#they are a good representation of asian households lmao

[caramello-styles]

I can’t stress enough how much I love the good bad mother

[battlestar-royco]

here is part 2 of my sci fi recs masterlist! again, i could’ve gone on with even more recs but i decided to draw the line here. this set for the most part errs on the darker side, thematically, visually, conceptually etc. i personally find it super thought-provoking and intriguing but that’s just me. i highly recommend reading the tw under the cut if you’re thinking of watching, especially the matrix and space gothic slides. please view at your discretion <3

part 1/2

If you like WLW (um idk why I only made this slide based on identity; it just kinda happened lmao but I think it works):

Siren: (tw: parent loss, grief, thalassophobia) a mermaid surfaces in a cove town looking for her lost sister. Polyamorous relationship between a man, a black/indigenous woman, and the mermaid!!!! Environmentalism! As a person who has thalassophobia, I didn’t find this too hard to watch. There aren’t that many underwater scenes, thankfully.

Black Mirror: San Junipero: (tw: grief, but otherwise none that I recall; it’s pretty lighthearted) two women meet in a beach resort in the 80s and fall in love. Interracial wlw!

Orphan Black: (tw: suicide, infertility, rape implication, VB, language, drug use) a woman realizes she is one of several clones and uncovers an elaborate corporate conspiracy. This is one of my personal favorites with great rep of complex women of all ages and bodily autonomy. Several central queer characters and a black male secondary character!

Starfish: (tw: grief, a few jump scares and brief monstrous imagery, blood) after the death of her best friend, a young woman breaks into the deceased’s apartment and discovers a chain of music tapes that could save the world. Weird, subtle, and experimental. Not to sound like a surfer but you kinda have to allow yourself to be in the vibe. The main character and her friend were definitely a thing imo.

Annihilation: (tw: body horror, VB, disturbing imagery) a team of women scientists explore an anomaly that rapidly mutates genes. There are canonical and coded wlw and multiple (light-skinned) POC in this but the rep is short-lived. I put it on because although it should’ve been more ambitious with the casting, I think it breaks *some* ground for Hollywood sci fi with the all-woman team and more than one WOC. Wack ending though.

Mad Max: Fury Road: (tw: rape implication, violence) I think everyone knows about this one but: in the apocalypse, a woman breaks 4 younger women out of a harem. A badass car chase across the desert ensues. A bit light on plot/worldbuilding, but sooooo cool-looking and very thematic!!!!

If you liked STRANGER THINGS:

It: (tw: VB) don’t actually watch this lmao I’m serious. It’s really stupid, and not in a funny way. But I do think Stranger Things was inspired by this story overall. The modern It films are better but they’re also really kjslsklskls stupid? Stephen King in general is obsolete imo.

The Thing: (tw: VB) an alien that can take the form of others wreaks havoc on a scientific facility in Antarctica. It’s dark and vibey, but I feel like it’s just Alien in Antarctica with truly terrible special effects tbh?? Others feel differently. It’s also classified as sci fi/horror, so stay away if you’re easily scared! Not too good on representation.

Super 8: (tw: some language) a group of preteens witnesses an alien-caused train crash as they’re filming a home movie. Not diverse but I definitely think it inspired a lot of sci fi for the 2010s, ESPECIALLY Stranger Things. Not too scary either!

ET: (tw: it’s been a really long time since I watched so I don’t remember but it’s rated PG) I think everyone knows what this is about!

Alien: (tw: VB) truckers in space discover a deadly evolving alien. One of my favorite movies of all time! I love the aesthetic and the mood and worldbuilding so much. Ellen Ripley is one of the first Final Girls in the horror genre. I personally found this more of a sci fi than a horror movie but I’d say stay away if you’re nervous!!

Terminator: (tw: VB) a deadly android is sent to kill a woman who’s destined to birth the man who saves the world. Terminator 2 is way better imo because it centers on Sarah rather than the dudes saving her and trying to kill her. But it’s still worth a watch, you know, for the culture.

