halfcactus

Recently finished Convenience Store Woman by Murata Sayaka (tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori), which is a satirical little novel about the absurdities of societal expectations told in the PoV of a woman who's considered an anomaly: Keiko is thirty-six years old, unmarried, ace/aro, probably neurodivergent, and works at the same part-time convenience store job she's had for eighteen years. She is content with the life she has, but the people around her treat it as a problem to be solved. Abstractly recognizing that to be human is to perform in accordance to the rules of the majority, she nominally enters a relationship with a universally disdained incel and observes her social standing improve. As the plot progresses, Keiko faces the question of what it means to be "normal" and whether or not it's worth it.

I really wish this book had a better English translation so I can gauge it more properly. It reads stiff and unnatural and othering in a manner that's quite typical for translated Japanese litfic, and the story suffers so much for it as one of the major characterization points is in Keiko observing and imitating distinct speech patterns, all of which are invisible to me; as far as I'm concerned, everyone talks in the same, flat, translated-from-Japanese-to-English way, indistinguishable from each other.

It's really a shame that the translation style and quality made the reading experience so irritating because I'm currently in a headspace where the book's themes resonate and hit hard. There's a certain amount of comfort to be had in the way Keiko finds meaning and satisfaction and humanity in the things she does even when no one else understands, but also envy.

Is there such a thing as seasonal depression but for summer? Because I have been Going Through It and not really having the energy to do anything, and I don't know if it's just because the heat is sapping away my will to live energy. It's peak summer and electricity rates have not only been continuing to spike but are also no longer sufficient; we are entering a period of rotational outages. How much of this is the direct consequence of the fuel crisis, I can only speculate. I guess it's not totally unusual to have electricity issues in the summer when demand is greatest, but today it seemed like everyone (not us) experienced hours of power interruption at some point, most of them without advisories or extending past the declared window. I'd feel better if there were official, pre-announced schedules so everyone can prepare beforehand.

Movies/books

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026): A pretty good sequel that is set in the modern day with modern issues (the death of print, journalism, and longform writing; the rise of tech and AI), but not a very good movie. It was very focused on outcomes but not really the process of transporting characters through their arcs, so the writing came across as fanfic-y. The romance subplot could have been cut out in favor of having character moments linger. Still, enjoyable!

The Fellowship of the Ring: I'm a little more than halfway through—so far Frodo has utterly failed to keep his departure a secret (he keeps sighing dramatically to himself without considering that other people can hear him), Sam has held Frodo's hand blushingly, and Elrond revealed to be half-human. The Company is now wading through a snowstorm. Aragorn and Boromir are arduously creating a path in the snow so the hobbits can pass, and Legolas... watches them struggle for a while before making a point of flying off just because he can???

Seraphina: Roughly 20% through this and not particularly invested. The FMC is half-human, half-dragon, and has to navigate this precarious space with her unique perspective. She also has to keep her dragon-ness a secret because in this world dragons are, though highly cultured math geniuses (unlike these oafish and bigoted humans), an oppressed class. The racial allegories trip my Orientalism sensitivities (I'm extremely sensitive haha), and the storyline about having to pass as human feels like this might be written with a specific modern-day audience in mind, which breaks my immersion.

My Beloved Oppressor (manhwa): Surprisingly good in spite of its title? The FMC is a princess who marries a revolutionary who slaughters her family, abolishes the aristocracy, and establishes a new government. The webtoon begins with the FMC begging for divorce. The ML refuses, citing a desire to watch her suffer. Eventually (after multiple traumatic suicide attempts) he lets her go and she opens her eyes to the world outside her bubble of privilege and decides to live in atonement. They get back together in the end which I'd rather they didn't (I stopped reading when they did) but as far as het romance goes this one had more flavor and complexity than usual, and it takes war seriously. I loved the angst, the FMC's self-loathing was cathartic. The ML's PoV was mostly the same note of suffering (and tenderness) extended throughout the story but it was necessary for his perspective to make sense.

