Tuesday Can Never Leave Her Computer

I'll start today with a humorous anecdote about my Sunday. My internet went out, I panicked as per usual (I have an addiction and I know it, no need to stage an intervention). After fiddling with the router for about ten minutes, though, my internet had safely returned. I immediately refresh my tumblr, previously filled with images of my high school friends talking about how cute Dean and Castiel of Supernatural are together (I don't know, either), and upon refreshing, it's just a good twenty pages of "OMG OSAMA BIN LADEN DIED". Conclusion? I can't quit you, internet. I leave for ten minutes and BREAKING NEWS INSTANTLY EMERGES.

To Cassie, projects sound cool. No other comment at this time.

I don't have any real topic to discuss, honestly. I guess I can just jumble together a few random thoughts in a non-coherent fashion and let the post just fizzle out of existence. Sound good to you guys?

Those are my wedding rings. They're being fitted (hence why they are seen here on our pinkies), but there they are. I didn't really want diamonds, at first, but they were a good price, they matched, and they weren't too... gaudy, I suppose. Now I just need to get all of the paperwork done and figure out what to do with crockery, and I'm set. As an aside, I can't find a way to rent plates, forks, linens, etc. for less than $1,000. There is no politically correct way for me to express my thoughts on this issue.

I bought a Kindle in the past week. Amazon is amazing, so I didn't have time to inform you of this last week. I decided I would like one after I had made my post, and it arrived before I could make this one. I have mostly been reading public domain books, because (a) I mostly read old books, and (b) they are all free in the Kindle store. It's a big pile of win, in my humble opinion. I bought a couple of other books, too, just to test it out, and I like the kindle. It doesn't feel like a book, but it definitely reads like one, and for me, that is enough.

As per usual, I have also been writing. Maybe I should tell you guys what I write. It would probably make much more sense when I reference it again in the future if you know what the hell I am talking about. Basically, it is a high fantasy, quasi-exploration story. There is a plot, but it is low key and very character-oriented. It is about an elven king, Theodore, traveling through his kingdom with his loved ones (and sister; he only just met her), learning about the diversity of his people and the impact of the lord of the West, and his decision to either help this 'dark lord' or destroy him. It's a quiet novel, lots of character and introspection, but there isn't too much action. What action there is, though, is usually about sacrifice of some sort. The two big battles of the book have one character destroying the bond between himself and his father, and the other has my protagonist lose his arm.

I am writing this post a day in advance, by the way, as I have much to do on Tuesday and can't guarantee the time needed to get this written. I'll let this end now by saying that I'm making chicken parmesan for dinner with a new chicken recipe. My fiance is working late hours and doesn't get back until 10 for the next couple of weeks, so I guess I'll have to get used to late night dinners. :) See you soon, Carlyn.

Tuesday's Time to D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-DUEL!

I ate about twenty cupcakes in the past week. My stomach is rebelling against me. It doesn't help that, just before I bought these cupcakes, I had all of my fillings removed (I am getting them replaced today, since they were cracked), so decade old cavities were exposed to sugar. Good stuff. At least we've picked a place for our wedding cupcakes (because cupcakes > cake).

@Cassie; Oh, I agree, I think it is simply a matter of perspective. Harry is our viewpoint character, so the Slytherins are near unanimously evil, or at least rather unpleasant. I don't really mind that fact; it is just how the stories are written. But I still like the Slytherins the best, even if we only see them as the slimy snakes Harry sees them as.

@Christina; Plane tickets. :P

Obsessions, eh? I don't know if I really have any, truth be told. I am a big fan of certain fandoms, certain authors, certain things. But Harry Potter hit me at a stage in my life where an obsession was something I really could have. I own a Slytherin tie, a Slytherin plushie, an engraved wooden plaque of the Hogwarts emblem, the $100 edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, all that. It lingers on from my nostalgia - I do the midnight shows, even though I am not as huge a fan as I once was. Most of the things I liked back then have also become far less of an interest to me. The only reason I know all of the original Pokémon is because I can remember the lyrics to any song I hear (I wonder if there is a word for that). Buffy the Vampire Slayer has only lingered in my heart because of Angel, which I liked later in my teenage years. I had a thing for BL manga (boy's love) that has near entirely faded. Aside from the rare spark of enthusiasm for Darkwing Duck or something similar, I rarely get that old feeling of obsession back save for two series. Harry Potter is the first; I've covered that. The second is Yu-Gi-Oh!

