January 2024 Monthly Update (Patreon)

February is almost here! January was pretty stressful (in part because I overextended myself with all of the reviews and "favorite x of the year" lists, in spite of the fact absolutely nobody was making me do that?") so I'm hoping February will give me a break. 

I'm currently working on my synopsis and my query letter for my book now, and it's going slower than I'd like. So close to actually querying! 

With the new anime season I'm watching Metallic Rouge (two women in a cyberpunk dystopia with robots, I have no idea what's going on with it, but the vibes are cool), A Sign of Affection (a shoujo romance featuring a deaf protagonist, super cute so far), Dungeon Meshi (if you follow my blog, you know all about it, and fortunately the anime is handling the material well so far) and continuing with Frieren and Apothecary Diaries. I might pick up Cherry Magic too (A guy gets telepathy and realizes his cool guy coworker is in love with him) because the first episode was pretty cute. I'll probably save Sengoku Youko for next season.

The Witch and the Beast was unfortunately a bit of flop, it just didn't interest me enough to keep going.

On the side, I just finished watching Pretear (a classic magical girl show about a girl and a group of hot guys and young kids that give her superpowers) and it was cute! I liked Himiko as a protagonist, was less impressed by her angsty belligerent pretty boy love interest, but he settled down significantly after the first few eps. The comedy was grating and repetitive at times, and one of the plot twists had zero buildup, but overall it was good fun and I liked the family theme. I'm also watching My New Boss is Goofy, about a man who after leaving a workplace with an abusive boss, finds that his new boss is a goofball and slowly heals. It's very sweet and soothing, a good comfort watch. I've also picked up Monster again, my mom loves thrillers and we're watching it together. 

I haven't done as much reading as I wanted this month--I finished Red White and Royal Blue which was fine and cute, I just feel too cynical about politics right now to fully enjoy. I'm reading So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole right now. I actually got to meet the author of it! A recent book twitter scandal made me look into certain books that were releasing, and the summary of that book (the story of two sisters who survived a war where their country was almost colonized by those dragon riding people, only one sister discovers she can ride dragons, and there's a queer romance) sounded the most interesting to me, then I saw the author was visiting my local indie bookstore and decided to attend the event! She was super nice and funny, and really friendly! When I mentioned I was querying for my second book, she whipped out her phone and looked up my first, which was nice of her but embarrassing lol. As for the book, it's a little exposition heavy for me, but really enjoyable overall so far!

I read a little bit of manga, including the After the Revolution Utena manga, which I hadn't made a high priority and...yeah, I was pretty much right to do that. I did like it better than the original Utena manga and I'm glad Saito's grown as an artist, but it didn't really hit. I think the Saionji and Touga part was the strongest one, Saito is good at capturing their hatemance. Saito's version of Ruka made me appreciate those episodes more though, because it's very boring.  It plays pretty well into the idea of Ruka being this "ideal self" that Juri created and is a lot less problematic, but... I like the idea Juri's power fantasy would have a dark side and be horrible.  And without any of the dark side so he's just some saintly dude who sacrificed himself for Juri and she idolizes him and it's dull. Not as boring as this version of Kozue though, who is just hopelessly in love with Miki and sooo pitiful and bleh.

I've gotten back into Animal Crossing a bit because my cousin might visit my island. I lost my data for my first island and I forgot I hadn't done a lot for my second, so I'm slowly building it up again.

See y'all next time! Hopefully I'll have actually started querying by then.