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MEOW_IRL

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Today's advice from your Goth Auntie

No slouching! Drink some water, take your meds.

Despite what your brain may say, guilt is not a good motivational tool.

The Thing in the Walls wants a freezer pop. I said it had to come out; no freezer pops IN walls allowed.

❤️ Auntie Jilli

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(source)

Unsplash -  photography, illustration, and art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

Pexels - stock photos and videos

Stockvault.net - stock photos

freepngimg - icons, pictures and clipart

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Kissclipart and kissPNG - more vectors and clipart (often transparent!)

Getdrawings - simplistic images and drawing tutorials

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without infringing copyright! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own. 

Please add on if you know any more sites for free images <3

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😄🤣😂 make sure your volume is turned on.

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So accurate.

So I tried to make cream heroes human avatar ver using pitzmaker!

DD:

- lazy ass man

- but unexpectedly super athletic

- 10/10 would buy convenience store food than cooking

- head in the cloud

- bread enthusiast

- you cant predict him at all

- loves baby

- everyone's caring big bro

- gets hit alot by TT

TT:

- queen

- queen

- queen

- hits DD alot cos she thinks he is smelly all the time

- black belt at karate lol

- hates everyone

- but maybe she's just tsundere

- refined lady

- guys are scared of her

- easily jealous

Momo:

- CEO lol

- so of course he's rich

- still young but most of the time talks like he is 50

- Coco's best friend

- Cunning

Coco:

- Momo's best friend

- Researcher

- "Hmm...."

- Calm and collected

- Well mannered

- Doesn't eat junk food

- Women get attracted to him easily

- Unexpectedly good at winking

- Doesn't have any interest in some common things other people are interested to

- Secretly into some kinky stuffs lmao

Chuchu:

- soft

- princess

- scared easily

- introvert

- Lulu's love interest

- hates physical exercises

- well behaved

- doesn't like going outside

Lala:

- foodie

- Lulu's partner in crime

- selfie queen

- loves getting spoiled by DD

- tomboy

- loves watching TV

Lulu:

- hungry all the time

- foodie

- Lala's partner in crime

- loves Chuchu a lot

- cute boi

- noisy

- has too much energy

- but also cares a lot for his siblings

- your typical shounen manga protagonist

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screaming at self to paint the fucking deer already

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Never.

Patreon | Web | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

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“I shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s healthcare” yeah, no, you should. We’re all soft, weak, hairless apes long removed from any species that could survive alone, and you’re alive because of the daily efforts a vast web of people just as weak and helpless as you. That’s what a society is. America requires you to pay extraordinarily little to the common good, but keeping your fellow witless apes alive is part of the small fee. Deal with it or try your luck in the wilderness.

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“Your English is good.”

I was in Chicago for a business trip and took a Lyft to see my friends in the city. There was one other passenger besides me. I strike up a conversation and it’s going well. Then in the middle of it, he said to me, “Your English is really good.”

Some background: I had immigrated to the US when I was a few months old, so although I am bilingual, I speak English like it is my native tongue. Growing up, I learned that I shouldn’t mark that I spoke another language on my school forms because then I’d be put in an ESL class that I didn’t need.

I still find myself thinking about this small moment because it reminds me that I am an “other.” I am not the default, and I know I will never be. There are times when I’m glad I’m not like everyone else around me. But then there are moments like this that make me want to curl into a ball or punch someone in the face because they dared mention I was different. In this case, it was the latter.

I told the passenger, “It should be. I’ve lived in the US basically all my life.”

He looked so embarrassed and he tried to back peddle and say something among the lines of, “there’s a huge immigrant population in Chicago and you might be one of them,” which didn’t help his case either.

This experience reinforced to me that when I’m listening to how others speak, I shouldn’t try to guess if they’re from the US or not. It doesn’t really matter in the end if “their English is good.” It’s what they’re saying that does.

#tales of an immigrant #long story

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I love how the drama plays with the Noble Idiot trope by basically making our couple too smart to let the other get away with it. (More detailed post to come.)

