dangermousie | Yup...angsty sexy assassins in love. Still.

Newest Tip for the “Crazy Secondary Girl Stalker Handbook:” Be satisfied if you are the Emperor’s favorite concubine. Going after a guy who never indicated any interest in you, is in mourning for his beloved dead wife (which you know about), and deciding that the best way to win him over is to dress like her, come into his room in the middle of the night and tell him you can be her? Will likely not work out.

I’ve restarted watching Handsome Siblings, the wuxia drama with Nicholas Tse, Dicky Cheung and Fan Bing Bing, that I have been watching on and off for months. I can’t watch it in a binge: not only is it too long, but it’s incredibly uneven: some parts of the story I love to bits (anything involving Flower and/or Orchid) and some I couldn’t care less about (all the palace intrigue, not too mention waaaaay too much of Little Fish and his antics). It would not replace Return of the Condor Heroes (which might have an equally gigantic cast of supportings but firmly focuses on the OTP and their angsty, forbidden, sword-wielding love) as my fave wuxia, but it’s definitely super awesome in places.

I am beginning to think it’s some sort of a wuxia trope to have one half of an OTP jump off a cliff at the place his true love died, in order to reunited with her in death, only to discover her alive at the bottom. When that happened in Return of the Condor Heroes, I just thought it was unique to that story, but here we are in Handsome Siblings and here we are again!

We have Flower, the hot angsty former assassin, jump off the cliff where his wife, Orchid, jumped off to her death a few months earlier in order to save his life (long story. For details click on tag, short version is: Flower’s masters are evil psychos).

But then he fails to die (due to his super-awesome martial arts skills I am sure) and is all bleeding and injured and then he staggers into this house at the bottom and he finds Orchid’s scarf.

Clearly, somebody has been doing demographic surveys, because I can imagine few things more appealing to this particular viewer than a wounded, bleeding hottie, burying his face in his wife’s scarf and whispering her name.

And then we see a bowl fall and Orchid comes in, and there is clutching (mutual) and weeping (his) and her bandaging his arm which necessitates taking half his shirt off (yes, thank you) and explanations and conversations about the baby kicking. All things I highly approve of.

Ah, if this drama centered only around Flower and Orchid, it would definitely go into my Top 10.

Did I mention that while the protagonists of ROCH are my fave wuxia OTP, I think Orchid is my fave female wuxia character? She is just so competent, pragmatic, and full of common sense. Which balances Flower out perfectly, what with him being super-reserved, super-emo, and only slowly getting the hang of this whole ‘emotion and interaction’ thing. I think part of the reason he is so madly in love with Orchid, to the level of not being able to function without her, is because she is the first normal person he has. (Well, there is Little Fish but it would be twincest).

You know, I do like Little Fish. He is capable and compassionate and certainly way better adjusted than Flower. I would have loved him to bit if he was supporting. But not when it becomes all about him. I mean, when Flower lost his wife, he wandered out in the desert to die (and then had an interlude of supreme hotness when he was rescued and returned the favor to the Princess who did it and wore a mask :P) and then when his obligations were discharged, jumped off a cliff. Fish lost his wife and wept a bit and got over it and is now onto his next OTP. That is probably healthy, but way unappealing.