A Longwinded Update

 Hello, world!

I doubt I'm the only person who ended up abandoning their blogs during the pandemic. Apparently, a few people actually started during the pandemic, too. Everyone's hobbies got added and deleted in all kinds of ways in 2020. I mostly lost mine, including writing, but EGL got stronger. I'd ordered some of my very first pieces in Nov 2019, when there's no way I could've known they'd end up getting shipped in the middle of quarantine summer. The comm had gotten moved onto Discord that March, though, so I was still able to interact with the comm in the state with the things I already had until then. I'd found the FB group a few months before and been disappointed that it was mostly dead, though they'd just barely started reviving it around Jan 2020, and moving to Discord revived it further. At this point, now that I've been able to go to the in-person meets since last April, I think I might be one of the more prominent members! I accidentally put myself in charge of the next meet, even. I seem to be becoming a grocery store lolita/ouji, too. I dressed up a couple times to go to the tailor's because I wanted to make sure the clothes would be tailored to fit over my ruffliest blouse, and I felt really comfortable just wandering around like that, even when I was in Smith's and Rancho afterwards! I preordered a big, long cloak that I really hope will work out for everyday wear too, and besides that, I just have an idea of grabbing a suitable short-sleeve black blouse if the opportunity presents itself... I really don't think I need anything else. I'm trying to slowly reduce the rest of my clothes, partly because there's so much and partly cuz it would make it possible to wear my EGL stuff even more instead of trying to work through everything in my closet.

Anyway- what I said about losing my writing habit is true but not. During my college years, my posts were sparse and based off short notes I wrote to myself. Everything else I noted down during that time will probably never see the light of day, and probably doesn't make sense anymore after all this time anyway. When quarantine started, though, I began a proper physical diary. I called it the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Chronicles, C(C)C for short. It was actually my writing teacher's idea. On our last day of in-person class, she set out journals for us to take for an assignment where we all had to keep some form of journal with those or something else of our choosing. She changed the order of remaining assignments, I believe, so we could start it now, and I'm grateful for that. From that moment on, I've kept a daily diary. The physical one ends at June 6, 2020 (Day 85), cuz that was harder to maintain, so I just switched to online again. This coming March, I'll have been writing the C(C)C for 3 years- cuz as much as people like to believe otherwise, the pandemic isn't over. I figure it's safe to say it is once we don't have to wear masks in the hospital (though we should honestly keep that around), but I'll consider the Chronicles complete once I've reached the point where I feel comfortable without a mask in a crowd. (I might keep them around for the winter for the long run, though, cuz it's nice to have a face covering out in the snow.) The pandemic will theoretically never scientifically end, like the 1918 Spanish flu, I know, but there's still a point where it's essentially done and irrelevant, and what other good measure is there for that? It's certainly not "when nobody cares anymore", cuz in that case, this would've been over in summer 2020.

Though I'm glad I managed to keep the diary this whole time, cuz it was sometimes a huge help and way less overwhelming than the biweekly posts I used to do, I was way less consistent with writing for fun. I kept it up for a bit, but over time, it reached the point where I hadn't touched my drafts in months. 2022 is probably the year I've written for fun the least in a decade. I was also a very bad beta reader for a good chunk of this time, cuz I was too unmotivated to work on it for months at a time. Probably my biggest accomplishment was editing Kez's entire book near the end of summer 2020. They asked me to proofread a different book late last year, too, though that was much less work. I got paid for both, though, which was kinda wild! A part of me wants to send the money back because I would've gladly done it for free, but Di insisted that I should take the pay. 

I don't think it wouldn't have gotten so bad for my own WIPs if I hadn't somehow lost interest in fandom in general, which had never happened before. It just... disappeared, I think around Oct 2021. It came back, sorta, for a time in 2022, but it's gone again. Even though things overall got better for me over the past year, losing fandom made me feel like I'm not even myself anymore. I might sound dramatic, especially cuz I know some people hyperfixate way more than I ever did, but I definitely hyperfixated enough that not having anything specific to be addicted to was just wrong. It's mostly meant watching a lot of Youtube instead, with that anxious energy of not knowing what I want but not knowing what else to do. And, of course, my writing is mostly tied up with fics, so I've just felt stuck on that front.

So... that's why I'm back. I feel like I can function enough to keep up a decent habit of writing on here again. It's gonna be more just rambling about a topic, like I did at the very beginning of this blog, since I already have the diary material covered somewhere else. I need to write something that isn't fic, cuz I want at least one of both halves back so I feel more like myself again.

Alright. I'll try to write an entry every one or two weeks, like back in the day. See you soon!

Resolve, Part 1

So I honestly don't really want to be here, but I feel like I should be. I had planned to write this months ago, when it was still fresh, and I just kept procrastinating and then it had drifted away from my priorities again. But I'm here now, and I'm going to resolve this once and for all. (Maybe, then, I'd be able to work on something else that I haven't even touched with a 49.5-ft. pole.)

I kinda doubt that I haven't written anything about what I pretty much consider the only thing that makes me think I get where people are coming from when they say middle school sucks. I went to a normal, public middle school for one year. Maybe my teachers weren't perfect and I had favorites, and maybe sometimes I felt a strange mixed feeling about one of my friends because sometimes I felt like I couldn't get a break from her but I also couldn't just say that because then she'd feel abandoned too- well, that'll be explained in here- but overall I thought my year was pretty dang good. It still seems pretty good when I think back on it.

But then, something will remind me about my other friend group, and I remember I'd gotten hurt pretty badly during that year, too... the kind of hurt that stuck to me.

Right now, as I write this, it doesn't hurt like I used to, but even in college, I've had a couple good cries about it. Eeeeeeevery once in a while, I get a reminder that I'm not over it. I really want to be over it, man.

So, that's what I'm hoping to do by writing this. Just... get it out, when I'm not overwrought by emotions that seem way too strong for something that happened when I was 12. Maybe it won't be as bad if I get overwrought yet again at some point in my life.

I'm doing it now because of a Relief Society activity we had last Wednesday. It was about overall wellness- in other words, physical and mental and spiritual health. It got pretty heavy for most of it, as a lot of it revolved around depression and anxiety and why people develop them in the first place. It's so weird to me now that I can think about those with a little more personal experience than I ever could before- like, enough that I admitted I was depressed for a bit there to Sis and, relatively recently, to Carter. The last woman to speak had told everyone to take some time to pray and really think about their insecurities- and identify their limiting beliefs, as my internal Sis added- and where they really came from, and work on overcoming them once you've gotten to the root. Thanks, lady, but I already figured out the roots a long time ago- what I needed was a plan that I would actually follow through with.

I hadn't even properly prayed about it at that point, but she'd gotten it stuck in my head that I should say something to someone, like she would say to her husband or her therapist. I realized then that I haven't ever vocalized the entire dilemma to someone before- the full, full version. I've said parts to a few different people- Sis and Mom knew the majority of it- but I hadn't even told them everything, and probably never will.

But the idea of just spilling my soul is terrifying, so a different solution came to mind- times that I stayed up late with Sis for whatever reason, and so there we are together, sleep-deprived, telling each other chest-burning secrets. That's what I needed- to not be the only one spilling my soul.

I asked my roommates if they were willing to do something like that, and one declared, "That's it, we're doing a sleepover this weekend!"