#lost love in times #cdrama

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Literally minutes later, your daughter escaped from her room. Either she's very smart or there is no security. Personally, I like to think the maids were on her side.

#lost love in times #cdrama

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Homo-eroticism in Lost Love

Something that really just bugs me when it comes to dramaland is its use of homoerotic imagery and homosexual themes, but none of the guts to really follow through. There are several dramas that deal with homosexual issues (Personal Taste, Coffee Prince, and Sungkyunkwan Scandal come to mind) but homosexuality itself is always played with, never really dealt with. It’s the same in Lost Love, and I wish it weren’t.

Spoilers ahead, and it’s a rather lengthy post.

Yuan Ling and Yuan Che

There are a lot of princes in this drama, so it’s no surprise that they would form alliances and be joined at the hip. There’s a sense of brotherhood between them, but it also goes into homosexual, incestuous territory at times, and I wish that it really didn’t because it doesn’t do the show any good nor does it do anything for the story. Take Ling and Che, our first brothers-almost-lovers pairing.

There is a key moment when Princess Duo Xia comes to Ling’s manor and sees Che there. When Che mentions that Ling’s not there, Duo Xia says she’ll wait, then looks Che up and down as if assessing a potential rival. She moves closer to him and asks why Ling is single.

DX: Could it be that he has unspeakable reasons or some unmentionable disease? Or is it because of someone else that he has to marry late?

Che: It isn’t because of me that 4th Brother is single!

There’s a lot of homoerotic subtext in Duo Xia’s question, and the fact that Che tries to dissuade her is telling. It’s not hard to understand why Duo Xia would think there’s something else going on between the two brothers given that 1) they’re very close, having been through many battles and often shown together; 2) Che is almost always at Ling’s manor (I don’t know if he has his own place, but surely he has his own family he can be with) and it’s not a coincidence that he’s the one who greets her, much like a stay-at-home wife; and 3) Che shows little interest in much else other than Ling. (We know that he has his own love interest, but Duo Xia does not know that yet.) Duo Xia has always been shown to be observant and perceptive, so it’s not out of character for her to ask what’s really going on and try to get to the bottom of things. She is, after all, trying to marry Ling. That’s not really what’s problematic here.

What is is the humorous music underlying the whole interaction. Accusing someone of being a homosexual isn’t funny, nor should it be treated as such. That’s just exploiting a real issue in the LGBT community faces for some bad humor. Lost Love isn’t the first to do this, but I am disappointed because it could do so much better.

Yuan Ming and Yuan Ji

Where Ling’s and Che’s interactions aren’t explicitly homoerotic, Ming’s and Ji’s are. I think you could make a bigger argument that Ji loves Ming more than you could for Che loving Ling. There are also several factors that make this couple interesting, while still problematic in its execution.

There’s a lot more overtly gendered characteristics between the two. Ji is shown to be quiet and meek, almost like a princess rather than a prince. He is berated by the Emperor for being such, and even calls those traits “shortcomings.” There is a bias going on there that’s not really seen anywhere else in the show (for example, no one criticizes Duo Xia for being strong-willed and powerful even though she’s a princess), which only goes to feminize Ji. In a few flashback scenes, we see Ji caring for Ming as a wife might. He fixes Ming’s clothes before they go to a court session and he uses his sleeve to clean up blood from Ming’s hand. It’s no surprise that when Ji dies, Ming carries him bridal style out before his brothers. But Ji isn’t the only one to play a “female” part in their relationship.

Whereas Ji’s effeminate-ness is implicit, Ming’s is explicit. He’s shown to have cross-dressed and can even puts on a female mask as a disguise. We find out he did this to help Ji several times before. The first being when they were young and Ji had lost his mother, Ming disguises himself to get the Emperor to visit Ji’s mother’s grave. The second being when Ji had to kneel in the rain after displeasing the Emperor, Ming came to him as a maid and put an umbrella over him. Ming is literally turning himself into a woman to help Ji, and Ji in turn dotes on Ming as a female lover might.

