Lasitas

There's a question that I've been pondering lately: Why do people like seeing their favorite characters suffer? As many of you know, I love Final Fantasy VII. In particular, I love Cloud Strife, the moody sad boy protagonist of the game. Because of my great affection for this fictional man, I seek out (and write) fanfiction where Cloud faces a variety of hardships from childhood trauma to harrowing battle injuries to horrific laboratory experimentation to plain just being lonely. But why? Why do I like reading about a character that means a lot to me, who reminds me a lot of myself in some ways and has helped me understand myself better, suffering? Why do I seek out stories where he is in pain? And why am I not alone? There is an entire genre of fanfiction called “whump” where the writer’s favorite character is subjected to whatever sadistic imaginings the author can dream up. And people can dream up a lot of pain for Cloud Strife, largely because that’s sort of his deal in th...

 Hello friends, Alex and I recently came back from an almost forgotten activity in the time of COVID: travel! That's right, we boarded a plane, and I only had my possessions seized by the TSA once! (Apparently they don't like knives on board a plane, psh, whatever). And we went ahead and got infected with the coronavirus two weeks before the trip, so we couldn't get sick from traveling. That's how that works, right? ...Right? For real though, we did wear masks as much as we could in the airports and on board and had been feeling much better for a while after being sick; we are responsible little citizens of the world! And lil' miss Hazel got to spend a week with one of her favorite friends: my sister! Yay! So now that we're back, I'd bet you'd like to hear what it was like in sunny California, huh? Well, on day one it was rainy and cold. See proof: cold Alex and her spirit animals. These pictures were taken on the Santa Cruz wharf, where we were buffeted...