halfcactus

Games + journaling: Legend of Mana, Legend of Tian-ding

2026-05-21T14:02:49Z

Legend of Mana

Finished the Legend of Mana remaster last weekend! It was unexpectedly gay. The straight love triangle was bland, the straight + serial-monogamist centaur ended up single (I really liked how it was friends-to-lovers-to-friends from the siren's PoV), the clinically (and relatably) depressed boy and his tirelessly optimistic partner were extremely moving... and finally... the lesbians. The lesbians were a knight/priestess you-and-me-against-our-entire-clan storyline with a touch of yandere-ness and genderfluidity. They were the game's most important arc too and they have you going through so much Plot and tragedy before revealing that actually this is a love story.

Anyway, more thoughts here and more photos of my physical journal pages here.

The Legend of Tian-ding

In today's episode of impulse buying (the perils of browsing the discounted section of the Nintendo eshop...), I've picked up The Legend of Tianding, a 2D platformer set in Dadaocheng, Taipei under the Japanese occupation. You play the (real-life) Taiwanese folk hero Liao Tian-ding, a hot-blooded young rebel who steals from the rich, shares with the poor, and, well, gives Japanese soldiers who get in his way a thorough thrashing. Incidentally I'm also playing the murder mystery game Murders on the Yangtze River, which occurs in roughly the same time period (early 1900s), so I feel like I'm getting a more comprehensive historical education. XD

The spoken language in The Legend of Tianding is Taiwanese Hokkien. I can only understand around 10 words, but it's nice to hear in a videogame. I'm playing on story mode (which the game calls "Gentleman Thief" mode) but it's still a struggle for me. 😂 The design and interface are very nice to look at and the cutscenes have a dynamic comicbook-like style. I've uploaded some screencaps and GIFs here.

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@thefridayfive 2026.05.15

2026-05-16T16:35:47Z

1. How often do you hear live music?
Uhhh whenever a friend has an important(?) gig. I also try to see one or two musicals a year. For actual musical artists, I'm just never really enough of a fan to justify the trouble of watching a concert.

2. What was your favorite live musical performance ever?
Recency bias: ONE OK ROCK (whose music is meant to be experienced live)

3. Do you play an instrument, or sing?
I can play a couple of videogame songs on the piano, but very, very badly. I will never improve. Then again, everyone needs a hobby that they're hopelessly terrible at. It's liberating. Unfortunately, I'm mediocre at best at all my other interests/endeavors, which is not as liberating, just depressing lol

4. Have you ever performed music onstage?
On high school graduation day, everyone had to go onstage to sing as a chorus.

5. Who is your favorite musician?
Can I just say Vienna Teng for how long I've been listening to her... A huge fan of The National as well for High Violet.

-

Just finished Legend of Mana! I missed around 5 quests (there are 67 total) but I think it's a sufficient experience of the game? I can't exactly say I loved it, but I'll miss it. I'll miss having something I can be fully absorbed in (especially since the rerecorded soundtrack is so soothing and the colorful graphics comforting), and I'll miss writing/drawing my progress on my physical journal.

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Set this world on fire now

2026-05-01T05:48:42Z

The Kickstarter for The Crane Rider's Tale, a Chinese fantasy-inspired murder mystery is live! I hope it gets funded, I'm really looking forward to it. The art style, the ability to RIDE A BIRD, and the murder mystery aspect already have me sold. The cited influences (besides Disco Elysium) are also games I have on my wishlist...!

A cool website: Mahjong: a Visual Guide with Hong Kong and Taiwan rulesets.

Photos of recent eats. I'm still a little sick—thankfully it's a long weekend, but me not making a full recovery in 12-24 hours is making me antsy.

I caught the ONE OK ROCK - Detox Tour movie last week. The theater surround sound + audio editing really made me feel like I was there, I was so hyped for Make It Out Alive and The Beginning. (And, as a bonus, I had Din Tai Fung for dinner, so I have nothing but positive associations.)

I read the first 6 volumes of Touma Rei's The Water Dragon's Bride, a shoujo manga about a girl who is transported to another world and chosen as a sacrificial bride. Very 2000s animanga vibes but lacking an interest in details. Thoughts here.

I've been posting more on Bearblog lately bc it's less social (and thus anxiety-inducing) and I like the Discovery feed where you can see the posts of other blogs! I hope the platform doesn't die...???

It's so hot haha and electricity rates have been spiking again haha and according to the news other countries might build data centers here haha (but I suppose I'm glad that we still have power since a month ago we were worried about rationing electricity)

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like butter scraped over too much bread

2026-04-22T04:37:49Z

I am now 10 chapters into The Fellowship of the Ring (via audiobook), here are my journal pages on it. I'm a full month behind the Shelved by Genre (podcast) pace, and a lot of the things that are being discussed go right over my head anyway, but I'm enjoying having the readalong experience.

Some photos I took this month: 4 photos of flowers + 1 of a magnificent chicken that I passed by on the small residential road that I privately think of as "the chicken path". I'm trying to be better at ID-ing plants but it's not really going well.

I'm at the part of Legend of Mana where I have gotten the Sword of Mana artifact? But I still have so many quests left? Even though I totally messed up the artifact placements and have been locked out of a bunch of other quests? Shoutout to this beautifully designed Legend of Mana fansite + walkthrough which is so neatly organized and ad-free. Without its step-by-step dungeon guides I would have dropped this game within 5 hours and left too many quests unfinished because I can't be bothered to explore from place to place.

Just set up a personal fantranslation site (halfxin.bearblog.dev) for organizing old works--just audiodrama clips and fancomics for now. I'm not fannishly active in any capacity anymore, I just like clean websites.

Misc. links

Zhang Linghe’s face is the real star of Pursuit Of Jade – and that’s the point - h/t douqi, an entertaining little piece about the economics of TV and attractiveness.

深渊猫猫: A 4-koma-style slice-of-life comic on Bilibili about living with an eldritch cat.

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Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders

2026-03-25T10:01:00Z

Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders is a point-and-click mystery game set in Tang Dynasty China. Currently on sale on the Switch store for $2, and on the Steam store for less. You play the famous historical figure / novel character Di Renjie (also known as Judge Dee in pop culture) during the fledgling days of his career, beginning with the murder of a Korean diplomat in Penglai. You tie up the case neatly and earn the recognition of Emperor Gaozong. But something about its resolution feels unsettling, unfinished, leaving you with cryptic, recurring dreams. A few months later, you are summoned by the newly crowned emperor Wu Zetian to the capital city of Chang'an to solve a string of murders, each signed with a silk rose.

This is a short, tight game with a fairly straightforward plot whose sense of urgency comes with the shadow of regret and a deep anxiety towards the future. I'm personally not so fond of serial-killer storylines, but Chang'an visualized through pixel art was so charming and appealed to my guzhuang drama sensibilities and I didn't have to sit through 40 drawn-out eps to get to the ending (my total playtime as Person Who Is Bad at Puzzles is around 7 hours). I liked how Detective Di's motivations are tied with Wu Zetian's and how the pursuit of justice swings between personal and political. There's a cinematicness to the scene reenactments that I found really effective. The game is quite clear about its direction that the reveals have little in the way of surprise, but it ends in an emotionally cohesive note and overall I just really liked the environments and the historical setting and the feeling that it was a labor of love..

The puzzles were a nice mix of textual, tactile, and visual types, from keys to letters to weiqi boards—my personal favorite is the one where you have to beat the drums. There's also a neat mechanic where you can make improvised tools by "combining" items.

