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[journal] once again i look back at 2020. no more
this is based off the ask-meme thing that regularly floats around on tumblr during this time of year, and i've seen at least (2) people attempt it. and it's fun and i love dreamwidth a little too much even if all my posting here is soooo messy. so i'm gonna do it. because i love making lists and because i love typing like this, it's almost mindless.
obviously me being me i'm not gonna attempt all of the questions because i'm lazy and most of the questions are a little >_<
this is the ask-meme thingy.
favourite musical artist/group you started listening to this year
this is a bit difficult, there were several new discoveries this year. i'd have to say BBHF and Ayano Kaneko have been my favourite discoveries. something about Kaneko's voice which isn't broken but almost sounds on the verge of breaking is crazy, it makes me go feral. i understand what people mean when they don't feel like sharing the artists they listen to if said artist isn't like, wildly popular. lmao... and for BBHF, the discovery was veryyy emotional because Galileo Galilei had such great music, their song used for HQ's ending in season 1 makes me cry every time. if i listen to the entire ending song, inevitably i tear up. and they disbanded so discovering they're still a thing was crazy... and their songs are still so good! man! geez! i love music. music is Good.
honourable mention to: fujii kaze, who i discovered in the beginning of the year and went Ham. absolutely ham. i don't know why now, but back then i was having a big moment. also i was listening to a lot of spanish music then. i've had such a varied year musically, there's been a lot of The National, SM (WayV, NCT), Taylor Swift and Run River North. if there's one underrated and unknown band i will grab everyone's hands to make them listen to, it's RRN. they are. too good.
movie of the year
it's either Little Women by virtue of being a childhood favourite that Greta Gerwig reworked so beautifully, Jojo Rabbit for having the distinction of being the only movie i've straight up bawled in the theatre for, or Little Forrest which is a Korean movie based off a Japanese manga, both of which deserve love on their own. this year has been about repeatedly coming home, in a way, while being stuck at home. while i watched the first two movies in theatres, the third i watched at home, and it's special to me not just because of the quiet moments in it - which i value so very much - but also because of how Song Hye-won handles herself and her life. home cooked food is so important to me, not just because of my heritage, but because it's truly just the tastiest food anyone can have. we baked garlic bread at home this year, and i never knew freshly baked bread could taste like that. sometimes i feel i romanticize these things too much, but i'm also the daughter of people whose ancestors were farmers. i've grown up with people who know the value of food. it's okay to romanticize, without peril. i don't harbour dreams or illusions of farming in the countryside. i'd just like to be able to cook food and feed others, and myself, healthy meals. there's a reason why slice-of-life manga is my safe space. why quiet movies where nothing much happens and games where you just run around make my mind feel like it's nestling in the fur of a freshly washed cat.
tv show of the year
hilda season 2. season 1 helped me so much in the first year of college when everything was strange and largely friendless, or over friendliness spent in unfruitful avenues. season 2 just... it was just so good. the librarian returned. they did immense justice to the characters of david and frida. hilda's friendship with frida especially warms my heart, the witches episode had me crying. well, tearing up. what really had me straight up bawling was the deerfox episode. that is magic. there's a lot of real-people media in this world which is extraordinarily made. i've realised it's not for me, my brain can't handle it. there's a reason i've grown up subsisting on a diet of animation, whether western or eastern. even then i can't handle watching things, something i regularly hate about myself. i spiral too much. getting even one thing done is so good. and there's so much kindness and genuine love to be found in what's relegated to kids - there's a reason adults enjoy and watch media "meant for kids" so much. i love art, i love animation. i love hilda. it's just such a well-drawn, well-told story. gosh
game of the year
i fulfill this ask as if i've played a lot this year... but SURPRISINGLY I HAVE! gamer-me makes a return. and by gamer i mean visual novels and narrative-driven games that don't make me hardcore or whatever, of course. i loved night in the woods a lot, but discovering npckc's games have been really good as well. but let's talk of nitw. how good is bea? i've yet to make friends with the fox, but i just love bea so much. the game's soundtrack is breathtaking. just walking around town with mae is fun. the dialogue is so good... always felt like i wanted more of it, but there never was enough. i have a lot of cross-over thoughts wrt hq's kita shinsuke and nitw's angus, but i need to spew them out in fic instead. nitw is just a Good Game. i've a feeling i'm going to love the games i've pending even more. i did play and love a short hike a lot, so. i'm playing hades currently but for some reason i don't feel like it's going to comprise Top Game for me, in any list. maybe in the future once i've played a lot it will, but not for the present, no. well anyway.
