#advisor's alliance

[popfishjr]

My gallery is normal.

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

come watch my director's cut of Advisor's Alliance where i am painfully faithful to the historical record. season 1 will consist entirely of 40 minute episodes where sima yi spends all day in bed pretending to be paralysed. every few months, cao cao half-heartedly sends a spy over to check if he's still faking. it's basically just a formality at this point, he's lowkey getting a kick out of reading sima yi's increasingly improbably list of illnesses. this goes on for 10 years.

[zhoudadudugongjin]

If I had a penny for every time Liu Tao played a hot girlboss wife/gf to a flimsy gremlin of a scholar-strategist malewife, who also has a deeply homoerotic friendship with a sad little man he's trying to help become the crown prince I would have two pennies. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Oh and there's also Guy played by Wang Jinsong who has a long and complicated history with the aforementioned asshole father:

Anyway the point of this post is that if you have seen either Nirvana in Fire or The Advisor's Alliance you should definitely check out the other because you would definitely probably enjoy it very much.

[dangermousie]

If someone were to ask what my favorite historical cdrama is (ie not fantasy, real historical place etc) - the answer would be The Advisors' Alliance, a two-season masterpiece that follows the rise of Sima Yi as he and eventually his sons navigate through the rule of Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Cao Rui and Cao Fang and eventually establish the Sima Dynasty.

The first season covers only up until Cao Pi's ascension and the second season the rest.

This drama is smart and beautifully filmed and incredibly acted. There are politics and fights and interpersonal relationships that are very very complex. Romance is deeply tertiary (though Cao Pi x Guo Nuwang are one of my all time fave secondary OTPs of all time) and this really is not the drama to watch for traditional eye candy. Cao Pi is my jam to a ridic degree but he's vvvv much an adult warlord, not a pretty young dude; even those you normally think of in terms of idol looks, like Tan Jianci, look suitably historical and non-idoly:

And oh, this drama would never ever ever in a million years pass censorship nowadays even if they changed their names to fictional ones. There are no good guys here - there are different flavor of monsters, monsters than can love and compose poetry and joke but monsters nonetheless (because they are feudal warlords and their women) and yet from the safe confines of the screen you end up loving some of them a lot - it really is pick which monster team are you.

It feels realistic about the uniform horribleness of those in power and their motivations the way no cdrama past 2019 is allowed to truly be (Eternal Brotherhood and JoL2 are about the only exception and I think it's because in further parts they will walk some of it back or just sidestep it, leaving it implied - it does not confront it head on the way TAA does.) And yet and yet and YET God, I loved some of those characters so so so much!

I mean, my favorite scene in the entire first season is Cao Cao's last sword dance. The aging warlord is a monster - murderous to seize power, terrible father, terrible friend etc etc and yet I love him. He is so magnetic, so smart, so larger than life that you believe this is a man who could establish his rule and bring down a dynasty. I watch his last sword dance and shiver because this is a relic of a bygone era - a man who outlived all his rivals and friends and he's on top of the world but he mourns his lost world and his lost youth - all his achievements legendary but behind him, him about to join the past with all the people he loved and hated the soldiers watching him not even born when he did all his feats. This scene conveys the end of an era very few things do.

[lyselkatzfandomluvs]

Liú Tao 劉濤

For the variety show 王牌對王牌

Bringing back my Nirvana in Fire 瑯琊榜 FEELS! Mù NíHuáng 穆霓凰 !!!

(Which reminds me that her character in the Advisors' Alliance is the mother of both Xiao ShùnYáo and Tán JìanCì's characters!)

[kakmem]

i need to make content of this drama before i explode

[the-wintry-mizzenmast]

肖顺尧 Xiao Shunyao as Sima Shi 司馬師 in The Advisor's Alliance (大軍師司馬懿之軍師聯盟 / 虎嘯龍吟)

This was the first role I saw him in way back in 2017, and I'd forgotten about him entirely until Mysterious Lotus Casebook, and I looked him and a lightbulb went off in my brain. "Oh, he was the hot son," I thought. (Sorry, TJC fans.)

I have always been of the thought that Yaoyao needs to grow out his beard, he does look quite good with a goatee.

