there may be words

Me? Writing fic in Chinese? In the year 2022?

Clearly more likely than you think, and solely to be blamed on ZS-adjacent The Truth brainrot. It's enjoyable enough (with admittedly some degree of annoyance re: not being able to write at my usual speed) and I've gotten a fairly gratifying level of response on Lofter (aka Tumblr-equivalent, for those lucky enough to not have fallen down this rabbit hole before) so that's fun.

Otherwise, nothing much to update aside from extensive yelling about the solo Douyin concert from earlier this month

which I managed to catch most of live!

Also:

10/10 adorable. That is all.

Borrowing off nnozomi's rec game – reply with a number between 1 and 436 and I'll give you the corresponding vid off my Zhou Shen playlist!! (Which is, yes, a whole 436 vids long XD)

ETA: This is also running on Tumblr with extra commentary! All the songs ahoy.

But first, the performance that has been single-handedly getting me through the past two weeks:

So good. So infinitely loopable.

Anyway. Unordered fandom-and-adjacent list:

• Finished my 520 exchange fic just in time! For a given definition of the word, in that it is complete but I'd still like to add a few paragraphs to round out the corners if brain permits, which is a chancy prospect.
• Casually watching TLTR with a generous amount of skipping (I am considerably No at horror-type suspense vibes and also the pacing in this show needs a pacemaker of its own) while sending elenothar unhelpful observations about Wu Xie and literal debugging. (He's definitely got a point about hugging pillars, though.) Also I suspect this is the kind of thing which I'd enjoy (even?) more in book form, but we are, ha ha, not touching that with the ten-foot pole that is my lack of attention span.
• Note to self: watch the Pokemon anime more often, it's good brain-empty fun.
• As with a definite large fraction of my Tumblr dashboard, I'm also subbed to Dracula Daily but see above note re: attention span, so mostly I'm just absorbing it secondhand via textposts and memes. There are worse rides to be on.
• Also participating in a NIF group read (well, reread for me, aside from the revised starting chapters since I went with the original ones last time). Doom, thy shadow is long.
• Words cannot adequately express the extent of both my (a) LOL-ness at 2/4 things mentioned above being Chinese-media-I-am-consuming-in-Chinese (I say this often but it's still true, seeing as I spent most of my life convinced that my use for anything aside from conversational usage would end with graduation) and (b) fizzy-brain pleasedness at having the correct language set to consume the things I'm interested in more-or-less in the original (kind of self-selecting by nature, but still – awfully convenient, good job past!me).
• The 生米 mood of the moment is knowing he's on 2 ongoing shows (天赐 and now 奔跑吧) and literally not having the brain for more than clips + photos but being delighted anyway. I'm definitely gonna miss it when 天赐 is over and with it my stream of weekly new performances and vlogs, he spoils us with this content.

Miscellaneous ( life-and-work updates: )

Because sometimes one is in the mood for something just slightly interactive. Mostly just small narrative-based games? Probably. Patience is a variable and mysterious thing.

April

• Adventures with Anxiety!
• UNDER A STAR CALLED SUN
• novena, also by the same author
• Counterfeit Monkey – a long one with interesting glimpses of lore (linguistics as worldbuilding! sort of) and a fun mechanic; not sure the ending was worth the playthrough though

Also, mandatory mention for ink-splotch / dirgewithoutmusic's Stay? if you haven't played it already (though a few hours are recommended to do the story justice and also here is the post-game fic I couldn't help writing for it).

Thank you mysterious person for the upgrade!

Armed with which I immediately had to make full use of naye / glymr's Guardian mood theme, of course 🌟

Or, more importantly: DALABENGBA ANNIVERSARY DAY!!

Truly iconic. So much so that I'm just gonna drop the video upfront, because this would be my submission for "things you'd like the whole world to witness At Least Once" – BUT if you're sensitive to flashing (especially red/blue) lights, check out the audio-only version instead!

