particularities | recent entries

hello!!! wow i haven't posted on here in just over three years. a lot has changed and at the same time, not that much! i don't know if anyone even remembers me but i feel i should provide some life updates before i start posting again. maybe i'll do a life primer and then go into what has actually /changed/ in the last 3 years.

ABOUT ME…

i'm max and i'm 23 this year (i'm a 2002 scorpio). wow it feels kinda crazy saying that i'm 23. i'm brown and live in asia!

i stated previously in my profile that i like to say i put the T in LGBT and STEM (being some undetermined flavour of trans as well as a tech student). these are both still true… i'm still unsure exactly what gender i align with but i'm trying to just do me and present however i want these days. I could talk for way too long about this so i'll leave it there.

i'm also still a tech student but not for much longer… i graduate in december and then i will (Hopefully) be an Employee in tech… it is what it is.

WHAT I AM DOING…

recently i was reading my journal, which has entries dating all the way back to 2016, and realised that in the 8 years from 2016 to 2024 i truly did not change much as a person, despite the outward changes in my life. so i've decided this year i have to actually do the things i want to do, instead of saying i want to do things, knowing exactly what i want to do, and not doing them anyway.

This includes… learning to dance. learning more about music. learning another language. writing more. consuming some iconic media that i've been putting off. and that's one of the reasons i'm trying to revive this blog! i also want to get used to organising and researching my thoughts in written form. because i have a lot of thoughts and i never put them anywhere.

WHAT I AM ENJOYING…

i remain a big fan of seventeen & infinite… but in november 2024 i got properly into two new kpop groups for the first time since. hmmm. 2017? i think the last group i became a fan of a new group was stray kids in septemberish 2017, and since then i'd gotten to know some idols and became a solo fan of some members (not necessarily because i disliked the other members, but just because i didn't feel drawn towards the whole group, but individual members occasionally caught my eye).

but in november, i really don't know what happened… i think the stress of my uni final year project and finals got to me, and i got into p1harmony and ateez. i'd liked piwon's music since their debut and picked out keeho as my bias, and likewise for ateez with wooyoung… but i got into both groups for real last year. really quite deeply obsessed with both of them at the moment. Much more to say but i will leave it here for now.

and i've had an inspirit renaissance as well because i finally got to see them live during their 15th anniversary tour! after 9 years of being a fan… so glad. and their promotions for their latest comeback have been super entertaining and i am endeared by how much they still love being idols and celebrities after all these years, and how hard they work to this day.

i also got to see seventeen on their be the sun and right here tours – one experience was much better than the other. i remain extremely carat. i will always be carat. Boo seungkwan above anyone else.

i haven't read a single book since december 2023 but i joined an atiny book club so hopefully that will encourage me to read at least our monthly book every month. (it's halfway into march and i've yet to start on the march book, so we'll really have to see.) i HAVE been reading copious amounts of fan fiction though, and i'm not sure why it feels so different to read fan fiction vs published books. i will figure that one out later. i'm starting to feel inspired to dig my old WIPs out and complete some of them, but that is a topic for another section honestly…

movie and music wise… i could honestly make a whole post about each of these categories. I'll save them for another time. i've started getting into food and fashion as well. We will see how that goes.

WHAT I WANT TO WRITE HERE… SOON

wow… there are a lot of topics here that u will just need to hear me out on…

Why i hate le sserafim's work so far (god this will need so much research from me before i feel comfortable complaining fully)
current bias list
ranking ateez songs
kpop group longevity
my thoughts on concerts – what i'd pay for, what i'd no longer pay for, what artists i care to see
monthly media consumption (recurring)
fashion/gender moodboard

IN CONCLUSION…

i'm very excited to have logged back into dreamwidth!!!!!!!!!!!! hopefully i'll post at least twice by the end of march. and i will begin interacting with people here as well, because… i do enjoy reading others' thoughts a lot. !!!!!! i'll wrap this up here with a lot of excitement !!!!!!!

i need to lie down. i need to commit a crime. i need to drop out. i need to SCREAM

SOME THINGS I'D LIKE TO GET DONE...

this is actually a pretty small list of things to get done, now that i think about it... i didn't want to aim too high and get nothing done, so i decided to stick with this as is. for each section, the points are either listed in descending order of completeness (if the list is numbered) or no particular order (if the list is a bullet point list)!

