thawrecka | Recent Entries

I love how much the character 酒 looks like, wow, look at this bottle of stuff, like it's putting spirit fingers around a bottle of booze

Things I have watched since last post (I am basically an anime watching machine right now):

• Sasaki and Miyano, a high school set BL about Miyano, a boy who likes reading BL manga but is sure he's totally straight, and Sasaki, his dreamy sempai who thought he was straight until he met Miyano and is now borrowing BL manga from him to read and trying to be cool about his gigantic crush. This is a pretty cute anime, TBH. Miyano is so worried all the boys at their all boys school will not be cool with Sasaki now that he's reading BL, and constantly worried about exchanging books on the sly, and struggles to believe he's now sharing an interest with him!!1! Meanwhile, Sasaki is constantly going through the deepest erotic torment over the most innocuous nonsense.

There's this whole arc after Sasaki confesses his feelings where Miyano wants time to figure out his own, but once he finally figures them out things keep getting in the way of his return confession!! It wasn't too dragged out, so I found it kind of charming, and I appreciate that this is a story where the teens get to be horny but the focus of their feelings is actually based on a shared interest and the friendship they've formed.

• To the end of season 2 of Kimi ni Todoke, and given what I've heard of season 3 sounds frustrating, season 2 seems like a good end. They're together, yay! Let's not look beyond that. There are cute things about this, and I do like how much focus is put on the friendships Sawako forms. But also the misunderstandings drag on just that bit too long (the bit where they both confess they like each other but somehow both still feel rejected is excruciating), and it really does remind me of the things that annoy me about shoujo romance.

• Season 2 of Hana Kimi came back and dropped the first two episodes, so I watched and enjoyed those. The OP and ED are so much better than last season's. I appreciate that this adaptation goes through the events of the manga at a fast clip, so it feels like things are actually happening.

• Currently watching The Betrayal Knows My Name, which is such a style of anime that isn't made any more, and I'm having a great time. All the rose and bloody thorns and chains images in the OP, A+ Everything is cool hair and sad superpowers dark fantasy and nothing hurts.

I also read all of:

• Given by Natsuki Kizu, to see how different it felt from the anime. There are some interesting differences, some of them just by the nature of the format, I think. Uenoyama's sister doesn't get any more depth of characterisation in the manga, but it feels more natural in this format, whereas in the anime it felt like she ever needed to be properly expanded or excised from the story. The awkward encounter between Akihiko and Haruki doesn't feel as non-consensual in the manga, which is interesting, because it definitely felt non-consensual in Given: the Movie. Though it may just be the translation I read? Either way it's good that Akihiko spends so much time afterward trying to get his shit together to make amends & etc. I do feel like the anime having actual music (that I really enjoy) adds a lot to the story, but that's natural given it's about bands and the love of music. It turns out I hate the get together between Hiragi and Shizasumi equal amounts in either version, because it basically involves Shizasumi pressuring him into sex. In the anime, though, when Shizasumi says he thought Hiragi was in love with Yuki it felt like it came out of left field, because Hiragi seemed to have paid more attention to Mafuyu, whereas in the manga I at least get how Shizasumi believes it.

Current Music: Madonna - Confessions II

As promised, talking about Bleach. I finally finished the previous season on Monday last week 🤣 just in time for the first three episodes of the final season to come out at the cinema! So I went on Friday night. It's very much just three episodes cut together and not at all like a movie, and I don't feel like it was sharpened enough for the big screen 😂 but it was nice to see, and they played a Q&A between Kubo Tite and the anime directors after.

Getting what I dislike out of the way first... mute naked catgirl Yoruichi infuriates me just as much in the anime as it did in the manga. Ugh.

But I really did enjoy the rest. The fight scenes are so fun. I loved every time Ishida made reference to what Ichigo would do ♥ Byakuya and Hitsugaya's banter was just as fun animated as it was in the manga, and they and Zaraki fighting the big guy is delightful in what I got to see of it. I love Orihime and Ichigo fighting against Yhwach together. The animation actually does a lot to make that fight feel more exciting.

Oh, man, I'm having a lot of thoughts about Urahara. The anime expands on his big fight and it looks so cool. And also really brings home how similar he and Mayuri are, in that they're mad scientists who do equally mad things to themselves. They are their own Frankenstein's monsters.

To be honest, I think one of my favourite things was hearing people's reactions to the scenes in the cinema. I've been into Bleach since the beginning; therefore I am not young. But there was a young man (I wanted to say kid, but given I assume he was 20 years younger than me that still means an adult hahaha) next to me who was having a great time, gasping at all the right bits, and it was just so much fun to hear these episodes appreciated by a crowd. It was nice to laugh at the same parts that I laughed at in the manga and get to hear people laugh with me.

The Q&A was fun to watch. Kubo Tite really knows how to accessorise, which is not a surprise. I've seen people compare how great he looks now compared to how he looked towards the end of the manga run, and yeah, it's not a surprise that a well rested millionaire looks great but he looked like garbage when he was destroying his health to make Shonen Jump's deadlines.

The two main things I took from the Q&A are this:
1) Kubo Tite wears fun patterned socks!
2) Kubo Tite is a micro-managing control freak, when allowed to be, who sometimes started storyboarding scenes for the anime without asking anyone on the anime team first...

Of those two things, only the socks are a surprise.

I have watched so much (mostly) anime in the last week. I got partway through a boring Gintama arc and decided I'd watched way too many shonen battle series recently and should watch something entirely different. So I got through, in no particular order:

Honey Lemon Soda: You know those shojo stories that are about a normal, plain Japanese girl who is isolated from her peers, and then she meets a cute boy, and this kicks off a series of events that lead to her developing social skills, making friends, and falling in love? This is one of them. It's okay. I enjoyed it well enough. Some of the animation does some really cool things, and there's some great stuff. The friends Ishimori makes are great, and I appreciate how much of this focuses on realistic teenage friendships. There's an arc where Ishimori befriends her love interest's ex who still has feelings for him, and they have a genuinely supportive friendship, which feels rare in fiction but actually truer to my high school experience.

It feels a little fast at the beginning and a little slow at other times, and the main character cries a bit too much for my taste, but she is 15 and recovering from being bullied in middle school, & etc. The love interest is a bit of a dickhead, so I was mostly like ?? that's your taste, girl?? He's not the worst or anything, he does encourage her most of the time, but he's just enough of a dickhead that I was like... what's the appeal... half the time. Only 12 episodes.

(Come to think of it, My Dress Up Darling is just the gender switched version of that type of story but for the seinen audience, and with the main characters actually having a shared interest.)

7 episodes of Kimi no Todoke, which is the same kind of thing, except the quirk is that people compare the main female character to Sadako from the ring and treat her like she's creepy. The visual style makes it so obvious the manga started in the mid 00s (oh my gosh, the clothing), and it is charming, and I might have shed a tear, but after Honey Lemon Soda and 7 episodes of this I hit my limit of crying and not being able to talk about what you feel for a while. I would say this is better than Honey Lemon Soda, though.

The Cherry Magic anime, for a change of pace and to watch a story about adults, which does something the live action didn't do: kissing scenes. And the kissing scenes are good. I laughed out loud and was charmed, although I will say the animation isn't always all that good. I mean, the animation isn't Isekai Office Worker levels of bad, though I love Isekai Office Worker on a deep soul level so clearly that's not a problem.

Skip and Loafer is a story about from the countryside who moves to Tokyo to attend high school as the first step in her many step plan to becoming a politician who can help the rapidly emptying out countryside, and then she meets a cute boy, and this kicks off a series of events that leads to her making lots of friends & etc. etc. etc. The anime ends before anyone gets to be in love, though I hear they fall in love in the manga. I will say that this has a higher level of depth and characterisation, but the manga ran in a seinen magazine so was actually aimed at adults. The animation is smooth as hell. I also really appreciated the depiction of high school friendships in this one.

Yes, No, or Maybe? is a 50 minute BL anime film that I found pretty entertaining right up until the sex scene at the end ruined it by being kind of rapey. I'm just not here for ignoring someone's no in sex in romance fiction in the 2020s.

Given is a beautifully animated BL about a band, composed of a season of anime and three different films which crunchyroll has not put in the correct order (when the season of the show ends it automatically starts the last film, and you have to go looking for the previous two). It's so pretty. This is so much about forming a band, loving music, dealing with grief, figuring out your life. The characters feel a lot more real and mature than I was expecting, even the 17 year olds, but apparently the manga ran in a Josei magazine... I do love that Mafuyu is never expected to stop loving his dead ex, even as he falls for Uenoyama, and it's just as much about falling in love with music. Dealing with grief is basically my favourite theme, so I really enjoyed this.

I might try to track down the manga, to see whether some of the emotional arcs feel more complete to me in that (they're not lacking in the anime, but I do wonder if the manga hits harder in that regard). The anime does have the plus point that the music is actually really good, starting from the opening theme song which meant I knew I was in good hands from the beginning. As a music lover this really worked for me.

Season 1 of You and I Are Polar Opposites, just in time for season 2 to start next week. This is a high school romance (based on a manga from Shonen Jump+ apparently, given I seem to be noting the origins of everything this post), but unlike the others I watched this week, the characters get together in the first episode and the series is about navigating their relationship and all the friendships around them from there. This is actually really cute. Probably the best depiction of high school friendships and how much people get up in each other's business of any I watched this week, and it's so funny and charming. The main female character, Suzuki, is outgoing and flashy and adorable, and her boyfriend Tani is a quiet glasses wearing introvert, and it's a fun contrast because they like their differences so much and are really charmed by each other. I'm so excited for season 2 in July.

