Zine Shine: July 9-21, 2024
I’m participating in Zine Shine, which will run July 9-21, 2024 at the Issues magazine shop. There will be a bunch of zines by other zinesters there as well. Tadaai logs will be there at the shop.
You can find out more details on Zine Shine here. Issues magazine shop is located at 1489A Dundas St. W., Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Citrus Con, August 23-35, 2024
You can still sign up to attend Citrus Con in August, which is a free 18+ BL/queer media con. Hamletmachine is going to be a guest(!). I’m running a watch party for Word of Honor, and also participating in the Artist Alley. Hope you check it out if it’s your jam.
Word of Honor is free to watch on Youtube, and is also streaming Netflix. When I filled in the form, I did note that the show doesn’t contain sexual content, but it does contain self-mutilation (self-harm) and violence. My favourite character list does contain Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishou, but my favs are actually Ye Baiyi and Scorpion King. This show is hard-carried by the actors, especially Wenzhou. I believe this drama was shot post-lockdown in China: there are some really funny screenshots of this show where it’s very clear that the production budget simply wasn’t there. I seriously think this drama is worth your time, even if it won’t compare in popularity to works by MXTX. I really enjoyed the videos by AvenueX on the flirting and lip reading for this show, as well as the explanations for the poetry and other literature that is referenced. If you do end up watching it, please note that there was an episode 37 that was created and does conclude the show in a satifactory manner. It does seem that episode 36 was made to appease the censors, and if you didn’t know episode 37/the special does fix the ending implied, you would find the ending enraging. (Not sure how many people have seen Guardian, but I was so mad at the end. My god.)
Anyways, this could be us at Citrus Con!
I finished this drawing…I actually painted this twice because the first try was pretty much a failure. I’ll try the oil painting brushes in Procreate some other time.
Canzine postcard
I don’t think I’ve posted this here, but here’s the postcard that was included as a gift for purchasing Midnight amaretto at Canzine earlier this year. Hope people enjoyed the comic!
Other
I haven’t worked on figuring out how I can get this blog to have summary posts yet, so I’m probably doing that for the next while. Also comments?
The robots.txt is a web standard file, and apparently scrapers have taken to not respecting it. You can read more about it here.
- Exclusive: Multiple AI companies bypassing web standard to scrape publisher sites, licensing firm says
- Cloudflare: Declare your AIndependence: block AI bots, scrapers and crawlers with a single click
- Microsoft’s AI CEO with his bullshit take on the free and open web
- Eric Bailey: Consent, LLM scrapers, and poisoning the well
Despite posting all of the above, I feel like I can actually write more freely here than what I was doing for the last year on the old blog.
I actually watched all of Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger recently, and found it to be a fun take on the sentai genre. Despite the name, this show is sanctioned by Toei, and is shot in Akihabara. It was cool window into Akiba of 2012. I feel like I really appeciate suit actors and practical effects a lot more after. I might watch another sentai show sometime, but so far I’ve simply started watching Fuuto PI.
In some ways, when I watch shows like Akibaranger and Bravern, I have this small fear that the things I enjoy are contributing to me not expanding my borders and reading other things. Like a snake consuming its own tail; when is it bad if something is too meta? But I enjoy them so much…I know some people might say that modern otaku/fans are too concerned with only reading specific media and not going outside what they knew from childhood, but I do try to watch/read other things. I suppose having been an anime/manga fan for a long time lends itself well to being able to enjoy these kind of shows.
Playlist
Yes, we are continuing with this endeavor.
- 陳雪燃 Xueran Chen《大漠經》【電視劇沙海主題曲 Tomb of the Sea OST】官方高畫質 Official HD MV
- 奥井雅美 - God knows… from CrosSing/TVアニメ「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」挿入歌
- Ninpuu Sentai Hurricanger opening sung by the cast
- fripSide/LEVEL5‐judgelight‐ ‐version 2022‐(Live) 2023/01/08＠Zepp Haneda TOKYO
- 【推しの子】第2期ノンクレジットオープニング｜GEMN「ファタール」
- TVアニメ「しかのこのこのここしたんたん」ノンクレジットオープニング映像『シカ色デイズ』
- Hitsujibungaku - Burning [TV anime【OSHI NO KO】Season 2 Ending Theme]
- Zenki (OP)
Anyways, I’m doing my best to not to be a shut-in, since it is summer.
Until next time!