#there was only one way I'd be forever 29....and that was worse

[amclennonblog]

some of you are so insensible like, wtf?

yeah, paul mccartney is not 52 anymore, he grew older, and it's a BLESSING. because there are only two options: you either grow old or you die. thank GOD Paul is here, now, being able to record this song, unlike John, who we've lost a long time ago. We will never get old man John voice, and that's because he's not here. That sucks. I'd give a lot to have seen John grow older, even if just a little more. See his face change, his music and his voice too. It would have been a blessing.

be fucking greateful that paul and ringo are still here, doing this. rejoice on paul's older raw and real voice. it exists.

[cinclidaefang]

Sorry I'm late to the OC talk I had the WORST jet lag :/ For Alister: 25, 42, for sillies, and for a more serious one, 29.

For Seb: 11 and 12.

For Leto: 27.

HOUH BOY, DOING MY BEST TO NOT MAKE THIS A LONG POST. ALISTER 25) What subject / topic do they know a lot about that’s completely useless to the direct plot? Spiders. IDing, misc facts, all that jazz. Not bugs as a whole though, it would really only be spiders(and maybe some other arachnids?) 42) If invited to a TED Talk, what topic would they present on? What would the title of their presentation be? Honestly? I don't listen to/know enough to have a semblance of an answer for this. I think he'd sooner jump off a cliff than speak in front of a crowd about important topics, and even worse, solutions to said topics. 29) How do they respond when someone doesn’t believe them?Fumbles his way through trying to make the point make sense but makes it more confusing in the process. He'd be so hung up on the person not believing him due to a miscommunication and not realize there is a fundamental difference of beliefs(or that he is being mocked). Eventually he'd just back down and let the conversation haunt him forever. SEB 11) If someone was impersonating them, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference? This would vary a lot depending on the character trying to sus out the imposter because each of them knows a different facet of Seb but there's not, like, one unifying thing everyone close to him knows him for. Ie: Reiss asking about their shared past, Leto asking him to read her something(trick question), Celeste trying to pick apart speech patterns, etc...

12) What’s something that makes them laugh every single time? Be specific! I don't know if I'd say “every time,” Seb laughing is far and few between, but Myla's definitely gotten at least one from him. he is not immune to the shenanigans of a 0-6 y/o. It'd be some weird child logic thing she did, not slapstick. He would not laugh if it was something he think might have actually hurt her.

LETO 27. What’s the worst gift they ever received? How did they respond?

[brucebocchi]

Ranking every new anime I watched in 2023, Pt. 1: #29-21

hey, i just started a ko-fi for my writing and possible other creative outlets. this post will also be available there, as will future entries, so please check it out and consider tipping/donating as i'm currently between jobs.

I have watched a frankly hilarious amount of anime in 2023. I got back into it as a medium in a huge way last year, and in addition to watching new stuff as it airs, I went back and caught up on a lot of what I'd missed when I thought anime was cringe. I watched existing shows come back for new seasons. I even read manga before watching some shows! I dove headfirst into romantic comedies, finally dug into some hype shonen, and even indulged in a few isekai.

If I ranked every anime I watched in 2023, we'd be here forever, so I decided to stick to the ones that came out in 2023. I have not watched all of them, because I had a job. I kept up as much as I could with the stuff that came heavily recommended and hyped, but I was unfortunately unable to watch all of them. I couldn't find the time to watch Vinland Saga or Pluto, and this list is long enough as it is. We'll be sticking to a very untidy 29 anime series that aired this year.

I'll be breaking the full ranking up over the next few days. This is publicly available, but if you liked what I had to say and you'd like to throw a couple bucks my way, I'd really appreciate it.

Let's get to it.

29. FLCL Grunge/Shoegaze

I absolutely adore the original FLCL, but I’ll cop to not having watched its sequels, Progressive and Alternative, until earlier this year. I knew going in that people hated the reboot and then forgot about it. For me, the experience was similar to when I saw Spider-Man 3 a week or so after the backlash died down: Nothing great, but I tempered my expectations and enjoyed them just fine. Didn’t hate them, didn’t love them. I had similarly mild expectations for Grunge and Shoegaze, and the six-episode run came and went without anyone really having anything to say about it. That was probably not a good sign.

I really wanted to give Grunge a shot, even though I was unimpressed by the trailer, but I found myself only watching it out of obligation midway through the first episode. I'm not as hard on CGI in anime as others, and I know that entirely-CGI anime has come a very long way since the likes of even recent works like Ex-Arm (you’ll see my thoughts on Trigun Stampede much, much later in this list). You can imagine my disappointment in saying that Grunge is fuck ugly. Character models are rigid and inert, the settings are unimpressive, and the only time anything on screen looks any good is in the little moments when they swap out the CGI for something slightly more FLCL-ish.

This one plays out like the original release of Arrested Development’s fourth season, each episode focusing on a single main character until they all culminate in the same explosive climax. That's an admirable enough storytelling ambition, but Grunge is three episodes long. That's not enough to get me invested in any of the characters, and it makes all their respective personal struggles feel more like lazy attempts at emotional manipulation. I just came away depressed. What’s worse is that this framing ends up placing Haruko, fucking HARUKO, as the main character, which is one of the worst mistakes anything calling itself FLCL can make.

I'll be real for a second: I'm very easily manipulated by nostalgia. There were moments in the final Evangelion Rebuild and this year’s Nier Automata anime that brought me to tears by calling back unexpectedly to moments I’d loved in previous entries of those respective franchises. When I first watched FLCL Progressive, the instant the Pillows’ iconic “Little Busters” first started playing, I immediately got misty-eyed because the song’s inclusion in the original FLCL was so formative to me as an adolescent. When the almost-as-iconic “Last Dinosaur” gets a needle drop in Grunge, I just rolled my eyes because the wool had already been pulled back from them. 

