#(this is a big more compressed and un-elaborated on than i would ideally like for meta but eh

[fatalism-and-villainy]

@hedvig-ulrika replied to this post:

I resonate with everything here. (Even if I haven’t reached all the parts yet.) And especially with everything about Zhou Zishu. He only started working for me as a character after getting to know the novel him. And definitely about the ending too. And wenzhou in general.

I actually first got endeared to Zhou Zishu while watching the show, during the Tian Chuang storyline. That was some great characterization - his assuredness and control over the situation, but also the façade that he’s put on for so long falling back in place. But I don’t think that arc fits in well with the plot of the novel. And his characterization is a bit inconsistent for me in the adaptation, both in the development of his feelings for Wen Kexing (likely due to censorship and the need for them to become closer faster) and his attitude towards the atrocities he’s committed and towards Wen Kexing’s current morality. (Like, we’ve got him being judgmental towards the collateral damage Wen Kexing causes, but then being perfectly nonchalant about Wen Kexing being the Valley Master, but also being wracked with guilt about the fact that he himself has done murders, which would seem to clash with his acceptance of Wen Kexing... I can see what they were going for, but yeah.) 

Furthermore, in the book he’s just not as concerned with penitence and atonement. He does carry the weight of what he’s done - see his flashback to killing that little Jiang girl - and especially of Jiuxiao admonishing him for what he’s done, but it’s not as central. He just wants to move on. And that’s kind of freeing?

And yes, like you, I also got truly attached to him when I read Qi Ye. He’s so much more ruthless there than what really comes across in the show, and there’s such an interesting through-line between where he is in that book and where he ends up in TYK. He has a lot of power in his former position! He’s not put-upon! But he’s constantly scheming and constantly enacting violence, always having to perform propriety and deference when around powerful people, and one of the only authentic relationships in his life, with Jiuxiao, gets ultimately destroyed... he’s just tired! He wants out! 

And there’s such a fascinating new side of him that gets brought out in TYK, because he’s had this inner gremlin just waiting to come out. Think the part where he says “fuck you” to that guy and is just SO thrilled at getting to be rude without consequences, or the part where he’s facing the Jianghu and is like “wait, why do I need to explain myself to these people? I think I will cause problems on purpose instead.” His entire life has been devoted to honing his skills and intelligence, and expending his abilities to the upmost, and once he’s freed himself from those obligations, there’s a playful and irreverent side to him that just flourishes. 

And then Wen Kexing forcefully elbows his way into Zhou Zishu’s life, and he is, at least seemingly, all gremlin and no filter - the exact thing that Zhou Zishu is so unused to, but that I think he comes to find incredibly refreshing. But Wen Kexing actually has some similar issues to Zhou Zishu going on - different circumstances, and some different emotional needs and neuroses, but there’s some palpable commonalities in the way they’ve both been constrained in some way, and in how (I think) they’ve both primarily experienced sex as transactional or a means of negotiation. And now they’re both trying to eke out some kind of joy from the world that they haven’t been able to experience before, in the limited amount of time each has available, and they find that joy through each other - in each other, yes, but also in a way that expands outward. 

And yes, the ending is wonderful. Another reason I’m so fond of it is that Beiyuan and Wu Xi are so involved in it! There’s something very endearing about Zishu’s weird gay friends being involved in his surgery and subsequent recovery, and I’m very happy that with this ending there can be the possibility of Zhou Zishu actually visiting them in Nanjiang the way he initially wanted to. And with regards to Wenzhou, the ending is very wrapped up in the trust they have in each other, as well as the fact the joy the take in each other is connected to the joy of life and the material world (in contrast to Ye Baiyi’s immortality). It’s very thematically strong, I think.