#千秋 backlog

[hunxi-after-hours]

hunxi my friend hunxi DYING to know what you thought of 《无双》 and the way it elevated what 《千秋》 thought of women who ran rampant in the jianghu. it is so very dear to my heart. also do you think that they'll live past yang guang's reign are they pigheaded enough 😂😞🤔

ANON and here I thought no one noticed my sneaky updates to my to-read list/currently-reading post but you caught me, I might've read 《无双》 over the past few weeks, I just haven't gotten around to uploading a few Choice Quotes from my phone yet

but YES, let's talk about who runs the world jianghu in 《无双》!

I think one thing that really struck me reading 《无双》 was that only five years had gone by since the events of 《千秋》, but all under heaven has changed so much. I mean, obviously there's the new Sui Dynasty in power but like... the shape of the jianghu has shifted and I don't recognize anyone in it anymore. okay fine I'll admit it, I miss 《千秋》 a lot okay

I think the exponential increase in female characters in 《无双》 is, wildly, directly caused by 《千秋》 itself, and I'm not just referring to the fact that Bai Rong was a hit with the readers (to the point where many readers were shipping qiaorong rather than yanshen and Meng Xishi was like "thank you all for your support for Bai Rong, however this is a danmei novel, so don't get too attached to that ship" for which I will never stop laughing, have you ever seen the central ship in a novel get upstaged by a het ship take that sao lao Yan—), but also to the fact that, well, the events of 《千秋》 resulted in a lot of toxic men getting wiped out of the jianghu, and I'm sure Bai Rong's ensuing leadership of Hehuan Zong can only carve out a better place for women in the jianghu regardless of their origins or cultivation paths

but I also think the shift in the setting from 《千秋》 to 《无双》, from jianghu to courtly politics, is also quite significant — "behind every powerful man is an even more powerful woman" suddenly becomes very applicable here because there are now more families involved with the central thread of the plot, particularly royal ones. and so we have ambassadorial figures like Jin Lian, conspiratorial figures like Bing Xian and Qin Miaoyu, and the (gestures frantically) everything of the women of the Yang/Yuwen family, which got messy rip ladies Yuwen

if the archetypal figure of the jianghu is 云游侠客, the wandering xia hero, free of obligation or family ties or roots in a singular place, then the archetypal figure of courtly politics may well be the scheming of spymasters and strategists, and there's nothing to say that the person hiding their knowing smile behind a demure sip of tea can only be of one gender or another, and so we see the emergence of so many more lovingly crafted female characters in 《无双》, particularly well-connected ones who grow up with an awareness and a deftness for leaning on their relationships, just so, to effect the change that will further their personal agendas in these opening years of a new dynasty

ALSO. also. can we talk about the fact that Meng Xishi strongly implied trans Qiao Xian because I swear my jaw dropped when I read that. the exchange between her and Zhangsun Puti... iconic:

(paraphrased for comedic effect and because I can't be bothered to look it up asdlkafjs) Zhangsun Puti: wait, are you male or female? Qiao Xian: (side-eyes him) aren't you a Buddhist monk? Shouldn't you understand that gender is but a manifestation of the material illusions of the profane world, and doesn't actually matter in the eyes of the Buddha? Zhangsun Puti: damn, you right, forget I asked

anyway. (gestures) love everything going on with her, yes I do realize she does at some point betray Cui Buqu, no that does not reduce my love one bit

#I'd also love to see Qin Miaoyu and Bian Yanmei form a support group for competent jianghu underlings #because I think it'd be Neat and also they could get drunk and bitch about their narcissistic demonic cultivator superiors #this is the true 《千秋》 - 《无双》 crossover we deserve #alkdjfalksjd will fengcui survive past Yang Guang's reign? yes because they're both cockroaches #the sheer NUMBER of times either of them should've died........ inspirational #but if they know what's good for them they'll probably get out of the imperial court once a son takes over rip #《无双》 backlog

[hunxi-after-hours]

呦，都是老熟人啊

#LOOK I MISS THE 《千秋》 CAST OKAY #《无双》 backlog

[hunxi-after-hours]

hunxi’s danmei awards, 牛年/2021 edition

(should’ve made this at the end of last year or something but I was only recently possessed by the demonic urge to make something silly like this so we’re doing this now)

I recently realized that I’ve now consumed roundabout 10 danmei novels in either novel, donghua, and/or audiodrama form during this past year of the ox, so I wanted to commemorate this milestone with some longform shitposting. thus — awards night!

Here are some of the categories:

Best Worldbuilding

Best Relationship Development

Most Iconic Use of Punctuation

Most Iconic Takedown (verbal)

Most Iconic Takedown (physical)

Best Unreliable Narrator

Best Performance by Voice Actors in an Audiodrama

...and more!

yeah okay, so I got a bit carried away

And here are the candidates in the running:

《天官赐福》 Tian Guan Ci Fu by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

《千秋》 Qian Qiu by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

《七爷》 Qi Ye by priest

《天涯客》 Tian Ya Ke by priest

《人渣反派自救系统》 Ren Zha Fan Pai Zi Jiu Xi Tong by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

《双杀》 Shuang Sha by 娜可露露 Na Ke Lu Lu

《烈火浇愁》 Lie Huo Jiao Chou by priest

《黄金台》 Huang Jin Tai by 苍梧宾白 Cang Wu Bin Bai

《判官》 Pan Guan by 木苏里 Mu Su Li

《哏儿》 Gen’er by 南北逐风 Nan Bei Zhu Feng

of course, obligatory disclaimer that these are nothing more than my opinions, these designations mean nothing, and I really abandoned all brain cells at the door in the writing of this post

Best Worldbuilding

Winner: 《判官》 Pan Guan by 木苏里 Mu Su Li

Everyone has something that they can’t let go of, and in the world of 《判官》 Pan Guan, sometimes those unresolved regrets, unfulfilled wishes become 笼 / “cages”—subconscious traps where a soul can wander forever, caught in the vortex of their own grief and rage. The 判官, then, are those dedicated to unlocking these cages and releasing the souls imprisoned inside. Travelling into these subconscious dreamscapes, the 判官 must unravel mysteries and uncover the truths, bearing witness to the grief, rage, regret, and love that define human lives.

This novel has, hands down, one of the coolest premises I’ve ever read, and Mu Su Li utilizes it to explore the emotional struggles of frustration and denial as well as the catharsis of learning to let things go. Each cage is an intricate puzzle box of clues left by the cage host’s subconscious, such that the novel reads like a blend of detective case fiction and horror (these dreamscapes can get pretty gnarly). Lest you think this book is all dark and gloomy hours, however, 《判官》 Pan Guan ALSO features the best use of WeChat in a novel I’ve ever seen (that’s RIGHT, this is MODERN FANTASY, never forget Wen Shi vs. the roomba). The entire Zhang family chat... iconic.

Best Characterization

Winner: 《千秋》 Qian Qiu by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

Anyone who’s been on my blog for the past year has probably seen me losing my mind over Meng Xishi’s 《千秋》 Qian Qiu, and for good reason—here is enemies to lovers like you’ve never seen it done. Over the course of 128(+) chapters, 《千秋》 Qian Qiu slowly, carefully, painstakingly develops the relationship between Shen Qiao (compassionate, sheltered, forgiving, kind) and Yan Wushi (brutal, mercurial, arrogant, cynical) as their paths continually intertwine amidst rising turmoil in the jianghu. Meng Xishi sets up two characters fundamentally opposed to each other in belief and refuses to pull any punches or take any shortcuts as these two negotiate jianghu politics, shadowy conspiracies, and their own character arcs to eventually come to stand by each other’s sides. These two literally don’t get together until the fanwai, which is how hard Meng Xishi makes them work for it.

What I particularly appreciated about the characterization in 《千秋》 Qian Qiu was that this novel isn’t about how true love can redeem even the worst of villains, or that naive idealism will forever be doomed to a tragic end. Shen Qiao is often forced to concede that Yan Wushi has a point, just as Yan Wushi is often faced with the error of his assumptions. Neither of them is wholly right, just as neither of them is wholly wrong, and the development of their dynamic/relationship is the constant negotiation of how they balance their unswerving personal beliefs with everything the world throws at them—including each other.

Best Relationship Development

Winner: 《双杀》 Shuang Sha by 娜可露露 Na Ke Lu Lu

Look, I wasn’t planning on getting into an audiodrama about competitive video gaming either, and yet 《双杀》 Shuang Sha came out of nowhere and double-killed me with its deft, nuanced development of its main characters and their relationship. The narrative follows 19-year-old Feng Can—talented, feisty, and headstrong—in his first year with the pro gaming team SP. As Feng Can struggles to adjust to a starkly different playing style and his new teammates, he continually butts heads with the team captain, Cheng Sunian. Where Feng Can is impulsive and hot-headed, Cheng Sunian is steady and serious, and at the age of twenty-six, Cheng Sunian is all too aware that he is nearing the end of his gaming career. As the competition heats up and the world championships draw closer, the two of them must learn to navigate both the game and their feelings for each other if they want to win.

While I could write loads about Feng Can’s character development as he grows and matures as a person (he is, after all, nineteen, a fact both that Na Ke Lu Lu and Cheng Sunian pay careful attention to), my heart really belongs to Cheng Sunian, an ace icon for the ages. Just as Feng Can learns what it means to take responsibility for his own actions, Cheng Sunian also comes learn that he doesn’t have to be an island alone, that he doesn’t always have to be independent and self-sufficient. Throughout the narrative, the two of them clash and argue, hurt each other and forgive each other; together, they stumble, and together, they eventually stand.

Really, my heart is at all times overflowing with my love for extremely competent, coolly sensible, deadpan snarker Cheng Sunian, so perhaps I’ll just leave it with this iconic exchange:

封灿：但我真的喜欢你，我想把坏毛病改掉，变得好点再去找你。我这么想没错吧？

Feng Can: But I truly like you—I want to change my bad habits, to come find you again when I’ve become better. Am I wrong to think that?

程肃年：所以这就是你一直不来找我的原因？你想 ‘变好了’再来？但如果短期内变不好了呢？你打算让我等几年？

Cheng Sunian: So this is the reason why you never came to talk to me? You wanted to “become better” and then come back? Then what if you couldn’t change so quickly? How long were you going to make me wait?

封灿：我会努力的，你应该喜欢那种懂分寸，情商高的成熟男人，对吧？

Feng Can: I’ll work hard—you must like men who understand propriety and restraint, who are mature and emotionally intelligent, right?

程肃年：那我为什么不直接去找这种类型的人谈恋爱？或者干脆照镜子，自己和自己谈算了？

Cheng Sunian: Then why don’t I just find those people and date them? Or just find a mirror and date myself?

封灿：啊？

Feng Can: Ah?

程肃年：行了，你也别瞎想了。算我什么都没说。真是恋爱降智。

Cheng Sunian: All right, don’t agonize over it further. Pretend I didn’t say anything. Truly, love makes people stupid.

封灿：我想的不对吗？那你究竟是什么意思？想让我怎么做，你直接说不行吗？非得给我绕弯子，我猜不出你的想法，你到底想—

Feng Can: Were my conclusions not right? What do you mean? Can’t you just directly tell me what you want me to do? You always beat around the bush, I can’t guess what you’re thinking, what exactly are you—

程肃年：我想让你闭嘴。

Cheng Sunian: I want you to shut up.

[he kisses Feng Can]

GET ‘EM, 队长—

Most Extravagant Act of Devotion

Winner: 《黄金台》 Huang Jin Tai by 苍梧宾白 Cang Wu Bin Bai

Danmei is full of characters doing outrageous things for love, from carving giant stone statues that can double as mechas in boss battles to waiting 13/800/3000 etc years for one’s loved one to come back from the war/death/vagaries of worldbuilding, but somehow one (1) general from an ambiguously historical, non-fantastic danmei managed to beat out all of them for me:

Fu Shen and Yan Xiaohan are Cruelly Separated From Each Other for plot reasons, miles of battle lines and enemy-occupied territory filling the vast distance between them, but let it not be said that a certain general lacked for batshit insane ideas as well as the willingness to follow through on them. Taking inspiration from literature, bullying his subordinates, and yearning desperately for his husband, Fu Shen shoots down several dozen swan-geese, nurses them back to health (or rather, gets his long-suffering field medic to do so for him), and ties letters to their legs with the vague hope that one might make its way southwards to Yan Xiaohan. And when Yan Xiaohan somehow, miraculously, does find one, there are only four words on it, ink-smeared and barely legible: 吾妻安好？

Seriously, Fu Shen, you couldn’t even have been bothered to sign it with your name???

