straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2026-02-25 07:01 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2026-02-25 07:01 pm
345 | vacation, books, anime
This week, I have four days off from work! I worked on Monday, took Tuesday off via my accumulated overtime, and now I have vacation from Wednesday to Friday. I have… many things on my to-do list, quite possibly too many things (especially considering that one of those days is going to be taken up with celebrating my birthday), but so far I’ve mostly just been building furniture, reorganizing my apartment, and doing other housework, and feeling pretty pleased about what I’ve been accomplishing.
Though I’m also hoping to accomplish some hobby-related things as well! I’ve been playing Pokémon Brilliant Diamond recently, and it’s occurred to me that it wouldn’t be impossible to finish it before I get back to work next week, based on where I am in the game now. I’m not going to rush it or push myself, but it is something on my mind.
I would also like to get some writing done… ideally in the form of “actually post something”. I’ve recently fallen down a very unexpected rabbit hole—I read Long Live Evil not expecting much from it, thinking it’d probably end up being a three star read for me unless I get unlucky, and then I ended up adoring it? And having actual fannish feelings about it? So much so that I actually started a reread of the book the very next day after having finished it? I cannot remember the last time I’ve done something like that with a single book—possibly before I was an adult, even. (I do remember the last time I did that with a series of books, however: Legend of the Sun Knight, back in January 2019.)
I finished that reread last night and loved every second of it, so it’s safe to say that I’m very hooked. It’s not a perfect book, but what it is is perfectly iddy, as though tailored to appeal to me specifically, and the fact that I have to wait until May for the sequel is currently absolute agony to me, haha. I have lots of thoughts about it, and what it is about it that appeals to me so much, and also how wild it is that the author mentions MDZS and not Scum Villain in her list of inspirations when so many elements of this book feel like it’s in conversation with Scum Villain—but that’s not for this post.
To get back to my original point: I wrote a couple fills for it for the Three Sentence Ficathon last week, and since then I’ve been poking at some potential non-3SF fic for it as well, with the one that’s closest to being finished a Lia/Emer pre-canon ficlet. So: ideally I’d like to finish that one up, and make progress on one of the other fics as well before this break from work ends.
I’ve also been watching anime in the evenings! This was not originally in my plans for this break, but—I have a very long watchlist on Crunchyroll that I’ve made no progress on, and I don’t actually intend on renewing my subscription when the year ends, so I decided I should actually start making my way through that list.
I started off with Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex, which originally was a series that… mildly intrigued me, but I didn’t have high hopes for; I was actually a little bit surprised to see that I had put it on my watchlist, because my assumption was that I would drop it within the first episode. But then someone made a post talking about their impressions of the series, and something they mentioned made my interest in the series go up, so I went for it, and in the end watched the whole thing within three days, so—definitely better than my initial impression suggested!
Overall, it was fairly light and charming series—entertaining and engaging, but not necessarily something I’d go out of my way to rewatch. Its greatest weakness were the minor villain characters, who were all very 2D and had an apparent IQ of zero (the two maids… the carriage driver…), while it was at its strongest when dealing with the relationship between the two sisters, Marie and Anastasia, and how they were affected by their abusive upbringings. I kind of really loved how both of them felt like they’d gained their happiness at the expense of the other, and both had a moment where they tried to sacrifice that happiness because of it.
And while I think the actual execution of those reveals were clumsily handled, I did appreciate that the parents had plausible backstory motivations for how they became the kind of people who would treat their children that way, in a “this explains, but does not excuse” kind of way. Though I do feel like their grandmother was a bit too valorized by the end. She may have intended well, but her lack of communication caused too much of this mess. On that note, their mother really came across as having been in love with her mother-in-law, and… I’m not opposed to that. Like, I do know that wasn’t the narrative intention! But the way she talked about her sure didn’t feel platonic.
I frequently found myself reminded of Under the Oak Tree (web novel/webcomic) while watching—the two series have fairly similar premises, though they approach them in different ways and have different tones. Both feature red-haired protagonists who are raised in abusive environments, were unfavorably compared to a sister, and become convinced of their own ugliness and worthlessness, who then through unusual circumstances marry/become engaged to someone who takes them away to their own estate, where they then are given space to grow into their own. Again, they’re ultimately fairly different series, but I couldn’t help but keep noticing various parallels.