I hit this show up a bit later than I did Harry Potter. I think I would have been in 5th or 6th grade, so 10 or 11. I watched every episode that was out - about a season - and I kept up with it religiously every Saturday morning. The first good friend I had based on something other than geographical location (my previous best friends were twin sisters who lived next door) was met because she had a Yu-Gi-Oh! t-shirt on, and it turned out, she was also a gamer and Harry Potter nerd. The result of that friendship is quite a tale, one for another week. Yu-Gi-Oh! introduced me to anime, something I really loved in high school and still appreciate, if significantly less, to this day. It ran for several years, and once it ended, GX came out (a series that takes place in the future, with an academy to learn to play card games). After that, 5Ds (CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES). We are now on Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, which takes it a step further by using augmented reality. There were a few rather terrible movies and side series, as well. The first manga I ever owned was the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, the earliest season which never came to America (mostly because it had little to do with duel monsters, and instead featured death games and tabletop RPGs prominently). My decision to buy a new game console hinged on if a new Yu-Gi-Oh! game was out for it. I didn't buy a Gamecube or XBox until the systems came out with Yu-Gi-Oh! games, though the games on those systems were terrible. I owned a few tins worth of cards, had all the really powerful ones and all of my favorite sets. I still do own a good deal of them. And, of course, there is Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged.

The concept of the 'Abridged' series, now popular on YouTube, pretty much started with Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged (though I imagine it was inspired, in part, by Shakespeare Abridged). If one thing kept my love of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series going, it was comedy based on the Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Harry Potter had Potter Puppet Pals (and later A Very Potter Musical), Yu-Gi-Oh! had Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged. And it was, and still is, absolutely hilarious.

The long running series, the long running comedy web show, and the simple fact that - no matter how ridiculous the show got - the card game was bloody amazing and really fun to play kept me attached to Yu-Gi-Oh! past the time when I would have (perhaps should have) likely stopped caring. It was just unique. I have a good history with the series, and I continue to watch it and buy the cards and sometimes even the perpetually terrible video games. I don't even know why. I much prefer the Pokémon games and franchise as a whole, but I don't have that same attachment to it, the same nostalgia (an oddity, really, as Pokémon Yellow was the first game I ever called my own), or the same - well - obsession.

Tuesday thinks Lucius is Luscious

I just paid $600 so I could have a maid of honor at my wedding. Good stuff.

I consider myself a casual fan of make up. I don't really wear it myself, but I like the idea of it. I just don't have the face for it. I wear lip gloss or chap stick from time to time, mostly because I'm always biting or smacking my lips. I'll probably be wearing some light make up on the day of my wedding, if only for the sake of formality. But just going out around town, or chilling at home? No. Also, I just don't find it to be worth the price. Even drug store makeup costs more than I'd want to spend for the product I'm getting.

So, Harry Potter. I was introduced to the series when I was in the third grade. Our teacher would read us a chapter every day at the end of school, as we were antsy youngsters who just wanted to go home and she could barely get anything done when we were like that. It was the first book I enjoyed. I was a big reader already - though not by choice. My father could be a bit of a grades nazi, and I had read a good deal of children's classics (he rarely cared for more modern works, though he did end up liking Harry Potter) and even a few adult novels. My mum was a Stephen King fan and those occupied most of the shelves in our library, so I read some of them to ease the boredom (and because I liked the movies, particularly 'The Shining'). But I never really liked reading, in spite of this. It was just how I was raised. Harry Potter changed that, and even without the nostalgia goggles, I can acknowledge its importance in my life for that much, if nothing else.

I was always a fan of Slytherins. I like all of the characters, at least a little, except Colin Creevey perhaps. But Slytherins always held my interest. Severus Snape, Tom Riddle, Draco Malfoy, and - after the movies came out - Lucius Malfoy. I should say that I am big fan of Jason Isaacs. If a movie has Jason Isaacs in it, it doesn't suck. Even if it is 'The Patriot'. The biggest complaint about 'The Last Airbender' is the fact that they replaced Jason Isaacs with Asif Mandvi. Knowing that, and knowing that I already loved Lucius Malfoy's character, I think you can imagine my reaction to seeing him playing the character. It was perhaps my first act of fangirling as a youth. Indeed, Harry Potter was many firsts for me. The first fanfiction I read was a Harry/Draco fanfic (and, indeed, Harry/Draco was my first shipping).

