New goal in life: Become a househusband

Trigger Warning: Opening a b*ok and reading it

At the time of writing this, it's the tail-end of Thanksgiving break, I haven't done any assignments in three weeks, and I'd rather be put in the Clockwork Orange eye machine than open a single Word document.

First off, I want to open a public request to incarcerate whoever the hell made Microsoft Word and Google Docs. You give people this program they have to stare at all day to work or write or whatever, and you make it insane asylum-white? And there's not even a goddamn Better Canvas equivalent for Word or Google, the best you can get is dark mode or something. I hate it.

While my motivation to return to the asylum-white writing software of Doom and Despair is currently sub-zero, I've been working on bringing my constant media consumption habits back to books. Working at a bookstore is, to no one's surprise, a great way to get back into reading; highly recommend. I get discounts on physical books and there's a website we have access to that lets us get advanced copies for certain books, and while most are just random slop for the slop gods, there's (so far) two that I've read and enjoyed. 

The first one, which lowkey I haven't finished yet but still recommend, is The Girl With a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean (Releases May 5th). I'm like halfway through and so far I'm meandering between a 3.5/4 out of 5 stars. It's good for the most part, but the dialogue between the protagonist and the antagonist is so corny and exposition dump-y. I also think they revealed the antagonist way too early, but I guess I haven't read enough to say whether or not it still paces well or if there's another shoe to drop.

The second book, The Language of Liars by S. L. Huang (April 21), was a good read imo. I thought it was just generally solid for the most part; I'd recommend it mainly for fans of linguistics (like myself) and fans of freaky-deaky goobers (not like myself), and since I was only one of those two things, I just couldn't get myself fully into it. It's a sci-fi where the creatures are non-humanoid and just weird, hence the freaky-deaky goobers part, but the plot twist at the climax was genuinely not something I expected and, in my opinion, was pretty fire, so I bumped it up in my review.

I felt bad for the author when I logged it on Storygraph; I was the only review for like a month, and I left a stupid review because I generally don't write seriously on review apps. There's one other review now, though, and I'll just let you play spot-the-difference between the two.

People who take media analysis too seriously piss me off crazy style (ignore the fact that this started as a media studies blog); at least the people who beat subtext to death. Idk though, you tell me if I'm wrong for thinking that.

Gonna speedrun some other, already-published works I've been reading recently, starting with Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, which I liked but wished Janie was more present as a character in the Jody section. Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon gets so much hype for its worldbuilding and politics but the entire East section is half the length of West and generally irrelevant until you're like halfway through; it's just an alright fantasy trilogy compressed into one book. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler was good, but Lauren's stream of consciousness was pissing me offffff; just get to the point bro. And lastly I just finished reading The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, which is good and takes some interesting routes with how it tells the story, but idk I just haven't felt the book connect me to anywhere in its setting aside from the Junma. Fun fact, one of the people in that book's acknowledgements is teaching my fiction workshop next semester. I didn't even know my university had game like that fr.

I just don't get a lot of chances to
use this reaction image I'm sorry

The last book, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, has become one of my new favorites and is one of a few books that make me pause and think about how I write and tell stories. 

It's written as an oral tradition; though where, for example, Their Eyes Were Watching God goes down an oral tradition route of just talking to your friends about your life, A Wizard of Earthsea emulates a legend or an epic's oral tradition. It's a hundred percent a turn-off for a lot of people; there's barely any dialogue, and not everyone wants to read mainly prose for 200+ pages, but for me I enjoyed her writing style. The story takes place in Earthsea, an archipelago, and while there's so many different islands mentioned, we actually don't get a lot of fixation or interest on any one island in particular. Part of me kind of hates that and wants to Le Guin to expound on the worldbuilding, but simultaneously another part of me gets this sense of wanderlust from this massive, diverse archipelago.

The last thing I love about the book isn't actually from the book, but rather the afterword. Le Guin talks about what she did and why, and while I skimmed through most of it, towards the end she talks about why she designed Earthsea to be a land of relative peace. She talks about war as almost a disingenuous cop-out (my interpretation of her words) for fantasy writers to create conflict within their stories. She doesn't outright diss anyone, and in fact praises Tolkien and some other dude I forgot for their stories which deal with these wars of good and evil; what she does instead is mention that conflict appears in many different ways, and that fantasy almost uses war as a crutch.

I wouldn't write a war novel, as someone who's never experienced, researched, or spoken to survivors of war. If I wrote a fiction piece, the conflict would most likely be about something other than war. If I wrote a non-fiction, the conflict would be something more personal to my life. But if I wrote a fantasy or science fiction piece? Maybe it's just me, but while I've written a warless fantasy story before, I don't have that same taboo for the subject on account of my lack of experience.