Misc. screencaps

Me: Check out this CONSPIRACY BOARD
liuet: All three of those white stones are illegally on the board

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Thank you for the paid time <3

2026-03-19T01:21:53Z

Thank you kind anon for the paid time ♥

Life updates:

I watched a local showing of A Chorus Line, which ends my streak of pre-booked outside/leisure time. Now I'm back to the hermit life.

We had one last cold surge from the northeast monsoon, as cold as 23C at daytime. Weather is warming up now but still pleasantly cool.

Currently groupwatching the How Dare You!? cdrama. We did try the donghua, but the Youtube subs were MTL and unbearable. (I vaguely recall iQiyi having human-translated subs? But we can't be bothered to subscribe just for that, so.) I guess it worked out because the cdrama pacing and visuals have been much more enjoyable while paying homage to the donghua.

I set up a new Feedly account because I miss reading old-school blogs (outside of Dreamwidth)! If anyone has any blog/Substack recs, I'd love to hear them. I've resubscribed to Kottke, Cup of Jo, and The Marginalist (formerly Brainpickings) because it comforts me to see old blogs still going strong.

The narra tree across the street has begun practicing how to bloom. So far it's just a few flowers here and there which I think has been attracting orioles (I usually just hear them flying around, now I can see them). Summer is coming.

I picked up some sort of Detective Di game because it was on sale for $2 on the Switch store and am enjoying it so far. Here we have Detective Di having a Mei Changsu moment.

Current events, local and international, continue to be very bleak, I hope everyone is doing well.

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If the end is right, it justifies the beans.

2025-09-11T15:16:07Z

1.
Some manhwa I read at the end of August:

Shall We Bathe, Your Grace?; Savor the Taste; Live Happily Ever After With My Ex's Uncle (DNF)

All on Manta:

Shall We Bathe, Your Grace? (m/f, complete): Short, cracky, fairly standard romance, tropey villains. Plot gets progressively mediocre, the bigger it becomes, but it's short. The FL gets transmigrated to a pseudo-European fantasy world and struggles with the lack of hygiene and sanitation standards. Although her new family is very loving, they have also forbidden her to bathe, citing bathing as the cause of her illness. She finds a kindred spirit in the duke who is notorious in high society for being scrupulously clean and obsessed with bathing. The obvious solution is to marry him and get unlimited access to baths. Eventually they become a power couple that changes the world, one hygiene practice at a time, fighting scientific misinformation by... equating water and bathing with divinity.

Savor the Taste (m/f complete): As always, the initial cooking plot is pretty fun, and the transition to romance and Big Plot is meh, but it's also fairly short. Plot: the ML is cursed so all food tastes bad to him (...which reminds me of Covid) so he avoids eating. The FL, a transmigrator from the modern world, is about to executed as the princess of a subjugated nation, but because she's Quirky, she brought a snack as her last meal, which she offers to the ML. Unexpectedly the ML finds it delicious and this gives her a path to survival: he delays her execution, brings her back to his estate to cook for him, and falls in love.

The storyline with the FL's half sister is actually pretty good! Her sister is a beautiful and honorable princess, and the reason where their nation is conquered in the first place. The emperor courted her, was rejected, and decided the best recourse was to take her nation, kill her family, and keep her as a caged bird. This puts the FL at odds with her: her sister wants to avenge her family and take the FL with her to protect her, not knowing that the FL has fallen in love with the duke. It's resolved in a bittersweet way that I really like, even though I find the plot unimpressive (they add it some stuff about witches too which I don't think blends well) and the romance too bland to warrant the drama.

Live Happily Ever After With My Ex's Uncle (DNF): Misleading teaser which makes it seem like the ML is happy to be used by the FL. Atrocious translation (I think this might be Kuaikan's own translation, and Manta is only distributing it). Dogsblood. You're better off reading Marry My Husband.

I also finished Semantic Error, which I loved all the way to the end, even though I needed a few more chapters for closure. It's the first time I've been disappointed in a manhwa for not having extras. I wanted to know more about Sangwoo (MC)'s family relationships and previous romantic relationship. All you get from the manhwa is that he does have a family, and he did used to date, but none of these are ever shown or treated as relevant information Still, it was a lot of fun, and all those scenes where Jaeyoung (ML) calls Sangwoo and prompts him to tell him all about his day felt like food for my heart.

2.
Into the Woods

Oh, if life were made of moments / even now and then a bad one—! / But if life were only moments / then you'd never know you had one

Saw a local staging for Into the Woods. It was my first time experiencing the musical in any form, and I enjoyed every moment. ( Read more... )

I Am Setsuna
A year ago, I started this song purely because the Spotify algorithm played me this song:

I've been playing it on and off ever since, and when I finally heard the song in the game, at the very end of the story, you bet I teared up. I'm glad I finished it and got my catharsis! I was pretty ready to DNF it because I found it to be kind of a slog—the characters felt deliberately familiar as the entire game is modeled on classic JRPGs, but nothing about them was individually compelling. Gameplay-wise, I don't think I really enjoyed it until almost the end when I got access to the MP-recovering Spritnite (Gagnrath) and settled on a rotation of characters (Endir, Setsuna, and Nidr/Aeterna). On the plus side: it is so short and linear and totally finishable! And yeah, pretty nostalgic! I was worried about getting lost in dungeons because there were no maps, but non-random encounters made it easy to tell if I've been through an area or not. ^^;

My final party was Endir (lv 60), Setsuna (lv 56), and Aeterna (lv 53)—I spent an hour repeatedly challenging the Stoniel trio in the Last Lands and losing before realizing that the answer to all my problems was simply the Grand Cross triple combo. With Aeterna's crit rate boosted by her weapon and combo damage boosted by one of the Spritnites, none of the regular bosses in the final dungeon stood a chance. I was probably also over-levelled by the end of the game, which helped?

( random notes about the game—contains endgame spoilers )

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@thefridayfive 250905

2025-09-07T14:38:56Z

thefridayfive 25.09.05
https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/143006.html

1. When did you "lose your innocence"?
The first time I got into an internet fight as a teenager, the clique of white American girls I was fighting with devolved into wildly racist remarks and threats. I was too unaware of the world to be hurt by this behavior, but it was certainly eye-opening for someone who didn't even know that racial stereotypes existed. I guess it's true that you never forget your first. XD

2. Would you say you have an accent?
Yes, and there isn't any single language where I pass for native. Schoolmates have pointed out oddities in my Tagalog pronunciation; parents have laughed at how I pronounce some Cebuano words (I think I don't pronounce vowels hard enough?); superborb has ID'd my English as having a Filipino accent. This kind of thing used to bother me when I was younger because I have social anxiety and identity issues and people IRL are so weird about accents and languages... but now that I have a stronger sense of self, I've realized that... people are just stupid lol.

3. Do you hope to be married (married again if divorced)?
Every time I see my married/soon-to-be-married friends with their SOs, I think, awww, I might want they have. Marriage is conceptually hard for me to see myself in, though, especially since divorce is illegal where I am. I just want someone to take care of me haha.

4. If you could take one technology to a desert island (the obvious satellite phone excluded), what would it be?
My first thought was some kind of water filtration system and then I realized I am too dumb, lazy, and un-resilient for survival to be worth it.

5. What is the last activity you bought a ticket for?
A staged concert for Les Miserables in 2026. I'm not actually that hyped about it since I've already seen a full production and also ~outgrown~ my love for Les Mis (and all formative fandoms), but I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it when I'm there. The last FINISHED activity was a bus ride a couple days ago for an errand. And a few days before that, another musical.

