the passage of time

[grainfall]

or: my second semester kind of slipped away from me

i always associated dreamwidth with the idea of sitting down on a free afternoon and taking the time to consolidate and type out my thoughts at a slower/calmer pace than the breakneck speed that twitter demands, which probably explains why i haven't posted anything on dw since august....i haven't had one of those in a while. which makes it sound really depressing, but i haven't exactly been sad, just stupidly busy. i kept (somewhat) track of the media i consumed in august/september and then fell off somewhere in october, so this will probably be more rambling than usual, but given that it happens to be the first of december today i figure now's as good a time as any for a media roundup/life update


✫ some things i watched:

• squid game (binged the entire series on a whim right when it came out/before it blew up! i thought it was very well done, but given [waving] its treatment in the media ever since i think the point it made about capitalism has just been rendered completely moot......i thought the mr beast recreation of it was staggeringly tone-deaf.)
• inception (for several years my idea of what inception the movie was sonámbulo by ao3 user batman (a formative influence on my writing btw....) so imagine my shock when i watched inception the movie and went "wait what inception the movie isn't about an art heist")
• my name (i don't really watch kdramas but a friend recommended this so i binged the entire thing. loved the action sequences, han so-hee is. very attractive)
• luca (an incredibly gorgeous labour of love!! i can't recommend it enough—the animation and colour palette and details are just delightful and it's filled with so much joy....imo one of the loveliest things pixar has produced. animation is such a fantastic art form)
• 全职高手 / the king's avatar (live-action chinese series, i'm still halfway through it but it's such good fun.)
• arcane (i highly recommend this. the quality on this is just ridiculous, they had six years to work on this and it shows in every single scene. the story is understandable even without prior knowledge of league of legends and it can stand on its own, but the real star of the show is the animation. give the trailer a watch if you don't believe me and then go watch the entire show on netflix!!! it's incredible.)

✫ some things i read (books):

• Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal 
• Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
• Our Bodies and Other Fine Machines by Natalie Wee 
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 

✫ some things i read (poetry/journalism):

• Prac Crit: Daily Bread by Ocean Vuong 
• Proof by Tiana Clark
• The Defeated by Linda Gregg
• Good morning, the sun in October by Sanna Wani
• Tomorrow is a Place by Sanna Wani
• Blood History by Reginald Dwayne Betts
• "Cat Person" and Me 
• Who Is The Bad Art Friend?
• Summer was Forever by Chen Chen

✫ some things i listened to (a lot): 

• Be Your Enemy by Taemin, Wendy
• Hate That by Key, Taeyeon
• The entirety of Attacca (at heart i really am #carat)
• Rose by D.O.
• Make Up Your Mind by Florence + The Machine
• Runaway by Eric Nam
• Burn It All Down by PVRIS
• Same Sun by Before You Exit
• and of course.....all too well 10 minute version.....

✫ on life:

• reconnected with a few old friends and began talking to them a lot more, which has been extremely comforting! fell out of touch with a few people, which i feel like is the universe's way of balancing things out T___T argh.
• i graduated in october (which in itself is terrifying enough) and then i had to take national exams for chinese in early/mid november, with the expectations that if i pass these exams i'll get to drop chinese as a subject and won't have to study it academically ever again. and that made me think about language....i was raised speaking english and chinese and chinese is technically my mother tongue, but (much like the majority of youths in my country) i'm decidedly more fluent in english than i am in chinese for a bunch of complicated reasons. i never enjoyed the rigour of studying it even though i always thought it was a beautiful language. & i always loved chinese media/music, but those don't exactly increase your proficiency in the language T___T the other day i was speaking to my grandfather in chinese and felt so helplessly frustrated because i knew the english word for what i wanted to say but i couldn't remember the chinese words for it! which scares me a little....i can already feel my fluency in it decreasing, and who knows how much worse it'll become in the following years? you see the conflict....on one hand i'm glad i'm no longer forced to study it so intensely but on the other without being forced to study it the chinese media i consume won't be enough to maintain the same level of fluency T___T unless i dedicate extra time to it, but next year is set to be insanely busy.....sigh. i don't feel this way about dropping spanish as an academic subject bc it was a third language (studied for 4yrs) and i was learning it as a complete beginner....there was some degree of separation but being chinese is literally an inextricable part of my identity T___T.

✫ on writing (and kpop):

• been hovering on the edge of getting into ggs....i think stayc are lovely and have some really fun personalities (and their music slaps!) followed gp999, but my 2pick got eliminated in the finale so i have to find a member of kep1er that i Really like if i were to stan them. my 1pick from gp999 (kim suyeon!!!) got added to billlie though and i thought their debut song was pretty decent so they're certainly a candidate for my nugu 4th gen gg pick. zzzz. 
• i've not been reading a lot of fic lately T___T partly because i've been so busy. i've been trying to read more books, particularly local literature...but like i said, life has seriously been getting in the way and it's so frustrating!!!
• truth be told i have a whole bunch of ideas but i haven't had the chance to commit time to fleshing any of them out. sometimes it feels like i have too many ideas and for some inexplicable reason i want to keep them as ideas instead of bringing them into existence as finished fics out of a fear that they won't live up to what i envisioned them being in my head, which is....a mental thing to work on. i have a couple of compulsory fics (exchange/zine) to be finished but other than that the project closest to my heart that i really want to finish is a f!minghao/mingyu & f!minghao/f!jun triangulation slice-of-life coming of age taiwan-romance-movie-inspired fic that deals with heteronormativity, and female friendships, and growing up lgbt in asian society. not sure if this will get finished before the end of the year because 1) it's so personal that i want to do it justice and not rush it 2) it's so personal that it's awful to write. sad clown honking noises.
• 17hols was just announced, i think that'll be really cool! lately it's been getting kind of difficult to find joy in just writing...i want to get excited about writing again.

if you're reading this, i hope you're doing well; sending you a whole lot of love and strength. let's get through what's left of the year together :')