Finally, Mio was the best. ♥ And I also really enjoyed the animation! The visual comedy in particular was quite fun.
Though I’m also hoping to accomplish some hobby-related things as well! I’ve been playing Pokémon Brilliant Diamond recently, and it’s occurred to me that it wouldn’t be impossible to finish it before I get back to work next week, based on where I am in the game now. I’m not going to rush it or push myself, but it is something on my mind.
I would also like to get some writing done… ideally in the form of “actually post something”. I’ve recently fallen down a very unexpected rabbit hole—I read Long Live Evil not expecting much from it, thinking it’d probably end up being a three star read for me unless I get unlucky, and then I ended up adoring it? And having actual fannish feelings about it? So much so that I actually started a reread of the book the very next day after having finished it? I cannot remember the last time I’ve done something like that with a single book—possibly before I was an adult, even. (I do remember the last time I did that with a series of books, however: Legend of the Sun Knight, back in January 2019.)
I finished that reread last night and loved every second of it, so it’s safe to say that I’m very hooked. It’s not a perfect book, but what it is is perfectly iddy, as though tailored to appeal to me specifically, and the fact that I have to wait until May for the sequel is currently absolute agony to me, haha. I have lots of thoughts about it, and what it is about it that appeals to me so much, and also how wild it is that the author mentions MDZS and not Scum Villain in her list of inspirations when so many elements of this book feel like it’s in conversation with Scum Villain—but that’s not for this post.
To get back to my original point: I wrote a couple fills for it for the Three Sentence Ficathon last week, and since then I’ve been poking at some potential non-3SF fic for it as well, with the one that’s closest to being finished a Lia/Emer pre-canon ficlet. So: ideally I’d like to finish that one up, and make progress on one of the other fics as well before this break from work ends.
I’ve also been watching anime in the evenings! This was not originally in my plans for this break, but—I have a very long watchlist on Crunchyroll that I’ve made no progress on, and I don’t actually intend on renewing my subscription when the year ends, so I decided I should actually start making my way through that list.
I started off with Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex, which originally was a series that… mildly intrigued me, but I didn’t have high hopes for; I was actually a little bit surprised to see that I had put it on my watchlist, because my assumption was that I would drop it within the first episode. But then someone made a post talking about their impressions of the series, and something they mentioned made my interest in the series go up, so I went for it, and in the end watched the whole thing within three days, so—definitely better than my initial impression suggested!
Overall, it was fairly light and charming series—entertaining and engaging, but not necessarily something I’d go out of my way to rewatch. Its greatest weakness were the minor villain characters, who were all very 2D and had an apparent IQ of zero (the two maids… the carriage driver…), while it was at its strongest when dealing with the relationship between the two sisters, Marie and Anastasia, and how they were affected by their abusive upbringings. I kind of really loved how both of them felt like they’d gained their happiness at the expense of the other, and both had a moment where they tried to sacrifice that happiness because of it.
And while I think the actual execution of those reveals were clumsily handled, I did appreciate that the parents had plausible backstory motivations for how they became the kind of people who would treat their children that way, in a “this explains, but does not excuse” kind of way. Though I do feel like their grandmother was a bit too valorized by the end. She may have intended well, but her lack of communication caused too much of this mess. On that note, their mother really came across as having been in love with her mother-in-law, and… I’m not opposed to that. Like, I do know that wasn’t the narrative intention! But the way she talked about her sure didn’t feel platonic.
I frequently found myself reminded of Under the Oak Tree (web novel/webcomic) while watching—the two series have fairly similar premises, though they approach them in different ways and have different tones. Both feature red-haired protagonists who are raised in abusive environments, were unfavorably compared to a sister, and become convinced of their own ugliness and worthlessness, who then through unusual circumstances marry/become engaged to someone who takes them away to their own estate, where they then are given space to grow into their own. Again, they’re ultimately fairly different series, but I couldn’t help but keep noticing various parallels.
Finally, Mio was the best. ♥ And I also really enjoyed the animation! The visual comedy in particular was quite fun.
no subject
no subject