fairy skeletons.: Three Blog Awards (Coincidence? I think not.)

Maybe it's because I finished Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater a little while ago, but I can't stop thinking about the power of threes.

Anyway.

To start off - the lovely Alyssa at Insanity Inc. nominated me for three blog awards! So it's only natural that I open up this huge post with a big thank-you to her. I don't know if I've mentioned it (read: I have indeed mentioned it), but you should totally check out her blog and her writing because she's brilliant.

The Rules:

♥ Thank the person who nominated you and include a link to their blog.
♥ List the rules and display the award.
♥ Add 7 facts about yourself.
♥ Nominate 15 other bloggers.
♥ Follow on blogger the person who nominated you.

My Facts:

1. I'm very short. (Around five feet and two inches tall, or approximately 157 centimeters.)
2. My favorite film score composer of ever is Hans Zimmer (Inception, Sherlock Holmes - the Robert Downey Jr. version, The Lone Ranger, etc.). If you haven't listened to any of his pieces you should do that. Seriously.
3. I currently have thirteen books on my bookshelf that I have not read. ("For shame, Christina!" you say.) And that's not even counting the unread books on my Kindle. *sobs*
4. I once took a synchronized swimming class. You can imagine how well that went.
5. For some reason I constantly get called 'Christine'.
6. My glasses are purple. *grins*
7. And I'll go Alyssa's route here and talk about classes! I'm taking Literature/Composition 10, World History 10, AP Statistics, Graphic Design 1, STEM Physics, and Japanese 1. So far I'm getting less homework than I did in middle school and am feeling extremely weird with so much free time. (I'm just going to ignore PE, because don't I always?)

Best Blogging Buddies Award

The Rules:
☼You must make a post to show your award on your main blog.
☼You must tag the person who nominated you in your post.
☼You must nominate all of your best buddies, and those whom you want to become best buddies with, who, to your knowledge, have not been nominated for this award.
☼You must ask your buddies at least 15 questions in your post.
☼You must answer all of the questions your buddies ask you on your post.

Imagine a door. Any door. Describe it?

It's painted a deep green, with a doorknob worn smooth by years of turning, turning, turning. Something about it is out of place, like it's being shifted and blurred by a layer of smoke, and it smells burnt, though it shows no signs of damage. When you reach out and place your hand on it, it's warm to the touch, strangely so.

Naturally, when you try to get it open, it's locked.

Pick up the book nearest to you and read the fifth sentence on page seventy-six.

Actually, in the book nearest to me - Collapse by Jared Diamond, which I'm reading for World History Honors and desperately trying to enjoy but struggling - page seventy-six is blank. So.

What's your favourite colour? What's the nearest object to you that is this colour?

My favorite color pretty much changes based on my mood, but right now I think it's this one (giving you an image because I feel too lazy to describe it):

I don't think there are actually any objects in my house that are this color. A shame, I know.

Which is your favourite literary character?

I swear this is one of the most cruel questions I've ever been asked. HOW DO I CHOOSE?

Okay, so at the moment I'm really loving Karou from Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. This girl may seem like a Mary Sue at first, but the way she picks up the pieces of herself time and time again after being shattered just tugs at my heartstrings. She is tender yet strong. Indestructible. Also, she is magical and wonderful and is an artist and has blue hair.

Heck, I even made her a fanmix.

Subject you're taking that you hate most?

This isn't normally the case, but right now I absolutely loathe Literature/Composition. It's not because I hate the subject itself - why on earth would I be a writer if I did? - it's that we just spent two and a half months on Lord of the Flies and we've been writing CHAPTER SUMMARIES. (The book is less than two hundred pages long. I have no idea how this happened.) Worse still, I've already done this book for school - in seventh grade, and I think we did more in-depth in-class analysis back then. It's not that Lord of the Flies is a bad book, though. It's actually very thought-provoking and fairly well-written besides. It's just that no one should be made to read it this slowly.

But now the LotF unit is over and we're doing poetry, so hopefully it gets better. (But I kind of think it won't, because the class is honestly kind of a joke.)

When did you sleep last night?

Something like 12:30 am? This is entirely the fault of anime.

The most amazing thing that's happened to you in the last week?

This. (Thanks, Alyssa.)

