Himitsu no Corner

This writer was apparently like, “I want a Dragon Quest Slime as a pet, no wait, I want a Dragon Quest Slime as a SON”

I have severe executive dysfunction. I've been dealing with it by having myself do one small task a day. So far it's helped a lot. By doing it this way my brain doesn't freak out trying to tackle everything at once.

I got my inspiration for it from this Donald Duck comic:

YES!!! I can definitely recommend a handful! The titles are links to where you can watch them with eng subs!

(Note: I don’t watch that many shows because of life, so this is actually a pretty starved list. But any one of them is a gateway drug to a whole world of asian dramas. See bottom for shows I’ve been recced but never watched.)

—

BLOODY ROMANCE (2018)  

Rating: 9.5/10Genre: Historical fantasy cdramaLength: 1 season, 36 eps, 40 min each (completed)Plot: A young girl escapes a brothel and finds her way to Guihua City, which is a city of female assassins. Every female assassin chooses a Shadow (a male assassin and servant).The girl and her Shadow fall in love amidst a bloody struggle for power and revenge.

Review: BLS WATCH IT!!! THIS IS MY FAVOURITE OF THE LIST. Ignore the corny english title (the chinese title is much better). I can spew about this show forever, where do I even START. This is one of the most tightly, brilliantly written and complex plotwork I’ve ever watched in a show. It’s a show where, even though I read the ending first, I still needed to watch every second of it, and any minute I skip might be a plot point missed. It’s that tight. 

My favourite thing about the show is that it is a FEMALE DOMINANT CAST (legit, for every one strong male character, there are three (fucking gorgeous) strong female characters), and everybody has their own complex character arcs and backgrounds. It’s amazing and so refreshing. Even the horrible villainess you learn to feel sorry for after you learn what has happened to her. Oh my god and the music. There is one melody they use in the most tragic love scenes, and when I listen to it now I still want to cry. Also the ACTING OF THE SECOND MALE LEAD (Wang Duo) IS PHENOMENAL… he’s SO good that while he may not be conventionally attractive, he has become more and more beautiful to me, and I actually want to watch other shows/movies he’s in. (God, that one drunk scene.) The designs of the sets and costumes, and the overall cinematography, are absolutely masterful… each shot is like a painting, and it makes me want to step inside. I can’t get enough of it.

The story asks some pretty tough, philosophical questions about life, death, responsibility and power. It’s an action drama about assassins, after all.The romance part of the show is really well-woven into the overall plot; the pining, the angst, and the occasional beautiful moments of fluff has emptied me of tears. I cried watching this at work lmao.

My god, it’s s e r i o u s l y worth the watch. Please please please watch this if you watch nothing else on this list; I want this show to get more popular. It’s beautiful.

The Untamed  (2019) 

Rating: 9/10Genre: Xianxia fantasy cdramaLength: 1 season, 50 eps, 50 min each (ongoing - 4 new eps per week)Plot: Wei Wuxian, a young infamous cultivator who “died” 16 years ago wakes up in a new body, and gets caught up in a power struggle between the main families of the cultivator world. He gets help from Lan Wangji, a very old… “friend” who has mourned and missed him much more than he knows.

Review: EYE CANDY, BRILLIANT STORY, BEAUTIFUL AESTHETICS. This is a live adaptation of the viral online gay chinese novel called 魔道祖师 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) that has an anime and a manhua too. It is beautifully made. THE COLOURS. The designs and costumes are even more beautiful and breathtaking than Bloody Romance. The acting is surprisingly good for a cast of chinese idols (there are professional actors in the mix, however) - they’re going for eye candy (the target audience is young women hehe). And the actors they chose… really are hot. Oof *chef’s kiss*

I also like the drama characters much more than in the original novel; they added character developing scenes and more softness and depth to some of the less-liked characters in the story. It’s very obvious the writers of the show are big fans of the original novel; they did it great justice. Very tightly written, character-driven plot.

ALSO! The original story is canonically gay. While the Chinese gov’t censors lgbtq+ media, the creators, cast and crew of The Untamed have gone above and beyond to sneak in as much of the romance between the two male leads as possible, and it’s quite obvious too. There is no forced hetero romance for those characters. They even added some classic romantic tropes (falling over each other, some very heavy gazing moments, etc, hnng) that weren’t even in the book. Agh… I feel so fed…

The Tale of Arang (2012)  

Rating: 7/10Genre: historical romantic comedy kdramaLength: 1 season, 20 eps, 1 hr each (completed)Plot: A girl has died and her soul can’t remember her living life at all. She is on the run from grim reapers as she tries to find her memories, and she meets a young, living man who can somehow see her, and so she enlists his help.

Review: This is a very fun show. It’s been a year since I’ve seen it, so my review will be brief. If the above two shows are full-course meals from a five star restaurant, this show is a delicious guilty pleasure snack. It starts off lighthearted and fun, and super super cute, but it gets more serious as it goes on, and… tbh, a little bit draggy. The main girl loses much of the spunk that made her so lovable in the beginning, and gains more stupidity. The writers made her do the dumbest things near the end, just to drive the plot where they wanted it. Poor writing there. Still, it has a happy ending that was so sooooo cute it made me cry. I feel like if you love your typical YA romance fantasy novels with a love triangle and cute cliche pining tropes, you’ll definitely enjoy this one. I definitely lost some calories laughing.

I AM NOT A ROBOT (2017)  

Rating: 9/10Genre: Romantic comedy kdramaLength: 1 season, 32 eps, 30 min each (completed)Plot: A young man named Kim Min Kyu is a child prodigy and is the heir to a massive company. But he is severely allergic to human skin contact, and has lived alone for years. A young woman in need of money accidentally finds herself disguised as a robot in his mansion, and shenanigans ensue.