Best Interrogation of Themes (aka the “Rent-Free Award”)

Winner: 《七爷》 Qi Ye by priest

It is nigh-impossible to declare that any one of these titles has “better” “thematic” “content” than any of the others, especially because I can and will go off about characters, characterization, and character dynamics for days, but the novel whose philosophical ramifications have haunted me the longest is definitely 《七爷》 Qi Ye by priest. Part reincarnation novel, part time-travel do-over, part political intrigue, part interrogation of destiny and what it means to defy it, 《七爷》 Qi Ye packs a lot of thorny themes and complicated relationships into a deceptively short novel.

I’ve gone off about 《七爷》 Qi Ye‘s thematic complexity in other posts so I’m not going to rehash them now, but really—the questions this book deals with about power and morality, about legacy and responsibility, and the lengths a person would go to in order to see something done are still living, as they say, rent-free in my head.

Best Banter

Winner: Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu in 《天涯客》 Tian Ya Ke by priest

These two I stg. Moving on—

Honorable Mention: 《哏儿》 Gen’er, because… because. I mean, it’s 相声 xiangsheng, banter is like, the literal essence of xiangsheng

Most Iconic Use of Punctuation

Winner: 《天官赐福》 Tian Guan Ci Fu by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Really, nothing is ever going to top this scene in book 5:

慕情[...]沉默片刻，道：“殿下，你真的很喜欢他吗？”

“[…]after a moment of silence, Mu Qing said: ‘Dianxia, do you really like him?’

谢怜没料到他会突然这么问，道：“啊。啊？... ...啊。”

Xie Lian would never have guessed that he would suddenly ask this question. “Ah,” he said. “Ah? ... ...ah.”

Honorable Mention: 《千秋》 Qian Qiu, for the sheer number of “沈峤: ...” / “Shen Qiao: ...” in this novel but particular shout-out to the one in That Scene. You know the one. LSP NI SHEI A—

Most Iconic Line

Winner: 《天涯客》 Tian Ya Ke by priest

I believe so strongly in the superiority of the 凉雨知秋 line that I translated and subtitled the audiodrama season 1 trailer for the sole purpose of yelling about the choral rendition of it:

凉雨知秋，青梧老死。一宿苦寒欺薄衾，几番世道蹉跎...也不过一声“相见恨晚。”

When cold rain falls, autumn makes itself known; the wutong tree ages and dies. Thin robes offer no protection from a night of bitter winter, years and lives wasting, whiling away… nothing more than this: resentment, that we met so late. 

Chills, every time.

Honorable Mention: 《千秋》 Qian Qiu, for the truly lovely line 苍生有难，山河同悲。草木有灵，天地不朽。 / “When the living things suffer, the mountains and rivers also sorrow. Grass and tree possess spirit; heaven and earth remain uncorrupted.“

Most Iconic Takedown (verbal)

Winner: Shen Qiao in 《千秋》 Qian Qiu by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

I’ve literally made a top five list of Shen Qiao’s best takedowns before, but I have magnanimously decided against letting him sweep these awards. That being said, Shen Qiao’s very public, very messy martial brother break-up in a crowded teashop where he verbally drags Yu Ai before the entire jianghu remains one of my favorite scenes of all time, to the point where I literally added 23 extra pages to the SHJX survival guide for the sole purpose of translating this iconic scene. Get ‘em, a-Qiao, I’ll hold your flower.

Honorable Mentions: Wen Shi in 《判官》 Pan Guan, for the line “意外在哪？做事全靠躲的懦夫，也就只能当当影子。” / “What’s unexpected about this? A coward who relies on hiding to do anything could only be a shadow.” Rest in absolute fucking pieces a-Jun

Xie Shuangchen and Ye Ling 《哏儿》 Gen'er — given that this is a novel about 相声 xiangsheng / “cross-talk,” a form of traditional Chinese comedy that functions on wit, wordplay, and mutual roasting, not an episode of the audiodrama goes by without some truly sick burns

Most Iconic Takedown (physical)

Winner: Xie Lian from 《天官赐福》 Tian Guan Ci Fu by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

I honestly could not tell you if I am giving TGCF this award for the giant mecha fight that takes up a solid amount of book five or for the vindictive rush of satisfaction from seeing Xie Lian, powers finally unlocked, pummeling Jun Wu into the ground, but it wins, Xie Lian wins, TGCF absolutely wins this award.

Honorable Mentions: 《判官》 Pan Guan, for battle couple chenshi destroying a certain useless ancestor and looking fabulous while doing so (shout-out to Wen Shi’s many, many three point landings)

《千秋》 Qian Qiu, for the September Ninth ambush 😉

Best Babie

Winner: Xia Qiao from 《判官》 Pan Guan by 木苏里 Mu Su Li

We all know this secondary character—the sweet, summer child who gets accidentally or forcibly adopted by the main characters, often a force of Pure Goodness to be Protected At All Costs, even if they can take care of themselves. (Especially if they can take care of themselves.)

Xia Qiao from 《判官》 Pan Guan beat out some fierce competition for the title of Best Babie, but I could give this award to no other because he really is one of the most hapless characters I’ve ever met in fiction. What a precious child. What a darling disaster. We award this title to him in honor of the many times he dutifully followed his Wen-ge into various horror movie situations despite the fact that he is the biggest scaredy-cat in the entire book.

Honorable Mention: Zhang Chengling in 《天涯客》 Tian Ya Ke, because he too is a hapless sweet summer child who would lose a fight against a chicken

Best Beleaguered Side Character Award

Winner: Xiao Zheng from 《烈火浇愁》 Lie Huo Jiao Chou by Priest

We all know this character, too—equally as hapless as the babie, but for reasons of the plot conspiring against them rather than relative inexperience or personality. This character is in all likelihood actually quite competent, but because they lack the Protagonist Halo (TM), they are often relegated to picking up after the maelstrom of the main characters—cleaning up their messes, filing their paperwork, providing crucial information for the next plot arc, etc etc. In any other book, they might even be the protagonist. Unfortunately, they live in this one.

I’m giving this award to Xiao Zheng for his hair travails alone. (blows kiss) this one’s for you, Xiao-baba

Honorable Mention: the Zhang siblings from 《判官》 Pan Guan because they really set records for accidental cringe when they unintentionally Zhangsplained to the literal founders of their magical practice

Most Competent Side Character Award

Winner: Bian Yanmei from 《千秋》 Qian Qiu by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

Did I make up this award solely to give it to Bian Yanmei, one of my favorite characters in existence? Yes, yes I did. I would trust the man with a budget and a spreadsheet, which is quite possibly the highest praise I could give a fictional character.

An incomplete list of Bian Yanmei’s accomplishments:

ran a sect for ten years while his shizun fucked off into seclusion

continued running it after his shizun returned, because Yan Wushi was up to a lot of things but uhhh taking care of budgets and logistics were not part of them

functionally raised and trained his younger shidi

became a mover and shaker in Chang’an politics

befriended all the noble families to the point where their children call him “Uncle Bian”

deduced his way through his shizun’s bullshit in record time when he first met Shen Qiao

helped organize a political coup

was adapted out of the donghua for being the only brain cell in the jianghu

Best Antagonist

Winner: Dan Li from 《烈火浇愁》 Lie Huo Jiao Chou

Dan Li is, easily, one of the coolest characters I’ve seen in a novel. Ruthless, calculating, cryptic, opaque, he is both teacher and opponent, strategist and enemy, murderer and protector, demonic and divine. He taught Sheng Lingyuan everything he knew, which, if you’ve met Sheng Lingyuan...well.

Though Dan Li has been dead for literal millennia by the beginning of the book, his actions, legacy, and stratagems linger throughout the narrative, playing out a centuries-spanning game of strike and counterstrike, move and countermove long after his death. The fact that no one has seen him without his mask is just icing on his cake of general mystery.

Best Unreliable Narrator

Winner: Shen Qingqiu from 《人渣反派自救系统》 Ren Zha Fan Pai Zi Jiu Xi Tong by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Could it have been anyone else? Was there any doubt in your mind that this award could go to any other character? Yeah, I thought so; no other character comes remotely close to the level of Shen “I hate this novel with every fiber of my being” Qingqiu, Shen “I’m not being nice, I’m acting in my own self-interest” Qingqiu, Shen “isn’t everyone a little gay for Luo Binghe” Qingqiu.

Honorable Mention: Xie Lian in 《天官赐福》 Tian Guan Ci Fu for neglecting to mention that Qi Rong was his cousin for fifty-some chapters which will never not be funny to me

Best Clown

Winner: Shen Qingqiu from 《人渣反派自救系统》 Ren Zha Fan Pai Zi Jiu Xi Tong by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Gaze deeply into your soul and ask yourself if it could have been anyone else. If your soul tells you otherwise, I don’t want to hear it. I will not be taking criticism at this time.

Honorable Mentions: Yu Shengyan from 《千秋》 Qian Qiu for... too many moments to count. Looking at an amnesiac Shen Qiao and going "it’s free shidi” and thereby accidentally tricking himself into feeling responsible for Shen Qiao. Showing up eighty chapters late to a sword conference still calling Shen Qiao “shidi” after the man has beaten up half the jianghu. Losing a bet with a housekeeper despite having inside information. RIP Yu Shengyan, if Shen Qingqiu weren’t a god-tier clown, this title would have been yours

Xie Shuangchen in 《哏儿》 Gen'er — have you ever faked amnesia after a head injury to try and get your beloved xiangsheng partner to admit that he likes you, only to have said beloved xiangsheng partner see through your bullshit and con you right back, which you fall for and end up chasing him through the hospital begging him to come back to you? You could make a drinking game out of the number of times Xie Shuangchen wails “叶老师，我错了—” / “Ye-laoshi, I was wrong—” in this audiodrama

Best Personal Weapon

Winner: E’Ming from 《天官赐福》 Tian Guan Ci Fu by 墨香铜臭 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu 

I will hear Absolutely Nothing against this precious cursed scimitar who just wants cuddles. Nothing. E’Ming is the best and deserves All the Cuddles, All the Time. Jail for Hua Cheng for a thousand years.

Honorable Mention: the 山河同悲剑 Shanhetongbei sword from 《千秋》 Qian Qiu, for having a stupidly beautiful name. See also: Most Iconic Line, Honorable Mention

Dishonorable Mention: 《烈火浇愁》 Lie Huo Jiao Chou is disqualified from this award for Reasons. It knows what it did.

Best Moment That Wrecked Me (aka the Knifiest Award)

Winner: chapter 121 from 《烈火浇愁》 Lie Huo Jiao Chou by Priest

Over the course of these books, I’ve seen desperate yearning. I’ve seen centuries of pining. I’ve seen betrayals and destructions, disappointment and despair, resurrections and redemptions. But only one novel has had the absolute goddamn gall to drive half of its central pairing to his knees, begging, in tears, promising to let the other go if that’s what he wants, just give him a goddamn second—

盛灵渊后知后觉地想：“我伤了他的心么?”

Sheng Lingyuan thought, belatedly, “Have I broken his heart?”

Bixia, we get it, you’re the most metal of them all, but was that strictly necessary.

Honorable Mentions: chapter 106 of 《判官》 Pan Guan. It knows what it did.

chapter 79 of 《千秋》 Qian Qiu. It knows exactly what it did.

Best Performance by Voice Actors in an Audiodrama

Winner: 《哏儿》 Gen’er by 南北逐风 Nan Bei Zhu Feng

This audiodrama. This audiodrama. I realized halfway through writing this overlong shitpost that I actually haven’t consumed 《哏儿》 Gen’er in its entirety, but I felt the need to yell about how insanely good this audiodrama is. 《哏儿》 Gen’er follows two lovers and performers of 相声 xiangsheng / “cross talk,” a traditional Chinese form of comedy that blends improvisation and classic scripts, as they work to establish their own xiangsheng studio and carry on the legacy of Xie Shuangchen’s shifu and adoptive father.

What makes the voice actor performances in this audiodrama absolutely bonkers is that xiangsheng is an art that performers train for years, entire lifetimes, not unlike Beijing opera performers or professional stage actors. While voice actors are very good at what they do, this is a whole other level. I’m not saying that Zhao Qianjing and Xie Tiantian are good enough to be xiangsheng performers, but like, 他们还真有一点那味儿你知道么，太神了. The technical brilliance demanded by these roles, including but not limited to talking a mile a minute, is utterly insane, and I can’t wait for the three whole 完结FT’s (post-production interviews) this audiodrama promises.

