Once a Stranger

Read a handful of Yuletide fics. Especially enjoyed those three:

An Autumn Dire (The Last Unicorn)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/52333504/chapters/132390526

And so the unicorn left her forest for the second time.

The writing is beautiful and it feels like it really addresses the themes from the book.

Some Things That No One Teaches You (The Left Hand of Darkness)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/52498021

When I woke that morning, it was with the bone deep surety that kemmer was upon me.

A skillful might-have-been with very delicate writing.

In the Wet Dark (Tokyo Babylon)

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2023/works/52255429

Subaru is comforted by Seishirou after a difficult case, and an unexpected kiss becomes more.

A well written piece of smut with very interesting PoV work on Seishirou.

we concluded my Exalted essence game because two characters wanted to go in too divergent directions to continue

I'm not entirely unhappy to have ended it because i was starting to be stumped about how to continue anyway, but I wish we had a finalized version of the rules so I could start a new game with an all Dragon Blooded cast instead (taking inspiration from Fire Emblem Three Houses).

I've been catching up on anime watching since I've been back home. There's actually a lot of interesting shows this season!

There's the sequel to Spy x Family, which is reliably good and entertaining (a little bit too much tbh, it feels a bit too much like a heartwarming product at times).

There's Raven of the Inner Palace, an ancient China fantasy Josei adaptation, which is gorgeous. Storytelling is a bit rote, but decent enough to watch.

There's Gundam : Witch from Mercury, which is taking some cues from Utena and therefore grabbed my attention even though I've never watched a Gundam series before and don't much like Mecha action. It's been very good so far (I'm 3 episodes in it).

There's a modern adaptation of Urusei Yatsura which I'm curious about because I loved the old one when I was a child. Not sure it's the sort of material that has aged well enough for 2020 but I want to check out another episode before I rule one way or the other.

Am I missing out on any other good anime series this season ?

Finished watching The Long Ballad. Overall enjoyed it a lot.

The premise is: Li Changge is a princess of the early Tang dynasty whose parents and whole family get killed in a palace counter-coup. At first she swears vengeance and goes on the run; along the way of her journey she meets a general of the not!Goturk (because of censorship >_>;) who falls in love with her.

The thing is enjoyed the most was the music. Both the OP and the ED are kickass and the soundtrack overall was great which helped immensely the epic feel of the story. The characters are overall very charismatic. Li Changge is adequately badass, her LI is stoic in an endearing way. There are also some very adorable secondary characters in a timid princess who end up having an awesome character arc of growth, and the sinister warrior originally tasked with capturing and killing Li Changge who also has an awesome character arc of growth where he falls in love with the timid princess and is adorably confused about it. One of the thing i liked is that there's entirely evil people (asides from a few bit characters), there's a lot of sympathy for the antagonists as well as some switching along the way. The main theme is one of renouncing vengeance as not worth it.

Sometimes I found the show lacked a little bit direction though. The main antagonist is properly introduced a bit too late to be a real thrust of the story (and frankly, their plan seem to far fetched to be worth worrying seriously about). Li Changge doesn't have enough plans after the very beginning either to provide that impetus.

However it's really a small criticism. I liked that series a lot overall.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds

I'm pretty new to Star Trek, having only starting watching it with Discovery. So it's not that easy to appeal to me by hitting on the nostalgia button. Nevertheless SNW really hit the spot; with overall excellent episodes and characters. It's not without some minor points that failed. A couple of episodes weren't as good as others, I was disappointed that we didn't get more episodes centering on Una or Ortega; and it's been also disappointing that asides from a blink-and-you'll-miss it nonbinary character and bisexual Chapel; the show has been lacking in queer content. At least it's on point in term of slashiness, with La'an (my favourite so far) and Una having some very interesting chemistry. The final of the season was a bit too referential to really work for me, but was still solid enough. I very much look forward to a second season (although so far, I still prefer Discovery as it is after it went through its growing pain).

Ms Marvel

I only read the first few issues of the comics before I ended up giving up on comics altogether about that time. I remember liking it a lot and finding it surprisingly relatable. The series has been following in those footsteps very well; being an overall excellent, heartwarming series centering on an awesome character and having a lot of relatable moments (American Jews might not understand why bitching about the female partition at your local religious center being such a second rate emplacement is such a relatable moment, but oh yeah). It suffers a bit from lacking focus however, and the Clandestines overall didn't work for me at all as an antagonist, from their overly sudden shift to extreme violence to their leader's eventual overly sudden shift to, errr, suicide and giving up her path. I felt pretty meh about tying them with such a broad and common mythology as djinns, though it worked a bit better latter where it seemed more that the myth predated them and just were assigned to them by locals. The whole passage in Pakistan, and lengthy flashback, while interesting in its own right, sucked the passing right out of a too short series to contain them. It also broke us from too many of the supporting cast that was allowing the show to shine. In the end the heart of the series were in the family and community relationships, though, and those really shone all the way through and including in the ending.
In the end, none of the MCU series have been perfect, but I'll have a hard time picking my favorite between MsMarvel, Hawkeye and WandaVision.

