#but seeing some of the older eps: yes. he actually changes quite a bit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

asumi2020202 · 26 days ago

Text

How odd

Pairing: Yue Qin x Reader

Summary: In hopes of taking Mei Lin back to Xiyan as the Moon Kunlun, Yue Qin falls in love with General's youngest daughter in Great Yan.

A/n: Hello, I hope you all are doing okay. From now on I will be focusing just a tiny bit more on C-Dramas since there are almost none. Anyways, Thank you for reading!

I don't know what the next episodes will turn out as, I am writing on the basis of ep- 17-24. I don't know what happened next, so this might be different from the show a bit.

This event occurs from ep 17 when Yue Qin searches for Mei Lin since he thinks she is fit to be the Moon Kunlun.

Some changes have been made. Some events may be interchanged with eachother, I apologise for this mishap.

And this fiction is long. Longer than I expected it to be.

Ā-xiong - elder brother, Ā-jie - elder sister, Meímeí - younger sister

______________ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ___________________

Y/n was born only 30 minutes after Luo Mei, making her the younger daughter. Though they were twins, they were different from each other but loved eachother nonetheless.

Luo Mei was dominant and attracted to swords and battle, while Y/n was more submissive and was taught household affairs by the Empress.

Luo Mei taught Y/n how to use a bow since she wanted her little sister to know atleast a little weaponry to protect herself.

Both the sisters grew up at the Royal Palace, where one grew up to be a great general and strategist while the other grew up to be a wise, mindful delicate lady.

The Emperor of Great Yan created a decree to let the sisters choose their own lovers with a hope that they could follow their hearts' desires.

_________________________________________

Luo Mei was a fearsome General who went for battles. Y/n, however, remained in Royal Palace. The Emperor promised her elder sister that she would be taken care of.

Much had happened since then.

The Emperor of Xiyan sent his daughter to be a Concubine of the Emperor of Great Yan along with hundred beauties of Xiyan as a peace treaty.

Since Princess Zi Gu, now Concubine Yan, didn't know anyone in Great Yan except her brother and Mei Lin, an assassin who tried to kill Prince Jinghe, the Emperor asked Y/n to live in Fanghua Palace along with Zi Gu.

The two got along with each other quite quickly. Both of them were lonely, so they took refuge in each other.

Y/n and Mei Lin got along with eachother as well. Y/n made her the sweetest flowercakes which reminded Mei Lin of her mother.

_________________________________________

Yue Qin, the Prince heir of Xiyan, was walking around the garden of the Emperor when he saw a woman walking down the court room.

As she came down from the stairs, she almost crashed into him but avoided the crash.

"Forgive me your highness, I was careless and didn't watch where I was going." The h/c lady apologized, bowing to Yue Qin.

She didn't know who he was but his clothing seemed as if he is a royal.

"It is fine. As long as no one is injured.." Yue Qin answered with a light smile which the lady reciprocated.

"Forgive my lord but.. i haven't seen you before.." the h/c lady spoke gently.

"Ah.. I am Yue Qin, the Prince heir of Xiyan. This is my second time visiting actually. And you my lady... who may you be?" Said Yue Qin.

The lady was slightly shocked but composed herself and replied.

"I.. am Y/n. Luo Mei's sister. I grew up here in this palace."

"Luo Mei... The General?" Yue Qin asked.

"Yes.. she is my older sister but only by 30 minutes." Y/n spoke calmly, letting out a gentle laugh.

"Y/n.." a voice called.

Y/n turned around and saw Luo Mei.

"Ā-jie" y/n gave a smile to her sister as Luo Mei reached them.

"My prince. Forgive me but I am afraid I need to take my sister away for sometime, before she goes back to Fanghua Palace, to discuss a matter." Luo Mei bowed and spoke.

"Ah.. it's quite alright. I understand." Yue Qin said, giving a smile while y/n and her sister left.

"Ā-xiong"

Yue Qin turned around to see his sister, the Concubine.

"I was just going to meet you in Fanghua Palace. Tell me, does Y/n work there?" Yue Qin asked his sister, Concubine Yan.

"Y/n? No she doesn't work there. Since I know no one here, the Emperor asked her to live in Fanghua Palace with me. Is she a friend of yours?" Concubine Yan asked with an eager smile.

"Yes... I suppose." Yue Qin said, turning his head down and smiling to himself.

_________________________________________

You had returned to Fanghua Palace after you and your sister discussed the matter about Mei Lin.

You walked inside Fanghua Palace and saw Concubine Yan having some tea with the Prince Heir.

"Y/n! Come join us." Said Concubine Yan.

You walked upto them as she patted down on the chair between her and the Prince Heir.

You took your seat as a new set conversation arose at the table.

"Back then I couldn't really get to know you, since your sister suddenly took you away." Started Yue Qin, laughing gently.

"I apologise. She had received a letter that our father has sent, so she had to take me away to discuss." You replied, taking a sip of the tea that Concubine Yan poured for you.

"Ah, it's fine. Tell me, y/n... How long has it been since you have been accompanying my sister? I do hope that she hasn't given you any trouble." Yue Qin asked.

"I have been here for about a month or two. Concubine Yan treats me well."

"I told you to just call me Zi Gu.." grumbled Concubine Yan from the side.

"I am pleased to hear that..... Tell me then... Y/n..." The next few hours went on like this. It was as if Concubine Yan was invisible. Yue Qin and y/n were discussing between themselves, laughing and occasionally blushing as well.

Concubine Yan smiled a little, not enough for the other two to see. She knew Mei Lin didn't reciprocate her brother's feelings. It's better if he finds someone else, someone who will appreciate him.

_________________________________________

Three weeks had passed from then.

"Ā-xiong. It's been almost a month since you've been trying to pursue her. You should tell her of your feelings today."

"I understand your concern Zi Gu. But with the Crown Prince trying to hunt down Mei Lin, I think I should delay this some more."

"You and I both know that Mei Lin is no longer the one in your heart. Then why hurt her and yourself? You love her and she loves you."

"She... Loves me?"

"Since I am her best friend, I am the only one who knows this. I wouldn't have helped you if you weren't my Ā-xiong."

_________________________________________

"-No longer the one in your heart. You love her and she loves you."

Those words made Y/n freeze in the spot. She felt a pain in your heart. Tears started swelling in her eyes.

Y/n was passing by the room of Concubine Yan when she heard her and a male voice, probably the Prince Heir, talking and occasionally shouting.

Without a second more, she ran to her room.

_________________________________________

Two days since then, Y/n felt hurt but decided to back down. If whom she loves, loves another, then she would stand in his path.

She hid her pain under a delicate smile.

"No matter what, Mei Lin would not be safe here. The only way to protect her is if she stays in Xiyan and better if she becomes the Princess Heir." Spoke Prince Jing.

"You and the Crown Prince would clash. It is inevitable. I can take Mei Lin to Xiyan and protect her but I cannot make her the Princess Heir. My heart belongs to another." Yue Qin calmly replied but his facial features showed concern.

"Very well then... i am entrusting her safety to you. Take care of her. And one single advice I'll give you, if you love someone, tell them before it's too late." With one final smile, Prince Jinghe left the room.

_________________________________________

"Y/n~" Concubine Yan whined because of the lack of attention from her friend.

"Hmm?"

"The Emperor is unwell.. he had a stroke. I cannot go to the festival today.. But you can! Will you go today?"

"What for?" Y/n enquired.

"Umm- to buy me some ornaments!" Zi Gu said, excited.

"Alright.."

Genuine happiness could be seen on the Concubine's face. She had succeeded in her plan.

_________________________________________

You were walking around the stalls of the festival when someone spoke to you.

"I was looking for you everywhere and here you are."

Oh.. you knew that voice.

"Your highness" you turned around and bowed to Yue Qin.

"May I ask why you were looking for me?" You asked.

"My sister had asked me to accompany you today. And I have some things to tell you which is important for you to know." Yue Qin replied.

"I see. Her Highness told me to buy some ornaments for her." You answered.

"Ah.. in that case you can help me buy something. Since I don't know what women like."

For women? You felt your heart cracking again.

"Alright. Perhaps this hairpin would suit her. It looks nice." You said, holding up a beautiful hairpin to him.

"Indeed it looks good. She would be happy." Yue Qin replied, giving a smile while handing the money to the seller.

_________________________________________

You both had been walking for sometime. You had bought some things which you thought Zi Gu would like.

"Your Highness. Didn't you say you have something important to tell me?" You asked the Prince Heir.

Yue Qin took you under a nearby tree. He took you a little further from the crowd.

"Y/n.. I want you to listen to me very carefully." Yue Qin started, looking directly in your eyes. You gave a simple nod.

"I want you to know that there is no pressure. You have no reason to feel obliged."

"I-i cannot understand anything you're saying." You said, a little confused.

"I wanted to ask you... Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? Of being the Princess Heir of Xiyan?" Yue Qin came clean.

It seemed as if time was frozen.

"Wh-what about Mei Lin? I thought... That you liked her." You questioned.

"Mei Lin? Yes I did love her once but I do not anymore. Her heart belongs to Prince Jing and mine to you. So..what's.. your answer?" Yue Qin looked tensed. Maybe because you still hadn't said anything.

It took you a little time to process his words. Tears started forming in your eyes but you blinked them away. You gave a smile to him and nodded your head.

The Prince Heir felt a weight being lifted up from his shoulders. A smile broke out on his face. He took the hairpin he bought and placed it on your hair.

You stared at his eyes. He bent a little and kissed you passionately.

Concubine Yan, whom you both thought was in the palace, had spied on the whole situation with her maid Chagu. They clapped their hands together in success.

_________________________________________

The dreadful day had come.

The Prince Heir, Y/n and Mei Lin would leave for Xiyan.

Concubine Yan had a sad expression on her face. She wanted to hug but stopped. The three other walked two steps when Concubine Yan could no longer take it and ran upto the three, hugging them.

After some time, she let go of the three.

"Y/n.." came a voice.

Turning her back to the Concubine, Prince Heir and Mei Lin, Y/n looked in front. Her sister, Luo Mei stood in front of her.

"Ā-jie! I thought you were with the Crown Prince." Y/n told her thoughts to her sister.

"I was. But you were leaving, so I came to see you one last time. The Crown Prince doesn't know that I'm here...." Your sister said softly, placing a kiss on your forehead as tears threatened to fall from both the sisters' eyes.

"Take care of her for me. That is the only request I will make to you." Luo Mei stated her wish to the Prince Heir.

Luo Mei watched her sister leave in a carriage. She smiled to herself knowing that atleast her meímeí would be safe.

_________________________________________

"Father... She is the one who has captured my heart." Began Yue Qin, looking at Y/n and then back at his father, the Emperor.

"She is Y/n. The daughter and sister of two powerful generals of Xiyan." Yue Qin continued.

Y/n bowed and greeted the Emperor as he gave a little smile of amazement. The Emperor read the card which a servant handed him to check about Y/n's life history.

"The Sun Kunlun has found the Moon Kunlun." Said Madam Zhu Li, giving her smirking smile.

"The Gods.. have blessed us. I will pick an auspicious day to crown her the Princess Heir." Said the Emperor, giving a smile.

_________________________________________

The next day of arrival and meeting the Emperor, the Moon Kunlun is suppose to do take part in a ritual.

The Moon Kunlun would have a bit of her back embroidered. It has been done everytime a Moon Kunlun has been chosen.

"It has been passed down for centuries. Only the Moon Kunlun has some of her back flesh embroidered." Stated Madam Zhu Li.

"The Sun Kunlun and the Moon Kunlun are one body and soul. It doesn't matter who has their skin embroidered." Came the Prince Heir's reply.

"It is alright. I can bear through the pain." You said, looking at Yue Qin.

"But you-" Yue Qin was interrupted by you.

"No buts. Time is short. Madam Zhu Li, please begin with the ritual." You stated.

"Very well. Escort the Sun Kunlun to his room." Madam Zhu Li stated.

A guard accompanied Yue Qin to the stairs and led him to the back.

Yue Qin heard a little sound of pain which you tried to stop. He turned around and saw your kneeling state, eyes clamped shut, face contorted in pain, blood dripping from the back. He was upset that you had to go through this just to be with him. The guard continued to take him back to his room.

_________________________________________

Before the wedding of the Sun Kunlun and the Moon Kunlun, they had to pay a visit to the village. Mei Lin came along with them.

While they strolled, the villagers kept chanting "Greetings, Sun Kunlun. Greetings Moon Kunlun."

The two only looked at each other and smiled. A small child came upto the Moon Kunlun with a flower in her hand. Both the Prince and Princess Heir stopped as the Princess Heir crouched down and let the child place the flower in her hair.

Hours later, they arrived at the house of the Governor of Qingzhou. The governor was no other than Murong Jinghe. Mei Lin ran to him while the other two stood behind. While the Prince and Princess Heir of Xiyan returned, Mei Lin stayed back with Prince Jing.

_________________________________________

"The lights of the Sacred High Tower has been getting dim. I want the Sun Kunlun and the Moon Kunlun to relight them before their wedding." The Emperor of Xiyan said before getting down from his throne and leaving the Prince Heir and the General alone.

_________________________________________

The next day, the Moon Kunlun and Sun Kunlun were escorted to the High Tower. Since they weren't wed yet, they couldn't share a room. Hence they were brought by seperate palanquins.

In front of the Emperor they bowed. The High Priest, Madam Zhu Li, guided them through the ritual.

The Emperor seemed pleased. The Sun and Moon Kunlun bowed to the Emperor as he left.

_________________________________________

Finally, it was the day that the Sun and Moon Kunlun, the Prince and Princess Heir, Yue Qin and Y/n would be tied together with a red string. The day they would truly become one.

Y/n's handmaiden escorted her to the High Tower, where she saw The Emperor, The Prince Heir, The High Priest and The General.

Y/n's was dressed in a traditional red Hanfu. Since she was the Prince Heir's wife, her dress had a crane pattern. Her hair was braided in some parts to match with her husband's.

Her head had multiple beautiful hairpins along with the traditional pheonix crown, but her hair was styled in such a way, that the hairpin Yue Qin gave her stood out the most in a beautiful way.

Yue Qin was mesmerized when he saw her. He could only see her eyes since half of her face was covered by and embroidered stand which is only used in weddings.

The Emperor had a satisfied smile on his face as he relaxed on his throne.

The High Priest said her part and guided the couple through the session.

_________________________________________

By now it was already night. The man who stays with Prince Heir, escorted him to his room which he will now be sharing with wife for the rest of his life.

On his bed sat his wife, the embroidered stand she held was on the table. Yue Qin could see his wife's face clearly now.

"Can you help me with the hairpins and this huge thing?" Y/n asked her husband, pointing at the pheonix crown.

"Of course." Yue Qin smiled and went behind his wife to help her with her hair.

Yue Qin gently took out the hairpins one by one as to not hurt Y/n and then proceeded to take off her pheonix crown.

Once done, her hair was completely down. He ran his hand through her silky hair to soothe her roots.

Y/n turned around to look at her husband while sitting on the bed.

"The nanny has explained to me about what has to be done tonight." She said, her head looking down to hide the excessive blush on her face.

"You're back isn't healed yet. There is no rush." Yue Qin explained.

"But you would be-" y/n almost got up but Yue Qin made her sit down again.

"It's alright. We have the rest of our lives. I will not take any Concubines so you shouldn't worry about my love to you getting divided." He said, giving her a smile.

"Did you apply the ointment on your back?" Yue Qin asked to which she shook her head no.

Yue Qin went to the nearby desk to get the ointment box.

"Will you let me?" He asked for permission.

Y/n nodded her head. She let her Hanfu loose in a way that only her back showed.

Yue Qin took out an ointment and gently applied on her back. She winced out a little.

"Did I hurt you?" Yue Qin asked worried.

"No, it just stings a little." Y/n said, giving a tiny smile.

Once done, Y/n tried fixing her Hanfu but failed a little. Yue Qin, like a gentleman, helped her fix it for the night.

He cut his finger a little and dropped some of it on the bed before lying down.

He laid on the bed first and guided Y/n to lay her head on his chest so her wound wouldn't get pressed by the bed.

When morning came, y/n's handmaiden found them in that exact position, y/n's chest pressed to Yue Qin's, her head under his neck, a hand of his wrapped around her protectively.

The maid couldn't help but blush a little looking at them. While she was trying to leave, the man who stays with the Prince Heir tried to come in.

The maid stopped him and said

"It's better that we don't disturb them now." The man blushed at her words, thinking about the 'Deed'. He rushed out of there.

The maid had a confused look on her face before leaving to tend to her work. She noticed the man blushing near a tree and muttered out-

...How odd..

-Lillian

#Yue Qin #Yue Qin x reader #fanfiction #x reader #x yn #kill me love me #cdrama #chinese drama #yue qin x yn #prince heir

3 notes · View notes

constantvariations · 2 years ago

Text

V9C6

Pro tip: never let someone who doesn’t understand the RP in RPG run a DnD campaign

Post Ep: quite possibly the best episode of the season so far. Things actually happened for once, and it was all character focused. By V9 standards this is an absolute masterpiece

Hey the OP changed to show Jaune’s ugly ass breaking the 4th wall. Don’t care about your sad face dude

Oh goddammit not this 1st POV shit again. I get doing it for Ruby bc yknow. Main character. Show’s named after her and everything. Jaune? Not so much

So we don’t even get an indication of when Jaune originally showed up? Where even is he?

Ah yes, let’s just skip right past the trauma of someone waiting literally decades for people he knows are coming but not when to have some silly whoosh sound effects and bullet fast questions

One thing I will say is I much prefer this voice to his usual. It’s far more natural and far less grating on my soul

WHY ARE THEY MAKING WEISS LIKE THIS. WHO IS THIS BITCH AND WHERE IS THE REAL WEISS

Like, if she’d shown any interest in an older man before this then, fine, Weiss would be into older men, but this is coming from literally fucking nowhere and feels like, yet again, the writers are catering to themselves via their pet rather than thinking about what the characters would actually do

“We got everybody out” think you’re missing a few dozen folks. Yknow. The ones who Cinder exploded off the bridge? Even if the explosion killed all of them, which is statistically unlikely, there would still be bodies somewhere. Thanks to the timey whimey fuckery, we could see them falling from the sky at any time, which would be gruesome as fuck but a very poignant moment of failure for them all

Aaaaaand once again the team’s attempts to have a proper fucking discussion about their past actions and the subsequent consequences interrupted. By fucking Jaune. Goddammit

“What cat?” Does Jaune not know the story or is he attempting to clarify it’s Curious instead of some other resident? Also, damn that was actually a good bit of voice acting. Is this Luna or is someone else playing Elder Banana Boy?

The framing of Curious Cat under clear skies to Jaune under dark clouds is really fucking good. Wonder if the protruding jackalope antlers means something or if it’s just too big to leave out of frame

“This place really is the pits” I’m not entirely sure this is something Weiss would say, but punderful crossroads ig

So the tree is the source of the Againing? I feel it’d be more impactful if residents went to the tree willingly, like a sacred pilgrimage, rather than being dropped through a hole

Though this does present an interesting choice for Ruby: go to the tree and become someone new or continue with the choices and responsibilities. It must be incredibly tempting

“[Yang and Blake] must’ve had something bigger to work out.” Shut the fuck up their romance isn’t even tied to any character arcs or thematic problems; they’ve just been circling each other for fucking seasons while ignoring everything and everyone else. This is NOT bigger than what’s already at hand

Ah yes, the perfect solution to force a romantic confession: dangling people on a rickety bridge in high winds. Guess that brings a new meaning to “falling for you”

“So, what, Alyx lied?” Damn sure would be nice to know the actual story so we can feel the same betrayal the characters do

God can I just skip over the high rise bumblebee moments? I’m cringing so hard my intestines are straightening out. Also is it just me or is the animation around these parts really strange? I can’t put my finger on it but it’s wigging me out

Not entirely sure how I’m feeling about this Alyx reveal. Would it really have been so wrong for an innocent, naive girl in strange and overwhelming circumstances to make terrible mistakes? Wouldn’t that be far more relevant to Ruby’s own journey, especially if Alyx never learned to take responsibility? Especially if one of those mistakes cost her a brother she never spoke of again, perhaps eventually even forgot due to the guilt?

