Because I totally started last night and now I cannot fucking stop — I am addicted to this…slightly weirdly drawn and amazingly, wonderfully cracktastic story. Like, I love it so much that my face hurts. You know, from love. PROBABLY BECAUSE OF MY ENDURING LOVE FOR TEACHER/STUDENT SHENANIGANS. I’m warning you — picspam and spoilers beneath the jump. (more…)
Kdramas probably have a long and storied history that ties into South Korea’s meteoric rise as one of the Pacific Rim’s economic powerhouses etc. etc. — but mostly what I know is that many years ago, predating DVDs’ commonality, when in Asia, all things came as a VCD, my father brought to our home (and probably regrets it each day he lives) a copy of Meteor Garden.
My mother and I resisted watching it for many moons, immediately dismissing it as “horrible,” and “totally lame,” and “Asian guys aren’t even hot.” But after caving during a long and lingering winter vacation, the rest was, essentially, history: like a casual coke user turned hardcore crack smoker, I went from Meteor Garden to Meteor Garden II to Huan Zhu Ge Ge to — and this is when ya’ll will want to check in — to something call All About Eve.
All About Eve was like black tar heroin to me, featuring rival newscasters and their many loves and frustrations — it was melodrama in its purest form: everybody cried and broke up at least three times, and there was one fake pregnancy, one fake abortion, one senseless and physically-impossible vehicle-related death, one suicide attempt that goes wrong, and some people who come together in the end for the most awkward, uncomfortable, and unrealistic kiss ever. I loved it. It burned like sugar and Jesus in my veins.
Guys — it was time to break out the spoon, lighter, and tourniquet.
• …You haven’t made these sound all that well-written, why should I watch them?
Because they’re somewhat poorly-written. They’re the visual equivalent of Harlequin novels, with predictable twists and turns but usually an ending that you want — with a sense of sweeping romance. They’re totally mindless, by turns funny and wonderful and charming. In fact, they share many of the same characteristics of fanfiction — if not the very best fanfiction. My current two favorites are Coffee Prince and Bad Couple — the first of which features a tomboy who is literally taken for a boy, and gets paid to act like a lazy, wealthy scion’s boyfriend (I’m not making this up or stealing the plot from an SGA story, by the way) to scare away potential suitors; the second features a woman who wants a baby and — after scoping out the best sperm in the country — finds it in a botany professor, and proceeds to roofie the baby juice out of him with hilarious results.
These stories are by no means perfect, but they are dear — they’re also wonderful good fun in packages of 24 hour-long episodes or less.
• But Pru, I just remembered: I don’t speak Chinese/Japanese/Korean!
Not to worry, dedicated teams of rabid fangirls fansub this stuff at an astonishing pace, meaning while you’re going to be listening to Chinese/Japanese/Korean, you’ll be reading English subtitles — many times those subtitles will outstrip the so-called “professional” ones.
• All right, fine, I’m sold: where do I get ahold of this stuff?
That’s where ya’ll are lucky: watching k/j/c/twdramas these days are a snap. Once upon a time, you had to go through the terrifyingly huge forums at either Soompi or D-Addicts to (a) download the torrents of the video and then (b) to download the soft sub of the episode. What that means, in English, is that you had to download the raw video (all foreign language, no English) and then download an srt file (a subtitle file) — make sure that the video and srt file had the same name (except for the file extension), and then were in the same directory — the subtitles would load automatically, but the stress levels were insane. At least for me.
These days, with the advent of YouTube and other online streaming , you’re lucky in that none of that is necessary for the most popular of the k/j/c/twdramas — usually, they’re available for you to watch anytime straight from the web. (Be warned, because of certain copyright restrictions, things may disappear and be rearranged fairly frequently — my constant hunt for the show “Goong” online will be discussed later.)
The best places to watch these dramas online are at MySoju.com (a fast-growing streaming site) and at CrunchyRoll.com (gigantic) — where dozens on dozens of shows can be watched at your leisure.
• Fine, drag me into the abyss. What should I be watching?
Happy viewing, my friends, and God speed.
ETA: If you look at the comments for this post, you’ll see those who have chimed in already have loads of differing opinion — which is great, it just shows you what a wealth of options there are in Asian dramas — so! Happy viewing! (And if ya’ll go watch something (ie: My Name Is Kim Sam Soon) and hate it for the not-at-all latent misogyny and assorted bullshit that made my blood boil, DO NOT come crying to me — it was not on my recommendation.)
