![[sticky entry]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/sticky_entry.png){kind=small}
hello viewers of my dreamwidth!! i figured since i'm going to be on here a lot more i should make sure people know who i am :)
if you know my government name feel free to use it, but you can call me vee if you don't!
she/her/hers, 20s, south asian (specifically south indian)
ao3
twitter
2024 Fic Year in Review
2024: Fic Year in Review
The Stats:
☆ Total Word Count: 41,736
☆ Total Fics Written: 7
☆ Fandoms Written In: Seventeen, IVE
( Read more... )
The Stats:
☆ Total Word Count: 41,736
☆ Total Fics Written: 7
☆ Fandoms Written In: Seventeen, IVE
( Read more... )
a critique of trails to azure
Complaints about a video game series I love, a dissection of what makes a compelling surprise villain to me, and learning to deal with disappointment.
( I hope this is interesting to someone )
( I hope this is interesting to someone )
Entry tags:
Fic Year in Review
2023: Fic Year in Review
The Stats:
☆ Total Word Count: 149,939
☆ Total Fics Written: 11
☆ Fandoms Written In: Seventeen, BTS, Le Sserafim, Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy Tactics
( Read more... )
The Stats:
☆ Total Word Count: 149,939
☆ Total Fics Written: 11
☆ Fandoms Written In: Seventeen, BTS, Le Sserafim, Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy Tactics
( Read more... )
Holiday Love Meme
It’s apparently Holiday Love Meme time!! I didn’t participate last year but this is truly such a lovely tradition :)
✨ holiday love meme 2023 ✨
my thread here
my thread here
Entry tags:
for you i would cross the line—fic commentary
Now that reveals have happened I thought I’d try my hand at this whole author’s commentary thing for my ficmix fic for you i would cross the line, going a bit into the process of writing it and also some of what I was thinking while writing.
( Read more... )
Comics I've Been Reading Recently!!
If you followed my Twitter account from any point following October 2022 you have probably seen me lamenting that I couldn't afford to renew my Marvel Unlimited subscription. Marvel Unlimited for those who don't know, is a subscription service that gives access to thousands of Marvel comics, and is basically the entire reason I was able to read the entirety of Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men. I was recently able to renew my subscription (thank you, 50% sale prompted by the newest Spiderverse movie) and I thought it'd be fun to talk about what I'm reading/what I plan to read!
Which brings me to the storytelling, I suppose. Spider-Man was one of the first ongoings at Marvel when Marvel Comics as we know them today took shape, and the comics landscape looked very different. I'm not going to get into too much of a history lesson here, but this run is from what's called the "Silver Age" of comics, which is known for pretty goofy dialogue and less focus on broader storylines or character development when compared to newer comics. The tone is pretty silly, the characters don't really feel like people so much as cartoon characters (which I guess they are, but you know what I mean), and every story gets wrapped up in a single issue. I can fly through issues of a comic pretty fast, but with this early Spider-Man stuff it takes me so long because every issue is SO dense. Every story has to start and end within a single issue, and that's just not how comics are written anymore!!
I plan to read this pretty slowly alongside some of the other series I'm going to mention below. My overall plan is to read Stan Lee's entire run on this book, then jump to Roger Stern, then jump to J.M. Dematteis in the 90s (mostly for that issue with the death of Harry Osborn, which is often regarded as one of the best issues in comic book history), then J. Michael Straczynski's run from the 2000s. I also want to actually read Ultimate Spider-Man through to the end (ie: when Secret Wars ends the Ultimate Universe) because that's what started this whole thing. I'll fit it in somewhere, I guess.
If you read all that: thank you!! If you have any comics thoughts at all please tell them to me, or if you're trying to get into comics, tell me that too!!
