Aka a 2022 novel set in the Appalachians during the late 1990s and early 2000s with the euphemistically called "Opiod Crisis" very much a main theme, and simultanously a modern adaptation of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. The last Copperfield adaptation I had seen or read was the Iannucci movie starring Dev Patel in the title role which emphasized the humor and vitality of the novel and succeeded splendidly, but had to cut down the darker elements in order to do so, with the breathneck speed of a two hours mvie based on a many hundred pages novel helping with that. Demon Copperhead took the reverse approach; it's all the darkness magnified - helped by the fact this is also a many hundred pages novel - but nearly no humor. Both adaptations emphasize the social injustice of the various systems they're depicting. Both had to do some considerable flashing out when it comes to Dickens's first person narrator. No one has ever argued that David is the most interesting character in David Copperfield. As long as he's still a child, this isn't noticable because David going from coddled and much beloved kid to abused and exploited kid makes for a powerful emotional arc. (BTW, I was fascinated to learn back when I was reading Claire Tomalin's Dickens biography that Dickens was influenced by Jane Eyre in this; Charlotte Bronte's novel convinced him to go for a first person narration - which he hadn't tried before - and the two abused and outraged child narrators who describe what scares and elates them incredibly vividly do have a lot on common.) But once he's an adult, it often feels like he's telling other people's stories (very well, I hasten to add) in which he's only on the periphery, except for his love life. The movie solved this by giving David - who is autobiographically inspired anyway - some more of Dickens`s on life and qualities. Demon Copperhead solves it by a) putting most of the part of the Dickens plot when David is already an adult to when Damon/Demon is still a teenager (he only becomes a legal adult near the end), b) by making Damon as a narrator a whole lot angrier than David, and c) by letting him fall to what is nearly everyone else's problem as well, addiction.

( Spoilers ensue about both novels )

In conclusion: this was a compelling novel but tough to read due to the subject and the unrelenting grimness. I'm not saying you should treat the horrible neglect and exploitation of children and the way a rotten health system allowed half the population to become addicts irreverently, but tone wise, this is more Hard Times than David Copperfield, and sometimes I wished for some breathing space in between the horrors. But I am glad to have read it.

So … BTS did a liveshow recently (when they video stream casual conversation for fans, responding to questions viewers type into the chat and such) and announced that they’ll have a studio album coming out in spring 2026, accompanied by a world tour. It’ll be their first world tour in 7 years! First there was the pandemic (which led to the cancelation of 2020’s scheduled Map of the Soul tour, for which I had tickets), and then they went into the military. They hadn’t even done a live show with all of them together since September 2022. (The first member of the group joined the military at the end of 2022, and the last member was just discharged less than 2 weeks ago.) They were all emotional about being all together again after so long.

There’s been some confusion among muggles (lol, non-ARMYs) about whether BTS have broken up, since they’ve all been doing solo work over the past couple of years and not group projects. But the group never broke up. The entire time that they’ve been doing solo work, they’ve been describing and defining themselves as members of BTS. The group was just not able to be working together for logistical reasons, as all members joined the military at various times, so it was a great opportunity to explore their own independent music.

All the members of BTS have different musical and performance interests, which can only be expressed so much while performing as a group. Their management company has always encouraged them to pursue their own individual projects if they wanted to, but their schedule with BTS was so taxing that most of them really didn’t have the time/energy to do side projects.

They staggered the dates when each of them entered the military, so that the ones who went in later had time to do solo projects before joining up, while the first ones to join had time after they were discharged. So, for example, Yoongi/Suga did a solo tour before he joined the military in September 2023 (he was just discharged a week or two ago). Hobi/j-hope did the reverse, joining the military earlier (in April 2023) and doing a solo tour at the start of this year after his discharge. There was a period of only a few months when all seven members were in the military, because they scheduled it so that the rest of the time there was always at least one of them out, making music.

Each of them, while they were free but other members were in the military, took this time when BTS as a whole was separated as an opportunity to each pursue their specific passions. One member, for example, really likes jazz, and so he produced a bunch of very jazz-influenced music. Another had always wanted to have time to improve his piano skills, and so worked on that and added more piano playing to his solo performances. One went full on into mainstream hip-hop. A few of them wrote deeply introspective albums about their personal emotional struggles. All seven of them had a chance to really explore their own personal musical interests as individuals who make up BTS.

But now they’ve all completed their mandatory military service and are starting up group projects again. One member (Jin) will be in the U.S. throughout the latter half of this month on his solo tour, so that’s apparently when a lot of work will be done on the album, since during the liveshow they specified they’d be following him to the U.S. to work on it.