Everything Grunge did, it did wrong, and it could not be more naked of a nostalgia grab. Haruko didn’t need to be there, the Pillows didn’t need to be there, and the FLCL branding didn’t need to be there. Worst of all, it’s fucking boring. FLCL Grunge, plainly, was a mistake.

Shoegaze, on the other hand, turned out to be a full-on sequel to Alternative, generally considered the better of the first two sequels (it also goes back to traditional animation). We get to see Kana as a grown woman, fully involved with the bureau that handles disaffected teenagers like she once was. It's neat to see a version of FLCL where one of its protagonists has actually grown up, and I do appreciate it when a long-running franchise acknowledges that its viewer base has gotten older and attempts to grow with them, but it feels cheap here because Alternative came out all of five years ago. There's a lot of additional shenanigans involving time and dimension travel around our two younger protagonists that could’ve been very fulfilling on their own even without the Alternative connection, but again, three episodes.

While Shoegaze isn’t all that great, it still kind of stinks to slot it this low, but Grunge was such a palate destroyer for what followed that it made me more annoyed that Shoegaze didn’t take up the entire six-episode run. Maybe watch it if you really liked Alternative, but otherwise this stinker of a miniseason is not worth your time. Grunge isn’t even worth a hate watch. I want my hour back.

28. KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World

Speaking of fuck ugly visuals, here’s KamiKatsu. To be fair, that was actually the hook for me! I'd heard about and seen examples of this show’s intentionally low-quality, uncanny visual gags and I had to see what this trainwreck was about. Overcoming a cheap animation budget for laughs can actually work to an anime’s advantage if it’s done well, and Cromartie High School is legendary proof of that.

KamiKatsu, in reality, is nothing to write home about outside of its wacky visual meta-gags and a halfway decent premise. I generally steer away from the bloated wasteland that is the isekai genre unless a specific work either comes highly recommended by trusted sources or draped in the sash of “no seriously, this shit is bonkers, you HAVE to see this.” 

KamiKatsu is the latter: The son of a cult leader is ritually sacrificed, reincarnated into a world where nobody has heard of religion, nearly executed, and saved by a goofy shitty goddess (think Aqua from KonoSuba but looks like a 10 year old) who can only carry out miracles if she has enough followers. Our protagonist, whose name I will never remember again, uses his prior knowledge of cult tactics to cultivate a following for the goddess whose name I keep forgetting so she can protect their village from outside threats.

Even putting the shitpost-y visuals aside, this show is… sloppy. There's a whole lore to this that isn’t really worth diving into outside of a system of elites that can attain similar benefits by amassing followers. It’s an uneven, poorly-defined power system and it kinda doesn’t matter. A lot of this doesn’t matter. Pretty much everyone is a weird pervert. There's a decent emotional arc among a pair of characters later on, and a few of the jokes land, but for as outlandish as KamiKatsu can be, it just kinda slides off the brain once everything is said and done.

Other than the aforementioned visual gags (such as PS2-quality monsters and animals poorly implemented into hand-drawn scenes and the rotoscoped combine harvester you see above), the only other thing I can really commend the anime for is the voice performances. The cast is genuinely great; there are some pretty darn good performances by seiyuu titans like Junya Enoki (more on him when I cover Girlfriend Girlfriend and Jujutsu Kaisen), Kana Hanazawa, Aoi Yuuki, Rie Takahashi (MUCH more on her as this goes on), and the legendary Megumi Ogata. I won't be so flip as to say they’re better than this show deserves, but they definitely help it punch above its weight.

Points for originality in concept, ingenuity in working around a low budget, and some very good performances, but something this consistently insane really shouldn’t be quite so forgettable. Shouts out to the writer of the subtitles in the version I watched, though, for actually using the word “cummies.” That took gumption.

27. Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Man, I really wanted to like this one. “One Punch Man goes to Hogwarts” should be a fucking slam dunk concept for an action-comedy shonen. It gains its footing as the season rolls on, but honestly, I'm unimpressed.

In a world where magic dominates everything and those without any magical aptitude are culled, a very un-magical young man is raised in secret to train the only asset he does possess, which is his very strong body. He’s found out as an “other,” and with the old man who harbors him under threat of penalty, he enrolls in a very familiar-looking school for young wizards for reasons I've already forgotten so he can save his adoptive father. Extremely mild hilarity ensues.

Mashle doesn’t look all that good, the action is so-so, and worst of all, it’s utterly convinced that it’s funnier than it actually is. The characters are solid, the lore is kinda interesting, and I have to give the original mangaka credit for ripping off Harry Potter so blatantly and shamelessly. I really wish I had more to say about this, but I'm coming up short. That's all I've got because that’s all the show gave me. Your mileage may vary.

Guess I'll be watching season 2.

26. KonoSuba: An Explosion on This Wonderful World!

I’m not as high on KonoSuba as many other anime fans. It’s one of a select handful of isekai I’ve watched by choice, and I had a fun time with it, but it’s far from the best or funniest anime I’ve seen. I was excited, though, that it was finally back from a four-year hiatus, and so soon after I'd picked it up. What I got was… not quite what I'd anticipated.

While I, along with most other fans, would’ve preferred a proper third season rather than a spinoff (and we’re getting one in 2024, thankfully), Megumin is pretty much the only member of the main party tolerable enough to spend an entire season with (and yes, that includes fucking Kazuma). This season covers Megumin and Yunyun’s backstory prior to their travels to the starter town, beginning with their education in the Crimson Demon Village. The 2019 movie did a very good job fleshing out Megumin’s family and the origins of the Crimson Demon race, which turned out to be one of the best jokes in the series, so I was looking forward to learning more.

