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sid_guardian2020-08-15 11:14 am
china_shop) wrote in sid_guardian2020-08-15 11:14 am
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Focus on Bai Suxia and Wang Xiangyang
This post is based on the drama versions of Wang Xiangyang and Bai Suxia. According to the Dramatis Personae (novel edition), in the novel Wang Xiangyang is the “malevolent ghost of an orange seller who died in a car accident at 62.” Please feel free to discuss or compare the novel character in the comments!
Bai Suxia and Wang Xiangyang run the fruit stand next-door to the SID. They’ve been there since Zhao Xinci’s days, and they have a good relationship with the SID, placing a lot of trust in them. When we meet them, Bai Suxia is visibly pregnant, and Wang Xiangyang fusses over her. They are living a poor, simple life and looking to a hopeful future. They talk about their child working at the SID one day to serve the people.
Wang Xiangyang is a good-natured, humble guy, with a strong sense of right and wrong. He’s friendly, familiar enough with Zhao Xinci that he knows something’s wrong when Zhang Shi talks to him (ep 28, 24:21), and close enough with Guo Changcheng that Changcheng knows the significance of the phone booth (ep 29, 12:20).
Wang Xiangyang is married to Bai Suxia, who is mischievous and forthright. We see their courtship in flashbacks.
While they’re dating, Bai Suxia insists on taking a selfie of the two of them in front of this old-school phone box. Wang Xiangyang tells her she should at least make a call to make the photo more real, and he takes the opportunity to propose. Later on, when snapping their wedding photos (themselves, because they can’t afford a photographer), they see a fancy car parked by the river. Bai Suxia happens to find the key and jokes about stealing the car. She even jumps inside in her wedding dress to take a photo.
“We can't just take things we didn't earn. The owner will be worried if it's gone when he comes back to look for it,” protests Wang Xiangyang. When Bai Suxia doesn’t answer, he adds, “I admit I'm a stupid person. Are you sick of me?” “Actually, I like the simple-minded person you are,” she says. “An honest, kind-hearted and good person. I was thinking about how lucky I was to meet you and to be with you.”
“I didn't go to school much. I can't come up with a pretty name [for our child]. The Ex-Chief Zhao of the SID, you know him, right? He's the most literate and knowledgeable person I know. When our child arrives, I'll ask him for a good name!” -- Wang Xiangyang
One of the first times we see the couple, Wang Xiangyang insists on giving Zhao Yunlan some apples. Zhao Yunlan tries to refuse but eventually tells him, “Fine, I'll accept this once. Don't make it a habit.” This small exchange shows us that Zhao Yunlan is scrupulous about avoiding any hint of corruption, but maybe implies that Dragon City officials generally are not such sticklers. This becomes important later on.
Bai Suxia visits her aunt on the evening of the Reunion Festival and has trouble getting a taxi home afterwards. She calls Wang Xiangyang, but a fight has broken out in Guangming Road, and the fruit stall is being trashed again. One of the fighters accidentally breaks Wang Xiangyang’s phone, so he can’t answer Bai Suxia’s call. This breaks his promise to her of always answering her call within five rings.
Bai Suxia has a near-miss with a taxi and is taken to hospital, where the doctor can’t treat her because they don’t have enough blood of her type (there are only two matches in Dragon City, and one was a victim of the underground fight club). The doctor can’t calm Wang Xiangyang down enough to explain this to him clearly. Distraught, Wang Xiangyang sees Zhao Xinci, who is brought in with heart trouble, receive immediate medical attention.
Bai Suxia and her unborn child die. The post mortem points to their having been fridged.
WXY: The boss... Ye Zun fooled me all this time?
Shen Wei: His ability to beguile people depends on darkness already in their hearts. The more you brood, the better for him.
On the continuum of susceptibility to manipulation, Zhao Yunlan and Wang Xiangyang are pretty much at opposite extremes, so it’s likely Ye Zun takes Wang Xiangyang’s natural anger, misery and despair at his loss and heightens them to epic levels with relative ease. I don't think we know if Ye Zun meets him in person and uses mind control, or simply influences him via Ya Qing, but Wang Xiangyang talks as if Ye Zun has spoken to him. Anyway, Ye Zun and Ya Qing egg Wang Xiangyang on to revenge—and engineer Ye Zun’s release from the sky pillar along the way.
