there may be words

Instructions unclear, couple months have passed??

Unordered list of things as they come to mind:

• Got my official promotion letter just this week (and lots of congrats messages from colleagues, which is nice) and a pay raise before that as part of a company-wide review, so I guess that's pretty much my work goal boxes ticked for the year?
• Alas, now that we're attendng things in the flesh again, work also means I have to go on my first official trip later this year, but admittedly there was never any helping that. (I don't like travelling for the most part, if that's not obvious.)
• Trip last month concluded without incident, and definitely much less mishaps than if we'd scheduled it even one week later, so I guess we lucked out in that regard.
• Neighbourhood cat has been amenable to headpats of late, at least when I do manage to spot it en route.
• Frankly this past however-long has been just Bad for the attention span in general, but the brain gremlins got back onto the giffing train lately. Always nice to have a reason to zen mode focus on details with zero stakes at play.
• Almost caught up with 开始推理吧 after casually binging it over the past week (having got stuck in the early cases re: above on attention span) and I like it even more than I thought I would! Which was already a fair bit, given both the ZS content and similarity to 明侦, so that was a nice surprise. And yes, I am now tempted to gif more of it.
• I've also been watching a fair bit of 世界ネコ歩き in a mix of CN subbed and without – bonus points for being both 癒やし系 and good practice.
• Pretty much everything else watched lately has been as a side effect of someone else in the house watching it, of which only 3年A組 stands out for the acting and strategic trope usage.
• Other media consumption: both Hungry Hearts Diner games, a Thief of Time reread, and so much ZS content. I need to update my song playlist with all the new stuff, on that note.

Over at sid_guardian: transcripts and translations of Zhao Yunlan's personnel file, Shen Wei's self-reflection letter, and that text about Kunlun…

Because it's just been that kind of week. Many thoughts head empty would like to become one with the nearest sofa cushion except it's too hot lately for that, etc. I haven't even gotten around to last weekend's 天赐 episode yet, except for that absolutely feral 算你狠 performance (though to be fair, I have watched it… well, a lot more than once……)

Also, I do need to get my gif folder under control at some point, that pest is reaching almost 30GB at this point because I refuse to delete my PSDs. (Fortunately I do have the storage to spare on my laptop, but still.)

In the meantime, various bits and bobs from earlier this week:

Re-bearified version of the banner I made for the 520 reverse exchange at sid_guardian, because Bears.

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Zhou Shen gifset ft. blue gradient and overlays for week 3 of the March gif challenges – technically my first time Doing Colours On Purpose, and of course I had to make my own life difficult by trying to coherently combine gifs from 5 wildly-different-colouring videos. See comparison ( under the cut )

I don't often do draft versions of gifs these days, short of extremely elaborate layouts (…so basically that CM intro set), but it was called for in this case. (Tangentially, a fun read on the topic of white balance and colouring!)

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On-the-commute-home-phonefic (or the opening three paragraphs thereof) owing to discussions on the Guardian server, which I have since realised could fill the DCU square on my bingo card if I could trap writing!brain back long enough to finish it out:

( snippet: aw, shen wei, no )

Music hours!

…because I may or may not have spent an enjoyable-if-slightly-repetitive hour on these Music Lab games. (Oh who am I kidding, I love this sort of stuff. Even if my answers for the super-listener one were hampered by my inability to consistently differentiate left and right… still scored well enough anyway XD)

I do want to do a Zhou Shen post this weekend though! if I have enough time leftover after errands, at least *vaguely annoyed squinting* Both because the 光环之下 interview is out and so is episode 1 of 天赐的声音, the latter of which I am watching (well, pausing on) to type this. May put my non-ZS-specific thoughts here later if I have them? We'll see.

Also on the to-listen list: the new WTNV episode, and probably other things I'm forgetting. In the meantime, though, have some farmers.

ETA: Redid the super-listener one while consciously trying to not be a spatial 左右不分 disaster and scored almost a 90th percentile this time (definitely an increase, since I only did average for the level 3 exercise on my first try). Which explains a lot, and I know exactly who to blame… (subtweet @ my band conductor)

Crowdsourcing some Chinese handwriting practice over at guardian_learning on this uneventful day, feel free to nudge things my way! And of course I will take any and all excuses to pull up that quote from Chapter 50…

Dreamwidth Circle Meme
Answered and will be checking out everyone else in the replies!

Unrelatedly: my hand slipped and I recced a whole bunch of Zhou Shen performances here because I adore him *holds out arms wide* so much. Check them out? They're all great, promise. Honestly I could rec, like, three performances each weekend shenshen saturday? for the rest of the year and still not run out. (Certainly I haven't run out of gifs to make yet, and I already made so many in 2021.)