recent tv favourites (aka tv, cartoon + anime recommendations!)

Since I'm on the super long holiday between year 11 and 12 right now I have had a lot of time to watch a lot of TV and YouTube. I was originally just going to do a general current favourites video but realised I had so many TV shows I wanted to recommend that I wanted to dedicate an entire blog post to it!

My list of TV shows to watch is still massive and ever growing with all the amazing shows I'm discovering and are currently coming out (I really need to watch this Stranger Things everyone is on about) so I may do more posts like this because I just really like watching TV.

I'm going to do this in 3 sections: anime, cartoons and general TV which is just anything that doesn't fit into the other categories. Without further ado, let's go!

General TV

Veep - This is a show me and my brother recently finished (he'd already seen it but rewatched it with me). It's basically a comedy show about the Vice President. It's described as "American political satire comedy" and I'd say that sums it up pretty well. I just love everything about this show! The characters were just amazing I found myself loving them all, even the ones I hated (*cough* Jonah *cough*) and it was just so funny that I found myself laughing out loud quite a lot. There's currently 5 seasons out and I am VERY excited for season 6!

RuPaul's Drag Race - I actually started watching this when I was doing my exams. I planned to have it as just a background show but I just got so caught up in it that I had to stop myself from watching it until my exams had finished! It's essentially a competition show to "discover America's next drag superstar" and there's just so much drama and bitchyness and fabulousness that I just can't tear myself away! I just finished season 5 (I am SO happy with who won I just love her so much) and am excited to start the next season!

Orange is the New Black - I watched season 4 when it came out and it is just so good. I'm not gonna dwell on it too much because you've probably heard of it by now but it's basically just a women's prison show that makes me feel all the different emotions within the space of 5 minutes. This show will be the death of my I stg.

Also some random recommendations that don't really fit with the others but I still really enjoy watching are Dragon's Den and Eat Well For Less? so if you're looking for something random to watch on BBC I'd definitely recommend these!

Cartoons

(I have completely fallen in love with cartoons recently and I really need to reiterate how not "just for kids" so many of them are. They're amazing.)

Bob's Burgers - Okay this is definitely one I wouldn't show my kids! It's just a funny cartoon about this family that runs a burger shop and I'm really not sure what to say about it! I binge watched all 6 seasons and my life just felt so empty once I'd finished it. I love every. single. one of the characters and want the best for all of them. You may have seen some Tina quotes around Tumblr already because I know that's what introduced me to the show in the first place!

Gravity Falls - Honestly I'm not sure I'm emotionally prepared to talk about this show. I watched it when it first came out in 2012 and got completely obsessed with all the mysteries then but wanted to wait until all of season 2 had come out to watch it. Then I was convinced I had to get my brother addicted too (which I succeeded with) and we watched the entire thing together very quickly. I couldn't tell you how much I cried in the last episode. WHY DID IT HAVE TO END! I want more adventures with these characters that I am ridiculously attached to and more mysteries and secret codes and little things to spot in the background and seriously I just cannot recommend this show highly enough if I tried. It was just an incredible rollercoaster.

(Also I ended up downstairs whilst my brother was watching the last episode of Bojack Horseman and even though I now know the season 3 ending I just need to watch it. It has gone straight to the top of my list.)

Edit: It's August 9th and I just realised that I somehow COMPLETELY forgot Rick and Morty! That show was just incredible. Hilarious but still leaving me on the edge of my seat at times! And that season 2 ending I just can't I need season 3 right now seriously that was some emotional pain they put us through. Also I just really love everything Dan Harmon does. He's amazing.

Anime

Attack On Titan - cards on the table I actually watched this in like March but it's still completely taking over my life so I'm still going to mention it. As soon as I finished it I had to read the manga because I just physically couldn't handle not knowing what happened next! It's currently the time of month where the new chapter is going to be released soon and there are loads of spoilers about but I'm trying so hard to avoid them and it's very difficult because I just NEED to know what happens next! If you're not big on blood and gore and stuff I would not recommend this show but if you're fine with that then I would 1000% recommend. I am so excited for season 2 even though I know what happens because of the manga. This series has put me through endless amounts of pain and I still love it so if that doesn't say something good I don't know what will!

No Game No Life - I like to describe this as "if Sword Art Online took itself less seriously". It's about these two young people who are obsessed with video games and are incredible at them and get transported to a world where everything is decided by playing games. I think it's absolutely hilarious and I love the characters too! (Wouldn't recommend watching it with your grandma though. Or anyone, really.) Also the animation is just gorgeous. I gave in and upgraded to Crunchyroll Premium and I swear everything just looks so incredible.

