I has a Netflix.

[which_chick]

Turns out that if you want me to pay for a Netflix, all you have to do is provide me with absurdly pretty Chinese dudes in period costume doing sorta-pretend martial arts stuff in a fantasy setting.

Late to the party, as always, but apparently I need to be watching The Untamed, so... fine. Let's do that. Shit, I'll even pay for it like an adult.

Comments

[heavenscalyx]

Ohhhhhh yesssss, The Untameddddd.

Word of Honor is a pretty good one to move on to, afterward, if you're still jonesing for pretty Chinese dudes in period costume.

[which_chick]

It's just so... pretty? And yeah, it's kind of silly but no worse, I figure, than superhero stuff. People watched CW's Arrow non-ironically. And The Flash. And The Boys and Daredevil and the entirety of the MCU movies. This is like that, only different genre.

I am in awe (about 14 eps in, I'm rationing.) of various things that just happen without comment. Like, nbd, this is just the way things are 'round here.

Hair. Nobody who has hair that long has it perfectly aesthetic 100% of the time when they are OUTSIDE fighting possessed people and hiking about and spinning aesthetically in the air doing qi-infused Flying Bird Kicks and so forth. These are dudes with waist-length hair who WEAR IT LOOSE FOR FIGHTING and yet this does not create any technical difficulties with, like, seeing the enemy. I have hair down to my jeans pockets and (back when I had sex on the regular) I couldn't wear it down for fucking because it GOT IN THE WAY. I don't expect fighting is all that different than fucking in terms of "hair gets in the way if it's loose". Also, probably there's a crew of staff when they're filming that spends every spare moment fluffing the hair between takes to keep it looking amazing.

Also, so MUCH hair. (I am aware that they're wigs. Work with me, here. In Fantasy China, that is their real, exceptionally-well-behaved hair.) Real people do not generally have the volume of hair needed to do Fantasy China Hairstyles without extensions in the same way that real horses generally do not have the volume of tail needed to do Stock Breed Western Pleasure without extensions. (My friend Trys could manage it. So could Bethie. But they are people with hair that destroys hairties, people where the ponytail circumference is larger than a quarter. Most people don't have that much hair.) Anyway. the hair is amazing. I kind of love it. I kind of like the bizarre extra sideburns too, and I don't know why.

The Lan Clan's impossible whiteness of being. I get that this is Fantasy China, but nobody can wear white clothes that are THAT WHITE in the out-of-doors without a laundry budget that is insane. How? HOW? I am the sort of person who, if I were dressed in Lan Clan fashions, would be dirt colored the moment I walked outside. These guys are tromping through the countryside and splashing in creeks and getting in fights and hanging out in caves and dueling out on roofs and through it all, they have spotless, immaculate white clothing except when it is Dramatically Bloodstained with brilliant exceptionally red blood. The amount of white fabric involved is ridiculous. There's acres of it. I can only assume magic is involved vis a vis the immaculate white clothing. (I also assume that this is true of people who can wear white dressage breeches and keep-them-white while being in close proximity to horses.) I bet the Lan Clan dismisses hopefuls who are unable to remain spotlessly white. Probably it's another discipline item like the headband. Who can say for sure? Not me. It do be a mystery, a shining white and spotless mystery.

The Wen Clan. C'mon, guys, how do you not know these people are evil? They're COLOR CODED TO BE EVIL. They're doing the Bad Thing what with the Yin Iron. There is visible sneering and scenery chewing from the principles of the Wen Clan. Their hangout is VISIBLY EVIL. Like, nobody lives in volcanic mountain scenery and is "not evil". Nobody has a... building (?) throne room (?) primary audience chamber (?) with HOLES IN THE FLOOR WHERE THERE IS CLEARLY VOLCANIC FIRE UNDERNEATH IT and sulfurous fumes and stuff and is ALSO "not evil". I am a bit concerned that our guys (Our guys are Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji) lack basic narrative awareness with respect to the visible trappings of evil.

