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

[trobadora]

Ooh, thank you for crossposting this here! It's such a lovely bit of meta. :D

I'm just going to copy my comment over here too, because why not? *g*

I don't think it's a Pyrrhic victory? There's no sense of futility at all; they do save the world. And Shen Wei even gets a reconciliation with his brother. I'd say there's a sense of achievement about it, which is part of why I love it so much. It's not the kind of tragedy where you go, ack, if only you hadn't! And yeah, on top of that the ending is open enough to remain hopeful - it refuses any kind of finality, and so mitigates the sadness. Because they WILL find each other again.

And I know some people are disappointed that Xiao-Guo as the wick didn't go anywhere, but to me, the ending is built up to foreshadowed so well, I really can't see the Xiao-Guo thing as anything but a red herring. (There's even a lantern in Zhao Yunlan's flat! And he has a lantern fruit as his lock screen!)

I was just saying to china_shop the other day that I really can't think of any other ending that would have been nearly as satisfying, even if it had been happier. And I still maintain that what I want most is not a different ending, but a second season where they do find each other again. ♥

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.

Yes! And also, the show utterly commits to the pairing, all the way through. It remains the focus, centre and heart. Not for a moment do we have to doubt that these two are ALL about each other, that nothing short of saving the world could tear them apart. They would never willingly leave each other, and the ending doubles down on that even after death, which is just, ♥ ♥ ♥

(Er. That was a lot of words. But I have a lot of feelings about the ending. SO many feelings, OMG.)

[clevermanka]

I'm glad it spoke to you! Yay for spreading the conversation!

[riventhorn]

I never noticed ZYL's lantern accoutrements!

It never actually occurred to me while watching that Xiao-Guo might be the lantern wick. I felt it was quite apparent as we went along that Shen Wei was going to be noble and self-sacrificing and that ZYL would never let him do it alone.

As you know, I found the ending very satisfying too. It felt very true to the narrative and characters for me.

[trobadora]

zeest discovered the lantern fruit lockscreen here!

I watched it all so fast, I had no time to form much of an expectation, but I did know going in that people had been complaining about a bad ending, so I was afraid of something truly terrible, like Zhao Yunlan surviving without Shen Wei ... (Later, I found out about the terrible schoolboys ending that might have happened, and that would have been even worse than the worst thing I'd imagined.)

I love the ending we actually did get so much.

[clevermanka]

the terrible schoolboys ending
I would not have watched that show, tbh. That sort of thing is why I spoil myself for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

[riventhorn]

The schoolboy ending was ghastly!!!

[trobadora]

So glad we're all united in our hatred of that!

[riventhorn]

I usually like to know endings too for that reason.... and also because I have zero self control and cannot wait to get to the end. :D

[trobadora]

Yeah, seriously. That was a horrible, horrible idea and I still can't believe they actually filmed it.

For Guardian I wasn't nearly as spoiled as I usually am because good drama spoilers were difficult to come by, and also I was just going to watch a few episodes to check out the show ... (And then I mainlined everything in two days, and there was no time to look for spoilers because I couldn't tear myself away from the show. *g*)

[abyss_valkyrie]

I think we're all a little bit emotionally sadomasochist,or why would we be watching this show over and over again knowing what's to come? But you are so right about the ending being that much more of a punch because of the overall atmosphere of the show.It's like,yeah there were happy,comic,cutesy,friendly moments but after a while you could feel some sort of serious tension present around the characters.Obviously happy endings are great but this ending-ugh-it was perfect,I'm so glad they actually gave us Shen Wei and Yunlan until the last second of the series.And thanks to that we have a whole lot of opportunities for fix-its and AUs. :3

[clevermanka]

Two days? How did you survive???

[clevermanka]

I think we're all a little bit emotionally sadomasochist,or why would we be watching this show over and over again
POINT. =D Maybe that's why I feel so at home in this fandom, too. <3

[trobadora]

I ate while watching, and I didn't sleep much. I skipped the opening and ending credits to save time. I really didn't do anything but watch for two days - it was a rush.

