tinny

This set took me much longer than it should have, considering this is my fave pairing right now. But once I sat down to finish it, I had fun again! It's for round 04 at ships20in20.

Enjoy!

Teasers:


( 20+3 icons of Ashile Sun and Li Changge from The Long Ballad )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

Previous icon posts:

Heated Rivalry dominated December:

TV finished

Heated Rivalry! It was so good! It's on HBO Max and Crave. I really liked the first two episodes, there was a ton of sex, and other people much more eloquently explained why that's not a bad thing: the sex is the plot!
I hated ep three, depriving me of the main pairing I love, but I see how it's necessary as context for later episodes. Since I knew that going in, I waited until I was ready for it and just treated it like a different show. That worked for me. I loved the last three episodes again, there was a ton of romance. *A lot* of thought went into the show, and it's all intentional, and that's such a change from the things I usually watch where I rant at the writing all the time. Here, there's almost nothing to rant at. Plus, it's pretty much exactly what I'm most looking for in a tv show: m/m sex and m/m romance. \o/ I will probably read some of the books this year, and likely write up a review for the show if I find the time.

For now, let me direct you to

* my friend machinistm's heated rivalry tag
* the heated rivalry comm gamechangerhr
* the hockey podcast "What Chaos!" reacting to every single episode with genuine enthusiasm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us7Pok5nDRc

TV new (ongoing)

Love on the Turquoise Land (17/32) - a modern fantasy/horror cdrama with Dilraba Dilmurat as a mystical sword fighter. I started watching for her, and by now probably would still be watching even if she wasn't on it. It's ... not good, exactly, but I love it anyway? I got over halfway through it in a few weeks. The horror aspect is not my thing at all, but it was only strong in the first episodes, and after that it started focusing more on vampire rituals and a general good vs evil fight and the horror took a backseat. I'm happy with that! I am very much enjoying Dilraba's actual voice (yay! she doesn't usually get to dub herself! This is cool!) and seeing her fight monsters. I am ranting at how illogical all the vampire lore is (they're called Earth Fiends but everything screams vampire to me), but fwiw once you disengage your science brain, it's fine. Giving the vastly overpowered FL a damsel-in-distress moment made me grit my teeth, but it did lead to the ML taking care of her for three eps straight, and I am not complaining about that at all. The character interactions are really good! I love the fighting, bantering, h/c, and budding romance between the ML and FL. The central mystery sounds interesting, and even though I don't trust the book author (who also wrote Parallel World) to plot herself out of a wet paper bag, the plot seems to hold together so far. Since Heated Rivalry has finished, this is the show I'm most motivated to watch right now. It's on viki.


Our Times (03/38), a 90s retro "IT students go professional" cdrama with Wu Lei and Hou Minghao. The costumes are amazing (bell bottom jeans and corduroy jackets galore), and I really am enjoying the retroness of it all, especially the way the cut scenes are interspersed with actual old footage from Chinese cities, e.g. the construction of the tower in Shanghai. I immediately imprinted on Wu Lei's character (who is a bit of an arrogant asshole but gets beaten up twice in the first episode woah, see another cap). I only watched three eps so far, but liked those a lot. The only downside is that the show triggers my embarrassment squick (they are so incompetent as computer salesmen omg!), so I have to go through it slowly with many breaks. We'll see. It's on wetv and youtube.

TV continued

Still The Long Ballad (43/48), I don't want it to end. omg why do I love this show so much? I haven't loved a historical cdrama this much since Lost You Forever. Whenever Ashile Sun is on screen I go awwwwww. I'll enjoy the rest of the drama at a slow pace, while it continues to give me life. <3

I haven't dropped A Moment But Forever yet, but also haven't watched a whole ep this month.

TV (dropped)

I got halfway through Love at Night, and once the leads got together, which always makes me happy and is the main reason I watch anything, I immediately lost my motivation to continue, lol. I guess it just wasn't otherwise good enough. I might pick it up again, once I'm done with Turquoise Land? Maybe? I'm not holding my breath, though.

I realized that To My Shore is airing now, a Chinese BL (one of those sneaky international China-Thailand co-productions), and I watched half an ep, but I think it's too dark for me. For whatever reason, they keep picking the non-con ones to produce. *sigh* I prefer my romance consensual.

Extraordinary, a shorty cdrama with 20 15-min episodes about a computer nerd who transmigrates into a playboy in the past and basically transforms his family into the richest family around using his modern knowledge of business and weaponry. There's a cross-dressing FL (who he immediately sees through, lol), but otherwise it's mostly comedy of the type I'm not too fond of, and I dropped it again after a few eps.

Rewatches/Watchalongs

The HPI watchalong finished season 5. Unfortunately, there are no subs (yet) except French ones. We tried auto-translated English ones *once* and then decided that French will have to do. We enjoyed it very much but now it's over. *sob*

We started Nothing But You after that. Now on episode 6 already, we're going through it fast because we don't want to spend a year on it. So far looking good in the *show everyone how good this cdrama is* department. \o/

Still watchalong-ing When A Snail Falls in Love with my other friend, and will move on to Nothing But You after that as well.

I had expected the first Snowflake Challenge to be "update your intro", so I did that. :D It wasn't quite that, though. The first part of the challenge was "introduce yourself", so I guess close enough. :D Snapshot of my current dw profile page:



I only updated the icon comms and changed a few icons in the color bars. Nothing much new, really.


The second part was "why do you do the challenge and what you you hope to gain from it"? Idk? I'll just see which challenges speak to me and then I do them. I did this in previous years as well, and it suits me fine. I usually just pick a few challenges that I like, no more than five, usually, and then I do those.