ALSO APOLOGIES FOR THE COLOURS they look a bit insane to me um... let's just roll with it for now shall we... !!! i had a better colour scheme initially but i decided to use that for a different very long thing i'm working on that i'll hopefully post on dreamwidth as well. (it is for one of the media analyses so hopefully i will complete it and the colours will not be wasted in vain!)

fics

1. untitled hank mccoy-centric x-men prequel films fic

OK I CAN EXPLAIN... actually i can't. i hate 2/4 of the x-men prequel movies (as in the 2011-2019 movies... yeah i think apocalypse and dark phoenix are the worst things to ever exist). i have SO MANY gripes with this cinematic universe oh my god, starting with how pissy and annoying they made hank and charles, and how they KEEP MAKING ERIK THE VILLAIN EVEN THOUGH HE'S ALWAYS RIGHT. MAGNETO WAS RIGHT. not to get too heated or anything but like...

regardless i want to write my own little Look into hank's brain. i like the idea of using fic as a way to explore and extend what's given to us in canon... so i will be doing that! but it might be a bit canon-divergent because i refuse to make hank as self-loathing for as long as he is. it pisses me off so badddd why do they movies make the characters so insufferable... I HATE THE WRITERS so much...

general themes this would get into is like. internalised mutantphobia... internalised homophobia/biphobia... the intersection of both of these... (yes mutantphobia is completely hypothetical but i will write about it anyway) and how hank's feelings for/about people might help shape his personal growth. Anyone else feel like unrequited romantic feelings are fun to play with in fic btw? (maybe i'm just too unhappy and single to make characters happy. oops)

2. untitled q-centric james bond (daniel craig) fic

i actually don't have any particular ideas for this rn... the hank one i have some vague ideas of what to write and what the Plot could be. for this one i just have a concept... both of these fics are going to focus on [unrequited] romantic feelings. but i think this one is gonna lean more into the Sad aspect of unrequited feelings... i want q to be a bit pathetic. i think that's fun sorry!

also why are these both about the scientist characters. someone needs to examine the relationship gay people have with their little scientist characters!

media meta/analysis/personal thoughts

1. the contradictions of james bond — daniel craig movies

the movies introduce a lot of very interesting themes... and then just do not discuss them at all. it would be so interesting to interrogate (ha) how bond's profession and his personal life are entangled, and how difficult it is to separate the two (and is it even possible to do that, anyway?). or how the things he has to do in his job affect his psyche. how his trauma affects his ability to have an actual life, and how that's made even harder by the fact that his personal life... literally cannot exist because he cannot escape his job.

sorry i know these are a lot of words that are probably confusing even if you've seen the movies because i'm still trying to find a way to put words to the thoughts in my head!!! but there are SO many concepts that are super interesting and the movies don't discuss. which is fair, because there's only so much Movie and there's only so much you can do within the movies. especially since they have such interesting plotlines and themes already so it's challenging to work even more introspection in! but that's why i want to think about them personally i guess.

the reason i called this the Contradictions of james bond is that sometimes characters say some things that are absolutely bewildering because they do NOT jive with the character of james bond who is shown in the movies. this is like. somewhat of a mild spoiler... but a character says to bond that he's not "built to trust". but it's like. ?!!!! he IS though. he's so much softer on the inside than everyone thinks he is and than he pretends to be... and even the people he cares for the most don't know that about him. he keeps trusting people despite being a spy and that's both his fatal flaw and the thing that keeps him human!!! the PROBLEM isn't that he isn't built to trust. it's that he is, and he keeps getting betrayed... no matter how many times people hurt him, he just keeps trusting people.

so yeah i just want to... talk about all of the themes i wish they'd had time to explore in the movies! i think daniel craig said once he was bothered by how bond's character was focused a lot more on physicality than on personality (paraphrased very extremely) but i think his portrayal lent a lot of humanity to the character, and it was a pretty consistent performance throughout too so it really gives us a Lot To Unpack Here. which i am excited to do!!! i've already gotten started on this because i haven't stopped thinking about these movies for more than a month but. very slow progress (i have more than 4k words written already but it's super slow going because i'm not used to doing analyses of media so putting words to feelings is hard. this is something i hope to work on this year too!)