So we actually did it! On Friday, two of them brought out their mattresses to the living room, while my other roommate got on the couch and I pulled out my sleeping bag. Ultimately, I was the one that told the heaviest "secret", but it really did feel easier to do in the dark, in my sleeping bag, staring at the ceiling as my roommates fight sleep and ultimately fail. I told them the fullest version I've given to anybody.

I had entered into school, already knowing people, for the first time in 7th grade, my first year of normal middle school. This included friends, like Nutelly. I was very excited about not being 100% the new kid for once, and having friendships that might actually last because they were carrying into a second school year. 

But that didn't mean I didn't try to make new friends, because I did make new friends! And what's better than having more friends? All your friends being friends! So I introduced them to each other, and they were awkward at first, but in just a few days they were friends, too! We could all hang out together now! It was gonna be great! I even pulled out some friendship necklaces my mom had bought at Claire's forever ago cuz they were cute and it was an excuse to give them away.

But then things seemed different. It really only took a few days more to feel like it was harder to insert myself into the group when they all talked together during gym. I tried talking to them in other classes, instead, but felt like that wasn't really working either... and it weighed heavier and heavier on me as the year wore on and I felt like I was slowly getting kicked out of the group I'd formed in the first place.

I'd lost friends plenty before, but it was always because of moving to different schools. It was normal and still hurt, but nothing like feeling accidentally (or maybe purposefully?) phased out of a friendship. Multiple friendships. A friendship that I'd cared to hold for longer than a year, and who had bothered to still be friends with me, too.

What I couldn't get over was not knowing why. Was it purely them, or was it because of me? Was I too annoying? Was I too clingy? Were the cute little necklaces too much? Could I fix it? Could I prevent it from happening again? It killed me for years. Months ago, it still killed me, and one of the only things I had actually done back then when I was supposed to was pray to not be killed by it.

I mean, I think it worked. No longer I want as badly as I did last year to send Nutelly a note, begging for an explanation. Now I feel a little more accepting of the fact that it probably isn't a good idea to talk to her at all. But do I think I could see her (or think I see her, at least) out of the blue and keep my cool? Not really.

I think, by the fact that she's the only one I've only put a name to this whole thing to, it's obvious Nutelly's the one that I felt hurt by the most. I thought we were close friends, so it felt like a true... betrayal to prefer my other friends over me. She's the only person I've felt betrayed by. 

I think I'm done for today, so I'll continue this later (hopefully, within the week).

Some Entries From the Past Few Weeks, Woohoooooo

June 23

I finally told my sister about my struggles to get myself to write in my diary because I know I'm behind and I know I take forever to write, even if I cut down how many things I write about. She was very, very irritated with me. I'm just gonna write about what comes to mind and see how that goes this time.

Starting two Fridays ago, Mom and I have been at Abuelita's house (and Sis arrived last Wednesday).That's right, I finally came back to write because we're on vacation. One of the reasons I look forward to coming to her house for a while is that it tends to be easier to get myself to just write or draw or whatever. The fact that she doesn't have Internet is one of the main things, but besides that there's something calming about the vibe her house has and Mexico in general. It proved true back when we lived in Querétaro, especially, since we hardly had to go hang out with other relatives and we didn't really go on trips out of the neighborhood besides going to the Centro Histórico every once in a while. It just makes you feel like you are in less of a rush. People usually describe it as living a simpler life, but it doesn't sound quite right to me. Different, yes. Simpler... usually, no. 

This trip is different, though. It's the first time Sis and I brought our phones, and the first time any of us actually get to use mobile data- and it's a decent amount, too. I've still been fighting against using much of it because it feels wrong and like I'm not actually taking a break from my normal life. I've still ended up doing a few things, like look at Tumblr for a while (then suddenly realize and go "DANG IT") or read fics. I read DP all day yesterday, which was actually very relaxing, but I still felt a little guilty because, if I hadn't had my phone, it's likely I would've been writing DP instead... I'm hoping (once I finish reading the fics I started) I'll be able to keep myself out of the Internet again for a while, even though it then starts feeling like I'm wasting the money that went towards us having data in the first place. Mom and Sis use it plenty, so maybe that can help me feel less weird about it.

Oh, can I mention that this was the first time I'd gone on an international flight by myself?! I'm quite glad that my first times on a plane alone had been going to visit my family in Pittsburgh last year. Oh my gosh, I didn't write anything for that, did I?

I had been pretty dang anxious for that even though I knew, logically, it'd most likely come out all perfectly fine and routine. I had been praying a lot and even asked Human for a blessing the night before the flight, and I certainly think it worked because I suddenly felt perfectly fine once I had made it past security. (I'm never going to forget that dude behind me in line teasing me about holding my unopened bag of limón chips like a teddy bear. I just wanted it to make it through this ordeal in one piece, man! I did think it was funny when he then saw the flavor and he was like "Oh, I understand now" as if one really should protect this flavor with their life. Which is, you know, true.)

This time around, I felt much more chill. Like, I got a spike of panic when I didn't remember where I was supposed to go for security (actually, I think they moved the area) and then when I hadn't been sure where my mom was. I was supposed to meet here before the Mexican end of security, but we didn't see each other so she texted to just go through alone. (Thankfully, the security lines were really fast and unproblematic for me on both ends.) Then, she figured out we were in different terminals. It was killing me to just wait there, so I took the little airport train to Mom's terminal. Yeah, she was not happy about me moving around like that.

Even if I've been using the Internet more than I wanted to, I've still done pretty good about just hanging out. I usually eat without looking at my phone and try to be... present, I guess. And I've been talking to Abuelita more than ever before! And watching old movies with her!

Okay, this is a little dumb, but... This year marks the first time in a long time I've OCed or self-inserted. The first was the "ghostsona" (autocorrect thought I meant "ghost soba"... An idea for a different time?) trend in the DP phandom that I technically entered pretty late into but wanted to take seriously. It took a long time for any kind of idea to come to me, so I'd thought I wouldn't bother. One way or another, though, I eventually got an inkling of an idea of what I would do as a ghost... 

Scare people.

It was somewhat original, actually, considering how ghosts in DP are very different from the normal ideas people have about them. There aren't horror movie ghosts in there at all. If I was a ghost, though, I absolutely would want to be more on that end of the spectrum!

I ended up basing it off of how I had dressed for Halloween. I had 3.5 costumes last year, and on the actual day it was a ghost girl costume that I'm pretty proud of. We had found at the DI a while earlier a white nightgown-looking sort of dress that reminded me of what Wendy wears in Peter Pan. It was a bit big on me, but it worked fine and provided the inspiration for the costume! I wore it with (essentially) white-base makeup, dark red and purple around my eyes, and a bit of blue on my lips. I walked around campus holding my old teddy bear, Daisy, trying to creep everyone out by just staring at people blankly. It actually worked! My favorite reaction was one guy who had just barely passed me with a nervous smile on his face (he might've waved a bit too?) and I heard him mutter to himself, "Well, that was terrifying."

ANYWAY, the idea behind this character is that I had died somehow on Halloween while dressed as a ghost girl. I suppose it was a very sudden sort of thing where I had been in the middle of just trying to scare people, so that was what kept my form together and became my obsession.

The difference between this and the typical scary ghosts is that the motive is literally to just scare, not actually hurt anyone for revenge or anything. Therefore, I think she would just be a neutral character rather than being classified as a good or evil character. She's more of a prankster, all in for the reaction and personal satisfaction of a job well done. Though she actually likes humans (even if they're real dumb), the absolute best is when she manages to scare or creep out other ghosts, and I absolutely want her to pull it off. 

