lackingdaze (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lackingdaze) wrote2021-08-02 03:05 pm
lackingdaze) wrote2021-08-02 03:05 pm
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july media round-up
july went by so fast and so much happened but also i didn't consume much of substance...
📽 WATCHING
3 will be free
this show was so crazy + i can't believe i experienced half of it on dramacool when it was on YOUTUBE all along? idk i had a lot of thoughts that i put on a locked dw post but i just found the characters + relationships to be really compelling [anyone else a MAE(PHON)TER enthusiast?]. i compared it to itsay/ipytm when i was watching it bc that's the only other thai media i've consumed, and while i don't think the production value was particularly great, i think it has a lot of heart and a great focus on characters? i liked that most characters had "hidden depths", i.e no one is all bad or all good, even shin's dad [unexpected ally king?]. the climax IS LITERALLY FUCKING CRAZY!
nevertheless
this is not a good show. but it has a sam kim ost and pretty cinematography and an ambiguous wlw side relationship and song kang being a male manipulator, which is why it's the highlight of my saturdays and i watch every episode twice for commentary purposes.
hospital playlist
i'm watching this as it airs [same for nevertheless] and it's not particularly interesting or anything, but i think the characters are fun and it's a good brain buffer.
light on me
this show is so bad. [insert screenshot of main_guy_holding_dildo.png with subtitles: "hey, you dropped this!"]
doom at your service
when will i finish this fucking show, i still don't understand the premise and i'm on ep 12. also i realized sf9's dawon is in this as the annoying little brother and literally WHY ARE THESE DUDES EVERYWHERE?
young royals
i don't have much to sayyy about young royals that isn't already better said but it was fun to watch and i enjoyed the soundtrack and i wanted felice to be gay.
kingdom: the legendary war
i hate this show and the fact that i spent 3 days bingeing it despite literally not caring about any of the groups and actually harboring ikon haterisms so i actually just skipped most of their process parts for performances but i guess some of the performances were really cool like ateez's finale except now i'm reading ATEEZ FIC IN THE YEAR 2021?
raya and the last dragon
i watched this on the plane with my friend, which is actually the only context in which i would watch it bc i don't have disney plus and also don't tend to gravitate towards animations? it was okay, i thought main plot was pretty basic, but umm did any one else have thoughts about RAYA/NAMAARI?
soul
again, another movie i watched on the plane. i think it was pretty good, i liked it better than raya and i also liked the messaging/the way story was resolved with a more open ending? the mix of animation styles was cool but also i know nothing about animation
in terms of k-pop content aside from kingdom, i watched some p1h content earlier in the month, namely their mbti interviews and some eps of saessak harmony, and finally learned all the member names and I LIKE THEM A LOT. and i guess i watched enha o'clock and sunjay vlive which is actually about as much enha content as i can handle in a month. and also i finished VITYPARK which is still the most perfect and compelling kpop variety show ever, even if i found the horror eps to be kind of boring.
also i realized this while talking to shakti over discord, but judging from my media round-ups, i haven't been watching a lot of movies recently? i think it's mainly because i need to watch movies in one sitting, but i tend to watch shows more sporadically (like i will literally watch 5 minutes of a show, close out of the netflix app, and start reading something, then come back to it.) but i'm trying to watch movies again! so if anyone has any recs, pls send them my way <3
📚 READING
umm. so i'm trying to develop a healthier relationship with reading because i feel like i have the tendency to borrow a bunch of books from the library, wait until the last week before they're due, then marathon them, which often leads me into feeling very down because i get very emotionally attached to books? and a lot of what i read is kind of depressing? anyways, here's some of the stuff i read this month, which actually isn't that much:
writers & lovers ★★★
taken from my storygraph: this was depressing! sometimes straight people really are that boring but also why did this particular "writing about writers" / "my mother is dead" type of story send me into an emotional spiral.
i wrote a kinda long rant about this freshly after reading it, but basically all you need to know is that this book was sad in a pathetic and #kindareal way and hit a little too close to home re: struggling writer prospects. also it made me have thoughts about unreliable narrators and what the characters say/vs their actions. the book is exactly what the title says it is about.
how much of these hills is gold ★★★★★
technically i didn't finish this it in july but i also didn't want to wait to put it in next month's round-up, so here it is. i don't think reading it all the way through really changed any of my initial thoughts of the book—i still think it's gorgeous and amazing and as always, i care more about style than i do about content, so any shortcomings of pacing and development are overshadowed by how much i love zhang's prose. like literally grammar is that fucking crazy. also part 3 is truly the best part of the book, and i think it's worth pushing through 1 and 2 to read if you're not sold on the first half of the book!
interior chinatown ★★
idk why this book pissed me off so much, but it did. i read half of it on the plane, and then finished it after and was just ? ? i don't understand the rave reviews...this is asam fiction for subtle asian traits to me. i also get annoyed when writers take a lot of liberties with "telling" over showing in fiction, like idgaf if it's "genre-blending" or "satirical" or whatever. the screenplay format is cool i guess?
