![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What with the new bts content showing up yesterday, I did something I hadn't since last November/December: clicked around Guardian twitter for an entire evening.
The actual bts content was fun, and have been linked by people much more well-versed in the Real Person side of the fandom than myself. But what I wanted to put down here are a few fandom opinions that I'd never even realised existed before:
1) Apparently, there's an entire subset of the fandom that openly admits to hating Shen Wei and thinks Zhao Yunlan is better off without him? Of course, I never assumed everyone who's into Guardian likes SW or ships SW/ZYL (I know several people whose order is something like: #1 ZYL, #2/3 Da Qing, #3/2 Ye Zun, not to mention those who're only here for Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng), but hate? That was news to me. Most of the critique was of the drama version: which I absolutely get because, let's face it, their having to censor the entire "For all intents and purposes a millennia-old King of Hell" aspect and prune the Past arc into one measly episode pretty much nuked SW's entire backstory and motivation, plus several key points of his characterisation. (Will I ever stop despising the drama for that? The answer is always NO.) There were a couple of anti-novel!SW peeps, too, mostly those who don't fancy the "emotionally manipulative liar" aspect. Which again, fair, but see also: denizen of Hell, not bound by human laws of morality. (It amuses me to no end how in the novel it's Shen Wei who's emotionally manipulative, while in the drama the manipulative one is definitely Zhao Yunlan. But drama!SW isn't all that forthcoming himself, which means neither of them is capable of straightforward communication (novel!ZYL, for all his iffy points, is straightforward to a T) : another reason why I can never truly believe they might have managed a proper romantic relationship in show canon - who the hell would've done the confessing? XD)
What struck me as far more interesting, though, is that I can't recall ever (and not just during yesterday's twitter spree, I mean ever, on any platform) encountering a Shen Wei fan who even remotely dislikes Zhao Yunlan. Though in a way it makes sense? Doting on ZYL is the core essence of SW's being, so you probably can't like SW if you don't also like ZYL 😅
2) More importantly! I finally got an answer to something I've been wondering about for more than a year now: Why is Shen Wei/Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan - or just Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan - practically a drama fandom staple (I think the third most common ship after CSZ/GCC, and with longer, plottier fic to its name than that ship ever had), while there are next to no novel-verse fic with the same?
I'd put it down to a combination of "Zhu Yilong is hot" and Evil is Sexy + Draco in Leather Pants (bless TV Tropes, it really does have a name for everything ^^) but was still kind of scratching my head about it, because people tend to imagine the novel characters with the drama actors' faces anyway, plus I'd always thought Evil is Sexy only applied insofar as said Evil didn't literally murder one of the people he's shipped with, and would have done the same to the other if he hadn't been stopped. Afaik novel!Ye Zun never managed to cause any significant harm to the main couple, but he was still evil, so it'd make more sense - or so I naively assumed - for that ship to be more common in novel-verse.
Now admittedly, I've never subscribed to the Evil is Sexy trope (also, I have zero interest in Malfoy or Snape - make of that what you will ;D), and the only time in my fannish career that I've shipped an antagonist with a protagonist has been Erik/Magneto with Charles/Professor X from the X-Men Alt Timeline movies, so what I'd failed to grasp (but which one fairly entertaining twitter convo was happy to educate me on) was that drama!Ye Zun is considered sexier because he was more evil and wreaked more havoc than his novel counterpart. Conversely, since drama!Shen Wei didn't possess any of his novel counterpart's "violently possessive lover" traits and seemed to actually be willing to forgive his brother for his many, many infractions, it's apparently easier to imagine him being okay with Ye Zun going for ZYL, especially if they get to share. (Another convo by the same people mentioned that they'd never even dream of shipping YZ with either or both MC's in the novel, so I was right about that, at least.)
My sister listened to me rambling about all this, and when I ended with, "Finally, an explanation that makes sense from a canon perspective and not simply a casting perspective!" said: "What was the point of this whole monologue? I hope you're not trying to say you're gonna read threesome fic now. Cos if you are, you better not tell me about any of that!"