2. was no time to die good? — james bond (daniel craig movies)

i want to think about this from the angles of: was it a good standalone movie? (yes imo. sorry to spoil it. but yes.) was it a good conclusion to the series? (in some respects yes... although its implications for mental health might be troubling, considering bond's character arc and the way trauma and betrayal have impacted every inch of his life).

sorry this section has a lot fewer words than the first bond analysis i want to write because i've worked on this a lot less... as i said. descending order of completeness!

3. themes that make fics good — sorry idk how to explain this one

i think i personally enjoy fics a lot when they're set in the canon universe and explore themes that are In canon but aren't Explored! kinda like the themes i'd like to talk about in the first analysis in this section. and i also like when they have a tone similar to canon. for instance, one of my favourite craig-era bond fics explores the implicit sexualisation of bond that's done by the canon, where people assume that he's easy and promiscuous because of what he does in his line of work, without really considering that there's an actual person underneath that. (if anyone's interested: To the Victor Go the Spoils by beaubete. sorry if i didn't explain the themes super well i think the author did a really good job with this and a bit of it might've gone over my head)

this would just be more of a... list, for personal reference i guess, because i want to figure out what themes i like seeing explored in fic! cause obviously not every piece of media has the same themes, so they wouldn't all discuss the same themes. so it would be Cool to see the whole range of what people write about.

(also in case anyone was Worried let me defend myself and say i'm not some kinda fic elitist i'm down for a good au... i just think canon-compliant stuff that explores themes within the canon body of work has a specific type of Deliciousness to it too...)

media consumption

movies

i've recently discovered a love of film and i really want to watch a LOT more this year... i waste a lot of time doing things that are useless, generally, and watching movies is much better a use of my time than doomscrolling instagram or reddit or whatever. i haven't seen a lot of iconic franchises or film directors' movies, so i want to rectify that in 2022! (i will forgive myself if i watch a lot of western/english movies this year instead of expanding my horizons because everyone has to start somewhere... hopefully i'll make it through the more Required Pop Culture Watches quickly and then i can try to watch more niche movies.)

my priorities rn are: the lord of the rings trilogy (2/3 done and i am in LOVE?!), star wars (i watched 1977's star wars/a new hope on the 3rd and that was my first star wars EVER), the dark knight trilogy, and... i can't think of more rn but i'll make a more complete list sometime maybe.

reading

i only have one real reading goal for this year which is. i want to read the lord of the rings... i've had a copy of the book since i was like. 8. and now that i've watched (and enjoyed!!!) the movies, i think it's finally time to get started on the book. the length is, admittedly, intimidating... but that's why i'm giving myself the whole year to read this ONE (1) book. this is my only Solid goal for the year.

but also hopefully i'll [continue to] read some marvel comics this year! i am a really disorganised comic reader and so i don't have any real handle on the canon or timeline... maybe this will be the year i read in an orderly fashion.

general

monthly media consumption

IDK I REALLY LOVE READING PEOPLE'S MONTHLY MEDIA CONSUMPTIONS ON HERE... i don't know if i'll consume enough media/varied enough types of media to actually make substantial posts but i'd like to make some kind of summary every month i think that'd be fun! i also think it could be a fun way to try new css formatting bits and bobs (for instance, i tried Something in this post... not sure how well it worked, but it's certainly Something...) and get some practice in, so. here's to a more... reflective dw presence i guess!

penpalling

i've wanted to get a penpal for a WHILE and i finally bit the bullet and made a post on r/penpals and i have a few people who seem interesting to talk to which is exciting! snail mail + writing on pen and paper has a certain appeal and i really wanted to capture some Zest for life by having new people to talk to... i think i was sorta inspired to bring some little joy into my life after seeing this video where actor/Incredibly Interesting Person rajiv surendra talks about his day-to-day life and. idk it was really inspiring! i want to have things that bring me joy and take deliberate actions to do that. and penpalling was my choice!

also if anyone here wants to be penpals (like via snail mail) u can like... message me... i would be open to that for sure! internet mutuals to penpal friends would be an interesting progression.

update dw theme colours...!!!

idk WHAT i was doing when i set up my dreamwidth but all the colours on my page clash and it is PISSING ME AWF... so i want to change the colours up sometime this year. it's just so annoying to do because dreamwidth is so unnecessarily fiddly and annoying which is just GRAH. not much to this point i just do not like the colours on my dw theme rn...

i also have a few new year's resolutions, but those are going to stay in my diary until the end of the year, when i will hopefully make a post reflecting on whether i actually accomplished what i set out to do this year. and my tech-related projects remain largely consistent with the ones i stated in my holiday plans post so i won't be updating those until i make a serious dent in those plans!

thank you for reading this and HAPPY NEW YEAR! :] <3

so i'm not sure how it took me until 2021 to discover the existence of tiny desk concerts but. it did. but here i am NOW and that's what counts... i really love just picking a random video and putting it on while i putter around my room cleaning or whatever because there are so many concerts. and it's not just limited to super famous artists so it's been a very fun way to discover new music. anyways here are some of my favourite tiny desk concerts because i feel a NEED to talk about them somewhere!

