academic zombie

► Yesterday was my birthday! I have a soft spot for Thursdays, despite its location within the standard work week—enough so that I actually briefly considered going with “thursday” as a username before settling on “straightforwardly” /lore drop—so it always feels weirdly fitting when my birthday lands on a Thursday. Anyways—I had a pretty great day. Lots of good food, plenty of fun special drinks, good weather, and wandering around my favorite town to visit for a day trip.

Then I went to my mom’s place for cake and tea and presents, and we ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters together—second watch for me, first time for her. That was not at all planned, and in fact I had no plans to rewatch that movie in general. But somehow we got on the topic of kpop while we were eating cake together (she knows nothing about kpop, so I was telling her about what little I do know), which got me thinking about that movie (which she’d also never heard of), and then it occurred to me: my mom might actually really like it? ( more thoughts, including spoilers, beneath the cut )

► Unrelated to the above, but I posted that Lia/Emer ficlet I was talking about in my previous entry. It’s a small thing, but I mention it because—unless I missed something while scrolling through my works page—I believe it’s actually the first fic I’ve posted to AO3 outside of the context of a fandom event since like… summer of 2024 or so. Here’s hoping for more of that energy coming from me in the future, since that is literally one of my goals for this year <3

► Since talking in my previous post about my sudden desire to tackle my crunchyroll watchlist before my subscription runs out, I decided to make a spreadsheet for myself to motivate me and track my progress! Because that is the kind of person I am. ( self-indulgent spreadsheet-related rambling beneath the cut )

After that, I checked out The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies, and I’m about two episodes into it so far. And so far, I’m liking it! I do have some qualms—( beneath the cut )

This week, I have four days off from work! I worked on Monday, took Tuesday off via my accumulated overtime, and now I have vacation from Wednesday to Friday. I have… many things on my to-do list, quite possibly too many things (especially considering that one of those days is going to be taken up with celebrating my birthday), but so far I’ve mostly just been building furniture, reorganizing my apartment, and doing other housework, and feeling pretty pleased about what I’ve been accomplishing.

Though I’m also hoping to accomplish some hobby-related things as well! I’ve been playing Pokémon Brilliant Diamond recently, and it’s occurred to me that it wouldn’t be impossible to finish it before I get back to work next week, based on where I am in the game now. I’m not going to rush it or push myself, but it is something on my mind.

I would also like to get some writing done… ideally in the form of “actually post something”. I’ve recently fallen down a very unexpected rabbit hole—I read Long Live Evil not expecting much from it, thinking it’d probably end up being a three star read for me unless I get unlucky, and then I ended up adoring it? And having actual fannish feelings about it? So much so that I actually started a reread of the book the very next day after having finished it? I cannot remember the last time I’ve done something like that with a single book—possibly before I was an adult, even. (I do remember the last time I did that with a series of books, however: Legend of the Sun Knight, back in January 2019.) ( more beneath the cut )

I’ve also been watching anime in the evenings! This was not originally in my plans for this break, but—I have a very long watchlist on Crunchyroll that I’ve made no progress on, and I don’t actually intend on renewing my subscription when the year ends, so I decided I should actually start making my way through that list.

I started off with Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex, which originally was a series that… mildly intrigued me, but I didn’t have high hopes for; I was actually a little bit surprised to see that I had put it on my watchlist, because my assumption was that I would drop it within the first episode. But then someone made a post talking about their impressions of the series, and something they mentioned made my interest in the series go up, so I went for it, and in the end watched the whole thing within three days, so—definitely better than my initial impression suggested! ( more beneath the cut, with potential spoilers )