Idk this kinda feels like another complicated, morally grey situation being boiled down to “bad person hurt good person so we hate the bad person." Also, not great that she and the dead bro are the only ones darker than milk this season. Gr8 representation rt

“You have cat ears!” ...why are we alive? Just to suffer? I swear this volume has made more of a fuss about Blake’s status as a “non-human” than all other volumes combined. SHE IS JUST A HUMAN WITH CAT EARS I’M GOING TO EAT A FUCKING FRIDGE

“Maybe it’s saying things we’ve never said to each other.” Damn y’all haven’t really done any talking about anything so if that’s the rule y’all could reach the platform by straight up talking about the weather or books and videogames

Also this forced confession feels really icky. They’re basically hostages to the environment. It’s not cute that the confession is coming out of this situation, it’s fucking appalling. Especially when you consider how much better and more natural it would’ve been in V6 or V7. Hell, I’d take a wildly out of place kiss in V8 rather than this

I think Blake should’ve been the one to say it first. She’s the one with the running away problem, so her being the one to step up and face her fears in such a personal manner would be far better for her character arc than urging Yang to take the leap instead

“You never give up on people, even when they hurt you.” Adam Taurus and every White Fang member she’s killed is calling bullshit. Blake never tried reaching out to any of these people and clearly had no problem slicing and dicing them for the sake of humans who give zero shits about faunus rights

“You never give up” I think her retreat in V4 counts as giving up, Yang, but you wouldn’t know that because you’ve NEVER FUCKING TALKED

Huzzah, a kiss! Now, how about a proper, healthy relationship?

So Curious knew the story all along? Which means we didn’t have to suffer that obnoxious, self-righteous snore of a “love letter to the fandom” because it was required for the plot. We suffered it because the writers wanted us to suffer. Thanks I hate it

I really like the checkers going dull when Curious gets sad. They’re genuinely the best part of this volume, followed only by that gorgeous mushroom forest. I just wish their colors were better. There’s a difference between bright and eyestrain, and they very much are the latter

“You used me in the same way I’ve only seen [indecipherable] for knowledge and entertainment.” Firstly, can I get some goddamn captions please my family is starving. Secondly, go get em baby I got yo flower

Damn did they rip that house straight from the ps2? What the fuck

Ah, bathos. Possibly the worst literary crime possible. Why would we ever ruminate on the fact that Ruby and co. have been using people and making lives worse everywhere they go when we can watch Blake and Yang suck face?

Also, I’m fairly certain that, out of the two of them, Yang would be the one to pop a leg

“I think Alyx traded [Louis] to the tree [in order to leave]” Is that what Ruby’s gonna propose? Being traded so everyone else can go home? Doubt the tree will allow such an uneven trade to begin with, but, once again, a tempting idea

Why is Ruby having an episode over Cresent Rose’s return? Is it the reminder of what happened at the V8 crossroads? The responsibility it represents? The identity she no longer has?

This would be easier to understand if we had any build up. If the return of her weapon is going to be this heavy, then the loss of it at the beginning should have made a serious impact. But it didn’t. She didn’t even look for it. Never once talked about it. Outside of fights, Cresent Rose’s absence has been completely ignored

And why is no one seeing her very clear and obvious distress yet AGAIN? WBY cheer when she gets it back, but it makes them seem ignorant to the point of callousness. Par for the course this volume, but the longer it goes on, the less I actually care about any of this

If her supposed friends, including the overprotective sister who apparently raised her, don’t notice Ruby waving more red flags than Sayaka Miki, then why should I be bothered whenever it’s happening? If the story keeps dragging her symptoms out episode after episode, cutting the scene any time it feels like we’re about to get somewhere, then why should I invest any energy into it? If the story doesn’t care, why should I?

Luna is, indeed, still the voice of Jaune. Great improvement, boyo, keep this voice for him forever

#rwde #so when is jaune gonna talk abt penny #whens he gonna admit he stabbed her in the heart #hows he going to say it now that hes had decades to come to terms w it but for them penny was alive like. yesterday #or even this morning #thats what im waiting for. thats the shit i wanna see #bc i think thats gonna be the thing that makes ruby break #i wanna see her shatter then figure out what to do w the pieces #im genuinely sad abt Curious tho #i like the little guy despite him being an eyesore #but now that hes gone were gonna have to deal w fucking little again arent we #eat that fuckign mouse right now #also there were a lot of interesting hooks in this ep #alyx and louis. the tree being the source of agains. Curious leaving them behind #more and more consequences are piling up on the team. v interested to see how they handle it #and now that the bees are canon hopefully theyll remember that other people fuckign exist #yang your sister is potentially going to reset herself. maybe you should take notice instead of sucking face

18 notes · View notes

jeontaehui · 4 years ago

Text

TAEHEE WITH NCT U

shotaro tarohee

shotaro ADORES . her

taehee, although very shy, was quick to get close with the two new members ,,, especially shotaro !!!! he’s very close to becoming her jisung pt. 2, he’s got her wrapped around his finger.

(un cut | take #4 resonance pt. 1) “shotaro!!!! have you just finished your shoot?,” taehee asks, a dimpled smile on her face as she does so. “yes, i just finished,” the younger one laughs softly.

taehee calls him ‘taro-chan’ with her iconic eye smile and the dimples on her cheeks.

(un cut | take #1 resonance pt. 1) “what do you think of the new members?,” the producer asked. “oh they’re so cute,” taehee pouts, “super cute. sungchan is so tall and handsome and shotaro is so cute and he dances really well. i adore him.”

taehee praises him all the chance she gets to reassure him, and helps him with his korean and she makes sure he also gets to speak.

she also knows a few tiktok dances here and there so she asks shotaro to teach her a few more (may or may not have filmed one or two tiktoks with him).

iconic moment (nct world 2.0 ep. 5) “i might be full already,” taehee hangs her head low as she mumbles. she was already nine plates in but each of them had to eat twenty-three plates of sushi to complete the challenge. so far, she has the highest number of plates after haechan who has ten. she decides to stretch and walk for a bit just like haechan had suggested, before sitting back down and counting each of the member’s plates.

“is it good?,” she asks shotaro while mindlessly getting another plate. the latter nods, taehee melting at the sight of his adorable eye smile, “it’s delicious.”

her smile quickly falters as she looks down at whatever plate she grabbed. something in her stirs as she groans over three long rolls of makizushi, waiting to be eaten as she thinks over her decisions in the past minutes, “this looks so good but i’m feeling so full.”

shotaro giggles when he hears this and raises his fist saying, “noona, fighting!”

and for some reason, taehee’s apetite had gone up again as she finishes her current plate. she then grabs one, two, three more plates of sushi and is now going for her seventeenth plate. realizing this, she can’t help but smile at the younger japanese boy who had encouraged her earlier. “woah, taro-chan you should cheer for me more. we’re gonna be out of here in no time.”

shotaro laughs once again, “you’re doing so well, noona. fighting!”

taehee turns to her other side, covering her face as she fake cries into haechan’s shoulder. “he’s so cute!”

song adore you by miley cyrus

sungchan chanhee

taehee makes it a point to show up and hype up sungchan from the sidelines as he shoots his scenes as a form of encouragement.

(90’s love mv reaction) “SUNGCHAN!!!!! YOU’RE DOING SO WELL!!!!!”

she’d also accompany him around set and get to know him more so he won’t feel lonely when waiting for the others to finish up.

sungchan is a Giant and taehee is used to patting her dongsaengs on the head but ,,, for sungchan she just pats his shoulder instead.

when they hug, sungchan has to bend down to reach her (out of respect and so that taehee could just really pat his head lol) and fans find it super endearing.

(n’-151) “okay so, out of all the members,” haechan says to sungchan, “who has been the nicest and most helpful to you. you really have to think about it.” sungchan puts his arm around haechan’s shoulder, making the latter think it was going to be him, until he says, “taehee noona.”

sungchan actually isn’t afraid to ask taehee help in something, be it rap, gestures, or choreo. taehee’s glad to at least feel that he’s comfortable with her.

taehee tells sungchan not to be fooled by haechan, he should trust her more (which is followed by strings of protests coming from said member).

iconic moment (uncut take #8 | ‘90’s love’ mv behind) “right now, we’re filming a music video,” sungchan begins, holding the camera a little lower to fit both him and taehee in the frame. “yes. why’d you bring the camera lower?,” he chuckles at her teasing.

but he continues, “please tell me how i should look cool while filming,” and taehee proceeds to think over the words that could help him. “mmm, confidence is a given,” sungchan nods, “don’t hesitate ‘cause then that would look awkward.”

“don’t even like... think of the result too much. just be in the moment. feel the vibe of the song,” taehee finishes, nodding as the younger took in her words. “and don’t be too nervous,” she adds, “if something looks off, the staff would tell you. we would help you, you’re doing great so far anyways,” she pats his shoulder, “if you feel like doing something you’ve seen before, you can do it.”

taehee smiles as sungchan continues to process her words, he’s such a good dongsaeng. “is there any like, facial expression you want to try out?”

“i want to look artistic,” he smiles, “you’re good at that.”

taehee shies away at the compliment, her dimples poking from her cheeks, and sungchan’s smile widens at seeing this side of her. “um,” she clears her throat, a faint smile on her lips, “you can have your chin up like this. then ‘street ijen geunyang classic’, sungchan pays attention as she copies his part of the choreo. her fierce look dropping to a smug smirk when she says, “‘blow that.’ you can change expressions at that part.”

taehee watches as sungchan tries what she had just demonstrated, a proud smile showing itself when he was able to do so while adding his own flare to it.

“that’s great! you did great. i think the fans would like it too if you winked. can you wink?”

“i’ll try,” he chuckles, quite proud at himself at what he just did. “고마워, noona.”

“no problem! you can ask ten hyung too, he can have more ideas,” taehee suggests as she looks around for ten, “or haechan. remember, don’t-“

“fall for his charms,” they say together, the maknae chuckling at his older members’ antics. “you learn so well, sungchanie! good job!”

song bang bang by k’naan ft. adam levine

150 notes · View notes

chalkrevelations · 3 years ago

Text

Back, finally, with Word of Honor, Episode 11, which involved a lot of waving my hands around over precious button Zhang Chengling and his concern about whatever ridiculous argument between his Murder Dads left his shifu in a snit and must be solved right this minute. I really think if he could’ve just pushed their heads together like two Ken dolls to make them kiss and make up, he would have. Didi, I could eat you up with a spoon, although not in the creepy way that Du Pusa threatens. I promise.

First, though, due diligence: Spoilers, possibly likely for the entire show, not just this ep, so scroll away and come back later if you are still, at this point in the game, trying to watch the whole 36.5 eps unspoiled. Also, this is hella long. Strap in. Hashtag long post (remorseful).

First thing I actually want to do is point out a couple of scenes that I found particularly striking for various reasons. The first one is not quite the opening scene - which is super-brief and involves Yueyang’s prep for the Heroes Conference, Gao Shan (AKA Chengling’s bully-in-chief) being smug about Yueyang’s upcoming ascendance (oh boy, are you in for a surprise, you little schmuck), and Gao Chong’s extreme weariness at the idea of Yueyang’s upcoming ascendance. Gao Chong is very tired, y’all. It’s been a long 20 years. There’s also a ginormous sword on display, like Yueyang is now having a dick-measuring contest with who they think is the disciple of the Changming Sword Immortal (and oh boy, are you guys in for another surprise. I’m not sure what part of “immortal” y’all don’t understand). But I digress - as I said, this is a very brief scene, and then we cut back to Luo Mansion, where we left Ghost Valley and Lunatic Wen at the end of the last ep. Everyone is gone except for Wen Kexing, who’s still plotting, Beauty Ghost, who’s trying to stay tf out of this current shitshow as much as possible (good luck with that), and Tragicomic Ghost, who is totally and completely Done With This Shit. She berates WKX for acting crazy, he gets snappy back – I feel like their relationship is maybe a little bit fraught at this point – and Beauty Ghost attempts to soothe the waters, leading to an eyeroll from Tragicomic Ghost with a directive to stand the hell up and stop being scared of this idiot child throwing his weight around. WKX dismisses Tragicomic Ghost so he can plan a Very Secret Mission for Beauty Ghost in secret. WKX is … he is super-tired at this point. Painfully, achingly tired. I would almost say weary. We can see it in Gong Jun’s face. It’s a nice subtle bit of acting, and it definitely says something about WKX’s relationship with these women that he’s willing and able to show it in front of them, even as he’s still throwing his weight around.

Anyway, Liu Qianqiao proves her smarts by showing her hand just enough for WKX and us to see that she’s seen through the Lunatic Wen act to the utility of chokin’ out a dude as a warning, to try keeping Changing Ghost in line (good luck with that), but she also assures all of us that she only wants to serve the Ghost Valley Master and has no agenda of her own. WKX assures her that he has everything under control (Uh … huh. OK, my dude) and tells her he has a task for her, before detouring into a quiz about her disguise technique (learned from Qin Huaizhang, Zhou Zishu’s shifu at Siji Manor, and this is probably a tipoff that the Very Secret Mission will involve disguising herself), about Siji Manor, and about why she never visited there. We get some interesting vague hints about her past, including the fact that she met Qin Huaizhang when she was “little” and he took pity on her “disfigurement,” according to both the Youku and Netflix English subs. @coralcoloratura pulled out 童年时 (tóngnián shí) from the Chinese subs for me, which does mean “childhood.” Given that the going story is Yu Qiufeng’s wife threw acid in LQQ’s face over their affair, this opens up some questions about how old LQQ actually was when all that happened. Viki subs, per @janedrewfinally, add that she says she treated Qin Huaizhang to a meal, so she couldn’t have been too young. But Qin Huaizhang dies when ZZS is just 16, and LQQ can’t be any older than ZZS, and is likely younger (good lord, I just checked actor ages, and Ke Naiyu is 7 years younger than ZZH, so that’s probably not a good age gap to port over to the show, because just. No.). All this leads me to place LQQ at somewhere between Zhang Chengling’s age and Gu Xiang’s age (at most) when this whole tragic backstory happened, which is still pretty freakin’ young, and I can see why she would consider herself a child, at least metaphorically, in terms of naïvete, if not literally. I don’t know how much exploration has been done about this, on the fannish side of things, but it seems like an area rich for exploration. Also, I CANNOT TELL YOU how much I now want to read the AU of WKX and LQQ both actually being brought to Siji Manor at various times by Qin Huaizhang and staying there. I suspect that with those two shidi backing him, ZZS might never have had to go to Prince Jin in the first place. (Clearly this makes some things problematic, including A-Xiang, but I keep thinking about ZZS, WKX and LQQ growing up together … And anyway, I’m ALSO willing to read the AU(s) where WKX’s storyline stays the same, but LQQ does come to Siji Manor – both the AU where she and ZZS together manage to save the sect, and the AU where she goes with them to Jin, and the kind of weapon she could be for ZZS there, as he runs Tian Chuang. Who’s writing all this? Anyone? Anyone?) Anyway, when WKX asks why she didn’t visit Siji Manor, LQQ tells WKX that she’s a ghost now and doesn’t want to think about the living world anymore, which is probably a way of saying she wishes she had gone there and doesn’t want to talk about her many and varied bad decisions back in the day; it also acts as an unknowing reinforcement of that bright line WKX is desperately trying to maintain for himself between the world of ghosts and the world of humans. Plus it gives him the chance to speak the very portentous line that “Yes, we’re ghosts, and ghosts disappear in the light,” pulling the theme of light back in, again and giving us all kinds of foreshadowing. Cut away as he leans in to whisper her mission to her.

The other really striking scene, for me, happens near the end of the ep, when Gao Chong visits the shrine room, with the memorial tablets of his various brothers and friends. This hit me not just because of Hei Zi’s acting (which is great, don’t get me wrong) but also because this is a scene that reflects both backward and forward in the show - back to ZZS in Ep 1 and forward to the two scenes that Zhao Jing will have in this same room – as well as giving us all sorts of subtle clues about relationships throughout the show. So first of all, we see, in a shot that will mean more the deeper we get into the show, tablets for Zhen Ruyu and Gu Miaomiao (or, “his wife,” as the Youku subs call her, and this is me, rolling my eyes), who were apparently close enough to Gao Chong that he keeps memorial tablets for them on his home altar - which helps explain why WKX is so incensed that none of these Five Lakes Alliance assholes helped his parents when they were turned out of the Healer’s Valley, although that’s not something we would have known yet on a first watch through the show. Gao Chong lights some incense and apologizes to the tablet of Zhang Yusen for letting Zhang Chengling get kidnapped. He talks about waiting 20 years to learn the truth – which is kind of cryptic, but probably means the truth about who poisoned his sword before the spar with Rong Xuan, which we hear about in a later scene this ep – and gets a little bit salty about the fact that it doesn’t matter if everyone else doesn’t believe him, but why didn’t Zhang Yusen believe him? Again, I’m assuming this is about Gao Chong’s protestations that he’s not the one who put poison on his sword. We also learn in this same ep – from Chengling – that Zhang Yusen’s break with the Five Lakes Alliance seems to have at least started that far back, and that Yusen would have been at Mount Qingya to stand with Rong Xuan against his other Alliance brothers, if Yusen’s shifu hadn’t broken his legs so that he couldn’t travel there. (Yusen clearly had some strong feelings about this, if that’s what it took to get him to sit still for it. Also, it makes me wonder how Ye Baiyi’s feelings about Chengling might change if he ever learned that Chengling’s father intended to defend and stand with a guy who Ye Baiyi considered his own child, as well as his disciple.)

Gao Chong then proceeds to have a little crisis of faith – he’s very tired, y’all, it’s been a long 20 years – and talks about how no one understands him, and he’s old, and everyone’s dead. He also yells at Rong Xuan’s tablet, calling Rong Xuan da-ge but also saying he’s sorry he ever met him, but then there’s this brief little moment after, when he seems a little bit shocked at himself for saying it out loud, which reminds me, honestly, of the moment in CQL (we’ve all seen The Untamed, right, I don’t have to put spoiler warnings for it, right?) when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are in the Yunmeng Jiang memorial hall and Wei Wuxian talks about Yu Ziyuan’s punishments back in the day, then pats his own mouth and says “My fault, my fault, my fault” before bowing to her tablet. Like, yes, their relationship was multiple levels of fucked-up, and his reaction is not out of place given some of his continuing neuroses, but also, this is just not a thing you do, speaking ill of the dead to their faces. I’m sure Gao Chong does regret ever meeting Rong Xuan, and the way that led to the building of the Armory and the Five Lakes Alliance to guard it, and the position that ultimately put Gao Chong in - not to mention that if he never met Rong Xuan he never would have accidentally killed him. But you can’t say things like that OUT LOUD to the MEMORIAL TABLET. Then contrast this to Zhao Jing, who literally takes a piss on the tablet in one of the later episodes. Because he’s the worst. And THEN, Gao Chong kneels and talks to the tablets of Zhang Yusen and Lu Taichong, his dead Five Lakes Alliance brothers, saying they must have met again in the netherworld, and that they’re probably swearing about him right now, and this is the point when I sit straight up and exclaim, out loud, “Fuck. Me. This is Zhou Zishu’s breakdown at the mirror in Episode 1.” When he talks to Jiuxiao about how Jiuxiao and Jing’An must have met again in the afterlife by now and are probably discussing what an awful shixiong ZZS is, right? And then Gao Chong even laughs bitterly like ZZS, and cries like ZZS, and I just. OK. FINE, show. I’ll try to go a little easier on Gao Chong, because you’re clearly linking him to ZZS, here, and I’m willing to forgive ZZS for anything. I suppose I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t try to extend just a little bit of the same grace to Gao Chong.

