#(Idk - It feels like I’m caught in this liminal space of not wanting to be annoying vs being stifled by those drafts…

[loveesiren]

𝖲𝗇𝗈𝗐𝖿𝖺𝗅𝗅 - 𝖢.𝖲.

DISCLAIMER: This is my first Sturniolo fic and I have taken a longggg break from writing so I am very rusty. Sorry in advance that this most likely sucks. I'm also not great with fluff but I thought this was cute so I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think <3

Synopsis: In which Y/n finds the one person who brings joy to her life.

Warnings: Language, broken family (deceased father, alcoholic mother, troubled youth), fluff, cigarettes, very brief mention of drugs

Word Count: 2.4k+

“I WISH I WASN’T EITHER!” You screamed at your mother before slamming the door and walking out into the cold winter night. You grabbed a cigarette from your coat pocket and placed it between your teeth as you searched for your lighter. You brought it to the tip of your cigarette, flicking it a few times until it finally lit. 

I wish you weren’t my daughter. The words echoed in your head as you made your way down the dimly lit street. Light snow fell from the sky and your neighborhood was silent, the fluffy white powder absorbing all sound. The space around you was liminal. It was nights like these that were perfect for clearing your head. 

Chris’s POV

I heard Y/n yelling and I immediately turned my attention to the window. I slipped my headphones off, completely ignoring Matt and Nick and abandoning the game. I watched as Y/n clicked her lighter to light up her cigarette before walking off down the street. She looked sad. That wasn’t unusual. Especially this time of year.

I’d grown up next to Y/n my whole life. I’d dare to even say she is my friend. Although maybe she doesn’t feel the same about me? She was confusing at times. She was often quiet and kept to herself at school. She was really kind. But I’d also seen her lay someone out before for disrespecting her. She was smart as hell but always managed to end up in detention and for some reason I found myself getting into situations to get detention just so I could hang out with her. 

Obviously, my parents didn’t love that but she was so intriguing. The whole neighborhood knew of her situation. Her mom definitely wasn’t the most pleasant neighbor. Y/n tried to escape that as much as she could but she was still viewed as the “troubled kid” growing up. Now we are 18 and on the verge of graduating. I was beginning to fear that she’d be gone soon. She’d told me before how she couldn’t wait to get out of this town, that there was nothing keeping her here. 

Where would you go? I texted her.

Idk. Maybe the Outer Banks? Learn to surf, search for treasure, live like a Pogue. Lol. She responded.

We didn’t always stay up late texting but when we did our conversations were always interesting. I was always excited to see my phone screen light up with her name. It wasn’t constant, but often enough that Matt and Nick began to notice.

“Who are you texting?” Nick asked one day.

“Yeah, you smile like a goof every time you look at your phone.” Matt added.

“No one,” I responded quickly. 

“That’s a fucking lie. Who is it?” Nick asked again. Matt quickly snatched my phone from my hands and ran away with it.

“Matt, what the fuck!” I yelled as I attempted to chase him. Matt tossed it over my head and Nick caught it at the perfect time for Y/n to text me back. My phone lit up with her name and photo and Nick's jaw dropped.

“Y/n?!”

“Ew, the weird bitch?” Matt added.

“She’s not fucking weird!” I snapped, grabbing my phone back. “Don’t fucking worry about it.” I stormed off to my room and since then they haven’t brought it up. Which was fine by me. They didn’t take the time to get to know her, no one did. She was actually cool as fuck.

I thought about texting her as I watched her walk further down the street. But it just didn’t feel right. I wanted to talk to her in person. 

“Dude! What are you doing?” Matt burst through my door. “You totally fucked me and Nick in the game!”

“I’m done playing for now.” I told him as I went to my closet to grab my coat and snow boots.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”

“Chris!”

I hated keeping things from my brothers but this was something I didn’t feel like discussing with them further. They made it clear they didn’t care about Y/n. The only time they ever made comments is when they noticed her and her mom fighting. They knew she was my friend and that’s all they needed to know. All I cared about was catching up with Y/n and making sure she was okay. It was absolutely freezing outside. 

I left out the backdoor without responding to Matt and made my way down the street.

Y/n’s POV

You let the tears fall freely from your eyes as you dragged your cigarette. One more semester until you graduate and then you could leave this god awful suburb for the rest of your life. After your dad died when you were just thirteen, your mom took all her anger out on you. The last five years had been miserable. You missed your dad. You missed when your mom didn’t drink. You missed when you were a regular family. Now you were just the girl everyone felt sorry for. The troubled one.

