(no subject)

Jul. 16th, 2025 07:40 pm
thawrecka: (Trowa)
[personal profile] thawrecka
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.

Bleach fic

Jul. 14th, 2025 08:38 pm
thawrecka: (Default)
[personal profile] thawrecka
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.

(no subject)

Jul. 13th, 2025 04:26 pm
thawrecka: (Bleach - fighting is better back to back)
[personal profile] thawrecka
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.

Dailies

Jul. 9th, 2025 08:40 pm
kalloway: (FFBE Duane)
[personal profile] kalloway
I could complain about work, but what even is the point?

Limited Edition PG 1/60 Blue Frame went up for sale the other night and I ordered one. As I said to my parents, as far as mid-life crises go, model kits are pretty tame. I also have some things on the way from various weekend sales which, whoops, was not terribly expensive but sure is a lot of parcels. I still need to order paint.

My last two Suruga-ya orders rolled in after spending a bit of time in customs. One was the last Estailev kit that I needed, and certainly the biggest. I had not realized it was huge! I will possibly pick away at the related SD-styled ExeCreR kits in the future, but for now I'm pretty good. (No, I do not know why I got absolutely obsessed with these. I really hope they're pleasant builds!)

I tried out a new mobile game, Silver and Blood, but I just didn't click with it. Interesting premise, and I should theoretically like weird vampire game? But nope, after getting through the first chapters and thinking it was okay, I found myself just sort of staring at the icon the next day thinking 'actually I don't really care'.

Time to wait for Seven Knights Rebirth, I guess. And then I'm 100% out of upcoming mobile games?

Tomorrow, I clean out the fridge (not for any awful reason; it's just that time) and do a lot of general pickup if it's not too hot.

Bleach fic

Jul. 7th, 2025 08:38 pm
thawrecka: (Default)
[personal profile] thawrecka
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.

(no subject)

Jul. 7th, 2025 08:16 pm
thawrecka: (Bleach)
[personal profile] thawrecka
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.

(no subject)

Jul. 7th, 2025 01:15 pm
thawrecka: (Default)
[personal profile] thawrecka
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.

Tiny Plastic Souls

Jul. 6th, 2025 07:46 pm
kalloway: (Destiny Impulse)
[personal profile] kalloway
There often comes a point when I'm building a model kit that I realize that ah, I am being watched right back. There is a tiny plastic soul* in there of some sort, and sometimes not quite the one I'm expecting.

The last month or so of model kits/gunpla! )

*which is not to say I think that my kits are actually-alive in any way, this is more in the fun way that my aunt and I used to leave offerings of jellybeans for my grandmother's porcelain doll collection so they wouldn't eat us in our sleep.**
**at least I think we weren't serious about that.***
***I should probably email my aunt.

Monthly Roundup Returns

Jul. 3rd, 2025 10:38 am
kalloway: Sleepy Cotton from SaGa Frontier (SaGa Cotton Snooze)
[personal profile] kalloway
[community profile] sunshine_revival's first challenge is goals/plans for the month, just in time for me to actually post my monthly plans roundup. (A couple of days late, because hot.)

So here goes:

June )

July's plans are to survive being too fucking hot.

July )

There is another part to the challenge but I'll worry about that later, if at all.

Profile

gaignun: (Default)
Tara