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consuming five forms of media simultaneously in order to eliminate the option of thinking (this is not a cry for help), and other things like that
WATCHING (jujutsu kaisen, variety, bp concert)
anime: jujutsu kaisen (2020)
i started watching this with my sibling during fall(?) of last year and immediately rushed to read the manga as soon as i finished episode 4 or 5... it is so delightfully good. disclaimer i have not yet read the prequel manga series (but i have spoiled myself through fandom wikia which is usual behavior from me) so everything i say about jjk will be from that perspective!
i think i've always had a bone to pick with typical shounen protagonists being, well, you know, shounen, self-sacrificial lamb, noble white knighting, etc etc, (don't ask me to name names) but somehow i do NOT mind it on yuuji. the way he handles sukuna (whose character design is a trap bc i see him and immediately the latent villainf#cker chip in my brain makes itself known), is so refreshing to see because he clearly doesn't fully understand the magnitude of the predicament he is in and yet he doesn't make anything easy for sukuna.
my favorite, though, takes the form of obnoxious (are we even surprised at this point) overpowered overlord supreme jujutsu tech teacher gojo satoru. he is just So. so much. in the literal sense. as a person, as a sorcerer, as a single entity that exists in media. gojo is so chaotic, and yet, somehow i feel like if you just considered, "hey, what would an utterly unhinged person do" you could probably guess which choices he would make with about 80% accuracy. besides all the superficial outward reasons, ie. tall, platinum blond, mappa's godly baby Blue eyes, Long Ass Eyelashes (wtf), and overwhelming competence as a jujutsu sorcerer combined with underwhelming performance as any sort of responsible guardian to yuuji, gojo appeals to me because he is the embodiment of Loneliness At The Top while having to bear the entire weight of being the best, strongest, most capable in this world and keeping that devil-may-care attitude and shit-eating grin on his face. it's just all so much all the time. but if anyone knows me, they know that i like Too Much All The Time. obnoxious bastards with zero remorse for their actions, "what's you and what's the persona," "is there even a 'you' amongst the funhouse mirrors," etc etc, which is to say, this tracks.
megumi is a close second. i love my broody, mostly-dark haired boys (see: kags, shouto etc etc). and megumi isn't even that broody, he's just straight-laced for the most part, but his dynamics with yuuji are exquisite. hyper-competent nerd with head-empty no-think muscle is a match made in heaven. nobara is hilarious, gutsy, has gumption and her idol-worship of maki is something i relate to on a spiritual level. the countless times i've seen maki in action and just whispered outloud "she's so fucking cool" is unreal. because she is, so fucking cool. maki could step on me anytime any day and i don't say this lightly. other favorites include inumaki and okkotsu. love men who don't speak.
tbqh i probably should've waited until after reading the prequel manga series before writing this up but my media consumption habits are erratic at best, sporadic at worst, and definitely not anywhere close to being in the realm of consistent, so it's best not to expect too much out of me anyway. i digress. will update on jjk when finish those though!
variety: dream in wonderland, ridin club (2020)
i started dream in wonderland mid-december. figured it was finally time to watch content that was made in 2020, while it was still 2020 (and not cling onto puff lives as my sole basis of characterization/rpf plotting of the dreamies but idk if i that was really that successful on that front). to nobody's surprise, jaemin remains my favorite gremlin. he is SO random. so obnoxious. wildly unpredictable (but not really). are you beginning to see a pattern bc i am. chenle's extreme confidence and his lack of shame is so endearing to me. in chinese there's a phrase "就出一張嘴" which translates approximately to "to be all talk," and i suppose it usually has a somewhat derogatory/negative connotation but i really feel like it applies to chenle in the best way. dream needs someone with that kind of overwhelming confidence in themselves; it improves team morale by miles. this reads like a drag but i promise you it isn't. i love chenle, what a mood maker. ofc i can't end dream content w/o mentioning my number one agenda. the wink jaemin that sent jeno as he shot off to the other side of the zipline, and jeno's resulting panicked "euh? wh-wh-what the hell" will sustain me for months. idec if jeno pretends like jaem doesn't exist for the next era (just kidding i do, jeno please do not do that). as of typing this i am still on episode nine. sorry my attention span is akin to that of a squirrel. sometimes even if u love 5 men its not enough to watch them melt sugar for half an episode.
