dayflies

i felt the sudden need to do a media review - i haven't done one of these in ages but they're so fun to read back, and it's a nice way for me to reflect on the media i've been consuming, so they don't fade into obscurity in the deepest drawers of my mind

FILM/TV 📺  
past lives: ★★★★

("see you then.")
 
in the end of 2023, i turned 24, and i thought it would be hilarious to make a filmclub where we only watch a24 movies, since my name happens to be an. anyway, past lives was one of the films we watched in the a(n)24 filmclub, and ugh!! it was good!! a gorgeous, gentle, bittersweet ode to the people in your life who pass you by. thinking a lot about roots, bridges, mourning people who are alive, closure, and what it means to love someone. in an interview with celine song, mia lee vicino wrote the following, which i think summarizes the film perfectly:
This, however, is no melodramatic tragedy; Nora and Hae Sung’s lives simply, softly pass each other by. It’s the feeling of a barely missed subway transfer, the wind of what could have been stinging your eyes. Past Lives dries your tears and gently suggests that you don’t need to sprint for the train; another is always coming.
minari: ★★★★.5

(source)
  
this was another a(n)24 filmclub pick. i've been wanting to watch it since it came out *checks notes* four years ago... and i'm so glad i finally got around to it! loved the themes of the american dream and toxic masculinity, framed within the experiences of a korean-american immigrant family.  loved the symbolism of the minari plant. steven yeun and han yeri were so convincing as a jaded married couple, you just feel they are trying their best, or at least, what they believe is best. yeun's character especially is so infuriating at times, but you cannot help but empathize with him and feel for him still. this family is just portrayed through a lens that's unbelievably tender and nuanced. AND ALAN KIM!! <333 ugh

harry potter 1-8: ★★.5 (rewatch)

(source)
 
i adore the first three movies; they encompass this feeling of childhood nostalgia where the magic just feels real and everything feels big and new, regardless of how horrible the cgi is. and then they just get worse!! for me, the best film is the third film - although i will forever have issues with ron's portrayal, it's otherwise really solid! the worst one is the sixth. nothing happens in that movie fr - the hinny romance is awkward and weird, ron is just There, and the trio dynamic is kind of nonexistent

atla season 1-3: ★★★★.5 (rewatch)

(source)
 
i was inspired to do a rewatch after all the (annoying) social media discourse surrounding the remake. i love my blorbos!! to me, atla is close to being the perfect show - season 1 is one of its weaker aspects, i'd rate that 3.5 stars, but the other seasons is 5 star television to me. i thi make a separate post about my thoughts so i'll just leave it all for that post.

spy x family season 1 and 2: ★★★.5

(source)
 
a riot. so silly. as so many other things, it's at times foiled by the incest jokes but apart from that! i love the forgers - all of them are just so fucking hilarious, and their dynamics are so fun to witness. the ridiculous conflicts which arise due to the huge parts of their lives loid and yor keep hidden from each other, and anya's ability to fucking. read minds!!! is funny every time. i love damian and becky, they are both just so ridiculous (but also damian's endless need for approval and validation from his father... please. someone hug this child). it's the kind of show where the stakes are super high, regardless of whether yor is being attacked by 50 people at once who wish to kill her, or anya tries to get macarons af the school cafeteria before they're sold out, which is one of my favorite things about it

little women (kr): ★★★

(source)
 
this was intriguing most of the time, and then the ending just sort of tanked. but my expectations weren't that high anyways, so i didn't really mind it. i had fun! and honestly, despite being ridiculous throughout and fumbling the ending, it's still a k-drama i actually finished, which i can't say about a lot of dramas, so it's also got that going for it. my favorite things about it were hye-in and hyo-rin's relationship and the fact that they quite literally eloped, and do-il (i love a scammer!!)and the dynamic he developed with in-joo. i was toeing the waters of in-joo/hwa young at first, but hwa young had just become so unsympathetic by the end it was ridiculous lol. and pretty insensitive?? anyway

teenage mutant ninja turtles: mutant mayhem ★★★★★

(source)
 
watched this during a flight and i had the most delightful time ever. i wish i hadn't been on a plane while watching it because being on a plane automatically makes everything worse, but i'm still giving it five stars. sooo delightful, in terms of artstyle, characters, script, voiceacting... just perfect. i love when teenagers are cringe. i need more of this genre of animation please

i-land: n.r.
 
yeah so i jumped on the enha bandwagon 4 years late and started watching i-land to catch up. i'm thinking i'll make a full post on it since i do have Thots. anyway. my enha <333 love those boys. they've become very importantt to me in an impressively short timespan.

BOOKS 📖

yellowface, r.f. kuang: ★★★

i haven't really read much in general this year because i haven't had the brainpower to concentrate on anything in between thesis writing and work lol. i must have started a hundred books and finished 10 lol. anyway, i listened to yellowface on audiobook on my flight to vietnam, and while i found it really enjoyable and pretty funny while i was listening to it, it did become too ridiculous and surface-levelby the end, especially for an author known for thorough research and critique. also if you've seen readwithcindy's video on the book, you'd know about the self-insert stuff which is also kind of weird but year  

the honeymoon crashers, christina lauren: ★★

another audiobook i listened to in vietnam during the first nights where i was really struggling to fall asleep. i remember choosing it because it seemed like an easy read, it was a full-cast audio book which i'd never tried before, and harry shum jr. was the male lead which was kind of funny. it was fine, i've mostly forgotten everything about it now lol. lucky for me, past me wrote a review on goodreads. it's not exactly the most in depth review in the history of book reviews, but here it is: 

it was fine. I think maybe I need to warm up to this kind of full cast audiobook experience because the transition from description to dialogue was so awkward to me. tbh I don't think there was enough harry shum jr. the surfer bro in this for my liking, if they're gonna name a surfer guy BRODY of all names they might as well just have gone all in and bestowed him with a kronk level of loveably idiocy. as far as I remember, we didn't even get one (1) heeelll yeaa dude 🤙 which I personally find a bit upsetting (just kidding, mostly, but can u imagine)

the trial by franz kafka, ★★★

i read this across two or three months so it wasn't really the greatest reading experience, but as i said earlier, it has been a pretty weak reading year for me so far, overall. i really do think i'm starting to become illiterate. anyway, the trial was fun, and i loved the ending, but i would probably have enjoyed it a lot more if i'd been in a better headspace, i kept zoning out while reading it. but i mean! i finished a physical book at least! yippeeee

