i'll tell you all how the story ends

my toxic trait is getting invested into reality tv shows from other countries and watching them on sketchy video sites in 480p, only to go on reddit after and read that the people watching the show either are toxic or hate everything and everyone.

tis the season once again.

last year (almost to date) season 4 of the boulet brothers' dragula premiered. in 2020 i've binged seasons 3 and 2, in that order, but i don't remember how and why, only that i ended up in the "i wish i could be a drag king" mindset for several months. this time i managed to get my partner to watch the season with me, and we had some good time and good laughs.

and look, that's all reality tv is for me - something to watch, maybe binge, laugh a little and then, most likely, forget. not to rip people on reddit out a new one because they decided to have a different opinion. i know that the boulets themselves are actually no better than rupaul, they aren't just as mainstream and don't have as much opportunities to show their less glamorous side. i know the drama is mostly fake. i know the contestants are just people and can have their own Bad(TM) views, political and etc. i am aware of the western-centric standards in the show and i know that the titans season is going to be a damn mess, for a thousand of reasons. i wish i could care more and actually have any Deep Thoughts about the politics of this season and the show and the industry.

but i'm so excited. i can't wait to turn off my brain once a week and just watch something without subconsciously analyzing it. the curse of being an audiovisual media student is not being able to sit down and simply consume media, and reality tv - be it another drag show or a produce clone - is silly enough for me to just have fun.

to be fair, this year beat my ass into the ground and then some. i don't really remember much of it and i'm about to blame myself for not keeping better track of things, promise myself that i'll do better this upcoming year and then proceed to do the exact opposite.
i'm also clueless about what i have to say here so lol let's just go.

WRITING
embarrassing, that's how i'd put it if i were to use one word
i signed up for 6 ficfests and managed to finish anything for 3 of them, dropping out of the rest. in theory it's a good statistic, but i still feel bad about having to tell the mods that i'm out of this. there were multiple reasons for that, more about them somewhere lower in this post in the "life in general section", but the general gist of things is that i was too emotionally tired to sit up, not to mention sit down and write.
here are the fic that i managed to post and some Thoughts about them:

• bite the bullet (even if i give it my all)
  • absolutely the best thing i've written this year and definitely the one that made me feel good in my mixed-media approach to writing. it was written for kpop olymfics and i will make a separate post about it someday, but for now: i was scared. so scared when it went up. and then i somehow won the category. incredible.
• drop a heart (break a name)
  • ah yes, the submission for emo fic fest that i had to half-ass bc i was too tired of whatever the fuck was going on in my life. it happens, i guess. not much you can do about it. i hope to maybe finish it someday. or at least put out the next chapter.
• POV: humans are weird
  • another kinda experiment of mine, written for kpop ficmix. i had some fun and maybe this one will get a post of it's own as well some day, but for now it's enough to say that my two stupid cats were the best inspo for this one.

i tried to shoot my shot at being published in a non-profit collection of polish lgbt+ works, but i didn't manage to finish my submission on time. rip to the idea, maybe i'll try to finish it someday for my own enjoyment.
i also went back to my high school roots and back to playing on a play-by-forum warrior cats rp. so that's what i'm mostly writing these days. i'm going to be 24 in 2022, and i'm pretending to be a cat on the internet. what a life.

• Queen's Gambit
• The Haunting of Hill House
  • eh. it was alright. tired me out tbh.
• The VVitch: A New England Folktale
• Star Trek: Voyager - season 1
  • absolutely amazing, i love everything about this show, it's just the thing i needed and i can't believe i waited so long to watch anything from this franchise that wasn't the movies from 2009-2016.

also because of my college major i am being forced to watch movies that i would probably never watch ever in my life, so here are the ones that i actually saw, not just what i should've seen:

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  • my fave from all of those. the scenery, the plot, the music... just amazing, highly recommended.
• Nosferatu
• Battleship Potemkin
• Waltz with Bashir
• Lebanon
• Foxtrot

i was supposed to watch more but i just didn't. the art of picking your battles.

