Asian Dramas And Relationship Dynamics (Pt.2)

Once I believed that everything and everyone drawn by me would dissapear from my life. But I am still here. Am I?

Стихотворение написано мной, музыка - iday - moon, анимация - сделанные и оживлённые мной пикселизированные коллажи. English version is available here.

Asian dramas and my favorite types of characters

There are my favorite types of characters as a list. A villain with a fatal weakness

Drama: The Scholar Who Walks the Night /밤을 걷는 선비 Character: Gwi Screentime: Secondary Gwi is an ancient vampire and a master of puppets (and Joseon's king is the main of them). He is merciless, invincible and scheming all the drama long, until he accidentally kills a girl, who was his hostage and recalcitrant puppet from her childhood on and was the only one who could scold him and deny him. Nothing about it is said directly in the drama, but after her death he goes insane, kills all of his puppets and this way causes his own death. So, I suppose, she was his only weakness, and I like this type of a personal drama for a villain.

Drama: Moonlight Mystique /白月梵星 Character: Mo Li Screentime: Minor The shell of Devil lord Mo Li (which has got his own consciousness) falls in love with the demon girl (and has a very complex enemies-to-lovers relationship with her). Later, Devil lord occupies his shell, cornering shell's consciousness into the darkest corner of his mind, and treats his shell's girlfriend with no particular interest (but better than he could). However, he ends up unintentionally killing her off, and it becomes his doom, because her death releases the ancient weapon, the only thing that can kill him, and the main heroes use it to destroy him. So, she was his only weakness, literally.

Punch-Clock Villain / the Dragon

Drama: 100 Days My Prince /백일의 낭군님 Character: Moo-yeon Screentime: Secondary Moo-yeon works as an assassin for the killer of his father, who is constantly threatening him with the life of his sister. Moo-yeon is a man of a very ill fate: his family was accused of a treason and executed, his sister became a fugitive, he was forced to sell his conscience for his and sister's lives and, as a cherry on the top of this cake, fell in love with the daughter of his captor. And died trying to save her... His story is sooooo sad, but it makes me feel for this character fully. Also, he is the king of whump because the half of the drama he is injured and suffers from his wounds. The whole sad story of this guy is analyzed by me here, here and here.

Drama: The King Loves /왕은 사랑한다 Character: Moo-suk Screentime: Minor Koreans, obviously, like this type of characters, too, so there is another Dragon of the main villain, Moo-suk. In his free from dirty deeds time he h̶e̶l̶p̶s̶ ̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶l̶a̶d̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶c̶r̶o̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶a̶d̶ literally saves cute children and restores self-confidence of young ladies. And then he falls in love, rethinks his life and dies from the hand of his master. Predictable and sad. Still a memorable guy, though.

Drama: The Legend of Shen Li /与凤行 Character: Mo Fang Screentime: Minor A son of the main villain has been groomed from his infancy to plot against the main heroes to avenge his father. Later, he falls in love with the main heroine and rethinks things he was taught about. His resistance, however, doesn't help him much - his body ends up being possessed by the evil spirit without even an opportunity to kill himself in order to break free... No HE, as you understand. 50 shades of a Byronic Hero

Drama: The Wolf / 狼殿下 Character: Chu Youwen Screentime: Main A Mowgli boy was adopted by a wicked emperor, brought up like a cruel beast and was forced to do some dirty stuff for the emperor. He is mysterious, severe and you never know what's on his mind. As a true Byronic hero. He is some kind of Dragon, too, but it's a Chinese drama and he is a main hero in it, that's why he doesn't really do anything bad during the series. His soul is kind and his heart is pure, but he hides it from his love and deals with all of his problems on his own. It's the reason why all of this drama is a masochistic tango between him and his love. Whump lovers will be happy, too, because he is constantly in chains, pierced by arrows like a hedgehog or works as a slave in mines. As any other Dragon, he has a BE.

Drama: Lost You Forever /长相思 第一季 Character: Xiang Liu Screentime: Secondary A mysterious demon general, whose name makes everyone shake in fear. A former demon slave, who is true to his word enough to fight for his benefactor even if he knows crystal clearly that it's hopeless and he and his army will die in the end. A man who has huge problems with expression of his emotions in a socially approved way. Edward Cullen of Chinese dramaland. He is enigmatic, with thick vibes of a bad guy, yet very loyal to his benefactor as well as his love and very selfless. Because of this loyalty he will die and the love of his life will never-ever find out about anything he has done for her during the story.

