halfcactus | Entries tagged with links

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

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.

Happy Eid!

a picture of a sign that reads "DO NOT FEED the CATS in the GARDEN" followed by two photos of a cat coming out of the garden

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.

In any case, translation toward English is not an act of benevolent charity — Penguin’s imprimatur did not rescue Truyện Kiều from obscurity. Nearly a hundred million people live in Việt Nam and several million Vietnamese people live abroad. Việt Nam is now more populous than the United Kingdom, Turkey, Australia, France, Germany, South Korea — and many, many other countries. A friend recently shared a reminder from her mother: Vietnamese doesn’t need you. We get so embroiled in our diasporic angst, writing heartfelt, tortured essays about not being able to impart cultural knowledge to any children we might have, but we’re lucky for what is not the case for everyone who has lost a language or had it taken from them. Vietnamese is not endangered, and its literature is not honored by translation toward English — it is English-using society that benefits from gaining access to literature produced in other languages. . .

—Som-Mai Nguyen, "Blunt-force Ethnic Credibility" (h/t

superborb on Bluesky)

2.

In that instant, Kiyose realized something. If happiness, or beauty, or goodness existed in this world, for him, they would take the form of this runner.

Just finished Shion Miura's Run with the Wind (translated by Yui Kajira) and loved it. Although I barely remember anything from the anime, I adored it the first time I watched it and I now appreciate it as an adaptation. :') The big race (Hakone Ekiden) took almost half of the book and I'm amazed at how invested and emotional I was throughout it, even when I was just reading it! I did mostly have to skip Shindo and Haiji's legs because I was too anxious haha.

Also loved the bits where Musa was struggling with colloquial language (as a foreign student) and Shindo was always checking in on him. I actually don't remember Shindo at all in the anime, which makes me feel bad because he is such a GEM.

Some of the side characters (namely the rival athletes and Hana) were more obviously narrative devices than people and it took some time for me to get used to that, and I was very surprised to see the (one-sided) Kakeru/Hana developments.

Really enjoyed the English translation, the (consistent and intentional) choice to leave specific words untranslated and unitalicized, and the writing.

Some excerpts from the translator's notes:

Miura's writing has a warmth and an openness, though it's hard to put a finger on what exactly gives it that feeling. Her all-embracing love for human beings and their everyday lives, in all their messy glory, seems to seep through her words and touch us, too. Her characters come alive on the page, each possessing their own past and future. As readers, we are pulled into that embrace, and, like the spectators of the Hakone Ekiden, we feel absorbed in the Chikusei-so team's endeavor as if we were running alongside them ourselves.

My general stance in translating this novel was to prioritize the momentum of the story, the feel of each character (and their relationships, with all the banter), and the authenticity of the language revolving around running. At the same time, I wanted to retain as many Japanese terms as possible, and in a way that allows curious readers to look things up. After all, it's perfectly natural to come across unfamiliar words or concepts while reading any book, no matter the language it was originally written in. Luckily, it's easier than ever to find out what an engawa or a kamaboko looks like, or what a higurashi sounds like. Of course, there are many English videos and articles about the real-life Hakone Ekiden as well, packed with as much human drama as the story of the Chikusei-so team.

llonkrebboj linked me to their translation of 人是_ by Zhou Shen, which naturally led me to falling in love with the song and being tempted to watch Wandering Earth 2.

Watch on YouTube

1.
snowflake_challenge #6: Share your favourite piece of original canon.
I don't have a favorite anything anymore since I have a very short memory and tend to move on from interests... But here's a list of favorites from the last five years:

the movie Legend of Hei: there's supposed to be a sequel in the works and I'm worried Xiao Hei will spend less time in his cat form in it. I think his human form is cute too but I have cat bias. XD

the manga Witch Hat Atelier: the art, design, and paneling are insanely good, and I cried almost every volume. Not very sure the anime format is for me but I'm excited for it nonetheless!

the baihe youth comic 她們的故事 Their Story: Found out recently that there's some controversy(?) around it, but I still love it and it continues to be a comfort reread.

