thinking since '98

as melbourne begins to crawl back into hibernation while the depths of winter wrap us up in its frigid arms and the stress of senior year is starting to smother me like a homicidal maniac with a pillow, it's time to look back. and reflect. and wish i was back in hawaii like i was in january 2015.

what is this, the fourth post in a month? unexplained hiatus who?

anyways

i think the main reason that i stopped blogging oh so long ago is that i felt that it was pointless. i was ignoring homework and other priorities in favour of pouring my heart and soul into a post that practically no one would read. to try and fix this, i'd post the link for each of my blog posts on my tumblr with copious amounts of hashtags that were barely relevant in an attempt to reach a wider audience. but even then, i assume the handful of people that even bothered to click the link were just there to skim through another piece of work to do with their fandom before never checking out my blog again. that's not what i wanted. i wanted readers. i wanted friends.

then i realised that this sense of isolation was probably to do with the fact that i was isolated. i was trying to reach out to the teen blog universe but i was barely in it myself. i wasn't following any other blogs similar to mine - i wasn't really reading any other blogs at all. i was just wandering around on a lonely, empty road yelling my opinions into the nothingness.

so i turned to my good old pal, google. i scoured through posts and posts about 'the next tavi gevinsons' and 'up and coming teen bloggers to look out for'. i read through article and article on teen vogue, forbes and elle. i even clicked onto the second google search-page. but the second i clicked on each link, i would just dig up a dead blog. their owners had left them ages ago for the bright lights of ready-made social media accounts on instagram and twitter, abandoning their adolescent obsessions like a nintendog. when they were older, they might come back to blogging but i didn't care. adult blogs didn't interest me - i didn't want to read about divorces, mid-life crises and fabulous meatloaf recipes. i thought the world of teen blogging was over. that is, until i stumbled across 'teenage blogger central'.

suddenly i was faced with a buttload of blogs that were actually still being updated. there were people all around the world that were my age who were writing and creating and photographing things that i actually liked. the world of teen blogging wasn't dead - i was just looking under beds when i should of been searching through the clouds.

so, don't make my mistake. hit up tbc. trust me, you'll probably find a blog that's a lot better than this one.

(born in 1998 and have a voice to share with the world? click here to find out how you can be heard!)

i really liked this movie. like, a lot. not that that surprised me - it had the makings of all my favourite films: life-changing road trips, loveable pricks, the blackest of humour and subplots dedicated to peeing. the fundamentals of caring was crude and heartwarming - exactly the way i like it.

mind the pun but this film had all the fundamentals of being a giant sob-fest. there's the dying kid and the man with the secret tragedy and the girl trying to find her place. thankfully, though, tfoc decided to say fuck all that and launched straight into broken characters who had either experienced or were experiencing shitty things but had more to them than their circumstances. they demanded no pity and instead forced their way into your heart with obstinate determination and humour as sharp as the metaphysical knife they wielded to slash through their grief.

to be honest, the story was a bit cliched but personally i would say that fell towards its favour. tfoc wasn't emotionally draining like a lot of other films that deal with sickness or dying. it flatlined in the best kind of way possible because it let you just genuinely enjoy the ride. my facial expressions didn't contort into side-splitting laughter or heart-wrenching tears. rather they found themselves in the content middle of the spectrum where they alternated between warm smiles, furrowed brows and surprised exhales of amusement. i sat here for the past 1 hour and 37 minutes and had a good time from the moment the first shot popped up till the end credits rolled. if this were a straight comedy movie, more likely than not that would mean the conclusion of my experience. but this was even better because it made me think. and it made me feel. its heartfelt-ness was quiet and unassuming and i'm so grateful it never felt like it was shoving good vibes down my throat.

i haven't read the revised fundamentals of caregiving yet and i hate myself for it. i can only assume it's even better than the film. except i've been a fan of craig roberts ever since i watched submarine so i'm kind of glad that i had the opportunity to get to know the tantalising character that is trevor through his lens. though, the real highlight of this film was getting to watch selena gomez portray grown up alex russo dealing with not receiving the family magic by running away from home, smoking, and unleashing the filthy language that we all knew was waiting to pounce behind her disney facade.

also, as an australian who has never eaten a slim jim, this has set my expectations soooooo high.

(born in 1998 and have a voice to share with the world? click here to find out how you can be heard!)

when i was 13, my family and i went on a holiday to my parents' home country of sri lanka for a few weeks. during our stay, we spent a night at one of my uncle's house. we had been on holiday for about a week by then and i had already finished up all the reading materials i had brought with me. when i told my 18 year old cousin this, she promptly took me into her room and directed me to her book shelf where amidst various picture-books and hardbacks, was a neat row of archie comics.

i had never even heard of the archie universe in my life, but after that night i was obsessed. the next day, my cousin took me to the bookshop where she bought them from. i use the term 'bookshop' loosely; it was basically a hole carved out of the wall in a shopping centre filled to the brim with every book you could imagine and a man squeezed into the middle who knew them all by heart. when we told him what we were looking for, he confidently dug through the books stored to his right and presented us with a stack of archie digests. from my pocket i pulled out basically all the money my parents had allocated me to spend on souvenirs for the trip and bought 14 comics. i still have them on my shelf above me as i write this right now.

that was just the beginning and over the last few years the iconic squad of riverdale have always been on the back of my mind. when i'm having a secret midnight feast i think of jughead. when i do something nice for someone else i think of betty. when i feel like throwing a tantrum i think of veronica. and, of course, any love triangle in any pop culture work ever pales in comparison to the shockingly functional mess that is betty-archie-veronica.