Drama: My Journey to You /云之羽 Character: Gong Shangjue Screentime: Secondary A guy was through trauma in his childhood and it made him look intimidating and unfeeling. A tsundere is born! He coped with his trauma by taking extra responsibilities for everything and everyone and turned to be a walking killing machine instead of a man. But an enemy assassin comes to his life and teaches him how to be a human once more. It's a painful experience, but it`s necessary in order to grow up as a character and is beautifully fulfilled. It was a great joy to know that he survives at the end of the story, it's a rare thing for this type of characters, so even if there is season 2 someday, I will not watch it in order not to spoil my impression of the first one. I wrote about him detailed here, here, here and here.

Drama: Princess Agents / 特工皇妃楚乔传 Character: Yan Xun Screentime: Secondary It's the transformation story, too, like a previous one, but this time it's transformation from an ordinary man to a villain. Prince Yan Xun is a hostage colony prince in a metropolis empire, but he enjoys a noble life along with other nobility youth. The society around him is awful, each of these noble youths is a psycho who appreciate human hunt and so on, but cheerful and easy-going Yan Xun doesn't think their bloodthirstiness could turn against him. When relationship between the metropolis and the colony become tense, though, Yan Xun's friends of yesterday are happy to drink his blood. He loses his whole family and, insanely longing for revenge, slowly turns to one of those monsters himself.

Drama: Fangs of Fortune / 大梦归离 Characters: Li Lun Screentime: Secondary The Great Demon was dumped by his boyfriend because of his aggressive ways of protecting people of his own species and still can't get over their break-up. He goes through all five stages of acceptance of their break-up while being a villain of the story. In the end his obsession brings him to his doom, because he loves his ex-friend too much. He is morally grey yet a versatile and interesting character. I wrote about him here: 1 , 2, 3 and 4.

Drama: A Journey to Love / 一念关山 Character: Li Tongguang Screentime: Minor This guy has got a very realistic personality and background: he is a bastard who was deprived of mother's love since he was a child. The first circumstance made him power-hungry, scheming and outwardly emotionless, the second one made him longing for mother's love on insanely level. So he is invincible outwardly, but turns into a teary mess when it's about his female tutor, who is a mother figure for him. The contrast between these two personalities is enormous and makes this character very alive and interesting. During the drama he will not cope with his Oedipus complex but circumstances will solve this problem for him.

A pure-hearted hero

Drama: Creation of the Gods Ⅰ / 封神三部曲 Character: Ji Fa Screentime: Main It's maybe strange to find this type of characters in the list of my favorite types, but morality and selflessness of a character is very important for me, too. This story is some kind of King Arthur's legend, but in a Chinese way. The emperor is bewitched by a demon and is bringing the kingdom to it's downfall, the Gods are here to find the savior with the help of a magic scroll that can be opened only by a true king. Ji Fa, a hero of this story, doesn't care about scrolls, but his heart is loyal to his kingdom and to his family (in this very order). He genuinely wants to help his friend-prince to be a king his kingdom deserves and, despite awful things that were done to him and his family, doesn`t harden his soul and betray his ideals. And, I suppose, although he isn't aware of this, he IS the future King Arthur of China.

Interesting character decisions

Drama: The Legends/招摇 Characters: Jiang Wu Screentime: Minor This character is something like a rival of the male lead. He is a xinmo - an inner demon of some other character and represents the darkest features of a human's soul. He is a ruthless killer, a dark sorcerer without conscience, but what was very unique, being literary the worst part of a human personality, he values his assistants a lot and genuinely cares for them. A villain is usually a lone wolf. He doesn't trust anyone and doesn't value anyone, his loneliness is usually his weakness and a key to his downfall. So I was pleasantly surprised that sometimes a villain is capable of building healthy relationships with his subordinates.