sour heart
a book i haven't actually finished it [see above predicament], so you'll see it again in next month's round-up. i'm not too mad about taking a forced break from this book since 1) it's a collection of short stories [that are set in the same universe?] and 2) reading it made me really sad. the way jenny zhang writes about girlhood and the immigrant experience is sooo harrowing—she does not skimp on the nausea-inducing. my favorites so far are we love you crispina and the evolution of my brother. i also think often times, short stories get bogged up in the "tightness," so i really appreciate all of the spindly stream of consciousness and the idea that you can loosen up a bit and still achieve really great effects. here's one of my favorite excerpts, from the empty the empty the empty:
I wanted to live a dreamless life in my unconscious and be full of dreams in my conscious life. Also, I hated having nightmares. I hated how, even if you were lucky enough to never have anything terrible happen to you the entire time you were alive, and even if every single thing you wanted was within your grasp, and even if you were the luckiest girl on earth who all the other girls aspired to be and all the boys liked and all the adults found charming and sweet and full of potential, even if everything went right for you and there was no chance of slipping off that path, you still had to contend with your nightmares, how they intruded on you while you were sleeping when the point of sleeping was to skip past the next eight hours so you could get back to living your ridiculously good life that you couldn’t wait to wake up to every morning if only you didn’t have terrible nightmares that made you feel like your body was detached from itself, like you had floated up into the sky and were now looking down on yourself, at everyone who secretly pitied you, who laughed at you and threaded flowers in your hair not to make you look beautiful but because they knew you were horribly allergic and wanted you to sneeze and suffer all day, and worst of all, you hated how your dreams made you think that the vision of yourself that you saw when you were forced to see yourself the way other people saw you was the real you, which was a confused little girl who wanted someone to pay attention to you, to show you how to be a person because actually, if you really really looked long enough, if you really really didn’t look away, you’d see that you weren’t just a confused little girl desperate for attention, but a child who was in real danger of becoming someone no one would want to know…
anyways, i'm hoping for a better reading routine in august. i'm looking at finishing sour heart, as well as starting new waves, this is how you win the time war, and bestiary!
🎵 LISTENING
total scrobbles: 2,531
avg scrobbles per day: 43
top artists:
1. muna (114)
2. twice (70)
3. txt (52)
4. dpr live (46)
5. snuper (45)
top tracks:
1. muna — stayaway (now, now remix) (74)
2. a.ce. — down (31)
3. cix — cinema (28)
4. umi — midnight blues (21)
5. muna — i know a place (19)
top albums (excluding singles)
1. iite cool — dpr live (42)
2. hello — cix (39)
3. blossom — snuper (36)
4. the chaos chapter: freeze — txt (32)
5. to see the next part of the dream — parannoul (28)
um, i don't listen to that much music? i find that music can distract me when i read and write + with summer break, i don't do much else, so i don't listen to music as much as i would during the school year.
also as you can see above, i have super basic tastes ;-; i'm kind of on a muna kick rn after my friends introduced them to me on our nyc trip and pls don't ask about my stayway listens—I HAVE NO IDEA!
i finally listened to japanese breakfast's jubilee album and while i liked it, there weren't any notable songs for me? it's one of those things that i think are better experienced as a whole....
also i listened to parannoul after reading
girlrock's indie recs and idk anything about "shoegaze" music but "to see the next part of the dream" is perfect to me for lying in bed and contemplating life. ✏️ WRITING
what did i actually write this month? nothing. well i did a bit of dw posting, with my nyc trip log and revised sunjay thesis. i've been really slacking on fic + non-fic writing lately, but it's all a creative process....or whatever. anyways, hoping i finish the initial draft for ficmix by the end of this week and have it revised by the end of next week? i want to get back to some of the other wips that i've been putting off and #spark_joy in writing again ;-;
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also love ur p1h semi-stannery <333 theyre so oddly fun and charming right? Also its great to stan Talent for once. But yeah why did vitypark end on a low note T_T its ok soon we’ll be getting cb content to sustain us!! Also idk what kind of movies u normally gravitate to but if u give me a general genre/what ur fave movies are maybe I can rec some!
I literally do the exact same thing re: reading LOL like checking a bunch of books out then being forced to read them all 3 days before they are due T_T anyways I haven’t read how much of these hills is gold so I’ll add it to my tbr!!! I also care more about style than content so hopefully I like it too :’)
<<333 hope u have a good august!!!
