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xiaoshengnu · 8 months ago

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𝕸𝖞 𝕵𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖞 𝖙𝖔 𝖄𝖔𝖚 (2023)

overview : episode no - 24 | genre - wuxia

yun weishan has only ever known darkness. brought up and honed from a young age to become a spy under the mysterious sect wufeng, she longs for freedom. the drama begins as she is sent on a mission into the gong family, the enemy sect of wufeng. if she succeeds, freedom she gets. surrounded by schemes and treachery with possible death looming on both sides, yun weishan must navigate the dangerous waters of the gong family and her own turbulent emotions towards her target, gong ziyu.

l⃣e⃣ t⃣’ s⃣ b⃣e⃣g⃣i⃣n⃣

YALL THIS DRAMA. THIS DRAMA. this drama was simultaneously the worst and best thing I have experienced in a long time. however, if I could only use one word to describe this drama, it would 100% be stunning. the drama is absolutely stunning. from the music to the costuming to the makeup to the actors- this drama's visuals is quite frankly something never seen before in chinese dramaland- its so dark and brooding and so cool. the plot on the other hand...? let's get into it.

o⃣u⃣t⃣ o⃣ f⃣ t⃣ e⃣ n⃣

𝖕𝖑𝖔𝖙 - 3/10

𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 - 7/10

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 - 7/10

𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 - 10/10

𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕘𝕖 - 6.7

o⃣u⃣t⃣ o⃣ f⃣ f⃣ i⃣v⃣ e⃣

𝖍𝖎𝖉𝖉𝖊𝖓 𝖌𝖊𝖒 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖚𝖊 - 💎💎💎💎💎

[ honestly, this drama is pretty unique I have to give it that much. in every way. the characters? the premise? and the style? I think the visuals alone grants it it's five gem value. ]

𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖆𝖙𝖈𝖍 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖚𝖊 - ✨✨✨

[ despite the plot that is quite literally held up by like two stitches, I would probably rewatch it for the characters, but probably not think too deeply about the drama's construction as a whole because honestly- it would frustrate me to no end. ]

‘keep reading’ for detailed review

𝖕𝖑𝖔𝖙 - 3

okay- hear me out y'all. I know people absolutely LOVE this drama and I am one of them, but I have to admit the logic in this plot sucks ass. like it really sucks ass. recently i heard a youtuber describe the characters as people who thought they were zhen huan but in reality were just a bunch of xia dongchuns and it really made me laugh- and guys... unfortunately, its true. some of the methods that the characters use to scheme and idk "verbally spar" honestly were just so- sigh. so ridiculous.

generally speaking, I felt that the drama didn't really have a "thread" or a central purpose, which I think is mainly a result of the build up to the ending. it failed to answer so many questions and instead made it worse by creating even more. overall, the plot kind of just felt like wading through a gigantic mud marsh with pointless confrontations and plot points popping up everywhere. the scriptwriters gave the drama a super complex framing that they just weren't able to do justice. two powerful sects and two people from completely opposing sides. one is an assassin-spy that initially (?) yearns for freedom and one is the leader of the sect that she is trying to destroy. add to that all the scheming that goes on the gong family. and a lot of childhood trauma. that's a shit-tonne of emotion and plotting to deal with which you can't realistically develop to a good quality within just 24 episodes.

I also got the vibe that the scriptwriters were scared to pin point any of their characters down for the sake of mystery, which honestly instead of making the drama better, really just made it worse. so many characters' motives were constantly doing 180s and big revelations were thrown in without any evidence of it being interlaced with the rest of the drama (I'm looking at you Big Plot Twist At End of Drama). like, the general concept was amazing, show-stopping, fantastic, never seen before, but then came the execution and it all just sort of fell apart.though I did enjoy the plot and watched the show until the end, ultimately I felt that there was honestly just too many frustrating flaws to justify it getting anything higher than 3. I loved the drama all the same though, the concept, the music and cinematography was just insane.

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘 - 7

ugh all the characters in this show where literally sO COOOLLL. they all had such distinctive characters, styles and personalities, it was amazing. honestly, literally never seen before. their tragic backstories were so so heartbreaking. while plot wasn't fantastic, the drama was pretty good at establishing and handling the characters and their emotional attachments to each other. its kinda funny to me that for a drama which marketed romance as it's main thing, the non-romantic relationships were so much better written. I loved yun weishan and yun que's relationship to their master han yasi and the relationship between xue chongzi and xue gongzi. and omg, gong ziyu's relationship to lady wuji? brought me to tears.

speaking of the romance department; I found it really hard to invest in the ships. while I approved of all the pairings and thought a romantic dynamic between them would be very interesting, it did feel like the storytelling was yet again lacking. I couldn't be sure wether I could really invest and ship the romance between shangguang qian and gong shangjue bcs both their motives were so unclear, and neither of their feelings towards one another were never really explored properly? and while I definitely understood yun weishan's attraction to gong ziyu, I didn't really get why gong ziyu loved her and risked so much for her which made some of his actions seem really silly and hard to stand by. overall, for the romance, i think I liked what it had the potential to be than what we actually got.

𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 - 10

Y'ALLL. time to talk about my absolute FAVOURITE part of this drama. THE PRODUCTION. the colouring, the lighting, the sets, the cinematography?? the makeup? the music? the costume design?? THE COSTUME DESIGN?? its quite obvious that a huge amount of the budget for this drama has simply been poured into the design, like I've seriously never seen a drama shot like this ever before and it was absolutely insane (though they definitely had to cut down on the cast and extras, the whole drama has this weird kind of empty feeling for a manor that is so rich and famous and so tightly guarded, like yun weishan didn't even get a personal handmaiden) I remember seeing the trailers for this show and literally screaming- the drama itself did not disappoint. I would even go as far to say that I would watch this drama completely just for the aesthetics.

𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 - 7

in my personal opinion, no complaints about the acting, it was pretty great. although it's pretty dramatic at times and everyone speaks at the volume of a whisper, at no point in the drama did I get taken out of the show by the acting. esther yu really slayed in her new assassin role which was so fun to watch especially since most of her roles thus far have been rather cutesy and light- and her marital arts scenes ate- in fact all the martial arts scenes ate in my opinion. I think even the side characters did fairly well, it was all very nice. no complaints.

𝖇𝖔𝖓𝖚𝖘!!

favourite character(s) :

yue gongzi ( who doesn't love an angsty angsty man? he's literally the definition of that teary wet cat meme and I love that for him )

xue chongzi (yet another angsty man- you can see a pattern forming lmao- his arc at the end was literally so heartbreaking. one of my favourite characters from this show fr. )

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖜 (source mydramalist)

lead actors : esther yu, zhang linghe, lu yuxiao, cheng lei

director : guo jingming, luo luo

screenwriter : guo jingming

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baifengxis · 1 year ago

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What are some of your fave cdramas that you would highly rec? I’m looking for something to watch and I would be grateful if you can share some. Thank you!!

Oh, thanks so much for this question, I love recommending cdramas haha!

LEGEND OF FEI [2020] Gotta start with the obvious, because I'll recommend this drama forever even to everyone who has started and can't get into it, I'll always be like, please try again lol It's feminist, fun, feel-good but with very nicely done heavy moments every few episodes, important messages about life and about becoming who you want to be, it has my, at this point, favorite cdrama ship ever, yunfei my beloved!! relationship goals! friendships, funny dynamics, siblings, AMAZING characters and...so much more, I won't continue because I'll never stop lmao

UNEXPECTED [2018] Such an underrated Drama! I don't know why it's so underrated, especially because it's made by the same writer as a very popular drama (The Romance of Tiger and Rose) and the stories are very similar, which I know can be boring but they also have differences that make each drama unique, there's just the same premise of a writer traveling into their own story.

I'VE FALLEN FOR YOU [2020] The perfect rom-com historical drama, with a very fun plot and with plot twists you don't expect, such good characters and two amazing ships! Comfort drama for sure!

THE LOVE BY HYPNOTIC [2019] If you love palace romance, arranged marriage turned true love, a few crazy (but very entertaining) villains and a love story for the ages! Even though it has some very heavy moments, it's one of my comfort dramas as well, because it also includes some VERY FUNNY moments, like I just love dramas that can somehow balance comedy, romance and serious moments so well!

THE QUEEN OF ATTACK [2021] There's so many short dramas nowadays and 80% of them have the same plot of someone traveling into a story lol and yes, this is one of them BUT it's such a good drama like it's insane, I'll wish forever it was a normal length one, but it's still so good, the episodes are 9-10 mins each but there are two seasons, and the episodes have been combined, so eventually it's like having a normal drama with 12 normal length episodes (6 for s1 and 6 for s2). It's so worth it and the two actors are so talented and have such good chemistry, plus the story is unique too, yes this premise has been done many times but I think they still made it so unique and different from others.

THE STARRY LOVE [2023] A recent drama and quite popular, but I'll still recommend it always. Other than the last episode that was a bit disappointing and rushed (still a happy-ish ending though), it's my favorite Xianxia and it was just so good, the story, the cinematography, THE OST, the actors, the ships, the friendships, the sisters, ALL THE WOMEN, youqin literally making all other MLs take notes from him on how to be the best ml out there, so many reasons to watch this drama, just ignore the last part and pretend we saw what they forgot to show us lol

LOVE LIKE THE GALAXY [2022] Where do I even begin??? (This is the first Zhao Lusi drama i recommend in this list, but I just wanna mention, I recommend almost all of them.) Anyway, LLTG is by far my favorite political drama, and non wuxia/xianxia historical cdrama. It's so different and unique, there's literally nothing like it. It's a slow paced drama, with very long scenes (you might only have 3-4 scenes in one episode for example) and it's the reason why It got me a while to get to it, but now I'M SO IN LOVE WITH IT!!! There is not an episode I don't enjoy, it's pure art. Cheng Shao Shang is one of my favorite girls ever and her and Ling Buyi???? I'D DIE FOR THEIR LOVE. Their chemistry is so so so good, now Zhao Lusi can have chemistry with a tree, it's true but still, one of the best cdrama ships out there. Even though I never truly watched classic cdramas like Nirvana on Fire and those "older" ones, I think LLTG somehow is the closest to those except it also loves its characters and focuses on romance more than any older political cdrama did but it works so so well.

LIGHTER AND PRINCESS [2022] Favorite modern drama! I gotta be honest I'm not verrrryyyy into modern cdramas, I like a few, even love some, but generally it's hard to find a modern cdrama I'll go crazy over...but L&P changed that. Or well, it's still hard, maybe even harder now, to find something that tops it, but L&P is just so so good. Again, a quite popular drama, maybe it doesn't need the recommendation, but I have to mention it anyway 'cause it's my baby and I just cannot make a favorite cdramas list without it! Some reasons to watch: One of the best love stories out there, with such good angst and just everything you need on a ship, two main characters so unique that you'll definitely relate to (at least in some aspects), one of the best OSTS ever, perfect cinematography, directing and writing and one of my favorite endings on any show ever!

Some more dramas I recommend but I won't dig deeper (I talked a lot already):

Couple of Mirrors [2021]

Who Rules The World [2022]

Love Between Fairy and Devil [2022]

Young Blood [2019 - S2 starts tomorrow!]

Wait, My Youth [2019]

Zhaoyao/The Legends [2019]

Arsenal Military Academy [2019]

There's probably more but I think that's good for now, I hope I helped you find something to watch and I'm always here for more recs if you want :P <3

#anonymous #answered #anon #cdrama recs #cdrama recommendations #recs #drama recs

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shewholovestoread · 1 year ago

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My Journey To You - Thoughts and Impressions Part 1 of 2

I realise that I've been missing these past few months, i've been on a consumption binge but with little to no bandwidth to write about any show/film irrespective of how much I may have loved them. (depression is an ass) But I can, once again, feel thoughts tingling in my brain and I've decided to get back to writing, something that I deeply enjoy. Anyway, enough about me, let's get started.

