Media log - early November

[halfcactus]

Hamilton

The show we went to was mostly understudies (no Rachel Ann, so sad!) and I was VERY distracted during the first act because I was hyperaware of every single person who coughed, sniffled, hummed or sang along, plus there were so many latecomers (including a couple who shuffled in during Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down).) Someone in my row had their phone alarm go off. Etc etc

Other than that, the stage design was so much more enjoyable live. Less enjoyable: not being able to distinguish characters without prior knowledge, because they spend a lot of the time in uniform (not color-coded like the women). Our Angelica had a little world and vision of her own, which was entertaining for me (but not to other people jsldkas;ap); but she couldn't rap or enunciate, which was much less entertaining. Watching it live also made me realize how difficult Burr's role was, especially in the first act where he's much more restrained.

The line they changed for us was "vice president is not a real job anyway", which did not land very well with our audience that night (maybe because we had a politician watching with us then??? j/k I think we just didn't have a good crowd).

My Five Elements Lack You (49/107)

I actually stopped reading this for a while because it got boring. The overarching plot was never interesting to me in the first place, but the cases themselves got uninteresting and unsatisfying, especially with the author paring down the squad to just the two leads + Shen Yiqiong, unlike the tournament arc which had more characters playing off each other. So it was a slog for 15 or so chapters. But it's picked up a bit for me in the paper friends + New Year chapters, where they're back in the household, with a new supernatural friend in tow (a tiny little paper friend!!! that they must raise to not become a murder baby). AND once I get past chapter 53 the chapters are gonna be significantly shorter (6k characters instead of 9k haha).

I almost wish this hadn’t been written as a BL bc this author is trying so hard to get the romance going but the romance isn't really romance-ing...

Also got tired of the jokes about Shen Yiqiong's complexion from the MC's POV—the characters are both Han Chinese and it's humor that is well within the realms of what I hear spontaneously in real life as an Asian in Asia (among good friends who aren't sensitive about it), but if you keep making the same jokes, it's just obnoxious at best, mean-spirited at worst--especially when the jokes are made by the MC, who is fair-skinned and meant to be read as more conventionally attractive.

(This book is otherwise pretty good at not being Weird about different lore and practices—the first case was about an artifact from Thailand, and the shadiness comes from the character who uses the kuman thong for nefarious purposes and with very nefarious methods, but the country, artifact, or sorcery itself is not nefarious.) (It is, however, very stereotypical about white people being wusses.)

ch47: RIP to those students (not unexpected but still upsetting), though we never found out what the deal with their deaths + unnatural postmortem condition are—surely we will circle back to this later on????

We've now had multiple storylines where characters can canonically change genders... The first from a talisman that tried to "fulfill the conditions" for the spell that way (a woman was needed, so it created one), and the second, more vague—there's a character who can temporarily take on the appearance of another person, and the ML has made him stuck in the body he transformed into.

Mysterious Lotus Casebook

I can't tell if I want to write a separate and long-winded post about this, or end up being too lazy to summarize my thoughts, but anyway, we finished it! The last few eps were not great (for many different reasons), but had some good dialogue... I kept my expectations low, so the show didn't actually disappoint me, but I was way more annoyed with the Nanyin storyline than I expected to be. (I thought I had high tolerance but the """twists""" at the end hit my rage button lol.)

Shortbox Comics

I spent all of October trying to decide what to get and facilitating a 5-way trade, and naturally now that the hard part is over I have no motivation to read hahahaha

I did finish reading what I got for myself: Birds of the Storm, Light Through Memory, and Minnow Soup. All of them were visually satisfying, and Light Through Memory was an interesting experience.

Ripe Town (8/12)

Now that we're familiar with the relevant characters as well as the factions in the story, I'm invested. There are also more group dynamics at this point, compared to the first half where it was all very individualistic with no one you could trust, but I still wonder about the show's stance on morality and what the conclusion will be. The episodes are getting longer though... (I have been duly warned that the last ep is an hour and 40 minutes long, so at least I won't be shocked. XD)

Time Concert: Old Friends ep5

G.E.M. performing 平行世界/Parallel, which I just learned that she wrote herself. She plays the piano here too ♥ Prior to that, she explains that while she wrote it for a movie, she had her beloved maternal grandma, who passed away when she was 19, in mind during the writing process. ;___;

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[eglantiere]

everybody is being very mysterious and sad about the end of WLC, and i'm worried! i want to get into it, but if it's something atrocious waiting after all the investment... was it simply like, we no-homoed your gays? tragic death? babies every after?

[halfcactus]

It’s likely just the tragic death, which is similar to NiF but it did not hit me as hard. :P They left it a bit ambiguous, which might have contributed to the restlessness afterwards. Overall I thought it was still a good death that was appropriately devastating for the people he left behind, I just wasn’t emotional about it because one of the major contributing factors was narratively dissatisfying. It’s a bit of a “princess and the pea” situation for me where I fixate on that one thing that feels off.

(And without spoiling the particulars—this might not bother a lot of people as much, but the show also uses kinda very racist sensibilities for the major overarching storyline, all the way to the end. Theoretically you can just close your eyes and not look at it, but like I’m still quite salty haha. Forewarned is forearmed!)

Would still rate this show a 7/10 for being watchable and having a number of aspects that I thought were really, really well done. I loved the trio dynamics and the NiF-like tropes of identity porn and terminally poisoned MC! It’s just best to adjust your expectations—it’s nowhere near as tightly plotted and paced as NiF (so many plot holes and contrivances, and the pacing in the second half gets bad), and the characters and relationships aren’t as complex. The villains were all a bit too cartoony. 😅 But the emotional relationship between the three main characters (one of which is one-sided eternal rivalry) is still great, as is the lovers-to-friends relationship between the main character and his ex! AND there’s a dog!!!!!!!!

[eglantiere]

oooh, thank you! re: racism: that's good to know, because I thought I don't care and then it very comprehensively spoiled the back half of TSOMD for me, to the point that I kinda stopped being fannish about it. You Never Know -_-

[halfcactus]

Ah, I didn't know that about Sleuth (which was somewhere in my to-watch list), so that's good to know! I heard the show itself was pretty hit-or-miss. I'm sad that a show that was otherwise enjoyable got ruined for you. ;__;

MLC had the benefit of one of the villains being born of the exotically evil bloodline but not really subscribing to everyone else's villain newsletter, as she was too busy vibing and being a scenery-chewing yandere (I ended up finding her highly enjoyable, unexpectedly! Her actress was so fun hehe).

[eglantiere]

the first half of TSOMD is genuinely super fun and I recommend it for real and for ot3 vibes. but the mytharc makes literally zero sense, is stuffed with idiot balls on all levels AND goes hard with the what if profiling police brutality and torture... good? slant.

(the other problem is that a lot of it hinges on being super loyal to the emperor who's supposed to be amazing and the guy is such a stupid nothingburger omg)

[superborb]

I feel like there's an interesting post about MLC somewhere, but I'm far too lazy to write it myself lol. It's just not good enough to warrant that much effort...

[halfcactus]

It has a lot of parts that I think warrants some good discussion and meta, I just wish that the strong parts had been strong enough to hold up the show when it started to fall apart. (For me, it’s mainly the final reveals that kind of undid all the thoughtfulness it had with its main character who was otherwise so well done.)