therem_harth | Recent Entries

Hello.
It's another life update, crazy how that keeps happening.

I have been (can you guess it?) busy.
Having a full time job and full time studies is a fever dream that I don't wish on anyone. It's no wonder that many course-mates have fallen behind or fully out of the studies, for a moment if seemed like it would be only me and three other people submitting their thesis but two more people popped up just having submitted the draft late. It is still just 6 people from the 14 or so we were in the beginning but as I understand the road to a MA thesis is usually something like that. It's not easy, not by any means.

Did thesis predefence and despite spending like a full minute bitching about current academic debate (it's not good and fragmented to hell) and how hard it is to conceptualize conspiracy theory, not having a fully formulated theoretical approach much less a written chapter on it, and having done only 5 interviews (generally a MA consists of 10-12) the profs liked it and my supervisor and reviewer were cute and said they like it and Aivita said that I've done very well :3

So that gives me some hope. I've struggled with theory a bit more and then I had three interviews over 5 days which was... intense. As I wrote in my field notes, you can spend only so long before that many people all firmly believing in something that is unthinkable to you before it makes you feel profoundly weird. I can't say that it makes me question science because my belief in it was already severely shaken by, ironically, science and technology studies in Uni and I've spent time from that course building it back up, but it does make me feel... bereft, somehow. Bittersweet about their lives. Alienated a bit. I want to relate to them but I can't. And I want to relate to people saying that conspiracy theorists are evil or stupid but can't.

I think part of the reason every of these last three interviews (of people deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep within it) leave me reeling so much is because it's often hard navigating the interviews for reasons I wrote abt in the last post, I think. I have to gauge their responses and poke within their conspiracy beliefs and retreat if they get defensive, I have to appear understanding, agree with them, I have to be the naive student, I have to ask them questions in an anthropologist way of being stupid that works. (I prompted one respondent by asking "and then some of this is because of god?" and she replied with a "SOME of it?? All of it is god, god is everything!! There is no "some"." and man, I mean it worked but I'm also just a small creature and I don't like talking to strangers because it leaves a feeling like I'm being watched sometimes and I'm not very good at talking with people.... Wanna be a small frog under a leaf sometimes.........
But yeah. It's not horrible, I'm getting good data and generally having a good conversation that often leaves me in awe as much as it makes me feel like a carpet has been pulled out from under me.

Generally, I have been driving myself forwards with a combination of anxiety, guilt and sense of duty and none of these things are a really healthy way to approach anything. It's generally alright when I don't have a lot of things to keep pushing at the same time but if I keep pushing things for a long while, like my MA and my work and my studies and keeping up with my friends and their troubles it starts to leave marks. A couple weeks ago I told my friend that I can't write her a rp post despite wanting to because I can't justify taking off an hour or two that might end up leaving me more tired instead of actively resting in that time because life generally is like that during the weekdays when I have work and have to write MA in the evenings and she was like jesus christ and metaphorically sprayed me with a water bottle when I later said my supervisor told me to chill... My course-mates sometimes say I must be superhuman to manage all of this but nah man, I'm just making sacrifices. I understand Crime & Punishment so well these days.

I feel anxiety crawling within me sometimes when I go to sleep or at night (I told this to a friend a week ago and for some reason I said it in a very american accent so you can pretend that I did just now if you like), like a thin line of buzzing activity down my chest, eating at me like acid. I wonder if that is in part why Mija has been more anxious at night too... but you can never know with her. Ar Miju ir kā ar bitēm...

In light of all of the shittiness I've decided not to be stupid and curb my overachievement re: future career/academic career and have firmly told myself that I need to slow down after this. So perhaps if a small side-gig to my current work opens up or I find a different job, I can do that but not a phD, at least not without a break. It helped that a friend told me that I need to take care of myself and as much as I'm a little shit at listening to friends she is the one friend we all joke is always right about everything so I just did it to keep her reputation of being right......