So, that’s a lot of verbiage, and I haven’t even gotten to Wenzhou yet, but trust me, I have some things to say about them. While WKX has been terrorizing the troops, ZZS left Han Ying’s place and immediately started drinking again, because that continues to be the best way – in combo with his Nails – he knows to kill himself by increments, but so sad, he’s run out of wine as he wanders the marketplace, alone and zhiji-less. Inside Yueyang, Chengling finds a note purporting to be from “Xu,” instructing him to meet at the North Gate that night, and like the little idiot they keep calling him (he really is too pure for this world), he takes it at face value. On his way that night, he runs into Gao Shan, who inadvertently almost saves him by interrupting his sneaking around to try to bully him back to his room. Something something food as bonding, because the lie Zhang Chengling comes up with is that he’s hungry (he’s not eating Yueyang’s food, and it’s not nourishing him), and he’s on his way to find something to eat (because he and his Murder Dads are in a mutually nourishing relationship, and that’s who he wants to be with). Also, no, he would prefer going to find something to eat for himself and not eating whatever Gao Shan will bring back to Chengling’s room. (A little bit, I’m sad there’s never any place to fit in some canon-complicit long-form enemies to failboats to lovers fic for these two. I have to admit, I would read it. Someone should do something with the tension between them, although I don’t really want it to be anything that will make Best Boy permanently sad.) Anyway, A-Xiang shows up just as Gao Shan is about to frog-march Chengling back to his room, and Gao Shan never sees her coming before he’s knocked out on the ground. A-Xiang is confused about the note but nevertheless helps Chengling get to where he’s supposed to meet “Xu,” whereupon she gets beat up and gets her didi took by the Scorpions. (There’s an interesting moment here where Pretty Arhat is fighting with A-Xiang and asks what her relationship is to Beauty Ghost, which whaaaaaat? THERE’S some backstory I need more on. I’m assuming this is based on A-Xiang’s hand-to-hand fighting style, which I think is the only thing Pretty Arhat has seen at this point, and exactly WHEN has she gotten so familiar with Beauty Ghost’s fighting style? Also, I like the apparent nod to Beauty Ghost’s influence in raising A-Xiang (and we’ll see more of this).) Meanwhile, ZZS has been inexorably drawn to the place he left his child disciple child and is moping right outside of Yueyang, so he sees Pretty Arhat fly away with Chengling. Murder Dad 1 springs into action.

Yueyang disciples run around like ants whose hill has been kicked over, looking for Chengling in town, and two of them encounter Wen Kexing, out for a midnight stroll in a fetching pastel blue and green combo. They ask him about seeing a guy. With a pipa. Or maybe without a pipa. So maybe just a guy. Wen Kexing correctly deduces they’re asking about Phantom Musician Qin Song, who covered Pretty Arhat’s getaway by incapacitating everyone with his magic music. YY disciples are excited and tell WKX yes, this dude was involved in kidnapping Zhang Chengling! Y’all. WKX’s face when he hears that. He is not happy. Almost immediately, he spots Qin Song on a rooftop. Murder Dad 2 springs into action.

So, WKX the Ghost Valley Master finds Qin Song, asks him where Chengling is, crushes his playing hand, threatens to break every single bone in his body one at a time (meanwhile dropping the tidbit that he learned the number of bones in the human body from his dad), and tells him a little story about a time when – apparently – he asked another guy the same question (about WHO? has A-Xiang been kidnapped in the past, because that’s about the only other person I can imagine him being like this about?) and only had to break 80 bones before he got an answer. Meanwhile, ZZS actually finds Chengling, in the Scorpion lair where Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat have variously been molesting him (srsly, I feel like I should probably say something to a trusted adult Murder Dad), torturing him with unpleasant magic pixie dust, smacking him around (he loses a tooth, y’all), and waterboarding him. During all this, Pretty Arhat says she’s yet to meet a man who can stand up to waterboarding, and I’m kind of reminded of WKX’s scene threatening Qin Song, and I don’t know if that’s on purpose or not. Chengling literally spits in her face and proclaims that he’s the son of Zhang Yusen, none of whose sons are cowards, and about then, ZZS busts down the door like he’s WKX (by throwing Monster Jiang through it), tells the Scorpions he’s their daddy, and gets into a big fucking fight with all three of them. He flags a little bit somewhere in here as he starts having some Nail pangs (which, yeah, it must be getting about midnight, which is when that’s supposed to happen) and spits some blood, but he reassures Chengling and then tells the Scorpions no one can stop him from killing who he wants and getting what he wants (OK, Wei Wuxian …). Then he shoots some projectiles from some little contraption up his sleeve that we get a quick look at that I did not remember AT ALL from my first watch of the show but is literally like the gun hanging over the mantel in the first act. Huh. Anyway, he kills Monster Jiang, and Du Pusa (who didn’t give a shit about Monster Jiang OR Qin Song earlier), wants to capture him alive, supposedly so she can get revenge for them by teaching him how it feels “to want to die more than live.” Joke’s on you, lady – too late! That’s literally his constant state of being!

About this time, Qin Song comes flying through the doors – or what’s left of them – gasping his last breath as WKX makes his dramatic entrance. Chengling not only calls him “Wen-shu” but also has already figured out exactly how to manipulate Murder Dad 2 and tells him that in addition to kidnapping him, they also hurt ZZS. WKX is predictably murderous, and Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat run away and hide behind the skirts of Xie Wang’s robes as the Zombie Drug Man Army approaches. WKX tells ZZS to take Chengling and leave, ZZS refuses, and Xie Wang LITERALLY SAYS “IN LIFE AND DEATH YOU WILL NEVER PART. WHAT A TOUCHING MOMENT.” and I am DYING. Also, this will not be the last time ZZS/WKX will exhibit what Xie’er wants from his Awful Yifu. Anyway, Xie’er calls ZZS “Leader Zhou,” then tells WKX that he’ll tell them who he (Xie Wang) is if WKX tells them all who he is first. ZZS is Very Done with all of this and smoke bombs the Scorpions to escape. Xie’er shows he actually does know who both of them are – even though each of them doesn’t know everything about the other’s identity yet, and won’t for a while – by telling Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat that they’re the leader of Tian Chuang and the leader of the Ghost Valley and wondering “How did these two devils end up together?” Like calls to like, I guess.

OK, this is getting super-long, so I’m going to attempt to wrap up with the actual Wenzhou material. We cut to Murder Dads and Chengling sitting in the forest, around a campfire, and Chengling is in heaven, back with his family. He’s super-emotional, and ZZS is all, come on, be a man, don’t cry (OK, crybaby). WKX gives some campfire-cooked rabbit? maybe? to ZZS, who starts a precedent by passing it to Chengling. Please, A-Xu. WKX wants to feed his laopo, will you eat something, ffs? Chengling, still emotional, tells them that he knows they’re the only ones who are sincerely kind to him, that Five Lakes Alliance has all kinds of agendas and none of them care about him, and nobody has asked him what he wants. (I know, bb, they were awful.) ZZS asks what he wants, and Chengling says he wants to learn martial arts, to get revenge, and to not be a useless child anymore. Oh god, the cut to WKX here. His face, y’all. He is not cool with the fact that Chengling thinks he can’t be a child anymore, and probably with whatever role he (WKX) had in it. He is so sad. It’s killing me. However, it’s not as if WKX has lost his edge, and he also pounces, asking Chengling if something happened that made him suspicious of the Alliance. Chengling spills that his dad already didn’t trust them and also told him not to trust anyone ever, but he trusts his Murder Dads! This kid, I tell you. He tells them that his dad hid the Mirror Lake Glazed Armor in his stomach and starts getting ready to cut it out for them before ZZS stops him. He tells them Yusen gave him a letter for the Changming Sword Immortal detailing Rong Xuan’s injury (and we get our first iteration of the story of the battle between the Five Lakes Alliance brothers and Rong Xuan, the poison on the sword, and how that turned Rong Xuan evil). Per Chengling, the original argument was about the Combined Six Cultivation Method. Also per Chengling, the Alliance bothers should have been responsible for Rong Xuan after that, but no one stood up for him – I mean, Zhang Yusen would have, but his legs were broken. We learn that the poisoned sword that injured Rong Xuan belonged to Gao Chong. ZZS looks taken aback, but this all just CONFIRMS WKX’s SUSPICIONS.

Cut away for another scene. Cut back. ZZS has suddenly remembered that he’s pissed off and that someone (else, not him) is sleeping on the couch tonight. Earlier, they were sat in order of Chengling, ZZS, WKX. Now Chengling has been put between them. WKX asks for wine, A-Xu is being passive-aggressive and ignoring him before finally handing the wine gourd to Chengling to pass to WKX. He won’t even look at WKX. It is hilarious, particularly as he only remembered he was mad after they’d all eaten dinner, which WKX cooked, and the pair of them made sure their child was OK. Chengling wants to know if they fought and tells them there’s nothing confidants can’t resolve. He’s in full puppy mode. He tells WKX to hurry up and comfort ZZS, because you know he looks tough on the surface but he’s got the softest heart! Didn’t you teach me that tough women can’t resist clingy men? ZZS’s indignant little face at this is a picture. Chengling offers to apologize for WKX. WKX’s face is all fondness for Chengling, except for the eyebrows, which are doing the Tragic Sadness Eyebrows at ZZS. ZZS is all, OK, fine, although he immediately changes the subject and starts talking about the kidnapping attempt. He tells Chengling that the world is dangerous right now, and the safest place for him is Yueyang Sect. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS? Chengling sadly nods. My little dude, c’mon. ZZS’s Nails are bothering him and WKX takes the chance to feed him qi, which ZZS accepts – might I note - without complaint. WKX waxes rhapsodic about A-Xu’s shoulder blades, and says he once saw a dead body with beautiful shoulder blades. Smashcut to a flashback of two people who we don’t yet know are Zhen Ruyu and Gu Miaomiao dead on the ground. Although this takes place immediately after the scene of Gao Chong at the altar, when the first tablets we see are Zhen Ruyu’s and Gu Maiomiao’s, we also don’t know yet to connect those names to these bodies. Tricksy, show. We see Zhen Yan place his hand on Gu Miaomiao’s back, and WKX’s voiceover talks about how he could tell she was a beauty despite the blood everywhere. ZZS interrupts this morbid tale to say they should let the past stay in the past, and then tells WKX, “My condolences,” even though WKX hasn’t actually mentioned anywhere in the story about this dead body that it was even anyone he knew, let alone someone he was related to. Because A-Xu isn’t stupid. Immediately after this - after saying they should leave the past in the past - ZZS asks WKX who he is. WKX goes into his Philanthropist Wen evasion spiel. ZZS shakes his head, visibly steels himself, and apparently comes to the decision to model the behavior he’s trying to encourage by coming clean about his real name, his relationship to Siji Manor, all of his bad decisions, his choking guilt over the deaths of all the Siji Manor disciples, and his reign of state-sanctioned terror as founder and leader of Tian Chuang. Notably, the very first word Chengling speaks to ZZS after hearing this rundown of supposed and actual crimes is to call him “Shifu” again to get his attention before asking for more info about the Scorpions. THIS CHILD. MY HEART.

ZZS tells them both, “I spent half my life alone, doing things I didn’t want to do and killing people I didn’t want to kill,” and I literally want to reach into the screen and shake WKX, because OMG LAO WEN. You are reflections of each other, and he’s baring his soul, and you’re going to continue to be so afraid that he’s not going to accept every part of you that it’s going to be episodes and episodes before you open up, and even then, only after he figures it out on his own. :hands: To make things even more OBVIOUS, ZZS then asks Chengling if he still wants ZZS to be his shifu after learning all of this, and Chengling doesn’t even hesitate, he says “Of course,” and ZZS and I are both about to cry. UGH. Zhang Zhehan, your face. It’s killing me. This is a man seeing the hope of resurrection for the sect he was convinced he had ground into dust. ZZS and Chengling are both so busy being emotional at each other that WKX has to take matters into his own hands, encouraging Chengling to bow, and we get a real bow to shifu this time, in a scene that once again mirrors the later scene when Zhen Yan makes his bow to Qin Huaizhang to become a Siji Manor disciple.

ZZS tells Chengling, all right, then. You are the first disciple of the sixth generation. (SHIXIONG. NO PRESSURE.)

End ep.

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #beauty ghost #liu qianqiao #gao chong #gao shan #du pusa #pretty arhat #qin song #gu xiang #xie wang #tragicomic ghost #luo fumeng #qin huaizhang #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

22 notes · View notes

ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 5 years ago

Text

Alright alright alright

You’ve all been asking for it, so here it is!

This will be (edit: HELLA) long and obviously spoiler-y, so everything is under a cut.

Are you ready?

Before we get to it, I want to mention that for the sake of keeping things organized, I will NOT be talking about my AU (@ask-whitepearl-and-steven) in this post. I want to just analyze the show as a viewer and a fan first. I’ll make a seperate post for AU-thoughts a bit later.

Without further ado:

EP 1: LITTLE HOMESCHOOL

This is a great way to open up the episode and show the changes through the lens of someone who has been a bit out of it for a while (we are all Cherry Quartz, fresh from the hiatus, aren’t we?) but I’m sorry, this post still takes the cake:

Okay, okay, back to the program.

“That used to be a loaded question...“

Right off the bat, Steven is SO much more confident about saying that he’s... HIMSELF! What a good feeling. I’m very proud of our boy.

I love the name “Gemglyph” for the gem language! I’ll need to know who wrote these, though. And who the heck drew the diamonds? Hopefully it was BP.

And I’m not the first one to point this out, but MORE ANIME REFERENCES!

Which can be seen as either a reference to the Chill Low-Fi Hiphop Beats to Study To OR Whisper of the Heart.

And absolutely no one cares but something that caught my eye is the fact that they have an EARTH FLAG at Little Homeschool! How cool is that!

Earth 4ever!!!

Off-note - I love how INVESTED they are in this conversation Pearl is having with Holo-Pearl.

Peak entertainment.

I love Professor Amethyst and I love the random human who snuck in to apparently take lessons on Not Giving A Single Shit About Anything, Ever.

And here we FINALLY are in the FUTURE

Where we FINALLY get Jasper as a functioning character

And

She’s

SO DRAMATIC, I LOVE HER.

This is literally SO funny like she... she was just... laying on top of her house... under a blanket..... FOr WHAT? To stand up dramatically and throw it off when Steven inevitably paid a visit?

Is that just what she dOES?

“It’s FINE I don’t need any HELP, I’m FUNCTIONING, I’m just having a SELF CARE DAY OK”

Also I’m sorry but

Jasper: “It took forever to yank those puny green earthlings out of the ground.”

Steven: “You mean grass...?“

THIS. RIGHT HERE. is peak Jasper.

It’s also curious how INVESTED Steven is in this:

“I’m TRYING to give you [a purpose]!“

Why are you... trying to do that, though? Isn’t the whole idea for gems to surpass their ‘purpose’ and just kinda... do whatever? Isn’t Jasper just kinda... doing whatever?

I mean, sure, it’s not useful to anyone, but she seems relatively happy. Aside from. You know. The whole laying on rocks under blankets until she’s disturbed thing and-- okay, you’re right, maybe an intervention would be healthy.

I’m not gonna talk at length about the rest of the episode - although I think it’s really good, I don’t know what I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. Jasper is definitely poking Steven’s buttons and rephrasing a LOT of what WHITE has said to Pink: “You surround yourself with inferior gems because it makes you feel better.”

And Steven REACTS to this. The taunt WORKS.

And yes, he gains some extra powers for it, but something tells me this AIN’T the only thing he will get. It feels like a two-edged sword. Like it’ll be his own downfall somehow....... maybe at the end of the series.

Ashes to ashes.... hole to hole.

And oh wow I thought they were gonna bond but LMAO

“Consider your fight back there your first and ONLY lesson.“

Basically:

I love you Jasper.

EP 2: GUIDANCE

I LOVE YOU AMETHYST.

sHE’S doing SO much and she’s SO good at it!! Look at her!! Organizing stuff!!!!

RUBIES IN SUNGLASSES. IN SQUARE SUNGLASSES.

I need 20.

And I also need 20 of Larimar because holy shit that’s hilarious.

Larimar: “I want to hear the human screams forever.”

Steven: “Okay that’s kinda troubling.”

I love the reference to Monsters Inc here and I love the callback at the end of the episode when Larimar switches to Human Laughter to get her fill of that particular erm... need.

And honestly the ensuing chaos is equally predictable and entertaining.

I’m SO glad to know that Rubies are just... Like That and that actually Navy is not a deviation from the norm but rather a different flavor of the chaotic energy all Rubies naturally seem to possess.

Amethyst is also super relatable:

“Ah yes, the fool comes crawling back. Come to beg for forgiveness, have you?”

In fact, the episode’s WHOLe HUMOUR is just very much My Brand

“Sometimes you save all the people but the rollercoaster still crashes into the ocean...... and that’s okay.”

Including the Running Gag that is Onion. Who... does not appear to have aged. At all. And that’s okay.

EP 3: ROSE BUDS

Okay where do I even begin with this one. Um.

I have to openly admit that I spent the majority of this episode wheezing with laughter. Let’s start with the Zoomans:

Who are CLEARLY STILL SUPER SALTY AT GREG ABOUT REJECTING THEM??? Which is hilarious.

And also this paradise is fascinating in and of itself.

But the next scene is basically where I started losing my shit.

Okay, okay, alright so. Uh. I have... a few questions.

Like Why. WHY. Does she look. SO MUCH like Rose?

Clearly Rose Quartz differ in coloring and etc. But She literally looks. Like THE Rose. VERY explicitly.

So here’s several options here:

1) Pink made Rose Quartz way before any of the Rebellion happened and Pearl just basically pigeonholed her into THIS specific Rose Quartz appearance because she (???) had a crush? Or somehow saw this specific Rose, thought ‘hot, i can make my sympathetic Diamond wear this exact costume and that would be EXCELLENT fanservice for ME’

2) Pink didn’t have any Rose Quartz until the Rebellion, and thereafter quickly decided ‘I need these gems as an alibi, so we’re just gonna make them” and she and Pearl basically inclubated Rose Quartz like a pokemon trainer hatching for a Shiny until they got one that looked Exactly Like That.

3) There was no Thinking involved because this is Pink we’re talking about, and it was all just a huge coincidence for the sake of this Very Hilariously Uncomfortable Episode.

While we ruminate on that, let’s look at some Relatable Reactions.

And here we have the holy trinity of “I have just seen the clone of my deceased parent/parental figure/lover.”

Featuring: Bonus ‘I’m Almost Over It’ Pearl

Also, I need y’all to make this into a meme:

For example:

Anyway, alright, alright.

That relatable feel when your (hot) dead lesbian lover’s clone asks you if you’re okay after another one of the (less hot?) clones offers you a whole ass stick of butter to eat.

