halfcactus

Q: Do you consider yourself prolific?

A: In a weird way, my self-worth is contingent on that. I kind of feel like, oh, it's embarrassing, I haven't done anything in like six months. I need to be constantly re-establishing that I'm an artist in my mind, or else I just feel kind of lost and restless and... like a loser.

—Song Exploder #287: Kevin Barnes (Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games)

Subbed: Zhang Xincheng's Spotlight x Egypt Vlog


Hit 1,000 subscribers sometime since I last logged into my YT account... I'm not one to care for these milestones since none of my ~content~ is truly mine anyway (AND I'm no longer in fandom), but I figured it was an excuse to finally dust off a WiP that has been sitting in my hard drive for months... I had to rope llonkrebboj into beta-ing this one because I wasn't comfortable being my usual lackadaisical self about this since the subject involves real people and places. I'm VERY grateful that she was willing to sit through a 6-minute celebrity video to comb my work thoroughly and offer me the corrections + extra details I needed. :')

Also reccing a song that llonkrebboj just subbed and that I really enjoyed the lyrics of—折扇 The Folding Fan by Winky诗 ... The second verse with the fan vibrant in the opera singer's hand was sooooo good.

Text version with translation notes here.


In other news:

I've finally been managing to finish most of the books/comics in my "currently reading" queue since I finished Bridge Tower... But I 1) haven't had any spoons to write about them here (other than a couple of Shortbox stuff), 2) don't even have enough space in my journal/planner to write about them there. JOURNALING PROBLEMS, AMIRITE? </3 (I recently found my Platinum Preppy so I've been actually writing on my journal again) (Mostly thoughts about media)

Natsume's Book of Friends is back with season 7, which is PERFECT for October. But I don't really have the time/spoons to watch stuff... I've been slightly fatigued, moderately stressed, and overwhelmingly mad at the world haha .___.

And because I've been stressed and tragically earphone-less, I've been listening to podcasts again! Some recent listens:

- PCHH's Pop Culture Pumpkin Spice Lattes episode: A mood-booster; It was great to hear the gang back together again and ribbing each other for their choices. ♥

- The What Arabic LGBTQ+ Slang Tells Us episode in Slate Books: Really enjoyed hearing about dialects and evolutions of slang (my favorite tidbit was the one about the Jack card having a metrosexual vibe), and how language "flows visa-free from one place to another".

- One of the Dear Prudence eps where the hosts describe wedding imperfections as part of the slice-of-life.

- Now listening to the SYSK episode about Lysol and how it used to be marketed as a contraceptive. D:

Games:
The Cyphstress; Book Reprocessing Machine 5; Six Cats Under.
Thoughts in this post.

Books:
Ada Limón, "The Carrying"; Agha Shahid Ali, "The Half-Inch Himalayas". Both poetry collections.
( some excerpts: Contract Says: We'd like the Conversation To Be Bilingual; Postcard from Kashmir; The Dacca Gauzes )

TV:
Under the Skin
[livetweet thread, with comments from the groupwatch]

A 20-episode crime drama starring Tan Jianci as Shen Yi, an all-around artist most known for his age regression drawings. Due to the trauma of having his art used to commit murder, he has decided to become a cop and aid in investigations using his artistic superpowers.

Overall, not a good crime show, but very good for art shenanigans. The first half is frankly bad at both crime writing and tying the episodes together; cases were abruptly dropped with no sense of closure, jumping straight to the intro of the next case, which was very confusing. It was also very hard to tell characters apart, which I think was a big flaw in a show where face recognition is crucial.

I had huge problems with the way this show treated women—in its attempts to be empathetic to women, to criticize sexism and patriarchal systems, and to explain why crimes against women are unreported, the show unfortunately comes across as quite gratuitous with sexualized violence. superborb mentions in her post that the show also comes across as unintentionally sexist when it casts two men as the main PoV characters and investigators.

However, I did love Shen Yi's art montages and superpowers, and the art-related comedy. I loved them a lot!!! And I think Shen Yi's process is executed especially well in the second half, in the bomb case. The payoff for that case was very good. (Other fav scenes: Shen Yi confronting a criminal in the only way he knows how in episode 16; Shen Yi pulling an extremely funny and extremely effective power move as an audience member in the final episode).

I didn't care about the bromance/subtext because I disliked Du Cheng (the angry cop), but it is otherwise very shippy. They look married in the end. ^^;


This show contains: multiple rape and sexual assault cases (one of them badly handled, imo); CSA; cute but sad girlfriends (x2); gratuitous domestic violence—the scene goes on for much, much longer than it has to be


Podcasts
I'm still not in a podcast mood, but I tried a couple: the first was The Beef and Dairy Podcast, which was... an experience... The other was Hari Kondabalu's episode on Feeling Seen, a Maximum Fun podcast, which I think is about connecting to movies/media?

. . .part of the experience of being a POC is that, out of a sense of necessity, we have to see the humanity in whiteness. . . . the reason why i think this is some weird homework assignment is that i’m the only one doing the homework

aartichapati also recommended Kondabalu's Code Switch episode: Sometimes Explain, Always Complain. Haven't listened it yet but I really enjoyed hearing his PoV about race and representation, so I'm putting it here for bookmarking purposes lol.



Misc.

cuuuuuute art about cats vs new boxes!!! by kyuryuZ who draws the cutest comics about being a cat owner

Frankenstories: a collaborative writing game. Bookmarking for my writer friends because Gartic Phone is getting old. XD

Japanese Man Spends £12,480 To Look Like a Dog (he commissions a very expensive costume)


Lastly, a collage of personal photos from May, which was kind of eventful:
( photos )