#ambition quarantine 2020

[britneyshakespeare]

you know what it is. i talk about how vain he is and how he only talks about himself and that is the impression a lot of people have of him and it is the impression i favor leaning towards. he has a very coded way of self-disclosure; he often seems like he's trying to impress people but i know him to be not-the-most-assured in a lot of ways. when i first complimented him on his poetry and told him how much i liked a few pieces (and i loved some of what i read before i knew his last name, so when i read his poetry i did not assume the person whose poetry i so loved was, well, that retired male model i met in passing every now and then). when i told him that. he was very moved by it.

and i do talk about how vain he is; i do say he only talks about himself; but every now and then when he does say something about me it is not at all hidden that he does admire me. some of what he says that seems to coded to impress me or to get my validation, i know he is doing this towards me because he thinks im this smart poetry girl. and i am? i am that, he's not wrong. i think it makes me feel hopeless to think that he really does respect me and care what i think of him because i'd rather he didn't. i'd rather him be this charming but shallow pretty boy which i think he has been seen as by a lot of people throughout his life. despite that he is hardworking, despite that he has (or at least tries very hard to have) an intellectual side. perhaps what he says about himself is so often coded to please me even while it is fishing for my attention, and i want to see that as a reflection of his own self-regard but i don't know that it is.

i don't know that it's not, but i don't know that it is either and as neither of us is very frequently vulnerable with the other, it's not fair for me to say which is the case. or even that there's a "which" like it can't be both. i don't know that he admires me; i don't know that he sees me as this girl who is (or at least used to be) very charmed by him. i do know that he always comes to me and asks me about poetry because as far as he's told me, i'm the only one who has ever cared about his. for all i know that could also be bullshit, but then why should i assume it is either? i'm quite unfair to him in my assessments of him. i do have to admit, he has never actually seemed to have a disrespectful or unfair assessment of me.

[3months2mordor]

On Hobbits and Existential Dread

or Why “The Scouring of the Shire” is the True Climax of The Lord of the Rings

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Or more accurately, there lived a human who had been in hard COVID quarantine for six months and certainly felt like a hobbit, what with all the staying inside and eating second breakfast and trying her best to ignore the world, which seemed in the summer of 2020 to be spiraling towards something unknown. And she, well I, was packing for college. On an impulse that I cannot explain except to say that I had previously binge watched all the movies in my seemingly infinite quaran-time, I packed a large red volume of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with the intention to read it over the course of the semester.

What began as a simple personal challenge to read a chapter a night instead of doom scrolling on Twitter became a profound experience not only in terms of discovering that my parents were right in saying the book was actually really good, but also in realizing that the Hobbits, in their edenic Shire perched on the edge of a world about to enter catastrophe, were more like me, more like a lot of us, than Aragorn or the Elves or Dwarves or Men who people Middle Earth. And here is why the chapter at the very end of the last book where the Shire is nearly destroyed is so very, very important.

Tolkien takes careful time in his books to establish the attitudes and habits of his hobbits who live in pastoral harmony in near complete isolation from the rest of the world. They are content with what they have and don’t have the greed that drives Dwarves to dig, or the ambition that drives Men to war, or even the worship of nature that drives Elves deep into their forests to protect them. They build their hobbit holes, smoke what is definitely pot, and eat and drink heartily. They care little for news of the outside world and tend their fields instead. That’s it.

But the world does not cease to exist just because they want it to. It never does.

As Gandalf warns in Rivendale, “We are sitting in a fortress. Outside it is growing dark.” (Part 1 Book 2 Chapter 1).

Regardless of how much the hobbits might ignore the coming of the Dark Lord Sauron and the existential threat that is his attempt to control the world, it will not go away. They will not be safe from the darkness just because they want to be and they have a supply of candles in the cupboard. And so, at the start of the story, evil comes to the Shire in the form of the Black Riders and Frodo, our hero, must leave to keep the Shire safe from the forces of darkness. Still Frodo is just a hobbit, albeit a brave one. So he laments to Gandalf, “I wish it need not have happened in my time” and Gandalf replies “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (Part 1 Book 1 Chapter 2).

I feel this quote more deeply every year. A deep childish wish for things to exist as we expected them to be, but a solemn and more mature knowledge that Gandalf is right. That our time has already been given to us. All that we have left is what we do to make that time matter.

But back to Frodo, who takes a good seventeen years to heed this advice, but eventually sets off on an adventure to save the Shire which, spoiler alert, ultimately saves the world. Along the way people despair and seem to lose hope. Theoden, recovering from a spell that robbed him of agency and clearsightedness, cries “Alas! That these evil days should be mine, and should come in my old age instead of that peace which I have earned” (Part 2 Book 3 Chapter 6). Even Sam, in his darkest hour thinking he has lost Frodo for good, groans “I wish I wasn’t the last. I wish old Gandalf was here, or somebody. What am I left all alone to make up my mind? I’m sure to go wrong” (Part 2 Book 4 Chapter 10).

Yet despite it all the One Ring is destroyed and the King returns and good wins. Everything is set right and our heroes get a chance to rebuild the world rather than watch it crumble. They get to go home.

Now this is a fine story and one I desperately needed amongst all of the *everything* going on in 2020. However it is not the ending that stuck with me. For you see once Frodo and his companions return home, the Shire is not the same place they left it.

The Shire, in their year long absence, has descended into a despotic police state run by a wealthy, privileged hobbit who stays in his hole rather than try to help his people as Men, who tower over the hobbits, and are specifically and on multiple occasions called bullies, abuse their power. They use their strength to take food and (let’s face it) weed from the hobbits, desecrate their land with deforestation and pollution, and create a state of fear and paranoia that anyone could be taken at any moment to prison without trial after only a mere whiff of seditious behavior. The world has come to the hobbits and they are so paralyzed with fear that they are unable to do anything other than sit in their hobbit holes and keep their heads down, hoping that they and their families will make it through.

Now, Frodo and his companions, having seen the change that can be wrought from people who stand up to bullies and fight to make a difference, see the state of their home and immediately understand the despair their friends and neighbors have fallen into because they too have felt it. These are the hobbits who faced thousands of orcs and rode in battle and walked to Mount Doom with only each other to lean on and they know how deeply despair of impossible odds can affect someone. But they have also learned that that despair is not inevitable. They saw the Ents on their last march when Treebeard said it was “likely enough that we are going to our doom… But if we stayed at home and did nothing the doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has been long growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now” (Part 2 Book 3 Chapter 4). They saw the Rohirrim ride to battle against impossible odds because it was the right thing to do. They saw even the most pitiful Gollum play his part in saving the world. And they saw the Eagles fly in to help carry the day.

There’s always hope if there’s something worth fighting for.

And so, back in the Shire which was not the Shire they knew but still the one they love, the four heroic hobbits do what had once seemed impossible: they get the hobbits, in their apathy and terror and existential despair, to stand up and fight. And it’s hard, and people die, and it gets worse before it gets better, but in the end the bullies are run off and the hobbits are victorious and they begin to rebuild, not just their homes but their forests and their relationships with each other too.

The hobbits, and me really, wanted to curl up in their holes and hope the world would go away. And sometimes, God, that seems like it’s the only thing you can do when darkness is spreading far on the horizon and it keeps creeping closer but isn’t here yet. But Sauron is not the scariest thing in this book. Tolkien’s real villain was the fear and despair that can paralyze you to stay in your hole until the Shire is burning around you. Yet even the most comfortable and secure hobbits have to stand up and face the world because if we don't, no one else will.

There is a reason Frodo is able to see the mission to the end. And it’s not that he’s exceptional in the way other heroes are. No. In fact it is because he is unexceptional and unambitious and also uncompromising that the deed is able to be done. He, like the hobbits he helps at the end of the series, has to get up and work to fight the evil that hurts people every day. And Frodo doesn’t save the hobbits of the Shire; they save themselves. Then they rebuild. They grow things again, not better, not the same, but they have to go on living. And, I don’t know, I needed to realize that.

We aren’t Aragorn with a throne and a legendary sword and a destiny to be king, we aren’t the Elves with their centuries of knowledge and skills, we aren’t the Dwarves with their mountain holds to hide in. Heck, we’re not even Frodo, or at least I’m not. There’s no way I could handle a walk that long. We’re the hobbits. We see the existential wave of dread and terror that is coming and our instinct to hide from it, to hold it off as long as we can and then silently accept it when it comes. Because what can one little halfling do against a thing like that?