Obi Wan Kenobi

This one is a bit older and I think I have less to say about it. I'm not really sure where up to I am in term of my Star Wars fanishness. It's never been one of my big fandom; but I did read a few Obikin fics back in the days on the down low, and I tend to consider Obi Wan my favourite Star Wars character from that context. Yet I obviously felt like a stranger to most of the fannish reactions I saw to the series. I did enjoy it. It especially shone thanks to the actors. Little Leia being amazing, Ewan McGregor being Ewan McGregor and therefore amazing. And so on. Lots of solid character work overall. I actually really like Reva's character arc and found its conclusion very moving and interesting. The storytelling wasn't quite as good and honestly felt a bit meandering. I feel this series could have been a bit shorter actually, and that there were a bit too many episodes with unlikely rescues. But overall a solid series.

I'm halfway through the Long Ballad. I still like the main characters a great deal, as well as the music but the story has lost a part of its appeal since moving the action in the grassland. I guess the setting is less in depth and detailed comparatively. I hope the action picks up again.

(However I was very glad when I realized I knew which historical figures were part of the story! Finally my watching You Tube history videos is paying off XDDDD)

I'm 5 episodes into The Long Ballad, and so far I'm liking it a lot. Finding the OP and ED especially earwormy. The story isn't much so far but it's told in a very entrancing way and the main character is compelling (not as sure yet about the LI but he seems cool as well).

Finished reading the Priory of the Orange Tree. Found it disappointing overall. It's well written but I found the characters and the story to entirely lack in appeal. Just very luckwarm and non compelling feelings overall.

well Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was disappointing

( spoilers )

another one for archiving purpose

Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng’s relationship as told through songs



List of songs:

1. Hey, Brother by Aviccii : Reconciliation?
2. Summer Skeletons by Radical Faces : Childhood
3. Broken Home by Papa Roach : Family Tensions
4. Push the Limit by Enigma : To Know What is Impossible and Do it Anyway
5. Save Your Life by Les Friction : The Xuanwu Cave
6. Hail, Hail by Pearl Jam: Fracture Lines
7. Nothing Will Be Bigger than Us by Hurts: Promise of Twin Prides
8. Our Solemn Hour by Within Temptation : The Fall of Lotus Pier
9. Running Up That Hill by Within Temptation : Sacrifice
10. Wolves with No Teeth by Of Monsters and Men : The Wen
11. Ghost Lights by Woodkid : The Yiling Burial Mounds
12. Libera Me from Hell by Tarantula & Yuri Kasahara: The Yiling Patriarch
13. Seven Devils by Florence + The Machine : Sunshot
14. Nobody Loves You by Garbage : After the War
15. Bullets by Creed : Rescuing the Wen
16. Start a War by The Nationals : I You Insist on Protecting Them Then I Can’t Protect You
17. Second Sight by Placebo: Tell the World That I Defected
18. Unsustainable by Muse : Qiongqi Path Ambush
19. Brother by Sam Tinnezs : Consequences
20. Reckless by Lacuna Coil: Nightless City Massacre
21. Thousand Eyes by Of Monsters and Men: Breaking the Tiger Seal
22. The Last One Alive by VAST : After the Siege
23. The Crow by Dessa : Thirteen Years
24. Alive by Sia : You’ve Got the Wrong Person
25. When Anger Shows by The Editors: Hunting Demonic Cultivators
26. I Of the Storm by Of Monsters and Men: I am His Uncle. Do You Have Any Last Words?
27. Iron Flower by K’s Choice: Don’t You Have Anything to Say to Me?
28. Smile Like You Mean It by The Killers : Back to Lotus Pier
29. I Will Return to You by K’s Choice: Confrontation in the Jiang Ancestral Room
30. Terrible Lie by Nine Inch Nails : Golden Core Revelation
31. The Ice is Getting Thinner by Deathcab for Cutie: If Only Your Attitude Towards Your Shixiong Was Just a Bit Better
32. Thomas by Perfect Circle: Chenqing
33. Bad Blood by Bastille: I’m Sorry. I Broke My Promise.
34. Running Up That Hill by Placebo: Sacrifice (Flashback)
35. Nothing Left to Say by Imagine Dragon: There’s Nothing To Say
36. Lotus Flower by Radiohead: Let Go
37. I Ain’t Scared of Lightning by Tom McRae: Opening
38. Tonight, Tonight by Smashing Pumking: Towards Reconciliation

