...and then 2020 was like; "Here, hold my corona...!"

   So who else hasn't had to change much of their everyday life?

   I've had to change worryingly little.
   What I have changed though was substantially important to my somewhat frail but recovering mental health. I am absolutely fuming inside about how all the activities and parties I had planned on going to have been cancelled one after the other. I'm not saying they shouldn't have been cancelled; they absolutely should have been cancelled for everyone's health's sake. What I'm saying is that it's fucked up my schedule and I'm shit with changed plans once I've set my mind on something - so much so that everything else also falls to pieces. I'm deeply disappointed is what I'm saying. And it scares me to be reminded of the fact that I'll have to start again as soon as this shitstorm has passed.
That's what I'm saying.

   H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T, people, this is absurd.
   I'm expecting the zombies any moment now.

Femme Freak

   What up nerds?
   How's everyone doing? How have you been? I've been... tired.
  I've had a low period creativity-wise and it's showed its ugly face through me not being able to make myself heard through text like I have in the past.

   I still have opinions, and plenty of them obviously, but I don't feel like I gain anything from writing them down anymore. In the past, I've written things down here for mostly myself - the fact that a few (very few) people actually read them is a significant bonus. I'll admit that Goodreads has become a bit of a substitute for this blog and rightfully so seeing as I've been reading so much more in the last two years, but it also pains me to see this platform being left desolate after having meant so much to me for such a long time.
   Writing's always been my number one coping mechanism.
   Nerd as I am, I still keep a journal though: it's a great way of sorting through difficult thoughts and as I'm also a nervous wreck at the best of times that's been super useful throughout. Writing is also a great way of sorting through ideas and impressions which is why I've been using this platform and also why it's lost its appeal steadily the more I use Goodreads.

   Life is tough. Things changes.
   Change is good though.
   It has to be.
   I hope it is.

   As an endnote I'd like to mention why I thought of this at all, and I need all of you to tune in to Feminist Frequency Radio for me. They're everything I ever wanted to be in life: feminist killjoys coming for your beloved media - especially if you're a white cis dude with leanings toward misogyny and racism. It feels good to the core of my nerdy heart to listen to these women talk about media that I too have a close relationship to. To hear them echo the same thoughts I have about certain nerd media is revitalising and encouraging as fuck.
   It's good.
   Nice to know that I'm not the only one.

Man, that bitch 2019 was extra

What a roller-coaster. Fucking hell.

During 2019 we lost Tardar Sauce - the One and Only Grumpy Cat. We also mourn the passing of Peter Mayhew, the ONLY good thing about Blade Runner - Rutger Hauer, Toni Morrison, Godfrey Gao and Marie Fredriksson.

So what happened in my life during 2019? Well...

• I cut my hair again. Shorter than ever. Finally found a hairdresser that gets me.
• I saw Dylan Moran again together with my very best bestie.
• I bought 18 new books during the Big Book Sale... It's not a hoarding problem if the shelves don't buckle under the weight...
• I can happily inform you that Dara O'Briain is still hilarious.
• Had my backpiece finished with a brutal 6 hour(!!) sitting. (...and then an additional hour or so for more detail...)
• My ginger room-mate Sengir turned 7 years old.
• The White Buffalo was a great experience.
• I went to Berlin(!) to see Loreena McKennitt. Magical is what it was. AND she played my favourite song.
• The Medieval Week on Gotland!
• I turned 31 and had a party on Hobbit Day. It felt epic.
• Amanda FUCKING Palmer!!!
• A Halloween fancy dress party. I LOVE THIS STUFF.
• Hannah Gadsby was brilliant.
• My childhood favourite band Nordman was in town to celebrate the 25 years since they released their first album and I was there.

 Ok, so 2019 has been a year of many firsts; of highs and lows. Coming into summer I felt like I had neglected myself by trying to survive a bad work place situation. I managed, by some miracle and a little help from my boss, to get myself away from that situation. Within weeks I had gone from absolutely no energy to energy to spare. And I had the rest of the year to enjoy it!
   And did I enjoy it.

Top picks of 2019

   Movies: I didn't have the same amount of time to spare to get myself to the cinema but the best experience of my cinema year was, hands down Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. I absolutely adored it. Other movies I enjoyed was The Favourite and On the Basis of Sex. 

   TV shows: I have so much love for The Umbrella Academy! Finally got a third and a fourth season of Queer Eye and I cried my damn eyes out (THE FEELS!). A new season of Killing Eve that won all of the awards well deserved. I was thrilled to discover Warrior. A last and final season of Elementary and how I'll miss it now that it's gone... Handmaid's Tale gave us a confusing and frustrating third season. Gentleman Jack was great. STRANGER THINGS, OH MAH GAWD.

