#I’m glad the movie isn’t bloated but I do wish we got a little more time w everyone

[mechanomorphic]

one thing i thought was really funny abt the Mario movie was DK violently trying to avoid any homoerotic tension between him and Mario. it did get a good few chuckles out of me

[touchmycoat]

5, 6 (i already know this is some insane amount), 9, 10, 16, 23, 26 (house)

BAAABE :*

5. What is the perfect environment for you to write in?

my office cubicle apparently kdsjfnksd

no but genuinely anywhere i can zone out. i make faces & mutter to myself when i write tho so, anywhere where that wouldn’t draw weird glances lmfao

6. If you’re really concentrating, how many words can you write in a day?

bahahaha i think Farmer’s Almanac holds the record rn—10k, give or take.

9. Do you prefer to write AUs, canon divergence, or canon-compliant fic?

#selfintrospection, my pattern per fandom seems to be starting with canon divergence! I’m a side characters ho, y’all know this, so I always like to recenter the narrative & get a surer foothold in my own interpretations of character first. but after that.... no preference! I love (and have written) all three to great enjoyment heheheh just depends on where i wanna see ‘em fuck

10. Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot the most?

NFJDNFJDNFJD HOW CAN I CHOOSE

Exposition is sexy, and i get to be the most experimental & excessive & self-indulgent here w/ style choices.

Dialogue is sexy, ‘cause voices and humor and dirty talk and heartbreak and communication!!! I’m a movie ho so i’m all about that plot-driving script game ;;;;

Plot is sexy ‘cause that’s where you get to fuck around with all the canon themes, subvert & avert & redistribute them!!!!!!!! I’m a slut for that!!!!!!!!!

can’t choose won’t choose :’D

16. What is your most underrated fic?

LMFAO you know i’m gonna say Sword of the Yi Maiden ;) she’s basically like, our child ;;

23. If you had to remix one of your own fics, which would it be and how would you remix it?

well once i sort out the single dad!Song Lan universe, i’d loooooove to switch gears & swerve into single dad!Xiao Xingchen B) just for kicks. But where Song Lan is like, a high school lit teacher and A-Qing is our favorite local delinquent child. XXC gets called in for a parent-teacher conference, and he’s actually kind of dreading it at first because AQ honestly never had too many complaints about the English teacher, so if this Song Laoshi was suddenly going to betray his daughter’s trust and tattle on her XXC would def take AQ’s side.

But! Turns out SL’s calling him in to be like “hey, AQ never does homework but is fine with participating in class if i kind of trick her into arguing about it, so i figured she just really doesn’t like being told what to do. That’s fine! But that also means I don’t think she’ll respond well to me sitting her down to talk about her higher education options, so I figured I’d run it past the parent first to see if you have any thoughts about how we’re going to proceed.”

it’d be SO fucking funny... AQ stops skipping class or stops zoning out the moment she catches onto her dad’s little ~thing for Song Laoshi. She starts challenging him in class instead on every little thing (”yeah but don’t you think it’s inherently racist to require us to read conrad at all, if there are so many books out there written by actual African postcolonial authors”) but he’s just happy she’s engaging so they bond

they’re both super proud and near tears at graduation, and AQ is too but to hide her own embarrassingly feelings she’s like “don’t pretend y’all aren’t just crying ‘cause you can finally date each other now that it won’t be fucking WEIRD for me”

26. Which part of House was the hardest to write?

hmmmmm I think I had the most number of false starts w ch. 3!! i never save shit rip but at one point i straight up had like.... 13 pages all blacked out? Oh i remember, the scene where AQ first tests SL. I had that set in like, the breakfast stall, in a busy street, a quiet street, etc. etc. I was putting each of their conversations in different contexts too, just seeing how they would play out based on the surroundings??? i even thought about dropping AQ’s POV completely at one point but I’m very glad i didn’t. The current version is actually the very first opening for the chapter i ever wrote so, el oh el, i try not to think all that effort went to waste. It’s more like, I had some ideas, but i had to prove none of them would work before i could proceed with this one, y’know?

