Nerd Zone

Shounen can be good! Who woulda thunk

2026-04-15T14:53:54Z

I don't have the brain for long, effortposting at the moment, but I've just caught up with the manga Akane-banashi, which I've been enjoying so much that it deserves a recommendation! The story follows an impulsive, headstrong, single-minded young woman named Akane and her journey into becoming a fully fledged rakugoka (practitioner of rakugo, Japanese oral storytelling). She gained the love of the art from her father, who was unfortunately expelled from the school he practiced under, and her goal is to confront the head of that school in order to understand what led to that expulsion.

The series has a very colourful and endearing ensemble cast, but the standout is definitely its protagonist, Akane, who is basically all anyone would want if they're being frequently let-down by most women written in manga featured in the Weekly Shounen Jump magazine. Her growth throughout the series has been incredible so far, and she's such a sweetheart! But most importantly, she's taken as seriously as she deserves. Which is bare minimum, but if you're into the shounen recipe and like women, then I really suggest you meet her.

As for the story, it's a very fun immersion into the world of rakugo, which I was entirely unfamiliar with before I started it. The story is supervised by rakugoka, and at the end of each volume they offer trivia as insight into how the art functions. There are a lot of compelling threads in the story, about how to build yourself as an artist, how to build an audience, how to keep a more traditional art alive in the modern day, the shackles that tradition necessarily imply, etc etc. All within a beautifully drawn and immersive artstyle, that has all the expressiveness and humour I love in manga.

I do have a lot more thoughts on this story, on where it's at, what I feel it's missing and what I hope to see next, but my brain isn't cooperating with me at the moment so I mostly want more people reading it!! It has an anime coming out right now, too, if that's more your thing. Give it a chance. Do it for Akane. There's yuri potential in there too if it sweetens the deal.

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Assorted thoughts update #9

2026-04-08T13:28:08Z

Sine wave of a mood I've been having these past few weeks. But today, I'm riding the high of a delightful weekend spent in Paris for Easter, so I've found the energy to write (a bit) in the public journal again!

COMPLETED MY FIRST WRITING PROJECT THIS YEAR JDSFHJSDKJFSD YESSSSSS. Very happy with myself! I'm really glad for the fan gift exchange I participated in for forcing me to finish something on a deadline. I do look at the fic I wrote and think that I could do better, but I am mostly satisfied with it, and have gotten some positive responses to it. It's really encouraged me to start dusting off WIPs and making an effort to finish them.

I am still mostly listening to K-Pop, and hoping that I get over it soon. Not that the actual music is the problem: I typically listen to a huge amount of K-Pop anyways because I like the songs! It's just that now I've started caring about the idols too, and I've become so repulsed by stanning/celebrity culture that I wish the affection would just dissipate on its own...

... that is, after I watch BTS's interview on Hot Ones this Thursday. And then I'll move on. I need to move on. Their album wasn't even that good, why am I still here (she says, after seeing a picture of J-Hope and smiling affectionately. God. Get me out of here!!)

On the plus side, recent release-wise, this song by Yena was super good and catchy (ha). I respect this return to old, 2nd gen sound and aesthetics so much. K-Pop is at its best when it's colourful, a bit weird, and an earworm!

Actually, speaking of BTS... they really just released their best-looking music video in a while to pair with what is objectively the worst song on their new album. Have I ever had a single win with this group since 2020. At least the choreo for 2.0 is fun.

That's it for me now, I think. Hoping to read more books and watch new movies and create more art this month! Last month I only managed to read a couple short stories.

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fitia @ 2026-03-20T10:35:00

2026-03-20T09:42:43Z

Honestly I've been pretty tuned out of k-pop for a while now. At a certain point, everything starts to sound repetitive and the performances simply don't dazzle as they used to, and the fan culture as well as genuinely abusive industry standards just start to alienate you more and more. It's really not a fandom I miss participating in much.

That said, there is always the occasional gem that gets released, like this song by Ten from WayV last year:

Goes crazy. He was always the standout member of the group for me, and I was really disappointed with the solo he released back in 2021 so it was amazing to find out that this was the new direction he decided to take!

I listened to Haechan's first solo last year as well, because he has my favourite voice out of everyone in NCT, but honestly wasn't too impressed. The title track was fine, but I was hoping for something that stuck more.

Anyways. Those are my kpop updates for the morning.

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Honestly, that was about what I expected

2026-03-20T09:30:23Z

After reuniting as a group following their mandatory military service, BTS have finally come back with their new album, ARIRANG! I'm about a couple years removed from being a more passionate army, years I've spent sitting with and finally accepting the disappointment I'd been feeling witnessing their musical trajectory post-2020, so I didn't really go into this with high hopes. Which was honestly setting my expectations exactly where they should have been, because this was about as mid as I thought it'd be. Sorry.

It's not an uninteresting album, if you're more tuned into the group and are more familiar with their style and colour over the years: this is the most hip-hop they've been in a while. I haven't been following the rollout as closely as I would have been in my earlier fan days, but I did see them mention that the album was meant to be a culmination of their journey as a group throughout the years, and honestly? Yeah, I hear it! The first half of the album is a lot more rap-heavy, reminiscent of their older days, but with a sound more adapted to the current hip-hop landscape and trends, while the second half is more melodic and pop.

The problem is... well... where are the bangers? Not that there aren't any songs on the album I don't see eventually growing on me, there were one or two reasonably catchy tracks, but this was an incredibly underwhelming comeback for what was once one of the biggest acts in the world at some point in time. For how much fanfare there seems to be for their return, complete with what is apparently a whole mini concert city dedicated to their comeback in Seoul, the music itself feels safe, unexceptional. I was expecting at least a bit of a bang, but I could honestly put this whole thing on the shelf and not think about it in the next few years.