Your Ryan (manhwa): Again another surprisingly good read (can you tell I read so much trash lol). It's an ongoing Jane Austen-inspired het romance about a spinster and an infamous war hero. There are shades of Not Like Other Girls in the FMC, but the friends-to-lovers dynamic is cute and fun, and the art memes are funny.

https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/150938.html

1. What was the last book you read (or are currently reading)?
Last read manhwa: On My Way to Meet Mom, would recommend! It's a 30-chapter story about an orphan boy in a post-apocalyptic world (where there are more aliens than humans) who discovers the concept of family one day and sets out to find it. Very comforting because the boy is so ordinary! He is small and round and human and that is enough reason for him to be deserving of love. It's gen through and through, which I like, and acknowledges that gender and gendered family roles are human constructs, which I also like. And the character designs are so good!!! Beautiful fantasy elements too, like whales in the sky.

Last read book: A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, an 80-page essay about Antigua, post-colonialism, white tourism, and global power dynamics. Hits pretty close to home and written quite lyrically. Would also recommend!

Currently reading: The Fellowship of the Ring audiobook (narrated by Andy Serkis)—I'm not sure how sustainable the audio format is for my attention span but it got me further than all past attempts to read the text with my eyes. I now see the appeal of Tolkien. I still can't visualize anything, though...

2. What was the last movie you watched?
This morning's groupwatch—we meant to watch the Journal with Witch live action movie, but the subs were machine-translated from Chinese which was painful, so we switched to 100 Meters on Netflix. It's about what running means to athletes, the years and years of training and self-doubt all for these races which are over in 15 seconds, and what those 15 seconds mean. On paper: good concept! I can see this being a nice, thoughtful manga. In practice, it had some really interesting textures and breathtaking moments, but I thought the storytelling was poor and did not maximize the animated form. None of the characters also ever really have inner lives, and because of that, the main character's speech at the end feels unearned.

3. What television series are you currently watching?

Loving Strangers (cdrama): I stopped watching this for a while and then got back to it because I was feeling tired and 委屈, and this show is nothing but characters who are tired and 委屈.

How Dare You!? (cdrama): 14 eps in, I don't have very strong feelings about it but it's a group watch and there are enough interesting plot points that I'd like to see through. The show is kind of uneven, some sets of episodes are paced better than others. I really liked the first ED so I was very sad that they changed it to the more "serious" one.

Pursuit of Jade (cdrama): One of my oomfs said this got her out of a cdrama slump and true enough I managed to watch 2 eps in a row. XD I am not very enthused that the FL, a small village butcher, is Secretly Proficient in Martial Arts and has Secretly Important Parents (deceased).

Witch Hat Atelier (anime): So beautiful and worth the wait! Not sure how much the anime covers and how long I'll stick with it, but I'm pleased that its impact is mainstream enough that I have a common interest with IRLs again.

4. What are some of your favorite blogs or communities online?
My fav community is the HnG server where we groupwatch non-HnG-related things and people share pictures of their local birds and flowers. :') Also the gaming channel in the NiF server, it's like the only channel I check haha. Also all the bookish people in my Dreamwidth and Storygraph circles because how else do I know what books exist! I read A Small Place because I saw two of my Storygraph mutuals (one of them is, naturally, aartichapati) finish it recently.

My favorite blogs are mostly defunct. </3 Some old blogs that are still up but no longer active: Lazy Evaluation Ranch, a personal farm blog; Hanzis Matter, a blog "dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture"; Source Code in TV and Films; and Said the Gramophone, a music blog (still updates every December).

5. What social media do you belong to and check often?
Twitter and Bluesky... I also have an Instagram but as usual I've stopped checking it 😂

Potion Witch
90-chapter webtoon about a woman who's a pharmacist by day and vigilante witch by night. A good, tight, case-centered story with het romance and equal-opportunity emotional hurt/comfort. The ML is an ex-nepo baby who's managed to eke out a living as a cop. Due to his lack of physical endurance, his duties are mostly paper-pushing are cat-feeding. He and the FL are equally competent investigators, but the FL is physically stronger, which I thought was very nice.

Interestingly enough, the first half of the story is about unpeeling the layers of the ML's family trauma while the FL remains opaque and unaffected until the last act that reveals her. I loved the little found family beats between the FL and ML, and the ML's relationships with his estranged brother and his privileged nepo baby peers.

