yuerstruly

YuEr is 23, has finished her undergraduate studies and is starting graduate school. Her mother says she should have finished reading the entire Jin Yong collection at the age of 12, and is making attempts to shovel Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber into the reading list. Her bookshelf consists of B&N Classics, too many AP prep books, and a bit of YA squeezed in there.

Wait, YA? You read YA?? I wouldn't say I actively seek it out, but I'll give anything a try if I'm into the premise. This is half the reason I chose to pick up Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu. The other half is that I have been trying to write an idol-verse/spy-verse AU for DoJae since 2020, and came across the premise for this duology and gave it a try. I've read two Marie Lu series in my lifetime, and though they were both YA SFF, Stars and Smoke sounded like a fun change-up.

Believe it or not, Stars and Smoke was a fun read. I have some nitpicks here and there, but Marie Lu delivered an impactful story and pulled her punches as needed for climaxing scenes. Objectively, people might say the work is "OKAY," and I could agree, but what fun is there in rating a book 3/5 and leaving it at that?

Pop star Winter Young meets elite spy Sydney Cossette in a task to infiltrate a crime organization and take down the boss, Eli Morrison. Winter is an asset that contradicts the essence of a spy—he's hot, famous, and always the center of attention. This is, however, the ticket into Eli Morrison's lair, with his daughter Penelope being his biggest fan and wanting a private performance from pop sensation Winter Young. With little time to prep, Winter's training focuses on self defense, and applies his choreography-learning skills to imitate whatever Sydney throws at him. He's a quick learner, much to her annoyance and dismay (though his quick reflexes are just what they need if things go south).

cw: suicide, terminal illnesses, mental health, cockroaches

these works are actully unrelated to one another. i just needed to get my thoughts out about miscellaneous short stories i've been giving a try. tagged as seen because i need categorization for written media i engage with vs "things i've read" (BLAND)

燕歌行 by 四又西. this work is only 3.3k words but i almost cried. keyword: almost. i do think part of it is a language barrier because despite that i can comprehend things fine in chinese (especially works like these) for the most part, it feels like a part of it isn't actually hitting my brain? the writing in this was very strong though and it spoke to my inner 文藝青年. i'd love to give this author's works a try, but it seems like their only other baihe work is a 500k word wuxia novel with paid chapters. i'm not complaining about the act of paying itself, but the bulk of changpei things are free, so i've not really topped up on the app. most of the topping up i do is on jjwxc. this means i'll get to it within the next century or so ahaha…

深海坠落 by 茶言月色. i'm 90% sure i only saved the work because it has an audio drama and it spoke to me with its sea reference. i had also assumed there was a mermaid in the mix, but upon reading this work, i got hit with something way different. the mermaid is a hallucination of the MC's, and a reflection of the girl she had once befriended in the … i want to say psych ward but it's the hospital. the MC, Xingyu, is in the hospital for selective amnesia, psychosis, and … cancer? damn girl. anyway, i didn't feel strongly about the story because i feel like the writer may be that good of a writer. if you'd given the same plot to another author and rewritten it with a more depressive tone instead of flat sentences, it would've made for a much more engaging read. i was also not really invested in xingyu's feelings for the other girl, xinghai. i was actually more interested in the backstory of the crazy doctor who was using xinghai to revive his dead lover, whom he himself had KILLED. that was crazy to me. i don't think it was specificed how xinghai was being used since on a surface level, they had been a couple up until xinghai's suicide, though whatever was being described sounded like human experimentation. that doesn't matter in the end since xingyu kills him LMAO

小蟑螂也有春天 by 食鹿客. where do i even begin? it's about a cockroach. an american cockroach and a german cockroach at that. but yuer, how did you even find this story? i was scrolling through the baihe supertopic when i came across a post complaining about this author liking one of her characters too much and the other not enough. this led to me clicking on her catalogue (i have one of her works saved, but not the one mentioned in that post). i scrolled all the way down to find a … cockroach story. strictly speaking, it's not labeled baihe but it's a f/f cockroach story so … yes it's cockroach baihe? OKAY THE ACTUAL STORY. i only read one chapter, then dropped it because the writing was too detailed and disturbing. i hate cockroaches. we follow a little cockroach who's grown up and is leaving her mom's nest (don't know the actual scientific term). her journey of survival includes witnessing the brutal murder of her sister, becoming the first cockroach to board a plane, and falling in love at first sight with a bigass cockroach who protects her from bullying by her other peers. what a story. i can't even tell you if it's good or bad because the idea was so disturbing, but if anyone wants to give it a try, feel free to search it up on jjwxc …

Though Asimov is one of many big sci-fi authors, I have had little interest in giving him a try, especially not after reading I, Robot and getting disappointed. I, Robot was also part of my cyberpunk homework, which is different from Foundation, the series he is most known for. I ended up putting Foundation on my list despite my immense disappointment, and you know what, Asimov impressed me on many fronts despite being a cishet White man.