And then you and your friends all hide in the bathroom to talk about your feelings:

Okay, the rest of the episode gives me FEELINGS and I love how hard Steven is trying, so I’ll just close it off with:

I LOVE THEM. Unironically, they are EVERYTHING I had hoped Rose Quartz would be. They’re SO MUCH like Rose herself - did she model her personality after them? Or are they just like her because she WAS like that, and they’re made from her essence? WHO KNOWS?! They’re adorable!

And the conflict between them and Steven is honestly so gooD! I don’t know if it’s completely relatable but I’m glad they ended up talking it out.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Her again... you know who I’m talkin’ about.

Her....

I’m madly in love with Rose, ok, I don’t need a callout post. Just leave me be.

EP 4: VOLLEYBALL

Alright, alright, alright.

OKAy,.... It’s fine. It’s FINE. I’m fINE.

Confirmed: 8000 years. That’s. UH. A LOT? That puts our timelines quite a ways back. We kind of estimated as much, but still, it’s so jarring to think about. And PP is VERY casual about it.

She’s also VERY casual about the injury.

“This is all Pink Diamond!”

It doesn’t seem like it bothers her to talk about it at all. She’s not even trying to keep it a secret. So I’m almost wondering - was there a connection to her being taken by White and the injury at all or not?

She came to Steven to get healed - she clearly wants it gone. At the time she was injured, did Pink not even attempt to heal the injury?

Follow up question: If she DID care, why didn’t she try to heal it?

Follow up to the follow up: Was it because she didn’t know she could? Or did she simply not have the time to (White removed her before she could)?

When Steven goes pink, she gasps - but makes no further comment. It’s presumably because she’s seen this happen before. She doesn’t try to move away, weirdly enough - she asks him if everything is alright. Perhaps the context is too different for it to be triggering for her. Perhaps there’s more layers to it? HMMM.

What follows is, perhaps, the SALTIEST we’ve seen Pearl since Greg rolled around.

“Did you come to compete?”

This is doubly curious to me because Crewniverse has previously explicitly stated that Pearl was NOT in love with Pink Diamond. She was in love with Rose. So if this is true, why would Pearl care about her place as Pink’s Pearl? She is supposed to be past all that, isn’t she?

And yet as time goes on, the salinity grows exponentially. Alright, you two, I know you’re Pearls but tone it down with the sass.

(Also, I’m sorry but I will NEVER call her Volleyball. That’s all. Bye.)

Also it’s worth noting that... PP is clearly VERY much in love with Pink.

This is, perhaps, where the lack of a grudge plays into it. She’s completely enamoured.

Moreover, she’s VERY casual about how she talks here. This isn’t exactly how one talks of their Diamond. This is how people talk about their romantic partners. She calls Pink silly, calls her ‘funny’. That’s not exactly a term of respect - it’s way more intimate than that.

Also, did anyone else notice how, although CG Pearl’s gem is usually shaded in teal, it’s in Pink in this episode? VEEEERY subtle, Crew.

Also, we can’t quite see Pink Pearl’s expression fully here because her working eye isn’t visible, which makes it hard to get a read on things like

“I’m older than you.“ Is she just saying it casually? Or is she fully aware that she’s poking fun at CG Pearl?

HI SHELL. ISN’T IT FUNNY HOW YOUR VOICE AND YOUR NAME ARE A SUBTLE NOD TO PORTAL, WHICH IS FORESHADOWING HOW BADLY THIS IS GONNA END.

Meanwhile, Pearl continues to be in character.

“No need to be overly... attached.”

And this has nothing to do with anything but

she cute

Aaaand now it’s creepy again.

The rest of this is super important so let’s get to it:

“Oh, no. Pink did this.”

“What did you say?”

“It’s a funny story, really. Once, Pink got tired of asking Yellow and Blue for her own colony, so she went straight to White. Of course, White told her she wasn’t fit to run one... and well! That set her off.”

“Set her off? What are you talking about?”

“You remember how she was! With her destructive powers, throwing tantrums left and right! She had a scream that could crack the walls. She didn’t mean to hurt me! (giggle) I just happened to be standing too close to her that time and--”

And then Steven interrupts.

We get more CG Pearl arguing for how wrong this image of Pink is to her. What CG Pearl knew was a totally different (or, well, same, but VERY changed) Pink.

But what we have to prove our point is Steven himself. He rolls into the EXACT same state as Pink presumably did - and begins to over-use his powers.

(This isn’t the first time we have seen him use this attack.)

The reactions from the Pearls are telling - this is clearly not Pink Pearl’s first rodeo with this type of Mood.

And it’s important to note that Steven clearly didn’t direct any attack AT them. He simply yelled - and the whole dang place literally started to crack. There’s weight to the argument that possibly, Pink really DIDN’T mean to hurt her Pearl - that she was just collateral damage.

Which doesn’t make it any better, obviously. Even if Pink had no direct intention of hurting her Pearl (and there are theories that Pink purposefully hit or threw Pink Pearl or somehow physically acted directly to damage her, which I was skeptical of) the result of it is still the same.

If you raise your voice and yell, even if you’re just yelling because YOU are hurt/have feelings, you might still hurt the people around you. If you throw a tantrum, even if your direct goal was just to let off some steam without aiming to harm anyone, whoever gets in your way is still the victim.

And this is all very much On Brand for Pink’s timeline as we know it. We already knew this about her - we KNEW she tended to throw tantrums (like in the flashback on Jungle Moon) and that she was childish. The fact that she accidentally hurt her Pearl in the process because she had no self-control at that period in her life comes as no surprise.

(Although it’s important to mention that perhaps hurting her own Pearl WAS the breaking point during which she finally realized how her emotional outbursts could have negative consequences on those around her.)

And this is a very beautiful message - even if Pink Pearl still doesn’t want to blame Pink for what was done to her (”But... she didn’t mean to!”) Pearl brings the point of it back around to her (”But you were still hurt!”) The point isn’t the person who did the hurting - the focus is on the victim and how they were affected.

And the rest, I daresay, is history.

I like the fact that they managed to still bring it back around to the main message:

It isn’t about just “Pink was bad”. It’s about how she did bad things. And there were multiple sides to her - multiple stages. And the Pearls who knew her knew different sides of her - the side that didn’t know how to be a good person, who was selfish and childish and unrestrained... and the side that was, arguable, too restrained. Who hated her own past, her own character and her own mistakes so much that she would rather bury them and keep secrets from everyone.

And neither of those things were good, and neither were healthy, but they are a GREAT contrast to a GREAT character arc that is, arguably, still being unearthed. And we have so much more context for it all now.

I, for one, can’t wait to see and discover more of Pink through Pink Pearl - no matter how ugly that side of her might be. I think it gives great perspective to her later growth.

And if you ship the Pearls.. .well, I get why.

Personally I’m not interested in it that way. Call me unromantic - I don’t think their relationship NEEDS to be shippy in order to be satisfyingly deep. I love the idea of them having a deep bond over this - a shared past, a shared experience, and gaining confidence through one another.

Cheers and thanks for listening!

#steven universe future #steven universe: future #steven universe future spoilers #su:f spoilers #suf spoilers #su spoilers #steven universe spoilers #spoiler warning #pink pearl #volleyball

4K notes · View notes

skullsandwineglasses · 3 years ago

Text

Remembrance of Things Past - Eps 1-10 Impression/Rant

Not really a first impressions post since there are only 2 episodes left, but as I’m waiting on the last few episodes, I thought I’d rant a bit about the drama here.

First of all, I agree with everything that AvenueX said in her review of the first 6 episodes. Her review is what prompted me to start the drama. I needed a realistic slice of life drama to balance out the idol drama that is You Are My Glory (which I’m also waiting on for new episodes), and ROTP seemed to fit bill. ROTP is just so good.

I binged ROTP in 3 days. It could have been 2 days, but I started it at 2am on a Wednesday night, so I didn’t get very far the first night. Each episode is about 75 minutes long, so almost the equivalent of 2 regular lengthed episodes, but not quite.

I cried during the first two episodes. The character development is just phenomenal. You really feel for Jing Jing’s character even though you’ve only seen her character for an hour. There are little moments throughout the drama that made me tear up too, like when the girls were celebrating Nan Jia jie’s 36th birthday and I got emotional over how close their bond is, or moments when the girls reflected on their aging parents and how we often take our parents for granted.

Plot pacing and structure

The plot is tight and well-paced, and each girl’s storyline is interwoven well. Sometimes they’d cut between simultaneous scenes between the girls to compare and contrast what they’re each going through. For instance, when Xu Yan is having an argument with her boyfriend, the drama will also cut and flip back and forth to Qiao Xi Chen going through problems at her workplace. When Xu Yan makes up with her boyfriend, the drama cuts to QXC and Nan Jia being romantically pursued by Jian Yi Fan and Ou Yang. It’s interesting to see how their lives mirror and differ from each other.

Because the storylines between the girls are so interwoven and keep flipping back and forth between each other, it makes it hard to skip scenes because you can’t just skip an entire segment or else you’ll miss something important in all 3 storylines. I can see that this might be a little annoying if you have a preference for one of the girls and want to skip someone else’s storyline. But I actually like seeing all 3 of their stories play out, so I’m not bothered by it.

Another aspect about the plot’s structure that I appreciate is how they use the mystery behind Jing Jing’s suicide as a throughline for the drama. Up until episode 8ish(?), each episode ends with a question about Jing Jing’s life prior to her suicide and the next episode opens with the girls trying to find an answer or a clue to it. The girls and we the audience learn more and more about Jing Jing with each episode. However, episodes 9 and 10 deviate from the structure a bit and so the drama has recently been less and less focused on Jing Jing’s story, especially after they found out that she had depression. The drama seems to imply that her depression due to the stress of living in Beijing was the main factor that led to her suicide, while the successive unfortunate events that happened on her birthday was the trigger.

Characters

I like all the main characters in the drama, albeit some a little more than others, which I’ll explain. I think the 3 male love interests are a little too perfect though, and so I guess this slice of life drama is actually a little idealistic after all.

Xu Yan - My least favourite of the four girls. She’s materialistic, but not as spoiled as I though she would be. But it does annoy me how she keeps picking fights with Shen Zi Chang, when he’s just trying his best. He’s so tolerant and patient with her. He apologizes, they make up, and then the cycle repeats. It’s just a very unhealthy relationship, and I’m tried of seeing them fight and make up.

EDIT: So, I started writing this review when I had only watched up until episode 9, but now that I’ve finished episode 10, um, wtf?? Xu Yan made a bad choice and got scammed of all her money, her friends try to comfort her, loan her money, and tell her not to repress her emotions like Jing Jing. And then she just lashes out at them saying they have no right to comfort her because they were the ones who caused Jing Jing’s death. Xu Yan starts off blaming QXC for not knowing that Jing Jing had a crush on her boyfriend, and then she blames Nan Jia for being a bad older cousin. She blames both of them for being ignorant of Jing Jing’s depression and only caring about themselves. QXC (rightfully) retorts back than Xu Yan knew all along that Jing Jing had a crush on her boyfriend, and yet Xu Yan never told anyone, so she’s just as guilty as all of them. Honestly, I was sympathetic towards Xu Yan before, but she was just so ungrateful and entitled in that scene. What right does she have pointing fingers and assigning guilt to people? And to weaponize Jing Jing’s death against them? That’s just cruel. The argument between them in that scene at the end of episode 10 just felt so random and out of place. All of a sudden, Xu Yan points out all of these problems she has with QXC and Nan Jia, when all they’ve ever done is pamper her. Also, you can’t blame QXC for dating Lin Rui even if Jing Jing liked him first, and not to mention that QXC wasn’t even aware. QXC might not have even chosen to date Lin Rui if she had known. But it happens all the time between friends where your friend might date someone you like. All’s fair in love and war, and there’s no first come first serve rule when it comes to dating.

Jing Jing - She becomes more complex as you learn more about her. She puts her friends first and is fiercely supportive and protective of them. We get a glimpse of how far she’s willing to go for them she pulls a butcher knife from the kitchen and points it at QXC’s debt collectors in the first episode. Her friends see her as being really open, expressive, and bubbly. She’s the first one they each go to whenever they need help with a problem or want to show off an achievement. But in reality, she’s really secretive. She hides her feelings to keep her friends happy, and when they slowly uncover her secrets, she becomes less and less recognizable to them, as though she’s been living a double life all along.

At the end of episode 10, Jing Jing is described as the “hole in the tree” that everyone goes to to share their secrets, but they forget that she’s also a person with her own secrets to share, and she’s not just a tree hole to serve others. Can we blame the friends for not paying enough attention to Jing Jing and only using her for emotional support? Yes and no. It’s complicated. We should always do more to try to care for others and to be more attentive to them, but at the same time, it’s impossible to completely know a person. I purposely hide parts of my life from my friends because I don’t want them worrying or judging or commenting. So I would never expect them to be able to figure it out, and neither do I want them to figure it out. I think it’s interesting that the drama is exploring the friends’ self-imposed guilt, but I don’t agree that Xu Yan should be the one to point it out them and to be Jing Jing’s spokesperson. Xu Yan positions herself as Jing Jing’s heroic and righteous advocator, when really Xu Yan is the most problematic person out of the three remaining friends.

Also, after seeing how the friends interact, they don’t feel narcissistic. Yes, they each readily vent about their problems to each other, but they also ask about the other person. It’s not one-sided. Xu Yan talks about her problems with her boyfriend, but she also asks and cares about what’s happening in QXC’s life and vice versa. Nan Jia is more mature and is busy with her business, but she always takes the time and effort to help her friends. All of their conversations are reciprocal and they are genuinely interested in each other’s lives. So, I don’t think they have a major communication problem or that they don’t care or that they’re ignorant. Which again, makes Xu Yan’s accusations in episode 10 feel even more unfair.

Ji Nan Jia - Jing Jing’s cousin and also the oldest of the three girls (about a decade older). Sassy, witty, unapologetic, confident. She’s who you’d think of when you imagine a successful, independent, career-driven woman. She’s extremely annoyed by her mother’s nagging to get married. But she herself is trying to figure out whether she actually wants to find someone to settle down with or if she just wants to beat her biological clock and have children while she still can. She’s pursued by Ou Yang, ten years her junior, and he’s absolutely enamoured with her. He seems to be unconditionally in love with her, which is what I meant when I said that the male leads in this drama seem too perfect and idealistic. But I like Ou Yang though. He’s adorable.

Qiao Xi Chen - The main character of the four main characters. Like Nan Jia, she’s also quite sassy. In some ways, she’s like a younger version of Nan Jia. QXC is also very career driven and competitive. She’s confident and believes in her abilities, but she also gets easily overwhelmed and emotional (like when her stress and nervousness prevented her from being able to give her proposal presentation and she ran out of the room. I’ve definitely felt that way before my committee meetings). QXC is a character you can self-insert as because she represents the everyday employee who struggles with the long commute to work and tries to stand out and make a name for herself in the company. QXC is also extremely paranoid, which is understandable when you’re a woman living alone in the city. I know what it’s like to have to briskly walk home late at night and constantly having to look over your shoulder to make sure no one’s following you, or having to check your hotel room before you change, or having to make it seem like you’re not the only one living in your apartment. QXC is smart, logical, helps people when she can, but is also reasonably selfish when she needs to protect herself, like when her co-workers try to take advantage of her or throw her under the bus. She’s a character everyone can relate to.

She and Jian Yi Fan also make such a cute pairing. I love all their interactions. I love how Jian Yi Fan can’t help but smile when he’s with her, but he tries hard to clamp it down. I love how QXC is aware of her own attraction and easily admits to to Xu Yan that she does have feelings for him instead of beating around the bush. And I especially love the awkward but adorable confession scene in episode 8. Such great banter and play on words (”你是什麼意思” “沒意思” “你對我是不是有意思?”). The drama did a great job of depicting the frustration of trying to guess whether someone likes you when they seem to be sending mixed signals. A lot of dramas that don’t focus on romance seem to do a better job of showing romance than idol dramas that focus on nothing but romance. I grew up with TVB dramas, and in most of them, romance is usually secondary to the main plot, but I always loved the romances in those dramas.

Like Ou Yang, JYF is such an idealistic love interest. He’s so supportive of and attentive to QXC. I haven’t watched too many slice of life dramas, but To Dear Myself and My Best Friend’s Story both had flawed (and sometimes even irredeemable) male love interests. This drama’s rose-coloured glasses definitely reduces the amount of performative angst, but it also makes the drama a little less realistic. The men in Jing Jing’s life aren’t villainized either even when you expected them to be sinister. I think the most antagonistic character is Lin Rui, but even he’s made to be sympathetic. In fact, nearly all the characters in the drama are sympathetic characters because many of the choices they made were forced because of the situation they found themselves in, and what they did was an act of self-preservation. And so, you can’t hate them or blame them.

Acting and Dialogue

I mean, what’s there to say? The acting and dialogue just sucks you right in. I love it so much. The characters are so animated and charming because of how well the actors delivered their lines. I’m not a mandarin speaker (I’m a cantonese speaker but learned mandarin afterwards), but even I was able to notice the colloquialism and slangs and idiosyncratic ticks in speech that made the dialogue feel so real and alive. The actors had great comedic timing, and when they cried, you could feel how vulnerable they are.

Lastly, I also like the little “life lessons” they include at the end of the drama where there’d be a voiceover by one of the actresses and they’d muse about life. One of my favourite musings when when they talked about what it means to have a sense of security. For some people, having a sense of security is about having a certain amount of money in your bank account, or having someone waiting for you to come home, but a sense of security isn’t something tangible or physical that you can achieve or possess. It’s a belief. It’s a belief that you’re able to face any problem and that life will go on. It’s a belief that the one that you love will be faithful and supportive. It’s a type of belief that allows you to be confident to face uncertainty. And thus, a sense of security is something that only you can give yourself. I really like that little food for thought because it’s a great reminder to be self-dependent and to not rely on external gratification. Que sera sera. What will be will be. Don’t get too hung over on failure and don’t let stress dominate your life.

Note: Watching this at the same time as You Are My Glory is extremely humbling. YAMG is an idol drama, and so they make the romance look so easy. Heck, idol dramas make being a protagonist easy. The protagonist is destined to stand out from the crowd. It’s easy to be noticed. It’s easy to cause a change in the status quo. But ROTP is a reminder that we’re all practically nobodies in the big city. It feels impossible to make an impression when there are millions of other people living almost the same life as you are. There’s nothing special about you, and it’s hard to find meaning and purpose. Obviously, the drama shows that even when it feels like you’re trying to swim upstream in a big city, we each have a life worth living. We may feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but to our friends and family, we’re their world and they’re ours. I think it was Camus who said that we should find meaning in the face of absurdity. Live in spite of how absurd and meaningless things feels. Anyway, this drama gives you a lot to think about, even though I don’t really like the melodrama they’ve recently added to drag the plot (*cough cough* that explosive argument scene at the end of episode 10 that I keep ranting about). You’d think that a 12-episode drama wouldn’t have filler, and yet here we are.

#我在他乡挺好的 #remembrance of things past #cdrama #zhou yu tong #bai yu fan #cdrama review #jolin jin #ren su xi

17 notes · View notes

ohnobjyx · 4 years ago

Text

A hotpot of candies EP 1-2

It took me so long to find somewhere to watch all of the episodes of “Let’s hotpot together” that I only sat down to write this today. This is going to be a “compilation post” since most of the candies are already out there, but picking them and putting them together was still fun for me.

Disclaimer: fake fake fake.