To keep the post from getting obscenely long, I'm going to split it into two. This post will be about the technical aspects of the show. Part 2 will focus on the characters.

My Journey To You is a 2023 fantasy, Wuxia show (shows/films that are based in ancient China with martial arts warriors being capable of superhuman feats, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). It was highly anticipated owing to the amazing trailer (one of the best I've seen)

youtube

Plot: The series tells the story of Yun Wei Shan, a spy longing for freedom, who infiltrates the Gong residence to complete a mission. In the eerie and treacherous Gong residence, she encounters love and friendship, embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and finds the determination to move forward. Together with the rebellious nobleman Gong Zi Yu, they grow and mature through their shared experiences. (via mydramalist)

It stars: Yu Shu Xin (Yun Wei Shan), Zhang Ling He(Gong Zi Yu), Ryan Cheng (Gong Shang Jue) and Lu Yu Xiao (Shangguan Qian), Tian Jia Rui (Gong Yuan Zhi), Jolin Jin (Gong Zi Shang) and Sun Chen Jun (Jin Fan)

Written by: Edward Guo.

Series directed by: Edward Guo & Luo Luo

I'll talk about everything I liked before I get into the stuff that I didn't.

Right off the bat, this show has some of the most gorgeous characters you'll come across and this applies to both the men and the women. The costume and make-up departments do an amazing job making already attractive people look ridiculously attractive. They also help the actors really inhabit the world seamlessly. The costumes are especially incredibly detailed and intricate, you can see the care that went into crafting the look for each of these characters. Shout-out to Huang Wei (costume designer) and Shi Hui (Make-up)

One of the best aspects of the show is the cinematography by Wei Hong. This show is aesthetically beautiful, so many absolutely stunning shots. Chinese shows (and Korean shows) love slow-motion shots, and while at times, it can be a bit much, this show makes great use of them, especially during the fight scenes.

The cinematography is helped to a great extent by the excellent production design, courtesy Jiyao Zhang. Like the costumes, the production design too is detailed and intricate. The world feels fully realised and yet also lived in. Each of the different clan mansions, the Front Hill and Back Hill are so incredibly different and distinct that you can immediately tell where you are. An insane amount of hard work went into the show and it shows in every frame.

You can tell that they had a good budget to work with and every bit of it was spent on making the show look as stylized as possible, there is not an ounce of realism to be found here, cue slow-motion beautiful hair flying shots. (Every day I bemoan my inability to make gifs) But the screencaps below illustrate the beauty of the show, it's so gorgeous that you could literally use screencaps as wallpapers.

The fight scenes in the show are some of the best I've seen. They are intense and thrilling and always coherent, you can always tell who's fighting who. The fight scenes are also so aesthetically pleasing, like an exceptionally deadly dance.

Now, we come to the not-so-great stuff.

First off, the marketing. The show was marketed and advertised as an action fantasy show and while there is action and it is excellent, it's not an "action" show. The main focus of the show is on the characters and the internal power struggle of the Gong family. There are also whole scenes, sometimes making up the bulk of an entire episode which are just conversations. I've seen a lot of viewers disappointed and it makes sense. they thought they were coming for action and instead they got verbose conversations.

The pacing also comes to a near-halt in some of these scenes and instead we're treated to lengthy expositions which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it becomes tedious when it happens repetitively.

Now, let's come to the worst thing about the show, it's ending, specifically the last 5 minutes. This end is ridiculously mindbogglingly bad when you consider that there is almost no confirmation on a 2nd season. It's just such a bad idea to end on a cliffhanger like this. If they wanted to leave things open for a potential 2nd season, they could have ended with the Wufeng elders coming together at that character's home, possibly to hold them ransom or something, like literally anything else.

if you're planning on watching this show and I do recommend it, keep in mind that it does get slow and don't watch the last 5 mins of the show. Trust me, you'll like the show a whole lot more if you follow that approach.

Part 2 HERE

#chinese drama #cdrama #my journey to you #mjty #mjty spoilers #gong ziyu #gong shangjue #yun wei shan #shangguan qian #gong yuanzhi #zhang ling he #esther yu #yu shu xin #ryan cheng #lu yuxiao #tian jia rui #jolin jin #sun chen jun

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andoqin · 1 year ago

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The Ingenious One

What a ride this drama was! From the stunning shots, to the smart writing, to the plethora of well acted side characters it just had so much to give me.

Let’s start with the characters:

Snipping this for length.

Yun Xiang: Driven by a need to avenge the death of his 300 people family village, eradicated for seemingly no reason, he goes on a quest to find out who did it and why. For a Wuxia drama it’s very interesting to have our hero be a person wholly lacking in fighting skills, in fact the only thing he can do is run, and even that doesn’t last for very long. He is not someone who has a heart of gold in fact his plans will sometimes even endanger his friends, though the more he gets to know them the less that part becomes and he uses his brain to help them where he can.

Shu Yanan: Orphan, adopted by someone of Yun Xiang’s sect, she vows to avenge her adoptive father’s killer and thus her paths cross with Yun Xiang. In contrast to him, she is one of the strongest fighters of the show and physically is much stronger than him, which often makes hilarious things happen. The two of them are immediately drawn to each other and their bond is a big part of what carries the show for me. Shu Yanan is a cypher for the first half of the show, not letting the viewer know most of her thoughts and putting on a mask, even in front of Yun Xiang (but then again, he too changes masks so often it’ sometimes hard to keep up) and only in the latter half of the story does her true motivation/storyline come out but I didn’t mind that. The first half was used to build up their connection and the second half was used to delve deeper into her origin (story) which provided a very nice balance.

Su Mingyu: Initially a spoiled princeling of a rich merchant family with no business aspirations but Big Dreams about being a HERO of the Jianghu but no actual knowledge of what that means. Well he learns, pretty quickly, that despite appearing awesome and brave, actual fighting involves blood and death and the show makes it a point to drive that home. He is a skilled fighter and later on learns to become a man that can support his loved one and family but it does take him some time to get there. He is an AMAZING boyfriend tho, 10/10 in that regard, as far as spoiled rich princelings go you can def do worse.

Ke Menglan: Daughter of a disgraced official, cast down into the lowest societal tier in the very stratisfied Ming Dynasty (or at least it’s based on that) where upward social mobility was all but impossible, she tries her best to get back to the “normal” citizen-tier because she does genuinely love Su Mingyu and their marriage is literally not allowed. She is the very capable manager of what later becomes Yun Xiangs gambling house and their little club-hub and I love that she got her own story about dealing with who and what she was and loved the resolution for that arc since it was her choice and she has faith in SMY.

Jin Biao: Last but certainly not least in the main character gallery is my sneaky bigass sword dealing 10 gold jin per head demanding softie. His plot such as it is, is the simplest, but how can you not love a dude who uses his murder-gotten gains to support jianghu orphans??? Also I loved his little romance plotline, happiness for them always.

And this is just the main characters, there are SO many side characters that play an important role, some that come in later in the story, some that are dispatched earlier (usually bc they’re villains, or bc they get to go on a long deserved trip with their butler/assassin bf) and to put them all in here would cause my fingers to fall off, so i’ll just put a few favourites here:

Mo Bufan (and Kang Qiao): MBF is technically a senior of Yun Xiang, but he’s kinda let go of their sects teachings for the most part and embraced that capitalist lifestyle with his ... protegé? (I always read them as a couple tbh). Like YX MBF is not really a fighter, and they have a very interesting connection because of that, because it takes them a long time to be more than reluctant allies but they do become such great bros it is a delight to see.

Liu Gongquan and Princess Mingzhu: They come in towards the latter half of the story, one as the daughter of a Prince and the other as a former protege who is now an imperial investigator. He is at least as smart as Yun Xiang and it’s great to see them sort of work at cross purposes, feeling each other out and then coming to a tentative alliance. The princess is the usual sheltered naive girl type, but she shows these occasional flashes of smartness that are delightful to me (and LGQ hehe) and it’s great to see that clearly it is mostly a case of her lacking experience and not brain.

This is not nearly all of them, once again but man I gotta swivel to the villains now, because nothing in a show like this works without villains and oh do we have some interesting ones here:

Tang Xiao is our first initial big hurdle, and by god is he a slimeball par excellence. As the owner and proprietor of most of the cities gambling establishments he wields a lot of money and influence and uses it to menace women, be a creep and probably smell really bad. We get to see how he comes to hold on to his position though, because he is clearly adept at wheeling and dealing with people by any means necessary, though in the end that bites him in the butt. What makes him more interesting to me though is the fact that he has two very devoted underlings, one of whom is a female fighter who doesn’t talk much, wears an iconic hat and generally has a terrifying aura but who is very gentle to one of the female sidecharacters who gets caught by Tang Xiao, drugged (and probably abused). I had IMMEDIATE Black Sails Anne flashbacks in my head and though i am loathe to even put Tang Xiao and Jack into similar categories I do wish we could have explored the relationship between TX and his female underling (sorry I forgot her name) and just *why* she did the things she did for him. At least Tang Xiao did have a very deserving end and I cheered hahaha.

Kou Yuanjie: He was the second Big Hurdle, but he was more of a “stock standard” bad guy: Spoiled Bratty princeling who was power hungry and Big Mad that his older sister is better than him in pretty much every regard: fighting, brain wise, not a psychopath, etc. He can’t stand any minor inconvenience and will use people as he sees fit, even going so far as to let his one devoted underling, who adores him for reasons unbeknownst to me, get killed. She even suspects he’s being shady, but then he kisses her and makes her forget her doubts, basically walking to her death, it’s not great.

The Big Bad: I have to say as far as villains go, he left me a bit cold because he was using circular rhetoric to justify his end goals/plans, but the impact he had on the story and our characters is significant so I was fine with it.

So yeah, the fact that even my goldfish brain can retain so much for these characters should tell you that they left a lasting impression on me, which is truly not easy.

Let’s talk about the plot now, because on its face it is a fairly standard story, but the characterwriting especially lifts it above and the way the show manages to not spin its wheels but keep the tension going by introducing new revelations slowly but also giving other storylines the ability to breathe while not losing focus was very good for me. I think the ending is not the blockbuster type that I personally would have preferred, but after everything it felt earned for our characters and I am happy with where they ended up.

NOW LET’S TALK VISUALS, because this show knows how to set up a scene, how to block a shot to tell a story. So often visual storytelling in cdramas is an afterthought at best it is especially noticeable to me when a visual language is established in a drama and made clear to the viewer. This is not to say this is some Every Frame A Painting sort of show, but whenever the drama wanted to put emphasis on something, it did.

One of the main ones was the focus on characters’ eyes and faces, there were a lot of closeups of the actors’ eyes and or faces and that’s where having expressive actors helps because I didn’t need dialogue to tell me what a character was feeling. Sometimes it was more obvious, sometimes less so, but it displayed an interiority to these characters’ lives that I feel is missing from many many many other shows.

The gorgeous cinematography can just speak for itself tbh.

FINAL VERDICT: 9.5/10 maybe a 9 depending on my daily mood but mmmm so good.

#the ingenious one #drama reviews #cdrama

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thekatea · 2 years ago

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Reunion: The Sound of the Providence

Watched: 04.03.2023

I honestly feel bad about rating it so low, since it had quite a few enjoyable elements and the first half was exactly what I always look for in Tomb dramas, but there were a few too many flaws that I just cannot ignore.

Starting from the things I liked. Iron Triangle as one of the best trios ever created. A typical case of characters representing a heart, body and brain, but it never felt limiting in how they were interacting with each other. All of their scenes together were easily the best in the whole show.

Likable female characters with their own goals and ideas. We all know how limited in that aspect are Tomb dramas. Here we got a variety of women with unique personalities and perspectives.

The acting was great. I think Chen Ming Hao is my favorite Wang Pang Zi at the moment. This character is always hit or miss - I either like them, or hate them. Here, he was probably one of my favorites.

