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extrapenguinIn the darkest hours of the night, I am more likely to lie awake in my bed than actually sleep. While this is bad for my alertness, I do get a lot of revelations about myself then. And when I say "myself", I mean "my fandom opinions".
A long time ago, there was a post, the comments of which touched upon what levels of sexual/romantic experience Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan might have. The fandom consensus is that Zhao Yunlan is experienced and Shen Wei isn't; a few commenters discussed the opposite case and expressed their love for the concept. I found myself squicked by it, and now, months later, my brain has decided to tell me why!
Let's take a step back: we have on the one hand an alien with superpowers who is sort of a head of state and widely seen as a hero amongst his kind, and on the other hand a regular human civil servant who is good at leadership and manipulating people. We can all see the power gradient, right? Our war hero could very easily kill or hurt the civil servant physically. And from the points of view of their respective bureaucracies, the war hero is irreplaceable, unlike the civil servant. To add to that, over the course of the series, the war hero alien knows more things than the civil servant, and withholds information even when he could safely tell it. Now, Shen Wei does have his reasons, but I think we can all observe the way the deck is stacked.
Switching our viewpoint to a romantic relationship, Zhao Yunlan's people skills even the ground a bit, but Shen Wei is still someone who habitually keeps secrets from Zhao Yunlan (including unnecessary ones, like that time he went to have a chat with Zhao Xinci and acted like it was a hostile interrogation the moment Zhao Yunlan maturely asked about it). Experience would be a good way to even this – make Zhao Yunlan the experienced one, and he can have fun showing Shen Wei what love and sex and so on can be like! When you put that card as well into Shen Wei's hands, however, it just turns the relationship into something squicky to me.
More commonly, though, I just see stuff that flattens Shen Wei's character unpleasingly. He's the Envoy, confident and competent at it, yes, but he's also more than just the guy who turns himself into justice. (For one, he has a trollish sense of humor. Bears, anyone?) A key trait is the streak of vulnerability: Shen Wei is the person who gets flustered when flirted with, cares very much about Zhao Yunlan's opinion of him, and spends the course of the series scared that Zhao Yunlan might not return to him from the wormhole. To remove that and make him into an authority figure with no weaknesses is to run contra to the show's message that Dixingians are human, too.
On the Zhao Yunlan side of the equation, he is a master manipulator who's capable of landing on his feet no matter what conversation he's dropped in (though occasionally he doesn't want to slip out because that'd be against his morals). I see a lot of people go "ohh he's such a subby sub!" and then cite scenes that to me are very explicitly about him using social judo to get his way. To insert a metaphor, he is a master at limbo: the fact that he bends backwards is incidental; the point is that he got to the other side of the bar like he wanted. He covers himself in a veil of artifice – we know he is both the person who'd ask a foreign diplomat to clean his bedroom and the person who single-handedly planned and then organized the plot to capture Zhu Jiu. His interiority is a lot harder to pin down, but I'd argue that we see a lot of him with minimal pretending during his first trip to Dixing, and that really makes plain how much mask-wearing he does in his regular life.
A long time ago, there was a post, the comments of which touched upon what levels of sexual/romantic experience Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan might have. The fandom consensus is that Zhao Yunlan is experienced and Shen Wei isn't; a few commenters discussed the opposite case and expressed their love for the concept. I found myself squicked by it, and now, months later, my brain has decided to tell me why!
Let's take a step back: we have on the one hand an alien with superpowers who is sort of a head of state and widely seen as a hero amongst his kind, and on the other hand a regular human civil servant who is good at leadership and manipulating people. We can all see the power gradient, right? Our war hero could very easily kill or hurt the civil servant physically. And from the points of view of their respective bureaucracies, the war hero is irreplaceable, unlike the civil servant. To add to that, over the course of the series, the war hero alien knows more things than the civil servant, and withholds information even when he could safely tell it. Now, Shen Wei does have his reasons, but I think we can all observe the way the deck is stacked.
Switching our viewpoint to a romantic relationship, Zhao Yunlan's people skills even the ground a bit, but Shen Wei is still someone who habitually keeps secrets from Zhao Yunlan (including unnecessary ones, like that time he went to have a chat with Zhao Xinci and acted like it was a hostile interrogation the moment Zhao Yunlan maturely asked about it). Experience would be a good way to even this – make Zhao Yunlan the experienced one, and he can have fun showing Shen Wei what love and sex and so on can be like! When you put that card as well into Shen Wei's hands, however, it just turns the relationship into something squicky to me.
More commonly, though, I just see stuff that flattens Shen Wei's character unpleasingly. He's the Envoy, confident and competent at it, yes, but he's also more than just the guy who turns himself into justice. (For one, he has a trollish sense of humor. Bears, anyone?) A key trait is the streak of vulnerability: Shen Wei is the person who gets flustered when flirted with, cares very much about Zhao Yunlan's opinion of him, and spends the course of the series scared that Zhao Yunlan might not return to him from the wormhole. To remove that and make him into an authority figure with no weaknesses is to run contra to the show's message that Dixingians are human, too.
On the Zhao Yunlan side of the equation, he is a master manipulator who's capable of landing on his feet no matter what conversation he's dropped in (though occasionally he doesn't want to slip out because that'd be against his morals). I see a lot of people go "ohh he's such a subby sub!" and then cite scenes that to me are very explicitly about him using social judo to get his way. To insert a metaphor, he is a master at limbo: the fact that he bends backwards is incidental; the point is that he got to the other side of the bar like he wanted. He covers himself in a veil of artifice – we know he is both the person who'd ask a foreign diplomat to clean his bedroom and the person who single-handedly planned and then organized the plot to capture Zhu Jiu. His interiority is a lot harder to pin down, but I'd argue that we see a lot of him with minimal pretending during his first trip to Dixing, and that really makes plain how much mask-wearing he does in his regular life.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-13 12:31 (UTC)You seem to be assuming that I slept well before I got into Guardian, which is incorrect – for as long as I have remembered, I have been having fanfiction-y dreams for whatever it is that I'm currently reading/fannish about! All the advice on sleep hygiene is for naught due to my natural tendency towards a 25+-hour day cycle and overactive imagination...
I am discussing two completely different things! I started out with a realization on why the first thing didn't work for me, then segued into complaining about other things. :P The whole "subby sub" stuff is prevalent enough that one encounters it occasionally; the "inexperienced Zhao Yunlan" stuff I've only seen once.
(And FTR, it's not that I think it would be OOC for Zhao Yunlan to be a sub, it's just that all the "evidence" people cite for him being a sub is about as convincing to me as "He has dark hair, so of course he's a sub!")
no subject
Date: 2019-07-13 13:56 (UTC)Aaah, gotcha!
the "inexperienced Zhao Yunlan" stuff I've only seen once.
Yeah, that gels more with my experience. I was in a convo once about that, but that was actually me speculating about it (not that I want to squick you - I was still trying to puzzle out what I actually believe about Zhao Yunlan's level of experience in the face of a lot of "he's so slutty" interpretations), and neither me nor my speculator-at concluded it was likely.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-13 14:05 (UTC)Yeah, I got you. It's okay for people to like stuff I don't!
I will just complain it beneath a cut.And it's not like I need him to be the Slut King who has had ten thousand sex, I just want him to have some experience of relationships before he starts one with Shen Wei. (On the other hand, I also want Shen Wei to have experience with masturbation and know what sex and kissing are, even if he's not tried it yet! No explanations on what a dick is should happen unless Shen Wei's equipment is so seriously alien that they both need guided tours of the other's bits!)