like a car wreck: you want to look away but you have to stare at it because your boss is making you
1. LAST NIGHT I SAW KRIS ALLEN COVER TLC'S WATERFALLS, WHO WANTS TO TOUCH ME?????
I can't even with this dude. LOVE HIM FOREVER.
2. SO I MIGHT DEFECT TO DREAMWIDTH? Like obviously I'd crosspost because the idea of everything that's ever happened to me NOT being recorded here is insane to me, and I'm sure the bulk of the commenting would happen over here, but LOOK AT MY FUCKING LAYOUT, YOU GUYS. As soon as my paid account expired, it switched over to that, which it isn't supposed to do unless you try to alter a paid style while your account is unpaid, and the fact that I've had the same layout for seven years or whatever and can't fully duplicate it on Dreamwidth was like the one major, major thing I couldn't get over, sooooo. I have a support request in - technically my second? Because apparently when the account expiration email says "reply to this if you have any questions!" it actually means "reply to this and then wait twelve hours and we'll tell you to take your issue elsewhere." So we'll see how that goes, but if I can't get my layout back, I'M PROBS POSTING FROM DREAMWIDTH. I KNOW. I AM ALSO SHOCKED THAT IT HAS COME TO THIS. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.
3.
THAT AJA ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!! Have we all read the Aja article? I can't even with that shit. What I love the most about it is how telling it is that it's focused on fandom's fear of persecution and that there's ZERO self-awareness regarding the fact that OF COURSE that is the angle Aja's going to take, given her history? I mean, I'll chain myself to the fourth wall like I'm trying to save a tree from being bulldozed, I LOVE THE FOURTH WALL AND I WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR IT, but it has next to nothing to do with worrying that people will think I'm a weirdo. I AM A WEIRDO. I LOVE IT. Tonight I was waiting for a bagel to toast and for some reason started contemplating how great it is that I know so many people who GET me in very specific ways even though I am a giant fucking weirdo, and IT WAS LIKE I BECAME THE BAGEL, BASKING IN THE TOASTER LAMP OF YOUR LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING.
I'm a person who says things like that! I've been weird since ALWAYS, it makes me awesome, I could give a shit what people IRL think of how I spend my time and most people who know ANYTHING REAL ABOUT ME know about my fandom involvement to some degree. I'm not worried about it! So it's hilarious to me that a ~serious piece of journalism~ [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA] about why fandom shouldn't cling to the fourth wall out of shame contains absolutely nothing about why I want the fourth wall to exist.
For starters, she focuses almost entirely on "the fourth wall" as a separation between fandom and the outside world, using that definition interchangeably with what it actually is - the separation between fandom and the people whose work we're fans of. The fourth wall does not exist between me and my coworkers - it exists between me and showrunners, between me and authors, between me and celebrities.
But even if I accept her totally made-up definition and agree that it applies to me keeping my fannish life on the DL around civilians: Backlash is not a thing I'm worried about. I can understand how Aja, who MYSTERIOUSLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY ends up in the exact center of a shitstorm wherever she goes, would end up with the perspective that shitstorms are everyone's #1 concern.
Here are my concerns, as far as PUBLIC SHAMING and being afraid of the local preacher making me wear a scarlet F all the time or whatever I'm supposed to be afraid of: I have manners and basic social skills and therefore no interest in telling someone who has never heard of Show X all about my involvement in the Show X fandom. Social interactions are about gauging these things in other people! I don't want to hear about the great hike you went on or what the fuck ever people who go outside do, why on EARTH would I expect you to want to hear about this great fic I read about HOCKEY PLAYERS BEING IN LOVE? Even if they are into Show X? Fandom is not for everyone. The conversations I have with my dad about Breaking Bad are different from the conversations I have with my brother about it, and those are different from the conversations I have with my mom about it, and those are [somewhat] different from when I scream about it on LJ. AND I DON'T WANT ANYONE COMING NEAR ME WITH BREAKING BAD FIC EVER UNLESS IT'S THE AU WHERE SKYLER BREAKS BAD AND IS GUS'S ACCOUNTANT AND THE METH TRUCKS ALWAYS RUN ON TIME.