Best Post-Production in an Audiodrama

Winners: 《千秋》 Qian Qiu by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi (post-production by 声罗万象 Shengluo Wanxiang Studio)

and

《双杀》 Shuang Sha by 娜可露露 Na Ke Lu Lu (post-production by 祝余 Zhu Yu)

I think it is a demonstration of my restraint that I haven’t been giving out ties left and right throughout this entire overlong shitpost, but for this award I really have no other choice. Post-production sound editing is tremendously important in audiodramas, not the least for general atmosphere, but also for narrative clarity. As a result, the audiodramas for 《千秋》 Qian Qiu and 《双杀》 Shuang Sha stand out for their brilliant execution.

As a wuxia novel, the action and narrative of 《千秋》 Qian Qiu are often advanced by fight scenes, which Meng Xishi describes in loving, lavish detail throughout the novel. The miracle of the audiodrama, then, is that these fight scenes remain fundamentally intelligible despite the fact that we can’t see them. With a deft combination of voice acting, sound effects, Foley, voice-over, soundtrack music, and bystander commentary, the listener can follow the progress and turning points of individual fight scenes without much difficulty at all, which is super heckin badass when you think about it.

Similarly, 《双杀》 Shuang Sha features multiple video game competitions that occupy a similar narrative function to fight scenes in a wuxia novel—they are intense, fast-paced, and filled with complex technical components that illustrate and advance character development. 音熊联盟 VoiceBear Alliance, the voice actor studio that produced this audiodrama, pulled from its wider cast roster to record unique lines for every single playable video game character that came up in the novel at varying degrees of health. Correspondingly, during matches, the canned voice-overs of player characters telegraph the progress of the competitions that audiodrama listeners cannot visually witness. And an additional shout-out to voice actors 刘强 Liu Qiang and 龟娘 Gui Niang is in order for absolutely killing it as the commentators. Commentating is a particular skill (in the post-production interview, they mentioned that multiple voice actors had to beg off Liu Qiang’s role), and these two were critical to appreciating, comprehending, and following the action of these scenes.

Voice Actor with the Most Insane Range

Winner: 吴磊 Wu Lei of Listen领声 Studio for his roles in the 《千秋》 Qian Qiu audiodrama, the 《穿越自救指南》 (the SVSSS donghua), and the 《判官》 Pan Guan audiodrama

All right, we all know I have a voice actor problem, but really, listen to Wu “maomao-laoshi” Lei in a few productions and you’ll understand why. A single person who can voice characters as disparate as Yan Wushi (which includes, by definition, Xie Ling and a-Yan as well), Shen Qingqiu, and Chen Budao/Xie Wen deserves to be feared and adored.

And never! Forget! the Da! Ah! Jian!

Honorable Mentions: 姜广涛 Jiang Guangtao (aka 姜sir), for the sheer range of bumbling fool 伊依 Yi Yi in the 《诗云》 Shi Yun audiodrama to murderous warrior emperor 盛灵渊 Sheng Lingyuan in the 《烈火浇愁》 Lie Hou Jiao Chou donghua

赵乾景 Zhao Qianjing, for playing both brusque tsundere Wen Shi in the 《判官》 Pan Guan audiodrama and mischievous motormouth Xie Shuangchen in the 《哏儿》 Gen’er audiodrama

Okay that is QUITE enough nonsense from me tonight, if you’ve made it to the bottom of this post I heartily congratulate you. No one is allowed to send me corrections because I’ve decided that I am right, but everyone should feel free to let me know if there are any award categories I’ve overlooked in this—oh god—4k+ post

Here’s to a 2022 filled with more reading and discoveries, more disaster gays and fictional stabbery! 咱们再接再厉！

#ARE YOU READY FOR THESE TAGS #ok ok ok let's go #hunxi reads TGCF #千秋 backlog #hunxi thinks about qq #seventh time lucky #zhou zishu comedy hours #hunxi thinks about svsss #voice(bear) appreciation hours #spine chickens and war crimes #if I were really clever I would schedule this post to coincide with 春节 #but I have always been yours in calendrical heresy #if I do this next year I promise I'll divvy this up into multiple posts oh my god

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hey Hunxi! Which novels would you recommend for someone who can read Chinese newspapers but never tried Chinese language fiction?

anon!!! I am very impressed, you are more than ready for fiction/webnoveldom if you have newspapers under your belt (I say, personally daunted by newspapers still)

here is a (personal, subjective) rundown of authors on a sliding scale of writing style, since I think that might be helpful when considering a shift from newspaper-style 书面语 to fiction. unfortunately, I have an extremely limited repertoire at the moment, so I can only offer insights on a few authors:

墨香铜臭: terrifically colloquial, I found her writing more accessible than any other author. Generally speaking, the greatest vocabulary challenges are going to be technical worldbuilding aspects. I haven't actually read 《魔道祖师》, but 《天官赐福》 was my first danmei webnovel and I was pleasantly surprised at how very readable it was at my level. hilariously, 《人渣反派自救系统》 kind of goes off the other end due to its high concentration of internet slang — I had to baidu a lot of stuff I haven't seen before — but I personally found the journey absolutely batshit and delightful. 10/10 would recommend 《人渣》 as like, a crash course in Chinese internet culture alone

木苏里: I've only read 《判官》, but I think 木苏里 's style occupies a happy medium between colloquial and referential. once again, greatest vocabulary challenges are probably going to be technical worldbuilding terms. your experience will be improved by some knowledge of references, but they’re not necessary for comprehension. slips into classical construction a few times throughout the entire book, so not too bad

苍梧宾白: again, I've only read 《黄金台》, so I can't vouch for any other title. greatest difficulty I ran into was parsing the court-specific vocabulary (so many bureaucrats. So Many)

一十四洲: I'm only halfway through 《小蘑菇》 at the moment, and in a fun turn of events the vocabulary challenge here leans towards the technical and scientific rather than the fantastic. the opening paragraphs in particular feel very, uh, naturalistic, and were honestly the hardest for me to parse. once the human(oid) shenaniganery begins, the language is quite easy to follow. does benefit from slight familiarity with scientific vocabulary (if you know "magnetic field" and various common genetic terms — or you're ready and willing to Pleco on occasion — you are a-okay)

海晏: heavy, heavy asterisks on this author because I read 《琅琊榜》 approximately (checks notes) uhh six years ago at this point (??!?!?) and my memories of the journey are heavily colored by the fact that it was the first novel I tackled outside of a structured educational environment. I remember struggling with it quite a lot, but that was also 1) fairly early on in my Chinese reading journey and 2) encumbered by a somewhat foolish insistence on looking up every single word I didn't know. my impression, looking back on it now, is that I'd probably slide it between 木苏里 and priest in terms of style, though if the language is anything like the show then it enjoys leaning towards the pseudo-classical in sentence construction

priest/p大: priest isn't difficult to read so much as her writing style really rewards people who have at least some knowledge of poetry and classical texts, both within and without the Chinese tradition. her plots and worldbuilding also tend to be more intricate, though this of course depends on the particular novel. of the three I've read, I would say that 《天涯客》 is the easiest to get into. it's also the novel with the highest concentration of fart jokes, which is neither here nor there

梦溪石: this author has a vocabulary and isn't afraid to use it, which I feel confident saying even though I've only read 《千秋》. her fight scenes in particular tend to cross over into the abstract, and at some point you just kind of sit back and let the language wash over you without trying to parse it too clearly. deeply intricate plots combined with her own historical research can make 《千秋》 a bit daunting to get into, but once you do get into it you're compelled to keep going as fast as possible (I say, having suffered many a late night at the hands of 梦溪石)

as for specific titles! oh gosh this is getting long, um, here's an at-a-glance overview of the webnovels I've read:

《天官赐福》 by 墨香铜臭: xuanhuan/xianxia; 1.1 million words. vast, sprawling, non-linear (ish) narrative that investigates godhood and trauma, humanity and devotion, acceptance and (self-)forgiveness

《人渣反派自救系统》 by 墨香铜臭: xianxia/satire; 432k words. an absolute clown transmigrates into a Legitimately Terrible webnovel as one of the central villains, and in the course of trying to alter his own fate, accidentally makes everyone fall in love with him instead by virtue of being a decent person. also an exploration of genre, tropes, the author-reader relationship, trauma (as usual), and one's own unreliability as a narrator

《判官》 by 木苏里: horror/contemporary fantasy; 539k words. what begins like an episodic horror-mystery series spirals out into a centuries-spanning epic about memory, fate, love, and grief. some of the coolest worldbuilding I've seen so far

《黄金台》 by 苍梧宾白: (a)historical political intrigue; 290k words. a story of how an emperor thought he was making a political match from hell with the two main characters and accidentally created the dynasty's scariest power couple. these two needed to get a room even before they were officially pressured into marriage, honestly. a general and a court official fight for their shared survival in a collapsing dynasty

《小蘑菇》 by 一十四洲: hahaha oh god. um. science fiction + the collision of three simultaneous apocalypses; 313k words. the world is ending, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but a long, ragged groan of pain as humanity refuses to go gentle into that good night. in a world where genetic mutations threaten to destroy humankind and a man-made aurora dances across the sky each night, a sentient mushroom goes undercover in a human city to recover a part of himself that was stolen. an investigation of humanity and personhood, sentience and benevolence, the role of order in a lawless world, how to face despair and the end times with dignity and meaning. also, mushroom-based comedy

《琅琊榜》 by 海晏: (a)historical political intrigue; 740k words. how do I even begin to describe the novel that literally changed my life and led me to where I am today. forgive me but I'm going to pitch it as The Count of Monte Cristo meets Game of Thrones. I am regularly rendered incoherent by my love for 《琅琊榜》. read it and weep

《七爷》 by priest: (a)historical political intrigue/the lightest possible fantasy elements; 292k words. theoretically there's a reincarnation premise but this book is 98% complex political intrigue. in which Jing Beiyuan attempts to put Helian Yi on the throne without dying this time around (and with more naps). finally a political intrigue novel that commits to characters with gray-as-hell morality. a book that balances themes of destiny (and how one defies it) with morality (when you’ve decided that your ends will justify your means, just how far would your means go? what does it mean to smile, and smile, and be a villain?)

《天涯客》 by priest: wuxia; 292k words. sequel/companion novel to 《七爷》, best read in conjunction with it. a retired assassin wants to do nothing more than drink his wine and die in peace, but the rest of the jianghu and a budding found family refuse to leave him alone. a roundabout exploration of how one escapes from the shadow of one's past and how even the bloodiest of hands can build a joyous future with love and care

《烈火浇愁》 by priest: contemporary fantasy/modern mythology; 783k words. an ancient resurrected sorcerer-emperor reluctantly teams up with a credit card debt-ridden millennial (ish. it’s complicated) to unravel a shadowy conspiracy with literally volcanic stakes. bleak, gorgeous, hilarious, heart-rending. explores the nature of humanity and grief, purpose and desolation, pedestals and sacrifice. the ravages of memory. how one is meant to be human when one has been relentlessly dehumanized. alternatively, "the sentient weapon of a sentient weapon falls in love with the sentient weapon and both of them forget about each other for 3000 years"

《千秋》 by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi: historical (!!) political intrigue + wuxia; 637k words. an isolationist sect leader is unceremoniously yeeted off a cliff into the midst of changing political regimes and capricious jianghu turmoil. investigates the complexities of good and evil, reputation and hearsay, betrayal and understanding, pride and forgiveness. what it means to remain faithful and unchanging in a world that seeks to break you. what responsibility an individual bears to a world that has only betrayed them. the profoundly revolutionary act of trusting another person

oh goodness this post is getting out of hand, feel free to ask if you have any more questions! alternatively, I present this post as a clickbait-ish selection for your perusal

#ahahaha oh god let's tag this huh #zhou zishu comedy hours #hunxi reads tgcf #seventh time lucky #千秋 backlog #spine chickens and war crimes #came for the mushroom stayed for the mushroom #hunxi thinks about qq #hunxi thinks about svsss #I...... think that's all of it #oh man I didn't even get into audiodramas but that's!! an expressway for me to get hooked deep into a novel #and incidentally a great way of practicing listening #also a great way to get yourself deep into the niche fandom of Chinese voice acting asdlfkajsdlfka

[hunxi-after-hours]