the Yoruneko comics, which are about the daily (well, nightly) life of a cat owner: this is also a comfort read and the main reason I still check Twitter, as the artist posts there. There's an animated series too.

the webtoon Like Wind on a Dry Branch: I paused at around 100 chapters in (it's ongoing with 200+ chapters), but it was the most invested I was in a canon in a while, a rare occurrence. It has some of my fav tropes too, ie. hurt/comfort and demons raising a human child :'D

I guess it's easier to say that my favorite medium is comics these days... I need to relearn how to read books without illustrations. ^^;

2.
Vocabulary list from the first chapter of 全宇宙最后一只猫 The Last Cat in the Universe (which I'm dropping because I'm looking for shorter or maybe less webnovel-y reads):
journal photo: vocabulary from The Last Cat in the Universe chapter 1

journal photo: vocabulary from The Last Cat in the Universe chapter 1

3.
Recent bookmarks:

Public Domain Archive: you can filter by style, time period, and tag!

Ellipsus: supposedly a Google Docs alternative.

Current Music: Jolin Tsai - 日不落

Twitter finds:

Free Filipino ebooks (per the page description, they're PDFs)

when you want senpai to notice you but she's too busy with her 12 boyfriends: cute and funny oneshot manga about a guy trying to compete with senpai's 12 gacha boyfriends by

sakaimii

when your gacha luck is so bad you get isekaied into the game of the chara you were pulling for preview, created and translated by

sakaimii - The rest of the manga is available internationally on Bookwalker, untranslated

when you find out you're not your boyfriend's type, 6-page manga by

sakaimii

The Pale Queen preview by

EthanMAldridge; the full graphic novel is available here.

Synopsis:

Agatha has always dreamed of the stars. But when a chance encounter introduces her to the Lady of the Hills, Agatha is shocked to learn that a secret magical world lays hidden in the mist-shrouded land next to her village. She finds herself quickly captivated by the Lady, but is the Lady who she appears to be?

A Twitter thread about

melonconsumer's first-hand experience in subbing for iQiyi. Apparently the process is MTL before being "proofread" (retranslated by Chinese-speaking human translators) who work on episodes in groups and in real time.

Embedded tweets, in case Twitter is inaccessible:

It's been almost a year since I started subbing for i/QI/YI

Some things I've learned:
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

They have staff regularly watching social media. During this time, at least 2 subbers got fired for leaking drama release dates and other info

I don't know why because melon accounts on Weibo often have faster and more accurate info than us 😅
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

There have been dramas that got released suddenly and we had like 1 day to sub 4 eps

There have been dramas that we worked on for a 1 week in advance, only for the release to get scrapped the day before
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

So many things get edited last minute (or even after release)

The last few eps of a recent drama were mostly subbed without sound because it got edited and didn't finish getting re-dubbed until a few hours before release
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

There are different levels of subbers. Higher budget dramas will obviously have a higher level sub team with stricter editors

But editors only look at a part of each ep (due to workload and time issues)
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

Can't think of anything else, other than that the full-time staff work so hard it's crazy

The manager works literally every day and replies immediately even when I message her at like 3AM 😳
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

Forgot to mention some things!
Multiple subbers work on 1 drama. Sometimes, there are multiple subbers for 1 ep

We have a glossary but when there are flashbacks or repeated lines, it's near impossible to have the exact same wording
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

Subbers don't get to see much of the drama beforehand and everything is done real-time

Sometimes it's halfway thru the drama and we realize something is wrong 😅 (ex: CP4 where elixir had to be changed to pill)
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

The translation process: transcription to Chinese → AI translation → humans proofread (have to change 95% of the content because AI sucks) → transcription and translation of onscreen text → broadcast → review and edit
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

The biggest difference between official subbers and fan subbers is that fan subbers don't have set deadlines, understand fandom language/style, and can add translator notes to explain things
— 🍉 田里的猹 (@melonconsumer) April 25, 2024

Dreamwidth finds:

chillwaves: a mixtape / fanmix comm!!!!!!!!!! \o/ Both physical and digital :')

raikantopeni: Thai media comm; I'm personally a bit fascinated over the fascination over what I think of as love teams (actors being paired up in different projects again and again) and I guess the perception of Thai media outside of Asia. (I'm v. unfamiliar with Thai media myself but I remember the waves of international popularity beginning much earlier where I come from.) (Though my perception might just be skewed because I hung out with people who generally liked movies and dramas.)

