Hello! Haven't been doing a lot of work recently. (my brain decided it was Done with writing for a little bit so I've been struggling with burnout and some depression. Many such cases.) But I've been trying to be patient and kind with myself and give myself time to work on other things and hopefully we'll crawl back to it this week before I have to turn things in.
I HAVE been reading a lot. Let's all point and laugh at this graph together.
So, things I have been reading:
Reading
Alison Bechdel's Books
This past month, I've read Fun Home and The Secret To Superhuman Strength (in reverse order). I've read a good chunk of Dykes to Watch Out For, so I'm not unfamiliar with Bechdel's work, but these books really made me realise that she is a white butch lesbian weeabuddhist, and that's kind of great for her I guess. I get why people read Fun Home as a lesbian/queer classic, I'm not sure that I can easily think of another text that did what it was doing, at the time of publication. And I think queer memoir is always a really fun genre. One of my favourite books is In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machedo, which is also a lesbian memoir, albeit about a different subject matter entirely.
I don't know how I feel about the books, to be honest. I'm glad I read them, but I don't know if I would recommend them. Memoir to me isn't just about the facts of narrative, but about narrative construction and craft. And both books have those things in spades! I think they're just a bit distant from the world I live in, maybe. Sometimes I feel this way about queer fiction if it emerges from a very Western (American) sort of viewpoint/habitus. Not even necessarily white, just American.
The last Bechdel book on my shelf that I have yet to read is Spent, which is also her newest book. I think I'll take my time in getting to it, I'm not in a huge rush.
Shantih Shantih Shantih
This book is by Daryl Yam, who is a Poetry.sg colleague of mine. (Hi Daryl, please never read this!) The book is gorgeous. I love magical realist fiction a lot, and this was a nice collection of vignettes/short pieces about an (imagined) incident of snowfall in Singapore. I think the interweaving of the narratives with each other was expected for me, to some extent, but I think that was also framed in the first story/the blurb? Regardless, executed very well.
It reminds me a lot of Jeremy Tiang's It Never Rains On National Day, which features similar interlocking short stories of a similar demographic of characters. Not really sure what to make of that comparison other than that it exists. Something to do with liminality/queerness/magical realism? Who knows, man. I did really enjoy it though, and I'm glad that it got reprinted!
Witch Hat Atelier
As you can probably guess, the above Storygraph image is because I burned through all of Witch Hat Atelier's manga in the span of like, a week, because the anime dropped and I was like, well I'd rather read a manga than the anime, and the manga is so much ahead anyway. I think one thing about me is that I currently hate waiting for week by week releases. I think it shapes the way that you perceive media because of the element of temporal progression! And I think people tend to get attached to first impressions too easily, so I much prefer having a substantial chunk of something to get into first, when I can.
So I read all of Witch Hat. and it's really, really good. I really like all of the characters (my favourite is Qifrey but admitting this feels like saying I should be burned at the stake). And I think the narrative deals with themes of fascism [1] and accessibility and disability so elegantly. It allows the characters to make choices that are so bad but also so understandable given their relative positions! There's a lot of complex characterisation and fun worldbuilding that I really enjoy in there, and also they put yaoi cocaine in there. No spoilers, but they literally put yaoi cocaine in there.
Also, the magic system is really fun. It makes me want to try designing my own magic contraptions and making an OC to put in there. And also I read my way through all of Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen which is REALLY CUTE. Maybe I will even try making some of the recipes... Much to think about. And it also made me want to get into embroidery so that I could start embroidering the magic sigils from it around my house as home decor. Kind of bad for me, honestly, but I really cannot recommend this enough.
(I am also following the anime! I watched the first three episodes and it's so pretty in there... And the stuff they've added to the narrative to pad it out so far adds more than it takes away so I'm kind of pleased.)
Non-Fiction
Been slacking on reading non-fiction this month, mostly because my brain is burnt out, I think? But I picked up All-Consuming by Ruby Tandoh again, because I do want to get through the books that are physically on my shelf. I finished the Sonkë Ahrens book from last month by the way; it's kind of a drag towards the end. I had fun in the first half and then the second half was really terribly repetitive.
