halfcactus

I'll Be the Matriarch in This Life also known as I Shall Master This Family (webtoon)

Webtoon based on the novel by Kim Roah, in which the FL goes back in time to rewrite her family's history, using her knowledge of future events to set herself up to become the next heir and exact vengeance on the Empress's family that ruined her. Along the way, she earns the respect and loyalty of various family members and employees/artisans/misc. NPCs, and wins the undying love of the Second Prince who has the same vengeance goals. The retcon begins when the FL is seven, and it takes around one hundred chapters for the timeskip to her eighteenth birthday, so for a lot of it she is this insufferably genius child that is doted on by her father (who is a talented fashion designer), her grandfather (the patriarch), her twin cousins, and her hypercompetent aunt.

I binged 160 chapters only to find out that this is still ongoing (oops). It's a very light and easy read with "yay! feminism" energy and a romance that's secondary to the main plot, and a series of politics and business arcs that, although repetitive, are the right amount of substantial without being too complicated for my brain. There's definitely not a lot of depth in the characters; people are very black-and-white, so any person who is in the FL's side is good (and will never betray her), and anyone against her is evil. The tension and emotional honesty peak when her father finally falls ill, as predicted, and the FL is an anxious mess. In contrast, the aunt's divorce storyline lacks the punch it deserves, falling into dramatic tropes instead of taking the opportunity to flesh out these other characters that are otherwise so important to the FL.

See You in My 19th Life also known as Please Take Care of Me in This Life As Well (webtoon)

Reincarnation romance webtoon based on the novel by Lee Hye, which also had a kdrama adaptation last year. The FL has the ability to remember her previous lives, leaving her jaded and unable to form attachments until she meets the ML in her latest incarnation. Things happen, the ML is super traumatized, and then we get to a timeskip to the FL drawing on all her experience from her previous lives to pursue the ML with shameless single-mindedness.

In typical me fashion, I would have preferred this to be a shorter canon. It started out really strong, with beautiful and heart-aching slice-of-life. Even after the timeskip the FL and ML have pretty good chemistry as adults. But the murder mystery/conspiracy and wild car chase plots dragged—the murder mystery especially.

That said, I really liked how the [maximum trauma event] that the ML survives is more than just emotional damage. He develops PTSD with episodes that are impossible to predict, and a hearing disability that not only affects his daily life in visible ways but also gives him anxiety of further hearing loss.

Our Times (2015 movie)

I found this an excellent nostalgia piece, set in the 90s and drawing storylines from 2000s dramas. Felt a lot like a Hanadan/Meteor Garden remake but with 2015 sensibilities. The cameos were very on-the-nose and by the time you get to the end it stops being its own thing and becomes 2000s RPF. XD It got me raring to rewatch a bunch of movies, which I wonder will withstand the test of time?

A Sign of Affection (manga)

Haven't finished this yet, but this is a fluffy romance canon centered around the FL's life of navigating university and working towards her life goals as a deaf person who communicates with sign language. I don't really care for the ML (he has this really bonkers idea about purity, especially at the beginning where he correlates it with the FL's deafness), but as far as MLs go he's probably one of the less bland ones. There's not much momentum but tons of fluff, and also an anime adaptation that came out just this year.

According to the mangakas, they did a lot of research and consult with someone from the deaf community to shape the FL's experiences and also draw the hand movements. I'm really interested in the FL's journey—she's presently still in the process of breaking out of her bubble and I'd love to see her meet people from different regions.

Ghost Trick
I'm around halfway through! It's a really good game to pick up when I'm anxious and need a little reset—I can just jump right in without trying to remember the plot (which is now thickening) or what I'm supposed to be doing. Except now I'm kinda stuck lol.


priest, "橋頭樓上"
24/32 chapters done. \o/ At this point I think I could just keep reading instead of stopping at 2 chapters / week... but alas, life. I've been remiss in taking vocab notes too, and as a result, my journal/planner is once again empty and making me sad.


接骨木花, "陰間沒有珍奶嗎？" (Google Books link)

I was reading what I thought was a sample on Google Books, but idk, maybe it's the whole thing after all? This is a YA novel(??) about two boys separated by death and bonded by bubble tea (which is very Taiwanese of it ahaha) and mutual pining, so I've been calling it the "boba boyfriends book" in my head. It's actually really easy to read!!! Google Books isn't letting me read with a pop-up dictionary, but I've been managing surprisingly fine with the context, the radicals, and the very plain writing style. For the first time I feel almost literate!!! A feeling that will be replaced by despair when I go back to reading Bridge Tower. XD

This is also my first time reading any kind of TW lit, so it was a lot of fun for me, reading a "different" kind of writing. I learned that 機車 is scooter and that the traditional from of 庙 is 廟. Idk if I'll continue but it seems quite short?

But first, my vocabulary list/journal doodles~




小蘑菇 Little Mushroom is a post-apocalyptic novel about a future where gene contamination has caused inter-species mutation all over the world. And the more that humans try to keep their biological humanity intact and survive as a species, the less human they become.

I didn't expect this book to be as bleak as it was but in retrospect it's pretty thematic. It pursues the question of "how far are humans willing to go?" wholly and unflinchingly, and it allows you to inhabit an interesting emotional space as the events unfold before the eyes of a mushroom who has absorbed human genes but doesn't experience emotions or attachment the way that humans (and by extension, the novel readers) do. There is some comedy and humor in between all the horror, so it's not horrifying the whole way but it was still terrible, lol.

The visual aspects of the story are beautifully, vividly rendered, but the worldbuilding is pretty shaky so it was hard for me to predict which details would be plot-relevant or not because there were some aspects that seemed like they could be a cause for concern. I did get a better handle on the storytelling style and its themes in the second half (Roses), which had a longer series of intertwined mysteries and plot points that I was very invested in. I liked having the information spread out and revealed ~organically~, but I'm not sure I enjoyed having all the information slowly trickling in only for later chapters to change the rules.(But it's entirely possible that my perspective of time is skewed from only reading 3 chapters at a time...) The high points for me definitely were the action-horror chapters that An Zhe was a part of! They were horrifying, but wonderfully executed.

Vol2 ends at a really good place where it's not a sudden cliffhanger but still leaves you with all the unanswered questions that An Zhe wasn't invested in finding out.

The English translation does really well with scenery and visual details, because it really felt like I was being drawn to the picture that was in the translator's head, and I genuinely enjoyed the first few chapters. But the longer I was reading the more it felt like an initial pass that was meant to be revisited, with lots of the choices in the later portions feeling rough and cursory. It is readable but not the smoothest experience—I felt this most in the dialogue parts, because they were the parts that I found easiest to read in Chinese, but reading them in English didn't feel as easy?

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror, gore, giant bugs and worms (horrifying), attempted rape, racism/weird depiction of racism at the beginning (not in the English translation)