2024.

[younglegends]

highlights.
- starting to run sept 2024. it's what i'm proudest of this year! idk if i can really express how crazy it is that i started running--i used to despair that i couldn't even bring myself to leave the house for a walk, i do not "work out", my lifestyle was (and still is) quite sedentary. it isn't even that i've never tried getting into running before! i don't know what clicked this time because like it is still hard and painful and agonizing but at the same time it also feels really good. i simply can't explain this idk. some of my favourite memories this year are running the seawall 10k and doing better, feeling better, every time. anyway i'm still at the beginning of my journey ofc (but the excitement that it's a new lifelong hobby...!) and i have currently fallen off majorly because it's freaking cold outside and gets dark at 4pm aka right when i get home from work and it's literally raining every single day but i'm genuinely very excited to get back into it in the spring... i miss it!

- had a pretty good summer. in july i focused on writing which is notable because it's been a freaking terrible year for writing and in august i spent a lot of time with friends swimming/paddleboarding at the lake/dog beach. also one week i stayed at my friends' place to catsit their kittens and ostensibly "write" but did nothing but read wolf hall the entire time :]

- a lot of sports-related firsts this year. went skiing for the first time in feb, am going again in jan and looking forward to it. had fun bouldering for the first time. improved my swimming endurance. also went ice skating a couple of times and learned how to do a crossover, sorta <3

- attended a wedding for the first time. saw the northern lights through our phone cameras in my friend's backyard. many hangouts many hobbies many potlucks (too many imo... why do i hate cooking this bad 😭 help.) got back into playing league of legends with my beloved same friends i've been playing league of legends with since 2013 <3 Sorry jinx they're shipping u with ekko of all ppl on arcane but whatever... they could never make me hate u! 


books.

28 books this year... not bad. beat my gr challenge for the first time in ages lol. chronological list below.

1. LUSTER - raven leilani ♡ 
2. THE NICKEL BOYS - colson whitehead
3. THE DISENCHANTMENT - celia bell
4. BOY PARTS - eliza clark
5. MONSTRILIO - gerardo samano cordova
6. MARTYR! - kaveh akbar X 
7. MCGLUE - ottessa moshfegh ☆ 
8. PRIESTDADDY - patricia lockwood
9. IDLEWILD - james frankie thomas ☆
10. NO ONE WRITES BACK - jang eunjin
11. THROUGH THE WOODS - emily carroll ↺
12. GOODBYE ERI - tatsuki fujimoto ↺ ♡
13. LOOK BACK - tatsuki fujimoto ↺ ♡
14. LAPVONA - ottessa moshfegh
15. PIRANESI - susanna clarke
16. WOLF HALL - hilary mantel ♡
17. PRIVATE RITES - julia armfield X
18. WE USED TO LIVE HERE - markus kliewer X
19. BRING UP THE BODIES - hilary mantel ♡
20. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - cormac mccarthy ☆
21. INTERMEZZO - sally rooney ♡
22. I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN - jacqueline harpman
23. REJECTION - tony tulathimutte ☆
24. BEAUTYLAND - marie-helene bertino
25. THE COIN - yasmin zaher ☆
26. THE GLASS CASTLE - jeannette walls
27. THE BOOK THIEF - markus zusak ↺ ♡
28. THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS - ursula k. le guin

standouts: LUSTER for being the first and one of my fave reads of the year, MCGLUE bc i was shocked at it genuinely moving me, PIRANESI not for being particularly good but still making me bawl at the last page, WOLF HALL & BRING UP THE BODIES for consuming my summer, INTERMEZZO for being such a delight to read (i loved peter's fragmented pov so bad), REJECTION for the most insane and horrible short story i have ever read that i unfortunately finished on a bus to work at 7 am in the morning, THE COIN for being like a moshfegh that i actually still think about, THE BOOK THIEF for having formed the foundation of my entire sense of writing style when i was 12 years old, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS because scifi is hard for me to read but i swore i'd get through this and at the last page i was once again left blinking back tears on a bus. 

dnfs this year.

• PENANCE - eliza clark
• THE LATE AMERICANS - brandon taylor
• ROUGE - mona awad :(
• FLUX - jinwoo chong

tv.

MAD MEN S1-7. changed my life or whateva. we are rewatching now :] 

THE LEFTOVERS S1-3. wrote up an entire post for this and didn't hit publish. maybe i'll go do that. not one of my favourite shows overall but s1 will forever be perfect to me... 

