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Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023)

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Loving Love Game in Eastern Fantasy (seriously what a terrible name) but now that I’ve caught up and am anxiously awaiting new episodes, I started watching Moonlight with most of the same cast and love it! I haven’t really found any modern dramas I like recently and this one is so good.

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@呼葱觅蒜

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This show has an entire King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone plot and I am LIVID. Also it's so funny how they're all just... so confused lol.

Sheng, being a supportive bf when his gf tried to pull the weapon out: Yay, you can do it, Miaomiao! I believe in you, bbg!

Also Sheng: *girlbossed too close to the sun and accidentally became the Chosen One™️* What the he-

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Ding Yuxi and his micro expressions

Lately, Ding Yuxi has trended in weibo for his phenomenal acting in Love Game in Eastern Fantasy and people have started calling it "jinjiang style acting" for being able to portray the fancy and wordy description or narration jinjiang (JJWXC) novel authors use. For context, jjwxc is a chinese website for publishing novels.

Someone in weibo has created a compilation of his micro expressions and let me tell you, if you appreciate good acting, watch this.

Link to the original post here.

NOTE: All subtitles were MTL'd! I only added subtitles so that when I rewatch it I don't have to rely on my notes for the translations. It's all really for ease of watching. I apologize if there are mistranslations within the video.

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I was explaining the premise of Mysterious Lotus Casebook to some other fandom friends.

Me: It's about a detective who faked his death. Years ago, he and his rival were having a big fight, they injured each other and fell into the sea, and he was assumed to be dead... but he's still alive and now he goes around solving mysteries.

Friend: Oh, so Reichenbach Falls.

Me: .... goddammit. How did I not think of this.

Me: Yes, Reichenbach Falls, except if years post-Reichenbach Holmes and Moriarty team up to solve crimes, and Watson is a much younger himbo that Holmes somehow picked up along the way.

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Finished Blossoms in Adversity and honestly I kind of love it, which I was not expecting from a Hu Yitian drama (and he is about the same as always, which is to say, not particularly expressive in his acting). I wouldn’t call it great in quality, but it is extremely satisfying. Everyone is beautiful, and we get the sort of female-focused strength and story that, while historically inaccurate, really scratches my competence itch. Also a healthy relationship dynamic and no dumb miscommunication, thank goodness!

It’s kind of in the vein of New Life Begins and Destined, but I think both of those suffered from turning Bai Jingting’s character into the main focus towards the end as a hero and his constantly making those righteous “hero” speeches really irritated me. I love that all the way through in Blossoms in Adversity, it’s about Hua Zhi, and Gu Yanxi is just there to support her (and quietly be a badass in the background).

Also Shaoyao’s actress is fantastic. All the female characters were great really. It was definitely an easy watch.

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– Thank you.

– Why are you being so polite all of a sudden?

NOTHING BUT YOU 【爱情而已】 (2023): EPISODE 06

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(the post editor malfunctioned and after a series of unfortunate events the original ask post is gone, so I had to make this screenshot mockup of the ask, sorry)

Thank you for prodding me to finish up a draft that's been sitting there for an inexplicably long time.

I will divide puns into exact homophones, which are pronounced exactly the same, and near homophones, which consist of the same phonemes with different tones. Though exact homophones are much punnier in speech, Internet jokes rely heavily upon text input and most people use phonetic-based Chinese input systems, meaning their autocompletes will often suggest near homophones and people will use them if they're funny enough.

To make this slightly statistically sound and not just me making up random puns, I grabbed 700k viewer comments from the years NiF was available on Youku, 2015 to 2020 (courtesy of danmu box). These danmu/弹幕 comments are timed to a particular moment in the show so they splash across the screen while you watch.

Let's start with the heavy hitters:

Xie Yu/谢玉 is an exact homophone of xièyù/泄欲, literally discharging desire, which means satisfying one’s lust or orgasming. Xie Yu's name occurs 5000+ times in the comments versus almost 900 orgasms.

Prince Yu/誉王 is an exact homophone of yùwáng/欲王, meaning prince of lust, and a near homophone, of yùwàng/欲望, which means desire (or the chaotic evil penis). The latter is far more likely to be autocompleted and shows up 1500+ times versus 200+ for the prince of lust.

Yùjīn/豫津 is a near homophone of yùjìn, 欲禁, or forbidden lust/abstinence. Because bath towel/浴巾 is an exact homophone and again far more likely to come up first in autocomplete, people overwhelmingly refer to him as the towel. In the comments, bath towel is used nearly 7000 times, 10x more frequently than his actual name, which is made up of two not-super-common characters.

Mei Changsu is often addressed as Su-xiong/苏兄 by Jingrui and Yujin in canon, which is an exact homophone of sūxiōng/酥胸, a literary term for supple and beautiful breasts that might have the same old-fashioned connotation as heaving bosom does in English. I'm going to call him gorgeous tits because he does bear a striking resemblance to the azure tit:

I've seen Chinese MCS fans note this resemblance before, but these birds don't have titillating names in Chinese so you can have this bonus joke for English speakers. Anyways, gorgeous tits are invoked in nearly 6000 comments versus almost 1200 for Su-xiong itself.

Now you can enjoy one of the comments from the above screenshot exclaiming over these names:

浴巾裹着酥胸，泄欲，这都什么什么 a bath towel (yujin) wrapped around gorgeous tits (su-xiong), orgasming (xie yu), what is all this

And the following off-color joke retold many times throughout the episodes:

Why is Mei Changsu called Su-xiong and not Mei-xiong? Because he has gorgeous tits, not tiny ones (Méi-xiōng/梅兄 is an exact homophone of flat-chested/没胸).

