Without a Purpose

[seawherethesunsets]

HOU MINGHAO as ZHAO YUANZHOU

FANGS OF FORTUNE (2024)

[biochemjess]

@dangermousie I felt like you needed this

[flightyfiona]

This captures the exact moment I fell in love with Fangs of Fortune.

[flightyfiona]

So I was a bit busy for most of 2024 (long story, not relevant) but towards the end of the year, I felt like I had a bit of time and @dangermousie was posting such gorgeous gifs of Fangs of Fortune, that I was lured back to CDramas. Since then, I have watched Fangs of Fortune, Dashing Youth, Blood of Youth, Under the Skin, Blossom; parts of I Am Nobody, Back to the Brink, and My Journey to You; and I’m currently watching The Blossoming Love and Moonlight Mystique. 

I may need to update my favourite CDramas of all time list, because Fangs of Fortune and Blossom were both amazing and I loved them to bits. 

Fangs of Fortune is the most gorgeous TV show I have ever watched. I cried so much and I’m still not over how much I loved the characters, the music, and how carefully everything but the plot was constructed.

Blossom is the exact type of time travel story that I love the most in a guilty pleasure sort of way. I also adored the mutual respect between the main male and female characters. It was pretty. It was fun. I was very satisfied with how the story played out. 

Under the Skin is one of the few modern CDramas I’ve watched. I enjoyed it, though I very much see Shen Yi’s artistic abilities as a kind of magic more than anything scientific or realistic. I don’t care very much about the cases or if they’re predictable or not. It was just fun for me to watch Shen Yi frustrate and amaze his more typical detective partner with his magic art, insight into the minds of suspects and victims, and total disregard for his own safety.

Dashing Youth and Blood of Youth were also fun but not in a way that truly delighted me like FoF and Blossom. Hou Minghao is very handsome, and I’m a bit of a sucker for ride-or-die friendships, but I didn’t love the characters or plots and I feel like Dashing Youth had some production issues that made it look a bit cheap sometimes. 

Speaking of productions that look a bit cheap–Back to the Brink is one that I started in 2023 and then abandoned in the middle. Hou Minghao is still very pretty in it, but the show was not well made. Maybe it’s the way the different shots and takes and camera angles were edited combined with very cheap-looking costumes and props, but I find it hard to watch. Maybe partially the plot/script, too. I don’t blame the actors, I think they did pretty well, but I may never finish watching the show.

I’m sure anyone still reading this has a good idea of why I picked up I Am Nobody and what parts of it I prioritized watching. I rarely watch modern CDramas, even with fantasy elements, but I’m willing to make a few exceptions. Wang Ye might actually be the Hou Minghao look I find most attractive and his fight with Zhuge Qing was well worth watching. 

My Journey to You is very pretty–the aesthetics are pretty similar to FoF–but I’ve never been able to really get into it. I started it back in 2023 and gave up after a few episodes. The whispery dialogue combined with the tense, back-stabbing sort of atmosphere make the viewing experience uncomfortable for me. I want to like it, because it is pretty and I like a lot of the actors in it, but it hasn't really clicked with me yet.

I’m still surprised I started The Blossoming Love. I am not at all attracted to the main actor, in fact I find something actively off-putting about his face, but the OTP of the show is just too powerful. I’ve watched the first 8 episodes and I really enjoy their dynamic as flirty, forward FL and flustered, noble ML.

Moonlight Mystique is the current show really gnawing on my attention to everything else in life. Bai Lu is still as beautiful as ever (probably the prettiest actress, in my book), though her character is a bit annoyingly arrogant. Ao Ruiping somehow is evoking Cuteness Aggression in me even as he prowls around in his flowing demon peacock robes and occasionally chokes his future love interest. The aesthetics of everything else are… not my favourite, but I’m willing to roll with it for now. At least the camera and editing work is not as jarring as Back from the Brink.

[flightyfiona]

I just watched episodes 36 and 37 of A Journey to Love and I'm almost finished crying for tonight. Honestly, from the first few seconds of the opening title sequence of the first episode, I was sure it would end tragically. But I still wanted good things and happy lives for these characters enough that it hurts. Especially Yuan Lu... he was my favourite. The princess might be the best-written, and a phenomenally-acted, character, but Yuan Lu was my favourite.

That said, I do feel these last few episodes don't hold together as well as earlier episodes. The logic of how we get from one scene to the next is a little shaky. Li Tongguang's actions and characterization are consistently inconsistent. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

[xiaolanhua]

A Journey to Love 一念关山 (2023) Dir. Zhou Yuan Zhou, Zou Xi – Ep. 18

[flightyfiona]

I love Yuan Lu, but really? That's your method of cheering a girl up? Die beautifully or it'll be embarrassing when the coroners examine you?

