Hello and welcome back to Etude to Eden! Today’s update concerns a show I always have the urge to rewatch: Broadchurch. Besides my drive to watch programs that are British in origin and also happen to include David Tennant, Broadchurch cements itself as a favorite show of mine due to its ability to display the complexities of tragedy and trauma as it affects individuals, families, and an entire community thrown off its axis. The show follows the lives of people in a small town in the wake of the murder of a young child, Danny Latimer, and the extensive investigation to find who killed him. The challenges of the investigation slowly make the people of the town turn against each other, families develop significant internal conflicts, and secrets of the past come to light for many. For this blog, I will go into detail of the results and plot twists of the first two seasons of the show, so if you want to watch this show for the first time and witness the mystery unfold, go watch it first–it is definitely worth it. WARNING: This post includes major spoilers for the TV show Broadchurch.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden
Lauren’s Etude to Eden: Detroit: Become Human and “Soldier, Poet, King”
Hello and welcome back to a new post my friends! For today’s addition to the blog, I’ve decided to focus on a video game called Detroit: Become Human. This game is one that can be viewed through a “choose your own adventure” lens, where throughout the course of the game, one shifts between the storylines of three different characters in a fictional future Detroit, set in 2038. In this future, androids are the new hot tech on the market and can be found in any home or business; however, many androids are beginning to revolt and claim they are gaining a sense of consciousness, deviating from their intended programming, becoming what is come to be known as “Deviant.” The overarching story takes you through the lives of three different androids living in this new reality: Kara, a caretaking android whose goal is to save a child from her abusive father; Markus, the leader of the android rebellion; and Connor, a detective android tasked with discovering the cause of the deviation and aiding to stop it from occurring. There are ultimately many different endings to this game from any of the three perspectives, but for the sake of clarity, I will be mainly focusing on what is considered the “true” or “good” ending. In this ending to the game, Kara successfully crosses the US/Canadian border with what has become to be her daughter, ensuring their safety; Connor has deviated himself and assists Markus, who together come to prove to the world that androids are in fact alive. At this point, it is implied there will be legislation put in place over time to ensure the rights of androids are protected and they will integrate into society.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: Our Flag Means Death and “For the Departed”
Hello all and welcome back to the blog! This semester, I am going to put a bit of a twist into my typical formula by introducing a wider span of content. While I temporarily dabbled in my interpretation of TV shows with my Good Omens hybrid post, going forward, I will occasionally write updates entirely dedicated to certain shows and video games! Given my playlist, Eden was originally started in the wake of my interaction with the TV show version of Good Omens, so it seems only fitting to highlight this medium of content in addition to novels. To start this transition, I will properly introduce and elaborate on a show I have already mentioned on this blog: Our Flag Means Death.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: Loveless and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! It has been a wild summer and I spent a lot of money on books (as usual). However, I have yet to read the vast majority of them. Therefore, this semester will be more of a book review. My time will be spent constructing and (hopefully) adhering to a reading schedule, where I will read a book between each blog and write about my experiences with it through the lens of the funky songs I come across. This plan cannot possibly fall apart, so it will be a blast to work through the weeks with more material and adventures through my library. Additionally, most of these books will all hold a similar theme. I’ve been allocating a lot of my time to reading new LGBTQIA+ stories emerging into the publishing world, so most of the new additions to my shelves are just that. So, for the foreseeable future I’m going to spice up our lives by reading through my abundant amount of queer literature and expose you all to the madness that are the ideas floating around in my head. Without further ado, here is the newest addition to my Etude to Eden: Loveless by Alice Oseman.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: Good Omens, “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” and “39”
Now I will admit, despite being in the ideal target demographic, I never got into Superwholock when I was younger. For any unaware of this unfortunate phenomenon, Superwholock is the fan base created for fans of the shows Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock. All my friends in middle school seemed to be enamored in these shows, but I somehow dodged the angsty content and media that was perfect for me at this stage in my life. I really should have had the classic “emo” stage. I cannot elaborate on why I did not. However, the internet has brought to my attention that there is a new age of “Superwholock,” and I honestly cannot disagree with them. This new set of shows feels very reminiscent of the themes that enamored many back in the day and overall encapsulates the same feral energy found on Tumblr at its peak when those shows were still airing. The new age of “Superwholock” has presented itself in the following programs: Good Omens, What We Do in the Shadows, and Our Flag Means Death. I can say that while I may not have given in to the first wave of this occurrence, the second time around I am not so lucky. These three shows all come together in such a way that gives a sense of progression in this age, instead of the frantic grasping for scraps that people had to engage in during the age of Superwholock. While many people rallied around shows like Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock due to their potential for representation of more inclusive relationships and people’s ability to relate to their characters, people now rally behind shows like Good Omens, What We Do in the Shadows, and Our Flag Means Death due to their explicit representation offered in an age that is significantly more accepting.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: Tess of the d’Urbervilles and “Eden”
Welcome back, everyone! This week we are taking a look back to a classic, one in which I managed to find a song that I personally think is my best pairing yet. Now, I have a lot of opinions on this work, and I am going to hopefully manage to reign in my impulses to rant on these various topics. I personally have no one else who has read this book yet to bounce these ideas off of, so these thoughts have been festering for a good while. With that aside, the novel I will be turning my attention to this week is Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. This is a read I do not encourage one to binge in one sitting, because it will give you whiplash with all of the events that go down. I say this from experience, from the perspective of a master procrastinator that read this book and analyzed it all in one day for a school project I had put off for months. SPOILER ALERT: I chose this book out of the many available mainly due to my awareness of the ending in which, spoiler, Tess dies. I largely chose my books based on dramatic endings because I wanted to see how the events of the story unfolded to lead to unfortunate fates. However, I had no idea of the events of the rest of this book, and it would be an understatement to say I was shocked at the time, as the plot provides hit after hit. The song I have chosen to pair with this book I think presents said events in a view that matches with my own and breaks down Tess’s story into the true horror it became. That song would be “Eden” by Sara Bareilles.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: The Love Hypothesis and “My Heart is Buried in Venice.”
