Monday, November 4th - Early November Update
Sorry for being gone so long! I've been cooking up some stuff behind the scenes, but they are so labor intensive that they have made other site updates fall by the wayside. Things are cooking though, so don't you guys worry! The House of Leaves fans will be quite happy. Someday. Soon, hopefully
For now, I just wanted to give an update on life and everything! Nothing dramatic just a way for me to yap a bit :). Everything's been crazy busy lately, so most of my update is "AAAAAA I'M SO TIRED" but we stay strong.
Work has been absolutely dreadful lately. My coworkers (most of them) are great, but everything has been kind of insane and stressful in a way it shouldn't be. Working at a used video game store that barely pays me above minimum wage should not be that stressful :/. Definitely ater the holiday season I'll be on that job hunt grind again. I did apply for a job at a local sex shop that looks like it will pay well, I'm admitedly really hoping i get it. I don't want to get into what about work has been crazy until after I'm gone but let it be said that I do not see myself there this time next year.
Classes have also been... something, lately. The only class I'm getting any enjoyment from right now is my medium format film class. I just don't care for mdigital photography personally, and the others are a complete waste of time and thousands of dollars. I'll be getting into one of them a little later too offer a review of the book we read in that class... just know it's been rough. I'm hoping I can have my art page up soon though, I think I will end up having 2 different pages. One will be a website of just shit I do for fun like fanart or my ocs or whatever, and then I'll have a seperate website for my photography that doesn't link back to this one. I'd like to keep the professional shit seperate, at least for now. Hopefully I will be getting stuff scanned soon though. Next semester will be awesome, I'll have two photography classes, an Islamic art history class and a course on mysticism! Overall, I'm very excited for next semester.
I also went and visited my boyfriend again! That was super fun :) I love my boyfriend. We went to the zoo (WHICH HAD SHARKS!!!!! I LOVE SHARKS!!!!!! and red pandas which were so cute!) and I got to introduce him to the beautiful world of pho (I had to show him how to use chopsticks). We also went to a botanical garden which was soooo pretty I had a great time. There was a guy there doing a glass-blowing demo and it was super interesting. Also the guy doing the demo was super hot. Overall it was super fun! And I got to pet stingrays! And spend time with my boyfriend that I love I guess, lol (teasing, I am always happy to steal a weekend with him).
I also finished The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I think it is by far one of the best stories I've ever read and I really regret not having picked it up sooner. I will have a full review of the story up on my House of Leaves shrine when I get everything up and running for that, so be on the look out for that! I also finished Princess Knight by Osamu Tezuka. I will also be watching the animation of it soon as well, and then I will be writing a small review of it!
For my Narrative Studies class I was tasked with reading Circe by Madeline Miller. I think the only book I've hated reading more was when I had to read Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities in my high school honors English course. Genuinely I despised every second. The writing style is that of a Y/A novel, which would be fine and has its place, but this is a college class, and more than that a lot of the themes are very much not geared towards Y/A. I was NOT expecting to have to read TWO different very graphic birth scenes as well as a sexual assault scene. I would have been fine reading them if I had been given some kind of warning and the writing style felt... more mature, I suppose. Not only that, but the entire time the protagonist, Circe, is talking and sounding like a mix of r/im13andthisisdeep and when you see a 14 year old girl on tumblr learning what Wicca is for the first time and casting spells without understanding the why or how, or the consequences. What bothers me the most however, is that this book preaches itself as a feminist story. It is not. Throughout the entirety of the book Circe is defined by the men around her (her father, her brothers, her lovers, etc), and all the other women in the story are written to be the biggest assholes. I truly dont understand it. Overall if I were to give it a star rating I'd give it maybe a 1 and a half. Don't waste your time with it.
In lighter news though, all I've been playing lately is Vampire Survivors, as the new "Ode to Castlevania" dlc dropped. It is an absolutely phenomenal dlc, adn it has so much content to sink your teeth into. I'll be doing a full review (with a fun update to the Joachim shrine ;) ) once I've pplayed a bit more/ This has been such a good year to be a fan of the Castlevania games, though, and I'm so excited for what this may mean for the future.
