NiF Mini Exchange 2023 just went live and here are my favorites (mostly gen):

Building Standards
Meng Zhi's adventures in house hunting.
A very fun missing episode about Meng Zhi trying to find a house for MCS. Cute, funny, slice-of-life.

Traced Everywhere in Thought
Mu Nihuang and Lin Chen have tea, discuss logistics, and determinedly do not wake Mei Changsu, who needs more sleep than he gets.
Excellent Nihuang PoV of an interesting interaction! I adore her intelligence, her passing thoughts and observations, her determination and her jiejie-ness.

Cozening
If Qin Banruo was the kind of woman given to self-deception, she would say that the affair was the best way to prevent Lanjin from interfering with her plans for Prince Yu. But Qin Banruo can be nothing but ruthless with others, so she is nothing but ruthless with herself.
Pairing: Banruo/Prince Yu's wife. A sharp reflection of Banruo through a rareship lens.


Honorable mentions: bamboos bend and break, a prequel fic about the older gen trio (Lin Xie, Yan Que, Xiao Xuan) centered around Consort Chen, and bitter sorrow shared, a space AU about Lin Chen finding and treating Lin Shu in the aftermath of the Chiyan tragedy.

This is a BL comic series where the love interests are Your Work and Your Day Off, which I think is very galaxy brain.

Note: 🔞

Artist galleries:
- Website: CXC
- Twitter: nichirinko

Individual comics:
- Photobooth (the biggest mood)
- Your birthday part 1
- Interview
- Your Work: Do you presently have the means to leave me? (alternate link: your continuous days off 2)
- your continuous days off 1
- Working from home: 1, 2, 3
- fucked by Your Work (NSFW, obv)
- Your Work
- Your Day Off

March was just a fog of Zhang Xincheng-related output and I can't be bothered to link them all here. It was also my cousin's wedding, so I spent some time low-key fretting over it. I got my booster shot and a hair cut, and then my sister-in-law tried one of those bubble dyes on me. My hair is so fine that she got to do 2 separate applications on me, but the color didn't really take haha. Due to logistical reasons, we actually ended up skipping the actual wedding (which apparently had several mishaps) and only attended the reception, which was an outdoor one and more intimate than I feared and expected. At one point the wind toppled down a small tree, which landed on a table (no one was hurt, so it was funny).

Media

Turning Red (2022)
I'm not sure how much I enjoyed this one because I don't enjoy coming-of-age stories and this had all the coming-of-age beats, but it was CUTE and well-executed--the visual build-up and play on scale were masterful, as was every single beat of the boyband storyline. I was a lot more interested in the mother's generation, and loved how much backstory and personality was informed through the animation and the designs. It's really interesting to me because, though accessible to all, the movie inhabits a specifically millenial space, in between Mei's and Ming's generation as though we are both of them, and I felt this most at the bamboo forest scene towards the end.

I didn't realize it when I was watching, but I learned from this review (video/podcast format; h/t lunarflares) that the movie used a lot of color language to depict relationships. (I haven't finished that episode, it gets deeply personal among the hosts, but the general discussions happen in the first 30-60 minutes).

In terms of relatability, this definitely was not for me even though I recognized so much of Mei's teenagerhood haha. I think, partly, it's because of the setting: I was always an Asian among Asians, and while I have completely severed most of my connections, I grew up in Chinese communities. But also, I just was not Mei. XD And I had no desire to gyrate LMAO. But I did recognize so many people in Mei, which made her all the more enjoyable.


Who's the Murderer S7
Due to Deng Lun's tax evasion reveal, the puppet episode sequel that he was meant to be in was cancelled like... a day before it was meant to air??? I'm still mourning the set and the costumes and Qi Wei's appearance. They promptly aired the first part of the following episode (NZND as Old Boys) instead, but they... have not released the second half of the episode. Who's The Murderer and several other variety shows have suspended broadcast for two weeks after that. I'm not sure how much of it is related to Deng Lun, but it certainly feels huge; viewer comments that were initially sympathetic and understanding became angry the following week. (It certainly seems like they meant to release the episode, and were trying to, but something behind the scenes was happening. The "no episode this week" announcements were made around an hour before the scheduled airtime.

EPISODE 5 (which also had Deng Lun, pre-cancellation) WAS REALLY GOOD THOUGH!!!


Delicious Romance
Technically finished this on April, I just want to get this out of the way. XD

Main thoughts: I loved eps 1-6 and then 11-15, and in some ways I do love the messaging about still being a work in progress at 30; but sometimes the messaging didn’t fit the situation, and its perspective of work is still kinda… teenager-ish. I dislike most of Fang Xin's career storyline (which makes her relationship with her younger female coworkers antagonistic, instead of acknowledging that they're both victims of the corporate system and bad leadership), and eventually Liu Jing's. I... actually don't know how I'm meant to read Liu Jing. Emotionally it feels like she's meant to succeed, but logically, going by her conversations with her own parents and Song Chao's friend, it looks like she's setting herself up for failure. The latter would have been interesting to me, though, because I love the idea of having the freedom to fail.

