First year of college

I finished my freshman year of college 2 weeks ago, ending it the way I started it. Getting sick and having a 101 F fever. That marked the 5th time I've gotten sick in around 8 months of college. Last week, my grades came out. I'm happy to say my effort paid off and my grades are good right now. 

In this blog from 4 months ago, I wrote about not fitting in and not having energy for anything. Much of that sentiment stayed the same. I remember hearing "try to stay in your dorm as little as you can" from some silly instagram post before my first semester, so for my first semester I forced myself to be in the library and events I really just didn't want to go to or do. On my second semester, I stayed in my dorm a lot more, which I think was better for me. Because I got to relax and be more comfortable. I really only spent energy on stuff I cared about or wanted to do, like a robotics club and also the smash club that hosts tournaments (though that was way later down the line). 

I think I gave up on trying so hard and was ok being in solitude. I deleted all my socials a quarter way into the semester. I was tired of a lot of things and one of those was people posting their fake lives with their fake friends and fake groups with fake personalities. My resentment was growing, so I just deleted it to get away from it. In the months following, I was definitely way more calm. It didn't solve all my problems but it was a good change. 

I think I was pretty "locked in" in certain ways. I was pretty consistent with piano practice, and someone I know helped me with a gym routine. I began going to the gym 3 times a week to take care of my physical health. Every one yells at me to gain weight (including my gymrat friends), gain muscle, but honestly, I don't give a crap about that. It actually kind of annoys me. I'm at a healthy weight, even if it's at the lower side. It just annoys me everyone has a picture of what a man should look like, especially with the 2020s explosions in gym content. Going to the gym is great, but not every guy wants to pursue bodybuilding. Focusing on being healthy, getting stronger, and being more athletic is my goal. And mogging xd

Though something I have to complain about is when I need to talk to people at the gym. I always went to the gym alone, and when it was packed I HATED it because I would need to talk to people and ask to "work in" with them, or share equipment. I really did not want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to blast music at max volume and do what I want and leave. Our college gym is pretty small too so this happened often. 

I was being more of a delinquent, skipping a LOT of class (I'm a smart skipper though, I only skip when I know it won't affect me), and someone I met was honestly a stoner and got me to try stuff. It's ok because he respected my boundaries and never pushed me to try anything. I tried smoking weed for the first couple times. I tried it, but I couldn't get high. It was only until I tried edibles I got it, but I didn't have a good trip at all because I was sick during it. I also tried nicotine, hated it, and will probably never do it again. I still like drinking alc over anything else, but I reserve drinking for special occasions. Some of the people I met, goodness they were gone. Hitting the vape like every 20 seconds, telling me they get withdrawal symptoms. 

With the exception of these stoner friends who I didn't hang out with all that much, I really hated social interaction at all. Even when someone I loosely knew said Hi and had some small talk, I wanted to leave within 10 seconds. I couldn't help but hate how fake it all was, and I struggled to even remember peoples names. My social anxiety got to an all time high because sometimes I would see someone I talked to in class walking around and I had no idea if I should say hi or not so I either pretended to not see them or just looked down so I literally did not see them. 

I hate hate hate being perceived. Especially when I'm walking around trying to get to class and someone, or a group of someones, pauses to look me up and down and just think unwarranted thoughts about me. I'm not that important, and psychology says my mind is just extending that millisecond glance into multiple seconds. I don't care though. Stop looking at me. Stop thinking about me. I do not want your thoughts about me. Why do you care? Am I strange enough to look at? Keep talking with your friends.

A new pastime for me now is to watch Vtubers. Streamers always felt boring to me, I don't understand people who watch Kai Cenat or HasanAbi for hours on end. But a few too many youtube compilations and now I put on a fuwamoco stream in the background while I do something. I was always dissuaded from Vtubers because there's this guy I knew from middle school who was super cringe about them. Posted like NSFW fanart on his instagram close friends story. This is the part where I'd say they aren't like that. But reading through youtube comment sections, lurking in some reddit posts, yeah these guys are fucking weirdos lmao. Unfortunately, I'm a rare fan who knows they all play a character, and I'm not a retard who believes that the streamer loves me. There's actually a term for that kind of vtuber fan I learned, it's called "unicorn." 

