rhysiana

ATEEZ Lore in 5 Minutes

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 20:12:15 GMT

ATEEZ lore in 5 minutes (originally edited down from a fannish summary idrilka sent me, which I then tailored for a non-fan getting ready to taking her daughter to the Toward the Light concert, with links to all the relevant MVs added. Admittedly if you watch all the MVs, this takes a lot longer than 5 minutes to work through...):

( Read more... )

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November 2023 Media Round-up

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 01:03:22 GMT

This month's list looks rather sparse, but it's because my brain finally let me pick up an epic-length book again, so I've been doing a lot of reading, but I don't count it until I'm done. Also, I didn't separate out seasons of shows (looking at you, BSD) or volumes of manga (so much Gentle Noble read in such a short time!), so there's depth rather than breadth being represented here for once! (Plus I'm in the middle of entirely too many other shows. Hopefully I'll finish some of them soon!) Anyway, huge shout out to kit for all the manga/webtoon recs, and to annundriel and marsastronomica for dragging me into BSD with them, I love enjoying things with friends!

Books
-Sekine's Love, Kawachi Haruka (manga) ( Read more... )

-Malice, Keigo Higashino (Japanese, translated, audio) ( Read more... )

-Take Off, jui (webtoon, to current) ( Read more... )

-A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation, Misaki (manga, to current) ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (movie, English, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Bungo Stray Dogs (anime, Japanese, Crunchyroll) ( Read more... )

-The Case Files of Jeweler Richard (anime, Japanese, Crunchyroll) ( Read more... )

-Twinkling Watermelon (Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

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Thanksgiving Day, 2023

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 00:16:24 GMT

Had a perfectly decent midday Thanksgiving at my parents' house, with only a third as many children present as I expected and a great muchness of food. Came home before it was even dark, sat down in the dining room to work on carving a wood print block while Spouse did miniatures modeling things, got up at about halfway done to get a drink, sat down and thought to myself "Hmmm, do I really want to do any more tonight?", and then promptly stabbed my thumb.* So I guess that answers that question!

Anyway, hope all other USians are having a pleasant holiday, with less accidental self-maiming!

*(It's fine, I promise. Bandaid-level injury, not stitches-level.)

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October 2023 Media Round-up

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 22:25:05 GMT

In addition to catching a crud from my niece that necessitated lying around for a week watching things that didn't require too much brain, this month also featured all my library holds coming in at the same time, so the round-up list will be an interesting reflection of those two events, I'm sure.

Books
-Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee ( Read more... )

-A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, KJ Charles ( Read more... )

-Dome 6, Gail Carriger ( Read more... )

-The Name Drop, Susan Lee ( Read more... )

-Killers of a Certain Age, Deanna Raybourn ( Read more... )

-To Shape a Dragon's Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose ( Read more... )

-Paradise Kiss (manga), Ai Yazawa ( Read more... )

-Love is Probably Around the Corner (manga), Tatsuya Kiuchi - (actually read in Sept) ( Read more... )

-The Cat Proposed (manga), Dentou Hayane - (actually read in Sept) ( Read more... )

-Red, White & Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston ( Read more... )

-Kono Oto Tomare! (manga), Amyuu ( Read more... )

-I Hear the Sunspot (manga), Yuki Fumino ( Read more... )

-Once a Rogue, Allie Therin ( Read more... )

-Luke and Billy Finally Get a Clue, Cat Sebastian ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-My Happy Marriage (anime, Japanese, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-A Girl and Three Sweethearts (Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Ballerina (movie, Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Destined with You (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-My Personal Weatherman (Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Doona! (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Koisenu Futari (Japanese, ...the internet) ( Read more... )

-Bungo Stray Dogs (Japanese, Crunchyroll) ( Read more... )

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Quick List of Life Stuff: October 2023

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 20:04:43 GMT

I keep meaning to make posts that aren't my monthly tallies of media consumption and then not doing it, so I'm just declaring today to be the Day of Lists and running through non-media stuff first:

-End of September, now: As mentioned last time, I went to the folk school and finally got to take the mokuhanga (woodblock printmaking) class I'd been wanting to take since last year, when they sadly cross-scheduled it with the week I was teaching. It was great! And I came home and acquired all the tools and materials I'll need to do it myself, because unlike the wood engraving class I took, this style doesn't use a press and is thus much more doable at home. (There are no local art spaces/maker spaces with a type-high press around here, and it drives me nuts.) Last night I finally sat down with one of the postcard-sized blocks I bought for playing around with small test prints and committed to a design that I will hopefully start carving out today.

