fairy skeletons.: Month in a Nutshell: May 2015

Oh gosh, where did May go? Here's a brief recap, I guess!

on the blog

• For my second-ever Scribbler School post, I talked about how to make your names work for your story.
• I participated in the third round of #LitLove (which is an Awesome Thing that I do with the ATTAC gang), highlighting William Shakespeare and one of my favorites of his plays: Othello.
• I did Beautiful People again because it's fun and emotionally compromising. This time, I spotlighted Rowen Raveneye and Yvette Scarleigh.
• I featured Maggie Stiefvater's #twitterfiction for the fifteenth edition of Fiction Friday.

that one time I was offline *gasp*

• School is vaguely tolerable, if only because my history class is really interesting.
• I came in second at a state-level piano scholarship competition (on Mother's Day, no less), which was very cool and a wonderful surprise.
• I took my first (and hopefully last) AP exam of high school, for AP Statistics, which is the only AP class my normally-IB school offers. I think I didn't do too badly, shockingly enough.
• Toward the middle of the month, I came down with a debilitating cough/cold/generally gross thing. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly pleased about my immune system's decision to take a sudden holiday.
• I had a very relaxing and much-needed four-day Memorial Day weekend.
• During that weekend, I founded out I'd been admitted into The Adroit Journal's 2015 Summer Mentorship Program! (I saw the email and suddenly WHAT WAS AIR.) This is a summer-long writing mentorship for high school writers brought into being by the indomitable Peter LaBerge and his wickedly talented Adroit staff. So far the experience has been an absolute dream, and I can't wait to get into the heart of the program this summer—I'm being mentored by 2013 National Student Poet Aline Dolinh, whose work I've admired for ages (there is so much caps and excitement that I'm barely containing here).

I think poetry might end up taking over my life this summer. I am so okay with that you don't even know. Excited, even. #clearpriorities

— christina im (@_christinaim) May 29, 2015

(Yes, this is what that tweet was about.)

• Actually, a lot of poetry-related happenings went down this month.
• I got a really great score on the ACT Plan, which was great because I was pretty certain I'd screwed up that test. (For all you non-American friends *waves*, the ACT is one of the standardized tests that we can take in America to get into college, kind of like the SAT, and the ACT Plan is like an ACT prep test administered to high school sophomores—except when you're like my nerd friends and me and you take it as a freshman.)
• I was also given an honorable mention for outstanding ninth grade math (??? I'm honestly terrible at math) student at my school's academic awards. I'm pretty sure those are decided by teacher recommendations, and I wasn't even aware that my math teacher noticed me, so that was very cool.

I've been reading

• The Witch Hunter by Virginia Boecker, which was pretty enjoyable while I was reading it, but didn't hold up in retrospect (also some aspects of the book hurt my feminist heart in a big way).

I've been watching

Wolf Hall ended and I didn't know what to do with myself. The answer turned out to be WATCH MORE THINGS.

these cw poster things always look so absurdly contrived; they make me laugh

You probably know about how The 100 became one of my newest TV obsessions last month. So it's no surprise that I dove headfirst into season 2 both terrified and thrilled to be starting it.

IT'S EVEN BETTER. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS. I said last month that The 100 was everything I never knew I wanted, and that assessment held true in this second season. This is sci-fi at its grittiest and fiercest—so, thoroughly out of my comfort zone. It's something I never would've picked up on my own but am so glad I did (thanks, Tumblr). The tension and stakes are ramped up about 532%, the worldbuilding just gets richer and richer, the moral dilemmas are more thorny and heart-wrenching than ever, and the characters have come so far in their development it's just mind-blowing. Bonus points for diversity (!!!) and empowered girls (!!!) and combinations of the two (!!!!!!).

Spotlight of some of my favorite aspects of this season:

if you hurt raven reyes i will probably fight you fyi

this ship is everything? basically yes + look octavia's amazing

i should start a monty green appreciation campaign

you know lexa i love you as a character but sometimes just LEXA NO STOP

UPDATE:

I JUST FINISHED SEASON 2 OF #The100. IF YOU NEED ME I'LL BE HUDDLED IN A CORNER SOBBING. I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION FOR A FEW DAYS.

— christina im (@_christinaim) May 30, 2015

i will go down with this ship, no regrets

Something that a lot of people seem to not know about me is that I sometimes watch and fangirl over anime. I'm nowhere near as hardcore as a lot of anime lovers, but I do really enjoy anime when I delve into it. This month I started Sword Art Online, which is a fast-paced, engaging look into the world of virtual reality video games.

I've mainly stuck around because a) sword fight scenes are fun fun fun, b) the plot advances very quickly and I love it, c) the premise is ridiculous but the execution is unexpectedly awesome, and d) the characters are so lovable (plus character dynamics are so wonderful, especially the OTP I indicated above). The only thing I'd like to ask for from SAO is some deeper exploration of the moral issues that come up both inside and outside the games—I've yet to see the moral complexity that I crave from what is otherwise a really great anime (and so great for binging, OMG).

ahhhhhh

I'd been absolutely dying to watch The Theory of Everything ever since I heard it had been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and had gotten Eddie Redmayne the Oscar for Best Actor. (I'd only seen Eddie in Les Mis before that—I think he's adorable and a pretty good actor, but I didn't know if his performance could really hold up.) So when my mother rented the Blu-ray of course I was excited.

The film promised one of my favorite things: an intersection between love and science and history. Also Stephen Hawking. HOW COOL. And I wasn't disappointed! Aesthetically speaking, it's gorgeously done. Emotionally speaking, it's gorgeously done. The performances by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones were A+ (these two dorks being dorks together in the beginning were so perfect I could cry), the film score was super nice, and I came away with renewed faith in humanity, which is always something I need a boost in anyway. I'd definitely recommend this.

(I still don't think this tops The Imitation Game but hey! I'm slightly aggressively biased in favor of anything Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley do, so.)

help, someone teach me how to Instagram

Click each image to get to full-size!

very pretty arc of virginia boecker's the witch hunter

a walk so lovely i thought i was in fairyland

links of interest

• Alyssa @ The Devil Orders Takeout discussed the original Mulan ballad, which was awesome because the story of Mulan will always be gorgeous and I love it and GAH.
• Alyssa's #LitLove post was also superb this month because it was on Romeo and Juliet and it offered an intriguing view on Paris. Plus, feminist Juliet is my favorite Juliet.
• Topaz @ Six Impossible Things went to Hong Kong, took some lovely photos, and MET ALYSSA WHAT.
• Alyssa talked about her epic nine-hour marathon of the Hobbit + LotR films, thus introducing us to THE THRANDUIL HEADCANON THAT GIVES ME LIFE.
• Rachel Hartman, brilliant author of the Seraphina YA fantasy duology, offered some encouragement for writers in their eternal struggle against their inner "Grendel" over on the Figment.com blog.
• On the Pubslush blog, a friend of mine, the lovely and talented Samantha Chaffin, recounted her experiences and shared some valuable tips regarding sharing one's novel online.

So that was my May! How was yours?