to hear rain against your car windshield! Live to laugh, to cry, to make Naruto proud! Do all of this to live, no matter how strange it is. You enrich this world, and no matter what you are living for, it is good enough. I am so incredibly amazed at your resolve, and your sheer willpower. I hope you never forget that part about your spirit because it is spectacular.

[luxuryandlilacs]

May Review and June Reset

My meditation practice and affirmation habit have been getting better in May! I pray I continue this in June. I have been in a reading slump so I only finished two books. I really want to get into Bookstagram and start posting my book photos.

I have been making green smoothies with spinach, a banana, a green apple, and almond milk. It’s so good and kind of filling lol.

In June, I want to finish at least 5 books. That is a big goal but I just need to keep my butt off of YouTube and I’ll actually succeed lol.

I am going to be more active in my language learning habit, learning coding, and belly dancing. I also want to get back into qigong as well!

Here is to a productive and an amazing summer! ☀️

[piningpebbles]

the dream smp journey: attempting to make the lore of the dream smp more accessible.

so back when i first wanted to get into the dream smp i had absolutely no idea where to start. i asked some people and they told me pretty much “look up dream smp + [insert youtuber name] and start there” and so i did, but i quickly came to realize how much i was missing from the story by not seeing all the different points of view.

so i decided to make my own playlist.

it was just for myself at first, but as i got more obsessed with the story, i also gave the link to some friends of mine so they could have the full experience, and they loved it. so i kept updating it.

my goal was to try and make a capsule of the entirety of the lore on the dream smp across almost every single POV, because while i do appreciate those who make recap videos, they always miss something and it’s usually with peoples’ POV who aren’t considered to be “main characters” which sucks because one of my favorite things about the dream smp was how everyone was their own main character with their own individual storyline you could get invested in.

i’ve seen every single video in the playlist, and did my absolute best to discern what should be included and what didn’t need to be. 

for instance, while i personally enjoyed streams where they’d just goof off, this is a lore-centric playist so i didn’t include all of them unless one of the jokes or such gets mentioned/becomes important later on. or if there is a lore event happening but two people have almost identical streams to one another then i decided between the two of them which one to keep. or if the cc themself made an edited version of their experience, i would decide whether to go with that or keep the original vod

it’s far from perfect. i tried to keep up with it as long as i could I STILL HAVE VIDEOS IN MY WATCH LATER THAT I PLANNED TO ADD but simply put while the dream smp storyline got longer and longer it became harder to keep up with. i watched pretty much all the streams when they happened but failed to update the playlist accordingly so right now it has almost everything up until ”Hitting on 16.”

i always wanted to finish it before i posted it, but i’ve been seeing people talk about how they miss the experience of watching the dream smp and while i obviously can’t provide the full interactive experience that the dream smp offered as it came out, i knew i couldn’t just keep this in my back pocket and thought i could at least offer a good chunk of the experience for you guys to still be able to keep!

here’s the playlist, spanning over 300 videos.

there’s also a semi-canon playlist (not nearly as thorough) for events that get mentioned by the cc’s a lot or are just cool to have and i wanted to include them somewhere so here it is also!!

to go along with it i also made a masterpost (can you tell i love making lists) which is what every single video on the playlist is supposed to be (and was last i checked, but videos get taken down every so often so there might be a couple missing here and there).

i hope to update this one day and have it fully finished, but with my schedule (full-time college student babyyyy) and simply the hundreds of hours of content i’d need to sift through it just seems impossible (and frankly just really intimidating) to challenge alone right now. so i also wanted to give this to the community to maybe be able to do what i couldn’t!

my hope with this is that if someone in a year or two (or whenever really) is interested in the dream smp they won’t have to sit through recap videos and instead can watch the real thing in a single playlist connected to the doc. my dream is for the masterpost and the playlist to go hand-in-hand, being like a guide people can follow that would also link to other moments and lore that is saved but just not avaliable on youtube, so we don’t have all these moments just lost to time.

i want to make this collaborative, i’m hoping this will maybe spark others to share what videos/moments they have saved and stored with each other for the dream smp and maybe together we could complete this thing somehow!! make the playlist and masterpost i dreamed of (the one right now is scuffed, but at least it’s something). the dream smp is one of my absolute favorite pieces of media out there and i want to share this with people but (as you can probably tell) i have no idea what i’m doing!! any step to help make the story more readily accessible is a good one, though!

i know i’ve missed things but i’ve done my best. and while not the perfectly polished thing i hoped it would be when i sent it out to the world maybe it could be a good building block for the community to use. so please share this!! reblog it!! all that jazz!! i want this to be for everyone!!

anyways, this is a long post. but the whole reason i got into the dream smp in the first place was because of the awesome fan content i saw and this crazy and creative community and i want to be able to give back, if i can.

