I like structured fun. I was keen on hide and seek and other playground games long after they were popular. Quite honestly, if someone suggested hide and seek today I might still be down for it.
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The next phase of games in primary school was card games and werewolf. When interest in these tapered off I was pretty bummed. Several years later we got to drinking games and boy was I relieved.
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I don’t get bored of these games the way other people seem to. I’m sure part of it is coming to them later, and I feel like they’re different enough each time. I do know that I find it so much easier to socialise through games. So much of my anxiety in social situations is managed by having like… cards to play with. I used to be quite confused that other people got bored by these games and the fun wore off for them. Having reflected on how I’ve felt about games my whole life, and how I feel when someone suggests a game over just sitting around talking, I think it’s just part of the way I am and the way my brain works. It’s not exactly the only aspect of social interaction that’s taken me a while to wrap my head around throughout my life.
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I am a pretty extroverted person, so I will endure unstructured fun and I can definitely begin to enjoy it. But if you ever want to play board games with me, or cards, even jackbox or role playing games, don’t hesitate for a second to invite me along.
I was struggling with the theme of ‘icons’ a lot because I don’t have any specific icons of my own I look up to, and I couldn’t think of anything clever to say about computer icons. I googled icons and read the sentence ‘Pop icons of previous eras include Benjamin Franklin and Mozart’. This seemed kind of wild to me both because those two people are surely still iconic in some way today, and also because the term ‘pop icon’ just doesn’t seem a comfortable fit for them.
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I’ve realised I associate the phrase ‘iconic’ quite strongly with the queer community. Interestingly, there are many, many people with ‘queer icon’ status who aren’t queer. We end up in this weird position of wanting so desperately for both characters and actual real people to come out as queer because they fit this queer icon image. I hope in the near future there will just be more queer queer icons. They are definitely out there. I’m glad there are already some amazing queer icons to look up to, I’m just always starved for more.
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It really struck me at the Spice Girls how many of the attendees were visibly queer. I feel like the Spice Girls are such a weird image of 90s feminism and even though they were going full out with the inclusive messaging, I felt like I could see the split in the audience where there were super straight people and super gay people. Are the spice girls queer icons? Discuss.
Day 17 – Balloons
This is the first dear June I have failed to source my own picture for, but all I could think of for this prompt was the balloon photograph in the film Funny Face and I am far too sleepy today to think much beyond that.
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The part of the movie where they go out and take all the different photos was one of my absolute favourites, even though the song in that bit is one of the least fun (Give me Think Pink and Clap Yo’ Hands please). Someone please give me pretty dresses and a bunch of balloons and let me run around Paris.
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Also, take more candid photos of me you cowards.
Day 18 – Post-its
You’re really challenging my need to sound pretentious and poetic with this prompt. I don’t really use post-its myself, I like the idea of them but actually they are of very little use and they are never sticky enough.
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The only real uses I can think of for post-its are for sticking the phone number for IT services to your work desktop, and then I suppose I see lots of people put post-its on top of stacks of paper about a thing to remind them what to do with that particular stack of paper.
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I’m not sure that I have ever regularly used post-its, but nowadays they seem particularly outdated. Do you think post-its could become obsolete?
During June I took part in an Instagram challenge named #DearJune from superstar and friend Hannah Witton. I surprised myself by managing to write at least a little something every day and also by being brave enough to be so open and to share pieces of writing at all!
I’ve decided to put the pictures I shared and all the pieces of writing up here as well, largely because I’m about to get a bit pretentious about my Instagram ~aesthetic~ and archive some of the posts.
Don’t forget to follow my Instagram @alliegrce and I might share more writing there in the future!
Obviously the growing overlap of books and YouTube is controversial. I won’t go into that. For me, it was really cool to see how the two different interests of mine overlapped. There were two panels I was really excited about – and luckily managed to get to (I was volunteering at the event so panels were not the top priority). I saw the Booktube panel on the Saturday, and the Women who write panel on the Sunday.
Penguin had a great stall at Sitc and even gave me free books and a cute ass tote bag
When I tried YouTube when I was younger I had always wanted it to be related to books, and if I ever try again I suspect I will come back to that. The Booktube community was one of my early points of access to the wider YouTube community. The Panel was moderated by Sanne (booksandquills) who I have followed for years and years. Other speakers were Hannah Witton, Ariel Bissett, Lucy Powrie, Genista Tate-Alexander, Olly Thorn (PhilosophyTube), and Imani Shola. I had known of and watched about half of the panelists before, and am really interested in what the other panelists do.
I was particularly interested in Olly Thorn’s work on YouTube. As a soon-to-be Psychology graduate I have often thought about making academia that I am familiar with more accessible by making YouTube content. This is effectively exactly how Olly got his start. I think it’s so important that knowledge is made more accessible to everyone. University is insanely expensive. Textbooks, journals, and even general non-fiction books can really empty out one’s wallet quickly. I was glad to see people are already doing the things I have thought about in approaching education accessibility, and I hope to be a bigger part of it someday.
It was interesting to hear Hannah and Imani speak a little on their own published works. I had already read ‘Doing It’ as a big fan of Hannah and as someone who is very involved in improving sex education. I now have Imani’s poetry book ‘Heart Shards and Lip balm’ sitting on my bed for me to read ASAP. I did not know of Imani before but she was such a highlight of the event. She radiates positivity and thoughtfulness, and I think it was so worthwhile having her voice on panels at the event. I can’t wait to see more of her.
Women who write panel
I would love to write more, so hearing from people who have written is an opportunity I don’t like to pass up. Whether it be poetry, non-fiction, or something else entirely, I love to hear about other people’s processes and experiences with writing (particularly if their writing is out there in the world, on bookstore shelves and in amazon warehouses). This brings me on to the second bookish panel: Women who write. As well as Hannah and Imani making an appearance again, Savannah Brown, Hazel Hayes, Connie Glynn, and Dodie Clark were there to talk about heaps of different kinds of writing.
Each of them were coming at writing in different ways. Hannah, who was moderating, has written her non-fiction book about sex education. Imani and Savannah both have published poetry books, and Savannah is also in the process of writing a novel. Connie (who you may know as Noodlerella) is writing a series of YA books. Hazel is a film-maker, and has written a number of scripts, but also has a background in short story writing. Finally, Dodie is primarily known for being a song-writer, but also has a non-fiction book being released later this year.
It was so interesting hearing all of their different perspectives and experiences with writing. I was really fascinated by what each of them had to say, and was taking notes on my phone about some of their strategies and techniques. I particularly like hearing women speak on it, and it was really interesting to hear about the prominence of women in the book industry (Especially in contrast to the film industry, which Hazel had good insight into).
I’m really glad to have had the opportunities to hear all of these people speak at both panels. My love and passion for writing, books, and publishing, was well supported at the event, which was really exciting for me. I hope to see more insight into this world in the future, and continue to explore how it connects with online media and personalities.
Allie x
P.S. Later this week I will probably write a blog about YouTube culture more broadly, and being a ‘fan’. As I have a lot of thoughts I’d like to write down, and as I’ve learned in the last 24 hours, Twitter is not sufficient for sharing those thoughts…
