about ME!!!!!

hi hello!! u may be wondering who the elusive webmaster of this web thingy dot com is! well my name is Rachel! i've gone by many different names & monikers during my Online Tenure, but Rachel is my irl name. i am excited to meet u!

i am quite a self-reflective & introspective person who's been posting/blogging/writing on the internet for almost my whole life. usually i have a lot to say about myself, & that's one of my fav things about the Internet! i can talk about myself & my thoughts!! but right now i'm drawing a blank!! but i guess if i had to summarize all of That, i am a neurotic individual in my early 30s, & i just moved to Chicago with my boyfriend! i am in the first year of graduate school, where i'm working toward my MS in Library & Information Sciences. i am hoping to specialize in Digital Information & Media Literacy!! i am very interested in Digital Anthropology & want to learn how i can use my LIS skills to help archive & curate Internet cultures, especially ones that formed 2005 & earlier. i got my BA in Journalism & Gender Studies (double major whoaa yeah!!) back in 2015 & then spent the rest of my 20s just trying my best to survive.

other things i like:

music!! i have very eclectic tastes in music but i think my favs could be narrowed down to synthwave, gothic, electronica, especially 80s stuff. in recent years i've really gotten into hyperpop. my fav musicians off the top of my head are depeche mode, the cure, crystal castles (fuck ethan, we stan alice glass here), SOPHIE (rip!!!), lady gaga, britney spears, charli xcx, fka twigs, hemlocke springs, 100 gecs. fun fact: i have a last.fm that i made when i was like 16 years old and my spotify still scrobbles to it.

movies. i used to watch so many movies, but lately i have a hard time sitting still long enough. i really like horror & surreal stuff. i think the best movie i've seen lately was i saw the tv glow. you can take a look at my Letterboxd

books. i used to put neil gaiman at the top of my list whenever i talked about my favorite writers, but... uhh.... yeah. off the top of my head, here are some of my fav books: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, Carrie by Stephen King, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, the Raven Boys cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, Perfume: the story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (also really like Gone Girl by her), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

TV. it's always sunny in philadelphia, twin peaks, rupaul's drag race, aqua teen hunger force, futurama, PEN15, breaking bad, better call saul

anime! evangelion, FLCL, cowboy bebop, sailor moon, cardcaptor sakura, madoka, panty & stocking with garterbelt, serial experiments lain, haibane renmei, devilman crybaby, cyberpunk edgerunners

video games. i can't believe i forgot to put video games on here until now. don't even know where to start. for like a whole year from september 2023 onwards i played Baldur's Gate 3 obsessively. other games i love: silent hill 1 - 4, the monkey island series, the longest journey, earthbound, american mcgee's Alice, Spyro, rule by rose, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, resident evil 4, persona 3, Mass Effect 1 - 3, original god of war trilogy, kingdom hearts (only ever played the first one), Omori, Hades, don't starve, dungeon of the endless, zoo tycoon, rollercoaster tycoon, Undertale, Gone Home, Stardew Valley, Papers Please, & so many others i'm probably forgetting right now. i love viboe gaem. currently playing: Dragon Age Origins, Nier Automata

misc stuff i like: unicorns, cats, Wildberry Pop Tarts, earl grey tea, Garfield (the cat), the Cheshire Cat, collecting weird things, & being mischievous.

the "deep shit":

religion/spirituality. kinda weird. agnostic, & some kind of pantheist. i believe in Da Universe

philosophy. existential-absurdist & slightly postmodern

politics. some kind of progressive - leftist - anti-capitalist - intersectional feminist - socialist - humanist thingy. i hesitate to put a label on it these days, because i find too many people are too quick to weaponize it like, "you're not a REAL LEFTIST unless you agree with ME." which is ok i guess, because i don't really want to be part of your club. i don't "do" politics in order to fit into a specific ideology or so that people will like me. what would the point of that be?

i have no patience for authoritarian leftists or authoritarians in general. not a fan of dogmatists or idealogues in any form. i've found that leftists who lean too close into those ways of thinking are more concerned with protecting their group identity than advocating for any kind of tangible social progress.

i try my best to be a pragmatic idealist. i'm more disillusioned than i'd like to be, gonna try to work on ways to fight that feeling.

want to contact me??

hi.rachel.flory at gmail babey!!!!