or, alternative title: "The destruction of the dream"
more info below (and spoilers for Qi Ye/Lord Seventh, too...)
So I like to spend my time imagining what my ideal Qi Ye donghua adaptation would look like, and after recently talking at lenght about LJX and ZZS, I was in the mood to picture some of my favourite scenes involving them.
Listening to one music in particular (Empire Systems, by Raphael Anton Irisarri), I was suddenly hit by this image of LJX leaving ZZS' office as he went to see him for the first time after being told that ZZS & JBY were behind the Jiang family massacre). That time, he doesn't confront ZZS yet, rather trying to obtain a proof of ZZS providing the drugged wine to JBY.
He leaves, and at that moment, when he does get that proof, when he does realise that what he was told is probably true, ...naturally, his whole world collapses. So far, he was already fragile, burdened by grief and guilt, for having failed at his mission, for having slept in, for having lost so many people he cherished; and now, he's losing his one true pillar, the "person who loved him the most", the person whom he himself had always looked up to...
And then that's all he can see; that dream he'd loved so much, him and ZZS walking through the peach tree orchards, wandering together - now, there is only death and pain. I wanted to depict that, the destruction, corruption of the dream, of his shixiong.
I feel like the dream is the representation of Jiuxiao's world (outside of reality, partly revolving around ZZS, literally rose-coloured), and that world has momentarily collapsed. In the end, unable to stand it, he decides to... rewrite reality in his own way, shifting the blame on HLY, trying to preserve what it used to be, preserve ZZS' image, because ultimately reality is the hardest to bear.
I think that my goal here was to represent destruction, the absence of safety, the place of comfort now corrupted. I named it "shixiong" because first and foremost, I see it as... the tragedy of how for a moment, that's the only way LJX can ever think of ZZS: a dark, threatening shadow who destroyed his whole world.
As a side note, and because I need to gush about it: HELP I think that LJX and ZZS' storyline in QY is truly, truly brilliant and absolutely gut wrenching and I'm so glad I read QY.
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