Wang Xiangyang is persuaded to blame the taxi driver, the fighters who smashed up his stall and phone, the doctor and nurse at the hospital, Zhao Xinci, and the SID, who were supposed to protect the people. I know some people see the targets as irrational, but it’s Ya Qing who selects them (ep 23, 39:34). (Also, I watched Guardian just after I’d started a Kdrama called Romantic Teacher Doctor Kim, which begins with a similarly motivated “you must be corrupt because you didn’t treat my loved one (due to lack of suitable blood products)” revenge rampage, so I figured that part was a standard Asian drama trope. I don’t know if that’s actually the case?) Regardless, I think it’s fair for Wang Xiangyang to be incredulous that a modern hospital doesn’t have the blood products it needs. And as mentioned above, there may be a degree of corruption in Dragon City that would make a VIP’s health emergency taking precedence over an ordinary citizen’s, if not normal, far from implausible.
Add to that Ye Zun and Ya Qing’s self-interested manipulation, and what we’re left with is a bitter, nihilistic Master of the Merit Brush who is driven to use the Hallow’s power to avenge his wife. Even so, in keeping with Wang Xiangyang’s strong sense of morality (and in contrast to Zhu Jiu), almost all of the Merit Brush’s direct victims are deliberate targets.
The Merit Brush is Wang Xiangyang’s family heirloom. He knows it’s special and only uses it for important occasions like rewriting the board outside his shop -- or prevailing on Guo Changcheng to write it for him.
I don’t know if Team Ye Zun orchestrated Bai Suxia’s tragedy in order to turn Wang Xiangyang evil and gain control of the Brush by proxy, or whether they just exploited the situation, but the Brush knows it belongs to Wang Xiangyang, so simply stealing it wasn’t an option. It protects him from Ya Qing’s attack (ep 23, 34:19), he tells Sha Ya, “As long as I don’t stop, it won’t stop either,” and at the end, just before he dies, the Brush tries to fly off into the night but obeys when he orders it back and gives it to Zhao Yunlan.
Ya Qing initially says to Wang Xiangyang, “How ironic that a Holy Tool fell into the hands of a coward like you.” And “I just don't get it. Why does the Boss say you're our new hope?” but in episode 29 (13:31), she tells him, “Me and the Boss, thousands of Yashou and the Dixing people will remember your kindness”—a tribute which he rejects.
Sha Ya isn’t a fan. During her interview at the SID, she says he’s “just a bitter old man with average looks. He's bent on revenge but doesn't dare do it himself. Every time he locks target, he’ll go find Dixing people with the same enemy and egg them on. I despise people like that.”
As far as the main villains are concerned, Wang Xiangyang’s revenge is a convenient delaying tactic to keep the SID busy and distracted while Wang Xiangyang draws characters/sigils in various places to break Ye Zun out of prison. When this succeeds, Wang Xiangyang passes the Merit Brush on to Zhao Yunlan and disintegrates.
The theme of revenge—and especially misplaced revenge—reoccurs in the drama in many guises. In the Hanga arc, Zhao Yunlan says, “The most basic dignity of a man is to keep our loved ones safe and secure, right?” and the Envoy agrees that a failure to do so is an understandable motive for revenge.
There’s also a recurring motif of broken promises to loved ones: Ji Xiaobai promising to protect Zhou Weiwei, Shen Wei promising never to leave Ye Zun, Wang Xiangyang promising to answer Bai Suxia’s calls...
Unsurprisingly, I only found a few fanworks for these characters:
Vow of Vengeance, a Wang Xiangyang vid bymaidavids
Like Picking Up Oranges, Scattered in the Street, a canon divergent AU bydraconicsockpuppet in which it’s Wang Xiangyang who dies, and Bai Suxia inherits the Merit Brush
the life you save, by me, in which Guo Changcheng time-travels back from ep 40 and talks to Bai Suxia.