My favorite book in the series was probably either 'Half-Blood Prince' or 'Chamber of Secrets', which are perhaps the two least liked books in the series (save, I suppose, Deathly Hallows). As I said, I'm a fan of Slytherins. Both books focused heavily on Slytherins, so they get some bonus points. 'Chamber of Secrets' does, I agree, follow a similar story to 'Sorcerer's Stone', but I think the second one was simply better executed. I don't tend to like the storyline of a (if you will) muggle learning of the magical world, and though every book has that to some extent, the first had it in spades, and though I understood why it was there, it made it hard for me to enjoy as much as the second book. Additionally, I simply preferred the the story. The sorcerer's stone inevitably didn't do anything to impact the overall story. It doesn't show up again, it was destroyed. It introduces many things that would pop up later (invisibility cloak, Norbert/a), but nothing in the core of the story ever shows up again. 'Chamber of Secrets', however, throws out a horcrux and our means of destroying them. Half-Blood Prince, well, yeah, that was almost entirely due to the Slytherins. I loved the Gaunt family, loved the extra Malfoy, loved SNAPE KILLING DUMBLEDORE (OMG!), loved Slughorn.

I've stuck with the series because, well, it was sort of my life. I loved Harry Potter as a kid, I saw all the movies, I made more than a few friends because of our mutual love of the books, and I've been a fan for nearly 12 years of my life. It's hard to break away from that. I think it's hard to deny that most of my love for it comes from the old nostalgia goggles, though. I read it now, and I can't help but notice the little clichés, the often subpar writing, and other things that keep me from saying it's just a great series. It doesn't help that I hit that stage in my life as a reader just before 'Deathly Hallows' came out (and let's face it, even if I hadn't hit that stage, it wasn't a book without its faults). Still, I'm here to stay, even if my love is routed in loyalism.

My favorite Harry Potter pairings are split into two categories: things I ship because Harry is a vessel for the reader, and I love the other half of the pairing, and things I ship because they actually make some canonical sense. For the latter, my favorite pairings are Molly/Arthur and Harry/Luna. I don't have a problem with Harry/Ginny, per se, but I think he could have done better. And though I didn't care for the movie, I think the fifth set my lingering ideas of Harry/Luna in stone. For the former, it's a toss up between Harry/Fenrir and Harry/Lucius. Because...

To answer Cassie, Harry, as a character, is pretty bland and inoffensive. I don't love him by any means. As an author, I like him because he serves his purpose very well. He is simple enough, inexperienced enough, to work as a reader avatar, so that we can live through the stories as though we are there ourselves. Yet he is still a character in his own right. Not one I care for, but a character. That is where many characters of this nature fail (*cough*Bella*cough*). He's an alright character. I care enough about him for it to not affect my ability to read the book. Except perhaps in 'Order of the Phoenix'. And I like shipping him with older male villains.

Also, my birthday - September 2nd, 1991 - is Harry's first day at Hogwarts.

Tuesday Writes Way More Than She Reads

It's true. I'm a writer, and that takes up two or three hours of my day. I still read at least a book a month (usually two to five), but I read a lot less than I did back in high school when writing was something I just did for fun. I keep up with all of my favorite authors, and reread those books that really inspired me, but honestly, I've torn through a fair few books in my life (my goodreads suggests 1,166, specifically) and there aren't really any that I'm dying to read nowadays. It's basically just new releases in long-loved series and rereads for me, although I am going to be giving George R.R. Martin another shot since Game of Thrones on HBO looks right fantastic. If I can just push through his bulky prose, I'm sure I'll enjoy it highly.

Recommending books is not that easy, because I do not like books most people like (and even the ones I do I have a few problems with), and I certainly do not like YA. As an author, I am perhaps more inclined to think of books less in terms of "favorites" and more in terms of "inspiration", as well. As such, I will simply review two books that I consider to be the most influential to my own writing, and perhaps give you a little taste of what you might expect if you ever peak at my own works.

Iron Council, by China Miéville

Iron Council is the third book in Miéville's Bas-Lag series, and everyone seems to have their favorite. They stand alone, and each explores something different - though they all stay close to New Crobuzon, the big city of Bas-Lag - this one is my favorite, however, and I will admit a lot of that comes down to the fact that Judah, one of our protagonists, can make golems out of abstract concepts, like darkness and time. Awesome.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it is simply that I don't like stories that follow multiple POVs. The story follows three characters, Judah, Cutter, and Ori. The first two are deeply intertwined (indeed, those two characters have been 'intertwined' in the past, if you catch my drift), while the third reinforces the message of the other two, while serving to flesh out the narrative. It's a dark fantasy/steampunk story, about a train that travels freely, lifting up the tracks behind it and putting them in front to move forward and away from Crobuzon, until that time when they finally decide to fight.