It’s an interesting dynamic that I wish the show had more guts to follow through. There could’ve been so many more layers to their relationship, and on the show’s take on gender and sexuality overall. However, by having the two be brothers, the show cops out of having any real discussion on the issue or allowing the characters to have any further development. It seems like the show just put the homoerotic scenes there for the homophiles in the audience. It’s the same as with Ling and Che–the homosexual relationship is implied but only for entertainment value rather than for character depth.

Yuan Li and Ming Yan

Perhaps the worst (and most disappointing) of these homoerotic relationships is that of Yuan Li and Ming Yan. A common trope in dramaland is a man falling love with another “man,” who is really a woman in disguise. Ming Yan is one of the Mages but enters the palace disguised as a man and meets Li, the 12th prince. They don’t get along at first, but slowly Li falls for her, all the while not knowing she’s a woman and becoming conflicted because of his feelings. Li even goes so far as to ask Che for advice, and Che seems to give Li his blessing on the relationship. In the end, Li finds out that Ming Yan is not a man through accidentally walking in on her bathing.

I don’t like that in these situations the only way the man finds out about his lover’s identity is through seeing her naked body. It objectifies the woman, stripping her worth down to her body and gender. It robs her of agency, as her privacy is never treated as a serious issue and is instead allowed to be violated so that the man’s heterosexuality can be confirmed. There are better ways to discover a character’s true identity that can actually affect the character’s relationship and better the story.

What gets me is how, after the man’s heterosexuality is affirmed, character development basically comes to a standstill. The status quo is brought back, and our characters don’t learn or question anything beyond it. Li doesn’t question his sexuality after this, not wondering if he really is attracted to men or what would’ve happened if Ming Yan was actually a man. There are no more layers or conflicts to his relationship to Ming Yan, even though there absolutely should be.

And I think that’s the reason why this relationship was the most disappointing. There was so much more the show could’ve done to make this couple interesting. It could’ve been a more realistic, homosexual relationship rife with internal and external conflict. Instead, it’s a generic mistaken-gender-swap story that’s been done so many times before.

Why am I rambling about this? Why does this matter?

In my previous post, I talked about why I love Lost Love. It’s got an interesting premise, it’s well-paced, and it looks stunning. But I really love it because its core characters are intelligent, proactive, and show an awareness of their situation that makes them more than just pretty faces. I really adore the way women are treated as equal to men in this show, saving their own butts and coming up with their own plans to forward their own agendas. Everyone is given a level of agency over their own development, and that’s honestly so refreshing in a genre that’s teeming with stupid, doormat flat characters.

So, it’s really disappointing when characters are robbed of that chance. Che doesn’t develop beyond being a loyal brother. Ji dies before we can get anything else out of him. Li’s feelings for Ming Yan are not expounded upon any further, as of this posting anyway. For once, I want to see a historical romance drama deal with the real issues of having a man love a man and not shy away from it or use it for just entertainment.

I’m not saying that every drama needs to deal with homosexuality or LGBT issues, but I am saying that I’m sick of dramas that can deal with it in a mature, realistic way not do so. Everything else about Lost Love is so much better than the other shows I’ve seen, so it’s disheartening when it fails to show or comment on homosexuality and even goes so far as to treat it as a joke.

I’m still going to watch the rest of the show (as of this posting, only 38 out of its total 56 episodes have been streamed on DramaFever) and hope that it does have some guts to actually address these issues.

#lost love in times #醉玲珑 #醉玲瓏 #cdrama #homosexuality #long rant

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Petty Jealousy in Lost Love in Times

It’s amazing that the ONLY show of petty jealousy is between two princess, Cai Qian and Duo Xia, and it’s treated as childish and one-sided because that’s what it is. In a genre that’s teeming with murderous schemes and female characters, it’s refreshing to see a trope played with like this.