Here's my post from 2025: challenges 2-6 challenges 14+ and my own

Here's my post from 2024: only challenge 5, the icon scavenger hunt

Here's my post from 2023: challenges 5-10, 12 and 13

Lets see what this year brings, shall we? :D



What I'll also do this year is try and think about my creative process, and there's a new comm for that:


cultivativity

I'm looking forward to this, too!

Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich
Rivers of London #07

Peter uncovers clues that the Faceless Man Martin Chorley is executing the final stages of a long-term plan rooted in London's two thousand bloody years of history.

thoughts - slightly spoilery

* I still like Peter's POV, although in some scenes he's still a little bit too naive considering all the things he's seen.

* What I liked a lot is that he doesn't always react ideally in tense/dangerous situations. I found that very realistic.

* I'm not quite sure what to think about the psychological stuff, the colleague who needed counseling after working with Peter, etc. I guess it's a good thing to be mentioned seven installments into a series, but Peter is still being very cavalier about it.

* I really liked how he went back to talk to the river, by making a sacrifice to the Mother, which he (not quite but mostly) knew how to do, which makes sense because he really knows a lot about the rivers by now. She accepted it because she knows and likes him and knows it was given in the right spirit. He still gets important parts wrong and almost suffocates in the process, angering the sewer authority friend he persuaded to let him go into the sewers alone, against regulations. All of this was just hilarious.

* I very much liked all the conflicts he had with Leslie in this book. Her motives are discussed, and they very uncomfortably reminded me of typical reactionary views. Which is kind of a pity, because Peter is often wrong with his quick judgements, and it would have been fitting to have him be wrong about Leslie, but I don't think he was.

* I also very much liked the fairy he found in his cell, and that she's related to Molly. That was so heartwarming and cute!

* There wasn't all that much about his immediate family (neither his parents nor Beverly), but what there was was cute, too. And some of it thought-provoking, because he apparently had never thought about the fact that Beverly is very very old and he is not, and what consequences that will have on a relationship. The Old Man and his wife were setting an interesting example there (and an option for the god to make his lover somewhat immortal).

* I'm not sure what happened with Mr. Punch in the end, and why it even worked. So I guess the main plotline of the book somewhat escaped me. Oops.

4 stars - very quick read as usual, and some things I really liked and hadn't expected



Because I forgot to take this draft with me on vacation, I'm posting it after the reviews for books 8 and 9, so this is the last post for my 2025 Mount TBR challenge. I failed it by three books. /o\ I blame work for this, and I hope that will be less stressful in 2026.

I was trying to catch up at the end, and got to "almost two" - if those had been the last two, I would have made an effort to finish them both. As it was, even that would not have helped, so I wasn't motivated to do that. Those will be the first books of 2026, then, since I've already started both of them.

1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]
3 - 4 stars - Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire Toby Daye #10 [DW link]
4 - 1 star - Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin [DW link]
5 - 5 stars - Murderbot Diaries 1-4 by Martha Wells [DW link]
6 - 4 stars - Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur/We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter [DW link]
7 - 4 stars - Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich Rivers of London #07 [DW link]
8 - 3 stars - Der Markisenmann by Jan Weiler [DW link]
9 - 3 stars - The Village Teacher by Liu Cixin [Graphic Novel by Zhang Xiaoyu] [DW link]

In order of obsession, best first. Rec posts linked from the show titles:

HPI (Haut Potentiel Intellectuel) 2x07 - 5x08 ✔ 💖💖💖 - OMG I fell so hard for this show in January. I love Morgane, highly intelligent and very chaotic mother of three (now four). And I love Commandant Karadec, who can't help falling in love with her, despite her constantly turning his world upside down. Season five - the last season - aired in May and September and I watched it as it aired. It was wonderful! I want more hearts. :D I created a comm for it with all my icons: hpi_tv

Nothing But You 38 episodes ✔ 💖💖💖 - this is a noona romance cdrama set in the world of sports: between a professional badminton player who later switches to tennis (Wu Lei - you might know him from Nirvana in Fire, or maybe from Sand Sea) and a sports company sales person/executive assistant (Zhou Yutong). He's 22, she's 32, and basically the whole obstacle to their relationship is that she thinks he's too young for her. That sustains the tension for a very long time indeed. :D I personally find both of them very cute (and I say that as someone who was indifferent to Wu Lei's looks before). You can watch it on Viki (or youtube but the viki subs are much better). This show surprised me a lot and made me fannish in ways I'd not been before - certainly not for a cdrama or actor since Guardian (in 2018). Wow.

Heated Rivalry season 1 (8 eps) ✔ 💖💖💖 - OMG the Internet was right for once: this show is nigh perfect. It's a gay romance between two hockey players, based on the first two books of a romance novel series. The first four eps have all the sex, and all the plot/relationship development is told through sex, and it's so well done omg even my bubble - who are experts on romance and how to write it well - is all head over heels with how well done it is, and the last two eps have all the romantic payoff.

The Long Ballad 44 of 49 eps 💖💖 - The next Wu Lei costume drama, from 2021, starring him as a young general from the grasslands, and Dilraba Dilmurat as the titular Changge. OMG why did nobody tell me that this has a) a cross-dressing FL and b) Wu Lei in "barbarian" braids? I am smitten. The storytelling is quite good, too, the characters are all flawed in different ways, and the action isn't quite as ott tropey as on other shows. Still plenty, the ML has to save the FL again and again, all the usual tropes are there, but she also has agency and gets stuff done on her own. Once I got over the fact that it's obviously cast with only young idol actors who are too young for their roles (especially Wu Lei omg - he was 20!), I enjoyed it immensely. It's more of a growing-up tale for both leads than a torrid romance at first, but the romance really steps up towards the end, and I loved it. This drama unfortunately has no kisses between the leads (I blame Wu Lei's contract), but their love is so pure I didn't mind too much. I also grew fond of the second FL (played by Zhao Lusi). It's free on youtube or on viki.