What we got, unfortunately, is pretty mid. The story largely revolves around the onset of Megumin’s obsession with explosion magic and her stubborn refusal to learn literally any other spells despite her prowess, and above all, the negative effect that stubbornness produces for everyone around her. Although Megumin is probably the least shitty of KonoSuba's main cast, the show doesn’t hesitate to remind its audience that she’s still a piece of shit. She's still likable, relatively speaking, because she constantly finds herself surrounded by freaks and perverts, but she is also wildly capricious and selfish. The only person Megumin is even remotely nice to is her precious little sister, Komekko, and any time with that little shit is time well spent. Everyone else is grist for the mill, easily sacrificed or left for dead so Megumin can make some quick coin or save her own hide.

Which is honestly fine, especially when the Crimson Demon protagonists find themselves in the resort town run by the Cult of Axis (who are, uh, much more pedophilic than their appearance in the second season led us to believe). I'm not opposed to media where everyone is shitty and kinda hates each other; that’s really the whole bent of KonoSuba to begin with, but everyone in this season just plain kinda sucks in an unfunny way that left me watching out of obligation. We also see the genesis of Yunyun’s one-sided rivalry with Megumin, and honestly, this spinoff just left me feeling even worse for Yunyun than I already did. It's never been a secret that her “rivalry” was really her way of trying to make friends with Megumin, but the explosion gremlin is so consistently frustrating for her to be around that I really wonder if it’s even worth tailing her.

Rie Takahashi (there she is again) is familiarly excellent in her fourth go as Megumin, and doesn’t hesitate to depict her as somehow even more unhinged than she was after joining Kazuma’s party. Unfortunately, that’s really all this season has to hang its comically large witch hat on. There were so many teases of the main series’ other protagonists that by the time it was over I was ready to see Darkness, Aqua, and yes, even Kazuma again. This is a fine stopgap en route to the overdue third season, I guess, but it’s far from essential unless you’re a hardcore KonoSuba fan.

25. Girlfriend, Girlfriend, season 2

In my grand Get Back Into Anime quest that started a year and a half ago, I spent a lot of my downtime really digging into what I’d missed; the stuff that came highly recommended and really took me for a ride. Mob Psycho 100’s absurd action scenes and emotional highs, Serial Experiments Lain’s thematic vagaries and alarming prescience, and ODDTAXI’s multilayered, constantly-unraveling mystery are all well and good, but I'm getting dumber as I get older. Sometimes I just need to turn my brain off.

Girlfriend Girlfriend is so unrelentingly stupid that I fear I may be unable to turn my brain back on, and that is genuine praise. Naoya, an entirely-too-honest high school boy, finally got his lifelong crush to agree to go out with him, only for another very adorable girl to confess to him shortly thereafter. Rather than hurt either of their feelings, his solution was to date both of them, and because everyone in this show is very easily convinced (and to be fair, he’s a very convincing person), he manages to bag Saki and Nagisa at the same time. The three of them navigate the relationship together, with Naoya working overtime to ensure both of them receive equal attention while the girls make sure he doesn’t blab about their situation to anyone who’ll listen.

The first season was insanity from top to bottom, but the second takes a slightly slower pace as it focuses on the two girls who aren’t simultaneously dating Naoya. The first half is about Rika’s continuing (and extralegal) attempts to woo Naoya away from his girlfriends, and the second focuses on the main five’s trip to Okinawa as Shino wrestles with her emotional attachment to him. We can all see where this is going (Girlfriend, Girlfriend, Girlfriend, Girlfriend), but the manga lasted for 16 volumes, so the show will take forever to get there, if it ever does. He doesn’t even get to kiss one of his actual girlfriends until the penultimate episode of this season.

Rika’s sociopathic attempts at wooing Naoya are unfortunately more of the same, and while her appeal and feelings for him are plainly obvious and even understandable, her antics (inasmuch as you can classify her repeatedly kidnapping and hogtying Naoya as “antics”) in the second season don’t do anything to make me want to root for her or really even see her at all anymore. Shino’s struggles, on the other hand, are entirely internal: She’s had a crush on Naoya for as long as she’s known him, but her friendship with Saki only complicates things. She wants him to get serious with Saki so she can let him go, but she can’t let go of the nagging feeling that there might be room for herself as well. Shino still hates that Naoya is two-timing her best friend in plain sight, but she sees what a thoughtful and caring young man he can still be and can’t seem to let it go.

Shino’s side of the story is all well and good on paper, and Rie Takahashi turns in a characteristically great performance (Junya Enoki kills it as Naoya as well), but by the end of the season I almost didn’t care anymore. It’s always good when a romantic comedy actually takes its time to delve into the angsty side of things, but it felt like it put the brakes on the larger story so hard that by the end of the season, I had fully forgotten Nagisa’s name. Even this season’s better comedic moments felt like more of the same from the first, and you can only eat the same junk food over and over again so many times before you’re tired of it.

I do try to address each of the shows I talk about in a vacuum, but Girlfriend Girlfriend’s second season was done no favors by having to air at the same time as The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, [...] Really Love You, which frankly blows it out of the water in both concept and execution. On its own, I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say this show “fell off” in its second season; it was cheap junk food to begin with, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the third.

24. Shangri-La Frontier

I gave this show four episodes because it seemed to carry some hype around it. I couldn't tell if I liked it or not. I left it for a few weeks, watched up to episode ten, and still couldn’t tell if I liked it or not. We’re now an entire cour into the show and I still cannot tell you whether or not I like this show. I can say definitively that I don't hate it, but I really don’t know why I kept watching it.

The premise is not “deceptively” simple so much as it is too simple: A gamer who specializes in the broken and buggy world of kusoge (literally “shit games”) decides to take a breather in a full-dive VR MMO that shares the show’s title as his first real experience with a kamige (“god game”). He takes a wrong turn and gets waxed by a roaming elite boss, and by a quirk of his equipment he finds himself able to access an emergent scenario that nobody else in the game seems to have found yet. 

Because the curse he’s received from the boss prevents him from wearing anything but his original meme gear, he’s instantly recognizable, which makes things harder once he starts running around with an unknown bunny NPC that makes him the target of real-life acquaintances, player-killers, and of course, a guild of furries. The rest of the show is, and I cannot stress this enough, watching this guy play his way through a video game.

