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Post Sunday · 14 June

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

所谓“高处不胜寒”正是这个意思。当你已经在众人心目中成为胜利的化身,那么胜利对你就不再具备更多的意义;人们对你唯一的关注点仅在于:你什么时候会失败。
所以你便会格外地害怕失败。当再有挑战到来的时候,你已经没有勇气去坦然面对。在这个时候,逃避就成了你无奈的选择。

Characters Sunday · 14 June
第十六章 “一·一二”碎尸案
冯春玲
féng chūn língFeng Chunling
Student, victim of the 1/12 case
王文超
wáng wén chāoWang Wenchao
38, cook for more than 10 years.
Post Sunday · 14 June

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).

Audiobook Update Sunday · 14 June
殺死瑪麗蘇
殺死瑪麗蘇
メアリー・スーを殺して
乙一
Mandarin
Translated from Japanese

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!

Activity Sunday · 14 June
Genshin Impact
Version: Luna VII · 虚空劫灰往世书

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…

Activity Sunday · 14 June
Genshin Impact
Version: Luna VII · 虚空劫灰往世书
Luna VII
虚空劫灰往世书
Event 勇锐魁杰试炼战记 (yǒng ruì kuí jié shì liàn zhàn jì)

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 :sword::trophy:
The most difficult part of the event, was to read the five sections tutorial in Chinese.

WordReadingDefinition
格挡gé dǎngto parry
锐气ruì qìacute spirit
韧性rèn xìngtoughness

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… :leaf:

Review Sunday · 14 June
Backrooms
Backrooms
Kane Parsons

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.

53%

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.

Summary Saturday · 13 June
第十五章 往事初现 (contains spoilers)

Luo Fei and Mu Jianyun are invited to Huan Jieyuan’s club.
It turns out that the two cases (both the 4/7 Chen Tianqiao’s robbery case and the 1/12 case) are important for Jieyuan because Ding Ke quit the force during the robbery case so Jieyuan took his place, and he himself quit the police after the 1/12 case.
Luo Fei tells him about the recent discovery: Zhang Cuiping suddenly found enough money for her operation, but when the police enquired about it, she gave up on the operation to protect the source of the money. And the policeman who questioned her deliberately hid this information from the investigation team and did not record it anywhere. Luo Fei asks for the name of this policeman and both him and Jianyun are shocked when they learn it was Ding Ke himself.
They arrive at the conclusion that Ding Ke didn’t quit the police because he faced an unsolved case, but because he solved it: he understood that his favourite student on whom he had placed a lot of hopes and expectations, Yuan Zhibang, was the culprit of the robbery case. Either he sent Zhibang in prison, which also meant that Cuiping had to give the money back, or he covered for him, which he did. Given that this action was against his integrity as a policeman, he retired.

Activity Saturday · 13 June
Reverse: 1999
Version: 3.5 · The Turquoise Serpent Club

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.

Post Saturday · 13 June
Reverse: 1999
Version: 3.5 · The Turquoise Serpent Club

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

Post Saturday · 13 June

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…

Review Saturday · 13 June
기리고
기리고
박윤서
Korean

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.

Post Saturday · 13 June

I found another word whose meaning was a surprise to me:

WordReadingDefinition
成见chéng jiànpreconceived idea, bias, prejudice

Because the hanzi are so common, it felt like I should have known the meaning of the word, but the real meaning was not what I imagined.

Story Friday · 12 June
Reverse: 1999
Version: 3.5 · The Turquoise Serpent Club
3.5
The Turquoise Serpent Club
Event Story 绿松石蛇俱乐部 (lù sōng shí shé jù lè bù)

I continued the story a bit, I finished chapter 9. I like it so far, but it’s also not my favourite.

Story Friday · 12 June
Genshin Impact
Version: Luna VII · 虚空劫灰往世书
Luna V
捕风的归客
Story Quest 天狼之章·第一幕「致予远征之人」 (tiān láng zhī zhāng dì yī mù zhì yú yuǎn zhēng zhī rén)

I finished Varka SQ, it was insane!! He got a crazy trial, I can’t remember any character having so much combat in their story! (though to be fair, there are a lot of SQ I haven’t done yet). I loved the last part a lot, the cutscenes were great too, and the combat was really cool. Thank goodness I haven’t played his story during his banner! Varka’s playstyle is so good :star::sword:

Activity Friday · 12 June
Reverse: 1999
Version: 3.5 · The Turquoise Serpent Club

Cleared Lucidscape! I always try to speedrun with my best characters. Teams were:
First half:

Liangyue
Cheng Heguang
Flutterpage
Fatutu

They cleared in 4 rounds. I did a retry, but I couldn’t clear in 3 rounds no matter what. Maybe the team is not optimal, because Fatutu didn’t do anything.

Second half:

Ezio
Cassandra
Charon
Argus

Not sure what this team is exactly, but they cleared in 3 rounds no problem (Ezio is P5 and Charon P3). I didn’t play Cassandra at all.

Post Friday · 12 June

There were only two character names in 神の言葉, so I’m not doing a character list. Even for Closet it was not really necessary.

Update Friday · 12 June
68%

I finished 神の言葉, another incredibly fascinating story. It’s kind of scary to think that someone can write so many unique yet equally impactful stories.
I really loved this one, the end was so striking and terrifying too… But what I loved the most is the protagonist, it was such an interesting character, not just his personality and how it made him struggle, but that he was aware of it.