maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 3)
Monday, April 18th, 2022 12:45 pm
I’m still coughing, though thankfully less than before. I’m well enough to work and I did work from home last week. But that stupid cough is exhausting. I don’t have enough energy for anything serious, so I’m cleaning all the bookmarks I acquired in the last two months and using a few of them to make a rec post.


Two recs for Queen Seondeok:

A review on Subtitledreams - well, I say a review, but it’s more a love letter to Bidam, that’s why I like it so much. :)

And a rec for a Mishil & Bidam fanvid - Secret Door


A few more fanvid recs:


The Veil – Unstoppable


Kei x Yaku – Killing Me


Semantic Error – Fever


The Devil Judge – No Light, No Light


Under the Skin:

Grind Me Down (Du Cheng)

Crush 2 (Shen Yi)



And one more thing: Thai Names & Honorifics (for the casual BL fan)

It's a funny and educational 14 minutes long vid about Thai names and honorifics made by BL actor Perth Nakhun, using examples from Thai BL dramas.
maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 2)
Sunday, October 17th, 2021 07:35 pm
I’ve almost finished my Yuletide letter. I decided to go with only Korean dramas for my requests this year. I hope to sign up sometime this week, I don’t want to leave it till the last minute.


[personal profile] undeadrobins is hosting the second Kissathon here.

There are already a few great fills, amongst them two wonderful The Devil Judge fics written by two talented people from my dreamwidth reading list. Both are for Kang Yo Han/Kim Ga On.

Home by UndeadRobins

your kiss tastes like heaven by no_detective


Here are two more recs for Guardian:

In the Shadow with a Damaged Heart by china_shop - Unrequited Chu Shuzhi/Black-Cloaked Envoy fic

Best Deputy Kitten by UndeadRobins – an adorable gen Da Qing fic


I wrote a short Bai Chi/Zhao Zhen ficlet – it’s here. But I’m eyeing up two more prompts, so maybe more writing will be done this week.


I watched two Korean BL dramas this week.

To My Star is about a romance between a famous actor and a young chef.

The Tasty Florida is about a student who starts working at the popular restaurant and falls in love with the restaurant’s owner and head chef.

Both dramas are cute and sweet with a minimal conflict and a happy ending. They’re well-acted, with a lot of pretty boys, nice chemistry between the leads, and a few lovely kisses. Both are very short (To My Star has 9 episodes, and The Tasty Florida has 8) and are available on VIKI.


Last but not least, here are a few BL dramas fanvid recs.


History 2 Right or Wrong

When You’re Home


Manner of Death

Jokes On You

Teeth

Crazy In Love – this one is for Max and Tul’s two dramas: Manner of Death and Together With Me
maggie33: (infanta margerita 3)
Saturday, October 9th, 2021 03:50 pm
I’m tired and a bit depressed – too much work and too many health problems lately. And on Monday I have to go to Warsaw for work for a few days, and I don’t wanna. Gah... But at least it’s finally weekend and I have two days of watching and reading and maybe hopefully even writing before me. I had such a nice burst of creativity with fics for Guardian wishlist. I miss that feeling.


I finished the 2nd season of Hospital Playlist yesterday. And it was as delightful as the 1st season was. It’s so optimistic and heartwarming and sweet. It made me cry a few times, and it made me laugh often. It was a perfect show to watch in the evenings when I was tired after work.

Now I think I will finish Mad Dog, which I started watching before Hospital Playlist became available on Netflix here. It’s a Korean drama about a former insurance investigator from a big company, who creates his own private investigation team to solve many different insurance crimes, after his wife and son die in a suspicious airplane crash. Woo Do Hwan plays one of the male leads and I watched this drama mainly for him. I mean I am interested in the main mystery, but mostly I’m interested in staring at Woo Do Hwan, admiring his acting talent, and sighing “wow, he’s so beautiful” at least twice during each episode. :)

And the next in my queue is Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha with Kim Seon Ho and his adorable dimples.


As for recs here they are.


The Devil Judge fanvids

This Love by Zara Soulmate

Power by solariene


Vincenzo fanvids

One Jang brothers fanvid: Crossfire by xAliceCandyx

One Jang Han Seok fanvid: E.T. by xAliceCandyx

And the last one is about Jang Han Seo – it’s basically Han Seo’s story condensed into 12 angst filled minutes: I Would Have Adored You Infinitely by pppenguiiin


And I have a few 2PM vids to rec, because I’m still very much in love.

Here's my favorite performance of Make It. They all look so hot here, but Taecyeon and Juhno especially. And the ending is super cute and always makes me smile. They are all such dorks. :)

A new song With Me Again from the Japanese mini album in two versions: The official vid and the special performance

And I found another cover of My House that I really like – this one is by GOT7
maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 2)
Sunday, August 29th, 2021 07:15 pm
On Wednesday I unfortunately had to go back to work after my holiday, but it wasn’t that bad. I expected to have much more work to do, but it was manageable and it didn’t make me dead tired in the evenings. So, yay for that. :)

And on Tuesday I finally managed to finish and post my wishlist for [community profile] guardian_wishlist fest. It’s here.

