some Ye Zun/Shen Wei ship meta
Jul. 18th, 2020 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waterscrollRelated to this fic. (cn: the fic is E-rated noncon.)
Two pieces of meta here. The first one is on the idea that Dixing has no time. The first part of it may be of interest to people who aren't here for the twincest, just bail when it starts to get shippy. The second is on my attempts to start a rewatch (which is going slowly, because like Dixing I have no time) and what I'm seeing and how I'm dealing with it. That one probably is only of interest for people who share my shipping tendencies.
No real warnings for the meta, aside from the obvious: villain apologism and non-graphic twincest.
1. Dixing has no time
I keep turning this over and over in my head, and it keeps meaning different things. Because, what do you not have when you don’t have time? You don’t have schools, because schools are about training people for the future, which only works if you have a future, and time. You don’t have hospitals, because hospitals are about curing people so that they will be healthier in the future, and ditto. There’s no government, because govrnment involves planning for the future, and with no future and no time all the king can do is a sick parody of governance, burning through his life in a haze of signing documents with no purpose. Meanwhile the Treaty can’t be updated or renegotiated, because nothing can change.
(I have some sympathy for the Regent when I think this way. He doesn’t do a lot of good - and what he did to the Chu brothers is abhorent - but maybe he didn’t have a lot to work with. When Shen Wei asks him to reopen schools, maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, maybe it was that he couldn’t, because the timelessness of life in Dixing prevents it.)
There also doesn’t seem to be any historical memory, other than vague mentions of Alliance times. I assume things were better before the Hallows were lost, but I don’t hear a lot of Dixingian talk about the Good Old Days. There are no empty schools and crumbling old hospitals. The awful of the present seems to be the only world they know.
But they do have bars, because when you live in an eternal present a bar is not a bad place to be. It’s a place for enjoying life in the moment. It makes sense that a bar is the main social institution of Dixing.
And look, as the main social institution of Dixing it actually does passably ok. The bar-drinkers of Dixing can organize themselves to overthrow Ye Zun after he literally says that he is going to kill everyone, which,okay, it’s something. When the overthrow of Ye Zun goes down it happens in a bar, because there is no other social institution to work with, because the bar is a social institution that doesn’t require time.
When you don’t have time you also don’t have justice, in the sense of reasonable terms for crimes that can be served. You can’t serve your time, because there is no time.
There is also no forgiveness, at least not in the sense of letting go of the past, because to do that there has to be a past. (There might be forgiveness in other senses.) Ye Zun can’t really distinguish between past and present, the (imagined) betrayals and traumas of the past are still completely present for him. As they would be when time doesn’t pass.
But there’s a seed of redemption hidden there, because if nothing is ever in the past because time never moves forward then any love that ever existed can never be lost. So in the end Shen Wei and Ye Zun hold hands and go home together, even right after killing each other. They once loved each other and that means that by necessity they still do, because Dixing has no time.
It’s so striking, Ye Zun really did get what he wanted in the end. He wanted a world without cheating, betrayal or abandonment, and after death with his brother he found it. And he got it on his own terms, not by letting go and moving forward but by refusing to let go of the past (that wasn’t really past, because Dixing has no time) and stripping away layers of it until he found the pure and beautiful world he wanted, that had in fact always been there. He doesn’t get it for everyone, but he does in the end get it for himself, in an afterlife that looks very much like the palace of Dixing.
2. Rewatching early episodes with wrongshippergoggles
I loved Ye Zun from episode 20, but after watching Ye Zun and Shen Wei hold hands and go home together right after killing each other I was 100% In Ship. I have nothing against hot twincest, but let’s be honest, if it were entirely unrelated characters holding hands and going home together right after killing each other I would still be completely here for it, it is the kind of thing that I am always going to be 100% here for. So here I am, declaring my allegiance and waving my ship flag.
