Media Round Up: Letters, Addresses, APD, Danmei, and More

[forestofglory]

The Dragon Prince season 1— It took R and I a bit to decide what we wanted to watch next, but eventually picked this animated series on netflix that I had been curious about for a while. We are enjoying it. the pacing isn’t perfect but the animation is super pretty, the wordbuilding is interesting, and there are characters I can root for.

Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan— I checked out this middle grade book form the library because one of you recommended it to me after I complained that I’d never read a book about a person with an Auditory Processing Disorder (ADP) like mine. This book is about two boys during the 1st week of fifth grade one of them has ADP and the other one just moved from India. Overall I liked it. Joe’s APD is not exactly like mine, but it was similar and that was lovely and affirming to see. Also both boys have alive moms! I did want to yell at all the adults in this book about how there were failing to address bullying though. “Just learn to deal with it on your own” is an awful thing to say to a kid.

The Moon Brightens for You episodes 25- 33— I’m getting close to the end. I’ve had some brain fog so I’ve slowed down a bit recently, but I’m excited to find out how it all ends up. The romance in this is mostly cute and sweet but every now and again there’s a that makes me go “argh, Patriarchy” However this despite my few grumbles I’m enjoying this a lot! I wish I had more focus for complicated plots and subtitles, but hopefully I’ll be able to watch more soon.
(content note: torture)

Spiritpact eps 1-8— My group watch generally watches a live action show and animated one on different days. This is our animated show at the moment. Before this we have only watched media in Madrain. However the original Chinese version of the show wasn’t available so we are watching a Japanese-dubbed re-cut version.

Anyways this is a show about a young fortune teller who dies unexpectedly and becomes the spirit shadow of a mysterious and powerful priest. It’s a forced proximity situation. There's more
physical affection than what I’ve seen so far in shows from mainland China. I’m not quite sure if like the characters, but wow a lot things keep happening here. Poor characters! It’s only been a like week in universe.
(content note: blood)

Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China by Antje Richter— I love epistolary stories! One of my frustrations in writing epistolary fic has been the lack of resources for how letters were written in Medieval China, so I was excited to find this book. It was very helpful in that regard, plus it had a lot of information about the materiality of letters, and how letters are structured. I found it useful and fun to read. I’ll definitely be referencing it for future fic writing.

(Some thoughts and extracts on Twitter Here)

Word of Honor episodes 1-4 — a lot of people I know have been getting into this drama based on an danmei wuxia novel, and I haven’t been sure if it's my kind of thing. (It’s a show about people who at least start out as villians) But my group watch picked this as our next live action show so I decided to give it a shot. It’s very shooshy and has some fun sets. Also lots of mentorship which I always love in stories. I’m still not convinced I like the main characters, but there’s enough other things I enjoy that I’m going to keep watching, especially because I have people to watch it with.
(content note: politically motivated mass murder)

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask — Latest book for urban planning book club. I sure can read pop nonfiction faster than academic monographs! I don’t love the thing that a lot of these kinds of books do where everything has to be focused on a person, so I found reading this a bit frustrating. History doesn’t have to be about individuals. Still I though there was lots of interesting information in this book. We haven’t had the book club meeting for this one yet, but it should be fun.

Comments

[rekishi]

WoH features people who have done terrible things searching for their own humanity. They don't start out doing that, though.

[forestofglory]

That kind of thing can be hard for me to get into. However there's grumpy reluctant mentorship -- which is troupe I didn't know I loved, and I have good people to watch the show with, so I'm enjoying myself.

[rekishi]

I agree that grumpy reluctant mentorship kind of came out of left field for me too, but mostly because I have outgrown boy (or girl) protagonist stories and prefer to have adults. But having this told from the perspective of the mentor, more or less, works for me!

I hope you keep enjoying it!

[naye]

I must have missed the references to genocide in WoH! What/when was that? I only remember lots of general politically motivated assassinations and general murder and mayhem...

[forestofglory]

Maybe genocide isn't the right word? But I don't know what else to call it when an entire sect gets killed. I guess you could argue that sect isn't a distinct enough cultural group for that to count. Maybe "mass murder" would be better. I'm not sure here.

ETA: talked to some friends about this and decided that genocide is too loaded, so changed it to politically motivated mass murder

[naye]

Ah, okay - I definitely remember a lot of politically motivated murder!

[lunabee34]

We really enjoyed Dragon Prince. I very much like that some characters went in directions I didn't expect.