Sugardy Candy

Bought vol 1 of Scum Villain, English translation, pretty good but alas only vol 1.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend soon.

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Starting to watch The Devil Judge, purely on rumour that the two male leads have enforced cohabitation at some point... which has just started in episode 3, yay! This is supposed to be some kind of dystopian legal drama, though it's best if one ignores all that one knows of legal processes so as to enjoy it more.

Ji Sung is excellent - and how. Was this the same person in Kill Me, Heal Me? Innocent Defender? He's on another level again. *swoons* Also the house that his character Yo-han owns, is to die for. (That wallpaper.) Though I'd probably hate that many mirrors.

Yo-han (Ji Sung) tending to Ga-on's wounds in bed. Finally we see Yo-han smile for real, when talking to his niece Elijah. ^___^

Of media consumed:

1. Finally got bored with Netflix!

(a) Well, for a given value of bored. I've been using it to re-watch the bits that I really enjoyed, like the encounters with the foodimals in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, the sky lantern scene in Tangled, the post-cave testflight(s) for Iron Man's suit, and Kim Hang Ah rescuing Lee Jae Ha in King 2 Hearts (all scenes). And the last episode of Hwayugi, which I'd been avoiding (and it turned out to be not as awful as I was expecting).

(b) Also because I'm really with Netflix for season 4 of Lucifer, really. So much so that I've not been paying much attention to Endgame playing in theatres, even though I was looking forward to it - I'll probably get round to it next week or so. Been trying, though not very hard, to avoid spoilers on that front.

(c) And also because my absolute favourite K-dramas of recent months/years, Beautiful Mind and Are You Human Too? are not on Netflix, but Viu. (Goblin is, so at least that's that.) So that rules out binge re-watches.

(d) Also no Nirvana in Fire.

(e) And also because I've been watching Taiwan's BL series on youtube. I'd had a go at Guardian, which is a China product, but lovely as the the main characters are, the basic plot premise just annoyed me a lot. So. Taiwanese BL. As expected (which is unfair on the whole, but my experience of watching Taiwanese dramas, especially the soaps, has caused some bias), the plots are just about serviceable, the dialogue is clunky, and the meet-cute scenes are all hackneyed (okay, 'all' is an exaggeration, but close). But it is something of a novelty to see a BL series play out as banally as a typical hetrosexual romance. Even the character names are punny.

I've been watching the HIStory series so far, which is a bunch of short drama series (mostly half-a-dozen roughly 30min episodes per offering) and it's been predictable but kinda fun. Acting ranges from awkward to okay to "hm, not bad, you had me convinced for a while", while displays of affection range from kissing to pushing the other onto a couch or bed, then fades to black: roughly the same as what I'd expect from a typical Taiwanese romance on TV for general consumption...? And novelty aside, the guys are cute. Not necessarily handsome or good-looking, but damn they're cute, all big eyes and earnestness and wholesomeness. Also, once in a while, it's nice to listen to some Taiwanese slang rather than the China/Chinese variety.

Just a word of forewarning: some people may want to pass on HIStory2 - 是非, which is between a college student and his professor. Apparently the power imbalance issue never comes up? They deal (vaguely) with bullying, homophobia, age difference, family dynamics (the prof has a kid) but not that. I know everything is soft-focus in a romance series, but that was a strange omission. So, forewarning in case you are bothered by that. (ETA) If that doesn't bother you, it's pretty good and I liked it. Oh, and HIStory2 - 越界 (Crossing the Line) is high school romance with volleyball and fauxcest (two pairings) and it's cute too!

What I'm really on, though, is HIStory 3 - Trap, which just started two weeks ago, and features a romance between a cop and a gangster. (The secondary couple is also cute as heck.) It's tropey but sooo adorable. I think cop/gangster pairings are my idfic. Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i-qaUOVu1Q

5 Times Peter Made Tony Laugh Out Loud, Spider-man, Avengers, Iron Man, by grilledcheesing


5 Times Peter Pretended To Be Tougher Than He Was, ditto by grilledcheesing

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Have been rather immersed in K-drama for a few months now, and current obsession is Are you human too?. I watch all the clips from KBS on Youtube when they are released, despite not understanding any Korean, and watch it on Viu later when it's subbed. Then again a lot of the dialogue is pretty straightforward so you can make a guess? Also there are recaps on Dramabeans. I think a bit part of my fascination comes from the fact that I still can't quite predict how it will end: whether it's going for "ok, a robot-human romance is definitely doable, let's handwave all the side-concerns" (which I secretly root for, heh), or "robot Nam Shin will sacrifice himself (or get sacrificed, because he's a robot) and then human Nam Shin will find redemption, etc, etc" which is a much more teeth-gnashing ending and I will be justified in scoffing at K-dramas, all over again. Or something else. I look forward to finding out. Let's hope it's not a human-robot mind-meld.


