Words of Wood

30 Days of Guardian Day 6: Favorite character

*drumroll*

Yeah, it's Shen Wei.

I just utterly adore Shen Wei. His clothes! His face! He is a stunningly beautiful, competent, overpowered, intelligent, complete fucking disaster. I am endlessly fascinated by his complete lack of objective reality in assessing "risks I am taking" vs "risks Zhao Yunlan is taking". He is such a self-sacrificing idiot who is completely taken aback when Zhao Yunlan finally goes DO YOU THINK I COULD BE OKAY IF YOU DIED??? because this did not occur to him.

...I love him such a lot.

Also I love how fandom is united in agreement about how pretty he is when coughing blood. He does it so very well. Along with being covered in blood generally. Or literally falling apart slowly and not telling anyone. Shen Wei, I mean, what the actual fuck. "Fortunately, I'm used to getting injured." Why are you like this.

This is my favourite Shen Wei gifset

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30 Days of Guardian Day 4: How you started watching

This was one of the questions I added and I'm frankly really hoping other people might answer it too -- I'm very interested in the answers because I suspect a large proportion of them are "through fandom".

It's definitely my answer! I had seen people like naye and philomytha posting about these Chinese shows on DW for a while without managing to pick up anything else at all about them. (I don't think I distinguished between Guardian and Nirvana In Fire tbh.) Then at vidukon I was AMBUSHED by loneraven and soupytwist who sort of handed me a pen-drive. "You like hurt/comfort, we have a show which you will LOVE!" Then I had the 5-minute Weilan premise and I agreed that it did indeed sound interesting, and I put the files onto my laptop. Then started watching on the train home and the rest is history -- also from the train I tweeted that I was watching Guardian and I think naye retweeted me and then SUDDENLY MANY ENTHUSIASTIC NEW FRIENDS who lived through my show experience with me and just increased my whole enjoyment manyfold. (The twitter Guardian fandom is like a roving gang of muggers waiting to POUNCE on new people, it's hysterical.) But then I have also watched a load more cdramas because of being told to by twitter friends, and have watched (and encouraged) many other people to get into Guardian via this method. Best channel, I'm certain, and I knew absolutely what sort of fannish experience I was letting myself in for within a couple of hours.

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So "Shen Wei takes Jiajia as his newest grad student post-canon" is now a series! The unofficial newsletter of Dragon City University (BioEng Dept). And here is a second fic for it.

Title: Please refer to the list of ingredients (Guardian | 镇魂)
Word count: 3200 words
Characters/Pairing: Jiajia, Li Qian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Content/Tags: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Established Relationship, Awkward university functions, Accidental Alcohol
Summary: Jiajia, Professor Shen's newest grad student, is nervous at her first faculty-and-guests function at the university. But really, what could go wrong?
On AO3
For the "trust issues" square on my hc_bingo card

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30 Days of Guardian Day 2: Favourite case

The one with the ultrasound noises and the little girl and the wedding and the mind-control... good thing this question isn't "most coherent case" XD But it facilitates so many excellent scenes, including Shen Wei being super badass, Zhao Yunlan being clever, super awkward conversations, and Shen Wei coughing blood.

Also I really liked it for Zhao Yunlan being unhappy with both Shen Wei and the Envoy for different reasons (even though he was pretty sure by then that they were the same person). He really didn't want the Envoy to arrest the little girl and it was *such* a relief (for him and the audience) to afterwards know that mercy was being shown.

Also! This case arc had Zhao Yunlan touching the Awl and then swooning in Shen Wei's arms *and* Shen Wei being unhelpful to the cause of science by messing up Lin Jing's scan. Which weren't really related to the case I guess other than Zhu Jiu being related to the case in a very nebulous sort of way. It's a good job I wasn't watching this show for the cases, really.

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Day 10 - A song that makes you fall asleep
All Good Things (Come To An End) — Nelly Futardo

I just really love this one. It's had a lot of repeat plays. This is one I used to have on loop to work/revise to in sixth form, actually, because it's nice relaxing noise.

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Day 11 - A song from your favourite band
Speed the Collapse — Metric

This was a really hard question to answer -- I have quite a lot of bands I love! But I haven't used a Metric song for any of my other meme answers, so I'll go with them. This is also one of my favourite apocalypse songs. (I have a lot of favourite apocalypse songs.)

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Day 12 - A song from a band you hate
A Light As Bright As Ours — Sandi Thom

Yeah, this is the "I wish I was a punk rocker" singer. Which is one of the most annoying songs I know XD But this one is okay! Although I have no idea why I have it in my music collection -- I think may be one my sister added way back when she used to steal my laptop...

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Unrelated note: I've had to turn off anon commenting on LJ. I've been getting an enormous volume of spam, about one an hour! They're currently enabled on DW -- I'll see how this goes.

Day 04 - A song that makes you sad
Samson — Regina Spektor

This is one of the songs which no one will ever convince me is not about lesbians, because it totally is. (Note: please don't actually try to convince me.) Also I've spent the last year planning in my head how I want to do a Myka/HG vid to it, and definitely plan to make it after Warehouse 13 finishes airing.

I love the sweetness about this song, and the sadness. It's got beautiful lyrics. We couldn't bring the columns down, no we couldn't destroy a single one / and the history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us, not even once.

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Day 05 - A song that reminds you of someone
Pressure Suit — Aqualung

This is song which I was given by Esvan, during the period of my life when I was in 6th form and had literally no one to talk to (and he was in his first year of uni) and I was just incredibly lonely and depressed and suicidal. But he sent me a song and I played it over and over and over and just. It's such a good song. Somewhere far beneath your pointed tongue and teeth is where you really are and just the repeated it's alright was so much what I needed right then, and yeah. Esvan's song. ♥

Dammit, now I'm crying.

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Day 06 - A song that reminds of you of somewhere
Fire And Rain — James Taylor

Years ago, we went on holiday each summer to France, to the Alps and to the south. We'd drive there, and go between campsites which were all in the middle of nowhere, with all the camping stuff for three weeks wedged into one car (because apparently it cost a load to take the little trailer on the ferry). But basically there was a lot of driving. And we'd all make one or two mixtapes each to be played in the car (except my mother, who was too busy actually organising the holiday). My sister's tapes were universally hated by everyone else, being comprised of Atomic Kitten and the Sugarbabes and the like. Mine were bizarre mixtures with Steeleye Span wedged up next to Snow Patrol and the end-songs from LOTR and Death Cab for Cutie and Cat Stevens in a way that I thought was great. And dad's tended to be made of the exact same songs every year, even though he made new ones every time. (This meant that I never had to put them on mine unless I wanted a duplicate, which worked great for me!)

So this song is France. There are actually lots that are, the ones that dad repeated every year -- James Taylor and Neal Young and Carol King and other artists I can't remember although I could still sing you their songs. But I picked this one here because it's a specific place to me -- driving through a golden evening on a high, narrow road above a long reservoir that we'd spent all day beside. Cork oaks beside the road, all glowing gold in the sunset. That's this song.

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Signal boost: This round of Last Author Standing urgently needs more votes! Link to voting post and fics.

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I have found a new meme I'm going to play, one of the 30 Days ones. Not that I have illusions about me remembering to post for 30 consecutive days. It's 30 Days of Favourite Female Characters. I'm assuming TV show only, as a) more people are likely to recognise them and b) I can illustrate with pretty pictures.

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