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virgomoonas it is unlikely i will be consuming A Lot Of Things until December (but not impossible) and because i am religiously avoiding studying for endsems, here's the post i should have been making monthly instead of the to-do lists i made! what can i say! everything about me is preposterous
> i've read an upward of 90 books this year, though my goodreads goal was initially 20, then 50, then 80. now it's 100 and i don't think that's going to happen, but it's still fun to aim at. among these, i finally read the percy jackson books and understood what the entire hooplah is about, i read maggie nelson's bluets, ocean vuong's on earth we're briefly gorgeous, this is how you lose the time war, ursula k. le guin's the left hand of darkness... THESE DECIMATED ME. i could make a separate post about books and i might, but yeah my mental makeup has been severely impacted by reading Really Good Fiction especially Really Good Specfic. i'm always thinking about "to be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted." i'm thinking of this in lieu with that line from that strange movie i kind of liked, walter mitty, where our milquetoast protagonist meets sean penn and they see a snow leopard and then sean penn says "beautiful things don't ask for attention" well, that's contestable, but i still really like that and think about that specific scene (and the skateboarding scene) often. i dislike the movie overall though.
> bouncing off from that, i'd just like to say discovering the vast world of specfic has been BRILLIANT. i've always watched scifi and been a fantasy consumer, but i'd been slowly consuming ted chiang and ken liu for the past few years, this exploded when i read the flowers for algernon novel (after reading the short story in 2018) and then the left hand of darkness. in many ways, tlhod is a beautiful, perfect novel. in many ways it is also a novel that's very much anchored in the times it was written in, but perspective! is the internalized misogyny the ged's or is it le guin's? does it matter whose when it's clearly being worked through to reach such a satisfying, beautiful conclusion? anyway. interstellar is arguably my favourite movie despite what the world says about it being pretentious. WELL IT IS, BUT I LIKE IT. and arrival comes close if the source material was just not that much more superior + linguistics is beautiful babey. and i rewatched these, and rewatched a lot of doctor who this year. plus i discovered the world of spec fic magazines... gorgeous. seriously. there is so much well written spec fic out there and i just have to read it. i'm still thinking about this one. it is so beautiful and so sad. i was watching this strange k-drama which is apparently based off of a sci-fi novella and researching about that led me to the strange world of korean spec fic wherein most stuff isn't translated, but whatever is available is intriguing to say the least. so yeah, it's been a blast. i've been thinking about somehow doing something related to spec fic for my dissertation, but nothing has occurred to me yet.
> to continue in the same vein, i've been listening to podcasts this year. welcome to night vale is basically the best thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep, but the downside is i end up needing to re-listen in the mornings because i don't remember anything cecil said. also their twitter is fun. weird cosmic horror (?) is really good for me, someone who appreciates visual cues and visual learning. listening to podcasts was also a self exercise in inculcating the patience to listen, to truly listen, because i think i suck at that, my brain starts wandering immediately. and this did happen even while listening. but i think listening helped me in the way that even though 50 episodes in i still need to pause and force myself to recalibrate my attention, at least i have had the experience of being so invested in a story i laugh, cry and truly enjoy being so immersed in a world. alice isn't dead is another podcast i tried listening to, and really liked the pilot of, but paused. wolf 369 is really, REALLY fun, and i know it's going to get pretty dramatic soon, so i paused a few episodes in. but it intrigues me and i know it's going to be the next big thing for my brain to hyperfocus on. lingthusiasm was just, so great. it's fun, it's linguistics, it's two nerdy girls just talking about something they love. fun! it got really detailed though and i couldn't take the info in, and college was starting, so i paused. hopefully i'll resume.