   Books: So many books (a total of 84), and I made even more of an effort to read books not written by men (37 this year). Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. The next novel in the Newflesh series by Mira Grant; Deadline. Sarah Gailey's American Hippo turned my insides into pink fluff and made me want a hippo ranch. The thrilling steampunk zombie air ship ride that is Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Some oldies but goldies; Maskerade and The Last Continent by Sir Terry Pratchett. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, and I finally got my hands on the legendary short story collection I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler made me more certain of how much I adore her writing. I would also highly recommend Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape - an anthology edited by Jaclyn Friedman.

   Comics: Sunstone #6. MY HEART. MY FEELS. I've been recommended Southern Bastards on Goodreads so I gave it a go and actually enjoyed it - but I've been known to enjoy the 'Violent Old Bringer of Justice' before.

   Events: Life expectancy has risen. Child poverty has gone gone. A man in London is the second person to ever be completely cleared of the HIV virus, once and for all proving that living with HIV is neither a death sentence nor incurable. Researchers have found a plastic-eating mushroom that is edible to humans; not only giving us the opportunity to get rid of our massive amounts of plastic garbage but also offering us a hopefully tasty food (with our normal human luck though this mushroom with develop immense intelligence from eating our garbage and kill us all, but heeeeeey! That sounds an awful lot like a problem far into the future). Researchers have also found a way to convert all blood types into the universal type O that all people can safely receive. YouTube has finally actually officially banned white supremacist content (lets not question why it was allowed to begin with...). Humpback whales have come back from the near brink of extinction! Globally, renewable energy sources make up around a third of our power capacity. Global suicide rates have dropped 38% (though trans youths are still four times more likely to attempt suicide than their cis counterparts - help protect our trans kids! Support them! Save them!).

   Now's the part of the review when I tell the old year to fuck off and invite the new year, and decade, in with wishes for more hugs, love, sex and friendship.

  Get your ass in here 2020 and join me in the fun.

Spooky Halloween

   I love fancy dress parties. I really do. So when a friend of mine invited me to a Halloween party I immediately started planning my outfit and I knew exactly what I wanted to be for Halloween - the scariest stuff of nightmares: a Handmaid.

   I bought the fabric and then... I did absolutely nothing. Well, not entirely true I suppose since I procrastinated the everloving fuck out of that poor costume. A week before the party I still had done nothing with my costume, but had a nice angry ulcer coming along. Awesome. In pain I started making my outfit and realised again just how quick I can be under a certain amount of pressure. Some mistakes were made with the dress but after correcting them I was truly pleased with how it turned out:

   The Wings had me concerned though. I had no clue how to make them look as good as they do in the tv show but I wanted them as similar as possible. I YouTube'd a few truly awful videos containing a lot of hot glue and then decided to just dissect some pictures of the costumes and let my imagination do the rest. As a result I never used any glue for my wings but they look great and are easy to slip on and off the cap I wear underneath. For next time I think I'll have to use something stiffer for structural lining material...

   Having finished the last stitches and ironed out the last creases the same day as I was going to the party I'd have to call it a success nonetheless! Later in the day I met up with my beautiful friends:

   We played some board games and had a lot of fun. Pictured below is me not being the werewolf in One Night Ultimate Werewolf:

   I need more fancy dress parties. Give me fancy dress parties. I'm an adult. I promise.

Now give me fancy dress parties.

The Hutt (kind of) Recommends: Autonomous

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

   Our hero Jack is a drug pirate. She pirates drugs and distributes them to the less fortunate like some pharmaceutical Robin Hood, but has lately run into some unexpectedly bad drugs which has put her reputation in danger of being ruined entirely. She has to salvage what she can, all the while running from law enforcement.
   The agent and the A.I. on her tail will not only have to sift through all the disinformation Jack leaves behind, but also deal with their growing affection for each other.

   I enjoyed the story and most of the characters, but I have so many opinions (no, really? me?) on the gender issues of this book - to simplify, in my eyes it makes a mockery of trans* experiences. The relationship between Elias and Paladin is weird and frustrating and I wanted to scream from the top of buildings that Elias is a testosterone-damaged homophobic prick and Paladin deserves their autonomy just for having put up with Elias' garbage for so long.
   But that might just be me, right? (Hint: it's not just me.)