This week:

Boosting geraineon's post on how to support Indonesia through Grab.

Trying to do Yoga With Kassandra's latest 30-day challenge which is 10–15 mins of yoga and pilates. On one hand, it takes away any exercise-related decision-making. On the other, I'm NOT enjoying it. As a very un-fit person whose activity is mostly mobility work, I'm suffering lol. But I have an accountability buddy so I haven't fallen off. Yet.

Picked up I Am Setsuna again since I got a notification that Nine Sols is 40% off which reminded me that I have a Switch. It's been four months since I held my Switch so I have completely forgotten what I'm supposed to do and where anything else is, but thankfully the game is super linear and the world relatively small. I'm at the point where I have 15 Orichalcum and I am experiencing decision paralysis on what to spend them on (as if it matters with the casual way I game!). And I think I'm on my way to the last leg of the main story? But I'm worried there won't be any more item/spritnite shops from hereon out so I've just been procrastinating. XD Favorite combos for revisiting previous dungeons are Blowbeat (Endir / Nidr - physical attack VS all enemies with a chance of afflicting Stun/Paralysis) and Astral Bloom (Aeterna / Julienne - AOE damage with all elemental attributes)... There's also one with Endir, Nidr, and Kir that targets all enemies but I forgot what it's called.

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那曾經吹過的風...

2025-07-25T09:26:44Z

Terrible week for SEA: 1) Flooding for those of us who are affected by the southwest monsoon, which obviously sucks more when your country is poor; 2) SEA once again being exploited by the US; [exhibit A, exhibit B]; 3) Border clashes and war (TH-KH)

( Read more... )

Bits and bobs:

Legend of Hei 2 started showing in China and I'm manifesting a quick digital release.

The Lovers (also known as the Filipino fish yuri short film) has updated to announce that they're hoping to hold a test screening for backers on Q1 2026. It will be another year before they post it publicly on Youtube as they're planning to premiere it in a bunch of international festivals first. I hope I don't miss the Kickstarter screening omg.

Gongsam, the creator of my fav manhwa Goldiluck, has been serializing a BL manhwa called Killer Whale Protocol. The English translation is set to come out next month on Manta (which sadly no longer has a monthly subscription option, maybe because it was too unprofitable).

Ever since Wingspan launched its Asia expansion last month, I've been playing it again and I'm even beginning to understand the game, or at least the goals. XD I can't express how much joy the Asia expansion has given me—I'm not one to care about cultural representation in media, but this one made me feel all the things, so I guess I feel represented by... birds. 😂 I learned from the Chinese audio track that hummingbird is 蜂鳥, which is cute, and mourning dove is still the same, 哀鴿. I'm actually considering getting the other expansions now that I'm playing for more than the bird noises and music.

Umamusume: Found out from Bluesky that Cygames "literally made yuri on ice before Yuri on Ice aired". Here is the GIF of Symboli Rudolf dipping and kissing Oguri Cap and looking smug while Oguri Cap just vibes to their romantic ice dance.

I have been SUPER obsessed with this artist's NieR: Automata art: https://bsky.app/profile/reimei-swd.bsky.social

On itch.io shadowbanning/deindexing games with NSFW content: someone made a great meme

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Recent fannish developments

2025-06-08T05:56:47Z

I've been neck-deep in a hundred different fandom projects that I have yet to cross-post but for the meantime, some bullet points:

Mangadex got hit with a big DMCA take-down, so that's a lot of fantranslations disappearing.

Justice in the Dark fandom had another round of tension at the end of May when Wowow released a statement about, idk, piracy and copyright infringement; in reaction to this, people started locking their accounts, deleting their posts, taking down translations(?)... I've also locked my Twitter account, more for fandom peace of mind than the fear of WWW seeing my GIFs/edits and cancelling the show lol. I've been having a lot of feelings about fandom, fandom norms, and Anglo cfandom experiences that I want to process but I'm too distracted to write about them. Anyway I'm pretty excited for the show to be fully released so the air feels more clear.

白鲨Jaws/Baishajaws (the band who does Link Click's theme songs) disbanded. I've only skimmed internet reactions but it seems like a messy situation involving copyright(?), pay, and allegedly the front man being a dick.

The Mo Du / Silent Reading audio drama hit a new streaming milestone, so they recorded a message thanking the listeners and wishing us the best. (I literally screamed when I got the update notification lol.)

A screenrecording of my subtitling process because I was showing someone how to sub on Resolve... Now I'm wondering if other apps (eg. Aegisub) are better, after all. (I use Resolve bc I also edit videos and I just supplement with other software, depending on my needs.)

On my reading list: Inside Gaming - Interview with Former Square Enix Translator Tom Slattery

Art advice by nn-ee-zz:

I keep finding out again and again that people react to my designs the most when I draw earnestly. I recommend the same to you, the world is a lot more interesting with your vision in it. If you’re scared people won’t like it just remember that you should be your biggest fan and that you’ll be glad you put your heart on paper. An honest design will last you a lot longer than a popular one. It’ll make you stand out more, too.

Art rec: Prutas card series (Rambutan / Papaya, Mango / Pineapple / Sugar Apple / Banana / Durian by emeldraws: anthropomorphized fruits, with very interesting design choices. I'm kind of obsessed with these!

368 chickens game (h/t superborb), my new source of distraction and rage.

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March

2025-04-01T13:33:45Z

Happy Eid!

Small victories, etc

After years of columbarium visits with 0 cat sightings, I have FINALLY spotted one of the infamous garden cats (pictured above)!!! It came out of the garden, right where the family vault was. This one was very affectionate and twined around my legs when I invited it to approach, suddenly nipped me on the knee (without breaking skin) before sauntering off, then returned to me for more scritches. On a different day, I saw a different cat sleeping at the entrance near the flower shop but it had the vibes of a street cat and not a forbidden fruit. Anyway, good month for cat sightings!

Set up S****** on my parents' smart TV so they can watch movies that aren't on Netflix without me and my USB stick. I've seen news that R*** D***** is dead but it works fine on their TV when otherwise the streams would have been unwatchable from infinite buffering.

Learned how to play the Switch on docked mode (after a year of owning this Switch)... Still playing I Am Setsuna and still dropping the game every time I have to enter another dungeon. /o\ I have no idea how far along I am, but it's far enough to have access to the Spritnite that allows me to recover a generous amount of MP every time I defeat an enemy, while not far enough to have recruited a character with the Shadow attribute (it has to be the Reaper, right?).

Found an old notebook that I had been using to learn the lyrics of Chinese songs by translating by hand... Threw it out without hesitation because 1) I don't need to refer back to it anymore 2) my level of comprehension back then is probably outdated and full of rookie mistakes. I do miss the practice of sitting down and writing everything by hand and going through every line word by word, I am so lazy and unfocused now.

Btw I have a computer now! I bought it from my brother's friend who owns a computer shop, which landed me a considerable discount AND reliable/free delivery. I've mostly been using it for watchpartying, online purchasing, posting on DW, and watching videos. I'm trying to ease my way back to do other stuff (making icons, edits, fansubs, etc) but I'm enjoying lying down too much. ^^;

Links of interest:

llonkrebboj/fwoopersongs's translation (with footnotes and all) of Song Dongye's Anhe Bridge, which has become one of my fav songs in recent years (with thanks to jianghuchild who had specifically requested an edit set to this for last year's Cdrama Gotcha for Gaza).

pauraque's post about Until Then, a slice-of-life/supernatural visual novel set in the Philippines (playable on Steam [Windows] and PS5). (H/t rionaleonhart, who also wrote about it here.) I hope there's a Switch release someday!

