drop ★ pop ★ candy

I keep saying I want to do a book round-up post of what I've been reading lately but I can't seem to get it started. So instead I'm just going to promote the Rina Sawayama remix of one of my favorite Le Sserafim songs: "Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard's Wife".

Watch on YouTube

Le Sserafim is one of my favorite new kpop groups and I love Rina Sawayama, so this remix was a very nice surprise lol. The original is amazing, I think it's so catchy and almost too good to be a b-side, but the remix is really good too!

What have you all been listening to lately? Any kpop fans here got recs to share?

A fic meme yoinked from svgurl! I barely write enough fic anymore to do any memes but I have had my AO3 since 2011 and I never look at my overall stats so.

rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, most kudos, most comments, most bookmarks, most words, and least words.

( fic meme results )

Wow that was harder than I thought it'd be lmao. A lot of overlap in the popularity of my fic, and it's funny how the the fic that gets big isn't always your favorites. I've got a lot of shorter or newer fics with less popular ships/fandoms that I like a lot better.

But speaking of fanfic, I'm curious--where do you guys post your fic? AO3 is still the most popular place, I assume, but does anyone still post fic here on Dreamwidth? Or backup everything on another site?

☆ I jinxed myself by saying I was doing a decent job keeping up with a weekly update schedule last time lmao. Basically nothing at all has been going on here though, just the same old go to work then come home and watch TV/play video games/whatever on repeat. BUT how's everyone else been doing? Hopefully things've been more exciting for y'all.

☆ Updates on stuff I've been watching... First and foremost is the Nimona movie. ♥ ♥ ♥ I read the webcomic back when it was first posted and I loved it a lot! I re-read the comic right before watching the movie so I could refresh my memory on it, and it's very different from the movie. ( + )

☆ In the realm of TV, there's season 3 of The Witcher! Or the first five episodes of season 3, I hate that Netflix keeps pulling this half-assed release schedule. Either drop the whole season or do a weekly release, you can't have both lmao. Anyway I'm canon-blind to both the books and games but I've been enjoying season 3 so far. ( + )

☆ I also finished watching Star Trek: DS9 a little while ago! And just in time because I'm currently working my way through season 3 of Picard and what should show up this season but stuff that originated in DS9 lmao. ( + )

☆ Okay, phew, that's enough of that. I might do a book update next time, I've finished reading several things since last updating properly. I'm also almost done playing Persona 5 Royal!! After all this time! I'm in the additional Royal endgame area so I've beaten the OG portion of the game, wow. The finish line is in sight sjdhfksjf

☆ Hello all! I had a nice long weekend off work this week. :) Got to hit up Bath and Body Works for their semi-annual sale, and despite complaining that their SAS deals and overall prices have gotten way worse in the past few years I still bought some stuff lmao. Just enough to use the $10 off $40 coupon though, they barely had any stuff 75% off and my store had zero 75% off soaps. What's the point if there aren't cheap soaps tbh!! I did get suckered by the ice cream line they released with the Cotton Candy Clouds and the Fruity Sherbet Scoop because I can't resist an overly sweet candy scent lmao. Other than some shopping, there was also a picnic at my coworker's house which was nice. It rained pretty much the entire time but thankfully the porch was covered so it wasn't bad, just cold.

☆ I also got to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse!! The theater was full of children lmao I truly don't mind kids at the theater but I wish parents were like...smarter about it. There were these like four-ish year-olds behind us that were being annoying because they were clearly restless, and it's like why are you bringing a four year-old to a 2+ hour movie where they're only going to be interested in the action sequences!

That aside, the movie was SO good. I loved the first movie so I had high hopes for this one and they thankfully delivered. The animation and action was even better than the first, the art styles and color palettes and all that were amazing, everything was so creatively done--Gwen's universe being colored in the watercolor-y style of her comics, the different Spider-people and how they were designed and animated, the fight scenes all being super cool and stylish. It's definitely worth seeing in a theater if possible, though it's VERY bright and flashy so not good for anyone who has problems with flashing lights.

Very sad we gotta wait until next year for part two. :( But I can't wait to watch it again once it's available at home so I can pause on all the text boxes and stuff that are only on screen for a few moments lmao.

☆ Excellent news on the Persona 5 Royal front, I made it past the part where I rage quit in the original game! I'm now in uncharted territory, I've added Futaba to my team and have gotten to the next palace/acquired Haru. I love both of them a lot already, I never really knew much about them since I didn't get far enough in the og game but they're so cute, Haru especially. Royal's been really fun, they added a whole lot more from the original game that actually made it worth it imo. Can't wait to get farther and finally see how this dumb game ends after like what, 5 years?

