#idk man i think me doing these 3.5 months after the facts gives it a little spice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

poptartmochi · 2 years

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ok I wanna say dmc for the glub shitto ask game bc I love the way you talk about it sm even tho idk anything of it

if u already got dmc or don't feel up to it I guess jojo is my alternative to u^^

ahh, Luna thank you! <3 😁 i'm on desktop rn so i cannaur send my beloved blue hug emoji, but know i would put it here if i could! also apologies for the late reply- i'm trying to rebuild my mom's desk! 😄 my rambling aside- ouuuuugh Thee dmc!!!! I shall try to give some context for the characters as I answer, hopefully it sheds some more light on them.. if not, thank you for reading my rambles despite not knowing them!! :') i appreciate it 🥺💙

P.S.: I just finished writing this and dear GOD it is LONG!! D: i started writing and then I blacked out, and when I came to i was looking at like 3.5 paragraphs of hate towards DmC Vergil 😨😨😨💧 the spirit of the infodump possessed me...... I put this all under a readmore- if you don't want to get hit with a genuine wall of text, please take care not to open it... i don't even want to think about how long it'd take to scroll through it on mobile 😳💀💀💀💀💀

prompt ( i prommy i won't go off the rails like i did w this one! 🙈)

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most):

is it any question... Vergil, man of all time 😔🆘🆘 if you listen to bury the light on 24hr repeat for like 2 months straight, you contract vergil blorbo disease </3 but so! vergil! speedrun lore, vergil is the son of ✨ Sparda ✨, a demon who split the human and demon worlds in two after a Very Long Time of demons hunting humans for sport 😳;;. Vergil's also the twin brother of Dante, the series' leading protagonist! ^^ anyhow, at some point after the two were born, Sparda disappears and from what I can tell, they're just raised by their human mom, Eva? In any case, since the two have The Blood of Sparda™, the demons that slip through into the human world want them Dead. Thus, when they're like 8 or 9, the demons descend upon their house and light it aflame, killing Eva and presumably Dante in the process. Vergil's the only survivor, and girl............... we need not discuss the psychological impact of this 😳🆘 After this, Vergil adopts this ideology that power is the most important thing, and his pursuit of power sends him on a very tragic path. 😔 to make a long story short, he basically shows up in the 3rd game because he's trying to open the gate between the human + demon worlds, which he succeeds at in spite Dante's efforts to stop him. Immediately after getting to hell he gets curbstomped by the king of hell </3, stripped of his will, and turned into the guy's little demon minion for like a decade. :( He then shows up in the 1st game as a Mysterious Enemy that you fight a few times on your journey to stop the aforementioned king of hell, and it's only towards the very end that it's revealed the really cool very strong mysterious guy is in fact... YOUR BROTHER :( But what can ye do except curbstomp his ass, since he's still in the throes of the king of hell 😔 So curbstomp him you do, and he basically gets mario washing machine'd to god knows where, where he takes Continual Losses. at this point, he's come back into his own consciousness and psyche, and he's like 😐😡 but also he's dying 🥺 Despite this, he is haunted by the many losses he's been dealt at his brother's hand and resolves to do one final thing before he dies: Kill Dante ⚔ ...... unable to do this in his current dying form, he goes back to his childhood home and uses his fucked up demon sword to split himself into two- the human and the demon. The plot of the fifth game all stems from his human side realizing What the Fuck He's Done, not just right now but in general, and he's like ohhhh dear.. girlies we gotta fix this 😳;;

hmm what else about vergil... oh yes he has a book of William Blake's poetry that he got shortly before everything went to hell as a child, and he like.. carved?? drew?? his initial into it because, despite vergil being the Evil Twin in the games, dante was THEE evil twin when they were younger... dante the instigator the brawler the manipulator.. tbh i'm obsessed with it. Anyhow, despite all the madness and mania he goes through throughout his life, he's somehow kept that book the entire time and his human side is Always Cryptically Quoting It :')

so. yes that is blorbo,,, the parasite that haunts my brain so...

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped):

Nero!!!! :D nero is vergil's mystery son, and the protagonist of the fourth game! 😁😁 He grew up as an orphan on an isolated island called Fortuna, where they actually worship Sparda in a cult-like manner 😳 Before I go off the deep end, I just must quickly say.. nero literally is SO SHAPED. DMC4 came out in like 2008/9 and my sister and I are in agreement that if I'd played as Nero as a kid, i would be a trans guy today. it is uncontested.. his design is SO fucking gender

but so nero! In canon nobody knows where the fuck Nero came from, much less that he has any connection to Sparda. he was raised in an orphanage before being taken in by the super cool parents of Credo and Kyrie (who took him in because he has the ✨ Same Silver Hair as Sparda ✨😮 but.. it's fine @w@;;). At some point they die, and so then it's just Nero, Credo, and Kyrie- the three must be incredibly tight because Nero looks up to Credo and joined the Order of the Sword, which is Fortuna's like.. demon-hunting church military/police kind of organization?? you know how it goes 😀😀😀;; Anyhow, Nero joins them because of his deep respect for Credo. And then Kyrie.. they end up dating which cannaur lie makes me uncomfortable given their upbringing but we pretend we do not see it 😳

set-up aside! Nero's game is basically about how The Pope™ wants to lure out Dante in an attempt to absorb him into the core of like.. a marble Sparda-shaped evangelion basically 🙈 Nero is really just a henchman following Credo's orders until it is revealed that he too, somehow, has demonic power... then things begin to shift, and the pope and co. are basically luring Nero into the belly of the beast by kidnapping Kyrie, so on and so forth 🤪🥴 They succeed in this and Nero's unwillingly drawn in as the aformentioned Sparda eva's power source, so the game then switches to Dante POV and you have to take it down! It finishes out with Dante beating the shit out of it but not really being able to stop it, so then you have to take it, and the Pope, down from the inside as Nero......... it's a whole thing 🙈

anyhow.. nero is truly scrunkly man, like the above description to a T. DMC4 was very rushed and suffered many things, but they still managed to put a ton of work into Nero's animation and expressions. he does a lot of small things with his face in the cutscenes that are 🥺🌋🌋 That, combined with the fucking insane voice acting of Johnny Young Bosch, makes Nero a really 🥺🤲🏼 *holds him* character for me <3

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave):

literally banging on my chest like a gorilla because CREDO, MAN..... i say vergil is the man of all time, but credo is like.. the MAN of ALL TIME 🥺🥺🥺 In the overall scope of the franchise, Credo is a Minor character- he only shows up in one game, you only fight him once, etc etc. but dude holy fuck credo lives in my MIND.... let me explain his white man sauce...

so, as I loosely explained above, Credo is the older brother of Kyrie and their parents took in Nero when he was young before they died under mysterious circumstances. WELL... the circumstances are not so mysterious to credo.. I mentioned before that Credo was in the Order of the Sword- expanding on this, he was also in some type of high position at a young-ish age? Which means he was privy to the truth behind his parents' death, which is that they participated in a ritual to imbue them with the power of demons and fucking died :(

this is classified information, so Credo never gets to tell his little sister the truth of what happened to their parents. so not only is he dealing with this truth, but Also. without his parents, he has to raise Kyrie (and nero????) all on his own 🥺 he does a stellar job with this because Kyrie is basically widely regarded as a fucking saint- for me this would be impressive on its own, but! He also manages to be such a fucking chad that everyone is Fortuna loves him- this combined with his insane fighting skills nets him the position of supreme general of the order, which imo is the second-in-command after the pope

Knowing the plot of the fourth game, this is incredibly heeeeehee 😳😨😱 Credo enacts the pope's will because he believes in the false vision of the future that the pope's been spouting forever, yk how it is with cults... However, he throws all that aside when he learns the pope has gone behind his back and pulled Kyrie, who is his sister but Also a Civilian 😡, into everything... in the end, his defense of Kyrie costs him his fucking life and it's 🥺🥴🥺🥺🥺🥺😔😐🥺😭😭😭😭 why!!!! </3

oh my fucking god I forgot to mention that. while he's still under the pope's will he has the SICKEST boss fight as a demon (bc surprise he undergoes the same ritual that his parents did, and he survived!!! there isn't enough time or space in 4's narrative to dwell on this, but I Dwell On It 👁👁🥺)

so yes in conclusion... credo 🥴😍🥰🥰🥰❣❣❣

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week):

Lucia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 lucia my fucking beloved aouuuuuugh!!!!!!!! Luna I know I've rambled so much but you are about to HEAR IT.. i cannot think of lucia or i will go insane!

SO. Lucia. Lucia is the second protagonist of the ill-fated Devil May Cry 2. the original DMC was directed by Hideki Kamiya, mr. bayonetta himself, and I'm not sure if the next part happened because his + the team's work on the original DMC was super promising pre-release or because DMC was met with such acclaim after its release, BUT. development on the second game began incredibly quickly, some people say before the original even shipped. In any case, Kamiya had no idea it existed until the original DMC was being localized into English. this is the second game's point of inception, right?

Development was. challenged. like super super fucking challenged. Accordingly, despite months (?) of development, the only concrete thing the team had was the animation for one attack. Capcom was disappointed in this and removed the sequel's original director, who has never been named and in my opinion is in witness protection. 😀;;; Then, they brought Hideaki Itsuno on as the director and basically gave him 4-5 months to make a game out of nothing. I think this is incredibly fucked up and they should have delayed the game, but some people say that Capcom needed to use/cash in on an expiring contract with the brand Diesel and that's why there was no expanded dev time.

SO. i don’t know how, but Itsuno somehow makes the game. Given the circumstances, it is rough and nobody really likes it and it is widely regarded as the Genuine black sheep of the franchise- 4 was rushed and had some issues but that is all a speck of dust compared to how troubled 2 was. :( Outside of some side material, the contents of 2 have yet to see the light of day.

this is why Lucia is the obscure fave </3 It breaks my heart because Lucia is such a good character. In short, she's basically an artificial demon created alongside many others by this CEO kind of guy in his pursuit of power etc etc. Unlike the other artificial demons, she's defective (I think because she had her own sense of will?) and so, she's basically thrown out to the trash. She gets taken in by this elderly woman who's basically the last demon hunter on this one island, Vie de Marli. The woman raises Lucia to carry on the torch, and Lucia is a very very human character as a result of this. (although, i think in being raised like this, she's also brought up to disregard her own life in the service of her people? it's been a while since i played 2 so i don't really remember, but I'll come back to this in a moment)

Anyhow, the plot of 2 basically follows Dante, who was called to the island by the aforementioned old lady, on his quest to thwart the CEO’s attempts to open the gates of Hell through this ritual, or something like that... To do so, the CEO has to collect these artifacts, and while Dante is the main one working against this guy, Lucia is in the background trying to collect the artifacts before the CEO can so that he can't do the ritual. As she's doing this, the CEO guy confronts her and is like "ohhh it's you! :o you're no devil hunter lol you're a literal devil! i made you!! and it's only a matter of time until your programming faults and you begin killing the humans you've been trying so hard to protect hehe >:3c"

This like. really fucks up Lucia and she has a whole existential crisis shutdown about it while Dante is fighting the guy. I don’t remember it well, but I think the guy succeeds in opening that portal to Hell + unleashes a fucked up demon that Dante has to go after. In any case, Lucia stops him and is like "You'll be stuck there and the world needs you but I'm expendable so let me do it" or something like that, which... 🥺🥺 I'm describing it very loosely here bc I have terrible memory but frfr that was such a heartbreaking moment and Also the precise moment I was like ok. i will kill and die for lucia okokok <3

I forget what Dante says to her but it's some lifechanging shit and she's like oh!!! 😮 i have self-worth now!! So she steps aside and lets him go into the portal. While he's gone, this fucked up version of the CEO guy returns and is Berating Her Yet Again :( but this time, she's able to stand on her own to fight (and beat 😚) this guy proper.