I’ll be fair: This is, by most objective measures, a very well-made anime. The action is excellently choreographed and animated, almost every joke lands, and the music is killer (especially the rabbit blacksmith hymn). I'm still yet to find the hook, though. Maybe it’s because I'm not an MMO guy, but I really am struggling to find a reason to care about this guy’s trek through a video game when there’s not really anything at stake. It’s probably a more relatable experience to those of you who enjoy MMOs; there’s plenty of stuff from the Universal Gaming Experience in there like getting cheesed by cheap boss mechanics or making a mad dash to a checkpoint while on the brink of death to make you go “ah ha, I do that.” 

It just isn’t there for me though. This feels like an extended advertisement for a game that doesn’t even exist. Of course, not everything in anime needs to be high-concept; I'm a big fan of slice-of-life, for instance, but I really can’t find a reason to keep watching into the second cour beyond a sunk cost fallacy. If I do continue watching Shangri-La Frontier, it would be in search of a reason to continue watching Shangri-La Frontier. I guess that really is the MMO experience.

At least the bunny is cute.

23. Level 1 Demon Lord and One Room Hero

I love it when anime can be both high-concept and extremely stupid at the same time. I watched way more fantasy anime this year than I'd anticipated, and almost all of them follow an unseen, Dragon Quest-y “yay the hero’s party beat the demon king” prologue. The turn this one takes, though, was so hilariously goofy that I had to go check it out.

Ten years after the fearsome Demon Lord is taken down, they reincarnate as a three-eyed, gender-ambiguous little gremlin thing. Though weakened and diminutive (and wearing a seifuku because it was the first outfit they were given), they go to seek vengeance on Max, the hero who befell them. After flying over a suddenly very technologically-modern town, they hone in on someone who looks an awful lot like the strapping young hero, except now he’s a shut-in slob with a beer gut and a porn addiction.

Turns out the spotlight of postwar celebrity was a bit too bright for Max and he got himself canceled like a half dozen times before deciding to go full NEET off his earnings. The unnamed Demon Lord, rather than taking advantage of an easy opportunity for revenge, just kinda… feels bad for him. Rather than seek revenge right away, DL instead goes the domestic route, to Max’s chagrin. They cook and clean and urge him to get back in touch with his old adventuring buds, which he’d rather not do because there’s some serious political turmoil going on outside with two of them on opposing sides.

I may have oversold the “high concept” aspect a bit, but I really do like the idea of an archetypal sword-and-sorcery JRPG protagonist having to survive in a modern media environment. What's more, there is some bizarrely potent romantic tension between Max and the Demon Lord (who can transform their appearance into that of an attractive young woman, which makes it look slightly less weird) that should serve as catnip for the enemies-to-lovers crowd. It’s also not quite as slice-of-life-y as the initial premise suggests; that political turmoil I mentioned is much more than a background element, and Max and DL keep getting dragged into the squabble to the point where it takes over the entire plot.

I went and read the manga midway through the season and realized that all of the flashbacks to Max’s adventuring days were entirely original to the anime, and they went a long way to padding out a frankly thin plot. The action and political intrigue are well and good, but I was so taken in by the silly domestic aspect of the show that I kinda hoped it would be the whole thing. Still, it’s a nice light watch (if surprisingly horny sometimes) and a nice palate cleanser for some of the richer stuff coming later in the list.

22. Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon

By all accounts, this shouldn’t work. The title alone yields a pretty expected response: “Jesus Christ, the isekai genre is really out of ideas.” It’d be a throwaway line in 30 Rock if that show made anime jokes that didn’t involve James Franco. And yet! And yet it works, and it’s… fine.

I will commend the author of the original light novel for actually exploring what can be done with the very silly premise of someone being isekai’d into a fantasy world as a vending machine. Yes, it’s a silly title that can steal some quick cheap views on Syosetu and Bookwalker, but credit where it’s due for digging into the questions the title raises: How can he move? How can he communicate? What use does he have in this world? Do the people there know what a vending machine is? Do they even know Japanese? 

These questions are all answered in a short time as our vending machine protagonist, soon assigned the name Boxxo, helps protect a strong but clumsy adventurer named Lammis from a trash mob ambush. She soon realizes that Boxxo is more than a simple inanimate object, and that strapping a fucking vending machine to her back improves her balance and accuracy in battle, so she takes him back to town to meet her friends. He soon becomes an invaluable part of daily life in Lammis’ little pastoral community and adventuring party, providing rations and creative solutions along their quests.

Once the initial absurdity of the premise settles in a bit, this show works out nicely as a cozy turn-your-brain-off light fantasy story. It’s very fun seeing Boxxo figure out how to work his and the party’s way through challenges, especially as he learns to transform into different types of service machines (including air pumps, defibrillators, and condom dispensers), but nothing ever feels too high stakes. There’s conflict, there’s action, but none of it really feels like life or death. The rest of the show is just the story of a girl and her quarter-ton box. I refuse to rephrase that.

If there’s any reason to watch this, though, it's Lammis. She’s so goddamn cute.

21. Horimiya: The Missing Pieces

The original run of Horimiya was excellent, but very condensed given that it got only 13 episodes to adapt all 16 volumes of the remastered manga. It hit all the major beats of Kyoko Hori and Izumi Miyamura’s uneventfully-blossoming romance, but left out a good handful of the side stories and characterization of less-central characters.

That's more or less where Missing Pieces comes in. I flippantly refer to this as “the DLC season” but that’s effectively what’s going on here. While the aforementioned romance is the centerpiece of the story, Horimiya is always at its best when you get to just hang out with its ensemble cast. The original run of the show did eventually settle into the more slice-of-life rhythm of the manga, but this season really dives into those. 