In other news, I have been getting a bit tired of FFXIV for the past month or two and honestly it's amazing and unbelievable that I was into it so much for so long. And I know that I don't want to like, leave it forever because it's incredibly close to me by now. As I told my friend I already clearly see a time 10 years later when my life has changed and perhaps even my friends have changed when I log into it and hear the music and just start bawling. It's just been so important to me, especially over quarantine. But yeah, it just sucks that I'm not as into it because it's nice predictable and easy free time spender. Getting into new narratives and games is hard and unpredictable... Need to find something else than Elden Ring (which I might not even finish tbh... I'm kinda tempted to pick the bad ending and watch the world go up in flames. I hate endings....) to cling to in my sparse free time.

Yeah. Generally, that is my life these days. I always need to both work on MA and rest and I don't manage to do any of these fully. A month and a half of this hellscape and then I'll be done.

P.S. the icon for this post has been my telegram icon for the past couple months. usually I change them more often but man do i need to manifest this feeling during this time...

Current Music: Left at London - It Could Be Better

Hello dear two to three readers!

The summer is going pretty nice despite the unsure footing mentioned before. I have caved in the face of my sanity speaking and have set a rule that I will use the entirety of July to rest from studies and not think about MA one bit. So I just have work, that is sometimes stressful and full and sometimes there is nothing at all to do and I'm left flopping like a wet fish in all of the empty space of time.

A thing I am set upon, however, despite officially letting myself rest, is to push myself to enjoy the summer as much as possible, which means going to the beach with vitiņš most weekends, going to visit friends, thinking of a roadtrip, nudging myself out the door when I am restless and not sure of what to do inside. I don't want to miss enjoying myself and though the natural impulse is to stay in all the time, it's actually not that hard to make plans outside too, I have found the toggle off/on switch for pushing myself to do these things, finally. I do things p easily once I convince myself that it's just what I have to do.

Also in exciting news is that I finished The Song of Achilles yesterday (one minute in today actually), and though I try not to subscribe to the snobbish attitudes of book-reading being the only thing that makes one smart, it's nice to immerse myself in a book nevertheless. I think I have trained my withering focus and attention span with the torturous amounts of reading I have had to do for MA over the past year. I can read p easily now.

The following stuff might include spoilers for the book!

But yes! The book is kind of nice, neatly written though some parts stumble a little (I really have no idea since when I have gotten so picky but I see parts that don't work for me very easily and go ah yes it might have been better to do it in other ways. or hah yeah Patroclus has to die first right, you had to make a decision here about what to do with the narrative). It made me think about two things that I wanna expand on here, actually.

Firstly, the blurbs about the author says that she specializes in adapting classics to modern readers which I find a fascinating thing in itself, especially as an anthropologist, the translation between different times and cultural understandings. And one thing that stuck out to me like a sore thumb was a scene in the Greek warcamp of the Greeks raiding nearby farmlands and taking riches and women captive and Achilles and Patroclus try to save as many as 10 girls from the "appetites" of other kings and men and it just struck me as a very modern thing to include. I have not yet read the Illiad (tho I'm going to buy it today and go to town, whee) so I might be speaking out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure Achilles wouldn't have had to do it originally to be viewed as a hero but our standards and understandings have shifted and I don't think a modern retelling could feature him taking on slave girls to sleep with as spoils of war while viewing him as the virtuous hero at the same time. And I just think that it's interesting and funky.

And secondly, gods, but I love the inevitability of tragedies, at least specific aspects of them, though I still am very tentative about heavy topics. But the narrative of someone being doomed to fail, you knowing they will fail, them perhaps even knowing they will fail and then seeing the steps that lead to destruction, the way they try to rail against fate, the way they inevitably fail, the way they have to fail because succeeding would mean that the structure of the world with the clear lines of what you can and cannot do are at jeopardy and with them the entire universe. The sacrifice in the name of keeping order and clear lines. The way we watch the doomed heroes from our safe positions within the lines and the structure and the rules and we watch them step out and go up in flames, a sacrifice that must happen but is no less sad. I might be all for the underdogs and those who rail against the system irl but tragedies promise such simplicity when you think about it.

