Progress Report No. 6

Progress Report = indulgent post, feel free to skip. 

I figured it's been a month since my last progress report, so I'd better record how I'm doing now.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Finished writing Chapter 5, aka the scene where Charlotte interviews Leo. I moved things around quite a bit so Leo is the first interview rather than Rhys. It occurred to me when I was restructuring the plot that Rhys would never agree to interview first. Plus, it builds up the tension more this way. Rhys is more like the final boss type, no?

Chapter 6 is a flashback chapter, and I haven't decided if the pacing works better if I stick in one of Charlotte's childhood flashbacks or Rory's, but for the sake of continuity I decided to jump ahead to Chapter 7, which is roughly the one where Rhys sees the Phantom for the first time. I HAVE BEEN STUCK ON THIS CHAPTER FOR ALMOST TWO WEEKS. The initial problem, I think, is that the first scene of that chapter involves Nicolette and Cassie, whom I came to realize that I didn't get their motivations at all. If they dislike Charlotte so much, why would they keep someone like her around? Eventually I came up with an answer, but it means I'll have to do a massive rewrite of Chapter 2. Which will have to happen later, since I made a new rule to myself that I can't go back and rewrite chapters until I finish writing the entire first draft from beginning to end.

It was rather disorienting for me to put myself in their shoes to figure things out though. I'd been contemplating just how much of a wimp Charlotte should be at the beginning (is she weak enough?), but when I tried reading 7 Seeds last week, the heroine was so infuriatingly spineless that I just wanted to smack her silly. Did I want to write Charlotte into someone I would constantly be pissed at? To be honest, not really.

Here's another problem. I've been reading Love in the Time of Cholera, and though I'm not particularly into the story or the characters, I find myself enthralled with the writing constantly. Which I think has indirectly been feeding into my massive fear of a blank page. Garcia Marquez writes so gorgeously AND ALL I CAN PRODUCE IS CRAP!!!

Anyways. I even outlined the entire chapter in hopes that it'd trigger some flow in the writing, but that hasn't happened yet. I suppose I will keep clunking on stubbornly until something starts working.

TV Recap: City Hunter Episode 3

Guess what time it is? It's CITY HUNTER TIME WOOOOT.

Remember how I mentioned last week that I read the City Hunter manga a long time ago? I actually binge-read all of the current English scanlations (up to Chapter 136) recently, so now I can conclusively report that the manga is absolutely nothing like this drama. Ryo Saeba... like I remembered, he's a huge pervert, but no one can deny that he's very charming. I suspect the Lee Min Ho playboy behavior that weirded me out last episode was probably inspired by Ryo, but the two City Hunters are rather different. For starters, I'm not ready to bestow the title of Major Badass upon Lee Min Ho yet. Though I'll admit he's got a pretty face, he has yet to convince me he's worthy of such an honor, especially if he's still getting judo-thrown by Nana. Ryo Saeba though... he freaking shoots through his own left hand in order to slow down the bullet enough so that it doesn't hit other civilians. And this happens only in the second chapter!

On another note, I've discovered the secret to preventing binge-watching TV. If you force yourself to write a recap each time, there's no way you're gonna plow through episodes! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Ahem. Without further ado....

At the end of Episode 2, Lee Min Ho uncovers the nefarious schemes of Evil Councilman #1, whom I'm just gonna refer to now as Numero Uno because it's shorter and my fingers have to reach farther to hit the # sign. He catches Numero Uno's accomplice shredding some suspicious documents, and so Lee Min Ho sets off the fire alarm, forcing everyone to evacuate so he can take photos of incriminating paperwork on his iPhone and steal the shredded paper.  During all this, I wonder why nobody notices him on all the security cameras, but I guess maybe they're too busy trying to save their own asses to notice.

With incredible painstaking patience that I am probably incapable of displaying (fortunately fast-forwarded so we only saw like 20 seconds of work), Lee Min Ho tapes the shredded documents back together, and it pretty much confirms what we already suspected--the two orphan kids never received their food stamps and someone pocketed the money instead. Then he tracks down Numero Uno's partner and takes out a bunch of dudes in broad daylight before stealing their important files. Lee Min Ho sends all the incriminating evidence to Cute Prosecutor. This whole sequence is very Dark Knight to me... Lee Min Ho as Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, rich playboy extraordinaire by day and mysterious vigilante by night, Cute Prosecutor as the respected lawyer and nice guy, Harvey Dent.  Or maybe Commissioner Gordon. Something like that.

So Numero Uno is on trial for corruption, and he gives a rousing speech claiming innocence. Or rather, he flails his hands around wildly while screaming hoarsely about justice and such. I just snorted while trying to imagine President Obama talking like this. Unfortunately, the other assemblymen must collectively vote whether to arrest Numero Uno, and to no one's surprise, Numero Uno gets off jail-free. Poor Cute Prosecutor. Is this really how South Korea operates? I hope not. Maybe I misinterpreted what was going on, but what's the logic for having the assemblymen vote whether or not their own people can be arrested?? That's like summoning a gang to be the jury for their own member. 

