Ever Bethany

Without love for the people and concern for the nation
It is not poetry
Without an ache for our era and outrage at the world
It is not poetry
Without striving for good and guarding against evil
It is still not poetry.



The only good thing about having finished Sungkyunkwan Scandal is knowing how it all turns out.
T_T
The next best thing is the idea that there will probably be knock-offs that at least have ninjas, classical stage dressing, and men in funny hats....

The screenplay of this one is of the inimitable kind that manages to work the necessary tropes without falling prey to them. Check-check-check on the cross-dressing romance story elements, but none of them are props. They are all working members of a really well-told story.



I spent most of the show pretty sure that the Left Prime Minister was *capable* of being a snake, but not sure he would be. And they didn't actually betray the characterization of him set up in the beginning, of a man of steel who admires the ideals youth have, but has been tempered by long service at the top.

They redeem the only fairly major character who seemed like a cliche villain.

And though they had an epilogue scene, it was neither too sweet, nor contorted any of the characters.

The one thing I could have asked for more of (though considering the actual participants, I wouldn't) was slightly hotter romance scenes.  But the period, as well as the characters, make that unlikely.

Which is why I'm going to go watch a Taiwanese show now...

Let's just be upfront here. The only linking theme between Sungkyunkwan Scandal and Himitsu no Hanazono is the cute middle-aged men:


(note the drab colors of this screencap vs. any Korean drama. This is true-to-life.)

In fact, the closest thing to a male lead:

Wataru KATAOKA, is very much of the same type as this one I posted about before:


Wataru's not making his sad-puppy face above, but I swear, it's a dead ringer.

...You know, I like how I don't even apologize for all this f-list effing anymore XD Esp. since fabricalchemist confessed that she didn't know how I did all the images when I don't do HTML. (that's not how the conversation really went, but I'm just outing myself as a Rich Text Editor user before anyone else's illusions are shattered.)

himitsu no hanazono is easily translated to make sense, but as this post's title reveals, it actually has quite a bit of nuance.

Here is our heroine:


she gets to be the oblivious klutz! can you tell?

But actually, the first episode establishes her as a hard-working, competent editor for a fashion magazine. Unfortunately, it goes under, for which her boss blames herself,

and as her last act of boss-ness, gets this hard-working little chickie a job in a new department of the publisher.

At this point, I thought this actress's tenure in this show was probably done, which is a shame, because Maya Miki's beautiful and plays mature women with grace, all severe strong types in my J-Drama experience. I was happily wrong, which we may or may not get back to.

(note: I'm taking most of these screencaps from darkeyedwolf  who wrote a HILARIOUS show overview, and happens to have uploaded all the good pictures to Photobucket, so I decided to fail with grace and just USE THEM ALL. Not really.)

Turns out this new position is far outside poor little Tsukiyama-chan's experience: the MANGA DEPARTMENT. [swelling notes of doom]
This turns out to be a classy example of the forcefully airheaded boss-lady's way of operating. (I see we got back to her rather quickly. 0_0;)

And she is given the task of overseeing a famous (eccentric, of course) girl's comic writer. Enter the Shojo Manga tropes...no wait, they were with us all along.



Because "Yuriko HANAZONO" is actually four brothers, mostly middle-age except the 18 year old Hinata.
Of course, she's been basically thrown to the wolves. Four men who are kind of solitary because of some secret they need to keep hidden, and work from home can't pass up a chance with a young, serious woman on their hands.

Since this show is more classy than we deserve, only two brothers really fall for her, and the second triangle is formed by the lovably tenacious and spastic...



BOSS LADY!

She thinks Yuriko HANAZONO stole her fiancé, but is finally thinking about moving on...with Manager/Playboy Brother Satoshi.

This is about 23x more interesting of a secondary-character plotline than I have seen in a drama, because this character could have been SO annoying but you just want to watch this woman do whatever it is she's doing.
She was part of an all-female drama troupe in her 20s(?), and played male lead characters. She's got the goods, she brings a certain presence to whatever she's doing.

Apparently, today's post was GiRl-cRuSh Conf<3ssions time? Heh.



It's all good, though. And I really enjoy stories centering around some kind of creative work, despite their usual sweeping grandeurs of inaccuracy. Of course, you have to be inaccurate to make them any fun...

Yesterday, I went to a gun show, played Lego Indiana Jones with a Nintendo-style controller (a first ever), beat the level, and made chicken stock.

