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xkaylinh · 4 months
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Me: I really like WolfWren, ValCarol, CaitVi, Wenclair...
"But those aren't canon--"
Me:
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xkaylinh · 10 months
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xkaylinh · 1 year
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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Gemma Chan receiving direction from Chloe Zhao while filming The Eternals
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A wallpaper I made by cropping that image that just looks like Sersi looking pensive. What's she thinking about???
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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Asian actress in their live-action and animated roles in (mostly) Disney/Marvel/Star Wars
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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Crazy Rich Asians in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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xkaylinh · 2 years
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Asian actresses in their live-action and animated roles
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xkaylinh · 5 years
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This month in movies:
February 1 - Velvet Buzzsaw (Netflix): Did not live up to the hype of the trailer. Too campy and full of exposition.
February 4 - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (A-List): Watched for third time. So. Good.
February 5 - Miss Bala (A-List) : Gina Rodriguez is good, but the movie is a bit of a mess.
February 7 - Free Solo (A-List) : Scariest. Movie. Ever. How is this real.
February 9 - What Men Want (A-List) : Wholesome remake of a movie I haven’t seen. Good themes involving race, gender, work, relationships, and family.
February 10 - The Little Hours (Netflix): Hilarious. Perfect line delivery by everyone involved. 
February 11 - Alita Battle Angel (A-List) : Everything I wanted it to be. Really captures the essence of this character.
February 14 - Happy Death Day 2U (A-List) : Sticks to the winning formula of the first, but adds enough to feel fresh.
February 20 - Roma (Netflix): Best movie of 2018. Everything about it is beautiful.
February 24 - Personal Shopper (Netflix): Great performance by Kristen Stewart, plot never goes where you’d expect.
February 25 - Fighting With My Family (A-List) : Wholesome family comedy drama, enjoyable despite Vince Vaughn’s middling performance.
This month in music:
Sometime early February - I discover Billie Eilish and score pre-sale tickets to her sold out tour
Throughout February - Last Call with Carson Daly post videos of live performances by boygenius, Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Snail Mail
February 6 - Japanese Breakfast makes a cameo in a music video she directed for Charly Bliss
February 10 - Snail Mail also discovers Billie Eilish
February 13 - Sasami drops a music video
February 17 - Petal on Collector’s Edition
February 18 - Jay Som drops a single with Adult Swim
February 20 - Phoebe Bridgers on Song Exploder
February 22 - Sasami on The Monocle Culture Show
February 27 - Billie Eilish on BBC Radio 1
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xkaylinh · 5 years
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Concert Diary: Half Waif at the Echo on February 20, 2019
I first came across Half Waif when I saw them opening for Julien Baker back in 2017. That time, Nandi Rose Plunkett was accompanied by a drummer and a bassist. Seeing them again in 2019, this time as a headliner, I was surprised that she was performing alone.
Okay, let’s rewind for a second. This was my second show this year, and it was at the Echo again. I ate at home, again. I parked by the school nearby, again. I got there super early, again. I asked the guy at the front when doors was and he said it was the time on the ticket, again. I should know by now that for the Echo the time is for doors, not the show. I went to the bookstore, again--but it was closed! I walked around for a bit but didn’t find anything to do.
I’d noticed that the Echo served pizza from the pizza place next door. Feeling a little hungry already and needing to use the restroom (which was for customers only), I bought myself a slice of cheese pizza. The crust was thin and crunchy, but there wasn’t a whole lot of cheese like Costco’s cheese pizza. Still pretty good, though. By the time I returned, I was still the first person in line.
The first opener, Lisel, performed solo. She wasn’t playing any instruments, though. Instead, she used her hands to control the lighting on stage, at times in coordination with the music, which had a mesmerizing effect. When she wasn’t doing that, she was dancing, holding her mic with one hand and waving around the other. There were some images projected onto the backdrop behind her. She had a sort of electro-pop sound as well, but not quite as ethereal as Half Waif. She did have a really interesting and pleasant voice, though.
The second opener, Whitney Ballen, was a tiny human with a tiny voice. She was accompanied by a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer; she also played guitar. Their sound was a much more straightforward indie pop-rock. She was talking about the name of their album and told the story of how her mother told her, “In my life, you’re the star.” But then she followed it up with, “Just kidding, she never said that.” The crowd chuckled at first, but then was like, aw that’s actually kind of sad.