 

Full song listing with lyrics quotes and link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18NpwVn_IVd5N74S0leiLIzIVo2ARfLDXsi_Z7BnpXOQ/edit?usp=sharing

Download all songs: https://www.mediafire.com/file/v084slr5p87n58y/Songs_for_Twin_Prides.rar/file

Miscellaneous notes:

• I didn’t intent for this to be a shippy fanmix, but things happen when you pick a bunch of songs to describe a relationship, many of which are break up songs. Interpret it however you prefer.
• This is meant to mostly cover canon with an open ending towards the possibility of reconciliation
• The “oldest” song in this fanmix is Libera Me, which I decided would make for a great Yiling patriarch song very early when i got into the fandom. I’m still waiting for a fanvid, it would be perfect. It took a long time before I figured out I could build a fanmix around it though!
• I think I may have picked up the idea of Dessa’s The Crow (for both this fanmix and my fanfic titled for a song lyric, Love gone to Vinegar) from a this post by hunxi-guilai​ - although I don’t remember it, the timing fits.
• Some songs that I ended up cutting out from here because they didn’t fit are Shearwater’s Rook for Nie Huaisang/Guanyin Temple, Kongo’s Kids These Days for the Cloud Recessa/Lan Qiren and The Editor’s Life as a Ghost for Mo Xuanyu (the latter i think sneaked into the final rar actually. Very like Mo Xuanyu to get the last laugh like that. Enjoy.)
• Many thanks to @runespoor7​ for their encouragement and patience while I was working on this.
• Yes, I’ve put Running Up that Hill twice in one fanmix. One is for Wei Wuxian and is covered by Within Temptation and the other for Jiang Cheng and covered by Placebo and frankly, what more do you need to know?
• I’d love to know what people thought of this and I hope you enjoy all the songs.

Caught up on Shadow and Bone which I enjoyed a lot. It's very Young Adult in vibe, in a way that I found refreshing to see in TV shows format, in that you need to not think too much about the plot and everybody is way too young; but it looks very pretty and is well realized to craft atmosphere wonderfully; and the characters are overall endearing.

For context I've read the Six of Crows duology but not the main Grishaverse trilogy (which i've only heard bad thing about) so it was a bit odd to see how the series adapt both stories by mixing them together a bit awkwardly. I love the Crows characters and they did feel like they were a full B plot of the story. ( spoilers )

Finished watching Star Trek: Discovery's S4. Overall that was my favorite season. I liked how the stakes were built, how the vein of optimism was worked and how the show has been increasingly using more of its full cast. I've not liked any of the final of the series a lot and while I still had issue with this one finale ( spoilers ), it was my favorite finale so far.

I've also watched an anime series called Mashiro no Oto, from last year. It's basically a shamisen sport shounen thus proving once more that you can build sport shounen out of everything. It was a lot of fun, greatly helped by the quality of the sountrack. I don't know much about shamisen music, but I enjoyed hearing it immensely. The story is a bit rough and honestly feels more like a first arc to the story (which it probably is, being the adaptation of a light novel) than anything. The characters are fun - I especially appreciated for spirited and sometimes aggressive many of the female characters are. The story had gusto, I really hope there's a second season sometimes to watch. (also I wish I could find an OST for it which I haven't been able to so far).

(repost of something I wrote on tumblr in April 2020 for archiving purpose)

In fanfiction, it is extremely frequent to see Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng refer to one another as “brother”, either in dialogue, or described as such through the narrative. This always struck me as hitting the wrong note, because in the actual narrative of Mo Dao Zu Shi there is not a single instance where the word “brother” is used to refer to one another, not even once.

Yet it is obvious why fanfics go there. It does fittingly describe the nature of their relationship. Wei Wuxian was brought back to Yunmeng by Jiang Fengmian to be raised by him in a way that looks much more like an adoption than anything. It is probable that the main reason that he didn’t formally adopt Wei Wuxian was because Yu Ziyuan would never have stood by it. Despite her opposition and her worry that Wei Wuxian might usurp Jiang Cheng’s place as heir to the sect, it is obvious that Wei Wuxian wasn’t treated as a servant (as the son of a servant) or as a simple disciple. He was part of the family unit in more ways than not, and they grew up close and their relationship displayed a kind of intimacy and rivalry that is typical of brotherhood.

( Read more... )