verushka70

Movies

I started on my quest to use the trial Disney+ subscription and watched two movies:

Wall-E, which I didn't get through in one sitting. I thought it was supremely illogical, but had some sweet moments. I like robots in general, so it wasn't a complete waste, but it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

Coco otoh blew us away. I loved the colors, the hero's journey involved some believable twists and turns, the skeleton animations were simply adorable, and I loved Pepita. A++, thanks to the people at tv_talk for the rec.

TV finished

So much that I'm going to put it under a cut!

Feel What You Feel - terrible, not worth watching
A Moment But Forever - loved it
Wu Lei's Jian Lai Wrap Party - only of interest for Wu Lei fans, I guess. My blorbo! So cute! <3
Love on the Turquoise Land - apart from one completely stupid trope, it's a rec.
Off Campus - good if you like sexy het romance

( five shows in more detail and with pics )

TV new (ongoing)

I started Soul Mate, Ok Taecyeon's new BL on Netflix that I've been waiting for for over a year. So far so good, I liked ep 1. I don't know how BL-y it's going to be, and it starts with kill your gays, too. But I had to laugh at the fact that one of the leads is an ice hockey player. It's going to attract some second-hand Heated Rivalry fame for sure. The other one is a boxer. I like the language mix in it a lot. The first ep is set in Berlin, one of the leads is Japanese, the other is Korean (but can speak Japanese), and the background noise is in German and the leads speak English to some other characters. I'd watch it for that alone. Note: I'm preeeeetty sure it's going to end badly, just from the general vibes (please don't spoil me). I'm not sure I really want to subject myself to more dead gays, but so far it's still on my watchlist.

TV continued

I watched half of ep 2x02 of Saint Pierre, and am enjoying how comfortable the leads are with each other. I don't think they're supposed to be shipped (she has a boyfriend, he keeps running into all his exes), but I ship them anyway.

TV (dropped)

I tried Life in Smokey Blue (a Japanese BL), but the characters and story didn't grip me. I'm likely not going to continue with that.

Rewatches/Watchalongs

My two Nothing But You watchalongs are ongoing. One on episode 34/38, almost done, but I don't want it to end! The other is on 10/38, and I know that 11 and 12 are the worst eps of the whole drama, but we gotta get through them somehow.

Hannah (Ella Bright), Garrett (Belmont Cameli) and Justin (Josh Heuston) in Off Campus

I was told about Off Campus by a mutual Heated Rivalry fan, and while it has barely anything to do with it, it is another tv show based on a Hockey romance, so I gave it a try.

Is this a rec? Hmmm... If you like YA stuff and/or College AUs, and are into het romance, I'd say yes. It's nothing special, and I don't like the pacing in the last two episodes, but apart from that, I don't have any major complaints. The acting is good, the production values are good. I liked the main characters and their trauma and how it was explored (except for one resolution :/ ). It's peppy, the music is good, there are lots of sex scenes, and I was never bored. I'll go into more detail under the cut below.

Does it have a happy ending: Well, it's a Western show, so it's not done yet. Filming for season 2 has already started. As for this season:

s1 ending spoilers

It's a romance novel adaptation, so, yes. The main couple are together at the end of the season. The secondary couples not so much, but I expect them to get more attention next season.

Content Warnings:

warnings

One character has an alcoholic mother. She is never shown, but her problems are discussed.
One character has been roofied and date raped in the past, and still has hangups about sex (and other things). The rape itself is not shown.
One character has an abusive parent who hit them when they were a child and their other parent. The violence itself is not shown. It's heavily implied that domestic violence was the other parent's cause of death.

Where can I watch it? I watched it on Amazon Prime.

I... did not hate it? I'm tempted to make fun of it. :D

It's very standard het romance fair, set in a US college: music major wants to be noticed by her pretentious musician crush and strikes a deal with hockey star to pose as her fake boyfriend to make the musician notice her.

It works, but of course by that time she has fallen in love with the hockey jock.

my detailed thoughts - spoilery

* There is nudity and drinking and frat boys all over the place, two on screen sex scenes and two different girls' tits visible in the first episode alone. I especially hated the drinking (I always do, it's not this particular show's fault). What bothered me was that one of the characters has an alcoholic mother but sees no problem with participating in frat parties at all.

+ I really liked how Hannah's trauma about being roofied and date raped in high school was treated. She never drinks in public, she's afraid of letting anyone in, afraid of telling anyone about it because nobody believed her back then. All of this sounded reasonable to me. I also liked that she specifically says that this does not define her, and that she's healed. Of course she hasn't completely healed, but I liked that, too.

+ I felt like male and female gaze are relatively fairly distributed on the show. All the scenes of hockey players exercising are very on the nose. In one scene where Hannah walks into the men's locker room (she does that more than once, actually), they even make it a point to show penises.

