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sid_guardian2021-07-02 09:12 am
dorinda) wrote in sid_guardian2021-07-02 09:12 am
Entry tags:
Focus on: Hei Pao Shi rescues/recruits Chu Shuzhi from prison, episode 36
Location of the scene: episode 36, from 27:58 - 30:11.
(Though actually I'm starting just a little early, with the present-day exchange that triggers Chu Shuzhi's initial memory, beginning around 27:18.)
(Language note: I have no schooling in Chinese—my mentions of the language are gleaned from what other people have written, and are of course completely open to correction. Thanks tosakana17 and thevetia for talking with me about the poem and stuff!)
Recap and pictures
Right before the flashback, Yehuo and Chu Shuzhi are patrolling for invaders from Dixing. Chu Shuzhi thanks him.
Chu Shuzhi: "I mean, you're from Dixing, but here you are helping the SID."
Yehuo: "Every time we work together, I get more convinced I'm doing the right thing. And don't you forget, you're from Dixing, too."
Yehuo warmly grips his shoulder and goes on patrol, leaving the camera to slowly push in on a very thoughtful Chu Shuzhi. Chu Shuzhi thinks to himself, "I used to belong to Dixing..."
And, we're in the flashback! Dijun Palace, in the past. We can hear whipping and see an out-of-focus Chu Shuzhi in the foreground, with our attention on the Regent. The Regent is theatrically wincing as if in pain and sympathy every time the lash strikes. (Ugh, that guy!)
A shirtless, sweating Chu Shuzhi ( :D ) is bound to a column, being steadily whipped (:D :D ). We never see by whom... it could be the Secretary, who we see in ep. 32 whipped him as a boy (if that portion of his dream was accurate), or it could perhaps be one of the guards we briefly see in later shots. This shot is from slightly below him and slightly tilted, dramatic and expressive.
He's reacting with pain and fury. We can see part of that diagonal slash down his chest, which he got in the original bar fight that started his and Nianzhi's whole tragedy (although the direction of the slash looks different here than it was in his dream...on purpose, related to how the dream twisted back and forth? Or a makeup error? Or—?).
We get a closeup of his right hand clenched in a fist, chained to the bloody column; it jerks with every strike. The camera is moving, tilting, giving it a kinetic, effortful, and even queasy feel for a moment.
Interestingly, this closeup echoes a shot from ep 32, when he's being whipped as a boy in his dream: there we get a closeup of his hand (tied with rope this time), clenched in a fist...but then relaxing open as he passes out.
The Regent, still pretending to suffer, holds out a hand to stop the punishment. The camera follows him as he approaches Chu Shuzhi, who is panting, head hanging down.
"Little boy," the Regent says to him. The characters are 小娃娃, Xiǎo wáwá... All viewers of the show will be familiar with "Xiǎo" as a diminutive, "little"— and according to google translate and various online dictionaries, wáwá has meanings like "baby", "small child", and "doll". (!) You can see why, when the Regent came to SID in ep. 15 and called out, smiling, "Is this Xiao Chu here?", Chu Shuzhi grabbed him with teeth bared like he was going to tear out his throat.
The Regent continues, bending over and peering closely up into Chu Shuzhi's face: "You broke out of jail and committed murder. You committed unforgivable crimes. Now your 100-year jail term is ending. Do you repent for your crimes?"
Chu Shuzhi, with pained and exhausted effort, replies, "I avenged my younger brother." He slowly looks at the Regent as he finishes, "What is wrong with that?"
The Regent makes a prissy tut-tutting sound. Now his voice has more force, less of the pretense and wheedling: "You're hopeless! Dangerous persons like you can never be pardoned." He wags his finger in Chu Shuzhi's face. "Get him out of here! Add on life imprisonment for Chu Shuzhi!"
We can see that Chu Shuzhi is bound with rope around his waist, as well as with the chain.
Chu Shuzhi reacts with silent rage, as if he would bite if he were close enough.
BUT THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN! A new voice offscreen says strongly: "His crimes are unforgivable, but one can sympathize with his reasons." (An emphasis on context and sympathy that we've seen in the Envoy we've come to know, when he releases some people in the show rather than imprisoning them... Also, we know what Chu Shuzhi does not, about Shen Wei's personal history with a younger twin brother.)
The Regent gasps and lowers his eyes and body in frightened respect. And now we see who is speaking: a familiar black-robed form. ♥
"Since you want him out of the way, why not hand him over to me?" The Regent cringes and nods. Chu Shuzhi, head thrown back against the column, watches this new player warily.
