#this was very enlightening and tbh the explanations make total sense to me

[coulsonlives]

Huh, TIL.

[tricorops]

#1 - *insert some sort of pretentious title *

welcome in ! here’s where everything starts…

i probably should have thought a bit more before starting this entry but alas. here we are ! i guess ill go chronologically so the story makes sense,, if i miss anythinging im positive futrure me will fill in the gaps, but my memory is pretty shit tbh.

Before we ~officially~ start i guess ill introduce myself. i have a name (as does everyone fucking duh) but ive recently realized i dont feel like my name is mine. cant really explan it exaclty right now but in the last couple of months, ive gotten really angry that people call me by name,, whose to know whyy /s. realistically it’s probably due to the fact that im not a woman and haven’t been for many years now. i think im just scared to really admit it ? like i really dont like who i am, i dont fit in, and im so fucking sad all the time but im scared to start exploring my gender identity for who knows what reason. if anyone knows, please enlighten me. im 25, single and have never had a parter, been on one failed date (yikes), and haven’t come out to my parents. big. oof yall. i have a job that is what i thought i wanted to do, but im second guessing it rn since there is so much im not able to address or even attempt to fix. FUN /s

cool intro down i guess. now to the beginning ish ?

my earliest memory is my mom feeling me smashed avocado, but apparently that never happened. im an only child who’s always wated a sibling. my childhood was very lonely. my parents essentially removed themselves from their families, so i didn’t grow up hanging out with cousins, grandparents, aunts/uncles, literally no one besides my 2 parents. the memories i have of my first house are fuzzy, but i feel like there were a lot of rooms for only 3 people. i lived on a quiet street with lots of families with children of different ages, but i dont have any memories of playing with kids on my street or going to anyone’s house for playdates and what not. not sure why.

i remember when i was really little (maybe like 4 or 5 ish??) we went on a trip to disneyland. i think we flew there instead of driving. one of the days my mom was putting my shoes on— they were brown winnie the pooh sandals with buckles at the ankle and i had this weird feeling. it felt like i was in a dream like i was maybe lucid dreamis sort of? and i had this weird oedipus complex for my mom. like i saw how much my dad loved her and i wanted that,, its odd nw that im reflecting on it and i know many people go through this stage of development but like why did 4 year old me think i could love and care for my mom the same way my dad did ?? fucking kid lol. anyway perhaps this is graphic but whatever. i remember i was on the edge of the bed and she was sitting on a chair she pulled up across from me. my foot was between he legs so she could buckle the strap on my shoe and my brain just told me to push my foot closer to her? idk idk. but i push my foot closer to her and like tapped it and i remeber feeling hmm like giddy ? like i was so happy i had done that and then i went to do it again and my mom had like thrown my foot off the chair and started yelling at me. rightfully so like totally not ok for a 4 year old to try and arouse their parent. but in that moment i went from being so fucking giddy and happy and almost proud to feeling so fucking ashamed and unloved. and as she was yelling at me i just cried and cried and i remember just not even wanting to go to disneyland anymore because i didnt want to be around my mom. wild. everything in my little world felt so fucking big that my parent telling me not to do somthing inappropriate made me not want to do the fucking disneyland run anymore.

i dont know what came out of the rest of the day but we Must have gone to disney or soemthing. now, you maay be thinking “oh getting yelled at for doing something made you not do it again” right? wrong. my dumb fucking pea brain wanted to chase that feeling agian so the next fucking day when my shoes were getting put on i tried to do it again. there wasnt any yelling that time though. i just remember my leg getting pushed again, my name being said sharply, and my mom telling me to put my shoes on by myself or to not wear shoes at all. and what do you think little me felt? disppointment, guilt, ashamed. all to be expected but it hit my world hard (again 4 years old. every little thing feels like the world is crashing).

how does this relate to the present? i dont fucking know but i might figure it out along the line. anywho theres other things i remember from this age of my life but they don’t really fit the theme im trying to follow so i wont bore yall with the extra details. didnt think this one would be so long but here we are. i cant wait for the highschool installments bc those are FOR SURE going to make me cry hahahahahahahahaha strap in.

on the dockett for next time: elementary school. probaly around 2nd or 3rd grade. little preview— the first time i was called a lesbian (derogatory) and, upon reflection, my first crush phew 😮‍💨

ps. i know there are probably spelling mistakes and im not following any grammar rules. stream of consciousness yall. cant really blame me plus its uhhh 3 am here so yall are already know whats up.

