one of the best decisions i've ever made was to stop arguing.
i'd always been an arguer. i was defensive about everything and mindlessly contrary. it wasn't all my fault; i was (and still am) talked down to and patronized a lot, and when you live your life that way, you become kind of a raw nerve and dedicate a lot of energy to trying to prove yourself. someone even told me once, "it's just fun messing with you. you get so upset."
at 23, i was working in an environment where about a half dozen middle aged conservative men were always telling me what to do and explaining things to me. i either argued with them when they said heinous things or stewed about it for hours or even days. and so my new year's resolution one year was simply: no arguing.
it felt a little like defeat at first, like i was no longer standing up for what i believed in, even though no matter how right i was or how much proof i had for my claims, no one had ever been swayed by anything i told them. part of that was because they had no respect for me and didn't take me seriously; the other part was the simple truth that arguments are almost never productive. when someone says something and you immediately reply with, "you're wrong and here's why," a wall goes up and nothing can go over it.
i couldn't just let these men talk at me though, so i started asking questions. not leading questions, not with an intention to prove a point or walk them into a corner. i genuinely wanted to understand how they came to shape the opinions they held. i realized that understanding and agreeing are two different things, and just because i seek to understand doesn't mean i condone.
a truly fascinating thing happened: these men walked into corners all by themselves. it turns out nobody had ever actually tasked them with speaking their opinions aloud to a neutral audience. no one had ever been sincerely curious about them and their views. sure, their loved ones probably asked, "how are you doing?" all the time as a show of affection, but that's much different than, "what do you think?"
knowing what i know now, i think that's true of everyone. how many people ask you for your opinion and listen to what you have to say without speaking their opinion back to you? without judging you? how many people actively and intentionally try to understand you?
it's been over ten years since my resolution and i think i can count the arguments i've gotten into on one hand. one finger, even. it's amazing what happens when someone tries to rile you up, pick a fight with you, and your only response is, "can you elaborate on that?"
you can work someone into a very open and vulnerable state when you ask questions. they eventually run out of their usual talking points and move into the personal. when i do this, it's not like therapy; i'm not trying to help anyone. and it's not like teaching; i'm not trying to educate anyone. i just want to understand how people reach the conclusions they've come to. even after all these years of asking questions and not arguing, it still amazes me how few people in this world feel understood, and how easy it is to get them to open up when you say, "i want to know what you think."
I probably shouldn't, but I find myself mostly comparing F4 Thailand 2022 to Hana Yori Dango 2005. Probably because it's the one I’m most familiar with, being one of my first ever Asian dramas and the one I have rewatched the most. But also, because compared to the comedic vibe of Boys Before Flowers 2009 and the clean, almost censored vibe of Meteor Garden 2018, it seems to adopt the Japanese vibe the most.
But what I noticed and where F4 Thailand sort of falls flat, is the slight difference in Gorya’s relationship with Ren. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the Thai version so far, I think they are making an excellent adaptation, but there is something that has been bugging me and that solidified in the recent episode, namely Gorya’s date with Ren.
In HanaDan 2005 the date is a mess. It is awkward, they barely have anything to talk about, Makino (Gorya) makes a fool of herself several times, and - and this is important - she really talks about Domyouji (Thyme) a whole bunch. Really, he is the only topic she and Rui (Ren) can talk about without it being weird. And then, of course, they run into Domyouji and the two of them start fighting/bickering again, as they do and we see Rui watching this interaction with an “Ooooh okay, I get it now”-expression.
That distinction is important. Because the whole balance of the show hinges on the fact, that Rui, as good and nice as he is, doesn’t have romantic chemistry with Makino. They are great friends and they can talk to each other really well, but when it gets romantic, something is off. Rui, in Makino’s eyes, is this perfect knight in shining armour, a fantasy, the peak romantic hero she can imagine. He’s on a pedestal, so when they are together, in a date setting, it doesn’t work. She’s too much in awe of him and he doesn’t know how to deal with that. It’s mutually unromantic.
The date in the Thai version, though, seemed completely fine. It was awkward for a moment, but then we get this really cute montage of them having fun together and enjoying each other’s company a lot. It looks like a genuinely good date. Then at the end, we get the conversation about the disastrous Zoo date, and then of course Gorya confronting Tesla in front of Ren, where we get the same “Ooooh okay, I get it now”-expression, but in a completely different context, with Thyme not even present.
