#j-pping

i have a nespresso machine because it was super convenient in the morning when i was actually going to the office. took a few seconds to have a really nice coffee made and i was saving money. thats not to say that i dont love it now. if anything i love it more. i have more time in the morning to explore the milk frother that came with it. yes, i know there are other and better espresso machines but this is fairly budget friendly and i appreciate how good it is for the environment. the pods are all aluminum and are sent back to the plant once theyve been used. last year they made aluminum bikes out of recycled pods. mostly the aluminum gets reused to make other pods. the left over coffee beans are turned into compost which they use to grow more trees. in the spring the receipts are printed on compost paper with seeds so you dont waste paper. they are very conscious of the environmental impact coffee has, and focus on supporting local farmers. so thats why i like them. yes im aware its still a major company and im sure if could do more research and find a small business better than this, but this is whats in my price range and the coffee variety for the pods is amazing. this is my machine.

alternatively, you could do the tried and true stove top espresso way. the bialetti moka espresso pot is simple and pretty fast. this is how my grandmother made her coffee, and this single item is the most nostalgic in the world for me because she was always making coffee. quite possibly the strongest espresso in the world lmao its really easy to clean and the espresso is extremely smooth. they also make a stove top milk frother that is affordable, and i recommend this too. its a manual pump, but the froth youre capable of creating is incredible.

15. why did you start writing? gosh. tbh...i dont really know. ive been writing stories ever since i was a kid. my diaries and journals were full of them. other times it was poetry. but i guess for fanfiction...that too as so long ago. really my first fanfic - which i found this past week when i was visiting my family! - was for sailor moon when i was 8 lmao. but ill keep it for this blog and this fandom. 

i started writing for exo after a 2.5 year writing block hiatus from a different fandom. i was pretty confident i would never write again, and i was in a pretty low place in my life. i thought id grown out of writing fanfiction and i really did accept this like?? i wasnt even...mad? at this time i was in an unhealthy relationship and i was in a low point in my life, so looking back this kind of reaction is genuinely upsetting. given that writing is my form of therapy and something ive just always done, i probably should have been more alarmed than i was. but i fell into exo and there was something...inexplicable...some kind of magic. for the first time in years i felt excited about something, i wanted to make something for it. i avidly read fic for about two weeks and was so excited to be reading. at this time i didnt have a tumblr account, i was just lurking on ao3 and tumblr, reading and reading. at the time, there were lots of vamprie au fics on the platform and they were brilliant but i had an idea for one that didnt seem to exist, didnt seem to relate to any of the ones id read, and it felt important. so i wrote the prologue and first chapter of hero in one sitting. that was the first time id sat down to write in almost three years. i cried a lot after i finished them, because id finally felt like myself again. lmao anyway

17. if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be? does it seem fun? does it seem exciting? when you think about writing, does it feel like a relief? if the answer to those three questions is yes, then you must do it. you must start. the white page is a sea and it feels endless, but you can kill it. youre stronger than it - even your ugly words are stronger than the white page. you will make them pretty, pretty is learned and pretty is born, youre always in control of how things look. and you love control. this is the one place where everything is yours, so make it.

18. were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they? oh god yes. almost shamelessly so. my favourite authors of all time are mark z danielewski and isaac marion - the authors of the house of leaves and the warm bodies trilogy. they have this way of writing that feels like youre reading poetry, like theyve carefully chosen every single word. the sentences arent long or complex, but they have so much emotional impact. their grasp on vocabulary is astounding, and every time i reread their works im floored and emotional because how are there still so many words? and how wonderful is it that words change texture and feeling when theyre put together. words look better when theyre next to the words they like. and even more, both these authors are not afraid. theyre not afraid of confusing their reader, not afraid of hurting their reader, not afraid of hurting their characters. their settings are brutal. the situations are intense, and they make me feel so many things that linger long after ive stopped reading. 

another author i really love is andrew davidson. his book the gargoyle is one of my all time favourite books ever because of its plays on religion and romance and religion as romance. however, i dont talk about it much anymore because its out of print so i dont want to recommend something if people cant find it.

this got so long im sorry lmao