Yeah, my interests, like yours, tend to veer away from a focus on the momentarily catastrophic, and toward a focus on the more mundane yet long-ranging aspects of life in a given environment. I guess this mirrors my style of studying history, which tends to focus more on the minutiae of the day-to-day experiences of everyday people, rather than on the movements of Great Men or the ins & outs of battle strategy or high-level politicking, etc.
When you say you would have liked to see Eliot & Margo take an interest in the country prior to S3, I think that really gets at part of what I'm reacting to here. They don't take an interest, or they only do when someone proactively brings to their attention an urgent crisis (e.g. when Fen mentions that without magic the peasants are starving, so Eliot distributes manure). They're very focused on themselves and what this change means for their lives, which is totally believable in terms of how self-involved 20-something grad student party animals WOULD act in this situation. But it means that (a) they are shitty rulers, and (b) the picture that we, the viewers, get of Fillory is super biased and constrained. And neither the shittiness of their rule, nor that bias and constraint, are really explored or challenged as the show goes on, even when the actual plot events would seem to provide an opportunity for them to be.
(But no, you're right that this kind of thinking-through isn't where the show shines or even where it's trying to focus.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-03-12 11:22 pm (UTC)When you say you would have liked to see Eliot & Margo take an interest in the country prior to S3, I think that really gets at part of what I'm reacting to here. They don't take an interest, or they only do when someone proactively brings to their attention an urgent crisis (e.g. when Fen mentions that without magic the peasants are starving, so Eliot distributes manure). They're very focused on themselves and what this change means for their lives, which is totally believable in terms of how self-involved 20-something grad student party animals WOULD act in this situation. But it means that (a) they are shitty rulers, and (b) the picture that we, the viewers, get of Fillory is super biased and constrained. And neither the shittiness of their rule, nor that bias and constraint, are really explored or challenged as the show goes on, even when the actual plot events would seem to provide an opportunity for them to be.
(But no, you're right that this kind of thinking-through isn't where the show shines or even where it's trying to focus.)