But even the hobbits of the Shire stand up eventually. Even hobbits can take that dread for a bleak future and turn around and create new life. There’s a reason why the symbol of the Shire returning to peace and throwing off the yolk of oppression is a tree. The bullies cut down Bilbo’s old one and it can’t come back. But Sam plants a new one anyway and hopes it will grow.

I’m reading the Lord of the Rings again before this election as I did last time. But this time I’m not alone. I’m reading it with friends. I marked passages like the ones above that made me think but also ones that made me laugh because there is joy in amongst the shadows and if we cannot find those moments it’s hard to keep looking for the light. In rewatching The Two Towers film the other day I was struck, as I usually am, by Sam’s speech at the end of the movie, based on one he gives in “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol.” I think it bears quoting in full.

Sam: It’s all wrong By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

Hobbits are remarkable people, Tolkien says, and I hope we are too. I hope we can get through this by raising up our own Shires full of hobbit warriors to face the world and not lie down and give up. Because if everyone did that there would still be a One Ring and Sauron would rule forever.

But we have to save the Shire. It’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. We have to believe that. I have to. I will do my part to make sure it does, but first I have to believe it’s possible. We have to take that existential terror and turn it into righteous fury because we have seen what a shadow can do and we cannot let it spread again. We have been there. But we will not go back again.

[moochilatv]

Chris Portka presents: A Candle is a Raging Fire!

Debut single released in the winter of 2020

The artist said:

Lockdown, bullshit, etc. I was tired, we were all tired, but this song had been 37 years in the making.

I've been playing music since I was a teenager and now I finally release this song as a proper debut single. I wrote it in 2019 while travelling through India with my fiancé on a trip for her textile / fashion business (pre-COVID times). I also wrote and recorded the music to a series of documentary videos she made while we were in India for her brand Seek Collective (this instrumental music was released as my EP "Soundtracks I").

But this song is much more personal and reflects the long, multi-decade struggle I've had with music. My parents were never supportive of my musical ambitions and actively discouraged me from pursuing music as a career. So I've struggled to make my way through jobs in the tech world - all while keeping the hope alive that someday I'd become a musician.

I've always loved guitar, piano, writing songs, and jamming with friends - but my biggest fear in the world was always singing. It's been my major roadblock to releasing and playing music throughout my life. So 6 years ago I got serious and met a Voice Movement Therapist named Julia Norton who helped me slowly be able to use my voice and sing in front of people. I now practice vocal exercises every day and regularly played at coffee shops in the bay area (before quarantine anyway). That's a long way of saying the lyrics of the song are about this candle - the hope, dream, and wish which I've always held for a life in music. I hope it also reflects the secret desires we hold in our hearts for what we truly want in this life.

The song was mixed by Jasper Leach of @jplrecordings (on Instagram) who also played the organ, tambourine, and some backup vocals. I played, wrote, and composed the rest of the music.

The song was mastered by Christian Wright at Abbey Road Studios.

Chris Portka is an artist and musician based in California's bay area, defying norms with a unique fusion of harsh trash sound and ethereal glitch rock. His music strikes a careful balance between raw and refined.

[annie-shirl]

Okay babies, first girl on here is the cutie in my pfp

Anne Cordelia Shirley Cuthbert (Awae) was an orphan girl mistakenly placed in the Cuthbert's siblings' house. They decided to keep her and raise her.

Anne of Green Gables (books and movies) and Anne with an E are different in forms but not in essence.

The canadian movies' adaptation are closer to the books' story : a slice of life about a girl finding a family and friends and making her way into the world. It is light-hearted (until book 4 I think ? And 3rd movie), cozy and reassuring (okay Matthew and Ruby die but I swear the story is still very wholesome). I stopped at book 3 tho bc book 4 is about Anne after college and I'm not done with my cursus studies yet and I need to parallel her story, it feels right to walk together on the path of life or whatever

What makes me say Anne stays Anne throughout adaptations is the fact I can identify to Anne with an E, Anne of Green Gables movie and Anne of Green Gables book

•Anne with an E was my very first adaptation of Anne I saw, (back in 2020 covid first quarantine in the country I live in) and I got OBSESSED. This Anne is passionate about books, stories, writing, nature, collecting things on the floor and magic in mondain. She has a sharp moral compass and is always ready to defend social causes she considers important. The only difference between us is that she is as extroverted as I am introverted. But I admired the way she would leave a mark on all the minds of people she met. Also I was a hot-headed teen once too and was pretty much subject to strong emotional releases. Turns out I was autistic all along and Anne is very autistic coded too so it made me happy to share another feature with her kcjdjdkd (also Amybeth McNulty did an amazing job as Anne🌸)

•I think book Anne was my second representation. A new edition was coming out and the covers were too gorgeous to not buy them. Also I wanted to read the books so much since I hyperfixated on the show for a long time. I read book 1 in one night, sobbing by the end at 3 in the morning bc Matthew died (it was awful I was shaking). I then read to the 3rd book, and seeing very emotional Anne becoming calmer, getting a scolarship, fighting for her education even when she was struggling with money, working with kids, making it to college, renting a house with her friends and working on the side made me feel SO SEEN. I officially started working at 15 and never stopped until I was 21. I worked in a fast food, then with kids. My family doesn't have a lot of money so I had to handle myself most of the time, with scolarships, my savings and random babysittings, especially when I started my art school journey. That's why I want to read the 4th book once I finish my cursus. Cause we're so similar I want to keep this feeling of walking side by side.

•Anne from the movies is a cutie. She's a bit sillier than Awae but the core remains. She's a hot-headed red head full of dreams and ambitions, who's following her heart whenever it is possible. Then comes the war but her determination remains. She is strong, she is goal oriented and she gets over the obstacles on her way, helped by her two arms and solid shoulders. I like to imagine that's how I've been until now, a fighter.

Of course, other characters are lovely but Anne will remain the little girl I was and hopefully, the determined woman I could become 🌸

My father watched Anne with an E, he cried all of season 3 and said Anne reminded him of my sister and I and that was probably the nicest thing he could have said about me ever

Anyways, I love Anne ♥️

[ambitionsource]

please, overlords, what can you say about jeric in s3?

overlords FJKLSDJGKLSJGKLSJGL oh lena

when it comes to jack and eric, following s2 it’s pretty clear to both of them that their dynamic is... unique. i think they’re both aware that there’s something there between them and that it might very well be reciprocated, but whether they’ll explore such a thing -- and if that exploration would even bode well, due to a number of factors -- remains to be seen.

one thing that i like about writing the development of their relationship is that jack and eric are in such a different... life place than the rest of the main cast. its a very different thing to be playing with the idea of love in your 40s than it is when you’re young and everything is still fresh and new and malleable. so their progression will be inherently different, just by the nature of the circumstances.

all this to say, they will definitely be explored throughout s3. how so and to what degree... well, time will tell...

-- Maggie

[fashion]

Artist Spotlight: Francesca DiMattio [Tory Burch]

Francesca DiMattio is a ceramicist, sculptor and painter whose work plays on themes of femininity and power. For Tory Burch’s Fall 2020 collection, Francesca designed a series of floral prints based off her and Tory’s shared appreciation of classic French, English and Turkish porcelain.  

When did you know you wanted to be an artist?

I guess I always knew but I didn’t know that one could make a living off it. My parents were always very academically inclined and, when we went to look for colleges, my dad fell in love with every school and I hated them all. I just couldn’t picture myself there. At some point, my mom said, ‘there is nothing at the end of academia, it just sort of eats its own tail, so you’re going to have to jump at some point. Maybe that time is now.’ We then visited Cooper Union in New York City and I felt totally different there. I felt intimidated and excited — all the things that make you uncomfortable and inspired.  

What was the collaboration process like with Tory?

Very compatible and easy — it was a very natural collaboration

What was it like when you first saw your prints on clothes?

It felt like a real gift. It was thrilling and something I’d never really experienced before.

Is this the first time you’re wearing your work?

