#also this is more minor but can we talk about Siren Song bc i hated that Erica was originally planning on ditching Sarah

[cubile-animussy]

Serica should have been ride or die...

tbh i wish they had been more consistent about the "erica always pulls through for me" element of serica's dynamic. like Erica is a morally grey character but I wish she was less so when it came to Sarah. Erica is a good friend when she chooses to be but I think the idea of an unconditional kind of dedication to her best friend when she's otherwise double crossing and biting/killing people would make her character even better. i think her questionable actions in the movie are very important for her character transformation as they display her hunger for popularity/revenge but one thing that always really bothered me was that she never formally apologizes to Sarah for what she did (hooking up with Jesse and nearly letting Gord kill Sarah). like rewatching the film, she was such a prick 😭😭 and then for her to be excited to see Jesse when he came back was...eh to me. Although, Erica may not fully understand the ways in which Jesse ruined Sarah's life.

this plays into her pressuring Sarah to drink human blood throughout season 1. of course Erica would think that's the easiest solution bc it IS and Sarah absolutely does need to accept her vampirism if she's gonna 1) survive and 2) be happy. I think the disconnect Sarah has from Rory, Erica, and the rest of the vampire community, as well as their inability to really understand the emotional turmoil that being turned caused her and her moral objection to biting people are very important elements of the show. Like in that sense Rory and Erica don't even MEAN to alienate Sarah with their apathy but they do and it's still shitty!! What I do wish was that Erica's genuine concern for Sarah's well being was more evident. like I don't think it's that she didn't care about Sarah and what she was going through (which was what it felt like sometimes) it's just that she couldn't understand why her friend was doing this to herself. Like she knows she's DYING and she is seriously worried and wants Sarah to get better but she's unable to sympathize with the fact that she doesn't want to drink human blood.

Erica falling short as a friend bc of the real differences between her and Sarah in terms of their values is way more interesting than her just being a shallow self-centered mean girl. Sarah being the exception to Erica's egocentrism adds so much more depth Erica's character bc it solidifies the motives underneath her persona. she'll either kill you or she'll kill for you. she'd bury a body for you but she's not the best person to help you through a fragile emotional state.

[bronanlynch]

bi-weekly-ish media roundup bc damn weeks just get shorter and shorter huh can’t believe Christmas is literally in a week and I have not gotten one (1) single present for anyone, sorry to all of my various friends and loved ones unfortunately I have not been aware of the passage of time recently

listening: have been listening to the new tswift album bc I am not immune to (gestures at all that) however I will have more fun talking about the Sleeping At Last cover of I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers which has like, the exact opposite energy of the original. normally this is a thing I hate about covers, when they suck all the energy out of a song that ought to be a bop. however this is so wild that I kinda dig it. and yes despite regularly listening to and enjoying the music of both Sleeping At Last and Sleeping With Sirens I did originally type the wrong band name. in my brain Sleeping At Last, Sleeping With Sirens, and Taking Back Sunday are all the same band called Sleeping Through Sunday

reading: finished reading Steel Crow Saga which I talked about a while ago and then set down and didn’t have the correct brain energy to pick up again for a bit. it was good, I enjoyed it, I’m glad I read it, I was a little bit disappointed by the ending but also I think that endings are hard so it’s fair that not everything sticks the landing, y’know? I just think things weren’t wrapped up as well as I would’ve liked, there is a major romantic relationship that I didn’t see coming and didn’t feel earned, and the pacing got a bit uneven at the end, and also my favorite character (who is objectively a minor and not especially sympathetic character but who is my favorite by virtue of being one of the very very few trans mlm characters in fantasy, especially fantasy not set in the real world) should’ve gotten any sort of ending at all to his arc. look I just think if someone is dating one of the main characters, and then they have a falling out but he’s still in love with him to the point that his feelings for his ex can be used to talk him out of fulfilling his main life goal, there should be some sort of closure for that. they should interact again, ever, maybe, instead of never seeing each other again and the main character suddenly being in love with a woman whose relationship I read as platonic up until the point they started confessing feelings to each other. also the trans character is real fuckin defensive and assumes people are judging him for being trans, which is a bit of worldbuilding that is never elaborated on which I found kind of jarring considering that being gay is completely normalized and no one ever makes any kind of issue out of either that m/m relationship or the f/f relationship between the two other main characters. someday I will find a transmasc mlm in a non-real world fantasy story who doesn’t let me down

watching: Supernatural, unfortunately. I could legitimately write a dissertation on The Gender Of It All but I will restrain myself. maybe someday I’ll make like, a wordpress or something specifically to write my fucking academic treatise on gender & violence in CW’s Supernatural but for now most of my thoughts go directly into Zan’s DMs

playing: finally picked up my Dishonored replay again, eventually got out of the Flooded District, had some very important revelations about parallels between Daud/Outsider/Corvo and several of my favorite dynamics from Friends at the Table’s Seasons of Hieron. I’m sure I had more to say but now I cannot think of a single thing other than like, Dishonored good. I spent most of the day at work yesterday strategizing about how I was gonna get through the rest of the mission where you have to infiltrate the pub to figure out where those fuckers took Emily, only to have such a bad headache when I got home that I couldn’t play at all

making: for once something very exciting! strained the mead that’s been fermenting for the past six (6) months. so here’s the unstrained mead, we used a balloon with holes in it instead of the proper kind of stopper you’re supposed to use for homebrewing because it works just as well and also it’s a lot cheaper. we did have to do curbside pickup from party city because that was the only way we could acquire balloons at that point in the pandemic shutdown

and here’s what it looks like in a glass

this is what a gallon of mead looks like, the picture is a bit blurry but all of the clearer pictures show the apartment chore chart in the background and I don’t want to dox my housemates

writing: allegedly I am still a person who writes things but I have not made progress on anything that I should be working on lately, including the things with deadlines. so that’s fine