Category: Junior Literary

This will be my last blog, so in order to (kind of) celebrate I’m going to be writing about my current hyper fixation: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m going to have fun and rank my favorite ninja turtles. I won’t be looking at any specific shows or renditions, instead I’ll be judging them by their over character.

 

Mikey

Mikey is a fun-loving dude. He’s the team goof ball and general party guy. I like him due to his silliness. He always breaks the tension and chooses to have fun rather than try to remain serious like his brothers. Despite his silliness he is the most naturally gifted in fighting out of his brothers.

Donnie

Donnie is the genius of the group. His inventions often aid him and his brothers, although sometimes they wind up getting the team into trouble. He usually is very nerdy and displays the calmest personality of the four brothers. I enjoy how much of a nerd he can be, as well as how he uses his intelligence rather than simply his strength to win a fight.

Leo

Leo is the leader of the team. Often times he is the most mature and most serious out of his brothers. Leo is a character that I will either love or hate. In some renditions, I find his character quite compelling and interesting, while in others I find him to be annoying. I find that I most like him when he is having trouble with the responsibility of his leadership role. He is a kid after all, and his need to look after his brothers conflicting with him only being a teenager is very interesting to me. However, in some renditions being “the leader” is his entire personality and he can become whiny and controlling.

Raph

Raph is the tough, hotheaded brute of the team. I feel bad for putting him at the bottom of the list, but it’s only because he usually is the one to cause conflict. Raph is notorious for having some sort of rival with Leo due to him hating authority and having to listen to his brother. I like seeing Leo and Raph have their rivalry as long as it is written well, but sometimes seeing them fight can be annoying. Same goes for Raph’s anger. His anger is a large part of his character and I like to see it explored; however, his angry outburst can seem random and unjustified.

For this weeks blog I decided to write about who, what, where, and everything else impacts my writing. I think I write about a wide variety of themes and plot lines. I thought you may be interested in seeing where they all come from. 

Mental Health

I commonly use the topic of mental health in my writing because it is one of a few things I can strike a passion for. I love forming a character to represent this illness. I also really enjoy getting to research the mental illnesses I write about. I obviously try to do extensive research before writing the story. There is so much to be aware of in the area of mental health, and I feel like I can show that through my stories. 

Societal issues

This is another subject I am passionate about. When it comes down to sexism, racism, or just hate in society in general I feel like I have to write about it. Societal problems strike a special anger for me, but I can vent that onto a piece of paper. I feel like there are so many places society as a whole still needs to improve in. 

Specifically teenage mental health/issues

It gets technical here, but this is my favorite subject matter to write on. Teenagers do not get heard a lot of the time when it comes to their mental health, or what people call “teenage drama” can be serious in the eyes of the teenager. I have a specific, festering passion for this subject. I could go on and on about why I like writing about this topic. 

Lighting and sound

This is not a topic I like to write about, but my setting. Certain areas I can be more or less productive. I like it to be in my own personal area, but that does not always mean my room. Take our classroom for example (3rd block). I sit on the almost end of our table but I am not shoulder to shoulder with anyone. I have enough of my own space to feel like I am in my personal area. My room is the ideal place of course. I like for the lights to be dim. I usually sit at my desk with the lava lamp on my desk, and my roommates lamp on on the other side of the room. I like to have 2 sounds going (not at the same time). I either like to hear white noise while I write, or music. It depends usually. If one doesn’t work I will swap to the other. I like my room freezing at all times, so I can bundle into a blanket. Comfy and cozy. 

 

oh dear god.