Our man Wei Wuxian. Damn, he's pretty. He's not just, like, face pretty. He's pretty all over. Clothes drape exceptionally well on him. Like, this is a show where EVERYBODY gets fairly nice drape-y clothing. (If you are not up to speed on this thing, everybody who isn't an Innkeeper or an Old Woman or whatever is dressed in flowing ankle-length robes, several layers. I don't know how they aren't dying of hot during filming, tbh.) And yet, in a sea of fairly attractive and slender people who are all wearing nice drape-y clothing, this dude still looks... better than everyone else in his damn outfits. He's got to be like, model skinny for the clothes to look that good on him. I hope he doesn't have an eating disorder.

Also he's... got great facial expressions. Like, he's just endlessly watchable. It's somewhat unfair because he *gets* to have facial expressions while our man Lan Wangji doesn't get to have facial expressions (because his character is the straight man, er, not like that, I mean the serious kind of straight, definitely not the straight kind of straight) but even so, Wei Wuxian is fucking comedy gold so... many... times. He's just delightful. Big fan.

The scenery. I do not know where they filmed this thing, but my guess is that they cleared out every single national park (or whatever China has in lieu of national parks, possibly People's Cultural Nature Collectives or something) for the scenery. I know that Real China is not entirely pristine due to rapid industrialization and stuff, but Fantasy China looks great. Maybe they do a lot of editing in post? Two thumbs up on the scenery front. Is it pretend? At least somewhat. Is it nice to look at anyway? Yes indeed.

Also I find Wei Wuxian's little paper men inexplicably charming.

[heavenscalyx]

I found the cinematography to be amazing, also the set design. It's just gobsmacking.

I'm absolutely certain the Lan Clan has magic related to keeping the whites blindingly white and the headbands straight (see also that charming drunk scene with Lan Zhan trying to check his headband).

Lan Zhan's actor is just brilliant with the microexpressions in contrast with Wei Wuxian's macroexpressions. :)

There are set photos floating around somewhere of all of them dying in the heat during filming. The actors are all excessively tiny and skinny boyos -- I have no idea how they buff up Jiang Cheng as much as they do, for instance. The juniors especially are all so smol.

ACRES and ACRES of fabric and hair, EVERYWHERE. It's amazing.

[which_chick]

I am appreciating the contrasts between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian on all sorts of fronts, from amount-of-facial-expressions to costuming and verbiage and yadda yadda yadda. Good times.

I don't know about set photos but there are behind the scenes video clips on YouTube, the relative reality of which I kinda question.

The BTS stuff is promotional material. It's basically something I would characterize as "casual advertising" for the show and/or for the relative fandoms of our cast, many of whom have Other Media Personality Day Jobs like being in boybands and stuff. Is it scripted? Maybe not. Are they aware they're being filmed? Heck yeah.

Because of this, the BTS footage is, at best, real-adjacent and not "documentary real" but also even documentary real has kind of skidded off the rails these days with faux-umentary stuff like reality shows which are not real at all. Regardless of the cameraperson's goals for catching lightning in a jar, when the cameraperson hauls out the camera and starts aiming it at people, "reality" goes to hell anyway because it turns out we're like very large photons in that our behavior is very much affected by being observed. But I digress.

That said, some things in the BTS stuff are probably real-ish and one of the things that is probably real-ish is the fact that the actors are frequently holding small, battery-powered personal fans aimed at the only exposed skin that they have (neck and face). This is probably real-ish because (a) it looks dorky and (b) why on earth would anyone MAKE UP stuff to seem more dorky?

Other real-ish thing in the BTS footage: There is apparently an army of people who go around fluffing and straightening and arranging the hair inbetween takes to make it look so nice all the time. I found this delightful to know and also wow, I could not be an actor for TV or movies because there are way, way, way too many people in your personal space ALL THE TIME when they're not actually filming you.

I do not have any problem at all with delightfully skinny boyos and have not had a problem with them since... since... since the nekkidGackt cellphone commercial. (Also this was when I became fundamentally disappointed with American advertisements because we did not have ethereally pretty nekkidGackt selling us stuff. Greatest country in the world my ass.)