Spider-Man
The biggest project I'm taking on at the moment is reading Stan Lee's entire run on Spider-Man. I wanted to do a big Spidey readthrough at some point, especially after Across the Spiderverse made me remember how much I love both Miles Morales and Peter Parker. I was planning on re-reading Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis, both because that run (eventually) contains Miles' first appearance and also because I remember loving it when I was a teenager. But before I really got around to that, I got into a conversation in a comics server I'm in about Roger Stern's run on Spider-Man, and was eventually told that if I wanted a good starting point for that it would honestly be worth going back to the original 60s material. I'm only 3.5 issues in (the origin story, which is like 10 pages in another comic, and the first 3 issues of Amazing Spider-Man) and so far I'm really struck by how different it is, both in a character sense and in a storytelling sense. The Peter Parker of these early stories is kind of the worst, and not even really in a 'but we love him anyways' kind of way. He's bitter, and resentful, and not especially "good" or "kind." He feels obligated to fight bad guys (power, responsibility, etc), but so far he doesn't strike me as someone who cares. He's not even that funny! He's a really isolated character, with none of the supporting cast I'm familiar with (except Aunt May, who just says "Peter, why are you so upset" a lot). I find this all fascinating, for the record. I obviously prefer the version of Peter that I'm more familiar with, but it is cool to go back and see how much he's grown over so many years of publication history.Which brings me to the storytelling, I suppose. Spider-Man was one of the first ongoings at Marvel when Marvel Comics as we know them today took shape, and the comics landscape looked very different. I'm not going to get into too much of a history lesson here, but this run is from what's called the "Silver Age" of comics, which is known for pretty goofy dialogue and less focus on broader storylines or character development when compared to newer comics. The tone is pretty silly, the characters don't really feel like people so much as cartoon characters (which I guess they are, but you know what I mean), and every story gets wrapped up in a single issue. I can fly through issues of a comic pretty fast, but with this early Spider-Man stuff it takes me so long because every issue is SO dense. Every story has to start and end within a single issue, and that's just not how comics are written anymore!!
I plan to read this pretty slowly alongside some of the other series I'm going to mention below. My overall plan is to read Stan Lee's entire run on this book, then jump to Roger Stern, then jump to J.M. Dematteis in the 90s (mostly for that issue with the death of Harry Osborn, which is often regarded as one of the best issues in comic book history), then J. Michael Straczynski's run from the 2000s. I also want to actually read Ultimate Spider-Man through to the end (ie: when Secret Wars ends the Ultimate Universe) because that's what started this whole thing. I'll fit it in somewhere, I guess.
Moon Knight
I started reading Moon Knight literally today and so far...it rules! I've never really thought much about Moon Knight, other than the iconic edited panel about killing Dracula or whatever, but this run (by Jed MacKay) makes a really compelling case as to why I should care. I'm not that far in but so far this run has gorgeous art, great action, and compelling character work. I realized while reading this that I looove street level comics, partially because it helps the Marvel Universe feel much more grounded and real. This run is really good street level comics, but also there are vampires. Very chef's kiss.She-Hulk
Ok I'm kiind of a Rainbow Rowell hater when it comes to her novels but this run is just! So! Fun! Heavy focus on romance, really fun supporting cast and such a vibrant main character too. I will be eagerly anticipating each new issue drop on MU.Fantastic Four
RYAN NORTH WE LOVE YOUUUUUUU. I have only read one Fantastic Four run before this, but this is IMO a lot better than that....sorry to Jonathan Hickman.....North has such a knack for capturing character voices, both in dialogue and narration, and the plots here are so inventive and creative. I also love the art, especially how wild the artist goes with Reed's powers. He's a stretchy guy!! He should look a little freaky!!If you read all that: thank you!! If you have any comics thoughts at all please tell them to me, or if you're trying to get into comics, tell me that too!!
Entry tags:
Spring Media Wrap-Up
Uh.....oops? I fully intended for this whole media wrap-up thing to be monthly but I forgot about school taking up so much of my time. Well, I've graduated now, and May is over, so we're just gonna compress three months into one post. I read 19 books since the last post I wrote -- I will discuss series as a whole but otherwise, buckle up. This is going to be a long one.
This series is just immensely fun. The books I've read so far are novellas, so pretty quick to get through, and Murderbot is such a unique and interesting POV character to follow. I will admit to getting a bit lost in some of the details (like what company did what, or the technical details of how Murderbot does XYZ), but overall I'm having a great time with this series.
2. The Locked Tomb (series) by Tamsyn Muir
I don't know that I have anything to say about this series that hasn't already been said. Lesbian necromancers IN SPACE! These books are so funny, and so interesting, and have so much to say about love and grief. I truly, truly cannot stress enough how funny these books are, even when they're ripping your heart out. My kind of series! I really struggled with Gideon and especially Harrow on my first reads, but rereading them when I had even a little bit of an idea of wtf was going on was really rewarding and fun. Nona on the other hand.....okay. The thing is I didn't HATE it (I think), it was just so not what I was expecting at all. I think it's one of those books I can only evaluate when the series is over, because only then will I know how necessary it was to the story Muir is trying to tell. Anyways, I am eagerly awaiting Alecto.
3. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
This book has a cat named Payasam so it automatically is perfect To Me. (For those who don't know, payasam is a South Indian dessert that I have heard described on Wikipedia as a pudding. It's not really that thick, at least the way my mom makes it, but it has milk and sugar and sometimes other things. Anyways.) Ok but seriously though this book was soooooo fun and soooo good. I have come to kind of hate recommending things as being "diverse" because it feels kind of tokenizing, but this book truly captures the diversity/multicultural exchange happening during the peak of the Indian Ocean trade network(s) and it's just so FUN! A pirate crew of people from many different walks of life, headed by a middle-aged woman out of retirement for one last job to protect her family (but also, magic and money and adventure). Chakraborty has a real passion for medieval Islamic history and it shines through in this book, with how thoroughly this period is brought to life. I'm really excited for future installments in this series.
4.A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
This book is very long and pretty dense, but I still really enjoyed reading it, even if the experience was kind of tainted by getting the plague halfway through my readthrough. Shannon roots this book (as well as its semi-sequel, Priory of the Orange Tree) in a LOT of historical research, even if it's set in an ostensibly fictional world, and as we have established I am a sucker for that kind of thing, so I really loved that. Also, sapphics <33333. Reading this book, and also thinking back on it for this post, is making me realize how little genre fiction I read with sapphics....if anyone has recs please feel free to let me know....
5. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makai
I am usually not a litfic person, mostly because of my own perceptions of what litfic is, I think, but also because I am generally more oriented towards genre fiction in terms of my reading taste. That being said, I really enjoyed this! I did feel a bit of imbalance in terms of the dual timelines--I cared waaay more about Yale than I did Fiona, but overall I still flew through this book. I can't say it was "nice", necessarily, to read about the AIDS crisis, but I did I guess...appreciate? The experience of reading a story that grappled with a really pivotal part of modern American queer history that I still don't really understand the impact of on a visceral level, being born in the 21st century. I want to seek out more stories about queer history, even if I have what I've realized is a pretty low tolerance for stories about, for example, outing/explicit ostracization by family members. Not to say that that's necessarily a feature of all historical stories about queerness, but I feel like explorations of time periods with more overt homophobia involves like....characters experiencing homophobia, which isn't something I can always handle. But at the same time, I really do want stories about queer struggle and solidarity, not just escapism, so I'm a little screwed either way, lol.
6.The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
I came away from this book pretty disappointed, which is a shame because I remember really liking the first one. There's a couple factors that contribute to that disappointment, the first of which being that I remembered sooooo little about the first book to the point that I had to Google things to understand what was going on. The second, though, comes from the fact that this duology was originally supposed to be a trilogy, and imo You Can Tell. It felt like so many character arcs and plot points got dropped or compressed, and some characters barely had arcs at all. Jemisin had very good reasons for axing the third book (ie: COVID) but I also think the decision significantly weakened the story. Oh well.
7. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Probably my new favorite nonfiction book, not that I read enough nonfiction to be a massive deal. This book is so engaging and easy to read and also just so well constructed. I appreciate that Keefe took a nuanced view on opoid use itself while at the same time thoroughly condemning the exploitative nature of pharmaceutical advertising and how deeply unethical the Sackler family as whole have been. I think this should be required reading for anyone who cares even a little about healthcare, or alternatively wants to read a story about capitalism poisoning an industry that ostensibly should have had nothing but the advancement of science and the welfare of our most vulnerable in mind.
8. Happy Place by Emily Henry
SIIIIIIGH HOW TO TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK. This is by faaaaaaar Henry's most polarizing novel. A lot of people outright hate it and I don't, but I also don't unabashedly love it either. I think it mostly comes down to not liking the ending, for several reasons (partially involving realism and partially because I felt it kind of undercut an earlier theme/recurring element). On a smaller note, I also was forced to confront that Emily Henry is, in fact, a white woman. I don't think I would say the characters of color are written badly, per se, but something about Parth in particular felt off to me as a South Asian person, although maybe it's just that he was pretty underdeveloped generally. Anyways, still a pretty breezy experience, but not as satisfying as Henry's other work.
9. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
I also have no idea how to talk about this book. I can't say I loved it but I also had too much fun with it to hate it? The prose kind of got in the way of my enjoyment of the novel, but at the same time there was something kind of fun and silly about how melodramatic everything was. I appreciated the themes of this book and the issues it tries to tackle but I also could not take anything about it seriously at all. A good time overall, but not sure if I would recommend?
10. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
This book literally took me the entirety of my senior year to read oops. There's a lot about this series I love, but this book kind of got taken over by romantic subplots that I think are unequivocally awful so it was hard to keep going to get to the parts that I did like. This is also a veeeery internal series, where a lot depends on how our narrator/protagonist feels and what he's going through. Unfortunately, like I said a lot of what he's feeling has to do with this truly terrible romantic subplot so. A slog unfortunately. I have the third book checked out from the library, it is like 750 pages but I hope I enjoy it more than I liked this one and also that it doesn't take me 9 months to read.
11. A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
This was a fun enough time! It's not gonna stick with me, but I enjoy Regency romances and this was a good one.
12. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
I went into this based on recommendation and I knew almost nothing but WOW was I blown away. This is such a quick read but such an enthralling one. The plot is so gripping, I loved the characters, and the worldbuilding was done in a really satisfying way. Really excited to keep going with this series!!
13. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Another book I read on recommendation, another book I flew through, another smash hit!!! This is a really heavy book (because uh. the main character dies tragically and it's like, the whole point) but not in a way that I found to be too much or overwrought or anything. I guess I need to go read more JCO books now because this one really really impressed me both in terms of prose and how much the author was able to make me Feel in under 200 pages.
14. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol. 5 by MXTX
Picture me sitting in a train station losing my MIND over this ending. Wowwowow. Man I love MDZS.....I love Wangxian.....but unfortunately most of my reading experience was not actually that great, because only the first like 150 pages or so are actually the ending of MDZS. The rest are extra stories written after the fact, and I felt ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Hm. Mixed. About them. Mostly because a good number of them are 1. Kind of irrelevant or 2. porn, and the latter is where the problems emerge. I've mentioned in previous posts that I don't love how consent and similar issues are handled in these books and those problems are really pronounced when the story is pwp. I probably should have stopped reading but I am unfortunately a completionist, so. Sigh.
15. Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
I read this pretty much in one sitting and I had a great time with it, mostly through watching the emotional journeys of our main characters (individually and as they come together as a couple). If there is something I felt more meh about I guess it would be the political stuff, more in the sense of how satisfied I felt with the ways the idea of empire was/wasn't interrogated. Ah well.
Wow okay! Lot of books! The other sections will be shorter I promise!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY. WOW. YEAH. Over the course of the last month I watched blanet with two of my dear friends and we all went utterly insane about it. I genuinely could not have watched this show alone because it is SO long but with friends. Wow. What an experience. Gave me the insane desire to watch PD48 for some reason (the reason: I am in love with Huh Yunjin). I really really came to love this group through this show which frankly is not an experience I had with the last survival show I watched, my apologies to Enhypen. The dynamics here are CRAAAZY and also these are just. Such good boys. Sung Hanbin u have my entire heart FOR REAL!!! Mnet editing and like, scenario setup in general you remain as always deeply evil but whatever. I'm tentatively excited for their debut (tentative because I am still kind of scared I won't like their music TT) and also Extremely excited for the fandom to really take off. I am Zerose!!
Okaaay this is the part of the post where I just talk about my life!! So. I graduated. I am now a college graduate. Crazy shit!! I don't think I've fully processed it....every so often it hits me that I'm not going back to school this fall, and that I'm never going to be at school with my college friends again and it hurts a lot, honestly! I did not have an easy time in college socially (exacerbated by the pandemic) and this past year has made me soooo happy even when my mental health was truly awful because I felt so secure in the friendships I had made. And now it's like....we have to be adults and only see each other when we're free, and we're all doing such different things, and. AAAAAA. Anyways.
This year is also the first time I've posted fic since I was in middle school and it has been such a rewarding and incredible experience!!! I've never really thought of myself as a particularly creative person but maybe I am, actually? I think I still have a lot of insecurities about this whole thing and am still working on finding My Process or whatever, but I'm excited to keep pushing myself and growing and spreading my worms to others.
