letter #1 || 3/9 UTC, 3/9 CST || 1264 words

Dear Eevee,
How are you? It's been so long since I had a penpal, and I'm really excited to get to write to someone again! You suggested chatting about books, so I'll kick things off with some rambling about what I've been reading lately The main thing I've been reading these past couple of weeks has been the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson — I've been wanting to read the series for a while, especially as I got more into Sanderson. Finding the series was like uncovering a goldmine; a five-book epic fantasy series with books that are actually long enough to give me more than a few hours of reading material, by one of my favorite authors? Yeah, it's been fun.

I've also gotten to read some neat literature for school this term! To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek are the ones I've been enjoying the most, although I also really appreciate a book on English I've gotten to read called Less than Words Can Say. The author is refreshingly spicy, and doesn't hold back his opinions, which has been both entertaining and enlightening. To Kill a Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451 are classics, of course, but Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was an unexpected gem; the author of that has some of the tangiest writing I've ever come across. She does beautiful, unexpected things with words that leave me a little breathless, a little dizzy — her voice is wild, unrestrained and unfettered, and somehow real in a way that I don't often see. She has the kind of talent that I strive for in my own writing. I'm not sure I want to write books about nature (although her work has made me think it might be interesting after all), but I want to use words the way she does: fresh, almost feral, ideas taken apart and put back together in a unique way.

Speaking of inspiring writers, I recently read another book that had a similar effect on me: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. I'm not sure if you've read it or not, but it's a historical fiction novel set during WWII, and it was absolutely stunning. Narrated by Death himself (this was, by the way, one of my favorite takes on the grim reaper I've seen so far), I've never read a book that made me feel quite the same way. There was an inevitability to the story that shattered my heart long before the climax, and that tension was beautifully sustained throughout the book.

On the still fun but more mediocre side, I've been reading a series called The Arc of a Scythe, the premise of which deals with what would happen is humanity essentially conquered death. An interesting concept, but although I clipped through the first and second book, I've stalled on the last one — I just haven't been able to get into it. I seem to have an issue with trilogies these days; I started another series, read two of the books, and gave up on the third. In fact, I currently have not one but two unfinished trilogies sitting on my shelf right now. I finished the first two books of one and definitely intend to finish the third (I just got a bit sidetracked by the Stormlight Archives) — the series is called the Sunlit Lands and I've been enjoying it a lot. The second is a fun little fairy tale mashup / fractured fairy tale series I thought looked cute. I finished the first book of that one and flipped through the other two, but I haven't decided whether it's worth the effort of finishing yet. Not the most brilliant writing I've ever encountered, to be honest, but I'll give it a chance to redeem itself if I have the time.

Anyways… reading this, I've realized I possible have too many things to read and not enough time to read them all. Sigh. By my count, I currently have 8 unfinished books I checked out from the library, plus an audiobook (that one is a novella, though, so it shouldn't take as long). Some of them I might just need to return to later. Stormlight Archives took up too much of my brain space over the past couple of weeks to allow for very much reading outside of that LOL.

What about you? Have you been reading anything interesting lately? What are your favorite genres? Mine is predominately fantasy, but I appreciate some good dystopian, too, and will occasionally dabble in historical fiction. On the other hand, the genres I almost never read include romance and horror. In the middle somewhere are mystery (I am extremely picky with this and pretty much exclusively read Sherlock Holmes, with the exception of a couple Agatha Christies I managed to find — I definitely need more Agatha Christie), adventure, and sci-fi. I love a good fairy tale retelling, but alas, those are harder to find. I guess I just have to write some myself. Which reminds me, do you have any writing projects you're currently working on? If so, how would you describe them?

I mostly yapped about books and what I've been reading in this letter, but you're more than welcome to write to me about anything — I'll happy chat about just about anything under the sun (except bananas, I don't like bananas). So, to give you a couple things more than just my love of reading (which has already been well established), here's some random stuff about me or that has happened lately. My best friend got me an awesome pair of earrings yesterday — I'm not sure if you've seen it or not, but they're from the movie Howl's Moving Castle, and specifically are Howl's earrings. It's one of my all-time favorite movies, and getting the earrings made me ridiculously happy. I'm not wearing them right now because I still need to clean them (although I did wear them for a few minutes yesterday to try them on), but maybe I'll put them on later. I also got myself some new highlighters lately that I've been using for taking notes during church, and I've been loving them so far. I kind of have a thing for art supplies… the sheer number of pens, pencils, and markers in my room is a little frightening. Oh, and sketchbooks. I have a thing about collecting pretty sketchbooks, too.
I've been thinking about getting a haircut lately. I'm a bit conflicted, because I'm not sure what I want to do with my hair. It's really long right now, like, down to my waist (it's actually a little past it when I straighten it out all the way), and it's got a wavy texture + frizzes and tangles super easily, so it's kind of a permanent mess. I love having it long but I'm terrible at styling it, and there's just… a lot of hair. It gets caught in everything and goes everywhere. Trimming the ends might help, but I think the only real solution would be to just cut it shorter. I'm not sure I'm willing to do that yet, though. If I did, I think I'd be tempted to cut it really short. I don't know how that would look on me, though.