If you know of any others or have made related fanworks or meta yourself, please do link in comments.
So - come and talk about Bai Suxia and Wang Xiangyang! Share links to meta, picspams, and related fanworks, new or old! Self-recs whole-heartedly encouraged. Basically, this is the place for anything you want to say or link to about them.
Innocence
Bai Suxia and Wang Xiangyang run the fruit stand next-door to the SID. They’ve been there since Zhao Xinci’s days, and they have a good relationship with the SID, placing a lot of trust in them. When we meet them, Bai Suxia is visibly pregnant, and Wang Xiangyang fusses over her. They are living a poor, simple life and looking to a hopeful future. They talk about their child working at the SID one day to serve the people.
Wang Xiangyang is a good-natured, humble guy, with a strong sense of right and wrong. He’s friendly, familiar enough with Zhao Xinci that he knows something’s wrong when Zhang Shi talks to him (ep 28, 24:21), and close enough with Guo Changcheng that Changcheng knows the significance of the phone booth (ep 29, 12:20).
Wang Xiangyang is married to Bai Suxia, who is mischievous and forthright. We see their courtship in flashbacks.
While they’re dating, Bai Suxia insists on taking a selfie of the two of them in front of this old-school phone box. Wang Xiangyang tells her she should at least make a call to make the photo more real, and he takes the opportunity to propose. Later on, when snapping their wedding photos (themselves, because they can’t afford a photographer), they see a fancy car parked by the river. Bai Suxia happens to find the key and jokes about stealing the car. She even jumps inside in her wedding dress to take a photo.
“We can't just take things we didn't earn. The owner will be worried if it's gone when he comes back to look for it,” protests Wang Xiangyang. When Bai Suxia doesn’t answer, he adds, “I admit I'm a stupid person. Are you sick of me?” “Actually, I like the simple-minded person you are,” she says. “An honest, kind-hearted and good person. I was thinking about how lucky I was to meet you and to be with you.”
“I didn't go to school much. I can't come up with a pretty name [for our child]. The Ex-Chief Zhao of the SID, you know him, right? He's the most literate and knowledgeable person I know. When our child arrives, I'll ask him for a good name!” -- Wang Xiangyang
One of the first times we see the couple, Wang Xiangyang insists on giving Zhao Yunlan some apples. Zhao Yunlan tries to refuse but eventually tells him, “Fine, I'll accept this once. Don't make it a habit.” This small exchange shows us that Zhao Yunlan is scrupulous about avoiding any hint of corruption, but maybe implies that Dragon City officials generally are not such sticklers. This becomes important later on.
Tragedy
Bai Suxia visits her aunt on the evening of the Reunion Festival and has trouble getting a taxi home afterwards. She calls Wang Xiangyang, but a fight has broken out in Guangming Road, and the fruit stall is being trashed again. One of the fighters accidentally breaks Wang Xiangyang’s phone, so he can’t answer Bai Suxia’s call. This breaks his promise to her of always answering her call within five rings.
Bai Suxia has a near-miss with a taxi and is taken to hospital, where the doctor can’t treat her because they don’t have enough blood of her type (there are only two matches in Dragon City, and one was a victim of the underground fight club). The doctor can’t calm Wang Xiangyang down enough to explain this to him clearly. Distraught, Wang Xiangyang sees Zhao Xinci, who is brought in with heart trouble, receive immediate medical attention.
Bai Suxia and her unborn child die. The post mortem points to their having been fridged.
Turning to Vengeance
WXY: The boss... Ye Zun fooled me all this time?
Shen Wei: His ability to beguile people depends on darkness already in their hearts. The more you brood, the better for him.
On the continuum of susceptibility to manipulation, Zhao Yunlan and Wang Xiangyang are pretty much at opposite extremes, so it’s likely Ye Zun takes Wang Xiangyang’s natural anger, misery and despair at his loss and heightens them to epic levels with relative ease. I don't think we know if Ye Zun meets him in person and uses mind control, or simply influences him via Ya Qing, but Wang Xiangyang talks as if Ye Zun has spoken to him. Anyway, Ye Zun and Ya Qing egg Wang Xiangyang on to revenge—and engineer Ye Zun’s release from the sky pillar along the way.
