tullycat

December wrap up!


This marks one year of me doing monthly recaps, yay! I honestly didn't know if I would manage to be consistent throughout the year.

Books

• Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
  • This was actually a November read but I couldn't add it until my Yuletide fic was posted so pop didn't realize what I was writing for her.
• Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte
  
  • A series of stories with interconnected characters, centering on mostly romantic rejection. The first two stories were kind of like - imagine the worst person you know and then make them even worse. I thought the specificity of those characters was really engaging. And then the characters started getting more and more off the rails. I am still unsure if I liked the ending, because it kind of undercuts any criticism you might be about to make. It's certainly buzzy right now so I won't dissuade anyone from reading (just beware one of the stories gets very NSFW).
• The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak
  • Told from dual timelines, one in London in.....I forgot the date but 1990 at the earliest, and one in 1960s Cyprus. The London timeline follows Ada as she struggles to adjust to the death of her mother and the Cyprus timeline follows Defne and Kostas (Ada's parents) as they fall in love as teenagers and watch war break out on the island. This book is very tree huggy - it gives the fig tree a POV (explained at the end). This was a choice for my book club in August that I never read but held onto the library book for months, so I was happy to finally return it. Otherwise, I'm pretty neutral on the book.
• Heaven's Official Blessing Vol 2 (TGCF), Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
  • Hua Cheng is Xie Lian's pet psychopath on a leash and I am here for it. The book ends in a flashback which has stalled me from starting book 3 - I just want to see them interacting again!
• Cold Enough for Snow, Jessica Au
  
  • A woman and her mother go to Japan for a trip. It's quite short, just under 100 pages, and written quite simply, though as soon as I ended I was flipping back to the beginning to reread the beginning. The writing style reminded me of The Goldfinch a bit in how liminal it feels - she describes going on a bullet train but at no point says it's a bullet train. Also with her teenage self being so obsessed with aesthetics, I wanted to hand The Secret History to her and say read this.

I hit 50 books for the year - just barely!

Music

• Artists
  
  • Ateez (163)
  • Taemin (92)
  • Stray Kids (89)
  • The Boyz (75)
  • Loossemble (48)
• Tracks
  
  • Work, Ateez (29)
  • U (Feat Tablo), Stray Kids (19)
  • TTYL, Loossemble (15)
  • High Five, WAYV (12)
  • Bite Back, The Boyz (10)
  • Deep Dive, Ateez; Man on Fire, Ateez; cotton candy, Loossemble; Blue Moon, N.Flying; Railway, Stray Kids; Criminal, Taemin; Re-Wind, The Boyz; Twist, Wayv (all tied at 9)
• Albums
  • hop, Stray Kids (74)
  • Trigger, The Boyz (49)
  • TTYL, Loossemble (46)
  • Golden Hour : Part 1, Ateez (41)
  • Peaches - The 2nd Mini Album, Kai (39)

This is probably the most diverse my monthly listening has looked so far. Low listening month for me.

Concerts

• Wonho
  
  • The tickets went on sale before they said they would, so by the time I checked, GA was sold out. Which meant we ended up getting high touch with Wonho haha. This was billed as a fanmeeting, so the run time was about 75 minutes. This was my first time seeing Wonho ever, so I was not going to miss it even if it wasn't a full concert. He was very charming and muscular. I enjoyed his dance cove medley because I love seeing him do girl group songs - the first time, at least. He did practically the same medley at the end of the concert which was kind of disappointing because when you have such a short show, you'd hope for at least all new material. But otherwise this was fun. Pros of the venue: somehow everyone kept their phones at eye level so even though I was ~10-15 rows from the stage, I still had a perfect view. Cons: the staff were disorganized running the benefits at the end and kept high touch til the end, after the tier above us had a group photo. It made no sense to me because high touch goes by so fast, all you have to do is just make us walk past and we're done and then you have more room to set up for the photo. Plus they were making people form groups of 8 instead of just lining them up and counting off. So it took us probably as long to get through the benefits as the concert itself was. For my high touch, I told Wonho 'see you Monday!' and he gave me such a blank look and apparently looked back at me after I left. I'm sorry Wonho!! I should've said something less confusing.
• Jingle Ball (Wonho and NCT Dream + others)
  • The aforementioned Monday! Jingle Ball announced that Wonho was in the lineup before he announced his own fan meeting, so I got a ticket for this too. I thought Wonho did a good job hyping up the crowd, especially considering he was second in the lineup. He did get the floor on their feet during What Would You Do. In the middle ish of the line up was Jason Derulo, which was surprisingly fun? He got the crowd really hyped since pretty much everyone knows his songs. And then NCT Dream came on after him, and honestly I wasn't thrilled with their setlist. They did Rains in Heaven I think, which is a slower song. The crowd couldn't sing (though I just looked up the song and there's an English version?? They should've put the lyrics up on screen like Wonho did) and couldn't scream, so the energy just kind of died. They also did choreo the whole time instead of just working the stage, which I think they should've done. Bright side, I did get to see Renjun this time! He was on hiatus when they toured in the fall.
  
  Fic
  • Now that all my fics are posted, my November word count was 4452.
  • December word count was 12737 and I posted so many, my god.
  • Boyz Next Door, Sangyeon/Jacob, 2.3k
  • dorm is where the heart is, Jaehyun/Haknyeon, 1.2k
  • 99% of faith, Seonghwa/Hongjoong, 5.8k, based on the Halazia MV - my yuletide assignment!
  • rose sent kiss, Haknyeon/Eric, 5.4k, based on Be Your Own King MV - yuletide treat #1 for pop
  • as the stars would have it, Irene/Wendy, 2.9k, based on the Cosmic MV - yuletide treat #2
  • call me by y/n, Seonghwa/San, 1.4k - gift for Veronica!
  • calculated intimacy, Chanhee/Changmin/Sunwoo, 500 words, based on the Maverick MV - yuletide treat #3

Speaking of fic, I also received 3 lovely yuletide gifts! Two were for The Warm Hands of Ghosts, both Laura/Pim fix it. #1 and #2. I also received a LSF gift from pop that I bullied her into writing, yayyy <3 Hilariously, I kind of predicted my yuletide back in October before assignments went out - "Ok someone is assigned to write LSF for me and I get assigned Cosmic and someone treats Warm Hands because of my super inspiring prompts and I get a lesbian yuletide YIPPEE 🐬" Warm Hands was my main gift and LSF was my gift and I treated Cosmic, not assigned, but all of these fics did happen! YIPPEE! 🐬