halfcactus

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Also on: AO3
My submission for Blind Go—an ensemble-cast video about the various criss-crossing paths that the characters have chosen to walk, featuring a hug compilation at the end. :) Tap the CC button for English subtitles.

I don't really have a lot of feelings about this, but I relistened to the full song recently and now I appreciate my past self's audio choices? I'd spliced together all the chorus variations from different sections of the song, so the chorus in the video comes off as overly long but I think it kiiiiinda works when it ends on the big, sweeping instrumental break.

The song is 夜空中最亮的星 (Brightest Star in the Night Sky) by Escape Plan. As I was looking for cover versions I could possibly use I ran into Yisa Yu's performance which was absolutely ethereal and went straight into my personal playlists... Wish there was a full version!

I still ended up using with the original studio version by Escape Plan because the lyrics were more complete and the vibes more appropriate. ^^;

I was pretty satisfied with the lyric translation at the time I wrote it, for the simple reason that at that it looked like it was done by a human person. It's a fairly straightforward song but sometimes you have to hang on to the little things.

Translation "draft":

I never refer to these when I'm actually subbing btw (I prefer to translate as I'm watching my own vid), it's just a good way to organize my thoughts and consider how else I can edit my vid.

( CN lyrics + text translation below )

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.

A bunch of badly taken photos (I really should learn how to take better ones!) of my journal from the first quarter of the year. I'm using an A5 Laconic planner with a little snake on the cover. :>

January

For some reason I slapped these on a paper background, idk???

February

March

I was so deep in my manhwa brainrot I didn't have the space to write about them and was already planning to get a Hobonichi for 2026 haha! It's evening out though because April has been a very empty month. I've temporarily moved back to my Field Notes to make my little lists (especially since I just had a bunch of little fandom projects spinning around in my brain and it was kind of driving me crazy) because I'd otherwise just be stuck in my head and bedrotting. I also just got a set of carbon ink refills for my Platinum Preppy, which was how I found out that the reason my writing was so thin and more prone to skipping was because I had been running out of ink this whole time? 😂

1.

The tree across my window had its first full bloom of the year, the first along its street to turn gold. It shed its flowers two days later, of course, but it felt special, like it was just for me hehe. And hopefully it will bloom several more times before summer ends. :")


2.
It was a long weekend for us and I had so many plans for it: catching up on sleep, catching up on Justice in the Dark, finishing I Am Setsuna, finishing all the episodes/movies I started and forgot to continue, journaling, etc... So far the only thing I've managed to do was game a little, GIF a lot, and finally sub ZXC's latest song, which confirmed for me that Resolve has been misbehaving as far as subtitles are concerned... I should probably check if there are any later versions but I'm afraid that any potential update might make the program stop working!?!?




3.
I actually have been having a lot of complicated thoughts about Anglo cfandom since Justice in the Dark has me drawn back into various fandom spaces (mostly because I dump my GIFs on Tumblr and Twitter) after a long time of only being present on Youtube which was its own can of strangeness.

The drama itself has been... fine. I'm not the best judge because I watch raws (bc there's a provider that has added CN subs... And sometimes it's nice to read bullet comments haha) and can only understand so much... And I'm not particularly invested in the adaptation's plot... And I skip-watch all the parts that stress me out... It tracks fairly close to the novel, but I'm not sure how cohesive it is to an audience who is unfamiliar with the original—a lot was obviously cut (in the sense that scenes are conspicuously missing), and a lot of transitions feel janky, but the emotional storyline between Pei Su and Luo Weizhao has been kept intact. Their relationship is progressing at a different pace, which for me is interesting? For now, at least! Like it's sad that the gay got cut out, but I don't mind this version where Pei Su is still some level of antagonistic towards LWZ (not yet flirting), maybe because I'm just a casual Modu fan. XD

(A little nervous about seeing any SEA rep here since I remember mentions of it in the audio drama, but I'm not sure the universe has a concept of SEA, other than being filmed there.)