That and I just love the epic narrative of it all, of Achilles knowing that he will die, but not before Hector, of the moment he steps outside of the space allotted to god-like heroes onto the path of pride and destruction, you can see his trajectory start to go down and you want to be angry at his decisions but you cannot, of Patroclus going into battle in his stead and you knowing that the story has to end in one way and one way only, of Hector killing Patroclus so Achilles will have a reason to kill him and seal his fate.... I mean. It's amazing. It's fucking amazing is what it is. I can't wait to read the actual Illiad, though it for sure will be written in a less accessible way to me, but therefore probably way more interesting, like touching a stone you know humans half a century ago touched.

ETA: OH AND ANOTHER THING I LOVE ABOUT IT, that I will also always love, is the trope of the untouchable, amazing, god-like man our main character who is very human and not nearly as skilled views from outside, a position the non-godlike reader can find himself in. I actually based a D&D character on this kind of character pairing, one of them an untouchable blazing star and the other firmly on the ground, clumsy in their movement in life. I love it. I love also that Achilles is blonde and pretty and almost feminine but also this untouchable blazing star and just hhhhhhhgh I fuckin love these kinds of characters, especially when they inevitably crash down and realize the limits to their abilities.

Yeah. I'm waiting on an anthropology book that is stuck somewhere along the line and until that I'll read the Illiad and perhaps the Odyssey. And then I will have to think of what to read next because I think I'm back into books. I put on a stormy sea with thunder audio while I was reading just by the table lamp while it got dark outside and it felt so nice, like I was back at my grandma's house in the countryside, living out adventures on the page. Something about myths and old dramatic narratives like this will always, always touch me, it's like there is another space within me that is just full to the brim with love for myths and legends and stories.

Ah, yeah, it was nice to write this entry. Today I am going to visit a friend who lives near where my grandmother used to live, in sprawling pine forests and seaside, we might go for a swim or we might settle down and read our books, and it's just kinda nice in July when I am not too tired. I am keeping a close watch on my tired levels and trying to get the best of summer. And I wish you all the same. :3

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

Hi! Things just don't stop, do they! But I am here again to talk about them. Them things.

Last week was aaaa, I:

1)got an e-signature mobile app thing that made me jump through funny hoops to get it but now I have it an I'm surprised it actually works. Signed a contract for the project I'm working with my prof with it, sent it off to government and highest instance of uh, court that is our client for this, feeling a bit like sending in a contract I've signed in crayon. :D

2) got furniture! lots of it! Got them good gender feels and bad hand feels after screwing and nailing so much stuff, but I now have a cute, wooden dresser, a cute, wooden shelf (do you see a pattern yet? I like wood) and a nice, functional computer chair, the old one was falling apart. My room is so much cuter than before now and it just... it feels so good to have Things after a long time of not having that many. It's fucking great.

3) binged the Given anime in a single evening :D Apparently I inhale media these days in hell swoops. It was p nice! A bit heavy, which was in part why I wanted to finish it in one go so I don't end on a heavy note. I do like the story concept though, and the song scene slapped so much though, I fucking love the song still. Also I find it so interesting how I perceive the heaviness - like, I binged Banana Fish fine, except for a couple scenes that were a bit much, but this, even though it was arguably fluffier, was heavy heavy heavy, probably because of personal connotations.

4) participated in a very good but very tiring sesh of our D&D game, where at the end I was so tired that the DM snapping that "the player also has to contribute, I can't do everything" when I asked about a rule sort of sent me on a bit of a tired spiral of badness. Made some food and cleaned the dishes, then ordered the 1500 images I had saved on my phone from tumblr into categories on my PC in a tired, distancing haze. Whoosh.