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ahh i def want to watch luca now that i hear so many people mention it. and YES RAYA / NAMAARI WERE SO CRAZY i was watching it like hold on....are we seeing the subtext..... in terms of movies um i think i tend to like coming of age stuff + action movies?? i really like moonlight and alternatively, kingsman LOL sorry that's a rlly random combo
i'm having a lot of fun getting into p1h icb they're talented and good at variety?? i just caught up to saessak harmony + watched some of their english interviews and laughed a lot TTATT
omg lmk how it goes if you read how much of these hills is gold! content warning for extended mentions of corpses in the beginning though, i think it can be off-putting (but the blurb covers the premise) ;-; thanks for reading, hoping you also have a great august <33
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i also promised movie recs because i watched some this year so here we go…
- [anime pahe] my favorite ghibli movie so far is whisper of the heart — it’s pretty realistic and i liked the coming of age aspects + the reflections on the struggles of pursuing something creative??? like for a cartoon movie abt 14 y/os there’s a surprising amount of nuance LOL
- [amazon prime] and then we danced WAS SERIOUSLY SO GOOD T___T so much said in the small quiet moments and the setting/culture (it’s a lgbt film set in GEORGIA? the country?) was super interesting too
- [netflix] i also liked us and them so much for some reason too.. like yes first loves don’t last but you can still appreciate what has happened etc etc.
- [amazon prime] my fav of the oscar nominees this year was sound of metal
and holyy shit i’ve read some shorter stuff by jenny zhang but this makes me want to read sour heart asap!!! her writing is fucking insane to me. sorry for my HMTHIG haterism though <3
re: music i also discovered muna this month!!!! they’re seriously good but i havent heard the now, now remix im going to check it out rn!! and u already know but ur snuper listening is so iconic to me. i totally relate to not listening to much music during the summer breaks either tbh T___T not all of us can be miss girlrock!
btw good luck on ficmix too and whatever else you might be writing [TAEHOON PERHAPS? NO? okay nvm]~~~~~
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tysm for the recs, i will def check them out <3 i think i've actually watched whisper of the heart before, but that was when i was like 10 and i don't remember anything about it, so i am planning to rewatch it ++ well you already heard my thoughts on us and them
screaming re: your tweets on sour heart yeah jenny zhang's stuff is brutal...i haven't gotten further with the book but maybe there is a less nauseating story later in the collection, will report back if so TAT
muna is so good and also obsessed with you understanding STAYAWAY NOW NOW REMIX like yuppp it is actually perfect. thank you for reading [+ yes i will....taehoon coming to an ao3 page near u.... :D]
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also i didn't think raya was all that but LITERALLY RAYA AND NAMAARI WAS CRAZYYYY I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THAT!!! the things they could have been fr 😔 also so happy to see you falling into p1ece-isms who are ur favs rn / ur bias ranking if you have any idea 🤔
crying at ASAM FICTION FOR SAT :smiling_face_with_tear: literally the worst thing you can say about any book. also i kind of want to join in on the storygraph fun but i don’t read books anymore so it’s literally an L T___T if i ever get back into reading i’ll have to check out some of ur favs and add u guys all at some point!!!
also just letting you know that this post inspired me to go relisten to some MUNA <3 i’ve listened to them so randomly over the years so i can never distinguish that many of their songs but i checked out the stayaway remix and i really liked it! NOW, NOW IS LITERALLY THAT SERIOUS!!! but yeah i + most people i know agree that jubilee is strongest as an album experience and that the sounds kind of blend together at times… which i actually like but you know sometimes you just want to listen to a few standout singles!!!
also thanks for checking out PARANNOUL <333 cryinggg i rly don’t think he’s for everyone so it’s kind of embarrassing but i’m glad u think it’s good for the art of LYING AROUND and self-reflecting. So True queen.
anyway to end this nonsensical content: i always think your dw/writing content is so perfect so i'm really looking forward to anything you put out in august T___T <3 here's 2 sparking joy in writing again!!
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SCREAMING um i feel like i'm still in the stages of gauging their personalities but based on early vibes alone... intak > keeho > theo = jiung > soul > jongseob ... why do i feel like im going to look back on this in a month and be like why was i like this but also YEAH I KIND OF RLLY LIKE INTAK? imo he's basically cravity taeyoung adjacent in terms of being straight dancerdol except shakti has planted the sunoo/intak seed in my head and now i can't stop thinking about it
yeah idk if i'm just a HATER or if interior chinatown was rlly that bad but it just read like....sat to me... lmk if you get around to making a storygraph, i'd love to add you!!
and yesss STAYAWAY NOW NOW REMIX IS LITERALLY THAT SERIOUS. i've listened to it so many times on loop now and still have not worn it out <3 also i think parannoul is so cool and that pitchfork article you shared about them made them 2137187x more compelling to me like sometimes you are just "active loser" "below average in height, appearance and everything else" and you are valid for that!!! thnx for reading kaia <33 wishing you a happy and rewarding august!
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also omoo lets go muna fans<3 i liked them a lot a while back and whenever i listen to them nowadays it still RLY HITS... that stayaway remix is rly iconic and now, now's recent album is pretty similar if you like that sound!
good luck with writing and life i'm rooting for u :D
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thank you for the now now rec, i've passively listened to some of their stuff on autoplay but i'll check them out in more depth some time <33 hope you're having a good month!