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shinyhappybaubles · 4 days ago

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january continues apace, and schoolwork is suffering

read

the last command, timothy zahn (1993): crawling my way through this because I keep spending evenings doing homework and then playing genshin. it's good star wars! mara jada you unending dweeb of an ex-imperial, I love you.

watch

girls band cry (toei 2024): I find this show charming? also the music is good and the girls are messy and complicated in ways that cute anime girls usually aren't. also I love that the lead guitar player is 20 and has done the high school pop star thing and left. it's not going to rewrite my brain or anything like bocchi did, but I'm having fun in it.

listen

"how to let go" (sigrid, 2022): kind of a knock off aurora? not terrible, but absolutely within the genre. my favorite song of hers is still not on an album and I am sad. favorite song: "burning bridges"

"metaphorical music" (nujades 2003): how have I not spent half my life listening to nujades? I love the samurai champloo ost, and this? this is the good shit. jazz and funk and hip hop and soul, all rolled up together. also shing02 is here? and fat jon is on this thing?? favorite track: "F.I.L.O"

play

genshin: "history becomes legend, legend becomes tale--that's how legends live on. forgetting is also part of the story. the more you cling to the idea of tradition, the more you only selectively remember the story you desire and eventually become lost in the maze of tales."

I really like this game, it's eating all my brainpower

#weekly journal

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shinyhappybaubles · 11 days ago

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time for week...two! also three, because tumblr was being stupid on my phone.

read

legends and lattes (travis baldree 2022): when orc adventurer viv decides she's done with the adventuring life, she settles down and starts...a coffee shop. in a fantasy city where no one knows what coffee is. but with her new coworkers, her own determination, and a little maybe-magic luck, she has a pretty good start.

I get that this is the "cozy fantasy" genre definer, or at least the one that got popular recently. it's very cute! comfort food. nothing mind-blowing but very competent. probably a 3.5* if goodreads let me do halvsies.

watch

girls band cry (toei animation 2024) and zenshu (mappa 2025): putting them together because I checked out the premieres for both of these on a very cold thursday evening in lieu of my usual genshin hours. I think I like gbc more than zenshu, and not just for the dissonance of watching an overworked animator isekai herself in an anime produced by mappa of all studios. gbc seems like a bocchi that's about the drunk bassist rather than bocchi and her friends, mostly for worse? but it's charming, and I really like the 3D rotoscope style. might keep watching?

severance (apple tv+ 2025): we're so back baybee, my heartrate won't come down, how is this show so stressful

blue velvet (dir. david lynch, 1986): laura dern enters from the dark, romantic music swells

play

genshin impact: more natlan! featuring the new world quest with a dragon. oddly enough, the most straightforward "and then 1000s of years ago the dragons and the humans did something fucked up" in genshin so far.

I also finished 5.3 and gosh I love the captain. what a way to go out. also mavuika is a bamf.

listen

"the human fear," franz ferdinand (2025): didn't expect more franz in 2025, but it's a pleasant way to start the year! nothing that's going to blow me out of the water here, but it's comfort food. favorite track: "night or day"

"american patchwork quartet," american patchwork quartet (2024): taking american standards and playing them deliberately to encompass as much of the american experience--black, indian, japanese, all that jazz--is something beautiful. I love shenandoah, but favorite track: "wayfaring stranger"

#weekly journal

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shinyhappybaubles · 25 days ago

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okay. 2025. new year, new/old blog, doing my level best to remember to write up my weekly "what tf did I do" lists.

read

wind and truth, brandon sanderson (2024): 10 days until a contest of champions between the god of hate and dalinar kholin, the king of urithiru, decides the fate of the planet of roshar, a land torn by storms and war. 10 days to hold out and establish the boundaries of the nations of the world. 10 days to determine why honor is dead. 10 days until the end of the world.

the first half of the stormlight books went out with a bang, where the breather chapters were the buddy comedy of kaladin "baseline emotion is grumpy/depressed" stormblessed on a 10 day all expenses paid murder road trip with szeth-son-son-vallano. it's 1300p of stress but also felt strangely cathartic? kaladin and shallan, long the pov characters for personal suffering, have largely worked through their myriad sufferings prior to WaT, and so get to spend this book employing what they've learned and growing beyond their suffering--my emotional support bridgeboy in particular has some of my favorite stuff in this book. adolin kholin continues to be the very best, grappling with his own issues, and has my other favorite stuff, particularly about his relationship to dalinar and to oaths more generally. sigzil made me increasingly terrified and then deeply sad (thanks the sunlet man!). tbh we could've gotten more renarin and rlain, whose stories feel like they're only starting, and WAY more navani, especially after the tour de force that was her time in rhythm of war, but there's already so much book in this book. qualms aside, a great way to start 2025 with a book that I loved from start to finish.

listened

the silt verses (jon ware and muna hussen, 2021-2024): making my way through season 3, and this show is so good. it's got crabs, parental neglect in all forms, shrimp, the ceaseless fatalism of trying to carve out some good in the face of systematic devastation of personal and collective power, shrimp and crab angels, sister carpenter having the Worst Time--

smile, brian wilson (2004): the songwriter for the beach boys put out his masterwork in 2004, and it's all catchy songs from start to finish. kind of timeless americana pop, in a way that is fully atypical for 2004. favorite song: "good vibrations" (what a good fuckin song)

played

mouthwashing (wrong organ, 2024): the crew of the tulpar is stranded in space after a routine year-long cargo haul goes wrong. the five crew members struggle to survive as the captain is incapacitated, medication and food runs out, and the vid screens all show a sickly orange sunset. this is going to hurt.

my annual tradition is to play a horror game or two during new year's, and this year, I chose 2024's viral hit. but I dunno, this one's really overhyped. I appreciate the graphics and the audio, and the times we play as captain curly (particularly the endless hallway section) are nifty. jimmy is a piece of shit as a protagonist, what with the whole game as an exercise in self-inflicted misery of one man to avoid responsibility, but one that doesn't dive super deep past the horrors of human suffering. I kept thinking about I have no mouth and I must scream, game and story, which it seems to be in the same vein of. maybe it would have stuck harder if we'd gotten out of jimmy's awful head and seen more from anya or swansea's pov, especially anya's...

clickholding (strange scaffold, 2024): the man in the corner of the hotel room asks you to click. he watches. he says too much, or maybe not enough. click. click. clickclickclick.

what a weird little game (affectionate). oddly enough, works in spaces of self-inflicted suffering and obsession that strike a few chords in similarity to mouthwashing. but its increased simplicity (just one room, just clicking away) and 40-50min runtime made for a much cleaner experience that I actually spent more time mulling over afterwards.

genshin impact (hoyoverse, 2021-): crawling my way through natlan because there are so many hidden caves and so many dino children and I love that the LLAMAS HAVE HATS

#weekly journal #2025

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