1. Gongcai expert

The first big signal for this one is the director saying “only people who frequently eat Sichuan hotpot will order this”. Sichuan and Chongqing are very close and Chongqing cuisine is considered a derivative from Sichuan cuisine with local flavors (Henan, where dd’s from, has a cuisine that’s a mixture of Jiangsu and Beijing cuisine, and it’s known for being mild and a mixture of flavors).

Then ZHL adds that “this person must have a good understanding of me, and must not be very young”. This received a bjyx explanation, as apparently, as many parts of the Chinese cuisine, this is a dish better appreciated by older people, so it’d be rare for dd to know of this vegetable.

However, I think that he was just talking about age differences. ZHL follows an almost vegetarian diet, which would be known by people who know him well. He’s 45 years old, more than 20 years older than dd, so it’d be strange for dd to know that he prefers vegetables to meat in his dishes. That’s why, in my opinion, dd chose this dish just because he likes it, no deeper meaning.

Not just that, but for someone who struggled to remember the name of a typical dish of his hometown, he knows surprisingly well how to prepare it in a hotpot, and which is the best way to eat it. And he keeps taking bites from ZHL’s plate throughout the episode.

He also was the only one who recognized it in a TTYSJ episode (ttxs during quarantine).

2. The spicy hotpot (EP1) and the Sichuan pepper oil (EP2, more info in point 4)

This is the most telling one for me in the episode. When gg and dd were asked whether they preferred all-spicy or mixed hotpot/鸳鸯锅 (the photo is a mixed pot, whereas an all-spicy only has the right side) in CQL interviews, gg said “all-spicy”, and dd, “mixed pot”.

They also explained in other events/shows what kind of dippings they preferred for their hotpot. Dd liked sesame paste, while gg liked a mix of powdered spices (spicy as f***, really).

They both changed their hotpot tastes:

As shown in the episode, dd now likes to eat an all-spicy pot with a base of Sichuan pepper oil and garlic, “classical Sichuan hotpot” combination (EP2). Just look at his face after he says “this pot is so spicy”.

Gg, in more recent interviews, admitted that he now likes the mixed pot and that he now prefers the sesame paste. In one of the interviews, he admitted that if he ate a too spicy hotpot now, he’d have diarrhea.

They both said they like cow tripe (mao du) for their hotpot. Dd likes it so much he eats it anytime he has hotpot in a show and gg once said that it’s one of his “3 must have” for hotpot.

Dd’s change is very drastic. Really. In the variety show (极限青春) dd filmed in 2019, dd was uncapable of eating Chongqing’s spicy dishes.

If any of you have travelled to Sichuan, you’ll know that it’s hard to eat there (and in the surrounding provinces) if you’re not used to spicy food. When I was there, we asked every restaurant to serve food without chili or spicy condiments for us, but everything tasted spicy no matter where. Because the pots had been used hundreds of times to cook spicy food, no amount of scrubbing could take out the spiciness. Thus, whatever they cooked was spicy for a non-Sichuan person’s standards, even if they don’t add spices.

The kind of spiciness of Sichuan cuisine also takes time to get used to, because they boast a 麻辣 (málà) flavour that’s both numbing and spicy at the same time (dd said in the variety show that it was so spicy it made his stomach hurt. I confirm that it can happen to people not used to it).

What I mean with all of this is that it takes time and a lot of spicy dishes to change someone’s taste as much as it has changed dd’s. He couldn’t even have the spicy half of the mixed pot (which is usually milder) a year ago and now he eats it even when he shouldn’t (because of his cough).

It’s not just dd who changed his tastes. These level of spiciness requires frequent exposure to not lose tolerance (almost like what happens to people who drink a lot and stop for a while, after that their alcohol resistance is diminished). So gg had to tone down the spiciness of his food, but this is likely due to him being a professional singer now, and having to take care of his voice. I find much more meaningful that he prefers sesame paste now.

3. Sore throat

So it’s a really big thing that not only did dd get used to it, but he likes it so much he’ll order it even if he has a sore throat. You really have to like something a lot to eat it even if it hurts your throat (I dare you to try having a spicy soup with a sore throat... not a good experience, I assure you).

I talked about this somewhere (oh, here), but there are 4 prohibitions in Chinese traditional medicine for those who have to take care of their throats and/or voices: spicy, sweet, oily and alcohol. These flavours and foods can be overstimulating for the lining of throat and it’s also advised not to have cold food/drinks.

So seeing him gulf down a spicy hotpot and follow it with a bottle of frozen water it’s like (sigh).

4. Sesame oil and garlic

In EP2, the captains put their hotpot base together. Dd picked Sichuan pepper oil and garlic, which is mildly spicy, so one of the directors said: “this is classical Sichuan hotpot” (dd just nodded and said yes).

Director: Have you always eaten this combination? I saw your old interviews, and you said you liked sesame paste.

Dd: Yes, at the beginning I ate sesame paste, but I met a friend in a filming crew, who taught me this way of preparing hotpot. This way, the spicy pot won’t be so spicy, so it suits my taste.

Director: yes, it’s also better for the stomach.

This is one of the many reasons mtjj don’t like people mentioning hotpot 😂. Remember that time mtjj dug up a list of people born in October 5, just trying to prove that dd’s Colgate post wasn’t about gg? Well, bxg did the same and did a list of all the people dd has worked with in a filming crew and where they are from (I only have the list in Chinese).

And... surprise: the only two people in the list from Chongqing who could have taught him Sichuan cuisine, are gg and JL. And I love jcisthebestfightme take on JL 😂

5. Bo ge/博哥 (”older brother Bo”)

A few moments after, WJE says: “bo ge said it”. Inmediately, dd jumped in and said: “it wasn’t me”.

WJE was actually talking about HB, a guest for EP 2-3, whose name contains a character that’s also pronounced “Bo”, with the same intonation. They all laugh at dd, because he’s actually the youngest of them all, and no one would actually call him 哥 (ge, older brother).

BUT... we all know of someone older than dd who actually called him Bo ge quite frequently in interviews and bts. I’ll leave here a video with some of the instances gg called dd that, though in the s/na interview (when dd was typing) gg called him “bo ge” a lot more times than what the video shows.

He’s obviously used to someone calling him that, that’s why he reacts so quickly when he hears it. Most of the people he usually works with and the friends that we know of are older than him, and out of all of them, we’ve only heard of gg calling him “bo ge”.

6. Washing a little bit

There’s also speculation and theories about another of the dishes dd picked (chicken tendons), but I don’t find it especially meaningful.

The same thing happens with “being near-sighted is like opening your eyes under the water”. Bxg were saying that the sensation must have been described to him by gg, also very near-sighted, but well... I dunno? Besides, there’s no proof for these two.

(Sad bonus, not-bjyx related: I felt really bad for them when one of the directors announced that WJE’s mum was on the backstage and coming up and it ended up being a very bad joke. While they earn more money than I’ll ever see, they can only see their families like twice a year in a very family centered society due to work schedule. They all looked very expectant and happy for a moment, until it was announced as a bad joke.

Dd said: “I thought there were true feelings in humans, I thought true love existed”. They were all disappointed, even though they cover it with laughs, and you can see WJE rubbing the corner of his eye. Even the director that played the joke felt bad and said “this was a bad one, we can cut this from the episode”. WJE said it was fine.)

Part 2: EP 3-4

#yizhan #bjyx #sdoc s3 #candies #hotpot

172 notes · View notes

zeawesomebirdie · 3 years ago

Note

Hey!

I really feel like I’m writing forum messages again haha, that’s a lot of fun :)

Yeah the popularity of Kylux is pretty impressive, the fanlore page is interesting if you want to have a look. I wasn’t really there to see it but apparently it grew pretty slowly but steadily, contrary to those ships that get super popular suddenly. I honestly think it’s so fun that the like, 2nd most popular ship on AO3 for all of Star Wars has this rando who doesn’t even get 15 full minutes of screentime over 6 hours of movies as one half of it, that’s pretty impressive (and yes I did time that when I rewatched the sequels, I was kinda surprised, he doesn’t even get a full 15 minutes! More precisely, it’s ~4:20 in ep 7, ~6:30 in ep 8 and a measly ~2:20 for ep 9! Counting those seconds you see him vaguely laying on the ground dying! What the hell, JJ Abrams, what the hell. But I mean, if we’re talking about Hux, what happened to him in ep 8 wasn’t… yeah. I have a few rants ready at all time and the one on whatever the hell they did to Hux is one of them haha). I know I have the potential to get into Reylo somewhere in me, I just know it, but I never did because… I don’t really know, maybe the fact that I’m generally not a multishipper and Kylux is already there, something. I’m honestly pretty curious of what ships are popular on what platforms and with which audiences and how much and when and all that? There are so many things that could influence that, it’s the kind of thing that would deserve a study but also you can’t really do one. I didn’t check FFN though, even if that’s where I started reading… I’ll add that to my notes for when I finally feel like writing down numbers. The advantage with the sequels is, contrary to all the older fandoms, I imagine the LJ population is much smaller and there won't really be archives, it’s just too recent for that. Look at me getting all excited for maths and statistics when I should be doing literature homework lol. Anyway, apart from that, I too could talk about ships for hours, I get the feeling :’)

The “fixed point in time” was a Doctor Who thing, I thought it was clear but maybe I’m biased because I have the context. It’s this thing where some events are fixed, they happen whether some time travelers decide to change history or not. A lightly spoilery example: in one of the seasons of the 11th Doctor, there’s this whole thing with his death, and it’s a fixed point in time, that means he’s always going to die whatever all his friends do to try and make him stay alive. The internet archive idea is super good though, that’ll help me flesh the thing out! I have to say, I have a deep fondness for the whole citrus scale, but I don’t think I feel quite ready to explain what a lemon is to a classroom haha.

Yeah fandoms get… intense sometimes, it’s pretty scary to hear about it. That Hetalia thing sounds ridiculous, though it’s funny to see another variation on why genderswaps are bad. There was a bit of that with John’s wife in BBC Sherlock, what with the show having quite a lot of queerbaiting, but you could pretty easily avoid it. I never got it either, people really do weird stuff on the internet.

Thank you!! Probably mostly flimsi, but I imagined she would also try other mediums like metal or wood? Kind of like your arts classes where you drew but also tried sculpting and all kinds of techniques (even if here you can’t sculpt a map, but I think she’d try stuff for the fun of it. Also, an engraved map of a sector on a piece of wood sounds dope). The Mary Sue thing is so bad for confidence when you’re young, I totally get the strong feelings, me too tbh. Like I always saw people criticising their old cringy OCs or other people's and I desperatly didn’t want to “fail” at anything, even something you can’t really fail because as long as you’re having fun you’re good, so I just didn’t create any, since I was sure I couldn’t do it properly. Internet is fun but sometimes not that much actually.

I hadn’t even realised for “dear one”, I mean it makes sense that he wouldn’t say it in canon but it just… fits so much!! That’s a thing you read once and go “yeaah he WOULD say that” because yes he would. And you know what this makes me even more curious of who thought “Yan Dooku” was good, because yeah it is, honestly I like it, it sounds like a SW name, it works. By the way, I’m super curious about the human naming conventions in the galaxy, where do the names come from? Cause they have normal names that you could give a kid in our world (if you exclude the fact that some of them are Star Wars Names and immediately off limits), like Luke, Leia, Norra, Wedge, Caleb, probably Han or Sinjir, Ben, Owen, Amilyn, Armitage, Rey, Poe, Finn, Orson… you get the idea. Then there’s the more ambiguous like Lando or Satine or Padmé and her handmaidens, they’re not really real names but they might work if you want something original. And then, well. Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon. Anakin. Shmi. Temmin. Mace. Cliegg. Sheev. Dryden. Mon. Galen. All of the damn Knights of Ren, if that’s even their real names? I suppose Lor San Tekka’s name is Lor?? Anyway, you catch my drift. How do they work is my question. I’m not gonna start on birthdays and certain things not existing because what they’re based on doesn’t have a SW equivalent (like uuh the name Christopher is based on Christ but they don’t have Jesus), because you gotta know when to stop. I just can’t figure where they found those weird human names and what would sound fine. Are the same names considered basic and timeless? Are there weird ones that sound perfectly normal to them? How does any of that work?? Because picking a name for a species that has few info available is fine, you just invent your own stuff and fill in blanks, but humans? That’s us! … Maybe I just answered my own question and I’ll have to invent my own stuff. Still curious about how the fuck Obi-Wan came to be though, that's a very nice but weird name. Also I know I’m not the first one to notice but I think it’s very funny that it’s more or less official that the strip of cloth Jedi have around their waist under their belt is called an obi. Because haha, funny joke, Obi-Wan is a Jedi, Obi's obi, all that.

Oh this is pretty comforting actually, thank you! There’s always that “I don’t want to be annoying” voice in the back of my head but putting it in perspective does help. I’m glad that you’re having fun too then :)

Also unrelated to the rest but I really want to talk about it, I went to a con this weekend, and while it was more fantasy themed, there was a stand for the local lightsaber combat association, and they did demos and short little initiations. I didn’t catch any of the demos but I did get to learn a few stances with a saber and it was super cool. I mean I’m really bad at most anything physical so I probably looked like a tiny initiate having their first lesson but hey, at least I tried! I also have renewed appreciation for literally anything they do with lightsabers in the movies and series because those movements are not easy, even when your weapon is pretty harmless. The instructor tried to teach us how to do the little twirly wrist movement you can do at the end of your salute when you’ve finished a session, the same kind Obi-Wan does when he “unsheathes” his saber in TCW sometimes, and my friend got it right away but I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out lol. So yeah that was fun, there was also a super nice cosplayer who came as her own OC with an apparently Revan-inspired design that looked really cool.

Now that I’ve written the equivalent of the homework due tomorrow on some text analysis I should have been doing instead, I think I’ll go attend to my actual responsabilities (sadly, because this is much more fun). Have a nice – I think it’s late-afternoon/evening in the US, so a nice end of your day I suppose, and don’t worry, I did see your answer! (I think at that point the anon isn’t very necessary BUT I’m shy lol)

- ☂️

Hey ☂️! Thanks for your patience with me, I really appreciate it!

Ngl that kind of popularity from kylux is crazy impressive. I remember it being the crackship back in the early days of the sequel fandom, that was before TLJ had come out. Its really epic that its gone from being a crackship to the 2nd most popular ship though! And its such a good ship too, it definitely deserves that popularity lmao!

Okay so ik i say this a lot but Hux really did deserve better from d*sney. Less than 15 total minutes of screen time? How dare they! And they gave him this terrible awful backstory and then refuse to show any of it on screen, like his whole relationship with Brendol could have been so interesting to see outside of comics but no ofc not and his bio mother isn't even a named character in canon and thats!! So terrible!! Im very defensive over him i love him very much (yes he's a villain ik but look) and like maybe im just super defensive of him because I built an entire backstory for him for fic purposes (that i can't really talk about until the kylux big bang is released) but I love him and he deserved!! So much better!! And how dare they just kill him!! I have a whole rant about this somewhere lmao, im so glad we can agree on this!

I can def agree with kylux being the better ship compared to reylo. Why have het enemies to lovers when gay enemies to lovers is right there? But legit reylo is what got me to like the sequels back in the day, they're still a soft favorite of mine 😅

Now exploring ship popularity in comparison to which platform you're on would be very very interesting! I can tell you that tumblr has a very small kylux base these days (i go through that tag almost weekly these days and there's very rarely new stuff that im interested in) compared to say, reylo or obikin where there's constantly new stuff being posted. But there's also a ton more "hate" in the obikin and reylo communities compared to kylux, so by popularity are you going for traffic overall vs positive interaction vs just the negative interactions and you're right, there's so much that can influence it and its definitely worth a study if someone has time!

Oh, im gonna be honest I stopped watching Doctor Who after Eccleston. With your explanation though it makes a lot of sense! Seems like theres a few of those in the prequels fandom, generally there's always the Clone Wars and generally unless its a fix it au Anakin always falls.

Explaining lemon to a classroom, thatd be,,,, rough lmao. Its probably a good idea to leave that one out 😅

Fandoms do get intense. Its pretty crazy, and I say that as someone who's been around fandoms for the last decade. I have so many Opinions(tm) about it lol, it really is easy to avoid the stuff one doesn't want to see and ngl its a lot better that way isn't it

Omg an engraved wood sector map would be so so cool!! She sounds like a great character, im very excited to hear more about her whenever you want to share!

The whole concept of "cringe" is kinda sucky tbh, I dont know how to explain it but it feels like it was just a way to make fun of people for their ocs or their writing or art or whatever. You're right, the internet is fun but also not sometimes. But yeah, you really can't fail as long as you're having fun! Just getting over that initial hump of feeling anxious about your oc is the hardest part! This reminds me of that one meme, "I want a good grade at [thing], something that is both normal and possible to achieve-" and I dont remember where it started but I remember @/mandocule having a good one somewhere, I think it was about fic writing?

Okay so human naming conventions is such a hotly debated thing! Or was at one point, i dont keep up with fandom drama anymore lmao. I remember seeing something on reddit saying Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon must have come from the same planet because their names use similar conventions, which is very interesting to think about but also! There's so many different planets and cultures that its absolutely impossible to narrow the naming conventions down to a single thing, and I doubt even Lucas and d*sney have it all figured out so if you can find a naming convention go for it yknow! I think also thats the benefit of fanfiction, we can make up whatever we want and it'll be plausible because the SW universe is so vast whos to say xyz thing isn't true. That got a little meta, but yeah you did answer your own question there!

Also yeah Obi-Wan is a v nice, v weird name. Re: obi also being the belt, do you think its maybe one of those things were theres a name variation of a word? Idk if that question made sense, yknow how theres words that are Also Names? Bc it could be like that, so maybe "Obi" as a name prefix isn't actually that weird? Again, making it up as we go along but! Wouldn't that be interesting!

Let me reassure you again then, you're not annoying me whatsoever! I love talking about this stuff :) this is really fun, and delving into these topics also gets me thinking about stuff I wouldn't have normally thought about!!

Omg testing out lightsabers is so much fun!! I have two lightsabers myself, I've been messing around with them (and actually have to replace the electronics in both whoops) and its so so hard to get the movements right! And its good to try new things!! Im not sure which actor this was said about but there was an interview once about how the lightsaber duels were choreographed like actual sword fights or something, and there was one actor who was really good at it and worked really hard at it and stuff. It was either Mark Hamill or Hayden Christensen, im pretty sure?? Anyway, yeah that stuff is wicked hard and good for you for trying it!!

Omg i hope you got your homework done! And attending real life responsibilities is never as fun as fandom stuff, its too bad its necessary 🥲 you're always welcome back in the inbox for more analysis :) im not sure what timezone you are, so I hope you're having a good day/night today!

#anon ☂️#ahhh i had a lot to say today #i have a whole rant locked and loaded about hux lmao #most of it will have to wait until after the kylux bang is released in december though lmao #as always i love having you in the inbox!!

3 notes · View notes

ship-trek · 4 years ago

Note

I would like to know everything about your ships with Spock, Uhura and Bones please!!! KJFEWHKJFW if there's lore or fic I wanna read it and if there's art I wanna see it those three are VERY GOOD (I have a lot of love for TOS) @goldenworldsabound

@goldenworldsabound

!!!! I! Thank you for this lovely ask!! I also have a lot of love for TOS, it was the first Trek I watched and it's always going to have a special place in my heart!!

If you really want to know everything, we're going to be here for a while, so this is going under a cut for length. I should never have been enabled like this. None of them have any fics yet and I can't really draw all that well, so there's no art either, but I'm always happy to ramble about them and call it lore, so here we go!