Her character arc roughly ends there, which is. the worst because she has SO much potential. Lucia is someone who was raised as a human, raised to love her fellow humans. I feel like you could really do something with the revelation that she's Not a Human, and even moreso!! there's tension and suspense from the line where she was told that some day, she'll break and turn on her fellow man!! like what!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺

but alas. That's basically the last we ever see of Lucia and I'm not sure how likely it is we'll ever see her again. :( She got a little section in the expository book for DMC5, but no mention in the actual game itself... if/when she does, know that i will be ripping my shirt off and banging my chest like a fucking gorilla!!!!!!! she's my girl!! 🥺🥺

ummm also very very quick honorable mention here for the Lady in Red, who is an NPC given a few seconds of screentime during the opening cutscene for Vergil's game mode in DMC4. She's just a random Fortunan with her face hidden beneath a hood, but she's the only one that notices Vergil walking through the crowd. It's implied and widely believed that she's Nero's mom, but she's never given importance beyond those few seconds in the cutscene so 🤪🤪🤪 Anyhow, the Lady in Red gets honorable mention here because the very existence of Nero drove me insane. I couldn't wrap my mind around Dante, part of Kiryu's swag virgin club, or Vergil, who imo is too laser-focused on power to have time for relations of any kind, having a kid. more than that, I couldn't imagine what kind of woman would be able to fall in step with them long enough to have a kid??? And then I spoiled myself on Who Nero's Father Is, and felt even more insane because your honor i truly cannot see vergil ever taking interest in someone In That Way. so the thought fermented in my mind, who WAS this woman??? what did she do to catch his attention??? and the more i thought about this, as a Joke, the more it began to seriously haunt me. Before I knew it, I'd gone and pulled a sergio again, making a whole ass character to bridge the gaps and expand on the spaces left in between the narrative 🤪😳;

anyhow. that's gioia. the lady in red gets to stay here despite gioia because i fucking lose it over any breadcrumbs we get about her. XD there first time I watched my sister play through DMC5, before I was familiar w the ins and outs of the franchise + didn't realize Nero was an orphan, there's a part where he phones home after learning Vergil's his dad + I was ready to pop bottles bc I thought he was calling his mom.................... naur... 🙈🙈🙈 in the same way as Lucia, I doubt we’ll see much, if anything, about Thee lady in red </3

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave):

So, you recall how during Vergil's section I mentioned he split himself in two, right? well, the human part of him is named V and holy shit holy fucking shit is this guy a poor little meow meow. holy shit. not in the evil sense, he is just Going Through It </3 The thing with Vergil splitting himself into two is that like,, all of his essence, his strength ig? went into his demonic side. V inherited Vergil's conscience and memory in the divorce, and that's It. V himself is kind of odd in that he's the human portion of vergil, but he's not.. human? per se? Not a concrete human anyways, so he's running off a very limited reserve of juice to keep himself going in the regular sense, but also in an existential sense. And the further the game goes on, the less he has to work with. 🥺🥺

V is also the meow meow of all time because he really is so fucking human oh my god. :') He reads Vergil's book of poetry and knows it so intimately that he can casually whip out lines to comment on the situations he finds himself in. Vergil's clothes go into the void of existence with him when he splits himself, so iirc V fr just walks around naked until he mugs a guy and takes his clothes- rings and belts and necklaces and fun strappy sandals included. He's hesitant to eat a burger because he doesn't want to deal with how messy it is, but then he just. eats a demon raw. (and then he eats it cooked on like skewers BUT. this is only AFTER he just fucking eats the raw meat. this haunts me to this DAY)

Also a huge portion of V's character that I forgot to mention is that he has demon familiars who're essentially formed from Vergil's memories of his coworkers when he was a puppet for the king of hell..... One of these familiars is named Griffon, and he's the only one that talks out loud. Griffon bullies V so much and V just takes it bc they're besties. :') it's meow meow behavior your honor. OH one final thing, when you’re fighting as him, he’ll call out commands for the familiars + one of his commands literally sounds identical to CGI Ganondorf saying “die”. it HAUNTS me 😭😭😭😭😭

another meow meow-type character for me is Kat from the DmC reboot! We Do Not Talk about the DmC reboot because it is godforsaken, goatforsaken, the list goes on. It's a badly-written insult to the franchise. HOWEVER, Kat is cool :') I won't explain everything that goes on w Kat bc then I'd have to explain the reboot and that's more effort than it's worth. </3 but Kat is worth explanation. 🥰 so!! she's essentially Vergil's right hand lass, and also his girlfriend?? maybe? but that's basically irrelevant. Anyhow, the two of them have been working together for god knows how long trying to overthrow the surveillance state the demons have mankind under. Kat is a medium, so she's able to exist in Limbo, which is the space between the human and demon worlds? or maybe where they overlap??? I dunno tbh 😳 but anyhow, Kat is able to traverse Limbo while her physical body gets left in the real world, and she uses this ability to be the smartest, most effective, most efficient person in the whole game. There is one point where she gets taken hostage and the king of hell is trying to use her to convince Vergil, who's an unknown variable in this universe, to bring him Dante, public enemy #1. While he’s beating the shit outta her and doing god knows what else (which is 🥺👿 because the game casually drops that she was assaulted, iirc sexually, as a child) to her, she slips into Limbo and basically scouts out the place where she’s being held hostage. Then, she concocts this entire plan, iirc all by herself!, to topple the demon’s power. The reveal that she was doing all of this blew my fucking socks off- when you first see her in this portion of the game, it's in a video where she's super out of it and I was Very Concerned about what she was going through.. meanwhile miss thing is out here masterminding her captor’s downfall... legend behavior. So yeah! of the reboot's cast, Kat is my favorite character 😚 but the reboot is wildly unpopular and held in similar regard to DMC2, with the exception that it's set in a different universe and thus even Easier To Ignore than DMC2. so i think that makes her an unpopular fave and thus a good fit for the meow meow category ^^

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason):

so I would say Dante because dante is like. the most batshit normie guy ever. like... Confirmed the strongest guy in the whole series, has taken down every Ted, Jim, and Sue from the demon world that's tried to grab for power... but also. Dante lives off of pizza, his favorite drink is tomato juice, and he loves strawberry milkshakes. he never has money because his besties are always running him dry </3 for at least a little while, he gets bossed around by his own version of the Ace Attorney Weird Little Girl. in every single game he gets impaled with a sword, and when nobody did it in 5, he did it to himself. Dante is easily the most tormentable character in the entire franchise, but ALSO.. he is the Most Tormented :( so I don't know if I could torment him, he's been through enough!!! 😭

so if I can't torment dante, then Nero it is. >3 a bit of context here- every time I see a city you can kiiind of explore in a game, ie Val Royeaux in Dragon Age: Inquisition, I get a hardcore itch to explore + play in it the same way you play through Kamurocho/Sotenbori in Yakuza. WELL... girl lemme tell you this itch is so fucking strong for Fortuna man!!! it's such a pretty city and you really don't get to see a lot of it! :( so for a long time now I have been juggling a Yakuza-esque spinoff game for Nero where you have to do a bunch of sidequests for the people of Fortuna.. in my mind all of them are as headscratch-worthy and bewildering as Yakuza's sidequests. however, Nero is a lot more affectable than Kiryu is, so I think he would be tormented by them a lot more than Kiryu would be. 🥴 it is my dream to get into the dmc board room and pitch this game one day 😤😤😤😤

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

SO............. THE POPE, RIGHT >( I would say sanctus is the most bitchass character in the entire franchise, if only because he took Credo away from us 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 BUT. sanctus has a lot of pussy power. he poisoned the previous pope for two years straight so he could take his job and then he strung Literally Everyone along while he was planning world domination for two entire decades. he's the worst but I'm kind of obsessed with him </3

SO.

INSTEAD. : - )

my vote goes to DmC Vergil. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh i HATE DmC Vergil he is genuinely the fucking worst 🤬⚔ I think they started off with a good idea for his character, the son that got away, a mystery variable in a heavily-surveiled state. If I were in that position, with the bass boosted powers that Vergil gets from his parents (plural... his and Dante's mom is an angel in the reboot... girl 😐), I Too would build my own secret little organization to topple the demons in power. BUT. That's like the end of Vergil's good writing. Throughout the game, he's always in the back, always the one depending on Dante to do things for him. What was he doing before his group found Dante? They dangle the idea of him having sauce right before your very eyes, because they take a moment to establish that he still has his fuckt up crazy sword Yamato (which he pronounces as if it rhymes with tomato...) in this universe as well, which means he COULD be doing things. But no!! there's literally a mission where you have to come defend his ass while he's trying to back up servers or whatever. as if the original Vergil would ever need to be defended. There's another part in the game where you're trading Kat off for the king of hell's... lover? who is pregnant with his child? In any case, it is a very high stakes high tension moment in which neither party can really afford for things to go wrong....... so vergil decides to snipe the pregnant lady out! 😱🤯🤯 for literally No Reason!!!!!! and it endangers Kat and everything goes haywire and hsdhfjfjhgs...... the entire time I was like, you did this for what!! iirc correctly, he is Hardly Useful in the ending fight against the king of hell, whereas the original Vergil in a similar fight was instrumental to winning the battle.... like, girl!!! where is your sauce? what's going on!

it gets worse though... after Dante defeats the king of hell, there's a beat, right. the guy is dead, his surveillance state's been dismantled... damn, there's finally room to breathe! to hope! and then Vergil, who has made Dante do all the legwork, is like "Dante, the path is clear for us to rule over the humans now ^_^". When Dante is justifiably like what the fuck, they get into an argument about humans being fine/not fine on their own and Dante Correctly brings up that it would've been impossible for the two of them to achieve anything without Kat (who is in the bg watching this unfold like 👁_👁😨), and vergil essentially handwaves her!!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬 this is the point where I went from begrudingly tolerating Vergil to really disliking his character 🙈 you fucked with the wrong kat stan !!!1! 😆

but then!! the worst part! as if what he'd already done wasn't enough! his boss fight begins, right. Vergil's boss fight. vergil. who has been useless and non-combative the whole game. HIS boss fight starts AND SOMEHOW??? HE HAS SAUCE?! INSANE SAUCE? that really cemented it for me. He'd had these abilities the whole time, you know! he never had a big coming of power moment, so he was just sitting on all these abilities The Whole Time! and it just bugged me- Vergil, in any instance, keeping a low profile is a rational thing. but the original vergil still took the time to have sauce and do batshit stuff like ricocheting the yamato off of walls and catching it at the last second, so on and so forth. With this newer Vergil, they nerf him only until he Has To be the final boss. I've rewritten this a few times and I still don't think I'm capturing what I'm really trying to say, but. god. I know they're two separate characters and you shouldn't compare them, but the reboot's Vergil just feels so incredibly disrespectful towards the original. and since vergil is The blorbo of dmc for me, this is a crime punishable by death /j

OH my god i forgot to mention. they gave him his own DLC where you get to play as him, right? they initially won me back over because they had him limping around and clutching where dante fucking stabbed him to death (i call it the garrett thief effect 🙈), BUT THEN.. the story of the DLC was just. so edgy and grrr Vergil fights his inner demons and he kills the ghosts of Kat, Dante, his mother, everyone who left him and haunts him grrrr... but it felt too disconnected from the Vergil we'd seen in the main game for it to be a cohesive addition imo.

dear god I cannot believe I went off about the reboot Vergil for this long,,,, I am so sorry </3 I tried to forget him but I guess he still vexes me deeply 🙈🙈🙈 in conclusion, DmC Vergil has been sentenced to an eternity in superhell for crimes against DMC Vergil and also because he is kin with the Elon Musk who Also had a fedora and katana. grrr

#long post #sriracha ask game #ty again for the ask luna!!! <3 getting to write this all out reminded me of what i love about the series so much #but also god west youw souw.... i can't believe i wrote so much 😳🙈#also.. how did i only mention lady and trish (''dante's besties'') in passing that is so criminal.. they are super fun and good characters #too!!!! capcom needs to do more with them! :(

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calliecat93 · 3 years

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ST: TNG S5 Watchthrough Episodes 18-21

Cause and Effect: Who’s ready for the ST equivalent of Groundhog Day? Yep, we have a time loop episode. This is actually my mom’s favorite episode so I’ve been waiting for this one XD.So the episode opens with the Enterprise blown up… and after the titles we have a poker game as though nothing happened. But Crusher begins to have deja vu and as the loops continue, so do the others. So... If you’ve seen time loop stories you more or less know how this goes. Though unlike most of the oens I’ve seen where just one person becomes aware of it, while Crusheris the first the others also begin to take notice. The don’t remember everything, but they start picking up on it and figuring out that something’s up. Again, I appreciate the cast being written as competent and not stupid cause it’s very easy to do with this kind of plot. Not sure I at all understand Data’s explanation on how he figured out how to end the loop... but hey, it ended. So it was good. Nothing mind-blowing but very much enjoyable. Any time that Crusher gets prominent screentime I’m happy, but again I just appreciate the cast being intelligent. Also the Kelsey Grammer cameo at the end, Hell yes~! 3.5/5.

The First Duty: Okay Wesley, second guest star appearance. Let’s see how it goes. Which, haha... it’s not a happy episode for him. There’s been an accident at the Academy and while thankfully Wesley is alright aside from an injured arm, one of his classmates has died. Well… that’s sad. That n and of itself could fuel a story all its own. But as a hearing is held, it becomes clear that something more is going on. As it turns out, Wesley’s teammate died because the entire squadron not only performed an illegal flight procedure… but lied about it. First that it was an accident, then that the accident and his own demise was his own fault. Why? To save their own skins. Now to be fair it’s clear that they’re scared, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re essentially lying/disgracing a dead person to save themselves. Even the kid’s own father gets convinced of this, which only adds to Wesley’s guilt. I actually felt really bad for Wesley and I kinda feel like Picard, upon confronting him, was… pretty harsh. Wesley’s actions were wrong, but again he was clearly scared and felt guilty for it. Thankfully he does ultimately do the right thing, accepting the consequences. Hopefully, Wesley can push through it and grow from it if he shows up again. My mom doesn’t like this episode I guess because of how it portrayed Wesley, but honestly? I like it for that exact reason. Welsey isn’t portrayed necessarily as bad, he’s reacting like… well… a scared nineteen-year-old. He made a major mistake, and he paid the price for it, though it certainly wasn’t the worst punishment that he could have received. While Picard was rather harsh when confronting him, it was the push that Wesley needed to do the right thing. I think that this was the kind of episode that Wesley needed, where he commits a huge screw-up and unlike when he was a regular, pays the consequences for it… it’s just a shame that they did it after he stopped being a regular. I can see why some may dislike this one because of Wesley’s portrayal, but I think it was good and was long overdue for the character without villainizing him. He’s intelligent and capable of greatness, but he’s got a lot to learn, especially after this. Let’s hope that he does. 3.5/5.