[janiedean]

Do you have any theories about how ASoIaF will end? Like, who do you think will die and how, what will happen to Jon (seriously, I've read anything from "he's tots gonna marry Dany and they'll have kids and rule together forever" to "he'll die in a Heroic Sacrifice to Save Everyone" to "after all the shit he went through he's just gonna be like, 'fuck everything and everyone, Imma go wander beyond the Wall for the rest of my life!"), stuff like that?

HAHAHAHAHAHAH I JUST REPLIED TO SOMEONE IN PRIVATE OVER THAT I’m gonna c/p the jon and dany related parts and then add the rest, call me back in ten years to see if I’m right

SO, EXPLANATION OF THE MY EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR THEORY RE JON AND DANY:

- at the end of adwd dany's back where she came from and hasn't even met tyrion so everything that happened in the show BEFORE drogon flew her off should happen AFTER she's back in mereen- which puts her arriving in westeros WAY after the time she's in the show now- also the fact that in the book there's aegon prancing around dragonstone along with jon connington and the likes suggests me that IF no one dies before she has to deal with them first while shit goes down in the north and possibly grayscale spreads and blah blah blah

also, jon has to come back to life and I'm betting moneyt it's not as easy as in the show, grrm has to tie up the sansa plot and it's gonna take a lot longer because sansa is not in the north currently so it's gonna take ALL of wow for the starks to get back to winterfell IF they do get back to winterfell in wow and for people to find out jon was robb's legitimate heir and so on 

first conclusion: there's no way jon and dany even meet before either the very end of wow or actually ados and by that time the zombies should be WAY too much of a menace for them to be worrying about bending the knee and shit

taken the first conclusion into account and that ados should be all about defeating the others with whoever has survived banding together and that the only surviving copy of robb's will is currently with howland reed who is GOING to have to show up soon, r+l=j should be a known thing BEFORE jon and dany meet or anyway it'd happen soon after so I honestly don't know if it's likely that they'd hook up in canon or if it wouldn't be MASSIVELY weird if they do, but anyway I could be wrong on that bc the text evidence for those two sort of hooking up is actually there even if I don't particularly agree with it, but NEVER MIND

anyway at this point they're obv gonna do away with the zombies which is gonna cause even more casualties and shit which is not gonna make anyone any happier, jon's gonna have to pull his azor ahai stint because it's him and whatever (AND HE SURVIVES IT), I'm 99% sure that in between all of this aegon and jonc AT LEAST are gonna die and it's not going to be just them, anyway at the end they're gonna be left with a post-apocalypse westeros where most of the people who wanted the throne out of I NEED TO HAVE IT BECAUSE POWER or I HAVE RIGHTS ON IT (ie stannis if he survives which I doubt) will have lost most of the interest/force of will

THIS STATED, unpopular jon theory: the thing about his storyline is that he's going through all the typical secret chosen hero steps but every time anything happens it goes badly/it's not what he wants (he loses his family, his first true love dies, he becomes LC and instead of going well he gets stabbed etc) and what did he want at the beginning of the books? to not be a bastard. where is he now? ops, your father was rhaegar targaryen and your mom was lyanna stark OOOOPS. which is *not* what he wanted, he wanted to be a *stark*. but furthermore, idk if it's likely that R married lyanna before leaving her in the tower of joy or not, but if he did he's actually legitimate and has the best claim since he's male and legit son of the legit male heir, and who's gonna want that job? no one. so who is going to have to take it? yeah, HIM. and he's going to... dislike about every moment of it at least in the beginning (MORE ON THIS AFTER THE DANY PART)

now, on to dany: in that scenario they COULD get married and united the dynasties again, but... they'd know about the incest part of it and idk if he'd go for it, but honestly, the thing with dany is also that she started wanting to go to westeros, and what's most actually ironic/backwards if she finds out that after the zombies, meereen and basically getting shit all the way through she actually doesn't even *want* it? I mean the thing is, dany imo (in the books) seemed more at ease/happiest/filling out a role she seemed cut for when she was a *khaleesi*, not when she was ruling, and for a khaleesi she was a++++ because she was very forward thinking, did away with most of the worse stuff in her khalasar and was actually doing some seriously nice enlightened sort of revolution differently from how it went in mereen, so like... my eventual endgame theory is that she goes back to essos to actually be the enlightened full-time khaleesi that essos deserves and making good use of what she learned while jon picks the pieces up in westeros and comes to term with being the only fantasy hero in existence who didn't want to be king at all and ended up there anyway and has to make it work