-Now that my brother and his kids have moved back to the same tri-city area as me and our parents, we've started a family-wide project of helping my 8yo niece catch up on literacy skills, which means I've been going over to my parents' house once a week as one of her "fun reading partners!" I collected a huge list of suggestions from college friends with kids in the same age bracket and my mom took the kids to get their new library cards, and we're hoping through having huge stacks of options she'll keep thinking of reading as a fun thing and not a chore. So far, it seems to be going well. We're actually already seeing improvement! (She's also in a new reading group at school, so this isn't just our efforts, but still.) However, during my second turn as reading partner, I promptly caught an elementary school sore throat crud (not COVID, thankfully) and was down for the rest of the week.

-One of those trips to my parents' house was also for the purposes of temari glamor shots, as all the international members of the Japan Temari Association have been asked to submit photos of temari in clearly non-Japanese settings, and my parents have been collecting local pottery and art for the past 40+ years. My mom and I also took a trip to the art museum and took a bunch of pictures with the outdoor installations. I haven't submitted mine yet, though, because I also want to see if I get any good one at the folk school when I go back to teach in a week. It's an interesting challenge trying to get a good background that says something about itself in a shot that's still focused on something that is by comparison quite small.

-Finished out the month by going to see the annual Halloween-themed ballet with my mother. This year was Frankenstein, which we actually saw a few years ago when it premiered. Our seats were better this time, but I do think the paired piece last time, an interpretation of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was better than this year's, two pieces based on works by the Graveyard Poets, a subset of the Romantic movement.

-I spent the evening of Halloween holed up in the back bedroom of the house with all the other lights off because having a lifelong T1 diabetic spouse means residual bitterness about trick-or-treating, working on finally piecing together a sweater I've had all the panels done for for months. I made good progress on the sweater, and it turns out the good thing about the dog now being mostly deaf is he was unaware of the kids out in the street when not able to see them, so he remained unbothered by the whole experience.

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September 2023 Media Round-up

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 19:52:46 GMT

Running slightly late on rounding everything up, but it's still within the first week of October, so it's fine, right? It's amazing how much nothing I need to do to get back into equilibrium after an intense week of doing So Much taking a class at the folk school. (Which I should make an actual post about, probably, but whatever. On to the important cataloguing of books and shows!)

Books
-When the Angels Left the Old Country, Sacha Lamb ( Read more... )

-Witch King, Martha Wells ( Read more... )

-Seoulmates, Susan Lee ( Read more... )

-Spelunking Through Hell, Seanan McGuire
-Backpacking Through Bedlam, Seanan McGuire ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-Forecasting Love & Weather (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (Japanese, Netflix, movie) ( Read more... )

-Ooku (Japanese, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-An Ancient Love Song (Chinese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Uncanny Counter, season 1 (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-One Piece live action (English, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Pending Train: 8:23 Tomorrow with You (Japanese, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Minato's Laundromat 2 (Japanese, GagaOOLala) ( Read more... )

-Encore Martha (Taiwanese, GagaOOLala, short film) ( Read more... )

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August 2023 Media Round-up

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 20:49:46 GMT

August was an unusually busy month for me, at least in terms of how the past several years have gone, so I'm interested in seeing how that affected the month's round-up list. (Having now written out the list: turns out I read about twice as many books in a month if I'm mostly away from the internet for half of it. Shocking!)

Books
-Station Eternity, Mur Lafferty ( Read more... )

-If Found, Return to Hell, Em X. Liu ( Read more... )

-Lady Tan's Circle of Women, Lisa See ( Read more... )

-Translation State, Ann Leckie ( Read more... )

-Magic Claims, Ilona Andrews ( Read more... )

-Divinity 36, Gail Carriger ( Read more... )

-Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, by various (audio) ( Read more... )

-Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers (audio) ( Read more... )

-Demigod 12, Gail Carriger ( Read more... )

-Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-ETA: Good Omens s2 (English, Prime) ( Read more... )

-Celebrity (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Marry My Dead Body (Taiwanese, Netflix, movie) ( Read more... )

-Red, White, and Royal Blue (English, Prime, movie) ( Read more... )

-Invisible (Japanese, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Tokyo in April is... (Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

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Ficlet: Tanabata Matsuri

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 01:32:41 GMT

I gave myself a personal deadline of posting my Nozue and Togawa on vacation fic, however long it turned out to be, by August 7, which is when Tanabata is celebrated in Sendai, in the grand tradition of sending fictional characters on trips to places I used to live. It turned out to be just ficlet length, but I also did some quick semi-sketchy not-super-polished art to go with it.

Tumblr | AO3 (chapter 7 of the Petit Fours post-canon slice-of-life collection)

The art: A sketchbook open to a page of Nozue admiring Tanabata decorations, surrounded by reference photos and colored pencils.