honourable mention for worst game i've played this year: andromeda six. it's this visual novel on itch.io that's just so weird. sometimes i'm obsessed with strange, very heterosexual media. then my phase passes and i'm obsessed with extremely homosexual media. though the visual novel allows you to romance women i don't like the writing, everything seems very deliberately calculated to lead you to like this one dude only. i even wrote a fic for this stupid game because i liked one of the characters against my will. he's an asshole, and i hated him, but then there was one cutscene where he blushed sort of and i was like "ok well i think i'll write him a char study of sorts" and that's what happened. ugh. i hate most of the fic for this on ao3, thanks! i had to feed myself!
best month for you this year
i always say February's my month, not just because i'm a pisces but also because February truly is the month so much good stuff happens for me, so maybe I'll go with that. but a lot of good things, and i mean a lot of good things happened in January as well. there was a spontaneous picnic. there was an art fest. there were movie dates. there were pancake outings. there were classes with favprof that had me reeling. there were meetings with the free therapist college provides that had me crying for no reason. there was my friend A helping me out while buying an ukulele, then playing that uke for hours. there was sitting on the grass, near a canopy with sunlight filtering through the leaves and falling on me and P. there was time.
fav book you read this year
on earth we're briefly gorgeous and the left hand of darkness!! good grief. i've read a lot of poetry this year, but the left hand of darkness is poetry. i also really enjoyed this is how you lose the time war, even though the ending is... boring, to be frank. not arresting at all. however the story itself is mesmerizing, and the prose beautiful.
a memorable meal this year
i'm just going to use this as an excuse to talk about food. let's divide this, actually.
food i've had outside
i had so much food with P as usual. we tried the fish dish she keeps raving about at Chili's and it was so good!? the best fish i've had was this lemon butter garlic dish while road-trippin', but this fish comes close in terms of how good it made me feel about fish in general. and i don't eat fish!
recently, we went back to this town we used to live in a few years ago. food in restaurants there is so cheap, and it's a small town where literally no one has been affected by the plague, so we were maskless and eating tons. it was a surreal experience. even normal food tastes better there.
i remember coming home from midsems one day in March and being so tired i ordered a waffle from this shady waffle place with decently priced waffles. it was dark chocolate waffle with dark choco chips. it was the Best. my sister refused to take a bite of it, and i got all of it to myself, and it was bliss. i think this memory is particularly vivid because my family doesn't have the concept of waffles and because i was very tired that day.
homemade food
seriously considering keeping a journal for this. several times this year, ma made daal that tasted divine, but then never could be recreated. sad.
i made di san xian, a veg chinese dish that doesn't take a lot of effort, after seeing Seventeen have it in one Going Seventeen episode. it was such a hit in this household that i've made it several times since. it's very soothing to eat and makes me happy to make, because it's kind of healthy depending on if you use the air fryer as well.
ma figured out how to make garlic bread at home and it was perfect.
we made dalgona ice cream earlier this year and it was great, quickly got boring.
highlight of the year was when we brought homemade food to our spontaneous picnic. i made sandwiches that everyone loves at our home, and my friends liked it a lot as well. it was such a good day. a friend made hot chocolate that we sipped while sitting near flowers. i guess that's my memorable meal from the year, though each meal is memorable to me, and something always triggers memory of an inane meal i've had before. just can't remember anything sequentially, or distinctly.
what’re you excited about for next year?
publishing more fic! i think it's more exciting because the ideas i have are obscure and very self-catering. in that sense, even if i receive one kudos it would feel immensely gratifying, because my product of love has been viewed by someone seeking something like that, or not seeking but finding it anyway. love that.
besides fic, the animes for horimiya and laid-back camp, probably. also looking forward to having time to consume more manga/anime! and re-read stuff. and the yuri on ice movie! gosh.
i'm also looking forward to my birthday because i can get my parents to buy me the books i want >:) shameless
what’s something you learned this year?
i have to ponder on this, but maybe... maybe i learnt that it's okay to be myself. for some reason i was rushing too much in 2019, and when this year began i paced myself, i told myself to take it slow. but living life and taking public transport and seeing other people live theirs always makes me restless, always tells me that i'm not enough and that i will never be. just feels like i'm not a proper person, like i have an alien suit on whose reactions i can't control.
