A Twist of Things to Come

It's a sickness. I am obsessed. I'm also retreating from life in the hellscape of my world at large right now (pandemic, political...shenanigans, etc.) so it works out nicely.

I have worked up a few cheat sheets to explain the context of xianxia tropes and how they work in this particular Chinese drama, because it was made for an audience familiar with the genre, and there is a lot of stuff that they don't explain or that doesn't make sense in a western worldview.

So, I'm probably going to put up bits of that here, as I go, mainly to have it some place outside my hard drive.

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Here is a video about a character I tend to identify with a lot, because he comes from an upbringing of strict orthodoxy, which he slowly begins to question and eventually confront. I've been there. (He's prettier, a better fighter, and has better hair, but the rebellion against fundamentalism we have in common.)

The subtitles are small, but visible on full screen even though they are white and often against light backgrounds.