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 KittenLife 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 1–2Listened 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.
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snowflake_challenge #6: Share your favourite piece of original canon.
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dayadhvam_triad shared a link to the timeline of novel events) (major spoilers)