(also if anyone knows how to get rid of the "Watch on YouTube" text could you please let me know because i... cannot tell... it's not the worst thing ever but it is bugging me a bit)

my top 6!

1. little simz (aug 2021)

Watch on YouTube

little simz is easily my favourite artist whom i started listening to this year. one of my top few favourite artists ever even... i just think she's incredible. all of her music is so beautifully made; the instrumentals are just stunning. especially on her album sometimes i might be introvert (released in september this year). those orchestral arrangements holy shite... she's incredible! and suchhhh a good rapper too.

i started listening to her after hearing venom on tiktok (askjfmhskfj listen i think finding new music on tiktok is great but it also embarrasses me to say sometimes...) and i am SO glad because her music is. heartfelt, beautifully made, incredible, a feast for your ears... i love her!!! and this video is a feast for your eyes and ears. definitely my favourite tiny desk concert and also one of my favourite artists so. i adore this!!!!!!

2. chloe x halle (dec 2020)

Watch on YouTube

THIS IS FREE SEROTONIN... the bailey sisters have the most beautiful voices ever i swear asjfkmhs. i watch this at least once a week. it's PERFECT. also ungodly hour is soooo good best album of 2020 i am still angry it didn't get more accolades. not that awards are important but like... GIVE THEM THEIR DUE PRAISE... BEST ALBUM OF 2020 AND NOTHING?!!!! also how they keep saying "that was fun!" You just gave a performance most people could not dream of coming near and you say that was FUN? that's real talent right there seriously they just do this like it's nothing

3. koffee (feb 2020)

Watch on YouTube

THIS VIDEO IS ACTUALLY HOW I DISCOVERED KOFFEE... hooooly shit her music is so. wow. her music and her VOICE are incredible!!!!!! i don't usually listen to reggae (this is a personal flaw of mine sorry.) but like. /1/??!?!2992@&*& her music has me hooked now there is no going back. all her music is so good and she seems so chill she's like 19 in this video... i am 19... i will never be as cool as her. also her latest song came out like last week pls listen to the harder they fall :}

everyone in this video just looks so in love with the music they're creating and it's beautiful and it really. Cheers me up every time i watch it!!! of course people who make music for a living must really like music but the pure joy emanating from this video is amazing

4. c. tangana (april 2021)

Watch on YouTube

here is an extremely random fact about me… i think spanish is a really pretty language. like top 5 languages for me. if i could attain instant fluency in any 3 languages spanish would be one of them (the others being japanese – because i keep FORGETTING IT – mandarin – because the majority of my country and the people i'm around speak it and i keep being left out of stuff because i don't speak mandarin -___- and spanish because it is so lovely).

so anyway. this performance huh! i just loveeee it so much it feels so WARM and beautiful… and i have overplayed the shit out of these songs on spotify AND by watching this video too much. i think this is possibly the most simply joyous video i've seen all year… hearing a room full of people sing together can just be so heartwarming!

5. mariachi flor de toloache (jan 2016)

Watch on YouTube

NO WORDS this is one of the best things ever i guess i love mariachi now! the vibes in this bus are astronomical etc etc this is INCREDIBLE this was so fun and beautiful and. !!!!!! What i wouldn't give to get to watch them perform irl someday.... ONE DAY!!!!!!!!

also wow i had never seen a guitarrón before watching this and. what fun it must be to play that. and also very tiring but that is a very fun looking instrument. sorry i'm very easily pleased by things and Very Big Guitar is a very pleasing concept to me! also i feel like this is a band my mother would enjoy watching live she would be SO into the singing along parts... and honestly so would i.