Anyways, so the stupid bastard gets of free, and people be pissed. Lee Min Ho broods in the shadows after the verdict--and totally unrelated, but it finally occurs to me that I hate his hair right now so much because it reminds me of Justin Bieber's kiddie helmet cut from back when he was tolerable. Crazy McCrazypants is so angry that he HULK-CRUSHES a glass with his bare hands. Then there's a scene of Lee Min Ho being pissed at the shooting range where he shoots consecutive bullets all into the hole so it looks like he only got one shot on the target, much to the glee of his jealously inferior co-workers. He's still being angry and brooding until he goes to Nana's house, where she feeds him and the orphans. She makes some comment about whether or not it tastes like his mother's home-cooking, and he gets all sad.

Then there's this moment that I'm guessing is supposed to be cute but gave me the biggest eye-roll.

ONLY IN K-DRAMAS:
Boy:   I'm gonna go.
//stalks off//
20 seconds pass
Girl: I didn't even get to say goodbye!

Talk about slow reaction, yeesh.

So then a hodge-podge of scenes happen that shed light on some things but mainly just make me more confused. Cute Prosecutor visits his ex-girlfriend, who seems to own a pet store, and it seems he has some sort of connection to Nana so he's looking out for her. Meanwhile, sad Lee Min Ho calls the gambler who's taking care of some unconscious lady lying in the bed. At first, I thought his foster mother survived the gunshot, but then the gambler calls her by some other name so now I have no idea who this person is. Then I realize that the quasi-nice councilman who orders everyone's death is actually the president now (SAY WHAAAAT) and he warns the others in the Council of Five that corruption should be dealt with justice.

So the President's daughter shows up at the workplace the next day and insists that Lee Min Ho become her tutor... while also massively hitting on him.  God, this girl... she's cute and she knows it. And usually this irritates the hell out of me in real life, but I can't help but kinda like her, because she is an effing riot. He shuts her down real good, and later he picks up the Gambler from the airport because Crazy McCrazypants decided to send him back to Korea to keep an eye on Lee Min Ho. Except Nana thinks he rushed off during the lunch break in order to go out with another one of his supposed many girlfriends, so she's acting all pissy-flirty that night when she informs him that the orphans were chosen as flower kids for Numero Uno's book-signing event.

Fast-forward to the day of the book-signing event, and all the key players are there. If there is a competition for cheesiest and corniest book titles out there, I bet all my money on Numero Uno's: "The Day the Citizens' Tears Fall is the Day I Weep." Excuse me for a moment as I wipe the vomit of corn and cheese from my keyboard. The orphans get hustled off to see Numero Uno in less-than-welcoming fashion, while Nana has a nice moment with the Cute Prosecutor and they are adorbs. Meanwhile, Lee Min Ho and the Gambler start planning their elaborate scheme around the premises. Numero Uno tries to intimidate the two orphans to reveal Lee Min Ho's identity, since he found out that Lee Min Ho was the one who stole the documents, but Lee Min Ho shows up and allows the bodyguards to bring him before Numero Uno.

Numero Uno apparently is not only gross and heartless, but really really stupid. In a moment of bravado, he starts spit-spraying in that annoying hoarse yelling of his about how nobody cares about the orphans and how it's okay for him to embezzle money from taxes. It always irritates me when villains are like, "Before I get rid of you... let me tell you EVERYTHING ABOUT MY MASTERPLAN, so just in case you manage to get out of here alive you can report back to everyone about what you heard!" But actually, I'm only half-paying attention to all the shit this guy is spouting, because Lee Min Ho's lips are ridiculously glossy and distracting.

Lee Min Ho records all this on a tiny camera embedded in his glasses, and the Gambler uploads this onto the computer for broadcast. In another Batman-esque moment, the video of Numero Uno's confession starts playing on like every computer in South Korea. Numero Uno is about to give some speech about weeping about his citizen's tears or something, when his presentation changes to that video and everyone is all appalled. One of the other councilmen (who fudged the numbers in the first place) orders his bodyguard to get rid of Numero Uno, and the bodyguard drags him offstage and takes him away.

Meanwhile upstairs, Lee Min Ho dispatches the other guards with ease and comes face to face with a fat cook. The cook knocks him down and is about to fillet him with a butcher knife but Lee Min Ho takes him down with a spoon HAHAHA. Then he ziplines down to the dock and onto the yacht where the bodyguard is about to strangle Numero Uno. He knocks the bodyguard into the water and then shoots a tranquilizer dart into Numero Uno's fat body. Cut to the next scene, where the Gambler and Lee Min Ho pose as deliverymen and drop off this huge box at the prosecutor's office. A bunch of reporters show up, having received a tip to go there. Cute Prosecutor opens the package and inside is Numero Uno all tied up with a bunch of dog tags around his neck.

The Gambler drops Lee Min Ho off at the park where Nana and the orphans are. Then we're treated to another scene oozing with cheese, where Lee Min Ho walks into one of those fountains where water shoots out of the ground while wearing a suit and dress shoes. WTF MAN! THOSE THINGS ARE EXPENSIVE! He comments how they never had these in the US, which I'm calling bullshit because I've definitely seen those in California before. Well, maybe they don't have them at MIT. Anyways, he tries to cheer up the orphans who are all sad and disillusioned because now they think adults are just crocks full of shit. Eventually, all four of them run around the fountains like a happy family.