ALSO: my pet sorta wishful thinking theory re jon is that given that westeros will be a post-apocalypse mess in shambles with most previously powerful lords being either dead or done for and with a complete new system and in which most people will have been through too many wars, zombies and so on to give a fuck, jon could actually rule as *jon snow* rather than jon targaryen or stark (which imo is the name he’d take for himself if he had to choose) without getting married and continuing the dynasty and then after he dies after fixing what he could and putting things on the right way, the seven kingdoms secede, the throne gets destroyed (if jon doesn’t do it before) and they go back to being independent. like, I’m very much aware that it’s not very likely but idk IT MAKES SENSE TO ME THEMATICALLY OKAY? *shrug*

other characters and the likes:

people who are absolutely toast: cersei, the boltons, euron/victarion, lady stoneheart, the elder clegane and someone in dany’s retinue are goners, same as (SADLY FOR ME) aegon/jonc. jonc is definitely dying of grayscale unless what happens in the show with sam and jorah happens to him but I highly doubt that, aegon’s dying while going against the others or anyway after they all join up with dany and then someone else (possibly tyrion since grrm said that not all of the heads of the dragon have to be targ) takes his place. anyway, both goners. very sadly for me. tommen is also a dead man walking, either how it happened in the show or some other way but nope. myrcella might be but I’d like to think being in dorne and grrm not wanting to kill everybody in dorne because BUDGET might be her ticket to salvation, but I’m on the fence. hodor is also sadly dying most probably because the way they did in the show was too clever and well-done to be out of d&d’s imagination. at this point shireen is also most probably dying tho NOT HOW IT HAPPENED IN THE SHOW DAMN IT. stoneheart is dying because brienne kills her to save jaime and she becomes her aerys THIS IS MY PET THEORY OF THEORIES GRRM WILL HAVE TO PRY IT AWAY FROM ME. lf is definitely dying either thrown out of the moon door or some other way but he’s toast. also most freys are 100% toast.

people I’m definitely on the fence about: stannis - I’m sort of thinking he might die but I’m not 100% sure and anyway if he does it won’t be like in the bloody show, jaime (I thought he was kinda headed for the heroic death in the beginning but now I’m starting to think he has some chances of pulling through I really hope he does tbh), meera, the decent people at the wall (I mean some are gonna die when the zombies inevitably pass but I hope they don’t), jorah (not enough elements to decide sorry), blackfish & jeyne poole (same as above), sand snakes.

meanwhile, main people I’m definitely sure are living + their endgames for the ones I have endgames for:

the living starks are staying alive. sansa eventually ends up as rickon’s regent and bran is going to have some luke skywalker moment where he has to decide if he wants to go darkside or not and then obviously decides not to, but eventually renounces being the three-eyed raven the way the previous one had and rejoins the living. arya stays in WF or goes with jon to KL when he inevitably does - could be in his kingsguard or she can stay in WF and help sansa out. (on the fence re gendr/ya happening - might be, might not.) sandor ends up as sansa’s sworn shield at least.

brienne definitely makes out of it alive after fighting the white walkers at the wall with everyone else who had managed to get there. if jaime hasn’t died in front of her while fighting the white walkers (if he dies that’s how I see him going, and anyway they totally will have hooked up before I 100% believe that) they’re going back to tarth together, if not she goes there alone and proceeds to be the awesome person she is. (I said bitter*sweet* before right? I think she has a good shot at the sweet part.)

arianne gets her throne in dorne ofc

tyrion gets casterly rock while tywin rolls in his grave because I doubt he’d go to essos with dany AS PER MY HEADCANON BEFORE

sam gets his maester’s chain but eventually goes on to be jon’s right hand wherever jon ends up (I think in KL so XD hey THE CURRENT ARCHMAESTER IS DEAD)

if margaery survives (before the show I’d have bet on it, now I’m not so sure) she’s ending up in a way more demoted position than she is rn but anyway some tyrell’s gonna live - I don’t think loras might be one tho

davos is definitely surviving - if he doesn’t end up tied with anyone same as he’s in the show (I mean if he REALLY became jon’s hand of the king I’d die of happiness but idk how likely it is) - he’s coming back home a-la sam in lotr, like ‘hey marya I’m home’ 

