#hainyu

[eigwayne]

Today I watched a couple eps of a handful of shows I'd been working on. I want to finish one or two so I won't feel bad about starting Witch From Mercury or Parallel World or something else on my backlog. But man, sometimes finishing a show is a slog.

I'm on episode 50 of Court Lady, a show with unlikable characters and far too many plotlines that just keep dragging on. I forgot about Ma Hainyu and the other secondary/tertiary characters from the pirate group for a while there, they appear so rarely. And it breaks the tone AGAIN from the high drama of the palace, which was gearing up to resolve, it felt like. And now it's just dragging its feet about everything and especially Lu Yingying's arc, which is the worst arc of the whole show and I hated Fu Yin's stupid not-revenge arc a lot. The more I have to see Prince Liang, the more I hate the show, so you can imagine how I am suffering through this part. Also, this is the main character who gets called a Mary Sue the most in reviews (out of the other shows in this post) but is least Mary-Sue-like, imo. She had a modicum of wisdom and sense and self preservation, and apparently that is unbelievable for most viewers, I don't know.

I hit episode 20 of Stand By Me 2021. The main character is still a moron, sadly, but the palace drama and Xuan Lu's character are keeping me interested. I don't mind at all that there's ahistorical powerful female-led organizations- I mind that the main character is the sort that should have been killed for being fresh in front of the emperor in the first episode but faces no repercussions for hardly anything at all. They want me to believe this is such a dangerous court but they let this imbecile prance around with a sword and stick her nose into everyone's business? My ability to suspend disbelief is pretty decent but I am struggling with this. And the emperor's in love with her. If I were Cheng Yi I'd throw out my back on purpose or something to get out of acting in yet another drama where I had to fall in love with a girl who is so stupid she can't hold her own in a conversation with a toddler. This is the third one. Third! The man is cursed by his pretty face- born to do comedy, forced to do idol.

Besides that, I hit episode 7 of Rebel Princess, and this show is twice as long as it needs to be already. Every scene, every plot element is dragged out past its limits, and this is coming from someone who thought the childhood arc in Minglan was fine. They keep telling me the main character is beautiful and virtuous but they show me a spoiled brat. The actress, while beautiful, is too old to believable play a fifteen-year-old, as are most of the other actors, and they should have sucked it up and gotten younger actors for this arc. I heard this is a bit of a vanity project and I'd believe it.

And I'm on ep 12 of Goodbye My Princess. I started the original version, not the director's cut, and sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice. But this is another one with an unlikable, kind of greasy male lead, plus an amnesia arc which is often a snore-fest, plus we just introduced another woman to the love polygon, so we'll see, maybe I will be glad I saved myself three episodes.

I wish I was better about dropping things, but my brain just won't let me. Never mind just these shows- every once in a while, I think about going back to Ashes of Love or Destiny of White Snake or even Hot Blooded Youth. LOL, that one would be my inability to let something go versus my gut reaction to Huang Zitao's face. It'd be a disaster. But I still sometimes entertain the idea.

#currently watching