Lee Min Ho has dinner at Nana's and they have some cute moments that make me consider jumping ship from Cute Prosector/Nana to this one that's obviously endgame. They're watching TV and Nana is totally admiring the prosecutor for doing good work while insulting Lee Min Ho for doing nothing all day except going on dates with women. Someone on the TV dubs the mysterious vigilante as the "City Hunter." Lee Min Ho gets a call from Dad, which he doesn't answer until after he leaves Nana's. Oh boy, CRAZY MCCRAZYPANTS IS PISSED HAHAHA. If Lee Min Ho's not doing your stupid revenge plan properly, you get yo ass over and do it yourself, ya stinker!!

In a parallel storyline, the prosecutor's office discovers that the dog tags belong to special agents who all went MIA in 1983. BA-DUM-DUM. The President gets all worried, and so he goes off to visit a certain someone...

Meanwhile, the Gambler is concerned about Lee Min Ho's seemingly cold attitude towards the identity of his birth mother, so the Gambler tracks down her address and gives it to Lee Min Ho, who responds coldly and disinterestedly. But of course, he's actually kind of curious, so he goes over to his mom's place and watches her cooking dokbokki at this little snack shop. But then this mysterious black car shows up, and an agent goes up and say something to her that Lee Min Ho can't quite catch. She LEAVES THE DOKBOKKI STILL COOKING ON THE STOVE (collective gasp from the audience... aka, just me) and goes down to the car where it turns out the President is sitting in the backseat. Then Lee Min Ho turns around, and we see CRAZY MCCRAZYPANTS in the flesh and in Seoul!! END EPISODE.

SL: mmmmm his mom is making dokbokki. i want some...

      what the frick she just leaves the food there cooking??!!

       i am very concerned for the dokbokki

       awwwww shit crazy mccrazypants is here. damn i hate that guy
YY: hahaha in kpop universe the laws of science do no exist. 
       things happen only if the script says so

       do not fear for the dokbokki unless it is meant to be ruined.
       in which case nothing can stop it from being ruined.

        yeah...that guy does not get better with time....

SL: okay, episode 3 has ended

       WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT TO OUR INTREPID HERO?
       WHAT DOES THE PRESIDENT WANT FROM HIS MOTHER?
       AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE DOKBOKKI???
       FIND OUT IN THE NEXT EPISODE OF.... CITY HUNTERRRRRRRR!!!!

Falling Slowly

Falling slowly 

Eyes that know me 

And I can't go back 

And wounds that take me 

And erase me 

And I'm painted black 

Today was just one of those days. I don't know if it has something to do with hormones or what, but I woke up feeling melancholy, and it never quite went away...

... which set me up quite well for watching the musical "Once" tonight. My roommate and I bought student discount tickets, which were in the farthest row in the balcony. I didn't bother looking up much about what "Once" was about before I went to the show. All I knew was that it had something to do with musicians and lovers.

Well you have suffered enough 

And warred with yourself 

It's time that you won 

There's something about these musical theaters. Not just the fact that tonight, rows and rows in front of me were the many shadows of couples in the dark, resting their heads on the other's shoulders. I think almost every time I'm there, watching the love stories unfold before a backdrop of swelling orchestral music, that repressed part of me begins to stir. It doesn't rear its head often, but there are times when I sit there feeling very small and alone.

So when "Falling Slowly" began to play, something started moving within me. The song was vaguely familiar, like a dream you must have visited before, though I can't pinpoint if I'd actually heard the song before tonight. But the duet made me feel like a bubble about to burst. When it comes to emotions, I am a fortress of ice and steel. But music is the catalyst to emotional reactions, the conductor that helps me tap into that guarded energy source. It's why I write to music, why so many of my blog posts are audio clips or scraps of lyrics. Vulnerable as I already was, there was something about the music of "Once" that nearly had me melting.

I don't know if I was particularly fond of the story itself. The accents made it hard sometimes for me to catch onto key details, and the girl character kind of overlapped with the archetypal Manic Pixie Dream Girl in an annoying way. Some of the dialogue carried the flavor of cringeworthy sound bites from a sappy romance novel. But I do like how the story ends for Girl and Guy, much in the same vein of how I enjoyed the ending to Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss series. The music, however, is the best thing about the show.

Take this sinking boat and point it home 

We've still got time 

Raise your hopeful voice 

You have a choice 

You've made it now

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

Mary Elizabeth Frye

RE: Eleanor and Park

http://angrygirlcomics.tumblr.com/post/72519376982/angry-girl-review-eleanor-and-park

I wasn't as outraged in my review of Eleanor and Park--rather, I think I took on a more disappointed approach when it came to how Rainbow Rowell handled Park's race issues in that book. But the review I've linked at the top of this post does an excellent close-reading of all the issues I had with how Rainbow Rowell tackled having an Asian-American male lead. The book has received so much effusive praise in the literary realm that I'd been wondering if I was some oddity who felt rather underwhelmed by it all. Apparently, I'm not. The book seems to strike a different chord for people who are well-aware of the history behind media portrayals of Asian men.