This isn’t coming from a place of slut shaming or me finding it problematic or anything, but I still find it out of character that Shen Qiao slept with Yan Wushi that night at the inn. I get that they had gone through a lot and that he realized his feelings at that point, but given how for 30 years, abstinence was a huge part of his life, I just feel like it would have taken a few times to get him to go all the way. I guess Yan Wushi is just that good? 😂

anon this ask is halfway to a shitpost and yet I have been thinking about this for like, the past week

so here's the thing for me about Shen Qiao: he is one of the most asexual goddamn characters I've ever read in fiction, and I love him for that

this is, of course, just my personal reading of the book, and you could make very solid cases for deeply-repressed Shen Qiao, or dignified gay Shen Qiao, or subtle disaster gay Shen Qiao, among a whole host of other interpretations, and that's not even getting into the fact that I think we could have a goddamn field day about the merits and pitfalls of applying Western labels/queer identities onto non-Western texts, but like. lowkey. Shen Qiao reads as one of the most ace characters I've ever come across in fiction, which is really fucking cool

(going under a cut because you know me :)

I remember, back in freshman year of college, having an illuminating conversation with my very lovely, very allosexual roommate where she announced "I need to go on the hunt!" and I was like "I'm sorry, what?" and she was like "on the hunt? for a relationship?" and I was like “I’m sorry what”

and for me, that kind of encapsulates a lot of my experience of being ace, which isn't so much of an experience as the lack of one. my roommate would actively take time out of her week to seek out relationships and sexual partners; meanwhile, I don't remotely share that need. in many ways, it feels like being ace frees me up to do a lot more other stuff in my free time, like read, or write, or translate, or generally be a nerd on the internet

so reading Shen Qiao, who is operating in a highly sexual world (from the worldbuilding to the politics to the interpersonal dynamics to the gender dynamics), who has to deal with sexual overtures from various characters and being sexualized by everyone he meets and generally fending off interested partners while he himself is disinclined towards sex, really struck a chord, let's say

(skdjskjshds not in an “I’m also super attractive and half the jianghu wants to sleep with me” kind of way, but in a “gosh the rest of the world spends a lot of time being preoccupied over this sex business, huh” kind of way)

and Shen Qiao's general ace-ness comes from more than just his abstinence, I think--look, Xie Lian from TGCF is in a similar boat of cultivation-motivated abstinence, but a stark difference between Xie Lian and Shen Qiao's narration (or perhaps, MXTX vs. Meng Xishi's writing? I'd have to read more to tell) is the fact that, well--Xie Lian thirsts. oh my god Xie Lian is so thirsty, and he probably doesn't even realize it, but from the moment San Lang appears on the page, there is so much ink devoted to Hua Cheng's long, slender calves, to the point where I buried my face in my hands while reading and was like "we GET IT, the man has NICE CALVES, can we move on" and Xie Lian would be like "yeah we can move on, let's talk about his hands" and I was like "oh my god"

meanwhile with Shen Qiao, he feels much more... detached? I mean, Meng Xishi's narration/writing style feels a little more removed than MXTX's (but also, MXTX's writing style is very immediate and colloquial and holy fuck chapter 190 of TGCF was an Experience), but the most Shen Qiao really comments on anyone's appearance in narration is just... "this person was very beautiful. also dangerous" and moves on. he doesn't particularly linger on anyone's physical features, to the point where I couldn't tell you what most of the characters actually look like, tall or short, curvy or stick-thin, heart-shaped face or almond-eyed--he just cursorily labels people with "hot" and then keeps on keeping on (probably coughing up blood, Shen Qiao is usually having a bad time of it)

abstinence feels like much more of a Thing for Xie Lian (in that he desires, and then suppresses his desires) than it does for Shen Qiao. maybe Shen Qiao's enlightened himself to the point where he can neatly stow away his desires and not even comment on them in his internal narration. or maybe Shen Qiao's super ace, and abstinence isn't really a big deal for him since he doesn't care that much about sex in the first place

and it's precisely this asexual interpretation of his character (Shen Qiao very much reads as sex-indifferent on the spectrum to me) that makes his first night with Yan Wushi Together-together make sense to me? because like...he doesn't particularly care for the act of sex either way; what Shen Qiao's really pursuing in this scene is his desire to communicate with Yan Wushi about, well, getting together properly. it's not like Shen Qiao doesn't have second thoughts during the whole process ("it's still early " "so what you're saying is, you'll be willing when it's dark?"), but like... I don't think the physical act of sex matters to him as much as what that sex signifies--a confirmation and literal consummation of their relationship to each other

even in all the additional fanwai where they are together-together and have been for years, we only ever see Yan Wushi initiating, and Shen Qiao exasperatedly putting up with Yan Wushi's general nonsense. Shen Qiao doesn't appear to really seek out sex, but also doesn't mind when Yan Wushi does (provided they're not in like, the middle of a serious conversation about political affairs sdflksdjfls sao lao Yan please). and regardless of whether Meng Xishi deliberately conceived of the yanshen relationship and Shen Qiao's identity in these words, I do think it's pretty cool that you can interpret the yanshen relationship as a perfectly healthy, loving, and mutually appreciative (if occasionally eyeroll-inducing) relationship between a stupidly powerful distinguished disaster bi (Yan Wushi) and a gently exasperated sex-indifferent asexual (Shen Qiao)

#(cups hands and yells into the abyss) shen qiao i love yooooooou #千秋 backlog #why oh why didn't I make a proper tag for this #Shen Qiao #Yan Wushi #cautiously puts this out here like please don't take my head off for talking about asexuality and danmei again #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hi Hunxi, I'm rewatching the QQ donghua again and I always noticed that at least 50% of the time, they use the word "gang" instead of "sect" and I tried my hardest not to cringe bad or snort in laughter because using that word made me think I was watching a mob drama. But now I do want to really ask, has the word "gang" ever been actually used to describe an organization/sect/etc. in wuxia and/or xianxia?

funny you should ask that anon, because here's the thing--not no

so the 江湖 jianghu of wuxia isn't exactly the criminal underworld, but at the same time, it's not-not the criminal underworld. the whole point of the jianghu is that occupies a nebulous space somewhere between between urban and rural, civilized and lawless, where wandering heroes can roam and do good with their martial/vaguely supernatural prowess and cultivational sects clash and different schools of combat challenge each other to duels. it often exists specifically in opposition/contrast to the lawful, structured nature of the 朝廷 chaoting, i.e. the area under imperial law and control, though many wuxia stories focus much of their plots on the interactions/intersections between the two of them

Stephen Teo, in the introduction to Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, describes as “an anarchic domain with its own codes and laws” in which 侠 xia heroes “roam and operate and commit acts of violence based on revenge,” which makes the 江湖帮派 the factions and organizations of the jianghu very analogous to criminal gangs operating outside/in defiance of dynastic law. as a result, it wouldn't be inaccurate to call many 《千秋》 factions 'gangs'

that being said, there are distinctions/varieties to your jianghu organizations. I'm pulling this list from the ongoing 《山河剑心》 supplementary packet, but broadly writ you'll often see:

帮派 bangpai / factions

门派 menpai / schools

世家 shijia / clans

宗派 zongpai / sects

these translations are, of course, my preference, but you can get a sense of the subtle differences in terminology. for example, 宗派 zongpai are often going to have a religious element to their cultivation, such as Buddhist or Daoist sects (e.g. Xuandu Shan, Shaolin Temple, Mt. E'mei), whereas 世家 shijia are familial, organized primarily along bloodlines. the one jianghu sect in 《山河剑心》 that I actually do translate as 'gang' is the 六合帮 Liuhe Bang, because their structure and operation most closely resemble gang activity (as opposed to, say, 玄都山 Xuandu Shan, which is clearly out here being a religious Daoist sect)

off the top of my head, one of the translations as 'gang' that I do take issue with in the official donghua subs is their translation of 魔门 mo men / 'the demonic schools' as 'Evil Gang.' Primarily because... 1) it sounds dumb, and 2) the terminology around demonic sects (魔门 mo men as in 门派 menpai, 合欢宗 Hehuan Zong as in 宗派 zongpai) are clearly out here being labeled as 'schools' or 'sects,' not busybody gangs, also how dare you lump in Guang Lingsan with Dou Yanshan, one of these two is clearly classier than the other

tl;dr sometimes they are gangs! most of the time they are simply not-not gangs. either way you really, really don't want to cross any of them

#千秋 backlog #I've translated 8 episodes of 16!!! we're halfway there!!! #..........shh we don't need to talk about revisions #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

So this was gonna be a somewhat amusing discussion of if Yan Wushi was actually jealous or resentful towards his own personality (xie ling) for gaining Shen Qiao’s affections because I think it’s funny to think about and I never came to the conclusion of whether I think he was legit or if it was just for show and just to tease SQ. However, it got me thinking about deeper implications like about his past and perhaps him holding resentment towards that particular past when he was Xie Ling and whatever caused it. Maybe it could tie into SQ’s favoritism of that part of him like “I’m so superior to who I was in the past and yet he is the one you like?” It makes me wish we got some insight into when Yan Wushi was Xie Ling. But I am definitely overthinking this and dumping it all into your ask because I didn’t know who else to bother with this lol

anon you know exactly why you’re bothering me with this and it’s because this absolutely haunts me on a regular basis

I’ve mentioned off-hand before, buried somewhere in the absolute mess of my 《千秋》 tag, but I really do appreciate Meng Xishi’s decision to leave Yan Wushi’s backstory completely opaque and unknown, unknowable. we don’t know who Yan Wushi had been, what caused him to change, why he is like this--she just offers us the barest, tantalizing hints of who he might have been, who he might have become

(again, another reason why I thought Xie Xiang was going to be like. moderately relevant to the plot? and then he vanished and never showed up again)

what’s the first thing Yan Wushi says to Shen Qiao, when he’s delirious and nearly-dead from a head wound, before he remembers who Shen Qiao is, before he even remembers his own name?

don’t go.

which you can shrug off as something anyone would say if they had woken up, alone and hurting in an unfamiliar place, to the first person who shows them kindness. Shen Qiao certainly shrugs it off as Yan Wushi’s delirium, because he knows that the Yan Wushi he knows would scoff at weakness like that

don’t go. who left Yan Wushi, and why? who had they been to him?

what did their leaving do to him?

after I’d finished the book, I went back and re-read the little summary/hook/inside cover blurb for 《千秋》， and ended up spending way more time thinking about it than I’d expected to:

晏无师是从尸山血海里走过来的人。

他不相信人性本善，更不相信这世上会有大仁大义，不求回报为别人着想的人。

某日，有天下第一道门之称的玄都山掌教沈峤与人约战，却因故坠下山崖。

晏无师正好从下面路过。

看到重伤濒死的沈峤，他忽然生出一个绝妙的主意……

千秋之后，谁能不朽？

Yan Wushi was someone who had lived to today by walking across mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

He did not believe in the inherent goodness of human nature, nor did he believe that there could truly be a person who lived by great benevolence or righteousness, who would care for others with no expectation of reward.

One day, Shen Qiao—the sect leader of Xuandu Mountain, the greatest Daoist sect in the world—dueled an opponent, but for some unknown reason, fell from the peak. Yan Wushi just happened to be passing by below.

Seeing the heavily-injured Shen Qiao near death, he suddenly had an extremely clever, exceedingly ironic idea…

After all, who could remain uncorrupted after a thousand autumns?

first of all, I was struck that this passage is written from Yan Wushi’s point of view.

let that sink in for a bit. narration in this novel veers into omniscient on occasion, but for the most part we are firmly anchored with Shen Qiao’s perspective, following his journey and experiences, his emotions and struggles. we don’t get a ton of Yan Wushi interiority (the story of the stone is a notable exception), and I remember reading the one of the extras from Yan Wushi’s point of view (set shortly after The Betrayal) and being rather disoriented at his starkly different perspective, the shift of voice and narration

in a sense, this inside-cover blurb before we even get to the story proper is Yan Wushi’s backstory, the essence of his character and experiences that led him to the beginning of the book. Meng Xishi may not have written out his tragic backstory in graphic detail, but she gave us the essence and characterization of Yan Wushi before she gave us anything else

(this story may be about Shen Qiao, but it starts with Yan Wushi)

secondly, I kept thinking about the the first two lines, specifically because Meng Xishi could have left the first line out.

she could have started this blurb with “Yan Wushi did not believe in the inherent goodness of human nature” and the rest of the passage would have flowed just fine--everything about Yan Wushi wanting to mess with a fallen Shen Qiao, everything about the themes of purity/corruption, the title drop of ‘a thousand autumns.’ she could have left it at that, gotten the crux of Yan Wushi’s character across just fine, but no--she adds the line before that:

Yan Wushi was someone who had lived to today by walking across mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

which then, of course, implies causality. why doesn’t Yan Wushi believe in the inherent goodness of human nature? because he has walked across mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

the prevailing rumor in the jianghu is that Yan Wushi, before he renamed himself the masterless (haughty, arrogant, overbearing), held the surname Xie. and who were the Xies? one of the greatest families of the time (this is actually a historical reference: the 谢 Xie family was one of the Four Great Families during the Eastern Jin period)

Yan Wushi was someone who had lived to today by walking across mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

whose corpses? whose blood? where is Xie Ling’s family, and where does all of Huanyue Zong’s money come from?

who is Xie Ling?

