The Long Ballad ( 长歌行) Fanworks Recs
Sep. 28th, 2023 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ladybusinessRecently I’ve been very obsessed with a Chinese drama called The Long Ballad (长歌行). I started watching it with a group watch but as I got more and more sucked in, I decided to watch ahead and I finished my first watch a few weeks ago.
The show starts just before Li Changge’s family is killed by her uncle in the famous Xuanwu Gate incident. She escapes and goes on a quest for revenge. Along the way she keeps encountering Ashile Sun, a steppe nomad general. The show is very loosely based on early Tang dynasty history, and many of the characters are inspired by read historical figures, though Changge is not.
There are adventures and found family and mentorship, and of course romance. There are many vivid and nuanced characters! There's lots of schemes and tactics which I found very fun. I also really enjoy the character growth of many many characters in the show. There are several characters who are presented very negatively at first, but then as they grow and develop and are shown with more nuance you start to appreciate them more and more. The characters that start out being presented more positively also have lovely character arcs with interesting growth.
I also really enjoy that the main romances are built on characters learning to trust each other. Watching trust slowly build is so good! Bonding over shared values is also important in the romantic relationships and I’m so here for that!
The show is also really nationalist, as the Tang dynasty is currently looked back on as a golden age, and the show engages in historical revisionism to support this idea. The drama is also racist in its portrayal of central Asians. Some of the characters are basically racist caricatures. There's a lot of downplaying the harshness of Tang imperialism while playing up the violent stereotypes about Central Asian nomads.
The Long Ballad reminds me of a lot of the “girl power” SFF I read growing up, featuring girls and young women excelling at typically masculine pursuits like fighting. I've compared bits of it to both Tamora Pierce and Bujold. So it feels very iddy to me! Li Changge is a naive but fierce young woman who is crossdressing and having adventures, which is very much in the spirit of those books.
As I loved the show, when I finished I went looking for fanworks. The fandom seems to be pretty small with only about 30 works on AO3 in English, but I also found some fanart and some vids.
So I present you with a rec list of Long Ballad fanworks. I’ve tried to keep my recs spoiler-free but everything except the artwork contains spoilers for the show.
Li Leyan by little lilikoi— Very cute fan art of Li Leyan and some objects that are important to her story.
anywhere but here by CREATOR (1:42)— A very cute Hao Du/Li Leyan vid! I like how captures the development of their relationship.(Song only no dialogue, some words as visual elements, no subtitles)
hard to love [for mom ♥] by Fooko (3:13)— A vid about the parental figures in the show! While these relationships are not central to the story, they are very important and it was lovely to see this vid focus on them. (song no dialogue, words as a visual element)
我向你飞; fly to you by yiqie (Teen, 22,759 words)—When her husband is captured Leyan refuses to stay home and wait for news. This is a very sweet fic. I love how the characters see each other in new ways here.
Weaved Into Forever (叠成了永远) by Written_notes (gen, 12,469 words)— I really liked this post canon story featuring a romance between two minor characters. It was lovely to get to spend some more time with these people and their chosen family. The characterization is excellent.
The show starts just before Li Changge’s family is killed by her uncle in the famous Xuanwu Gate incident. She escapes and goes on a quest for revenge. Along the way she keeps encountering Ashile Sun, a steppe nomad general. The show is very loosely based on early Tang dynasty history, and many of the characters are inspired by read historical figures, though Changge is not.
There are adventures and found family and mentorship, and of course romance. There are many vivid and nuanced characters! There's lots of schemes and tactics which I found very fun. I also really enjoy the character growth of many many characters in the show. There are several characters who are presented very negatively at first, but then as they grow and develop and are shown with more nuance you start to appreciate them more and more. The characters that start out being presented more positively also have lovely character arcs with interesting growth.
I also really enjoy that the main romances are built on characters learning to trust each other. Watching trust slowly build is so good! Bonding over shared values is also important in the romantic relationships and I’m so here for that!
The show is also really nationalist, as the Tang dynasty is currently looked back on as a golden age, and the show engages in historical revisionism to support this idea. The drama is also racist in its portrayal of central Asians. Some of the characters are basically racist caricatures. There's a lot of downplaying the harshness of Tang imperialism while playing up the violent stereotypes about Central Asian nomads.
The Long Ballad reminds me of a lot of the “girl power” SFF I read growing up, featuring girls and young women excelling at typically masculine pursuits like fighting. I've compared bits of it to both Tamora Pierce and Bujold. So it feels very iddy to me! Li Changge is a naive but fierce young woman who is crossdressing and having adventures, which is very much in the spirit of those books.
As I loved the show, when I finished I went looking for fanworks. The fandom seems to be pretty small with only about 30 works on AO3 in English, but I also found some fanart and some vids.
So I present you with a rec list of Long Ballad fanworks. I’ve tried to keep my recs spoiler-free but everything except the artwork contains spoilers for the show.
Li Leyan by little lilikoi— Very cute fan art of Li Leyan and some objects that are important to her story.
anywhere but here by CREATOR (1:42)— A very cute Hao Du/Li Leyan vid! I like how captures the development of their relationship.(Song only no dialogue, some words as visual elements, no subtitles)
hard to love [for mom ♥] by Fooko (3:13)— A vid about the parental figures in the show! While these relationships are not central to the story, they are very important and it was lovely to see this vid focus on them. (song no dialogue, words as a visual element)
我向你飞; fly to you by yiqie (Teen, 22,759 words)—When her husband is captured Leyan refuses to stay home and wait for news. This is a very sweet fic. I love how the characters see each other in new ways here.
Weaved Into Forever (叠成了永远) by Written_notes (gen, 12,469 words)— I really liked this post canon story featuring a romance between two minor characters. It was lovely to get to spend some more time with these people and their chosen family. The characterization is excellent.
