Further drama adventures
or, White Girl Watches C-Drama... And BEYOND
We finished Pursuit of Jade and it was worth every penny of my Netflix subscription. I would rate it a little lower than Unveil: Jadewind simply because the plot and pacing are a bit wonky in places, so as a show it's not quite as good, but my god I love it so much. This is what's so good about the marriage of convenience trope when it's done well: you get to see the Actual Marriage, not just fade out on the wedding photos, and watch how the relationship develops when these people actually live together day to day.
(Apparently it's come under fire in China because some military bigwig felt threatened by Xie Zheng being the ultimate female fantasy. I mean allegedly the issue was """historical accuracy""", but come on.)
Honestly, this isn't my favorite show -- surpassing The Double will take some doing -- but I think Fan Changyu/Xie Zheng might be my favorite couple yet. They're just! so good! even when they are fucking up spectacularly and hurting each other's feelings!
Then we started Perfect Match, because Wang Xingyue hadn't steered us wrong yet. But while he's always worth watching, most of it really wasn't. Misogyny for the lulz and/or shock value, not a lot of compelling characters, weirdly shoddy subtitles... and I am not a subtitle snob by any means, okay. I realize I am an anglophone ignoramus who is probably1 missing one million nuances per episode of these things, but all I really ask of a subtitle is that it helps me understand what's going on. Most of them do that. These... didn't especially. I'm blaming the subtitles rather than the plot because we only got a handful of episodes in before H got super squicked and called it.
Then we changed it up a bit and started The King's Affection, which is extremely good! Both in and of itself, and because it's interesting, after being immersed in all these Chinese shows, switching to The Same Thing But Korean. Obviously I knew there were going to be differences, because products of different cultures, duh -- but I hadn't EXPERIENCED the differences. And I am nowhere near educated enough to define them, but still.
Anyway! It has cross-gender identity swaps, which is enough to hook me right there, but it's also gorgeous and heartrending and so intense I have to take it in moderate doses. So in between, we have started watching The Princess Royal, which so far is basically what I wanted from Story of Kunning Palace except actually entertaining. (And also Zhang Linghe isn't phoning it in. The guy can act! I guess he just happened to be playing a sexy lamp in that one.)
1 i.e. definitely.