L.J. Writes

Travel before holiday weekend

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 14:14:03 GMT

The top of this week was taken up with preparations for travel to a different city with the family. We used to live there and my husband has family living there, so he took kiddo to visit his dad and sister while my dad and I took care of business. The business part went well, husband and kiddo had fun on their family visit, and we traveled back without incident. The upshot should be that we can worry significantly less about money starting in November, especially if I can get some work to tide us over.

I had a slight misadventure on the way when I thought I might miss the train out and had it canceled in advance, giving my apologies to Dad. Unexpectedly I ended up arriving at the station a little earlier and ran up to grab a standing ticket last minute to make the trip after all. That was a bit of a surprise for Dad when I called him from the same train he was on lol. I'm still so bad about time, a trait that has not endeared me to employers over the years who have had to deal with me.

We had scheduled the trip on Wednesday because Friday was Independence Day and there were no train tickets to be gotten on Thursday, the day before the start of the long weekend. After the trip we rested and slid into the holiday weekend, spending it at home watching the celebration events and venturing out on walks. Today the husband went out to GM a tabletop game so kiddo and I were on our own, cooking and eating Japanese-style curry befor we went out walking. We're all showered and relaxing now, and I wiped down the bedroom floor. Showers feel extra fulfilling if I get a cleaning task in beforehand! :D

With the weekend drawing to a close, next week will be more waiting and looking for work in between rest and chores. Going to be poking a couple of people on stalled publishing projects and putter around on editing and technical tasks. Maybe some creative tasks too if I can hack it. It's still sticky and unpleasant outside but there's a bit of autumn in the air, and we'll be feeling the chill before long.

comments

What I've been up to: Taxes, coding, gaming

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 07:55:11 GMT

You know you're officially Grown Up(TM) when you're actually excited about taxes and insurance, specifically achieving savings. No, I don't have an offshore paper company funneling billions of dollars: I saved the equivalent of a few hundred bucks in liability by tracking down discrepancies between figures and making use of all my available deductions. It's a tiny fraction of the total sum owed but significant in the day-to-day, so it was a good moment when I finally tracked down a missing deduction. I got a lead on insurance premiums savings, too, and plan to follow up on that with my insurer and maybe change insurers altogether if necessary.

When not being a sensible adult (which is most of time, lbr) I've been going down fun rabbit holes like building a Dreamwidth posting app in Emacs, the Lisp interpreter that comes with a text editor. I've set it up to auto-complete tags and icons and stuff, and I'm pretty satisfied with how it works though I have more testing to do before it works fully as envisioned. This post itself made use of these auto-complete functions, in fact.

I've also gone through two playthroughs of Volcano Princess (火山的女兒), the Chinese roleplaying/simulation game about raising a beloved daughter and also having her solve human-monster relations if that's how you want to play it. I saw the "true ending" on my second playthrough and have many thoughts about the gameplay, which I'll probably talk about in another post. It's also a queer and polyamory-friendly game so I had fun romancing characters of different genders and multiple partners.

July has been slow work-wise after a very busy June, but I've been getting inquiries from several places about future availability so keeping fingers crossed. It's been a slow year overall for work, what with the political crisis we've been through and the recovering economy. I'm also trying to take advantage of the free time while I have it, though. That's just life, I guess.

comments

Why KPop Demon Hunters pops

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 15:06:48 GMT

KPop Demon Hunters was an experience for sure. It felt slightly weird to watch because it uses distinctly Korean materials but from an outside perspective. The girls' exaggerated comic acting was very Western animation-y, and the traditional Korean medical clinic scene bore no resemblance to real life, obviously.

Even with Korean dubbing it had the distinct feel of a foreign film, because it was! Korean-speaking actors and dubbing artists speak very differently, and the voice acting was obviously dubbing-style because the original was in English.

I also felt like the story had a lot of potential that it didn't quite reach, and foreshadowed things that didn't actually happen. But that's pretty deep in spoiler territory so maybe I'll go there in a different, spoiler-cut post.

