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Telly ramblings
Feb. 23rd, 2019 10:15 pmLately I've been watching the palace intrigue drama Nirvana In Fire! Some things I have enjoyed include:
-The master strategist, long presumed dead, returns to court, hidden behind three layers of secret identities, a bunch of sickly green facepaint, and a cunning plan! Instantly,
His Vassal: Oh hello boss! What the hell are you doing here?
His Ex:Of course I fucking recognise my own ex, do you think I'm a fucking idiot or something
His Granny: There you are dearie, have a sweet, why aren't you married yet
Our Hero: Can you people at least PRETEND to be fooled and impressed by my Mysterious Disguise, I am very smart and this is very discouraging
-How dare you insinuate that the noble princess got drunk as your cover for your scheme to drug her, the noble princess who is also a soldier drinks to excess FREQUENTLY and your passive-aggressive tea party cannot HOPE to match her regular habits
-Look, when we decided to hold a tournament and find the strongest men in the Empire, we didn't expect that any of them would be UNCOUTH. The very idea that a professional fighter might defeat people of ETIQUETTE and GROOMING in a simple combat competition has thrown us into quite the tizzy!
-Extended levitating scenes in which we are expected to believe that a) this is a fight b) momentum is only a property of those with insufficient willpower and poor manners c) the most highly prized fighting trait is efficiency, while all the camera cares about is style
-Why are my sons so scheming and pathetic, all I did was pit them against each other with mercurial displays of favour and explicit rankings, make the rankings a matter of life or death, give control of their education to their mothers whose entire lives are intrigue-based as a result of situational constraints, and have so many sons that I literally forget about the existence of some of them when they're not physically in front of me. Look, one left the room, who were we talking about?
-This man is obviously skeletal and deathly ill, as you can tell through the padded robes which everybody is wearing which utterly obscure his shape
The costumes are absolutely gorgeous, opulent fabrics in rich colours, thick with detail, layers upon layers creating massive structural creations which make sense of the body language required to manoeuvre in them and have your movements be visible. Every character's outfits make sense for their role, and also change for the situations they're facing. I'm also really enjoying the fancy hairdos, neat braids for the guys and fascinators fixed into the hair itself for the ladies. I'm always a sucker for worldbuilding and for detailed, stylised aesthetics, so this gives both at once!
There's pretty good diversity of female characters so far, too. Various diverse ways of being strong are shown, while the society is deeply patriarchal what that means for individuals varies -multiple women have respected jobs, others are quietly fighting for autonomy from within forced marriages, in both cases independence is explicitly conditional, and even the unsympathetic women are reacting understandably to their environment.
-The master strategist, long presumed dead, returns to court, hidden behind three layers of secret identities, a bunch of sickly green facepaint, and a cunning plan! Instantly,
His Vassal: Oh hello boss! What the hell are you doing here?
His Ex:Of course I fucking recognise my own ex, do you think I'm a fucking idiot or something
His Granny: There you are dearie, have a sweet, why aren't you married yet
Our Hero: Can you people at least PRETEND to be fooled and impressed by my Mysterious Disguise, I am very smart and this is very discouraging
-How dare you insinuate that the noble princess got drunk as your cover for your scheme to drug her, the noble princess who is also a soldier drinks to excess FREQUENTLY and your passive-aggressive tea party cannot HOPE to match her regular habits
-Look, when we decided to hold a tournament and find the strongest men in the Empire, we didn't expect that any of them would be UNCOUTH. The very idea that a professional fighter might defeat people of ETIQUETTE and GROOMING in a simple combat competition has thrown us into quite the tizzy!
-Extended levitating scenes in which we are expected to believe that a) this is a fight b) momentum is only a property of those with insufficient willpower and poor manners c) the most highly prized fighting trait is efficiency, while all the camera cares about is style
-Why are my sons so scheming and pathetic, all I did was pit them against each other with mercurial displays of favour and explicit rankings, make the rankings a matter of life or death, give control of their education to their mothers whose entire lives are intrigue-based as a result of situational constraints, and have so many sons that I literally forget about the existence of some of them when they're not physically in front of me. Look, one left the room, who were we talking about?
-This man is obviously skeletal and deathly ill, as you can tell through the padded robes which everybody is wearing which utterly obscure his shape
The costumes are absolutely gorgeous, opulent fabrics in rich colours, thick with detail, layers upon layers creating massive structural creations which make sense of the body language required to manoeuvre in them and have your movements be visible. Every character's outfits make sense for their role, and also change for the situations they're facing. I'm also really enjoying the fancy hairdos, neat braids for the guys and fascinators fixed into the hair itself for the ladies. I'm always a sucker for worldbuilding and for detailed, stylised aesthetics, so this gives both at once!
There's pretty good diversity of female characters so far, too. Various diverse ways of being strong are shown, while the society is deeply patriarchal what that means for individuals varies -multiple women have respected jobs, others are quietly fighting for autonomy from within forced marriages, in both cases independence is explicitly conditional, and even the unsympathetic women are reacting understandably to their environment.