BUT TELL YOU WHAT I DID SAVE THO. The first draft of the Ch. 2 opening? After I wrote this i was like “yikes this is way too conventional a set-up for a flashback let’s just do it,” and wrote the current version on ao3 lmao. I kept the chapped knuckles thing~

Under the Cut:

((Behind the Scenes of Fic Writing Asks!))

Song Lan stood at the entrance of his room in the inn, fist clenched hard around Fuxue’s hilt as the rain came in. Night had been the herald, and now, the lantern at the top of the stairs to Song Lan’s left was flickering wildly, buffeted about by the stormy wind.

The inn’s owner, an older woman in her 50s, spoke a string of worried utterances as she hurried up the stairs to close the window. As her hands approached the latch though, Song Lan sensed bloodthirst. Fuxue went flying.

The woman screamed, but the harm was over; a mutated critter of a hungry ghost slumped against the window frame, pinned there by Fuxue’s cool blade. Instead of closing the window for her, Song Lan pressed two paper talismans on either side. He pulled out Fuxue and watched the hungry ghost dissipate.

“Daozhang, daozhang, gratitude,” the woman wept. “A few here and there is nothing, you know? But once they begin to stay, and bigger things start to come, and we have young ones in the house, oh, it terrifies me, what state this city has been falling into…”

Fuxue returned to its sheathe, and Song Lan still had his fly-whisk tucked in his arm. He gave the inn owner a polite bow.

“I will attempt an extermination tonight.”

“Daozhang is so reliable,” the woman said, tears instantly transforming into simpering gratitude. Her distress had been in part a show, meant to move Song Lan into action. Song Lan did not mind; this was his third night at the inn, after all, and the second time the inn owner’s requested a favor from him. It stood to reason that she would think he needs more affective convincing, even if she’s wrong.

“I may trouble you for tea upon my return,” he murmured. When the woman reached out to pat his elbow in a matronly gesture, Song Lan stepped back, disguising the gesture as a readjustment of his robes as he replaced the stack of talismans back in his sleeve.

“Of course,” she replied, hand waving in the air before lowering back down to her side. A spot of tension eased at the base of Song Lan’s neck. “The stove never stops burning in our kitchen, particularly when we have guests. Just give our door a knock if the evening chef isn’t around. We’ll take care of you.”

Song Lan was grateful. He’d need the hot drink when he returned from the rain—soaking in the deluge always left his skin feeling beaten and bloated. And the sensation, if untreated, never failed to transform itself into two long iron nails hammered deep into his skull and brain. The pain was best avoided if at all possible.

(Xiao XingChen knew this about him. Nothing’s ever eased the migraines faster than XingChen’s smile as he wordlessly pushed a cup of hot water or tea across the table. Nothing’s ever distracted Song Lan from the pain more effectively than wondering exactly what would happen, if XingChen’s fingers lingered and his own could touch, just lightly, those perpetually chapped knuckles.)

(Take better care of yourself, Song Lan had once chastised when blood came seeping up between cracked skin.

I forget to, XingChen had confessed, sheepish lines crinkling around his eyes.

Had Song Lan been anybody else, he would’ve said out loud what he wished he could’ve said out loud: I’ll do it then.

Had Song Lan been anybody else, he would’ve thumbed a layer of protective grease over Xiao XingChen’s dry hands himself, save them both the need for cheesy lines and impotent promises. Words often got him into trouble, he knew this; he much preferred the vows made in every shared action that was mutually fostered into consistency. But what did it say about him, that his hands flinched from touch and Xiao XingChen walked at a careful radius around him, that he couldn’t make a vow on any level that counted?)

The extermination was no reprieve from the discomfort, the dissatisfaction, the disassembly of it all. The sky was falling apart and so was his skin. Moderation was less a stranger to Song Lan than longing, but tonight, the berating of his body was not moderated at all.

A year of searching, over, just like that.

An opportunity to apologize, gone, just like that.

A promise.