Wang Xiangyang is persuaded to blame the taxi driver, the fighters who smashed up his stall and phone, the doctor and nurse at the hospital, Zhao Xinci, and the SID, who were supposed to protect the people. I know some people see the targets as irrational, but it’s Ya Qing who selects them (ep 23, 39:34). (Also, I watched Guardian just after I’d started a Kdrama called Romantic Teacher Doctor Kim, which begins with a similarly motivated “you must be corrupt because you didn’t treat my loved one (due to lack of suitable blood products)” revenge rampage, so I figured that part was a standard Asian drama trope. I don’t know if that’s actually the case?) Regardless, I think it’s fair for Wang Xiangyang to be incredulous that a modern hospital doesn’t have the blood products it needs. And as mentioned above, there may be a degree of corruption in Dragon City that would make a VIP’s health emergency taking precedence over an ordinary citizen’s, if not normal, far from implausible.
Add to that Ye Zun and Ya Qing’s self-interested manipulation, and what we’re left with is a bitter, nihilistic Master of the Merit Brush who is driven to use the Hallow’s power to avenge his wife. Even so, in keeping with Wang Xiangyang’s strong sense of morality (and in contrast to Zhu Jiu), almost all of the Merit Brush’s direct victims are deliberate targets.
The Master of the Merit Brush and his relationships with the other villains
The Merit Brush is Wang Xiangyang’s family heirloom. He knows it’s special and only uses it for important occasions like rewriting the board outside his shop -- or prevailing on Guo Changcheng to write it for him.
I don’t know if Team Ye Zun orchestrated Bai Suxia’s tragedy in order to turn Wang Xiangyang evil and gain control of the Brush by proxy, or whether they just exploited the situation, but the Brush knows it belongs to Wang Xiangyang, so simply stealing it wasn’t an option. It protects him from Ya Qing’s attack (ep 23, 34:19), he tells Sha Ya, “As long as I don’t stop, it won’t stop either,” and at the end, just before he dies, the Brush tries to fly off into the night but obeys when he orders it back and gives it to Zhao Yunlan.
Ya Qing initially says to Wang Xiangyang, “How ironic that a Holy Tool fell into the hands of a coward like you.” And “I just don't get it. Why does the Boss say you're our new hope?” but in episode 29 (13:31), she tells him, “Me and the Boss, thousands of Yashou and the Dixing people will remember your kindness”—a tribute which he rejects.
Sha Ya isn’t a fan. During her interview at the SID, she says he’s “just a bitter old man with average looks. He's bent on revenge but doesn't dare do it himself. Every time he locks target, he’ll go find Dixing people with the same enemy and egg them on. I despise people like that.”
As far as the main villains are concerned, Wang Xiangyang’s revenge is a convenient delaying tactic to keep the SID busy and distracted while Wang Xiangyang draws characters/sigils in various places to break Ye Zun out of prison. When this succeeds, Wang Xiangyang passes the Merit Brush on to Zhao Yunlan and disintegrates.
Themes
The theme of revenge—and especially misplaced revenge—reoccurs in the drama in many guises. In the Hanga arc, Zhao Yunlan says, “The most basic dignity of a man is to keep our loved ones safe and secure, right?” and the Envoy agrees that a failure to do so is an understandable motive for revenge.
There’s also a recurring motif of broken promises to loved ones: Ji Xiaobai promising to protect Zhou Weiwei, Shen Wei promising never to leave Ye Zun, Wang Xiangyang promising to answer Bai Suxia’s calls...
Fanworks
Unsurprisingly, I only found a few fanworks for these characters:
Vow of Vengeance, a Wang Xiangyang vid by
maidavidsLike Picking Up Oranges, Scattered in the Street, a canon divergent AU by
draconicsockpuppet in which it’s Wang Xiangyang who dies, and Bai Suxia inherits the Merit Brushthe life you save, by me, in which Guo Changcheng time-travels back from ep 40 and talks to Bai Suxia.