There's been other stuff going on, but it's fall so the seasonal depression is getting to me a bit. We stay strong though, and it isn't all that bad. Later this month I'll hopefully get to visit my boyfriend again and during the holiday breaks I will get to go home and see my family and my friends whom I miss dearly. Overall though I have been alright! Thanks for reading ^-^!
Sunday, August 25th - Awesome Weekend
You may have noticed a few weeks of percieved radio silence! Do not fret, I was simply on a little trip. Last weekend I was out of town visiting my boyfriend! I don't talk about him much about him on here (though you can find a link to his website around here somewhere... smiles.) but I think this time it would be quite fun. Overall it was extra fun to see him... we have been long distance forever so getting to see him in real life was like Holy Shit!!!! That's him!!!! My Boyfriend!!!!!!!!! 10/10
Obviously, this means we had to do a LOT of things to hang out. Every moment had to be spent hanging out together, and that's what we did! The itenerary for the weekend was quite jam packed and we still had plenty of downtime in between!
The first day visiting him was pretty tame, we went and got Raising Cane's (my most beloved fried chicken place... this is the closest I'll ever get to brand loyalty), visited a library where we found a VERY hysterical book about how to date for geeks (which recommended dressing like either Captain Kirk or Neo... very different vibes to go for here), perused an arcade where we saw some awesome pinball machines. I am shit at pinball but it was cool to look at and be like WOW... Elvira AND the Addams family? In my pinball? Hell yes!!!! We also went to a Half-Price Books, which is always fun. While we didn't get anything, it was just fun to go to a bookstore and have a good time going "WOW... I HATE THAT AUTHOR SO FUCKING MUCH!" followed by us finding a 40 dollar yaoi manga locked up in a case. Good time.
On the 2nd day we first went to an art museum! It was really cool to go to, and I got to see TWO Goya works, and they were his political pieces too! It was really enriching to get to see them in person, it was my first time seeing a Goya in real life and I got so excited that I started jumping around a little bit. There were also a few Monet pieces there, and as my mom is a lover of Monet I diligently took pictures to show here. There were also Cezanne pieces but i cant stand that guy fuck Cezanne I have beef with that guy like crazy. There was also a very House of Leaves ass thing we saw that WILL be going into the eventual shrine, mark my words. After that, we went and got Indian food, and since it was his first time trying it that was extra fun. It was awesome to share something like that with him. Afterwards we went to many fun little shops. There was a comic book store, a game store, and a novelty soda shop where we got soda that I can only describe as Heisenberg Blue and Horchata Shouldn't Be Soda. Very Awesome. They tasted horrid it was awful. We also got Culver's and watched Vinesauce together. Overall a very well-rounded day.
On the 3rd day we went to a museum and also to concert together!! That was also very fun. The museum was super enriching for me because I got to play with water (awesome and whimsical) and there were dinosaurs WITH FEATHERS!!!! THE DINOSAURS HAD FEATHERS!!!!! IT WASN'T A DINOSAUR LIE DINOSAUR THATS SO COOL. The dinosaurs were awesome I loved seeing them. There was alot of freaky bird dinosaur things too. Was less of a fan of the bird-things but thats because I'm scared of birds. My boyfriend had a GREAT time though because he is bird obsessed. Truly that exhibit was made for us. We also went and saw a planetarium show and that was very fun. Afterwards though my neck hurt REALLY bad because I was wearing a giant choker that does not promote neck mobility. LOL. There was also stegosaurus bones I love stegosaurus... that's my mom's favorite dinosaur :). Afterwards we hung out for a little bit and THEN we went to a concert. The concert was FUCKING AWESOME we had a great time. The opener played a Nine Inch Nails song (awesome for me and my boyfriend) and then the main act played my favorite songs as well as a Cure song that we both consider to be Our song, which was really sweet. Big fan of the whole thing! It was his first concert and he got his first piece of show merch, a really cool glow-in-the-dark pin!