> my goodreads goal is really bolstered by the amount of manga i've consumed this year. to begin with, while i've been consuming haikyuu for a while now, it still finds mention here because i bought vol31 and re-read most of it after it ended. i will not talk about haikyuu here. i will not. GOOD GRIEF. anyway, i read barakamon , which was epic. it's created by a female mangaka and i AM partial to female mangakas (my personal headcanon is that furudate are a she but they are whoever they are or want to be obviously) (hiromi arakawa i am Looking) plus she clearly left subtle cues about the homosociality of the males in here, but more than that, it's just such a lovely time. it reminds me awfully of yotsubato and that makes me happy because yotsubato is probably the only thing that can make me happy on any odd day besides fushigi neko no kyuu-chan. there's also a lot about food and found family going on in here, which i appreciate. silver spoon is another manga i'd been putting off to read god-knows-when and finally this godforsaken year granted me the headspace to consume it. hiromi arakawa, i love you. silver spoon is perfect besides how it handles some of its females, but you see the arakawa right off the bat i think, and the story is so rich because it's steeped in all her personal experiences. plus she's just a good story-teller. she and furudate really knock it off the ballpark for me in terms of how well they handle themes in dialogues and through the art. i hate how it ended though, the ending felt rushed.
i have to break paragraphs for this one because i'm just realising i've consumed quite a bit, for me that is. keep your hands off eizouken was such a beautiful anime to watch, until i realised the mangaka had been involved in some controversy about "photorealistic drawings of naked preteens". anyway. i won't read the manga because i can't dissociate myself from that, but the anime truly is so good and a product of love that is wonderful to behold. it's a loveletter to animation, to strange schools, to even stranger friendships, and GIRLS. i just wish the mangaka was a god dang woman it'd be so nice there'd be none of this photorealistic pedophilic nonsense. the animation director was the same dude who did tatami galaxy though, so that explains why/how good the anime was. i was going through the instagram accounts of some of the people who worked on the animation, and there were quite a few ladies who were passionate about what they do. animation and visual media just make me so happy... keeping in lieu with GIRLS and FRIENDSHIP, i finally watched the anime of yuru camp also known as laid back camp , which is already such a perfect manga and i do prefer the manga, but the anime follows the source material and the art style closely, and it's about food, camping, girls, and being solitary vs togetherness. the perfect aspect of this is how the solitary is never portrayed as a lack, as i often find elsewhere. it's just the accumulation of little habits that make up a person, how they prefer things to be. the togetherness comes about slowly, is appreciated wholeheartedly, never replaced by the solitary. i love and appreciate yuru camp so very much. something about taking trips with your friends who are all girls and being so cozy alone and together, and FOOD, just really works for me. i'm a slice of life gal at heart after all.
ending my massive animanga round-up by saying two mangas i consumed recently that made me straight up CRY and EMOTE were shimanami tasogare and my broken mariko . first of all, the former is created by a queer individual from japan and as such i read it knowing it wouldn't be any appropriation. it isn't. it's just so purely beautiful. i have nothing against bl/yaoi/yuri what have you but i never consume it HOPING TO BE SEEN? or anything. usually for fun, or for themes. not quite lgbtq+ themes. shimanami tasogare has heartrending dialogue, breathtaking artwork, and characters i love love love so much. there is a lot of warmth and growth here. the only caveat i have to the perfection that this is is that i don't like the implications that "asexual" posit here, but terms are weird to handle anyway and maybe nuances were lost in translation. asexuality here means aroace, but aroace is a term i learned from western sources anyway (being decidedly a poc as i am), so i'm not judging, but maybe the term is a little jarring to be utilized in the contexts it is. regardless, this is another tale of found family, of acceptance, of growth, of love, and i just cried so much reading this i don't even understand why. everything just felt so much more immediate. god.
my broken mariko recently got a english publication by yen press, and so help me god i need to own it. why must students be so poor and international shipping so expensive? anyway. i don't know if she's queer, but i love the mangaka's presence on twitter, and i love how she's written this. this is a heavy manga i read after dealing with someone else's mental health issues, and as such it was all the more impactful when i read it. i don't know how to say it, but this makes for a careful, but important reading. like tasogare, the ending feels perfect and abrupt, the characters are fleshed out wonderfully, and despite what the story is actually about, it's also about the love and relationship between two girls who are friends and in love with each other. i say this, but on reading someone else might find it to be something different. that's what it is to me anyway. i love it, but i don't love it because it made me happy, i love it because it's beautiful, it's sad, it's maddening and it's so raw. it's so real. everything that occurs here is something that has actually been witnessed by the mangaka, and that makes it all the more careful a media to consume. something might unravel within you once you read it though.
