SM: You Got Me Out Of The Jail. Thanks! DZ: What Have You Just Said? I Didn't Get It. SM: THANK YOU!

I should say that I absolutely in love with the voice of the actor, who has dubbed Wang Hedi in this drama. Wang Hedi speaks Mandarin with a Sichuan accent, that's why he hasn't got "proper" for Chinese state TV pronounciation and should be dubbed by some actor who has. At the same time, Wang Hedi's voice pitched higher than dubbed actor's one and would be not so harmonious with the image of fearsome lord (it suits better to Xiao Lanhua in Devil's body). So I like the dubbing a lot!

Fangs of Fortune and Li Lun

GJM is really great in terms of visuals: young and beautiful actors and actresses, their acting, decorations, frame building, coloring, costumes – I’ve never seen such a beautiful thing in whole my drama-viewing career! But GJM is like Chinese J.J. Abrams: everything in his work should impress viewer with visuals and plot twists, even if it harms the plot and the link between viewers and characters, and I can’t say that it’s something good (although FoF was VERY good looking). If I need to explain to someone what to expect from FoF in one GIF, it would be this one 😅:

"WTF is going on?" you may ask. "I don't know either" I will answer.

And these are closing credits. They were different almost each next ep, strange, but somewhat comforting. At least actors had fun filming it. Yan An is so nice here. I need to feel related to the characters and to understand the rules of the fictional world to dive fully into the story, but I gave up on my pathetic attempts to understand how this world works very quickly, because the whole story was the one huge Deus Ex Machina. I swear, I have never seen such a series in my life, in which you can meet deus ex machina not just a couple of times per story, but the couple of times per EPISODE. EACH EPISODE. The logic of main heroes’ actions also remained a mystery for me (maybe their mindset was too divine for me, I’m an earthly person after all), so I couldn’t feel related to any of the mains, and their problems were absolutely uninteresting for me.

But suddenly I felt related to Li Lun. He was the only one in this story who didn’t have a plot twist up his sleeve, and his actions were pretty understandable (unlike ones of the mains).

BTS. Yan An and Hou Minghao are having fun. There are two ways to tell the story: either you create characters and let them tell the story by themselves, or you create a story and bend your characters to fit it in. Unfortunately, FoF is the second variant: I understood what type of a story GJM wanted to tell through Li Lun’s character, but he chose two tropes (getting over an obsession and prejudice overcoming) and didn’t work out any of them in a valid way. However, I’m a professional in loving characters whose stories weren’t constructed in a satisfying way and am fond of LL anyway (I cut something like 80 GIFs, so I will post 3-part-recap with my thoughts on LL soon).

BTS. Yan An with Hou Minghao, Tian Jiarui and Lin Ziye. Btw, I ‘ve never heard of Yan An before this drama, but he acted so good in FoF, I would like to see more of his actor works.

Yan An is shivering from cold. How this man was supposed to play a villain? Look at him, he is a cinnamon roll! However, he did it well 💙

Derailment thoughts

The first 2/3 of Derailment were marvelous. I truly enjoyed the part when Qi Lian couldn`t understand why Jiang Xiaoyuan treated him like a stranger and attempted to be just friends with her:

And the next coil of a spiral, when he learned she was a transmigrator who possessed the body of his teenage sweetheart. It`s a very interesting question: who are we if we are stripped of our memories? Are we still the same person or another one? What if your lover is gone and replaced by other personality, but this other personality has the same appearance, temper, habits and gestures? Could you fall in love with this new personality again as you previously did? This topic started to unfold when Qi Lian came the whole path back from being scary and mean to her to mutual pining, but never was unfolded till the final point, because screenwriters went to other topics (and came to nothing at the end).

The last point I liked here was a drama inside a drama about their relationships at school. There is my second favorite trope "us vs the world" so I naturally enjoyed it and would like to watch the whole drama about it (but obligatorily with Lin Yi as a main):

Do you think I don't know what's on your mind?

The end of drama was ill-conceived though, so I can`t say that I like it as a whole thing.

“New moon, lay your mercy on me tonight...” (с) Swallow the Sun I wanted to draw this a long time. The font is designed by Taras Makar. 

FANGS OF FORTUNE (2024)

– What's this? It looks pretty. – This is not a hairpin.

Swooning over a secondary character (again), Pt. 1/3

This is Moo-yeon, the best assassin of the wicked vice-prime minister Kim Cha-eon, the most powerful man in Joseon. He is VERY good at archery.

And not really good at anything else.

His servitude for Kim Cha-eon has a very heartbreaking background, though. Originally he was of a noble bloodline and was named Yoon Seok-ha. He and his younger sister Yoon Yi-seo were children of an official. But once there was a take-over and their father was accused of treason felony. The official and the whole his family were sentenced to be executed. The children managed to escape, but they were being cruelly hunted down as animals.

In the end Seok-ha hid his sister and led the chase away from her. Tired, scared and desperate, he sneaked into the residence of the murderer of his father, Kim Cha-eon, and tried to threaten him, promising he would kill off Kim Cha-eon's daughter, Kim So-hye, if that evil guy would continue to hunt down Seok-ha's sister.

