🌱 year of the tiger

[9ofcups]

2022 goals

🌱 word count: 70k
🌱 published fics: 5
🌱 longfic wc goal: 30k
🌱 books read: 50

2021 overview

🌓 word count: 63.5k
🌓 published fics: 13
🌓 max longfic: 21k
🌓 books read: 34

general round-up


i really don't have the strength or energy to comb through everything i've done this year especially because i started round-ups in june but skipped over the last two months and i didn't exactly do much this year—in fact, most of my content consumption occurred in the last half of december which is kind of funny but it all began when i let myself have access to viki + netflix and also bought a kindle which all happened within months of each other. i'm actually going to end up talking about most of these in my january round-up but overall:

📺 TV & MOVIES


shang-chi: ★★★.5
venom 2: ★★
spiderman nwh: ★★★★.5
encanto: ★★★★★

law school: ★★★★
taxi driver: ★★★
squid game: ★★.5
sky castle: ★★★★★
atla (rewatch): ★★★★★
shadow & bone: ★★★.5

currently watching: homcha, sex ed & singles inferno

it's not surprising that i watched close to nothing this year, with the way covid prevented me from feeling comfortable enough to go to the movie theater until shang-chi dropped which... i'm pretty sure was in september. and because i have extreme issues with making my adhd cooperate enough to let me actually finish things it's nearly impossible for me to sit down and get through a show without being bored but i'm slowly getting better at it (this is probably a bad thing realistically) which is cool! developing an attention span for all the wrong things wasn't on my bucketlist for 2021 but i guess we're here now.

moving onto books:

june

ariadne: ★★★
a thousand ships: ★★
black sun: ★★★★★
sorrowland: ★★★★★
the song of achilles: ★★★★★
black girl unlimited: ★★★★★

july

the overachievers: ★★★★★
a darker shade of magic: ★★
wicked as you wish: ★★.5
on earth we're briefly gorgeous: ★★★★★
summer in the city of roses: ★★★
for the wolf: ★
fire with fire: ★★★★
crazy rich asians: ★★★
a song below water: ★★★★★
verity: ★★★★.5

august, october & november

a chorus rises: ★★★★
ace of spades: ★★.5
the firekeeper's daughter: ★★★★

december

iron widow: ★★★★
the atlas six: ★★★★★
six of crows: ★★★★★
the lightning thief: ★★★★
the sea of monsters: ★★★★★
the titan's curse: ★★★★
the battle of the labyrinth: ★★★★★
the jasmine throne: ★★★★★
the love hypothesis: ★★
people we meet on vacation: ★★★★
[redacted]: ★★★
raybearer: ★★

and, of course, my to-read list:

bold = planned for this month
+ their goodreads ratings

the lost hero: 4.31
the son of neptune: 4.41
the mark of athena: 4.44
the house of hades: 4.52
the blood of olympus: 4.4
we hunt the flame: 3.95
gearbreakers: 3.94
malibu rising: 4.1
one last stop: 4.1
the gilded wolves: 3.74
she who became the sun: 4.01
the keeper of night: 3.78
the poppy war: 4.08
the priory of the orange tree: 4.22
the hating game: 4.08
legendborn: 4.43
jade city: 4.11
the raven boys: 4.04
a master of djinn: 4.17
the secret history: 4.12

now you may be wondering—amal, why the hell are you rereading pjo/hoo? well the truth is i'm a nostalgic little loser and i genuinely enjoyed it when i was young, and it's free on the kindle so i decided to reread it... again. in fact if i didn't get a kindle i probably wouldn't be reading at all so this is a pretty big step for me even if all the books i'm reading are regurgitated YA. idc as long as the character development is good.

when it comes to december's music...