Mezzanine Theater Diary: a Letterboxd-like app for logging/rating/reviewing the shows you watch and seeing other user-submitted reviews. Sadly this seems purely app-based.

默讀 (Silent Reading / Mo Du) was recently updated with new extras, which I hope are reflected in the official English translation... I've only read 181 to 183, but they're very cute! President Fei and Captain Luo go on a road trip. :D What are the chances that they record these for the audio drama...

This photoshoot makes me imagine a NANA AU where Nana had dated Reira instead of Ren.

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Videogame Log

2024-11-29T16:12:40Z

Don't really game anymore (especially because most of them give me motion sickness) but thought I'd take a page out of rionaleonheart's book and try to log all the games I can remember playing...

2026 update: finished Legend of Mana (Remastered)

( games! )

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Let rise the dreams of your heart...

2024-10-04T09:48:42Z

Found out from lassarina in this week's What Are You Playing Wednesday that LUNAR (Remastered) is coming out in 2025!!!

I'm not excited for the dungeon crawling + random encounters, but I really want to re-experience the OST again. (Though a little sad that song in the trailer seems like a rerecording and the singer doesn't sound like Jenny Stigile?)

Lunar: SSSC is one of the formative core memories I've completely forgotten about. I played it at home, and then watched my cousins do their own playthrough when I was visiting, and roleplayed scenes with a classmate I've completely lost touch with after high school... Replayed Luna's boat scene again and again at night so I could write down the lyrics... Tortured everyone with shrill recorder versions of Thoughts So Far Away. XD So... yeah! One of the few games I actually made memories with outside of my bubble of solitude, forgotten until today.

AND would you believe that LunarNET is still up with the downloadable midis and mp3s of the series OSTs? :')

(I'm also waiting for Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, a less formative musical game, to go on sale... it's bundled with a sequel I've never played, so it costs too much at regular price.)

-

+ Found the Dreamwidth journaling community journalsandplanners!!! Posted a little photodump here of my current planner... I was really conscientious about keeping up my physical journaling for the first months of the year, and then my anxiety demons took me. =_=; I'm trying to get back into it now that I'm sane again and able to relax. :')

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September log

2024-09-30T13:19:41Z

WEBTOONS/MANGA:
Wrote about I'll Be Matriarch in This Life + See You in My 19th Life + A Sign of Affection here.

DNF A Sign of Affection because I 1) found out it was still ongoing, 2) lost my urge to bingeread shoujo/otome comics.

MOVIES:
Wrote about 我的少女時代 Our Times (2015) here, and 海角七號 Cape No. 7 (2008) + How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024) here.

GAMES:
Finished Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and enjoyed it!!! Even though I ended up still having questions about the plot, the twists in the last act really stuck the landing and got me in the feelings. I also really liked the way it shows how animals, humans, and ghosts have very different perspectives on life, deaths, and attachments... And the overall design and experience were pretty great, even though I was too dumb and impatient for this game. XD

CREATIVE WORK:

Subbed: 舍不得星星 You Are My Lover Friend trailer 1

So Close gifs: Shu Qi gifset / Karen Mok/Zhao Wei gifset

Mid-Autumn Dice Game rules (graphic/diagram): personal work, technically a repost from 2021, but I wanted to archive it

Sep 19 & 20 ~travel vlog~

Also made the graphics for NiF Exchange 2024 (technically just recycled last year's PSD to get it done fast)

Currently

PLAYING:
Fallen London, a free text-based + browser-based RPG... Idk how long I'll stick with it but I really like the mobile version! So far it's curbed my wild urges to keep starting new books/comics/games, which is good, because between the endless compulsions to start new books/comics and the frustration of never finishing anything, I was about to go crazy. And it's much healthier than gacha. Even though I almost left our laundry to get rained on because I'd just gotten a (rare!!!) temporary Danger buff lol. My character is named Santan, after a tropical flower.

WATCHING:
舍不得星星 You Are My Lover Friend, starring Wang Yuwen, Zhang Xincheng, and Guo Yunqi.

Would not recommend this to friends, but it's serviceable and relaxing as a background watch. While Wang Yuwen and Zhang Xincheng have very nice, warm "childhood friends" chemistry (likely due to them being IRL childhood friends with moms who are spreading leaks of their kissing scenes behind their backs), the characters are, though competent, kinda bland...

Enjoying the OP enough that I've never skipped it, though. :') And the show does manage well with its quieter moments of sweetness so I'm hoping it catches it rhythm sooner or later.

READING:
( Well I guess I should make a list lol )

Anyway Shortbox Comics is going live super soon and I'm trying to commit to only getting works by Filipino authors considering *gestures at reading list*. Not to mention I have yet to finish going through last year's Shortbox haul. XD

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Recents

2024-09-13T13:44:33Z

I'll Be the Matriarch in This Life also known as I Shall Master This Family (webtoon)

Webtoon based on the novel by Kim Roah, in which the FL goes back in time to rewrite her family's history, using her knowledge of future events to set herself up to become the next heir and exact vengeance on the Empress's family that ruined her. Along the way, she earns the respect and loyalty of various family members and employees/artisans/misc. NPCs, and wins the undying love of the Second Prince who has the same vengeance goals. The retcon begins when the FL is seven, and it takes around one hundred chapters for the timeskip to her eighteenth birthday, so for a lot of it she is this insufferably genius child that is doted on by her father (who is a talented fashion designer), her grandfather (the patriarch), her twin cousins, and her hypercompetent aunt.

I binged 160 chapters only to find out that this is still ongoing (oops). It's a very light and easy read with "yay! feminism" energy and a romance that's secondary to the main plot, and a series of politics and business arcs that, although repetitive, are the right amount of substantial without being too complicated for my brain. There's definitely not a lot of depth in the characters; people are very black-and-white, so any person who is in the FL's side is good (and will never betray her), and anyone against her is evil. The tension and emotional honesty peak when her father finally falls ill, as predicted, and the FL is an anxious mess. In contrast, the aunt's divorce storyline lacks the punch it deserves, falling into dramatic tropes instead of taking the opportunity to flesh out these other characters that are otherwise so important to the FL.

See You in My 19th Life also known as Please Take Care of Me in This Life As Well (webtoon)

Reincarnation romance webtoon based on the novel by Lee Hye, which also had a kdrama adaptation last year. The FL has the ability to remember her previous lives, leaving her jaded and unable to form attachments until she meets the ML in her latest incarnation. Things happen, the ML is super traumatized, and then we get to a timeskip to the FL drawing on all her experience from her previous lives to pursue the ML with shameless single-mindedness.

In typical me fashion, I would have preferred this to be a shorter canon. It started out really strong, with beautiful and heart-aching slice-of-life. Even after the timeskip the FL and ML have pretty good chemistry as adults. But the murder mystery/conspiracy and wild car chase plots dragged—the murder mystery especially.

That said, I really liked how the [maximum trauma event] that the ML survives is more than just emotional damage. He develops PTSD with episodes that are impossible to predict, and a hearing disability that not only affects his daily life in visible ways but also gives him anxiety of further hearing loss.

Our Times (2015 movie)

I found this an excellent nostalgia piece, set in the 90s and drawing storylines from 2000s dramas. Felt a lot like a Hanadan/Meteor Garden remake but with 2015 sensibilities. The cameos were very on-the-nose and by the time you get to the end it stops being its own thing and becomes 2000s RPF. XD It got me raring to rewatch a bunch of movies, which I wonder will withstand the test of time?