[fallloverfic]

I love singNsong again reminding people in Side Story that Dokja wanted other people to read TWSA (he wrote reviews and comments! It was his first wish), and he only stopped bothering because people harassed him for it. He didn't gate-keep the story. When he's avoiding talking to Sangah about it at the beginning of ORV, it's because he knows what happens when he tells people about the story, not because he's gate-keeping it from her. He notes he's not proud of his hobby (likely because he's been bullied all through his life, including for reading the thing he loves): he finds it embarrassing to talk about, and better respects her studying Spanish in her free time (learning another language is a generally accepted thing in society). He assumes she won't care or will look at him funny (or worse) for when she learns about the novel he's into.

Basically anyone writing "let's gatekeep ORV" posts because of the anime announcement or because they dislike the manhwa or some other weirdness, y'all are the villains in the scenario.

The literal climax of the story is about sharing ORV with as many people as possible. What story were y'all reading?

[thresholdbb]

Can we talk about The Dying Swan moment in Coda? As someone who was once a very serious ballerina, I need to talk about the Dying Swan. Here's your context --

CHAKOTAY: Harry's clarinet solo was okay. I could have done without Tuvok's reading of Vulcan poetry. But the highlight of the evening was definitely Kathryn Janeway portraying the Dying Swan. JANEWAY: I learned that dance when I was six years old. I assure you, it was the hit of the Beginning Ballet class.

Have you seen The Dying Swan? It is dramatic.

Here, take a minute:

First of all, this dance is much too advanced for a six-year-old, even if they’re doing it in demi pointe. (Six-year-olds emphatically should not be in pointe shoes btw.) The dance is almost entirely bourees and arm movements done to very subtle musical cues, not the foundational ballet moves typically taught in Beginning Ballet.

This is a very vulnerable, dramatic dance that is effective because of its subtleties. The performer would need to embody that vulnerability in some way for a convincing performance. It's short, but it's a solo piece -- all eyes on you. I mean, it was choreographed for a prima ballerina, BUT THAT'S NOT MY POINT

Can you imagine our unflappable Captain Janeway willingly getting in front of her crew to do this ballet? I get that it’s thematically relevant to the plot of Coda, but since Janeway is only vulnerable in front of her crew when it means putting herself in harm’s way, it seems like a wild decision. She tends to hold herself apart from her crew, maintaining the professional distance of the captain. Further, when she does any creative pursuit, it is almost always in private, since her sister was the artist in the family and she was the scientist. As a captain, she commands Voyager in a much different way than she would as a dancer with this piece. I'm not saying she never shows vulnerability because she definitely does, but not necessarily in this way. Then when she talks about it with Chakotay, she just casually brushes it off with a laugh like no big deal.

There’s also the question of costume – would she have gone full tutu? Done it in her Starfleet uniform? An impeccable yet flow-y white suit? She does get into costume and command a performance in Bride of Chaotica!, but Coda is still kind of early days for our captain. Arachnia aligns more with what we know about Janeway's character.

Granted, it is Chakotay laying down these complements about her dancing ability and he is clearly biased. To be fair, Neelix does too before they leave in the shuttle. If she did this dance and performed it poorly or amazingly, I feel like the crew would look at her a bit differently afterwards.

Canonically she did The Dying Swan, but I certainly have trouble picturing it happening.

[tolive1000lives]

We’ve hit the halfway mark of the 2024 reading challenge! These are most of my 2024 reads and I’m excited to add to the stack!

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

Well, at least my grandfather lived to see the election result he wanted

[afrenomes]

Lately I’ve become increasingly more frustrated with the dissonance between what’s reported in Western news media and what I’ve heard from people experiencing the conflict directly (and which is often confirmed by Israeli media from across the political spectrum), and I think this article from 10 years ago does a really good job at explaining what’s actually happening and why we’re only hearing selective parts of the “story”. Despite being written 10 years ago, I think it’s still incredibly relevant to today.