i remember this conversation i had with p about how i've never had a best friend, and how it doesn't bother me but makes me wonder, because there's never been absolute comfort. that sense of inevitably returning to one person. and is a person important? i've been going on walks with my sister lately, and we've been talking about how lonely the both of us are, and she's young so she mostly talks of romantic things, and i'm slightly not-young and have lived through a perilous romance, so i don't care. but i listen. and i hear the loneliness. and i want to tell her, just go out there and find a friend. just find a friend who listens to you, and it will be enough. it will be cathartic. but i also don't want to be pompous and presumptuous and also i've already said this before and she's pointed out my own loneliness and we've hurt each other so that's fine, that's okay. no mentioning that.
but i do think friendship is so great. the free college therapist was being subtly suggestive about how i place too much value in friendship, but hey, you're a free college therapist lady, and just because i've burst into tears in your office once doesn't mean you've got all the context!
and that's kinda cringey to be saying on dw and that's kinda weird and i definitely want to delete it because if i re-read it i'll want to die and if i said it to one of the boys who were insistent on taking me out years ago they'd immediately prostate themselves upon the floor saying "it's easy!"
no, it's not. it never is. fics make it so. parents make it so. but unconditional love is conditional upon your birth after all. tolerance bleeds into all after all. things are not rosy and perfect and unending, things are bitter and imperfect and filled with stuttering ends, sometimes ends that don't feel like ends, which is worse really. absolute ends are hopeful, because then you rework them. then you move past them, and get to say, "this hasn't really ended". what is an end that never arrives? i'm going off track again.
i've fallen in love with myself this year, a little, slightly. i've been alone a lot and felt okay, felt like breathing didn't hurt and constantly remind me of everything i'm not. i've been okay. i've learnt how to be kind to myself, and as stupid as that sounds, and as vague, it's true. even if marginally so.
what’s something new about your place of residence (room, home, or general location) now vs the start of the year?
included this ask as a buffer from how earnestly i answered the previous... yeah my room is livable now by which i mean every part of my room gets regularly cleaned. it's crazy.
in the new year i want to hang up pictures of my friends and also of my favourite haikyuu fanart/panels. maybe quotes. we'll see.
Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one
now, i think this ask is very interesting. because i've been away from fandom for so long, i've not really written fiction of pre-existing characters in a long time. my OCs have gained multiple narratives. they've gained more dimensions this year. i didn't create any new ones, but old scenarios feel new somehow.
[edit, 4th Jan '21] i hated re-reading the earnest bits of this thanks, edited the entire entry slightly
obviously me being me i'm not gonna attempt all of the questions because i'm lazy and most of the questions are a little >_<
this is the ask-meme thingy.
favourite musical artist/group you started listening to this year
this is a bit difficult, there were several new discoveries this year. i'd have to say BBHF and Ayano Kaneko have been my favourite discoveries. something about Kaneko's voice which isn't broken but almost sounds on the verge of breaking is crazy, it makes me go feral. i understand what people mean when they don't feel like sharing the artists they listen to if said artist isn't like, wildly popular. lmao... and for BBHF, the discovery was veryyy emotional because Galileo Galilei had such great music, their song used for HQ's ending in season 1 makes me cry every time. if i listen to the entire ending song, inevitably i tear up. and they disbanded so discovering they're still a thing was crazy... and their songs are still so good! man! geez! i love music. music is Good.
honourable mention to: fujii kaze, who i discovered in the beginning of the year and went Ham. absolutely ham. i don't know why now, but back then i was having a big moment. also i was listening to a lot of spanish music then. i've had such a varied year musically, there's been a lot of The National, SM (WayV, NCT), Taylor Swift and Run River North. if there's one underrated and unknown band i will grab everyone's hands to make them listen to, it's RRN. they are. too good.
movie of the year
it's either Little Women by virtue of being a childhood favourite that Greta Gerwig reworked so beautifully, Jojo Rabbit for having the distinction of being the only movie i've straight up bawled in the theatre for, or Little Forrest which is a Korean movie based off a Japanese manga, both of which deserve love on their own. this year has been about repeatedly coming home, in a way, while being stuck at home. while i watched the first two movies in theatres, the third i watched at home, and it's special to me not just because of the quiet moments in it - which i value so very much - but also because of how Song Hye-won handles herself and her life. home cooked food is so important to me, not just because of my heritage, but because it's truly just the tastiest food anyone can have. we baked garlic bread at home this year, and i never knew freshly baked bread could taste like that. sometimes i feel i romanticize these things too much, but i'm also the daughter of people whose ancestors were farmers. i've grown up with people who know the value of food. it's okay to romanticize, without peril. i don't harbour dreams or illusions of farming in the countryside. i'd just like to be able to cook food and feed others, and myself, healthy meals. there's a reason why slice-of-life manga is my safe space. why quiet movies where nothing much happens and games where you just run around make my mind feel like it's nestling in the fur of a freshly washed cat.