Yeah, and I guess it is difficult to really verbalize what it feels like. I put it on, and my son said I looked really beautiful. That was sweet because he is four and rarely takes a moment to see his parents outside of himself.  

What have you been working on recently?

I had planned to work smaller to some extent — I had just had a little baby girl and was limited by carrying her in the studio — and so during quarantine I started working on this tile mural that is going to be installed in a public school in Queens. I’ve had my four-year-old son at home as well, and I wanted to find ways to activate his interest in working with clay. We made a lot of different molds of things like Legos and Storm Troopers or leaves and seashells and created picture frames. During a time when everything is so unclear and formless, it was satisfying for me, and I think him, to have this moment of completion. I also began making a series of plates and cups and dishes, which I had never done before, and they share the same inspiration as some of the prints I did with Tory this season.

Do you use the plates?

Every day! We call them princess plates.  

Artist’s equivalent to writer’s block?

The way I overcome it is by doing things that I wouldn’t consider work. For example, I wouldn’t exactly consider those plates my work. They’re a side project that I just felt inspired to do. When there is nothing at stake, you can tend to be more playful and a bit freer. I think it’s important to carve out those spaces for yourself and not question why you’re doing them. It does feed your inspiration and can lead you to unknown places that you wouldn’t have gotten to if you were thinking about it only in terms of your work.  

Who inspires you?

It’s funny, I used to be around a lot of artists who inspired me because we all shared studios in Brooklyn, but now life has gotten so much more insular. I miss that camaraderie and seeing so many people’s work whereas now it’s all on Instagram. I had great professors — Charline von Heyl and Jacqueline Humphreys — and I’m inspired by the people that I’ve had intimate relationships with over the years, like Betty Woodman.  

Best advice?

Two things. The first is that my mother always raised me to consider everything as being important. She didn’t feel that one’s work should take precedence over everything else. If I wanted to have a family, I should have a family; if I wanted to have a garden, I should have a garden. These other areas of your life are equally important… She also told me to pick something you love to do for work. The second is about being present. I spent a summer with Max Wigram and Phoebe Philo and, when I asked Phoebe what she was doing next, she was so calm in her environment and clear in her decision to be with her kids during this time.

How do you embrace ambition?

By being brave.

Francesca’s work can be found here. 

📷: Noa Griffel

[tisthenightofthewitch]

GHOST’S TOBIAS FORGE ON THEIR NEW ALBUM ‘IMPERA’: “THERE IS A DESPERATION AND AN ANGER IN THERE”

"You always take a risk in something that you put together in the name of art."

Ghost have just released their new album 'IMPERA', and it is nothing short of sensational. A dense, dramatic and decadent look at the Imperial Empire, and the heroes and villains that inhabited it, through Tobias Forge's unique and undeniable lens, it is a collection of songs that not only cements Ghost as one of metal's most fascinating and fantastical assets but also an album for the ages. One that deserves to be played loud, proud and as frequently as possible. We had a sit down with Tobias to talk about the record's inception, whether the events of the modern-day have affected his view of the songs and where they ultimately fit into Ghost's live show... How does it feel to be at this point with Ghost where you have a new album out in the world, but you can also get back to what you love the most, which is touring? "It feels incredible, to be honest. We are just trying to rock. That’s what we do. And being back on tour, this one we have just done in America specifically, is extraordinary. But even up to the day of it kicking off, we were still in the position of, ‘We may not be able to do this’. It felt like there were too many roadblocks. We left a trail of people as we went, crew testing positive to COVID and having to stay in hotels at the very beginning. But as the tour progressed, those numbers went down to just about nothing. That allowed us to get the shows back to the level we wanted them to be. It feels like Spring is in the air now! And with the album coming out, it feels really nice."

In terms of the stories you tell and the commentary, you deliver on this album, was this always a part of the long-term journey of Ghost, or is it something that built itself around the times that we found ourselves in? "If there were a feeling of worry about putting a date on the things that I was writing for this album, it would be if it would feel irrelevant when the album came out. I wrote a lot of the songs back in 2019 and 2020. And the thing is that in my mind, I had known for years what this record was going to be about roughly. It always had the tag ‘The Imperial Record’. But a few months into 2020, and when the world shut down, I instantly knew that many other artists would do dated material and songs. Things like ‘Quarantine Blues’ and ‘In The Bubble’, shit which will feel so irrelevant straight away. And in the future, people would have no interest in listening to anything like that. So because I knew what I wanted this to be about, I just kept on trucking. It was pretty easy to get inspired by the events of these last two years, and that had nothing to do with the things that so many were writing about. But then again, as things were being stretched into a year and then a year and a half, I hoped that what I was writing wasn’t going to feel strange more so than anything. As a writer, especially in the rock community, it always seems like you’re supposed to be about authenticity and not giving a fuck and only writing for yourself. No one does that. Everyone who has a career knows precisely what they are doing. You always take a risk in something that you put together in the name of art."

Creation is a form of escape, which is what Ghost has become for so many people. Yet there must be moments when you’re piecing together this intricate puzzle that you have planned out, and you find things and feel things you didn’t expect to within that process? "It’s funny to say it, but a lot of what we are doing is actually already a lesser version of what I intended it to be. It’s always with a great deal of discontent that I look at something and still feel like it isn’t properly done or finished or what I actually wanted it to be. But that is what it is, and I have got used to that over time. It’s just the nature of the ambition. And I bring along a long list of things that I want to correct and continue to achieve at each stage of this. The funny thing with that is that I have found myself reflecting on things we have done in a lot more hindsight than before. We finally played this venue, or we finally did this thing. But on the day of those things, it could have been raining. We were late. We had problems with the guest list, there were errors with the effects going off on stage, and the afterparty got really weird. That was the big day you had been dreaming of, and it never materialises into what you may expect it to be. But the truth is, such is life. It’s a great problem to have. This band allows me to cross out so many things in my life that I have wanted to do, and it’s mindboggling just how many of them I have been able to achieve. To talk to somebody I may have known years ago back in school; it’s almost unthinkable to recount what Ghost has been able to do with them."

What would you say are the feelings that have stuck with you the most as each piece of ‘IMPERA’ has unfolded before your eyes as you’ve brought it to life? "I think that something that I like with a lot of these new songs, in terms of ones we have chosen to become a part of the set as we move forwards, is that there is a desperation and an anger in there that feels very cathartic to what is the overall feeling of things right now. That I think is essential. It feels good to have that scream of anguish in there. They are played with an intensity and with a temperament that closely resembles the time and the subject that it is about and the time that we are existing in now." How does that compare to the feeling that you get from your other songs, The ones that are a huge part of what Ghost is to you? "Most of those songs are there because they feel good to play. That is the main difference to me. ‘Mummy Dust’ is an example of that, a song that is easy to sing, and the emotions within it closely resemble the ones you need to sing it. Sometimes, to sing a beautiful ballad, you have to use your whole body to sing a song that sounds that soft. To sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’, you can’t lie down and whisper. You need to use everything you have. There are songs across our repertoire that are unintuitive because they were written in a studio or thought of it from a different perspective to singing. Sometimes those songs are not constructed to be played live, even if it was my intention. Everything is based on how the crowd reacts as well, of course. When it comes to this new record and the feelings that it exhibits, we will have to see as time goes on what songs work and what songs don’t."

Rock Sound

[pressure-machine]

The Killers have made another dazzling statement of ultra-modern pomp -- NME

Irony-free and infused with feeling until it bursts, ‘Imploding The Mirage’ is the counterpoint to quarantine claustrophobia – it’s the sound of countless doors being opened, with The Killers stepping away from their limitations in a blast of undiluted ambitions. -- Clash Music

Imploding the Mirage feels like more than just one of their best albums, but a triumphant and invigorated rut-reversal that shines with a hard-won confidence. -- AllMusic

Imploding the Mirage is gigantic and jubilant. -- Consequence

When it’s particularly easy to feel cynical, this album offers the same fiery hope that All These Things That I’ve Done did years ago. -- No Ripcord

Brandon Flowers’ choruses soar above the clouds, the guitars buzz with the effervescence of the sun, the pianos ring out with the elegance of an abandoned cathedral dance hall, and the drums gallop like wild horses kicking up dust on the American Midwest plains. -- Sputnik Music

An album that feels rich and invigorating. -- DIY

The songs themselves are vintage Killers, often beginning quietly but driving inexorably to those yearning, multi-layered choruses that Flowers does so well, perfect for singing emotively with an impassioned fist over the chest. -- Variety

IMPLODING THE MIRAGE released August 21, 2020

[trivialoveclub]

2020 Year in Review!

hey! i was tagged by the absolute angel that is ⚘ @unefleurofferte ⚘(tysm my love! 💞) for this 2020 tag! first off (even tho it's the middle of january already 🤡) i wanted to wish everyone a happy new year! not to get sappy 💀 but even tho i don't rlly talk/interact that much, it brings me a lot of happiness seeing u guys on my dash 🥺💗 i genuinely am supporting and rooting for you all and i wish u guys all the love and kindness in this new year bc you deserve it babes 💖

Rules: answer the questions about 2020 and tag some people to pass it on!