Hei Pao Shi approaches him, speaking calmly and rhythmically (see the next section, "Way too much about the poem" :D ): "Life and death come and go like puppets dancing on a table. Once their strings are cut, they easily crumble."
Chu Shuzhi is still watching him with his head pressed back, breathing hard, his teeth bared. These moments remind me of someone gentling a wild animal.
The Black-Robed Envoy goes on: "The line of Chu Puppet Masters has a long tradition in Dixing. I cannot let it end here." The Regent is making a face as he listens, as if something smells bad.
In a wider shot, we see that Chu Shuzhi has lowered his head slightly now and is looking up at him, at a more respectful angle. And at last, Chu Shuzhi speaks, breathy and effortful: "You are...the Black-Robed Envoy?"
"I am," says the Envoy. Chu Shuzhi listens, looking dazed. The Envoy says: "I can see your dedication to your brother in your eyes. Do you want to take this dedication to another place to let it shine?" Chu Shuzhi's breathing picks up again, his eyes gleam, the ghost of a smile almost moves his mouth. He says slowly, "I..."
The Envoy is watching him, his eyes steady and intense. The camera is slightly tilting/rising, while staying solidly on the Envoy; see how the background moves. It adds another of those almost-subconscious kinetic feelings.
Chu Shuzhi finishes, definitively: "I want to."
The Regent makes another stinkface. Uggggh that guy. Somehow I think he might not truly believe in rehabilitation!
The Envoy lifts his hand and passes it through the air in a smooth, regal gesture. The shot is slightly tilted, expressive; the guard and the palace walls all seem to be bowing toward the Envoy.
The chain and ropes vanish, and Chu Shuzhi collapses to the floor on his hands and knees, head bowed low. Whether intentional or not, his posture here is full prostration, kowtow, showing respect and reverence. The camera angle is extremely canted! Expressive camerawork, visual interest, a feeling of disorientation. He is small, and the Envoy's robes in the foreground are so dark and big.
In the foreground, we see the Envoy turn to go, the layers of his robes billowing.
Still on hands and knees, Chu Shuzhi slowly raises his head just enough, turning his eyes up to watch the Black-Robed Envoy leave. He's breathing hard. The camera subtly tilts to the right and then the left, as unsteady as he is.
From a low camera angle, canted on a diagonal—Chu Shuzhi's ground-level, dazed point of view—the Envoy departs up the steps in slow-motion. His robes flutter majestically behind him.
Chu Shuzhi watches him; the music swells. And he suddenly has a memory of Nianzhi, when Nianzhi was taking his punishment in their youth with the jar, saying, "Brother, we have to make a difference above ground. In my heart, you're forever a hero."
Chu Shuzhi on hands and knees, eyes turned up and locked on the place the Envoy has gone, promises—to Nianzhi, but maybe also to his new lodestar, the Envoy—"Don't worry." (放心, fàngxīn: set one’s mind at rest, be at ease, rest assured.)
Way too much about the poem
As Shen Wei walks toward Chu Shuzhi, he recites a poem. In the Solo-QC subtitles I have, the translation is:
{斗转星移 / 生死去来} Life and death come and go
{棚头傀儡} like puppets dancing on a table.
{一线断时} Once their strings are cut
{落落磊磊} they easily crumble.
In a discussion here in 2019, a contributor mentioned that this same poem (or at least, with the differing first line) is used in "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence". The first line of the version there is 生死去来.
A commenter on the Chinese site douban mentioned that the poem appears in a book by the Japanese Nō master Zeami (1363-1443). This book, Kakyō (also known as "The Mirror to the Flower", "A Mirror of the Flower", "Flower Mirror", etc.) is a manual on Nō acting. A 1984 translation of the poem (aiming for a prose style), reads "Indeed, when we come to face death, our life might be likened to a puppet on a cart [decorated for a great festival]. As soon as one string is cut, the creature crumbles and fades." (On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami by J. Thomas Rimer, Yamazaki Masakazu, Princeton University Press, 1984). Zeami draws an analogy between that and the skills of Nō performance, writing about the actor creating and supporting illusions without revealing the 'strings' of his spirit powering them.
