#brmp

[asleepinawell]

The five most normal people you will meet in the jianghu

bonus, baby sword deity:

[asleepinawell]

"Whether it's Tianqi City, the Xiao imperial line, or even your emperor, all are worthless to me."

bonus:

[asleepinawell]

tianqi's most popular fucked up little guy

bonus:

[asleepinawell]

there's a title words theme going with: the blood of youth, blood river, dashing youth which means that the next show in the series should be called either dashing blood, or youth river, or some ludicrous extension of one of these

what do we think, chat?

dashing blood

youth river

the river of dashing blood

the youth of dashing river

bloody river dash

Voting ended onMay 3

[asleepinawell]

really funny watching blood river after blood of youth because a bunch of people had fairly plain attacks in the first one and now have maximum vfx budget attacks that can be seen from 5 cities away in blood river. like. the squad lost their special effects in the war

[asleepinawell]

somewhere during watching blood river, xie xuan's character finally clicked in my brain. this guy is a sword deity who rarely, if ever, uses a sword and seems to just travel around the jianghu occasionally getting involved in major events. he is damn near normal compared to the rest of them. so what's his deal

and then he shows up in nan'an to peek in on su muyu's slice of life au and be like hey are you gonna kill anyone here? no? okay cool, later. and i was like oh i see

because the blood of youth universe is FULL of ludicrously op people wandering around most of whom are severely emotionally unstable and/or unhinged and many of whom have grudge wars with each other. how is it that the entire jianghu hasn't blown up yet over some petty fued?

enter xie xuan, the jianghu de-escalator. he shows up every time one the weapon deities (or someone else destructively op) has decided to do something possibly regretable to be like hey man. maybe have a cup of tea and then you'll calm down. he is there to be like li hanyi maybe do not stab a royal prince to death that might not be great. su muyu i know you're an assassin but have you tried NOT assassinating people for a few days? luo qingyang holy shit will you just chill the fuck out man

and when lqy does not chill the fuck out, xie xuan joins a community focus group on how to keep him from blowing up the city AND he's the one to take lei wujie's "what if we just dragged his ass" suggestion seriously because he has been doing this shit for years now and knows it will work. he understands how all these guys think and is probably in the middle of compiling notes on wushuang, the new baby sword deity, for future reference

he has to be powerful enough to be a sword deity himself to not get killed when he tries to talk these idiots out of their homicidal rages, but he rarely does any normal sword deity stuff. it is just a job requirement for personal safety (and because his book nerd levels are off the charts)

when sikong changfeng or ji ruofeng decide to send/trick one of the deity squad into getting involved in a major Situation (seemingly with the theory that a walking nuke will make things better), xie xuan is there with his books and his headache to be like here we go again chat

(he also knows when it's appropriate to send them to interfere like at the end of br when he's like yeah maybe li hanyi SHOULD just go beat up the pack of elite attack eunuchs why the fuck not, or hmm maybe i could channel her destructive tendencies into administering a city-wide antidote to some poison in the most extra way possible)

when li hanyi goes feral he's out recruiting people to help calm her down before she blows up the jianghu and dies from demonic deviation. he even drags yan zhantian, kicking and screaming, into helping which is impressive since that guy is the epitome of "i do what i want"

like of course he got involved with the youth squad in blood of youth, they all might be the next generation of deities and he needs to start building rapport now so he can talk them down from blowing craters in the landscape in a few years

mad props to him that tianqi city and the jianghu still seem to be in one piece but i wouldn't want his job for anything. have fun being the jianghu HR department my man

[asleepinawell]

Those gifs you've been posting from Blood River and the other shows are super cool. Where can I watch them? :D

So most of the ones I've posted recently have been from either The Blood of Youth or Blood River. The rest of this post is assuming those are the ones you meant but there are a bunch others I've watched in the last half a year that I sometimes gif, most notably Nirvana in Fire which is the greatest show ever and I would be happy to rave about in another post if so desired

but for Blood of Youth and Blood River, they are connected shows as both take place in the same universe. Blood of Youth is the one to start with. Blood River is one of two prequels to it which came out after, and while I haven't gotten to the other prequel, Dashing Youth yet, I do feel like Blood River would be confusing without having seen Blood of Youth first

you can watch both Blood of Youth and Blood River (and Nirvana in Fire) for free on viki.com. You need an account but not a subscription. also recommend using a browser with an adblocker. you can stream them elsewhere but the viki subs are pretty solid and, most importantly, always sub the chinese characters for people's names when they show up on screen which is vital for a show with this many characters

if you haven't seen any wuxia/xianxia shows before I'd recommend looking those genres up on wikipedia and quickly glancing through the terminology used (like take 5-10 mins tops). it'll help a lot when people start using genre specific terms

