The Lily Cat Editorials

Puhon, We Will Meet Again

2021 and things are still not the same as before. Like last year, many events are pushed back. Some canceled. Some are still hanging on the balance if they will push through or not. Although virtual events are possible, it is not enough to fill that empty void that we longed so much.

Meeting friends in a convention, hugging them when we meet, screaming and cheering at the top of our lungs, meeting people who share the same passions as you…

Goddamn, I miss them so much.

These days are tough, but here we are still doing our best to make ends meet in the comfort of our own homes, finding new ways to enjoy ourselves while the world is still uncertain for now. I admit it is really hard to be hopeful when things are still not 100% okay.

Every time when I feel like giving up, every time I wanted to just stop being hopeful for the best. I always remember this one simple word, Puhon.

Puhon is Bisaya for hopefully, someday, or in God’s perfect time. It’s a simple word but it has a beautiful way of expressing something related to hope.

Puhon, We Will Meet Again.

The past couple of years is without a doubt, life-changing. I learned a lot from the many travels I had. I got to be part of a community where I met the best people in my life. They have become my friends, my sisters, my “fam.” I wouldn’t be doing these things, continue to be passionate about this genre if it weren’t for them. It’s not for certain to when I will be able to see them again, but Puhon. I will, once all of this is over.

They say when you travel, you meet the most interesting people in your life that would turn things around, change your plans, and make your destination a place called home.

You will laugh, you will cry. You will face challenges and meet them with victory. At the end of the day, lessons are learned. Memories are kept.

I will look forward to the day when I can finally step on that platform again, heading to my assigned seat beside that small window, my ticket in my left jacket pocket, my passport on my right.

The distance doesn’t matter, the expenses don’t matter. When you meet people who make you feel at home, nothing else matters.

See you soon. Puhon.

Take Care of Yourself.

Finally, I have the time to just write on the site again. This time around, it’s a little special.

[Slight Trigger Warning. Emotional stuff ahead]

Now before I get back to doing the usual reviews here, I just wanted to leave this personal post one more time. It’s a great way to close another chapter and just open a new one for the better.

Let me start off with this very simple question: How are you?

It’s obvious that this year hasn’t been great. Cancelled flights, travel plans postponed, and physical events are almost little to impossible. Like many people, it was really hard to wake up every day the past couple of months. The motivation to work was no longer present because of the fact that you can’t fly out because of the lockdown. Sure, there are many ways to bounce back and do other alternative stuff to keep going, but I miss the usual stuff.

I miss meeting people. I miss my friends, I want to see my partner, I miss the feeling of being in front row seats watching musicals, the loud noise of an anime convention hall. I fucking miss all of it.

Not only that I had to deal with the lockdown and restrictions. I also had to deal with my personal demons.

I had to deal with my never-ending battle of self-hate, oftentimes thinking and admitting that maybe my detractors were right: that I am a gutless piece of shit, that I don’t deserve someone else because I am an existing eyesore, and that I deserved to kill myself if ever my nth attempts of doing so were successful.

But here I am, writing all of this to you.

Very recently, I made peace with myself and made the right decisions moving forward. Old connections have become parts of my past that are best closed and no longer be part of a problematic emotional cycle of my life. While some are still trying to defend themselves and explaining their sides, I think those are irrelevant now. When you moved on and make peace, no one wins or loses. You just let go of everything and move on with your life. Never looking back on the people and experiences that hurt you.

Believe me, I learned it the hard way.

When you’re going through loss, remember that you must take time to heal and take all the damn time in doing so. Don’t blame yourself. It’s never your fault and that doesn’t matter anymore. Yes, cry all you want. Release the sadness.

But after you’ve done that, seek happiness. You deserve to be happy. You deserve a ray of sunshine on top of your head. You deserve love.

Sooner or later, you will be crawling out of the mud and rocky paths, reaching the peak, and find success. You will find a reason to sing, write, and dance again. You will find better things and better people that would make you whole again.

Everything is going to be alright.

If you’re still stuck in the mud right now and unsure of where to go, it’s okay. That ray of light is going to shine on you soon. You will find the reason to stand on your own two feet and believing in your own strength to keep going.