Cost of Living: It’s another Lwaxana episode folks… yay. Okay despite my complaints about her episodes, the last one’s issues I had was more due to the subject matter than the character. If anything, she was the best part of it. So maybe this time things will be better. So this time, Worf is having parenting problems with Troi trying to help him and Alexander make it work. Lwaxana is on the Enterprise as she’s getting married, to Troi’s exasperation and Picard’s utter relief, and ends up butting in. Oh and the ship malfunctions because it’s Star Trek. So… it was okay I guess? The Holodeck scene was just utterly bizzare and I’m still trying to wrap my brain around WTF just happened. To be honest, Troi is the best part of this episode. She’s trying to reasonable help Worf with his parenting issues, Alexander with his lack of discepline/responsibility, her mother marrying a guy she never met and bending agains the Betazoid traditions that she usually follows, and she’s clearly just fed up with everyone especially her mother. It makes her such a joy to watch, haha! Lwaxana was… alrigh. On the one hand, it ws not at all her place to butt into the whole Alexander situation especially since Troi was handling it. On the other hand, the episode does go more into how lonely Lwaxana is and make her manhunting/desire tog et married more sympathetic. Te previous episodes always played it mainly as a joke/a condition of her species at her age, but it never allowed her to actually delve into why she’s so desperate. How she’s fears rowing older and being all alone without someone to love her… and gosh I’ve absoluteley seen this before and it’s just sad. Consideirng that this came out the same year that Gene Roddenberry, majel Barret’s husband and of course as we know the franchise creator, has passed… I can only imagine how rough this had to be for the poor woman. But if she wad channeling that into her performance, she did a fantastic job. Also Lwaxana’s fiance? He was played by freakin’ Tony Jay. The man is a freakin’ legend the voice acting world (probably best known as Frollo in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by far his darkest performance yet probably his best) and it’s the first time I’ve seen him in a live aciton role. He plays a snobish asshole and obviousy the marriage falls through in the end, but he made the episode worth it! So yeah, I’m still not a big Lwaxana fan but they are trying to add more to her and overall it was fine. It’s not great, for example the Enterprise’s plot felt tacked on to fill in the runtime, the pacing was rouh, and the storylines were not at all balanced out well. But it was overall fine, though i think Half a Life did her better. Troi, some legit Lwaxana development, and getting an appearance by Tony Jay made it worth it XD 2/5.

The Perfect Mate: While preparing for a peace treaty, the Enterprise picks up two Ferengi, one of which messes with the cargo, and releases a young woman named Kamala, a mutant amongst her kind whose abilities let her become the perfect mate for any man, from suspended animation. She was meant to stay that way until the ceremony... and was meant to be a ‘gift’ to one of the sides. Yeah... that’s not at all messed up. Due to the Prime Directive, the crew can’t interfere... and we find out that there was a more complicated reason as to why Kamala was as she was. This is pretty much the TNG version of Elaan of Troyius from TOS. Kamala is completely different from Elaan, more composed and well-mannered while Elaan was more aggressive and upfront. Looking back I do feel I was too harsh in calling Elaan a brat considering the conditions she was under, but the episode certainly didn’t give he much sympathy from anyone (aside from Kirk) while they do better calling out the arrangement here. Then again it’s been months since I watched the episode so I may be remembering wrong. But it does ultimately end with Kamala entering an unhappy marriage, but she bonds with Picard and ends up acting as his perfect mate, so... hope that goes well. The whole empath/metamorph thing felt necessary as well, you didn’t need a reason to make men attracted to her for this episode to work. Which yes it only works on men, remember this is the 90’s folks. I’m kind of baffled as to why Troi wasn’t in this one considering we have another empath, that could have added a more interesting layer and justified that part. But I shall repeat what I said in Elaan when they put Kirk under that tear-induced love spell: you don’t need those elements to keep a plot spicy. The Ferengi we're also utterly pointless. While I feel that the subject is better done than in TOS and it felt more evenly paced... I’m still not a fan of it. It has more of the nuanced debate on the arranged marriage plot that I was annoyed that Elaan didn’t have... but I’m still pretty meh about it overall. it’s alright, but just that: alright. 2.5/5.

Okay folks, we’re five episodes away from finishing S5. So far... it’s only been alright. There’s been a couple of strong episodes, but overall it’s remained firmly in the average range. Maybe S4 hyped me up too much, IDK. I’m still having fun, but maybe I’m just starting to get fatigued from TNG. But we don’t have much more to go, and there’s still plenty of time for S6 to change my mind, so we’ll see how things go from here.

#st watchthrough

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toomuchtimenerd · 4 years

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Review for ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely’ by Brigid Kemmerer

Aaaand here’s yet another popular retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. So something to know about me - I LOVE fairy tale retellings. I grew up on a lot of fairy tales, lots of Disney princess movies (most of which are based off fairy tales or in the case of Mulan, a ballad/folk legend). I’m pretty sure growing up I had this giant anthology of a bunch of old European fairy tales that had been adapted for children’s reading. I’m pretty sure my love for magic, fantasy, and all kinds of other-worldly things stems from how much I read and re-read everything in that kid’s anthology as an eight year old or something. Nowadays, I am on the lookout for anthologies with adaptations of folk lore from other cultures. Hopefully I will soon find some that seem promising.

So A Curse So Dark and Lonely is, interestingly, not a stand-alone and its sequel came out earlier this month. I opted to stop after the first book and not pick up the sequel, for reasons that I will divulge in later. A Curse, like The Cruel Prince, has incredibly favorable reviews on Goodreads, and for good reason really. It’s just unfortunate that neither of these two books quite hit the spot for me. Perhaps in the future I will pick up the sequel for A Curse, but with the third book planned for a late 2021 release I probably will not be reading A Curse So Fierce and Broken anytime soon. Something already tells me that I may have to put recreational reading on the back burner for an extended period of time once again when I go back to school. Sadface

A Curse So Dark and Lonely loosely follows the widely known story line for ‘Beauty and the Beast’, with notable changes in that the main character (Harper) has cerebral palsy and is transported from our non-magical contemporary world to the magical kingdom of Emberfall. Our Prince Rhen does not adopt the appearance of a beast 24/7, but rather transforms into one at the end of the repeating autumn season. In his transformed state, he has a penchant for violence and generally does not retain any sense of mind or humanity. When he yet again fails to win a woman’s love, the season will restart to the day of his 18th birthday and he will have to try again with a new woman. Rhen is accompanied only by the sole survivor of his first transformation, a royal guard named Grey. Grey was given the power to go to Harper’s world and take a woman to bring back to Emberfall for Rhen to court. This entire curse was brought down by an enchantress named Lilith, who apparently exists only to torture everyone’s existence. Harper wasn’t originally chosen by Grey, but Harper witnessed Grey “abducting” an unconscious woman and chose to interfere, which leads to her transportation into Emberfall.

So let’s talk about the obvious; the representation of disabled peoples in this book via our protagonist Harper. She has cerebral palsy, and this is made very clear within the first chapter of the book. Props to the author for not OVER-emphasizing Harper’s disability, though. I love representation, and I believe in the power of representation, but I’m not a fan of when representation goes too far and it becomes the sole definition of a character’s existence. It comes off as lazy writing when a character brings no substance or value aside from the fact that they represent some kind of minority group. However, this isn’t the case here and I think Kemmerer did a wonderful job of blending Harper’s cerebral palsy into the background, yet not enough for the reader to completely forget that she is living with a disability. There are times when Harper is in a lot of pain and isn’t able to do certain things as easily as other people can, but her perseverance/grit/determination shows us that she is still just like any other human being trying to get by. She doesn’t view herself as a victim of her disability either, it’s just something she was born with and has learned to live with. It is a part of her, and even if she doesn’t like it she has learned to accept it as a part of her. I think Kemmerer sends a beautiful message in portraying Harper’s attitude with her cerebral palsy: there is no need to feel victimized by one’s disability, and there is no need to hate oneself for it either.

Outside of Harper’s disability, she is a very standard YA fantasy heroine - hardworking, passionate, cautious, determined, guarded. Is it bad that I’m getting a little bit tired of this character trope? I kind of want to see a heroine who isn’t so perfect, and I kind of want to see someone who is a little whiny or bratty at first but then grows from their hardships and experiences. Harper, like many YA fantasy heroines, just seems to start out incredibly likable (or maybe too likable) with the perfect package of personality traits. Now I’m not necessarily complaining about this, but I definitely would’ve liked to see a little more substance from Harper outside of just “I need to find a way to get home and I’m going to keep rebelling until I do”. Obviously this wasn’t her as a character the ENTIRE book, but it definitely was more or less the only thing passing through her mind for maybe the first 40% of the book. Another issue I took with her (or maybe not even her as a character, maybe it’s an issue I have with the book itself) is her wishywashy-ness in regards to her feelings. For pretty much the entire book up until Grey takes her home, Harper at best only deeply cares about and respects Rhen. But in the last 20% of the book when Grey takes her back to Emberfall to face the transformed Rhen, Harper suddenly proclaims her love for him and is willing to pretty much give herself up to Lilith to spare Rhen and Grey. That’s a huge change in emotions, and according to the book timeline this change of feelings happens over the course of like... 36 hours or something. And then the book ends on a MASSIVE ambiguity over whether the curse was broken because Harper truly loved Rhen, or if it was because Grey had succeeded in killing Lilith. So, we went from “I deeply care for you and I find comfort in your company” to “I would DIE for you” to “did the curse break because I love you? Idk” over the course of like... 3-4 chapters? Uhhhhh. Yeah I’ve got questions.

Now I know this review is coming off as pretty negative, and not gonna lie I don’t think I was a big fan of this retelling but I certainly don’t think it was bad either. Rhen’s character development was so captivating and surprising because most YA authors generally don’t pay much attention into developing the male lead as much as the heroine. In all honesty, Harper began pretty perfect with very little room for growth so she her character progression just seemed to stagnate to me. But Rhen starts off as a meh character who didn’t seem to learn all that much from his countless failures of wooing women during his cursed time and progresses into a very selfless leader (re: true KING). He goes from isolating himself in his castle while trying to break the curse to nearly ignoring the curse so he could focus on protecting and caring for his people. I guess it’s pretty obvious that I really liked Rhen as a character, and I personally think he deserves a lot better than that ending we got. It wasn’t a bad ending, and I think Kemmerer wanted to be original in creating a somewhat ambiguous ending. But as a hardcore romance junkie I think I may have a narrow scope of what my heart can tolerate for any retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast’.

And finally, let’s talk about Grey. He’s not a POV character in this first book, but he’s in almost every single chapter and he plays a pretty big role. At the beginning I thought I was going to get a load of a love triangle, but thank GOD that wasn’t the case. I’m all for originality, but my mind will never be okay with a love triangle in ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It’s beauty and the fucking beast!! Not beauty and the beast featuring Ludacris!! Is it obvious that I don’t like love triangles to begin with? Yeah. Anyway, Grey is an interesting character. I kind of saw the epilogue coming, because for a side character Grey was too fleshed out and well developed (considering side characters rarely are, except for my one true love Despina from Wrath and the Dawn). But nevertheless, I quite enjoyed Grey! In the beginning of the story I felt like he served almost as a foil to Rhen. They were quite the opposites in terms of personality, but they ultimately are working towards the same goal. Watching Grey’s relationship with Harper unfold on paper was also quite nice. Unlike Rhen, Grey starts off kinda antagonizing Harper (with good reason, considering their first encounter consisted of her attacking him). Rhen is kind and very elaborate in his words and manners with Harper, but Grey very much the opposite. He speaks simply, he’s a man of actions, and is mostly very detached from his emotions. I actually felt his character complimented Harper’s character quite well (considering her own emotional detachment), and I think this is what Kemmerer was going for anyway since Harper does actually warm up to Grey much quicker than she warms up to Rhen.

Some last thoughts to wrap it up - while I understand that Kemmerer wanted to bridge the gap between this book and its sequel, I felt that she pulled WAY too much of the spotlight from Rhen/Harper and onto Grey. The ending between Rhen/Harper felt incredibly rushed, and again I just don’t think I like the ambiguity over what actually broke the curse. I was thinking about giving A Curse So Dark and Lonely a 4-star rating for most of the book up until the end, and now I’m thinking it’s more like a 3.5 star from me. The last couple of chapters were heavily action-packed, and Kemmerer’s way of tying up the lose strings (pushing the foreign army out of Emberfall) was very creative. But the ending following all of that action was just so... bland and unexciting. It was like dumping a large tub of water on a small campfire that was just starting to grow warm. I like Grey as character, but not enough to want to read the sequel where he stars as a POV just yet.