Zhang Xincheng's acting seems to be well received across various audiences, but I'm weirdly... indifferent to it (the reception). I guess it's not that weird when I've seen (and have been following) most of his body of work and I tend to avoid the fandom/Weibo side of things; from my POV, watching his performance in a drama he filmed four years ago and was partially released two years ago feels more like a puzzle piece sliding into place... Like obviously I think he was cast well and put a lot of effort to build a character that is more interesting than usual... I just don't do fandom the same way anymore, I guess? My relationship with cdramas has changed, idk. Still enjoying! But from a quiet and more neutral distance. ^^;

Saw the 2022 xxxHolic movie today—it wasn't a very good movie (in the sense that it needed another 30-60 mins purely just as an intro to Watanuki and his relationships) but it went SO HARD with the aesthetic I actually forgot about JitD for the rest of the day. It was my first time vidding on this computer and I guess it went well until I was exporting the subtitle track (which I ended up having to fix on Youtube's subtitles editor). Not sure if I messed something up or the version of Resolve I have is just wonky...

Watch on YouTube

Also documented the "process". Top = before coloring, bottom = final output:

The color adjustments were mostly to brighten up the clips, though I might have overdone the brightness and the color correction lololol. Anyway my favorite cuts in this vid were Yuuko's eyes opening in increments at 0:35 and Watanuki stepping on the ledge at the line "up to the top". :')

AO3 link:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/64640386

#1-12: The Tale of Goldiluck the Black Kitten

#13-15: Swimming Lessons for a Mermaid

#16-19: The Villainess Flips the Script

#20-21: Villainess in Love

#22-24: The Perks of Being an S-Class Heroine

#25: My In-Laws Are Obsessed with Me

#26-27: Father, I Don't Want This Marriage

#28: I don't remember where this is from lol

#29: Becoming the Dark Hero's Daughter

Preview:


( icons! )

Icon table generated by Chlor's Icon Table Generator

Crediting:
icon by <user name=halfcactus>

Swimming Lessons for a Mermaid

SUPER cute and wholesome (and complete!) modern-day youth + straight romance manhwa that's kind of like a reverse Little Mermaid AU? The MC is a mermaid who is unable to swim. Her doting older sisters trade their hair for a pair of legs so the MC can live on land with their human dad instead. In the present day, the MC lives a regular high school life but avoids emotional connections until a boy from the swim team discovers her secret and offers to teach her how to swim.

This is so charming and funny and effusively warm. The characters are all very normal people and their interactions with their families (especially among the humans) are laughably real. The manhwa makes it a point to build up multiple relationships and set up the dynamics in what eventually becomes a long-term reconfigured friend group. There's some drama towards the end but it's very low-stakes because it's not like the MC can drown. The ending is moving and emotionally satisfying (and not even centered on the leads!). There's a kind of "pair the spares" situation in the bonus chapters but they're as easily read as gen. It does hurt me that

spoilers

the comic-relief friend never finds out that the MC is a mermaid, in spite of the rest of the group already knowing. ;____; I'm sure that specific character is okay with being out of the loop since he's gone on the record about being okay with his friends keeping secrets, but the fact that they have to go out of their way to hide it from him hurts me. There's even a point where the MC suddenly disappears for months(?) and while everyone else has been assured that she's safe with her mermaid family, all he's told is that she's sick, which must be incredibly worrying!!!!

Anyway, this was a 9/10 read and a 100% match to my preferences.

Guiding the Eccentric Tyrant
Space + military danmei with omegaverse elements, except that instead of alpha and omega you get "espers" and "guides"... which I discovered is known as guideverse ahaha. Anyway I mostly checked this out for the translator's notes, which are intriguingly passionate, and made it to chapter 5... The MC is an F-class guide and the ML is, by the looks of it, an eccentric tyrant who likes bedazzling everything he owns (from his phone to his spaceship):


妃为九卿- 神医小娇妃 The Goddess of Healing
I noped out right after the first chapter because I was finding the dialogue annoying and the translated names distracting: 婉兒 was Waner which is at least reasonable, but 子然 was Zion, which was baffling. (I was reading the official Tapas translation.)

