thawrecka | Recent Entries

Finished reading:

On the Beach by Nevil Shute - which has its flaws as a book (it's certainly not scientifically rigorous and the prose is often clumsy), but I was emotionally overcome by the ending. I think even more so because it's such a slow burner, so much about incredibly ordinary people with no real effect on the world living out their last days. You don't get the point of view of politicians or geniuses or movers and shakers, and the one guy from CSIRO you only get his point of view toward the end when he's thinking about how he'll spend his remaining days. Just normal people living in denial, or numbing themselves with alcohol, or deciding to do things they never got to before, or finding ways to fill out their days and trying not to think of all the things they'll never get to do.

( Read more... )

Current Music: Everything Stays - the Adventure Time soundtrack

I kept a document open all year to paste these in as I went, but you can probably tell when that started to go awry...

( List of all the fic I wrote in 2025 )

The writing year in review meme:
Total words posted in 2025: 25,495 words
Total stories posted in 2025: 21
Longest story: The Ordinary Ever After Part: 5,552 words
Shortest story: Purring: 126 words
Story with the most kudos in 2025: Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man, 217 kudos (more than I expected!)
Story with the most comment threads in 2025: On His Mind, 10 comment threads
Story with the most bookmarks in 2025: Everyday Life With a Menace of a Man, 37 bookmarks
Personal favourite from this year: Probably Going Home, the Bleach Ichigo&Ishida gen I wrote after rereading the series yet again. I like the vibe of it! Either that, or the Pluto pinch hit I wrote for RMSE, which I feel really captured all my Paul Duncan and North no 2 feelings.

Overall thoughts: Weird year again! Didn't write much, and a lot of what I wrote didn't get much of a reaction. I joined a lot more exchanges in 2025 than in previous years, and they were marked by constant delays and not much in the way of comments. Not sure I'll bother much in 2026.

( Stats )

Yuletide reveals:

My assignment:
Hand to Hand (1202 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 永夜星河 | Love Game in Eastern Fantasy (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ling Miaomiao/Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi, Ling Miaomiao & Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi
Characters: Ling Miaomiao, Mu Sheng | Mu Ziqi
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Holding Hands, Fluff, During Canon, Post-Canon
Summary:

Four moments in time when Ziqi and Miaomiao held hands.

Looks like my recip was double assigned. When I saw the other fic they got, they hadn't commented on that, either, but I haven't checked since. TBH, they had no likes/dislikes/prompts/DNWs in their signup, so I assumed they'd be a no show, so this isn't a surprise. We matched on Love and Redemption, but I couldn't think of what to write, so I wrote Love Game in Eastern Fantasy... which the other person assigned to them also wrote.

On to treats:

Strange Feminine Secrets (1431 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jennifer Check/Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Characters: Jennifer Check, Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, back from the dead, Undead, Horror
Summary:

Post-canon, Jennifer and Needy find each other again.

Probably my most successful fic of the exchange! After I posted it I did start to think of what I could have done better, should I have written a longfic that covered their whole murder rampage, etc. etc. but actually I think it's fine.

Two Coffees, One Tea (1372 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Two Husbands One Wife
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shinpei/Mia/Takuzo
Characters: Satomura Shinpei, Yanoguchi Mia, Mitsuda Takuzo
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff, Domestic Fluff
Summary:

Scenes from Shinpei, Mia and Takuzo's life together.

I was so tired when I posted this that I somehow did not realise I posted it in Madness, not the main collection 🤣 Anyway, I was inspired by the prompt, especially as I'd just finished the show. Only one of my fics with a recip comment ❤️ Usually I just treat random people because I'm inspired by their prompts, but this is the first time I wrote a treat for a friend ❤️

I had a whole plan to write more treats than last but ended up writing fewer, because I was so tired. Kind of a quiet Yuletide, I think, though I might think that because my fic overall was less popular than usual. I think the delayed author reveals are also throwing me off.

What did I do in 2025? Hell if I know. A lot of people asked and about all I could say is I watched a lot of movies and TV shows and spent a bunch of time learning Chinese. I caught up with one set of friends and friends-of-friends for New Year's, and had a great time. I had non-dairy pizza, and non-alcoholic cocktails, and listened to people's opinions on the best superhero, and talked to a guy about Heated Rivalry and then his boyfriend played All the Things She Said during his DJ set.

I rung in the new year dancing to 3am! Something I am apparently still capable of doing! I am... very sore now, though 🤣

Happy new year, friends, and I hope 2026 treats us all well

I feel like I've watched a lot and read a lot this week and achieved nothing. Which is great.

Like everyone else on the planet, apparently, I watched Heated Rivalry, which has great shot composition and editing and sound design and in general is just so well directed I'm in awe of it, but also it's a nice romance. Kind of want to rewatch just because I'm in awe of how well crafted it is! The romance is nice, too.

Watched two episodes of Dare You to Death, a cheesy Thai BL about a cop duo with belligerent sexual tension trying to solve a series of murders targeting a group of university students (one of whom one of the cops is related to). Which is not like especially good, but there's some interesting moments and fun styling.

And the leads of that are also in The Heart Killers, which I watched three episodes of. Which is, I kid you not, a modern Thai BL take on Taming of the Shrew but make it assassins that work in a burger joint. It's... uh... very stylish? I don't know if it's good or not? I'm not sure if I'm compelled when I watch it, and I'm mostly bewildered when I think about it, but also I know it has a lot of fans.

I watched 10Dance (2025), a gay Japanese dancesport romance film on Netflix, which has structural problems and utterly pedestrian direction. It's fine, I guess? There are interesting elements that are only vaguely touched on, and I'm given to understand those are covered more deeply in depth in the manga on which it is based, but I'm not interested enough to read it. Takeuchi Ryoma is very good in this, though.

One and a half episodes of Realm's Night Rain Dreamlike, a homoerotic wuxia mini drama that is clearly ripping off (among other things) Word of Honor, and I'm not mad at it. And as it's a mini drama, it's certainly not bloodless... Filtered to high heaven, though, to the point it almost seems kind of blurry, which is a shame.

...other things I'm not mentioning because I wrote Yuletide fic about them...

I cannot begin to tell you how much YouTube I have watched. I've literally paused a YouTube video to post this right now 🤣 A lot of which is watching and rewatching makeup videos, like 뷰티숨BEAUTYSOOM's videos going around the world and getting makeup done in different places (so many different styles!) as well as getting her makeup done in different styles in South Korea. It's always so fascinating watching the different styles and how they emphasise different parts of the face.

I haven't fully finished reading through the collection, but all I have left is longfic so I'm flagging and will probably crash out tonight. I won't say I've read every fic 5k or under in the main and madness collections, but I've read a lot of them. That said, fic recs:

( Anime canons: The Summer Hikaru Died, Karaoke Iko!, The Apothecary Diaries )

( Movie canons: Hustlers, Edge of Tomorrow, Sinners, The Nightmare Before Christmas )

( All other canons: Carmilla, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, When Destiny Brings the Demon, Soulmate Goose AU, Womens Literary RPF, Manchild (Sabrina Carpenter video)/Orpheus and Eurydice, Hamlet, French fetish terms )

The Yuletide collection had a glitch this morning where half the authors revealed way too early, but now that everything's gone back anon I'll link the gift fic I got:

Cat Distribution System (3809 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pet Shop of Horrors (Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jill (Pet Shop of Horrors) & Leon Orcott (Pet Shop of Horrors)
Characters: Jill (Pet Shop of Horrors), Leon Orcot, Count D (Pet Shop of Horrors), Original Animal Character(s)
Additional Tags: 1990s Era is its own character honestly, The Dirtbag 1990s, Stalking (light), Period Typical Attitudes
Summary:

A cat adopts Jill, in canon typical fashion.

It's cute!

I ended up writing fewer Yuletide fics than last year, between holidays in November and exhaustion, and I feel weirdly guilty about it, but I appreciate the earlier opening gives me time to browse the collection before I head off to family Christmas Day hell 🤣

On the weekend I went to a showing of the 4k restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock, oddly suitable given I was halfway through the book at the time. Which I have now also finished, and enjoyed, though it's very weird and of its time.