For her visual design, I just kinda did a simplified version of the dress I actually wore, and wanted to make it the kind of thing where everything under the dress is just unstructured, blobby ectoplasm, so her legs have no form past the socks. Her face doesn't really like to stay in one place, either, and tends to twist around. That's why I'd done my best to purposefully set the face off from the rest of the head in the first drawing.

I couldn't decide which color choices I liked the most, so I ended up just copying the drawing onto the other side of the page and using both palettes. Basically, both are "canon". I think she would just switch between them depending on what worked better for the situation. The white-haired version would probably be used more often for scaring and purple-haired version for when she's not.

This was the first drawing I'd done in nearly a year! And I'd worked real hard on it! I actually did show it to some of my friends, though I always called it a mere ghost girl or me as a ghost without full context so I'd feel less embarrassed.

Here's a doodle that I legit posted just a day or two after involving phandom shenanigans:

And here's another drawing that I actually completed the weekend before coming to Mexico! One of the friends I'd shown the first drawing to had said she really liked it and wanted a drawing like that for herself, which completely blew my mind. Like, she didn't know Ghost Lily (yeah, that's what I call her) was a trashy OC, but still! I didn't actually do good on making it for her until a long while later- literally a couple months later, so she'd forgotten by this point- but I still wanted to do good on my promise. I also wanted to make the second drawing as different as I could from the first and make it dynamic. This is the most dynamic I've ever gone!

More recently I actually started at it again, though it's still more in the brainstorming stage, I suppose. This time, I started thinking about My Hero Academia. This was after I binged the first two seasons of it in three days last month. Kinda difficult to explain what happened there, but...

Okay, remember how I watched a couple episodes with Terra aaaaaaaaaall the way back at the start of freshman year? That ended up never happening again with her, and then more people started talking about it and telling me to watch it and it reached a point of popularity where I just had no interest anymore. 

Coatrack was actually the first recommender on one of those rare occasions we had been texting. One of those rare occasions happened again, and he told me to watch My Hero Academia- again. I ended up telling him the only way I could really get motivated to watch it is if he challenged me to binge it. He told me to watch two seasons by Monday, so I finished Saturday because that's how this works, obviously. I then proceeded to go through the third season over the next week, and now I'm caught up and have to wait for the new season like everyone else.

I was- actually, I'm still salty about how much I liked it. I didn't want it to live up to the hype! I guess so I had a reason to be wary of its sudden popularity, ya know? So now I'm angry with everyone and with myself for being a butt and yeah.

I think one of the natural things someone does with these kinds of shows is picture what their own superhero powers and persona would be, even though it's also cringy. I started to do the same, but it's not all coming together as easily as it did for when I worked on this kind of thing at 13 years old.

First of all, even back then, I didn't see myself being a full-fledge, full-time superhero like you're supposed to be. For example, Beast Girl was a part-time kind of girl that would only be brought in as backup. Of course, I can't speak for how different I would be about heroics if I grew up in the kind of environment like in My Hero Academia where it's so normalized, but in most universes I don't think I'd be adventurous enough or determined enough to try for that kind of career. I just don't think I'd go into a hero program like the one in UA. (Unrelated, I think the name's amusing because it reminds me of the University of Alabama.)

Nonetheless, I brainstormed different powers that could fit into the BNHA universe and were at least kind of unique. I'm just gonna copy down what I sent to Coatrack in a feverish, intense fangirl manner (this is why I tend to avoid talking to people about shows I like, man):

Okay, I'm gonna propose some ideas to you for what my Quirk could be.

1. If I could pick my own own power, it'd 100% be shapeshifting, but it looks like that isn't possible in this universe. The closest would be body stretching and manipulation, probably? Two tracts my brain has gone to do this without being too OP is A. Be able to stretch and shift similar to ElastiGirl, but retain the same body mass (sometimes it looks like she doesn't have to); or B. Essentially have very pliable skin and muscles, but bones and organs still exist and must retain same body mass. The second one's grosser and more limited, but I kinda think it fits more into the limits of Quirks and is more interesting. Like, as long as I keep track of my bones I could stretch my limbs a decent amount, maybe make faux wings out of my arms if I figure out how to build the closest structures with what I've got (at least to glide), I could move around everything inside my meatsack to whatever's advantageous (like Jake the Dog moving all his internal organs to his thumb because the rest of his body was about to be crushed), I could mend my body up much easier after dislocations and broken bones (bones wouldn't immediately heal or anything, but I could put the pieces back together immediately so there's no complications)... I dunno, a lot could be done with it too.

2. I think it's no surprise that I consider myself an airbender. If it was more based on personality, a Quirk that allows air manipulation of some kind would fit well. This one I have less of a solid idea for how it might function, though, because I think it'd have more limitations than airbending but I haven't pinned down what they'd be. I do know I want to clarify it NOT being the similar power about air coming out of my body (Gran Torino, the girl in Ms. Peregrine's). 

3. Remember how most of the time my hands are cold and I get too hot/cold pretty easily? I'm pretty sure I already told you about how it's a thing that runs in my family called Renauld's disease (hope I spelled that right). If I consider Quirks from the perspective that they're mostly hereditary, then there's the chance that the Quirk passed to me would be similar to this. Or, well, I guess the opposite. My idea is being able to change my body temperature. That'd mean on a regular basis I'd unconsciously be able to regulate my body temperature when currently it just can't really do that! It'd also mean, though, that I could consciously make myself REALLY hot or cold. It wouldn't be the same as shooting out ice or fire (I guess, if the range I'm able to do is really wide, I could conceivably make things catch on fire or melt or freeze over, but with limitations). The part that I'd have the easiest time doing that to would be, surprise surprise, my hands and feet, but I could probably isolate it to other parts of my body or the whole thing.

A little before coming to Mexico, something else came to me. Even though I talked about not seeing myself as a hero, I got an idea for a costume. It's based a bit on these overalls I wore recently that were olive-colored, light and baggy- and, admittedly, also a bit based on the Beast Girl idea, with being orange and more of a leggings-under-shorts kind of deal, but the similarities end there.

I liked how the show has a wide variety of costumes people use. Some are more on the traditional superhero end, some are purely practical or purely for show (*coughcoughBakugobesidestheglovescough*), and some are rather casual. I don't go particularly often for the athletic kind of look that is still mostly prevalent in the costumes, so I wanted to try a costume that was still more on the casual end but still didn't really get in the way. I also wanted to hide my chest and butt, which is what would make me self-conscious in a bodysuit. Light, baggy shortalls over a tight shirt and leggings seemed to do the trick! I don't have hair on these, but braids also seemed like a good idea to be casual but practical.

Don't ask what the rings are supposed to do. They add a nice touch, but I don't think they'd be useful. Well, if it was the version with the rings on the hands and feet, maybe they do have a use for whatever power I had, but I can't imagine what the use would be. Maybe they're metal and so good for punching and kicking? Or good to do magnetism tricks, growing/shrinking tricks, throwing tricks... I dunno, I tried to not think about that just so I could finish the idea first.

Real fast, I also want to point out that it's been an interesting experience diving into BNHA and also watching the new second season of One Punch Man as episodes come out. They both have similar universes but they treat some of the same concepts quite differently... It's monsters vs. villains (both have their own organization at some point in the shows!), one hero agency vs. a ton of agencies, not necessarily needing to be born with a power to be a hero vs. Quirks being mandatory, how you train and obtain a hero license and climb the ranks... Something strikes me as really different about the fights in both shows, too (not counting Saitama's, since his are different for obvious reasons)! It'd be fun to lay out these comparisons in detail once both shows are over, though I kinda doubt I'd have the patience to do a full analysis like that.

