I have a Kingdom Hearts themed event next week at the capital where I'll be there as vendor and playing as headliner DJ. I sketched with watercolor, gouache, and acrylic a little Heartless. Might recreate it in a small canvas panel for the party. Dress code is character cosplay or inspiration from the game. I thrifted a shirt with a Heartless logo in red, so I'll build my outfit around that. This is probably the hardest playlist I've ever worked on. I've never done a set of songs for a game before, so it's been quite the challenge putting together using only remixes of songs from or inspired by Kingdom Hearts. It's been fun though, even though I've had Simple and Clean by Utada Hikaru stuck in my head for weeks now, it's still such a banger. I need 90 mins of music and hope the other DJs aren't playing the same tracks. I'll share with them my tracklist just in case. I'm almost cured of the terrible cold I had. I'm feeling a lot better and can focus on this.

I'm glad I was asked if I actually like Kingdom Hearts before booking. I don't have all that much experience with console games, but I did have a PS2 back in the day and played KH and KH2. So I have very fond memories of that game, I never beat Sephiroth though, other than that, good times. I'd honestly play it again. I believe several versions are on Steam. If I ever wanna go down that rabbit hole again. #kingdomhearts #fanart #mixedmedia

My family has gone home despite terrible weather. Hurricane Erin brought some rain but didn't cause any flooding, which is great because I don't have the energy to deal with that. I remember promising my nephews last year that the house wouldn't flood due to a storm, and they woke up with 2 inches of water surrounding them and no electricity. Well, that's island life sometimes. This time, the power kept on, and it didn't rain as much. I've been sick the past few days with a terrible head cold and body ache. My sister spent her last days in Puerto Rico with a cousin, so I had some peace and quiet with my pulsing headache. I watched an animated show on Netflix produced by BiliBili called No Doubt in us, adapted by a manhua of the same name. It's a xianxia story about an emperor and empress who accidentally switch bodies, and they have to learn how to walk in each other's shoes, realizing how much they love each other. The episodes are short at about 11 minutes each with 2 seasons of 24 episodes. I had no expectations since I knew nothing about the story. I appreciated that the series had strong female characters. It was nice to see female empowerment that didn't seem just for show. It was a cute romance story with a decent plot.

Speaking of female empowerment, another thing I watched was The Rose of Versailles (2025), a historical story about the fall of the French monarchy, based on the manga from the 70s. I do like period pieces, and this film was exquisitely beautiful. I've never read the manga before, but I can recognize the style and how it influenced other artists that I like, such as Naoko Takeuchi. Lady Oscar is so pretty. I think MAPPA did a great job in adapting the style. It's about 2 hours long and can be considered a musical. I think it's a good homage to 50 years of feminist shojo. #recentlywatched

I watched the new season of King of the Hill on hulu. It's 12 episodes long at about 20 min each. Ngl, I got a little teary-eyed watching these characters again. It's a shame about John Redcorn's voice actor, ended by a hate crime. It made me sad and angry thinking about it every time his character was on screen. The new season is pretty good overall. I think it kept the quality of past seasons. It was interesting to see how the characters matured. They made good choices. I'm glad it's not a reboot. Speaking of reboots, my nephews were scrolling Netflix Kids the other day, and apparently, there's a new Johnny Test series. Ummmm, what? That show doesn't need a remake. The boys said it was boring, so they weren't interested.

Another series that got a new life that I watched recently is The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball, a continuation of The Amazing World of Gumball. I gotta say that it started off pretty strong with an eat the rich message in the first episode. They have been known for their social commentary and hit pretty hard in 20 episodes at 11min each. I found it very enjoyable. It did not disappoint. #justwatched

I squeezed in watching a show between breaks with my family. I watched the Korean historical fantasy drama Alchemy of Souls on Netflix. It's about a fictional country that is set in a Joseon style era with cultivation like martial arts and sorcery. The story is about a man born under the King's star constellation and weird circumstances that mark his destiny due to how his birth came to be and the consequences of everyone involved at that time. There's a type of sorcery called Alchemy of souls which allows the caster to switch bodies. The spell has side effects and is forbidden, making all soul shifters to be considered guilty of banned sorcery. The main characters are an assassin that attempts soul shifting into a new body and a mage's son that isn't allowed to follow in his father's footsteps. There's a few love plots in the series, some comedy, a lot of action. I found the story to be well told. The first season is 20 hour long or so episodes and the second is only half of the first at just 10.

