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lizziestudieshistory · 4 years

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Books of 2020 - March

Enforced isolation made me read a lot... Here are the 10 books I read!

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #1) We all know I adore this series - I reread it every year after all. This time I read it to annotate the text and do a proper deep-dive into the world Sanderson is creating in preparation for Rythmn of War coming out later this year.

The Binding - Bridget Collins I still don’t know how I feel about Collins’ book. It’s a historical fiction novel with a subtle hint of magical realism through the concept of Binding - using some form of magic (I’m not entirely sure how) to turn real memories into books. This concept is what made me and my uni friends buddy read this novel in the first place; it sounds fascinating, especially to bookish people like we us! However, this book is not really about book binding - it’s a love story between Emmett Farmer and Lucian Darnay.

If I’m honest the part two, which covered the original courtship of Lucian and Emmett, was the most interesting section of the novel. I thought their relationship was a bit cringey (as befits teenagers) and incredibly sweet. The romance made the novel. But it wasn’t the book we signed up for. I was expecting a book about the secrets about Binding - maybe a bit of a thriller/mystery but with beautiful writing and an ethereal setting? I was definitely expecting more information about Binding. Instead we got a angsty romance, endless cutting and gluing of endpapers for books and ONE scene of Emmett book binding that didn’t tell us what the process actually is.

For what the book actually is, which is an angsty gay romance in a very subtly magical alternate ‘Victorian’ society, it’s a decent book. If I’d known this I probably would have read it and considered it a lovely cutesy read. However, it’s not the book I was sold and it left me disappointed. I’d recommend giving it a shot, but it’s not a book I would necessarily read again...

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orcsy This was a ridiculous, over the top, and melodramatic classic adventure story. I had so much fun reading this! The Scarlet Pimpernel is a mysterious English aristocrat who, with his band of devoted fellow gentlement, travels to France during the height of the Revolution to rescue innocent French nobles from the guillotine. However, the French are at their wits end and Chauvelin blackmails the ‘cleverest woman in Europe’, darling of English society, and French wife of Sir Percy Blakeney, Lady Marguerite Blakeney, to find out the indentity of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

From there we go on a wonderfully melodramatic romp through 18th century England and France, and watch as Marguerite tries to save the Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s a silly, over the top, novel in a similar style to The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I’d highly recommend it as an entry into classic literature - or just as a ridiculous fun story!

Reticence - Gail Carriger (The Custard Protocol #4) My last full length parasolverse novel was A LOT of fun. I adored Percy and Arsenic’s slightly cringey but incredibly sweet romance bloom, alongisde the exploration of the supernatural in Carriger’s version of 1890′s Japan. The Custard Protocol was my least favourite of Carriger’s three main series (plotwise at least) but Reticence was a beautiful homage to the entire parasolverse! I adored the cameos (or just the entire wedding scene, let’s face it!), silly humour, and Percy’s happy ending.

My small niggle with this novel was the plot. As with the rest of the Custard Protocol novels I felt the plot wasn’t spectacular. It was a bit thin on the ground, particularly in the first half... This series is about character, and I love all the characters, but I wanted a little bit more from all of the novels. I wanted to see a bit more of each country (and spend a little bit less time on the Spotted Custard whilst travelling through the grey...) Nevertheless, I think Reticence was the strongest of the four Custard novels and I really loved it. Carriger’s world is my comfort blanket, it makes me smile, and I adore the world she’s created - and for that I will be forever grateful to Miss Gail!

Poison or Protect - Gail Carriger (Delightfully Deadly Novellas #1) This novella was a lot darker than I was expecting from Carriger. The plot and on-screen action was just a silly and entertaining as I was expecting (Preshea goes to a house party to prevent the assassination of the Duke of Snodgrove, and stop his daughter marrying a gold digger, whilst falling in love with a dashing Scottish captain.) However, Preshea’s backstory was much darker than we usually see in the parasolverse, the only comparable one I can think of off the top of my head is Rodrigo’s abuse from the Templars! She suffered through years of abuse and neglect at the hands of her father and husbands, leaving her damaged and shying away from all relationships.

