halfcactus

Words are from a poem by Li-Young Lee and Bird of the Summer by A Fine Frenzy.

I have not seen any egrets—which used to hang around our area in the recent years—since the 7th of May, but I've had sightings of other birds after that. These days I'm back to only seeing sparrows, though sometimes I hear orioles flying overhead in the morning.

More journal photos

The fire was just down the street. It turned out only to be a first-alarm fire and was put out pretty quickly, but I was too alarmed to take a video. /o\






Went through a minor crisis because these Japanese jam and butter packets gave me SO much joy but are so wasteful:


Vocabulary from Justice in the Dark:

Movies

The Rose of Versailles (2025)
Most of the story was compressed into music video form so it felt kind of like a musical? It's a very vibes-y adaptation with unapologetic anachronisms, but ultimately lacked closure between the two lead characters. It's a fun movie to watch with a friend, though, especially when none of you are familiar with the original canon. There's so much to comment on! (Me: "Oooh is he regaining his eyesight?" / Daisy: "Oooh is he losing sight in his other eye?")

The Match (2025)
Netflix markets this as a psychological thriller that highlights the main character's breakdown, but it's actually a character study about two inter-generational baduk players (the peerless mentor and his prodigious student) who push and pull each other and breathe new life into the sport. (Found out afterwards that this movie was based on real players.) Really enjoyed this one!

Detective Chinatown 1900 (2025)
I... How do I put it? If my paternal elders' chain mails were turned into a movie, this is what comes out—buddy-cop dynamics, broad humor, Chow Yun-fat's long dramatic spiels about Sinophobia, and racist caricatures of Native American culture (that these characters are portrayed as good people is immaterial).

Zhang Xincheng (playing a supporting character) was very attractive when he swore in English. IIRC he even won an award for his performance in this movie, which is painful to me because while I like that he did this movie because it broadens his network, I absolutely do not want people to associate him with this. 😂

Webtoons

The Wicked Ladies-in-Waiting (S1)
Het romantasy that puts emphasis on gen + found family relationships. Although it begins with a standard romance setup (the FL and ML's first meeting), the two leads part almost immediately so the FL can pursue her revenge and nudge the second prince to bid for the throne.

A quote from the scene where the second prince cross-dresses and earnestly draws inspiration from his ladies-in-waiting: Examples of true women I know, and not mere images people made up... It's Coco, who is confident and charming like a flickering flame, and Julia, who is tranquil yet formidable like the waves. Julia and Coco are like teachers, friends, and sisters to me, and I have been closer to them than anybody else.

The Tale of Goldiluck the Black Kitten
Life has simply not been the same since I finished this. I spent months unlocking 2-3 chapters a day, a most soothing routine, and when I finally got to the end life felt so empty. ;__; This is a gen + found family manhwa that ended with a trope that's usually associated with romance. Ahhhh I love them so much! And the manhwa loves cats so much, I cried so hard over each and every one of them (except maybe Goldiluck's derpy bio-dad lol).

The artist's current project is a Shape of the Water-esque BL manhwa where one of the characters is an orca that can take human form, which is... very on-brand for them.

Misc.

Sa Ye audio drama eps 1–2
Listened to the first two eps of the censored cut; I am unclear if anything was cut in these two eps and hated the feeling so much I couldn’t go on. The AD seems to start you off at a different point from the novel. Rather than guiding you through the leads' first meeting, it drops you straight in the classroom, at which point they've already met and I have no idea how many characters I'm listening to because they're all delinquent-type boys.

Started crossposting the clips I subbed from my random livetweets to Youtube—very slowly, so as not to shock the people who follow me for ZXC stuff, lol.

