Nonfiction Things
Said Isn’t Dead
If you use Pinterest at all for writing topics, I’m sure you’ve seen these pins come up. They’re always in some cutesy font and usually with little tombstones (subtle) and come with a huge list of words you should use instead of ‘said.’ If you’ve ever paid attention to these, though, you’ll notice that noneContinue reading “Said Isn’t Dead”
Fuck It, Let’s Remake Sliders
Last summer, I made arguments that the shows Lost and Dollhouse deserved remakes, albeit with some major caveats. Lost needs a lot of work, but mostly that work consisted of ‘tighten that shit up.’ Nobody needs a whole God damned episode about how someone got their tattoos. Dollhouse mostly needs to be freed from theContinue reading “Fuck It, Let’s Remake Sliders”
90’s TV: The End of a Terrible Era
Okay, so, what happened is that I wanted to write about remaking a 90’s show (spoiler alert: It was Sliders), but as I was writing it I realized I should explain how 90’s television functioned to people who don’t remember, and then that segment got way too long so here we are. Basically, 90’s televisionContinue reading “90’s TV: The End of a Terrible Era”
Shared Solitude
This is the story of how I almost cried at the movies. This is not the story of how I did cry at the movies, although those stories do exist and are, in fact, numerous. I didn’t use to be so emotional. I have to say I was a pretty fucking stoic teenage girl. AndContinue reading “Shared Solitude”
Solarpunk: Chicken Soup for the Climate Catastrophe Soul
Hey, you guys hear about the billionaire space race? You know, all those billionaires spending millions of dollars to replace their dicks with rockets and then skimming the earth’s atmosphere and calling it space or shooting a car into space or, and let’s be real, probably a lot of secret space stuff we’re not toldContinue reading “Solarpunk: Chicken Soup for the Climate Catastrophe Soul”
How To Explain the Internet to People Who Don’t Live There
Let’s be honest: It’s a scary world out there. Climate change. Global political unrest. A billionaire corporate class wielding late-stage capitalism as a weapon to strip both the planet and humanity at large of its lifeblood. Bears. But all of that put together doesn’t even touch the unhinged moral depravity planted in the nightmare gardenContinue reading “How To Explain the Internet to People Who Don’t Live There”
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Banuk Ice Hunter and Ice Hunter Master
The HZD Blanket Did you know there are only two escalators in the entire state of Wyoming? Did you know Wyoming is called the Equality State because it was the first state to allow women to vote, but they only did it so they could claim a big enough population to join the United StatesContinue reading “The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Banuk Ice Hunter and Ice Hunter Master”
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Free Heap and Pitchcliff
As I mentioned last time, Free Heap is run by Petra Forgewoman, so I wanted this square to both represent the settlement and her. While I want most of this section of the blanket to be simple designs in shades of brown and gray/silver, I wanted the settlement squares to pop a little, either with color or design. For Free Heap, I picked this square with the red circles in the middle to represent the forge. Surrounded, of course by brown and silver.
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Oseram Arrow Breaker
The HZD Blanket You know what would be great? A release date for Horizon Forbidden West so I could have a real deadline for this blanket. On the other hand, that would be terrible, because then I would have a real deadline for this blanket. Anyway, here’s my prediction: if we don’t get a releaseContinue reading “The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Oseram Arrow Breaker”
Writing Tips for Beginners, From a Long-Time Amateur
Let’s Get the One I Hate Hearing Out of the Way First – Just Write Yeah, super hate hearing this one all the time. But it’s true, and that makes me hate it even more. God, it just sounds so…so…smug. Like, I immediately want to react with that Spongebob Meme: jUsT wRiTe. Like, I’m askingContinue reading “Writing Tips for Beginners, From a Long-Time Amateur”
Every Writer Should Know the Moth Joke
On Wednesday, I told The Moth Joke and gave credit to Norm MacDonald at the bottom. The meat of the joke was all mine, but the general structure of the joke can be traced to an appearance Norm MacDonald made on one of Conan O’Brien’s shows, I think Late Night: Okay, so to start: Hi,Continue reading “Every Writer Should Know the Moth Joke”
The Tao of Pots
There’s a story that goes like this: There’s this college art professor. I don’t know what college and I don’t know what kind of art, except the assignment is to make pots, so…ceramics? Pottery? Ghost appreciation? I don’t know, I didn’t take any art classes in college. Unless you count writing, which most people don’t,Continue reading “The Tao of Pots”
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Oseram Sparkworker
Well, that took forever. Once again, not because the pattern was hard (spoiler: it wasn’t) but just because Life Stuff kept coming up. Life Stuff. Always interrupting my sitting around time. Anyway, this is the first of two patterns for a new tribe, so let’s meet…The Oseram!
