Forgot to add, specifically marked are “High Bresail” (heh) and “Purampet”. What is that last one?
I’m pretty sure it’s deliberate, to fictionalize everything (since it’s not set on Earth anyway).
How so?
It’s a town, but in the Faun/Puck homeland of Puyan on the continent of Ignota, not Tirnanoc. They don’t seem to have a Celtic place naming thing going on there.
Directional control? Maybe they magically levitate but need the winds to go in different directions rather than float like balloons at the mercy of the wind?
I take it back. At first I thought they were mangling the spelling out of ignorance, like they couldn’t be bothered to take even a passing interest in Celtic languages and mythology, which would have been a bit disrespectful, but it’s quite deliberate— and, evidently, successful — at creating the uncanny effect that something is out of kilter. Especially since I cannot put my finger on the system behind the funny spellings. “Ignota” seems like perfectly spelled Latin, for instance. (Good old Terra Ignota)
I gathered that, but what mythological island/city/realm does it represent?
Considering their fear of getting their wings clipped, we see they need them whole, intact, and unbound or they just fall, like the insect wings they are modelled after. I know I was giving the matter too much thought, and they are just meant to be normal flying winged magic fairy people 
OK, there’s a bunch of stuff wrong with the wings from a real world standpoint.
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When not extended they’re flopping, like fabric (I suspect as part of a costume they are fabric or a plastic sheet of some sort). Detached wings are also floppy. I recall reading somewhere that they are “hydrostatic”, by which I assume that fluid in the wing veins make them stiff and that when flying they are stiff and when not flying the fluid goes elsewhere, leaving the wings floppy. Not entirely unrealistic - the human penis works in a similar manner - but it seems to happen very rapidly and makes the wings very stiff, which would require extremely high (for a biological organism) pressure changing extremely rapidly.
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They’re nowhere near large enough to support a human body, or anything like a human body, much less additional weight which we occasionally see them do (carrying babies, or wounded comrades). At least we never see them glide, which would be totally impossible with those wings - if a pix is flying her wings are beating.
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When a pix is viewed from the back without clothing we can get a look at the wing attachments. The points are small, you really have to wonder how a human-sized body can be suspended from such small points without problems or pain, but let’s assume there is some anatomical thing going on allowing it. There don’t seem to be any additional muscles for flight (well, we are dealing with human actors) that we can see, and flight muscles are huge on any flying animal. During an autopsy scene a mention is made of a flight muscle, but it’s not something we can see. Given that it’s implied even a full pix can pass as human with a bit of cosmetic surgery presumably the average human in Carnival Row can’t see it, either. Presumably, there are anatomical differences that doctors and anatomists can easily identify, hence a prominent half-fae passing as human being told all his life to avoid doctors at all costs, but we the viewer aren’t privy to them.
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Flying is enormously energy intensive. Hovering even more so (which is why the only hovering real life flyers are tiny). Pix should be eating constantly to fuel their energy requirements. But they aren’t.
With the above I either have to ferociously suspend my disbelief or give up entirely on the pix. So… whether it makes logical sense or not, flight in the pix is dependent on them having intact wings. Maybe their wings function as much to soak up magical energies allowing flight as much as being the means to fly. Half the time they fly they look like limp bodies dangling from wings, so maybe that’s not so far-fetched. They don’t fly like birds or bats, they fly like insects, but the reason insect flight and mammal/avian flight differ is because size matters in aerodynamics. However the pix fly, it’s not by the rules that govern flight in our world. Somehow or other clipping or severing their wings messes up their ability to fly, the exact reasons being inexplicable because we don’t understand how they can fly at all in the first place. We just don’t know. But in a world like Carnival Row where undead flesh golems like darkashers exist, and divination by reading entrails actually works, I see no reason you can’t have magical flight tied to some biological requirements (like having wings) that wouldn’t work in our world but are mandatory in their world.
I don’t think everything has a 1-to-1 correspondence with mythical places, but you might be better-off looking at Greek or Roman myths, since they’re fauns.
IIRC, there was a reference in one of the episodes about Pix having “hollow bones”, similar to birds, how much weight savings would be achieved if a humanoid skeleton had similar bone structure to avians?
Most of the pix on screen also seemed to be very slightly built, very thin, i’m assuming an obese Pix would have more difficulty generating enough lift to overcome the weight?
It made very little sense to me that Vignettes entire library could suddenly show up in the Burgue. The entire premise of the show was that they abandoned the war and left Tirnanoc to the Pact, how did they retake Anoun if they were bailing? If her home was free why wasn’t she there?
