Of Swords and Parasols

 I think I'm about to embark on a wuxia binge(sure, I only have 3 series waiting, but I could probably make that last a month)  As several people have friended me since I last watched wuxia(not that it's been that long) and some probably didn't know what I was talking about when I was posting, I have slapped together a wuxia guide-type post.

It ended up rather longer than planned, but is still much shorter than it could be. 

Here is wikipedia's entry on wuxia.



meganbmoore's much less informative but more succinct description:  Wuxia are coming of age adventure stories set in ancient and medieval China.  The heroes are (in my experience) usually young men raised in near or total seclusion, or who led simpler lives before starting on their adventures.  Most are motivated either by a need to fulfill a promise to a parent or master, or by revenge(or both.)  Though they don't always start out that way, they usually end up being one of the greatest fighter's of their time.  Romance always plays some role, but with varying importance to the plot.  Sometimes it will be a main focus, others, a more background thing.  Most heroes, though, have several girls in love with them throughout the series.  Some will love more than one girl(usually in succession, not simultaneously) and others (the good ones) will only love one girl throughout.  If a series has 2 major heroes, there will usually be at least one of each kind. Some wuxia are straight up fantasy, and others historical dramas.  Most, however, still have a touch of the fantastic, and all, even the most strictly historical, involve fantastical acrobatics, including impressive aerial feats(called "wire-fu.")

I'm not going to get into wuxia movies(except to say that Hero seems to be the most popular but, IMO, none come close to matching up to Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon) but most that have been released in the US in recent years-Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, etc.-are of the straight historical drama with amazing acrobatics variety.

STOP GETTING SUCKED INTO THE SWORD STAINED WITH ROYAL BLOOD THREAD AT EVERY DRAMA BOARD YOU GO TO!!!!

Seriously.

I mean...why is it that every other wuxia hero who only ever loves one girl from start to finish gets praised for it, but with Chengzhi, it's a flaw?  Actually, I suspect it's because Ah Jie is more your normal heroine while Qing Qing is the kind of character who's usually the secondary girl, either as a sister of OTP interloper, or maybe it's because the actual romance is very simple and straightforward, or both, but really...

I feel my wuxia-loving life would be far, far simpler if Chengzhi were to realize that expressing your feelings vocally (I guess open adoration, indulgence in almost everything, extreme protectiveness don't mean much when there's also a beautiful princess in the mix...)

I found a few Sword Stained With Royal Blood production pics that were just cute.  To me at least.  Dunno if anyone else would think so...

I seem to have gotten myself involved in the Qing Qing/Chengzhi/Ah Jie shipping war over at SPCnet...odd, as I try to avoid shipwars in general.  I think normally I just like the canon pairing and don't really care about the 3rd party as much in contect to whoever they're being shipped with, but in this case, in addition to loving Chengzhi and Qing Qing, the actual relationship between Chengzhi and Ah Jie is beautiful and I find myself protective of it and thinking that simplifying it by saying "oh, they were in love but he didn't state with her" cheapens it.  It's a worlderful example of lost opportunity and "could have been" that doesn't undermine what is and what came along (Qing Qing and the fact that he already loves her by the time he meets Ah Jie and never wavers in his commitment to her.)

15 Sword Stained With Royal Blood/Bi Xue Jian
29 Charles Vess (inc some Stardust)
21 Stardust movie

Teasers:

   

Not really a proper writeup, as most of my opinions have been stated in other posts.  Just some randomness.

A couple more icons even though I'm probably doing a proper icon post tomorrow or sunday:

   

The gneral LJ dorama fandom is about as deep as I've ever willingly gone into a fandom. Message boards scare me.  Fandoms scare me.  I generally avoid them like the plague.

In other news, a few icons for the series:

    

Nothing but a massive vid spam.  Up to ep 8 now and loving it.  i especially enjoy Chengzhi's "What Qing qing wants, Qing Qing gets...as long as it doesn't get us in TOO much trouble." attitude.

Angst, cuteness, action, Swing Scenes of Awesomeness and Courtship With Bunnies, among many other things, are under the cut.


A picture of Chengzhi and the princess for dangermousie, even though they don't get together:


(not the best picture for either, but the only one of both that I have uploaded to my photobucket account)

Yyyyyyeeeeessss...new wuxia for me...