Re: My total lack of interest in Breaking Bad fic, even within fandom you have to make these calls about who you should and should not talk to about things! I mean torigates is contractually obligated to listen to me while I slowly lose control of my life, but even then, if we keep using Breaking Bad as an example - there are other people to talk to about that! DIFFERENT PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT INTERESTS AND THAT'S OKAY. Also civilians are gen pop and gen pop is the worst and that's why I will go to my grave swearing to casual acquaintances that I don't have a Twitter. Do I particularly want, say, people I worked with at Walmart seeing me livetweet my reactions to the Folgers incest fic? NOT REALLY. But my larger concern is just that I don't want to hear from them in that part of my life. Once again: Basic social etiquette dictates that you have to limit what you say based on the people who are present. That's not about internalized shame or self-hatred or whatever, that is just SOCIETY 101, and the Internet is like a room that everyone is in all the time, so yeah, I'll keep what walls I can, especially if it means my Twitter timeline doesn't fill up with garbage like High hopes lead to harder let downs. #lessonlearned.
BUT ALL THAT HAS TO DO WITH AJA'S MADE-UP DEFINITION OF THE FOURTH WALL, AND NOT THE ACTUAL FOURTH WALL, WHICH IS A GREAT THING TO HAVE? It obviously varies from fandom to fandom and, within fandoms, from fan to fan, and Aja kind of conflates the basic awareness of the existence of fans with the breach of the fourth wall, which is ALSO insane. "Avengers fandom is so big it influences entire policy decisions at Marvel." That sentence is technically true, but it's not true for any definition of "fandom" as it relates to the community I belong to, unless we're getting SO general that it might as well read "The population of Earth is so big it influences..." instead. Marvel caters specifically to fans on a level that exceeds most movie studios, but that catering is devoted more to the more well-known and digestible I LIKE THIS A LOT AND KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT IT fandom than it is the I LIKE THIS A LOT AND HERE COMES ALL THE META AND TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS fandom that we're all part of.
When I think of the breach of the fourth wall, I think of Cookies for Sterek and the general trend of Jeff Davis RELENTLESSLY baiting fans and courting their approval. This will end badly. It has already ended badly! Jeff Davis is always crying about how the internet was mean to him for being a dumb racist fuck or whatever it is he's always doing! THOSE WHO DON'T LEARN THE HISTORY OF AARON SORKIN GETTING BANNED FROM TWOP ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT. Even without the guaranteed minefield that is creators making themselves or their processes too accessible, there's the effect on canon - either the show tries too hard to please fans and fucks itself over, or it doesn't deliver on the things that all sane people knew it was never going to deliver on, and that tiny subset of fandom that they devotedly courted is going to fucking SNAP.
There's also the consideration - totally absent from the article - that the fourth wall has a totally different significance in fandoms based on fiction and fandoms based on real people. Ashley Clements seeing your tweets about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is not the same as the @happywrites Twitter account is not the same as Aaron Paul being a delight is not the same as Mindy Kaling seeing your tweets about wanting her to marry BJ Novak is not the same as hockey players seeing your tweets about wanting them to bang is not the same as Louis from 1D having to tell people to go fuck themselves because they keep insisting TO HIM that his girlfriend is a beard. It's a scale! Some RPF fandoms are dependent on a deliberately played-up dynamic [BJ AND MINDY STOP FLIRTING ON TWITTER JFC], but some are dependent on ostensibly candid interactions, and some are dependent on the basic courtesy of not constantly alerting someone to the fact that you'd really like it if they made out with a friend of theirs. Outside of overdone fanservice, fiction fans probably aren't likely to influence their fandom too heavily, at least not any more than a production would already bend to things like critical consensus, but a fandom based on interactions between real people may rely on the fourth wall to keep existing at all, or to keep existing in an acceptable and enjoyable state.
