fraactals

this is a show that puts its mains and their romance front and center, reveling in presenting various shifting dynamics between its mains, while also providing a lot of room for both ML and FL to really show off their awesome powers. both mains are fully formed and interesting characters in their own right, and the very, very full plot means getting to observe them in a variety of crazy situations. several of their heartfelt moments - the 'true' version of what happened 18 years ago; su yishui's drunken confession in episode 18; their conversation at su yishui's mothers' grave and su yishui's subsequent decision to allow himself a little fleeting joy; ranran's giving back of ling xiao inside the cave -- are like golden shafts of light to me that i will revisit over and over. at the very end, the shows caps off their relationship with a spectacular fight that showcases the awesome power each main possesses and the teamwork, love, and trust that they have painstakingly built over their "two lifetimes" of extreme ups and downs

almost all of the side characters -- except mu ranwu and su yu -- ended up being very effective and engaging. wei jiu/tu jiuyuan took me by surprise by how much i ended up enjoying them. ditto zeng yi, senior brother bai, the two uncle immortals, su yishui's two attendants, ai mi's junior disciple and her love interest disciple

despite all that, this will not be a favorite show for me or one i will rewatch for my own pleasure (outside the three or four truly outstanding scenes). partly, the middle 20 episodes of the main ship are simply not my favorite flavor of ship -- waiting for ranran to grow and regain her memories often felt like a chore to me, and i found that the scenes of her slowly breaking down his barriers to be very repetitive. but more than that, i think this show is a good example of a show which, while mitigating its weaknesses when viewed 'in hindsight' by being very well cast/acted and sticking the landing, still irritates me at a base constructive level

there were a lot, like truly a lot of times in this show where i simply could not believe the sheer amount of plot railroading that was enforced via magical devices. this is a story which effectively views fantasy/magic as a way to force character beats and situations. su yishui giving ranran ling xiao and having to use the ice lotus technique is just a little too transparent as a means to allow scene after scene of ranran making su yishui lose his cool; the soul locking device is just a little too useful for keeping mu ranwu around; the whole formless spirit root conceptual stuff that i never quite grasped is clearly a set-up from the beginning to force both yishui's extreme protectiveness and ranran's eventual sacrifice of her own cultivation for yishui. that's just touching the big ones 'core' ideas, by the way, and not all the to-be-expected mcguffin mini-arcs

maybe the most egregious example of what i consider such magical contrivance -- though it is less irritating to me than the soul-locking device, which was my least favorite contrivance by far -- are mu ranran's repeated encounters in su yishui's iced-over sea of consciousness with the chained man she knows to be ling xiao's soul owner and therefore her benefactor. the deliciousness of reveling in su yishui's anguish/guilt/squirming/delight as ranran spills out her feelings is undercut by the blaring obviousness of the set-up. and honestly, the foolishness of a person who spills out all her feelings about a guy to a different guy who she's never even spoken to... the fact that i somehow just roll with it and don't even find ranran to be foolish is basically entirely due to julia xiang's charm

i truly don't object to all magical devices. when the story established how a drop of the spirit spring was forced into su yishui, i was very happy with the set-up. when yishui sacrificed an arm and a leg to defy everything to bring back qingge while putting off the sealing of the spirit spring, there was a feeling of extreme clarity, like oh this is what the story is going to really be about. whenever qingge unveiled her special spell, whenever ranran encountered it and experimented with it (and sometimes suffered backlashes from it), when finally ranran showed off how she could draw power from everywhere instead of relying on only herself, it was thrilling

(i think btw actually that one reason wei jiu and elder tu end up being so refreshing is because they are refreshingly free of all character-moment forcing magical devices. unencumbered by soul locks, amnesia, spirit root forms, slow-acting poisons, silencing spells, and god knows what else, their mess is entirely their own, coming from within)

this isn't to say that the magical devices don't have symbolic and thematic meaning. ranwu's use of the soul-locking device is a literal manifestation of her parasitic tendencies towards qingge. yishui's iced-over consciousness is symbolic of his emotional frozenness, his fixation on the guilt, his focus on seeing himself as something to be contained. ling xiao is of course a literal manifestation of yishui's care and protection for qingge/ranran...

which brings us to amnesia. i want to watch more xianxia before writing about xianxia and amnesia in general and the things i find interesting in that relation (there are many!). keeping the focus tightly to this show, i will say that amnesia is very core both to what i viewed as solid themes that were repeated so often as to unfortunately become stultifying and to more open themes that will continue to fascinate me in this show. for the clearly stated themes of the show: the fixation on 'starting over' or a 'clean slate' is a fantasy people who are weak in character retreat to while failing to recognize their chances to cut loose from the past, while our leads, forced to start over memory-wise against their own will, achieve happiness (and world peace!) via focus on reality and their innate strength of character. for the less overtly stated, more fascinating themes explored via su yishui and ranran's amnesias: what makes a person themselves? can who we are be separated from what people expect of us (which isn't to say we will always behave as they expect) or remember of us? is memory the same as experience? is knowledge of identity the same as identity? how do adults learn to recognize the true agency of teenagers as they establish their identities?

the more the show leaned into the themes around amnesia, the less annoyed i was about its use as a romance/character-situation forcing device, until -- somewhere around when i finally understood what ye xin was about -- i decided that perhaps the show's number one problem is not leaning soon enough into exploring these ideas earlier

in fact i might say that i think a lot of it stems from trying to keep ye xin as a surprise villain, since ye xin is the culmination of the overt thematic development around memory and regret. he's perfectly serviceable as an end-game villain, but the show really, really missed out on all the very interesting things it could have done with him. like, how much of how mu ranwu turned out is because she was raised by a guy who actually didn't respect being a normal nonmagical human at all, and how interesting would it have been for qingge to confront him about it? is qingge's self-sufficiency and focus on being in the moment a reaction to being raised by a guy who was always only half there? if ranwu and qingge served as placeholders for ye xin, how did they end up fulfilling his expectations of daughters in ways they didn't understand until too late? i would willingly cut so many repeated scenes of ranwu insisting that she will win in this life and su yu fixating on qingge for depth of development of the two sisters' relationship with ye xin