(I was home sick, so it's not as if I'd have done anything more productive otherwise. Not sure it was very conducive to swift recovery, though!)

[clevermanka]

Not sure it was very conducive to swift recovery, though!
No kidding! Wow. I feel like you deserve some sort of medal.

[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.

[naye]

As someone who always feels chafed raw by the ending, I'm curious what your take as someone who appreciated it is on the permanent separation of Dixing and Haixing? Because one of the things that hurts me the most is that the entire 40 episodes of the series seems to build towards "Dixingren are just like us" where they get over the 10k year old scars and prejudices left by the war and rebuild a society where they can integrate Dixing and Haixing...and then at the very end we learn that, no, they just completely isolated Dixing and now the two are forever separated.

I'm also curious about how liking the end meshes with reading fix-its and fic set in an "everyone lives" AU. Because for me, the reason I want to read that kind of fic is that I'm looking for something I feel like I didn't get in canon. So I would imagine that if you were satisfied with what canon delivered, you wouldn't want to read things that directly contradict that thing you liked?

[trobadora]

I hope you don't mind me chiming in here!

For the Dixing/Haixing separation, I really don't like it either for all the reasons you mention. But the ending feels so open and hopeful to me, I have a hard time seeing that separation as final. Actually, it just occurred to me (and I can't believe I didn't realise this before!) that the Dixing/Haixing separation can be seen as sort of a larger-scale mirror or metaphor of Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan being separated. So if they are going to find each other again (and they are!), the Dixing/Haixing separation should be likewise temporary. Does that make sense to you?

For the fix-its and handwavey AUs, since I love the ending I don't regard them as necessarily fixing anything, but I love canon divergence at any point in the timeline, and can never get enough of alternate versions of events or all kinds of potential futures. So I want to read them all! Give me EVERY version of these two together.

(The only thing that can put me off a fix-it is if it treats the show's actual ending as stupid or worthless. That just makes me feel defensive of the show.)

[naye]

I feel like maybe I've got a different read on "canon" here? Because to me the hopefulness and them seeing each other again and Haixing and Dixing not being separated forever is something the drama doesn't give me - the drama kills Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan (and Ye Zun and Wang Zheng and Sang Zan and Lao Li) and leaves them dead, and leaves Dixing isolated from Haixing - so I have to seek that hopefully feeling out elsewhere.

I'm actually really confused by your "and they are!", because there is nothing in the drama that does more than show us they want to meet again. We don't even get a hint of that reunion ever taking place (other than in our hearts and in our fanworks).

[trobadora]

Huh, we have very different takes on the final scene in the vortex! To me, the hopefulness is inherent in that scene. The idea that they could actually remain separated forever and that whole scene could just be a futile gesture never even occurred to me. Yeah, strictly speaking they're only saying they want to find each other again, but it reads as a narrative promise to me. I don't need to see it happening to be sure that it will.

[naye]

Meanwhile, to me, if we don't see it - as a time-skip to reincarnation, or as the SID team in the final scene going "there are some strange readings coming from the closed Dixing gate...?" then it hasn't happened, and the final scene is a futile gesture and I am left bereft and grieving and clutching all the fic to make it better.

So yeah, that would definitely do it for both of us (you liking the ending and me hurting from it).

[trobadora]

This is so fascinating! I think we may have just pinned down one of the reasons people react so differently to the ending.

Anyway, more fic makes everything better! Even the best thing in the world is still better with more fic, because I'm greedy. *g*

[clevermanka]

Well, the separation is another that needs to be fixed in the second season! =D Seriously, though, I don't like that aspect of it, and I think it undermines a message of the show. I don't understand why they included it--wasn't necessary or even appropriate for the narrative. I have to wonder (Doylist hat) how much of that plot point was influenced by outside/cultural pressure?

I contain multitudes, so I love the "everyone lives" and handwavey-ending fics. I have zero problems being contradicted when it comes to headcanons. In fact, I enjoy it--as long as it's not done rooodly. The more theories, the better, imo!