Reading and watching

[maggie33]

I’m tired, physically and mentally. Sometimes work seems exhausting even when objectively it isn’t. I need a vacation and I plan to take at least a week off work in the second half of March. It will be so nice to sleep in and go for a walk to the park to feed walnuts to squirrels, and then watch them eat from respectable distance. 😊 And spend the rest of the day just watching dramas and reading fanfic.

Speaking of fanfic I managed to read this one last week:

Someone Like You (249448 words) by drsquidlove
Chapters: 63/63
Fandom: Oz (TV), Law & Order: SVU
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Tobias Beecher/Elliot Stabler, Tobias Beecher/Chris Keller, Elliot Stabler/Kathy Stabler
Characters: Tobias Beecher, Elliot Stabler, Olivia Benson, Holly Beecher, Harry Beecher, Maureen Stabler, Kathleen Stabler, Odafin Tutuola, Donald Cragen, Kathy Stabler
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Rape Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, Drug Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Sexual Identity, Fatherhood, Coming Out, Anonymous Sex, Romance, Angst, Crossdressing, Crossover, Family, LGBTQ Themes, Post-Canon, Relationship(s), Explicit Sexual Content, Sexual Inexperience, Slow Build
Summary: Tobias Beecher's trying to rebuild his family in the shadow of the man he was in prison. Elliot Stabler's struggling to continue in the wake of divorce while his job eats away at his soul. It makes for an odd friendship, but it works.


It’s long and good and it made me nostalgic for OZ and for Beecher/Keller. It’s such a beautiful, hot, complicated and fucked up pairing. I’m not in the mood for re-watching but I did re-read a few of my favorite fics on weekend.



As for watching, I did watch a few good things in the last two weeks.

The Equalizer

If you want to see Queen Latifah riding a motorcycle, saving people, beating up bad guys and outsmarting privileged jerks who think they own the world, then this is the show for you. 😊 It’s full of clichés, true, but I personally don’t mind that at all when the main character is a 50 years old black woman, instead of a middle-aged white man. Queen Latifah is wonderful and charismatic and I love watching her do all the things I mentioned in the first sentence.


The Mystic Nine

I tried watching Reunion: The Sound of the Providence. So many people liked it and I wanted to like it, too. I watched seven episodes, but unfortunately it is not for me. Zhu Yilong is beautiful and good as always, and I like the Iron Triangle, but I was so bored by the plot that for the last two episodes I watched I basically fast-forwarded through all the scenes without Zhu Yilong. One more reason is also: I really dislike the subplot of hiding your serious illness from your loved ones. And for personal reasons it’s hard for me to watch a main character slowly dying from lung cancer.

So that’s off my list for now, but to stay in a tomb-raiding franchise I decided to watch The Mystic Nine.

I’ve watched 22 episodes already and I like it a lot. It’s ridiculous and entertaining and a perfect relaxation for my brain in the evening. And everybody is so pretty.

Villains are rather boring here and sometimes I do a little fast-forwarding, too, but I like all the heroes. And most of all I like those three:

Zhang Qishan aka Fo Ye is the leader of the Mystic Nine Clan. He is this too perfect and too cool character who is not afraid of anything and who’s good at everything he touches. And everybody loves him or at least admires and respects him. Even the villains admit that he is a formidable opponent. Usually I’m not fond of characters like that, but to my great surprise I love him. And did I mention that he’s pretty? And he has cute dimples when he smiles.

Lieutenant Zhang Rishan is Zhang Qishan’s right-handed man. And he’s so loyal and obedient, and he loves his commander so much. Of course I love him. 😊

Qi Tiezui, also called Ba Ye, is an adorable coward skilled in fortune-telling. He’s also very pretty of course. I remembered that firestar used to post a lot about shipping him and Lieutenant Zhang, and I checked AO3 after watching the first episode and two most popular pairings have him as one half of the couple. And my reaction was “Him? Really?” because I admit that I found Ba Ye a bit irritating in the first episode. But I quickly changed my mind and after two more episodes I was like “Ok, I get it, he’s adorable”. 😊


And I watched two Korean movies on Netflix – a space opera and a horror.

Space Sweepers

I watched it twice – for the first time on Sunday a week ago and then again on Friday.

It’s a wonderful and very entertaining and funny, and heart-warming movie. There’s an adorable miracle child, found family in space, and a big heroic sacrifice with a happy ending. It made me cry a few times and it made me laugh. I love it. I will definitely watch it at least one more time in the near future.


Train to Busan

I don’t like horrors or zombies, but I got curious about this one and it’s on Netflix here. And I loved it. It’s wonderful, especially in the first half. It gets a bit repetitive in the second half, because there are only so many ways you can show people trying to hide from or fight zombies on the train. But it’s still a very well-made and exciting movie.

And this article about the movie is interesting. I got some of that myself (Korean dramas do like “corporates are evil” subplots), but not everything.

Comments

[laireshi]

*hugs*

If you want to give something else in the tombverse a chance, I wholeheartedly recommend Ultimate Note. It's so much fun. It's set, uh, 13 years before the Reboot, so there's no illness. And it has my favourite version of the Iron Triangle ever.

I also don't like horrors or zombies, but people keep saying Train to Busan is great... I might need to add it to my list!

[maggie33]

Thanks for the hugs. 😊

I wholeheartedly recommend Ultimate Note. It's so much fun. It's set, uh, 13 years before the Reboot, so there's no illness

Oh, that’s good to know. I didn’t osmose that, and always thought that Ultimate Note takes place chronologically after the Reboot. Maybe I’ll try it after The Mystic Nine.

And Train to Busan is really great, I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it.

[tinny]

I really dislike the subplot of hiding your serious illness from your loved ones. And for personal reasons it’s hard for me to watch a main character slowly dying from lung cancer.

a) it's not lung cancer. (The subs are wrong.)
b) he gets "outed" in ep 14 or something, then everyone knows. Because he did tell Xiaoge (his immediate most-loved-one), he basically only kept it secret from Pangzi, and Pangzi is seriously hurt when he finds out. (One of the best scenes in the whole show.)
c) he doesn't die

THAT SAID: if the first seven eps bored you already, it's good you stopped, because the whole mute village plot is ahead, and it's *the worst* White (Han Chinese) Saviour crap you have ever seen, even considering what to expect from a Chinese show, and then there's the warehouse arc, which has cost some of my friends their last nerve and they've quit the show over it. That would be eps 15 to 35 or something - a large part of the show. Even *I* find it boring, but I'm determined to stick it out.

AAAND: If you like Mystic Nine, the other good DMBJ shows are Ultimate Note and Sand Sea. I haven't heard much good about LT1 and LT2, but Ultimate Note seems to be pretty good, and Sand Sea is comparatively dark but apparently also not bad. This is all second-hand knowledge though, because I haven't seen any of them myself.

[maggie33]

it's not lung cancer. (The subs are wrong.)

Oh, well that is surprising. What illness is it?

And laireshi also recommended Ultimate Note so I think I will try out this one after The Mystic Nine. :)

[tinny]

Well, in the drama they say fibrosis. In the part where the English subs say "It's terminal lung cancer", the Chinese subs only say "it's terminal", but don't elaborate on the diagnosis again.

In the novel, it's a late aftereffect from swallowing magical snake poison (I think? I'm not quite sure), so it's some magical cause.

[maggie33]

Thanks for the information, I'll keep it in mind if I ever decide to try watching it again. :)