This week therefore started similarly tired, since I hadn't been able to do any study work on the weekend bc of the game, but now, after yesterday's seminars I've found that it always feels like drowning while having so much to read and write but then the lectures come and they are so nice and make me feel so smart and cool and teachers praise my work and I'm just. Oh. This is good actually. I might be in a weird phase of hero worship/getting my validation fix/pink glasses about this MA but man, it feels good. I always remember my teacher who is the most competent person I've learned under yet, telling us how she came back here from Cambridge, thinking that she would be like, a beacon of light and knowledge, which is just so... it can sort of make you feel very special, studies like these. I try to circumvent it by reminding myself here and there that this is all cringe actually. :D :D But no, I just try to not become a smartass mostly, and I slip up sometimes, but it's a process. Like most things. I was quite mean about someone I was talking about last week that bordered on mean-spirited gossip and afterwards I caught myself and went, oh. That was shit of me. I'll have to not do that again. But it's almost relieving to see that I still have growing to do.

Oh! Also! A thing that really turned the tide of this week is the new story me and Laura are writing, I've genuinely never been as obsessed with something I'm writing before. It's a modern-day vampire story! I'm writing a human named Adrien Deramus! He works in IT and has like, an entire semi-tragic backstory! And like, I really find myself fleshing out more of the world and NPCs in this story than I usually do, I have cooked up, what, four or five NPCs already, one of which Laura took over and who now is my fave boy, and a couple of which I just so enjoy writing. I'm really writing it like a novel, which is wild as usually Laura writes the longest posts but I've really been going 4 pages to 1 page by her thus far. I just love my boy so much! And I love writing him and the world so, so much. Yesterday I literally studied the entire day and the moment I got off studies at 21:30, I sat down and wrote this story for two and a half hours straight.

I've thought for the longest time that I can't do writing, cuz doing it for any sort of publishing intimidates me and I suck at thinking of long, overarching story lines with concrete endings, but this has sort of made me think that maybe I can write something for publishing some day. Because I dearly love this on-the-spot creativity that I have only gotten from one other place - DMing, and I know that the stuff I write is pretty good. I even thought once of writing a book together with Laura, inspired by the co-authored After The Storm, before realizing that it's a horrible idea because we both have huge complexes about writing. :D But I think it could be possible, one day, and I am so excited for the possibility.

So today I'm floating in a blissed out mood because of the amazing seminars yesterday, the burning excitement and pride about our vampire story, along with the tiredness of not getting nearly enough sleep all week and being overworked, but also the knowledge that I'm going to skip the last two lectures today to do some fun shit instead.
I probably have to get enough sleep one of these days, haah.

Anyways, that's basically it! Oh, I also got a binder but we're currently quarantining that fact to "we do not want to think abt it too much lest we get overwhelmed" *finger guns*.

See ya around! :33

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Honorary Astronaut - Final Dream Machine

Men will see an anime and say "is anyone going to watch that?" and not wait for an answer.
Hello :D

Last week was still p tired and I am still p anxious and unmotivated BUT after like, a year? More? Of not watching anime, or anything else really, I wanted to spend time with a dear weeaboo friend and we decided on watching psycho pass again together since I remember almost nothing abt it, but that it was nice. But, haah, it's heavy as fuck. And full of plot. So we settled for the no thoughts head empty skater anime my friend had been watching, and I watched the first ep and got my breath taken away by how.... simple and nice and wholesome and validating things can be. Doesn't matter if it's implausible, actually, it's greater because it isn't. It's just...... nice. Gives me the simple things I eat up in media for - validation and feeling cool - on a platter where I usually refuse it if it's too easy. I had somewhere lost the ability to enjoy a thing just like it is, without analyzing it for flaws and feeling like I can predict everything, and it felt really nice to just enjoy some implausible skating and jam to the kickass ost together with my friend.

So I told her that I wanna binge all 7 eps that are out that same evening and she asked me to repeat that bc it felt too good to hear :D :D Long story short I am now an avid fan of a skating anime. (Sk8 the infinity). It's great. gr8. And honestly it comes with two great parts - first part is another way to be able to get enrichment and forget about my worries that I had neglected for so long it felt like I was just remembering how thirsty I had been when finally getting a drink, and secondly, I got to spend meaningful time with a dear friend with whom my relationship is slightly bumpy at times and with whom it's been hard to connect bc of the lockdown. As bittersweet as they can be, the moments where you remember why you love someone and why you've been friends for so long are also so, so worth it. For me, this time, that just happened to be Vita dancing at the anime openings :D.