Right now, find joy in the little things. One day, someone is going to care, appreciate, and love you for being you. You will find friends who will comfort you and say the right words at the right time. You will make better connections, and you will be wise enough to let go of others that never helped you shine.

It doesn’t make any sense now, but someday it will. You will be okay again and I guarantee once this storm is over, you will realize that you have become a better person than you were before.

Right now, I want you to be happy. Seek happiness. Let go of everything that is hurting your heart, mind, soul, and start over. It’s going to be tough. But you are going to pull through.

Take Care of Yourself.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. Feel free to leave a comment to share your thoughts here and on Facebook. I’m also on Twitter just in case you’re interested.

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The Lily Cat Editorials – It’s Already 2019, Stop Hatin’

The Lily Cat Editorials is back. Long overdue, actually.

I will call this out now: 2019 is 60% a crappy year for me so far. Although it had some many good ones, a lot was taken away from me. The biggest recent loss I had as of this writing is a close friend who passed away. He was a good person and his courage and things he had done for me over the years have motivated me to write about this.

Life is pretty unexpected. You gain some, you lose some. There’s a constant motion to this and we are have no knowledge on what’s going to happen next. You’ll never know the friend that you once thought would be there for you would actually just backbite you and keep indirectly insulting you online, making you a primary subject of their immature tea fest. You’ll never know that the person that you once gave your trust on would just use you and leave you like dirt later on. You’ll never know that those who promise you this and that ended up as just mere words with the vision never went into surface.

It’s 2019 already. Why do we still have the time to even care of these kind of people in our life? If these people never helped you in your growth, then don’t let them in your life even a single of centimeter. You deserve the better. The best days and hopeful tomorrows.

Let go. Time to move on and forget. We only got one shot of life. Before the unexpected happens, unless we took a lot of our time to celebrate with joy and good memories along with the people that matter. If you lost some people or something recently over some things, don’t worry. You deserve better ones and you’ll eventually find them. Just keep doing the things you love, eat good food (I’m getting a nice meal after this is posted, lol), and just do things that would help you grow as a person.

It’s 2019. Stop Hatin’. You are never too late to pick up the pieces and start over. Stay awesome, friends. We all can get through this.

The Lily Cat Editorials – PROFOUNDLY Speaking, I Rather Enjoy Life

People have been raving (no, abusing) over this Facebook app called Profoundly or Profoundly.me. It’s been like a few days since this app has been a thing on my timeline and I still don’t even know and understand the bottom line of it.

The reason why I don’t use this is because it’s a gateway to trolls. It makes you vulnerable to whatever insult they’ll ever give you. Yes, you can always ignore it. If you do confront them however giving them straightforward replies, they fan the flames even more. Some may have just received anonymous questions and good messages but let’s keep an open mind here.

This case don’t just happen on just one simple FB app, it can happen on any social media platform. Anonymous or not, people will always find ways to take you down. So if you are very vulnerable or if you’re the type of person that loves to give a damn about what people say about you, then why waste your time getting into this hype in the first place? The excuse of saying that “I’m just here for fun” don’t cut it.

As of writing this article, I have switched to a more personal Facebook account and I can tell you, it’s been great! You are more connected with people that matter more in your life, who celebrate your victories with you, and willing to help you get back up in times when you feel like you can’t do the things that you want to do anymore. In a way, this is somehow relevant to the thing I’ve posted previously but I have officially moved on from that phase.

The main point of this is that you can’t just listen to hurtful stuff that people leave anonymously on some app. You fight back with the best thing you know how: take a deep breath, leave, and ignore.

Also in case of issues and dealing with people who just can’t really stand you when you’re present, stay away from them. Enjoy life and improve at your own pace.

About The Lily Cat Editorials

The Lily Cat Editorials talks about life and Serena’s thoughts on certain issues.

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The Lily Cat Editorials – Yuri Helped Me Through My Heartbreak

It’s been a while since my last post and it’s with good reason. The last few weeks of 2018 and first weeks of 2019 weren’t really smooth sailing for me. As the the title says, I went through a very bad break-up. My girl called it quits. 11 months down the drain.

Until now I still asked myself why I was so stupid. Stupid for a few reasons. Why do I feel so useless and not looking at the whole picture? Why is it hard for both of us to understand on some things? Lastly, Why the fuck do people find it easy to let go of something when they are willing to go heaven and hell just for you?