Cai Qian goes to challenge Duo Xia and the latter just looks at her like, “Okay,” and doesn’t take her too seriously. Duo Xia acknowledges Cai Qian’s feelings for Yuan Ling but knows that it’s one-sided - that’s why she isn’t fazed by Cai Qian’s words. It’s the words of a child who feels threatened but doesn’t understand that she doesn’t need to be.

At the same time, Duo Xia doesn’t rub it in Cai Qian’s face that Yuan Ling isn’t in love with either of them. She’s going to let Cai Qian learn the truth on her own and come to her own understanding. She gives Cai Qian enough credit to know that she’ll grow out of this and doesn’t rob her of that development.

Women subtly encouraging each other’s development gives me life.

#love lost in times #醉玲珑 #cdrama #female character #character development

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Yuan Ling x Qing Chen

I need more lovey-dovey Yuan Ling x Qing Chen moments please.

#lost love in times #cecilia liu #william chan #醉玲珑

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Lost Love in Times - No Jealous Other Woman Here

What I love about this scene is that Consort Jin (left) is proactively inviting Qing Chen (right) to be a part of the family. Consort Jin could’ve easily become a jealous wife, but instead goes out of her way to welcome Qing Chen into the family. She knows that 1) her lowly status as an illegitimate daughter gives her little leeway in politics, and she’s never seen to be interested in it anyway, whereas Qing Chen plays the game well and would help Yuan Zhan in his ambitions; 2) Yuan Zhan and Qing Chen are music lovers and gardeners so they have much more in common and are already good friends; and 3) Yuan Zhan loves Qing Chen, and Consort Jin wants him to be happy, even if it’s not with her.

It’s so great to see two women not kill themselves over men and show awareness for their situations rather than trying to one-up each other through ridiculous schemes.

#lost love in times #醉玲珑 #cdrama #cecilia liu #li chengyuan

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I’m in Love with Lost Love in Times

I’ve been trying to find a really good C-drama since Scarlet Heart with the right blend of fantasy/history, heartache, and story, and I think I’ve found it in Lost Love in Times. It is, without a doubt, the most engaged I’ve been with a C-drama in a long time - let’s hope it continues to be that way.

Mild spoilers ahead.

Story

Qing Chen is a Mage, a magic user sworn to protect the Wei State. Yuan Ling is the 4th prince, a general meant to bring peace to his people. After being saved by Qing Chen, Yuan Ling takes over the throne and is determined to marry her. However, nothing good can come between the union of the Grand Sorceress and the Emperor. When Yuan Zhan, the 7th prince, throws a coup on the couple’s wedding, Qing Chen is forced to cast a spell to reset the world, where she will make things right and swear to not be the cause for her love’s downfall.

Comments: The first five episodes go by so fast that if you blink you might miss it. But once we get to the altered timeline where the meat of the story is, it keeps going at a brisk, refreshing pace. Conflicts arise and get solved within the next episode or two but there are always consequences so it never feels like things just happen for no reason. Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve watched a drama where there is a logical progression of story where events scaffold on one another, where the big event everything leads to actually meets and exceeds my expectations. I really hope for this pacing and story to continue as it has because it’s great so far.

Characters

Qing Chen (Cecilia Liu) is a wonderful mix of intelligent, cunning, and proactive. She initiates a lot of her interactions with the other characters and is always doing something to move the story forward in a transparent way. For example, when she is investigating a brothel that’s a cover-up for a cult of Dark/Black Mages, she goes to ask Yuan Ling for advice because he had looked into them before. There is no time for any shenanigans here, no “I can’t tell him I’m doing this thing because I’m a noble idiot” that so many other dramas do. I love it.

Yuan Ling (William Chan) is aloof, serious, and confident. Like Qing Chen, he’s very proactive in the story and doesn’t bother trying to play games. It also helps that he acknowledges the females around him as equals in intelligence and physical strength. When the other mages (who are female) help him during an ambush, he doesn’t brush them off but kindly says thanks and that’s that. No need to act macho or anything.

