oh dear

i guess this is my fof sideblog now

[zhuoyichenpretty]

this scene out of context makes it seem like bai ze is realizing long shen missed his period

[zhuoyichenpretty]

perfect tags thank you

[zhuoyichenpretty]

this scene out of context makes it seem like bai ze is realizing long shen missed his period

[zhuoyichenpretty]

this song deserves its own post because every time there's a wu wangyan scene with this music playing in the background i am on the fucking floor in agony. the angst they put in this song is unreal. the sound of sheer yearning, capturing the soft warmth of that happiness they created in the illusion but also the quiet, ever-present fear of hoping, wishing, wanting something so precious and beautiful and easy to lose...

[zhuoyichenpretty]

caught up on VoS and wow am i dehydrated from crying

[zhuoyichenpretty]

also i'm so sorry i can't kill the queer eye in me i very much went 🤨 at this narration very specifically overlaid on this moment

[zhuoyichenpretty]

the curse of tian jiarui suffering so beautifully is that he must maximally suffer in every role he plays. wow. long shen crying talking to bai ze was so gorgeous and heartbreaking i verbally said out loud, "wow" and then played it back several times. my heart is incredibly bruised and tian jiarui really is the actor of all time.

[numerodixe]

Yan An - 闫桉

[zhuoyichenpretty]

the irony of tjr's chi wen going through the same thing he put lu wuyi through: having someone he cares about devoured, memories and all

[zhuoyichenpretty]

lu wuyi's devastation confronting wu wangyan was so peak...much as i will buy into the straights, the sapphics call to me...

[fiftysevenacademics]

One of the main ideas explored in Veil of Shadows is the shifting and situational nature of identities. Do we have a true, inner self, or is the self constantly being formed, reformed, and performed in relationship to other people? We tend to be very attached to the idea that there is some true essence of who we are. In settings where reincarnation is possible, it's common for some bit of a stable self to remain across incarnations. In many of the Chinese dramas I've watched, the idea of an authentic inner self vs a performative situational self is very prominent.

But much modern scholarship and psychotherapeutic practice suggests that there is no "true" self- the self is a set of intermeshed narratives we create about ourselves-- and that are told about us by others-- as we go about our daily lives and relationships. What we perceive as a whole self is actually the almost herculean effort of our brains using language and memory to construct a stable, chronological narrative that we can use to guide and think about how we interact with the world. Entertainment media that explores this idea of the self typically adopts the theme (which I paraphrase here from Doctor Who): "We are all stories in the end. Make yours a good one."

Veil of Shadows is a deep exploration of these themes.

Wu Wangyan, a shape shifting fox demon assassin, says at one point that she has had so many identities, she isn't even sure who she is any more, for example. We first meet Ji Ling as Chi Wen's innocent younger self that he uses and plays with literally like a wooden puppet. Lu Wuyi is insistent that Chi Wen (who, we learn, isn't even the real Chi Wen!) is really Ji Ling. Their whole relationship revolves around the tension between an authentic and performative selves.

All the main characters shift between multiple identities and the viewer is never sure at any given point which one they are or which one is their true identity. I think the fact that we're all so confused about who is who is the whole point: we keep trying to pin down an authentic self, figure out who each character "really" is, but maybe the center is always empty? The characters actually are all their identities, there is no true, core self, and the identities characters take depend completely on how they relate to other characters and situational context.

We see this clearly in the relationship between Wu Wangyan and Wu Shiguang, who started off as assassin and target but ended up married for 50 years in an illusion, only to come back to reality no longer sure of who they really were anymore.

The character of Xiaowei, who we first meet as a male fox demon hunting for his lost love across incarnations, later turns out to have originally been a female fox demon when she met her lover. When Xiaowei finally finds the lover in the present day, she is in a female incarnation, so Xiaowei has become a man. Interestingly, since all the female fox demons are extremely lesbian coded, it's not clear to me if the original lover was a woman or a man. Was the original love a queer one?

Regardless, the point is that gender is fluid, only the emotion is eternal. Xiaowei had to pay a big price to make that emotion eternal, however. She had to sever herself from the moon cult's monthly memory-washing ritual, which made them attacked by some kind of ice magic whenever they used their own magic. And the lover, she did not remember Xiaowei, insisted she was not the person. All that sacrifice and effort and the beloved is not the person you want them to be! There was no part that remained across incarnations.

So, the effort to pin down an emotion, the effort to pin down a relationship, is futile and self-destructive. Several times later in the show, characters ask, "Will he/will I become like Xiaowei?" meaning, will I become obsessed with pinning down an identity or obsession that cannot be pinned down?

There are also the mixed up family relationships. Family are the ones who truly "see" you. Can a son be his own mother's husband? Can a man raise a younger version of himself? What does it mean to be a "normal loving brother" versus twisted "Cain-Abel" brothers? These aren't done purely for the shock value of incest or family drama, but to make us question the stability of identities we tend to think of as natural, inevitable, and unchanging.

I decided to write down all these thoughts percolating through my brain because in episode 17 we learn that Wu Shiguang was born from a dragon egg made by the scales of his 9 dragon brothers (fathers?) that fused into a rock, gestated, and eventually, "gave birth." First, I acknowledge that dragons are magical, mythological creatures and who knows how they reproduce in this universe.

But to me, a human, it brings up several things. First, some reptiles reproduce asexually, by basically cloning their own chromosomes and laying eggs (parthenogenesis) that are almost identical to their own genomes. Only females, however, have this capability, since it still depends on laying eggs. Which brings me to the second point: males using a female mode of reproduction. Third point: This isn't truly parthenogenesis, since it required the combination of material from nine different dragon scales. So we're seeing another blurring of gender and sex, giving males the reproductive capabilities of females and the idea that people of the same sex can produce a child together.

I think the exploration of these ideas is really cool and pretty deep, actually, and it's definitely going to be heartbreaking because we, the viewers, are as fixated on holding on to a stable point of view, an anchor in a sea of shifting identities, as the characters are, and it's going to hurt so much when the things we most want to see vanish in front of us.

[fiftysevenacademics]

I have nothing smart or insightful to say so I made this dumb bingo card instead.

[haifoct]

We all should share xiao si bingo we made at some point in our lives and compare!

[zhuoyichenpretty]

joining in on the fun!!

[zhuoyichenpretty]

for the FoF lovers out there how do we feel about chen duling's VoS character going through a very similar blacking-out-waking-up-to-find-she's-committed-mass-slaughter situation as zhao yuanzhou................

[c4tr0nac7]

[annoyingchildmiracle]

i feel so unwell about wu shiguang and wu wangyan just thinking about them might make me combust

wdym she approached him with ulterior motives with doubts layering their relationship wdym theyve been married for 50 years now wdym she has the blood of his entire clan on her hands, the same hands he tried to warm despite them both freezing to death, the same hands he wanted to reach so desperately he cut off his limbs just so he could crawl to her and comfort her wdym she would rather cut off a part of her that risks an excruciating death, lose all her powers, become blind and get chased by a curse for eternity than lose her emotions and memories of them being together WHAT DO YOU MEAN

[c4tr0nac7]

[storge]

Ji Ling!

[numerodixe]

Zeng Shunxi - 曾舜晞