I thought it was pretty decent with beautifully shot scenes, landscapes, and special effects for the magic and martial arts.
#justwatched

My eldest sister has come to visit with my Mandarin speaking nephews. Finally have my chance to practice what I've learned, my nephews are delighted and told me my Mandarin is pretty decent and that they can help with my pronunciation. My youngest nephew gave me a supermarket deals page from Taiwan to read and I managed to identify some fruits, tea, coffee and meats. I felt pretty proud of myself. My sister talks shit about me behind my back, so it was nice to prove to her that she can learn Mandarin if she wants to. I've been practicing for just 3 months, her eldest son is 11 years old. Learning a new language can be hard, but if you put in the effort, you can do it. I hope she gets the courage to learn. Yesterday the kids had a Mandarin lesson via Zoom and I listened in for some bits and managed to understand a few words, not enough for context of the whole conversation, but I did get a few bits despite how fast they were talking. The class is a dialogue between the kids and the teacher, one on one where they talk about what they've done recently. The topic was how they've spent their summer vacation.

I can pat myself on the back for teaching myself Chinese. I have a long way to go to have a full conversation in Mandarin, but at least I can tell the boys to wash their hands and not watch tv while eating dinner, among other simple things. We went to the movies 2 days ago to watch the Fantastic Four movie. I thought it was pretty good. I had no expectations and that helped.

My sister saw that my Netflix was expired and offered to pay a year for me. I guess the kids tried watching Netflix and saw the payment notice and told her. 😅 I was waiting for my Patreon payment to come in to renew it since I haven't sold anything recently, but now I don't have to worry about that. Bless. It's the nicest thing she's done so far, because she's a tough character to put up with. Today I woke up feeling unwell. As soon as everyone left the house and I had a break to relax, I felt much better. More siblings will be coming to visit soon, so I need to prepare for that. I'm already exhausted. My mom has been making me slave away doing chores and painting walls to accommodate my sisters and their kids. I'm sick of it. I still have some painting left to do, but my body needs a break. My hands still hurt.

Anyway, on my afternoon to myself I saw on Netflix: The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity. I found it entertaining. It's different than the other Yin Yang master movie despite having similar characters. I would recommend it.

I've been reading quite obsessively the manhua I'm an evil god. I managed to be up to date already. It's the first isekai webtoon I read and I have to say that it's been quite enjoyable. The illustrations are absolutely fantastic, the author and artist are the same person, Shidai Man Wang. His use of different textures and strokes to convey action, excitement, beauty, backgrounds, and characters is remarkable. I saw he has other titles to his name, I can see from this work how well versed he is in anatomy, fashion, literature, religion, history, films, video games, other manhuas, mangas, and anime because of the homages found throughout the story. The first 100 chapters had the best scanlation with plenty of translator notes. That helped know more about the references in poetry, attack names, history tidbits, among other things. I appreciate the hard work the translator did in explaining, it set off a good foundation to grasp the story better since I'm not well versed in Chinese history, poetry or religious concepts related to Taoism or Buddhism. A lot can be learned through fiction and the medium of webtoon is dynamic and captivating.

I had briefly mentioned what the story is about, it's another cultivation based narrative where the MC's soul is transferred to his doppelganger in a wuxia world known as the Main World, where the martial arts are of the highest level. The main world is of the xianxia variety with Ancient China fantasy elements typical of this genre mixed with some video game elements such as the MC has access to a modern looking System Control panel that allows him to upgrade and develop his character, similar to a video game. As he unlocks different features and completes quests, he's able to travel the outer realm (different worlds) and become more powerful each time by using the system along with his cunning and training. I find the plot to be interesting and well woven, although the character gets progressively stronger, so do the stakes as more powerful beings come into play and the plot thickens. It's been a good read filled with gorgeous characters (the textures in the clothes alone are superb), beautiful landscapes, and well thought out plot make it a perfect combination of visual narrative that compels the reader to keep them engaged. There's even some LGBTQ+ representation sprinkled here and there, so it's not a typical toxic macho seinen fantasy. Besides mostly every female character having huge tits and looking sexy, it's not misogynistic imo. The women aren't written poorly and that counts for something. There are strong female characters in the story. I would recommend this manhua if you’re into wuxia. At some point I'll check out the donghua, I found it in the iQiyi channel on YouTube. I'd love to see how the fights are animated.
#review

I watched a movie with my partner the other day. He suggested Kayara (2025), an animated film about a teenager that dreams to be a Chasqui, an official runner/messenger for the Incan emperor, just like her dad. The original language is in English. Subtitles weren't available on the platform he was using, but it was easy to understand. I don't have auditory processing issues, but I still like having captions on everything. Because not everyone enunciates or the words get muffled by sounds and music.