Yuan Zhan (Xu Hai Qiao) is calm, refined, and loves music and flowers. At first, he’s not into politics and wants to stay out of it. But when his mother kills his brother to frame Yuan Ling, he goes straight into action and is shown to have a strong sense of morality. He’s a nice foil to Yuan Ling as an intellectual and more emotional partner to Qing Chen.

The whole cast of characters are well put together. It helps that each one feels like they have lives outside the main story and are shown to be just as competent as the main trio. The villains' plans are thought out and their motives aren’t just petty things. The other supporting characters have just enough screen time to showcase their abilities and honestly do a lot for the main story.

And FOR ONCE, there isn’t an evil, jealous girl who’s out to get our heroine or do stupid things to get our heroes’ attention. Like, thank you.

Technical Stuff

The costumes are well put together except for a few choices of head pieces. Lots of flowing sleeves and soft fabrics, which is my type of thing. I couldn’t be happier.

Cinematography is done well here, as well as integration of CGI. When we’re in a more fantastical setting, you can tell, but it’s not so much in your face. Also, no CGI talking animals so far, so everything’s alright with me. There is a little too much sparkle for me, but that’s more of a personal preference.

Stunt work is done well and integrates the magic nicely when we need it. There are a few nonsense hand motions that I find cheesy, but nothing that takes away from the story.

Overall, I like the way the drama looks. It adds more to the story than it takes away.

Ramblings - Female Characters and Complex, Mutual Relationships

I love how equal men and women are in Lost Love’s universe. The Mages, for the most part, are all female and are treated with just as much respect as the trained warriors (because that’s what they are). The relationships we see between men and women are generally mutual and based on admiration and acknowledgment of the other’s strengths. Even when relationships aren’t mutual, there’s a common understanding of why. This makes for more interesting conflicts down the road and more complex relationships.

The first couple we actually see on screen is Xi Xie and Tao Yao, two top-ranking Mages. The former is Qing Chen’s mentor and father figure. The latter is her senior and mother figure. They’re clearly a couple, but never act on it because of their devotion to the Wei and the Mages. They both understand where the other is coming from and would do anything to protect what the other wants. At the same time, they aren’t completely dependent on the other. Tao Yao is competent in her own right and is shown coming up with her own strategies and fending for herself quite well. In the altered timeline, Xi Xie is missing but that doesn’t stop Tao Yao from protecting the other Mages by basically building an underground city. She loves Xi Xie, sure, but isn’t going to let that stop her from defending her sisters.

Another great female character is Princess Duo Xia of the neighboring A-Chai tribe. She is first shown on screen commanding her own small army to free the captured Mages so they can help her people. Later, she fights Yuan Ling and is bested by him. It is then that she decides she wants to marry him, but she explains that her reasons aren’t just that he beat her in martial arts or that he’s handsome. She knows of his reputation as a general and thinks that that’s what the A-Chai need. She isn’t being petty or single-minded. She’s thinking of all sides of her situation and picking the best option. When she confesses later and guesses Yuan Ling loves Qing Chen, and instead of plotting to murder Qing Chen (which is soooo refreshing for a second female lead in these kinds of dramas), she acknowledges Yuan Ling’s feelings for another and doesn’t try to push the issue. Then she challenges Qing Chen because she KNOWS Qing Chen loves Yuan Ling but won’t act on it. There is a mutual understanding of feelings, and that makes Duo Xia’s relationship to both so much more fun to watch.

Honestly, I can go on and on, but I’m gonna stop there because I think you get my point.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Because of the great characters, interesting story, and visuals, I’m gonna stick with this drama. It’s the only one so far that’s managed not to play into too many annoying cliches and stands out from the plethora of historical, fantasy romance I’ve seen so far.

If you’re also looking for a C-drama with smart characters, a faster pace story, and beautiful visuals, this is one to watch. Just hold out through the first five episodes and I swear it’ll be worth it.

#love lost in time #醉玲珑 #醉玲瓏 #c-drama #cecilia liu #william chan #xu hai qiao