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hwarium
visitors book
thank you for visiting my corner of the internet *__* I love hearing about people's lives so please drop a comment and introduce yourself, anon commenting is allowed for this post! You can tell me anything, including:
- how you found me
- what you use dreamwidth for
- a piece of media you enjoyed but wish more people tried it out
- something that has made you happy recently
about
hwa
b. 1990s
favourite genre: science-fiction
weakness: sleeping on time
current concern: u-turns on my motorbike
brøther, I cräve the forbidden lämp
welcome to my personal journal ♡ I'm a longtime kpop stan (svt!), reader and fandom enthusiast. You can check out my reading or cooking tags to start.
Here, you can find essays like:
- learning how to be reflective about reading;
- sliding scale of tinhat comfort; and
- how I want to live this life.
I post my fandom meta in a separate account, @salutant. That's where you can find essays like seventeen's Love Languages, lore posts like dorm arrangements and translations. All of my seventeen writings are compiled into a masterlist here.
credits and permissions
credits
- dreamwidth layout is by tumblr user strulovic, some css taken from london fog by girlrock, and some customisations are my own (post tbc).
- as always, I always refer to the touchstone dreamwidth html/css post by girlrock.
- icon by twitter user itsres98.
- post art is by Kamome Shirahama, of the character Easthies from the manga Witch Hat Atelier.
- ui/ux inspiration taken from the tumblr themes:
permissions
for all of my work, I provide blanket permission for non-commmercial derivative work in the form of:
- translations;
- podfics; and
- fanart.
I'm happy for transformative works to be created (you don't need my permission!) This would include adaptations such as music or fanart, commentary, or a fic remix. I would be grateful if you could link back to the orignal work and let me know (I love the fandom economy, we are all doing this for free and for fun!!).
html/css/formatting ref [TBC]
>work in progress, come back in 10 business days
hi!
Date: 23 June 2021 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 December 2022 05:33 pm (UTC)i don't have a twitter account but i lurk there sometimes. i typed into the search bar either liu cixin or his book's name, to see what others have said about the book. then i read your tweet about him, it sounded interesting and you had a kpop profile pic. hm. i checked your profile and saw you liked svt! that was such a nice surprise for me, i did not expect to find a svt fan when i searched for 3bp. you had an ao3 link. and now you are (along with several other creators on ao3) one of my fave authors. i also like reading your non fic writing.
this got quite long, phew!
no subject
Date: 4 January 2023 02:46 am (UTC)oh dear was this the tweet where I said his brain was the size of nicki minaj's ass... I'm glad you ended up liking my writing!! yes, I'm very keen to talk about sci fi and to write kpop sci fi aus. See you around <3
hey!
Date: 20 December 2022 05:50 am (UTC)This journal is actually what inspired me to re-make my own dw (well that and the recent doomsday reports about twitter, where I mostly spend my time these days in terms of social media). But I thought it would be great to remake a blogging space for monthly media round-ups and creative fannish ventures.
Re: hey!
Date: 4 January 2023 02:47 am (UTC)all the best with dw! and welcome to the space. hope you have fun writing in long form (and hit me up if you need ideas <3)
hi!!!!
Date: 14 August 2023 04:18 am (UTC)Re: hi!!!!
Date: 14 August 2023 12:28 pm (UTC)helloooo
Date: 17 November 2024 10:28 pm (UTC)Re: helloooo
Date: 1 December 2024 12:06 pm (UTC)hello!
Date: 25 March 2025 04:26 am (UTC)i actually rediscovered/came back to your account for sort of selfish reasons T-T i haven't kept up with svt in a long while , and i've moved on to a different group. my only problem is they have virtually no fandom outside their country (they're not a kpop group) and even their home fans aren't keen on rpf. so i was really struggling, to the point that i've taken it upon myself to try writing for them. but i've never written anything before and no matter what i tried i could never be satisfied with my output. so, i had the genius idea of looking up all my old fave svt fics to try and take notes from them and that's how i found your account and fell in love with your writing all over again. and how i realized it was gonna be a while before i could make anything i can be really really proud of :')
but seriously, your blog and writing has been so helpful in my own writing journey. i hope i'll be able to weave emotions and character into my prose the way you do, someday!
side note, but tinatting on idols really is an amazing way to work on your character writing, isn't it?? maybe it's because they're real living people who don't exist within the context of a story the way fictional characters do, and how everything about them is in that vague liminal space between real and not real, that you have to give your own meaning to every little thing they do, but it feels more holistic? than say, writing a character analysis on a fictional character.