The homoeroticism is off the charts; not just all the school girls being in love with Miranda, but also whatever was going on with Mike and Albert. I honestly had not remembered much about those characters in the movie, so seeing the level of homoeroticism there, and then discovering it's even more intense in the book was a surprise! There's stuff in the book I'm glad isn't in the movie - the fate of the Lumleys and all the stuffing about with Irma and Michael would have been a bit too soap operatic for the dreamy, vaguely horror-toned vibe Peter Weir was going for. And I do like the tighter focus allowing the vibe of 'the real horror is the school', though there is some nice atmospheric prose in the book.

I went with a friend to see the movie and we both laughed at the judgmental koala around Hanging Rock, lmao.

Though seeing some of the things non-Australians have written about this novel and movie has me like, sigh, can people try not to be weird and xenophobic about Australia?? It's not scary or strange for the southern hemisphere to have opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere, and you don't have to go on about how ~exotic~ and ~bizarre~ you find Australian things.

I'm skipping the question about food recommendations, because I'm going through a phase of disliking almost everything I eat.

littlerhymes asked: "Travel plans?"

These are all contingent on me ever having money again 🤣 which given how rapidly my home is disintegrating and I don't even have money to deal with that, feels unsure.

I have so many.

Can you believe that I've never been to Tasmania?? It seems like everyone I know has already gone there, so this will have to be solo travel (I solo travel so often but sometimes I long for company at the airport, you know?). Might be nice for a weekend trip. Of course I have to hit up museums and the markets and have some nice food. The natural beauty would probably be lost on me, and I'm unlikely to see that unless I go with a tour group, what with not driving and all. I'm thinking winter; the historical weather says it's not noticably cooler than Melbourne, though given the closer proximity to Antarctica the winds probably feel icier, but it's not exactly the frozen tundra and I do like to wear coats.

I mean, obviously I have to visit Sydney again.

The writing conference that I was meant to go to during the pandemic was on the Gold Coast... well, that didn't happen and I'm not going to the writing conferences anyway. But I really want to go to the Gold Coast again. My dad took me and my brother there after my mum died, so to me it's always felt like a place of healing. I haven't been back since a trip with friends in my 20s, which was lovely. But also it has tons of fried food and tacky crap AND I LOVE FRIED FOOD AND TACKY CRAP!!! Theme parks! I'm not overly into beaches, but it can feel ~exotic~ to visit them on holiday.

I also haven't been back to Darwin since the 80s, for that matter, so I should probably visit there, too...

...Yeah, I still haven't made it to Paris. I've wanted to go since I was a small child obsessed with sad French art films and ballet. It just costs so much money, though. The kind of holiday I could have for a week in Tokyo for $5k AU (still expensive!) would cost $10k AU in Paris, which is just prohibitively expensive for me right now. Maybe if I win the lottery??

I am slowly saving up for it, though. And Europe is so far that I will probably only ever go once, so I need to make the most of it when I do.

littlerhymes asked: "Standout books/comics/manga you read this year"

I was like, what did I even read this year? I feel like I've had more trouble this year than ever remembering what I actually experienced within the calendar year.

Goodreads to the rescue! I gave up on my reading spreadsheet early but I did dutifully log books on GR.

My favourites of the year:

Colette Decides to Die, volumes 1 to 3 by Alto Yukimura - the title makes it sound very grim, but this is a charming shoujo series about an overworked apothecary suffering burnout who decides to jump in the well when she's particularly exhausted, and instead of dying she meets Hades who is also overworked and suffering burnout and needs medical help. Through the relationship they develop, they learn the importance of delegating! And they have adventures! There's also a bit of a romantic element, but that hasn't progressed far in the volumes I've read.

It's a particularly soft & kawaii version of the Greek gods, but why not after all. I'm charmed by it. (I see a lot of discourse on the tumbles about how Greek gods are terrible and shitty in the ancient texts and therefore should only be terrible and shitty in modern fiction, but like, when I want terrible and shitty iterations of the Greek gods those ancient plays and poems already exist for me to enjoy...)

I did catch up on the last three volumes of Natsume's Book of Friends and it's still excellent and amazing and heartwarming & etc.

The more I think about A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon after the fact, the more I appreciate it. Such neat and tidy plotting, a nice spot of social commentary, and a fun story with cute illustrations, all in a slim 176 pages.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is the best book about a female serial killer I read all year. I like how messy and textured it is, how atmospheric, how rounded the characterisation feels, the insights it has into Japanese culture and the way it treats women, bodies and food. It doesn't come to any comfortable conclusions, and yet the ending still feels optimistic, and I appreciate how much space it allowed for ambiguity.

I won't do a more formal version of the December talking meme, but if you leave prompts in the replies to this post about topics you'd like me to talk about I'll try to get through them during the month.

I should write more about my Japan trip than just plane troubles, because I want to get all these thoughts and feelings down before they slip through my fingers.

I'll organise my thoughts mostly by area, as it's easier that way:

Ginza: This is where I stayed, and it was a perfect base for exploring Tokyo. Last time (which was 17 years ago! A long time!) I stayed in Nihonbashi, and it felt less convenient. My hotel was literally right above an entrance to Higashi-Ginza station.

Of course, Ginza is perfectly nice on its own. Touristy, but not overwhelmingly so, and clean and nice with lots of good signage, and very walkable. I spent a bunch of money at Loft and Itoya, which are dangerous as a stationery fan (I did not realise until I got home how many stickers I bought). Cursing that I didn't buy one of the sun and rain umbrellas at Loft, tbh, because it would be super useful in Melbourne. I also spent a lot of time wandering through Mitsukoshi department store just browsing and not buying anything. If I'd been more flush with cash I might have been in danger of buying a bunch of fancy makeup here, but given I already have too much eyeshadow I'm not sad I didn't.

This reminds me how convenient the trains are. They come so often! When I visited Tokyo in 2008 I'm pretty sure only Roppongi had the subway fare table in English, which was inconvenient when I was trying to get to Roppongi and my nearest station in Nihonbashi only had signage in Japanese. Now pretty much every subway station has English signage, and the ticket machines allow you to display the information in multiple languages and type in the station you're going to to get fare advice anyway. It's so convenient.

In general, Tokyo is so much more convenient for foreign tourists now. (Which turned out to be great for me because my Japanese is so much worse than I thought it was, lmao.) In some of the more tourist heavy areas the overhead announcements are in Japanese, then English, then two varieties of Chinese, then Korean. At Tokyo Station I think there were also announcements in Thai. Amazing, tbh. I don't feel any city has an obligation to be convenient for foreign tourists, but it is very nice.

I did a lot of shopping at the Tokyo Station shops in 2008; I did a lot in 2025, too 🤣 I bought a kimono Miffy, and a fancy mug from the fancy Ghibli store, and I very nearly bought a tacky plastic keyring about my fave anime character before reminding myself I have too much plastic crap already...

Tokyo Tower! I went to Roppongi thinking I'd go to the Mori Art Museum, but once I got there I only wanted to walk to Tokyo Tower instead (even though there's a closer station to it, yes). And it was so worth it. The bright red and white tower against the bright blue sky! In front of Tokyo Tower there was a mini Tokyo Tower surrounded by Christmas trees, and it was so cute. This is the only thing I remembered to photograph.

Ikebukuro: I really enjoyed this neighbourhood and went there two days in a row. It's well known as a place full of anime merch frequented by women, and certainly I went to the massive Animate and looked in several of the second hand stores and considered buying things... but in the end, I stumbled into the Sunshine City shopping mall and bought a bunch of feminine accessories and looked at a bunch of cute clothes. I planned to buy other things, but then I spent ¥16,500 on a cute handbag & bag charm at Samantha Vega, and I can't remember how much on a hairclip at Mary Quant, and honestly if I'd had more cash I could have spent so much more... I also liked the other shopping malls in the area and the general vibe. Just a really nice area, tbh. I have to go back!!

Akihabara on the other hand, meh. I didn't like it in 2008 because it felt crowded and sleazy, and I don't like it for the same reasons now. Most of Tokyo smells mysteriously nice, but Akihabara doesn't. OTOH, the Animate there had a different selection of merch, and was where all the Natsume Yuujincho stuff was?? I bought a Nyanko-sensei pen.