You made your way to the small pond near the end of your neighborhood. You were ready to sit and let the stillness of the water distract you until you heard footsteps behind you. Your body tensed, nervous for who would be out here at this hour. You reached in your pocket and grabbed your knife, quickly pulling it and turning it on the person walking your way.

“Whoa, whoa!” The dark figure said, stopping in his tracks with his hands up. “It’s me! Chris!”

“Chris?” You asked softly, lowering your knife. He stepped forward. It was indeed Chris Sturniolo. You took a deep breath at the sight of him. “You scared the fuck out of me!” You scolded.

“I’m sorry…” He said. Unsure if he should walk closer or not.

“It’s fine,” You chuckled. “What are you doing out here?”

“Oh, you know, just enjoying the freezing weather.” He said, smiling and stepping closer to you. 

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” You joke as your teeth chattered. 

“What are you doing out here, Y/n?” Chris asks, his voice more serious now.

“Just needed some air.” You told him. “I like this pond in the summer. There are lots of frogs. I wonder where they all go in the winter…” Your face fell as you pondered the thought.

“Y/n..”

You sniffled as you looked down at the pond. Chris always knew. “What.” You responded. It wasn’t a question.

“You have mascara running down your cheeks.”

Christopher Sturniolo might have been the only person to ever see you cry. He always knew and he was always there. It was a rare occasion but as you thought back on it, he always seemed to appear when you were sad and find a way to cheer you up. Whether it be walking home with you, trying to make you laugh, or even just sitting next to you silently so you wouldn’t be alone.

“She said she wishes I wasn’t her daughter.” You confessed, allowing your head to fall. Chris wasted no time in wrapping his arms around you and pulling you into him. Normally you hated being touched but you felt so comfortable with him. He wrapped one hand around your lower back and the other made its way to your hair as he towered just above you. 

“I’m sorry, Y/n. You deserve so much more.” He said softly.

You cried more at his words. In what world did you deserve more? In what world did you deserve Chris?

“Y/n, you’re freezing.” 

“Yeah, I know. I’ll call Billy-”

“No. Come to my house.” He cut you off.

You were taken aback for a moment. You hadn’t been to the Sturniolo’s since their 13th birthday party. The only reason you were invited was because your father died. You couldn’t imagine his parents or brothers actually liked you. 

“Chris, I can’t just intrude like that-”

“You’re not intruding. And I don’t want you at Billy’s.” He stated. You’d never heard the sweet Chris Sturniolo sound so serious about something. Billy definitely wasn’t the best guy but he always gave you a place to stay when you needed it. “I don’t trust him.”

Chris had no reason to trust him. Billy was a dick and often fucked people over. But having him as a connect meant a place to stay and drugs to do as long as you put out or helped him out. But to be invited to Chris’s house made you nervous. His parents were sweet. His brothers were protective. Chris bringing you home would be like bringing home a stray raccoon. 

“Chris, I can’t.” You sigh.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not a good look sneaking some degenerate into your home at midnight,”

“I will walk you through the front door proudly,” He says. “Besides, my parents are asleep and my brothers are too invested in their game. Just come over for a bit to warm up? We can listen to music in my room.”

You thought about it for a moment.

“If you hate it, you live right across the street,” He smiled hopefully at you, 

You couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Fine.” You say. “But just for a little bit! Once my mom is asleep I’m going home.”

“Deal.” Chris agreed, throwing his arm over your shoulder and guiding you back towards the street.

The two of you walked back to his house with minimal conversation. 

“Wanna catch snowflakes?” Chris asked before sticking his tongue out and letting the snow fall on it.

You giggled at him but followed his lead. The crisp flakes on your tongue felt nice. You were having fun jumping around in the snow with Chris. You even stopped at the park to make stupid snow angels and throw snowballs at each other. Before you knew it, the snow was getting heavier, almost blizzarding. 

“C’mon!” Chris yelled, grabbing your hand and running towards his house. 

You made it to his porch and he opened the door slowly. The kitchen was mostly dark aside from the microwave light being on and the light that shined underneath Nick’s door. You could hear him still awake, obviously yelling at a video game he was playing. 

Chris put a finger to his lips, gesturing for you to be quiet as you both slipped out of your boots. He grabbed your hand and you both tiptoed through the dimly lit house and up to his room. You made your way down the hall and followed Chris into his bedroom. 

