A Very Silly Resolution

I am not going to be watching The Untamed.

I mean, I'm not going to make an active effort to avoid it, and if I'm bored and scrolling through Netflix I might watch an episode or two...

...but I'm not going to be making an active effort to watch it.

(As a note, I am mostly writing this as a note to myself, and to have something to point to if someone says 'Hey, have you heard of The Untamed? It sounds like it might be up your alley!' I do not intend to yuck anyone's yums. It's a good show. Just not my thing.)

I have made a solid attempt at watching The Untamed. I know a lot of people who really like it, and I get a lot of my media reccs from people I know really liking a thing. Usually they're right! That's how I got into Dragon Age, and the Silmarillion and The Magnus Archives. If a lot of my friends and acquaintances really got into The Bridge Jumping Show!, hell yeah would I watch it.

So of course I checked out The Untamed. A lot of people liked it! A lot of people who's taste I trust like it! And it seemed like it was likely to be a thing I liked!

And I do like it! ...I'm just very bad at watching it. I don't know quite what it is? But something in the melange of 'has subtitles'+'the subtitles are not great'+'I do not know this genre or this cultural context very well' means that I am constantly confused. And sometimes it is a fun confusion! But sometimes I'm left wondering if I've actually properly understood a basic conversation at all, or have to I have recontextualise four episodes on the fly because I did not realise most of the characters were teenagers. (...And I have just enough of a second hand embarassment squick that Wei Wuxian is really hard to watch a lot of the time. A second hand embarassment squick that is strongest in ~school settings. Yeah.)

And the thing is, even though I do like the show ~overall, the pressure I've been putting on myself of 'lots of people like this! you should like this! maybe make content! but you should watch and like this because so many people who's opinions you trust like this! watch it! like it!' and the fact it is actually difficult for me to watch outweighs that overall liking of it. It has made it kinda stressful. Not even necessarily to watch, but it's been hanging over my head. And it's been taking up a slot in my 'list of things I could do in my recreation time' and considering one of the big things that eats into my recreation time is picking a thing to do-- I'm taking it off the list. At least for now. Maybe I'll end up putting it back on it. Maybe I'll end up reading Mo Dao Zu Shi. Who knows.

But yeah, probably not going to be watching it any time soon.