The day i left was. Very sad. Admittedly I did not want to go back to my house because it meant we would be HOURS away again and that was just miserable (I maybe cried. We both maybe cried). BUT we got ice cream and that was great. More specifically I got a shake and he got ice cream but it counts. the milkshake was caramel and very tasty.
It was a great weekend. Not to be all disgusting or whatever, but it was the happiest I've been in a while. Summer is always really hard for me because I'm not great at socializing, and I think between this and going back home to spend time with my family and friends, this had to be one of the best summers I've had in years. I could go on and on about how fun it was but him and I both have already waxed poetic about it several times to each other now so I will leave it at that!
As a quick note, school starts literally tomorrow for me, so expect updates to super slow down!!! Such is the way of things :,)
Last week, I went with some friends of mine to go see Longlegs. I had been invited to a couple events by my coworker/friend (I am still woefully unsure of where the boundaries of friendship lie but considering I've slept at her house on 3 seperate occasions now and she keeps inviting me to things I like to think we are friends now) (this is the same person I saw Pokemon Concierge with) and prior to that the night before the events, I went with her and her fiance to go see the movie Longlegs. I had not even heard of the movie up until an hour before we left, where I got the brief synopsis of "its a movie about a serial killer and takes a supernatural turn." I was admittedly hesitant about the movie, as I am not a fan of many modern supernatural horror movies. I find them to be too reliant on jumpscares and not enough on the actual atmosphere of the horror of the supernatural. Suffice to say, my expectations were thoroughly blown out of the water. Considering I'm making this blog post ages later.
Make no mistake, I assume a large part of my obsession with this movie has been seeing it in theaters. I don't leave the house much at all, and I especially don't go to theaters often, between the cost of tickets (though for this movie the theater was selling them for 5 dollars on a Friday night... what a steal) and the variables of movie theater interactions means I rarely go to them. The last movie I'd seen in theaters was the Five Nights At Freddies movie, and before that I hadn't seen a movie in a theater since before 2020. Because of that, I'm naturally inclined to be awed by the power of the big screen, I believe. This is not said to discredit the movie, but to give myself some clarity as to why I've continued to think about it for so long.
I will not aim to bore you with the personal details of my life for this however, and instead would like to get into the nitty-gritty of why I love the movie, as well as address my thoughts on some claims people have made of transmisogyny or transcoding of the killer in the movie, as I do think it's important to at least acknowledge there has been pushback
So what did I like? To be honest, there's a lot to like. It has some beautiful cinematography, every shot felt expertly crafted to be made for me to be awed at. I feel like as a photography student I am more drawn to pay attention to the cinematography and the choices made to show a scene than the average person, but every shot just felt so perfect, I couldn't imagine anything else. I was also captivated the most by the sets. My obsession with House of Leaves knows no bounds, and I find myself seeing the houses within Longlegs in such a similar light. Not only the protagonists house, and her mother's house, but every house in the game. They have a suffocating feeling to them, a perfect white-picket fence that's just being slowly infected. The setting of the movie is perfect for that, and the end of the 90's and thus the end of the Satanic Panic as a time period for that made so much sense. Genuinely beautifully done.
This movie is predictable, but I think that makes it all the more impressive. You know where the movie is going, it lays it out pretty clearly from the start all the way up until the end, but the fact it can hold up a tense and paranoid theme throughout, while also managing to make me laugh at points, is truly impressive. While not the best thing I've ever seen, I certainly loved it. It's one of Nic Cage's best performances, and on top of that it's in a wonderfully crafted story about the 90s, CPTSD, the Satanic Panic, and how sometimes what's haunting a house is already there.
