halfcactus

I was getting tired of the chaos of Twitter, so I started a Youtube account for... Zhang Xincheng things. As much as I really miss working on my desktop and having more control over typography and design, this has been a really fun exercise of learning how to do new things and learning a bit about how Youtube works (I always thought the end cards/links were automatically generated, but turns out they are manually activated!). And anyway, I find screenrecording on mobile/tablet so much easier than on desktop.

And while I don't expect anyone, even my fellow enthusiasts in the Anglosphere, to watch all 11 minutes of this cut of his livestream that I put together from my 999 Twitter posts about it, PLEASE APPRECIATE MY CUTE 8-SECOND INTRO (that I trimmed from an edit that I did earlier this week haha).


(The reason I'm moving to Youtube is because Vimeo has a space limit, and I think it's best to keep my Vimeo as my more "artistic" and "creative" space.)

And if anyone's wondering, the apps I use are primarily InShot for trimming and editing and yeeting to Twitter, and Video Captions for captioning. For that compilation vid, I used Lumafusion which I don't actually recommend because it's paid and expensive (one-time fee, no trial) and still doesn't support subtitle tracks, and not fun, and definitely not for people who have no video-editing experience (it's more similar to desktop software, but with fewer features, though specially designed for mobile/tablet). It is excellent for exporting and better for longer videos, since InShot has so limited compression options (it's designed for social media use), you end up with giant files which I almost immediately delete from my phone/tablet.

Honestly I was going to write an entire post about app pros and cons because I have 8934853489 opinions and very specific needs but I GOT DISTRACTED.

Links to my accounts: YouTube | Vimeo

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In other news, I got a new watch, a Garmin Lily:


I originally bought it for the look and size (it's a watch that was especially designed for small wrists and fashionability) with a little bit of wanting to learn more about myself, but I actually... like it a lot?!? In the grand spectrum of fitness watches, this is probably more on the side of casual use, but I've honestly always liked tracking my exercise (with a very lax definition of exercise; mostly I just stretch my back for 10-15 mins) because it makes me feel like I'm doing something with my life. It's also summer and I tend to be more physically active in the summer with the logic of "since I'm already sweaty and suffering, I might as well get sweatier and suffer some more". I've really enjoyed the ease with which I can just doubletap the watchface to let my watch know that I'm engaging in a physical activity, and doubletap to tell it that the activity has stopped, and then I can see how hard my heart has been working during that timeframe (evidently not as hard as I always think haha).

The annoying thing about it is that the Garmin Connect app doesn't work without an internet connection, and the interface isn't great. The primary product is the watch, so it's not a dealbreaker, but it annoys me. XD

Other cons: gesture responsiveness (responsive enough, but only just—and if you turn up the sensitivity it's too sensitive; and not instantaneous), sleep tracking (which I don't care about, but if you do, this watch is very bad at it).

September... flew. I had to go back and reread my own tweets to remember what happened. /o\

Media log

他們都說我遇到了鬼 by 青色羽翼 (English: They All Say I Met a Ghost by Cyan Wings)
This was a book club read, and we finished the main novel right before Mid-autumn Festival which was apt and fortunate in light of Mid-Autumn busy-ness.

TL;DR - I agree with superborb's review which includes a handy synopsis!

My main thought about this book is that I think it works best in other mediums where other PoVs can be more organically incorporated: I've listened to bits of the audiodrama and enjoyed it, but I think it would be even better as a visual medium like a comic or an animated series. The writing is best when it stages the comedic scenes that highlight the differences between what Shen Jianguo (the main character) sees and what other characters see.

To me the book has a very rocky start, but gets better: when we first meet Shen Jianguo, the dense-ness of his PoV felt overdone. Between his exaggerated obliviousness, and the confusing circumstances of the first ghost he meets (Mr. Saw), I wasn't sure it was my type of humor. But I think these were the chapters where the author was still figuring out how to write the book and the characters. The writing and humor certainly get more refined as you go on—my level of engagement peaked between chapters 13 to 30, before the author rushed their way towards the ending.

The women are written so lovingly! My favorite parts were all the arcs involving the girl ghosts. The author really took their time with telling their stories, making for the most heartwarming resolutions and bittersweet partings. When you see the MC interact with the girl ghosts, you understand why he was so popular with school AND why the ML falls in love with him. These are the parts that shone for me the most. The author's end-of-chapter skits for the girls' ending were also really funny.