Overall, though, the most important thing about the fourth wall is that it should exist to whatever degree an individual fan needs it to, and it's fucking rude and presumptuous for Aja or ANYONE ELSE to try and drag us away from it kicking and screaming. With Bones, I barely wanted to acknowledge that the cast even existed other than screaming "EMILY DESCHANEL HOW DO YOU DO THESE THINGS WITH YOUR FACE???????????????" With YJ, I will DEVOUR whatever I can get via Ask Greg or Brandon's tweets or Jerome Moore's DA or whatever else I can get, but I also love that there is a limit to it, that Greg has this way of addressing fans that still has a buffer built into it, because I am, in general, not a fan of direct contact. But that's me! Other people love that shit, and that's fine, but that should be for them to decide. Maybe you want to be that person who mails Mike Schur your Tom/Ron fic! You do you, you FUCKING WEIRDO! But when the dude who draws the YJ comics who I won't name because he's probably a self-Googler not that there's anything wrong with that linked to a post I made about an issue? THAT WAS WEIRD. I was ultimately fine with it, I'm fine with most things, but he was not the audience the post was intended for, and I'd say neither were most of his Facebook fans. The entire thing was me screaming about Meg and Conner sharing oxygen VIA THEIR MOUTHS and also how I don't care about the plot. I STAND BY IT! A lot of my YJ stuff is a lot more polished than that post was, and I'd probably be more comfortable with that getting linked around, but - these things are written with specific audiences in mind, and yeah, the fact that they're public means that to a certain degree I hope people will stumble on them, but, like I said before, it's a scale.
In conclusion, Aja's whole thing about how everything in fandom should be as visible as possible because we should be proud of ourselves and not ~hide our light~ just because the patriarchy wants to shame us for our creativity or whatever is FUCKING IDIOTIC and based on her own understanding of herself as a constant innocent and misunderstood scapegoat who ultimately benefited from becoming a high-profile fan, and not on the average fan's actual experience kthxbye.
4. Today [YESTERDAY NOW] was GARBAGE but in an okay way, the Kris Allen show on Wednesday night was general admission and I AM TOO OLD FOR THAT SHIT AFTER A FULL WORKDAY, I got there an hour late and still had to stand around for an hour and a half before Kris went on because there were THREE DIFFERENT OPENERS god tiny local venues kill me in the face. ONCE HE WENT ON MY FACE WAS BASICALLY BREAKING IN HALF FROM SMIIIIIIIIIIIILES, don't get me wrong, but by the time his set ended I was like JUST SET ME ON FIRE AND LET ME LIE ON THE FLOOR AND BURN, and from there it took me nearly two hours to get home because WOODS and also because I took the train in, and then I was DEAD in the morning and realized once I was in the Dunkin' Donuts drivethru and placing my order that I'd left my wallet at home, so NO COFFEE OR MUFFIN FOR ME!!!!!!!! So basically I spent the entire workday hung over from...standing? PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, SARAH! But then I came home and downed some Easy Mac and passed out for FOUR HOURS and it was so glorious I can't even explain it to you. BLESS NAPS THAT ACTUALLY LEAVE YOU FEELING RESTED. BLESS THEM. Then Liz called and we had an actual conversation for the first time in MONTHS which was great, I've really missed her. [PRIZE EXCERPT from when she said she was trying online dating - ME: "I'm too judgmental for that." HER, IN THE FONDEST WAY POSSIBLE: "Oh god, you totally are." I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVEN'T SEEN HER IN ALMOST THREE YEARS? WHAT IS THAT. GARBAGE IS WHAT THAT IS. ONE TICKET TO SAN DIEGO PLZ.] Then Mom and I had some QUALITY CHATZ and then I went to Dunkin' at ten to get coffee because YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE and now I'll be up until god knows when and it'll be GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT.
