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What I've Seen Recently - February 2025 - April 2026
holy crap i really haven't updated in a year. sorry about that! i haven't really watched or read a whole lot of new stuff anime-manga-video game wise. honestly i've had a lot of trouble concentrating on anything new recently, even gacha games that i am ostensibly enjoying and want to continue. the world is just... too much of a mess, lol. it's exhausting to even think about it. but i've been kinda tempted to update so i guess i can collect some stuff i told lain about in the past... year and change lmfao.
these are minimally edited and kinda rambly, beware!
books
3/5/2025: i recently finished world war z by max brooks and i guess i will be first to critsten this channel with a review of some sort. this contains unmarked spoilers:
i did not like it! i completely agree with the top 1-star review on goodreads. every character reads the exact same, the scientist sounds like the soldier sounds like the otaku. and even though they're describing different things they all sound rote?
to give an example yes there is a section in this book with an interview with a stereotypical "neet" otaku-type and at the end of it he finds a sword in some old man's apartment building and teams up with a blind hiroshima survivor who is living off the land and talking about traditional kami and shit. tell me you've only seen kurosawa films without telling me you've only seen kurosawa films. it was legitimately laugh out loud funny.
i rated it 2 stars on goodreads because i think the some concepts were interesting, in how people would eventually come back from an attack on the undead and what an undead underwater would look like. and some sections of the book (IE the guy who manufactured a fake cure for the zombie plague) were prescient. but it was not very good even for sloptertainment.
to be 100% frank though i didn't expect it to be good... the movie's always on TV and it's like extremely bland... whatever. however when i renewed my library card for the first time in 15 years i was like "well i can't leave the library without checking something out........" L M A O social anxiety is a hell of a drug fam. however it didn't even meet my low expectations. don't read this!
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5/15/25: i finished crying in h-mart by michelle zauner yesterday! very different in tone from my last review, as it's a memoir these contain no "spoilers", but contains the cws of cancer, death of a parent (mother):
i liked it very much! the descriptions of food were vivid and made me hungry and contrasting it with her mother's stomach cancer made it all the more impactful and awful. it was unflinching in it's recollection of stuff about their relationship, good and bad, that it seems almost easy to miss the point.
as an example... there's a section of the book where the author makes some food for her mom at the very beginning of her treatment but her mom doesn't/can't eat it, and the author gets mad and snippy about it in her own head (like "i worked so hard she can't even try to choke it down???") and so many negative reviews point to this as a knock on the author for being whiny/horrible/shitty etc but to me it's just like... yeah people have awful thoughts like that sometimes. especially when they're struggling and grieving. if you don't i don't believe you deadass (and saying "i'd NEVER say that" okay glad you graced us with your presence mx angel :Eyeroll: )
and yeah i really appreciated that kind of stuff personally. i think it's nice to share that people don't always have Nice reactions to death, especially extended caregiving death (there's some other stuff in there that got similiar reactions and i was like "yes that's reasonable" about it)
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5/17/25: i finished growing things and other stories by paul tremblay, it was a decidedly mixed bag unfortunately, mainly because like 40% of the collection was... i can't say this any other way: fanfiction. LMFAO. this was a horror story collection so i'll go through every story and talk about them some. cw's for individual stories instead of a big collection of them if i need to mention it in the review, but overall expect unmarked violence and horror themes.
growing things (cw: apocalpyse): strong start, liked this a lot. paul tremblay has a really good knack for writing kids voices without being too precocious or precious. i thought the apocalypse part (it was like mysterious plant grows uncontrollably, choking out all life including overgrowing fields, people try to kill it with pesticides but they just end up poisoning the groundwater, etc) was really unique, enjoyed it!
