Two Things About 三国 So Far

1. It's interesting, how little of what they're saying I understand, and yet how much I understand at the same time. I mean, when I make the effort to pay attention, I understand maybe 70% of the courtly language, 100% of the normal language. (张飞, for example, I understand all the time. His sworn brothers, not so much.) But if I do something else at the same time (as I often do with English, and with run-of-the-mill Chinese in the background) and am not fiercely concentrating, that understanding drops sharply -- but it's not hard to figure out what's going on. My biggest issue right now is getting people's names straight, attaching them to the right faces, and trying to figure out where the 孙 family suddenly came from and why they're on screen, and if I missed them before or something.

2. I really, really want to read (or, I guess, write) genderbent 三国演义 fanfic now, where all the men are women, and all the women are men. I think it would be awesome.

And a final aside: I think it'd be really interesting to see someone critique this show based how/where it strays from canon. Alas, my Chinese is not good enough for me to find a forum doing this -- I suppose I could always bully my parents into watching and giving me feedback?