[glimmerofawesome]

[orcelito]

Wild that anytime I post an update a lot of people read it and are even excited about it and have their own thoughts and reactions to it that I'll never know.

Comments are only the very tip of the iceberg with it. And I am Very grateful to commenters for letting me in on it. But in the same way that I'll be excited with my friends when a fic we love updates, it's likely that Other people enthuse with Their friends when my fic updates. And it's just so strange. An experience I'll never have access to.

Everyone's relationship with my fic is unique. So many different people with so many different circumstances and preferences... and the number of people that have told me that my fic is one of their favorites, some even saying it's their Favorite favorite... every single one of them have their own relationship with my writing.

It's just interesting to me. I think and think and think on my writing. I have my plans for basically the entire fic, the way I want it to end already thought out, all the major plot beats and the relationship progressions, All of that thought out. I love my writing so very much, but I'm on the inside looking out. This is my mechanical horse, and I'm in here laying out the groundwork and pulling levers and constructing limbs, puttering away making the horse move. Forever and always, my relationship with it will be more intimate than anyone's, and yet more clinical. Because I know it better than the back of my own hand, but I'll never have the experience of reading it fresh. Of reading it without knowing everything that's going to happen from now to the end and beyond. I won't have the thrill of the plot twists I have planned, the delight at seeing things progress, the horror at seeing things go wrong...

This is my mechanical horse, and I'm making it move.

I just always wonder what it must be like to see it from the outside. I hope to others that it's a pretty horse.

[studentbyday]

my 2024 reading list

(included are only the light reads, stuff i can read to wind down, stuff i can read with little to no context...i feel like i need to make a list of this or i will bog myself down with heavy stuff and never wind down 😂)

(i already started the dictionary of lost words. depending on my mood, i may or may not finish it in 2023.)

(in fact, if at any point it turns out i don't like a book or i'm not in the mood for it right then, i'm not gonna force myself to finish it bc my goal is for reading to be a fun, relaxing activity.)

(also might insert some unplanned reads like if i like before the coffee gets cold, i might wanna read its sequels, or i might wanna read more maisie dobbs, who knows? i'm keeping it flexible...)

ready to talk about the heavy nonfiction? 😬 (this is more like a hopeful list rather than "i will pressure myself to finish it at all costs or berate myself and feel disappointed for not meeting my goals" sort of thing which is a trap i tend to fall into...)

molecular biology: principles and practice (for my mol bio course ending this semester but the readings weren't required bc they contained lots of extra info 🤷🏻‍♀️)

bioinformatics algorithms vol. 1 & 2

music theory remixed

meditations by marcus aurelius (i need to understand the historical context first...)

[lover-of-mine]

i’m always interested in your analyses of the blue-green thing! colour is such a cool way of expressing themes or parallels and when you look at it laid out with all the couples, it’s so clear and non coincidental lol

“up until 6b they were really careful with this particular implication of romantic undertones with buddie and that's out the window now” is this in reference to how they carefully set up buddie’s themes and storylines over 5 seasons and then fucked it up in just a few 6b episodes? 😅

because honestly that’s part of the reason why i don’t have much hope for canon in season 7, i feel like they’ve suddenly backtracked on their relationship for some reason and are gonna go all no homo and/or just ruin them completely

post about the blue and green thing

Okay, I'm gonna go conspiracy theorist here, and I may be giving the showrunners too much credit, but here's the thing, we know the threat of cancellation made them change things around during 6b, there's a very clear tone shift, they changed episode names, called actor back for reshoots, so they changed the way the season was supposed to go so it would work as a nice packaged little happy ending if they got cancelled. Personally, I believe that there is some higher plan with Buck and Eddie going on here, I think they are a slowburn that is still burning, and personally, that needs to burn a little bit more until they can have a relationship that would work (getting Buck back in therapy and letting them talk would be ideal) and if you wanna jump ship go for it, I don't blame you, this shit is frustrating. But the thing is, they are very careful about how characters are constructed, and Buck and Eddie exist as mirrors of each other, and they also mirror canon romantic couple, bathena being the most blatant one. And they make a point to make sure that if you look at it closely, you can pick up on some romantic undertone, most major buddie scenes have that feeling that leaves you wondering. And it's not like the show doesn't know how to write friendships, because they do, so... choices. But going back to season 6, it might just be me, but I don't want them to get together for the sake of them getting together, there's a lot of build-up surrounding them for me to be satisfied with "and they kissed roll credits" (i love you *falls to gay superhell*, oh he had complicated feelings over the jeep) so I don't think they fucked it up, I think they didn't have the time to playout what they wanted to do with buddie in the space they had in season 6 and voted against rushing it since there was a chance the show was going to get picked up by someone else. Because it is still very easy to write off both Natalia and Marisol and keep whatever plan they might have and if they didn't get picked up just shoving them together would be unsatisfying. (In the end, it was unsatisfying anyway because the way they wrote the season makes a real effort into painting Buck, Eddie, and Chris as a family unity, so most things that don't end with them acknowledging this are unsatisfying, but it's an easy fix because the show didn't end, so)

