this is from the michihara logh manga... they're just bros i swear
i return for what will nearly certainly be my final journal entry from taiwan. next monday morning i'll be on the first plane of the three i need to get back home. and then i'll be home. and then i'll be normal (?). ignore any evidence that says otherwise in this post i swear i'm gonna go on my normal arc and also get a buzzcut. not enlist in the navy tho
my mother sent me an email yesterday with a link to some articles she'd been reading about advice for reverse-culture shock, when exchange students return home. it's interesting to think about, because i still feel like i never had a serious culture shock here in the first place? one of the articles said students who adjust back to their home easily probably didn't adapt to their host culture that much. "is that me?" i worried. i remembered drinking with the dads last weekend at my final rotary meeting. one of them, the current youth exchange chair, said i was the best exchange student he'd ever met (bragging). i think i did a good job. that was my first time ever getting close to drunk, even though i drank less than usual. it's probably because the old man i've never ever compared to seafort was awkwardly singing karaoke in the front.
finally got my financial aid offer, got my first choice of dorm and a single, talking to someone on insta who'll be in the same dorm so i've already made my first friend there! made a mock schedule for my first semester but i still gotta talk to my advisor whenever i meet her. signed up for orientation events. "i can do college no problem i've already lived on the other side of the world for a year" WRONG i still had adults telling me what to do all the time man i ain't qualified for this... whatever we still gotta do it. because at college, there will be new people. and i can recommend seafort and rodrigo to new people. my priorities are good i think. thinking more about the future. i don't want to go into the field of astronomy. still going to major in astronomy though. for the funny math/phys classes. yeah.
time too! look at me go
i finished reading seafort! the last book was really good and i don't even mind the open ending. i'm so mature. i'm done with highschool forever and ever and ever. the last week was actually pretty nice since i just had to sit in the library instead of attend class so i got to read a lot.
i went out for food with a classmate after class for the first
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yesterday i found an old seafort forum and a whole bunch of dead fansites from the 2000s. surprisingly amount of overlap between the americans fans who were serving in the navy and japanese fujoshis. the world is a beautiful place. (most of the art on this post besides the logh manga panels are from those sites)
wait i thought they were bros... what did tanaka mean by this then
i'd already planned to make two fanpages for rodrigo and seafort, but now i definitely have to in order to carry on this time-honored tradition. it's really nice to see fans passionate about the same things as you, even if they've all moved on by now. "hope is something you create with your own hands" - a speech abt shipping vn...
it turns out i'm still a normie when it comes to being a seafort fan. i've only read the series once in its entirety, and i certainly can't cite the regs. this summer, perhaps, when i get my hands on the physical books... it's nice to see other fans, but sad, too. lt arlene achieved her goal of studying journalism in the us and is now an editor of a major paper. midn fernandez passed away in 2013. one guy got married bc of seafort. the longest thread in the forum is a debate about seafort's sexuality. everyone remains civil and it veers off into a discussion of the futility of labels before finally being brought to an end by feintuch himself--seafort isn't gay. the end. huh?
pax!
i fell behind with in the last couple of weeks with my bible reading. not sure if i'll still be able to finish it before the exchange ends. we'll see.
s
i finished the main storyline of bully and i liked it so much! it's a really nice game. i've started working on an edit for it to msi's uncle... i've been reading the horatio hornblower series since it gets cited as the inspiration to seafort a lot, and while i can definitely see why.... it kinda sucks ass so far? despite being both more popular and better reviewed... slowly getting into it. it is why i found that forum, though (find out there's a hornblower fandom -> complain that it only exists bc of the film series -> go look at the film studio that bought seafort's rights -> if it was post-feintuch death, does that mean they'd be willing to let me look at book 8 too? -> what do we actually know abt book 8 -> FORUM), so it was good for something at least
when i first found the forum and fansites i made a joke wondering what terrible thing was coming in my future to make god feel this sorry for me. maybe the terrible thing was straight seafort. maybe the terrible thing was simply the knowledge itself. people once set up pbem (play by email) rpgs within the seafort universe. some guy once got marriage advice from feintuch himself. and i'll only ever be able to observe from the future. that's not the worst fate, i think.
barefoot through the grass and play soccer with my kid neighbor and pull weeds in the garden. i want to embroider felt crosses and learn how to properly pray the rosary and be completely and utterly bored as i lay in a patch of sunlight.
this summer i want to try and read all the unread books i have sitting around in my room. i want to catch crayfish and go swimming in the creek. i want to run