i'm still just catching my breath from the absolute shitstorm that this past semester has been. it's the first semesters i've had without having to be working a part-time job, and i'm really thankful that i could afford that kind of luxury. i don't know how i managed to survive two semesters ago working a full time job with a full course load. what the fuck.

four months of nearly being driven to breakdowns by computer science assignments, clawing my eyes out from boredom thanks to my absolutely shit shakespeare professor and despite spending the last three days of my semester throwing together an essay and regretting my entire life, now that the dust has settled i can really say it's been the most entertaining and strangest semester i've ever had. my comp sci prof is.... really something else. 

this semester was a lot different not only because i decided not to work, but because (as trivial as it sounds) i actually got to know a lot of people in my classes, which made a world of difference for me. i'm not sure i would have even passed comp sci without my classmates. my school is infamous for a lack of community and school spirit, since it's primarily a commuter school in a kind of shit location. yeah. i don't know why i decided to go there, either. some days i regret it, some days i don't. i go back and forth a lot. but i only have a few years left, so i might as well make the best of it, right? 

i'm still pretty exhausted from the last couple weeks of school, but once i get back on my feet there's a couple personal projects i've been meaning to work on, as well as catching up with the huge backlog of movies i've built up. i'm excited to be back in the loop! rewatching the iron man trilogy in the past couple days have really reminded me of how much i missed watching movies. 

i think this summer's gotten off to a good start: this morning i got my marks back for a class i thought i wouldn't do very well on, but to my surprise it was a really, really good mark. i think to treat myself i'm going to go buy myself that lipstick i've had my eye on for awhile. i'm maybe gonna not think about school for a few weeks now. yeah. 

????

i don't think it's fair to say that i've always been gay, but in retrospect: holy shit i've been gay for a long, long time. while i'm proud of myself for coming to terms with a lot of different aspects of my identity, i'm angry at how long it took me to get to this level of comfort with myself. growing up, there was no one 'like me' around me. the only gay people i knew were caricatures on tv, or skinny white 'alternative' girls on the internet. it wasn't until the end of high school i was introduced to margaret cho- a queer asian-american woman who struggled with the same stuff as me: the gap between immigrant children and their parents, the culture shock, body image, being an outsider in all the places you're supposed to fit in, all of it. it meant a lot to me that there was someone that experienced the same stuff i did. it wasn't until i started university that i found anyone with really similar, meaningful interests as me, and that wasn't even because of university. it was thanks to the internet that i met some of my now closest and dearest friends, queer kids from all different backgrounds that i could not have made it this far without.

while i couldn't be happier with who i am and where i am today, especially growing up in a household where sexuality, let alone homosexuality was barely ever discussed or acknowledged, i am furious. i'm furious that there was no visible, tangible queer representation for us, and that most representation was usually mockery. the only role model i had growing up for me was mulan, really, and she wasn't even korean. but beggars can't be choosers, right? sure, there's been some progress. there are a lot more gay people on tv, sure. but where are the lesbians? where are the women of color, the trans people of color, where's my fun tv show about a group of queer friends that get up to shenanigans and discover meaningful relationships? i'm angry. i'm tired of seeing the same 5 different hetero white people do the same things over and over again. i want our stories to be told, and not from the clumsy hands of some straight white middle class american dude that "knew some lesbians in college and has a chinese friend." i'm not here for that anymore.

despite my parent's absolute refusal to talk about gay people: here i am, raised by the two most traditional korean parents that have ever walked the earth. here i am. despite the media's refusal to acknowledge my community and our stories, here we are. despite everything, i'm still here. and i want to keep being who i am.

i'm terrified about the day that i might have to tell my parents that i am, despite their best efforts, gay. i want to tell them because it's an important part of who i am and i don't want to shut them out of that part of my life. i get sweaty thinking about having to explain that the fact that i'm bisexual doesn't make me any less attracted to the person i'm currently with. i still haven't come out to one of my oldest childhood friends because i'm scared of how she might react. i'm scared because despite my absolute conviction of who i am, i can't just shake off the expectations my family raised me to have.

i've been wanting to talk about this for a long time. it's been on my mind since ellen page came out, since it made me realize how i would be completely fine with coming out to a random group of people but not to my own parents. isn't that fucked up? it's fucked up being raised the way i was because i can't exactly bring myself to resent my parents for all the shit they've taught me that i had to unlearn over years and years and years. i've rejected so many things about myself for so long that now i want to be everything at once. i've had so much internalized misogyny and biphobia and misdirected anger that i'm now just learning to allow myself to just be. 

growing up, i think i tended to define myself by the things that i wasn't. i'm not like those other girls, i'm not like those asians, i'm not like that. and i hate that it was the way it was. i can't help but think that if someone was there to reassure that the things i was wasn't something bad, or something to be ashamed of, maybe it wouldn't have taken me so long to climb out of this pit. i wish i could go comfort my younger self somehow, tell her that i'm going to meet so, so many amazing people and do incredible things and that things aren't going to be doom and gloom forever. i'd like to think she'd be proud of who she grew up to be. maybe a little baffled, but still proud. yeah.

something else.

i've been thinking a lot about the direction of this blog, specifically what direction i wanted to take my film reviews in. what would keep my reviews different from the thousands (possibly millions) of other film dedicated blogs and reviewers out there? why am i even doing this? what do i possibly have to offer? i've been really stuck on those questions for a couple months now, and i've come to realize that i've been approaching this the wrong way. i can't completely separate my own life experiences with the media i consume on a daily basis. it's not like i can just stop being a queer asian-american girl when i watch movies. so i'm going to try to make this blog more personal, for when i need a more formal platform than what twitter or tumblr has to offer. i actually feel more comfortable here on blogger since i have a much smaller readership.

i haven't been able to watch as many movies as i would have liked to in the past few months, since i've been really trying to focus more of my energy on doing well in school. i did get to watch her before school started up, and i've really been wanting to discuss my feelings towards it, but was unsure of how to approach it. i actually didn't like it very much upon my first viewing, or on my second viewing. don't get me wrong, i feel like it was an excellent movie and it deserved every last nomination and award. but i actually found myself warming up to the movie more as spike jonze's reflection on the failure of his marriage with sophia coppola, rather than as its own narrative. i'm not really sure what that says about me, or why, after thinking about it for almost three months i still can't quite put a finger on what put me off so much. it could be that i just didn't approach this movie the right way, or that i didn't watch it at the right time. or maybe i'm not one of its intended audiences. who knows.

i still haven't seen the lego movie yet, but i'm hoping next week i can catch it along with the new wes anderson movie i've been really excited about. the grand budapest hotel has so many actors i'm excited to see in a wes anderson film, such as adrien brody as one of the villains and saoirse ronan as the enigmatic baker girl. maybe it'll put me back in the mood to get back into watching movies.

anyway, i hope i'll be updating more frequently here now that i've opened it up to more than just film reviews. i've been wanting to talk about... well, everything actually. i'm absolute crap at keeping a handwritten journal since my handwriting looks like limp noodles dropped on a page, and since i'm all but completely fused to my computer, you'll be seeing more of me around here soon.