#a curse so dark and lonely #cursebreakers #ya fiction #ya fantasy #brigid kemmerer #book review #beauty and the beast #retelling

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booksaroundtheworld · 5 years

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A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

3.5 STARS I have never once read a book about a girl like me - a Persian girl with immigrant parents who feels out of place. When I read YA books, I scrounge around, clinging onto anything remotely middle eastern. It was nice to, for once, be totally in tune with the culture I was reading and not have to be like oh that’s kind of like what Persians do! because everything in this book is what Persians do. And for that fact alone I want to thank Tahereh Mafi. Her book wasn’t perfect (quite honestly I had a lot of problems with it) and there were also a lot of things I didn’t relate to (for one, I don’t wear a scarf), but she gave me a Persian character. And that alone means the world. A Very Large Expanse of Sea is about Shirin, a 16-year-old Persian, Muslim girl who, in addition to facing the general awfulness that is high school, also has to put up with the racist and bigoted assholes at her school that subject her to constant microaggressions and actual aggression. Her life turns around, however, when she and her brother finally fulfill a lifelong dream of forming a breakdancing crew and she meets Ocean, a boy in her biology class that actually seems interested in her in a non-creepy, fetishy type way. I get what Tahereh Mafi was trying to do with this book. I also wonder how much of this book is based on her own experience going to high school in the US, because if it was, that’d truly be awful. I’m lucky that I never really experienced any racism growing up here, and neither have my parents. Like many other children of immigrants, I was just asked questions about my “weird” food or my “dangerous” home country, which, while obviously racist, have become so normal that at this point I barely blink twice. That being said, I think that Tahereh missed the mark in a couple of ways. One, she made some of the students so obviously racist and bigoted that they seemed like caricatures of real people. While I don’t doubt that each of these experiences happened to some Muslim girl at some point in time, the sheer amount of comments and incidents and general backlash to her relationship with Ocean seemed excessive. And on that note, my biggest problem was Shirin’s relationship with Ocean. I don’t have any problem with Shirin’s physical relationship with Ocean. It may seem “un-Muslim” to some people but I don’t find that to be true at all. For one, Persians as a whole are a different type of Muslim than other Muslims. Despite the fact that Iran is the only country where all women are required to wear a hijab, as a whole we aren’t very Muslim. There is actually a joke that we’re too Muslim for non-Muslims and not Muslim enough for Muslims, alienating us from both groups. And of the other Muslim girls I know, many of them are like Shirin, going out with boys and not really following the whole “no touching” thing. No, my problem was first with the insta-love. Shirin and Ocean probably had like one conversation before he was in love with her, and she followed suit shortly. Their conversations were also so…. weak. Half of it was Shirin educating Ocean on something, and the other half was him saying “Wow” or “I feel pressure from my family” or “I want to see you”. See her to do what exactly? Stare at her and say she’s beautiful? Okay lol. I also disliked the way she treated him. I get why she was so against being in a relationship with him, but she was so bitchy about it. Realistically speaking, I just don’t get why Ocean was so adamant on being in a relationship with her based off that one conversation and then be in such anguish whenever it didn't work out. Especially after she would ignore him for a week and then just say “Hi” like nothing happened. The fact that their relationship went from 0 to 100 in a matter of what felt like days was something I just couldn’t get behind. Then there was the issue that within a couple months of them hanging out, he was willing to throw away his whole life for her. The level of idiocy and lack of communication displayed by YA couples always astounds me. Furthermore, once she and Ocean started hanging out, everything became about him. Nothing more about the Persian experience, barely anything about breakdancing (which I feel, as a whole, wasn’t talked about enough), nothing about school or making new friends - it was just Ocean. I’m also always so annoyed when a female character only has male friends because apparently, girls are too bitchy to be friends with. Idk. Tahereh tried to fix that in the end, but too little too late. I also think that Tahereh introduced characters only to forget about them later. Navid’s friends and Yusef had great potential, but she included them only to raise Shirin’s self-esteem, and then didn’t include them again. The last thing I want to say is about the end. We resolved things way too quickly and I was left feeling profoundly unsatisfied. The last chapter literally felt like Tahereh was like alright well it’s time for this to end let me just put together a few summarizing sentences and leave it at that. After I had to read pages and pages of empty dialogue between Ocean and Shirin, I kind of expected something more than what we got. I’m so torn about A Very Large Expanse of Sea. While I love Persian representation and am grateful Tahereh decided to write about her own experiences, she ruined it with a dramatic romance that didn’t really need to be there. Not to be that girl but do we really need a white man to save the day and ~open our eyes~? Probably not lol. Honestly, after the emotional rollercoaster that was the Shatter Me trilogy, I don’t really know why I was expecting something different, although I have to say that Tahereh’s decision to NOT include the frilly flowery language of Shatter Me was an excellent one. I don’t think this is an important book the same way The Hate U Give was, but I also know that Persian and Muslim representation is so little that even this small education is better than nothing. Ultimately, this isn’t a book that you have to read. But it is one that, despite all its issues, is one worth reading.

#a very large expanse of sea #tahereh mafi #book review

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speckeh · 7 years

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2017 Book List

BACK AT IT AGAIN. JUMP IN THE CAR!!! I’M STILL READING A SHIT TON OF BOOKS!!!!

1. How It Works: The Cat. 2.5/5 stars. I read this at a book store in Bergen because my brother laughed while he read it. I picked it up and it was ok?? I don’t understand why people who write about cats always, ALWAYS talk about how much of an asshole they are and how they don’t truly love you. And I just sit there like, have you ever owned a fucking cat??? Some parts of the book was super cute but I hate the trope that cats are “assholes.” yeah they’re dicks sometimes. But they’re not assholes 24/7 unless you’re an asshole to your cat.

2. The Greenest Island. 3.5/5 stars. This is another small book that I’ve been meaning to read for a couple of months now. It was pretty interesting and like Mrs. Dalloway I read last year, I’m not sure if I want to sell it or keep it. It’s beautifully written, the story is strong, but some of the characterization is just sort of annoying. Like I get that it’s a very real sensation and issue a young couple who get pregnant WAY TOO SOON without knowing each other. But only a man would think of something so drastic as the end in reference to raising a child.

3. Letters for Lucardo: 5/5 stars. I saw this comic advertised early in 2016 and I’ve been watching the project closely. I help funding the gofundme and I bought a download and a signed copy of the physical book. The story about a 60 year old man falling in love with a Vampire stuck at the age of 36 was SO INTRIGUING plus the artist had a webcomic which I absolutely adored so I knew not only would the art be excellent but the storyline would be solid. This is one of four volumes and I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. The story line was so cute, the art was beautiful, the smut was *mwah* beautiful. But the best part was that it left me wanting for me and I can’t WAIT until the next three volumes are here. Support your local tumblr artist and enjoy some gay vampire storylines with well drawn wrinkly aging men. 10/10, 100/100 please read and enjoy.

4. A Special Study Set of Fine Art Reproductions. 4/5 stars. A little black spiral bound book of black and white copies of famous art works. It’s cute, it’s a good bite sized art book to get the gist of Western Art history. I knocked it down because the art pieces are in black and grey when I know for a FACT some art pieces are in color. So that was a bummer. But overall a nice rendition of some of the classics.

5. Alphonse Mucha: Masterworks. 5/5 stars. I bought this book probably 2 years ago? I’m in a reading funk right now and flipping through art books seems pretty doable. This book is chalked full of history of Mucha while I will read later. But the art quality is excellent, the sizes are big enough to view with pleasure. This is a excellent excellent book full of his art work. I love it. It makes me feel better for the fact I’ve only been drawing girls for the last year because I love drawing delicate features and strong women. If Mucha can just draws women for most of his career, I don’t have to feel guilty in only drawing women for a year.

6. Assassin’s Creed: A Visual History. 5/5 stars. Ok I’m going to repeat this over and over again. But I’m such a fan of the AC series, even if the latest editions have been a u t t e r let down. But I have to admit flipping through this book I got emotional. AC was such a fun series for me when I started and it helped me through a manic depression I had after a very serious illness almost 3 years ago. I don’t pretend the history is accurate or the plot lines are all there, but they means so much to me. As a history lover to the point I’m getting a Minor in college in history. I’ll always enjoy my AC games, no matter how cringe worthy and disappointing some of them end up becoming. Shout out to my boys (and girls) of the assassin creed order. <3

7. The Art of Howl’s Moving Castle: 5/5 stars. I’ve had this book for a long time, when my childhood best friend and I would hang out nearly every day and sleep overs every weekend. She gave me this book a few months after I watched Howl’s Moving Castle because I was so enchanted by the movie. Howl’s Moving Castle is a favorite movie, book, and soundtrack. This art concept book is beautiful, it’s like a novelization of the movie without any dialogue. The back is the FULL script, there’s concept art, and fully fledged art story boards. If you’re a big fan of Howl’s Moving Castle, this is a great book to have in your library.

8. Tango! The Dance, The Song, The Story. 5/5 stars. My father lived in Argentina for awhile so he would make dishes growing up of delicious food. I love the tango, it’s so beautiful and down right seductive. So of course finding this book for 4 dollars I had to have it. It has photography, drawings, posters, female tango singers, the history of the tango. It’s chalked full of excellent information and it’s really enjoyable to flip through.

9. Why Cats Paint: A Theory of Feline Aesthetics. 5/5 stars. I bought this book for my birthday last year because it was absolutely silly. It features “Cat Artists” and their aesthetics and their art pieces. Warning there are mummified cats in the beginning of the book which can be upsetting. This book is really goofy and the people who write it are serious but in a fun way? It’s a great book to read like today when I’m stuck in the house because of bad weather and having my own two cats it makes me curious to see if I could make my kiddos paint like those kitties in the book.

10. Life: The Classic Collection. 5/5 stars. A decent sized photography book of the most recognizable Life photographs. Not to forget there are 25 extra prints available for you in the book you can take out and frame. I love editorial photography and seeing the most iconic photos throughout the century. Idk man if you like photography and Life Magazine this is a great book to have.

11. Fashion: A History from the 18th to the 20th century. 5/5 stars. Beautiful book. Beautiful clothes.

12. The Pharos Gate. 4.5/5 stars. I saw this book at Barnes and Noble early in 2016 and the intrigue had me thinking about it for awhile. I bought it for christmas, waiting to read it in right time. Early on this week I went to my favorite second hand book store and found out it had 3 books before this one. The Pharos Gate is the final book in a series but it can be read by itself. To be honest I think if I had to read the three books before this I would have become bored. That’s three books worth of people trying to find each other but keep missing connections, that’s infuriating. But this book was lovely and the letter writing kind of reminds me of the letters my best friend and I send to one another. She just went back to school and I think she would really enjoy this book so I’m going to send it to her with my own letter attached. I think she’ll like that.

13. Pirateology. 4/5 stars. These series were my SHIT as a kid. Dragonolgy, Greek Myths, Pirateology. While Hastings went under and into ruins, I found this book for super super cheap. I have certain niches I love to learn/read/aesthetic. Regency, 1950s murder mystery (Looking at you 007), Westerns, weird vintage novels, and pirates. I love the history the book gives you, but as an adult the information is sort of lacking. This is a book definitely for kids, the plot line throughout the guide book is meh it’s ok but it doesn’t capture you, and the interactive bits are the best. I just wish there was more about specific pirates but other than those complaints this is a great book.

14. Viking Poetry: Of Love and War. 5/5 stars. I went to Norway for New Years and I didn’t buy a lot of souvenirs. I mostly bought key chains. I think I only bought two books, maybe even just the one. I bought this viking poetry at THE famous viking ship in Oslo. It was very very cool. I read this book today because I don’t feel well, I want to go to bed but I know I shouldn’t. I have too much homework to do but I’m not motivated to read. The viking poems are unique as they are pretty. I was sometimes disappointed they didn’t have great rhyming schemes but you have to remember these were written in various old languages and then translated into modern day English. If you want to read what the vikings considered poetry, this is a great introduction without reading the giant lores.

15. The Elements of Style: 5/5 stars. Oh my god it’s been so long I completely forgot what my book tag was. February has been crazy for me. I got a internship, I dropped a class because of stress, I’ve been stressed out like crazy, I’ve been doing a lot of school work. I felt like I’ve had no time to read for pleasure. I actually didn’t read this book for please (half pleasure) but for work. It was actually a lot of fun. We studied this book in AP Literature when I was a senior in highschool and I wanted to have it for myself as a writer, but also it’s excellent for my ambitions to become an editor. The writing is a little hard, sometimes I’d read a whole page without really absorbing what was on it. But it was interesting and you can read White’s frustration with writers with certain rules they ignored. I actually loved the add on V chapter by Strunk which said that English rules are extremely important but take in mind the language of your time and how you write. Your voice is important. Which I found very important and also felt like an eye opener with Editing for my job. I’ve been wary of making sure not to change anyone’s voice but also trying to keep with proper English rules. It’s been a lot of fun.