Now, I have seen people talking about Longlegs, and Nicholas Cage's presentation of the character. I can understand where people are coming from. The movie industry, and specifically serial killer horror, has had a frustrating history with transphobia, dating all the way back to Psycho. I do think it is unfair to place the sins of the father upon this movie though. Cage and Perkins have made mention of how the killer was just trying to make himself beautiful for the devil, in a glamrocker sort of silly way. Cage also mentioned that he based a lot of his performance on his mother during her schizophrenic episodes, which were probably very scary for a young Nicholas Cage who didn't know what was going on. I have seen some people liken this to performing a kind of drag based on his mother, and I think that is cruel and insensitive. Cage is clearly using the childhood fears he expressed about his own mother in the movie, and I believe that had to be some sort of catharsis for him, at least to some degree. Regardless, I think likening the character to transphobia is an understandable take to have, but must be taken in conjunction with the fact that it was clearly unintentional, and that Longlegs the character wanted to be pretty for the devil. Ultimately, I nor my friend I went to see it with (transwoman) found the character of Longlegs to leave the same bad taste in our mouth as other stories, and I'm led to believe that a lot of the people with this take are likely trying to be defensive for trans people, which is appreciated, albeit unnecessary for this movie. Feel free to disagree, that just seems to be my take on people's opinions.
Sunday, July 21st - Life Update
Hello everyone! Wanted to get a little life update done just because I feel like it's deserved.
I'll start off discussing the beginning part of this month. Overall it was very enriching going back home to see family and friends, and I was there until the 12th. During that time, I saw a lot of movies with my friends and family, went to Fan Expo Denver, and went to an arcade. It was overall very fun, and I'll give quick reviews of everything.
The things I watched were all of Dragon Ball Z Abridged (which reignited my Dragon Ball hyperfixation), Monsters: 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation, Beverly Hills Cop, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, and If. Dragon Ball Z Abridged is... very silly. I like it a lot! It was a really fun time and I feel like it has aged better than Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series in a lot of ways. There's a truly beautiful amount of incredibly gay jokes. My only issue with it is that it portrays Goku as like the worst dad on the planet but to be fair I do kind of get it. Overall a fun watch I'd love to watch again with other people. Monsters: 103 Meries Dragon Damnation was fucking awesome. I am a big fan of the manga as well, but seeing it animated and seeing the beautiful very artistic techniques used within Monsters was fucking awesome. It was gorgeous experience and we had a lot of moments where we were all going "HOLY FUCKING SHIT" at my friends TV screen. Overall it was a lot of fun. Beverly Hills Cop is awesome. I don't know if it's my favorite Eddie Murphy movie, but it was really fun and I loved watching it with my parents. No notes there. The Dungeons and Dragons movie was a fun time. It definitely felt like a dnd campaign and it made me giggle. I liked it overall. Also no notes. When I was going back to Michigan I stayed the night at my cousin's place and we watched If. I thought it was pretty good overall and definitely made me a little emotional but it looses a lot of points because I'm genuinely upset that they had a movie about imaginary friends and they went with fucking cgi instead of practical effects and puppetwork. Shit like that always makes me sad.
Fan Expo Denver was VERY fucking fun. I went with two of my friends for Friday and just one of them for Saturday. Friday and Saturday I was dressed as Android 17 from Dragon Ball Z and it was very fun when people recognized me. I really enjoyed the fact that I was just Android 17, no name usage, no pronouns, no nothing. It was a weirdly nice gender experience and I would like to do that again. I really like cosplaying as Android 17 and plan to do so more. I'd also have fun cosplaying Yamcha I think. I also got a LOT of awesome stuff. So many charms and posters.
Finally, the arcade. The arcade was fucking awesome. I have very little to say on the arcade other than I had the time of my life. I went with my friend and we played so many fighting games. We also played Enter the Gungeon and some other very silly things. I got him to play Project Diva, and I got to have beautiful bubblegum pink and blue Cell in Dragon Ball Z: Fighterz. I also became a little bit obsessed with Typing of the Dead. It was very funny to have all these normal ass arcade machines and then just one with a keyboard attached. Definitely made me remember why I love fighting games so much so I'm getting back into them slowly but surely and will probably have a page dedicated to my mains in different games here soon, so look out for that.
