i might know what to do someday.

Stone Ocean's next part is premiering tomorrow, and I have no expectations, only that it'll be a good time. In the afternoon, my friend M and I will start a watch party of two and make a headway through what's available.

Unfortunately, my two friends M and G, whom I used to watch JJBA with, have broken up.
( Read more... )

But so, for JJBA rewatch, it'll just be M and me now. We were always the two who talked through the show the most, so despite G being gone, it still feels like the same old hang-out stream.

In other news, I completed the game Disco Elysium and saw the movie "Nope" in theaters this past week. I've been unable to get either of them out of my brain soup for long. I've already started a second run in Disco Elysium, lost too many hours of sleep last night reading Harry/Kim fanfic, and identified "Ship to Wreck" as a Klaasje and Harry song, after listening to it on repeat all night. And every now and then I remember the terror that is known as Jean Jacket, the black hole that is her mouth, and the horse and the cowboy riding fast in the California desert with a string of flags flying behind them, saving their life...

Two R19 BL manhwas have caught and kept my attention recently. Their art styles drew me in, and then their set-ups kept me hooked. Ironically, both set-ups are tropes that I don't normally go for, mainly because second-hand embarrassment is the number one cause of death for my poor rabbit heart when I read. Somehow I'm leaning into the embarrassment this time, either because of the comedy or because I want to tear apart the couples' psychologies.

( Read more... )
+++

Reading both of those summaries/reviews back over, I see why they've both got me in a choke-hold. They both star two leads who's motivations and inner circus-ring minds clash, but should go hand in hand if only they'd all stop and be normal for 2 seconds. "Be normal" is a terrible way to describe it, so apologies to these fictional trashcan men, since it's clear from the narratives that at least half of them had certain upbringings that lead them to their present day selves, but it's the only phrase I can think of. If they'd be vulnerable; if they'd open up; if they'd stop thinking of expectations; if they'd listen to their partner and leave their assumptions at the door.
Seon-woo is the clear exception, for now. (He's just a horny little guy. He's got a teacher's pass from me.)
Namwoo has the most on-page character development, and I'm so proud of him. He will drag Si-eon into his happy ending. I believe in him. Seon-woo...not so much. But Tae-moon might get charmed along the way. We'll see.

This week is the beginning of my volunteer work at a local lit magazine in my city. They needed a new poetry reader, and I hopped into their inbox as fast as I could. Poetry has kept me fed for these past three years, when my ability to focus and be interested in longer works degraded, and when finishing not just a book but a short story felt like an impossible task.

Although I follow the lit mag's twitter account and subscribe to their newsletter, I never saw any call-out for a new reader. It's possible I missed an email, but their twitter has been bare recently. So, this is to say, I was lucky that I was looking through their website when I did and saw the call-out for a new volunteer! The application was simple, just your name and email and experience (any!) with poetry, but they had two optional additional sections that I knew I couldn't pass up if I wanted to stick out. I skipped the first one, but the second was asking for a mini-review on one of their previously published poems, if I had read any. At that point I had not, since they don't provide any free poems online, but what's a quick purchase of some past issues to fix this little problem? I grabbed 3 pdf's and tumbled on in. Found a poem I liked, wrote a mini-paragraph, and submitted. There was also a poem I did not like—one that was hard to wrap my brain around, whose style rubbed me the wrong way, and one I could possibly explain a reason why I wouldn't publish it. It actually bothered me, though I can't remember why now. I almost wrote about that poem in the application instead—
what a terrible idea, right? Sometimes I get these self-sabotaging urges and can reason away why they would work for me instead of obviously against me. Perhaps I could've shown how I knew what I was talking about—but the lit mag decided to publish it, so obviously they saw the poem's worth. Why give them an example of how I would go against their current team's tastes? I'm glad I slapped myself out of that misstep.

