I’m sorry I died

EP.24 | Love You Seven Times 「七时吉祥」 (2023)

hey not to be deeply weird about it but just to check, has everyone else already seen this interview with xiao shunyao in which he (correctly) argues that actually di feisheng is a deeply loyal and affectionate character, and also that li xiangyi gives di feisheng a reason to live?

i'm so fucking normal about it

Art by Duowei Feng

Happy Jonghyun Day!

Modu by priest was truly such a good read. If you like romance? It has a sweeping romance, with a well done bisexual and gay lead (and straight best friend) all written in ways that manage to feel realistic, it's got features people likely found it for when looking for a danmei - rich manipulative younger man, older investigator who's got a hero streak, and yet those categories don't really do justice to them (and of course tao ran is the more grounded detective story lead who keeps his theories to himself and worries about dragging others into his mess).

They're so much more... Fei Du is a traumatized young man who's worried he's as monstrous as the people who scarred him, who is preparing to take the leap and cross the line to become an even more terrifying version of himself if it will destroy the corruption poisoning this city and harming so many, Luo Wenzhou is a cop that used to want to be a hero and learned he will fail people and be unable to save people and holds onto Fei Du as someone who reminds him he DOES fail but also reminds him why he wants so hard to keep Trying to help people even when it seems impossible... why trying and putting in effort to care and help Even when its too late to fix things is Worthwhile. Tao Ran is a contrast to them both, Fei Du living in a world where there's only monsters and victims and Luo Wenzhou desperately trying to force the world to be a place where justice CAN prevail and win even as he sees it fail over and over, trying so hard to believe all people have the capacity for everything and are worth trying to save. Even though Fei Du doesm't believe that, being around Luo Wenzhou makes him want to consider it. Tao Ran, their contrast? Believing the world can go either way, and its up to people like him to create any justice at all, any structure at all, or else everything is just meaningless suffering chaos. As characters, the three of them serve to explore how the world works and views on it in terms of a detective murder mystery encompassing the whole city, the small scale version of the world. Modu is a romance, but its also fully commited to being a murder mystery that wants to tackle the kind of themes that come up in the setting it's created. Its characters are so much more than Insert Character Ship types here. These characters were made this way to explore these ideas (just as the villains are all made to parallel and contrast Fei Du to explord these ideas in comparison to our point of view Fei Du moments, our impressions of Fei Du from Luo Wenzhou and Tao Rans varied perspectives, all of them are different lenses to view humanity and how it works, if the world is just or if we have to make it good, if we can be inherently good and if good people will reach out to us if we just keep treading water to survive, if its luck and chaos, and how much... and much more frankly).

Modu is like. If you want a story about a corrupt city and its victims, symbolizing a corrupt world and all of us at its mercy, and you want to see the heart of the people doing something about it. First the main trio, but also every victim Fei Du recruits to help, every murderer recruited to the corruption, all the people in the cases swayed to some side. Thats what Modu is about.

The romance is just one facet of exploring that, the personal debate about what these things mean about the world as told through two people who view this world incredibly differently. Yet find some way to exist in the same space, same mutual world, when together. It hooks you in and doesn't let you go and youre wondering right there with them, left to draw your own meaning in the end. Hopefully that its worth trying, that doing something is worth trying even when its just the trying you can do and not the succeeding, at least thats what I got from it (at least in regards to Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou meeting each other, unable to live up to the pillar they put each other on but trying anyway, is what I felt from them).

Then like? Modu gives you THAT story, which in its own right is enough to make you contemplate.

And if you're like me and care about people, about characters? Well it gives you, like I said, those big themes and a city's nightmares symbolizing the world, and brings them down to an individual level. You read from the mind of the little girl who grew up in this (one of my favorite scenes and when I felt this novel was going to not shy away from dark psychological moments and bringing them to you). You read from the mind of Fei Du when he knows himself, when he doesn't. You read from the minds of all kinds of people, and the heart of much of the investigation is peoples motives and things they'd gone through and how that shaped what they'd do next. Why they'd do it. Leaving you to wonder who's right. Jaded idealist Luo Wenzhou who wants to believe in the goodness of the people he loves, but also is willing to risk that strangers may have good intent? Fei Du who thinks theres only victims and perpetrators and everyone is going to fall into one in the right circumstance? Tao Ran, who feels the world is too messy to dare declare predictable, who thinks even your closest can betray you and even you can accidentally hurt them, nevermind strangers, and the only thing you can control and rely on is your own choices? Some mix? None of them? The side characters as they come up, grow and evolve, do they understand the world better or worse, and is the world they experience different than anothers and justify why their worldview is likewise different? Modu gives you that up close and personal, over and over. Im still thinking about it. And the way its done, they all get to feel like lived in people. Not structures to tell the themes only. But on their own, there's a personal struggle between Fei Du feeling like a monster who'll destroy Lup Wenzhou if he loves him, like his dad destroyed his mom, and Luo Wenzhou carrying the guilt he could never save Fei Du and desperate to believe in Fei Du (and keep trying to save him in that way if only that way) as person who can do good despite not being saved and despite Fei Du's fears. You could cut the entire city's plot away, all of the crimes and make the city calm, and still that core of their plot would be carrying a Lot of weight. Theyre playing a game of "enemies" to lovers sure, or whatever romance story structures they fit into. But they're also made to be deeply rooted into each other, their personal beliefs tied into the outcome of what they hope or fear happens if they are close together. Modu made me care about that. Its like the fears many people might have, abiut theur own flaws, about getting close to others, about trusting and being unsure if that trust is safe to give. Its that and magnified into bigger form, in this landscape of a fucked up city and the tragedy of Fei Du and Luo Wenzhou's meeting and former lives.