In other news, there is not a ton to be said. I am kind of still unhappy at work, and contemplating figuring something else out in another place. I mostly just feel as though I am being underutilized and would like to fix that, but I unfortunately think that might have to be somewhere else. Oh well, I can't complain too much I guess. Other than that, I'm just keeping an eye on my new plants my mom gave me :)! That's all for now.
Monday, July 1st - Pokemon Concierge - The Art of Taking Steps Back
Recently, a friend/coworker and I had a movie night together. After 2 months of 30 hour weeks and a much needed and fast approaching trip back home, watching Pokémon Concierge felt partially like a mini-vacation, and partially like seeing a reflection of myself in a lot of ways.
Before I get into my life, my baseline review is that the series was incredibly solid. The clearly defined art style through stop-motion animation works so well with the Pokémon medium it's a shame it hasn't been done prior. The whole thing has made me a Psyduck enthusiast. The story itself is what really has captured me though. While Pokémon is generally considered a kids show, and thus has kids as a target audience, I think lots of adults will get something out of it that younger watchers may not. Since the story focuses so heavily on disconnecting from work culture and how stressed it makes the protagonist Haru, I feel like its message came to me at a vital time.
Lately work, and life in general, has been... rough. I won't go into too many specifics with some things, because it's not my place to tell and I'd like to keep some of my private life private, working 30 hours a week has been hard on me. There's been some stuff happening with some friends of mine, and truth be told ever since moving to where I currently live I've felt nothing but lonely. Most notably though, I haven't really been feeling valued at work or liked by most of my upper management. I know this is relatively normal, but considering the amount of effort I put into helping the store, it does really suck.
I'm not planning on leaving, because there's a lot of aspects to the store I do really like, I just wish I was more... wanted. Or at the very least felt more wanted. Aside from the coworker that I watched Pokémon Concierge with. She has my heart forever.
I am finally back home though, on a two week vacation and I feel as if I can finally breathe. There's a lot of stuff that's been going on in my life outside of work too, and so I feel like I really related to Haru. It's hard to experience inconvenience after inconvenience after bad thing after bad thing and feel like yourself afterwards. The show came at a great time for me. It really did remind me that I need to take some time for myself.
Thursday, May 2nd - A Consideration of Dark Anime Angels
It's easy to look at the things you enjoyed when you were young and had little context for what could make a work good with disdain, relegating it to the basement of things that definitely affected you in the current day, but you'd rather not think about to heavily, for the sake of your own current psyche. And while in many cases this is fine--the media you interact with when you're younger can sometimes fall incredibly short once you've aged and have had more chances to experience new media--I think it can at times do a disservice to your younger self to look at this in such a negative way. So instead I want to focus on how what I grew up with has shaped me in an impactful, beautiful way. I think in the end it will be more beneficial to my current understanding of myself and my interests.
How am I going to do this? Well, I'm going to talk about the edgy anime angels, of course.
I think everyone who has been on the internet knows what I'm talking about, but I'll show off some of my personal favorite examples still, just so we are all on the same page. I did my best to hunt down their artists, but if one is wrong and you know who drew it, feel free to send me an email and let me know and I'll be happy to fix it.
Dark Angel Anime by draconianstefany on deviantart
14675-anime-dark-angel-boy-lilzeu-tattoo-de by Dark-Angel70 on deviantart
These dark angel characters were just so formative to me in ways that are hard to explain, but I will try to summarize how they have impacted my life in the 11 years that have passed since I first encountered them.
This isn't to say that their merit is entirely based on my enjoyment of them because of nostalgia or how they shaped me. Rather, I think a lot of these are beautiful pieces of artwork from a bygone era, one represented with edgy anime girls with moe eyes and sped up versions of Set If Off songs. Often, they were created by young artists, and my ability to connect so deeply with them was because I too was a young kid searching for some kind of expression to how scary growing up was.