The strongest relationship of this show was easily the Xia Meng/Wang Jichong storyline, a long-term couple that, due to their work and pandemic living conditions, broke up and had to learn to grow without each other. I feel that they could have pushed Xia Meng's growth and self-realization further since she has the highest amount of accumulated insecurities among the three characters, but the show is open-ended enough that I can accept it.

The best part was definitely ALL the child actors, from Wenwen (my favorite), to the child versions of the trio who were cast and directed so well I could see them in the adult versions and vice versa. And also the scene at the divorce registration queue which is what sold me to this show.

THIS SHOW CONTAINS: body/weight issues, fad diets and disordered eating, sexual harassment (several times, verbal and, at one point, physical), A LOT of fun meta about cdramas, a pointed portrayal about how marriage shouldn't be the default expectation from women, canon LGBT characters.

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Currently:

Reading: a bunch of things but due to my focus/reading issues, I have temporarily dropped everything /o\

Playing: I spent 3 straight days losing myself in short mobile puzzle games (Monument Valley, and Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise) and just now resurfaced. XD

Watching: Starting Under The Skin (crime/forensics cdrama) next!

Links:

ADORABLE Cardcaptor Sakura birthday animation by NzeNeee

Episode preview of the chaotic Who's the Murderer 7 Puppet Episode that got cancelled when Deng Lun got cancelled

Cat day fanart of Xiao Hei being piled on by ordinary cats by ne5zee

undemanding → halfcactus

I don't feel strongly about the name, but for now it's probably good to narrow my online identities to 2 main usernames haha. Have also updated the FFXV fancomics recs post because I had some unposted backlog.

Media I'm into these days:

我磕了对家X我的CP manhua is baaaaack with Vol.4 as of last weekend! So cute, so sweet, GYL so 委屈 and still happily pinching WYZ's cheek and patting WYZ's head. I don't follow a lot of manhua, but I think the ISMM one is extremely good. The art style is very pretty and the chapters dynamically rendered.

Legend of Hei S2 started this year and is about to end this Saturday! The ratio of episodes seems like half gaming mechanics dialogue (to fulfill Xiao Hei's mission, they have to play a VR game), half intense action sequences. Ep.39 was 12 whopping minutes of a fight scene, but so ramped up with tension I couldn't quite enjoy the cool assassin moments. There's so much I love about this season, especially Xiao Hei going full murder kitten who's adopted A-Gen as his older brother, and Shan Xin being the resident expert gamer. And there are, in fact, SEVERAL appearances from characters from the movie! Exciting times.

他们都说我遇到了鬼 (They All Say I've Met A Ghost): Reading this for superborb's book club. I didn't enjoy the first 5 chapters very much because I found the MC's PoV hard to get into, but I'm enjoying it a lot more now, at chapter 12! It's a 42-chapter danmei novel featuring a buff MC who lives and teaches in a haunted school and vehemently denies the existence of ghosts, and an exorcist ML who sometimes has to break the law to proceed with his ghostbusting. The MC's first ghost encounters are so annoyingly stupid, but they turn sweet and then bittersweet.

我五官缺你 (My Five Elements Lack You): Stopped at ch16, but hoping to get back into it! I have it mentally tagged as "fengshui boyfriends": it's a 113-chapter novel about a completely nice and ordinary MC who gets transmigrated into the body of a vile swindler. He is captured and put to work by a blind fengshui master ML. The book contains folk horror elements and has very webnovel-y pacing. I'm liveblogging this one on Goodreads so hopefully I won't forget my thoughts haha.


I have a fuller list of media I'm consuming in my listography but I have a terrible habit of starting things then dropping them, so it's not super representative of my media consumption. XD

Recs, etc

[vid] Go Ahead | 他从来都没有忘记，自己是被寄养的
Good day it is crying over Ziqiu + Li Dad o’clock again

[vid] Go Ahead | 贺子秋在离开的九年里过的一点也不好
EXCELLENT He Ziqiu fanvid. All of his important lines are here, from the open wounds to the casual knifing.

[vid] Go Ahead | 宠妹狂魔贺子秋，这样的哥哥来一个？
Compilation of pre-timeskip Jianjian and Ziqiu moments! I have this bookmarked to watch on bad days.

Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky
I chose English because no one in my family or friends knew it; no one I spoke to could read what I wrote. I myself did not know the language. It was a parallel reality, an insanely beautiful freedom. It still is.