If you liked CONTAGION:

War of the Worlds: (tw: blood) pretty straightforward aliens come to Earth to take over. Sorry to rec another T*m Cruise movie but I really like the alien design and the apocalypsey feel of this one. Baby Dakota Fanning is in it too!

Falling Skies: (tw: VB, body horror, rape) alien invasion yada yada but the alien lore gets more interesting as it goes on. It’s kind of cheesy and yeah maybe I did discover it by looking up the iCarly boyfriend (and what about it??) but it’s nice to have on in the downtime. An Asian woman co-stars.

Knowing: (tw: blood) school students unearth a time capsule that contains a sheet from a girl who predicted all the tragic world events between 1959-2009. This is NOT a good movie but it’s SO hilarious to me because of the acting and contrivances. Fun to group-watch!!!!

10 Cloverfield Lane: (tw: VB, emotional abuse) a woman wakes up in a bunker to a captor who tells her that the world has fallen to alien apocalypse. I think this movie elevates the original Cloverfield in pretty much every way. Again, super tense and moody. The conflict revolves around whether or not the captor is being truthful.

Train to Busan: (tw: extreme VB and disturbing imagery) a man and his daughter are on a train when a zombie hops on at the last minute. It’s Korean with an all-Asian cast; Choi Woo-shik co-stars. I definitely wouldn’t watch if you’re scared of blood and gore. It’s very gross and violent.

12 Monkeys: (tw: ableism, violence) a man from the 2030s is sent back to the 1990s to prevent the plague that will end the world. I think the aesthetics of this are really cool but otherwise it’s not a favorite. But I think it appeals to people who like apocalypse and time travel stuff!

If you liked THE MATRIX:

Strange Days: (tw: rape, sex, nudity, VB, racism, police brutality) memories can be saved to hard-drives and sold on the black market for exorbitant prices. Very problematic and triggering presentation of rape, but young Angela Basset stars and there’s a condemnation of police brutality that’s still relevant 20+ years after its release.

Upgrade: (tw: ableism, VB, fridging) a disabled man installs an AI in his spine to help him move and investigate the murder of his wife. The premise is glaringly ableist and I feel weird even recommending it tbh but it’s got great visuals and a few good twists.

Altered Carbon: (tw: VB, weird interracial body switching, uhhh I haven’t finished this one IDK) in a society where human bodies are interchangeable, a man wakes up in a new body after 300 years of his mind being dormant. A Latina woman co-stars, two Asian characters in a subplot, a few other POC here and there as well. I think season 2 stars a black man.

eXistenZ: (tw: VB, anti-Asian racism, general weirdness? IDK it’s hard to describe. There are guns made out of bones and weirdly sexual visuals.) after someone tries to assassinate her, a video game designer and her bodyguard must play through her virtual reality game in order to save the only copy of the game.

Minority Report: (tw: VB, eye removal/insertion) all crimes are predicted and criminals reported before they are committed. The main character is preemptively accused of murder. This one is really white but it was one of the first movies that got me into sci fi. Early 2000s Colin Farrell <3.

If you liked WESTWORLD:

Humans: (tw: uncanny valley, objectification) androids are household helpers and public assistants throughout Britain until one day they start developing consciences. It hits a lot of the themes of Westworld without all the unnecessary pretentiousness, “edginess,” and “grittiness,” and it stars Gemma Chan and Colin Morgan!!

Blade Runner 2049: (^) an android is ordered to find and kill a human/android hybrid. It’s not without its issues but it’s one of my favorite movies of all time, right up there with Alien. So beautiful, so thematic, so thought-provoking (to me, anyway. I know a lot of people thought it was way too slow).

Ex Machina: (^) a man is invited to a private estate to help test the intelligence of an android. It’s kind of predictable imo but you know Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno are in it so we have to stan, and so is Domhnall Gleeson, for the SW fans! I like how isolated and quiet it feels.

I Am Mother: (tw: blood, gaslighting) after an extinction event, a young woman is raised by a lone android in a human repopulation facility until one day a woman knocks. It starts off slow and a bit generic, but I’m obsessed with the 2nd and 3rd acts of this movie---good acting, dialogue, and fantastic visuals. It has that same isolated feel as Ex Machina with only three characters, all of which are women/woman-coded!!!

