有辱斯文 - or - A disgrace to scholars

Introduction

Hey guys! lazulisong has emerged from work hell and is taking point on the episode the Collective lovingly refers to as "I choose YOU, pikachu". (Not mentioning any names but this was eventually the cause of some really cursed manips on Twitter. Thanks, Twitter!)

PLEASE BE AWARE: a major plot point of this episode and the next is attempted rape and flashbacks to rape and assault in the past! Be good to yourself and proceed responsibly.

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Introduction

rageprufrock: I’M BACK.

lazulisong: I'm beginning to think we were all quite clever to not rely on a Tumblr presence for this.

rageprufrock: I would like to take complete credit for that decision, by the way.

lazulisong: Also SHOUT OUT to Kit and Meg's friend Bee, who has spent the entire week angrily DMing them on Discord about how much she loves Jingyan and Jingmom :DDDDDD

kitsunec4: SO delighted, the fandom, as always, thirsts for new blood.

tactless_yet_lovable: INTRODUCING THE LITTLEST PEANUT THIS EPISODE, my lil’ cutie.

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Introduction

A quick note: rageprufrock won’t be able to join us this week because she’s had to be a Responsible Adult. We’re jealous that she got to skip this one.

moggiesandtea: My notes for this episode begin, “I have no memory of this episode.” Then, all of two minutes in, I was swearing about how this was the shitty water CGI one.

lazulisong: I think this is the one that really gave Tam and I flashbacks to watching tokusatsu for eight hours straight and I still wasn't sure which one it was at first.

kitsunec4: isn’t this how all of our recaps begin? I mean, the, “I have no recollection of this place,” schtick?

moggiesandtea: I have regrets.

tactless_yet_lovable: Fucking Zhu Yilong and his goddamn everything. GODDAMN WUHAN BOYS AND THEIR SAD PINING CHEEKBONES. Between him and Wang Kai, Wuhan has did me dirty.

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Join us here in two weeks for a discussion of Guardian: Episode 6, wherein the filler episodes continue and we really want some booze!

As some of you may have already heard, the much-beloved writer Jin Yong passed away in Hong Kong this week, on October 30. While he was most famous for his prolific and popular wuxia novels, Jin Yong was also deeply involved in Hong Kong politics for much of his life.

Jin Yong was born Zha Liangyong in Haining, Zhejiang, on March 24, 1924, to a prominent literati scholar family - his grandfather had passed imperial exams in the late Qing dynasty, and his father had been executed by the Communist government for being an intellectual counterrevolutionary. He was no stranger to political upheaval and the ever-changing court of public opinion. His incorporation of these elements into a fictional realm named the jianghu solidified the concept and strengthened wuxia as a genre. Along with Gu Long and Liang Yusheng, Jin Yong is commonly credited as the father of contemporary wuxia.

Even if you’ve never read a Jin Yong novel, the influence of his writing is pervasive in current Chinese pop culture, from the perennial remakes of Legend of the Condor Heroes and Smiling, Proud Wanderer (both in drama and movie forms), to video games, to dusty cracked-spined paperbacks lingering on bookshelves (that someone hauled across the world while praying to not exceed their luggage allowances).

The sheer volume and evocativeness of Jin Yong’s stories make it difficult in some ways to pinpoint, ah, yes, this is from whom this story element is drawn. His style was admittedly long-winded, as the stories all began as serialized fiction for newspapers, and yet it also immediately transported the readers to an entirely different time and place.

His writing encompassed a wide range of topics, while ostensibly focusing on the main themes of the jianghu, martial arts, and romance: Chinese medicine, music, calligraphy, poetry, art, food/tea, philosophy, and even regional differences in dialects were all incorporated with an eye to detail. Jin Yong both upheld and subverted traditional tropes in Chinese literature, such as the teacher-disciple relationship, Han Chinese patriotism, and even the mold of what a traditional hero could be. Through his skill with sketching characters within the conflict-ridden world of the jianghu, Jin Yong would pass commentary on modern life (and his books had in the past been banned on both sides of the strait for their political content).

