maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 1)
[personal profile] maggie33
I’m a bit sick, ugh. Nothing serious, just a sore throat and a bit of a cold, probably because I’m sweating a lot (ahh, my lovely frenemy menopause 😒), and when I go out there is a strong chilly wind outside (and has been for the last two weeks or so), and of course air conditioning inside everywhere.

Also I have the attention span of a gnat lately and started watching so many new things, I don’t know when I’ll finish all of them. 😊

I mean, ok, I did finish a few things. Amongst them:

Kpop Demon Hunters

This is Netflix’s new animated movie everybody is talking about right now. It’s about three demon huntresses, who form a kpop girl group named Huntrix, and use their songs to build the protection spell around the world, to save all the humans from a big scary demon, who wants to eat their souls. So this demon sends five demon boys to form a kpop boy group to compete with Huntrix and steal their fans and their fans’ souls from them.

Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds, and it’s also funny and entertaining, and touching and sweet. I enjoyed it a lot. And I didn’t expect much, just an hour and a half of fun and cuteness and a few catchy songs. And it was all that, but it also made me teary-eyed at the end.


Spoilers here.And not because of Jinu’s sacrifice. But because I’m a sucker for ‘power of friendship saving the world’ stuff. And that movie delivered so well on that front. Rumi, Mira and Zoey’s friendship was my favorite part of the movie.

Also – this cover of Your Idol is very good.




My Sweet Brother in Law

The last episode aired last week and it was bit of a letdown after decent and enjoyable four episodes.


Spoilers here, tooThat went into a full OTT dramatic soap opera in the last episode: a cheating psycho wife, a homophobic dad throwing his gay son out of the house, a stabbing, Bao saving Khanh’s life and ending in a coma for six months, and then a cliffhanger with a sudden arrival of Bao’s handsome ex-boyfriend. I think they hope for the 2nd season. And you know what, I hope they will make it. In general I enjoyed this drama. For my first Vietnamese BL it was great.

Even though I do wish they didn’t make Khanh’s wife a gold digging cheating psycho, to make it okay that Khanh cheated on her with Bao. After watching the first three episodes I was so pleased that the women involved weren’t vilified in this drama, and unfortunately, that didn’t last.


I also watched two other BL dramas. And they both had a very similar plot. Chinese and Taiwanese BL dramas sure do love dramatic, full of longing and forbidden desire, step-brothers pairings, don’t they? 😊 And sometimes I get a craving for such pairings, too.

So first I watched Moon and Dust, a new short (6 episodes) Chinese BL. An older boy rescues a younger boy from homelessness and suffering, ends up raising him, and then of course a younger boy falls desperately in love with his Da Ge and tries to quash those feelings, but can’t help confessing in an emotional scene. And the older brother clearly feels something more than brotherly feelings, too, but can’t admit it, because he doesn’t want to recognize those feelings for what they are, and he feels that as an older brother he has to be the responsible one and refuse his brother’s love.

I liked this short drama a lot. It’s cheaply made, cheesy and OTT sometimes, but good actors with very nice chemistry made it work for me.


Spoilers for the ending here.This is not a happy ending. I would say it is ambiguous. It’s clear they both have feelings for each other. But they don’t get together, and it ends with the older one rejecting the younger one’s feelings. But there is no tragedy or death or anything like that. So you can imagine very easily a post-canon fix-it with them getting together in a few months or a few years.

The 1st episode is available for free on Youtube here. When the drama was airing they did make each new episode available for free for the limited period of time, and now you can still watch the last 6th episode there, but episodes 2-5 are available for members only.


And since Moon and Dust was so short I decided to finally watch Unknown, Taiwanese BL from 2024 with the same trope. I did watch the first episode back then when it started airing, but it was rather dark and violent, and I wasn’t in the mood for something like that then, so I never watched more. But now I watched all of it.

My opinion – it’s very uneven. The first half is good, and then it starts falling apart. It took me a week to watch the last two episodes, because they were either super boring (episode 11) or made me cringe so hard (episode 12).

The weak script in the second half was the main problem for me. Exacerbated by me not really seeing much romantic and sexual chemistry between leads. As actors they are both good, but it was very hard for me to buy Qian reciprocating Yuan’s feelings.