I also could have spent entire days in Shimokitazawa. If you like neighbourhoods full of vintage shopping and independent designers that make you feel like you're not cool enough to be there, as I do, then this is top notch. There were so many cute things in the stores! I nearly bought a purple handbag at Wego (where everything was delightfully tacky), before reminding myself I'd already bought a handbag the day before elsewhere and how many handbags do I need... Well, I'm still thinking about that handbag, so I guess this is a reminder you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and 100% of the accessories you don't buy.

I bought so many stickers at B Side Label. I could have spent hours in there, buying every sticker I saw. They're so cute! This is their website, and I bought more anime stuff here than anywhere else, lmao. You can get B Side Label stickers all over the place - Loft, the Jump shop, the various TV station shops in Tokyo station, etc. - but I'm glad I waited to buy any until I got to one of their own stores and could browse a bigger portion of the collection.

Some other thoughts:
- I'm 5'4 or 5'5 depending on who measures me, and it's really nice to visit a country where almost everything is made for people around my height.
- Rice is healthy for most people, but I can't actually digest it very well, so after eating it several days in a row, having to deal with plane turbulence didn't only do in my back, I also felt queasy the whole plane flight. Live and learn.
- Google maps was good at telling me the public transport to get somewhere, but almost every time I needed walking directions it tried to lead me in a circle. What is with that?
- I talked with a friend about it after I got home, who said that he felt disappointed that Japan no longer gives him the feeling it used to the first time he went there, whereas it still gave me that feeling: excited to be there, and just different enough from home to be interesting but not so difficult that anything was particularly hard to navigate (even with language issues). Honestly, still feels like a very nice place for a solo female traveller to go, and I can't wait to go again.

I've probably forgotten so much of what I wanted to say about it already.

I am back from Japan! I had a great time. Until an overnight flight home that was 10 hours of turbulence, so now I'm tired and in pain. At least I had the good sense to make sure I had a few extra days off work after my flight, so I have time to recover.

Realistically, I am not going to catch up on any social media, and I'm not even going to try.

As I write this, it is ridiculous o'clock and I am getting ready to leave for the airport.

I finished Blood River! The ending is great! Honestly the most satisfying ending possible. It achieves what I thought impossible, giving something to satisfy the m/m fans and m/f fans (and possibly also the m/m/f fans), and gives an end to the politics that's somehow both grim and optimistic.

I also watched 4 episodes of I Am Nobody season 2 while I had the Youku subscription, and I just don't think I'm going to watch the rest. The pacing is off, and there are way too many male characters and not enough women. I could genuinely feel my interest dropping with each episode as the gender balance got worse.

I also watched 8 episodes of When Destiny Brings the Demon and to the end of the 26th episode of Whispers of Fate, though I could not tell you what happened in them right now, I am so tired.

I am 34 episodes in to Blood River! I think the writing gets a big wobbly starting in episode 30, but I'm still having a good time, and I'll be able to finish it this week, and it did pick up a bit in episode 34. I hear good things about the ending. I'm enjoying my silly sad-eyed assassins story.

I also had to pause during episode 23 of Whispers of Fate last night to go to sleep, because I was so tired. I have my quibbles with this show, but once it started feeling like particularly magical xianxia instead of a lukewarm rehash of Mysterious Lotus Casebook it really picked up for me. The action scenes are so good! Tang Lici dancing to save that array, and that one music/string puppets scene live in my head rent-free. A Shei and Tang Lici still have negative chemistry, which does drag things down, but overall I'm enjoying it.

Also, today is my birthday! (For another two hours.) I went out to lunch with friends and exhausted myself at a market, and I'm looking forward to a sleep in tomorrow.

Reading:

DNF - The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - I've really liked most of this author's work that I've read (Strange Weather in Tokyo is beautiful, for example), but this turns out to be a boring mosaic novel about a sexual predator from the pov of the women he messes around. The back cover copy describes him as a [curious and complicated man whose great capacity for love may well be the course of his downfall] and like... that makes him sound interesting, and he's not. I assumed it meant tragic ill-advised love affairs and not, you know, straight up rapist. Not remotely what I'm in the mood for.

Watching:

Blood River:

Episode 22

Sword deities! Just hanging out, as they like to do. I like Bai Hehaui's red dress. I like her friendship with Su Muyu and absolutely do not ship them in the slightest.

Also, I love that she calls his umbrella (that Changhe made for him) his treasure.

Episode 24

They're like, look at this censors! This show is definitely sufficiently heterosexual! And meanwhile I do not believe Su Muyu has the slightest interest in seeing a naked woman. Also LOL they made a big fuss about how unclothed she would be during the procedure and she was still mostly clothed.

And how close Su Muyu and Su Changhe sit together at dinner! Ridiculously so!

Episode 26

is so cool! Baby Tang Lian! Mu Qingyang fanboying over Lei Yunhe! SMY and SCH and Mu Yumo looking so damn cool as they make plans together!

I also watched 10 episodes of Whispers of Fate. I thought the first few episodes were pretty rough, tbh, but I stuck it out until Xiao Shunyao showed up in episode 4. The overall show started to improve from that point. May just be on my TV, but the first bunch of episodes looked really cheap, and I do feel the sound stage-y ness of it all with the non-moving backgrounds. Also the beginning felt like a lukewarm rehash of many things, including but not limited to Mysterious Lotus Casebook and every past fantasy character Luo Yunxi has ever played. But I feel like it's gone sufficiently xianxia nonsense now that I'm drawn in and the visual flourishes seem to get more interesting as it goes on. And also, so much it's that guy! Like, it's that guy from Love Game in Eastern Fantasy! And Bai Shu is in this, too! & etc. etc.

Still don't love the older man-younger woman vibe they seem to be pushing, but that's just because that's my squick, and it's not like it takes up too much screen time. I also feel like a bunch of the actors are giving the most mediocre performances of their career (Riley Wang, you're usually better than this!), for which I blame the director, but I've seen worse, so...

I'm fully caught up on Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! and This Monster Wants to Eat Me as well. I would say the latter is kind of slow in a way that stretches my disbelief, but I am overall enjoying it, and the freak 4 freak nature of the main pairing of the former is A+.

I read: Salem's Lot by Stephen King for my book club, and I think everyone who claimed it was scarier than Twilight owes me $5. Though King does have it right in his introduction when he says it's a bit like Peyton Place; certainly enough of it was a soap opera with occasional appearance of vampires that I compared it to that time on Days of Our Lives when Marlena was possessed by the devil, but there continued to be non-demon possession storylines... Well, it was fine overall, I guess. (I can't truly comparee it to Peyton Place, the book, but I've watched the movie, which I had a better time with than with Salem's Lot.) And in comparison to Dracula, which I know partially inspired it... it is more sexist than Dracula, and has fewer interesting characters. I continue to be convinced that King is better when he writes short.

I watched: Well, I'm continuing to watch episodes of Blood River as they come out, and as you can guess, I'm getting increasingly unhinged about it. Not only because Su Changhe and Su Muyu love each other very much, but also because they're bringing other people into lives and trying to establish a lovely domesticity with friends and sort-of-family, but I've seen The Blood of Youth and I know where this goes. The slow motion trainwreck of this all, where if you didn't know better you might think they're dragging themselves out of the muck, but you do know better, you know they'll never be able to escape the darkness they grew up in... Absolute killer, and the fight scenes are totally bomb.

Current Music: Hozier - First Light

Like Real People Do (607 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 暗河传 | Blood River (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Su Changhe/Su Muyu
Characters: Su Changhe (The Blood of Youth), Su Muyu (The Blood of Youth)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene
Summary:

A little extra moment set during the flashback in episode 14.

I keep meaning to post here and I keep not getting around to it! All I've been doing is watching things:

• Blood River - Gong Jun's latest - is finally airing, and it is so much fun. It's in the same universe as The Blood of Youth (which had great fight scenes and friendships and which I liked very much) and Dashing Youth (a poorly structured mess, that it occurs to me was probably trying to do something ambitious, but kept cutting away from the fight scenes I was more interested in). The fight scenes in Blood River are SO COOL OMG. It's also setting a cracking pace.

