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FINALLY! Tencent offically announced season 2 of The Imperial Coroner (御赐小仵作)! The filming is already completed (filmed fall/winter 2024) and now I'm just waiting for the airing date! I hope we get to see it this year!

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THE FIRST SHOT (2024) 雪迷宫 Episode Three.

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I really doubt anybody on Tumblr is watching but The First Shot or 雪迷宫 is making me LOSE MY MIND. I’m on episode like 10 and just yelled WHAT IN THE LANYU IS HAPPENING HERE IN 1997 DONGBEI. The first and second male leads are the dude from Addicted and the guy who plays all the mean cold CEOs and also was in Imperial Coroner. They live together and somewhere in the next four eps someone is getting kidnapped by drug dealers and tortured and handsome rough northern drug cop from Addicted is going to princess carry his six foot tall delicate southern nerd wife. This show is produced by Zhang Yimou and is ruining my life.

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hi hey hello i have started watching a new crime drama and I AM OBSESSED. it's called 雪迷宫 or, for some reason, The First Shot, although it should be more properly Snow Maze. it's a period piece set in 1997 and it's produced by ZHANG YIMOU which must be why the production values are actually good??? anyway i am here to tell you all about it and why you should be watching it okay here we go

first of all there's a big hot dumb cop, zheng bei. yes that's huang jingyu and you might not like him because of his apparently quite sketchy personal life but all i care about in this case is that he's tall, and thoughtful, and a police captain who's protective of his people and a little bit of an idiot. my catnip tbh. (i guess he was in addicted too? somehow breaking the you-can-only-be-in-one-BL rule?)

(ETA that by "dumb" of course he's not dumb at all, only by comparison; cf. my own stupid meta on this fascinating topic)

then there's an effete genius consultant, gu yiran (wang ziqi), who knows everything there is to know about drugs. he comes from the south to help these ignorant northerners form an anti-narcotics unit. he's such a massive nerd, the team doesn't like him until they realize that he runs 10k every morning and can outrun motorcycles and is actually quite useful. then suddenly it's no longer "gu-laoshi" but is all "ran-ge" this and "ran-ge" that. he can't dance for shit. i adore him.

there's a superb seven-samurai style Assembling The Team sequence in which this cop is brought in as the muscle. Her nickname is mad dog yao and she kicks the ass of an entire club at one point. we love her. her only problem is that, not unlike zhang haixing in tibetan sea flower, she will in fact fight a wall. here's gu yiran's face after a drug dealer mistakenly underestimates her and she stomps on him.

one of my favorite things about this drama so far is how poor the police are. it's 1997 in a dinky northern precinct and these cops ain't got shit. no computers. rudimentary cellphones. barely any forenic analysis, and most of that is on pieces of paper. no bullpen. no interrogation rooms. they have to interview suspects at their desks.

captain zheng is so underpaid he can't even afford a real pointer for his situation board, he has to go outside and get a literal stick.

drives his dad's chicken delivery van. has to slam himself against the front door to open it. everything about this is absolutely perfect.

i'm only on episode 7 but this shit is already brotastic. please behold:

yes that is an actual line from the show. yes gu yiran has to live with captain zheng, they can't afford fancy accommodations for him. turns out there's a trundle bed made out of paper clips but that's okay, they still get plenty of cosy domestic time together.

and that's also what i already love about this drama—in spite of being about anti-narcotics, it's also very slice of life, very daily city life, with meals and neighbors and friends and family and did i mention food, there is so much eating in this drama. it's gorgeous. also i'm improving my colloquial chinese by leaps and bounds.

of course you are you stupid service top, now take care of the baby.

and those are just some of the reasons why you should be watching the first shot, which is funny and suspenseful and unexpectedly brainy and well-cast and has beautiful opening credits. there are 19 episodes on youku's youtube channel right now and the subs are shockingly high quality. i'm hooked, and also so mad at my day job because i can't just binge it, pls join me in this handbasket

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And the life itself can't dull it.

Hey Bartimaeus fandom how are we doing?

(fandom piece based on the Bartimaeus sequence by @jonathanstroud)

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I will always… always… want to be here with you.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

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for you and your warped reflection

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Wakaba Shinohara, Nanami Kiryuu, Juri Arisugawa - Utena, la fillette révolutionnaire

There it is, a triptych of my favorite duels from each season, and coincidentally my favorite characters.

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natori can play bland heterosexual playboys because he’s not interested in women and it’s all fake for fun Acting but if he played a gay character he’d be confronted with the deeply repressed reality of thinking matoba is kinda hot

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a bunch of capri doodles from my bsky account

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Wow… it’s actually official now. Took them long enough…

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アキラ (Akira) - "the light coming from the sun", "bright"

ヒカル (Hikaru) - "light" or "radiance"

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she is going home to make soup. (via)

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INTRIGUE, RELIGION, GENDER! The immortal masterpiece! Being a CONTINUATION of TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING a NARRATIVE OF EVENTS of the year 2454! SEVEN SURRENDERS

So @argumate's Discord is watching The Rose of Versailles at the moment, and, well, it just made too much sense to edit this poster to be Dominic Seneschal (standing) and Carlyle Foster (seated).

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Ada Palmer is a historian AND a science fiction author! Also, this episode really helped when I was feeling not awesome about the world and stuff.

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LMAO YELLING!!! this is from diana wynne jones to her editor—

Dear Miriam, I have been on the phone to Terry Pratchett who sent me a rough draft of a story which is going to be very good, but he is very anxious to know at what stage in the process he actually gets the money.

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This is how i felt about the ending. It's all good guys, everything will be fine jjdsdjjdsa.