august scrapbook

[latespring]

Writing this seems like it happened so long ago lol. I really shouldn't have left it for so much time, but I've been busy. I was finishing up summer quarter during August, but I still managed to read and watch some things! I'm in my senior year of college?? Sentences that are true but don't feel real.

Movies

Green Knight dir. by David Lowery ★★★★☆
Who doesn't like to see Dev Patel be hot and sad in the wilderness? I think this was really well paced! I'm still debating whether I would want something different out of it? I keep waffling between 4 and 5 stars, and I think I'd have to watch it again to figure out where I really stand.

Princess Jellyfish ★★★★☆
Introverted girl meets dude who does drag, accidentally invites him home, and discovers the magic of friendship. As pithy a summary as that is, I did like this movie! It's cute and sweet, and Tsukimi is a likeable, if sometimes frustrating, main character. You really do fall for the main love interest. The pacing felt rushed, but I gave it a little grace because this is the adaptation of an incomplete anime adapted from a manga. They go a little heavy handed with the character arcs, but it's the sort of movie where if you buy into the characters, a lot can be overlooked.

Anyway, there's an excellent fic to read afterwards if you watch this movie.

The Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity ★★☆☆☆
Did I like this movie? Yes. Would I recommend it to my friends? No.

Uhhhh there's a giant snake in it. There's a scene that made me lose my mind. They pretend like they have a plot that makes sense.

(Deeply hilarious that it's rating by critics on rotten tomatoes is 29% but audience approval is around 84%.)

The Yin Yang Master ★★☆☆☆ (2.5)
(Different movie, vaguely connected franchise, it has to do with the adaptation).

Same as above except the snake is a dude now. There's some cage fighting. People make bad decisions.

The Half of It ★★★★★
Introverted girl who writes homework essays for money gets into a deal with a fellow classmate: she'll write his love letters for him. The only problem? Somewhere along the way, she falls for the girl they're writing to too. Coming of age movie with a fun focus on friendship.

I'm a sucker for the themes in this movie and it was really cool to see a protagonist I could relate to. It just felt genuine and well directed. I held my breath through the entire last scene.

TV

Chef's Table ★★★☆☆
This is the netflix show on chefs. Honestly my friend recommended me the only episode I really liked from it (Jeong Kwan, who makes korean temple food and has a really refreshing philosophy on food), and then all the episodes I watched afterwards were worse. The show is shot so ~cinematic~ that you really have to buy into what the chef is doing to watch the episode (each episode is on a different chef). And frankly, they didn't always sell me. Best part? Watching it with my parents and groaning every time the chef of the season did something ridiculous.

I started watching this because of this haikyuu fic actually lol, and it's funnier that I haven't finished the fic. The half I did read is very good though! I just got distracted.

The Good Place ★★★★☆
I finished this in September, so I'll have more thoughts there, but I enjoyed this.

Way of the Househusband ★★★★☆ (3.5)
The concept is so fun! Ex-mafia man just wants to be a good malewife.

The format lends itself better to the manga than this adaptation (especially with the low animation budget), but I think it's really charming!

Reading

Waiting on a Bright Moon by Neon Yang ★★★☆☆
What if I were a singer who could open interdimensional portals employed to a tyrannical government and you were a revolutionary, we fell in love, and we were both girls?

I think this short story was too short for me to really care for the characters the way the author wanted me to. The concept was really cool but the execution didn't have enough buildup.

(FIC) never bite twice by morcai
Not going to rate this because I feel like there's a difference between rating books/short stories and fic.

Some gorgeous prose! (Heed the warnings for violence!) A bnha/DOGS crossover.

Podcasts

Wow if True Episode 24: Tumblr Drama
Really fun discussion about monetization and the drama that comes with that! I adore the hosts and this episode was really fun. (link here)

99% Invisible Episode 452: The Lows of High Tech
Interesting discussion about prostheses and how high tech solutions can be worse a lot of the time. (link here)

Shortwave: Managing Wildfire Through Cultural Burns
Good discussion about cultural burns (different from but similar to controlled burns) and how they're useful for wildfire management. It's a really fascinating concept. Worth a listen! (link here)

MISC

Caratland
Holy shit caratland happened? This is more of a "wow I completely blanked that out but I guess it's in my notes" moment than anything else. I think I enjoyed it!! It's been two months and I have the memory of a goldfish.

Poetry

Order by Dan Rosenberg

XX Judgement by Dan Lau

Copernicus by Timmy Straw
All this is with you, is you,
runs after you into the dark
like those men after Copernicus,
like a planet chased by telescopes into space.