Drama: Sh**ting Stars / 별똥별 Characters: Do Soo-hyuk Screentime: Minor

This guy truly surprised me. Firstly, he is supposed to be something like a third wheel in relationships of the main couple, but he just calmly got a refusal from the female lead, said "OK" and, absolutely relaxed, proceeded to live his life further. It's something unbelievable for me, because I used to see the insanity caused by an unrequited love to be the plot engine of a lot of dramas. Secondly, he is well-written as a character, straightforward, principled and has tsundere-ish or Byronic vibes - all the character features that I like =) Also you can see: Asian dramas and relationship dynamics (Pt. 1) Asian dramas and relationship dynamics (Pt. 2) Asian dramas and Love tropes Enemies to Rivals/Lovers recipe

New moon, would you open the gates

And take me away, away from this night... 

How to fight your doom (Pt. 5)

Devil's love is in full bloom and he meekly accepts it. I adore this scene very much, it is so heart-warming. Episodes 20-26

The Romeo and Juliet problem is acute, so everyone suffers and is with the long face. Girl, as well as Devil, decides to put the love problem aside and to focus on the higher goal. The problem seems to have no salvation, so they don`t even try to think about it. And here we have our deus ex machina Jieli, who forces them to talk to each other face to face.

While talking, Girl tries to catch on something that could bring the salvation, but only finds out that everything is hopeless. He IS in love with her and also he IS willing to crush Fairy Realm. And also he is proud (Am I not capable of pretending to be just a reach mortal? Ha! Watch me!), but empathic to sufferings of his folk and prefers fair fights to dirty wins. There is nothing in his personality that could count as disgusting character features. The conflict between Girl's love for him and her craving for peace between tribes is tearing her apart. So she rides him on emotional rollercoaster: she doesn't want to say «no» and can't say «yes».

Devil is very solid in his feelings for Girl (as always) and all the hopelessness of the situation makes him quiet and extremely sad. He even allows GoW and Dragon boy touching him! He also is an EXELLENT learner in terms of emotional intelligence stuff: he understands that his magic powers and status can't conquer Girl's heart and accepts that he can do nothing about it. He carefully analyses his previous behavior and finds out that he was rude to Girl and made her cry so it's natural that she doesn't like him and likes God of War instead. His love ability has bloomed fully and it makes him suffer from unrequited love.

Girl finally accepts her feelings for Devil (with the help of side characters) and there is a funny situation: three months ago it was her sweet dream to be God of War`s bride and now she feels only sadness about it.

Unresolved romantic tension of these two is palpable and it is the most beautiful part of this story arch: Devil is jealous (with a reason), sad and angry because of his unrequited (as he thinks) love and Girl is jealous (with no reason) and because of it fails to expose her feelings to him.

There is a Chinese legend that once Chinese Emperor loved his wife so much so he had been helping her to draw her brows, although it was stricktly female's thing to do. That's why drawing female lead's brows by a male lead is a lovely Chinese romantic trope.

«Wife, are you still mad at me?»

There is a nice moment when he enjoys pretending to be her husband (because he would like to be one) and she enjoys him enjoying acting (because she wants to be with him too).

Finally he proclaims his feelings for her for the third time and in the most beautiful way («I feel like I've known you forever. I have seen you in fairies', demons' and mortals' clothes but the most beautiful dress on you is tonight's wedding dress. Although tonight's wedding is a fake, I feel like I am really married [to you]») and lets her go: if she can`t bear to see him killing her friends, he will understand her hatred.

But it ends up them choosing to be together (in absolutely ADORABLE way! I love episodes 25-26 sooooo much) and delaying the salvation of the Romeo and Juliet problem for later. When the time comes, Devil chooses Girl over his duty and kills Chidi, and Girl chooses to be with Devil and to think about coming war later.

At last misalliance problem finds it`s salvation:  it turns out that he is Demon God and she is Fairy Goddess, they are equals in magic powers and status.

I LOVE mortal story arch because it has got the great emotional tension (I suffered from knowledge that Girl should marry GoW and because cinnamon rolls are in love but couldn't voice it) and delivers the HUGE catharsis feeling at the end of it (Hurray! They are finally together!). Unfortunately, the very end of the story doesn't have the same satisfying feeling (I will explain it later).

And then the Silent Moon Palace story arch begins.

Episodes 1-7 Episode 8 Episodes 9-13 Episodes 13-19 Episodes 27-34

Asian dramas and Love tropes

There are my favorite characters and their love stories as a list. Enemies to lovers

Drama: Her Royal Highness/长公主在上 Characters: Gu Xuanqing x Li Yunzhen Screentime: Main A boy is sent to be a servant in the unruly princess`s palace in order to find some dirt about her and to help his master to overthrown her, but something goes wrong... The HE is attached.

