bullet point journaling

I shall try to do more of this:

- I almost fell of my chair twice this last 7 days so I am buying that gaming chair. I cannot do this weird perching-on-a-cushion thing anymore.

- Now looking for a wired keyboard and mouse, thinking of getting a keyboard with a USB port so I can attach a mouse to it. But I would also like them to have pretty colours.

- Largely I don't think I'm going to make it back to the States within 2020, so I have to look for someone to sublet my room in Berkeley. If anybody knows anyone looking for a room in the Bay, Aug - Dec 2020, at rent around $898 with awesome housemates near a BART station, hmu. My housemates have to vet the subletter, so interviews are a thing.

- My mom is so dumb, omg.

- My A/C is fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- I finally bought new hangers to hang up all the clothes in my luggage bags after like, months of them sitting there. My dad was all like "why can't you just use the hangers downstairs that we use for laundry" and I'm like "there would be no hangers left for laundry" and he was like "You that THAT MUCH CLOTHES?" and I'm like "look i know you are a retired gremlin slob for some of us still like having a range of professional and party clothes". Some of these clothes need to be handwashed so I'll have to set aside time for that.

- also need to catalog the books in the boxes and pack them away. I want to catalog them so i don't have to open boxes just to find out what's in them in the future!!!!

- I got myself a table clamp for holding an embroidery hoop!! Pictured here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBXSiRynfr_/ It's amazing and I'm so excited to use it more.

- Trying to plan my next embroidery project, and I need tracing paper. Of course I would only think of it when MPH has finally closed and I forgot to go back to check out its stock. I went to AEON Big yesterday, which is kind of like a local Kmart, except it is several floors and has less logic.

- I did not know it would be so hard to find large writing notebooks here. The spiral-bound notebooks are small. The ones which are thick are bound by glue and thus gonna be unhappy to write in. The ones bound through stapling, UGH, so thin. I finally bought a two-hundred pager, but it isn't very thick because it's 100 sheets, really. But I really want to do long-hand writing for the Clarion write-a-thon so here we go.

- Speaking of I'm not sure if I want to continue the novel from last year. I typed it up into the computer afterwards and then the computer died. It's now gone to the workshop, so trying to remember how much I typed up and how much revision I did to what I did type up. (There are [BRACKETS] in my handwritten draft.) I do believe that there isn't a whole lot left to write, since I hit the major climactic battle. But I also want to write something else--I have an outline for a silly Eurofantasy romance inspired by all these manhwa I keep reading.

- WORK! WORK! WORK! My second acquisition is finally coming out! ARCs of NUCLEATION are up at NetGalley and Edelweiss and it's not as popular as THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES (Kimberly doesn't have as strong a track record as RB does) so I need to figure out ways to get more people interested in it. If you like to review books set in SPACE, let me know!! NUCLEATION is one of those fun commercial books which made me go "oooOo!" when I read the first few pages.

- I am writing again and I am writing fanfic. It's basically a re-write for The Reason Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion because WOW is the premise wasted on an incompetent protagonist and I just lost patience one day. It's gotten to the point where I could conceivably file the serial numbers off and pass it off as original fic, especially given the sheer number of recycled isekai stories right now.


I think that's it for now.

Things I Have Been Reading

I've no brainspace for longform fiction right now so it's all comics comics comics. I've got an account at Manganelo and have been following these:

ISEKAI stuff:
- Who Made Me A Princess - main character, an orphan, gets isekai'd into the childhood of a princess doomed to die at her emperor father's hand after her sister, the real protagonist, shows up. A good chunk of her reincarnated childhood is spent trying to avoid her father's wrath, planning to run away, and then she decides to take the third route, which is to win him over. And she does fairly successfully, though he remains cold and violent. New characters she never read about show up, and the male lead of the original novel falls for her, and she also finds out her sister (who doesn't know she knows) (???) (the DRAMATIC IRONY) isn't actually her sister but was conceived through dark magic via her deposed uncle (???) and anway, the art is lovely.