I've probably rambled enough, so I'll do you a mercy and wrap this letter up LOL. Apologies for my wandering thoughts; getting Chuey to write a cohesive, focused letter without going on any tangents is… well, good luck with that. Anyways, I look forward to your reply, and I hope you enjoyed your letter <3
- Chuey

letter #2 || 3/10 UTC, 3/9 EDT || 1264 words

Hi Chuey!

I'm doing pretty good, how about you? Pen pals have always been something that interested me, but I never had a means of making it work, so I was thrilled when it was an activity that was being discussed in the Polar Bears.

I have heard a lot about the Stormlight Archive—my brother and sister keep nagging me to get into Mistborn—but I haven't ever gotten into it myself. Something about the large commitment to a long series is a bit threatening. (I do not need to throw myself into a new pool of fandom to play in right now either-) I'm glad you're enjoying it; I've loved what I've read from Brandon Sanderson so far.

Yay, I love reading great books in school! I read Fahrenheit 451 and To Kill a Mockingbird in class years ago and, while I don't remember much about Fahrenheit 451, I do remember that I wrote an essay on why Atticus Schafer is a hero. I adore the way you use your words to describe things, oh my gosh- I have not read The Book Thief yet, though it is on a list of books I would like to get around to. Your description is very compelling; I'll have to see what the status for getting it at the library soon could be.

Speaking of books for school, I've read some great ones for World Lit this year! The first semester was mostly older works— like The Odyssey and Hamlet, only one of which I hadn't read before—but the second semester has had some more enjoyable novels so far! Not that I didn't find The Odyssey and Hamlet fun, but the writing style is harder to get into and fully grasp. I was given the valuable advice of listening to Shakespeare if I'm not able to watch it, which has made it a lot easier to understand. That aside, I'm loving the books for this semester. We read Les Miserables earlier and I'm going through The Chosen right now! The Chosen has been really interesting in that it's so deeply immersed in Jewish culture and takes place during World War II with the unlikely friendship of two Jewish boys. I found the way that the concept of religion and family dynamics was explored to be really intriguing, and there's a lot as far as culture is concerned that I learned from it as well!

Outside of school, I honestly have not read too many books the past few years outside of comic books. I was able to finish a YA trilogy two weekends ago though! It was, in fact, about comic book characters… It was so lovely and kind of read like a fanfiction in that it leaned into the fact that you knew about who the characters all were before some of them new themselves! Most of my reading is fanfiction… I don't know what that says about me, but I thoroughly enjoy it because I cannot get into new worlds and characters so frequently. I love reading most genres, but I am currently leaning towards spy-fi and something that I suppose could be called domestic action? I love action on the side, but having real-fi as the main. Which sounds very fanfiction-y. Honestly, the dynamics of the characters mean way more to me than the genre itself. I personally don't like books in the romance genre too much (I once asked for a romance book recommendation and my main complaint was that it had too much romance, go figure, but I lean so heavily into reading shipfics. I'm not sure if it's the nature of how fanfiction is written or that it's the specific characters that I like reading about. Perhaps it's a mix of both and the deep character study that can come along with it? I am unsure.

Book-adjacent, I finally got around to watching all of the Hunger Games movies (just the original trilogy), which, thinking about it, I have no clue if you've read the books or not- but AAAA!! I just adore the characters and the ways it explores all of these different social constructs and makes commentary about it is so fascinating. Getting back into this world years later —I was probably around 12-13 when I first read them— does really help to open my eyes to just all that was being discussed. I would not be able to catch some of those themes and commentary on society when I was younger, so it's been really interesting to go back and revisit that. It's making me want to reread the books so badly… However, I have many options available to me. I really want to listen to the audiobook! And there's one available to me on Libby, so I'll be doing that for sure. But I don't know if I want to read an e-book alongside that or use my physical copy… The thing with the e-book is that I can annotate it in a way that I like digitally and not physically because my siblings share the book as well. Honestly, I may just end up only listening to it, but who knows? I am planning on reading more this week because my college classes are on break this week! I want to make art as well AUGHH- I want to create, so that means I should write some more, right???

Howl's Moving Castle is on my to be watched list! Which is probably longer than my to be read… I'm trying to get through some Studio Ghibli movies, so it's probably more likely to be watched than me reading The Book Thief. That sounds so cool though! As far as hair is concerned, trimming and layers would probably help? I always get layers because of my thick hair, but it's not like visibly layered if that makes sense? (I honestly don't know what to call it, my mom has cut my hair for me most of the time). Hair can be a tricky thing because of its permanence and major effect on your physical appearance. I'm currently thinking about getting bangs which is a whole other ordeal.

Anyways, today was the first day of theater rehearsals! We're doing monologues and spoken poetry for this season of theatre! My selections are I'm Nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickinson and The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol, both of which are fun and I am excited to memorize! This is the first time that we're doing mostly solo stuff, so I was unsure of how we would go about practicing. It ended up being extremely laid back and we finished like 22 minutes early so I got to yap with my friends and we had a fun time! We have some elementary school kids for the first time and, while I have known both of them through dance, I haven't spent too much time with this one girl. However, I think I am quite comfortable with her now, considering that she played with my hair, sat on my lap, and got way too close into my personal space. It was an interesting experience for sure, but I got many entertaining photos out of it, which I think is worth it.

