Wow, I am super bad about updating here! Or anywhere, to be honest. I had someone recently leave an (annoying) comment on my real life blog asking why I never update anymore, and mostly it's because I don't feel like I do anything different here in the pandemic, but what I
have been doing is watching a lot of TV, and I actually started keeping track of the books I'm reading again, and that's what fandom is for, right? So I should at least post here.
TVI am still in the cdrama hole along with the rest of fandom, as I'm sure is no surprise. I recently finished rewatching
Nirvana in Fire, which was an excellent decision and I love it even more now. Hu Ge is just
so good. And the writing is so tight! (Also, I have adopted
the deleted scene/post-canon extra as the One True Ending, so all is right with the world.)
Just as I finished up NiF, an intrepid Tumblrite set up a group watch of
Joy of Life, which I'd been meaning to get around to watching for a while. All I'd really seen of it was gifs of Xiao Zhan's character at the end of the show, which made it look like another very serious, high-stakes political drama, which means I was totally unprepared for the beginning: a college student, annoyed by his advisor's scolding that he keeps applying an overly modern lens to historical documents, sets out to write a screenplay about a character who finds himself reborn in a historical setting but with all the memories of his modern life. This is quite possibly the most accurate history student thing to do that I have ever seen in a TV show, and the subsequent Gary Stu self-insert main character is
hilarious. That said, we just got to e13-14,
( (mild spoilers) )I'm also watching
Word of Honor between JoL group watch appointments, and have now reached the early 20s. Do I care about all the jianghu political infighting and the magical McGuffin? Not one whit. Do I care about the two beautifully tragic leading men and their adopted teenagers? Yes, very much. I'm also deeply invested in Wen Kexing's battle fan. I'm not analyzing this show too deeply, I'm just enjoying all the pretty.
To take a break from historical Chinese shenanigans, I also watched
Player, which is basically Korean
Leverage ( (brief content warning) ) The found family feels between the main crew are extremely good, and it's only 14 episodes, so that was a nice little palate cleanser.
I also picked up a few more episodes of
Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories last night, just to maximize my linguistic confusion, and I think my initial take on the show still stands: it's an excellent set-up for an anthology show, but the actual episodes are very hit-or-miss for me. I also really want to know more about the diner owner! Even more than thinking about the actual show, though, it has brainwormed me with a Guardian AU idea I didn't need and will probably never write because it's all just Vibes, but, like, Shen Wei as the mysterious guy who runs the late-night-only restaurant near the SID and has been their benevolent outside observer for as long as anyone can remember, until one day Zhao Yunlan finally walks in, yes? Yes.
BooksJust the highlights here:
I reread
A Memory Called Empire to refresh my memory before I dove into
A Desolation Called Peace, and it was a good decision because I'd forgotten a lot of amazing worldbuilding detail. These books just contain
so much. I love them.
I read a teaser excerpt of
Winter's Orbit for the magazine when I was still doing their copyediting and knew I was going to have to pick it up immediately because it reminded me so strongly of a Wangxian AU, a thing I am not the only person to think. It is very much its own thing, of course, but the fact it also had those Wangxian In Space vibes made it much easier to slot into my pandemic-brain sporadic reading habits, and I enjoyed it. (I'm just really in the mood for galactic empires and space stations lately, for whatever reason.)
In an effort to actually read stuff that was already on my Kindle due to sales, I've been finally getting around to a bunch of Tor novellas, including Paul Cornell's Lychford series, which is very much the flavor of a rural British crime procedural show, except with magical problems and witches (in training) instead of murder and cops.
I also read all of the Murderbot Diaries up to current, which were as fantastic as everyone said, and I was a million years late to that so I assume I don't really need to review them here. Delightful, A+, very relatable murderbot.
I've been experimenting with audiobooks more lately, because I do have a bunch of temari stuff I'm supposed to be doing for certification, so I listened to
The Mask of Mirrors, and while the narrator was truly excellent, I think this one would have worked better for me in print, so I could have lingered longer over some of the visual descriptions and skimmed some of the explanation of their world's version of tarot, which I have no real-world interest or basis in, but that's just a me thing. Overall very good, with a very pretty, glittery world and
lots of fashion detail that was entirely plot-relevant. Read/listen if you like heists, intrigue, explorations of class and power, fashion, and magic all in one place.
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