"Fear The Walking Dead" - Resurrection of Nick

This will be somewhat a personal post. Those who know me, will probably know why.
There is a talk about the season 2 blurring the clear view of the apocalypse as it was seen through the eyes of three families and a shady mane name Strand. I find it somehow different. What's better than this setting? Not Los Angeles, a big city with places (where new zombies can roam, OK), but a boat? Surely, for fans of the gore elements, it won't work. What we get here is rather a slicing-and-dicing of relationships and families, already strained by the events. We get to see that stupid people are acting stupid regardless of the circumstances (read: Alicia in every-damn scene).

The first season of Fear The Walking Dead left the main characters (all of which deserve to perish, if you ask me) boarding the ship called Abigail. The second season picked upon the deck, and this way we got a very condensed soup of completely different characters, and worse, who felt estranged among themselves. There is no love lost among them. And I watched the first season not growing fond of any character; the first episode of the second season did not make anything different.

Wake Me Up When...

 

  

    ...Koreans get their priorities right. Oh well, let's not be biased, let's say - when fandoms get their priorities straight, because what's been happening in September in our lovely Hallyuland, can turn a normal person into a raging Hulk within 0.00000001 sec.

September is an eventful month in this particular world. Kdrama-llama land may be barren and boring for months but when events start to happen, it's a deluge.

I'm Unique. Like Anyone Else...

   Having read tons of books on human behaviour, cultural patterns, language and anthropology makes it easier for a person to see patterns and set a distance between you and things you observe. I always talk with students about stereotypes, because it's fun and, surprisingly, educational. However, without the right tools to do that, the talk about stereotypes can turn into: a) bashing, b) nonsense, c) personal opinion based on one (1) person's view. Anyone who heard anything about sociology knows that one person's opinion is worth less than a toilet paper (on the second thought... no, wait...)

We had this talk about overfloated individualism lately.

Age of Feeling Overloaded

   Yes, the main winter drama is this terrible lack of snow. And then in the summer we will get a lot of bugs and I will have to buy another pair of slippers just to kill them. Yes, I kill bugs. I kill spiders too. Sue me.

We haz snow... and series!

 

   Finally, the winter arrived here and I'm sure I will hate it by the mid-March. Few new series started, few ended, some went on a hiatus. And since none of Fall/Winter Kdramas were doing it for me, I naturally went back to the pond I crawled from in the first place. 

You Surely Can't Be Serious!

I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.  So I'm back, disinterested in currently airing Kdramas as never before. After having a blast this past Spring, nothing actually caught my attention, not when Under The Dome started and got into me. Yes, I do have Cruel Palace to finish, waiting for two dramas, but not excited about one (medical, brr. Oh, Jihun, the things I'm willing to do for you!). 

Will probably be back to blogging, but real life is somewhat so persistent, it gives me no time to do anything much. Well, this and my innate striving to not do what I should knowing exactly what I'm doing. Or not... well, you got the point.

Cruel Palace Off The Chest

   Except for Monstar this drama became the one I check the subs for the most often. We are after 26 episodes and drama is scheduled to 50, so that makes us sitting right in the middle of the events. There were few episodes I felt a bit boring, but in overall, I'm enjoying this series a lot. Apart from 2 ladies on twitter no one seems to watch it (among my friends of course, not talking about the whole twitterverse) and I just comment for the sake of commenting, me seems. 

Safe Little Home

   This post serves only one purpose - to apprehend the meaning of double standards that are so pervasive in the academic world, be it thorough research or casual critical thinking. 

Problem lies in my own country's scientific and cultural establishment that rarely ventures beyond the boundaries, that doesn't feel the need to "boldly go where no one has gone before".

War of K-arrows

   

   Do you, fellow readers, remember those dark times when we waited a whole week or even more for subtitles? Some of you for sure, cause we're old, ahahaha!

With Hallyu sudden rise after 2010 we got a little more comfy with growing communities of fans translating vids fairly fast, like viki or DSC. Depending on the show, subs were even available the very same day (oh, hay Faith).

As everything in this world, going global has consequences.

Sageuk slump

   By sageuk I mean also to include daeha. It may be only my biased view but lately there is a significant slump in period drama production and those that are made, somehow fail to deliver. Last year there was only Mushin that made me stick with it all through 50+ episodes. I also watched Queen Insu, but since the show reminded unsubbed, I probably lost lot of it in the course.

Little update

   I'm not dead yet, today I'm really close to it, however.

February is a horrible month for K-entertainment, one of the worsts in few years. And only SHINee shining comeback is actually the beam of light (well, a horrible flowery pajama beam of light, to tell the truth).

