Escapism FTW

[vilakins]

What do you do to get rid of stress?

Read entertaining (as opposed to depressing or frightening) novels, preferably set in a time and/or place that is very different to mine. I've always been able to lose myself in fictional worlds; as a child I annoyed my parents by just not hearing them when they tried to get my attention. Sadly I can no longer

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[snowgrouse]

Ahahahaww, my hair's dwindled down to only a third of what it used to be, these days--I have a decent regimen of meds these days for my endometriosis and EDS, but it does give me semi-menopause, so The Mane has thinned considerably. But I don't miss the pain. If it's a small enough sword (claymores are taller than I am) I'll be happy to pose for that, though :D Thank your subconscious for recommending me for such a shot; I am much flattered.

Thanks for the link to the questions! I'll see if I can be arsed to fill all of those out, yeah; some of those questions are pretty irrelevant.

I haven't yet checked out The Untamed exactly because I'm getting hype aversion, and because big fandoms are... well, big fandoms with all their exhausting drama. These past ten years of having fangirled in a near-vacuum, I've come to the conclusion that part of the joy of being into obscure stuff is because there's no wank, no Discourse and I don't have to dodge all that rubbish every time I want to enjoy some fanworks. With big fandoms it's unavoidable; you look for lovely fics and pics and then the same people post horrific stupid wank or just blog about topics that aren't good for anyone's mental health to dwell upon. You get a basketful of the good fandom's fruits, but can't ever filter out the rotten stuff 100%, the stuff that ruins the whole basket. At first it was lonely and frustrating, but it taught me to be self-sufficient about my happiness when it came to fandom stuff. A bit hard to explain, but it was like a growing-up process, kind of like the fandom equivalent of getting out of a bad circle of acquaintances that kept dragging me into unhealthy and depressing stuff. Like someone quits drugs or drink and realises that in order to stay sober, they have to leave their junkie/drunkard friends behind.

But anyway, yeah, I've heard good things about Yanxi myself. I've watched The Empress of China twice by now, as daft as it is--it gets better after the somewhat soapy harem backstabbery in the first half a dozen eps, even though I would never say the writing is excellent or anything. It's silly but enjoyable, for the history and the costumes and the fact that it has these genuinely great actors taking it all seriously. When it comes to better-written and more historically accurate stuff, I started watching The Longest Day in Chang'an a long time ago and still haven't finished it; it's really really really well researched (jaw-droppingly so when it comes to all kinds of tiny detail) but it is on the heavy side and pretty testosterone-laden, with long action sequences in every episode. So it takes me a while to get round to putting a new episode on every time. But that one really is great if you want a realistic-looking view into the Tang Dynasty--for example, some of the prettiest women in town were played by BBWs, that being the beauty ideal at the time. At the mo, I'm almost done with Heroic Legend of the Chin (sic) Dynasty, which is ok, even if the writing is a bit unbelievable--again, it's the good actors and the engaging history stuff that keeps me hooked. Both Chin and Empress have Zhang Fengyi, who's always solid; I really like him and his quiet gravitas. As for really good writing in Chinese drama, I can highly recommend Burning Ice, if you want modern-day crime/detective stuff that's right up there with the better British stuff. Not Sherlock or Life on Mars-level with the plot twists, but better than Midsomer or other silly stuff like that. Plenty of plot twists I didn't expect, all the way to the end (just finished watching it this week), and it kept me pretty much riveted to the screen (my poor bladder). I haven't been grabbed by the tension of a drama like that in a while, so it was good entertainment. That one should be on Netflix in some countries, and if not, that and almost all of the above can be found on watchasian.sh (just make sure you have sturdy popup/ad blockers installed). Tons of Asian drama there, and a decent amount of them with engsubs.

Thanks again for the link; I'll go and see if there's anything that strikes my fancy! And Dolores just came here to look at me quizzically, so I guess she sends her (baffled, as usual) greetings.