There have been plenty of good kdramas — but as a general rule, they don’t really run concurrently: there’re good ones here and there, many one or two every one or two years if we’re lucky. The last kdrama before Goong that I really truly loved was probably Hotelier, and that was ages and ages hence, and before that, All About Eve — yeah, you see? And while I have been fond of Dal Ja’s Springtime and — briefly — Witch Amusement, to have two kdramas at the same time? That’s wacky.
And this second kdrama, my friends, is definitely hilarious: Bad Couple.
A woman, Dang Ja, wants a baby, but not the husband that associated marriage shenanigans that go with it. When she realizes that in Korea, she can’t have a test-tube baby unless married, she starts scoping out people who might have good sperm…which brings her to Gi Chan, a brilliant if socially-retarded botanist.
I don’t have the heart to spoil the rest — suffice it to say, Dang Ja is after his babyjuice, and God damn it if she isn’t going to get it. But the imagery in this story so far, oh my GOD. It’s like somebody ripped open my Id and was like, “Go nuts”: attacked by horny wild pigs (no joke), killing plants with boiling water, babies sucking down liquor in their bassinets — I love it. I love it all. Oh yeah, and thirtysomething career women popping mancherries all over the place, since apparently Gi Chan has been saving himself for marriage. I love it so much.
Oh, and poor Gi Chan, who, after the second time Dang Ja bangs him, gets told he’s not all that great in bed, and then follows her out into the street to plead his case because really, nobody’s good at something when they just get started, right? HE HAS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. GOD.
I wanted to dig up images, but they’re hard to find on the internet so far, and sadly, I’m not downloading the actual files so no screencaps (for now, we’ll see if this changes) — but! If my description has intrigued you at all, tally-ho here to watch the series online with English subtitles. It comes highly recommended.
First off, ya’ll, I am so tired. I am also sort of sunburned, imagine me saying this all in Britney Spears English. I just hit up Agua Verde on Portage Bay where friends and I kayaked for a while before climbing upstairs to gorge outselves on really wonderfully fresh Mexican food and eat salsa until it came out of our ears — fabulous. So it’s with sore arms I sit down to write you about my NEWEST TRUE LOVE.
Last time I talked about kdramas, I was talking about the appallingly bad Witch Amusement, which actually took bad to such a transcendental place I’m pretty sure it was doing shots with Keats. In the past, I have also mentioned my fascination with the uneven but overall fantastic Goong, which re-imagined Korea into unified country with a constitutional monarchy — for the super important purpose of there being a royal love story. And since I have a penchant for following the careers of people I have been impressed with in the past, of course I followed up on Yoon Eun Hye.
Who is now in something called Coffee Prince.
Guys? The gay theme started by Witch Amusement? Is continuing in Coffee Prince. I am without words. It all starts with a picture. Of dudes smooching. I know. (more…)
Remember Bukiya no Silent? Remember how agonized we all were waiting for the inevitable conclusion of the volume? GUESS WHAT GUYS? Dangerous Pleasure has posted the concluding chapters four and five as well as the extra for the volume! WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE? GO! GO!
But come on, it’s not like I couldn’t find the Ai no Kusabi OAVs online (I KNOW) and not link them fucking everywhere. Ai no Kusabi started out as a freaky-ass yaoi novel and then was translated into an equally freaky-ass and tres 80s yaoi OAV pairing, wherein, folks, I’m not making this up, society is stratified by hair color and people keep other people of lesser hair colors as sex slaves and toys. By which I mean, the Blondies (yes, that’s what they’re actually called) reign supreme. D: <– note my distress face. It makes sweet love to my :D delight face: D:<3 :D
Why, you might ask, is this such a big deal?
Because for years, it was near-impossible to find the OAVs. They weren’t made mass market available in the U.S. — newcomers to the yaoi/bl/shounen-ai genre, you don’t know how good you have it — and nobody translated them into English (as far as I know, and I would know, I looked). It’s scifi sex fantasy/tragedy at its finest, and yes, there are chains and questionable consent, but like I said in my Welcome to YAOI! posts, that’s par for the course in this business.
