march scrapbook
Mar. 31st, 2021 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
latespringInspired by karina, here’s my march in media:
Nirvana in Fire 2: The wind blows in Changlin
I started this drama with some friends after finishing our rewatch of Nirvana in Fire (the first season). I watch things a lot better when I have someone watching with me, I don’t know why.
Nirvana in Fire, the first season, is such a perfect piece of media to me. It has historical drama! A revenge plot! Exploration of grief! Loyalty! Romance! Seriously what more could I want from a show. The first season makes me cry every time I get to the ending. I don’t cry a lot, generally. It’s hard to get into the first episodes because of how quickly it jumps into the plot, so if you’d ever like me to hold your hand through them, I am more than willing to do so!!
Nirvana in Fire 2 takes place two generations after the first season, following the grandchildren of the original main cast. Despite taking place in the same universe, we don’t see many of the original characters. Instead, we see their legacies. In my opinion, it’s not quite as strong as the first season (which set a really high standard), but I like it! It made me cry. I have a bone to pick with how season two writes women but that’s a whole separate post.
I particularly like the way both seasons portray romance--I don’t think there’s any on screen kisses, now that I think about it? But you never doubt how much everyone is in love with each other. It’s nice. It reminds me to build up emotion in writing, and to think about how I write love.
Both seasons dig into some of my favorite themes: legacies, grief, family. Watching it with friends guts me like a fish.
Start Up
K-drama I started with Ro! It’s really fun and the protagonists are really endearing. Ro has an essay on one of the male leads, Nam Dosan, here if you’d like to read it. It’s a really cute show so far!
Super Vocal
A Chinese bel canto competition show!! I’ve been tweeting about it a lot, and I finally finished it this month. It’s so serotonin inducing? I’ve been watching it by myself, which has taken longer than it might with friends, but I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to sit with the songs in my own time.
Watching this feels a little like being back in the music department. What can I say? Vocalists never change (affectionate).
Also talk to me about this show!!! Link to eng subs on dailymotion here.
Here’s my playlist of favorite stages from this show!
-Anne Carson, Antigonick
i was an island by zetaophiuchi
(E, Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe/Xiao Jingyan, Nirvana in Fire
Summary: “You have to trust me,” Mei Changsu says. “Otherwise this won’t work.”
Jingyan gets career advice from his dom. Everyone catches feelings.)
Speaking of Nirvana in Fire-- fics that make me feel like a flattened pancake?? This fic has such an atmosphere. I really really really love its writing. The scenes give you just enough before they move on, and the sense of space in it is perfect. In a fic with no magic, the author writes pitch perfect portents and dreams.
After reading it I just kind of stared at a wall for a while.
Business in a Bloodstained Dress by darkmagicalgirl
(E, Shimizu Kiyoko/Yachi Hitoka, Haikyuu!!
Summary: Oh my god,” Yachi says, looking at the dead man nearest her feet. His face is the color of an overripe plum, a pair of nylons twisted around his neck. “Oh my god.”
“Why does the Mona Lisa smile?” Koi repeats, looking away from the fridge with the smallest of frowns creasing the skin between her brows.
“She knows she is to be hanged,” Yachi completes the codephrase, raising her hands to show she’s no threat. She forces her shock and fear out of her mind, tries to remember the protocols that have been drilled in to her over years of training. “Koi, I’m glad to meet you. I’m Dormouse. Are you injured?”
A KiyoYachi spy/handler AU.)
I’ve been returning to formative fics recently, only recently did I realize how much this fic influenced my taste in spy/handler aus. What can I say? I read this and then I lie down and stare at the ceiling.
Challenge by Branch
(E, Niou Masaharu/Yagyuu Hiroshi, Prince of Tennis
Summary: Follows Niou through his middle school career and his meeting and fascination with Yagyuu. Also traces the pre-canon development of the Rikkai team.)
I could be quoting passages from this all day. Speaking of formative fics… Their dynamics snipes me every time, I think you can trace a lot of my current pairs back here. I haven’t watched tennis recently enough to judge how well this holds up to canon, but the #getting power is still there. Danger, what’s a mask made of, trust, etc etc.
(These three fics tell you a lot about my favorite dynamics to read about, I might go back and compile formative influences into a post sometime.)