My expectations were for cool wuxia fights (FULLY SATISFIED!! THE FIGHTS ARE SO COOL!!) but uh also the level of homoeroticism is off the charts. Given how I know they end up in TBOY I'm mostly like 😭 about it, but I'm very much enjoying it. There could stand to be more female characters, but the ones that are there are very cool, and I'm also very much enjoying the selection of handsome middle aged men for someone of my age and tastes to appreciate.

But oh man, Su Muyu and Su Changhe sure love each other, and isn't that messed up.

• The great Gundam watch through... sort of continues. I had to admit I was just not vibing Gundam 0080 (it's fine, but I only had access to the dub and just could not stand the voices), and I'm moving on to the next on the list, which will be whichever of what comes next I have access to on Crunchyroll or Netflix, because I'm not signing up for yet another streaming service.

• What if I just... watched Kaiju no 8 again from the beginning. What if that. Well, I'm doing it, and it's honestly better than I remember. Still think it could stand to have more female characters, though.

• I don't know if I mentioned I watched all of season 1 of Chainsaw Man, but I did, because of course I did, it's about a guy who grows a chainsaw from his head. I also went to see the Reze Arc movie on the weekend, and I'm pleased that it had Mr Chainsaws himself riding a shark into a fight with the embodiment of the human fear of typhoons. I did not stay for any post-credits scene. I am too old for it. Apparently there is one, and I'll catch it when I rewatch the movie on Crunchy some day.

This series is like a fever dream someone had of merging 90s Tarantino films with cheap 90s VHS horror in a mad science experiment and animating it, and just for that reason I'm happy it exists.

Some more things I like about it

- It is a sleek 100 minutes. No time wasting, I didn't have to take a bathroom break even once. Get in, get the job done, go home. A+

- I knew I liked that 'everyone wants Chainsaw's heart, but what about Denji's heart' line from the trailer, but I didn't realise it happened WHILE DENJI IS STANDING ON TOP OF A CAR AKI IS WEAVING IN AND OUT OF BUSY TRAFFIC insane business

- Aki grabbing Angel Devil's hand to save his life even though he knows it will shorten his lifespan even more!!! All the Aki and Angel Devil scenes were so fucking good, they absolutely hit

- Honestly I wasn't sure I was vibing most of the film until Reze bit Denji's tongue and was about to gouge his heart out and Beem jumped up (seemingly out of nowhere) to rescue Denji from the scenario and kick things off

- THAT ENDING!!! Revealing Reze's tragic backstory, but of course she can't be allowed to live, and in come Makima and Angel Devil monstrously powerful to fix that problem

Chainsaw Man is certainly not without sexism, but I appreciate that it has characters like Himeno who gives cigarettes to underage boys and once accidentally threw up in Denji's mouth, and Power, who will sell you up the river to save her cat. Everyone of any gender is a ratbag and kind of charmingly shitty, and I love that. And I also love that sometimes it reminds you how truly horrific Denji's childhood of deprivation and poverty was, to really punch you in the face with a feeling when you just wanted to laugh at a dumb monster fight.

• It turns out I never gave my actual thoughts on Kimetsu no Yaiba after watching the entire anime (including the Mugen Train and Infinity Castle movies) in a week. Here it is: Kimetsu no Yaiba is equal parts (1) Wow, this sword fight looks so insanely cool! (2) but the sexism is not great (3) wow, this awkwardly placed flashback just keeps going and going and going (4) this fight has gone on so long it's no longer cool; when will this demon fucking die already.

And yet? I watched the whole thing in a week?

I think the thing is it starts off so good. I watched the first four episodes at a New Year's Eve party several years ago and was really impressed, so when I heard about the good reviews the Infinity Castle movie was getting I figured I should start again from the beginning. And it does really hit the ground running - the beginning and middle of season 1 are paced so well. And then it's never well paced again HAHAHA. It's good at making clear the stakes and has great tension; a lot of the series has fights and conflicts where if things go one way one horrible thing could happen, and if they go another another horrible thing could happen, and it threads that needle of making you believe that most of the time it comes out in the middle just fine because it works at it. And the fights are brutal! Tanjiro's loss of most of his family and his codependent relationship with Nezuko, and the people who give him a chance in the beginning, and how hard he works to train - all that works well.

But oh man, the awkwardly placed long flashbacks. The worst is in the show when the Love Hashira has that long flashback about trying to change to be marriageable and learning it's okay if instead of finding romance she has friendship & etc. etc. and that's great, I support that arc, but it came in the middle of a fight that had nothing to do with that. And I swear the flashback in the Infinity Castle movie was 40 minutes long - I went for a long bathroom break in the middle of it and missed nothing.

I'm still going to see the next movie when it comes out, though.

Hello!

I'm

thawrecka, and I'm excited to read whatever you write. If you want to see more about what I like about these canons, or if you want to find more of what I like in fiction feel free to browse here or my tumblr.

If you're the person assigned to me, hi! :D If you're someone else, I also welcome treats.

Requests

( フェルマーの料理 | Fermat no Ryouri (TV) )

( 琉璃 | Love and Redemption (TV) )

( Pet Shop of Horrors (Manga) )

( Lexx )

( Underworld (Movies) )

( Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Anime) )

( General likes )

( General dislikes )

Successful day in the city. Saw a movie [Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle], bought a new phone grip, and picked up the next volumes of both the manga series I'm reading, which is the third volumes of both Kaiju no 8 and Colette Decides to Die.

I may have thoughts about Kimetsu no Yaiba at a later date because... I watched the entire series in a week, which is unhinged behaviour! Infinity Castle has all the same strengths and most of the weaknesses of the rest of the series though, so...

The seasons of both The Summer Hikaru Died and Kaiju no 8 both ended on the weekend, and while the former was more satisfying than the latter, I had a pretty good time with both.

The cliffhanger Kaiju no 8 ended on feels less satisfying than last season's - feel less like an actual cliffhanger and more like just stopping the story in the middle of a fight - but I'm looking forward to season 3 if/when that arrives. The beginning of the season had a bit of a lull with the bunch of new characters I had yet to care about, but ever since Kafka fighting Isao it's been great, building and building emotionally. I wouldn't say I'm in the fandom, which seems to be composed mostly of teenagers super hot for Hoshino and his bowl cut writing copious amounts of readerfic, but I am writing fic of one kind and considering fic of another, and contemplating buying merch when I get to Tokyo.

The Summer Hikaru Died's season ender had a great emotional moment, and I'm excited that it's been renewed for another season (whenever that will arrive! I'm willing to wait). A lot of people who've read the manga seem to like the anime adaptation more, so I'm not sure whether to read the manga or just wait for the next season... The theme song is also stuck in my head, so there's that.

With regard to Bleach I finished the old anime series, sped my way through the anime movies, and have now got on to the Thousand Year Blood War anime. So I can slow down now, LOL. I actually think the Fullbring arc might be better in the anime. The animation towards the end of the old anime is kind of stiff (a lot of nothing moving but people's hair), but the pacing of the emotional backstory for the Fullbringers spread through the arc is better, and I like how it captures that slow quiet heavyness of Ichigo without his powers, that feeling like he's underwater and just pretending everything's fine. I also like how small and petty everyone in X-Cution ends up feeling; that honestly makes me have more sympathy for the characters than less. It's an arc that's really grown on me! I'm still disappointed it didn't make more use of Chad, but it's a great arc if you're emotionally invested in Ichigo & Ishida's friendship, as I am.

I do feel a little disappointed the old anime didn't have more Hueco Mundo filler, though. I think that would have been a great way to get deeper into the arrancar leftover after Aizen, who are relevant in the last arc after all...

My verdict on the movies: Eh, they're okay. They're basically filler arcs but shorter. I think the first two are the best, and the last one is the messiest with the highest highs and lowest lows. The third film feels like an interesting idea rendered in the least interesting way possible (I also feel like it's catering to the Ichigo/Rukia shippers, whereas the fourth has fanservice for Ichigo/Orihime shippers instead). The idea that without memories of Rukia Renji would forget he has bankai is interesting! So is the idea that Byakuya would believe Ichigo about a Rukia he doesn't remember because Ichigo mentions Hisana! But the execution is, eh, whatever.