“Make yourself at home,” He said with a smile. He went to his computer and logged into his Spotify. You scanned his room, noticing all the posters of his favorite artists on his walls. You could tell he was passionate about music. 

“Who’s your favorite?” You ask. He looks at you and you gestured to all the posters.

“Skies, for sure!” He says. “What about you?”

You unzip your coat to reveal the shirt you got at Grey Day last year. “$uicideboy$”

Chris smiles at you. “I’ve never really listened to them. What’s a good song?”

“A Death In The Ocean Would Be Beautiful,” You say as you slip off your coat and sit on his bed. 

Chris turns on his galaxy projector so that wave-like colors flow across his ceiling before he presses play and joins you on his bed. You both lay back and listen intently as you watch the lights. 

“They’re kind of depressing…” Chris admits after the song is over. 

You chuckle slightly. “Yeah, they can be. But they can be helpful. They get it, you know? What I’m going through.”

Chris turns on his side and you mirror his movements as if you were his natural reflection. “I hate hearing it every night.” He admits.

Your body curls into itself, you pull your sleeves further over your hands. “I’m sorry…”

“No, not like that,” He says, propping himself up on one arm and placing his other on your shoulder, gently tangling his fingers through the ends of your hair. “I just hate hearing you guys fight and seeing you walk out in the cold every night. You don’t deserve that.”

“Trust me, Chris. I’m no saint.” You say with a sad laugh. 

“Don’t have to be a saint to deserve basic respect, especially from your own family.” 

“I only have to deal with it for a few more months. When I graduate, I’m out of here.” You smiled at the thought. 

“You know…I’m really going to miss you…” Chris says softly. 

You look up to see his eyes already on you. You wanted to tell him you’d miss him too. You wanted to tell him to come with you, although you knew he’d never leave his brothers. You wanted to tell him he was the only good thing in your life and every time you were near him you felt happy and warm and like everything was going to be okay for once in your miserable fucking life. But with every single thought your brain contained about Chris Sturniolo, your mouth could only mutter three little words. 

“I love you…”

Chris’s lips parted slightly with shock as his eyes quickly scanned your features.

“Fuck! I’m sor-”

You were quickly cut off when he pressed his lips to yours. You were taken aback for a moment but quickly leaned in to deepen the kiss. He brought his hand up to cup your jaw and your fingers found their way to his hair. His lips were soft and sweet and you felt that fluttering feeling in the pit of your stomach that you hadn’t felt in a long, long time. 

He pulled away slightly and you frowned at the loss of contact. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long fucking time…” He said, his voice almost a whisper. 

“I-I didn’t know you liked me…” You said. “Why?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” You’re smart, you’re sweet, you know what you want, and pretty as hell.” He smiled. “Not to mention you’re like the strongest person I know. You deserve so much better than the cards you’ve been dealt.”

You felt tears welling in your eyes again but you couldn’t help but smile. You don’t know what you did to deserve the pretty boy who had his arms wrapped around you, but you hoped you never had to let him go. 

“Can I stay?” You asked shyly.

Chris smiled and pulled his comforter over both of you. “Please,” He said. 

You snuggled into him, resting your head on his chest while he played with your hair. 

“And Y/n?” He said, placing a kiss on your forehead.

“Mmm?”

“I love you, too.”

Tagging a few mutuals! Let me know if you want to be added/removed from tag list :)

Tags: @strniohoeee @flowerxbunnie @christinarowie332 @kenzieiskoolaid @bluesturniolo333 @chrattnick @recklesssturniolo @soursturniolo @byechristopher @justangelheree @sturnimovies

[allineedisabook-18]

Strung out heart title cards

The reappearance of the jigsaw pieces (yay!) in @strungoutheart (a music au percabeth comic by @amesliu) has made me actually sit down and go through all the title cards after so long of saying I would. I’ve loved the puzzle piece analysis done by @bookishjules on the centre pieces and @hpeg-art on the rest of the pieces; all this has left my thoughts swirling so here’s some things I’d like to talk about!

I started this out by going through every title card and noting down how many jigsaw pieces we lost or gained between each chapter and how this reflected the content of the chapter. The first time we don’t gain a jigsaw piece is chapter 8: The In-betweens I. This was quite interesting cos it seems like Percy and Annabeth are getting along quite well at this point (perhaps this was intentional or accidental I’m not sure) which led to me further examining all of the in-betweens chapters which led to some very interesting insights (at least to me!)