It’s not quite a sequel, nor does it really stand on its own, but it’s necessary viewing if you developed any attachment to the cast from the original anime or manga runs. We see a lot more of Miyamura’s friendships with his classmates, student council antics, Shu Iura’s hilarious home life, and even Kyoko’s parents. There’s plenty more of the titular relationship, of course, with a little extra focus on what a holy terror Kyoko can be, even to her boyfriend.

It’s more Horimiya. I really shouldn’t have to say anything else. If you liked Horimiya, then watch this. If you haven’t seen Horimiya, then go watch Horimiya, and then watch this. Or find a watch order so you can watch both seasons at the same time.

Part 2 coming in a couple days!

[scarletsaphire]

28, 29, and 30 for AO3 wrapped!

For this ask game! (Yes im stealing the link from your blog shhhh)

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

Hm. That's basically all of the, so I have many choices. It might be Cover Blown, despite it still not being finished. We're ignoring that. I just really enjoyed writing it and think I did a very good job.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

God I have no idea dude. There's been so many my brain is leaking out of my eyeballs. If I have to choose (and this is only sticking out in my brain because of @duchi-nesten mice) is the transition passage from Strength of the Past and Weights of the Present. Putting it under the read more.

"She never could decide, in the late nights where she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering, what that worse was. She knew it involved dying, but would it be worse to die and be gone forever? Or would it be worse to become a ghost? A creature with your face and your voice, but stripped of everything that made you you? She hadn’t expected to need to know the answer so soon. Even in the darkest moments, she’d thought that even if she did, it would be her on the ground, her bleeding out, her body going cold. She had expected to be the one faced with the reality of becoming a ghost, with the horrors that it would bring. She hadn’t expected to be on the other side. She hadn’t expected to find Danny on the ground after her ghost fight gone wild; she hadn’t known he was there, hadn’t known that anyone was there besides her, Phantom, and the newest ghost filth that had dragged its way onto this side of reality."

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

I'm still fucking here dude. I've been in fandoms for longer, sure, but never actually making anything. I fully expected to wear myself out somewhere during summer, and we are looking the new year in the eyes and I'm still here. I told friends that I'd probably wear myself out of it within a few months and said friend is Not Happy With Me. Yeah. I'm still here, I'm still going, and I cannot believe that.

[sweetswesf]

A Long Overdue Update...And This One's a Juicy One...Pt. 2

Continued from Pt. 1

Tumblr did me DIRTY and deleted everything I wrote for my part 2. Talking about I CRASHED the editor. *EYEROLL!!!*

I'm angryyyyyyyy I had so much there...Sigh...I'm already pretty stressed...This has happened before...let's start again...

I woke up to an email. Got let go. Company was sad they had to make the decision to lay off 13% of the workforce. I was angry, sad. Stayed in bed for hours and didn't work out, but did get up to do some self care, eat (real meals...a lot!), and wash the dishes. I took a nap, woke up, and realized I was laid off and just felt so low. I also kept telling myself, "I hope I don't stay this way forever. The road ahead is not clear and I have no clue how these next few months will go. I can see how people turn to vices or spiral out of control. I will be okay, but for many, bad situations like this are extremely hard to recover from. I can't imagine anything worse. I can't judge anyone either." Homelessness did cross my mind as an irrational fear, but I could see how something like that could happen for many without opportunity. Please just trying to get it right. Thank God I have support around me, but a lot of people don't. I've always known that but empathized a bit more that day. One bad day leading to a pattern of bad habits. I felt sick.

I was one of two Black software engineers, to my knowledge, that got let go, and one of two engineers on my team that got let go. The other engineers in both situations were on leave. It hurt. It felt like a rug was ripped out from underneath me. This was the only tech company I have worked at, the company I have been at for over the past 6 years, and joined when I was 22 (I'm now 29). I was overwhelmed. So much so, I ate the remaining pack of red vines on my nightstand for breakfast.

I caught myself comparing myself and even secretly hoped I wasn't the only one in my apprenticeship cohort that was let go. It was true though. I hope my force to be positive and protect my ego during this time doesn't make me miss out on my lesson. Maybe this was supposed to happen. Maybe I just wasn't ready. Maybe my next spot will be better.

Back in high school I was so sad I didn't get into UCLA, but USC was where I belonged the whole time. Back when I was about to start my bootcamp, I was mad my manager did not let me take a sabbatical and was mad when I found out he was let go literally MONTHS after I decided to leave. But had I not gone by that time, who's to say I would have made the transition because the pandemic came the next year and trying to make a transition at that time would have been SO MUCH HARDER. I could still be in FINANCE! YIKES!

···

GIF by zemenipearls

A lot of people came to my help though. I thought of everything I should do. Moving back home was not an option: no one has a room for me and I haven't heard from my parents or grandfather in so long. My grandmother, although shady when she calls, has been the only one with well wishes when she does. Ehh. I felt like my life was very hard. I thought of moving away but everything would be just as expensive as staying with moving costs and such and the time suck it would be and I kind of need to keep as many things as I can control stagnant so I can focus. I thought of taking some time off but to do what? Mope & watch YouTube? Not smart to take a big financial trip, and traveling ANYWHERE is a big financial trip at this point with rent this high and no promise of income after mid-January 2023. Maybe it'll serve as motivation TO go somewhere WHEN I get hired. I made schedule and figured this was probably for my best. I didn't think I'd be one and thought back to all the warnings a paranoid colleague of mine had about us potentially being on the chopping block. We both were. Layoffs like these are not always due to performance, but I can't help but feel that that was a part of my story too. Maybe I just was not ready. I had been working a LOT but finally getting to a place where I was catching my rhythm and told myself to just stay focused.