I'll add a spoiler free review below the read more too in case you or anyone else wants to know more before trying it

The Blood of Youth is a wuxia show, which more or less means set in ancient china with martial arts and fantasy elements. If you've read/watched any shonen this show will feel familiar as it used a bunch of similar tropes and story beats

The first half or so of the show is very action/adventure with the squad out running around the jianghu (term for the cities and wilds controlled by martial arts sects, as opposed to the places controlled by an emperor/imperial court), getting in fights, doing training arcs, losing fights a lot tbh, etc. i found the first plot arc to be the weakest (not bad by any means but a little too all over the place) and then the second arc in xueyue city was phenomenal, so if you're a little confused at first just hang in there and it levels out

The second half moves to the imperial city and is more about politics (but still with fun fights and such). if you haven't watched cdramas you probably haven't seen nirvana in fire but it is like what if nirvana in fire was set to yakety sax (the opening backstory montage of the show made me go what is this nirvana in fire ass plot.... many such cases in cdramas... practically a running joke at this point... but anyway...)

It has a HUGE cast. Like ridiculously so. The main squad gets introduced pretty well so they're easy enough to keep track of, but there are a bazillion sects and everyone has history with everyone else and it can be hard to keep up with everyone. but the show is fairly aware of that and does a decent job making sure you understand the stakes in any given scene. The acting is fantastic and the casting was great and the expansive world building is super cool once you figure out who everyone is

The humor in the show is one of my favorite parts of it. As I said, the show is very self-aware and makes fun of itself sometimes which is delightful. The jokes land really well and don't get stale and had me actually laughing out loud a bunch. Like more than anything else this show was just incredibly fun. I did not realize how much I was craving a mindlessly fun fantasy show until I started watching it

Other good stuff: costumes, music, and visual effects are all amazing. Felt like a big budget production. also had a squad of fabulous combat eunuchs which is an idea i had never considered before and now think every show should have

Since a lot of my followers are from femslash fandoms and are here for the ladies, let's talk about the women. There are some terrific badass female characters in the show and most are written very well, however I will say that the show just couldn't quiiiite commit to #equality and there are some silly scenes where a badass lady still has to be rescued by a guy at the last moment or they go out of their way to point out that even the strongest women are not as strong as the strongest men. And a few cringey lines. Nothing so terrible that it ruins the fun, but worth keeping in mind. Oh it also does not pass the bechdel test :( But the women are still great and Li Hanyi (featured blowing shit up in my gif sets) is a really fantastic major recurring side character who I love quite a lot. AND it has a lot of m/f platonic friendships which were surprisingly well written

moving on to Blood River... it's set uhhhh maybe ten years before Blood of Youth (good luck trying to keep the timelines straight, i gave up) and is about an assassin sect that were side characters in Blood of Youth. I'm a little more than halfway through it and overall have liked it much less than Blood of Youth. I don't find the main characters as compelling (except the female lead who is great) and the pacing and story are kinda all over. also it didn't have as much humor and the humor didn't always land quite as well

the issues I had with the female characters in the first one are more pronounced in this one as well. like i think main character boy shows up to rescue basically every badass woman from a fight (except li hanyi) at some point and every woman ever (except li hanyi) is in looooove with this dude 🙄

however, one of the really neat things about these shows is the massive amount of world building and the different generations of characters who all have their own history and relationships and seeing a bunch of the guys from blood of youth earlier on was really fun. also, very important, li hanyi and the other sword deities are in it on and off and they are fantastic and the parts they're in tend to be funny in the same ways the first one was

also the soundtrack and the costumes absolutely SLAP (the effects are big budget again but i preferred blood of youth's and thought blood river went a little too crazy with the effects). compared to blood of youth it is very goth™️ and tries for a slightly darker tone. i am deeply obsessed with the over the top dramatic goth opening credits and song

please don't misunderstand all of that to mean i don't like it or think it sucks, i just don't think it is as good as Blood of Youth

the third show Dashing Youth, which is set maybe an additional 4-5 years before blood river, I have not watched yet so can't say much about

so my advice is start with the blood of youth and if you enjoy it definitely try out blood river (i feel like ep 11 was really fun so maybe give it until that one at least)

oh one last thing, for anyone who is new to cdramas, a lot of them feel like they were shot as one insanely long movie and don't have clear episode start/ends. it's like they hit the time limit for the episode and just slap the credits on wherever. it's a bit strange at first but overall i actually really enjoy how it doesn't constrain the overarching story with an episodic format. so just don't be surprised when episodes stop in really random places