halfcactus

FINISHED:

Murders on the Yangtze River | 山河旅探 (game): I started this wayyyyy back in March and finally finished at the end of August (total playtime was ~25 hours). Historical murder mystery game with trial elements and a special gimmick in every chapter. It's set in the late Qing Dynasty and shows the repercussions of the opium wars as the protagonist follows a trail of murders that are connected to his brother's death two(?) years ago. The game takes the historical and case aspects pretty seriously so it feels like a true period piece + love letter to the murder mystery genre, but the dryness and lack of any real character writing made it hard to want to continue. The parts between chapter 4 (backstory chapter) and the big reveals in chapter 6 (finale) were my favorite, and then it fell off again. I did feel like I learned a lot from this (as someone who has little knowledge of history), so I'm glad I played it!

The Obsessed Mage and His Beloved Statue Bride by Crane, tr. Molly Lee (jnovel): A silly, smutty age-gap master/disciple romance about a saintlike woman who turns to stone. After twenty years, the petrification spell wears off and she returns to a society where her adorable misanthropic teenage disciple is now a respected thirty-something-year-old lord who's made the world a much better place in her honor. He is also known for getting freaky with the statue of his goddess; the villagers whisper about it but accept as his One Character Flaw. This is the brand of yandere ML I enjoy, and the entire thing is just one volume, which is always a plus.

PS. It's always funny when (translated) jnovels describe the ML as ruggedly handsome or chiseled or whatever, but the covers and illustrations show him to be the bishiest of bishounen.

Your Charm, My Karma | 我就想蹭你的氣運 (manhua): Straight high school romance/drama that's Marry My Husband-adjacent in the sense that the FMC dies of cancer in the original timeline, abandoned by her birth family who favored instead the adopted daughter. She gets brought back in time and the System suggests that she mooch the luck off a selection of ML-coded targets by attaching herself to them; she immediately commits to the prickly red-haired delinquent. The entire plot is very dumb (and unsurprisingly classist), and even with all the high school-level theatrics, it somehow didn't feel dramatic enough?! It also ended in a rush, so the arson storyline passed in a comically nothingburger fashion. But the ML is very sweet and the romance is cute, it's just a shame I have no idea what the characters want to do in life. The only end point in sight seems to be marriage and nebulously living happily ever after.

-

UNFINISHED:

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: Satirical thriller about a tradwife influencer who gets transported to a time period when she actually has to be a tradwife. I'm roughly 1/4 through and unsure if I will finish but I really need to relearn how to finish books.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: I need to stop getting murder games just because they're on sale for $2. Anyway, this is so far the most murder-y of murder games. I just finished chapter 1 and immediately went back to replay it in the delulu hope of preventing death with the power of friendship lol (obviously it did not work, but I had to give it a shot so I could move on with no regrets 😂). I've now decided to only play on weekends because the chapters are lengthy and meaty and require a lot of attention, so I can't just pick it up for 15 minutes at a time at random intervals... The trials are so long I had to do the first trial in three sittings (I really thought I could just finish it over lunch...). And there are too many different mechanics AND they end with a rhythm minigame from hell.

1. Because of the news of her death, I found out that Yayoi Kusama had a wildly racist (anti-Black, to be specific) history and that various translations of her autobiography have been censored to sanitize her international image. So yikes, yikes, and yikes.

Similarly, because of Glen Hansard's death a few weeks ago, I found out that he was a creep/groomer...

2. I've started watching season 3 of the Link Click donghua; originally I wasn't planning to watch it at all since I have so much trauma from S2 (continuing theme of gendered violence + overly drawn-out domestic violence scenes) and didn't enjoy the Bridon Arc that came after that, but I heard they show Lu Guang's backstory in S3, so here we are. S3 still has domestic abuse and violent murder scenes but they're not as grueling—I can't tell if they've learned restraint or if it's just that they linger less when the victims are male. /uncharitable

Happy to report that S3 at least seems to be circling back to the plot from the first two seasons + the Bridon Arc and building up on existing characters instead of just throwing new characters at us So it's more watchable than S2 and the Bridon Arc.

The music style has changed since BaishaJAWS disbanded, but the lyrics are still canon-specific and I like how much warmer the vibe of the new OP is—it just has a more ensemble-cast feel since it includes characters from the previous season.