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i have been the biggest fan of the guardians of the galaxy series since the very first one came out. i’ve seen each movie in theaters within two days of it coming out. i love it. i’ve also seen the specials (i love them as well). so obviously when i found out that the last one would be coming out, i was destroyed but excited. i love james gunn- he is one of my favorite directors, and he never lets me down. i knew i would love the third installment, but i didn’t realize the extent of the affect it would have on me. not only do i think it is my favorite movie in the series, but for the past couple of days, it has completely changed my way of thinking and made me so emotional. it might just be because of the point in the month, but i have been sobbing everyday since seeing it. ya’ll, when i watched it, i wanted to bang my head against the wall until it exploded. i genuinely could not take it. i’m very sensitive to harm towards animals, so this movie really got to me. my favorite character has always been rocket, so i was especially interested in this movie. it wasn’t until after my mom told me that she sobbed during it that i debated even going to see it in theaters. but of course i couldn’t break the streak, so i went with a couple friends. don’t do that. i held back tears for the sake of saving face- and now i’m going to go watch it again with my boyfriend, and i will not be holding back a single damn emotion. i grew so attached to these sweet characters just to- i won’t spoil it, but it gets super dark and super depressing. you will cry. you will sob. and then at the end you’ll attempt to smile as florence + the machine plays but inside you will be sobbing. 10/10 movie, 10/10 series.

it’s great to have friends.

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Hey guys, I am producing yet another blog, only one left after this. Since last week I did my least favorite foods, this week I’ll do my favorite foods. There aren’t the healthiest, and I don’t even know if some of these are even considered foods, but these are just foods I don’t think I would be able to live without.

1. Bacon 

Yes, it’s greasy and has fat and it’s unhealthy but I put it on everything, burgers, baked potatoes, omelets, and anything else I can think of. It’s so crunchy, and the flavor is out of this world. You can season bacon, but you really don’t have to do anything, and it still tastes so good. It’s also really easy to make. 

1. Pasta 

This is like a wide variety of things. I love any type of pasta and my mom tells me I eat too many carbs, but I don’t care. Macaroni, rotini, farfalle, ziti, penne, and fettucine, I eat it all. I like spaghetti, alfredo’s, and any other pasta bakes. 

1. Cheese 

I think this may be my favorite item in the list. Cheese is everything to me. I PUT IT ON EVERYTHING! I put it on sandwiches, pasta, burgers, baked potatoes, chicken strips, and anything else I can put it on. I feel bad for people who are lactose intolerant because I love dairy products. 

1. Pickles  

I’ve loved pickles all my life. I only eat sour and hot ones. They’re so good and I always put pickle salt on them. I eat so many sometimes I have to take a break and let my body rest but when I eat them, I eat multiple a day. They are so good, especially if they’re juicy and crunchy. I love pickles. My favorite brand is Best Maid, and you can only find them in select gas stations, which is kind of sad, but they also sell them at Wilson’s Meat Market in my city. 

1. Mayonnaise 

This is really the only condiment I like for real besides barbeque sauce and Polynesian sauce. It’s so thick and smooth and it goes on literally anything. Sometimes I put it on bread and just eat it by itself. It has a little bit of a tangy taste but it’s not sour nor is it sweet and that’s what I like about it. It’s the perfect neutral condiment to put on any food. 

That’s all for this week, see you later! 

Last week I started talking about some characters from a book I have recently finished reading called The Love Hypothesis and of course this is a continuation of that since I only did two of the characters so far. I said that I was gonna talk about Olive and Malcom for this post but I think I’m gonna switch it up a bit(adding more characters). This will likely also contain spoilers from the book so proceed with caution if you haven’t read it yet and you would like to.

Olive Smith

Olive is indeed the main character of the book and it would seem that she’d be the very first one I talk about before anyone else, but I really wanted to talk about Adam and Tom. Anyways, Olive is the sunshine in the grumpyXsunshine trope in the book and she definitely lives up to that “role” very well and she is a very lighthearted and kind person. The book does dive very deep into her character, though. It breaks down why she does what she does for her best friend and it also explains why she is in Stanford to become a scientist primarily in biology- to develop a possible cure for pancreatic cancer(it goes so much deeper than that, but I’ll leave that part for y’all to read if you wish to). As lighthearted and kind as she is, she is also very much an overthinker(something I relate to a little too well) and she has a lot of self-doubt and is one of those people that couldn’t think of a single thing about herself that someone else could like about her when in reality there isn’t anything that someone wouldn’t like about her. And I absolutely love how much of a selfless person she is.