   It's an entertaining read with lots of thrilling heroics and some new exciting ideas. Though I have issues with some aspects of the book I think Newitz is on the track towards something amazing if only lessons are learnt and themes improved upon.
   I will recommend it nonetheless.

Ugh, the levels of procrastination

Aight.
   I need a new Halloween costume and I was planning on making one for myself this year.
   Then I agreed on working extra because cash is a good thing. Especially this time of year (oh, how I fucking hate X-Mas...).
   The amount of stuff I can get done when I'm supposed to be doing something else will never cease to amaze me - I've mended and reconstructed things I've had lying around since last year. A whole lot of those "I'm gonna. Eventually" garments.

Still the Queen of Procrastination.

Random thoughts on dates and body hair

   I really hope that the people I date, and I'm talking about men in particular here, realise just how much energy I put into primping and preparing for said dates. Because if they don't - they should, and if they do - thank you for your appreciation, it's duly noted and taken into consideration.
   I don't shave my legs for just anything. Or anyone.
   Usually you can tell how long it's been between dates by measuring the length of my leg hairs.
   And now I have a cold.

HAPPY HOBBIT DAY

   Today I'm celebrating my 31st birthday (though I was actually born on the 18th) and I've invited a few nerd friends over to eat and play board games with me. My partners are here to help with all the preparations, and we're going to be joined by my family members, and my best and closest friends a little later.

   In two years time I'll be an adult hobbit. And that's when the big party'll start for real.

Part of the Hobbit Generation

Backbreaking work

"Brutal".
   That's how I'd describe getting the backpiece done. It's nothing I'd like to do again, because PAINFUL, but then on the other hand I kinda don't have much room now... The piece is colourful and lovely and sore and sweet and finally fucking finished after yesterday's grueling six hour sitting. (I am going back to fill in the tree one more time because apparently I bleed a lot in the neck area, so that's not going to be fun...)

BUT LOOK AT MY LITTLE PIECE OF HOBBITON:

by the super talented and super sweet @filthyswede

Soooo, I wonder what the next one is going to be?

A Game of a 100% DONE WITH THIS

   Thank the Gods it's over and done with now.
   A Game of Thrones has finally aired its last episode and it was, just like previous episodes of this last season, a great mess of "MEH..."
   Congratulations to Benioff and Weiss for making the conclusion to the great epic that was GoT uninteresting and bland. I've never felt so rushed through the story before. Ugh.
   #DISAPPOINTED

If we wish hard enough, do you think G.R.R. Martin can fix any of this in the next book?

"BOKREA" got me going crazy

Yes.
It's that time of year.

Here. Have a picture of this year's haul.

Happy Valentine's Day Folks

This is when I write another scathing remark on how Valentine's Day is bullshit but, though it is and I am, I also need to remind all of yous that Valentine's isn't all about romantic relationships.
   It can also be about all kinds of love.
   At the time being I find myself in a situation I've never been before.
   I send more love to my close friends and my family than I have ever done before, at the same time as I'm in a romantic relationship that absolutely smashes all kinds of norms applied to what relationships should be.
   Lets celebrate love my friends. Lets just do that. Lets show each other what the power of love can do to people.
   Tell your friends how much you appreciate them. Give some flowers to a loved one, be it your mum or a sibling or your best friend/s. Remember: life is chaos, be kind.
   And y'all motherfuckers need love, I can tell. ❤ 

The Hutt Recommends: DEADLINE

DEADLINE by Mira Grant
#2 in Newsflesh

I don't read zombie fiction very often but stumbled over the first book of the Newsflesh series (FEED) and found the description quite captivating. A book written by a female author about a female blogger in a zombie-infested world? Could this really be what would let me enjoy reading about zombies?
   Answer? YES. Yes, it was.
   I devoured Feed (haha...) and put Deadline on my to read-list for later. 
   In January I finally bought Deadline and finished it in three days. If I hadn't had to go to work I'd have finished it much sooner seeing as I couldn't put it down once I had it in my stubby lil' hands.

BEWARE, SPOILERS AHEAD (make sure you've read Feed first):
   Ex-blogger Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. These days. His mission used to be poking zombies with a stick while someone filmed it, but then his sister died and suddenly playing with dead things wasn't as much fun anymore. His news team is still the best at what they do, but assuming the wheel after Georgia was never something he strove for.
   And then one day a researcher from the Center of Decease Control shows up on his doorstep with a scoop that can make even Shaun's shrivelled heart beat extra hard.

   We know the characters. We know the fight. We all want to know what the ever-loving hell is going on at the CDC. And Mason is the exact right amount of sarcastic little shit paired with whiny but brave hero that I enjoy. His inner struggle and the friendships portrayed in this series are engaging and down to earth.
   I have books #3 and #4 in my bookshelf.