And, it keeps changing how I see canon. In episode 3, Shen Wei talks about how some tragedies are destined from the beginning and about being hurt and disappointed by people. I’m remembering how in the early canon I was convinced that there was going to be a later reveal that Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan had hurt each other badly in the past and I have to say I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t because I love the trope of people loving each other after hurting each other so very much. Well, I guess it was a different ship that I had been wanting all along.
And in episode 2, Shen Wei says to Li Quan that if someone he loved was dying in front of his eyes his first thought would be to exchange his life for his. And I have the following conversation with myself:
Self: Yes, that’s how Shen Wei must have felt when his brother was taken by the Rebel Leader.
Self: No, you idiot, he’s talking about how he felt when Kunlun was taken by the Hallows. Guardian is canonically a love story between Shen Wei and Zheo Yunlan, you can’t make everything about your wrongOTP!
Self: Yes I can, I am a shipper and this is fandom and you can’t stop me. Also, a nice thing about being mind-controlled by an evil villain is that he lets me borrow his evil laugh, so Mwahaha.
And then I think: is this what rewatching the rest of canon is going to be like for me? Oh no I am doomed. And I haven’t even gotten to the whole Ge Lan/Sang Zan thing with an actual pillar.
So, okay, let’s try this.
What it looks like to me now is that ten thousand years ago Shen Wei lost two people that he loved deeply. (I’d say ‘in different ways’ but brotherhood is a canon euphemism for bonking so ::shrug::.) When he vagues about his angst, it’s not always clear which one he’s talking about, or if he’s thinking about both. We’re encouraged to see all his vagueing as about Zhao Yunlan by how beautifully we’re shown Shen Wei pining for him, but that’s not necessrily always the only truth.
If that’s the case, what is going on for Shen Wei is two parallel love stories that don’t intersect. One of them we’re shown openly but the other we’re not clearly shown until the end.
In the previous meta I went on and on about Ye Zun and Zhao Yunlan as pillar and lantern and how they’re the inverse of each other, but if the objects that people become are reflections of their character, well, Shen Wei is a bomb, created by the presence of two different kinds of energy within him. He holds so much inside him and then in the end, well, he explodes.
And in the end the two things still don’t reconcile. To state it as brutally as possible: While Zhao Yunlan is dying out of love for Shen Wei, Shen Wei is holding hands with someone else. It hurts even more because Zhao Yunlan doesn’t have anyone else like that in his life. The closest he gets is his friendship with Zhu Hong and her crush on him, but he states clearly that she’s not in his heart. While Ye Zun is in Shen Wei’s heart, and he even knows it (or knew it, back in the day), he’s just pissy that he’s not the only one.
But (to me, with my shippergoggles) it hurts as much when I describe it from the other side: After ten thousand years of feeling abandoned, Ye Zun finally has Shen Wei say that they are going to go home together, and then Shen Wei leaves him to wait for someone else. I feel like the normal way to read this is: going home is a euphemism for dying and after going up the celestial staircase Ye Zun is dead and so Shen Wei waiting around for Zhao Yunlan isn’t something he’d notice or care about. But I actually want them to be going home together in some real sense so I don’t want to read it that way. If I try to imagine that they die and are lost to each other permanently after just a few minutes holding hands it hurts even more.
But, okay, the story isn’t over yet. So it’s ok that the end hurts, because it’s not really the end. I guess that’s true no matter what shippergoggles I’m wearing. tl;dr, Shen Wei needs a hug, and I think multiple hugs from multiple people, separately or together. Maybe the different forms of energy can be brought together in a way that doesn’t make things explode. That would be really nice.
Point being, canon looks pretty different if I let myself think that some of Shen Wei’s constant vaguely described angst and pining is about his estranged omnicidal brother. I wonder if that will continue to hold up and, if it does, how that will change the rest of canon for me.
Thank you for reading, and if you found anything useful here please do leave a note.
Meanwhile, if Ye Zun interests you, please take a look at In Two Nights and a Day, a highly shippy and fun Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan fic thatextrapenguin wrote for me for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
equalityauction. It's got food porn, Zhao Yunlan being caretaking, and a lot of optimism about the possibility of actually meeting Ye Zun's needs even when they feel overwhelming. It made me very happy to read.