⚡️ TOTAL SCROBBLES: 2,388
⚡️AVG SCROBBLES PER DAY: 80
⚡️ SCROBBLED THE MOST AT: 7am + 8pmTOP ARTISTS

1. nct 127 (395)
2. aoa (256)
3. flo milli (201)
4. nct u (172)
5. summer walker (118)
6. tinashe (93)
7. mahalia (86)
8. megan thee stallion (78)
9. victoria monét (61)
10. baby tate (40)

TOP TRACKS

1. limitless - nct 127 (201)
2. like a cat - aoa (165)
3. elevator - nct 127 (115)
4. in the party - flo milli (103)
5. ok! - nct u (100)
6. unloyal - summer walker (93)
7. pasadena - tinashe (77)
8. neva - megan thee stallion (48)
9. pedi - baby tate (33)
10. what am i? - mahalia (32)

...definitely a mixed bag. i'll put my capricorn szn playlist here but for obvious reasons it isn't finished yet. recently discovered a good artist for rpg music and found out that their fe3h covers are insanely accurate and true to form so i guess i'm having my orchestra arc (small playlist here) and am tending towards more quiet music overall now that i'm reading and meditating more (calm playlists: 1 / 2 / 3 but realistically speaking these playlists all contain quite a few repeats of each other) but i think i'm just all over the place in terms of what i enjoy listening to right now which is totally fine.

i've been slightly drifting away from kpop which has honestly felt really weird seeing as this'll be my tenth year of being into it but i guess i understand why it's happening seeing as the pandemic ruined my social life and now that i have one again it's just so easy to forget about kpop altogether, especially back over fall semester when i was too busy to do much else than study lol. which in a sense is a nice feeling because i like the satisfaction of accomplishing things but it's totally burnt me out on writing which is decidedly less nice.

i won't do an official writing reflection because overall i'm super disappointed in how i wrote this year as compared to 2020 which feels like the golden age of amalfic now compared to how i'm doing in the present—in 2021 i fandom-hopped from the boyz ➡️ oneus ➡️ ateez ➡️ enhypen ➡️ wherever i am now, and that's just a list of fandoms i actually wrote for lol... in reality i've existed in a thousand different spaces within the span of a year and the inconsistency is really irritating, esp because i got into enhypen in may but didn't write shit from september to the end of the year, so i'm already kind of sick of writing for them too lol.

it's an irritating feeling! like maybe it isn't that deep but to me it's actually extremely real and personal and etc how tired i am of writing fic even though i've based my value off of my productivity of writing fic for literal years... it's a prison that i have no idea how to break out of and it's such a strange feeling. the other night i spent the day feeling exhausted and listless and kept trying to write before i realized that nothing would come of it and then i proceeded to spend the rest of the day reading (by "rest of the day" i mean from like 6pm-2am) and i still felt bad. we'll see how that unravels in the future i suppose

but since i'm on the topic of writing... well i'm keeping track of how xdh's ao3 grows. they're so new that i expect nothing of it in the near future + i'm also already severely annoyed at the amount of stays using xdh for their rabid shipping tendencies (who the fuck is shipping jisung and junhan... i know a lot of you are mentally ill which is why i'm going to build a hospital for mentally ill people etc) but i already like quite a few dynamics + 02z are so endearing! we know me and my tinhats. i plan on dwposting about xdh soon once i sit down to watch more content.

overall i think i'm going to look more into what i can do with ocs which is a level of uncharted territory that freaks me the fuck out seeing as i've never really played around with ocs because established characters were always the easiest things for me to build off of which is kind of sad if you think about it lmfaooo like girl find some originality... cancer sun gemini moon what can i say etc etc

that being said i'm developing my own little universe as we speak and it's honestly really exciting! not to be me but i watched a video the other day on the 2H/8H nodal axis and now whenever i feel like discussing ideas i'm violently reminded of the astrologer in that video reminding 8H north nodes to keep their ideas to themselves but that's genuinely the hardest thing i've ever done so um. we'll see how long i stick to that.

as for other aspects of life: lost a friend, gained some trauma, cut people off, and made more friends # along the way. it certainly hasn't been a good year for me but i guess that's what happens when you finish your cycle nine year and come home to cycle one. i think i've achieved a lot in terms of knowledge and maturity, and that's enough to leave me satisfied... but no promises to 2022 lmfao i'm sick of having expectations.

see y'all!