16. The Last Wish: Introducing the Witcher: 5/5 stars. This book took me me almost 2 full months to read. I’ve been so busy. I first started reading this book before my trip to Norway, took it all the way across Europe, back and I finally finally finished it today. I don’t know why it took me so long? I absolutely loved it. I played Witcher 3 last semester and really really loved the story line and characters. My sister-in-law loves the books so I gave it a try! I would definitely recommend this book if you like spins on fairytales and medieval magical worlds. I had a lot of fun but I’m glad I can finally pick a new book.

17. Shackleton: Antartic Odyssey: 4/5 stars. Today has been a recovery day and I’m, emotionally dead/it comes in waves. So I spent like 5 hours in a bath today and read this comic. The art is really good, the story is super intriguing! I was in Norway this last December and we went to a arctic ship museum because Norway was the first to reach the South Pole. But the author even said himself the comic needs to be at least 300 pages but his hand would fall off. And I wish he did do 300 pages. The story was short and choppy. I know it’s selfish, but as a reader I wish he did do his main goal because he had the perfect art style for this comic. Either way, I did enjoy.

18. Creole Folktales: 5/5 stars. If you love mythology, this book is pretty great. If you love Louisiana, black folklore, this book is pretty great. It doesn’t have 5 stars on amazon or goodreads because I think people take issue with the writing or they’ve heard these stories before. This was my first introduction to Creole folktales and I have to say i loved it. The nostalgia of reading different myths is pretty great plus the storylines can be hilarious to kind of terrifying. The author says to read this story by night and I have to agree. I read it all in one sitting this evening and I wouldn’t change that experience.

19. I Shall Not Be Moved: 5/5 Stars. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a poetry book. Since February I think. Sundays are usually my comic or poetry days and I was in the mood for some poetry. I was going to read this book for Black History Month for my book club (if you wanna join hit me UPP) but February was so crazy and stressful that I couldn’t read anything. So this time I did read a Black Poetress but just for National Poetry month. I loved this book, super powerful and moving. I’ll probably be thinking about this poetry book for a long long time.

20. Artists and their cats: 3/5 stars. Being stressed out in my finals week means I want to do a lot of book things just so I can procrastinate. I bought this book as a Christmas present for myself. I'm slightly disappointed in it because the book is called Artists and their Cats, but it's really more like, A mini biography of artists and oh, some cat photos. I was expecting heart warming stories about their cats. But no. I loved the photos though which make this book conflicting for me.

21. The Monkees comic book: 5/5 stars. Super cute. I feel bad because Mickey was drawn pretty horrible. But I loved the art. The choppy scenes were kind of hard to get into and that 1960s humor can be kind of cringey but I really really enjoyed it.

22. The Art of Drowning: 5/5 stars. So I was thinking this would have completed my Billy Collin’s reading, but apparently I read this book in 2014! How crazy! Well I read it and enjoyed it. That’s all.

23. A Queen’s Journey: 4/5 stars. I’ve been having a lot of heart ache for my birth state as of late. I visited Hawaii this time last year since moving when I was 2 and not remembering a single thing about it. Everything fit and I felt like I was home (when I was in the ocean) and it was such a strange feeling. I’ve been missing it hardcore this last month and so I decided if I can’t go to the Island I’d read a book about Hawaii or a Hawaiian. I’m also a book traveler, I bring books on trips and my favorite souvenirs are books. I’m a person who can remember times and feelings by looking at books. This is one of the books I bought while on the big island and haven’t read until now. For the story itself, I definitely give it a solid 4 stars like most people have. The book is unfinished as the author died while writing it. But I actually love how the book ended, the last chapter is perfect for a finale. But everything leading up is meh. Don’t get me wrong, I flew through this book and found it so much fun but it’s written from the perspective of a white entitled reporter who doesn’t really understand Hawaiians but “loves” them because of the Queen. I would have preferred to have a story told from Queen Lili’uokalani’s perspective but it was a nice read.

24. Lights Out and Away We Go by @naum-e : 5/5 stars. I’ve been following Naume-e for at least a year now and they draw the absolutely cutest/breathtaking spirk doodles on tumblr. When I saw they put up their formula one au book up for sale, I had to get it. They even sent me a sheet of adorable spirk stickers. I love it. The art is so professional, the cover is beautiful! The storyline is short and I wish there was more background and developlement but that’s just me being greedy. Only criticism I would have is that one page would be crisp and saturated black and the next would have a grey tone to it so it wasn’t as sharp. I don’t know if that was due to printing costs or stylistic choice but sometimes it worked, other times it was kind of distracting. Either way I really enjoyed it and loved the art!

(I’ve actually read 44 books but 20 of those are yaoi mangas/I don’t have the energy to type up individual reviews)

25. And Three Makes Tango. 5/5 stars. I’m doing a summer class and this is a book I picked for a 5-7 page project about censored books. And Three Makes Tango is the true story of two male penguins who fell in love at the New York Zoo. They made headlines when the zoo keepers gave them a fertilized egg which made them the first male couple to raise a baby penguin. It’s super cute and the art is adorable and I can’t wait to write this 5-7 page essay on it.

26. Goldfinger. 4.5/5 stars. I really enjoyed this book! Dr. No was kind of a hot mess with a huge octopus, guano, and the girl not being entirely likable. This book was definitely a treat! It may be kind of boring because the first 150 pages is a slow burn of James finding a guy cheating at cards and like 3 chapters dedicated to just him playing golf. But I really really loved this? The only reason why I don’t give this book 5 stars is because of Bond’s very sexist and homophobic views he suddenly stated out of no where. There were a TON of lesbians in this book, Pussy Galore, Tally, and he seemed ok with them except he was disappointed he couldn’t fuck them. And then said lesbians and gays were all sissies who he had no time for (even though Bond is like super, mega gay for James Bond. SUPER MEGA GAY.) and the ending they made the strictly lesbian badass gangster woman say, “Well I’ve never met a real man before.” and UGH. WHY. I would have given it 5 stars if they had just left Pussy Galore’s lesbian nature alone and not justify it with a “She just needs a strong man.” Also I apparently bought this book for me for Christmas 2015 ahah.

27. The Mad Kings & Queens, History’s Most Famous Raving Royals: 4/5 stars. I enjoyed this book. It’s marketed as a reference book and it discussed the insane breeding of The Kings and Queens of Europe. This book should really be called, “Inbreeding fucked me up.” because most of the insane issues came from inbreeding lines and madness from parents and grandparents being passed down to their kiddos. But there were several monarchs where I didn’t believe they fit underneath the “mad” title. Like King Henry VIII was just a pissbaby. And there a handful of monarchs included who just had severe depression and anxiety which affected the way they ruled, it doesn’t mean they’re mad. Other than that, it’s a great little book for a quick overview of Europe’s fucked up royalty.

28. Strike Through The Mask! 2/5 stars. It’s not my favorite poetry book, it had some poems I enjoyed! I bought this from the annual library book sale because it was signed by the author and was super cheap. Though after learning about Peter Viereck, I’m not really sure what I think about him? He’s super conservative and is VERY loud about people being extremist but is sort of seen as an extremist himself. Nothing wrong with that inherently but I’m still not super sure about these poems. A lot of them were about trees talking to humans or other trees. Debating on giving them poetry book to donations because it’s really not my favorite.

29. For the King: 2/5 stars. The premise of the book is quite interesting! It follows the assassin attack on Napoleon in 1800 on Christmas at Midnight. It cause da wave of destruction, death, horror, and a huge police investigation which resulted in more death and conspiracy. The book did not live up the potential. It kept my interest and it had some great writing, but the characters were flat, the main character was whinny, and the plot was a little jumbled. It was also strange because it’s a historical fiction but also murder mystery but you know who did it by chapter 1 and you follow the policeman’s thoughts and instincts to capture the assassins. It’s weird, there were a lot of strangely written sentences, and it was over all a just ok read.

30. The Old Man and the Sea: 2.5/5 stars. There is a lot to enjoy about The Old Man and The Sea. The story is compelling, the relationship between the old man and the boy is pleasant, and Hemingway has a way of using metaphors and descriptions which are breathtakingly beautiful. But there is also a lot to be disappointed in. It’s a lot of rambling, several sentences could have been edited, and the old man was pretty much senile in the way that he fishes. I read it in one day and still processing it. I’m pretty sure there are a few pages that I didn’t really read, I fell asleep the first 60 pages, and the story doesn’t truly touch me in the way classics usually do. But there is also something oddly charming which makes rating this book more difficult than I thought.

31. The Lost Estate: 5/5 stars. This book has been on my shelf for awhile. I bought it because you can design your own cover once you finish the book, so I bought it not expecting the story to be great but at least I can art a book. This is one of the best reads I’ve read in several months! I loved the story! I loved the characters! It felt like a fantastical children’s story with romance, magic, and French school boys. The chapters were short and the main character has such a charm. The only downside is that the story has a weird time lapse where you’re not really sure how old the kids are or how many years have passed. All in all, I’m really thrilled with this book and it’s easily going on my favorite shelf after I draw the cover!

32. Lunch Poems: 4/5 stars. Frank O’Hara’s poetry isn’t like your classical poetry. He’s irreverant which makes reading his stanzas refreshing and different. There were some poems where they were too strange and convoluted for my taste, ones I wished I could be heard out loud, and there wasn’t anything that punched me in the chest with wowing words, but it did inspire me to write my own poem. And for me, that’s the highest compliment of a poetry book, to make you write poems. I really enjoyed 14 of the poems which is a pretty decent amount to like for me. Billy Collins has the highest likes of poetry for me, and Lang Leav having the least amount of poetry I liked in her book Love & Misadventure. Frank O’Hara was a decent medium for me and a nice introduction for anyone who doesn’t particularly care for “flowery” poetry. My favorites were: Cambridge, Poem (1959), How To Get There, Pistachio Tree At Chateau Noir, and Yesterday Down At The Canal.

33. Howl And Other Poems: 6/5 stars. Very rarely do I hold a book to my chest after I finish reading it. The books I remember doing this were The Secret Garden, Shadow of the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, and Howl’s Moving Castle. I can add Howl to my list. I first heard of this revolutionary poetry book in one of my university classes about censorship and banned films and literature. We watched the James Franco movie about the whole trial over Howl, and I thought it was pretty, but I didn’t feel a great pull to the way he read the poems. I decided to pick it up for myself and I read it today all the way through. And reading it for myself was something magical and far more touching than the movie could ever produce. All of the poems were a punch to the gut, made me feel something, made me want to create art, and that’s what poetry is supposed to do for you. I may have found my second favorite poet in Allen Ginsberg. This is definitely on my favorite 2017 reads and also in my top 10 favorite books of all time.

34. Monstress Vol 2: 4.5/5 stars. I agree with the main consensus that the second volume is way better than the first. I actually contemplated getting rid of and stop reading the series because the first volume was very bizarre. But now I’m super invested in it. The story line unfolded in an interesting and made more sense way. The art was gorgeous and dark. THERE WERE SO MANY BADASS WOMEN CHARACTERS. Plus I finally caught on that the cats are called Nekomancer and I’m in love. If you like dark, blood, gore, and creepy storylines, Monstress is a great comic to read.

35. Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century. 5/5 stars. I picked this book up back in 2011. I was browsing Barnes and Noble, looking at their new arrival table. I was in 10th grade, newly in high school, and I had watched the movie Cleopatra in my western civilization class. I loved the writing, bought the book, I remember my mom saying “If I had known who the book was about, I wouldn’t have let you bought it.” and I was enjoying myself. Things happened shortly after that had me pausing from reading the book for 6 years. I decided to try to read it over the summer, had summer school, then my beginning of the semester was too crazy to read this book, and after I dropped from one of my classes, I found I had time to read it. I really loved this book. It’s heart wrenching, you feel the love they had for each other, but you also saw the abuse and tragedy that became their relationship. There are only two notes of importance I would say that is this book’s downfall: 1. The book has minor editorial flaws (commas outside of quotes, periods in parenthesis, Earth wasn’t capitalized). 2. The writers are very much infatuated with Richard and Elizabeth, coming to their defense about the scathing reviews. They did a great job, but it also brings into question just how accurate they can be when they’re so emotionally charged about Richard and Elizabeth. If you want to know more about Richard and Elizabeth, how they came to be, their marriage, and how the marriage fell, this is a great book.

36 + 37: Maus I & II. 5/5 stars. I’ve been wanting to read this collection for years. It has everything I love, history, contrasting colors, and comics. But whenever I found the books, they were full priced and too much for my wallet. Well, a few weeks ago I found the boxset at my local second hand store for 22 bucks. I snatched it. I read the first book on the 29th and the second on the 30th. This, is a heavy story. It’s gut wrenching, it hurts, I nearly cried in book 2, and it’s a poignant story about surviving, the effects of surviving horrible situations, and how it affects your children. The art is beautiful, very symbolic, and doesn't hold back from showing the ugly of WWII. If you want a heavy read to make you think about history and humanity, 100% recommend this comic series.

38. Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit: 4/5 stars. A classic fairy tale book that I read because one of my friends had it on her shelf and I wanted to read it. It’s very cute, very Peter Rabbit esq. but with more danger and violence to it. It’s not my favorite collection, I didn’t get the warm fuzzies from it, but I did fly through the stories. Though my book is so old that it doesn’t have a publication date and I’m slightly terrified that if it’s from the victorian era that it’s laced with arsenic to make the blue color ahah! But it was cute. A very short fairytale that is chalked full of mythologies of forest creatures and how their distinctive features came to be.

39. Sword of Destiny (Witcher 1, but technically 2) 5/5 stars. I’ve been reading this book since the end of October. I don’t know why, but short story compilation books always take me months to read while James Bond takes me 3 days. I think it’s to do with the pacing and the fact the stories tend to be more condensed and I need to think about a book for at least a day before starting a new one. I really enjoyed this book! Having played the games and adored them, I love the character building and foundations in this book! Baby Ciri warms my heart and I fucking called who her parents were in the prologue which I just realized I actually read this year. Much better than “The Last Wish,” and the angsty Yennefer romance just makes the book with its angst and Geralt just hating everything about his life except for Ciri and Yen.

40. Bing Love: 3/5 stars. I saw a GoFundMe post for this comic book earlier this year and the art is adorable, the plot line got me, and I was so excited to get my copy of this book! I’m torn because on one hand, I love representation and the love story between Hazel and Mari, and the fact the writer took an approach that people had to settle for a fake happiness and how families can be torn apart when you realize they were built on a facade. But there’s a huge pacing problem with this story. It jumps, it skips details, I know this story would have been so much more vibrant with even 20 more pages added to it. Limiting it to 97 pages really killed the vibe of the story. The character development was lackluster, their reactions became unbelievable, and the ending felt so rushed. I would honestly probably give this story 2 stars if it weren’t for the art work making up for where the story lacks.

41. Call Me By Your Name: 5/5 stars. @haremshame for those who don’t know, was my very first, serious love. They’ve been loving Call Me By Your Name and essentially has become the spokesperson on tumblr for the book. They told me to give this book a listen to (which is something I do not do on the regular), gave me a link, and but I was in the middle of the semester. I think maybe more than a week ago I finally started listening to it, how could I not when your first love tells you the story reminds them of us??? And I have to whole heartedly agree. Call Me By Your Name reminds me very much of the excitement of a first love and the everlasting long heart ache that comes when that first love inevitably ends. I loved this story. I wish I picked up the book and read along with Armie Hammer so I could mark all the passages I loved because there were quotations that made me shiver and hum and felt a literal twist in the gut. I’m not entirely sure how this book will go as an experience for other people since I went in to this reading with heavy expectations and knowing it would remind me of Percy and the specialness of our fumbly, young and naive teenage relationship, makes me heavily biased. But the writing is breathtaking, Armie Hammer does a fantastic job, and the story will have you aching in some form or another.

#2017 books #you guys should just get used to this #I'm probably in this for the long haul

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unitedstatesvsdisbelief · 4 years

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i’m... kind of annoyed. i’m just thinking about my cousin who i used to be very close with. incredibly close. i used to drive 3.5 hours away to see her & my aunt like AT LEAST once a month. sometimes twice or more. my cousin & i started really having issues probably 2016. maybe before but i couldn’t tell you, i don’t remember. i just remember her being SO personally offended by my political opinions starting specifically before & around the 2016 election. she always hated that i was a democrat and she always was very backhanded about obama but it wasn’t like, mean??? she just disagreed and would be a smart ass but like, not in a really hurtful way or at the time i didn’t perceive it as so. it got really personal during the 2016 election. it’s like every little thing i did and every single opinion i had she felt was a direct and personal attack on her. she deleted and blocked me on facebook, she would screenshot my political snapchats (which sometimes, i’ll admit, were posted with the intention of getting under her skin) i mean she literally just started to not like me?? because my opinions were so offensive to her. after having a close relationship with me all of our lives. like her political opinions to me?? deplorable, literally disgusts me to the very deepest pits of my core. SOME of her opinions literally made me feel unsafe, made me feel unaccepted. her treatment of me made me feel unloved. but i never once argued with her. i never once stooped down to her level. with every single fight she picked with me i just told her “hey, we don’t agree. that’s okay. we’re family, we don’t need to agree. agree to disagree.” before she deleted me even my own friends would stand up for me against her when i wouldn’t stand up for myself. if i didn’t fit this exact mold that she had put me in EVERYTHING i ever did offended her. it’s still that way. like no matter what i do, what i say, i’ll never be good enough for her. our relationship honestly hurt me more than almost any familial relationship i’ve ever had. she really made me feel inadequate and it really hurt me, all of it. i know logically that i am better off with out that kind of relationship in my life but there is a part of me that still feels incredibly hurt, incredibly small, etc. i don’t think it would even be so bad if it weren’t for her kids. i love those kids like they were my own. i still miss them every single day. genuinely every. single. day. if it weren’t for them, i don’t think being like ostracized by her would really bother me so much. i mean yeah it’d annoy me but not to the level it does now. now those kids think i am just another family member that doesn’t keep in touch, another family member that left them. and i hate that. it fucking kills me. bc i remember that shit from when i was a kid, with other family members. to go from seeing those kids more times than i could count a year to once in the past 11 months? it’s shit.

it’s not for lack of trying on my part. i’ve reached out to my cousin every single time i’ve been anywhere remotely close to where they live. left on read, radio fucking silence. could not be more clear that she wants nothing to do with me. she comes into town once every month or two to see her half sister (who i actually AM close with. despite the fact that she’s not my actual blood) but when they come in? she doesn’t reach out. hasn’t once tried to see me or my siblings. idk. i’m just harboring SO many bad feelings about her. i want to not care. i want to not be hurt, to not feel so worn down by someone who doesn’t think twice about my feelings. i have so many fucking feelings i’m sitting here at almost 4 am on the night before i have to get up for working writing PARAGRAPHS of it. she doesn’t even spare me a thought unless i’ve done something to offend her (like a few weeks ago when i was “disrespecting christianity” by posting a picture of the collection of jesus pamphlets we’ve saved up at my restaurant job from shitty/no tippers.

when i responded kindly, respectfully, offering up a genuine conversation over what she was accusing me of? left on read. never responded. she just wanted to fight. and that’s all it ever is really. all it’s ever gonna be again i guess. i’m not going to give up pieces of me to someone who would rather break me apart. the funny thing is i still stuck up for her all the time, if my dad says something backhanded. i still, despite how she’s treated me, have enough kindness in me to stand up for her. idk. like. cutting off her mom was different. cutting off her mom was like emotions sliced with a knife (we had a big falling out. she hurt me but due to her alcoholism. my cousin isn’t an alcoholic she just hates me because i’m

not who she thinks i should be. who she wants me to be. my aunt was just a fucking bitch. i cut her off the SECOND she hurt me. the moment she fucked me over it was over for us. i felt hardly anything. i miss who she used to be sometimes, sure. but i don’t dwell on it like i dwell on this. idk man, i’m gonna delete this in a few days once i read it all to my therapist lol i just really REALLY needed to externalize clearly. if any of you have any tips on how to not feel like shit bc your family is mean lemme know!! also to be clear, yes i hate her political views. but for family, there was still a piece of me who was willing to look past it, so that i could still be a part of their lives, of the kids lives specifically. idk if that makes me weak, or what.

if any of you /actually/ read all of this.. damn. you’re a real one. lots of love if anyone made it this far lol. sorry to clog ur feed with my bs

oh also one more bitch abt it all... she got mad at ME bc i didn’t tell her that i was bi. i came out on fb and to her mom (bc i was closer with her at the time) she made MY coming out about herself. and then tried to gaslight me when i was rightfully upset. i told her i wasn’t sure she would accept me.. which honestly??? isn’t crazy. with her views, the man she voted for. the president she fucking loves so much?? why would i feel safe coming out to her? god!!!! sorry i really will shut up now goodnight all

#personal #this is.... a lot #sorry #to delete soon #d/on/t re/bl/og #tw politics #tw family

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fultas01 · 7 years

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Hello Reader!

Hi mom! For the last three months I have been working on this post, which if you see the word count you’ll begin to understand why it took so long. With over 5,500 words this is my longest post ever. Sorry, not sorry. In this post I’m going to talk about a lot of my adventures in the month of December (I know its March, BUT I’ve been busy!). This post will talk about some of the dumber (more air-heady) things I have done in country, as well as discuss my first vacation in Europe! While there is a lot in these stories, there is also a lot omitted, so if you want to hear more about any of these things, you’ll have to ask me in person, or wait for an Angela-tells-all post (not coming soon). So just remember: this is going to be a looong post, make sure to see it as a marathon, not a sprint! See you at the finish line. :)

The first misadventure: Losing of the Phone.

After celebrating a lovely (and honestly completely different from I’m used to) Thanksgiving, I headed back to site with my site mate (sort of site mate, we live in different places, but he’s in the raion, so if I want anything I either go to his city or Chisinau), and about a half hour into the trip back I realized that I didn’t have my phone. Instead, I had completely forgotten that I had knocked it off the sofa the night before and left without it in the morning.

Some pictures from our fantastic Thanksgiving meal. Great food, drinks, and even better company.

We contacted our friend in Riscani and asked for him to look for it when he had time. He thankfully found it that night and texted to guard for me that I made it back to site, right before the phone died. He told me that it was like defusing a bomb, having to beat the clock to send a message as the phone was dying. After that, I tried to figure out a time when I could either make it to Riscani to pick up my phone from him, or if he could send it via rutiere back to Edinet for me. Unfortunately due to our schedules as teachers, and the rutiere schedule, there was basically no way to get to Riscani and back (without either missing part of the school day, or spending the night in the other town, neither were really acceptable). So, he being a great human being, said he’d take it to Chisinau that weekend and leave it in my locker for me.

Now I just had to make it a week or more without a phone. Normally, I don’t think that this would be difficult. Annoying yes, difficult no. But my phone has my alarm on it, which led me to being late two days of the week for school. I set the alarms on both my computer and tablet to help me wake up, and on the first late morning realized that my tablet had set the alarm for 8 am back in the states (not very helpful), and the one on my computer didn’t go off (no idea why… and now it will randomly go off around 8 am). Along with the fun times of sleeping in, I also found that due to random power outages, I had very little internet access. Every time the house lost electricity for a few seconds would turn off he motem, and I would be without internet on my laptop and tablet until it was turned back on by one of the kids. The lack of internet also was annoying at school, where if I was ever unsure of a grammatical rule or wanted to come up with quick examples of said grammar, I would google it. Without the internet on my phone, I was left to either guess at meaning or try some out of the textbook (and these textbooks are far from my favorite sources of information).

The final weird thing about being without a phone, was the fact that my program director was planning a visit to see me teach, and I was trying to fill out my request for vacation. I informed my program manager that I didn’t have my phone for the week, so she was awesome and called me via my host family’s phone. A little awkward to first few times, but since she ended up calling at least four times I got used to using their phone and my host family understood.

At the end of the week I was happy to find myself going to the capital for a meeting and to grab my phone. Being reunited was absolutely fabulous.

Misadventure 2: Teaching in a ‘Winter Wonderland’

I have a theory that in the month of December all kids that live in a country that celebrates Christmas are the same. They are counting down the days until they have a break. During this month we had our first snows, and did the kids go crazy at that! Even the teachers asked if I went out and built a snow man (no, no I didn’t, it’s freaking cold outside). And so, as any teacher can tell you, teaching students in December is somewhat similar to herding cats. They only learn when they want to, and you end up bending over backwards trying to get their attention.

During the month I had a hard time concentrating myself, as I was counting down to my vacation, so for the most part the only people who were trying were my partners. Sorry guys, I was distracted. But we pushed through and continued to teach vocabulary and grammar points while everyone was bundled up in their winter coats. This is because while the school is heated, there are some rooms that are better heated than others, and I think the English room was just a step above freezer.

Our heaters were located below the windows and they lazily pushed out a little heat. Meaning that the seats closest to the windows were the most coveted, since they were the warmest. But, sitting next to the windows made it easy for the students to get distracted by any and everything that passed by. While my 12th graders were very studious and interested in learning, my 11th graders took to talking about everything and anything that passed by outside, and just generally hold full conversations in Romanian. And how do you deal with this? Well, you probably shouldn’t follow my example and just start being sarcastic and snarky right back at the student in English. It gets their attention, and for those that understand what I’m saying laugh, but the kid who was speaking in Romanian just continue by saying N’am înțeles (which means, I didn’t understand). Which I would then reply (in English, and sometimes in Romanian) either, I know, or put a hand over my heart and dramatically go: no?! Not the most professional answer, and I don’t recommend acting that way in class, but it just came out naturally, and it had a moticom of success in stopping conversation. I would also go and sit right next to the talkers and just stare at them, that generally had them blushing and turning to the front of the class real fast.

In the middle school grades I just generally let my teachers work their magic to make them behave (less rather than more) and we pulled teeth with my middle grades for the month. Did they learn anything? Maybe. Maybe not. But I definitely taught them the American move of hitting your head against a table or the chalkboard when frustrated. So….culture exchange?

