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sirenofthegreenbanks · 1 year

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hello hello hope u are having a good timezone! as u might have noticed re: my tags on that shl gifset lmao i'm interested on yr thoughts on this as a wenzhou poem.. cannot stop thinking about the come hope too much. come with all your ghosts. come clown around when the timing's bad. come promise me the world. come trust me to do my best even when i don't. come ask me to give you everything i have. anyway. !!! <3

honestly, i dont know how to present my thoughts without wanting to cry. there is something so raw about this poem that hits me where it hurts. i think this visceral need, of hope, is so essential to tyk, and at the same time, the novel is making a study of hopelessness.

i mean. the main character starts out killing himself; and it is hard not to understand this wish if the very world he lives in is so bleak and devoid of warmth. and after that very important decision, zhou zishu rejoices in every single mundane thing life has to offer; and he can do that, like, he has given himself the allowance to it because he paid for it with his death.

Death was not frightening. It had not been easy for him to survive over the past twenty years; all of the methods he used to pressure Zhang Chengling were ones he had endured in his childhood, but even harsher, and despite him not having the kid's innate talent for withstanding that harshness completely unharmed. (Ch. 45, tl. chichilations) "Why wouldn't i? My junior used to be taught by my hand." .. "Then what did you do if our junior couldn't recite the mantras, or couldn't practice some move?" .. "I made him copy the introductory breath-regulation mantra three hundred times. If he couldn't even practice slowly, then he wouldn't need to eat, nor… need to sleep. In the middle of the night, I would get someone to lock his bedroom up so that he would go into the snowdrifts and come to a comprehension on his own." (Ch. 33, tl. chichilations) He had experienced enough to fear no one and nothing in the world. If he lived in no fear, what was so scary about death? (Ch. 45, tl. chichilations)

and i feel like... like!! he has spent his entire life trying to carve out a place for himself: he perfected four seasons manor’s martial arts into an, uh, art, he dabbled a little in game of thrones politics entirely uncalled for, he discovered he has basically no bottom line, he sold his sect to the empire and built a new organization by himself, he became the most powerful person of the nation second only to the son of heaven. he has, like, done lots of things, and made mostly only bad choices.

but this struggle has always been about living his own life, and it has always been in a transactional way, and now that he has all but killed himself, he is doing it all over again.

However, what was making him uncomfortable was that he had to count the days down until his death. / Having endured so much, his heart's will was stalwart, and never had he had a will for death. Wasn't it ironic that his most free, most unworried, and most cheerful days would be the ones where he was waiting to die? / This was most likely yet another stupid thing that was his own doing. (Ch. 45, tl. chichilations)

and wen kexing is kind of the opposite. wen kexing has never really lived a life for himself, and over his time in the valley, he must have become accustomed to the thought of never having a life of his own ever. he is entirely unashamed of being seen as well, at least regarding the things that are socially unacceptable, like homosexuality and murder, or his general unhinged self; unashamed in a way that speaks of a trial by fire. but he once says that,

"For all my life, whenever I want to happily play around, I can't be happy. When I grew up a little, I wanted to learn arts both martial and literary with my parents, but no one was around to teach me. Tell me… isn't that some very poor timing?" (Ch. 29, tl. chichilations)

in short, he is always slightly out of tune. when he meets zhou zishu, he is slightly out of tune as well. zhou zishu is going to die (at this point, it is all but set in stone), and wen kexing has this plan that ends with a bang, with him going up in flames while he burns all of his past grievances and the devils and demons of jianghu, and that includes himself, away.

"This is the human world," he continued, "and the human world should not have ghosts and demons. The … prestigious Hero Ghao Chong is ridding the world of calamities for the common folk. If we don't lend a hand, would your many years of reading sagely texts not be in vain? I heard that only many years of cultivation can then give you a fulfilled life, but if you don't do anything notable, wouldn't those decades have been for nothing?" / Zhou Zishu didn't answer, but Wen Kexing still turned to ask after him. "Wouldn't you agree, Ah-Xu?" (Ch. 16, tl. chichilations) 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. (Ch. 29, tl. hunxi-after-hours)

but oh. while they meet, in that space between them, they carve out a place for them that fits just right; a space where they can explore and discover, play and fuck around, and be human. something neither really knows how to. ("and I started feeling myself open, / started feeling my yes coming back / and it was the sweetest thing I had ever known / the reverse of being haunted, / like taking a deep breath / and pulling the fog of the glass.")

and it also reminds me of this:

