Not Today

 Finished Tale of Twin Cities last night and...no complaints really. Generally satisfying. I won't spoil the ending, but it's pretty predictable if you've been paying attention. I wasn't all that affected by it tbh. These days I'm just happy to encounter a drama that doesn't rile me up right before the ending and the ending doesn't feel rushed or forced or is just unnecessarily tragic or something. Things I found super refreshing about this drama include:

- The fact that Su Mo was extremely powerful and intelligent and never overly emotional. He was respected by pretty much everyone he came in contact with. And those who didn't respect him, well, they usually regretted it later lol. I really dislike struggling, weak, emotional, or dense male leads. Su Mo very perfectly fit the heroic ideal and it was a nice change. I will also give kudos to Li Yifeng too bc his visual and the calm collected way of his acting extremely helped complete the picture. 

- The OST was pretty nice. There were the usual soppy insert songs, but the instrumentals were varied and memorable. I liked the opening so much that i never skipped it.

- Emotionally, the drama stayed on a very even keel throughout. I didn't feel like anything was unnecessarily dramatic or put there for additional dramatic effect. There were sort of three tiers of villains: Cangliu in general, Zhi Zhe, and Yu Huan. They all had different goals, and none were what I would call cartoonish. Unfortunately, despite their villainous tendencies, none of them trusted each other (which makes sense) and so they never teamed up very effectively against Kongsang or Su Mo.  HOwever, all three of them were VERY hateable for different reasons.

- There were plenty of morally gray characters. Not everyone was straight up good or evil. I like the realism of this.

- The CGI was super good.  All the magic and the dragon and whatnot was super cool and definitely gave you that fantasy realness.

There was nothing I didn't like tbh. There wasn't much romance per se, but I didn't really go into it for that. I never felt much about the main relationship, but I think that had a lot to do with the FL's acting. It was very stiff and cold and I just never felt her supposedly strong affection for Su Mo. However, the side couple of Yan Xi and Na Sheng was pretty cute. 

So yeah. I'm not really saying this is a sensational drama and everyone should watch it, but it was very absorbing to me as a fantasy story and satisfying as a whole. 

Now I'm down mainly to finishing Last Cinderella, which has 3 eps left and I honestly am not sure who the FL will end up with. Her relationship with Hiroto seems so shallow but her relationship with Tachibana is so comfortable and buddy buddy that it's like, wait, if you have a relationship like that with a guy, like HELLO??? 

Then there's Cambrian Period which is fffffffffffffffffff.  Such a pain to watch. I have to watch shitty quality vids on DramaCool or whatever for the subs, then pause and go through the subless HQ YT vids whenever Jian Zi is in the picture. I refuse to miss out on HQ Minghao is mainly the problem. That's the only reason i'm not done with it yet. I really ought to be by now bc it's not like it's uninteresting. 

 Well, it was only yesterday that I finished Psych Hunter and boooooooooyo was I disappointed. Like, it was oddly the most deflating feeling the end of that show. With no ToTC to watch, i felt like i was in a total show hole. Then I randomly picked up Minghao's very first drama, but I'll talk about that later lol. Mainly I have to discuss Psych Hunter and there will be spoilers bc idc lol.  First of all, idk whether the ending was from the book it was based on or not. If it WAS, then that was the most cheaty bad writer way out ever. Like he/she couldn't figure out an ending and decided to go with the absolute worst exit strategy ever: it was just a dream. 

The other option is that the censors murdered it in order to explain the supernatural aspects to it. That's incredibly weird and petty if so but i have heard that they try to keep that stuff out of dramas, which is why they're always lying in Lost Tomb about what's going on. 

But basically, after 34 episodes of getting attached to all the characters and looking forward to a resolution on Liu Zhi and everything else. Maybe finding out why Jiang Shou was his disciple and why he had psychic powers or whatever, they completely collapsed it and threw us back to the future where a Jiang Shou and Dr. Qin that we have no reason to care about are patient and doctor, and the entire show has been nothing but JS's fever dream where he fights with his alternate personality. 

To add insult to injury, the actual ending is completely open-ended. They wake up, but Qin says that it's a 50-50 chance whether the real JS wakes up or his alternate. And that's it. Judging by the sinister look on JS's face too it looks like the alternate won, which is even WORSE bc then the whole thing was even MORE pointless lmao. 

It's like going on a journey with a goal in mind and when you get to the end, you realize that the goal was never feasible and you did it for nothing. This is totally different from the vaguely unsatisfying endings of say, ROP and UTP, this ending literally negated the entire drama. It really sucks lol bc i was really enjoying this drama and looking forward to the resolution. 

Anyway...so now I'm randomly watching this Cambrian Period thing mainly bc I'm sugoi addicted to ToTC and am waiting for episodes and need something trashy to waste time. Idk that this is a particularly good drama even, but Minghao is impressive for his first drama and being only 20 at the time and whatnot. It's funny tho bc physically, he looks very manly, he's quite broad, etc, but his faaaaaaaaaaace looks really young lol.  There's not a lot to choose from in his back catalog, but it looks like he has a lot of stuff coming up at least.