A dream.

So do you like him then? You want to really build a family with him?

Gone. Just like that.

[overthinkingkdrama]

Exit Rant: Mr. Sunshine

[This is intended to be a spoiler free review of Mr. Sunshine but it may include a few minor spoilers throughout. It’s also long as all hell. Enjoy.]

Wow, here I am with my Mr. Sunshine review and it's only...*looks at wrist despite not wearing a watch* nearly three months after the final episode aired. Totally in keeping with this blog's commitment to publishing consistent and relevant content *manic laughter*.

The truth is, even if it hadn't been bad timing schedule-wise, Mr. Sunshine was going to be a difficult drama for me to review. This drama has so much to recommend it in terms of beautiful production, epic scope, unique period setting and blockbuster cast. There is something conceptually mesmerizing about Mr. Sunshine that engaged my basest fangirl and aesthetic sensibilities, but the actual experience of watching the episodes does not live up all the premise promises. What Mr. Sunshine delivers as a drama is, paradoxically, less than the sum of it's parts.

Let's focus on the positive first.

The cast in this drama is god-tier. You're rarely going to find an ensemble cast like this outside of Chungmuro. Your first, second and third leads all can and have headlined films and dramas of their own, and a lot of the stars here (like Kim Tae Ri of The Handmaiden fame) have critically acclaimed film pedigrees.

There's a lot to say about the actors and the performances, and there's no way I'm going to get to all of it. The extended cast is large and exceptionally great, and I'm not going to be able to remember and talk about everyone by name, so I'm going to have to limit myself to the main cast.

It's really the cast that moves heaven and earth to make this script work. To the degree that sometimes it felt that each actor lived in their character and lent flesh and texture where the writing let us down. Kim Tae Ri, played Ae Shin with so much fierceness and unshakable dignity that I couldn't stop cheering for her, even when the plot sidelined her character for what felt like episodes at a time.

For many people, the rousing showstopper performance of the drama was Yoo Yeon Seok as Gu Dong Mae. Early in the life cycle of the drama I recall hearing that Kim Eun Sook got herself embroiled in some controversy because people felt that the Japanese-sympathizer Dong Mae was far too likable considering his political ideology. Some hasty shuffling was done and rather than being characterized as a bald-faced fascist, Dong Mae became more of a freewheeling mercenary gangster-type. This was a positive change in my opinion. I don't want to retread what has already been said (a lot of it by me) about Dong Mae, but YYS has never been and may never be as interesting or as sexy as he was in Mr. Sunshine, in my opinion. He plays the morally grey character with edge and blazing charisma and, if nothing else does, makes the drama worth checking out.

Information broker and enigmatic owner of the Glory Hotel, Kudo Hina, as portrayed by Kim Min Jung and (my personal favorite) and the soulful Hui Seong, born into a blood-soaked privilege he can't escape, played by Byun Yo Han, wonderfully round out the cast and are, if anything, tragic underutilized by the plot. The only person here who perhaps underwhelms is Lee Byung Hun as the titular main character. I don't have strong feelings about him as an actor or as a person one way or the other. I've enjoyed some movies he's been a part of. I do feel that visually he looks too old for baby-faced Kim Tae Ri, but I'm almost used to that kind of thing in Dramaland. His performance is perhaps meant to be restrained--nigh on repressed--but it comes off as a bit bland and wooden. Which isn’t to say he’s bad, and I feel Eugene had a lot of potential to be a very interesting character just...decidedly less interesting than everyone else.

A lot of praise has been heaped on the way this drama looks, and I will agree, it’s a very pretty show. Personally, I disliked how heavily color graded certain scenes, especially outdoor scenes were. I found it a bit distracting and it took away from how otherwise gorgeous some of the scenery in this is when the sky is tan or everything in a scene is tinted blue for some reason. But the production deserves a lot of credit for creating a full and lived in feeling world, for the beauty of the sets and the costumes, the sheer attention to detail, and the way they used all four seasons to set the tone and give you a sense of the passage of time.