Okaaay that was my spring media wrap-up!! Thank you so much for reading all of my rambles (if you did read all my rambles, lol), hopefully I will be back next month with a June wrap-up!!
(Also, it is 6/13 in SK, so I would be remiss to not say: Happy Festa!!! Apo bangpo!!! And also happy birthday Sung Hanbin!!)
Books
1. The Murderbot Diaries (series) by Martha WellsThis series is just immensely fun. The books I've read so far are novellas, so pretty quick to get through, and Murderbot is such a unique and interesting POV character to follow. I will admit to getting a bit lost in some of the details (like what company did what, or the technical details of how Murderbot does XYZ), but overall I'm having a great time with this series.
2. The Locked Tomb (series) by Tamsyn Muir
I don't know that I have anything to say about this series that hasn't already been said. Lesbian necromancers IN SPACE! These books are so funny, and so interesting, and have so much to say about love and grief. I truly, truly cannot stress enough how funny these books are, even when they're ripping your heart out. My kind of series! I really struggled with Gideon and especially Harrow on my first reads, but rereading them when I had even a little bit of an idea of wtf was going on was really rewarding and fun. Nona on the other hand.....okay. The thing is I didn't HATE it (I think), it was just so not what I was expecting at all. I think it's one of those books I can only evaluate when the series is over, because only then will I know how necessary it was to the story Muir is trying to tell. Anyways, I am eagerly awaiting Alecto.
3. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
This book has a cat named Payasam so it automatically is perfect To Me. (For those who don't know, payasam is a South Indian dessert that I have heard described on Wikipedia as a pudding. It's not really that thick, at least the way my mom makes it, but it has milk and sugar and sometimes other things. Anyways.) Ok but seriously though this book was soooooo fun and soooo good. I have come to kind of hate recommending things as being "diverse" because it feels kind of tokenizing, but this book truly captures the diversity/multicultural exchange happening during the peak of the Indian Ocean trade network(s) and it's just so FUN! A pirate crew of people from many different walks of life, headed by a middle-aged woman out of retirement for one last job to protect her family (but also, magic and money and adventure). Chakraborty has a real passion for medieval Islamic history and it shines through in this book, with how thoroughly this period is brought to life. I'm really excited for future installments in this series.
4.A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
This book is very long and pretty dense, but I still really enjoyed reading it, even if the experience was kind of tainted by getting the plague halfway through my readthrough. Shannon roots this book (as well as its semi-sequel, Priory of the Orange Tree) in a LOT of historical research, even if it's set in an ostensibly fictional world, and as we have established I am a sucker for that kind of thing, so I really loved that. Also, sapphics <33333. Reading this book, and also thinking back on it for this post, is making me realize how little genre fiction I read with sapphics....if anyone has recs please feel free to let me know....
5. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makai
I am usually not a litfic person, mostly because of my own perceptions of what litfic is, I think, but also because I am generally more oriented towards genre fiction in terms of my reading taste. That being said, I really enjoyed this! I did feel a bit of imbalance in terms of the dual timelines--I cared waaay more about Yale than I did Fiona, but overall I still flew through this book. I can't say it was "nice", necessarily, to read about the AIDS crisis, but I did I guess...appreciate? The experience of reading a story that grappled with a really pivotal part of modern American queer history that I still don't really understand the impact of on a visceral level, being born in the 21st century. I want to seek out more stories about queer history, even if I have what I've realized is a pretty low tolerance for stories about, for example, outing/explicit ostracization by family members. Not to say that that's necessarily a feature of all historical stories about queerness, but I feel like explorations of time periods with more overt homophobia involves like....characters experiencing homophobia, which isn't something I can always handle. But at the same time, I really do want stories about queer struggle and solidarity, not just escapism, so I'm a little screwed either way, lol.
6.The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
I came away from this book pretty disappointed, which is a shame because I remember really liking the first one. There's a couple factors that contribute to that disappointment, the first of which being that I remembered sooooo little about the first book to the point that I had to Google things to understand what was going on. The second, though, comes from the fact that this duology was originally supposed to be a trilogy, and imo You Can Tell. It felt like so many character arcs and plot points got dropped or compressed, and some characters barely had arcs at all. Jemisin had very good reasons for axing the third book (ie: COVID) but I also think the decision significantly weakened the story. Oh well.
7. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Probably my new favorite nonfiction book, not that I read enough nonfiction to be a massive deal. This book is so engaging and easy to read and also just so well constructed. I appreciate that Keefe took a nuanced view on opoid use itself while at the same time thoroughly condemning the exploitative nature of pharmaceutical advertising and how deeply unethical the Sackler family as whole have been. I think this should be required reading for anyone who cares even a little about healthcare, or alternatively wants to read a story about capitalism poisoning an industry that ostensibly should have had nothing but the advancement of science and the welfare of our most vulnerable in mind.
8. Happy Place by Emily Henry
SIIIIIIGH HOW TO TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK. This is by faaaaaaar Henry's most polarizing novel. A lot of people outright hate it and I don't, but I also don't unabashedly love it either. I think it mostly comes down to not liking the ending, for several reasons (partially involving realism and partially because I felt it kind of undercut an earlier theme/recurring element). On a smaller note, I also was forced to confront that Emily Henry is, in fact, a white woman. I don't think I would say the characters of color are written badly, per se, but something about Parth in particular felt off to me as a South Asian person, although maybe it's just that he was pretty underdeveloped generally. Anyways, still a pretty breezy experience, but not as satisfying as Henry's other work.
9. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
I also have no idea how to talk about this book. I can't say I loved it but I also had too much fun with it to hate it? The prose kind of got in the way of my enjoyment of the novel, but at the same time there was something kind of fun and silly about how melodramatic everything was. I appreciated the themes of this book and the issues it tries to tackle but I also could not take anything about it seriously at all. A good time overall, but not sure if I would recommend?
10. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
This book literally took me the entirety of my senior year to read oops. There's a lot about this series I love, but this book kind of got taken over by romantic subplots that I think are unequivocally awful so it was hard to keep going to get to the parts that I did like. This is also a veeeery internal series, where a lot depends on how our narrator/protagonist feels and what he's going through. Unfortunately, like I said a lot of what he's feeling has to do with this truly terrible romantic subplot so. A slog unfortunately. I have the third book checked out from the library, it is like 750 pages but I hope I enjoy it more than I liked this one and also that it doesn't take me 9 months to read.
11. A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
This was a fun enough time! It's not gonna stick with me, but I enjoy Regency romances and this was a good one.
12. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
I went into this based on recommendation and I knew almost nothing but WOW was I blown away. This is such a quick read but such an enthralling one. The plot is so gripping, I loved the characters, and the worldbuilding was done in a really satisfying way. Really excited to keep going with this series!!
13. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Another book I read on recommendation, another book I flew through, another smash hit!!! This is a really heavy book (because uh. the main character dies tragically and it's like, the whole point) but not in a way that I found to be too much or overwrought or anything. I guess I need to go read more JCO books now because this one really really impressed me both in terms of prose and how much the author was able to make me Feel in under 200 pages.
14. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol. 5 by MXTX
Picture me sitting in a train station losing my MIND over this ending. Wowwowow. Man I love MDZS.....I love Wangxian.....but unfortunately most of my reading experience was not actually that great, because only the first like 150 pages or so are actually the ending of MDZS. The rest are extra stories written after the fact, and I felt ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Hm. Mixed. About them. Mostly because a good number of them are 1. Kind of irrelevant or 2. porn, and the latter is where the problems emerge. I've mentioned in previous posts that I don't love how consent and similar issues are handled in these books and those problems are really pronounced when the story is pwp. I probably should have stopped reading but I am unfortunately a completionist, so. Sigh.
15. Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
I read this pretty much in one sitting and I had a great time with it, mostly through watching the emotional journeys of our main characters (individually and as they come together as a couple). If there is something I felt more meh about I guess it would be the political stuff, more in the sense of how satisfied I felt with the ways the idea of empire was/wasn't interrogated. Ah well.
Wow okay! Lot of books! The other sections will be shorter I promise!