A real shame. I honestly think they've run out of things to say, and fame's burnt them out. I've made my peace with that a while ago, and this release pretty much sealed it. I hope that at the very least they'll manage a couple few memorable performances out of their world tour, but I'm confident in saying that the BTS moment is pretty much over.

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fitia @ 2026-03-16T18:49:00

2026-03-16T17:52:28Z

Tumblr appears to have rolled out an update so unpopular that it nuked itself (the site seems to be down for me), which is honestly kind of funny. I wonder if they're scrambling to roll back the new addition, which would be a first because I don't remember a single time they've done this for like. Any other update at all.

EDIT: 30 minutes later and it's back, and the update is still there. Well, if they decide to keep it, this might be that website's death knell. I'm glad I made the decision to post more often on here.

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I really am rusty

2026-03-09T18:48:22Z

Consistently hammering away at this gift exchange fic has really shown me how out of practice I am with writing! Of course prose is a constant issue, but I've also been having a lot more problems with structuring, pacing, transitions and logical connections than I expected to... goes to show that you really need to work at something frequently in order to stay on top of your game 😔

That said, it's been incredibly satisfying to see an end in sight for a project for the first time in a while. Most of my previous writing attempts in the last year have been incomplete drabbles and drafts stuck at the 30% mark, so I'm pretty happy that this current WIP is about 60% done! I still have a couple weeks before the deadline, and it should be enough time to smooth out all the kinks.

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fitia @ 2026-03-09T10:33:00

2026-03-09T09:37:29Z

I am a bit sad that I missed the Fandom Snowflake Challenge... I thought about participating halfway, but felt too nervous to. I'm always missing out on things out of irrational anxiety.

It's mostly that a daily miscellaneous writing challenge looks appealing to me at the moment. I feel like forcing myself to write consistently, based on any given prompt, would go a long way in helping me hone the skill of sticking to a point and expressing it in the most efficient way possible. There might be other writing challenges out there, though, maybe I just need to look for some!

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fitia @ 2026-03-07T09:43:00

2026-03-07T08:54:06Z

On pourrait me dire que je suis quand même mal placée pour m'y plaindre en tant que personne qui ne fait que parler une autre langue européenne, mais je trouve que c'est vraiment dommage que la vaste majorité de l'internet soit anglophone. Sur mon compte Twitter privé, je ne suis abonnée qu'à des francophones (avec une seule exception) et ça n'empêche toujours pas que la moitié de ma tl soit en anglais. Encore plus dommage que les espaces fandoms qui aiment bien écrire de la fanfiction sont anglophones 90% du temps... mais ça me donne un peu d'espoir quand je vois plus souvent des fanfics en Chinois quand je vais sur AO3.

En vrai ce qui m'a fait pensé à ça aujourd'hui, c'est le fait que je voulais lire des discussions en ligne sur Les Misérables, mais je voulais lire les discussions qui se font en français. Je lis le livre en français, bien entendu, et ça fait bizarre d'avoir à changer de langue pour retrouver les discussions les plus actives à ce sujet. J'aimerais que ça soit plus facile de trouver des forums, ou autres trucs du genre. J'ai l'impression que les scènes les plus actives pour les discussions sur quoi que ce soit ces jours-ci sont sur Twitter, et j'avoue que ça donne pas envie.

Mais bon, on peut trouver des solutions à tout. Faut que je m'efforce un peu plus à chercher, quoi.

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There has to be a more efficient way to do this...

2026-03-06T18:33:40Z

You know, I really would like to be the sort of person who can write a complete first draft, rough or otherwise, and have the editing process consist mostly of tweaking and ironing out that draft.

Instead, my writing process goes:

Write 30% of a first draft, mostly the introduction of the story/chapter
Create a second draft to polish that first 30%. You have not written the rest of the story yet.
Write the rough follow-up to the story so that in terms of introducing the elements you'd like to have in it, you're about 70% done
Create a third draft. Polish the introduction again, this time adding new chunks to it that come to you in the moment. You have not touched the rest of the story, meanwhile.
Polish the rest of the story, but halfway to the end you either lose steam or had 6 new ideas and have included all of them. The draft still looks like you banged it out while half-asleep.
Finally write a complete rough draft, all story elements included
Create a fourth draft so you can finally start editing the whole thing. Once again, the introduction receives most of your attention, and you've still found new things to add to it.
The story/chapter is eventually finished. At, uh, some point.

In conclusion:

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Today I watched: The Legend of Hei

2026-03-04T16:47:32Z

I found out about this movie through Tumblr gifs on my dashboard, which is always a fun way to find new stuff to watch! It's been on my watchlist for a while now, and I only just managed to sit down and get to it properly because my free time coincided with a mood for some animated fun.

Most prominent thing about it is that it's such a feast for the eyes! Gorgeous, gorgeous art used in the backgrounds -- the first comparison that comes to mind is Ghibli, but I felt that this movie had more of a storybook feel to it -- and impressive animation! I really loved how varied and dynamic the composition for the action felt, it made for a very immersive experience. I really wish this had been something I'd gotten to see in theatres, my laptop screen did not do it justice.

The character art is also very charming, I love that more round, cartoony anime-esque style.

Story-wise, I only learned after I'd finished the movie that it was a prequel for an animated series, which definitely explained why I felt like I was missing a lot, haha. But while I wasn't able to emotionally connect to the events as much as I should've, there was still a lot to like in Wu Xian and Hei's dynamic! Loved the clashing between the former's dry, cold, inflexible self and Hei's rowdy childishness, and it was really sweet to watch them eventually find common ground. Aside from that, the rest of the story is garden variety Us vs Them stuff, and didn't really stick with me. Feng Xi as an antagonist was mostly interesting for his powers, which are pretty cool! Loved the visuals of his wood bending, it reminded me a lot of [girl who's only watched Naruto voice] the Mokuton and what I find cool about that.

