February media log

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

3.5 - I liked the first half better than the second half where the plot escalates but everything still feels kinda simplistic and the baking becomes less defensive. :P But it's still a fun, charming book, one I would recommend IRL (for example, to my relative's teenage daughter who's not enjoying her father's fantasy novel recommendations). I was invested in the characters and their familiars.

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Nirvana in Fire (novel)
A groupread that started May 2022, lol. My not-so-live livetweet thread is here.

Overall, I think I prefer the drama over the novel for how it streamlined the novel, restructured the storytelling and added new dimensions, and for how well it brought the novel's characters to life, but the novel ending feels more right to me in terms of how it ends for Lin Shu. I liked how much more quiet the final showdown was, how the shadow of (highlight for spoilers) Tainainai's death continues to loom over Lin Shu, and for how Lin Shu smiles at the end:

(novel-ending spoiler) 放眼十万男儿，奔腾如虎，环顾爱将挚友，倾心相持。当年梅岭寒雪中所失去的那个世界，似乎又隐隐回到了面前。烟尘滚滚中，梅长苏地唇边露出了一抹飞扬明亮地笑容，不再回眸帝京，而是拨转马头，催动已是四蹄如飞的坐骑，毅然决然地奔向了他所选择地未来，也是他所选择的结局。

I do think that the drama lost some of Liyang's backstory, and Yujin's more obvious deftness, but their opaqueness in the drama made them interesting, still. However, I'm sad that we never got to see Meng Zhi hug MCS. >:(

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光渊 (Modu cdrama)

This has been quite the rollercoaster because I was trying to ignore the rumor about Modu cdrama being cleared to air and about to drop, which turned out to be true. Even more bizarre, the show dropped 8 episodes only a few hours after it was confirmed to have gotten its airing license!?!? And then it just stopped updating after that, LOL.

There's also been just a lot of friction about the cdrama on Twitter, and from what I could see, a lot of it was huge conversations about what people assumed of the cdrama adaptation, and not the actual cdrama adaptation. Now that it's been two weeks and all 8 eps have human-translated English subs, maybe it's calmed down a bit and people are assessing the actual show now!

Anyway my first impressions are that the cdrama does stick pretty close to the book! But also it feels to me that they had to cut out scenes or add new ones for the first case, and fill up the airtime, so the procedural aspects for the first 5 eps are really, really bad (especially episode 5). The character relationships and banter were preserved (these parts are still so fun and cute!), though, apart from the expected erasure of Luo Wenzhou as an openly gay man. The quality gap between eps 1-5 to eps 6-8 is quite huge.

I'm presently using the break to catch up on the audiodrama's final season and revisit the plot with fresh eyes. ♥

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Misc things

This is mostly a reminder for me, but:

Leonor Will Never Die (Filipino movie): coming to Netflix on March 17

Mula sa Buwan (Filipino musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac): streaming online for a limited time on March 20+.