theon and asha are definitely not dying. asha is eventually ruling the iron islands somewhat. about theon I’m not sure because I don’t have enough elements to decide if he’s going back to the islands (doubtful) or staying north (maybe) but anyway theon’s surviving that shit. he didn’t have the mother of all abuse survivor recovery storylines to die just when he can get to live without anyone breathing down his neck and trying to force his alliances. like I’m 100% sure theon doesn’t die it’s the one thing I’d bet actual money on after canon jb lol

varys is probably gonna live because he’s too smart not to

edmure is surviving and getting riverrun but he and roslin prob won’t separate so he also gets the twins or something along that line of thinking

I’m sure I prob. forgot someone but that’s the main lines of it I think XD let’s see how wrong am I if these books actually see the light of day

btw this is all based on book canon, on the show I have no fucking clue anymore #rip

[kacheeking]

the lost years/months/days

haven’t revisited/thought about things that I’ve been reading on my own terms for a while, but this was the last time I was taking note roughly from July 2015 to May 2016: 

no. 3 shit i’ve been reading: circa march 2016

Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa – Joan Jacobs Brumberg (Found this incredibly illuminating re: sainthood and 16/17th century starvation in the name of religion. Made me think more about the intersections of appetite, power, religion and how this came to a head in that age. The Victorian era sections were also really interesting, I think since I’ve never thought specifically about how food and physical appetite came into the picture even though I’ve known so much about social mores of the time and how that would have been in line? I think reading this overall, esp when they started getting closer to the modern age, I just held this sheer sense of being appalled by medical practice and how eating disorders were treated, viewed and patients subjected to unfair/uncomfortable/even dangerous power dynamics. Feel like it’s so difficult to be a woman, though it’s improving, and my feminist self balked at so much that went on in the book re: this screwed up relationship between physical appetite (sexual and food-related), madonna-whore complexes, freedoms and rebellions and how in the face of so much external pressure women turn inwards and into and on themselves.)

Living Beautifully – Pema Chodron (Last Buddhist book that we had to read for class as part of a course that aimed at understanding the conception of “self” through various lenses e.g. psychoanalytic, evolutionary-biology, religious, etc. Still struggle to reconcile a lot of Buddhist concepts with the reality of a modern nation-state framework that we have to live in. Can see its merits on an individual level but in class, was agitated when the professor seemed to dismiss/relegate discussions of privilege, and power to the sidelines, or equate sufferings that in my mind seem absolutely incompatible. Maybe I’m not “enlightened” yet? Maybe I don’t want to be.)

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (Liked this more than other sci-fi that i’ve picked up. Can see why it’s a “classic”. also read this at a time when i was very much alone/wanted the experience of solitude. want to pick up more sci-fi in future, wondering why i was biased against this genre in the past??)

Devotional Poems – Joe Hall (didn’t seem clean enough, like some phrases were superfluous/didn’t add anything to the force of a poem. a lot of imagery, sound and fury but with no object or point. cacophonous but i didn’t enjoy this collection)

Once in the West – Christian Wiman (really enjoyed this. at first was disappointed – somehow poems that have monosyllable lines or single word lines strike me as irregular/ineffective (?) but this is unwarranted bias i suppose because a lot of the poems ended up having an unexpected resonance. reading wiman and also other poets in class i think you gain an appreciation for what objectively good poetry is. people say that art is subjective but that’s some bullshit at least at the preliminary stages because being an editor for a creative literary magazine i have read a LOT of bad writing and it is clearly not subjective. anyway, what was i on? always enjoy religious/devotional poetry specifically, and most of the time it is circa 16th/17th century, but wiman combines the modernist poetic aesthetic with something enduring and that always wins me over.)

