before bed update

mawaru penguindrum is really good anime. now that ive finished it im really excited to read a lot of essays and articles analyzing it. i feel like its helped me gain an even stronger understanding of utena too (thank goodness there is so much writing out there analysing and explaining utena. it helped me so much as a novice to media analysis)

a lot of times i feel like i can understand the themes and meanings and messages of a work but im completely unable to put it into words. its really frustrating! reading other peoples explanations and breakdowns helps me figure out what those words are supposed to be. its an enlightening and humbling experience. i think utena and penguindrum are able to be simplified really well by a lot of people so that i can understand it, because a lot of the things in utena and penguindrum arent supposed to be hard to understand. theyre supposed to be straightforward and understood without hitting you over the head with it a billion times and i like that quite a lot and i like what they want to say

for the past few days ive also been a little fixated on japanese studying again and that has been really rewarding but im trying not to sabotage myself by getting too excited and burnt out, so im just taking it a little at a time. it helps a lot that ive been on and off studying it for several years along with mandarin so i do have a lot of basic understanding

other than that i have been reading ancillary justice by ann leckie and ohhhhhhhhhhh its sooooooo good im maybe three quarters of the way through and im so so excited to think really hard about how to talk about it in the way i want. and also to start the next book in the series and see more of the story..