Absconding With The Tontine Funds

I started a draft of what I've been up to; unfortunately I started that draft in mid-January and promptly forgot about it and now it seems pointless to post about all that minutiae. So here's Korean stuff I've watched in the last little while instead:

Life: Hospital administration intrigue! Which sounds like not a very interesting premise at all, but it was actually quite compelling with several nicely written and acted characters. It wasn't without its problems (like a lackluster and completely unnecessary romance and somehow also a lackluster and completely unnecessary male lead...?) but overall the good far outweighed the bad. It also had a lot of Hey It's That Guy moments, which I always enjoy. Lol.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes: I finished 16 episodes in two days, which normally would indicate that it was really well done, but it was the opposite. ( Wee spoilers under cut )

Splash Splash Love: Cute, amusing, and ultimately forgettable, but a nice antidote to the dark WTFery of SIG's drama. It's only 2 episodes so it went fast, and I generally always enjoy Kim Seulgi (even though she kind of overdid it with the cutesy high schooler voice) and Daeyoung from Let's Eat (which is what he will always be to me).

It's Dangerous Beyond the Blankets: Oh, now I see what the fuss surrounding Kang Daniel is about. WHAT A GODDAMN CUTIE. I only ever saw pictures of him before and didn't get why everyone was so into him. I hope he has a solid solo career that I can follow, because Wanna One has already disbanded and I had no interest in them in the first place. I really liked most of this program -- the conceit is that a bunch of celebrity homebodies/introverts/antisocials come together to stay in the same house for a while and have to hang out -- but sometimes it was SO AWKWARD to watch because the guests would arrive, not know what to say to each other, and so just sit IN SILENCE for extended periods of time. Not even questions about the weather or each other's jobs or whatever, just SILENCE. But overall it was cute and I'm also now in love with EXO's Xiumin (and then impulse-bought a chubby little cat plushie to be his oppa avatar even though we don't really take our oppas around anymore; I regret nothing). He's cute, tidy, AND can deal with bugs? Sign me up.

Master Key: Fun enough of a variety show; it's a bit like Mafia in that you have to guess who carries the 'master key' and everybody can pretend to be things they're not. The last handful of episodes where they travelled around outside of their Master Key studio steadily declined in fun, though. Still, it was nice to see a lot of familiar faces from various bands.

Tidying Up: Not a Korean show, but it's CHANGED MY LIFE. Lolol. I bought Marie Kondo's books after watching this and KonMaried my place, and I'm still not quite done, but it's so much nicer living here now. I never thought of myself as a super untidy or cluttery person but it's still made a huge difference. I just don't have ANY mess now. Everything has a home, it's way easier to clean, and I'm developing the habit of considering what I truly want and need, rather than, say, just buy something because it's cheap and I can make do with it.

It was bound to happen, sarea_okelani and I falling behind on our posting, and so these are all a bit of a vaguely-recalled jumble. Nonetheless, we shall soldier on.

At the end of June, we first went for haircuts with our usual stylist, and then I picked up sandwiches from Tres Sandwich and went to her house so we could watch a GOT7 concert DVD she'd picked up at KCON NY a couple weeks before. Hyunsik oppa got to hang out with all the oppas at Sarea's house and joined us for lunch. He also now has the flower he was missing before! :D



( And then we did more stuff we barely remember anymore )

Two oppas joined us on part one of a weekend in Federal Way. It's a bit of a drive, but sarea_okelani and I like going down there because they have excellent Korean food (although so many places only open for dinner so it's a Sophie's choice of what to eat every time now, ugh) and our regular noraebang. slitherhither would also join us later!

The primary oppa chosen to accompany us this time was Ilhoon. He is represented by Tigger because BTOB once dressed up as Disney characters for their Winter's Tale music video, which was adorable to the max. Hoonie oppa also has little angel wings (a doggy harness, teehee) because Ilhoon's birthday is on Oct 4, and in Korean, the word for 1004 is a homonym for the word 'angel'. (He rarely lives up to his nickname.)



( But who is the mystery second oppa? )

For the longer explanation of why sarea_okelani and I have collectively gone insane and instituted Oppa Outings, see her post here (along with Oppa Outings #1 and #2). The short version is this: when you get two enablers together, things get out of hand real quick.

Minhyuk was our destined oppa on Saturday. Here he is, with his namesake. Minhyuk oppa is a red squirrel because he is frequently compared to a squirrel and is known as BTOB's "red man" because one time he split his pants on stage and was revealed to be wearing bright red underpants, and nobody has ever let him forget it.



( Wherever will Minhyuk take us? )

Late to the party as usual, I've only just found out about the dick move Photobucket made recently (i.e., restrict photo embedding anywhere unless you pony up $400), so I have hundreds of pictures here on LJ that need to be uploaded elsewhere and then re-embedded. That's assuming I want to go through the trouble... Granted, much of it is really old and nobody but me will look at it, but I'm very partial to my nostalgia. A lot of those pictures accompany blog posts about trips I've taken that I like to relive from time to time. Ugh. Why you gotta make life so difficult, Photobucket?? Though, given the customer backlash, life is probably pretty difficult for Photobucket right now, too. Which is well-deserved. Badly done, Photobucket. Badly done.