Because, in the end, they are purposely writing Buck and Eddie as mirrors of each other, and it goes down to the first death on the job for both of them being someone falling to their death. You have the first love that ran away from them and came back without giving them real closure, you have the rocky relationship with their parents, you have the relationship they were pushed into by other people (Eddie and Ana and Buck and Ali if that's not clear), you have the way that Shannon is introduced and the next episode Buck gets a girlfriend, Shannon dies? Next episode, byebye Ali, Eddie starts dating Ana? Next episode, let's bring Taylor back into the mix, Buck is dating Natalia? What a wonderful time to have Eddie decide he's ready to put himself out there. You have the late confirmation they are the same age. You have the way they both escaped home, the way they found themselves in firefighting. You have the pretty blunt parallels between the shooting and the lightning and the well and the lightning, you have Eddie's will and the way Eddie decided to hide it (because they could have Eddie talk to Buck before changing and I've seen this playout between friends in other shows, but the choice to hide it gives a different feeling), you have multiple confirmations that Buck sees Christopher as his own, you have Eddie being hurt being Buck's berzerker button. One or two things are an accident, this many? They're on purpose, and I chose to believe there is some bigger, longer plan in action here. Sometimes I feel like there's a large percentage of the fandom who doesn't understand the stakes behind a network slowburn. Even shows like castle or the mentalist, where you KNOW they are gonna end up together, took like? 6 seasons? of build-up for something to happen? And like, I want them together, but with everything we have around them, I want them together in the right way, and yes, I think the show is delaying them because the stakes keep getting higher so it's harder to make it work, but I do have faith they can make something good work, just look at everything about them from 6x10 to 6x13.

Also, that particular statement was just about the blue and green thing because I actually looked at every scene where they are together, and they are never in those colors except for those two scenes, and the choice of shades of blue and green is very on purpose to be on accident, you know what I mean? And Buck and Taylor have multiple blue and green scenes, to pick the shades from the shooting is insane really.

Everything is on purpose, but a tv show is not like a book or a movie where everything is gonna be contained, you need to let the story evolve and adapt to the circumstances in which is being aired, and personally, I think 6x16-6x18 are just a detour, some construction on sunset lol, I think they had a choice to keep the season the way it was supposed to go and risk leaving the show feeling unfinished or shift things around and just leave Buck and Eddie feeling unfinished and they went with the second option, because it had less consequences.

Season 7 could absolutely go just kidding, no homo, but the thing is, you have two characters whose storylines are deeply tangled together, you can just sit them down, have them talk, say "you're my brother, dude" and goodbye, they're platonic best buddies. But I also don't think they would draw such a hard line because us crazy buddie shippers keep watching the show in the hopes of seeing them in the same frame together, and I feel like a significant part of people could give up the show altogether if they make such a blunt statement. And the showrunners know that, keeping us in the will they won't they thing helps their numbers and we are a significant enough portion of the viewers to make a difference. The hope of buddie brings audience to the show so I wouldn't expect a no homo thing. Or any hard line between them really.

But what do I know? I'm just a girl with a blog and a hyperfixation lol

[thealatvs]

i cannot recall a point in this life when "dante" did not chase after "vergil",

and i never wished for such a time to come.

nevertheless,

maybe after a bottle, or two, or twenty,

i stare out into that void,

i failed.

you fell.

my first, my last, my only.

and i drown everything alongside the hazy memories of our fleeting youth.