- Survive as the Hero's Wife - main character isekai'd into the villainness of her favourite novel right at the point where she marries the protagonist as a child bride. She starts off being determined to support him so she can retire in peace as a wealthy landlady once he gets hitched to his "real" love interest... only to find out the love interest actually isn't in love with the protagonist. I LOVE Canaria--she's SUCH a TruFan!! I especially love the bits where she really uses her fanlore knowledge to help Cesar, and the rivals-to-friends is really wonderful.

- The Pet of the Villainess - main character is reborn into a rando side character, and since she worked retail, she realises she can use her people-pleasing skill to thrive in high society by sucking up to the various ladies she meets. It's sort of interesting because her position skirts between being genuinely friends with people (because she's also genuinely kind) and abuse (she admits that most of these ladies have NO idea how to emotionally regulate, and take it out on her instead). She starts off wanting to avoid the villainess but by the second chapter is like having a THOROUGH girl-crush and it's a, uh, "gal pal" relationship. And of course things change.

- The Duchess' 50 Tea Recipes - a bit of an outlier because usually isekai stories have the main characters transport into the world of a media they've consumed, but Chloe just wakes up in a weird European-ish place with the memories of the Duchess she's inhabiting. The original Duchess Was weakwilled and cowardly, what Chloe used to be, except now Chloe is just Done With That Shit™ after being fired from her accountant job for something she shouldn't have been responsible for. So she just... takes her skill as an accountant and starts making a change in the household and also there is a different tea every episode. Everyone falls in love with her tea. Just. Tea.

- Cheating Men Must Die! - A FUCKING RIOT. The main character is an "agent" who travels to "small worlds", i.e. the world of various media, and inhabits the bodies of female "cannon fodder" side characters who are usually abused and discarded to serve the plot of the main characters of the story. Much feminist commentary. Much misandry. Much take-no-shit resentment. NO QUARTER GIVEN!!!!!!!!

- The Villainess is Adored By the Crown Prince of the Neighbouring Kingdom - this one starts off promising enough. The main character gets her memories of her former life back and realises she's been reincarnated as the villainess of her favourite otome game. It's the day before the denouncement event (when the villains get dealt with, usually by a public breakup and banishment), and she's about to take her licks and retire quietly even though she knows she's done nothing wrong, when the crown prince, who was supposed to be the sequel's hero, shows up to propose to her. The first volume deals with the fallout from that which is all cute and roses, except the "real protagonist" gets mad, because she's also been reincarnated and she prefers the sequel's hero to the current one she nabbed. The second volume starts getting annoying bc then it's all about her anxiety on whether the "real plot" of the game (where the hero gets tired of his fiancee and starts a new relationship with the playable character) will pan out.

- The Reason Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion -- if there is a comic with a helluva hook, this is IT. The main character finds herself inhabiting the body of a side character who dies before the book even starts! Her death is what kicks off the original romance novel plot between the "real" protagonist and the male lead. On a whim (also she was drinking) she blackmails the male lead into a fake engagement with her for six months. Shenanigans ensue. Lots of pining on his part, lots of tsundere resistance on her part, lots of anxiety on whether the "real" protagonist will show up. I really like the worldbuilding potential of this one, and I've re-read it a lot because gosh the male lead is SO DREAMY and EXACTLY MY TYPE but the main character is admittedly... immature. I just generally feel very old reading this, and other isekai stories like it, because it's like... why are y'all overreacting like this? I think it's supposed to be funny but it really just makes the main characters feel like they're incompetent. In the case of Raeliana, I can't tell if it's because the main character is SUPPOSED to be like that, or she was already kind of stupid and inconsistent in the original novel (I can't find the original novel to figure this out) or something has gone wrong in the editing of the webtoon? Anyway it looks like it's headed into the final arc of the story, so I hope a bunch of my questions re: the plot get answered within... oh, one year or so.