Yan Wushi is single-mindedly obsessed with achievement, with attaining ever greater heights in his cultivation. he has no need for friends; the only people who deserve to speak to him on his level are rivals, are opponents, are people who can challenge him, maybe even defeat him

which is to say--Yan Wushi does not care for the inherent goodness of human nature, or the merit of benevolence, because both have failed him. the only true law is might, the only true directive is selfish self-preservation. Yan Wushi continually tests and mocks Shen Qiao saying that that the only reason why Shen Qiao hasn’t lost hope, hasn’t given in to corruption yet, is simply because Shen Qiao has not yet come face-to-face with the level of suffering that would shatter his faith in morality, his belief in goodness, and Shen Qiao reluctantly concedes, because he did grow up and come of age in a rather sheltered environment, and perhaps, maybe, somewhere out there in the world is a force great enough to torment him into evil. Shen Qiao doesn’t know, and he can’t know until it happens. it’s not an argument he can win through logic or experience, and both Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi know that

who doesn’t want to be a good person? who doesn’t want to be righteous and admired, venerated and exalted?

what makes you believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, and what makes you lose faith? what kind of experience, what sights and horrors and sorrows and agonies lead you to the only conclusion that all goodness and morality are nothing more than empty words in the face of the need to survive?

Yan Wushi is single-mindedly obsessed with greater martial achievement--for pursuit of the martial way and actualization, sure, I think that’s what it becomes, but I don’t think that’s where it began. the simplest, saddest answer to that desire to become stronger, mightier, more powerful, is painfully, poignantly obvious--so no one else can hurt him

why doesn’t he need friends? because the only person who can stab you in the back is someone you trusted. why is he so dismissive of his disciples, harsh in his criticism and uncaring in his manner despite their resounding capability and inherent talent? because coddling Yu Shengyan and Bian Yanmei will do them no favors--only greater achievement, the amassing of power, resources, influence, skill can truly guarantee their survival and success

and then there’s Shen Qiao

when Shen Qiao comes back for Yan Wushi and saves his sorry corpse, Yan Wushi acknowledges that he had been wrong about Shen Qiao (about Shen Qiao specifically, not necessarily about human nature entirely) with surprising grace. admittedly, there are quite a lot of confounding factors (head injury, split personalities, hijinks and adventures in a deserted ghost city, further assassination attempts, etc etc), but once Shen Qiao defeats Yan Wushi’s ultimate test, Yan Wushi comes around surprisingly quickly, considering that Shen Qiao is a living, breathing, walking refutation of the laws Yan Wushi has lived his life by, built a bloodied reputation on. but Yan Wushi doesn’t go about re-shaping his understanding of the world or human nature; he simply opens a gap in those laws, large enough to fit Shen Qiao. Shen Qiao, to him, is the exception that proves the rule, and Shen Qiao, for that reason, is all the more precious

for decades, Yan Wushi didn’t believe that mythical creature, that legendary figure, that genuinely, purely good person who lived by great benevolence, who cared for others with no expectation of reward, truly existed, or even if they did, they died swiftly, foolishly, tragically, young

and here is Shen Qiao, doggedly hanging on to both his life and his silly, silly morals

of course Yan Wushi falls. of course Yan Wushi falls hard, chases, pursues, cherishes, protects. he hasn’t seen such light in years. he’s almost forgotten what it’s like to be warm, and here Shen Qiao comes, lit from inside with a flame that even Yan Wushi cannot douse

and so--who is Xie Ling, to Yan Wushi? someone young, and weak still; someone foolish enough to do things like trust a young man with a pretty face, needy enough to cling to a complete stranger who had shown him kindness, someone soft enough to go back for Shen Qiao when Yan Wushi himself has made it out of danger just fine. Xie Ling is who Yan Wushi had been, before he’d bettered himself, made himself stronger, more invulnerable to the injustices and assaults this world hurls at him

and Shen Qiao has the audacity to care about Xie Ling, even knowing that Xie Ling is a transient ghost, a wisp of a soul, a shadow of a self not long for this world? Shen Qiao has the absolute goddamn gall to mourn who Yan Wushi had been?

Yan Wushi is jealous, absolutely; resentful, even; and more than anything, I think, he is furiously, desperately angry, because here is Shen Qiao, thirty years too late, crying over a boy that Yan Wushi had buried with his own hands, with his old name

all of which is to say--Meng Xishi does a devastatingly masterful job of giving us just enough hints about Yan Wushi’s backstory to know what matters (trust and betrayal, kindness and pain), and how perfectly Shen Qiao upsets everything in Yan Wushi’s world with the force of his own pain and power, brokenness and brilliance

#oh this got out of hand #千秋 backlog #Yan Wushi #Shen Qiao #...goddamn I have feelings about Yan Wushi don't I #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

This is a really minor thing about Yan Wushi that I'm curious about, but does the old man take offense to being called "old"? The way he asked "Am I that old?" in the donghua made it seem like that was the case, and there's his really inappropriate remark to little Ah-qiao when the baby said that he didn't look as young as Qi Fengge said he was - I'm still facepalming at that because OH MY GOD.

slkdflsdkj okay so the thing about the worldbuilding in 《千秋》 is that the higher you go in your martial cultivation, the less age matters

I think Shen Qiao explains this to Ban Na during the pre-Ruoqiang, post-ambush interlude--Shen Qiao is thirty but looks like he's in his young twenties; Yan Wushi is pushing fifty but still looks thirty or so, and I think Shen Qiao notes that extremely powerful martial cultivators can live to over a hundred, provided that nothing goes wrong in their cultivation (rip Qi Fengge)

anyways, the extended longevity of high martial cultivators plus the fact that both Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao are very much adults capable of making their own decisions based on their own considerable experiences, means that the twenty-or-so year age gap between Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao doesn't particularly get in the way of their romance

what does put their age gap into stark relief, however, is martial generations, which is peak comedy

so generations of shifus/dizis (masters/disciples) are arranged along familial lines (I mean, there's a reason why there's a 父 fu / father in 师父 shifu), and while we mostly see this laterally (师弟 shidi，师兄 shixiong, etc), we also see it vertically (e.g. 师叔 shishu and 师伯 shibo are both martial uncles, and would be the 师兄/师弟 of your 师父, and on and on)

of course, generations aren't split along specific dates or anything, so Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao are really more half a generation apart than a full martial generation, but the fact remains that Yan Wushi is closer in age and experience to Qi Fengge's martial generation than he is to Shen Qiao's. Bian Yanmei and Yu Shengyan lampshade this briefly in the audiodrama (I can't remember if this conversation happens in the book) when Yu Shengyan complains that he's the one who picked up a lost Yuan Ying off the side of the street, how come Yan Wushi of all people is calling Yuan Ying 师弟 shidi (thereby catapulting Yuan Ying a whole martial generation above Yu Shengyan, who seems to be getting tired of being the youngest all the time)

and Bian Yanmei cuffs him over the head like, you dumbass, of course shizun calls him 'shidi,' who do you think is his shixiong? and Yu Shengyan, clueless, goes Shen Qiao? and Bian Yanmei is like exactly and Yu Shengyan is like nope I still don't get it

(I! love! the Huanyue disciples!)

basically, if Yan Wushi treats Yuan Ying as the same martial generation as Yu Shengyan, then Shen Qiao would also belong to the same martial generation as Yuan Ying and Yu Shengyan, i.e. the disciple generation, so Yan Wushi would functionally be, well, cradle robbing

but if Yan Wushi yoinks Yuan Ying up to his martial generation, then he and Shen Qiao belong to the same generation, and while that doesn't change the fact of their age gap, it does feel a little better than you know, cradle robbing the next generation

tl;dr I don't think he's like, actually sensitive about it, but I do think that he's a vain bastard about it

#the sheer COMEDY of this #千秋 backlog #I legit yelled when Yan Wushi said that to a literal six-year-old a-Qiao #that fanwai is truly bonkers #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

Shen qiao has a strong and stubborn personality... I was wondering when did he realize and accept he's in love with yan wushi? Was it at the very end of the novel?

sdlfksjdfksjd oh I love Shen Qiao so much and this is part of the reason why

tracking his relationship with Yan Wushi backwards through the novel is so interesting, because here's the thing about Shen Qiao: unless you're like, literally committing a crime the first time he meets you (@Sang Jingxing @Huo Xijing), he cares about you. he cares about your continued survival and eventual success. he just wants nice things for you, because that's who Shen Qiao is, and it's not that much, is it? to want nice things to happen to other people?

anyway, so it's like, fascinating to me that Shen Qiao cares about Yan Wushi, has cared about Yan Wushi pretty much since day one despite Yan Wushi being, well, like that. Yan Wushi endlessly mocks him for it (what, have you really developed feelings for me?) but that's just who Shen Qiao is--he'll care about you if you give him the chance

but like, when did Shen Qiao fall in love with Yan Wushi, and when did he realize it? both very good questions, and perhaps not ones with definitive answers, because the relationship between these two wasn't an "eye contact, world slowing, love at first sight" kind of business, but the long, slow building of trust and understanding and mutual care. sure they had to rip out the foundations in the middle of the process and start over, but hey, yanshen get there eventually

so, when does Shen Qiao fall in love? well, I think that's an open question, right? is love what brings him back to Yan Wushi at the Panlong Conference, saving Yan Wushi's sorry corpse with just the barest thread of life in him? is love what makes Shen Qiao throw himself into danger, again and again, to protect a greatly-weakened Yan Wushi from the many jianghu people who are still out for his life?

or is it later, perhaps, when Shen Qiao returns to the foot of a mountain he once called home and, overhearing a neighboring conversation, learns that Yan Wushi has challenged Hu Lu Gu to a duel, the timing too suspicious to be anything but a calculated move to protect Shen Qiao himself? is it when Shen Qiao approaches a casually unconcerned Yan Wushi, teasing a small fawn in a familiar-unfamiliar courtyard, and asks to take his place in the duel? or is it even later, when Shen Qiao cradles Yan Wushi's body on the peak of a mountain where it all began, voice shaky with sobs as he pleads I'll do anything, if you just come back?

well, hard to say, isn't it? I don't think Shen Qiao really falls in love so much as he accidentally slides down the side of a mountain into it--inevitably, gaining momentum, not realizing that he'd already left the point of no return much farther behind. where was that point of no return? he doesn't know; perhaps it was at the foot of Half-Step Peak, where a passing Yan Wushi first picked up a battered and broken Shen Qiao and nursed him back to health, because from that moment onward, both of their lives were irrevocably changed

I've been thinking, lately, about what makes Shen Qiao's relationship to Yan Wushi different from his relationship with literally anyone else in the jianghu, and I think it's this: Yan Wushi is, lowkey, the first person to care about Shen Qiao as like. a person

(except Qi Fengge, I do stan one (1) dead mentor)

no wait, hear me out: in his first tenure as sect leader, Shen Qiao was defined more by the position he occupied (sect leader, successor, shixiong, shidi) than he was by his person. and then, as he wanders the jianghu, people care about his beauty and reputation (did you hear? he lost to Kun Ye and I heard he's now Yan Wushi's bedwarmer--) rather than the reality of his person, his skill, his merit, his virtue. and this isn't to say that Yan Wushi doesn't start there either (recall: how little rest Shen Qiao got while Yan Wushi beat the essence of the Zhuyang Ce out of his body), but Yan Wushi actually spends time with Shen Qiao. teases him, teaches him, treats him like a person, not just a sect leader, a person, not just a representation of Qi Fengge's legacy, a person

let’s not romanticize Yan Wushi’s very shitty behavior in the first fifty chapters, but let’s also recall that Shen Qiao can walk away at any time--did, in fact, walk away for a while--but crucially, Yan Wushi never tells Shen Qiao to leave, just lets Shen Qiao choose

my god. has Shen Qiao ever been so free, in his entire life?

