the sleeping soul of the country

Somehow I always go for long stretches without much to say about media and then finished several things at once, and suddenly its time to post here again.

Dominion and Devotion—Instead of watching any of the dramas I’ve already started I watched this mini drama (24 15 min episodes). I’ve had mixed luck with mini dramas but I enjoyed this one! It’s a crossdressing girl drama with enemies to lovers and political intrigue! The premise is that the FL has been raised from birth to pretend to be a young weak prince, in the hopes of someday escaping the palace. But instead she gets picked to be the puppet emperor.

The “AFAB person was raised as a boy for Reasons” variety of crossdressing girl stories really have a different vibe than the crossdressing girl adventures I grew up with, there’s just less of a sense of agency when the FL didn’t get to choose to crossdress.

Spoilers

I was not expecting the tragic ending thought! I thought it would somehow turn out ok up until the last moment.

Content Notes: Child death, corporal punishment (children and adults), torture (presented as righteous), blood

Wow the Worldep 1-4—Yes, I’m watching yet another Chinese reality show featuring Liu Yuning. This travel show where a group of people visit a bunch of cities near the 40th parallel. It’s pretty charming! I love that there's a little cartoon planet that represents each person. I would prefer a bit more focus on the tourism – tell us more about these places, and describe the food please!

Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China by Stephen R. Bokenkamp—This was a super interesting book about Daoist ideas about the afterlife and how they evolved after contact with Buddhism. I kinda wish I had read this before finalizing my translation of the about Wei Huacun because she’s mentioned in this and there’s a bunch of useful context about early Daoist practice.

Dragon Steel by Laurence Yep—The second book in this series which I’m reading to the kid. Still holds up well, I enjoyed the under sea dragon kingdom which was one of the bits that stuck with me from my first reading. This one does have some fatphobia though, which I didn’t enjoy.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh—I tried so hard with this book! Well maybe that’s not strictly true because at first I wasn’t going to read it because I didn’t really like the one thing by Emily Tesh I had read before (Silver in the Wood) but then I found out more about the premise – a teacher a magical school who actually has to do paperwork, so I decided to give it a go.

I loved the first third of this book with its teaching and risk assessment and a big climatic battle that could be the end of a different book. Saving the world part way through and then having to live with the consequences would make for an interesting book, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here. Instead we introduced a new very annoying character.

I was considering DNFing at that point but I asked some friends if he went away and they said that I could expect less of him, so I kept reading. And there was a lot less of him for a bit, but another thing started frustrating me: the story was providing big clues about something that the main character was not figuring out. I really don’t enjoy that kind of reader character knowledge mismatch! That’s been resolved now but I didn’t feel motivated to keep reading after that.

I really wanted to like this book because teaching at a magical school is a cool concept, and so many of my friends loved it but after the first third I found it pretty frustrating.