This post was longer and had more passion and detail but Tumblr has me HOT. Maybe it was not meant to be posted. I thought of getting a sugar daddy for a hot second. I thought of pursuing acting, being a rap tour manager, taking my app to a start up accelerator. Listen to the advice of haters who prompted me with, "Are you going to do something completely different?" BITCH YOU WISH!!! I know I just expressed my thoughts of probably doing something else, but coming from one of the haters, it felt like hate. She been a confirmed hater for a while. My internship ended around the time when people got laid off in 2020, so she thought I was one until I came back. When I came back, her post in the channel was, "How are people being able to come back so quickly?" People weren't getting hired back, she didn't know the logistics of my internship, so it looked like I was let go and hired back. I called her out publicly in the same channel. She's attempted at friendship pretty poorly since then. She suggested we even hang out when she NEVER has offered but has had many opportunities to in the past. "You should write down what you REALLY want to do," came from an old lady in my network. Girl bye. I'm on this mission and I'm going to get it.

But I did have thoughts. Maybe this was a sign that I need to do something else. But I told myself, "No, that's the devil." I like how this is challenging me. Who it's forcing me to become. I feel like it is in line with what I believe God's purpose for my life is and that's to heal and help heal. Build generational wealth. Be a lender, not a borrower. Help others. Work hard but live comfortably. I had improved. It's been challenging. It's forced me to think about my health more and has drawn me close to him. But I'll keep listening and hope that a bit of pride isn't wrapped up in my decision to keep going along this path too. Sometimes I feel like there is SOO much for me to learn and will I thrive elsewhere and not just be SURVIVING which I feel like I have been doing my whole career? Do I love it? No, but I am learning a lot, and it's allowed me to have multiple investments and streams of income...kinda, on that last point lol. I now only have 1 stream and that stream is pennies, but I'll get another stream back.soon..

The next day, a friend reached out who was also laid off but not at my company and recommended me for a role. He said helping people helps him get out of his funk. That was sweet of him. I am reminded that his cousin sexually assaulted me on his couch two Summers ago, but he didn't know about it, it wasn't his fault, and I wasn't going to remind him.

It encouraged me though. I updated my resume, scheduled some calls with some recruiters, put a weekly check-in meeting on the calendar with some folks who were also laid off, and put my name on the list recruiting circulates to help laid off folks find placements sooner. This could have been worse! I could have been fired solo. That would have been even more embarrassing. But if I want to get to a place of TRULY not caring what people think, I have to shake the ego off. I even scheduled a meeting with an old teammate who's at the company that's on the top of my list of places I want to be. I didn't know that she had left and I didn't know she was there. We've had a FEW encounters in the past. She wanted to help when I was an apprentice. We had a weird encounter then, and I think it was partially due to my ego. Kinda regretting that now. I don't know if she peeped game. We've been cordial since. She also used to be on my team when I started with my most recent team. We haven't gotten close, but maybe all these run ins where just a set up for this next big step. It's also a reminder that, you never know when you'll need someone on your side, and burn bridges if you must, yes, but do so strategically. Not everyone has to know how you TRULY feel. I'm trying to take my own advice and remain humble. Learn from my past mistakes. Whatever will be will be...I'm hoping it's in God's plans and that what I'm hoping to come true will and that it's the best thing for me in God's eyes. Here are the things I want to master and my proposed schedule plan:

Going to focus on algoexpert, interview cake, codewars, and leetcode.

So in addition to these learning goals, I'm going to stay on my health goals and get down to my desired weight. I'll take some time off before my next role starts. I can't imagine I'll take some time off before then. This is all that's on my mind. I'll get some time to focus on the things I wanted to learn but just didn't have time to at work. I was out of balance and hopefully this allows me to get back on track. If I have to dip into savings, so be it. Thank God I have them. I can't eat out as much or buy as much, but I don't need much these days anyway. I feel like I'm pretty good on what I have. Not too dazzled by the restaurant options in SF. I've tried a lot and can wait a little while. At least I can mope and not take care of myself on the days it is really hard instead of having to be a person in front of a spouse or children or have to find a job before I get kicked out of the country because it's against my visa like others who are not citizens like me. Can't travel as much, but I will again soon. This won't be forever. It just pushes those goals out a bit to achieve some others that God wants me to focus on. And it'll bring me even closer to him. Focusing on the blessings. Trying to at least. It will be a rollercoaster, but it will make me better. Part of the fear is that I have tried to master these concepts before but also get fatigued. And maybe that's because I've consistently had the promise of a job where that wouldn't be tested...but it is now. So I will have to become a different person to elevate. Maybe spend less time on these social media sites. Eat better. Stay hydrated. I'm already so tired but I have no choice but to do it. Failure or giving up is not an option here.

Also, RIP Takeoff. This week was ROUGH! This year has been rough. But tomorrow is a new day...Although my life has genuinely felt rough, I have accomplished a lot, am much more independent, am much more confident, have been in my apartment solo now for a year, and I'm still here and of pretty good health.

I hope to keep this thing updated more often on this journey in hopes that it is helpful to you. I hope to do it weekly. I hope you'll tune in, read, comment, share. I'll leave you with some videos that encouraged me (even though I don't really love Dave Chappelle):

Y'all be blessed!

[just-anka]

Ladybower trail marathon - 08/06/2019

Race day morning

My best friend from home, her 5yo daughter and J got here Thursday evening so the morning was a bit more chaotic than it usually would've been. The weather forecast for Saturday had been getting progressively worse in the days leading up to it and we woke up to pouring rain, but at that point I had kind of accepted getting soaked as inevitable :'D had the same breakfast I always eat before long runs, then drove the 20 mins out to ladybower.

The start

This was by far the tiniest race I've ever run - just under 100 starters and it didn't have the feel of a race, it looked more like a bunch of trail runners getting together for a group run in the mud and rain. I liked the atmosphere a lot, the only thing I was (stupidly) worried about was coming last - I knew I wouldn't be running a fast time but the idea of actually coming dead last somehow made me feel like I had to start out faster. I still did my best to take it slow, especially because we started out on roads which makes it even more tempting to start out too fast.

