november-ish round-up

[lackingdaze]

(source)

reading

for class:
- david h. hwang's m. butterfly
- yiyun li's the princess of nebraska
- nam le's love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice
- adrian tomine's killing and dying
- bharati mukherjee's the tenant

the readings in second half of my asam lit is significantly better than the first! my favorite is mukherjee's short story, because it's been a long time since i read one that i really loved the writing of. tbh her style gives very classic iowa workshop, but it's very well-crafted (the sentence construction!!) and just straight up masterful....

i've also gotten in the habit of just reading graphic novels in class instead of paying attention because i'm paranoid about opening twitter and having someone behind me see me draft insane tweets about keeho or something.

- kat leyh, snapdragon
- trung le nguyen, the magic fish

i thought snapdragon was so cute 😭😭😭 and the art in magic fish is so beautiful!! seriously wonder if nguyen was influenced by clamp or something because the way they draw the dresses/certain panels is so clamp/particularly card captor sakura esque.....also not to get into but i appreciate the way it addressed vn-am refugee/2nd-gen narratives in a way that isn't just like The Immigrant Story (bc miss thi bui already did that). i've been getting a lot of that lately and it's nice to see it handled in a less heavy-handed but still thoughtful way [literally suffering so much while writing this thesis on madame vuong guys]

i keep placing holds on books and not reading them at all before my hold expires so i obviously need to reflect on my actions and actually get around to reading the physical books i own once winter break starts. fingers crossed for finally finishing babel / starting breast and eggs / reading the maggie shipstead short story collection?

watching

- young royals s2 — the way i was like "i'll hold off on watching young royals until i finish this one paper" and then proceed to rewatch s1/start s2 before the paper was even halfway done. i blame my roommate!!! but also amazed at her for being young royals fan who has rewatched it like 3x. the new season was really enjoyable with wilhelm's character development (+ edvin's HAIR CUT!) and omar rudberg truly has one of the most beautiful faces in the world wtf. also the actor for marcus — is there a dearth of cute twinks in sweden or smthing?

- under the queen's umbrella — kim hyesoo's eyebrows are working over time in this show but omg seeing her and kim haesook on the screen together is insaneeeee. they are both so fucking scary. enjoying these gurlboss/what if sky castle was a saguk narratives + rookie actor MOON SANGMIN RISE!!!! can't wait for him to be netflix's new song kang btw. and yoo seonho's acting is so bad but i congratulate him for dodging the produce101 to gay4pay pipeline.

- starship game caterers — why is starship so entertaining!! i didn't know what to expect from the actors/idols combo but they got along surprisingly well. like why is yoo yeonseok hag behavior + kwangsoo + shin seungho enthusiastically doing the love dive team dance the peak of variety!!! and wjsn monsta x interactions too....aside from minhee + seongmin being srsly cute + selmsong still staying strong (wish they played troublemaker during the random play dance), i'm kind of endeared by miss YUJIN and also liz/rei optics like ok......maybe i need to tune into ive content. and also figure out how jungmo/gaeul narratives can win in 2023.

i'm truly sinking so low in my search for things to watch that i now spend time actually watching youtube shorts instead of downloading tiktok like a normal internet person. although i know if i actually redownloaded tiktok i'd spend like 3h a day just mindlessly scrolling through it, whereas on yt shorts i'm subjected to blasphemous content like sungsun shippers in 2022 so there's a level of reality check and i can safely exit the app after seeing a 5 month old doobydobap short ya know.

listening

- top 5 artists: mallrat, new jeans, enhypen, the rose, oceanfromtheblue
- top 5 albums: butterfly blue, new jeans 1st ep, b-side: 90s kids never get old, midnights (wtf), fearless
- top 5 tracks: mallrat — your love (82), oceanfromtheblue — necessary girl (72), blue flame — le sserafim (38), new jeans — cookie (35), new jeans — hype boy (32)

my listening patterns are that i have a rotation of 1 indie-bedroom-pop girly, 1 random krnb mf, and hybe music that i pretend to hate but get stockholmed into enjoying anyways. i'm surprised oceanfromtheblue is up there purely from my necessary girl streams since i thought i listened to gemini more these days. and yes mallrat's your love is still that serious.

i went the rose's concert in la last weekend because my roommate had another ticket and it was surprisingly enjoyable!! i don't even like band music that much but i like woosung's raspy voice and they're great performers and we got a vip view for GA price...it was funny when they brought out james reid and then woosung outsung him on his own song like personally i'd be so embarrassed. listening to their new album frequently these days + old stuff (sorry, she's in the rain, etc.) i think it fits into my post-quarterly mental breakdown + transition to winter vibes well <3

life-ing

- the quarter is almost over and the end of my research capstone/thesis is in sight!! now i just need to sit down and not agonize over every sentence.

- i got peer-pressured by my fave professor into signing up for a workshop + advising with a visiting professor, which admittedly did sound cool but my original plan was to focus on writing fiction in winter and then focus on being employable in spring so i'm not sure where this workshop fits into the trajectory... it's a little disorienting because i think me from a year ago would have jumped at this opportunity but now i'm trying to move towards a diff. path yet still being yanked along by all the things i have previously set-up n_n the ultimate struggle of being good at something that isn't profitable vs. trying to do something profitable that you're not sure you're even good at or smthing......

- my little picked up littles and those littles picked up littles so now i'm a great grand which means nothing other than i feel like a fossil at parties bc i can't even drink anymore and even if i could i would still be harrowed [girl who was in the splash zone of a freshman [x]ing]. also smthing smthing outgrowing friend circles not feeling like i fit into new friend circles whatever i just enjoy being at home on the weekends tbh!!

- excited for winter break bc most of my friends are coming home <3 i'm nervous about some things coming up but as always, hoping for the best and taking every day one at a time. my resolution for december is to make better decisions and stop fixating on mistakes TT-TT