The actual romance in Poison or Protect left me a little but underwhelmed. Gavin was actually what I was expecting from Connal Maccon in the Parasol Protectorate, and I’m much more on board with his ‘gentle-giant’ style romance with Preshea. I’m personally not a huge fan of the stereotypical kilt-wearing, enormous Scottish bloke... Just not my thing...but good for Preshea if she likes that! I just wasn’t that invested.

Personally, I would have loved Preshea’s book to revolve a bit more on her relationships with women, not romantically (she has never read as bi or a lesbian) but platonically. In the Finishing School Preshea held herself aloof from the girls around her, never really having a proper friend or friendship group. Instead she was like a vampire queen surrounded by her hive - beautiful, deadly, and set above everyone around her. Preshea herself comments on it in the book! Because of this I would’ve really loved the novella to focus on Preshea learning to be friends with other women, not see them as enemies or competition, and maybe getting her man on the side. We did get this growth as a sub-plot with Lady Flo and Mis Pagril, but I think it was more important for Preshea with her Finishing School background and the abuse she suffered to find herself with other women before jumping into bed with husband number 5...

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince - Robin Hobb (Realm of the Elderlings) This was a fun little novella that expanded the backstory of the Six Duchies and explained why the Witted and Wit magic are so feared in the Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies. It’s not Hobb’s finest work, but it did flesh out the history of the Six Duchies a little bit more. The story isn’t incredibly important to the main series but I’d highly recommend for fans of Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings and it’s best to read the tale either before of after the Tawny Man Trilogy.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A disappointing classic. Madame Bovary is supposed to be selacious and scandelous. I found it tedious and irritating. Emma Bovary was one of the most uncompelling heroines I’ve read outside of Dickens - she was a selfish snob, with no redeeming characteristics for the reader to latch onto. She’s adored by her husband, but bored in her marraige because Charles is only a middle class, mediocre doctor... She is manipulated by the men around her (both lovers and the guy who lends her money, I can’t remember his name) but is also incredibly stupid in her decisions, particularly around money and her last fateful decision at the end of the book.

The language (both French and my English translation) was dry, and the pacing was off. Important parts of the novel went by in a whirl, but then there were long stretches where almost nothing happens. I’ve read similar novels that were much better with similar themes, plotlines, and much more interesting characters. I am glad I’ve read it but Madame Bovary is not a book I would read again, nor would I recommend it unless you want to cross it off your list of classics.

Winter’s Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, and Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time #9, 10, 11) This post is incredibly long and I’ve spoken about this series at length already so I don’t really have any new criticisms to rasise. However I am slowly making my way through the rest of the Wheel of Time and I’ve now reached the end of the books solely written by Robert Jordan himself. Winter’s Heart and Crossroads of Twilight really were the height of the slump, however, I did manage to read through them both quite quickly with the amount of time I have at the moment. Both books were quite slow but had hugely important moments in them for the entire series.

Knife of Dreams was a return to form for Jordan before he died and we got the resolution to several tedious plotlines that had been running through the last few books (Perrin and Faile, Mat in Ebudar, Egwene travelling to the White Tower.) Personally, I loved Elayne’s struggle to claim the Lion Throne, however, this is one of the plotlines people tend to dislike and it had a particularly satisfying conclusion at the end of KoD. I’m incredibly excited to the series conclusion that I can see coming and I can’t wait to jump into the installments written by Brandon Sanderson in April!

Currently Reading

I’m still working through Fellowship and the Companion... It’s fallen by the wayside slightly but I am still working through it.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens This is my buddy read book for March/April, but it’s also a reread for me (as we know from my turbulent relationship with this book from 2019) We have just finished Book 2 Chapter 5.

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon I’m not a huge fan of this book so far, however, I don’t hate it. I think the plot and world building is quite shallow (circa. 200 pages in anway), and the writing makes me feel like I’m watching the characters through a glass screen. Hopefully it will pick up a bit, but at the moment I think it’s overrated. (I don’t think it’s helping I’ve been reading a lot of brilliant epic fantasy at the moment...)

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five-wow · 4 years

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Hi, I'm a fellow writer in the fandom and I admire your work. I wanted to ask, as a popular writer, do you get fixated sometimes on the number of kudos/comments/hits etc that your new work gets, and does this impact your motivation/inspiration? I think comparison is the thief of joy, and I really want to get over this feeling when I post my own work, so was wondering if even popular and regular writers such as yourself feel like this to, and if , what's your secret? Thanks!