> whew that was a big one. i watched more movies than i ever have this year too, though i don't think any of them impacted me as much as little women did. greta gerwig, i love you. THIS IS THE PERFECT ADAPTATION AND THE BEST META COMMENTARY ON WOMEN WRITING. I LOVE IT. it deserves a separate post of its own so i shall speak no more but i loved this movie soooo much i still think about it, i rewatched it twice.
i also watched parasite which was also incredible for obvious reasons, jojo rabbit WHICH MADE ME CRY IN THE THEATRE WHILE MY FRIEND PRETENDED NOT TO NOTICE (this was pre-corona), and a lot of others. approximately 20 ish or more? among everything i watched, the movies that impacted me besides little women were little forest, 2017 this was a beautiful watch. it's serene and calming and everything i love and also based on a manga i keep starting and stopping because i can FEEL how perfect the manga is so i wish to savour it so i put it off. the movie is about farming, the changing seasons, and the growth that comes with it. food and friendships. relationships of every kind. making your own space for yourself. i have watched this movie twice because it's just so nice. while this is a korean movie, japanese movie adaptations of the manga exist as well which i will be watching whenever i can.
promare OOH BOY this is sooooo unapologetically gay i love it. like, there's no way you can argue it isn't. the homoeroticisms are here and they're PLENTY. and it's not even ABOUT them! it's just. insane. please don't expect me to be coherent about this movie i watched it at night then listened to the beautiful OST on loop till 3 am and then slept and woke up to rt a hundred different artwork on twitter. love twitter if only for the fanart.
but seriously, a big part of my childhood was gurren lagaan and coming from the same people who made that to make something that's so good in terms of its sexual politics is insane, because they were already so good at mecha. promare is ridiculously good and it's also a tribute to all the movies that have come before it. it's funny, warm, and pure fun. and the OST still makes me break out in goosepimples.
dear ex this is a taiwanese movie i found on netflix and was so amazed to find it there. directed by a woman, it portrays the aftermath of the death of a father, a husband, and the lover of a gay man. it's raw and cleverly told and warm and funny. it's beautiful and it's so conscientious in portraying the mother, and that's what i love. mothers are central to this movie folks and you better believe it. the ending is so brilliant i still can't believe the movie ended Like That. god. the ending and the mothers are what kept me attached to this movie.
so i got a mubi membership trial on a whim, and watched huang pang-chuan's shorts, mesmerizing lighting. beautiful narration. i loved em. i also watched the recorder exam directed by kim bora, also a short film. this movie pierced me so sharp and so deep, i don't want to watch her longer feature length film based on the same characters w the same actors... she captures loneliness and being young so well. why is there so much warmth in a movie so sad?
> well that's that. i played a lotta games this year, and that was really fun, but the only game i wish to talk of here (unless i buy hades before december ends and i'm rendered speechless/ dead/ whatever) is night in the woods. EXCELLENT. FUCKIN. GAME. i love angus. i love bea! god i love them. mae and bea's friendship is the only thing that needs to exist. this is also because i've never befriended gregg because i love bea so much. i should correct that. but yea! bea! mae! angus! gregg! i love them! i love this game! wtf. lack of financial resources prevented me from playing other games that i REALLY wished to play, but i bought the racial equality bundle from itch.io and played milkmaid of the milky way which was strange but nice because whenever i see indians in a game or some semblance of an indian identity, i feel ":O" about it. so. i'm playing undertale right now and really enjoying it, so... a short hike is also a really excellent game. i just like all games that someone like "gentle gamers" (a really nice website) would recommend. my slice of life loving soul makes an appearance everywhere.