There’s also a live album that will be released in just a couple of weeks. It’ll be their first group album release since June 2022’s anthology “Proof.”

It’s an exciting time to be BTS ARMY! Now that they've announced a tour in spring 2026, I have more motivation than ever to save money! The tickets I bought more than 5 years ago were more than $300 each, so who knows how much they'll cost now! (TicketMaster is such a scam.) Plus airfare and such...

1) As part of sunshine_revival's first challenge: "Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community."

I just shared some necklaces I made a few months back over at everykindofcraft. I did a lot of beading in the first 13 years after I took it up, but things have been rather start and stop in the last 10. A craft store closeout + a challenge from a relative got me making some new things in the last few months. That probably also contributed to my starting everykindofcraft here, because I saw various people posting wonderful stuff that not many people were seeing, whereas on Pillowfort some general craft communities there are always getting posts.

Hopefully we can get more crafters sharing here!

2) Have been watching a slew of Apple+ shows as our subscription cutoff nears. The miniseries Disclaimer was framed in an interesting way, one which I suspect had a lot more clarity in multimedia than in the book, but perhaps not. It uses multiple narrative voices and POV for the narration, including second person, first person, and some omniscient narrative. This was pretty relevant because of who was being framed (literally) and who actually got to have their voice(s) heard. ( Read more... )

3) Surface is a story told in a much more straightforward manner even though it also involves an unreliable narrator of sorts in that our central character had memory loss and is trying to piece together her past which also involves a parental mystery. ( Read more... )

4) Also saw the movie Wolfs, which is fine but largely a vehicle for us to watch Pitt and Clooney do fun stuff. ( Read more... )

5) Finished The Big Conn and Cowboy Cartel, two documentaries about big crime. I found the former much more interesting, even though I'd heard about the case before. What was probably the most striking about both was the role of the media in precipitating change. ( Read more... )

6) Careme was marketed as the story of the first celebrity chef, who served Napoleon, Tallyrand and others. It was certainly about far more than cooking. ( Read more... )

1) A few more trip photos posted over at common_nature, these of Oneonta Gorge.

2) Saw The Flash film and found it better than expected but also so-so. The big problem to me was the lead himself. Granted his character isn't really written to have any charm but a good bit of the humor fell flat for me, and when he was on screen twice as much it made it worse. ( Read more... )

3) Just an update about the bed situation listed in my last post. Everything went well! The youngsters delivering the bed had no problem with taking the old one down to the moving truck, and moving the other one to another room. ( Read more... )

4) A new wrinkle in the last few weeks is that during yet another heavy rain we got a leak near our front door. ( Read more... )

5) I quite liked this diagram of the interaction between entertainment production and fan activities. This came from an interview on Henry Jenkins' blog about a new set of textbooks for studying fandom.

Aka the series which was delayed for years, with the result that there is much preemptive sceptism. Having watched the first three episodes which got dropped a few days ago, I very much like what I'm seeing so far. The way the series provides a distinct feeling of a place and people reminds me of what the show Ms Marvel did with the Pakistani community in New Jersey - in this case, Riri Williams comes from the Chicago South Side, as does the director, google tells me, and that's where she returns to in the series' pilot.

( Spoilers could make an Iron Suit in a cave, but would need the cash to be brought to the cave first )

The Bon Dance last night was incredible! The yard in front of the Kauai Soto Zen Temple in Hanapepe was all decorated with paper lanterns and string lights, with a big circular display area where the performances took place. There were food booths, and the food I saw people eating looked good, but we didn't eat there. Maybe next time, because this is something I would like to do every year! I'd seen the announcements every year since we moved here (including two years when it was canceled or done virtually because of COVID restrictions) and always wanted to go.

It was a great community event, with lots of people wearing beautiful yukatas and kimonos. There's a pretty large Japanese population on Kauai, and this seemed to be a popular event with the Japanese community. But there were lots of other people too, mostly families who appeared to be residents, but there were a few visitors, too. Some from very far away, like South Africa and Australia.

We found chairs near the performance ring, and we had a pretty good view. The first performance was a group of taiko drummers, who were very impressive. The beat of their drums was so powerful that we could feel it reverberating in our chests! I've always loved taiko drumming, and I went to a performances a couple of times back in Berkeley, but seeing it performed outdoors on the temple grounds under the paper lanterns was really different. It felt less remote, more like we were all part of the same community event, which of course we were.

After the taiko drumming performance, there was a transitional period, when the taiko drummers performed with flautists and a singer while dozens of people (maybe a hundred people? there were a lot) danced a dance with set steps that everyone performed simultaneously as they moved in a slow circle around the performance area. It was a beautiful dance, and it was neat to see how some people were very graceful and practiced, while other people went out there and did their best to dance along and no one judged them. During this time, though, a high percentage of the people dancing were in kimonos, yukatas, and flowing Japanese-style shirts. The sun started setting during the dance, and the sky was all pink and blue and gorgeous.