Sadly, though, the answer is still "Hell, no!" And I say "sadly" because there are a lot of really interesting-looking fic written by excellent authors for the threesome, but at the end of the day, I still can't stand Ye Zun and have zero interest in anything that (imo) compromises SW's already meagre happiness, so. But it feels good to finally quell the "Why!?" that kept rampaging around in my head whenever I thought about it. (I'm an Analyst, jsyk. I have to know at least some of the reasons for the things I find puzzling, or else they'll just keep cropping up in my thoughts incessantly, making nuisances of themselves at the most inopportune moments.)
I don't think any of this is news to anyone except myself, though. I only frequent a few Guardian-related spaces on DW and AO3, and rarely tumblr - I don't interact on twitter and have never even set foot on the discord. Still, it's good to finally know these things, even several months too late, which is why I wanted to have it here for posterity. The completely and utterly diverse views different people can hold on the same show/book (I understood where they were coming from - yes, even the anti-Shen Wei peeps, when SW is the only reason I'm still even in this fandom and why I started watching Guardian in the first place, meaning no-one is more pro-Shen Wei than I am ^^) both baffles and fascinates me.
Are we gonna talk about the fact that it's nearing the end of 2020, everyone else has already gone through at least three other fandoms, and I still only ever post about Guardian on this journal? Nope! 😁
The actual bts content was fun, and have been linked by people much more well-versed in the Real Person side of the fandom than myself. But what I wanted to put down here are a few fandom opinions that I'd never even realised existed before:
1) Apparently, there's an entire subset of the fandom that openly admits to hating Shen Wei and thinks Zhao Yunlan is better off without him? Of course, I never assumed everyone who's into Guardian likes SW or ships SW/ZYL (I know several people whose order is something like: #1 ZYL, #2/3 Da Qing, #3/2 Ye Zun, not to mention those who're only here for Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng), but hate? That was news to me. Most of the critique was of the drama version: which I absolutely get because, let's face it, their having to censor the entire "For all intents and purposes a millennia-old King of Hell" aspect and prune the Past arc into one measly episode pretty much nuked SW's entire backstory and motivation, plus several key points of his characterisation. (Will I ever stop despising the drama for that? The answer is always NO.) There were a couple of anti-novel!SW peeps, too, mostly those who don't fancy the "emotionally manipulative liar" aspect. Which again, fair, but see also: denizen of Hell, not bound by human laws of morality. (It amuses me to no end how in the novel it's Shen Wei who's emotionally manipulative, while in the drama the manipulative one is definitely Zhao Yunlan. But drama!SW isn't all that forthcoming himself, which means neither of them is capable of straightforward communication (novel!ZYL, for all his iffy points, is straightforward to a T) : another reason why I can never truly believe they might have managed a proper romantic relationship in show canon - who the hell would've done the confessing? XD)
What struck me as far more interesting, though, is that I can't recall ever (and not just during yesterday's twitter spree, I mean ever, on any platform) encountering a Shen Wei fan who even remotely dislikes Zhao Yunlan. Though in a way it makes sense? Doting on ZYL is the core essence of SW's being, so you probably can't like SW if you don't also like ZYL 😅
2) More importantly! I finally got an answer to something I've been wondering about for more than a year now: Why is Shen Wei/Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan - or just Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan - practically a drama fandom staple (I think the third most common ship after CSZ/GCC, and with longer, plottier fic to its name than that ship ever had), while there are next to no novel-verse fic with the same?
I'd put it down to a combination of "Zhu Yilong is hot" and Evil is Sexy + Draco in Leather Pants (bless TV Tropes, it really does have a name for everything ^^) but was still kind of scratching my head about it, because people tend to imagine the novel characters with the drama actors' faces anyway, plus I'd always thought Evil is Sexy only applied insofar as said Evil didn't literally murder one of the people he's shipped with, and would have done the same to the other if he hadn't been stopped. Afaik novel!Ye Zun never managed to cause any significant harm to the main couple, but he was still evil, so it'd make more sense - or so I naively assumed - for that ship to be more common in novel-verse.