Where the movie truly shone was its stylish, energetic representation of K-pop, including in no small part its earworm soundtrack. Fans have been pointing out all kinds of K-pop tropes like the tiny powerhouse rappers Zoey and Baby, the similarity of the two bands to legends like Blackpink and BTS, and the way the male band debuted with a catchy bop ("Soda Pop") before coming back with a darkly cynical, technique-heavy number ("Your Idol").

It wasn't just the stars who got the spotlight; so did the fandom and community, from the fans who filled stadiums for their faves to online challenges and breathless anticipation for new releases. The movie also went into some, though by no means all, of the darkness behind this adoration, and made a good case for the potential destructiveness of such massive franchises and fandoms.

The love of the genre and the fandom, backed up by extraordinary music and production, was what gave the movie its heart and turned what could have been a gimmicky throwaway into a snapshot of an era. The depiction in KPop Demon Hunters of the love and fragility, the beauty and hollowness at the heart of K-pop was arguably more powerful than its scripted story. That's not a knock on the story so much as a statement on the nature of the narrative: K-pop is an age to be experienced in all its glory and corruption, not a tale to be told from a comfortable distance. It is one's own story to live and not someone else's to watch, and that is arguably the true power of KPop Demon Hunters.

comments

New desk, more tasks

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 15:27:42 GMT

A couple of days last week went by in housework to get my new desk set up and change the furniture arrangement. This was after an all-nighter to send in my Soul-Sucking Neverending Work Assignment of Doom From Hell in the morning followed by a nap to sleep it off, so that was certainly a choice I made.

In the afternoon I rose from the dead to clear out the old desk and brought in the assembled pole-mounted desk, wiping down the desks and floor in between. I also moved my secondary Dell monitor from the old desk-mounted monitor arm to the new pole-mounted one (after snapping a pic of the old setup so I can sell the old arm on the flea market app Danggeun), then moved my computer housing to serve as a side desk. More wiping because the inside of that housing had gathered some dust over the years. The monitor was plugged in on its brand-new arm, and I turned it on to check the power supply-

And nothing! The monitor wasn't turning on! I wasn't sure if the monitor itself had somehow met its demise while being moved to its new mount or something was wrong with the power supply. So I dragged our cable hoard out of storage to see if I could find a matching power cord, which there was. Two of them, actually. Changing the power cord got the monitor working again, whew. Maybe I'd kept the monitor power cord too tightly curved on the old mount, or maybe its time had simply come.

Anyway it was a good thing we had the extra cord on hand, but the cables had become a tangled mess in storage and I somehow had the energy to group them into different plastic bags and tag them by categories like "power cords" and "charging cables." It doesn't make an immediate difference right now, but future-me will thank past-me the next time a cable needs to be found.

The old, bigger desk wasn't being dumped; rather, it replaced the side table of the living room couch. The couch-side table had been hanging on in bad shape for years after a younger Tater had jumped up and down on it, tilting sadly and precariously from a missing wheel, so it was a mercy really. (Why are kids?) I dismantled the old couch table and replaced it with the one I'd been using in the office. Also wiped down the living room floor while I was at it. After putting away or tossing a bunch of stuff, the new setup was more or less complete. I even took a night to do a deep-clean of the keycaps and board, a process I live-tooted on fedi.

( Before and after pics! )

I'm very satisfied with the new setup, despite all the work it took. The desk layout is more compact than before, the computer housing no longer gets between me and the monitor, and everything I need is within reach when I'm sitting at my desk (or desks, rather). The change was a while in coming and I'm relieved to have it over with.

comments

Work stress and furniture

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:40:45 GMT

My current interminable work assignment is draining the soul out of me. Like I need the work and am grateful to have it, but also just ughhh. I'm just barely keeping myself functioning by mainlining the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, plus all kinds of music from my collections that I haven't browsed in a while.

