ruiyi dot thoughts

words, mostly

portrait of the author

ruiyi, she/they, 35. menacing anime girl. unfurling like a banner or a pair of wings

visitors: !


01:53 AM | 2024-05-25

maybe i should try taking an antihistamine and seeing if it helps with whatever is going on with my skin

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17:59 PM | 2024-05-21

I say this with love but it's so funny to see the friend i absolutely would have expected to go insane for a twink from hazbin hotel to, in fact, go insane for a twink from hazbin hotel

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20:55 PM | 2024-05-20

i have stress exczema AGAIN

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16:16 PM | 2024-05-20

the fucked up thing about unemployment is that it makes you have LESS time for stuff you want to do a lot of the time because all your time is taken up with worrying about employment. yeah sorry i can't make it i have to stare balefully at linkedin for several hours

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10:00 AM | 2024-05-20

the power to make a fresh loaf of bread every day is really good. enjoying this immensely. i want to do this for the rest of my life

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22:25 PM | 2024-05-13

goddamn i do not want to write this cover letter. i dont want to write any cover letters

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18:09 PM | 2024-05-13

remembered i have a breadmaker. have been baking a fresh loaf of bread like every day now

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02:17 AM | 2024-05-11

ha ha back pain bad :')))

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10:05 AM | 2024-05-08

chewing on my hands because i should NOT preorder the fancy vinyl of the upcoming tmg album. but. but,,,

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08:48 AM | 2024-05-07

fucked up that if you go to sleep at a normal time and then wake up at a relatively normal time you feel rested and ready to face the day

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22:25 PM | 2024-05-05

#currentlywatching watched Stopmotion! viscerally uncomfortable! great movieNext in topic: #1714786804

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20:23 PM | 2024-05-04

reply to thought #1714871315:

see previous post

#bookreview bigolas dickolas was right. i DID need to read this is how you lose the time war

no but for real the poetry of this book—sometimes it was hard to imagine what was being described, the way these agents of the future could be and the bodies they could inhabit—but I think that made it all the more beautiful. love as a future beyond imagining, torn from the bloodied jaws of defeat.

#bookreview gdit i forgot to link the review FINE This is How You Lose the Time War

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20:08 PM | 2024-05-04

#bookreview bigolas dickolas was right. i DID need to read this is how you lose the time war

no but for real the poetry of this book—sometimes it was hard to imagine what was being described, the way these agents of the future could be and the bodies they could inhabit—but I think that made it all the more beautiful. love as a future beyond imagining, torn from the bloodied jaws of defeat.

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03:10 AM | 2024-05-04

oh emacs is really good actually. macvim might have a challenger here

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01:23 AM | 2024-05-04

i stg my luck in mahjong is so bad this week. i'm in hell. deliver me from these catgirls

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20:40 PM | 2024-05-03

#currentlywatching catching some of the besties up on the new pretty cure. only cats now

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18:31 PM | 2024-05-03

reply to thought #1714692137:

see previous post

a fun fact is that you can make this thing have an RSS feed by adding in a hidden section in htmlblog format right after the h1

testing whether this works

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15:15 PM | 2024-05-03

#bookreview Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up With a Mythical Sorceress! Vol. 1: Like a lot of light novels, this is one where I think I'd enjoy it more as an anime—I can definitely imagine the scenes put to movement and the pacing working pretty well that way. I just struggled a lot with this one because there's pretty much no meaningful tension—it's kind of an "all we do is win" montage, but I think an audiovisual medium's methods of using framing / timing / etc. could probably help underscore some parts a lot better.

(There's also some things that I think are just translation choices I might have done differently—"hee hee" just doesn't read so well in English prose as it would in a comic. I presume that's an "ufufu")

That said, it definitely has its niche; like the author says in the afterword, webnovels are pretty saturated with male power fantasies, so why not a female power fantasy? (I could say that a lot of the antagonists were too horrible to be believable, but I also know the author wrote this out of frustration with sexism in Japan and patterned a lot of stuff off of that, so. I guess I can believe it.) I'm also interested in some of the potential conflict it hints at for the sequel that might prove a little more challenging, and also I'm hoping for more of Katherine Foxxi, who turned out to be one of the more interesting characters, so, hey, even if I think there's room for improvement: I'm still reading the sequel.

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13:34 PM | 2024-05-03

#bookreview Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai: I'm sometimes hard on light novels because while I enjoy a lot of things about them, I tend to find the writing style a little too mired in over-explanation and over-narration; I think Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai manages to hit a good balance and the character voices feel unique and developed such that the tendency to use few dialogue tags isn't an issue.

Also the arc of the story gave me an emotion. I feel like most people would get their heartstrings pulled on at least a little bit by a story about how invisible you can feel when you're growing up and/or struggling in your career. Gets the "hets I care about" stamp of approval.

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03:26 AM | 2024-05-03

#bookreview I'm in Love with the Villainess, Vol. 1: I feel like this one started to pick up once things start going off the rails for Rae—when her attempts to keep tight control of the narrative she's familiar with start to slip out of her hands. There's also some nice subtle tension with Rae just being fully convinced that the best she can do is to be there to support the woman she loves, rather than hoping to be loved in return—I kind of wish the narrative dwelled on that a little more, because it's an interesting thread.

The main weakness, I think, is that the narrative tends to over-explain itself and tends to stifle emotional moments that way. By the end of the book it's definitely getting better, and I know this was originally published as a serial webnovel, so I expect the following books to improve.

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00:56 AM | 2024-05-03

books i had in progress to finish:

reminded looking at my pile that I guess I never read the last book of the Lunar Chronicles. honestly have no idea how i managed to have the energy to get through all of them given that i did not like them at all

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18:22 PM | 2024-05-02

a fun fact is that you can make this thing have an RSS feed by adding in a hidden section in htmlblog format right after the h1

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00:15 AM | 2024-05-02

trying to read more books but DETERMINED to get through The Force of Non-Violence by Judith Butler before starting anything else. the problem is that Judith Butler is incredible dense as a read and it's been eight thousand years (approx) since i've read anything this heavily academic

on the other hand apparently i'm learning i also ought to give some freud a read because she brings up some really interesting works of his (Civilization and its Discontents and Thoughts for the Times on War and Death)

absolutely verboten from buying any more books though until i whittle down my tbr pile

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