Another positive thing was proper lighting. Big props to the team for making the caves/warehouses/underwater scenes look dim, but not ridiculously dark when the viewers can’t see anything. A few more candles or flashlights as the light source is all it takes for the viewers to not question how bright some places might look. The whole production quality was great - the set designs, costumes (excluding Glasses, I just cannot deal with that outfit), camera angles - all working well to create nice pictures.

To the less enjoyable things. First and second half of the show felt like completely different dramas. Not only did the plot seem too loosely connected, the main cast completely changed. We literally cut from the show the characters we followed at first.

While I appreciate the female characters, I am also a bit sad how all of them were put in the context of being romantic interests. No one watches the Tomb series for romance, this is really unnecessary.

Second half was painfully repetitive and failed to make me care about the plot progression and even the characters safety. I am sorry, but how many times can I watch Wuxie do exactly the same thing over and over again in more or less the same manner in a boring environment, surrounded by barely established characters?

Wuxie being sick. Oh god, too many times it felt like watching a wuxia with male lead being poisoned and coughing blood - so dramatic for no reason, because we all know he is not going to die. My issue was how they presented it as something dangerous, but it never felt really limiting. All the potential issues always showed up after he was done with whatever task he had to accomplish.

While I do believe everyone in the cast did an amazing job, I am also a bit bored with Zhu Yi Long (don’t kill me). There is not enough variety in the roles he takes and his portrayal of them. Sure, I only saw a few of his dramas, but it always feels like a similar character just put in a different context.

Overall, it was not bad, but felt too “all over the place”.

#Reunion: The Sound of the Providence #cdrama #cdrama review

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yilinglaozuhot · 3 years ago

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Please don’t feel pressured to answer this. But chengxian literally grew up together as brothers. Even though they are not biologically brother, isn’t it still a little weird?

No pressure, and it's totally cool that we see things different ways. But warning, I've snapped a little bit in this long ass rant.

You and many many other fans see their relationship as brotherly and I and a tiny tiny fraction of the fandom don't. If I didn't ship them romantically, I would only see them as friends. Perhaps not even best friends with all the shit that goes down between them. Wwx arrives at lotus pier when they're like 4 and 5 (idk, kids' age is always a mystery to me) and it all starts with jc's dogs getting taken away because wwx is afraid of them. Jfm puts a street urchin as priority against his own son by doing that and basically says to him "there, here's your new assigned best friend" so jc as a stubborn, angry but rather filial son makes friends with wwx. He doesn't have much choice in the matter but he learns to like the kid. And after that first day they never stop being pitted against each other. They have a cruel competition going on although none of them wants to participate in it. Who's better in martial arts? Wwx. Who gets more affection from jfm? Wwx. Who's the legitimate heir of lotus pier? Jc. But should it really be him? Wouldn't be the first disciple better at even being the clan leader?

How can wwx feel like he's part of the family when Madame Yu never fails to remind him that he's only a servant? She's protecting his own son against an unwelcome guest in her house, a cuckoo in the nest as @necroprankster has said it once. She sees him as a potential threat, not an adopted son. If she saw his as his son, it wouldn't be such a problem that he has better skills than jc and may be more suited as clan leader in the future. Only jyl treats wwx as a little brother and keeps the three kids together and what does she get from Madame Jin at the phoenix mountain when wwx wants to escort her back from the hunt? That she shouldn't be alone with an unrelated young man.

Wwx also has to reassure jc from time to time that he doesn't threaten his position: "you'll be the clan leader and I'll be your subordinate." He says it himself once that he doesn't want to take on the Jiang name as he already has his own or something like that, I don't remember the exact quote. Anyways, they have a stricter hierarchy between them than bothers have and they would be comfortable in their positions if they wouldn't be compared to each other by jc's immediate family and the whole clan. This whole measuring thing fucks them up so badly.

They're martial brothers, and being martial brothers isn't equal with being blood brothers or even adopted brothers. Martial brothers don't have to live under the same roof but wwx's case is special. He's being reminded of it constantly, and he has to know his place. Also, in wuxia/xianxia "martial siblings falling in love" is a popular trope, and I don't see anyone complaining about wenzhou being martial brothers for example. I know, they didn't grow up together so it doesn't count.

Yes, if they were blood brothers or relatives there would be the threat of one trying to snatch the "throne" underneath the other as we've seen it in Shakespearean plays and TV shows. But wwx doesn't have the ambition to do so and he'd inherit the clan leader title anyway as he's older than jc if they really were brothers.

So, imo you can put them into the "brothers competing for the throne" shoebox if you want to but definitely not into the "loving brothers" shoebox. I know fandom mostly sees them as loving brothers but they have too many expectations from the whole clan, they hear too many things being said about them, and there is too much awkwardness and tension between them to fit into that shoebox. They love each other but they're also painfully aware of how they're seen and treated so they try to balance between being clan heir/first disciple, friends, shidi/shixiong and (adoptive) brothers and look how well it goes for them. So how can they be brothers after all this? And what does it matter if some of us add romantic/sexual tension to this whole hot mess? It's certainly interesting to explore the possibilities this extra flavour adds to their relationship and shipping is exactly about this, isn't it?

Oh, and I haven't even touched the golden core transfer but as we say it in chengxian circles: the inherent homoeroticism of being inside your shidi for 16 years. Or something like that.

#i've got mail #chengxian #disk horse #i've written a whole ass essay at 3am #i wonder how coherent it will be in the morning

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phoenixkaptain · 2 years ago

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Okay but have we ever considered that the prequel trilogy was made for people like children or like neurodivergent people?

The main complaint I hear is about how they explain everything in dialogue. And yes, dialogue isn’t fun for kids all that often, but the dialogue does exactly what I like dialogue to do! It explains stuff that is difficult to show via visuals! It answers questions and it goes into details and it explains what’s going on!

Kids ask questions!!! What was the take-away from “losing” Kamino? That the mind of a child is a wondrous thing. And it is! BECAUSE kids ask questions!

Why are some Jedi more powerful than others? Why do Jedi have powers at all? Why do some of them have different powers from each other? Is the Force alive? Do they have a name for whatever the alive thing of the Force is?

Like, I asked these questions as a kid. I had these questions, but I thought “Star Wars won’t answer these questions because no series ever answers the questions I want to be answered-“ but I was wrong!! Star Wars did answer these questions and Star Wars did it in a way that I understood! It used dialogue!!! I don’t understand film metaphor, and I take things too literally on first viewing them, I have always had this problem, and the movies go out of their way to explain things in a way that makes it easy for me to understand them! In a way that makes it easy for a lot of people to understand them!

Look. The movies answered these questions that “no one had” because answering questions is one of the best ways to keep a kid’s mind going. If you constantly shoot down children’s questions by saying no one cares, you’re shooting down the kid. The kid is asking because they care, which is in direct contradiction to the phrase “no one cares” and also you just implied that the kid is no one. It’s only when you answer questions, or at the very least encourage them to seek out answers, that kids really flourish!

And in a world like Star Wars, which has so many mysteries, kids will have more questions than usual. But, I feel like that was purposeful. They want you to ask questions. They want you to wonder. They want you to want to know more, because the craving to know more is what fuels the whole way they tell the stories.

Also I just don’t understand what’s difficult to understand about midochlorians??? Like, they were pretty clear. They’re microorganisms. They have a silly little name and they determine power in people and I don’t get why people are confused. I’m not a child, but even as a child I understood that these things were a clear cut answer. Where does the confusion stem from? Please, am I the weird one for getting it? Do I actually not understand at all? I don’t get it, please help.

Star Wars was made, I’m pretty sure, with the idea that anyone could enjoy them. And, in doing so, it inevitably has to explain things in ways that people who don’t think like you do can understand. Because, as we all are aware, people don’t learn the same way. So yes, the prequels have long, boring sections where nothing happens but dialogue but you know what? I like that. I like that they try to answer questions. I like that they leave things mysterious, but they answer questions as a way of saying “The things that are mysterious are meant to be mysterious. They are meant to be confusing or confounding. You won’t get an answer because sometimes you just won’t ever have an answer.”

I don’t think the Force is supposed to be something that is mysterious. And maybe it’s becaise I read a lot of wuxia novels. Like, the Force is clearly another form of qi. A force that surrounds every living thing, but mastery of which means that you also have power over non-living things? That’s qi, dude. And while, yes, qi is confusing the first few times you read about it, that’s because it’s purposefully vague because it, like the Force, can be used in so many different ways. It isn’t supposed to be mysterious, it’s supposed to be mystical. If that makes sense.

Jedi clearly don’t all have the same powers or abilities. I mean, I really doubt that every single species has more than four limbs, more than two eyes, and more than one throat. There are aliens, and aliens are an endless expression of creativity and imagination. And so, it’s fun to explore how a mystical ancient power would work throughout an entire galaxy. It’s fun to note differences and similarities in beings that look entirely different. That’s one of the joys of science fiction as a genre.

I don’t know. I don’t know if I even explained any of this very well. But, I just don’t think the prequels were as bad as people say. Are they depressing? Yes, very. Are they boring at times? Every movie becomes boring at times when you have ADHD and understand the twist and are impatient for them to just announce you’re correct. Are they fun? Also yes.

The fight scenes are some of the funnest to watch in any movie, in my opinion, and the fact that the actors used real actual swordfighting comes across very well. The dog fights as well, they’re clear about which side is which and it makes them easier to understand and therefore more exciting to watch. The characters are interesting. It’s cool to watch Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme all grow as characters as the years progress. And, okay, I like the clones a lot and I wish the best for them and I’d likw to lie down and cry and pretend that every single one of them lived and went on to do whatever they felt like doing with their lives and they each had a wonderful time and they’re all okay-

I think the prequels are over-hated. Over-criticized. Like, dude. This is a film series about space wizards with telekinetic powers who fight each other with flashlights. Calm down and have a bit of fun, why don’t you?

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dangermousie · 4 years ago

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2020 End of Year Post - cdrama edition

This is only going to cover cdramas that aired in 2020; if I had to make a post about all the cdramas I watched this year, I would still be doing it in three months...

Overall it’s been a fairly decent cdrama year (certainly better than the very lacklustre kdrama year.) It’s no miracle that 2019 was (so many excellent dramas!) but overall pretty solid.

DRAMAS WATCHED

(In order of liking from least to most as opposed to pure quality; I am including if I’ve seen enough to make up my mind; yes I realize that’s inaccurate, but that’s my list)

44 The Legend of Jing Yan - the worst cdrama I have seen this year, and possibly the worst drama of 2020, period. The hero and heroine were both uncharismatic, incapable of acting and saddled with such shrilly moronic characters, the only suspense was how they haven’t both perished long since from forgetting to breathe. Nor was anyone in the rest of the cast much better; the screenplay was written by a lower mammal and the cinematography was the best a third-rate wedding cinematographer could offer. Stay the HELL away from this one.

43 Unicorn Girl - the only unicorn about this bland yet irritating piece of pap was the fact that I was supposed to believe the leads are hockey players.

42 Autumn Cicada - I like spy stories, Allen Ren, and Republican Era settings. I can tune out Communist propaganda with the best of them. Yet, the propaganda ate the story to such a degree that there was nothing left; pre magic change Pinocchio was less wooden then this narrative.

41 You Complete Me - no you do not.

40 Skate into Love - the only positive thing I can say about this is that at least it’s better than Unicorn Girl, if for no other reason that only one of them is supposed to be a hockey player.

39 Irreplaceable Love - how do you make a story about fake siblings with a mad mother falling for each other boring? I don’t know, ask the makers of this.

38 Eternal Love Rain - I hate to rain on their parade, but these two actors cannot act, have about as much chemistry as a piece of bread, and are trapped in a story perfect for entertaining the mental abilities of the leads of Jin Yan.

37 For Married Doctoress - ummmm, you could do worse I guess. It only made me break out in mild hives. The sadistic ending did make me laugh though.

