Media Round Up: Middles
Aug. 24th, 2025 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryLately I've been saving up dramas until I'm done watching them and then posting about them here, but right now I am watching several things and I want to talk about them. I also read a couple of things and watched a movie since the last time I posted one of these.
Kill My Sins ep 1-14—This is a cdrama about a woman who is a “mind healer” in not!Tang China. (And also some dude but I don’t care that much about him) There’s a lot I like about it, it's got women who are friends with each other, excellent costumes, including some crossdressing women, a character inspired by one of my favorite historical figures (Shangguan Wan’er), and a woman ruler. The plot is a twisty revenge story, and its very tense, so I have been watching very slowly.
Content notes: harm to animals, gore, backstory featuring sexual assault, torture, self harm, domestic violence
Mu Guiying Takes Command ep 5-11— I picked this drama back up because I wanted something very unstressful to watch. It’s not really very good, but the things that are bad about it make it easy to follow. like everything is a bit exaggerated, and I'm not super invested so it's less stressful. It’s got women in armor
Justice in the Dark eps 1-4 —This show sounds like it's made in a lab to be not for me. It’s got police, violent crime, bad things happening to kids, a CEO, a romance where the couple met when one was a kid and the other was an adult, and probably some things I’m forgetting. But it's the new show that my groupwatch picked, and that’s an important event in my social calendar so I decided to watch at least the first couple of episodes. Who knows maybe I will end up liking it, it’s happened before.
It does have some really nice food details, but I wish it wasn’t so visually dark – it's hard to see a lot of the time.
Ash's Cabin by Jen Wang —A graphic novel about a sixteen year old who goes to live in the wilderness by themselves. This was an intense read for me, because I was in a very similar mental space at 16 – of feeling like no one cared about the big issues but me and wanting to do something wild and drastic. I thought this book did a good job of portraying those feelings, but the resolution of the story left me feeling a bit discontent – not really with the story but with my own life.
The non-wilderness parts of the story are set in “the Bay Area” and some of the scenery is clearly based on places I recognize but it's a little weird because the artist isn’t trying to be faithful to reality so places don’t always connect the way they do in real life. Still the art is lovely and I thought the woodsy mostly green and brown color palette suited the story.
House of Flying Daggers —Solibitina is taking a class on Chinese cinema, and she’s decided to watch as many of the recommended films as possible, including this one. I’ve been wanting to watch more Chinese movies so when she offered to stream this I jumped at the chance. I see why this is a wuxia classic, the fight scenes are awesome! I loved the twists and turns of the plot, and the gorgeous cinematography! (Wow are the men in this terrible though)
A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon —I picked this up because a couple of friends who are knowledgeable about Rome recced it. It’s kind of weird reading popular history after reading a ton of academic history. It's fun– very informal and chatty,not a tone you could get away with in an academic publication. It's very focused on the stories of specific individuals. And for a book that keeps saying that it doesn't care about politics it sure has a lot of politics. Also surprising to me was how little the book cared about material culture, which to me is central to women’s history. Despite this I enjoyed this, it's nice to read about women and the prose was a lot easier to understand than most of the academic stuff I read.
Kill My Sins ep 1-14—This is a cdrama about a woman who is a “mind healer” in not!Tang China. (And also some dude but I don’t care that much about him) There’s a lot I like about it, it's got women who are friends with each other, excellent costumes, including some crossdressing women, a character inspired by one of my favorite historical figures (Shangguan Wan’er), and a woman ruler. The plot is a twisty revenge story, and its very tense, so I have been watching very slowly.
Content notes: harm to animals, gore, backstory featuring sexual assault, torture, self harm, domestic violence
Mu Guiying Takes Command ep 5-11— I picked this drama back up because I wanted something very unstressful to watch. It’s not really very good, but the things that are bad about it make it easy to follow. like everything is a bit exaggerated, and I'm not super invested so it's less stressful. It’s got women in armor
Justice in the Dark eps 1-4 —This show sounds like it's made in a lab to be not for me. It’s got police, violent crime, bad things happening to kids, a CEO, a romance where the couple met when one was a kid and the other was an adult, and probably some things I’m forgetting. But it's the new show that my groupwatch picked, and that’s an important event in my social calendar so I decided to watch at least the first couple of episodes. Who knows maybe I will end up liking it, it’s happened before.
It does have some really nice food details, but I wish it wasn’t so visually dark – it's hard to see a lot of the time.
Ash's Cabin by Jen Wang —A graphic novel about a sixteen year old who goes to live in the wilderness by themselves. This was an intense read for me, because I was in a very similar mental space at 16 – of feeling like no one cared about the big issues but me and wanting to do something wild and drastic. I thought this book did a good job of portraying those feelings, but the resolution of the story left me feeling a bit discontent – not really with the story but with my own life.
The non-wilderness parts of the story are set in “the Bay Area” and some of the scenery is clearly based on places I recognize but it's a little weird because the artist isn’t trying to be faithful to reality so places don’t always connect the way they do in real life. Still the art is lovely and I thought the woodsy mostly green and brown color palette suited the story.
House of Flying Daggers —So
libitina is taking a class on Chinese cinema, and she’s decided to watch as many of the recommended films as possible, including this one. I’ve been wanting to watch more Chinese movies so when she offered to stream this I jumped at the chance. I see why this is a wuxia classic, the fight scenes are awesome! I loved the twists and turns of the plot, and the gorgeous cinematography! (Wow are the men in this terrible though) A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon —I picked this up because a couple of friends who are knowledgeable about Rome recced it. It’s kind of weird reading popular history after reading a ton of academic history. It's fun– very informal and chatty,not a tone you could get away with in an academic publication. It's very focused on the stories of specific individuals. And for a book that keeps saying that it doesn't care about politics it sure has a lot of politics. Also surprising to me was how little the book cared about material culture, which to me is central to women’s history. Despite this I enjoyed this, it's nice to read about women and the prose was a lot easier to understand than most of the academic stuff I read.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-25 03:28 pm (UTC)