Anyway, I'm not far into the TYBW anime yet but it's so much prettier than the old anime and I'm really vibing it. The last arc of Bleach is all over the place but there are parts I really enjoy that I'm excited to get to. It does still have some of that hair blowing in the wind so you won't realise it's otherwise a still image stuff 🤣 and way more of the hollows politely waiting to fight while someone monologues than I'd like, but still! I'm not far in but I'm excited and having fun! I can't wait to see Ishida suffer 🩵🩵🩵

I wrote a Kaiju no 8 Kaguragi Aoi/Izumo Haruichi ficlet for the prompt 100 words of first time blowjobs. I may or may not extend it into a whole story later to put on AO3.

This was my assignment:

Shared Warmth (1056 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 黄金台 - 苍梧宾白 | Golden Terrace - Cāng Wú Bīn Bái
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fu Shen/Yan Xiaohan
Characters: Fu Shen (Golden Stage), Yan Xiaohan
Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Slice of Life, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Summary:

Two moments in their relationship in which Fu Shen and Yan Xiaohan take care of each other.

But first I wrote this pinch hit, because I saw it on the PH list while I was actively watching Pluto, and got inspired:

Preludes and Endings (Arr. for Piano) (1854 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pluto (Anime)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Paul Duncan/North no. 2
Characters: Paul Duncan (Pluto), North No. 2 (Pluto)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Canonical Character Death, Angst, First Kiss, Robot/Human Relationships
Summary:

Paul Duncan uses the time they have to reach out for North no. 2's hands.

The Pluto fic did better than my Golden Terrace fic, and I can't say I'm surprised. The former was just better, and even though I signed up thinking I could write the latter I really struggled.

After this I'm taking a break from exchanges until Yuletide. I did a bunch over the last year, and it turns out instead of giving me the joy Yuletide gives me they mostly made me stressed. I did read some great fic, though, and got to write some interesting stuff.

Purring (126 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Madara "Nyanko-sensei" & Natsume Takashi
Characters: Natsume Takashi, Madara "Nyanko-sensei", Natori Shuuichi
Additional Tags: Fluff
Summary:

The healing power of Nyanko Sensei.

Originally posted on FFA here.

I am unlikely to expand it, but here's a Natsume Yuujinchou Natori/Natsume ficlet I wrote.

LOL at this season 6 episode of Natsume Yuujincho, "I don't do favours for youkai," says the guy who's been doing favours for youkai for five seasons. I've been on a Natsume Yuujincho binge all weekend, and it's amusing and reminding me how shippable Natsume is. Everyone wants a piece of him. Also, wow, the animation massively improves from season 1.

I appreciated that the weekend's new episode of Kaiju no 8 put focus on a different set of characters. I was really missing the old crew from division 3! Kaiju no 10's shifty proposition and the intelligence it gave in return are iiiiinteresting.

I said I was going to give myself a break between the end of the filler arc and the beginning of the Fullbring arc, but I watched episodes 343 and 344 of Bleach anyway. I enjoyed them! I've relaxed on the Fullbring arc since I first read it forever ago and enjoy it a lot more, and thus far I'm liking the anime version. Captures Ichigo's obvious denial about how much he misses his powers and his shinigami friends well, and the way he's drifted back to spending more time with Keigo and Mizuiro without sharing anything real or deep with them, and I love the scene where he and Ishida argue while fighting that gang just as much animated. They're so funny and so silly. And TBH, I love that so many of the characters have after school jobs. I'm preparing myself to be disappointed all over again with how it deals with Chad, but I think I'm going to enjoy how it deals with Ichigo and Ishida all over again.

Famed Australian film critic David Stratton died last week, so I decided to watch more movies in his honour. Unfortunately um I watched Rashomon and was underwhelmed. I guess every serious film fan will disown me now. It really does feel like a short story unnecessarily dragged out to movie length. Longest 88 minutes of my life. The best part is the fourth memory, which isn't even from Akutagawa's stories, but has better acting from everyone. There are good bits, but also... it's too long. I mostly feel it's too long.

OTOH, I watched When Harry Met Sally for the first time, and you know what? It's good. It's really good and really funny, and captures an emotional truth. The joke about Ethiopian film has not aged well, but everything else is delightful. That romantic ending speech really brought a tear to my eye. And remember when people were allowed to look like that on screen? No one in this movie is bad looking but everyone looks so normal.

I have finished the Bleach filler! Insert a maniacal laugh here.

They should have done more one shot filler episodes instead of too long boring arcs, and that's about all I can say about that. It's not that the reigei arc was entirely without merit (for one thing, I like how they actively tried to show Ikkaku incorporating Iba's feedback about his shitty battleground behaviour as a bit of a character motivation bridge between arcs, and while I didn't find Kageroza or Nozomi particularly interesting there were interesting moments and some cool fights, including surprising match ups like Komamura vs fake Soi Fon), but it did go on too long, and kept redoing the same thing in increasingly less interesting ways. How many times do we have to see Byakuya fight himself??

I do appreciate filler episode 342 because it's all about Ichigo and Rukia's friendship, and that's my favouritest thing in the series. For most part I'm :/ about them dragging out Ichigo's power loss, but I did like that the entire episode was a nice farewell between them.

And now onward to the fullbring arc. It's grown on me in the manga in reread, but we'll see how I feel when I watch it.

The new episodes of The Summer Hikaru Died and Kaiju no 8 on the weekend were great. I'm living for the uncomfortable tension between Yoshiki and "Hikaru", and the last episode was a real knife to the chest. And as for Hibino Kafka and his crew, the revelation that Kafka is now not fully transforming back from kaiju but small parts are staying monstrous was interesting, and I'm excited to see where they go with that. Also, I love that he's just going to do his best about it. Also, that the scientist was saved! And I think Narumi has grown on me, even though I found him dull at the start of the season.

I have also watched all four episodes in existence of Let's Go Karaoke!, about a member of the Yakuza approaching middle age forcing a middle school choir boy whose voice is about to change to go to karaoke with him so he can learn to sing better. It's not remotely what I thought I would be into, but it's so compelling. The first episode is so uncomfortable with how cringe Kyouji is, hahaha. Poor Satomi, having all that inappropriate karaoke time and struggling with so many teenage emotions. That scene in episode three just about rewired my brain. And the last episode! Crying while massacring an X Japan song! So good. I'm glad I got back into anime just in time to watch weird silly nonsense like this. A choir boy having inappropriate tension with a yakuza who makes him go to karaoke is not what I would have thought I enjoyed watching a year ago... but it's real fun.

Since I started it last Monday, I have also finished watching all 48 episodes of The Apothecary Diaries, which is unhinged behaviour, but also after everything I saw about this series before I watched it being that Maomao never has convincing attraction to men, I was surprised how obvious it is that she's attracted to Jinshi. I guess that must be ship war rhetoric from people who ship her with Loulan instead? She is very shippy with Loulan, but I don't like Loulan hahaha. Obviously she should kiss almost every woman though. I wouldn't have minded her smooching Suirei, but maybe Suirei should get smooched by Ah Duo instead.

I feel like Jinshi and Maomao should not hook up because that would fundamentally change their relationship in ways that wouldn't be great for Maomao. Much like with the X Files, I find the idea of them doing something with all that tension both compelling and ill-advised.

TBH, most of my favourite parts are when she's hanging out with concubines and other servants in the rear palace, or when she's chatting with her sex worker friends at the brothel. It's pretty good for interesting female interaction, and while it's frank about sexuality and sex work, and there's horrors in the backstory, and it mostly doesn't dwell too much on them to stop feeling light and charming. And the main character enjoys testing poisons on herself, in classic chemist fashion.

I did laugh every time they clearly did not have the money to properly animate a thing, so there was a succession of still images and a voice over.

Let's Eat! (705 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Rukia
Characters: Kuchiki Rukia
Additional Tags: Fluff, Missing Scene, Established Relationship
Summary:

Three moments in time when Rukia thinks about the people she shares food with.

