forestofglory

I can't think of an even vaugley clever subtitle for this post so I've just put the date. I read some books with varying levels of joy. Getting slightly better sleep for a bit helped, as did putting less pressure on myself to love everything I read.

Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis—I was very charmed by this book! It’s not a book where I want to think too hard about the worldbuilding, nor is it a book that thinks too hard about its political systems. (There is an empire – it's bad because it wants to control magic and take over all the little kingdoms around it. But we aren’t going to think too hard about how all those monarchies work or about due process) But if you are in a mood to let those things slide and I was, it's a fun read. I liked and wanted to root for the main characters right away, especially the male lead who is a bit princess coded and becomes a librarian by accident. The plot is mostly a kind of tropey romance and I found that very soothing.

Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer—This age of sail crossdressing girl book was recced in response to my crossdressing girl media post. Our main character Jack (née Mary) disguises herself as a boy to become a ship's boy on the HMS Dolphin, and has many adventures. This was a little too gritty for me, especially the early part of the book where her family all die, and then she lives on the street. That section featured a lot of the kids dying! Then ship life is rough and they are in battles and things so more people die. There’s also an attempted rape. Anyways this is a solid example of the crossdressing girl trope! (I actually checked the second book out form the library but it involved school bullying and I was finding that way too upsetting)

A Sky Full of Dragons by Tiffany McDaniel—I read this MG fantasy out loud to my kid over many bedtimes. I think it's a bit too whimsical, which is not a thing I thought I would ever complain about. I like whimsy! But so many unexpected things kept happening it was hard to follow the plot at first. Plus it’s just hard to hold narrative tension when absurd things just keep happening.

The Truth Season 3 cases 1-3— I’m so obsessed with this show! It’s a reality show where pretty people wear pretty clothing and play an elaborate game that’s like a cross between and escape room and a murder mystery dinner party. It’s got my fav Liu Yuning and several other people who I'm very fond of. I think the big thing that keeps me coming back is the group chemistry, which is very fun. I can’t really follow the mysteries – I can get the broad strokes, but to really follow you need to get the details. But it's fine because it's not really what I’m here for, and I enjoy the surprise reveals. This season's costumes are great so far!

Paprika—We did watch another Satoshi Kon film for our next movie night! This one is both very trippy and very creepy. I’m not sure I like it. It was good, just really intense. Anyways I’m glad I watched it. I continue to be impressed by Satoshi Kon’s cityscapes (content note: sexual assault, fatphobia)

I don't generally post two of these in a week, but I finished the drama I was watching and also read and watched several short things, so I have more than enough to say.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells—I know I wasn’t that enthusiastic about rereading the first Murderbot novella but I still wanted to reread another one so I did. This was pretty fun. I had lower expectations which probably helped, but Murderbot admits more to caring about stuff in this one. But the best part is definitely Murderbot’s relationship with ART! I especially liked the bit where they watch media and talk about how humans portray beings like them.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells—Yet more Murderbot, as I was finding it rather morish. This one doesn’t have ART, and it does have a lot of new characters to keep track of.

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells— Even more Murderbot. This is the last one I have on hand and these four make a nice arc so I stopped after this one. It's hard to pull off this kind of multi part arc where each piece also is a complete story

( The Lost Boys, Race to Romance,and In a Class of Her Own )

I’m once again sharing my thoughts on my recent media consumption. But first some thoughts about my joyful reading project.

I spent several days making a deliberate effort to not read if I didn’t feel like reading or wasn’t excited by anything I had to read. I don’t think it really helped? I was kind of miserable but in a different way than when I read things because I don’t have anything better to do. (I need no screen low hand impact things to do right before bed) But I guess after I did that I did end up reading some things. So maybe it worked? But I would rather not do it again.

I went back to reading not because I was suddenly super excited but because I had a day where I was too sick to do much at all and ended up reading a long fic all day.Which was nice, maybe not joyful, but nice.

( All Systems Red, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, and The Flash Band )

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— ( Read more... )

Posting this because I have a lot to say about A Love Story of Oiled Paper Umbrella even though I haven't finished much else. Even though I haven’t read much that I want to write up, I have read a bunch of enjoyable fic, so I’m counting that as joyful reading win!

