Sitting Devices In Ancient China

Yes

It is just like ai art and the such

Bad

Watching season 1 again and the sisters are making me sad again.

Good Morning, Wife Wen!

Word of Honor as The Onion News headlines part 1 (-> part 2)

Not enjoying A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality :(

For the record, I'm somewhere around 25 episodes into the donghua. I don't know anything about the webnovel; this post is about the donghua.

First off, the writing is weird. The beginning was ok, Han Li gets put in classic main character situations and does main character stuff. It was predictable but enough to get me a little hooked. It however continues being predictable later on and the story is simply linear and uninteresting - often boring. This isn't even the biggest problem - which is the straight up weird and problematic stuff like after Han Li saves her from being raped Chen sexually assaults him??? Hello??? Worst of all, why isn't this painted as a horrible thing to do??? (Fine, I'm exaggerating my own surprise, but that's only because I'm desensitised to Chinese shows doing this by now.) Also when him and that woman (forget her name) are trapped with the monster which they manage to defeat together which magically coerces them - both shown to be unwilling and only into it because of the magic - into having sex??? YES I'VE SEEN THIS STUFF BEFORE TOO BUT IT DOESN'T GET ANY LESS MESSED UP EACH TIME IT HAPPENS! These might be the worst cases but there's also lowkey ableist subtext, hugs without asking consent... the list goes on, and I'm not even far through this donghua.

Not only is the story boring - the characters are too. Characters other than Han Li don't get much of personalities or development, and the few character traits they are shown to have are vague and shallow. They rarely get scenes just by themselves, and when they do, it's not because it's necessary or expected for the plot, or it's used very simply to show their very vague and shallow (and often singular) character trait. There's lots of characters but each only gets their little bit of screentime when Han Li is around - partially due to the linear structure of the story. In particular, the female characters feel poorly written - there aren't that many of them but in addition to my previous complaints about characters in general, they either have no personality or an unrealistic one, they don't have agency and constantly require saving by Han Li (not to mention I think it's clear enought that this is turning out to be a harem donghua, which I just dislike).

Han Li himself is also boring. He has strengths - such as his gardening skills, quick wits and generic carefulness. He's shown to be humble, and also shown to be uninterested in anything romantic or sexual - this is often shown as a positive trait in Chinese media, particularly the latter (which is weird in its own right but I'm not getting into that now... headcanon they're all aspec though). Han Li isn't shown to have any weaknesses, and while he isn't amazing at everything, he's shown to have a large variety of strengths and ultimately he feels very much like a Mary Sue. He doesn't have a personality and everything revolves around him trying to get stronger. He does a lot of helping of other people along the way, making him a moral and agreeable character without any other outstanding traits. He doesn't have particularly strong emotional attachments to anyone, which is fair because it's the natural result of his characterisation, but with the blandness of everything else he's a very boring character. He's a nice guy who's very clever and wants to get more powerful - and that's it.

The animation is alright, mouth movement and occasionally generic movement feels off though. Plus a lot of faces look really similar and facial expressions aren't great - not even with Han Li. The rest of it is fine but nothing mindblowing. The aesthetics and visual designs don't stand out in any way from any other cultivation setting.

The worldbuilding is simple, a very generic cultivation genre world and magic system, but it means with all the above there's really nothing exciting going on with this show.

The two cardinal sins of this show is that it's boring and problematic, and unfortunately both of those are unforgiveable. Maybe watching an animated show simultaneously with your third watch of Arcane isn't the best idea.

For @asathorin who enabled my vision of Braum as a star guardian ☆~☆

Ghost Marriage 冥婚

Red Lotus: Despair and Brokenness

初見你 眉目清 容顏秀 • 曾許你 此生一世無憂 • 殊不知 你心中有解不開的愁 • 轉身 竟成 永久

Meeting you, at first, looking delicate and pretty, (I) once promised you a careless life. Who could have suspected, the intractable torments of your heart and that turning around would become an eternal parting?

Xiao ShùnYáo 肖順堯 - 雲樹之思 Cloud and Tree's Longing

I just read an interpretation for “the moon that year was not as bright as tonight” / “the moon that year is just like tonight” on bilibili that blew my mind：

When Di Feisheng says “the moon that year was not as bright as tonight”, he means that he did not appreciate their relationship ten years ago like he does now. And since saying “the moon is bright” is basically a love confession according to Chinese romance novel / drama conventions, Ah Fei is saying that he wasn’t in love (or didn’t realize he was in love) with Lianhua ten years ago, but realizes he loves with him now. (This is very plausible, imo, because ten years ago, he was single-mindedly focused on Lianhua’s power and channeled his obsession with Lianhua into their rivalry)

But when Li Lianhua tells him that “the moon that year is just like tonight”, he is confessing that his love for Ah Fei had never changed: he loved Ah Fei ten years ago and loves him still to this day 🥹

I really like this headcanon / implication that Lianhua was the first to fall in love with Ah Fei ten years ago (and not the other way around). Because imagine Li Xiangyi / Lianhua at the height of his power ten years ago, realizing that he has a crush on his arch-rival who only sees him as a challenge to overcome. Nevertheless, he manages to win Ah Fei’s trust and they sign a truce, only to learn shortly after that Ah Fei “betrayed” him and killed his older brother / shixiong! Imagine his despair and heartbreak as he storms into Ah Fei’s yacht / ship to fight him!

And then, ten years later, after he lost all is power and resigned himself to waste away as a dying man, Ah Fei shows up, tells him he didn’t order his shixiong’s murder, vows he will cure him, and refuses to leave his side. They settle into their old banter. They instinctively rely on each other but cannot fully trust each other.

And this is when Ah Fei, who has only known a life of violence and has never found a moment of peace until now, begins to realize that he can love! He doesn’t have to relive his childhood over and over, killing everyone better than him until he is the last man standing! For the first time in his life, Di Feisheng feels safe with someone, he wants to protect rather than destroy. With Li Lianhua, he can finally enjoy the mundane and simple pleasures of life. Of course the moon looks brighter tonight.

I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

id in alt

can’t believe the first murderdads I draw are a meme