If you liked ALIEN (space gothic):

Battlestar Galactica (2004-2008 reboot): (tw: genocide, war, colonization, VB, uncanny valley, rape, infidelity) space opera that follows humanity as it fights the ever-evolving and powerful enemy of their own creation: androids named Cylons. Um? I  L O V E  THIS SHOW SO MUCH and I truly do think it’s everything sci fi should be. There is a really unfortunate Miss Saigon-esque romance plot in season 1 and a lazily-written love triangle involving a black woman in season 3, but otherwise it’s one of my all-time favorites and I highly recommend. It’ll spin your mind and tug your heartstrings for years.

Black Mirror: Men Against Fire: (tw: genocide, war, nudity) soldiers in the near future protect citizens from mutant zombies, but one soldier starts experiencing strange hallucinations in the field. This is such an underrated Black Mirror episode starring a black man. There’s brief objectification of a black woman but it’s very anti-military and it has an interesting sterile aesthetic that reminds me of Alien.

High Life: (tw: rape, black holes/space anxiety, very disturbing) prisoners are given the option to join a space expedition and serve as experimental subjects en route to a black hole. Please please stay away if you are triggered by sexual violence of any kind. There’s almost no physical violence in this movie but it’s psychologically haunting imo.

The Faculty: (tw; VB, drug use) high schoolers discover their teachers are being possessed by an invading alien race. I LOVE THIS MOVIE LMFAOOOO. The cast is SO wild---Elijah Wood, John Oliver, Usher, Salma Hayek, Josh Hartnett??? And I’m probably forgetting more. The combination of the cast, the terrible dialogue, and shitty special effects is PEAK comedy imo. But bear in mind it’s bloody!!

Prometheus: (tw: body horror, VB, uncanny valley) a crew of scientists heads on a deep space mission to find the aliens who created the human race. A prequel to Alien, but I kind of view it as its own thing. Despite the plot holes, I love this movie too! It was one of my sci fi gateways and the visuals are stunning. It’s pretty gory though so if that’s not your thing stay away.

Life: (tw: extreme VB) a lesser Alien, but it provides all the space gothic tropes (jokey crew, shots of space, really pretty spaceship, everyone dies, creepy alien) with a well-known cast---Gyllenhaal, Reynolds, etc.

The X Files: (tw: a few episodes contain 90s racism, sexism, queerphobia etc but you can skip them) a lot of people have watched this so I barely have to explain, but it’s one of my favorites. Two FBI agents investigate multiple aliens and get involved in government conspiracies along the way. A good gateway!

A Quiet Place: (tw: child loss, VB, tension) I think most people know what this is about too. Alien apocalypse with aliens that hunt by sound. The daughter in the family is deaf, and so is the actress who portrays her. The representation of deafness was critically acclaimed.

[bladesoflightandshadow]

thoughts on alana 😔👌

SUCH a good fucking character !! i thought she was interesting before but that diamond scene in the recent chapter of pm rlly proved her to be one of the most interesting characters pb has created. she grew up in an immigrant working class household with a single dad and had to learn to look out for herself from a young age, & her job makes it difficult for her to trust others so she learns that the best way to survive is to only protect herself…..like of course she would turn out the way she is now??

plus i’m a sucker for sympathetic antagonists when they’re done well and she is done very well imo. not to mention she’s one of the few southeast asian characters in choices, which is the closest thing to representation i can get!! like i cannot think of a more powerful move than for pb to make her an official love interest, absolutely obliterating that male:female li ratio, other books could never

my only contention with her character is the fact that so much of her development seems to be hidden behind a paywall so far, which honestly i think is one of the biggest reasons why so many people still hate her so much. if we got to hear about her backstory for free like we do with the other ‘redeemed antagonist’-type characters (e.g. s*b*stien) i think the opinion of her would be a less harsh. then again she did date damien and people will still hate her for that regardless lmao ! hopefully pb continues to develop her as a character in the book like they did with olivia bc frankly it’s what she deserves and it’s what WE deserve

ask me about my thoughts on something!