Malcom (don’t remember his last name)

Let me start off by saying that we all need a Malcom in our lives. He is one of Olive’s best friends/roommate and quite honestly one of the best friends anyone could ask for. Since he and Olive are so close, he knows very well of the various struggles she goes through and is there for her in every way he knows he can be and always finds ways to cheer her up. Now, he does not like Adam whatsoever because he was overly critical of a paper that Malcom had submitted, but he set those past feelings aside after finding out that he and Olive are fake dating and why they are. He also becomes genuinely supportive when Olive tells him she’s developing real feelings for Adam. At the end of the book, Adam and Malcom end up getting along. I honestly love Malcom so much and feel he very much deserved the happy relationship he gets into towards the end of the book.

Anh (also don’t remember her last name)

Okay, if I am being totally honest, I found Anh to be slightly annoying but she is a really good friend to Olive(I feel like most of us have one of those people in our lives that we love so much but have to fight the urge to smack them upside the head). Anh is the reason why Olive and Adam are fake dating. How, what’d she do? She didn’t necessarily do anything, but she fell in love with Olive’s ex, Jeremy, but refused to pursue him even after Olive has told her many, many times that she is completely over him and she is okay with it, which she genuinely is because she and Jeremy weren’t that serious anyway and it was a short relationship. Anh finally decides to go out with him when she sees that Olive is “dating” Adam and has really moved on. She is also the friend that first detected that there were some real feelings on both sides. The reason I found her a little annoying is that she kept putting Olive in very awkward situations but I can’t really be upset because she didn’t know that it was fake.

Holden Rodrigues 

Last one and one of the most likeable characters. He’s funny, charming, loyal, and a genuinely good friend to Adam. Adam and Holden have bee best friends since childhood and have been there for each other when each were in touch situations. He also became a good friend to Olive as well, he was the one that first told her that Adam liked her for years. As I read more about Holden, the more I saw that he was kind of conflicted about Adam being friends with Tom because he had suspected that Tom wasn’t a real friend but he put off saying too much about it because he felt that he may have been too protective and maybe even jealous, but he knew something was off. Honestly, I can kind of relate to him because I have had friends who were hanging with toxic people but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to seem like a bad friend and didn’t want to start anything that was unnecessary in case I was wrong. But, of course, Holden was right about Tom.

That’s it, I have pretty much said everything I wanted about the characters. The Love Hypothesis is a really good and fun book and I really recommend it. But, of course, if it’s not your cup of tea, that’s completely understandable. I hope you have enjoyed this and I will see you again next week for the last time *sadness* </3

Hi, my faithful readers, hope you guys are doing well, I’m not. Anyways today’s blog is going to be my least favorite foods, well scratch that the foods that I absolutely hate. Broooo these are disgusting and ridiculous and DO NOT try to come in the comments defending any of these because I only tolerate food slander over here not praise lol.Okay I’ll probably do about 5 foods depending on how much I rant about each one but yea around 5. 

1. TOMATOES 

THEY SUCK! I don’t care bro there is no way you can defend these squishy, slimy, stinky, little things. They’re red and I don’t particularly love red things, and that little vine is usually pretty hairy which feels weird and sometimes almost cuts you. They rot really fast and they’re too sweet to be as acidic as they are. I know all this about them because I usually cook food when I’m at work and tomatoes happen to be one of the fruits/vegetables that I have to cut up and deal with. 

1. MUSTARD 

Yet another disgusting thing. I don’t really know if this counts as food because it’s technically a condiment but whatever I’m going to include it. It’s sour and when you squirt it out of the bottle it has that water stuff that comes out unless you shake it really well. It stinks and it’s in a big yellow bottle which is very much unappealing. 

1. LETTUCE 

Lettuce has got to be the nastiest thing I’ve ever tasted. I can’t decide if Iceberg lettuce or that pre-packaged spring mix is worse. Both of them suck so bad. Lettuce has gotten harder and harder over the years, and it is just a really unnecessary food. It feels like I’m chewing on plastic, I can never seem to finish chewing and swallow, so I end up choking. Most of the lettuce isn’t even green, it’s white, super thick, and nasty. 

1. STEAK 

It’s touch, fatty, and it takes an entire week sometimes more to digest. It’s one of those foods that I don’t like just because they aren’t good for you. I don’t like the smell, and I just don’t get the point of them. Most people see them as high class or pricey foods, but they seem like regular old scraps to me. 