Finally revealed! The fic I wrote for Fandom5k:

The Ordinary Ever After Part (5552 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ayasegawa Yumichika/Madarame Ikkaku
Characters: Madarame Ikkaku, Ayasegawa Yumichika
Additional Tags: Fluff, Slice of Life, Established Relationship, Humor, Smut, Post-Thousand Year Blood War Arc (Bleach)
Summary:

A series of moments in Ikkaku and Yumichika's life together.

Getting this assignment is also directly responsible for me getting back into Bleach, rofl. When thinking about signing up I saw someone requesting this pairing and thought, sure, I could write that pairing, I'm willing to sign up for that. And as soon as I got my assignment I went on an unhinged full manga canon review and got back into the anime and etc. etc. Well, I'm having a great time.

I've finally reached the point where I've posted more Bleach fic than I have Smallville fic, which feels right because I posted all that Smallville fic two plus decades ago. There should be a 'show only my top most written fandoms in the last five years' button 😂 I filtered by date updated for five year periods to see what fandoms I was most deranged about writing in in any given period, and first of all it's not even accurate because I have three fics tagged LOTR and it says I have only two. And secondly I think I've realised I'm just as unhinged in the 2021-2025 time period as I was 2001-05. I may have written 21 Buffy stories in the 01-05 period (well, I wrote more than that, but plenty of my early extra bad fic was not posted backdated to AO3, and in fact has been lost from the internet), but I also wrote ...uh... 23 Mysterious Lotus Casebook stories in a year and a half in the 2021-2025 period, so... there's that...

Whereas 06 to 10 and 11 to 15 is just [gandalf I have no memory of this place meme]. I wrote Merlin fic?? I wrote Teen Wolf fic?? I wrote Young Avengers fic?? I have absolutely no memory of ever writing getbackers fic, but I was obsessed with it, so at least that makes sense.

Limbo (1014 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kira Izuru & Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo & Kurosaki Isshin
Characters: Kira Izuru, Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Isshin, Tia Harribel
Additional Tags: Bittersweet, Grief/Mourning, Post-Winter War (Bleach), Awkward Conversations, Angst
Summary:

Three different shared griefs, in three different places.

!!!! The new Kaiju no 8 episode! An absolute killer. I did not expect to be so emotional because I didn't think I was that invested in that character, but I cried. That episode was beautifully done.

Click for spoilers

Shinomiya Isao ;_; It was so good, he went so hard, and got so close. He was willing to destroy his body to defeat the kaiju and it wasn't enough! It got me all the more so because of that tech guy who stayed close to help and had to witness it all. And the flashbacks to his wife, and to Kikoru as a child, sobbing forever. I feel so bad for Kikoru. This is absolutely going to mess her up. She was already so fucked up by seeing Kafka nearly kill her dad, but now no 9 ate him. JFC, that's horrific. This was the emotional depth this season needed.

The new episode of The Summer Hikaru Died was also great. I love how it went into Asako's early childhood and showed what it meant that she could see ghosts, and how this was a positive for her, and the way she felt Yoshiki was safer with Hikaru. But also love the jealousy Yoshiki feeling turning to horror and anger at the end of the episode, and the complicated ways he's feeling about Hikaru. I think the complicated intense feelings - the way everything for Yoshiki is on the edge of one thing or another, never pure and uncomplicated, but always intense - is the great strength of the show. It really captures those teenage feelings through the supernatural horror metaphor of it all, but also works on the non-metaphorical level as well.

I'm now at the end of episode 325 of Bleach. I got through the end of all the Aizen stuff! Finally! The anime really dragged that out to the point of being tiresome, whereas I know I enjoy it a lot in the manga. I'm now square in the filler zone. The characters talk a lot faster in filler episodes because they're not trying to drag things out to avoid outpacing the manga 🤣 I thought I was going to appreciate the anime giving more time and space to the immediate aftermath of Aizen's defeat, but it turns out Ichigo watching Rukia fade from view as his powers disappear in the manga hits me a lot harder than the 'idk it could disappear some time' thing they're going for in the anime. I get why, it's so they can have filler arcs, but still. I do appreciate seeing Matsumoto's grief for Gin, though.

Some of the one shot filler episodes are pretty fun! The one with the squad 11 training exercise is fun, not just for the repeated joke of Renji and Ichigo joining in for no good reason, but also because it's about squad 11 (and especially that dumbass Ikkaku) being shitty and immature and passive aggressive about something for 100 years and Ichigo fixes that problem. The Kenpachi and Yachiru in Rukongai story was also great; I liked how it used those characters in a more serious way and filled in some of their backstory. Right now I'm in the midst of the Reigei arc, which is fine. Some of the fights are pretty cool.

I also started watching The Apothecary Diaries. I wasn't sure during the first episode, but the second episode charmed me, so I'm about six episodes in right now. I like the light touch it takes to serious things, without being too light, and Maomao and Jinshi are charming characters.

What have I done since last entry? Completed a couple of exchange fics, and I keep telling myself I'm not going to sign up for more exchanges because I don't enjoy most of them the way I enjoy Yuletide... eyeing off some pinch hits nonetheless.

Also, I started watching Kaiju no. 8, the first episode of which is an awesome work of science fiction that imagines what it would look like in a society that was used to kaiju invasion. The main character, Hibino Kafka, is a 32 year old man working on the team that cleans up after the monsters are defeating: cutting them up to make the bodies easier to remove, crane-lifting bits out, generally hosing things down. His childhood friend has gone on to be a big name in the monster defeating squad, and he thinks longingly about joining the defence force, but after all he's been rejected in the physical exam so many times... and then at the end of the episode he swallows something he doesn't want to and becomes a kaiju himself, discovering what this means in a hilarious scene where he and a friend break out from the hospital while everyone around them screams.

Great stuff! Unfortunately it becomes a standard shonen fighting story from there. There are good moments once he meets new characters who also want to fight the monsters and people keep interesting backstories and cool fight scenes & etc. but nothing anywhere near as good as the sheer science fictional excitement of the beginning. And it's on to season 2 and there's even more characters, and while the new characters have cool hair they don't have interesting personalities... I'm still watching, though, and trying to reframe it as just a fun monster fighting show, because the monster fights are cool.

The Summer Hikaru Died continues to be so cool, and every episode I don't know how to describe my reaction to it! This one had eldritch horror in a bath and still yet more supernatural fisting, yet more of Yoshiki and monster Hikaru trying to figure out the borders of what their relationship is and what things they should do to each other.

I've well and truly returned to my anime era. I spent much of the last week watching Pluto, which is absolutely magnificent, and so tailored to what I like that I don't know why it took me so long to get around to watching it. It's so so good.

I knew it was like an adult version of an Astro Boy storyline, but tbh I don't remember that storyline well, so it felt very fresh. Gesicht's story felt like 90% something le Carre would have written, had he lived in a world with humanoid robots, sad and bitter and complicated and intertwined with the grim sides of international politics. The way the story used the robots to tell a story about war trauma, child loss, the dark mess of politics, optimism in the face of climate apocalypse, etc. felt truly mature. In a way this reminded me of the feeling I get from Ghost in the Shell, though they are ultimately very different SF stories. What does it mean to be human or inhuman? What do you do with the sadness you feel about lost chances?

The ending is profoundly emotional, thoroughly overwhelming. I cried, honestly.

The third episode of The Summer Hikaru Died also dropped today, and it continues to be prickly and uncomfortable in the most fascinating way, capturing that mix of compelling and disgusting that is adolescent desire.

Going Home (1756 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ishida Uryuu & Kurosaki Ichigo
Characters: Kurosaki Ichigo, Ishida Uryuu
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Post-Thousand Year Blood War Arc (Bleach), Family Feels, Cousins, group hug
Summary:

In the wake of the Quincy war, Ichigo drags Ishida home.

Originally posted on FFA: One, two, three, four, five.