But wait, there's more! People online typically say that the poem is by Zeami, but, in the 1984 translation of the Zeami book I saw, the poem is in quotation marks; Zeami is quoting something older. A footnote reads: "A saying attributed to a priest of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism in Japan, Gettan Sōkō (1316?-1389)." That's as far back as I've been able to trace it at this point.
I'd love to know more about that changed first line. The first line used in Guardian (斗转星移) might be thought of more literally as something like, "The Big Dipper revolves, the stars shift" (using xīng, star, as in Haixing and Dixing), which still has that sense of time and change, coming and going, but with interestingly different imagery.
Why I chose this scene
Okay, well, first of all I'm not made of stone! I was enjoying Chu Shuzhi's handsome shoulders all through the show in his sleeveless shirt, and then I got a chance to see him barechested and sweating and gasping and bravely/furiously suffering? Sign me up!
But there are also other reasons, believe it or not. :D The dynamic between the Envoy and Chu Shuzhi is set out for us very early in the show, in the meetings that end episodes 2 and 4. There is a lot of history and powerful feeling hinted at there, especially when Chu Shuzhi kneels to the Envoy, and the Envoy reminds him that it is not about obligation, but a friendship between gentlemen. On top of that, we have the brief but important moments in ep. 21 when Shen Wei apologizes to Chu Shuzhi. So now we get a chance to see where all of that started!
I am also fascinated by the Envoy saying to Chu Shuzhi, "The line of Chu Puppet Masters has a long tradition in Dixing. I cannot let it end here." There are a few references throughout the series to Chu Shuzhi being famous (and frightening) to Dixing people. But here, we get a sense of something more, hinting toward his family and his history, which is treated so respectfully by the Black-Robed Envoy himself.
And speaking of respect: I absolutely love how the Envoy sees Chu Shuzhi in this scene, sees him and values him, respects him—he doesn't see a half-naked chained feral beast, or a "dangerous person" who can never be pardoned like the Regent does. The Envoy doesn't command—he speaks courteously (as well as dramatically), he tells him that he knows and appreciates who he is, he asks him if he wants to come and help. He leaves the decision up to him. You can see that from the very beginning he saw it as a friendship between gentlemen.
Finally, more and more I've noticed the direction in this scene. Real attention is being paid to the camerawork—placement, angles, movement. There's a lot going on, but not for show or distraction, always suiting the story and feelings: pushing closer during a shot to build drama, fluid tracking that follows a character, expressive canted setups, tilting during a shot for emphasis or disorientation, slow motion for the emotion in the point-of-view, etc.
Questions
In ep. 18, Zhao Yunlan says to Shen Wei, "If you hadn't commuted his sentence and brought him to the SID, he'd still be doing penal labor for the Regent in Dixing." What do you imagine Chu Shuzhi's prison sentence has been like? What penal labor might he have done?
Why doesn't Chu Shuzhi lie to the Regent that he repents? (This certainly makes me think of our discussion about Zhu Jiu trying to recruit Chu Shuzhi in episode 19...)
What do you think about "the line of Chu Puppet Masters"? Do you have ideas about Chu Shuzhi's family? His/their hereditary powers? His/their fame in Dixing?
How and why do you think the Black-Robed Envoy chose Chu Shuzhi?
Did Shen Wei learn that poem in university? :D
Fanworks
I don't know of fanworks that are about this scene, so I would love to hear it if you do! I will say that I wrote a short piece about Chu Shuzhi working for Shen Wei set not long after his rescue, and pieces of this event are still very alive in his heart: Some bright place.
EDITED TO ADD!: I only just now got to read, and highly recommend,china_shop's story, starting right after the rescue. A series of 7 perfect drabbles!:
The Envoy's Man (700 words) by china_shop
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi & Shen Wei
Characters: Chu Shuzhi, Shěn Wēi, Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Loyalty, Dixing Powers, POV Second Person, Drabble Sequence
Summary:
Please do come and discuss! Any and all thoughts are welcome, definitely including "Ohhhhh myyyyy".
(Though actually I'm starting just a little early, with the present-day exchange that triggers Chu Shuzhi's initial memory, beginning around 27:18.)
(Language note: I have no schooling in Chinese—my mentions of the language are gleaned from what other people have written, and are of course completely open to correction. Thanks to
sakana17 and thevetia for talking with me about the poem and stuff!)Recap and pictures
Right before the flashback, Yehuo and Chu Shuzhi are patrolling for invaders from Dixing. Chu Shuzhi thanks him.
Chu Shuzhi: "I mean, you're from Dixing, but here you are helping the SID."
