#multimedia post

I was born and raised in New York City... but only 11 months out of every year. For one month every summer, I go to Greece to visit my family and - as Greeks call it - the “motherland.” For as long as I can remember, my favorite part of the year has been getting off the plane or the boat and smelling the fresh Greek air. 

This summer, however, was more special than any of the ones that came before it because last year I didn’t get to go to Greece. Not going made me miss the country even more than I could possibly imagine, but this year made up for everything that I had missed last summer. 

We started off our journey with family friends in Milos, a little island in the Cyclades region. The best part of being on that island - an island that I hadn’t visited before - was exploring with friends that are as good as family. Together, we explored different beaches (Kleftiko, Sarakiniko, etc.), ate new and exciting foods, and walked through the town of Adamantas. Milos made me learn to appreciate the Greek islands in their purest, most untouched form. It’s an island that is still very much unbothered by tourism and commotion, and it embodied all of the loveliest features that Greece has to offer. 

Below are pictures of Milos’ beaches:

Next, we made our way Santorini - my second favorite island in Greece. It was my fourth time there and my second time staying with the family friends who we vacationed with in Milos. They are from a wonderful village in the center of the island, about 10 minutes from either end of it. Our days were spent at the beaches, and our nights were spent in Fira, the main city, which is located on the caldera (the cliff-like structure that was left after the island’s volcano erupted). In my opinion, it’s the most magical place on Earth, and everyone should go there at least once in their lifetime if the opportunity arises. I think about Santorini every single day; that island makes me grateful to be Greek.

Below are pictures of Santorini and the caldera:

Video of the caldera:

Last but not least, we went to the island that my family is from: Crete. My little village on a mountain is my favorite place on the planet; it’s been filled with the same old people for as long as I can remember... even the scents are the same. It’s my second home - a place my family goes to escape the hustle and bustle of New York City life. All my cousins, uncles, and aunts visit during the summer, along with the kids I’ve been friends with since I was three years old. Crete is known for being one of the loveliest places to visit in Greece; there’s so much to do and so much to see. Fun fact(!): Crete is known for being the location for the film Zorba the Greek!

Listen to Zorba the Greek:

 https://open.spotify.com/track/30Lj5KKGd8IUEK0s5N3ccN?si=fPYj_7y3RouKymt-n3vczw

My favorite part about going to Crete, though, is always the celebration for August 15th (one of Greece’s most celebrated holidays). Every year on that night, Cretan musicians play their music for the whole village until the early hours of the morning while the youth dances along and the older villagers watch. It’s the liveliest party that the village throws every years, and - in my opinion - the most enjoyable.

Maleviziotikos (Traditional Cretan Dance):

A Cretan song by Nikos Zoidakis:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4TJzgyfcAwDpliXnvKUr4d?si=v_6Zo8D6QNeUmbSvxYlqbw

Now that it’s September, I am back in New York for school, but I am missing Greece more than ever. All I can do is reminisce about the time that I spent there, and look forward to the next time I visit!

There eventually comes a point in every blogger’s life where they suddenly realize that they have inevitably run out of things to talk about at that particular moment in time. Hence the dire need for a multitude of adjectives and adverbs throughout this long, drawn out blog in the name of effectively finishing it up.

I’ve talked in the past about my experience with Wordpress. Once again, I want to reiterate that it is the devil and should not be trusted. It tricks you with false promises of easy to use systems and then switches things around on you and laughs as you sadly try to finagle your way through it because surely it wasn’t this hard the first time?

Then there was wiki. Much like its demonic brother-in-law Wordpress, it is a false savior, offering you the simple, easy lie of an easy to use system and then mocking you as you sob into your keyboard with the lines of code looking down upon you like a derisive feudal lord, uncaring of you college plights.

I also mentioned Weebly, which has been a white, sandy beach in a sea of awful attempts of making a website. Sweet, kind Weebly who saves time and effort with simple templates and an easy to learn drag and drop system with buttons, social media, and galleries. Thank you Weebly.

I also mentioned Storify, which has been amazing and easy to use, but, at the same time, a bit tedious and in need of some better filters.

But I haven’t talked about the three websites I’ve been using the most while taking this class. YouTube, Tumblr, and Twitter.

For those of you who have just been seeing only one of the three (which is probably not many I have had almost no traffic on any of those and that’s ok) I tend to either write the essays in tumblr, and then announce them on twitter for my class, or I’ll make a short video and post it on YouTube before doing the same thing. But, for all that I’ve been using these three, I haven’t talked about them.