Who's in your profile photo? If it's yourself, what's special about this photo?

I honestly don't know - it's a silhouette photo that I have no idea where I found. It'll probably change soon. *grins sheepishly* (On that note, does anyone have ideas for what I should use as my new profile photo?)

Favourite OTP ever?

This is very cruel. Along the lines of the favorite literary character question earlier.

*makes inhuman noises*

I'm going to have to say Blue Sargent x Richard Campbell Gansey III from The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, also termed "Bluesey" or "doomed" according to the author. (I affectionately call them Dick and Jane.) There's so much tragedy and tenderness and heart in their relationship - meaning in the silences and the loneliness and the in-between moments.

AND IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR A KISS? ARGH.

Which fandom are you not in but you admire a lot?

I really admire the ASOIAF (A Song of Ice and Fire for those of you who don't know) fandom, which Alyssa herself is a part of, as well as some others on the Internet that I see around. The book series by George R. R. Martin just sounds so awesome - I have no idea why I haven't gotten to it yet - and the TV series sounds equally amazing. Plus, the fan work (art! art! art! also music!) that comes out of this fandom is just mind-blowing. I want to be in this fandom! Ahh!

My answer to this question also may or may not be influenced by this:

I'm hooked on the Game of Thrones main theme. SEND HELP.
— christina (@clocksandcages) November 29, 2014

Favourite fairytale from a country your parents/grandparents/known ancestors were from?

All of my known ancestors are from Korea (and I'm very proud of my heritage), so our folklore isn't really termed as "fairy tales", but I'll make do. (Plus KOREAN FOLKLORE IS AMAZING.)

There's one story that goes something like this (although it varies widely depending on who you hear it from, and I may have muddled it up a bit):

Long ago, there once was a peasant woman who made a living selling rice cakes. She had a son, Haesik, and a daughter, Dalsun - the son was older and very wise, and the daughter was younger and very innocent. They lived together in a small cottage far from the nearest village.

The peasant woman often went to the village for a day to sell her rice cakes, and on one such day, she encountered a tiger on the way home. The tiger demanded that she give him a rice cake; otherwise, he would eat her. Frightened, the woman gave him her best one, but the tiger simply came again and again, taking rice cakes until they were all gone. The woman begged him to spare her life for the sake of the two children waiting at home, but the tiger, consumed by thoughts of an easy meal, devoured her.

The tiger then kept the mother's clothes and set off towards the children's house. The children had locked the door, and the tiger knocked and asked to be let in. Dalsun moved to open the door right away, but Haesik stopped her, alarmed that the tiger's voice was so different from their mother's. In his frustration, the tiger covered his paws with rice cake powder. He fooled the children into thinking his skin was as pale as their mother's and opening the door.

The tiger immediately lunged at them, and Haesik and Dalsun ran as fast as they could until they reached a tall tree and began to climb. Not to be thwarted, the tiger retrieved an axe from inside the house and began chopping the tree down.

Dalsun prayed for a rope from the heavens - if the children were good-hearted enough to be saved, the rope would hold firm, but otherwise, it would be rotten. Accordingly, a rope came, and Haesik and Dalsun were able to climb it into the sky. The tiger saw what they were doing and prayed for a rope for himself. The rope that came down for him was rotten, and it broke after mere moments.

The tiger fell and died and I cheered because honestly I hate this tiger so much.

Once they'd reached the heavens, Haesik and Dalsun became the sun (Haenim) and moon (Dalnim), respectively, and brother and sister still light up the night sky.

What do you find lacking in your life?

I find that I have all these grand aspirations and then not enough motivation to follow through with them. I want that to change. I want to feel productive and work hard at things I love, and I feel like that just isn't happening right now.

What are you going to do in the next five minutes, other than answering these questions?

I'll probably work on either my Scholastic Art and Writing Awards entry (yay for Orpheus/Eurydice genderflipping and Japanese elements in fantasy) or my cases for Speech and Debate (slightly less yay because I'm a singularly horrible debater).

What's the one thing you want to change in the world?

Institutionalized prejudice, definitely. Racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, etc. It's so destructive and counterproductive and horrifying. And insidious, because it's so easy to pretend that it doesn't exist. It strips people of their humanity and that shouldn't happen.

