(//_-) ← emo bang

I almost forgot. ALMOST! I didn't really do much though. In May my old laptop exploded finally, got a new one later but felt tortured in between. Didn't do anything in June but go to a bunch of doctor appointments (which is an accomplishment, calling people is scary but I did that) and get a year older.

One crazy thing though -- on my birthday I saw a car accident happen in front of me and then narrowly avoided being involved in another one. Once I got home I learned my little sister got in a car accident in which the car she was in flipped and she broke both her shoulders. (She's fine if you ignore that she can barely use her arms right now). Then later on in the day my mom got in a car accident too and totaled her car, so I had to go pick her up. What was up with that?

And I got Linux (Fedora) working on the new laptop shortly after getting it, and I don't regret a thing. I switch back to Windows for certain things, but every time I do I quickly get annoyed and remember why I wanted to change operating systems in the first place.


I finished a fuck ton of stuff, so instead of reviewing them all, I'm putting them all into categories and only record my thoughts on things that make me think "if I don't say anything I'm going to regret it." I put asterisks next to the things I wrote more about.

LOVED it: May (movie, 2002, literally me), Final Fantasy VI* (game, 1994, I'm checking Backloggd and I will admit I agree with the person who took stars off their rating for it being "too much game," lol), Black Swan (movie, 2010)

Liked it a lot: Juuni Kokuki (TV show, 2002, 95% a rewatch), The Venture Bros. (TV show, 2003, only the first 3 seasons), Red River* (book, 1995), Yona of the Dawn* (book, 2009), The Truman Show (movie, 1998), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (movie, 2019)

Liked it: Simoun (TV show, 2006), Late Spring (movie, 1949), Legally Blonde (movie, 2001), The Godfather (movie, 1972), The Godfather Part II (movie, 1974), Bound (movie, 1996), The Red Shoes (movie, 1948, the start of my June-July balletmaxxing), Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side: First Love (game, 2007, ended up alone like I do every TMM game 💯), Fangirl: the Manga (book, 2020), The Queen's Gambit (book, 1983), Circe (book, 2018), Funeral Parade of Roses (movie, 1969), Memories of Matsuko* (movie, 2006)

Mixed feelings/Meh: Heaven's Official Blessing* (book, 2017), Roma* (movie, 2018), The Weathering Continent (movie, 1992), Taboo* (movie, 1999), The Love Witch (movie, 2016, gorgeous but at what cost), Like Water for Chocolate (movie, 1992)

more...

🢒 Red River/Anatolia Story/What have you was crazybananas, I'm glad I powered through my initial disgust with Kail (I read only the first chapter years ago and dropped because I wasn't with the invasion of the female protag's boundaries and the apparent age gap) because it's full of twists and turns and I love drama. It was so messy. And Kail and Yuri are so intimate ಥ_ಥ Is it the kind of thing that changes one's life or makes one want to be a different person or changes their worldview forever? Not reeeally, but it's still a really fun read in my opinion. I just wish that she talked about Japan more... No one seems to be curious at all about the land Yuri hails from, it's crazy, and she doesn't bring it even a quarter as much as you'd think she would either. The anime is airing rn and everyone on Anilist is being so mean to it <///3 It gets good I swear (or should I say, it'll hit for its target audience and if that isn't you you'd best leave now).


🢒 Yona of the Dawn was great! This is yet another manga I dropped, but unlike Red River I really did give this an honest try multiple times. Each time all those years ago I'd drop before we even gather all of the main cast, but turns out it was just suffering from "the part where we gather everyone is just so boring," like many VNs. I'm not sure how it could've been handled better though. After that it's good and just keeps getting better... However, the ending felt just a little rushed. I get it though, the mangaka had been working on it for 500000 years, if that was me nearing the end I'd start rushing a little too. Can I just say that I was on Suwon's side the whole time? Have I said that here already?

