#unironically love when i get asks about the same thing it's like... yay my brand... pecco/casey corner...

[batsplat]

pecco has the taste! his test livery was a casey reference! https://www.tumblr.com/muxas-world/767679864728879104/so-the-white-livery-was-in-honor-of-casey-now-i

(tumblr and instagram links)

it's soooo sweet.... right up my alley..... did just make me smile - that was actually what the livery immediately reminded me of so I was wondering if it was a deliberate reference. so I was very :)) to see him confirm as much

wish pecco hadn't been stuck in a cave during the ranch visit, like of all the times for that to happen!! he should've been there... just been an unambiguously strong month for casey + vr46 stonks hasn't it - casey glazing pecco in that interview, casey ranch visit, pecco paying tribute to probably casey's favourite livery... and to think, in only a few short months we'll get another fun interview where casey explores new ways of calling valentino a cunt

anyhow. yeah. I do love how unerring pecco has been in being both a valentino and casey fan over the years, from when he was a kid to when he was getting advice from BOTH valentino and casey to his first title to now. he's so me-coded. and he really is their daughter... that's my neurotic + cerebral ducati champ sunday kid right there

[overthinkingkdrama]

hi! love in sadness anon again. if you can rec some good melos i would be thankful.

[Oh my gosh, anon. I suck. Seriously. I’ve been trying to sit down and get this done from the moment I got your ask and I just haven’t been able to do it. Anyway, hopefully you see this. Thank you for your patience.]

Little do you know how long I have been waiting for this moment. This is my time to shine! Jk, but I would be happy to give recs. It’s a delight. I started going through my MDL and realized just how many dramas in this genre I have actually seen and realized I would probably have to trim my recommendations somewhat not to seem like a crazy person. Also I have subcategories! Yay!

(I’ve included the *** next to titles that I have watched multiple times or that stand out from the rest of the pack.)

First of all, Movie Melos.

Sometimes you don’t have time for 16-30 hours of drama. Sometimes you want to get all your feels out in a single sitting and move on with your life. That’s where movies are so helpful. My favorite bite-sized melos are:

Always*** – An ex-con trying to get his life together falls in love with a blind woman, but his efforts to help her recover her sight might drag him right back into the violence he’s tried to escape.

Shoot My Heart – A young heir is forced into a mental hospital by his rich family where he meets a disturbed young man. They become friends, try to protect each other, and eventually escape. This one has a bit more of a comedic element to it than the other movies I’m recommending, but there’s plenty of the melo tone as the movie goes on.

Will You Be There? – After finding out that he’s dying of cancer, a man travels through time to beg his younger self to save the life of his first love.

Butterfly Sleep – This is a Japanese movie, but it also stars Korean actor Kim Jae Wook, who recently got a boost in popularity from Her Private Life. The movie revolves around a poor young man from Korea who ends up living with an older woman, a novelist who has just discovered she is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and the passionate relationship that develops between the two as he helps her finish what will be her final book. #tragedy_tag

High Quality, Human Melodramas

So, this category is for if you want something with all the emotional gut punch of a really wild family drama, but you also want your melos to have actual artistic merit so when you tell your non-drama watching friends and family members about them they don’t end up losing respect for your taste.

Just Between Lovers – This is the story of two young people involved in and scarred by the same horrific accident, but survived and end up finding solace in one another as they deal with their combined traumas. If you’ve seen this drama around the kdramasphere on tumblr you might have seen a lot of gifs of the soft romance. Don’t be fooled though. The romance is indeed wonderful, but the themes are heavy and it can be rough sit.

My Mister*** – I really am just looking for every possible opportunity to recommend this drama. It has supplanted my former favorites and become my top drama of all time. It’s about two people, a troubled young woman in her 20′s and a structural engineer in his 40′s who have become beaten down and broken by life. Their two lives end up intersecting and they develop a really complex friendship that changes both of their lives. Acting, writing, directing…I have nothing bad to say about My Mister. This drama is actually perfect. 

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes – Do you like your melos a bit murdery? I know I sure do. Give me a sociopath any day of the week and I’ll say, “Thank you. I’ll take two.” This drama is about a young man who might be a monster. He becomes a detectives prime suspect in a murder investigation. At the same time he meets the detectives younger sister and they begin to fall in love. #tragedy_tag If this sounds like your thing, but you don’t like super sad endings check out Hello Monster, also starring Seo In Guk.

Secret Love Affair – I think it’s probably safe to say this drama is considered a modern kdrama classic, and for good reason. A story revolving around a woman who gave up her dreams for security, trapped in a loveless marriage, who meets a piano savant from an extremely underprivileged background and he sets off a spark for passion, music and love that she hasn’t felt in a long time. This is a quiet, pensive drama with a lot of wonderful music and atmosphere. YMMV depending on your tolerance for cheating and a slow-burn pace.

