then there are blackbirds

Spent some time scrolling re: the Muskification of Twitter today- is it just me, or does this seem like the prelude to a more general internet migration and not just a fandom one? The counterpoint is that I haven't seen any discussion of viable alternatives. Most threads/tweets I've seen (that aren't mocking the muskrat) have highlighted why Cohost/Mastodon/Discord/Tumblr/IG aren't good replacements - TOS, niche organization, not text-friendly... I never thought about the uniqueness of Twitter before these conversations. DW is still my preferred space but it's not exactly a broadcast/short-attention-span system.

Non-internet life continues to be very busy and not super interesting, so have a link instead of an update: DJ Sprenk has done some of my favorite zouk sets! If you're looking for mood music (chill, feel-good, party vibes, etc.), definitely give them a try. :)

Wow it's been ages since I've read/watched any new content?? Things I plunged into on recent rest/recovery/workfail days:

- Zuko fic, including lots of Sokka/Zuko - I love their canon relationships with Mai and Suki (and to a slightly lesser extent Yue) to bits so this ship hadn't previously registered for me, but I find their combined ridiculousness... astoundingly appealing right now??

- Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer - sister watched the anime on Netflix and poked me about it, and then I went and watched it and read the whole manga in approximately 2 days. I didn't expect to love it so much, but TANJIRO! NEZUKO! Cute and heartwrenching and sweet, but tbh my first overall reaction was CLOWN FRIENDS, HOW DO YOU HAVE SO MANY. ♥ ♥ ♥

- Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Official's Blessing - I marathoned this on Netflix after I finished Kimetsu no Yaiba, and then did the same thing with the manhua and novel translations. >.> (Hello again, completionist tendencies?) 800 years of pining, literal/emotional suffering, and EPIC OBLIVIOUSNESS are truly A Combination, wow. The portrayal of the pains of bureaucracy also made me laugh really hard- Ling Wen is a truly underappreciated martyr!

Side notes: I think non-live-action is the only reason I could handle the amount of gore/body horror in these, though the art style in Kimetsu no Yaiba was less of a buffer for me than, say, Mononoke. Really, the art style in TGCF doesn't have Mononoke's extra buffer of surreality either, it's just that Hua Cheng and Xie Lian are distractingly pretty so the eye gets drawn away a lot more. xD

Happy Lunar New Year! 新年快樂! I'm not normally one for horoscopes, but this one was pretty entertaining (I didn't realize there were breakdowns by birth year!).

New Year's Eve dinner was pretty weird this year! At this point I'm used to celebrating at a distance from family as I never have time off to visit, but this year we didn't exactly manage to eat together either. We were all on facetime, but we ended up just talking about random things as we had dinner one by one? xD At least I cooked a decent (one-person) spread. I never tried making guo ba before but my mom sent me some in a giant package o'dry goods earlier this winter, so this was a good excuse! Between store-bought chicken dumplings and fish for the guo ba, I had my bases covered in terms of traditional foods that my family does. The only thing missing was spinach, because I couldn't find any whole ones in the grocery nearby. Frozen and (more importantly) chopped nullifies the longevity parallel, wouldn't you say? :P

My goodness. I never thought I'd have the energy or the chance to revisit my linkspam days at this stage of grad school but here we are... here we are. I went to grab some books from my office and then couldn't get off of Twitter afterward because there was too much going on and all of it was Too Much, in many ways and on many levels. Also I managed to listen to a podcast ep - a true rarity! Malcolm Nance dishing on security & the insurrection was illuminating, if heavy. Here are some gems to (hopefully?) balance it out:

1. Whoever wrote this headline deserves ALL THE AWARDS. "Coup Klux Klan" definitely got the biggest belly laugh out of anything I've seen today.

2. The best metaphor to get the point of IMPEACHING THAT MOFO across? WHO KNOWS, but the whole thread is gold. Especially good was how many people apparently missed it was a metaphor.

3. American Teacher's Federation on Devos's resignation - truly, an epic 'nuff said moment. xD

4. RUDY GIULIANI CALLING THE WRONG PERSON TRYING TO PREVENT CERTIFICATION.

Woke up this morning to news that Agent Orange had, of course, tweeted about the "Chinese Virus." As if the amount of anti-Asian violence I've been hearing about through the few feeds I actually skim wasn't worrying enough. If I had a rocket launcher right now... *sigh*

Some of my DJ friends are doing their thing on livestream in my dance community (ETA1: I heart zouk radio; ETA2: Going Back to Africa 1.0), but I'm curious as to what other stuff everyone's listening to right now. What's on your avoiding-the-plague-lists? :P I already mentioned I Use Tabo (a Swalla parody) elsewhere, because I can't do anything about the toilet paper panic-buying except laugh... and side-eye.