5. TOMORROW NIGHT [TONIGHT AT THIS POINT THOUGH] IS MY WORK DINNER! I FEEL GOD IN THIS LOCAL ITALIAN RESTAURANT TONIGHT. If we were getting Dundies [Billies? RODIES?] I would totally get BEST SCOWL or WORST AT SMALL TALK or MOST VERBALLY ABUSIVE or something. I'm pretty proud of myself. SORRY I'M SERIOUSLY DISINTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE/IN PRETENDING TO CARE ABOUT WHAT THEY SAY TO ME! Like it's an actual super rude thing about me that I almost never think to ask people questions about themselves EVEN IN SITUATIONS WHERE I LOVE THEM TO PIECES and I am trying to work on being less of a selfish jackass who just talks about herself all the time, but I'm not sorry that when Paula walks into my office and is like "wow, it's hot in here" I spend half a second thinking "do I have a meaningful response to that? No" and then say absolutely nothing. NOBODY EVER LISTENS TO ANYONE ANYWAY. IT'S JUST FILLING SILENCE! Uh oh I'm a sociopath. :(
6. I read Warm Bodies on my way in and out of Boston last night! I WAS SUPER INTO IT, or at least super into everything that was truly from R's perspective? I didn't really give a shit about all the stuff about Perry living on in his brain or whatever, I always just wanted to get back to the real events of the story. I WISH THE ENDING HAD BEEN MORE DEVELOPED, THOUGH. It wasn't as blatantly sequel-bait as something like Shatter Me, but I still felt like he avoided concluding things as much as he could have. I think I'll try reading a physical copy at some point, maybe after I see the movie, because I think reading it on my phone COUGHCOUGHPIRATEDCOUGHCOUGH I lost out on some formatting stuff that might have made it flow better, particularly at the end.
7. You all know I love you and I'd do anything for you but literally the only person I ever want speaking to me about Taylor Swift is blahblahologist.
Click to viewI can't even with this dude. LOVE HIM FOREVER.
2. SO I MIGHT DEFECT TO DREAMWIDTH? Like obviously I'd crosspost because the idea of everything that's ever happened to me NOT being recorded here is insane to me, and I'm sure the bulk of the commenting would happen over here, but LOOK AT MY FUCKING LAYOUT, YOU GUYS. As soon as my paid account expired, it switched over to that, which it isn't supposed to do unless you try to alter a paid style while your account is unpaid, and the fact that I've had the same layout for seven years or whatever and can't fully duplicate it on Dreamwidth was like the one major, major thing I couldn't get over, sooooo. I have a support request in - technically my second? Because apparently when the account expiration email says "reply to this if you have any questions!" it actually means "reply to this and then wait twelve hours and we'll tell you to take your issue elsewhere." So we'll see how that goes, but if I can't get my layout back, I'M PROBS POSTING FROM DREAMWIDTH. I KNOW. I AM ALSO SHOCKED THAT IT HAS COME TO THIS. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.
3.
THAT AJA ARTICLE!!!!!!!!!! Have we all read the Aja article? I can't even with that shit. What I love the most about it is how telling it is that it's focused on fandom's fear of persecution and that there's ZERO self-awareness regarding the fact that OF COURSE that is the angle Aja's going to take, given her history? I mean, I'll chain myself to the fourth wall like I'm trying to save a tree from being bulldozed, I LOVE THE FOURTH WALL AND I WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR IT, but it has next to nothing to do with worrying that people will think I'm a weirdo. I AM A WEIRDO. I LOVE IT. Tonight I was waiting for a bagel to toast and for some reason started contemplating how great it is that I know so many people who GET me in very specific ways even though I am a giant fucking weirdo, and IT WAS LIKE I BECAME THE BAGEL, BASKING IN THE TOASTER LAMP OF YOUR LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING.