Miéville will not appeal to everyone. It is dark fantasy beyond the term's common use. This is legitimately dark, not just gritty, and, at times, horrific. It's adult fantasy at its finest. The prose is very heavy, perhaps the only indication that he was influenced by the fantasy greats at all. It is beautiful, though. It doesn't waste time on "flowing raven locks shadowing her frame, flowing before her sapphire eyes" or any of that. If he's going to spend a paragraph describing something, it will likely be a creature with a mucus membrane on its face and fur in its unmentionables.

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

This book is not a fantasy of any sort, though what it lacks in that, it makes up for by being one of the darkest books I have ever read. At face value, this is a Western with some Biblican overtones. Nothing particularly unusual, particularly from this author. But it's grim. Gratuitous violence fills the pages, and for good reason. This book wants to break your spirit. It wants you to be as down as possible, and it is only through the allusions to Christ we find in our protagonist that we can hold any hope in our hearts. Prepare to have those hopes (and your heart along with it) crushed.

The kid and the judge are the focus of this story. The Kid is our protagonist. We follow him around, but it's hard to really say that this is his story. He's too young for the frontier. There is also the Judge, a ruthless man whose crimes cannot be described in a manner appropriate for this blog. The prose is perhaps as beautiful as Miéville's, but in a very different way. Where Miéville is extravagant and perhaps, at times, gratuitous (to great effect), McCarthy excels by using precise words and cutting language. This is a powerful book, it would appeal to fans of Herman Melville (of Moby Dick) and, to an extent, any fan of Westerns who can make it through some heavy prose.



To answer the other question posed, I suppose I have my fair share of 'procrastination' tucked away, but since I've left school, I haven't had much to procrastinate about. I certainly don't do this with my writing, not anymore. The only thing I can think of is scratching myself when I have dry skin (during the transition between months), since that just makes it worse. I don't care, I'm itchy, darn it.

Tuesday, the Creeping Realization...

That I am going to have to come up with some witty title involving either "Tuesday", "Ophiucha", or "Alexandra" to fill up an entire year of weekly blogging. O.O

For the questions,

I do believe my patronus would be a snake. As I may have already explained, Ophiucha, a name I am known by perhaps more widely than Alexandra, is the Greek (feminine) for "snake bearer", as the constellation specifically. I can't remember a time when reptiles were not my life. When I was young, it was Jurassic Park (if one thing got me reading at an advanced level, it was my desire to read Crichton), Land Before Time, and any encyclopedia on the things I could find. The Long Island Game Farm, about five minutes from my home, gave kids a chance to play with an alligator and pet a boa constrictor one day, and my nonna would let me do things that gave my mum a heart attack. Snakes, in particular, became rather dear to me after - well - Harry Potter. What can I say, I'm a Slytherin at heart.

Many a thing gets my blood boiling. As a writer of fantasy, I think the way it is so commonly accepted to worldbuild is what irks me the most. I see people saying you can't write a story without a map, and I start sharpening my knife (and my pencil, for a well-worded thrashing). It's the Tolkien model. Tolkien wrote a story about Middle Earth; it worked for him. But most of us write stories about people, about tales of adventure, about many things in the world, but so rarely the world itself. His influence is so far-stretched, however, that we still use him as the model for high fantasy, and it just doesn't do a writer any good. On a less niche note, I can't stand people who, if you will, feel the need to get involved in our bedrooms. Anything from anti-interracial relationships, anti-LGBT, and even anti-polygamy. That last one is probably where some people step back. But it's something I've always felt strongly about, that a relationship is built on honesty and trust, and if you say "may I have a/nother husband or wife?" and s/he says "okay", well, have at it hoss.

And I do indeed have a best friend. She is the girl I mentioned before who goes to BGSU. :) Her name is Carina, and we met in high school. I was originally friends with her older sister (Carina is one year younger than me, her sister is one year older than me), but in either eighth or ninth grade - I can't recall which - I pretty much ended up sticking with Carina. We weren't best friends for a fair bit, though I did a lot with her. My best friend at the time was a girl named Kristen, but... well, things were tough. She was a serious hypochondriac, and her mother was a clutterbug. They moved out West when I did, and I saw them once, but... haven't been able to get in touch since. I worry about them sometimes, but they were at a bad downhill spiral, spending more money than they made. But, yeah, anyway. Carina. Two others eventually joined our "posse", Eric and Gayle, and they are as good a friend as Carina, but she's been there the longest, and she's made the most effort to stay in touch since we split apart for university.