The romance was smooth, stress-free, and basically just a side dish. I enjoyed it more for how the romance characterized Shen Jianguo than what the relationship or the ML (an exorcist from a well-known family) was like.

In conclusion: I enjoyed this book for the middle bits. XD It's a nice and easy book if you want a short and funny story with a gay main character who's very comfortable and confident in his sexuality (and his pecs!). Although there is some romance, the overall vibe of this novel was very gen! Also, apart from being a poor grad student, the main character was completely self-sufficient and did NOT need any saving at all, which was nice! He's very athletic and earnest.


CONTENT NOTES: gruesome deaths (though the writing is very good at focusing more on the afterlife), bullying and abuse (of ghosts in their former lives), and the MC's unquestioning trust in the entire justice system



Couple of Mirrors


Also known as the 12-episode Republican era GL show! Or, as our groupwatch lovingly calls it, murder wives.

Once again linking to superborb's entry on this, because anything I wanted to say, she already said. https://superborb.dreamwidth.org/476320.html

And here is my gif/livetweet thread.

Things I made in September

Kamen Rider Build stickers: this was a collaboration with lunarflares and hoodlessmads. We wanted to thank kuyamars for streaming the ENTIRE show for us and also for drawing Chihayafuru fanart for EACH of us during our Chihayafuru groupwatch!

[fanvid] Kamen Rider Build - Seishun Amigo: This has a target audience of 1 (me). I firmly believe that Seishun Amigo should be the theme song to the Kamen Rider Build movie, and needed to make my vision a reality. The lyrics match PERFECTLY, you can't change my mind.

A Mid-Autumn Dice Game cheat sheet: My Chinese side comes from a part of Xiamen/Fujian where the Mid-Autumn practice is to play a dice game for prizes (traditionally mooncakes of different sizes, but we just customize our prizes). This year my brother suddenly wanted to ~revive tradition~ so I designed a visual guide for winning dice combinations. :P I made a colored one but it has mistakes I'm too lazy to edit, and this black-and-white printer-friendly one where you can color in the dice yourself. Anyway the most notable thing about it is that I drew the diagrams on Google Slides. Very pleased that we can do that now!

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Currently

Watching: The Justice:


A Republican era show about banking, marriages of conveniences, and revenge. Cast includes Zhang Xincheng and Cai Wenjing as the leads, with Liang Jie as one of the supporting characters. I wouldn't recommend this show, but I think it's very good at telling women's stories. It has a very complex and refreshingly consistent FL that I find is very challenging to play! I'm halfway through and I think I'm starting to genuinely enjoy it (the fallout of the first 20 eps), but IMO they should have just removed most of the ML's scenes from the first half, which I felt were a waste of airtime––especially since his character is just an empty suit of plot armor and contradictions.

What I enjoy the most about it is the FL's other relationships. She has such fun and genuine relationships with other people that the main romance feels very fake (which is not aided by the ML being, in gixi's words, a cryptid). This is definitely a script issue because the actress thought so too. And I wonder if that contributed to how reluctant and emotionally flat her character seemed in the scenes where the intent was romantic tension.

Livetweet thread (with occasional gifs, if ZXC is stripping) here.


Reading: The Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky: This is my first time reading a poetry collection designed with a narrative structure, and while I knew what I was getting into (I've read excerpts before), I almost immediately had to put it down because of how distressing it was. :( It's a book about a stageplay about a nation that decided to turn deaf after a soldier shot a deaf child. The writing and images are extremely evocative. (I'm especially sensitive to child harm so I haven't been able to pick this back up.)

Also on AO3

Second attempt at vidding--the first one was in 2018, and it took me an entire month to put out something that was barely over a minute long. I used a trial version of Adobe Aftereffects last time, learning as I went, but I can uhhh no longer get AE to work for me? So I downloaded Davinci Resolve 15 (free) and I like it! I don't vid so I don't really have any basis of comparison, but for simple vidding with typesetting (like in the video) I found it pretty intuitive to use. I guess it helps that I've used AfterEffects that one time so I have a rough idea of keyframing basics so I can get the type to behave how I want it to.

I'm not very sure what other features it has. I still don't know how color grading works (took me forever to desaturate the Dear Missy clips--if I had to replicate a type of coloring, I wouldn't be able to do it), and if I can do any kind of masking in it. There's a fancier paid version that has more bells and whistles and motion graphics functionality, but I probably don't need those?

Anyway I'm trying to be better at documenting my process, so:

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