I've definitely heard many people say that it's funny how into emo music they were as small children, because they hadn't really experienced anything actually bad up until that point. I do not find this to be true, personally. I had been bullied for being weird (see: autistic) for my entire childhood, and started puberty at a very young age. It was not a fun time, my body was going through changes that while I had been taught about, were a sort of horror that I don't think is easily expressed, even if you aren't transgender. More than that, growing up with very little restriction on my internet access meant that I had been exposed to a manner of things I simply could not comprehend or understand. To be frank, a 10-year-old is experiencing something actually bad if they stumble across a snuff film from misclicking while trying to read Naruto through a free manga website. Sure, I was not exposed to the horrors of war or having a manipulative or abusive lover, but I had been going through issues of my own all the same.
Because of that, these angels held something very powerful to me. They were beautiful, and often very young, and their ethereal nature felt personal. They were something that had been beautiful and good, but had been changed irrevocably by something else. There's this idea that even though they have fallen, or are now dark, or evil, or fucking whatever you want to call it, they held this sort of power because they were, after all, still angels.
This isn't to say that I was thinking that at the time. I was 10, frankly I don't know if I was thinking much at all aside from how cool I thought Warrior Cats was. I am just looking at these drawings now with a hindsight of so many years that gives me an appreciation for them in a new light. Truth be told, I mostly just wanted an excuse to show my love for these angels, because for a good number of years I cringed at the thought of them. Now though, I just think they are fun. I enjoy them in part because they are just so formative to how I am now. I love them so much they're so awesome. Everyone should draw one edgy anime angel in their life as a form of catharsis, I think that would be my takeaway from this. They are so representative of a time bygone to us now, and I think bringing them back could do us a world of good.
Hello everyone. Another long time with a lot of radio silence. It's never intentional, life just keeps getting busy so all my work on the site ends up being minimal things or making it look better or more functional. As you can probably tell, I have recently rethemed the place to suit my current interests and fixations. Though it's not perfect, I definitely felt like the site needed the change. There is not a lot to talk about currently, but seeing as my last update was last year, and also almost 5 months ago, I think it would be best to start with a life update.
To start, I was able to find a job at a used video game store. The place is very fun, and I enjoy working there. Though it had been stressful and chaotic at first (in large part due to a terrible store manager, but that isn't a story for here) I think I've found a flow within the store now. My coworkers are nice and I get along with them. I find myself struggling at times with the new systems being put in place, but not enough for it to be a large deal. Working there is nice though, I've managed to finally get ahold of some stuff I'd been really wanting (like a box set of Samurai Champloo). Our customers tend to be pretty cool as well, barring they don't make weird comments or passes towards me. It's only happened once or twice, though, so definitely not enough to make me feel particularly worried. Overall, I enjoy working there.
It feels a bit like a moot point to talk about my school stuff when the semester ends next Thursday, so instead I'll just make the promise to hopefully have my art page back up soon (once I've found a way to display everything well) and scan in all the photography work I've done. I don't think everything is my best work, but overall I'm happy with what I've done. I definitely have some stuff that turned out exactly how I wanted, however, so that is exciting. My drawing class makes me slightly miserable, but my final project is a collage that I'm hoping turns out quite well!
Other than that, I've mostly been doing the same old stuff. I finished reading through House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and will likely write a review of it once I've reread it. Overall though it's definitely a recommended read, and there's plenty of videos and other people who can tell you why you should read it in the interim. I also reread all of Yu Yu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi and remembered how endeared to the characters and world I am, so I may write something about it as well. Kurama, my beloved Kurama. Other than that, I have only watched Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series with a friend. I have not really had the time to play any new games, but I am hoping that changes over the summer. We will see though, it depends on how much I work and how much time I instead spend outside taking pictures.
I can't think of much else to report now! I am hoping (hoping) to have some sort of review of something by mid-May, but please don't hold me to that. Thanks for reading!