Also OH MY GOD THE LORD OF MYSTERIES TAROT CLUB OVAS CAME OUT AND THEY ARE SO COOL. I can't talk about how cool they are without spoilers that make no sense if you're not already watching, but omg, Azik ♥ ♥ Klein ♥ Derrick is so sweet in spite of basically growing up in Silent Hill and aaaah Audrey and Alger almost meeting and aaaaah

Also, I watched the first few episodes of the last season of Bleach at the movies, but more on that later, this entry is long enough as it is.

DNF: I've officially given up on Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, because it didn't hook me. I think the serial killer stuff really added to what I found compelling about Butter, but this one just didn't quite grab me. I've passed it on to a friend, though, so hopefully she'll enjoy it more.

Finished: Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, translated by Shanna Tan - A divorcee opens a bookshop, and builds a life and community there. Not deep, but I liked it! It's very slice of life and often kind of shallow, but that can be nice in its own way. Yeongju makes friends, hires employees, tries to figure out how to keep the bookshop running long term.

I like the passage, "It was part of the balance of life -- a person's dream coming true could mean the collapse of someone else's life. He was sure that he and the real estate agent would never stand on the same side of destiny." - p66 I also like how the story dealt with Sungwoo's feelings, ( Read more... ) It's pleasantly sensible and non-dramatic.

Too many clunky adverbs in the translation, though.

Attempts at the great Gundam watch through continue:

I watched the F91 movie, which is much much better than people make it out to be. It's not without flaw, certainly, but it gets going fast, and I like how it depicts the chaos of the battleground and the chaos of people on the ground attempting to flee when a battle intrudes on their quiet suburban area. The battles are exciting, and it feels like there's texture to the world.

I attempted to watch 0083 Stardust Memory, which does seem like a pretty entertaining show, but unfortunately the only version I have access to is a terrible English dub on YouTube. I just cannot stand the dubbing, so I've abandoned it for now. If I ever find a version with the original voice track I'll give it another go, because I liked how lived in the environment felt. Textured in the way of the best Gundam.

I then skipped forward and watched the Gundam Hathaway movie from 2021, which is sleek and shiny even in the bits depicting scummier areas, and feels lacking in texture or depth. It's obviously trying to re-do the Char-Lalah-Amuro triangle but modern with Hathaway, Kenneth and Gigi, but the characters are lacking in enough depth to get me to care about/believe in their actions, and the fight scenes are mostly boring. There is an interesting bit with characters trying to run from a mobile suit battle happening in a city, but that's about it, tbh. It's hard to like either the earth Feds or the terrorists who want to forcibly relocate everyone on the planet, especially because they're all too privileged. idk why people love this movie so much.

In non-Gundam news, the last episode of Go For It Nakamura-kun!! aired this week, and it was bittersweet and charming and lovely. Overall, it's been a delightful series to watch, at turns funny and sad, capturing the cringy-ness of 15 year olds and the sadness of having a crush and being the only person you know is gay.

Having a head injury is so tiring. I feel better today at least, but yesterday my head and eye were at a solid 2/10 of pain all day long (which might not sound like much, but my eye felt gritty and like it wasn't fixed in my head right, and it was unpleasant). Luckily, today I have enough energy to work, which is good given I need to do payroll... The guy giving my CT scan seemed impressed at my having no metal to remove from my body whatsoever and my brain was instantly like 'I am getting a good grade in being prepared for a CT scan, which is normal to want' & etc. etc.

Definitely wasn't up to watching TV or reading yesterday. I got out of bed to do a load of washing, and in the hour that took to wash & for me to put it on the line I got so tired I had to go back to bed.

Here's what I was watching before I managed to bang my head and eye on my bedside table at 7am on a Wednesday: so much JJK. I watched the first two seasons, the 0 movie and the Hidden Inventory movie. It took a while for me to get into season 1 - the first episode is unpleasantly male gazey, and it felt very derivative of other shonen at a point when I've been reading and watching too much shonen - but once I pushed through it got better, and the Shibuya Incident stuff in season two taking the wild swings of killing off most of the cast and destroying Tokyo really did improve the story. Also, oh, Nanami, so sexy ♥

I'm hoping getting through it will help me pick up more pinch hits for the multifandom fic exchange circuit, which is why I pushed through season 1 in the first place, but I am at least enjoying it now.

I just finished watching the old D.Gray-Man anime, and honestly my main thought is amusement at how much the outfits look like club outfits. Allen going to deal with some akuma on the way to the rave. That and feeling that Allen, Lenalee and Ravi (and possibly also Kanda) should all kiss, while Komui turns into a cartoon about it.

This knocks out one more thing from my crunchyroll backlog, which is nice.

Read recently: Bookstore Girls by Kei Aono - Two women working at a Japanese bookstore deal with Japanese sexism, and spend half the book taking out their resentment on each other. The cover copy asks "Can two very different women put aside their differences to save the bookstore they love?" and I was doubtful, tbh. I ended up liking the book by the end (it's not bad at the beginning, just depressing in its depiction of workplace and domestic sexism).

spoilers

They do end up being able to put aside their differences, which I like, but if you've read a contemporary Japanese novel before you will not be surprised to learn they don't manage to save the bookstore.

I started watching Champignon Witch because I heard good things about it, and there was something compelling about it in spite of the tonal weirdness, but I just finished episode 8 and the kid Luna is raising is now in love with her and NOPE NOPE NOPE. Not looking for the Bunny Drop experience. Someone on FFA said they knew the kid was a love interest as soon as he became the narrator, so I do feel like I should have seen it coming, but either way I'm dropping that one with a vengeance.

Fic stats meme:

I normally do this in April, but I completely forgot last month.

Top five stories by hits
Discovery (12,024 words) Ace Attorney - Phoenix/Edgeworth - 10,419 hits
One, Two, Three (8,758 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua/Fang Duobing - 3,933 hits
Visit (1,792 words) Harry Potter - Harry/Hermione - 3,595 hits
Lonely Rivers Run to the Sea (4,605 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Fang Duobing/Li Lianhua - 3,320 hits
Infinite Jest and Wisdom (975 words) DC Comics - The Joker/The Riddler - 2,471 hits

That MLC threesome fic has skipped up to second place, wow! The power of porn, I guess.

TBH, I have been considering deleting my HP fic from AO3, and if I did number 5 would be Thousand Autumns fic I wrote for an exchange last year.

Top five stories by kudos
Discovery (12,024 words) Ace Attorney - Phoenix/Edgeworth - 978 kudos
Lonely Rivers Run to the Sea (4,605 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Fang Duobing/Li Lianhua - 401 kudos
One, Two, Three (8,758 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua/Fang Duobing - 374 kudos
The Mission (1,499 words) Naruto - Sakura/Lee - 241 kudos
Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man (1,416 words) Thousand Autumns - Yan Wushi/Shen Qiao - 241 kudos

Discovery has gone up literally 50 kudos since last year, LOL, how. That fic is 11 years old! I'm honestly kind of impressed now. I'm also shocked at how well that Thousand Autumns fic has done, finally unseating Bleach fic I wrote in the late 2010s from the fifth position. I'm surprised, because I don't think it's one of my better written exchange fics, but I must have captured something believable about the pairing and there must be a lot of thirst for that pairing right now.

Top fic stories by bookmarks
Discovery (12,024 words) Ace Attorney - Phoenix/Edgeworth - 272 bookmarks
Lonely Rivers Run to the Sea (4,605 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Fang Duobing/Li Lianhua - 119 bookmarks
One, Two, Three (8,758 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua/Fang Duobing - 116 bookmarks
Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man (1,416 words) Thousand Autumns - Yan Wushi/Shen Qiao - 41 bookmarks
What Comes After (1,712 words) Bleach - Byakuya/Kenpachi, Yumichika/Ikkaku - 34 bookmarks

The Ace Attorney fic got another 30 bookmarks since last year! Also, wild how well that Thousand Autumns fic has done in literally a year. I feel like that fandom is small, but the people know what they want.

Top five stories by comment threads
Discovery (12,024 words) Ace Attorney - Phoenix/Edgeworth - 59 comment threads
Lonely Rivers Run to the Sea (4,605 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Fang Duobing/Li Lianhua - 30 comment threads
Third Option (355 words) Legend of Fei - Li Yan/Yang Jin/Ying Hecong - 19 comment threads
One, Two, Three (8,758 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua/Fang Duobing - 17 comment threads
Little Waves (12,982 words) Mysterious Lotus Casebook - Di Feisheng/Fang Duobing/Li Lianhua - 15 comment threads

The Ace Attorney fic gained another 12 comment threads in the last year!!! Crazy business. For the most part everything else there is very stable; I have not received a lot of fic comments overall in the last year. I'm kind of intrigued by how in the long run Little Waves, which is about an mpreg abortion (among other things) in a wuxia world, has slowly accumulated comments. Within the first week of posting that fic I assumed it had totally bombed, but slowly it found an audience, and I'm really glad of it. I felt like I tried different and interesting things in it, and TBH the Fang Duobing/Di Feisheng sex scene has a tone that I think makes it some of my best/most mature work.

General thoughts
You know, sometimes I think I should get into a megafandom or something so I can get some sweet sweet megafandom kudos and unseat some of my older fic, but then I see how batshit the megafandoms of the past year are and I'm like... nah, I'm good. I do feel like my more popular fic is increasingly dominated by M/M now and, idk, it's weird. Maybe I should get into an F/F megafandom 😂

Top 3s for the last couple of years under the cut:
( Read more... )

More anime watching:

• I gave Snowball Earth an episode, because people have talked it up, but it's just not for me. I didn't vibe with the tone, I think? I thought I would like it, given how much I like both Kaiju no 8 and various Gundam series, but it was just a mismatch.