Cute High Earth Defence Club LOVE! - This anime is plain ridiculous and I adore it. I am so in love with all the characters and the silly story. It's basically a parody (I've seen some reviews where honestly I think people may have taken it too seriously) magical girl anime where these 5 boys are made to join this club where they have to defeat evil people and fill the world with love I guess? That was a terrible overview but honestly I love it so much and think it's hilarious. Also shit went DOWN in the last 2 episodes of season 1 I seriously somehow did not see that coming!

Food Wars - I'm a vegetarian and all the food in this show still looks delicious. There's somehow something so dramatic and tense about cooking competitions in this cooking school with these strange and silly characters and I really don't get what makes me love it so much but really it keeps me on the edge of my seat and wanting to watch more!

Ouran High School Host Club - I do not get how you couldn't love this anime. The characters are just all so charming and adorable and lovable and I laugh out loud every single episode because they just get involved in all these ridiculous shenanigans. I'm so in love with every single member of the host club that even if the whole show was them sat there doing nothing I'd probably still watch and adore it.

(Cheeky plug time: here's my MyAnimeList profile so you can stalk the anime I'm watching and enjoying ;))


This ended up being a REALLY long blog post but I hope you enjoyed me rambling about TV shows anyways (if you even read it all that is)! I obviously 100% recommend everything mentioned here so if you see something you haven't watched before maybe give it a go! I'm not the best at giving overviews and describing things so even if they didn't sound great by my explanations I can promise you I loved each and every one of them with my entire being!

Goodbye

:)

i want to write poetry

A stupid little poem I wrote yesterday that's not meant to be taken seriously in any way! I just want to write poetry. (also I know poems don't necessarily have to rhyme I just thought it sounded funny ALSO as you can tell I'm not amazing at rhyming)

I want to write poetry.

I want my thoughts to flow in a way that sounds nice

and use words that make me sound as smart as mice.

I want a rhythmic beat that makes you tap your feet

and a surge of syllables that won't make you miserable.

I want my pen to swiftly spill its ink

into a poem that hopefully will not sink.

So here is my incredibly forced poem just to say:

I want to write poetry. Maybe I'll try one day. 

craving creativity

I hate that feeling when you just want to do something creative but you don't know what.

For me it's mostly craving putting pen to paper but just not knowing what to write. Or when you do get an idea but when you try to put it down on paper you just can't write more than two sentences.

I want to do something. Change something in my routine. Make something.

When all you want is to write an amazing blog post but all you can do is write some sentences on how you wish you could write an amazing blog post.

Goodbye

:)

"who are you all dressed up for?"

I can't help but get a little irritated when maybe I put a little more effort into how I look one day suddenly I get bombarded with the apparently obligatory question, "Who are you all dressed up for?" I don't understand why I can't be dressed up for myself?

Why do we seem to have come to a point in time where everything we do is thought to be for someone else and not ourselves? Yeah, I dressed up nicely today and I look damn good!

It also makes me feel insecure in a strange way. Like I'm drawing attention to myself (I'm not a huge fan of being the centre of attention) even though I try not to care of what others may think of how I look. And honestly mostly I think I manage to succeed in that. I didn't care when I went out in a dress and a multi-coloured propeller hat; so why does this question make me so self-conscious?

So basically what I'm trying to say is: let people do what they want and need to do to help their happiness and confidence (unless it's like harmful or something). And even if they are dressed up for someone, why does it matter? I can only presume that's still what's making them happy.

As much as I am for dressing for yourself, I really do encourage you to try and do whatever's best for your happiness and confidence and try not to let comments like this bother you and put you off doing what you want to do. And when in doubt: fake it 'til you make it!

Goodbye

:)

BEDA?

I have no idea if BEDA is a thing people do or not but I'm gonna try and do it anyways.

BEDA stands for Blog Every Day in August (or maybe it's Each Day?) so I'm gonna try (TRY) to put up a blog post every day throughout August. It's likely I'll miss days or maybe even stop halfway through and the blog posts probably won't be amazing but I'm gonna try anyway.

My train of thought is basically: if people on YouTube do VEDA (Video Every/Each Day in August) and it helps to get their video making creative juices flowing then maybe blogging every day will help my blogging creative juices flow.

I'm not sure if it counts as cheating to plan/write blog posts days in advance but I feel like there's no way I'm gonna be able to do this otherwise.

Here's to trying! See you (hopefully) tomorrow!

:)

summer holidays

I wrote this blog post on the 19th June and for some reason never made it public. So here it is today:

On Friday I took my last GCSE exam, marking the end of my GCSE exams and my time in secondary school. That means I am now completely free and on summer holidays until September. This gives me just over a month more summer holiday time than normal and I really want to do something with all this time.