Nandi’s set-up is a bunch of junk I don’t understand. There’s two keyboards, an Apple laptop, and I don’t know what else, some sort of pre-programmed synth pad maybe. Sometimes she would play the piano parts live, sometimes she would step away and dance for a bit while the backing track did its thing. Well, she was pretty much always dancing, bobbing her head, flailing her arms. I guess that makes her sound like a crazy person, but she kind of was, like, in the best way. She had this really enormous stage presence that just commanded your attention. Her voice is somehow simultaneously soft and powerful, strong and vulnerable. I recognized some songs from watching her performances on YouTube, but the others were new to me. She mentioned how she’s from New York, but lived in Los Angeles for a short stint and didn’t like it here, which I thought was pretty funny. Even though a lot of her sound is probably computer-generated, everything about her just felt so genuine.
I came home with a CD of her album.
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xkaylinh · 5 years
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Some Thoughts on Music: Personal Preference, Diversity, and Accountability
I first heard of Half Waif when I saw them live opening for Julien Baker in 2017. I’m not usually into electro pop but there was something about this band’s sound that really captivated me. Afterwards, I followed up by looking up their live performances on places like NPR Tiny Desk Concert and Audiotree Live, both of which I also really enjoyed. During this time, though, the band was on the periphery, as I was getting more and more obsessed with Mitski and Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. I saw Half Waif again last night at their headlining show in Los Angeles. This time, Nandi Rose Plunkett performed solo, yet somehow she still managed to fill the stage with her presence. I was so blown away that I bought her album.
This morning, as I was listening to the CD, I was idly scrolling through her Instagram when I spotted a photo of her in a Sari. Wait, what?! I did some Googling and, yup, she’s part-Indian. I had no idea! This revelation filled me with Asian pride. I’m already a huge fan of her music after seeing her live the second time and listening to her album, but that made me love her just that much more.
Then I got to thinking: Is it a bad thing that I like certain artists based on their gender, race, or sexuality? I started listening to Tegan and Sara in the first place because of the novelty of them being lesbian twin sisters; I found out about Thao Nguyen as I was searching for Asian American musical artists. But with Nandi, it was the other way around, I came across her music first, then found out about her cultural identity. I do believe that Thao’s and Tegan and Sara’s bodies of work stand on their own, that I would’ve fallen in love with their music regardless of who they were. But who they were made me fall in love with them, not just as artists, but as people. I think it’s fine to want diversity in the people whose art you consume. Whether explicitly or implicitly, their experiences inform their art. Once I’d found myself rather unwittingly distanced from the music of straight white men, I’d found it kind of refreshing. It’s okay to be drawn to artists who may have shared some of your experiences, as well as artists whose experiences don’t quite mirror your own.
I wrote the following a few months ago, after seeing Thao perform live. At the time, I was reluctant to publish it for some reason. Coincidentally, in the last week or so, some news has come to light regarding Ryan Adams. I’ve never listened to his music, and now I don’t think I ever will. I’m a huge fan of Phoebe Bridgers, so it really puts a face to the issue and brings it into perspective. In light of all this, and my newfound appreciation for Nandi, I thought I should share this now:
For many years, Brand New was one of my most favorite bands. Their albums Deja Entendu and The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me were life-changing for me. I was so drawn to how depressing and self-deprecating their lyrics often were, and how experimental and challenging their sound was. I learned how to play a lot of their songs on guitar. I went to see them once, and even got a t-shirt at their show, which I would wear proudly at school for years until the color faded. I looked up to frontman Jesse Lacey as a musician, both for his vocals and for his songwriting. I never met him, though, but I’d read random accounts online that he wasn’t always the nicest with fans. The ancient beef they once had with Taking Back Sunday, and the fact that they did minimal press and interviews, only added to their alluring mystique. When they announced that their most recent album would be their last, I was heartbroken.
That is, until Jesse Lacey was faced with allegations of sexual harassment.
The band’s silence, which I once thought was cool, now looked like cowardice. Lyrics which once seemed like a guilty fantasy started to sound like a confession. I found that I was no longer able to listen to their music. I took down any covers I had recorded of their songs. I even considered burning the shirt I had of theirs, which would’ve been kind of funny because the image is of a tree on fire. I reacted a similar way when news came out about Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari, and Kevin Spacey. I’d finished Louie (the show) and Master of None, regarding them as some of the best half-hour shows I’d seen, and I was two seasons into House of Cards . Now, any time I see their names and their faces online, I am filled with disgust. I can hardly go through clips of Parks and Recreation anymore, and I loved that show so much. It’s a certain kind of betrayal when someone whose work you’ve looked up to for so long is accused of such horrible things. For a while, I actually believed that you shouldn’t have heroes, because they will fail you.