For me personally, it would feel wrong to write about a real war without knowing almost everything about said war. It would feel wrong to write a fiction novel about a non-existent war that happens on our Earth, because I wouldn't be able to infuse it with enough nuance to make it seem A) realistic and B) not some tear-baiting slop some kid threw together for funsies. But when I think about writing a war in Fantasyland, I don't really have those same hesitations, and after really thinking about Le Guin's afterword I realized it's probably because I just don't care.

Like I've been watching the Lord of the Rings movies recently, about to start the third one, and I just can't help but think Who gives a shit?

Andy Serkis has had such a career

Lord of the Rings and a lot of other fantasy just feels so removed from reality for so many reasons. The difference in time period, the clear distinctions between good and evil; even just the elements of fantasy like dragons and magic and whatever. It's fun to detatch yourself from the real world and imagine Fantasyland for a bit, but none of these elements of war in my childhood favorites like Eragon or the last couple books in the Percy Jackson, or even a recent favorite like Dune, really stick with me because they sort of just use war as part of the spectacle that Fantasyland creates; it doesn't connect to my human emotions. I can see it as an interesting plot device or something, but when Main Character loses Third-Favorite Friend who was also Somewhat-Beloved Side Character's love interest as a result of some holy crusade, it doesn't feel like a genuine attempt to connect to the deep despair and pain you feel when you read about the actual atrocities of actual war.

Does the kid's series Percy Jackson need to emulate war crimes that happened in real life? Probably not. But did it also need to lead to a final Mega-battle against the evil forces of Kronos? Also probably not.

I feel like the only time I've read a war plot in fantasy that's stuck with me, not for how it just affected the characters or the world, but for how it affected me and my emotions, was in The Poppy War, where one of the cities is described exactly as the Nanjing Massacre happened in real life. To write a war plot in fantasy that feels genuine, I feel like you need to use it not to motivate your characters, but to make your audience feel sonder for each and every life that's affected, each life that could have been yours if you lived in this world. Lord of the Rings is cool and I get why people rock with the movies and the Good vs. Evil themes, but to me I just think of it as a spectacle. I care about the Fellowship (sort of), and I want them to win, but the war just seems like a thing that's gotta happen, and not an event that will affect Middle Earth for years to come.

War, to Le Guin, just isn't a place she wanted to go to in her writing. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'll never write a fantasy or science fiction war plot myself, but her words do make me think about how I might want to use conflict more to connect with something deeply human than as a spectacle.

TLDR; good book.

I will gain a thousand Letterboxd followers.

I am so sorry to anyone who's ever asked me what movies I like only to watch me immediately pull up my Letterboxd. No I do not have a top 5. No I do not remember any movies I like until I go through my reviews. No I am not original. Yes I deserve happiness too.

I don't really know what happened, I've pretty much never been a movie guy ever in my life, but downloading Letterboxd is like ingesting a brain slug that tells you to be unfunny on the Internet. I just can't help it.

I've had multiple conversations with people about what books and movies I like, and a lot of them start with people saying I love to hate or I'm a snob. I think it's fair enough; I'm the type who barely gives anything a five star rating and I'm one of those chumps who are like well it was objectively good but I don't like it because and yada yada. But also now that I think about it...who gives a gaf?

I also just don't really watch a lot of movies or read a ton of books. A lot of the times when I've logged a movie in the past year, it's been something I watched because it's the only thing me and my friends agreed on or I just wanted to spend time with people and we just happened to watch that movie. Half the books on my Storygraph are novels I had to read for literature class that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise.

I'm starting to realize that I'm less inclined to like a piece of media if someone tells me I have to consume it.

I didn't really enjoy any of the books I read for my literature class this semester. Some were good, but I wouldn't pick any of them up in a bookstore. I also had a decent streak where I felt like I never watched a movie willingly. Chump mentality I guess.

I've been trying to watch more things I'm actually interested in recently, and while there's always some exceptions (Sweeney Todd you will burn in hell) I think I've had a good run of watching movies I enjoy. 

I ended up watching the whole Now You See Me trilogy recently and I truly cannot decide if I love them or hate them. That's not really related to anything else I just wanted to mention it.

I've also been reading more books for personal enjoyment, and I just want to say that whoever came up with Don't judge a book by its cover is a moron. I think you should judge a book a solid 40% by its cover; cool, creative people don't slap lame-o covers on their books! And 99% of the time when you see a fiction, romance, or fantasy book where the cover is a photo of an actual real-life person instead of a drawing/art; it's probably garbage. Real photos of non-people are an edge case.

Last thing I'm just very proud of my Frankenstein review

I am going to become Head Coach of the Miami Heat

One of the greatest decisions of my life was getting into basketball, I love NBA brainrot so much. Just a couple of pearls of insight and wisdom as I leave you to ruminate on this blog post: The Heat becoming a power-of-friendship team and somehow winning games when Herro and Bam were out was such an unexpected development. Like omg we might beat the play-in allegations this year. Free James Harden from the Unction, blow up the Pelicans' training facility, and put Wemby on steroids and Celsius. Happy Holidays.