Today just couldn't win with that kind of competition...

Day 27 of the Month of Images was next, many moons ago, and demands a glamor shot. My favorite is still this one I took of myself while traveling in Panama with my exchange sister:



Tonight I watched The Order of the Phoenix, which I actually found quite good, especially toward the end.
It was kind of startling at some points, though, when Daniel Radcliffe-as-Harry is holding forth, how much he looks like my brother, in the way he talks. Since they're both short, dark-haired, blue-eyed guys, one wonders... Welsh genes?

The randomness of this is brought to you by the desire to post something without having any burning passion to post a *specific* thing....

***

Oh. And I think I need to completely rewrite Vol 5 of Aolon, not just Vol 1. Which, being a NaNo vet, is 50,000 some words long! Sadly, I'm getting the feeling that if every volume, and every 200,000 of the words needed to be gone over to make this book presentable, I would need to do it. The stories in it are too important to me, I tried to give them up but I couldn't shake them...

ahhhh, just got to the best fallout to accidental kissing ever written in shojo, which I had forgotten about until I restarted this T-Drama: drunk hero kisses heroine, and...she runs away and cries, even though she likes him.
She doesn't know why she's upset. But she is.

Hana Kimi's writer actually has moments of brilliance in that fairly silly girl-as-boy-in-boy-school-for-LUUUUURVE manga. The more complex emotions, and the more unfunny complications of masquerading as a man surprised me a few times. In this kind of super-escapist wish-fulfilment literature, there are *plenty* of things brushed under the rug for the sake of fun. GREAT GIANT CARE PACKAGE OF--uh, yeah, I'm going to go drop this off with the school nurse who knows I'm a girl, brb haha.




This drama spends a lot more time than I have patience for in lala-land with the characters thinking of outrageous scenarios...but that's a failing of these sorts of dramas, and the Taiwanese scriptwriters seem to *really* love them. To make up for it, the hero has already realized she's a girl (which since it's not in her POV strictly, we can see this) and he's having a bit of fun with it...

Also, his tattoos have appeared. I thought these guys were a boy band, but apparently he's not the straight-laced ingénue he appears (and is cast for).   [for the record, I don't have anything against tattoos, but in Asia it's a *much* bigger deal to have one.]
Wu Chun, with kiwi

The silliness of this makes me think of "You're Beautiful" and the limes.
Geun-Suk, I am so happy you are doing another show...

Though his character in Mary Stayed Out All Night isn't as much fun. Yet.



Not that this post needed a point, with all the sour-fruit-eating boyfaces floating around, BUT, the real thing I'm geeking out about is a writer taking an opportunity to do a more unusual, genuine thing with a fairly tired trope. (When drinks, becomes a kissing monster. The list of odd shojo tropes could last for hours of hilarity, really... oh, in V.B. Rose [GOOD COMIC] they have a fake out where you think that's what they're going to say a guys does when drinking, but he just throws up instead. And then the writer plays it really well for a much more interesting scene afterward. SO GOOD.)

So yeah.

My latest drama of choice I think will have to be dropped or skimmed for a bit..
I like the characters (pragmatic girl taxi driver and her pal, a reluctant celebrity and his buddies the agent and formerly rich-kid restaurateur) and the set-up, but I'm dreading the next episode. It's about MONEY. So far there has been quite a bit of intrigue about a lost winning lottery ticket, which is fine, but there's a set up for something heart-breaking to happen to the heroine and/or her best friend, and...

Ugh.
I hate it at the third-to-last-episode when the characters (inevitably) break it off foreve~r and this feels like it's coming all too early, in the fourth episode, or at least for whatever angst to result that's going to be in the back of my mind until it all comes down in about 7 more episodes.

I'm watching it because of this dude we were just talking about:


who has an adorable likeness to me in this photo by having bruised his forearm, and having it prominent in the shot. I cannot begin to recount to you how many photos star me with a smaller version of that--I've come to realize this is because my forearms are often bruised. Random knocks on things that my mind doesn't register for injury, but my ginger-fair skin does. (Don't believe me? Go review that picture of me on the swing. IT'S THERE.)

So probably I'll end up watching it, in some form. I'm running out of backlog of WICKED FUN shows, it feels like, though. So I have to go trawling new series' at the beginning of the various seasons. I've heard about a few I need to check out, and by now they'll have updated past one episode...