Amidst a Snowstorm of Love 30 eps ✔ 💖💖 - a 2024 cdrama starring Wu Lei and Zhao Jinmai as successful (i.e. impossibly competent) billiard players. It's on viki. It was filmed in Finland, replete with lots of night scenes and snow everywhere. It's based on a webnovel by MBFB, the same author who wrote Love Me Love My Voice, which was so low on drama it verged on boring, but I sat through the whole thing last year. Wu Lei's subtle expressions held my attention here too (and he's soooo pretty), but his character is the older one in the relationship, and he's very stoic, which just isn't Wu Lei. (Which is funny because the leads are the same age and they both said that this made the shoot easy for them because they got along very well, and oh god the bts are so cute, they are so playful with each other!) There are some tropes I don't like and recognize as typical for the author, which dampened my enjoyment of the drama somewhat. Overall, I'm in two minds about the drama, because I always somehow expected more from it than it gave me, but otoh it wasn't *bad*. The romance was very sweet most of the time, and I liked the many kisses especially.

North of North season 1 (8 eps) ✔ 💖💖 - a very female comedy series, most of the characters and all producers are women, a series made by Inuk people about Inuk people, filmed on location *very far North*. I love all the characters, the humor is wonderful, and even the embarrassing foot-in-mouth moments are played with so much love and charm that they don't feel squicky. On Netflix now.

So those were the OMG ones. Here's the rest:

Doctor Odyssey 1x09 - 1x18 ✔ 💖💖
The Pitt season 1 ✔ 💖💖
Murderbot season 1 ✔ 💖💖
Love on the Turquoise Land 1-15 of 32 💖
We are Lady Parts 2x04 💖
A Moment But Forever 1-27 of 36 eps 💖
Mann/Frau 2 seasons (40 eps) ✔ 💖
Tout Va Bien all 8 episodes ✔ 💖
When it rains, it pours 7 episodes ✔ 💖
Will Love in Spring 21 episodes ✔ 💖
Phineas and Ferb 5x01 - 5x13 of 25 💖
Somebody Somewhere 2x04 - 2x08 💖
High Potential 1x05 - 1x12 ✔
Severance 1x01 - 1x04
Under the Skin 2x01 - 2x02
Saint Pierre 1-10 (season 1) ✔
A Dream Within a Dream 1-5 of 40
Couples season 1 ✔
Love at Night 1-16 of 30 eps

these in more detail under here

Doctor Odyssey 1x09 - 1x18 ✔ 💖💖 - Shark Attack! Throuple Show! Ryan Murphy Go! Go! Go! At first, I was happy that they solved the pregnancy storyline in the to me most palatable way, but the ending just ripped all my happiness about the show from me. Everyone in the fandom suspects network interference. Boo. Sorry, Ryan Murphy. You deserve better.

The Pitt season 1 ✔ 💖💖 - Noah Wyle in another very realistic ER show! \o/ The setup with the whole season only covering one single day isn't quite my cup of tea, but 100/100 for nostalgic Noah Wyle love. The camerawork makes me nauseous, and they gave themselves a little artistic license when it came to how much time they had to give most cases closure, but otherwise everything was hyper realistic and I thought it rocked. The last few episodes were so tense and action-packed, I was vibrating out of my skin watching them.

Murderbot season 1 ✔ 💖💖 - I really like the adaptation, except for two kinda major things: 1) Murderbot in my mind is not a white male. 2) Murderbot specifically and explicitly says that it doesn't like sex/romance and they added more sex/romance to the show than there was in the books why exactly? To piss off Murderbot more? Apart from that, it's really well done, the special effects are great, it had great character development, good novel-divergent choices in service of telling us more about Murderbot's character, and they really stuck the landing. You can watch it on Apple or where I live it's on Disney+.

Love on the Turquoise Land 1-15 of 32 💖 - cdrama with Dilraba Dilmurat and Chen Xingxu fighting evil creatures in a modern fantasy drama, written by the same author as Parallel World. I am ranting at how illogical all the vampire lore is (they're called Earth Fiends but everything screams vampire to me), and the setup of the two competing groups (vampires and hunters) is also riddled with logic holes. It starts out as horror, but later tones down on that in favor of weird rituals and ...romance! The character interactions are really good! I love the bantering (and fighting) between the ML and FL. The little moments really are what make this show for me, and I'm going to stick with it for the romance.

We are Lady Parts 2x04 💖 - especially loved Bisma's Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. Awesome.

A Moment But Forever 1-25 of 36 eps 💖 - a period xianxia cdrama that AvenueX recced. It's so over-the-top magical, with lots of very esoteric locations and sparkly visual effects that I am honestly charmed. I can't say I like the ML's looks much (he's played by Liu Xueyi), but he has a nice and natural laugh. The humor is mostly subtle and underplayed, which I generally like. It bored me a bit in the middle there (eps 8-13), but then the ML slowly starts to a) clue in to the FL's actual identity (she's a goddess but is forbidden from telling him) and b) fall for her, so it got a bit more interesting again. The humor devolved into more ridiculousness, but still watchable. I really liked the arc where she has to walk through his subconscious: lots of dream sequences and magic fights, and finally the ML gets a bit of face acting to do (he has to be mostly stoic otherwise). I'm enjoying it for the magic and beautiful scenery/creatures, so I don't mind that the romance is glacially slow so far. I'm enjoying it for the romance, the silly xianxia magic, and the steampunk craftsmanship. It's only on iqiyi.