The In-betweens Chapters 

We have six in-betweens chapters: 8, 12, 13, 17, 24 & 37. Looking at them all together, I absolutely adore them being titled as such because it really captures what is going on! 

Chapter 8 can be viewed as Annabeth and Percy getting closer and more comfortable with each other; the beginning of both seeing the other as a true friend. The lack of an additional jigsaw piece reflects the hesitancy as they go from this transitionary stage of acquaintances to friends. Idk I think it was nice to have this slight pause in the continuous momentum we’ve built up, to show that progress isn’t always linear (even if even this scene they’re getting on well, just the reflection that them constantly moving forward at constant steady pace isn’t really the reality of when building towards closeness, sometimes you will take big leaps and other times baby steps). 

Chapters 12 & 13 are where Annabeth and Percy respectively are called out on their feelings towards the other and they both deny it. This is another transition period: going from friends to romantic feelings, from denial to admittance, obliviousness to awareness. 

Chapter 17 is where Percy and Annabeth almost kiss but pull back at the last second. Yet again they are standing at a threshold, one that could lead to a romantic relationship if they crossed it. Again caught in that in-between place, between friends and lovers. How Annabeth drawing back because of her fear of the unknown keeps them caught in this liminal space. 

Chapter 24 captures the period as we transition into Lukabeth starting to develop again and how this begins to negatively impact Percy and Annabeth’s relationship. Annabeth beginning to distance herself from Percy in a way (grouping Percy in with the band). This is the first (and only) in-betweens chapter where we lose a puzzle piece. Signalling the downturn their relationship is going to enter as they go between different stages; from potential love to estranged friends. 

Chapter 37 is the latest in-betweens chapter so far and omg. The fact that this is the last title card with no jigsaw pieces. We enter this new transition phase where Annabeth has broken up with Luke but is not ready yet to reconcile with Percy. That stage between being with Luke, leaving and reaching out to Percy. It’s just so perfectly named!!! Actually makes me go insane and also the fact that it’s the last chapter with 0 jigsaw pieces and the first in-betweens chapter was the first chapter with no additions just feels so fitting.

This was actually only the first point I wanted to touch on and this post feels so long already! I think I will leave it here for the moment as I am a very impatient human being and come back at a later stage with separate post(s) on the rest of my thoughts. I would love to hear what everyone else thinks, other interpretations, ideas, opinions! I’ll be back with more at some point💕

[trashmouthkid]

I’m never lonelier than I am during the times I can’t write about it.

[saturnsorbits]

Torn between throwing up the last of these draft fics (I still have 8… 3 ficlets: 5 fics; so I’d have to stick one up like every week) before the one year anniversary of the blog so I can start with new, fresh stuff again; or just condemning them to draft Hell where they may never get posted?

[fika-wika]

Liminal Spaces

This Past month I’ve  been taking a break from like everything. I’ve felt myself in idk what you call it...maybe a liminal space. Its a space where you are not where you were before but not quiet where you want to be yet either Its somewhere inn this uncomfortable middle. While in this space I also kinda just felt like my whole life was on pause. The start of may pretty much kicked off with health issues for me then after clearing them up at the hospital I lost my financial stability and was unable to spend any money all month long trying to clear up the problems with my bank...and yea I can probably guess what you’re saying “damn..that sucks” but tbh. I was totally fine. I feel like if there was anything this last month had taught me. Well my whole life really but specifically this month..its that you can’t control everything. And sometimes as people I’m sure the thing we want most is to feel in control of our lives but that’s just not where I was this month and I feel that’s ok. Since the beginning of the month I knew there was nothing I could really do about my circumstances as they were already playing out so I gotta wait them out. I suppose that was the best option. To do what I can and not worry about what I can’t.

So throughout the entire month I’ve just been resting, and picking my battles. No money? Ok cool I’ma just stay home and chill. Find something I CAN control and put attention towards that. Clean, Read, Play some games, Watch Tv, Go hang out with friends. Honestly, it was amazing too. For a month filled with a lot of ebbs, I still felt like I was just In a flow with it. This month taught me a lot about just living my life day by day one at a time not worried about tomorrow or looking back on yesterday but finding something I could do today right now to be happy and enjoy myself. Then as the month went on now entering June. My health is improving, My financial situation worked itself out right on time for rent and the rest of my bills and I’m still just as happy as I was at the start of the storm.

