forestsofpine

I’m a bit sick, ugh. Nothing serious, just a sore throat and a bit of a cold, probably because I’m sweating a lot (ahh, my lovely frenemy menopause 😒), and when I go out there is a strong chilly wind outside (and has been for the last two weeks or so), and of course air conditioning inside everywhere.

Also I have the attention span of a gnat lately and started watching so many new things, I don’t know when I’ll finish all of them. 😊

I mean, ok, I did finish a few things. Amongst them:

Kpop Demon Hunters

This is Netflix’s new animated movie everybody is talking about right now. It’s about three demon huntresses, who form a kpop girl group named Huntrix, and use their songs to build the protection spell around the world, to save all the humans from a big scary demon, who wants to eat their souls. So this demon sends five demon boys to form a kpop boy group to compete with Huntrix and steal their fans and their fans’ souls from them.

Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds, and it’s also funny and entertaining, and touching and sweet. I enjoyed it a lot. And I didn’t expect much, just an hour and a half of fun and cuteness and a few catchy songs. And it was all that, but it also made me teary-eyed at the end.

Spoilers here.

And not because of Jinu’s sacrifice. But because I’m a sucker for ‘power of friendship saving the world’ stuff. And that movie delivered so well on that front. Rumi, Mira and Zoey’s friendship was my favorite part of the movie.

Also – this cover of Your Idol is very good.




My Sweet Brother in Law

The last episode aired last week and it was bit of a letdown after decent and enjoyable four episodes.

Spoilers here, too

That went into a full OTT dramatic soap opera in the last episode: a cheating psycho wife, a homophobic dad throwing his gay son out of the house, a stabbing, Bao saving Khanh’s life and ending in a coma for six months, and then a cliffhanger with a sudden arrival of Bao’s handsome ex-boyfriend. I think they hope for the 2nd season. And you know what, I hope they will make it. In general I enjoyed this drama. For my first Vietnamese BL it was great.

Even though I do wish they didn’t make Khanh’s wife a gold digging cheating psycho, to make it okay that Khanh cheated on her with Bao. After watching the first three episodes I was so pleased that the women involved weren’t vilified in this drama, and unfortunately, that didn’t last.

I also watched two other BL dramas. And they both had a very similar plot. Chinese and Taiwanese BL dramas sure do love dramatic, full of longing and forbidden desire, step-brothers pairings, don’t they? 😊 And sometimes I get a craving for such pairings, too.

So first I watched Moon and Dust, a new short (6 episodes) Chinese BL. An older boy rescues a younger boy from homelessness and suffering, ends up raising him, and then of course a younger boy falls desperately in love with his Da Ge and tries to quash those feelings, but can’t help confessing in an emotional scene. And the older brother clearly feels something more than brotherly feelings, too, but can’t admit it, because he doesn’t want to recognize those feelings for what they are, and he feels that as an older brother he has to be the responsible one and refuse his brother’s love.

I liked this short drama a lot. It’s cheaply made, cheesy and OTT sometimes, but good actors with very nice chemistry made it work for me.

Spoilers for the ending here.

This is not a happy ending. I would say it is ambiguous. It’s clear they both have feelings for each other. But they don’t get together, and it ends with the older one rejecting the younger one’s feelings. But there is no tragedy or death or anything like that. So you can imagine very easily a post-canon fix-it with them getting together in a few months or a few years.

The 1st episode is available for free on Youtube here. When the drama was airing they did make each new episode available for free for the limited period of time, and now you can still watch the last 6th episode there, but episodes 2-5 are available for members only.


And since Moon and Dust was so short I decided to finally watch Unknown, Taiwanese BL from 2024 with the same trope. I did watch the first episode back then when it started airing, but it was rather dark and violent, and I wasn’t in the mood for something like that then, so I never watched more. But now I watched all of it.

My opinion – it’s very uneven. The first half is good, and then it starts falling apart. It took me a week to watch the last two episodes, because they were either super boring (episode 11) or made me cringe so hard (episode 12).

The weak script in the second half was the main problem for me. Exacerbated by me not really seeing much romantic and sexual chemistry between leads. As actors they are both good, but it was very hard for me to buy Qian reciprocating Yuan’s feelings.

More complaining with spoilers here.

And seriously, everybody around them is perfectly fine with Qian and Yuan’s relationship, and so accepting as soon as they hear about it? And people in Qian’s office instantly start gossiping about who’s the top and who’s the bottom. And then they openly ask Qian about it. I cringed from second hand embarrassment so hard and instantly pressed a fast-forward button. Why? Why do BL dramas still do that in 2024?

And this post got quite long already so I’ll write about all those other, started things the next time. And now I’m going to watch some of them, and maybe I’ll even mange to finish something else today. 😊