I'm a person who says things like that! I've been weird since ALWAYS, it makes me awesome, I could give a shit what people IRL think of how I spend my time and most people who know ANYTHING REAL ABOUT ME know about my fandom involvement to some degree. I'm not worried about it! So it's hilarious to me that a ~serious piece of journalism~ [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA] about why fandom shouldn't cling to the fourth wall out of shame contains absolutely nothing about why I want the fourth wall to exist.
For starters, she focuses almost entirely on "the fourth wall" as a separation between fandom and the outside world, using that definition interchangeably with what it actually is - the separation between fandom and the people whose work we're fans of. The fourth wall does not exist between me and my coworkers - it exists between me and showrunners, between me and authors, between me and celebrities.
But even if I accept her totally made-up definition and agree that it applies to me keeping my fannish life on the DL around civilians: Backlash is not a thing I'm worried about. I can understand how Aja, who MYSTERIOUSLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY ends up in the exact center of a shitstorm wherever she goes, would end up with the perspective that shitstorms are everyone's #1 concern.
Here are my concerns, as far as PUBLIC SHAMING and being afraid of the local preacher making me wear a scarlet F all the time or whatever I'm supposed to be afraid of: I have manners and basic social skills and therefore no interest in telling someone who has never heard of Show X all about my involvement in the Show X fandom. Social interactions are about gauging these things in other people! I don't want to hear about the great hike you went on or what the fuck ever people who go outside do, why on EARTH would I expect you to want to hear about this great fic I read about HOCKEY PLAYERS BEING IN LOVE? Even if they are into Show X? Fandom is not for everyone. The conversations I have with my dad about Breaking Bad are different from the conversations I have with my brother about it, and those are different from the conversations I have with my mom about it, and those are [somewhat] different from when I scream about it on LJ. AND I DON'T WANT ANYONE COMING NEAR ME WITH BREAKING BAD FIC EVER UNLESS IT'S THE AU WHERE SKYLER BREAKS BAD AND IS GUS'S ACCOUNTANT AND THE METH TRUCKS ALWAYS RUN ON TIME.
Re: My total lack of interest in Breaking Bad fic, even within fandom you have to make these calls about who you should and should not talk to about things! I mean torigates is contractually obligated to listen to me while I slowly lose control of my life, but even then, if we keep using Breaking Bad as an example - there are other people to talk to about that! DIFFERENT PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT INTERESTS AND THAT'S OKAY. Also civilians are gen pop and gen pop is the worst and that's why I will go to my grave swearing to casual acquaintances that I don't have a Twitter. Do I particularly want, say, people I worked with at Walmart seeing me livetweet my reactions to the Folgers incest fic? NOT REALLY. But my larger concern is just that I don't want to hear from them in that part of my life. Once again: Basic social etiquette dictates that you have to limit what you say based on the people who are present. That's not about internalized shame or self-hatred or whatever, that is just SOCIETY 101, and the Internet is like a room that everyone is in all the time, so yeah, I'll keep what walls I can, especially if it means my Twitter timeline doesn't fill up with garbage like High hopes lead to harder let downs. #lessonlearned.
BUT ALL THAT HAS TO DO WITH AJA'S MADE-UP DEFINITION OF THE FOURTH WALL, AND NOT THE ACTUAL FOURTH WALL, WHICH IS A GREAT THING TO HAVE? It obviously varies from fandom to fandom and, within fandoms, from fan to fan, and Aja kind of conflates the basic awareness of the existence of fans with the breach of the fourth wall, which is ALSO insane. "Avengers fandom is so big it influences entire policy decisions at Marvel." That sentence is technically true, but it's not true for any definition of "fandom" as it relates to the community I belong to, unless we're getting SO general that it might as well read "The population of Earth is so big it influences..." instead. Marvel caters specifically to fans on a level that exceeds most movie studios, but that catering is devoted more to the more well-known and digestible I LIKE THIS A LOT AND KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT IT fandom than it is the I LIKE THIS A LOT AND HERE COMES ALL THE META AND TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS fandom that we're all part of.