Two pieces of meta here. The first one is on the idea that Dixing has no time. The first part of it may be of interest to people who aren't here for the twincest, just bail when it starts to get shippy. The second is on my attempts to start a rewatch (which is going slowly, because like Dixing I have no time) and what I'm seeing and how I'm dealing with it. That one probably is only of interest for people who share my shipping tendencies.
No real warnings for the meta, aside from the obvious: villain apologism and non-graphic twincest.
1. Dixing has no time
I keep turning this over and over in my head, and it keeps meaning different things. Because, what do you not have when you don’t have time? You don’t have schools, because schools are about training people for the future, which only works if you have a future, and time. You don’t have hospitals, because hospitals are about curing people so that they will be healthier in the future, and ditto. There’s no government, because govrnment involves planning for the future, and with no future and no time all the king can do is a sick parody of governance, burning through his life in a haze of signing documents with no purpose. Meanwhile the Treaty can’t be updated or renegotiated, because nothing can change.
(I have some sympathy for the Regent when I think this way. He doesn’t do a lot of good - and what he did to the Chu brothers is abhorent - but maybe he didn’t have a lot to work with. When Shen Wei asks him to reopen schools, maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t want to, maybe it was that he couldn’t, because the timelessness of life in Dixing prevents it.)
There also doesn’t seem to be any historical memory, other than vague mentions of Alliance times. I assume things were better before the Hallows were lost, but I don’t hear a lot of Dixingian talk about the Good Old Days. There are no empty schools and crumbling old hospitals. The awful of the present seems to be the only world they know.
But they do have bars, because when you live in an eternal present a bar is not a bad place to be. It’s a place for enjoying life in the moment. It makes sense that a bar is the main social institution of Dixing.
And look, as the main social institution of Dixing it actually does passably ok. The bar-drinkers of Dixing can organize themselves to overthrow Ye Zun after he literally says that he is going to kill everyone, which,okay, it’s something. When the overthrow of Ye Zun goes down it happens in a bar, because there is no other social institution to work with, because the bar is a social institution that doesn’t require time.
When you don’t have time you also don’t have justice, in the sense of reasonable terms for crimes that can be served. You can’t serve your time, because there is no time.
There is also no forgiveness, at least not in the sense of letting go of the past, because to do that there has to be a past. (There might be forgiveness in other senses.) Ye Zun can’t really distinguish between past and present, the (imagined) betrayals and traumas of the past are still completely present for him. As they would be when time doesn’t pass.
But there’s a seed of redemption hidden there, because if nothing is ever in the past because time never moves forward then any love that ever existed can never be lost. So in the end Shen Wei and Ye Zun hold hands and go home together, even right after killing each other. They once loved each other and that means that by necessity they still do, because Dixing has no time.
It’s so striking, Ye Zun really did get what he wanted in the end. He wanted a world without cheating, betrayal or abandonment, and after death with his brother he found it. And he got it on his own terms, not by letting go and moving forward but by refusing to let go of the past (that wasn’t really past, because Dixing has no time) and stripping away layers of it until he found the pure and beautiful world he wanted, that had in fact always been there. He doesn’t get it for everyone, but he does in the end get it for himself, in an afterlife that looks very much like the palace of Dixing.
2. Rewatching early episodes with wrongshippergoggles
I loved Ye Zun from episode 20, but after watching Ye Zun and Shen Wei hold hands and go home together right after killing each other I was 100% In Ship. I have nothing against hot twincest, but let’s be honest, if it were entirely unrelated characters holding hands and going home together right after killing each other I would still be completely here for it, it is the kind of thing that I am always going to be 100% here for. So here I am, declaring my allegiance and waving my ship flag.
And, it keeps changing how I see canon. In episode 3, Shen Wei talks about how some tragedies are destined from the beginning and about being hurt and disappointed by people. I’m remembering how in the early canon I was convinced that there was going to be a later reveal that Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan had hurt each other badly in the past and I have to say I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t because I love the trope of people loving each other after hurting each other so very much. Well, I guess it was a different ship that I had been wanting all along.