> we come finally, to music! if i wasn't tired i'd probably elaborate on this a lot. but i am. it's been an hour since i've been typing this. so let me keep it simple: jan-may i was listening to k-pop and indie incessantly, also being really emo a lot in general. nice times. then i saw someone on twt who said they make monthly playlists for the songs they're listening to in the moment, which made a lot of sense to me because i'm the type of person who hates having the albums i'm listening to disappear from my spotify's "recently played" section :(
based on the monthly playlists i've been making since july, i've discovered 92914's music and enjoyed it a lot, lots of ambient, soothing sounds, looping sounds, just a fun, floaty, peaceful time. because i was rewatching haikyuu i started listening to japanese music again, particularly gallileo galilei's music and also The National's stuff. The thing is, I was listening to The National on loop while writing my Interstellar atsukita, and that was a fun time.
i've discovered i love Shinee a lot - wish i was listening to k-pop a few years ago. Taemin's new albums have been nice - nothing too great for me, but I love a few songs off them. one thing i've been yelling my throat hoarse about on twitter is how beautiful haikyuu's animation OST is, i mean, it's really really good. i discovered the manga three years ago via the anime, so i think its justified in how big an emotional space it has acquired for me. but i was recently listening to the OST playlist since Yuki Hayashi shared it on his twitter, and even objectively (pffft) listening to a random track with no reference to which part it belongs to is an Experience. really. i've become obsessed with learning about music theory ever since i realised how good the soundtrack is, so i can EXPLAIN why it's so good. it's just so good. i truly wish i could compose odes on how good it is, it evokes such an immediate, visceral reaction from me. it leaves me gutted. stumped. it is so hopeful and beautiful and sad. it's just the music to see the lives of high schoolers giving sports their all to!!! god! this is an example of a track that is so wonderful, but so are this and this. THERE IS A REASON WHY I MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO SPEAK OF HAIKYUU, OR DISSOLVE INTO ABSOLUTE INCOHERENCE.
this has been me! there's a lot more i've not covered like tv shows (there are a few) and random assorted media, but a. i'm lazy b. it doesn't matter. this is a very comprehensive round-up of how it's been. it's been real good. though this might not seem like a lot to some of my friends, it's so much for me, someone who hadn't even read ten books last year, or watched a damn movie. life is horrible but also filled with possibilities to eke out right now, and i've done my best to survive and have fun! i'm glad for these media for having kept me sane.
> i've read an upward of 90 books this year, though my goodreads goal was initially 20, then 50, then 80. now it's 100 and i don't think that's going to happen, but it's still fun to aim at. among these, i finally read the percy jackson books and understood what the entire hooplah is about, i read maggie nelson's bluets, ocean vuong's on earth we're briefly gorgeous, this is how you lose the time war, ursula k. le guin's the left hand of darkness... THESE DECIMATED ME. i could make a separate post about books and i might, but yeah my mental makeup has been severely impacted by reading Really Good Fiction especially Really Good Specfic. i'm always thinking about "to be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted." i'm thinking of this in lieu with that line from that strange movie i kind of liked, walter mitty, where our milquetoast protagonist meets sean penn and they see a snow leopard and then sean penn says "beautiful things don't ask for attention" well, that's contestable, but i still really like that and think about that specific scene (and the skateboarding scene) often. i dislike the movie overall though.
> bouncing off from that, i'd just like to say discovering the vast world of specfic has been BRILLIANT. i've always watched scifi and been a fantasy consumer, but i'd been slowly consuming ted chiang and ken liu for the past few years, this exploded when i read the flowers for algernon novel (after reading the short story in 2018) and then the left hand of darkness. in many ways, tlhod is a beautiful, perfect novel. in many ways it is also a novel that's very much anchored in the times it was written in, but perspective! is the internalized misogyny the ged's or is it le guin's? does it matter whose when it's clearly being worked through to reach such a satisfying, beautiful conclusion? anyway. interstellar is arguably my favourite movie despite what the world says about it being pretentious. WELL IT IS, BUT I LIKE IT. and arrival comes close if the source material was just not that much more superior + linguistics is beautiful babey. and i rewatched these, and rewatched a lot of doctor who this year. plus i discovered the world of spec fic magazines... gorgeous. seriously. there is so much well written spec fic out there and i just have to read it. i'm still thinking about this one. it is so beautiful and so sad. i was watching this strange k-drama which is apparently based off of a sci-fi novella and researching about that led me to the strange world of korean spec fic wherein most stuff isn't translated, but whatever is available is intriguing to say the least. so yeah, it's been a blast. i've been thinking about somehow doing something related to spec fic for my dissertation, but nothing has occurred to me yet.