This was my first time dipping my toes into Chinese animation, and it was a really good first experience! I'm inclined to watch the sequel that came out last year.

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I've connected the dots...?

2026-02-28T15:45:04Z

Finished the Namek Arc yesterday! I have... many thoughts on Vegeta, and honestly on how Toriyama's been writing villains so far in general:

There's never been much depth in the actual character- or thematic-writing in Dragon Ball, and the conflict is about as black-and-white and protagonist-centred as it gets. Given that it's primarily a story about martial arts and self-improvement, the story pulls its conception of virtue from there, and "good" means humility, means discipline, means understanding that there's always room to be better than you are and that there will always be others that are better than you; which means that as a counterpart to all that, the villains are caricatures of arrogance, egoism and cowardice. The protagonists are earnestly emotionally attached to one another, the villains team up for convenience and eventual personal gain, or else they rule over people they mean to control.

I mention all that because this is how Vegeta is consistently written throughout the arc: there were many opportunities to soften him a bit in the eyes of the audience, give him a drive that reads more human and emotionally vulnerable in a way that evokes sympathy, but he sidesteps them over and over! The destruction of his planet isn't a tragedy to him, he never develops any sense of conscience when he's forced to work with our heroes, he's a self-interested megalomaniac obsessed with power to the bitter end. You have to wonder if Toriyama wrote him that way so he wouldn't do a complete repeat of Piccolo's character arc and have some distinction between his recurring characters.

Despite all this I'm still very compelled, because aside from being an unkillable dick whose purpose is to cause enough problems to drive the plot along, Vegeta's most consistent traits in this arc are his desire to see Freeza killed, and his insistence that a saiyan should be the one to do it.

Obviously Vegeta takes pride in the fact that he's a saiyan, and in the fact that the saiyans were destroyed because Freeza feared something in them, but there's nothing especially... communal about it. It's as if his relationship to his race is divorced from an actual relationship to his race: he doesn't grieve them, he was completely fine with letting Raditz die and killing Nappa off himself, there's no recognizable sympathetic attachment in Vegeta's relationship to the saiyans, and yet he brings it up constantly, he clearly has a strong relationship to them that he makes it his entire identity, and convinces Goku that Freeza should be killed by a saiyan as he dies.

really

should

the

Another thing that makes this all a bit weird is the unfortunate fact that DBZ logic is very race sciencey as a whole. The saiyans were clearly originally written as an "evil race", so much that even in installments far off in the future, the most that can be done with them is to mention that "pure-hearted" saiyans are a rare occurrence. Even in Goku's battle with Freeza, a battle in which half of Goku's motivation is to avenge Freeza's destruction of his home planet, this exchange happens:

Freeza: Awfully noble, aren't you...? Are you saying the saiyans never killed an innocent?

Goku: They died because of it.
(Chapter 124)

Anyways. I'm taking a break from reading the manga because while I'm excited to get to the Android and Cell Arcs, I do know this story by heart at this point and want to read some new things first. But, all of the above has made me interested in revisiting Vegeta's relationship with Trunks, seeing as that Trunks represents a bit of a genre shift in the series-- or at least, his story and background feel a bit out of place in the martial arts and constant self-improvement manga. In contrast to his father, he's a character whose tragedy actually is of grief, and he experiences actually human and sympathetic emotions over his whole world being destroyed. It's interesting that it's for this kid that Vegeta actually stops thinking about himself for once for the very first time.

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[Insert "It's over 9000" joke here]

2026-02-26T18:33:47Z

Been feeling bored and uninspired re: media lately, so today I decided that my mental stimulation should come from revisiting Dragon Ball Z, a childhood favourite. I haven't actually read the manga in its entirety (I read the original Dragon Ball series two years ago, though, and had fun with it!), and since I've basically watched several different versions of the anime already, I thought, why not go straight to the original source!

Just breezed through the first 49 chapters and finished the entirety of the Saiyan Arc! This manga is incredibly fast-paced, which is definitely at odds with my memories of sitting through hours and hours of powering up and obviously re-used shots in concession to the budget (Freeza's infamous multi-episode-long "5 minutes"...) It does make the fights more engaging and the overall reading experience more pleasant, but at the expense of genuine gravity to the events depicted, as well as emotional resonance.

Some examples of this that come to mind are:

Piccolo's redemption arc and his growing affection for Gohan felt like a checklist of moments in sequence needed to pull it off rather than a believably sentimental progression. I feel like letting some moments linger (like when Gohan tells him that he thinks he isn't that bad, or, hell, Piccolo's sacrifice itself) might've helped! Give them time to breathe! The story's always in a sprint towards the next interesting or exciting thing, and it really kills its affective power.
Bulma learning about Yamcha's possibly permanent death was... honestly framed in a more comedic than serious way. I skimmed through anime episodes to check if I hadn't misremembered it treating it with a lot more gravity, and I definitely didn't! If you saw the manga panels of her reaction out of context you'd be forgiven for thinking she was whining like a spoiled child over something insignificant, lol.

Though I do think this is largely due to Toriyama having been more at home when it comes to humour, rather than actual emotional depth in his characters. The closest he got in the original Dragon Ball, as far as I remember, was with Tenshinhan's story, and while he had a moving arc I found it pretty simple on the whole: rival character realizes the heroes' side is more virtuous than the side he learned from, and makes a switch. It might've been more interesting than what it was if DB had a more complex and reasoned idea of "good" and "evil".