Hi! 1) You are so sweet, ahh, and 2) YES, I DO. Gosh, yes, I absolutely do get insecure about those kinds of things, and I think that anyone who says they don't ever feel that way is either lying (to themselves, possibly) or maybe just pure magic, like some cross between a writer and a unicorn.

I love ao3 and I love all of its metrics and I love numbers and statistics, but there’s definitely that shadow side where having all of that easily available makes it deceptively easy to compare your own work to other people’s. I do it all the time! It honestly makes it a little hard for me at times to read h50 fic and fully enjoy it, because I keep... looking at it and wondering how my own stacks up against it, unwillingly. That's not a relaxing experience, and sometimes not even a very fun one. (Another part of it is that I just write SO MUCH for h50 and there is SO MUCH I still want to write, and I don’t want to risk reading something that’s very close to an idea I had and then never being quite sure if what I write after that was influenced by the other person’s work or if it’s really still my idea, because I have this (pretty irrational) fear of accidentally stealing someone else’s work even though one of the really great things about fandom is that it’s a very collaborative process as a whole and being inspired by other people’s stuff is usually totally okay, buuuut that’s a different rambly story.)

And I definitely do also get... some cringey feelings, hardcore, around fics I posted that don't do very well numbers-wise. Sometimes it's expected - fic that doesn't follow traditional formats or doesn't feature Steve/Danny, for example, is always something where I KNOW it won't get as much attention because I know how fandom works and that lessens the sting because it doesn't HAVE to hold up to those other fics that perform way better, because I already know it's not really comparable. The truth is, of course, that most fic is not really comparable to other fic, but it’s easy to fall into that trap anyway. If I post something that seems like my average kind of work and it gets less kudos or comments than usual, I do start to doubt the fic and second-guess myself - is something about this weird? Is it too [insert quality x]? Is it bad? Did I unknowingly do something terrible and people are now avoiding me? The answer to all of those is probably no, and going through it a bunch of times has definitely helped, because what usually happens is that I end up somewhat avoiding the fic in question because it makes me a little ashamed and awkward to think about it (a relative failure! oh no! I'm human!) and then, eventually, I return and reread the fic. By that point I have enough distance from it in time that I can look at it a lot more objectively, and it's way easier to see what works and what does not than when I posted it and I had just read it a dozen times in twenty-four hours and the words were burned into my brain. And upon that reread, inevitably, I realize that, holy shit, it was NOT AS BAD as I had made it out to be in my mind! It’s actually kind of fun! Imagine the ego boost of realizing your most cringy recent work is actually pretty okay, haha, and it's silly, but it's a revelation every time. The quality of a fic is not dictated by how many people read it or comment on it or like it, and intellectually I absolutely know that, but it’s hard to remember when it’s about yourself and you’re still in that emotionally vulnerable place of having just shared your work with the world and it feels like the world is not as into it as you thought (or hoped) it’d be. It’s honestly very, very reassuring to have those experiences to fall back on, but sadly the only way I know to get there is to just tough it out and feel super awkward for a while.

When I’m writing, on the other hand, I usually don’t really think about what other people might think of it. I have the advantage that (pretty much) all of my work consists of fairly short stand alone stories, which means I don’t have to struggle with keeping my motivation up for a second chapter of something but I get to start fresh every time, and that’s nice, because I can just lose myself in the joy of throwing words around and making characters do things that make me giggle. That’s not to say I never think of the outside world while writing - I realized, pretty recently, that I occasionally end up constructing paragraphs or pieces of dialogue a certain way mostly so it will make for a good excerpt to put in the eventual fic description, which might give me a sense of accomplishment because it’s nice when things work out and look good, but in all fairness it’s probably far more motivated by attempts to package the finished work attractively so other people will want to click on it than by anything else. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I don’t think so - I don’t feel like it lessens my work and it doesn’t interrupt my enjoyment of it in the moment, which are the key elements for me - but other people might disagree.