MUSIC 🎶

ngọt - suýt 1: ★★★★

a short and sweet ep, slightly dampened by the fact that they immediately announced their disbandment on facebook afterwards lol. but yeah, ngọt continues to be my favorite viet artists i've listened to. while i'm honestly somewhat indifferent towards the first half (i haven't listened to the first two songs since i first heard the entire ep), i love the second half so much that it justifies a four star rating.

♡ : hay là & thắp hương / hoá vàng. both are really good, but the latter feels especially made for me with its indie/jazz/viet folk fusion... it's such a shame they disbanded lol

kara jackson - why does the earth give us people to love?: ★★★.5

i didn't like this when i first listened to it, and i think it's partly because it'd been so hyped by musicheads that i was underwhelmed, and partly because i'm not much of a country/blues enjoyer. but it grew on me upon a few relistens! and kara is such a great lyricist - despite the fact that i enjoy writing, lyrics are usually not something i pay attention to at all when i listen to music which probably stems from the fact that i've played music since i was a kid, and only got into writing as i got older lol. i only tend to note lyricism if it's really bad/cringy or if it's really good, and this album stood out to me in terms of the latter! but like. maybe don't listen to it if you're feeling very existential

♡ : free, why does the earth give us people to love, & curtains

iron & wine - the shepherd's dog: ★★

generally pretty underwhelming, and all the songs sounded the same to me. flightless bird, american mouth was the only song i already knew on the album, and it's also iron & wine's most listened to song on spotify, but it was one of my least liked songs on the album help, it was just kind of boring to me

faye wong 浮躁 (fuzao): ★★★★.5

hell yeeaaaa i loved this album, it's so fun and i love her voice and the way she uses it, i'm really glad i checked it out. it was my first faye wong, but i really need to get into more of her stuff. from what i've read on the internets, this is her best/most experimental album tho - i tried listening to her most popular track on spotify and they were all ballads and i'm not really a ballad girlie lol

♡ : 无常 (wu chang/impermanent), 浮躁 (fu zao/restless), 想像 (xiang xiang/imagine)& 掃興 (sao xing/disappointed), although i thought most of the songs were really good.

rm - right place, wrong person: ★★★★.5

i can't stop thinking about that fucking tiktok that's like "forced to be leader of bts, born to be a british roadman"... another banger of an album... i honestly hadn't intended to check this out because i didn't know it was coming out lol. i haven't followed any of bts' activities in a really long time, so it would have flown totally under the radar for me, but then i saw THEE LITTLE SIMZ had a feature on the album, so i just had to listen to it, and i'm sooo glad i did. it's so good!! rm dabbling in experimental hiphop... love that for him <3 and i'm so glad he gets to fulfill his creative vision <3 it's definitely my favorite solo project from any bts member, all the songs differ from each other while still being a cohesive project, and it's so obvious how namjoon is just exploring his creative freedom and doing whatever the hell he wants

♡ : nuts, domodachi (<333), groin, around the world in a day & come back to me

anaïs mitchell - hadestown: ★★★★.5

returning to my musical theater phase with this one and ykw i'm not even mad about it!!!! i'm seeing hadestown in london this summer with my roommates, which i'm super excited about, so i figured i'd listen to the broadway recording album instead of going in blind, and now i'm obsessed. i must have listened to the reprise of wait for me 500 times. i'm so obsessed with eva noblezada's voice, i hope she never shuts up, ever. also again. great lyricism!! great vocals. great instrumentals (esp if you're a folk/new orleans jazz enjoyer). great everything tbh

♡ : road to hell, any way the wind blows, wedding song, way down hadestown, chant, when the chips are down, why we build the wall, flowers & wait for me (reprise)

blonde redhead - melody of certain damaged lemons: ★★★.5

my first blonde readhead! i obv already knew for the damaged coda because i (unfortunately) watched rick and morty in my teens and play classical piano (shoutout to noct. in f minor, op. 55, no. 1 by my homie chopin), but the rest was very new to me. i really love their sort of creepy, atmospheric, dreamy sound, but while i think the album as a whole is good (it's cohesive but not boring!) i feel like i wouldn't listen to that many of the tracks individually. then again, i dont think blonde redhead is aiming for listenability first anyways so! anyway, i cant wait to listen to more of their stuff

♡ : melody of certain three, loved despite great faults, for the damaged & for the damaged coda

ok. see you later 🫡🫡🫡

(rv's seulgi in mv of the year)

( no-nut november truly went out with a bang (spotify called me a cringefail loser) )

haley bennett in swallow

hello hello! it's been a while since i did one of these so let's just jump straight into it

movies and tv 📽️

swallow ★★★.5

i have a mubi subscription bc i decided to try out film nerd-dom for a minute, and swallow was on their halloween list. it's a movie about a newly pregnant housewife who begins to swallow objects (marbles, thumbtacks, needles, batteries etc.) to cope with her increasingly controlling husband. it was interesting! it was pretty heavyhanded with its symbolism, which isn't always a problem, but i feel like this one was perhaps a bit too on the nose with its metaphors. on the other hand i feel like i would be very heavyhanded with my metaphors as well if i made a movie, so like. whatever. my main issue with it was the whole scene with the father which felt very strange and kind of like it was working against the message the movie was trying to tell me otherwise? i won't spoil in case you wanna watch but yeah. watch this if you wanna impress a gender studies major i guess

x ★★★★.5
SLAY!!!! every time i mention this to an irl i am painfully reminded of how chronically online i am because NO ONE KNOWS THIS MOVIE i swear it only exists to people who spent the entirety of this autumn seeing mia goth fancams on their twitter tl or whatever. anyway, i've been meaning to watch x and pearl for the longest time, and i finally did and it went so hard. x follows a group of young porn stars + their camera crew who travel to rural texas to shoot a porno - shenanigans ensue. and with shenanigans i mean creepy old people who are also murderers. i think the choice to have mia goth play both maxine and the old lady (pearl) was sooo cool, not just bc it's kind of a flex from mia's side, but also it rly emphasizes the relationship between the two characters - how pearl envies maxine for her youth and her beauty and her sexuality - and the whole theme of sexuality and age. very awesome!!!!