And let me just state that during Mr. Sunshine’s run I was decidedly obsessed with it. I posted about it, I talked about it to my friends, I talked several of those friends into watching it with me...and a few of those people still speak to me to this day. When I start criticizing it here in a few seconds, know that doesn’t mean I didn’t get a lot of hours of enjoyment out of this drama or that I think I’m too good for this show. I’ve seen 4 of Kim Eun Sook’s dramas so far and this is easily the best one. It’s not just better than Goblin, DOTS and Heirs, it’s miles better. Is that everything? I think that about covers it.

Now for the bad stuff...

I’ve said this in the past in relation to Goblin, but it bears repeating: Kim Eun Sook is good--possibly even great--at creating singular, iconic story moments and absolute rubbish at developing a cohesive plot that builds tension over multiple episodes and pays off in a logical way. At the time I said it I was basing it off of relatively little experience with her writing, but I’ve seen the pattern repeat itself two more times since then and I’m increasingly convinced that I’m a genius.

I do believe there are extenuating factors that account for the poor pacing of her dramas. The number of episodes and the episode length might not be within Kim Eun Sook’s control and she’s not responsible for poor editing either. Both Goblin and Mr. Sunshine suffer a lot because of bloated run time, and maybe that’s the network’s fault but it leaves plot feeling thin in places, even like it’s futilely spinning it’s wheels waiting for the next important event to come along.

With Mr. Sunshine the issue wasn’t even that there wasn’t enough interesting plot or character backstories to fill 24, hour plus episodes, possibly even more, it was that at times it felt like the drama flatly refused to delve into the interesting details, preferring to leave us miserably treading water in the doldrums of the story. It felt like we had to beg and wait for even morsels of backstory about certain characters--the drama was especially mum regarding Kuda Hina’s history--while the two leads endlessly mooned over one another. How many scenes did we need to watch Eugene and Ae Shin soulfully stare at one another?

Mr. Sunshine never successfully builds momentum until the last 2 or 3 episodes of the run. And while there is a lot of lip service paid to guns and glory and sad endings, but much of the drama feels like it's milling around with hands in pockets waiting for the tragic curtain call. Even the badass sniper heroine is frequently sidelined. It feels like the story remains stubbornly in the set up phase, one step forward and two steps back. It's as though Kim Eun Sook has all of these wonderful toys--great characters, huge budget, interesting time period/setting--and she simply doesn't know what to do with them.

Consistently my frustration with Mr. Sunshine was its inability to effectively incorporate the extended cast into the plot. It feels like all characters exist in separate bubbles waiting for their turn to have a scene. Those scenes are interesting but maddeningly brief, and then they are shuffled backstage once again until it's once again time for their requisite 5-10 minutes of screen time per episode. 

This problem is especially present in the main cast with Dong Mae, Hina and Hui Seong. And that is what is so deeply exasperating about this drama, because there is just enough good peppered in to keep me invested, so many great elements poorly employed. It makes one want to take KES's script away from her and take it home and fix it yourself, because you just know she's not treating it right.

When calamity comes, and it does, it feels disproportionate and somewhat unsatisfying, because the build up didn’t do it justice. The drama ends with a rousing crescendo, but it feels that the individual character arcs were never allowed to reach their full potential. I’m not one to shy away from tragedy, but it left me feeling rather empty.

I wish I could a finer point on it than that, but it’s a murky issue to me. I know I’m not connecting with the story as much as I want to, but it’s hard to put my finger on the exact reason and that just adds to my frustration with it.

I stand by my assertion that this is still the best KES drama I have watched. Thought admittedly I’ve still only seen 4 of them, this one shows the most promise and, I think, the most growth. But it’s not there yet. I don’t know if I could ever watch it again, but I’m glad I watched it once. If for nothing else for the fantastic performances of several old and new favorites. I give Mr. Sunshine an 8.5/10, which is probably too high considering everything I’ve said about it up to this point. However, it’s just too strong in terms of overall production and cast for me to feel good about rating it any lower.