[fishylife]

The Bad Kids Ep 10

Ok this is going to be the last post of the day lol. I’m going to spread out the next two episodes over the next two days. I don’t know if I’ll have time to write a post tomorrow after I watch ep 11 but hopefully I do.

- The title of this episode was 張叔叔, “Uncle Zhang.” This episode focused on Chaoyang and Dongsheng, and I think maybe we’re supposed to see that Chaoyang and Dongsheng may be more similar than we thought. None of this is concrete, but both of their actions could be considered manipulative, Chaoyang doing so to bring his family back together and Dongsheng doing so to clear his name. Not to mention they’re both math enthusiasts, which is superficial but still a thing. In a previous episode, Laochen mentioned that kids need a good upbringing or else they’re going to grow into rotten humans. Do we think that Chaoyang is going to grow into an adult like Dongsheng?

- The story started off with the story of “Three Little Chickens.” I don’t know how I managed to remember this but I recall seeing this book on display at the bookstore that is often revisited in the show. Anyway, the gist of the story was that the fox invited three chickens over for dinner. The three chickens discussed about whether to go or not, invoking all sorts of analyses and such. In the end, they decided to go, and were eaten anyway. I think the point of the story is that the chickens were overthinking and that sometimes things really are as they seem. I think Three Little Chickens is trying to tell us that the kids should NOT be getting close to Zhang Dongsheng. Their minds have been clouded by how he’s helped them out. But he is a criminal who is trying to cover up his crime and that is supposed to come before him showing some sympathy for the kids.

- Why does Chaoyang lie about Wang Li’s attack on him? I think on the surface, the reason is that his dad told him not to implicate Wang Li and Chaoyang is being a good kid. But I think another important reason is that he wants to draw attention away from himself. By not including Wang Li, then the cops will not know to look for Wang Li, and if they do find his dead body, then they wouldn’t know to link it back to Zhu Chaoyang’s family. He protects his father by protecting his feelings. And he protects his mother because if he told her what actually happened she would go apeshit on Yongping and Wang Yao.

- Everybody knows he is lying because there is no way that could happen. Ye Jun tries to question Chaoyang again, and this time, he refuses to answer. Maybe this is better for his conscience because not answering technically means he’s not lying. 

- Now we revisit Chaoyang’s relationship with his mom. Chaoyang finally tells us what he thinks of his mom, which is that he blames her a little too. We knew that Chunhong already had a bit of a complex about being a single mom. The gist of the family history was that Yongping was having an affair and so Chunhong pushed for a divorce. While Chunhong said Yongping had abandoned them, Chaoyang reminded her that she’d pushed him to sign the divorce papers. The thing is, Chaoyang is a kid who cannot see things objectively, so that is the part that he focuses on. For Chunhong, it’s very easy to understand why you’d want a divorce if you found out your husband was cheating on you. But as Chaoyang said, he felt that his parents were selfish and hadn’t tried hard enough to keep the family together. This is one of the first times we see Chaoyang feel so strongly about something, talking back to his mom and pointing out her flaws. To summarize, I think that Chunhong was not in the wrong for pushing for a divorce, but she holds grudges, and that is hard for Chaoyang to accept because he can’t change the fact that his father is his father. As for Chaoyang, he is a kid so it’s understandable that he’d fixate on his mom pushing his dad to sign the divorce papers, and not be able to see how his mother might’ve been hurt by her husband’s affair.

- After Chaoyang left the hospital, Yongping came over to visit. This time, their father-son bonding was a bit different. It wasn’t the usual fun, superficial stuff like going shopping or swimming. Yongping seemed like he was trying to re-integrate himself in their lives, asking about Chaoyang’s school work, and helping Chunhong with household matters. Is this what Chaoyang wanted? More importantly, is this what Chaoyang had planned to do? Or did it just fall in place like that?