Ok, as I'm writing down the lore for my ship with Spock, it's becoming a lot longer than I thought it would be - as in it's over 1000 words and we *just* got to Starfleet Academy. I'm going to trim it down a bit to try and get a shorter version and I'll probably turn the rest into a fic. Even with the cuts, though, this is really long. You've been warned.

Once I finish my WIPs with Nerys, I have some plans for some TOS fics, so hopefully my lovely friends will get their fair share of fics soon! I can tag you in any TOS fics I write if you'd like, but of course there's no pressure!

Bones:

I selfship with Bones in the way I do to cope with some specific issues, so lore-wise it's a bit different than my other ships. I don't really have an s/i, it's just me here in our world. He's off on the Enterprise doing all those fun space things, but I can call him whenever I like and he always tries to get back to me as soon as possible if he misses the call at the time. He doesn't miss them often, though - he and I set up a system so I can mark calls as high, mid, or low priority and he'll interrupt almost anything to take a high priority call. I hardly ever use it, but it's nice to know I can reach him if I really need to. And he's amazing to talk to! He's really supportive and always willing to listen to me, and he gives the best hugs :)

I'm actually really excited because he's due back on Earth soon, and he promised to come visit! He can't visit often so every time he does he goes out of his way to make our time together special. It's one of the little ways he shows he really cares about me.

This is a fairly new ship for me, so I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do about Joanna. I'm unlikely to add her as a familial f/o, but we might end up as friends or I might just ignore her entirely. It's my canon now :)

Uhura:

So! I am a massive language nerd. I've been teaching myself both Vulcan and Klingon in addition to studying Latin, Japanese, and Spanish in school at various points. (Yes, Swahili is next on my list. Yes, this is because of Uhura.)

Nyota and I met at Starfleet Academy (more details on how I got there in Spock's lore as both ships use the same s/i) during one of our xenolingustics classes. She seemed super cool, but she had a friend group already, so I ended up being too scared to approach her. I haven't always been the best student, so I got into the habit of taking any extra credit opportunities that came my way. Our xenolinguistics teacher offered extra credit if we went to a presentation being hosted by the xenolingustics club, and I figured I had nothing to lose, so I showed up. Nyota saw me there, recognized me from class, and encouraged me to join the club. She seemed nice and I was free, so I said I'd try it out. I came to a few meetings and we ended up becoming friends!

I was never close with her friend group (we didn't have a lot in common and i just didn't fit their vibe) but she worked hard to make sure we still had time to hang out, and I never felt like she liked me any more or any less than the rest of her friends. How she balanced it all, I don't know. I still think she might be superhuman.

She was a year ahead of me and we ended up falling out of contact a little bit when she graduated. Between her (and later my) assignments, there was just never enough time, and as some of you may know (Sorry!!) my ability to stay in touch with people online is atrocious. We didn't stop talking entirely or stop being friends, but it wasn't until we were both assigned to the Enterprise that we were able to reconnect, and we're even better friends now than we were back then. I didn't exactly figure out who I was, but I grew more comfortable with the process of growing as a person and not having all the answers, and as a result I ended up way more confident in myself and with a lot less self loathing. Turns out, that makes you a lot more fun to be around! I still have a lot of work to do in that area, but I'm a lot better than I was back at the academy.

She and I hang out a lot on the Enterprise, sometimes with Spock or Nurse Chapel and sometimes just the two of us. We sing together, play games, talk in half a dozen languages (just because I don't know them yet doesn't mean my s/i can't!) and just do all those normal fun friend things. Sometimes we even teach or help each other learn new languages (I'm learning a new dialect of Klingon and she's learning Latin). One thing I've always really appreciated about her is the way she handles spontaneity with me - when she wants to hang out or change plans on short notice, she always gives me a really good sense of what she's suggesting we do and gives me the chance to raise any concerns or questions about it before we have to make a decision.

Interesting quirk of our friendship: I can usually be flexible about what we do but really need to know in advance who is going to be there, and she can usually be flexible about who's going to be there as long as she has a good sense of what we're going to do. It took us a little while to figure that out and start warning each other appropriately, but once we did things got a lot better!

It's really a crime that the writers didn't give us more Uhura-centric episodes because there are just so many things I want to know about her! This is also a new-ish ship for me, so the lore isn't quite as finalized as I'd like. If you see me changing things about our ship later, that's why!

Spock:

Ok, important warnings time. My selfship with Spock fills a very particular emotional role for me that causes me to be unusually protective of him and our relationship. I'm aware that this isn't exactly emotionally healthy, and that's something I'm actively working on. Part of the benefit of my ship with him is that he can fill this role rather than me putting it on a real person, which, yeah, wouldn't be great. A lot of this has to do with him putting me first.

To be clear, I view my ship with him as happening in one of many similar but distinct universes (there's a TNG ep I'm thinking of here) that's separate from both canon and other people's ships with him. That's why I say that our s/is probably can't be friends (unless we have some universe crossover stuff going on). I would never want to get in the way of another person's ship with him! And this is the division of things that makes it easiest for me to wholeheartedly support others' ships with him, which is something I very much want to be able to do. (What I'm trying to communicate, badly, is that I want to be clear that I don't view the way he thinks about me as being true anywhere outside of my ship with him.)

I do refer to him as my best friend, the platonic other half of my soul, and other similarly intense terms, which he reciprocates. We also have a minor telepathic bond (I have Headcanons about Vulcan telepathy and no one can stop me from using them). Our relationship really is strictly platonic, but if that's going to make you uncomfortable, the time to stop reading is now! I'm also always happy to work out more detailed tags if needed.

Now! On to the actual ship stuff. I've changed around the lore a little bit recently to be a little truer to the way I've been shipping with him for the past 6-7 years, so hopefully this is the final(ish) lore. There are several moments where if canon says otherwise I simply do not see it. I am looking away. My canon now :)

It's late, later than I should have been out, but I'm too young to know better and too excited to care. My cousins are playing in the sand out ahead of me, but I've had enough of the noise and the people for right now, so I'm doing what I do best: wandering off when I shouldn't. The beach is busy but the nearby hills are quiet, so I start to climb. Even at that age, I hate sand, and the stone staircase is a welcome relief.

I was so focused on the climb to see him and by the time I reach the top, I'm too exhausted to do anything but flop on the ground. As soon as I do that my eyes turn skyward and then I'm too focused on the stars to do much of anything else. Even with the lights around, it's a dazzling display. Most call it science, but to my untrained eyes there's a much simpler word: magic.

Between the exhaustion and the stars, it takes me several minutes to realize I'm not alone. A Vulcan boy I don't recognize is sitting on a bench a few feet away from me, staring at something in his lap and staying very still. I watch him for a while and when he still hasn't moved, I walk closer. He twitches - clearly, he knows I'm here - but keeps his eyes fixed firmly on his PADD. If I were older, I would have gone down the hill and this would have been the end of it.

But I wasn't older. I was young, and dumb, and perhaps most dangerously of all, I was curious. I didn't go down the hill. Instead, I walked up, pulled myself up to sit on the far end of the bench, and asked the question that would end up shaping the rest of our lives:

"Have you ever looked up?"

And he did.

I rambled about the stars and asked about his logic homework, and he watched the stars and patiently answered my questions. By the time we parted ways, I was smiling with his contact information tucked safely into a pocket and he watched my go with the corners of his lips pulled up into that classic Vulcan not-quite-smile.

My mom recognized his name and description as the son of Amanda Grayson, a friend of a friend, and she let me use her PADD to keep in touch with Spock until I was old enough for my own. He turned out to be a few years older than me and a lot of fun to be around with a subtle sense of humor that never failed to make me laugh. We'd hang out in person whenever I went to Vulcan or he came to Earth and we talked almost every day online when we were apart. He was (and is) my best friend, and we saw each other through the highs and lows of growing up. Even when his bullies got really bad and when my school social life went down the drain, we always had each other, and somehow that was enough.

Because of something something Vulcan brain development, the eligible age to apply to Starfleet is 20 rather than 16. (ooc this is my headcanon and I need it for our backstory to work, so shh.) I was certain he would apply for Starfleet Academy the moment he was eligible, and I think his decision to wait for a year shocked everyone. I asked him about it, wondering if there was something wrong. We'd talked for ages about how much he wanted to escape Vulcan, so why wasn't he now that he finally had the chance?

His response? "Not all humans treat me as you do. The bullying is unlikely to change, only its source. If I am to be bullied no matter my path, I will choose the one in which we are together."

I have never felt more honored in my life.

We applied for Starfleet together the next year. His father was devastated displeased that he did not choose the Vulcan Science Academy, my parents were upset that I was moving out so young, and we rolled up to Starfleet Academy as the resident pair of family disappointments. Good times.

The academy was a blast, though. We got to see each other! In person! Every day! I was there to stand up to the people who teased him, he was there to encourage me to make good choices, and we both were there to remind each other that sleep is a necessary biological function not to be ignored. We were both studying science, but he focused on the astrophysics side and I focused more on the biology side, so we didn't share too many classes, but we'd hang out all the time in between classes and we tried to take the same electives when we could. Having similar interests helped a lot on that front.

I was a weird child that had by now grown into a weird teenager, so I didn't have a ton of friends at first. Even when it started directly affecting his social life, Spock was never embarrassed to be seen with me, and though he claims that he would be treated the same without me... I doubt it. Still, though, it helped a lot to have him there, and he's never held it against me.

I did convince him to do a show with me once. He tries to hold that one against me but he had fun and we both know it. Besides, it's my job to drag him into illogical things sometimes :)

We graduated together but like so many close friends are, we were posted to different ships. It was a weird time for us. I was doing great, honestly. I was medicated for my chronic illness (finally!), in therapy (finally!), and I loved my ship and fellow officers. My job was interesting and engaging and I was having a blast. Spock, on the other hand, started to struggle a little bit. Though he always treated me like an equal, I think there was a part of his mind that always thought he was a little bit better than me, and seeing me succeed seemingly effortlessly where he was struggling was hard for him. We got through it, though, and he got some better accommodations (and later a transfer to a ship that fit him better) which made everything a lot better. I even ended up taking some engineering classes and wound up getting a degree in engineering too, just for fun.

Before we knew it, he was the first and science officer of the Enterprise and I was a lieutenant commander working for him. (I say working for him, but really it's a lot more like working alongside him. Most people in the science department assume that if you tell something to one of us and don't specifically say not to tell the other, we will, so you can basically report things to either of us.) I do some work for Scotty too, and Kirk likes to joke that I'm an honorary member of the bridge crew at this point. It was a funny joke right up until I started getting invited to briefings, but hey, who am I to complain?

Serving together is a lot of fun. I'm one of the only people on board who doesn't constantly pressure him to show his emotions, with the result that he is a lot more emotional with me. He knows that I don't view his moments of emotion as a reflection of how Vulcan he is or isn't, so he has nothing to gain by hiding them. Mostly, I don't comment on them, which is his preference.

While we're both happy to offer each other emotional support when needed, most of the time we end up just sitting with each other and letting them process it on their own. Between my emotional regulation issues and his I Am A Vulcan mentality, it's been a great way for us to show each other the support we crave without worrying about finding the perfect words.

Speaking of words, I'm one of very few people on the ship who speaks Vulcan. I actually learned it years ago because of him so we've been speaking it to each other for a while, and we take the Vulcan tendency to drop words to a truly ridiculous extent. Uhura tends to joke that we created our own language somewhere along the line, but it's a fun way to annoy Bones when he really gets on our nerves. He can't even complain about it because as it turns out having the ability to converse in a way no one else understands is very, very useful when a mission goes south. You can't really complain about something that's saved your life, now can you?

The telepathic bond (again, very minor and strictly platonic) came about when he had to meld with me on one such mission gone wrong. It wasn't planned, though we'd talked about it in the past and neither of us was upset by it. Bones tried to joke that our minds were so compatible that we were probably going to start dating now and immediately found himself on the receiving end of two death glares. Credit to him, he never made that joke again. We view each other like family anyway, so yeah. No.

But I like the bond we have! It's nice to know when he's uncomfortable but not saying anything and it's easier for me to tell when he's protesting for effect and really does want to go along with my bizarre illogical scheme and when he'd rather not. As someone with no real sense of social cues or sarcasm, it's a lifesaver. Besides, he's been a lot more comfortable with causal touch between us since it formed, which is great for me.

We also play a lot of D&D together. It's something I got him into but which he took to like a fish to water, and the lengths we go to to avoid scheduling conflicts for our weekly game night are probably a bit excessive, shall we say, but it helps that all the friends we'd normally have conflicts with end up getting invited too. He very rarely DMs, but when he does, you better hope someone in your party has a decent intelligence stat because his puzzles are amazing. Seriously, I don't think you've really played a puzzle based game of D&D until you've played one of his. Works of art, I tell you.

I could go on about him for hours, but I'll wrap it up here for time and length's sake. If you have any more specific questions, I think I've already effectively demonstrated that I'm incapable of shutting up about him!

#thank you for the ask!#this was a lot of fun!#my grumpy space dad #thrah t'nash-veh eh thrah t'du #uhura tag tbd #seriously. I should not have been enabled like this #kestrel go to bed challenge

4 notes · View notes

astarlightmonbebe · 5 years ago

Text

2019 Kdrama Year in Review

Alright, with 2019 drawing to a close, I thought it would be good to kind of organize my year in watching kdramas (ft. some cdramas). As per usual, I probably started around 100, dropped around 75% in the middle, and finished maybe like 10. My attention span is not good, but hey, I did watch a ton of great dramas this year and made some amazing discoveries. Let’s take a look! (and please keep in mind the top 5s are in no particular order!)

Dramas started: 96 (this encompasses ALL the ones I’ve started, mostly kdramas, but some cdramas, a jdrama or two, a couple thai ones, and one or two web dramas)

Dramas finished: 16 (usually, I aim to finish a kdrama a month (given my usual watching rate), so this is actually pretty good)

Dramas on hold/dropped: ~75 (excluding some I’m still trying my best to finish; I tend to get behind on dramas or stop around eps 10 or 11, so there are a couple I have like 4-5 episodes left on and am trying to finish)

Top 5 Airing Dramas:

He Is Psychometric

Arthdal Chronicles

Watcher

Hotel Del Luna

The Untamed

Top 5 Dramas Watched (Not Including Airing Ones/Ones in the List Above, Excluding Ones Not Finished)

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo

My Strange Hero

Kill It

Bad Guys

Six Flying Dragons

Top 5 Unfinished Dramas (Ones I Don’t Plan on Finishing in the Near Future, but want to)

Confession

When the Devil Calls Your Name

You’re All Surrounded

I Wanna Hear Your Song

Tomorrow With You

Top 5 Actors

Ryu Joonyeol (Lucky Romance, Reply 1988, Believer, Heart Blackened, Money, The King)

Song Joongki (Arthdal Chronicles)

Lee Seunggi (You’re All Surrounded, Vagabond, Hwayugi)

Lee Jaewook (Extraordinary You, Search: WWW)

Jang Kiyong (Kill It, Search: WWW, Bad Guys: Reign of Chaos)

Top 5 Male Characters

Yi Bangwon from Six Flying Dragons

Ryan Gold from Her Private Life

Eunseom from Arthdal Chronicles

Kim Youngkoon from Watcher

Hwi from My Country: The New Age

Top 5 Actresses

Shin Ye-eun (He Is Psychometric)

IU (Moon Lovers, Hotel Del Luna

Lee Sungkyung (Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, Doctors,

Shin Hyesun (Angel’s Last Mission: Love)

Shin Sekyung (Rookie Historian Goo Haeryung, Six Flying Dragons)

Top 5 Female Characters

Jang Manwol from Hotel Del Luna

Han Huijae from My Country

Wen Qing from The Untamed

Tanya from Arthdal Chronicles

Yoo Soobin from Moment of Eighteen

Top 5 Couples

Yuna and Hyeonjung from Hotel Del Luna

Dan and Yeonsoo from Angel’s Last Mission: Love

An and Jaein from He Is Psychometric

Gitae and Soye from Moment of Eighteen

Soondeok and Eun from Moon Lovers--Scarlet Heart: Ryeo

A Drama I Hated

Here I don’t want to talk about a drama I necessarily disliked, but something that made me drop a fair number of dramas that I liked a lot, including The Liar and His Lover and Radio Romance (and I guess Goblin and Clean With Passion For Now, also maybe Doctors but I’m seeing if I can get over it). And that would be: age gaps. It’s something that’s made me distinctively uncomfortable, whether it’s in the drama or the actors: the fact that young girls acting with older guys. Whether that is in the actors themselves, like the 12 year age gap in Radio Romance where Kim Soohyun was literally 18 and he was 30, or in a show like The Liar and the Lover, where the girl is only ~18 and the guy is at least five years older or something. Now, I know there’s all this legal talk blah blah blah, but it’s simply a fact that made me uncomfortable, especially when watching the romance blossom on screen, so I sadly had to say goodbye to some of the dramas I had gotten a good portion into before being forced to discontinue.

A Genre I Got Into

I don’t know if it was because of Arthdal Chronicles or not, but I blame the former, because ever since that drama aired, I kept watching historical dramas! This was very unusual, since I forsworn off watching historical dramas after The King in Love (which I never finished), since I disliked that they all seemed to have similar plots and greed for the throne always won. Those facts have not changed, but the only difference is now I’m watching those dramas knowing exactly why I dislike them and still watching them. I have discovered some good ones and learned quite a bit of history through them, finishing Moon Lovers and Six Flying Dragons (and, soon, Tale of Nokdu and My Country). It’s something that has bled over to Chinese dramas as well...I’m in deep.

BONUS: Chinese Drama

This year was the year I finished my first ever cdrama: The Untamed! I binge watched it over the summer and fell in love with the wuxia/xianxia drama. I discovered a lot of great actors as well xD. The acting and plot were seriously so amazing. I loved the morally gray characters, the villains, and the heroes all at once. It’s one of the only shows where there was no boring moment for me; even in shows I love there are always a scene or two I skip over, but nope! Not during The Untamed. I highly, highly recommend it.

BONUS: Movies

This year I tried to watch more movies (Chinese and Korean, and even a Japanese one or two)! Ones I watched include: New Trial, Juror 8, The Swindlers, and The Merciless. I also went on a Ryu Joonyeol binge over the summer where I was really into his acting for a long point, and so I watched a ton of movies he was in (listed in Top 5 Actors). I watched On My Wedding Day with my mom and sister (mixed reviews, I liked it at least) and Goodbye Summer with my friends (very mixed reviews, we were: confused). For jmovie representation, I watched Bleach and Kingdom (and unknowingly fell in love with Ryo Yoshizawa). For Chinese movies (of which I have been trying to watch more of to improve my comprehension skills, they’re still a -1), I watched The Witness, The Untamed: The Living Dead, and Jade Dynasty. I’m always looking for recs, so if anyone has any good ones, hit me up.

322 notes · View notes

deadcactuswalking · 4 years ago

Text

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 15/05/2021 (Coldplay, J. Cole, Trippie Redd & Playboi Carti)

I’m awful at predicting this chart, I really am, but most of that is probably down to how I only make vague predictions at the end of each episode without even considering most releases that’ll actually chart. Let’s just say I didn’t expect nine new arrivals this week. At the top, however, little has changed as the absolutely huge “Body” by Russ Millions and Tion Wayne with a remix featuring whoever the hell is spending its second week at #1. The rest of the chart, however, gets a bit more interesting. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

The biggest story to effect the chart this week is of course 2021’s BRIT Awards happening this Tuesday, which I’m sure boosted a lot of songs during the mid-week. I also actually covered the awards show on that day if you’re curious, with some of my observations, predictions and opinions. We can very clear see – or hear, for that matter – the impact of the BRIT Awards in this week’s chart, as it did cause a lot of gains and new arrivals that shook up the chart right in the middle of the tracking week. Firstly, we do have some drop-outs from the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, only one of them, “Paradise” by MEDUZA and Dermot Kennedy, being all that important given it was a top five hit but we do have a handful that lasted five or more weeks or peaked in the top 40, like “Medicine” by James Arthur flopping embarrassingly, “Addicted” by Jorja Smith dropping out to prepare for the rebound next week given her album release and “Solid” by Young Stoner Life, Young Thug and Gunna featuring Drake.

