How To Fight Your Doom (Pt. 4)

Thoughts on TtEotM

Well... I didn't like it. LYX was marvelous, CGI, too, plot elements were pretty good changed to tie the story up (and the part with Ming Ye was better tied to the main plot than in the book), but still... I didn't like it. In the book it was the story about man without abilities to feel something, his "love" in the first part of the story was wicked and twisted, so the contrast with the second part was huge and palpable. TTJ was a monster and became a man, he turned from egoist who only wanted to survive no matter what to person who was ready to give away the most precious thing for him (his life) to make his beloved happy (it happened that saving the world was the thing that could make his beloved happy, so he sacrificed himself to do it). And his heroic deed was rewarded with resurrection and a normal life with his family and new-found home. The story in the drama has nothing to do with that. There is a poor boy (no monster at all!!!) who constantly suffers and wants to die, falls in love with the first person who treated him well and sacrifices himself for the world that was so unkind to him. It`s awful! I know that Chinese people love the idea that you should die for the greater good, but this philosophy is as far from my heart as Jupiter from the Earth. Maybe DFQC will remain the only one drama "villain" who's got the happy end. And that drama will stay my favorite.

Why are you always taking their side? Why can't I?

FANGS OF FORTUNE 大梦归离 — 2024, dir. Edward Guo, Luo Luo, Wei Nan

to defeat monsters: become the greater monster | m.a.w

I agree with much of your critique on LBFAD. DFQC wasn't evil, he was tortured into being a weapon so I don't really get why he needed to suffer so much for redemption. I would have loved to see him use his newfound powers in the finale to demonstrate that he still remained the most powerful in three realms. Power of love so to speak.

I was annoyed by all the pointless suffering too. But perhaps DFQC needed to suffer and sacrifice to become worthy of glazefire? Like how he had to suffer to get hellfire in the first place? That's the only way I can stomach all the DFQC whump post ep 26. It serves no narrative purpose otherwise.

When I first watched the drama I was unhappy with the ending. I loved the early episodes and preferred badass, rational, logical DFQC over the version we got at the end. But then I realised that he wasn't invincible. That hellfire didn't really save him from imprisonment. Only Orchid could have saved and healed him so in a way his life was a gift given by her. That helped me to make peace with the ending.

Thank you for your comment, Nonnie! I think that you get the point of the meaning of the pointless sufferings as the way to get the power of a Hero. A Hero is not an usual person, so to get some unique abilities he needs to pay the highest price (that only hero can pay and is not availible for commoners). At the same time there is a certain pattern in european and american culture (in chinese it is not but LBDAF feels pretty western and is much suitable for american and european viewers) that a hero should be spotless and shining, and for those who missbehaved in the past (even if they admited their mistake and turned to the light side) there is no forgivness. Only atonement and death (or, in the very few situations, atonement only, but then a person should suffer A LOT and be at the brink of death (or die and ressurect later). For me Qingcang is fluffy and didn't deserve sufferings but in terms of heroism he was a bad guy at the beginning and should pay for that. It's an interesting conclusion about "his mighty power could not save him from dying 30 000 years ago". I didn't think about it in these terms but I also admired the beginning of the story which starts with saving a villain. Good attitudes go round and cause world saving, what a nice thought for a series!

Two days till I will devour a bucket of broken glass.

I strongly dislike the trope when someone who is in love with one person is forced by fate or circumstances to be with another. Hate it so much. And I have to watch it for 12 series in a row.

I'm afraid that those romance pieces that we could see in OST trailer but havent seen in drama yet are from dreams of DFQC and never happen in reality. And I`m also afraid that one of them will die, because problem of Romeo and Juliette can hardly be solved in another way.

I know that novel has HE but the drama plot has plenty of differences by now and Chinese people like to film BEs. Besides, DFQC killed his father, it`s an unredeemable crime in Oriental cultures.

Please talk to me, I want to share my love and fear with someone.

*It`s me sitting under my tree of love for this drama and trying to brace myself*

It is time for my friend Nastya to suffer from my drawing skills =) 

Li Lun, a villain I feel for (Pt. 2/4)

So, by the beginning of the drama LL says that he wants to kill all of ZYZ’s new friends. In fact, he just likes talking. He says: “Let’s kill ZYZ’s friends starting with Baize Goddess, like the previous time” so the viewer thinks he killed previous goddess off, but later we learn that he didn't do it. Even if he has a perfect opportunity to kill someone of ZYZ’s new friends without ruining his own schemings, he does pretty nothing to achieve it. He just stands and talks. Because he doesn’t really want to kill anyone, including ZYZ. He wants to attract ZYZ’s attention and to make ZYZ stop ghosting him.

Li Lun speaks to Big Bad in Mask while possessing a courtesan. Meanwhile, he lends Truth Eye to Ao Ying so she could see his true self.