Mann/Frau 2 seasons (40 eps) ✔ 💖 - a German production from 2014, made by Christian Ulmen, who either must like Mehdi Nebbou's acting or is simply friends with him (because this whole thing is cast with Ulmen's friends and family). A very funny series of five-minute episodes, alternating between a man and a woman and their relationship stories. Fun and quirky and often indecent. They're here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW1jZkw2X40Gl3IlZp_3c5bTfRp07Qi45 . I like it better than Couples.

Tout Va Bien all 8 episodes ✔ 💖 - a show I would not have watched if it hadn't had Mehdi Nebbou in it - but it deserves watching! It's much too serious subject matter for me - a family deals with the leukemia of their child - but it is so extremely well done omg. I did not like the last episode, it deprived us of a very much needed katharsis. But I do recommend the first seven eps for when you feel up to looking at how people deal with terrible situations. Despite all the pain, Mehdi Nebbou is very cute in it (and dead sexy).

When it rains, it pours 7 episodes ✔ 💖 - a Japanese BL on Viki - Hagiwara lives in a frustrating sexless relationship with his girlfriend, while his colleague Sei lives with his best friend from childhood on whom he has an unrequited crush. They connect via a wrongly addressed email, and start confessing their problems to each other. There's a lot of talk about sex, which surprised me - it's very blunt and honest for a Japanese drama. There's also actual sex, and I really enjoyed the sex-first-romance-later plot here. Both characters are interesting, and I found the actor who played Hagiwara, Muto Jun, especially good/attractive. CW for rape and infidelity.

Will Love in Spring 21 episodes ✔ 💖 - a romance cdrama from 2024, starring Li Xian and Zhou Yutong (who was in Nothing But You, and I'm now going through her back catalogue). He's an embalmer who tries to see everything in life with equanimity and calm after getting into lots of fights in his youth and feeling responsible for his best friend's death. She's a successful sales person and workaholic who was in a car accident when she was 12, where her father died and she lost a leg. The story is very sweetly told, with lots of flashbacks and non-linear cuts. I liked it overall, although the miscommunication between the leads got on my nerves, as well as the sometimes preachy dialogue about life and death from all characters. CW for death, since that's the theme of the show and some important people die. Last but not least: it gets extra points for having an actually hot sex scene - that's probably a first for a het cdrama. There are very many happy/cuddly/kiss scenes, too.

Phineas and Ferb 5x01 - 5x13 of 25 💖 - a new season after a break of 13 years(!). I'd never watched this in English before (only ever dubbed on TV), but I got used to it. I still really enjoy it, they kept it fresh, the humor doesn't get old.

Somebody Somewhere 2x04 - 2x08 💖 - I thought they glossed over the conflict between Joel and Sam a bit too quickly, but I really loved Tricia this season.

High Potential 1x05 - 1x12 ✔ - Residual fannishness because I love HPI so much, and this somehow feels like a viable ersatz drug. I grew to like the characters, and especially, unexpectedly, the chief, Selena Soto. I passed on season 2, though.

Severance 1x01 - 1x04 - Psychological thriller and dystopic bureaucracy, oi! I found it a little too scary in places, but otherwise really well done, with very laconic humor.

Under the Skin season 2 2x01-2x02 - the second season of the imho best police procedural cdrama, Under The Skin, starring Tan Jianci and Jin Shijia. It was too dark/tense for me this year with work sapping all of my energy. So I couldn't watch it, but it's still on my list.

Saint Pierre 1-10 (season 1) ✔ - Another attempt at more French, but there's barely any. :D A Newfoundland police detective has to lay low after a media scandal, and the farthest thing his boss can come up with is the French overseas territory of Saint Pierre et Michelon (which is right next to Newfoundland - which I did not know). They do speak French there, but the show has no more than half a dozen sentences of French per ep, everything else is English. I didn't know Allan Hawco before, who came up with, wrote, and produced the show, and also stars in it, but apparently this is not the first time he's done something like this (see Republic of Doyle below) - and he's good at it. :D Although I didn't like the way they explained the plot for dummies in some of the episodes. I guess I'm a bit spoiled by HPI, idk? It got on my nerves. Apart from that, the characters are interesting, a lot of them are black/minorities, and the acting is good, too. I also like that they're less trigger-happy than their US equivalents. Weirdly, even though it didn't grip me at the time (I blame the lack of romance?), this show has been on my mind a lot even months after I've watched it. I am looking forward to season 2. Oh, and there was a guest appearance by David Hewlett in ep 4, if anyone cares.

A Dream Within a Dream 1-3 of ?? - a funny costume cdrama parody, where an actress transmigrates into the script of the show she's about to film. She's trying to live the good life while the script forces her into impossible situations time and again. A lot of these are 1:1 persiflages of scenes from popular cdramas, and they're hilarious. Finally a cdrama whose humor I like. I haven't seen enough of it to really judge it, but so far I like it a lot.