Keep Running Special Season ep 6-8—This was fun! Zhou Shen showed up for the last three episodes which was nice. I think I will check out some of the older seasons of the this show at some point

The Gown of Harmonies by Francesca Forrest—This is a standalone fantasy novelette about a blind seamstress. I liked it a lot! I liked how central to the story the labor of making a dress was – it can be really hard to center any kind of domestic labor in fiction but this did it beautifully! I thought the romance could have used a bit more development, but it's hard in a short piece like this. Overall this was sweet and charming!

A Love Story of Oiled Paper Umbrella—This short (24 episodes each about 35 minutes long) Chinese drama features demons and demon hunters (Not sure what genre it's considered, since it's got demons but not transcendents) I’ve been stressed so I’ve been watching this about as close to binge watching as I get. It's very more-ish.

Still I think I’m watched this less critically than I normally watch things. There’s bit early on where the main characters torture a demon for information that’s the kind of thing often have trouble suspending my moral disbelief about, but it hasn’t stopped me form watching this. (Maybe because its brief and non graphic? ) I feel a bit guilty about this though.

Also I didn’t think too hard about the plot, which is full of twists and schemes. I didn’t keep track well enough to really say, if they make sense. This is a bit darker than what I usually go for, but it escalates slowly and by then I was invested in the story.

I’m proud of myself for being able to recognize that the costumes in this are inspired by the Tang Dynasty! I also like that this show features women wearing men's clothing but not in disguise as men, a thing that real Tang dynasty women did, but that I haven’t seen in any other dramas. On the other hand several costumes are these one shouldered over robes, and I think those look silly. There's also some weird asymmetric collars I'm not fond of. But, even if I’m not fond of some of the pieces I do really like the overall aesthetic! There's so many fun colorful textiles!

Du Yuelian, the woman most often shown wearing men’s clothing, is a badass and I love her! She also has an interesting friendship with the FL, which I wish got more screen time.

Spoilers.

The ending is sad though! Both the main characters more or less die. They do accomplish their goals though, so its not entirely tragic. Still I was sad and I probably wouldn’t have starting watching it if I had known

ETA(later the same day): Now that I have been thinking about it I'm irritated that Nan Fengyi never told Meng Xizhou that he didn't really kill her uncle and all those people! It would have solved some problems and I can't see any reason why he wouldn't tell her! I may have spent some time plotting a fix-it AU where her little sister finds this out and plays matchmaker

Overall a very engaging show! I’m full of feelings about it right now.

Content notes: gore, animal death, parental death, childbirth, forced castration, torture

I have been watching a lot of TV the last couple of weeks. I seem to be on a kdramas about women scholar kick (If two dramas in a row counts as kick) Here's what I've read and watched recently:

The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier by Felicia Davin — The third and final book of the French letters series, this one was grimer than the first two, and it took me a bit longer to get used to the characters' voices. Probably my favorite part though was Victor’s and Isabelle’s relationship with each other.

Keep Running Special Season ep 2-5— This continues to be fun! I want to make my own personalized tea cake. Not exactly a content note but there are some very touristy bits with ethnic minorities, and I don’t know enough about how racism against these groups functions to say anything about how well they are represented here.

Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung ep 16-20— AHHHH! This was really good! I loved it so much! I had so many feelings about so many things! History! gender roles! Siblings! I liked how the show depicted monarchy while not endorsing it, I guess some people might find it too on the nose, but after a lot of media that is not very critical of monarchy I thought it was a nice change. There are also a ton of great characters! I just really loved the whole show. (I think I could be really fanish about this in the right circumstances but, well, small fandoms are tricky, and I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment)

Sungkyunkwan Scandal ep 1-12—After I loved Rookie Historian I decided to watch another Korean historical drama about a woman scholar. I was a little worried that it would suffer in comparison, and it probably does a little bit, but they are different enough that it's not a huge deal. This drama is about a girl who has to crossdress to attend a prestigious all male school. So far it's very fun! There’s lots of roommate shenanigans, and school story tropes, but also a bigger political story that hasn’t come fully into focus yet. Though I liked the earlier bits where everyone was very passionate about ethics and scholarship more than the current storyline which is more romance focused. So far it feels less critical of monarchy than Rookie Historian did but I’m excited to see where it goes.