3. I've gone back to playing Murders on the Yangtze River after a long break that I kind of regretted because I stopped mid-case and in effect couldn't enjoy the rest of the fourth case. I'm really enjoying the final case, though! It brings back the trial mechanic and has a long enough trial sequence that I can sink my teeth in it. And I suppose the case itself is overall more interesting to me than the previous ones which I found dry and not character-driven enough.

Case#6 journal (with thanks to Ace Attorney):


4. I watched the Hadestown Proshot yesterday and was thoroughly mesmerized by the physicality of Persephone (Amber Gray) and Hades (Patrick Page). Page seemed to have some sort of leg injury, which was stressful to watch, but I like how he integrated it into his performance of Hades, and how moving it made his dance scene with Persephone.

Of all the cast members, I found Orpheus (Reeve Carney) least convincing. But then, I guess it sort of works for the story, where Orpheus is more of a device and a point-of-view than a character? I also really liked the double-edgedness of his ability to "see how the world could be".


5. The Lovers (15-minute sushi chef x mermaid yuri animation) is out!

The Odyssey (2026)

This was good in the "movie that feels like a movie" way (with the use of practical effects and filming Techniques) but it doesn't really go beyond that. Definitely a movie to see in the cinemas!

The sound mixing for the first hour was awful, I couldn't catch most of the dialogue, but I was mollified by the later scenes where they bring back the thrum of the bowstring and thread the sound with the music. It does some other "interesting" things with sound but I'm no longer as impressed, having just seen Resurrection (the Shu Qi + Jackson Yee movie) just a few months ago.

Other notes: the scene with Circe reminded me a lot of the opening of Spirited Away!

-

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

This had some parts I really liked but I think I really just have superhero fatigue... It had strong whump potential and fanfic-like writing (perhaps by nature of the genre) but could not break out of its own MCU-ness enough to feel truthful. It had some really, really good moments, especially with the gen relationships, and it went places I liked, I just found it bloated and uncathartic.

-

Kung Fu Soccer (2026)

This is an interesting imagining of "what if Stephen Chow, but they're all women".

Thoughts

To be honest I haven't been very fond of Stephen Chow's more recent (+ China-based) movies, I feel they are shinier and more ambitious when I prefer his work when they inhabit smaller spaces, literally and figuratively. In the case of Kung Fu Soccer, the successor to Shaolin Soccer, the setting is a big global stage and the modern-day shininess works against the campiness of the CGI effects and the stakes don't really make any sense; it just comes across as any other China VS the world movie with Stephen Chow jokes and a specific mean-spiritedness towards South Korea. They spend a lot of time introducing the quirks of all these women who take on various character types, but it's all "who/what" and not "why" and there is no real process to their growth, and honestly no reason to put them on a world stage... And they really could have just cast a woman to play Lay Zhang's character...? But I suppose they still need to have men be the ones to have comically swollen and banged-up faces, maybe for sensitivity reasons.

I have to say this is a very, very fun role for Dilraba Dilmurat. She does NOT suit the part, but she sure did her best and I lol'd when they tacked on the "actually she is a rich heiress!" bit because yeah, that makes her marginally more believable. And I did find this pretty nostalgic! A lot of the story beats felt very familiar, which isn't always a bad thing in the year 2026, and some of the callbacks were pretty fun. It also just meant that it could hardly surprise a laugh out of me because I could see a lot of the punchlines coming.

Para-Paraan (Finding a Way Through) (2026) dir. Mae Chan Li

A 10-minute short film about disability and accessibility and design, told as a thoughtfully curated "day in the life of" episode that shows how wheelchair-accessible spaces are not truly wheelchair-accessible. The main character, a wheelchair user who lives alone, wakes up with a three-item to-do-list: pick up meds, withdraw cash from the ATM, and get groceries. This was shot in the Ortigas area, one of the more familiar and "accessible" and developed business/shopping districts in Metro Manila. The roads have bike lanes, the banks have ramps, the malls have elevators with large signs about giving way to priority citizens, but are these systems truly designed to benefit people with their disabilities? And in cases where systems are well-designed, can they work when society doesn't participate?

This was so short but so quiet, focused, and efficient; every single point it tried to make landed (and in fact, I gasped several times in those 10 minutes). 10/10.