tv show of the year
hilda season 2. season 1 helped me so much in the first year of college when everything was strange and largely friendless, or over friendliness spent in unfruitful avenues. season 2 just... it was just so good. the librarian returned. they did immense justice to the characters of david and frida. hilda's friendship with frida especially warms my heart, the witches episode had me crying. well, tearing up. what really had me straight up bawling was the deerfox episode. that is magic. there's a lot of real-people media in this world which is extraordinarily made. i've realised it's not for me, my brain can't handle it. there's a reason i've grown up subsisting on a diet of animation, whether western or eastern. even then i can't handle watching things, something i regularly hate about myself. i spiral too much. getting even one thing done is so good. and there's so much kindness and genuine love to be found in what's relegated to kids - there's a reason adults enjoy and watch media "meant for kids" so much. i love art, i love animation. i love hilda. it's just such a well-drawn, well-told story. gosh
game of the year
i fulfill this ask as if i've played a lot this year... but SURPRISINGLY I HAVE! gamer-me makes a return. and by gamer i mean visual novels and narrative-driven games that don't make me hardcore or whatever, of course. i loved night in the woods a lot, but discovering npckc's games have been really good as well. but let's talk of nitw. how good is bea? i've yet to make friends with the fox, but i just love bea so much. the game's soundtrack is breathtaking. just walking around town with mae is fun. the dialogue is so good... always felt like i wanted more of it, but there never was enough. i have a lot of cross-over thoughts wrt hq's kita shinsuke and nitw's angus, but i need to spew them out in fic instead. nitw is just a Good Game. i've a feeling i'm going to love the games i've pending even more. i did play and love a short hike a lot, so. i'm playing hades currently but for some reason i don't feel like it's going to comprise Top Game for me, in any list. maybe in the future once i've played a lot it will, but not for the present, no. well anyway.
honourable mention for worst game i've played this year: andromeda six. it's this visual novel on itch.io that's just so weird. sometimes i'm obsessed with strange, very heterosexual media. then my phase passes and i'm obsessed with extremely homosexual media. though the visual novel allows you to romance women i don't like the writing, everything seems very deliberately calculated to lead you to like this one dude only. i even wrote a fic for this stupid game because i liked one of the characters against my will. he's an asshole, and i hated him, but then there was one cutscene where he blushed sort of and i was like "ok well i think i'll write him a char study of sorts" and that's what happened. ugh. i hate most of the fic for this on ao3, thanks! i had to feed myself!
best month for you this year
i always say February's my month, not just because i'm a pisces but also because February truly is the month so much good stuff happens for me, so maybe I'll go with that. but a lot of good things, and i mean a lot of good things happened in January as well. there was a spontaneous picnic. there was an art fest. there were movie dates. there were pancake outings. there were classes with favprof that had me reeling. there were meetings with the free therapist college provides that had me crying for no reason. there was my friend A helping me out while buying an ukulele, then playing that uke for hours. there was sitting on the grass, near a canopy with sunlight filtering through the leaves and falling on me and P. there was time.
fav book you read this year
on earth we're briefly gorgeous and the left hand of darkness!! good grief. i've read a lot of poetry this year, but the left hand of darkness is poetry. i also really enjoyed this is how you lose the time war, even though the ending is... boring, to be frank. not arresting at all. however the story itself is mesmerizing, and the prose beautiful.
a memorable meal this year
i'm just going to use this as an excuse to talk about food. let's divide this, actually.
food i've had outside
i had so much food with P as usual. we tried the fish dish she keeps raving about at Chili's and it was so good!? the best fish i've had was this lemon butter garlic dish while road-trippin', but this fish comes close in terms of how good it made me feel about fish in general. and i don't eat fish!
recently, we went back to this town we used to live in a few years ago. food in restaurants there is so cheap, and it's a small town where literally no one has been affected by the plague, so we were maskless and eating tons. it was a surreal experience. even normal food tastes better there.
i remember coming home from midsems one day in March and being so tired i ordered a waffle from this shady waffle place with decently priced waffles. it was dark chocolate waffle with dark choco chips. it was the Best. my sister refused to take a bite of it, and i got all of it to myself, and it was bliss. i think this memory is particularly vivid because my family doesn't have the concept of waffles and because i was very tired that day.