In my youngest grades (2-5th) the students were still generally good. They wanted to learn, so we kept to our work and even played some games, sang songs, learned our ABCs and all that. :) I even taught a couple of my classes some Christmas carols. I hadn’t been planning on it, but when one of my second graders just started repeating “jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell…” over and over again, I couldn’t help go over to him and start singing the actual song. Which got the attention of everyone else in the classroom, and we quickly switched gears and learned the chorus of Jingle bells, because why not?

Misadventure 3: What’s in a Holiday?

Winter break began on the 24th of December, so I packed my book-bag and went to Chisinau, which was completely decked out for the holiday. When I arrived, I hung out with some other M31s, including the two ladies I was going to Romania with, as well as another friend who we were going to celebrate her birthday! We walked around in the beautifully decorated area, took photos and then made it to our hostel.

I was so thankful to get to the hostel, because after an hour or two of carrying a 10 lbs (I’m guessing, I have no idea how much it really weighed) backpack and my purse with my laptop in it, I was getting a little tired…. If you ask the ladies I was hanging out with, they might even go as far to call me whiny or annoyed. BUT I’m sticking with tired, and I just had a desire to put my stuff down. Either way, we finally made it to our hostel after looking around downtown Chisinau and going down a sketchy alleyway to find our hostel (IDK if it’s just Moldova, but I feel like all of their hostels are down sketchy alleys).

Once we sat our stuff down, we set out to celebrate Beth’s birthday in style. We went to a nice Italian restaurant, that I won’t be able to find again on my own. And whose name I don’t know (so sorry if you were hoping for me to give you a good restaurant in Chisinau, I have the attention span of a Labrador retriever and Dory’s memory). I can say that the food was delicious and the company superb. It was nicely decorated for Christmas, so we had to take a picture together. Unfortnately, I had not dressed for taking a picture, I had dressed for the 3.5 hour rutiera ride into the city, so I look like a hot mess.

That night, we stayed up late watching the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in our hostel. The movie was great, however the quality from my computer was lacking. :/

The next day was of course Christmas! And being in an orthodox country, December 25th didn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. But we decided to keep some traditions alive and went to see the new Star Wars movie in the theater (it was even in English :D ). Another really good movie, that I was happy that I got to watch, with Americans.

After the movie, we met other volunteers and had a little Christmas party together. We had food, nonalcoholic beverages, good company, ginger bread houses, and a piano! With the piano available, and a gentleman who plays the piano, we decided to sing some Christmas carols! Because, why not?

From the party, I left with my travel partners and we headed for the South Bus Station to catch our rutiera to Brasov, the first stop on my wonderful winter vacation! As we made it to the bus station it was already around 6 at night. So, we sat down to wait for our rutiera… and we waited….and we waited. During this wait, one of my friends reminded me that I still needed to turn on the roaming on my phone. With that thought in mind I looked around for an Orange store (our cell phone provider, not the fruit). However, all the little phone stores were already closed for the night (everything closes up when it gets dark, which at that time was around 4 pm). Cursing under my breath and heading back to my travel buddies, I began trying to turn roaming on from my phone. This, I thought would be an easy process, but NOOOOOO, it had to be difficult, and wouldn’t let me do it, without an added 200 lei (about 10 usd) to my account, something I couldn’t do from where I was. So I gave up and decided to turn it on the next day from Romania.

While I was messing around with my phone we were still waiting for our rutiera, and getting a little anxious that we hadn’t seen it yet. So we went to investigate, only to find that there had only been five tickets sold, so they were getting a car instead of a rutiera. No sense wasting the gas and the space when you could do it another way, right? So, we got to drive to Brasov in a minivan! Not what I was expecting, but it was more comfortable than a rutiera, so absolutely no complaints…. Okay, my only complaint is about Bethany deciding to wake me up by hitting me. Thanks bro. I will get even.

We drove through the night and made it to our hostel around 2 am. Which, was earlier than we had anticipated… meaning that we had to wake up the employee to let us in and pay for another night, that we hadn’t been expecting. But that meant we did get to sleep in a bed that night.

Misadventure 4: Yes I’m American, yes I speak Romanian aka. Romania

We spent the next 2 days exploring Brasov and the surrounding areas. The first day we walked around Brasov, had some good food, walked up to the two observation towers (the white and black towers), threw some snow balls, checked out a grave yard (because…because!), checked out the black church, and generally just walked around the city.

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Each of these photos has a little story behind them, so if you want to know more, try to find me some day and ask, I’d be glad to share my experiences.

In the mean time, I will say that the pictures of us in the woods was in the middle of an impromptu snow ball fight, the big church in the early photos is the black church which was closed while we were there, and we joked that the tree looked like an old lady who had hair coming out of her hair net in every direction. :)

That evening (and the next one too), we came back to the hostel by 8 o’clock and played card games for a while. This led to us finding out that Susan is a card shark who spent a lot of time playing cards (successfully) in Vegas for years before she came to Moldova. Thankfully we were only playing Uno and go fish! However, Susan did wipe us out on first time around during one of the go fish games. She literally guessed all of my cards, then guessed all of Bethany’s. It was insane. I can also say, that I never won a game of Uno, and I don’t think I won go fish either.

Our guardian at the hostel, she really liked my bed :)

On the second day in Brasov we went to Bran castle (Dracula’s castle) and to a fortress! It was a fun day trip away from Brasov, so we could walk up to the different castles (it was pretty dangerous getting up, and then down, the steep and snow covered slope to Bran Castle). However, I can now say I was at Dracula’s castle!

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One the 3rd day we traveled to Romania’s Capital, Bucharest! We decided to go via train and hang out in the city for a couple hours just seeing what they have. We decided that we would go to the Hard Rock Cafe in the city, which I was definitely cool with, since I knew I would be getting my Starbucks craving finally sated after 6 months without it.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know exactly how to get there, and ended up a little lost, and we walked for over an hour before we came to the restaurant. During the walk I had cut my heel (how? I have no idea), so I was kind of limping and trying not to be on my heel for the last kilometer that we walked. After our wonderful meal, we decided to ax the walking idea, and had the restaurant call us a cab back to a mall we had seen so that we could do some shopping. There, I finally had some Starbucks!!! (Twice <3)!

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We widdled away the afternoon and I left around 4:30 to make it to the airport for my flight to Budapest. This is where my luck changed, as the driver took me for a tourist and it took over an hour to get to the airport, and cost me 30 euros (nope, not how much it should have cost, at all!). There, I found out that I had missed the check in for my flight by 10 minutes. I could only reschedule the flight in the next twenty minutes for a flight in two days. Fml. I said no, and tried to not make a scene in the airport about how stupid this was, and decided that I officially hate airports.

I went back outside and flagged down another cab to take me to the train station. From the train station I was hoping I could get a late night train to Budapest. This second taxi ride took 20 minutes and cost me 30 Romanian lei (7 usd). I talked to three different tellers in the train station and was able to get an over night train to Budapest that was leaving in 2.5 hours. Thank god! After almost crying of happiness about being able to keep going with my vacation, I sat down and waited (in the cold) for my new train. It was not the way I wanted to spend my night, but I was able to make it onto my train and head for Budapest. I left Romania with a lot less money than I started out with, but I still left.

Misadventure 5: My Favorite City: Budapest

Before leaving the US, if you would have asked me what my favorite city was, I probably would have said Chicago. It’s close, it’s beautiful, and it’s a place where I could see myself living in the future. Now, I can say all of these things about Budapest, Hungary. The city was absolutely gorgeous, the people were nice, it has a cool night life, and I would give up a lot of stuff in my life to get the chance to live there (sorry Mom, I know that’s not something you want to hear, but it’s true!).

But back to my story!!!

When I left off, I had missed my flight to Budapest, and had to take a train. This train didn’t arrive in Budapest until noon or 1 the next day. Meaning, I had slept on the train, but I did get to meet two nice ladies traveling through Romania and Budapest and ending their trip for the New Year in Vienna. The ladies were from Denmark, and as soon as I spoke in Romanian they could tell I was American (American accents are ridiculously easy for people to pick out), so we were able to talk in English easily. They told me about their travels, and I told them about my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. We spent the trip talking off and on about different topics, and we came away with me adding Denmark to the list of countries I would like to visit, and I talked them into visiting Moldova in the future (as well as talking up Chicago).

When I finally arrived in Budapest I got out some money, the Hungarian Forint. This monetary system was one of the only downsides (because why do I need a 10,000 forint note? Why can’t it be 100???? I asked myself this question my entire time in the captial).

So, after I had some cash, I followed the first directions to the hostel: get on the tram and take it to the next station. Got it, so far so good. Well, that’s when I got lost. I made it to the correct stop on the tram, then went the wrong way on the street. Then I backtracked, when the right direction, then turned the wrong way again! It took me over an hour to make the 15 minute walk to the hostel… not my finest moment.

I finally made it to the hostel (a very nice hostel too) and checked in. I messaged the volunteer I was staying with and decided to crash until I heard back from her. Being able to lay down on a bed was amazing, and I was almost asleep when I heard from my friend and headed out again to St. Basilica church.

Saint Basilica’s around Christmas time.

Afraid of getting lost again, I asked the receptionist to give me directions and a map (which she did). I made it to the Jewish Synagogue (about halfway there) and then got lost again, as I headed the wrong way. Again. This lasted a hour and a half (90 minutes of basically walking around looking at buildings, thinking that that building looks like it could be a cathedral. Then realizing that I walked past it like 3 times) before I was finally able to meet and find my friend in front of the church, which we didn’t go inside of because we were starving.

Once we finally met each other, we decided to walk back towards the center of the city to find a restaurant. And guess what? We went the wrong way!!! We ended up walking a same way I had just come from and walked all the way around until we hit an overpass that seemed to be going out of the main city. Funnily enough, while we were walking, an English guy (probably our age) literally ran up to us, because he saw our map and asked us where we were drinking. Thankfully he kept going with his friends, so we didn’t actually talk to the guy, but it definitely made me more aware of how much of a tourist we looked.

I can’t remember where we ended up eating that night, but I think we ended up going to a ruin bar (which those are fantastic) and we drank Starbucks and talked while sitting outside listening to some random band playing in the background.

Day 2 of Budapest: Let’s be tourists

So on my second day in Budapest, we got all sorts of touristy with paying to have breakfast at the New York Cafe and do a hop-on hop-off tour. But when we left the restaurant, we lost more than we expected. My friend lost quite a bit of money (no idea where) and I lost my ticket for the bus. So I had to buy a new one, spending more than I had planned on spending that day (oops).But I will say, the New York Cafe was really pretty.

From there, we tried to make things better and jumped on the bus touring the city and listening to the pretty insane stories of the city’s history (they threw a guy in a barrel and then rolled it down a hill into the Danube, not to mention all the floods, wars, and other disasters that have affected the area). We explored the city for a long while and split up for a little while exploring different areas. We met back up at the hostel and got ready for our big activity of our time in Budapest: a bath party. Budapest is known for their public baths, so we decided to go to the New Years Eve bath party (held on the 30th… no idea why).

While the idea was a really fun one, it was supposed to be like a huge night-time block/pool party. We didn’t consider the fact that the temperature outside at night was well below freezing. Not to mention what happens in pools when there is a lot of alcohol and drunk people. Also, I am not much of a party girl, as the DUF (if you don’t know this acronym, urban dictionary knows what it means) of every group of friends I’ve had since the age of 13 (probably), I was on babysitting duty, and my RBF (same as my earlier comment: urban dictionary) made me good at the job, but it made me cold and bored for most of the 4 hour party, not to mention that I was sober. So yay, gross water party where I wasn’t distracted by anything (person or anything).

With that said, I do think that the baths would be fun in the day time and when there aren’t so many people around, and I could actually relax, and not be annoyed. If asked to go to this party again, I’d laugh all the way to the nearest ruin bar, and tell you to go if you want, but I’ll be here having fun. Either way, I had a great day taking pictures then an okay night out.

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Day 3: Bye-bye Budapest!

On our last day in Budapest, my friend and I started the day out by going to the train station and buying tickets to Prague for that night (our way of saving money because a room in either city was more money than all the other nights combined, so no.). We then had some breakfast together and made a plan to meet back up together later. Then I went back out to explore the city by myself. To my mother, who very much might be hyperventilating reading about me going two days in a city by myself: I know you’re worried, but I made it without a scratch. And I honestly had a really good time, and if you’re afraid of me going it alone too much, you’ll just have to join me on my next adventures. :)

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This day, I got to try some local food, and had some mulled wine (delicious!), and took looots of pictures. It was a great day of traveling around and seeing different sites. I ended my time in Budapest by getting a local beer at a nice restaurant and then some waffles and a milkshake at a boutique cafe, that I will go to again when I visit again. Oh, and I of course had some Starbucks (the guy recognized me from the day before) before meeting my friend at the train station.

Misadventure 6: What’s your Prague-lem?

The final leg of vacation was to visit Prague, one of Europe’s top-rated cities. But, it is not on my top favorite lists. I went, I saw, I got the shot glass. I don’t have any strong desires to go again. That would be due to a lot of different things.