• This week I watched the entirety of Zenshu, a 12 episode series from last year about an animator falling into the world of her favourite depressing children's film after she eats seafood that's gone off. I can see why this is so well regarded. It's so pretty and a lot of thought has been put into the story. I love the magical girl transformation sequence for when she sits down at her desk to draw! The kids fantasy movie she falls into visually feels very influenced by 80s animation (some parts are a clear shout out to He Man, for example), but also given it's a rocks fall, everyone dies scenario you can see why in universe it was not successful, LOL. This is such a love letter to fix-it-fic and self insert romance, LOL. There are parts that didn't work for me quite as well, but it was overall delightful. I think my favourite was Destiny deciding she was going to get super buff.

• 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy is fun, though a bit too neat for my tastes. Rishe's life is not actually carefree, and by the ending they are not actually married yet, but I did enjoy the tension created from her getting engaged to the guy who killed her in a previous life and started the war that got her killed in all the previous lives. The re-living the five years from being dumped by a previous fiance to her death repeatedly mostly means she's levelled up in skills and stats; I did kind of want more from her previous lives woven into the story. But it's a fun bit of fluff. Her outfits are mostly hideous, in an amazing way. There's various handsome men who come into her life to be interesting and handsome, and that's enjoyable.

• I'm finding the pattern with episodes of Go For It, Nakamura-kun!! is that the episodes that people tell me draw more heavily on the manga are a lot funnier. In terms of laughs it's sort of uneven for me, but always cute. The episode that made me laugh the hardest is two weeks ago with the closer friendship battle and the creepy clothes sniffing. It's so cringe in the most delightfully awkward teenage way, and the art is so lovely. Though my actual favourite bit from any episode is Nakamura and Hirose becoming officially friends in Yokohama Chinatown, which is just so sweet.

• I'm also keeping up with Marriagetoxin, though I don't know that I have a lot to say about it. Lovingly animated. I'm looking forward to continuing to ignore all the discourse.

• Witch Hat Atelier is pretty and enjoyable, but I'm also finding the increasing hype and the fandom around it super annoying. I would like manga fans to be less aggressively trying to spoil anime watchers, I would like the people obsessed with the discourse around it to stop telling me about it, I would like the people who think it should be gatekept for political reasons to STFU about that...

I watched all 18 episodes of Moonrise, an anime on Netflix, this week, and this could have been so good if it was good! But it was not good. Imagine if this had any solid narrative focus whatsoever?! Imagine if this put focus on the actually interesting things about the story?! It's about Jack, a rich kid who has been blamed for a terrorist attack, who gets forced into the military while a suspect and has to go to the moon with a bunch of other people to investigate things, and also his tragic backstory in a lab with a childhood friend he's never forgotten, and also...

Well, anyway, I liked Salamandra, she's so dreamy. More super strong buff ladies in everything, please. And the relationship between Phil and Jack was interesting whenever it got any screen time whatsoever.

But all the jokes were bad and there were so many of them. There were too many characters. And like, it's a space opera with a superpowerful AI that everyone follows and also everyone on the moon is oppressed and also there's genetic screening that decides what jobs people should do and also prisoners are made to work in the army and also there are genetically engineered people with cool space powers and also there's some sort of space jellyfish thing and characters constantly playing a pokemon go ripoff, and it's like... that's too much. Put some back.

Also, the ship tease with Rhys, a woman who even when times were good constantly nagged Jack and didn't respect him, was just tedious.

I guess as far as Gundam/GITS knock offs go it's not the worst I've seen? The flashback to Phil cutting off his arm and grafting it onto Jack's bloody stump was so so good, imagine if their relationship and Jack realising that Earth was the bad guys had been the actual focus of the story, it could have been good!

Fist Bumps and Hook Ups (2466 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 怪獣８号 | Kaiju No. 8 (Anime)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Izumo Haruichi/Kaguragi Aoi
Characters: Izumo Haruichi, Kaguragi Aoi (Kaiju No. 8)
Additional Tags: First Time, Getting Together, Missing Scene, Teammates to Lovers, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, During Canon, Nonnies Made Me Do It
Summary:

Haruichi hangs out with Aoi and slowly trips his way into a relationship.

Expanded from this ficlet I wrote last year.

I finally finished my Yu Yu Hakusho rewatch:

- Yikes, the sexism. It's pretty bad. Yuusuke groping Keiko and flipping her skirt up in public early on is pretty awful.

- My other main takeaway is that everyone wants to kiss Yuusuke. Kurama definitely wants to kiss Yuusuke. Hiei maybe wants to roll around shirtless in the dirt with Yuusuke. Kuwabara wants to make sweet passionate bro love to Yuusuke and pretend he's still straight afterward. Everyone in the last arc all ooh he gets my blood fired up. Yeah, I'll bet.

Anyway, I don't actually ship anything, but I do think Kuwabara's crush on Yukina is pretty cute.

The first time I watched I didn't get why Kurama/Hiei was popular at all, and this time I saw it a little, but I still think they're only mildly shippy, but Kurama is definitely shippier with Yuusuke, and probably even more shippy with Kuwabara than with Hiei.

- LMAO, Kurama getting mistaken for Kuwabara's girlfriend.

- That Hong Kong action cinema influence is so obvious.

- So much of this is that Japanese anxiety about juvenile delinquents that was all over stuff in the 90s and early 00s and that you don't really see in new series. Also, anime just doesn't look like this anymore, so it's not really a surprise it's not as popular as it used to be.

I do think the Dark Tournament doesn't actually get interesting until the semi-finals and there's a lot of dull bits I hadn't remembered. That's probably why newer viewers are underwhelmed by what is always hyped up as the ~best tournament arc ever~. It's okay. Kurama v Karasu is still pretty good, and there's a bunch of great stuff at the end.

- Kurama is still my favourite, just like the first time I watched, but I would say Botan is my second fave now.

The latest dispatches from my deep dive into Prince of Tennis's crazy sequel:

The things Konomi gets wrong about Australia: middle school is not really a thing here, we don't like singing the national anthem that much, and it's certainly not part of Australian culture to bow to each other in apology. OTOH, the Australian team all seem to be cashed up bogans, which is about right. And one of them is called Milky Millman, and I had to pause for a moment to accept that that's the sort of dumb shit name an Australian athlete could end up with.

Other than that:
- the Greek gods are playing in an under-17 tennis competition. I'm serious, the Japan team plays against Zeus
- Art Tennis! Sleep Tennis!
- Normally Prince of Tennis doesn't answer my 'why is this happening' questions, but it actually explains why Ryoma is attempting to play tennis on horseback the next chapter. It doesn't necessarily give a good answer, but it does give an answer
- We must confront the possibility that the French revolution didn't happen in the Prince of Tennis universe

I finished the Genius 10 OVA and, first of all, that was way more Niou than I was expecting. Everyone makes use of Niou's mutant morphing powers! Second, my favourite part was when Ryoma decided he'd had enough with how shitty the training camp was and decided to do something that would get him kicked out.

Every time blond pirate whatshisface went on about how tennis can be fatal I was like . . . you guys know this is not a blood sport, right. This is just tennis. The superpowers aren't the silliest part of Prince of Tennis; the silliest part is when people try to kill each other over the net.

Ryoma's memory problems make me wonder if he has a brain injury?? Though I guess the answer to that is not to think about it too deeply.

I did actually really like what the training camp did with Rikkai - basically by surrounding them with other people and getting them out of their zone of dysfunction, they all started to become less fucked up (except for Jackal I guess who was very busy crying about Marui not playing tennis with him LOL). I also liked Yanagi actively making a step to do that on purpose by making sure Kirihara stayed in the camp and he got to go off and have Data Bros time with Inui, because he's recognised it's good to reconnect with people outside the zone of Rikkai dysfunction

I also like that it removed Tezuka from the story partway through, even though I like Tezuka, because it was interesting to have him out of the story in a way where he wasn't even a looming spectre threatening to return, to see what some of the characters were like without him.

The selection of characters for the U-17 team is not really a group of characters I think will be particularly interesting together, but we'll see when I get to all that, I guess.

The Teen Dream (1149 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jawbreaker (1999)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Courtney/Liz, Courtney/Fern, Fern Mayo/Liz Purr
Characters: Courtney Shayne, Fern Mayo
Additional Tags: toxic lesbians and mean bisexuals, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, late 90s homophobia, Mild Voyeurism, Dirty Talk
Summary:

Courtney Shayne plays vicious games.

Now I've watched through the first season of Prince of Tennis II and the specials, which is completely uncharted territory because I haven't read any of the sequel manga. This training camp is so stupid (don't go to a mysterious training camp in the woods about which you know almost nothing and which has terrifying gates, kids), and I'm shocked and surprised to discover Echizen is a cool jacket guy?! Because that jacket sure is cool!

Atobe lightly smacking Hiyoshi on the butt with his racket - wow, I never found them shippy before, but suddenly... Though as a Tezuka/Atobe shipper I am also eating so well. As a fan I feel serviced. Look at their eyes sparkling at each other.

Kaidoh carrying Momo on his back up the mountain is also insanely shippy.

Everything about this mountain training camp is fucking stupid, but I've accepted this Prince of Tennis is about nonsense boys adventures and not about actual tennis, so I'm enjoying it. Shishido and Gakuto squabbling is so entertaining to me. I really enjoyed Inui and Yanagi's data doubles moment. The Shitenhoji dorks have grown on me. Even Sanada is growing on me, which I thought was impossible!

I'm never going to like the Rikkai characters the way Rikkai fans do 😂 but I'm invested in so many characters banding together to turn Kirihara into a functional human being. It's sort of fascinating how completely Rikkai fucked themselves up, now that they're in a context where they're interacting people from outside their toxic mess. Yukimura has to learn how to enjoy things, and Sanada basically hates himself, and Yanagi even feels guilty for what they all did to Kirihara.

It's amazing how after so many episodes of watching the losers camp be forced to climb mountains, get chased by eagles, and sleep rough, switching back to the winners camp seems so decadent and infuriating in comparison! They get catered food and nice baths!!! Atobe brought his own rose petals for a rose bath!!! Maddening!