5 Fav Films You Watched in 2020

🎬 Soul (2020) "Your spark isn't your purpose. That last box fills in when you're ready to come live."

🎬 Onward (2020) "I never had a dad, but I always had you."

🎬 Klaus (2019) "A true selfless act always sparks another."

🎬 Diecisiete (2019) "You think I'd be doing all of this if I had no heart?

Maybe you're trying to get it back."

🎬 East Side Sushi (2014) "You know behind every great restaurant here, there are great latinos, in the back, in the kitchen, hidden. Prepping the food and making you all look good. Well, I don't want to be in the back anymore."

5 Fav TV Shows You Watched In 2020

📺 Like in The Movies (2020) "Do you ever feel like you're not the protagonist of your own story?"

📺 Given (2019) "Do you have anyone you like, Haruki-san? If that person suddenly disappeared from this world, what would you say?"

📺 Banana Fish (2018) "My soul is always with you."

📺 Masterchef Junior (2013-) Not a quote but Gordon Ramsay always says the dishes has "finesse" and now i can't stop saying it in everything 😭

📺 Next in Fashion (2020)

5 Fav Songs You Listened To In 2020

🎶 UGH! : BTS 🎶 "You're allowed to be angry, but bothering someone else's life, I don't like"

🎶 Fuyu No Hanashi : Given 🎶 "Just like the snow that hasn't completely melted in the shade I continue on with these feelings inside of me."

🎶 So Beautiful : DPR Ian 🎶 "My love is turning kinda gray / My heart is looking the other way."

🎶 PSYCHE : Joohoney 🎶 "All of the world pay attention"

🎶 Stay Tonight : Chungha 🎶 "Tell me what you wanna do, run away or stay tonight"

Top 5 Albums of 2020

💿 Map of The Soul 7 : BTS

UGH! ⏯ Black Swan ⏯ Inner Child

💿 Fatal Love : Monsta X

Sorry I'm Not Sorry ⏯ Nobody Else ⏯ Guess Who

💿 Ungodly Hour : Chloe x Halle

ROYL ⏯ Forgive Me ⏯ Lonely

💿 Mixtape [ PSYCHE ] : Joohoney

PSYCHE ⏯ Intro (Ambition) ⏯ DIA

💿 Chromatica : Lady Gaga

Replay ⏯ Sour Candy ⏯ Alice

Top 5 Books You Read in 2020

🤡 🤡 🤡

...i haven't read for fun in years 😔 i used to read a book every single day :(( but! i already have a list of ones i want to read so this year for sure im gonna be that girl again 🤧💅🏼

💌 How did you spend your birthday this year? 💌

uh hahaha 🤡 suddenly i can't read 🤡

well...i had to take my drivers test but i had no idea how to park so i mean obvs i was gonna fail 💀 so i got super anxious and then had a breakdown in the back seat when it was getting closer to my turn 😭 my parents had to reschedule it and take me home. i felt like such a disappointment. so it started off absolutely horrible, fortunately the rest of the day was a lot better but oof 🤪

💌 What was your most memorable day? 💌

i honestly cannot remember anything 😭 it's like one big blur but ummm...probably finishing high school! i felt like i could finally breathe 🥲

💌 What was your most memorable meal you had this year? 💌

hmm...ooo probably when my abuelita made us a bunch of paches de papa 🥺 i ate them for a whole week and i loved it entirely...my heart is pache shaped 🤧💘

💌 Did you find any new hobbies or interests in quarantine? 💌

hmm i don't think i got any new ones but i did get to be reminded again on how much i genuinely enjoy making food and like decorating/personalizing things! ☺💖

💌 What was the last big event/thing you remember doing before covid? 💌

uhhh i honestly can't think of anything? i literally don't go out 🤡 like im in chilling in this quarantine lifestyle bc nothing has changed for me 🤪

💌 5 good/positive things that happened to you in 2020? 💌

🌱 i finally escaped high school! 🎓🎉

🌱 i decided to take a gap year and the burnt out student inside me feels like she can finally exhale

🌱 i can't remember if it was in early 2020 or late 2019 but anyways I GOT MY DRIVERS LICENSE 😝😝 i honestly...do not know how i got it...i took 15+ minutes to park (as u can see your girl didn't learn her lesson) but bless that man for passing me i hope u have a beautiful life sir 😭💖 however i have not stepped in the driver's seat since then 💋 i refuse 💋

🌱 i honestly would say watching Soul 🥲💗 i've always been obsessed w my meaning and purpose in life and that movie rlly just hit home for me...i think about it everyday and im literally starting to tear up right now so let me just stop 🤪

🌱 hmm honestly just being home 💗 i now have an excuse to stay in all time and that brings me so much peace in my heart 🤧

💌 Biggest messages or lessons learnt from this year? 💌

that there's a lot to live for. and i rlly want to enjoy it? and like w the gap year i still feel guilty and still feel like im wasting time and not being productive (love being a capricorn 🤪) but im trying to not think like that...and the fact that Soul came out and it's whole message is literally like life is beautiful and it's meant to be lived 🥺 it rlly like...set that for me u know...there's so many little things that truly make me excited about life and i want to enjoy it and after those 4 years in high school of constant work and stress and losing my entire mind maybe i actually deserve it 🥲 so um yeah..sjdkajd

💌 And what are you most looking forward to in 2021? 💌

a lot ☺ everything honestly...wow omg that's so weird asjakjd ahhh 😭😭💘 [insert that paul rudd who would have thought not me meme] but i wanna do sm much!! bake and cook and learn to knit! and personalize my clothes and READ! and watch movies and shows! and i'll also be going back to school so i rlllllllllyyyyyyyy want to learn how to manage my time bc my procrastination truly fucked me in the ass in hs 🤡 but yeah im excited ahh! ☺

And We're Done!

oof my memory is so awful i feel like i can't remember anything that happened in 2020 🤡 this ended up being a bit long 💀 so if u made it to the end...thank u for reading...ily 😚💌 besitos for you! 💞

tagging these cuties 💘: @moonlattae @fluorescente @glossierjoon @ardores @star99 @jooniephoria @ahearthrob @catboyjm @yoongidisease @violetmoonlits @koyan @stardustyoongi @7blueside @m1amor @sobsyub @m8nstruck @souheii @1okyos @virgomoon @alevchaan @jihyoist

[reedblackcomics]

I realized this is a perfect place to dump sketches that will probably NEVER be finished. Especially the ones that I started to ink and then gave up on. 

1. Early in the 2020 quarantine times I had this brilliant idea that I was going to learn to screen-print. So I made this complicated image hoping that it would be super fun to print. My ambition was greater than my interest. I still have all the screen-printing supplies, so who knows what I’ll do in the future.

2. An unfinished Kingdom Hearts Mickey

3. I just felt like drawing Digimon.

4. The Simpsons’ living room. I had an idea for Inktober (before I learned that the guy behind the hashtag was a plagiarist and all around terrible person). I was going to draw a bunch of fictional places.

5. I’ve been wanting to draw Farscape for a long time. I still haven’t gotten there yet.

6. I found this whole group of people who make retrod midcentury modern doll houses and I thought it’d be fun to draw the rooms they made. I didn’t get far.