Absolutely ready to ship him and the princess, though, despite his questionable taste in comforting tactics.

[flightyfiona]

Okay, watching a bit further, he really is quite comforting in his views on living and dying in ways that are meaningful and not just safe and comfortable.

[flightyfiona]

I love Yuan Lu, but really? That's your method of cheering a girl up? Die beautifully or it'll be embarrassing when the coroners examine you?

Absolutely ready to ship him and the princess, though, despite his questionable taste in comforting tactics.

[flightyfiona]

I didn't expect to enjoy A Journey to Love more than a little bit when I started. I just thought it looked a bit interesting and I like Liu Shi Shi quite a bit. But I kind of love it. I'm getting kind of Word of Honor feels from it in the two damaged, tired weapons of mass destruction drawn to each other because of how rare it is to find someone who really understands them and can stand with them as an equal.

I also just love his squad. They're amazing. I was terrified for a few minutes there that Yuan Lu was going to die in the first half of the show. I doubt he'll survive to the end. Probably they'll all die, but for now, I'll just love them for the loyal, supportive, deadly guys that they are.

[flightyfiona]

My CDrama Top Ten

My Favourite Chinese Dramas that I’ve watched all the way through:

Nirvana in Fire

The Story of Minglan

The Untamed

Ancient Detective

Nirvana in Fire 2: The Wind Blows in Chang Lin

Joy of Life (this probably would beat out Ancient Detective, but I’m still a bit put out that I have to wait an unknowable amount of time in order to know what happens after the cliff-hanger)

Lost Love in Times

Cross Fire

Eternal Love/Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms

General and I

Once I finish watching them, I expect Word of Honor to take spot #4 or so on my list and The Romance of Tiger and Rose to take spot #7 or so, pushing out Eternal Love/Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms and General and I.

I’ve only watched 15 Chinese Dramas all the way through, but I’ve given up (or skipped through, or put on hold to maybe get back to later) more than 30 additional dramas and I would estimate that I’ve spent over 850 hours total watching Chinese dramas, so the ranking of my favourites is not totally baseless.

Lost Love in Times and Cross Fire are probably ranked a little higher than they really deserve here, but I have a weakness for time travel stories and particularly what fanfiction writers might call “time travel fix-it” stories. Both of these stories have characters trying to “fix” things that they think went wrong in the original timeline, though in very different ways--they’re very different stories--but it’s a story type that I have an irrational love for.

[flightyfiona]

Updating my list as of June 2023, my top ten CDramas include:

The Story of Minglan--as time has gone on, I've decided that I like this drama even more than Nirvana in Fire.

Nirvana in Fire

The Untamed

Word of Honor--as I expected when I made my first post, I loved this drama once I finished it.

Ancient Detective

Reset--I hadn't anticipated this drama, but I couldn't resist a time-loop story. I thought both the acting and the story were well done.

Nirvana in Fire 2: The Wind Blows in Chang Lin

Joy of Life

Lost Love in Times

Who Rules the World--Mostly because it's pretty and I really enjoyed some of the early choreographed fights.

Runners-up include:

Lighter and Princess--This one is not my usual time period for CDramas, but it's kind of addictive somehow and has a great soundtrack.

Sword Snow Stride--This one is more my preferred type of story, but it starts a bit slowly and doesn't totally resolve in one season, so that's a bit annoying. Zhang Ruo Yun is one of my favourite Chinese actors, though, and that helps.

Cross Fire--previously on my list, but probably not as good as Who Rules the World.

[flightyfiona]

More about my top 2 CDramas

Nirvana in Fire is a 54 episode period classic that came out in 2015 and it was the first Chinese drama I ever watched. I wasn’t initially interested in watching CDramas, sticking mostly to KDramas, but it had been so consistently and highly recommended as a great period drama (and I love period dramas), that I tried watching it. I gave up about three times in the first episode and for three reasons: I was used to hearing Korean and the Mandarin sounded strange to my ears; I’m a bit squeamish about blood and the story begins on a bloody battlefield; and I wasn’t used to the Chinese period drama style of a slow introduction to a story and I was really confused about everything. Once I got past the blood and into the story though, I loved the series because it has:

Characters I could root for (intelligent, competent, mature, well-intentioned, and whose actions make sense to me based on their history and motivations)

