forestofglory

I’m in a bit of a reading slump which is not fun. I have mostly been reading academic papers, a couple of which were very good, but it's not the joyful reading that I want to be doing. I feel like I’ve lost the knack for finding SFF, and to a certain extent fic, that I want to read. Or maybe I never had that knack for my current brain. Either way it's a bit frustrating.

(I wasn’t going to say anything about the academic papers I’ve been reading but you know what I’m going to at least link you to my favorites : Tang ‘cosmopolitanism': Towards a critical and holistic approach by Shao-yun Yang and; The Song Rediscovery of Chang'an by Xin Wen)

But let's talk about what I’ve watched recently instead:

Legend of Yunze Season 2 —After starting watching a bunch of things and not getting very far with any of them, I really wanted to finish something, and I was reminded that I hadn’t watched the second season of this mini drama. I found this season harder to follow than the first season – not sure if that’s because I was tired or because there's a lot of dream sequences that make this confusing. Could be both.

Love Behind the Melody ep 1-6— This is a Chinese drama about a modern day pipa player who gets transmigrated back in time to vaguely tang dynasty olden times as a woman who plays the same pipa. She then gets involved with contests between various different music academies.

I totally decided to check this out for the shallow reason that it looked like it had a similar textile aesthetic to A Love Story of Oiled Paper Umbrella. And it does but I don’t like these textiles quite as much. I think LSoOPU did more interesting mixing and matching, and those textiles were more Tang-style. Still LBtM has some fun big dramatic textiles and lots of color.

I also appreciated that they have Tang style tea. The early Tang kind with tea leaves and spices and fruit in it was kinda like soup. Don’t think I’ve seen that in a drama before!

However I disliked the dynamic between the main couple. What I wanted from this show was a scrapy found family competing in music competitions while wearing pretty clothing, but instead what I got was people trying to manipulate each other.

Jade's Fateful Love ep 1-24— Since I wasn't having great luck with the shows I was picking myself I asked some friends for recs and ended up picking up this show thanks to

libitina

There’s this stereotypical central Asian princess that shows up in cdramas sometimes. She is carefree, martial, and a bit spoiled and sometimes a brat. She generally at least starts out as an antagonist. Now I grew up on a certain kind of girl power stories and I love a free spirited badass princess*. But this type of character plays into chinese ideas about how central asian women are unfeminine. So I enjoy this character type but feel a bit bad about it. But the reason I’m telling you all this is because the FL of this drama is a stereotypical central Asian princess, and since she’s the main character the show is more sympathetic to her.

So our princess takes her sister’s place in an arranged marriage with the Chinese kingdom next door, and finds out that she as the prince she’s supposed to marry both have a magic item where if they die together they get a short do over to avoid the dying. Many adventures and shenanigans ensue.

It’s very cute, and charming. There are many longing looks and tender glances. But it's not too stressful either. I did feel like the FL got sidelined in the last part of the show which was focused on political scheming — I would have preferred more joint scheming and less miscommunication. It was a good show for the brain space I’ve been in recently!

Content notes: Torture (The FL tortures someone with non damaging mentions eg ticking, and the ML is shown briefly over seeing interrogation by torture, there are also brief scenes of the antagonist torturing people) slavery, disease out break

*Yes, I am very aware of the critiques of this style of “not like other girls” character but I still find them deeply appealing on a visceral level. And I am interested in characters who are more traditionally feminine as well.