☆ Finished up a Good Omens re-watch with a couple friends as well in preparation for the new season coming out soon. The book is one of my top favorite books, I originally read it ages ago in high school and it's what got me into Terry Pratchett's books (I'm a huge Discworld fan) so I'm curious to see what they do with this second season. Nothing will be quite as good as the original book and I'm sort of hesitant about any new storyline made without Terry's input :( Even if supposedly Gaiman is using ideas from the potential sequel he and Pratchett workshopped I think. But hopefully it'll still be fun, I think Tennant and Sheen were super entertaining casting for Crowley and Aziraphale so I guess even if the season sucks they'll still be fun haha.

So one of my internet hobbies for a long time has been online TCGs. I've always liked collecting things (e.g. Pokemon cards when I was younger, enamel pins, etc) and online TCGs are great because they don't take up space or cost any money but they still satisfy that desire to collect and display lots of pretty things. Most of the online TCGs I've played are community-run games (go check out colors_tcg, we're having our 13th anniversary event this month!) but in this post I wanted to share a site called NeonMob. They were going to close earlier this year, but they're now under new management and are having a user drive right now!


What is NeonMob? In their own words, NeonMob is:
☆ An online card-trading game, where the cards are all created by independent artists.
☆ Free to play, with optional paid features.
☆ Similar to old-school baseball cards, mid-2000s online pixel card collecting, and modern gacha games (though with better odds!)

Basically, like Pokemon cards, you open packs of random cards from artist-made sets and can trade with fellow players on the site to complete your collections. There's a lot of cool art and it's a lot of fun. They also don't deal with any NFT/crypto-type stuff and (since this new company took over) they don't accept AI-created series anymore, for anyone worried about that.

If anyone is interested in joining, here's my referral link! And let me know if you sign up so we can be friends. :)

☆ Phew finally an update that's not just going on about GotG3. I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day who celebrated, or who just had the day off at least. We never do anything particularly exciting for Memorial Day, this year as usual we just had the family together and did some grilling since the weather was nice. I made them watch Black Panther Wakanda Forever since I wanted to re-watch it lmao I've rekindled my love for MCU Namor.

☆ Other things I've finished since the last non-GotG update... I watched the D&D Honor Among Thieves movie! It was really fun, you definitely don't need any D&D knowledge to enjoy it. The most unrealistic part of it was that everyone was straight lol nobody has an all-straight D&D party. But even so, Chris Pine was enjoyable as your standard Chris Pine funnyman character (this is not bad), though my favorite character was definitely Xenk. Wish he'd been in it more, his interactions with the team and Edgin especially were so good. The epitome of a one-off NPC that the players love so much they force the DM to bring them back into the story lmao. But yeah if you like fantasy action movies I recommend watching!

☆ I also watched the final season of His Dark Materials, which was...interesting. I've never read the books--I tried to read The Golden Compass twice when I was younger but never got hooked enough to finish it or the series, so I went into the show not knowing anything past book one. I think the show was very well made, everything looked great and the acting was very good, though I don't know how accurate an adaptation it was. I never understood before why some Christians hated these books so much, having only read part of book one; I was like, is it because the animal souls are called "demons"?? And then you get into the real plot with the Magisterium and Asriel's war against Heaven and it's like oh sjdhfskjhdf yeah that'll do it. So yeah it's NOT subtle at all in it's messaging but as someone who never read the books it was interesting to finally see what it was all about since the books were very popular when I was in school.

☆ And then there's Lycoris Recoil oh my god. They lured me in with the yuri bait and girls with guns trope and then hit me with the unexpected old man yaoi backstory drama. Where is my Mika/Yoshi prequel?? But yeah I really hope whatever "new animation project" they've recently announced is a proper sequel or something, I don't feel like Chisato and Takina got any real closure to their story, especially after what happens in the last couple episodes? Even so I think it's worth watching overall, it's only 13 episodes and the characters/their relationships really make it since the plot imo is kind of weak. But the animation is nice, I loved the characters, and the action sequences are decent. I don't have any real hope for Chisato/Takina becoming canon lmao but we can dream.

☆ I got to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3! Since Endgame I haven't been as intense about seeing the new Marvel movies in theaters (partially because covid, obviously) unless I genuinely really didn't want to wait, so I think I'd only seen Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in theaters and waited for the rest at home. MCU movies have been pretty hit or miss lately, some I did enjoy when I eventually got around to seeing them and some were just blah. My favorite of Phase 4 (is that what we're on lmao?? I don't even keep track anymore) was Wakanda Forever, which I actually want to rewatch soon because I only saw it once. (Loooved Namor and the intro for Riri, I'm looking forward to seeing them again hopefully? Who knows what Marvel's plans are ://) Anyway GotG 3 was actually really good! ( + )

In conclusion, if you enjoyed the previous GotG films but were worried about a dip in quality like Marvel's been putting out lately, watch GotG 3, you won't be disappointed. I'd say it's probably replaced BP 2 as my favorite post-Endgame film.