Highlights from my march playlist:
Ship in a Bottle - fin
Oh, captain, let’s make a deal / Where we both say the things that we both really feel
Ares - Winters Island
Let it burn on top of you / Breathe again beneath the flames / I'm a man, I'm a man / I'm a man that can't be saved
HIT - Seventeen
I just like it! Thank u svts for the noise.
H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald
I have been reading this book for like three months now, it’s ridiculous. I tore through the first quarter, and it’s been a slog ever since. I’m not exactly sure what it is about this book that makes reading it so slow. I still haven’t finished it, but hopefully next month?
Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven’s Official Blessing) by MXTX
Bookclubbing this with Almay! <3
Xie Lian is so fun? It took a few chapters to get into any plot, but it’s not hard reading. Estimating we’ll be done with this uh…. some time before 2022 maybe.
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Idk, my school book club chose this one. The narrative thing is interesting and I read the whole thing in one evening but I don’t think it’s worth like, recommending, or that it was a good book. I can’t believe this is the first book I’ve finished in 2021, how ridiculous?
Poem-a-day Favorites
Torch by Deborah A. Miranda
I follow my hunger, my emptiness, the flame
on my forehead not betrayal but reminder:
it’s not wrong to want, to ask—not wrong—
I keep the beacon lit so love might see me.
Advice for Using Blood in a Poem by Albert Abonado
If someone suggests you use words besides
blood in your poems, make it part of a recipe
Try dinuguan, for example
Make your blood impossible to avoid
Another name for this dish is chocolate
meat, the name your aunts used to hide
from you the fact you were eating
pork blood with your rice
Anthropocene: A Dictionary by Jake Skeets
nihootsoii
: evening—somewhere northward fire
twists around the shrublands;
sky dipped in smoke—twilight
—there is a word for this,
someone says
: deidííłid, they burned it
: kódeiilyaa, we did this
Podcasts
The White Vault
This is a mystery/horror podcast based on found footage. I’m not totally sure where it’s going or whether I like it or not, but I enjoy the multilingual aspects of it and the production is compelling. The first season gets the characters trapped in an icy bunker in Svalbard, Norway, and the second takes place in the Patagonian Andes.
99% Invisible
99% Invisible does occasional ministories episodes, where they cover stories too short for a full episode. I really loved Volume 10 and Volume 11 of these stories. Volume 10 covers sheep that live on seaweed, and Volume 11 has such a good story about a bust of Lenin that sits in the middle of a frozen wasteland, at a pole of inaccessibility.
The Magnus Archives
I’m not actually sure I’d recommend this show, but the finale was the 25th of this month. This is a found footage-ish type podcast about a man recording statements people give about supernatural incidents that happen to them.
I’m writing this right after listening to episode 200 (no spoilers). Funny how ⅔ of the podcasts I was listening to this month were horror? but I get recs from my friend who’s really into the genre. I’m not sure I was entirely satisfied with the ending to this… It felt too quick I think. There are some elements of this that you have to be critical with too re: what the author considers horror. Overall I did listen to all of it so??
Anime
Sk8 - Fun anime about skateboarding.
Jujutsu Kaisen - Anime about curses and cursekillers. I had fun, the story is pretty tightly paced, and the characters are really endearing. I’m planning on reading the manga sometime later.
Nirvana in Fire 2: The wind blows in Changlin
I started this drama with some friends after finishing our rewatch of Nirvana in Fire (the first season). I watch things a lot better when I have someone watching with me, I don’t know why.
Nirvana in Fire, the first season, is such a perfect piece of media to me. It has historical drama! A revenge plot! Exploration of grief! Loyalty! Romance! Seriously what more could I want from a show. The first season makes me cry every time I get to the ending. I don’t cry a lot, generally. It’s hard to get into the first episodes because of how quickly it jumps into the plot, so if you’d ever like me to hold your hand through them, I am more than willing to do so!!
Nirvana in Fire 2 takes place two generations after the first season, following the grandchildren of the original main cast. Despite taking place in the same universe, we don’t see many of the original characters. Instead, we see their legacies. In my opinion, it’s not quite as strong as the first season (which set a really high standard), but I like it! It made me cry. I have a bone to pick with how season two writes women but that’s a whole separate post.