then The Betrayal happens, then everything happens, and Shen Qiao is warier now, rightfully distrustful of Yan Wushi's every word, but oh, he never stopped caring, did he? the difference now is that he won't let this care blind him to the reality of the man before him, the difference now is that this man before him swears up and down that he loves Shen Qiao, and if Shen Qiao doesn't believe it, then he could carve this heart out of Yan Wushi's chest to take a look, but Shen Qiao's not going to fall for this twice, he knows where that leads

but the pile of evidence pointing towards the uneasy realization that Yan Wushi is, in fact, telling the truth this time continues to grow, and grow, and grow

this is all getting very long and rambling, but Shen Qiao comes to some kind of realization in the very last chapter, on the peak--curled protectively around a rapidly-cooling body, begging and bargaining back the life of the man in his arms, Shen Qiao admits that he would, in fact, do anything for Yan Wushi, so long as Yan Wushi came back, says as much to Yan Wushi's closed eyelids

is that love? it's sacrifice, it's devotion, it's grief, it's gladness--sure, let's call that love, though Shen Qiao never calls it that by name

and then we have the unrestrained comedy of the fanwai, the extras, the hijinks Yan Wushi schemes, the group effort it takes to get Shen Qiao to make the first move, and it's endearingly clumsy how clueless he is but he gets there eventually, a quick peck on the lips which is all it takes for Yan Wushi to seize the reins of this relationship again and kick it from slow-burn into high gallop

in the fanwai, Yan Wushi remarks that Shen Qiao is both stubborn and proud enough that Shen Qiao would, in fact, refuse to admit his feelings for Yan Wushi unless Yan Wushi took matters into his own hands (engineered an entire melodrama amidst a bandit skirmish, seriously), so the feelings were definitely there. it just takes Shen Qiao a few weeks, a lot of encouragement, and some questionably-applicable courting advice to act on his feelings. it takes these two chuckleheads until the literal extra chapters after the end of the story proper to get together officially, which I appreciate to no end because Meng Xishi really made them work for it and it shows

tl;dr I'd hazard that Shen Qiao realizes that he's in love in the last chapter, but accepting that's he's in love? not until after the book ends; these two literally get together post-canon

#I shouldn't be allowed to write posts after my bedtime #千秋 backlog #this post is made of incoherence and my love for Shen Qiao #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

Any thoughts on the similarities and differences between hualian and yanshen??

(kicks down the door) DO I HAVE THOUGHTS OR WHAT

so it's funny you ask this, anon, because when I was reading 《千秋》 and Going Through It, I distinctly remember trying to explain it to people and at one point saying "the main ship of 《千秋》 is like TGCF if the central ship of TGCF was Xie Lian/Bai Wuxiang"

which, having now finished the book, isn't actually that accurate, but I think it gets at the Two Main Things that come to mind when I compare and contrast TGCF/QQ: 1) Xie Lian and Shen Qiao parallels, and 2) the arc of enemies/symbolic opposites/narrative foils-to-lovers

I think there's a lot to unpack between TGCF and QQ on levels of character, theme, and relationship, which all orbit around/interact with the material of the central ship, so grab some tea, this is going to get roundabout:

first, let's talk character similarities w/o relationships in the picture:

Shen Qiao 🤝 Xie Lian:

too good for this world, too pure

has gone through literal hell and back

refuses to give up morals even under the threat of intense suffering/death

ridiculously pretty

unrepentant sword nerd

always assumes the best of people

Yan Wushi 🤝 Hua Cheng:

will roast anything that moves

ambiguously evil (or at least, perceived as evil by other characters in the narrative)

can and will wipe the floor with anyone in the room

does not especially care for anyone beyond their immediate circle of close loved one(s)

so we can see a lot of superficial similarities between hualian and yanshen (it's the dynamic of ghost king/demonic cultivator x pure-hearted Daoist), but truth be told, I think the similarities between Shen Qiao and Xie Lian does most of that work, rather than anything inherent about the hualian vs. yanshen relationship

because Hua Cheng and Yan Wushi have starkly different character arcs, which then reflects upon the general relationship arcs in their respective stories

in TGCF, the only thing keeping hualian apart are the secrets they hold about themselves. seriously, by the end of book one (book!! one!! of!! five!!) the two of them move into Puqi Shrine together and live in peak domesticity until the plot comes rudely knocking on the door. the only reasons why hualian don't get together immediately are because 1) the plot Continues to Happen, and 2) they met each other like, yesterday, they're still getting around to actually knowing each other

the slow burn of TGCF primarily comes from the flashback reveals about hualian's past--for Xie Lian, his greatest secret and greatest shame is how close he came to becoming a Calamity, which is why when Hua Cheng tells Xie Lian that he was there, that he had been at his side, that he supported and loved Xie Lian unconditionally through the darkest days of his immortal life, Xie Lian is amazed and moved to tears

for Hua Cheng, his greatest secret and greatest shame is the true depths of his obsessive love, overcoming a certain amount of internalized shame and of course, the mortifying ordeal of having exactly how much you care be known by the object of your affections

but like, once they talk it out on both sides, they are in full battle couple mode from pretty much mid-book three onwards

MEANWHILE WITH YANSHEN. god. meanwhile with yanshen, there are no secrets to be revealed between them; their relationship does not hinge on the revelation of truths but rather the slow accumulation of shared experiences. in direct contrast to hualian, who are functionally together for most of the book, yanshen don't get together until the literal fanwai because Meng Xishi makes them earn it

oh my god she makes them work so hard for it

Yan Wushi is quite upfront with his attraction to Shen Qiao from the early chapters, but that’s all it is, really--Shen Qiao is drop-dead gorgeous, Yan Wushi is human, and there isn’t really any emotional or romantic content in their relationship beyond that. Shen Qiao, however, is definitively uninterested in Yan Wushi’s cursory advances (and the advances of literally everyone else in the jianghu sdlfkjs;flakdj), and brushes them off with long-suffering tolerance

in direct contrast to hualian, whose primary obstacle to their relationship is their knowledge (or ignorance) of each other’s past (which is, again, fairly easy to overcome because it’s no more and no less than the mortifying ordeal of being known), the primary obstacle to yanshen’s relationship is yanshen themselves

exhibit A, of course, being The Betrayal, but also the separate journeys yanshen take to realizing and accepting the fact that yes, they would in fact be interested in a relationship with the other, and yes, it takes these two chuckleheads the whole damn book to figure this out (I say, with great fondness; I wouldn’t have them any other way)

if Hua Cheng’s character arc is coming to accept himself for who he is (I’m thinking of this phenomenal meta in particular) and how much he loves (and that his love is both valuable and good), then Yan Wushi’s character arc revolves around realizing that Shen Qiao (and what Shen Qiao represents) is not only worthy of respect and admiration, but specifically worthy of his love and devotion (one of these days I’ll get over the story of the goddamn stone but not today)

meanwhile, Shen Qiao’s character arc... is about a lot of things besides yanshen, but specifically Shen Qiao’s character arc in context of their relationship goes through:

he saved my life so I owe him mine. it’s not personal though

he sold me out. that kinda felt personal?

I saved his life so we’re now even, I swear it’s not personal

we keep saving each other’s lives, and also helping each other out. it might be getting personal?

oh my god it’s personal, I actually care about him now, please don’t die you dumbass

Shen Qiao is such a fascinating character because if you don’t take the time to  excavate his interiority, he seems simple, boring, one-dimensionally good, but once you go looking, the fabric of his person is actually built of an incredibly complex weave of guilt and grief, sacrifice and selfhood, determination and resolve

and a good amount of it has to do with his developing relationship with Yan Wushi. for the vast majority of the book, Shen Qiao keeps Yan Wushi firmly at arm’s length, and his interactions with Yan Wushi are never anything beyond necessary, polite, and professional (as he can make it)

this of course, gets sorely tested due to (waves vaguely) All the Shit That Goes Down in the plot, and also Yan Wushi In General, but all the way up until... heck, up until Shen Qiao takes back sect leadership of Xuandu Shan, Shen Qiao sees Yan Wushi as nothing more than like... a coworker. a weirdly close colleague. someone he’s fought with, multiple times, a fellow traveller of the same way somehow, and it’s not until Shen Qiao hears of Yan Wushi’s challenge to Hu Lu Gu, which isn’t on Shen Qiao’s behalf but neither is it not on Shen Qiao’s behalf that something slides into place and Shen Qiao goes oh. oh?

...him, really?

and like... there’s all the domesticity of the days before the final duel, Shen Qiao slowly allowing himself to admit that actually, he does care, and in fact cares very deeply, which culminates in his realization on the peak, cradling Yan Wushi’s cooling body

because here’s the thing: as long as their relationship is professional, is impersonal, then Shen Qiao doesn’t have to acknowledge how deeply Yan Wushi’s betrayal hurt him. when people try to offer him sympathy, or condolences, or mockery disguised as sympathy or condolences about Yan Wushi’s betrayal, Shen Qiao shrugs it off and explains that Yan Wushi is just like that, it wasn’t personal, but at the same time, as long as Shen Qiao denies this, he will never have closure. he cannot forgive Yan Wushi for this betrayal until they both acknowledge that actually, it’s been personal from the beginning. Yan Wushi gets there before Shen Qiao does, but Shen Qiao figures it out, eventually

I’ve written in the past about the yanshen relationship, and how it isn’t so much a relationship of knowing as it is one of choosing. Yan Wushi chooses Shen Qiao to love and cherish; Shen Qiao chooses to forgive Yan Wushi, to allow their relationship to move forward. again, in stark contrast to hualian, the main obstacle in the yanshen relationship is their own individual character arcs, which eventually lead them to a place where they can realize the potential of their shared relationship arc

I also think it’s worthwhile to point out that Hua Cheng isn’t... he’s not evil at all. his morals are at all times taizi-dianxia-oriented, which is quite compatible with Xie Lian’s general goodness and Xie Lian’s laidback attitude about morality in general (Xie Lian may be a pure force of kindness and goodness, but he recognizes his own exceptionalism and does not expect the same of anyone else). meanwhile Yan Wushi isn’t... he’s not like, the mindless, destructive evil that Bai Wuxiang embodies in TGCF, but doing good and accumulating merit isn’t particularly high on his priority list. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng almost never argue, and especially never come to blows over their disagreements in moral frameworks. Arguing and coming to blows over disagreements in moral frameworks, however, lies at the heart of the yanshen relationship. Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao are constantly challenging each other and each other’s beliefs, taking turns to verbally roast or physically drag the other as the opportunity arises (fine, it’s mostly Yan Wushi doing the roasting/dragging but Shen Qiao gets a few good ones in there)

sldkjfslkdjf this is getting extremely long again, tl;dr hualian / yanshen parallels exist primarily on the levels of Xie Lian / Shen Qiao parallels, but the differences between Hua Cheng and Yan Wushi is where the hualian / yanshen parallels begin to diverge

#hunxi thinks about TGCF #hunxi thinks about QQ #千秋 backlog #why are all of my long posts about sao lao yan

[hunxi-after-hours]

I have to say, something that still bothers me is how in chapter 79 I believe, YW explicitly states that he does not regret handing SQ over to Sang JingXing. Not from a writing standpoint because I think it’s perfectly in character. Regret is probably not something in YW’s vocabulary. Just from ya know, a human being standpoint it’s hard to me to get past in regards to their relationship. He knew what a monster Sang JingXing was and how SQ would suffer at his hands and he gives him up basically just for fun. Just cause he can and he wants to see it play out. I know YW isn’t a good or normal person, but even still, I feel like with SQ becoming his beloved, the one person who he has room in his heart for, you’d think he’d feel a little bad about that? Just a little. Bless SQ because even with an apology I don’t think I could get past what YW did, much less after he tells me he doesn’t even regret it. So yeah that’s just something that still bugs me (even though again, from a writing standpoint it’s in character).

you know anon, you're absolutely right to be bothered because Yan Wushi is a challenging character, and I honestly believe that the yanshen relationship is intended to be difficult to come to terms with. I mean, Meng Xishi really came into this story with the explicit purpose of writing a romance between two people with entirely opposed worldviews, and threw a lot, a lot, in the way of their relationship

honestly, I think one of the most fascinating things about Yan Wushi is his relationship to his past self/selves, because he has the astounding ability to accept his past mistakes, and not regret them at all