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July 2023 Media Round-up

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 19:54:32 GMT

Kind of an odd month, media-intake-wise, because I was at the beach for over a week with my family. This used to mean I'd get a ton of reading done because the internet was nonexistent/unreliable, but alas, now it works consistently, even during the July 4th peak! I did make good use of it by fascinating my niece and nephew with Japanese manufacturing process videos, which seems like a good trade-off.

Books
-Minimum Wage Magic, Rachel Aaron
-Part-Time Gods, Rachel Aaron
-Night Shift Dragons, Rachel Aaron - These three are a trilogy, so I'll just talk about them all at once. ( Read more... )

-Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall ( Read more... )

-By a Silver Thread, Rachel Aaron ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-Love Tractor (Korean, iQIYI) ( Read more... )

-Naked Dining (Japanese, GagaOOLala) ( Read more... )

-Restart After Coming Back Home (movie, Japanese, GagaOOLala) ( Read more... )

-My Tooth Your Love (Taiwanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Hotel del Luna (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-One Day Off (Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Dresden Files (rewatch, English, freevee) ( Read more... )

-To My Star (rewatch, Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

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June 2023 Media Round-up

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:30:56 GMT

I'm on the annual family summer vacation this week, so I thought I wouldn't be able to write up this post until I got home, but everyone else in the house went over to the sound to enjoy (?) themselves in the 86% humidity, so I might as well take advantage of the peace and miraculously stable internet.

Books
-Caught Off Guard, Catherine Cloud ( Read more... )

-Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots, Cat Sebastian ( Read more... )

-Blood Heir, Ilona Andrews ( Read more... )

-The Forgotten Dead, Jordan L. Hawk ( Read more... )

-Tea with the Black Dragon, RA MacAvoy ( Read more... )

-Magic Tides, Ilona Andrews ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-The Door Into Summer (Japanese, Netflix, movie) ( Read more... )

-Our Dining Table (Japanese, GagaOOLala) ( Read more... )

-Bloodhounds (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Why didn't I tell you a million times? (Japanese, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Minato's Laundromat (Japanese, GagaOOLala) ( Read more... )

-Oh No! Here Comes Trouble (Taiwanese, iQIYI) ( Read more... )

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Pondering WIPs I Haven't Started Yet

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 18:29:19 GMT

I have several things I keep meaning to start, like illustrations for a fic I'm reading because a couple of scenes have lodged themselves in my brain in a way that I really need to see, but I still tend to get so perfectionist about art that I put off starting. (Also, I keep waffling about medium, even though I know I should just do plain pencil and get it done.)

I also looked up Sendai's official Tanabata dates to give myself a deadline for an Old Fashion Cupcake fic I started back in December as a Yuletide treat but then couldn't finish because my chosen setting was too summer. August 6-8, for the record. Surely I can finish a probably not that long fic in two months? *pokes brain*

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May 2023 Media Round-up

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 22:33:09 GMT

Books
-The Monsters We Defy, Leslye Penelope ( Read more... )

-Ocean's Echo, Everina Maxwell ( Read more... )

-The Midnight Bargain, CL Polk (audio) ( Read more... )

-The Keeper's Six, Kate Elliott ( Read more... )

-Rose House, Arkady Martine ( Read more... )

-Liar City, Allie Therin ( Read more... )

-Unbreakable, Mira Grant ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-Her Private Life (Korean, Viki/Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Hitomonchaku nara Yorokonde! (Japanese, ...the internet) ( Read more... )

-The King: Eternal Monarch (rewatch, Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Don't Call It Mystery (groupwatch, Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Our Blooming Youth (Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Black Knight (Korean, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-Rokuhoudou Colorful Days (Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Happy Merry Ending (Korean, GagaOOLala) ( Read more... )

-Call Me Chihiro (movie, Japanese, Netflix) ( Read more... )

-My Hot Sexless Lover (Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

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April 2023 Media Round-Up

Fri, 05 May 2023 19:27:52 GMT

A few days later than intended, but who's counting? A good reading month, in part due to the power of library holds, but also lots of TV because I was clearing out my backlog of short series while finishing up an afghan for my niece. All listed in the order I finished them, not ranked.

Books
-The Red Scholar's Wake, Aliette de Bodard ( Read more... )

-Bitter Medicine, Mia Tsai ( Read more... )

-After the Dragons, Cynthia Zhang ( Read more... )

-Lavender House, Lev AC Rosen ( Read more... )

-A Lady for a Duke, Alexis Hall ( Read more... )

-A Thief in the Night, KJ Charles ( Read more... )

TV/Movies
-Kill Boksoon (Korean, Netflix, movie) ( Read more... )

-Hold My Hand at Twilight (Japanese, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Pie in the Sky (English, Acorn) ( Read more... )

-Unintentional Love Story (Korean, iQIYI) ( Read more... )

-Goukon ni Ittara Onna ga Inakatta Hanashi (Japanese, ...the internet) ( Read more... )

-Weak Hero Class 1 (Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Moonlight Chicken (Thai, GMMTV's YT channel) ( Read more... )

-The Eighth Sense (Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

-Our Dating Sim (Korean, Viki) ( Read more... )

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End of a Fandom Era

Wed, 03 May 2023 17:27:10 GMT

I finally got my Y4 OMGCP Kickstarter stuff, and it really does feel like it's bringing a close to an era. OMGCP was the fandom that actually got me involved in the online fandom world, despite being adjacent to it all my life. I got a Tumblr and AO3 account for it. I wrote my first fics for it (or at least my first posted and shared fics.) With all the various KS extras, I own far more merch for Samwell than I do for my actual alma mater.