☆ Having gone on about GotG for too long I think I'll just save any other thoughts for a different post lmao. Nothing much new happening with me anyway, still just juggling a bunch of various media I haven't finished any of yet, so that can be for another day. Talk GotG with me if you've seen it! Or any other MCU movie, I've seen them all except Quantumania at this point. I think.

☆ I am not very good at this once-a-week updating thing... I suppose not much has been going on worth making a whole post about. I did finish writing that Mal/Nikolai fic!! That only took like two months lmao. I still need to type it up and edit it and toss it onto AO3 to never look at it again, but at least it's done. I did make a new fanworks comm when I created this journal just in case, I doubt people are posting fic to DW much these days? But I might use it just because I miss having a cute little personal comm with all my stuff haha. I suppose I could use it for icons too. 

☆ The spring book sale at work was this weekend (I work in a public library) so Friday was pretty hectic. I love used book sales because you can so clearly see what was popular like 10 years ago and now people are cleaning house, I found multiple copies of The Da Vinci Code, Water for Elephants, etc. Didn't find much that exciting for me but I did snag a good condition paperback copy of The Goldfinch for a friend, then that friend convinced me (very easily) to get the nice paperback copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell I found. It's like 100000 pages longer than what I normally read but it always seems to come highly recommended so for a buck I figured why not.

☆ In terms of books, I should be reading King of Scars more diligently but instead I've mostly been reading manga this past week. I'm nearly done with Oresama Teacher, I've finished 25 out of 29 volumes. The story's been bouncing around a bit but with 29 volumes obviously things are going to go a little off track. Anyway it's still really fun, I can't wait to see how it wraps up so I'll save my final remarks for then.

☆ More importantly I sped through volumes 2-4 of Cherry Magic, the subtitle of which is "Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?!" lmaooo yeah. I actually first discovered this on Crunchyroll as a live action drama and I watched about half of it, but I never finished it. I might go back and try to watch the rest though because the manga is super cute. The premise is that if you're a virgin when you hit thirty you gain the power to read minds via touch and the main character discovers that a guy at his office is in love with him. (Presumably the magic powers don't happen to everyone or else I feel like it would be a much more well-known phenomenon lol). Anyway it's a really fun rom-com, the MC is a socially awkward loner and the love interest is the hot popular guy at their work but he's really sweet. I'm definitely going to try and get my hands on more volumes because I must know what happens next with this.

☆ Still making my way through Star Trek DS9! I'm on season 5 now and it's actually had some very good episodes so far this season. ( + )

☆ I finished reading Bloom into You! It grew on me by the end, I enjoyed the main characters' individual development and the conclusion to their story. It had a happy ending, of course, and it was sweet getting to see the little time-skip at the end. Plus the art is very pretty, so I'd definitely recommend the series to anyone looking for a f/f romance with a little high school drama. I especially liked the message that love isn't just feelings, it's a choice you make over and over. Their struggles/character arcs felt more real to me than those stories with the grand love-at-first-sight style romances (which are very fun! but not particularly realistic).

Not sure if I'll bother watching the anime since I've just got so much other anime I want to watch haha, but it looks like there's a light novel side story with Sayaka as the protag which I may look into, I really felt for her while I was reading so I'd love to read more about her.

☆ I also finished my Crooked Kingdom buddy read with my friend! Still such a good duology. If anything I was even more emotionally wrecked by this series the second time around than the first lmao, I literally cried at the end of Inej's final POV chapter. Ketterdam is such an interesting setting, it's like a character all on its own, so while CK felt slow at times compared to how the momentum of SoC was always moving forward it was worth it to see all the character development/relationship growth/etc. I'd love a third book with the Crows if Bardugo ever wanted to go back to this series. (I'm not particularly enamored with her current series, I'd be absolutely thrilled if she did another Grishaverse book next lol. I was floored when I found out Bardugo wanted to do at least 5 books in the Ninth House series, like first of all is Alex going to fail college and have to repeat a year or something. What kind of plot could possibly keep this going for 5+ books. BUT I digress.)

Anyway yeah we're trucking along and have started on King of Scars, though I'm only a couple chapters in so far. I've realized I barely remember anything that happens in these last two books?? I have a few specific memories of plot points that I THINK are probably from the second book? So it's like I'm reading this one totally anew so far. My buddy read pal didn't like Zoya in the original trilogy so I'm hoping these books turn her opinion around because I love Zoya.

☆ And lastly, Honkai: Star Rail release! I actually haven't even downloaded it yet lol I was waiting to see if they were going to announce a Playstation release date but as far as I can see they haven't. So I guess I'll just download on PC to start and if they finally do release a Playstation version I can switch over. I haven't played the other Honkai game(s?) but I do play Genshin and Star Rail looks neat so I definitely want to check it out. Anyone else planning to play?