Couples season 1 ✔ - a German Arte production that takes a humorous look at couples, and it's set up like conversations with a therapist. Each couple only gets five minutes or so, and there are only ten couples in the first season, so it's a very short watch. Some of them are... ehhh questionable, but I liked them overall. You can watch them all on youtube (in German): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjqdif7wT03ds2d06O0JnIIXgjrsBiNRZ

Love at Night 1-16 of 30 eps - on viki, because I wanted to see if Liu Xueyi (the ML in A Moment But Forever) is any good at modern drama, but the drama itself is... mediocre. He's... also mediocre so far? Zhang Yuxi is his FL, and I really like her acting. His is... well. His mannerisms are pretty natural? I liked that about him in AMBF as well, but I'm not sure it's enough. But the story OMG the story is so bad. I was delighted to see an actress (Zhao Yuanyuan) from When A Snail Falls in Love as the 2FL, and in true cdrama fashion she looks not a day older than she did in 2016. I am still watching this (now on ep 16 of 30) and still finding it preposterous. But my brain is gone (I blame work), so silly things are all I can watch right now. Oh, and I learned that Liu Xueyi played Xiao Hua in TLT2 (which I haven't seen).

Things I only looked at for a bit and might come back to later (in alphabetical order):

Bon appetit your majesty
Dark Winds
Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent)
Glass Heart
Go Ahead
Kaamelott
Maxton Hall
Melancholia
Our Times
Remembrance of Things Past

details for these things I will hopefully continue in the future

Bon appetit your majesty - I got through ep one, typical kdrama length of over an hour, so that's not as little as it sounds. So far hasn't gripped me, but I'm willing to try.

Dark Winds 1x02 - I loved John Hillerman's novels, and I loved this, too. I really want to continue this sometime.

Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) 1-4 of 24(?) - In my attempt to immerse myself in more French, I started this Netflix show about a Parisian talent agency. I was fully expecting not to know a single one of the French actors who star as themselves (a different one each episode), but then Audrey Fleurot turns up in ep 4! LOL! I like it so far - the characters are all distinctive, if not all eminently likeable. But likeable enough for now. I'll keep watching.

I started Glass Heart on Netflix, the Japanese "drummer girl joins a band" thing which friends have recced to me as nice romance and found family. So far I think it's nice, the FL is interesting, and the music is great, and there's lots of rain with beautiful imagery, and a genius composer who I'm not quite sure about whether I like him or not yet. I've only seen a little over half an ep (of 10). I'm too stressed (back at work after my vacation) to have a long attention span :( but I'll definitely try to continue that show.

Go Ahead - a cdrama with Tu Songyan, who played Song Sanchuan's father in Nothing But You. Looks a little too high school for me? But a friend recced it, so I might watch it at some point.

Kaamelott 1-15 of (many many) - notorious French show from the early 00s that permeates French pop culture. It reminds me a little of Little Britain or of Monty Python's Holy Grail. The humor is a little flat for me (or maybe it's just that I'm not French and watching it with subs loses a lot too), but maybe I haven't gotten into it far enough yet. There's *a lot* of it. Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXzt21wguxoJGo7TFBXNRgw

Maxton Hall season 2 came out in November, but I'm a bit hesitant because the lead actor said that it was pretty dark and he had a hard time filming it. I actually made it about ten minutes in before it got too tense for my current state. Maybe later.

Melancholia 1 ep - noona kdrama with a maths genius student and his teacher (apparently the romance only starts after he's no longer her student but I didn't get very far in). Looks interesting.

Our Times 1-3 of 32 episodes - Wu Lei (and Hou Minghao) in a 90s retro "IT students go professional" cdrama. The costumes are amazing (bell bottom jeans and corduroy jackets galore), and I have immediately imprinted on Wu Lei's character (who is a bit of an arrogant asshole but gets beaten up twice in the first episode woah). I really am enjoying the retroness of it all, especially the way the cut scenes are interspersed with actual old footage from Chinese cities, e.g. the construction of the tower in Shanghai. The only downside is that the show triggers my embarrassment squick (they are so incompetent as computer salesmen omg!), so I have to go through it slowly with many breaks.

Remembrance of Things Past - a short cdrama with Zhou Yutong, there's a suicide right in the beginning of the first episode, which I didn't feel up to this year. Maybe later.

...Last and very much least (also in alphabetical order):

Things I did not like/tired of

Etoile 2 eps - A show about two ballet theatres, one in New York and one in Paris. I love the pervasive bilingual setup, almost all the characters speak English and French and code-switch a lot. But that's the only positive thing I have to say about that. I hated pretty much all the characters on sight.

Everlasting Longing 1-11 of ?? - Another random period cdrama, starring Angelababy crossdressing as a merchant son, and Song Weilong as a foreign prince and her love interest. It promises to be terrible, but omg they're all wearing those beautiful hair ornaments. Not the usual metal Ming things, but beads and animal teeth and feathers. I assume their goal was to make them look "Barbarian", and I did not expect to love that look so much! I don't need another terrible cdrama. /o\

Filter 1-5 of ?? - Tan Jianci's current modern romance show, about a girl who gets a magic bracelet that can change her appearance, and of course her crush falls in love with the beautiful version of her and hates the regular one. I really really wanted to like this, especially because it stars Tan Jianci, but... uuuugh.

I started Love's Ambition mostly despite myself. It's also a relatively tense modern romance drama starring William Chen and Zhao Lusi - her last one to date. Who knows if she'll make any more dramas. The first episode sets her up as something of a con artist, faking her way into a marriage with the man of her dreams. I'm thinking what could save it would be if he'll turn out to be just as fake as she is, but it's way too early to tell. I only watched two eps and then stopped, because it wasn't gripping me. I don't think I want to invest my time into 30+ eps (unless I develop a Zhao Lusi craving).