For me, watching hololive is very comforting. It melts away a lot of my stress even if it's just for a little bit. I like watching it like it's a reality TV show, minus the drama and cancer. Some people care so much about their personal lives. I couldn't care less, just seeing a bunch of people play video games and do stupid stuff together is enough. It makes me happy. I'm glad I stopped caring about being a loser. 

Once again, in previously mentioned blog from 4 months ago I said I didn't hate my roommates. And that's the truth, but it also does take another 4 months for you to get prettyy fed up with some of the things your roommates do. For one, I'm in a triple room, and my room is pretty cramped. We have a small-ish room, then the bathroom with piss poor ventilation, so a lot of times they'd take a shower (or take a shit) and the steam from the shower would make the room super stuffy. So I would always be the one to open the window,  then close it, and monitor all that stuff. We only got our bathroom cleaned once a week which is pretty crazy in my opinion. If it were any other teenage boys, that shit would be a steamy hot pile of shit. 

And it's not just the shower too. One guy was super addicted to ramen noodles to the point he was making it 4 times a week, and he would use his rice cooker for it because he had no other way to boil water. And then the room would now be steamy and now have the smell of shin ramen, so again, I was the one who was opening the window, spraying the room with Febreeze. Additionally, while one of my roommates was pretty aware about smells, the other, just wasn't. I brought to the room a lot of those plug in Febreeze so the room would never stink, but this guy bro. He'd put his sweaty clothes into a bag that he put into his closet for it to ferment. We had to tell him so many times that he should NOT do that. (Also he'd come back from a day and without washing himself just hopped into bed? I mean it's not my bed, so whatever, but I don't think I saw him wash his sheets). The main saving grace is that all of us were chinks and chinks don't have the worst BO, though it can absolutely get really bad. 

That wraps it up for this blog entry at least. 
Bye 

I've been killing slimes for 300 years...

 

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga# 

Synopsis 

You know, of the all the isekai anime/manga I've had the displeasure of watching, two of my favorites have slime in the title.

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level! starts pretty typical. An overworked office lady in Japan, Azusa Aizawa, DIES and is reincarnated as an immortal witch. Hmmm... where have we heard this plot before? But all she wants to do is relax and live a cozy peaceful life without working. She has no problems doing this, facing no hardships in her life. Azusa kills 20 slimes everyday for 300 years until she discovers shes the max level, super overpowered, and one shots dragons. All the sudden, people start showing up to her doorstep after hearing how powerful she is. One is a dragon, another an elf, and then two children that claim they are her daughters who were born as slime spirits from all the slimes Azusa killed over the years. Her family keeps on growing.

Despite being a generic isekai, it's instantly is on my good side for being a yuri-bait and having the main character be a girl. It's the purest form of yuri-bait. The best blueprint for yuri bait. What do I mean by yuri bait? Well Azusa keeps growing her family, taking new girls under her wing like a mother. It's heavily implied that Laika, one of the first characters that shows up and joins Azusa's family is very in love with her. We don't get to see any developments in any romantic relationships very often, the author kind of just implies to us that "These girls live together and are practically married and everyone else in the house they live in are their children"