Excellent acting and cast

Solid plot with no memorable plot-holes (it’s a Wuxia kind of period piece; allowances should be made for Wuxia-style plot devices)

A setting I like (I love period dramas)

An overall enjoyable watching experience

Limited romance in general and no obnoxious love interests at all

The Story of Minglan is a 78 episode series set in the Song Dynasty. It’s not as well-known or universally beloved as Nirvana in Fire, but I personally love it. It’s a very slow story, but it builds on itself so beautifully. Every character and every relationship is given time and space for the viewer to get to know them and see how they change and develop over the course of many years. Minglan is situated in the middle of a web of familial and societal relationships--and those relationships matter! I especially love her relationship with her grandmother. Key reasons why I love this show include:

A strong, intelligent, capable woman as the main character who goes out of her way to appear meek, ordinary, and forgettable--which allows her to both protect herself and manipulate people around her so much better than if she were constantly fiercely face-slapping people around her

Excellent character depth and development for not just the main character but practically the whole cast

A satisfying romance (slow-slow-building but based on trust and respect more than infatuation and lust)

A fascinating slice-of-life view of the Song Dynasty

An intricate and intelligent plot with no really distracting plotholes

And beautiful camera work and natural lighting

On the other hand, late in the drama Minglan is able to get away with far more “this is why you’re an idiot and this is what you should do now” speeches than she really should have without making far more enemies than she did (despite how therapeutic it was to see her lay it out for some of those folks).

[girllovescomic]

Ironically both were produced by the same studio ☺️

[flightyfiona]

I hadn't realized that, but that's good to know. I may check the production studio of any show I think about watching in the future and be more likely to watch one made by this studio. They did some good work.

[flightyfiona]

More about my top 2 CDramas

Nirvana in Fire is a 54 episode period classic that came out in 2015 and it was the first Chinese drama I ever watched. I wasn’t initially interested in watching CDramas, sticking mostly to KDramas, but it had been so consistently and highly recommended as a great period drama (and I love period dramas), that I tried watching it. I gave up about three times in the first episode and for three reasons: I was used to hearing Korean and the Mandarin sounded strange to my ears; I’m a bit squeamish about blood and the story begins on a bloody battlefield; and I wasn’t used to the Chinese period drama style of a slow introduction to a story and I was really confused about everything. Once I got past the blood and into the story though, I loved the series because it has:

Characters I could root for (intelligent, competent, mature, well-intentioned, and whose actions make sense to me based on their history and motivations)

Excellent acting and cast

Solid plot with no memorable plot-holes (it’s a Wuxia kind of period piece; allowances should be made for Wuxia-style plot devices)

A setting I like (I love period dramas)

An overall enjoyable watching experience

Limited romance in general and no obnoxious love interests at all

The Story of Minglan is a 78 episode series set in the Song Dynasty. It’s not as well-known or universally beloved as Nirvana in Fire, but I personally love it. It’s a very slow story, but it builds on itself so beautifully. Every character and every relationship is given time and space for the viewer to get to know them and see how they change and develop over the course of many years. Minglan is situated in the middle of a web of familial and societal relationships--and those relationships matter! I especially love her relationship with her grandmother. Key reasons why I love this show include:

A strong, intelligent, capable woman as the main character who goes out of her way to appear meek, ordinary, and forgettable--which allows her to both protect herself and manipulate people around her so much better than if she were constantly fiercely face-slapping people around her

Excellent character depth and development for not just the main character but practically the whole cast

A satisfying romance (slow-slow-building but based on trust and respect more than infatuation and lust)

A fascinating slice-of-life view of the Song Dynasty

An intricate and intelligent plot with no really distracting plotholes

And beautiful camera work and natural lighting

On the other hand, late in the drama Minglan is able to get away with far more “this is why you’re an idiot and this is what you should do now” speeches than she really should have without making far more enemies than she did (despite how therapeutic it was to see her lay it out for some of those folks).

[flightyfiona]

My CDrama Top Ten

My Favourite Chinese Dramas that I’ve watched all the way through:

Nirvana in Fire

The Story of Minglan

The Untamed

Ancient Detective

Nirvana in Fire 2: The Wind Blows in Chang Lin

Joy of Life (this probably would beat out Ancient Detective, but I’m still a bit put out that I have to wait an unknowable amount of time in order to know what happens after the cliff-hanger)

Lost Love in Times

Cross Fire

Eternal Love/Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms

General and I

Once I finish watching them, I expect Word of Honor to take spot #4 or so on my list and The Romance of Tiger and Rose to take spot #7 or so, pushing out Eternal Love/Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms and General and I.

