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sakarrie-creates · 10 months ago

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2023 Fic Round-Up/Reflection

Got an early start this year! I technically was shooting to get it done before the new year but I feel like I’m still within a reasonable window, so I’ll take it! Here’s my 2023 Writing Summary! Overall, I think I actually did okay! As usual, my rambly reflection stuff is under the cut. Happy 2024 people!

2023 Stats:

Fics Started: 12 Fics Fully Written: 12 Fics Posted: 5 New WIPs: 0 Total WIPs: 20 (ish?) Words Written: 53,686 (55,598 if including fic outlines that haven’t been turned fic) Words Posted: 34,805 Fandoms Written For: 3 (+1 for Merlin FTH outline) Events: 4 (+3)

Posted Fics:

Supernatural (Gen): 2

When it Rains, it Pours (13,779): As part of Chuck's "reliving of his greatest hits," Sam starts having his painful visions again. He doesn’t want to believe it, but the nightmares keep coming true and now, he's beginning to worry it’s not just visions. During their last hunt, Sam could have sworn that the machete he was reaching for threw itself. Dean didn’t seem to notice anything but later that night, Sam finds a small trail of blood coming from his nose.

He needs to tell Dean—he knows that. But Dean’s been struggling a lot between Chuck and losing... well, most everyone. He's just barely beginning to bounce back, and Sam was his only constant right now. He’ll just have to keep a handle on it until they can take care of Chuck. Set around s15e4 Atomic Monsters.

Whatever it Takes (1,875): Gadreel's possession of Sam has more serious side-effects than Dean ever imagined. Now, his brother is sick, hurting, and close to giving up. But Dean is determined to make this right.

The Owl House (Gen and Implied/Background Ship - Huntlow): 2

What Doesn't Kill You (Gives You Trauma) (1,737): With the reconstruction of Hexside finally complete, a sense of normality has been restored. Fortunately, that includes Grom. Unfortunately one of their own has been declared King. Hunter doesn’t even know which fear he'll have to face. He certainly has enough painful memories for Grom to take its pick. With a bit of luck and support from his friends, though, he might just make it through the night.

Frenemies (1,737): Hunter gets a mysterious message telling him to meet them at the night market. He really should have realized Luz would be behind this. Or: Post-ASIAS, Luz doesn't like the idea of Hunter suddenly showing up at Hexside and almost kidnapping her friends.

Code Lyoko (Gen): 1

No One’s an Island (7,612): Yumi is tired. XANA's attacks have been relentless and it's wearing her down. Between school, home life, and Lyoko, she's not sure how much more she can handle. After all, there's only so much weight one person can take. Except, it's not just Yumi's burden to carry, and her friends are going to do whatever they can to remind her of that.

Specifics:

Events Participated In:

SPN Summergen (Fic), Player Appreciation Week (Art), Weird People MEP (Edit), Dear Fellow Traveler (Animatic), SPN Gencest Bang (Fic), Fandom Trumps Hate (Art/Fic), Mirage and Mischief Zine (Fic), and LOTS of zine apps (Fic, Art, Mod).

Best/worst title?

Best title: None of them super jump out at me, but Whatever it Takes and Between the Lines of Fear and Blame both come from songs where the song vibe/lyrics match the fic PERFECTLY. The latter is a bit long for my tastes, but it’s grown on me. What Doesn’t Kill You (Gives you Trauma) makes me chuckle too, but it’s got the same length issue as well as trying out a new style from my norm which I had mixed feelings on.

Worst title: Oof, well as usual, I didn’t particularly like most of my titles this year. I think Frenemies has to take the cake though. It started as a working title but then I got lazy and just left it when I posted. It feels so generic and not... aesthetic enough? Poetic enough? Literally no idea why it bothers me so much but it does.

General Questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I honestly can’t remember what I was expecting this year (and it’s tradition that I can’t look back at my goals ‘til I answer these questions, so it will remain unknown). I certainly hoped to be able to do more since last year was a fairly barren year creativity-wise, but I’ve also been quite aware for a while that being in school sucks out my soul makes it difficult to create. With that, I think I probably was in the ballpark of what I was expecting. I might have predicted it being more spread out, though, which is a rookie move considering that my classes are clustered haha. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

I think I’d just barely gotten into TOH at the start of the year, so that wasn’t COMPLETELY unpredictable, but I did write some Huntlow (aka, romance) fics, which is abnormal for me! Additionally, I can’t remember if I discovered The Sentinel this year or last, but that definitely wasn’t expected. Just got the DVDs so I can finish watching the series! Oh, also writing Code Lyoko was a new experience (not counting my random 6th grade fanfiction I wrote in notebooks lol).

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

I’m split quite a bit on this one. On one hand, I really like my Grom fic (so far) so I’m hoping that will continue to flow as I wrap it up. I also like my unposted fic about Willow dealing with Hunter’s near-death and Camila comforting her. Of those that are currently posted, though, I think I might go with No One is an Island. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out how to write Yumi and the other Code Lyoko characters, and considering the small size of the fandom, it was fairly well-received too!

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

Same as the last two years! Fragmentation’s views are hard to really predict since view counts have been down since September, but the total views has officially surpassed the overall word count at 21.4k views (vs 20.7k word count). Which is AMAZING. It’s always a bit wild to me to consider, but I’m so great people are enjoying my fic. Next is still The Problem With Good Intentions at 12.6k, which surprises me less now that I’ve seen just how alive and well the Once and Future Fandom is haha. From the fics I posted this year, it would be When it Rains, it Pours at 1.5k.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

A Letter to Never Be Read on FF.net never really got any traction, but I think I’m over it by now. As for more current underappreciated fic... I think I might actually go with When it Rains, it Pours again. Even though it had the most views, it’s a fairly long, multi-chap story and didn’t get many reviews in between chapters. That’s part of the challenge with bangs and posting dates, though, so nothing too shocking there.

Hardest story to write?

It’s really hard to say! I was struggling with burnout a lot during my zine app timeframes, but most of those fics haven’t been posted yet. It might be Whatever it Takes just cause I had such a hard time coming up with something that matched the prompts as well as my preferences. When it Rains, it Pours was also a challenge at times, but mostly in trying to find motivation to write anything.

Most overdue story?

It’s Only Natural is still very very overdue, but it’s not super popular (and is on FF.net), so it’s not one I’m stressed about. I think about A Long Ways Home a lot, though. I wanted to work on it recently, but unfortunately my writing energy needed to go towards FTH so that continued to be put off. People have left some very supportive comments on it recently, though, which I majorly appreciate!

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

It hasn’t been a very writer-heavy year, which means less opportunities for writing risks. Writing for Code Lyoko was something of a risk in that I had no idea how it would turn out, but it wasn’t actually that adventurous. I also explored different types of grief in an unposted zine app piece, but I think in the end it turned out solid! My biggest risk was probably a different ficlet I wrote for a zine app. It was of young Eda and Grudgy, so both about characters I’m less invested in and in the sports genre, which is totally new for me. Unfortunately, that risk didn’t pay off. I actually felt pretty good about it, but when I sent it for feedback from a mod friend, they really didn’t like it. Everything’s subjective so it’s possible that it would still be enjoyable for some people, but suffice to say, I didn’t use it for any apps in the end.

How’d this year compare to your goals of last year?

Okie here we go! I think my goals were fairly reasonable last year if I remember correctly so I’m tentatively optimistic I’ll have some stuff to check off!

Oof last year had a bunch of paragraphs of reflection here. I think I’m gonna focus more on bullets this year haha.

Goals from 2022:

-Unfortunately, keeping my scholarship has to be my biggest goal this year again so gonna put that here in case it's the only thing I can check off come December.

-A Long Ways Home (at least 1 new chapter) -SPN Summergen-At least 3/7 Player Appreciation Week days-Catch up on comment replies -At least do some more brainstorming for bigger CS aus -Huntlow/Owl House fics?-One zine?

If crazy inspired year: -All of A Long Ways Home -All Player Appreciation Week Days -WIP Bang with It’s Only Natural -Post More CS One-shots -Write out more big AU scenes -Other Zines

Oof, okay so apparently I was not crazy inspired this year lol. To be fair, I did do a bit more exploration in art and lots more in merch, so it wasn’t a totally uncreative year. And I doubled my word count overall from last year! Plus I did apply to a LOT of zines this year... I just unfortunately didn’t get in to nearly any of them. Next time maybe though! I’m a pinch hitter for a couple so that’s something at least!

It’s also been a year with lots of burnout and anhedonia for me, so brainstorming has been completely unachievable for most of the year. It’s been sad and I feel a little bad for my poor friends who love to brainstorm with me, but thankfully they have other sources. I’m scared to say anything, but I’ve felt more recently like maybe some interest is returning, so I’m crossing my fingers that it will still be there by the time FTH/Mirage&Mischief stuff is finished and school starts.

I actually met my goals this year too! In fact, my stretch goal had 25k posted, which I doubled in total and surpassed in written too, which is really impressive for me! Not to mention, I finished EVERY SINGLE fic I wrote this year!! That’s WILD for me. To be honest, it’s probably more a sad reflection on how I was writing purely for external deadlines rather than myself, but hey! Still got them all done and wrote a lot of words. Overall, thank you last year Sakarrie for keeping things achievable cause I actually did meet/exceed my goals!

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Well, I was a little relieved to find that I’d met them this year, so I think I’m going to try to keep things not too high again. Overall, though, I think I want to have a little more room for creative freedom in what I’m writing this year. For how little creative work I was doing, I did a TON of events, and at many times, those obligations stopped me from working on something I was feeling more inspired by. My fandom interests jumped all over this year (main focuses include: TOH, Merlin, Code Lyoko, The Sentinel, Dragon Prince, She-ra, Handplates (Undertale), and Centaurworld). Honorable mentions to Amphibia, SPN, and Miraculous Ladybug too... and that’s all just the stuff I’ve had long hyperfixations on this year. There’s tons of fandoms outside of those that also grabbed my attention on and off this year.)