More complaining with spoilers here.And seriously, everybody around them is perfectly fine with Qian and Yuan’s relationship, and so accepting as soon as they hear about it? And people in Qian’s office instantly start gossiping about who’s the top and who’s the bottom. And then they openly ask Qian about it. I cringed from second hand embarrassment so hard and instantly pressed a fast-forward button. Why? Why do BL dramas still do that in 2024?


And this post got quite long already so I’ll write about all those other, started things the next time. And now I’m going to watch some of them, and maybe I’ll even mange to finish something else today. 😊
umadoshi: (lilacs 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
With Canada Day rudely falling on a Tuesday, [personal profile] scruloose and I both booked today off. I haven't managed a whole lot of manga work yet, but hopefully between today (as soon as I finish this post) and tomorrow I'll get a reasonable amount done. While I'm doing at-my-desk things, [personal profile] scruloose is working on the next step(s) in getting a dedicated hose set up for our individual townhouse.

Last night we finally got around to switching the desk chairs in our offices, cut for the uninterested )

It occurred to me very late in the game that I might do better at spending non-work time at my desk (where, y'know, most of my writing used to happen) if I didn't hate my chair; I've been attributing the fact that I spend 95% of my evenings down in the living room these days to the fact that Sinha's such a lapcat, and that's definitely a huge factor, but...being able to sit comfortably in here would sure help.

Another pleasing tech-related development has to do with my phone keyboard. again, cut for the uninterested )

Speaking of things that feel so much better now, Saturday also involved Ginny chopping my hair off for me. I've been leaving it alone (other than the undercut) since whenever the last time we buzz cut it was, and maybe a month ago I found that it was long enough to easily ponytail. That was pleasantly novel for about a week, even though the front bits weren't long enough to get into the ponytail and quickly started to need clips or something when it got hot. By last weekend, I was very, very done with the whole thing, and this weekend Ginny was able to deal with it. Such a relief.

My younger nibling and their spouse of eight months or so stopped by a few days ago to pick up a few years' worth of my spare comp copies from Seven Seas. Only one box, since I've technically scaled back my freelance workload (and I think there's also a backlog of comps that I should be getting sooner rather than later), but a hefty box that was bulging a bit at the seams, so it's nice to have that all sent off to a new home. It was lovely to see my nibling and meet their spouse, however briefly. (They politely rolled with the "we're going to stand in our driveway and chat while masked and overheat more than a little" element.)

A final thing before calling this a post and getting to work: last weekend [personal profile] scruloose and I gave the Sensation lilac a long-overdue aggressive pruning (and it should probably get the same amount cut out of it in a year). The poor thing was all spindly limbs and mostly-high-up blooms, so hopefully this will help it for next year.But what to do with the mutant hybrid? )

Two weeks' worth of reading

29 Jun 2025 15:16
umadoshi: (books 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
A weekend post never happened last weekend, but here's what I'm been reading over the last couple of weeks. (Watching has been basically unchanged: we're up to date on Murderbot and continuing to slowly work through Leverage season 4.)

I finished reading Tchaikovsky's Service Model, which I thought was...fine? It was interesting enough, but if it had been my first exposure to his work it wouldn't have made me rush out and try more right away.

I read and liked Margaret Owen's Little Thieves in April, and Jenny Hamilton on Bluesky was recently talking about the trilogy as a whole (and this reminds me that now I can go read her "How to Break a Heart: Subverting the Hero’s Breakup Trope"), so when I decided a week or so ago to finally burn through all of my Kobo points and clear at least a bit of my wishlist, I included the second book, Painted Devils, which I enjoyed enough to want to read the third (Holy Terrors) right away. I try not to buy many ebooks at full price, though, given how many more I buy overall than I'm ever going to manage to read, and thankfully my library not only has it but had it available right away.

Consider that a recommendation, but beyond it I'm just going to quote the non-spoilery part of Jenny's essay that describes the series (and the essay then details how things stood at the end of book 2, so consider that the spoiler warning):
This year brought us Margaret Owen’s Holy Terrors. It’s the third in a trilogy about an angry, selfish girl named Vanja who made it through a lifetime of neglect and abuse with a crop of emotional and physical scars, a talent for picking pockets, the favor of the gods (sometimes), and a healthy hostility for rich people. Against both their better judgment, she falls in love with prefect Emeric Conrad, whom she variously describes as a “human civics primer,” an “accounting ledger made flesh,” and an “intolerable filing cabinet.”

(Here the author of this piece has been compelled to delete a ten thousand–word manifesto about the greatness of the Little Thieves series. If you like the TV show Leverage, or you enjoy digging your teeth into solid character development, or you just hate rich people, you should read it. The first book is Little Thieves. Thank me later.)

For a dramatic change of pace, I'm now reading Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi (also a with-points acquisition), which I keep wanting to file under non-fiction, although the title will clearly tell you that it's speculative fiction. (IIRC I learned about it from [personal profile] skygiants' post.) Its fictional interviews build a distressingly plausible picture of global collapse through this decade and the couple to come, but also offer glimpses into how we could come out on the other side, if we're willing to largely raze and rebuild ~human society~ in a way that actually takes care of people. (The book came out in...2022?...so it in no way accounts for the most recent and current forms of the political hellscape.)

On the non-fiction side, I read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, a book of essays and corresponding recipes that I'd previously read maybe ten years ago. Colwin died in 1992 (I think I've got that right), and this book (and the follow-up, More Home Cooking) is a food-writing classic for good reason, although also very much of its place and time--very American, very '80s.

(The rest of my using-all-my-Kobo-points haul: The Hands of the Emperor, We Are All Completely Fine, Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China, and Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World. Did this put a visible dent in my Kobo wishlist [which is a relatively curated list of books I keep an eye on for preorder purposes and sighting sales]? Yes. Has the dent since been filled in? Also yes.)

(no subject)

29 Jun 2025 07:23
shadaras: A phoenix with wings fully outspread, holidng a rose and an arrow in its talons. (Default)
[personal profile] shadaras
There's a local queer contra that I have known about for a very long time (probably close to a decade tbh, which is wild) (mostly because I uh keep forgetting exactly how long I've been out here) but have never actually gone to because the friend who got me into contra during college wouldn't go (which, hah, idk if she'd call herself queer, so.) and I usually only went to the dances with friends, so. No reason to. I've never really cared about the Intrinsic Gendering Of Dance Terminology anyway (calling the moves for Ladies and Gents is exactly as irrelevant to me as calling it for Robins/Ravens and Larks) (I mean, I like that the non-gendered terms queers came up with are birds, but. I don't think it stops people from having gendered associations with the roles, it just removes the explicitly gendered terminology.), and tbh it's not actually hard to meet queers at events not aimed at queers when you're in such a queer-friendly area. Plus the general events are, y'know. Larger. And if I am there mostly because of music and dance, then... more people is nicer, makes the dances easier to have more people to keep the pattern flowing.

But the queer contra is also still a mask-required space, and it's one of the only dances in the area (like. two-hour radius, from what a friend said.) with that requirement, which is why said friend brought her friends out from Albany to try contra at this dance, and then messaged me like "hey are you around this weekend? I am going to be at this dance, could you be there too?", to which I was like "!!! YES <3".

this is a lot of rambling )

Only Friends Dream On

28 Jun 2025 14:15
maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 2)
[personal profile] maggie33
Oh wow, look at that. 😍



These are AouBoom pics from the first day of shooting.


Two more pics (EarthMix and JossGawin) behind the cut.



People are speculating that Only Friends Dream On may even replace Memoir of Rati when it finishes airing in September. It would be great. And I already know I will be even more obsessed with this season than I was with the first one. 😊

Good things

27 Jun 2025 19:45
maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 3)
[personal profile] maggie33
Good RL thing is that I had a colonoscopy today and everything is fine. Uff... I admit I was a bit anxious, especially since I was never sedated before. But everything went well.


And there are plenty of good fannish things.


At 25:00, in Akasaka will have the 2nd season. It was officially confirmed a few days ago. Yay!


Only Friends Dream On started shooting today. There is a chance it might start airing in November or December. Woohoo!


MosBank will have another drama soon. It’s called Be My [Soul]mate, and it’s another university BL with “and they were roommates” plot. Here is hoping it will be better than Sunset x Vibes. The official longer pilot will be released tomorrow, and for now here is a teaser pilot.