Km 1-8

It took me a while to get settled, constantly trying to slow down but not too much, and not be tempted to chase other runners, but I eventually found my pace. This first part was all gentle uphill on country roads, with great views of the reservoir. It wasn't really raining, just drizzling slightly, my legs felt fresh and I was just really enjoying myself. It's a fantastic feeling to finally start a race you've been training for for so long I think. After 8 km, we reached the first aid station where I filled my waterbottles, it was a cupless race with only 4 aid stations so I had my pack with me.

Km 9-21

After the first aid station there weren't really any runners around me anymore so I decided to put in my headphones. The following miles until the halfway point were by far the best of the whole race. Roads turned into bridleway, then single track trail with some more technical sections and some easier ones. The views were amazing and even though it was raining the whole time, it wasn't too windy or cold so I barely noticed it. I cruised up and down the rolling hills, flowing effortlessly and I just couldn't believe how good I felt. Around 10 miles I saw my friends who had walked towards me from the start "backwards" along the course. Got a high five from the kid and they all ran with me for a bit, I was so happy to see them :') my best friends dog went crazy when they stopped, he loves running with me and clearly wasn't happy to be left behind haha. A group of women running a little ahead commented on how cute he is and I ended up running with one of them for a while and we had a really nice chat - she was doing the marathon (which was her 18th o.o) as training for her first 50 miler and was so so nice. At the next aid station she stopped to wait for her friends while I went on. I reached the halfway point around 2h 13min, which was wayyy faster than planned, but I felt too good to really worry about it.

Km 22-28

The next aid station was around 22 km followed by the only actual uphill of the race. I didn't look at the race map all that much beforehand so i didn't know how long or steep it would be, just that it was the only one :'D it turned out to be only about 150m of elevation gain but it was really freaking steep. I walked the whole thing but still passed several people on it, so apparently all the hill running is sort of paying off. Once I got to the top the rain started to pick up and I was greeted by gusts of wind blowing along the edge. The view was fantastic but I didn't get much of an opportunity to take it all in because I was just sooo cold. Luckily the descent started after about a mile and the wind lessened a bit. The second half of the descent was really steep and technical and I again passed like 5 people - I'm really proud of that because when I was running with the group in the fall, my friends routinely ditched me on the downhills because I was so slow on them, and I worked on them a lot. It was also super fun.

Km 29-34

This is when it started to get hard. The last ~13 km were the same as the first, so the downhill was followed by another 8 km of roads. Not fun after so many miles already :'D I had to walk a few times but was mostly keeping it together, telling myself to just focus on the next km (I had "run the mile you're in" written on my hand which is always a good reminder).

Km 34 to the finish

After the last aid station I started to really crash. I was so so tired, freezing cold from the rain and wind and started to feel really sick as well. After a small uphill that I had to walk I finally gave in and stopped to put on my rain jacket - I hate running in them because I always feel like I sweat more than I'd get wet from the rain, but at that point I was just too cold. It helped a bit and I spent the next few miles alternating between running and walking. This part is a blur in my mind, I really just remember being in pain and thinking if there was any way I could quit I'd do it. There wasn't though, so I just kept going. 2 km from the finish I suddenly saw J walking towards me. I was so happy to see him I started tearing up. By then I was feeling so sick I could barely run but having him next to me helped a bit. The last km was all downhill and I somehow managed to run all of it and 'sprint' across the finish line in the pouring rain. And then I started to cry, just like after every half marathon race I've done so far 🤦‍♀️

After the race

After recovering enough to walk and receiving my medal, I hobbled back to the parking lot with J where I changed into dry clothes in the bathroom. It took me forever because my hands were so cold I couldn't feel my fingers and I was just soaked to the bone 😂 but being dry was the best feeling in the world. So was the hot shower once we got home, and the pizza we had for lunch, and hugging my friends. I was so grateful to have them around for this ❤

It's a few days later now and I still can't believe I did this. I haven't run yet but I feel.. recovered? I guess so I'll try a short and slow one tomorrow or so. I'm glad I picked the race I did even though it deffs wasn't an easy one, and most people I saw or talked to were wearing ultra shirts, training for ultras, doing this as their 20th marathon etc etc :'D but despite the horrible weather it was a great experience and even while finishing and feeling like I never want to take another step I thought "I'd do this again in a heartbeat". I love running.

[wild--and--wonderful]

I'd be a shame if someone asked you to answer aaaaaall those "talk about" questions...

1: Talk about the first time you watched your favorite movie.

I first saw Fast and Furious when I was 16 and COMPLETELY (embarrassingly) obsessed with Vin Diesel. It was amazing, and it still makes me all ooey gooey 16 (!!!!!!!) years later.

2: Talk about your first kiss.

Brian was GORGEOUS. Black hair, blue eyes, the perfect hands. Fun, funny, and sweet (or so I thought...but that’s a story for another time!). And since he wouldn’t make the first move (and I was an impatient 14 year old) I kissed him. And it was awesome. He’s a total asshole now, so I really dodged a bullet when he tried to break up with me through my friend’s  AIM (aol instant messenger for all you young’uns out there) so he didn’t have to do it himself.

3: Talk about the person you've had the most intense romantic feelings for.

I met Daniel when I was 15 (nearly 16), and he was pure perfection. Curly blonde hair, the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen (Misha Collins’ are a pretty good example), and a smile that lit up my heart. We spent 4 days together while I was on a school trip to Wales, and it was the loveliest 4 days of my life. I fell in love with him instantly and so hard. The morning I left was the most heart-wrenching moment of my life. I had an awful plane ride home, but you know what woke me up at 8:30 am? Daniel. On the phone. FROM WALES. Just making sure I got home safely and to tell me how much he missed me. And just between you and I? If he showed up on my doorstep today, I don’t think I’d be able to turn him away.

4: Talk about the thing you regret most so far.

I don’t regret things. I can’t. Because if I regret anything, it means that my life wouldn’t have turned out the way it has, and for better or worse I made the best choices I could.

5: Talk about the best birthday you've had.