Other thing I was thinking throughout this arc is that Vegeta really is a funny character, for how inconsistent he is as a consequence of Dragon Ball as a whole being inconsistent, the world and its logic shifting constantly to fit the needs of the plot. You can tell the guy's written to be the final big bad in this arc, seeing as that he's constantly harping on about being the strongest in the universe even though this is disproved in the very next arc in a way that he should definitely know, and decades later we get told that he's also met the god of the universe in person. But if we can ignore that little detail, it's a fun game to try and piece together all these inconsistencies in a way that makes sense: for example, I'm trying to figure out what Vegeta's personal relationship to the Saiyan race even is, seeing as that:

he's constantly calling Goku a traitor to their kind, and believes it justifies torturing and killing him over
he also doesn't have any real regard for the actual saiyans still left alive, since he didn't revive Raditz, killed Nappa, and obviously thought Goku and Gohan were less than dirt (though what's interesting is that Raditz expected Vegeta and Nappa to revive him, and Nappa was shocked that Vegeta would kill him, which shows that he's particularly ruthless in a way that they're not*)
he apparently doesn't care that Freeza blew up his entire planet, because I don't remember him having much of a reaction when Dodoria told him
he cried while insisting that Goku beat Freeza in order to avenge their race, and seems to hold a lot of pride in the legend of the Super Saiyan

Like seriously, what's going on with this guy. He makes no sense. But I'm sure I can figure out a way to make him make sense somehow.

(He also happens to have been one the first characters I could consider a blorbo, so it was kind of natural that I'd gravitate towards him again, lol)

Anyways! I've been having fun, I missed this cast a lot. I'm honestly having a lot more fun than when I read Dragon Ball a while back, because while DBZ is much more of a sausage fest, it also means that there's a lot less of the uncomfortable sexual harassment jokes from the early series. Not that misogyny is absent, like... battle shounen, y'know? But it's more tolerable.

* or maybe not: Raditz was also 100% willing to kill Goku, after all

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fitia @ 2026-02-25T13:59:00

2026-02-25T13:09:36Z

( A lot of feeling bad! )

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fitia @ 2026-02-20T23:37:00

2026-02-20T23:03:13Z

Sometimes I wish I could share the non-fiction I read more often (recent find is a book on the history of the political evolution in France circa 1848-1871, that maps the trajectory leading to the 3rd Republic. I picked it up purely out of a desire to learn something new, preferably in relation to the European revolutions of 1848*), but I'm very weird about sharing excerpts. I always feel like I should be adding additional commentary I rarely ever feel equipped to make, or I'm terrified someone will see the title of the book I'm reading and tell me that everything in it is outdated or that it's mostly unreliable, and that I've wasted my time. Which is scary. My reading speed is slow enough as is, I'd like to be sure that whatever I've picked up is worthwhile 😔

The good news is, it's not like I'm obligated to share every little detail of my life, including what I'm reading, but it does give me a weird sense of FOMO to not be able to go "hey, look at this cool thing I've learned!" with any degree of confidence.😔

( * Speaking of... )

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Assorted thoughts update #8

2026-02-14T17:52:10Z

Had a huge scare two weeks ago when my laptop suddenly died on me... I rely on it for so much at the moment that losing it would've been catastrophic. Thankfully, it's fairly new, so it was still under warranty and I was able to get it fixed no problem. Turns out it had a screw loose, and I was somehow none the wiser despite hearing something rattling beneath my keyboard for several days. So that's a potential canon event (I still haven't watched ATSV...) averted, leaving me only with two weeks of annoying inconvenience. Which I spent either struggling to take notes in class or having no hobbies outside of media consumption! Anyways:

I finally finished Basara a couple days ago! I was definitely having the most fun with it during the second half, when I had to suffer less of Shuri and Sarasa's "romantic" interactions: they work so much better as dramatic narrative foils and political rivals, honestly. But I wasn't mad when the story ended with their reunion. The culmination of their character arcs up until then and the genuinely strong writing and well-delivered emotional beats in the latter half of the manga made it feel very deserved. My experience of the story vacillated a lot throughout, but I ultimately come down on the side of having enjoyed it, and thinking that it was pretty good! There are some characters I wish had been fleshed out better, I find the series' gender politics tedious, and I wasn't entirely on board with how Tamura chose to approach vengeance and revolutionary violence-- But, I found Sarasa to be a remarkable protagonist, and her and Shuri's character arcs very satisfying, and found a lot of the character dynamics compelling and engaging! It's definitely something I'd recommend others give a try.

Another thing I found compelling about it, without really having the tools to actually make solid conclusions, was how often Tamura directly referenced various parts of Japanese history in juxtaposition with the political commentary she was making in her narrative. I was especially surprised by her acknowledging, somewhat, Japan's settler colonial relationship with the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa specifically) and the Ainu in Hokkaido! I wish had a better grasp on that history to better appreciate the depth of the writing.

Also, despite me not agreeing entirely with Tamura on violence, I'm really glad she was adamant on having no "Good Monarch" bullshit. A low bar to clear but apparently still a difficult one, as far as I've seen!

Speaking of narratives of systemic oppression and revolution, I'm slowly making my way through Les Misérables right now, which was a funny book to start at the same time that I was reading Basara. Nothing much I can say on it so far because ~~I'm scared of looking stupid about one of the most famous novels ever written by one of the most celebrated authors of all time~~ I'm only on the third book, but I've always loved Victor Hugo's writing. All I've read by him so far has been Le dernier jour d'un condamné and Claude Gueux (plus an aborted attempted to read Notre Dame de Paris several years ago), but I admire how militant he is in his convictions and how rhetorically effective he is at conveying them. And he's romantic/sentimental without being melodramatic, which, given the concerns he writes about, is a fine line to tread! I really loved the Jean Valjean chapters, he managed to paint a fantastic portrait of an undeniably sympathetic, unquestionably societally wronged and yet believably miserable and unpleasant man. I have like several hundred pages still ahead of me but I know I'm going to have a lot of fun reading them!