swim wants to know if it's as bad as swim thinks (cw: apocalypse, child kidnapping): it was alright, but paced terribly imo. wastes way too much time talking about her grocery store job or her fwb's apartment instead of like her relationship to her child (op is an addict who kidnaps her own kid during a different ^ apocalypse, they're all diffo) or any backstory at all... swim also stands for "someone who isn't me" btw i thought that was confusing LMOA
something about birds (cw: stalking, violence): liked it okay, wasn't one of my faves but not really mentionable worthy. what if you meet your fave author and the fave author was the yangire...? also liked the dichotomy between like super Locked In socmed poster op and the authors pal being like :> Hey. Don't Do That. 🔪
the getaway: liked this a lot! it combines very light supernatural horror with a good old-fashioned robbery gone wrong story, in a way that felt very well constructed. i felt bad for the mc's brother at the end though :(
nineteen snapshots of dennisport (cw: violence, murder): this was peak, one of my faves. straight up crime drama/thriller so i think you would like it too. full of really intimate layered details but also super tense and like oh man... Oh Man! good shit.
where we all will be (cw apocalypse, ableism in my interpretation): horse saying man.wav. another apocalypse but also mixed in with like... the experience of having a different POV mentally, of feeling different and not understanding why everyone is acting a certain way and having everyone else go "just try it you'll like it"? it was a pretty honest look into how that would be if you're slightly out of step with the "norm". really miserable and effecting, hurts a lot fam (positive)
the teacher (cw: child death, child abuse, abuse by authority, vague csa mention by me not in the story, a fucking Lot): jesus christ. i read this one, initially disliked it, reread it again, something just clicked and i really got it in a D: D: D: D: way. i did not Want to get it but i sure did! the mundane horror of abusive teacher gaining trust then showing class just like liveleak stuff including child death etc etc was a gutpunch and very like, sexual abuse ""coded"" in a way that startled me, then contrasted with mc's experience getting physically/mentally abused by some older boys with her being like :) i do not see it. i am looking away... it took some time to settle in me which is why i think i started off disliking it but once i got that people do not want to Perceive in their own way vs people being like You Must Perceive It Is Good To Perceive it was genuinely horrifying. one of the best stories in the collection 10000000/10 i want to never read it again L M A O
notes from "the barn in the wild": this was fanfic #1 of an author i've never read but i think it's one of the better ones because you can read it without needing any "canon knowledge", and i liked it okay. guy goes to wilderness and gets owned, many such cases, but he had a happy ending which i liked and it was like oddly shippy? in the way that you could read mc/scott (his editor/husband?? not sure what he was) as romantic and i was like "aw... good end to a bad end au or some yaoi...." L M A O happy for them though :>!
___________: didn't get this one at all and also didn't like it. i thought it was like about vampires but then i got to the end credits and saw it was written for a lovecraft collection...? so idk LMFAO. i did like that the mc was just like me frfr. mystery lady aka underscore woman shows up and pretends to be mc's waifu and mc... just goes along with it cuz its awk/weird to say antyhing... LMAO...? so true king, me as well, kinda boring to read about though!
our town's monster (cw violence): my other favorite story in the collection, a really devastating satire/takedown of "not in my backyard" types of people and also colonialsim and thinking you can control other people, things, your environment, the hubris of man. loved the ending was a literal whitewashing of the monster's extremely bloody and violent attack on the town including like :) all the kids in the school he attacked lived! (This Did Not Happen.), it's just the cherry on top. hope the monster is living their best life.
a haunted house is a wheel upon which some are broken: it was just okay, the most interesting thing about it is the choose your own adventure format at least in ebook form. i don't really like the the haunting was her guilt at abandoning her sick mom on her deathbead oooh twist in anything, also girl she's like 10 can we be serious here, don't like it in any other story, wasn't fond of it here either.
it won't go away (cw suicide): paul tremblay to me: it's a metaphor about the impact people have on each others lives. even though the suicide was supernaturally influenced as well as it's continued effect was also supernatural the community impact is widespread and palpable. people will miss you and be affected, me: :( (it was very good, probably my third fave in the collection, but man. hurts a lot fam.)
notes from the dog walkers: people really liked this story so maybe it'll click for me eventually but i disliked it severely. kinda navelgaze-y and self-insert-y in a way i found pretentious and boring. way too many references to other crap and other books i barely understood, 2/3rds of the cast was super annoying, really didn't like it!