But the heart of thing is, just, there are SO MANY factors that influence a fic’s numbers, and not all of them are visible (I’d argue most of them aren’t, in fact), and it always helps me to keep that in mind. It puts things in perspective somewhat and softens the harshness of a black and white kudo count judgment. Numbers can depend on when you post a fic (what day of the week, time of the year, time relative to big fandom moments, whether you’re in the middle of a global pandemic or not), how you pick your title, what you put in the description, how you use the tags, what genres or tropes are popular in your specific fandom, the genre of your fic in general (pwp as a rule tends to get lots of hits and few kudos or comments, for example, making it totally unfair to compare it to G-reated fluff fic with super different ratios), how much you’ve posted before (because if someone likes one of your works, they’re often likely to check if you have more in the same fandom), how many fics other people post around the same time (because yours might be gone from the first page of most recently updated works in a fandom or ship tag very quickly if others push it out), how big your fandom is(!!!) (over two thirds of my works on ao3 are for h50, but h50 only makes it into the top 10 of my most kudo’d works by the skin of its teeth) and definitely also what your fandom’s culture is like (compared to a lot of other fandoms, h50 fans are a-ma-zing when it comes to leaving comments, my gosh, and as a writer I adore all of you), how old your ao3 account is (the longer you’ve been around, the more likely a higher number of people is subscribed to you as an author or has read your previous work or has encountered your name, etc), how long your fic is (under a thousand words in my experience generally does less well than 1-5k, but longer fics might end up with lots of chapters which switches things up because people come back to it when there’s an update, and even if a long work is all in one chapter it will probably stand out for the wordcount and might attract attention that way, etc), whether or not your fic is part of a series (in my experience it will probably get more hits because it’s a chain of fics that leads you to the next one, but the kudos might not go up at the same rate because people might forget a kudo or reread previous works when a new one is added), whether you make a habit of commenting on other people’s fic (I’ve had comments saying MY comment on their work led them to my fic!), if you have social media like Tumblr or Twitter where you can promote your work (it’s advertising, basically), and any of a bunch of random little other factors. Sometimes, I see a sudden little cluster of kudos on an old fic in the daily ao3 kudos email, and I assume someone somewhere maybe recced that fic, but it usually remains a total mystery who or where or even if it happened at all and wasn’t just a weird coincidence to begin with. Sometimes the thing a fic’s popularity depends on is really just whether it clicks with people at that point in time, whatever that means, which is an even more impossible thing to grasp or predict than anything else.

Or you can look at things from a totally different angle and not try to make yourself care less about numbers, but just accept that you do because you’re human and we all crave validation, and instead try to roll with that. A brain hack: when I do start getting down about numbers, it also helps me to focus on one work and just... try to visualise what those kudo (or hit or bookmark or comment) counts mean, if you were to translate them to the real world. While it can be super helpful to remember that there’s a LOT going on that you can’t see and that’s virtually impossible to really explain, it’s also nice to somewhat do the opposite and try to make things as concrete as possible instead. I like measuring in school classes (~25-30 heads, I’d say) and “my fic only has fifty kudos but this other person’s has ten times as many” could easily make anyone sad and demotivated, but “my fic has fifty kudos and that’s TWO WHOLE CLASSROOMS packed full of people that all read my work and liked it so much they wanted to give me a little thumbs up for it” is actually pretty cool and encouraging, I think. Or you could measure in sports teams (I don’t know sports, but soccer has 11 players on the field per team, so as soon as your fic has 33 kudos that’s three teams which means you’ve got yourself a little beginning league! how exciting!) or in DnD campaigns (variable of course, but most of mine have had around four players plus a DM, so if you have twenty kudos? that’s FOUR WHOLE DnD campaigns that enjoyed reading your fic, and it’s fully up to you how many half-orcs that includes). You could apply this method using literally any other measurement that works for you, too. If you have a hard time painting a mental image of numbers, you could even open up a Paint doc or get a piece of paper and start counting out little dots or copy-pasted images of a person, or get a big bag of physically present M&Ms and count them out, or take a good look at your dog and then go around the neighborhood and collect forty-nine more dogs and pile them all into your home and be slightly frightened by the utter delighted fluffy chaos that ensues in your living room. That’s how many people liked your fic! That’s a heck of a lot of wagging tails! Who knew a kudo could bark this loudly!

