#aaok

I got into the Nerdfighter community by accident.

I read Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines right after they came out. Of course, Brotherhood 2.0 wasn’t in existence when Alaska came out, but after Katherines, I googled John. I was looking for the release date of his next book, and instead, found his YouTube channel with his brother, Hank.

I watched a few videos, and while I enjoyed them, I wasn’t really interested in YouTube at the time. Fast forward a few years, and I’m watching Charlie McDonnel’s video about how excited he is to read Paper Towns, and as a subscriber of Charlie’s, of course I went out and read it.

So after reading Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson for the first time, and I read the author bio, which of course, mentions the Vlogbrothers channel. This time, when I go to YouTube, it’s with the specific purpose of watching John and Hank’s videos.

This time, I was hooked.

I subscribed, and came to look forward to watching their videos every week.

My freshman year of college (‘09/’10) I started following John and Hank on twitter, and my sophomore year, while studying abroad and feeling particularly homesick, I started using Tumblr and following Hank and John there too.

When I got home, I started sharing The Vlogbrothers’s videos with my friends. I’ve made friends in this community, and two years ago I actively participated in my first Project for Awesome. This past spring, I started sponsoring a charity that helps to break the cycle of poverty, starting with young women and girls. This coming winter, I intend to make my first Project for Awesome video about it, and all the incredible work they do.

Slowly, but surely, Hank and John, you have changed my life. Because of the amazing community you have fostered, I know I’m a more generous, more thoughtful person. I’ve learned to make a conscious effort to think of other people complexly, to be more giving and to tell the people that I love that I love them more often, even if it’s hard.

DFTBA isn’t just a tag line or a sign off; it’s a mission statement. It’s a promise to try and be the best version of yourself you can be, so you can help others be their best selves too. It’s a promise to decrease the suck in the world and to increase the awesome. It’s a promise that I try to embody every day. So Thank You, John and Hank, for being your best selves and inspiring us to be ours. And never, ever forget to be awesome.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

When I first tried to read this book in 2016, it bored me, I must admit. It was four years ago and I didn’t really know much about heartbreak or math. Now, in 2020, this novel was heartfelt, hopeful, and outstanding.

It was a light read that truly had the power to make you feel good. It was incredibly well-written, not that I’m surprised, having read multiple books by John Green previously. 

What was truly fascinating was the addition of math to this plot, the explanations at the end of the acknowledgments. The attention to detail that the author has while creating this new world is extraordinary. He knows what he is doing, even though he admits he isn’t very good at math. 

The main character, Colin Singleton, whose name is rather hilarious, is a former child prodigy, but pre-genius. He is insecure, which is easily detected by his constant need to be told that he is smart and that he will become a genius. He is completely self-absorbed, until the end of the novel. He doesn’t really know how to act with everyone else in his life, especially any of the eighteen Katherines he had dated. 

He is a sweet and romantic teenager, but ultimately his insecurities tend to ruin most of his attachments to other people, something that I personally find relatable. This novel depicts a boy who doesn’t know what friendship truly is, who doesn’t know how to act and what to say. He somehow seems oblivious to the rest of the world and its interests. 

Colin’s best friend, Hassan, is great. Honestly, he is comedically perfect in most situations, especially when he finds out Katrina is cheating on him. He always finds a way to make everyone laugh. His rhetoric seems religious, but he isn’t the perfect Muslim he’d like to be. In all honesty, he shows the amount of hypocrisy that is present in each human being, whether they know it or not. 

Lindsey is a strong female character and I loved her. The fact that she wasn’t a trophy to be earned was fantastic. She had just as many insecurities as Colin, but they just manifested themselves differently. She was emotional when necessary and calculating when not. Her intelligence never failed and she was honest which is a quality to be admired. 

The plot of the story was well thought out and perfectly portrayed. The setting of the novel was well chosen, a small town in rural America, showing a complex side of what most people think is the land of racism and country music. 

I have been missing!

I promised to come back last month and then I got hit with an awful flu and was taken out of commission for the month I couldn’t even do most of my school work my brain wouldn’t function.

But tonight I will be posting new chapters and will be picking up my writing schedule next week fully!

There are going to be some changes from my original plan though so pay attention:

The story I planned to start for fridays and post to watt pad isn’t going to be posted which brings me to;

I am going to be participating in NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month)

My plan for my original story will be my story for NaNoWriMo and I can’t wait to start writing it on November first

If I complete that book I may see about releasing it eventually for purchase (perhaps ebook, maybe physical copies, we’ll see what happens!

