current state of the nation
TV
Flower Boy Ramyun Shop - the only new show I've watched this week. It continues to deliver my weekly quota of charming, funny, and HOT, and more than made up for the vacuum left by Once Upon a Time. If this were real life, I would totally ship Kang Hyuk with Eun Bi. She needs a dependable, stable guy. He's a dependable, stable guy (minus the whole sleeping thing). On the whole, he would be better for her. As it is, all the intensity goes to Chi Soo/Eun Bi, so I ship them like mad in-story. And then I ship Kang Hyuk with myself, even though I would totally look half his size.
Tomb of the Cybermen - surprisingly more enjoyable and less dated than Genesis of the Daleks, considering that this is the older story and is in black and white. I haven't finished the whole serial, but I'm enjoying it immensely. I think I love Patrick Troughton's Doctor more than Tom Baker's. He's snappier and wittier - not comparable to the new Doctors, of course, but still very funny. The production values are high considering that it's the 60s, and the Cybermen are genuinely creepy. Must be the slasher smile.
Ringer - I'm behind, but I'm enjoying it, despite the typical Gossip-Girl, rich-people-in-NY setting. There's nothing really humorous about the show, and SMG looks haggard, but there's just something about it that draws me. Unfortunately, there's no new episode this week. Fortunately, I'm still a few episodes behind so it's not as if I've run out of episodes to watch.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - BEST ANIME EVER, adapted from the BEST MANGA ever. I vastly prefer the English dub over the Japanese as the characters are clearly English-speakers with English names, and the way the Japanese stumble over their pronunciation of names distracts me. Also, Alphonse in the Japanese sounds like some overly shy, seven-year-old Japanese school girl, and it annoyed me. Much more importantly, the English dub's Roy's voice is just so deep and smooth and... *sighs*
I am depressed that there's no Once Upon a Time this week. Really, ABC? Just when it turns out that hot!Sheriff is sleeping with queen!Regina? I need more Emma/Sheriff RIGHT NAO. Also, the Sheriff is totally the Hunstman who took pity on Snow White.
Books
Tigana has got to have one of the worst cases of designated heroism/designated villainy I've ever read. To be fair, it's not as if the author treats the protagonists as admirable people, or the villain any less a decent person. It's just that the villain, who I desperately want to get over his grief and revenge over losing his son so he could get it on with his beloved courtesan, dies. He deserves a happy ending, dammit. He's one of the three people in the book I genuinely felt sorry for, the other two being his courtesan Dianora, and a wizard one of the "heroes" bonded (read: enslaved). Alessan, the aforementioned hero, is one of the most hypocritical characters I've ever met. He fights for freedom and yet he enslaves other people to get what he wants. The rest of his party are either afflicted with sheer idiocy or overwhelming pride, both of which made me lose what little sympathy I had for the "freedom fighters".
Sorry. I still can't get over sheer hypocrisy of seeking national freedom through enslavement and disregard for individual free will and human life. At least the wizard makes several good jibes at this. Unfortunately, these mostly occur during chapters where an overly hyper sex maniac of a pipsqueak is the POV character. Ultimately, the warriors on King Brandin's side are more honorable and decent human beings than any member of Alessan's party.
There are a lot of things I wish Tigana were. Wit and grandness in scope come to mind, but the thing I think this novel really lacked was a sense of urgency about the heroes' cause. I never really got the sense of why Brandin had to be overthrown now, as opposed to a few years ago, or a few years from now. I never really got the sense of why Brandin had to be overthrown, really. All I got was a bunch of people who were trying to cling on to a past without thinking of the future.
That said, Tigana is a very thought-provoking fantasy novel and is certainly highly recommended. I just wish I had more characters to root for aside from the ones that lost.
I've just started Dragonlance Chronicles so I can't really weigh in on it yet. It seems like standard fantasy fare, and the dizzying POV switch is... dizzying, but it's also fun.