Somewhat on a whim, if three weeks in advance counts as a whim, sarea_okelani and I decided on a whirlwind weekend trip the first weekend of June to Vancouver for – what else – eating.

( All the things )

So much for a fun snow day. Here I was envisioning a day of relaxation and resting up to get rid of my stupid cold (and possibly even vacuuming), but no. Of course that wouldn't happen. Because of course the power at my condo had to go out. It's been out for ten hours and counting now, with no ETA from the electric company as to when it'll be restored.

Thankfully, I could charge my phone in my car, and once the roads were cleared, my parents came to get me (they don't trust that I can drive in winter conditions and they're probably correct, as I can barely drive properly in fully clement weather). Now I am warm, with electricity, and with wi-fi at my parents' house. Huzzah!

Here's to hoping that the power will come back soon and no pipes get frozen and maybe another school closure for the one I didn't even get to enjoy. Lol.

I'm siiick.

I've been sick for about two weeks with a cold and this is the third time I've left work early. Ugh. I hate burning through my sick leave, even though I have plenty; I just like the idea of hoarding them to the point where I could take two straight months off work if I wanted to. And I think I'm just not getting better because everyone else around me is sick too, especially the childrens who don't know how to not cough and sneeze directly on other people. Pleh.

Now I am at home in sweatpants (cue Karl Lagerfeld: "Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants" LOL) and watching The Princess Bride, the movie that still holds up even on one's thirty-ninth viewing.

Last weekend sarea_okelani and I went to see The King, a Korean movie about the 1% in politics in the 1990s -- a subsection of prosecutors who game the system so they can live in luxury. Though we were both impressed that it managed to make it all the way up here (and not even just LA and New York), and my current one true love Ryu Junyeol is beautiful and effective in it, it was, unlike The Princess Bride, not a great movie.

( And here is why )

I've also watched the last series of Sherlock, finally. ( It was a slog )

Way back when summer was still new and I was celebrating being freshly off work for an extended period and therefore had nothing to do -- HAPPY, HALCYON DAYS -- I got super into Korean dramas again. After watching City Hunter a few years ago and it knocking every standard for drama out of the park, I didn't feel like watching any other K-dramas, feeling quite certain none of them would measure up.

Over the summer, I managed to get over it and get three more under my belt (and a few that I started and then just ended up reading recaps for instead): School 2013; Pinocchio; and Signal.

They're all great in different ways, though if I only get to rec one, I aggressively rec Signal. More on that in a bit.

School 2013
What's awesome about it: It's a high school drama about a low-performing school and more specifically, about the "bad" class, the quiet, still-waters-run-deep student who doesn't listen to lessons but hears everything, the inexperienced teacher with her heart in the right place. It's kind of difficult, actually, to pin down an easy summary for it, because it's all about the relationships between the characters -- and I'm not talking romantic relationships; in fact, what worked so well for it was that it didn't have any canon romances, and centered itself on character growth instead. Also, it has THE CUTEST, ANGSTIEST BROMANCE EVER. (And the actors are BFFs in real life; SO ADORABLE.)

Pinocchio
What's awesome about it: A female lead who says what she means, doesn't take any crap, and goes for exactly what she wants? THANK YOU, I'LL TAKE TEN. No noble idiocy or inane love triangles to be found here; the lead couple are refreshingly communicative and honest with each other and cute cute cute.

Signal
What's awesome about it: It's my new City Hunter. After watching this, I'm off K-dramas again. The premise is a time paradox: a police profiler hears someone calling his name over a radio transmission and he finds an old walkie-talkie and starts getting messages from the past to help solve cold case crimes, from a detective who, in the present, has been missing and presumed dead for over a decade. It's part murder mystery(/ies) and part thriller, grounded in profound emotion. It's about the human connections we make, the decisions that change the course of history, the lifelong regrets about the things we never said. I can't tell you how many times I cried while watching this -- and listen, I cry at A LOT of things, but I know when I'm being manipulated to cry and when I'm not; Signal isn't by any stretch of the imagination a tearjerker melodrama. It earns every tear and gasp and howl of injustice. And the acting in this by actors who play the veteran detectives, OMG.

I will say, I didn't get fully hooked until about episode 4, so if you do give this a looksee, make it at least that far before you decide whether or not you want to go on. AND YOU WILL. (Also, watch it on Dramafever. At the time I watched it, Viki didn't have it fully subbed.)

tl;dr: Watch Signal. Do it do it do it.

A kind soul left a very complimentary comment on one of my Bradley/Colin fics on AO3 today, which got me to reading a couple of my old Merlin fics. There is something so strange about knowing with a hundred percent certainty you strung all those words together into a story and yet thinking, omg I wrote that?, because some of it was actually quite good?? And yet if I were to sit down and write that very same story today, it might well suck a big toe. Is it because I'm out of practice -- after all, in my most active days of fandom, I'd churned out something like a fic a month, and now I put out a story once a year, if that -- or did I already peak as a writer several years ago without anyone telling me?

I'm not necessarily looking for an answer; the thought just comes up every so often. And I do cycle through periods where the last thing I wrote is what I consider my best, and then a few months later, I reread it and think it's hot garbage, and then several months (or years) after that, on further reread, think perhaps it might be a worthy effort after all.

So I guess what this all means is that my opinion can't be trusted. Oop.