Do any of you have other recs for historical dramas about women scholars? They don't have to be kdramas.

I have stared off 2025 with a terrible cold which meant doing lot of nothing! But today I'm feeling a better and my brain is clearer. I hope the start of the year has been kinder to all of you!

Anyways here are some thoughts on media from the end of 2024. Some of these overlap with my DecRec posts

Gender, Power, and Talent: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China by Jinhua Jia—More or less what it says on the tin. Lots of profiles of interesting Tang dynasty women here! I do think the author not sceptical enough of official histories, and I ended up skimming most of the literary analysis.

What The Hell Is Love ep 1-10—This Taiwanese drama, is modern but with ghosts -- but the ghosts are represented by people covered in green makeup, also sometimes the ML has visions of Diyu which is shown as industrial ruins with trippy lighting. This is not a complaint. I enjoyed the silly special effects.

It was pretty fun for a while, though definitely a bit 'Am I confused because the subtitles are bad, because I lack cultural context, or because this is some nonsense?" But then the show moved away from ghosts and cases to have some heterosexual nonsense, and I wasn't finding any of the romance stuff compelling at all, but when it finally got to another case it was storyline that I was just extremely Nope about

Content notes: death and grieving, cancer, medical fiances, infertility, rape

Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma — A friend suggested a group read along of this book for the solstice, which I thought was an excellent idea. I had read this and loved it when it first came out, but I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered it. But it was! It’s a contemporary fantasy story about two metamores who dislike each other but have to work together to save their mutual boyfriend. It’s extremely good, the writing is beautiful, the characters are great, the magic makes sense while at the same time feeling numinous, and everything is just so keenly observed.

It was lovely to reread this with friends reading it for the first time. One thing I love about this book is how it makes me and many people I know feel seen in ways we don’t often feel seen by the media.

Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis—Once I reread one of my favorite solstice themed novellas I thought it would be fun to reread the other one. This is such a delight I forgot that Cassandra Harwood is such a super smart disabled chaos muppet, but I love her so much! Her family is great too!

Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 1-14 by Afro—I read the first ten of these a while back then a few years ago I watched the anime. I thought it would be nice to return and read the volumes that have come out since then. It’s a very charming slice of life story about high school girls going camping, with lots of food and friendship. Having watched the anime where the characters have different colored hair I found it easier to tell them apart than the last time I read this. I got these in paper form the library but it turns out that paper maga and my hands don’t play well together– so I should probably return the other manga I checked out at the same time without reading it. (content note: fatbopia and diet culture, excessive drunkenness )

I'm in one of those fleeting phases where my brain is letting me read novels! (I used to read all the time but since 2020 its been very sporadic) I'm enjoying this while it lasts but not expecting it to last very long. On the other hand I've bounced off the last couple of dramas I tried to watch.

Anyways have some thoughts on media I've read and watched recently

The Scandalous Letters of V and J by Felicia Davin—I put this on my TBR last year because my friend Jenny wrote a lovely review of it. It's a fun epistolary nb/nb romance with magic. I liked that even before they met each other V and J have people they care about. And both of them are such fun characters. I confess that I skimmed over some of the sex scenes because there are a lot of them – but I think that will be a feature for many readers. Also V’s aunt Sophie is the best!

Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy— this book doesn’t feel inspired by The Untamed exactly but it sure feels inspired by Untamed fic. Not that it’s a fic with the serial numbers filed off, but that it has vibes and situations that feel very wangxian fic like to me. And there are a few xianxia touches to the magic system, like sword forms and someone's hair turning white from using too much magic, though overall the vibe is more regency-ish fantasy romance than cdrama. I enjoyed this although I find myself getting distracted by thinking about how it was and wasn't like fic. It was fun and charming, and I enjoyed the characters and the worldbuilding.