It is cute watching Eiji and Ohtori be so sad and lost without their doubles partners, though.

Me when Atobe developed X-ray vision: Of course this would happen, I don't know why I expected otherwise.

I watched the Another Story OVAs and I cannot believe they somehow made Shitenhoji grow on me just by having an episode where one of their team tells them all they're not funny and don't need to make so many jokes 🤣

Other thoughts:

The Inui-Fuji friendship is deeply underrated. I've said it before and I'll say it again! I'd love to see more of their off hours adventures in Osaka.

Aw, the young Hyotei episode! Atobe and Oshitari looked like they were having fun! I'm also amused by Oshitari getting on the wrong train. TBH, Hyotei are my favourite of the rival teams and I think part of it is because they seem like they have fun and make time for friendships. I also liked the Jirou episode about his sleep disorder and his admiration for Marui from Rikkai. It was kind of cute.

Even when trying to make a fun charming backstoy episode for Kirihara, Rikkai still seems grim and joyless, with only about two characters who ever seem to have any fun...

Kintaro has grown on me, and he and Ryoma playing across the river is entertaining. Though I think my favourite moment was actually Eiji catching the ball.

I really liked the conversation between Eiji and Oishi about going to different high schools, not just that Oishi is a little pained about it and has struggled to tell Eiji, but also that Eiji is instantly so supportive. Obviously they're soul bonded on the tennis court, but it's nice to see them having those increasingly mature conversations outside of it.

I don't think I ever noticed until now that Taka and Tezuka talk more than I previously realised?!?

I did also like Momo and Kaidoh taking on the pressure of a team that's now going to be defending champions, as opposed to before when they were just part of an underdog team... It's a very different vibe, to be sure. And Higa popping up because they don't have the money to go home 🤣

Celebration Chance (1029 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fuji Shuusuke/Kawamura Takashi
Characters: Fuji Shuusuke, Kawamura Takashi, Kikumaru Eiji
Additional Tags: Fluff, post nationals, First Kiss
Summary:

Kawamura is still injured, but Fuji takes a chance on what he wants anyway.

I finished the Nationals OVAs! They're fun. It's a shame they don't have more time to expand some matches, but also I think some things work better animated than they did for me in the manga. Yukimura v Ryoma seemed so silly to me in the manga, but in the OVAs I'm like, oh, I get it: Yukimura visits his trauma on other people with his tennis style that aims to make people feel like they're being betrayed by their bodies and don't enjoy tennis anymore, so Ryoma defeats him in the psychological battle by still liking tennis. It's not deep, but somehow it works better for me in the OVAs than it did when I speed read through it.

Though I'm a bit sad that the original anime series cannibalised bits of what happened during the Fuji v Niou match for the Fuji v Tezuka match it put in towards the end of the original anime, because it means anime Fuji v Niou seems so much less interestingly weird.

Once again I feel like I don't understand why there isn't tons of fic about Oishi's desperate unrequited feelings for Tezuka. Everyone is weird about Tezuka obvs, but Oishi is the most so.

also lmao, Inui capturing Tezuka smiling on video

Also also, for the most part I think Tezuka's sexuality is leaving everyone on read, but during the yakiniku insanity when Inui was trying to fly mouth first towards Atobe and then Tezuka dakked Inui before he fell on the grill... that seemed more like Tezuka trying to stop Inui from trying it on with his man than anything.

Glitter (196 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jennifer Check/Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Characters: Jennifer Check, Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Additional Tags: Resurrection, Short, Nonnies Made Me Do It
Summary:

The 17th time Jennifer resurrects and finds Needy all over again...

First posted here on FFA.

Hello!

I'm thawrecka on AO3, and I'm excited to read whatever you write. If you want to see more about what I like about these canons, or if you want to find more of what I like in fiction feel free to browse here or my tumblr.

If you're the person assigned to me, hi! :D If you're someone else, I also welcome treats.

Requests

( Prince of Tennis )

( Bleach )

( Pet Shop of Horrors )

( Blood River )

( Adventure Time )

Continuing my anime/manga era:

I got to the end of the season of Isekai Office Worker. It was a lot of fun! I should track down the manga/light novels some day. I love that the power fantasy is such an office worker power fantasy, but also I really enjoyed the fantasy politics and the romantic arc. I also love that the main character looked tired for the entire anime 🤣

I also finished Journal with Witch, a beautiful contemporary slice of life anime about living with grief. I'll have to track down the manga for this one some day, too! It has so much good things to say about gender, and people's relationships to the concept of romance, and parenting, and adult life choices, and loss. I really liked this speech about toxic male social rituals. Also, Makio is a great portrait of the life of a writer!

I got a subscription to the Jump app and immediately read 66 chapters of Dogsred, a shonen manga about a former figure skater who blows up his figure skating career after his mum dies, and then after he and his sister go to live with his granddad decides to join the ice hockey team after an altercation with an ice hockey player, even though he knows nothing about ice hockey. It's weirdly compelling. I wouldn't say that I understand ice hockey any better after reading so many chapters 🤣 but I like Rou's sparkly eyed enthusiasm for learning about ice hockey, and the dumb boy rivalries and complicated team dynamics, and the gritty undersides to its depiction of ice hockey towns in Hokkaido.

Apparently it's by the same guy who did Golden Kamuy, but as I never got far into either the anime or the live action for that I don't know if that's a positive or not...

The first two episodes of Go For It, Nakamura-kun!! came out and are delightful! There's a much meme-d image associated with the manga so I was curious, and the anime is cute and funny and absolutely exquisite to look at. The colours! The backgrounds! The characters are animated in a charmingly cute and retro style that strongly reminds me of Rumiko Takahashi's work. Nakamura fighting for his life to make the most awkward conversation with his crush and talking to his pet octopus about it is adorable.

I'm slowly watching Mushishi at a rate of an episode every one or two days. I didn't get along with the manga or the OVA for some reason, but I was determined to try this series because it sounded like my sort of thing, and luckily I'm enjoying the anime proper. I know people have compared this to Natsume Yuujinchou, but that's more about recovering from the sadness of the world, and this feels more like moving through the darkness of the world. Not that it's all dark -- the mushi wine episode certainly wasn't -- but it definitely feels like it's grounded much more in the adult horrors of the world.

I'm also about halfway through the Nationals OVAs of Prince of Tennis. I've finished the Hyotei matches! They're a lot of fun. I'm kind of sad the OVAS are so short and don't get a chance to expand the matches the way the original anime did; OTOH, the original anime added a lot of nonsense. There's some pseudo mystical basically super powered tennis in these matches, but it still feels like the last hurrah of the real tennis. The series jumps the shark directly after.

I feel like Hyotei vs Seigaku in the Nationals is the point where the character stuff and emotional arcs is at its finest after all that build up, before it gets buried by complete nonsense. Some of the tennis moves are silly, but not so silly they weigh down how fun it is to watch Hyotei and Seigaku play, and I'm invested in both teams and care about their characters. Hiyoshi & Gakuto vs InuKai is so much fun, and Silver Pair vs Golden Pair is a bit silly but also lives or dies based on how invested I am in those character relationships (in this case: very. They're charming kids and their doubles friendships are sweet).

In addition to marathon-ing the anime, I also speed ran the manga. I reread the entirety of the original Prince of Tennis manga this week, and I want you to know that nobody should do this to themselves. It is bad, and I feel bad. I will not be reading the sequel.

The beginning of the manga is about tennis. The end of the manga is about superpowers and pseudo mysticism and being willing to die on the tennis court. It is very very stupid.

(It's all on the Jump app 😂)

Anyway, thoughts on the anime inc. changes, more thoughts on the manga, etc.

Well it turns out the reason I remembered nothing about the Midoriyama matches is because they were pretty boring, but the jousei shonan matches that replaced that in the anime go on longer and are even more boring.

I forgot that thing where Ryoma's dad called kids toys to play with, what a douchebag.

I hate Rikkai ahahaha. Sanada beating people just makes him a douchebag.

The manga is funnier and more ridiculous than I remembered. The bowling episode comes straight from the manga!

I like Kaidoh's match with young Rokkaku guy in the manga, but I actually like Ryoma's match with him in the anime even more, it's fun and they seem to be having fun. That's probably the only adaptation change the anime makes that I actually like, though.

Fuji has his eyes open so much more in the manga. Also, I like temporarily blinded Fuji in the manga more but the selfless state nonsense is so dumb. What is with all the pseudo mystical nonsense?!?

Kaidou and Yagyuu dressing as each other to play doubles! And I just started the Nationals OVAS, and they did adapt that, yay!

It well and truly jumps the shark during the Shithenhoji matches. That boring doubles comedy duo comprised of homophobic stereotypes? They're not even funny! The pinnacles of mastery or whatever the fuck it was is so dull. I know it was slowly going that way, but it stopped being about anything remotely like real tennis, and started being about super powers and pseudo mystical nonsense. Inui and Tezuka doubles but it wastes the chance to be interesting about their partnership because Tezuka turns it into a singles game. Why?!? WHY?!?

The Rikkai matches were also so boring.

And like, remember early on when Fuji forfeits a match because Taka is injured and it's not actually good for adolescents to play injured? By the end Taka is like 'I am willing to die in this tennis match' and bleeding from every orifice and this is just how tennis works now in this world... The number of games where Seigaku players are bleeding all over the place by the end... I feel like by the end the mangaka forgot he wasn't supposed to be writing about superpowered samurai fighting each other to the death. It's only school sports! 🤣

I reached the bit towards the end of the anime where Ryoma's jetted off to America and Tezuka and Fuji have a match which, if I shipped them, would probably delight me, but as I don't... I'm mostly like, why is there so much exposition?! Well, because they haven't interacted much in the anime but the anime wants to sell this as a super intense relationship you just haven't been seeing so there has to be endless voice-overs about how this is so intense actually! I think it would work better if there had been more interaction between them throughout and there wouldn't have to be so much info-dumping. Also, LOL at the writers having to get Ryoma out of the country first, because realistically both Fuji and Tezuka have been way more intense at him than at each other. And why is this match three entire episodes long??

