She doesn’t appear on the show after the third ep, just some mentions.
How’d you like Away? Idk if it’s bc Emma is our lead but I don’t like Lu so far, hopefully I warm up to her and she warms up to her commander too
Oh, hmm, well, it’s hard to say how much I liked it as a whole, a lot of it is colored by how much I liked certain parts. I don’t think it fully succeeded, tbh, in what it was attempting, as I mentioned in the previous ask, it was blending different genres and to me, it didn’t fulfill its potential in either. For one thing, Lex, the daughter, her arc seemed so out of place on this show, where the rest of the drama and stakes and characters were on such a different level, and then this teen romance.. And the various adult romances popping up, like, maybe it’s hypocritical to say that when Lu and Mei are my favorite part, but they’re defined by their literal restraint and not following through, it’s not just about the romance but culture and willpower and they only got the one ep, instead of all these random friends and coworkers with their season-long inappropriate arcs.
Yeah, when you start off, Misha and Lu really don’t come across well, which is unfair because Lu especially is correct, Emma was impetuous and didn’t listen and caused the fire, but Emma is also our sympathetic lead so the audience naturally sides with her. As I did too. But I very much started to warm to Lu, partly because of her romantic arc, which is entirely intentional, even the general audience should like her by the end of ep 3, but she also warms to Emma a lot. Also, she’s just funny and badass and so smart and good at what she does. It’s hard to not like her even if she weren’t a wlw.
boocita so i checked out Away and it was way better than the trailer!! ok yeah bit of a family melodrama but also a story of ppl coming together and accepting one another ? with Lu’s character i was eyerolling at the start bc the whole china’s honour thing always reeks of chinese market PR to me now but i loved her arc of deciding what she wants. the photo at the end was really lovely it perfectly encapsulated her growth. oh my god and the wlw pining!!! can you say slow burn? mei asking just to be beside her for a night, oh my god! exquisite
Yeah, the marketing did the show a bit of a disservice! But on the other hand, I thought the show would have a lot more of what we saw in ep 2, action thriller in space but it really pulled on that going forward. Maybe it was trying to draw in the emotional drama crowd that loves This Is Us so much or something. A lot of it was hopeful and, as you said, people coming together.
I actually was thinking something similar about Lu’s character originally except from the opposite perspective, wondering if she was going to be an American’s version of a cold, Honor Above All Chinese stereotype, but mannnn, the way they humanized her and let her grow too.
The WLW PINING WAS THE BEST. God. I really cannot praise it enough in the writing and acting. The only thing I’d change was Mei’s disappearing completely, at the LEAST show a couple of seconds of her reacting to the Mars landing in ep 10? But the two actors sold this true, abiding love story so well. So romantic and beautiful and all about the other person’s wishes. It was just the one ep (for the most part) and I’m still thinking about them.
Hilary Swank and Josh Charles in the same show, like that’s two powerhouse actors right there. Wow. I’m gonna give it a shot just bc of those two lol
And not because of the emotional heartfelt f/f ship I’ve been giffing and posting about?? I see how it is. -_-
But on a more serious note, they’re actually quite lovely as a married couple, both are sympathetic rootable characters Going Through Things.
April has some of the best lines on the show. I’m still laughing about her making up the perfume thing and then smiling while telling Hannah B & Ezekiel to get breath mints (we all know who she’s thinking of) and someone on tumblr really said that april speaks like a repressed renaissance lesbian with the whole fait accompli and patula thing lmaooo can you please gifs april’s lines on the show? I would really appreciate it
Hey, some of us regress to old-timey overly literary kinda European to COPE, okay! 😛
She really does tend to do that, lol, I hadn’t really actually made the connection till you pointed it out, but yeah, like using philandering instead of cheating too. It’s definitely funnier and probably actually has a legit connection to her diving into Christian scholarship, partly because she’s an intense nerd and partly to escape Other Things, but if it’s just a character choice because it’s funny as hell, I’ll take that too.