LL joins hands with Big Bad in Mask, not knowing he was the one who tortured demons in that bloody dungeon (yeah, LL is not the smartest guy of the Universe). By doing it he tries to achieve his own goals. First, he wants to break free from his custody, and second, he wants to get attention from ZYZ, who ignores him.

In order to break his chains LL works as matchmaker for ZYZ and his girlfriend, so they could fall in love with each other and find and unite pieces of Baize token, because only if the token is intact, it can be broken and its spells can be dissipated. He is not a saint, so he kills some folks (by possessing them or just because) and tricks other demons into helping him, although he is said to value his own kind more than anything. It means he goes through break-up with ZYZ so badly, that even his principles fade into the background for his anger and pain. Or it’s just another script flaw.

Li Lun behaves himself very much as a ghosted ex-boyfriend (in fact, he is), and I understand him well. He goes through stages of acceptance: throws himself from denial (ZYZ is no better than me, why don't you treat him the way he treated me?) through anger (ZYZ, I’ll kill your friends and make you suffer!) to bargaining (Why does he find you better than me? What if you would be like me, would he still love you?).

To talk about his feelings with someone, he uses the only way to leave his dark lifeless place of imprisonment, which is possessing others. At first, this ability and an omnipotence of it looks intimidating, but later we learn that he cuts his lifespan by a half each time he does it, so his need to talk to someone is very desperate. (Later, LL says that it was his way to enjoy the world and freedom but GJM never showed us such a use of this LL's ability). ZYZ knows that destroying LL’s leaves (through which he possesses bodies) will hurt Li Lun, yet he does it anyway, and LL kinda... enjoys it bitterly. As if the fact of him being not ignored by ZYZ is more important that his wellbeing. It's miserable and pathetic, but understandable.

And anytime LL tries to get some answers for his questions, ZYZ and his friends say something like “You don’t understand a thing, I won’t bother to explain, though.” or “We have friends and ZYZ is our boyfriend, and you are a lonely loser!”. How it supposes to help LL understand his wrongs? I have no idea.

Ghosting your ex is the sure way to make him a villain.

LL breaks free from his jail and destroys a “support beam” of the “wall” around demon ghetto. An accent on “I’m destroying the wall” is strange, because I can’t understand the gain demons will have when they aren't in their ghetto anymore (and it obviously should be). Would Great Demons even the scores of victims if not only humans would catch and torture demons but demons would also catch and torture humans, or what? However, it sounds pretty fair, as long as said Baize Goddess’ and ZYZ’s protection of demons consist in only preventing them from going outside their ghetto without passport, LOL.

Although LL is free from the seal, he is still dying from the fatal wound causing by ZYZ 8 years ago. His true body is smoldering slowly, so he has got not so much time left.

For plot purposes, the main heroes need to visit LL’s birthplace to get the last cup of magic water to fix Baize token and to restore a “support beam” of ghetto’s wall. What would a normal villain do, knowing about it? Yes, he would spill it. What does LL do? He, in fact, hands it over to the main heroes. Yes, stained, but LL was a student of Mountain God, too, so he could know that there is a way to restore the pureness of magic water, and the best way to destroy the token for good is to spill this water.

During their visit LL kidnaps ZYZ’s girlfriend (it is funny that the main heroes don’t notice it for something like first five minutes 😅) and has a phycologist session with her (in which she is a psychologist). They have a superstrange conversation, something like: LL: “ZYZ supposed to be my friend but ghosted me for no obvious for me reason and I’m hurt!”. WX: “Oh, it’s because you are a loser with no friends, ZYZ did everything right!”.

Then ZYZ and his current boyfriend come and LL tries once more to tell ZYZ that he is hurt, but ZYZ has absolutely no desire to talk to him or to explain to him something and acts like they were never boyfriends and LL is his archenemy.

So, they fight and ZYZ hurts LL with Everburning Wood once more, now deliberately. LL dies, and although ZYZ has red eyes at this moment he never thinks of LL again. So, LL is right: ZYZ is a hypocrite with double standards. It is such a contrast with the stories of the main heroes and ancient dragon gods, in which killing your friend for Higher Goals is a tragedy.

But there is a plot twist ahead!

Here is Part 1 Here is Part 3 Here is Part 4

"That porridge was not poisonous."

My journey to you 云之羽 // Episode 13

Li Lun, a villain I feel for (Pt. 3/4)

While no one remembers of Li Lun anymore, he is still here. His body is destroyed but he can possess other people, so he secretly possesses a little traitor from the main heroes’ camp. Little Traitor is ½ wood, so his body suits LL well (LL is a sophora, after all).

He dramatically reveals himself as Li Lun to the main heroes and says that he can destroy Little Traitor’s soul wholly and make this body his forever, but he doesn’t do it. If we think of it not as of another script flaw, he needs this body not to live happily ever after in his new healthy shell far far away from any dull exes, but to talk to ZYZ!

