[ SECRET POST #5559 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5559 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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02.
[Adventure Time]


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03.
[Undertale]


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04.
[Black Widow]


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05.
[The Lost Tomb]


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06.
[Star Trek: Picard]


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07.
[The Mystic Nine]
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 46 secrets from Secret Submission Post #796.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

That's a complicated question.

It has a lot of (extremely) intense platonic relationships, some of which kinda read as pure friendship or quasi-familial (Wu Xie & Pangzi, for example, or Little Flower & Huo Xiuxiu) and some of which have the bone structure of Epic Romance (Wu Xie & Xiaoge, oh god, ten year promises, oh my) while not being on-screen about kissing or the erotic.

Wu Xie gets into a couple of ambiguous relationships with spiky, dangerous women (A-Ning and Su Nan) that have a flirtatious element but ultimately boil down to friendship, loyalty conflicts, and even more intense, bittersweet friendship.

There are, I think, three explicitly romantic relationships in the series as a whole, all slow-burny. I thought Zhang Rishan/Liang Wan in Tomb of the Sea was the best, partly because we see them spending a lot of time with other people, establishing themselves as 3d characters - when they were together they felt so very real, and so very raw. It's also funny as fuck.

The other two explicit romances are in The Mystic Nine, and they're kind of... tomb, tomb, adventure, intrigue, romance bit!, tomb, tomb... The female sides of them are maybe a bit one note compared to the male characters? But I liked both of them, and Yin Xinyue is extremely funny when she gets going - she just doesn't have a lot of plot outside her relationship with Zhang Qishan. (When they finally got married I was cheering them on.)


And, relationships between characters aside, there is A Lot that is primarily about tombs, adventure, intrigue, Indiana Jones kinda stuff, so there's a lot to enjoy if you're primarily about Gen-fic.

[(Anonymous)]

Wait no, I forgot. Pangzi falls for a lady (who already has a kid) in Sound of Providence.

It doesn't fit most of the Standard C-Drama Romance Tropes - they're both older, a bit world-weary, there's a lot of stuff going on, and there's a kid thrown into the mix. (I really liked Piaopiao.)

[(Anonymous)]

High-five, fellow Piaopiao fan!

(General note to anyone watching: I love this franchise but it is so bad with women. Or so good at fridging them, to put it another way.)

[(Anonymous)]

It's good at making female characters that I love. Then it kills them...

(Though I don't think A-Ning and Su Nan were fridged, to be fair. They had solid arcs with motivations and emotional insight, and death was always a strong possibility of the lives they lived. But poor Piaopiao.)

[(Anonymous)]

I 100% think A-Ning was, her death was so bloody pointless. And literally seemed to happen so that NPSS had something dramatic to end that book on. I'm still mad about it.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess. It's certainly hella random.


But also - in the dramas at least - she's a counterpoint to Hendry Cox's Eternal Life Above All deal. There's a point in the Changbai Mountain arc where everybody is hallucinating, and her wistful dream is that Father comes and says something like, 'I understand now. Death walks with us everyday, as close as a shadow, so why fight it? Let's go home.' and she says something similar in Ultimate Note.

I think 'A-Ning has accepted that she will die young' is a fundamental part of how I view her as a character.

So the snake was hella random, but I always figured there would be something.


(Also also, it's just lovely talking about this with someone. Thank you for stopping by.)

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you very much for this detailed reply!
So in general, I feel watching Tomb would be alright for me but I should rather steer clear of Mystic Nine in terms of romance subplots. That is very good to know!

[(Anonymous)]

Have fun!