36 Dance of the Sky Empire - why you get Xu Kai and waste him in this insipid mess of a story is beyond me.

35 Love Designer - it’s inoffensive except to my sense of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with it but oh God is it bland.

34 Love a Lifetime - It felt like a lifetime watching this, but I didn’t love it. The story is incoherent, the actors have no chemistry and it’s all an epic waste of time.

33 Love is Sweet - so sweet it gave me diabetes. I like Luo Yunxi and Bai Lu, but there is literally no plot. I don’t need to sink into a plotless morass to watch pretty people engage in PG-rated make-outs. I am an adult with access to stronger stuff if I am thus inclined, though to be fair they could get x-rated and I still wouldn’t be able to sit through so many episodes of plotlessness for that.

32 Fake Princess - I love Zhao Yi Qin, but the guy needs to pick better projects. The female lead in this one has the voice and personality that can strip paint but the story is also doing nobody any favors.

31 The Changan Youth - I lost my brain checking this out. I had to go and read a dense treatise on medieval coinage or Mayan farming to try to recover it.

30 My Dear Destiny - kinda cheesy fun. It honestly shouldn’t be as low except it really feels like community theater.

29 Handsome Siblings - why is the Nic Tse version so good and this one so bad? True mystery for the ages. Chen Zhe Yuan is the sole reason this isn’t lower, because that kid tries SO HARD to make this drama bearable and almost succeeds. I can’t wait to see him in Sha Po Lang which actually will give him something to do.

28 In a Class of Her Own - see my comment on The Changan Youth. But at least Song Weilong is gorgeous to look at.

27 General’s Lady - inoffensive, pretty and so utterly pointless.

26 The Blooms at Ruyi Pavilion - those two leading actors are a no go to me but at least they considerately acted with each other instead of ruining two dramas for me. It’s very pretty though.

25 Jiu Liu Overlord - it’s a mess and I bailed, but I placed it this high merely due to the fact that Lai Yi finally gets a leading role and he’s sexy as fuck and I am shallow. Whoever styled Bai Lu should never work again except at a circus, however.

24 Cross Fire - not my genre and Luhan will always look too much like my cousin for comfort, but it’s a surprisingly gripping and dark drama. I liked it!

23 God of Lost Fantasy - if you want to watch a mediocre wuxia/xianxia, this is not a bad choice. Probably better than Legend of Fei actually, because at least it doesn’t have an A-list cast to waste and gives us Sheng Yilun himbo and shirtless.

22 Renascence - the insane cuts (it went from 70 eps to 36!!!) made a fairly cheesy story into a total mess. But I had a good time until I finally bailed mainly because of the male lead (Chen Zhe Yuan yet again carrying a not-good 2020 drama on his shoulders; the guy should be nicknamed Atlas) and the insane but in a fun way story. The female lead (both the character and the actress) were not up to par but oh well.

21 Legend of Fei - only this high because objectively there is nothing I disliked it. But there is nothing I liked either. The most uninspired drama on the list. If you could eat cardboard, this is what it would taste like.

20 Ever Night 2 - compared to EN1, it’s a waste of film. On its own merits, it’s not very good (the cast replacements are uniformly inferior and Dylan Wang is so wrong for Ning Que I cannot even put it into words; the script is useless.) But it had some parts I loved so very VERY much (all the shippy stuff was perfection) so I don’t feel too bitter.

19 Castle in the Sky 2 - a lovely if not too complex fairy tale. It is inferior to its prequel because it doesn’t have Zhang Ruo Yun who elevated it, but it’s still a solid bit of fun.

18 The Great Ruler - it’s very high fantasy, very pretty, and surprisingly involving.

17 (tie) Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos - the secondary couple steals the show but the rest is not too bad if not too involving.

17 Legend of Awakening - a solid bit of fun with a seriously BDSM streak (theme this year apparently - but come on, the lead’s powers only activate when he’s in extreme pain!) It’s a bit generic and the costuming is done by a blind person, not to mention the OTP is a NOTP, but the rest of relationships (romantic and platonic) are wonderful (I live for the found siblings story in this one) and I like most of the characters.

16 Consummation - a rare modern cdrama I liked; a sweet coming of age story (and love story) even if wrapped in a pretty weird virtual reality concept.

15 Oops the King is in Love - this is how you do a low budget, sweet, silly piece of fluff. Our heroine pretends to be a eunuch and crosses paths with a powerless young king and they are adorable, even more so than the drama.

14 Song of Glory - pretty solid, though draggy and I didn’t love the toothpaste filter. But A+ cast, excellent leading couple chemistry, Li Qin being a BAMF and a leading man (Qin Hao) who is actually an adult.

13 And the Winner is love - objectively kind of a mess (and the heroine has the brainpower of a gnat), but the OTP chemistry is excellent and Luo Yunxi fighting and flirting with a fan as finally a leading man is worth the price of admission.

12 Miss S - snazzy and snappy and stylish and whatever else starts with S.

11 Eternal Love of Dream - I don’t know if it would work for you as well if you weren’t a hardcore shipper for this OTP in Three Lives but I was and this was such a darling, wonderful, shippy delight; plus I love this type of high fantasy.

10 (tie) Maiden Holmes - solid and sweet and a wonderful OTP. Proves that functional doesn’t have to mean boring. If you watch one cross-dressing drama this year make it this one.

10 Qin Dynasty Epic - srs bsns history epic. I am not far into it but it’s so good and smart and visually stunning (if you love battles, this one is for you.)

9 Love Lasts Two Minds - I adored this so much more than I should objectively have, but it’s so beautiful (and no I am not just referring to Alan Yu’s face) and the OTP has wonderful chemistry and the story is solid, and the whole trope of her memory being wiped but falling for him all over again while he’s constantly and utterly devoted is a fave; plus he’s in pain and semi-dyng for most of it so sluuuurp (happy ending, don’t worry)

8 To Love - yes, a modern drama is this high! But it involves intensity, tragedy, genuine adults and sexiness that is Lin Gengxin. And there is an actual plot and darkness OMG!

7 Legend of Xiao Chuo - so beautiful, so fun, so full of gorgeousness of Shawn Dou. Plus, Liao is a rare setting for a cdrama and there are a lot of characters and stories I liked a LOT. Less ship content than I wanted but more than I expected.

6 The Romance of Tiger and Rose - so so delightful. I was literally laughing out loud. I have no idea if it will work as well if one isn’t a seasoned watcher of period cdrama/reader of web novels, with bonus for watching/reading Goodbye My Princess, but it was a complete delight for me (and yes, I shipped for real, as well. Best of both worlds.)

5 Twisted Fate of Love - Jin Han gets a leading period drama role! And he’s enjoying it to the hilt, excellent as a smart, twisty bastard who is also charming and so madly in love with heroine. Sun Yi is beautiful and tough and her chemistry with JH is on fire, the story never drags, and it’s so twisty and fun and just awesome.

4 Love In Between - the most underrated drama on this list. It has no big names or big budget, but it’s wuxia that’s clever, driven, tragic, hopeful and so beautifully shot. Three separate (amazing) OTPs, a leading man who is so not typical (a doctor who cannot fight and who never acquires this ability) and who is intense and smart and damaged, a heroine who puts her quest ahead of her emotions, an unhealthy degree of involvement by yours truly. This is a drama Fei should have been.

3 Love and Redemption - such a lovely, addictive, utterly romantic fairy tale. I was obsessed with it for a reason. All the tropes you love and some you didn’t know you did, a star-crossed OTP to the nth power (and a secondary OTP I hardcore love), a twisty yet coherent plot, some insane chemistry and so much whump and hurt/comfort they must have bought blood packets in bulk.

2 Go Ahead - yes, I can’t believe it either. A contemporary slice of life cdrama made it this high on my list. But the way it feels so real, the found family perfection, the characters I love and loathe, the perfect cherry of a wonderful OTP that hits my narrative kinks on top, and just a perfect storm of loveliness all around with this one.

1 The Wolf - is that any surprise to anyone who’s checked out this tumblr for the last couple of months? Tragic, intense and gorgeous; so romantic and angsty and passionate it made me lose my mind (though some of it was gone the moment the camera panned to Darren Wang) - all my favorite tropes and then some; this is a drama that may not be perfect but it is 100% and then beyond perfect for ME.

FAVORITE DRAMA

The Wolf - I have seen objectively better cdramas; even this year. But it has been literal years since I have been this hardcore obsessed, this utterly pleased, this emotionally catered to and devastated at once. A beautiful dark fairy tale that manages to own me despite the storytelling gaps due to censorship, it took me for one of the biggest emotional roller coaster rides of my drama watching career. Visually gorgeous, poetic, intense, and so romantic it took my breath away, this is not just my favorite cdrama of 2020, it’s my favorite drama this year period, and the one cdrama this year to make it into my permanent Top 10 cdramas list.

WORST DRAMA

Legend of Jin Yan - see my write up for it for why as I refuse to waste more time on this stupid mess.

FAVORITE MALE CHARACTER

Wolfie, The Wolf - he is such a haunted, tormented, complex, dark mess; loving and violent, severely damaged and with a hidden yearning softness, longing and aloof. And the amount of charisma and sheer masculine sex appeal Darren Wang brings to the role is insane and not something I see much of in a cdrama. Plus, that character arc with its rapid fall and slow painful redemption is A++++

Runner Up: Sifeng, Love and Redemption - has a male lead ever loved more utterly and selflessly, suffered more thoroughly and beautifully, and managed to have such chemistry with both his leading lady and his leading man (that his leading lady temporarily turned into) at once? The answer is no.

Almost made the cut - Feng Xi, Twisted Fate of Love, Han Shuo, The Romance of Tiger and Rose, Qing Ci, Love in Between.

FAVORITE FEMALE CHARACTER

Xiao Qian, The Romance of Tiger and Rose - so funny, so much the reason this drama was such a delight. I adore her beyond words.

NEEDS TO BE MURDERED

Murder Daddy, The Wolf - I am sad the censors robbed us of seeing him die on screen. He was fully human but nonetheless managed to be the worst monster in a drama full of literal ones.

Ling Xiao’s Mom, Go Ahead - I hate her so much I don’t want to look up her name. She abused the kid, the disappeared and came back to abuse him some more. I mean she literally gave her child mental health issues. She is the WORST.

FAVORITE SHIP

Xing’er x Wolfie, The Wolf - are you kidding me? Who else could it ever be for me? They destroyed each other and saved each other, sworn enemies and childhood lovers, soulmates and epic messes, they couldn’t live with or without each other. The longing, the passion, the intensity, the angst, the epicness. LIKE THERE ARE NO WORDS!!!!

FAVORITE SECONDARY OTP

Si Yuan, Shen Manqing, Love in Between - I loved them as much and often more than the main OTP. So much angst and passion and a happy ending! She is a seeming sect darling (except the sect is horrible and also sexist so her only worth is as a marriage candidate) and he’s an information broker who is actually one of the members of a destroyed sect that’s blamed for the massacre of her family. That chemistry and yearning is insane. The scene where she touches his face when he’s unconscious was in serious running for my favorite scene of 2020.

NOTP

Legend of Awakening - I have never seen a couple that didn’t just have no chemistry but exhibited actual revulsion towards each other before watching Chen Feiyu and Cheng Xiao try to act as lovers in this one. It was almost entertaining to be honest.

FAVORITE SCENE

It’s a tie and both are from The Wolf. One is a sequence where Wolfie marches to the walls alone, seeking death at Xing’er’s hands and the whole sequence with the battle and rescue follows. The other is the intercut between Xing’er going to her wedding and Wolfie going to his execution, and the auto-da-fe being intercut with her wedding.

BIGGEST CRUSH

Wolfie, The Wolf - Ummm have you seen this tumblr lately, it’s basically a drool shrine to the man.