Poor Ao Ying, I like her, too! She is LL's mirror: death is the price of loyalty and not having your own private life.

He is hurt and angry, so he vents his anger on ZYZ’s new boyfriend (His behavior here is realistic!). The fight looks very raw and feral, and you can see LL’s feelings seeping through it.

He doesn’t really need to keep ZYZ’s boyfriend alive. You may say that ZYZ’s boyfriend is the only one who can kill ZYZ with his magical sword, and LL wants ZYZ dead, but he obviously doesn’t: he breaks the magical sword of ZYZ’s boyfriend by himself and doesn’t want it to be restored, in order to not to be expelled from Little Traitor’s body. What is the best way to leave that sword not restored ever again? Yeah, right, to kill its owner! LL has an opportunity, a lot of them, during this fight, but he wants to humiliate ZYZ’s boyfriend, not to kill him.

It’s very important for LL that other people can see his true self, so he lends Truth Eye to almost everyone except for ZYZ. Because ZYZ promised LL to see his heart with his own heart.

But the triumph of LL’s pettiness is short: the main heroes gather together to tell LL that he is stupid because he helped the killer of those dungeon demons with his own hands.

LL goes to dungeons to kill Big Bad in Mask, but the guy says that LL’s current body is poisoned and he will die if Big Bad in Mask dies. How Little Traitor’s body’s death relates to Big Bad in Mask’s death I don’t understand even now. But LL leaves his attempts to kill Big Bad in Mask, which is strange, and focuses fully on attempts to leave Little Traitor’s body for himself, although it’s dying from poison and of no much use anymore. OK, the main heroes don’t give a flying heck about Big Bad in Mask, his zombies and demon tortures, but LL? (But at least he tried to kill him, unlike ZYZ, who wholeheartedly didn’t give a damn).

Why wouldn’t he possess any other healthy body that could contain his fierce spirit? Maybe possessing this very boy is his twisted attempt to be a part of ZYZ’s life as far as he doesn’t understand what’s the difference between him and new ZYZ’s friends and why can’t he be a part of ZYZ’s life anymore. It’s pathetic, yet still understandable.

He tries to put the crimp into the main heroes’ attempts to restore the sword because he doesn’t want to lose Little Traitor’s body and die, but, at the same time, he actually helps ZYZ’s boyfriend to stay alive without the sword (there was so many variants whose inner core could be given to ZYZ's boyfriend for that...).

And then this dialog happens:

I was in such a GREAT PAIN. The worse of their conversations ever. ZYZ tells the person who was his boyfriend and was killed by him twice that he will kill him for the third time to save people he knows a couple of millenias less than him. And when LL brings on for the last time the topic of what’s the difference between him and them, ZYZ says that he is the only reason of everything what happened to him. It’s such a hypocrisy! Yes, LL should leave the body that isn’t his, it’s right thing to do, but ZYZ knows the way how to keep him alive if he does it! Yet he doesn’t say a word about it. Moreover, he is the main reason why LL doesn’t have his own body anymore. Yet he prefers to say something like “only your voluntary death can atone your sins, anyone’s life is more precious that yours”, which hurts af considering their previous relationship and the way ZYZ cut LL out of his life.

Meanwhile, the current ZYZ’s boyfriend, who used to be a demon hunter and killed demons, turns himself into one.

His ancestor was an ancient water dragon demon, so when his demon blood takes over him, he goes to sleep onto the bottom of the pool in his residence.

Now, as ZYZ's boyfriend became a demon, people who praised him when he was a demon hunter start hating him for his new race. LL comes to him after him being humiliated by humans he used to protect and asks him his question for the last time.

And this conversation is strange af. LL asks if ZYZ’s boyfriend feels anger because he was unfairly accused of crimes and beaten just because he is of other species now (read as: does he feel like LL felt when that dungeon situation happened), and ZYZ’s boyfriend answers that he chooses not to hold a grudge against humans, and his superior attitude will destroy such an evil and hopeless thing as LL is. And throws humiliated LL into the puddle of mud.

It supposes to be a turning point after which LL understands all his wrongs and moves towards his redemption-through-death arch, but in fact it doesn’t work! When I saw it for the first time, I had a gut feeling that something is wrong here, somethings doesn’t work for me. Then I rewatched it to write this post and finally found out what is exactly wrong.

Originally, I thought that it doesn’t work because GJM takes two topics for redemption development and fails to work with them as far as they are intertwined and interfere with each other, but now I see that there is no redemption development topics at all! Let me explain.