Why does that feel wrong? Because, now, in the Thai version, I genuinely question why the fuck Gorya would like Thyme more than Ren. Why she ultimately chooses Thyme over Ren. Because she and Ren seemingly fit together amazingly. So what happens? We get the weird, outdated trope of a girl having a perfect potential boyfriend, that she has good chemistry with, but instead choosing the violent asshole, that annoys her for… reasons.
I quite honestly don’t remember the storyline from the Korean or Chinese version, but the Japanese one avoids this so well, by simply showing us that Makino and Rui don’t have romantic chemistry at all. While she and Domyouji, as cat and dog as it is, do. And I don’t remember the Korean or Chinese version giving me the same confusion as to why the Makino stand-in would choose the Domyouji stand-in over the Rui stand-in.
And again, this is absolutely no hate towards the show, I truly love it, the actors are amazing and they are doing a good job. But the balance is slightly off-kilter for me. They even try to rectify this, by having Ren speak Rui’s line of “She constantly talked about you.” when we didn’t see that at all during the montage. They told and didn’t show and I felt it. I felt it being weirdly forced towards the end. It felt wrong.
How to tell if you're in a historical Chinese drama:
(Inspired by this classic!)
Someone offends you unforgivably by calling you by your actual name.
You are preparing for a bloody battle in the rain. Your boots are made of exquisitely embroidered silk duchesse.
Everyone you know is god-tier beautiful. You ignore this.
Significant tea is being poured.
Your soulmate tells you in plain words that they love you. You comically misunderstand what they said, and will keep doing so, because the plot is not over yet.
The only thing more elaborate than the villain's cunning plan is the engineering of your man-bun.
Duels are scored like gymnastics routines. To beat your opponent, try a triple-twisting double tucked salto.
You have been married for thirty years. You have never seen your spouse's wrist.
Sometimes peasants and servants are killed horribly in front of you. It's a normal part of life. The other peasants will presumably take care of the practicalities, such as burial and being upset.
Any injury, including a broken nail, makes you vomit blood.
The year is 400 AD. French tips have been invented.
This is the penultimate from this photoshoot. I am dying to know the conversation, decision making, or whatever that led to these pics looking like... this. 😂
Nirvana in Fire Behind the Flames 11/?
Click for all Nirvana in Fire Behind the Flames posts
Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 琅琊榜/Nirvana in Fire.
Nirvana in Fire is a 2015 historical series best described as either a complicated succession drama set in the premodern Chinese imperial palace, or the story of a man who didn't die a decade ago and has decided to make it everyone else's problem.
And really, I almost feel silly giving my glib little summary, because Nirvana in Fire is so well-known of a property. It's a classic for a reason, and that reason is that it's legitimately very good. This show is what happens when you adapt a solid story, get a bunch of very talented actors, and throw a huge amount of money at it. It's incredibly popular and highly acclaimed, and it earned all of the hype.
Still, while I bet there are few people adjacent to c-drama stuff who've never heard of Nirvana in Fire, I'm sure there are plenty who haven't watched it. After all, it looks like one of those slow, serious shows with a lot of ponderous talking and no joy. If that's the impression you've been given, I could imagine looking at the 54-episode commitment and saying, I don't need that in my life.
I am here to tell you you're wrong. It is a banger of a show. It's tense. It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It’s exceptionally clever. It’s jaw-droppingly stupid. It’s romantic. It’s tragic. It has smart plots and bizarre subplots. And that's not even touching the thing with the yeti.
So in case you're one of those people who's heard of Nirvana in Fire, but has put off watching it for one reason or another, I'm here with five reasons I think you should try it.
1. Epic Shit
Did you like the Lord of the Rings? More specifically, did you really like the second Peter Jackson film? Great, then you're all set for this.
I guess I could have called this Game of Thrones without the dragons, but that's not actually the vibe at all. Game of Thrones is much more sensational and salacious, with all the blood and butts and what-not. The Tolkien comparison is more apt, I think, because Nirvana in Fire is equally about as wholesome as you can get in a property where dudes are still getting stabbed all the time.