• 27 Deaths of Toby Obed - J. Gierak-Onoszko
  • this one was probably the book that kit me the most. when i was younger i saw canada as that kind of perfect place, an amazing country that can do no wrong. i have since then grew out of this sentiment, but this book was truly eye-opening. highly recommended, really.
• Nie zdążę - O. Gitkiewicz
  • a book about something we call "wykluczenie komunikacyjne" - the lack of public transport in poland, the closing of more and more train routes, the rise of private bus companies, and how it affects the people here. hit closer to home than i expected, as both me and my partner are from the part of the country that's the most affected by this. some great observations there.
• Kwiaty w pudełku - K. Bednarz
  • women in japan. who are they. how do they live. where do they live. what the society does to them and what it means to be a "losing dog".
• Człowiek w przystępnej cenie - U. Jabłońska
  • something about how the human body is treated in thailand. left me with a weird taste in my mouth, but was okay overall.
• Nie hańbi - O. Gitkiewicz
  • a thing about work. about the work culture. about how we kill ourselves for work and how work is waiting in the streets. there was some lack of conclusion in my opinion, and if it were to stay so open, it should've been more broad in the perspectives given.
• Farba znaczy krew - Z. Kruczyński
  • a story of a hunter that gave up hunting and started advocating against it. the most enjoyable part for me was probably the one where he lists out how the hunters mess the ecosystem up. the interviews were a little boring tho.
• A co wyście myślały? - A. Zbroja, A. Pajączkowska
  • nothing spectacular, but it was pretty interesting to read about perspectives of women from the countryside, even if their experiences don't match the things i know from my family. it could use some closure, some kind of ending, but it was... okay.
• Cena nieważkości - D. Kortko, M. Pietraszewski
  
  • once upon a time there was a polish man in space and he flew there in a soviet space ship. then it got political. or was it always political? a neat little book about some part of history that just isn't talked about.

from the fiction books i read this year, here are the ones that i actually remember reading and have some opinions on:

• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet + A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers
  • you know what we need? more queer sci-fi stories. this duology is one of them. it's not the best, but it is good, and it picked me up when my mood was a little down, so yeah.
• W lesie pod wiśniami w pełnym rozkwicie - Ango Sakaguchi
  • i did not fully comprehend what was written there, despite reading this book in polish, but if anything it lead me to broaden my reading horizons a little bit.
• The Rest Of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness
  • maybe if i read it when i was 16 or something, i would've liked it more. but now it was just... okay. i appreciated the idea and the writing was pretty okay, but honestly, i was just simply too old for this book.
• Wilder Girls - Rory Power
  • once again, it would've been better if i read it when i was 16. the mystery, the setting, those were fine, but some plot points were a little silly to me. the ending was great imo.
• Call Down the Hawk - Maggie Stiefvater
  • took me longer than i expected to finish this, and while i liked it, and it was actually more adjusted to my current age, there was a lot of questions left unanswered and the end left me like :/
• Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke - Eric LaRocca
  • i've had a post-in-progress about this one. i decided to scrap it. nonetheless, i think this book was redundant. it didn't bring anything really new to the table, and some aspects were too simplified to be recieved well by me.
• Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao
  • a friend recommended this to me bc of mechas and also war as well as family drama, but i found most of it lacking, sadly. the battles themselves were alright, as well as the character motivations, but in the end it felt like an undercooked action movie with a budget too small for the author's vision. (and then i found out it was somewhat based on darling in the franxx and tbh everything i didn't like about this book started making sense lmao) idk if i'll be reading the next part.

overall, it was a year. it happened, i don't remember much, it was there and then it wasn't. i really hope i'll be able to write something more coherent with more fic-related content next time.

do siego roku lol

i hate deadlines, especially close ones. writing takes time - planning, editing, digging through thesaurus to find the perfect synonym, and (in my case) also translating the words already written to the closest possible english ones - it all takes more time than anyone would like to admit and cares to take into consideration.

that's why i still can't believe that in 2019 i decided to celebrate my two closest twitter friends' birthdays with publishing fanfics written specifically for them. this is the first one that was born in those circumstances, and i'll talk about the other on another day. either way...

i used to have really good contact with debbie - as far as twitter-only frienship can go, i'd say we were exactly that, friends. nowadays, we don't talk anymore, and i have no idea where the fates took her, but i do hope she's in a good place and enjoys whatever she's doing. i hope life treats her kindly. still, this fic remains as a weird kind of statue, a timeless proof of a friendship once existing. there are two things you need to know about debbie to get this fic - she liked hozier, her favourite song of his was take me to church;, and she loved lipves. i had (still have) a policy of never writing a fic to the same song twice, so i picked the next best thing.

