Guardian (镇魂) 26-32
7 Nov 2018 19:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extrapenguinI finished my first draft of my Yuletide fic, so I now have more time I can dedicate to watching Guardian!
First of all, holy fuck, I love Sha Ya. She's so unapologetically her, and she might be hell-bent on revenge, but she still played her music and was herself. She was part of some ridiculous triangle drama, but she didn't blame her "competitor" for Gu Ban's indecision and such, and instead called him a coward. And it's basically a gender-swapped fridging scenario? Very pleasing. As were her conflicted loyalties at the end when she texted Lin Jing, and declared the Black-Cloaked Envoy should abandon her to her fate. Also, Lin Jing was 100% enamored with her the way she was, and didn't try to change her, and even seemed okay with the fact she was Dixingian. (I think he must have known, from the electricity and the remarks about a lack of stars in the sky.)
The other thing with Sha Ya was the continued "looks can be deceiving" theme they established with Cong Po: Gu Ban was actually shot by another Dixingian, not Zhao Xinci (which, um, I suppose this was before his wife died, so he might be less of an extremist?). Likewise, Wang Xiangyang, master of the Merit Brush, went on a rampage of revenge that was way too elaborate because he thought the blood that could've saved his wife went to save Zhao Xinci instead, and decided this mean that the SID killed his wife and unborn child. (Given the offhand comment about Bai Suxia's bloodtype being shared with only one random and one person who disappeared in an underground fighting ring, the better argument would be that Ye Zun killed Bai Suxia, but I honestly can't blame Wang Xiangyang for not knowing.)
Shen Wei was useful with his old-fashioned tech usage! That is quite a lot to deduce off the wear patterns of a phone booth, but Zhao Yunlan praised him, and Shen Wei put on that expression. You know the one. (Shen Wei has a very nice face.) Of course, that old-fashionedness might've bitten him in the ass later in Dixing, where the Chancellor said his lack of immunity to bullets was due to sharing his life energy. Me, I think it might be due to the fact that he's 10k years old and probably forgot guns existed for a moment. He brought a knife to a gunfight!
The rest of Dixing's political situation is, well. First the Chancellor decreed armed parties to patrol the streets without the Dijun's assent, then Ye Zun got out and took over everything, and guess what, Chancellor: you can only play both sides against the middle for so long until one of them wins, and both of them will hate you. I actually really liked how Ye Zun used his knowledge of Shen Wei (his brother!) to trap him to the pillar, and even if those chains look kind of feebly wrapped/easyish to step out of, well, Shen Wei in chains. Very aesthetically appealing. And Ye Zun taunting him is just the right amount of creepy – he really is into making people run around. Also, his powers are an evil mirror of Shen Wei's – he gets powers by eating the people; Shen Wei by I think observation.
Lin Jing is revealed to be a mole in the SID, which was kind of shockingish? Now he's part of Professor Ouyang's lab with Li Qian, and Professor Ouyang let his doubting new hire be shown around by the doubting slightly older hire.
There was a lot about loyalty: Da Qing had an argument with cat lady Da Ji about staying in the SID, and it was fundamentally about loyalty to the ... SID/surface-world collective vs loyalty to the specific Yashou tribe. We've had similar conversations about loyalty with Zhu Hong, on and off, and the three main Yashou tribe leaders. Ying Chun and Ya Qing clearly are on opposite sides of the "whom to support" debate, and Fourth Uncle wants to remain neutral. A large part of the loyalty to the SID seems to be personal loyalty to Zhao Yunlan, especially from Zhu Hong. The way she feelingsdumped on him and he tried to finesse his way out of the situation without rejecting her outright was very illustrative of his feelings, and the way the show is very very obviously framing Shen Wei as the successful love rival but "no nothing to see here censors, just bros being bros" was tragicomic.
Episode 32 was all about Chu Shuzhi. Turns out that they have three people who can act! The way it ended and contained the paranoia about "was it just a dream?" was a fitting way to tie them to the prior ep with Zhu Hong's dream, though I'm glad it wasn't. We did see another dream, though idk whether Chu Shuzhi sacrificing himself to try to keep his brother Chu Nianzhi from being punished was what actually happened, or what he wishes had happened. We've established that Dixingians can live for a century (since Chu Shuzhi has been punished for a century) and also that they do not eat plants, but what do they eat???? Apart from each other. We know Chu Nianzhi is dead, but transferred his conscience into a doll, and I cannot help but wonder whether he's the Zang Shi who is doing a timeshare in Zhao Xinci's body and trying to keep Zhao Xinci even a little bit merciful.
Oh, and Guo Changcheng grew a brain! FINALLY.
Ya Qing's leet hacking skills and Cong Po's forgetting to close the window = suddenly everyone is after the SID. I really love Zhao Yunlan's loyalty to the team: "None of us should be the scapegoat" etc, and how he really wants to tell the regular citizens what's up to ease any panic and worries. He's being good so far, but since Ye Zun's out of the containment field and wanting to go straight to Haixing vs Dixing, Roud Two, the citizens will eventually know.
From this set, the outstanding ones were 30 and 32. Next, the final stretch! I've been spoiled about the sensicality of the ending and the existence of a few scenes about Shen Wei's perspective of his first meeting with Zhao Yunlan. No further spoilers, please.
(I do like how, compared with Hollywood shows, there are way less histrionics about "OMG YOU BETRAYED ME" or whatever. Less drama for the sake of drama.)
First of all, holy fuck, I love Sha Ya. She's so unapologetically her, and she might be hell-bent on revenge, but she still played her music and was herself. She was part of some ridiculous triangle drama, but she didn't blame her "competitor" for Gu Ban's indecision and such, and instead called him a coward. And it's basically a gender-swapped fridging scenario? Very pleasing. As were her conflicted loyalties at the end when she texted Lin Jing, and declared the Black-Cloaked Envoy should abandon her to her fate. Also, Lin Jing was 100% enamored with her the way she was, and didn't try to change her, and even seemed okay with the fact she was Dixingian. (I think he must have known, from the electricity and the remarks about a lack of stars in the sky.)
The other thing with Sha Ya was the continued "looks can be deceiving" theme they established with Cong Po: Gu Ban was actually shot by another Dixingian, not Zhao Xinci (which, um, I suppose this was before his wife died, so he might be less of an extremist?). Likewise, Wang Xiangyang, master of the Merit Brush, went on a rampage of revenge that was way too elaborate because he thought the blood that could've saved his wife went to save Zhao Xinci instead, and decided this mean that the SID killed his wife and unborn child. (Given the offhand comment about Bai Suxia's bloodtype being shared with only one random and one person who disappeared in an underground fighting ring, the better argument would be that Ye Zun killed Bai Suxia, but I honestly can't blame Wang Xiangyang for not knowing.)
Shen Wei was useful with his old-fashioned tech usage! That is quite a lot to deduce off the wear patterns of a phone booth, but Zhao Yunlan praised him, and Shen Wei put on that expression. You know the one. (Shen Wei has a very nice face.) Of course, that old-fashionedness might've bitten him in the ass later in Dixing, where the Chancellor said his lack of immunity to bullets was due to sharing his life energy. Me, I think it might be due to the fact that he's 10k years old and probably forgot guns existed for a moment. He brought a knife to a gunfight!
The rest of Dixing's political situation is, well. First the Chancellor decreed armed parties to patrol the streets without the Dijun's assent, then Ye Zun got out and took over everything, and guess what, Chancellor: you can only play both sides against the middle for so long until one of them wins, and both of them will hate you. I actually really liked how Ye Zun used his knowledge of Shen Wei (his brother!) to trap him to the pillar, and even if those chains look kind of feebly wrapped/easyish to step out of, well, Shen Wei in chains. Very aesthetically appealing. And Ye Zun taunting him is just the right amount of creepy – he really is into making people run around. Also, his powers are an evil mirror of Shen Wei's – he gets powers by eating the people; Shen Wei by I think observation.
Lin Jing is revealed to be a mole in the SID, which was kind of shockingish? Now he's part of Professor Ouyang's lab with Li Qian, and Professor Ouyang let his doubting new hire be shown around by the doubting slightly older hire.
There was a lot about loyalty: Da Qing had an argument with cat lady Da Ji about staying in the SID, and it was fundamentally about loyalty to the ... SID/surface-world collective vs loyalty to the specific Yashou tribe. We've had similar conversations about loyalty with Zhu Hong, on and off, and the three main Yashou tribe leaders. Ying Chun and Ya Qing clearly are on opposite sides of the "whom to support" debate, and Fourth Uncle wants to remain neutral. A large part of the loyalty to the SID seems to be personal loyalty to Zhao Yunlan, especially from Zhu Hong. The way she feelingsdumped on him and he tried to finesse his way out of the situation without rejecting her outright was very illustrative of his feelings, and the way the show is very very obviously framing Shen Wei as the successful love rival but "no nothing to see here censors, just bros being bros" was tragicomic.
Episode 32 was all about Chu Shuzhi. Turns out that they have three people who can act! The way it ended and contained the paranoia about "was it just a dream?" was a fitting way to tie them to the prior ep with Zhu Hong's dream, though I'm glad it wasn't. We did see another dream, though idk whether Chu Shuzhi sacrificing himself to try to keep his brother Chu Nianzhi from being punished was what actually happened, or what he wishes had happened. We've established that Dixingians can live for a century (since Chu Shuzhi has been punished for a century) and also that they do not eat plants, but what do they eat???? Apart from each other. We know Chu Nianzhi is dead, but transferred his conscience into a doll, and I cannot help but wonder whether he's the Zang Shi who is doing a timeshare in Zhao Xinci's body and trying to keep Zhao Xinci even a little bit merciful.
Oh, and Guo Changcheng grew a brain! FINALLY.
Ya Qing's leet hacking skills and Cong Po's forgetting to close the window = suddenly everyone is after the SID. I really love Zhao Yunlan's loyalty to the team: "None of us should be the scapegoat" etc, and how he really wants to tell the regular citizens what's up to ease any panic and worries. He's being good so far, but since Ye Zun's out of the containment field and wanting to go straight to Haixing vs Dixing, Roud Two, the citizens will eventually know.
From this set, the outstanding ones were 30 and 32. Next, the final stretch! I've been spoiled about the sensicality of the ending and the existence of a few scenes about Shen Wei's perspective of his first meeting with Zhao Yunlan. No further spoilers, please.
(I do like how, compared with Hollywood shows, there are way less histrionics about "OMG YOU BETRAYED ME" or whatever. Less drama for the sake of drama.)
no subject
Date: 2018-11-07 21:14 (UTC)I also like that the resolution to the "vengeance!!" motivation is almost always "you should have stopped to think you moron."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-07 21:23 (UTC)So, so true. I think he does a really lovely job of letting her down gently, while also being honest that Shen Wei is the person dearest to his heart. And... yeahh, imagining what we could've had without the censorship makes me sob.
Shen Wei in chains. Very aesthetically appealing.
Mmmmm, yes. <3
no subject
Date: 2018-11-08 19:47 (UTC)Ha, true. Most people are pretty busy grieving or whatever when they form their hatreds, but every case so far has them destroy themselves going after the wrong target, if there even was an accurate target to begin with.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-08 19:54 (UTC)Shen Wei in chains – and Shen Wei smiling that shy, derpy smile where his whole face lights up! Ahh. Such a nice face.