 

On the drama table

   This year started in a bad way. I have never thought I could drop Park Shihu's drama. Alas, I did. Worse - I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever about this. There's no going back, crawling and begging to give one more chance, I'm not like a clingy "girl/boyfriend-from-Miguk-suddenly-coming" just to ruin a budding romance. Nah-uh. I dropped that, which is weird considering I finished Miss You which puzzled, irritated and emotionally drained me.

Actually it's not that weird at all. I like to feel emotionally attached to characters. That's why I don't care about many things like (horrible) fashion or (hideous) haircuts. But when something happens to characters and I'm "oh damn, I forgot to buy eggs", I know there's probably some problem.

Annoyingly subjective kdrama post

from tumblr

The reason why I started watching dramas is simple and somewhat shallow. I run out of the movies with Namgil-nim, so I decided on giving dramas a chance. It was My Lovely Kim Sam-soon and probably I’d missed his appearance there if I wasn’t on hot red alert all the time, so yes, I managed to spot the man there. After that it just followed.

First ramblings of the 2013^^

   Sometimes I like to go out and just sit in a park, café or other place, seemingly doing nothing meaningful or worthy of any mentioning. But that’s not true – I’m spying. My stupid face is a perfect cover-up, no one suspects anything. I observe, take notes, compare with older experiences and incorporate into my worldview frame. There are people who can’t spot a billboard sign half their flat on their way to work (hay sis^^), and some see new fruit on a bush. I like to observe and see differences. Maybe that’s why I don’t pay attention to street name, but I always remember what building there is, what surrounds it and the colors. People ask me sometimes about how to get to this-and-that street (cause I have city info sign on my head, yeah) and I usually ask: but what building you’re looking for? Well, nothing outstanding and not a special skill anyway, but sometimes people amuse me. Do I treat them like items at some exhibition? Sure. Do I feel remorse? None whatsoever.

K-entertainment part 4

source

   Nothing major happened. I'm kind of busy, so I barely have time to bitch blog about anything. With all what is happening in real life, I adopted new attitude to everything that surrounds me: fuckit happy-go-lucky. And with that upbeat mood, I present you 4th installment of news roundup regarding our lovely kindergarden that is K-entertainment with me as the Marry Poppins from hell.

November Rain

Pic from here

So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
Even cold November rain

Not much of rain this Novemeber over here, but last weekend we had a horrible fog. Musically - I have a small harvest as I started to go one song after another from the list of 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die. Lots of them are alredy known to me (or most of the people, I guess) but it's always great to listen to some new stuff. I side-eyed Nancy Boy though so much, because Placebo has handful of other better songs, so why put there a song from their first album? Eh, whatever, I'm glad they made it anyway.

Marry in a hurry

Picture from here.

   Usually it's a shotgun marriage leading to home disputes, fights and bloody divorce. Marriage between music and politics. Whenever politics is involved in art (be it music, literature or movies) the art ceases to retain its own principles. It becomes another tool implemented to turn the masses into kneadable dough.

JoongAngIlbo posted an article about comedy gag character singing the song "Animunida". The artistic values of the song are close to zero, since the very performer of it, Gyaru described the second song as “neither rap, nor a song, nor music.” But the problem lies elsewhere.

1000th Man of Arang

   I wanted to wait with The Thousandth Man when some dramas end, but no, my evil friend I. said the first episode was funny, so... Plus, my slutty greasy baby Wuhyeonnie is in it, so I planned to watch it, but was unsure about his acting. And I didn't want to cringe everytime I'd see him. He's not an actor, that's a fact, but he's cute. I'm not cringing (this is biased nuna speaking, don't pay any attention). And he's in nuna-love relationship. I'm on board!

Music report - September 17th

   I desperately need few albums of some men, desperately, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Eh. 

End of wailing. So I'm after listening to Melon Charts TOP 100, which is a brainwashing process, believe me (yet I still do it every two weeks). And since I need to renew my Naver music account (haven't used it since 2010) and phone number is not accepted, I'm a bit pissed right now. Among those TOP 100 there were 2 (sic!) new songs that caught my attention. Urban Zakapa's song is not that new though, I probably mentioned it on twitter some other day. But I list it here nonetheless.

I'm seeing wooden people...

   They don't know they're wooden...

I understand some people may not like me, I wouldn't like me too if I was a 15-yo who can barely read more than one page. The thing is, when I like/love/admire, I do this with every cell in my body. But when I hate, it's exactly the same. I don't usually write much, or very little, on those whom I admire to the end and beyond (I like a lot of people, but admire a handful), but I vent my hatred on those I dislike. Why? Because it amazes me how on Blue Mother Earth such talentless creatures can get popularity. Oh well, popularity we're talking about.