Anyway, my hope is that I’ll be able to write similarly or more this year, but based on my own fickle inspiration, rather than only writing when I hate to for events. With that, I think I’m going to just stick with the Gencest Bang and zine obligations as the only writing events I’m planning on this year. I also hope to do Player Appreciation Week and Summergen again, but both of those could be art if needed.

I also 100% failed in my comments goal from last year, but my mindset is slowly getting healthier I think. I do leave comments occasionally, but they still feel like way bigger deals than they should be. I’m getting better at letting old tabs go, though! I’m also fairly behind on responding to comments of my fics, but that one’s a lot more manageable.

Additionally, I want to have a pinned post on my tumblr page and ao3 profile page where people who are interested can see my current status on projects. I don’t expect it would be updated all the time, but it might help me keep track of everything.

Okay so! Goals for next year: -Have a solid zine portfolio -Make pinned update post -Post at least 4 stories -Embrace/follow the inspiration -Finish first draft A Long Ways Home -Gencest Bang -Summergen Exchange -Code:Swap -Player Appreciation Week -Apply to more zines

So, finally work counts goals are...

Easy Goal Word Count Goal: 20k (at least 10k posted)

Stretch Goal (aka, if I don’t die from school agAIN): 60k (at least 30k posted)

Ultimate 2021 Word Count Goal: 38k

#sakarrie's fic #the owl house #supernatural #code lyoko #gen #huntlow #ao3 #fic list #2023 fics #end of year reflection #fic roundup

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pokimoko · 10 months ago

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Poki's Top 10s for 2023

I ended up enjoying a great many new pieces of media this year so, for no reason other than doing it for myself, I thought I do a roundup of all the ones I loved the most. So, in no particular order, here are some lists.

Top 10 TV Shows*:

Severance

Ted Lasso

The Last of Us

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

A League of Their Own

Fionna and Cake

Scavenger's Reign

Daisy Jones & The Six

Pushing Daisies

*excluding continuing shows I didn't start watching this year, such as 'Our Flag Means Death', 'Heartstopper', 'Doctor Who', 'The Owl House', and 'Good Omens'. They all certainly would have made it onto this list otherwise, but that wouldn't be fair to all the new shows I watched so instead they are getting listed here as honourable mentions

Top 10 Movies:

Nimona

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3

Good Night Oppy

Sing a Bit of Harmony

CODA

A Silent Voice

The Truman Show

Stranger Than Fiction

Entergalactic

Top 10 Video Games*

Portal 2

Omori

The Wolf Among Us

Guardians of the Galaxy

God of War: Ragnarok

The Quarry

Gris

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

Control

*that I finished the main story for in 2023, so this list doesn't include any games I played but have not completed as of posting this (RIP 'Disco Elysium' and 'Tears of the Kingdom', maybe next year)

Top 10 Books/Graphic Novels

'How It Feels to Float' by Helena Fox

'Project Hail Mary' by Andy Weir

'Dungeon Club: Roll Call' by Molly Knox Ostertag and Xanthe Bouma

'I Hope You Get This Message' by Farah Naz Rishi

'Red, White & Royal Blue' by Casey McQuiston

'Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues' by H.S Valley

'The Martian' by Andy Weir

'House of Hollow' by Krystal Sutherland

'Watch Over Me' by Nina LaCour

'The City We Became' by N.K Jemisin

Top 10 Podcasts

Wolf 359

The Silt Verses

Seen and Not Heard

Dust: Chrysallis

Life with LEO(h)

The Bright Sessions

StarTripper!!

In Strange Woods

Malevolent

Mistholme Museum

And that's it for 2023. Fare thee well, you wonderful, terrible, so-so year.

#personal #personal archive #this post is partially to keep track of what i really liked this year and also partially to go 'hey look I liked this thing! you too? yay!'#(and also maybe partially as recommendations)#rec list #2023 #end of year #end of year roundup #not sure if this is something i'll be doing yearly but whatever #i would have done top 10 fanfics but i am shit at remembering which fanfics i liked the most or even remembering which ones i've read #queue

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deng-yi-deng · 11 months ago

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Drama round-up 2023

This is one of the best drama years I've had since I started watching in 2019. I think I've finally learned when to drop and when to say - maybe another time.

there were some standouts, but for me the top three were:

Oh no! Here comes trouble

Ripe Town

Till the End of the Moon

reviews (in the order I watched things) under the cut

The Blood of Youth 少年歌行 (3.75/5)

2023 started off on an unexpectedly good note with a really fun well-done wuxia. It had lots of what I enjoy in a drama: ensemble cast of friends, good pacing, some humor, lots of fighting, and a fairly logical plot. Sure, there was a little bit of over-the-top silliness, but it's a wuxia, not a historical drama, so I enjoyed it. What it did not have a lot of was romance - which is fine - though there was a really sweet angsty sub-plot with two minor characters, one played by cutie Cao Yuchen, if that's your jam. Besides that sub-plot I personally didn't find any of the (many) other CPs had chemistry or added anything to the overall drama, and yes I am including those folks who ship the MLs.* Costumes, effects, and visuals were all great, and acting was ok. There was a mix of younger and more seasoned actors which I think helps. Ngl I immediately fell for Liu Xueyi as Wu Xin, and will be watching more of his dramas.

Weak points were the dubbing and (some) acting. VA was done by the donghua VAs, and it took me until 3/4 of the way through to get used to their voices with the actor's looks. Many didn't fit well, especially Xiao Se (Li Hongyi). Which brings me to the #1 weak point - Li Hongyi. His character should have been interesting, and thus was chosen as the main ML, but the man's face does not move. It really detracted from the whole drama, especially when the plot moved to revolving entirely around him and who would inherit the throne. I started to groan every time the camera focused on him and his unmoving upper lip and vacant expression. There were so many more interesting side characters - from the 'older generation' as well as the younger, that I wish we had spent time on instead of focusing on the imperial family power struggles.

*it is impossible to have chemistry with an inert substance

League of Nobleman - dropped

Grammar aside (yes, the English title annoyed the crap out of me) the production value and look of this drama was really good. The plot was fairly interesting but for some reason overall it didn't grab me and I dropped it around ep 10. I think this was because I had just soldiered through one lackluster male lead, and had to deal with one again in Song Weilong. Everyone else was good, and I heard that it got better towards the end, but I'll never know. The real problems for me were two fold: the lazy plot device of the water-hypnotism thing (this is supposed to be historical, not wuxia, so I am less tolerant of vaguely magical/occulty things that just happen to make solving the crime easier) and the fact that the drama was trying soooo hard to pretend to be a dangai and get you to ship absolutely everyone with the ML. If that's your thing, then you might enjoy it.

Under the Microscope 4/5

Dubious at first because of the slightly 'Rain man' treatment they were giving the ML. You also have to give it lots of drama leeway in terms of historical accuracy (w/r/t the role of the lawyer) which was done for obvious dramatic reasons.

If you can overlook those two things, it was satisfying - well paced, and well plotted. The look was much more realistic than typical costume dramas, and joy of joys, large portions of it used live audio (not dubbed) which gave it even more of a realistic feel. I wasn't completely sold on Zhang Ruoyun's performance, though I do think he's a good actor - it might have been the writing or direction, difficult to know. I'm fairly sensitive to portraying neurodivergent characters. All the supporting characters and their performers were really good which is what eventually won me over.

Till the End of the Moon 4.5/5

This should probably rate it's own post. I've defended the ending once, and will do forever - it is not a BE. It fit the themes of the drama perfectly. This drama will either continue to be divisive, or everyone will move on with their lives. It won't leave me though, I'm scarred for life. (the personal emotional damage is what earned it the extra .5 in my rating. I've never cried this hard over a drama ending.)

So far this is the only xianxia I've seen that manages to be about more than romantic love. Though it stuck to some familiar plot devices - the three arcs, destiny/fate, multiple cps - it was about so much more than the main cp and I hope paves the way for more like it, turning away from tired tropes and towards a literal xianxia - the story of Immortal Heroes - not just fairy-tale love.

The biggest flaws (outside of Xixi's inconsistent heavy makeup and an overuse of sparkly effects that obscured the action during fight scenes) can be blamed pretty squarely on the NRTA rules. Tantai Jin was a bit too whitewashed. Li Susu's character arc was difficult to follow because of all the many many cuts. I was very frustrated towards the end as the majority of really brutal editing seemed to be done in the last arc - it made the plot confusing and character motivations - especially for Li Susu - unclear. Overall, it was good but could have been even better if we had all the episodes and production had gone even further with the Dunhuang aesthetic and farther from typical xianxia/wuxia tropes.

Oh No! Here Comes Trouble 5+/5

I was worried I'd need to give up cdramas forever after the emotional beating I took watching TTEOTM. Luckily tumblr came through and kept putting gifs of this on my dash. An absolute gem. Funny and heartfelt drama about paranormal investigation, friendship, family relationships, death and grief, high school bullying - it really had it all. Twelve episodes were not enough!!! It's rare that I can literally say "I laughed, I cried" about any show but it was true for this one (and maybe the Good Place.) The friendship among the characters, and their really supportive families was so heartwarming. Which was needed since there were also lots of dark themes about isolation and loneliness, abuse, and death. The attention to detail in the sets and character names and backstories were so clever, it was obvious how much love the production had for the show. My only quibbles are that the first couple eps that set the characters were a little long to get through, other than that a practically perfect drama in every regard.

Mysterious Lotus Casebook - on indefinite hold

Not as good mystery-wise as Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty but mostly fun. Decent acting (this is the first time I've watched CY and he's OK, if not particularly compelling for me.) I should have liked this more because as a wuxia/mystery it's absolutely 100% up my alley but found myself falling asleep during some episodes - there is way too much exposition and not enough 'show' when it comes to the mystery solving aspect. I most definitely skipped all the tender scenes between CY and CDL's characters (🤮).