Yehuo: "Every time we work together, I get more convinced I'm doing the right thing. And don't you forget, you're from Dixing, too."
Yehuo warmly grips his shoulder and goes on patrol, leaving the camera to slowly push in on a very thoughtful Chu Shuzhi. Chu Shuzhi thinks to himself, "I used to belong to Dixing..."
And, we're in the flashback! Dijun Palace, in the past. We can hear whipping and see an out-of-focus Chu Shuzhi in the foreground, with our attention on the Regent. The Regent is theatrically wincing as if in pain and sympathy every time the lash strikes. (Ugh, that guy!)
A shirtless, sweating Chu Shuzhi ( :D ) is bound to a column, being steadily whipped (:D :D ). We never see by whom... it could be the Secretary, who we see in ep. 32 whipped him as a boy (if that portion of his dream was accurate), or it could perhaps be one of the guards we briefly see in later shots. This shot is from slightly below him and slightly tilted, dramatic and expressive.
He's reacting with pain and fury. We can see part of that diagonal slash down his chest, which he got in the original bar fight that started his and Nianzhi's whole tragedy (although the direction of the slash looks different here than it was in his dream...on purpose, related to how the dream twisted back and forth? Or a makeup error? Or—?).
We get a closeup of his right hand clenched in a fist, chained to the bloody column; it jerks with every strike. The camera is moving, tilting, giving it a kinetic, effortful, and even queasy feel for a moment.
Interestingly, this closeup echoes a shot from ep 32, when he's being whipped as a boy in his dream: there we get a closeup of his hand (tied with rope this time), clenched in a fist...but then relaxing open as he passes out.
The Regent, still pretending to suffer, holds out a hand to stop the punishment. The camera follows him as he approaches Chu Shuzhi, who is panting, head hanging down.
"Little boy," the Regent says to him. The characters are 小娃娃, Xiǎo wáwá... All viewers of the show will be familiar with "Xiǎo" as a diminutive, "little"— and according to google translate and various online dictionaries, wáwá has meanings like "baby", "small child", and "doll". (!) You can see why, when the Regent came to SID in ep. 15 and called out, smiling, "Is this Xiao Chu here?", Chu Shuzhi grabbed him with teeth bared like he was going to tear out his throat.
The Regent continues, bending over and peering closely up into Chu Shuzhi's face: "You broke out of jail and committed murder. You committed unforgivable crimes. Now your 100-year jail term is ending. Do you repent for your crimes?"
Chu Shuzhi, with pained and exhausted effort, replies, "I avenged my younger brother." He slowly looks at the Regent as he finishes, "What is wrong with that?"
The Regent makes a prissy tut-tutting sound. Now his voice has more force, less of the pretense and wheedling: "You're hopeless! Dangerous persons like you can never be pardoned." He wags his finger in Chu Shuzhi's face. "Get him out of here! Add on life imprisonment for Chu Shuzhi!"
We can see that Chu Shuzhi is bound with rope around his waist, as well as with the chain.
Chu Shuzhi reacts with silent rage, as if he would bite if he were close enough.
BUT THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN! A new voice offscreen says strongly: "His crimes are unforgivable, but one can sympathize with his reasons." (An emphasis on context and sympathy that we've seen in the Envoy we've come to know, when he releases some people in the show rather than imprisoning them... Also, we know what Chu Shuzhi does not, about Shen Wei's personal history with a younger twin brother.)
The Regent gasps and lowers his eyes and body in frightened respect. And now we see who is speaking: a familiar black-robed form. ♥
"Since you want him out of the way, why not hand him over to me?" The Regent cringes and nods. Chu Shuzhi, head thrown back against the column, watches this new player warily.
Hei Pao Shi approaches him, speaking calmly and rhythmically (see the next section, "Way too much about the poem" :D ): "Life and death come and go like puppets dancing on a table. Once their strings are cut, they easily crumble."
Chu Shuzhi is still watching him with his head pressed back, breathing hard, his teeth bared. These moments remind me of someone gentling a wild animal.
The Black-Robed Envoy goes on: "The line of Chu Puppet Masters has a long tradition in Dixing. I cannot let it end here." The Regent is making a face as he listens, as if something smells bad.
In a wider shot, we see that Chu Shuzhi has lowered his head slightly now and is looking up at him, at a more respectful angle. And at last, Chu Shuzhi speaks, breathy and effortful: "You are...the Black-Robed Envoy?"