June 30

Last night, I was thinking about how grateful I am to have my online friends. I'm always grateful to have them, and have gotten to steadily talk to a couple old ones (Darkrai, the Smiling Crow) and make a new one every once in a while (BKS was the first during college, and getting to beta/translate for her and chat was a dream come true), but I especially needed a new one last semester that I could talk to more often. 

I became friends with kiri in... March, I think, basically an answer to a prayer, and though I did have to hope for a little that it wouldn't just be a temporary thing, it looks like I don't have to hope or worry about that anymore. We've been talking less consistently the past few weeks just because I don't want to be on the Internet too often on the trip, as talked about before, but otherwise we talk at least once a week, typically more!

I have been aching to talk to people online more for a while, but it hit especially hard second year of college. The more "real-life" friends I had, the more I missed my online ones. The more social I somehow became, the more I missed being anti-social (in the sense of how I talked to people in person less but still talked plenty online). I tried to explain this to a few of my newer friends (Aubs and Firefly), but they just didn't understand in the slightest. I guess it's because they are more extroverted than me and so have never felt the need to make friends online like I did?

I mean, I started making online friends in 9th grade (besides Anna in 8th, but I technically saw her in person once?), but they are the reason 10th grade didn't suck as much as it could've. I knew full-well that I was talking online way more back then because I didn't really get to hang out with anyone outside of school or church stuff, but I think it's more recently hit me the... scope of it all, I guess. How much I really needed that. How I needed that even when I had more "real" friends the year before. How I still need that now and probably always will.

I don't think anyone can actually get it unless they make an online friend themselves. Human had a friend he'd gamed with for years and was one of his closest friends. He'd tried to defend/explain when he first told me about his friend, I believe, but I was like "Bruh, I get it." Hearing the two talk  (and even talking to him a bit myself) was a different experience because I've usually just messaged my own friends and rarely heard their voices, but they were definitely really close and it warmed my heart.

I don't know if Human would agree with me that it's just... a different kind of friendship regardless of how you communicate. It's the kind of thing that I've rarely felt like were replicated in real life. (I think the best example of it actually happening in person was my friend from last semester, Ann, who I could genuinely talk Ninjago with for hours if we hadn't had to worry about making it to our classes... It was such a new experience to me to do that kind of thing but with actually talking instead of scream-texting, and I will admit it was disorienting but nice.) It's a friendship built on mutual interests more than usual, and- in my case- usually it was one in which we would often talk about our mutual creative pursuits and beta each other's work and stuff like that. That's what happens when most of the people you talk to you found on FFN, I suppose. The exception: Carter and I used to talk with each other about our work (him DoH, me WFAM), but it was almost all over text, so it's... kinda closer to being online friends than in-person friends, isn't it?

July 3

Didn't finish earlier, but I went on this tangent because I gained extra gratitude for my online friends... and in the process ended up missing some of the ones I haven't talked to in a long time. Like, I always have, but it's just hit extra hard lately. 

I haven't talked to author since college started. Well, more accurately, she hasn't talked to me. She totally disappeared on me, and I have no idea how to contact her now. My only form of communication with her was through PMs on FFN and she hasn't responded.

There were other people who disappeared from the conversation(s) before, of course, but hers hit the hardest because we were much better friends, for longer, than the other people. We knew each other impressively well for remaining nameless and faceless to each other. It was practically throughout my entire time in high school that we talked, and now I can't talk to her anymore. Of course I hope to talk to her again, but mostly I just want to know she's okay. I have no clue what happened to her.

I... I think I talked a bit about Mirror and Merm back during my senior year, right? Merm had to go just a couple months after our trio friendship formed because her parents weren't letting her on the internet anymore, apparently? Mirror and I talked a lot during and after that and we became quite close too, and she disappeared last October (I honestly didn't realize just how long ago it'd been until I checked the timestamp while writing the previous entry). I'm a little worried about both of them, too.

I want to see ("see"?) all three of them, at least to know that they're okay and alive and preferably happy, wherever they are.

I tried sending out a Tumblr post to see if I can try to find them through people there, because I just really don't have other useful options. It's barely useful, though, because I'm such a small blog that hardly anyone will notice me... and I really don't know who to ask who would have a wider audience and care to help.

I'll be really happy if I manage to make contact with my dear friends again, regardless of how it happens.

Totally Aced It

I think this has by far been the longest I've gone without posting something here. I have been keeping a shorthand list of stuff that happens throughout not just this time, but the entire time I've been really inconsistent, which hit pretty much right when I started college nearly two years ago, and I think my definition of "noteworthy" isn't as broad as it once was just cuz it already sounds painful enough to maybe eventually actually put out this list with detail without it being quite as long as it could be...

This is going to be different from most of the posts I've done in the past. I haven't done a piece just on a topic in a long time (just didn't really get to do that as often when I was always behind on relaying actual events over the past week or four), and while this does somewhat fall into the "storytime" kinds of things I tend to have under the "Faith Project" label, this isn't quite like that stuff either, though I'm still leaving it there for convenience and because one point of this I could argue belongs in there.

I'm tired. It's going to be really late (like, even by my standards, which are so much lower nowadays) by the time I finish this, but I just felt like I had to. I've been thinking about all of this a lot lately, and I know I'm just gonna drive myself crazier if I never get all this written down.

Here's the intro you may have been looking for:

Hello world! I think I'm ace.

As all the Spideys said in Into the Spider-Verse, let's go back to the beginning one last time.

There's always been little stuff that could perhaps hint at me eventually coming out to something along those lines. All the way at the start of this blog, I talked about how I was bothered by all the love songs when I thought there were so many other things you could talk about. Like, I thought it love was real and important, but not to the extent they seemed to think it was in music and movies and stuff. The 12-year-old in me still gets happy when I finish watching a movie and it doesn't end with a kiss because it proves that people can still have the happy ending without it, you know?

I'm pretty sure I also mentioned at some point a thing I've tended to do over my life of being kind of... proud that I don't get crushes. That's the best way I can describe it, though I imagine it sounds odd. Now that I'm in a class called Human Development Throughout the Lifespan, and the Adolescence unit included the "personal fable" concept (that you feel that you are so different from other people, no one understands you, and also that you are invincible/invulnerable because, in a sense, you're the main character in your story), I'm thinking that mindset of mine was fueled by that. I'm different from all you overdramatic peasants! I don't even entertain potential feelings and thus avoid all this stupid drama and pointless heartbreak! I have other, better priorities! Yes, that's me making fun of myself, and yes, maybe I still feel a wee bit of that pride that I just don't even deal with that when I see people go "woe is me" over relationships.

I do know that this was, in part, due to the constant moving around. I still wanted friends and made friends, but in the back of my mind I knew that the friendship was way more likely to terminate permanently once I inevitably moved away again. What was the point of getting attached to people in the romantic sense if it was never going to work out? So, when I felt like maybe, maybe, I had a crush on someone, I did my best to immediately stomp it away, which honestly didn't take much effort. I think Coatrack was pretty much the first time I had to face that the usual routine wasn't always going to work, but I did still go a long time without really crushing on people, both by the fact that I just didn't really feel that kind of thing much in the first place, and crushing away the crushes that slipped through.

