Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

Media: Live Action TV

Approx length: 40 episodes, 45 minutes each ~30 total hours

Where to find it: Viki, YouTube, AppleTV, WeTV


What is it, in summary?

Side Story of the Fox Volant (2022) is a 40 episode wuxia tv series adapted from one of Jin Yong’s lesser known novels — The Young Flying Fox/Young Fox — and follows the story of Hu Fei as he struggles to piece together the mystery of his parents’ murder. This is a Qing Dynasty novel set during the later Qianlong Era (1700s) so it also has GUNS and POLITICAL CORRUPTION and some of the coolest characters known to man.


What do you love about it?

God I love everyone in this bar and I adore the world they live in with all its grief, violence, societal upheaval, and political corruption. This is a really modern looking wuxia with very classical genre roots, which is very very atypical and the fight scene choreography here are amazing. There's a LOT of use of environment and physical force. Injuries actually look like they hurt here! They really gave this their budget all, so if you come from MDZS/CQL or xianxia where fight scenes are mostly a light show, let it be known that these fights are cool but they’re definitely martial arts focused. (I also probably have an essay in me somewhere about how Jin Yong writes about power and heroism and his commentary on social systems bc that's something he does really deftly but it's a bit difficult to do without writing tons of spoilers!)

I also adore the characters. Yes all of them. Even trash son. Also the characters are really cool. Did I mention the fashion sense aesthetics are stunning and the production quality is wonderful?

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?

In all honesty, I'm just here for more of all the characters in whatever form people want to write about them! I'd really like more people to see this show!

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests, or that showcase particular characters and relationships?

No I really think this is a show that's best experienced in its entirety. Later parts will not make sense without having seen the earlier episodes.

Content notes: torture, rape, a child being disemboweled by their own parent(not shown on screen), and references to child prostitution, general wuxia brand violence, murder, poisoning, adultery, violence towards children, amputation, other things I'm probably forgetting.