7. Woody and Buzz. I like the sketch, but not enough to finish.

8. I’ve been wanting to revisit my fanart for Nightmare Before Christmas.

[polar-stars]

BEEN A WHILE SINCE I ASKED MAMA BUT 5 7 8 20 !!! For the Elite Ten girls uwu

thank you for the ask bby 💕❤️🥺 !! I’ll be glad to show some love for the Elite Ladies!

5. If they got a tattoo, what kind? If they have tattoos, what would their next one be?

It Kiyoko would ever get a tattoo it would be a very small one and it would be at a discrete place where it isn’t so easily seen. I could imagine the motive to be either some flower, or a tiny Koi-fish in memory of her childhood days with Masashi.

Suzume would probably get a dragon. On her shoulder perhaps!

Ran…Given Ran’s Biker Aesthetic I could see a lot of tattoo possibilities for her. One thing I could see her do for sure is getting a tattoo of her sibling’s names somewhere (in an arsty form of course)

7. Their 2020s AU quarantine craft of choice?

I can see Kiyoko trying to make her own jewellery. She’d also use the time to get better at painting nails.

Suzume’s quarantine craft is enTERTAINMENT! She’d troll around on TikTok, she’d give random dance numbers in the living room, she’d spam the Elite 10 Group Chat with memes….(But she’d also experiment around with paint, I think and draw some random pictures once in a while)

Ran sews and knits new clothes for Ayano’s dolls. And a whole dress for Ayano herself on top of that!

8. Which era of historical fashion do you think would fit them?

I would name the 50s/60s for Kiyoko, mostly because I can picture her very well in some Audrey Hepburn inspired looks. (Or the Japanese Edo Period would suit her as well…I think? I’m sadly not too knowledgeable about Asian fashion periods yet)

A lot of Suzume‘s casual fashion is pretty 70s inspired, so yes…The 70s for her awhdhfhf! She‘d rock a lot of 20s looks as well imho

I can picture Ran in some 80s grunge, I think :0

20. What kind of people are their type that they find most attractive? (Either platonic, romantic or sexual attraction.)

Kiyoko likes people who are justifiably confident (she can’t stand it when people are all bark but no bite), but aren’t intimidated by Kiyoko’s own power and ambitions. To get real close to her, you also have to be accepting of her darker sides though.

Suzume is a social butterfly who gets along with most types of personalities. However, justified confidence is definitely something she feels drawn to as well.

Ran is also a very affable persona, who gets along with mostly everyone. But something that really does draw her in is people who dream big, are determined and know how to take care of themselves.

[l0chn3ss]

l0chn3ss update

I feel like the last time I ever really active on tumblr was in the year 2016, so i want to address my absence between 2017-2020. Part of it is because I feel like I owe it to my friends and mutuals who I just basically left on read and another part is because I’ve always treated this blog as a personal blog that documents my life and my growth. I put off writing this for a long time but now that I have a huge paper due, now is definitely the time.

You are welcome to skip but I will address a few hard hitting questions I feel should be answered, especially since I feel like I departed like an anti-hero of a bad tv show.

Where I am currently: I am in grad school to obtain a master’s in library and information science. I have a full time job at different middle school libraries, though I work from home now. I also tutor kids on the side to pay for my tuition because I basically make minimum wage. Quarantine messed with my head at first, but now I’m feeling much better and I’m trying to reconnect with friends and close a lot of loose ends.

TLDR: I took an extended break because tumblr mobile sucks and my laptop needed serious repairs. I made a huge migration away from social media in 2018. I prioritized my education and in-person connections, which fell to shit because of my fandom involvement in the past. I did not like the direction of the main fandom I participated in and knew that many of the people I once respected did not respect me in return/ Us versus them mentality. I recognized that I treated my life on tumblr too seriously and took petty drama personally. I am sporadically on tumblr now because I genuinely enjoy the social connection and because I still like running fandom events.

Yes, you can reblog this. I’d love for this narrative to be heard.

Long version: To preface this, this post is being written to give myself closure and because I really am procrastinating on my final big paper of this semester. I’ll be tackling on the points in the tldr in a longer narrative that will appear to be in an expository fashion, which I recognize will be a source of contention, but my intentions are to throw it onto the table so that I can be freed. I can let it go and move on. I’m no longer a 20 years old who cared too much of what other people think and will think; I think differing perspectives are important and I want to give myself a chance to say my piece. That and I recognize that I lost the audience that I once had, so I doubt this will be an issue at all. It’s been 4 or what ever years, let’s just not.

Back in 2015-2016 there was a huge back and forth between three groups of people in the SE fandom. The reason why I’m not listing out the name is because I don’t want this to show up in the tags. I’d say that the three groups could be seen as quite literally the soma shippers (mostly white, demi sexual girls), lgbt centric bloggers (very kid or star oriented, very fed up with soma), and the people who were deemed as alright to soma shippers (c r ona, ste inm arie, jac k im centric people). There was a constant (and understandable) tension between the first two groups while the third was like the weird cousin that everyone in the social circles liked because they sprinkled in soma for the masses. Don’t argue with me on this-- this was literally how the fandom was in 2015 and you know it.

The main issue was that one group felt that they were being inclusive towards identities and sexualities while the other felt that they were not. I remember that one of the arguments was that soma WAS an LGBT ship because people headcanonned the members to be demisexual. However, the other side of the argument was that it wasn’t good representation of a gay pairing. Now that we can look back at this 5 years later, I have two things to say: 1, I now very much understand why the argument broke out because of how heated the topic is, and I do believe that I lean more towards the “other side” now that I’m not wearing rose tinted glasses, but 2, I need to make it clear that demi people are lgbt, but a headcanon is not fact and ship diversity was the main question at hand, not the ship itself. This argument lasted for weeks, destroyed my friendships, and no matter what I felt I did in the moment (which was to mend the fandom), it was taken as an insult.

(Side note: Somethings that I remember was being in someone’s DM’s to encourage them to participate in the large fandom events more, but once they twisted my intentions and rallied their friends, I became their enemy. I also became the mods’ enemy but then again, when was I not? I was made fun of for saying “queergender,” a term that is now currently being widely used, quite openly by someone I wanted desperately to be friends with. I was outwardly mocked by popular users who only apologized behind closed doors but didn’t bother to clear things up with their followers. Adults who were in their 30s quite literally attacked a 19 year old. It was in that moment that I realized I would never become friends with either side, and not because I didn’t want to.)

I bring this up because as I begun to stop writing soma fics, I also begun to see and understand why people moved away from it. It wasn’t the ship itself, it was the culture surrounding it. However, on tumblr we have the ability to connect intensely with the content we produce. Therefore, the ship itself began to be connected with the shippers and their attitudes towards outside pairings-- that attitude being tied into elitism.

I say this with every ounce of love I can because I once had the exact same mannerism. When you become so tied into one pairing to the point where other ships appear to threaten the existence of it and you react negatively towards it, you become rancid. The popular tag “everything is soma” takes a very dark turn. Even if readers consume another pairing’s work, they will be obliged to say “I ship soma more BUT that was cute.” They will read an entirely different topic and wonder why soma wasn’t inserted into it in the background. They will reject pairings that separate the two as if breaking them up is sin and an insult.

The only reason why I stopped writing my soma fics in 2016 was because I saw a real need to fill in the gaps of other pairings. I took what people were saying to heart and I wanted to change my ways and my perceptions. I saw the animosity of the ship culture and rejected it. I wanted to use what little influence I had to make the fandom just a bit more accepting. In 2016, I don’t think the fandom was ready for it. In 2017, they still weren’t ready for it. In 2020, I see hope, but I wonder sometimes if it’s masqueraded pity because of previous treatment.

In the middle of it all, I went from being the soma angst master to becoming the weird person everyone once knew. I was the friend that people excluded from group chats and I just “wasn’t the same.” Cliques grew extremely large in power in 2017 and exclusion hurt like a bitch.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and completely shut me down was in 2017 when I was graduating as a bachelor. There was a fandom event that I decided to go all in to. For context, there used to be a huge debate on how many times a person should enter in an event, but in my mind, the more exposure the better. My graduation and the event took place at the exact same time, which was cool, but what hurt me was what happened after.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into field school (when you travel to do outdoor excavating) for my major. I’m an anthropologist-- it was an honor. I didn’t plan in advance for it, and if anything, I thought that I would be committed completely to the events and my 5 or what ever entries at the time. I’ve always prided myself in communicating with others, so I made sure to let my partners in the event know what was going on. I was so excited to be going on my first ever excavation and no one at the time said anything otherwise, in fact, they all seemed incredibly supportive. 

