October passed way too quickly and was not properly fun-spirited spooky for me! I didn’t dress up as there were no parties for me to go to, but also, I had homework due that day. (That's where the real spookiness came in haha.) Also, I was still recovering from LASIK eye surgery that I got on the 29th that my mom gifted me for my birthday and Christmas. The procedure itself took about 15 minutes where, if not for the Valium the doctor prescribed, would have absolutely been panic attack inducing. However, I was able to see almost instantly. It was a little hazy, and once I got to the car I closed my eyes and couldn’t physically open them until I got home without them pouring tears like a water fountain and intense pain like crushed glass was in my eyes. I took my recommended nap and once I woke up, I could see!
Lilly, my one black cat, was the first thing I saw after I lifted my eye shield (to protect my eyes as I slept) and she crawled over my hips to investigate my face. I’m sure I smelled quite odd, especially my eyes. I looked up and noticed I could see my Digimon shrine from across the room and read the VHS tape’s title. For perspective, I couldn’t see any text before the surgery unless it was less than a foot in front of my face with a -5.00 prescription. This was AMAZING. I can now see, for all intents and purposes, perfectly!
Monthly Media
I READ
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
I WATCHED
Demon Slayer My Hero Academia
The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan
Haunted: Latin America Holy Hell
Sweet Home Squid Game
Inside Job
I LISTENED TO
The Last Podcast on the Left
Queers for Fears Trust Me
My Ordinary Life by the Living Tombstone
Halloweenie: IV by Ashnikko
The Bidding by Tally Hall
GOALS FOR NOVEMBER
Survive. I’ve been very stressed out and struggling with my mental health during the end of the month and it’s been hard to get out of bed in the morning and convince myself life is worth slugging through. I’m still meeting with my therapist, particularly tackling some difficult things, so that may be attributed to this whole downswing I’ve been in. Otherwise, I need to start writing my thesis as that is the only thing I was unable to complete really from last month. I did all my other thesis things though! For November I aim to distribute my reader’s survey regarding representation in YA fiction, create an industry survey, and start writing a significant amount of my thesis. Project-wise? Who knows what I’ll do if anything.
FEATURED CREATOR OF THE MONTH
One of my closest friends that I am always in absolute awe of her work, Marine and I worked together at Hot Topic during the middle of the pandemic. I remember one day when we were talking about art she noted she designed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt she was wearing and I was immediately struck by her talent. Marine draws a lot of fanart, especially for videogames and animated shows, injecting her own style and expressionism into her pieces, especially her animations! I catch myself bursting into laughter from the wild expressions she manages to capture that are just incredibly truthful in the emotions they are representing.
Self-taught and endlessly talented, Marine can comfortably create art with and without lines in a way that often blends the two together and makes me wish for some talent to be spared for the rest of us (/j). Her ability to render both characters and objects using her apt color theory skills is inspirational, and her fantastic sense of composition with lighting and dynamic poses are likely thanks to her observations of varying media types and from the realm of animation itself.
I recently commissioned Marine to depict a few of my characters from my WIP graphic novel series Caramel Crunch having a snowball fight and up to some shenanigans and I cried a little bit from how well she captured their personalities and how beautiful it came out to be. After having a mental breakdown for a week with a demented Greek chorus chanting in my brain to kill myself, being surprised with the finished product of this commission inspired such hope in me and life as a whole that it brought me to a safer mental place after the fact. A part of my personal philosophy is to break down the stigma of mental health issues, so I hope you'll forgive me for potentially oversharing there. Art is powerful and can bring joy and help others, and that's what I hope to do with my creations too.
With that said, Marine is open for commissions and you can find more information about them here! You can find her art on Instagram and Twitter. Additionally, she currently has a GoFundMe fundraiser in memoriam for her sister and mother who recently passed away in a tragic car accident, so if you are capable of donating you can do so here.
Stay safe, and create some good out there!