Drama: The Legends/招摇 Characters: Li Chenlan x Lu Zhaoyao Screentime: Main A leader of a demonic sect died trying to get a demonic sword. Her soul returns to the world full of wish to get revenge on the current leader of her sect, who, as she thinks, killed her in the past. Found the way to be close to him, she learns that he wasn't the reason of her death and, moreover, desperately in love with her for many-many years. This is an adaptation of the novel "Ostentatious Zhaoyao", which I love more than a drama, but it's a good story in both variants. The HE is attached (although it`s a little bit obscure in the drama).

Drama: Till the End of the Moon/ 长月烬明 Characters: Tantai Jin x Li Susu Screentime: Main A boy who is destined to become a Demon God and to destroy the World tries to fight his doom. In a process, he falls in love with a transmigrator, who was sent 500 years back in the past to prevent his transformation into a Demon God. The irony is,making him falling in love is the only way to kill him for good... It`s an adaptation of the novel "Black Moonlight Holds the BE Script", which I like way-way-way more than the drama, not the least because the drama has BE and the novel has HE. I just watched it as a visually beautiful fanfic to the novel.

Drama: Love Between Fairy and Devil /苍兰诀 Characters: Dongfang Qingcang x Xiao Lanhua Screentime: Main My favorite drama of all times! Trying to save her love, a girl accidently falls into a secret prison for immortal criminals, revives the most fearsome demon of all times and heals his ability to feel. Later, forced to spend his time together with the girl from the enemy camp, the demon finds out that he actually likes her... The HE is attached. I wrote A LOT about them and made recap of the whole drama from the point of their relationship development in these posts: one, two, three, four, five and six.

Drama: My Journey to You /云之羽 Characters: Gong Shangjue x Shangguan Qian Screentime: Secondary In order to destroy the martial artist's clan, a female assassin was sent in there. While she is trying to seduce one of clan's young masters, he tries to expose her lies, but, eventually, falls in love with her. Unrequited. Maybe. This story has an open ending. My analysis of their relationship is here.

Drama: Butterflied lover /风月变 Characters: Ling Changjin x Bao Zhu Screentime: Secondary A wicked nobleman marries a princess because of her miraculous blood: it`s able to bring his zombie sister back to life. The princess allows him to treat her bad because she has been in love with him for a long time and believes he is a good person. Bit by bit he starts believe in it himself and begins to cherish his wife more... The ending is obscure (in a traditional Chinese way).

Drama: Moonlight Mystique /白月梵星 Characters: Fu Ling x Chong Zhao Screentime: Secondary The most wildest version of the trope. The story starts with the confrontation between an absolutely ruthless demon girl general and a righteous boy from immortal clan. Then the girl falls for him, turns him into her side (kind of) and they become a villain power couple! After that they both change their side and enjoy a bit of normal life as good guys! And the last twist: the righteous guy turns to be a Demon God, as ruthless as the demon girl at the beginnings but the girl stays the same righteous. Yes, it all happens in one single cdrama. And of course there is no HE for these guys, but the philosophy behind this particular type of BE is beautiful. The full recap of their relationship is here and here.

Drama: The Blue Whisper /与君初相识 Characters: Li Shu x Xue Sanyue Screentime: Minor A cat demon prince infiltrates the valley of demon hunters in order to set free the great demoness, but falls in love with one of demon hunters. Mutually. The ending is traditionally Chinese - they met again in another life. Т_Т

Drama: Immortal Samsara / 沉香如屑 Characters: Xuan Ye x Ran Qing Screentime: Minor An Asura king infiltrates the Heavenly Realm in order to steal the artifact that can help him conquering the world. The keeper of this artefact is a brave and honest goddess and he can't help but fall in love with her. After, he needs to choose: to be with his lover or to rule the world. He wants all at once, but there is no way to get it all. No HE for this pair. Pride and Prejudice

Drama: Lighter and Princess / 点燃我 Characters: Li Xun x Zhu Yun Screentime: Main A girl from a rich family with an anxious type of attachment falls in love with her classmate from a poor family with an avoidant type of attachment and tries to win his heart. It`s a problematic ship in a full meaning of these words and I like it this way. Yummy! The HE is attached.

