I’ve spent this month reading Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and I’ve finished around 40% of it. The trilogy follows the lives of two main characters as they live through pretty weird times. The title of the book is a take on George Orwell’s 1984 and is pretty amazing. Like every Murakami book, the book is mesmerising and whatever I’ve read of it till now is so good. Here is another totally amazing Murakami quote:
I hit 800 followers last week and it’s been the highlight of this month for me (till now)! Thank you so much – I can never actually believe that anyone even reads what I put on here especially since I know my content’s quality has fallen quite a bit over the years, and yet here we are!
In honour of me reaching 800 followers, here are a few things I’ve been obsessed with this month:
(A) Haikyuu!
(B) Champagne Problems – Taylor Swift
(C) Afterglow – Ed Sheeran
(D) Killing Commendatore – Haruki Murakami
I read somewhere once how fiction is so special because it helps you to imagine so much more than you ever thought you could. I think that’s very important – knowing that you have the ability to do that. Its one of the reasons I enjoy books so much; reading always makes you feel like you can do so much more than you’ve ever thought you could. But it’s not only reading that does that. Tv shows and movies and anime and k-dramas, they all can form this little corner in your life and you can just feel yourself being getting better, getting happier just immersing yourself in this experience.
I spent most of the second half of 2020 on my laptop screen. I consumed so much content online that I could start giving off recommendations for every kind of genre now. But it’s been during these times that I’ve realised how important fictional content is; how important it is to see something very pure and happy on your screen and let yourself follow their journey. This is what makes comfort characters so ridiculously important.
What I’ve really understood from comfort characters is that they’re just these regular fictional characters that bring you immense amounts of happiness and everything they do just makes you adore them more and living vicariously through them just makes you feel all gooey. I think everyone ends up having comfort characters is most of anything they watch. You might not know it and suddenly that one character is your comfort character. The crazy thing is that they can just be a really minor character or not the hero and yet everything related to them will make you feel excited. Every back story, every development arc and every new thing introduced for them to tackle will have you rooting for them like you’ve never rooted for anyone else. Comfort characters are so important and just acknowledging that someone fictional entity is your comfort character is rewarding.
So I decided that I could here list a few of my favourite comfort characters and then everyone reading this can think about their own perfect comfort characters!
First, Happy New Year to one and all! I hope 2021 brings with it more Harry Styles music, more wholesome Ed Sheeran content and a lot more of happiness in everyone’s lives.
It hit me pretty hard last year that One Direction had debuted 10 years ago. I mean, a decade honestly is a long, long time. I’ve always felt that as you go on loving something for a long time it’s possible that you stop loving it as hard as you did. I’ve seen it happen with so many things I’ve loved – books, movies, songs, people.
My love for Harry Styles has not diminished. Not a bit. I think it’s grown.
I’m really hoping for 2021 to be a great year for him especially with his Grammy nominations. No one has deserved it more after all the hard work he’s put into being himself these last few years. 2021 has already started off pretty great with the release of the music video for ‘Treat People with Kindness’: a must-hear AND a must-watch.
I was watching the music video and I just kept thinking ‘wow, he’s changed so much – he’s grown so much and I’m so happy for him’. Harry Styles was a child when he became a part of One Direction and so many of the important years of his life he’s spent with people dissecting everything he does everyday. Despite everything, Harry Styles has come out as an exceptional human being. I’m always awed by him.
Harry Styles’ 2020 Vogue interview and photoshoot was legendary. I know that a lot of artists wouldn’t have done something similar and just knowing that he does absolutely nothing but be himself is so powerful.
If it wasn’t clear already, I think I can appreciate Harry Styles for the rest of my life.
It’s hard to not absolutely and totally adore Christmas and the whole gifting + decor situation. I love Christmas, and this my 2020 Christmas is super cute pictures! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year ❤️
When you’re faced with doing basically nothing for days and days on end it becomes really easy to get back into things you might’ve left behind. Like writing! I’ve been attempting to write a lit bit every other day just so I can somehow manage to still keep myself relevant to it – and this here is my attempt at something.
“Is this one good?”. Holly looks up from where she’s squatting on the floor to see someone wrapped in a big red sweater holding three books in her hand one hand and flipping a fourth book in the other. Holly squints to look at the title of the book before she gets up.
“It’s a good one. I enjoyed it a lot.”. Big red sweater nods and places the book along with the three she’s already chosen. Holly gets up and dusts of the little specks of glitter that have settled on her palm from all the decorations she’s been putting up for the last half hour.
“You’ve chosen some great titles.” “You’ve read these?”