Another way I'm relieving stress is by obsessing about furniture of all things, specifically a new desk that'll replace my current one which has been oversized ever since I changed things around to a split-desk layout for more comfortable seating. Changing the furniture is one of those middle-aged female coping mechanisms I didn't understand when I was younger, along with a taste for trashy drama about getting comeuppance in the face of unjust family situations. I'm turning into my mom in my middle age and I guess that's not a bad thing lol.

comments

Poking my head back in

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 01:41:39 GMT

Hello again, Dreamwidth!

It's been a while. Lately I've been hankering to keep an online journal for everyday, chatty stuff that's less serious than my author website (yes, I have one now!) but also archived in a more orderly and discoverable way than my fediverse social media accounts. This DW account was the obvious choice for it and I've always been meaning to do something with the account again, so might as well run with it! I'm hoping to stick around for longer this time.

So what have I been up to? I've been getting busy with work again after a five-month dry spell since a little coup attempt in Korea you might have heard about. A lot of the long, anxious winter and spring months were spent following the political news and going to protests, doing independent research, working on ttrpg translation, and lots of home cooking because we had more time than money.

The political situation is finally starting to stabilize with the Presidential election, and so is the economic situation. Literally work started rolling in the week of the election early June, so that's been a win on more than one front lol. I'm getting back to normal-year levels of work and income which is a huge relief, though it also means I'm busy and stressed again. I guess life is a choice between problems and this is better than the alternative!

So it's going to be a busy weekend crunching for a work deadline, monsoon season is here and it's raining again, I have a bunch of things going on and more I'd like to get into but I'll get to that post by post. Like I've been mildly obsessed with Kpop Demon Hunters, did some small coding projects, been working on side translation projects, ran some tabletop games at events... keeping busy, I guess, in addition to the default family, work, and home stuff.

And I continue to work on my writing, of course! More about that, too, as things come up.

comments

Micah speculation

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 12:44:21 GMT

( Spoilers for Season 3 )

comments

Policing and woobiefication redux

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 12:00:09 GMT

After my prior post on the subject, here's yet another commonality between the fandom policers and the woobiefiers/apologists: They think their personal emotional reactions define the morality of a thing.

Again, they go to opposites from the same premise. The fandom police think that since they react with disgust, shame, fear etc. to a fictional depiction, it must be objectively harmful and therefore immoral to create. The apologists think that since they react with positivity and excitement to a fictional depiction, it must necessarily be harmless and objectively moral. The emotional and intellectual dishonesty is staggering in either case, which isn't surprising because they both start with the same dishonest and flawed premise.

comments

WIP Big Bang: Posting date claimed, now to finish the thing!

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 12:00:07 GMT

The final push for wipbigbang is here as I have claimed a posting date in August! Planning to send the first draft to my lovely artist this week so they have time to work on the playlist. I've wanted to write a Finnrey Auntie Anne's AU ever since I learned that my favorite pretzels place declared support for my favorite ship, although the fic is a bit more action-packed than my own RL experiences buying their pretzels. XD I'm also having fun writing Rose, Paige, and Black Squadron in supporting roles.

( Excerpt )

I don't have much time or brainspace for fanfic these days and I really appreciate these fan events that I sign up for giving me the push to, as the comm puts in its header image, finish my sh##.

comments

On being a Christian atheist

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 12:00:14 GMT

I am a Christian atheist.

Let me state up front what I don't mean by that; I don't mean I believe in the obscure branch of Christian theology which states that God is dead and we must love each other and save each other in that absence. While I admire the poignancy of it, it doesn't gel for me even as metaphor because I don't believe God is dead but rather that he never existed, at least in any physical sense outside the sensemaking that we do through story.

I also don't use "atheist" as a pejorative here, as a Christian pastor does in his book The Christian Atheist criticizing Christians for living as though God does not exist. I don't think it's morally or intellectually inferior or superior not to believe in God.(1) By atheism I mean, simply, the lack of belief in God as a supernatural being. I don't assign any moral or other value judgment to it.

Fortunately, Christian atheism seems a lot more visible than it was back when I was first searching for the term back in 2013. The above two senses were the only ones I could find at the time, but now I am able to find entire articles on cultural Christianity (2) and more expanded information on Christian atheism itself, not to mention modern Christian atheists openly expressing their convictions.