Alright, Cut the Crap Jona, Show Me the Extra Soapy Guilty Pleasure Dramas We All Know You Like…

Maybe you don’t go in for this type of self-conscious, “serious” drama watching. You’re going to watch these things in the sanctity of your own room and never tell a soul about them. Or perhaps you’ve evolved past needing other people’s approval to enjoy the things you like. Good for you, I say! As it should be. In that case, I have some top shelf makjang crack to deal you. This is the part of the list where the sliding scale of quality gets a little wobbly. Most of these shows contain a little, if not a lot, of crazysauce. All of them are over-the-top melo fun.

Baker King Kim Tak Gu – A drama about the illegitimate son of a conglomerate CEO who has inherited his preternatural baking abilities looking for his place in a family that will never acknowledge him. Yeah, the premise is pretty “what”? When I first watched this drama I thought it was supposed to be a satire of the makjang genre. To this day I’m not sure how seriously this drama actually takes itself. What I will say is it’s hella entertaining, even as it piles on more than it’s share of craziness (machinations, murder, affairs, chaebol fuckery, love polygons, gangsters, birth secrets, and on and on.) I was surprisingly invested and remarkably satisfied by the ending.

Ms. Perfect – This drama is something of a gothic romance/makjang melo mash up. It involves a woman whose marriage shatters just as she loses her home and finds herself desperate to take care of her family. She’s enticed by a mysterious woman to live with her in her huge house, but this stranger has eerie motivations of her own. Really fun, weird show. But brace yourself to be blue-balled by the romance. It’s one steamy make out session from being noona-romance catnip. 

Money Flower*** – I unironically love this drama. It’s very close to the platonic ideal of the Revenge Melo. It involves a Dantes-esque male lead, Kang Pil Joo, who is willing to destroy himself to enact his multi-decade revenge on a wealthy family that took everything from him. He is the shadow of a spoiled young heir who he plans to use to take down the whole evil empire of Chungha group, but in order to do that he has to orchestrate the heir’s marriage with the innocent daughter of a powerful politician, the woman who Pil Joo himself is in love with.

That Winter, The Wind Blows – This one is a lurid conman tail about a gambler who, in his attempts to pay back a dangerous gangster out for his life, pretends to be the prodigal brother of a blind heiress. He tries to get the money and skip town, but ends up falling in love with the mark which comes with a host of other complications, not the least of which is she thinks he’s her brother. This one is high on the guilty-pleasure-o-meter for me.

Come and Hug Me – Some people might disagree with my putting this one on here, but for me the premise is too wildly melodramatic to omit. The leads start out as childhood sweethearts, but the problem is his father is a deranged serial killer and her parents end up two of his victims. As adults he becomes a detective trying to make up for his father’s legacy of cruelty and she becomes a famous actress like her mother. Traumas resurface when she becomes the target of an apparent copycat and their past connection becomes the fixation of a ruthless tabloid journalist.

Thank You – After his fiancee dies of cancer, a Doctor travels to a remote island to fulfill her last wish–to help the family of a little girl the late fiancee was responsible for inadvertently infecting with HIV. Unexpectedly he finds himself attracted to the girl’s single mother. However, he will have to contend with the prejudices of the island people about AIDS and the reappearance with the girl’s father. This one is as heavy as it sounds, and the oldest drama on this list, from 2007, with all the idiosyncrasies that go along with older dramas. But it’s remarkably well done. From the same writer of a bunch of classic melodramas (I’m Sorry, I Love You; A Love To Kill; Innocent Man; Uncontrollably Fond, etc) but this is my personal favorite of hers.

The Last Empress – Okay, I couldn’t omit this one. I tried. Average musical actress Oh Sunny winds up married to the Emperor in an alternate history version of Korea and becomes embroiled in the machinations of the corrupt royal family. With a nice side helping of revenge plot. It’s demonstrably not a good show. It’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. But it had me hooked early on and then I couldn’t get myself free. What a magnificent train wreck this drama was. If you’re looking for problematic nonsense melos that were MASSIVE hits in Korea and you’re torn between this and Baker King, go with the silly bread show and keep this one in your back pocket.

Fated to Love You – This one is probably the most off-brand on the list, because it leans heavily on the comedic tone, especially for the first half. There’s a definite turn at the midpoint of the drama where it becomes MUCH more melodramatic (with all the tropes you expect to go along with that), but I think it pulls of the transition impressively well. Besides, it’s a fun watch with a fluffy feelgood ending with a bow on top. It’s a dash of sugar for your melodrama sojourn, a genre that admittedly can be a bit of a bummer.

There it is. I tried to do an extra good job with my list because it took me so long to get it out. I’m sorry again. Happy watching!

Jona

[ninja8tyu]

My brother came back home, and I remember why I always never can stay mad at him.

Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ narcissist, I will still bet everything I have that he is, but if that’s all he was, I wouldn’t be on the internet venting my feelings and instead be in jail.

Also apparently I now have a FBI agent watching my every post now. Yay. Big brother’s watching my hentai. Well, hopefully they only monitor what I post rather than what I see.

Also, yay. I get to make the FBI agent watching my porn jokes unironically. New material for jokes and stuff.

