u know what, the special edition is all well and good but this ending actually fully wrecked me in the way that I needed and didn't even realize

within the narrative, wwx and lwj working their way towards each other outside of conflict and the sense of a debt owed, a chance at finding who they can be to each other without lives at stake, and realizing they *want* to be together without any other goal to accomplish.

outside the narrative: the reality in which a show like this is made, and the book it was adapted from, and the restrictions they have to work within, and still trying to make as emotionally an honest of a work they can.

it's hard to make emotionally honest art as it is, it's harder still to make emotionally honest collaborative art, much less on a scale of a television show, and even harder still do so in the political environment they have to work within.

but they tried anyway.

i just think that's neat.

like, you can feel on every level of the production, from writers, to producers, to directors, to actors, they *know* intrinsically, what the story is about. that clarity of vision is hard for anything, harder still for something you're not allowed to name.

they did it anyway.

sorry!!! day job is often a shade of that similar struggle between what is best for the work vs. what will get approved, and I think I respond super hard to seeing creative collaboration that succeeds despite restrictions, be it budget, political, structural.

and when that art can actually *reach* its intended audience with its intended message intact?

i don't know if i'm feeling jealousy or awe, but it's heady stuff to know it can be *done*, actually.