More on watching Guardian in Corona Times
Apr. 26th, 2020 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waterscrollIn episode 15 Zhao Yunlan visits Dixing for the first time. He asks Shen Wei a fairly dumb question: why is it so dark? And gets the obvious answer: Dixing is underground and light is a scarce resource. Fortunately, Dixing people don't need it to survive.
This was probably intended to hurt when it was written, but sitting here in April 20fucking20, having not left my apartment to see daylight in approximately one billion years (or six and a half weeks, who can tell at this point) this probably hurts more than it was intended to. I don't need sunlight to live. Really, I don't. I'll be fine. And whatever treaty made the Dixing people have to agree to this IS NOT OK AND HAS TO STOP AND IS TERRIBLE AND AWFUL FOREVER. Um. I'm fine. Really. Except that I'm not and neither is the world and now I am having intense feelings about fictional underground-dwellers and it's this damned show's fault.
This episode threw me for an emotional loop and I take back everything I said about this show being emotionally safe. Mostly because this is the episode where finally Shen Wei is in a relationship with the guy he's been pining over for millennia, and you'd think he'd be happy but he's not. I mean there are moments, but mostly he still looks like a tense nervous bunny buried in secrets up to his pining eyes. And I don't know what these secrets are! But I want him to be happy, and right now he's not.
Some of it is maybe the power games. I am utterly in awe of Zhao Yunlan's determination to not only marry a terrifyingly powerful hell demon but to boss him around, pry out all his secrets and get him to do housework. It's kind of hilarious to watch. But the problem with pining for someone for a very long time is that when you finally get together it can be hard to have proper boundaries or protect yourself in any way, and for all Shen Wei's terrifying powers I'm a little worried about him. Maybe more than a little.
But look, that's realistic I guess, and it also makes sense thematically. For all the show is at its heart a romance, it's a romance that is intertwined somehow with the great and unresolved tragedy of this show's universe, which includes but is not limited to Dixing people not being able to see the sun. There's much more at stake here than the love between two people, no matter how prettily they pine and lust after each other. The power balance is weird and out of whack - on an individual level Shen Wei is vastly more powerful than Zhao Yunlan, but it seems (?) that as a whole Haxing is more powerful than Dixing, at least in that it is keeping them underground and out of the sun. There's also apparently a ton of painful history between Haxing and Dixing, as well as between Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan personally, that Zhao Yunlan doesn't know about. How to make a happy relationship out of this mess? Who knows. But damnit show I am expecting you to tell me.
This was probably intended to hurt when it was written, but sitting here in April 20fucking20, having not left my apartment to see daylight in approximately one billion years (or six and a half weeks, who can tell at this point) this probably hurts more than it was intended to. I don't need sunlight to live. Really, I don't. I'll be fine. And whatever treaty made the Dixing people have to agree to this IS NOT OK AND HAS TO STOP AND IS TERRIBLE AND AWFUL FOREVER. Um. I'm fine. Really. Except that I'm not and neither is the world and now I am having intense feelings about fictional underground-dwellers and it's this damned show's fault.
This episode threw me for an emotional loop and I take back everything I said about this show being emotionally safe. Mostly because this is the episode where finally Shen Wei is in a relationship with the guy he's been pining over for millennia, and you'd think he'd be happy but he's not. I mean there are moments, but mostly he still looks like a tense nervous bunny buried in secrets up to his pining eyes. And I don't know what these secrets are! But I want him to be happy, and right now he's not.
Some of it is maybe the power games. I am utterly in awe of Zhao Yunlan's determination to not only marry a terrifyingly powerful hell demon but to boss him around, pry out all his secrets and get him to do housework. It's kind of hilarious to watch. But the problem with pining for someone for a very long time is that when you finally get together it can be hard to have proper boundaries or protect yourself in any way, and for all Shen Wei's terrifying powers I'm a little worried about him. Maybe more than a little.
But look, that's realistic I guess, and it also makes sense thematically. For all the show is at its heart a romance, it's a romance that is intertwined somehow with the great and unresolved tragedy of this show's universe, which includes but is not limited to Dixing people not being able to see the sun. There's much more at stake here than the love between two people, no matter how prettily they pine and lust after each other. The power balance is weird and out of whack - on an individual level Shen Wei is vastly more powerful than Zhao Yunlan, but it seems (?) that as a whole Haxing is more powerful than Dixing, at least in that it is keeping them underground and out of the sun. There's also apparently a ton of painful history between Haxing and Dixing, as well as between Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan personally, that Zhao Yunlan doesn't know about. How to make a happy relationship out of this mess? Who knows. But damnit show I am expecting you to tell me.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-27 07:52 pm (UTC)I think it's likely that I'll find these posts embarrassing once I've engaged with more of canon. So far I've watched up to episode 15 and I binge-read the novel a few days ago in the middle of the night but definitely need to read it again to more fully understand it. I'm glad you're finding my early thoughts worth reading anyway.
the 'demons' in the book are actually evil demons and Shen Wei is the only one who has decided he doesn't wnat to be like that
I really want him to be both. I love that in the show the Dixing people are people with moral weight who are capable of love and whose suffering matters. At the same time I *loved* the young Ghost King from the novel. I get the picture that this isn't drama-verse Shen Wei's backstory but I still can't completely get it out of my mind. Well, I guess it's good that both canons exist.
I hope you aren't spoiled for the ending.
Spoiled for that they both die, yes, I am glad I am not going to be blindsided by that. And I've poked enough around the fandom to know that once I finish crying there will be plenty of fixit fics for me to read. But beyond that...it's not exactly that I'm avoiding spoilers, more that even reading spoilers it's hard to get a full picture of what's going to happen.
I am alas very far away from you but I will think about your garden. It is lovely to get such a kind invitation.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-28 06:57 pm (UTC)I get that! And I'll totally read and love fanfic based on the novel (I'm currently part of a team that turns the novel translation into better English). But... well, I find that overall, merging novel and drama canon turns out to be impossible, so you'll find me discussing them as very separate entities.
Haha I was, and I would not miss the experience for anything. I was so new to the conventions of Chinese drama then.... ah, my innocence, where have you gone.
If you ever want to entertain yourself by reading what an unspoiled Western person's reactions might be, here are mine: https://solo.dreamwidth.org/582623.html
That is true. It gets quite convoluted.
Aww, that's a shame. Maybe one day!