Love Like The Galaxy 56 eps! ✔ - Wu Lei and Zhao Lusi in a very popular costume cdrama. This one is very hard to quantify, because I *hated* it but I was so obsessed with Wu Lei when I watched it that I actually made it through the whole thing in a month. I don't regret watching it, at the same time I was ranting to all my friends about how terrible it is, all while it managed to inspire me more than a lot of other things on this list. It's all very weird. The comic relief characters were annoying, the enemies were mean for the sake of being mean, the main characters were also mean more often than I'd like, the damsel in distress moments were repetitive and visible from miles away, the main romance was so tragic the ending felt fake. The last thing I want to do is rec this, so please do yourself a favor and don't watch it.

Love Scout 1-4 of ?? - an office romance kdrama. I hated the first episode, but liked the second. I liked the genderswapped setup with her being the workaholic boss and him being the doting father and secretary, but found eps 3 and 4 very meh, especially the secondary characters (and contenders for affection of the leads), so I stopped watching.

My Youth 1-5 of 12 - a kdrama with typical long episodes, so the 12 eps are making it sound shorter than it is. It stars Song Joong Ki, who I've liked in Sungkyunkwan Scandal and Vincenzo. He's good in this, too, but... eh. I thought it was a romance (because it is advertised as such!), but... mostly it kept foreshadowing tragedy. If you like your romances tragic, go for it. I didn't wait around to find out. It's well done and beautifully filmed, very slow, glowy, and emotional.

Parallel World 20-38 of 38 eps ✔ - Also called "West of Yumen", this tomb-robbing adventure starring Bai Yu and Ni Ni started out very promisingly and has a kick-ass female main character. After the first third, the story slowly started to unravel, and not in a good way. The worldbuilding devolved into weird unconnected monster-of-the-week appearances, the main relationship made me cringe. I still really like the female lead, but I lost all motivation to continue it. The watchalong made me finish it, but we ranted at it for the whole second half, it was so illogical.

Republic of Doyle 2 eps - I started this because I came to like Allan Hawco who wrote, produced, and starred in both this show and St Pierre (see above). Here he's a bumbling private detective who constantly gets picked on by his mother and his ex-cop father. It has a very retro 80s vibe. Unfortunately, I could not stand the main character's completely unwarranted self-confidence and his inappropriate behavior towards his love interest starting from the first time he even sees her.

Starlit Bloom is a short noona romance cdrama - 24 eps of about 12 minutes pure running time (without intro/trailer). It's cheaply made compared to the things I usually watch but not as cheap as some old Z1L stuff (*cough*). The acting is so-so, the dubbing is meh, and the story is one long trope. But it's short, so... who cares. It's about a young second-generation rich guy who falls in love with a female entrepreneur. I like the noona aspects, and I hate all the tropes, the usual. It's nothing special, but the worst thing is the ending: they simply stopped in the middle of the final confrontation, so there is no actual ending. wtf. It's on viki and youtube.

To My Shore - a Chinese BL (one of those sneaky international China-Thailand co-productions), and I watched half an ep, but I think it's too dark for me right now. For whatever reason, they keep picking the non-con ones to produce. *sigh* I prefer my romance consensual.

OMG I was so sure I had already posted this - I assembled it in November. /o\ All the icons I made for challenge communities in September and October:



( 63 icons - about half of Wu-Lei-related things )

Concrit welcome! Comments adored! Credit appreciated! Take and use as many icons as you like. If you want to know whose textures and brushes I use, take a look at my resource post.

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Since I didn't do a post for 2024, I now added the movies I watched in 2024, as well. In alphabetical order:

2024

Klaus ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Only the River Flows ⭐⭐⭐
The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐

2024

BisouBye (Standup comedy) ⭐⭐⭐
Brothers ⭐⭐⭐
Chicken Run 2 - Dawn of the Nugget ⭐⭐⭐
Cookie ⭐⭐
Deep Cover ⭐⭐⭐
Flow ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kpop Demon Hunters ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Les Heures Souterraines ⭐⭐
#schwarzeschafe ⭐⭐⭐
Shawn the Sheep - Christmas Special ⭐⭐⭐
Wallace and Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl ⭐⭐⭐
Wild Robot ⭐⭐⭐⭐

all my movie reviews for 2024 and 2025

Movies of 2024

Klaus ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - What a beautiful Christmas movie! Absolutely make sure you watch this in dark surroundings on a large screen, because the lighting in this movie is something else. Every scene is lit from unusual angles, with shadows dancing and playing across the screen. So gorgeous! The storyline is also cute, the motto of good deeds beget more good deeds really spoke to me, and I didn't expect the sad parts. Very good movie!

Only the River Flows ⭐⭐⭐ - Zhu Yilong gained over 30kg for this movie and then consecutively lost all the weight again during the chronological filming. He looks extremely unattractive in his 80s leather jacket and downcast expression. If you didn't know it was him, you wouldn't recognize him. That said (those were the important parts, lol ;)), the movie is pretty good. It's one of the few regime-critical movies, based on the notoriously regime-critical novels of a famous Chinese author. But it's absurdist enough, and set in the 80s, and high-profile enough internationally that the censorship let it slide. If you're expecting a logical police case, you'll be disappointed. If you're going in expecting a harrowing psychological look at someone living in an absurd police state where you don't know whether he's been crazy all along or driven mad by it all, you'll be fine.