( What Christian atheism means to me )

comments

Lyrics translation: 항상 마지막처럼 (Always My Last Chance)

Sun, 21 Jul 2019 12:00:13 GMT

Translating song lyrics is an occasional hobby of mine, and since these translations live nowhere else but my Evernote and some fan music videos I've made I've decided to post some of them here, inspired by yhlee. I'll post the literal translations of the verses much as I did with my poetry translations so you can see what changes I've made.

I think the first lyrics translation I ever did was 항상 마지막처럼, which loosely translates to Always My Last Chance. It's the Korean theme song to the anime Angelic Layer, which I have not seen; I chose the song for its lyrics and singer, the talented Korean voice actress Yang Jeonghwa, for my Azula and Suki fan music video.

Those who know the early twist in loopy777's fanfic Retroactive will understand my choice, since the vid was intended to be a fan video of that fic, but people have enjoyed the video without having read the story. I think I get more comments from Korean fans than English-speaking ones, since it's still a Korean-language video and subtitles go only so far ^_^

( Lyrics and translation )

comments

Frustrations, mom posting, workstation

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 12:05:13 GMT

( Procrastination and career thoughts )

Speaking of whom, the Tot is growing apace, not doing much talking but he sure laughs and babbles a lot. He's a healthy and happy kid and I couldn't ask for anything more. He is HEAVY into cars, both toys and the real kind; Mark's father even sent the kid a mini sedan he can ride in and drive around, proving once and for all that grandparents love their grandchildren more than their children.

Mark calls that thing the White Elephant for a reason, aside from its color. It's noisy, takes up space, and is heavy as hell to take out of the house where there is enough space for the kiddo to ride it around, something we have only done twice. Funny, though, it's actually worked out reasonably well; the Tot hasn't shown much interest in playing outdoors with the thing, and mostly loves to climb in, honk the horn, and play its tiny selection of music. He occasionally pedals it backward and forward, but we stop him from doing that at night so we don't disturb the downstairs neighbors.

I pulled my zero gravity chair out of storage and rearranged my workstation to use it, with a bed tray holding my keyboard placed on two straps across the armrest so I can type comfortably. I was using a kitchen chair for a while and that got uncomfortable, so I considered getting a swivel office chair but the idea of being upright all the time didn't appeal, either. This arrangements suits me for now--with my main monitor being a flatscreen across the room, I can tilt back while working when it suits me. Maybe a better lumbar support could help, but then again I'm not vertical most of the time so it doesn't bother me.

comments

Currently watching

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 12:00:11 GMT

Into the Badlands

Really good post-apocalyptic wuxia with big-stakes political/military intrigue and a compelling cast of characters. There are amazingly choreographed action sequences in the best tradition of Chinese action movies. I love how diverse the cast is, too, with many interracial relationships and a canon queer relationship. I'm almost done with this one and am hanging onto the last three episodes mainly out of a reluctance to let the show go. I'll finish when I'm in the mood.

Star Trek: Discovery

I have mixed feelings about this one. I love Michael Burnham and the Season 2 storyline is intriguing, but I'm still disoriented by the tight focus on the main plot and cast, resulting in a lack of the ensemble feel and leisurely pace that I'm used to with Trek.

The going is slow on this one because I'm watching this together with Mark and we both have to find time to sit down together, mainly while folding laundry. We haven't done this in a while, and the living room sofa is a jumble of clean laundry XD

Good Omens

This was all the rage on Tumblr for a few weeks and I still see quite a bit of content. I never could get into the book, and it sat on my shelf for years unread after my then-boyfriend lent it to me. Then we got married and I returned it to him as part of my move-in luggage. Neither Terry Pratchett nor Neil Gaiman ever quite gelled for me and the two of them together weren't a particular improvement, it turns out.

My husband loved the book, though, and wanted to watch the show with me, so we watched Episode 1 together. It's funny, I guess? I'm still meh on it, but it's easier and more passive than reading the book.