1. CHITTERLINGS 

They stink so bad; they’ll have your house smelling like pigs for weeks. They are super hard to clean. They are all the unused and leftover parts of the pigs such as intestines. They are so disgusting and it’s like grinding your teeth against a Ziploc bag all day. I suggest you never try them. 

Anyways, that’s all for today folks see ya next week! 

welcome back to my random installment of my current rotation!! the month of april was big for me and music. a year ago, i grew an obsession with car seat headrest around this time- now, a year later, i have revisited that obsession and sparked a new one. so you’ll probably see some of them on there !! i also have some new artists that i’ve never heard previously on this list- including lil ugly mane. so, with that being said, let’s get into it !! 

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there must be more than blood – car seat headrest

this song has had a total chokehold on me recently. i wasn’t the biggest fan when i first heard it about a year ago- at least it didn’t totally incapacitate me. now however, the song has been playing at least once a day in my head for an entire month. i always said me and this band were connected souls, and now i’m really starting to think i was right about that. my favorite part of this song comes right around 3:17. the way will toledo sings those lines INCAPACITATES ME. it’s genuinely just so good. the lyrics too- i could go on forever. 

gimme shelter – the rolling stones

so, half of why this song has been on repeat for me is because i just wrote a piece surrounded by the song (you’ve probably already read it), but i also just found this song again after absolute YEARS of not hearing, and of course, i love it as much as i did back then. the backstory behind the background vocals always breaks my heart, but i can almost hear the pain in her voice towards the end of it- and it truly is so powerful. my mom would always play the rolling stones when i was younger, so now when the band plays, both me and my mother have a bonding moment. i really love this song, but after listening to it on repeat for 2 hours while i wrote my story, i love it just a tiny bit less /j.

porcelain slightly – lil ugly mane

i found this song on a youtube video by cscoop- one of my favorite youtubers. i skate, and he skates, so that’s a bond like no other. during one of his videos, this song came on and i instantly fell in love. something about it makes me think about when i was in my freshman year of high school. i feel like this song sounds like how i looked back then. i haven’t been skating in a while, but the next time i do, this song will be the first one i play.

it’s called a heart – depeche mode 

yes, i’m still thinking about seeing depeche mode for my birthday in october. i found this song while randomly shuffling through their discography, and i fell in love immediately. i first listened to the extended version, but i found that i love this version much better. dave’s voice always gets me- and martin’s lyrics are so ….. god i love them. such a great song, and i can’t wait to find more songs from them that i love.

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so that’s all for this week !! let me know if you recognize any of these awesome songs. so, yeah- cya next week !

As I was reading through the blog ideas website, I found one that sparked my interest. It said to interview a character from one of your stories. I’m choosing Felix from the most recent work shopped piece. I decided he would be a good fit, so you can see into his personality and get a feel for what talking with him would look like. Imagine this taking place before the climax of the story.

Q: Tell me about your childhood. What were the best and worst parts?

            “My childhood. It was unlike the average. I remember my classmates, this was probably the 7^th grade, they would go after school every single day to the park. I would watch them run in the opposite direction of my own walking path. How I wished I could, for just one day, go to the park with them. My mother required me home by 3:30 PM. That is when my piano lessons began. She had a professional come to our home every day until 5 PM. After 5, we would sit down and have dinner. Then, back to the piano until 7:30 PM. The best part of it all was obtaining the skill I desired: piano. But the worst part was my mother drilling it into my head. She gave me a mere 3 weeks to learn new pieces once I could read sheet music.”

Q: What is your profession?

            “Ah, this one is simple. I do not have one. I am unemployed. I decided music should be my only passion. My mother agreed. From there she agreed to support me financially. I live in an apartment that she pays rent for as long as I am producing music. I make my own money in ways of performance. For my friends or family. It does not give me much, but I need something inside my pockets. I am not a man of greed or value I would say. As long as I can do what I love, and I am grateful for the support of my mother.”

Q: What do you value most?

            “What do you think? What have I spoken most of during our time? Music! I value mostly my skill for music. I know I am a great pianist if not one of the best!”

Q: What is an object you still have from your childhood and what is the story behind it? 

            “That’s a good question. I have a bag of piano keys. They came from my first piano. I played the hell out of it to the point keys began falling off. Every time one fell off, I threw it into the bag.”

