there is no such thing as being late to the things you love!! it came into your life exactly when you can appreciate it most — i heard this saying once and loved it so much that i live by it today 🥹💖

this is such a kind message and made me very wibbly ;; thank you for thinking of me ;;;; i love reading other people's analyses about things like these too, so please feel free to share lengthy thoughts here too ;v;

i did some backtracking and besides me bawling about the cover, i actually?? have not said much about it??? except the fact that i thought the bed pictures reminded me of the drifting mv?? lmao i think i was so overwhelmed by how gorgeous the pictures were that i didn't even have anything worth sharing at the time

❶ the many seasons of xz
it's so interesting that you brought up that particular part about him saying he finds it hard to plan for the future; i've always thought this was one of xz's biggest paradoxes!! like on one hand, he's always so painstakingly deliberate and seems to plan things ages in advance to work towards them slowly (e.g. his album, the kind of scripts he's been getting, his photography exhibition?). but on the other, we've seen that he can also be unexpectedly spontaneous: deciding to take up xfire on a whim, the Emotional Support Japan Trip, the random night walks he speaks about...

this is just me going off on a thought tangent but i think xz has always been a mix of both, it's just the the planner side was more apparent because of his incredibly disciplined approach to work and how, especially when he was starting out, he seemed to work sometimes to the point of self-detriment...? he didn't seem comfortable even saying that he was comfortable ("i can't say i'm happy, but that i'm fortunate", portrait 2026). and because this was a time where he was taking up more interviews and being more open with press, that was more well-documented and ended up being the impression people kept with them the longest.

but i feel like there was a really palpable shift around ~2022-23 or so? i wasn't in the fandom yet so this is just from observation of media at the time. but it seemed like he started to take care of/prioritise himself more, to not stress about every little thing, and i think that change was both the cause and effect of how he seems to be more comfortable taking things as they come. i also think he's super aware of how fickle his industry can be; people can turn around at the drop of a hat so what's the point of thinking so far in advance... ("some outcomes, some things you want to control but are powerless to change") and! if you don't mind me saying — i'm me, after all!!! — i do think this was as much personal character development as it was yb's approach to life rubbing off on him after so many years together ;;

now he is, in his own words from the portrait interview, comfortably able to say that he is both happy and fortunate ♡

which is why i think the changing seasons concept was so apt!! after all: "all four seasons are fine. a person’s personality and their state of life are fluid."

❷ if xz is all four seasons then is he also all four elements?
... was my immediate thought when i was re-reading the interview.

because at first glance, he is, right? he has no air, but has an airy quality about him, like he's easy to work with, but is someone you can't quite pin down. he always feels so grounded, like earth, like there's not really much that fazes him. he is fire, too, but not in the usual way; he's hot-headed and a bit stubborn but never overtly so, and is more like a simmering flame than a full-on blaze.

but i think more than anything, he feels like water, and the elle interview really, really reinforces that. maybe it's the games i play, but water is always depicted as a conduit element, always with some sort of historical relevance to life and lore? and i thought this was reflected (haha...) in the way xz seems to speak about so many things

idk how to describe it but it always feels like there is a solemness about him, you know? he looks at things and speaks about them with a certain kind of weight: he says the set reminds him of space displacement; talks about how human life, as robust and vivid as it is, is just a speck of time in an infinite universe; observes how cruel the passage of time is. i don't mean to say that he's like sad all the time shdfjshfs but i think he really appreciates slow thinking and deep thinking, and it reminds me of the waters' depth.

he mentions navigating different characters, like the flow of water. he mentions switching between states of mind with props, like high tide and low tide. he's always curious about the what ifs and the what's out theres ("forever wondering about another life"), a little like the vastness of the ocean. he says he's the type to feel deeply, sometimes too much ("they are real, and whether it’s anger, pain, or sweetness, it all touches me deeply"), like how water absorbs or seeps into the things it comes into contact with.

now that i'm typing it out, this is more of a retrospective reflection than actually coming to any conclusions tbvh but the nature theme made my thoughts stray here ;v;

❸ maybe one day in the future...
i actually feel like he's already done what you said about shadowing people in their daily lives!! 👀 i can't remember if it was he himself or one of the production staff who said it, but he shadowed craftsmen to see how they work with their tools leading up to filming for gezhi town

very very honestly, it read to me like one of his signature Media Trained Answers AHSJAJSHA maybe because he did this a few times for sohu's fox interview!!! like he said he'll tell them next time, and then next time came around and he didn't have an answer, and they reminded him and he just cooked up something really humble on the spot haha

BUT!!! i love where your brain went with that!!! i would love to see xz do something like barack obama's working documentary, because i think he's the sort of person who sees the beauty in the mundane, honours the resilience of the everyday, etc. he doesn't do variety shows anymore anyway and this sounds like a departure enough from the genre to potentially be of interest to him...

... but we'll see, won't we :') maybe one day in the future :') when the tide retreats to reveal treasures in the sand :') ♡

(GOSH I'M SO SORRY THIS ENDED UP BEING SO LONG) (AGAIN)