Spoiler: there was a love from the first blade pressed to one's throat. Mmmmm, delicious. And no, I`m not about Seok-ha and a vise-prime minister 😄 Naturally, Seok-ha failed because Kim Cha-eon had no heart and his daughter was not really of value for him, so there's nothing left to do for Seok-ha but to beg for death for himself and for mercy for his sister. But Kim Cha-eon had other plans for this stupidly brave boy. He made a deal with the boy and forced him to do everything Kim Cha-eon wanted him to do in trade for sister‘s life and freedom.

So here he is, professionally doing disgusting and honourless stuff for the murderer of his father. Here is Part 2 Here is Part 3

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

Meet Sima, a biblical Seraph. I proud of this handmade angel because everything from concept art and chose of materials to building was made by myself and the result is perfectly nice.

Fu Ling and Chong Zhao: all in one. Part 1 of 2

The relationship of these two is fated, but a viewer understands it only when the drama is over: Chong Zhao was destined to meet Fu Ling, in one way or another, because she was his doom. There is an infinite amount of versions how this story could go if they met as enemies, but it goes another way: a righteous immortal Chong Zhao meets a vicious demoness Fu Ling in the moment she is severely wounded, and, not knowing she is his enemy, out of compassion, saves her (which is ironic).

Bridal carry [1], as an immortal. Being him an immortal, a demon or a deity, he carries her bridal-like, which is a beautiful parallel, joining all the versions of his identity together. Being treated nice for the first time in her demon career and feeling something familiar in Chong Zhao (of course there is something, but it's not what you think, darling 😭), she falls for him, in a very demonic, obsessive way.

She teases him as they meet on the battlefield, but saves him from attacks of her cruel and merciless master. Eventually, her master notices it and orders her to turn her love interest into a demon within a month, or he will be killed, because demon servants need to have only one attachment - their master (😏).

"Hello there! Still don't want to become a demon, huh?" In order to save him from death, she enthusiastically tries to seduce him into becoming a demon (and causally saves him a couple of times more). As a demoness herself, she thinks being alive is more important than staying righteous. Chong Zhao has another opinion on it (and stabs himself in order to destroy a demonic protective token she cast on him to save him once again), which gets a demoness frustrated.

"As far as I'm in hell, I want you to keep me company here".

And maybe Chong Zhao would prefer to die rather than to become a demon, but his treacherous shifu tells him to stay undercover in the demonic den, so Chong Zhao tries to pretend he agrees to stay in hell. But just saying "I agree" is not enough, so the demoness forces him to kill his fellow immortals, promising the others could be free if he kills one, but, of course, she has lied and later kills everyone else of the prisoners.

So she breaks him, and he becomes a demon himself (It's super cruel on her part, but demon's love is ugly and twisted, alas).

She cares for him, so treats him with (twisted) love, but he is not happy about it at first.

It's the most erotic scene in this drama (because goners can afford it). Yet the demoness still looks like someone who is ready to be bedded by a person she is in love with even if he doesn't care about her at all. It obviously pains her. But it is not what you think it is, she just sucks him (the poison) off (of his shoulder) (😏).

And he rejects he after sex. She takes responsibility for his failed mission and endures the punishment that should have been his, so it awakens a good guy (or Stockholm syndrome) inside of the broken demon-like former immortal, so he takes care of her in return.

Bridal carry [2], as a demon. And from now on they start mutually caring for each other.

The deity's huadian on his forehead is to no good... He says, he has taken this blow for her because he doesn't want to owe her, but it looks like there is something else underneath his wish to be even. And this time he deliberately allows her to treat his wounds, it's not as erotic as before, but more intimate.

"I didn't want to owe you". So, it could have been an interesting dynamics: Chong Zhao starts feeling something towards his capturer, who broke his will, forced him to lose his innocence (not in that way, alas), but genuinely cares about him. But the screen writer put the cheat-code out of their sleeve: the demoness Fu Ling turns out to be Chong Zhao's childhood friend Bai Xi, whose memories were erased by the evil demon master of hers, who abducted her 10 years ago. It makes Chong Zhao think that she is a victim of circumstances, just like him, and isn't guilty of any evil deeds she committed the previous 10 years (and she did a lot, her name is widely known in Jianghu, people recognize her as vicious demon general Fu Ling just by throwing a look on her spiritual weapon). OK, it could be his logics because of who he is (the devil god's shell), but the screen writers think it's OK, too, so... But let's return to our couple. Now, as Fu Ling regains her memories and remembers that she was in love with Chong Zhao even as they were children (they were destined to meet, remember?), they run away from the evil demon master and join The Team Main Heroes to have their little nice moments of being together (because why not, if the demoness is not a demoness anymore, right?) before the plot turns into Hell.

"As we were children, my sister and I often sat like this and looked at the stars". They look at the starry sky [1], Chong Zhao x Bai Xi version. Here is Part 2