Q: Are you married? Children?

            “Noooo. Nor will I ever be. I see them as a roadblock. If I were to get either of those things, I would have to put consistent pauses in my musical career. I also could not afford it either. I have money to place into my music not a family.”

Q: Where do you live now? Why?

                “I still live exactly where I was born, Verona, Italy. La Cassa Rosa apartment complex. My rent? It is about 300 euro’s a month.”

Summer is coming up. I only have about three weeks of school left and then three months of free time before starting all over again in college. So, I’ve been thinking lately, what exactly am I going to do with this free time?

Personal work

First of all, I want to focus on doing my own artwork. School often makes it feel like I have to keep pumping out different work constantly. It can really become draining at some points. Usually, I feel very restricted in what I can or cannot create. So, over the summer, I’m going to create whatever I want.

new projects

Without the stress of school, I will have plenty of time to try new things. So I’m going to try some new things, specifically things that have to do with crafting by hand. I’ve always liked sewing, but I want to practice more with it. I really want to create items like stuffed animals and blankets. I want to make quilts, which is such a grandma activity to do, but I think it’s so charming. I also want to crochet, but I don’t think I’ll have the patience to learn how.

Summer trips

Above anything else, I want to have fun with my hometown friends. I’m leaving to go out of state for college and I know that I probably won’t be able to see them again for a while, so I’m going to spend as much time with them as I can. Right now, we’re planning to have a senior trip together. What exactly we’re going to do is still being planned, but either way, we’re going to have fun. Me and my mom are also planning a little kayaking trip. We haven’t been kayaking together since last summer and it’s finally warm enough to go again.

Love Hypothesis is the title of a book that I had just finished reading this past Saturday and, in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s a romance novel(more specifically a rom com). For this post, I thought it might be fun for me to talk about some of my favorite characters and my least favorite characters. I have a lot to say about each of them so this will more likely take two parts. Without further ado, please enjoy(full disclosure, if you haven’t read the book and you wish to, this will contain some spoilers)

Before we get into the characters, here’s a summary of the book:)

In the book, the main characters Olive and Adam meet in the bathroom(gender neutral, don’t freak out) and Olive’s freaking out because she’s not confident in her future in academia. Olive is wearing expired contacts(because college students can’t afford new ones) and it’s gotten to the point where she can’t see and she’s ranting to this stranger(Adam) and he encourages her. 3 years later, Olive gets caught in a situation with her best friend Anh and her ex Jeremy that leads to her and Adam fake-dating. Well, of course, as they spend more time together, Olive catches real feelings and they end up getting together for real in the end.

Adam Carlson

I felt this would be a good character to start with. In the book, it’s a grumpy and sunshine trope in which Adam is the grumpy one in this case. Adam is a professor at Stanford  University who has a reputation for being way too brutally honest when giving feedback to students. Of course, he’s different towards Olive and he’s a lot kinder and more encouraging towards her. His development in the book was really cute(in my opinion) and thanks to Olive, he becomes less cold in general. As it turns out, Adam has had a huge crush on Olive for three years, and I loved the way that it was revealed in the book. Of course it makes me wonder if that fact was the real reason that he agrees to fake date Olive. Regardless, I loved Adam’s character in general and the way he was towards Olive. The more you get into the book, the more you could tell how much he cared for her even before it’s directly revealed that had feelings for her.

Tom Benton

If you decide to read the book, do NOT get attached to Tom. Does he die in the book? If only… When he is first introduced, he seems like a genuinely good guy and he had me fooled until the end. I do hate his character. Why? Well, he does things for other people only if he knows if it’ll ultimately benefit him. There are a lot of examples that I won’t get into. But basically, he’s very good at manipulating people and he was one of Adam’s closest friends until Adam realizes the kind of person he really is. He’s one of those people to seems selfless and does selfless things for people but it’s ultimately to fulfill his own selfish agenda. You find little reason to not like him until the end and then it’s like the complete opposite, you end up finding very little reason to like him.

These are the only two I will talk about for this week. Next week, I will talk about Olive and one of her best friends Malcom. I hope you enjoyed this post, stay tuned for part two<3