New Blog

A while ago I created a new blog entitled Love Letters and Blog Posts. I realize now that with the amount of people who know about the existence of goatgirly (and the number of links to it from other people's blogs), I should perhaps inform this blog about that blog.

Essentially, this blog is good and dead (perhaps to one day be resurrected, but for now just a memorial to my younger youth), and LLBP is lovely and active and will eventually feature some of my own lovely HTML formatting. So, if you want to hear my ramblings (which are inarguably better  than those featured on goatgirly, in every way), go to my new blog.

That is all. Have a nice day.

EDIT: Love Letters and Blog Posts is no more. You can now find those posts under a new title: The Glitter Bonfire. Welcome.

SUMMER!… and The Fourth of July

So. Summer. June 14th was my first REAL day of summer, and I spent the next week packing, the next week at Girl's Camp (a summer camp put on by my church), and the days since on a ROAD TRIP!!

So. Summer.

I would highly suggest to all travelers and holiday fanatics to spend your Fourth of Julys in Idaho Falls, ID. My mother's hometown, my family and I spend at least a few days there most summers, so I've spent my fair share of Fourths in IF, and have every right to say that they have the best fireworks. Like, ever.

Anyway, a summary: The day starts off at 9 AM, with a fantastic parade complete with candy, free stuff, and awesome floats. Several high schools and even some junior highs have their marching bands in attendance, there are several groups of cheerleaders and dance students, along with pageant winners, fire departments, and this year, even a float from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. After the parade, many families flock to local parks for a picnic or barbecue. Then, that evening, is the Melaleuca Freedom Celebration. Also known as, the fireworks.

Oh, gosh. The fireworks. A computer controls every blast to make sure they go off at the right time, and the display is amazing - easily 20x better than the fireworks in my hometown in South Central Pennsylvania. To help convince you, here are some photographs:

This is only a sampling. I have more. And, of course, there's always more every July Fourth in Idaho Falls. I suggest you check it out. 

I'll be home by Saturday of this week. It's been long, it's been fun, and currently I just want to stay here in Summit County, Colorado at post- family reunion celebrations. Sadly, I do have to get home at some point to, like, turn in (and do!) my AP US History summer work. Ugh. 

Happy Summer, everyone!

Disney's Frozen

I'm going to briefly assume that you're all well versed in your Disney movie culture, especially the somewhat recent ones. Or, more specifically, that you've seen Disney's brand-new movie Frozen.
Okay, so I'll be honest here: I love Disney movies. I love animated films. The good ones. Some of my favorites: Tangled, The Lorax, Wreck-It Ralph… and now, Frozen. All four of these are pretty new, and I guess a large part of that is due to the fact that I am pretty newly at the stage in my life where I'm beginning to be able to really enjoy a movie and all its parts. Or maybe I'm just getting to the stage where I'm not ashamed of being a teenager who watches kid movies.
Anyway, I am fully and completely enraptured in the world of Frozen. As I said before, I'm just gonna assume you've already seen the movie, because that makes my job way easier (read: spoilers).
So, okay. Where to begin? Well, before I'd even seen the movie I bought and downloaded the Demi Lovato version of Let It Go, and my little brother and sister were constantly asking to watch the trailer. This was back before Halloween, which I know because EVERYBODY thought I was dressing up as Elsa for this fantastic holiday, even though I was just a simple ice princess (well, not simple exactly - I refuse to be simple) and had the idea waaaay before I found out about Elsa's existence. It was a really great costume though and suited me fantastically.
Okay, back to the topic at hand - Frozen. I saw this movie at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, November 27, 2013, my local theater's first showing. I saw it with my dad, sister, aunt, and uncle. The four girls in the row behind me kept fangirling the entire time, shouting for a kiss and giggling and generally doing whatever it is we fangirls do. I, of course, was very proud of them. My family… well, they were a little annoyed. But.
The movie itself was kind of fantastic, regardless. The plot was intricate, the characters were detailed, the songs magnificent. Yes, there were flaws. Yes, some of the characters could've been more believable. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, everybody makes mistakes, and nobody's perfect. So let's leave that all behind! No hate on the important snowman, no hate on the white ice queen, no hate on the white Norwegians, no hate on the powerful girls, no hate on the guy who decided to help, no hate on the pretty stinkin' awesome rock trolls, no hate on the really good songs. Okay? Okay. So now that we've covered our bases…
The biggest thing about this movie for me was Elsa and Anna. Not just them individually, but them together. How they act around each other, and their relationship, and… ahh. When they were little, they played and had fun and were best friends, but then something happened - some big, powerful, sorta out of their hands thing - and they didn't really talk anymore. The younger of the two still wanted to play, and didn't get it, and the older one didn't really get it either, but she knew, and she didn't seek out the companionship of her sister anymore. Like, at all. The older one drew back from the world, shut herself inside of herself, and when she eventually tries to talk to her sister, being friendly for the first time in, well, forever, it didn't really work out. One push, and she fell. She broke. And then when she had the chance to flee, she fled. She built herself a palace of self-worth/thought/consciousness (whatever you want to call it), and didn't look back. But her sister, who still didn't get it (mainly because they aren't the same person, and even if you know factually what someone else is going through, you can't possibly know what they're going through. And that's okay! At least Anna tried.) came for her, and tried to get her to come back, and it was so so so so so so so so hard for her. She fled from her problems, and when they came back… she couldn't pretend anymore. But in the end, she just really had to care for her sister, because even though she never talked to her sister, she still loved her. She just didn't know how to love her until that moment. (You can see this continual love in Olaf, which is why he's totally important to the story, because he's the snowman they made at the very beginning, that was destroyed, and how at the same time that was destroyed Elsa thought her relationship with Anna was destroyed, and when Elsa subconsciously creates him again - that same snowman - it shows that she really is always thinking of how sorry she is that she destroyed everything they could've known.)
So although on the outside Frozen is a movie with a nice plot about some sisters and a curse and a power-seeking prince, it has another layer - the massive inner conflict going on inside Elsa, that you can only see if you really pay attention.
I paid attention. I really, really did. And I'm not saying that's the only under layer - Anna has her own inner conflicts too - but It's the layer that I liked the most, that meant the most to me. Why? Because I relate to that. Like, a lot.
You see, I saw myself in Elsa. And not just in the way that I saw myself in Rapunzel, but in the way that I am Elsa. My sister and I, on the outside, look a freakishly lot like Anna and Elsa. But not only do we look just like them, we act just like them. And our relationship… just like theirs. The first thing my aunt said when we got in the car after the movie was how much my sister and I are like them. There's the grasping at straws stuff - when our hair is in braids, she has two and I have one, her hair is brown and different from how it used to be because of me (long story, which also includes the "some big, powerful, sorta out of their hands thing" that happened) and mine is an incredibly light blonde (though not quite as light as Elsa's; I happen to not have ice powers), she's an outgoing optimist and I'm an introverted realist. But that's not all - that entire story - that entire story - up there, that entire thing that I wrote about Elsa and Anna, that's us. With the obvious differences aside, it's like somebody took my sister and I and Disney-fied us. That's what that movie felt like to me. It was so brilliant.

