Books

Still reading The Priory of the Orange Tree. ISMM is also back with vol 5!!!!!!!!

TV

Remembrance of Things Past
12-episode drama, centered around Dongbei women in their late 20s and 30s who live and work in Beijing. Thoughts and content warnings here.

Who's the Murderer s6
Although I initially jumped into the show for Zhang Xincheng, this has sort of become my emotional support LARP variety show. XD It's a lot more enjoyable the more you watch it, as you get more familiar with the regular players, the inside jokes, and their relationships. My favorite part is always the final voting of each case where everyone privately casts their vote for who they think the murderer is, and explains their reasoning to the camera. But I got really attached to the regular players, including Sasa, who I initially disliked because I found his humor too slapstick. It's just really fun to see "veterans" be extremely comfortable with each other, and Zhang Xincheng (the new kid) get more comfortable with both the game and his seniors. I also like the cases best when they go ham with the plot. I truly wasn't expecting to see bodyswap, space/time bubbles that led to complicated time mechanics, and aliens, so I'm very delighted.

My favorite S6 case was case#5, with the town of sad people. It got a bit dark (suicide, depression, trauma, and some horror), but the puzzles were satisfying and I felt that the characters were the most compelling, with very funny banter and puns. (Unsurprisingly this is one of the episodes that ZXC is in, and my favorite role for him. XD)

Games

Sadly I wasn't able to play any games during the holidays, but I did get to do a virtual escape room with lunarflares! Would recommend this as a pandemic/remote social activity!

Movember Virtual Moscape (link)
Although it is called an escape room, it's actually the opposite of that, since what we did was INFILTRATE. :D One can do it solo but it's a pain to switch between screens, so playing it with at least one friend is best. To play as a team, you can either enter the virtual room individually and just simultaneously play the game, or have one person screenshare their playthrough. We decided to go the screenshare route because I had internet problems—luna screenshared the playthrough and entered all the solutions, while I screenshared my interactions with a character. You need a Facebook/Messenger account for the interactive portion, but you're not talking to a real person, so it's FINE.

The first half of the game was Puzzles I Did Not Like To Do (decoding stuff, reading instructions, and sometimes Googling—I was very happy to just listen to luna do everything). The second half was a lot more interactive (talking to an AI on Messenger), with Puzzles I Was Happy To Be Part Of (examining sceneries, unlocking hidden doors, figuring out the passwords, choose your own adventure, and some internet sleuthing).

The game design and experience were really impressive, with an effort to be accessible. They had real websites and Facebook accounts that you had to scour for clues, and very cool visualizations that I associate more with console games (luna particularly had the time with her life rotating the 3D object). You alternate between entering answers in the main room, which is a virtual desktop computer, and messaging the results of your investigation to your fictional colleague. For the color-coded portion, there is an alternate chart for the colorblind (we aren't colorblind, but we referred to it anyway), as well as the option to turn on video captions. The Youtube videos only have auto-generated captions, but you get messaged a recap/summary of the information that was in the video.

Gameplay is estimated to be 90 minutes, but there's no time limit. It took us more than 2 hours since there were only 2 of us and my connection kept dropping.

Tools: we used an internet browser for the game, Discord for voicecall and screenshare, and Facebook/Messenger to interact with a fictional character.

Fanworks

I spent my New Year's Eve (and part of New Year's) subbing/translating I Only Have Four Nights with You, the Vogue short film featuring Zhang Xincheng (of course) and Tong Yao, to English. It's a 10-minute adult love story that unspools the present-day established-relationship tensions back to its past promises. I have no basis of comparison for Tong Yao's performance, but I've heard that it was exciting (and confusing XD) to see her in this role! On Zhang Xincheng's part, he was uncharacteristically restrained and introverted—I want to see him cast more in these types of roles where he doesn't have the wholesome protagonist halo.

Watch on YouTube

And a song translation attempt, though incomplete (subbed video on the Twitter link below):

tried to translate the most evocative parts of the version of 曾經我也想過一了百了 (I Also Thought About Ending It All) that Zhang Xincheng covered for Who’s the Murderer! the pre-chorus imagery has been rattling in my head all month pic.twitter.com/798jCMmSSI

— (@halfcactus) December 29, 2021