I ended up putting it on hold, but I might pick it up again for Xiao Shunyao's character. I think the main reason people went bonkers for this drama on tumblr was because they loved shipping the MLs, which - whatever.

Hikaru no Go 5/5

Finally watched this after having it on the list for a couple years and it was absolutely as good as people said it was. Touching and sweet without being overly sentimental. The child actors were fabulous - I was almost sad to see them grow up and be replaced by the main actors. Each character really feels like they're a complete person, their motivations and actions are individual and understandable. Who knew I'd love a drama based on a manga about Go?

Ripe Town 5/5

Everything about this short drama was absolutely top notch. It was like watching a prestige western drama or mini-series. I want more of these, please! Luckily I've heard that Tencent is making a series (like iQiyi's "light on") that will specialize in these shorter dramas.

The cinematography was gorgeous and set the mood so well. Acting was excellent from everyone. The plot was TIGHT. The pacing was ON. Direction was so good. Audio was live, not dubbed for most of it (aaaaaaaah my beloved ambient audio.) I looked forward to each new episode and lamented that there were only 12. The suspense built with every episode as we learned the backstories of our characters and what happened 20 years ago. There was even humor - dark, adult humor, not slapstick. The only slight failing for me was the very very end - there's an unnecessarily twist that, while it didn't ruin the drama, didn't really help it either, and in fact muddied some of the character motivations somewhat. Aside for that would have been the best cdrama I've ever seen.

Love is Panacea - dropped

Yet another modern drama starring my favorite actor that I simply could not get through. Sorry Xixi. He and Zhang Ruonan were both good (though her stiff faced kiss scenes were not) but the plot was a melodramatic mess that overshadowed a really sweet message about facing adversity. The direction made it look like a cheesy idol drama in spots, and the secondary characters (Dr. Gu's family) were beyond annoying. Please let him stop acting in these sub-par modern dramas. I have no idea why it did so well on CCTV8 other than the fact that he looked stunning through most of it.

The Story of Kunning Palace 3.75/5

Honestly not entirely sure how to rate this, but out of all similar dramas I've ever watched this was pretty well paced and generally well acted. I definitely looked forward to each episode but did eventually find myself 2x'ing through some of the slower scenes and romantic longing looks with the OST in the background (yawn.) The revenge plot was well done, and more interesting than the 'who will she pick' romance plot, though even I found myself rooting for one of our MLs more than the other (even though it was obvious who would get the girl).

The biggest downside for me was the directing - the spins, the terrible backlight - it was so dated and so noticeable that it took me out of the drama. Though Bai Lu did a good job, I won't say it was her strongest performance. Zhang Linghe was criticized for his performance and at first I disagreed strongly. His character was a little exaggerated but it's a costume drama, come on. Around ep 32 though I understood what people meant. His character was too unhinged to be taken very seriously - I mean, how many times can you stab yourself without the audience thinking you're nuts? His shouting and throat grabbing was just a bit over the top and was more like deranged stalker behavior than hopelessly obsessed lover. How much of that was direction (see my earlier criticism) I don't know, but at the end...he's all fine. Gets the girl, loves kitties, etc. etc. Ngl, I did not expect such a pat HE and it kind of didn't fit. Folks who love HE loved it though.

#what I watched this year #cdrama review #cdrama roundup 2023 #posting this early since I don't think I'll start and finish another drama before the end of the year

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formulaorange · 2 years ago

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2022 End of the Year Anime Summary

2022 has been a hell of a year. Here's everything I've watched and the awards for the top series!

We've completed 83 shows this year!! A total of 1132 episodes! Which adds up to 415 Hours or 17 and a half days! My 2022 top 3 shows were: Ousama Ranking/King's Ranking Summertime Render Bleach: Thousand year Blood war Honorable mentions: Spy Family Vinland Saga Sabikui Bisco Aoashi

We increased our standards a little and dropped a few more shows than last year: Couple of Cuckoos Devil as a Part Timer S2 Uncle from another World When will Ayumu make his move Akiba Maid Wars Keep it Cool Guys It's been a solid year for anime watchers, we got some highly anticipated releases and long awaited reboots. Here's a sneak peek at what we should look forward to for 2023: Vinland Saga S2 - JAN Misfit of Demon King Academy S2 - JAN Tokyo Revengers S2 - JAN The Vampire Dies in No Time S2 - JAN Demon Slayer S3 - APR Dr. Stone S3 - APR KonoSuba S3 - APR Hell's Paradise - APR MASHLE - APR Ousama Ranking S2 - APR Oshi no Ko - APR Jujutsu Kaisen S2 - JUL Bleach Thousand year Blood War Part 2 - JUL Needless to say, it'll be a stacked year and will definitely keep us busy. Here's to 2022 and what 2023 has in store!! 🎉

2021 Anime Summary - Link

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oh-a-very-toxic-octopus · 10 months ago

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Read in 2023

#this year's reads #books #reading #booklr #my posts #end of year roundup #2023 #read in 2023 #book time time for book

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reasonsforhope · 2 months ago

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Masterpost: Reasons I firmly believe we will beat climate change

Posts are in reverse chronological order (by post date, not article date), mostly taken from my "climate change" tag, which I went through all the way back to the literal beginning of my blog. Will update periodically.

Especially big deal articles/posts are in bold.

Big picture:

Mature trees offer hope in world of rising emissions (x)

Spying from space: How satellites can help identify and rein in a potent climate pollutant (x)

Good news: Tiny urban green spaces can cool cities and save lives (x)

Conservation and economic development go hand in hand, more often than expected (x)

The exponential growth of solar power will change the world (x)

Sun Machines: Solar, an energy that gets cheaper and cheaper, is going to be huge (x)

Wealthy nations finally deliver promised climate aid, as calls for more equitable funding for poor countries grow (x)

For Earth Day 2024, experts are spreading optimism – not doom. Here's why. (x)

Opinion: I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore. (x)

The World’s Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think (x)

‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief (x)

Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (x)

Young Forests Capture Carbon Quicker than Previously Thought (x)

Yes, climate change can be beaten by 2050. Here's how. (x)

Soil improvements could keep planet within 1.5C heating target, research shows (x)

The global treaty to save the ozone layer has also slowed Arctic ice melt (x)

The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past (x)

Scientists Find Methane is Actually Offsetting 30% of its Own Heating Effect on Planet (x)

Are debt-for-climate swaps finally taking off? (x)

High seas treaty: historic deal to protect international waters finally reached at UN (x)

How Could Positive ‘Tipping Points’ Accelerate Climate Action? (x)

Specific examples:

Environmental Campaigners Celebrate As Labour Ends Tory Ban On New Onshore Wind Projects (x)

Private firms are driving a revolution in solar power in Africa (x)

How the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu drastically cut plastic pollution (x)

Rewilding sites have seen 400% increase in jobs since 2008, research finds [Scotland] (x)

The American Climate Corps take flight, with most jobs based in the West (x)

Waste Heat Generated from Electronics to Warm Finnish City in Winter Thanks to Groundbreaking Thermal Energy Project (x)

Climate protection is now a human right — and lawsuits will follow [European Union] (x)

A new EU ecocide law ‘marks the end of impunity for environmental criminals’ (x)

Solar hits a renewable energy milestone not seen since WWII [United States] (x)

These are the climate grannies. They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their grandchildren. [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

Century of Tree Planting Stalls the Warming Effects in the Eastern United States, Says Study (x)

Chart: Wind and solar are closing in on fossil fuels in the EU (x)

UK use of gas and coal for electricity at lowest since 1957, figures show (x)

Countries That Generate 100% Renewable Energy Electricity (x)

Indigenous advocacy leads to largest dam removal project in US history [United States and Native American Nations] (x)

India’s clean energy transition is rapidly underway, benefiting the entire world (x)

China is set to shatter its wind and solar target five years early, new report finds (x)

‘Game changing’: spate of US lawsuits calls big oil to account for climate crisis (x)

Largest-ever data set collection shows how coral reefs can survive climate change (x)

The Biggest Climate Bill of Your Life - But What Does It DO? [United States] (x)

Good Climate News: Headline Roundup April 1st through April 15th, 2023 (x)

How agroforestry can restore degraded lands and provide income in the Amazon (x) [Brazil]

Loss of Climate-Crucial Mangrove Forests Has Slowed to Near-Negligable Amount Worldwide, Report Hails (x)

Agroecology schools help communities restore degraded land in Guatemala (x)

Climate adaptation:

Solar-powered generators pull clean drinking water 'from thin air,' aiding communities in need: 'It transforms lives' (x)

‘Sponge’ Cities Combat Urban Flooding by Letting Nature Do the Work [China] (x)

Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala (x)

A green roof or rooftop solar? You can combine them in a biosolar roof — boosting both biodiversity and power output (x)

Global death tolls from natural disasters have actually plummeted over the last century (x)

Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be (x)

This city turns sewage into drinking water in 24 hours. The concept is catching on [Namibia] (x)

Plants teach their offspring how to adapt to climate change, scientists find (x)

Resurrecting Climate-Resilient Rice in India (x)

Other Masterposts:

Going carbon negative and how we're going to fix global heating (x)

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muffinlance · 4 months ago

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State of the Muffin Report 2023-24

Happy belated birthday to my fanfics! Little Zuko turned six back in March. <3

Behold, my annual roundup stats, because you can get fanfic from the math teacher but you can’t get the math out of the fanfic:

[id: Screenshot of an excel spreadsheet showing my 2023-24 word counts. Important info is that over six stories, I wrote 104k words, for a monthly average of 8.6k and a daily of 284 words. End id.]

