Guardian episodes 39 and 40
Jul. 27th, 2020 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayI have so many feels. SO MANY. And they are so complicated. This show really whammied me, I did not expect this.
I went into Guardian knowing that the ending wasn't a 100% happy ending, but not entirely sure what that actually meant in practice. I'd seen a few vids (and peopler reacting to vids) but that was all.![[twitter.com profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
hockeybosh knew even less than that.
By the time we started episode 40, I think we'd both realised that Shen Wei wasn't going to survive to the end credits. And I don't know about HB, but I'd decided that I wanted either both of them to survive or neither, because the idea of one of them having to go on without the other broke my heart too much.
So in that context, the ending was actually less painful than I expected in some ways, while still being terribly sad. Yes, they both died and it was so painful. But there's also that gorgeous sequence in the final scene where they meet on some kind of astral plane and promise to find each other in their next lives, which gives me a lot of hope. Their's is a forever deal in a literal sense, and they'll always find each other and one day they'll get to be together again.
I suspect this is as close as the producers felt they could get to the novel's ending, and I'm okay with that. It leaves a lot of open space for fics and theories.
(HB and I were initially confused about Zhao Yunlan holding a press conference after he died, buttwistedsoup explained the context that it's not really him, it's Zhao Xinci's undergrounder using his body, and it all made so much more sense after that. It also made processing all the feelings a bit easier because neither of us had to think about Zhao Yunlan going on for the rest of his life without Shen Wei, which would have been only slightly less awful than Shen Wei going on without Zhao Yunlan forever but only very slightly.)
So I've got this complex mess of grief, hope, and relief all at once going on. I did not expect to feel so much for this show but here we are. Twitter has already been very kind and supportive with vid and fic recs, this is a lovely fandom. You're all beautiful :D
(If there are people on DW who also want to chime in with vid and fic recs, I won't say no :D)
I feel like I'm going to be processing this show for weeks. And possibly rewatching and blogging each episode to process my feelings more completely.
I spent a lot of time in these episodes marvelling at how little Ye Zun actually knows about human nature and specifically his own brother and Zhao Yunlan. Ultimately that was his downfall, because he was out-played by both of them on so many levels. But his lack of understanding also explains why he has the least healthy coping mechanisms of anyone on this show.
For the last few episodes, I'd been absolutely determined that there was no way Ye Zun could be redeemed or made less awful. Nope, not gonna happen. He's evil and the worst. And then there was that final scene between Shen Wei and Ye Zun, where they finally talked and Ye Zun understood everything, and...okay, I don't like him but I'm also not angry that he got that scene. That he got peace and a possible second chance at not being a total mess. As I noted, so many complicated feelings.
And in the middle of the awfulness of Shen Wei dying, his necklace turned out to contain a 10,000 year old lollipop wrapper. I called it. And it was sad rather than funny, and oh my heart.
Okay, so most of my feelings right now are about Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan, but I do need to take a moment to shout about Guo. And Chu. And Guo and Chu. AND CHU INTERRUPTING HIS BLIND DATE. Guo/Chu forever. And Guo got to be a big damn hero in his own way. His journey has been such a gorgeous story in this.
Came for the detective/professor ship. Fell for the side ship too. What a show.
Honestly, feelings are so tangled up. These episodes were incredibly painful to watch because I've fallen so hard for these characters, but the final scene was healing in a way I didn't expect. Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong sold the characters and their love story so well, without ever being able to kiss or say anything explicit about it being a love story, and somehow that made it all more intense than anything else I've watched for a long time.
I've got a lot of feelings and thoughts about subtext and ships and text, but I think that needs its own post. Heck, I can probably blog about Guardian for weeks without running out of words.
(Which means I'm probably going to be working a lot of my feelings out with fic, as is my way. I've already got another *thought* about a fic for the blindness arc, and somewhere in the back of my brain is a slowly forming fix-it idea. And I really want to write soft fluffy everyone lives fic. This might be a year where I actually post more than two fics for the first time in a long time!)
Yes, there are so many more thoughts but I'm still processing the ending and I'll leave it here for now.
I went into Guardian knowing that the ending wasn't a 100% happy ending, but not entirely sure what that actually meant in practice. I'd seen a few vids (and peopler reacting to vids) but that was all.
By the time we started episode 40, I think we'd both realised that Shen Wei wasn't going to survive to the end credits. And I don't know about HB, but I'd decided that I wanted either both of them to survive or neither, because the idea of one of them having to go on without the other broke my heart too much.
So in that context, the ending was actually less painful than I expected in some ways, while still being terribly sad. Yes, they both died and it was so painful. But there's also that gorgeous sequence in the final scene where they meet on some kind of astral plane and promise to find each other in their next lives, which gives me a lot of hope. Their's is a forever deal in a literal sense, and they'll always find each other and one day they'll get to be together again.
I suspect this is as close as the producers felt they could get to the novel's ending, and I'm okay with that. It leaves a lot of open space for fics and theories.
(HB and I were initially confused about Zhao Yunlan holding a press conference after he died, but
So I've got this complex mess of grief, hope, and relief all at once going on. I did not expect to feel so much for this show but here we are. Twitter has already been very kind and supportive with vid and fic recs, this is a lovely fandom. You're all beautiful :D
(If there are people on DW who also want to chime in with vid and fic recs, I won't say no :D)
I feel like I'm going to be processing this show for weeks. And possibly rewatching and blogging each episode to process my feelings more completely.
I spent a lot of time in these episodes marvelling at how little Ye Zun actually knows about human nature and specifically his own brother and Zhao Yunlan. Ultimately that was his downfall, because he was out-played by both of them on so many levels. But his lack of understanding also explains why he has the least healthy coping mechanisms of anyone on this show.