I guess the lesson in all this...Live in the present of your day to day, find happiness in the life you can live NOW and if you cant control it, let it go and don’t allow yourself to stress over it. Cause you can’t control it anyway. So do something fun that you CAN control. and focus on those. Just choose to be happy man, choose to do what can make you happy now if things are out of your favor. The rest will work itself out in due time. I for one caught up on a lot of sleep this month and I regret nothing. Feeling better than ever, like its exactly what I needed instead of working so hard all the time. Lil slow down never hurt, just what the doctor asked for.

[goblinfruit]

End of the year writing reflection 2017

I’m trying out this thing where I gather all of my thoughts about my writing and growth as a writer-person from the past year into one place. This is a long post, fyi. Here goes:

I had two workshop classes this year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and a writing conference during the summer. At the end of all this, right now as I calm down after finals, I feel like I have more self-doubt than I had at the beginning of this year, but I also feel like I’m more okay with that self-doubt. I can live with it more easily now. I might change my mind tomorrow, in a week, in a few months, but this feels like a real change and not a mood.

Before I always had this background noise of “you have to be good. You have to be the best. You have to be amazing. You’re not right now, so you have to work and get there sooner rather than later. You can’t miss any opportunity because it might be the only one.”

Maybe this thought is true in some respect. Maybe I shouldn’t let my guard down. But I wrote some stinkers in my fiction studio in the spring. I felt like my prose was okay but the stories were scattered and too much lived in my head and not on the page. The story I presented to my workshop group in my summer writing conference still deeply embarrasses me. I had written it a year ago, and it was a short story that was trying hard to be a modern folktale, as if the genre made up for the fact that nothing in the story was grounded. No concrete characters, setting, the plot was a thin moral. I love the concept or trope or whatever-it-is of reincarnation in stories but I put it into that Terrible story so now I have this weird heartburn whenever reincarnation comes up in shows or books. I had to re-watch the entire first season of 90s Sailor Moon to lessen it with overexposure (sure, that was totally the only reason I did that). To be fair to myself, I thought that workshop group in particular was a stinker. They made me doubt if I wanted to be a writer or befriend any writers because writers seemed to be, on the whole, a species of pretentious assholes trying to show-off or belittle anyone who makes the mistake of breathing in the same air as them. I’ve gotten over that doubt, partly.

At the end of the summer I just… let go. I tried to stop thinking about possible, future publication while writing every story. I stopped looking up story contests and submission deadlines. In the fall semester fiction studio, I still got righteously angry at some stories and commentary in my workshop because getting righteously angry over minor social interactions is my thing. But way back at the beginning of this year I also started a job as a writing center consultant. I leaned into that training, I started treating workshop pieces as if they were brought to me by some courageous student just trying to do well in their classes.

This was so freeing. It didn’t feel like much, in my mind I thought of it like briefly giving up, a hiatus. I knew that I would try to summon up all of my ambitious feelings again but I needed a break from myself. I needed to shelve the perfectionist within me and go on a mental pilgrimage to just ...think about storytelling as a concept and not specifically about ME and my DREAMS. The fall semester helped. I had to take a required algebra class on top of classes that needed a lot of mental energy. I tried to do NaNoWriMo but got too caught up in everything else. I was too busy to care or feel devastated that I didn’t draft a long manuscript.

I wrote around three short stories for my classes, and all of them were about haunting in some way. Still can’t tell if this is from my mood or if this is my new(-ish) interest. Two of them were throw away stories that were one or two scenes that I’ll either never touch again or will have to completely rework. But one of them, the longest and first of the three, is the ghost garden story, which I’m excited about. This was the first story I felt like I made progress with in the revision assignment for class. I see so much potential in it, I want to explore that world. I want to make it hopeful, bittersweet, and pretty, dammit. I don’t know if this will be a serious project or something I use to make myself a better writer. Technically, the start of this school year is my fourth year as an undergrad, but I have a double major in Brit Lit and in Creative Writing, so I’m going to be here for another year trying to fulfill all of these dumb requirements. Maybe this has also contributed to my change in mood—I’m more relaxed about this now. I have a new project and a new school year ahead of me, and I can settle in and stay put for a while. I’m not going anywhere in a hurry and that’s okay.

Tl;dr: This year I learned to chill out, a little, and this helped me grow as a writer, a little.  

