gaignun | Reading

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.

kalloway

The top half of a model of Wing Gundam cradled in a hand wearing a black glove. It is mostly white, blue, and yellow, and is looking modestly into the camera.

I bought MG Wing Gundam ver.Ka back in April of 2018, which is several lifetimes ago now. Looking at that date, I momentarily wondered how I'd managed to get to a nerd convention. The Summer of the Doors, however, was a little closer to actually happening in summer; that ridiculousness started in May.

I don't think the Summer of the Doors, and by that I do mean actual physical doors not The Doors, had anything to do with not tackling Wing back then. It was more that Wing is a MG and at that point I'd never actually finished an MG. It took until this year to finish MG Infinite Justice and I'd started him back in what, 2010?

I've actually finished Wing, but I like this half-built photo best. He's got a lot of personality and while building went from rather morose to downright adorable and has settled into somewhat resigned. (I think he's cute though.)

Well, finished aside from waterslide decals, which I need both practice with and to make some decisions because like many MGs, Wing comes with a ridiculous amount of decals and the instructional photos and diagrams honestly look overdone. I also have a tiny Heero Yuy still on the runner and the urge to paint him as a youngster Gai Murakumo is intense.

The rest of my week involves getting the kitchen under control so I can keep cleaning up Monster High dolls for the nerd convention in a couple of weeks.

So much to sort through, so little time and energy.

harukami

Hello, friend! I didn't get a letter up before yuletide stuff closed but here it is now! If you started writing off the actual signups that is totally fine, though, that should have all the info you need.

( Yuletide Letter )

thawrecka

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+.

thawrecka

I read: Salem's Lot by Stephen King for my book club, and I think everyone who claimed it was scarier than Twilight owes me $5. Though King does have it right in his introduction when he says it's a bit like Peyton Place; certainly enough of it was a soap opera with occasional appearance of vampires that I compared it to that time on Days of Our Lives when Marlena was possessed by the devil, but there continued to be non-demon possession storylines... Well, it was fine overall, I guess. (I can't truly comparee it to Peyton Place, the book, but I've watched the movie, which I had a better time with than with Salem's Lot.) And in comparison to Dracula, which I know partially inspired it... it is more sexist than Dracula, and has fewer interesting characters. I continue to be convinced that King is better when he writes short.

I watched: Well, I'm continuing to watch episodes of Blood River as they come out, and as you can guess, I'm getting increasingly unhinged about it. Not only because Su Changhe and Su Muyu love each other very much, but also because they're bringing other people into lives and trying to establish a lovely domesticity with friends and sort-of-family, but I've seen The Blood of Youth and I know where this goes. The slow motion trainwreck of this all, where if you didn't know better you might think they're dragging themselves out of the muck, but you do know better, you know they'll never be able to escape the darkness they grew up in... Absolute killer, and the fight scenes are totally bomb.

Current Music: Hozier - First Light

thawrecka

Like Real People Do (607 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 暗河传 | Blood River (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Su Changhe/Su Muyu
Characters: Su Changhe (The Blood of Youth), Su Muyu (The Blood of Youth)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene
Summary:

A little extra moment set during the flashback in episode 14.

kalloway

I am signed up for WritingMonth and so can you! If you want to be buddies, I'm 'kalloway' there as well. ^_^ My goal is 100 stories but that is 100 very short stories. Last year I managed 80 despite my life being absolutely on fire so maybe I can manage the full 100 and I think a We Didn't Start The Fire joke goes here or something.

Did the pre-signup for a secret santa in the one little gunpla discord I'm in. Offered to subsidize a local friend for the next month if necessary. (probably necessary) Gonna try to toss some cash at the food pantry. (obstructed more by their hours being counter to mine than anything - obviously a me-problem) Still debating how much I want to do with

holiday_wishes, though I suspect the annual 'I can give more!' will envelop me at some point even if I want to humbug.

Comic-con is on the 22nd so I suppose I need to actually start sorting through things. I'm burning some vacation time the week before so at least I'll be mildly rested and hopefully so tired of looking at my stuff that I just toss it in the bags of whoever walks by our table. Or something.

Finished watching the quarter's JFF films and will, as always, aspire to watch the next batch before the last possible minute.

FRANS

Reading

(no subject)

Several Summers Later

Yuletide Letter 2025

(no subject)

(no subject)

Blood River fic

I'm not even doing a roundup this month.

Profile