index
july 2024
hello. i've died and come back to life a million times this month. every revival left me still a little fucked, like i was hollowing dark souls 2 style. sometimes i get so tired of the indomitable human spirit i wish i were domitable enough to quit putting one foot in front of the other. like idk. maybe i wasn't supposed to live this far. it's not that i don't find a lot of joy in the world but like. what a fucking hassle to be alive!
new on the site: marrow #11 — respite in bullet paradise. yeah. really pleased with this one even if the feeling behind it sucks. also! marrow #12 — 3ds art process, in case you're interested on seeing that.
and because bullets have been on my mind, i vaguely investigated the origins of the "genre name" bullet heaven, over on cohost. results were inconclusive but i wasn't expecting much. feel free to continue my reseach if you have the free time. i still think it's a ridiculous name and people who say it's because you become the touhou are just backronyming themselves.
lastly, i'm back to petz and my sub-site, the solar library, has received some much needed attention. weaning myself off `section`-heavy one page websites. they're practical in some ways (particularly for nav bars) but become so annoying and unwieldy as they grow, they scale terribly. so into separate pages they all go. with this setup i could use frames as so many in the community do, but i don't like them much. i'll just have a single index page that links to every other and you can go back to it, as is the case with my whole site already.
in progress: i gotta implement bertha's translation but haven't had the energy. in august i also HAVE to focus on applying for that masters. ugh i don't wanna send emails or write things in an academic tone. also also working on the hybrid bullet hell review corner — starting with picayune dreams and it's feeling a bit underwhelming but also does it really need to be particularly whelming?
art
artfight was this month and i uh. didn't draw that much. surely i'll pull through during the extension. but here are my attacks, hover to see who they're for:
i've been using new art academy long enough to find out there's actually a limit on how many saved sessions you can have, so i'm now having to overwrite past paintings. it feels a little bad but i don't really revisit them once they're finished, so it's ok. i linked up above, but my process post uses screenshots from that last painting.
also, more elden ring fanart, dlc version. maybe i can manifest the legendary "johnlock patch" that gives my girls cutscenes and fixes the ending. i did get cut lines for both of them so is it that much of a stretch? (yes)
media
games
- immortality (2022): finished it. good lird. truly a cinephile's game too.
- maiden and spell (2020): nice game! my first run was rough, i just didn't understand the systems and couldn't get nearly enough dps, but since then i've got a bunch more clears in cute and normal. it doesn't play nice on linux, which is a shame, because i'd love to play it on the thinky. but yeah it's a fun game, and! story mode has fucking save and exit! yeah you can continue instead of starting over every time, a feature i'm always saying (uh. to myself at least) more run-based games should have (balatro does as well btw it's great).
- lethal company (2023): been playing with friends! it's really fun and kinda scary — but unlike a normal horror game you can just leave. or be the computer guy that looks at the dots on the map and says "um. don't go in there" on the walkie talkie (but that's a bit less fun sometimes). optimal party size really is 4, but 3 is still good (just easier to wipe) (maybe we're just bad at it)
damn was this all? ok. besides rabbit and steel (finished the story, haven't been able to repeat my normal clear success yet) i also did play some risk of rain 2 now that my friend built a pc that can take it. faced the final boss alone a couple times and that was stressful as fuck. too much responsibility on my casual ass shoulders, i'm usually the one that gets carried on coop. well it's a damn good game even though runs that last an hour are less than ideal, and i've gotten better at it despite barely playing lmao
movies and series
- interview with the vampire (2022-2024): it's over i'm free i'm done! look i've been very mean to this show because i'm a hater by nature. i did like a fair bit of it, but it was just so completely enmeshed in bullshit that it wore me out. here are my episode-by-episode reviews in order, so you can see the hope and optimism leaving my body. very very funny seeing my earliest fears and criticisms because pretty much everything came true and i hated it. all my homies hate queen of the damned. and can you even trust a vampire series that can't be featured on my lesbian vampire page?
- cloverfield (2008): there wasn't a minute of this movie where i wasn't fully aware i was watching a usamerican monster/disaster movie. needless to say that's bad. i think it's mostly pretty good at keeping the monster off screen, but also the cgi looks like ass and the story is stupid (sorry to all my friends i love you dearly but if your building collapses during a monster attack i won't play the hero to try and save you. because that's suicidal). at least it's short.
- the birds (1963): flopppppp. sorry hitchie you have some banger movies but this is not it. pretty good climax / ending though. man's at his best when there's nothing really happening. also this clearly should have been a lesbian drama between melanie and annie. i gotta reread the haunting of hill house soon.
- the big lebowski (1998): classic fun movie that i'd absolutely not trust ardent fans of.
watching house of the dragon still. cannot fucking believe it took them this long to have rhaenyra kiss a woman. like i can actually because i am aware i'm watching an hbo series based on a book by grrm but! it literally makes so much sense for her character and arc (which is why i think it'll be botched. given grrm's track record with women) — in more trustworthy hands i even think lesbianism as purposeful masculinization could be incredible, but for prestige tv where there aren't really any queer characters erm...
also vhagar has got to be one of my favorite dragons of all time she's so cutes... honestly despite my distate for the spoon wings plaguing both series' dragons, she's gorgeous and very well executed cgi, her solidity is incredible. she looks like a fucking force of nature and i love her so much. clapping and cheering when she appears.
books and manga
- system collapse (martha wells): last murderbot for now. this has airs of the current therapy-as-panacea zeitgeist that i do not care for. but overall enjoyable as usual.
- DNF mordew (alex pheby): stopped around 20% of the page count (there's a long glossary in the end kinda affecting it but eh idc). the pace is grueling and nathan is unpleasant to follow around. but more importantly i simply lack the patience to read something with a background radiation of misogyny. this is a 2020 book. how is it even possible to go a hundred pages without a single woman with personality traits other than "female".
- ancillary justice (ann leckie): gave it a second shot and enjoyed it more this time. of course now i have the added benefit of having recently read another book in the same setting, but i think my criticisms of the "infodumping" weren't all that warranted. it's still no favorite of mine but i got the desire to read the sequels now, and i hadn't back then.
- pornography for the end of the world (brendan vidito): this sucked ass. i'm not sure how this wound up in my to-read list but every time i scrolled past it i assumed it was weird transexual fiction (or adjacent enough) and uh. it isn't. stories were mid at best, painfully heteronormative, author's allergic to writing women.
- ancillary sword (ann leckie): yea i fucking loved this one, it was impossible to put down. i love breq, really good character and incredible narrator. worldbuilding is very well done, and i love leckie's style of conveying the differences in languages (and cultures) without conlanguing but through explaining. it's very elegant.
- ancillary mercy (ann leckie): devoured this book in two days (← unwell or back to middle school form? jury's still out). really liked it as well, it's a lovely conclusion and just as good as the previous book ^_^
- the tyrant baru cormorant (seth dickinson): i don't think i've been vehement enough in my recommendation of these books. some of the best fantasy (well. ish?) i've ever read. i don't wanna say a song of ice and fire if it were good because i think it's a bit of a disservice to both series. but it hits a similar genre while being written by a guy that cares about the women he's writing. just overall really fucking good characters and setting and writing and you owe it to yourself to read these.
- annihilation (jeff vandermeer): wanted something quick and familiar so. reread. hi biologist i missed you. lowkey wish i could go on an expedition like this and disappear, i could be the blogger. surely this means nothing.
currently reading seth dickinson's exordia. it's good!
cya ^_^
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