Next manga I decided to read was Banana Fish, and it's got me hooked! It's been a while since I've read anything I've had a hard time putting down, so I've been enjoying myself a lot. I was kind of surprised to see that Ash and Eiji's relationship takes up significantly less of its time than the fandom had led me to believe, though honestly, you'd think I'd expect that sort of thing by now, lol. It's still very good and very moving, though. But I'm not really vibing with how the series treats race, and the fact that it has no prominent female characters even though this is the sort of narrative (one concerned with the exploitation of the most vulnerable, especially children, and hypermasculinized environments and the violence that comes of them) that would benefit from it. Otherwise, it's been a fun ride! I've been spoiled for a lot of the major plot beats, including the ending, through a friend who's talked about this series a lot to me, but it's a sign of competent writing that none of those spoilers have really "ruined" my experience so far. The way it's looking, I'm probably going to be finished with this manga in the next week, and I'm really digging the themes, so I'm hoping it'll inspire some meta-writing out of me-- and maybe even some fic writing, eventually!

I tried to write this post yesterday but felt annoyed with everything I was writing and dropped it, lol. I'm glad I'm feeling a lot better today and could update my journal a bit. Also, I wrote 1000 words of fanfic, so I'm feeling pretty good about that too!

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Writing is... still hard! But we persist.

2026-01-18T18:25:42Z

Wrote around 1000 words of this fandom gift exchange fic in the past two days, so I think I can pat myself on the back for it! It's great to have something motivating me to write consistently.

It's also helped me unpack the many sentiments behind my perfectionism, whenever I write. I've noticed that when I start typing up first drafts, what automatically comes out of me is a pretty stiff, formal style, that I can probably trace to the fact that a lot of the prose I tend to be inspired by comes from early/mid-20th century writers that write in a kind of Victorian register? Or at least, the type of style that shows off an expansive vocabulary, and the creativity to use it to its fullest potential.

Which means that halfway through a first draft, I tend to notice pretty quickly that my prose feels dry, unimaginative, and it does eventually discourage me. Continuing to write always feels like trudging through a molasses of self-doubt, which makes it all too easy to give up. And I do realize that these are ridiculous things to be feeling when, again, you are literally only on your first draft, but knowing this has never helped the fact that I do, unfortunately, always feel like this! It sucks!

Hopefully this experience will teach me how to get over this little by little. I really love writing whenever I can actually manage it, and I want to become the sort of person who does it frequently, and not in-between five month intervals (sobs), so that I have a lot more to actually share.

On another note, I really need to find the discipline to consistently practice the more technical aspects of writing, especially when it comes to vocabulary and to being concise. It continues to frustrate me how I'll often get stuck staring at a page looking for the right word, or how all of my sentences feel unwieldy and tedious to get through, especially once they get long. I'm not all that good at finding clever, appropriate expressions that help demonstrate eloquence and that help make your writing more rhetorically effective, and it's something I really need to practice.

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Assorted thoughts update #7

2026-01-08T09:21:22Z

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):

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.

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I actually joined a fan-event... they said it couldn't be done

2025-12-23T08:52:10Z

Very recently, I decided to sign up for an Ace Attorney gift exchange event. This is actually the first time I've ever done anything like this, because admittedly these two years I've spent hovering around in the fandom have been... more misanthropic than they should've been. Of course, I did get some very kind mutuals over it, but seeing as that my feverish passion for the series coincided with two years of creative drought, I admit that I've felt incredibly dissatisfied with how I was engaging with this particular interest. Fandom, for me, is all about the creative aspect, and so barely having been able to make or finish anything for a series that inspired me to a degree I don't think that any other series had was definitely a contributing factor to the awful burnout I went through a couple weeks ago.

And I think the period in which I could say I was "hyperfixated" on this series has passed, which is also a bit of a bummer. I don't have any less love for it, however, and seeing as that I wanted something to pressure me into going the whole way through in a writing project, I thought that joining this fan event couldn't hurt!

It's great because I have a two month deadline to complete a oneshot of around 2000 words, which is plenty of time! I can't say I'm not nervous, because I'm still not at a point where I'm satisfied with my own writing, I worry about characterization, and I worry about my gift being received politely and through obligation rather than it being something that actually delights the person receiving it. But I also know that improvement doesn't come out of doing nothing, and so I hope that this will be a good learning experience!

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She (Eleanor Vance) is just like me for real

2025-12-17T15:26:20Z

I definitely have other, more pressing things to get to (such as locking in for finals...), but I decided to allow myself one little indulgence: I'm rereading The Haunting of Hill House! A lot of what prompted this is my current inability to read any actually new fiction and feeling painfully stagnant as to my own writing, so I decided to pick this book back up after *checks notes* three years since I'd first read it, in the hopes that a close read would remind me of how good writing and fiction works.

Also writing this here so I have a place to yap without the fear of looking stupid over giving my own thoughts on one of the most celebrated horror works of all time. Repeating to myself that what everyone gets out of art is unique, like a mantra.

I've only just re-finished the first chapter, but god, I really, really continue to enjoy Shirley Jackson's prose in this one. The flitting between ordinary sequencing of events and Eleanor's internal narration gives it such a pleasant sound and rhythm. And it has such airy, dreamy quality to it as well, especially during those long stretches where it's just Eleanor and her account of and reflection upon her surroundings. I keep coming back to this passage:

