state of current fannishness

[waterscroll]

starandrea made a strong case for why The Untamed is a logical next thing to watch after Guardian, so I watched the first episode of the animated version and the first two episodes of the drama. Both are good, but the drama hit me in the 'I must keep watching this' place. Especially that arm-touch from the second episode. You know what I mean. It gave me the same feelings I had from early Guardian, when all I cared about was the two protagonists somehow getting together. I expect that, like Guardian, it will eventually distract me with worldbuilding, woe and epic angst, but for now I'm having fun.

Those of you who are in the fandom, anything you want to tell me about it?

I also started playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Black Eagles, because Edelgard is relevant to my interests and also very pretty. It's slow going so I'm not sure if I'll stick with it. And I am not at all enjoying the fights. It reminds me of Dragon Age: Origins, a good story that you have to slog through a lot of annoying stuff to get through. With Dragon Age I just ended up watching the story clips on youtube so I might do the same here.

Meanwhile in Guardian I feel like I still have more stories in me but I haven't settled on what to write next. I have the beginnings of a backstory shippy fic in which Ye Zun and Shen Wei are childhood sweethearts rather than brothers (and have the same face for Reasons). I also have the beginnings of a fic about Fu You convincing Shen Wei to join the Alliance. Meanwhile I have some growing interest in writing about the Regent, he gets zero villain-sympathetic fic and I feel like someone should look out for him, and I have the beginnings of a piece about him being a petty bureaucrat haplessly trying to deal with Dixing's utter mess. I have a major RL deadline in three weeks so I can't write much fannish now, but I still could do something short if I get an idea that won't take me too long to write. Do any of the above sound like something you'd like to read? Or do you have other ideas to throw at me?

I know I owe Zhao Xinci fic but I don't think I can write it yet, my head is so firmly in Dixing that I can't deal with Haixing politics right now.

Finally: Do any of you do this thing where your favorite story by an author is paradoxically the one that you comment on the least? I've noticed myself doing this - I'll read a story by someone, love it, and then read all their other stories and comment more and more as I'm reading, but meanwhile the first story that drew me into their work gets a kudos or maybe a one-line comment. I just noticed that I do that sometimes. I thnk I might need to work on changing that.

Comments

[solo]

Those of you who are in the fandom, anything you want to tell me about it?

It gets just as painful as Guardian, but at a different point in time, and the ending is happier (in every version, the Japanese one is best).

[waterscroll]

and the ending is happier

That is a relief, I'm not sure I want to suffer like that again.

Which is the Japanese version?

[solo]

They showed the series in Japan recently, just subbed like we also got, but they re-cut the ending so things are in a slighty different sequence and just that little more swoonworthy. (Probably because they had to worry less about censorship than they do in China.)

But only a snippet of that is on youtube, so I'd say go with the original and then check out the snippet. :) The original is also fine.

[waterscroll]

This is good to know, thank you!