But meanwhile!

finale notes: PLAYFUL KISS/Mischievous Kiss

This is one that did *really* well with it's writing of the last episodes, but the hero's actor actually set it back.



Kim Hyun Joong, baby, you are so easy on the eyes,
WHY can't I believe you're into girls?
I mean, for most of the series, the heroine's chemistry toward him carried the story but for most of the story, he's pretending to not care about her. But then the end... it still looked like this:


It would be very interesting to see what this guy is like around a person he likes. The character Baek Seung Jo becomes more teasing, more uncivil--but there's not even that much life in the actor.

I feel like the script gave him every chance, and he just does not do that well at playing pretend.
Unlike his rival from Boys Before Flowers, who in his next project was playing a man pretending to be gay to get by the heroine, and ends up being the object of two girls and a guy, and managed to have chemistry with EVERYBODY.

(Personal Taste)

Lee Min Ho, when I fall prey to rewatching BBF, it will be for you and your AMAZING SUITS.
Even though your stylists believe in never hiding your ankles, and also, being sock-free.

(Korean business people, like Japanese, apparently, still wear full suits for business. I am *often* distracted from the action by them. I mean seriously:


jacket, vest, low-neck tee combo--THAT IS SO HOT, and yes, he wears it well, but at this point I am not really noticing him.)



...apparently that K-Drama suits rant I've had stewing decided enough was enough, it was going to gate-crash this post. Don't fear, someday I will post pictures of my favorites, if I have to drag up ancient history shows to take screenshots especially for it.


I watched the K-Drama version of Overboard, but I think it will need it's own post at this point. I will show you a suit from it, though:


This guy always plays the unfortunately subservient type, the awkward common man.
But THIS SUIT. I so love it--the big pinstripes, the lime green tie...



Final thoughts on Playful Kiss: it's too bad both the other shows had better heroes, because I might have been just fine with this one if there was no comparison. As it was, this was the best of the three shows overall.

The heroine was superb, where the Japanese one was cringeworthy, and the Taiwanese one cute, but not well scripted and certainly not giving strong-character vibes.
The sets were very pretty.
I need to go and check out the anime for whether the original has the moment-of-truth scene in the rain, because the K-Drama found that one hard to mic as well, though I only noticed it because of the strong comparison with the Taiwanese show. It was NOT as bad, and it was much better quality in terms of resolution and lighting.

But the Taiwanese hero's voice was more true in his lines that are like thunder-strikes in the downpour, and that's all I could really think in that (drama-drama, but in a fun way) scene. If I rewatch the show at any point I'll just do a manual cut-in there, I guess...

Briefly, before we begin... I am having a moment of anger and disbelief so many people do not love the idea of The Carnie's Conspiracy. And am lamenting what I could be doing wrong...

On the other side of things, this morning I wrote a piece of flash (1000 words style...I need to cut out 47 words, if we're being strict here) titled:

The Fox of the Karaoke Bar

which is a title that was in my head several weeks, and then last night developed a story to go with it. Maybe I'll post it someday, though posting fiction has never gone that well for me when it wasn't fanfiction. (Is this a demand I ought to fill? WAIT. Save me from myself!)


***
Last 6 days of the Obsessive Book-Lover's Month of Books meme!

Day 25

What authors do you most wish to have bring out a new book, right now? (Dead or alive, keep it down to five!)

Dead People include Tolkien (and endless back matter being presented as new books is not what I mean, but a Hobbit or Farmer Giles of Ham kind of book) and Jane Austen (but not something serious as Her Last, like Mansfield Park, tho' I don't think she would have done it again, she never did things again).

At the same time, I don't feel like they're body of work was incomplete. Tolkien told the stories he wanted to tell.


Hmmm. Living people? Saving the obvious that I've already been over? Well, first, I wish Christopher Stroud would stumble across an idea like The Bartimaeus Trilogy again--his other books have not caught me the same way.


...and Hey, Presto! Robin McKinley's about to bring out a new book that looks soooo good. Pegasus is not a winged horses story (read sarahtales  's latest post with an interview with her for a bit more on that) but a story about a pegasus race that has forged an alliance with a human race--and a pair of friends who are not alienated from each other enough for their respective sides.

I haven't gotten to reading Chalice yet, by a terrible negligence on my part and a wariness produced by both the wonderful darkness that is Sunshine (which I read) and the reactions to Dragonhaven (which I haven't). I'm not talking about the controversy, so much as the impression I got of the book from posts of various people. I need to buck up and just read them both.