Alright everyone, get ready for a doozy of an update because this week I have thrown everything to the wind. I like to think of myself as pretty organized and too anxious not to have a properly formed plan and schedule, but the impulsivity kicks in every now and then to ruin it and this will be a direct result of that. Because this week I actually read a book. I genuinely cannot remember when I last finished reading a story I chose of my own volition, but I binge-read a book in 24 hours in the middle of this week and it has taken over all thought processes. The plan was originally to write about another classic – and I know you will all be so bummed to hear I am no longer doing that – but instead, I have pushed the whole line-up back to discuss this novel which has taken up the residence of the tiny plot of free real estate that is my mind: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. I am laughing as I type this that I enjoyed this novel so much, especially after learning about how it is another example of mass-produced fanfiction from the internet. However, the fact that it reads so much like fanfiction really kept me reading, with its weird quippy lines and typical weird, unlikely situations. Plus, this baby has ALL the tropes. It really is a culmination of what writing on the internet has come to, and I love that those who put themselves out there on public platforms so long ago are getting recognition in the actual world of literature.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: Six of Crows and “Burning Pile”
Hello everyone! This week I want to delve into one of my all-time favorite books, as well as a band that truly captures the essence of its story. But first, a quick detour into a discussion of the literary canon. While the literature which makes up the canon do genuinely have some depth and messaging to them that have stood the test of time, thus thrusting them into the canon, few people can get invested in their stories, and more importantly connect to these stories due to a lack of application to our own lives and even more often a lack of proper representation/inclusion in the stories. Certainly, there are a few that break this mold, but the vast majority lean towards one end of the spectrum. Aside from the obvious problems with this curation of texts, the problem my attention grasps onto is the lack of genre inclusion. Not a lot of attention is placed on how we view different genres, and how we can often perceive those who indulge in genres typically viewed as juvenile. Some desire books that do not take themselves too seriously or push some sort of worldly moral code. I appreciate the effort, but something that still succeeds in that mission, but also occasionally reads like a slice of life of the characters in some wacky situation (such as perhaps, some misguided teens within the criminal underworld taking on the most impossible heist their world has ever known), really makes it fascinating in its simultaneous simplicity and underlying complexity.
Continue readingLauren’s Etude to Eden: Wuthering Heights and “Sick of Losing Soulmates”
Hello all! My name is Lauren Lotarski and I am here to write about literature and songs, but it is not as simple as it sounds. See, I have this large playlist I have been cumulating for about two years now (I am definitely the type of person who just maintains one playlist over time rather than creating new ones. I have been told this is weird, but alas, I cannot comprehend organizing more than one set of songs). My main objective of this playlist was to bring together some songs that all gave me a similar calming vibe that could help me destress, and generally have slower, nicer sounds that I could calmly breath along to; I call it “Eden” (This is heavily contradictory to many of the songs included, but that is besides the point). Anyways, a lot of these songs have come to me through media I have indulged in over time, and when I listen to these songs, I get the happy feeling and thoughts I had while originally consuming it. Many of these mediums were books I was made to read in my classes, or books that became so much a part of me that I looked through every corner of the internet to find content that could bring me new, refreshing takes on already great material. And through this collection of music and emotions, I have concluded I have plenty of material to write a blog on, so here I am, and let us see where this goes together. I hope you see as much wonderment in these combinations as I do.
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