6. ya tseen (nov 2021)

Watch on YouTube

this is an artist that is completely new to me and who i would never have discovered if not for their performance here... n that's what i love about tiny desk concerts honestly like. there's so many different artists who perform on these and you can discover so many new artists this way... and even if you don't stick around and listen to their whole discography, you get to listen to something new and incredible every so often.

ok my general thoughts side, this is a really beautiful performance by indigenous band ya tseen and i just think. it is sooo worth a watch and deserves way more than the paltry 60k views it has right now. the third song especially was so cool!

so that's that... also if you clicked the link to venom you will notice it's to little simz's performance on the colors show which is. YET another avenue through which i have found a lot of artists to listen to... i am truly spoiled for choice or whatever the phrase is (sorry my english is dying a bit these days because i have not written anything in proper english since finals ended... using slang and dropping grammar rules WILL ruin your command of the queen's english apparently).

also a general life update...

life is going okay i am having trouble doing anything that takes a lot of mental effort rn but i am having fun doing things that don't need that much effort! just also going through a bit of a rough patch mentally and falling behind on replying to people n stuff... my god. i am known to all my friends as a terrible texter and i do genuinely try but it's so Hard to put in effort to do anything sometimes? but when i do reply i make it worth their time (or at least. i Try) by responding at length...

(this is also an apology to my lovely dreamwidth mutuals whose replies to the New_Improved_Goodreads portion of my holiday plans post i have yet to reply to. i am so sorry i have read them but i am trying to gather up the words to respond please give me another Two (2) days to reply properly <3)

askjfhskfhm anyway. i hope u are having a good day... and also watching these tiny desk concerts because they are great...!!! Good bye :^)

my first term of university is over!!! my finals ended last week (they went terribly the two grades i've received so far dropped from an A+/A- to final B grades. please don't talk me) and now i have a month of holiday before my next term starts. and i feel like putting my thoughts out here wrt holiday & other plans bc i think it makes me feel more. accountable to what i hope to do! so that's what i'll do.
i have a few categories, i suppose: (1) fun – media i want to consume, plans i need to make; (2) preparation – things i need to learn to prepare for next term's classes; & (3) projects – side projects i want to create for my own fun.

FUN

MEDIA

james mcavoy's filmography: okay i'm not gonna watch... quite all of his movies, because i like to think i am sane, but i'm going to try watching more of his movies. maybe up to 10 of them? (i've watched 6 – 3 of them are x-men movies; i have dark phoenix left of the x-men prequel movies, which is. yeah. – and i'm halfway through another. so i'm pretty close to that goal of 10 already.) i think he's a fantastic actor and also like... very handsome honestly... and his movies have yet to disappoint me so far so i'm gonna keep going on this accidental binge i started last week.
daniel craig's bond run: no time to die was the first movie i watched once finals ended, because i'd been wanting to see it for literal months, and it was honestly just... so good!!! i barely remember anything of the previous bond movies, so i decided i want to finish the other four again and maybe complete a full rewatch of his run, ending with no time to die again; hopefully no time to die will still be showing in theatres by the time i'm able to scrounge up some free time for a 3 hour movie again. i'm done with casino royale, so i have 3 left to come full circle.
18 more books: because i am only 12/30 books into my goodreads reading challenge for the year... honestly i've read millions of words of fic this year but since they aren't counted on goodreads. 18 more books it will be. i'm probably going to read comics because (1) they're a lot faster & easier to read, and (2) for a self-professed marvel comic fan, i haven't caught up with comics in an embarrassingly long time. i already have 8 volumes borrowed from the library, waiting for me to read them, so here's hoping i get around to actually reading them.

PLANS (?)

oh my god this entire section poofed out of existence after i'd already written it... three extremely long bullet points... i'm gonna be super brief this time bc i can't be arsed to write all the details out again. fuck you dreamwidth.
movies with T: my standing date for mcu movies! watched eternals with her last week (a month late because we both had finals, #Fuck you school) (also that was the worst movie i've seen in my entire Fucking life.) and i'll be watching spider-man: no way home with her sometime soon as well.
movies with J: i asked sooo many people before i found a friend both willing and able to watch the lord of the rings movies with me! i've been wanting to watch them for a while because they're iconic (though i don't know anything about the series). he's one of those friends who i don't text a lot but we always hang out every few months without fail and i'm very excited to see him again!
okay i have more plans but im lazy so this is all i'm gonna type