A Sign of Affection (manga)

Haven't finished this yet, but this is a fluffy romance canon centered around the FL's life of navigating university and working towards her life goals as a deaf person who communicates with sign language. I don't really care for the ML (he has this really bonkers idea about purity, especially at the beginning where he correlates it with the FL's deafness), but as far as MLs go he's probably one of the less bland ones. There's not much momentum but tons of fluff, and also an anime adaptation that came out just this year.

According to the mangakas, they did a lot of research and consult with someone from the deaf community to shape the FL's experiences and also draw the hand movements. I'm really interested in the FL's journey—she's presently still in the process of breaking out of her bubble and I'd love to see her meet people from different regions.

Ghost Trick
I'm around halfway through! It's a really good game to pick up when I'm anxious and need a little reset—I can just jump right in without trying to remember the plot (which is now thickening) or what I'm supposed to be doing. Except now I'm kinda stuck lol.

priest, "橋頭樓上"
24/32 chapters done. \o/ At this point I think I could just keep reading instead of stopping at 2 chapters / week... but alas, life. I've been remiss in taking vocab notes too, and as a result, my journal/planner is once again empty and making me sad.

接骨木花, "陰間沒有珍奶嗎？" (Google Books link)

I was reading what I thought was a sample on Google Books, but idk, maybe it's the whole thing after all? This is a YA novel(??) about two boys separated by death and bonded by bubble tea (which is very Taiwanese of it ahaha) and mutual pining, so I've been calling it the "boba boyfriends book" in my head. It's actually really easy to read!!! Google Books isn't letting me read with a pop-up dictionary, but I've been managing surprisingly fine with the context, the radicals, and the very plain writing style. For the first time I feel almost literate!!! A feeling that will be replaced by despair when I go back to reading Bridge Tower. XD

This is also my first time reading any kind of TW lit, so it was a lot of fun for me, reading a "different" kind of writing. I learned that 機車 is scooter and that the traditional from of 庙 is 廟. Idk if I'll continue but it seems quite short?

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August media log

2024-09-01T09:53:24Z

Link Click

Overall thoughts about the donghua

Season 1 was pretty great and well-paced. It had a case-of-the-day format for the first half, with filler cases between the heavy ones... The noodle girlfriends were sweet... And the entire basketball arc was so well done! But I wouldn't have finished this on my own because it's just too stressful for me.

Season 2 is almost purely plot-driven, but the plot wasn't that great... Without the time to breathe or the thread of emotional logic it had in season 1, the gendered violence and weaknesses in writing women were much more prominent. To be fair I don't think any of the characters are written well here (the main villain was cartoonishly bad), but the women definitely got the shorter end of the stick for me. It had a lot of missed opportunities with the lesser villains' motivations and character arcs, and one of the episodes had an extremely extended domestic violence scene.

AND episode 9 is a total waste of time. It was meant to be a "three stories" episode playing with different art styles, something that is normally my favorite kind of episode, but it ends up only showing us 1) nothing we didn't already know 2) information about the main villain that would have been better off revealed much earlier... The entire episode was like 26 minutes, and I was so annoyed by it I almost left the groupwatch ajskdl;ja;fdja;fa

First impression on manhua + live action adaptation

I checked out the manhua and live action afterwards to 緩一緩, and I'm really enjoying the manhua! Volume 1 has an opera troupe case set in the aftermath of the basketball arc, where you can see the emotional fallout and Lu Guang's attempt to give Cheng Xiaoshi some time travel therapy... Will definitely continue.

As for the live action adaptation... the Slam Dunk props are inconspicuous reminders that I'm watching a Sugarman Media production. :P The setup is also quite different, as Cheng Xiaoshi is superhuman in more than the specific time travel way... and he and Lu Guang meet as adults, with Lu Guang purposefully seeking him out to presumably set things right. (I haven't watched past episode 1, so it's still unclear what Lu Guang wants.)

热辣滚烫 YOLO (2024)
Chinese movie adaptation of 100 Yen Love.

Thoughts

I never saw the original, so I went into this assuming it was a sports movie, only to find out it wasn't as sports- and FL-centric as I initially thought.

The most interesting part about this movie for me is how it carefully avoids bodyshaming the main character, who for most of the movie is thirty years old, depressed, and fat. She ends up losing weight when she decides to get serious about boxing, but the focus is on how much better she feels when she pursues a goal and learns to do things for herself. The movie acknowledges her as not being conventionally attractive, but it also portrays her as being desirable, in a way that I found pretty natural and realistic.

That said, I don't think this was a very good movie... it uses that one cinematic gimmick that I've come to HATE in cmedia, in which scenes are omitted and then shown as "reveals" in the end, to purposes I don't understand... The main character's emotional arc would have been far more compelling from the get-go if it had been told in a regular, linear fashion!!!!!!!!!! The little 小紅花 montage would still have worked, I promise!!!!!!!

Anyway, I enjoyed the last 30-ish minutes (which had the training montage + ending), but I watched most of the middle bits in the fastest speed Netflix would allow me to watch it in.

The Double eps 1-20
DNF, but sometimes I go back to rewatch the music battle scenes (ep 11).

PS. Netflix appears to do this weird censored words thing where it avoids offensive language? Sometimes to ludricous effect. "Xiao jianren" got translated as "you cow" and "hellcat", which... okay...

Also saw other movies I saw when I was rooming with my parents (due to ant problems)! I think they were Oppenheimer and a recent Matt Damon heist movie (it wasn't great). Did another Kung Fu Hustle rewatch too, since it's apparently on Netflix, and yeah... still a classic. :) Curiously, I get more stressed watching this as an adult, in anticipation of the "painful" scenes (mostly in the first half, a.k.a. the best parts) which is funny because this movie is also now "comfort movie" status to me... Landlady with hair rollers you will always be a legend. ♥

-

Other recents:
( August life updates )

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Fanmix: 明明很愛你

2024-07-30T13:37:35Z

Re-posting because I was feeling nostalgic—technically it's a Qihun fanmix (concept: Gu Yu and Jiang Xueming make a mix CD together), but it's pretty much a 2000s Mandopop playlist with three out of the five S.H.E songs I know. Originally posted on Tumblr 3 years ago.

tracklist, stream links, and notes here on chillwaves

Recently:

Finished watching To the Wonder, which certainly, uh, took a turn in the last ep. I think I have thoughts about the show and some notes about the production, but right now my only thought is that I could have been healed with more scenes of baby sheep.

Started reading Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (Rainbow Turtle fantranslation). I'm enjoying it a lot more than I expected! Some of the character moments were scenes I didn't even know I needed... But it really is so long and I'm bad at consuming anything for extended amount of time so I've stopped, somewhere around volume 5. I like that it's appropriately webnovel-y and very easy to read on the phone (it's very light on descriptions), while also being meaty.

Got myself stuck in the Proving Grounds of Eiyuden Chronicle. 🤣 I initially stopped playing because I wanted to wait for "the right time" to do a dungeon crawl, but, well, weeks have passed... Sometimes I turn on the game so I can "explore a bit"... But there's a puzzle element to this dungeon and I genuinely don't remember which dungeon configurations I've finished... And battles still take forever to load so I ragequit every time I try to continue. 🤣

Saw 毛雪汪 ep 90, featuring Wang Yuwen and Zhang Xincheng. I now get all my ZXC updates from gixininja, a Tan Jianci fan who... has conditioned me to think about Tan Jianci every time I think about ZXC. I initially wasn't going to watch this because I just don't have the spoons/attention span for variety shows (ZXC is doing a lot of variety shows this year and I simply am not following them), but she assured me it was my type of variety show (chill and cozy) AND informed me that Mao Buyi has a pug who is an official cast regular... She was right! There were also mentions of TJC, which I reported accordingly. XD

My key takeaway from that ep is that ZXC wrote a song for the drama he and WYW are in (whose English title is *drumroll* You Are My Lover Friend), and that WYW was NOT asked to sing for it, as previously agreed. (From what I understand, it's meant to be a duet?) (This is all told in good humor, since WYW and ZXC are childhood friends, and 80% of the ep is WYW exposing ZXC.)