Holly nods,“All except that one.”, she says pointing at the red paperback, “It’s been on my list for a long, long time now. Haven’t found anyone ready to gift it to me yet.”, Holly chuckles. Big red sweater turns the books over in her hands and looks up at Holly, “I’m Abigail.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Abigail. Thanks for giving us business. I’ve seen you around many times.”, Holly says without thinking. In a second she realises maybe that was a creepy thing to say. Who tells a customer they’ve seen them around a lot? “Uh, I’m sorry, I don’t mean it in a creepy way. It’s just that I work here and I see you and okay I’m going to leave you alone now.”
Holly turns around to leave but stops when she hears a soft laugh from Abigail. She turns around with raised eyebrows. “Well, it’s true. I do come here a lot. I love it here. Who wouldn’t?”
As Abigail laughs, her big red sweater jingles and Holly notices small Christmas ornaments hanging from the edge of the sleeves. Holly looks at Abigail fully. She’s dressed in faded light blue jeans and wearing huge boots along with them. The black boots are decorated with small white snowflakes all over. The big red sweater isn’t just a regular sweater. It has a Rudolf’s huge red nose smack in the middle and jingles every time Abigail moves her arms an inch. Holly smiles softly thinking about how Abigail fits perfectly in this corner of the store. Abigail’s back faces a huge Christmas tree made out of green hardbound books (it was Remi’s idea to make one out of books this year) and the shelves that Abigail faces towards are all covered with bite-sized wreaths, mini snowmen and glitter-adorned Christmas ornaments. Tiny green, red and gold Christmas trees hang from the ceiling above (that one was Holly’s idea and she’s crazy proud of it too). And Abigail fits all too nicely into this corner.
“Thank you for helping me choose. I’d better get going, I have a long evening ahead. Great job on the decorations.”
Honestly, I can never seem to get enough of Christmas – and with the number of songs talking about Christmas its pretty impossible to not have favourite Christmas songs and here are mine!
1) Under the Tree – Sam Palladio
2) Christmas Lights – Coldplay
3) Christmas saves the Year – 21 Pilots
4) Mistletoe – Justin Bieber
5) Lover – Taylor Swift ft. Shawn Mendes
It’s very hard to imagine people whose favourite time of the year is not Christmas. Honestly, there is nothing about Christmas that you can’t love – the weather, hot chocolate, cookies, gifts, Christmas movies, and just this super warm feeling that the whole month of December gives you. I’ve always loved Christmas movies. Really, most of them are rom-coms and most of them are pretty unrealistic but also so believable at the same time. There’s nothing like a good Christmas movie to put you in a Christmas mode, if you’re not already – and that is why I recommend watching The Princess Switch 2.
The Princess Switch 2 is the sequel to The Princess Switch released back in 2018 starring Vanessa Hudgens in a pretty awesome double role. If you haven’t seen the first movie, you’ve really missed out and you should definitely watch it before you read on here!
The Princess Switch 2 follows Vanessa’s character Stacy going to Montenaro for the coronation of her other character Margaret along with secretly planning a romantic reunion for Margaret and Kevin. The movie is such a feel good movie that you can’t even sit there and find any faults with it.
The movie runs for just a little bit under three hours and puts Vanessa into a new role as well, and really she pulls off all three roles amazingly well. The movie runs on Vanessa, her clothes, her Christmas vibes and pretty much every time she says anything I’m instantly transported back to her saying ‘Troy’ with her soft smile.
The movie has a pretty normal plot, nothing too fancy and yet the movie is pretty perfect. Right from Christmas decorations to feel-good moments, The Princess Switch 2 ticks all the boxes of a good, light Christmas movie.
10/10 recommended!
My friend and I have been a fan of photography for quite a while now. Almost a month ago, we decided to start one of those instagram pages and post pictures we’d taken over the last 2-3 years. So for this page, we decided we’d do a row of photos of books because obviously I love books and they look pretty amazing in various settings.
For this project, I went around the house with some of my books and took some pictures and then I realised my books always, always deserve a post of their own!
It’s nothing really as dramatic as just reading the header of this post feels but I did do a thing. I’ve been reading on and off on wattpad for almost eight years now. My friend introduced me to it and I mostly used it for Harry Potter and Supernatural fan fiction, and then I moved on to a ton of LGBTQ original stories. It has always blown my mind how really good some people that are writing there are. Their stories can easily make you feel so many things and I constantly re-read many of my favourites.
This thing I did, it was a pretty random decision. A decision really shaped by the fact that I have nothing but time on my hands. So I wrote a story, and then I entered it into a contest. It’s a pretty basic story for a large scale contest so I always knew I shouldn’t expect much but writing it made me feel really nice. It gave me something to do and something to plan and something to look forward to. I wrote almost around 11,000 words and it’s definitely the longest singular piece of writing I could’ve ever dreamed of writing.
I guess 2020 hasn’t been all bad: https://my.w.tt/GBn9t7NAAbb