Fanfic:

After not touching the birthday fic itself since 2019, Little Zuko v the World is finally finished! Woooo.

Otherwise, a slow-but-steady sort of year on the fanfic front.

Serious Face Writing & RL:

Li’s Friends has now raised $4,206.21 USD for wildlife charity, not counting gift matches. <3

Finished the second book in my original fic series, Fox’s Tongue; The Skin Stealer’s Son officially launched yesterday! (Affiliate link, so that if you happen to buy it, Amazon pays me extra money for the privilege.)

I also created a secondary tiny human, and she is a DELIGHT. She was last seen a half hour ago crawling after her brother like a particularly aggressive tripod, Hop on Pop in one hand, and slap-screaming at it until he read it to her. My children. <3

Year Six (2024-25) Goals

Fanfic:

Gonna finish the new case of Dark Night in Ba Sing Se. Gonna finish it so good. (This is a donation fic for the winner of my Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction and is therefore due by the end of the year, so woo artificial timelines! Ah external motivations, how I missed you from my school days.)

I’m incredibly excited for Blindsiding Badgermoles, and have that same lovely external motivation in the form of my sensitivity reader, so planning to focus on that this year.

Finish the current book of Towards the Sun. We’re currently on the final field trip, so that should be very doable. —I say, using the exact same wording for the third year in a row. Honestly this one’s less a goal than a joke to see how many years it’s actually going to take me. And hey, I’ve been making progress! We now have the delight that is Lady Jun! Third year’s the charm?

Serious Face Writing & RL:

Get a solid start on Fox’s Tongue Book Three, Face of the Wolf King.

Get out large print editions of the first two books.

Continue raising children.

Special thanks this year goes to First and Secondborn, who blessed me with the ability to still manage over 100k in a year, which is way more than I anticipated at this time last year.

Cheers,

MuffinLance

#state of the muffin report #avatar the last airbender #atla #fox's tongue and kirin's bone #writing stuff

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brucebocchi · 22 days ago

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Summer 2024 anime roundup: ALL IN ONE

hey! i also post these reviews on my ko-fi. this is a labor of love so if you like the stuff i write, i'd really appreciate it if you'd throw a few bucks my way. thanks!

Well, I'm much busier now than I was in the first half of the year, so that means less time for anime and less time for writing about it. I managed to watch only (ONLY?) nine shows this season, so might as well put it all in one post.

As always, each show's OP is linked in the title.

Let's jump in.

Returning anime

NieR: Automata Ver. 1.1a, part 2

After a COVID-plagued production delayed the last few episodes of its first half last year, A-1 Pictures’ adaptation of Yoko Taro’s landmark action-RPG returns to deliver the real meat of the story. And as with the game, the first half of NieR: Automata Ver. 1.1a was something I’d classify as “pretty good!,” while the remainder is what makes the entire endeavor worthwhile.

I’m happy to report that not only did the studio not lose a step, but they improved on the presentation of Ver. 1.1a immensely. The action sequences are superb and expressive throughout, and the CGI integration is actually, y’know, integrated this time out. The score, both original and borrowed from Keiichi Okabe’s contributions to the NieR duology, remains as evocative as ever. They also ramped up the cheesecake more than a little bit, and let’s be real, that was the draw for a lot of people in the first place.

If there’s any one thing Ver. 1.1a can claim as an advantage over the game’s narrative, it’s that the former does a lot more work in building on A2 as a character. There’s just enough to chew on in the game, but having more of her backstory from the YoRHa stage play and manga adaptation integrated into the narrative makes for more of a meal. Having A2’s history and real personality pinned up as a backdrop as she struggles to suppress both really fleshes out her journey and eventual resolve as shit continues to hit the fan. She’s also just a big ol’ tsundere sometimes. And not for nothing, but they gave her an absolute DUMPY for no reason, but I can’t really pin that as a negative.

9S’ whole thing happens too. I really don’t have much to add to that.

When I reviewed this show’s first half at the end of 2023, I mentioned that the initial concern with the anime’s very existence is that it’s adapting a narrative that is functionally being told through the very fact that it’s a video game. The delivery of the game’s true ending, especially, is so innately A Video Game that it’s functionally impossible to adapt directly into a television show. I’m happy to say that although that function is lost, Ver. 1.1a’s ending is still plenty satisfying (and I’m told especially so for Drakengard fans, without giving too much away). Something is still very much lost in the transition, though. In his review of the penultimate episode, Anime News Network’s James Beckett wrote:

What the anime of NieR:Automata has not been able to capture in these critical final moments is the way that the game makes its players complicit in the tragedy in a way that they could never be if they simply sat down and passively watched these events unfold from behind the safe veil of the fourth wall. It would be like if we were each individually guided on stage to place our hands on Hamlet's shoulder and push him gently onwards to his final destination. It doesn't change anything about what happens in the story, but it changes everything about what it means to us.

These acts of “ludonarrative culpability,” as Beckett called it, are the reason why Yoko Taro is considered an auteur in the gaming sphere. Both NieR games are tragedies writ large, and Yoko’s genius lies in making you, the player, carry out the tragedy, often well before you realize what you’ve wrought. And to Beckett’s point from his review, NieR: Automata is a perfectly fine sci-fi story in its own right, but the game puts the blood squarely on the player’s hands and inserts them into the narrative in a way that simply watching cannot. The connection I felt to the story was only there because I’d already played the game myself; I can only imagine how it would feel if this was your introduction to NieR.

So to return to a question I suggested at the end of last year: Do I recommend this to people who haven’t played the game? Eh, not particularly. It’s a well-made show, to be sure, but there’s enough missing from what makes Automata such an exceptional game that I’m not sure I can recommend it wholeheartedly if you’re not already familiar. Then again, I wouldn’t really know how it reads from the other side. To those who know and love the game, Ver. 1.1a isn’t quite the “Rebuild of NieR” some were hoping it to be, but it’s an interesting companion piece that takes surprising strides to tie it even closer to the preceding franchise. If you’re a newcomer? YMMV. Either way, play the game.

Oshi no Ko, season 2

I spent far more time than was necessary in the Discourse Mines following Oshi no Ko’s thunderous debut last year and a controversial (but fortunately inconsequential) turn of events in the manga shortly after the season finale. Though I remain one of the series’ foremost glazers, I’ve had my moments where I worried that maybe I overrated it a bit in my head, that I carried too much water for writer Aka Akasaka, and that I’m still riding the high of the series’ premiere.

Oshi no Ko’s second season completely erased any lingering worry almost immediately and reminded me and the world that yes, it Really Is That Good. The “It’s So Over” switch flipped to “We Are So Back” as soon as best girl Kana Arima and co-lead Taiki Himekawa dazzled their co-stars and one another with literally colorful displays of their acting prowesses. My expectations continued to rise as an active reader of the source material, and studio Doga Kobo continued to surpass them. This adaptation is just that good.

Aqua’s quest for revenge and Akasaka’s continuing examination of Japan’s entertainment industry both lead us into the world of stage acting, specifically 2.5D adaptations of famous manga and anime. Aqua is cast alongside Kana and his sham girlfriend and former reality show co-star Akane in an adaptation of the fictional smash hit shonen manga Tokyo Blade, along with several members of a theater company to which Ai once belonged. While Aqua is more concerned with getting dirt on Ai’s background than he is with acting, Kana and Akane have much more personal stakes as they try to show one another up and still put on the best play they can. Kana can’t stand Akane’s absolutist, matter-of-fact approach to acting (nor the fact that she’s fake-dating the guy for whom Kana’s down abysmal), while Akane, who idolized Kana as a child and is disappointed to see her take a step back as an actress, is trying her damnedest to rekindle the spark that convinced her to pick up acting in the first place. On the fringes, rookie actor Melt Narushima is trying to make up for a heinous performance in the first season that earned him the scorn of his more experienced castmates as well as a mangaka’s permanent ire.

A good amount of this arc does feel like Akasaka was still sorting through his feelings about the Kaguya-sama live adaptation when he wrote it, but he also gave himself some room for reflection on his own side of the equation as a mangaka. Tokyo Blade’s creator, Abiko Samejima, holds her creation very dear and is not impressed with the script. Her friend and former boss, Yoriko Kichijouji, is entirely too familiar with how badly the process can go; her own manga, Sweet Today, was horribly botched in this show’s first season, and she wants to help Abiko-sensei keep a level head. Kichijouji-sensei is the voice of reason this time out as she points out all of the concessions creators may need to take in order to get their work adapted and the unimpeachable truth that mangaka are basically crazy people (and you can practically hear Akasaka screaming through her lines; four months after Kichijouji said this in the manga, Kaguya-sama published its final chapter, marking Akasaka’s retirement from illustrating serialized manga). At her urging, in addition to an all-nighter helping Abiko-sensei make a deadline, the play goes off without any more hitches.

I didn’t much care for the Tokyo Blade arc in the manga but I knew full well that it would translate well to anime just as well as the acting sequences in the first season had. Akasaka’s decision to have the actors treat the stage as a battleground felt a little silly on the page, but experiencing everything again in sound and motion reminded me that this was the same genre of psychological competition that made Kaguya-sama one of my all-time favorites. Doga Kobo is just stupidly good at adapting manga. God, the animation is incredible. Character animation is as deliberate and mesmerizing as always, and emotional moments are punctuated by interpretive splashes of watercolors. Melt’s breakout on stage was a standout moment in the manga, but the abstract, expressionistic depiction of his redemption was so perfectly conceived on screen that life imitated art: Kichijouji-sensei cried in the anime, and manga artist Mengo Yokoyari cried in real life.

I could go on and on and on, but if you’re already this deep into Oshi no Ko I really don’t need to tell you anything else. This season, for all its gorgeous visuals and onstage glory, does not hesitate to remind you at the worst possible moments that this is still ultimately a revenge story and pulls the rug from you just as gleefully as it dazzles. The first season was already exceptional, but the second cements Oshi no Ko as an all-time great adaptation. As a fan of the manga, this is as good of an anime as I could ask for, and then some.