I was reading Yona of the Dawn along with others in a server dedicated to shojosei, and it seemed like literally everyone hated Suwon from the start. Now, me, I simply assumed that he had a good reason for killing the king that Yona doesn't understand because she's a sheltered princess. I mean, that's usually how these stories go, right? And it'd be safe to assume that later she'd learn that her dad actually sucked and then she'd be like "okay I understand why he did it even if I still think that wasn't the right way to go about things." Yet no one else backed me up when I said he's probably valid. I also didn't like the love interest, I thought he wasn't cute enough to act the way he acts, but he grew on my eventually. No one agreed with that either, lmao. I eventually stopped talking in the group read, but I still read along because the story was good... If you've been avoiding reading a long-running adventure romantic fantasy historical political story because it wasn't finished, now's your chance! YOTD not only ended, but so did the post-finish side stories, so I do think you should read it if you think it's your jam. I think the fact that the romance isn't always front and center worked out great for me, who had mixed feelings on Hak and cared more about the goings-on of nations and cities anyways. I wish there were more stories like this, but at least manga-wise I think the well is running dry for me orz


🢒 I dropped Heaven's Official Blessing cuz it was introducing too many damn plot points and my GOAT Qingxuan went MIA. I'm sure it was going to have all these separate strings connect later in a way that'd make my jaw drop, but I was losing my patience. 5 volumes of these 500-page books in and I felt like nothing had been resolved, the romance was moving slow as hell, again they took away my favorite character that wasn't the main couple... I couldn't do it. I can't do it. I do want to come back and finish it, but maybe at the end of the year...


🢒 Roma (2018) was beautiful to look at, but (sorry Mexicans and everyone with a little money from overseas apparently) I can't get with having a servant who takes care of another family and doesn't get to see her own as often. Maybe if the servant was white sometimes, but the servant is always brown or Indigenous, so it feels 😟 Also this month (July) I watched another movie about a woman who suffers, and after it I thought back on this movie too, and uhhhhh I'm starting to feel a type of way about male directors making stories about women suffering and being self-sacrificing but saying "wait it's so beautiful and awesome of them though." I could, of course, be crazy.


🢒 Taboo (1999) probably would've been better if they figured out how to make a sex scene that didn't look like rape over there. Some things the movies are trying to communicate are lost when I genuinely am unsure if the Twink In Question(tm) is enjoying the gay sex or if other people are forcing him into it. Also none of the relationships are developed, they claim he has "lovers" but I see 0 romance going on, overall it was just a confusing experience to me. But at the end of the day I'm glad to have seen the gay shinsengumi movie. Somebody else should do something with that concept again.


🢒 I finally beat Final Fantasy VI! On May 23rd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow, beating that game only took me *checks calendar* 8 years! Well, it only took me a few weeks to get to the end-ish, but then I thought I softlocked myself by going into the final dungeon with few characters and stalled playing the game for yeeeeeeears because I didn't wanna confirm that I fucked myself over. But yea, turns out you can leave Kefka's tower once you go in and the point-of-no-return is much deeper inside it. I spent 5 hours getting every party member I could (everyone but Shadow), making sure they all had Meteor and good healing spells, and grinding everyone to level 50 or 60. I can't remember which. We wiped the floor with Kefka... It was a little embarrassing for him. It makes you see why the fight against Sephiroth in the next game is Like That. Regardless, it's a great game, and honestly I might think it's better than Chrono Trigger. ... No, why must two queens fight? They're equal.


🢒 For Memories of Matsuko I'm just going to copy-paste what I wrote immediately after watching it: on one hand, the movie is beautiful to look at and did exactly what it set out to do (make me cry), but on the other hand, i hate that it's directed by a man and our heroine spends her whole life abused and misused by men*, to which the movie basically says "and she was awesome for putting up with that"

so, morally, this movie is bad, but on every other level, it's amazing.

*and sometimes said abuse is timed like it's supposed to be a gag (comedy), which is.   dude.

🢒 ...

That is all!