Yes, I did say that I didn't feel like that much in the first place. I certainly think I've mentioned my mom and sister being quite frustrated with me over my life for hardly ever admitting to liking someone cuz I just didn't. At some point in high school they finally accepted that I wasn't going to give them any answers besides:

• I mean, I guess [actor or random kid]'s good-looking? But I don't care? I don't really think about it?
• There was that one kid at the Houson airport that I thought was cute when I was 13
• I kinda like a book character, but not even really in that way (yes, totally talking about the cinnamon roll that is Alphonse Elric who I mostly just wanted to be friends with really bad, I dig Al being with May, and he'll always have a place in my heart even though I don't really have the baby crush on him anymore)
• You guys insist I had a boyfriend in 2nd grade, I only remember remembering (is that a phenomenon you readers deal with?) that I held hands and picked boogers with some kid with dark hair down the hallway once

Coatrack and especially Human were the closest I ever got to maybe understanding what people apparently deal with on a regular basis, though at this point I'm still not sure just how odd my personal experience is from the norm. I still think the media over-portrays romance, but I've also recently been encountering way more aces online that I expected to, so I'm not so sure about percentages.

Point is, my circumstances did somewhat shape my thinking, but ultimately I think it's in my nature that I just... don't think/feel that way as much as it seems everyone else does. I mean, if I did crush on boys much easier in the past, would I have really been as okay with burying those emotions away, even with the moves? Would that have even been my first thought as an acceptable solution? Would I have been happy with myself for not looking for romance? Sure, my very-much-introverted personality wouldn't have made me act that differently, I still would've kept a lot of that to myself (cue a decent amount of secret doodling), but I really would not be the same person that I am now if that were the case.

I'm pretty sure I first heard what the full acronym is- LGBTQIA- and what the last one stood for- asexuality- when I was 16, which is awfully late for a Gen Z kid but I generally avoided Tumblr like the plague back then and I think that's where kids my age tended to get their first exposure. It sounded weird to me at first, though that was more the term itself and not the definition (as a biology major, I'm still very much bothered by it, so I'm gonna go with calling myself "ace" a whole lot more).

I honestly didn't really think about it again until last summer, when Echo Gillette put up a video talking about asexuality. I watched it before going to work (the lab internship), and I thought about it near-constantly for I don't even know how long. Intensely, near-obsessively, for nearly a week, and it would get stuck back in my head sometimes for a couple weeks after that. Like, I was really shook.

I had to cope with the fact that 1. I maybe fit the definition of being ace, 2. that would mean I was part of the LGBT+ community which I never saw coming, 3. I didn't know what being ace could mean for the future I had envisioned of a husband and family. That last one was what really had me reeling.

I'll be real, I'd always thought more about wanting kids than wanting to marry, but I did still want (or expect, I guess) the latter to happen. Like, I'd probably still want to get married eventually, maybe, if it wasn't for the fact that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There's a strange culture around the Church, especially in Utah specifically, about getting married as soon as possible (it really does happen, more than I thought it did, because I really don't want to just buy into stereotypes, you know?), which is not part of the doctrine. What is part of the doctrine is having a healthy temple marriage with children, whenever that ends up happening. So, if I don't at least try to follow that commandment... that is not good. Not in the "What's everyone going to think of me?" way. I genuinely believe in my religion and in the importance of this commandment, so I would be horrified with myself and thinking about how God would feel about that, that I wasn't willing to do what it took to accomplish one of the main purposes in life, to have a family. I just... for the first time, I truly questioned whether I would even be able to be as faithful as I want to be because of the way I am, and thus not be as happy as I could be and not make God as happy with me... (Like, I know He loves everyone so much, but He can still be disappointed in people's actions/decisions just like a normal earthly parent can love their kid and still be like "Bruh, that was stupid, I can't believe you" if they made a poor choice, you know?) That just... really hurt and terrified me at the same time. It was very much a tug-of-war between the religious part of my identity and the emerging self-aware sexual orientation part of my identity.

The best I came up with was that maybe I would find one of the few people I did feel more strongly about. I kinda compared my situation to that of this one short documentary about a few Mormon men who had same-sex attraction but were still looking for a woman to have a family with, because that is the commandment. They needed to find one of the women who they felt something for or at least felt comfortable enough with that they could be happy with her even though they were gay (they didn't identify as gay, since that implies they'd be actively seeking out dudes rather than women, but they pretty much are). I think two of the guys were already married with a kid by the time they were in the documentary, and it did seem like it sometimes got tough between the couples but they still wanted to make it work and seemed to overall be happy. It wasn't exactly the most ideal situation, but I figured that, if they figured it out, then I could have hope for myself... but then again, the future is really hard to grasp as is without feeling like one of the inevitables is now less inevitable.

I dunno, it was still really hard on me. I didn't really want to acknowledge being ace for a while because... I mean, it didn't exactly go against my religion, but it certainly complicated things, and that was obviously upsetting. I didn't even really get a break while being Human's girlfriend (which I still get surprised even happened!), because in general it seemed like he was more into me than I was into him. I loved spending time with him and cared about him and enjoyed cuddling and naps, but the aspect that had to do with kissing and saying cute, romantic stuff and stuff I was way more unnatural to me. I ended up liking kissing more than I thought I would, but even then most of the time I kissed him because he wanted to, not because I really wanted to, or because it seemed like I was supposed to at the moment.

I have no idea when I saw it (just sometime after learning being ace was a thing and before Echo's video), but there was a comic that I saw posted on Facebook once about being ace in a sexual relationship. The narrator (who was also the artist, of course) talked about how she didn't really get any satisfaction from sex while her partner did. It was less like she didn't want to or didn't like to, but more like she was neutral or whatever about it, fine either way. I remember, when I first read it, that I was like "That just doesn't sound right. How can you just do something because your partner wants you to but you don't?" I realized just this past week that that's exactly what I was doing, though, even if it didn't actually go further than kissing. I tended to be kinda uninterested in it, or indifferent, but not actually against it.

I haven't actually mentioned that Human and I ended our relationship last December, the night before his family took me to the airport so I could be with my family for the rest of Winter Break. He left on his mission on New Year's, so we weren't going to see each other again. That means we were officially together for around 3 months, knowing from the very beginning that the relationship would have to end. (He had already put in his mission application papers, and got his call back just a week into going steady.) It was so nice to have less pressure on the relationship, considering how it involved a lot of firsts for me. Nonetheless, I was so insecure about whether I was being a good enough girlfriend the entire time since I just didn't feel like girlfriending came as naturally to me as it was supposed to. I know the thing about the kisses was a big part of that, but other little stuff about how I didn't feel as comfortable with being romantic as he was. And I could hardly figure out how to explain that to him without making it sound like I didn't like him or make him feel like he was doing something wrong or... I dunno. I did tell him about how I wasn't really sure what I was doing because I hadn't done this relationship thing before, and about the moves, but all those other little reasons that stacked up to looking like I was... I guess mostly ace, I kept to myself. I doubted myself a lot, and doubted whether it would really help to tell him about that other stuff.