The Clusterfuck We Affectionally Call 2018

This is the 10th Year Review I'm putting together. That deserves a star.

   We mourn the loss of Johannes Brost, Dolores O'Riordan, Ursula K. LeGuin, David Ogden Stiers, Stephen Hawking, Rick 'Zombie Boy' Genest, Aretha Franklin, Margit Sandemo, Burt Reynolds, Emma Chambers, Al Matthews, STAN LEE (!!!) and William Goldman. 

• I cut my hair shorter again. Stayed green though.
• BOOKS. And COMICS.
• I finally got off my ass and started looking for a new job. Got one! but the search goes on.
• My best friend and I went to New Zealand. Dreamy.
• I got to see Stephen Lynch again.
• I had another great Midsummer's Eve.
• I FINALLY got myself some of that good HBO streaming. So much win.
• My furry ginger roomie Sengir turned 6 years old.
• I cut some more of my hair off. An then some more.
• I reached 70 000 page views.
• I had some epic vacation time with some very close friends.
• Went to the world's biggest separatist music festival for women, non-binary and trans*people.
• I turned 30. And I was lovingly surprised by my friends with dinner! ❤
• I ran out of chlorophyll so my hair turned from green to orange.
• I got a new tattoo.
• I celebrated New Years Eve on my own in my bath tub with delicious champagne.

   I had the unspoken goal to read more books by female authors and I'd like to think I made an effort.

   I also made promises to myself to treat myself to other people, as in: I need to see that I might not be as much of a nuisance as my anxiety-ridden brain would like me to think and wedge myself into other people's lives or rather myself into theirs. In short; I wanted to socialise more. Whether it'd be having coffee, having a PJ party, going out for a drink or whatever... I need to be with people. And I was. To a certain degree.

   I went to the cinema a shitload more than I used to which means I'm keeping up last year's Year Review promise to myself: MOAR FILM PLZ.

Top picks of 2018

 Movies: Black Panther - holy shit! The Shape of Water - wow! Avengers: Infinity War - WHAT IN THE GOD DAMN?! Deadpool 2 was laugh-out-loud funny. Tom Hardy made Venom hilarious.

 TV shows: I finally watched Limitless and liked it, Everything Sucks! was pleasantly nostalgic, Altered Carbon was kinda awesome. I binged the amazing 2nd season of Dear White People in two days, they gave me a new season of Elementary (oh YEAH...!) of which I could only watch half before I got cut off and, whadda ya know, CBS is only available in the US and Canada so fuck me, right?! The new season of Handmaid's Tale was great (AWFUL, but great). Killing Eve ❤ !!! Despite not being a big fan of horror I absolutely loved The Haunting of  Hill House.

 Books: I've read a shitload of books (68!) in 2018 and obviously found a few nuggets of gold in that heap... FEED by Mira Grant felt new and awesome, Queers Dig Time Lords edited by Sigrid Ellis was thoroughly heartwarming, The Road by Cormac McCarthy took me completely by surprise. I fell entirely in love with Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and the follow-up Parable of the Talents, and Richard K.Morgan's Altered Carbon was even more fascinating than the tv show they made of it. The long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers was SO FRIGGIN' AWESOME I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START. Sea of Rust (!!!) by C. Robert Cargill made my brain happy.
 Comics: I need all of you to read Paper Girls and Saga, aight?

 Events: Oscar nominations I could get behind: Get Out, The Shape of Water, Logan... turning into Oscars for Jordan Peele and Guillermo del Toro. And for Coco!❤ The super endangered Black Rhino is moving in to areas they haven't lived in for many years, which is awesome. IRELAND VOTED TO END ITS ABORTION BAN. Sweden approved stricter consent laws, making it illegal to have sex with someone without their explicit consent (ABOUT TIME). Sweden also decided to ban micro-plastics in cosmetics. Researchers have found methods to help reverse damage caused by Alzheimer's decease in the human brain. Scientists have also managed to reanimate pig brains up to 36 hours after initial death, leaving further possibilities to save human lives in the future. Humans now have the power to grow food in space (well... so far it's "just" onions on a space station but... still cool).

   For 2019 I want more books and comics. I want good cinema experiences. I want more stories by women and people of colour in my life. I want more hugs and good food. Honestly, I want more sex. I don't make promises. I can only hope and strive.

What I'm trying to say is this:

Dear 2018, get fucked.

Lets make 2019 something brilliant.