I feel like this is a writing issue - if there had been better set up long term there wouldn't need to be so much effort put into this 'no it's totally so intense you guys' thing now. I'm happy for the TezuFuji shippers, though, they must have loved this.

Also, LOL at the coach being like "tennis is like a game for him" about Fuji. Okay, but tennis is actually a game though?

Also, 12 year old Ryoma being invited to the US Open is A BRIDGE TOO FAR for me. NO! That is too stupid! And it sort of warps everything around it in the anime, which means that a bunch of scenes which were about Tezuka and people's relationships to Tezuka in the manga become about Ryoma in the anime but without the same emotional heft.

I am finally on to the Nationals OVAs, though, and I am enjoying myself. Even though Eiji basically cloning himself is so much stupider in the anime somehow. But I love Taka and Fuji's doubles match; they're nice boys who are friends and they enjoy tennis and bring interesting things to the game and that's really all I want.

I'm looking forward to seeing the Hyotei rematches animated. Those were basically the last bits of the manga I enjoyed, but also I really enjoyed them, so let's see if the anime lives up to that.

In my rewatch I reached my favourite ever episode of Prince of Tennis -- the one where Kaidoh gets amnesia from a tennis ball to the head, and starts to act like a cat. Cured, of course, by another tennis ball to the end.

It's brilliant, amazing, just as good as I remembered. I laughed just as hard tonight as I did 20 years ago!

Life is so short. I want to say that I don't know what to say, but I do. I was very intensely into LJRP/DWRP in my 20s; at a time when other people were doing uni and postgrad and forming friendships with people at uni, I was making RP friends. I slowly drifted away from a lot of people, without even meaning to, because life happens, but they were present for a very important, very intense part of my life and I kept meaning to reach out and get to know them again. And then someone dies, and I realise it's too late. A strange, wistful feeling. I think I'm crying more because people I love are grieving than anything else, because I didn't know AJ very well anymore, but really, what a loss.

If there's any upside, it's that this motivated everyone to get back in touch. We are all so much older than we used to be, and some people we still can't find, but it's so nice to get back in touch.

Watched:

I'm still deep into the Prince of Tennis marathon. I remembered nothing of this junior selection camp filler arc until I got to the point where they were all like, wow, Sengoku got shredded!!! Why is that the thing I remember? The boxing style tennis is hilarious, sorry to say. Also, Samada telling Atobe he doesn't care about Atobe's obsession with Tezuka and then Dan faithfully reporting this to Tezuka is hilarious.

Though Tezuka slapping Ryoma to the ground just because Ryoma wants to play a tennis game Tezuka didn't sanction is um serious values dissonance moment, because I think this makes Tezuka look shitty and the anime does not.

TV: My Prince of Tennis anime marathon continues apace. Good news: Tezuka vs Atobe is just as good as I remember! The look on Atobe's face when he realises Tezuka has accepted his challenge! Oishi asking Tezuka if he's sure! Atobe getting what he wants, but no longer wanting it! Atobe wishing the game would go on forever! When the crowd stops cheering and just looks on in shock for that endless tiebreak! The arm raise at the end! Honestly, magnificent. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when Atobe finally won, even though I knew it was coming, it was that tense.

The Inui/Kaidoh doubles arc is also just as homoerotic as I remembered. Hunting down the place where Kaidoh trains shirtless, asking him to play doubles against a vibrant sunset, the whole 'let's mutually use each other' thing... What a good pairing. I 100% believe they hooked up between tennis practises....

Kawamura's hyper macho tennissona is so funny to me. Also, I just got to Fuji asking to use his bloody tennis racket and, wow, instantly remembered how hard I shipped that pairing back in the day. There should have been more fic about them!!!

I feel like Tezuka/Oishi is also an underrated ship; people don't do enough with that dynamic early on where Oishi is taking Tezuka to his doctor's appointments and acting like his worried wife. On the other hand, people have done much with how shippy the Golden Pair are after they break up in the arc where Inui gets back on the team, and they were right to, this bit of tension is the most shippy Oishi and Eiji have ever been, and from what I remember they get even shippier later.

I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to the (anime only) Josei Shonan arc, which was sooooooooo boring. All the characters on the opposing team have wacky hair to disguise that they don't have interesting personalities. I felt very [I have no memory of this place] so I assume I straight up skipped this arc the first time around. In theory the Inui & Momo doubles match should have been interesting, but it mostly underlined for me that they both have better chemistry with Kaidoh. It's not like I can say the storyline the manga did instead at this point was better, because I also don't remember that 🤣 The Rokkaku arc is fine, but the most striking image is the super long racket. Echizen is adorable in this arc, though.

I'm about to start the Rikkai games. The last bunch of episodes have been very Momo/Kaidoh shippy. Rescuing the kitty together ❤️

I kind of want to write Prince of Tennis fic again... in 2026... but I have genfic ideas. Where Ryoma is aroace but doesn't care because he only identifies as a tennis player. And then I guess I'd have to write a lot of tennis?

Watched two movies yesterday:

The 2006 Prince of Tennis live action movie, which is so much worse than I remembered. It's not good as an adaptation and it's not good as a film in its own right! No narrative focus! A lot of bad acting! Ryuuzaki is young and hot for some reason! They try to jam in too much stuff and too many characters and everything feels thin and underwhelming! The upside is I think Fuji is perfect in it in his approx five seconds of screen time, and the weird side is Ryoma and Tezuka are so much shippier here than I think they've been in any other version of the canon.

Challengers: the sad story of a woman who can't marry tennis, so she has to put up with men.

Could have used more tennis, though I found the tennis ball POV shots kind of funny. I mostly got the impression that Tashi found Art nice and convenient and she was attracted to Patrick but didn't want to be in a relationship with him, but she was really in love with tennis. I didn't find Zendaya convincing as a tennis player, but she is convincing as the hot woman two dudes fight over, so that was fine. The homoerotic tension was there, but by the end I think I found it the least interesting part? At the beginning I didn't like Tashi, but by the end I found her the only likeable character, weirdly enough; I think it might be because she was the best characterised of them all, and had more depth to her longings.

The ending felt great, which I think is because it gave me the impression the men were finally as in love with tennis as Tashi was. I can see why people want a threesome at the end of that film, but I mostly felt like none of those people should bone. Much like with the peach fucker film I feel that Luca Guadagnino's aesthetic sensibility and mine don't mesh very well; the film wasn't pretty enough to my tastes, but obviously worked well for other people.

In a surprise turn of events, this weekend I started watching the Prince of Tennis anime from the beginning. Honestly, it's charming and well paced! I can see why I was so into it... 20+ years ago. I wouldn't say it's particularly mature; it is definitely a story about a 12 year old beating almost everyone at tennis and everyone talking about how cool he is. The adolescents are very adolescent - Kaido hissing like a snake is classic awkward 13-year-old behaviour.

I mostly remembered the important parts: the tennis and the cat. I had forgotten everything about Echizen's sleazy dad, and I would happily forget that all over again. I also forgot how long they drew out not letting you see how Tezuka plays tennis - I've watched 24 episodes, and I don't think you actually see him play until episode 25. There is a ton of filler, but the filler is all one episode fillers IIRC, so in that matter is vastly superior to, say, the endless Bleach filler arcs.

Overall it's feeling like light nostalgic fun.

Finding Moments (627 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gu Xuanqing/Li Yunzhen
Characters: Gu Xuanqing, Li Yunzhen

Terrible headache and I didn't even drink last night, it's just that people were too loud in the pub. Amazing how you can get symptoms identical to a hangover without alcohol just from being around people yelling for hours.

Recently read: The Woman Dies by Aoka Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton - I picked this up partly because I enjoyed Barton's translation of Butter, and partly because the cover art is so cool. Collection of stories, much of it flash fiction, tacking sexism, gender, technology, the media, etc. A lot funnier than I expected. The titular story, which is my favourite, is incisive about sexist cliches in the movies, but also has a very funny conversation about vaginas. I feel like this is best read all at once, because so many threads are picked up repeatedly in multiple stories (the Japanese national anthem jokes, for example), and it has a great rhythm that way, so I'm glad I read it all at once. I had a great time with this.

Currently reading: Lord of Mysteries: The Clown, Part 1 by Cuttlefish that Loves Diving - I'm 44 chapters in and really enjoying myself. There's some things the animated series glossed over but that the novel goes into more depth on, so the world feels even more textured. I'm most delighted by how sneaky Klein is, and how awkward all his interactions with Leonard are, but there's a lot to enjoy. I like that this has more on the tarot club, and I'm amused by Audrey and her large dog.

Yen Press doesn't seem to list a translator anywhere in the book, but I can believe there is a human translator because there are so many clunky adverbs. When did adverbs stop being considered bad writing, my guys? Maybe I'm out of touch on this, because I see them so often in published fiction these days (especially in translated fiction), and they always annoy me.

DNF: The Moon Glow Bookshop by Dongwon Seo, translated by Shanna Tan - the idea of a bar that sells drinks that tell stories is fun, but the prose in the translation is so clunky and surface, with no real subtext or interesting description, no depth or texture, that I just can't push myself forward.

新年快乐！

I meant to post yesterday but I've been feeling a bit tired and rundown this past week. Hopefully better by the weekend - I have lunar new year celebrations and a friend's birthday to get to. Not to mention my book club tomorrow night!