Now admittedly, I've never subscribed to the Evil is Sexy trope (also, I have zero interest in Malfoy or Snape - make of that what you will ;D), and the only time in my fannish career that I've shipped an antagonist with a protagonist has been Erik/Magneto with Charles/Professor X from the X-Men Alt Timeline movies, so what I'd failed to grasp (but which one fairly entertaining twitter convo was happy to educate me on) was that drama!Ye Zun is considered sexier because he was more evil and wreaked more havoc than his novel counterpart. Conversely, since drama!Shen Wei didn't possess any of his novel counterpart's "violently possessive lover" traits and seemed to actually be willing to forgive his brother for his many, many infractions, it's apparently easier to imagine him being okay with Ye Zun going for ZYL, especially if they get to share. (Another convo by the same people mentioned that they'd never even dream of shipping YZ with either or both MC's in the novel, so I was right about that, at least.)
My sister listened to me rambling about all this, and when I ended with, "Finally, an explanation that makes sense from a canon perspective and not simply a casting perspective!" said: "What was the point of this whole monologue? I hope you're not trying to say you're gonna read threesome fic now. Cos if you are, you better not tell me about any of that!"
Sadly, though, the answer is still "Hell, no!" And I say "sadly" because there are a lot of really interesting-looking fic written by excellent authors for the threesome, but at the end of the day, I still can't stand Ye Zun and have zero interest in anything that (imo) compromises SW's already meagre happiness, so. But it feels good to finally quell the "Why!?" that kept rampaging around in my head whenever I thought about it. (I'm an Analyst, jsyk. I have to know at least some of the reasons for the things I find puzzling, or else they'll just keep cropping up in my thoughts incessantly, making nuisances of themselves at the most inopportune moments.)
I don't think any of this is news to anyone except myself, though. I only frequent a few Guardian-related spaces on DW and AO3, and rarely tumblr - I don't interact on twitter and have never even set foot on the discord. Still, it's good to finally know these things, even several months too late, which is why I wanted to have it here for posterity. The completely and utterly diverse views different people can hold on the same show/book (I understood where they were coming from - yes, even the anti-Shen Wei peeps, when SW is the only reason I'm still even in this fandom and why I started watching Guardian in the first place, meaning no-one is more pro-Shen Wei than I am ^^) both baffles and fascinates me.
Are we gonna talk about the fact that it's nearing the end of 2020, everyone else has already gone through at least three other fandoms, and I still only ever post about Guardian on this journal? Nope! 😁
no subject
Date: 2020-09-17 04:24 pm (UTC)From:I have been wondering this for just as long as you, even setting aside the final phrase regarding the novel-verse. I just... don't get it. I tried a few fics and came away with DNW DNW!!!
I really don't find evil sexy, either, so that might have a lot to do with it. Also, I don't find deranged sexy, and YZ is definitely no longer sane.
I can -- if I squint -- see how his greater damage output might impress people because I have a huge competence kink but even there... yes, he's more effective than Mianmian, but going by smarts rather than sheer power, your bad guy to go to is really Zhu Jiu. YZ is pretty dumb.
I'm still here and have only added one other fandom since, and that was in 2019!
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 01:12 pm (UTC)From:I tried a few fics and came away with DNW DNW!!!
Always knew I could count on you to join me in the niche corner of Evil/Deranged is Unsexy! 😁
I can -- if I squint -- see how his greater damage output might impress people because I have a huge competence kink...