+ All the sex on the show is consensual (except the rape in the past, which is obviously presented as *bad* - and it's not shown). Nobody ever pressures anyone else into sex (or anything else) that I noticed.

+ Also, nobody expects the women to take the men's shit. There isn't much misogyny that I could see, everything was pretty equal.

+ The sex scenes in general are well done - similar to Bridgerton. One of them is plot relevant, and I had to smile at how "don't show anything below the neck" it was. :D You can do a lot with just showing faces. Although I must admit that I found that scene quite unrealistic. Not from a physical standpoint, although Healing cock! From across the room! is quite funny too, and reminded me of one of the Heated Rivalry podcasts where they said "you can do a lot with nine inches, you can do it from across the room!" :D I just thought it was a bit too easy, emotionally.

* Apropos unrealistic: that sex scene wasn't the only time in the show that one gets the impression that she had to shoehorn the sex/romance into there come what may. Romance was definitely a story goal that needed no reason to happen. But I guess the majority of plot points still did make sense, so I'm not complaining too much.

+ In general, it's always refreshing to have a Western (liberal) take on attitudes towards sex - I like that so much better than in cdrama. I also like the humor much better than in cdrama. No slomo, no annoying sound or light effects. She did stay in that locker room much longer than necessary, lol, but overall, the jokes landed.

+ I must admit what endeared the show to me was the Dirty Dancing reference. Am I the target audience? Possibly!

* I have nothing at all to say about hockey. I did notice that the way it was filmed was very different from Heated Rivalry. Apart from that, don't look at me. I don't care about hockey and know nothing about it.

* The most taxing thing for me was that all (and I mean literally all) the men have curly or wavy hair. The only one I managed to tell apart from the rest from ep1 was Dean, the only blond one. Everyone else I kept confusing for at least the first three of the overall eight episodes. They all look the same to me. /o\

+ I do like the look of the female main character, she's not a stick insect, and she has character.

* In typical YA novel fashion, all leads have traumatic pasts (see content warnings). The two leads' trauma is treated very well, although I have some gripes about the domestic violence. It is shown really well when Hannah and Garrett visit his father - I thought that whole episode was really well done. Both Garrett's and Cindy's actions felt realistic, and so did his father's behavior. My problem is with a later episode. Garrett's main character trait is that he doesn't want to be like his father, but then he has a violent outburst anyway. Hannah kind of confronts him about it, but then gets back together with him anyway, without any mention of it. And in the same episode, Dean does the exact same thing: he beats up a rival over a woman, and nobody bats an eye. Double standards anyone?

* I liked how everyone hated Justin's lyrics except Justin himself. The way he went and just performed the song even though he knew Hannah wanted it to be her showcase entry was an extremely shitty thing to do, but it was never mentioned. Probably because she'd already decided that she didn't want his lyrics in her showcase anyway? Whatever. But I did like how he took ownership of his contribution. Why should he care what the other characters think? He's a musician with heart and soul, and good for him.

* I'm not quite sure what to think about Allie, Hannah's best friend. I expected her storyline to be wrapped up within the season, but it very much wasn't. I see how her boyfriend does not respect her biggest dream (even though he seemed otherwise perfect) and that is a good reason to break up with him. But then jumping into bed with the yuckiest of characters instead and turning that into an unlikely love story... exceeded my suspension of disbelief. They're not the leads, so I guess I shouldn't hold them to main character standards? Eh. I thought that could have been done better. As it was, it didn't work for me. They may have great sexual chemistry, but that does not a relationship make. But who knows, maybe season 2 will explore that further.

* The secondary characters were a little flat? Tucker's only character trait seemed to be that he likes to cook. A lot of screentime was spent on that, we might have gotten to know more about him than that? Logan was a little better - we got some info about his family, also through his sister - but overall I still don't know what kind of person he is.

* What made me chuckle the longer the show went on was how all side characters always know the exact right thing to say in a crisis, wow. Sooo much good advice, lol. I guess it's a good thing that they don't spout bad advice all over the place? I probably would have hated that. As it is, I just found it a little unlikely, i.e. too good to be true. But overall, I am fine with things being handled well.

* Another thing that made me chuckle was that except for some Thanksgiving trips, the whole thing very much takes place On Campus all the way through. :D

* Even after all that, I still liked it! It's actually even a little deeper than I expected it to be. If it had handled Hannah's and Garrett's getting back together a bit better, I'd be happy. As it is, this bugged me. But I'd still say it's a watchable show.

some caps (nsfw)

The Hockey players - all with curly hair


Hanna and her friend group - look more guys with curly hair!


accidental cuddling


drunk Shakespeare


the sex scenes are pretty good