Let’s start with actual human skeletons - adult human skeletons tend to be around 16 (women) to 22 (men) pounds, or around 8-11kg (yes, I know, those two sets of numbers are not entirely in agreement, but it’s a starting point I got to through Google). That’s for an adult human weighing between 140-200+ pounds, or 75-100 kg (yes, yes, again, not entirely in agreement but we’re talking averages anyway.
Bottom line, even if the skeleton had no weight at all you’re not going to save that much weight Most of the weight is things like muscle and internal organs, which can’t be made “hollow”. Birds cut down further on weight by not doubling certain internal organs, so they have only one functional lung, kidney, testicle/ovary, etc. but that only goes so far
Let’s say the average pix is small, slight, and hollow-boned, with less difference between the genders than in humans. Say… the women are 5 foot tall and the men 5 foot 6. Let’s say that a human the same size and body build would be 100 pounds (averaging, again). Let’s take 10 pounds from that for “hollow bones” and maybe other weight-saving traits. That’s still 90 pounds to launch into the air. There haven’t been 90 pounds flying creatures since the pterosaurs died out 65 million years ago. The maximum wing loading of a flying bird these days is around 5 pounds/square foot (25 kg/m2), which means a 90 pound flying critter needs 180 square feet of wing to go aloft (AND some honkin’ big flight muscles to go with it). The pix ain’t got that, not nearly. Nor are their wings optimized for lift.
If the pix fly (and they do) there must be magic involved somewhere.
This. The set design is fantastic. This world looks real, and all locations are “deep” for lack of a better word. Layers and layers - down to the files in the cupboard in the background of a shot in the police station.
And the first episode is the weakest in the series, it looks like it is setting up some pretty standard stuff, and not doing that great a job of it, and then the rest of the episodes are significantly different - better.
I hope this isn’t considered a thread-shit, but I watched the first episode and hated it. Both the overall story and the dialogue are so cliche - we’ve all seen this same thing 100 times before. As a result, you can see what’s coming next miles away. I literally anticipated and said out loud the next lines that came out of a character’s mouth at least twice, maybe three times. And the acting isn’t complete dreck, but they can’t do anything with the shit dialogue/scenes they’re given.
I’ll give it this: it looks good. The production design is excellent, even if the CGI left a lot to be desired.
Seems like a major missed opportunity to me - I was hoping for so, so much better.
Even those of us who liked the series admit the first episode is by far the weakest. As also mentioned, some of it goes in unexpected directions but that’s not until you’re several episodes in so a lot of people who might otherwise enjoyed the second half of the series never got that far.
But if you didn’t care for it you didn’t care for it. That’s OK.
I’d be thrilled if Season 2 hit it out of the ballpark.
I thought the “library” was a painted ceiling to look like a shit ton of books, and what was real was prominently displayed, as in the one book. Still, the implication being her work to seal the library failed and that the religious artifacts are being sold and displayed by humans.
The library could have been found by the Pact, who ended up selling some of their booty to the Burgue.
Concur in toto.
Loved the show! Both of us. Looking forward to the next season.
Love the discussions on the wings and flying. I thought of it but it never bothered me. I also like that pix are bad asses.
I also wondered about the library but, minor spoiler?? the current period is seven years later. Enough time to have found and transported the library.
Love the comparison to Bright as we enjoyed that show!
I forget about xray but love the info. We watched on our TV and so not as easy to use for us. Have to see if I can find it.
I also liked the one noble woman’s journey with her puck neighbor. Thought that was fun.
I did find that there are maps out there of the world with names of the places, which I liked.
I also read that this was originally a movie but somewhere along the way got a series. I’m glad it got the longer time!
Thanks for the discussion!
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I really enjoyed it. The world building was interesting and I liked the storylines. Also appreciated there weren’t 6000 characters to learn and how almost all the stories dovetailed together.
The setting reminded me of a Computer RPG from the 90s or early 2000s called Arcanum. I loved that game.
I constantly thought of Lane Pryce every time the prime minister showed up.
Glad it was renewed and look forward to season 2
Season 2 has started. I’m about 15 minutes into episode 1 and find that I don’t remember much about the first season, even with the lengthy recap at the beginning. I googled to find that there was almost three and a half frigging years between the seasons.
I am really glad Imogen dealt with Ezra such that he will no longer be a problem, but I’m sad to see her and Agreus are now at odds. But that seems to be every love affair in this series.
Sparas are… very scary.
I was hoping to see a few more opinions before I try the new series. I literally can’t remember what the storyline was from the first series.
I assume these are Orlando Bloom and Cara Delavingne, but I can’t recall anyone else in the show. I think that old age thing is setting in.