I also have to say that it also felt very freeing to just sit back and watch this without having any thoughts about subbing or translating or cutting the video into bite-sized segments... And to not really feel a thing except mild interest in music. I feel like my Chinese has deteriorated a lot over the past year of stepping away from fandom and most cmedia, but it's really nice to just be a regular viewer lol.

Anyway this is the ep... I didn't realize how clickbait-y the episode description was until now haha:

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Notes and references for 一蓑烟雨 (张新成)

2024-07-14T14:52:01Z

Subbed this song last Sunday and only looking at it again today. I figured I should take note of my references so I can find them again...

It's the promotional song for what appears to be a musical about... poetry?? Su Dongpo?? Even though I am, as gixininja puts it, "out of the pit", I'm still very happy to hear ZXC sing this! He gets to utilize his toolkit as a musical actor more fully, which I like. I know I'm biased because I just read the lyrics, but I love the operatic flair in the verses and the way it genuinely evokes a sense of there being an audience to hear a recitation.

I'm still very ??? at the song because I don't read Chinese poetry, don’t know anything about Su Dongpo’s life, and have no idea how to read poetic language, and was mostly Googling phrases and playing connect-the-dots. (Never mind preserving the structure and flow when I'm still chewing over everything.)

Notes

一山一水一扁舟 / 一路烟尘一世游 / 一俯一仰一声笑 / 一轮明月一江秋

Reference: 一字诗 (陈沆)—this poem is borrowed almost word-for-word, and sets up the structure of the entire song (made of the character for "one"): "一帆一桨一渔舟，一个渔翁一钓钩。 / 一俯一仰一场笑，一江明月一江秋。"

缘来缘去 / 一程去留浑无意

Notes: The overall feeling for me is that fate comes and goes like the flowing river that appears in the first verse, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's still unclear to me whose 去留 is to be 无意'd. 一程 makes it feel like a crucial stage in one's life, maybe?

谁怨谁怕 / 一蓑烟雨任平生

Reference: 定风波·莫听穿林打叶声 (苏轼): "竹杖芒鞋轻胜马，谁怕？一蓑烟雨任平生。"

几时归去 / 对一张琴 / 一壶酒一溪云

Reference: 行香子·述怀 (苏轼): "几时归去，作个闲人。对一张琴，一壶酒，一溪云。 "

Recently:

Finished our groupwatch for The Makanai, which was like Midnight Diner but set in the bubble of a maiko house that seems quite untouched by time, external circumstances, and financial issues. The main characters are two childhood friends who left their home in Aomori to share a dream. Momoko, the older and peerless zombie-obsessed geiko who's sorely in need of a rival, is AMAZING.

We're watching To the Wonder next, the eight-episode drama adaptation of Li Juan's essays about living in Altay.

Got back into games by deciding to DNF FE3H—I was still in my first playthrough (Golden Deer route), but it just wasn't sparking joy anymore, in spite of my love for Hilda. I've instead picked up Eiyuden Chronicle as my new fixation. I'd Kickstarted it a while back in a fit of Suikoden nostalgia, but over the years my excitement fizzled away and I didn't feel a single thing when it was finally released a couple months ago. Now that I am playing it, I have SO MANY thoughts about it, and I really hope I don't lose interest after 20 hours... or after 20 recruitments...

I also found out that you can track Switch sales through Deku Deals and spent some time scrolling through it while waiting for my battles to load (the Switch version of Eiyuden takes FOREVER for battles to load). I got Wandersong as a treat since it was on sale for $5 but I have nooooo idea if I'll ever play it. (I'm mostly waiting for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective to go on sale, because I just played the demo version where I got to save a brave little doggie. ;___;)

My reading brain which had only just come back to life is now offline again. D: I'm hoping to be able to keep reading 1-2 chapters of 橋頭樓上 a week because I really don't want to lose track of the plot... It's the kind of book where you have to pay attention to the little details + I don't have a fantranslation to fall back on if I'm unclear about what's happening. Why can't I have more than 1 brain???

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September media log

2023-10-01T10:55:25Z

I thiiiink I spent more time subbing things + editing videos than watching things this month, and then got burned out of wanting to do/watch anything... I was probably also frustrated with my media rotation haha.

Finished

Keigo Higashino, "Salvation of a Saint" (English translation by Alexander O. Smith)
A really good murder mystery with satisfying answers, no notes.

Lost in the Stars (movie)
Dreamwidth entry.

DNF

I Am Nobody (cdrama)
Cdrama adaptation of a donghua? manhua? novel? starring Echizen from the Tenipuri cdrama, young Shen Siyi from Dear Missy, and uh... a couple of pretty boys. Directed by the director of Crossfire too. It's basically either a long martial arts movie or a shounen anime in live action form. If you like that kind of thing, this is very good at that! However, the main character is insufferable and the live action format magnifies everything I hate about anime and webnovels aimed at boys. Even when it "subverts" expectations, the humor is still really annoying, and has that harem anime/novel vibe? Also the scene where they give Baobao a makeover was too much of character disservice and skeeviness for me in spite of its fight scene payoffs. (I might come back for Baobao's fight scenes haha)

Horimiya (anime)
A very wholesome friends-to-lovers high school anime about a popular girl who's secretly a homebody, and a quiet and unpopular boy who secretly rocks piercings and tattoos + their friends. Somehow this was too wholesome and vanilla for even me...? In any case, I got bored and wasn't into the romance or the ~domesticity~. XD I do like how the FL is the popular and confident character for a change.

Parallel World (cdrama)
Adventure-romance with Bai Yu and Ni Ni. I might still continue this because I enjoyed Ni Ni's character + performance, and I heard that there might be more ensemble/group dynamics and a chicken later on... But my track record for finishing shows is... abysmal.

I Ship My Rival X Me manhua vol8
Vol8 ended last week, and I think vol9 is the last one! The recent chapters haven't been very interesting, but I'm going to miss my boys and Yanyan's colorful reactions.

Misc

I JUST found out that Yoruneko anime is now accessible outside of Japan, AND has English subs!!! It's a very cute and funny slice-of-life anime about living with a cat. :') Eps are just a minute each, perfect for when your soul needs a little bit of healing.

Here's a compilation of eps 1-40 (no English subs):

And their episode playlist with English subs (though not all eps are accessible):

Playlist link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL21PGVTtHmxgpTZwSrn-1QMUcbaJdnxZM

Twitter finds

MorgansGoodTime: "Oh to be a rat enjoying some soft rain" (a very lovely and soothing 20-second animation)

caldatelier: Fingerseek pages (like crossword puzzles, but with fingerspellings)

caldatelier: A comic about Filipino Sign Language and regional/personal variations (Comic is in English. A short and interesting read with useful visuals!)

cioccolato_kun: What if there's a shounen anime for Laundry Washing?

