Word of Honor

It would not be inaccurate to describe me as cynical.  Whether it's work, society, or relationships, with any new idea I can jump twenty steps ahead and see every problem that can arise.  When a school or district proposes a change, I can see all the ways it won't be implemented well.  When a community proposes an action step to plead for social justice, I can review all the ways that leaders have failed to listen in the past.  When a new relationship sprouts, I can take the smallest action and magnify it to five years down the line where it will cause us to separate.  

This ability to predict the worst and act accordingly has been an extremely useful trauma response.  After a past where I had very little control over anything, I've built a generally happy and successful life from the foresight to attempt to control for every eventuality, cynically reluctant to rely on anyone else to uphold their part, making sure everything I depend on is, if possible, controlled for by myself alone.  

However, the reality is, at my core, I'm a deeply hopeful person.  Cynicism is a wall of protection for that deepest part of myself, the part that believes in change, believes in people, and feels the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.   

A common struggle I face is worrying that I'm too far gone - that the cynical shell I've built up has fused with my being, that now I'm fundamentally changed from my experiences, and that my hopeful core can never see the light of day again.  And if that's the case, have all these years of protecting it been for nothing?

Word of Honor reflected back to me my cynicism/hope dichotomy and posited that peeling back the built-up, practiced layers to let yourself hope is possible, long after it feels like you are too crusted-over to function.

*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*

So, let's get into it.  Zhou Zishu is the head of an assassin organization who is DONE.  He's watched everyone he's loved die, so he takes his own punishment for leaving his organization, driving nails into his body that will slowly kill him, and leaves to live out a painful but hopefully peaceful last few years wandering the world alone.  Zhou intends to die, punishing himself for his failure to protect those he loved.  He believes there is no coming back from the life he's led.

Wen Kexing is the Chief of Ghost Valley, a place where people who have done evil deeds drink an
oblivion potion, forget their former lives, and live anew, secluded from society.  Wen, however, has a vendetta against the world outside of Ghost Valley, a world that betrayed his family leading to his life hidden away with the ghosts.  Wen intends to die taking the rest of the world with him in a final act of vengeance.  The world is irredeemable, and so is he.

Both of these characters think they truly understand the world and no longer want anything to do with it. They have risen through their respective ranks by constantly anticipating the worst.  They are smart.  They are prepared.  They are ready for everything.  Nothing can penetrate their armor. They've survived... Now what?  There's nothing left.  Death is the logical end to cynicism.  (Something I related to a little too hard.)

However, cynicism is inherently unimaginative.  It THINKS it sees every possibility, it THINKS it is foresight, but really it's myopic.  When Zhou and Wen meet, suddenly a new possibility emerges.  Here is someone new to love, a reason to exist beyond punishing yourself or the world around you.  When they meet each other, they glimpse something new, or, rather, something old - some core of their being that has been walled up from decades of tragedy.  

(I need to take a minute to talk about how fun it is to watch Wen Kexing switch from psycho Chief of Ghost Valley to fawning, playful Lao Wen with Zhou Zishu.  Just notice the images in this post.)

What got to me about Word of Honor was not that these two villains could fall in love, but rather that the love could be transformative and lasting.  The idea that touched me so much was that, with a powerful enough spark, one could abandon all the defense mechanisms of the past, let one's guard down, and be happy.

Wen Kexing's home, Ghost Valley, is a giant metaphor for forgetting the human world and hardening yourself against its disappointments.  They have a saying about how ghosts can't be exposed to light.  The ghosts of the valley can no longer mingle with the human world. This is what isolates them and makes them ghosts, but it’s also what protects them from the hurts they left behind.  They say they can’t go into the light as a form of punishment, but really it’s their own self-isolation.  One ghost character tells Wen Kexing, “ I'm so afraid.  I think the nicer he treats me, the more imaginary I feel things are.  It's like the snowman you made for me.  When the sun came out, it melted.”  She feels acclimating to happiness and good treatment will destroy her, or at least the version of her that has helped her survive.  That’s a scary proposition.

However, according to Zhou Zishu, "[Bravery is] to do something even though it's impossible and to trust people even though they are unpredictable."  Here, Zhou outlines the real heart of the series.  What makes this show special is that its deeply traumatized characters don't just find love, but they are able to choose it and live in it.  Does it open them up to danger and hurt? Yes.  Do their former selves melt like a snowman? Yes.  It's painful and beautiful and worth it.  

You can see this opening up in the continuation of the quote above - Zhou Zishu's declaration of love, "Lao Wen, it is difficult for us at our age to show our hearts to others.  I can't do this myself, and I can't ask you to do so.  That's why I decided to be the first to try and take a gamble.  You are the one that I know."  For two characters who are so calculated, it's a gamble to show their hearts.  But "you are the one that I know" is possibly deeper than "you are the one that I love."  When they recognize themselves in each other, they are reminded that maybe there's a piece of themselves worth saving.  In the end, loving each other isn't about finding an external reason to keep living, it's about finding what can be redeemed in themselves. 

Normally, I love dramatic scenes where love interests save each other from disaster or heartfelt declarations of love (this show definitely has all of that).  But the scenes I liked most in this series were just the daily life scenes where these two characters and their wards just hang out, goof off, cook meals, and drink.  When you are a master assassin and a ghost chief, the most radical thing to do is not to fight with swords, but splash water in each other's faces like five-year-olds.  In those moments the tough-guy shell is gone, and we see two iridescent balls of hope.

*OK MAJOR SPOILERS HERE.  I'M TALKING ABOUT THE ENDING.*

So, one reason this show got to me so much is that I THOUGHT it disappointed me. On Netflix, the show ends on episode 36.  While the ending is ambiguous, it seems as though Wen Kexing ends up sacrificing himself for Zhou Zishu.   For me, that completely obliterated the heart of the series.  The point was supposed to be that life after trauma is possible, not that the only way to redeem one's self is to die for a cause.

This ending legitimately made me depressed for a few days.  As someone who often succumbs to the idea that I don't deserve happiness and need to be working hard for someone else in order to justify my existence, THIS DID NOT HELP.  I wanted, I NEEDED to see Wen Kexing be able to leave his past and be happy, not only find happiness in dying for someone.

Luckily, after about a week I realized the fan community kept talking about a different ending.  Turns out, there is an epilogue.  (It's only like, five minutes long.)  It wasn't on Netflix, but it was behind a paywall on the streaming service Viki.  You know I paid for it, and, luckily, it fixed everything.  Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing literally live happily ever after, both having achieved immortality, living and fighting together on a mountain for as long as they choose.  

As another fan said, Word of Honor did the opposite of bury your gays.  Thank God there's hope for them.  For us. For me.

P.S.  Here are some gifs of Wen Kexing and his fan.  We deserve.