And I hope you had/are having/will have a Happy 22nd Birthday, Christina!

So, what are people most shocked to learn about me? That really depends on who these 'people' are, I think.

Online, where I near exclusively am around talking about writing, I think people are often shocked to learn some of the books I enjoy. For all that I love my New Weird, my classics, my Cormac McCarthy, I love nearly as much a great bad book. For all that I enjoy China Miéville's elegant prose (“Here a crawling man spiral-shelled in iron and venting smoke. Here a woman working, because there are women among the Remade, a woman become a guttered pillar, her organic parts like afterthoughts. A man — or is it a woman? — whose flesh moves with tides, with eructations like an octopus. People with their faces relocated, bodies made of iron and rubber cables, and steam-engine arms, and animal arms, and arms that are body-length pistons on which the Remade walk, their legs replaced with monkey’s paws so they reach out from below their own waists.”), I also love to make fun of Kristen and P.C. Cast's (“She wasn’t thin like the freak girls who puked and starved themselves into what they thought was Paris Hilton chic. (‘That’s Hott.’ Yeah, okay, whatever, Paris.) This woman’s body was perfect because she was strong, but curvy. And she had great boobs. (I wish I had great boobs.) / ‘Huh’ I said. Speaking of boobs-I was totally sounding like one. (Boob… hee hee).”). And I think you can learn as much from reading The Lord of the Rings or another fantasy classic as you can from reading Eragon or R.A. Salvatore.

In real life, there are two categories: people I want to like or not insult, and people I am forced to interact with and don't much care about their opinions. The former, I am rather shy at first, but I can be remarkably outspoken, loud, perhaps even a bit rude when it comes down to it. Get me in a room with my husband or some of my friends, and we'll be laughing up a storm or groaning about the latest bestseller or some political development. I think a lot of people are like that, but there it is. For people I care a bit less about, I suppose it is simply my ideologies. I am pretty far left, on the political scale. My mini rant about polygamy up there might give you a bit of a taste for that. I am very, very open. There isn't a question you could ask that I wouldn't answer, as long as I had an answer to give. I don't censor myself, either. In general, I guess I am just a bit... upfront, if I don't need to keep it quiet for the sake of a job or for pleasing someone I care about.

Not much else to say today. I don't have a driver's license either, though I live in a city with some amazing public transit, so I don't much see the point in getting one anytime soon. I will probably learn (or more accurately, have my husband learn) if I get pregnant, though. I would hate to take a stroller everywhere via transit. Way too much work, and you always get dirty looks from the other commuters.

See you tomorrow, Carlyn.

Tiny Chicken Disease Tuesday!

It was nice to meet you all! It'll be fun blogging with you. :)

Nerdfighteria was not something I was instantly immersed in. I am a casual YouTube watcher. I subscribed to a lot of the big name YouTubers perhaps three or four years ago: sxephil, vlogbrothers, Fred, etc. I unsubscribed from the ones I didn't like, and kept watching the ones I did. I subscribed to the people those vloggers like, and eventually formed the network I watch now. So, for me, I can't even say when I started watching the videos. I can't say for sure when I even started to care about Nerdfighteria.

I bought An Abundance of Katherines on a whim, noticing John Green's name. I'm not into YA literature, but I knew he was a YouTuber, and I'll support an internet celebrity if I can. While it would never be a favorite of mine, it was certainly the most enjoyable piece of young adult fiction I had read. I got a bit more interested in the brothers, and started watching their archives. As a writer, John in particular was of interest to me because he had the rare vlog about writing. I never liked his other books, but 'Katherines' held a special place in my heart. I guess around now is when you would call me a fan, at least of John.

Hank is a different story. I don't like the acoustic guitar + singing about nerdy things combo much. I'm a metalhead, and while the subject matter might mean something to me... I wasn't going to be heading over to iTunes to grab the CD anytime soon, either. And science has always been my least favorite subject - I was always more of a Math and English sort of girl. But I watched his videos, if only for the sake of continuity, and he grew on me. I liked him as a person, even if I never really got very into his videos.

