![[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! 😁
