I am going to lay it out on the table so there can be no misunderstanding: I’m not going to write about every member of the overseas sister groups. I just don’t know enough about these groups, and, several years in, I think they are big enough to have their own fans, their own followings, and I don’t think I could really justice when talking about that, however, AKB48’s sixty-sixth single is going to be with us in a few months, and with that comes the long overdue inclusion of members from the further afield overseas groups in the senbatsu as part of the anniversary celebrations so it would be remise of me not to talk about those members. tl;dr Shania Gracia.



JKT48’s third generation debuted in 2014 about a month after my favourite member of the group, Cindy, left the group under a cloud. Arriving as a trainee, Gracia was promoted alongside her peers to Team T when the group was formed in January a year later, Harugon being appointed as captain of the team as the group’s longest serving member at that time. In mid-2016, Gracia appeared in the senbatsu for Mae Shika Mukanee (Hanya Lihat Ke Depan) before the group’s shuffle event in September that saw her join Team KIII.

JKT’s teams have a history of being disbanded and reformed, a practice that feels a little unsettling to me as Team T presently has no members at all in 2025. I don’t think this suggests that we’re going to see AKB move away from the generation system any time soon, yet I could also see management changing course for this kind of thing after the anniversary.

This speedrunning of JKT history and of Gracia’s time thus far in the group possibly fails to take in the extent of her popularity as it feels like she is a big deal in Jakarta with notable celebrities amongst the coterie of her fans and birthday wishes from former politicians. Although the former third generation is presently down to just two members—Gracia and Feni Fitriyanti, who is on hiatus as of August, and whom we probably should talk about at some point due to QUADLIPS, a sort of international UNLAME that AKS rolled out last year—it feels very much like their introduction was the beginning of JKT48 gaining their own identity with Gracia’s being very much an important factor in that process.

Having gone from captain of KIII in 2020 to presently acting as the captain of the group as a whole, it feels like AKS are banking on both Gracia and Feni in the hopes that their popularity in Indonesia will translate into popularity in Japan.

I don’t know, friends! At the time of writing this, I am literally second-guessing what will happen with the sixty-sixth single and how that release will set the stage for AKB in the future. Gracia continues to rank in the senbatsu during JKT’s general elections, and she has continued to appear with regularity on releases since 2016. Like Feni, in terms of where Gracia is as an idol, it feels like the only options left for her in future are either graduation or international success, whichever comes first.

Merry Christmas in July!! 🎄🎉🎁💝🍰 When was it that I started to be able to only write a certain kind of story in winter and summer? It's not that I do not love spring and autumn, yet somehow, they feel somewhat less than. I recently read The Frolic of the Beasts by Mishima which struck me as the perfect summer story in its depiction of the heat, of the sea, and of disfunction. Iwai Shunji's Fireworks, Should We See it from the Side or the Bottom? similarly feels like it evokes the unease of the warmer months, of struggling to come to terms with things, as does all of Higurashi. Maybe this is something I've trying to wrestle with for a few years now. Regardless, there is a certain kind of story that only seems to make sense in summer or winter.

Over Christmas, I wrote a lot in the early hours of the morning, more things that I could post for Write Whatever the Heck You Want, Courtney!, more things than I could post without alienating you, friends. In summer and winter, there's an unsettled feeling that comes over me that seems to descend from either the extreme heat or the extreme cold, and I think I might get closer to writing "true yuri" during these moments. This isn't to say I have succeeded at all, but in these seasons, I try to write matters outside of the usual nonsense that I post—or maybe I just present the themes I usually do in a way that strips them bare of their usual window dressing. Christmas is about the unwrapping, so they say. This month, I'm going to post some of that stuff, and also, presumably write a lot more. Sometimes, I think you have to push yourself to write things in a different way in order to improve so... I'm going to do that once more. precuretokuprompt is running once again this month, the next batch of episodes for Write More Power Rangers falls at the end of the month, so I'll still do that usual things, but whilst the weather is warm, whilst the sun is high, whilst our lips still carry the taste of shaved ice and watermelon, of fruit popsicles and lollies, I thought I'd take some time out to try and articulate a now familiar sort of ennui.