Jeff Satur’s new song Tell Me The Name is fantastic. The official MV is here. And here is a stage version from the concert he had on 21st of June.


Jeff looks so hot here in that sleeveless T-shirt. Come on, Jeff, hurry up and come to Europe when I still have the strength and energy to fly to another country to see you on stage. 😊
tinny: Something Else holding up its colorful drawing - "be different" (Default)
[personal profile] tinny
I have been working on sporadically remembering the [community profile] 100ships table since 2022, and today I felt like making a few more shippy icons.

Here they are:

#14 – Navy #16 – Neon #52 – Salt #72 – Desert #75 – Buff


I realize that Ody3 aren't really in the navy, but I feel like cruise ship / navy, close enough. I really wanted to have an icon of them in their navy blue uniforms, but didn't have a good cap. :/ I made some Spock icons for [community profile] your_favourites today and while I was at it, made two more for the table. And the remaining two are Murderbot and the movie "Good Luck To You, Leo Grande".

The table is here, there are currently 40 icons in it: https://tinny.dreamwidth.org/704185.html

Previous icon posts:

Community Thursday

26 Jun 2025 06:57
vriddy: christmas gnome (gnome)
[personal profile] vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.


Over the last week...

Second-to-last vigilantes chit-chat on [community profile] bnha_fans, as the current season approaches the end!

Commented on [community profile] common_nature, [community profile] booknook, [community profile] anime_manga, [community profile] ffxv.

Promoted [community profile] finalfantasy in a comment.

Signal boosts:

  • [community profile] everykindofcraft, a new comm for all kinds of craft and already decently active!
  • Continuing to enjoy the weekly stories on [community profile] senzenwomen, "Histories of women in and around Japan, 1868-1945"
  • Bunch of fanweeks, zine and other events for Final Fantasy XV being promoted on [community profile] ffxv :)
  • Via [personal profile] squidgestatus, SquidgeWorld is having their summer fundraiser!

Initial Air3 usage report!

25 Jun 2025 14:10
umadoshi: (plague doctor (verhalen))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Over a month after the arrival of our (in my case, long-yearned-for) Microclimate Air3 powered respirators, I finally took mine out on its maiden voyage yesterday. (It may result in me going more places than I have been, but it may also mainly result in me feeling safer in the places I do go.)

Yesterday there was a casual in-person meeting at Dayjob where the team properly met the two people who our office's managing editor answers to. Donuts were promised (and turned out to be quality donuts, although I opted not to bring one home with me [since I sure wasn't about to unmask to eat anything there!]. Fun times in needing to be picky about what I spend my sugar intake on). We also had a heat warning, so I was all the more glad/relieved to have a drive to and from the meeting rather than taking transit for the first time in, oh, three years or so.

I'll put most of the rest under a cut, but I do want to note--especially since probably at least one or two of you clicked on the link for the Air3, and the price looks horrifying--that I'm incredibly glad we didn't order ours immediately when they first became available, because at that point the Air3 alone (as opposed to the kit) was more like $1000 USD. The original plan wasn't for [personal profile] scruloose to get one at all, given that initial price and given that they have a respirator setup that works well for them. But then a few weeks later, the price dropped to $549(/$649 for the kit with extra stuff, which is what we opted for, as well as a few extra filters etc. in the name of minimizing future need to deal with shipping), so we got to say "Well, that's still really spendy, but it's also now not completely outrageous to get two." (And then we wound up having to contact the company because of shipping/import charge shenanigans, but those were on the courier's side, not Microclimate's, and the person [personal profile] scruloose dealt with was great, so it's all good.)

I should also note that one of the review videos I watched about this made sure to point out clearly that its price (which initially was a MAJOR jump up from how much the Air2 cost when that was available) was in line with the cost of other NIOSH-certified powered respirators. It's far from cheap, but it's not the gouging attempt it might seem like. (I do wonder what the deal was with the massive price drop so soon after its release, though!)