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE S1-2. thank u for a perfect deranged summer!


movies.

watched 72 movies this year according to letterboxd. some standouts:

THE IRON CLAW (2023) because i loved starting out the year with a late-night cinema experience that made me bawl my eyes out walking through the slush in the parking lot.

DUNE: PART TWO (2024) saw this for my birthday two days in a row lol once in imax as well <3 

ANATOMY OF A FALL (2023) i love movies that are good 

MAY DECEMBER (2023) probably my favourite out of all the oscar-nominated movies last year

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) cannot make this up if i tried we went into this like Ok what's all this then 🤨 and came out of it like Woah... 😳

BONES AND ALL (2022) crazy! romance! 

CHALLENGERS (2024) crazy! romance! etc

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024) crazy-- ok i'll stop 

I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024) yeah.

TRAP (2024) utterly dissolved by the end but very funny and remarkably strange LOL

LOOK BACK (2024) my ass silently bawling my eyes out literally 5 minutes into the movie 

EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) my first tom cruise movie and he kinda delivered! nicole kidman's monologue is crazy. best ending dialogue in a movie of all time

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) why did we watch this in FRENCH it was fun though! we watched this around the same time as we watched american psycho and after we watched the leftovers so all i can say is justin theroux i'm obsessed with your project choices

FIRST REFORMED (2017) certain lines from this have stuck with me for so long like "the desire to pray is itself a kind of prayer" okkkkkkk fuck. loved the way this was filmed and loved the ending sequence. kind of shocked us with just--what it was, and its commitment to that vision 


music.

every year i type up my little year-end soundtrack write-up and then i don't hit post 🙄 this year it's finally seeing the light of day ig

at the end of this year i've finally made the switch from spotify to apple music! sooo much ai bullshit on spotify and i don't listen to podcasts or audiobooks so getting them constantly pushed on me was annoying. and the wrapped isn't even good like as a music streaming platform how can you not gaf about albums or genres ???

also my friends decided to start an acapella singing group LOL since we're obsessed with karaoke anyway. we've only had literally 2 sessions all year but it was still really fun to try something new that we're not particularly good at. 

1. BOTH SIDES NOW - judy collins

but now old friends are acting strange
they shake their heads, they say i've changed
well something's lost but something's gained
in living every day

what can i say... mad men infected my brain. this is not only the first song of the year to possess me it's also my #1 top listened. every time i listen to it it hits me like a truck all over again. also found out it's the ending credits to hereditary LOL? well anyway. 

2. VIOLENT TIMES - st vincent

violent times
almost lost you in these violent times

saw her live this year and she played CHEERLEADER yayyy

3. GOOD LUCK, BABE! - chappell roan

and when you think about me all of those years ago
you're standing face to face with i told you so
you know i hate to say it, i told you so
you know i hate to say it but i told you so! 

yeah! i sideeye any publication's top songs of 2024 list that doesn't have this one in the top ten because like what do you mean

4. EVERYTHING IS ROMANTIC - charli xcx

fall in love again and again
fall in love again and again
fall in love again and again
fall in love again and again

my life was over when the remix for my favourite song on the album featured CAROLINE POLACHEK and i DIDN'T LIKE ITTTTTTT ? at least we'll always have the original... 

5. ANGEL OF MY DREAMS - jade

angel of my dreams
i will always love and hate you, it's not fair

was only ever a very casual little mix fan but really loved this one! sometimes "fair that i buy you sushi" by itself just gets stuck in my head lmfao 

6. SO HARD TO TELL - debby friday

you don't want your fucking autograph
you wanna hurt me!

saur good...

7. TIGERS BLOOD - waxahatchee

you're laughing and smiling, drove my jeep through the mud
and your teeth and your tongue bright red from tigers' blood
we were young for so long, seersuckers of time
drank someone else's juice and left only the rind

song of da summer!

8. VAMPIRE IN THE CORNER - magdalena bay 

vampire in the corner, am i scaring you off?
oh, i wanna dance, i wanna learn how to love
someone call the coroner 'cause you're breaking my heart
my god, i think i might have loved you too much

imaginal disk strong contender for aoty... very happy to have seen them on tour this year

9. HOME WITH YOU - fka twigs

never seen a hero like me in a sci-fi
but i'd save a life if i thought it belonged to you
mary magdalene would never let her loved ones down

i didn't know that you were lonely
if you'd have just told me, i'd be running down the hills to be with you

and i'd have told you i was lonely too

yea... 