Obviously, I have a crap load of other opinions and insights into and on this movie, but that'll just have to wait for later. It has taken me entirely too long to post this.

thoughts on mourning, and how the internet has it wrong.

A couple weeks ago it was revealed to the public via a new episode that Brian, the dog from Family Guy, had died.
A couple days ago it was revealed to the public that Paul Walker, an actor in the Fast and Furious films, had died.
I have never watched either of those multimedia masterpieces, and I'm not really too depressed about either death -- they really don't affect my life in any way -- and I found it funny that people were mad that a talking dog was dead (oh what a shame) and that an actor from a movie about race cars died in a car crash (it's hilarious, honest), and so I'm not really one to talk. In a way, though, I guess that makes me totally unbiased in the department, right? Right. Obviously.
Anyway, I happen to be very involved in the world of social media, and so I found out about both these deaths almost as soon as they happened, both through Facebook and the wild and wonderful tumblr. It was interesting to me, of course, that people would mourn the death of two such similar yet incredibly different personages, in such a similar way.

One of my "friends" uploaded this to Facebook the other day (yes, I have my language set to English (Pirate) and I know I suck at editing), and I very much find it to be true. He was mostly saying that a dog from Family Guy really has no importance in the real world so stop freaking out. I am guilty of freaking out over the death of a fictional character on Facebook, but it's really kind of different. You see, I didn't mourn the death of either of these, and unless a real-life person was an actor from Harry Potter, I'm not mourning on the internet. Sorry.
I think I may have successfully proved my cold-heartedness (oops), but this really is true. There have been other people that have died, and we don't mourn them. My grandpa died this summer but did the internet care? No. And anyone who really has lost someone knows that the entire internet freaking out over the fact that they're dead really doesn't help anything. It's kind of a sweet thought, but you really don't care. If they could bring the person back, then that's cool. I could bring in so many other references to books and stuff now, but I think you get the gist. It kind of doesn't matter.

That's all for today. Please just be considerate, and really think about what you should be mourning. Yes, it's sad when people die in shootings. Yes, it's sad when planes crash into skyscrapers and kill millions of people and it's dubbed a terrorist attack, but there are other things out there that are just as sad, or even more. There are other people dying themselves over the fact that somebody died of disease or peacefully in their sleep, and there are cyclists being hit by cars. Does the internet freak out over them? Not usually. So, please. Give them some thought this holiday season. That'd be cool.