Some essays on diaspora writing, curated by

geraineon; relevant to my interests, but I'm a lazy reader =__= Don't want to lose the links and quotes tho.

-

Currently playing Eiyuden Chronicle, and keeping most of my real-time thoughts on Twitter because I don't have the energy to write a post. 😂

Current party favs are Garr (or Kogen–this game makes me appreciate tanks SO MUCH), Iudo (a physical attacker with high speed and high MP so I use him for healing magic), and Kuroto (stronk archer)... Mellore's stats and growth are mediocre, and magic is ANNOYINGLY next to useless at this point in the game anyway, but her rune slots are promising, so I rotate her in now and then for extra heals... Am retiring Francesca even though I enjoy her so much, because her HP / speed/ defense are abysmal and mark her for death.

PS. This game has a character named Pohl! No real connection/resemblance to the Suikoden 2 character but it made my heart jump hehe

1. Have you gotten everything done that you had hoped to do during the first half of 2024?
I guess! I sorted out my Philhealth so I could get a cyst out of my body (years overdue) and not have to pay for all of it. Did both of these in February! And I finally finished 我五行缺你... Also in February.

2. Did anything exciting or unexpected happen to you during the first half of 2024?
Good: A number of college friends came back briefly to visit so we had a couple of reunions.
Bad: One of places we reunited in was a wake (a friend lost a family member).

3. What big plans do you have for the second half of 2024?
Going to the dentist at least two more times. :(

4. Have you taken, or are you planning, a vacation this year?
Yeah, but I don't like talking about WiPs, so...

5. Have you ever wanted to be one of the people writing and posting these questions?
Haha no.

-

TV/Books:

橋頭樓上: Finished chapter 4, which I regretted starting at night. I had to stop halfway and continue in the morning because it spooked me so badly even though nothing bad was happening onscreen. Excellent thriller/horror so far, as much as I'm really distressed and afraid for the child character.

Almost done with Time Concert: Old Friends—am really enjoying the cover choices in ep 12, mostly because a number of them are actually familiar to me + are duets. IDK what I'll be putting on as background noise next... I've finished the Little Mushroom audio drama too so I have nothing lined up. ;__;

Started The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House and so far really enjoying it!!! Ensemble cast + girls + homey food. ♥ It's always funny watching these chill little slice-of-life jdramas because I keep bracing myself for, like, character deaths or life-altering disasters. Also the main girls' relationship this made me want to continue the Haikyuu anime because everything is a sports anime trope to me hahaha.

Twitter things:

This is technically a Tiktok, I just found it through Twitter: Out-of-touch wizard influencer shows you her loot

This

kyuruZ comic about force-feeding your pets medicine. Literally me everyday with our dog!!!!! (RIP)

I've been watching Tender Light (formerly Gone with the Wind), a drama with crime/thriller and coming-of-age elements, and major domestic abuse and rape storylines (multiple scenes of both).

Eps 1 to 9 were great at depicting coming-of-age bits with the younger characters (as well as the younger versions of the women), but not so much with the main storyline and its characterization of both the adults and Qingshui Town. It does nail down the right notes for a small town where the sun hits exactly right and you can feel the heat settling in in various ways while the darkness festers, etc. But the storytelling was rough, and the parts that surrounded Nan Ya's abuse felt, though obviously having a destination, overblown.

The crime stuff picks up at at the end of episode 9! It's getting twistier. The POV flashbacks are more immersive and functional rather than gimmicky and distracting. The (adult) characters still feel more contradictory than complex, and I'm still not sure if the dubious plot points will be sufficiently explained, but we'll see when more things come to light!

Misc:

sighyam: essay on Thai language & trans culture: about a certain slur and the Anglosphere misconception that it is broadly acceptable to use in Thailand just because sex workers refer to themselves with it. I'm adjacent to the SEA side of Twitter and have been increasingly seeing people, even non-Thai SEAsians, use the word casually with the assumption that it's socially acceptable, so it's great to see it addressed.