Then there was a break while they removed all the taiko drums, and a lot more people went into the circle, more of them just casually dressed in street clothing, though the people in Japanese clothes didn't leave the circle. They were just joined by a lot more people.

And then we were BLASTED by recorded music that was probably 5 times louder than the live performance had been, so loud that Shannon and I could hardly bear it. Everyone continued dancing in their slow circle, but Shannon and I pretty rapidly decided that we'd had enough. Shannon insisted that we could stay if I wanted to, but I'm prone to headaches and I knew music that loud wasn't going to do my brain any favors. So we headed out.

But it was a lovely evening, and a perfect date night. It's been a long time since we were able to go out to stuff like this together much. We've been to the theater together a few times during these past several years, but outdoor stuff like this festival and the Pride parade are a very different sort of thing. This festival would have been difficult (though not impossible) to navigate on my knee scooter, for example. And the bathrooms were port-a-potties, which would have been a nightmare when I was having my digestive problems. So it is very exciting to be well enough to be able to easily go out to this sort of community event.

I saw the physical therapist today, and we're getting me started back on my exercises. I've actually improved since I last saw him, because I've been walking whenever I can, especially since the injections started helping me feel better and I could leave the house more often. My legs are quite strong again now, but the muscles are still very tight and need stretching. It's nice that I've overcome some of the atrophy that was a huge problem when I first went to PT after my second foot surgery! I remember my left calf muscle was weirdly concave because of atrophy in late 2021 / early 2022.

So I'm going to start doing physical therapy stretches at least twice a day again, along with my frequent walks (whenever I have the opportunity!) and the water exercise class twice a week. It seems like a good plan.

I talked with the physical therapist about the fact that I think we need to set our expectations for the long term, because my body just doesn't heal/adjust quickly, so it's going to take a long time to get those muscles more flexible. I'll work on it, but my effort won't be enough ... it'll take time. In the past, I've always felt that if I just worked harder, then I could make things happen faster, but with my body's recovery it definitely doesn't work that way. It's a cliche, but it's also true: some things take time. That's frustrating, but it's also reassuring. If I don't seem to be improving noticeably, it isn't my "fault" ... it's just my body taking its time, and I need to learn to be okay with that.

In an example of how small the community is here on Kauai, Mary is working with the same physical therapist that I'm working with ... and the woman I met on Wednesday at the writers' group is friends with Gary and Mary because they all go to the same church. Kauai really is like a small town spread across an island's space.

Shannon and I are heading to Hanapepe for a Bon Dance festival tonight, which should be fun!

Another nice day today, though less eventful than yesterday. I started out the day with writing morning pages and doing some meditation, and I think that really started the day off on a good note. I didn't get a lot of work done, but I felt cheerful. In the late afternoon, I went to Poipu with Shannon and Gary, and I went for a walk while they swam.

I notice that my knee seems to be doing better since I stopped doing my physical therapy exercises a couple weeks ago. I think a problem I have is that I expect noticeable improvement from PT exercises, and so I overdo it a little bit. I think this is especially an issue when I have weekly appointments with the physical therapist, because I feel like I should be making notable improvement every week. My body just doesn't heal or change that fast. So I think I need to establish different expectations with my physical therapist. I'm seeing him tomorrow to restart treatment, so I'll talk to him then.

Currently, walking and the water exercise class seem to be serving me well, and I've even been able to go up and down the stairs a few times this week without pain, but I know I should be stretching. I just have to figure out how to do it without hurting myself.

Tomorrow Shannon and I are also going to the Bon Dance festival at a Buddhist temple in a nearby town. There will be fancy lights, taiko drum performances, dances, food, etc. These Bon Dances are held at various places on the island every year, and I've always wanted to go, but this is the first time my health has allowed it. I'm looking forward to it!

As far as musical biopics go, they tend to be more of a miss than a win in many cases, with the plus side that at least you, potential watcher, get to listen to some good music even if the script fails. There are exceptions, i.e. films where both the music is good and the film doesn’t feel like a visualized wikipedia entry, for example, Love & Mercy, which escapes the formula by picking two distinctly different and important eras of Brian Wilson’s life instead of his whole life, with 1960s Brian on the verge of creating his masterpiece and having a mental breakdown played by Paul Dano and 1980s Brian, in the power of a ruthless exploitative doctor but about to freed via encountering his second wife, by John Cusack. The performances are great, the different eras are poignantly commenting on each other, and even were Brian Wilson a fictional character, the film would be worth watching. If Love & Mercy wins for originality with the template, Walk the Line (about Johnny Cash) wins for doing the formula expertly, in fact so well it became endlessly copied and parodied thereafter. James Mangold, who directed Walk the Line to a lot of commercial and critical success back in the day, waited for near two decades before going near another musical biopic again, but he did last year, resulting in A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan, which courtesy of the Mouse channel I have now watched.