One thing that really helped me come to terms was when I got my patriarchal blessing last October. Human had encouraged me to get it the moment I told him about how I'd been thinking about it lately, and was really supportive even though, by the end, I decided to be alone in the room while receiving it. The patriarch was so sweet and hugged me after while I was crying my eyes out. (I have still told him about a few of the things said in it, and even now I feel like I'd be more comfortable sharing more of it with him than you're really supposed to be when it's the kind of thing you should only share with immediate family and your spouse.) I knew that the blessing would be a game-changer, part of why I waited so long to get it, but I didn't know just how much. Ever since getting it, my brain has latched onto a couple details in it and run through it for weeks, figuring out what it really meant and why it was important for me to be told that. One of the ones that stuck to me at first was that I was outright told (is it okay to say this here?) I would get married and have kids. Like, that just slammed me down to the ground because it was confirmation that I would still be okay! I would still find someone that I liked enough (in theory)! (Hopefully, I'll eventually talk about more of what I've learned from my patriarchal blessing, as there's some other major stuff that just proves more and more to me that He knows me personally and knows exactly what I need and wants to give that to me. My testimony has increased a lot, and I'm really thankful.)

I didn't want to be cliché and figure out that stuff better because of Tumblr, but... well, it did kinda end up that way. I ended up joining Tumblr in order to make an art commission, and because I had finally done it, I decided I might as well make use of it and start following and interacting more with Danny Phantom (henceforth referred to as DP or, referring to the DP fandom specifically, the Phandom) blogs, and just like Tumblr and other social medias are known to do, I've gotten pretty sucked in. But I'll (hopefully) talk more about all that stuff later. For now, you mostly gotta know- the content I ended up running into there and on Youtube kinda brought this whole internal monologue once more into the forefront, but this time the marriage revelation came with it, combining to become one of the major themes of the semester. A big realization that ended up getting added to the previous one was that God knowing that that I needed to know marriage really was in my future would help me accept being ace now because things would work out in the end anyway. It didn't mean calling myself ace really went against the things that I was taught and what I wanted to happen, it just meant I could be more authentic. That realization made me feel like I was given the OK, basically, and that was such a relief. That plus the content I was seeing online was giving me more confidence in maybe calling myself ace rather than making me worry over it. I actually tested it out with a new friend I've started chatting with, Kiri, admitting to her that maybe I was ace during a conversation that wasn't even focused on that kind of thing, and... I dunno, it felt kinda nice. Like it really did fit. I tested it out again, with this post:

Yeah, it still felt kinda... right. (Also, a few people actually ended up reblogging it with my addition, and I feel honored.)

Just two weeks ago was when I finally tried talking to someone who, like, knows me in real life and knows me well about it. I think that's not how this usually goes for people coming out, but I... emailed Human about it.

When he was leaving I felt very conflicted because... (This is one of those moments where I'm regretting making this blog public but it isn't really read much and it's still principally for myself, so guess I'm gonna still say it:) he said "I love you" and I wasn't so sure I could honestly say it back in the same way, but not like I could honestly not say it back either? I told him that over one of the first emails we exchanged as he was training, and he agreed to let me just think on it more on my own and figure out what I really felt.

So, when he brought that back up, asking if I had come to a clearer answer on all of that, I realized I kinda did, but probably not the kind of answer he expected. It felt like Human was the person who deserved most to hear what I was thinking about this whole thing.

I laid out some of the stuff I said here to him. We had been chatting on Hangouts when he replied to it (that's a thing missionaries can do now!), and he sounded like he mostly doesn't agree with me. He even said that thinking I'm ace could just be a phase, which actually hurt quite a bit. I had started with telling him I'd been thinking about this for a long time- thinking seriously about it for nearly a year- and I thought I sounded like I was taking this seriously. I feel like, even with having more immature parts in my personality, it's usually the more mature, logical, thought-it-through-a-lot-before-bringing-this-up parts that would be talking if it came to subjects like this. I dunno, maybe it had to do with me literally never talking about things like that with him before. Guess that's the problem with keeping these kinds of things close. (Just a week-ish ago I had revealed to my roommate my past in singing, dancing, and a wee bit of acting, and she was like, "Wow, how many secrets do you have?! I'm such an open book compared to you!" and it hadn't registered quite as much as right there that I really don't tell people much about myself, not without being asked about something or feeling like I have a reason to, and even then it's usually just lesser-known hobbies and tidbits from my past that aren't terribly personal.)

Anyways, we've talked again and it looks like he's more okay with the concept, but I still have to figure out what to make of our relationship from this point on. We decided on being friends while he's on his mission, but it does feel like he still treats me like more than that.

There's some other stuff related to this I want to talk about, especially because I haven't talked to anyone about it because I just don't know how to bring it up. Hopefully I get that done soon.

I guess this was me coming out to myself? Is this me officially calling myself ace? I think I could say aromantic, too, but I think that is less... an inherent nature than the ace part. I know I would probably fit under "graysexual", but I dislike that even more than "asexual", so the title that currently feels most comfortable and accurate to me is "mostly ace", even though the wording's a bit silly.

So, uh, yeah. There you go, world. I don't even have the brainpower to finish this with pizazz. But I totally aced the rest of it, right? Eh? Eeeeeeeh? *wiggles eyebrows* ...I only put this here so I could use a pun in the title, and bye.

A Thing Happened Today

So I have, once again, been really bad about this. I think I'll be better once my church ward changes to an earlier time.

Until then, though, I think this is worth posting by itself.

I, uh... had my first kiss today? And officially started dating a guy? I'm now a girlfriend?!

This still feels pretty surreal to me. You know me. I was always scared of getting even close to something like this, feeling romantic emotions and all that junk. So... yeah, I'm still wigged out by all this.

The only person I've told this far is my sister (kinda glad I didn't have to say it to her face since we kinda don't live together anymore, I don't know what I would've looked like), since everyone else is pretty dang gossipy and much more interested than I am. I wanna see how long it'll take for the news to spread across the neighborhood... ugh, no one's gonna leave me alone.

So... I do like him, but I'm so not used to this (how many people say that at 19?) and I think I am just naturally not as feelsy in the relationship sense than most people even with the inexperience taken out, so I don't know where it'll go. Hopefully, it'll all be good.

I kinda wanted something to happen before it reached this point so it stopped there just because I was scared... but I know I'm not gonna grow as a person and, well, never get to know what it's like until I just let it happen.

So here I am. Now a girlfriend. It's weird.

(His name is Finn the Human, by the way. It's not my best code-name ever, but I think it'll do.)

B-Day, So I Read/Watched Stuff

Hello, world.

​Yup. Slapping myself as we speak. Literally. Doing this diary just feels like such a chore (someone else said that about writing a story, and so they took a hiatus, and it seemed like perfect wording for what's happening here, especially since I've been so bad about actually doing all my normal chores at a decent time and frequency...).

I'm gonna see how much timeline I can fit into this, just with going more by topic than chronology, if that makes sense... the nice thing is that I didn't actually watch all that much stuff on Netflix over the school year (it was usually YouTube which I rarely comment on in this blog), and mostly read fics that I usually don't mention, so this might not be too painful.

Before then, though, I'll talk about my 19th birthday (everyone keeps telling me to stop feeling old because you're nowhere near old enough for that, but I can't help feeling old and like it doesn't match my internal age)!

