An Icontest community

Heated Rivalry dominated December:

TV finished

Heated Rivalry! It was so good! It's on HBO Max and Crave. I really liked the first two episodes, there was a ton of sex, and other people much more eloquently explained why that's not a bad thing: the sex is the plot!
I hated ep three, depriving me of the main pairing I love, but I see how it's necessary as context for later episodes. Since I knew that going in, I waited until I was ready for it and just treated it like a different show. That worked for me. I loved the last three episodes again, there was a ton of romance. *A lot* of thought went into the show, and it's all intentional, and that's such a change from the things I usually watch where I rant at the writing all the time. Here, there's almost nothing to rant at. Plus, it's pretty much exactly what I'm most looking for in a tv show: m/m sex and m/m romance. \o/ I will probably read some of the books this year, and likely write up a review for the show if I find the time.

For now, let me direct you to

* my friend machinistm's heated rivalry tag
* the heated rivalry comm gamechangerhr
* the hockey podcast "What Chaos!" reacting to every single episode with genuine enthusiasm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us7Pok5nDRc

TV new (ongoing)

Love on the Turquoise Land (17/32) - a modern fantasy/horror cdrama with Dilraba Dilmurat as a mystical sword fighter. I started watching for her, and by now probably would still be watching even if she wasn't on it. It's ... not good, exactly, but I love it anyway? I got over halfway through it in a few weeks. The horror aspect is not my thing at all, but it was only strong in the first episodes, and after that it started focusing more on vampire rituals and a general good vs evil fight and the horror took a backseat. I'm happy with that! I am very much enjoying Dilraba's actual voice (yay! she doesn't usually get to dub herself! This is cool!) and seeing her fight monsters. I am ranting at how illogical all the vampire lore is (they're called Earth Fiends but everything screams vampire to me), but fwiw once you disengage your science brain, it's fine. Giving the vastly overpowered FL a damsel-in-distress moment made me grit my teeth, but it did lead to the ML taking care of her for three eps straight, and I am not complaining about that at all. The character interactions are really good! I love the fighting, bantering, h/c, and budding romance between the ML and FL. The central mystery sounds interesting, and even though I don't trust the book author (who also wrote Parallel World) to plot herself out of a wet paper bag, the plot seems to hold together so far. Since Heated Rivalry has finished, this is the show I'm most motivated to watch right now. It's on viki.


Our Times (03/38), a 90s retro "IT students go professional" cdrama with Wu Lei and Hou Minghao. The costumes are amazing (bell bottom jeans and corduroy jackets galore), and I really am enjoying the retroness of it all, especially the way the cut scenes are interspersed with actual old footage from Chinese cities, e.g. the construction of the tower in Shanghai. I immediately imprinted on Wu Lei's character (who is a bit of an arrogant asshole but gets beaten up twice in the first episode woah, see another cap). I only watched three eps so far, but liked those a lot. The only downside is that the show triggers my embarrassment squick (they are so incompetent as computer salesmen omg!), so I have to go through it slowly with many breaks. We'll see. It's on wetv and youtube.

TV continued

Still The Long Ballad (43/48), I don't want it to end. omg why do I love this show so much? I haven't loved a historical cdrama this much since Lost You Forever. Whenever Ashile Sun is on screen I go awwwwww. I'll enjoy the rest of the drama at a slow pace, while it continues to give me life. <3

I haven't dropped A Moment But Forever yet, but also haven't watched a whole ep this month.

TV (dropped)

I got halfway through Love at Night, and once the leads got together, which always makes me happy and is the main reason I watch anything, I immediately lost my motivation to continue, lol. I guess it just wasn't otherwise good enough. I might pick it up again, once I'm done with Turquoise Land? Maybe? I'm not holding my breath, though.

I realized that To My Shore is airing now, a Chinese BL (one of those sneaky international China-Thailand co-productions), and I watched half an ep, but I think it's too dark for me. For whatever reason, they keep picking the non-con ones to produce. *sigh* I prefer my romance consensual.

Extraordinary, a shorty cdrama with 20 15-min episodes about a computer nerd who transmigrates into a playboy in the past and basically transforms his family into the richest family around using his modern knowledge of business and weaponry. There's a cross-dressing FL (who he immediately sees through, lol), but otherwise it's mostly comedy of the type I'm not too fond of, and I dropped it again after a few eps.

Rewatches/Watchalongs

The HPI watchalong finished season 5. Unfortunately, there are no subs (yet) except French ones. We tried auto-translated English ones *once* and then decided that French will have to do. We enjoyed it very much but now it's over. *sob*

We started Nothing But You after that. Now on episode 6 already, we're going through it fast because we don't want to spend a year on it. So far looking good in the *show everyone how good this cdrama is* department. \o/

Still watchalong-ing When A Snail Falls in Love with my other friend, and will move on to Nothing But You after that as well.

I had expected the first Snowflake Challenge to be "update your intro", so I did that. :D It wasn't quite that, though. The first part of the challenge was "introduce yourself", so I guess close enough. :D Snapshot of my current dw profile page:



I only updated the icon comms and changed a few icons in the color bars. Nothing much new, really.


The second part was "why do you do the challenge and what you you hope to gain from it"? Idk? I'll just see which challenges speak to me and then I do them. I did this in previous years as well, and it suits me fine. I usually just pick a few challenges that I like, no more than five, usually, and then I do those.

Here's my post from 2025: challenges 2-6 challenges 14+ and my own

Here's my post from 2024: only challenge 5, the icon scavenger hunt

Here's my post from 2023: challenges 5-10, 12 and 13

Lets see what this year brings, shall we? :D



What I'll also do this year is try and think about my creative process, and there's a new comm for that:


cultivativity

I'm looking forward to this, too!