Also, my favorite part of the long-delayed Madison comic is Coach's thousand-yard stare as he says, "Son, I coach high school football. I've heard worse."

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Life Stuff: Knitting, Suminagashi, Outings

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 18:11:39 GMT

As I'm sure I've mentioned here, I re-took up knitting during the pandemic, specifically intentionally easy, boring patterns I can do while watching TV with subtitles, and this has been great on several levels (soothing, gives me permission to not take a hobby to the most complicated extreme, etc.), but I haven't been great about actually doing anything with my finished items that were actually for me (and not blankets). But I have finally actually Worn Things I Made!

Last weekend was my dad's 75th birthday, but he didn't want to do anything big, so my mom made reservations for a small group at a local restaurant and I used it as a reason to put together a more interesting outfit than usual: jeans (because it's not that fancy of a restaurant), one of M's business casual dress shirts that he'll never wear again because he no longer works in an office (white with blue, purple, and gray vertical stripes), and my bias-knit purple gradient wrap. I was very pleased with it, got several compliments, and have resolved to appropriate more of his shirts. Hilariously, because he is so tall, they are longer on me than some dresses I own.

My dad was also very eh about presents, so I decided to play with suminagashi again, since it often results in patterns that look rather like wood grain and woodworking is his main hobby. I didn't leave myself enough time to actually do anything with the prints, but I took them with me in a folder to let him pick which one he liked the most, and now the plan is to combine it with his newest fun thing, taking the tops off beer and wine bottles to turn them into vases. I just have to wait for him to identify a new wine bottle to sacrifice, take the label off of it, and then I can Mod Podge it up. Not sure yet what I should do with all the other prints.

Then last night I went with my mother to the ballet and finally had an excuse to wear the cape thing I finished a few months ago. (Vastly oversized drop-shoulder vest? Ruana with closed sides? Cape thing.) Very satisfyingly swooshy. Also satisfying: my hair is finally long enough again that I can get it into the only bun style that for sure holds without everything all slithering down. I haven't done ballet since I was 10, but I still feel like my hair should be in a bun when I'm there.

The ballet itself was very good. An adaptation of Orpheus & Eurydice, apparently premiering in this season of our ballet company, with super great costuming and art direction. I really wish they would take more production stills than just a single image of the leads for the program so I could link to them. The Furies had bat wings! Eurydice's Underworld outfit was so haunting! I might be forced into trying to draw some of them.

Now back to working on the cardigan I had put on hold to make an afghan for my niece's birthday, which fortunately knit up much faster than I feared. Maybe now she'll stop stealing the one I made for my brother.

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March 2023 Media Round-up

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 16:37:36 GMT

This month I rediscovered my library's e-lending catalog (by which I mean, found my login info again), and it's truly amazing how much more I read when I have the pressure of needing to return the book looming over me. 6 books and 6 shows completed this month, although I confess I didn't keep track of random movies we rewatched in the evenings or shows I watched a couple of episodes of and then put down.

( Reviews and descriptions back here; cut for length )

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February 2023 Media Round-up

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 19:47:13 GMT

This will be a shorter list than last month, since I got to a point in my knitting project (now finished!) where I had to actually pay attention to what I was doing. However, I did get a lot more reading of actual books done while I was avoiding having to figure out how to do some of the finishing steps I'd never done before!

Books
-Golden Terrace volumes 1 & 2, by Cang Wu Bin Bai - Currently my favorite c-novel reading experience! Peach Flower House did a great job with the production, and E. Danglars' translation was nicely distraction-free. (I suffer from a professional hazard when reading translated novels of falling into editing mode if there are too many grammar/word choice mistakes.) Anyway, production values aside, I really liked the story as well. I liked both of the main characters, the pacing didn't get too bogged down anywhere for me, and I really liked the little bonus reincarnation AU at the end for two of the previous generation characters who only got suggestive mentions in the main plot.

-The Red Palace, by June Hur - For fans of historical Korean dramas, a Joseon-era mystery! A palace nurse teams up with a prodigal young inspector to solve a murder. (Well, several murders, in the end.) Full of all the fraught issues of status and legitimacy expected of the time period/genre, but with excellently competent main characters, and finally a noble dad who learns a lesson about being an entitled jerk.

