Thoughts on the end

[clevermanka]

It was suggested that I link a post about my thoughts on the ending, so...I'm also pasting the relevant section here in case people don't want to see a couple personal life updates that are in the linked post. I hadn't thought about it being something I should maybe highlight for general fandom discussion--whoops!

I like the ending. It hurts, oh how it hurts, but it's so beautifully constructed from at least episode three that I can't be mad at it. Current western media has a noticeable lack of well-constructed tragedies and this is such a gorgeous one that I can't hate it. No plot twists, no gotcha moments, just a slow build to a Pyrrhic victory that the show producers left justttttt open enough for plausible fix-its. ranalore posted about the last several episdoes a couple days ago, and just yes. All that. The way our beloved heroes hit the ground running after Zhao Yunlan gets back from the past and things just. don't. slow. down until they ... well, stop. And while I probably wouldn't have complained about a canon happy ending for the drama, I feel like, the way it was presented from the early episodes, it wouldn't have been as...idk, powerful? Guo Changcheng sorta being hinted as the lantern wick was a great red herring and made ZYL's sacrifice more believable because of course ZYL would throw himself on that grenade before letting anyone else do it.

And yes, the Bury Your Gays chafes, but the fact that they presented the ending the way they did, considering the Chinese Tragic Romance Tradition, lends a bit of weight to the fact that this is an Actual Romantic Love Story.

Also, I am an emotional sadomasochist.

Comments

[ranalore]

I'll paste my comment over here, too, since it looks like the discussion may have migrated. *G*

If my post in any way inspired this eloquence and love, then the time I spent on it was WORTH IT. While I can understand the perspective of people who wish there'd be a happy ending, and who see GCC as the wick as a dropped thread, I continue to love the ending. It's just so cathartic, and for me, it definitely is a huge factor in my utter devotion. Because I feel it fully gives the characters over to us, if that makes sense, which it may not. Just, I've spent about the past ten years with fandoms imploding and feeling like they're being deliberately and maliciously broken by their creators (during one of the worst personal times of my life, and the two certainly fed each other). So, coming into a new fandom that is not only a closed canon, but a closed canon in which the two main characters both gave their lives to save the world, so there was an ending, but also met in the afterlife and made a promise to find each other again, so there was canon potential for a new beginning, in addition to all the fix-it possibilities...well. It really is a perfect story, in that way. Hope or sorrow—hope and sorrow—whatever direction I want to go in riffing on the ending, I'm not breaking anything. The tragedy has already happened. The story goes on.

[clevermanka]

Thank you! And I realize I should have asked you before linking your post. Mea culpa and apologies.

[ranalore]

No worries! It's a public post, and mostly Guardian-related. I haven't been linking every 30 Days of Guardian post so as not to clutter up the comm, but I'll link the last one and mention people can search by the tag, so that one would be searchable, anyway.

[tassosss]

I think your point about it being "cathartic" is really on point. I feel like so much tv these days is about shock value, and while having some twists are fine, they're not the same as catharsis where you get that emotional cleansing in a tragedy because you know that to do big things like save the world they had to give of themselves, and it happens in an overall quite satisfying sequence of events that build and build, even as you see what it's building toward.

They didn't die because time ran out, or stray bullets, or to give another character a reason to cry. They died with open eyes because it was the only way to take out Ye Zun and save Dixing. I think that's why the bury your gays doesn't bother me very much in Guardian the way that it has completely soured me on other shows.

[extrapenguin]

They didn't die because time ran out, or stray bullets, or to give another character a reason to cry. They died with open eyes because it was the only way to take out Ye Zun and save Dixing. I think that's why the bury your gays doesn't bother me very much in Guardian the way that it has completely soured me on other shows.
+1. Especially when combined with the traditional Chinese romance tropes being very much about tragedy and death.

[china_shop]

They didn't die because time ran out, or stray bullets, or to give another character a reason to cry. They died with open eyes because it was the only way to take out Ye Zun and save Dixing. I think that's why the bury your gays doesn't bother me very much in Guardian the way that it has completely soured me on other shows.

Yes, exactly! <3 <3 <3