Cons: Disappointed that the 2FL's storyline didn't really go anywhere outside of being a plot device. She's seen at the beginning as being unhappy with her family situation and abusive towards her employees, but nothing comes out of that?


Meg Cabot, "No Offense"
This was a Valentine's Day read: librarian x sheriff romance with small-town mystery/case elements that felt far too short for either storyline to land. The apology pies were pretty cute, though.

Unveil: Jadewind ep1
Only saw ep 1, which was was an hour long..... I like how the FL is written like a ML? She fills some sort of leadership role as a palace-appointed investigator and is good at martial arts. The ML is a physically weak astronomer who can deduce information with math which can be really funny if the drama leaned more on humor. Didn't continue bc ep1 didn't really grab me, which is normal with cdrama but I just have too little patience these days to give 30-episode shows a chance.

Cosmic Princess Kaguya (2026)
Surprisingly, not bait!!! The yuri was real!!! The characters not so much. Iroha's character actually felt like the ML in a 90s/2000s anime... The concept of a tired student who brings home a manic pixie dream robot that proceeds to follow her around at school... The trajectory of their relationship... I really wish they'd done better in developing her arc. I was so invested in her family backstory but it doesn't feel like the movie particularly cares about the characters as people. I did like the sibling relationship even though the relationship progress never translates into action when it matters.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
I totally need to rewatch this bc I wasn't looking at the screen the first time and only started paying attention to ep4 (a really good episode) and missed so many fun visual details. I didn't read the original novella(s?) so I don’t have much to say about the show except that the performances were interesting—especially among the older Targaryens, they had such flavorful interactions and I could actually recognize them by the energy they brought in (I kept forgetting who everyone else was). And the music was great… AND it was nice to see texture again after years of living on cmedia lol

Book recap bc I managed (barely!) to fulfill my goal of finishing 12 books this year. Goodreads tells me I read 4,000 pages with an average book length of 300 pages and an average rating of 3.7/5, which is... not bad for someone who hasn't really been feeling books. Most of what I read this year were by authors I haven't previously read, and most are some kind of Asian. Read 0 books/comics in Chinese (but not for lack of trying).

Also read a bunch of webtoons and indie oneshots (from Shortbox), but those are harder to quantify, so:
( the 12 books of 2025 )

Isora Matsuri, "Secrets of the Silent Witch" (vol 1–6)
Ongoing light novel series (with a newly released anime adaptation) about a traumatized and socially anxious witch / genius mathematician who develops a method of spell-casting without ever chanting, making her one of the most powerful magicians ever. Outside she is very intimidating and heroic, and inside she's a stuttering and tearful mess. After single-handedly saving a village from a black dragon, she retreats back into the mountain but is conscripted into guarding the Second Prince. To do this she must infiltrate the academy as an ordinary student while ~*keeping the magic secret~*. As a consequence, she learns to actually care about people and gradually heal and form relationships.

Thoughts

The high school setting and very YA situations aren't really working for me (especially with our MC, Monica, being the strongest and most ingenious witch to ever witch), but the politics are surprisingly interesting! The Second Prince (and ML) Felix is a popular and charismatic figure in the academy, and unnervingly conniving. He has a retinue of very loyal but elitist young men who befriend and are changed by Monica, the only commoner in the vicinity. This positions them as the "good" guys. However, outside the school walls, the Second Prince has many detractors, including Monica's own mentor/colleague. And as Monica protects him from assassins she learns that they actually have some very good reasons for wanting to murder him and prevent his ascension.

There are also some very nice twists with the Second Prince's character, the fun one is him being the #1 Monica Everett fanboy and having genuine interest in her magical research and papers.

Elizabeth Lim, "A Forgery of Fate"

"My father used to say, 'Green is from blue, and is better than blue."

"What does that mean?"

I gave Gaari my cheekiest smile. "It means you learn to surpass your teachers."

Beauty and the Beast retelling set in a fantasy world with Chinese elements. The MC, Tru, has the gift of prophecy that manifests in art. When her father disappears, it falls upon her, the eldest daughter, to support her mother and sisters, so she turns to art forgery. The ML, Elang, is a half dragon who has lost his heart and been banished to live on land. The only way he can go back is by presenting to the Dragon King his Heavenly Match, so naturally this means a contract marriage storyline. There's also something about a curse but to be honest this seemed written to adhere to the Disney!Beauty & the Beast vibes more than anything, I really did not understand what was going on there lol.