i did finish ridin club, however, and it is fucking hilarious. it opened my eyes to the dream team of jaemle. i know/think they're not as popular as other ships, but their teamwork is elite, and i love how i got to see njm adjust his competitiveness for chenle in real time. jaemin's scary competence on the biking arcade game was very sxc, it's nice to see him serious about winning for once, and the lil jaemren crumbs (rj's "woah Na Jaeminnnn") were cute. in lav's voice "rj isn't interested in men unless they do sum shit ya know." also the amount of times jaem has to carry/lift chenle or demonstrate any sort of physical effort... well i am but a simple young woman... i can only say i was Looking. and not to continue w/ jaem drivel but him just vibing in the corner/background on a hoverboard was so fkin cute. what the hale.
concert: blackpink the show (jan 2021)
including this bc it was truly a spectacular experience. incoming bitter nctzen feelings but god the production on this shit was balls to the wall insane. could you imagine nct performing with a live band? like, even just a fraction of whatever yg shelled out for these girls. still not over the piecemeal shit show that was nct beyond live... sm is so sick for this truly.
on to the actual concert: the outfits were incredible. i may not have agreed with every single fit aesthetically but they all have the charisma and body type (skinny lmao lbr) to pull whatever their stylists decide to go with. my favorites definitely include rosie's first silvery dress with no straps and jennie's remix solo dress. the puffer ensemble during their last stage on rosé grew on me tbh! lisa's doja cat cover was pretty incredible actually... n jisoo's tove lo one was good too! but oh my god... rosé's solo is right up my alley, sad and moody and very rosé, kinda wish it was entirely live instead of being half-vcr (which got cut out lmao) but that's a minor gripe. overall 10/10 concert, sm wishes they could do this, i wish sm could do this, etc.
to-watch list: yokoku no moriarty, horimiya
to-finish list: tgcf donghua, dream in wonderland
READING(ish)*
*my Actual Literature consumption is quite abysmal. i do seem to have infinite time to follow webnovels/webtoons/etc though. so this is what this section is.
manga: jujutsu kaisen
haha you thought i was done with this one.... sike.
this is honestly one of the more text-heavy mangas i've read, and considering the fact that i binged approximately 80% of it in the span of two days, i feel like i should give it a re-read just to make sure i have all the plot points straight in my head. i've been keeping up with weekly updates and sometimes i feel like i hallucinated some of the chapters, there's just so much going on all the time. with hq at least all i was missing was which direction the ball went sometimes, but with jjk some action heavy scenes require excruciating attention to detail.
webtoon / webnovel: omniscient reader's viewpoint
started this in i want to say october or november of last year. fell off somewhere around chapter 130 or so? right before the holiday season. i'm not sure why, maybe finals? i still definitely want to finish this, and it was quite entertaining when i was reading it. i'm still reading and following along the webtoon, though. visual media seems to be easier to keep up with. for the record, i love the dokja-joonghyuk-sooyoung dynamix, the triangulation is very important to me! but yeah definitely had a phase in oct/nov where i retweeted orv/joongdok fanart for like maybe 10 days straight. yoo joonghyuk sexy, what can i say. please look this man up and the official webtoon art to see what i'm talking about. ur eyes will thank you. this is on my to-finish list. dokja, i will come back for you!
manhua / webnovel: tian guan ci fu (heaven's official blessing)
it's been a year since i've read this, but ree falling into the novel this past month got me back into my reread and i can say without a doubt tgcf is just as good the second time. (i still react outloud when i get to the good parts, and staying up to read it becomes routine because it just evokes such a feeling of 'oh my god? did that just happen?' and i never regret it until like 5pm the next day).
unfortunately the only form of media (discounting the novel reread) i'm caught up with is the manhua; i fell off the donghua train around ep 10? i think? or perhaps 11. (which is why i didn't include tgcf under watching lmao) not to say that the donghua's bad or anything because it's not at all—it's so incredibly good. i just can't explain my capricious urges to put a hold on watching/following things. i'll get around to it, soon probably. the donghua art is so clean and i absolutely love how haoliners just went for the jugular when they added gratuitous homoerotic lines that weren't even in the source text. (the flirting on the wagon? chefs kiss) everything about it is so good. ending and op are bangers i have them on my xianxia playlist, you already know the vibes.