Oh, and maybe some visuals will help move along your interest:
Initially I considered writing up a story summary and giving you the names of the characters and/or plot but I realized that most anybody who would care about those has already scrolled up and down over these images and gone right back up to watch the OAV live action and I don’t need to waste my time. HOWEVER — those of you who are still around, should definitely check out this business, which is an awesome amazing music video for Ai no Kusabi set to — wait for it — Leann Rimes, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight.” I’m just saying, don’t be frightened; I love it so hard my lady parts hurt.
(AMV.org, by the way, is worth signing up for, tons and tons of amazing vids. Like this one, Ninja of the Night, for Naruto, which, wow, if you haven’t seen, go fix that NOW)
Happy viewing!
And for those who might have missed it, I posted Arc pt 2/? over the weekend. Go forth, tell me you love me.
One of my current roommates has decided to develop a hideous crush on me and so as a stalling tactic, I’ve been hiding out in my room and drowning myself in old SGA stories — and guys, I’m re-remembering why I love these two. In the show and in the stories we write about them there’s always such a thread of affection, and even when it’s grudging, there’s a wonderful sense of caring there — and stories that lack it I generally hate with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Whether or not they’ve been recced to high heaven. And rereading has made me all soppy in the soul over things like Suddenly at Last by Yin and Slow and Steady by Kellifer, two stories I love to an embarrassing degree. And then there’re always other fandom classics, like Oblivious by shalott and Thicker Than Water by Julad, they’re like the reading equivalent of hot soup for me — comforting and thick and wonderful.
It makes me wish for the fourth season to hurry up already! And it makes me wish somebody would fulfill my wildest dream and write all the things for which I yearn on demand: Jane Sheppard fic, John’s ex-wife fic (fuck! I have to get back to that), psycho ex-boyfriend fic (come on, you know you love this sort of trashy shit, too — especially if, and I know, I know, this is horrible: if John’s ex-boyfriend was this total lunatic and all hell bent on threatening John’s life if he leaves him, but the thing is that John didn’t notice he was nuts and just went about his business as usual because, come on, as if anybody who isn’t Teyla or Ronon or Teyla and Ronon could kick his ass to the floor so easily. Meanwhile, McKay finds out and insanity ensues. COME ON YOU KNOW YOU LOVE IT.)
So! My friends, I ask you for recommendations of comfort stories in any of the fandoms in which I read (NCIS, SGA, Supernatural, SV, and a metric asston of animes).
Oh, and for those of you who have been reading Harudaki? No, there is no fanfiction. I know.
And that means, if any of you would like to you know, write me some good Harudaki in which Katou and Iwaki adopt a baby, I WOULD TOTALLY ROCK THAT SHIT, TOO.
Firstly, for those of you who picked up Harudaki 1-3, now, if you go to my swag folder, you can get 4-6 — happy reading!
And secondly:
Title: Arc (pt 2/?)
Rating: R
Summary: In which Geoffrey is not actually a hooker, Conner looks like a hipster tool (but in an endearing way), and Clark does that thing my mom does and drives me up the motherfucking wall.
I’ve talked about Harudaki before (specifically, the OAV) and I have talked about yaoi before, as well — so it’d be remiss for me not to discuss the intersection of these two intriguing things, right?
Sexually explicit images (and lots of them) beneath the cut, so beware. Or you know, be psyched.
I just spent an hour on the phone with one of my best friends — and in between listening to him call some guys in his barracks douchebags and motherfuckers (Marines barracks vocabulary = disturbingly similar to j-school editing class vocabulary) he mumbled something about infantry training levels and I yelled, “OH MY GOD, ARE YOU TRAINING TO BE A RECON MARINE?” and then I was like, “OF COURSE YOU ARE YOU PSYCHOPATH,” and he was all “HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A RECON MARINE IS?” and I was like, “WHY ARE YOU GOING TO JUMP OUT OF PERFECTLY GOOD PLANES?” However, as it turns out? The moment is still much funnier in Smittywing’s paean to the Love Song Of John Sheppard And Lorne And The Navy Goat The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves than it is when I’m shouting it at my buddy in California while listening to him talk about some moron who stole a drill sergeant’s porn and tried to beat off to it in said drill sergeant’s bathroom. (Mostly because you know, I don’t want him jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.) Plus it wasn’t like I could tell him my extensive knowledge of the military is primarily rooted in me writing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell defying smut for it.