Because apparently Pegasus is really Part One of a single story that's huge and the ending of the first is cruel. DO NOT WANT.

Day 6 of the Obsessive Book Lover's Month of Books

What books lift your mood when you don't want to talk to people?

Okay, well mostly any book will do. But if we're talking about a book that will immediately send me rocketing off in search of convivial fellowship with mankind (that is, going to bother my mom in the kitchen) it is Eloise.

It is presented as "a book for precocious grown-ups" (which does not work out to an insult, but I think it *does* work out to mean adults who can remember what being a child is like, which makes them much more mature than most) and this is a good way to put it.



The drawings take the oddball story one step further into hilarity. This book laughs, not at the expense of the people it pokes fun at, but instead treating them all as part of the idiosyncratic world we know.
Nanny is a boxing fan who drinks and yells while watching matches, though otherwise is quite presentable. Eloise is a child whose energy and disregard for adults as she lives a fairly independent life are not that of a little monster (though no doubt many of her neighbors regard her so) but that of a small person. The personalities around her are undiminished by the largeness of hers.

Distilling it down, it's like reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel without the brain-wracking plots to push through, a moment of "cheerful humanity".


This was one of the first books I bought with the express purpose of having for my own house, as my own property, rather than just because I wanted it handy all the time.
If you now need to see it, I do lend it from time to time, and my brother tore the dustjacket already, so it's not an enshrined copy, to which no harm may befall. Feeling a need of Eloise?

***

I have an amendment to make, about picture books and being read to.



I remember my mother loving the Madeline books! This may be one of my earliest experiences of her enthusiasm for something I didn't think she should be so excited about causing me to be contrary. Sadly, it is not the last. Nor was it the only  time I was proved wrong in my skepticism. XD

The fun, unexpectedly strong-willed heroine is much more impressive to me as an adult looking back, than it was at the time.
But fabricalchemist  ...I didn't much like this art either. T_T I find it fun now, but back then it just seemed simplistic, and dumbed down... Forgive me?

I'm watching the Mainland China drama version of Hana Yori Dango.   (12.26 am on Thursday morning, not posting this immediately because of obvious timing issues with my last post [I knew I should put it off until I had something I was passionate about to post])



Oh, I'm pretty sure this is the only one I'm going to like.
For one thing, the viciousness has been toned down so unlike in every other version, the first episode of the show did not give me a subtle sense of creeping horrors.

For another, I wish I could capture for you the short section where the actor for the Domyouji/Gu Joon Pyo character is comparing the girl to a fly, mimicking it going in buzzing circles around your head, and then saying "It doesn't bite, but it annoys the bejesus out of you".


...maybe part of that was seeing a subtitle use the phrase "bejeezus". No, the comic repetition the gesture was pretty good, too...



***

To be more analytical, the opening of the show doesn't start off with the F4 idol gang formed as it's going to be--the fourth guy is new kid on campus just like the heroine is, and there's some fun fight scenes over it.



Also, shiny cars--though the Korean show had prettier ones.

I've realized in the last week or so that I actually really enjoy clean fight scenes--the kind where you know everyone's going to get over their bruises and maybe breaks eventually.
This really should have been obvious to me, but it wasn't.

Moment by Crannibal

I love the framing of this, almost like a Japanese landscape with it's oblong tapestry-length, but then the actual subjects being much more like watercolored Maurice Sendak characters.



wildr by Kunisaki

I think I palettes may be the most important thing to me visually. I identify era by colors first, and textures next. Actual shape comes last.

So these pictures feel like classic children's books, but with more pleasing style than these colors usually  were used in. The next two are less like storybook pictures, but instead like they would belong in the Datlow/Windling retellings as recalling both the fairytale collections for children, but taking them in more mature directions.



Unforget by lone_momo




I'll be your scapegoat by Derrewyn


I've been very drawn to this kind of muted palette that is far from boring, but instead quiet and striking.

While we're talking K-Dramas

MAD  PROPS

to 1% of Anything for having the girl capable of giving herself a make-over (in a half-hour at most!) when she gets dissed.

This puts her in a very limited company. Most need their future boyfriends to do it for them...
Kyoko of Skip-Beat! is the only other to come to mind.

***

Also, mad props to the scriptwriters for having EVERYONE'S parents be embarrassingly conniving matchmakers!



I'm not at this point yet. They're still fighting all through they're enforced dates. 6_6