Mixed Bags

My Deer Friend Nokotan

I’m just exhausted.

I’ll admit, I bit a little too hard on the marketing. The preview trailers promised madcap, nonsensical fun on the level of Nichijou or Asobi Asobase, the cast was exceptional, and the OP’s refrain was a total earworm (Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan! Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan! Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan!). It even has the cast jumping in the air! And we all know the Ryo Yamada rule! This was going to set the bar for gag anime!

Oh, how little I knew. Y’know how sometimes you see a trailer for a middling comedy movie and you can tell they already gave away all of the movie’s best jokes? Turns out My Deer Friend Nokotan did just that. I did temper my expectations; it’s not like I thought this was going to be the second coming of Nichijou or anything, but I guess I was still expecting something, I dunno, funnier?

The premise seemed to lend itself to a good comedy either way: Torako Koshi, a former delinquent, has successfully expunged her prior reputation and worked her way up to becoming her school’s student council president. All of that is nearly thrown away when a bizarre new student, Noko Shikanoko, immediately clocks her and almost spills the beans. Also, Shikanoko (who prefers to be addressed as Nokotan) has antlers and can commune with deer. She may even be a deer herself. She hoodwinks Koshi into starting a Deer Club at school, where they recruit Koshi’s upsetting younger sister Anko and the languid, rice-obsessed Bashame. Allegedly, shenanigans ensue.

Take this with a grain of salt, as humor is very subjective, but this show just plain isn’t very funny. Nokotan’s gags hit at least as often as they miss, and a lot of them just feel unforgivably dull. One bad segment can feel like an entire episode. The only reliable gags are gross-out humor, outsized slow-motion violence, or Nausicaä references. Everything else is just Koshi barging into the lower third of the screen to shout about how wacky the joke was just then.

Look, I know that humor doesn’t always translate across cultures. The things I don’t understand about Japanese humor could fill several libraries. I do, at the very least, get the basics of the boke/tsukkomi dynamic (fool and straight-man, basically) and how the reaction to a silly thing is usually the real punchline. I’ve absorbed enough Japanese media to adapt to that momentum. That nearly goes out the window here, because Koshi’s role as the tsukkomi is a straight-up momentum killer. It’s rarely just a “wait, what?!” or a “yeah, that’s rich coming from you;” it’s usually more like “wait, that is so ridiculous! You couldn’t possibly have pulled that off! And what’s that you’re wearing all of a sudden?” The rhythm is just gone. Comic timing? Don’t know her. Even if I thought the joke was funny at first, you could probably see any semblance of a smirk fading off my face by the time she was done. And hey, maybe some of this stuff doesn’t translate. Maybe it’s not that funny in Japan either.

The other characters outside of our main two really don’t help. Anko’s whole “yandere siscon” act isn’t very funny to start with, and she brings nothing to the table otherwise. Bashame is such a nothing character that even Koshi was sick of her by the end of the season. And while I feel like a good narrator can add a good level of je ne sais quoi to a comedy anime (see: Kaguya-sama), an overly intrusive one can actively take away from the humor (see: the Kaguya-sama dub). Nokotan’s narrator comes at it with a sort of winking, nudging “HEY, WE’RE A GAG ANIME” energy that gets too grating, too quickly. What doesn’t help is that he eventually affects a fake-desperate “please watch this show and tell your friends!” bent that called to mind Ron Howard’s narration in Arrested Development’s third season as it was approaching cancellation. Meta humor, as in the latter, can absolutely elevate the level of comedy; 100 Girlfriends in particular wielded it like a machete. In Nokotan, on the other hand, it betrays a clear lack of confidence in the writing, and there’s nothing less funny than comedy that doesn’t even believe in itself.

It’s not all awful, I swear. There are genuinely some very good gags; Nokotan’s cat-and-mouse game with an anachronistic matagi was a blast from beginning to end, and the skin-suit gag got a bigger laugh out of me than almost anything else I saw this season. Any good anime, especially a comedy, lives and dies by its voice cast, and Megumi Han’s performance as the titular Nokotan is this show’s whirring, beeping life support. She makes the absolute most of her considerable range as the jokes call for it, while somehow never stepping on her own toes by dipping into her Kana Arima voice from Oshi no Ko. Koshi shares a VA with Hatsune goddamn Miku. Bashame is pretty much only tolerable thanks to the languid performance of relative newcomer Fuuka Izumi, whom I’m very glad to hear in something that isn’t Gushing Over Magical Girls.

And aside from the music (the OP, to be fair, is infectious), that’s about all there is to like about the production. Did Studio WIT really make this? It looks like it could’ve been made by anybody, and that’s not a compliment. The uncanny CGI deer were the only real visual standout, and even those lost their shine before long. Something attempting to be this audacious needs to have a look to match, and Nokotan falls flat. Again, maybe that’s on me for trying to hold it to the standard Nichijou set.

I’d honestly be surprised if this gets picked up for another season. I’d be hard-pressed to come back for more.

No Longer Allowed in Another World

(CONTENT WARNING for discussion of suicide)

Osamu Dazai was one of the most complex and fascinating figures in Japan’s modern literary canon, right up there with his ideological opposite and real-life rival, Yukio Mishima. Dazai was, frankly, a disaster. He was a serial womanizer, terrible with money, repeatedly disowned by his family, unemployable, a deadbeat dad, and hopelessly addicted to drugs and booze. His magnum opus, Ningen Shikkaku, or No Longer Human, is a stark semi-autobiography, just barely fictionalizing his repeated failures of dignity and self-preservation, including his several failed attempts at double-suicide with his many illicit lovers. The same year it was published, however, Dazai was successful in his final attempt, drowning himself alongside his mistress in 1948.

But like, what if he got hit by the isekai truck instead?

Isekai Shikkaku, or No Longer Allowed in Another World, fully Goes There. The series begins with the legally distinct, unnamed Sensei and his lover Sacchan blindsided by an anachronistic truck along the riverbed. Sensei comes to, alone, in a monastery inspired by the JRPGs from well after his time. He doesn’t know what’s going on and he doesn’t care. All that matters is that he’s still alive, and that sucks for him. Sensei is greeted by Annette, an elf priestess in a virgin killer sweater, who is shocked to discover that not only has he not gained a single stat boost by coming to this world, but he’d also rather kill himself than take her up on the standard offer of an OP cheat skill (and he’d also just rather kill himself in general). So he bounces to go find Sacchan. His refreshing outlook on the new world, as opposed to the other excitable losers who got isekai’d before him, completely melts Annette’s brain to the point of falling in love with him on the spot, so she dons her sluttiest Persona 3 battle armor to chase after him.

Sensei hates this shit. Contemporary western fantasy hadn’t made its way to Japan yet in his time, so he has zero point of reference in this world, and he sure as shit has no clue what a JRPG is. The level-up jingles give him migraines. He has no self-preservation instincts and the only solace he has in this strange new world is a jar of toxic sleeping pills that he munches like M&Ms. He has no interest in or aptitude for fighting, so when he encounters a big-tiddy catgirl being squeezed half to death by a walking tree’s branches, Sensei sees the perfect opportunity to get himself killed. Unfortunately, his blood has become so toxic from said pills that piercing his skin instantly kills the tree, saving the young lady he incorrectly names Tama. Much to Annette’s consternation, she joins the party, and they set out on Sensei’s quest to find his lover and finally die in peace.

As you can guess, that’s not what happens. For some time, we see Sensei throwing himself in harm’s way, floridly imploring various fantasy monsters to kill him in one shot with their big bats, to the point where they get creeped out. His vaguely-threatening exhortations for death make for a fine formula, but one that can wear thin quickly. Before it gets that chance, though, the seed planted in Annette’s introduction bears fruit: The visitors to this world from our own aren’t here in isolation, and they have succeeded in completing the usual isekai goal of overthrowing the demon king. There’s now a massive power vacuum, and nature abhors that shit, so a cabal of erstwhile isekai protags dub themselves the Fallen Angels and decide to take over.

This turn was, to put it bluntly, the main thing that kept me watching. There’s a fine bit of commentary inherent to this framing that the type of wet-noodle, borderline faceless self-insert isekai protags tend to appeal to antisocial losers who would rather give into their basest impulses than see an opportunity to actually better themselves. This is not at all lost on Sensei; his keen eye for the human condition leads him to interrogate the Fallen Angels his party encounters so that he can write about their own failures as humans, as well as the gaping voids in their previous lives that led to them acting like petty tyrants as soon as they gained a bit of power and treating a brand new world like their own personal playground. Sensei’s writings reveal that he did indeed gain a power when he came over to this world; if he sees fit, a finished book will surround its subject and reanimate them back in their original world and afford them a second chance to right their wrongs or, in one particularly moving case, start over on the right foot.

For as audacious as No Longer Allowed’s premise is and as impeccable its comic timing and voice cast (you will find some absolute heaters completely buried on the call list), I just didn’t find it all that compelling. Isekai as a genre is so oversaturated that it was old hat to call it oversaturated even five years ago, so while I do try to pan for gold, sometimes I just come up with a neat-looking river stone. Hell, I can’t even say this one’s all that neat-looking; there’s nothing that looks all that great about it to begin with. The character designs and backdrops are pretty standard JRPG-style stuff that you’re just as likely to find in the likes of Helck, with lackluster animation to match. Didn’t care too much for most of the characters either. Even for its commentary on the isekai genre and the type of person it caters to, No Longer Allowed just ends up shaking out like another isekai series.

There’s clearly more at play here, and I might just go ahead and read the manga because I didn’t really find myself looking forward to watching the anime. Maybe it just didn’t translate well. No Longer Allowed in Another World does clearly have something to say under its silly premise, but its method of getting that message across is, ironically, buried underneath the usual trappings of the genre it’s trying to say something about.