English translations of Shirahame Kamome's (Witch Hat Atelier mangaka) TCAF 2024 Q & A sessions: Day 1, Day 2

capturedwarmth: Free self-care wallpapers (lettering / illustration) | Translation of second image: "Take it easy / Life's not a race / Who says I have to finish first?" (BINI song lyric)

Comics by

daruma_tatsuma: The Many-Many-Happy Collection of My Elder Girlfriend: My girlfriend is a lefty / My girlfriend is right-handed

Also I have... once again... made a vid... of a Cdrama G4G prompt... This one was not claimed by or assigned to me, but it was Justice in the Dark (Modu) and I had a song in mind for it and all. I'll cross-post it to Youtube AO3 Tumblr etc at some point (I hope my computer doesn't die before then lol), but for now:

Fanvid: Murderer!Fei Du (Pei Su) (Twitter link)

Challenge #7: Make a list of fannish and/or creative resources.

Cfandom people are always looking for Chinese learning resources, so here is a list (with other links thrown in):
( Read more... )

Challenge #8 Talk about a current fannish project (fic, art, vid, crochet, funko pop village) (that you are creating or enjoying)
Not exactly fannish, but I'm trying to maintain a journal—and trying to keep reading cnovels so I have content to put on my journal (vocabulary lists). XD I meant to finish My Five Elements Lack You before LNY but I've been to preoccupied to sit down and read, oops.

And someone did an animatic of a Modu audiodrama skit (parody of a viral Korean video/meme) I subtitled/translated, though as usual, I can't look at my old stuff without critiquing them and wanting to claw out my face.

Audio with soft subs:

Watch on YouTube

Animatic by liss:

Watch on YouTube

Challenge #9: Rec Us Your Newest Thing.
Not really a "thing", but, well, my latest dog obsession is Manyu and only Manyu!!! I now understand solo/celeb stans because I felt a wave of crushing disappointment when her owner posted a photo of her little brother... Like, cute doggo, but that's not my baby :( :( :( I hope she's genuinely being treated well by her owners because she seems like such a sweet baby and I love her little face sooooo much.

I also started Fire Emblem: Three Houses last week + am trying to do Yoga with Adriene's January 30-day challenge without following her timeline, ie. just doing a video whenever I feel like it. I don't usually vibe with her videos but this series actually looks beneficial for my back, with different core focuses and an average video length of 18-20 minutes. We'll see if I can make it to the end! (I'm at Day 6 lol)

Challenge #10: Five Things
Five recent reads/watches (or attempts to):

Dungeon Meshi anime: fantasy anime about experiencing the cycle of life by cooking in the dungeon. Updates every Thursday, and it was a nice weekly unwinding ritual for 2 weeks, until I fell into the FE3H pit. I didn't make it very far into the manga, so I'm excited to see the rest of the story in the anime! IMO ep1 flew by too fast for the food and comedy scenes to be truly done justice, but ep2 was a bit smoother. I expect it to find its groove as it goes—even the manga took a couple of volumes to pick up momentum.

Frieren: another fantasy anime, one about mortality, outliving the people you love, and carrying the parts they left behind on your journey. I only got to see maybe 1.5 eps and the grief and pre-grief hit me pretty hard so I'm not super sure this is for me. It's very wholesome and soothing otherwise! The basic premise is life after saving the world.

I Told Sunset About You: 5-episode Thai BL drama, one that I remember a non-fandom friend recommending a few years back, long before the sequel existed. I think I only made it through half an ep because I couldn't multitask to it? XD But production values are very promising, and characters seem to be Thai Chinese, which is interesting to me!

長安三萬里 Chang'an (2023): Just watched this weekend, and will try to write about it at some point lol. tl;dr - This is a 3/5 movie for me.

The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have finally been released – and we have questions: stats and discussion roundup.