Things watched recently:

• Seven episodes of Isekai Office Worker: The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, an isekai BL anime about an accountant accidentally ending up in a fantasy world, reforming the royal accounts department, getting hooked on magical energy drinks it turns out he's allergic to... and being saved from an overdose by a handsome young knight in the world's silliest fuck-or-die scenario. And then continuing to make political waves with his accounting!!! power, which is just so satisfying to watch. DAMN THAT MAN LOVES TO ACCOUNTS. The subtitle of the show is correct, the other world's book do indeed depend on the bean counter, and not everyone is happy about him tracking their spending... I'm having so much fun with this! It's funny, but also in a strange way an office worker power fantasy, but also there's political fallout for everything and that feels right, too. Once the season's over I'll have to track down the books.

• All of season one of Lord of Mysteries, first in Chinese, and now I'm watching the English dub. I really will have to track down the novels, the first of which is already out in translation here (apparently the second is out elsewhere in the world but doesn't arrive in Australia until next month?? sigh). I'm hoping to track down that book tomorrow night, if the book store that claims to have a copy really does.

This is also a transmigration story, but it's a steampunk-y horror transmigration fantasy. The main character ends up in a world where people take potions to cultivate into eldritch monsters, basically. He spends the first episode bewildered (and so did I hahaha) but pretending he has any clue what's going on, and I think one of my favourite things is how both his Chinese voice actor and English voice actor give him the kind of voice that can trick you into thinking he's almost a totally normal guy... and then you step back and look at the facts and you're just like, wtf, Klein! He's a great character, but I also like a lot of the supporting cast; my favourite character is actually Leonard, a guy who once fell down a flight of stairs because he was distracted reading a book (relatable). Leonard regularly tries to act cool and mysterious at Klein, who keeps calling Leonard a weirdo instead of being impressed, and I'm very entertained.

I do have... extremely mixed feelings... about the evil secret sect of people who take potions that make them women which gives them more powers to do more evil things, and by mixed feelings I think that has very unfortunate implications but they are all unfortunately also so sexy.

• I watched the remaining episodes of Betrothed to my Sister's Ex, a really charming cinderella story type anime I started last year. Which is actually really good. I appreciate that it doesn't just have the charming romance of Marie coming to be loved by rich handsome dweeb Kyros and everyone else in the castle, as well as slowly learning to love herself, it also deals with how she and her younger sister were abused by their family in different ways, and the ending is a happy escape for both of them. I really liked it!

• I also finished This Monster Wants to Eat Me, a subtly yuri-flavoured anime about the main character's suicidal depression, and the monsters that would prefer her not to die, actually. And like, it really is very good, but it is also so heavy so it makes sense it took a while for me to finally get to the final episodes.

• Cosmic Princess Kaguya (2026), truly the superior of the animated lesbian space princess movies I've watched so far this year. It does zip through plot very fast, so it's not without flaw, but I loved this lesbian sci fi take on the tale of the bamboo cutter, and the scissoring handshake is just an A+ detail. Great songs, a lot of fun.

• Which means Lesbian Space Princess (2025) is the lesser animated lesbian space princess movie I've seen this year. The songs are okay. I was stunned to learn after the fact that the homophobic blokey spaceship was voiced by Richard Roxburgh. It is sometimes funny. The best joke was the Maliens and the thespian. I don't regret watching it, but like... eh.

• Scarlet (2025): Wow, it's amazing how IMAX can make a bad film worse. I didn't realise before going to see it that this was an AU version of Hamlet where Hamlet is a girl who meets a handsome Japanese man from the present day in the afterlife, so that was... strange. It's uh not good. Some of the emotional stuff would have worked better if those scenes had not been dragged out, and a lot of the animation is TV quality limited animation. Morally incoherent, which is a feat because it's so thin and slight. The bit with the imagined Shibuya dance sequence is uh... I don't even know. That sure was a film I watched.

I paid for a month HBO Max subscription for Heated Rivalry, but then after watching that I was like, oh, they have all of Adventure Time, and the Distant Lands specials, and Fionna and Cake, I wonder if I can watch all of that in a month?

...The answer to that is yes, actually. Massive Adventure Time marathon. Having many feelings about post-apocalyptic gender and identity, and also 🩷🖤bubbline, and also aaaah Huntress Wizard aaah!

I'd never actually finished it when it was on an Australian streaming service, so I finally got to see the final seasons and Marceline and Bubblegum getting back together ♥ and Finn growing up! I truly thought no finale could live up to ten seasons of build up, and I won't say it was perfect, but it was pretty good. I was moved! If you told me at the beginning of the series that I would end up with so many emotions about Ice King, I would not have believed you, but there's some very rich stuff there about loss of identity, especially with regards to his relationship with Betty.

Fionna and Cake also does some pretty interesting stuff, and is especially thoughtful about gender. To the point where I really liked it even though I didn't particularly like the main characters.

( Read more... )

Anyway, I had a great time with that. And literally the night after I finished this massive TV marathon I went out to see two movies.

First: Hamnet, which only just released here. It's interesting, though I don't think it was entirely successful for me. I have to admit I did laugh when he took his shirt off to go swimming and it turned out Will Shakespeare had abs. Not Marvel abs or anything, but certainly more visible abs than I would believe the average Elizabethan playwright to have.

My tears were not jerked out of me, alas, and there was so much shaky cam, but I did think the most interesting part was ( Read more... )

I feel like there used to be a lot more of this kind of film, so I like that it seems fairly successful, even if I wasn't nearly as moved as I wanted to be.

Then I went to see No Other Choice, which was kind of funny. I did laugh. I also didn't find it as funny as I wanted, but it certainly wasn't bad. It ends basically in exactly the place you think it will end, and I do find it an effective satire. Apparently it's loosely based on a Donald E. Westlake story? The best part was some of the comedy of errors at the start of his attempt at a murder spree, and then later it was kind of sad. I'm not sad I went to see it, anyway, even if I was very tired when the movie let out and the cinema had already closed down their escalators.

Finished reading:

On the Beach by Nevil Shute - which has its flaws as a book (it's certainly not scientifically rigorous and the prose is often clumsy), but I was emotionally overcome by the ending. I think even more so because it's such a slow burner, so much about incredibly ordinary people with no real effect on the world living out their last days. You don't get the point of view of politicians or geniuses or movers and shakers, and the one guy from CSIRO you only get his point of view toward the end when he's thinking about how he'll spend his remaining days. Just normal people living in denial, or numbing themselves with alcohol, or deciding to do things they never got to before, or finding ways to fill out their days and trying not to think of all the things they'll never get to do.

( Read more... )

Current Music: Everything Stays - the Adventure Time soundtrack

I kept a document open all year to paste these in as I went, but you can probably tell when that started to go awry...

( List of all the fic I wrote in 2025 )

The writing year in review meme:
Total words posted in 2025: 25,495 words
Total stories posted in 2025: 21
Longest story: The Ordinary Ever After Part: 5,552 words
Shortest story: Purring: 126 words
Story with the most kudos in 2025: Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man, 217 kudos (more than I expected!)
Story with the most comment threads in 2025: On His Mind, 10 comment threads
Story with the most bookmarks in 2025: Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man, 37 bookmarks
Personal favourite from this year: Probably Going Home, the Bleach Ichigo&Ishida gen I wrote after rereading the series yet again. I like the vibe of it! Either that, or the Pluto pinch hit I wrote for RMSE, which I feel really captured all my Paul Duncan and North no 2 feelings.

Overall thoughts: Weird year again! Didn't write much, and a lot of what I wrote didn't get much of a reaction. I joined a lot more exchanges in 2025 than in previous years, and they were marked by constant delays and not much in the way of comments. Not sure I'll bother much in 2026.

( Stats )

Yuletide reveals:

My assignment:
Hand to Hand (1202 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 永夜星河 | Love Game in Eastern Fantasy (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ling Miaomiao/Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi, Ling Miaomiao & Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi
Characters: Ling Miaomiao, Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Holding Hands, Fluff, During Canon, Post-Canon
Summary:

Four moments in time when Ziqi and Miaomiao held hands.

Looks like my recip was double assigned. When I saw the other fic they got, they hadn't commented on that, either, but I haven't checked since. TBH, they had no likes/dislikes/prompts/DNWs in their signup, so I assumed they'd be a no show, so this isn't a surprise. We matched on Love and Redemption, but I couldn't think of what to write, so I wrote Love Game in Eastern Fantasy... which the other person assigned to them also wrote.

On to treats:

Strange Feminine Secrets (1431 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jennifer Check/Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Characters: Jennifer Check, Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, back from the dead, Undead, Horror
Summary:

Post-canon, Jennifer and Needy find each other again.

Probably my most successful fic of the exchange! After I posted it I did start to think of what I could have done better, should I have written a longfic that covered their whole murder rampage, etc. etc. but actually I think it's fine.

Two Coffees, One Tea (1372 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Two Husbands One Wife
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shinpei/Mia/Takuzo
Characters: Satomura Shinpei, Yanoguchi Mia, Mitsuda Takuzo
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff, Domestic Fluff
Summary:

Scenes from Shinpei, Mia and Takuzo's life together.

I was so tired when I posted this that I somehow did not realise I posted it in Madness, not the main collection 🤣 Anyway, I was inspired by the prompt, especially as I'd just finished the show. Only one of my fics with a recip comment ❤️ Usually I just treat random people because I'm inspired by their prompts, but this is the first time I wrote a treat for a friend ❤️

I had a whole plan to write more treats than last but ended up writing fewer, because I was so tired. Kind of a quiet Yuletide, I think, though I might think that because my fic overall was less popular than usual. I think the delayed author reveals are also throwing me off.

What did I do in 2025? Hell if I know. A lot of people asked and about all I could say is I watched a lot of movies and TV shows and spent a bunch of time learning Chinese. I caught up with one set of friends and friends-of-friends for New Year's, and had a great time. I had non-dairy pizza, and non-alcoholic cocktails, and listened to people's opinions on the best superhero, and talked to a guy about Heated Rivalry and then his boyfriend played All the Things She Said during his DJ set.

