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Februariness
Mar. 1st, 2026 01:11 pmThe UK girl group FLO recently did an amazing Tiny Desk Concert!
February has come to an end.
It has been an emotional month and I'm super tired, but at the same I've felt inspired to write more than usually. I'm also finally going to cinema next week to watch a couple of new films (+Enhypen Concert Cinema). I need to keep moving, because when I get stuck in a depressive phase it's really hard to get out of it.
This weekend I binged a new series: (spoiler-free review)
The Art of Sarah
South-Korean, Thriller, Netflix, 8 episodes
Netflix has made some interesting scammer stories like the fictionalized series about Anna Delvey and the love scammer documentary Tinder Swindler. Recently there was another viral love scammer targeting a tiktok influencer: The Danish Deception. The worst scam story I've heard is about the cancer cure hoax/fraud by Elizabeth Holmes. I'm obsessed with scammer and cult stories in the same way some people are about true crime (which i have complex feelings about. i rarely watch it).
The Art of Sarah is a fictional story about a scammer building a luxury bag brand. It's both a murder mystery and a scammer story: the two main mysteries(murder and identity) are linked together when the police investigate who really is Sarah Kim.
Scammer stories pose the question of what is real. If people believe in the scam, doesn't that make it real? Legit businesses are also scams, frauds, they make fake things, and unethical choices. At the core these stories deal with status, desperation, corruption, and social mobility in capitalism. Scam stories targeting poor people are always unpleasant, but this story (like Anna Delvey's story and the love scammers) target (mainly) upper middle class women wanting to be top elite. Scammers and abusers study their victims really carefully, they're master manipulators.
It was a very easily bingable series. The investigation/mystery part wasn't super complex but that's fine for me, I don't need everything to be like Mindhunter. The series doesn't try to be too realistic. My only complaint is that by the end of the series the episodes were too short (around 40min), and there wasn't enough exploration of the most interesting part of the plot!
Overall I enjoyed it. It was a very woman-centric story with a crazy evil woman as a protagonist. The K-dramas I prefer are rarely romance/romance-focused, but South-Korea also makes excellent thrillers and stories about class.
One of the central places in the story is a luxury mall. That reminded me of my own experience working at one when I was 19. Being a young person from a working class background who couldn't afford to buy anything I was selling and being surrounded by luxury items was sure an interesting experience. Also how during sales "normal" people thought they were being sold stuff for a cheaper prize (because they were never actually advertised as sales, they were campaigns lol). I actually once thought about writing a novel or a film inspired by it, and I think I'm gonna start this project now. Maybe I will only write a short story, we'll see.
February has come to an end.
It has been an emotional month and I'm super tired, but at the same I've felt inspired to write more than usually. I'm also finally going to cinema next week to watch a couple of new films (+Enhypen Concert Cinema). I need to keep moving, because when I get stuck in a depressive phase it's really hard to get out of it.
This weekend I binged a new series: (spoiler-free review)
The Art of Sarah
South-Korean, Thriller, Netflix, 8 episodes
Netflix has made some interesting scammer stories like the fictionalized series about Anna Delvey and the love scammer documentary Tinder Swindler. Recently there was another viral love scammer targeting a tiktok influencer: The Danish Deception. The worst scam story I've heard is about the cancer cure hoax/fraud by Elizabeth Holmes. I'm obsessed with scammer and cult stories in the same way some people are about true crime (which i have complex feelings about. i rarely watch it).
The Art of Sarah is a fictional story about a scammer building a luxury bag brand. It's both a murder mystery and a scammer story: the two main mysteries(murder and identity) are linked together when the police investigate who really is Sarah Kim.
Scammer stories pose the question of what is real. If people believe in the scam, doesn't that make it real? Legit businesses are also scams, frauds, they make fake things, and unethical choices. At the core these stories deal with status, desperation, corruption, and social mobility in capitalism. Scam stories targeting poor people are always unpleasant, but this story (like Anna Delvey's story and the love scammers) target (mainly) upper middle class women wanting to be top elite. Scammers and abusers study their victims really carefully, they're master manipulators.
It was a very easily bingable series. The investigation/mystery part wasn't super complex but that's fine for me, I don't need everything to be like Mindhunter. The series doesn't try to be too realistic. My only complaint is that by the end of the series the episodes were too short (around 40min), and there wasn't enough exploration of the most interesting part of the plot!
Overall I enjoyed it. It was a very woman-centric story with a crazy evil woman as a protagonist. The K-dramas I prefer are rarely romance/romance-focused, but South-Korea also makes excellent thrillers and stories about class.
One of the central places in the story is a luxury mall. That reminded me of my own experience working at one when I was 19. Being a young person from a working class background who couldn't afford to buy anything I was selling and being surrounded by luxury items was sure an interesting experience. Also how during sales "normal" people thought they were being sold stuff for a cheaper prize (because they were never actually advertised as sales, they were campaigns lol). I actually once thought about writing a novel or a film inspired by it, and I think I'm gonna start this project now. Maybe I will only write a short story, we'll see.