When I think of the breach of the fourth wall, I think of Cookies for Sterek and the general trend of Jeff Davis RELENTLESSLY baiting fans and courting their approval. This will end badly. It has already ended badly! Jeff Davis is always crying about how the internet was mean to him for being a dumb racist fuck or whatever it is he's always doing! THOSE WHO DON'T LEARN THE HISTORY OF AARON SORKIN GETTING BANNED FROM TWOP ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT. Even without the guaranteed minefield that is creators making themselves or their processes too accessible, there's the effect on canon - either the show tries too hard to please fans and fucks itself over, or it doesn't deliver on the things that all sane people knew it was never going to deliver on, and that tiny subset of fandom that they devotedly courted is going to fucking SNAP.
There's also the consideration - totally absent from the article - that the fourth wall has a totally different significance in fandoms based on fiction and fandoms based on real people. Ashley Clements seeing your tweets about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is not the same as the @happywrites Twitter account is not the same as Aaron Paul being a delight is not the same as Mindy Kaling seeing your tweets about wanting her to marry BJ Novak is not the same as hockey players seeing your tweets about wanting them to bang is not the same as Louis from 1D having to tell people to go fuck themselves because they keep insisting TO HIM that his girlfriend is a beard. It's a scale! Some RPF fandoms are dependent on a deliberately played-up dynamic [BJ AND MINDY STOP FLIRTING ON TWITTER JFC], but some are dependent on ostensibly candid interactions, and some are dependent on the basic courtesy of not constantly alerting someone to the fact that you'd really like it if they made out with a friend of theirs. Outside of overdone fanservice, fiction fans probably aren't likely to influence their fandom too heavily, at least not any more than a production would already bend to things like critical consensus, but a fandom based on interactions between real people may rely on the fourth wall to keep existing at all, or to keep existing in an acceptable and enjoyable state.
Overall, though, the most important thing about the fourth wall is that it should exist to whatever degree an individual fan needs it to, and it's fucking rude and presumptuous for Aja or ANYONE ELSE to try and drag us away from it kicking and screaming. With Bones, I barely wanted to acknowledge that the cast even existed other than screaming "EMILY DESCHANEL HOW DO YOU DO THESE THINGS WITH YOUR FACE???????????????" With YJ, I will DEVOUR whatever I can get via Ask Greg or Brandon's tweets or Jerome Moore's DA or whatever else I can get, but I also love that there is a limit to it, that Greg has this way of addressing fans that still has a buffer built into it, because I am, in general, not a fan of direct contact. But that's me! Other people love that shit, and that's fine, but that should be for them to decide. Maybe you want to be that person who mails Mike Schur your Tom/Ron fic! You do you, you FUCKING WEIRDO! But when the dude who draws the YJ comics who I won't name because he's probably a self-Googler not that there's anything wrong with that linked to a post I made about an issue? THAT WAS WEIRD. I was ultimately fine with it, I'm fine with most things, but he was not the audience the post was intended for, and I'd say neither were most of his Facebook fans. The entire thing was me screaming about Meg and Conner sharing oxygen VIA THEIR MOUTHS and also how I don't care about the plot. I STAND BY IT! A lot of my YJ stuff is a lot more polished than that post was, and I'd probably be more comfortable with that getting linked around, but - these things are written with specific audiences in mind, and yeah, the fact that they're public means that to a certain degree I hope people will stumble on them, but, like I said before, it's a scale.
In conclusion, Aja's whole thing about how everything in fandom should be as visible as possible because we should be proud of ourselves and not ~hide our light~ just because the patriarchy wants to shame us for our creativity or whatever is FUCKING IDIOTIC and based on her own understanding of herself as a constant innocent and misunderstood scapegoat who ultimately benefited from becoming a high-profile fan, and not on the average fan's actual experience kthxbye.