I'm thinking of the conversation between Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi when they visit Bixia Zong together (well, Shen Qiao has a reason to come back to Bixia Zong--Yan Wushi is just here to Cause Problems On Purpose and tease Shen Qiao)--Shen Qiao, fed up with Yan Wushi's antics, finally confronts him about his behavior. what has this lowly Daoist done, Shen Qiao says, to cause sect leader Yan to exact a thousand petty revenges upon me?

and Yan Wushi says, eyes wide and voice innocent, revenge? how could this be considered revenge?

and Shen Qiao responds, voice clipped, Yan-zongzhu, you told me in the past that you didn't need friends, that the only people worthy of your company were rivals, and though I have recovered much, I am still not your match, yet you call yourself my friend before Zhao Chiyin and Bixia Zong--aren't you being inconsistent?

and Yan Wushi says, easily, I was wrong in the past--what I said previously is like water scattered from a cup--I can never take it back. even if my words hurt your feelings, I can't do anything about it now

Yan Wushi acknowledges his flaws and his mistakes with breathtaking ease, especially because Shen Qiao's existence is lowkey breaking the laws of Yan Wushi's world (human nature is inherently corrupt, no one can remain true to their ideals forever, etc). I think there's another, equally plausible version of this narrative where Yan Wushi, confronted with Shen Qiao's iron will and determination to remain good in the face of everything Yan Wushi throws at him, becomes Shen Qiao's mortal enemy, bent on breaking Shen Qiao until Shen Qiao does conform to Yan Wushi's understanding of the world. But instead, Yan Wushi gracefully acknowledges that he was wrong, does a complete 180, and reorients his entire life around Shen Qiao's. the shape of Yan Wushi's newfound devotion to Shen Qiao is disguised beneath his usual flirtatious teasing and general... Yan Wushi-style asshole behavior, but by the time the two of them (and Yuwen Qi-lang sdflksjdk) set foot on Taishan, Yan Wushi is unequivocally devoted to Shen Qiao (even if he's. hm. certainly got A Way of Showing It)

there's a short, almost stream-of-consciousness segment in one of the fanwai from Yan Wushi's point of view, and it begins with:

他的人生里，从来没有后悔二字。/ In his entire life, there was never room for the word 'regret.'

当年离开谢家是这样。/ It was so when he left the Xie family.

为自己改名‘无师’是这样。/ It was so when he changed his name to 'Wushi' -- the masterless.

后来与崔由妄一战也是这样。/ Later, it too was so in his duel with Cui Youwang.

天大地大，无君无父无师。/ The vastness of heaven and earth; lordless, fatherless, masterless.

天大地大，从未有人能在他心里留下痕迹。/ The vastness of heaven and earth; there had never been anyone who could leave a mark upon his heart.

沈峤不会是那个例外。/ Shen Qiao would not be the exception.

so like, dramatic irony aside, we can see how fundamental this lack of regret is to Yan Wushi's character--it's literally the very first line of his POV fanwai. As the fanwai progresses, a sliver of regret appears when Yan Wushi throws Shen Qiao to the wolves (by which I mean Sang Jingxing), but the narration notes that this regret was not enough to make Yan Wushi change his mind, and he walks away without looking back

there's a curious truncation of character when it comes to Yan Wushi (that is eventually literalized in the existence of Xie Ling and A-Yan). I was wrong in the past, Yan Wushi says, as if his past self has no connection to his present, as if his past self was wholly distinct, rather than a continuous development. He's changed now, and that's all that matters--he won't do it again, and he'll do whatever Shen Qiao would like to make up for it, but wallowing in regret and remorse? is so foreign, practically antithetical to his character

which is to say, Yan Wushi has the remarkable ability to acknowledge that he had been wrong, and not beat himself up for it

in this curious way, Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi are exactly the same--they don't particularly care what other people think of them, so long as they know what they themselves are doing. and both of them seek to 问心无愧, to live their lives with no regrets, though what they strive for and what they regret are vastly different

okay, that's enough appreciation for Yan Wushi as a masterfully crafted and delightfully amoral character who Meng Xishi really, really committed to making amoral from beginning to end, and I respect her so much for doing that. now it's (rolls up sleeves) time for MY interpretation of chapter 79, because that's lowkey one of my favorite scenes in the entire book, and yes, this is me on my S2E5 audiodrama supremacy agenda again

so! so. as Yan Wushi tenderly tucks Shen Qiao into his hiding place before going out to lead Sang Jingxing away on his own, Yan Wushi says:

我做事随心所欲，既然从不后悔，此番也不会是为了赎罪，更不是因为什么可笑歉疚，你不必觉得有所亏欠，乃至自作多情，平白令我恶心作呕。/ I've always done whatever I desired, and never regretted anything. What I do now isn't to atone, nor is it for something laughable like a guilty conscience. You do not need to feel indebted to me and fall into unrequited love--you'd sicken me for no reason.

本座等你有朝一日兑现自己的诺言，成为堪配一战的对手，那样或许本座才会多看你几眼。/ I'll wait for you to one day fulfill your promise, to become someone I could truly fight with. Perhaps then, I might give you more than a passing glance.

all right, let me just level with y'all on what I think is going on here: Yan Wushi is a lying liar who lies.

he says he doesn't regret. he says that this isn't to atone. sure, m'dude, sure, those are the words coming out of your mouth, but right before that, he also says to Shen Qiao, I don't have the time to recite the Zhuyang Ce for you to listen (implying that if they had the time, Yan Wushi would have started reciting it then and there???), but Yuwen Yong appreciates your merit--he would let you read the Zhou volume, if you asked

Yan Wushi is really like "trust me when I say that I don't actually care about you. also this is how you get access to one of the most highly-sought-after martial arts tomes in the entire jianghu"

sir

also like. I do think that Yan Wushi's sacrifice in that moment, even if it doesn't end up being all that much of a sacrifice, is quite significant. even if Guang Lingsan is on the way, Yan Wushi still carefully conceals Shen Qiao and chooses to go out and face danger alone, distracting their pursuers

so Yan Wushi got lucky, and rendezvoused with Guang Lingsan before Sang Jingxing even got there

so Bao Yun and co. got lucky, and deduced their way to Shen Qiao's hiding spot

so Shen Qiao got lucky, and kicked into a higher realm of enlightenment before kicking everyone's asses

so it all turned out fine, even a bit anticlimactic, but crucially, when Yan Wushi is hiding Shen Qiao away and stealing one last kiss (or two, and copping a feel while he's at it, for heaven's sakes lsp), neither of them know that. for all they know, Yan Wushi might very well be walking away to his death, and refusing to let Shen Qiao come with

ah, and that's the last thing about this moment that really gets me--Yan Wushi might very well be walking away to his death, and both of them know it

what does Yan Wushi say to Shen Qiao, as they're running out of time, maybe forever?

I can't give you the Zhuyang Ce, but this is how you get it

tell Bian Yanmei these things for me

a-Qiao, when will you stop trusting people so easily? the next person to betray you might not be as kind as me

don't feel indebted to me

don't feel the need to mourn me

I hope you do become someone worthy of being my rival

(reminder that Yan Wushi is the literal best in the jianghu, which makes this equal parts "I hope you realize your immense potential in cultivating the Daoist sword path" and "I hope you become unbeatable")

like, okay mister Yan "I have no regrets" Wushi, sect leader Yan "don't do something stupid like fall in love with me" Wushi, your words say one thing but your actions say another

none of this absolves the things Yan Wushi did, the things Yan Wushi will continue to do. Yan Wushi says so himself--this isn't atonement. he isn't seeking forgiveness, or reciprocation, or love. it's nothing more, and nothing less, than a man looking at his situation, his options, his abilities, his actions, and choosing the path that he thinks will be safest for both of them.

could Yan Wushi have thrown Shen Qiao to the wolves again, used Shen Qiao to buy himself time to get away? absolutely, a hundred percent yes. another Yan Wushi would have done that (lowkey did that, in the Ruoqiang arc), but this fight, this flight, this long night in an abandoned temple Yan Wushi knows better than he should marks a critical, pivotal turning point in his character arc, and in the development of the yanshen relationship

#this got out of hand AGAIN #apparently sao lao yan simply inspires overlong tumblr posts #千秋 backlog #yan wushi #no really the audiodrama for this book is UNFAIRLY good #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

Do you think that one of the things that attracted YWS to SQ is also SQ’s quiet confidence? Throughout the story, I don’t think SQ ever doubts his own abilities or feels sorry for himself. He appears to simply accept his injuries and a and just…adjusts to accommodate them and moves onward. Where YWS is all arrogance and showy confidence (and with the firepower to actually back it up), SQ is more like “I really don’t want to fight you but I will wipe the floor with you if you persist”. They are flip sides of the same coin. I think despite what he tells SQ about not qualifying as a rival, YWS did respect SQ’s abilities and tenacity, because he repeatedly tests SQ and chooses to stalk-…ahem, spend time with him. YWS strikes me as someone who loses interest in people quickly, and wouldn’t waste his time on anyone whom he thought was anything less than worthy (scientific experiment or otherwise). I also have cursed thoughts about how Lao Yan hasn’t had sex in a decade when he first encounters this intriguingly resilient and pretty guy. Just sayin’…LMAO

ahaha the hilarious thing is that Yan Wushi explains to Shen Qiao multiple times why he likes him, but the problem is, The Betrayal happened so Shen Qiao is like "hilarious. okay Yan-zongzhu why are you REALLY here" until Yan Wushi is just like 说了你都不信 / I TOLD you and you don't believe me

off the top of my head, there's this moment time in chapter... 78? 79?

...晏无师笑道：“食色性也，人人如此，我的确喜欢你的容貌，却更爱你对我爱答不理的冷淡，这又有什么不好承认的？..."

Yan Wushi laughed and said, "Food and sex are human nature--all people are so. While I am quite fond of your appearance, I love your aloof coolness more. Why shouldn't I admit this?..."

there's definitely another time when Shen Qiao is like 贫道何德何能得到晏宗主如此青睐 / What great virtue or ability does this lowly Daoist have to earn sect leader Yan's favor? but like, in that particular brand of Shen Qiao Deadpan (TM) and Yan Wushi just smiles and goes 你既有德又有能 / On the contrary, you are in possession of both great virtue and ability and it's like okay, okay sir, we get it you're in love but very understandably, Shen Qiao does not get it then

so like, yes, Yan Wushi is rather taken with both Shen Qiao's capability and virtue, determination and persistence, but I think that, despite his occasional lines to the contrary, Yan Wushi is most intrigued by the fact that Shen Qiao is--okay hear me out--a worthy opponent from day one

like you said anon, I think Yan Wushi is absolutely the kind of person who would lose interest in other people quickly, which is precisely why Shen Qiao is so intriguing

he starts out as a science experiment, right? Yan Wushi is on a walk and happens across Shen Qiao's body and is like "oh free sect leader? I'll take him, and see if I can turn him evil and/or drive him mad," because in Yan Wushi's worldview, those are the only two possible roads that Shen Qiao can take after Shen Qiao has lost so much

and what does Shen Qiao immediately do? prove Yan Wushi wrong

Shen Qiao, even while amnesiac, is locked in constant battle with Yan Wushi, except this isn't a contest of martial skill--the two of them are engaged in an ideological battle. Yan Wushi believes in the inevitable corruptibility of human nature. Shen Qiao plans to prove him wrong simply by being himself. Yan Wushi plans to prove Shen Qiao wrong by doing his literal worst. Shen Qiao, when he hears news of the impending attempt on Yan Wushi's life, decides to go back and save him not just for the greater political picture, but also because he wants to prove Yan Wushi wrong. literally, Shen Qiao says:

“我没有你想的那么伟大，我只是希望能再见那个人一面，看一看他的脸上失望的样子，让他知道，我没有被种下魔心，我也没有被魔心控制，我还是我。”

"I'm not as noble as you think. I just want to see that person one more time, to see the disappointed expression on his face and let him know that the demonic core didn't take in my heart, that I have not been controlled by the demonic core, that I am still me."

(not to say that Shen Qiao was like "I'm gonna go save this man's life out of SPITE" but like. he kinda did say that)

what's one of the first things we learn about Yan Wushi? it's that he's obsessed with the battle, the fight, the contest. the improvement of oneself and the triumphing over the other. he'll take risks, break taboos, invent new paths of cultivation to climb higher in martial achievement. he's really goddamn competitive, so it should come as no surprise that when Shen Qiao continually defeats him on the level of the ideological simply by refusing to roll over and die, of course Yan Wushi is going to pay attention. when was the last time someone had the audacity to remain stubbornly undefeated like this out of sheer will?