The Tale of Goldiluck, the Black Kitten


This is the first time I've encountered anything I thought of as a hidden gem, because this sure is a gem, and it's on Pocket Comics (which never seemed to offer anything that I'd enjoy unironically and isn’t on the other platforms... until now)... It's a sweet slice-of-life series set in the Joseon dynasty about a sad black kitten, a sickly scholar, and family. There are some magical elements, ie. the cat turning human every night and forest creatures helping him find his way home, but otherwise, it's pretty mundane and fatally adorable. If you're a pet owner, this might make you cry.

How to Get My Husband on My Side
Checked this out because the novel was written by Spice & Kitty, who wrote A Stepmother's Märchen, but unfortunately this did not hit the same—maybe because the central relationship is romance and the character writing revolves around it, or maybe because the artist/team for this one isn't as good at adapting a novel. I guess it's recommendable if you like arranged marriage with hurt/comfort (where the MC, a victim of physical abuse and a creepy incestuous brother, has developed an eating disorder and a knack for masking), but the fantastical aspects (magical creatures that the MC can bond with) just didn't work for me. And outside of the MC's journey of healing, none of the characters are interesting.

Raising My Fiancé with Money
There's a glut of generic romance-fantasies with vaguely European settings saturating the manhwa scene, and though this series doesn't stand out as particularly unique, it's still better than average. It's a contract dating story where the MC and ML are trying to break off their current engagements. The MC has just recovered from the brainfog of being in a VERY ill-advised relationship (to the point of distancing herself from her loving family), and now she wants her life back. She's incredibly lucky with money and has the enviable problem of being incapable of spending more than she earns. Meanwhile ML is a high-ranking but functionally powerless pushover with social anxiety. He hides behind his RBF and wartime reputation and learns, with the MC's help, how to socialize and say no to things.

This is one of those canons where I'm not really sold on the romance but I want them to get married anyway because the ML deserves to be adopted by the MC and her chaotically protective family. And everyone (except maybe the MC's dad, who's... built different) is memorably hot.

PS. This manhwa has no transmigration or regression.

A little annoyed because I've been reading WIPs that haven't even finished serializing the first season (at least for the English versions).

Divorcing the Emperor by Legendary Cat (story) and Hara (art)
Ongoing, < 30 chapters on Tapas.

The English title is so difficult to distinguish from other generic transmigration rofans, but the content is completely different. For one thing, there's no transmigration (or regression, for that matter). For another, it's an ensemble-cast adventure/comedy set in a fantasy world where the romance is secondary to the characters' shenanigans, and the style and pacing are very anime-like.

PLOT: The main character, Krisha, is the daughter of a soldier who grew up in a battlefield before they settled in a province outside the capital. One day she is informed that she is married to the emperor in an accident of paperwork with neither of them having met each other. Thus begins Krisha's quest to go to the capital to file for divorce—and in her travels she sees the true state of her country.

Krisha is: 1) very strong, and 2) the founding member of ANRA (The Archuke of the North Research Association), which leads to some very funny developments. AND she has a magical meat-eating horse called Creampuff.

The plot is moved by comedy, hijinks, and likeable characters, and a sort of reverse harem format, except so far only Archduke#1 has fallen in love with Krisha and even then he's been manipulating her for his own political/revenge motivations. Everyone is so eccentric and interesting it's actually hard to tell who the ML is (I'm going to guess the emperor, if only because the Krisha's trajectory seems to be her learning how to be empress), and Krisha herself is a force of nature who is the perfect balance of smart and dumb. There's enough genre awareness in the story to subvert some tropes (eg. slave auction / desert kingdom character trope) while parodying others magnificently.