mia goth in x

hamilton ↻ (unrated (read more to find out?!))

okay so like. i actually wrote a way too long review of hamilton on my letterboxd account which i will just paste here:

rewatched this with some of my hamilhead friends and okay, do i think this story aged well? no!!! do not get me wrong, the actors are insanely talented and the music and scenography is super cool, and hamilton DID have a huge impact in terms of poc casting in broadway, and i WOULD take a bullet in the chest for lomls phillipa soo and daveed diggs, but it also tells a version of the creation of america, which, ironically, is incredibly romanticized. it constantly lets us know, perhaps unsubtly, that this is a story of legacy; who gets to tell your story when you are gone, which bits do they leave in and which do they discard, how does their perception of you color the story, and so on and so forth. but for a story which asks all of these big, important questions about history and immortalization and legacy, it completely ignores america’s legacy of westward expansion which came at the cost of countless indigenous lives. what about the fact that racism towards black people is infused into pretty much every part of the american system - a legacy that is still felt to this very day? who, exactly, tells these stories?

regarding the casting, i, again, do acknowledge that it has created opportunities for poc in broadway, however, i’d much rather these actors have roles created for them. i recognize its attempt at casting poc in order to reclaim american history, but having a black person play a slaveowner is incredibly weird and tone-deaf.

by virtue of being a very big part of my teens, hamilton will always have a special place in my heart, but equally, it will always leave a bitter taste in my mouth. hamilton is a lesson in history, but not necessarily in the way it intended to be: history is so often told and revised by the victors, and this makes it abundantly clear.

get out ↻ ★★★★.5
SLAY PT 2!!! i've been meaning to rewatch this for the longest time and i finally did, god bless. i def noticed more things the second time around, like for some reason the significance behind the gf's death on the side of the road completely went over my head the first time i watched it BUT NOT THIS TIME!!!

also daniel kaluuya is so good at microexpressions, it's insane. like everytime his gf's family are being very weird and are overcompensating to show how Not Racist they are he does this subtle smile and i can just see everything that goes through his head, he's just so good you guys. i need to watch nope and like every other movie he has been in.

pearl ★★★★★
SLAY PT 3!!! this movie is just everything to me. she's a colorful bloody beaut!!! mia goth is so cool and the projectionist is hot and pearl was, to me, one of those movies you want to watch again immediately after finishing it. pearl is the origin story of the old lady in x and the thematic tie ins to x were so good and interesting, i was considering watching pearl before x (so chronologically) but i'm really glad i didn't lol. they were def made to be consumed in the order they were released in.

the titular pearl (2022)

american vandal ↻ ★★★★★

SLAY PT 4!!!!! i feel like you could say so many smart things about american vandal, like yeah it IS a show about dicks and shitting your pants but also it's such a good and intelligent show with so so much heart. it only ran for two seasons before netflix pulled the plug on it and i mourn it every single day, but basically it's a mockumentary made by high schoolers peter maldonado and sam ecklund, where they try to solve the Crime of the Season. it's genuinely the best thing to ever happen to me. i forced my roommates to watch it (and i really had to force them at first lol) but we just finished season 2 and they all really love the show now, but for different reasons which is p interesting and cool to me. i prefer s1 bc [explanation will follow in next paragraph], while one of my roommates prefers s2 bc he thinks the mystery is better

personally, before i rewatched av, i had always been of the very firm belief that s1 was better than s2, simply bc i remember it better lol, and now that i've rewatched both seasons back to back i have come to the necessary realization that I WAS WRONG kind of. i still personally prefer s1 over s2 BUT it's like. the show is perfect the way it is and things were never going to be any different. in s1 you have this mystery of trying to figure out who vandalized the teachers' cars, but surrounding this you also have this boy who just wants to create a groundbreaking documentary so badly, and is so so passionate about integrative journalism and figuring out The Truth that the documentary and its repercussions unintentionally bleeds into his own life and the lives of the people around him, and i loved how the show explored these different layers. s1 is several stories within stories, and it subsequently functions as both a commentary on the ethics of true crime through peter's character, and a look into these very genuine and real characters and the relationships they have with each other which overlap and continuously impact each other

s2 is a lot more mystery/investigation oriented while peter and sam mostly fade into the background due to the professionalism they have gained from working on s1 and it's just!!!! this is the way things should progress, this is what makes the most sense for the show and its characters - s2 is different from s1 because the characters are dynamic. and even though the personal lives of peter and sam are further removed from the plot of s2, the very fact that they are able to fade into the bg adds another layer to their characters because now we get to see how much they - especially peter - have grown, we get to see how much they have matured as filmmakers; they were never meant to be static. and then, of course, there's also the question of what was left out this time, what happens between the margins, because we know that unlike in s1, the boys are less personally involved. it's all just such a cool form of storytelling to me.

