salinea: Emma Frost, sitting comfortably (chill)
I finished playing Dragon Age Veilguard yesterday. Enjoyed the game overall, especially the ending. But I have mixed feelings about the game though.

Alright, so for a lengthy review with specific spoilers so be careful.

Read more... )
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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.
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It appears I don't receive email notifications for answers to my comments. Makes it a bit hard to feel motivated to try to keep posting on dreamwidth as I already struggle with it :(
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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).
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Finished watching the Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty. Overall it was okay, but I didn't have strong feelings for the characters. The mystery investigation were cool, but the big arch plot was a bit boring. It's very well done though, and often made me hungry for Chinese food.

Hope to find a new historical/wuxia asian drama to watch soon. Any recs?
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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 ?
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Started playing Triangle Strategy along with a friend who's already played it. I'm three chapters into it, and I like it so far. It seems like an interesting and dense world; and several of the characters are already appealing (Frederica and Roland). It's a good thing I'm playing with a friend because adapting to the gameplay doesn't feel easy at all -- although it seems interesting as well. But the battle maps feels very hard to "read".
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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.
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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.
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It might be impossible for me to play Three Hopes, but watching my friend play the demo did rekindle my interest in playing Three Houses, aka I started making progress on my Crimson Flower playthrough again. It's still early days (just reached the Remire chapter) so I don't know how long that'll last though.

I've completed my recruit sprew (Constance, Yuri, Sylvain, Felix, Ashe but he'll be benched because I have too many people, Mercedes also benched just there for the support with Jeritza, Lorenz, benched just there for the Thyrsus, Leonie and Lysithea)

Unlike my BL playthrough, I don't have a fun set of builds to amuse me unfortunately. I should have done something like aiming for a maximum for mixed builds (dark knights & so on) or something XD
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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)
salinea: Balder is unhappy (*D:*)
Tried my hand at the Three Hopes demo and I didn't make it to the end of the first fight before I got a game over, on the easiest difficulty. Yeah I think gameplay wise this isn't for me XDDD

thankfully I can watch a friend play it (the demo at least. We're not sure if it's worth the investment for a game we're interested in the story of but don't like the gameplay of)
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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).
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it's been month now that I've been bemoaning the loss of the mo dao zu shi ao3 feed on tumblr. It kind of went away out of the blue and since that's what I used to keep track of the fics in the fandom, it altered how I was reading fics a lot. I could have tried to remake one (you need an email address but it's not too complicated. I created the one for scum villain actually) but I didn't feel up to it because I also felt a bit less enthusiastic about the fandom at the time. But still I had to get myself a RSS feed tracker just to make up for the lack but I had to make choices about which tag I had the time to follow. Mostly I follow fics tagged Jiang Cheng and also Nieyao. I had to give up on tracking Yi City Crew fics and Xiyao and any number of rare pairing and gen because of it.

Today I found out there's an Untamed ao3 feed on tumblr.

I guess I could follow that? But this is disheartening because i haven't even watched the Untamed. I'd prefer to find fics tagged for the novel canon in priority and that's the ones that got dropped.

So yeah. Mixed feelings here :/
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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.
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Finally finished watching The Flame's Daughter, a cdrama I started watching in 2020. I took a large gap in the middle because, to be honest, it's not very good. But I'm glad I finished it because there's a few cdrama and kdrama I started watching which I never finished watching (Story Yanxi Palace, The Goblin, and The Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People mainly).

Now that means I want to find a new asian drama to watch. Preferably historical or fantasy. I'm thinking maybe of the Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, but I'd like to take recs. Anything good people want to recommend to me?
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well Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was disappointing

spoilers )
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At some point in the middle of S1 it went from a show I felt lukewarm about to one I was very much hooked to. I finished watching it in full yesterday.

Loved the lore and the heart of the show - it is a very warm story. My favorite characters were Connie, Pearl and Lapis. Loved the way it declined the themes of family love and support and how much of a difference to people. The songs are also incredibly catchy.

The ending of the main series was pretty awesome and epic. I loved how we got a series of fusion with Steven, that was good fanservice. I thought perhaps White Diamond was a little bit too underdeveloped for the final to hinge so much on changing her mind, though.

I thought the end of the Future was a little bit too abrupt after several episodes of escalation; but otherwise it was a brilliant, sensitive deconstruction to its own show. It was an excellent epilogue, addressing a variety of characters as well as Steven’s character journey in depth.

I don't have strong shippy feelings for the show, overall. I liked the fucked up one sided Pearl/Rose thing. The pining! This is some extra quality of pining! Also loved all the layers of secrets and uneven and dysfunctional relationship wrapped into it. Pearl knowing some of Rose Quartz’s secrets being what makes her feel like she has a special relationship with her; but also being burdened by them. It’s all fucked up and delicious.

I also was very into Steven/Connie who are adorable.
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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.
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Smileon Bonaparte over on the Rue Bonaparte
salinea: (peaceful)
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).
salinea: (Default)


Very nice weather today

I went to visit a small free expo at the institut du monde arabe about Algerian artists
salinea: (Default)
(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... )
salinea: (Default)
Finally finished reading Clear and Muddy Loss of Love, a f/f Chinese Webnovel. Someone made a very enticing and brilliant fantrailers for it:



In the end it left me somewhat disappointed. I think I appreciated the other f/f novel by the same author, The Female General and the Elder Princess more. Part of it is the novel is so long it kind of outlasts its welcome, the other is that the plot meanders a bit too much. Lots of stuff happen, but despite the story having such a strong hook of vengeance, it feels like it lacks focus on that plot, a sense of the challenges being vanquished by skill and work rather than plot fiat. However, I enjoyed the characters a great deal and had fun reading the largest part of the story. Not sure how highly I recommend it in the end.

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