In my second year of college, I was taking a class on Asian American Fiction, and it opened my eyes to the amount of literature that I was missing out on from people who looked like me and shared my experiences. I figured, if there were so many Asian American authors out there I didn’t know about, surely there were also Asian American musicians I should look out for. And so, through research, I discovered Thao Nguyen. I tried getting into her music, listening to her first album, but was initially put off by her indie/folk sound, as it wasn’t really what I was into at the time. But still, I was thrilled that someone with my last name was making it in the music biz.
Flash forward a few years, and a Mitski song is covered on Adventure Time, one of my favorite shows. I looked into Mitski’s albums and was blown away. I immediately learned every song I could of hers, and I tried getting my friends to join me in recording covers. Through her, I then discovered a bunch of other artists, some of them Asian American, but all of them female. After a while, I figured, I should give Thao Nguyen another shot. So, I did the logical thing (haha) and skipped a few albums, going from her first album straight to her most recent one, and boy was I glad I did so. As obsessed as I am with Mitski, some days the only thing I want to listen to is that new Thao album. From there, I went backwards, listening to her third album, and then her second, and I found that, hey, I like these albums a lot, too. When she tweeted out that she was playing a free show in LA, I made plans right away to go see her.
For the past maybe year and a half, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to female artists, some of them Asian, some of them LGBTQ+. I would like to think that this is me being more open-minded towards the kinds of artists I am drawn to, but at around the same time this was happening, all the stuff with Brand New and Jesse Lacey went down, and for some reason, not only was I unable to listen to Brand New, I also had little interest in listening to new albums from bands I had listened to alongside Brand New, whom I associated with the same era in my life. I’d like to think this, and my current interest in female artists, is more correlation than causation. I don’t want to give him too much credit.
When Thao performed her song “Meticulous Bird” (and I honestly can’t say for sure if this was from a video or from when I saw her live), she dedicated the song to, as she put it, “survivors of all kinds,” and that meant a lot to me, not as someone who’s experienced sexual harassment, but someone who is a human being who knows other human beings who’ve posted the hashtag #metoo on social media. She performed her entire solo set with such passion and energy, it was so captivating to watch. I was very glad that I returned to her older albums, as I was able to recognize more than just songs from A Man Alive. Afterward, I saw that she was taking pictures with fans, so I decided to get in line. When I walked up to her, I told her that I am also Vietnamese American, and that it means so much to me and inspires me greatly that she’s out there making music the way she does. I asked for a picture, and then a hug, and she was so nice and said she really appreciated my comments. From then, I realized, the lesson to learn here isn’t that you shouldn’t have heroes, it’s that if your heroes betray you, find new ones. Find better ones. For every Jesse Lacey out there, there’s also a Thao Nguyen, and when you meet that new hero of yours, they’re going to be awesome.
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xkaylinh · 5 years
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I made it loop.
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xkaylinh · 5 years
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This month in movies:
January 2 - Went to see The Favourite. Very stylish, and absurd. Great performances by Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz.
Also watched Room on Netflix. Great performances by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. Almost made me cry. Several times.
January 3 - Watched Martha Marcy May Marlene on DVD. Great performance by Elizabeth Olsen. Mixed feelings about the story.
January 6 - Watched Certain Women on Netflix. Standout performance by lesser-known actress Lily Gladstone; the others are good but aren’t at their best here.
January 10 - Went to see Aquaman. Great visuals, very fun.
January 18 - Went to see On the Basis of Sex. Great performances by Felicity Jones and Armie Hammer, but I feel like overall this could’ve been better.
January 21 - Went to see Shoplifters. Great story and acting.
January 24 - Went to see If Beale Street Could Talk. Almost made me cry. Several times.
January 29 - Went to see First Man. Walked out because of shaky cam; will give it another shot some other time.
This month in music (links to tweets icymi):
January 4 - My first show of the year is Sasami’s first headlining show ever.
January 9 - Sasami drops a music video and announces her first album.
January 14 - Michelle Zauner, of Japanese Breakfast, appears on Pitchfork’s Over/Under and talks about butt stuff.
January 18 - Thao and the Get Down Stay Down play a show supporting Planned Parenthood, but it’s in Nor-Cal, so I don’t go.
January 22 - Mitski’s performance on KEXP is posted.
January 23 - Michelle Zauner appears on Song Exploder, hosted by Thao Nguyen.
Also, Better Oblivion Community Center begin to take over the world.
January 29 - BOCC drops a music video directed by Michelle Zauner.
January 31 - Mitski drops a music video in collaboration with Spotify, Lucy Dacus posts a cover of La Vie en Rose, Soccer Mommy posts demo/b-side.
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xkaylinh · 5 years
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