☆ Welcome to all the new people I've added recently! Hopefully you find something worth your stay here. :) Feel free to comment on any of my posts if there's anything you want to say, but don't feel obligated if not. I've put together a quick intro post stickied to the top of this journal with the basics for future friending reference.

☆ TV-wise, I've started on season 4 of Star Trek DS9, I'm about halfway through so far. Personally I don't think I like DS9 as much as the other Trek shows I've seen (TOS was my first and still my fave, but I've also watched TNG and most of the recent shows like Discovery, Picard, SNW). DS9 has its good moments though (I recently watched the episode where they get stuck in Bashir's fake James Bond holosuite program lmao), it just feels like the episodes are more hit or miss to me. It's still Star Trek though so it's not like I dislike it or anything. I hate to say that Quark is probably my favorite character in this one lmao he's so funny. His interactions with Odo too, like why are you making me ship the little Ferengi man and Mr. Smooth-Face. I say this lovingly to Odo, he's really funny to me too.

(Still making my way through reading Crooked Kingdom and I had the horrible thought that the Kerch are basically the Ferengi lmao they both run their society on profit.)

☆ I also finished up the current season of The Mandalorian. Non-spoilery thoughts but cut anyway just in case. ( + )

☆ I'm trying to get back into writing fic again, or at least I want to try lmao. I used to write a lot more often but these days, like with the blogging, I just never seem to get around to it... I browsed through DW comms for writing comms, I miss those old prompt table type fic challenges so I found a few of those that look interesting. I might use the table from 100ships for inspo first, that one looks fun and I think the concept would be a fun challenge! I started writing a Nikolai/Mal ficlet while in the middle of reading Siege & Storm but didn't even finish it and that was what, 4 books ago lol. I know I just need to get motivated and get better with my time management so we'll see how it goes.

☆ Other than that, not much to update on. I finally (after 6 years) got a new laptop but it's terribly ugly because it's an Asus gaming laptop so I need to cover it up with stickers. Yet I am burdened with the curse of never wanting to use my stickers on anything...oh the permanence of it all. I'll have to fight my instincts and pick out a selection.

☆ A brand new start! I got it into my head to try and start journaling again because I missed the good old days of LJ and DW and such, spent several days crafting a username and layout and browsing for comms to join...and then didn't post anything for ages lmao. So we're off to a good start. Most of my time is split between going to work and chilling at home, nothing particularly exciting, but here's what I've been into lately.

☆ With the second season of Shadow and Bone imminent I had decided I wanted to do a re-read of the whole series and got my friend to do a buddy read with me since she'd never read any of the books before. ( + )

☆ I'm also finally going to finish Persona 5!! But P5 Royal this time lmao. Back when the game first came out I got it and played up to the pyramid palace, died in an incredibly annoying way after not saving for a long time, rage quit, and then literally didn't pick the game up again. So after *checks watch* six years I will finally beat Persona 5. I'm enjoying it a lot though, there's a lot more stuff added to P5 Royal than I realized. Maruki and Yoshizawa are fun new additions, I'd already gotten a little spoiled on Yoshizawa's story over the years but there's still a lot I don't know. I've only just finished Madarame's palace so I've still got a bit to go before I reach where I left off.

☆ I've been getting back into watching more anime/reading manga again too, so that's been most of my media time other than gaming. I finally watched The Witch from Mercury which was really good, I love the characters and the school setting. I didn't realize that it wasn't complete though which is both great and a bummer because I want to know what's going to happen next but now I have to wait!! Suletta and Miorine are so cute, let them be lesbians or else...

So currently I'm working on the other recent lesbian fan anime lmao Lycoris Recoil. I'm only about 4 episodes in, personally the plot isn't as, idk, gripping to me yet? But I'm enjoying the interactions between the main girls (they went on an aquarium date....), Chisato especially is super cute and I love her personality. But yeah hopefully the plot will pick up now that the establishing eps have happened.

☆ Manga-wise I'm working my way through both Oresama Teacher and Bloom into You. OT is very stupid lmao but it's by the creator of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (which I love) so the art is pretty and it's definitely funny. The characters are even wackier than the ones in GSNK but they're a lot of fun. Meanwhile Bloom is much more subdued haha I've only finished 4 volumes so far and honestly I'm not super into the main pair yet? Like there's nothing wrong with them, the setup is interesting, but I'm a sucker for the pining best friend trope so I'm just sad for Sayaka most of the time. Find someone who appreciates you that way girl!!

☆ ANYWAY that's enough of that for now, I'm just rambling into the void at the moment about fandom stuff no one's going to read, so. I'm going to attempt to look for some friending memes and stuff if those still exist, see who's active on DW to follow these days. If anyone does see this, stop by and say hi \o/