Sunset by Effie Lee Newsome

A Fairy Tale of Blackboyhood by Dāshaun Washington
I’ve been taught a man must be made a boy before he can receive a kiss from another man, and such ancient magic must be sparingly used.

Interior by Jada Renée Allen

Vows by E. C. Belli

The Life of a Writer by Jalynn Harris

Confessional to Famous Iranian Pop Singer Dariush by Darius Atefat-Peckham

Music

Maybe I should put some stuff about which albums were released each month? That might be getting too ambitious.

I really liked Stray Kids' latest album, as is evidenced below! I drove a lot during August, and so it was driving music a lot of the time.

A link to my monthly playlist. I feel like these playlists are never good in January or February, and only really get better in the summer. This one I enjoyed a lot!

SCROBBLES: 4,041 ▲

SCROBBLES PER DAY (AVERAGE): 130 ▲

Artists:

1. Stray Kids - 366
2. THE BOYZ - 227
3. SHINee - 137
4. Rationale - 105
5. PVRIS - 101
6. Mitski - 88
7. tobi lou - 86
8. Kathleen - 83
9. TOMORROW X TOGETHER - 82
10. King Princess - 78

Albums:

1. NOEASY by Stray Kids - 320
2. Rationale by Rationale - 105
3. Monster by PVRIS - 96
4. Live on Ice by tobi lou - 86
5. THRILL-ING by THE BOYZ - 70
6. Drink It by THE BOYZ - 68
7. The Longest Year by Kathleen - 67
8. Titanic Rising by Weyes Blood - 60
9. Talia by King Princess - 58
10. TURN OVER by SF9 - 57

Songs:

1. Monster by PVRIS - 96
2. The Longest Year by Kathleen - 68
3. Drink It by THE BOYZ - 68
4. Prodigal Son by Rationale - 59
5. Talia by King Princess - 58
6. Crush by Weki Meki - 56
7. Out Of Control by THE BOYZ - 51
8. Dahlia by Chanmina - 50
9. Silent Cry by Stray Kids - 50
10. Hey Hi Bye by SF9 - 48

Comments

[stoplight]

glad u are overcoming dw formatting one post at a time!! also i’m so happy to see someone else enjoy the half of it as much as i did… when i first watched it at the beginning of this year i don’t think anyone else around me liked it 😭

+ i’m super intrigued by ur forthcoming good place thoughts! i really like the show and have been thinking abt it for quite some time so i’d love to know what u think :’)

hope that august was good to u and (if so) that october continues to be!

[latespring]

thank you!! I hope you've been having a good month as well <3 dreamwidth formatting hates me less now that I have a simpler theme I think lol

It's so nice to hear you liked the half of it too! I don't know anyone around me who's watched it, so that's so cool

I have some longer thoughts on the good place here (finally posted!), I really liked it! I haven't watched a lot of the "genre" of tv it is (the kind of comedy-drama long running thing--I'm thinking like parks and rec and the office as other examples that I haven't watched), so it felt very fresh! And I really enjoyed how they rolled ethics into the show, not just as a one-off thing, but as a theme throughout. They made really likeable characters too.

What did you think (like/dislike?) about it?

[stoplight]

incredibly late as always but hello! read through your good place thoughts and im pretty sure i agree with you on pretty much everything—i watched this alongside an ethics class that i was taking in high school coincidentally so it was really fun to be able to understand all the ethics they were talking (even though i think they did a good job of explaining it all anyway). also it’s interesting that you mention its genre because i actually think it doesn’t fit into its genre all that well… it’s technically a sitcom (in the vein of parks & rec and the office as you’ve mentioned) but because it relies quite a bit on plot to drive it forward through all four seasons i actually feel like in that way it isn’t quite a sitcom. because with something like the office, for instance, you could pick any episode to watch and basically understand the gist of it, but with the good place you’d have to do a lot of catchup to get there. but they have the exact same brand of humor (which makes sense, because it’s the same guy who did the office/parks & rec/b99/etc).

anyway, as you can tell i definitely like it. the first season is most memorable to me simply because i never saw that twist coming, but i think for a “sitcom” all four of its seasons were done remarkably well and the ending message that they landed on was both sweet and fitting for the show. a lot of times sitcoms become less and less fun to watch because you get tired of the antics that the characters get up to, which is what the office definitely suffered from, but i think four seasons was enough to get through all of the story that they wanted to tell without feeling like it was dragging on and on. i don’t have anything bad to say about the show off the top of my head… it’s perfect in nearly every way to me <3

[latespring]

oh that's so interesting re: sitcoms! I haven't watched enough (read: any) to have picked up on the difference, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I also thought four seasons was just enough for it! any longer would have started to drag, but I was always pretty invested in what was going on with the characters and plot