Sword Stained With Royal Blood is about Yuan Chengzhi, the son of a general who was killed by the emperor.  After seeing about 9 out of every 10 people he knew get slaughtered in the streets (a few of whom were sent through brick walls by a guy with some pretty awesome kung fu) Chengzhi is sent off to be trained by a kung fu master Mountain Hermit.  Now, as anyone who's seen a wuxia drama goes, Mountain Hermits are the best LIVING kung fu masters.  All the really good dead ones died in caves and left detailed manuals for young men to find and study.  For the next twelve years, the only company Chengzhi had was Mountain Hermit, and their neighbor, Other Mountain Hermit.  This led to several important things for Chengzhi:

1.  Awesome kung fu abilities.
2.  Absolutely no social skills.
3.  The inability to tell a pretty girl from a handsome boy(see under cut.)
4.  Most importantly:  really, really bad hair.  (Yang Guo: Raised in tomb by amazingly beautiful Tomb Girl.  Yuan Chengzhi:  Raised on mountain by Mountain Hermits.  See the connection?)

Actually, midway through the second ep I stopped noticing the hair...Bobby Dou wears it as manfully and bravely as it can be worn, and his fight scenes and clueness face make up for it.)

1.  My Sword Stained With Royal Blood DVDs have arrived...the scans of the cover made it look really dark and murky, but the actual cover has nice colors and is really shiny, making it look kinda metallic and the red letters really, really bright. *yes, I like it*  There's also little character bars on the inside flap of the box and Eva is between Bobby and the Crimson Sabreguy(who it seems is a popular enough character to warrant versions of the story from his POV or something.  If nothing else, he has better fashion sense than Bobby...or wardrobe likes him better.  One or the other.)

2.  I have a headache.  Headache is aided by tylenol but is NOT aided by  people carrying on 5 conversations 5 feet away, in addition to regular work noise...but it's dying off now.

3.  I finished the Dresden Files set.  Since I wrote about most of the eps while they were airing, I likely won't do a proper writeup(unless you want to read about Paul Blackthorne's angsty puppy-dog eyes and Harry's creative ways of stealing kisses.)  There were 2 things about it though, that made me wonder a bit...

3a.  Usually in a series with a male lead where the romance or relationship between him and his love interest isn't a focus, it comes across as she's obviously head over heels but he isn't.  In Dresden Files, however, bith books and TV series, while it's obvious that Harry is crazy about Murphy, whether he realizes it or not, but it's not as clear whether or not Murphy has any interest in Harry beyond friendship.  I can't help but wonder if that's why, slashers aside, pretty much everyone in the fandom-whichever version they refer to-seems to like Harry/Murphy.  For that matter, the few people who don't like Murphy *cannot fathom* seem to like them.

3b.  Someone actually brough up something similar to this recently, but it's something that I've been thinking of lately, and I'll just use primarily Dresden examples.  In the books, neither Morgan nor Carmichael is remotely likable, yet in the TV series, Morgan and Kirmani(who's very similar to Carmichael) are.  Now, with Morgan, part of it is that, instead of almost being rabidly hateful of Harry, Morgan is just distrustful and caution of Harry, and he gives his reasons.  I wonder though...how much of their being likable comes from the writing, and how much comes from the actors' natural likability coming through?  If it were a different actor, would the character still be someone you could like?  (Incidentally, the character that got me pondering this was Lassiter in Psych.)

4.  I loathe the laugh track.  Seriously.  I think it's the main reason I've never liked sitcoms.  I find it obnoxious, it tells you things are funny when they aren't, and when something IS funny, it blows it so out of proportion that it doesn't seem funny anymore.  Sadly, we have been watching  90s comedies at work the last few weeks.  Fresh Prince of Belair I actually kinda like.  Most of the rest I'm neutral about but don't mind.  However, the current show, Rosanne, I cannot stand AT ALL.  I don't find it funny and I don't find the characters likable.  Sadly, all are best served in small doses, but we're watching hours at a time...

5.  Since watching Bourne Ultimatum, I have been pondering the fact that Jason Bourne is essentially the epitome of angst, romantic or otherwise.  Then last night, 3 people(myself, calixa, and  lesbiassparrow) had far too free time on our hands and had far too much fun with his angst.  Andthe factthat he was obviously a wxia hero in his past life.  There the rooftop jumping and leaping off tall buildings and landing in rivers and being just fine, etc(and the amnesia, of course) but mostly, the necrokiss alone qualifies him. 

6.  Due to various stops and starts while typing this up, people have moved on, Tylenol has completely kicked in and it has quieted and the headache is MUCH better.