"I am," says the Envoy. Chu Shuzhi listens, looking dazed. The Envoy says: "I can see your dedication to your brother in your eyes. Do you want to take this dedication to another place to let it shine?" Chu Shuzhi's breathing picks up again, his eyes gleam, the ghost of a smile almost moves his mouth. He says slowly, "I..."
The Envoy is watching him, his eyes steady and intense. The camera is slightly tilting/rising, while staying solidly on the Envoy; see how the background moves. It adds another of those almost-subconscious kinetic feelings.
Chu Shuzhi finishes, definitively: "I want to."
The Regent makes another stinkface. Uggggh that guy. Somehow I think he might not truly believe in rehabilitation!
The Envoy lifts his hand and passes it through the air in a smooth, regal gesture. The shot is slightly tilted, expressive; the guard and the palace walls all seem to be bowing toward the Envoy.
The chain and ropes vanish, and Chu Shuzhi collapses to the floor on his hands and knees, head bowed low. Whether intentional or not, his posture here is full prostration, kowtow, showing respect and reverence. The camera angle is extremely canted! Expressive camerawork, visual interest, a feeling of disorientation. He is small, and the Envoy's robes in the foreground are so dark and big.
In the foreground, we see the Envoy turn to go, the layers of his robes billowing.
Still on hands and knees, Chu Shuzhi slowly raises his head just enough, turning his eyes up to watch the Black-Robed Envoy leave. He's breathing hard. The camera subtly tilts to the right and then the left, as unsteady as he is.
From a low camera angle, canted on a diagonal—Chu Shuzhi's ground-level, dazed point of view—the Envoy departs up the steps in slow-motion. His robes flutter majestically behind him.
Chu Shuzhi watches him; the music swells. And he suddenly has a memory of Nianzhi, when Nianzhi was taking his punishment in their youth with the jar, saying, "Brother, we have to make a difference above ground. In my heart, you're forever a hero."
Chu Shuzhi on hands and knees, eyes turned up and locked on the place the Envoy has gone, promises—to Nianzhi, but maybe also to his new lodestar, the Envoy—"Don't worry." (放心, fàngxīn: set one’s mind at rest, be at ease, rest assured.)
Way too much about the poem
As Shen Wei walks toward Chu Shuzhi, he recites a poem. In the Solo-QC subtitles I have, the translation is:
{斗转星移 / 生死去来} Life and death come and go
{棚头傀儡} like puppets dancing on a table.
{一线断时} Once their strings are cut
{落落磊磊} they easily crumble.
In a discussion here in 2019, a contributor mentioned that this same poem (or at least, with the differing first line) is used in "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence". The first line of the version there is 生死去来.
A commenter on the Chinese site douban mentioned that the poem appears in a book by the Japanese Nō master Zeami (1363-1443). This book, Kakyō (also known as "The Mirror to the Flower", "A Mirror of the Flower", "Flower Mirror", etc.) is a manual on Nō acting. A 1984 translation of the poem (aiming for a prose style), reads "Indeed, when we come to face death, our life might be likened to a puppet on a cart [decorated for a great festival]. As soon as one string is cut, the creature crumbles and fades." (On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami by J. Thomas Rimer, Yamazaki Masakazu, Princeton University Press, 1984). Zeami draws an analogy between that and the skills of Nō performance, writing about the actor creating and supporting illusions without revealing the 'strings' of his spirit powering them.
But wait, there's more! People online typically say that the poem is by Zeami, but, in the 1984 translation of the Zeami book I saw, the poem is in quotation marks; Zeami is quoting something older. A footnote reads: "A saying attributed to a priest of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism in Japan, Gettan Sōkō (1316?-1389)." That's as far back as I've been able to trace it at this point.
I'd love to know more about that changed first line. The first line used in Guardian (斗转星移) might be thought of more literally as something like, "The Big Dipper revolves, the stars shift" (using xīng, star, as in Haixing and Dixing), which still has that sense of time and change, coming and going, but with interestingly different imagery.
Why I chose this scene
Okay, well, first of all I'm not made of stone! I was enjoying Chu Shuzhi's handsome shoulders all through the show in his sleeveless shirt, and then I got a chance to see him barechested and sweating and gasping and bravely/furiously suffering? Sign me up!