I rung in the new year dancing to 3am! Something I am apparently still capable of doing! I am... very sore now, though 🤣

Happy new year, friends, and I hope 2026 treats us all well

I feel like I've watched a lot and read a lot this week and achieved nothing. Which is great.

Like everyone else on the planet, apparently, I watched Heated Rivalry, which has great shot composition and editing and sound design and in general is just so well directed I'm in awe of it, but also it's a nice romance. Kind of want to rewatch just because I'm in awe of how well crafted it is! The romance is nice, too.

Watched two episodes of Dare You to Death, a cheesy Thai BL about a cop duo with belligerent sexual tension trying to solve a series of murders targeting a group of university students (one of whom one of the cops is related to). Which is not like especially good, but there's some interesting moments and fun styling.

And the leads of that are also in The Heart Killers, which I watched three episodes of. Which is, I kid you not, a modern Thai BL take on Taming of the Shrew but make it assassins that work in a burger joint. It's... uh... very stylish? I don't know if it's good or not? I'm not sure if I'm compelled when I watch it, and I'm mostly bewildered when I think about it, but also I know it has a lot of fans.

I watched 10Dance (2025), a gay Japanese dancesport romance film on Netflix, which has structural problems and utterly pedestrian direction. It's fine, I guess? There are interesting elements that are only vaguely touched on, and I'm given to understand those are covered more deeply in depth in the manga on which it is based, but I'm not interested enough to read it. Takeuchi Ryoma is very good in this, though.

One and a half episodes of Realm's Night Rain Dreamlike, a homoerotic wuxia mini drama that is clearly ripping off (among other things) Word of Honor, and I'm not mad at it. And as it's a mini drama, it's certainly not bloodless... Filtered to high heaven, though, to the point it almost seems kind of blurry, which is a shame.

...other things I'm not mentioning because I wrote Yuletide fic about them...

I cannot begin to tell you how much YouTube I have watched. I've literally paused a YouTube video to post this right now 🤣 A lot of which is watching and rewatching makeup videos, like 뷰티숨BEAUTYSOOM's videos going around the world and getting makeup done in different places (so many different styles!) as well as getting her makeup done in different styles in South Korea. It's always so fascinating watching the different styles and how they emphasise different parts of the face.

I haven't fully finished reading through the collection, but all I have left is longfic so I'm flagging and will probably crash out tonight. I won't say I've read every fic 5k or under in the main and madness collections, but I've read a lot of them. That said, fic recs:

( Anime canons: The Summer Hikaru Died, Karaoke Iko!, The Apothecary Diaries )

( Movie canons: Hustlers, Edge of Tomorrow, Sinners, The Nightmare Before Christmas )

( All other canons: Carmilla, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, When Destiny Brings the Demon, Soulmate Goose AU, Womens Literary RPF, Manchild (Sabrina Carpenter video)/Orpheus and Eurydice, Hamlet, French fetish terms )

The Yuletide collection had a glitch this morning where half the authors revealed way too early, but now that everything's gone back anon I'll link the gift fic I got:

Cat Distribution System (3809 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pet Shop of Horrors (Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jill (Pet Shop of Horrors) & Leon Orcott (Pet Shop of Horrors)
Characters: Jill (Pet Shop of Horrors), Leon Orcot, Count D (Pet Shop of Horrors), Original Animal Character(s)
Additional Tags: 1990s Era is its own character honestly, The Dirtbag 1990s, Stalking (light), Period Typical Attitudes
Summary:

A cat adopts Jill, in canon typical fashion.

It's cute!

I ended up writing fewer Yuletide fics than last year, between holidays in November and exhaustion, and I feel weirdly guilty about it, but I appreciate the earlier opening gives me time to browse the collection before I head off to family Christmas Day hell 🤣

On the weekend I went to a showing of the 4k restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock, oddly suitable given I was halfway through the book at the time. Which I have now also finished, and enjoyed, though it's very weird and of its time.

The homoeroticism is off the charts; not just all the school girls being in love with Miranda, but also whatever was going on with Mike and Albert. I honestly had not remembered much about those characters in the movie, so seeing the level of homoeroticism there, and then discovering it's even more intense in the book was a surprise! There's stuff in the book I'm glad isn't in the movie - the fate of the Lumleys and all the stuffing about with Irma and Michael would have been a bit too soap operatic for the dreamy, vaguely horror-toned vibe Peter Weir was going for. And I do like the tighter focus allowing the vibe of 'the real horror is the school', though there is some nice atmospheric prose in the book.

I went with a friend to see the movie and we both laughed at the judgmental koala around Hanging Rock, lmao.

Though seeing some of the things non-Australians have written about this novel and movie has me like, sigh, can people try not to be weird and xenophobic about Australia?? It's not scary or strange for the southern hemisphere to have opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere, and you don't have to go on about how ~exotic~ and ~bizarre~ you find Australian things.

I'm skipping the question about food recommendations, because I'm going through a phase of disliking almost everything I eat.

littlerhymes asked: "Travel plans?"

These are all contingent on me ever having money again 🤣 which given how rapidly my home is disintegrating and I don't even have money to deal with that, feels unsure.

I have so many.

Can you believe that I've never been to Tasmania?? It seems like everyone I know has already gone there, so this will have to be solo travel (I solo travel so often but sometimes I long for company at the airport, you know?). Might be nice for a weekend trip. Of course I have to hit up museums and the markets and have some nice food. The natural beauty would probably be lost on me, and I'm unlikely to see that unless I go with a tour group, what with not driving and all. I'm thinking winter; the historical weather says it's not noticably cooler than Melbourne, though given the closer proximity to Antarctica the winds probably feel icier, but it's not exactly the frozen tundra and I do like to wear coats.

I mean, obviously I have to visit Sydney again.

The writing conference that I was meant to go to during the pandemic was on the Gold Coast... well, that didn't happen and I'm not going to the writing conferences anyway. But I really want to go to the Gold Coast again. My dad took me and my brother there after my mum died, so to me it's always felt like a place of healing. I haven't been back since a trip with friends in my 20s, which was lovely. But also it has tons of fried food and tacky crap AND I LOVE FRIED FOOD AND TACKY CRAP!!! Theme parks! I'm not overly into beaches, but it can feel ~exotic~ to visit them on holiday.

I also haven't been back to Darwin since the 80s, for that matter, so I should probably visit there, too...

...Yeah, I still haven't made it to Paris. I've wanted to go since I was a small child obsessed with sad French art films and ballet. It just costs so much money, though. The kind of holiday I could have for a week in Tokyo for $5k AU (still expensive!) would cost $10k AU in Paris, which is just prohibitively expensive for me right now. Maybe if I win the lottery??

I am slowly saving up for it, though. And Europe is so far that I will probably only ever go once, so I need to make the most of it when I do.

littlerhymes asked: "Standout books/comics/manga you read this year"

I was like, what did I even read this year? I feel like I've had more trouble this year than ever remembering what I actually experienced within the calendar year.

Goodreads to the rescue! I gave up on my reading spreadsheet early but I did dutifully log books on GR.

My favourites of the year:

Colette Decides to Die, volumes 1 to 3 by Alto Yukimura - the title makes it sound very grim, but this is a charming shoujo series about an overworked apothecary suffering burnout who decides to jump in the well when she's particularly exhausted, and instead of dying she meets Hades who is also overworked and suffering burnout and needs medical help. Through the relationship they develop, they learn the importance of delegating! And they have adventures! There's also a bit of a romantic element, but that hasn't progressed far in the volumes I've read.

It's a particularly soft & kawaii version of the Greek gods, but why not after all. I'm charmed by it. (I see a lot of discourse on the tumbles about how Greek gods are terrible and shitty in the ancient texts and therefore should only be terrible and shitty in modern fiction, but like, when I want terrible and shitty iterations of the Greek gods those ancient plays and poems already exist for me to enjoy...)

I did catch up on the last three volumes of Natsume's Book of Friends and it's still excellent and amazing and heartwarming & etc.

The more I think about A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon after the fact, the more I appreciate it. Such neat and tidy plotting, a nice spot of social commentary, and a fun story with cute illustrations, all in a slim 176 pages.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is the best book about a female serial killer I read all year. I like how messy and textured it is, how atmospheric, how rounded the characterisation feels, the insights it has into Japanese culture and the way it treats women, bodies and food. It doesn't come to any comfortable conclusions, and yet the ending still feels optimistic, and I appreciate how much space it allowed for ambiguity.

I won't do a more formal version of the December talking meme, but if you leave prompts in the replies to this post about topics you'd like me to talk about I'll try to get through them during the month.

I should write more about my Japan trip than just plane troubles, because I want to get all these thoughts and feelings down before they slip through my fingers.

I'll organise my thoughts mostly by area, as it's easier that way:

Ginza: This is where I stayed, and it was a perfect base for exploring Tokyo. Last time (which was 17 years ago! A long time!) I stayed in Nihonbashi, and it felt less convenient. My hotel was literally right above an entrance to Higashi-Ginza station.

Of course, Ginza is perfectly nice on its own. Touristy, but not overwhelmingly so, and clean and nice with lots of good signage, and very walkable. I spent a bunch of money at Loft and Itoya, which are dangerous as a stationery fan (I did not realise until I got home how many stickers I bought). Cursing that I didn't buy one of the sun and rain umbrellas at Loft, tbh, because it would be super useful in Melbourne. I also spent a lot of time wandering through Mitsukoshi department store just browsing and not buying anything. If I'd been more flush with cash I might have been in danger of buying a bunch of fancy makeup here, but given I already have too much eyeshadow I'm not sad I didn't.