This is a show about vengeance. And yeah, justice for the fallen, sure, that's fine too. But mostly it's about a bunch of good people joining forces to make sure the bastards who did wrong pay, with their lives as necesary.
The problem, though, is that these bastards are incredibly powerful, which means that a pure brute-force approach isn't going to work. Accordingly, this quickly becomes a story about the power of smart teamwork to exact retribution on some people who can (and did!) legally get away with murder -- and our heroes are some of the people with their necks most on the line if anything goes wrong.
Don't let the Middle Earth comparison fool you into thinking this is all epic swordfights. It's not. (I mean, for one thing, as well-funded as this project is, it doesn't have Peter Jackson Money.) The vast majority of the tension in the show comes from dialogue and slow, terrible realizations. The fight scenes are almost a relief from the nail-biting intensity of intimate conversations about getting a letter from somebody's ex-wife or returning a book.
All told, the show has that incredible almost-RPG vibe of going through all the little subquests and cutscenes you find along the way to defeat the final boss. The plot carefully unravels a multi-tendriled mystery told to you by people in incredible costumes. It doesn't get much more epic than that.
(Nirvana in Fire is also a cautionary tale about how you should be very careful with who gets invited to your birthday party.)
2. A chronically ill protagonist
Okay, right in the first episode, it is established that the main character has three whole completely different names and an old nickname. I'm going to call him Mei Changsu for the duration of this rec post, but let the record show that I could just have easily gone with one of the other three.
What you learn in that same first episode is that Mei Changsu used to be a palace insider, the cocky son of a noble family, only now nearly everyone he used to know thinks he's dead. Also, he's not far off from being actually dead -- he has an unspecified terminal condition that's mostly managed, provided he stays in his little mountain hideaway with his handsome doctor bestie and doesn't return to his old stomping ground and start kicking over hornets' nests.
So guess what he's about to do.
I have to make a note of how brilliant the casting is here: Hu Ge is an action actor! He is a kickpuncher of a man! And I think it's great that you can sort of see his frustration, as well as Mei Changsu's, at having to spend the whole series wrapped in countless layers of fabric and/or lying in bed while everyone around him gets to be the badass action heroes.
Mei Changsu's not faking it, either -- he's actually dying. He expends his energy where he thinks it's necessary, and sometimes that means he has to spend the following week in bed. He's constantly frustrated with himself for what he can't do anymore. He's racing a clock, and that clock is his own failing body. If he dies, the only hope anyone here has for justice dies with him.
He gets two love interests that the show treats pretty much equally. One's a lady general who wasn't even a love interest in the book. The other's the handsome prince who was initially going to be his textual romantic partner in same book, until the author hopped genres from danmei to general historical drama. I can't even call this a love triangle, because there's no competition. He just gets a wife and a husband -- in that he gets neither, because circumstances and his own illness keep him distant from them. He lies to both of then about his condition (among other things). He wants to be with them both and knows he can't be with either. And they in turn have to learn to accept what of him they can and can't have.
(Also, Nihuang (her) and Jingyan (him) are both incredibly gorgeous, which is exactly what bisexual genius Mei Changsu deserves.)
Obviously this isn't a perfect representation of life with chronic illness, largely because Mei Changsu is an incredily wealthy man who lives in a universe with what's basically magic medicine. However, I've seen the story's treatment of him and his condition resonate with a lot of chronically ill viewers, so even with the fantasy layer on it, there's definitely something there.
3. Dave
I have already told the story of how Meng Zhi became "Dave," but long story short, he's such a Dave that I legitimately forget his character's real name. He embodies Daveness. He's The Ultimate Dave.
Dave is an excellent fighter, a loyal friend -- and a terrible liar. He's possbly the only straightforward character in the entire show. When he's asked to be duplicitous, he's comically bad at it. Dave will never do a heel turn. I was misled at first by his semi-evil facial hair, but I have seen the error of my ways. Dave is pure lawful good.
And the reason I list Dave as such a selling point is that having a Dave means you always know what's going on. This is because Dave never knows what's going on, and he has no ego about that, so he asks questions, and other characters have to explain to him what just happened, and that is how you figure out what's going on.
It's an incredibly smart move on the drama's part, because some of the (very fun) schemes are so complicated that there's no way for you, the viewer, to understand them just by watching. Without the internal monologues and omniscent narration of a book, the machinations are opaque. You need things explained -- but why would the schemers explain their schemes? Well, Dave needs some exposition, so here you go.