Art/comics

你的工作&你的休假 (Your Work & Your Vacation) vol1 by 日輪

nichirinko
18+ BL comic with a love triangle between the main character, personified Work, and personified Vacation, now available as a digital comic on Bookwalker TW! The comics are by a Taiwanese artist and on a Taiwanese site, so text is in traditional Chinese. *adds to the pile of digital comics I want to get*

nichirinko: "if you can become immortal by eating the flesh of a mermaid, can a mermaid become immortal by eating itself"
Full webtoon 隔壁同學是人魚 My Classmate is a Merman (BL) is on LINE webtoons (haven't read this one, but it looks cute)

Twitter thread: 19 fiction books by Palestinian authors: novels, short stories, and folktales

Twitter thread: free assets for graphic designers by

studio_aaa
Mostly textures and light grunge effects

FF7 fanart: "Hanging out in the mall with your favorite person" (Cloud and Tifa: 80s edition part III) by

HTSA_art

Book Clubs

Publishers for Palestine
Join us for an international #ReadPalestine week, starting Wednesday, November 29, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. (Free downloads from Nov 29 - Dec 5)

Journey to the West groupread: substack | tumblr | #jttwdaily tumblr tag
An online groupread for Journey to the West (bring your own book), with 2-3 chapters a week—I'm not participating but the tag seems pretty active with interesting discussion and notes.

Youtube/Videos

mariyum: website | instagram / tiktok / youtube
Palestinian baker/recipe blogger who has been recently posting their mother's recipes (but also has a large back catalogue and a written blog)—I think their Instagram might be the most updated video recipe repository right now. Videos are in English.

Video essay: Is Laufey jazz? by Adam Neely
Filed under "videos that helped me get work done"—I like Adam Neely's video essays even though I know nothing about jazz or musical theory, especially since he’s very conscientious about attributing the history and community that continues to breathe and thrive (and thus challenging Laufey to do the same). I’ve also only ever listened to Laufey casually on music platforms and had no inkling of her MVs, marketing, internet presence, or audience (though my brother was definitely in the concert that was shown in the video—PH crowd is the best crowd ahaha), so it was really cool to see the ~story~.

Video essay: The Musical Moral of Into the Woods by Sideways
As someone who has never seen any version of Into the Woods—I'm not entirely sure I'm a Sondheim kind of person either—this made me really want to watch a stage version. ;___;

Abi Marquez (youtube.com/@lumpiaqueen)
Recipe shorts by a Filipino cook! I don't cook, but hers is the rare cooking content that makes me want to get cooking. Her humor/personality + recipes are all very approachable, and a lot of times familiar, with brands/ingredients that are legitimately pantry staples (I too am a canned corn enthusiast), as well as easy snacks and hacks. Recipes are in English, with occasional humorous asides in Tagalog/Taglish. She has full videos too but I mostly watch her shorts. For quick and easy Filipino street food, see: banana cue, cheesy corn in a cup

Didn't want to lose these links to the chaos of my Twitter timeline:

1) "Chinese people playing Wordle like" [video]: so much happening in this video, I keep rewatching it lol

2) Twitter thread by

bjrecio:

One of the things that commonly get lost in translation when talking about "Philippine Myths" to folks outside the country is the idea that they're not... actually myths to us.

(I think this is something that even our diaspora counterparts don't always get.)

I mean, sure, the tikbalang is a cool looking horse creature that haunts our campfire stories. What gets omitted sometimes is that the stories are often first or secondhand. You've either actually encountered a tikbalang before, or know someone who swears that they did.

Do I believe that this encounter actually happened? That's an irrelevant question, I think. What matters is that to our culture, these are real encounters.

I say tabi-tabi po when passing anthills, not out of belief in nuno, necessarily, but because that's part of my culture.

SO TRUE, for our SEAsian neighbors as well, it's also why I feel so strongly about Zen Cho's short fiction. The stories that feature Malaysian mythological creatures inhabit a really familiar space, even for someone like me who grew up in the urban parts of the Philippines. My classmate's sister has encountered a tikbalang (she didn't find out until she played a recording of their interview), my friends have lived near kapres... (I don't really hear these stories in adulthood anymore. Maybe they just don't come up in our conversations, maybe I'm lucky enough to have grandmother who vets houses for supernatural presences, maybe it's a provincial thing, maybe those with higher educational backgrounds don't believe in them--it's hard to tell because I have a hard "no horror or supernatural stories" rule unless it will directly and immediately impact my life lol.)