At one spot she stopped altogether beside the road to stare in disbelief and wonder. Along the road for perhaps a quarter of a mile she had been passing and admiring a row of splendid tended oleanders, blooming pink and white in a steady row. Now she had come to the gateway they protected, and past the gateway the trees continued. The gateway was no more than a pair of ruined stone pillars, with a road leading away between them into empty fields. She could see that the oleander trees cut away from the road and ran up each side of a great square, and she could see all the way to the farther side of the square, which was a line of oleander trees seemingly going along a little river. Inside the oleander square there was nothing, no house, no building, nothing but the straight road going across and ending at the stream. Now what was here, she wondered, what was here and is gone, or what was going to be here and never came? Was it going to be a house or a garden or an orchard; were they driven away forever or are they coming back? Oleanders are poisonous, she remembered; could they be here guarding something? Will I, she thought, will I get out of my car and go between the ruined gates and then, once I am in the magic oleander square, find that I have wandered into a fairyland, protected poisonously from the eyes of people passing? Once I have stepped between the magic gateposts, will I find myself through the protective barrier, the spell broken? I will go into a sweet garden, with fountains and low benches and roses trained over arbors, and find one path—jeweled, perhaps, with rubies and emeralds, soft enough for a king’s daughter to walk upon with her little sandaled feet—and it will lead me directly to the palace which lies under a spell. I will walk up low stone steps past stone lions guarding and into a courtyard where a fountain plays and the queen waits, weeping, for the princess to return. She will drop her embroidery when she sees me, and cry out to the palace servants—stirring at last after their long sleep—to prepare a great feast, because the enchantment is ended and the palace is itself again. And we shall live happily ever after.

which I sat here for a minute looking for the words to describe, but as my brain isn't cooperating, I'll just have to do with saying that this counts among my aspirational writing styles. "[...] she had been passing and admiring a row of splendid tended oleanders" is such a lovely phrase, too. I love writing that clearly has a lot of fun with the sound of words, rhyming and assonating at the author's leisure. You'd think that would make me appreciate poetry a lot more than I currently do, and yet...

And Eleanor herself!! I think that the first time around, I never managed to really fix a solid portrait of her character in my mind, and so it's been so far very rewarding to build a better understanding of her now. What struck me most, I think, was this moment in which she comes to face with Dudley the caretaker for the first time:

It’s my chance, I suppose, she thought; I’m being given a last chance. I could turn my car around right here and now in front of these gates and go away from here, and no one would blame me. Anyone has a right to run away. She put her head out through the car window and said with fury, “My name is Eleanor Vance. I am expected in Hill House. Unlock those gates at once.”

which stood out to me because of the sharp turn from her inner narration to the actual action she took. It really manages to express that disjunction between someone's rationalizing and the more deeply, strongly felt certainty of what they actually want to do or say. And it's interesting in the context of Eleanor specifically, who's a deeply lonely person so used to being in her own head and so used to being at the beck and call of others for most of her adult life (especially when it came to her mother), and who's naturally had to fit herself into the shape of a person capable of withstanding that. She's written very convincingly as a person whose years chipped away at her ability to be assertive (especially since, as far as I can tell, she's never really been so naturally) but who remains very stubborn and determined, enough to spur the occasional act of courage. "[..] insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again."

Probably more I could say on this, but these are the current prevailing thoughts! Excited to go through this story again. This was the first proper horror book I've ever read, and surprised me by making me feel as much dread as I would by going through something more visual. I doubted written words could scare me, and it was fun to be proven wrong!

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Wait

2025-12-05T20:26:44Z

Help, I just found out you could customize your little mood emoticons. That's so cute. Changed mine to those adorable jellyfish ones ^_^

Also, I know I said a while back that I wanted to resist the urge to change the look of my journal too much, but I do think it's looking a bit plain... and too pink. I'd like to give it a bit of a makeover today.

EDIT (3-ish hours later):

I think I ended up making it look a little bit tacky, but honestly, I find it more fun to look at now! It's fun to decorate one's house, after all. Hoping that I stick with this and don't end up doing a complete revamp two weeks later, lmfao.

EDIT (another hour-ish later):

You know what, I think I prefer the little pink bats, actually

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Writing is Hard <- many are saying this

2025-12-05T20:09:29Z

I'm very inconsistent when it comes to training the technical aspect of writing ~~I say as if I'm consistent about writing in general~~, but today, I decided to take half an hour out of my evening to sit down, lock in, and actually do some goddamn practicing.

Though I'm making it sound more settled than it was. The actual process was more opening a LibreOffice document, writing down the skills I'd like to train and the sorts of exercises that would help train them, forgetting about the document for an hour while I did acrostic puzzles on Sporcle (which are super fun, btw) and scrolled on Tumblr, and THEN finally decided that I wanted to do timed flash fiction exercises in order to both train my ability to use words effectively and be concise, and my ability to... actually put words to paper! Because the "staring at an empty document" struggle is real, and it's kind of stupid how obvious it is that setting a time-limit actually forces your brain to act.

So, technically, the whole thing took around 3-ish hours. I'll train myself out of being distracted so often some other time.

The exercise I tried today was to lift some random, one sentence prompts from the internet, and to write mini "stories" based on each one, in more or less 500 words and within 10 minutes. Here's what I learned from it:

I reallyyyyy underestimated how much 500 words actually is. While I still managed to write somewhat full and coherent "scenes" (except for the first attempt, where I ran out of time), the longest one I wrote sat at only 317 words, and I just barely managed to finish that one before the 10 minutes were up. I think I'll reduce the word limit going forward.
Obviously you can't get all flowery and literary in such limited time and space, and this is the first writing exercise I've done in a while, but it still bugged me how uncreative I was with vocabulary. It feels like I'm still a long way from more precise language (words and expressions) coming to me instinctively.
I did still manage to write at all, today! 800-ish disconnected practice words, maybe, but it's still writing! I'm not sure if this is something I'll be able to keep up daily, but it's undemanding enough that I can see myself being more consistent about it. I'm thinking of doing an alternating thing, where I write from prompts one day, and then the next, after my brain's cooled down, I analyze what I've written, look at the gaps and see what needs to be improved.

Another thing that makes the process of writing practice difficult is that I am honestly committed to being, like, good at it, to a certain degree. This is hard to do without the help of someone more experienced acting as a critic T_T so I'm thinking that maybe I should find someone who has the patience to walk some of this through with me, so I can get more of a sense of progress through feedback. But that'll have to be for another day.