PREP

a far shorter list of things so i didn't bother putting this under a details section... i have two (out of five) modules that are actually for my degree next term, and the rest are core modules about like. writing and stuff. ugh. (sorry to be a stereotypical stem major who hates humanities classes or whatever but i hate that i have to take a class about WRITING EMAILS... we were examined on writing emails when we graduated primary school. i have taken my Goddamn A Levels. ENOUGH!!!)

anyway i'm going to try learning php, sql, http, and javascript to prepare for those two modules! probably not too in-depth yet. but these will also come in handy for my personal projects as well (since i plan on creating websites sometime soon), so... we'll have to wait and see see how much effort i'll put into these. i also need to improve my html & css; obviously not going to try memorising documentation, but i need to get faster at coding these things. and just look at this damn post! i got too lazy to create new code so i copied code from my last post for this division! in conclusion i need to be less lazy too.

PROJECTS

my favourite part of this post... and the primary thing i wanted to talk about! during my term, i thought of a lot of fun things i wanted to do but didn't have time to explore just yet. so this is just. stuff i am super excited about doing!!! i hope to complete my short-term projects/goals before next term, and the long-term projects... hopefully before my final year of university. because they are really quite ambitious. i also have a little misc section because i'm taking a course that i have no choice but to complete, which isn't really... relevant to either type of goal but could be useful for my career idk.

MISC

machine learning course: i'm taking a course that serves as an introduction to machine learning, and we're going to learn how to construct machine learning models and recommender systems. i have literally zero experience with this and i'm not sure if this is the path i want to take for my career, but this seemed like a great (governmentally-subsidised) way to get a grasp of the concepts so. here i am! there's also a group project, which is vexing because group projects are the bane of my existence, but... whatever. hopefully i get assigned a decent group!
also this entire course takes place over 3 weeks so i am truly being crash coursed. i'm 3/8 lessons in rn and it's really quite intense but. hopefully i make it out Happy Healthy and Alive

SHORT-TERM

learn content scraping: i've been really interested in learning how this works since i found out that this covid case database was created with the use of content scraping! i've started learning how to do it and it seems pretty cool. but more importantly i have a few fun little side projects i want to complete using this method, such as:
- generating statistics of olympic medals won by countries, split into medal type & sport... i know there are already datasets out there that cover these breakdowns, but i want to generate my own!
- and this one i am far more excited about because. it's just fun. i want to create charts showing... the popularity of fics in the fandom/particular pairings on ao3 over time... plotted against the release dates of instalments in a series. i'm just very curious about how the release of new instalments affects content creation! maybe i'll even break it down by tag if i can figure out how? but yes!!! i'm very excited for these.
- i can also use other technologies i've learned to do this, i think: i've been learning several ways to visualise data using python libraries like matplotlib/plotly/pandas. and i'm excited to put that knowledge to use!!!
and i'm unsure exactly what technologies i'll need to be able to do this, but i also want to find a way to sort my spotify library by genre. i think this will be a lot more complicated than just accessing wikipedia or ao3 like i'd need to do for the two goals above, since i think spotify library data requires you to log in to access it & all, but... we'll see!! i hope i can find a way to do this.
oh and also i want to code a personal website for myself to serve as a portfolio!!! after i achieve all of these short-term goals of course... and learn the programming languages in the prep section as well... so i have something to show for myself, lest i create an empty portfolio.

LONG-TERM

i need to stress how extremely long-term this project is because it's really ambitious and i'm not insane enough to thing i could create this anytime soon considering my skill level and limited knowledge of programming languages. that said. i want to create a site that's like... goodreads but better? letterboxd, but for books? i want to create a way to track reviews of books, basically, because i'm extremely unsatisfied with all the current available options. (sorry, storygraph! and anyway this is more of a personal desire to create something tailored to my preferences so the existence of alternatives is kinda irrelevant to me anyway. i literally do not care about how fresh this is for the market it is just... a passion project, i guess.)
currently, my plan is to create a mockup of what the website and/or mobile app would look like by the end of my first year in university. creating mockups is a pretty useful skill to have even outside of this project, as well, if i want to participate in hackathons, so my first step would be learning how to make wireframes & mockups.
i think i'll be able to reach out to some professors for help sometime soon as well, since one of my modules next semester is about web application development. hopefully by this point, i'll have my mockup ready to show them, so i can reach out to them for advice on what my next steps should be. and that's about as far as i've planned this so far!