I’ve only watched 15 Chinese Dramas all the way through, but I’ve given up (or skipped through, or put on hold to maybe get back to later) more than 30 additional dramas and I would estimate that I’ve spent over 850 hours total watching Chinese dramas, so the ranking of my favourites is not totally baseless.

Lost Love in Times and Cross Fire are probably ranked a little higher than they really deserve here, but I have a weakness for time travel stories and particularly what fanfiction writers might call “time travel fix-it” stories. Both of these stories have characters trying to “fix” things that they think went wrong in the original timeline, though in very different ways--they’re very different stories--but it’s a story type that I have an irrational love for.

[flightyfiona]

I recently finished watching The Story of Minglan and started on The Story of Yanxi Palace. The Story of Minglan was one of the most satisfying dramas I’ve ever watched and I had hopes that The Story of Yanxi Palace would be similar. While I don’t plan on writing any essays comparing the two historical dramas, I have a few thoughts. Both dramas feature very clever main leads, with a story primarily following the main female lead. They’re handled very differently, though, and I like Minglan’s story better. I loved the rich web of relationships that she’s situated in--with a large family and network of social ties--and how most of her maneuvering is done to quietly protect herself and her loved ones. Wei Yingluo is much colder in her pursuit of vengeance, and she has very few people she either likes or trusts. I know enough spoilers that I’m certain her suspicions about Fucheng are wrong and I cringe every time she mentions him or talks to him (which is a shame because I like looking at Xu Kai).

[andhumanslovedstories]

The best cover for Bruce Wayne would be dumb carefree playboy who is also Instagram Optimistic, everyday he’s posting a selfie of his smiling at his breakfast with a caption like “it’s a waffle day! #goodvibesingotham #grateful” or a picture of a sunrise with a caption that’s just “wow #blessed” 

[feynites]

Bruce Wayne ending up as Gotham’s favoured son because he may be an idiot, but he’s a cheerful idiot, and he donates tons to charity and genuinely loves Gotham and actually, truthfully does put a lot back into the city. And his instagram is a bright ray of sunshine, and honestly there are a lot of people in the city who get surprisingly defensive of their Dumb Carefree Playboy because, okay, sure, every month or so Bruce Wayne falls off a yacht or sleeps with a reporter or whatever. The man clearly never met a healthy coping skill even once in his life.

But as far as news regarding Gotham’s prominent citizens go, Bruce’s ‘scandals’ are so normal that it’s downright refreshing. When a headline has ‘Bruce Wayne’ in the title, you know you’re either going to read some Celebrity Gossip level non-drama, or else something to do with a charity. Maybe he’s been kidnapped again, but that’s only happened a few times. Bruce Wayne news is like the Gotham equivalent to special reports about dogs who rescue their owners from drowning, or raccoons who’ve figured out how to get past the new self-locking garbage can lids.

And there’s something weirdly reassuring about following his twitter. Like, if Bruce Wayne is tweeting about a really neat old tree he just saw, things must at least be sort of alright.

(Meanwhile, Bruce’s social media persona is 100% him flanderizing Clark.)

[flightyfiona]

I really want to read a fanfic like this.

[powerofthestruggle]

Man eating rice, China, 1901-1904

[comradepiyaz-deactivated2016020]

this is an extremely important picture

[fear-and-trembling-pdf-deactiva]

Ive never seen someone from 1904 having fun omg

[scootsenshi]

He has a nice face

[fearwax-deactivated20200108]

No but the history behind this picture is really interesting

The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.

It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.

But one time some British dudes went to china to go on an anthropological expedition, and they met some rural Chinese farmers and decided to take their pictures. Now, these people weren’t exposed to the weird culture of the time around getting your photo taken, so this guy just flashed a big grin during the photo because he was told to strike a pose and that’s the pose he wanted to strike.

[thisisarebeljyn]

I think painted portraits and old photos give us the idea that in general people were just really unhappy because those are the visuals we have. This is so refreshing.

[avatar-dacia]

Hey, look; “Man Laughing Alone With Rice” is back on my dash.

[jumpingjacktrash]

always reblog Happy Rice Guy. once upon a time, he really enjoyed his lunch, and that’s beautiful.

[prismatic-bell]

For that "glitch in the matrix" thing going around

Not me, but my mom.

In 1972, she ran away from home. She was gone for several months, and when she got home my grandmother started shaking her and screaming about how someone had told her my mother had no shoes and my grandmother was sure it meant my mom was dead.