But yeah. And then there were no more eps and Vita wasn't responding to my demands for more recs right that minute so I watched some vids and saw that the same author has made Banana fish and went hoo ok let's try it and 1) sexyman angst with the promise of gay romance? yes, please(my friend who hadn't seen it told me that they are canon in this anime which they kinda are but not as explicitly as I might have hoped) 2) it reminded me so so much of what my friend Laura is writing - the way she likes to write her chars that is identical almost to Ash and the way she loves piling all trauma in the world on them that I lowkey convinced her to watch this even though she doesn't watch anime 3) it was very very good at keeping the tension up. So we did a lil bit of binging. Of course, after binging 24 eps in two days some of the plot becomes repetitive and some of it flies over your head and some of it loses its luster but yesterday I finished it and the ending completely blew me away and framed my love for it nicely. [I will try to be vague but read further at your risk if you haven't seen it].

I was honestly worried and surprised that despite the very heavy subject matter and plot it worked for me. But it's rather good at balancing the angst with fluff so much so that even after it skirted a little bit too close to my limits in angst (the scene where all of them are in a basement and forced to watch some bad bad men do bad bad things) I could predict that it would pull us back and give us a breather the next ep. And it did. So, despite everyone dying off like flies and despite the purposeful piling of angst on the mc (that I found lowkey endearing bc it reminded me of Laura's writing so much), I enjoyed it a lot. And I especially enjoyed the drama moments of it, I have always been a latent enthusiast of the sappy kind of drama that was Ash taking the offered pistol without hesitation, or this scene that is just.... great (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAlAYaIwHP0) or Ash always choosing to protect Eiji and asking him to stay and the ending, oh, the ending.

And that's honestly pretty amazing. So now I have a lot to think about and a lot of fics to discover and it's honestly great. Why did I stop watching anime? Or, more accurately, why did I get so twisted up in my high expectations and fear of new stories not matching them that I almost stopped consuming new stuff altogether? Well, I have some theories but hey, we have planned to watch Given and Promare and maybe something else together with Vita now and she's watching Banana Fish now bc of my vocal love and maybe that's just great and nice. I think it is.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: King Gnu - Prayer X, because of course

Good morning!
My proffessor reached out to me yesterday for paid help with a research project bc of my sociology skills and on the one hand I am like wow this is kinda like validation that she reached out and trusted me with this and on the other hand I'm like uhh should I have, what if I get too busy with primary job/studies and on the third hand I'm like money $.$. I could buy furniture!!! New pc chair!!! and on the third hand I am like sure is intimidating to sell your skills not knowing if you can do smth first - I've grown soft in my current job. But mostly I am happy about it, also bc the adult part of me hollers about the layers of networking and a foothold in the job market I am getting with this.

There is fog outside and I am laying in my bed and typing this on my phone while feeling a lil used after sleep, like I didn't get to scrape all the tired away during the night. An entire day ahead of me, huh?

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: The Antlers - Just One Sec - Edit

Hello!
Have been wanting to put more of me out there, whatever that means, and hey, I did enjoy the experience of blogging my Icelandic erasmus so gonna give dreamwidth a go. I don't expect this to become like a social media site for me, since the less people see this the more likely I am to spill my guts here rather than write them in a book in a single player minecraft world and leave it on a lectern before promptly abandoning the world (uhhh not like i've done that). But who knows. I am, after all, doing this because of chasing the high of human connection.
So, hello.
Update: wrote a bio, yaay! But yeah, this is just setup of things and a formal hello. Will probs start posting more the following week, maybe will even do these *shudders* people attracting things sis is going on about. Oh yeah, my sis is

thenewbuzwuzz, and you can see all kindsa Buffy stuff there if that strikes your fancy :D :D