On another note, this is one of those moments where I wish I actually used my tumblr account, but all in all, tumblr doesn't quite suit my blogging style. Not to mention that this blog is over seven years old...

Runaway

 
Runaway - Jhene Aiko | The Weeknd | Frank Ocean

"The bass reverberated through my bones as the songstress’ sensual warble rose above the electronic echolalia, ensnaring the room in tendrils of melodic smoke. Neither of us spoke as the lyrics of the popular love song diffused through the room, regaling honeyed expressions of affection and bedroom magic. This was a song that would become immortal—not for artistic merit, but for the young lovers in the room whose lives were now forever intertwined to this acoustic reminder of bittersweet first love and high school prom."

An excerpt.

TV Recap: City Hunter Ep. 2

Well hello again, everyone. I decided to give Episode 2 a chance, and though there were some minor annoyances here and there, this episode actually piqued my interest a little more since the WTF-ery from Episode 1, so chances are I'm gonna keep watching this series.

Before I start recapping, I realized I'd forgotten to mention that I used to read the City Hunter manga a few years ago. I honestly don't remember anything about it except that the City Hunter character was a huge pervert, but I'm preeeeetty sure there was nothing about avenging his father's death. I remember it was a pretty entertaining manga though. Anyways, on to business...

This episode starts off approximately the same place where we left off, with the exception of a new scene at this building that looks kind of like the White House, except with more obnoxious patriotism because there are eagle statues atop every peak of the building. With all the stacks of hundred dollar bills everywhere, I'm guessing this is supposed to be the Grand Drug Lord aka Crazy McCrazypants' palace of finery, but I'm a little confused. Did they always have this palace? If so, why did they stay in that little jungle villa this whole time? Or did they suddenly build this after he lost his leg, since he can't go tromping around the jungle anymore?

Anyways, handsome jungle-hair Lee Min Ho receives a letter of acceptance from MIT. I have so many questions. How did this happen? Did he even receive proper schooling in the jungle? What did he put down for extracurriculars? "I've been physically training to be an assassin since I was born, which involved fighting in mud and shooting targets placed around my foster mother." I consulted YY, who's seen this series already and suggested that maybe Crazy McCrazypants donated an entire building to MIT, thanks to all that drug money. Sounds about right to me.

His pink pants are a lot brighter than in this pic. Trust me.

Anyways, we now fast-forward to seven years later. I'm not sure if that MIT acceptance was to undergrad or graduate school, but regardless---somehow Lee Min Ho has graduated with a PhD from MIT in that short amount of time and he shows up in Korea wearing bright pink pants, and now we are introduced to presumably the heroine and love interest, Kim Nana. Turns out this girl has been doing all sorts of odd jobs (including passing out flyers while wearing a funny yellow dress) in order to pay the bills to support her father, who's been in persistent vegetative state (PVS) for ten years. She begs the doctor to save her father---and this is where I feel conflicted. On one hand, I sympathize with her grief about father, but as a future med student who's been reading about end-of-life care, I feel like ten years in PVS is not about quality of life for the patient and more about keeping him alive due to her guilt over his death.Given that this is a K-drama, I'm wondering if this is like Chekhov's gun. If you introduce a comatose patient in the first act, does that mean he will miraculously wake up in the following act?

One of Nana's odd jobs is being a Designated Driver--which is kinda funny, because I've had to do this job all the time for friends out of charity and the goodness of my heart. Minor observation: she has this atrocious flowery fringe thing that I don't even know how to describe, but it's detachable from her dress and it made me snort. Anyways, she picks up Lee Min Ho and his drunk paramour from the club, but not before flipping this undercover prosecutor who forcefully tries to interrogate Drunk Chick and is mistaken for being a perverted creepo. Nana drives them to their hotel--well, only part of the way, because Drunk Chick starts getting frisky and Nana is grossed out.

Lee Min Ho doesn't seem to be enjoying this much either.

She kicks them out of the car and says she's only driving this far but he still owes her money. He acts like a walking anal orifice, and this is the first sign of something that ended up bugging me this whole episode, but I'll get to that later. They get in an argument, and she leaves in a huff but later realizes she left her cell phone in the car. Meanwhile in the hotel room, Lee Min Ho starts plying Drunk Chick with wine in order to figure out what Evil Councilman #1, this chick's sugar daddy, is up to. Nana, desperate for her phone, tries a bunch of methods but ends up kicking his car and setting off the alarm. She's not there when he finally comes downstairs all annoyed, but he sees her phone and realizes what she was up to.

At the hospital, Nana begs this doctor to give her father some major stent operation, and he tells her that they don't normally do such risky procedures on PVS patients. But then Lee Min Ho shows up with all his moolah and says, Just do it--I already paid for it. My inner conflict continues to cringe. Ethically, this is not appropriate at all... but... but... sigh.

