retrograde irregular satellite

i’ve previously decided to not rate paper only samples in store when working on my bigger perfume sampling posts, especially from the limited time spent with them ie pm only getting the v first moments of the opening, but i also wanted to have a record of stuff i've tried in store (not all in one go) but not on skin? and i am a hater and don't mind first impression quick judgement so most of these are just yes/no/like/hate/love but sometimes w a short comment, and some of these were only to have a reference to what i see in others' reviews

givenchy
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jo malone
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hermes
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chanel
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mugler
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bvlgari
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guerlain
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kenzo
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viktor & rolf
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elizabeth arden
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estee lauder
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carolina herrera
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prada
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armani
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calvin klein
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valentino
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narciso rodriguez
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the ones i recall as liking the most (in no particular order) are: chanel no19 poudre, prada infusion d’iris cedre, prada infusion de fleur d’oranger, narciso rodriguez narciso poudree, jo malone lavender & silver birch, bvlgari the vert, guerlain aqua allegoria pamplelune, guerlain aqua allegoria nerolia vetiver, elizabeth arden green tea, hermes twilly d’hermes, hermes un jardin sur le nil

the most common notes among my favs here:

• citrus (10) [grapefruit (3), orange (2), lemon (2), mandarin (1), mandarin orange (1), orange peel (1)]
• wood (8) [cedar (3), sandalwood (2), birch (1), precious woods/woodsy notes (2)]
• jasmine (7), musk (6), neroli (5), orange blossom (5), iris (3), vetiver (3)

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND HAPPY 2023! to send off 2022 i forced myself to finish this post in a bit of a hurry that i only have myself to blame for, and i'm too lazy to even attempt to format it slightly nicer (or at least use some italics or bolding for legibility) atm, might return to edit it later! i not longer remember when or why i said i would do this, but i'm kinda happy i did it because it was fun but also very time-consuming and kinda taxing

• scoring done on a scale from 0-10 where 0 = hate it, 5 = neutral, and 10 = LOVE
• non-dream album tracks such as sm stations, fireflies, or tracks on nct brand albums will not be included in this, nor will i include the chinese versions
• presented in order of release
• i don't know music, i'm not here to offer any meaningful critique, this is just my thoughts/feelings in short comments and a score according to my personal taste and preferences

the first
my first and last - 10/10
no explanation needed.

dunk shot - 6.7/10
kinda stupid and not great, but it’s so much fun and cute.. yabalabahiya yabalabahiya... some of the cutest idiot baby perfs <3

chewing gum - 6.8/10
i’m just never gonna be a chewing gum fanatic but i also love it but i also don’t think it’s v good but it’s fun and catchy... my emotions are complex and multilayered, i can not explain my poetry often

album total: 7.83

( guess my other 10/10s )

i've played around with the idea of doing this for a while, and after a couple of my twitter oomfs thought this would be fun when i mentioned it, i decided to just go for it? this post is ALL personal opinions and thoughts, and they sometimes won't make sense or might seem hypocritical. i'm a nonsensical person, what can i say. the commentary is a combination of mv review, song review, and just whatever pops into my mind

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i've been thinking a lot about trying to continue my gp999 posts since i had a lot of fun writing the first, but since i started watching gp999 with a friend on the weekends i've realised that a) i say probably most of the things i want to say then, and b) i no longer take notes as i watch bc i'm active/reacting in chat instead, which means i would either have to write entirely from memory or rewatch the full episodes? because even if i don't intend to write full on reviews/episode synopses i still like to touch upon things that happen in the episodes, which works only if i have a vague outline of my reactions and things that interested me.

that said i'm so sad we're already arriving at the first elimination! avoiding spoilers for tomorrow's episode is probably going to be really difficult when so many of my twitter mutuals also watch the show, and most watch it live? i'm not ready to see girls go, and i'm just desperately hoping for some of my less popular faves to make it - if wen zhe and wang yale don't make it to next round i will cry, but i'm hoping babymetal's momoko being in her cell and and wen zhe's good edit in ep3 will save her, and for wang yale i'm desperately hoping jeongmin's slight highlightisation/positive edit throughout and the jeongmin/yale push in ep4 have made ppl notice her? (a lot of ppl seem to think she was one of the better parts of the mic drop perf, but whether or not this translates to votes....)

i've also been started watching stage boom on iqiyi as part of the weekly weekend women watching with lily! a bunch of female artists/idols are competing for resources and opportunities to perform basically, probs since there are less opportunities to be on stage in c-ent compared to like kpop/jpop?

the girls on it i'm familiar with are mainly (ex-)kpop idols in form of yuqi, xuanyi, jieqiong and qcyn2 winning group members keran and anqi, but also cql actress turned chuang2020 winning group member chen zhuoxuan! other contestants are yamy (former rocket girls members tgt w xuanyi, idk her but have vaguely positive feelings abt pre-show for no reason), lexie liu (have heard a couple songs by), vava and shan yichun who were both completely new to me tho i think i might've heard vava's name a couple times before.

