Deep Conversations

TV ongoing

There was one more ep of HPI in June. I wasn't sure whether I enjoyed it at first, it takes a while to grow on you, and it ends on a cliffhanger, too. I think they could have moved faster in this last ep, nothing at all moved forward in it, it just heightened the tension. The show is usually better at pacing than this. And now we have to wait until September for the final four eps. At least there's a smallish fandom on AO3 with very good authors who will tide us all over, I'm sure. Even one or two who write in English. \o/

I finished Murderbot. I didn't enjoy the middle episodes as much as the previous three. I didn't hate them, either, but they were definitely farther away from the book, and not in a way that made me go "oh yes, this makes sense". I had difficulty finding the parallels and figuring out why they changed so much in the first place. I did enjoy the Sanctuary Moon self-insert, and hated the added sexual harassment (of Murderbot). All the Murderbot emotional things were good, except for when they intersected with the romance/sex aspects. By ep 6 I really enjoyed it again right through the end. Either I'd gotten used to the many changes by then or they were indeed getting more logial, idk? I thought it had great character development, good novel-divergent choices in service of telling us more about Murderbot's character, and they really stuck the landing. They gave the character of Gurathin in particular more of a bond with Murderbot than I remember from the novellas, but that was definitely one of the choices I enjoyed. You can watch it on Apple or where I live it's on Disney+.

Finally finished the Parallel World watchalong. By the end, it got more and more absurd, trying to squish its remaining plot into the last few episodes, with important plot points happening off-screen and mentioned off-hand, oh, and a two-year time skip. The last ep was even more weirdly paced than the previous ones, and almost none of it made any sense. We're glad we're done with it. We'll start watching When A Snail Falls In Love in July, which is a rewatch for me. I'm interested in how well it holds up compared to when I first watched it seven years ago. My other watchalong has finished HPI (s4 - I'm still in the process of translating the subs for s5), and started North of North. Instant hit, as I expected. <3

I watched two more eps of Love Scout (which I'd started ages ago, in March), the kdrama about a workaholic female boss and her male secretary - and I think I should stop. The main couple is good, but lots of the rest of the show is annoying me. The pacing is very slow in places, both leads have other romantic interests that bother me, and overall it's just not doing what I want it to do. Mostly I just went back to it because I was so tired I couldn't concentrate on anything else.

TV new

I tried the first few minutes of Dept Q, because several people on tv_talk mentioned it, but I think it's too dark for me. I might try again at some later point.



I also watched part of the first episode of Phineas and Ferb, a new season came out last week, after a break of 13 years(!). I have never watched this in English before (only ever dubbed on TV), so that'll be a change I'll have to get used to.

I watched all of The Residence within three weeks. It's not something I'd get fannish about, but the humor was very much up my alley and I enjoyed it. It had a weird thing where five minutes into every episode they'd do a recap of the things that had *just* happened. Not even in previous episodes, just in that same episode! I thought it was just cdramas that did weird unnecessary flashback things, but that was noticeably weird, too. But on the whole, the show is a solid rec. It's a homage to old detective stories, with a beautifully eccentric detective played perfectly by Uzo Aduba, and just overall very funny and very well cast. It's on Netflix.

Lastly, I watched the first few eps of The First Night With The Duke, which is a transmigration kdrama with Ok Taecyeon - he's the duke who falls in love with a secondary character instead of the 'planned' female lead, and the transmigrated fan first tries to fix the narrative and then of course falls in love with him, too. Taecyeon is the only reason I've watched even a few eps of it. It's not terrible, but also not really my thing, and of course the historic kdrama costumes don't do anyone any favors, not even Taecyeon. Not all episodes have aired yet, it's on viki. Im really looking forward to his BL, which is slated for August, if they don't push it back, so that's not too long now.