BEST SCENE STEALER CHARACTER

Yelü Yansage, The Legend of Xiao Chuo - I have loved this actor since The Myth and he continued to competently steal every scene he was in.

NEEDS A SEQUEL

To Love - come out of the coma, dammit!!!!!!!

NEEDS A DIRECTOR’S CUT

The Wolf - duh. It started out as 59 eps and got cut to 49. I reaiize some stuff is never gonna get put in due to censorship, but some of the stuff that got cut got for time reasons because they were deluded and hoping to get a TV broadcast so ep count had to be under 50. I mean I doubt the censors would care if they kept scenes of Wolfie building her a swing or whatever. I really really want a director’s cut the way Goodbye My Princess did even if like with GMP it’s only three extra eps. Hell, I will take extra three minutes, as long as those three minutes are Darren Wang shirtless or with a sword. Ahem.

NEEDS SCISSORS TAKEN TO IT

The Song of Glory - it’s a fairly solid drama but honestly it didn’t need to be as long as it was and kind of got draggy and I got lost interest. (I could have gotten snarky and said all the dramas I didn’t like needed scissors taken to them in their entirety but decided to play nice.)

TOO MANY SCISSORS TAKEN TO IT

There are a number of dramas I could complain about with regard to this (hi there, darling The Wolf!) but this award goes to Renascence - poor Renascence was never going to be a masterpiece, but it had the potential to be a bit of good cheesy fun until it had its run time cut by more than half and became an incoherent piece of insanity.

TROPE THAT NEEDS TO DIE

Dumb shrill innocent heroine who can’t tie her shoes - see basically all the cdramas I didn’t like this year.

FAVORITE TROPE WE��VE SEEN A LOT OF

Male lead torture - I mean it’s always open season on that in cdramas, but between Love and Redemption, The Wolf, Love Lasts Two Minds, Love in Between and so on, it was a banner year!

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Legend of Fei - what a waste of that cast; what a waste of our finite time on this Earth. What a waste of my intelligence to hope for something better and stick with it for a dozen eps. I have had stale wonderbread that had more personality than this drama.There is absolutely nothing that stands out about this drama in any way, from half-dimensional characters, to actors who are sleepwalking, to a plot that moves at the speed of an arthritic snail, to uninspired cinematography and direction, to lack of any chemistry between anyone in the cast. If paint-by-numbers was done by a group of particularly linear robots, it might come across the same way as this drama.

BIGGEST GOOD SURPRISE

The Wolf - honestly, I did not expect it to come out AT ALL EVER let alone to become my favorite drama of 2020. I was not familiar with the leading man (hahah), I liked Li Qin but wasn’t yet obsessed with her, and Xiao Zhan was excellent in The Untamed but I was hardly going to follow him from drama to drama (and I don’t do SLS any way.) And the trailer was enjoyable but unlike seemingly everyone, I didn’t think it was going to be some epic masterpiece. And then it came out and while it wasn’t objectively an epic masterpiece, it pulled out all the favorite tropes, shippy and narrative kinks from the deepest darkest recesses of my id. And I fell harder than I have in years.

2020 DRAMAS I HAVEN’T SEEN THAT I MOST WANT TO WATCH

None. Covid Year gave me PLENTY of time

BEST NON-2020 DRAMA I’VE WATCHED IN 2020

Novoland Eagle Flag and Joy of Life - they are in my Top 10 dramas from anywhere now. They are quite different except being smart and giving me protagonists to obsess over.

ETA: Also The Untamed because @idlewilds3 pointed out I actually watched it in 2020 even though I didn’t think so because this hellyear has lasted about three decades.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2021

I am gonna limit it to dozen and leaving out ones that aren’t necesarily supposed to air next year (Joy of Life 2, Love in Flames of War, Novoland Princess from Plateau.)

Monarch Industry, Novoland Pearl Eclipse, Silk Washing Stream, Dream of Changan, Sword Snow Stride, Wu Xing Shi Jia, Ancient Love Poetry, Immortality, The Long Ballad, Mirror Twin Cities, The Imperial Age, Fall In Love

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steve0discusses · 3 years ago

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Yugioh S5 Ep 19: Yugi and the Only Neck Accessory He Didn’t Really Want to Wear

Been busy! Hopefully stuff will open up soon as I’m taking a hiatus on a different quarantine project and will be finishing painting the entire roof of my car this week? One can hope. Sanding the rust off the whole top of a car takes a long time it turns out?

Also, fun Yugioh fact, I recently painted a book cover for an author who is older so she’s never seen the show, and she looked at my tumblr, saw my Duke Devlin fanart and was like “That’s him. That’s my main character. OMG. You captured him perfectly!” and I was like “Ma’am that is Duke Devlin, hence the single dice earring on his lobes there, but we can work with this.” and now a spiritual Duke Devlin is on the cover of a Wuxia-style fantasy trilogy on the Vella. Had to give him a top knot and delete the eyeliner for Wuxia reasons but uh, that’s just Duke.

So long story short, fanart can get you work, don’t even worry about posting that stuff online because most people don’t even know it’s fanart anyway and older ladies freakin love it.

Back in Yugioh, the team was doing their best to navigate a map through the woods and they do about as well as they normally do.

And inside Tristan lifted up the floorboards and was like “I found the only way out, this is it, this is the only way.”

And they ended up in something that has a color scheme I would actually associate with a jungle. Finally. We have finally left California (in order to go to another Hell.)

Youknow, when we went to California, we visited Hell, and when we went to India, we also took a stop at the nearest death destination. There’s just so much death on this show and sometimes I forget because there’s been a ghost in our party for so freakin long it’s been normalized.

(read more death imagery under the cut)

Joey freaks out at a flock of crows and reveals in this episode something I never realized about him before.

Like I’m not always the perfect observer as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I love that this is canon for probably only this episode, but I will never forget it for the entirety of this series.

You go on hating birds, Joey.

Bro was like “Maybe it’s a deep cut about Mai Valentine because she’s a harpy lady” but eh...pretty sure we spent like an entire season of Joey telling us that Mai was a good experience? Would be incredibly funny if immediately after all of S4, Joey was like “You know what? Screw Mai, guys.”

So my thoughts...it’s probably just a literal bird experience. Like I had a friend who hated deer because once she went to a petting zoo, got some pellets to feed the deer, but her finger was sticking up, so when the deer came over to nibble on some pellets her finger went up it’s nose by accident. She was so disgusted by this event that was entirely her fault, that she brought up how much she hated deer basically whenever we saw one.

So like...maybe Joey fed a bird wrong at a petting zoo. I can see him getting bit by a parrot because he was too Joey Wheeler.

But now that we’re in a graveyard neighborhood, Pharaoh decides to hop out because there’s a lot of ghosts here and he needs to practice socializing with his peers.

So that’s just a Yugioh monster doing the ostrich dance, right? Like this is a meme from like 2010 but on Yugioh in 2003(4?)

Good to see the Ostrich dance here in the land before Vine.

So they pull out their Pokemon to do some antics, Tea looked like she was about to do something useful, and Yami does a yump across time and space to get her as far away from playing (not)cards as quickly as possible and y’all...sure was a position these animators animated.

Holy crap.

And I was going off about that scene last season where they woke up in the same bed like...

...have these two been together this entire time? Like together together?

They’re like...way more comfortable than you’d figure they’d be considering Yugi nearly passes out every time he gets a hug. But Yami just like....How long has this been going on? As long as Joey’s fear of birds?

Like obviously this show would never cover what the hell Yugi may be thinking about this overreaching move here, because we’re gonna gloss right over that, and just run away up a flight of stairs. No one mentions this ever again. Which is mind blowing for an anime to do. I think in most anime I watch, the kids would be like “ahh ahhhh I bumped into a booooob!” like it does for I want to say every other episode of My Hero Academia. But in Yugioh, they saw that low hanging fruit and they were like “we expect a higher level of maturity out of our audience. Now here’s a fleet of ostrich dancing tree monsters with faces for crotches.”

They decided to sprint up this flight of stairs, and it enough of a slope to deter the monsters who are only unbalanced weird legs.

I want us to take a moment and admire this background painting. I can’t unsee the rocks that are all the same size, just piled on top of eachother. Did Alexander the Great just plop rocks here--or was the mountain made up of tons of similarly shaped boulders?

Like there’s a lot of nice bg’s in this arc, don’t get me wrong, but this one...I’m just trying to wrap my head around the logic of it.

At the top, they meet a pantheon, that is immediately blocked by this wall, because if this arc had a tagline, it’s “Yugi gets inconvenienced every 4 seconds.”

Bro was like “Clearly they would have pushed it over if Tea wasn’t slacking off” and like...she is actually. Look at her. Only used one hand? Slacker.

Joey was disappointed he couldn’t push over a massive wall, and the team decided not to analyze how much Joey Wheeler thinks of his own strength and instead fixate on these statues.

Usually in anthro characters they kinda look birdlike but act human. But what about an anthro that’s just a bird? Like human torso, but can turn his head 180 degrees? Yugioh made me ask this question.

And then Joey was like “wait, there may be a solution that isn’t just to use brute strength!”

Youknow it is a bummer that Kaiba couldn’t witness Joey own a dragon while he himself only has a robot jet dragon. Although, the jet is probably faster, stronger and overall...better than this baby dragon. It would have been great for Kaiba to witness Joey under-utilize this dragon and forget he has it for like huge swatches of the episode.

And then Grandpa pulled some body horror out of nowhere.

Wow.

I mean that is really gross.

I guess Grandpa can’t use Blue eyes, because Kaiba ripped it up, Grandpa can’t use Exodia because Weevil tossed it off a boat, and grandpa can’t use the card that’s just a building because...it’s a building.

So instead Grandpa has a bunch of meat and bones that look like something out of Doom. It’s probably from a more obscure Konami property, but I forget which.

I’ve seen Tristan hold back Joey in this hold, first time it’s been Tea.

So much shipping in this episode, it’s wild.

It’s also wild how low my standards are for what could possibly be shipping when it comes to Yugioh because of how freakin tepid all of these characters are, which as I’ve brought up before, I really don’t mind.

So Yugi decides that because Grandpa was folding his arms like one monster and it made a gem light up or something, to just do the video game thing and use the giant ass statues as clues.

Why was this arc not a video game? Like parts of it really feel like it was meant to be.

So Yugi falls down a hole, where the walls cave in like it’s that dumpster in Star Wars but like...it barely phases him.

Also...Yugi might be able to see in the dark. It’s never been brought up but like...the more I think about it...has Yugi ever struggled to see without the lights on?

After Joey disappoints everyone, he confronts death.

And Pharaoh and Yugi decide to solve the puzzle of “how do I get out of this trap dungeon room” which, honestly, is probably what they’re doing every time they hang out in the brain pyramid.

So they summon their mascot monster, and surprisingly the show decided its ability to fly cannot help them out here.

Kuriboh manages to become enough of a doormat to push Yami up to the stone and they end up in a set of weird cuts that ended in this?

Like seriously it was like flashes of light and then they were just...up here like this.

Hey like...

Alexander the Great, my man...

Were you planning to put that stone in the middle of a exhaust vent hoping someone would touch it? Because there’s no way anyone would rationally have done that. You would need to fly to do it. This is the world’s worst DM.

Like Yugioh pulls a lot of fantasy nonsense but this arc is a lot more like a “it’s a kid’s show, just go with it.” arc than most of them. It’s not a bad vibe, necessarily, it’s just not the vibe I’m used to.

So once I witnessed maybe the most boring conversation I’ve ever witnessed about corn (this was on a twitch stream, by the way, a guy was playing an interesting game, and then a guest came on and started talking about corn and plants for 2 hours) and they would not shut up about how all taxonomy is wrong because there are no such thing as trees and how all animals are labelled incorrectly, and then they started comparing it to like all sorts of mushrooms and phytoplankton as you would if you clearly got a little bit high before dumping your corn knowledge on a twitch stream.