Disclaimer: maybe keep the dog thing as your very last resort, because your neighbors might not be super into their pet getting dognapped for the purpose of visualizing fanfiction stats. The point is really just to remember that there’s an actual person behind every kudo you get, no matter what the cumulative number is, and even if you have seven or five or three kudos, that’s seven or five or three very real people that hit that button. That’s pretty damn awesome. Also keep in mind how you feel if you read a fic, and take some time to realize that every single person that left you a kudo went through that same process of spending time reading words (the words you wrote!) and experiencing that story and THAT’S why they left that kudo. It’s a real person’s real investment.

This ended up very long and rambly, so tl;dr: You are in no way alone in feeling that way, it's okay and normal and so very very human to feel like that, but you still shouldn't let it get you down, because numbers fake being meaningful very well but are deep down just little squiggles on your screen and they’re more scared of you than you are of them, while at the same time there are real individuals that enjoy your work even if you usually never see them. Your fic is worth posting. That’s the one factor in all of this that’s a constant, not a variable.

(And as a very important sidenote, just be kind to yourself, always. Does it truly stress you out? Are you feeling really bad about it today? Does it make your anxiety spike? Then give yourself room to take a little step back and allow yourself some time away from it. Go watch something you enjoy, or read something nice, or do something else that makes you feel good. Fic is something that should add to your life, not subtract from it. You don’t owe anyone anything, not even yourself in this context, and I used to push myself occasionally to get something finished TODAY, and eventually I started realizing, well, why? Why not instead of reading it over again just get some sleep or watch an episode of something I want to watch, especially if I literally just finished the fic and I feel a little unsure about it and it might actually be beneficial to me and my own feelings about it if I just give it a day or even a week and let it rest and then look at it again and THEN post it, if I want to, whether that’s with some changes beforehand or not? Who set me that deadline that’s apparently looming over me? I did, and it’s fake, and it’s there for absolutely no good reason. Breathe. Put yourself first. Be really really really selfish about your own fic writing experience, even, because it’s supposed to be something you enjoy (that’s what a hobby is!), and the rest is secondary.)

#anon #ask #writing #ao3 #it's very odd to get called a popular writer by the way oh my gosh #nice!!! so very nice!!! thank you!!! but also difficult to reconcile with my own internal image of myself #all the more evidence that brains lie to us all the time #*

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thatgazebobullshit · 5 years

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IT CHAPTER TWO REVIEW

This is v long and heavy on the spoilers, so read at your own risk

.DISCLAIMERS

1. I saw this in the Spanish dubbed version because of reasons. I will be rewatching the original version but, because I still haven’t, there may be some things that I’ve missed because of the translation. I also didn’t hear the changes in the kids voices which made the “they haven’t aged” thing they tried to pull a tiny bit more believable.

2. I have read the book. However, I read it about 8 years ago and I while I’ve reread some parts, I’ve never read the whole thing since. Because of this, there were a lot of scenes that I felt weird about, as I couldn’t tell if they had just made this really random thing up or I just couldn’t remember it.

3. These are just my opinions, please don’t take them personally. I love all the characters with my whole heart and I do think the actors did them justice.

THAT BEING SAID

Let’s start with what I liked

1. The cast

They all did a fantastic job. Every single one of them. Even the new little kids killed it. (The scene with Pennywise and the girl in the bleachers was one of the best moments/jumpscares in the whole film for me). Obviously Bill Hader was a standout, also I’d only seen him in SNL so I didn’t know what to expect, and he definitely impressed me. But we can’t forget about James Ransone. I couldn’t get enough of him. He captured Jack’s Eddie so so so so well he deserves every bit of praise he gets.

2. The flashbacks

I don’t know who the fuck said there were too many flashbacks, but they’re wrong. I get wanting the focus to be on the adults but the flashbacks gave us a bit more insight on the losers dynamic outside of the whole “this clown is trying to kill us so we need to stick together”, and I liked that they showed more encounters with It, because there is no way he only tried to get to them once all summer. Eddie’s scene with his mom was really good too, I liked it a lot more than his scene in the first movie with the leper. Also they were cute as fuck. Don’t get me started on the hammock scene.

3. Adrian and Dom

I loved this scene. It was a great beginning and it gave me hope for the film. Really well done, very similar to the book and heavy on the reddie references, which you know I love. Also very sad, but I knew what was going to happen so it didn’t affect me as much.

4. Richie’s arcade scene

This scene hits hard. Finn Wolfhard’s acting is 10/10. He just wanted to play with the cute boy Bowers leave him alone.