I also love competent villains (and competent heroes); but the more competent a villain is, the less likely I am to enjoy seeing them redeemed, or even just getting together with one of the heroes. For one, I can't respect a hero who just up and ignores the fact that someone caused so much pain and damage just cos they're attracted to them, but for another, I also can't respect a villain whose motivations (or lack thereof, in the case of the more unhinged examples) are so weak that they'd get turned to the good side through the Power of Love. Which means that I actually don't mind novel!YZ being portrayed as an okay guy who's maybe a bit psycho, while doing the same to drama!YZ seems way odder to me.
...going by smarts rather than sheer power, your bad guy to go to is really Zhu Jiu
Fandom seems to hate him, though, and it looks like he's been permanently relegated to "to be mocked" territory, together with the Regent. Personally, I find them both (especially the Regent) to be more interesting and multi-faceted than YZ; I wish there were more stories that portrayed them as serious villains instead of one-note.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-17 04:41 pm (UTC)From:I can't ship Ye Zun w/Zhao Yunlan, either. Fayjay managed to convince me with Unexpected Legacy, but even among most AU's I'm like ehhh.... no. I do like me some one-sided Ye Zun pining for Shen Wei, though. Because I hate him. 😆
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 12:35 pm (UTC)From:I got about halfway through Unexpected Legacy, and then there was that scene where ZYL gave YZ a liquorice stick and started fantasising about his skill with it and I just... Closed the window, stared off into space for five solid minutes, and went off to configure my AO3 savior app to block all the iterations of that threesome I could think of. I think at that point I realised: if such a good writer couldn't make me stomach YZ/ZYL for more than 2 sentences, no one could XD
I do like me some one-sided Ye Zun pining for Shen Wei, though.
😂 I've never seen that in a fic before! If you can think of any examples, I'd like to read it.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 03:00 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2020-09-17 05:17 pm (UTC)From:I always felt that Shen Wei also cared deeply for him, right to the end, so for me, it's a bit like what you said about Shen Wei fans liking Zhao Yunlan; Shen Wei loves his brother, so I do too (and Zhao Yunlan might feel the same way.)
I'm not trying to morally justify anything Ye Zun did (eating people is 100% definitely bad, as is attempting genocide, lol) and I know other people have different takes on Ye Zun and on the twins' relationship, which is fair! Just wanted to give some perspective on why some of us find him to be likeable and complex and also woobie.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-17 08:42 pm (UTC)From:Oh yes, that's a good point too! Shen Wei's feelings do make a big difference in the end, for what I want to see happen in fic.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 02:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 03:47 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 04:11 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2020-09-17 08:41 pm (UTC)From:And I am utterly baffled that there are people who hate Shen Wei. But then, personally I found Zhao Yunlan incredibly unlikable at the start of the novel, back when I tried it ... (In the drama, I liked him a lot right away, though it was Shen Wei I first fell in love with.)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 02:17 pm (UTC)From:Amen to that! I always wonder why in fiction - fan or pro - all redemption must happen through romantic love and/or sex? Why can't people be redeemed because they themselves saw the error of their ways, or tried to become better with the help of friends, family, therapists, maybe even random people they meet? Why is it that if character X brings Y "out of the darkness," they have to end up together? It's just... I don't get it. Not to say "bad guys" can't or shouldn't find love (either with or without becoming "good"), just that inextricably tying "falling in love" with "being redeemed" is just so...iffy to me. But then again, I am aro. It's probably mostly the (lack of) romantic orientation talking ^^
...personally I found Zhao Yunlan incredibly unlikable at the start of the novel
Ahaha, yeah, I find almost all danmei (Chinese M/M novel) protagonists to be nigh-unbearable, ZYL included. I only managed to get through it because of my intense need to understand some of the more inexplicable choices they'd made on the show. Funnily enough, I went into the novel fully prepared to despise SW because everybody had warned me that he was nothing like his drama counterpart, and while they were of course correct, my favourite character in the novel is still Shen Wei. I like him for entirely different reasons than I like drama SW, though, and overall the drama cast is far, far dearer to me than the novel, so.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 05:50 am (UTC)From:Re: appeal of Ye Zun shipping. Yes! This makes so much sense. Drama Ye Zun has the violent possessiveness that must appeal to fans of novel Shen Wei. He's the edgy character drama!Shen Wei isn't, I guess. (I personally love drama!Shen Wei and am just fine with him not being a demon or violently possessive, but I can get why that's the Shen Wei a lot of fans want or wished they'd gotten from the drama.)