Here are some rarer-but-still-good puns:

Gōng Yǔ/宫羽 is a near homophone of gòngyù/共浴, bathing together (cue viewer comments about how she and bath towel belong with each other).

Níhuáng/霓凰 is a near homophone of nǐhuáng/你黄, slang meaning you’re perverted.

The emperor lives in Yǎngjū Hall/养居殿, a near homophone of penis hall since yángjù/阳具 is the yang implement, though it's most popularly punned with pigpen (I wrote about this here if you scroll to the end).

The travelogue Mei Changsu wrote annotations in, 翔地记, is an exact homophone of xiángdìjì/降帝记, or records of subduing the emperor (which I can only interpret as MCS’s Dom Diaries on how to conquer Jingyan).

To conclude, here’s a stacked area chart of the four horsemen of punny NiF names and how often they're spammed:

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The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second of rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try there is no escaping being yourself forever.

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Costume Designer: How dramatic do we want this bitch to be? Director: Yes. Costume Designer: Say less.

@userdramas get to know me bingo ⎈ fashion @asiandramanet november creator bingo board ⎈ free choice

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I barely follow any serial media nowadays so I only ever encounter this in epistolary artifacts, like a found-footage horror movie, but one thing I really think is funny is when people are following along with something as it releases and talking about how it’s being really clever and setting up a rare, compelling thematic commentary, and then later on it turns out that none of that panned out and the ending was mediocre and everyone was just extrapolating an illusory better plot in their mind’s eye

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Why you should watch Hikaru no Go (2020) Live Action

by me who just finished rewatching it for... idk 5th time now i guess... and I am having some emotions.

A very detailed and itemized review of the series is below. I would be happy if I convince one (1) person to watch this very underrated show.

What is it?

Also known as Qi hun, it is Chinese live action adaptation of Japanese manga Hikaru no Go by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata

You might know Obata Sensei who also draw Death Note manga. So you know its manga already is awesome. There is also an anime adaptation.

It’s about board game Go and can be classified as sports manga/anime. Basically the plot is: a Go master haunts a boy and teaches him way of Go.

[The manga appears in the cdrama!]

So you have options…. But why should you watch the cdrama?

It's the cutest thing ever

I never seen anyone who watched it and did not like

Acting is very good especially the kid actor is one of the best I’ve ever seen

Do you want numbers? It has IMDB rating 8.6.

Although the story is not same as the original material, its one of the best adaptations ever. You will enjoy it whether you are a fan of the manga or a new audience.

The main character: Shi Guang (aka Hikaru in the original manga)

Look at him he’s so lovable!

He doesn’t know any Go in the beginning but he is a genius so he becomes one of the best young players in country in record time.

Young Shi Guang is so good at acting and he is so cute I love him.

[At some point he wears a t-shirt with "Agender" written on it so you can headcanon him as he/they nb icon]

The other main character: Chu Ying (aka Sai)

Not a Ghost!

Accidental time traveling spirit of a Go master of ancient times (Southern Liang Dynasty to be specific)

His goal is to achieve the “Divine Move” which is a Go term for a perfect play/move

No one but Shi Guang can see him.

He is Shi Guang's bff, mentor, and Go master.

He is a funny little guy (but not physically, the actor is quite tall)

Rival: Yu Liang (aka Akira)

Go prodigy and the son of 9-Dan Go master Yu Xiao Yang

He gets beaten by Shi Guang (actually it was Chu Ying) when they were children and he proceeds to construct his whole life around him

He is obsessed™

Actually both Shi Guang and Yu Liang are so obsessed with each other. They have this passive aggressive relationship which is so interesting and also (again) very cute.

Likes to hold Shi Guang’s hand and run

Friends! Friends everywhere!

Shi Guang is a very sociable character so he is surrounded with friends and family

His relationship with his mother (unfortunately doesn’t have a name) is so realistic and so soft. They are not perfect mother-son but they love each other and they show it.

Actually, Shi Guang is very affectionate with all friends so you might die from all the fluff.

Plot

Shi Guang meets with Chu Ying when he is very young. Chu Ying forces him to play Go. He plays for Chu Ying. Against Yu Liang twice. And enters a tournament and of course wins.

But he feels bad for the other kids who work very hard so he drops Go completely for 8+ years. During that time Chu Ying disappears

He is forced to play Go again in middle school because everyone thinks he is some sort of prodigy while he knows next to nothing

Chu Ying appears again and they play together.

Shi Guang then decides to learn and play by himself.

The rest is regular sports manga/anime plot.

Towards the end the drama hits you hard and rips your heart out but last two episodes are so fluffy that by the end you will feel so much better.

Ships? In this shipping website? More likely than you might think

So many shippable pairs... like all sports manga/anime fashion they come in pairs

From students to teachers... with the main pair being Shi Guang/Yu Liang

Other than slash, there are also many platonic options that you might consider

By the end of last episode, all your ships will be as canon as cdramas would allow and no I’m not kidding the final arc is all about being the perfect partner (in Go).

[light to my dark, sun to my moon, etc, etc]

All is good, what about down sides you ask?

Not many female characters or female relationships.

Go ahead then! Watch it! Enjoy it!

First episodes are in youtube!

(the videos cut last few lines at the end of episodes for some reason but it doesn’t make much difference)

[and come back to me talk about it if you like]

[screenshots and stills are from kinorium]

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I can’t believe she is so cruel to Li Tongguang when she is so empathetic and loving to Yang Ying! All LTG needs is some acceptance and praise and maybe some firm but gentle discipline 😭😭😭

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A Journey to Love 一念关山 (2023) Dir. Zhou Yuan Zhou, Zou Xi – Ep. 24