My 14th birthday was pretty epic! It was my last birthday in Hawaii before we moved to the mainland, so my mom took a bunch of my friends and I to Planet Hollywood in Waikiki, then we walked down to the big ass Local Motion store and got to watch a taping of MTVs Real World Hawaii (which I saw later that summer and promptly burst into tears).

6: Talk about the worst birthday you've had.

My stepdad died suddenly 2 weeks before my 17th birthday. 

7: Talk about your biggest insecurity.

My weight/stomach. It’s gotten ruined by children (I don’t have the most elastic skin, so it just hangs there all gross).

8: Talk about the thing you are most proud of.

Getting my Bachelors Degree! Took me 10 years on and off, but I got it in 2015.

9: Talk about little things on your body that you like the most.

My eyes are so pretty! 

10: Talk about the biggest fight you've ever had.

I don’t really want to. Brings up all kinds of bad things.

11: Talk about the best dream you've ever had.

I don’t remember the good ones :-(

12: Talk about the worst dream you've ever had.

I had a recurring nightmare when I was 4-6 about a huge gorilla completely destroying my preschool.

13: Talk about the first time you had sex/how you imagine your first time.

It was at my 17th birthday party (unsurprising to adult me...we can talk about death of a parent and the need to feel love and affection at a later date). It was boring and not fun. Nothing to write home about. He and I were always better as friends.

14: Talk about a vacation.

Growing up with a single (overachiever) mom and being an only child afforded me a privilege I cannot give to my own children. I was spoiled, and taken on so many god damn amazing vacations as a child. I’ve been to Maui 3 times, Moloka’i once, the Big Island once, and one summer we took quite a few weeks and went to Boston, New York City (I got to eat at Tavern on the Green when I was 9...what kind of shit is that?!?), then to LA and Disneyland, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and up to San Francisco. 

15: Talk about the time you were most content in life.

Hahahahahahahaha. I’ve never been content. My life has been a series of abusive parents (dad and stepdad), death (stepdad then dad), and a poor relationship with my mother. Top of becoming a parent at 20, and I’m currently at my least content. How fucked up is that?!?

16: Talk about the best party you've ever been to.

I don’t like parties? There are always too many people, and way too much pressure to drink and get drunk. 

17: Talk about someone you want to be friends with.

Weird question. Uh...I don’t have an answer for this.

18: Talk about something that happened in elementary school.

I attended 3 different elementary schools. My mom pulled me out of public school after day 4 of Kindergarten because my friend and I snuck off during a fire drill and the didn’t find us for hours. She put me in a private school which wound up not teaching me math at all, so she put me back in public school in the middle of 2nd grade, and it took me until 6th grade to finally catch up to grade level math.

19: Talk about something that happened in middle school.

I went to a Lutheran school, complete with Chapel every Wednesday morning. I am now an agnostic and know more about the bible than most self-professed Christians I’ve met.

20: Talk about something that happened in high school.

We moved from Hawaii to Virginia. Talk about culture shock and the inability to deal with the cold.

21: Talk about a time you had to turn someone down.

This dude took me on a date (I had known him in high school, he was a few years older) and his teeth were gross. Like he hadn’t brushed them in weeks. He tried to kiss me and I had to tell him no. I got the hell out of there real quick.

22: Talk about your worst fear.

As a parent, my worst fear is something happening to my children. It’s turned into a very pronounced anxiety so I can be incredibly overprotective.

23: Talk about a time someone turned you down.

I haven’t dated in 13 years, but I can’t recall anyone actually turning me down.

24: Talk about something someone told you that meant a lot.

In 11th grade (junior year), I was going through some shit. It was just a tough year for me, with some bullying and some really dumb things I did. A boy that I was really close to wrote me this poem that just meant the world. He really understood what I was going through, and made it clear he was there for me.

25: Talk about an ex-best friend.

Emilyn and I met when we were 3 and 4, and she was my sister. I honestly couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know her. As we got older, she grew more and more distant. She moved from Hawaii the year before I did to go to a boarding school in Vermont, and called me up a year or so later to tell me she was gay. I don’t think I had the best reaction, being young and so very unsure of my own sexuality. We saw each other once more when she came to visit us in Hawaii when we were there for the summer when I was 15. She was really...not nice. Spent a lot of time with her other friends despite the fact that she was staying with us. It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve seen her, and it sucks. 

26: Talk about things you do when you're sick.

Sleep, drink tea, and sleep more.

27: Talk about your favorite part of someone else's body.

Not specifics, but I love me some full lips. 

28: Talk about your fetishes.

I’m so vanilla.

29: Talk about what turns you on.

Being touched, kissed on the neck/shoulder area

30: Talk about what turns you off.

Bad breath, general bad hygiene, bad attitude

31: Talk about what you think death is like.

Death is nothingness. I so much wish for it to be a happy place full of the people I love but I’ve felt the loss of so many people and they’re just gone.

32: Talk about a place you remember from your childhood.

We had a hammock strung up in a Portuguese lemon tree in the front yard, and it was the perfect reading place.

33: Talk about what you do when you are sad.

Complain. listen to sad music, isolate myself.

34: Talk about the worst physical pain you've endured.

Childbirth is pretty brutal, but with the epidural, it’s wonderful.

35: Talk about things you wish you could stop doing.

Being lazy, procrastinating

36: Talk about your guilty pleasures.

I refuse to feel guilty about anything that brings me happiness!!

37: Talk about someone you thought you were in love with.

I was engaged to a man before I met my husband. He was...not the right guy for me. He loved me a lot, but I was far too young for him.

38: Talk about songs that remind you of certain people.

There’s this one Daya song that reminds me of one of my ex’s but I can’t remember the name of the song.

39: Talk about things you wish you'd known earlier.

How not straight I am. I didn’t connect all the dots until my mid 20s, and by that point I was already married with children. There’s not much you can do at that point.

40: Talk about the end of something in your life.

Nothing has quite ended yet!