#yang fang

[dangermousie]

Do I know what this drama is about? No.

Do I care what this drama is about? With a cast this pretty, also no.

[kdram-chjh]

Cdrama: Fangs of Fortune (2024)

Didi adores his gege. He always acts cute and smol next to his ge.

Watch this video on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBxxrJyRO6E/?hl=es

[b1mbodoll]

obsessed w this pic why r they the cutest

[shijiujun]

In which it takes the whole damn village to help Boss Ning kiss his girl, and it pays to have friends like Yu Shisan (most of the time)

A JOURNEY TO LOVE 一念关山 (2023) | EP 12

[movielosophy]

Flourished Peony | With the same goal, how can it be called using you?

[hyog-blog]

Fangs of Fortune: The Game of Yin and Yang

I love how Zhao Yuanzhou is basically embodying the philosophy of Yin and Yang, which is much more flexible and practical than the old-fashioned Christianity-inspired good vs. evil dichotomy.

And because it is Chinese philosophy, we don't get too much of that black-and-white nonsense in the show, but instead, we get to explore 50,000 shades of black, white, and gray playing with each other beautifully. And what better way to convey the ambiguous nature of this world, which seems so bent on the Duality of literally everything, than to take the Evilest Force in the world and attach the most gentle, caring, and loving soul to it (to torment both that soul and everyone who gets to witness this torment).

I mean, the recipe is nearly perfect, it really is. And not only do we get to see this evil mixed with a hefty portion of good (like that drop of white inside the Yin-Yang symbol), but we also get to see the perfectly good and innocent characters mixed with a hefty drop of black (like Bai Jiu who got possessed by Li Lun).

Children are considered by society as the most innocent creatures (okay, Bai Jiu is a teenager, but he could still pass), that's why getting him taken over by someone so dark and broody and ill-intended like Li Lun hits even harder. Like all that innocence becomes tainted by something so bad. And at the same time, being a supposedly innocent child, we also see that Bai Jiu really isn't stainless himself (and he got to explore a bit of his darker side when he betrayed his friends).

And yet, it is also Li Lun, who is not someone abysmally bad (he's just lost, and wounded, and a bit more on the demonic spectrum when it comes to ethics and morality), who gets attracted to that light and purity to get a chance at redemption (which he does get in the end!). It's as if being in that body, chatting with those people, experiencing some friendliness before he got exposed actually mattered to the point that it changed him as well (and thus, that droplet of light in the blackness of Yin started doing its magic, slowly transforming the darkness, giving hope to someone who has seemingly lost it).

There's also Zhuo Yichen and his ability to see the good for what it is and his inability to see evil where there is none. Like, if it was someone else (even in real life probably) they would righteously hate Zhao Yuanzhou no matter what (maybe even knowing that he had no choice but to kill all those people). But this young man not only sees the good in Zhao Yuanzhou, that droplet of light that shines brighter than all that malicious energy, but he actually has enough goodness in him to forgive ZYZ.

Because Zhuo Yichen's beautiful soul, no matter how innocent and pure, has seen despair and lived through so much grief that it also changed him, making him more empathetic than most people (and that's yet another thing that Zhuo Yichen and Zhao Yuanazhou have in common - they both got transformed by the heaviness of their grief, two perfectly gentle creatures who just had to explore the depth of human and demon suffering, and that's why they meet on level ground).

And what makes their relationship especially beautiful, is that they both came to the same point, but moving from different directions of the spectrum - Zhao Yuanzhou was clinging onto his own light in the Ocean of Darkness, but that light was piercing enough for him to survive and remain himself. Zhuo Yichen was light that had lived through pain and grief of unimaginable proportions, and it changed him, but it didn't drag him down into that Ocean of Darkness.

It's a type of equilibrium, and they both, each in their own right, continue looking for ways to find balance in their lives (and then they meet each other and it changes them again). Zhuo Yichen sees that there's always light in the darkness (and Zhao Yuanzhou is a stark example of it), for Zhao Yuanzhou - Zhuo Yichen is that light shining brightly, reminding him that it actually exists, and it grants him absolution. And it also makes things especially painful for him because his darkness (that malicious force) tainted that light (but it didn't, really, it transformed ZYC into something more).

And when Li Lun gives his energy/life force to Zhuo Yichen, and then when ZYC gives all those powers, adding his own, to Zhao Yuanzhou for him to break the barrier and kill Wen Zongyu - this is the reflection of the same Yin and Yang principle, the all-pervasive energies penetrating into each other, becoming one another, ever-changing. Basically what they're saying with this is "I am you and you are me and there's no difference." And not even some magic barrier can stop those energies from becoming one.