[feng-huli]

Cao Zhen wearing white 🤍

[andwhatnot1]

Yu He Wei is such a versatile actor. I'm only one episode in, and I already love his portrayal of Cao Cao! I was worried my brain would get confused after seeing him for so long as Liu Bei in 3K, but once I saw how differently he carried himself and spoke here, my brain just accepted him as Cao Cao

[cangse-sanren]

Original show dialogue: 令君 你跟我 就不要说那些洪别人的客套话啦 我给了令君绝对实权 也就要给令君绝对的信任 宛若民间夫妻 互相谁没个小秘密小心思 但临大事 则能同甘共苦 肝胆相照 不独夫妻间该如此 你我之间 亦该如此

My version: Magistrate, we don’t need to speak politely like with others. I’ve given you real power, and I also give you my absolute confidence. Just as common husbands and wives keep little secrets or thoughts from one another, yet if large problems arise, they can then share weal and woe with utter devotion; not only should man and wife act thusly, but you and I should as well.

For comparison:

Viki subs: Lord Magistrate, you do not have to tell those polite formulas me as to other people. I gave you an absolute and real power. I also gave you my absolute trust. Just like commoners, caring about each other without sharing each secret or small issue, but in the face of great events, sharing joys and sorrows and being in perfect sympathy with each other. This is not only a connection between a common husband and wife but also between you and I.

YouTube subs: Minister, you and me don’t need those holiday words. I gave you real authority. I will give you absolute trust as well. Just like husband and wife, [w]e all have little secrets and thoughts, but when faced the important event we can go through together, trusting each other. Not only the husband and wife should be like that. We should be like that as well.

[eunuch-enjoyer5]

this shameless eunuch-abduction in the advisors alliance made me think of you

bahahaha 🤣 this is so funny thx for sharing 😊

[popfishjr]

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

daddy sima according to wikipedia:

Sima Yi was raised in a strict Confucian manner:[13] He was not allowed to visit his father unless summoned, to speak to his father without being explicitly addressed, and neither was he allowed to be seated in the same room as his father.

this was what inspired my portrayal of cao pi in the bean story btw. cao pi and sima yi became close friends as young men, and i thought it would be cool if they bonded over their impossible to please fathers.

Father tolerated it because Cao Pi never spoke and never moved his folded hands from his lap. He was as unobtrusive as one of the little lacquered cups. 

come watch my director's cut of Advisor's Alliance where i am extremely faithful to the historical record. season 1 will consist entirely of 40 minute episodes where sima yi spends all day in bed pretending to be paralysed. every few months, cao cao half-heartedly sends a spy over to check if he's still faking. it's basically just a formality at this point, he's lowkey getting a kick out of reading sima yi's increasingly improbably list of illnesses. this goes on for 10 years.

[zhoudadudugongjin]

"You fight like a girl." Zhuge Liang sends Sima Yi a dress to make a point.

[dangermousie]

Cao Pi's death scene in Growling Tiger Rising Dragon - I loved that on the verge of death he makes that callback to how he wrote on her hand when they were young...

and his heir, Cao Rui, who has a relationship with his father as messed up as Cao Pi himself had with Cao Cao watches, his loathing for the woman who supplanted his mother, about to burst:

Cao Rui is someone no censor today would let pass - a cross between Caligula and Yeonsangun - who executes painters by the dozens for not capturing the likeness of his dead mother (until he poses for them in women's clothes as her) and who yearns for the love of the father who never liked him and would have killed him if it wasn't for the father's second empress who he loathes for replacing his mother.

The contrast between The Advisors Alliance (both s1 and GTHD) and nowadays is SO stark though this was made less than a decade ago. This drama allowed Cao Pi to be both good (he's genuinely brave, he genuinely loves his second empress, he yearns for his father's love, he's a hell of a ruler/warrior, he tries to save people he cares for) and terrible (he killed his first wife and almost killed his son, he did get rid of his brother, he did a ton of ruthless bad stuff) but that is what makes him feel like a real person and a real period noble and a real period ruler - and the new idiotic restrictions don't get that all the bad stuff he did doesn't make him any less competent or worthy to be king, it just makes him more believable.

PS In general, the level of realism in period cdramas went down drastically. The scene where Tan Jianci talks about the horror of his first kill and his terror of his own own mortality to his sister in law? Brilliant and I cannot imagine in today's drama.

[lyselkatzfandomluvs]

Xiao ShùnYáo 肖順堯

2024 Lunar New Year gala (2/3)

龍拳 dragon punch