Foundation tells of a small group of people originating from the Galactic Empire attempting to minimize the originally predicted era of barbarism and unrest. It's centered around the Foundation working to preserve the pinnacle of human knowledge. The first book, at least, captures segments of the descent into political unrest, all centered around people on the Foundation.

Now, I've not read many stories set in space. As a matter of fact, I cannot name one I've read as I'm typing this out. Foundation was a fascinating read because it got me invested in the overarching plot while not caring about the characters one bit. They all lived to serve a greater purpose, and I was honestly fine with my lack of investment in any character. The ones I can name off the top of my head are Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, and Hober Mallow. Oh, and Linge Chen and Yohan Lee but that has less to do with their functions in the story and more the fact that Asimov gave some nondescript characters real Asian names instead of making something up based on "vibes," which is rather a common crime. I mean, look at JKR and Cho Chang. Terrible naming with too much ambiguity from a clearly racist person.

Putting that aside, I do think Salvor Hardin stood out more than anyone else. In Part 2, there's a moment where they're gathered to discuss about Seldon and the issues at hand. The rest of the Board is very happy to blindly trust the process and the path they've walked along for the past few decades, but Hardin calls into question everyone's passiveness. This reminded me of the world we live in. It's a given that most people are like sheep, and when offered a solution, they choose to not think. Why think when you can shut your brain down? Why innovate if someone has done it for you? I guess this is a reflection of the society we live in.

I'm upset that I got more invested than I thought it would be. I had walked in with the expectation that I would be dropping this series after book one, but it looks like I'll have to keep reading (not a priority though). Maybe space politics is something I'll look into more!

Between Tang poetry and Shakespeare, I'm quite unsure how I ended up choosing a poetry anthology when I am decidedly not into free verse. Finishing Jihyun Yun's Some Are Always Hungry solidified that for me. I was quite into the content—it evoked distrubingly visceral images and was in general unsettling. The topics covered—Japanese occupation in Korea, womanhood, the 20th century immigrant experience—are heavy, and I appreciated that the author was willing to explore them. It spoke to me not as content catered to a foreign audience but a raw portrayal of heirloom trauma.

Now, the standout pieces:

"All Female" - "The men watch game shows / as we wreck the girl bodies / for roe, and I don't know why."

"Field Notes from My Grandparents" - "When I fled / without returning you / to earth, you did not resent me. / Please say it, / you did not resent me."

"I Revisit Myself in 1996" - "I live in California / on Washington Street, / so I think I live / in Washingstone State / and dream of California / weather all sun all the time, / except at night when God / throws stars like darts and punctures / the ground sometimes."

"The Daughter Transmorphic" - "In no version / are they not hunting us."

"Yellow Fever" - "When the first blood releases between your thighs, they'll come."

"Menstruation Triptych" - "I bleed like girls are taught to bleed, / pretending I am fine."

"Some Are Always Hungry" - "We pass the last chicken thigh between us"

"Immigration" - "At sixteen, she's still new to this nation that unnames her daily."

"Benediction as Disdained Cuisine" - "Give me all / I avoided so long for your sake."

"Savaging" - "Today I woke not knowing / which country holds me or if those love / motels stringing neon cords outside my window / were those of Oakland or Seoul."

"The Leaving Season" - "What keeps me / so afraid of wounding a man?"

Comments for:

"Homonyms": This is one of those things where I'll always go "??" because I don't really find meaning in a word meaning two things and taking the meaning that's clearly not the one you're meant to use, then going "haha language is soooo complicated for diaspora."

"Recipe: 닭도리탕": I'll be honest, I didn't pay that much attention to the contents of the recipe. What I did grieve about in this was the fact that Grandma could not "discard" Japanese. It's something I've witnessed firsthand. Japanese is weaved into everyday conversation in Taiwan, especially for the elderly. Even now, there are Japanese words that have been identified as "Taiwanese" because before the arrival of the KMT on the island, Japanese was what the people spoke. It didn't matter what ethnicity you were, what job you did—you learned Japanese.

"Blood Type": Partially an "LOL" moment for me. Identifying blood types is the personality test of … a decade ago? Two decades ago? And Koreans still love to talk about blood types, so this seemed about right to me.