And in episode 2, Shen Wei says to Li Quan that if someone he loved was dying in front of his eyes his first thought would be to exchange his life for his. And I have the following conversation with myself:
Self: Yes, that’s how Shen Wei must have felt when his brother was taken by the Rebel Leader.
Self: No, you idiot, he’s talking about how he felt when Kunlun was taken by the Hallows. Guardian is canonically a love story between Shen Wei and Zheo Yunlan, you can’t make everything about your wrongOTP!
Self: Yes I can, I am a shipper and this is fandom and you can’t stop me. Also, a nice thing about being mind-controlled by an evil villain is that he lets me borrow his evil laugh, so Mwahaha.
And then I think: is this what rewatching the rest of canon is going to be like for me? Oh no I am doomed. And I haven’t even gotten to the whole Ge Lan/Sang Zan thing with an actual pillar.
So, okay, let’s try this.
What it looks like to me now is that ten thousand years ago Shen Wei lost two people that he loved deeply. (I’d say ‘in different ways’ but brotherhood is a canon euphemism for bonking so ::shrug::.) When he vagues about his angst, it’s not always clear which one he’s talking about, or if he’s thinking about both. We’re encouraged to see all his vagueing as about Zhao Yunlan by how beautifully we’re shown Shen Wei pining for him, but that’s not necessrily always the only truth.
If that’s the case, what is going on for Shen Wei is two parallel love stories that don’t intersect. One of them we’re shown openly but the other we’re not clearly shown until the end.
In the previous meta I went on and on about Ye Zun and Zhao Yunlan as pillar and lantern and how they’re the inverse of each other, but if the objects that people become are reflections of their character, well, Shen Wei is a bomb, created by the presence of two different kinds of energy within him. He holds so much inside him and then in the end, well, he explodes.
And in the end the two things still don’t reconcile. To state it as brutally as possible: While Zhao Yunlan is dying out of love for Shen Wei, Shen Wei is holding hands with someone else. It hurts even more because Zhao Yunlan doesn’t have anyone else like that in his life. The closest he gets is his friendship with Zhu Hong and her crush on him, but he states clearly that she’s not in his heart. While Ye Zun is in Shen Wei’s heart, and he even knows it (or knew it, back in the day), he’s just pissy that he’s not the only one.
But (to me, with my shippergoggles) it hurts as much when I describe it from the other side: After ten thousand years of feeling abandoned, Ye Zun finally has Shen Wei say that they are going to go home together, and then Shen Wei leaves him to wait for someone else. I feel like the normal way to read this is: going home is a euphemism for dying and after going up the celestial staircase Ye Zun is dead and so Shen Wei waiting around for Zhao Yunlan isn’t something he’d notice or care about. But I actually want them to be going home together in some real sense so I don’t want to read it that way. If I try to imagine that they die and are lost to each other permanently after just a few minutes holding hands it hurts even more.
But, okay, the story isn’t over yet. So it’s ok that the end hurts, because it’s not really the end. I guess that’s true no matter what shippergoggles I’m wearing. tl;dr, Shen Wei needs a hug, and I think multiple hugs from multiple people, separately or together. Maybe the different forms of energy can be brought together in a way that doesn’t make things explode. That would be really nice.
Point being, canon looks pretty different if I let myself think that some of Shen Wei’s constant vaguely described angst and pining is about his estranged omnicidal brother. I wonder if that will continue to hold up and, if it does, how that will change the rest of canon for me.
Thank you for reading, and if you found anything useful here please do leave a note.
Meanwhile, if Ye Zun interests you, please take a look at In Two Nights and a Day, a highly shippy and fun Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan fic that
extrapenguin wrote for me for equalityauction. It's got food porn, Zhao Yunlan being caretaking, and a lot of optimism about the possibility of actually meeting Ye Zun's needs even when they feel overwhelming. It made me very happy to read.