ok well that's about it! i am just using dw as my personal diary at this point... a public sort of diary... what can i say i think it's fun. unfortunately i'm lagging a bit at catching up with my inbox (sorry to my lovely mutuals whose comments/convos i have left hanging) but i will get to it soon!!! :} if anyone has read this far. thank u so much. also if u have any things u hate about goodreads/like about other cataloguing websites/any random things u hate about web design plz let me know in the comments as well i'm all ears and would love to engage in a bit of Criticising Things Online heehee. goodbye!!!

my friend was talking about the GISELLE_APOLOGY_TWEET n how they arent inclined to trust it cause it was definitely an sm employee or pr agent who wrote it earlier... tweets something as follows:

> X: she ain’t write that apology either you all are under a tweet reassuring an sm employee. a PR agent

> (...)

> ME: i love when famous people apologise cause obviously it's not them doing it

> X: the only apologies i’m slightly inclined to believe are handwritten or verbal ones and even then there’s always the strong possibility that they’re being coached or copying something someone wrote for them already 😭😭

> ME: honestly like the more i think about it it's just not possible to believe anything famous people say at face value bc of the immense amount of coaching they get all the time...! i was watching this billie eilish interview the other day and she was talking abt how she literally

> ME: forgets how to have a conversation with human people and starts talking about herself like it's an interview bc thats what she gets coached to do. Famous people's minds r like... irreversibly changed by pr agents it's hard to believe anything any of them say
> X: please wait this is. omg
> X: like ur right but i do not wanna by hyper aware of that i just wanna enjoy my kpop men 😭😭
> X: Totally agree with u by the way like i understand exactly what ur saying but i'm not absorbing it cos ignorance is bliss

and isn't that just something to think about really... i find the impact things have on your psyche so interesting. (Like some things i've been thinking about recently have been how being quite very terminally online since i was 11/12 has shaped my relationship with gender and sexuality but that's not entirely relevant... i think it's fascinating how your life circumstances or what you do regularly shape you as a person.)

anyway the original interview where billie eilish said that is this one and what she said was, in full (emphasis my own):

"Sometimes I'll catch myself in a conversation with someone acting like I'm in an interview, and in interviews you're trained to talk about yourself and not ask the other person about themselves. And so I'll catch myself in conversations where I'm like, shit, like I'm not being interviewed, I'm acting like I'm being interviewed instead of acting like I'm talking to a human being. And I think some artists and celebrities haven't even learned that and still just do that. And people I love do that, that I've met where they just, they're trained to talk like they're in an interview and that's normal but it's like we forget that we're not though."

and it's kinda scary (?) to hear about the way their work life ends up influencing their personal life... especially cause celebrities nowadays sell their personality and their actual life rather than just their art. so naturally it's so hard to separate FAMOUS_SELF from PRIVATE_SELF and turn off the FAMOUS_SELF mindset and training...

and also because billie eilish is only a year (actually like 11 months) older than me so it was really shocking to see her talk about this because. at such a young age she's already been trained to be a person in public in a way so pervasive that it affects her personal relationships which is really shocking! i don't know. i really think being young and famous should not be allowed like it will really really damage you as a person... it's scary to hear the types of things young people in the public eye go through. (in the same billie eilish interview – the second link where i took the full quote from – she was talking about how she's been like... physically grabbed by fans and stuff and she was only. 17? in that video which is really quite terrifying!!!)

plus if this is the case for a western celebrity i wonder how it must be for kpop idols who are trained intensely around the clock. definitely western celebs also get pr training but considering exactly how much of kpop idols' lives are marketed i am really curious how it affects them and shapes their entire lives. it is really quite scary!

no thesis statement to this post i was just thinking about it... if anyone has thoughts plz leave a comment or something i wld love to discuss! thanks for reading x

side note about giselle & kpop stans:

it's honestly ridiculous how many people in the replies and qrts of GISELLE_APOLOGY_TWEET are babying the fuck out of her and saying "aw baby it's okay we still love you 🥺 hugs for giselle 🥺 giselle best girl" Shut up she's a grown lady she can handle a bit of flack... u don't need to baby the 20 year old... and my friend is right there's no way she wrote that apology herself lmao. i find kpop fans honestly ridiculous the way they treat idols sometimes as if they're not real people with agency... stop being weird about them!!!

current mood: cranky

☀

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