no time to write a post, got to get back to Guardian

[waterscroll]

...so I can try to finish in time to participate in the Zhao Xinci conversation over at sid_guardian. I'm only at episode 33, I need to hurry. And damn that man guts me whenever I see him onscreen. We see him lose everything: his wife, his relationship with his son, the division that he ran at great personal cost, even his own bodily integrity (I mean his *entire life* for the past 20 years has been one long noncon fic) and sense of self. And he's willing to give all of it up if he has to, because the safety of Haxing is his responsibility and what matters to him and worth whatever he has to give up for it. Worse, I can't find any fluffy happy-ending fixit fic for him in which he gets love and cuddles. Well, that may be my True Destiny in the fandom. But first I need to finish the rest of the series, because there seems to be lots of character arc left for him.

Speaking of Guardian characters who need fixits, fandom is *definitely* meeting my Ye Zun fixit needs. (Thank you extrapenguin!) I'm watching the show with fixit fics open so I can flip over to them when canon feels like it hurts too much. And then I accidentally wrote 4 pages of Ye Zun meta the other day to make myself feel better, I think I'm going to hold on to it until I finish canon and then maybe use it as the basis for fic.

I'm hoping I can produce some actual fic out of all these intense feelings I'm having, that would really be great. In the meantime, back to episodes.

Comments

[extrapenguin]

I think he doesn't inspire the kind of fannish affection that makes people want to fix all his problems for him and shower him with love. And, okay, I can understand why.
It's the "he was mean to the main character(s) and thus must die" effect. (I've seen a few people have knee-jerk negative reactions to Ye Zun based on the fact that he killed half their OTP.) Add to that limited screentime and no childhood trauma, and there'll be less of a "poor woobie, pile kittens on him" faction.

Guardian's storytelling technique of showing you something and then showing you what *really* happened is extremely clever but tends to make me feel like I need to be careful about drawing particular conclusions about canon or even having particular feelings about it. Even reading lots of spoilers doesn't always help. But okay, only a few more episodes to go.
Ha, yeah. And Ye Zun's everything is very back-loaded. Not even via expansion-reveals but plain old stuff only revealed in ep 40.

[waterscroll]

It's the "he was mean to the main character(s) and thus must die" effect.

That completely makes sense.

One way that Guardian is an odd fit for me as a canon is that I tend to never read a canon through the lens of the protagonists but rather treat the protagonists as unreliable narrators of a larger story. So when I see a character being mean to the protagonists I think, hunh, this person has a perspective that we're not being shown and I'd like to figure out what it is.

This feels like a somewhat unfair way to read Guardian since so much is what is distinctive about the canon is the protagonists and the beautifully written romance between them. I think we are intended to read canon from their perspective and that doing so is rewarding. But I think they're still lovely when seen from other perspectives, just maybe less perfect.

So if you're wondering what Ye Zun and Zhao Xinci have in common for me to be drawn to both of them, it's that, they clearly have perspectives on reality that are different from Shen Wei's and Zhao Yunlan's and I like puzzling out what they are.

Speaking of which, I'm watching episode 35 and am kind of frustrated with Shen Wei. I mean he has good intentions, but the human leader and Yashou leader are all googly-eyes for each other and not making time to even really talk to Shen Wei (as he says to Kunlun) and the effect of this is that no one is really looking out for Dixing. Meanwhile all Shen Wei is thinking about is stopping bad Dixing people. I can see how this comes from a good place, he wants to stop harm and save lives. But it also comes from the virtues he has and the virtues he doesn't - he's good at self-sacrifice and not so good at politics.

I wonder if - and this might be a reach - Shen Wei describes himself as a general of a defeated army because on some level he wishes he was, that a part of him wishes he had fought harder for Dixing. Or that he sees himself as defeated because he was so outclassed politically.

I'm also thinking about Ye Zun's choice to become the new Rebel Leader, but I'm going to wait to speculate until I see the back-loaded stuff.

[extrapenguin]

I think we are intended to read canon from their perspective and that doing so is rewarding. But I think they're still lovely when seen from other perspectives, just maybe less perfect.
I agree with this. It's the protagonists doing their best to fix things and do good, and the show doesn't fall into protagonist-centered morality or some of the other pitfalls good vs evil fall to. We see Zhao Yunlan and the SID improve in their treatment of Dixingians, even if true reform is ignored due to the Ye Zun situation. (Had the plot happened with e.g. Zhao Xinci as the protagonist/SID Chief, it'd have looked very different from an audience's POV.)

he's good at self-sacrifice and not so good at politics.
Yep. This is also why Dixing is as bad as it is - he's been up and awake for over a decade and doesn't like the Regent or the stuff with the Lord, but he doesn't replace the system because his childhood was derailed by the system of society collapsing due to the meteor impact, and he doesn't reform the system because he's shit at politics. His YOHE self has the excuse of being young, but ... yeah. He's good at fighting because he has to be, good at teaching and science because he enjoys it, and the only reason he has decisionmaking or political power is because he became a legend while he slept. Then the legend woke and turned out to be just a mortal after all.

I wonder if - and this might be a reach - Shen Wei describes himself as a general of a defeated army because on some level he wishes he was, that a part of him wishes he had fought harder for Dixing. Or that he sees himself as defeated because he was so outclassed politically.
My favorite Watsonian explanation is that he's a drama llama and indulging his penchant for maximally melodramatic speeches. *g* But yeah, his sources of guilt would be interesting to contemplate.