Read:

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur - A women in her late 20s with massive credit card debt discovers that she's a magical girl. The magical girls have a union! They're very concerned about climate change! There are illustrations with each chapter! This is interesting and fun, but slight, but mostly what it made me think about is translation audiences and assumptions made for those audiences. As in, who is the assumed audience and what do we assume they know about a place/a language? What do we assume can go transliterated rather than translated? I'm often thinking about that, because I read books and watch things translated from so many languages, and for different audiences, and they all seem to come with different sets of assumptions. This one transliterated rather than translated: 'unni' (it means older sister/girl who is slightly older than the speaker, right?), 'noraebang' (I had to google this and it seems to mean kbox). I watch the occasional Korean thing, but I wouldn't say I have a particular cultural competence there; I do feel this is more on the side of the assumption that a general audience will know what these things mean, because Korean stuff is so mainstream in English-speaking culture now, the same way someone translating a French novel might assume any random would know what 'monsieur' means.

My other main thought is that Ah Roa and the main character should kiss.

Watched:

Three episodes of Cinderella Closet, a very silly Jdrama on Netflix. A young woman (Haruka) moves to Tokyo, bumps into a very pretty crossdresser (Hikaru), and befriends him and asks for his help to glam up for a date with her coworker, but Hikaru is maybe also interested in Haruka... This has standard Jdrama overacting and is definitely not good, but it is 100% my kind of garbage. Seems like it's based on a manga, which I haven't read. Hikaru is indeed very glam, and I like his outfits.

Two episodes of The Summer Hikaru Died on Netflix. This is AMAZING! Eldritch horror romance! Flirting with the monster who has taken the form of the friend you have unspoken feelings for! The horror of day to day life in a small town! The raw chicken, I'm shrieking.

This is so unsettling, and so beautifully animated. The flash cuts and sound design combine so well to capture the horror of whatever Hikaru is, but also the daily horrors Yoshiki experiences of uncomfortable interactions, and the horrors of adolescence, and the horrors of having that first intense crush with desire you don't know how to deal with. And also in a weird way, the horror of being a monster. The scene with the arm (how should I describe that?? supernatural fisting??) in episode 2 is spectacular.

Asking the Question (1599 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Rukia, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ayasegawa Yumichika/Madarame Ikkaku
Characters: Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Rukia, Ayasegawa Yumichika, Madarame Ikkaku, Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Isshin
Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Marriage Proposal
Summary:

Renji asks for life advice and finds most of his friends unqualified to give it.

I finished my reread of Bleach and I've now watched through episode 273, which I think means I've watched about 80 episodes of Bleach in a couple of weeks. Unhinged behaviour. I think for the most part the animation of the lust arc was pretty good! Captured a lot of the feeling of reading it, though it was faintly amusing they didn't show the exact moment of Ichigo stabbing Ishida, which blunted that impact a little. It had not ever occurred to me before that Ulquiorra's final attack on Ichigo was because he was moved by Orihime desperately wanting Ichigo not to kill Ishida, but I feel like that's the implication in the anime, and I'm willing to internalise that interpretation of it. It certainly works with the things Ulquiorra says just before he fades away (oh man, and with Orihime stepping forward to try to grab his hand a moment too late, that always gets me; tbh the arc is equally good for Ulquiorra/Orihime or Ichigo/Orihime).

Back to the rest of the fights and blergh Yammy. Not that I dislike what the manga does with Yammy, but the thing with this whole arc being so long in the manga and yet the anime expands it even more is that sometimes the anime gives an entire fight scene to something briefly touched over in the original and it's often kind of boring.

Like everyone else on the planet I have now seen KPop Demon Hunters. It's cute! I see why half a dozen people I follow on Tumblr are now gaga for it. It commits to its premise 100%. Sony animation is doing some real interesting stuff and making some fun choices.

Piercing Moment (697 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Rukia
Characters: Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Rukia, Ayasegawa Yumichika
Additional Tags: Piercings
Summary:

Rukia and Renji have a moment over an ear piercing. Yumichika is also there.

I got to the end of the sword beasts filler arc of the Bleach anime. I was not so hot on the Zanpakutou Unknown Tales arc, but I can see why the Beast Swords arc is more highly regarded. It was fun and had a lot of heart. My favourite was probably the episode where Hisagi's sword had to take care of a baby, but there was a lot of good stuff. And back on to the actual plot of Ichigo vs Ulquiorra next episode.

I'm well into the last arc with my reread of Bleach. It really is messy. I think the fullbring stuff improved on reread, but this arc is actually less enjoyable on reread. It's so messy, and the overstuffed group of villain characters curbstomping the shinigami is not exciting, and idgaf about squad zero, and Yhwach is a boring villain. The Unohana stuff is so much worse, too; before her fight with Zaraki I thought maybe her clear and obvious grief for the captain general would make me buy the whole thing more, but I really don't.

But at the same time, there is still that stuff I love - Ikkaku and Yumichika running through the rubble, trying not to get blown up; Yumichika nearly saying the true name of his sword in desperation before he gets knocked out; Shiba Ganju showing up on his hog to get that just like old times feeling; Byakuya helping Rukia de-freeze after her fight; Renji increasing the amount of leopard print in his outfit.

Dinner Conversation (549 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (TV 2022)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Disa (The Rings of Power)/Durin IV (Tolkien)/Elrond Peredhel
Characters: Disa (The Rings of Power), Durin IV (Tolkien), Elrond Peredhel
Summary:

Disa has an idea. Durin and Elrond can only follow.

I've now watched through episode 249 of Bleach and am still in the depths of the sword filler zone. Emo villain isn't super exciting no matter how much he bleeds from the eyes, and overall I'm finding it a mixed bag. There's a lot that I just find kind of unconvincing about the premise. But there are upsides: the Hitsugaya episode about reconnecting with his sword and reminding it of a home they found is great, though to be fair most of that actually comes from the manga flashback about him meeting Matsumoto; I also thought it was an interesting choice for the anime to explicitly mark Kenpachi and Yumichika as very similar. Which I agree with! They have a lot in common, but their similarities aren't often drawn out (in canon or in fandom, tbh). I also like the continuing Matsumoto and Hinamori interactions, but the stuff with their zanpakutou has diminishing returns.

(I've also been fully immersed in rereading the series, and one of the things that strikes me about the early volumes of the Viz translation is how visible to me now is the youth slang that was used to translate it at the time, in a way it wasn't visible and obvious to me at the time. Then it was just how people spoke, but now it really sticks out.)

I got to episode 237 of Bleach and am now in the midst of filler again, sigh. Even during the parts adapting stuff from the manga, the anime team thought we needed two episodes of Omaeda. And adapting fake Karukura town stuff but not being able to show gore meant that when Matsumoto was gored and everyone was panicking they couldn't show that and it seemed a little silly, because there was no visible wound. But at the same time, the horrors of Ayon were otherwise well realised... I do love the complicated interactions between Matsumoto and Hinamori.

As far as the filler arc I'm in now. Mixed bag, tbh. I've long heard it's one of the better filler arcs, but being better than the Shunsuke Amagai arc isn't saying much. I had the bad taste to actually enjoy the Bount arc 🤣 though.

I have just finished rereading the early urban fantasy parts of Bleach and the Soul Society arc. They're so tightly written and have an energy that leaps off the page. There are certain things that don't hit the same way now that I know the twists, but that just means I admire the skill that goes into making it all come together. It's been said before that the problem with later Bleach is that it's overstuffed, and it's really not wrong. Soul Society arc is such a ride. I feel like I love different things every time. I was especially vibing Renji and Byakuya this time, but sometimes I'm most unhinged about the Chad stuff, or about Ishida, or the 11th div, or the Shibas, or Yoruichi and Soi Feng.... The "why didn't you take me with you" always gets me.

Honestly there's a lot of later stuff that felt like asspulls at the time, but if you reread this arc already knowing it seems fairly well supported, like Yachiru turning out to be Kenpachi's sword, or everything with Gin. Which like, don't get me wrong, plenty of stuff in later arcs is still obviously asspulls like everything KT did with Unohana. But there's a lot of things later on that I feel would have more impact as obvious character growth moments if it weren't so overstuffed with characters that you forget between chapters about such and such. There's so much cool stuff in the fake Karakura town arc, and a bunch of things that pay off later on, but there's so much time and plot and excess new characters between the things set up there and when a lot of them pay off that if you're not paying close attention to a specific character's arc you might not even notice it. Like when Iba lectures Ikkaku to grow the fuck up and get over your bullshit and try to win a fight, even if it means stabbing someone in the back, and the next time Ikkaku shows up in the Fullbring arc he's stabbing someone in the back. But there's so much crap between those points it's easy to miss there's actual character growth there.