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Assorted thoughts update #6

2025-12-02T16:24:20Z

I'm in the midst of nursing an incredibly lengthy and miserable burnout period that I'm having trouble seeing a way out of. Obviously, I'm constantly holding out hope that I'll find one; I'm (sort of) in therapy again, I'm slowly picking at a digital drawing after several months of no real creative output on that end (wow!); basically, I'm trying to Do Things. Though I'm still stuck in this state of like, up-and-down moods, without ever consistently "feeling good", so it's notttt looking too hot at the moment.

Another symptom of this is that it gets harder and harder to see the point in writing... anything, really, because the insecurity of anticipating audience response (negative, or outright lack of) is genuinely incapacitating when I'm in the dumps. That said, I do tend to feel better after writing something out, regardless of what happens with it, so I'm forcing out a journal entry in hopes that it'll fix me (or at least give me some relief!)

Ability to read has been Dire lately, but I have managed to finish Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery! The experience of reading it, around the end, was actually a lot more miserable than it should've been because a lot of the ending just kept reminding me of my own awful mental state, and the whole time I was like ughhh!!! I should be having FUN here, this is GREAT writing, I am so FRUSTRATED!!! Everything seems tainted by this goddamn burnout at the moment.

But anyways, quick thoughts on the book itself: this is the third full work of Montgomery's I read this year -- after giving The Blue Castle a try, and rereading Anne of Green Gables -- , and it's definitely my second favourite of the three. Despite my Problems. I've always enjoyed Montgomery's prose when it comes to landscape description: she really wrote like she was enamoured with everything she saw, and she was my first introduction to a book getting Gorgeous with it when it comes to language. There's a lot in EoNM that's reminiscent of AoGG, but I think Emily as a character is one I find more interesting than Anne. I like that she has sharper edges to her, and her journey as a child discovering her own love for writing and growing to be more discerning and critical of her work and aiming towards improvement is something that really resonated with me.

Funnily enough, I find both AoGG and EoNM a lot more... adult, and down to Earth, compared to The Blue Castle, which is among LMM's novels actually intended for an adult audience? I've been meaning to write my thoughts on that, some time, but it'll have to wait for when I no longer feel like a pile of sludge T_T

Right now, I'm slowly making my way through a book on the Drefyus Affair, which I'd been meaning to learn about properly for a while now. It was written following the centennial of the year Dreyfus was officially cleared of all false charges against him, and serves as a kind of retrospective of the event's history, how that history was written, and the influence it had on the actual practice of history in France, of gathering evidence, of dealing with revisionism and falsification given the tug-of-war of establishing facts between the dreyfusard and antidreyfusard camps, etc etc. It's also a collection of essays, which each author treating the Affair and its social/cultural/political/historical impact under different lenses. I have a lot of fun with it, whenever I manage to actually sit down and read it. It's been interesting to get more insight into this massive event in contemporary French history.

I made a letterboxd account recently, purely to lurk and read other people's reviews, and God is it really making me resent the whole Social Media aspect of interacting with any sort of art. All these bite-sized, witty comments meant first and foremost to gather likes taking up all the space in the top reviews... it's so annoying. Say something true and beautiful, etc etc. I've thankfully managed to hunt down the users posting longer, more substantial reviews that are actually a pleasure to read, but I am still bummed out for having to spend so long scrolling to find some interesting reviews of movies I personally just happened to watch.

Speaking of movies! I managed to watch a couple good ones last month: I did rewatch the Star Wars original trilogy last month, I watched The Iron Giant (FANTASTIC kid's movie) and The Banshees of Inishering (this one requires a rewatch, but it did leave a lot of food for thought). Once again, though, I am having all of my current media experiences stained by the stupid burnout emotions, which did not make for the most fulfilling movie experiences... can I please be free.

And this is about as far as I can think to write. I've been doing and enjoying a lot more things than this one post would have you believe, and I really do hope I find the energy to talk about them eventually. My brain has been craving some meta/analysis posting for a while now, I just need to cope with all the bad feelings before I can get to that...

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Today I watched: The Last Jedi

2025-11-04T13:20:51Z

You know you're in a bad headspace when you find yourself wanting to have opinions on Star Wars again. Since I happen to have reached that point, I decided, on a whim, to actually watch this movie for the first time; because surprisingly enough I've never actually touched it since it came out! I watched The Rise of Skywalker once it hit theatres without having watched its prequel, if you can imagine. I also happened to watch this movie on its own without either watching the aforementioned or even The Force Awakens, so all I'm about to say is resting a bit shakily on my fuzzy memory of what happens both within the Sequel Trilogy, and the Star Wars movie canon as a whole.

My only impression of this movie going in was the memory of the fandom tearing itself apart over it, so I had the low expectations that anticipated a lot of genuinely left-field, poorly-considered, outrageous writing that would have me wondering in hindsight how anyone could direct such a movie and get away with it. Things on the same level as "Somehow, Palpatine returned. And Rey happens to be his granddaughter" you know? So I was both surprised and unsurprised to find out that the movie was... fine! Surprised because TROS left my sequel trilogy expectations in the gutter, unsurprised because I should probably be used to the fact that Star Wars fans like to bitch and whine about anything and everything.

Obviously, the movie isn't high cinema. It has the Disney/Marvel prints all over it, especially when it comes to the excess of quippy humour, and it's very much a sequel to a multi-million dollar media IP that lives on how much the fanbase is willing to pay for the next one. But it nonetheless had a lot of compelling elements strung together during its runtime, delivered some very engaging stretches of action and tension, and definitely left me with a lot to chew on after it was over.

