Korean boy band to Korean gay rom-com

I finished the book The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal. This science fiction alternate history novel is the fourth in her Lady Astronaut series. It just came out. I read the third almost three years ago and wrote about it here. The premise of the series is that in 1951 a meteor hit Chesapeake bay, wiping out much of the Mid Atlantic coast, including Washington, DC. The federal government is reestablished in Kansas. Scientists quickly determine the global climate catastrophe is coming much faster than in our own timeline. Getting viable off-planet habitats is of utmost importance to humanity. Three of the four books are narrated by Elma York, the Lady Astronaut, though she’s not the only woman in the space program. Her husband is Nathaniel, a chief rocket scientist. They are Jewish. The team is trying to get into space on 1950s technology. The flight crew and support crew are much more racially and ethnically diverse, even with black people in critical positions, because the equivalent to NASA is an international group. By the end of the first book, The Calculating Stars, they are starting to establish a habitat on the moon. In the second book, The Fated Sky, Elma is on a ship to Mars and dealing with a misogynist mission commander. The third book, The Relentless Moon, is narrated by Nicole Wargin because Elma is on that trip to Mars. It is all about firmly establishing the moonbase while dealing with a person trying to sabotage their efforts. And now to the fourth book, set in 1970. The core of a dwelling on Mars, called Bradbury Base, has been built by a First Expedition. A Second Expedition with about a hundred settlers is orbiting Mars in the Goddard, waiting for more of the dwelling to be built. Elma pilots a shuttle with supplies and several settlers to the Base and she takes the assignment of deputy administrator. Nathaniel is already there. She soon realizes there are repairs that haven’t been properly logged. When asking about them she senses people are lying. She and a colleague go out on the surface to retrieve supply drops (food and building materials). One drop was destroyed and a second damaged. The ability of the base to finish the dwelling is now in doubt. The Earth First organization, which played important parts in the earlier books, would very much want the whole thing to fail and the base be abandoned. Those unlogged repairs were done during the First Expedition and a major part of the story is trying to learn what happened. In reading this book I kept wondering, were these events covered in a previous book and I didn’t remember them? Those hidden events may have taken place during Elma’s first trip out to Mars. But I don’t recall her getting to the surface of Mars – one of the problems reading that book maybe four years before reading this one. So maybe we the readers weren’t told about the First Expedition until now. Now that I know what happened, those events would have made a pretty good book on their own (though that would have significantly changed this book) or as a good flashback in this book. Alas, those events are told only briefly. Another important thread is abortion. Doctors don’t yet know what the lower gravity of Mars or the spin gravity of the Goddard would have on a developing human fetus. Bringing one to term without a great deal more study would be unethical. Yet, each earth country demands their nationals honor their country’s abortion laws. Elma must balance that conflict. There is also a good deal of story of Elma living into her role as administrator, learning to care for the diverse crew under her, and building a community. I quite enjoyed this book and the series and, if you are a science fiction fan, highly recommend all of them. My Sunday movie was You Want Some? It’s a Boys Love series from Korea. The original is 50 episodes about two minutes each (which included credits). It was compiled into a movie (though I think one episode is in their twice) 1:12 long and without the episode credits and posted on YouTube. A difference in this series is the aspect ratio is vertical, like Tic Toc videos. When the camera is focused on one character the viewer sees little of the scene around him. There are English captions. Alas, the captions are up only as long as the actor is speaking and they speak really fast. Even while reading fast there were many times I didn’t read all of a block before it disappeared. That difficulty is a point against watching many more Asian boys love stories – the series length of most of them is another. I learned about this movie in a Boys Love article on Daily Kos. I relied in it for the story outline. Jaeheon is a senior at university. He’s behind on his senior project. All the girls he pursues say they like Sunwoo. With seemly no effort Sunwoo, a junior, attracts all the girls on campus. How can he do that so easily? Sunwoo overhears Jaeheon make that complaint to some friends and Sunwoo offers a bet. Let me show you firsthand how I do it. The winner will be who can get the other to admit he’s fallen in love. Jaeheon thinks this will be easy since he likes girls. But Sunwoo seems to be a step ahead of Jaeheon all the time, confusing Jaeheon until he’s totally distracted, falling further behind in his classwork. Yeah, there are problems along the way. But we know where this is going, though the trip is a good one. Both lead actors came from the K-pop band industry. That gave Krotor, the author of the Kos article, a chance to discuss that industry. This will be of interest to Niece (or maybe she knows about all this already). In America pop singers figure things out for themselves. If they’re lucky they get food and shelter from Mom and Dad while they learn their craft. In Korea and other East Asian cultures, preparing the next crop of bands is an industry. They are hired, sometimes at a young age, by a management company and trained in all aspects of being a performer, including being comfortable with a camera in their face. This can take years. Every so often the company will announce the formation of a new group and over several months the advanced trainees audition for it. Krotor wrote that until recently the emphasis has been on entertaining, not singing. That is changing and Krotor included a couple examples. I watched one by Babymonster, a girl band. It had the typical dancing and fast cut video, but it was nearly a solo. She sang well but I don’t know about the other girls. The other video showed the boy band ZeroBaseOne. Rather than being a slick video this one was one song in a concert setting. The nine lads each had moments to shine and did well. All were at ease in front of the crowd and camera. Alas, while there were moments of duets and trios there was never a time when all nine sang together. The lads sounded like they were all tenors, without much differentiation between their voices. If they did sing all together it would have been in very close harmony. In general, not my preference in music. Krotor then mentioned that with all that training band members can easily shift from the band into acting. As the two leads in today’s movie did.