Taking its place on Friday is going to be a raven cycle fanfic! Involving a niche character pairing of Noah and Henry! And of course our lovely boys and blue! All the other usual pairings

I will probably share on here my girlfriend’s fantastic supernatural fanfic about queer, adhd dean Winchester for you all to see because I’m like that

Christmas with the campbells will be finished some day

So here is a reiteration of what will be happening:

Mondays: Different can be better

Camp camp, Trans!max, Trans!david, jaspvid, dadvid, max/Neil

Tuesdays: The lost prince

Camp camp, Fantasy au, jaspvid, Prince max, dadvid, max/neris

Wednesdays: An act of kindness

Camp camp, Dadvid, jaspvid, max/Preston, after camp, abusive ex Daniel

Thursdays: Faces on the battlefield

Harry Potter, Draco/Harry, post war

Fridays: TBA TITLE

Raven cycle, Henry/Noah, Gansey/Jane, Ronan/Adam, Child Opal, after

Are you excited?

Happy spooky month!

It’s January, so I suppose everyone is stuck in their ‘New Year, New Me’ mode, but I don’t get that. Why do you have to change every year? It doesn’t make sense to me...

I know I change every year, I change every day practically, to be honest, but it has nothing to do with the New Year. It’s got everything to do with the fact that I’m alive. Everybody changes. 

Maybe it’s just people saying they’re going to be better this year. I don’t know....Why do you have to wait for the year to start over to decide to be better?

Regardless, since it’s officially January 4, 2017, nearly 2AM, I decided I’m gonna tell you about myself. And since no one is following me, I don’t have any trouble saying this stuff. 

I am 19 years old. I graduated high school last June from being homeschooled. I had hoped to go to college at Covenant College, but when my parents told me I’d have to pay for it all on my own, it wasn’t a possibility for me, due mainly to it being very expensive.

I don’t have a job, though I’ve been trying really hard to get one, no one seems to want to hire me. I would take almost anything at this point. 

I am 5′8″-ish, I have burgundy hair at the moment, but my natural color is the closest you can get to Crayola crayon brown. My eyes are blue I guess, and I have freckles. I’m not comfortable with my looks or the rest of my physical appearance, so I’m not going to talk much about that. 

Instead, I’ll tell you that I like music and words (I tried coming up with a better way to say that, but that’s as close as I can get). I have a very particular taste in music. It has to be good. This is harder to find than you might think. Good music is an opinion, I understand, but my opinion of good music is songs that don’t repeat the same phrase six times in a row. 

But then you can look on my iPod and see that I have pretty bad music on there. 

I like books. The only book I’ve ever read that I didn’t like was “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly, and I’m not sure if I could explain to you why I didn’t like it. I take pride on the amount of books on my bookshelf, and I honestly haven’t read them all. But who as honestly? 

The last three books I read: 3. Looking For Alaska by John Green (For the second time) 2. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling 1. Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead

Looking for Alaska is my favorite of the John Green books on my shelf (which is four: LFA, TFIOS, Paper Towns, and An Abundance of Katherines) though it’s probably not as good as the others. 

I got The Cursed Child for Christmas from my sister along with the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and I’m struck with the feeling of disliking toward the plot. I liked more, I think, that there was a new story out for the world I would like to abide in. The plot wasn’t really that great and the character development was shabby, to be honest. I did like Draco and Scorpius quite a bit. 

Taliesin was also a Christmas present from a friend because he liked the Pendragon Cycle and I told him I’d read it eventually. So I guess he’d figured he’d just buy it for me. These are the best sort of presents in my opinion -- ones that your friends or family give you because they think you’ll enjoy them as much as they did -- and I was more than happy to read it as soon as I got it. It’s become one of my favorites, and I’m glad I read it even though it took me quite a while to get through it. 

I don’t know if that list gives a look inside my interests, but it’s a pretty obscure list of books of you know what at least two of them are. 

Right now I’m reading a book called “All the Bright Places” by Jennifer Niven -- in fact, I stopped mid-chapter to sit down and do this -- and so far it’s good. It’s pretty predictable as it’s a YA fiction book. I can relate to the characters in the sense that I have lost my ability to write anything good like Violet, and just the way Finch functions seems to be the same way I function. I’m not suicidal or anything. I don’t seriously think about dying, though I do catch myself wondering if it mattered if I did keel over right where I was, but then the moment passes and I go on with my life. 

Which is pretty boring, to be honest, but that’s not important right now.What is important is that absolutely no one is going to read this and if you do, you won’t make it all the way to the end because you got bored reading nonsense that has nothing to do with anything.

And that is the most hilarious thing to me. Maybe I’ll talk about something more important tomorrow...

Like how I spent this entire article (if you can call it that....probably not, though) listening to Act 1: The Lake South, The River North by The Dear Hunter (Which my sister gave to me for my birthday on vinyl) because it’s the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.