In past summer holidays, I have definitely been known to do...well, nothing. Honestly I mostly just spend them watching YouTube or TV or when I was younger I spent the whole time on Club Penguin (that website was the best though). And whilst I definitely want to give myself a fair amount of time to do this "nothing" that I enjoy so much, I also want to TRY and do some other stuff.

I know some friends that are going on that NCS thing this year and while part of me regrets not signing up to do it too, I do feel like I wouldn't really have been able to enjoy it because I'm really not a big fan of being away from home without at least some family members or something and whilst I've never been camping I feel like I know myself well enough to know that I would not enjoy it.

So what do I do? Well one thing I can tell you is that I have a massive list of TV shows and anime to watch (honestly it's like a full 3 A5 pages it's slightly ridiculous). But what about other things? Things that would be widely regarded as "productive"? I have some things in mind but I feel like if I don't write them down somewhere I will either forget them or just pretend that I never thought them in the first place so I don't feel bad for not doing them.

So without further ado, here's a little (future me: this list actually turned out quite long okay whoops) list of some things I would like to do with my super long summer holiday:

• Tidy my room. Like REALLY tidy it. Clear out all the crap I don't want/need anymore and sort shit out. When my brother went to university 2 years ago we swapped rooms because he doesn't really need the bigger one anymore. But we never really properly swapped so we both have boxes of each other's old stuff under our beds that seriously needs sorting out. Honestly, most of it is probably gonna be thrown out/donated because I haven't touched those boxes in years meaning there's probably nothing in there I need.
• Write more blog posts. I know I've said this loads before but now I don't have anything to really stop me so I really wanna try and just write more.
• Write more fanfiction. YES THIS SOUNDS WEIRD but I can promise it's completely clean, Pokemon fanfiction. The community on the website is so lovely and I just miss the creative process of writing a fanfic so I wanna do it again.
• Buy some more plants. And get rid of the ones that are dead. You're not gonna save them no matter how much you water them so just accept it and move on. I really want more cacti because they're just so cute and easy to take care of and to me growing a plant is so rewarding because it's like raising your own little life without all the crying and nappy changing etc.
• Listen to more music. No matter how good you think your music taste is (and if I say so myself, it is pretty frickin' good), you know you want to expand it and there are loads of bands you've wanted to listen to more from so JUST DO IT! (also stop trying to bring back old memes)
• Learn stuff! I enjoy learning and have been eyeing up some Crash Courses series for a little while now so why not watch them and learn something new that you're actually interested in? Also watch some more documentaries and finally start researching some more cruelty free brands and what nutrients you actually need as a vegetarian because I'm pretty sure you're not getting everything you need by living off pizza and pasta.
• Volunteer!!! Not only will this look great on your CV, you know you want to help people even if that means sorting out clothes in the back of a charity shop or helping in some form at the food bank!
• Play some more Animal Crossing New Leaf and make that perfect town that you've dreamed of for so long!

There's probably something I've forgotten here that I'll add at some point but for now, this is the list. Future Caitlin please say you've done at least some of this because now you really wants to.

I feel like I changed tenses and constantly switched between writing in first and third person but it's cool. I forgive me.

If you're already on summer holidays then I hope you're enjoying yourself and if not I hope you enjoy yourself when you are! And if you're one of those weird adult people that doesn't get summer holidays I hope you're still taking time to relax and do the things that you love!

Goodbye

:)

"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted." - John Lennon

notes to self

some random notes to myself which i might edit/add more to as time goes on

• stop writing then deleting blog posts/tweets (unless they're like really bad or something) because it's YOUR blog and YOUR twitter and YOUR life and if people don't like it then that's their problem
• you won't always feel like you don't belong
• you won't always be this shy (hopefully)
• one day you might work in that perfect small side-lane book/coffee shop you're currently dreaming about (though if we're being real probably not)
• there is good in the world i promise
• stop questioning why people actually like you and just focus on trying to talk to them so they don't end up hating you 
• and yes i know talking to people is terrifying but you can do it i promise
• i know it seems like just EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT is tested on animals but there are great products that aren't animal tested you just need to actually be bothered to do some fkin research
• pls work on you english speaking speech else you'll just cry when it gets to the night before
• tidy your room
• please start your revision else once again you'll just end up crying the week before exams
• buy some hair heat protectant stuff before you burn all of your hair off
• take care of yourself
• just because you felt like crap yesterday and you feel like crap today doesn't mean you will tomorrow
• ur alright i guess
• you will find what you're passionate about one day

:)