Anyway, my brother’s a cunt. He says shit that gets to me and I despise him for it. His constant beratement of me for never having changed despite the efforts only I have seen ticks me off, and so on.

And again, if anyone else were in my shoes, they’d go insane. Still will bet all I have on that.

`

But honestly, I’m not an idiot (do not bring that/those incident(s) up) enough to see it as everything he is. I hate him, but because we’re family, I know a lot about him.

Thus, I can never make an irreversible decision. I can say shit that can’t be reversed (hooray databases and archives, and lovely that a trollface in a suit flipping the bird enters my house in the form of a printed paper now with my name on it) but never make a truly stupid irreparable decision.

I’ve made an analogy like this before, but talking to him is like sifting through dirt, gravel, and sand for gold. The dirt, gravel, and sand being emotional torment, and the gold being genuinely useful pieces of information.

I’m ticked, of course, that I usually get grains of gold when I have to deal with him, with only dirt to fill up my filter, but sometimes I get large pieces of gold.

And as much as I can complain about being forced to sift through gold, I get some of those larger chunks of gold and remember why I bother.

This time around, he didn’t decide to insult me, berate me for never having changed. Or rather, maybe it’s because I’ve grown and actively decided to not permit any kind of that topic to be discussed when I don’t want to.

Or maybe the FBI visit woke him up. Who knows. Also hi if you’re still reading this far.

But yeah.

To put it in my own words, if he really were as bad as I always make him out to be, then I must ask the following questions:

“If he is that bad, then why doesn’t he do this?” in a general abstract sense.

But specifically, “If he truly wants to see me be miserable and a failure, why does he give me very good pieces of advice that I know I can use?”

A true piece of shit would do something else. As in, I would know the knowledge they provide to me is practically useless or detrimental.

Maybe I’m just autistic as all hell. Seriously, I need medicine that numbs my emotions. I heard anti-psychotics work. It was said as a joke, but I think I really need them. I’ll ask the psychiatrist about it.

And I’m reminded that he probably also knows about the bloody FBI visit. God, I don’t want to get help if the first thing I’m gonna hear is “WHAT UP MAN I HEARD YOU GOT VISITED BY THE FBI WHAT’D YOU DO” except in a more formal manner like “Hey, uh. I heard that you did something to get visited by the FBI. Could you... tell me about it?” 

God fuck it certainly was a wake-up call, but I wish it wouldn’t have lasting consequences. I swear if every doctor on the block that has access to my data, I don’t think I could live without wanting to hide in a shell.

`

But anyway.

Venting online is basically forfeiting all the power I have to others. If I need to release my anger, I need to channel it into something else.

Else, even if I do make a decent point...

“OH REALLY?

Ninja8Tyu says [thing I think is wise and smart], but isn’t this the same person that made a tumblr post about shooting up a school?

And don’t forget when he added protein powder into pasta, only to complain about it tasting bad.

Are we REALLY going to listen to Tyu, the person who faps to Japanese cartoons?

Vote No on listening to Ninja’s words TODAY.”

So, yeah. Never a fan of bringing shit up from the past. It’s literally attacking the other person rather than their arguments. People will still do it because they’re pieces of shit, but if I actually want to make a point, I should probably not make myself look like an idiot.

And Ninja8Tyu is kinda an original brand I made since childhood, so fuck if I’m abandoning him. I doubt anyone looked at the fucking keyboard, say the consecutive ‘T’, ‘Y’, and ‘U’ characters on the keyboard and thought “hey that looks like a name” and took it as their own.

So yeah it’s my brand. Not abandoning it despite how much I fucked it up.

I think I really need to get a therapist soon so I can vent in private. Surprisingly (not), therapists are a better audience than the internet because whatever I say out of anger isn’t likely to “FBI, OPEN UP!” my ass the two days after.

Speaking of therapists, apparently someone was receiving calls from the FBI asking when I’m going to get my weekly medical screening of my mental health, which, uh, I haven’t kept my word yet on going to see a therapist.

Because like, my original plan was to save gas and see a therapist at my college, but turns out that they don’t have that, only counselors, and going to a hospital would waste gas, and if I dared to waste my mother or father’s time to go see a therapist, well it’s gonna make me more depressed.

“Why still you haven’t gotten a driver’s license? This is getting annoying.”

I don’t wish to be a burden on anyone because I don’t want to consistently deal with the constant complaining caused by it.

So I’m choosing to shut up and just stay at home, venting online still except this time I’m a bit more cautious about how I go about it, as to mediate it as best as I can and also avoid the damage to my mental HP caused by the complaining of having to go to the therapists every single week.

Maybe if I found somewhere close by I could walk to that I can see a therapist, I might, but like, if I need to get in a car to get there, I likely won’t do it.

So yeah.

Things aren’t as bad as my fight or flight response pumped up with an overdose on anxiety claimed to be.

For now.

I’m not betting anything. I’ll just see what happens and hope that I’m wrong.

Nothing makes a pessimist feel happier than being proven wrong about his suspicions.

But yeah. Currently smooth sailing, storm warning was a false alarm, hopefully shit gets better.