I’ve added it to my list to gif but probably won’t get to it for a while. 😡
Maddie’s tweet: ” i like #stepril cus april could step on me if she rly wanted wait did i say that out loud @hales_devon”
Lol, the blue check really makes it.
And I hadn’t seen Devon’s reply, hah, they’re having FUN with this.
Had Priory of the orange tree since your rec last year. I stalled because of THE LENGTH but finally I started and finished it last week and I want more of it. Ead and Sabran are just so ~chefs kiss~ Thank you so much! I wasn’t big on fantasy before but now I’m craving more. Do you have other book recs? (I finished a book called Never tilting World today which has a literal goddess whos a gay disaster and in love with her healer/bodyguard right off the bat)
The length was the best part! The establishing, the buildup, the arc!
Uh, but I actually have not really read a lot of books since and liked even fewer, and none really like Priory? Gideon the Ninth and Memory of Empire are probably the two biggest ones but neither are fantasy. Maybe just go through my sparsely used books tag? I guess there’s the Nevernight trilogy, though the f/f takes a super long time to start. There are so many books I’ve heard about and want to get around to (including The Never Tilting World!) but obviously can’t rec yet.
Have you heard of Crier’s War and Iron Heart? It’s a f/f sci-fi/fantasy duology and I just finished it was so good! I think you’d enjoy it, and since I’ve found good book recs from u I thought I’d share the titles in case you haven’t heard of them :)
I’m pleased you liked it, anon! Sadly, I did try Crier’s War and honestly tried to keep with it for a while, since I’d preordered it off a premise that sounded so fun but I just wasn’t able to get into it.
andy/quynh is truly the most devastating and delicious pairing I can imagine; rly wish that we could see them overcome quynh’s 500 yrs of water trauma but man…. that might be too much to come back from. even tho all i rly want is to see them happy together!! pre-water andy/quynh is peak tho, can u imagine, 2500 yrs of beautiful partnership where they kill warlords and save innocents and just EXIST w each other … hurts to think ab
Ughhh, you’re right, for millennia they had that eternal happy ending you want for other ships. And then, taken away from them! And instead…this. I dunno how, but I so want them to come back from the torture too, like what’s the point otherwise??? That the totally undeserved and incomprehensibly cruel suffering others inflicted on you will break you and that’s just that? You may get a few seconds of redemption at the end if you sacrifice yourself or something? No! Happy ending or nothing. :<
Lu’s backstory in Away ep.3 portrayed much more accurate representation of Asian Chinese individual’s duty/responsibility towards one’s family, society, & country, than Mulan(2020) did. That Disney movie is just a lame attempt to show film+cast diversity & playing out Westerners fetish on Ancient China. I am just so mad at how they didn’t bother to put in any effort. The movie’s dialogues are just TRASH. It’s like preschool kids’ skit. Ppl are better off watching old HK movies on Netflix w subs.
Oh, that’s a great point, it’s such a relevant and recent comparison. Such an effective and moving portrayal, as bittersweet as it was, you get that it’s all wrapped up in not just, like…a burden, but an actual sense of wanting to do it. Which, obviously, there are so many nuances and layers to that and I truly do hope that once Lu gets back, she finds a balance that lets her and Mei be together (I’m gonna need all the fic here), but I get her decisions.
Although, isn’t Away also through a certain lens? Where Emma is the good guy through it all (and I mean, like, I loved her as a character, but stepping back a bit at what she represents) and you have the CNSA so hateable. I was literally telling my friend as I was watching, I’m hating this fictional Chinese woman written by Americans, not sure how to feel about that. Especially because then on the other hand, in real life, it probably WOULD be like that so it’d be a disservice to paint it too differently. I guess we landed on the best outcome being that while the homophobia in China shouldn’t be glossed over, the US’s flaws shouldn’t be either.
Full disclosure, I have not watched the new Mulan at all barring the parts with Gong Li, but I assumed she went because her father is sick? But yeah, Disney really went and didn’t hire a single Chinese writer for it. I guess that showed, from the criticism I’ve been reading.