Zhuo Yichen actually understood Zhao Yuanzhou even before he got turned into a demon himself (and once again we're shown that it's not that the demons are all bad, you can still choose what to be even if you turn into one, and if you have that droplet of light inside of you, like the Yin and Yang, there's always a chance it will overpower even the borderless Darkness, be it inside a human or a demon heart).

We also get to see how that droplet of light comes in the form of love into Zhao Yuanzhou's life (from Wen Xiao, Zhuo Yichen, and the rest of their little gang), and it slowly transforms him, a very depressed being, who's already suicidal, and in the end, he actually feels alive enough to not want to die. That transformative power of light is actually limitless.

In the show, we see people come out of the darkness of their souls and bad states and depressions to see the light of something more, but then there's also the main bad guy who turned full-on evil because his wife was killed, and we see how that droplet of darkness pushed that person to the brink of becoming a murderer and torturer of both humans and demons.

And there's also the notion of Li Lun with that one thing, one betrayal, one drop of darkness changing him and bringing him close to the brink of turning full-on evil himself (he pretty much is at some point, but he never loses the ability to feel, it's just that he can't process his own grief, pain, and all those emotions that are eating him up). And even for him, who has gone so far, there was still a chance to get back (which he does, having experienced the transformative power of Zhao Yuanzhou's love that has never disappeared). So Li Lun's life is spared and he transfers himself into that piece of root that Zhu Yan saved, for he never stopped caring about Li Lun, and the latter could finally see that in the end.

Even with Wen Xiao, we see how something 'bad' (the death of her father) leads to something 'good' - she is found by the Goddess and later becomes a Goddess herself and gets to meet Zhao Yuanzhou. It's all so relative and nuanced that we can't really say that something is actually good or bad, just like with the show's characters and their personal journeys.

And don't get me started on Ying Lei, the ultimate sunshine boy, who gets dragged into the dark world of human-demon relationships, vengeance, and doomed narrative to pave a path of his own. Sometimes a droplet of light does drown in the Ocean of Darkness, but it still makes a huge difference and transforms everyone's lives before it finally fades away (that, and other people's doomed narratives may also be contagious if you go deep into those relationships). Well, we can argue that his narrative was also doomed from the start but that's a topic for a different essay XD

I just love how the show is not only about good fighting evil, the whole fight is like a veil, a premise, a stage to tell a story about characters that are much more complex than that very familiar dichotomy. And just like in life, good things sometimes lead to bad consequences, and bad deeds can bloom into something wonderful against all odds.

[lansjue]

THE YIN-YANG MASTER: DREAM OF ETERNITY 晴雅集, 2020. ⇄ FANGS OF FORTUNE 大梦归离, 2024.

[kandadze]

Let me walk beside you in the heavy dark. (Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West: Poems, Sister)

Fangs of Fortune, ep 30

This scene lives in my head rent-free. It's the fairy-tale like framing of it that captivated me on the first watch, but then there's also what the scene is about. These two fools, so willing to sacrifice themselves for the other's sake, so eager to spare the other pain, they don't stop to think - not to mention ask - what the other would actually want, lying to each other (by omission, but still) instead. But then ZYC's concern is so palpable; it's almost as if it physically hurt him to see ZYZ so weakened and vulnerable. Offering a hand, offering a shoulder to lean on and support to move forward, out of the dark, is what he can do in that moment, and so he does. It's such a good closing beat, if this was where the show ended I'd be content that whatever happened next, at least they faced it together.

[littlestarpjm]

𝒾 𝒸𝒶𝓃'𝓉 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒸𝒽 𝓎𝑜𝓊

Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020) // Fangs of Fortune (2024) dir. by Guo Jingming

[alipeeps]

Fangs of Fortune | The Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

[usertoxicyaoi]

"Are you crazy? Why did you forcibly suspend your cultivation and bring about your own destruction?"

FANGS OF FORTUNE (2024). EPISODE THIRTY TWO.

[ball-of-butter]

flashback to when i was reading the burning god

[lovingdabeessss]

RWBY MEMES

[melodious-tear]

the squad + last words

[hamliet]

Do you have any thoughts on how RWBY handled the white fang storyline?

Unpopular opinion: it's decent?

Now, now, before people come at me with pitchforks: yes, it's overly simplified. The entire story is a fairy tale, though, so that's not out of place. It also complements the rest of the story thematically, and manages to incorporate nuance and complexity in despite the simplification of issues.

I think it's a mistake to look at the White Fang as a 1=1 of the real life struggles of marginalized groups. That said, there obviously are parallels, and so people aren't mistaken to note those. I just think it's not meant to be an instructional manual and shouldn't necessarily be viewed as one, but rather a conversation starter in some ways. And yes, those conversations can and should include critiques.