and so, this fic came to be.

i started it way too late, but at this point i don't remember why. maybe because i was working on something else; maybe because i believe it was the time when i started a new job. whatever it was, it's the reason why this fic feels as rushed. because, truly, i was rushing it. (i still didn't manage to hit the deadline on time - i think i published it several days too late. but it's the thought that counts, right? or so i've been told.)

here's a fun fact - i used to attend dance class when i was in primary school. i was truly horrible; limbs too long, moves too rigid, no rhythm or coherence to save my life. but i was there, and i learned a thing or two. (the most important lesson was to never dance again, but alas.) and i've seen people dance a lot. and i saw how beautiful and expressive dancing can be. maybe interpreting "movement" as "dance" is the most basic thing in the world, but come on, it works so well here. then you add the fact that yves is supposed to be one of the best dancers in loona, and you have a perfect storm.

ruined only by the fact that i didn't have enough time and energy to fully commit to writing it out. that's why from a slow description of lip's career as a dancer we go straight to yves' performance and then, without a break, to them training and - presumably - being in a relationship together, if the last line of the fic is anything to go by. in a weird, twisted way, it works perfectly; there's some kind of parallel to be drawn between a dance performance and the way this fic flows, with some sharp turns and gentle yet determined flow. some part of that is thanks to my conscious choice of using present tense instead of past, as i believe it makes the scenes flow more naturally in front of the reader's mind's eye. but maybe that's just me.

i wish i could explore lip's character more in this fic, because oh lord where do i even start. there's something painfully poetic and tragic when you hate the only thing you're told you're capable of, the feeling of being broken when you can no longer feel good about your art, be it dancing, writing, drawing, whatever you pursued out of passion. she ends up cutting herself off from any kind of emotions connected to dancing then and they only return to her when she sees yves dance, all of what she loved about the art overflowing her in one powerful wave. something something poetic cinema. someone take this idea and run with it, as i can't because my legs are too clumsy to dance, let alone run a marathon like that.

in the end, debbie enjoyed this fic, if i remember correctly, and that's all that matters to me. still, if i were to rewrite only one fic out of this hozier series of mine, it would be this one. the idea is too good; it - and debbie - simply deserved something better.

something about hozier's songs makes me go absolutely feral.

maybe it's my love for all the sounds of the guitars, or maybe that perfect mix of blues and folk and dark nights and endless forests that makes my brain both calm down and kick into the overdrive. or maybe it's the lyrics verging on poetry just enough to be vague but still understandable by me. or maybe it's how he sings them, like his life depended on it.

whatever it is, it makes me want to write.

while the main theme in most of his songs is very clear - it's love, duh - i find myself almost endlessly fascinated by the wide range of how varied this theme is from song to song. It's the endless devotion to your lover bordering on worship in take me to church, foreigner's god or work song. It's the gentleness of finally finding peace in like real people do or in a week. It's the affection in movement or grisly dedication in shrike and the dysfunctional relationships in cherry wine and almost.

i could go on, but that's not the point.

the point is, love and relationships between two people are so ever-present in hozier's pieces, i understand why so many fics (and probably original fiction as well) were born out of some of the more popular ones. so why not take all of his songs and turn them into a series, each of the installments connected with each other just by their inspiration being hozier's discography?

that's exactly the challenge that I decided to take up. match every song with a loona pairing and write a short story based on the lyrics and the general feel. why loona? the amount of possible couples, possible dynamics, even if the unnie and maknae lines are separated, makes the task of picking and matching 34 of them to songs an easy feat.

granted, at first that wasn't my idea at all. i was just writing one ficlet based on one song, and then decided to write another as a gift, and then another, and... now i'm sitting at seven completed fics and seven wips. only twenty more songs to go!

here are the links to my thoughts on each of the published fics so far, linked as i write and put them out here. i hope you'll enjoy this little insight into what drives me absolutely bonkers, as well as my interpretation - and explanation of said interpretation - of each of the songs.

• (let me) give you my life 
• move (like a bird of paradise)
• fall in love (just a little)