thousand year old all-powerful demon lord tied with a red string to his girlfriend AND his boyfriend. this is the type of bisexuality they talk about in the dao de jing,

Two things I've been thinking about with regard to Fangs of Fortune (it's so rare for me not to move on immediately from a drama; usually no matter how much I like it, the moment it's done so am I.)

(1) The bells in Jiu and ZYC's hair. The way this is a theme that runs throughout the entire narrative to culminate in them being clutched in Jiu's hand as he saves the world. But also - Jiu wore those bells because he was afraid he'd never be found - that hide and seek metaphor. And yet when he was lost in his own body due LL taking over (and significantly it's shown through his being locked in his hiding place, unable to come out), the team keeps searching and willing to die (YL does die!) for him to be found and to be brought back. And then at the end, the bell he wore in his hair in hope of being found is in ZYC's hair forever and ever - Jiu removed the tongue of the bell as part of his belief he does not need to be searched for (his last wish was don't grieve me) but by putting it into his hair to always accompany him during all the years of his now close to immortal life, ZYC has transformed the message - the bell does not need the tongue any more because Jiu does not need to be looked for any more, sure. But the reason he does not need to be looked for any more is because he's always there now, always with the man he looked up to the most and found safety in. He is now always found.

(2) I am still in that moment in the epilogue where ZYZ's soul flies to ZYC's hands. I've talked a lot about that already but I can't stop. I love that the hopeful ending with its promise of future happiness and reunion is possible because ZYC took a look at the final, most awful iteration of the trolley problem (I can't remember who in the tag labeled a lot of their quests this way but you are 100% right!) and broke the constraints of the rules. Because finally in his long long life, ZYZ found someone as powerful and capable and good as he is, but also someone just a tad more persistent. Because ZYC is immovable in his quest to save those near to him to the best of his considerable ability and if he needs to bend the rules of reality and the drive of destiny, so be it. He will sacrifice himself without hesitation but those he loves are different.

Because ZYZ's salvation is an act of love - of ZYC's refusal to have ZYZ do the ultimate sacrifice of walking onto that sword. Thus actually making sure ZYZ is not a liar - he said he won't seek death and by taking the burden of killing him instead of making him kill himself - ZYC makes that statement ZYZ said true. (In a different religious tradition where suicide is a sin that sends you to hell but murder can perhaps be forgiven if sufficiently repented for, one could talk about how this action literally saves ZYZ's soul for heaven at the possible cost of ZYC. Yes, I realize medieval Catholic doctrine is inapplicable to this drama, but I like the different notions of salvation and sacrifice among cultures and how they can reflect different understandings and view of humanity and moral duty.)

It's very much because of censorship (which I of course loathe) that the nature of ZYZ x ZYC relationship has all these lacunae and unspoken spaces. Yes, we know they are soulmates/mirrors but there is room to interpret their relationship as - romantic, platonic, part of a throuple, something else. And I so genuinely admire the narrative for making a virtue of the censorship necessity and transforming the constraint into the message of lack of labels on love, into discussion on all forms of love - romantic, familial, friend, etc - being crucial and not waving the flag of sexual-romantic love supremacy. There is something so beautiful in the narrative going "they are each other's most important person and their love and devotion can literally bring back from the dead and save the world. And does the nature of that love even matter? What matters is the strength of it." Taking unfair, stupid restrictions and turning them into art is something else indeed.

look, i ship this whole polycule, but i'm on ep 29 and it's starting to feel like the ZYZ/WX is a beautifully painted smoke screen for the actual, queer romances the drama wants to tell. like, you get WX/ZYZ talking about death and their desire to live and then you cut straight (haha) to ZYZ mutilating himself for ZYC and the pair of them swearing to walk the same path together, culminating in ZYZ passing out in ZYC's arms (jfc). Then we see WX taking care of ZYZ while he's injured, lovely and hetero, BUT THEN cut to ZYZ and ZYC, alone in a candlelit room, making the most intense eye contact known to man, saying "you are my soulmate and my reason for living". Hello?! HELLO?!?! I love ZYZ/WX but they look pale here compared to ZYC/ZYZ and more like they are best friends doing an excellent job of bearding for each other. Just give me more WX/PJ and I will have feasted fully.

@fiftysevenacademics dropping hard facts in the tags

Zhao Yuanzhou: If I died how much would you miss me?