> to continue in the same vein, i've been listening to podcasts this year. welcome to night vale is basically the best thing to listen to while trying to fall asleep, but the downside is i end up needing to re-listen in the mornings because i don't remember anything cecil said. also their twitter is fun. weird cosmic horror (?) is really good for me, someone who appreciates visual cues and visual learning. listening to podcasts was also a self exercise in inculcating the patience to listen, to truly listen, because i think i suck at that, my brain starts wandering immediately. and this did happen even while listening. but i think listening helped me in the way that even though 50 episodes in i still need to pause and force myself to recalibrate my attention, at least i have had the experience of being so invested in a story i laugh, cry and truly enjoy being so immersed in a world. alice isn't dead is another podcast i tried listening to, and really liked the pilot of, but paused. wolf 369 is really, REALLY fun, and i know it's going to get pretty dramatic soon, so i paused a few episodes in. but it intrigues me and i know it's going to be the next big thing for my brain to hyperfocus on. lingthusiasm was just, so great. it's fun, it's linguistics, it's two nerdy girls just talking about something they love. fun! it got really detailed though and i couldn't take the info in, and college was starting, so i paused. hopefully i'll resume.
> my goodreads goal is really bolstered by the amount of manga i've consumed this year. to begin with, while i've been consuming haikyuu for a while now, it still finds mention here because i bought vol31 and re-read most of it after it ended. i will not talk about haikyuu here. i will not. GOOD GRIEF. anyway, i read barakamon , which was epic. it's created by a female mangaka and i AM partial to female mangakas (my personal headcanon is that furudate are a she but they are whoever they are or want to be obviously) (hiromi arakawa i am Looking) plus she clearly left subtle cues about the homosociality of the males in here, but more than that, it's just such a lovely time. it reminds me awfully of yotsubato and that makes me happy because yotsubato is probably the only thing that can make me happy on any odd day besides fushigi neko no kyuu-chan. there's also a lot about food and found family going on in here, which i appreciate. silver spoon is another manga i'd been putting off to read god-knows-when and finally this godforsaken year granted me the headspace to consume it. hiromi arakawa, i love you. silver spoon is perfect besides how it handles some of its females, but you see the arakawa right off the bat i think, and the story is so rich because it's steeped in all her personal experiences. plus she's just a good story-teller. she and furudate really knock it off the ballpark for me in terms of how well they handle themes in dialogues and through the art. i hate how it ended though, the ending felt rushed.
i have to break paragraphs for this one because i'm just realising i've consumed quite a bit, for me that is. keep your hands off eizouken was such a beautiful anime to watch, until i realised the mangaka had been involved in some controversy about "photorealistic drawings of naked preteens". anyway. i won't read the manga because i can't dissociate myself from that, but the anime truly is so good and a product of love that is wonderful to behold. it's a loveletter to animation, to strange schools, to even stranger friendships, and GIRLS. i just wish the mangaka was a god dang woman it'd be so nice there'd be none of this photorealistic pedophilic nonsense. the animation director was the same dude who did tatami galaxy though, so that explains why/how good the anime was. i was going through the instagram accounts of some of the people who worked on the animation, and there were quite a few ladies who were passionate about what they do. animation and visual media just make me so happy... keeping in lieu with GIRLS and FRIENDSHIP, i finally watched the anime of yuru camp also known as laid back camp , which is already such a perfect manga and i do prefer the manga, but the anime follows the source material and the art style closely, and it's about food, camping, girls, and being solitary vs togetherness. the perfect aspect of this is how the solitary is never portrayed as a lack, as i often find elsewhere. it's just the accumulation of little habits that make up a person, how they prefer things to be. the togetherness comes about slowly, is appreciated wholeheartedly, never replaced by the solitary. i love and appreciate yuru camp so very much. something about taking trips with your friends who are all girls and being so cozy alone and together, and FOOD, just really works for me. i'm a slice of life gal at heart after all.