further questions for the somnabulist: another flop, this is fanfic #2 of some movie i've never seen and he admits as much in the endnotes. you definitely need to "know the canon" to get anything out of it. i was mostly just like "wtf is going on". the freeform poetry format was kinda cool i guess...? but i wouldn't have included this in my ao3 collection much less a published book one.
the ice tower: it was okay. kinda had rpgmaker game vibes in that there's this weird unexplained location (random tower of giant ice in antartica??) that people Have to explore, wasn't really horror or much of anything imo, but was too short to really go anywhere. would be a cool pitch for a video game though.
the society of monsterhood (cw bullying): this was like the inverse of our towns monster. wasn't my absolute fave like that one, and a good old actually the mc's who claim to be pals of the monster are actually turbo bullying the monster twist-o is fun sometimes, but idk i feel like it was missing something. some secret sauce. yknow. our town's monster is definitely the better one for me.
her red right hand: fanfic #3 and of a canon i'm familiarish with, hellboy! dad likes the movies, and i liked this story. i think it's serviced by actually saying the character/canon's name out loud instead of just dancing around it or the endnote being like "for [author name]". can't really comment on if it's ic for hellboy but i liked it! another one with a happy ending too :>
it's against the law to feed the ducks (cw: apocalypse): my third (? fourth? i can't remember) (future lita: it was fourth, self) fave in the collection, combines the stuff i thought he did well earlier (little kid ic-voices and an interesting apocalypse) with just hinting at whatever it is, focusing on the family dyanmics itself makes it more powerful. i hope they'll be okay in the end and i choose to believe they do. ganbare fam...
the thirteenth temple: fanfic #4, but of his own work :jiiiii: ... didn't like this one either, because i didn't read the book it was based on and never really intended to. it really is like dependent on the book itself, and the framing device is just like realy... why. maybe it worked for the fans though.
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1/16/26 NEW!: i didn't talk about this with lain because it was pretty heavy subject matter, but i read i'm glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy after hoarding it on my kindle for like a year. i think a lot of people have already said a lot of smart stuff about this book. but man once you know hollywood you never stop wanting to beat hollywood to death with your bare hands. the prose is just like brutally blunt. the way poor mccurdy is like "yeah my mom instilled an eating disorder in me from like 6 and also did [horrible horrible sexual abuse thing] and i thought this was all normal :)" in like, basically that exact words... woof.
i do think it'd hit harder if you've seen icarly though? i grew out of shows for tweens very quickly, in fact i basically went right from kids cartoons to edgy anime, and therefore have never seen an episode. the only context i have is that meme video where the girl opens the door and is flashbanged lol. but it's not a detriment to the work to not be too familiar with it. all in all very good but heavy.
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4/2/26: so i read convienence store woman by sayaka murata while my internet was out yesterday and i LOVED it.
it's like a slice of life/comedy about a woman who, surprise, works at a convienence store! but like... to talk about what's so great about it i kinda have to spoil it, so yeah! spoilers ahead. and also kinda goes into me myself and i/personalposting... sowwy!
the protagonist, keiko, is like... wow i have never related to a protagonist more. she does such off the wall shit but she's SO lovable imo. and then i went online and saw all these people being like "she's obviously autistic and that's coolio" i was like "............. oh :>" lol i felt like, Validated, because it's like "haha i do that!"
like specificially she brings up that she mirrors her coworkers in how they act/their speech patterns, which is something i do a lot with my online friend groups and irl too..... how they "absorb" each other's personalities when you spend time with someone, i've always noticed that (and like it tbh). or her understanding she's "different" and "abnormal" from society expectations, but not really giving a fuck about it outside of the pressure she feels from her family to act normal. and a line that ESPECIALLY resonated with me was her sister freaking out about her weird ass situation and keiko was like "girl. why are you crying. if you had just told me what i needed to do to be normal i would have done it a long time ago :/" in exasperation. like damnnnn do i feel that. sometimes i feel like i was sick the day in school where we all learned how to communicate with each other, and yeah it does get frustrating; an issue i had in therapy was like "i can obviously see that i am "wrong" in some way, what are the concrete steps i need to do to fix it?" and they were obviously like "uhhh... there aren't any?" and that disconnect drove me CRAZY LMAO, it was so refreshing to hear a fictional character on the page say what i've thought to myself so many times.