The House of Hades Review... WITH SPOILERS

So, I finished The House of Hades last night, the fourth installment of Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series. I have to say, it was my favorite book by him, and probably his best book (okay, definitely his best book). This is high praise, seeing as he's not quite done with writing yet. 

The main reason this book was so good was because there was so much character development! Percy and Annabeth developed together, Frank became worthy of himself, we finally figured Jason out, Hazel and Piper finally figured themselves out, and Leo and Nico... Well, I'm getting to that next. 

This is where the spoilers kick in, so don't read on if you haven't read the book, please. 

The halfway point of the book may just be one of the best scenes in YA literature. It's Nico's scene, and it lets us discover him, and Jason as well. This is the Cupid scene, the scene in which everything about Nico finally clicks into place: he has (or had, if you believe Nico, which I most certainly do not) a crush on Percy. Every single thing Nico has ever done or said - especially around Percy - finally makes sense. It all takes on a new meaning, and you understand him so much more. I loved this scene too because it shows us something we needed to see: even in books written for middle schoolers, gay people are okay. Rick took a character we all knew and sort of loved, and gave him new depth, in the form of a controversial topic in the world today, and I'm so proud of him for it. He may lose some fans. He was totally reading our fan fiction. But it was the best thing I have ever read. 

The second scene that just made the book for me was Leo's time with Calypso. I'll admit that I used to kind of ship them, but then I decided they'd never meet and that they probably wouldn't like each other anyway. But ohhh man… I was soooo wrong. Leo and Calypso is my new OTP, and it is the most beautiful thing of all - they hated each other at first, and it seemed like a major setback, then a tragic love story. I think we all know what the oath to keep with a final breath is now: "I'm coming back for you, Calypso," he said to the night wind. "I swear it on the River Styx." 

I don't care what the rest of you think, but Leo NEEDS to get back to Ogygia. 

books = drugs

This photo puts it simply. 

I am of the strongest opinion that there is nothing better than a good book. 

I am of the strongest opinion that everyone likes to read.

I am of the strongest opinion that the photo pictured is the most accurate representation of everything.

I am of the strongest opinion that I came up with that idea first.

Books are a magical, beautiful thing, but they are addictive.

Very.

And they have the most awful side effects, too. 

I am also fairly certain that withdrawal is deadly.

So... watch out.

Health class is wrong. They think they know the most dangerous drug. They think they know what drugs you can die from. But they're wrong.

They forgot about books.

Now don't get me wrong; there are a million-and-one positives to reading, too. Books are a gateway to a new world, a way to help you get better grades and new friends. They can help you, help you, help you and they only take you higher. But once you get to the stage where you don't just read books, you devour them, you don't just love a book, you fangirl over it, you don't just talk about a book, you smother Tumblr with it. 

“So many books, so little time.” ― Frank Zappa

Books. 

They are addictive.

They are empowering.

They are everything.

Legend by Marie Lu

I find myself in this position all too often: I find a book that has received great reviews, and when I am finally able to read it, I sit down and engulf it all in a minimal amount of sittings. When I'm done, I have to try very hard to pull myself out of that cocoon I have been enveloped in for the last hour or so. It tends to be a difficult thing to do, and sometimes I feel as if I'll wander around aimlessly for days. Luckily, I usually have another book waiting for it's chance on the floor beside my bed, and the tiresome cycle starts itself again.
As you may have guessed by now, I recently (as in 10 minutes ago) pulled myself out of bed with two new names on my mind: Day and June. Day, the ruthless criminal who "failed" his Trial. June, the faithful agent of the Republic, the one person to have ever gotten a perfect score on her test. I can guarantee you now that their story will be ricocheting around in my head for the rest of the day, maybe longer. This book is going to stick in my mind for days to come, and may I just say, I ship Jay. Or Dune. Or however the fandom has decided to spell it.
Anyway, I love the book, and the characters, and the plot. It was intensely fascinating to me, constantly finding me on the edge of my seat. (Not literally of course. I was on a bed.) I love it when you discover secrets about a somewhat okay government that make it all seem so backwards. I guess the rest of the world does too, because distopian novels have seemingly overthrown undead romances in the fictional scheme lately. (Although the recent release-- and popularity-- of the film Warm Bodies leads me to believe otherwise.) In book series like Divergent and Matched, the government seems fine-- at first. Not to give away any major spoilers, but in Reached when you find out about the plague... delicious. I guess that's how it is in Legend, too, with the secrets about the plague spilling out through certain genius characters' "mad searching skills" and supreme amounts of logic (two things I myself have, by the way). The whole thing drips of girl genius and daring escapades, two things I LOVE. If a book has those, it's a good one. It might not be a favorite one, and they aren't the only qualities I would enjoy, but it's a good one.
Overall, Legend is definitely a new personal favorite, and I will be reserving Prodigy ASAP, mark my words.