Next thing we know, Nana is accepted to this Secret Service training program. She runs into Lee Min Ho there, who is newly hired to work in some other national security branch. All his coworkers brown-nose him real bad---I had no idea being an MIT graduate was such a big deal in Korea, seeing that they're practically licking dirt off his shoes at this point lol. Anyways, the pacing of this episode gets all weird around this point. Basically a bunch of things happen all at once:

1. Nana tries to force Lee Min Ho to let her pay him back for her dad's medical bills, best exemplified by when she takes him down twice with this judo move. I am confused--wasn't he supposed to be a beast at fighting, after all the craptastic training Crazy McCrazypants put him through? Is he pretending to be weak, or did all his muscles atrophy while he was studying at MIT? Anyways, he relents and lets her make up the money by hiring her as his driver.
2. Nana and another agent are assigned to be bodyguards for the President's daughter, who is quite a brat but I actually find her kind of amusing. She takes an immediate liking to Lee Min Ho, who shuts her down real fast.
3. Cute Prosecutor is apparently after the same evil councilman that Lee Min Ho is after, and he's trying to arrest him for corruption charges. Lee Min Ho figures out they're after the same person, but Cute Prosecutor hasn't figured out the opposite.
4. Lee Min Ho continues to investigate Evil Councilman #1 and manages to sneak into his home and steal his diary, which has a record of all the illegal crap he's been doing. 

In a notable scene, the President's daughter goes straight to clubbing after school, which to me seems totally ridiculous because who the hell goes clubbing in the late afternoon/early evening---as evidenced by the ridiculously empty dance floor. Upstairs, Nana runs into Lee Min Ho right after he's ended things with Drunk Chick, who's broken up with Evil Councilman #1 and has no use to him anymore. In spectacular K-drama fashion, to make Drunk Chick go away he kisses Nana in this 360 degree panning shot where we are treated to every single angle of their awkward kiss.

Instead of explaining properly, maybe she'll just go away if I kiss you.

Nana is pissed that he took her first kiss so crudely and ends up judo-flipping him right in the middle of the club. She also starts freaking out because the President's daughter manages to sneak out of the club and away from her pesky bodyguards, but fortunately for her, Cute Prosecutor happens to be there and directs her to where he saw the girl run off to. Methinks a love triangle is in the cards. Too bad--I like this prosecutor, such an upstanding gentleman and with such nice manners too!

The next day at work, Lee Min Ho accidentally injures Nana's foot during judo practice so he ends up having to drive her home and helping carry her around and stuff. He's also wearing this horrendous pink shirt--even my dishcloth looks more attractive than that flimsy low-cut t-shirt. They eat ramen together in her apartment, and that's how we learn that Nana's mother died in the accident that put her father into a coma. Most of her belongings are in danger of being repossessed if she can't pay the bills. Anyways, this other storyline begins, featuring these two young kids in Nana's apartment building who are starving and essentially orphans. One of them is allergic to flour but ends up eating bread and is sent to the hospital. When Nana and Lee Min Ho go to the welfare office to ask for help, the numbers don't add up and it's obvious that Evil Councilman #1 has been doing some shady business with playing the numbers in his child welfare project.

Or something like that. END EPISODE.

All in all, this was a relatively entertaining episode, except I was REALLY annoyed by what they did to Lee Min Ho's character in this seven-years-later spiel. You see, he seemed like such a sweetheart back in the jungle. He cared about his foster mother, he rescued a gambler from angry gangsters, he cried for Crazy McCrazypants when the dude lost his leg. Then it was like he went and got a personality transplant in the US when he went to MIT, because seven years later he is a certified Grade A asshole. I've never watched Boys Over Flowers before, but it's probably not too different from Hana Yori Dango and he completely reminded me of Domyouji--who, surprise surprise, is the basis of the character that Lee Min Ho played in Boys Over Flowers.

Maybe he was corrupted by the money that he never got to use while living in the jungle?  I don't know, I just feel like it was completely unnecessary to bestow all the stereotypical K-drama Male Lead qualities upon him--such as Rich Arrogant Playboy Who Regularly Insults Poor Sweet Virgin. Also, I didn't mention this in my last recap, but Lee Min Ho saw a photo of Nana from the gambler when he was in the jungle. It's clear that he still remembers seeing her in the photo. So why does he treat her like such crap and constantly insults her about how he's not interested in her type and that she should go buy a mirror? What the eff man, you totally kept her picture by your bedside seven years ago!!

My prediction: things between Nana and the Cute Prosecutor are gonna heat up, eventually stirring some jealousy from Lee Min Ho. 

SL: lee min ho's behavior now reminds me too much of the typical boys over flowers lead jerkwad character
YY: hmm...oh yeah...I vaguely remember that now... I think it improves?
SL: i dunno. to me, i'm kinda like... does getting a PhD at MIT really make you such a buttfaced miscreant?
YY: actually...probably yes

To be continued...

Together

I know to be there 
When and where, I'll be there 
You know what's to be said 
We said out loud, we never said 
My premonition of the world comes to me 
A sun in your hands from the middle life 
Says I'm alright

You said you don't have to speak 
I can hear you 
I can't feel all the things you've ever felt before 
I said it's been a long time 
Since someone looked at me that way 
It's like you knew me 
And all the things I couldn't say

-- "Together" by The XX 

TV Recap: City Hunter Ep. 1

I have not watched a Korean drama in years--since high school, perhaps? The main reason is, here's how Sophelia works: 1) I have very good self-control prior to starting to something, but... 2) If I succumb and start something... and find myself addicted, I absolutely won't stop until I finish. This is why I try not to buy junk food, because that shit will be devoured in less than two days. Hence, this is also why I rarely watch TV, because chances are if I get hooked, I will sit in front of the computer, neglecting food and sleep, in order to binge-watch for hours on end.