Thoughts

I really enjoyed the magic and underwater setting and integration of Chinese culture/lore/tropes/food... not so much the obsession with noodles, because I often think "obsessed with a type of food" is used as a replacement for personality. In this case, the noodle conversations do have narrative relevance, it's just that I was not Feeling the Love. I also wasn't really feeling the themes of regionalism and discrimination, but those parts were pretty secondary anyway.

The first 70% was a 4/5 read for me, then got downgraded to 3/5 because the book lacked the narrative and romantic tension to pull off the last act. I simply didn’t feel anything or understand any of the characters. In fact, the only time I felt any real stakes in the story was at the beginning, when 1) Tru's mom had accrued a large gambling debt that Tru had to pay off urgently and 2) Tru had to guess (by painting) a mahjong tile correctly in a do-or-die moment. Everything after that felt only superficially dangerous. There's all this talk of the Dragon King having ~eyes and ears everywhere~ in their kingdom, and even of there being a spy within Elang's palace, but Elang and Tru continue to have conversations about their fake marriage + secret plan in a normal fashion. There isn't any real fear of being discovered, so the secrecy thing feels like a sham.

I did really like Tru's art powers. They never actually help her or give her a buff—it's really just prophecy with art as its medium. Nonetheless they're what Elang needs to execute his mysterious plan and the reveal for what that exactly was was very satisfying.

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MISC:

Found out from Twitter that Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway was originally written by Avril Lavigne and that an Avril Lavigne version was released a few years ago (for a 20th anniversary album?), There's a neat animated lyric video that features old clips and photos of her:

CW: Flashing / glitch effects

Relatedly, here's her singing Complicated for The First Take:

Recently read/watched and too lazy to write about:

Webtoons: Marry My Husband; The Remarried Empress (dropping at S4, which is ongoing); 穿越成反派要如何活命 To Be or Not To Be / How To Survive As a Villain (DNF)

TV: 女世子 The Heiress

Movies: 不說話的愛 Mumu (2025); Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy (2025); The Quiet Girl (2022)

Books: Burning Houses & Hush Harbor
( one last poem from that collection )

https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/138441.html

1. What is your all time favorite book?
For the past decade, probably Ann Leckie's Radch trilogy--in particular Ancillary Justice. I remember reading it at my desk at my old job and getting assaulted with feelings. Also Goblin Emperor by Sarah Monette.

I feel like I keep waiting for my next reads to hit me the same way but I think I should reconcile myself with the fact that my reading brain is not what it was ten years ago, before the pandemic. ^^;

2. What is your all time favorite movie?
For the past decade, The Legend of Hei. Xiao Hei my baby!!!

3. What are you reading right now?
An assortment: the manhwa The Tale of Goldiluck the Black Kitten, which I adore fiercely; the manhwa As the Heart Leads, a fantasy/romance with pretty art, ongoing in its first season; The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman; The Invention of Darling, Li-Young Lee's latest anthology, which has a "plot" I can actually follow as it constructs (or reconstructs; I'm not very familiar with religious lore) a creation story. It feels less autobiographical and inward-facing than usual, an interesting experience.

I've also sampled the first chapters of the licensed translations of Run Wild (Saye) and The Imperial Uncle, though I'd hardly count that as reading.

4. What is your favorite show on TV?
For the past decade, the cdramas Nirvana in Fire, Qihun (Hikaru No Go cdrama), and The Murderous Affair in Horizon Tower. For anime, Chihayafuru, Silver Spoon, Run with the Wind, and Natsume's Book of Friends.

5. What is the last movie you saw in the theater?
Nezha 2, which I'm surprised they showed in our local theaters at all! A little sad that I missed Mickey 17 because I couldn't afford to watch two movies in the same week...

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Tech things, this month:

Finally learned to back up my computer without overwriting the backups from my previous computer! Next project would be trying to retrieve and back up my old music files and fanvids. Kinda sucks that because iTunes shifted to streaming, my mp3s (even the purchased ones!) disappeared from my folders in the process of all my reformats and migrations and I can't seem to download the files off the cloud.