Video Game(s)
Ok surprise surprise this is about like, two games. Umineko isn't even a game, really, but I didn't want to just talk about Zelda, so. Anyways! Umineko: When They Cry is an incredibly long visual novel and I am not far enough to really say what it's about but I AM having a good time. I'm not playing it because I could not figure out how to save and also, hot take, I prefer reading dialogue to voice acting, but either way I am enjoying the experience of a good-old-fashioned forum let's play. Like everyone else in the world I have also been playing Zelda, though not as much as everyone else. There are a couple factors here, first of all I'm doing [redacted] applications right now and it takes so much time and if I let myself I would just play Zelda for 12 hours a day. Also my Switch is a pain to use in handheld mode because my left joycon drifts sooooo badly. I'm living with my family for most of June so if I want to play on the TV my mom is just going to be working from home like 30 feet away from me and idk it makes me feel Perceived. On top of that I've realized that TOTK is the kind of game I want to experience slowly and steadily. I'm not trying to beat it anytime soon, I'll play it when I want to play it and when I get overwhelmed I'll stop and play something else maybe. Anyways, TOTK extremely extremely good I could play this game for A WHILE.I was going to name this section "TV" but really it's just Boys Planet
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY. WOW. YEAH. Over the course of the last month I watched blanet with two of my dear friends and we all went utterly insane about it. I genuinely could not have watched this show alone because it is SO long but with friends. Wow. What an experience. Gave me the insane desire to watch PD48 for some reason (the reason: I am in love with Huh Yunjin). I really really came to love this group through this show which frankly is not an experience I had with the last survival show I watched, my apologies to Enhypen. The dynamics here are CRAAAZY and also these are just. Such good boys. Sung Hanbin u have my entire heart FOR REAL!!! Mnet editing and like, scenario setup in general you remain as always deeply evil but whatever. I'm tentatively excited for their debut (tentative because I am still kind of scared I won't like their music TT) and also Extremely excited for the fandom to really take off. I am Zerose!!
actually time for some complaining
While I'm here, my second biggest fear beyond not liking the music is the insufferable Yujin "noona" bit continuing because every time it happens I want to walk into the sea.....HE IS A CHILD LEAVE HIM ALOOOOONE....why are your hearts fluttering he can't even DRIVE yet. That's a baby!! Enough!!Misc. Reflections
Okaaay this is the part of the post where I just talk about my life!! So. I graduated. I am now a college graduate. Crazy shit!! I don't think I've fully processed it....every so often it hits me that I'm not going back to school this fall, and that I'm never going to be at school with my college friends again and it hurts a lot, honestly! I did not have an easy time in college socially (exacerbated by the pandemic) and this past year has made me soooo happy even when my mental health was truly awful because I felt so secure in the friendships I had made. And now it's like....we have to be adults and only see each other when we're free, and we're all doing such different things, and. AAAAAA. Anyways.
This year is also the first time I've posted fic since I was in middle school and it has been such a rewarding and incredible experience!!! I've never really thought of myself as a particularly creative person but maybe I am, actually? I think I still have a lot of insecurities about this whole thing and am still working on finding My Process or whatever, but I'm excited to keep pushing myself and growing and spreading my worms to others.
Okaaay that was my spring media wrap-up!! Thank you so much for reading all of my rambles (if you did read all my rambles, lol), hopefully I will be back next month with a June wrap-up!!
(Also, it is 6/13 in SK, so I would be remiss to not say: Happy Festa!!! Apo bangpo!!! And also happy birthday Sung Hanbin!!)
Entry tags:
february media wrap-up
Hello everyone!!! This is my February media wrap-up. Categories are gonna be a bit different this time because I have not video gamed this month, but most of this will be books I've read, same as last month.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Entry tags:
january media wrap-up
I've decided I want to write more in 2023 (not just fic!) and also I like talking about the media I've experienced so for as long as I have the energy (hopefully the whole year) I will be doing monthly media wrap-ups! I'm going to try to be comprehensive but some things may slip through the cracks.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Entry tags:
Favorite Reads of 2022
As I write this the year isn't technically over, but I really doubt I'm going to be able to finish another book that I want to mention. If I do read anything else worth mentioning I'll add it in (if I figure out how to do that). This is not a top 10 list, or really a top anything list. I'm just going to be picking out all the books I read this year that I want to talk about/consider worthy of being "favorites" of the year. I'll be going chronologically, partially because ranking things stresses me out and partially because my Goodreads Year in Books is organized chronologically and that's how I'm going to remember what I read this year. Extremely long preamble out of the way - onto the books!
( Read more... )
( Read more... )