Cat Cafe: c/o superborb; mostly including so I remember what it's called haha. I'm not a boardgame person and I don't really understand what anything is for and likely never will, but it's very chill and cute. I like that boardgamearena automatically tells me my options and allows me to easily scan the other players' boards, but in retrospect, I think it would be pretty cute to draw(??) your own cats for the pen-and-paper version. (The toys might not be as fun to draw.)

I'm also trying to reread and then continue Dungeon Meshi because I forgot where I left off years ago (not very far) and it's still as fun as the first time. I love how the licensed English translation has translation notes at the end. And,,, I love,,, Marcille,,,,

( +2 more images )

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April-May Media Log

2023-05-09T16:37:35Z

April media log, with some spillover into May—I read With This Ring on the Labor Day holiday—I was sandwiched by snoring adults, and lying on top of the seam where two beds were pushed together, and couldn't sleep. 😂

Books

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A story of intergenerational trauma between a bonesetter/oracle bone collector, an inkmaker, and a ghost writer.

I was really engaged in Ruth's PoV, the conflicts and anxieties that arose from her traumatic upbringing, and the way she personified the themes of language and ghosts and writing. I'm so glad she found answers and got closure in the end, even though I wasn't very invested in the mystery of Bao Bomu's real name. I did really enjoy the novel's relationship with language and translation, and how Ruth's struggles with the language were very specifically a product of their time and place—matching radicals to the paper dictionary + her insinuation that only old or extremely specialized people could read traditional script. 😂

I couldn't stand Art or Art's kids and couldn't forgive them for how rude they and their families were during Mid-Autumn dinner. They were old enough to know better and school their children. May they never be invited to parties or community events ever again.

I actually think Lu Ling's chapters were the weak link because they weren't paced very well, and in spite of its intentions I think it failed to convey the emotional complexity in her relationship with her sister. The non-tragic relationships, in general, didn't feel earned.

Unrelatedly, I wish I'd paid more attention to the timelines of this book, because it feels like Ruth loses her voice around ghost month?

Content notes: this book contains suicide, drug addiction, embarrassing situations caused by poor sex education, childhood sexual assault

With This Ring by Carla Kelly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Marriage of convenience + hurt/comfort romance novel: She is the unloved eldest daughter with severe self-esteem issues and a desire to do meaningful work, while he is a wounded soldier with war trauma and men he wants to take care of.

Nothing about the novel feels remotely plausible, but it's fine, other than the completely unnecessary child acquisition storyline—it just feels too heteronormative, especially since the characters' chemistry feels more platonic than romantic to me. I think I could have rolled with it better if it had more angst for flavor. :P

Shisi, “Little Mushroom” Book 1: Judgement Day
Book 1 = book 1 of the web version (the print versions collate the first 2 books into the same volume)—I'm mostly putting this down so I remember my impressions.

I really loved the first chapter: it draws you in atmospherically and emotionally, with the right amount of mystery to make you keep reading, as the information that's filtered through An Zhe's PoV comes to you piece by piece.

The backdrop for the story is beautifully, vividly rendered, but the worldbuilding feels pretty shaky as of now (I do presume that some of my questions will be addressed later on). There's no cultural information whatsoever, but I guess this is set far enough in the apocalyptic future for cross-cultural interactions to be natural to the characters. The vaguely Western names throw me off, and I'm not very sure about what the book wants to say about Doussey (sp?). I also feel that the romance tropes disrupt the tone and flow of the story, but sometimes they're a welcome interruption from the more gruesome bits.

The action-horror chapters are very well done and give me anxiety with distressingly descriptive (but not overdone) body horror, gore, and bug-related paranoia. 🙈 Anyway, the general vibe to me right now is science fiction shounen anime/videogame with BL endgame. XD

IMO, the English translation does really well with scenery and visual details! The dialogue is a bit stilted, though. But it is very readable, and has some choices I really liked. I just feel it could use more time for polish and a few rounds of editing to smooth out the phrasing and errors (there was one particular sentence that just didn't make sense).

Current/Recent Media

4 episodes into Trigun Stampede—I never watched the original so this is all new to me! So far it's fun and it nails what it tries to achieve, but it's not what I'm looking for right now haha.

Tears of Themis: My first gacha ever. 😭 This is a free mobile otome game/gacha game, with Ace Attorney-like elements (investigation, court trials). The gameplay is very hard to enjoy because my phone is low on memory, and it keeps crashing, but it has enough variety of things to do to make you want to keep playing. The investigation parts are particularly frustrating for me, though, because I keep failing to tap the right spots, and sometimes there are clues that are lying around that you can't interact with until a bit later. I'm mostly enjoying this as a translated piece of media! I nearly had a heart attack when Luo Jinghe (Marius) first showed up as a shadowy CEO that looked and sounded exactly like Fei Du. Turns out it's the same VA as the audiodrama actor. 😂 I found myself finishing 2 cases in 2 days and then quit cold turkey because I was tired of losing my entire night to it. I'm not really interested in the plot, cases, or any of the characters (I find my boss and the psychiatrist annoying tbh), but I enjoy Rosa as a protagonist, at least.

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命にふさわしい (Deserving of Life) cover

2023-04-11T03:41:24Z

MY NIER:AUTOMATA FEELINGS.

(Video has English subs, we can all suffer together.)

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december - january media log

2023-02-02T05:13:50Z

Happy New Year + Kiong Hee Huat Tsai!

What I consumed in the last two months:
( TV: Rock It, Mom; The Heart of Genius; Wednesday; Salt Fat Acid Heat; 两不疑 No Doubt in Us )

( movies: Spider-Man No Way Home; Glass Onion; Cherry Magic movie )

Misc

Mula sa Buwan (From the Moon):

Localized Filipino musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. I'm not familiar with the original play, and because the setting was adapted to the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in WW2 (which is still pretty recent), I was too stressed to truly enjoy this. /o\ Still, it was beautifully staged, and I was really surprised and delighted to discover that the play was entirely in verse (which is, IME, unusual)! This was a limited two-weekend run where they didn't have any understudies, so there was also a lot of pandemic tension going on backstage; you could FEEL the palpable joy when the play opens with characters rejoicing about how the theater was theirs tonight, and the gratitude of the actors during the curtain call.

Kotaro Lives Alone: recced by aartichapati; dropped because my Netflix subscription expired, but it's a quiet slice-of-life anime that was perfect as a background watch because I could look away without missing anything.

Disco Elysium: The game’s overall feel (like the lack of warmth in the city—Martinaise just felt so cold all the time) was v depressing and anxiety-inducing for me, but I think my anxiety has also been pretty rough on me lately. I do think it was written beautifully, for me to get so emotionally invested in the characters that I met, and for Harry’s personal storylines to hit me so hard. It handles a lot of dark and sensitive themes really well too, neither shying away nor reveling in them. (And I am absolutely pleased with the storylines I decided to put my energy to——the cryptids and perception boost, as well as the entire Church storyline, and the tie.) Overall, 10/10 experience and storytelling, but in many ways, this game is not for me.