What I didn’t know was that I would be called out by name in the event feedback response by one person who felt that I didn’t take the event seriously enough and that I should’ve prioritized my time accordingly. Two of the mods let me know because it referred to me directly, though the name of the submitter was not included. It was not only a slap in the face, but a dumbfound moment that reminded me that wow, fandom content really is someone’s life out there. My enforced silence because of lack of internet in the woods actually upset someone and made them believe that I wronged them, because I put my real life ambitions first before a fandom event.

It was then when I woke up and I remember very clearly thinking to myself: I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to treat my fandom life seriously. I want to participate in fandom for fun, not out of duty. I don’t want to prioritize this life because in the end, if I am hated for putting my work and education first, then I don’t want it.

(For context, I suspect that it was the same person who made a 200 note call out on me during the fandom tension. I respected this person immensely, but I also treated them like the flawed person I believe everyone is. I’m sure because of this, I’m pretty much trash in their eyes, which is totally fine. They have really cute cats so they can’t be all too bad. Don’t look into it too deeply.)

Once my month long field school was up, I was already used to not being on the internet or any of my social media accounts. I didn’t play my mobile games for a month. I didn’t read the news for a month. It was like going cold turkey on the internet, which reshaped my habits entirely. The only time that I had online within that time span was during the weekend, but I spent my time working on my projects and catching up with friends instead of being on apps.

I was also completely fed up with tumblr’s mobile app at the time, so one by one, I deleted my apps. Good bye to tumblr, snapchat, what little I used of instagram, twitter, everything. The only thing I kept was facebook, which was because it is the main platform that I use to message my boyfriend. That meant that any friends I retained from the fandom (who I still contact now) were also friends who had the chance to add me on facebook.

This was the cause of my 2 or 3 year hiatus on tumblr, and therefore the fandom. I occasionally checked back every 6 months to do a few fandom events, but I have several unopened messages and notifications that I haven’t been able to get to. I open my instagram for a few days once a year, and I only go onto twitter if my friends tell me (through facebook) that they dm’d me a post there.

When I left my online persona behind, I quickly strengthened my in person connections. New drama that erupted every other day became replaced with starbucks and boba runs. Reality TV shows replaced fanfiction. Text messages replaced the tumblr activity feed (which still doesn’t work on mobile BTW). I study at cafes unironically with friends instead of typing alone in my room. Overall, it opened my world considerably.

I still like making fun of myself and I try not to take myself seriously. I still make self depreciative memes to send to friends but then double up with kermit heart pics. I’m still a plot bunny, I still write my fics, I still watch my anime, I still play video games, I still sleep at 4am, I still take my depression medication, I still love potatoes, I still use my voice for people who can’t find theirs yet. But I think I’m in a much healthier mindset now, even if I still make stupid shifty posts calling out bad behavior.

Nowadays, I’m working on my Master’s degree in secret. My parents don’t know about it because my mom doesn’t like that I want to go out and do unladylike things like getting an education. I tutor kiddos and I’m really good with younger children, but I’m not going to do anything with kids because I just don’t want to. Instead, I want to work at an archive or a museum to bring my library interests and my anthropology background together. If I had my dream job, I would be a marine archaeologist; however I love my boyfriend of 8 years whom you probably all remember and I really came to terms with my grandeur dreams. I’m extremely happy with living in a small town with loved ones now, and I don’t need to move somewhere far away from my parents to be content. It’s a huge realization.

From 2018 to 2020 I got into actual drama in person while I was job hunting. Adult people suck and honestly it’s kind of embarrassing how ill equipped some people are. Even so, I currently work in middle schools as a media assistant. One of those realms is the library, and honestly it’s like fulfilling a prophecy. As much as I love the social aspect, public schools are an absolute train wreck.

I’m going to wrap this up now. This post is meant to help me close the past and move forward because the fandom culture feels different now. Things from several years ago don’t need to resurface. I want to enjoy my life fully, and fandom life is one of those aspects that I truly did enjoy. I’m going to keep using my voice and act like a fool, but I’m also not going to be losing sleep because of this. People are going to talk about you no matter what, whether positively or negatively, and it’s important to not take it personally.

Idk, go enjoy yourselves. Do things for yourself. It’s more fun that way.

[disbander-of-armies]

2020 tag

I was tagged by the wonderful @hiddenlookingglass! Thank you!

Rules: answer the questions about 2020 and tag some people to pass it on!

Favorite films you watched in 2020? Waves, Phoenix (2014), 1917

Favorite TV shows you watched in 2020? Unorthodox, The Good Place, The Queen’s Gambit, and just finished and loved The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. I also watched Barbarians. The plot is only meh imo but the spoken Latin is excellent!

Favorite songs you listened to in 2020? I don’t really have any because I hardly ever listen to songs, I much prefer soundtracks. I‘ve already mentioned it but this piece from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack has helped me a lot lately. And I really like this remix of the Vikings intro song.

Favorite books you read in 2020?

 -Fiction: Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (really anything by Le Guin is great, Lavinia is one of the best myth retellings I’ve read so far!), Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Der Tag, an dem mein Großvater ein Held war (The Day my Grandfather was a Hero) by Paulus Hochgatterer

-Non-Fiction: Big Gods by Ara Norenzayan, Ghost on the Throne by James Romm (about the years following Alexander the Great’s death - it reads like a novel!), Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning, Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt

How did you spend your birthday this year? My birthday is in June and since we didn’t have any special restrictions during that time it wasn’t different from any other year, which was nice.

What was your most memorable day this year? One was definitely the day of my oral exam for a class where we translated a song from Homer’s Iliad. I feel really honored by the feedback the professor gave me. They told me that they can’t give me the best grade because I wasn’t as good as the others (most of the other students were from the Classical Philology department, which focuses heavily on Ancient Greek and Latin. I’m from the Ancient History branch which focuses on history and culture and has very few mandatory language classes. I’d love to do both but I just don’t have the time). But they also told me that I was the only non-Classical Philology student that didn’t drop out at some point during the semester (I had no idea because everything was online) and they really appreciated all the honest and hard work I put into my translations.

I just appreciate it so much that this professor gave me honest feedback but at the same time saw my love and ambition. I know it will take me a much longer time than others to be able to reach a really good level of Ancient Greek reading comprehension but I am as determined as ever!

What was the most memorable meal you had this year? Eating pizza on a roof terrace in Naples on a warm summer night.

Did you find any new hobbies or interests in quarantine? I started doing yoga. I took a break later on but a friend of mine is giving online lessons now so I started again.

What was the last big thing you remember doing B. C. (before Covid)? I was at a good friend’s birthday party. A lot of nice people and great food, what more could you want?

Positive things that happened to you/biggest lessons learned in 2020? These are actually two separate questions but I want two answer them as one because I think in my case it makes more sense. It’s also the reason I’m doing this ask meme. I’ve already done quite a few of these and I don’t want my blog to become too monotonous but I think this is an important lesson to learn that I want to share.

This year really sucked. One big setback was that my landlord decided it was a good idea to terminate the lease of my roommate and me during the pandemic (class act). I first wanted to move in with a friend but this didn’t work out so I had to move back in with my parents.

And now I’m just ... so thankful it turned out that way. As I’ve already mentioned, my guinea pig Mia had to be put to sleep on December 25th. The last few years, I always left in the morning of December 24th (after filling the cage with veggies and hay of course) to go to my parents and returned in the evening of December 25th. This year I didn’t and so I immediately noticed in the morning of the 25th that something was wrong with her and took her to the vet. If it had been like the years before, she would have had to suffer a whole day and I would have had a huge shock when coming home and probably wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself. But this way I was able to get help as quick as possible and had someone there to give me a hug.

I still think 2020 sucked. But this way I can make my peace with it a little bit and that is the lesson I take away from it: There are still things to be thankful for even in dark times like these.