*

Runo! (2026) dir. Lysa Catolico & Jazmine Gin R. Pateña

A 15-minute animated short film about a dog who sets out to find her owner in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. ;__; JAIL. JAIL FOR EVERYONE WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. I was so stressed during the entire runtime because I was expecting the worst outcomes lol. Thankfully, the hungry doggie did not decide to eat zombies in desperation. And thankfully her human (yes, they reunite) was not actually asking her dog to eat her. Anyway, this was very engaging, everyone was so invested, and a couple of girls in the audience audibly cried.

*

給阿嬤的情書 Dear You (2026) dir. Lan Hongchun

To quote a guy in the audience: "This is just like The Odyssey, bro!"

Dear You is a sweeping historical dramedy about the Teochew diaspora in Bangkok (but told from the lens of mainland China and its values), the families they left behind, and the letters that bridge the distance in spite of mutual illiteracy. The movie is largely in Teochew (I'm curious if this is the same variant they speak in Thailand), with bits of Mandarin and Thai. The main character is Den Bhagseng a.k.a. Iron Fish, a bright-eyed and scrappy young man who flees China to avoid conscription. He spends the rest of his years in Southeast Asia, away from his family and only staying present in their lives through the remittance letters (僑批 qiaopi) he sends back.

Read more

Den Bhagseng's role from then on becomes that of the romanticized and misunderstood hero on both ends—his wife in China disavows him for starting a new family, and his landlady in Thailand—assumed to be his new wife—disdains him for being crude and unable to afford rent. For a movie that's not remotely character-driven, I think it does well in introducing him as a sweet, single-minded guy who's fiercely loyal to anyone he cares about and as such is devoted to his family back home. But he also carries the burden of being the Ideal Martyr and so his tragedies were less emotionally affecting than that of the people he was uplifting.

Do I think it's a good movie? Well, it's not as melodramatic as I expected but still quite Dramatic. The use of Teochew language and the unintentional sapphic-coded storyline were definitely what elevated it for me lol. It's the type of movie that has a surprise woman-focused center and I'm soft on that even though it is, at heart, a story about the importance of men.

The whole storyline where the people exchanging letters were illiterate working-class people and needed someone to read and write for them was also suitably moving. It reminds us that the most fundamental reason to learn how to read, write, and expose ourselves to literature, is because it's human to express ourselves to each other.

There were some Weird bits too. The "oooh, Grandpa slept with everyone in town, what a playboy" bit at the beginning was so extraneous and ill-fitting? Its stances on identity and racial politics were very modern-day China-coded, but at least most of it made sense in the PoV of first-generation immigrants...? The friendship between Den Bhagseng and the landlady was definitely underbaked and unsatisfying. And the baby acquisition that was meant to be a touching full-circle thing was too bizarre for me to emotionally connect to as intended, but okay, we stan an ace/aro queen who is in a mysterious situationship with her guy friend's wife.

tl;dr - I think this is an interesting movie to watch, even if it's only to hear a full-length movie in Teochew language. I'm really curious what other people think about it, especially other SEA Chinese...

Edit: Made a fanmix with lyric notes here!

-



Just finished (with great difficulty) volume 1 of Ning Yuan's The Creator's Grace in both Chinese and English (and in their respective cutoffs). \o/ I don't really know how to describe this novel. Sapphic psychological thriller in a vague science fiction setting? (I'm still unsure how much science fiction is in this, we're kind of just learning as we go.) I thought it would be a murder mystery, but Murder and Mystery are two separate elements here. It's certainly mysterious about everything!

PLOT: Chi Yu's sister dies under very suspicious circumstances—apparent homicide declared as suicide, the original autopsy report covered up. Believing the murderer to be her sister's lover Ran Jin, Chi Yu does everything in her power to expose her and bring her down. But the closer Chi Yu gets to the truth, the less certain she is about the world she always thought she knew.

This novel opens with revenge drama theatrics: Chi Yu in Ran Jin's apartment, then in her sister's dress, then in Ran Jin's arms as they dance in the middle of the room with cameras flashing around them. And just as Chi Yu is ~giving everyone something to talk about~, the novel does the (record scratch) You may be wondering how we got here thing and jumps back to events from one month ago.