So I'll go over the points that I think it did well and how those ties into real life, but also specifically how they work for RWBY's overall story. This does not negate criticisms, especially those by marginalized groups.

In contrast to some other fictional depictions, RWBY actually is better as well because it avoids the number one pitfall of such issues: the X-Men fallacy. I've talked about this in terms of Attack on Titan before, but essentially it's the idea that the problem with depicting discrimination against superpowered people is that, well, there is a logical reason for people to be concerned about superpowers; hence, it almost justifies that very discrimination it seeks to condemn. This isn't present in the faunus/human divide. They are both capable of superpowers.

It also doesn't fall into another common pitfall: the idea that people have to be perfect to be victims of discrimination. The White Fang... has senselessly and cruelly murdered people; doesn't mean faunus discrimination isn't also cruel and senseless and doesn't justify it. And this is something that we do see in real life too--people trying to either completely whitewash the actions of radical anti-oppression movements, which can do awful things, or trying to use these awful things as evidence that these people deserve discrimination when really it's a result of rage and desperation at a society that refuses to give them anything. That doesn't justify the pain of the victims of the awful things (see, Weiss) but nor does it negate the righteousness of that anger.

It does portray the faunus as a fairly diverse group too, when fiction often portrays marginalized groups as a monolith. That's not true. People from one group have very different ideas about what liberation looks like, and what they want to achieve. People in marginalized groups are people, and they can be motivated by a variety of selfless principles and egotistical validation, and neither negate the other. See, Sienna vs. Ghira vs. Adam.

Now, of course within RWBY Ghira's more nonviolent principles more or less win out. That's because RWBY is again a fairy tale where you have to fight to live, but that also doesn't endorse violence. If you expected otherwise, wrong genre. Of course the real world is far more complex, but it's not as if there is no real world basis for this either. Peacemakers exist, and nonviolence has accomplished a lot before. Whether or not that's the be-all-end-all of the faunus struggle in RWBY isn't even clear, so I don't think it's intended to be the be-all-end-all preached moral as it applies to the real world either.

Story-wise, the White Fang functions as a Jungian shadow of society. If you do not take charge of your own life, you are letting others decide for you. The faunus who disagree with the White Fang take it back, because they have to acknowledge it to move forward in society. They have to integrate with it, and accept their own humanity: capable of good and what they might rather deny.

This faction--the faunus who don't like the White Fang--are represented in Ghira, who becomes passive and steps back from aspects of the movement. However, when Blake arrives in Menagerie, this changes, because Blake's entire arc is about integration. Ghira then becomes active, working for the rights of the faunus and for the White Fang to be better rather than simply disavowing the White Fang in an attempt to be a good person, because doing nothing isn't exactly good.

On a more character level, the White Fang exists for Blake's arc. Her Jungian archetype is the Shadow. Like, it's literally her semblance's name. Hence, the idea of the shadow is gonna be important. If you want more on this, @aspoonofsugar has written a meta on it here and another here.

So, for Blake, on a personal level the White Fang (especially under Adam) represents the parts of herself she doesn't like. The part that ran from her family. The part that is violent. And yet, she cannot abandon it or simply disavow it. No, the answer is instead:

We’re not going to destroy the White Fang. We’re going to take it back.

She has to integrate with it, take the good--the righteous anger, the focus on justice and equality.

The White Fang also comments on the microcosm/macrocosm of alchemy.

For the unaware, RWBY is an alchemical story, and the principles of alchemy are represented in the symbol for the philosopher's stone, as seen above. Microcosm: the smaller circle enclosing two people in the center who come together (hence chemical weddings). The square is the four elements: water, earth, fire, air. The triangle is body, heart, and mind. The larger circle is the macrocosm.

The Shadows for Blake on a personal level--microcosm--is Adam. The Shadow on a worldwide, big picture scale--the macrocosm--is the White Fang. Integrating with the shadow isn't only an individualistic endeavor, but also one that benefits society as a whole and brings life to the entire world. The main point of alchemy's philosopher's stone, which Blake, along with the rest of RWBY, are symbolically being transformed into.

I think the main issue with the White Fang, by the way, is its handling of Adam. Typically you don't kill the shadow, though I do think Blake kinda had no choice. Still, I don't think the show fully explored him.

Yet what does work with what we have is that Yang has to face Adam, Blake's shadow, to be with Blake. Yang losing her arm to Adam parallels her being upset about losing Blake to fear, because symbolically Blake can hurt her deeply in the way only a lover can. Blake has to stop running from her shadow and allow herself ot be known and seen by Yang to be with her.

[movielosophy]

The Double | frame