I do tend to get a bit bored by K-dramas, especially the slice-of-life types. They are lovely for the first few episodes (even if they're really good), and then I get restless. The ones that draw my attention most are the ones that give me some interesting myth-making, especially ones that make some (tenuous) connection to folklore. That's probably why I loved Goblin so much, but this doesn't explain my antipathy to other fantasy dramas...


Back to book meme, and since it's the first of the month:

( 1. Favorite book from childhood )

I was going to post more regularly, really. That can be my new year resolution for the year of the Dog.

Well, today is the 7th day of Lunar New Year, also known as 人日, the day when human beings were created (chickens were created first) by 女媧. So today is the birthday of every human. Yay! (I guess the goddess did have to practice on chickens first.)

More randomly: ( life, job, flat, K-dramas, part-time job )

1. Work

[letter to client] Dear client, as discussed, you need to pay $XXX.
[client's reply] I got your letter. So how much do I need to pay?
*facepalm*

2. K-drama

Yup, still obssessed with Goblin. I'm a bit sad that there isn't more fic - at least, those that aren't in Korean. Quite a few on AO3 are m/m fics, which I'm not at all invested in. -_- I really want to explore the canon pairings more.

In other news, am following Tunnel because time-travel and crime-solving and serial killers, who doesn't like that? (Do note: The Youtube clip contains images of female victims.) And just started Ruler: Master of the Mask, which I've heard one commentator describe as a fusion between Man in the Iron Mask and the Prince and the Pauper but in sageuk form. Heh. It's pretty awesome so far.

3. Should I be watching k-drama if I also trying to brush up on my Japanese?

Because K-drama

King 2 Hearts. wiki link

This was an older drama (2012) where the publicity posters put me off when it first came out. Luckily it turned out be very different from what I imagined. Damn you, publicity photo!

At first I simply enjoyed it for the romance set in an imaginary constitutional monarchy South Korea (and whenever I watch K-drama, like Goong, that riff on this concept, can't help thinking exactly what it would have been like IF Korea did have a constitutional monarchy... but history marches on) and because not only is the Ha Ji-won an ass-kicking, not-taking-names type, she matches up so well with the Lee Seung-gi (who is always kind of fun). Both are enjoyable in their own way and as the power couple, they are awesome. And of course, the fact that the writers bring in the North-South conflict (albeit resolving it, if temporary, in a suitably K-dramaland fashion) adds a lot of illicit thrill, because on one hand it's a Serious Thing and on another hand I can imagine the writers and producers thinking of the whole North-South conflict as a grab bag of ready-made issues that they can pull out for dramatic tension. As one does.

And on the other hand, I did reach a level of confusion about exactly what the writers/producers meant by constitutional monarchy. At one point Lee Seung-gi as the king yelled at the prime minister, "I'm the commander-in-chief!"* and I went, wait, is that how it's supposed to work?! which led to googling and reading and now I'm... less enlightened in my assumptions? Unexpected but again, fun.

*Though this could be due to subtitling/translation issues.

Goblin: the Lonely and Great God Wiki link. Trailer here

The buzz has been about Gong Yoo and the bromance between the goblin and the grim reaper, and those are definitely the draws, haha. There's just 2 episodes out yet, and I'm very eager to find more about the myth-world that's being built up here. There's also a thrill that they filmed part of it in Quebec because it is so pretty. And also very, very confusing because the goblin is supposed to be more than 900 years old but apparently Quebec was the first place he landed after he sailed from Korea (cf the tombstones in the trailer where his servants were buried) and I do not think ships were reaching Quebec from Korea at that point in time, 900 years ago. Unless he and his servant went overland to Europe first and sailed on a ship there. (But the ship and sailors looked Korean! But then it got sunk by him while it was in the middle of the ocean!) And there's gotta be a time skip of some sort.

Ok, either it will make sense in later episodes or it'd be brushed off by the overall narrative. But it's currently nagging at me. I guess this means I must follow it, haha.

Have been watching K-drama Love in the Moonlight aka Moonlight Drawn by Clouds (hilarious teaser here), which is more of a period idol drama wherein woman in disguise as man turns up in the palace as an enunch falls in love with meet-cute crown prince. There's some typical palace plotting, together with some expected she's-daughter-of-a-rebel! drama coming up. Which actually reminded me of Dong Yi. I'm really very curious about how it will end because the setting is based on actual history and the said crown prince in history... well. Died young.

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Extracurricular Activities, Mei Changsu/Xiao Jingyan, modern-day AU, Nirvana in Fire, by Alaceron

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On the personal front, ( work and job woes )