My birthday was, for the most part, quite fun. I wore a favorite outfit (though, since I gave away my old birthday shirt to one of the girls back in my old ward for her birthday late last year, I don't have anything that explicitly tells people why I'm in a good mood)--Nightmare Before Christmas shirt with green jeans, white suspenders hanging down off my shoulders, and high pigtails. I had a pretty fun time at work because I just like my job, but also my boss took me and my coworkers (much easier to do when there's only two other girls working that day, I suppose) out for ice cream, which I accidentally treated as my lunch... so I ate my actual lunch as a quick dinner at the bus stop later (bought some fruit for myself and corn syrup for Bias). (They actually had the huckleberry flavor, which was sooo good!) Once home, another friend came over (Bias and I started hanging out with her, like, a month ago?) who I'll call Spyro because I think she'd just love that if she ever found out I called her Spyro. She brought her Just Dance game (don't remember which number, but it was from 2012, if I remember right) and then I got her to play a little bit of Kirby's Epic Yarn with me while Bias was using the corn syrup and some other stuff to make this honeycomb/honey brittle candy stuff? I liked it a lot, and I kinda wish it lasted longer... Oh, and I ended the night with watching Tarzan, because it's basically required to watch an old favorite Disney movie on my birthday now, and I had a blast.

Unfortunately, not the whole day was particularly fun. I haven't gotten to a thing that happened on the Fourth of July this year with my American grandparents, and it got carried over... I wasn't actually there, but my mom, dad, and sister had gone to eat dinner with them that day, and my dad mentioned watching the latest Purge movie and said that they all thought it sounded very similar to stuff that is happening now or could happen because of how Trump is, and... apparently, my grandpa didn't like what he was implying. I've heard that most people have seen him get angry plenty of times and that he gets rather scary while angry (we all know that's where my dad got it, though he's nowhere near as bad in comparison)... but I've never seen it, and I know I should be glad I haven't. From there, an explosive argument happened where my grandparents were saying we should support the president because he's the president even if he's done some bad stuff and that HE'S STILL BETTER THAN HILLARY, I WASN'T GOING TO VOTE FOR THAT ***** and that Mexicans are causing the most crime right now (not true in the slightest??) and that immigration laws have to be stricter for them because they're right there while Europeans are a whole ocean away?? I dunno, he apparently spouted a lot of nonsense, and my grandma was there mostly silently supporting him. Though my dad was clearly shocked and angry, my sister was infuriated and was the one arguing back the most that when he's calling Mexicans criminals, dealers, and rapists, he's saying the same thing about her, my mom, and me. Apparently, though, they just can't understand that? There's probably a lot of stuff I'm forgetting to say, but long story short, my family isn't talking to my grandparents anymore, which... I mean, it's not like we were talking to them daily and visiting all the time anyways, but it still hurts a little knowing that something like that happened and it hurts a lot knowing how it affected all of us.

Later, when my mom was recounting all of this to me, she added a warning that my grandma was probably going to do her birthday call for me still, and that if she tried to start going off about what happened that I should just politely say that I don't feel very comfortable talking politics with her. And, well, she did call me during work, and... yeah, she just started going, and I couldn't bring myself to interrupt. She was putting all the blame for the drama on my sister overreacting and being an extremist and saying that it concerns her so much that she has so much hate for the president because we're supposed to support him because HE'S THE PRESIDENT AND THAT'S IT, NO MORE REASONS NEEDED. I don't know whether I'm more bothered by how she just doesn't get that he's a bad person and our problem is with their blatant racism (especially because it's against us, even though they don't see it that way), or that she was pleading with me on how to right things with Diane because she doesn't want the family to be broken like this and not appear perfect, not because she genuinely wants to understand what's happening or... anything. It's just... I'm glad I wasn't actually there, but I don't like that she's still trying to suck me into it, and use me as an information broker on what's happening with the rest of my family because they're not talking to her because she's being a terrible person when 1. they need more time to cope with this, 2. I don't want to accidentally make things worse, and 3. she doesn't get what the point is.

I think it just proves further that just doesn't get what's happening because, when she asked me if my mom was mad, too, I ended up just saying something my mom had told me back in July, that she didn't feel very comfortable talking to them until my dad did, and she just had this moment of shock that "Your dad is mad at us, too?!" when he's the one that had brought up Trump being a terrible person and president in the first place? She apparently doesn't understand how a white dude could possibly be offended when you go talking about his wife's people like that? Who knew??

I hope I don't sound too terribly biased about all of this, even though I think I kinda have a right to be biased in this situation. I just... yeah, I ended up thinking about this for hours, wondering how she thinks like this and if I could've made that conversation go better... At least I was able to finally get my mind off it with my friends who didn't even know about the call.

​I think I left off on Sept. 27th all those months ago, so that's where I'm gonna go.

That Wednesday, I'd found that this one girl, who had once commented on Family History whether it'd be okay for her to try writing a sequel, actually did it! (Or, well, started it, I guess is more correct... last I checked, it was two or three chapters in.) It's so flattering that someone liked my work enough to try to continue it themselves! (I still feel as KYAH as that time someone wrote an alternate for me for Visiting Homeland, the "official" sequel!") It was fascinating to read it and see how different it came out compared to my own take, yet the characters actually felt like they were still the same characters! I love when that happens!

The weekend brought one of my favorite things ever, General Conference! I hitched a ride with Lia and her roommate (let's just do K because I'm lazy), and we went straight to K's house where it turns out her house is huge and her mom likes to make delicious, elaborate meals. We watched Minority Report Friday night even though we were all tired from the drive, then hung out to watch the first session of GF and drove down to my and Lia's houses a little before the second session. I just chilled with my mom and dad for a while, and had also chilled with my sis at her place for a while to do homework and listen to Dodie and friends. (Because why not add this last note now, I gave Barbie some Abuelita chocolate because it turns out she's into authentic Mexican foods, and she was absolutely thrilled.)

Because a bunch of notes don't really count for this topic, I'm now gonna skip to Oct. 28th, because I went to one of my college's theatrical productions for the first time, and really enjoyed it! It was Sideways Stories From Wayside School (you probably didn't know they made a play out of it, did you?).

The week after, Lia and I watched a school-sponsored film where it interviews Latinos that live in this city. I liked it a lot, but the frustrating part was that there were a couple things that they talked about that I wished they went more in-depth with. Lia pointed out that, though there were quite a few Latinos like us in the audience, the point was for other people to get a broader understanding of why Latinos moved here and what life is like for them.

(And, uh, I guess this doesn't count as reading or watching, but I went on a major Spider-Man artwork binge afterwards, which I am quite sure had something to do with dressing as Spidey for Halloween a couple days before... I intend to tell you about that later.)

That Friday, I brought Ash with me to a presentation about sharks. They do a monthly thing throughout most of the year where they have a guest speaker come talk on something science-y, intended for kids to be able to understand and enjoy it but anyone can come. Of course, sometimes it was like "I didn't need it so dumbed down", but other times they seemed to struggle with making it dumbed down enough so kids could follow along. For the most part, though, they do a good job, and this one was indeed very cool! I still have the notes I took during it somewhere.

Now at Nov. 9th, I indeed ended up going to Anime Club again, and got a bit of Gintama (though I don't remember that in the slightest, whoops), Cromartie High School (ridiculously weird, I wanna watch more), Konosuba (very stereotypical, from what I remember), and Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun (sad kind of funny).

On the 21st, I'd taken a ride home for Fall Break (which hardly lasted, how ridiculous) and watched a bunch of movies with my parents and sis. My dad and I went to see Justice League which was quite fun (only note I've got is that Barry breaks my heart, but I do also remember that I thought Aqua-Man's newest interpretation was really cool). I also watched Shimmer Lake and The Good Son with my mom and sis, then Corpse Bride (YES!) with Sis, and IT (2017) with the whole family. I liked IT a lot more than I thought I would, even though my family was insisting that I'd like it and I tend to trust their judgement on this kind of thing more nowadays. (Also, we went for Crown Burger that day, which makes just about any day better.)

Oh, I also finally watched The Lego Ninjago Movie with my dad at the dollar theater, and loved it! (And my dad also said he liked it more than he thought he would, but I knew it was going to be good, so I was like "Told you so.") Broranges, because he's like that, had been complaining about how everything was going to be the same as in the show (which he actually hasn't seen much of, compared to moi), but you'd know it wouldn't be if you bothered to pay attention to the commercials... They changed the ages and personalities quite a bit, and it was all Lloyd-centric in a way the show never had been (I mean, it did center on his personal struggles for a while, but not to this extent because it still had a bunch of other main characters to show you meanwhile), but it was still greatly enjoyable and still felt like the same franchise, thankfully. The only part I felt bothered by was that I thought the other main characters were a little too ignored in order to focus on Lloyd and Garmadon. I know the point of the movie wasn't their stories, but they're still so integral that it hurt a little to see them hardly get any screen-time.

If only I had seen it before I hung out with my cousins at my grandparents' house that day, so I could flaunt around the fact that I saw it before them (I was a little surprised they hadn't, actually)... Maybe I can watch it with them in the future if we all get together sometime and it's on Netflix. That'd be really nice.

I believe I'm now at Dec. 1st, in which I apparently binged RWBY... because I guess that's what you do when it's finally acceptable to do Christmas-y things (in my eyes, at least).

Actually, nothing to do with anything, but I genuinely enjoy watching the Sanders Sides Christmas episode randomly--pretty much one of the only Christmas specials I can stand to watch when it isn't almost Christmas. It's just so funny and iconic! I've watched it at least twice just this summer! Out of nowhere, actually, I'd suddenly remembered a couple lines from it a few days ago and had to try to stop myself from laughing in the middle of work. If only people around here actually knew Sanders Sides so I could quote characters with them and stuff! (I will admit, though, I have very mixed feelings about the fandom since a lot of it is comprised of heavy shipping, and it's weird to me because they're essentially shipping Thomas with himself, and yet somehow, sometimes they manage to make it so gosh-darn cute that I still kinda like it?? What the?? How????)

I think I'll now skip to spring semester. (See? That wasn't too painful after all!) A decent amount of spring was dedicated to... Doki Doki Literature Club gameplays and fandom. I apparently started watching a Let's Play in the second week of January and got sucked in. (More specifically, my note says, "All this week I've been watching [DDLC] and I've been 'WHAT THE HECKIN HECK'.") I haven't actually played it myself, and I don't know if I ever could despite knowing what happens... or, well, I guess it also seems more pointless because I know what happens. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating game, and though I'm quite sure the Doki Doki craze has died down by now, it's still something I think of every once in a while and I'm like "Dang it, hardly anyone would get it if I said 'JUST MONIKA' right now".

Feb. 9th (at this point I'd been putting dates in my notes, which is many helpfuls), I went to see another school play, this time with Ash and Barbie. It was called The Great God Pan, and we all really liked it, even though it was also really intense? We then went to Wendy's after that (where the poor cashier messed up Barbie's name on the receipt hilariously), and then ice cream. After that, I... don't remember if that was the reason, but Ash's family had gotten cookies (there's these two local companies that are pretty popular) and Ash brought us to their house to eat some of the leftovers. So, I got to more officially meet her mom and see her dad and little sister for the first time. They also let us borrow a bunch of movies (DVDs), though we ended up not watching most of them... which is good in a way, frustrating in another. We did watch The Lizzie McGuire Movie that night, which is one of those movies where I just figure I probably saw it as a little kid but I don't remember doing so in the slightest, so I was essentially watching it for the first time. I hardly remember the show at all, either, but I'd blame that on just preferring cartoons over live-action, especially when I was younger.

I went home for the weekend after riding with this one girl from my ward who I hadn't really talked to before that, but she was super cool and I'm kinda sad we didn't talk much after that either? While there, I watched some Monk with my mom (man, that brought back memories) and went to see Black Panther (I've seen it at least two more times since then, hah) with my dad. Also, somehow... my dad joked about wanting to go eat something even though it was really late, but then it turned into a half-joke and then I was like "Actually I do have room to eat right now" and then we ended up going to Belgian Waffle House and sharing a massive plate of garbage hash at one in the morning... That was so bad and yet so worth it at the same time.

March 3rd, I finally got the guts to watch the live-action FMA movie... and I was surprised and so relieved that I actually enjoyed watching it. It wasn't my absolutely my most favorite thing ever, of course, but I actually had fun, and so it got a point in my book. I loved Ed's actor, who did an amazing job, better than I could've ever hoped for, and of course the special effects were frickin' sweet. Yes, they kinda changed stuff around, not always for the better, but that didn't bother me terribly. The part I'd personally been most disappointed about was that Alphonse wasn't likable (which I'll agree with Terra on, that putting in the whole "doubting my existence" thing that happens in this movie did not help). The same thing happened to some other characters, but it's nearly blasphemy to do that to Alphonse, who is the co-protagonist! It's not even a matter of whether they messed up my personal favorite character, but it ruins the point of the show and it kinda ruins Edward, too, because no one would get why he'd sacrifice himself like that in the first place if his little brother wasn't the sweet ball of sunshine he's supposed to be, you know?

That day, I also watched Brother Bear and Wreck-It-Ralph with my roomies, which was super fun and nostalgic. We also had a short dance party jamming to "When Can I See You Again?" afterwards because Owl City. (It was kinda a follow-up dance party for me because I kinda put on my own private party in my room, dancing with myself... that kind of thing is super embarrassing to admit to, but it can be so fun!)

The week after, I was on Spring Break, which I spent most of at home (though I did do the lab safety course that Monday since it was going to be easier then than trying to fit it in some other time with classes in session). My mom had been organizing papers and found some old printouts Sis had of a Harry Potter book, which turned out to be because she had asked for them during the HP class back at the high school, but she didn't have the whole book. Nonetheless, I was bored, and figured "They're here, so why not try Harry again?" I'd only tried reading the first book once when I was 10 and got too bored and put it down halfway through, sooo... I think this was the fourth book? And I actually did kinda like it (Harry has sass, goodness). Nonetheless, who knows if I'll ever finish one of those books or even re-watch the movies... Don't think I've seen even half of the movies...

I also watched A Wrinkle in Time (2017) and Thor: Ragnarok with my dad. The first was still fun and it had some spots I liked, but in general I just don't think it's something I'll bother watching again? And I still don't really get what everyone likes about the story? The Thor movie was awesome, though, and so I ain't even mad that I've seen that one a couple times more afterwards, just like with Black Panther.

Last one I'll talk about is rewatching the very beginning of Avatar: the Last Airbender with Wan, Ash, and Barbie. Forever ago, all the way back to when she'd been helping me come up with my Relief Society lesson, we'd had the Avatar inside joke and been saying we'd watch it together. For some reason I'd been remembering it happening later, but it was actually March 10th when we'd watched it the first time together, and we'd both brought a couple other people to watch with us. Yep, it was awesome (and I think my roomies, who hardly knew anything about the show, were a little like "Okay, girl, you're being a little too much with your excitement right now", but I couldn't help it!). Ash and Barbie said they liked it, but they never came again... Ever since we've been watching in the summer, though, Wan's roommates sometimes end up watching some with us and laughing at our attempts to imitate the opening moves.

Okay, I'm gonna stop there, but that was a pretty decent amount of info I put down! Soon after this, I'm gonna update my profile, as I do on my birthday (though I'm almost a week late this time). K bai!