Raya

May. 3rd, 2022 10:46 am
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
Selamat Hari Raya Puasa aka Hari Raya Aidilfitri, this year we get to go on visits, so that's a *\o/*

Also yay for long weekend (Raya and May Day). Alas coming to the end of it. But it means a short work week, so again yay!

***

I've been in the process of turning into a fanyu, lol, since slightly before the Beijing Olympics (I started watching all the vids of Hanyu Yuzuru to familiarize myself before the event, and then fell into the rabbit hole). It's been a beautiful experience: a bit heartbreaking, a bit bittersweet but very, very joyful and inspiring. <3 <3 <3 (Currently re-watching the amazing "Let Me Entertain You", and also rec his 2012 Romeo & Juliet, because I'm weak for Romeo & Juliet interpretations (and his is sooo dramatic lol) and the thought of Yuzuru skating it at the age of 17 is so astonishing and poignant.)

***

Recently I added another chapter to my HIStory 3 Trapped fic: Chapter 6 of How Tang Yi Got His Name.

You'd think I'd have made use of the long weekend to do more fic writing, but not quite: there's a few things scheduled with family, and other than than I find myself doing nothing or watching drama or Yuzuru vids, haha.

Started watching The Longest Day in Chang'an, love how the concept is used, episode 1 here.

And also started Be Reborn, which we're told is "Detective Cracks Cases with Talented College Boy". Hm... it's good so far? Only on episode 2 so far.
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
Started watching Reset 开端 (trailer and 1st episode (of 15) here). Groundhog-ish set-up, thrilling and I love how the main characters slowly unravel the mystery behind their exploding bus. Highly recced.

Reading adventures of 2021: Two main ones stand out: The first being Scum Villain Self-Saving System, which I'm finding to be most darlingest of MXTX's works. I mean, MDZS is really fine, and I love what I've read of TGCF so far (slowly reading it) but there's something about SVSSS that tugs at - nay, plays with my heartstrings. Although I have to say, looking at fanfic: do people actually like to pair Liu Qingge with Shen Qingqiu? >_> Inexplicable.

The second one being Thousand Autumns, which I started out with the donghua and naturally, couldn't wait to find out what happened next. Yan Wushi is immensely... bigger than life, heh, yet you can't help sympathising with him, and also still finding him really sexy. Shen Qiao: I really like his character trajectory in the way it shows growth yet also shows that some ways, a person's essential personality never really changes.

Others:

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho: which I love for the setting, the Manglish, the gothic feel and Black Water Sister herself. Main character narrator is... good? I guess I have no choice but to like her given that the entire story unfolds through her eyes, but Cho's other characters are simply so alive. The energy from their anger, resentment and fear powers the story. And wow, I must go to Penang again once pandemic allows.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: My sole big quibble (if that isn't an oxymoron) is I cannot imagine a pair of conservative parents choosing to name their daughter Wu Zetian, but otherwise it is a thrill-ride of a book (with mecha! I repeat, mecha!), a deliciously delightful threesome and a furious, magnificent Wu Zetian.

TGCF: The Taiwanese edition is only up to book 4 so I've been (sort of) pacing myself while checking every other week to see if books 5 and 6 are here yet. I guess there are... unauthorised versions online somewhere but I didn't really want to check them out... yet. I'll see how desperate I get. Also, whoa, really deft mythmaking and backstory creating; it's rather awesome how the novel-verse gets bigger and bigger. I can see that there's a lot of foreshadowing, so I'm anticipating a lot of meaningful plot resolutions as I get further and further inwards - onwards?

A few others (not many, really) and I had ordered Louise Erdrich's The Sentence except Book Depository sent another book by mistake so that was a bummer. I got a book on (of all things) "explores the life philosophies of some of the world's best investors" which was interesting for the first three chapters on how some well known investors like Buffett, etc, and after that simply felt rather narcissistic? Um, yeah, there's this thing about going against the flow, seeing potential in companies, etc, etc, etc... but also there's this other thing about living in a time of rapid industralisation and explosive economic growth in the last century. I dunno, it'd make a good Christmas present for someone who isn't me.