On literary translation: "Hosts and Guests" by Robin Myers: Interesting read. NGL, I'm not sure if there will ever be a language that truly feels like home to me. I wander through the houses I grew up in like a ghost lol

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Mid-May Notes

2022-05-20T12:07:00Z

The weather this week has been, strangely enough, half summer, half rain. The mornings are unforgivingly hot but become cooler and wetter throughout the day (it's 7:20PM and raining now). The entire month has been really busy and stressful for multiple reasons, but!!! As luck would have it, Zhang Xincheng has released two songs, one week apart. XD

Recently

Played a couple of games to distract myself from election tension and post-election grief:
( The Cyphstress; Book Reprocessing Machine 5; Six Cats Under )

Currently

Reading

Under superborb's influence:

琅琊榜 Nirvana in Fire

for cnovel reading club. Reading Nirvana in Fire in Chinese has been my ~lifelong~ goal since I watched the drama in 2017, and WHO KNEW that I was closer to getting there than I thought. I nearly gave up when the first chapter hit me with grand 4-character phrases at the second line, but IT TURNS OUT!!! I CAN READ (with the help of Pleco's pop-up dictionary)!!! Mostly because I'm already familiar with the characters and plot, and can easily skip the parts I find tedious and unimportant, but it's surprisingly readable and I'm no longer scared of this book. I cannot imagine reading this uninitiated, though, so kudos to the people who did and are doing that. XD

Dracula (via Dracula Daily)

Get the classic novel Dracula, emailed to you in real time as it happens.

This is an extremely fun way to read Dracula! Which I have never read before. And this format/pace is really ideal for both the novel and my attention span, because I seem to have genuinely lost the ability to read books. /o\ I guess the cons are that I hate reading books on mobile, but it feels wrong to do my designated reading on my Kindle haha.

Watching

We started groupwatching Rainless Love in a Godless Land, a Taiwanese urban fantasy drama featuring Amis folklore, or appears to. So far (...2 episodes in) I think it's solidly and tightly written, and beautifully directed, but here are some notes that I think are important to know moving forward (with thanks to embleciel for doing the legwork):

I had a hard time finding any comments from the Amis community while it was airing, but I think that speaks for something too. What I found severely disappointing was the lack of representation in the cast + writing team (as dramapotatoe pointed out in their blog).
— 🌸 (@embleciel) May 15, 2022

I remember seeing (in the credits? in an interview?) that the folklore at the beginning of each episode were mostly fictionalized. That reeks of cultural appropriation to me, especially given the environmentalism themes in the story--I will not speak further 🙊
— 🌸 (@embleciel) May 15, 2022

This is how I felt by the time I finished Rainless! I loved the gods and stories but afaik they were heavily edited to the point where only the names were borrowed. I still loved the drama, but the prod team could have done filled in the gaps with interviews outside of the drama.
— 🌸 (@embleciel) May 15, 2022

It's hard to say though, because I don't live in Taiwan and I'm not from any of the indigenous communities. I am only speaking from the pov of someone who learned a lot because the drama. Would local viewers have similar criticisms? What about indigenous groups? 🤷🏻‍♀️
— 🌸 (@embleciel) May 15, 2022

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april media log

2022-05-02T11:26:31Z

My current headspace is that I can't really watch or read anything on my own rn, so very grateful for groupwatch/groupreads! I also spent the start of the month making a list of short mobile games to play to reset my brain. I've given up on borrowing my brother's Switch (my other brother has taken custody of it haha). I don't think it's a good idea for me to start more standard-length games anyway—I have a really bad game (sometimes TV) addiction problem that gets in the way of my ability to function and take care of myself.
( Games: Monument Valley; Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise )

( TV: Delicious Romance; Who's the Murderer 7; Under the Skin; The Strongest Men of God )

( Music: Sabel (covered by Jona); 打開太陽 (Kimberley Chen x Flesh Juicer) )

( misc links: on troll farms; on writing outside of your experience and identity )

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December log

2022-01-02T06:50:15Z

Books

Still reading The Priory of the Orange Tree. ISMM is also back with vol 5!!!!!!!!

TV

Remembrance of Things Past
12-episode drama, centered around Dongbei women in their late 20s and 30s who live and work in Beijing. Thoughts and content warnings here.

Who's the Murderer s6
Although I initially jumped into the show for Zhang Xincheng, this has sort of become my emotional support LARP variety show. XD It's a lot more enjoyable the more you watch it, as you get more familiar with the regular players, the inside jokes, and their relationships. My favorite part is always the final voting of each case where everyone privately casts their vote for who they think the murderer is, and explains their reasoning to the camera. But I got really attached to the regular players, including Sasa, who I initially disliked because I found his humor too slapstick. It's just really fun to see "veterans" be extremely comfortable with each other, and Zhang Xincheng (the new kid) get more comfortable with both the game and his seniors. I also like the cases best when they go ham with the plot. I truly wasn't expecting to see bodyswap, space/time bubbles that led to complicated time mechanics, and aliens, so I'm very delighted.

My favorite S6 case was case#5, with the town of sad people. It got a bit dark (suicide, depression, trauma, and some horror), but the puzzles were satisfying and I felt that the characters were the most compelling, with very funny banter and puns. (Unsurprisingly this is one of the episodes that ZXC is in, and my favorite role for him. XD)

Games

Sadly I wasn't able to play any games during the holidays, but I did get to do a virtual escape room with lunarflares! Would recommend this as a pandemic/remote social activity!

Movember Virtual Moscape (link)
Although it is called an escape room, it's actually the opposite of that, since what we did was INFILTRATE. :D One can do it solo but it's a pain to switch between screens, so playing it with at least one friend is best. To play as a team, you can either enter the virtual room individually and just simultaneously play the game, or have one person screenshare their playthrough. We decided to go the screenshare route because I had internet problems—luna screenshared the playthrough and entered all the solutions, while I screenshared my interactions with a character. You need a Facebook/Messenger account for the interactive portion, but you're not talking to a real person, so it's FINE.

The first half of the game was Puzzles I Did Not Like To Do (decoding stuff, reading instructions, and sometimes Googling—I was very happy to just listen to luna do everything). The second half was a lot more interactive (talking to an AI on Messenger), with Puzzles I Was Happy To Be Part Of (examining sceneries, unlocking hidden doors, figuring out the passwords, choose your own adventure, and some internet sleuthing).

The game design and experience were really impressive, with an effort to be accessible. They had real websites and Facebook accounts that you had to scour for clues, and very cool visualizations that I associate more with console games (luna particularly had the time with her life rotating the 3D object). You alternate between entering answers in the main room, which is a virtual desktop computer, and messaging the results of your investigation to your fictional colleague. For the color-coded portion, there is an alternate chart for the colorblind (we aren't colorblind, but we referred to it anyway), as well as the option to turn on video captions. The Youtube videos only have auto-generated captions, but you get messaged a recap/summary of the information that was in the video.

Gameplay is estimated to be 90 minutes, but there's no time limit. It took us more than 2 hours since there were only 2 of us and my connection kept dropping.

Tools: we used an internet browser for the game, Discord for voicecall and screenshare, and Facebook/Messenger to interact with a fictional character.

Fanworks

I spent my New Year's Eve (and part of New Year's) subbing/translating I Only Have Four Nights with You, the Vogue short film featuring Zhang Xincheng (of course) and Tong Yao, to English. It's a 10-minute adult love story that unspools the present-day established-relationship tensions back to its past promises. I have no basis of comparison for Tong Yao's performance, but I've heard that it was exciting (and confusing XD) to see her in this role! On Zhang Xincheng's part, he was uncharacteristically restrained and introverted—I want to see him cast more in these types of roles where he doesn't have the wholesome protagonist halo.

And a song translation attempt, though incomplete (subbed video on the Twitter link below):

tried to translate the most evocative parts of the version of 曾經我也想過一了百了 (I Also Thought About Ending It All) that Zhang Xincheng covered for Who’s the Murderer! the pre-chorus imagery has been rattling in my head all month pic.twitter.com/798jCMmSSI
— (@halfcactus) December 29, 2021

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