At the rate things are going, I will need a Sleuth icon
Edit: I now have Sleuth icons thanks to 
sheron! ♥ ♥ ♥
We have now watched up to Sleuth ep. 31, and I have met THE GREATEST CHARACTER TO EVER EXIST (except for all the others, of course).
Please do not spoil me for future episodes!
I am speaking of course of Jin San, the sympathetic bandit leader who I now ship with LITERALLY EVERYONE ON THIS SHOW.
I'm not sure what pronouns to use, honestly, because in the world of the show Jin San is viewed by the protagonists as a woman dressing as a man, but I feel that by modern standards, considering how they present and clearly think of themselves, it would be more accurate to think of them as a trans man or genderqueer, and at the same time I think Mandarin doesn't have gendered pronouns anyhow? So I'm tentatively going with "they"?
.... anyway, I was actually sort of - braced for things that didn't happen, and really pleased at how this part of the storyline was handled! I was fully expecting The Big Reveal to be more of a thing (it wasn't - it was honestly dealt with pretty respectfully imho) and for Jin San to take on a more feminine role/clothing/mannerisms when it was discovered by the other characters that they were AFAB, and hahahah, no, basically a whole world of no.
I have now launched a new ship in my head, which is the SS Jin San/Everyone, sailing along in a tiny flotilla. (But especially Sui Zhou, because that FIGHT, my HEART.) Anyway, the Jin San flotilla sails alongside my other primary ships for this show, which are:
Tang Fan/Wang Zhi OTP *____*
Duo'erla/Tang Yu I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY'RE JUST SUPER CUTE???
And I continue to love the ... everything, basically, from the found-family-ness to the vaguely steampunk-esque technology, which is not at all unrealistic for the setting but also - I was talking to Sheron about this a little earlier - it reminds me of Turn somewhat in that area, which really embraced the FRANKLY BONKERS technology of the late 1700s; in this case it's the mid-1600s (I think?) but same hat, basically, where historical media doesn't all that often deal in too much depth with how honestly weird, fantastic, and cutting-edge the tech of the past was but THIS DOES, and while I know that this is not a ~true and accurate historical depiction~ any more than Turn was, I really like that aspect of the show, the way that the characters' sciencey bent and the interesting tech gives it a rich historical-on-the-cusp-of-modern feeling. I also like recognizing historical events I've heard of, like the Beijing maybe-ammo-depot explosion that's a big part of the plot in this story arc! (Which to be fair I know about mainly because it was talked about a great deal in the context of the Syria explosion last year.)
So basically this show continues to be super neat and I'm really enjoying it!
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1384641.html with
comments.
sheron! ♥ ♥ ♥
We have now watched up to Sleuth ep. 31, and I have met THE GREATEST CHARACTER TO EVER EXIST (except for all the others, of course).
Please do not spoil me for future episodes!
I am speaking of course of Jin San, the sympathetic bandit leader who I now ship with LITERALLY EVERYONE ON THIS SHOW.
I'm not sure what pronouns to use, honestly, because in the world of the show Jin San is viewed by the protagonists as a woman dressing as a man, but I feel that by modern standards, considering how they present and clearly think of themselves, it would be more accurate to think of them as a trans man or genderqueer, and at the same time I think Mandarin doesn't have gendered pronouns anyhow? So I'm tentatively going with "they"?
.... anyway, I was actually sort of - braced for things that didn't happen, and really pleased at how this part of the storyline was handled! I was fully expecting The Big Reveal to be more of a thing (it wasn't - it was honestly dealt with pretty respectfully imho) and for Jin San to take on a more feminine role/clothing/mannerisms when it was discovered by the other characters that they were AFAB, and hahahah, no, basically a whole world of no.
I have now launched a new ship in my head, which is the SS Jin San/Everyone, sailing along in a tiny flotilla. (But especially Sui Zhou, because that FIGHT, my HEART.) Anyway, the Jin San flotilla sails alongside my other primary ships for this show, which are:
Tang Fan/Wang Zhi OTP *____*
Duo'erla/Tang Yu I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY'RE JUST SUPER CUTE???
And I continue to love the ... everything, basically, from the found-family-ness to the vaguely steampunk-esque technology, which is not at all unrealistic for the setting but also - I was talking to Sheron about this a little earlier - it reminds me of Turn somewhat in that area, which really embraced the FRANKLY BONKERS technology of the late 1700s; in this case it's the mid-1600s (I think?) but same hat, basically, where historical media doesn't all that often deal in too much depth with how honestly weird, fantastic, and cutting-edge the tech of the past was but THIS DOES, and while I know that this is not a ~true and accurate historical depiction~ any more than Turn was, I really like that aspect of the show, the way that the characters' sciencey bent and the interesting tech gives it a rich historical-on-the-cusp-of-modern feeling. I also like recognizing historical events I've heard of, like the Beijing maybe-ammo-depot explosion that's a big part of the plot in this story arc! (Which to be fair I know about mainly because it was talked about a great deal in the context of the Syria explosion last year.)
So basically this show continues to be super neat and I'm really enjoying it!
This entry is also posted at https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1384641.html with
comments.