-Hen Fever, by Olivia Waite - A delightful historical f/f novella set in a town with a viciously competitive chicken breeding contest every year. Leads are the overlooked spinster daughter of the local doctor, whose only consolation is winning whatever category she enters every year, and one of the new residents of the local manor house, all survivors of the Crimean War with various forms of PTSD. Packs a lot into its relatively short length.

-The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal - A cruise ship murder mystery IN SPACE! I went into this with extremely high expectations, already being a fan of MRK, and while for the most part I liked it a lot, there was one aspect of the worldbuilding that was just so incredibly rooted in responding to our specific moment in time that I found it distractingly at odds with the futuristic setting. So not MRK's strongest work, but still enjoyable if you can get through the intro section where that aspect is most prevalent.

TV Shows
-Darby & Joan (English, BritBox or Acorn, I forget which) - A British/Australian mystery series featuring two leads "of a certain age." A retired nurse travels to Australia determined to figure out why her husband died there when he told her he was in Spain. She ends up running into (almost literally) a retired police detective, and they team up, solving several other mysteries along the way as they road-trip their way through the clues she's managed to gather.

-The New Employee (Korean, Viki) - A short workplace BL. Always glad to see BLs that aren't about high school or college students, and it was definitely nice to have two leads who had already figured out their sexuality. The plot was kind of eh, but the sheer power of the titular new employee's smile was enough to carry most of the show.

-The Makanai (Japanese, Netflix) - Two young women move to Kyoto to become apprentice maiko. One of them washes out of all the classes that rely on elegant movement, but falls into the much more fitting and fulfilling position of household cook. Overall a very low-key show, beautifully shot, full of food and daily life details in an interestingly unusual setting. Will definitely make you hungry, but handily Just One Cookbook has gathered all the recipes featured in the show.

-Dearest (Japanese, Netflix) - A mystery with a romance plot. In the fine tradition of Japanese mysteries (as opposed to police procedurals), the plot of this one is both darker and weirder than you'd probably expect, and the ending is more open-ended and less definitively justice-oriented than most Western mystery fans will be primed for. None of which I think of as a bad thing! I also greatly enjoyed the romance plot, because I am a sucker for second-chance many years later romances.

-I Will Be Your Bloom (Japanese, Netflix) - Yes, this was me just rewatching Kimi no Hana ni Naru after Netflix picked it up to feed the algorithm and hopefully encourage them to pick up more Japanese licenses. (Amusingly, the leader of the boyband in this is the younger brother in Dearest.) My only annoyance with the Netflix version is their subtitles insist on translating "hana maru" as "gold star" instead of the slightly less obvious to non-Japanese audiences but much more thematically important "flower mark."

-New Life Begins (Chinese, Viki) - A fantasy not-really-China historical in which vassal states send women to marry into the imperial family ever x years. The female lead arrives ready to do so badly during the wife audition process that she'll be sent home, but of course ends up married to the intentionally least impressive Sixth Prince. Plot happens, featuring much domesticity, food, and political reform. The larger ensemble cast of other wives is also great, so if you've been looking for a show with actual female friendships and no women dying for the plot, this is for you! (Content note: one short-ish plot arc featuring a difficult pregnancy and post-partum depression.) I actually got a little misty during the last episode when they did some looking back on how far all the characters had come through the course of the show.

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Life Stuff: Food, Job(?), Crafts

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 21:42:16 GMT

Food

For someone who really hates cooking and doesn't care all that much about eating, I sure do end up watching a lot of shows where food features heavily, especially as a sign of love/care. In a rare occurrence, I've actually been inspired enough by a couple of shows recently to actually *gasp* make stuff.

I joke that if I have a theme in the fics I write, it's "coffee = love," so when our coffee maker broke for the second time in ~5 years, I took that personally. We'd been using super fancy coffee makers with a grinder built into the top, etc., but I was so annoyed by the propensity of new, expensive things to break in irreparable ways that I argued for a French press this time, since I already owned a grinder thanks to the Christmas my dad got really into Aeropresses and gave me all the stuff I needed for single-serve coffee preparation. And I do love M, but not enough to go through all the steps needed for the Aeropress twice just after waking up, so a French press for two it was! Coincidentally, I was watching Would you like a cup of coffee? at the same time, and the apprentice barista mentioned some things about his own research on how to develop a new perfect menu item that made me go read several nerdy articles about French press usage, leading to me adjusting the grinder settings, the water temperature on the adjustable kettle, and the number of minutes before plunging.

Of course, this has now resulted in me being the only person in the house who can make a proper cup of coffee, because despite M following all the steps exactly the same, it does come out noticeably different when he does it. It's fine; I'm usually the first one up anyway.