Freeform — tell us anything you want to say.

I expect that some people might use this space for something very deep and thought-provoking. I however, am going to signal boost a cause that I really care about:

I'll leave you with their extremely important mission statement and a link to their website:

We Need Diverse Books is a grassroots organization created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. We Need Diverse Books is committed to the ideal that embracing diversity will lead to acceptance, empathy, and ultimately equality. We recognize all diverse experiences, including (but not limited to) LGBTQIA, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities. Our mission is to promote or amplify diversification efforts and increase visibility for diverse books and authors, with a goal of empowering a wide range of readers in the process.

Also, their first Indiegogo campaign is ending in ten days, so please contribute if you can!

EDIT: I forgot to include my questions for the nominees, gah!

1. What's one thing you've always wanted to do that you managed to finally get done this year?
2. Name five things you genuinely and wholeheartedly like about yourself.
3. What's your favorite part of blogging?
4. Describe your writing style (in blog posts or creative writing, your choice!) in three sentences.
5. Is there a song that's currently stuck in your head? If so, what is it?
6. If you could only eat one kind of fruit for the rest of your life, what would it be?
7. What language(s) - real or fictional - would you love to learn?
8. What is your opinion of silence - the all-encompassing, thick-as-a-blanket kind?
9. Without using the Internet or the news, predict the weather for tomorrow (be as far-fetched or practical as you want).
10. In the movie Rise of the Guardians (which I personally love), each Guardian has his or her own "center", or a single value that makes them who they are. For example, Santa Claus's center is "wonder". What do you think your center would be?
11. If a movie was made about your life, which actors/actresses would you put in the cast?
12. How do you like your eggs cooked (or do you not like eggs at all)?
13. How would you describe your fashion sense?
14. Do you have an "aesthetic"? If so, describe it for us!
15. Absolute favorite poem?

The Rules:
♥ Thank the person who nominated you.
♥ Leave a link to their page.
♥ Give a brief story about how you started blogging, and share some tips.
♥ Nominate 15 other bloggers
♥ Notify your nominees by email or comment


The Blog's Origin Story:

Nothing terribly glamorous, I'm afraid. I started out blogging on Wordpress (don't go hunting for that now, it's long gone) and was thoroughly awful at it, because I had no real idea of what I wanted to do. When I made this blog, it wasn't really a case of "I have finally found a grand purpose for my blogging life and will proudly carry it out"; it was more like "Ooh, Google has a blogging platform and I want to play with it".

Blogging Tips:

• Make friends! Blogging can be a very lonely endeavor for a very long time without them, and I'm so thankful for the friends I've been meeting in recent years. 
• Comment. If you're anything like me, you perk up every time you get an email saying that someone's commented on one of your posts. So leave meaningful, kind comments on blogs you love reading, and people are sure to return the favor. Never think that your comment bothers someone, because almost 100% of the time, they'll love you for stopping by.
• Don't stress because of "blogging obligations". A blog is your space to do whatever you want with, and no one will hate you if you aren't able to put up X post on X day or if you don't post enough or something along those lines. "Blogging obligations" will only make you unhappy and cause you to question why you created this blog in the first place, and that makes it stop being fun.
• Social media counts. Whether it's Twitter, Tumblr, or any other secondary platform, it really helps you connect with others who share your interests. It might help to get on specific social networks that reflect what you like - for example, I made a Figment account because I love to write, and thus I found fellow writers who I now consider very good friends.
• Have a nice design. Not only is a pretty design easier on the eyes and really fun to set up, it draws more people to your blog.

That's all from me! Now for my nominations.

My Nominations

Since Alyssa and I have lots of mutual friends, she nominated many of the people I would have spotlighted. (They're all awesome too, by the way.) So this won't be quite fifteen, but here you are! (My apologies if you've already been tagged for any of these.)

Adelyn @ Seeking Saturday

Kimberly @ I Wear Milk Crowns

Pseudonymous @ A Jar of Something

Alex @ Third Star to the Right

Ryanne @ thinking out loud

Morning @ The Ups and Downs of My Not-So-Average Life
Katie @ Adventures in Katieland

Ahh, blog awards are so much fun! I hope you enjoyed my answers.