and i still struggle with thinking of myself as autistic or anything, like i'm not allowed to be because no one has ever told me so, i don't want to be someone who intrudes on other people's spaces or a bad ally or w/e, so to have a character i relate to so deeply and have everyone else be like "yeah she's probably got the autism" was like "hm. maybe i'm not just some faker." but Anyway.
the other "main character" is this incel piece of shit called shiraha, but i actually... didn't mind him so much? i think he deserves a warning because he sucks ass, but keiko is so good at talking down to him and putting him in his place that i didn't mind him. like he ends up freeloading off of her... because she's so clearly like "6_9 you obviously want me to offer you a place to stay so like come here? or don't? idc man just fucking decide" and he's like :);;; oh... okay? comes home with her then. and then when they get to her place he does more incel ranting type shit about MEN GOTTA DO THIS WOMEN GOTTA DO THIS and she's like "well you're leeching off of me though." and instantly shuts him down. plus when they talk about what he'll eat she straight out says "i'll handle your feed." and he's like "wtf am i a dog" and she says "you're not contributing anything so yeah you're my pet? :/" like it's the most obvious thing in the world L M A O... i loved how instantly and quickly she handled him, just by being her true self.
and the commentary of like the very end... shiraha(+her family who thinks they're together when they're not) basically forces her to quit her job at the convienence store, and they're on their way to a new interview for her when they stop by one and she's like "no you know what? i would rather work at a "dead end job" in an abnormal way because it makes me happy then try to fit in and be "normal"," and shiraha the incel freak who's spent the whole story going "abloobloo i'm so diffo and weird i don't wanna live in society" is like "what the actual hell is wrong with you? you're not human." like... fake mh havers when a real mh haver comes at them or some shit LMFAO...... i just thought it was really clever and a great way to affirm that even though keiko isn't "normal", even to fellow "abnormal" people, she's happy with where she is and what she wants. she's good at it and maybe she shouldn't live just for the convienence store, but it's okay for now. like dgmw i totally disagree with shiraha's incel points but he was a great foil to keiko, in that his bullshit is "something he can change, ultimately the same as the rest of society" while hers is "something innate, unchanging, unrelatable to society but all her own."
keiko has her problems (like she has some violent thoughts and actions when she was younger and stuff) but i still would rather spend a million years with her then i would with any of the normal people or shiraha or anyone else in the book. she's great and i hope she's happy working at the convienence store. all the charm in the book lies with her and that's why i loved it so much.
i really can't recommend this book enough for "she's just like me frfr No For Real!" reasons, but it's got some dark humor stuff to it too, and it's a real quick read (less than 200 pages) so you can burst through it real quick. tl;dr 100000000000000000000000000/10!
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movies
oh yeah! i say i haven't watched any new anime and this is true, but i did watch redline yesterday at the recommendation of my friend.
i was kinda surprised to find out how many characters there were in it. i only ever see sonoshee, and sometimes jp too. but there was like a whole side plot with jp's mechanic (who was kinda gay for him imo) and a kamaji-type engineer dude and there was SO much screentime devoted to the other racers that kinda did nothing... it was like, why are we wasting time on all of these randos when we could be watching racing LMFAO.
don't get me wrong, there was a lot of racing, but intercut with the racing it'd be like "here's an introduction to this minor character!" and "here's the ruler of the evil military planet they're racing on discussing their evil plans!" and stuff like that. there was a lot more lore then i was expecting, that's all.
these aren't really complaints though don't get me wrong, just the balance was different then i thought it would be. still mostly dumb sicko fun with a lot of funny expressions and hardcore racing, but the split of that and lore was more like, 70/30 when i was expecting 90/10. i'm not 100% sure i'd recommend it, but it's fun enough to turn your brain off and kill time for two hours.