Thoughts (no spoilers):

I'm personally not a fan of the long flashback with sprinklings of Key Details and Tropey Interactions (it kind of feels like watching The Untamed...), but if I were reading it serially the way it was originally published, maybe I would not have minded? I mean, I still would have minded Qi Tong's strange knowledge of all of Ran Jin's meet-ups (which thankfully is addressed later on), and the lack of any real explanation/details for Chi Yu's Great Biometrics Heist, but I enjoyed seeing the main characters show different facets of themselves to other people and even objects. It gave them depth even when plot wasn't progressing. Before I knew it, Ran Jin went from stoically tortured celebrity CEO love interest (I was so skeptical of her at the beginning lol) to being a character I was emotionally invested in. I really loved Ran Jin's characterization! Even with all the head-hopping, she's so intriguingly opaque, an outsider to her own mind and body. You can only read her through her reactions and the fragments of self-loathing that pierce through the veil. Throughout it all, Chi Yu's grief for her sister persists, resurfacing again and again with memories that frequently feature Ran Jin.

The storytelling style and pace for volume 1 felt a lot like a cdrama, the way it leads you from scene to scene like there's a camera following them around. For a book that doesn't describe much, the effect is quite visual. I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the scene where Ran Jin looks out the window and her face is obscured by the city lights; this particular image is seared into my brain. I also liked the use of literary devices(?)—"devouring" and "beast" are words often used to add to the atmosphere, especially where Chi Li's company and her secrets are concerned... Chi Li's scents, her deep, warm perfume and acrid cigarette smoke, linger around Chi Yu like ghosts, remnants of a person Chi Yu soon realizes she does not truly know. Many such moments, scattered through the volume.

I really enjoyed the readalong experience of this (which I guess is the closest thing I get to the serial experience), there's SO much room for speculation and theorizing. I have gone from "aliens" to "vampires" to "clones" to "alternate universes" and by the end of the volume had nothing but the lack of vampirism confirmed... Based on the comments of rereaders, there are going to be huge payoffs for everything we've seen, but as a first-time reader I think that requires a great degree of trust. 😂 We're already 25% through (maybe more, if you don't count the extras) and I'm worried that the eventual plot reveals will not live up to the thrill of speculation. Then again by the time the second translated volume comes out I will probably have forgotten everything.

Anyway here is my summary of The Creator's Grace volume 1, in the PoV of Lu Siqing, Ran Jin's protective friend:

Briefly checked out this LGBTQ + (Southeast) Asian comic exhibit + the little comic fest upstairs—I wasn't really planning on buying anything but it felt wrong not to, so I got Cry, or the Witch Will Come by Syo.Era from the Du Bút Books table because I'm an easy mark when it comes to witches. I may even read it soon!!! (I'm very bad at reading physical books/comics okay) ETA: I have read it, it's not a wlw comic, just a gen one with grief, freelancing witching, and demonic sheep.

Also picked up some stickers by phan even though I'm on a self-imposed sticker/stationery ban... At least I learned that white cat is "mèo trắng" in Vietnamese. XD

Photos of haul

Word list:
能源产业 energy industry
开采权 mining rights
夺 to seize
绯闻 salacious gossip
传闻 rumors/hearsay
葬礼 funeral
靠山 backer/patron
唠叨 to nag
一丝不苟 meticulous
航班 flight
直梯 elevator
身世 family background
爱屋及乌 to love the house and its crow (idiom)

Journal photos (3)

Crack/plot theories (as of chapter 7):

Ran Jin is secretly an alien and needs the moon minerals to 1) fulfill her mission, 2) live peacefully with Chi Yu. She has problems understanding human emotions and wears Clark Kent contact lenses which function as disguise technology. (Sadly, this has been debunked in the chapter where they reveal that she has living parents but the Clark Kent disguise contacts are still a possibility—!!!)

Ran Jin is a human experiment/clone and there are actually two of them swapping out. The one who speaks with Chi Yu on the phone at the beginning of chapter 4 is the Other One.

Chi Yu was brainwashed and/or has forgotten a traumatic event that happened between her last visit (New Year's) and Chi Li's death.

Chi Yu is an alien who took over the original Chi Yu's body but their memories got mixed up (I'm just very attached to one of them being an alien lol)