Assorted thoughts update #7

[fitia]

Happy (a week and a day into the) New Year! I'm not really sure on what foot I've started this one. Not optimistic, not pessimistic, but a secret third thing? I've been taking a break from socials and socializing in order to recharge a bit, while still lurking a bit here and there. Anyways. I've definitely been doing stuff this week and the last:

• Several days back, I finished watching the first season of the CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It's... fine? The soundtrack is absolutely addictive, and even its misses have gotten stuck in my head; it's decently funny, when it doesn't rely on too much lampshading and irony for humour-- but, honestly, it wasn't pleasant enough to justify going further into the show. I'm really not fond of romcoms because I have a hard time caring about the stakes (you could just not date, you know!), and spoilers for the next few seasons have justified some reservations I've had with how the show's chosen to comment on misogyny and racism. Its premise is compelling, and I'm honestly fond of Rebecca as a main character, but knowing in advance that its landing doesn't stick is making it easier to drop it.

I do still enjoy listening to the songs that come up in the later seasons, though! Even if some of them make me grimace; it really is such a shame that Let's Generalize About Men is such a catchy, 80s-inspired dance track while just being a glorified "Not All Men" tune. Ugh. Whatever.

This is the best song in the show (which is ironic because it's from the worst episode of the first season):

Watch on YouTube

 

• Hopefully I'll be on the path to better emotional regulation this year! I don't "journal" (in the way I understand it), but I've made a separate folder in my phone's note's app where I take the time to write down any irrational feeling I'm having in the moment, talk myself through it, and eventually out of it. It's especially been helpful in the morning and the hours before I need to sleep, where my anxiety's at its highest. The shadow of that debilitatingly stressful period back in late October and November still hangs over me, but I am glad that it's more of a faded feeling than anything now.
   
• It's also been looking pretty hopeful media-wise this year!

For starters, I finished rereading The Haunting of Hill House. The ending really does make me sick (compliment). There's so much I could say that would take up more space than I have here, but I think the first thing I caught in this reread is how well Jackson writes a variety of different experiences of loneliness, all of which Eleanor seems to go through in one short week. Hill House being isolated from without and within, the doors always remaining shut, Eleanor being frequently singled out in her little research group, etc. It's a very pitiful and depressing story, behind all of the creepiness. I really had fun revisiting this one!

Next on my reading list was The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin, which honestly I'd put off for a while because my brain just wasn't receptive to sci-fi lore dumping and jargon. I'm about 100 pages in now, however, and I'm really enjoying it! It's exercising a lot of my speculative worldbuilding thinking, and I'm very compelled by all it's currently saying on the evils of nationalism, borders, the exclusion from citizenship, and more! I'm also fascinated by the race of people Leguin's invented where sexual dimorphism and gender work so differently from our own, and the way the story demands you to consider all the wide-reaching societal implications of it, despite the difficulty of imagining it. I love picking up a book and being able to tell why it's so widely praised. I'm hoping that I'll be getting more of a feel for the characters the further I go, and that I'll be hooked enough to read further into the series.

Finally, I started reading Basara by Yumi Tamura, which is also something I'd been meaning to get to. I read Seven Seeds around three years ago, and found it pretty fun, if a bit long. Not the biggest fan of Tamura's artstyle, but she does know how to write a good character and make some emotional beats land. And I really love her authors notes: she has such a charming personality! Basara's worldbuilding is incomprehensible to me so far (and a bit vaguely orientalist, if I'm being honest; why the Middle Eastern coded aesthetics in a desertic, post-apocalyptic Japan?), but the main character has been really fun to follow, and I'm excited to see where this life she's chosen in which she's acting as her dead brother in order to save the world will take her! I like Sasara, I've recently been introduced to Hayato and I like him too. All the other men so far are meh, and I dislike Shuri. We'll see if any of that changes.

• Oh, right, and I've been very, very slowly making my way through the Turkish historical drama The Magnificent Century, all episodes of which are subtitled and available on YouTube! My best friend recommended it to me, with the promise of homoeroticism (which might've been an actual historical reality?) between the fictionalized sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and Ibrahim, his right-hand man. I'm definitely seeing it, but I'm also having fun with the rest of the colourful cast introduced to me so far, and I'm having fun with the setting because I rarely watch anything outside of European historical fiction. I love the attention to detail the show has thus far, with the actors speaking multiple different languages as the characters come from multiple different places in the world, for example. I'm having fun with the 16th century geopolitics from the perspective of the Ottoman Empire! The reason I've been taking so long with this show (I am literally only on the second episode) is because god, the individual episodes are long so I have to watch it them 30 minute instalments every time, lmao. Still though: new experience! And I'm pretty excited about it.

• I wondered whether I even wanted to write down resolutions this year, and eventually decided in favour, because it's annoyingly true that forcing yourself into believing you can achieve things will actually bring you a step further into actually achieving them. I plan to print out my resolutions and stick them on my wall. I want to write more this year, and to finish some of the many, many projects I've had lying around. I want to get into drawing more consistently. And I want!! to make!! more!! friends!! In real life or online, but especially in real life since I am ridiculously lonely. That changes this year, #Trust.

 

I typed all of this instead of getting out of bed and eating breakfast. Which I will now be getting to. Other annoying truth: you feel way better in the morning once you've actually eaten something.

Comments

[elyusion]

Yo, I was reading Basara a few months ago (and Seven Seeds some years ago, but I paused it and need to make time to go back). Tamura is so good at coming up with Situations; I wish her art style didn't put so many people off from reading her works. I did wonder about the aesthetics she chose for post-apocalyptic Japan too 😭 Being charitable, she may have assumed that the currently-existing group of people who live in the desert that she knows best are best-dressed for desert life, but I would've looked more into what specifically is making their clothes good for living in the desert and added that to preexisting Japanese aesthetics.
I don't want to spoil anything, but I also have this recurring problem with Tamura that she does in Seven Seeds and Basara, but I wrote it in a locked post and don't want to spoil you. If you end up bringing it up I might end up copy-pasting the post into your replies LOL.

[fitia]

Ooooh yeah, it's very possible that that was she was going for, re: clothing, but I have to admit that a lot of the background environment (buildings, markets) still make me go... hmm. The world is a bit funny overall, though, it really does look like she was aiming for a mishmash of different cultural aesthetics while ultimately keeping the setting in Japan, lol.

Also for the recurring problem... I'm not sure if what you're talking about is the same as mine, but I also have some issues that come back in Basara that I disliked while reading Seven Seeds, and it's mostly to do with how Tamura treats a lot of her romances... there are many times that they come off as unpleasant. As of writing this I'm on chapter 16 of Basara, and if that's far enough that you wouldn't be spoiling me, I'm curious to know what you've noticed and disliked!

[elyusion]

Wait, you've finished 7Seeds -- does Hana end up with that guy who tried to kill her, by any chance? Because if that's how 7Seeds ends then I have to agree that Tamura has questionable taste in men and romance LOL
I still can't say the Basara spoiler exactly, but I'll go ahead and say that reading Basara has made me keep track of how shoujo manga treat/depict the rape of women vs. men.

[fitia]

Thankfully, she doesn't! It was another romance that bothered me. I'm not sure if you're at that point yet, but if you've gotten to the Hana near-drowning incident then it should come later!

And ooooh, I see! I remember Seven Seeds being a bit... iffy, with the rape of women also, but it was more or less resolved in the Gaiden extra. I definitely haven't gotten to the part of Basara where I'd notice this, but I really hope I'm not about to run into Berserk-level treatment of the subject...