And now, on with our irregularly-scheduled programming…

( new songs! )

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( gifs! also, art!! )

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( recs! )

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( and a watchlist (subbed versions included!) )

(Which probably isn't going to be a long list at all, realistically speaking, but hey.)

February

• The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman: Would be a better read if not for the too-sardonic tone? I appreciate sarcasm a fair bit more than the average person but this felt overdone, and I'm not sure if there was sufficient levels of cunning to back up some of the conceits of the case itself. Still, enjoyable enough for an afternoon!
• Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir: The ending felt a little rushed, and the technobabble occasionally a little excessive relativity do be a pain though but otherwise I definitely enjoyed this more than I expected to going in. ( vague spoilers? )

March

• Illuminae, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: Fun trivia – picked this up by way of seeing a post the Taiwanese translator (who also did Murderbot) wrote about it, because I absolutely love mixed-media storytelling. Admittedly the actual narrative itself isn't 100% up my alley, but compelling enough in combination with the format. May poke around the sequels, we'll see…

Mandatory note: I'm not actually caught up… nor am I not not caught up either, by dint of the extremely slapdash way in which I listen to Night Vale episodes these days (or, as I put to cortue, the non-scientific method of hopping backwards a couple episodes from the present until I hit upon a sufficiently intriguing one to start from).

I am vaguely aware of the ongoing arc though! And since it's conveniently February i.e. the start of this year's run, that's an easy pick for a starting point at least.

• 201 - The Delivery Man: Pretty classic standalone episode! With a peppering of the Bigger Plot, which I didn't fully absorb (having listened to it while working) and am therefore now reading the transcript for. Favourite quote: ( spoilers )

• 202 - The Day After the Day: The beloved (literal) return of Valentine's Day… and a strangely familiar audio puzzle LOL. Basically all fun segments today, which is great. Also, nice weather vibes! With a smiley face. Favourite quote: ( spoilers + ETA from director's notes )

• 203 – The Kareem Nazari Show: Subheading, the triumphant return of the Michigan brick joke. No Cecil, but I do enjoy a good fourth-wall take on Night Vale weirdness! Nice chill weather! And also what felt like a sort-of-acknowledgement of what it means to keep engaging in fandom even as the world does its level best to fall down around us. Favourite quote: ( spoilers )

Me, seeing this week's gif challenge on composition: Oh, I've got to make this harder before my brain will take me up on The Shiny.

Also me, an untold storm of increasingly-unhinged ideas later: Did I forget about my bingo card? I forgot about my bingo card. Who put me in charge of my life decisions and why was that a dubious choice.

Fortunately, I finally recalled its existence (complete sidetrack: here's how it's going, by the way, and I could have a line if I'd just finish that ZYL-vs-YZ gifset already) along with the entirely coincidental "Suits" square at elenothar's very helpful egging-on-ery. And thus!

*tinny fanfare noise*

Two-piece appreciation of Shen Wei's very nice three-piece wardrobe! Heavily inspired by canary3d-obsessed's iconic Shen Wei Serving Lewks posts (also available to read on AO3). Along with So Much gratuitous text animation and geometry especially on the second one, because if nothing else what you should know about me is that I really like fancy effects. Even if they make my laptop throw a minor fans-on-overdrive hissy fit exporting them. 10/10 worth it though.

So, to put the decision after the fact, I've decided that biweekly (that's once every two weeks, thanks for nothing, English) is a good frequency for these posts, with some leeway to do mini-posts on the off weeks if anything too-interesting crops up before then.

…which should also obviously be titled Satur-Sun-day instead, but hey, no one has ever accused me of having any good sense of time!

( new songs! )

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( gifs! )

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( recs! )

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( and a watchlist )

ALSO: HAPPY 2-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO THE ICONIC PERFORMANCE THAT IS Baby До свидания!! Opera, pop, Chinese, Russian… what can't he do.