5. Mike calling Eddie

I’m a bit bitter that they didn’t make him a choffer but I’ll admit that making him a risk analyst makes sense. His conversation with Myra was on point. It said so much in very little time. How unhappy they are, the mommy thing, just great. Also the car accident and him being like “I’m fine”. Wonderful.

6. Benverly/Reddie scenes

The parallels. Amazing. Beverly drowning in blood while Ben drowned in dirt, very effective. Meanwhile Reddie just being husbands. 10/10. The pomeranian bit might have been my favourite in the entire movie, not gonna lie.

OKAY NOW TO THE THINGS I DID NOT LIKE

1. Mike

Yes, Isaiah did really good. But Mike character was just so... bad. Just really annoying. The scene where he drugs Bill just didn’t sit right with me. It just wasn’t Mike and I was really frustrated with his character any time he did or said something, I’m sorry

2. Bill

Again, really great job on McAvoy’s part, but, again, I found the character very annoying and unnecessarily reckless/stupid at times. The scene with the sewer and the kid was just uncomfortable to watch and a bit cringey. Also the whole blaming himself and going after It alone got old very soon.

3. Most of the “scary” scenes

There were a few good jumpscares here and there, but in general the actual scary parts of the movie fell kind of flat. Young Richie’s encounter with It would have been really cool if not for the horrible, horrible cgi on Finn’s face. The scene with the naked grandma looked promising in the trailer but it ended up being pretty meh. Also the photographs and her talking about Pennywise like it was her father and them showing him as a person dressing up as the clown... very misleading and completely unnecessary.

4. The final battle

So many things wrong with this part. Where do I begin. For starters, why would they include the super weird ritual that I can’t remember if it was in the book or not, if it was just gonna be for nothing. Literally the whole getting the objects was such a big part of the movie and all they do is put them in the fire and scream for a while and then it’s like “well guess that didn’t work” and then they are in the same exact place they were as children. The objects did NOTHING WHY WOULD YOU MAKE IT SUCH A BIG DEAL I DONT UNDERSTAND. And do you expect me to believe that while all of them had their weird adventure (Bill with young Bill and the Benverly/Reddie scene) Mike was just there????? Hiding behind the rock???? The whole time????? Eddie’s scene was nice and I wouldn’t have mind the changes if HE HADN’T DIED FOR NOTHING. Like are you telling me that ALL THIS TIME all you had to do was BULLY THE CLOWN TO DEATH. WHAT THE FUCK. That was soooo underwhelming. Very unsatisfactory. Seeing a bunch of adults just shouting CLOWN, YOU’RE JUST A CLOWN to this thing that’s supposedly this great evil was just, so bad I cringed the whole way through. As you can see I’m still bitter about it.

So yeah, that is all I have to say. Had its moments. Enjoyable, scary at times but also kinda disappointing.

Oh and the whole “horror version of brokeback mountain” is a load of bullshit. There is so little Reddie please don’t go in there expecting this big gay romance because you only get glimpses of it and they never delve into Eddie’s side of it. So yeah, glad R+E happened, but it does, unfortunately, seem kind of one-sided the way they went into it.

#it chapter two #it chapter two review #reddie #benverly #eddie kaspbrak #richie tozier #bill denbrough #beverly marsh #ben hanscom #mike hanlon #bill hader #james ransone #finn wolfhard #jack dylan grazer #james mcavoy #isaiah mustafa

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smolsadscared · 3 years

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i used to like writing about my feelings, word-vomitting onto pages or into text boxes, like turning the messiness of my thoughts into words would expel the ugliness from my brain and blood, cleansing myself of the murkiness that’s tainted every part of me. years ago, when i still ardently believed that there was a purpose to it all, that at the end of the struggles and suffering, there was something i could do to better the world, that there would be a day where i would feel good again. like there’s a cure to depression and alienation and self-loathing.

and, i don’t know, maybe there is. i haven’t found it, and now that i’m in my tenth year of realizing my own brain isn’t where i feel safest, i don’t particularly care about ever finding it. i’m more convinced that it’s not attainable for me.

that sounds melodramatic and self-pitying, and i guess it might be, but knowing there are tons of people like me make it a dull, unremarkable thing about me.