The news of Jin Yong’s death was expectedly unexpected. While the author had been frail for long years following a stroke, it still rippled through the Chinese community and the diaspora as everyone in different time zones woke up or saw the obituaries trip past on their media feeds. If, through reading, we the readers get to know an author, then Jin Yong was everyone’s favorite beloved uncle with the best stories, taking on different nuances through re-reads and through the years. For all that Jin Yong once critiqued his own writing as not being that well done (and the novels have gone through rounds of revisions and re-releases), the layers of complexity of characterization and world-building have made them fascinating to reread and retell.

Even as we may fondly roll our eyes at yet another remake of Legend of the Condor Heroes, or decide to re-read a particular novel for the umpteenth time, the fact remains that Jin Yong crafted entire worlds and histories that the audience wants to return to again and again. So maybe it’s insufficient, but it’s all we have: thank you for the stories and the worlds you built and shared with us.

飛雪連天射白鹿
笑書神俠倚碧鴛

In the light of the recent hiatus on recapping episodes of Guardian, A Disgrace to Scholars decided to implement a new group feature: If This, Then That. While Guardian is now back online and we will shortly be resuming our recaps (watch this space!), we assume many of you have already watched the whole thing— maybe more than once— and are jonesing for something new. This one’s for you!

(That, and it seemed a shame to waste all that effort when we’d already written most of this post.)

As you can probably guess from the name of the feature, the purpose is to take a drama that we have been featuring on the blog, distil it down to what we consider to be one of its key selling points, and make recommendations of other dramas you may want to watch that fulfil that same niche need. In other words: like Netflix, but more accurate! Theoretically, anyway.

We make the disclaimer that this is based on our individual— somewhat eclectic— tastes and you may not agree. In fact, we don’t always agree with each other. However, we will try to be clear about the reasons why we are recommending a particular drama in this category, and any significant flaws that may make it less appealing to some viewers.

As you may have guessed by this point, we are kicking off our first If This, Then That post with Guardian— and since the only redeeming quality Guardian has is the intensely gay chemistry between the main leads, that is forming the basis for our recommendations in this post.

We make no guarantee of actual quality for all of these (looking at you, Disguiser), but since y’all sat through Guardian, we’re going to assume that that isn’t necessarily going to stop you. (Although we will be upfront about the dramas we actually recommend as quality TV, as opposed to our “this is objectively trash but may fill the Guardian shaped hole in your life” recs.)

And so, without further ado, on with the heavily subtextual, intensely obsessive and/or pine-scented show!

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Join us again on Monday for our inaugural recap of one of the dramas recced in this post, Nirvana in Fire!

(If you are wondering what this means for the Guardian recap, fear not, we will be resuming those recaps on alternating Mondays. Bad life choices and emotional whiplash for all abound.)

A Disgrace to the Scholars is a collaborative blog about Asian dramas by a bunch of nerds losing their minds in a corner of the room, and this community is where we’re sharing our thoughts. As such, posting is currently limited to the admin/feature contributors: arrghigiveup, hollyberries, kitsunec4, lazulisong, lunatique, moggiesandtea, rageprufrock, tactless_yet_lovable, tammaiya, and the admin account adisgracetothescholars.

One of the driving factors behind the creation of this blog on DreamWidth was that we all missed the longform discussions of old. We would love to meet more like-minded fans again, so please do link fellow fans to this space.

As a general blog policy, we will not be linking to unofficial stream sources or downloads, but will do our best instead, to let everyone know where something may be accessed in a way that supports the creators.

We will also be making new post announcements via our Twitter (@scholardisgrace) and Tumblr (adisgracetothescholars) platforms too, if those are preferred methods of keeping up with us.

Do drop us a note in the comments sections and have fun talking. You never know, fun questions and discussions may become later featured topics…

Spoilers will likely abound in the comments, and our episodic recaps are not necessarily fully spoiler-free (though we do try to focus on the specific episode). For those bringing up spoilers in the comments, please indicate in the subject line that the comment has spoilers for anyone trying to avoid them!