For the last few episodes, I'd been absolutely determined that there was no way Ye Zun could be redeemed or made less awful. Nope, not gonna happen. He's evil and the worst. And then there was that final scene between Shen Wei and Ye Zun, where they finally talked and Ye Zun understood everything, and...okay, I don't like him but I'm also not angry that he got that scene. That he got peace and a possible second chance at not being a total mess. As I noted, so many complicated feelings.
And in the middle of the awfulness of Shen Wei dying, his necklace turned out to contain a 10,000 year old lollipop wrapper. I called it. And it was sad rather than funny, and oh my heart.
Okay, so most of my feelings right now are about Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan, but I do need to take a moment to shout about Guo. And Chu. And Guo and Chu. AND CHU INTERRUPTING HIS BLIND DATE. Guo/Chu forever. And Guo got to be a big damn hero in his own way. His journey has been such a gorgeous story in this.
Came for the detective/professor ship. Fell for the side ship too. What a show.
Honestly, feelings are so tangled up. These episodes were incredibly painful to watch because I've fallen so hard for these characters, but the final scene was healing in a way I didn't expect. Bai Yu and Zhu Yilong sold the characters and their love story so well, without ever being able to kiss or say anything explicit about it being a love story, and somehow that made it all more intense than anything else I've watched for a long time.
I've got a lot of feelings and thoughts about subtext and ships and text, but I think that needs its own post. Heck, I can probably blog about Guardian for weeks without running out of words.
(Which means I'm probably going to be working a lot of my feelings out with fic, as is my way. I've already got another *thought* about a fic for the blindness arc, and somewhere in the back of my brain is a slowly forming fix-it idea. And I really want to write soft fluffy everyone lives fic. This might be a year where I actually post more than two fics for the first time in a long time!)
Yes, there are so many more thoughts but I'm still processing the ending and I'll leave it here for now.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 03:32 pm (UTC)The ending, tho'...I waffle back and forth between "it is perfect" and "OMG NO". I love me some fix-it fic, for darn sure! Yet that final scene between them is so powerful, I cannot deny the beauty of it. Ah. Here come the tears...
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 04:07 pm (UTC)His portrayals of all the characters he played in this has incredible nuance. I'm kind of in awe that he managed to make me okay with the Ye Zun ending despite what Ye Zun had done to Shen Wei. That took a lot of talent to pull off.
This show has so many complicated feelings.
The ending, tho'...I waffle back and forth between "it is perfect" and "OMG NO". I love me some fix-it fic, for darn sure! Yet that final scene between them is so powerful, I cannot deny the beauty of it.
It really is beautiful. There is no heterosexual explanation for the motions in it, there are tears in both their eyes, it's stunning. Which is why I'm equally happy with canon divergence or fixing it after that scene. And if they couldn't let them both live on the show, then this is the end scene that makes me okay with that.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 03:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, I was talking to a friend a while back who said she needed to know how it ended because she couldn't commit to something that didn't have a happy ending without knowing exactly what she was getting into. When I told her that they both died she said that was fine, she could deal with both of them dying but definitely not with one of them dying and the other surviving
HB and I were initially confused about Zhao Yunlan holding a press conference after he died
This confused me too! I thought maybe I'd missed something while I was doing all of the crying but maybe I didn't and they just didn't explain it properly
I did not expect to feel so much for this show but here we are
Same! I still can't watch it without crying. Fire up an episode for fic research and welp there I go. And even some fics still set me off and I finished the show weeks ago.
If there are people on DW who also want to chime in with vid and fic recs
I've only just started reading the longer stuff but I have a bunch of smaller recs!
https://hils79.tumblr.com/post/623530818290302978/monday-fic-recs
https://hils79.tumblr.com/post/624164874576166912/monday-fic-recs
https://hils79.tumblr.com/post/624799148810616832/monday-fic-recs
Came for the detective/professor ship. Fell for the side ship too. What a show.
No one told me about Guo/Chu beforehand and honestly if Yunlan and Shen Wei hadn't been so ridiculously and intensely in love this show would have been all about Guo/Chu for me. Their blossoming relationship and love for each other was so beautiful and perfect and that blind date scene had me smiling while I was still sobbing over the damn lollipop wrapper
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 04:10 pm (UTC)This confused me too! I thought maybe I'd missed something while I was doing all of the crying but maybe I didn't and they just didn't explain it properly
I think they didn't explain it clearly enough for us who don't know the cultural significance to pick up on it, but why would they in that case? I was relieved to get the explanation because the initial confusion made the ending much more difficult to process.
Their blossoming relationship and love for each other was so beautiful and perfect and that blind date scene had me smiling while I was still sobbing over the damn lollipop wrapper
Same! On all of this but particularly that!
no subject
Date: 2020-07-28 05:58 pm (UTC)I think I have a slightly different reaction to Ye Zun's ending now. Not because it was a sort of redemption but because I saw it as Shen Wei getting two things out of it - the first being the only way he knew how to save everyone else by taking Ye Zun out of the equation (which, you know how we feel about these characters and their terrible plans) and he also got to have a do over of when he couldn't save his brother.
The ending was heartbreaking but it had earned that so I didn't feel cheated.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-28 09:31 pm (UTC)I hadn't seen it from Shen Wei's POV in that way, but I think you're right. I don't think there is a way to redeem Ye Zun necessarily, but he gets another chance and I'm okay with that because it's what Shen Wei wanted/needed.
Shen Wei's plans are terrible and he really needed to find a plan to take Ye Zun out that didn't involve self-sacrifice, but I guess he didn't lose everything. Just a lot.
And that end scene implied he hasn't lost Zhao Yunlan forever either.
The ending was heartbreaking but it had earned that so I didn't feel cheated.
This so much. That's one of the most earned endings I've seen.