also s2 has demarcus which is another plus (and this is another topic altogether, but i think the way the show subtly deals with demarcus' experience with being a black person raised in a black neighborhood while attending a wealthy, mostly white school really really well. like his codeswitching and feelings of alienation, the part where he recounts the first and only time he accidentally said the n-word around his white peers... i just want to give this boy a very warm hug

bottom line: av is just the fuckingest show to ever and i'd love to write an analytical essay about it at some point, 1) because i think there's plenty of material to work with 2) because i love it and 3) because it would be hilarious

chucky ★★★★
i kind of went into this not expecting much, but it's sooo entertaining and it slays so hard. not only is there an unhinged killer doll on the loose, the show also doubles as a coming of age story for the main character, a young queer boy who is weirdly into dolls and he has a huge crush on a local kid who has a TRUECRIME PODCAST. i love them dearly. right now i'm at season 2 and i feel like the creators notched up the camp-level by like 500 and although i love when things are ridiculous and camp i do think i prefer s1 a bit more bc s2 felt a little too silly. s1 was already pretty funny, i don't think it necessarily needed to be even more silly than it already was. basically s2 is funnier than s1, while s1 is grittier while still being funny.

a few quotes that i enjoyed tremendously:

jake (whisper-yelling at devon while at a catholic private school): the catholics aren't exactly down with the gays!

catholic nun: he is our lord and savior (THE HE IN QUESTION IS CHUCKY)

(that's all i rmbr atm because it was so funny to me it just burned itself into my retinas but i will get back to you)

(slayage!!)

books 📚

the island of missing trees ★★★★

this is hard to summarize so i won't but i read this for my lit course on the anthropocene and loved it!! it has so much to say about the experiences of immigrants and intergenerational trauma and trees and roots/being uprooted (in every sense of the word) and climate change and i just loved it, even more so after analyzing it for class. the prose is breath-taking and gorjus and poetic and i would rec this to everyone

into the drowning deep ★★★.5

this follows a group of marine biologists and the like, who travel to the mariana trench to investigate the existence of mermaids, who may or may not have killed and eaten the crew of another ship a year prior lol. once again inserting a longer review i left on my goodreads account:

this poked at a very specific part of my brain (half-joking dreams of becoming a deep sea-oriented marinebiologist), because the fact that so much of the ocean is still unexplored i.e. ANYTHING could be down there, is super cool and fascinating to me. like yeah, this is fiction but there COULD be eldritch horrors beyond our mortal comprehension in the ocean yk, who am i to say humans are the apex predators of the world? anyway this was very slay, i especially loved the insane siren lore - the ecosystem in their scalps, their biology, the idea that they have a shared culture, their intelligence, their languages, the whale sized matriarch etc etc, it was all very awesome to me, and i am not saying i would be on that boat if given the opportunity but i would consider it very heavily.

this book was made all the more interesting because i have a lit course right now about the anthroposcene and i didn’t pick this up with that in mind, but it did make me consider the relationship between the human characters and the siren species (and reader and sirens) a lot more than i otherwise would have.

i do have a few complaints: i think it was longer than it needed to be, and the language, albeit beautiful, felt, to me, a little too flowery and had the unfortunate effect of lessening the suspense. i also didn’t care much about most of the characters, which might be attributed to the fact that the cast was too large for me to properly connect to all of them, but i do appreciate its diversity and mira grant’s ability to give us insight into the ways the characters are marginalized without having their entire arc revolve around their identities.

overall, this was a very solid read and i think there should be way more books in the world about predatory sirens which goes into great, unnecessary (or necessary, i’d argue) detail about their biological composition and evolutionary origins <3

ace of spades ★★★.5

ate this up in like two days lol. this is the first ya novel i've read in a minute, and it was sooo nice to just be able to fly through a book?? it's a dark academia novel which follows the only two black kids at this otherwise white private school, who become victims of targetted, very creepy, anonymous harassment. it's very good and p creepy and horrifying, and probably also one of the dark academia novels which are the most faithful to the genre in its critique of academic institutions, for virtue of it dealing with the various forms of racism embedded in academia.

the main characters are also rly great; there's devon, a really sweet gay kid, and then there's chiamaka who is queer and also happens to be THEE high school Mean Girl [trademark]. while i connected the most with devon, chiamaka's social standing at school was one of my favorite aspects of the novel because the role of the high school mean girl has usually been one reserved for white girls, so this was just very cool overall

she who became the sun ★★★★

wanna start out with saying that i cracked this open on the bus and the chapter i had reached started out smack dab in the middle of a hardcore sapphic fisting scene and there was a person sitting next to me. with that out of the way, she who became the sun is a historical fantasy novel which takes place in 1300s china, and the plot is hard to summarize but we follow zhu who has assumed her brother's identity after his death, and ouyang, an eunuch general who is the last surviving member of his family. this novel is the most devastating, tragic and beautiful tale of queer desire, duty and gender identity and you should definitely read it!!

music 🎵

music has been weird this month because i lost one of my headphones and my other pair broke, so i haven't really been listening much to anything at all lol. i CAN tell you that what i have been listening to has been an overwhelming amount of carly rae jepsen <3 her new album is so insanely good you don't understand. my favorite tracks right now are keep away, so nice, bad thing twice, surrender my heart and talking to yourself but i don't think there's a single song on there that i don't like. except maybe shooting star and beach house (but beach house is campy enough for me to accept it anyways)

(carly slay jepsen)

other songs i've been listening a lot too lately are poppy by stayc, 28 reasons by seulgi, vivid by rich brian ft. $not, nonsense by sabrina carpenter, antifragile by le sserafim, kim petras' slut pop ep and moscow mule and después de la playa by bad bunny. i have yet to listen to the new weyes blood album because i feel like it's an album which doesn't work without a pair of working headphones lol, so i've been putting it off.

(stayc gworls it's going down)

okay anyway, this was gucci, i am hoping for a good december for all of us, ily all and i'll talk to u later. take care! <33

( cringe and somehow also not free and if you ever meet me irl don't look me in the eye )

( aka best songs ever?! )

( apologies beforehand )

i don't think this is a trend anymore but i watched as told by kenya’s video on ranking romance tropes which made me think about readwithcindy’s fic trope ranking video which made me think of this trend and now here we are… back @ dreamwidth. unfort

i think most of these posts are about fic specifically, but i really wanted to talk about one of my All Time Favourite themes in fiction so this entire post is a terrible mix of fic AND fiction tropes, themes, dynamics etc etc, also bc this is the internet i'm exaggerating things for #comedic purposes like i PROMISE i don't feel that intensely about my dislike for pregnancy fics or whatever, SOMETIMES. it's just funny to be a silly little hater on a dead social media platform

💚 LIKES

rivals (to lovers): LOVE IT!!! WILL LOVE IT FOREVER AND ALWAYS <33 think about it like this: the only people who have actual rivals are people who are stupidly intense about whatever it is they're rivaling their rival about, MEANING!! a good rivals to lovers story practically guarantees Repression and denial-pining, loser who works hard, intense competitiveness, Glaring With Murderous Intent That Is Borderline Eyefucking etc etc... good stuff <3 i put the lovers in parenthesis bc i like the ambiguity/grey area of a really intense rivalry. will they Ever get over their pride and get tgt or will they forever settle in repressed, uncomfortable prolonged eye contact across the classroom/volleyball court/courtroom/debate podiums etc etc. losers <3

enemies to lovers: kind of in the same vein as rivals to lovers, but like it's just so much more fun when people dislike each other?? i tend to be very picky with enemies to lovers though bc i am picky about everything but also people label stuff as enemies to lovers when it's more like... 10% of being enemies and 90% of being sentimental and gross :/ IF YOU'RE GONNA DO IT COMMIT, COWARD

i like this trope more if they are Exes or used to be friends (generally if they went trough some form of break up, romantic or platonic). i like it EVEN MORE if it's enemies to friends to lovers <333 esp if the friendship is reluctant at first but becomes a Ride or Die type of relationship

[tldr;] (platonic/romantic) exes to enemies to reluctant friends to best friends to lovers is THE WAY TO MY HEART

sidenote but i tend to enjoy this more if it's in an AU completely removed from day to day life and if not then at least have the characs be teenagers bc there's nothing weirder than reading an office romance and have a grown adult's password be "IHate[Archnemesis]123" IT'S SO JARRING... stares directly at the hating game

childhood friends to lovers: these are some of my favourite but i ONLY think they're good if the childhood aspect is done really well, otherwise they become very boring to read for me. i want to be Floored with the amount of obscure details (i.e. going over to ur friends house to play on their family's computer, u being bad at skipping rocks but ur friend being insanely good, u having an older brother in high school that ur friend finds intimidating but also thinks is super cool (except he is actually a loser etc etc)). but i also don't want it to be a huge cliché which i feel like it can easily become. like okay you are playing hide and seek and now you are building a tree house and now you are holding hands and now you are crying because bullies are making fun of your ugly shirt and your beloved fwiend is protecting you from the mean boowies ughhh I DONT CARE

the best example i can come up of a portrayal i really enjoyed is in It by stephen king which is... regrettable bc it's not rly a book i'd like to recommend For Reasons That Are Obvious To Anyone Who Has Also Read It?? like... It by stephen king but only the first half i guess lol. otherwise:

anne of green gables
the six bullerby children
the goldfinch
the Vibe of kinderszenen, op.15 no. 1

things got a little obscure there at the end lol, but that's what your life is like when you are picky and desperate. also not to say that all of these things are similar at all, most of them have nothing in common apart from the fact that i liked their portrayal of childhood... LIKE no, It, the bullerby books and the goldfinch have nothing in common, this obscure list is the only place u will find these things together

established relationship: i like that particular flavor of established relationship where they are in the public eye and keep their relationship a secret (so tinhet aligned lol). shared glances and brushing hands and the knowledge that This Side of You is Just for Me <3 but i really dislike it when it's like "nooo homophobia is keeping us from being together, they would never accept us" lol. find another reason to have a secret relationship

reincarnation: it's the passing a familiar stranger on the street; being so sure you know the person sitting three rows behind you in class from somewhere but being unable to place them; waking up from a dream feeling sad but not knowing why; standing in a train getting eye contact through the window with someone who's on another train going in the opposite reaction and then they're gone in a flash and u get the feeling you've missed something important etc etc. u just keep missing each other, maybe in another life, heize's happening mv... it's good

ambiguity: has various stages that are ALL GREAT

the hesitant stages of the pre-relationship you're questioning whether the (recently realized) object of ur affections feel the same way and then the other person does Something; a soft smile or falling asleep on each other in a car or deliberately brushing their pinkie with urs; and You Know It Isn't. literally just describing the plot of this IMMACULATE itafushi fic (the bull and the china shop)

antagonistic flirting aka the imaginary relationship between fe3h claude and sylvain

fwb (fraught)

slow burn: not to be mistaken for a 200k word fic where they spend the first half dancing around e/o and the second half having dumb misunderstandings. i am talking about introspective A is in love with B - it takes them 10 years of (totally normal, nonerotic) sporadic meetings bc life keeps whisking them away from each other after the graduated from high school/college to act upon it bc they are emotionally constipated, we are not the same!!

betrayal: having clashing beliefs and choosing whatever cause they're fighting for over the other person <333 ummm yeah i'm thinking about fe3h. alternatively working for one side in a war, getting assigned the task of gaining the trust of x person on the other side (5528 bonus points if they have History) maybe sort of actually fall in love with them and having to betray them anyways, something something dabihawks... sorry for being a bnha stan (post-mortem conversations and love has conducted us unto one death)

pyrrhic victories: "i have won... but at what cost" is funny to say but it's also A GREAT THEME. getting everything u ever wanted and having it feel like defeat... victory but at the cost of something u can never regain... WINNING A WAR BUT AT THE COST OF THE LIVES OF PPL YOU USED TO BE FRIENDS WITH... OR AT THE COST OF UR OWN HUMANITY??? (so you want to win a war? // black eagle girls, fe3h) the space fe3h takes up in my brain is truly embarrassing

mean socialites: sometimes rich people are okay. especially if they call everyone darling (obnoxious) and are master manipulators and conspire to murder e/o

superficiality w/ selfawareness: rich girl who calls her father "daddy" is incredibly superficial and mean but SELFAWARE and kind of hates herself (ohnobymarina_mp3 <33) but is unable to stop bc hey she's selfserving and will drag anyone down who's in her way. and when she makes over some loser and she becomes even more popular than her and starts taking her place and it derails into an intense battle of popularity?? that might even derail into um murder... Somehow??? haven't figured out the logistics of that one yet - prolly a demon hybrid mix of heathers, mean girls and jennifer's body lol. "don't pit women against each other" but why not :(

food as a love language: sharing food (such as ORANGES), learning to cook someone's favourite dish, leaving food for the other in the fridge (in secret bc no one must know i am a nice person).... outsider watching A casually swap their carrots for B's tomatoes in the cafeteria anyone???

i also really like food as a depiction of familial love; parents asking their kids if they want another portion, giving them the best parts of the meat, packing food for them whenever they visit etc etc. i am vietnamese and my mom peels oranges for me, there is no other excuse

(complicated) family dynamics: FAVORITE THING TO READ ABOUT IN FICTION <33 i love unnecessarily long and in-depth explorations of the different relationships in one family

i also love motherhood as a theme, esp when it's that particular sort of complicated dynamic between an immigrant mother and her children. i am vietnamese part 2, but to be subversive i will add that i don't enjoy "mother sacrificing for her children" nearly as much as "mother sacrifing for her children but their relationship is Complicated bc hey both are possible at the same time". the first is meyeucon_mp3 the second one is on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong, very important distinction

accomplices: it's good when it's the addicted to you mv: "if you go down i will go down with you because i refuse to go on without you" (bloodoath // togachako, bnha), but it's EVEN BETTER when it's "if u go down i will go down with u, so u better not fuck this up and i promise i won't fuck up either". IT'S SO GOOD. when two ppl inadvertently end up having to pull off [Something] tgt, and they really don't want to bc they trust no one but themselves to do a good job, but now they have no other option than to trust the other person and place their life in their hands bc they're in this shit together <33

❌ DISLIKES

arranged marriage: not my cup of tea. it could potentially be good if it goes the "A and B are paired up in an arranged marriage, become unlikely friends and make their escape tgt" route but that's only bc i've read one (1) fic that does that which i rly liked lol (every defeat a divorce // edelclaude, fe3h).

soulmates: good if reincarnation or subversion, not a fan if otherwise. where's the FUN when you already know who your soulmate is?? WHAT IS THE POINT!!!

coffee shop: i'll read if desperation calls for it

bully romance: tried reading it once and it was enough. never again <3

anything involving pregnancy and children: usually don't care for them and my most despised genre of kidfic are the ones that combine childcaring with deaging, like the bnha ones where dabi is turned into a child and every pro hero in the nation is horrified because he reveals his dad abuses him what the FUCK, GET THEM AWAY FROM ME... AWAY I SAY.

kids are okay when the childcaring is temporary (e.g. they have to babysit A's nephew or smth and A or B see a softer side to the other person that they didn't expect or A meets B while B is on holiday with their niece etc etc) or if they are younger siblings (will elaborate in the final box)

a/b/o: just not horny enough for this ig!! also i cant rly take it seriously... r u telling me you're on the floor vomitting crying shaking bc of someone else's SMELL?? get yourself together. also the whole alpha male, growls, eyes glow red, turns into a wolf behavior makes me laugh hysterically while also managing to be icky at the same time... u do not need to put ur knot in an omega, u need to chill tf out. go hospital plz

chat fics: often chatfics portray everyone the exact same way and you just Know the author is projecting. sorry but your anime boy does not know what a keyboard smash is, nor does he know how to turn off auto capitalization

US/westernization: namjoon's favourite book is pride and prejudice by jane austen- [GUNSHOT]

zombie apocalypse/dystopia: are we in 2013

proposals/weddings: i dont really care lmao. i'll make an exception for proposal fics where A and B's dynamic is like "they are eating dinner at the kitchen table. A goes 'so hey do u wanna get married?? lol' and B goes '... uhhh yeah. sure.' and then they continue eating"

amnesia: are we in 2013 part 2 (i have a better explanation in the mcd section lol)

mcd: i feel like a lot of the time "and then he died </3" is used as a tool to pull off the most shocking/dramatic thing a writer can think of lol. i don't like it!!! mcd isn't a prerequisite for making ppl sad!! plus i like angst that's a result of someone's actions or their emotional constipation more than stuff that just Are, e.g. grieving over their s/o's death or their s/o's loss of memory etc etc.

ghosts are okay, but i only really like ghostfics if they are in the "magical realism where magical elements are questioned by no one and ppl are just chilling" context lol

de-aging: already said but but please keep them far away from me

hogwarts: are we in 2-

holiday themed: not sure why i dislike christmas fics or fics that are very [insert holiday] oriented, i just dont care. as if i'm not stressed about MY holiday already

too many Real World-isms: do not recall ordering a shot of a/b/o societal oppression as a metaphor for societal oppression to go with MY ESCAPISM???

hanahaki: look i like unrequited love as much as the next person but hanahaki is a bit too angsty for me.... DYING BC UR CRUSH DOESN'T LIKE U BACK?? JESUS..... i like it a lot more in art and other visual media - one of my favourite genres of art is plants growing out of people's bodies so it's not that i don't like the concept of hanahaki, i just don't want to Read it. same goes for all the other sickness due to unrequited love tropes - visually they're all rly tragi-beautiful and i'd like to keep them in that medium bc it just works so much better??