the manhua has god-tier level art. i don't know how to adequately convey this in words, but it is truly beautiful beyond belief, somehow capturing the ethereal nature of xianxia, the passage of time that spans hundreds of thousands of years. the color palette is a bit dark, but it makes it more atmospheric and i really can't find any fault with the manhua at all. what does kill me tho is the absolute contrast between the donghua and manhua artstyles. i know its been memed to hell and back on twt but like, donghua san lang/hua cheng is such a fuckin virgin and manhua san lang/hua cheng is a total... idk how to say this... animal... he literally looks at xie lian like he's going to eat him and protect him at the same time and it's scary? but hot? which is how most people should feel about hua cheng i think.
webtoon / webnovel: the remarried empress
the art in this is ALSO immaculate. navier's character design is so beautiful, i want every single one of her dresses, her hairstyles are so intricate and regal and everything is just so pleasing to the eyes; soveishu is rotten to the core but he objectively is handsome too. started reading the webtoon maybe 3-4 months ago, and recently found translations for the webnovel. i didn't read the webnovel from start to finish, but the writing is good from what i've gotten to so far! excited to see how this unfolds and i can't wait for navier and heinley to finally be comfortable around each other because heinley is So Besotted and navier is so Repressed and this is the slowest slowburn to ever slowburn i am in pain. also never thought i'd be rooting for a het couple in 2021 but... deserved!
to finish: tgcf novel (reread), orv, jjk prequel manga, catch-22 (if i can find where it is)
LISTENING
i haven't really gotten back into podcasts since maybe last fall... fwiw i used to listen to chd (i know) and let me ruin your life by serena shahidi! i do want to get back into lmryl tbh... maybe february is the month?
radio: chen-ra (akdong seoul/yuedong seoul)
i know chenle's been hosting for a while now but i admittedly didn't really tune in until like.. maybe a month or two ago. he's great btw. soooo different from renjun's philosophical vibe. he's so blunt it's refreshing. whereas rj might've played along with the host on certain traditional concepts/ideals to some extent, cl's opinions are always pretty strong and he sticks to his guns for the most part. AND it's always funny to hear him talk abt markles like a son. pleasant background noise for daily 3am dissociation sesh.
music: niki/ari, kiana lede, more keshi, and lexie liu
if you've followed me on twitter for like.... i don't know, anytime longer than a month, you know about my abg music taste. jaemin's (i know ur thinking, damn doesn't this bitch ever shut up about him? no, and i'm sorry) relay cam really put the nail in the coffin for me. i've liked niki since maybe 2018-19 somewhere in between, and maintain that indigo is one of her best songs. jaemin the world's biggest arianator has me listening to ariana like it's 2014 again. lord. always down to listen to keshi for some sadboi vibes. it doesn't get old.
we need to talk about the gone gold ep by lexie liu. sometimes i'm not a huge fan of lexie's egregious use of autotune but there are occasions where i don't mind it at all. carousel is probably my fav song off the new ep. again, it's a s*x song but the wordplay is amazing and its a suuuuper sweet listen. i've loved her since 2017's sleep away... society when lexie liu collabs w/ kpop artists... [insert flying spaceships gif].
by nature i just tend to stay within my own bubble when it comes to music, so i'd definitely welcome any recs ♪( ´▽｀)
IN CONCLUSION
i saw something on twitter along the lines of "logging every single thing i read or watch after i read or watch it gives me the same serotonin boost that i get crossing off items on a to-do list" and yeah, i'm inclined to agree—was this possibly a giant waste of time? maybe. is it likely that i might not have the mental fortitude to make this a consistent monthly thing? very likely. however, it was fun this time around, and if i can find it in myself to make it next month too, i'm sure ill be back with more unnecessary thoughts about stuff i have consumed!
if you've made it this far, thanks for reading and feel free to drop some thoughts/recs down below or via twt or cc
Current Mood: decomposing
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