Carnival Row
May. 5th, 2023 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sultrybutdamagedI was going to mash this post and my April Book post together because I want to be enthusiastic about something and my reading last month was kind of blah. A couple good books and nothing terrible, but not as many that I really enjoyed as usual. But it was getting long, so I’ll talk about books later.
For now, Carnival Row
I had DNFd this after the first two episodes a few months ago, but my sister wanted to watch something fantasy, we’d already gone through Wheel of Time, House of the Dragon, Rings of Power and Shadow & Bone, and I knew she would hate Willow even though I really wanted to rewatch it. (I still do.) So we picked this up and it turns out, the trick to liking this show is to actually watch the third episode.
Cara Delevingne and Orlando Bloom are the stars. They play a fae freedom fighter and a police detective who were in love years ago until the cop, being dumb, faked his own death for melodramatic reasons. Sometimes I don’t enjoy a show if the actors are too famous, like I can’t get past the actor faces to the characters. I sort of had that problem with Cara (she has a very distinctive famous person face, which isn’t a bad thing at all, she’s beautiful, but it was distracting), but I got over it pretty quickly with Orlando. Maybe it was his mustache, I dunno. But his character, Philo, was one of my favorites. Straight-up heroes who turn out to be kinda fucked up inside and do ridiculous things as a result are my type. My other favorite was Tourmaline, a fae erotic poet-turned-sex worker with a heart of gold. She and Cara Delevingne’s character also used to be in a relationship but they manage to be mostly normal about it.
The show is Victorian in the style and themes, even though it’s set in a fictional world, and it’s about fae creatures who immigrate to this human city after their homeland is destroyed in a human war, and then naturally the humans hate having them there and so political turmoil, racism and violence result. It’s not wildly original in the plot but the world is really, really cool. I had the weird feeling watching it that I might have liked it even better as a book, because there would have been time to delve more into how this whole place worked.
Now my one big disappointment with it, which is a spoiler:
They had the set up for a polyamory story and then just didn’t take it. They established canon polyamory as a thing for fae! And then there was a scene where a character said “you have two hands!” (Okay, she said something like “your heart has room for both of us,” whatever, she’s a poet. I’m not.) But then….no.
But other than that I really liked it.
For now, Carnival Row
I had DNFd this after the first two episodes a few months ago, but my sister wanted to watch something fantasy, we’d already gone through Wheel of Time, House of the Dragon, Rings of Power and Shadow & Bone, and I knew she would hate Willow even though I really wanted to rewatch it. (I still do.) So we picked this up and it turns out, the trick to liking this show is to actually watch the third episode.
Cara Delevingne and Orlando Bloom are the stars. They play a fae freedom fighter and a police detective who were in love years ago until the cop, being dumb, faked his own death for melodramatic reasons. Sometimes I don’t enjoy a show if the actors are too famous, like I can’t get past the actor faces to the characters. I sort of had that problem with Cara (she has a very distinctive famous person face, which isn’t a bad thing at all, she’s beautiful, but it was distracting), but I got over it pretty quickly with Orlando. Maybe it was his mustache, I dunno. But his character, Philo, was one of my favorites. Straight-up heroes who turn out to be kinda fucked up inside and do ridiculous things as a result are my type. My other favorite was Tourmaline, a fae erotic poet-turned-sex worker with a heart of gold. She and Cara Delevingne’s character also used to be in a relationship but they manage to be mostly normal about it.
The show is Victorian in the style and themes, even though it’s set in a fictional world, and it’s about fae creatures who immigrate to this human city after their homeland is destroyed in a human war, and then naturally the humans hate having them there and so political turmoil, racism and violence result. It’s not wildly original in the plot but the world is really, really cool. I had the weird feeling watching it that I might have liked it even better as a book, because there would have been time to delve more into how this whole place worked.
Now my one big disappointment with it, which is a spoiler:
They had the set up for a polyamory story and then just didn’t take it. They established canon polyamory as a thing for fae! And then there was a scene where a character said “you have two hands!” (Okay, she said something like “your heart has room for both of us,” whatever, she’s a poet. I’m not.) But then….no.
But other than that I really liked it.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-17 09:53 am (UTC)I love when this happens. :D
I've had Carnival Row on my to-watch list basically since it aired, but clearly not very high, so maybe I'll bump it up a bit!
no subject
Date: 2023-05-19 03:33 pm (UTC)