I particularly like the way both seasons portray romance--I don’t think there’s any on screen kisses, now that I think about it? But you never doubt how much everyone is in love with each other. It’s nice. It reminds me to build up emotion in writing, and to think about how I write love.
Both seasons dig into some of my favorite themes: legacies, grief, family. Watching it with friends guts me like a fish.
Start Up
K-drama I started with Ro! It’s really fun and the protagonists are really endearing. Ro has an essay on one of the male leads, Nam Dosan, here if you’d like to read it. It’s a really cute show so far!
Super Vocal
A Chinese bel canto competition show!! I’ve been tweeting about it a lot, and I finally finished it this month. It’s so serotonin inducing? I’ve been watching it by myself, which has taken longer than it might with friends, but I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to sit with the songs in my own time.
Watching this feels a little like being back in the music department. What can I say? Vocalists never change (affectionate).
Also talk to me about this show!!! Link to eng subs on dailymotion here.
Here’s my playlist of favorite stages from this show!
-
“but if some god shakes your house
ruin arrives
ruin does not leave”
-Anne Carson, Antigonick
-
i was an island by zetaophiuchi
(E, Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe/Xiao Jingyan, Nirvana in Fire
Summary: “You have to trust me,” Mei Changsu says. “Otherwise this won’t work.”
Jingyan gets career advice from his dom. Everyone catches feelings.)
In his dream, Jingyan opens his eyes to the sight of Xiao Shu draped over the balcony, leaning forward into the churning gray sky. His legs are crossed at the ankle. Jingyan is afraid of his back, afraid of what he will see when that silhouette steps into the light, but Xiao Shu turns with a smile.
Not a death’s head after all, but Xiao Shu’s whole and living face, shining and youthful. He doesn’t look a day over twenty, and this, too, is painful.
“Shui Niu,” he says.
Jingyan doesn’t say, You’re alive, because he knows it isn’t true.
“The wind is changing,” Xiao Shu says. Behind him, the huge black windows of Jianghu rise into the night.
Speaking of Nirvana in Fire-- fics that make me feel like a flattened pancake?? This fic has such an atmosphere. I really really really love its writing. The scenes give you just enough before they move on, and the sense of space in it is perfect. In a fic with no magic, the author writes pitch perfect portents and dreams.
After reading it I just kind of stared at a wall for a while.
Business in a Bloodstained Dress by darkmagicalgirl
(E, Shimizu Kiyoko/Yachi Hitoka, Haikyuu!!
Summary: Oh my god,” Yachi says, looking at the dead man nearest her feet. His face is the color of an overripe plum, a pair of nylons twisted around his neck. “Oh my god.”
“Why does the Mona Lisa smile?” Koi repeats, looking away from the fridge with the smallest of frowns creasing the skin between her brows.
“She knows she is to be hanged,” Yachi completes the codephrase, raising her hands to show she’s no threat. She forces her shock and fear out of her mind, tries to remember the protocols that have been drilled in to her over years of training. “Koi, I’m glad to meet you. I’m Dormouse. Are you injured?”
A KiyoYachi spy/handler AU.)
Yachi has never had the opportunity to see Koi fight up close. There's something the cameras can't capture, that the microphones can't pick up. The smell of metal and plaster in the air, maybe, or how sweat beads and merges with blood. The way Koi's eyes are filled with life as she uses her whole body as a weapon.
+
"Kiyoko," Koi says. Her eyelids flutter, dark lashes clumped together by tears. She's no less beautiful for it, but perhaps more human. "My name is Kiyoko."
Yachi's breath catches for a moment. "They must have wanted to get you to talk," she says. "You should try not to speak, you might say things you don't want to—“
"I want you to know me," Kiyoko says, her voice soft and vulnerable. "I want to know you. I want to know…”
I’ve been returning to formative fics recently, only recently did I realize how much this fic influenced my taste in spy/handler aus. What can I say? I read this and then I lie down and stare at the ceiling.
Challenge by Branch
(E, Niou Masaharu/Yagyuu Hiroshi, Prince of Tennis
Summary: Follows Niou through his middle school career and his meeting and fascination with Yagyuu. Also traces the pre-canon development of the Rikkai team.)