Anyway, after that bizarre experience I suffered so I could learn how to play an obscure video game, I think I can safely say, that while I know everyone here thinks a bird can’t be a dog. If you’re a high biologist: a bird is absolutely a dog. Apparently you can just do that if you’re the most boring biologist alive and no one will argue with you because to do that would involve talking to you. We’ll just say a bird is a dog and no one can fight me or I will talk about the corn book that this guest on this twitch chat was thinking about renting from the library about the different types of corn mutations inherent in freakin Indiana. Therefore, Joey’s fear of birds and dogs is same.

So they use Dark Magician to save them from the statues, and Yugi busts into the pantheon again because they got to open this casket before a time limit that I kind of forgot about, tbh.

And inside the casket, is...this thing!

(enjoy this line on the bottom of the image I don’t feel like fixing it)

And you may say to yourself...it looks like it’s just floating in mid-air, that’s silly, and so I want to introduce you to the next panel where you can see that it is...quite literally...just floating in the air like a video game.

and it just slurps itself onto Yugi before he can be like “nonono.”

Wasn’t there some horror movie where you were stuck in some sort of body brace that slowly tortures you (was that Saw?) This has that vibes. Like man that looks uncomfortable to wear over a jacket and two belts and a collar that is another belt.

That and I...I gotta appreciate that Yugi popped his collar while wearing body armor and chunky necklace. What 00′s fashion appreciation right there.

Bit like...this isn’t breathable, right? Like Yugi’s gonna finally take this thing off and his jacket will just be completely soaked in sweat?

Anyway, that’s it for this post, next week we’ll see if Yugi can walk through a doorway in that thing.

Also, I can’t bring up the ostrich dance without sharing the vines of my generation

youtube

#Yugioh #YGO #yu gi oh #photo recap #episode recap #S5 #Ep19 #Yugi Muto #Joey Wheeler #Joey's fear of birds I've never heard about until this episode #Tea Gardner #Grandpa Muto #Tristan Taylor #Baby Dragon #This weird ass tranformer that Yugi is wearing.

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hunxi-guilai · 5 years ago

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Hello! Firstly, like many others who pop in here I just wanna say I love all your meta on the untamed and how you actually break down the scenes and translations. I was hoping I could get your opinion on the scene in episode 15 (and I apologize if someone’s asked this already) where Madam Yu turns on Wang Lingjiao and reprimands her for “daring to tell her how to penalize her family before her” (these are youtube/Netflix subs so idk how accurate).I’m really curious who- 1/? (Sorry this got long)

man oh man, I’ve been sitting on this ask for a long time, trying to figure out how to answer it because it’s... a difficult subject, for sure

because on one hand, I’m like “strong female cultivator who kicks ass and takes no shit with a sparkly whip? hell yeah” but on the other hand, the fact that Madam Yu is also an pretty yikes mother who gave Jiang Cheng all sorts of self-esteem issues and laid into Wei Wuxian both verbally and physically at the drop of a hat

It’s worth taking a closer look at what Madam Yu says in that scene, after she backhands Wang Lingjiao so hard that Wang Lingjiao hits the ground:

Madam Yu: 打狗要看主人。你闯进我家里面，当我的面要惩治我家里的人 -- 你是什么东西，也敢如此放肆？/ When beating a dog, look at its owner.* You barge into my house, and in front of my face, want to mete out punishment to the people in my household? What kind of thing are you, that you dare to be so outrageous?

The idiom Madam Yu uses here, 打狗要看主人, highlights the fact that Madam Yu is the matriarch of Lotus Pier. Literally, it translates to “when beating a dog, you must look at its owner” -- the idea here being that if the owner looks on approvingly, by all means, keep beating the poor dog for biting you or stealing food or whatever. But if the owner looks disapproving, then you’d best not raise your hand. Gauge how the higher-up of the person you’re laying into is reacting; it might behoove you to be merciful to the dog. Or, if the higher-up couldn’t care less, then by all means, fire the dog. You get the idea.

So what Madam Yu is emphasizing here isn’t necessarily a protectiveness of the people in Lotus Pier; she’s hammering home the point that this is her jurisdiction, her territory, her household. Her word here is law, not Wang Lingjiao’s. Madam Yu will deal out punishment as she sees fit; Madam Yu will show mercy as she sees fit. She is the owner of any dogs in Lotus Pier, and Wang Lingjiao has made a grave, grave mistake in mistaking her for a hound that will come to heel.

I have been... hedging, quite a bit, when it comes to discussing Madam Yu in my posts. We see her for all of...three? episodes in the show, and that’s not really enough to draw any definitive conclusions about her relationship with Wei Wuxian. I've seen varying levels of interpretation of exactly how abusive Madam Yu is, and I don’t think I personally know enough to make a nuanced judgment or interpretation of this issue myself.

The first time we meet Madam Yu in episode 11, she’s absolutely incensed by the Wen edict demanding representatives/hostages from the major cultivation sects. She takes her anger out first on Jiang Fengmian -- how can you be so calm in the face of such outrageous demands? -- then Jiang Cheng, when he tries to interrupt -- of course you’re going, we can’t send your sister -- then Jiang Yanli -- who are you even peeling lotus seeds for? you’re no servant -- but strangely, not Wei Wuxian. She wields Wei Wuxian as a weapon against Jiang Fengmian -- oh, so our son has to go, but this one can go or not go if he wants? -- and Jiang Cheng -- you’ve never been able to surpass this one. She bandies about the ugly phrase son of a servant, storms out with all the pleasant temper of an ocean tempest, the kind that wrecks ships.

Startled meerkat look aside, there’s something about this moment (10:02, ep 15) that won’t leave me alone -- the moment Madam Yu rounds the corner, comes down the steps, it’s Wei Wuxian who shoots to his feet first, Wei Wuxian who looks utterly petrified, Wei Wuxian who doesn’t have a hint of a smile on his face.

Cocksure, arrogant, untamed boy -- the number of things Wei Wuxian is afraid of in the world is vanishingly few, and Madam Yu is one of them.

In episode 14, she strolls up to Wei Wuxian’s sickbed just after the Xuanwu Cave Arc, so, as a recap -- Wei Wuxian is starved, exhausted, wounded, possibly delirious with infection, collapsed within minutes of coming back to Lotus Pier. And Madam Yu rolls up and proceeds to spit venom at everyone in sight -- at Jiang Cheng, at Jiang Fengmian, and especially at Wei Wuxian.

He literally just woke up, folks.

Wei Wuxian is ready to defy heaven, defy earth, defy the Wen Sect, defy cultivation norms, defy medical probability, defy existential impossibility, defy the assembled clans rallying against him, but he never talks back to Madam Yu. Whether this is a function of his awkward role in this incredibly dysfunctional family (simultaneously blamed as the harbinger of chaos while held up as the example of what Jiang Cheng should strive towards; his lack of blood relation to the Jiang Clan; his mother’s relationship to Jiang Fengmian, whatever that might have been), or if it’s born out of an ingrained, learned fear is... open for interpretation.

There’s an expression on Wei Wuxian’s face in episode 15 that haunts me -- right after Madam Yu hits him the first time with Zidian (which, strangely enough, happens when Wei Wuxian tries to talk back to Wang Lingjiao about the ugly rumors that have been tearing this family apart), but before she starts laying into him in earnest. He falls to his knees and shoves Jiang Cheng away from where Jiang Cheng had bodily inserted himself between Wei Wuxian and Madam Yu.

And that look -- it’s there for a split second. Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s terror, it’s resignation, it’s bracing for pain. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and does nothing to protect himself.

People more knowledgable than me will have to make judgments about pain, or trauma, or learned helplessness, but somehow, I don’t think this is the first time this has happened.

And yet, when Lotus Pier falls around them, Madam Yu grabs Wei Wuxian without hesitation. She hoists him up by an arm, drags him out the door where she picks up Jiang Cheng as well and flies the two of them out to the docks. Is this purely driven by pragmatism, the coldly calculating knowledge that, if Jiang Cheng is to survive, then Wei Wuxian is his best chance? She knows exactly how talented Wei Wuxian is at cultivation, even if it galls her; she knows that Wei Wuxian will protect Jiang Cheng, no matter the cost.

She can’t go with Jiang Cheng herself -- she is, after all, the master of Lotus Pier. This is her place to die, but Wei Wuxian can go in her stead. Wei Wuxian will kill himself for Jiang Cheng, and to be sure of that, she shouts it at him, her last words to him ringing in his ears. Years later, Wei Wuxian says it’s what I owed to the Jiang Sect. Who was it who first taught him how destructive debt could be? Who was it who first told a young Wei Wuxian how much he owed?

There is a difference between hating everything that someone stands for and wishing that they would die; there is an understanding, however small and contradictory, that the son is not to blame for the sins of any father, blood or adopted. Do I think that Madam Yu and her actions are the product of years of venom, hate, and vitriol turned inwards until it has no choice but to explode outwards in every sentence, every word? Yes. Does that absolve her? No. Does that help us understand her, a little more? Perhaps.

#tw abuse #Madam Yu #Wei Wuxian #Jiang Cheng #ep 11 #ep 14 #ep 15 #Madam Yu is... complicated folks #and we don't spend a lot of time with her #I know a lot of the fandom favors her #and while I don't understand I can respect that #I think that there are a lot of environmental/societal factors that made Madam Yu so vengeful and angry all the time #and it happened that she took it out overwhelmingly on the people around her #I don't think that's excusable #but I can see why she might get to the point where she would do that #what she needs isn't absolution or forgiveness #but a really really good therapist

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welcome-to-the-cafe · 3 years ago

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Shang-Chi (2021) Review Pt. 2

This one will be about the less character-relevant stuff, such as casting, props, settings, and design.

Easiest first: props and costumes.

A bit cool, a bit silly, and bit too "Chinese-themed".

The old Ten-Ring troops had normal armor for the time and age. The new Ten Ring troops looked like the Snake-Eyes fodder ninjas but with tassled helmets. Like I appreciate what they were going for, but...it look dumb dude. And what they were doing with only one hook sword? The electrified thing was cool, but y'all didn't use the bladed hand guard, the combo hook move, the spiked pommel...wasted potential smh. And then the electric arc crossbows....again I appreciate the idea, but that was silly, especially after we showed the Ten Rings sniper with a normal ass gun. Or, just go full sino-futurism and give me the chainsaw spiked club, the electrified monk's spade, taser three section staff.

The villager's clothes were too...saturated, and monochromatic. It kinda reminded me of Mulan (2020) actually, the white people's ancient Chinese clothing. In contrast, in the he TianLongBaBu wuxia series I've been watching, people dress in...normal earth tones. Oh also, too many fucking sandals, where are my black loafers and thick white socks, with rope bindings? Like the kind modern Shaolin monks wear?? The villager's weapons too. Only Xialing's was kind of interesting, the rest are vanilla staffs and sword+shield. Boooo. Where's the dragonscale fangtianhuaji? The dragonscale guandao? Ok I'm done. Just disappointed.

Wenwu's costumes were pure drip in every scene. Zero complaints.

Shang-Chi's letterman's jacket was my favorite costume to be honest. He should not have changed in the village. The final costume seemed a bit too...modern, but not quite to the level of the Black Panther suit. It just seemed like Western superhero top with a vaguely Chinese pattern on it. Or it looked kindof...southeast asian? Wish it had no sleeves.

Katy should've kept her Macau drip. The "traditional" robe just didn't look right.

Xialing looked the best in her inverse Bruce Lee colors crop top and sweats. Like damn.

Ying Li's robes' green is too saturated in my opinion, unnaturally. Same with Michelle Yeoh's character. Now that I think about it, I hardly ever see bright green in traditional Chinese clothes...or modern Chinese fashion. Her pristine white/biege wushu outfit is also meh for me.