RDR2 for R&R
Serious spoilers below, so if you’ve somehow made it this long not playing RDR2 and still know nothing about it and still want to play it spoiler-free, you should probably leave. But not before telling me how you’ve remained spoiler-free for so long while living on the internet. I haven’t seen anything beyond the first season of Game of Thrones but I know all the major beats for the entire thing because I live on the internet and spoilers are like fucking currency around here. If you’ve already played, or haven’t played and never will and want to read anyway, please proceed past the Spoiler Chocobo.
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Mother’s Heart and Blackout Squares
There’s a lot of Nora villages, and a handful of important ones where Aloy can pick up quests, but their main village is Mother’s Heart so that’s the one I chose to represent with a square. Also so I could make this adorable pattern.
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Nora Silent Hunter
Y’all, I cannot express to you how happy I am with the way this square came out. Someone get the Happy Clichés off the high shelf and just let them unspool around the floor so I can swim around in them and throw them over my head and, just, like, make it rain happy clichés.
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Nora Protector
Apparently, when you remove naps and National Geographic from the equation, I get these squares done much faster.
Hot Take: Movies Are Pretty Good, Actually
Fuck, I miss the movies. There seems to be this idea, among people who consider themselves casual movie watchers, that if someone says they are really into movies they must mean they watch sophisticated movies. Oscar nominations. Film festival indies. Black and white classics. Silent films. Like there’s an entire mahogany shelf in the middleContinue reading “Hot Take: Movies Are Pretty Good, Actually”
Wanda’s AU Fanfic
Spoilers for the first four episodes of WandaVision. Proceed past the Spoiler Chocobo at your own risk. Listen, I have had a first class ticket to the MCU hype train since The Avengers. The only one of these things I haven’t seen in theaters is Iron Man 2, and I guess that Hulk movie fromContinue reading “Wanda’s AU Fanfic”
The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Nora Survivor
On the one hand this took longer than I thought it would. On the other hand I knew this would happen. We took two weeks off for Christmas and New Years, which I had hoped would translate into doing one to two squares a day, but when it turned into totally ignoring the yarn while I fell asleep on the couch watching National Geographic documentaries on Disney+ I wasn’t, you know, surprised or anything.
I Don’t Know How to Use Photoshop, Either – Planning the HZD Blanket
Now that I’ve got this wild hair up my ass, it’s time for everyone’s favorite part of every project ever – planning!
Nobody Offered Us Any Figgy Pudding
When I was a child, my family went caroling. Okay, so I wasn’t so much ‘a child’ as I was ‘in high school and college.’ But come on, look how sweet and cozy that sentence looks. ‘When I was a child, my family went caroling.’ A sentence like that is either at the beginning ofContinue reading “Nobody Offered Us Any Figgy Pudding”
2021: The Year I Crochet a Horizon Zero Dawn Themed Granny Square Afghan (Even Though I Don’t Really Know What I’m Doing)
I taught myself how to crochet a few years ago because I wanted to make something with my hands. Writing is all I’ve ever wanted to do, and it’s certainly an act of creation, but you can’t put a novel on a baby’s head. I guess you can. The reaction is going to be less ‘That’s adorable!’ and more ‘What is the matter with you?’ and ‘You’re ruining Christmas again,’ but you can still do it.