What are you most looking forward in 2021? Things returning to (somewhat) normal and me continuing to improve my French skills (I’ve been doing French on Duolingo for a few months now and I hope I’ll stick with it)

[alywats]

All The Books I Read In 2020

Here she is! The full list of books I read in 2020. My goal was to read 52 books again this year, but once lockdown started I upped it to 100, and I ultimately surpassed even that goal!! I think reading is so important for my personal growth and mental health, so the last two years I have made reading a big priority in my life, and it is the best choice I could have made. This year especially, I found reading to be such a comfort and such a great tool for keeping the quarantine blues at bay. Here’s to all the books I read in 2020, and all the books I will read in 2021! 

132 books, 44,531 pages, and a refreshed passion for learning and growth: 

The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini (372 pgs) 4.5

A Discovery of Witches- Deborah Harkness (579 pgs) 2.75

The Call of the Wild and Selected Stories- Jack London (176 pgs) 4

I Wear The Black Hat -Chuck Klosterman (225 pgs) 3.75

Digital Fortress- Dan Brown (430 pgs) 3.75

Night Boat to Tangier- Kevin Barry (224 pgs) 2

The Chemist- Stephanie Meyer (518 pgs) 3

Find Me- Andre Aciman (272 pgs) 3.5

A Walk In The Woods- Bill Bryson (394 pgs) 4.5

Invisible Monsters- Chuck Palahniuk (304 pgs) 2.5

Underland, A Deep Time Journey- Robert MacFarlane (496 pgs) 3.25

The Dutch House -Ann Patchett (337 pgs) 5

Notes From a Small Island -Bill Bryson (324 pgs) 3.75

Home Work -Julie Andrews (560 pgs) 3.5

100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know About Maths and The Arts- John D. Barrow (320 pgs) 2.25

On the Road -Jack Kerouac (307 pgs) 3.5

Train Dreams -Denis Johnson (116 pgs) 4.25

2001: A Space Odyssey -Arthur C. Clarke (297 pgs) 4.75

Educated: A Memoir -Tara Westover (334 pgs) 5

Carrie -Stephen King (253 pgs) 3.5

Dig. -A.S. King (394 pgs) 4

salt slow -Julia Armfield (208 pgs) 3

Don’t Call Us Dead -Danez Smith (96 pgs) 5

Convenience Store Woman -Sayaka Murata (163 pgs) 3.25

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir -Bill Bryson (288 pgs) 3.75

Who Moved My Cheese? -Spencer Johnson (96 pgs) 3.5

The Truth About Keeping Secrets -Savannah Brown (336 pgs) 4

All-American Poem -Matthew Dickman (85 pgs) 3.5

2010: Odyssey Two -Arthur C. Clarke (320 pgs) 4

Behind Her Eyes -Sarah Pinborough (307 pgs) 3

The Stand -Stephen King (1440 pgs) 4

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous- Ocean Vuong (246 pgs) 4.5

Homie: Poems -Danez Smith (96 pgs) 4

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet -Becky Chambers (516 pgs) 3.5

The Silent Patient -Alex Michealide (325 pgs) 3.75

Talking As Fast As I Can -Lauren Graham (205 pgs) 3.5

Gregor the Overlander -Suzanne Collins (326 pgs) 1.5

The Transmigration of Bodies -Yuri Herrera (112 pgs) 2.5

The Deep -Rivers Solomon (166 pgs) 4

The Last Man -Mary Shelley (478 pgs) 3

Oryx and Crake -Margaret Atwood (389 pgs) 4.25

One Summer: America, 1927 -Bill Bryson (456 pgs) 3.5

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe -Benjamin Alire Sáenz (359 pgs) 3

The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest -Anatoli Boukreev (297 pgs) 3.75

2061: Odyssey Three -Arthur C. Clarke (302 pgs) 3

Where I Belong -Alan Doyle (315 pgs) 4

Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World -Matt Parker (314 pgs) 4

Normal People -Sally Rooney (304 pgs) 4

Dinosaur Tales -Ray Bradbury (144 pgs) 3

Someday, Someday, Maybe -Lauren Graham (340 pgs) 3.25

The Power -Naomi Alderman (341 pgs) 4.25

Deception Point -Dan Brown (558 pgs) 2.5

3001: The Final Odyssey -Arthur C. Clarke (272 pgs) 3.75

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes -Suzanne Collins (540 pgs) 3.5

The Vegetarian-Han Kang (188 pgs) 3

The Map of Salt and Stars -Zeyn Joukhadar (368 pgs) 4.5

One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey -Sam Keith (224 pgs) 4

11/22/63 -Stephen King (849 pgs) 4.5

The Ballad of Black Tom -Victor LaValle (149 pgs) 3.5

Girl With A Pearl Earring -Tracy Chevalier (233 pgs) 4

The Year of the Flood -Margaret Atwood (431 pgs) 3.5

In A Sunburned Country -Bill Bryson (335 pgs) 3

Disappearing Earth -Julia Phillips (312 pgs) 2.5

The Hidden Life of Trees -Peter Wohlleben (288 pgs) 3.5

The People in the Trees -Hanya Yanagihara (368 pgs) 4

Shadow of Night -Deborah Harkness (584 pgs) 3

High Fidelity -Nick Hornby (340 pgs) 3.5

If It Bleeds -Stephen King (528 pgs) 3.5

Sharp Objects -Gillian Flynn (254 pgs) 4

A Newfoundlander in Canada -Alan Doyle (244 pgs) 4

The Water Dancer -Ta-Nehisi Coates (406 pgs) 4

The Fellowship of the Ring -J.R.R. Tolkien (398 pgs) 5

The Bluest Eye -Toni Morrison (216 pgs) 4

Into the Wild -Jon Krakauer (207 pgs) 4

Fahrenheit 451 -Ray Bradbury (194 pgs) 4

Burial Rites -Hannah Kent (336 pgs) 4.5

The Poet X -Elizabeth Acevedo (368 pgs) 5

The End of October -Lawrence Wright (400 pgs) 1.5

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine -Gail Honeyman (336 pgs) 3.5

Survivor -Chuck Palahniuk (304 pgs) 3.5

Every Song Ever -Ben Ratliff (272 pgs) 2

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor -Hank Green (452 pgs) 4

The Time Traveler's Wife -Audrey Niffenegger (540 pgs) 3.5

The Body: A Guide for Occupants -Bill Bryson (450 pgs) 3

Mr. Mercedes -Stephen King (437 pgs) 3.5

Girl, Woman, Other -Bernardine Evaristo (453 pgs) 4.5

Midnight Sun -Stephenie Meyer (662 pgs) 2

The Maltese Falcon -Dashiell Hammett (213 pgs) 3

The Hunting Party -Lucy Foley (406 pgs) 4

The Hating Game -Sally Thorne (387 pgs) 2.5

My Year of Rest and Relaxation -Ottessa Moshfegh (304 pgs) 4

Real Life -Brandon Taylor (329 pgs) 4

My Sister the Serial Killer -Oyinkan Braithwaite (226 pgs) 4

The Answer Is...: Reflections on My Life -Alex Trebek (304 pgs) 3

Eileen -Ottessa Moshfegh (272 pgs) 3

Answering Back -Carol Ann Duffy (144 pgs) 4

Then She Was Gone -Lisa Jewell (359 pgs) 3.5

Death In Her Hands -Ottessa Moshfegh (259 pgs) 3.5

This Is How You Lose The Time War -Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone (209 pgs) 4

The Goldfinch -Donna Tartt (771 pgs) 4.5

Shutter Island -Dennis Lehane (369 pgs) 3.5

The Devil All The Time -Donald Ray Pollock (261 pgs) 4

I'm Thinking of Ending Things -Iain Reid (241 pgs) 2

Bunny -Mona Awad (307 pgs) 3

The Snowman -Jo Nesbø (516 pgs) 2.5

Something Wicked This Way Comes -Ray Bradbury (293 pgs) 3

Pretty Little Liars -Sara Shepard (286 pgs) 1

Psycho -Robert Bloch (208 pgs) 3.5

Along Came a Spider -James Patterson (449 pgs) 3

American Psycho -Brett Easton Ellis (399 pgs) 4

Night Sky With Exit Wounds -Ocean Vuong (89 pgs) 4

Arctic Dreams -Barry Lopez (496 pgs) 4

Four Colors Suffice -Robin Wilson (280 pgs) 4.5

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry -Fredrik Backman (372 pgs) 3