The answer to all these questions? I don’t even know myself. I have done my efforts but of course, we are human. We bend and break. We have limits. I hanged on to my relationship because I thought, “Okay, this is it.” There is that feeling for regret but I know it would be really stupid to just hang on to things that didn’t really work out.

So I guess you know where this is going. I had a break-up, went through depression, and here we are. If you’re curious what I did on Valentine’s Day yesterday, I spent the whole day playing Overwatch.

Aside from distracting myself, I immediately went back to the thing I loved the most– Yuri. Even before my previous relationships, yuri was technically my first love. When all seemed tumbling down on me, I went back to it and somehow got me back. Now here I am alive and kicking (with a lot of yuri reviews on backlog lol).

So perhaps expect more stuff from the site in 2019. I’m thinking of giving myself a schedule of sorts to really get everything organized. As of writing this post, I’m already preparing for Otakufest 2019 which will be held in Cebu City. After this trip, I will be going through some of my yuri backlogs and my Winter Anime 2019 stuff so that I can share to you everything that I’m currently following and not following.

Just in case people will be “shooked” on the other stuff I will be writing about here: Basically the site is also catered to my other fandoms aside from yuri. I’m also be going full swings on my travels and covering events so expect some reports of my random adventures here and there.

So from the bottom of my heart, if you are still reading this or still stumble upon this place often, I would like to say thank you.

Although I still have things to fix personally, just writing my thoughts out for you guys to read is one of the things that keep me going. I really love doing this and if you’re also going through something right now, don’t worry. We can all go through this. Everything is going to be alright.

The Lily Cat Editorials: A Happy and Hopeful Yuri-ful Year To You!

Happy 2019!

As of writing this post, it has been two years since the release of the most popular and mostly discussed chapter of What Does The Fox Say, Chapter 69. If you’re a regular of this blog, then you have probably noticed that most of my updates are related to this popular webtoon. I can’t deny that the series is quiet interesting so I decided to follow it (almost religiously) until the end. In case you are out of the loop, the story is now back and published in a new webtoon platform. I’m very pleased with this news to be honest.

I was one of the many people who were disappointed when the series was halted in Lezhin Comics last year and this was together with the wave of the webtoon platform’s issues with their writers and artists. People have been asking me endlessly (since December) about the updates related to this but due to some reasons, I decided not to even write about the platform anymore.

The reason: There is nothing else to go back to. I am only down to less that 200 coins as of writing this so I doubt if I will be ever be refilling them anytime soon. I’m only following three GL series there unlike before when there was such an abundance.

I cannot erase the feeling of irony that WDTFS was one of the series that put the webtoon platform website on the map. It won best GL series of 2016 too. Fast forward to the present, you can’t even find the webtoon series in the list anymore (however the previous chapters that you’ve bought is still found in your My Library in your Lezhin account.)

Anyways, enough of the webtoon platform and let’s talk about other things. The webtoon series is back and that’s a good sign. There’s still some GL series to look forward to every week now. Speaking of that, I’m finding great delight in following two GL series titled She’s A Keeper by Darunni and Mage & Demon Queen by COLOR-LES. They are not only have awesome stories, but these are Filipino GL artists. I suggest you give their works a read. I highly recommend both!

As I look back at 2018, it was really a see-saw for the yuri genre (but in the end, it was mostly good). We had a couple of yuri manga that got anime adaptations: Citrus, Netsuzou TRap, Kase-san, and Bloom Into You. We lost Ssamba, creator of Fluttering Feelings. A number GL webtoon series and manga ended, some of them were on hiatus or ended abruptly. A yuri event happened in Japan. Our local yuri community had a booth in one’s of the country’s popular anime and cosplay conventions. This is just a few of the many. The main highlight of my last quarter of 2018 was when I got back into reading yuri manga again because of Bloom Into You.

Hopefully if the time permits, I would like 2019 for the The Lily Cat to be dedicated to not just news related to yuri and otaku culture, but also reviews. I am now catching up on my backlogs while some I have to reread for possible reviews in the future. I’m positive that 2019 will be another yuri-ful year for all of us. I get to learn more from the industry and learn you guys, the readers. Thank you so much for being part of my 2018 and hope that my 2019, and yours, will be as awesome.