The rest of my time I mostly spent watching dramas.

First I finished The Devil Judge. But the last two episodes were rather disappointing.

More with spoilers below.

Read more... )

After I finished The Devil Judge I realized I haven’t watch any BL dramas lately, so I decided to remedy that this week. :)

First I watched Be Loved in House: I Do. It’s another Taiwanese drama about adult people with adult jobs, so I wanted to check it out for some time. I liked it. It’s cute and occasionally funny. And I liked how they subverted the trope of “an evil ex-boyfriend comes back to become an obstacle for the main couple”.

The actors were all good and pretty, both couples had nice chemistry, but the screenplay was IMO rather weak and unnecessarily dragged out in places, so despite the drama having only 13 short episodes, I still felt that it would be better with just 8 or at most 10 episodes. Also all the kisses were rather chaste and sometimes awkward for me. I’m used to kisses like that in Korean dramas, and from a BL drama I expected something at least a little bit more explicit. I guess I got spoiled by History 3 and Max and Tul’s dramas. :)

Then I watched the Japanese drama A Man Who Defies the World of BL. It’s a show that pokes fun, but in an affectionate way, at a lot of classic BL tropes. The main character Mob realizes that he lives in a world of a BL manga. But he’s relived that he’s just an extra, and through the whole drama he tries very hard to avoid falling in love with a boy and becoming a protagonist. The drama has only 4 episodes each 30 minutes long. I found it hilarious and I enjoyed it so much that I watched all of it in one day.

Both this drama and Be Loved in House: I Do are on VIKI.

And then I watched the beginning of the 1st episode of Together with Me: The Next Chapter. And wow, that kiss in the first scene was very hot. Max and Tul are definitely my gold standard for chemistry and quality of kisses in BL dramas. :)


I also started The Bond – Bai Yu’s latest drama. [personal profile] sakana17 mentioned it in her latest post and I’m very grateful, because I completely missed the news that he had a new drama being released right now.

I’ve watched two episodes today and it’s good and I like it a lot, and it already made me cry twice. It’s about five siblings and their unbreakable bond. It starts in the seventies when the youngest child is born and their mother dies during childbirth. Bai Yu plays the oldest son Yicheng, who, after their mother’s death, basically has to raise his younger siblings on his own, because their father is a no good gambling addict. Seriously, I wanted to smack that guy so hard every time he was on screen.

There was no Bai Yu in these first two episodes. In the 1st episode Yicheng is maybe 12 years old, and in the 2nd episode he’s an older teenager, so he was played by two different actors. And just an aside here – all child actors in this drama are very good. But I expect Bai Yu to appear in the 3rd episode, which I plan to watch this evening.
maggie33: (infanta margerita 2)
Thursday, August 19th, 2021 07:20 pm
I’m on leave, finally. I’m not traveling anywhere, just staying at home and resting, but still it’s so nice – not having to think about work for a week and a half.

I’m using that time to work on my sign-up for Guardian Wishlist, but it’s slow going. I know I want stuff for Guardian and The Rebel, but I’m still trying to decide if I want something else, too.


And The Devil Judge is nearing to an end, so I decided to make a longer post about it.

It’s a Korean drama set in a dystopian version of South Korea in a near future where a few have a lot and many have nothing, and where the government officials only think about their own interest and don’t care about wellbeing of other people. There is unrest on the streets and the President establishes a courtroom live show airing on television – the trails are public and the viewers can vote if the defendant is guilty or innocent. The main character Kang Yo Han is a Chief Judge with his own agenda, a tragic past, and a lot of secrets.

I never saw Ji Sung in anything else, but he is wonderful here, and very beautiful. And he has great chemistry with Park Jin Young, who plays Kim Ga On – one of two associate judges, who work with Kang Yo Han. They are very slashable and I ship them. I read a few fics already, but it’s hard to find something I would like, because it looks like all fluff all the time on AO3, and I want something angsty and complicated.

Ji Sung and Park Jin Young have great chemistry not just on screen, but behind the scenes, too, like for instance in this poster shooting video.


More below with major spoilers for all aired episodes, and with a few fanvid recs.

Read more... )
maggie33: (strumiłło mandale 3)
Thursday, August 12th, 2021 07:50 pm
RMSE author reveal was yesterday. I think it was rather obvious which fic I wrote since it’s Chu Shuzhi/Ye Huo. :)

Let your willing heart (2085 words) by maggie33
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Ye Huo
Characters: Chu Shuzhi, Ye Huo (Guardian), Guo Changcheng
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Getting Together, Friends to Lovers
Summary: Later Chu Shuzhi couldn’t pinpoint when it all really began. When Ye Huo turned from a casual acquaintance to a friend to a trusted coworker to someone much more than a friend. Maybe saving the world together did it, and maybe it started even earlier, sometime after they met, when they were both strangers in a strange land and shared memories (sometimes painful, and sometimes surprisingly not) about that other, dark place.


And let’s make it a rec post, too. Since someone who’s not me wrote another good Chu Shuzhi/Ye Huo fic for the round 2 of Multifandom Drabble Exchange.