4. Today [YESTERDAY NOW] was GARBAGE but in an okay way, the Kris Allen show on Wednesday night was general admission and I AM TOO OLD FOR THAT SHIT AFTER A FULL WORKDAY, I got there an hour late and still had to stand around for an hour and a half before Kris went on because there were THREE DIFFERENT OPENERS god tiny local venues kill me in the face. ONCE HE WENT ON MY FACE WAS BASICALLY BREAKING IN HALF FROM SMIIIIIIIIIIIILES, don't get me wrong, but by the time his set ended I was like JUST SET ME ON FIRE AND LET ME LIE ON THE FLOOR AND BURN, and from there it took me nearly two hours to get home because WOODS and also because I took the train in, and then I was DEAD in the morning and realized once I was in the Dunkin' Donuts drivethru and placing my order that I'd left my wallet at home, so NO COFFEE OR MUFFIN FOR ME!!!!!!!! So basically I spent the entire workday hung over from...standing? PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, SARAH! But then I came home and downed some Easy Mac and passed out for FOUR HOURS and it was so glorious I can't even explain it to you. BLESS NAPS THAT ACTUALLY LEAVE YOU FEELING RESTED. BLESS THEM. Then Liz called and we had an actual conversation for the first time in MONTHS which was great, I've really missed her. [PRIZE EXCERPT from when she said she was trying online dating - ME: "I'm too judgmental for that." HER, IN THE FONDEST WAY POSSIBLE: "Oh god, you totally are." I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVEN'T SEEN HER IN ALMOST THREE YEARS? WHAT IS THAT. GARBAGE IS WHAT THAT IS. ONE TICKET TO SAN DIEGO PLZ.] Then Mom and I had some QUALITY CHATZ and then I went to Dunkin' at ten to get coffee because YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE and now I'll be up until god knows when and it'll be GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT.
5. TOMORROW NIGHT [TONIGHT AT THIS POINT THOUGH] IS MY WORK DINNER! I FEEL GOD IN THIS LOCAL ITALIAN RESTAURANT TONIGHT. If we were getting Dundies [Billies? RODIES?] I would totally get BEST SCOWL or WORST AT SMALL TALK or MOST VERBALLY ABUSIVE or something. I'm pretty proud of myself. SORRY I'M SERIOUSLY DISINTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE/IN PRETENDING TO CARE ABOUT WHAT THEY SAY TO ME! Like it's an actual super rude thing about me that I almost never think to ask people questions about themselves EVEN IN SITUATIONS WHERE I LOVE THEM TO PIECES and I am trying to work on being less of a selfish jackass who just talks about herself all the time, but I'm not sorry that when Paula walks into my office and is like "wow, it's hot in here" I spend half a second thinking "do I have a meaningful response to that? No" and then say absolutely nothing. NOBODY EVER LISTENS TO ANYONE ANYWAY. IT'S JUST FILLING SILENCE! Uh oh I'm a sociopath. :(
6. I read Warm Bodies on my way in and out of Boston last night! I WAS SUPER INTO IT, or at least super into everything that was truly from R's perspective? I didn't really give a shit about all the stuff about Perry living on in his brain or whatever, I always just wanted to get back to the real events of the story. I WISH THE ENDING HAD BEEN MORE DEVELOPED, THOUGH. It wasn't as blatantly sequel-bait as something like Shatter Me, but I still felt like he avoided concluding things as much as he could have. I think I'll try reading a physical copy at some point, maybe after I see the movie, because I think reading it on my phone COUGHCOUGHPIRATEDCOUGHCOUGH I lost out on some formatting stuff that might have made it flow better, particularly at the end.
7. You all know I love you and I'd do anything for you but literally the only person I ever want speaking to me about Taylor Swift is blahblahologist.