idk what is wrong with me but frankenstein wasnt that fun of an experience. maybe if i reread it next year and get magically used that specific style of prose. maybe then?? but it just felt more bearable than reading dracula bcs i dont think modern plot really prepared me for dracula. all i felt in drac was immense impatience that the pacing never seems to have picked up anywhere.. even when lives were at risk. it was unsatisfactory as hell.

or maybe its just time to accept that ive grown old and some stuff will not be revolutionary to me. also i feel like the frankenstein movie wasnt. well it did teach me a few things but also felt different from the text which just made me feel okay? id delve deeper but it just didnt provoke anything in me. i get the themes (when its pointed out to me but it inspires awe only then :(( ) jane eyre, however, left me shooketh. (and i have no particular preference for romances, im actually not a huge fan of those) i thought classics wouldnt have an effect on me but jare eyre i could relate on such a personal level even tho the prose was just as acrid, it was perfect somehow. its not that it didnt have boring parts its just frankenstein couldnt make me care any more for victor but jane? oh i was fully invested. the moral struggle.. retaining your integrity bit spoke to me. frankenstein just felt a lot like grand proclamations and just a lot of sentimentality. the characters were barely there. i couldnt love these people so i didnt feel anything for any of them

characterisation is so important to me because if you leave it to me to fill the blanks and attach traits like flesh and blood to your blorbo, you best believe ill let them live as blank spaces in my head  idk why my reading experience is like that. some characters are real to me and some are decidedly not but it really impacts how i interact with the text

#maereads #maeschatter

at home thanks to vacation and i had tremendous amount of time in my hand. like absolutely filthy amount of time to waste that i do not entirely deserve (or that i just didn't have much of a long vacation even since i started attending a public uni so) ive been bored enough to watch frankenstein (getting to a movie is a considerable hurdle for me, was good, idk why i got sm negative reviews from irl which kinda tapered down my expectations), finished the last half of 'i may be a guild receptionist' yesterday, and covered what was left of 'from bureaucrat to villainess' today (both were good enough to have me considering if i should hunt down their conclusion somehow but then i remembered i have teamoon empire ln volumes rotting somewhere and im persuing a trashier read with a lot of interest, cough cough fake saint of the year which i will probably get back to once current ongoing distractions go away or i get an urge or pull to do so anyway  ) also finished the last two hundred pages of scum villain (needed more mobei jun / shang qinghua content   ) doing everything but studying these days  

#maeschatter

ive been following yu menglongs case and been getting some uncanny references to the memory police (the erasure that goes unquestioned in the book vs how chinas gov wants it to go unquestioned but is instead being met with so much backlash is just very startling) idk i suppose theres better stuff to be said about this but im not equipped with adequate deciphering skills

ps: the case features some really gruesome stuff btw so probably look up a list of trigger warnings if you go into that

#thememorypolice #maeschatter

love that ive come to a stage where im like lovely book with prose spun of gold but unfortunately there were too many elements i didnt like or found to be in the realm of the nonsensical or the elements that were supposed to distract me from the romance werent distracting enough and i had time to think and ravel abt how im so not sold on the chemistry or dynamics or how its just not believable enough (tbh i do compare and contrast with my experience in fanfics and i just dont find that light, like 'i want to believe in this' quality in published works bcs im essentially a skeptic, i doubt and i doubt so i seek constant evidence to suspend my disbelief, yea i do think im trying the wrong genre, i need to seek better stuff)

#maeschatter

a villains end is not a choice looks so good ugh please let it not be an absolute flop bcs it promised too much, like we have a non genre staple male lead?? a clerk-slash-assassin (idk man, a guy can have many jobs it seems) who got coaxed out of killing the fmc (ok guys yk it really is like THAT in here) and now hes lowkey evelia's henchman (otome isekai naming conventions never stop being funny)

it looks bad but im really simpering over this guy (reaf) being openly nice to evelia,, no pretences or anything going on (or perhaps i should say i dont really believe otome men being nice in general bcs theyre just so void like to read of, basically theyre also inserts, which yea typical of a wish fulfillment genre but doesnt mean that i have to like it)

her fiance situation is really horseshit tho. cant really like the fact that literal plot armour is stopping a sensible woman who wields a lot of power in this fantasy world thanks to, you wont believe this, thanks to common sense and the ability to piece things together, is being held back from breaking things off with a shitty guy. idk sometimes i really ask myself what is the point of this genre when at the end of the day our antagonist is really some shitty guy who is blinded to reality,, oh i got sold on the romance huh- thats why im still reading it. im so sick of og!fls being portrayed the way they are, i liked it best in the villainess will not seduce the male lead or whachamacallit, the plot compelling the fl to act in a way and then it turns out she (or he should i say 👀 ) held no interest whatsoever in the male leads

otherwise weak pathetic fl troupe is done to death. so i do hope for its own sake that this one comes up with something new, i dont know how many devil raises a lady level of disappointment i can take before i forgo this genre entirely

#otomechatter #maeschatter

braced my heart for it and watched the last handful of episodes of cheng he titong expecting that cliffhanger and while its not much. the tables being turned thing and the further exposition and lore drop (with a healthy bit of yu wanyin wondering how the frick does xiahou dan know all that classified political stuff,, im waiting for her to find out this guys been here in the "paper world" ever since he was a middle schooler and has hoped against hope and has had his hopes dashed time and again until quiet resignation sunk into him, which is nice in a "they are integral to the lives of each other" kind of way; also that she cant possibly imagine what her sheer existence means to him, bcs only these two can communicate in a language that exists outside of the paper world) tis good i look forward to the webnovel now

#maeschatter #donghua #chenghetitong #otomechatter

went thru yt music bcs i cant uninstall the gosh darn thing off my device  and um wow is my literal taste in music whatever the heck i bumped into while watching genshin fan content *quizzically looks at self*  i know i am musically very uninclined or is this how ppl found music anyway like everything ive liked either came from a friend (really rare case bcs i rarely get around to hearing them) or by some miracle i heard it enough times to like it but fan content is the fastest way ive liked anything but then again genshin is like the first time i bothered with the fandom side of things,, (stuff used to be and still is very high effort to me for no plausible reason) i was occupied with original works before and i shifted back to it again

anyway this is so soothing  
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HGK8VsTKJgU

#songcrush #maeschatter #genshinimpact

me reading a positive review, "I love that it ended on a cliff hanger and I can look forward to more" haah?!!  or more accurately  this is absolutely ridiculous!? thank god i went and checked novel updates first and learnt that the webnovel was finished so i can probably read it

haha webnovels are such herculean tasks tho,, cheng he titong fortunately only has 27 chapters (two volumes),, how did the author manage to fit so much plot into all that  

one funny part is the novel is titled "this is ridiculous" (which was my exact reaction as i read the anime review iwi) the donghua, however, is called "how dare you"

honestly cant tell which is a more fitting title

#maeschatter #donghua

went back to cheng he titong / how dare you (after decades!! im so glad im still into it) and oh my gosh its so much more bearable, interpretable and interesting now that the subs arent shit,, i enjoyed it so damn much i took my media journal and filled up two pages just gushing abt stuff,, something abt this show is just so fulfilling.. and their meta shenanigans are fun too  

just a fun silly show you can relax to 

#maeschatter #otomechatter #donghua