Ok this show... I dont even know where to begin. Not all of it was this god awful, most of the time it was entertaining and mid, but when it was bad, it was SHOCKINGLY TERRIBLE. And at its best, this show entered the Marvel cinematic hell zone, where everything thats happening is on such a massively large apocalyptic world ending stakes so high that it just ends up becoming boring and meaningless. Tantai Jin is basically a total saint by the end, just a victim of cruel fate and Susu is literally a god, none of the main characters feel like they are being lead by any sort of complexity or humanity, they are just wholeheartedly devoted to the cause of saving the world from evil. Tbh not once were we really shown why it’s worth fighting for, they just say it is because it’s the world and that’s enough for them and most viewers I guess… but like a good writer would really make me FEEL the urgency. I’m not saying that world ending massive epic high stakes will always be boring or unrelatable- all it takes is characters that are well written and the addition of themes that have something important or new to say, but this show absolutely doesn't have that. I'm not even really sure what the theme is other than a generic people can change for the better and you really can love a bad boy into being a good boy LOL.

Okay I will start w the only truly good thing I will say about the show. The costume design for the gods is actually the best I've seen in a xianxia, which isnt saying much because it's usually absolute shit. And while I wouldn't say the gods had Good costume design, it was at least Better than what I've seen. Like they ACTUALLY referenced Chinese Buddhist imagery of gods/flying apsaras/feitian which gives it a feeling of both historical reference, as well as a more retro vibe from older C-dramas and their depiction of gods and immortals. Truly a balm for the eyes in the sea of pale ass transparent gauzy layers of hanfu with drop earrings. I will NEVER forgive 3L3W for the shit costume design that has become the standard in xianxia!! Thank you cyjm for doing something different!!! Not even that good it's just different!!! HOWEVER other than the gods the styling was absolutely terrible.

Onto character + relationship writing... Tantai Jin is of course the beloved darling of the show, (and of the internet... and of my mom) who gets so much time and attention and yet his character makes so little impact for me. It's quite funny to me that he is supposed to be 'evil' and yet the writers are so precious w him he cannot be blamed or disliked for even a second. He truly does nothing that is actually morally contemptible and the writers have gone in circles and circles with ridiculous plot shit and other eviler evildoer characters to make sure that he is essentially completely blame free by the narrative. Even in the beginning, when he was at his most interesting and basically whatever the writer's flawed perception of a psychopath is, he literally only ever hurt his abusers and people who betrayed him. And while those people were sympathetic, it also meant that TTJ never does anything that would truly make the audience question their support of him or of what's right and wrong. He never hurts the truly innocent. There's no villain who you can't help but root for, just a bullied and abused man who also happens to look like a beautiful manhua character come to life who never does anything wrong!!! It's simply cowardly to only make characters that are perfectly likable and do not do anything genuinely morally reprehensible and then CLAIM that he is some morally ambiguous ML. And do not tell me this is the fault of censorship when there are plenty MLs in cdramaland who are pretty bad and do bad things. Even when he takes his place as ruler in Jing country he does it as peacefully as possible and treats all citizens as his own and provides aid to refugees and everyone loves and respects him LIKE??? COME ONNNN LMAOOOOO he is literally FAULTLESS.

He's at his most flawed in the grand disaster of his relationship w Ye Xiwu but even then his obsession and possessiveness remained firmly in the land of fantasy of beautiful powerful deranged man who is obsessed w u, and wasn't really pushed That far into gross and creepy. It gets closer after she dies, I was actually genuinely hopeful that he was going to learn when Ye Qingyu yells at him but the final note is still that TTJ loved her so much he wanted to die with her, fuck the country and everyone else! And when he couldn't die he suffered endless torment for 500 years for her! Isn't that romantic instead of absolutely INSANE. Again this is what I mean by Marvel factor, like the 500 years of suffering is SO meaningless to me and it's truly just some peak crazy dog blood cringe writing!!! Like hmm, how can we up the stakes and make it as clear as possible that this love is so powerful and extreme? LETS PICK A BIG INCOMPREHENSIBLE NUMBER YEARS OF TORTURE. This is a middle school idea of devotion, hardship and love. All the writing does is take shortcuts to make manipulative emotional impacts instead of actually writing a good character and relationship arc lmao. China has always been prone to these very annoyingly dramatic epic you die I die self sacrificing portrayals of love which I absolutely hate and cyjm is just a classic example of this that is possibly even worse than those that have come before it.