So if you're worried that you might be left feeling stupid by a show where so many sneaky people are hatching so many complex plans, worry not! Like the good man he is, Dave has your back.
4. A Million Amazing Antagonists
If you like bad guys, this is a show for you. This show has brilliant bad guys all the way down. It has bad guys at every turn. It has bad guys for every taste. Welcome to Big Liang's Big Bad Guy Emporium, where we guarantee you'll walk out of here with a bad guy you like, or your money back!
(And yes, this set of pictures is also to say that their costume budget was entirely well-spent.)
Without getting too far into spoilers, I will say that the basic situation underlying the whole series is this: The emperor has done a lot of bad things, and he has enlisted a bunch of people's help in hiding those bad things, so much so that many of those other people have done even more bad things the emperor didn't even know about -- and then everyone has gone to great lengths to cover those up as well. Our protagonists spend the whole series unraveling this colossal shitshow and bringing people to task for their crimes.
So really, if you're going to spend 54 episodes taking down the baddies, they've got to be baddies you love to see taken down. And these are -- in part because all of them have crystal-clear, rock-solid motivations for their actions. Nobody here is a moustache-twirling comic-book-villain baddie. They're all bad for reasons that are very understandable in their individual contexts. And not a single one of them is going to go down without a fight.
5. World's Best Mom
(Sidebar: The fact that four out of five of my reasons to watch the show are individual or groups of characters should be your strongest indicator that this is an intensely character-driven story.)
This is not a Dead Mom Show. Okay, some moms are dead, but mostly this is a Moms Are Alive And Often Cause Problems Show, which is a lot of what makes the palace drama so delicious. But there is one Good Mom who stands out above all the rest: Consort Jing.
Played with perfect grace and devastating politeness by the stunning Liu Mintao, Consort Jing is a skilled doctor and excellent baker who starts the show with a low-level status among the women of the palace. She swallows down all kinds of mistreatment because she's not in a place to oppose it -- and when she can retaliate, it must only be through soft power. She loves her jock son with all her heart, but because of both their relatively poor positions in the hierarchy, she doesn't get to see him all that much. She wants to be an asset to him, while all the time she has to fear becoming a liability.
She is also the smartest person in any room that she's in, unless she's in a room with Mei Changsu, and even then it may be a tie.
There are lots of great characters in the show that I could have highlighted here, and plenty of them are women, but Consort Jing in particular never ceases to impress me. She is trapped in a gilded cage, married to a man who [lengthy list of spoilers that are traumatic to her in particular], and held hostage by how every time she even looks like she's out of line, it puts both her and her boy in danger. She's the most vulnerable of any of our good guys. Kind of like Wang Zhi, she's got to be clever or she's dead.
Consort Jing is not part of Mei Changsu's original plan. She figures out his plan and makes herself part of it -- and entirely remotely, as she and he aren't even in the same room until episode 40 or so. She puts herself in great danger to make sure he succeeds, not because it will necessarily do her any good, but because Jingyan needs him. This woman has been captain of the Mei Changsu/Jingyan ship for like twenty years already.
Oh, and did I mention her outfits?
I love you, Consort Mom.
Are you ready to watch it yet?
Get it on Viki! Get it on YouTube! Get it on YouTube but in a different playlist! (And also maybe get it on Amazon? Not in my region, but maybe in yours.)
I will warn you that it does take off running -- I think I saw someone say it introduces nineteen characters in the first episode? I was worried that I'd be too innundated by situations and flashbacks and names to be able to follow. By the second or third episode, though, I was rolling with it. So if you feel like you're struggling at the beginning, stick with it a bit. See if you don't feel it start to click.
...Man, reading over this post has left me going, oh, but I missed that! and that! and that guy! And yeah, the truth is that there are just so many great things about the show that limiting myself to only five (and being limited to only thirty images) was tough. I'm sure that people reblogging will add their own must-see elements.
Truly, this is a show that deserves its reputation. It may not be for everyone, but if this is the kind of thing that you like, it is a shining example of that thing.
Besides, you have to love a production where everyone was clearly having just a whole lot of fun being big ol' costumed dorks.