This reminds me how convenient the trains are. They come so often! When I visited Tokyo in 2008 I'm pretty sure only Roppongi had the subway fare table in English, which was inconvenient when I was trying to get to Roppongi and my nearest station in Nihonbashi only had signage in Japanese. Now pretty much every subway station has English signage, and the ticket machines allow you to display the information in multiple languages and type in the station you're going to to get fare advice anyway. It's so convenient.

In general, Tokyo is so much more convenient for foreign tourists now. (Which turned out to be great for me because my Japanese is so much worse than I thought it was, lmao.) In some of the more tourist heavy areas the overhead announcements are in Japanese, then English, then two varieties of Chinese, then Korean. At Tokyo Station I think there were also announcements in Thai. Amazing, tbh. I don't feel any city has an obligation to be convenient for foreign tourists, but it is very nice.

I did a lot of shopping at the Tokyo Station shops in 2008; I did a lot in 2025, too 🤣 I bought a kimono Miffy, and a fancy mug from the fancy Ghibli store, and I very nearly bought a tacky plastic keyring about my fave anime character before reminding myself I have too much plastic crap already...

Tokyo Tower! I went to Roppongi thinking I'd go to the Mori Art Museum, but once I got there I only wanted to walk to Tokyo Tower instead (even though there's a closer station to it, yes). And it was so worth it. The bright red and white tower against the bright blue sky! In front of Tokyo Tower there was a mini Tokyo Tower surrounded by Christmas trees, and it was so cute. This is the only thing I remembered to photograph.

Ikebukuro: I really enjoyed this neighbourhood and went there two days in a row. It's well known as a place full of anime merch frequented by women, and certainly I went to the massive Animate and looked in several of the second hand stores and considered buying things... but in the end, I stumbled into the Sunshine City shopping mall and bought a bunch of feminine accessories and looked at a bunch of cute clothes. I planned to buy other things, but then I spent ¥16,500 on a cute handbag & bag charm at Samantha Vega, and I can't remember how much on a hairclip at Mary Quant, and honestly if I'd had more cash I could have spent so much more... I also liked the other shopping malls in the area and the general vibe. Just a really nice area, tbh. I have to go back!!

Akihabara on the other hand, meh. I didn't like it in 2008 because it felt crowded and sleazy, and I don't like it for the same reasons now. Most of Tokyo smells mysteriously nice, but Akihabara doesn't. OTOH, the Animate there had a different selection of merch, and was where all the Natsume Yuujincho stuff was?? I bought a Nyanko-sensei pen.

I also could have spent entire days in Shimokitazawa. If you like neighbourhoods full of vintage shopping and independent designers that make you feel like you're not cool enough to be there, as I do, then this is top notch. There were so many cute things in the stores! I nearly bought a purple handbag at Wego (where everything was delightfully tacky), before reminding myself I'd already bought a handbag the day before elsewhere and how many handbags do I need... Well, I'm still thinking about that handbag, so I guess this is a reminder you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and 100% of the accessories you don't buy.

I bought so many stickers at B Side Label. I could have spent hours in there, buying every sticker I saw. They're so cute! This is their website, and I bought more anime stuff here than anywhere else, lmao. You can get B Side Label stickers all over the place - Loft, the Jump shop, the various TV station shops in Tokyo station, etc. - but I'm glad I waited to buy any until I got to one of their own stores and could browse a bigger portion of the collection.

Some other thoughts:
- I'm 5'4 or 5'5 depending on who measures me, and it's really nice to visit a country where almost everything is made for people around my height.
- Rice is healthy for most people, but I can't actually digest it very well, so after eating it several days in a row, having to deal with plane turbulence didn't only do in my back, I also felt queasy the whole plane flight. Live and learn.
- Google maps was good at telling me the public transport to get somewhere, but almost every time I needed walking directions it tried to lead me in a circle. What is with that?
- I talked with a friend about it after I got home, who said that he felt disappointed that Japan no longer gives him the feeling it used to the first time he went there, whereas it still gave me that feeling: excited to be there, and just different enough from home to be interesting but not so difficult that anything was particularly hard to navigate (even with language issues). Honestly, still feels like a very nice place for a solo female traveller to go, and I can't wait to go again.

I've probably forgotten so much of what I wanted to say about it already.

I am back from Japan! I had a great time. Until an overnight flight home that was 10 hours of turbulence, so now I'm tired and in pain. At least I had the good sense to make sure I had a few extra days off work after my flight, so I have time to recover.

Realistically, I am not going to catch up on any social media, and I'm not even going to try.

As I write this, it is ridiculous o'clock and I am getting ready to leave for the airport.

I finished Blood River! The ending is great! Honestly the most satisfying ending possible. It achieves what I thought impossible, giving something to satisfy the m/m fans and m/f fans (and possibly also the m/m/f fans), and gives an end to the politics that's somehow both grim and optimistic.

I also watched 4 episodes of I Am Nobody season 2 while I had the Youku subscription, and I just don't think I'm going to watch the rest. The pacing is off, and there are way too many male characters and not enough women. I could genuinely feel my interest dropping with each episode as the gender balance got worse.

I also watched 8 episodes of When Destiny Brings the Demon and to the end of the 26th episode of Whispers of Fate, though I could not tell you what happened in them right now, I am so tired.

I am 34 episodes in to Blood River! I think the writing gets a big wobbly starting in episode 30, but I'm still having a good time, and I'll be able to finish it this week, and it did pick up a bit in episode 34. I hear good things about the ending. I'm enjoying my silly sad-eyed assassins story.

I also had to pause during episode 23 of Whispers of Fate last night to go to sleep, because I was so tired. I have my quibbles with this show, but once it started feeling like particularly magical xianxia instead of a lukewarm rehash of Mysterious Lotus Casebook it really picked up for me. The action scenes are so good! Tang Lici dancing to save that array, and that one music/string puppets scene live in my head rent-free. A Shei and Tang Lici still have negative chemistry, which does drag things down, but overall I'm enjoying it.

Also, today is my birthday! (For another two hours.) I went out to lunch with friends and exhausted myself at a market, and I'm looking forward to a sleep in tomorrow.

Reading:

DNF - The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - I've really liked most of this author's work that I've read (Strange Weather in Tokyo is beautiful, for example), but this turns out to be a boring mosaic novel about a sexual predator from the pov of the women he messes around. The back cover copy describes him as a [curious and complicated man whose great capacity for love may well be the course of his downfall] and like... that makes him sound interesting, and he's not. I assumed it meant tragic ill-advised love affairs and not, you know, straight up rapist. Not remotely what I'm in the mood for.

Watching:

Blood River:

Episode 22

Sword deities! Just hanging out, as they like to do. I like Bai Hehaui's red dress. I like her friendship with Su Muyu and absolutely do not ship them in the slightest.

Also, I love that she calls his umbrella (that Changhe made for him) his treasure.

Episode 24

They're like, look at this censors! This show is definitely sufficiently heterosexual! And meanwhile I do not believe Su Muyu has the slightest interest in seeing a naked woman. Also LOL they made a big fuss about how unclothed she would be during the procedure and she was still mostly clothed.

And how close Su Muyu and Su Changhe sit together at dinner! Ridiculously so!

Episode 26

is so cool! Baby Tang Lian! Mu Qingyang fanboying over Lei Yunhe! SMY and SCH and Mu Yumo looking so damn cool as they make plans together!

I also watched 10 episodes of Whispers of Fate. I thought the first few episodes were pretty rough, tbh, but I stuck it out until Xiao Shunyao showed up in episode 4. The overall show started to improve from that point. May just be on my TV, but the first bunch of episodes looked really cheap, and I do feel the sound stage-y ness of it all with the non-moving backgrounds. Also the beginning felt like a lukewarm rehash of many things, including but not limited to Mysterious Lotus Casebook and every past fantasy character Luo Yunxi has ever played. But I feel like it's gone sufficiently xianxia nonsense now that I'm drawn in and the visual flourishes seem to get more interesting as it goes on. And also, so much it's that guy! Like, it's that guy from Love Game in Eastern Fantasy! And Bai Shu is in this, too! & etc. etc.

Still don't love the older man-younger woman vibe they seem to be pushing, but that's just because that's my squick, and it's not like it takes up too much screen time. I also feel like a bunch of the actors are giving the most mediocre performances of their career (Riley Wang, you're usually better than this!), for which I blame the director, but I've seen worse, so...

I'm fully caught up on Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! and This Monster Wants to Eat Me as well. I would say the latter is kind of slow in a way that stretches my disbelief, but I am overall enjoying it, and the freak 4 freak nature of the main pairing of the former is A+.

I read: Salem's Lot by Stephen King for my book club, and I think everyone who claimed it was scarier than Twilight owes me $5. Though King does have it right in his introduction when he says it's a bit like Peyton Place; certainly enough of it was a soap opera with occasional appearance of vampires that I compared it to that time on Days of Our Lives when Marlena was possessed by the devil, but there continued to be non-demon possession storylines... Well, it was fine overall, I guess. (I can't truly comparee it to Peyton Place, the book, but I've watched the movie, which I had a better time with than with Salem's Lot.) And in comparison to Dracula, which I know partially inspired it... it is more sexist than Dracula, and has fewer interesting characters. I continue to be convinced that King is better when he writes short.

I watched: Well, I'm continuing to watch episodes of Blood River as they come out, and as you can guess, I'm getting increasingly unhinged about it. Not only because Su Changhe and Su Muyu love each other very much, but also because they're bringing other people into lives and trying to establish a lovely domesticity with friends and sort-of-family, but I've seen The Blood of Youth and I know where this goes. The slow motion trainwreck of this all, where if you didn't know better you might think they're dragging themselves out of the muck, but you do know better, you know they'll never be able to escape the darkness they grew up in... Absolute killer, and the fight scenes are totally bomb.

Current Music: Hozier - First Light

July 2026

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