Drama: Derailment /脱轨 Characters: Qi Lian x Jiang Xiaoyuan Screentime: Main A boy accidently meets his school sweetheart after many years of radio silence and understands that something is wrong with her. It turns out that her body is occupied by a transmigrator from a parallel world. At first he hates transmigrator for replacing his lover, but bit by bit he learns, that a transmigrator has not only the same appearance but the same habits and way of thinking, and falls in love with this new personality again... The story ends with HE but not in a way that you may think it would.

Drama: The Love by Hypnotic /明月照我心 Characters: Li Qian x Li Mingyue Screentime: Main In order to build relationship between two countries an emperor arranges marriage for his son. His fiancée is from a barbaric tribe: she is good at horse riding and archery, but knows nothing about palace etiquette and ladies stuff. It`s a light and sweet story about finding a path to each other's heart. The HE is attached.

Drama: The Long Ballad /长歌行 Characters: Hao Du x Li Leyan Screentime: Secondary A tsundere of a low background with a poker face does his ruthless job in a court, that's why a young princess thinks he is an awful man and is scared of him. But in reality he is a loyal servant and son and, moreover, secretly in love with the princess, who can't stand him... The HE is attached.

Drama: Miss the Dragon /遇龙 Characters: Xue Qianxun x Qingqing Screentime: Secondary A very naïve bird demon girl accidently meets a tsundere god of netherworld and turns his well ordered life into havoc. He starts liking it, though. The HE is attached. Forbidden love

Drama: A Frozen Flower /쌍화점 Characters: Hong Rim x No Guk Screentime: Main A gay king needs a heir, so he forces his lover to conceive a child with a queen. In a process, a boy, who was groomed as a king's lover from his childhood, finds out that he likes women much more than men. A traditional Korean tragedy. Very beautiful and full of feelings, though. (No GIFs because they all would be erotic ones).

Drama: 100 Days My Prince /백일의 낭군님 Characters: Moo-yeon x Kim So-hye Screentime: Secondary An assassin who is working for a wicked court official is secretly in love with a wife of a crown prince, who happens to be a daughter of the killer of his parents. Forbidden love doubles! But it's mutual, unfortunately for him. It's a very beautiful and full of desperation and feelings story. No HE, we die like Koreans. More detailed story of their relationship is available here, here and here.

Drama: The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity/晴雅集 Characters: He Shouye x Zhang Ping Screentime: Secondary A woman, who is destined to restrain the undying evil within her body for eternity in solitude, falls in love with Yin-Yang master. Her love is mutual, but her lover can't be with her forever, so he leaves with her his guardian demon to brighten her loneliness. Protecting her for ever starts being the only goal of demon's life... A tragedy, but a beautiful one.

Drama: The Legends/招摇 Characters: Gu Hanguang x Shen Qianjin Screentime: Minor "The Legends" once more! The main doctor of a demonic sect is in love with a leader of a righteous sect. A girl is not allowed to love anyone, otherwise she will suffer from the poison, so he anonymously sends her packages of medicinal herbs. She is curious about anonymous sender, too. But nothing can be kept in secret forever... Unfortunately, no HE for these two. In the novel he is safe and sound, but he has no love plotline at all. So is a price of love Т_Т.

I will talk about my other favorite characters and tropes in the next post.

Also you can see: Enemies to Rivals/Lovers recipe Asian dramas and relationship dynamics (Pt. 1) Asian dramas and relationship dynamics (Pt. 2) Asian dramas and my favorite types of characters

I just watched ep. 13 and I have a bad feeling that Gong Yuanzhi is dead for real and Gong Shangjue just went insane out of grief.

Firstly, everyone kneeled when GYZ trailed off his speech and dropped a herb. As servants did in other dramas when Emperor died.

Secondly, there were some mourning lanterns in the air and Gong Shangjue watched them in his clothes from the date with an assassin (so it belongs not to the flashback).

Thirdly, YWS saw the light on the tower was lighten up. The previous time it was lighten up when the previous leader of Yu-lineage died. Gong Yuanzhi is the leader of Zhi-lineage. God, I hope I think too much and went to the wrong conclusions, and director didn`t treat my favorite characters of this drama like that...

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

The video is a fic trailer to a canon complained AO3-story about requited unrequited hyunlix love. Beware: the fic is E-rated, the video is M-rated for some еrотiс elements.