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After more than a year of luxuriously slow viewing, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti and I have finally finished watching Nirvana in Fire!
For those unfamiliar: Nirvana in Fire is an astoundingly good Chinese drama which I've often seen people compare to Game of Thrones. I understand why people recommended it this way, especially in GoT's heyday -- Nirvana in Fire is also a sweeping, complex historical-political epic with beautiful outfits -- but I respectfully disagree with this comparison; unlike Game of Thrones, Nirvana in Fire is a.) meticulously plotted, b.) focuses far more on extremely sympathetic humans who are motivated by their own deep senses of ethics, loyalty, and justice, and c.) does not feature dragons or indeed any mythological creatures at all (except for a whole lot of nonsense medicines and poisons, and, possibly, a yeti.)
The plot: the court of Da Liang is locked in factional struggle between two putative heirs to the Emperor's throne; Mei Changsu, Our Hero, is a brilliant scholar and strategist who has come to the capital to graciously allow each of the Emperor's favored sons an opportunity to attempt to recruit him.
However, in fact, Mei Changsu has actually come to maneuver the rise of the Emperor's least favorite son, the extremely honest but congenitally un-strategic Jingyan ... because Mei Changsu, unbeknownst to almost anyone very much including Jingyan, is secretly Jingyan's dearest friend, who was presumed massacred along with his entire family twelve years ago in an Unfortunate Treason Incident, but managed to survive thanks to a rare affliction that causes you to be played by a different actor, and has now returned! for REVENGE! that incidentally involves reforming the entire court and replacing it with a more ethical version of itself!
HIJINKS, IDENTITY PORN, AND A TRULY INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF POLITICAL AND EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION ENSUE.
The cast? The cast!
Mei Changsu: a liar
Prince Jingyan: a perfectly balanced mix of honor, depression, and belligerently repressed intransigence
- Princess Nihuang, who was engaged to be married to Mei Changsu (original flavor) before the Unfortunate Treason Incident and has been effectively dodging other suitors by leading armies on the southern border ever since; righteous, forthright, and yet somehow still perfectly competent at effectively managing court intrigue (yes this is a Jingyan callout post)
- General Meng, Mei Changsu's ally on the inside; a bold and respected warrior who is also a constant source of workplace sitcom energy
- Fei Lu, the world's most skilled martial artist
- Consort Jing, Jingyan's mother, a doctor who came to the palace one day to treat a patient and regrettably was not thereafter allowed to leave; possessed of absolutely incredible levels of chill, even more subtlety than Mei Changsu, and a very useful talent for remembering all her son's friend's allergies
- Jingrui and Yujin, cluelessly genial young lads-about-townmanipulated by befriended by Mei Changsu for mysterious reasons of his own. We initially called them the interchangeable Woosters, until Jingrui began to develop a more significant role as a beloved, sheltered, ethical baby unfortunately doomed to discover that his inordinately complex and shady family was intertwined in a series of inordinately complex and shady plots. As a result this began to seem unfair to Jingrui and we switched to calling them Woost and Wooster.
- (Nihuang's baby brother Mu Qing eventually emerged as Woostest.)
- Xia Dong, a virtuous member of the secret police with a tragically dead husband, who is about to come face to face with the shocking fact that some secret police organizations are in fact problematic
- Prince Yu, the Emperor's favorite son and Jingyan's main opponent for most of the show; he tried so hard, and got so far
- Banruo, Prince Yu's chief strategist, absolute best smirk in the cast
- Gong Yu, the Haydée to Mei Changsu's Edmond Dantès but less romantically successful; occasionally gets more to do than pine after Mei Changsu but not as much as one might wish
- Lin Chen, an eccentric medical genius; absent most of the show but sweeps into the final arc with an ABSOLUTE vengeance
Favorite subplots include but are not limited to:
- Mei Changsu manipulates the court and sends an enemy into ruin by playing an enthusiastic round of House Hunters
- Mei Changsu manipulates the court and sends an enemy into ruin by raising a question about the seating charts at a holiday party
- Jingrui Has A Birthday Party
- strategist scavenger hunt!
- "Consort Jing is like a cotton ball that cannot be flattened or broken. There's no way to fight her."
- the stressful round of chicken involving a prison escape attempt
- the hilarious round of chicken involving a deadly poison
- everything related to the yeti
genarti and I have finally finished watching Nirvana in Fire! For those unfamiliar: Nirvana in Fire is an astoundingly good Chinese drama which I've often seen people compare to Game of Thrones. I understand why people recommended it this way, especially in GoT's heyday -- Nirvana in Fire is also a sweeping, complex historical-political epic with beautiful outfits -- but I respectfully disagree with this comparison; unlike Game of Thrones, Nirvana in Fire is a.) meticulously plotted, b.) focuses far more on extremely sympathetic humans who are motivated by their own deep senses of ethics, loyalty, and justice, and c.) does not feature dragons or indeed any mythological creatures at all (except for a whole lot of nonsense medicines and poisons, and, possibly, a yeti.)