i don't even want to think about how long this post is LMFAO that'll teach me to put things off. i'm not sure anyone will actually read it so it doesn't matter but it does feel next to finally consolidate stuff. see you next time!
these are minimally edited and kinda rambly, beware!
books
3/5/2025: i recently finished world war z by max brooks and i guess i will be first to critsten this channel with a review of some sort. this contains unmarked spoilers:
i did not like it! i completely agree with the top 1-star review on goodreads. every character reads the exact same, the scientist sounds like the soldier sounds like the otaku. and even though they're describing different things they all sound rote?
to give an example yes there is a section in this book with an interview with a stereotypical "neet" otaku-type and at the end of it he finds a sword in some old man's apartment building and teams up with a blind hiroshima survivor who is living off the land and talking about traditional kami and shit. tell me you've only seen kurosawa films without telling me you've only seen kurosawa films. it was legitimately laugh out loud funny.
i rated it 2 stars on goodreads because i think the some concepts were interesting, in how people would eventually come back from an attack on the undead and what an undead underwater would look like. and some sections of the book (IE the guy who manufactured a fake cure for the zombie plague) were prescient. but it was not very good even for sloptertainment.
to be 100% frank though i didn't expect it to be good... the movie's always on TV and it's like extremely bland... whatever. however when i renewed my library card for the first time in 15 years i was like "well i can't leave the library without checking something out........" L M A O social anxiety is a hell of a drug fam. however it didn't even meet my low expectations. don't read this!
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5/15/25: i finished crying in h-mart by michelle zauner yesterday! very different in tone from my last review, as it's a memoir these contain no "spoilers", but contains the cws of cancer, death of a parent (mother):
i liked it very much! the descriptions of food were vivid and made me hungry and contrasting it with her mother's stomach cancer made it all the more impactful and awful. it was unflinching in it's recollection of stuff about their relationship, good and bad, that it seems almost easy to miss the point.
as an example... there's a section of the book where the author makes some food for her mom at the very beginning of her treatment but her mom doesn't/can't eat it, and the author gets mad and snippy about it in her own head (like "i worked so hard she can't even try to choke it down???") and so many negative reviews point to this as a knock on the author for being whiny/horrible/shitty etc but to me it's just like... yeah people have awful thoughts like that sometimes. especially when they're struggling and grieving. if you don't i don't believe you deadass (and saying "i'd NEVER say that" okay glad you graced us with your presence mx angel :Eyeroll: )
and yeah i really appreciated that kind of stuff personally. i think it's nice to share that people don't always have Nice reactions to death, especially extended caregiving death (there's some other stuff in there that got similiar reactions and i was like "yes that's reasonable" about it)
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5/17/25: i finished growing things and other stories by paul tremblay, it was a decidedly mixed bag unfortunately, mainly because like 40% of the collection was... i can't say this any other way: fanfiction. LMFAO. this was a horror story collection so i'll go through every story and talk about them some. cw's for individual stories instead of a big collection of them if i need to mention it in the review, but overall expect unmarked violence and horror themes.
growing things (cw: apocalpyse): strong start, liked this a lot. paul tremblay has a really good knack for writing kids voices without being too precocious or precious. i thought the apocalypse part (it was like mysterious plant grows uncontrollably, choking out all life including overgrowing fields, people try to kill it with pesticides but they just end up poisoning the groundwater, etc) was really unique, enjoyed it!
swim wants to know if it's as bad as swim thinks (cw: apocalypse, child kidnapping): it was alright, but paced terribly imo. wastes way too much time talking about her grocery store job or her fwb's apartment instead of like her relationship to her child (op is an addict who kidnaps her own kid during a different ^ apocalypse, they're all diffo) or any backstory at all... swim also stands for "someone who isn't me" btw i thought that was confusing LMOA
something about birds (cw: stalking, violence): liked it okay, wasn't one of my faves but not really mentionable worthy. what if you meet your fave author and the fave author was the yangire...? also liked the dichotomy between like super Locked In socmed poster op and the authors pal being like :> Hey. Don't Do That. 🔪
the getaway: liked this a lot! it combines very light supernatural horror with a good old-fashioned robbery gone wrong story, in a way that felt very well constructed. i felt bad for the mc's brother at the end though :(
nineteen snapshots of dennisport (cw: violence, murder): this was peak, one of my faves. straight up crime drama/thriller so i think you would like it too. full of really intimate layered details but also super tense and like oh man... Oh Man! good shit.