But now, with my first small bundle of poems to rate and review, I'm worried about being either too picky or generous. I've read for lit mags before, at my university. My university had two presses: the student-run lit mag, and the poetry press run by three of our Creative Writing professors. At both I practiced being generous and picky. The problem? At both of those internships, there was plenty of such obviously horrendous poetry. Plenty of the poems just weren't publishable yet.
My small slush pile now?
I can see how great all the poems are. They're interesting, in their own rights. I could make a case for why they should move on in the round. But more than that, personally I also don't like most of them, not enough to give them the thumbs up. One or two submissions were so close! So close! Yet I'm on the fence about them. When rating them, it's either "thumbs up", "thumbs down", or "maybe". It was like this at my previous internships, so rating submissions is not a foreign concept. The "maybe" might seem like a godsend, but here's the thing: we always want to use the "maybe" sparingly. So I'm leaning towards "no" for most of the poems in this week's round. I'm playing a game of hot potato all by myself.

I'm a first reader, so I'm the one setting their eyes first on the slush, and I'm probably not the only one reading them. Yet, I'd hate to have too high standards. Part of this is most definitely due to the fact that I'm not used to what this particular lit mag's standards are, so I can't tell if I'm being too picky or too generous. Maybe I should study those 3 issues I bought again. Reread all those already published poems? It's not like the poetry section of each issue were that long, since this lit mag focuses on fiction/prose over anything else. Once I get a better feel, I'll stop overthinking everything and find my groove.
—This isn't my first rodeo, just a new horse to break. It'll be okay.

Title: Home
Fandom: ORV
Author: javaink
Characters/Pairing: Shin Yoosung, Lee Gilyoung
Rating: General
Challenge: #297 Staying Home, drabble_zone
Summary: Shin Yoosung asks for a favor.
Spoilers: up to the epilogues! no events are mentioned, but the status of a certain not-protagonist protagonist is referenced
notes1: double drabble
( Read more... )

I still haven't made my Final Thoughts post on Giorno's season, but I've decided to re-watch the last few episodes, so I'll get around to writing up my final points at some point. Of course, I haven't gotten around to re-watching said episodes, despite it being a week or so now since I've finally seen the end, but I have do have a knitted scarf begging to be finished, so Giorno will be the perfect backdrop for that.

Last week I finished a book not on my Top Priority sub-section of my TBR book list, which is just predictable of me. But I finished a book, so it's still a win! To be fair all around, my friend M had read the book in January and was mad over it, wanted someone to talk about it with, to see if she was being too harsh--and coincidentally it was already on my e-book hold list with one of my libraries. I had to see if I agreed with her. Finally it was my turn with the e-book and I read it all last week.
It was A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

Turns out M was not being too harsh.

I enjoyed reading the book, and it was fun. I would not truly recommend it to others.

It's not bad, it's just...a road-trip book that never stuck with a character long enough for me to get attached.
( gripes with the book )
In another form of "please, mornings, focus on something", I have decided to ignore my Top Priority list--since apparently I'm only capable of thinking about the books but my hands refuse to pick them up--and have instead checked out two books from my library. Actually my library didn't have the books, but I hopped on our interloan library portal and got them through that. I *cries* love libraries. What a beautiful service.
( books! pt 1 )
Two days ago, my area had a tornado watch and warning. Having lived in north-central Texas my whole life, this is not a surprise. I have been through plenty of school drills and home drills. I even went to school in the midwest, where tornadoes are also common. I've never been hit by a tornado, or come close to one.
Despite all this, tornadoes terrify me.
My midwestern friends all joke that tornadoes are nothing, that they just go about their day as normal, it's no skin off their back. Meanwhile, I shelter immediately and lock my pets in the safest portion of my house with me. I don't cry or have outbursts, but I can't ever feel casual about tornadoes like them.
Thankfully, my town was on the outer edge of the predicted counties affected, and though we did go under warning, it was only for an hour or two. The heavy storm weather was gone by 10pm.
I distracted myself by reading a long review by a trans writer about the book "The Men" (hot garbage, that situation, all around; even just screenshots from the book were upsetting), and then reading the first chapter of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. Fight tornado fear with book fear.
( books! part 2 )
Alright, back to some LinkedIn scrambling.