Wistoria: Wand and Sword

I’m gonna preface this by saying that Wistoria is probably the best anime I watched this year that I’ve classified as a “Mixed Bag,” save for Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night. I’m generally of the mind that excellent production can make up for a middling story (my enjoyment of the likes of Solo Leveling and Wind Breaker this year was pretty emblematic of that), and that is the case here for the most part. Wistoria, story-wise, is nothing special; it’s your standard power fantasy set in a magical school, but the entire presentation is just almost fascinating enough to overcome that hurdle.

Hell, it’s almost not even worth going over the plot. Unassuming boy named Will goes to a magic academy, he doesn’t have any magical aptitude, so he makes up for it by honing his hand-to-hand combat prowess in the school’s designated dungeon. It’s Mashle meets Solo Leveling. Will gets picked on (like, a LOT), but he doesn’t care, because he made a promise long ago to reach the pinnacle of magical society to reach his childhood friend, who happens to be a genius mage. There are duels, there’s a tournament, there’s monsters, you know how this goes.

Will has allies in the school, namely a female friend who’s madly in love with him as well as a professor who covers for his shortcomings in magic-related subjects, but remember that this is a self-insert fantasy: There are also increasingly menacing bullies for him to put in their place. Will is challenged by a Snape-like instructor, a classmate who just hates him so much for not having magic aptitude, and a top performer at the school who’s just flat-out evil (and racist to boot!). And of course the latter two also have goon squads of snickering hangers-on. Will always succeeds, of course, because despite his shortcomings, he’s the strongest and most specialest boy. It’s almost like an isekai without the isekai. Too bad we find out that Will is hilariously shredded, which kinda blows a hole in the self-insert aspect.

Goofy shonen-isms aside, there’s still plenty to enjoy here. Varying types of magic, artifacts, and fantasy races abound, and lore is sprinkled throughout the show in character biographies in the commercial break eyecatches. The story does get gradually less stupid as the season goes on and characters are better fleshed out. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with watching a really strong dude beat the shit out of monsters and assholes.

The only thing that really kept me coming back to Wistoria was that, plainly, it looks and sounds fucking awesome. It��s not the best-looking anime I watched this season (that would either be Oshi no Ko or one of the next two anime on this list), but Wistoria takes such a surprisingly cinematic approach to such an uninspiring story that I couldn’t help but keep watching. The lighting effects are lush, combat animation is bonkers in its best moments, and the score is pretty darn good too. It definitely takes some big swings at simulating camera movements and perspective shots that don’t always accomplish what they set out to do, but I can appreciate the ambition bleeding through. I can see the vision, and that’s what counts.

The actual content is pretty paint-by-numbers, but Wistoria is well-made enough that it’s worth a shaky recommendation. Maybe just turn your brain off until the action picks up. I've heard the manga gets pretty good from here on out, so I'll probably stick it out for another season.

The Gems

The Elusive Samurai

If you’re not already familiar with this series, do me a favor and watch the OP linked right above. Pretty good character animation, right? Expressive, weighty, plenty of personality. The colors pop like crazy too! A lot of the time, an anime series will heavily stylize its OP to attract eyeballs and YouTube metrics, oftentimes bringing in outside animators and directors for a unique feel. In the case of The Elusive Samurai, I cannot stress enough that all that animation is the standard.

Yes, this show looks exceptional. Even putting aside the fact that it’s historical fiction, this show has a truly timeless look to it that I still struggle to put into words. The Elusive Samurai is clearly a modern production but bears all of the hallmarks of what great animation has always looked like when a studio is willing to invest in it: Colors are so bold and saturated that I want to take a damn bite out of them, backgrounds are painstakingly hand-painted even for brief cuts, and there even seems to be a film grain overlay to really sell the classic feel. It’s not perfect (I’ll get into that later), but holy shit is it a feast for the eyes.

Adapted from the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, The Elusive Samurai is a heavily fictionalized retelling of the fallout of the Siege of Kamakura in the 14th Century. Tokiyuki Hojo, left without a family in a bloody coup of the shogunate, is prevented from committing suicide by enigmatic priest Yorishige Suwa and then thrown right back into the fire of the battlefield. Yorishige, who has prophetic visions of the future, foresaw Tokiyuki’s ascent to leadership and wants to see how he fares in battle. Tokiyuki didn’t bother with his training as a young master, instead playing elaborate games of hide-and-seek with the Hojo clan’s advisors, so in the face of certain danger, he’s left with no choice but to do what he does best and run the fuck away. And as with evading his training, Tokiyuki realizes that it’s way more fun than actual combat, and the future is suddenly even more clear to Yorishige: Evasion, not bloodthirst, will guide Tokiyuki’s path to revenge.

At Yorishige’s increasingly unnerving behest, Tokiyuki goes into hiding at Suwa Shrine and begins building a squad to take down the usurper, Takauji Ashikaga. Along with Yorishige’s daughter, Shizuku, he teams up with young warriors Kojiro and Ayako, and in their travels pick up the crass, kitsune-masked thief Genba and the food-obsessed swordsboy Fubuki. It’s fine as extended casts go, though we don’t get much from a few of them past their introductory arcs. Tokiyuki is an absolute delight, though. He’s a sweet and joyful kid despite his circumstances; real shonen protag material. And most importantly, he’s completely over Yorishige’s shit.

I’m a sucker for magical realism, and The Elusive Samurai delivers. Yorishige really does appear to be a prophet, to the point where he can even predict Dragon Ball Z (yes, really), and he and Shizuku are capable of pulling off acts that any actual person would consider a literal miracle. Mythical beasts roam the land and those that were slain appear to reside on a different realm accessible to the Suwas. All of Takauji’s top soldiers have senses and abilities far beyond anything human or animal, and Takauji himself seems to have borrowed some of his prowess from the devil himself. With this show’s commitment to top-tier visuals and animation, the sky's the limit for what we can see, and it kept me glued to my TV every episode. It almost made me want to watch Demon Slayer. Almost.

The cast has some solid performances from familiar names and voices: Yuichi Nakamura is his usual blusteringly silly self as Yorishige, Aoi Yuuki is a riot as Genba, and Katsuyuki Konishi (Kamina himself!) infuses Takauji with appropriate menace. There’s some Chainsaw Man and Bocchi sprinkled into Tokiyuki’s clan of rookie warriors as well. Good stuff, but what really caught my attention was a surprisingly familiar voice giving life to the bug-eyed villain Sadamune Ogasawara: None other than Yutaka Aoyama, the narrator of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Nobody could have more perfectly infused Sadamune with the appropriate level of self-serious goofiness than the guy who narrated Kaguya-sama’s balloon game like it was an NFL Film. Perfect casting.

As incredible as this show looks most of the time, the remainder does have a critical issue: CloverWorks didn’t seem too invested in hand-animating horses or any of the show’s characters riding them, so it opted instead for CGI. Very poorly-implemented CGI. I really try to take stuff like this as it comes, but the modeling looks way too video-gamey for the style the rest of the show is going for, to the point where I’m taken out of it. There’s really no excuse for something this uncanny with the high bar The Elusive Samurai set for itself early on (and yes, Uzumaki is airing as I write this, and I’ll talk about the similar problem that show has at the end of the year).

I know I just said this about Wind Breaker last year, but this may be CloverWorks’ other Big Shonen Hit. It certainly has the juice, between the wacky gags and shockingly brutal violence, and CGI issues aside, the studio has clearly invested in it. A second season is already on the way, and I’d say it’s paid off. If the studio can iron out the kinks, this could end up becoming an all-timer.

Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!

If I haven’t made it clear enough, my anime journey has turned me into a bit of a romcom guy. Couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s because Tenchi Muyo was a formative anime for me, or maybe it’s because I got on Kaguya-sama relatively early in my return-to-weebdom trek and I’ve been chasing that high ever since. I could go on and on about the ones I’ve watched and which particularly stood out, but we’d be here all day. At the same time, though, a burgeoning market for the genre, particularly among the shonen demographic, means that there’s gonna be some real slop out there. Plenty of anime, manga, and especially light novels are targeted at the “lonely boy who wishes cute girls would attach themselves to him just because he’s A Nice Guy” type, and while there are some genuinely excellent series that cater plenty to that kind, there’s a well-defined line between the good and the trash.

Makeine is well aware of that line and elects to skip rope with it. Genre subversion is at its best when the work in question shows a genuine care for the milieu it’s satirizing, and Too Many Losing Heroines is to trashy light novel romcoms what The Eminence in Shadow is to edgy isekai and Bang Brave Bang Bravern is to vaguely homoerotic mech warfare. It’ll slap you in the face with every dumb threadbare cliche you’ve come to expect from the genre, and it’ll do so with a smile.

These stories are usually fronted by a total wet noodle and Kazuhiko Nukumizu is the soggiest soba you’ve ever seen. His main interests are water fountains and hey, wouldn’t you know it, light novel romcoms. As far as he’s concerned, he’s a background character with the personality to match. He’s thrust to the forefront, though, when he’s caught staring at his classmate, Anna Yanami, embarrassingly picking up the pieces from being brutally rejected at a cafe. She forces herself into Nukumizu’s booth and helps herself to several courses’ worth of stress-eating on his dime, which he never agreed to. As recompense, Anna decides to cook him lunch until her debt is more or less repaid, and would you look at that, Nukumizu just made a friend!