A few more isekai I've been following but they don't have very many chapters yet:

- Beware the Villainess! - hilarious, A+ awareness of self as reader and commentary on the male leads
- The Evil Lady's Hero - I clicked it for the ecchi tag, idk it's OK
- Death is the Only Route for the Villainess - so far looking really good! competent heroine who finds she has a LOT in common with the character she's inhabited
- The Evil Sorceress Plans To Survive
- I Am Troubled That My Fiance is a Villain - I've finished the light novel and it's pretty eh; cute concept, bleh main character
- The Banished Villainess! Living the Leisurely Life of a Nun Making Revolutionary Food - she was an events organiser in her past life! it's very slice-of-life and cute.
- Fiance's Observation Log of the Self-Proclaimed Villainess - this is another otome game reincarnation fic, from the perspective of one of the "capture targets," in this case the crown prince. It looks like it's almost finishing as well?

REINCARNATION STUFF:

- Lucia - I'm mostly here for the smut and fluff. The main character, around puberty, has a dream about how her life will unfold (all the way into old age) and in order to avoid an abusive marriage, decides to approach a duke to offer herself instead. Falling in love happens.

- The Sweet Life of Adelaide - sort of isekai, the main character was a fashion designer in her previous life, is reborn as a country count's daughter. She hears about a mysterious lady who appeared all of a sudden walking on the lake and is like "!! AN ISEKAI'D PERSON?? I MUST MEET HER!!" and goes to the capital only to find that yes, the strange lady has been transmigrated, but is also a right bitch, a former actress trying to live the high life by seducing the lead male character. Fake engagement, falling in love, shenanigans ensue. The main character is a BIT too wedded to her ideas of genre tropes, but she's otherwise really fun and competent, and I really love me a story with female friendships.

- The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass - HOLY SHIT I BINGED THE LIGHT NOVEL OF THIS IN 36 HOURS IT IS SO GOOD and the manhwa is also pretty good! The main character is the daughter of a prostitute who has married into a count's family; she has been vain and foolish all her life, and then attempts to poison her adopted sister, leading to her denouncement and public executiion. She prays for a second chance as she's getting executed, because her "angelic" sister tells her on the chopping block that her entire life has been set up for sabotage. So she basically goes back in time to when she's about 14, after she's become part of the noble family but nothing too serious has happened yet. And she reflects on her past life and what she knows will happen to TAKE REVEEEEENGE. Her friendships and relationships are all manipulative and weaponised in some fashion, and she denies a lot of her more tender feelings. She stays at 10 all the way until the end too. It's GLORIOUS. I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH. The fan translation I read wasn't great but even with the shitty translation it looks like the writing is quite strong by itself.

- Doctor Elise - this is a double-reincarnation story! The main character was a villainess traitor in her first life, got herself burned on the stake, reborn in the modern world, lived a whole life as a very accomplished doctor, dies in a plane crash mid-30s to find herself in her FIRST LIFE at around right before her engagment to the crown prince. She decides to break off the engagement and become a doctor in this life instead. Much feelings. Much anxiety about the revolution that happened in her previous life due to politics.

CONTEMPORARY stuff:

- I'm 30 and Have Fallen In Love For the First Time - just fluff about having a relationship for the first time at age 30. Someone in the comments was like "these people are a mess, even twelve-year-olds have their shit together better for their first time wtf" and I.... kinda agree!!!!

- Otome no Teikoku - high school girls, much gay stuff and high school drama, but there's a group of otaku characters who are HI-LA-RIOUS

- Lily Marble - WOMEN AT A GYM, much gay

- Thirty Years Old - disappointing gay sons, gays in the closet, gays out the closet, confused queer men coming to terms with being either gay or bi, straight-passing drama

- the Way of the House Husband - the yakuza-turned-househusband manga! IT'S VERY HILARIOUS. Basically every normal household chore gets ANTE'D UP as if he was still living the INTENSE YAKUZA LIFESTYLE. And his words get miscontrued because it's clear he was a gangster. There are also other former gangster characters now living 'regular' lives (one runs a waffle truck!! he and the househusband have an instagram-off) and it's all very silly and adorable.