Burning (200 words) by UndeadRobins
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Yehuo
Additional Tags: Double Drabble
Summary: Yehuo is in pain. Chu Shuzhi wants to protect him.



And of course my guess about the author of one of my gifts was correct. Because who else could have written me Chief Kim fic with time travel? ;) Thanks again for the wonderful gift, [personal profile] china_shop.



The Devil Judge continues to be very entertaining. Not only the relationship between two male leads is delightfully slashy, but there is also delicious F/F subtext in two flavors: between the main female villain and her loyal henchwoman, and between the same main female villain and a young, idealistic judge.



And the last good thing is connected to my newfound love for 2PM. I admit I’m not really interested in checking the songs of other K-pop groups. But I did watch a few other groups covering 2PM’s songs. And I really liked the one version in particular. Because seriously – how can you not like seven beautiful girls in suits dancing and singing My House without changing the pronouns. So you have one of those beautiful girls, who looks super-hot in her elegant suit, starting the song with “Hey girl” said in such a sultry voice. She later sings Taecyeon’s part and she’s very good at it. :)

My House by Dreamcatcher
maggie33: Infanta Margerita - Las Meninas, Diego Velazquez (Default)
Saturday, August 7th, 2021 08:00 pm
Again I feel like the luckiest recipient ever. Because I got two wonderful fics for my two small fandoms in RMSE. Seriously, they are great and I already re-read both of them.


A Preview of Coming Attraction (4185 words)
Fandom: 김과장 | Good Manager (TV)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Kim Sung Ryong/Seo Yool
Additional Tags: Enemies to Allies To Lovers, episode 15, Time Travel, Comfort, First time (for one of them), Car Sex, Treat
Summary: “There’s no buses here! No cabs either! You can’t just leave me, you jerk!” Kim Sungryong screamed at Seo Yul’s tail lights as they faded into the night. “Take me with you!”


i wear your ring (3546 words)
Fandom: HIStory3 - 那一天 | HIStory3: Make Our Days Count (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Lu Zhigang/Sun Boxiang
Additional Tags: University era, Long-Distance Relationship, Idiots in Love, Missing Scenes, Filling in the Time Jump
Summary: Zhi Gang prides himself on having a reasonably advanced awareness of the workings of his own mind. He realized very early into their relationship that the reason he constantly highlights Bo Xiang’s being younger than him is precisely that Zhi Gang is meant to be the adult. The one with experience, the one with a solid head on his shoulders, thinking with something beyond his heart and the passion that exists between his thighs.

The problem's always been that, at least where Bo Xiang is concerned, Zhi Gang’s little more than a teenager himself.

He's never cared for anyone this much, never desired anyone this much, and it would be terrifying if Bo Xiang didn't seem to make it his entire life's purpose to make sure Zhi Gang knows he feels exactly the same, all the time.



Other good things are mostly connected to Korean dramas.

Here on youtube is a discussion of episodes 1-5 of Vincenzo with Korean-American screenwriter Christina Strain. It’s 2 hours long, but very interesting. Also Christina Strain clearly loves Taecyeon and Jang Han Seok, so she’s my kind of person. :)

I’m also really glad that falling in love with Taecyeon in Vincenzo lead me to falling in love with 2PM. I watch so many vids (official vids, vids from concerts, BTS stuff) these days. They always cheer me up. Taecyeon is my favorite, of course, but all members seem like sweet and nice guys. And they are such good friends.



I finished Arthdal Chronicles a few days ago, but I can’t stop thinking about it, because I really loved it. And I’ve re-watched my favorite episode 15 twice already. I wish COVID didn’t mess with making of season 2. For now it’s still announced that there will be the 2nd season, but nobody knows when it will start filming. And Song Joong Ki films another new drama right now.

But I have a rec – a fantastic gen fanvid by TheMeaninglessArt, full of spoilers of course:

Arth, The Prelude to All Legends - Let Me Be Your Hero



After I finished Arthdal Chronicles I watched the 1st episode of Tale of the Nine Tailed. It was a bit boring and I admit that I don’t like Lee Dong Wook much. Maybe I’ll come back to it later, but for now I decided to try The Devil Judge. And that one was more successful in keeping my attention. I like stories about dystopias and it has Kim Min Jung (whom I loved in Mr. Sunshine) as one of the female leads. She’s great here, too. And I like Ji Sung as the titular character. He’s very pretty and charismatic. And it’s very slashy, straight from the first episode. So that’s what I’ll be watching for now.

Apart from that I’m waiting for the 2nd season of Hospital Playlist to appear on Netflix here, and for Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha - a new drama with Kim Seon Ho and his adorable dimples. :) I saw a few teasers and it looks so cute and heart-warming. Here is the latest one.

I’m also waiting for D.P. – a new drama with Jung Hae In about a soldier who gets assigned to the Deserter Pursuit unit. All I’ve read about it made it sound like a serious drama, but this official teaser makes it look more like a comedy to me? It’s a bit weird but still I want to check it out for Jung Hae In and his cute, sunny smile. :)