Why Are Cats, Even
Why the fuck are cats, anyway? No, I don’t mean the movie based on the musical. I didn’t see that, and if you did, that’s a ‘you’ problem. I just mean, like…cats. The animal. You know, soft and squishy but with a lot of sharp and pointy parts. Yells a lot. Chews on things. LovesContinue reading “Why Are Cats, Even”
Evil Cosmic Entity Dressed as a Clown of the Morning
I’m ninety-eight percent sure everybody involved in this movie was high as balls the entire time. It Chapter Two is complete chaos. The director, Andy “What Are Frogs” Muschietti, has stated that he doesn’t want the second movie to be seen as a sequel, but rather the second half of a complete movie, like KillContinue reading “Evil Cosmic Entity Dressed as a Clown of the Morning”
The Next Right Thing
Spoilers for Frozen II. I like Frozen. I love Frozen II. And of course I love both of Elsa’s songs. “Into the Unknown” is a fun, energizing call to adventure, and I still have not gotten through “Show Yourself” without crying at least once, usually when she starts the duet part with her mother butContinue reading “The Next Right Thing”
Hereditary Might Have Done Permanent Damage
Fuck, I miss going to the movies. My husband and I love horror movies. It’s actually how we started dating. It Follows had come out and neither of us knew anyone else who wanted to see it, so we went together. It turned out to be the best movie to see on a first date,Continue reading “Hereditary Might Have Done Permanent Damage”
My Favorite Disney Remake
There isn’t anything left to be said about this new Mulan remake, and I haven’t even seen it. I pretty much checked out of the whole thing early on, once news came that they were stripping this new version of both “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” one of the greatest Disney musical numbersContinue reading “My Favorite Disney Remake”
Someone Please Remake Dollhouse
Remaking Dollhouse is not the same as remaking Lost because Dollhouse is already a good show. Great, maybe. It was a two season sci-fi show that never seemed to get a lot of attention, potentially because everyone was still pining for Joss Whedon’s previous project Firefly, also unceremoniously cancelled by Fox who, just like yourContinue reading “Someone Please Remake Dollhouse”
The Case for a LOST Remake
Just to catch everyone up real quick, Lost was a vaguely fantasy drama that ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010. It featured a cast of roughly three dozen people, shifting timelines, a smoke monster, ‘the others,’ a hippy commune that didn’t really seem to get hippies, a really concerning lack of communication, a neverContinue reading “The Case for a LOST Remake”
Music Videos in the Twenty-Tens
The Mayans did not predict the end of the world in 2012. Their calendar system was cyclical, so the date 12/21/12 was not meant to be the end, but a transition into the next cycle. Not the end of days, but a new era. And fuck me if the past decade hasn’t felt like aContinue reading “Music Videos in the Twenty-Tens”
Music Videos in the Two Thousands
Good lord, I’m never going to know what to call this fucking decade.
Music Videos in the Nineties
“I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” by Meat Loaf Yeah, I’m pretty sure Meat Loaf is the human equivalent of a community theater production of Phantom of the Opera. The story of the video is vaguely ‘beauty and the beast,’ just with a lot more motorcycles and helicopters and power chords.Continue reading “Music Videos in the Nineties”
Music Videos in the Eighties
There is an evolution to music videos. In the beginning, no one knew what the fuck they were doing, and it was great. Here are some of my favorite music videos from the eighties. “Young Turks” by Rod Stewart Okay, so, obviously music videos as we know them started in the eighties. Prior to MTVContinue reading “Music Videos in the Eighties”
The Best Cut: Breath of the Wild
his is going to be the first in a series where I talk about my favorite scene from the video games I have played. As I only got into video games at the end of 2016, this won’t be long. The Best Cut will air the last Friday of every month until I run out of stuff.
