Ishmael

If I'm not mistaken, I have only five Poirot books to go: two novels and three short story collections, which is wild. Since my last post, I have read:

• After the Funeral - I enjoyed this one, which is funny because I can get irritated if I feel Christie has been too withholding with the clues in order to pull a trick, but in this case it worked for me, I think because there were enough elements of "wrongness" popping out of the text to be noticed and it was relief to see how those elements tied together, even if I couldn't ultimately guess to what direction. ( Spoilers. )
  Unfortunately the edition of the book I got messed up the layout of the family tree at the start, which annoyed me so much.


• The Sittaford Mystery - This was fun! I feel like it shouldn't work as well as it does, as one of those mysteries that's built around a specific murder-accomplishing hook that limits the number of possibles, but I think after having read so many of Christie's books that do the same, you have to appreciate the art of putting said mystery together. Basically a table-turning announces a murder, and since the supernatural do not exist, someone announced the murder on purpose, and it's a matter of figuring out why. Go-getter Emily Trefusis is a delight and I love her.


• They Do It with Mirrors - A Miss Marple story as she tries to protect a beloved friend. It's pretty straightforward but the (1) title and (2) diagram of the scene of the crime, got me overthinking things, but if you know your conventions you can figure out pretty quick how the murder was pulled off, and that isn't a knock on the story because it makes it becomes a matter of understanding the characters and their relationships to peel back the motives.


• Destination Unknown - This was a blast! An espionage story with a tight POV of a "normal" character who is brought into an undercover mission, but she's also competent and intelligent and starts out with a bit of a deathwish which explains why takes the mission. The whole journey is fun and we get to try to decipher all the characters she meets along with her, and it ties up really satisfying way for me. Yay!! Though there's some unfortunate ethnic descriptions, and a key moment is solved by another character donning blackface.

I just finished Red Carp Legend, I had SUCH a good time and I'm sad it's over! Admittedly the final few episodes were too repetitive and the finale was kind of meh, but it was the same kind of disappointing I'd gotten used to with HK TV shows growing up, so the fact that it's a happy ending at all was already good enough, plus everything before that more than made up for it.

Right before the wheel turning was the big plot with Mu Dan, which was amazing and got me thinking about the show as an adaptation, speaking as someone whose only knowledge of the original story comes from the few very brief snippets I've been able to find online.

As far as I can tell, the original story features the Carp Spirit tricking Zhang Zhen by shapeshifting into the form of his love (Mu Dan), and ultimately it's Guanyin and Justice Bao who are able to identify which Mu Dan is the fake one and trap her. Adaptations change it up between the Carp Spirit and Mu Dan being the endgame girl, and adjusting their personalities accordingly.

So I've watched two TV adaptations at this point, and my guess (which could be wrong) would be that these are in conversation with each other and other adaptations that came before, as does happen when there are many adaptations of folktale-type stories. Legend of Heaven and Earth went with both the Carp Spirit and Mu Dan being good characters, and Mu Dan dying tragically in order for the Carp Spirit to become endgame.

Red Carp Legend goes with Mu Dan being more complex than that, and having the potential to be good but having that sabotaged through her upbringing, though she steps up ONE (1) very critical time, to do the difficult and morally correct thing, at massive personal cost and does not deal with it well. She gets angry and resentful, and becomes the villain for the big conflict, which has massive consequences for Zhang Zhen and Hong Ling, and omg I love this so much. So much so that when the comments on youtube started going "Mu Dan is so evil!" I was tempted to add my comments supporting women's wrongs.

I don't think this use of the Mu Dan character as the antagonist is new (I think there's at least one other adaptation that does it) but I might make the effort to check if she's been used to this particular extent, because it feels so subversive (maybe a strong word, but I can't think of a better one) when compared to the morals of the older tale, with the Carp Spirit using deception to seduce Zhang Zhen. Red Carp Legend even does have Hong Ling shapeshift into Mu Dan, but it backfires because Zhang Zhen sees right through it almost immediately, and only misunderstands because he doesn't have enough information to know Hong Ling isn't human. Plus in this version Justice Bao and Guanyin have similar roles in trying to identify the fake Mu Dan and helping trap the Carp Spirit, but the context is completely different. And I think that's neat.