And now, the actual experience: )
tinny: Close-up profile of Adam Karadec from the French series HPI kissing Morgane, both with their eyes wide open in surprise (hpi_morgadec kiss)
[personal profile] tinny
The current challenge at [community profile] fandom10in30 is Vibrant Colors. My fave thing, turning up the vibrance and saturation to the max! I made these in like two days, lol. :) I hope I won't hate them tomorrow, but for now I adore the colors. It was a real challenge to make Karadec vibrant. :D

Teasers:


all hpi or hpi actors )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

Previous icon posts:

(no subject)

23 Jun 2025 14:05
shadaras: A phoenix with wings fully outspread, holidng a rose and an arrow in its talons. (Default)
[personal profile] shadaras
My dojo had a seminar this past weekend, which was lovely. The mat was full but not crowded, the energy was fantastic, got to see a lot of excellent people, and we had more than enough food for everyone to eat after the seminar. (And none pizza, because we know better and are willing to put in a bit more effort to provide better sustenance.) Everyone had a good time! Great practice! Love to take ukemi for sensei's demonstrations, and to get the vibe that she selected me not just for being a yudansha from the host dojo but because she enjoyed throwing me around!

Now we can start looking ahead to next year's seminar, which will be the dojo's 50th anniversary seminar. I think that the goal is for me to take nidan at that seminar, but it's far enough out (May 30th) that there's no particular plans yet.

When I was talking to my mom about this (a sidebar in a conversation mostly about scheduling me flying out to visit my family), she told me that next year would also be the 50th year since women could attend the air force academy.

She was a member of that first class of women.

She is much more excited about my dojo's 50th anniversary.

anyway it is TOO HOT right now and I can't wait for the heat dome currently covering the east coast to break so that it stops being high 90s F/feels like over 100 F. At least the seminar only had normal summer heat! Not this nonsense!

(this nonsense, btw, is hot enough that the building fire alarms went off because of the heat! nothing was actually wrong! it's just Too Hot! isn't that fun!)
abyss_valkyrie: made by <user name=narnialover7> (Default)
[personal profile] abyss_valkyrie
  

This seemed interesting so I'm just promoting it here. The new round at [community profile] tvmovie20in20 is going to have 20 textures provided and we can claim any one show/movie. Sounds challenging and I'm soon going to have summer holidays, so I'm entering this one!

Voting is open at [community profile] celebrity20in20 & [community profile] tvmovie20in20 

A new challenge is up at [community profile] ic_animated  , [community profile] perioddrama_ic & [community profile] screen_icons 
 

abyss_valkyrie: made by <user name=narnialover7> (Default)
[personal profile] abyss_valkyrie
Entered a challenge for [community profile] celebrity20in20  after a while. I always do love making icons of celebs in general. This time I chose the Chinese actress Zhao Lusi (I've only watched her in the Romance of Tiger and Rose) All icons are free to take and use.

Preview:


All the icons are here!! )

Community Thursday

19 Jun 2025 07:39
vriddy: christmas gnome (gnome)
[personal profile] vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.


Over the last week...

Vigilantes chit-chat on [community profile] bnha_fans.

Commented on [community profile] summerofthe69.

Commented on [community profile] newcomers.

Commented on [community profile] common_nature.

Promoted [site community profile] dw_maintenance, [community profile] style_system in various comments.

Signal boost:

  • Via [site community profile] dw_community_promo, massive blast from the past but someone started a [community profile] monkeyisland community :D

  • Sign-ups are open for the 7TH ROUND of [community profile] comment_bingo! :D "the goal is to have more fun and have an excuse to leave feedback! It is a Bingo community that involves commenting on other people's works based on the prompts provided, rather than creating your own."

(no subject)

18 Jun 2025 15:09
shadaras: A phoenix with wings fully outspread, holidng a rose and an arrow in its talons. (Default)
[personal profile] shadaras
two notes on music (despite talking about spotify, links are for youtube for easier accessibility)

1.
a few weeks ago, at work, I was letting spotify play me some "things the algorithm thinks you'd like" playlist or other, and my brain caught on one in a way that, for once, made me go "oh I should actually hit the like button on this" (I am SO BAD at doing that) (in this case it helped that I was Waiting For The Elevator). so I did. and then, a minute later, I was like. "wait. what was the name of that again." and looked at it properly, because it'd pinged in recognition but it took that minute for me to understand why. and. I am a parody of myself.

2.
in the completely other direction of music spotify will play for me, this (recent) cover of Madonna's 'Frozen' came on today and I was just like "wow okay this sure tosses me back to being a young teenager" about immediately recognising it.