ending my massive animanga round-up by saying two mangas i consumed recently that made me straight up CRY and EMOTE were shimanami tasogare and my broken mariko . first of all, the former is created by a queer individual from japan and as such i read it knowing it wouldn't be any appropriation. it isn't. it's just so purely beautiful. i have nothing against bl/yaoi/yuri what have you but i never consume it HOPING TO BE SEEN? or anything. usually for fun, or for themes. not quite lgbtq+ themes. shimanami tasogare has heartrending dialogue, breathtaking artwork, and characters i love love love so much. there is a lot of warmth and growth here. the only caveat i have to the perfection that this is is that i don't like the implications that "asexual" posit here, but terms are weird to handle anyway and maybe nuances were lost in translation. asexuality here means aroace, but aroace is a term i learned from western sources anyway (being decidedly a poc as i am), so i'm not judging, but maybe the term is a little jarring to be utilized in the contexts it is. regardless, this is another tale of found family, of acceptance, of growth, of love, and i just cried so much reading this i don't even understand why. everything just felt so much more immediate. god.
my broken mariko recently got a english publication by yen press, and so help me god i need to own it. why must students be so poor and international shipping so expensive? anyway. i don't know if she's queer, but i love the mangaka's presence on twitter, and i love how she's written this. this is a heavy manga i read after dealing with someone else's mental health issues, and as such it was all the more impactful when i read it. i don't know how to say it, but this makes for a careful, but important reading. like tasogare, the ending feels perfect and abrupt, the characters are fleshed out wonderfully, and despite what the story is actually about, it's also about the love and relationship between two girls who are friends and in love with each other. i say this, but on reading someone else might find it to be something different. that's what it is to me anyway. i love it, but i don't love it because it made me happy, i love it because it's beautiful, it's sad, it's maddening and it's so raw. it's so real. everything that occurs here is something that has actually been witnessed by the mangaka, and that makes it all the more careful a media to consume. something might unravel within you once you read it though.
> whew that was a big one. i watched more movies than i ever have this year too, though i don't think any of them impacted me as much as little women did. greta gerwig, i love you. THIS IS THE PERFECT ADAPTATION AND THE BEST META COMMENTARY ON WOMEN WRITING. I LOVE IT. it deserves a separate post of its own so i shall speak no more but i loved this movie soooo much i still think about it, i rewatched it twice.
i also watched parasite which was also incredible for obvious reasons, jojo rabbit WHICH MADE ME CRY IN THE THEATRE WHILE MY FRIEND PRETENDED NOT TO NOTICE (this was pre-corona), and a lot of others. approximately 20 ish or more? among everything i watched, the movies that impacted me besides little women were little forest, 2017 this was a beautiful watch. it's serene and calming and everything i love and also based on a manga i keep starting and stopping because i can FEEL how perfect the manga is so i wish to savour it so i put it off. the movie is about farming, the changing seasons, and the growth that comes with it. food and friendships. relationships of every kind. making your own space for yourself. i have watched this movie twice because it's just so nice. while this is a korean movie, japanese movie adaptations of the manga exist as well which i will be watching whenever i can.
promare OOH BOY this is sooooo unapologetically gay i love it. like, there's no way you can argue it isn't. the homoeroticisms are here and they're PLENTY. and it's not even ABOUT them! it's just. insane. please don't expect me to be coherent about this movie i watched it at night then listened to the beautiful OST on loop till 3 am and then slept and woke up to rt a hundred different artwork on twitter. love twitter if only for the fanart.
but seriously, a big part of my childhood was gurren lagaan and coming from the same people who made that to make something that's so good in terms of its sexual politics is insane, because they were already so good at mecha. promare is ridiculously good and it's also a tribute to all the movies that have come before it. it's funny, warm, and pure fun. and the OST still makes me break out in goosepimples.