3) Found my old planners/journals while attempting to declutter, here's a short thread of photos and notes. This is my favorite find hahahaha:

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to compile these so they don't take up so much space, one whole hardbound or springbound notebook a year adds up. A problem for another day.

SO MANY UNCOMPLETED THINGS THIS MONTH

( the justice, our times, squid game, nodame cdrama, my huckleberry friends, deaf republic )

Stuff I did: a scattering of spur-of-the-moment drafts that I have no intention of finishing

遙遠的歌 (My Huckleberry Friends ED) translation
遙遠的歌 piano whatever (LH notes if I ever want to revisit: B F# D# B / B G# B F# / F# C# F# F#)
Couple of Mirrors OP - piano whatever (chords if I ever want to revisit: D F A / Bf D F / A C F / C E G, pretty simple)

Miscellaneous Finds

undemanding → halfcactus

I don't feel strongly about the name, but for now it's probably good to narrow my online identities to 2 main usernames haha. Have also updated the FFXV fancomics recs post because I had some unposted backlog.

Media I'm into these days:

我磕了对家X我的CP manhua is baaaaack with Vol.4 as of last weekend! So cute, so sweet, GYL so 委屈 and still happily pinching WYZ's cheek and patting WYZ's head. I don't follow a lot of manhua, but I think the ISMM one is extremely good. The art style is very pretty and the chapters dynamically rendered.

Legend of Hei S2 started this year and is about to end this Saturday! The ratio of episodes seems like half gaming mechanics dialogue (to fulfill Xiao Hei's mission, they have to play a VR game), half intense action sequences. Ep.39 was 12 whopping minutes of a fight scene, but so ramped up with tension I couldn't quite enjoy the cool assassin moments. There's so much I love about this season, especially Xiao Hei going full murder kitten who's adopted A-Gen as his older brother, and Shan Xin being the resident expert gamer. And there are, in fact, SEVERAL appearances from characters from the movie! Exciting times.

他们都说我遇到了鬼 (They All Say I've Met A Ghost): Reading this for

superborb's book club. I didn't enjoy the first 5 chapters very much because I found the MC's PoV hard to get into, but I'm enjoying it a lot more now, at chapter 12! It's a 42-chapter danmei novel featuring a buff MC who lives and teaches in a haunted school and vehemently denies the existence of ghosts, and an exorcist ML who sometimes has to break the law to proceed with his ghostbusting. The MC's first ghost encounters are so annoyingly stupid, but they turn sweet and then bittersweet.

我五官缺你 (My Five Elements Lack You): Stopped at ch16, but hoping to get back into it! I have it mentally tagged as "fengshui boyfriends": it's a 113-chapter novel about a completely nice and ordinary MC who gets transmigrated into the body of a vile swindler. He is captured and put to work by a blind fengshui master ML. The book contains folk horror elements and has very webnovel-y pacing. I'm liveblogging this one on Goodreads so hopefully I won't forget my thoughts haha.

I have a fuller list of media I'm consuming in my listography but I have a terrible habit of starting things then dropping them, so it's not super representative of my media consumption. XD

Recs, etc

[vid] Go Ahead | 他从来都没有忘记，自己是被寄养的
Good day it is crying over Ziqiu + Li Dad o’clock again

[vid] Go Ahead | 贺子秋在离开的九年里过的一点也不好
EXCELLENT He Ziqiu fanvid. All of his important lines are here, from the open wounds to the casual knifing.

[vid] Go Ahead | 宠妹狂魔贺子秋，这样的哥哥来一个？
Compilation of pre-timeskip Jianjian and Ziqiu moments! I have this bookmarked to watch on bad days.

Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky
I chose English because no one in my family or friends knew it; no one I spoke to could read what I wrote. I myself did not know the language. It was a parallel reality, an insanely beautiful freedom. It still is.

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那曾經吹過的風...
Recent fannish developments
March
I've never been told a single lie so bold, and cruel, and beautiful.
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October Media Log (a.k.a. Zhang Xincheng media log)
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