Our first day there started really early (like 6 am) and as I got off the train I was automatically cold and had to try and find my friend (she had sprung for the sleeper car, whereas I hadn’t). It took us a while to find each other, and then even longer to figure out where to go from there, since we couldn’t check into our hostel until that afternoon.

We went to the Old Town area and walked less than a block before we turned back around and headed for the subway, deciding that before we get any food we should find the hostel and drop off our bags. So, we were tired, and freaking freezing. Not a great start.

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Throughout the day my mood fluxuated from happy to annoyed and back again. We ended up lost at almost every turn, the guy at the hostel, while somewhat helpful flirted with my friend and ignored my existence so much that the next morning he didn’t even recognize me. But we had Starbucks and saw some of the sites. Unfortunately while we did have some fun, I think we were mostly tired, and just generally annoyed that we had gotten so lost and had to wait around in the cold for so long waiting on buses. If I had to give this day a rating from 1-10, it would have received a 4. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. Not every city can be Budapest.

Day 2: Do I look like D. Trump?!

Day two came early and I was annoyed to find myself ditched without a word. Not the best beginning of a day, but we were both annoyed from yesterday, so I don’t care about it now. But at the time, it had really pissed me off. That day, I missed out on everything I wanted to do because of getting lost (I had planned on doing a tour of a concentration camp a little ways outside of the city, then I wanted to do a walking tour of the city that talked about the history of the city from the time of WWII to communism, to the velvet revolution. However, I couldn’t find the place to save my life. So I walked around taking some pictures.

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I made my way back to the main area and decided to try some traditional food that I had heard about from a Youtuber from Prague. So I found the restaurant, which was more of a cafeteria. And sat down to eat. I was joined by a guy who began talking to me in (what I’m guessing) was Czech. But I quickly confessed to not speaking the language, and he happily switched to English, and we spent the rest of the meal talking about random things together.

After the huge meal that honestly I didn’t think was all that tasty. I walked to a nearby gift shop and bought my souvenir shot glass (I’m 22, I’m allowed to by tacky things as my souvenirs!). The clerk this time spoke to me in Russian (I can occasionally pick that language out now). And I replied, instinctively, in Romanian. When he just gave me a look I switch to English and he asked me where I was from. When I said Chicago (no one knows anything good about Indiana, so I almost always say I’m from Chicago), he told me he thought I looked German or Russian. Then he took that back and said that I look like Donald Trump. Which, if that isn’t the biggest insult I’d heard in months I don’t know what is. So, like a true lady, I had some choice words for him and left the shop with my shot glass (I’d already paid for it, otherwise I wouldn’t have given the guy my business).

After that, I settled down at a cafe and to make myself feel better about my frustrating day, I bought myself a ticket to a concert being held in the city. I left two hours early to make sure I would find it. And good thing I did, because I got lost again, had to ask for directions, finally find the the box office where my ticket was sold only to find out that it was closed. Basically crying in frustration, I quickly tried to find the theater and found (thankfully) with about 15 minutes to spare. I was surprised that they let me in, I got my ticket and even had a really nice seat in the first few rows (not that the show I went to see was heavily attended). The concert was amazing and it improved my mood tenfold. I finished the night going to a sandwich shop near the hostel and face-timed my brother, then went to the hostel and packed my things up for my early morning. And fell asleep before my friend made it back to the hostel.

Misadventure 7: Heading home

I hate airports. They are the bane of my existence. I hate, hate, hate, hate airports. My last day in Prague say me waking up at 4 am so that I could get around and leave for the airport. Which was an experience! consisting of a subway ride, then over crowded buses and having absolutely no idea where or when to get off. I arrived like an hour before I could even check-in and just hung out on the floor of the Prague airport next to a plug, as I charged my devices and tried to keep busy.

When I finally made it through check-in (not hard when you’re the 3rd person in line, and when the guy actually speaks English to you without looking like its a hassle). The only downside to going through security was they took my leave in conditioner (because I’m going to hold up a plane with the ability to have silky hair). Then my flight was delayed by a half hour (why? I have no idea, just because?).

From Prague I flew to Poland, Krakow. There I had a bit of an issue with my passport, since I had no stamps saying I left Hungary or ones that said I had ever been in the Czech Republic (great job, customs). So I had to stand there for a good 15 minutes while the guy checked on what to do. They eventually just let me through with a stamp saying I was leaving Poland (so according to my passport I entered Hungary, and then left Poland, not suspicious looking at all).

I then had something like 4 hours to kill. Which I did by first freaking out about not being able to find my flight anywhere on the list that would happen that day. Then found out that I was apparently looking at the wrong thing on my ticket. Then I freaked out about being at the wrong terminal and actually freaking out about thinking that I missed my flight, until I realized that Poland is an hour behind Moldova. So I had another hour of waiting and I was at the correct terminal. Talk about stress.

On the plane, my seat was taken by a mom and her kid, so I took her seat, and then listened to the baby cry and scream for the entire flight, plus the kid kicking my seat. Who says politeness doesn’t pay? Once back in Moldova, I was relieved to get to a hostel, but was over charged by a cabbie, only to find out that the hostel was booked full. So I called a friend and headed out of the city on the last rutiera to Balti of the night. And stood awkwardly close to people for a good 2 hours making my way to my friend’s house. I under shot where I should have gotten off, and ended up on the wrong side of her village and had to walk all the way through the village at like 10:30.

The next day, I made it back to my village. And that is the end of my adventures!

Final thoughts: aka the adventures of traveling alone

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Me and Czech Darth Vader, and my favorite picture from Budapest: sun setting over Hero Square.

Throughout my trips I spent some of my time traveling with friends, and some of the time traveling by myself. And I found myself meeting really nice people while I was alone. I met two women between Romania and Budapest, 3 gentleman between Budapest and Prague that I rang the New Year in with, David from Italy joined me at the cafeteria in Prague, and I ran into a couple different volunteers on their own vacations here and there too. All together, I had a really good time. Meeting new people, exploring new places, and just getting out of my comfort zone. The lesson here: go do something you weren’t planning on doing. Or travel! You never know what might happen.

Thanks for reading! Until next time,

Angela :)

The Misadventures Part 2: Or how I got lost in 4 different countries Hello Reader! Hi mom! For the last three months I have been working on this post, which if you see the word count you'll begin to understand why it took so long.

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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Heres A Review Of Every Order I Made On Grubhub In 2016

I vaguely remember justifying the purchase of Mozzarella Sticks because it was New Years? This was certainly a pivotal moment for me, because it’s when I first discovered the Pizza Fresca Buffalo Chicken Salad. The concept of this salad is brilliant, because to cover up the fact you are ordering shitty wilted-ass lettuce from a takeout joint, they smother the whole thing with cheese and buffalo sauce and it takes basically like your dad’s BBQ sandwich (not really). 8/10

Here I am, just a few weeks later, returning to the Buffalo Chicken Salad. Having started my (failed) New Years Resolution, I ditched the mozo sticks this time. Unfortunately, Pizza Fresca has some arbitrary delivery minimum designed so that no reasonable order could efficiently reach it, so I had to buy two different drinks I didn’t really want.

Apparently the con totally worked. 6/10

Oh look, it’s the same order again, from the exact same place? Was my life really this boring in 2016? Did I do anything of consequence or meaning? This article is really putting my life in perspective.

I actually had a really bad experience with this order, because the food never, ever actually came. So I called the restaurant, and immediately opened my mouth to start bitching about how hungry I was and how my lawyer friend named Brick (who looks over lease agreements I think?) would totally get me some pain and suffering $$$ out of this. Right before my tirade of began, however, the gentleman on the phone informed me that I had put down the incorrect cellnumber when I placed the order and that the delivery guy had spent the better part of 15 minutes trying to call me / knock on my door desperately.

I finally got the food, and considered whether I was smart enough to use this service any more. -2/10

This order is remarkable because it was actually made at my friend’s place when I was hanging out with him, instead of in the dark solitude of my own room. The driver was really confused about where to go, however, and ended up in a parking lot across the street where I had to meet him. 3.5/10

For like a hot second I managed to expand away from Pizza Fresca. I remember this tasting really good, but I think the place went out of business not long after? 9/10

I remember only eating one of the mozzarella sticks because I felt so guilty after consuming the super greasy gyro salad. I think they were pretty good? 6/10

Apparently, I finally decided it was time to shake it up with my Pizza Fresca order. I decided to merge pizza rolls with a Caesar salad. Interestingly, I actually gave this order a rating at the time (five stars). But I also remember feeling disappointed that I got the Caesar, so idk. 5/5 (apparently)

Another order, another attempt to find something else to eat at Pizza Fresca. I think that the reason I keep ordering from here is that the delivery fee is so freaking low compared to other places. I’m pretty sure I was still unhappy with yet another non-buffalo chicken salad. 2.7548/10

This was actually the first order I made via the Grubhub App. I was walking back from a 10 mile run with one of my best friends. In what has now become a broken ritual for us, we would run far beyond what our physical limits should be, switching back and forth between talking about the shit we would never dare to bring up in real life. As if we were both hoping that we could throw our pain out into the open air, andthen simply run past it.

This night while basically sprinting through downtown Columbus I talked about an old flame who had casually tried to slide back into my life. He had ghosted on me a months ago, and I had finally gotten over him, when he texted me and asked to “buy me coffee and apologize” for ghosting on me. I agreed, and we met later that week.

As it turns out, he didn’t buy me coffee, and he didn’t apologize. But after an hour of idle chatter, and sincere laughter, I felt good about rebuilding a connection. We made plans to reconnect before he left for his glamorous job in a glamorous city and I parted ways to nurse my hangover from the night before.

A few nights later, I was getting ready to go to bed when I got a “u up?” text from him. I couldn’t do this again, I wouldn’t do this again.

The food arrived to my house almost exactly as I got there. But I guess I had pushed myself too hard on our particular run that particular night, because after eating only one of the mozzarella sticks I threw up in my bathroom sink. 0/10

10.

After my graduation on May 6th, I had returned to my hometown where was no Grubhub until August. I made this order on my first day back, desperately trying to set up IKEA furniture in my new apartment because none of my straight friends were around to do it for me.

“Looking at your car and putting together furniture is why you have straight friends,” Marilyn Monroe (probably)

I was excited, because moving just one mile south from my old place had opened up almost a dozen new GrubHub establishments for me. I ordered a gyro platter, which to this day, is the only order I’ve ever made at the Happy Greek.

I hadn’t eaten all day, but even if I had, I’m sure it tasted good. It was new, it was exciting. 10/10

11.

I remember this order really vividly because three days later I was still being a lazy fuck and refusing to go to the store. I didn’t get the water bottle because I hate the earth, but because of the fucking order minimum for delivery. Damn you, King’s Pizza. 7/10

12.

I remember getting this delivery when everything was changing.

I was spending another year in my college town after graduating I had just settled in actually, and I had been so excited to go back. I was hoping that it would be an extension of my college experience. That I would have all the fun and excitement of college without the coursework and never-ending commitments.

Instead, I felt like I had my nose-pressed to the window of my previous life. Stuck, motionless, isolated. I was surrounded by friends many of whom I was quite close with but nothing quite felt the same.Now that I was outside the general flow of people’s rapid-paced lives, I started to realize that we were all too busy to hang out. And we would all stay too busy. 1/10

12.

I ordered this ona lazy Friday before Labor Day weekend. All my roommates were leaving town to go camping together, leaving me to an empty apartment. Apollo’s platter is decisively not as good as the Happy Greek’s, but it was a little cheaper and a shorter delivery time. Something about $18.25 feels much more indulgent than $12.65.

Later that night I was going to get a drink with a boy who I had met on a dating app.I had spent the past year waiting on a series of different guys to decide to give me a shot, and it had totally tanked my self-esteem and confidence.

My date was a few blocks away from me, so we decided to meet up and walk down to the bar together. I was nervous, but almost apathetic, ready to embrace the next bitter, dark, disappointment of my romantic life.

Instead, ashopped between bars and rooftop patios that night I stumbled into a man who made me want toditch my angsty #ForeverSingle facade perhaps forever. 10/10

13.

I ordered this after getting back from the gym and being too lazy to cook. I think I really like Greek food. 7/10

14.

I’m actually amazed that I didn’t order anything from GrubHub for almost a month.

I was still talking to the guy I had met Labor Day weekend, as a matter of fact, I was now calling him my boyfriend. He had just gotten a “cannot refuse” job offer across the country, and I was picking away at my Gyro while texting him and watching .

We were going to stay together. I should’ve felt scared, but I didn’t.I felt like the greater improbability was me finding someone I loved, not having that love survive across 2,000 miles. 9/10

15.

I got this for lunch after my boyfriend had left town for the last time before heading out to his new job in a new city in a new timezone.

We had spent the entire day together before. Going to various mall stores and looking at expensive furniture that cost more than my entire hometown (probably). As we fell asleep together that night, I felt a quiet sense of calm and contentment that I cannot recall every feeling before.

The pizza itself could have used a little more sauce, but otherwise not bad. 8/10.