( You who are so good with words and at keeping things vague )

All in all: good, very good, though not great. But it’s the first film in a while where I absolutely want to have the soundtrack.

I went to the West Side Writers' Group this evening, and though there were only 2 of us there, it was SO fun!

Apparently, there are sometimes 6 or 7 people, sometimes as few as 2, and today was one of the small groups, but I didn't mind. The other woman there (M.) is the person who created the group, and she's a writer who loves BTS and Eurogames, so we had tons in common! She also doesn't live too far away, just the next town over from Kalaheo. So we exchanged numbers and maybe we'll try to get together to play games or something. I'm not going to push it, though. I don't want to be the desperate person looking for friends.

Even if I am kind of the desperate person looking for friends. lol

This writers' group only meets once a month, and it's aimed primarily at writers who are in the process of working on projects. Apparently there are a couple of novelists, a couple of poets, an essayist, etc. The woman who created the group is one of the poets, and she created the group partly to encourage Kauai writers to finish pieces and submit for publication. Talking with her was very inspiring, and I'm going to try to start morning pages again (a practice of writing three pages long-hand first thing every morning). I've done it for various periods in the past, but last time I gave up right about a year ago, because I found that creative juices weren't flowing, and every morning I was just writing about my plans for the day. But now I'm feeling more inspired to write again, so I'm going to give it another try.

I also discussed with M. my idea of rewriting one of my Korean short stories in English as a children's story. She said it might be interesting to write it in English, then later translate the Korean to see the differences. I think I might actually avoid re-reading the Korean version before writing it in English, because I remember the gist but not the details. My goal right now is to write this story before the next meeting of the writers' group in a month.

-

It was actually a pretty exciting day, because I also met with my old grammar class for the first time in 2 years. Our old teacher always seemed unimaginably far above my level, but today after 2 years I actually knew more about some grammar points than she did. It was shocking. She still knows a lot more than I do about Middle Korean, but in a lot of other ways we're on a more similar level now. I'm blown away.

The class was really fun: reading aloud together, translating, and discussing grammar. My reading aloud still needs a lot of work. My pronunciation seems to be okay, but I read very haltingly, just a few words at a time without good intonation. I read dialogues aloud with my friend Zsofi every Thursday, so I think that will help in the long run. But if I'm also reading aloud with this study group every week, that will help even more.

I'm going to a writing group tomorrow evening, and I'm really looking forward to it! I'm the slightest bit nervous, just because it's been so long since I've written anything ... I feel like a bit of a fraud.

Except ... well, I have written some short stories in the past couple years, but they've only been in Korean. lol. One of them might be worth re-writing in English. It isn't any great work of literary brilliance, but it might be a way to dip my feet back in the writing pool. I wouldn't be translating the story I wrote in Korean, but just telling the same story in English. It's a simple little story about a cat and a bookstore owner, but it's cute. (Maybe written as a children's story? Hmmmmm...)

I also have a story I wrote as a fanfic that had a central concept that really appealed to me, and I've been kicking around ideas about how to apply it to a novel format. I'd only be using the central concept, and the concept would be much less central in the novel (whereas it was the whole point of the fanfic). The story itself would be entirely different and much more complex, but the idea has been exciting me. Again, it gives me a sort of jumping off point. It's a sort of magical realism sort of thing, which I haven't written before outside of fanfic. I think it's neat that fanfic allowed me to explore different styles and genres than I previously felt comfortable with, which flexibility I can now apply to my non-fanfic writing.

I also wrote some historical fiction when I was writing fanfic, which is another thing I hadn't tried before. I did a lot of research for them and really enjoyed it. I wrote one story that took place in pre-WWII London which might be fun to turn into something else. It would be fun to use all that research for something different.

I also did a lot of research for a fanfic that included a Deaf character and some stuff about the Deaf community. I wonder if I might be able to put that research to use somehow, too.

When I was writing back in grad school and before, I wrote exclusively modern-day slice-of-life sorts of stories based on my own experiences. I think if I were to take some of these ideas, some of this research that interested me, and apply it to themes or experiences from my own life, it could yield fun stuff. I'm excited to stretch my writing muscles in different directions.