Review: This is one of the cutest yet also deeply moving show I’ve ever watched. The leads are SO FREAKING CUTE AND HILARIOUS, and there are so many funny fluffy moments that made me spill all of my uwus. The acting is BRILLIANT, oh my god. The design and cinematography, especially during the emotional scenes, are wonderfully fresh. The music is so cute. 

I also really like how this show addresses a particular subject matter that is rarely given proper attention to in Asia - mental illnesses, in particular psychosomatic illnesses. Since it’s a fictional story, the character has a pretty extreme version of such an illness, but it hits most of the right notes about the difficulties of people living with it. You can’t tell people to just “get over it”, it’s a real thing that needs time and trust to get better, and it may never really go away and always a work in progress. The story portrays that well. The romantic comedy part and this serious drama part of the show are mixed perfectly together. It’s a roller coaster of emotions; it’s a well-paced, simple story with lovable characters, and overall will leave you feeling very satisfied after watching it. Ahh the ending was so wholesome.

—

I recommend cdramas for meaty stories, with massive but tight, heavy plots, fantastical worldbuilding, and a shit tonne of complex characters, and kdramas for simpler relaxing stories with lovable characters and wholesome comedy.

Some highly recommended dramas I’ve never watched but want to (they’re all complex plotty historical fantasies bc apparently that’s what I’m into. Eng sub links included in name):

Mengfei Comes Across (romantic comedy)

Nirvana in Fire (historical drama) (The ratings for this show are freakishly high??? And my entire extended family on my mom’s side is nuts about this. I’ve seen a couple of episodes, and from what I saw I know I need to be really mentally prepared for this show. I’m probably not gonna eat or sleep if I start this lmao)

Ashes of Love (fantasy historical romance. There’s like a cult of middle-aged asian moms for this show)

The Longest Day in Chang’An (historical fantasy(?) drama)

NezuYuki!

Is there a skill you’ve always wanted to master someday, but kept procrastinating on? A language you started learning – then abandoned? A topic in class you’ve never quite grasped? Or maybe you just want to expand your horizon and try something new? Distract yourself from your usual studies?

This challenge is the perfect opportunity to achieve that! Pick a skill and see how much you can improve and grow in 30 days – or really start working on your to-read list (I know those books have been piling up), your portfolio for that dream job in Illustration you want, or your blog you’ve been meaning to post more original content on.

Self-growth and development are so, so important, which is the main reason why I created this challenge.

The idea of this challenge is that people from all communities come together to gain knowledge, add skills and just have fun with the amazing amount of resources out there. This way, we can all support and motivate each other, whatever field you might be interested in.

Post an introduction with the hashtag #30dol with your goals and expectations for the month (starting June 1st), and what your current level is. (Of course, you can join in later as well, but it’s fun to start a the same time!) In the end, you’ll be able to compare and see how much has changed!

Rules:

choose a topic or field you want to concentrate on

post an introduction to #30dol 

define your goals or aspirations

update daily or weekly, we want to hear from you! ♥

post a picture, a sketch, or audio, whatever you deem fitting to show us all your progress for the day/week

Here are some ideas for you:

bullet journaling (read about it here on @emmastudies, here’s an amazing online course on it) 

books/reading (if you don’t have a personal to-read list, here is one with the best books of the 20th century, best series with a gay plot/subplot, and books everyone should have read at least once)

coding (here are some sites to learn html, css, data science, python 3, java, etc.: x x x x)

design/illustration ( stickers and illustration, character illustration, Ink Illustration, 45 best adobe illustrator tutorials, 

business/freelance/open your own shop (tips on how to open your own sticker shop, digital skills: web analytics and marketing)

languages (apps like lingodeer, duolingo, lingvist, busuu, blogs like @lovelybluepanda. there are also so many pdfs and amazing websites out there depending on your target language!)

online mass education courses (edx, coursera, skillshare, futurelearn where universities and professionals teach you about their subject - be that astronomy, engineering, ancient greek history, artificial intelligence or medicine!)

social media (learn to take iphone photos for your tumblr or instagram, and here’s a great post by @studyquill on how to start and maintain a studyblr!)

photography (travel street photography, find photographers you admire like annie leibovitz or henri cartier bresson and read about their path, or browse youtube channels like negative feedback which specialize on photography)

creative writing (there are tons of workshops online - you could also try to set yourself a piece or word limit similar to nanowrimo) 

culinary (check recipe websites, or challenge yourself to try one new recipe a day, or dedicate the month to a specific cuisine)

music (learn music production, andrew huang has also made a video on how to start making music here)

film and filmmaking (karsten runquist’s channel is wonderful for film analysis,  learn about cinematography basics here and film history here)

painting (acrylic painting, sketchbook illustration. you could challenge yourself to fill an entire sketchbook/create a piece every day or week, or to improve a specific technique) 

Every resource linked is free (if you click on the links you can get Skillshare for free for two months and cancel anytime), so all you need is some free time and lots of motivation!!

I’m very happy to be announcing this to you all, and will be working on my Japanese for this challenge – so excited to see what you all and I will do and how far we can come!

Use #30dol as the general tag, and add your field (your specific subject, or writing, painting, lang(uages), pho(tography), film, book, design) to find people doing something similar! Though honestly one of the things I’m most excited about is the multidisciplinary aspect - we are such a brilliant and colorful community :)

witches´ pizza pajama party 🕯🍕🌙