it's a lot of fun so far tho! the episodes are long, there's a lot of fun moments including some FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC AND BEING GIRLS IS THE MOST SPECIAL THING, and also some things that i hate/get extremely stressed out by but overall my feelings are very positive. i'm so excited for the couple stages coming this week, even if like none of the collabs i really wanted to happen are going to happen! (oh yuqi how i wish you went with a partner you wanted/who wanted you rather than the person who picked the same song, even if i understand your reasoning...) it's so annoying two teams will be eliminated though because i have someone in every team i don't want to see go yet.

fav perfs so far: czx - open up, czx - exist?, syq - giant, wxy - i want us together, yamy - beijing journey

a biased list perhaps, but these were the performances that appealed the most to me personally! shan yichun is a SANGER tho i'm just not crasy about her perfs (tho her rnb all night 90 sec perf veeeeery lovely), and lexie's artistry and attention to her performances is incredible and i did quite like both of her performances.

long time no use of dreamwidth but i've truly missed writing random long posts of nonsense, but this past semester was hellish and draining? i def could've experienced a lot more stress on a daily basis and felt worse than i did, but i also didn't have the time to have emotions for so much of it lmao? feels kinda strange to slowly regain enough brainpower to use it on things i find fun

such as this past week i've written fic for the first time since may 8,, if you count an incomplete line, or more truly since april 26-28ish? there aren't words that can fully express how much i've missed it! i started yet another lesb aushun thing, and thinking about just posting all those random scenes as a single long fic/collection of flashfic at last if i can just smooth them out a little?

the other fic i worked on is the for the 20th century heta zine i'm taking part in! my pitch was for 1940s france/china, which was also what i got, and if this somehow sounds familiar it's bc it's something i've talked about before! so far i've got ~1.3k of it, and i'm not entirely happy with what ive got bc it doesn't feel connected enough to the events, so i feel like i still need to do a lot more research on both countries and the war in '43, but i feel good about writing again and i enjoy the dynamic i've got for them? i just need to tie it in Better

other fandom things to talk about since last time i posted has to be the very surprising complete and utter re-stanning of nct dream? who are now truly and absolutely the boy group i've been the fan of the longest, even with the dip in interest i had in 2020? and sure i was still crasy enough abt them to buy that photobook, but i sorta figured that'd be a last huzzah yknow since it was so hag dreampaen pandering - but there dynamics are just incredible and i liked several bsides on the album AND now the concept for the repack is honestly v much my style, so that's great?? there's also something v fun about engaging and laughing about ongoing ncity civil wars.

in terms of girl group stuff it's a bit more quiet tho. i don't really stan any groups other than fromis_9 at this point, and i have to say that i honestly didn't care much for 'we go'? i didn't dislike it and found it pretty cute, but it just didn't do much for me? i quite liked aespa's next level tho, and there had been a few other neat releases but... idk. i haven't really been feeling kpop that much. i've been listening a lot to nogizaka tho, and a bit to hinatazaka as well? and around the release time of 'we go' i had recently discovered 'kimi shikan katan' mv and it is so much more my style ngl, and ive enjoyed everything nogizaka released this year too lol

what i'm most excited about in terms of girl groups tho is the upcoming mnet survival, girls planet 999! i'm probably going to try to do write-ups after every episode? not making any promises, but it can be nice to organise your thoughts in a place where you can find them and also be wordy lol

it drives me crasy that the moment someone raises the point that western hetalia fans seem to forget all the fucking time, which is that hetalia was written by a japanese man for a japanese audience and that certain elements therefore doesn't translate well, someone else has to pop up all "yeah but he studied in the us for some time, so it's valid to use a western lens too!"? like.. sure, do whatever, fandom is free and transformative, but that's also why you're continuously misunderstanding especially things like relationship dynamics?

but i also think current eng speaking fandom is really hard into forgetting that the nations are intended to be centuries old strange beings no matter how babyfaced (unless they're into ~historical hetalia~), by which i don't necessarily mean everyone has to spend hours doing research for a single drabble lol, just that people consider them human rather than countries and that this causes conflicts that doesn't need to happen. and this is further exacerbated by the misunderstanding of this cultural context which hetalia and its characters - and thus their dynamics with one another - was created and assumed to be viewed through.

lmao i opened up dw to write a little about my uncertainty on whether or not i should make the 17th century nichu fic i'm working on part of my current series or if it should be a standalone and not connected, because i possible want them to kiss or maybe imply they might fuck and i can't do that in case of the former (since that universe strictly places them in having their firsts by the 1990s), but i'll save that post for another day - or just debate some more with myself in private to decide. but yeah, got entirely sidetracked by this tumblr post. never did i think that would become the sanest space