where we all will be (cw apocalypse, ableism in my interpretation): horse saying man.wav. another apocalypse but also mixed in with like... the experience of having a different POV mentally, of feeling different and not understanding why everyone is acting a certain way and having everyone else go "just try it you'll like it"? it was a pretty honest look into how that would be if you're slightly out of step with the "norm". really miserable and effecting, hurts a lot fam (positive)
the teacher (cw: child death, child abuse, abuse by authority, vague csa mention by me not in the story, a fucking Lot): jesus christ. i read this one, initially disliked it, reread it again, something just clicked and i really got it in a D: D: D: D: way. i did not Want to get it but i sure did! the mundane horror of abusive teacher gaining trust then showing class just like liveleak stuff including child death etc etc was a gutpunch and very like, sexual abuse ""coded"" in a way that startled me, then contrasted with mc's experience getting physically/mentally abused by some older boys with her being like :) i do not see it. i am looking away... it took some time to settle in me which is why i think i started off disliking it but once i got that people do not want to Perceive in their own way vs people being like You Must Perceive It Is Good To Perceive it was genuinely horrifying. one of the best stories in the collection 10000000/10 i want to never read it again L M A O
notes from "the barn in the wild": this was fanfic #1 of an author i've never read but i think it's one of the better ones because you can read it without needing any "canon knowledge", and i liked it okay. guy goes to wilderness and gets owned, many such cases, but he had a happy ending which i liked and it was like oddly shippy? in the way that you could read mc/scott (his editor/husband?? not sure what he was) as romantic and i was like "aw... good end to a bad end au or some yaoi...." L M A O happy for them though :>!
___________: didn't get this one at all and also didn't like it. i thought it was like about vampires but then i got to the end credits and saw it was written for a lovecraft collection...? so idk LMFAO. i did like that the mc was just like me frfr. mystery lady aka underscore woman shows up and pretends to be mc's waifu and mc... just goes along with it cuz its awk/weird to say antyhing... LMAO...? so true king, me as well, kinda boring to read about though!
our town's monster (cw violence): my other favorite story in the collection, a really devastating satire/takedown of "not in my backyard" types of people and also colonialsim and thinking you can control other people, things, your environment, the hubris of man. loved the ending was a literal whitewashing of the monster's extremely bloody and violent attack on the town including like :) all the kids in the school he attacked lived! (This Did Not Happen.), it's just the cherry on top. hope the monster is living their best life.
a haunted house is a wheel upon which some are broken: it was just okay, the most interesting thing about it is the choose your own adventure format at least in ebook form. i don't really like the the haunting was her guilt at abandoning her sick mom on her deathbead oooh twist in anything, also girl she's like 10 can we be serious here, don't like it in any other story, wasn't fond of it here either.
it won't go away (cw suicide): paul tremblay to me: it's a metaphor about the impact people have on each others lives. even though the suicide was supernaturally influenced as well as it's continued effect was also supernatural the community impact is widespread and palpable. people will miss you and be affected, me: :( (it was very good, probably my third fave in the collection, but man. hurts a lot fam.)
notes from the dog walkers: people really liked this story so maybe it'll click for me eventually but i disliked it severely. kinda navelgaze-y and self-insert-y in a way i found pretentious and boring. way too many references to other crap and other books i barely understood, 2/3rds of the cast was super annoying, really didn't like it!
further questions for the somnabulist: another flop, this is fanfic #2 of some movie i've never seen and he admits as much in the endnotes. you definitely need to "know the canon" to get anything out of it. i was mostly just like "wtf is going on". the freeform poetry format was kinda cool i guess...? but i wouldn't have included this in my ao3 collection much less a published book one.
