I have already finished one of my genre pieces for the 2-genre project, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Putting it all together to make it look like some old town newspaper was my favorite part of it, I think the aesthetic is nice and it makes sense given that the Blackwood murders and Constance’s trial was six years before the events of “We Have Always Lived in the Castle”. Most of the town seems to believe that Constance had killed her family, despite being acquitted in the trial, so I suspected that the way it was publicized had impacted how the town felt about it. A sensationalist reporter, seeking to draw the attention of the public, would twist some things around and add some nontruths. To spice things up, I added an “interview” based off one of the characters that harassed Mary Katherine in Stella’s shop, Jim Donell.

I haven’t exactly started the artist book by this point, I am a little unsure of how to begin but I’ll figure it out eventually. I considered making the front and end covers look like the court documents or something, but maybe it would seem out of place with Merricat’s imagination and magic. I may end up doing a hybrid of collages and drawings, since it is a little difficult trying to do an artist book using a computer. We’ll see how it turns out.

Out of all the few genres I can recall from the top of my head, I think visual art is one of the most interesting ways to send a message or represent an issue. It may be difficult for some people to imagine a purpose for certain types of artwork, but to someone out there it comes off as something meaningful and something they can deeply connect to. Art benefits from the facts that there are no words and people’s interpretations can differ in many different ways. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this rings true for artworks and paintings done by artists who are trying to express themselves to the world.

Music is another favorite genre of mine, and compared to art it has an even greater potential to bring out emotion in people. Music could contain lyrics or it could only contain a melody, and with so much variety of music it is easy for a person to find a song that best suits their taste. Music and art are a few of the earliest forms of human expression, going back to the paleolithic age where humans were still hunter-gatherers. Their cave art can still be seen today, and its amazing that these markings survived for their descendants to discover them. I guess cave art can be considered one of the most ancient genres.

I have recently finished reading Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” and I felt like it has the strangest ending of any book I have ever read. There are still many questions I have about the events that took place before the beginning of this novel, such why did Merricat kill the rest of their family? What was Constance’s and Merricat’s relationship with their family like before the incident?

I have a feeling that Merricat had actually decided to kill her family on behalf of Constance. When being questioned by the police, Constance had stated that “they deserved to die” and she ended up cleaning the bowl where the arsenic was placed. Uncle Julien claimed that she did all this because she was “excited” but I believe that Constance was trying to cover for Merricat. Several times throughout the story, Constance expresses moments of regret that she should have done things differently, such as putting Uncle Julien in the care of a hospital and doing something about Merricat. Although, Constance never clearly expressed what the deal with Merricat is and what exactly she should have done differently.

Merricat is very unlike how someone of her age is expected to think. She believes in magic and has fantastical daydreams about living on the moon with her sister Constance and a winged horse. Not only that, but she is quite morbid, wishing death upon the townspeople and reciting various facts about deadly mushrooms and plants to Charles whenever her patience with him runs short. It is obvious that some sort of psychological phenomenon is at play here, however I did not figure out exactly what it is yet.

It is now the moment a lot of us have been waiting for four years and it is definitely living up to my expectations. In that I expected pure chaos. In the days leading up to the election, I saw people from both sides predicting a wave, either a blue or a red wave or some landslide victory for one side. But now it seems that red and blue waves are crashing into each other judging by how close the individual races in many of the states are. This is especially surprising considering the record number voter turnout.

I guess when it comes to a person as divisive and attention grabbing like Donald Trump, people are deciding to exercise their right to vote in greater numbers either because they are his loyal followers or because they can’t stand the sight of him. Now a certain type of anxiety has settled over the people, the fear of rioting after the results of the election or the president trying to remain in power by taking action against “fraud”.

The 2020 Election is going down in the history books, along with the rest of 2020, and I can definitely say that sometimes it isn’t really fun living through history.