(excerpt from 'baked goods' by aimee nezhukumatathil, found here)

seriously, the lines youre quoting in your ask, like (grabs wenzhou and shakes them around) thats them!!! its them!!! but the poem has no single line that isnt a banger, almost no line that doesnt fit them. how it starts is absolutely devastating, it reminds me of wen kexing and the valley and his general attitude re: his lack of autonomy. ("I wanted the yes to last forever so badly later on I told myself: / We’re built like drums. We couldn't make songs / if we had never been hit. It was a desperate theory.") it reminds me of zhou zishu's journey (gestures at qi ye at large) and his unceasing downwards spiral, that ends with him (figuratively but also not) in his own grave. ("And that’s how I lived. I mean, that’s how I’d been living. / Decades of no no no no no no / And that’s okay, an accordion could not make a song / if it never closed.") like, zhou zishu is a survivor. the fact that he decides to kill himself has been a long way coming emotionally, but only really comes to pass in the physical world when liang jiuxiao's death kicks him off over edge, and half a decade later, he still remembers him with that misunderstanding in mind; otherwise, im fairly sure, he would have never done so, despite being unhappy and miserable.

"Who?" Zhou Zishu laughed dourly. "You mean the girl at the restaurant? I'll handle her. Liang Jiuxiao … he… he said murderers pay with their lives. Told me to pay with my life." (Qi Ye, Ch. 62, tl. chichilations) Murdering someone should be paid with one's life? Why should it be? In this world, there was a way to make living worse than dying. (TYK, Ch. 20, tl. chichilations)

but wen kexing, even despite being highly aware that he has never really lived, tries to find light in the darkness even in his last days on earth. ruth @specialability said the other day when i was rambling about wen kexing's general attitude re: his own impending death in my tags, "I do think that Wen Kexing is sort of removed from his reality in a dissociative way but he doesn't want to be. He is trying to have life experiences that are not so shitty and I do think there are times when he is very 'present', especially with Chengling," and i agree. they are both in their last days on this earth, and they are desperately making the most of it, because in all honesty, neither really wants to die. this shift from "not wanting to die" to "living", in tyk, happens incredibly slow and not all at once, i think. its a gradual process, a lot must be chosen and decided upon, and before all, wenzhou must allow themselves to believe in hope again.

thats what rattles me so about 'good light', its about how there hasnt always been hopelessness, but now, it is hard to remember how it used to be; having faith. believing in the good. this ardous, sometimes agonizing process of starting to believe in it again, of opening yourself to possibilities again. in the chapter when wu xi and jing qi return to examine zhou zishu again, after they already pronounced him incurable once before, and savable only if he paid a price that turns out to be his bottom line, zhou zishu says, in his pov:

Even though the time he had spent alive could not be considered ‘long’, Zhou Zishu felt that it was sufficient for him to understand this lesson--that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Even if these two people before him could be considered ‘friends’ if he were hard-pressed to, even if he was familiar with how the Great Shaman operated, he still dared not believe it so easily. / Because… it could hurt, this thing called hope. (Ch. 64, tl. wenbuxing)

but oh, it can be so sweet as well, cant it? when youve opened yourself to it, when youve begun to discover life, the world, yourself and who you might be; a second chance, at life, at being a person. like, wenzhou are so weird, but they are also trying out this thing called courtship, called friendship, called mundane life. and its so funny because they dont know how, and the novel absolutely drags them for it and they drag each other constantly and themselves too, no thing is left untouched. but also it is funny, it is hilarious, in this tragic sort of way that makes me want to cry, and also in the funny way because these two guys are just so perfect at being clowns.

but it is also sweet and lovely and raw, and thats who they are, and thats what they allow themselves to be, allow each other to be when they are together. they have, somehow, carved out this safe space with each other, where they can be fragile and human.

(quote above from 'i will' by mistki, found here)

#ruth! i hope its fine i keep quoting and atting u!#i know youre chronically tired u dont have to pay this silly little post any mind! i just really liked what u said there #the mutual tag #hi ros!!! hi!! hello hi!!!#sorry this took so long.#i saw this ask and i saw this poem and i was devastated all over the floor for WEEKS.#i have like 100000 drafts inspired by it thank u but no thank u #please add ur thoughts if u have any i love reading them and i would love to keep screaming about this topic especially #hope ure doing good!!! and thank u for the ask! (its the first of its kind in my inbox <3 it was very exciting and anxiety inducing höhö)#ros #ruth #inbox #tian ya ke

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