For some reason though, I came home this afternoon with a hankering for some mindless entertainment, and the idea of watching a K-drama popped into my mind. I don't really keep up with what's hot in that department, but I did recall that a lot of people I knew were hooked on City Hunter when it came out a few years ago, so I figured I'd give the first episode a shot.

Below is more or less my recap/thoughts on the first episode:

The episode more or less starts off with a bombing in Burma, aimed at killing the South Korean president but instead kills a bunch of high ranking officials. Meanwhile, there's a woman giving birth and her husband is nowhere to be found. A hundred bucks says that this newborn baby is gonna be Lee Min Ho, aka the hero that will BE A MAN. Isn't that how these stories usually start?

It turns out that the absent husband is actually one of the South Korean Secret Service-esque guys at the bombing, who survives and makes it back to his wife's side along with his best friend, who is also in the Secret Service. He literally holds his newborn son for like a minute before telling his wife, "Aiitte peace out---gotta go do some top secret business. We'll name the kid when I get back."

Meanwhile, these five official-looking people sit around a circular conference table and talk about planning an Operation Cleansweep to go into North Korea and kill... important people? I'm not entirely sure. Oh, it turns out the bomb was planted by North Koreans. So Absent Husband and Best Friend recruit some top secret soldier friends from a restaurant and other civilian locations, and they're getting all ready to head into North Korea when the general promises them he'll bring them all back home safely. Can you actually promise these things to soldiers? I am tres confused.

So these badasses do a spectacular job of getting into the North Korean building and slicing a bunch of throats, though Absent Husband is unfortunately stabbed during the commotion and Best Friend tries to drag him back to the submarine that's supposed to take them all home. But then, it turns out the five council members agreed to abort the mission in order to save face for the President (and save their own asses from getting fired), because otherwise the Americans will dissolve some sort of protection agreement they have with the South Koreans if they find out that the South Koreans retaliated against the North Koreans. So the only guy in the council with any semblance of a soul reluctantly orders the gunmen on the sub to shoot and kill all the men who were on the mission. In an act of true love, Absent Husband covers Best Friend and saves his life by hiding him underwater while he takes the bullets in the back.

So Best Friend goes crazy from grief and returns to South Korea, where he warns the quasi-nice council member that he's gonna take his life as revenge for all the lives he ordered killed to cover up the mission. At this point, I'm calling Best Friend by a different name, because Crazy McCrazypants goes PSYCHO. He goes off to find his bestie's wife, who is tenderly pampering her newborn son, and she literally turns her back for a second only to find her baby gone and a note that says something like, "Your husband is dead. I have taken your son. It is for your own good. Live a new life." He decides to raise this boy as his own son, for the sole purpose of exacting revenge on those council members.

Fast-forward years later, Crazy McCrazypants is some sort of drug lord in the jungle and is ridiculously severe with the training of his adoptive son. At this point, I'm at about thirty minutes into the episode and all the what-the-fuckery is rattling in my head:

- Why the fuck did the guy kidnap his best friend's son? If you even cared at ALL about your friend and his wife, how on earth would this be a good idea?? It never crosses your mind that MAYBEEEE giving the kid a chance at a normal life might be a good idea, or at least letting the mother have some say in all this??

- Why the fuck does his big revenge plan revolve around raising a baby into a man?? First of all, you have no idea if the baby will physically grow up into a capable fighter--what if he ends up being a sickly weakling--and second of all your plan is gonna take 20 years or so to accomplish. Why don't you just do your fancy revenge plan yourself??

At this point, I was about to give up on this show when full-grown Lee Min Ho finally shows up on an elephant. Years back, I had friends who were obsessed with Lee Min Ho, and at the time I never really understand what all the gushing was about. But it was like as soon as his physical beauty entered my computer screen, my interest level in this drama shot up like forty points. Good save, Lee Min Ho. I was just about to close the browser window.

After an amusing chase sequence in town where he saves the life of a Korean gambler from angry gangsters, I lose interest in Crazy McCrazypants' efforts to prove he's king of the jungle and lay down the law by forcing his son to shoot at targets around his foster mother. I'm more interested in wondering how Lee Min Ho maintains such flawless skin while living in the jungle? WHAT IS YOUR SECRET LEE MIN HO I MUST KNOW. Later, the gangsters he humiliated earlier show up at their little jungle hideout and shoot up a bunch of people, including Lee Min Ho's foster mother. More carnage happens, and basically Lee Min Ho also goes nuts, and blah blah blah at the end of all of it Crazy McCrazypants loses his right leg to a landmine that Lee Min Ho stepped on and he tells him the truth behind his birth and kidnapping and the ridiculous revenge plot. Lee Min Ho vows to get revenge, and not once does he question the fact that his adoptive father's revenge plan is COMPLETELY BONKERS.