I still find Ye Zun interesting (and, yes, sexy) and ultimately tragic, but I personally can't ship him.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-18 01:50 pm (UTC)From:I think they've all just kind of agreed to juxtapose the drama actor's looks with the novel character's personality, and ignore the entire second half of canon, where the differences between the two versions became more glaring XD That would have been significantly cooler - and hotter! - than what we ended up getting, so I do understand the novel fans' frustration: the idea that they could have had it (because Z1L would have done it beautifully) if China had been just a bit more lenient probably stings more than if it had never been a possibility in the first place.
Drama Ye Zun has the violent possessiveness that must appeal to fans of novel Shen Wei. He's the edgy character drama!Shen Wei isn't, I guess.
This is an excellent way of seeing it! (I sometimes wonder whether they made drama!SW such a good guy specifically because they were bent on killing him off in the end; it'd have been a lot more difficult to get rid of novel!SW - YZ would never have stood a chance against him.)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 03:43 pm (UTC)From:My entire Guardian fic-writing career would have been a lot easier if I could have found a way to ignore Shen Wei apparently wanting to have his brother back. But if that's what he wants, who am I to say that's invalid, so I will do my best to make it happen for him.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 04:06 pm (UTC)From:Yes, I do agree that SW being willing to forgive YZ is a valid interpretation of his actions in the drama. In this post, though, I was talking specifically about shipping - and about the fairly common notion that Ye Zun and Zhao Yunlan would be romantically/sexually attracted to each other completely independently of either of their relationships with SW. Personally, I don't see how SW and YZ loving each other as brothers and ZYL being willing to accept YZ as a part of SW's life has anything to do with the three of them ending up in an OT3 or ZYL ending up with both YZ and SW. It's in fact quite rare (in my experience on AO3, at least, though perhaps I'm not looking in the right places!) to find any longer fic featuring a good or redeemed YZ that doesn't go the threesome route, which I find puzzling.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 05:45 pm (UTC)From:I apologize if you found my comment irrelevant to the conversation you wanted to have; please feel free to delete it.
If you're interested in reading longer fics where Ye Zun is redeemed without being sexually or romantically involved with either Shen Wei or Zhao Yunlan, I'm happy to offer suggestions. I don't intend this offer to contradict your perception that such fics are "rare," only to be helpful if you have a genuine personal interest. (Preferably not an academic one, as I don't want to set an author up to be commented on as the subject of a meta discussion that dismisses or makes judgments about their probable intent.)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 06:40 pm (UTC)From:Oh, certainly. That'd be very welcome. I've read and loved Chrysanthemum Flowers by anecdotalist, BlackWaterVial's fics, synonemous' gamer AU, janonny's two non-OT3 fics, Spirit of the Living (the android AU), Flesh from Bone by ratbones, Discidium, Reparandam by galaxysoup, and Begin Again by enviropony. (Half of these are ones where he was a good guy from the beginning, though, so I'm not sure they count...) Other than the above, I do know of a couple of other popular longfic fitting the theme which didn't click with me for extraneous reasons, but, yep, that's the extent of my knowledge on the topic.
Also, no worries, I have no interest in judging anybody's writing. Any comment I leave on a fic will either be favourable or not at all, and any academic analysis occurs solely in my head :)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 09:09 pm (UTC)From:♥ Though my soul may set in darkness, by
♥ Share My Horizon, by
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 05:55 pm (UTC)From:Also, if you're interested, I love Shen Wei and dislike Zhao Yunlan. :)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-19 06:01 pm (UTC)From: