halfcactus

*shoves failed Rubik's cube illustration to a corner* Affinity practice—Designer for the vector shapes and Photo for everything else, though technically I think I could have done everything on Photo:

Based on the following journal doodles:

I guess I'm warming up a little to Affinity... Photo feels closer to AI and ID than PS, which means it does have a lot of features if you adjust your expectations of its controls, but also that it's not exactly a PS substitute. I'm really struggling with placing images/objects (typically I only use Place when I'm using InDesign; most of the time I drag objects around from canvas to canvas because that's how my brain works) + gradients... I kind of get it conceptually, but for some reason I get a prompt asking for screenrecording permissions which I deny on instinct lol.

Paintbrush works pretty smoothly if you set the hardness to 99% (instead of 100%)~ There's a built-in line stabilizer that you can toggle on and off.

Type tools work well. Same shortcuts as PS + has opentype features, but doesn't take into account other languages yet, I think? No vertical text orientation button that I can see.

In this latest episode of "tools I can't figure out", I don't know yet if Affinity has a blend tool or more customizable stroke brushes, which is what I'd want to try for the fishbones? (They'd still be tricky to control, but at least I don't have to manually align anything haha.)

Inexplicably, Affinity also has a cat tool:


Which can only generate one kind of cat shape:


All of this may be an exercise in futility considering the Canva acquisition, but idk, I presume we'll be able to keep the non-subscription version... So far Photo is less laggy than my half-broken Photoshop ahaha.

From chapter 13:

姜瓷越听越不能苟同：“那照你这么说，这世上就没有日久生情了？”

霍蓁蓁：“你指哪个‘日’？”

Currently at chapter 18 and things seem to be picking up. This novel occupies an odd in-between space where it avoids devolving into typical romance drama but still uses the same framework. I'm unexpectedly relieved that some drama is happening now + intrigued by the direction of Wen Nian's storyline.


Chapter 7-12 vocabulary log

Recent

TV-watching attempts (a.k.a DNFs):

Handsome Stewardess (Gagaoolala)

6-episode 2019 Taiwanese GL drama about a butch Taiwanese bartender who decides to become a stewardess so she can stay with her Singaporean martial artist girlfriend. I saw two episodes but had to stop because there were too many transphobic jokes (and callous and continuous use of words I consider slurs)—it's the same joke each time too, and drawn out for too long to ignore. This type of humor is always bad, but when the show attempts to start a conversation about LGBT communities and gender expectations it feels wrong in a much more personal way. How can I take its stance on gender expression seriously when the script punches down at the trans community?

More thoughts

I might pick it up again when I'm in a more forgiving mood—it is so short after all, and I'd like to have an informed opinion. There were mentions of Thailand when I stopped, so maybe??? Character growth and exposure to other LGBT communities???? I'll brace myself for the worst, though.

But Hsiao Man really is as handsome as advertised!!!!

* * *

Can't Buy Me Love (Netflix)
2023-2024 Filipino romance drama about a, uhh, rich and messy Chinese-Filipino business family (a stereotype), the competing stepchildren, and their enemies. There's a central murder-suicide mystery about the main character's birth mother and multiple crime subplots. Although the romance arcs are interracial, it's primarily class difference and family drama that divides the pairings, and racial or cultural differences don't even factor. I personally thought that was pretty nice.

Dialogue within the Chinese "community" is occasionally interspersed with Hokkien (the dominant Chinese language of the Filipino Chinese community), but none of the cast is Chinese, so the results are... interesting. XD

More thoughts

The dialogue in the first episode was actually quite passable and plausibly Chilipino! I for one co-sign "gua (我) bahala lo (了)". :P

The kinship terms are preserved as they should, and I loved the detail where the older brother was simply saved as "Ahya" (阿兄) in the main character's contacts. But every now and then characters will break out a phrase in Hokkien and the pronunciation progresses from somewhat comprehensible to total gibberish. ^^; I know the target audience is mainstream Filipino viewers and not Chinese-Filipinos, but having seen Mano Po (a Filipino movie franchise about Chinese-Filipino families with a non-Chinese cast), I know they can do better.

In terms of watchability, the first arc (20+ eps) is highly bingeable, but I don't know what the other 100+ eps are for. XD Maris Racal and her character are excellent! She radiates more personality and main character energy than the actual main characters and delivers her lines convincingly, so I can easily forgive her when she dramatically but unintelligibly calls someone a hoe.

Chapter 5: mostly uneventful but at least the cover art is beginning to make sense

Chapter 6: Mid-autumn + stormy night hurt/comfort chapter... Jiang Ci really needs to get one of those cat body pillows... A little Xiao Hei nightlight... Or one of those color-changing cat lamps... (Basically everything I can't justify getting for myself because of space + practicality issues lol) (I have a perfectly respectable bolster pillow that I do really like even though it's not cat-shaped)

Somewhat related: tanjiu9's most recent art (4-page comic):

Enjoy a blissful lie-in on weekend morning~ pic.twitter.com/zAv6Zp8xnH

— 坛九 (@tanjiu9) March 9, 2024

They also recently posted Marcille / Falin fanart (2 images)!!!!!

#ダンジョン飯 Growth pic.twitter.com/khEZ8aav0F

— 坛九 (@tanjiu9) March 5, 2024

Lastly, I Ship My Rival X Me manhua, a.k.a. my comfort manhua, has been licensed physically in English and is scheduled to come out in November 2024. The existing translation was readable from what I've read of it, and I expect it's the same team, so... good news to everyone who wasn't able to read everything before they pulled the plug on Bilibili International.