Re: hello!
Date: 25 March 2025 06:21 am (UTC)tinhatting is the best <3 I find that writing (rendering a scene) and imagining (world building) uses different muscles, and sometimes it's difficult to do both at the same time, so it's useful to revisit my old thoughts -- it feels like cheat sheet! Same for writing certain characters after a long period, it feels like I'm able to refresh and step into the headspace more easily because past me has put in the work.
all the best! writing will never not involve a struggle, but the act of persevering will always be rewarded!
(also -- you've caught me in the middle of renovating my dreamwidth layout so apologies for any wack colours or formatting!)
no subject
Date: 27 May 2025 03:48 pm (UTC)I love Jorge Luis Borges' writing. Hope you enjoy Labyrinths! I'm very interested in some of the videos you shared in that post and will watch them soon. Thanks for writing about them, I doubt I would have encountered them otherwise!
I was born in the 90s too and lately have been missing the informativeness of 2000s blogs/communities. Logging in by chance and nearly immediately reading a useful post from a recently updated journal moved me to comment ;_;
Hello!
Date: 29 October 2025 06:00 am (UTC)when i found your dreamwidth, i find myself agreeing to a lot of your criticisms on books i also didn’t vibe with like how i agree with vuong’s night sky with exit wounds to be his better work compared to on earth or time is a mother. i do look at your recs & trust that it’s going to be a good time if i happen to pick it up (trying out murakami’s 1q84 rn). this is an anon message bc i don’t have a dw acc but wanted to express my gratitude and admiration for how you write. i love your personal essays, the cn opera & thoughts about how you want to live your life.
a piece of media i enjoy is mr robot the tv show or decision to leave the movie. i feel like they’re both out there but not out there since i rarely see anyone rave abt it despite the critical acclaim they received. there’s a manga i enjoy too which that i feel is more of a hidden gem but i feel wary of putting it out here due to its content so instead i’ll leave you with a poem by leila chatti: after touching you, i think of narcissus drowning.
happily getting back to writing recently. i know you’ve posted a couple of considerations/inspirations for how you arrive at your stories (eg weight of heaven & ours for the moment) but if you ever do a deep dive on how you brainstorm, decide which scenes to cut and include, how to frame those scenes, i would be so over the moon to pore over it. thank you for sharing your work. i’m grateful to have had encountered it.
Re: Hello!
Date: 29 October 2025 12:37 pm (UTC)- To answer your question on book notes - my initial thoughts on a book is always analog, and usually within a month of reading a book or consuming that content. The notes are always more honest and I try to capture impressions and connections. In terms of what I capture, you may have already read it in this post [learning to be reflective about reading]. If I have a lot of thoughts about a book (that is worth sharing and not just blithely hateful without construct), those notes become curated as digital for the purpose of posting on dreamwidth. I have a thesis against taking digital notes -- I took most of my notes in university by hand and I believe creating and retaining that physical form is superior for memory retention.
- :) do feel open to tell me if you ever disagree with one of my ideas or did not like a book I've recced! perhaps I can understand you better and give another recomendation. the longer I live, the more I realise how subjective an experience of a book can be. Recently, a dreamwidth moot disliked tartt's secret history, which I loved, and in reading that review, I realise I probably idolise academia/latin & classics majors/rich kids more than I thought :)
- I've written both your recs down on my recs list! I'll be honest, I'm not good with thriller/horror but will keep an eye out for mr robot!
- thank you for the poem, I've read it out loud and will write it out in my notebook. I know you just shared it, but it feels like a gift!
- if there's a poem which could represent that manga for you, what would it be?
- I'm currently working on a story (for a non-svt fandom), but I've been keeping a diary as to the thoughts I've had throughout that brainstorming and drafting process. I'll keep you in mind when I revisit those notes to see if I can wrangle into a post (won't be an author's note, it will definitely go on this personal journal as a writer's reflection).
once again, thank you for saying hello <3
Re: Hello!