Its like. Id love to to read another danmei (Ive got a lot on my to read list). But what's going to give me roo

elie saab couture summer/winter 2023 collection ‘a golden dawn’

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Posted an edit after my 3 month long hibernation

(of course it’s these two to bring me out of it)

the 'big surprise' cdrama for me in 2023 that clearly didn't hit for anyone else but strangely I was all about it: Love You Seven Times

"This way, in the next life, and the life after that, you'll be able to find me."

"I may forget who I am, but I will never forget you again."

tbh 80% of the times I enjoy myself a xanxia but by the end I don't ship it. The couples torment each other too much and I emotionally disinvest. I started out already prepared to not care too much about the Love You Seven Times relationship, before one of them starts stabbing the other in the heart while marrying someone else. And then these bastards kept... not doing that? They sucked me in!

(Spoiler-heavy review)

When we are introduced to the 2 leads, they seem like your prototypical xanxia main characters. She's a super young cloud spirit. He's a jaded, cold & arrogant god of war who is impatient and derisive towards her hapless accidents & naivete.

But what's eventually revealed is that you aren't seeing the beginning of their story. These are actually the second incarnations of the essential characters - an immortal couple who are absolutely ride & die for each other, come hell or high water - and who cannot be kept apart or made to betray each other, no matter what tribulation they transmigrate into or how their memories are restricted.

We get:

* their original rom com to tragedy story, where they are wronged by the villian but never wrong each other

* a god arc [the story's bookend] where they are both missing their memories but come together again

(reborn as baby animals 🐯)

* mortal arc where she is transmigrated into a story and he is trapped in-character

* mortal arc where he transmigrated into a story and she is trapped in-character

* body swap mortal arc where they are both aware transmigrators

* demon realm arc where they are deep undercover and lie to each other while trusting implicitly

* a secret 8th thing, cause their love never dies

Usually the 'love trial'  arcs get a heavy fast forward from me. But here you have to invest or not watch at all. And I got interested because while per usual the mortal personas are Not Them... They then carry the collection of personas with them. Those experiences change them and actively linger. And the way the couple occupies these stories is fun - playing it straight, playing along, role swapping, cat demon petting...

This xanxia's lore says that the person's essence, the heart of them, is present deep-down: regardless of the outline proscribed by the Fate Book. And these guys are so very extra that they skew every trial they participate in. I liked how near the end, FL says do you know who I am? and ML lists all of her different identities she's carried. In Eternal Love, I was super annoyed by Ye Hua telling Bai Qian that I know you, you're Su Su. Sorry but to me Su Su has nothing in common with Bai Qian. But here, by the end, I did feel like all of those people are a part of FL and she feels that too.

"Who are you this time?"

For these two, I can believe it doesn't matter.

Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

wang ye ✘ zhuge qing || wanna be yours

Yeah...

天台上谈心...... (a heart-to-heart on the rooftop)

please i need more people to watch 《异人之下》 I Am Nobody 😭😭😭

i believed i was invincible until i met you. in an instant, everything i had ever known came crumbling down. you changed my world utterly; you altered my fate. “我也很喜欢你这个人”； “我喜欢他不假。”

vs

i left the secular world behind because i couldn't find meaning in the struggles of the day-to-day. i didn't understand the point of forming attachments, yet you took the initiative to approach me anyway. because of you, i had the courage to descend from my lofty perch, and find my own place among mortals.

rivals to best friends; two of the most promising sorcerers of their generation; a popular idol descended from Zhuge Liang himself and the wealthy third son of one of the most powerful families in the country who left home to become a Taoist.

"The kind of person that I am - I detest getting entangled with trouble. But if you really have any trouble, I'll help. To say I'll risk my life for you sounds kind of fake. But as long as it's within my power, I'll definitely help you." "Ah, go away, go away! I shouldn't befriend people like you; I can't have any secrets! Can't you let me remain mysterious?" "But I want to be friends with you." ep. 15

the only two people who are able to see and experience the world in the same way.

Some Chinese fanart posted on Weibo for Justice in the Dark/ Mo Du. Fucking amazing 👏!