And then with my group watch I'm still (re)watching Don't Call It Mystery, which always makes me want Japanese curry, and followed that up with The Makanai on my own, both of which led me to Just One Cookbook:
-16 Japanese Curry Recipes You'll Love
-masterlist of recipes made in The Makanai

After a sad attempt by M to make the Instant Pot chicken curry (not a fault of the recipe--entirely the fault of M being the kind of cook who doesn't believe listed recipe proportions should matter), I ended up making my own curry roux brick, which was entirely unnecessary but fun, and I certainly learned things about how roux works, and then made curry udon (twice, to use up the ingredients). I still have 4 roux blocks left, so I need to pick another recipe soon.

*

Job(?) & Crafts

These are really the same topic, because the job stuff is just that I've actually had an interview for a full-time position for the first time in quite a few years (results still pending), and then the folk school released the catalog of classes through the rest of 2023, which of course caused me to immediately have to confront the possibility of not having an infinitely flexible schedule in the near future.

But I did confirm they are running the mokuhanga printmaking class again this fall, and I'm pretty sure they specifically did NOT schedule it the same week I'll be teaching temari this time because I asked for it on my teacher survey last time, and due to the false sense of obligation this has created in me + the fact I've been wanting to take this class for over a year, I signed up anyway. If I have to cancel, I have to cancel. The peace of mind I feel knowing I have a guaranteed space in the class right now is worth it. Things can fill up fast there, in somewhat unpredictable waves, so I really didn't want to take a chance on waiting. The stuff the class made last year was stunning, and as much as I loved the wood engraving class I took a couple of years ago, I would love to learn a method that doesn't require access to a type-high printing press. (I mean, I could go back and take wood engraving again and use the press there, but that's just a special occasion hobby at that point.) There's just something about printmaking I enjoy in a very different way from other types of art.

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Fic: This Would Be Enough

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 01:46:27 GMT

I have once again managed to write fic for a fandom so small the tag doesn't even exist on AO3! I look forward to possibly three people reading it.

(For real, though, I'm so happy I finally wrote a whole fic in under 24 hours again. I haven't done that in literal years at this point. I had fun!)

This Would Be Enough
Rating: T
Fandom: Atom no Ko (Children of Atom)
Pairing: Azumi Nayuta/Sugo Hayato
Length: 3.391 words
Tags: Post-canon, Love Confessions, Kissing, Asexual Azumi Nayuta
Summary:

Hayato knows he’s smiling as he puts the phone back on the desk, but holds on to the vain hope he looks mostly normal about it until Tim asks, “Are you ever going to tell him?”
He suppresses a wince. No matter how fluent Tim’s Japanese, there are some ways he’ll always be extremely American. If there’s one thing about coming to Seattle that Hayato regrets, it may well be this final loss of his thin veneer of plausible deniability.
“Tell him what?” he says mildly, pretending great interest in the already triple-checked code in front of him.
“That you’re in love with him.”

Inspired by the third gif in this set.

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Festival of Broken Needles

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 20:40:51 GMT

Today, February 8, is the day for the celebration of the Festival of Broken Needles (at least in the Kanto region; they do it in December in other areas of Japan).

Hari-Kuyō began four hundred years ago as a way for housekeepers and professional needle-workers to acknowledge their work over the past years and respect their tools. [...] This festival acknowledged the good given to people by their tools. Practitioners went to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples to thank their broken needles for their help and service. This is in keeping with the philosophy of "not wasting" or "paying honor to the small things" exemplified in the concept of mottainai.

The modern practice involves taking your worn-out needles to a temple or shrine and laying them to rest in a block of tofu to be buried later, but in the international English-speaking temari discussion group I'm part of, most people don't have access to such a place, so we just take the day off and go through our needles. I have a pincushion I don't actually like for pincushion purposes (it's a little too hard, but very decorative), so I just retire them to that one. After working very intensively on a huge temari project all last year, I'm sure I have several that need to be thanked and retired.

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Seasons Passing

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 02:35:41 GMT

The sky is so clear here tonight I went outside with the dog and stared up at Orion for a little while, instead of just letting him out into the yard on his own like I normally do. It made me think of a friend saying a little while ago something to the effect of, "I'm always happy for winter to end, but I do miss Orion when he goes," which in turn reminded me of one of our across-the-hall dormmates from my first year of college, who loved Orion especially and used to climb out her window to sit on the roof of the loggia to look at the sky. (Only really possible from that side of the hall and one floor down, but she'd brought back a rope ladder after fall break just for this purpose. It's funny the things we remember about people we've barely spoken to at all since that one specific moment in time.)