I did pick up a book on knitting tea cosies at Kinokuniya's bargain shelf so... bargain.
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
In a bid to catch a lot more Wenzhou aka LLD clips on Youtube, I somehow ended up catching a lot of somewhat fantastical to seemingly delusional RPS (my characterisation) video clips for the actors, and incidentally learning a lot (true or not) rumours about the actors, other actors, and crazy world of Chinese entertainment. It's been a trip.

(I'm trying escapism recently.)

Anyway. I've also been watching:

Imperial Coroner (period drama, mystery, ancient-China-vibey coroner solving crimes), which is amazingly good: it's tightly plotted, logical sequences, starts to hint at an over-arching plot within the first few episodes, and the intelligent characters (including the female lead) are all extremely likeable.


The Long Night (crime thriller, dark), which I started watching last year. It is devastatingly good and also makes you rage, rage, rage at the injustice and unfairness of life. Stars Bai Yu, whom I didn't realise at first was the same Bai Yu of Guardian, because he's that good.
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
Haha. No, just a note that my brain outside of work has been consumed by Word of Honor and 《天涯客》. Just as well, because RL is pretty much wringing me out and I feel if I weren't fangirling WoH, I'd be banging my head against the wall.

On that note, though:

(1) The version of Wen Kexing in the novel is a bit more dark-edged.
(2) There's way more flirting and even a stolen kiss here and there.
(3) Priest's writing style is quite clean, occasionally reminds me of Gu Lung, and has a few poetic moments, which are lovely.

I need sleep.

Also I can't stop listening to this end theme song for 錦心似玉, Sword and Brocade. Lost interest in the drama after episode 15 or so, but love the song.

I haven't watched HiStory4 yet... apparently some love it and some hate it? It seemed very tropey but I was hoping they could do something interesting with those tropes. I've always enjoyed the HiStory series. (Has everyone watched Trapped yet? They must.) I'll catch up over the weekend, or when I finish《天涯客》.
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
Went on to watch My Heroic Husband (trailer) while waiting for Word of Honor updates and it's... entertaining?

Ning Yi is supposedly a contemporary businessman that somehow gets hit on the head and wakes up in the body of Ning Yi, a poor scholar in Hengdian feudal China who is a 'zuixu' 赘婿, i.e. who 'marries into' the wife's family due to poverty. The set-up is undoubtedly sexist, and it's meant to be, with many digs being made at him being the son-in-law who lives with his wife's family (and similar digs made at his friends who are in the same position), and his business accumen is supposed to all the more surprising because of this. The implication being that since he's so capable, he shouldn't have had to 'lower' his position to be a 'zuixu' in the first place. Hmmm. The patriarchy is still there but we're supposed to ignore it. There's some mockery in the way that he's initially meant to be in a subservient position but later as he triumphs, he 'regains' his position. *sigh*

More thoughts )

Speaking of male-male interactions (and btw, My Heroic Husband is a very male-intense, albeit heterosexual-only show: about 70% of the characters are male), I was still squeeing over Word of Honor and vaguely wondering how HiStory4 was going to stack up, since WoH is doing its best to show that the main leads are clearly a pair so in one way, it's as explicit as we get - in jianghu at least.

Then I caught HiStory4 trailer (beware spoilers). And I was wrong, okay? Going by the trailer, HiStory4 is loads better in acknowledging male-male attraction, being gay, stress of coming out, family tensions, society expectations, and changing relationships, romantic and friendship and familial. It's still rather idealised - it's BL after all - but at least I didn't have to keep raising my eyebrows at every instance of 'we're bros' and 'we're soulmates' and mentally do the nudge-wink 'actually this means they're into each other' interpretation for them**. But of course, HiStory4 is a Taiwanese production and they don't have to fear China's censorship***. I was just smiling dreamily while watching the trailer without even realising it. I watched it twice in a row, which I hardly ever do. OMG. I need it now like chocolate****. Of course, it's just the trailer and caution is called for. My expectations may be dashed. Drama aside, anyone remembers HiStory3: Makes Our Days Count? >__< Yeah.

footnotes )But HiStory4!!!!!

March 2021

Mar. 4th, 2021 10:57 pm
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
More than 12 months since Covid and everything else aside, I'm moderately burnt out at work? As in, I can still deal with my work/clients until about 2pm which is when I long for it to be Friday.

At least my parents got their vaccines yesterday and other than reporting some arm achiness, no other hiccups. (They are paradoxically happy about feeling some discomfort; apparently this means they got the REAL vaccine - I was not even aware this was even an issue to them. @ _ @) We'll see how it goes with the second shot.