Fast-forward seven years later, and Lee Min Ho's got himself a nice pair of hot pink pants. Ughhh I liked his dark v-necks and messy jungle hair better---not a fan of this perfectly coiffed metro look. He walks around what is presumably South Korea and ends up near this lovely young lady whom I am guessing will be the main love interest, and for some reason they stand like two yards within each other and never make eye contact. END EPISODE.

Will there be an Episode 2 recap? I don't know, because my remaining interest in this show is dangling on a string held up mainly by Lee Min Ho's good looks. Though if he continues to wear questionable outfits, I may have to ditch this altogether because I have a tendency to get irrationally riled up about horrendous fashion choices (see: Youngjae of B.A.P's floppy hat in the "Coffee Shop" MV or Domyouji's season-finale hot pink shirt or the furry mess from the double date in Hana Yori Dango). I mentioned this to YY, who told me:

YY: oh you would love the fuzzy, baby pink sweater he wears in the heirs.
SL: ewwwwwwwwww lemme go google that

      okay, finished the first episode. not sure if i want to invest in this drama yet lol

      omg what is this ungodliness that has befallen my eyes

YY: look how soft it is!

        and how well it complements his complexion

        LMAO
SL: yes it certainly brings out the rosiness of his doll-like cheeks. WHAT THE EFF.
YY: http://www.dramafever.com/news/now-you-can-own-lee-min-hos-actual-heirs-sweaters-/

        look at all the wonderful things he gets to wear in this show
SL: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE MY EYES ARE ON FIRE

To (possibly) be continued... 

Book Report: 4 for 1 Deal

Finished reading Burial Rites last week on the airplane; might write a post about it later. But anyways--

On Monday night, I checked out six books from the public library. My return flight to North Carolina leaves on Saturday morning, which means I had approximately 4.5 days to finish six books. Besides cram-reading books for class, I don't think I've ever forced myself to read back-to-back books at such a pace, but that's the luxury of the winter holidays for ya.

I was considering writing single posts for each book, but once I sat down with my laptop, I decided there wasn't really all that much I wanted to say about some of the books. Or rather, I'm just lazy and want to spill it all out in one go, since I'm really just writing these book reports for my own purposes--so I can remember what the heck I've read and jot notes on what I noticed. If this were a book blog that people referred to for recommendations, then maybe I'd put some more effort ha-ha.

In the order that I read them:

1) Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block

If we're judging a book by its cover, then this book would be awesome. First things first, I love the title. Obviously a play on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, which I've been meaning to read for ages. The summary describes the story as a post-apocalyptic retelling of the Odyssey--cool, right? Finally, FYA has entire posts about this topic, but I just want to second the motion that YA book designers need to stop creating embarrassing covers with big faces and pretty dresses and pastel fonts that scream TEENAGE GIRL TEEEHEE. Many people don't take YA seriously, and these book covers aren't helping the cause. I couldn't even get my friend to read Daughter of Smoke and Bone until I took off the jacket cover with the big face on it. (Fortunately, I got her completely hooked on the series... victory mwahaha.) As a matter of fact, I read this book first out of the six precisely because it had my favorite cover out of the bunch.

As for the actual contents of the book, I'd have to say that out of her newer releases (aka the ones published in the last five years), this is probably one that I like better.The language didn't enchant me with the same power it had when I was in high school, but I'm not sure if it's a matter of Block's writing or if my artistic tastes have simply changed over time. Probably both. I will forever hail Block for how she manages to weave diverse LGBT characters into her work without making them "issue books," and she does that nicely here.

I guess I didn't fall in love with this book though, because I was expecting more. Given the world we live in today, there's a lot that can be said about the apocalyptic future of global warming gone too far. I guess I was hoping to see more of a reflection on today's society in that regard, but Block undermines this by adding the whole mad scientist/bad science thing with the giants schtick. On one hand, I understand that the giants were necessary for the "Odyssey" theme, but on the other hand, I feel like I would have been more impressed if there had been a more radical spin on the giants. Fantasy elements such as giants and fairies are Block's territory, but I guess for me personally, I was sort of disappointed by having such a literal re-interpretation of Neptune's sons. I still prefer her older works and felt like the execution of this one was a bit of a miss, but overall it wasn't too bad.

2) The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

So here's the thing about me and vampires.

I am generally not a huge fan of the paranormal genre, but one thing I did enjoy about the vampire explosion in the last few years is how the "rules" are crafted in different stories. I was not impressed by the whole sparkling-in-the-sun thing from Twilight, but there have been a couple vampire stories I've stumbled upon that I've enjoyed. The Vampire Diaries TV show was fun to follow for the first few seasons, especially since the show wasn't afraid to turn people into vampires and kill some pretty important side characters. I've avoided most of the vampire YA books, but there have been some manga with interesting spins on the vampire lore. In one of the more intriguing ones--I actually can't remember the title of the series--the idea is that if a vampire ever kisses a human, their fates become bonded such that the vampire can drink only that human's blood. Once the human dies, the vampire loses its blood supply and will die soon after. Can you even imagine being the vampire in this situation? It's like true love on steroids, like marriage except 100 times the gamble because you're putting your life on the line and there are no take-backsies.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown sets up and executes a very interesting set of rules about vampirism. Here, being bitten by a vampire inflicts something known as the Cold--a "fever" that lasts 80 hours where you begin craving blood to the point of insanity. Drinking human blood completes the vampire transformation, but if you manage to resist for 80 hours, the Cold flushes out of your system. Coldtowns are kind of like ghettos where the vampires and some humans are kept within walls, and the US has realized that putting cameras in these Coldtowns--something of a cross between puppycams and reality TV--is profitable business. As a result, a lot of naive teenagers fantasize living in a Coldtown and turning into an eternally youthful vampire.