Date: 1 November 2025 04:41 am (UTC)- re: book notes / tl;dr - was wondering if you have a ritual to revisit all your notes when you start working on a story and if they’re all in one concentrated notebook? part of the reason i find myself moving away from analog / resistant to it is bc i feel like i keep losing track of the things i had written down. like where can i find that reference when i don’t recall which book/which author/who said it but i can only remember part of the phrase. which is much easier to ctrl +f on a digital doc and thus i'm swayed to house my notes in digital land unfortunately no matter how much i want to keep an analog copy sadly ahaha how do you go around that if you encounter that at all? i’ve heard some people use it as an opportunity to flip through all their notes in one sitting to find what they’re looking for bc you might never know what associations could come through. do you happen to do that too when you are cultivating a story / hitting a wall while brainstorming? i know you’ve mentioned previously in relation to ours for the moment where you read the short story and knew you wanted to play with the elements of the story somehow, so do you collect these stories/inspirations that you might want to use in the future in a separate page and notebook or do you keep it in the same page to the page where that specific book note is located (also curious if book notes also extend to your journalism readings & short stories! bc i find myself getting bogged down in writing my own reading notes sometimes). sorry if this is nosy i love looking through writers’ notebooks to inform my own practice and see what i can learn / not realize yet i can do when it’s staring me in the face.
- re: books/reading/recs - i confess i am not well versed in fantasy or sci-fi bc its convention usually means a Lot of names where i already have a hard time keeping track of names in a contained literary fiction & so i perceive the burden of reading sci-fi/fantasy to be much higher than say a thriller or a literary fiction where the characters tend to be constant/systems are similar or maybe a slight dystopian twist that is not as difficult to keep track of compared to a magical system with maps. i think one of the best parts as a writer or a reader being in conversation with other readers is seeing what resonates with them/the reader, what they take away, what impressions they leave while interacting with your work that comes from their own experience. i’ve plodded through secret history and while i like donna tartt's writing style, i have yet to finish it or the goldfinch (got halfway through with this one before i just left it cold. need to finish it at some point though bc it is good and solid, i think i put it down simply bc smthg else snagged my attention both times ._,) im currently reading through the poppy war… i’m not quite sure how i feel abt kuang yet & curious if you’ve read her other works!
- re: dtl / mr robot - not sure if this will assuage your worry of going into either of them if you do so but it’s not terrifying (i am a scaredy cat). well actually i find mr robot more terrifying than decision to leave bc it does have a substantial amount of gun violence baked into it. there are of course other tv that does the same if not even more horrifying amounts of deaths in it (e.g. game of thrones) but the way mr robot is filmed just gives you chills where each death matters (the framing of the scene, the angles of filming, the pacing, they all add that suspense to make it more horrifying at least to me) // sorry went on a tangent there. i look forward to your thoughts on them if you ever feel inclined to share or if you get to them (no pressure!). regardless, i’m already content that you would consider it. that feels special on its own to me. :]
- re: poetry/manga - this is a tough question & it feels like a cop out to think of either siken or vuong but the line by vuong on how being offered tenderness is the very proof you’ve been ruined or siken's the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it (snow and dirty rain) is what that book means to me. the main character though her story is pretty much encapsulated in taking it by vievee francis at least until line 13 or like 14.5 (i pulled out my poetry collection for this one).
- re: story - i'm looking forward to it <3 if that post ever comes to be, i’ll be on the lookout. ty for wanting to think of me. it’s very kind of you to do so.
i hope you have a good weekend!
Re: Hello!
Date: 23 November 2025 05:15 am (UTC)book notes / tl;dr
Difference between analog and digital notes
books/reading/recs
Thank you for being interested in my thoughts and reading this lengthy reply. I hope 2025 finishes off beautifully for you!
no subject
Date: 29 October 2025 08:19 pm (UTC)I love your journal layout so much! The rounded corners, the colours, the shadow, the blockquote 💕 I’m all full of layout envy 😂
As you can probably (sadly) tell my Dreamwidth is a bit all over the place, alas. But, I am *here* the most of all public/semi-public spaces.
Happy things lately: I’m randomly watching a Thai drama that feels like a cross between some kind of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft with Percy Jackson.