Such A Fun Age -Kiley Reid (320 pgs) 4

In The Dream House -Carmen Maria Machado (251 pgs) 4.5

Beach Read -Emily Henry (361 pgs) 3.5

The Queen's Gambit -Walter Tevis (243 pgs) 3.5

The Book of Life -Deborah Harkness (561 pgs) 2.5

Atomic Habits -James Clear (319 pgs) 2.5

Heart Berries -Terese Marie Mailhot (143 pgs) 3

The Kiss Quotient -Helen Hoang (323 pgs) 3

Around The World In 80 Days -Jules Verne (252 pgs) 3

Dolores Claiborne -Stephen King (384 pgs) 4.5

Flatland -Edwin Abbott (96 pgs) 3.5

The Impossible Girl -Lydia Kang (364 pgs) 2.5

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through The looking Glass -Lewis Carroll (239 pgs) 3.5

Kiss The Girls -James Patterson (481 pgs) 2

The Bride Test -Helen Hoang (296 pgs) 2.5

In A Holidaze -Christina Lauren (307 pgs) 3.5

‘Twas The Knife Before Christmas -Jacqueline Frost (309 pgs) 2.5

The Great Alone -Kristin Hannah (435 pgs) 4

[ambitionsource]

Are any of the other characters shipping jeric or....? Are Shawn and Cory seeing these developments?

cory and shawn aren’t seeing anything because they literally are so oblivious to 90% of what’s going on around them. especially when it comes to their older brothers. they don’t know a thing. as i said to es, they’re basically the hitchcock and scully of adams. should be fired, but we know they won’t be.

the ones who really know what’s up are riley and isa. they can both sense the vibes (especially on eric’s end) and get that their relationship is deeper than just a work partnership... even if it’s difficult to get eric to admit that out loud. we might be seeing them have such convos with him now and again in S3. they want to get more information out of jack too, but their only effective connection to him is lucas and there’s no way lucas would ever ask jack about that. the thing with lucas is like... he can barely read and understand his own romantic feelings, he is absolute crap at picking up anyone else’s. he never even thinks that eric and jack could have something more than a work relationship from the offset cause it just doesn’t make sense to him. or rather it just never even occurs to him. like yeah he subconsciously thinks of jack like a dad and eric kind of like a weird stepdad, but never does his brain put that together as like oh so there must be something between them too.

(considering his own parents don’t even love each other, that’s not surprising. but anyway).

maya has no perception at all of their relationship and doesn’t care. zay and charlie don’t think about it because they don’t interact with them the same way rilucadora do. dylan one time in sophomore year was like “i think counselor e is into principal jack” and asher was like dylan that’s crazy, they don’t like each other and hate working together and also it would be so unprofessional, jack is a stickler that would never happen. and dylan is just like... guess we’ll see...

and i guess we will see won’t we!

-- Maggie & Es

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2020 Reviews: brought to you by quarantine

aw shit look who’s got the time to do some of these again yeah that’s right it’s me

22/7

For 11/12 of its runtime this was an astonishingly forced exercise in hacky tragic backstory that thoroughly answers the question of what happens when assembly line jobbers jump on the already rickety KyoAni bandwagon. So I was ready to give it a well deserved meme score of 3.14/10. Then it remembered it actually had a gimmick and managed to completely fail at that as well, with one of the most thematically misguided endings I can think of. Oh well, if nothing else I laughed. 2/10

Asteroid in Love

Well, it’s competent and inoffensive. What else can I say? I guess it’s pretty amusing how blatant the gay marriage implications get by the end, but that’s not really, you know, quality all by its own (and Harukana Receive does it better). It’s also weird how its first season clearly ends at episode 9 and it just quickly does a second one in the time it has left. Apart from that it’s a slightly above-average Kiraralike with good character moments but a real drought of content (note: dropping exposition on your topic isn’t content) in the middle. Fun enough, but really doesn’t leave me wanting more. 6/10

Dorohedoro

This had much potential to suck but then it didn’t. The biggest surprise was that Dorohedoro is a comedy; a splatter comedy with a core story worth taking seriously, yes, but this is not horror, or mystery, or even action, even if it has all those elements at points. And it manages to be consistently funny. The other big surprise is that the nonsense really does start to come together and is meaningful where it counts, so it has much better worldbuilding than most. Looks really good too - you might take exception to the CG, but it allowed MAPPA to make the rest look great so it’s overall still a plus. Definitely needs a sequel though, because the plot seems to just get started and then it ends like there’s an episode next week. 8/10

ID: INVADED

Ei Aoki’s Inception fanfic turned out very nice, with neat visuals, cool characters and a story that comes together in the end. I mean, come on, it’s an anime where Kenjiro Tsuda literally talks people to death, how can I not like it. It’s not perfect; it’s stuck with some pacing problems, strangely superfluous side characters and ultimately less ambition than it could (maybe even should) have. But it’s also weird in a good way and moderately thoughtful without being pretentious about it. 8/10

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die

Romantic comedy? Eh, maybe not quite. Funny riffing on wota dumbassery without being mean-spirited about it? Yep. Oshibudo gets the tone (the critical aspect in a show like this) right and it actually ranks fairly high simply as an idol show when that’s not even the point, which is really surprising. It’s just very charming, even if a little simple. 8/10

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

So everyone’s losing their shit over how great Eizouken is and I’m just like nah, man. Not that it’s truly bad, it certainly has its fun moments and undeniably cool animation at times. But it really says a lot when in a show supposedly all about how amazing creativity is, the no-fun-allowed producer is the only character I like - Kanamori is indeed great, shame about Nerdlinger and Plot Device though. And it’s full of the kind of standard boomer animation bromides that just make me think “well, if Ghibli is supposed to be so great, why am I watching this instead of the real thing?” It also has notably poor and uncreative use of background music, which wouldn’t irk me as much if it wasn’t lecturing on the topic. At this point I’m fairly certain that I simply don’t like Yuasa’s style much, no matter what he does. 6/10

Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

So I’m watching the “final” episode of this and I realize that I care about this random, poorly explained fanservice fight between Mami and Sayaka much more than I care about any of the characters this show is ostensibly about. And that’s pretty much Magireco in a nutshell: It has very little of its own, what it does have is split among way too many video game characters, and it’s at its best when it’s just being dumb and bombastic or lazily replicating the style of Madoka. It’s definitely not good (and the things it does to the Madoka lore are double ungood), but as long as you keep in mind that it’s just meaningless Madoka-ish things, it’s barely entertaining enough. 5/10

Natsunagu!

Natsunagu turned out to be a pleasant (if very cheap) short film that’s severely compromised by broken up into weekly 3-minute chunks. Episodes that short can work, but not for material that depends on atmosphere and character engagement. I can only assume I’d like it more if I watched it all in one go. 5/10

Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It

This one started out as a one-note romantic comedy with the rare novel note, which then got more and more tired as it went on, and the introduction of decidedly less novel characters didn’t help. But by the end it recovered somewhat from not being much good at comedy anymore by being actually pretty good at paying off a romance, which is maybe even rarer. Remove bear though, what the hell. 6/10

Somali and the Forest Spirit

Somali just kept doing its thing (which is dadfeels/protect the blob). Still can’t think of another show so intensely laser-focused on that one thing, to the point they’re constructing an entire fantasy universe around it. I liked the fluffy/introspective parts a lot more so than the grimdark/”let’s get Somali into some danger so dad can rescue her” ones, but at least the former ones are more common overall, and I understand that both are important for the other one to work. So yeah, good show, even if I wish it used the big guns less often. 7/10

Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun

I wasn’t too hot on this one at first (apart from the looks, which were always really cool), but I have to say it has won me over by the end. It has likeable and occasionally funny characters, some meat to its setting and a mildly interesting streak of intrigue running though it. Of course it also doesn’t really answer anything, but I’m satisfied. 7/10

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki S2

Peer pressure presents: the other tourism short of the season, ft. material that fits the format. While it’s still not really good, it’s an improvement over S1. Mainly because it stops trying to extract humor from the characters themselves and gets back to dropping the hot #nagoyatruths, which are the thing I’m here for. 6/10