The Boy and the Heron ⭐⭐⭐ - Miyazaki's last movie. Another one that I found hard to understand. There are doors into fantasy lands - or is it the real world just at different times? - and an old man who wants someone to take over his legacy, but he can't find anyone. It's definitely worth it for the beautiful scenery, weird characters, and many many animals. Just as expected from a Miyazaki movie, really.

Movies of 2025

BisouBye ⭐⭐⭐ - I'm going to count this standup comedy show as a movie, because it is an 80-minute program. If you don't know Paul Taylor, he does bilingual standup comedy - in French and English (both parts subtitled in the other language). It's brilliant! I didn't like his second program much, it was a bit too mean for my taste, but the first one is good, and I enjoyed BisouBye as well. You can watch the full show on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap963rYkqmA

Brothers ⭐⭐⭐ - Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin as twin Brothers with a family history of crime - also starring Brendan Fraser and Glenn Close. It was very very absurd, and I liked it a lot! Both the characters and the plot reminded me a bit of a Fish Called Wanda, and the police officer made me think of Blues Brothers. My fave scene was the golf carts vs excavator chase. :D

Chicken Run 2 - Dawn of the Nugget ⭐⭐⭐ - I feel almost bad about giving this as many stars as the Feathers movie, because it was not as good as that. It was also not bad, though. Rocky and Ginger have a child, named Molly, and she wants to see the world - and of course, due to stupidly avoidable lack of parental communication, she runs away and straight into the arms of the next chicken farmer. Well, the same chicken farmer, as it turns out, and the chickens are mind-controlled into being happy and brainless. All of that made zero sense. That said, the rescue operation was hilarious and fast-paced, and basically reconciled me with the nonsensical setup. I enjoyed the second half of the movie a lot.

Cookie ⭐⭐ - A fellow HPI fan pointed me towards this French movie with Mehdi Nebbou (from 2013), in which he speaks Chinese. I found it on youtube, but it was a very LQ rip, not an official release. It's about a woman who suddenly has to take care of a six-year old Chinese boy. It turns out that his mother (the main character's cleaning woman) was in France illegally, and she's been picked up by the police. The movie can't really decide whether it wants to be a drama or a comedy or a romance, and the plot basically consists of the woman and her sister (and her husband and her ex) trying to reunite the boy with his mother (in an absolutely impossible way omg i want to rant about this it's so illogical). I still did not regret it because I did get to hear Mehdi Nebbou speak a few lines of Chinese (uuuuuuuh, understandable, and it's audible that he has an ear for languages, but still uuuuuh), and watch him kiss one of the women. So, for me, A++ experience. :D I would not recommend the movie for anyone else.

Deep Cover ⭐⭐⭐ - a British comedy about a group of improv comedians going undercover for the police. It's very absurd, and I loved it. A little dark in places - the film plays it off as funny but I imagine it must be pretty traumatic for the characters. It stars Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean (half of lotr right there) and Nick Mohammed (from Ted Lasso). It's a rec. I also liked the blues guitar soundtrack.

Flow ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - The Latvian Oscar winner for animated movie. It was brilliant. I'm not sure I would have voted it higher than Wild Robot, but they're both extremely good, definitely deserving of the Oscar. The plot is a bit hard to describe, since there is no dialogue at all, and some things (both what's happening in nature and character motivations) are unclear. Plus, it being set almost exclusively on the water, it played havoc with my nausea and I had to have my eyes closed for about half the movie. Which is extremely unhelpful in a movie without dialogue. /o\ From what I gather, the pov cat character lives in a world that regularly sees floods, and we follow the cat through the current flood period. It meets other animals, and together they scavenge a boat to ride out the worst. There are no humans visible anywhere, but lots of artifacts, houses, and cities. The animals are shown as very individual, each with their own characteristics, but the main theme of the movie is how they bond and help each other. The music score is very important, since there is no dialogue, and except for one annoyingly tense section, I thought the music was excellent. The movie leaves a lot of room for imagination - it makes you think, and that's always a good thing.

Kpop Demon Hunters ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - American-Korean animation movie about kpop singers who fight demons. The songs are great and catchy, the animation is beautiful and very colorful, the characters are great and easy to identify with, the mythology is cool (and apparently accurate). The main theme is shame and I liked the positive message. The only downside to me is that it's slightly ugly-anime in a few places, and that the characters are so unnaturally thin and tall that the dancing looks kind of strange? And the romance... kind of worked for me and kind of didn't. That's really a minor complaint, this is a solid rec. The main song still makes me cry every time I watch it.

Les Heures Souterraines ⭐⭐ - (somehow translated into German as "Die Tage Unter Null" which... wtf, it's about people having a bad time and not about temperature, and it's exactly one day, not more. I've seen some bad German titles but this one's even worse than usual.) The movie follows two people around Paris for one day. One of them is a doctor who does house calls, and the other is a woman who has to contend with gaslighting at her job. It wasn't terrible, but it was also not very satisfying. I felt like the author (it's based on a book) had to get something off her chest, and that's perfectly fine, but it does not make for a good movie, unless you're a victim of gaslighting yourself, maybe? What made the time worth it for me is that it's (to my knowledge) the only movie in which Mehdi Nebbou dubbed himself. The original production is French, but he did the dub for his character in the German version himself. If my lackluster review hasn't deterred you, you can watch it here (in French or German) at the official site: https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/054789-000-A/les-heures-souterraines/

#schwarzeschafe ⭐⭐⭐ - A German comedy I saw at a festival: a loose sequel to the original "Schwarze Schafe" from 2006, this movie is about a handful of very quirky characters whose storylines intertwine during a heatwave in Berlin. It's really hard to describe, and all the trailers are (imho) misleading. What can I say, I enjoyed it, I rec it. You don't need to have seen the original to enjoy it (I didn't see that either).