If there was a charity, I would donate. I liked and commented during Project for Awesome. I even started to get involved with the community, particularly once 'Your Pants' launched and it was easy to do so. But I do feel a bit alienated sometimes. I don't like Paper Towns, I don't own This Machine Pwns N00bs, and I don't get involved in projects like the recent 'Gussie Manlove' incident. I love the community, I love what Nerdfighteria is, where it comes from, and what we can do.

As for your questions:

I think I'd like my gravestone to say "She died young." I feel like I answered Christina's question rather thoroughly in my original post, but I guess the biggest difference is that I am generally happier now. College life, not having anyone close, it was stressful. Being out of college now and in a relationship has done wonders for me, and even though things still get tough, I feel like I have some support. And as for topics, I can't say I have much of a preference. As a cook and a writer, anything to do with food and books is certainly preferable. And of course I'm a Harry Potter nerd. :P Slytherin FTW.

Incidentally, my best friend is a student at BGSU.

Who the eff is Tuesday?

Tuesday derives from Teiwaz, more popularly known as Týr or Mars. Týr, my favorite of all Norse gods, is perhaps most famous for the story of Fenrir. The wolf needed to be shackled, lest it would be a danger to the gods, yet he could break free of anything they put around him. At last, they created a shackle made of unbreakable silk, but Fenrir was suspicious and agreed only to be bound if someone put their hand in his mouth. Týr agreed, knowing that the shackles would not break, and lost his hand for it.

Oh! You wanted to know about me? Well, you can call me Alexandra, or Ophiucha, in the future. My full name is Alexandra Victoria Hollingshead, though my surname is going to be Smith come August 15th. The man who is going to simplify my name is humorously named Alexander. Ophiucha, if you cared, comes from the constellation 'snake bearer'.

I am a nineteen year old woman, born September 2nd, who at one point considered herself the typical 'woman of tomorrow'. I was in the Top 10 of my graduation class, I had excellent scores on the SAT, I got accepted to a wonderful college in Vancouver, and I had intended to become a translator of books. It took about three months for me to realize that I could not learn a foreign language, and about a year more for me to realize that, short of going for medicine or law, college was not for me. I could not learn something that could not be applied to my job. I left my university late last year.

It is odd to think about, really. Where I am now. Everything about me now. I was very different in high school. I made a promise to never marry a man with a simple surname, particularly a short one, for I pride myself in the uniqueness of 'Hollingshead' in America. I am engaged to a Smith. I certainly would not have considered forgoing a college education, even if I just got an English degree for the sake of taking up a teaching job. Yet here we are. I was proud and boisterous, and now I am cynical and shy. I could read Cassandra Clare and enjoy it for the demons, yet now I cannot read past the bad writing and overused story lines. I spend twice the time I once did online. But I don't regret it.

My tastes are more refined, my interests more secure, my opinions more concrete, and my knowledge more widespread than I ever thought it could be. I have fallen in love with a man who loves my cynicism, yet he's the sweetest man I've met. I have found a passion for cooking, and am free to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a meal. I live in a country that I love far more than the one I was born to, and though I miss certain aspects of my youth, I could never go back to the way I was.

I love many things. I love fantasy books that were written contemporaneous with or before J.R.R. Tolkien. The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Faerie Queene, The Worm Ouroboros, Titus Groan, there are just so many masterpieces that have been all but lost to time. I love cheese, my favorite being Bleu d'Auvergne. It is a strong blue cheese, but it isn't as salty and it is nearly buttery in terms of its texture. Wonderful to spread on some thinly cut baguettes. I love unreliable narrators. Vladimir Nabokov was the master at that particular facet of writing. Damn if I didn't enjoy reading Lolita through Humbert's eye. I love bad movies. Particularly zombie movies. One in particular, Wild Zero, chronicles the events of an alien invasion in Japan, which causes zombies for reasons unexplained, and the only way to defeat them is through the power of rock n' roll.

I am Alexandra Victoria Hollingshead (to-be Smith), I am a nineteen year old woman with a knack for writing and cooking who dropped out of college to find herself. I grew up in New York, in the richer part of Long Island, to a British father, New York mother, and with a brother who likes lyricism. I'm a misanthrope with a lot of friends. I am a social democrat, an atheist, a curvy girl, a novelist, a foodie, a Slytherin, and a nerdfighter. I'm a lot of things, and perhaps this year you'll learn what those things are.

I haven't had a picture of me taken in years. Not with any recent friends, not with my fiance, not with anyone or anything I care for. If I had to choose, I'd say a picture of me at three with my Nonna and a boa constrictor.

I'll be seeing you tomorrow, Carlyn.