#fanglin

"Wei Qian, who has supported his sister Wei Li Li and adopted brother Wei Zhi Yuan since losing his parents, risks his life working illegally until his friend San Pang guides him to a better path. Life stabilizes until Xiao Yuan confesses his feelings and kisses Wei Qian, prompting Wei Qian to send him abroad. Struggling with his emotions, Wei Qian wonders if they will remain as brothers or cross the line into love."

I think you can gather why I was a little iffy on the show, because the faux-incest, forbidden love thing in BLs especially gets to be a bit much and just needs to be handled very precisely to not be icky. And in the end I do think that it's handled as well here as it can be. None of the older love interests are aware of any feelings from the younger ones until everyone is of age and and nothing happens until people are full adults. There's a kiss when one is between 18 & 19, and then nothing further until everyone is in their twenties. There's not any hardline information about ages in the show really besides one person turning 18, and so it isn't easy to know exactly how old people are throughout or what exactly the age gaps are. Based on my best guess, I think it's like a 4-6 year gap.

I feel like the synopsis doesn't really do the story justice, but the clarity of exactly what is happening is something you don't fully understand until the very end. The story is shown from the perspective of the two main characters Wei Qian and Zhi Yuan, but Wei Qian especially is a bit of an unreliable narrator for multiple reasons. Zhi Yuan is better, slightly more objective, but still colored by his own perceptions of what is happening around him. If this is the story of Wei Qian, think of it like the difference between a memoir and a biography, depending on whose perspective we're seeing at any given moment.

As someone who adores a found family trope, I do really like this story. It's also got a lot of grey-morality to it, which I enjoy, but also find realistic. I said it all the time in my discussion of KinnPorsche, but hardline morals are a luxury. You can know that stealing is wrong, but when it's a question of feeding yourself or the people who rely on you, sometimes you don't truly have a choice. I find the sort of individual moral compasses of Wei Qian and Zhi Yuan very interesting throughout the story.

I want to watch it a second time, since I'll have a better handle on who is who and the overall timeline of events, in order to really evaluate some of the storytelling choices made. Overall the story spans somewhere around 15-17 years by my guess, and for obvious reasons the main characters are cast in different age groups and not only do I think these actors all deliver excellent performances, but they also are really good castings as far as the physical match. But back to my point about a rewatch, I would swear that depending on perspective, the different actors are changed out, and I would need to solidify the timeline to verify that. And what I mean by that, is that there are events that happen around the same time in the story, but from one perspective a character looks older, and from another they look younger. The closest comparison I have is the flashback episode of Supernatural, where Dean is around the same age in both, but in an episode set from Sam's perspective he looks much older (and cooler) but in the episode from Dean's perspective he looks much more like a child (not necessarily less cool, but less mature).

(The pictures below are supposed to be the same character approximately 18 months apart, clearly it's a big difference)

But anyway, continuing along, there's a lot of subtle and interesting aspects to the storytelling, and the individual character's portrayals that really creates a fascinating story. It may not have repeat viewing watchability, especially given the trauma and violence, but it certainly will benefit from a second watch. I'm also fairly certain I will post again after that second watch, because there's a lot of moments that I found very interesting, but I need more time to formulate my thoughts about.

But to the reason I wanted to ramble about this show in the first place. There's two characters we meet fairly early on, I think both by episode 3, and that is Da Fang and Doctor Lin (pictured below).

Da Fang is a mid-level mob boss, not the leader of the whole outfit, but with his own area of control and responsibility (think district manager). He 'helps' both Wei Qian and Zhi Yuan, with an eye for his own gain. He's a very Fagin-esque type character, though smarter, I'll give him that. He bribes Wei Qian into fighting in a few underground matches, with the promise that should he win, that he will leave them alone. The thing with underground fighting is that when you get injured, you can't really just head to a hospital, especially when you're an orphaned minor with two younger 'siblings' that rely on you. So when Wei Qian gets injured, he gets sent to Doctor Lin. While we meet him as a full-fledged physician, context tells us that he was basically put through med school by Da Fang (or potentially the overall mob organization, but his main point of contact is Da Fang), and as 'repayment' he takes care of the medical needs of the ppl that the organization sends his way, Wei Qian included.

He basically ends up becoming Wei Qian's PCP, and so we see him throughout the series as Wei Qian continues to deal with the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury caused during his final fight. Zhi Yuan is a regular presence at his fairly run-down clinic, and someone he seems to have regular contact with as between the two of them they try to gently bully Wei Qian into taking care of himself. He's also Zhi Yuan's "informant" on the whereabouts of the Da Fang and some other more nefarious members of the mafia organization that still have this weird one-sided beef with Wei Qian and Zhi Yuan by association.

Why all this matters is that throughout the series it's known to us the Dr. Lin and Da Fang know each other, but THEN in the second to last episode we get a singular scene between them and the chemistry is absolutely insane. The very clear amused affection from Da Fang (in character, as he's pretty charismatic) and the aggravation, and almost resentment from Dr Lin, who up until this point has been a pretty genial guy.

My theory: They had a sort of on-again/off-again, kind of hate-sex thing going on way back when Dr. Lin was in med school, and it turned into less of an "I hate you, but you're a good fuck" thing and more into a "maybe I don't mind having you around when you're not being a criminal" thing. Then Da Fang gets re-assigned by his boss man, basically picks up and leaves without a goodbye. And Dr Lin, he doesn't know why he suddenly feels so lonely without Da Fang dropping in on him at 2 am a little drunk, sometimes a little bloody, and definitely a lot horny. Zhi Yuan asks him to keep an ear out, warn them if Da Fang or any of the others show up back in town, and he takes that as an excuse to to just keep light track of Da Fang's movements and what he's up to. The organization still sends him the occasional henchman to get patched up, and it's just some harmless gossip after all.

Now it's a few years later and Da Fang is back in town, but not just in town, in his clinic, and it was a lot easier to keep those boundaries firm when he wasn't looking at that charming and only a little bit punchable face. And he's past 30, fully cemented in his position as a respectable (and desperately needed) healthcare provider in a less than respectable area of the city, he shouldn't feel so churned up over a man that walked away from him without looking back.

And anyway, in my headcanon Da Fang keeps showing up in front of Dr. Lin, bringing supplies for the clinic, the legality with which they were acquired being no one's business, trying to get back into Dr, Lin's good graces. Okay, at first he was just trying to get back into his pants, but Dr. Lin wasn't the only one with fond-ish memories of their past together. And he certainly wasn't the only one who wondered 'what could have been' if he hadn't been reassigned on less than a day's notice.

Anyway, after several weeks of aggravated requests to "leave him the fuck alone" Da Fang shows up at the clinic well after closing and a little worse for wear after a scuffle with a competing organization, and they bicker as Dr. Lin patches him up, not because he wants to, but because he takes his Hippocratic Oath seriously and he knows Da Fang won't go to a the hospital to get checked out.

The bickering builds and eventually it turns to yelling and culminates in Dr. Lin shouting "You left without even saying goodbye. Why did you bother coming back?!" And Da Fang with more earnestness than Dr. Lin's ever seen says "I couldn't say goodbye, because if I had tried, I wouldn't have been able to leave."

Then they have very excellent make-up sex (that does rip Da Fang's stitches, and Dr. Lin has to sew him back up again) and that they both partially regret, because they're getting a bit to old to be fucking on a narrow and fairly rickety hospital gurney.