Twitter? There’s really not much to say. Seriously, they limit how much you’re allowed to say. It drives me insane. Sure, I have a hard time reaching the end of the five hundred word count for these blogs, but 140 characters? That’s just mean. And rude. And hurtful. See, that’s four words right there that were COMPLETELY necessary. But not according to Twitter. No, you should limit yourself! Bah, I shall have none of your limitations Twitter. Come the end of class, be gone with you.

As for Youtube, I’ve actually been enjoying doing the vlogging there. I’ve actually made an avatar and intend to start an actual blog come probably October-ish where I’ll be speaking through the avatar. I’ll probably attach that to this tumblr completely, but It’s driving me nuts doing all the editing necessary for them.

If I never have to look at another stock photograph or tweet again it’ll be too soon. On the upside, yay! I’m pretty much done with my storify! Woo! No more vulgar, frankly disturbing tweets for me! Seriously, this project killed a little of my already dwindling faith in the human race. It’s almost ridiculous. The choice between doing this story and the story about the Stanford rape case was changed only because I know I would have gone off on a tangent about how Brent Turner is so hated a mass number of Pagans and Wiccans did a mass curse on him—

(Which is actually a really big deal, like, no joke. The entire society behind Paganism and Wicca tend to try and avoid any association with curses or the such for obvious reasons and try to put on a more positive face to outside people, if only because there’s already an astounding amount of stigma attached to our religion as is and adding to that won’t make anything better, so seeing these people openly admitting to cursing someone on such a large scale is a huge thing in the community and I digress)

—But there was that, and also the fact that, as much as Brent Turner makes me absolutely furious, he still got jail time, he’s still a registered sex offender. He will never get back the life he had, neither will his family, and his life is, hopefully, ruined. Roger Ailes, however, is not in jail. He is not registered as a sex offender. He is facing 0 jail time. He got 40 million dollars to quit his job. Oh, and, did I mention? HE FORCED WOMEN TO HAVE SEX WITH HIM BY THREATENING THEIR CAREERS AND AS OF NOW IS FACING ALMOST NO CONSEQUENCES IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS.

I am so many levels of furious about this that I’m honestly surprised I didn’t hop onto facebook and say something (because, seriously, posting anything on my facebook is like screaming into a void half the time. Very therapeutic, low chance of it ever coming back to haunt me since I have two).

Apparently, something like this is called “clown pants” by these two web designers Lynch and Horton. It’s basically when, while trying to be different and unique, a web designer winds up making the page too garish and busy. Instead of achieving their original goal of being eye catching, they wound up with an abomination that instead winds up making it mentally scaring.

I’ve seen this in a couple of sites. Not too many, but a few. Usually, the problem is actually the opposite. Instead of having too much on one page, I sometimes feel like websites have too little.

Specifically, there is my original patron, Fanfiction.net. Now I, like a lot of fanfiction writers, started here, and it’s a good site to start with. Everything is clearly separated by medium and then a list of other things. However, I also find it lacking in several things, which is why I eventually switched almost entirely over to Archiveofourown.com (AO3). For one thing, it has one of the best buttons I have ever seen in online reading. “Entire Work”. This button shows all the chapters of a fanfic in one long page as opposed to having you move from chapter to chapter. This is really helpful when I want to go on fic reading binges that almost require me to read over one hundred chapter fics. Fanfiction just doesn’t have that.

There’s also the tagging system. Archive of Our Own has a system where you can search for either relationships (i.e. PersonA/PersonB), or search for something specific, like “Alternate Universe” or “Scott is a Bad Friend”. Literally, that is an actual tag, with over 100 fics tagged, something I never would have found on fanfiction. This makes it so much easier if I want to only look for a specific thing, like I only want to read fics with soulmates. It also helps avoid certain subjects. In Fanfiction, you are really rolling the dice on whether you’re getting something happy go lucky or something that is going to leave you a sobbing mess in the middle of your classroom. However, there are trigger warnings on Archive of Our Own, like Rape/Non-con, Major Character Death, Minor Character Death, Blood and Gore. Once again, these are things that assist the overall experience of using Archive of our Own without overloading it.

The only problem that I’ve heard people talk about with Archive of Our Own is that they have a harder time getting used to it, and I think that that may be the main thing. While having more on your website, does satisfy loyal users and make navigation easier, it does take a bit of playing around to get used to a more complicated system.

” I woke you up with poetry and stones The ragged and the bones Strewn around the room I recall another hazy may Take a round in the ring| Gone hungry for the win…

Heres the part I just lose everything I cracked a spark just to hear you sing Sing… I took it out The papers and the trash Old among the cans This golden love gone bad Shined it up Aiming at the sun Just a light year from us Hop a cab ride and we’re off.. And all the ravens came along to play The simple notes you sang just went astray Everything was up, its coming down Everything was up, its coming down Coming down”