Redemption should be driven not by external circumstances, but by inner processes inside a character with the help of external circumstances. For example, if the main problem of LL’s character were his prejudice against humans, his redemption arch could start like this: LL meets a human who is honest and treats demons nice, maybe does something selfless for LL (does all this stuff that LL thought impossible for humans); LL sees it, proceeds it inside himself and changes his mind. Or, if the main problem of LL were his obsession with ZYZ… Oh, it’s harder than the previous one. LL could release his obsession with ZYZ if ZYZ had an understandable reason why he ghosted LL (he, obviously, hasn’t) and they would talk about this reason in a proper way. Or if there were a reason why he is so obsessed with ZYZ, and some another person would show him that it’s possible to cover his needs without ZYZ (but it’s not a topic of a villain character development in a xianxia drama at all, as far as it’s used for the most part in modern romantic stories).

But here LL looks like an abuser’s wife: he literally asks new ZYZ’s boyfriend why ZYZ dumped him, and ZYZ’s boyfriend answers that LL was a bad wife and didn’t behave as ZYZ pleased. Does LL understand what exactly was wrong with his attitude towards humans? No, not at all. The only thing he understands now is that he needs to behave as ZYZ pleases if he wants his boyfriend back. He didn’t change his believes after this conversation. He didn’t overcome his obsession neither (otherwise, why would this absolutely stupid conversation work on him?). Because you can’t bring someone towards redemption by constantly humiliating him and gaslighting him into believing that he is all alone. He isn’t! He has got all the demons of Great Wilderness, he has got Ao Ying, he has got plenty of demons who share his believes. It’s just that he unhealthy obsessed with a guy who doesn’t care about him and can’t see any other good things around him.

Throughout all this scene I expected there to be some gesture of empathy from ZYZ’s boyfriend (because see the first redemption scheme I described), but it never happened. Li Lun also waits for something like that, as we can see in this scene with Ao Ying and an umbrella. The main heroes constantly talk about importance of patience and kindness towards those who don’t deserve it but never show it to LL with their own example.

LL is upset that this gesture of kindness (an umbrella) isn't from any of ZYZ’s squad, and here I feel sad for Ao Ying, too, because she is obsessed with serving LL the same way LL is obsessed with ZYZ, and an obsessed person has no value in the eyes of the object of their obsession. Just like in real life. Sad but true.

The only thing that changes in LL’s character during the story is his stage of acceptance.

Here is Part 1 Here is Part 2 Here is Part 4

Swooning over a secondary character (again), Pt. 3/3

Dandelions as a symbol of a longing for salvation (and of their love as well, which is SYMBOLIC).

He is about to run away with his sister (who is happened to be lovesick and heart-broken, too) but then he learns it was his lover who ordered assassin to shot him and decides to talk to her one more time before leaving. He is foolishly brave, as usually. Maybe he is very understanding, too, and this wicked attempt to make him stay said to him how desperate the princess needed him, or something, idk, it's never been said in the story.

They meet in private again and she says she wants to run away, too. He is reluctant and it makes her upset.

But finally feelings take over rationality and he promises to take her away with him. But this secret tryst was watched by Kim Cha-eon's spies, so now he is sure his daughter is pregnant with Moo-yeon's child. And also he knows Moo-yeon lied to him about killing of the Crown Prince. This all doesn't bode well for Moo-yeon.

Kim Cha-eon takes Moo-yeon hostage and threats his daughter to kill him off if she doesn`t obediently play her role of a Crown Princess, pregnant with Crown Prince's child. He is also not happy with her humble choice of a baby's father.

Meanwhile, during the investigation of his own murder attempt, the amnesiac Crown Prince makes a big mess in Kim Cha-eon's mansion and finds something very interesting in vice-prime minister's barn...

So here we have a sweet family reunion. A wanna-be-murderer of the Crown Prince turns out to be a big brother of a woman he loves.

After blaming Moo-yeon for leading such a miserable and disgraceful life and serving for a murderer of their father (even if it all was for her sake), Yoon Yi-seo tells him to hand himself over to the Crown Prince and to confess his crimes (which is a death sentence for him for sure) and Moo-yeon does it.

Moo-yeon tells the Crown Prince that Kim Cha-eon tried to kill him because Kim So-hye is pregnant with Moo-yeon's baby and the Crown Prince says no his beloved's brother nor his unfaithful wife will be forgiven.

"Escort the Crown Princess out of palace. She went out in the deaf of night to meet her paramour and was killed there. "

The Crown Prince didn't forgive them but let them run away together just as they wished to. I don't care there are 1,5 more eps, this drama ended up for me here, they ran away and lived maybe not super-happily, but free together and raised their child in love. The end.

"Once it heavily rained for a long time. The whole soil was drowned and even dandelions were about to die. A small dandelion prayed to the skies. It pleaded for salvation. Then suddenly the wind blew. The dandelion's seeds took flight and landed on a sunny hill. Shortly after they sprouted and bloomed. If we ride the wind, we will be able to bloom somewhere else, too."

Here is Part 1 Here is Part 2