10. HAWKMOON - hurray for the riff raff

i couldn't believe them when they'd say "watch out"
i'm becoming the kind of girl that they warned me about

alibi crowd favourite in my sister's car and for good reason but something about hawkmoon kinda ran away with my heart... 

11. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - waxahatchee

oh no i'm down and out, i'm tragically amiss
tell you i'm undefeated, i'm not worth fighting with
oh no i've lost my mind, i've lost my mind again
tell you i'm razor sharp, i'm terrifying

if you could see the freaking movie that plays in my head every time i listen to this. we went to the waxahatchee concert (which was sooooo good and fun btw! concert of the year) and she played this song as a preview because it hadn't been released yet and i instantly knew right then and there it would become my favourite... 

12. ONCE IN A LIFETIME - talking heads

time isn't holding up, time isn't after us
same as it ever was, same as it ever was

lol. Need i say more

13. DIM - yves

[INSTRUMENTAL OUTRO]

listened to her ep a lot this december <3


gaming.

did not play much! just from what i can remember:

PENTIMENT - i already need to replay this... 

INSCRYPTION - loved the gameplay sooo much why did the story have to be. that. like idgaf about this random dude why didn't we get to play GRIMORA'S VERSIONNNNNN 🥲

MARIO KART 8 - genuinely always was jealous of ppl who grew up in mario kart households or w/e and every time we play this at friend parties we suck so my sister and i just locked in for three days during the holidays and did nothing but play mario kart. Yay. going to friends' nye party tonight where hopefully we will make our comeback. 

i still play hsr + sometimes genshin... had an insane back-to-back pull string of yelan c1 (off a 10-pull) > clorinde > navia > mualani > kinich without losing a single 50/50 so briefly got back into it to build them lol but i haven't logged back in in a while. hsr... i hate penacony and super break meta so it's whatever but i got feixiao and sunday + his lc and am planning to pull herta too... we'll see. WHO CARES


writing.

can i engage genuinely with this yet. idk 

only wrote one fic this year: dear. that's ok because it's my beloved, down to the indulgent nami and zoro conversation, down to the title & epigraph. I literally love one piece... 

i published an original short story and was even paid for it. unsure what to do with how vindictively happy the second fact made me. the DAMAGES done to my psyche by lifelong lack of validation like oh it's fucking bad... anyway.

worked on the first chapters of a longer original thing. it should be everything i love but somehow it's still not, yet. idk. like i already said onhere it's making the thing you love that's hard. so. that's still hard.

i miss writing though so i started some random thing about sabo my beloved. here's a bit from it.

He looked back at the fruit in his hand. A bite was torn from the flesh. Guilty red taste in his mouth.

It was night, now. The fruit didn’t feel warm anymore. He did. Roar boiling over in his stomach. He made a pained noise like he was gonna be sick.

“Something you ate?” said Ace.

Sudden cold crush of something like fear. Ace, did you--? Did this--?

Ace was looking at him, arms behind his head, gangly ankles kicked up in the sand, a young man, sunburnt and ordinary, smiling. Face so familiar, so unknown. A stranger.

“Well, go on,” said Ace, “aren’t you going to finish it?”

happy new year everyone <3 i hope we all have a wonderful year. 

Comments

[headstone]

genuinely always was jealous of ppl who grew up in mario kart households or w/e and every time we play this at friend parties we suck so my sister and i just locked in for three days during the holidays and did nothing but play mario kart.

this is honestly so relatable... recovery from growing up in a no-video-game-household...

i'm sewww glad you liked wolf hall and bring up the bodies. >:)

may i ask what made flux a dnf? it's on my list...

[younglegends]

goddd CAN U BELIEVE I FINALLY READ WOLF HALL!! after all these years... all it took was my ass finally buying a physical copy instead of struggling with my ebook :') and reading aloud to unimpressed kittens hehe. unfortunately did fall off with the mirror & the light but i'm actually glad i still have 1000+ pgs left to read of beautiful voice. and thomas cromwell psyche. yayyy

ok tbh flux is the least offensive of those dnfs, i just fell off reading it 😭 i was struggling to engage with the characters to the point that i don't even really remember anything about the book despite getting halfway through?? which might've had more to do with my own headspace at the time idk. but i'd like to give it another try in the future because i think the author was setting up an ambitious structure for the overall story and i didn't get far enough to appreciate the vision. if you ever do get around to reading it before i pick it up again i'd love to hear your thoughts!!

+ slowly but surely fighting for dignity and honour in videogames... had another mario kart session with friends yesterday and one of them said "how the hell are you in first place rn" 🥲 ive made it!!