Things Consumed....
Sep. 21st, 2023 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseA friend of mine is desperate for me to find C-Dramas, specifically Cultivator stories, that I will like. In many ways, this is very sweet. She has introduced me to some great ones, like LInk Click (not a Cultivator story, but, instead time travel), which I devoured.
Most of the time, however, it's hit and miss, mostly miss. Yet, for some reason this CGI nightmare, The Island of Siliang, finally stuck.
The story is great, but the CGI is uncanny valley x one thousand.
Check it:
Image: Feng Mian, villainess, CGI nightmare
To be fair, this particular character, Feng Mian, is supposed to be inhuman (but, really, all the women are too... skinny? something BAD.)
This, meanwhile, is our hero:
Image: Jing Xuan, a boi too pretty to be real
The whole time I am watching it, I'm thinking YOU CHEAP BASTARDS, HIRE REAL ACTORS. Especially since CGI this detailed can't actually have been that much cheaper than all the set design and costuming of a live-action. I will say, that it does mean that the magic and fight scenes are REALLY cool because CGI magic can be anything the imagination can ponder.
So, the basic story is this: There is an island that exists between the Human World and the Realm of the Gods, Siliang, where criminals from either realm are exiled. It's basically this fictional Chinese cosmology's version of Australia, because, in fact, there are people who live on Siliang who were born there, like our too pretty to be a Real Boi hero, Jing Xuan. Speaking of immortals and their ability to fly (which we weren't, but this is a trope in the Cultivator genre), here on Siliang the "bones" of the immortals are tampered with in such a way that they lose their ability to fly and the salt water of the sea that surrounds this island can turn their bodies to ash. So, no escaping. However, the Gods, being infinitely merciful, have a once-in-500-years Redemption Day. On this day, if the prisoners have been exemplary, they can petition for early release, as it were. However, there are mortals on this island and the immortals, as part of having their bones removed, are growing old and aging like the mortals. Thus, some people can't wait for Redemption Day and want out now. So, escape plans are always in the air, if you will.
At some point, in the recent past, the parents of Jing Xuan and his foster sister Tu Li (a mortal, OR IS SHE??), make the single most effective prison break attempt of all time. Dad, a mystical genius, breaks the spiritual barrier between the worlds. BANG. The door is open. He's done this in order to take his wife somewhere where she has a chance of having her immortal bones returned to her, as she's fallen ill with some wasting disease or another. For reasons that have not yet been revealed (to me, at any rate, as I'm only on episode 7), she tells her husband "no" and refuses the escape. Perhaps due to the great shame of, I don't know, driving her husband to such a great crime, she throws herself into the ocean, where she turns to ash. Dad breaks his successful jailbreak spell and tries to save his wife, but also ends up as ash in the ocean. Jing Xuan (an impossibly beautiful child at this point) appears to go after them, leaving Tu Li the sole KNOWN survivor.
So, what I like about this story is a couple of things. We discover by episode 2 that the especially creepy-looking woman with the feather on her head (Feng Mian, pictured above) rescued Jing Xuan from the cliff on that fateful day. We learn through inference that she's become a kind of Mommy Dearest to him. She's trained him to be a Cultivator extraordinaire (who will, of course, surpass the genius of his father one day), but she has erased him from the island's history and is using him for her own escape plans. She's THE VILLAIN, there is zero doubt about that, as she seems to have snuck into island when Dad's genius magic vortex busted down the prison walls. She can fly. So, we know that she's Not From Around Here, although most of the villagers have talked themselves into believing that she can fly simply because she's achieved a certain level of Elder Magician status, since few people live as long as she seems to have (despite also retaining her youthfulness, which shouldn't be possible.)
Okay, so, you know I LOVE stories where part of the dynamic is: are you a good guy aligned with evil by fate or accident or are you kind of just up to no good and evil suits your purposes? Or both?
Jing Xuan feels very BOTH right now. I suspect they are setting him up to be a Tragic Victim of Evil, but whatever, right now, he's smart enough to be figuring out all the LIES of this island, and that's my second favorite thing ever.
Lies.
There are so many lies at play on this island. Jing Xuan, as part of a break-in to the Pavilion of Knowledge (a task assigned to him by Evil Feng Mian, the event that launches this story,) has discovered that the Redemption Day records show none, exactly ZERO people ever having been granted parole, as it were. No one has left this island in all of the recorded history, which may explain why Dad couldn't wait a couple more years to see if his wife could just be allowed a special get out of jail free card for being ill.
Meanwhile, Jing Xuan is also impersonating the second oldest person on the island, the very person who adopted his foster sister Tu Li, when she was orphaned (he has a name, but I've been calling him grandpa). Evil Feng Mian has implied that Jing Xuan gave her "a great gift" some years ago, and I have suspicions that this gift was, in fact, either discovering that grandpa was dead... or actually killing him. My guess is based on the fact that Jing Xuan can cast the illusion to look like grandpa, but he doesn't seem to do it around immortals and has otherwise made it seem as if grandpa is in seclusion in his extreme old age. I'm guessing all this because Feng Mian keeps harassing Jing Xuan for not having mastered the "Illusory Feather Technique," and that this is somehow critical to her plans to baffle the Deity when Redemption Day comes this year..
Anyway, that part isn't super important to the plot. The point is that the story, in general, is just meaty enough to keep me guessing, which I like.