Rather than look up a recipe (because lazy), I decided to just eyeball everything. According to my sister's research, the key ingredients are soy sauce, star anise (or five-spice, which includes it), and tea. I estimate that I used about half a cup of soy sauce and maybe 2 tsp of five-spice? for six hardboiled eggs, and enough water to completely cover them. I was loath to waste the good looseleaf my parents got from Taiwan, so I put in used black tea after I made several brews this morning.

I cracked and only partially peeled the eggs, getting rid of the membrane under the peeled bits for better absorption. Leaving them in my rice pot (not cooking, but warming) for the day; I'm curious to see the results!

I finally managed to buy rice! and cooked a pot of it yesterday! Usually we laugh at my dad for NEEDING RICE in his diet at all times, but today I had a moment of sympathy. It's been literally months since I replaced my last bag of rice. Bringing some to work today was a huge mood-booster, despite my two abortive attempts at talking to our lab analyst and three useless phone calls trying to find someone who could answer my questions. Usually this stuff would put me in a pit of crankiness, but not today! I had my lunch and instantly found More Cope for everything.

I'm used to listening to my physical cravings regarding what to eat; maybe I should start paying more attention to my mental energy levels as well.

A poetry month post at last! I haven't read much poetry in recent years, but this one feels very apropos to me right now.

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Super cold weather this week makes me want to bake, so I decided to play around with this chocolate peanut butter cupcake recipe! Modified as follows:

1.5 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 c sugar (approximately)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c lukewarm coffee (mine was instant and on the warmer side, oops?)
1/2 c milk (I used my roommate's extra 1%)
1/2 c creamy peanut butter
2 eggs
splash vanilla extract (I didn't measure this; 1-2 tsp?)

I mixed the dry ingredients and then added in the wet until everything was combined, no separate-bowl-mixing because I'm too lazy for that (same reason I used my cake pan instead of my cupcake tin, lol). I embedded 4 chunks of Trader Joe's 70% dark chocolate into the batter before I put it in to bake. My devil oven means that I play temperature/bake time roulette every time, but my best guess for people with temperature dials that actually correspond to their oven temperatures would be somewhere around 40 minutes at 350F? Once the toothpick came out clean I crushed a couple of dried Thai chili peppers on top.

Verdict: halving the sugar was appropriate for my fairly un-sweet tooth; however, next time I'll add the chili straight into the batter for a more infused (hopefully) spice kick. It could also use some flavor boosting on both the chocolate and peanut butter fronts- I like the lightness of the cake I ended up with, so I'll probably just embed more chocolate chunks next time. Straight replacement of butter with peanut butter apparently doesn't give the most peanutty flavor, so I could swirl in some extra peanut butter or try using chunky peanut butter? (You could also do a peanut butter frosting or just straight up spread it on top after the cake is done, but I'm not a big fan of frostings/icings/etc.) Hmm. Worth additional experiments!

musesfool asked about my Katara feels! I spouted off about Katara (and my feelings about her feelings) once before, so I will try not to repeat myself, heh.

Katara is the most mature person in the Gaang from the beginning to the end of the series, and that and her strong moral compass- she has enough empathy that she could manipulate anyone into anything, and enough compassion that she never will- mean that her growth curve is a lot less steep than everyone else's. Unlike the rest of the Gaang, she already knows and is confident in herself- emotions, values, beliefs, capabilities, potential, and all- and is unafraid to show it. The one major area of self-development she wrestles with is her anger, not because she doesn't understand it, but because she's afraid of how far she might go if she can't control it. Even then, her struggle isn't so much about anger management as it is the line between justice and vengeance. Katara doesn't want to cross that line because she recognizes what she'd become, and the parts of herself she would lose, if she does.

The bulk of Katara's growth arc is figuring out her friendships with the Gaang. I don't mean to gloss over the more romantic moments she has, but they're not the main part of her storyline, and I for one really appreciate that. Katara is super grounded in her family and her place in the Water Tribe; between taking over for her mom and having goofball Sokka as an older brother, she's relinquished any little sister vibe she ever had (I say this as the older of two sisters, lol). She's spent so long doing How to Adult that she doesn't really remember how to cut loose and be a kid again, so it's an interesting contrast to Aang and especially Toph. Katara's meeting with Aang is the first time she gets to be playful again, but it's not the cornerstone of their relationship progression; she and Aang get along because they're both fundamentally people people. With Toph, who's had to hide her mischievous nature for so long and has Huge Parental Issues besides, Katara finding her way back to her inner child is literally half of their conflict resolution, not to mention what seals their friendship. For obvious reasons, her issues with Zuko primarily revolve around regaining/rebuilding trust, but Katara joining in on the collective teasing is what really lets him know that friendship status has been achieved. It's the cutest and most relatable thing. :D

tl;dr Every A:TLA character is my favorite character, but I have SO MANY FEELINGS about Katara and how she's the best! (Also, if there's anything else you'd like me to babble about, feel free to leave a prompt.)