As the title would suggest, Anna’s not the only lovelorn maiden finding her way into Nukumizu’s school life. He’s exhorted into joining the school’s literature club, where he meets the track runner, Lemon Yakishio, and the lit club’s stammering stalwart, Chika Komari. He also has to bear witness to each of their own crushes backfiring and deal with the fallout. And amidst this chaos, there’s plenty of botched confessions, getting locked in storage closets, boob faceplants, and all the other nonsense you’d expect from the genre. And it’s terrific! And in the midst of all this, even as Nukumizu seems to be a passenger in this journey, you see him ever-so-slowly realize that he has some agency and grow closer to these girls. Makeine is plenty silly and more than a little stupid, but there’s plenty of heart in here as well.

The offbeat character dynamics and clever dialogue are what really make this. Everyone is just refreshingly weird in their own ways. Anna is a complete menace and totally convinced she’s the protagonist of life, and she may not even be wrong. I almost don’t care whether she and Nukumizu get together or not; they’re such a fun “serious guy/goblin mode girl” pairing that I’m not that interested in their dynamic changing. Komari and the lit club VP Koto are a dynamic fujoshi duo, ensuring that the club’s shenanigans aren’t too shonen-centric (and funny enough, Koto has her own idea for an Osamu Dazai isekai). Everyone in the student council has something demonstrably Wrong With Them, the homeroom teacher is a disaster, and the school nurse probably belongs in prison. I love every single one of them. I could’ve done without Nukumizu’s offputtingly-clingy little sister (and learning about her analogue in this season’s other romcom LN adaptation, Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, was enough to put me off of watching it), but it looks like one of her own female classmates is in love with her, so that could be gold in later seasons.

A-1 Pictures, to borrow an industry term, put its entire pussy into this production. As with last year’s Heavenly Delusion, there was so much love put into the lighting effects, background art, and character animation that I felt like I was watching a Makoto Shinkai film at times. All of those elements working in tandem massaged my brain in such a way that when every episode ended, I was left confused because hey, where the hell is the rest of the movie? Makeine is also loaded with killer visual gags, and I give A-1 a ton of credit for letting those jokes land without calling too much attention to them, unlike a certain other show I watched this season. The opening and endings were real treats, with three different EDs as the season progressed, each depicting one of the titular heroines’ personal journeys (and performed by each respective girl’s VA, no less). This is some real investment on the studio’s part and it absolutely paid off.

I promise that every time I compare a romcom to Kaguya-sama, it comes at a great inner struggle to prevent myself from doing so, but if that anime is truly over and this is where A-1 is focusing its resources, Makeine may very well be a worthy successor. I really can’t say for sure whether this or The Elusive Samurai was the best new anime of the summer season, and it doesn’t help that they aired on the same day and I’d always watch them back-to-back. Just know that they’re easily two of the better anime I’ve seen this year.

Mayonaka Punch

If “mega-cancelled YouTuber starts up a new channel with a bunch of disaster lesbian vampires” isn’t enough of a hook for you, I really don’t know what else to tell you.

Masaki got kicked off her popular NewTube channel after punching one of her co-hosts, and the internet is letting her hear it. Maybe barging in on the “we’re firing Masaki” live stream and tackling one of them didn’t help either. Rather than film the bog-standard apology video, she figures she can just wing it and start up a solo channel. Masaki decides to start by playing the hits and drunkenly recreate her first channel’s breakout video in a spooky abandoned hospital, and finds more than she bargained for in a vampire named Live (pronounced like it’d be short for Olivia) who really, really wants to drink her blood in particular. Masaki nearly falls to her death in a panic, only for Live to save her and reveal that she has the very filmable ability to fly, so Masaki cuts a deal: If Live can help her get a new channel off the ground, Masaki will let her drink her blood.

This is tremendous content, so Masaki moves in with Live at Banpai Manor along with her vampire roomies to produce a new channel, co-starring the eternal 10-year-old day trader (night trader?) Ichiko, the soft-spoken fujoshi musician Fu, and the heavy-vaping gambling addict Tokage. They name the channel Mayonaka Punch (because mayonaka means “midnight” and because Masaki punched the shit out of her former co-host) and quickly get to work trying to beat Masaki’s former channel to their goal of a million subscribers (and a delicious lunch for Live). Even though they try to pass off their vampire shenanigans as Very Good CGI, they run afoul of a vampiric authority figure for exposing their identities, so they have to get internet famous the old fashioned way: Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.

I can’t quite put into words what a blast this show is. Mayonaka Punch frequently barrels along at a madcap pace, often punctuated by an electro-swing score, as its cast of loud idiots (and Fu) carom off of one another to chaotic effect. The voice cast really sells it, too: Ikumi Hasegawa (Kita in Bocchi the Rock!, Vladilena in 86, Übel in Frieren) owns every ounce of Masaki’s mounting exasperation as she deals with all the vampire nonsense while continuing to avoid the consequences of her own actions. Fairouz Ai continues her MVP-caliber resume for 2024 in style as Live, infusing her with a kind of desperate manic energy as she scratches and claws for Masaki’s approval. This was easily my favorite of her many roles so far this year, and two years removed from Chainsaw Man’s debut, it’s been a treat to hear her once again voicing a feral, bloodsucking loser.

As silly as Mayonaka Punch gets, though, it delivers some serious emotional blows when you least expect them. The fourth episode, centering on Fu’s history, is one of the best of any anime I watched this season. There’s also some very interesting history between Live and the head vampire’s go-between, Yuki, that was told through (though partially buried by) a series of video game facsimiles, and I hope there’s more there someday. And, of course, there’s Masaki’s evolving relationship with Live, with romantic undertones so tantalizing they might as well be overtones. I really thought there wasn’t enough time left in the season to reach a satisfying conclusion, and though it might not have fully reeled in the yuri bait, I was pleasantly surprised at how well everything tied together.

Mayonaka Punch’s ending is open enough that I can only hope it gets a second season, but I’m not about to hold my breath. That’s a tall order for original anime that don’t set the world on fire, but this one has all the right pieces for a future cult classic. Liked and subscribed.

Suicide Squad Isekai

When this was announced, the only reaction it really got out of me was “Sure dude, why not.” As far as what this show is, it does what it says on the tin. It’s an isekai featuring a motley crew of anti-heroes plucked directly from the David Ayers and James Gunn Suicide Squad films. You already know what you’re in for.

Sure enough, this is a straight up Suicide Squad story from the jump: Harley Quinn and the Joker (the latter sporting yet another heinous makeover) try to pull off a heist, it goes sideways, Harley gets arrested and forced into Amanda Waller’s scheme to mine rare resources in another world alongside Deadshot, Clayface, Peacemaker, and King Shark. It’s your standard JRPG-style isekai fantasy world, except the previous Suicide Squad of Enchantress, the Thinker, Ratcatcher, and Killer Croc seem to have run roughshod over tensions between races and kingdoms, leaving Rick Flag alone to pick up the pieces.

And what ensues is pretty much what you’d expect. Everyone looks appropriately anime; Psycho-Pass character designer Akira Amano did especially good work with Harley, to the point where I’m shocked that a billion-yen idea like “anime Harley Quinn” was slept on for so long. All of this makes it even funnier that Peacemaker is still very much just John Cena. Character designs aside, Suicide Squad Isekai only seems to look good when it wants to; most of the moment-to-moment stuff looks a bit muted but absolutely pops off when business picks up. There’s even a flashback sequence of Deadshot and Ratcatcher that has a sort of loose, crumbly Masaaki Yuasa look to it. Despite the genericism of the setting and inconsistency of the aesthetic, though, Suicide Squad Isekai still carries plenty of style with it. The intro and outro are both blasts; I didn’t realize until the season ended that the “Tank!”-style OP was by Tomoyasu Hotei, the composer of the most iconic piece of music from Kill Bill. The ED (content warning: Mori Calliope) heavily features Amanda Waller getting down in ways I can only hope to one day see Viola Davis recreate.

The fusion of American and Japanese styles is definitely awkward at times; the occasional references to other Warner Bros properties like Lord of the Rings and Tom and Jerry feel particularly shoehorned in considering this is a Japanese production, but the voice cast makes up for a lot of faults. Anna Nagase captures Harley’s freewheeling energy perfectly, and her penchant for nicknames is extra cute in Japanese when she’s calling the Joker “Purin-chan” or King Shark “Nana-chan.” Jun Fukuyama is a real standout as Clayface, channeling the flashy spirit of Joker (not this one, the Persona 5 one) to animate Basil Karlo’s irritating showmanship. Takehito Koyasu as Peacemaker doesn’t quite have the self-serious goofy energy we’ve come to expect from the live action version, but it’s such funny casting on its face that I don’t really mind. Can this tradeoff go both ways? I want John Cena as DIO yesterday.

For a Studio WIT production and a story by Re:Zero’s writers, Suicide Squad Isekai may occasionally feel like less than the sum of its parts (par for the course for the property’s recent adaptations, unfortunately, save for the Gunn film), but if you don’t come at it expecting too much you’ll have a good time. Far from my favorite this year, but it’s a crowd pleaser, and those, I like.

#anime reviews #nier automata #oshi no ko #my deer friend nokotan #shikanoko nokonoko koshitantan #isekai shikkaku #no longer allowed in another world #wistoria wand and sword #the elusive samurai #makeine #too many losing heroines!#mayonaka punch #suicide squad isekai

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 1 month ago

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reading update: september 2024

I'm turning in the reading roundup a little later than usual, but booooy not for lack of enthusiasm! September was such an interesting month for books, not least of all because you'll notice that things take a spooky turn towards the end of the month. in the name of whimsy I decided that October would be the perfect time to go on a themed reading kick and read through everything vaguely spooky, scary, or horror-related on my TBR, and then I thought, hey, why wait? Halloween is a state of mind, and I want to get spooked.