Retrieved my Evernote files, mostly fic and poetry saved from the internet... One day I will go through them.

I can now (kind of! I mean I’ve only tried it on one site so who knows) rip streams through Stacher, which is yt-dlp for dummies (a.k.a. ME). Still using Cobalt and Wechat for everything else, which I hope never stop working bc they’ve been so reliable I don’t know any other good alternatives.

( Manga/manhua/manhwa )
( Movies: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes; Nezha 2; The Substance )
( TV: Bai Yao Pu (Fairies Album) S1; I Am Married... But!!! )

( Books: Straw into Gold - Fairy Tales Respun )

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RECENTLY:

Finished Cheese in the Trap (manhwa) and Ya She (donghua).

Watched the "new" Justice in the Dark eps (eps# 9 and 10). "Watched" is a pretty generous way of saying "relied on my memory of the audio drama to understand what's going on". The "zero empathy" thing and DNA talk continue to befuddle me, though they mostly seem to be focused on the argument of nature VS nurture and what that means for Pei Su. It's quite interesting that they made LWZ's mentor's daughter a co-intern in this adaptation, it integrates her more into the plot and emotional themes since she was mostly offscreen in the original work. I'm trying to relearn how to GIF post GIFs on Tumblr and my fandom Bluesky but tbh my fandom energy has been on the decline and my ability to focus worse... it's already a miracle that I managed to watch two whole eps in a week.

Feeling a bit anxious in light of global news, because the repercussions of certain US policies might eventually ripple into my livelihood, but I'm trying not to think too much about it.

After months of being bald, the tree (I think it might be narra?) across the street has finally sprouted bright new leaves and has been practicing how to flower. :) I was actually really worried it was dying because it grows on concrete and seemed withered for so long and its "seasons" seemed out of sync with the rest of the trees along the street, but the vicious summer seems to have brought it back to life.

I'm still paper-journaling faithfully. Four months in and no blank pages, thanks to the manhwa I write about and the smatterings of cmedia that have me drawing new vocabulary. It's the only thing that feels tangible and real these days.

Books/Comics

Mostly Chinese-language lit that I have a lot of thoughts about but never wrote proper entries on... and then a couple of indie comics from Shortbox 2024:

priest, "橋頭樓上 End of the Bridge, Top of the Tower"

Jimmeh Aitch, "哈囉哈囉馬尼拉 Halo-Halo Manila"

接骨木花, "陰間沒有珍奶嗎？ Is There Boba in the Underworld?"

Nico Baidan, "Firsts"

Pearl Law, "Karma's A Peach"

Movies/Musicals

SIX The Musical

Twisters (2024)

The Wild Robot (2024)


RECENTLY: Read up to volume 3 of The Apothecary Diaries light novel series and then stopped reading because 12 volumes is kinda a lot... Picked up 青春18×2：重返最初的悸動 again as a palate cleanser and am happy to report that it's not het all the way through. (As a shoujo manga enjoyer I do love het, I just think that an anthology about youth and first loves shouldn't be exclusive to it.)

Watched the first two seasons of the Cinderella Chef donghua because it was suggested by the Netflix algorithm, though "watched" is a generous way of saying "skipped all the plot and non-cooking scenes". 😂 Plot was mostly a setup for the romance and the romance was downright awful from what I saw of it, which really is a shame because it had all the potential to scratch my shoujo + cooking anime itch. The food animation + cooking shenanigans were SO up my alley... And then season 2 gave us too many characters, not enough cooking, and the reactions leaned more ~emotional and nostalgic~ rather spectacularly OTT and I had to cut my losses and drop out... Disappointing because it had a strong season opener (cooking showdown with the restaurant across the street).


CURRENTLY: Watching the cdrama adaptation of Link Click with daisydiversions, since fansubs are complete. Don't think we'll finish before the year ends. ^^; Also watching Arcane s2 and grateful for the staggered release schedule because this show isn't exactly bingeable for me and I like to avoid major spoilers... AND I easily get overwhelmed with high episode counts. XD