But! All-Consuming is really good, and I really like Ruby Tandoh's writing, so we'll see? I've read her book Eat Up! and I enjoyed the essays in that a lot. These new ones feel a lot more pop culture-focused, so I'm sort of zooming through them because they're of less immediate interest to me.
I've been slacking on reading things that are difficult (again, it's the burnout here, but it's frustrating me because I like reading things that are harder). I do need to get back into reading for school! It's just been difficult recently. For school I am still trying to read Second Skins by Jay Prosser for the billionth time and none of it is sinking in, so I might need to just go to supervision and be like "I don't understand this and I'm sorry I don't know anything about Lacan".
Other Things
I've been noodling on a few other different things. As previously mentioned, I did pick up the Witch Hat anime, which is very fun. :) I've just finished season 1 of the The Pitt, and I'm pleased to report that it is more good than bad, but also that I think I get bored very easily of storylines that babysit white men through character development while everyone else just has to cope. It does suffer a bit from the therapification of dialogue that I've noticed recently in media (although, this is because I also just watched The Amazing Digital Circus a few weeks ago at the rec of my friend Alex (hi oomf) and that is also a little therapy-speaky). TADC is also really good!
I've been playing a little bit of video games but not much. I did finish the main storyline of Pokopia (which is still really good!) but I've been slacking on finishing the Pokedex because I've been kinda gotta catch 'em all about the DIY recipes instead. But there's a limit on how many of those you can get in one day, so my progress has kind of stalled (rip). Pokemon Champions DID drop though, and I've been playing a little bit on and off, because I'm really enamoured by competitive Pokemon but I'm also so ass at it. I've been watching the coverage of it by WolfeyVGC on Youtube and that's been good though. :)
For movies, I watched Bottoms (2023, dir. Emma Seligman) at queer movie club and then immediately proceeded to catch an ailment from going out to watch it. Really good movie though! Lesbian black comedy save me... save me lesbian black comedy. I think the dialogue is really peak, and the characters are kind of deliciously stupid. Did not really care for misogynist teacher much but every other character is pretty good.
For Singapore movie club, we have unfortunately watched the first two Ah Boys To Men movies in the past month. I cannot emphasise this enough. They are so bad. They are literally so god awful. Like, my woke-isms aside (movies are military propaganda, sexist, racist, etc.) they are also just not very well-crafted narratives you guys. And there's still four movies in the franchise left to watch so I don't know if we're going to watch the rest of them. But oh my god. The second one is DEFINITELY worse than the first one as well. They're REALLY bad movies. They're also fully available on Youtube with subtitles if anyone wants to go watch them for themselves. They're so ASS. I'm adding Jack Neo to my nemesis list and I'm putting my favourite Letterboxd review of ABTM1 below:
Misc Commentary
The sun was a lie. It was false spring and then we had third winter. Now we're back into actual spring (I think) and the weather has gotten better, kind of, and the days are longer, which is, well. It's actually scary. I'm of the general opinion that the sun should rise reliably from 7 to 7 and any deviation from this is somewhat of an intrinsic horror, but hey what do I know, I'm from the equator. Nevertheless, it is nice that things are getting sunnier and less horrible, but the temps still drop at night so I'm like boooo. Get warmer!
Proof of Life
I have finally succeeded in my quest to obtain a succulent bowl. I have been hunting for the right bowl for my succulents for the past month in charity shops and it took me walking all the way to the other end of Kemptown to find it. But I got it for five quid so I'm really pleased with it! And I went to a local plant shop and picked out the plants that I wanted and they filled it for me so yay! Yippee! Now to put this guy by my window and hope that its existence staves off the horrors.
By next month I'm hoping that I will be knee deep in a schoolwork chapter draft. And also that I will have gotten through more readings. The grind is slow and evil and the world has been horrid and depressing as of late, but we persevere nonetheless, I think. I'm really trying to keep my spirits up about it, again, despite the horrors.
Endnotes
[1] I actually posted this on Tumblr but the first time one of the characters was like "we need to control the narrative so that people will stay safe in their lack of knowledge" I was like wow... This is just like Singapore... Much to think about here...