Blog

Chapter 16 is great, and we finally get to know more about something the author has been teasing for a while, but I was so tired today, I could barely keep my eyes opened while reading, so I preferred to stop mid-chapter. I’ll continue tomorrow!

I can’t really express how much I loved this audiobook. It’s kind of scary that one person can write so many unique and fascinating short stories (I’m currently reading Zoo, which is equally incredible).
Otsuichi’s stories all have this strange mix of sadness and loneliness, but also something warm and tender, while being excellent mysteries or horror stories or delivering really unsettling plots or denouements.
I loved all the stories in the collection, but 山羊座的友人 and 宗像與鋼筆事件 are my favourites.
And as I said before, I can’t find the name of the narrator, but the narration was top-notch.

Now that I have Mika, it makes farming 空羽蛾 for Lohen much easier than it was for Linnea!

I can’t wait to start Lohen’s SQ but I didn’t have time this weekend… I’ll wait to have the ascension materials from his SQ to fully ascend him too, so it slows down his build. I’m working on building Prune in the meantime.

I looked at which Otsuichi books were available as audiobooks on weixin dushu, and there’s 失踪假日 (失踪HOLIDAY), 只有你听到 (きみにしか聞こえない CALLING YOU) and 寂寞的頻率 (さみしさの周波数), which are all early works. If I’m not mistaken they are respectively from 2000, 2001 and 2002.
So that’s perfect, I’m going to listen to them in this order, they’re going to be my next audiobooks. I might listen to something else in-between to change things up, but these three audiobooks are on my list for this year.

My flashcards retention rate has been very bad yesterday and today… I need to focus!

I used to think that Udaru Oshita (大下宇陀児) and Jokichi Hikage (日影丈吉) were my favourite Japanese authors, but now I think it’s Otsuichi (乙一).

I finished 伊娃．瑪莉．克羅斯, I didn’t need to look at the text after all, it was easy to follow once I got started. Loved this one as well! Very disturbing, but very good!

I took the Miliastra personality quiz and my result was “Master Strategist of Liyue“.
I’ve been having fun with “One Stroke Puzzle”, “Nonogram Scrolls” and “Flappy Linnea” among others to farm primogems. Then I spent 15 minutes customising my Manekina. Some standard fates gave me the autumn-theme outfit I wanted so badly when it came out, but now the weather’s much too hot to wear that…

I finished the combat event, and it was so much fun!!! I loved it!! I’m hoping they will add this as a regular combat feature one day.
I named 咕咕丸 as champion
The most difficult part of the event, was to read the five sections tutorial in Chinese.

At least, now I know how to say “to parry” in Chinese.

Also, one thing we can say to Kazuha is 下回可以一起到処游览。If only it was true and we really could…

I loved this film much more than I expected to! I’m not surprised that the film leaves us with more questions than answers, but I find it a little bit too opened in the end, though it’s been fun to try and give it my own interpretation.
I found some scene surprisingly terrifying too.

I finished chapter 5, and this one felt oddly out of place. The chapter was okay overall, but there was a whole passage where characters seemed to understand something from the first time, when we already went over it previously. I’m pretty sure it must be a mistake, it felt very odd. Not only do the characters realise something everyone already knew, but we even already went through the consequences of it in a previous chapter.
I still enjoyed reading it, and I do still find the novel very suspenseful, but this chapter in particular felt quite repetitive.

I played a little bit of Critter Crash, I had a broken Dynamo deck which got me my best result.
I’ll continue playing until I get the skin, but I probably won’t have time to go beyond that.

Critter Crash is actually the perfect thing to do while watching the World Cup.

I’m debating whether I’m going to add entries for all the film and series I watch or keep it for the ones I watch in my target languages. I started a physical notebook for Korean films only, and this website replaced it, but it’s not just limited to Korean films.
I forget everything if I don’t actively try to recall it or make some kind of output about it. Maybe everyone is like this, or maybe it’s a problem with me, but I absolutely cannot remember the plot of films, series or books I watched or read in the past. That’s why I’m obsessed with writing things down, taking notes and writing reviews.
So even though my website was focused on language learning, it could be nice to just record all the films and series I watch just to not forget about them…

I have mixed feelings about this series, on the one hand, I think it was excellent as a young adult horror series, on the other hand, it was a “not for me” kind of series, so there’s a lot of things that I disliked.
If you like both k-dramas in general, high school stuff and horror, then you’ll probably love this drama.
But personally, I really dislike k-dramas in general. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like Korean series (I absolutely love series like Hellbound or Kingdom, and Karma is one of my favourite series of all times), but you know the set of rules that make k-dramas kind of a genre in itself, especially the feel-good and romance ones. I found that this series had a lot of those typical k-drama stuff that I absolutely cannot bear like characters freezing and looking dumb for several seconds when situations call for a prompt response, useless dialogues when the situation is urgent, and very clichéed and unrealistic characters. I really dislike this kind of perfect characters: Hajun clearly has financial difficulties, but he is a mathematic genius who does well at school. Se-a has a very traumatic past, lives quasi alone, but still found the courage to fight for her dreams, etc. On the contrary, the rich and privileged Nari is the most ambiguous one.
As a result, Nari was by far the most interesting character for me, she’s the only one who felt real, who seemed to have emotions like a normal human being, in opposition to her k-drama stereotyped friends. The two girls at the origin of the curse were also very interesting and I really liked the episode focused on them. I also found Se-a quite dull which is a shame because she is the main character of the series. Overall, the “bad” characters like Nari and Siwon were the most interesting ones, compared to our “good” perfect cast of heroes who have no flaws at all.
I also found some episodes better than others, not really liking the more action-focused ones.
Overall, it was entertaining enough, but even though the story was good, I was so annoyed by the characters that it prevented me from really liking the series. Probably won’t watch if there’s a second season coming.