(have I been spooked yet? well... eh. but there's still time!)

my point being, if you want some creepy recs, hang tight because the October reading roundup is going to be great for you. in the meantime, here's what I read in September:

My Nemesis (Charmaine Craig, 2023) - cannot recommend this brief novel enough if you like very stylized prose about very insufferable people. Craig's protagonist is a memoirist who narrates her tale of woe exactly like she's writing a personal essay that's going to do numbers on twitter, intimate from a detached and analytical distance and giving the strong impression of a person who's made a living being intensely self-obsessed and can't quite manage to turn it off. it's a fascinating approach to a story about an emotionally overwhelming friendship destroying two marriages and ending in a woman's death, all without any actual adultery ever occurring. the narrator is consciously self-conscious, unreliable in the subtle and shifty way of someone trying to take exactly enough culpability to avoid being assigned more. it's a heavily interior novel, but Craig managed to keep me gasping with surprise here and there - the stomach-twisting reveal of why the narrator is actually telling her story, for one, as well as the revelation of the work within the novel that shares its name. if you like a tightly crafted character exercise, you're going to eat this up.

Raiders of the Lost Heart (Jo Segura, 2023) - this was the romance novel picked out via poll over on my patreon for September, and if I may be honest I was NOT excited! to my mind it was the dud of the group, the one amongst the four possibilities that I was most dreading. the garish cover, improbable plot summary, and blatant Indiana Jones of it all (the male love interest is literally named Ford) was a tremendous turn off, and you know what? I was wrong for that. Raiders ended up being one of the better romance novels I've read this year, and not JUST because I've been reading an endless parade of stinkers. the characters are largely free of manufactured drama and are instead believably and sympathetically rendered, with the female lead Corrie being a particular knockout; I would love to be her friend. the plot isn't nearly as cartoonish as the synopsis on the back of the book would have you believe, or at least most of it isn't; the silliness doesn't arrive until almost the very end, when Segura decides she needs some action movie stakes in here ASAP. and while the prose wasn't totally free of the genre's worst bullshit (stop reminding me that Ford's eyes are emerald, I beg), it was for the most part refreshingly no-nonsense. I wasn't even a chapter into this book when I found myself realizing I might really like it, and as of right now it's looking to claim the title of my favorite romance of 2024 in a landslide victory. having said that someone should be in thought crime prison for titling the sequel "Temple of Swoon."

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 11 (Ryoko Kui, trans. Taylor Engel, 2022) - man you guys Dungeon Meshi is so fucking good. what the fuck. what the hell. it's so genuinely insane that Kui is still able to weave in elements of humor that feel so organic and natural to the characters at this absolutely dire point of the game, when all of my faves are actively in so much danger - largely FROM EACH OTHER - that I'm eating my fingers. christ. some of my students who are in an LGBT book club did Legends and Lattes last month and I just kept wanting to ask if anyone had read Dungeon Meshi for, you know, a very D&D-flavored story that's actually intensely interested in dissecting the tropes of the genre alongside race and class and xenophobia and the social rules of an adventurer heavy world but god. I couldn't. because it's not gay. like Senshi I just want to nourish the youngsters but I can't because it's not gay. please everyone for the love of god just read Dungeon Meshi.

The Most (Jessica Anthony, 2024) - I'm a simple man, and I added this tiny novel to my TBR based on a blurb that really gave me nothing but "a 60s housewife gets in the apartment complex's pool and refuses to get out and it freaks her husband right out." god forbid women do anything, right? anyway, at risk of showing my whole ass I think this is exactly the kind of "disaffected adultery and divorce" book that a lot of tumblr users claim to hate, and I fucking loved it. Anthony is a brilliantly sharp writer who paces her microcosmic drama perfectly, revealing everything at just the right moment like a practiced tour guide showing us around the shadowy corners of an aggressively ordinary marriage. I love adultery and I think this book in particular should be taught in writing courses. sue me.

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir (Akwaeke Emezi, 2021) - I think this year I've reread more books than I have any other year of my adult life, and I'm so glad that I took time to revisit Emezi's memoir. it's genuinely like nothing else I've ever read, one of the boldest and bravest things I've ever read. Emezi's account of godhood, of coming to understand themself as a deity trapped in flesh, is absolutely unwavering, completely grounded in their certainty of their truth and proceeding from there without ever worrying about persuading others to believe them. Emezi is a storyteller's storyteller, and their story doesn't need anyone's approval. but while it can be challenging, I wouldn't call the book confrontational. quite the opposite; in many places it's achingly vulnerable, as Emezi guides you through an unabashed tour of the very worst of their heartbreak, trauma, and alienation, and the times they've nearly succeeded in taking their own life. but god, please don't think this memoir is unrelenting misery. Emezi also speaks so, SO powerfully of opulence, of love, of the dedication to their artistry ad unabashed acknowledgement that they are a peerless talent. Emezi talks about magic of writing in a way that makes me feel like I'm being engulfed in golden-white flames; they make me want to transform myself into the artist I want to be. once again: I am an Emezi stan first and a person second forever.

The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America (Sarah Deer, 2015) - listen, I'll be straight up with you: unless you're exorbitantly interested in rape law, alternatives to carceral "justice," and legalese, this is going to be a very dry read, and there are not enough narrative segments to make up for that. for my money, Deer provides a thorough overview of the difficulties faced by American tribal nations in exercising legal power to prosecute and punish cases of sexual violence, despite the staggering levels of violence experienced by women in many Native communities. I really admired the intensely tempered view that Deer (a member of the Mvskokoe nation) brings to her work, discussing the history of Native approaches to sexual violence without pretending precolonial North America was a feminist utopia and offering thoughtful criticism of proposed substitutions to imprisonment. while the rape laws of any one of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the occupied lands of the United States could be a book on its own and Deer is constrained by the need to cover as much territory as she can in the broadest strokes possible, this is a solid primer to an ongoing social, spiritual, and legal issue that too rarely receives attention outside of Native communities.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes (Erica LaRocca, 2022) - straight up I was only trying to read Things Have Gotten worse, LaRocca's somewhat infamous story of a lesbian relationship that goes extremely wrong extremely fast, but the only copy available through my library system came with two more of his short stories (the aforementioned Other Misfortunes). I'm going to save time on the two extra stories: one is an incomprehensible exercise in religious trauma and I did not like it, and the other one was silly because I, personally, simply would not get so trapped in a sense of social obligation that I let my neighbor do stupid riddles to be until I was in a guillotine. rip to that guy but I'm different. anyway, back to the star of the show. I made the mistake of browsing some other people's thoughts on Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and encountered a truly dizzying number of people whose takeaway seems to be that it's bad not for any stylistic reason but because it depicts two lesbians being in a relationship that's deranged and unhealthy, to which I say you should probably go watch Stephen Universe or something instead of looking for #goodrep in the horror short stories. christ. for my money, Things Have Gotten Worse is messy in the most delicious way, absolutely bonkers from start to finish. escalates pretty much instantly and refuses to let up for truly even a second. cannot believe the predatory mommy dom turns out to be the reasonable one in this dynamic, that one threw me for a loop. it's not incredible but god was I entertained.

Fledgling (Octavia E. Butler, 2005) - another reread, revisiting some of my favorite little freak vampires for the spooky season! although, honestly, the most spooky scary thing about Butler's vampires is probably that vampires look like an Aryan cult and some of them are turbo racist while the other ones insist that it's totally 100% impossible for vampires to be racist and the fact that this gets quite a lot of people killed, something that I'm sure is just a weird coincidence and not any kind of commentary that Butler was making on anything at all. what else is there to say? this is one of Butler's most elaborate explorations of inverted power dynamics, dropping codependent symbiotic sexy vampire polycule cults smack in the middle of the 21st century United States instead of on an alien planet or an apocalyptic wasteland just to really drive home how crazy this shit it. and it's delicious! I love it! what a deliciously different interpretation of vampirism. imagine the utopia we'd be living in if this was the vampire novel that had gotten big in 2005 instead of Twilight.

The Low, Low Woods (Carmen Maria Machado, Dani, and Tamra Bonvillain, 2020) - first I remembered that there are horror comics that I can include in my Octoberish reading, and then I remembered that creepy queen Carmen Maria Machado has published one with DC Comics' Black Label. The Low, Low Woods follows dirtbag teen lesbians Octavia and El in the burnt out coal mining town of Shudder to Think, a town where everyone knows that something's not quite right but no one can seem to leave. the story begins with El and Octavia waking up in a movie theater with no memory of a movie, realizing that they've lost time. the ensuing investigation takes them deep into the town's troubled history, and forces them to realize it's not just the supernatural preying on the town. I love creepy Appalachia and would definitely recommend this for any Old Gods of Appalachia fans, and I will say that so far this is the only one of the spooky reads to really get under my skin and give me a full-body shiver due to the sheer overwhelming awfulness of the implications Machado raises with the revelations in her story. I'm not usually one for trigger warnings in my little roundups, but I cannot emphasize enough that if you have a hard time reading about sexual violence, you'll probably want to skip this one.

The Icarus Girl (Helen Oyeyemi, 2005) - I've been meaning to get into Oyeyemi's large body of work (in part because Akwaeke Emezi speaks quite highly of her) and where better to start than with her debut novel? and why not now, since it was tagged as horror? ultimately I'd concede that the book is creepy but don't know if I'd quite consider myself horrified, and that's completely fine since it's an astonishing piece of prose regardless. writing a believable eight year old narrator of an adult novel is a tricky thing, but Oyeyemi pulls it off beautifully with protagonist Jessamy, effortlessly selling her as an insightful, anxious, and intelligent girl who's still utterly believable as a child. the Icarus Girl revels in the same kind of "powerless child" horror as Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane, following the lonely Jessamy as she initially is befriended and then tormented by a mysterious and powerful little girl that she meets while visiting her mother's family in Nigeria. as her new friends gets increasingly malevolent and out of control, Jess struggles to account for the damage and to be taken seriously by her parents when she tries to explain what's wrong. Oyeyemi apparently wrote this book when she was only a teenager, and if she's been leveling up her craft with each subsequent novel then I have a lot of look forward to.

#bookblr

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