S1 clips

S1 extra: Teaching Demo

S1 voice actor freetalk: "变feng了!": I just found this really funny

S2 clips

Goodbye hug (audiodrama S2 ep1, novel ch26)

Watch on YouTube

I think it's unambiguous that Lu Feng is hugging in An Zhe in the audiodrama??? Like, there's no other way to misinterpret those noises??? The audiodrama does tend to add little touches like these that make them shippier in this medium; I can't find my screenrecording right now, but there was also some hand-holding in one of Lu Feng's rescue scenes. And the voice acting and directing do so much in making Lu Feng far more likeable and seem more complex and conflicted than he is in the novel, his sharp corners made rounder with intent. (Most notable to me when he asks An Zhe about Doussey and there's a slight, stilted pause before he describes her as the woman he shot down.)


An Zhe finding Lu Feng in the plane (+ new ED!)

Watch on YouTube

Obsessed with the way they used this scene to debut the new ending theme, wHICH I LOVE

As always, liberties were taken with the lyrics that I haven't really fully looked at beyond this snippet. In my mind, Lu Feng, like his name, tends to be represented by the wind and the sound of it, in the novel, particularly in this scene and in a much earlier scene where the narrative notes that it's a sound that's associated with love and fear in An Zhe. Though I guess it could also easily represent the turbulences in their relationship, haha. Anyway I really love how the audiodrama went hard with the dramatic wind! And I'm pretty excited to hear the production freetalk for season 2.

Chorus:
多少萍水相逢
How many meetings^[1]
最終 聚散匆匆
turn out to be brief encounters in the end?
千帆閱盡之後
But you and I have sailed a thousand voyages together
我們生死相擁
Live or die, we are never letting go^[2]

LWZ:
我會游向遠空
I'll swim the distance^[3]
築星的港
and build a harbor of stars
閃引路的燈
The glimmering lights will show you the way
明滅在你眼中
Flickering in your eyes
再渡你歸程
and ferrying you home.

FD:
萬家燈火閃动
Thousands of lights are blazing bright
值得此生
This life^[4] is worth it

DIALOGUE:
LWZ:
對不起... 我來晚了.
Sorry... I was too late...

FD:
沒有了... 怪物都清理乾淨了，我是最後一個，你可不可以... 把我關在你家裡?
It's over... All the demons have been purged. I'm the last one left. Can you take me to your home and lock me up?

Footnotes:

¹萍水相逢: "meeting, like duckweeds drifting in the water", an idiom for chance encounters. The entire line means "There are so many meetings, but in the end they're all just brief encounters".

Also there's this line from S3 E11 (I'm translating this badly, I've forgotten the context):

這些朋友，萍水相逢，聚散隨心，即便友誼地久天長，人卻還是來了又走，終究還是外人... 呵，我也不敢太自作多情地把自己當”內人”，有時候覺得自己就像一隻”隔岸觀火”的飛蛾，才剛剛得以一窺費渡這燈罩上旋轉的圖景，剛剛伸出觸順，打算去碰一碰那色澤奇的光....... 那盞流光溢彩的玻璃燈就這麼碎在了我的面前。

Friendships made from chance encounters, meeting then parting at a whim... Though old acquaintances are never forgotten, people still come and go as they please, ultimately remaining "outsiders". Ah, but I don't dare go as far as to proclaim myself as an "insider" to Fei Du. Sometimes I feel like a moth watching the flame across the river. Fei Du is the lamp I’ve just begun to get close enough to circle, to reach towards... wanting to touch that strange and colorful light, only for the glass around it to shatter in front of me.^[return]

²生死相擁: intertwined; "embracing each other in life and death" ^[return]

³遠空: "distant space" ^[return]

⁴In the 2nd pre-chorus of the first ED, Fei Du passes by the dazzling lights and wonders if they're worth docking his ship for. ^[return]

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Current consumption queue:

默讀 Mo Du (Silent Reading) audiodrama: s4 e7

Winter Begonia: halfway through ep 17

Dear Missy: ep 11 (watchalong; 3 eps every Sunday)

I've been busy and tired (aren't we all), so it's really just the Dear Missy watch parties I'm keeping up with. I'm also still planning to make a Qihun fanvid + fancomic recs post... eventually. XD