The Dark Tower of Ass
Spoilers, hey. Okay, so, this isn’t so much a review of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, but a brief look at why I hate every single word in all seven books. Hate. Hate. I hate these books like I hate the Nazis. I hate these books so much Emperor Palpatine is somewhere in spaceContinue reading “The Dark Tower of Ass”
The Appeal of the Apocalypse
When you hear the word ‘apocalypse’ you might think of the end of days. A meteor the size of Puerto Rico slams into the earth. Jerk-off scientists in some underground lab make the Rage Virus and unleash the kind of zombies that can run (it would have to be that kind of zombies. Most ofContinue reading “The Appeal of the Apocalypse”
Profanity
I’ve been getting in trouble for swearing since pre-school. One of my first memories is standing in front of my mother in the middle of summer, and I must have been…three? Four? Something like that. And I was sweating. And I wanted to say ‘I’m sweating like a pig.’ But I was a stupid littleContinue reading “Profanity”
What to Expect When Shaving Your Head
So, about three months ago, I’m in the shower and I’m washing my hair. I’d gotten it dyed red and pink about two weeks before the country realized just how badly we’d all been lied to about the coronavirus and everything had started systematically shutting down. I was working from home. The only people gettingContinue reading “What to Expect When Shaving Your Head”
Different Views, Same World
Let’s play a game, shall we? A game…of imagination (here I’m waving my hands). No, get back here, I’m not done with you, yet. I’ll stop. Now, imagine you’re a child born into a bitter dystopia. Like, real dark sci-fi shit. You’re living in a society on a distant planet, and from the first momentContinue reading “Different Views, Same World”
Let’s Talk About the Spanish Flu
Shall we? You know, because I want to. For no other reason. At all. It didn’t start in Spain. No one’s really sure where it started, but the first reported case was at a military base in Kansas. ‘Spanish Flu’ and ‘Florida Man’ actually have very similar origin stories: freedom of the press. The sameContinue reading “Let’s Talk About the Spanish Flu”
Black Lives Will Always Matter
I was going to write something else on the ongoing protests but ultimately decided the internet didn’t need another white voice lecturing people about stuff I can only sympathize with not empathize with. Instead, as an ally, I’m going to try to raise up Black voices by linking to important pieces and topics. This mayContinue reading “Black Lives Will Always Matter”
Double Disney Marathon
There’s no reason in long distance running beyond a primal urge to just keep putting one foot in front of the other until the animal you’re chasing gives up or until a half-interested volunteer drapes a medal you won’t know what to do with around your neck before pushing your half-dead body in the direction of the biggest pile of Powerades you’ve ever seen in your life.
Black Lives Matter
If I wrote something about the protests, what would I even say? I’m a white woman from Connecticut. I categorically do not know what black Americans experience. As a nurse, I’ve never walked into a patient’s room for the first time and been immediately hated by someone I’ve been assigned to take care of forContinue reading “Black Lives Matter”
Crowd in a Theater Watching Snakes on a Plane
God, I miss going to the movies. Do you remember Snakes on a Plane? Jesus, what a weird one that one was. And I’m not even talking about the movie itself, just how it came out. The movie was exactly as advertised. There was a plane full of people, but that plane was also fullContinue reading “Crowd in a Theater Watching Snakes on a Plane”
World’s Best Grandma
I have no idea why I’ve become fixated on this, but I have, so here we go! Scott Lang, yes, “Mr. Ant-Man” Scott Lang, is a good dad. No, you know what? He’s a competent dad, and I think that’s the really important bit. Scott Lang is a Competent Dad. No. Scott Lang is theContinue reading “World’s Best Grandma”
Will Smith and Aliens
In case you weren’t there, we as a culture were obsessed with aliens in the nineties. I don’t know how it happened, but I suspect it started with those douchebags in England who started laying down ‘crop circles’ with ropes and boards and then countless TV specials like Unsolved Mysteries and whatever the History ChannelContinue reading “Will Smith and Aliens”
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