December media log

[halfcactus]

With thanks to past!me for taking the time to jot notes on my journal. Otherwise I would have no way of differentiating my 4894664 otome isekai webtoons.

Books

Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (tr. Anita Barrows, Joanna Macy)
Rita Dove, "Playlist for the Apocalypse"

Movies

Wicked (2024)
Look Back (2024)

Comics

Komomo Confiserie

Short shoujo manga about a pampered heiress who is forced to find a job and learn to live on her own while her family is sorting out a financial crisis. The MC is a vibrant and confident protagonist who embraces the chance to grow as a person, handles conflicts (and bullying) gracefully, and breaks out into professional renditions of Lacrimosa when anyone in her life is in need of comfort. The ML is sweet but sort of just there to help her attain her independence. The best parts are in the middle which highlight my favorite shoujo friendship dynamic: the spunky FL and her loud, tsundere best friend.

An Incompetent Woman Wants to be a Villainess (ongoing)

Proxy bride story where the FL is very Pure and Cute and Doing Her Best to act like her wicked half-sister whose place she's taking. No one is fooled, but she tries so hard they just go along with it and praise her villainy. Super cute and fluffy.

Like Wind on a Dry Branch (ongoing)
Saving My Sweetheart (a.k.a. A Way to Protect the Lovable You)
The Tyrant's Only Perfumer
廚廚動人 U Kill, I Cook (a.k.a. Kitchen Goddess and Assassin)

Villainess in Love

A good hurt/comfort fantasy canon where the FL, Yunifer, is mature and comfortable with her sexuality, and the ML's trauma is taken seriously. The first chapter timeskips the whole part where Yunifer's just transmigrated and is trying to avoid the main characters, instead landing us straight into a drunken and ill-advised one-night stand with the ML. The manhwa left a lot of loose ends which I hope are tied well in the original novel, but this was otherwise a solid romance fantasy with a less boilerplate setting and some worldbuilding of its own. The ship dynamic is cool and mature older FL x codependent yandere puppy ML, which does not feel as romantic on Yunifer's end since she's also trying to help him be more well-adjusted, but it's appropriately sweet. And there's a beautiful gigantic bird character who always steals the show whenever she's onscreen.

The Villainess is Retiring (ongoing; not sure I'll continue when S3 comes out)

Transmigration with strings attached, with the MC as a reluctant/inadvertent hero. The MC just wants to retire in the mountains but when she summons a demon to light up some unburnable wood, she gets cast into the role of magical problem-solving and leadership. S1 was pretty great (somewhat comparable to Lout of the Count's Family, from what little I've read of it), but in S2 the character writing takes a step back and the power imbalance between the MC and her devoted demon servant felt starkly worse. PS. The outfits for this webtoon are so nonsensical.

Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

Isekai with a price. This is an enjoyable self-contained romance-fantasy with fake dating and mystery elements, though some of the episodes in the latter half fall into the "plot in service of romantic moments" category, something I wouldn't have minded if they let the hurt/comfort potential marinate a little.

The MC has a strong sense of personality, her own set of pecularities, and is unafraid of getting her hands dirty. The transmigration plot is a puzzle that's meant to be solved and resolved, with the MC having to come clean about who she is and where she came from, which is probably what made the romance more believable for me. Probably not that memorable in the long run, but it was an 8/10 binge with some interesting twists for me.

TV

Link Click cdrama

Mostly enjoyable for the songs and the opera troupe case and the scene in the end which shows the gang with their donghua looks! Bold of them to save that for after the Worst Story Arc I've Ever Seen in a Cdrama (a.k.a the MRA case). The last case was kind of okay but, like most of the cases, overly long. I ended up enjoying the siscon because at least it felt so bizarre it gave the story some flavor and it was amusing to see the actor leaning into it. XD The boys' dynamic was actually pretty good (I loved the conflict), but Qiao Ling was, sad to say, paper-thin and awful.

Comments

[geraineon]

I love how you journal about all the things you read! Very lovely~

Hm, I might check out An Incompetent Woman Wants to be a Villainess (seems like the kind of thing my lazy reading brain right now can just eat, like delicious porridge XD)

[halfcactus]

It’s kind of dumb but it’s my kind of dumb 😂

[superborb]

So many villainesses hahah

[halfcactus]

It's both a subgenre and a word that has lost its meaning to marketing haha