when i heard they were revamping the comics last year i was pumped. i remember when they did a different art style in jughead's the matchmakers. it was weird and after a few rows i kindda got used to it but it was definitely comforting to turn the page and have my classic cartoons waiting for me in the end. likewise, when i saw the new designs for the 2015 comics i was conflicted. but now i can confidently say i like it. it was modern and new but the stories still held the classic archie foundations and values. they respected the characters and while their origins might have swayed slightly from the original comics, it still managed to bring the sweet and all-ages appropriate riverdale world seamlessly to the 21st century while achieving a sense of freshness and relevancy.

when i heard that the cw was creating a live-action tv show, i was even more hyped. i never really got into the original animated series so i was excited to see my beloved crew on the small screen. that is, until i heard the intended direction of the highly-anticipated adaption and i realised that the only similarities between the comics and the show were going to be the characters' names and hair colour. that's it.

i read a vanity fair article on what we could expect from the new series and i'm still in shock. apparently the first season is going to focus on a murder. a murder. in riverdale. riverdale being the most wholesome and least likely place for a murder to happen in the entire universe! archie and co. are known for getting into bizarre but they're always charming and innocent - not homicide! and who is going to be our poor, dead victim? none other than mr jason blossom. the jason blossom, you ask? cheryl's twin brother? hates "townies"? can be surprisingly kind? is in love with betty? frankly, who knows. in this version he's probably a crackhead sex addict because that's what everyone else is:

betty is being drugged by her mother to focus on school. the bromance between archie and jughead is fractured. betty and veronica's friendship is on the rocks. but the part that had me reeling the most was "the sudden end of [archie's] forbidden relationship with riverdale's young music teacher, ms grundy". um... what? ms grundy? teacher ms grundy? this ms grundy?

so i had this dream the other night and i've been thinking about it a lot hence i wanted to record it somewhere but the trials of year 12 have caused my hand to ache at the mere glance in the direction of a writing utensil and i don't want the people i know in real life to gain insight into my hidden subconscious which rules social media out so i thought, hey! why don't i use that blog that i haven't touched in a buttload of time?

anyways

in my dream, i was part of the avengers (the marvel kind, not the british tv series that aired in the 60s which i may have mistaken for my beloved superheroes when flicking through the tv guide many a time). obviously, that's not a very unique fantasy - comic book worshippers probably have wet dreams to that same concept on a daily basis. however, rather than having the alien war or whatever take place in a poor, featured-in-every-movie-since-the-dawn-of-cinema american city while australia chills tranquilly far, far away, the avengers came down under to melbourne, because thats the place my sleeping brain knew and therefore it could destroy.

so my dream self was at home, watching tv with my older brother when BREAKING NEWS! A BAND OF SUPERVILLAINS IS ATTACKING MELBOURNE! AVENGERS ROLL OUT ASSEMBLE!

my designated avengers team member pager that i kept with me at all times (because this is 2016 and that's the widely used mode of communication states my subconscious confidently) began to beep hastily and, as i clicked it off, i only remember a single thought running through my dream mind: ah fuck, i have to help.

my brother pushed me off the couch and out the door excitedly, assuring me he'd watch me on the news. i stood on my front porch and sighed. here we go again i thought before bending my knees and launching myself into the skies, flying effortlessly through the clouds.

i took the route that we would normally take by car if we were heading into the heart of the city - rather than how the crow flies - as i glided above cars rushing outward bounds on the freeways and twisting my body in line with the turning roads. occasionally people stopped in their hurry to get away from the chaos i could hear ahead of me to point at the "flying avenger here to save us all". i waved awkwardly and sped up towards the cbd.

in my avengers essential ear piece, i could hear that the fight was well underway. the evil enemy team was made up of - well, what do you know - the same amount of members as us, the avengers. therefore, we were each delegated a different villain to defeat. mine was a hulking woman built not-unlike an amazonian on steroids, complete with enviously strong thunder thighs that no amount of squats would ever let me obtain. with only my ability to fly no better than a well-constructed paper aeroplane, i was fucked.

so what did i do? i procrastinated. all the way to my deepest subconscious, my go-to method of coping with stress was procrastination.

"where are you?" black widow yelled into the intercom.

"sorry! saving civilians!" i replied, helping an old lady cross a road next to where i had been watching the battle from a far, far away distance.

"your assignment is helping mine kill me!" iron man exclaimed, whizzing past me as i tried to begin rebuilding the fallen eureka tower with three bricks i found at a construction site.

"is dinushka even in this movie?" hawkeye asked and i didn't dare take a breath in case they'd hear me and remember that i was.

eventually captain america finished up his nemesis and informed me he was coming over to help me end mine, so i flew out of the empty coffee shop where i'd been taste-testing their now abandoned muffins-of-the-day and caught up with the wonder woman who looked like she ate wonder woman. panting from the effort, captain america assumed i was tuckered out from my brave fight and with no reason to believe otherwise, good old steve did all the work.

the rest of my dream is a haze of relief and shawarma but basically the moral is, people say your dreams reveal your true self, and apparently i wear my soul on my sleeve because i handled that situation exactly as i would any of my real-life responsibilities - with procrastination and muffins

(born in 1998 and have a voice to share with the world? click here to find out how you can be heard!)