Why be happy when you can be normal? – Jeanette Winterson (read this over two days, and by that i mean it took slightly over 2+/3 hours to get through it all maybe? incredibly easy to read which was why it went so quickly. liked this a lot and want to read more by winterson)

Nobody is ever missing – Catherine Lacey (read this over three days but grew more exasperated as it progressed. think i’m done with self-indulgence/characters who i perceive as self-indulgent. there is more draw for me, now, i think, to contemplate urgencies to others instead of urgencies only to yourself. i want to read not about escapism but about handling ties to history, ties to others, ties that threaten to envelope you but also uplift. this novel was about a woman who leaves a decent life to stay in a sullen silent space of isolation and somehow i cannot accept that anymore.)

numero dos: shit i’ve been reading circa jan 2016

Completed

The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell (i liked this and the fact that david mitchell writes so comfortably and well about/when placing his narrative in irish/english contexts. re: this book, i guess we handle/respond to mortality differently. the dystopian end made me think about wanting to recycle/be more environmentally-conscious) – January

Civilization and its discontents – Sigmund Freud (read this for class, again with all freud that i’ve read, some resonates and some i call total bullshit on (everything related to his gender theory tbh).

Man’s Search for Himself – Rollo May (read this for class. every time i read something approximating insightful about self-knowledge i somehow find a crack of doubt that then spreads across the text. there was a short segment about physicality and self-consciousness that i could see be true (and even then only in my context), but i lie in the crevice and believe that the self is unknowable so maybe this class is really just an exercise in futility 4 me?)

A General Theory of Love – Lewis et. al. (read for class again. Generally found this interesting, esp because it put a scientific spin on a theory of attachment and human connection. felt like the presence of objective science, though that is debatable, gave credence to the kind of subjective emotions we have all felt, and so was comforting in some small way.)

February: The Moral Animal – Robert Wright (for class again. basically an evolutionary biology perspective/explanation of morality. Interesting to see but idk, something about attributing so many things/our choices, etc. to biology feels inherently…wrong? but maybe that’s his point.)

Mlodinow, Leonard. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior (fascinating but Mlodinow jumps around a lot when writing and it makes me less inclined to believe him?)

What the Buddha Taught – Rahula (feel like the more I read about Buddhism, the more confused I am esp wrt to its metaphysical concepts. felt like a good introduction to something that’s been familiar all my life but i’ve never gotten to know intellectually. but there is something inherent about “unknowable” concepts that may be just shy of religious concepts, but still unacceptable to me)

Four Quartets – TS Eliot (probably one of the best collections of poetry that i’ve ever read. eliot goes into abstractions but grapples with the heart of the matter and there is anguish and brazen honesty and no hesitance to be ugly if that makes sense. need to reread this, probably aloud)

The Monk and the Philosopher – jean-françois revel, matthieu ricard (complicates/simplifies the ideas of buddhism? I can’t quite make up my mind. but the comparison to philosophy and subjecting it to the kind of ‘scientific’ and dialectical method was useful for me to understand it further. that is, beyond metaphors. side note: am q taken with this format of prose—conversation printed)

shit i’ve been reading circa July 2015 

Not that kind of girl – Lena Dunham (felt pretentious at a lot of points) – July

The diving bell and the butterfly – Jean Dominique Bauby (quite good) – July

Madness – Marya Hornbacher (this made me cry) -July

Eat and Run – Scott Jurek (motivation to run as all books about running are) – July

AWOL on the Appalachian trail – David Miller (gets boring if you haven’t been to the AT)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollen (liked this. made me think about my choices and the exact ethical structure behind it – read also: consider the lobster by david foster wallace for a similar/alternative perspective) – August

What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami (long time coming to read this, perfect short prose about the draw of running. feel like most people who enjoy running and associate it with thinking/contemplation will get it) – August

Bad feminist – Roxane Gay (brutal at points, beautiful mostly) – August

Under the banner of heaven – Jon Krakauer (this was incredible. well-researched and comprehensive but extremely smooth narrative about mormon fundamentalism.) – September

Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann (enjoyed this) – September

Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace (title essay is a gem, the rest ranged from obscure to mildly intriguing) – September

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng (above average) – November

The People’s Republic of Amnesia – Louis Lim (emotional reporting, slated to go one way, but expectedly so) – November

History of Chinese Philosophy – Wing-Tsit Chan (need to reread, slowly, and in detail)

Drinking: A Love Story – Caroline Knapp (well-written and need to stop reading memoirs on vice/transferable behaviours) – November

Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari (ok. choice) – November

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers (liked this a lot, eggers has great arrogant style that works) – December

Slade House – David Mitchell (perfect short read. thrilling. fantasy.) – December

Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff (liked this but it ) – December

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami (took a while to get into, but enjoyed this, esp folding routines that appeared in the book into my mind. there is a quietness that steals its way through the pages when the protagonist makes his sandwiches, thinks, goes deep into dry wells) – December