Enjoying this so much I'm not sure I'll have the willpower to let more chapters accumulate before continuing. ;___;

As the Heart Leads ny TILDA, CHT, Octopuschu
Ongoing, < 30 chapters on Tapas

Romance-fantasy where the MC was originally the granddaughter of a shaman in modern-day Korea, born with the ability to see spirits, preternaturally bad luck, and a poor affinity with water. She transmigrates into the body of a woman in a western fantasy world who drowns herself before her marriage to the king, an otherwise good-natured man who's driven to insomnia and fits of mania by the spirits that are attracted to him and his accumulation of negative karma. In spite of her commitment to avoid any entanglement with the supernatural at all costs, the MC takes to surreptitiously punching spirits, creating talismans and totems, and massaging the king's energy points to help him sleep.

So far not much is happening but I'm invested enough to subscribe to it, though I am as usual expecting the quality to drop after S1.


The One within the Villainess by Makiburo (story), Shiraume Nazuna(Art)
Ongoing fantranslation

Reverse revenge isekai with fantasy/adventure elements. Rather than being a transmigrator who takes over an otome game villainess's life, the MC is the original villainess who gets her body back after it's taken over by a well-meaning transmigrator. The transmigrator, Emi, is a modern-day Japanese girl who empathizes with the villains and wishes for the villainess's happiness, so she spends the MC's formative years improving the villainess's life and relationships while the MC is unable to do anything but watch until Emi detaches from the body.

The plot begins when the original protagonist—also possessed by a transmigrator—enters the story and completely undoes all the goodwill Emi has worked so hard to build. After the system turns on her, Emi breaks down and disappears from the body. Remi repossesses her body and vows to avenge Emi and pay her back for her kindness. Outwardly she uses Emi's gentle personality and moral compass to win people over and keep the memory of Emi alive, but inwardly she embraces her true villainess nature, only going through the motions of saving the world so the original protagonist is unable to progress in the game and is eventually cornered.

The story moves quite fast: there are only 26 full chapters out, but by chapter 7 Remi is already fighting a god for the sake of her lost love.


While it's technically not yuri, the vibes are very gay, and there's a lot of focus on how much Remi loves Emi. There is only ONE eligible ML (the demon king route), but that character and one-sided romance mostly exist to show that Remi will never be interested in anyone else because Emi is her entire world.


She regards the ML's confession as a confession to Emi and approves of him for sharing the same impeccable taste in women.



Cons: The villains—the original protagonist (or at least the transmigrator who takes her place) especially, but also the two other guys in her harem—are stereotypically a cartoonish level of evil AND stupid, and the manga seems to believe that it should keep layering on revelations of how bad these people are for the revenge to be satisfying. This unfortunately leads to a weird puritanical slant in the ~final showdown~ where the original protagonist is revealed to be a sexual deviant (in society standards) and all of high society basically watches revenge porn.

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PS. Blind Go (Hikaru no Go fan event) is back this year! The AO3 collection is open for submissions, and submissions are due on May 4. I believe this year's event is open for all mediums (not just fic.)

Links: AO3 collection (open) / Bluesky / Tumblr

1.

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.

3.
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.

Was recently talking about ISMM again, and figured I'd translate the theme song (in which Wei Yanzi raps about staying up to read RPS of himself and Gu Yiliang) for a friend. Haven't heard it in a while but it's still a bop and listening to it still makes me smile.

Ty to llonkrebboj for going above and beyond with beta-reading and pretty much teaching me how to read. :P Really enjoyed reading their notes and comments! Learned a lot from that. Going through a feedback process also forced me to slow down and marinate in the lyrics a bit.

Watch on YouTube

Notes: I'm still not really sure about the second verse but it's the less important one so I guess I can let it go.

Tools: made the srt on Video Captions app, and the thumbnail on Affinity Photo app

I also made Chinese/pinyin captions (which will show up if you select Chinese as your subtitle language)! I then made the mistake of hitting the "auto-translate" button which made my work feel (as always) quite useless and redundant. Not that it's gonna stop me, but you know.