In the way of these things, there are way, way, WAY too many other characters with plots of their own, but the main questions about WTF Evil Feng Mian is up to and the secrets of the island have me hooked.
Most of the time, however, it's hit and miss, mostly miss. Yet, for some reason this CGI nightmare, The Island of Siliang, finally stuck.
The story is great, but the CGI is uncanny valley x one thousand.
Check it:
Image: Feng Mian, villainess, CGI nightmare
To be fair, this particular character, Feng Mian, is supposed to be inhuman (but, really, all the women are too... skinny? something BAD.)
This, meanwhile, is our hero:
Image: Jing Xuan, a boi too pretty to be real
The whole time I am watching it, I'm thinking YOU CHEAP BASTARDS, HIRE REAL ACTORS. Especially since CGI this detailed can't actually have been that much cheaper than all the set design and costuming of a live-action. I will say, that it does mean that the magic and fight scenes are REALLY cool because CGI magic can be anything the imagination can ponder.
So, the basic story is this: There is an island that exists between the Human World and the Realm of the Gods, Siliang, where criminals from either realm are exiled. It's basically this fictional Chinese cosmology's version of Australia, because, in fact, there are people who live on Siliang who were born there, like our too pretty to be a Real Boi hero, Jing Xuan. Speaking of immortals and their ability to fly (which we weren't, but this is a trope in the Cultivator genre), here on Siliang the "bones" of the immortals are tampered with in such a way that they lose their ability to fly and the salt water of the sea that surrounds this island can turn their bodies to ash. So, no escaping. However, the Gods, being infinitely merciful, have a once-in-500-years Redemption Day. On this day, if the prisoners have been exemplary, they can petition for early release, as it were. However, there are mortals on this island and the immortals, as part of having their bones removed, are growing old and aging like the mortals. Thus, some people can't wait for Redemption Day and want out now. So, escape plans are always in the air, if you will.
At some point, in the recent past, the parents of Jing Xuan and his foster sister Tu Li (a mortal, OR IS SHE??), make the single most effective prison break attempt of all time. Dad, a mystical genius, breaks the spiritual barrier between the worlds. BANG. The door is open. He's done this in order to take his wife somewhere where she has a chance of having her immortal bones returned to her, as she's fallen ill with some wasting disease or another. For reasons that have not yet been revealed (to me, at any rate, as I'm only on episode 7), she tells her husband "no" and refuses the escape. Perhaps due to the great shame of, I don't know, driving her husband to such a great crime, she throws herself into the ocean, where she turns to ash. Dad breaks his successful jailbreak spell and tries to save his wife, but also ends up as ash in the ocean. Jing Xuan (an impossibly beautiful child at this point) appears to go after them, leaving Tu Li the sole KNOWN survivor.
So, what I like about this story is a couple of things. We discover by episode 2 that the especially creepy-looking woman with the feather on her head (Feng Mian, pictured above) rescued Jing Xuan from the cliff on that fateful day. We learn through inference that she's become a kind of Mommy Dearest to him. She's trained him to be a Cultivator extraordinaire (who will, of course, surpass the genius of his father one day), but she has erased him from the island's history and is using him for her own escape plans. She's THE VILLAIN, there is zero doubt about that, as she seems to have snuck into island when Dad's genius magic vortex busted down the prison walls. She can fly. So, we know that she's Not From Around Here, although most of the villagers have talked themselves into believing that she can fly simply because she's achieved a certain level of Elder Magician status, since few people live as long as she seems to have (despite also retaining her youthfulness, which shouldn't be possible.)
Okay, so, you know I LOVE stories where part of the dynamic is: are you a good guy aligned with evil by fate or accident or are you kind of just up to no good and evil suits your purposes? Or both?
Jing Xuan feels very BOTH right now. I suspect they are setting him up to be a Tragic Victim of Evil, but whatever, right now, he's smart enough to be figuring out all the LIES of this island, and that's my second favorite thing ever.
Lies.
There are so many lies at play on this island. Jing Xuan, as part of a break-in to the Pavilion of Knowledge (a task assigned to him by Evil Feng Mian, the event that launches this story,) has discovered that the Redemption Day records show none, exactly ZERO people ever having been granted parole, as it were. No one has left this island in all of the recorded history, which may explain why Dad couldn't wait a couple more years to see if his wife could just be allowed a special get out of jail free card for being ill.
Meanwhile, Jing Xuan is also impersonating the second oldest person on the island, the very person who adopted his foster sister Tu Li, when she was orphaned (he has a name, but I've been calling him grandpa). Evil Feng Mian has implied that Jing Xuan gave her "a great gift" some years ago, and I have suspicions that this gift was, in fact, either discovering that grandpa was dead... or actually killing him. My guess is based on the fact that Jing Xuan can cast the illusion to look like grandpa, but he doesn't seem to do it around immortals and has otherwise made it seem as if grandpa is in seclusion in his extreme old age. I'm guessing all this because Feng Mian keeps harassing Jing Xuan for not having mastered the "Illusory Feather Technique," and that this is somehow critical to her plans to baffle the Deity when Redemption Day comes this year..
Anyway, that part isn't super important to the plot. The point is that the story, in general, is just meaty enough to keep me guessing, which I like.
In the way of these things, there are way, way, WAY too many other characters with plots of their own, but the main questions about WTF Evil Feng Mian is up to and the secrets of the island have me hooked.