Speaking of Drake, he also provides the singular returning entry as “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby is proving to be the actual hit from that three-pack from March, coming back to #65. Scaling down the chart, we also have some notable losses, songs that dropped at least five spots on this week’s chart. Those that fell include “Your Power” by Billie Eilish dropping harshly to #15 off of the debut, as well as “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S at #18, “Confetti” by Little Mix to #21 off of the return (with Saweetie, the artist quite literally solely the reason it’s had this second wind, still bizarrely left without a credit by the UK Singles Chart), “My Head & My Heart” by Ava Max at #27, “Titanium” by Dave at #31, “Wellerman” by Nathan Evans and remixed by 220 KID and Billen Ted (yes, THEY’RE credited) at #36, “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G at #42, “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon at #44, “We’re Good” by Dua Lipa at #47, “Way Too Long” by Nathan Dawe, Anne-Marie and MoStack at #49, “Head & Heart” by Joel Corry and MNEK at #51, “Beautiful Mistakes” by Maroon 5 and Megan Thee Stallion at #55, “Don’t Play” by Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals at #56, “Calling My Phone” by Lil Tjay and 6LACK at #59, “Commitment Issues” by Central Cee at #67, “You” by Regard, Troye Sivan and Tate McRae at #69, “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #70, “Hold On” by Justin Bieber getting ACR’d at #71, “Streets” by Doja Cat at #73 and finally, “6 for 6” by Central Cee at #75.

Filling up the room for those losses, however, are the gains, always a tad more interesting, as the songs that rose at least five spots on this week’s chart – or make their first appearance in the top 40, 20 or 10 – are usually having the BRITs to thank to some capacity. The climbers include “Summer 91 (Looking Back)” giving Noizu his first top 40 hit at #31 (and I’ll admit, the song is growing on me), Griff also getting her first with “Black Hole” at #35 thanks to her win and performance at the BRITs, “WITHOUT YOU” by The Kid LAROI rebounding to #13 thanks to that once-again uncredited remix with Miley Cyrus and finally, entering the top 10 for the first time is “Anywhere Away from Here” by Rag’n’Bone Man and P!nk at #9, getting the boost from a perfect trifecta of gains: Rag’n’Bone Man released his album on Friday then on Tuesday had the closing performance of this song at the BRIT Awards with additional vocals from the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS choir, who are also now appearing on a new release of the song the day after, prompting a whole lot of sales, of which I assume and hope are going to charity. It’s Rag’n’Bone Man’s third top 10 hit, P!nk’s 21st(!) and interestingly enough, the NHS choir’s second top 10 hit as they had the Christmas #1 back in 2015. With all of that out of the way, I suppose it’s time to get to our varied array of new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#74 – “Dick” – Starboi3 featuring Doja Cat

Produced by Nius and SoFLY

This week is kind of a weird week if that wasn’t immediately obvious as our new arrivals are kind of all over the place, starting with... well, I think I could say less about the song than the title does. Starboi3 is this SoundCloud rapper from New Jersey who made a song with Doja back in 2019 – I assume she was more accessible for features back then –and it didn’t blow up at all, really, giving Starboi3 some additional traction but not until 2020, in which Doja Cat got her #1 hit and TikTok picked up this explicit single as a new sound. Sadly – or thankfully – the song was never released officially onto streaming until very recently, meaning, surely, the hype’s over by now? The answer to that is no, as it’s climbing up charts in both the UK and the Bubbling Under in the US... so there’s got to be something good about this song, right? Well, no. Not at all. Of course, that is subjective, but I do question your sanity if you’re honestly enjoying this unlikeable nobody shout “Dick!” over a basic, no-melody trap instrumental with heavy 808s not too dissimilar to drill, before going into a beyond basic chorus and verse about, well, you can guess, with rhymes sounding either like an awful freestyle or a kid with a rhyming dictionary. “She not with him tonight, she not with Jim tonight”? Of course, that’s in the post-chorus because if there’s one thing this song needs, it’s a freaking post-chorus. I also don’t think Starboi3 realises that making her scream for her parents is quite the opposite of sexy – or even raunchy and mindless, as it’s actually just creepy and terrifying. Speaking of terrifying, Doja Cat is here and not even she can add a less basic flow with a verse that just ends up going in one ear and out the other, even if I do like the seductive backing vocals that at least try to make this not a slow, joyless slog. However, I do NOT like the Pickle Rick reference. To be fair, this was 2019, but also to be fair, never reference that again, I am begging you. This is a disaster on all fronts and probably one of the worst tracks I’ve had to review in this series. Good start!

#64 – “Freaks” – Surf Curse

Produced by Surf Curse

This new song is actually even older, being released initially as a deep cut from this Nevada duo’s 2013 album. As you’ll probably tell, this is charting off of people streaming after hearing the song on TikTok and, I mean, at least the song’s actually good this time, careening off of a clearly surf-inspired clean riff surrounded by some basic drumming and a good bassline. It’s not great as it does feel increasingly basic as I said, almost like one of those local bands that don’t get much national attention or traction but do play some gigs and get some love at those places, to the point where it’s kind of big if they play shows outside of their region... which makes sense because that is exactly what they are. This is just some band from Reno but here it is charting on the UK Singles Chart and while it’s here, I should say whilst there’s not much here to discuss given how minimal it is, Nick Rattigan’s vocals are fittingly desperate for the theme of social alienation and particularly rejection as it’s pretty obvious he’s aiming venom at himself for a bad break-up, although given the sound and tone of the song, probably his first, with that double meaning of the mantra in the outro, “I won’t wake up this time”, potentially being a crushing line for someone in similar circumstances. That’s not me, exactly, so this doesn’t hit, but I’m glad that Machine Gun Kelly song from last week got replaced with some actually decent alternative rock on the chart. I hope this does well.

#60 – “One Day” – Lovejoy

Produced by Cameron Nesbitt

“One Day” is the biggest track from new English rock band Lovejoy’s debut EP, Are You Alright?, and whilst I was planning on not mentioning the fact that the band is fronted by Minecraft YouTuber Wilbur Soot, that is the only reason it’s charting – and he’s charted with “Your New Boyfriend” a couple months back, a song that I actually kind of liked. It’s also immediately obvious in the writing that this comes from an Internet personality, with some not-so-well-woven detail and increasingly gratuitous self-awareness that eventually cycles back and ends up as seeming like they have none at all... okay, like most indie bands but that’s beside the point. This happens to be Wilbur’s least favourite song on the release – one that I haven’t listened to because even if I’m not too old for mindless pop music, Minecraft YouTuber alt-rock may be where I draw the line – and I can completely understand the distaste for this given that it starts with the line, “Why’d you have to kill my cat?” I also have some qualms with the song sonically as it may be the most derivative rock single I’ve heard on this series, given how obviously it rips from indie rock bands of the 2000s, with an oddly clean mix that doesn’t exactly fit the obvious stream-of-consciousness lyrics and Wilbur’s erratic delivery. Also, there’s a whole lot of trumpet on this song, which I guess is a surprise, but that doesn’t make up for a drummer who can clearly play very well but has to chaotically play over a song with practically no groove. I do like that second chorus in how it builds up to a somewhat anti-climactic guitar solo but as a full song I do not really get the appeal of this that I don’t get out of other post-punk revival bands from decades back who are still pumping out music. This isn’t bad – I swear, don’t dox me – but I just want something more compelling from this. I will always be glad regardless of the quality that we have more rock on the chart, though, even if this’ll be gone by next week.

#57 – “It’s a sin” – Years & Years and Elton John

Produced by Stuart Price and the Pet Shop Boys

One of my favourite performance from the BRIT Awards this year was Olly Alexander of Years & Years sharing the stage with the iconic Elton John to cover Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin” which had renewed interest from last year as it was the namesake for a hit TV series about HIV/AIDS, for which this fittingly played a role and has kind of been recontextualised as a gay anthem, which makes complete sense if you look at its lyrics about the Church telling Neil Tennant “how to be”. It’s also one of the Pet Shop Boys’ most camp and theatrical songs, so giving it to Years & Years and Elton John to cover for the BRIT Awards make all too much sense. No, they’re not able to live up to the theatricality of the original, especially if Alexander’s vocals are going to be this clearly manipulated at points, but with Elton John’s piano laying a perfect foundation for the rising intensity of the track, we do get a sense of that original melodrama, with the synth-work and house groove coming in before Elton John’s voice, sounding smokier and wiser with age, and in my opinion, more compelling as a vocalist, especially if they’re both going to sell this song with the most convicted of deliveries. I don’t think a cover could ever live up to that original iconic track but if anyone’s going to get close, it’s Elton John. Expect this to rise next week.

#50 – “Never Left” – Lil Tecca

Produced by ThankYouWill, Taz Taylor and Cxdy

I’ll always be annoyed that Lil Tecca blew up as a rapper instead of a producer, as I don’t think this guy has any likeability or charisma about his flow, cadence or delivery, and that’s only after you get over how dry and whiny his voice can get. However, he can make some great and incredibly infectious beats for other rappers, including a song I see becoming a hit soon in SoFaygo’s “Knock Knock”, which I will bet on at least making the Billboard Hot 100 if not the UK Singles Chart. It’s unbelievably catchy. With that said, Tecca is here in the form of some SoundCloud raps over a boring synth pluck and vaguely tropical Internet Money trap beat, sounding and flowing way too much like Gunna for his own benefit, or Gunna’s benefit, if we’re honest, as this shows how easily he can be replaced. I usually don’t write off this type of rap and will absolutely defend it, but this song isn’t even catchy or unique. I mean, I don’t like “Ransom” either but at least it was kind of fun and I still know the lines in the chorus a couple years later. I’ll forget all about this by next week if it doesn’t stick around. At least he shouts out Chief Keef. God, I hope he charts sometime, that’d be funny.

#45 – “All I Know So Far” – P!nk

Produced by Greg Kurstin

So, P!nk is back but not with a studio album, rather an upcoming live album in which the two new, original songs are about or featuring her daughter. This is the second single from said album and is probably coasting off her appearance at the BRITs in terms of a relatively high chart debut. I’ve never been that big a fan of P!nk but she has her classics, none of which are in the past 15 years but that’s beside the point. This single in particular is an acoustic ballad dedicated to her daughter in which P!nk provides a rapid intensity alongside pretty great-sounding acoustic guitars, pounding drums and strings that sells the content about empowering yourself, with some nice lyrical detail about always being yourself, basically, which would come off as cliché and preachy if it weren’t for some oddly specific lyrics in those verses and the chorus that basically just tell her daughter that despite the fact the world will constantly try to crack down on her and everything she does much like life does to anyone but especially women, she should stand up for herself and what she believes in. However, none of that cuts deep when she’s being raised by a millionaire, huh? There’s little Hell to be put through when you’re born with a silver spoon, huh, Willow? Regardless, this isn’t a bad pop song and its content isn’t as misguided as it is just sang by the wrong singer, although I’d find it hard to get a singer with as much rasp and wisdom in the mainstream to sell this as convincingly as P!nk does – vocally, not lyrically. This is a couple steps above that last single, “Cover Me in Sunshine” at least, which was just insidious. Next.

#32 – “Miss the Rage” – Trippie Redd featuring Playboi Carti

Produced by Loesoe

Okay, so all of our last three new arrivals are in the top 40 and we start with... o-okay, well, it’s 2021, anything can and will chart and I should know this by now, but it’s still surprising to see a song by these two guys debut so high, especially since Whole Lotta Red produced absolutely no charting hits in the UK outside of “@ MEH”, which doesn’t really count. This is Trippie’s highest-charting song ever in the UK that isn’t fronted by KSI, so I guess streaming must have been that good – also, the charts are still weak. For what it’s worth, I do like both Trippie and Carti to their respective extents, and I am aware that this is only as big as it was because of the hype from the leak, which also featured Mario Judah, and that in itself was a big song but it took years for Carti’s feature to be cleared by the label, as is infamously true for much of Carti’s work and even his last official collaboration with Trippie that was actually deleted after release. I’m still hoping on an official release for his verse on Yung Lean’s “Yayo”, but whilst we have this instead, I might as well talk about it and... Well, let me explain to you what I see as the appeal of these two rappers. That appeal is, mostly, that they don’t rap even though they both very much can. Trippie yells, moans, growls, screams and spends most of his work singing in his typical raspy, venomous voice, whilst Playboi Cart spits and coughs his way through substance-less ad-libs to the point where any actual wordplay or lyrical detail gets you excited for that brief moment. In this song, Trippie and Carti don’t eschew the typical role of a rapper and both just... rap normally, which would not be a complaint if they weren’t so bland in that role, which is the whole point of their unique, phlegm-filled deliveries in the first place. As a result, this song just ends up feeling empty, even if this awfully-mixed, bass-boosted beat with some lovely distorted video-game synths and hardly audible trap skitters does go incredibly hard. Don’t get me wrong: this is still catchy and Trippie flows very well over a beat that sounds made for him and Carti. Hell, Carti has grown on me so much recently that my fondness for this might just be me eating anything he releases up. With that said, he’s the worst part of the song as his baby-voice style emphasises how lacking this song is in just anything. I do like the wordplay at the tail-end of the verse as, yes, that happens, perhaps not as iconic as some of his other oddly profound or clever lines on his last record but at least it’s something. At least this is some interesting American trap, unlike...

#25 – “i n t e r l u d e” – J. Cole

Produced by J. Cole, Tommy Parker and T-Minus

The pandemic has affected the music industry to the point where big-name rappers release album interludes as lead singles. Said album has songs shorter than this interlude, with most of its dull filler feeling like additional interludes, quite unbefitting for such a big and hyped-up album from Cole which frankly is just another boring addition to an already consistently dull catalogue. I’m just not interested in what Cole has to say because he’s never been likeable and I feel like there’s better rappers that bridge the gap between old and new like how Cole sees himself as doing, the “MIDDLE CHILD”, perhaps, like, you know, Drake? If we want to go for a more direct comparison from lesser-known rappers, the direct comparison I use for this new record is Aminé’s latest, also made up of a variation of trap bangers featuring massive, charting names versus introspective, conscious lyrics, yet Aminé is an interesting character with quotable lyrics that aren’t embarrassing, knows how to write an actual hook and whilst he also brings on both classic and modern features, he’s never out-done by them, creating an actual bridge rather than just some guy who thinks he can write his own role in the industry and culture without his own music backing his case. Unfortunately for me, it works – every freaking time – largely because of his continually loyal fanbase but also a general public interest in the guy that I do not understand, especially when more than a decade into his career, he’s still pushing out mediocre projects. He cuts his album’s length by a ton and still ends up with a bloated record. I barely need to talk about the track itself, right? Even if it has as much structure and effort put into it as his normal songs do, it’s labelled quite literally as an interlude. Sigh, well, in this interlude, Jermaine raps over a drowned-out soul sample and admittedly, sticks to the topic of reminiscing on where he came from, the violence in Fayetteville, a similar violence of which was what killed Nipsey Hussle, who he compares amongst Pimp C and Jesus as they all died at 33. Cole himself is 36 so I guess for once he doesn’t think he’s Jesus. It took him a while to realise.

#12 – “Higher Power” – Coldplay

Produced by Max Martin, Oscar Holter and Bill Rahko

I assumed this would debut at #3 until the BRIT Awards performance gave it a boost to debut at the top but I guess everyone else had the same opinion of that awful opening performance as I did, because here it is at #12. Well, that doesn’t matter, right? Coldplay’s last album similarly underperformed... but at least that time, they had a genuinely ambitious album for once in their careers with some genuine experimentation and themes I did not expect to come out of Coldplay. It was a better album but not an accessible one, with its only pop single being a bittersweet anti-war anthem which trivialises bombing in the Middle East to onomatopoeia. It’s a great song but it wasn’t going anywhere, so it’s no surprise that their next lead single is a soulless synth-pop track produced by Max Martin. Admittedly, the synth tone in the intro is kind of unique in all its nasal 80s nostalgia, but, man, I thought we moved past just rehashing for a hit, Coldplay. This is pretty obviously just a crap attempt at being “Blinding Lights” which trades in its machine-gun loco-motive drum pattern for one that is a lot more stiff, and its iconic, memorable lyrics for a forgettable set of love-struck laziness. Oh, yeah, and Chris Martin is far from the Weeknd both in the studio and live at the BRIT Awards – seriously, dude sounded half-alive. This isn’t offensive, just a bore that is clearly a desperate label move ready for when they can tour again, and if their last record proved anything it was that Coldplay seemed like they were finally above that.

Conclusion

Well, that’s our week – again, a questionable one at best and kind of a bad one at worst. Either way, this is a strange array of songs and I do like how the UK Singles Chart subverts everything you’d expect of it so often that chaos becomes the trend, even if not all of it is any good. I guess Best of the Week goes to “Freaks” by Surf Curse, with an Honourable Mention to Elton John’s cover of “It’s a sin” with Years & Years. Surprisingly enough, J. Cole actually doesn’t get Worst of the Week as the album gets a lot worse than that interlude, so he gets a Dishonourable Mention alongside Starboi3’s “Dick” being crowned Worst of the Week, and honestly probably Worst of the Year so far, not that I’m keeping track of that. Here’s this week’s top 10:

What’s coming next week? More J. Cole, Olivia Rodrigo’s newest single and probably – and hopefully – some album tracks from Jorja Smith and Nicki Minaj. For now, though, thanks for reading. It’s a big week next week, and I’ll see you then!

1 note · View note

courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years ago

Text

Maou-jou 9 - 12 (FINAL) | Idolish7 s2 10 - 15 (FINAL) | SLS 2

I’ve been holding off new seasonals because of other things, but after I post this I’ll have enough time to get around to them. That’s why I can’t guarantee winter 2021 seasonal tags on this post...maybe the next one will have them...

Maou-jou 9

…it seems shopping channels even are the same in the demon world.

Now even the demons have quests! (The frame is different to the princess’s, though.)

Oh! The quest failed.

Neo Alraune: in flower language, “the 2nd coming of happiness”. The worry from a little while ago was, “I’m worried about my brother.” The worry from recently: “I didn’t think about being happy that the princess didn’t kill my brother.”

The penguin demons are pretty cute!

Don’t you know how parents forbid children from sleeping until they finish all their homework? Must be something like that.

Yoku ganbarimashita! – Syalis worked hard!

LOL, mental age: 3. Poseidon likes cute things…I can’t read a lot of this…the hardsubs cover the JPN text.

They…both succeeded! (…LOL?)

Maou-jou 10

Owarinocity = Endopolis. It’s a good equivalent, if I do say so myself.

…oh yeah. What happened to Alraune? Update: There she is!

Also, that blonde guy in the infomercials doesn’t look too bad…*makes chef’s kiss gesture with one hand* Nice.

I wonder, was Twilight once human…?

LOL, there’s a goat symbol on the cleric’s pyjamas. Also “first time”, LOL.

I think they were playing shiritori at one point.

Hanamaru saikou yoku dekimashita!