dear ex this is a taiwanese movie i found on netflix and was so amazed to find it there. directed by a woman, it portrays the aftermath of the death of a father, a husband, and the lover of a gay man. it's raw and cleverly told and warm and funny. it's beautiful and it's so conscientious in portraying the mother, and that's what i love. mothers are central to this movie folks and you better believe it. the ending is so brilliant i still can't believe the movie ended Like That. god. the ending and the mothers are what kept me attached to this movie.
so i got a mubi membership trial on a whim, and watched huang pang-chuan's shorts, mesmerizing lighting. beautiful narration. i loved em. i also watched the recorder exam directed by kim bora, also a short film. this movie pierced me so sharp and so deep, i don't want to watch her longer feature length film based on the same characters w the same actors... she captures loneliness and being young so well. why is there so much warmth in a movie so sad?
> well that's that. i played a lotta games this year, and that was really fun, but the only game i wish to talk of here (unless i buy hades before december ends and i'm rendered speechless/ dead/ whatever) is night in the woods. EXCELLENT. FUCKIN. GAME. i love angus. i love bea! god i love them. mae and bea's friendship is the only thing that needs to exist. this is also because i've never befriended gregg because i love bea so much. i should correct that. but yea! bea! mae! angus! gregg! i love them! i love this game! wtf. lack of financial resources prevented me from playing other games that i REALLY wished to play, but i bought the racial equality bundle from itch.io and played milkmaid of the milky way which was strange but nice because whenever i see indians in a game or some semblance of an indian identity, i feel ":O" about it. so. i'm playing undertale right now and really enjoying it, so... a short hike is also a really excellent game. i just like all games that someone like "gentle gamers" (a really nice website) would recommend. my slice of life loving soul makes an appearance everywhere.
> we come finally, to music! if i wasn't tired i'd probably elaborate on this a lot. but i am. it's been an hour since i've been typing this. so let me keep it simple: jan-may i was listening to k-pop and indie incessantly, also being really emo a lot in general. nice times. then i saw someone on twt who said they make monthly playlists for the songs they're listening to in the moment, which made a lot of sense to me because i'm the type of person who hates having the albums i'm listening to disappear from my spotify's "recently played" section :(
based on the monthly playlists i've been making since july, i've discovered 92914's music and enjoyed it a lot, lots of ambient, soothing sounds, looping sounds, just a fun, floaty, peaceful time. because i was rewatching haikyuu i started listening to japanese music again, particularly gallileo galilei's music and also The National's stuff. The thing is, I was listening to The National on loop while writing my Interstellar atsukita, and that was a fun time.
i've discovered i love Shinee a lot - wish i was listening to k-pop a few years ago. Taemin's new albums have been nice - nothing too great for me, but I love a few songs off them. one thing i've been yelling my throat hoarse about on twitter is how beautiful haikyuu's animation OST is, i mean, it's really really good. i discovered the manga three years ago via the anime, so i think its justified in how big an emotional space it has acquired for me. but i was recently listening to the OST playlist since Yuki Hayashi shared it on his twitter, and even objectively (pffft) listening to a random track with no reference to which part it belongs to is an Experience. really. i've become obsessed with learning about music theory ever since i realised how good the soundtrack is, so i can EXPLAIN why it's so good. it's just so good. i truly wish i could compose odes on how good it is, it evokes such an immediate, visceral reaction from me. it leaves me gutted. stumped. it is so hopeful and beautiful and sad. it's just the music to see the lives of high schoolers giving sports their all to!!! god! this is an example of a track that is so wonderful, but so are this and this. THERE IS A REASON WHY I MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO SPEAK OF HAIKYUU, OR DISSOLVE INTO ABSOLUTE INCOHERENCE.
this has been me! there's a lot more i've not covered like tv shows (there are a few) and random assorted media, but a. i'm lazy b. it doesn't matter. this is a very comprehensive round-up of how it's been. it's been real good. though this might not seem like a lot to some of my friends, it's so much for me, someone who hadn't even read ten books last year, or watched a damn movie. life is horrible but also filled with possibilities to eke out right now, and i've done my best to survive and have fun! i'm glad for these media for having kept me sane.