Black Lightning

I was stalled on Season 2 for a while before I started again recently. I haven't watched a lot of superhero shows but I like this one, with its intimate portrayal of a family threatened from the outside and dealing with their own internal turmoil and conflicts. And I am so rooting for Anissa/Grace even though I don't think Anissa has a very good track record when it comes to treating women well. (Chenoa did nothing wrong!) I'm sure she'll grow as a character and am looking forward to how it might happen.

comments

Policing and woobiefication: two sides of the same coin

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 12:00:13 GMT

TL; DR: It's fine to enjoy "immoral" fiction and you're both being assholes

Fandom policing and villain woobiefication/apologia seem to be polar opposites, but at heart they agree on one thing: That your morality is defined by the wholesomeness of the content you make and consume.

They just go from that premise to different conclusions, with the fandom police (1) saying that some content is immoral and must be censored, and possibly its creators bullied as well, while the woobiefiers and apologists defend by saying shit like negging is true love actually and war crimes are fine.

( Nazi and genitalia mention, this may contain thinly-veiled references to Star Wars fandom )

comments

Writing, writing, and writing

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 12:10:11 GMT

Writing a textbook for a gig has eaten up most of my attention lately, but I'm trying to wrap up the current chapter and fire it off to my editor so I can work on a more enjoyable writing project--the wipbigbang Finnrey fic that I need to finish up and set up a posting date for along with my artist.

Work on the original novel has stalled out among all this, but I'm still thinking about it all the time and mostly despairing at how utterly short my abilities are falling of my aspirations T_T I do plan to move along on it once the WIP Big Bang is done, though.

So whatever it is I'm working on at a given time, work, fandom, or original, it looks like I'm doing a lot of writing! I feel a vague sense of impatience all the time and am trying to gather my thoughts & energies. Idk. One step at a time, I guess.

comments

When hair is more than hair: Finn's style in The Rise of Skywalker

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 12:00:10 GMT

Looking at Finn's material in TROS, I am very excited and emotional how he grew his hair longer and is finding his own style in clothing as well.

( Star Wars feels! )

comments

Pride and Practicality

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 12:00:10 GMT

For the Pride Fanwork Prompt Fest on queerly_beloved, prompt is by fred_mouse. Posted here to be linked in a reply because of content warning (mention of marital rape/reluctant sex).

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice
Pairing: Elizabeth Darcy/Charlotte Collins
Prompt: stepping out
Summary: Elizabeth's friend Charlotte's happy news leads to a less happy revelation and a long-overdue talk between the friends.
Bisexual Elizabeth and lesbian Charlotte, emotion, angst, and fluff. Lightly implied bisexual Mr. Darcy and former Darcy/Wickham.

( Mention of marital rape/reluctant sex )

comments

Pride and Practicality

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 02:45:13 GMT

For the Pride Fanwork Prompt Fest on queerly_beloved, prompt is by fred_mouse. Posted here to be linked in a reply because of content warning (mention of marital rape/reluctant sex).

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice
Pairing: Elizabeth Darcy/Charlotte Collins
Prompt: stepping out
Summary: Elizabeth's friend Charlotte's happy news leads to a less happy revelation and a long-overdue talk between the friends.
Bisexual Elizabeth and lesbian Charlotte, emotion, angst, and fluff. Lightly implied bisexual Mr. Darcy and former Darcy/Wickham.

( Mention of marital rape/reluctant sex )

comments

Fanny Price, stone-cold feminist

Mon, 06 May 2019 11:45:11 GMT

It's no secret that Fanny Price, the heroine of Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park, is far from the most beloved Austenian heroine. Fanny has been called a moralistic prude who gets everything by doing nothing. She is evidently deemed not to be liberated and feminist enough, seeing how she was replaced in two different movie adaptations by laughing, athletic, and outgoing heroines who bear little resemblance to her original character.