She finally calms down, and they piece it together: my grandmother had gotten a phone call from someone who breathed two or three times, said “Cathy’s in bare feet,” and hung up. Except that’s not what they said–my grandmother had written the date in on her calendar, and on that date my mother was in Bare Feet, Arizona. She knew definitively that she was in Bare Feet because on that date she called home to talk to my grandfather, who told her Uncle Jim had died–“got himself shot”–and that she had missed the funeral. Ready for the glitch in the matrix part? Here we go:

–My grandfather had no recollection of the conversation–which would have been a strange conversation indeed, since Uncle Jim was still alive and, in fact, didn’t die until 2009, eight years after my grandfather. However, my mom did miss the funeral, thanks to a delayed flight. Cause of death? Supposedly, it was suicide, but there were enough indications for the family to believe that was a pile of horseshit, not least that shooting himself in the head with the rifle indicated would’ve been near-impossible.

–My mom was going by the name Patricia Danko when she was on the run–she had a fake ID and everything. She hadn’t called herself “Cathy” since leaving home and nobody knew she was traveling under an alias.

–According to my mom, she never gave a name for herself–either Patricia or Cathy–when she was in Bare Feet, and she would’ve had no reason to. Bare Feet had maybe a hundred people in it, and they were just stopping for food and gas.

–This isn’t just an account from my mother–my dad was with her at the time, and he remembers both the phone call and the truckstop.

But that’s not the weirdest nor the creepiest part, which is this:

–I’ve been trying for three years to find Bare Feet, Arizona–on the Internet, on old maps, by talking to old Arizona cowboys, and there was never a Bare Feet, Arizona. My mom convinced my dad to drive “through Bare Feet” on the way back from Texas in 2013 and there was no town anywhere along the highway, not even the abandoned bones of one. I’ve looked for Bare Feet, Barefeet, Bear Feet, Bare Feat, Bare Foot, Barefoot, and Bear Foot. None of these exist.

My mother stopped in a town that doesn’t exist, ate in a restaurant that never was, made a phone call that could not have happened and was apparently answered by a ghost from 40 years in the future, and later that night someone called my grandmother from a number that turned up on her phone bill only as a pay phone in Arizona to say that single sentence, “Cathy’s in Bare Feet.”

[sigilseer]

I didn’t initially want to reblog things here, but this is just too far up my alley. I think I’ll start collecting stories of incidents like this, weirdling magic at its most potent.

[mewwitch]

@gallusrostromegalus

Seems like the kind of story that woud be right up your alley.

[gallusrostromegalus]

This is my favorite ghost story becuase I swear to god I’ve driven  through a Bare Feet but it was in Wyoming.

[flightyfiona]

Dumb twitchy feet

So, I'm thinking maybe I should go talk to someone in counseling about my stress levels. My feet twitch sometimes at night when I'm trying to go to sleep. And, well, I've been lying here awake for two hours with my feet twitching. It tickled at first, but it's starting to hurt now. I have things to do and I really need my sleep, but no, I have twitchy feet and they just won't stop.

[flightyfiona]

Hamilton’s House

Alexander Hamilton could very easily fit into of the Hogwarts Houses. It’s so easy to look at his character and make an immediate association with the key characteristics of each house. 

From the very first song, we’re introduced to him as someone who achieved things by “working a lot harder” a Hufflepuff trait; and “being a lot smarter,” a Ravenclaw trait.

 But that’s how he’s seen by other people, not how he defines himself. He defines himself as “young, scrappy, and hungry” and he’s determined that he’s “not throwing away [his] shot.” In other words, he gets into fights easily, and he’s driven to seize the moment, make a name, and leave a mark. His courage is essential to his ambitions--no matter how much he wanted to make a name for himself, without the courage to seize the moment he would’ve become like Burr who spends much of the film waiting for the right moment.

I think Hamilton, as he’s portrayed in the musical, is a Gryffindor. He is an unquestionably ambitious man, but his ambitions are mostly for legacy and honor, rather than for wealth, power, and physical comforts. He dreams of “dying like a martyr.” He is consistently rash, bull-headed, and obsessed with honor. He’s brilliant, ridiculously hardworking, and unsettlingly ambitious (in the eyes of his fellow founding fathers), but I’d still say that he’s a Gryffindor.

Finally, consider the duel. A good Hufflepuff wouldn’t have allowed personal relationships to sour enough that a duel would happen. A good Ravenclaw would have been smart enough not to duel. A typical Slytherin would have shot. Only a Gryffindor would be rash enough to get into a duel, and then decide to shoot the air rather than at their opponent.