I think this movie was consistently at its strongest when it focused on the Resistance. There's already a powerful draw, here, with the rebels' anxiety from being on the losing end of attrition warfare -- they're out of ships, their numbers are going down drastically, and the First Order has them surrounded -- which makes a lot of what's going on among the characters within feel more vivid and urgent. The emphasis from the stress of being backed into a corner made the characters' competing ideas on how to save themselves and/or find victory all the more engaging. I'd seen criticism of Poe Dameron's more reckless, trigger-happy characterization in the movie, and maybe if I gave TFA a rewatch I might feel similarly; as of now, however, I honestly feel very sympathetic to his desperation, to his response to dwindling hope being to try and take as big of a chunk out of the opposing side as he can. I also enjoyed his foils in both Leia and Holdo, who both respect his enthusiasm because of their own dedication to the cause, but who are more focused on the Resistance living to fight another day. Some decent character work going on!

Even better was how the story took the time to expand and diversify the stakes of fighting this war. I found Rose Tico to be an incredibly welcome and refreshing character: through her we get to feel that it isn't simply about survival or victory, but about lasting safety and justice within their worlds. The war is funded and persists through the oppression and exploitation of unlucky people like her, who happened to live on resource-abundant worlds that would be used to line pockets and build weapons. It's not especially radical, obviously, since this is Star Wars we're talking about, but it was still nice to see a more tangible consequence to the First Order's evil beyond their vaguely Nazi-ish imagery and impressive capacity to blow up planets: we get a lot more of the social and personal, here.

The less good parts, I have to admit, were all the moments relevant to the Force, the Jedi, the Skywalker-legacy-- which I realize is funny of me to say, seeing as that that storyline is the franchise's bread and butter! And this is definitely an incredibly subjective opinion, but I do kind of get bored of the sort of... moral spiritualism that comes around whenever the characters start talking anything Force-related. Maybe I'm too much of a sober atheist for that sort of thing. It's not even that appealing to me philosophically, either, because there's just way too much to unpack from the notion of a binary between "light" and "dark" space magic that doesn't agree with my brain.

Doesn't help that all that is also attached to Kylo Ren, who is pretty boring to me as far as villains go. He's uncharismatic, he's too whiny for me to forgive, and I am not compelled by his backstory when put in contrast to the much more pressing stakes facing the characters involved in the Resistance, and the whole intrigue of him is the same Skywalker family drama that I'm just bored of. It's sad that they ended up roping Rey into it all, too, because I really want to like her, but nothing about her really sticks.

The whole throughline of letting the past die would've been compelling if I didn't live in a world where The Rise of Skywalker exists, so every time they brought it up I couldn't help but feel both disappointed and amused because I knew they absolutely were never going to follow through with any of that, lmfao. Which is a shame, because it was by far the most interesting parts of every time I had to suffer through Force mumbo jumbo. My ear perked when Luke said that the Jedi don't have a monopoly on the Force, and I leaned closer to my screen when ghost Yoda burned the old texts, but again: nothing happening with any of that.

Oh, right, and Snoke was in this movie. I was going to mention him alongside Kylo but forgot, which goes to show how little presence he had as a villain. Dollar store Palpatine. If he had even slightly more of an interesting relationship with Kylo, it might have saved the guy ('s writing).

All-in-all, this movie was a fun distraction from the Bad Brain Stuff that's been going on with me as of late, so I enjoyed it especially for that. It also got me interested in rewatching the Original Trilogy, because I'd like to experience it again with fresh eyes, and with more of a Leia-focus: I got interested in her successive responsibilities as leader of a rebellion against a fascist empire, and would like to build a better mental profile of her character. I also finally want to watch both Rogue One and Andor, because I hear those SW properties tend to focus on the elements of this series that I'm most interested in nowadays.

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It's November!!

2025-11-02T10:42:03Z

I have nothing much to say or share at the moment, mostly because I had a pretty shitty week dealing with some incredibly embarrassing and yet persistent anxiety, and this Sunday my body is trying to recover from all that. Really evil how stress has physical effects.

Anyways, since it's the beginning of November, an inconsistently-held tradition of mine is to share this song wherever I can. Hoping the month brings good things! It's surprisingly sunny today.

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Assorted thoughts update #5

2025-10-25T08:24:49Z

I'm gonna be honest, this will be a quick one. Haven't been feeling too hot this week, and I've gotten mood dives at a frequency that tends to cancel out brief instances where I've felt fine -- happy, even -- and I'm thinking that writing a bit might help with it. Or not. We'll see!

I've been having various fandom thoughts -- specifically, on the question of media, politics, and where the former stands when it comes to where you expend your personal energy and outrage for the latter -- but haven't gotten to a point where I know how to word them, yet. Actually, I've had a lot of trouble wording a lot of thoughts I have that I'd like to share, and it's definitely been among the things that's been killing my mood, recently. Could also be due to period cycle hormones at the moment too, to be fair. But man, it's been feeling Not Great in my head these past few days. One of the moods where you know what exactly it is you want that would cheer you up, but you also know that it's not exactly something you can expect out of anyone. Which sucks. It's a matter of accepting it, but it would honestly be so much easier to accept if it didn't all feel so miserable.

I watched Train to Busan for the first time yesterday, and I had such a great time with it! I'd planned to write a mini-review for it on here like I did after watching the first Indiana Jones movie, but the aforementioned inability to write and feel articulate about it hit and so I had to nix the idea. But here are my quick thoughts anyways: really perfectly executed zombie apocalypse movie. The train setting was incredibly well-chosen, for how claustrophobic all the action and the dread felt, and while the characters weren't especially groundbreaking they were competently written and engaging! There were a lot of moments I felt should've felt trite in their sentimentality, but the writing really made them work, and got several heart squeezes out of me. It's a movie that makes you feel really bad the whole way through, but in a good way. No wonder I've seen this be highly recommended everywhere, it really is that good.

Really hoping I get back to the point where my hormones are in better balance so I can go back to like... remembering that there's enjoyment to be had in life more frequently, instead of feeling constantly miserable.

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