Some related but miscellaneous thoughts:

On writer friends: This was true in high school and I guess it’s true in college, too. At least for me, I always feel settled into a school during the last or later years I’m there. I have been at this university for three and now almost four years and just this last semester I finally feel like I’m making friends. Some of them are writers. There are writers around me who are not condescending or pretentious! I’ve found them! Just now, this year. This actually came about, partly, from the summer writing conference. I didn’t make any friends there, but the two other people from my school who were nominated to go are awesome and the summer conference gave me a reason to talk to them. They also complain about the conference, I’m not paranoid or a debby-downer. So thank you, writing conference, for killing my confidence and showing me the friends that were near me all along. No, I kid. Kind of.

On prose versus story: Moving forward, I’m going to try to write cohesive stories. Everything grounded—solid characters, solid settings, solid conflict. I’m still the kind of writer that puts logistics last on my priorities list, but I think I lumped in “development” in with logistics before and that’s not good. I’ve had this goal for a while, but the Terrible summer workshop story has made me even more determined. If this means writing extremely short, simple stories as exercise, so be it! I think that I’ve helped myself by figuring out why my stories haven’t been very grounded so far. I took the creative writing lesson of “your reader is smart, don’t tell us everything, show” too much to heart. My studies in just the last semester helped me realize this and brainstorm ways to work past this.

I had to read several books for a current writers class and I had to read a fiction by an established “master” writer for my senior level fiction studio, and then reflect and write essays about how these works ticked. I ended up writing three to four essays railing against the teaching that makes us hold back on exposition. Each of these writers used exposition effectively in their unique narration style. I think this is the key—I think that I’ve been afraid of using exposition because I’m a fantasy writer. I think that I should be afraid of clumsy, clunky exposition, instead. Showing, not telling, is great but my reliance on this, and not using much exposition, has left my workshop readers confused and slightly angry for each story, so I need to learn moderation.

Books: one of the books I read for the learn-by-reading reflection assignments was Margaret Atwood’s collection of short stories, Good Bones, Simple Murders. I didn’t read all of them because of time, but the many I did read were amazing. Most of the stories are concise, at about two pages long, and are brilliantly written. Beautiful, poetic, evocative, righteous, hilarious. There were also little pen-drawing illustrations by the author which were also amazing and complemented the stories so well. One of the main features in the stories is this close, personal narrative voice. The person is either first or second, or a mix of both, and usually reads like a letter, a diary entry, or a piece that addresses the reader directly. One or two were fake magazine ads. You kind of have to have a bit of exposition when your narrator is so direct, but this was coupled with a vivid voice and poetic language, so it totally worked. My next writing exercise idea is to write a flash fiction that mimics this style.

More books and stuff: I took a Chaucer class, which was fantastic. The Canterbury Tales are great and made me think more deeply about framing devices than I ever have before. The Canterbury Tales also were way more interesting once I had read more of Chaucer’s work first and got a sense of his meta and satirical style. If anyone wants to read The Canterbury Tales, I’d recommend some critical edition or something with a lot of academic notes if you can afford it, because there is so much in academic studies and even in the allusions and themes Chaucer himself uses. It’s a great thing to dig into.

I also took an Arthurian lit class in the spring and this did not make me want to read more Arthurian literature. Instead, I want to read more by Marie de France. We read her lai “Lanval,” and I remembered reading “Bisclavret” (a great werewolf story to check out if you haven’t read it) from Medieval Celtic Lit.

Also, reading her short stories made me want to start reading Margaret Atwood’s work. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale but that’s it for novels. This last weekend, I binge watched the Netflix series Alias Grace. It felt very Gothic to me, and had a lot about haunting, and since I’ve been obsessed with haunting as a theme, I should probably read the book. Idk what it is about haunting that’s caught me lately. Probably it’s a quick, easy way to evoke the feeling of the uncanny in a story. I mean, what’s more familiar-made-unfamiliar than a haunted house? Liminal spaces, man. They’re the best.  

That’s it for this reflection. If you’re a reader and/or follower who has made it this far, kudos to you! No, seriously. I wrote this mostly for myself and I have no idea if any of these thoughts are of interest to anyone else. But I feel like writing is so much an individual, lonely thing that I like to share my thoughts or be as direct with people as I can be, when I’m allowed. This isn’t always a good thing, but despite the crushing embarrassment I feel sometimes, I prefer to be optimistic and put myself out there (sometimes) rather than have no chance to be heard at all.