Spilling The Tea - Vol 26.1
What I’ve been working on, playing with, and obsessing about this week.
Happy New Year!
Are you obsessed with Heated Rivalry, because I am! This show has taken over both my brain and my fyp. It had me laying on the couch giggling and kicking my feet and scaring the cats. I rang in the new year in my pj's reading Heated Rivalry and The Long Game. The interviews with Connor Storie and Hudson Williams are just fanning the flames. All the fan art and fanfic are giving me life. Needless to say, I am still at the cottage.
I can feel a Heated Rivalry fanfic of my own percolating, something, something, Shane’s disordered eating and Ilya’s depression in The Long Game, but I’m trying to suppress it since I’m currently 21K words into writing a different story. Hmm, I wonder if I’m capable of multitasking like that? The sane part of me says no, but the other part of me thinks that I might just have to find out. Especially since I’m currently writing a scene in my current work that I find a bit boring. It’s important to the story, I’m just not feeling it so it’s killing my momentum.
Should we talk about Stranger Things 5? Do we need to? I was a HUGE fan of seasons 1-3 (and 4 was pretty alright). But like, what even was that? Volume 2 was so poorly written that I wasn’t even excited for the finale and then. . . oof. Was it the worst ending ever? No. It wasn’t the finale of season 4 of Veronica Mars. But it wasn’t that far off either. Did I feel my love for the show die a little bit when Eleven evaporated? Yes. If she had died to kill Henry or the Mindflayer, if her death had been the only way to end the evil once and for all, I would have been okay with it. It sort of at least would have felt like a full circle moment: Eleven unleashed the Upside Down and then she has to close the gate for good. If she had died a hero's death, I would have understood. But suicide? For like pretty much no reason? Give me a break. It just made her entire arc feel hollow. And you know Mike is never gonna get over that shit. He called her on the radio everyday for 353 days! They show him in the epilogue, just being sad and alone, writing, with a picture of Eleven on his desk. As a staunch Mileven stan, I honestly would have liked it better if Byler had become canon than what they did to Mike and Eleven. So yeah, anyway, don’t know if I’ll be watching anymore Duffer Brothers productions in the future.
Do you have any new year's resolutions this year? While I will die on the hill that New Years should be in the spring because who wants to start new things in the middle of winter, the new year hub-bub never quite fails to make me think about what I want to do differently over the next chapter of my life. I already know that 2026 will be full of change for me. Not only am I moving out of my apartment and my city, but I’m also moving away from my roommates of nine years. I’ve loved living with them, they are some of my very best friends and my chosen family. I know that we will know each other for many years to come, but it will definitely be an adjustment to not see them everyday. However, we are moving on to awesome new adventures and I couldn’t be more excited for all of us.
Of course, just as I’m moving, my brain is like “we should take up painting.” And I’m just like, "no, brain, stop, that’s just another thing to pack!" But I think I do want to try and get more into drawing this year. I doodle on the regular, but I get nervous when I try to draw anything big. And seriously, why? It’s just paper and ink. Just draw the thing. So I think it will be one of my goals this year to do drawing exposure therapy. I’ve seen a lot of really cool drawing techniques lately that I want to try, so I have a place to start.
I hope you go out and create something over the coming week! Have fun! Experiment! Play! Having a good time is resistance in these strange times.
Wishing you a wonderful week ahead,
Lucy