aww, thank you friend! and thank you particularly for copy/pasting the questions – clearly you understand what “brain going fzzt” means!

Amortentia: Talk about 3 things you love: I just – really love Tolkien’s works, you know? I remember seeing and reading The Hobbit when I was about 12 or so and just falling in love completely and that never went away. There’s just something about that world that feels right and good and that I just understand better on some level than the one I live in. idk – I think 12-year-old me heard the dwarves’ song and went “welp, guess I’m ruined then.”

I also love music. For someone who gets overstimmed from noise as easily as I do, that’s kind of odd, but it’s true – I’m an absolute snob about harpsichord vs the wrong kind of piano music (Schubert, I’m looking at you, pal). Generally I’m really just all about instruments from before the mid-18th century or so – which of course makes my love for Black Sails all the more fierce because hurdy. fucking. GURDY.

A year ago I probably would have said that I love books and to some degree it’s still true, but honestly I’m starting to wonder if I love books or if I was just a spectacularly lonely child looking for something to cling to and landed on it in the form of books and their worlds full of people I could pretend to be who weren’t lonely or ignored, so… yeah, there’s that. Um – I love pizza? Kind of a lot. Kind of probably too much but man – cheese on bread with delicious tomato sauce in between. With mushrooms. That. Delicious.

Babbling Beverage: what kind of person are you when you’re drunk/hyped up on caffeine? Well, I’ve never actually been drunk. I’ve most definitely been hyped up on caffeine though and I can say categorically that the more caffeine I have, the less friendly I become, probably because that much caffeine tends to go with lack of sleep. I also develop a nice eyelid twitch. I genuinely have no idea what I’m like under normal circumstances having chosen actively to consume too much alcohol or caffeine – although the one time I did get possibly a little tipsy while on vacation recently, it was kind of a gigglefest

Cure for Boils: Write about three pet peeves – oh woof. Um – I live in the US, so there’s… so much opportunity for people to be annoying in little, stupid ways here. Particularly though, I really hate being asked “why are you so quiet? Are you ok?” Yes, I’m ok. No, I don’t feel the need to talk all the time. It’s an irritating question for any introvert. For some reason I hate people leaving the dishwasher door open, and I get kind of peeved when people pile laundry up outside the hamper instead of putting it in, but only if it’s going to block a path to another room. 

Invigoration Draught: how do you wake up in the mornings? – I used to answer this with “badly, with a great deal of grumbling.” I’m getting a lot more sleep these days though, so now the answer is “in stages, with a great deal of rolling over and going back to sleep involved.” Really, though, I usually turn my lamp on, get my chromebook, and scroll tumblr until I’m ready to face leaving my bed.

Wolfsbane: What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced in the past year? This has been a year full of nothing but change for me. In the past year, I’ve changed jobs, I’ve changed towns I work in, I’ve met someone I now consider nothing less than a sister, and I’ve plucked up the courage to go on international travels on my own. it’s funny what happens when you get to the age of 29 and realize that you’ve been miserable for ages and things need to change.