Death Dealer's dark blue + yellow colors are quite striking, but a bit odd and out of place with the rest of the Ten Rings' getup. Perhaps it was intentional, since he's the elite trainer? I wish it was more modern, a la Snake Eyes' suit. I would also like to complain about his opera face makeup though; why only the top half? Is that even a real opera face design? It's kind of a dumb half-ass reference I think. Like, Noh masks are used all the time for creepy effect, why not Beijing Opera?

Next, CGI animals.

Morris the Hundun/Dijiang was cute, but I half expected him to suddenly go nuts and devour Slattery, since the Hundun is one of the primordial evil beasts. But Disney needs their marketable mascot. I even saw a Lego piece for him before the movie was released!

The trip through the other world was a bit too safari-like. Like wow, the Ninetails is just chilling by the road, and a herd of Qilin conveniently pass by. The execution of these creatures were fine, though the Qilin eyes were too "dead".

I don't have problems with the Lions' design, but they were completely unnecessary, and lowered the stakes for the final battle for me. Those two lions could literally tear apart all five of Wenwu's trucks in less than a minute.

I stated already, the big evil monster, the little soulsuckers, and the dragon are completely unnecessary to me. Even when I saw just the wood carving of the soulsucking bats, I felt disappointed. Xialing and Shangchi spent way too long riding the big dragon and not doing kungfu :/

Onto settings.

I just recently visited Bay Area! The hilliness of SF was nicely showed off by the bus fight.

Macao seemed well-grounded and normal for a modern Chinese metropolis. Was portrayed better than Tokyo was in Snake Eyes in my opinion. The bamboo scaffolding scene reminded me heavily of Rush Hour 2's Hong Kong fight, and I could hear Jackie Chan assuring us "don't worry, Chinese bamboo, very strong!".

The Ten Rings compound was...eh. No defining features to locate it anywhere real so whatever. But the interior was weirdly homey?

The Ta Lo village is what I really want to complain about: why they gotta throw Chinese people back to the Xia dynasty like that? Straw huts? Really? And there was a total of like 7 buildings there, across a tiny area. That is not a village, it's a medium-sized temple complex. Kung Fu Panda 3's hidden panda village was loads more impressive, with interesting geography. This was on a flat plane next to a pond. Combined with the costuming, it's like hello, it's hokey Western orientalism again.

Casting.

Tony Leung. Perfect. Outstanding. Phenomenal. Sexy as hell. I have recovered fully from Lust, Caution. I see on Tiktok that westerners are thirsting after him, and I am very satisfied. The "Killmonger-Loki" Effect is now the "Wenwu-Killmonger-Loki" Effect. I only wish he were younger, because I hate the "daddy" kink. Mr. Leung, you are a hero to Asian-American men. Thank you.

Awkwafina. Yeah she is pretty good as the unabashed ABC friend. But lately, I feel she has been over-used as the main Chinese-American actress. On some social media, I have seen Black users complain of her 'blaccent' and vow to boycott Shang-Chi in protest. I'm inclined to defend her, as it is probably what she grew up with, and the boycott feels like another attempt to draw moral hierarchical divisions between minorities. Similar sentiment is "yall didn't come out for Black Panther, why should we come out for Shang-Chi?". I don't have any data as to whether 'we' did come out for Black Panther, but I generally disapprove of POC factionalism.

Simu Liu. I'm glad that Westerners are thirsting over him too. I'm glad he's very enthusiastic and affable, and well-liked in the Asian-American community. He's us! And he got a shirtless scene! But the catch is...he doesn't fit the current Chinese standard for "hot guy actor".

From the majority angle: that's toxic af. He's hot enough, why are we being so picky with dumb Asian beauty standards? Will we ever properly support ourselves? Like damn, this is the first Asian-American lead in a goddamn Marvel movie, and this is how you treat him?? By the Heavens.

From the other angle: his eyes are small, his jaw kind of round, head kind of wide. Not the most masculine, but definitely not feminine. He's a normal Chinese-American dude. Chinese dude, Harbin, Heilongjiang born. Compare that to Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Paul Rudd, Chris Pratt, Sebastian Stan, Chadwick Boseman, Anthony Mackie, etc. These are among the finest western specimens; why did the pick the Asian hero to be played by the 'normal-looking' dude? Was Jackson Wang not available? Or Ludi Lin? I personally have a suspicion that his appearance most fits the stereotypical look of an Asian man to Western audiences, and that's why he was cast.

He's received hate for this, from Reddit r/aznidentity, the sub that I frequent, which currently is cheering Shang-Chi's box-office success. That's toxic af, and must be heartbreaking for him. Unfortunately, it's part of the larger conflict of Western and Eastern media, representation, markets, and culture. And that's a big fish to wrangle in part 3.

#shang chi #simu liu #awkwafina #kevin watches #asian american #tony leung

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thecuriousblitz · 5 years ago

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Yang Xiao Long’s Eastern name origins and allusion to Bees

What follows is an essay/rant about the parallels between RWBY’s Yang Xiao Long and iconic martial arts badass, Xiao Long Nü, that blew. my. mind.

I stumbled across RWBY when Vol 7 aired and had no inkling of what the show was about (even less re: Bumbleby).

So.

Having been born in Hong Kong and raised on a steady diet of martial arts dramas, based purely on the name ‘Yang Xiao Long’ and RWBY’s heavy martial arts influence, my instinctive reference point for Yang’s character wasn’t Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but rather Jin Yong’s 1959 novel, The Return of the Condor Heroes. [Side note: Jin Yong is essentially the Shakespeare of Wuxia (‘martial heroes’) fiction. There are countless modern remakes of his works.]

Here’s Xiao Long Nü (小龍女 in Chinese):

To cut an extremely long and convoluted story short, Xiao Long Nü is abandoned as an infant, adopted into the powerful Ancient Tomb Sect, becomes their leader and martial arts legend at age 14, kicks names and takes ass.

And now the part where the literary coincidences get super interesting.

Parallel 1: Their literal names

Yang’s full name is Yang Xiao Long (陽小龍), which is why Taiyang refers to her as his ‘Sunny Little Dragon’. It’s a direct translation, but also a nod to Xiao Long Nü (小龍女), which translates into ‘Little Dragon Maiden’. Like Yang, Xiao Long Nü is known for her fiery independence and ability to push through tough times.

Some have pointed out that ‘Xiao Long’ is a possible reference to Bruce ‘Little Dragon’ Lee (李小龍). I love the idea of Yang’s name drawing from both, as that would make her literary origins even more OP.

The ‘Maiden’ bit also hints at the tantalizing theory that each member of RWBY will eventually become one of the Four Maidens, Yang being the most likely candidate to receive Raven’s Spring Maiden powers.

Parallel 2: The name ‘Yang’

Yang is so called due to the first character of her Chinese name, Yang or 陽, which means ‘sun’ or ‘light’ and alludes to her gold/yellow color scheme, as well as her particular semblance.

There’s a second possible veiled reference. In ‘The Return of the Condor Heroes’, Xiao Long Nü meets and becomes entangled with a rebellious teenager, Yang Guo (楊過). [Side note: This ‘Yang’ is a different Chinese character, but pronounced the same and shares the same radical ie. pictorial component.]

Their relationship begins as one of master and student (despite being close in age). Xiao Long Nü agrees to train Yang Guo, and both fall madly in love with the other over the course of several years/RWBY volumes.

Their love, however, is severely tested on numerous occasions. A big challenge is that romances between master and student are considered extremely taboo in the martial arts world - not unlike, say, the taboo that likely surrounds Faunus/human relationships in Remnant due to longstanding prejudices. In the end, they persevere through personal traumas, deadly enemies and lengthy separations to emerge stronger as a couple. Sound familiar?

‘Yang Xiao Long’ is inherently a ship name; an amalgamation of the names of two people who together represent one of Wuxia literature’s greatest love stories of all time - one that is steeped in fantasy lore, while remaining true to the realities of heartbreak and finding your soul mate.

In case the allusion wasn’t clear enough, Yang Guo also gets his right arm cut off with a sword...

But oh, the best part.

Parallel 3: Their weapons

Xiao Long Nü’s signature weapons are LITERAL BEES.

As a disciple of the Ancient Tomb Sect, one of her key skills is carrying out stealth attacks using golden darts coated in jade bee poison, or ‘玉蜂針’, literally ‘jade bee needles’ (see below).

These bee-imbued weapons are launched at deadly speeds to take out unsuspecting enemies.

Xiao Long Nü can also summon and control a swarm of jade bees to aid in attacks by playing an ancient Chinese instrument called the guqin.

Poetically, the only antidote for the damage inflicted by jade bee needles is the rare honey that jade bees produce. Thus the source of the initial pain…

… becomes the spring from which healing can begin.

In conclusion, I love how RWBY signals certain character traits and ships via subtle (and not-so-subtle) visual and literary clues. As someone who was initially more familiar with Wuxia stories, it was pretty cool seeing the Bumbleby parallels as the show progressed.

#bumbleby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #bumblebee #rant

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untamedunrestrained · 5 years ago

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The Untamed and Mo Dao Zu Shi

These past eight days have been surreal.

I have drowned so fully in this story that it feels like I am just surfacing.

On Valentine’s Day, fandom on tumblr reblogged this fanart of WangXian by qulfeeh and I was intrigued. The reblog was tagged with two important key words ‘Wangxian’ and ‘The Untamed’. In the brush of a few keystrokes I came across the Wikipedia page for a show known as the Untamed that was available on Netflix. The thing that stood out was that it was based on a BL novel and that both the very male protagonists were described as each other’s soulmates and somehow that was enough. So, I opened Netflix and after like a second of hesitation I started watching the show and I didn’t stop. I started at eight in the evening and I watched nine episodes in a row which basically meant I was up till five in the morning. What followed seems like a record for me. I finished all fifty episodes of the Untamed in under seventy-two hours.

I put hardly five minutes of thought into my decision to watch this story and ended up dedicating the past eight days straight. The first three days to the live action drama and the past five to reading the novel.

If it isn’t obvious this story is that good.

The Untamed

The Untamed is a first for me on so many levels. I have never watched a Chinese show before ever and that seemed extremely significant to me because China is actually a neighbouring country yet as far as my mind is concerned it might as well be on another planet. Which seems particularly odd considering shows from English speaking countries like the UK and the US are a staple for me which makes these countries feel so much closer though they are geographically on the other side of the planet. Of course, a major factor is the language barrier but another is the political scenario between our two countries and amazingly this show made me realise how much of an impact perceiving different cultures can have on your perception of their people. It has literally opened up a whole new world for me that I have just realised I have never taken the moment to discover. Well, considering this is me we are talking about, how appropriate, that it would be a drama based on a BL novel that unlocked this whole new world for me.

I have tried reading a Danmei novel before which was awful and it completely turned me off the genre but it did have a side effect of educating we about elements of a wuxia novel which made this xianxia world seem a little familiar but even if it hadn’t, I would have still been hooked.

It didn’t take long for The Untamed to find a new fan and I have been obsessing over it ever since.

The Untamed is an amazing drama which revolves around the love Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian have for each other and the plot is so intriguing that you wouldn’t be able to stop even if you tried (I didn’t because that thought didn’t even manage to enter my mind).

It’s a love story and that is undisputable for me, they don’t say it, it isn’t mentioned but there is this palpable force influencing events and you know they love each other. I have somehow really disregarded how much a show can show you stuff without ever explicitly stating it but The Untamed set me straight in that regard. I doubt anyone who watches the show would mistake it for anything but the love story it is.

Wei WuXian was an instant hit for me. He is a lovable, gregarious character always up to mischief but is someone who always wants to be on the side of justice and I have a weak spot for characters with a hard on for justice. He is just such a lively character who keeps smiling all the time that it’s just hard not to fall for him in minutes. His antics and his demeanour are so charming that you’re hooked. He would have easily been my most favourite character in any other drama that doesn’t have a Lan WangJi.