I do think that the Ruoqiang arc in general, and specifically the fall-out from the ambush is an extremely important tipping point in Yan Wushi's character development. it's one thing for Shen Qiao to save Yan Wushi's life--a life for a life, they're pretty much even now--but Shen Qiao continues to go above and beyond in protecting Yan Wushi. Shen Qiao himself doesn't think much of it, just considers it the logical thing to do (救人救到底，送佛送到西), but this is Yan Wushi we're talking about. when was the last time someone took care of Yan Wushi, tended his wounds, defended him ferociously, fought to bring him to safety? Yan Wushi cannot deny that Shen Qiao has shown Yan Wushi--heck, not just Yan Wushi, but also Xie Ling, the weakest and least worthy form of Yan Wushi--an unutterable amount of kindness, tenderness, and care, that I'm willing to bet Yan Wushi hasn't seen in decades

tl;dr despite all of his protests to the contrary, Yan Wushi never stood a goddamn chance

#(cups hands and yells into the abyss) shen qiao i love yooooooou #千秋 backlog #Yan Wushi #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

I’m obsessed with 玉生烟 Yu Shengyan’s name, it’s literally so pretty and absolutely ridiculous?

so first of all, the characters are:

玉 yu - jade

生 sheng - to give birth, to give rise to

烟 yan - smoke

so his name is literally “smoke arising from jade,” and like, that is exquisite

BUT ON TOP OF THAT his name comes directly from a couplet in 《锦瑟》 Jinse, a 李商隐 Li Shangyin poem:

沧海月明珠有泪，/ Ocean dark, moon alight--weeping tears of pearls

蓝田日暖玉生烟 / The sun warms the Lantian mountains--[mist arises like] smoke from jade

sir, restrain yourself

#and on top of THAT they made him pretty in the donghua just for like funsies I guess #千秋 backlog #Yu Shengyan #also I love him as a character I just think he's neat #I also have questions for his parents #because this presumably means that his father's surname was Yu and they just like... planned to name him 'smokeborn?' #or--even better--Yan Wushi came up with his name?? #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

I don’t think it’s appreciated enough that Yan Wushi gets a deer and names it after Shen Qiao. This man is what? Pushing his 50s?? And he’s like “I’m gonna name this deer after my beloved because it’s cute like he is.” and I just think that’s beautiful.

trust me anon, I am CONSTANTLY appreciating deer a-Qiao, even if it somehow manages to sound like an animatronic puppet in the audiodrama (which is impressive considering that the audiodrama is, y'know, non-visual)

I also just think it's so funny that Shen Qiao leaves Yan Wushi unattended for... what, a month? to go back to Xuandu Shan and reclaim his throne assume his rightful position suss out the goings-on and just happen to take back his position as sect leader, you know, as one does, and in that time, Yan Wushi has 1) challenged the greatest fighter of his generation to a one-on-one duel, 2) come to terms with his impending mortality as a result of said challenge, and 3) adopted a pet deer and named it after his beloved

I have so many questions about where and when Yan Wushi acquired a fawn?? like, does one simply walk into the trees and come out carrying small woodland creatures? was he planning on picking up some wildlife on his daily amble through the woods today, or did the wildlife pick him up? literally how does one go about acquiring a pet deer??

the real kicker in this whole thing is that deer!a-Qiao adores Yan Wushi. like. I don't think you can fake the affection of a small, skittish animal for a big, intimidating human, even if said big, intimidating human often flicks walnut shells at said small, skittish animal when he's bored

when the two of them come back from the lakeside date, a somewhat-tipsy Shen Qiao crouches down to pet the deer and says, very gently, little deer, how about I give you another name? and then Yan Wushi, from clear across the courtyard, says, a-Qiao, come here, and the deer goes running

are we appreciating that for a moment y'all? are we taking a moment to appreciate the fact that, when given a choice, a living thing chose Yan Wushi over Shen Qiao???

anyway not to be like "the pet deer is Symbolism" but (whispers) the pet deer is symbolism

#my money is on Yan Wushi doing some accidental animal rescue #he happens across an injured fawn in the woods and is struck by the traitorous thought #'what would a-Qiao do?' and bam. pet deer #the real post-canon question is what happens to deer!a-Qiao #does it keep living in the Huanyue safehouse at the foot of the peaks? #does it travel with Shen Qiao and/or Yan Wushi at all? #do yanshen ever kiss passionately in a courtyard only for Shen Qiao to break away and say 'not in front of the children?' #and for Yan Wushi to glance around like 'what children' before Shen Qiao tilts his head at the deer #and Yan Wushi to mutter 'a-Qiao has seen worse' and dive straight back in? #I think it'd be hilarious and that is all #千秋 backlog #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

Would you describe Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi's relationship as one of knowing? Would they consider each other zhiji? I understand that Yan Wushi thinks of Shen Qiao as an exception to his core belief that only the strongest in martial arts are worth the attention, but I'm struggling to describe what Shen Qiao believes in Yan Wushi (yes, saving Yan Wushi is good for the world) but I'm not sure if Shen Qiao thinks Yan Wushi mirrors his self?

sat on these questions for a few days, thinking, because I’m still trying to put my finger on exactly what it is about 《千秋》 and its two main characters that keeps me coming back to it again and again

and I’ve written a couple of times about how incompatible Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao are, and why that is so important from a thematic/authorial perspective, but regardless of whether we’re talking about their characterization in the book or in the donghua, I think that’s still pretty key to their relationship and interactions

everything about their relationship is characterized by the word ‘despite.’ it’s ‘despite our different beliefs. it’s ‘despite our different principles.’ it’s ‘despite the things you’ve done to me in the past.’ and though Yan Wushi laughs and says 知我者阿峤也 / the one who knows me is a-Qiao when the two of them are kicked out of a gambling house two days before the greatest fight of his life, I don’t think their relationship is one of knowing, per se, so much as it’s one of choosing

because I’m pretty sure that, even by the end of the book, they aren’t on the same wavelength with each other the way 知己 relationships seem to be characterized, all glancing eye contact and wordless nods; Yan Wushi is still quite capable of hoodwinking Shen Qiao, and Shen Qiao is generally none the wiser, though exasperatedly tolerant

but this lack of synchronicity doesn’t get between them; in fact, I kind of love that about their relationship, that they’re constantly challenging and surprising each other, teasing and gently mocking each other. their differences in thought and perspective mean that they can offer new perspectives, unusual takes, radically different advice to the other

their differences make them such a good team, not because they act like a single unit, but because their strengths complement the other’s weaknesses

but yes, to me, their relationship is characterized by choice: both of them choose the other, again and again, despite the incredulity of others around them. it starts small, not romantic whatsoever: Yan Wushi chooses to save Shen Qiao’s life, to provide for his long and slow recovery. Shen Qiao chooses to stay at Yan Wushi’s side even when he is offered asylum by Ruyan Kehui or by Li Qingyu. and Shen Qiao chooses to go back for Yan Wushi, even after Yan Wushi betrayed him so deeply and fundamentally. and Yan Wushi chooses Shen Qiao to court and cherish, to defend and protect.

these two aren’t made for each other. they aren’t synchronized, aren’t wordlessly understanding of each other. what they are instead is appreciative, and concerned, and protective, and admiring of each other, and I think that’s just a solid base to build their relationship on as any other 知己 romances out there

#千秋 backlog #hunxi thinks about QQ

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hi Hunxi!! I loved your QQ posts and the way you have analysed some of the pivotal moments of the Yanshen relationship (the time when YW hides SQ in the hollow statue, especially!!) What do you think about their relationship progress, like in general? I found it sometimes a little odd that YW has to restrain SQ when they are being somewhat intimate (after the Betrayal and YW's recovery and realisation), but then I also remember that 1. SQ actually fully capable of stopping him 2. SQ does stop him when he feels it goes too far, but yeah, I think I've complicated feelings about it? Do you have any thoughts? (Also hope you're doing well and hugs hugs hugs hugs)

ahahaha anon, what a terrifyingly large question, where to begin...

I feel like my thoughts on the journey of the yanshen relationship is inherently bound up with my relationship to the book as a whole, which was "extreme skepticism - trusting tolerance - slowburn interest - full-on standom now, apparently," but this didn't exactly happen while I was reading the book, but rather, after I finished the book

if you scroll way back on my blog (I hereby repent for not organizing my 《千秋》 thoughts from the beginning), you'll find posts I made where I noted that I wasn't completely sold on the yanshen relationship, and it's taken a lot of sitting with the text, letting its various themes and journeys percolate and marinate, and coming to terms with some of the more challenging events/aspects of the book

and I think the book is supposed to be challenging; I think we're supposed to feel uncomfortable about certain yanshen moments, especially in their early interactions

I've also been thinking a lot about danmei as a genre lately (sldfkjsdlkfj what gave it away), and the fact that authors literally put the endgame ship in the opening blurbs. this, then, creates a fascinating phenomenon: basically, we already know how this story ends, which necessarily affects our reading experience. particularly, interactions between the central pairing are always shadowed by their eventual union. how do early yanshen interactions read to us when we know that they'll end up together? are we, to a certain extent, always reading their future relationship back into their early meetings, before any of them remotely think in that direction? and how might our readings of these relationships have been different if we did not have that endgame guarantee?

so I guess my relationship to 《千秋》 and its author has been, well--trust. in the beginning, it was consciously attempting to trust the author as she put Shen Qiao through goddamn hell and back, particularly at the hands of Yan Wushi, and trusting that she would do right by Shen Qiao, that she would give him the development and space and journey that he deserves. it also took a lot of trust to stick with the book, to trust that the author was going to develop Yan Wushi in a positive and believable manner, to get both characters to a place where a reader could conceivably accept both their character development and their relationship.

and like, at the end of the day, I think it's always more rewarding to read an author's work charitably and try giving them the benefit of the doubt. anytime I hit a moment where I go "wow, I really hate this phrasing" or "yikes that plot twist was Not Great," I try to sit with the discomfort and figure out exactly what is bothering me. is it simply personal preference, or a genuine misstep on the author's part? and is there any possibility that the author is aware of what they've done, and will address the consequences with care and nuance? this usually comes up when authors employ slurs or stereotypes or narrative tropes that we should really get rid of in their work, and I've found that attempting to excavate meaning behind points of discomfort in a text to be far more rewarding than shoving it away and declaring it unfit for consumption. sometimes you try to give authors the benefit of the doubt, only to find that nope, they really put this yikes thing in their writing, and that’s just fine! I mean, it’s not fine, but it happens. and sometimes, when you give the author the benefit of the doubt, to tease out the commentary they’ve been building behind the main plot, you can actually get super rewarding readings out of it, and personally, I’ve enjoyed that experience much more than slamming a text with the ‘problematic’ label and then being unhappy about it for the rest of the day

none of this is actually answering your question, anon, but I guess when it comes down to it, I really enjoy 《千秋》 as an exemplary work of fiction. there is a confidence and reassurance that comes from having finished the book and knowing exactly how we get to the end that, by definition, you can’t exactly have while reading. it's the difference in attitude towards early-book Yan Wushi--now, with the clarity of hindsight, we can look at his arrogance and asshole-ry with fond exasperation rather than unease and discomfort, because we know what’s going to happen, we know the storm that’s coming for him, and dramatic irony makes it hilarious

I use the word 'challenging' a lot when talking about the yanshen dynamic, because that's what I keep returning to: Meng Xishi challenges us to believe in this, to believe in them, to believe that a healthy and mutually appreciative relationship between these two is possible, and often the challenge has nothing to do with the book itself, but rather coming to terms with your own personal discomfort and accepting the dissonance between the two

#HUGS ty anon #love a good hug #idk if this is a satisfying answer but it's what I've got #I was extremely uncomfortable with the yanshen relationship at the beginning #and still not completely sold on it by the end #and I think coming to terms with that involved a recalibration of my own mindset rather than any miraculous insight #rather than thinking on whether yanshen SHOULD have ended up together #I ended up flipping it and going 'yanshen ARE together - what do you need to do to make that work in your head?' #and kind of deduced my way backwards toward feeling more comfortable with their relationship #but also at the end of the day they are fictional characters that are being used to safely explore dynamics of power and sexuality #in a fictitious setting sdlkfjsdlfkjs it's not big deal #千秋 backlog #hunxi thinks about QQ