all mirth and no matter

Warnings: unchecked pretentiousness and a tendency to ramble

To Whom It May Co-- No, okay.

I am not great at long form blogging, which is surprising because irl I never have trouble finding things to say. The problem is usually getting me to shut up. Part of that is because I self-censor and over-edit myself when I write, completely mortified by the possibility of coming across self centered (which I don't think I am), boring (which I occasionally can be), or pretentious (which is like, 90% of my personality).

But I really enjoyed being a part of online fandom again this past year so I am making an Effort (TM) to try out a platform that's not the hellscape that was fandom twitter. This journal will probably end up covering a lot of areas of my life (fandom, academia, reading, theatre) so I would appreciate it if everything stayed more or less in their respective boxes but I fully understand that streams crossing is unavoidable. I do not link my ao3 on my twitter or vice versa for a reason and I'm not expecting this journal to be linked to either of the two anytime soon so, please be good and don't randomly DM my boss to tell him about my fanfic output yeah?

Anyway about me: I am 27 years old. I am currently working towards being an academic. I love talking about books. I love theatre. I fully expect to be talking about NSFW content which I will tag but be warned of either way. My interests are best described as literally anything to do with Fantasy, Horror, Romance, SF, and theatre. I will read almost everything and have an opinion on anything I've read. I love talking about horror. I adore dragons. My favourite authors (at the moment) are Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, Helen Oyeyemi, JRR Tolkien, Mervyn Peake, Ellen Kushner, N. K. Jemisin, and Ken Liu. I have been reading a lot of danmei by priest (please talk priest to me), and am currently watching Word of Honor as it airs. I was really into The Untamed, Nirvana in Fire, SVSSS, and quite enjoyed Dance of the Phoenix.

I will be using this to talk about what I'm reading a fair bit so be warned, I tend to have 4-6 books on the go at any given time. At the moment I am reading Lang Ya Bang, The Graveyard Appartment, My Heart is a Chainsaw, Hell and Earth, and The Beckoning Fair One. I have now finished Mo Du for two days, but my heart is still full of it.

I write fanfiction sometimes but I don't really see myself as a creator. I'm mostly interested in critical analysis, discussion, theory, and thinking of academic papers that I do not have time to write and that my supervisor would kill me if she knew I was working on instead of writing my PhD. After one year in lockdown I no longer have any relationship to the concept of "having fun", but hopefully my rambling mess of a brain is entertaining to others! 

EDIT: I forgot to mention my name but like, it's on the blog thingy? Anyway hi, I'm Mari((t)a). (any combination of the letters in parentheses welcome or just go with Mari i guess? I'm not the boss of you.)