I think I have gone on long enough as well. I honestly have no clue how many words this will end up being haha- Hope you've had a great day and I can't wait to hear back from you! We should also totally talk about our cabins too, because it's SWC and all, you know?

Lots of love,
Eevee

1020 words

Hello Eevee <3

I'm doing well!! And yeah, I love that they instituted it this session It's been so much fun getting to know people better!

Mistborn is definitely long, although not as hefty as the Stormlight Archives — well, unless you count the second arc in. In which case I'm not sure which is longer LOL. Out of curiosity, what other Sanderson have you read? I've dabbled in the Cosmere some, but I've also read some of his non-Cosmere works like The Reckoners and Skyward!

LES MISERABLES MENTION!! I started Les Mis for school last year and absolutely loved it. Sadly, for some reason my schedule didn't have me going through the entire book, and I have yet to pick it back up again (as much as I was enjoying it, it's definitely dense in some parts). Maybe this summer when I don't have to worry about homework haha. I also read the Chosen earlier this year, that one was really good too.

I sadly don't read fanfiction (unless you count that one Keeper of the Lost Cities fanfic posted on Scratch I read when I was twelve… cough), but that sounds so fun! Honestly, I probably would read fanfiction if I could find any lol. And yeah — I think what annoys me most about romance are the tropes, because while it's fine to be stressed about something like the fate of the entire world, being stressed about who to go out with — this hot guy or this other hot guy, both of whom have zero character development and rely solely on their appearances and smoldering glances? — feels, uh, less significant. I also hate the idealization a lot of romance slaps on characters, especially in fantasy. As surprising as it may be, not every single person in the universe is incredibly beautiful…? I feel like it's all about who's most attractive rather than who's actually compatible or a good person. And then, gasp, relationship drama happens because the love interests are actually total jerks. Go figure.

I have actually read the Hunger Games, and I read them fairly recently, too! I enjoyed them, although I do wish literally everyone I loved didn't get killed off :sob: Finnick my beloved… you deserved better. I was also mildly annoyed by the love triangle since I was caught between secretly liking Gale better as a character but knowing the story was pushing for Peeta. (I didn't hate Peeta, though, so it was okay.) Personally, I didn't love Katniss because she didn't really resonate with me, but I know the sensation of numbness she gave off was the point, so, you know. I don't know that I would call it my favorite series ever — I liked Gregor the Overlander a lot better — but I thought it was good! I haven't seen the movies yet, so that's next on my list, I guess.

Ooh, theatre sounds like so much fun! I would love to get into it someday; I'm thinking about auditioning for my community theater one of these days. I've never acted before, but it seems like something I would like. I love what you picked for your monologues — those are both great! Jabberwocky especially ;D
Oh my goodness, my little sister does the same thing. In fact, I have a story about that! One of my best friends started bringing her boyfriend to the church we go to (which has been cool!), and my little sister, who absolutely loves her, was pretty unsure about how she felt about that. She acted really shy around him for a couple of weeks, but then a switch flipped and she decided to accept him… and now she's all over him. She sat next to him after services last Sunday and like held his arm LOL — my friend jokingly went “oh nah you can't have him he's mine :0” Anyways, my sister and another little girl have apparently decided he's now part of the gang and crawl all over him just like they crawl all over me and my friends. Poor guy.

Fairy Tales has been fun! It admittedly hasn't been as active as I hoped, but part of that was my fault; February was kind of wild for me and I wasn't as present during the planning process as I would have liked to have been. I think I may take a break from leading after this session — I love it so much, but I'm starting to feel burned out, and I don't think it's healthy to feel pressured into applying for every single session. I've been a co/leader consistently since November 2024, which is honestly kind of crazy. I absolutely love SWC, and leading was how I found a way to give back to the community and take a more active part in helping out, but sometimes I need to remind myself that life > SWC, and I think it's time to recharge and just be a camper for a session or two. (School stuff is also ramping up, and I want to be able to focus on that without being distracted by deadlines and leader commitments.) Regardless, Fairy Tales has been my dream cabin for years now, and I'm so thrilled I finally got to lead it, even if it didn't turn out the way I originally envisioned it. How about you? How's Ilu-fi going? I love y'all's aesthetic — it's so adorable <3

This letter has been a long time in coming (for which I sincerely apologize; the midsession slump hit like a train wreck and it took me a few days to get myself back on track. Also, every time I sat down to write something else would pop up I had to go do, which was extremely annoying and also made the writing process a lot slower. The struggles of a writer…), but I hope you enjoyed, and I sincerely thank you for putting up with your poor procrastinating penpal, who may or may not be addicted to alliteration. Ahem.
(…See what I did there? ;D)
Anyways, I hope you've been having an amazing session. Love you so much
- Chuey