waterscroll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waterscroll) wrote2020-04-12 02:16 pm
waterscroll) wrote2020-04-12 02:16 pm
some early thoughts about Guardian (but honestly more about how I'm feeling now)
I'm up to episode 10 and am delighted to find that there is plenty to think about, it's not just pretty boys pining and lusting prettily after each other, although it is very much that too. And tropey slash fanfic on screen, yes it is that too. But right now I'm also struck by the nature mysticism, which I understand was based in Chinese traditional folk religion in the original novel, and censored about as effectively as the m/m romance. Sure, space aliens, we'll call it that. But what it feels like, at least to me, at least right now, is an allegory about trying to love a terrifying world.
Warning: personal reactions to a canon that I am fairly new to and might be getting completely wrong. I've read some spoilers but not enough to be able to think through more of this show than what I've actually seen on-screen.
So here I am in April 2020 and I haven't left my apartment building for, welp, as of today, exactly a month. I live in a small apartment in a very dense urban area and out of my windows all I can see is other apartment buildings. I can't even see a single tree, or even a blade of grass. I've always been a city dweller, the three years I had to live in a rural area for work were the worst of my life, but I've always been able to go outside to get to parks whenever I wanted to. Well, until now.
People are still going for walks outside but the mayor yells at them to go home. Which makes sense. The city that I live in is having a particularly bad outbreak and I'm in a particularly crowded area. There are now police checkpoints to keep people from going to parks.
So I sit here in this apartment and the natural world is something that I miss and long for and is a kind of beauty that I can't access directly because it might kill me. And I wonder: maybe this is a more normal way of relating to nature, historically, than the way I'm used to. Maybe it's rare for humans to relate to nature the way I previously had, as a kind of public amenity. Right now there's a world out there that is beautiful and terrifying, the kind of terrifying that things are when they are actually dangerous. That's probably what the natural world has been to most people most of the time.
The world of Guardian is full of nature spirits thinly disguised as space aliens. Very thinly. Let's just call them nature spirits. Then there are the spirits of the underworld, very thinly disguised as...oh let's not even bother. The underworld spirits seem to inevitably - or almost inevitably - cause harm to humans that they interact with, even when they try not to. Even when they love them desperately. The only way that they can be kept from doing harm is to return them to the underworld. But because they are capable of loving humans, the cost of that sometimes feels very high.
One non-shippy scene that I found particularly powerful was the conversations between Shen Wei and the plant spirit. Mostly because of Shen Wei's highly expressive face, I found myself able to buy into the worldbuilding and feeling like what looked like a conversation between a professor and a nondescript bush was really a complicated political negotiation between a hell demon and a nature spirit. And, what if the world is actually like this? What if there are spirits everywhere, with emotional lives of their own, in everything that we call nature and the world?
And, what if some of them are motivated by (terrible, impossible) love?
As of where I am in episode 10, Zhao Yunlan is doing his best to seduce Shen Wei. He's working really hard on it, to the point where his co-workers are starting to talk. Shen Wei wants him desperately, pines for him beautifully, but since he actually knows what is going on has some understanding of what is at stake here and he's holding himself back.
I don't, yet, know what is at stake here, because canon is being fairly coy about telling me (and so is Shen Wei). I know what happened to the lesbians in episode 3 who could never touch and then finally did at great cost, because love between an underworld person and an above-ground person will always cause harm (but might be worth it). I know that Shen Wei, in his role as the Black Cloak Envoy, spends most of his time making sure that underground people get returned safely underground before they can do too much harm above ground, including to the people they love. But I also know that Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan were lovers at some time in the past, a very long time ago, and that this is important. As it feels like it should be. Since this is going to be a story about the Power of True Love, they have to find a way to be together again. But what will that mean for their universe?
I am in general very fond of human/deity pairings, but I've mainly worked with them (under a different name) in western canons drawing primarily on western religions. I am delighted to encounter something similar but working from a completely different religious tradition. I'm very happy to have found this show and at this point in canon I'm feeling like I am well on the way to getting extremely invested in it, and also like the emotional roller-coaster is just starting.
Warning: personal reactions to a canon that I am fairly new to and might be getting completely wrong. I've read some spoilers but not enough to be able to think through more of this show than what I've actually seen on-screen.
So here I am in April 2020 and I haven't left my apartment building for, welp, as of today, exactly a month. I live in a small apartment in a very dense urban area and out of my windows all I can see is other apartment buildings. I can't even see a single tree, or even a blade of grass. I've always been a city dweller, the three years I had to live in a rural area for work were the worst of my life, but I've always been able to go outside to get to parks whenever I wanted to. Well, until now.
People are still going for walks outside but the mayor yells at them to go home. Which makes sense. The city that I live in is having a particularly bad outbreak and I'm in a particularly crowded area. There are now police checkpoints to keep people from going to parks.
So I sit here in this apartment and the natural world is something that I miss and long for and is a kind of beauty that I can't access directly because it might kill me. And I wonder: maybe this is a more normal way of relating to nature, historically, than the way I'm used to. Maybe it's rare for humans to relate to nature the way I previously had, as a kind of public amenity. Right now there's a world out there that is beautiful and terrifying, the kind of terrifying that things are when they are actually dangerous. That's probably what the natural world has been to most people most of the time.
The world of Guardian is full of nature spirits thinly disguised as space aliens. Very thinly. Let's just call them nature spirits. Then there are the spirits of the underworld, very thinly disguised as...oh let's not even bother. The underworld spirits seem to inevitably - or almost inevitably - cause harm to humans that they interact with, even when they try not to. Even when they love them desperately. The only way that they can be kept from doing harm is to return them to the underworld. But because they are capable of loving humans, the cost of that sometimes feels very high.
One non-shippy scene that I found particularly powerful was the conversations between Shen Wei and the plant spirit. Mostly because of Shen Wei's highly expressive face, I found myself able to buy into the worldbuilding and feeling like what looked like a conversation between a professor and a nondescript bush was really a complicated political negotiation between a hell demon and a nature spirit. And, what if the world is actually like this? What if there are spirits everywhere, with emotional lives of their own, in everything that we call nature and the world?
And, what if some of them are motivated by (terrible, impossible) love?
As of where I am in episode 10, Zhao Yunlan is doing his best to seduce Shen Wei. He's working really hard on it, to the point where his co-workers are starting to talk. Shen Wei wants him desperately, pines for him beautifully, but since he actually knows what is going on has some understanding of what is at stake here and he's holding himself back.
I don't, yet, know what is at stake here, because canon is being fairly coy about telling me (and so is Shen Wei). I know what happened to the lesbians in episode 3 who could never touch and then finally did at great cost, because love between an underworld person and an above-ground person will always cause harm (but might be worth it). I know that Shen Wei, in his role as the Black Cloak Envoy, spends most of his time making sure that underground people get returned safely underground before they can do too much harm above ground, including to the people they love. But I also know that Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan were lovers at some time in the past, a very long time ago, and that this is important. As it feels like it should be. Since this is going to be a story about the Power of True Love, they have to find a way to be together again. But what will that mean for their universe?
I am in general very fond of human/deity pairings, but I've mainly worked with them (under a different name) in western canons drawing primarily on western religions. I am delighted to encounter something similar but working from a completely different religious tradition. I'm very happy to have found this show and at this point in canon I'm feeling like I am well on the way to getting extremely invested in it, and also like the emotional roller-coaster is just starting.