( How do I love Fanny? Let me count the ways )

comments

Sometimes you have to be a bad child to be a good parent

Thu, 02 May 2019 11:45:09 GMT

( Fatphobia, emotional abuse, parenting )

comments

In praise of the content warning

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 11:45:09 GMT

These days, other than spending minimum time on Tumblr to chat with friends and queue up posts, my main hangouts are here on Dreamwidth and over on Mastodon, specifically the Fandom.ink instance run by our lovely mod alisx. Though my longform stuff is obviously here and I love commenting and interacting with people in thoughtful ways, the place where I spend the most time online is definitely the Mastodon instance, with its cozy community, nearly real-time interactions, and old-school forum feel.

I think one of the things that keep me coming back to Mastodon, in addition to the factors mentioned in my review of the platform, is something I only mentioned in passing in that post because I had so much else to go into: The content warning.

The content warning (CW) is much like the fold or the cut in blogging software, complete with a text label that you can put on a post to tell you what's behind the cut. People can click on the 'read more' button to unfold the post and see the rest of it, if they so choose. Users can also choose to unfold content warnings by default.

( In which I wax lyrical about the CW )

comments

Of green sky and blue oceans

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:45:10 GMT

This article about different perceptions of color by culture, jumping off from the Homeric texts that describe wine-dark seas and cornflower hair, got me thinking about the language and perceptions of color in Korean culture that I had almost given up on expressing in English. Korea has no native word for "green," you see, but rather uses "blue" to describe the sky, the forests, and the ocean alike. We had to borrow the Chinese word for green in order to separate it out linguistically, so it felt weird to have Korean characters who don't even know Chinese to think of and use the word "green." On the other hand, I thought, it would feel odd for English-language readers to see forests and leaves described as "blue." For that matter, Koreans call hair with a slight brown/yellowish sheen "yellow" which would call to mind blond hair for many English speakers but is actually still dark brown hair. But hey, if Homer can get away with wine-colored seas, why can't I ha ve blue forests and brown yellow hair, right?

comments

All work and no pay leaves me a poor girl

Sun, 21 Apr 2019 03:14:02 GMT

April was a busy week, but since most of it was for projects that will pay off later I'm now not only broke but tired as well. XD At least I'm looking forward to some paydays starting in May, and I appreciate that my contacts are giving me work. We're finally getting out of the lean months!

( A rejection and an acceptance )

comments

Marvel Femslash is a no-go but WIP Big Bang is on!

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 11:45:08 GMT

After being so excited about the marvelfemslashevents exchange, I was flabbergasted to realize I had not actually been signed up. I'm not sure what happened, maybe I didn't press "submit" or my signup got dropped by the server or something? My fault, I should have double-checked while there was time. The mod kindly confirmed in response to my inquiry that I was not in fact signed up and it's too late to do anything about it, so there's that I guess. :/ I'll be on the lookout for pinch hit and treat opportunities, but I won't be a participant.

I did end up signing up for wipbigbang after all, and I'm glad I did after the Marvel Exchange ended up falling through. I have done so little fiction writing these past weeks that it almost physically hurts, so this ought to be a good way to get me going.

comments

Set up a Dreamwidth queue, drafts, and local backup on OS X

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 11:45:10 GMT

There isn't much I miss from my stay on Tumblr and it's a great relief to spend more time on Dreamwidth-- and, these days, my feed reader. However, there are still some functions that Tumblr has and Dreamwidth lacks, like a draft folder and the ability to queue posts.

Tumblr aside, I also found myself wanting to keep local copies of my posts and to compose them in an editor with more robust functions, such as live Markdown preview, than the DW editor offers. I like the new DW beta editor but it's still not an actual text editor, nor does it write to my own machine without an extra step like copy-paste.

So I figured, why not set it up on my computer? It seemed simple enough with Dreamwidth's post by email function and Terminal on Mac. It took me longer than I thought to get it working reliably because there were a few different components to it, like Postfix, Bash, and Launchd.

I wrote this documentation both as a note to myself and a reference for anyone who wants something similar. With a little modification I think this setup could be used for other operating systems like Linux distros and other blogging platforms that support post-by-email, such as Wordpress.

( Step-by-step instructions )

comments