Maybe I also started thinking about it because I'm watching The Makanai, and they think so much about the seasonality of food and hairstyles and clothing and so forth. I've been particularly bad about marking the passage of the seasons this past year; I didn't even decorate the house in even the smallest way for Christmas, let alone winter. I'd been trying to change out the temari on the tansu display at the bottom of the stairs seasonally, but I think I ended up with summer on display for a solid six months. I finally changed it after the holidays were over because my brother gave me a Lego succulent garden and I wanted to put it out, so now the theme is sort of a pan-seasonal rainbow.

I was talking to my Gyrokinesis teacher today after class, and we were both commenting on how strange it is to suddenly realize how much time has passed when our lives have felt the same day in and day out for so long. We were both startled it was February already; she is constantly shocked her niece has already graduated from college when it seems like she only just graduated from high school; I realized the other day a Japanese singer I'd just discovered is probably a solid decade younger than the high school students I taught when I lived in Japan.

There's no real point to these thoughts, I just wanted to get them down somewhere. And maybe remind myself to go outside and look at the sky more often.

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January 2023 Media Round-up

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 02:15:18 GMT

For this month, I decided to do one big post at the end of the month rather than weekly things. I've been keeping track more in my handwritten planner/journal, so listing everything here in one big go seems easier. We'll see how this split continues as the year goes on...

TV Shows
-Doom at Your Service (Korean, Viki) - The avatar of doom makes a pact with a dying woman that he'll make sure she lives out her remaining days in comfort if she promises to make a final wish that will allow him to bring doom upon the entire world... except of course then they fall in love. I have a thing for angsty immortals, okay? Also it had several actors in it I already liked from other things.

-A Business Proposal (Korean, Netflix) - Ridiculous CEO fake dating romcom that was more engaging than it had any right to be.

-Roommates of Poongduck 304 (Korean, Viki) - One of Viki's short Korean BLs. Not the strongest one I've seen, not going to stick with me for long, but I don't regret spending the time to watch it.

-Thirty but Seventeen (Korean, Viki) - A high school student ends up in a traffic accident that puts her in a coma, wakes up 13 years later very confused, ends up living with the guy she had a crush on at the time (though neither of them recognize each other) while she tries to find out what's going on and how to reconcile with the fact she's now actually 30. I actually watched this for the male lead, Yang Sejong, due to My Country: The New Age fandom brain, and he did a great job walking the line of being the product of 13 years of angsty depression (because he blames himself for her having been caught in the accident) and frequent accidental physical slapstick. Plus she's a violinist and he grows up to be a set designer who does a lot of miniature model building, so there was a lot catering directly to me here.

-Would you like a cup of coffee? (Korean, Netflix) - A very nice, gentle show about a guy who fails a major exam and decides to change his life by apprenticing himself to the owner of the coffee shop he stops at to console himself. Most of the individual episode plots center on their customers and regulars from the neighborhood, with a throughline of the main character and his boss's personal journeys running quietly in the background.

-Kimi no Hana ni Naru (Japanese, Blitzfansubs) - My fake boyband show came to an end! I was getting a bit worried about the future of everyone involved, but it managed to tie up nicely. Still ambiguous on whether it was a romance or not, but that really wasn't the point. It was really the story of two broken people finding a way to support each other back to functionality, and I appreciated that a lot. (Edit: Now picked up by Netflix as I Will Be Your Bloom.)

-MIU 404 (Japanese, Netflix) - A police procedural about mismatched partners that I had seen people talking about as having strong shipping vibes, so I was happy to hear Netflix had picked it up since the last time I had done a search for somewhere to watch it. Why will Japanese shows not just license to international streaming services? It would make my life so much easier. I'm far too lazy for all this having to download raws and sync subtitle files. Anyway. It was fun, and the eventual villain was hilariously played by the lead in Don't Call It Mystery, which I've been rewatching with friends. Only 11 episodes, so it didn't get particularly deep, but I enjoyed it.

-Lovers of the Red Sky (Korean, Viki) - Two children born the same day, caught in the edges of a curse levied against their fathers during a ritual to bind a demon, have their fates bound together by a goddess to protect them. As adults, they find each other again and must complete the binding their fathers didn't quite manage to save each other and the country. With art, because completing a royal portrait is part of the ritual, and I found all the details of that process super fascinating. Hilariously, I was halfway through this show before I realized the male lead was the same actor who played the teenage nephew in Thirty but Seventeen and also the CEO in A Business Proposal.

Movies
-Nana (Japanese, Viki) - Two girls with the same given name (Nana) meet on the train to Tokyo and end up as roommates. One is an outgoing good girl, the other is the vocalist for a punk band. Good-girl Nana's planned life falls apart, but punk Nana and her band are there to help her find her confidence again, and in return good-girl Nana helps punk Nana deal with the lingering heartbreak from her original band's break up. I really liked this one, in part just for being the movie it is, but also because it came out in 2005 and thus is much closer to the Japan I lived in, flip-style cell phones with charms and all.