the ice tower: it was okay. kinda had rpgmaker game vibes in that there's this weird unexplained location (random tower of giant ice in antartica??) that people Have to explore, wasn't really horror or much of anything imo, but was too short to really go anywhere. would be a cool pitch for a video game though.
the society of monsterhood (cw bullying): this was like the inverse of our towns monster. wasn't my absolute fave like that one, and a good old actually the mc's who claim to be pals of the monster are actually turbo bullying the monster twist-o is fun sometimes, but idk i feel like it was missing something. some secret sauce. yknow. our town's monster is definitely the better one for me.
her red right hand: fanfic #3 and of a canon i'm familiarish with, hellboy! dad likes the movies, and i liked this story. i think it's serviced by actually saying the character/canon's name out loud instead of just dancing around it or the endnote being like "for [author name]". can't really comment on if it's ic for hellboy but i liked it! another one with a happy ending too :>
it's against the law to feed the ducks (cw: apocalypse): my third (? fourth? i can't remember) (future lita: it was fourth, self) fave in the collection, combines the stuff i thought he did well earlier (little kid ic-voices and an interesting apocalypse) with just hinting at whatever it is, focusing on the family dyanmics itself makes it more powerful. i hope they'll be okay in the end and i choose to believe they do. ganbare fam...
the thirteenth temple: fanfic #4, but of his own work :jiiiii: ... didn't like this one either, because i didn't read the book it was based on and never really intended to. it really is like dependent on the book itself, and the framing device is just like realy... why. maybe it worked for the fans though.
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1/16/26 NEW!: i didn't talk about this with lain because it was pretty heavy subject matter, but i read i'm glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy after hoarding it on my kindle for like a year. i think a lot of people have already said a lot of smart stuff about this book. but man once you know hollywood you never stop wanting to beat hollywood to death with your bare hands. the prose is just like brutally blunt. the way poor mccurdy is like "yeah my mom instilled an eating disorder in me from like 6 and also did [horrible horrible sexual abuse thing] and i thought this was all normal :)" in like, basically that exact words... woof.
i do think it'd hit harder if you've seen icarly though? i grew out of shows for tweens very quickly, in fact i basically went right from kids cartoons to edgy anime, and therefore have never seen an episode. the only context i have is that meme video where the girl opens the door and is flashbanged lol. but it's not a detriment to the work to not be too familiar with it. all in all very good but heavy.
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4/2/26: so i read convienence store woman by sayaka murata while my internet was out yesterday and i LOVED it.
it's like a slice of life/comedy about a woman who, surprise, works at a convienence store! but like... to talk about what's so great about it i kinda have to spoil it, so yeah! spoilers ahead. and also kinda goes into me myself and i/personalposting... sowwy!
the protagonist, keiko, is like... wow i have never related to a protagonist more. she does such off the wall shit but she's SO lovable imo. and then i went online and saw all these people being like "she's obviously autistic and that's coolio" i was like "............. oh :>" lol i felt like, Validated, because it's like "haha i do that!"
like specificially she brings up that she mirrors her coworkers in how they act/their speech patterns, which is something i do a lot with my online friend groups and irl too..... how they "absorb" each other's personalities when you spend time with someone, i've always noticed that (and like it tbh). or her understanding she's "different" and "abnormal" from society expectations, but not really giving a fuck about it outside of the pressure she feels from her family to act normal. and a line that ESPECIALLY resonated with me was her sister freaking out about her weird ass situation and keiko was like "girl. why are you crying. if you had just told me what i needed to do to be normal i would have done it a long time ago :/" in exasperation. like damnnnn do i feel that. sometimes i feel like i was sick the day in school where we all learned how to communicate with each other, and yeah it does get frustrating; an issue i had in therapy was like "i can obviously see that i am "wrong" in some way, what are the concrete steps i need to do to fix it?" and they were obviously like "uhhh... there aren't any?" and that disconnect drove me CRAZY LMAO, it was so refreshing to hear a fictional character on the page say what i've thought to myself so many times.