Maou-jou 11

…How does one “sleep cheerfully”, anyway?

I think I saw Twilight drop something…some kind of paper…

Aw, Twilight blushing is kinda cute!

LOL, 70s shoujo style. Also, “It cannot be!”

Whoa, she cancelled it?!

I read up on this series on TV Tropes…and apparently the Demon King captured the Princess in her sleep.

Kagemusha? Like a ninja or something?

Apparently the Demon Cleric is much older than he looks.

Ooh! Hypnos is back!

A-whatsit really is abysmal levels of stupid!!! (LOL)

Maou-jou 12 (FINAL)

Who’s that one tiny guy occupying one of the Ten Kings’ seats?

*watching after Christmas, about a week after the anime finished* This is not seasonally appropriate!

…*thinks for a second, then spits* That’s the 2nd Nemu in the fall 2020 season!!!

Ooh, the head paladin doesn’t look that bad, either.

“…is it good to be…”

“…has seized the princess!”

“…that demon king is rather cute.” – See? Someone agrees with me.

Anyways, that was a fun series. See you soon!

Idolish7 s2 10

…Back at it after so long…(I can’t help it though – Crunchyroll, per month, is about double the local Funimation sublicensor’s fees, and for much less content that’s worth my money to boot!)

I’ve always thought Momo was like Sasara (HypMic), so seeing him anguished hurts me in the kokoro too…

I know Banri was involved with Re:vale somehow…this must be it.

…Male idols are also popular among men? Is this why there are 8 (!!!) idol anime in winter 2021 alone…? (Also, that’s why HypMic became popular? Multidemographic appeal crossed over with obvious merchandising opportunities?)

It’s kind of scary how Momo stepped the formality towards Yuki like that (to -san).

I guess in his heart Momo still reveres Yuki, some way or another.

The rakugo curtain really sold the moment that they (current Re:vale) were acting like an old married couple.

Yay! Silver Sky is such a cool song! Of course I recognised the intro when it came on.

…I see. The elder Kujo is entrusting his dream to Tenn, so that’s why he banned Aya from seeing Tamaki. However, it’s hard to know what to feel when Aya speaks in the vaguest terms possible.

I think that was a special ending for only this episode. I don’t know what its name is, but I guess I might recognise it on Spotify one day.

Idolish7 s2 11

LOL, Nagi’s reaction.

Considering the ‘rona is getting worse outside our very windows as we speak (type?), I think it’s correct to be concerned about your future right now.

Looking at these narrow streets reminds me of going to eat hotpot at the end of my Japan trip…only Japanese streets look like that, I think. Hong Kong’s streets are more crowded than that and America likes their suburbia.

Of course, when you say hajimemashite (nice to meet you), someone’s gotta say it back, hence the reply.

Considering there are people all over the world watching the Idolish7 anime, I would say you are telling the world about I7, Riku.

Oh! Restart Pointer! There was an MV for that one…I think it was around the time Idolish7’s MVs started getting better.

So this is the context around the new outfits! Cool!

There have been way too many puns about “idol” being…y’know, “ai (love) doll” and stuff like that…

I have one Twitter person who I follow (DejiNyucu, part of the creative team for Autumn’s Journey) because I don’t get much I7 content and they keep mentioning this “Haruki” person…and suddenly a “Haruki the Betrayer” showed up in the graffiti…they might be the same person, I think. Not Deji, but Haruki. Update: Sakura Haruki, perhaps…?

Sougo’s such a bad liar…

Sometimes, the best way to deal with things is to be direct…(I’m not very good at that, I naturally talk in a very roundabout sort of way.)

Sougo with long hair like Yuki would be really pretty… (<- has an obvious thing for guys with long hair)

Idolish7 s2 12

Nagi’s stupid accent is generally what he’s best remembered for (for me), so seeing him speak normally, and do a press conference on top of that, is…impressive.

A kabedon on top of all this! Whoa!

Shibuya 109 parody…? (I’ve seen that once or twice – parodying that means people know their stuff about Shibuya.)

I think the “it’s overflowing!” is referring to the hype in the “room”.

…this dejected Momo is worrying…(well, he is worrying and I am worrying about him.)

Oh, I see. The person responsible typed the letter so that they couldn’t be traced back. Kind of like those old movies where the culprit would cut letters out of newspapers to make threat mail, but…with even less traces than that, because cutting letters out leaves evidence.

…wow, it took a while for this ep. to have an intro…

…LOL, I just spotted Kenjiro Tsuda cited as the “fake Zero”, meaning the real one might never show up this season.

There’s something really stupid and infectious about these managers’ enthusiasm for drinking energy drinks. It puts a goofy smile on my face.

Is Musubi Tsumugi’s mother…? Update: Yes, she is.

…Wait, so the Chiba Shizuo guy is actually important?!

Idolish7 s2 13

Whenever someone says “by the way”, it means they’re changing the subject. I hate to state to obvious, but Sougo is clearly deflecting the topic of conversation from being about him.

I wonder if this guy (Haw9) is the actual Zero graffiti vandal…?

Hmph, I didn’t realise Tenn doesn’t refer to Kujo-san as his father, but…like that (“Kujo-san”) instead.

Oh hey! These are shots from Vibrato!

Most dramas can be solved with the power of Good Communication. That includes this one.

I feel like “he has a dark side” describes both Tenn and Kujo-san.

“Everyone, remember to wash your hands and gargle thoroughly.” – This is always a good thing to remember in the time of ‘rona. Reminds me of Jakurai’s line in ARB (<- this game started just after the ‘rona came down).

What did Sougo go to uni for (what specialisation)?

Idolish7 s2 14

I just realised Banri calls Momo -kun. Hmm…

Denki = electricity, LOL.

I feel like Tenn is basically Ramuda, give or take actual pink hair…guys in musical groups with pre-existing angst that they become the “centre” of. The fact Fling Posse have Saito Soma and so do Trigger strengthens the connection.

I would watch the heck out of a musical like that! Make it come true, Idolish7! (Also, today is I7 day! I’m not much of an I7 fan outside the anime, but…that’s cool!)

That shot of them jumping! I remember seeing it on the official site before!

Idolish7 s2 15 (FINAL)

There you go! I was wondering where Banri’s injury was – that was the only bit that didn’t add up for him to be Yuki’s old partner.

Hmm…Momo is 4 years younger than Yuki but 2 years younger than Banri…

This episode has a real concert vibe to it, to the point where I got startled by how loud the yell was at one point. (Even if it is mostly stills.)

LOL, lookit Okazaki!

Apparently, if you’re a hako oshi, you like all the members of a group. Someone with a green light and a pink light likes both members of Re:vale.

LOL, Usagi for Asahi beer.

…I forgot Nagi is 19.

…Ooh, I think that’s the kid from ZOOL. No wonder they needed a season 3!

That’s all. See you next time!

SLS 2

“fine and upstanding person” – That’s…hard to believe, Hayato.

I wonder how many bois Toboso designed for SLS…?

…The episode title is actually “Blank”. Not “Break”.

One of the guys’ shirts says moteki on it. That’s a period in one’s life where one enjoys more romantic attention than usual, literally “popularity season”.

The subs missed an I, so initially I knew Kiriyama’s name as “Kiryama”.

There are meant to be 2 wings, right…?

“He who controls information controls everything, right?” – For once, I’m surprised Hayato is right (and not just in that smug way of his).

“…I’m being treated like a manager.” – But Hayato is a manager! (In a sense.)

The plait guy jumps to nicknames really fast…also, why do I get the feeling Maeshima will lose the key?

I hate to say this Maeshima, but I side with your childhood friend (Kiriyama) here. As much as the anime wants me to back you, I’m watching for everyone else at this point.

That blocky building looks pretty cool. I think Zel (Archi-Anime) would like it.

Sasugai’s setup looks pretty cool, including his chair.

…hmm, Maeshima’s like me in a sense. I learn best by copying others, but memory is my best asset. If I don’t regularly train the fundamentals, I suck at everything. That said, I don’t have an eidetic memory. Also, I didn’t quite figure out Ken = Ken(sei Maeshima) until I watched long enough to connect the dots.

LOL, Derry’s. (<- reminded of a word for “butt” <- derriere)

Well, the guy’s (Souta…?) shirt does say moteki…

Kiriyama kinda looks like Jyuto (HypMic), come to think of it…Right down to his angry streak (although Jyuto has a reputation to keep as a “cool dude”, while Kiriyama is more of a Manza (Boueibu HK) and he’s more angry than he looks).

…This ED is nothing special.

…Hmm? Is that a small Terauchi and Maeshima…?

I think I’m sold for now, but I’m rooting for the other team, not Maeshima’s…not yet, anyways.

#simulcast commentary #skate-leading☆stars #idolish7 #Idolish7 Second Beat!#Maou-jou de Oyasumi #sleepy princess in the demon castle #Chesarka watches I7 #Chesarka watches Maou-jou

4 notes · View notes

shhhlikeme · 4 years ago

Note

Now that im up to date let's talk aot! Ive also read the manga up until the end of season 3. Im not sure if I want to go past the anime at this point, ive seen some spoilers and idk I kinda like being unsure atm at whats going to happen. Anway Im liking the new animation! I quite like both styles but I feel like the change in animation suits the change in the series since were seeing everyone grown up.

The whole basement reveal really shocked me, out of all the things I wasnt expecting that. I thought it would be about cure for the titans since Dr Jaegar is a doctor and maybe he figured out a way to cure the world. Instead I felt like the whole world turned on its head😂 Im glad it wasn't spoiled for me, it was a complete surprise which is nice. I feel like as a show no matter how much we learn there's still things that are unknown. Its really good and well written, also very cruel. Overall im enjoying it a lot and im glad I started watching it. What are your thoughts on aot and the new season so far? (Sorry if this was all over the place im about to go to bed and am a bit tired hahah) - Qyu 💛

******AOT SPOILERS BELOW******

Hiii qyu anon sorry I saw that this was about AOT so I waited to finish the latest ep before I read it.

I’m caught up again, if the episodes come out on Sunday im usually able to get to it today like Friday nights!

YAAAAAY IM SO GLAD WE CAN TALK AOT !! 😃

I saw your tweets did you end up surpassing the anime in favour of the manga?

You know I’m only an anime watcher so I’ve really been on the edge of my seat all season.

I’m feeling the new animation! It’s much for rugged and makes the characaters look older so I agree that it works. Kinda reminds me of the hq animation switch (pre quarantine) because it made all the boys look older and better.

Since you more or less binged watched it, did you find it was a rollercoaster? Did you find it confusing or easy to follow? For me: I started watching AOT when it came out when I was in high school so after every episode this season I literally have to watch an “explained” video. I quite enjoy them now actually as it has become a part of the process haha. I’m about to watch episode 10s now !!

Yeah omg the basement arc was just crazy .... I absolutely didn’t see it coming. For me the biggest shock is obviously Zeke cause like .... dude you actually threw those rocks and killed the corps FOR WHAT !!! fucking snake and I was so happy when I thought Levi killed him.

Levi btw 🥵

It’s so funny because when I watched aot before I got online in the anime world he never stood out to me looks wise, but then I saw that everyone thought he was hot and I think my mind finally noticed him and was like omg yes 😍😍😍

But I honestly say that I’ve never been more attracted to an anime characters while being until I was introduced to captain Erwin💔and kasamatsu from KNB. Anyone you find handsome in AOT ????

Okay!! Again sorry for the late reply and take all the time you need to answer. I’ll be here 💛💛💛💛

Wish you the best as always!

#qyu anon hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii #💛💛💛

2 notes · View notes

kinetic-elaboration · 4 years ago

Text

February 10: 2x06 The Doomsday Machine

Took a nap after work and really discombobulated myself. Then got a bit of a second wind watching Star Trek.

I believe I have seen this episode before but I had no memory of it going in and no memory of seeing it before even now that I’ve finished, so, who knows?

Where’s Uhura? Hopefully on shore leave somewhere having fun!

I feel like this other Communications officer walked over to the Captain’s chair hoping Kirk would acknowledge her lol. Then when he doesn’t, she doesn’t really know what to do with herself.

Some of the shots in this opening are really weird: the angle of Kirk and Spock at Spock’s station; the camera suddenly randomly dropping right before Kirk starts walking down the step.

DECKER?? Rev. Spice Boy’s father perhaps?

Hmm so the Constellation is another Constitution class like the Enterprise and the Intrepid. I always get a kick out of seeing other space ships of that same shape for some reason.

Mr. Spock in command.

Poor ship! In an aesthetically pleasing disarray, completely abandoned.

Kirk is a very good detective. “They didn’t leave any random mess, so they must have left on purpose.”

Spock in the chair!

Found Decker!

I know he has to be a Commodore to outrank Kirk later but... why is a Commodore in space? Or in other words, why isn’t the Constellation captained by a Captain?

Does Jim know everyone in Starfleet? He’s just that guy, isn’t he? He has a lot of acquaintances and he’s very friendly and easily charming so he just kind of collects people (especially Starfleet people since it is his WHOLE adult life) but he doesn’t have that many close friends or lasting romantic relationships; he’s hard to get really, properly close to.

Well that’s the mystery of the crew solved :( That’s like tragically sad.

I like when Kirk is smart and understands star ships.

Decker is not being very helpful here in actually explaining what the Threat is! Still, that’s a very classic horror trope: an evil so terrible that it is beyond description. (Alternately, he could have just said “giant windsock dipped in cement,” which is what it was.)

Robot weapon!! Giant ancient alien robot weapon just floating around space, following its orders mindlessly because it is just a machine, a tool set loose by people no longer around to control or restrain it... I love that. That’s so cool and scary and weird all at once.

A space legend!! The Doomsday machine... The most terrible of all weapons, never meant to be used... it destroyed its makers and continues to destroy still...

Really into the visual of towing a ship through space.

We must deactivate the robot!

Now Kirk will repair the ship.

The Commodore is recovering, I see... at least nominally.

“Logically our primary duty is to save Captain Kirk.”

Spock is getting outranked!! Awkward lol. Not a good idea to try to outmaneuver Spock in any way, rank or no. He is Savage and he WILL bring up your dead crew. He is Pissed. The subtlety.

McCoy is soo the audience in this scene. “So are you.. Sir.” That patented rocking motion. Trying to get over, under, around, or through the regulations to do what’s right.

Is the Commodore chewing on one of the floppy disks? That seems pretty weird to me. You can’t EAT them.

Mmm, Kirk working on the ship; sexy. Yet again he must fly the whole constitution class ship BY HIMSELF.

The thing is that Spice Boy Sr. IS unfit for command; anyone who saw him 10 minutes earlier on the Constellation would know that.

I love that not!Uhura doesn’t even try to tell the Commodore the status report; she talks to Spock because she knows who the real boss is here.

Spock, always on the lookout for how to use regulations to get himself back in the chair. Also foreshadowing the suicide.

Now Kirk will distract the evil robot to save Spock!!

Got that ship doing with only Scotty’s help, working all the controls, flying the whole damn thing himself like the bamf he is. Gotta zig zag around to tempt and confuse the robot.

“Scotty you’ve earned your pay for the week.” They get paid lol? In what?

Now the robot machine is eating.

Love Spock’s little, subtle eyebrow raise when he hears Kirk’s name.

This scene is gold lol. Kirk’s not going to let Decker speak for Spock. “Where’s Spock? Give me Mr. Spock. What happened to Spock?” Like good news is that it wasn’t Spock being reckless with the ship but bad news is where is he??

Another regulations show down. “You can file a formal complaint but for now.. out of the chair. Or I shall snap my fingers and have security escort you out.”

Vulcans bluff all the time lmao.

Ah ha, now to get him officially declared unfit.

And now for the required hand to hand combat scene. This ep really does have everything.

The shuttlecraft is escaping!

I love that when Sulu announces that the shuttlecraft doors are opening, Spock’s just like “Well...close them. Duh.”

RIP Decker... The inevitable end of that character.

Spock wants Kirk back on the Enterprise immediately.

I know Kirk is slightly annoyed when Spock corrects his math but like...you know he also finds it sexy.

“Jim, you’ll be killed.” / “Don’t worry bb I don’t intend to die.” Is that not the dialogue?

Now Scotty has to solve literally everything himself.

The tension!!

“Gentlemen, beam me aboard.” That tone, though. That’s such a Kirk tone, like he’s got to be the Cool Boss even and especially in moments of high stakes. That subtle humor Shatner brought to him.

I knew they’re going to save him and I also knew they’d do it at the laaaast possible moment but I was still really scared.

Spock is so in love. The way he looks at Kirk at his return and welcomes him aboard... Such relief.

And then some classic end of episode dialogue: Spock thoughtfully points out the larger implications of their adventure--that they might have only destroyed one of many planet killers still out there--while Kirk, all relaxed and happy now that the current problem has been solved, and still riding the high of his recent adventure, just makes a funny, minimizing remark. “I found one quite sufficient.” Little flirty smile for no reason.

And so the space legend lives on...

I loved this episode. It really had everything: great sci fi concept; K/S content; Starfleet regulations; a fist fight; aliens; a connection to the current events of its time (with the comparison to the H bomb, asking people to think about the long range/unintended consequences of our extreme weaponry); Kirk being heroic and good at his job; a tense finale.

I feel like this episode seems on its face to show the Kirk and Spock dichotomy that STID and the other AOS movies were trying to depict but like... AOS didn't get it. Like yes Spock quotes all the regulations and ultimately listens to Decker's regulation citing, and Kirk's like "yeah whatever screw those regulations,” but Spock is obviously making strategic decisions and he's always on the lookout for how to use the regs to his advantage--it's not just obeying for the sake of obeying. And Kirk isn't just cavalierly not caring about the rules--he's in an emergency situation and he reads it for what it is, a test of will, where regulations are being weaponized. And he weaponizes them, too: he knows Spock is his direct subordinate and not only will obey him but NEEDS to, per those same regulations.

All 3 of them, including McCoy, know both the regulations and their own morality; they're not that different, but they have different levels of power and different abilities with regard to how they use regulations and how they can interact with other people of other ranks. They ALL want to do what’s right and they will ALL either use or discard regulations as they see fit, to the best of their ability.

AOS just flattened it, in STID in particular: Spock likes rules and doesn't care about anything else and Kirk hates rules and never listens to them.

Of course Kirk in TOS is a decade older and has a lot more experience. Episodes like this make me think about how that experience is one of the huge differences between TOS and AOS Kirk (STXI and STID in particular). You can't fake 15 years of Starfleet experience. you just can't. Could AOS Kirk get down on the ground and fix the Constellation himself and fly it by himself? Probably not.

I get why the AOS verse ran itself into that corner, and in fact it doesn’t matter in STXI, where the narrative is a contained, emergency situation, and Kirk’s command is a field promotion for a discrete and limited purpose, but I do think the movies struggled with that conundrum later. No one has the time to grow and mature in a normal way. How do you build them up over time when you skipped over that development period they logically should have had, both as professionals and as people?

I appreciate STID in theory for trying to address that issue, I just think it did it badly. Like its Kirk narrative was supposed to be about "earning the chair" but it didn't keep Kirk IC while doing that, nor did it address the real problem: he's not just A Rebel, but he is verrrry inexperienced. (I know you could make arguments about his AOS background changing his personality blah blah blah I’ve seen STID recently and in my opinion it just doesn’t feel right.)

Then STB tried to skip over the issue by just pushing the narrative forward to mid-5YM. Well they’re magically experienced now! And that was even worse. So, what can you do?

Anyway that was a big AOS tangent lol.

Next ep is Catspaw. A little late for Halloween but always great nonetheless!

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek tos

3 notes · View notes