-Hell Dogs (Japanese, Netflix) - Uh. I watched this because I saw some gifsets on Tumblr. It's a pretty violent movie about a former cop who gets recruited to go undercover with the yakuza. He's assigned to infiltrate by winning the trust of and partnering up with a young enforcer. The rest of the movie can be summarized as "there is no heterosexual explanation." During the course of the movie, both of the partners sleep with women they even have nominal emotional connections with, and yet it still ends with a flashback to the first moment they met right before the credits roll. It was certainly an experience.

-JUNG_E (Korean, Netflix) - M actually suggested watching this, which is rare because he's usually multitasking during his TV time in a way that precludes subtitles, but he's between painting projects right now. At the beginning, this appeared to be a movie about fighting bad robots, but in true Korean media fashion, it actually turned out to be about the ethics of allowing big corporations to copy your brain to save you from true death in return for allowing them to license it for use in AI. M's response afterward: "Well, that was very cultural."

Books
-The Girl with Ghost Eyes, by MH Boroson - The first Daoshi Chronicles book, in which we are introduced to a young female Daoist magic practitioner in late-1800s San Francisco Chinatown. Great descriptions of magic and monsters in a non-Mainland setting.

-The Girl with No Face, by MH Boroson - The second Daoshi Chronicles book, following directly from the events of the first, now with our heroine having to establish her life more firmly apart from her father. Very nice character growth, plus the return of several characters I was happy to see from the first book, plus some good resolution of larger issues brought up earlier. I'd like it if there was ever another book, but things felt finished enough that it works as a satisfactory duology. (I do want to know more about the tiger monk, though.)

-Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo - Finally got this from the library! I really like the structure of this series, stand-alone but also connected. This one felt a bit like watching one of the big early 2000s wuxia epic movies.

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Accidental Themed Rec Lists: J-Pop Edition

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 20:12:15 GMT

My TV watching and music discovery spirals converged over the weekend, so here, the fruits of my labors in the form of a rec list:

TV show
Kimi no Hana ni Maru - the story of a fictional J-pop boyband and the burned-out former high school teacher hired to be their dorm matron. Is it a romance? That's fairly open to personal interpretation, but it is definitely a show about lost and somewhat broken people supporting each other in actually figuring out what their dreams truly are and how to follow them without breaking themselves further. (Edit: Now picked up by Netflix as I Will Be Your Bloom)

Music
-Vaundy - everything, but "Tokyo Flash" is a fun place to start (the majority of his stuff is currently streaming-only for ??? reasons, which is annoying to me personally as possibly the only person remaining on Earth with an irrational hatred of streaming music services, but his YT videos are all art in their own right anyway)
-Fujii Kaze - Love All Serve All album
-Aimer - Walpurgis album
-natori - "Overdose" (only this and one other single out so far but both very good)

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Things I Wrote

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 01:39:23 GMT

I have actually posted fic recently! And then forgot to say anything here! So now you get a 2-for-1 post.

First up, my Yuletide fic:

5 Times Chu Sangwoo Made a Change and 1 Time He Didn't Have To
Rating: T
Fandom: Semantic Error (TV)
Pairing: Chu Sangwoo/Jang Jaeyoung
Length: 2,591 words
Tags: Post-canon, Domestic Fluff, Learning to Live Together
Summary: At the end of each year, Chu Sangwoo made lists. One contained his goals for the coming year, of course, but another contained notable life events and accomplishments of the past year, and since the lists all lived in the same notebook for comparative purposes across time, he'd also started noting changes in his habits and routines. Data was important in understanding anything, including himself.

He stared down at the current year's list, surprised at how many changes there were, but even more puzzled that he hadn't noticed them as major events at the time. They had been... gradual, somehow. Natural-seeming.

***

Second, a fic I've been co-authoring with ritualist for a year as we worked irregularly across a 16-hour time difference:

Two Pollens (Alike in Indignity)
Rating: E
Fandom: The Untamed (TV)
Pairing: Meng Yao/Nie Mingjue
Length: 12,254 words
Tags: Qinghe-era AU, Truth Pollen, Sex Pollen, Explicit Consent, Desperate Avoidance of the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Kissing, Blow Jobs, Anal Sex
Summary: Meng Yao gets dosed with truth pollen. The cure has some side effects.

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2022 TV Consumption

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 20:05:30 GMT

I mentioned in my book consumption post that if I had actually tracked all the shows I watched, the relatively low number of books read (for me) would be more explicable, and I've been mentally tallying them while trying to fall asleep since then, so here's an attempt at recreating the list from memory. (Not counting shows I started but didn't finish. I'm sure I'm still missing some.)

( Read more... )

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