The plot: the court of Da Liang is locked in factional struggle between two putative heirs to the Emperor's throne; Mei Changsu, Our Hero, is a brilliant scholar and strategist who has come to the capital to graciously allow each of the Emperor's favored sons an opportunity to attempt to recruit him.
However, in fact, Mei Changsu has actually come to maneuver the rise of the Emperor's least favorite son, the extremely honest but congenitally un-strategic Jingyan ... because Mei Changsu, unbeknownst to almost anyone very much including Jingyan, is secretly Jingyan's dearest friend, who was presumed massacred along with his entire family twelve years ago in an Unfortunate Treason Incident, but managed to survive thanks to a rare affliction that causes you to be played by a different actor, and has now returned! for REVENGE! that incidentally involves reforming the entire court and replacing it with a more ethical version of itself!
HIJINKS, IDENTITY PORN, AND A TRULY INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF POLITICAL AND EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION ENSUE.
The cast? The cast!
Mei Changsu: a liar
Prince Jingyan: a perfectly balanced mix of honor, depression, and belligerently repressed intransigence
- Princess Nihuang, who was engaged to be married to Mei Changsu (original flavor) before the Unfortunate Treason Incident and has been effectively dodging other suitors by leading armies on the southern border ever since; righteous, forthright, and yet somehow still perfectly competent at effectively managing court intrigue (yes this is a Jingyan callout post)
- General Meng, Mei Changsu's ally on the inside; a bold and respected warrior who is also a constant source of workplace sitcom energy
- Fei Lu, the world's most skilled martial artist
- Consort Jing, Jingyan's mother, a doctor who came to the palace one day to treat a patient and regrettably was not thereafter allowed to leave; possessed of absolutely incredible levels of chill, even more subtlety than Mei Changsu, and a very useful talent for remembering all her son's friend's allergies
- Jingrui and Yujin, cluelessly genial young lads-about-town
- (Nihuang's baby brother Mu Qing eventually emerged as Woostest.)
- Xia Dong, a virtuous member of the secret police with a tragically dead husband, who is about to come face to face with the shocking fact that some secret police organizations are in fact problematic
- Prince Yu, the Emperor's favorite son and Jingyan's main opponent for most of the show; he tried so hard, and got so far
- Banruo, Prince Yu's chief strategist, absolute best smirk in the cast
- Gong Yu, the Haydée to Mei Changsu's Edmond Dantès but less romantically successful; occasionally gets more to do than pine after Mei Changsu but not as much as one might wish
- Lin Chen, an eccentric medical genius; absent most of the show but sweeps into the final arc with an ABSOLUTE vengeance
Favorite subplots include but are not limited to:
- Mei Changsu manipulates the court and sends an enemy into ruin by playing an enthusiastic round of House Hunters
- Mei Changsu manipulates the court and sends an enemy into ruin by raising a question about the seating charts at a holiday party
- Jingrui Has A Birthday Party
- strategist scavenger hunt!
- "Consort Jing is like a cotton ball that cannot be flattened or broken. There's no way to fight her."
- the stressful round of chicken involving a prison escape attempt
- the hilarious round of chicken involving a deadly poison
- everything related to the yeti
no subject
He does figure out scheming by the time of his father's birthday celebration (with a clear nod to having absorbed MCS' arguments in Ep. 33), so ... better late than never?
Nihuang both lacks Jingyan's particular hang-ups about the imperial court and has an incentive to manage politics in that she has a lot of people and a baby brother to protect. Jingyan, by contrast, is thoroughly unmoored by the death of Prince Qi and the Lins; I think he's kept in line a little by a need to protect his mother, but it's not the same as needing to learn enough to protect an entire province.
I kind of suspect Prince Ji told him about Tingshen in part to get him to stop being quite so passive-aggressively suicidal in court.
no subject
Yeah, there are some ways in which Jingyan is sheltered from needing to learn politics; the fact that he's not favored and everyone knows he's never likely to be favored is a material disadvantage in many ways, but it also means he's very free to go "well screw you all too" and ignore what anyone thinks of him with relatively few consequences for it, because no one thinks of him as a threat to begin with. Nihuang and her power and her province are absolutely a threat in and of themselves, and she's always aware that if she doesn't move very carefully then others will move to keep her in check. (And, of course, the gender element is a factor too, as we sese in the show.)