- Ye Jun and Ye Chimin have a fun father-daughter relationship lol. In the first episode, it was really hard to like Chimin because of how bratty and snooty she was, but she tones it down over the course of the show, because we see her more with her dad. Ye Jun is the “cool dad,” and he always wants her to relax. I think Chimin consistently does very well in school and that’s already enough for her dad. I’m happy that we have this sort of relationship because frankly, my parents are the same. The “Asian parent stereotype” grinds my gears so bad because my parents are actually not like that! My parents didn’t care about me winning awards or stuff. They were proud of me when I did, but if I didn’t they were never like “oh look at that kid, why aren’t you like them?” Ye Jun = great Asian parent representation lol.

- Alright, back to the serious stuff. I was honestly getting SUPER freaked out by Zhang Dongsheng being so nice to the kids. I started getting freaked out when he was being harassed by the loan sharks and Yan Liang and Yue Pu got scared. At first, I wondered if he was letting them see him get harassed on purpose so that they’d feel bad and return the money lol. But after he switched them to a new location, that was when things started getting extremely weird. Zhang Dongsheng was almost fatherly to them. At this point, I started wondering if Zhang Dongsheng was playing the long con, to try to gain the kids’ trust so that they’d drop their guard around him, and then he’d kill them.

- Zhang Dongsheng has so far been able to manipulate Pupu and Chaoyang. Pupu is after all a young girl, and she hasn’t the world as much as Chaoyang and Yan Liang have. She doesn’t have much memory of her parents, so having a father figure is extremely exciting for her. By the time they have their meal at McDonald’s, we see that she is already EXTREMELY attached to him. It was super weird when she asked him what his dream was. At that point, I became so acutely aware that this man was a quadruple-murderer. I think Yan Liang and Chaoyang felt that too, but they didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to raise suspicion.

- Zhang Dongsheng had already been warming up to Chaoyang, and now that he’s saved Chaoyang’s life, Chaoyang does have a much better impression of him. It was Chaoyang who suggested to Yan Liang that maybe they should just destroy the second memory card.

- Yan Liang is the tough one. Zhang Dongsheng has no way of manipulating Yan Liang. He has nothing that Yan Liang could possibly want. The money is for Pupu anyway, and it’s not like he’s academically inclined and cares that much about school. So the only way Zhang Dongsheng could get to him was through guilt/threatening.

- (I keep accidentally typing Zhang Dongsheng as Yan Liang because Qin Hao plays Yan Liang in Burning Ice.)

- Zhang Dongsheng checked the extra memory card and found that it was empty. So that begs the question. Was that memory card empty all along? Is there another one? Did Yan Liang know it was empty? It’s not like he has access to a computer. I hadn’t paid that close attention to when Chaoyang had visited the computer bar so I thought that he had copied the file, which makes me think that maybe there is one more memory card.

- But after that Zhang Dongsheng goes apeshit because he’s like “I GAVE YOU 300,000 RMB, AND FOOD AND SHELTER, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” And like, he’s not wrong. They did extort a lot from him. And at that point, it became clear to me that the kids were...not totally in the clear. Their blackmail did technically ruin Dongsheng’s life. Is that fair though? Dongsheng took several lives. Is this fair punishment? In any case, it’s not the kids’ duty to be judge, jury, and executioner right? Or is it safe to call that karma?

- Pupu gets an asthma attack and she passes out, but when Yan Liang returns to the apartment, Zhang Dongsheng and Yue Pu are nowhere to be seen. Zhang Dongsheng had called the ambulance but he stops part way through. There’s a big chance that Pupu is now dead. Whether or not she’s dead doesn’t matter so much to him because Chaoyang and Yan Liang don’t know that she had an asthma attack. I have a feeling that Zhang Dongsheng may use Yue Pu to threaten Chaoyang and Yan Liang.

- Yan Liang and Yue Pu are now on Ye Jun’s radar. I don’t remember why he was looking up the runaways. Oh, maybe it was because he investigating their  hideout at the dock? But he wouldn’t know for sure whether Yan Liang and Yue Pu were the people staying there. Was he at the dock to investigate Chaoyang getting hurt? 

- Every time I get anxious about something I have to remind myself that this is a TV show and everything will work itself out by the end lmao.