💙 OTHER RANDOM LIKES THAT DON'T NEED A LONG-WINDED EXPLANATION

friendship: soz to be sentimental, it's just good and nice (ecdysis study // aged up karasuno first years, haikyuu + my nameless world (i'll let you in) // kenma, hinata, kageyama, kuroo, haikyuu)

cats: i like when there are cats idk. also i like when A sees B being all soft and sweet and gooey with their cute cat when they usually are awkward and stiff. my kagenyama cat fic list

survival show: hello, gp999 watcher here

meta: not that surprising since i literally wrote a Person Realizes They Aren't Real fic lol. but when i say meta i'm also referring to famous person buying their own merch, social media outsider perspectives on famous people etc etc

bodyguard: i think these are at their best in royalty aus. if a royalty au isn't bodyguard x royal i do not want it

college: i'm basic

and they were roommates: i'm basic part 2

domesticity and mundanity: i like when ppl do boring things. something about quiet conversations @ the kitchen table... <33

magical realism: magical elements that are questioned by no one!! love love love

epistolary: great in the "pining 19th century person writes loving 5 page letter to their s/o in candlelight" sense and in the "co-workers send petty e-mails back and forth" sense

younger siblings: when the younger sibling adores their older sibling's s/o.... when they have a little friendship.... when/if the relationship shatters and the younger sibling is devastated.... T___T

morally grey characs: ppl who will do whatever it takes to win <33 manipulate gaslight gateboss or whatever

introspection: i enjoy being in the head of emotionally constipated people lol

chance encounters: dislike love at first sight, but having an encounter with the same asshole twice and having some weird circumstance bring them together a third time!! it's good

overexcited extrovert x fondly indulgent introvert: when A is eager to please and B just Lets Them

countryside: for the ghibli-nostalgia (a sprinkle of cinnamon, a dash of sunshine // kagehina, haikyuu)

whatever dynamic triple h's got going on in all their mv's (so two in total... T____T please come back)

the rv peek-a-boo mv murder cult: horror but it's glittery and romcom aligned (styling wise) without being a parody !!

💭 what about fake dating?

rly picky with it tbh, i like the whole thing with having to act like a couple when there are ppl around, lines being blurred, questioning what’s real and what isn’t, and i think it’s esp good with Exes but i hate… i HATE… when the reason they have to pretend to date is dumb like AT LEAST TRY THINKING OF A GOOD REASON?? LIKE it just ruins everything for me when it isn’t convincing AND IT RARELY IS!!!

tldr; fake dating works if they are unbitter Exes and there’s some sort of family gathering going on where everyone thinks B are coming so A pleads B to pretend they’re still dating bc A is a little bitch boy who doesn’t have the heart to tell their family that they are no longer dating and oops guess i wasn’t as over you as i think i was hahA

( stuff i've been listening to this month )

i have an obsession with tracking things - i actually used to do these media reviews i've seen people do on here back when i still used a bullet journal, but since i am incapable of being consistent with anything in my life i stopped lmao. anyway, now that i have this account i thought i might as well try it out? i'm kind of on a dreamwidth roll rn i feel like, so i'll just take advantage of it before i inevitably get tired of it and move on to something else to spend all my time on. btw this is probably going to be extremely long, because i apparently am incapable of shutting up, and NO I STILL DONT KNOW HOW TO DO THE CUT TAGS >:(

films:

the secret world of arrietty ★★★★
the cat returns ★★★.5
ocean waves ★★
emma. ★★★.5
the last airbender 0.5 lol
the last black man in san francisco ★★★★.5
little women (2019) ★★★★★

overall i'd say pretty good film month? i'm very inconsistent with the amount of media i consume - last month i didn't watch any films at at and this month i kind of went ham in comparison. i watched a bunch of ghibli films - i spent a huge chunk of this month being ill because allergy season has been trying to murder me so i could really use the pick-me-up. arrietty was my favourite; invented cottage core, the cat returns was a lot um.. weirder than expected, and ocean waves offended me on a personal level hjsdhjs but all three of them had the nostalgic ghibli quality to them that i adore. also beautiful animation and music!! i'm actually pretty sad about ocean waves because it could've easily been a favourite if it had ended differently? i actually feel the same way about from up on poppy hill, while watching i was so sure i was going to love it and then it took a very strange turn lol </3

emma. was one of my favourite films this month visually. such pretty colors and cinematography. plotwise it was mostly just white people going to tea parties and visiting estates and courting each other which i have figured out just Isn't My Thing. i know those types of period pieces are appealing for a reason but they're just not for me, i guess you could say it isn't my cup of tea lololol. also i really did not like mr. knightley's sideburns. it was all i could think about when he was on screen, why did they give the main guy those ugly sideburns while every other male character didn't have any?? but anya ... <333 that scene where she puts a strawberry (?) in her mouth <333

about the atla film... needless to say this was not good um. i watched this with a friend which made it a lot funnier, i think i would've gone insane if i'd watched it alone. when it was done we just kind of sat at a complete loss. it was unbelievably horrid. a few comments:

"they are white... they're all white :0"

"they pronounce aang as if they're british... ohng.... wa er bending"

"i do not like this" x100

"they all look dead... ACT. DO SOMETHING"

"who ARE you"

"why do they need to move around for five minutes to bend one thing"

"oh no fire! said the fire bender"

"that looks like contemporary dance"

*general confused screaming*

"WHY IS HE BREAKDANCING"

"this movie would not have passed our media exam"

"ah yes, the great library you keep mentioning, that you will not expand upon"
"i love her energy, go girl give us nothing"

"they just wanted a mythological creature and put in a dragon because they thought it was cool"

"how do they give us too much information without giving us any information at all at the same time?"