This is the first book I've read by Holly Black, and I enjoyed it a lot. I gobbled up all the satirical jabs at our celebrity-infatuated culture, and there are plenty of deaths to keep the stakes high. (One thing I didn't like about Twilight... given the deadliness of vampires, the action seemed awfully sterile.) The latter portion of the book loses a little steam, in my opinion, but I did not see the twist at the end coming, so bonus points there. Gavriel felt a little flat to me (I rolled my eyes once he started getting into the whole "you-reel-me-back-to-my-humanity" love territory), but holy pomelo, that one scene with Tana when they first enter Coldtown was scorching. If more vampire books had been like this, maybe I would have jumped on the bandwagon.

3) The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

I had never heard of this book before, but I happened to find it in the New Books section and the summary was too good for me to resist. Set in colonial Malaysia, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family is asked to be a ghost bride for the recently deceased son of a powerful family with secrets. She is soon haunted by his ghost but also finds herself drawn to the new heir of the family. This premise had me thinking of Tokyo Crazy Paradise where Tsukasa and Ryuji are obviously endgame but the obstacles for getting them together seem almost insurmountable. I read the jacket summary thinking that the heroine was coerced into accepting the ghost marriage and fell in love with the new heir while living in the new household. Potential adultery against a ghost? Mysterious family secrets? Oh heyyy.

As it turns out, I misinterpreted the summary--she doesn't accept the ghost marriage. The Ghost Bride has a lot more fantastical elements than I expected, which I probably should have anticipated if I read the last paragraph of the jacket summary a little more carefully. The latter two-thirds of the book take place in the Chinese afterlife, which I've seen people compare to Spirited Away on the Internet. They both take place in a spirit realm, but I don't know if I would describe it as such. Spirited Away is one of my favorite Studio Ghibli movies, and it might have the advantage of being animated but its setting feels so much more vivid, like a place I would actually want to visit as a tourist for a day. I feel that in the hands of someone like Laini Taylor with superb skills in world-building, the afterlife of The Ghost Bride could have been even sharper. On the other hand, I appreciated seeing the elements of Chinese mythos and culture woven into the story--given my Taiwanese heritage, I caught onto a lot of things pretty quickly, though I wonder how the world-building came across for someone with less exposure.  

Given that the storyline turned out to be so different than what I'd been expecting, I'm not quite sure how to pass judgment on the book. I don't mind stumbling across a story completely different from my expectations, but with The Ghost Bride, I didn't fall in love with what I ended up finding. The third love interest, Er Lang, caught me off guard because I failed in reading comprehension of the summary, but I almost felt like the three suitors were never fleshed out enough for me to care much about them.

The main thing that caught my attention though is that parts of Choo's writing reminded me of my own drafts. One of the things I've been struggling with recently is that at times my prose feels too slow or disengaged. Choo's writing seemed at times eerily similar, and I kept trying to figure out why. Does it have to do with the natural cadence of my writing? Do I use too much passive voice? I'm still pondering this matter.


4) The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

I've heard good things about Sara Zarr but haven't felt compelled to read the one she's most famous for: Sweethearts. It's one of the six books I borrowed though, so I may get around to reading it tomorrow. The summary of that book didn't quite hook me, but there seems to be an inverse proportion between my expectations for a book and how much I actually end up enjoying it. But anyways, I ended up reading The Lucy Variations first because I was curious how Sara Zarr approached the whole young-pianist-giving-up-her-music-and-finding-it-again thing that I'm trying to do for Charlotte in EP.

I do like Sara Zarr's writing style, so I probably will give her other works a chance. What didn't work for me in The Lucy Variations though was that I didn't give a flying duck about any of the characters. This was particularly true with the protagonist, Lucy Beck-Moreau, a girl who falls for men twice her age and who I would probably not get along with in real life. I already wrote a post last month about why I don't like reading teacher-student love stories, and in this book Lucy falls in love with not only her English teacher but her brother's married piano teacher. Though the book stays in PG territory, this stuff was already making me feel nauseous. I also felt that Lucy wasn't a very good friend to her besties Reyna and Carson (who is Taiwanese!), so basically I didn't feel very fond of her at all.

And yes, I felt a bit of sympathy for how she grew up being pressured by her grandfather and mother into being a child prodigy. As a tiger cub who wasn't a child prodigy by any means but also grew up feeling chained to the piano at times, I could relate to Lucy's struggle with music. But when you strip the story to its bare bones, there wasn't much of a narrative arc for Lucy's return or any real character growth. And so much of it was propelled by her attraction for the piano teacher that the whole thing made me feel kinda icky and detracted from whatever punch the story might have had about loving music on your own terms. On the plus side, reading this book made me a little hopeful that I can pack a harder punch with Charlotte.