and i still struggle with thinking of myself as autistic or anything, like i'm not allowed to be because no one has ever told me so, i don't want to be someone who intrudes on other people's spaces or a bad ally or w/e, so to have a character i relate to so deeply and have everyone else be like "yeah she's probably got the autism" was like "hm. maybe i'm not just some faker." but Anyway.
the other "main character" is this incel piece of shit called shiraha, but i actually... didn't mind him so much? i think he deserves a warning because he sucks ass, but keiko is so good at talking down to him and putting him in his place that i didn't mind him. like he ends up freeloading off of her... because she's so clearly like "6_9 you obviously want me to offer you a place to stay so like come here? or don't? idc man just fucking decide" and he's like :);;; oh... okay? comes home with her then. and then when they get to her place he does more incel ranting type shit about MEN GOTTA DO THIS WOMEN GOTTA DO THIS and she's like "well you're leeching off of me though." and instantly shuts him down. plus when they talk about what he'll eat she straight out says "i'll handle your feed." and he's like "wtf am i a dog" and she says "you're not contributing anything so yeah you're my pet? :/" like it's the most obvious thing in the world L M A O... i loved how instantly and quickly she handled him, just by being her true self.
and the commentary of like the very end... shiraha(+her family who thinks they're together when they're not) basically forces her to quit her job at the convienence store, and they're on their way to a new interview for her when they stop by one and she's like "no you know what? i would rather work at a "dead end job" in an abnormal way because it makes me happy then try to fit in and be "normal"," and shiraha the incel freak who's spent the whole story going "abloobloo i'm so diffo and weird i don't wanna live in society" is like "what the actual hell is wrong with you? you're not human." like... fake mh havers when a real mh haver comes at them or some shit LMFAO...... i just thought it was really clever and a great way to affirm that even though keiko isn't "normal", even to fellow "abnormal" people, she's happy with where she is and what she wants. she's good at it and maybe she shouldn't live just for the convienence store, but it's okay for now. like dgmw i totally disagree with shiraha's incel points but he was a great foil to keiko, in that his bullshit is "something he can change, ultimately the same as the rest of society" while hers is "something innate, unchanging, unrelatable to society but all her own."
keiko has her problems (like she has some violent thoughts and actions when she was younger and stuff) but i still would rather spend a million years with her then i would with any of the normal people or shiraha or anyone else in the book. she's great and i hope she's happy working at the convienence store. all the charm in the book lies with her and that's why i loved it so much.
i really can't recommend this book enough for "she's just like me frfr No For Real!" reasons, but it's got some dark humor stuff to it too, and it's a real quick read (less than 200 pages) so you can burst through it real quick. tl;dr 100000000000000000000000000/10!
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movies
oh yeah! i say i haven't watched any new anime and this is true, but i did watch redline yesterday at the recommendation of my friend.
i was kinda surprised to find out how many characters there were in it. i only ever see sonoshee, and sometimes jp too. but there was like a whole side plot with jp's mechanic (who was kinda gay for him imo) and a kamaji-type engineer dude and there was SO much screentime devoted to the other racers that kinda did nothing... it was like, why are we wasting time on all of these randos when we could be watching racing LMFAO.
don't get me wrong, there was a lot of racing, but intercut with the racing it'd be like "here's an introduction to this minor character!" and "here's the ruler of the evil military planet they're racing on discussing their evil plans!" and stuff like that. there was a lot more lore then i was expecting, that's all.
these aren't really complaints though don't get me wrong, just the balance was different then i thought it would be. still mostly dumb sicko fun with a lot of funny expressions and hardcore racing, but the split of that and lore was more like, 70/30 when i was expecting 90/10. i'm not 100% sure i'd recommend it, but it's fun enough to turn your brain off and kill time for two hours.
i don't even want to think about how long this post is LMFAO that'll teach me to put things off. i'm not sure anyone will actually read it so it doesn't matter but it does feel next to finally consolidate stuff. see you next time!