Personal blog for @celli.
This is a fun chance to get to know each other all over again
So tell me a thing. Tell me...about a time you were transformed. waits out Optimus Prime jokes A great teacher, or a piece of music; a friend, a book, a kiss.
One of mine: the first time I read The Neverending Story. I LIVED in that book. I had never seen a scene so clearly or felt what a character felt like that. I'm afraid to reread it now and find it less than magical! It was definitely an inspiration for both my reading and writing.
Yours? Good or bad?




both are big wows!
For me, definitely when I first heard One Heart / Million Voices by New Empire
This song...changed my life. Changed how I looked at so many things. It's actually one of the songs that helped me decide to leave my music career.
The song made you leave music? That's the exact opposite of what I expected.
emmylou harris was big for me in college. I was dealing with a lot of like, grief and bullshit, and a lot of her music creates this really great space to be sad, I guess? like, they're depressing, but it's not "here I lie, dog wife truck left me" sadness. it's a kind of wider...processing sadness? It was one of the first times I'd really experienced media that took me through grief in a way that didn't pathologize it in some way or another, and it was really great and cathartic.
Oh, fascinating. Any particular song/album?
Definitely Red Dirt Girl. Among other things it has a beautiful elegy for her father.
Oh, man, I just listened to the title track and I can totally see what you mean.
a formative album for me was Waking Up by OneRepublic, which is still one of my favorite albums in the world. there are some really interesting melodies in that album, and great rhythmic choices.
my other answer would've been Star Trek (the 2009 movie) which i have seen SO many times. the sweeping shots of space, the characters and relationships, the SOUNDTRACK (especially the soundtrack)--it's an iconic movie for me
I have watched the '09 about a dozen times. It just SINGS to me.
i saw it over and over and over when it first came out, and then didn't watch it for a few years (although of course i still loved it)--but when beyond came out, @grim_lupine and i went to see it and cried when the music first started, and then we went home and watched the 2009 one again and cried MORE
it's probably one of my favorite movies, if not my favorite
That makes me so happy 💕
Sarah Dessen's The Truth about Forever. I read it at exactly the right time for me to read it, and it changed who I am and how I saw myself. It brought home that I had a second chance to make right some things I'd messed up in the past. (I literally read it, got to the last page, and flipped straight to page 1 to read again without putting it down.)
I found Just Listen to be incredibly important to me because I felt so unlistened to and it made me stop acting like things were perfect when they weren't.
I've never heard of this. Book, song, article...?
Just Listen is SO GOOD. Probably my second favorite of hers. I cried so much the first time I read it; it was a cathartic experience. <333
Just Listen is another of Sarah Dessen's books!
Is it fiction, then?
It is! Sarah Dessen is a YA author who is from Chapel Hill, NC and her books are all set in a couple of thinly veiled NC towns, which means a lot to me. Some of them I just enjoy, while some pack a good emotionally healing punch.
Is there anything triggery I should worry about?
Depends on the book. Just checked her discography, and 2 of the 12 I don't know well enough to say (her first two books weren't great, IIRC); of the remaining ones, maybe half and half, assuming we're warning for anything triggery as opposed to specific triggers. I have read most of them multiple times and am happy to steer you toward/away from things (and will happily reread any of them, just to be sure they're celli-safe). I'd say more here, but don't want anyone who just happened to be reading to stumble over anything unsafe for them.
I had/have/will probably always have a lot of feelings about the Vorkosigan series.
My first read of the Cordelia's Honor omnibus was another transformative moment, for sure.
Orientalism by Edward Said totally changed my perspective on race, ethnicity, and Eurocentrism. It changed my worldview in a way that no other book every has. I can't describe how influential the change was because the change was so monumental that I no longer remember how I thought before that book.
I re-read regularly Reza Aslan's last chapter in his historical biography of Jesus that features James, Jesus' brother and the author of my favorite book of the Bible. "Faith without works is dead," is what keeps me involved even with my disability because, unlike many Christians, I take that admonition seriously.
religion
So which is your favorite book of the bible?
We sang a song this week that's stuck with me:
We ate called to act with justice We are called to love tenderly We are called to help one another To walk humbly with God
It's so full of action words. :)
oh my god, the neverending story <3__<3 i reread it fairly recently and it absolutely held up. i read it for the first time while hiding behind the couch in my grandmother's apartment while granny and my parents fought and johnny contentedly ate dog biscuits. did your copy have the two colors of text?
My library's copy did - I never bought it, just kept checking it out over and over.
The first thing that comes to mind would be the first time I watched the behind-the-scenes dvds from the LotR Extended Editions when I was in middle school. I'd read the books, the appendices, and the Silmarillion, but watching how Middle-Earth went from text to physicality really cemented my interest in worldbuilding in different media. I don't know if I would have ended up spending so much time as a theater tech if I hadn't seen how the movie version of Middle-Earth was made, and I doubt I would be as interested in the process of text-based worldbuilding as I am now. I definitely wouldn't have found something that works as well to act as a counterbalance to my science side.
Wow, literally live-changing.
(Ha, I typoed lice-changing. NOPE.)
Hmmm....other than what I said on twitter? I'd say watching Murder She Wrote. There was lady who looked like ladies I knew who wrote books and had adventures and traveled the world. I wanted to be Jessica Flecher so bad (I'd be crap at murder investigating though). Heck, I think I still do. :p
You'd be GREAT.
Celli, I don't know who anyone is anymore!
You know MEEEE.
::CLINGS::
The His Dark Materials series pretty much changed my life. They were books with such epic scope and complicated ideas that made me think about so many things I'd never considered before.
Oooh! I've only read the first one.
For a song it would be Grey Street by Dave Matthews band, I was so changed by that song that I cried for days and it got me diagnosed with Bi Polar disorder. (TMI! YAY!) But I think bookwise, it was "The Night Circus". It's only a few years old but it really changed how I viewed the world and more specifically writing. I felt magic at my fingertips and was transfixed. It's what got me writing again.