Finished Joy of Life to leap right into two other C-dramas:

(1) Sword and Brocade (trailer) which has Tan Songyu and Zhong Hanliang, a Ming-era historical-romantic (more romantic/dramatic than historical) drama about a girl who marries her brother-in-law after the death of her elder sister (it's less racy and more family politics than it sounds) and they eventually fall in love. Usual array of manipulation among his other wives. All very well and good, and the performances are very nice, but really, I came for the costumes. Ming-era women's clothing just looks a lot more... conservative? It covers up more, that's for certain, layers upon layers, with high collars, but at the same time it's sooo pretty.

(2) Word of Honor, the newest BL adaptation (episode 1) of Priest's novel (the same author of Guardian) which is made of m/m flirtation. Right now it's all jianghu politics and a McGuffin - while the two main characters meet each other and identify each other as soulmates rather quickly and adopt a teenager along the way - and some long-lost secrets will be spilled sooner or later. It's again very pretty. (I guess this is a big hint that my brain is not up to anything more.) Not that big a fan of Zhang Zhehan, but Gong Jun is very attractive, though there is a shitload of photoshopping that renders their faces unnaturally smooth, which is just very weird.

TV and fic

Oct. 3rd, 2020 04:03 pm
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
Happy Mid-Autumn festival, everyone!

I guess most people are like me, at the stage where I have good mask days (when I don't mind it so much) and bad mask days when for some reason it keeps fogging my glasses and it feels hard to breathe. Work has been perplexingly hectic (my industry is heavily affected by the economy, so you'd think that business would have cooled, but...). Most days you look back and can't believe it's the last quarter of the year, and where has it all gone?


Watching:

Love and Redemption aka 琉璃 (with English sub, if anyone wants), xianxia. Wiki link if anyone wants.

It's a pretty fun outing wherein the God of War is a woman, and reborn on earth as Chu Xuanji. I'm totally there for the many devoted scenes of the male lead, Yu Sifeng. And Xuanji's spirital animal, Tengshe (which I think would translate to Touda in Japanese).

***

the stars in the hazy heaven tremble above you, Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, royalty AU, Cinderella-fusion, by cicer


Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, backstory of Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji's mother and maternal family, by x_los

rather cruelly used and rather reserved, Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, by x_los

September ~

Sep. 2nd, 2020 11:33 pm
issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
September!

I'm now officially out of things to watch of Netflix, mainly because I'd like to stop bingeing stuff so I'd have time to write >_< No doubt I'd find something intriguing soon enough, but now it's pretty refreshing. Not least also because it's the 7th month in the Chinese calendar, also the Hungry Ghosts Festival and I'm sure there's got to be some Untamed | MDZS fic potential somewhere...

Cue hackneyed Covid-19 jokes about how, with travel restrictions and quarantine, your ancestors can't even come up for a nice long visit.

1 October is Children's Day where I am (offical children day's song: Semoga Bahagia, by Inch Chua) (once upon a time I could sing it, now I've forgotten 90% of the lyrics), but some years back the ministry of education made what I consider a really pathetic decision to celebrate Children's Day on the Friday of the week of 1 October. So that apparently children and teachers could have a long weekend. Weak, weak. I know it's less than ideal for holiday-planning if 1 Oct falls on, say, a Wednesday, but what happened to the symbolism? Isn't that the point of designating a random day to celebrate, I dunno, being a child? The rant comes to mind as 1 September is Teacher's Day... or it used to be, and this year it's 4 September. I know, I know... it's like the whole point of such days is to have a long weekend.

Also listening on repeat to 左手指月 by 薩頂頂 Sa Dingding, theme song from Ashes of Love aka《香蜜沉沉燼如霜》, another series that I did watch random episodes of, despite myself, because does Deng Lun look like Park Seo-joon, or is it just me?

***

There's a Baby Loose in the Burial Mounds!, crack, Burial Mounds, ghosts, Untamed | MDZS, by ScarlettStorm

Where the nightingales are singing, and a white moon beams, AU, Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, WIP, by Moominmammashandbag

Profile

issenllo: strawberry thief print from William Morris (Default)
issenllo

2025

S M T W T F S

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 09:11 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios