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This is a full two months after my last writeup so clearly I'm running out of steam (I did also take a detour to fall in and out of obsession with Love Like the Galaxy and Heart of Genius), but nevertheless I persist!
( Thoughts on Episode 13 )

I wanted to translate the scene where Shaoshang and her harem gather and then she proceeds to roast her aunt's ex-boyfriend, as it was one of my favorite scenes in the novel and the drama. Unfortunately, this is a very long scene so I've only gotten through the first part so far. I already regret starting this segment so early in the novel (why didn't I just start my translation when they were at the banquet and the scholar had started telling his "story about a friend" already???) but I'm in too deep now. Anyways, this starts midway through chapter 46.

( Partial Translation of Chapter 46 - Shaoshang Meets Her Aunt's Ex-Boyfriend )

To be continued when I start translating Chapter 47

When I watched the trailer for Love Like the Galaxy, I enjoyed it enough that I immediately started reading the webnovel. I finished the webnovel a few days ago (and loved it!), and am enjoying the dramas as well so far. But since there isn't a translation of this webnovel yet, I figured I might translate the arrow scene for anyone who was interested. This is my first shot at translation, and it is a rough pass that I was too impatient to fully proofread/edit so no guarantees as to accuracy, smoothness, consistency of translation, etc.

( Translation of ~The Arrow Scene~ )

I have no excuse for why this came almost two months after Episode 11. Maybe I'm losing steam? Here's hoping I stay motivated enough to finish this project though!

( Thoughts on Episode 12 )And that's it until next episode!

( Thoughts on Episode 11 )

( Thoughts on Episode 10 )

( Thoughts on Episode 9 )

( Thoughts on Episode 8 )

( Thoughts on Episode 7 (much delayed ... I was on vacation but now I'm back!) )

( Thoughts on Episode 6 )

( Thoughts on Episode 5 )

( Thoughts on Episode 4 )

( Thoughts on Episode 3 )

( Thoughts on Episode 2 )

I'm still getting back in the habit of regularly checking my flist, but nevertheless I'm posting something (something beyond "I'm still alive") for the first time in ages.

I’m doing a rewatch of The Story of Minglan, which is one of my favorite dramas of all time. This is my umpteenth rewatch, and I will theoretically be doing writeups of my thoughts at the end of each episode (although I have historically lacked the discipline to complete projects that I start, so we’ll see).

( An Introduction )

( Thoughts on Episode 1 )

Three months into the pandemic, I stopped checking Dreamwidth briefly, and then I did that thing where every time I intended to check Dreamwidth, I would think of all the posts I'd need to catch up on my flist and would decide to check back later, and then just ... never did ... for a year and a half ...

I am now declaring amnesty for myself, or whatever it's called, where I'm going to start checking Dreamwidth again! from today onwards! and just give myself permission to not catch up on anything that I missed.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Find Yourself

This is a contemporary romantic drama about a “leftover” woman — a 32-year old woman who has never been in a relationship (never been kissed, etc.), whose parents are trying not to pressure her (but who are very obviously anxious that she be married and whose anxiety leaks through) but who is strongly feeling the pressure from society to settle for a guy that is okay, and settle down and get married. The common consensus is that she is too old to dream about things like love, while she is very much a romantic at heart and is still waiting for true love.

When her college almost-boyfriend who she had a "if we're not married by XXX, let's get together" pact with (who her twin brother refers to as her last chance at true love) shows up married, she is disheartened but never fear! Very shortly thereafter, she ends up in a love triangle between a 22-year old intern at her company and a 37-year-old CEO she keeps running into.

(Her endgame OTP is the 22-year-old intern.)

The rest of this review is going under a spoiler cut because even though the ending (they end up together!) is obvious given the genre, the way everything comes up about is very cleverly done.

( Cut for Spoilers (I know this is just a romance, but it’s still best unspoiled!) )

To give you a non-spoilery sense of how much I loved this:

When watching, I got a little antsy about waiting for the other shoe to drop re: certain plotlines so halfway through, I skipped ahead and watched the last 2 episodes and yet when I went back to fill in the episodes I missed, I still got obsessed and stayed up until 4am watching, multiple nights in a row, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Upon finishing the drama, I immediately went to AO3 and read all the fic for this show (other than the super-long AU fics because I didn't see the point in AUs for this show), which granted is what I do for many things and it's not like there are a lot of fics for this show in the first place but the point to note is that all the fics for this show on AO3 are in Chinese. So yes, I read Chinese fics for this show because I wanted more just that much. (In case you were wondering, other than the two super-long AUs that I skipped, every single one of the fics on this show are PWP, which I think is because the Chinese government censors explicit fics on Chinese sites? There were definitely fics where they posted only the chapters with sex to AO3 and there were non-sex plot-chapters where you would have to go to a different site/app to find, which I did not do because that seemed like a lot of work.)

Final Verdict: Would Recommend (Again: would STRONGLY recommend)

Joy of Life

I started but have not yet completed other high school / college romances, so for now I'm moving onto the next category — shows I really, really, really liked.

This review is going under a spoiler cut because unlike romance dramas, there are a lot of important plot spoilers in this one and you really benefit from going in unspoiled.
( Read more... )

Final Verdict: Would Recommend (in fact, given the category this is in, would STRONGLY recommend)

Unrequited Love

This was another drama I watched because it’s as on Netflix and easily accessible and seemed to be a little low-key. There was nothing particular objectionable about it, but it definitely doesn’t stand out in comparison to the other dramas in the same genre that I watched around the same time.

The show follows a college student who attends the same university as her high school crush — a crush that she sorta-stalked throughout high school but who never knew she existed. I mean — I guess she didn’t actually stalk him? But she kept a journal chronicling every single interaction they ever had (including, for example, if he walked by her in the convenience store to get a bottle of water). The whole thing struck me as kind of weird and stalker-y but also non-invasive (she chronicled everything she could and was always watching him but didn’t go out of her way to find personal information / stalk him).

Anyways, in college she no longer stalks him, but when she runs into him, he starts taking an interest in her. Their romance develops, at which point you learn that in high school they actually had an almost-romance going on (they were leaving secret notes for each other, but while she knew his identity, he didn’t know hers; it’s a long story) before his ex-girlfriend sabotaged it by pretending to be the person leaving the secret notes.

I actually liked the way the romance developed when they were in college — the female lead’s personality is very low-key and observant, which is an interesting change from some of the other female leads in similar dramas. She holds the world at a distance, she’s really smart, and I liked the way she dealt with a lot of the conflicts and issues that came up for her in the drama.

What I didn’t like was the volume of misunderstandings in this drama, which frustrated me. I also had little to no interest in all of the subplots / side-characters. I didn’t care about her roommate’s asshole boyfriend or said roommate’s creepy & manipulative new love interest. I didn’t care about her high school friend actually stalking the female lead’s cousin (honestly, the high school friend was very creepy and I still don’t understand why she decided to betray the female lead later on in the drama).

And then, there was the source of all the misunderstandings, the male lead’s ex-girlfriend, who was also quite stalker-y (@ex-girlfriend, he said you are broken up and doesn’t want to go out with you! Why do you keep visiting his campus and trying to go on dates with him and hanging out with all of his friends and implying to all of them that you are all his girlfriend? Also @male lead, when your ex-girlfriend shows up and tells everyone she is your girlfriend, you need to Use Your Words and explicitly tell people that she is not). She was everything you would expect the evil secondary female lead to be but frankly, I didn’t understand why. She put a whole lot of effort into manipulating and stalking the male lead, and sabotaging the female lead, and that just seemed like a lot of effort for a high schooler for a guy who wasn’t that worth it. Maybe I’m just spoiled by dramas that didn’t have actual villains, or had villains with actual character development.

Final Verdict: Would Not Recommend (unless you’re already a fan of the genre)

Put Your Head On My Shoulder:

This is (again) based on a web-novel (that I have not read because it is not completely translated) by the same person who write the web-novel for A Love So Beautiful.

I finished this one only a few days ago and I honestly liked this a lot! This was very unexpected because I only started watching it because it was on Netflix and thus was easier to Chromecast onto my TV. I had not looked up anything about it beforehand, and had no expectations, and it was surprisingly addictive! It was very sweet and fluffy. There was basically no conflict, which I appreciated. Most importantly, the male lead is super sweet.

One thing I’ve been pondering recently is how I feel like, in the decade that passed since I last watched Asian dramas obsessively, the classic cdrama M/F pair shifted from a Asshole Guy / Spunky Girl Standing Up To Him dynamic to more of a Sweet and Loving Guy / Ditzy Girl Who Relies On Him dynamic. I haven’t consumed enough Asian dramas yet (though trust me I’m getting there) to know whether there has actually been a broader shift or if it’s just the dramas I’ve been watching. This mostly comes to mind because (1) I watched an episode of the Meteor Garden reboot and it defanged the F4’s assholery significantly — which, to be fair, I do see how a modern audience wouldn’t take as kindly to some of the F4’s truly spectacular awfulness from the original versions and (2) I watched Go Go Squid last Christmas which honestly surprised me because given the set-up and the way the male lead is introduced in that, I really expected him to be your classic cold, aloof, arrogant asshole who is rude to the female lead on their first meeting — and yet every time I thought he was going to say something mean, he would do something really sweet and considerate (although always in cold and distant manner) instead.

Anyways, this was all to say, the male lead in this drama is very cold and aloof, but he’s SO sweet! Honestly, it’s almost like ... well, let me explain the premise first.

When the drama starts, our female lead has a high school guy friend who goes to the same university as her, who she hangs out with all the time, and who she tells us (through voiceover) she’s pretty sure she’s going to end up with eventually. She’s liked him since high school and is pretty sure he likes her. Then she meets the male lead (who happens to be the high school guy’s roommate) and slowly ends up falling in love with him instead over the course of the drama.

Given the setup — that there’s a guy she has a lot of history with (but who takes her kind of for granted and who later says he never seriously pursued her before because he didn’t want to risk their friendship but then got jealous when the male lead showed up) who she likes and who thinks is going to be it for her, and then another guy shows up and starts being really sweet to her — it’s almost as if the archetype of the sweet secondary lead in any other drama showed up and suddenly became the male lead in this one.

Anyways, I really liked this — as mentioned, there was basically no conflict. The conflict for the first two-thirds of the show is whether he will be able to Confess His Feelings for her in a way that she will understand. (He is a physics student; his first attempt, which he workshopped with his fellow star physics student and his physics professor, was to confess to her through physics equations that of course she did not understand.) After they get together, there are conflicts but there are minor and don’t take much screen time. There is no Big Misunderstanding, which is very refreshing. Oh! And there’s this hilarious scene where the first time they have sex evidently does not go well — it cuts to afterwards, and she goes, “Well, you know, you always say that there’s some gap between theory and practice” and he proceeds to very determinedly Google (Er... Baidu) the shit out of sex, taking notes along the way, because he’s determined to get better at it. I cracked up.

Final Verdict: Would Recommend