Shawn the Sheep - Christmas Special ⭐⭐⭐ - it was cute. It's not movie-length, but I'm still counting it here. I keep trying to find something wrong with it, but it was just... very cute all the way through. The uses for the lemonade were hilarious.

Wallace and Gromit - Vengeance Most Fowl ⭐⭐⭐ - I'd have given it one more star if there'd been more Feathers. And if Wallace had treated Gromit a bit better. I know it's always the same old shtick, but it wears so thin after three movies, and this one really lingered on the humiliation in a way that made me grit my teeth. At least he apologized at the end. I liked the little gnome robots (although I would have liked Feathers more), and the young police officer, and the plot was fun and engaging. The fact that Wallace equipped the gnomes with different core values was hilarious to me, just like Doofenschmirtz putting a self-destruct button on all his -inators.

Wild Robot ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - I loved this! I always love robots, and this one has a wonderful storyline of love and helping each other. It had a few logic flaws, but nothing too terrible (one was that all the animals spoke a common language that the robot was then able to learn. Eh, no). But overall I really enjoyed it, and I totally did not recognize Kit Connor's voice. (His American accent was good, too.)

Der Markisenmann by Jan Weiler

i read book 7 before this but the draft is on my computer at home. i will post it once i'm home again.

For some reason, this book has not been translated to English. Considering it seems to be on the German school curriculum and is by far the author's most popular novel, that surprised me. Oh, well.

It's not like I liked it that much, so you're not missing out. ;)

Kim, 15 years old, and unhappy growing up with her mother, her stepdad and half-brother, has to spend the summer with her father, who she has never met before. Both of them carry a large guilt. Her father is trying to make up for his by selling unsellable old product door-to-door, and she starts helping him.

some thoughts, non-spoilery

* It took me three chapters to figure out that the main character is a girl - that was weird. I still don't quite trust the author to realistically write a 15-year-old girl, even after having read that book and being unable to put my finger on exactly why.

* From the very start, I had trouble identifying with the main character. I don't think I want to blame the author, I'm just not very interested in 15-year-old girls and their problems, even if those problems are relatable - although to be fair I don't remember having had similar problems, myself. (Except for the unrequited crushes, I do remember those. :D )

* I liked that there was never an answer for all the guilt. She feels guilty for setting her brother on fire - half accidentally, half not, she herself doesn't know - but there is no solution for it.

* Her father deals with his guilt in his own way, by setting himself an impossible task and doing penance for the rest of his life. I never quite managed to get how anone would do that. Yes, he ruined someone's life, yes he can never make up for that, and still. It just never clicked with me.

* Nothing much happens in this book. She gets to know the people who live around her father, falls in love with a neighbor boy but doesn't make anything of it, goes door to door with her father selling ugly canvas blinds (which is where the name of the book comes from). It's quite unremarkable, but she grows up a lot. That's the point.

* The parts about the father's (and mother's and stepdad's) East German past were quite good, but too short in my opinion, and it took a bit long for her to find out what exactly happened. They're probably the reason why the book is on the school curriculum.

* The insights into different people were quite poignant, but overall nothing really gripped me. Maybe it's because the author wrote the book for his daughter, i.e. it's basically a YA book, and I felt like there was nothing new for me in it.

3 stars - Not bad, just not my type of book.



1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]
3 - 4 stars - Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire Toby Daye #10 [DW link]
4 - 1 star - Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin [DW link]
5 - 5 stars - Murderbot Diaries 1-4 by Martha Wells [DW link]
6 - 4 stars - Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur/We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter [DW link]
7 - 4 stars - Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovich Rivers of London #07 [DW link]
8 - 3 stars - Der Markisenmann by Jan Weiler [DW link]

Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur / We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter

Full English title (it's too long for a post subject lol) is: We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State – How Biometric Control and Censorship Threaten Global Freedom and Privacy

German China correspondent Kai Strittmatter wrote this book after he retired, knowing he'd never be let back into China afterwards. He describes how China is developing widespread surveillance to help the ruling party stay in power. He describes the evolution of dictatorship in China, where it's heading, and what the consequences for the rest of the world might be.

The only non-fiction book on my list this year.

The book is based on a lot of interviews he conducted in China, with dissidents/artists/intellectuals as well as people involved in the implementation of surveillance. It reads like a very well researched book. It's not all that new - from 2020 - and it should be noted that it was written by a German, and thus does not specifically get into the developments in the US in that same area. I read the book in German.

I don't really have anything detailed to say about this book. Most of the historical developments were not news to me. I already found things terribly repressive when I was in China decades ago, and it has only gotten worse, and the book illustrates this very well. As for the newer developments, there were quite a few things that I didn't know before or not in that much detail. It's a depressing read, but for me it was worth it.

4 stars - Well researched, important book.



1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]
3 - 4 stars - Once Broken Faith by Seanan McGuire Toby Daye #10 [DW link]
4 - 1 star - Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin [DW link]
5 - 5 stars - Murderbot Diaries 1-4 by Martha Wells [DW link]
6 - 4 stars - Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur/We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter [DW link]

The rounds at icons10in20 are rare and always fun! This one is round 41, and it took me much longer than I thought, especially the icons that ended up being Kpop Demon Hunter icons. I'd been planning on making a whole Wu Lei set again, but those steadfastly refused. :D I hope you like the set!

Teasers:


( 10 icons, most from Wu Lei, the rest from Kpop Demon Hunters )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

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