Lan WangJi is an amazing character. In a world, which has become increasing about everyone voicing their opinions (like I’m doing at present) it is hard to believe that people like Lan WangJi exist. People who are quiet, who don’t speak unless absolutely necessary. He is literally the embodiment of tranquillity and more important he is Wei WuXian’s hero. Like literally he protects him like he’s protecting his life which on second thought he definitely is.

I literally had second-hand embarrassment from how obviously romantic these two are.

Hands down the best thing I have watched in 2020 by far! The characters are amazing, the plot is intricate and it is so, so interesting. I watched almost fourty hours of this series non-stop and I don’t remember a single point where I felt like the story became boring for a second which now that I think about it is, is… astonishing. How can such a large drama be so engrossing? This isn’t binge-worthy there is literally no other way to watch the show!!!

Mo Dao Zu Shi

But after coming down from the high of the first seventy-two hours of being submerged in this world, I was reluctant to leave this world so much so that I didn’t even contemplate it. I had a wide variety of media to choose from. The story is based on a web series by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu that was made into a manhua, followed by an donghua, followed by an audio drama followed by The Untamed. It must speak to the universality of the story that the people are willing to read the same story in so many different formats, I know I’m not done.

But, high up on my list was the source material, one of the articles described the show as being extremely faithful to the novel, which made me want to jump on that wagon posthaste, and I agree whole-heartedly. I read the translation by Exiled Rebels Scanlations and what struck me was how the show and the novel were tonally the same. I had switched mediums but it didn’t feel like a different story or like I was reading different characters which is shocking because that’s literally how good the show was at translating words into video.

Differences

One of the startling things about the book is that it really ties up the plot neatly. There are tons of plot points that aren’t as completely resolved on the show as they are on the novel which I only ever realised after reading the novel. A lot of this had to do with how certain details of the plot are different. A classic example that the reason behind the scars on Lan Zhan’s back is different in the two. In the novel, LWJ whisks WWX away from the Nightless City after he massacres and pretty much beats-to-a-pulp the entire alliance of sects. LWJ then has to tend to WWX so they remain in hiding for three days. When cultivators from the GusuLan Sect finally discover the two, LWJ has to defeat all of them to keep WWX safe and that’s why he is given one whipping for every cultivator he defeated. Of course, since WWX dies on the battlefield in the show this couldn’t be the reason behind the scars so they have LWJ defend Burial Mounds which wasn’t all that fruitful considereing the LanlingJin Clan does end up with a lot of WWX’s artifacts, there was no point in defending Burial Mounds as he couldn’t have kept it up in the long run but him going to Burial Mounds after the massacre at Nightless City is important to ensure they story can credibly reveal Lan ShiZui to be A-Yuan. So, yeah differences, the show focuses on the Wen Clan and the Yin Iron while the novel doesn’t have the Yin Iron at all and focuses on Jin GuangYao. But, despite the differences the story still feels coherent between the two mediums mainly because the relationship between LWJ and WWX that is at the core of both remains central to the plot at all times.

The plot of the novel though is extremely intricate and the author does an amazing job of deconstructing it which makes it easier to understand what’s happening while the show in hindsight does get away with sweeping up certain loose ends.

Of course, the kisses and the sex are gone but I will gladly take that cliff scene in exchange. I was actually shocked that the novel actually doesn’t dwell on WWX’s first death at all. Like, we don’t even know how exactly he died in the novel and this was hsocking given how pivotal that cliff scene is in the show.

Characters

Surprisingly though a lot of the roles of side characters were expanded for the show, the novel seems to have delivered a better understanding of these characters. The biggest example for me being Jiang Yanli.

She has an elaborately expanded role in the show which does highlight how deep her bind with her brothers particularly WWX is but somehow she seems like a timid character among a bunch of very strong characters. What the novel does is that it gives you a very realistic picture of her, she might not seem like a significant influence on the story but her impact is far-reaching. The novel doesn’t showcase much of her character but the scenes that feature her in the book are some of the most poignant ones and incidentally those are the same ones that stand out in the show. I feel like novel did a better job of showing off her strength. While, in the show I couldn’t look beneath her timid demeanour the novel manages to showcase the strength of her love. She cares deeply and loves deeply and the novel manages to show you the courage it takes to love someone so deeply. I definitely admire her character more and in fact I’m kind of in awe that someone who appears so traditional was so awesome. It felt easy to dismiss her character but reading the author’s words made me realise that I would be very, very wrong in doing so.

Wei WuXian might be the luckiest guy in the world to have a shijie like her followed by a husband like LWJ who both seem very determined to spoil the hell out of him. I might be experiencing some jealousy right now.

The author somehow manages to imbue her characters with qualities that makes them real and unique. Like WWX forgetting everybody’s face which is a real world problem that I have never seen anybody suffer from in a novel but just the fact that WWX doesn’t immediately bring his old hang-ups in his subsequent meetings with side characters didn’t only have hilarious consequences but made everything that much more intriguing and credible.

This author also does an amazing job of flipping characters. There are very few villains who are black and white in this story. WWX himself is a character caught in the gray of it all, universally reviled for standing up for the right reasons. This is a theme throughout the show and the novel where bad characters might be good and good might be bad but the author endeavours to show us all sides to a character. While this most definitely applies to Jin GuangYao, I’m surprised with how it resonates with Xue Yang who’s relationship with Xiao Xinchen can only be characterized with the words “It’s Complicated”. I don’t actually know what to think of these two Xiao Xingchen was definitely betrayed but can we ignore the fact that he found himself a companion in Xue Yang his sworn enemy and Xue Yang’s feelings for Xiao Xingchen are enough to drive me crazy. This guy has no idea how frustrating he is, that piece of candy clenched in his fist will drive me crazy for the rest of my life. The entire Yi City Arc is a big mess of grey there are no whites and blacks and the show underscores that with this quote –

Once upon a time, there was a little child who liked sweets very much. But because he had no parents nor money, he could never have such things. So he’d been dreaming if only someone could give him a candy every day.

Don’t even get me started on the music that plays in the background when this quote is being narrated.

There are just so many amazing things about the show and the novel. I mean the show might have actually worked harder to make things more romantic and one scene that I’m surprised isn’t from the book is the lantern scene with both of them making pledges like that particular scene neatly underlined who WWX is and would become. The hand-fastening scene is also not from the book but then there are other scenes and other delights to be found in the novels.

This story is definitely worth reading and watching for years to come. If anyone has any apprehensions about the novel I will be glad to clarify but the everything about “The Untamed” and “Mo Dao Zu Shi” stand in the same breath.

#wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #xue yang #xiao xingchen #posts #myposts #mo xiang tong xiu #the show which reminded me what it was like to be obsessed #once more

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tobiasbotte · 4 years ago

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Okay, I've got a weird itch, and I'm wondering if my dear netizens can help me scratch it. This is a fic rec request post. Also kind of a praise post? Skip to the end to see the request, because I go off on a bit of a tangent.

I've been…really getting into The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfics lately? Like, seriously, been doing a deep dive every since I finished the live action drama because holy shit that was something beautiful. And I gotta say, my favorite kinds of fics right now in this fandom are the full blown, novel length, ensemble cast ones. You know, the ones where all the right ones live, or even our favorite bad guys get redemption arcs, and almost everyone is paired off by the end. I'm a sucker for that shit. It's beautiful.

This does not negate the fact that the show (I'm working up the courage to read the actual novel that started this all - I've started, now I just need to take the plunge) is beautiful in its own right. I adore that WWX and LWJ got their happy ending. I also adore these fics.

I digress.

When I first dove into the fandom, I loved LWJ/WWX & LSZ interactions as a family. Then I fell down the WWX & JC reconciliation hell hole and I have not climbed back out, nor do I wish to! It’s amazing. But now, I've noticed that the fics that have Meng Yao|Gin Guangyao as the fulcrum are the most fascinating. Everything revolves around him, most of the time, and while I adore WWX as my favorite tortured soul and his epic pining romance with LWJ and his family dynamic with LSZ and JC, these giant fics with JGY at the center are like. Epic odysseys. It's amazing.

And, you know, off topic of this post - which is supposed to be a cry for recs, please help - it really makes me want to write one, but first off, I know next to nothing about wuxia/xianxia style stories (though with the amount of media I've been consuming, and the cultural rabbit holes I've fallen down in on Google this past month alone, I daresay I could definitely make a good run at it), and second, just the whole psychological aspect of it for all of those characters - I pride myself on being able to read a room, especially with what I do for a living, but holy shit do these fics do a deep dive.

By the way, I speak of two specific fic authors who write the most epic JGY-fulcrum fics that I've seen so far: @mercyandmagic and @hamliet. If either of you guys see this, my respect to you as writers is through the roof. Seriously, it's mind boggling. The dissection of JGY's character, his desire for acceptance, his desperate will to live no matter what - it's beautiful. Not to mention the viewpoints of literally every other character in their fics?! And the head-hopping is amazing - not something I usually see. (Apparently this is common in Chinese fic writing, or so I’ve read somewhere? But it’s not disconcerting at all, at least not how these two do it. I kind of want to try that style...)

Lord, I don't even remember where I'm going with this. If any of my readers follow me on here, you know I'm mostly a Yu Yu Hakusho writer (let's forget the other secret account I had back in high school; I burned that, I believe). I write novella length stuff at best (of fan fiction. My original works are…massive, to say the least, which I'm proud of.). But I've never been in a fandom (and I'm in a lot of fandoms; my bookmark count on AO3 can attest to that holy shit I have a problem) that has produced such epic works that it has moved me to sway from my usual fic writing habits of safety, of topics that I'm familiar with. Seriously, I "know" wuxia/xianxia stuff now (I've been going back to my nerd roots lately and tearing through K- and C-dramas - with my mother, no less! - and absorbing a lot of cool shit. It's so fun.), but I don't know it, you know what I mean? I can explain to my mother the significance of joss sticks, paper money being burned for the dead, wedding red and mourning white, the wedding games people have to play to retrieve their spouses, cultivation culture, etc., but I'd never try to write about it because - let's face it! I'm scared. Which is funny. I'm not Japanese (I’m black/Filipino/white), but I actually grew up being fascinated by the culture thanks to my dad - our family's original weeb - and so I'm not too terrified to write fics about animes because, you know, I'm kind of familiar with it.

Chinese-based fics though? Alien to me. And it's not that I'm scared of offending anyone - I'm glad that the majority of fan culture that I have personally interacted with is nice. It's a shame that a lot of the nasty stuff gets the spotlight, gives fandom culture a bad rep, but I know that most of you guys - I'm speak of you readers/writers - are chill people who wanna vibe with the fandoms in peace.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I guess I'm just making excuses to not write MDZS fics by claiming that I don't want to contribute because I don't want to do the genre its in any injustice. The real reason I don't want to write it is because I don't think I'd be able to have a good grasp on the mental aspect of any of the characters! Weird. Writing fanfiction has never scared me before. I know it's because I'm comparing myself to these other awesome writers, not just the two I've listed, but all the writers of the amazing MDZS fics I've been reading, but who doesn’t compare themselves to someone else? It’s destructive. At least I’m aware of what I’m doing-

Holy shit this post is long I need to stop what was the point.

The point...

The point was - a request! So far, those are the only two writers I've come across who do those epic ensemble/fulcrum/happy ending for all/everyone is paired off fics in this fandom. Obviously I've barely made a dent in all the material that's out there, but I figured I'd save myself some time and ask if anyone in the MDZS fandom could recommend any other fics that do this.

Bonus points if it includes Qin Su/Wen Ning or Su She/Jin Zixun (like, seriously, I would have never in a million years expected to have liked the latter pairing, but when I've seen it logically laid out on how to rectify them, it fucking works?!). If not that, then my second favorite type of fics are the WWX & JC brotherly reconciliation fics with lots of gross sobbing. I adore the relationship between these two and I just want them to be a family again, please. There's a lot more of these works than the former, and I'm slowly working my way through them, but if you find some that I should absolutely read right now, lemme know.

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