July 04, 2019
Notes from Summer: Hi everyone! I write this letter weak of lung and strong of heart. June has been a big transition month in which I did basically nothing, but it’s July now! I’m sweatier but employed. There are a lot of things on the docket that will make the wait for ACNH much easier. I’m excited!
Notes from Jillian: We’re back! And we have 100 subscribers! Amazing. I am been on vacation, and it feels like I’ve been on vacation for years, so I’m actually pretty excited to get back to work the rest of the month (weird, I know). I’m really excited about a lot of the things I’m working on right now—hopefully I’ll have something big to share at the end of July.
Since December, I’ve been searching for the part of me that used to love things so deeply, the way I hadn’t since I was fifteen and very lonely. It was partly brought on by writing a thesis, which called for a care that I wasn’t sure I was able to muster anymore. Finding this care was helped by My Hero Academia, which I’ve mentioned in a letter before. I find myself fully capable of this love again with Good Omens. The book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett was never a fandom I was particularly involved in, but I did consider it my favorite for brief moment—then, I read another book by Neil Gaiman and it became that one, etc., etc. Basically, I loved anything that man did. And he’s done it again! The 6-episode miniseries is fucking incredible. It’s very funny, translating the satirical edge of the novel into campy visuals and sort of side-stepping interludes. The overall visuals are STUNNING and despite my fear of David Tennant for no other reason besides having to face my past, it’s really well-cast. Michael Sheen is possibly the most endearing man on the planet and I would die for Adria Arjona. I’ve watched it four times through already and wow! I will watch it a fifth! Unfortunately, I am telling you to go give Bezos money again. Sorry!
– Summer
Playing Animal Crossing is great, but the second best thing is watching someone else play it. One of my favorite people on the internet, who goes by @sailorhg, recently started doing daily streams of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, which you can watch right here. It is cute and fun and very calming.
– Jillian
This is the best chapbook I’ve ever read, maybe! I’m really drawn to poems that incorporate the love of celebrity or the way we’re drawn to idols & how we relate to and communicate that love, how we find ourselves in that love—that’s this book, baybee! It’s 26 pages of poems about/to/inspired by Gerard Way & My Chemical Romance that I fucking blew through in an hour and immediately went back to re-read several times. My favorite poem in particular is titled “gerard way finds my fanfiction.net account”. You can buy it from Game Over Books here.
– Summer
Hear me out: instead of using photos of your friends in your phone contacts—or, ew, no avatar at all!—give each of your contacts a solid color avatar. If you pick colors that you love and that play well together, it will make your messaging experience so much nicer. I have an album in my photo library that’s just solid colors so I can easily assign one to everyone. It’s definitely a little bit of work, but it’s so worth it.
– Jillian