hold on to anything

As I write this, it is ridiculous o'clock and I am getting ready to leave for the airport.

I finished Blood River! The ending is great! Honestly the most satisfying ending possible. It achieves what I thought impossible, giving something to satisfy the m/m fans and m/f fans (and possibly also the m/m/f fans), and gives an end to the politics that's somehow both grim and optimistic.

I also watched 4 episodes of I Am Nobody season 2 while I had the Youku subscription, and I just don't think I'm going to watch the rest. The pacing is off, and there are way too many male characters and not enough women. I could genuinely feel my interest dropping with each episode as the gender balance got worse.

I also watched 8 episodes of When Destiny Brings the Demon and to the end of the 26th episode of Whispers of Fate, though I could not tell you what happened in them right now, I am so tired.

I am 34 episodes in to Blood River! I think the writing gets a big wobbly starting in episode 30, but I'm still having a good time, and I'll be able to finish it this week, and it did pick up a bit in episode 34. I hear good things about the ending. I'm enjoying my silly sad-eyed assassins story.

I also had to pause during episode 23 of Whispers of Fate last night to go to sleep, because I was so tired. I have my quibbles with this show, but once it started feeling like particularly magical xianxia instead of a lukewarm rehash of Mysterious Lotus Casebook it really picked up for me. The action scenes are so good! Tang Lici dancing to save that array, and that one music/string puppets scene live in my head rent-free. A Shei and Tang Lici still have negative chemistry, which does drag things down, but overall I'm enjoying it.

Also, today is my birthday! (For another two hours.) I went out to lunch with friends and exhausted myself at a market, and I'm looking forward to a sleep in tomorrow.

Reading:

DNF - The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - I've really liked most of this author's work that I've read (Strange Weather in Tokyo is beautiful, for example), but this turns out to be a boring mosaic novel about a sexual predator from the pov of the women he messes around. The back cover copy describes him as a [curious and complicated man whose great capacity for love may well be the course of his downfall] and like... that makes him sound interesting, and he's not. I assumed it meant tragic ill-advised love affairs and not, you know, straight up rapist. Not remotely what I'm in the mood for.

Watching:

Blood River:

Episode 22

Sword deities! Just hanging out, as they like to do. I like Bai Hehaui's red dress. I like her friendship with Su Muyu and absolutely do not ship them in the slightest.

Also, I love that she calls his umbrella (that Changhe made for him) his treasure.

Episode 24

They're like, look at this censors! This show is definitely sufficiently heterosexual! And meanwhile I do not believe Su Muyu has the slightest interest in seeing a naked woman. Also LOL they made a big fuss about how unclothed she would be during the procedure and she was still mostly clothed.

And how close Su Muyu and Su Changhe sit together at dinner! Ridiculously so!

Episode 26

is so cool! Baby Tang Lian! Mu Qingyang fanboying over Lei Yunhe! SMY and SCH and Mu Yumo looking so damn cool as they make plans together!

I also watched 10 episodes of Whispers of Fate. I thought the first few episodes were pretty rough, tbh, but I stuck it out until Xiao Shunyao showed up in episode 4. The overall show started to improve from that point. May just be on my TV, but the first bunch of episodes looked really cheap, and I do feel the sound stage-y ness of it all with the non-moving backgrounds. Also the beginning felt like a lukewarm rehash of many things, including but not limited to Mysterious Lotus Casebook and every past fantasy character Luo Yunxi has ever played. But I feel like it's gone sufficiently xianxia nonsense now that I'm drawn in and the visual flourishes seem to get more interesting as it goes on. And also, so much it's that guy! Like, it's that guy from Love Game in Eastern Fantasy! And Bai Shu is in this, too! & etc. etc.

Still don't love the older man-younger woman vibe they seem to be pushing, but that's just because that's my squick, and it's not like it takes up too much screen time. I also feel like a bunch of the actors are giving the most mediocre performances of their career (Riley Wang, you're usually better than this!), for which I blame the director, but I've seen worse, so...

I'm fully caught up on Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! and This Monster Wants to Eat Me as well. I would say the latter is kind of slow in a way that stretches my disbelief, but I am overall enjoying it, and the freak 4 freak nature of the main pairing of the former is A+.