Anyway, Kayara was produced by a Peruvian studio called Tunche Films and co-produced by Canary Island based Fortoon Island, a subsidiary of India's Toonz Media Group. It's a story of female empowerment and breaking gender norms. I thought it was well made. It told a story about traditions, culture, and a bit of Spanish colonization. I'd love to visit Peru some day, not just for the sights. Ever since I learned that's where potatoes come from and that they have over 10,000 varieties of potatoes, I just wanna eat potatoes in as many different dishes that I can. There were no potatoes in the film, but I always think of that fact when I see stuff from Peru. And llamas, they're so cute. In the film, Kayara had a pet guinea pig, which makes sense since they are originally from the Andes region. I've never been a fan of rodent like pets, so I don't find them very cute, but I can appreciate them from afar, especially a cartoon version of it. Overall, it was an entertaining movie and I'd watch it again with my nephews that are pre-teens. They'll be visiting by the end of the month and I'll finally get to practice Mandarin with them.

Most recently I watched Lucy (2014) starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. I had it on my Netflix watchlist and I saw a Leaving Soon banner on it, so I figured I'd watch it. I was interested in it because Luc Besson is the director and I've enjoyed his films. It's an interesting take on a drug smuggling movie, that's the main plot, but how it develops is pretty fascinating. Basically with a drug overdose, the main character manages to unlock their brain capacity and the visuals that accompany that breakthrough are gorgeous. I wish the foreign language parts were translated in the subtitles, but hey, I understood a speck of French and 2 Korean words. That's more than zero. 😅 My partner had already seen it, so I watched it at home on my own. I didn't want to make him watch something he'd already seen and remembers.

I added a few Chinese and Korean dramas to my watchlist that Netflix recommended. Who knows when I'll get to them, but they seem interesting like Word of Honor and Alchemy of Souls.

That free trial on Crunchyroll truly made me NOT want to subscribe. My boyfriend sent me an article on how they've been using ChatGPT for subtitles. That would explain the mess I saw on the first season of Heaven official's blessing. I then watched Black Butler starting from season 2 because I wasn't sure where I had left off. My gripes with that series was that the 4th and 5th seasons weren't placed in order. Both were titled season 4 and I apparently watched the 5th season first and then the 4th. The subtitles were better though. The skip intro on one of the seasons was short of 30 secs, so I still had to skip thrice using the skip 10 secs button. These minor issues didn't invite me to keep the subscription. I'd rather pay for some other service like Disney+. I want to support how I can, but not with mediocre playback and issues like I described.

Speaking of Black Butler, I'm almost up to date. Just need to watch the Book of Atlantic movie. I forgot how much I loved Sebastian Michaelis. I would totally cosplay him. I should've started watching from the first season, but I knew I saw it twice at some point. Once on my own and a second time with my daughter. So, I did some reading instead to jog my memory. It wasn't jogged, but at least now I know what I forgot. I've never read the manga, but according to what I found, the third season onwards is a lot more faithful to the original source. Because the second season is completely non-canon and almost felt like a waste of my time to watch. By I do love Sebastian, so whatever. I'll just think of it as a non-canon OVA. I'm quite partial to Victorian era things, so I do appreciate the attention to details in the food and clothes shown in the series. Not all elements are historically accurate, but that's ok. I'm not a purist.

I started reading a manhua called I'm an evil god, that has a donghua adaptation. It's an isekai about this handsome guy bored from his world, he dies and possesses the body of his self in another world where there's martial arts and cultivation. He has access to a control panel where he can jump worlds and level up his skills the more points he accrues. Apparently this style of multiverse isekai is pretty popular in webtoons, according to what my partner told me. He reads more webtoons and light novels than I do. I'm not quite sure I like what I'm reading. It's certainly different than what I've read before. It's currently on-going with over 500 chapters. I might check out the donghua, if it's too boring I'll find something else. Perhaps another romantic comedy or something along those lines. I like me some cheesy romance mixed with supernatural characters. There should be something like that.