homemade food
seriously considering keeping a journal for this. several times this year, ma made daal that tasted divine, but then never could be recreated. sad.
i made di san xian, a veg chinese dish that doesn't take a lot of effort, after seeing Seventeen have it in one Going Seventeen episode. it was such a hit in this household that i've made it several times since. it's very soothing to eat and makes me happy to make, because it's kind of healthy depending on if you use the air fryer as well.
ma figured out how to make garlic bread at home and it was perfect.
we made dalgona ice cream earlier this year and it was great, quickly got boring.
highlight of the year was when we brought homemade food to our spontaneous picnic. i made sandwiches that everyone loves at our home, and my friends liked it a lot as well. it was such a good day. a friend made hot chocolate that we sipped while sitting near flowers. i guess that's my memorable meal from the year, though each meal is memorable to me, and something always triggers memory of an inane meal i've had before. just can't remember anything sequentially, or distinctly.
what’re you excited about for next year?
publishing more fic! i think it's more exciting because the ideas i have are obscure and very self-catering. in that sense, even if i receive one kudos it would feel immensely gratifying, because my product of love has been viewed by someone seeking something like that, or not seeking but finding it anyway. love that.
besides fic, the animes for horimiya and laid-back camp, probably. also looking forward to having time to consume more manga/anime! and re-read stuff. and the yuri on ice movie! gosh.
i'm also looking forward to my birthday because i can get my parents to buy me the books i want >:) shameless
what’s something you learned this year?
i have to ponder on this, but maybe... maybe i learnt that it's okay to be myself. for some reason i was rushing too much in 2019, and when this year began i paced myself, i told myself to take it slow. but living life and taking public transport and seeing other people live theirs always makes me restless, always tells me that i'm not enough and that i will never be. just feels like i'm not a proper person, like i have an alien suit on whose reactions i can't control.
i remember this conversation i had with p about how i've never had a best friend, and how it doesn't bother me but makes me wonder, because there's never been absolute comfort. that sense of inevitably returning to one person. and is a person important? i've been going on walks with my sister lately, and we've been talking about how lonely the both of us are, and she's young so she mostly talks of romantic things, and i'm slightly not-young and have lived through a perilous romance, so i don't care. but i listen. and i hear the loneliness. and i want to tell her, just go out there and find a friend. just find a friend who listens to you, and it will be enough. it will be cathartic. but i also don't want to be pompous and presumptuous and also i've already said this before and she's pointed out my own loneliness and we've hurt each other so that's fine, that's okay. no mentioning that.
but i do think friendship is so great. the free college therapist was being subtly suggestive about how i place too much value in friendship, but hey, you're a free college therapist lady, and just because i've burst into tears in your office once doesn't mean you've got all the context!
and that's kinda cringey to be saying on dw and that's kinda weird and i definitely want to delete it because if i re-read it i'll want to die and if i said it to one of the boys who were insistent on taking me out years ago they'd immediately prostate themselves upon the floor saying "it's easy!"
no, it's not. it never is. fics make it so. parents make it so. but unconditional love is conditional upon your birth after all. tolerance bleeds into all after all. things are not rosy and perfect and unending, things are bitter and imperfect and filled with stuttering ends, sometimes ends that don't feel like ends, which is worse really. absolute ends are hopeful, because then you rework them. then you move past them, and get to say, "this hasn't really ended". what is an end that never arrives? i'm going off track again.
i've fallen in love with myself this year, a little, slightly. i've been alone a lot and felt okay, felt like breathing didn't hurt and constantly remind me of everything i'm not. i've been okay. i've learnt how to be kind to myself, and as stupid as that sounds, and as vague, it's true. even if marginally so.
what’s something new about your place of residence (room, home, or general location) now vs the start of the year?
included this ask as a buffer from how earnestly i answered the previous... yeah my room is livable now by which i mean every part of my room gets regularly cleaned. it's crazy.
in the new year i want to hang up pictures of my friends and also of my favourite haikyuu fanart/panels. maybe quotes. we'll see.
Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one
now, i think this ask is very interesting. because i've been away from fandom for so long, i've not really written fiction of pre-existing characters in a long time. my OCs have gained multiple narratives. they've gained more dimensions this year. i didn't create any new ones, but old scenarios feel new somehow.
[edit, 4th Jan '21] i hated re-reading the earnest bits of this thanks, edited the entire entry slightly