June 2022 Update (Patreon)

The anime season is wrapping up! I'm planning on an actual anime overview this time, so I'll hold off on my concluding thoughts here, but as a preview, I actually enjoyed everything I watched/am watching, so that's nice! I feel like Birdie Wing is definitely going to get a second cour and none of us are prepared.

I've been enjoying Teasing Master Takagi-san as a good turn-off-your-brain and enjoy cute puppy love fluff watch,  and since next season looks very sparse, I want to use it to watch Ya Boy Kongming and Aharen-san, which both looked good. Though I also completely forgot I might need to rewatch Made in Abyss to watch the new season...

Alongside my short story, I've gotten my novel up to around 76,000 words, I'm firmly rewriting the very hard string of emotional events that make up the end section- I think this draft will be around 90000-100,000 by the time I'm done. I also started up a short story about Galatea I want to submit somewhere, hoping to finish it this month. 

Bookwise, as I mentioned in this tumblr post, I read Ariadne and really didn't like it, but fortunately Otherside Picnic Volume 7 came along a kicked my ass again. I honestly  want to write a whole article about the themes surrounding Satsuki, trauma, and recovery in this series, and probably will (probably for Anifem) but that will require some rereading so I'll wait a little bit to get started. Right now I'm almost done rereading Gideon the Ninth in preparation for the third Locked Tomb book coming out in September. I started out rereading it the old fashioned way since I have the paperback, but then I bought the audiobook on impulse and the narration is really good and it's been a good way to motivate me to do things. I'll probably be able to get the Harrow audiobook through Libby and I'm looking forward to it. I can understand what's happening a lot more now, these are definitely books you need to reread, ha. 

Manga! Doughnuts Under the Crescent Moon is a pretty sweet yuri story about two office workers, I recently read a good deal of Magilumiere Co LTD, which reimagines being a magical girl as like, a corporate job, and does some interesting stuff with that: there's a nice emphasis on how the “all that matters is the results” approach to work is harmful and how valuing people should be put before efficiency and the bottom line. I also tried out the shoujo Prince Freya- I'm always a sucker of a 'girl has to become a prince' story- but the pacing for the first volume was so all over the place and I'm very uninterested in the bevy of boys, so I'm unsure I'll continue. Witch Hat Atelier released a new volume and another home run. 

Read some DC standalone graphic novels, and for some reason decided to review them on Goodreads, so here those are:

Poison Ivy: Thorns- This would actually be more of 2.4/2.5 but I always round up. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. A gothic horror starring a teenage Poison Ivy with a queer romance is a great concept. But while this sort of gestured at being a gothic horror, the story wouldn't really fully commit to that aspect, (I'm guessing because it was either presumed the target audience couldn't handle it (other YA definitely doesn't do that!) or they were worried about implications), so there wasn't really anything affecting about the creepy experiments or Ivy's revenge. 

And unfortunately, Alice didn't have any character traits beyond 'nice' and 'goth', so the romance was kind of a nothing. The story couldn't even give her the agency to break up with Ivy, Ivy had to decide to do it 'for her own good'. If Alice had something, anything, going on in her own story, that would have improved the comic a WHOLE lot.

and

The Oracle Code: I love Babs and I love the idea of a standalone comic focused on her as Oracle where she isn't dragged down by Killing Joke bullshit, and they did a good job updating it so her struggles aren't for men to be sad about. But I think this also confirmed for me part of what makes me connect to the character so much is that she's an adult, something DC really wants to ignore about her along with her disability. The exploration of disability here and the moral it's not something to be 'fixed' was really nice , especially since mainline DC comics seem to very much feel the opposite about this character, but I wish the mystery had been developed more and Babs' relationships had a little more depth. Her random male best friend felt especially really bleh and her PTSD wasn't given a ton of attention. It was also so weird that her dad dropped her off at a facility she didn't want to go to when it would have been easier to just have her see a physical therapist. Bad Dad Jim Gordon!The art was really fantastic though, and I liked the puzzle motif and how the art shifted during the "storytelling" segments.

TV! Finished Russian Doll Season 1, it was really good! Starting Umbrella Academy Season 3! Also currently watching Heartstopper, which is cute! I...attempted First Kill, but I'm not sure I'll continue, the constant repetitive voiceover overexplaining everything is a lot to deal with. Glad it exists, though! 

Movies! I was dragged to see the second Dr. Strange movie and begged for death. The dialogue...the acting...the bad attempted jump scares...doing the same plotline as Wandavision but worse...rocks literally fell on someone and they died at the end and I was too dead inside by that point for it to be funny. I would have walked out midway if I wasn't there with my Mom. I also watched some documentaries- the HBO Class Action Park one (about a super dangerous amusement part and uncaring capitalism), and for some reason, I watched both the Netflix Fyrefest documentary and skimmed the Hulu one. Both were ethically compromised but I do think the Netflix one was better produced and had less ranting about millennials- like listen. I have nothing in common  with those rich kids. I don't even do instagram, so shut up, Hulu.

Spotify! In case you missed it on tumblr, I've been making a sapphic playlist, see the link here. 

(I also went back and cleaned up some of my Sailor Senshi mixes, since most of the stuff that auto-transferred from 8tracks came out all garbled...and got weird about it and added a couple new songs...dunno why I'm like this...)

Youtube! Colleen's Manga Recs is a good channel to get the lowdown on shoujo! I've been enjoying her stuff! Also been watching too much Defunctland.

Life! Was super down at the beginning of the month thanks to loneliness, rejection, and general anxiety- attended a family reunion thing and was just generally falling apart the first day. But lately I've been meeting up with more people and feeling better, knock on wood. Of course, just as I am feeling a bit more hopeful, my roommate gets COVID and this country goes further into the shit with recent Supreme Court bullshit. At least on the COVID front I haven't caught it yet (fingers SO crossed). On the other stuff...we can only do what we can. I'll try to do my part.