Zhou Yichen: It's cute that you think death can get you out of this relationship.

The epilogue in a nutshell.

ZYZ might have fallen first, but ZYC fell harder.

fate/命运 and the 大梦归离 fangs of fortune finale

the choice that zhuo yichen makes during his and zhao yuanzhou's final confrontation is one of the loveliest and most profound decisions in writing and narrative that i have seen.

zhuo yichen choosing to be the one who stabs zhao yuanzhou makes for a conclusion wonderfully juxtaposed with yinglong and bingyi's ending, where yinglong does the impaling himself to free bingyi of that burden.

in a story like this, a story fundamentally a tragedy and haunted by the cycle of fate as so many xianxia stories are, fangs of fortune has its own way of exploring the concept of fate/destiny. that it is, as both zhao yuanzhou and zhuo yichen's are, a story written long before you were born, a story determined by all that came before you. like zhuo yichen says in episode 23, "no matter how many times i read [this book], the ending is always the same".

and it's true—fangs of fortune does not try to lead you away from this. once the direction of the story becomes clear, it never tries to convince you otherwise. but during their final confrontation, zhuo yichen's choice is both an acknowledgment and a statement. yes, he and zhao yuanzhou are caught in this cycle of continuous death and grief. yes, they cannot escape it. there was never any other way. but still—even the smallest of changes can dictate a shift in the narrative. zhuo yichen couldn't refuse to kill zhao yuanzhou, but he could change the way he did it. he could take on the burden of grief. he could choose to be different from bingyi.

it's a fantastic depiction of 命运/mingyun, which is often translated as the most common chinese term for "fate". if you're an avid cdrama fan you'll see this term being thrown around a lot, and i think it's important to note that the concept of mingyun is more about the interactions between predetermination and individual choice, which separates it from the idea that fate/destiny is one straightforward, rigid path.

what i mean is, you can never escape the cycle of fate, but you can change the angle at which it flows.

applied to zhuo yichen and zhao yuanzhou: again and again, a bingyi clan swordsman will someday be forced to slay his dearest friend for the sake of saving the world. this is their mingyun; the ending is predetermined, but even so, this doesn't mean it leaves them with no choices at all. and their last confrontation is an example of this. zhuo yichen couldn't save his dearest zhiji, his beloved friend, but he could free him of the guilt yinglong shouldered for bingyi all those generations ago. he could make it his own to carry, and, in doing so, turn their last confrontation into his final act of love instead of a choice made from fear, from hesitation. the end doesn't change—zhao yuanzhou still dies, and zhuo yichen has to walk the world without him just as bingyi had to live on after losing yinglong. but that choice matters; that choice was his to make with his own two hands. and it is not less impactful because zhao yuanzhou was going to die anyway; it was made out of a selflessness and consideration that, as we see in the extra epilogue episode, will set their legacy apart from their ancestors'.

in a genre so heavy with the idea of fate/destiny and the ways it impacts our lives, fangs of fortune brings itself to a conclusion with a particularly loving twist that truly takes to heart the idea of mingyun and how we live with it—that the choices you make, no matter how small and limited, are always meaningful, even if they don't change how the story ends.

FANGS OF FORTUNE 大梦归离 — 2024, dir. Edward Guo, Luo Luo, Wei Nan   

Fangs of Fortune Text Posts (1/?) (2 here)

WLW in my cdrama? More likely than you may think!

How GJM got this drama past the censors is beyond me. It's the queerest thing I've seen out of China after the ban by about factor of 10.

The gentleness of this and the advice.

Now that ZYZ is de-powered and LL regenerating, ZYC is the biggest baddest MFer in this drama in terms of firepower without any rival. And the fact that it's him who says that - who extols the virtue of gentleness.

MY GOD!!!!

This so fits the narrative - after all, he wakes up the sword not through his skill in battle but through his tears. That sword gets reforged because ZYZ loves him. Ying Long mentions Bingyi's softness and it's that softness that saves ZYC (because that last bit of YL he saved saves ZYC in turn.) It's ZYZ's softness towards Li Lun in offering the regeneration that saves Bai Jiu and the rest of them.

Battle is powerful but it's the soft heart that is the real strength the drama seems to say and aaaaaaaaaaaaa

i love that this drama revels in it's fight scenes and super powered characters but is actually closer to LOTR on it's take about grief, hope, and vulnerability