If you know of any others or have made related fanworks or meta yourself, please do link in comments.
Questions
- Do you like them as a couple? How about separately? If you don’t like Wang Xiangyang, is it because of what he is (ordinary, not smart, not attractive, easy to manipulate), because of what he does, or for some other reason?
- What do you think Bai Suxia and Wang Xiangyang have gleaned from living and working next to the SID? Do they know about Dixingren and Yashou?
- How much do they know about the Merit Brush? How did it come into Wang Xiangyang's family? When Wang Xiangyang gives it to Zhao Yunlan, does Zhao Yunlan become its new master?
- Given that Haixing is fantasy China, do you think there is corruption in Dragon City? We see these particular medical professionals and both Chief Zhaos behaving ethically, but there also seems to be an expectation of nepotism (based on Zhao Yunlan’s initial reaction to Guo Changcheng). Is the idea of a VIP being treated at a hospital before an ordinary person credible?
- Did Ye Zun orchestrate the fridging or just exploit it? It would have been a complicated set-up, but it definitely worked in his favour. If he didn't arrange it, what other plans might he and/or Zhu Jiu have made to co-opt the power of the Merit Brush?
So - come and talk about Bai Suxia and Wang Xiangyang! Share links to meta, picspams, and related fanworks, new or old! Self-recs whole-heartedly encouraged. Basically, this is the place for anything you want to say or link to about them.
no subject
I didn't know the term Yon-sama, so I just googled (ha! here's an academic paper on the phenomenon), and then I saw a reference to Winter Sonata and got it. Yes! So melodramatic! :-) (I haven't watched Winter Sonata, but I've heard of it and the impact it had. The only dramas I've watched from that era are goofy, tropey ones by the Hong sisters. :-)
LOL! Yeah. (I've kind of forgotten a lot of how his arc goes. I hope someone does a discussion post on him at some point...)
Awww! I don't think it's the same, though, is it? Zhao Yunlan didn't fail to protect Shen Wei or let him down -- he and Shen Wei both gave their all, in tandem, to protect everyone else. That's how I see it, anyway.
Ooh, yes. There's something a bit like that in
no subject
Winter Sonata, that's what it was. Sorry, I forgot that Yong-sama was a Japanese-only phenomenon ;)
Zhao Yunlan didn't fail to protect Shen Wei or let him down -- he and Shen Wei both gave their all, in tandem, to protect everyone else. That's how I see it, anyway.
Oh yes, I agree. I'm not sure Zhao Yunlan himself would, though, at least as of immediately before going into the Lantern--I feel like protecting each other is high on their list of priorities, given Zhao Yunlan's "Who hurt you? I'll kill him" thing and the way Shen Wei throws himself in front of him a little later.
no subject
No worries! It was educational. :-)
Good point! That's definitely true in the lead-up. I guess I feel like once Zhao Yunlan realises Shen Wei has been planning to deal with Ye Zun in that way, he accepts it. He's devastated by it, obviously, but it stops feeling like he let Shen Wei down. In the moments before going into the Lantern, I don't see him as bitter or self-recriminating. But YMMV! :-)
no subject
(how do I keep coming back to ZYL/SW, this is a post about Wang Xiangyang and Bai Suxia! I'm sorry. I guess I mean the difference between WXY and ZYL is that the former reacts to loss with destruction and the latter with constructive salvation...)
no subject
Hee! It's all good! It's interesting! :-)
*nodnod* In my reading, WXY is feeling specifically personally responsible because he broke his promise (to always answer her call within 5 rings), and angry at the randomness of it and the apparent callousness of the hospital system, and Ye Zun & co step in to exploit those feelings and dial them up to 15. So I agree with you, but I don't think it's entirely WXY's fault.
Like, if he'd felt that Bai Suxia had chosen to sacrifice herself for the greater good and there'd been no other way to save the world, he might well have felt differently about it -- still sad and grieving, but without the bitterness, maybe? Idk. :-)
(Sorry if I'm repeating myself!)