When Yagyuu let go, the smoothness of his front turned fluid and hot as molten glass, and, even if it burned to touch, Masaharu loved to immerse himself in it.
They took the set, 6-0, in a glorious sweep of speed. And Masaharu almost laughed out loud when Yagyuu congratulated their opponents, quite straight-faced, on a good game.
“What did I tell you?” he asked, as they strolled back to the benches. “Jelly.”
Yagyuu laughed, low in his throat, danger and fury satiated for the moment, leaving him languid until he regathered himself.
“As you say, Niou-kun.”
I could be quoting passages from this all day. Speaking of formative fics… Their dynamics snipes me every time, I think you can trace a lot of my current pairs back here. I haven’t watched tennis recently enough to judge how well this holds up to canon, but the #getting power is still there. Danger, what’s a mask made of, trust, etc etc.
(These three fics tell you a lot about my favorite dynamics to read about, I might go back and compile formative influences into a post sometime.)
-
Highlights from my march playlist:
Ship in a Bottle - fin
Oh, captain, let’s make a deal / Where we both say the things that we both really feel
Ares - Winters Island
Let it burn on top of you / Breathe again beneath the flames / I'm a man, I'm a man / I'm a man that can't be saved
HIT - Seventeen
I just like it! Thank u svts for the noise.
-
H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald
I have been reading this book for like three months now, it’s ridiculous. I tore through the first quarter, and it’s been a slog ever since. I’m not exactly sure what it is about this book that makes reading it so slow. I still haven’t finished it, but hopefully next month?
Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven’s Official Blessing) by MXTX
Bookclubbing this with Almay! <3
Xie Lian is so fun? It took a few chapters to get into any plot, but it’s not hard reading. Estimating we’ll be done with this uh…. some time before 2022 maybe.
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Idk, my school book club chose this one. The narrative thing is interesting and I read the whole thing in one evening but I don’t think it’s worth like, recommending, or that it was a good book. I can’t believe this is the first book I’ve finished in 2021, how ridiculous?
-
Poem-a-day Favorites
Torch by Deborah A. Miranda
I follow my hunger, my emptiness, the flame
on my forehead not betrayal but reminder:
it’s not wrong to want, to ask—not wrong—
I keep the beacon lit so love might see me.
Advice for Using Blood in a Poem by Albert Abonado
If someone suggests you use words besides
blood in your poems, make it part of a recipe
Try dinuguan, for example
Make your blood impossible to avoid
Another name for this dish is chocolate
meat, the name your aunts used to hide
from you the fact you were eating
pork blood with your rice
Anthropocene: A Dictionary by Jake Skeets
nihootsoii
: evening—somewhere northward fire
twists around the shrublands;
sky dipped in smoke—twilight
—there is a word for this,
someone says
: deidííłid, they burned it
: kódeiilyaa, we did this
-
Podcasts
The White Vault
This is a mystery/horror podcast based on found footage. I’m not totally sure where it’s going or whether I like it or not, but I enjoy the multilingual aspects of it and the production is compelling. The first season gets the characters trapped in an icy bunker in Svalbard, Norway, and the second takes place in the Patagonian Andes.
99% Invisible
99% Invisible does occasional ministories episodes, where they cover stories too short for a full episode. I really loved Volume 10 and Volume 11 of these stories. Volume 10 covers sheep that live on seaweed, and Volume 11 has such a good story about a bust of Lenin that sits in the middle of a frozen wasteland, at a pole of inaccessibility.
The Magnus Archives
I’m not actually sure I’d recommend this show, but the finale was the 25th of this month. This is a found footage-ish type podcast about a man recording statements people give about supernatural incidents that happen to them.
I’m writing this right after listening to episode 200 (no spoilers). Funny how ⅔ of the podcasts I was listening to this month were horror? but I get recs from my friend who’s really into the genre. I’m not sure I was entirely satisfied with the ending to this… It felt too quick I think. There are some elements of this that you have to be critical with too re: what the author considers horror. Overall I did listen to all of it so??
-
Anime
Sk8 - Fun anime about skateboarding.
Jujutsu Kaisen - Anime about curses and cursekillers. I had fun, the story is pretty tightly paced, and the characters are really endearing. I’m planning on reading the manga sometime later.