the last black man in san francisco and little women are my favourite films from this month :') they were both so beautiful, especially tlbmisf was just stunning. i will think about the opening five minutes until the day i die. everything about this film was gorgeous; the cinematography, the score, the story, the performances [cries into hands]. it was just....!!! it spoke about gentrification and friendship and ideas of masculinity and belonging and it was all just so moving

as for little women, i know i just said period dramas aren't my thing but this doesn't revolve around drinking tea and courtships >:) i feel like everyhing that can be said about it has been said already? it was good, the equivalent of being hugged (not to say it wasn't sad at all because it was). the depictions of relationships between the characters were wonderful, especially those between the sisters. something i really liked was how casual the physical touch and affection was; so many hugs and casual touches not just between the sisters but also things like laurie putting an arm around beth or john patting amy on the shoulder, you know small things that just show how much they've become part of the family. this movie was just filled with so much love [cries even more].... i love love!!!

series:

avatar the last airbender ★★★★★ (rewatch)
jujutsu kaisen ★★★★

those were the only two shows i finished this month - i'm generally really slow at watching tv-series lol. i loved them both? i rewatched atla with my parents, we saw one, sometimes two episodes each day so we've been going at it for a while. this time around i noticed a few details i hadn't picked up on when i was like 16 - zuko using fighting styles from all four nations in The Final Fight, the swampbenders having sino-vietnamese names. my dad is a philosophical buddhist so he also provided me with some fun facts he noticed; gyatso meaning ocean in tibetan, azula's fighting style being more direct and aggressive than the typical fire bending style, the philosophy behind aang's To Kill Or Not To Kill dilemma etc etc. it was a super interesting rewatch!!

i watched jujutsu kaisen with a friend over discord which has been my main source of social interaction this month sdjsdh T___T first of all, devastated to announce that i have fallen victim to gojou, no one is more annoyed about this than me. second of all i adore the friendship between the main trio. they care about each other so much, and they deserve to live in peace and be happy ://. i love the characters, especially the show's depiction of its female characters. they're badass without falling in the I Hate Other Women trap, nobara is just A Delight; she is such a bad bitch but she also likes things typically associated with hyper-feminity and her character has you know.... actual character lol. i realize the bar for good female characters especially in shounen is pretty low but nobara is a good character okay T____T

books:

my year of meats - ruth ozeki ★★★★.5

this was the only book i read this month but i really loved it so that's a plus! it's probably one of my favourite books in general now, i read it for class, and i probably wouldn't have picked it up anyway so school finally did one thing right lmao. this book was just really interesting? it dealt with a very wide variety of topics that played really well together: female friendships, motherhood, racial, cultural and sexual identity and um the meat industry. it makes more sense when you read the book lol.

cw for depictions of abuse, rape, animal slaughter, and general unpleasantries regarding the meat industry.

scrobbles:

i just made a last.fm account like two weeks ago so my numbers are only from the 16th to the 31st which?? i have 632 scrobbles in total how the fuck did i do that

top tracks:

lost in paradise by ali - 17 scrobbles
hai domo (man i dont even know...) - 11 scrobbles
a town with an ocean view - 10 scrobbles
moon by akmu - 9 scrobbles
月の丘 (the hill of the moon) by ichiko aoba - 9 scrobbles

top albums:

lilac by iu - 47 scrobbles
sailing by akmu - 39 scrobbles
kiki's delivery service soundtrack - 35 scrobbles
land of nod by thea - 22 scrobbles
BABYMETAL by babymetal - 15 scrobbles

artists

iu - 74 scrobbles
akmu - 52 scrobbles
joe hisaishi - 39 scrobbles
babymetal - 22 scrobbles
thea - 22 scrobbles

i can't remember the exact reason but earlier this month i started Thinking about fish in the water by akmu, so i re-listened to it, and now i've had the entire album on repeat again. i love akmu <3

lost in paradise is the first ending song for jujutsu kaisen, AND IT'S A JAM. i love that song with my whole heart, it's just instant serotonin injected straight into my veins. it's so so good and makes me so so happy.

about hai domo. the other day i felt like making a femblem lysithea playlist because... why not procrastinate some more.

land of nod by thea is such a gem :') it's so dreamy and vibey, if you're into j a z z and soul i'd definitely recommend checking it out!! i think my favourite songs from the album are inside out, one wish and place at the table

misc:

- fire emblem: three houses:

i still play this religiously, which is honestly?? very impressive for me. we've been going strong for 4 months now :0 i just finished my third playthrough of the game, which means i've cleared 3/4 of all the routes (the main three, i'm only missing the church route now). i played my recent route (the blue lions route) on hard which meant i actually had to think strategically (gasp) and not just randomly move things around and hope no one dies lmao.

my favourite route so far is probably the golden deer route because what can i say, i am a sucker for underdog narratives!! i love the other routes too tho - black eagles could probably come out on top of my rankings if it wasn't for the fact that it's short and leaves a Quite Important Plot Point unresolved. or well, it's solved but it happens off screen lol

favourite characters are claude (!!!), hilda, lysithea, sylvain, felix and dorothea, i think they're all super neat, except sylvain and felix who are just bastards sdhsjdhjs. my favourite supports are any supports where felix is being uncharacteristically nice and not a huge bitch because it's funny (felix/lysithea, felix/bernie, felix/sylvain A support etc etc). also big fan of marihilda and ferdibert supports for the Gay, and lysithea/cyril for the innocent puppy love that just guts you at the end.

- bnha chapters 304-307

i was debating whether i should put this under books but decided against it since they aren't in book form yet. but Yes i follow the bnha manga willingly, and read the new updates every sunday because i enjoy suffering <3 the current arc is batshit insane and has removed years from my lifespan, i am living in a constant state of stress for these poor children.

about season 5 of the anime which has jus started airing - i haven't watched it yet, and i'm not sure i'll follow along each week of if i'll just wait until x amount of episodes are out so i don't have to wait but i'm so excited to see the team bakugou fight and the dabihawks scenes ANIMATED aaah it's gonna be so cool... dabihawks..... "you should be addicted to shutting the fuck up" versus "you wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid"......

-these two articles on the vietnam war, cw for heavy, graphic themes such as rape, murder, genocide:

Rape Was Rampant During the Vietnam War. Why Doesn’t US History Remember This?

Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War?

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