Rise of the Phoenixes— I watched the first four eps of this cdrama, and it's not grabbing me -- not enough women, not enough textiles, and no one seems to actually like anyone else

Egg and Stoneep 1-3 — This is very close to something I would really like but ultimately rather frustrating and I'm not planning to watch more

Spoilers.

It's almost badass warrior woman x disabled schemer, except the FL actually only thinks she's good at martial arts, and it's unclear how disabled the ML actually is. (Somewhat I think? He's shown not using his wheelchair because the chair is too conspicuous -- but it's unclear how much of real issue it is. But the thing that really bugs me is that everyone is lying to the FL and going to elaborate lengths to convince her that she's really good at martial arts, and it just seems very cruel. And it seems from the set up that it's going to take a long time before she finds out and I can't deal with it.

Junior Taskmaster— I haven’t seen a lot of Taskmaster but my kid likes it, so we’ve been watching this together. It’s a lot of fun! The kids are very charming and funny. I sometime find British humor a little too mean, but here the kids are pretty mean to the adults and it works.

DNA Says Love You—A short and cute Taiwanese BL. There’s a little bit that made me go “science doesn't work like that?” but mostly it's very earnest and I was charmed.

Here are some brief thoughts on things I've been reading and watching lately.

Melody Journey— I’m still enjoying this singing reality show but not as much as some of the other Chinese reality shows I’ve watched. I like that it's chill and people seem to be having a good time. However since there’s a slightly different set of people every week and they don’t form teams that last beyond the end of the episode, there’s less of a sense of people learning to work together or developing a rapport.

The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century by Stephanie Balkwill — This book about Empress Dowager Ling of the Wei dynasty is really fascinating! The author is very incisive about how traditional historiography fails to tell women's stories, and there’s also a lot about the gender roles available to elite women of the time. The book is open access and availablehere

Love Me, Love My Voice eps 11-33 — This continued to be very soothing and charming!

Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard — This novella feels very wuxia inspired, even though it's set in space. There are clans and moral dilemmas and such. I thought the romance had a strong beginning and good ending but not enough middle to support the feelings of the ending. But overall this was a fun read!

The Imperial Coroner— My group watch recently finished this! It was a pretty cute drama about a young woman in Tang times who wants to be an imperial coroner. I liked the ending but I wish there was a little bit more of what happens after they resolve the main plot.

Performing Filial Piety in Northern Song China: Family, State, and Native Place by Cong Ellen Zhang—I expected this book to be more about caring for living parents but its actually mostly about death and morning rituals. It was interesting but not gripping. In talking about different “strategies” for showing filial piety in the author made her subjects sound a bit cold blooded, even though she acknowledged that, she couldn’t quite make her subjects feel like people with emotional inner lives, which was not to the benefit of the book

The Truth Season 2— I wrote about this last time, but now I’ve seen the whole show! It was very fun, the cyberpunk costumes at the end were my favorite. (Liu Yuning’s glowing blue light was so fun!) I liked that they changed up the format for the last episode so that everyone was working together, but I wish that part was longer.

Our Song Season 3— Having finished watching The Truth season 2, I wanted another reality show to watch (I’m watching a lot of these at the moment because they fit well with my need to take lots of short breaks) I tried watching a couple of episodes of the first season of the Truth and it wasn’t grabbing me. So I decided to watch more of Our Song since I loved the first season. The playlist of the second season that I fond didn’t have the first couple episodes so I decided just to watch the third season. It was very fun! Lots of intergenerational team ups and songs I enjoyed. (I put together the various links for where I watched it here)

Unseen Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones—I read this contemporary middle grade fantasy out loud to my kid. It was pretty charming, there’s a quirky magical town, a kid who’s dealing with a lot, and a fun cast of characters. There is some backstory involving domestic violence and a dead pet fish, which is not treated lightly but also is not something the story dwells on.

My Journey to You ep 7-20— This continues to be very fun with excellent textiles, mystical trials, and scheming women! I’m having a little trouble actually watching the last couple of episodes because they are so long, and everything is so tense. Content note: backstory involving child death