Likes and Dislikes

As I've already said, I love the comfyness of this. Everyone likes comfy, cozy stuff because of how unproblematic it is. It's a simple blueprint. Azusa goes on adventures after sticking to herself for 300 years. She's super overpowered, so typical isekai challenges like strong monsters and boss battles are not a problem. There's very little conflict in this world, the demons and humans are best friends to the point some of the strongest demons are best friends with Azusa and also part of her yuri family. The story focuses way more on the characters and their quirks and world-building. If I have to hand something to every isekai author out there, its that despite literally using the same blueprint of (You die in japan and get born in medieval magic RPG world) it's cool to see the kinds of twists they put on the worlds they create. The characters are somehow really memorable, because they all have their own stories and reasons for staying with Azusa. The fact that the main character is a women literally makes this series 10x better than if the main character was a guy. If the main character was a guy, it would be a standard harem and be really, really, really fucking boring. But since we get Azusa instead, we get to see how she treats everyone in her adoptive family well, whether it be making snacks for her daughters or solving her (wife) Laika's red dragon and blue dragon conflict. 

Like how it's hard to be problematic with cozy anime, it's also really hard to.. do anything. You can't create conflict without ruining the vibe. Most conflicts and plot points in the story only exist for new characters to be created, and then basically be taken under Azusa's adoptive wing. And only so many characters can be created without it getting boring. As of following the manga for 4 years, and watching both seasons of the anime. I haven't gotten bored, but I'm not exactly remembering every character by heart either. Usually, I only remember characters when they show back up in a chapter and I think to myself, "ohhh, I slightly remember that girl's existence!" Yet to most of the target audience, none of this is THAT much of a problem. But you want to know what's a problem?

Isekai mangaka have an obsession with food. It's honestly annoying. So many times, these mangaka spend entire chapters just letting their characters chase ingredients and cook food that subtlety resembles Japanese dishes, just so they can feed the isekai world people the food and then they have a food wars "ouhhh, ahhh, I've never tasted something this good before!" moment. If you have zero idea what I'm talking about, I'll lay out how this always plays out. 

    Main character: "This world's food is good, but I really want to eat rice!!!"

    Conveniently shaped rice paddy suddenly appears

    Main character: "Great, but now I want curry!"

    Conveniently created character that just so happens to be from a nation that closely resembles Japan provides MC with curry

    Main character: "Perfect, now I need katsu, but this world has no pigs!"

    Convenient pig replacement exists

    Main character: "Great! Who wants to try this katsu curry that doesn't exist in this world"

    Everyone: "ohmygodthistastesogoodyouresotalentedatcooking"

 I don't even hate these food scenes that much, but they just appear so often it's kind of annoying. The author has the opportunity to showcase some food that could only exist in a magical world like rainbow meat or something like that, but they always default to Japanese food that everyone around them glazes to no avail. 

Final rating: 8/10. It's hard to give a bad rating to something so cute.  

Manga review: Gal Oshi JK wa Gal ni Naritai

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga#

Gal oshi JK is a very brief 1 volume yuri that I started following last year. It’s a very lighthearted manga that is mainly about a Gal/gyaru who is a “gal otaku.” Meaning she really loves gals and gyarus, to the point she’s an otaku ABOUT gals. (Mangas really like to stretch the definition of gyaru, because I personally would barely classify Yuuhi as a gal, but that’s for another time) Mimiru (main character) goes through a high school debut, studying up on fashion and makeup to look like a gyaru in high school. In high school, she makes friends with other gyarus, joining a friend group of gyarus. She meets Yuuhi, who’s a tall “cool” type who doesn’t show much emotion, but she’s always thinking “Mimiru’s so cute” in her head. They basically love each other.

The art is beautiful, and I’m a sucker for any kind of school slice of life yuri. But the pacing is very slow, and the ending is incredibly boring. Spoilers here, but we didn’t get a kiss, or anything official as a matter of fact. The way it was paced, I’d assume the author wanted to write another 3 volumes, but it randomly ends at 1. The main assumption for why it ended so quickly is that the author probably got bored. It was a web comic, so it likely didn’t get axed in the traditional way, but just didn’t get enough attention that the author wanted. A mangadex commenter put it best: 

Final rating: 6/10

Still cute, lighthearted, amazing art, if it didn’t have those it would be a 4/10. The main issues in my opinion is the lack of gyaru/gal knowledge and of course the ending.