There's some great more obvious character stuff I've always loved with Matsumoto, Hinamori, Yumichika and Kira in that arc. But then there's also old man Yama being super boring.

Even in Hueco Mundo I don't get why we spend so much time on Szayelapporo, but then I love the never ending Ulquiorra v Ichigo stuff. But the latter has a clear emotional component and the former is just mad scientist that is hard to kill. Szayelapporo takes forever to defeat, Renji & Ishida are stuck against him forever and then Mayuri shows up and it's like, okay, this guy is just in the way, why should I care?

Whereas with Ulquiorra v Ichigo, there's an obvious emotional issue as well. Which is that even though Ulquiorra literally has a hole where his heart should be, he's obviously fallen for Orihime, and she's there watching the fight so there's something at stake.

It turns out that a few years ago Kubo dropped a Bleach oneshot that has updates on old characters, and some new characters and a bunch of lore, and when people asked if he's ever going to add more his response was basically 'I will if people stop nagging me about it'. Never change, Kubo.

( Read more... )

I've now watched through episode 220 of Bleach. The pillar fights really are so cool. I love Kira's speech about his weapon, and his squad being about despair. Truly, none more goth. Yumichika v Charlotte was just as stupid and yet cool as I remember it being in the manga, and Hisagi's fight was cooler than I remember. I love Ikkaku's failure and Iba giving him the 'grow up and get the fuck over yourself' speech so much. And Komamura ♥ ♥ Komamura is so good.

I made it to episode 216 of Bleach! Yes, I did watch the two episodes of filler about Urahara being so bored he creates his own super sentai team. They were not without amusement but they were also… not great. The ~comedic sexual harassment~ thing Honshou Chizuru does isn't funny to me in 2025. I was going to say that KT loves his predatory lesbians, but I guess none in the series come to mind other than Chizuru and Giselle, and of those only Giselle is a villain… Can't tell if that makes it better or worse. But at least these episodes aren't as boring as the Shunsuke Amagai filler arc.

But 215 and 216 are non-filler, yay! Finally getting to see stuff I've wanted to see animated forever and really should have gotten around to when it came out so I wasn't catching up like this. I do wonder if the filler would have been even more annoying if I were watching the series as it came out, though. New opening credits song and animation! Feels like it's all bad shots for the Seireitei pin up calendar. TBH, I liked the previous opening credits better.

Anyway, resumption of the Ulquiorra v Ichigo fight. I do love Ulquiorra, and it's a great fight, and there's some great tension with Orihime.

And the four pillars! My boy Yumichika is back on my screen ♥ ♥ he and Ikkaku are so dumb, I'm enjoying their bits immensely. TBH, I don't remember much of the other pillar fights beyond thinking Kira's misery guts thing got kind of interesting. I don't remember anything about who he fought, though, so even though this part of the story isn't actually new to me, it feels new to me.

On the weekend I caught up with friends for dinner and mentioned I got back into Bleach, and someone made a comment about not liking one of the final pairings of the series and I had to be [jokingly] like 'are we going to have a ship war at this dinner table'. I am 100% Renji/Rukia trash. But it's not really a series for romance, and I can't say I care that much about Bleach ships in general. I have like two ships I care about in Bleach, and all my other opinions are about the fight scenes and outfits and weird nonsense. And the friendships. The high quality dumbass friendships. People try to engage me with their thoughts on Ichigo ships and I'm always like he could have ended up with Kenpachi for all I care, idgaf. And like, Ishida's in a beautiful long term relationship with his sewing kit, I don't care if he ever dates a human being.

Movies: I just watched Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) this week, which was creepy fun, if a little slow for me. (I felt that it had a cracking pace in the beginning, then really slowed down; the people in my horror club mostly felt the opposite.) Creepy from the beginning, especially with that doll, showing off a particular horror of the child star. Bette Davis is like a haunted doll come to life in this, but Joan Crawford keeps pace with her. They are so good at their characters' particular varieties of co-dependent dysfunction, and the twist at the end (which you can see coming, tbh) just intensifies the horror of what they've done to each other. And I know Joan Crawford was an odious person but, my gosh, she was so beautiful.

TBH, though, some of the other camp, like the voice acting on a couple of side characters, was a little too much for me, and I did think it dragged at some points, so it wasn't unqualified enjoyment for me.

Bleach: I have continued my watch and I've now finished 212. I enjoyed the flashback arc. Urahara is so terrible 💔 sometimes I love his terribleness and sometimes he's just the worst. ( Read more... )

Random, but I do always laugh at the backstory that reveals why Hisagi has 69 tattooed on his face.

I thought maybe if I'm getting back into Bleach I should also get back into Naruto, but when I reread the first few chapters of that I mostly felt too old for it 🤣 Last time I read Naruto I think I dropped it one arc after the timeskip. I got to see some cool Gaara stuff and then was like, okay, I'm done. I feel like Bleach I can reread because it's slightly more mature, even if not actually particularly mature. Like, at least he's 15 when it starts and half the characters are 100+ years old.

Weirdly on this reread & watch I've gotten really hyped by Kenpachi's moments of mature adult-ness?! Like obviously mostly he's there for a bit of biffo, but I love the flashback where he tells Ikkaku to knock it off with the death wish and grow tf up, and the bit in Hueco Mundo where he tells Ichigo it's not his job to save everyone and everything because the captains are there to do that.

Not just reading Bleach again, but watching it again. I never finished the old anime (and I guess the new one of the final arc isn't done yet but should be this year?). I wasn't sure where I was up to last time I watched, which would not be an issue if it were still on Crunchyroll, but alas... I was pretty sure I'd already seen the Shunsuke Amagai arc, which is the absolutely most boring filler arc. I will take no arguments on this. So I started the episodes just after, and it seems like that's a good choice, because it all seems to be Hueco Mundo episodes I haven't seen.

I remember last time I was watching I was excited to get to the end of the boring filler and get to animation of bits I enjoy from the manga, but I must have gotten distracted by the dozen other things I was watching at the time. Now I've reached episode 204... which turns out to be more filler, hahaha! But at least I got to see some cool fights before that.

Nnoitra v Kenpachi felt a little dragged out animated, but I do like the ending, the way the flashback makes it clear that they fight for totally opposite reasons. Kenpachi is so fighting obsessed that it's always a shock when he has his moments of adult sense and maturity, but it is in character for him, and I do like him telling Ichigo that fighting everyone and saving everything is not his job (I mean, we know that Ichigo is the main character and that therefore saving everything is his job, but it is good to see a semi-responsible adult tell him he doesn't have to be responsible for everything). I feel like Byakuya vs the guy with all the eyes was more exciting to me in the manga; the problem with how slow the anime is (and I get it's A. because they didn't want to outpace the manga too much and B. because this is aimed at 12-15 year olds, and therefore characters talk slowly; tbh, it's helpful for me as a language learner that they talk slowly) is that some things hit stronger for me in the written form where I can read at a pace that makes the impact strongest. But I do love Byakuya being ice cold in service of saving Rukia and how far he's come since the soul society arc. Mayuri vs Szayelaporro is like, fine, whatever, I liked it in the manga but I don't like Mayuri so I mostly wanted it over and done with.

But as soon as this new to me filler is done (please be only one episode), I get to see more cool stuff animated! For the first time for me! More of the Ulquiorra-Orihime-Ichigo not quite love triangle, my boy Yumichika showing up again, that fuckhead Ikkaku getting absolutely told, etc. etc.

Throwing a curveball into 2025 by getting back into Bleach.

Skim reading the last arc and all my old feelings are coming back like 'there are plot holes you could drive a truck through and I could write fic about them' and 'Mayuri is very annoying'.

My main feeling is that when people complained about the ending arc because of the pairings or whatever, instead of the sexism and transphobia, they were complaining about the wrong things. I could not care less who Ichigo gets with (and I feel Ichigo also doesn't care that much 😂) but I would have liked fewer scenes where women have to be naked during a fight, you know? ...though on the other hand, as a Renji/Rukia shipper I did win.

January 2026

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