But there are also other reasons, believe it or not. :D The dynamic between the Envoy and Chu Shuzhi is set out for us very early in the show, in the meetings that end episodes 2 and 4. There is a lot of history and powerful feeling hinted at there, especially when Chu Shuzhi kneels to the Envoy, and the Envoy reminds him that it is not about obligation, but a friendship between gentlemen. On top of that, we have the brief but important moments in ep. 21 when Shen Wei apologizes to Chu Shuzhi. So now we get a chance to see where all of that started!
I am also fascinated by the Envoy saying to Chu Shuzhi, "The line of Chu Puppet Masters has a long tradition in Dixing. I cannot let it end here." There are a few references throughout the series to Chu Shuzhi being famous (and frightening) to Dixing people. But here, we get a sense of something more, hinting toward his family and his history, which is treated so respectfully by the Black-Robed Envoy himself.
And speaking of respect: I absolutely love how the Envoy sees Chu Shuzhi in this scene, sees him and values him, respects him—he doesn't see a half-naked chained feral beast, or a "dangerous person" who can never be pardoned like the Regent does. The Envoy doesn't command—he speaks courteously (as well as dramatically), he tells him that he knows and appreciates who he is, he asks him if he wants to come and help. He leaves the decision up to him. You can see that from the very beginning he saw it as a friendship between gentlemen.
Finally, more and more I've noticed the direction in this scene. Real attention is being paid to the camerawork—placement, angles, movement. There's a lot going on, but not for show or distraction, always suiting the story and feelings: pushing closer during a shot to build drama, fluid tracking that follows a character, expressive canted setups, tilting during a shot for emphasis or disorientation, slow motion for the emotion in the point-of-view, etc.
Questions
In ep. 18, Zhao Yunlan says to Shen Wei, "If you hadn't commuted his sentence and brought him to the SID, he'd still be doing penal labor for the Regent in Dixing." What do you imagine Chu Shuzhi's prison sentence has been like? What penal labor might he have done?
Why doesn't Chu Shuzhi lie to the Regent that he repents? (This certainly makes me think of our discussion about Zhu Jiu trying to recruit Chu Shuzhi in episode 19...)
What do you think about "the line of Chu Puppet Masters"? Do you have ideas about Chu Shuzhi's family? His/their hereditary powers? His/their fame in Dixing?
How and why do you think the Black-Robed Envoy chose Chu Shuzhi?
Did Shen Wei learn that poem in university? :D
Fanworks
I don't know of fanworks that are about this scene, so I would love to hear it if you do! I will say that I wrote a short piece about Chu Shuzhi working for Shen Wei set not long after his rescue, and pieces of this event are still very alive in his heart: Some bright place.
EDITED TO ADD!: I only just now got to read, and highly recommend,
china_shop's story, starting right after the rescue. A series of 7 perfect drabbles!:The Envoy's Man (700 words) by china_shop
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi & Shen Wei
Characters: Chu Shuzhi, Shěn Wēi, Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Loyalty, Dixing Powers, POV Second Person, Drabble Sequence
Summary:
Lord Envoy brings you, dazed and trying not to stumble, through the gateway into cool damp Haixing.
Please do come and discuss! Any and all thoughts are welcome, definitely including "Ohhhhh myyyyy".
no subject
I can easily imagine that discomfort being a distraction for a while, until, after he's worked with them long enough, he looks around and realizes he has started to feel like he's doing the right thing, like he's making a difference.
Oh, that's all really lovely! I like this idea also. :)
That does make me wonder if Dixingren with powers (their mutation 'activating', sort of) might even live longer than those without. It would add an extra level to the chauvinism we see in Zhu Jiu's background, with the captain calling him trash because he has no powers...even a bit like separate castes, the empowered/long-lived, and the normies.
Yeah! I'd also been thinking about that! :D And oof, I love the idea that it adds to Zhu Jiu's bitterness and anger... He's such a terrible angsty man, and it's cool seeing places where more layered characterization is possible. :)
Although it always strikes me as intriguing that Shen Wei ends up choosing someone who spurns lying, and then puts him undercover as a spy.
Right? I'm endlessly fascinated that Chu Shuzhi was chosen for that role. Were there simply not any other people Shen Wei trusted enough to work in Haixing without going rogue? (Which would've hit Chu Shuzhi really hard, seeing as he was imprisoned for going wild...) Did Shen Wei not have many recruits in general? Did he ask Chu Shuzhi trying to make it a "you can say no" type of deal and Chu Shuzhi's different sense of hierarchy mean that he just said "yes" even though it wasn't really suited to his nature?