that wasn’t even what i wanted to talk about right now. anyway.

i used to like writing about my feelings, about myself. but ten years into trying to think-piece my way out of depression, i find myself not doing it as often anymore. i don’t even think about myself much. not in a way that’s introspective and meaningful, not in a way that one would if they were trying to better themselves and “heal” or “get better.” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.

this isn’t uncommon, either, the phenomena of people distracting themselves from themselves, fixating on external things to get through the day, detaching themselves from the reality of their situation. it’s not even uncommon for me. in fact, i think i’ve even written about this before.

today, i’m wondering if there will ever be a time when i don’t rely on distractions to get through the next day.

in high school, i focused on studying and marching band and even boys. if i’m being honest, i don’t remember a lot of my internal dialogue in high school. the brain is great at hiding things, so i don’t remember a lot of the pain and hardships i felt. i remember it existed, but i no longer can recall some of the causes, or even find echoes of what it felt like. it feels like one big blur and a stepping stone to get to where i am now. an impersonal event in my own life.

in college, i focused on much the same—studying and band—and tried to be better at forming friendships. that proved difficult, though, but i still think i came out of it in the end with two friendships that will last a long time. i hope so. i’m trying to be better, even after we’ve all graduated.

i had different fixations, like tv shows, and youtube, and overwatch, and social media. if i wasn’t studying, i was consuming media or discussing it with others. talking with friends like r and c and m was certainly special and worth every minute, but sometimes my head would get so loud that it sounded like silence. thinking about big things was impossible, when i could hardly think about the little things.

if i can’t think about why a particular social interaction i had that didn’t sit well with me, how could i think about the workings of society?

these days, now that i’m taking a gap semester and absolutely nothing else to distract myself wtih, my current fixation is on kpop and fiction, and a lot of the time, a combination of those things. anything that’ll keep me out of thinking about real things, like the uncertainty of my future which i once thought was so certain, the global pandemic, the presidential election, the evil that exists in the world and how it manages to squander anything that would qualify as “good.”

to an extent, everybody lives like this, right? nobody is completely self-aware of their emotions, and these emotions only arise because of human interaction, or at least, some kind of interaction between self and the world. focusing on studying or people or even games isn’t weird.

but there is not a moment these days when i’m not thinking about an external thing. right now, putting this into words, feels immensely difficult, because i don’t want to do this. i don’t want to reach into my brain and dig out thoughts and feelings and put them into words that one day i might look back on and understand. (that’s another thing—rereading past entries makes me go, huh? because, as hard as i try to immortalize feelings through written word, you’re never going to get that feeling back. words can only go so far.) all i’m saying is, this is hard for me, but i recognize that i should get in touch with my inner voice before i lose myself completely and all that rings in my brain is an eternal loop of seokjin’s laughter. (yes, in 2021, i still watch compilations of boys laughing just to distract myself.)

actually, i still don’t know what the point was. i guess it’s just been a while since i’ve written like this, so i wanted to try. i used to record videos of myself narrating my thoughts and the events in my life, but that was just pretty cringey and i’m not consistent enough to be able to make ues of that, either. basically, i’m in a never-ending cycle of trying to find ways to be honest about my internal workings and realizing that fucking sucks and diving into the deep end of another new world, then realizing that’s not healthy and trying to swim up to the surface. maybe i do need therapy, still, but they say third time’s the charm and the third time most definitely did not stick.

anyway, it’s sunday, february 28th, and my mother is with my grandmother at the hospital and i’m sitting here in a cafe trying to make sense of my life, why i’m here, what i’m doing, what things might look like a month, six months, a year down the line. graduating college was supposed to be another step in my planned-out life, but things never go as they should, and i’m doing my best to find the lightswitch again. i have to try to be okay with that, for now. nobody is clairvoyant, so complaining about an uncertain future is not in any capacity useful, so i’ll try to stop doing that. it’s okay not to go super existential, think about my purpose in life or the purpose of life itself, and it’s okay to immerse myself in things that are ultimately inconsequential, because isn’t everything, in the end?

god knows when i’ll be writing here again, if i’ll look back on this and think i’m in the exact same place or pity my past self for being so god damn melodramatic. maybe there’s a reality in which i’ll read this and wish i could go back to this time. i don’t know. okay, that’s all for now.

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