There was potential for TTJ but so much of the show is just griefporn and him being relentlessly abused and betrayed whether it's by the people around him or by some kind of inescapable fate. And its all so that Susu can save him over and over and he can fall deeper and deeper in love with the only person who cared for him, which is also just more of the tropey Chinese fantasy view of what the deepest form of love is- one that is formed when you only know abuse and pain and One person is nice to you. It's how they keep making desperate unhinged trauma bonding instead of love. Like, if you think about it it's not even that romantic because he didn't fall in love and choose Susu for her character, or her strengths, but because she was the only person who was good to him and she kept saving him over and over... which she only did because she didnt have a choice anyway and it was for the fate of humanity!! It's not like their relationship has nothing going for it, its just not convincing enough. I wish that LSS could've inspired care for others in him beyond that scene with the fireworks granny, and the show showed through actions how she has inspired him, instead of just telling us over and over that shes the reason he has feelings now when all I saw was one measly fireworks scene, and many fluffy meaningless cutesy acts of service and gift giving scenes on top of a random ass dream where they lived as totally different people so the writers could take another lazy shortcut and make him become a better person by experiencing SOMEONE ELSE's LIFE and LOVE instead of HIS OWN. There are things in his story that genuinely have potential, his relationship w Xiao Lin is interesting, he has Nian Baiyu and an entire clan of people who are devoted to him, he also has fun relationships w Pian Ran and Ye Qingyu with decent basis for further development. I really wanted these parts to be explored more and it doesnt take that much time honestly, like it literally just couldve been a few extra scenes (and it wouldnt hurt to throw in some scenes of him with the common people too and learning their struggle!!!) so it wouldnt feel like such a massive jump between the abused and amoral hostage prince TTJ and the Genuinely Good Ruler TTJ. I barely even want to touch on the massive leap between him being relentlessly tormented for 500 years, unhinged don’t care abt anything but YXW to becoming a good boy cultivator who then spends the rest of the show impossibly pure and morally just. It's ridiculous, and you cannot blame this on the story being cut when plenty of other shows have less time and make much better characters and usage of the time that they have. It actually makes ZERO sense, the writers just need his character to be at a different place so they force it to happen.

Li Susu is more or less a blank slate of a character who only exists to be the hero and antithesis to the devil god. She doesn’t have much of any internal logic or core, no depth, she just exists to be whatever the writers need her to be in that moment. She oscillates constantly between forgetting her duty and remembering depending on which will create the most conflict, and then spending the 2nd half the show knocked out unconscious, or running around LOST while TTJ is spitting blood getting the shit beaten out of him ahgjkakjkfjkd tbh u kno the writers are like we need to make Luo Yunxi spit out more blood dramatically and beautifully for all the freaky fans who want to see beautiful men in pain, so LSS will have ZERO SENSE OF DIRECTION…… EVEN THO THEY ARE IN THE SAME PLACE AND SHE CANT BE MORE THAN A BLOCK AWAY!!!

And despite supposedly being smart the writers decide to disrespect her character and make her lose all sense just so they can continue to protect their precious baby TTJ so he remains a Good Boy. It was so genuinely frustrating to watch all of the events that lead to Xiao Lin’s death and subsequently YXW's that basically absolved TTJ of any blame, put all of the blame on Ye Bingchang, who is just evil because misogyny, and made LSS believe stupid shit at the drop of a hat like that TTJ killed her grandma, who isn’t even really her grandma, based on ZERO EVIDENCE. The writing was truly SO FUCKING BADDDDD and for WHAT!!! You LAZY writers!! Just so that neither FL or ML are bad people??? So instead they just made them STUPID??? Was it THAT hard to write a genuine conflict between these two extremely morally opposed people?? They literally went out of their way making an annoying multi step plot with useless branches like grandma dying to AVOID creating complex characters! Imagine if the writers were capable of writing two characters who are both flawed and naturally have conflict AND still love each other!!

Ok onto plot… I’ve already touched on the Marvel vibe which is a definite issue… but also the plot writing is just SO nonsensical and absolutely purposeless at so many points. Like they have such limited time and they are just WASTING it… if something isn’t working just cut it entirely!! Just fill it w parts that actually do matter! And I really do have to talk about the spinning flaming wheel of a train wreck disaster that is the dream arc…. like bro….. BRO…….. WHAT THE FUCK….. because of this arc I actually STOPPED watching for a good month (and would’ve dropped it for good had real life not presented itself w so many stresses i had to escape by binge watching the most fast paced candy at 2x the speed). They wrote the worst love story I’ve seen since Hua Qiangu, with the flattest, most insipid characters with the stupidest motivations and expected not only the Actual Main characters of the show to feel something for them much less the audience who are living in reality. You expect me to believe TTJ and LSS LEARNED smth from this?? Had I gone through this it just would’ve jokerfied me immediately, I would’ve spit blood and qi deviated, not been like wow their love is so sad and beautiful. Sang Jiu and Ming Ye have even LESS basis for loving each other than the main couple, they make LSS and TTJ look like they have substance, my god. And then we have to spend not one or two episodes just to establish lore here, we spend like WELL OVER 8 if not TEN episodes… I’m not counting, that’s just how it FELT… like an ETERNITY!!!! Good lord TIAN HUAN….. I FELT LIKE I WAS LAUNCHED INTO 2001…. and then they had YBC be like I’m not her because she’s pathetic and she sucks LIKE??? So the writers know that she’s nothing but a pure misogynistic lazy and stupid writer’s trope?? Then why force your viewers to watch ten unBEARABLE episodes with her singlehandedly being the cause of everything wrong and bad in the story, including commit GENOCIDE so that Sang Jiu is jokerfied?? Why purposefully make BAD writing that you KNOW is bad and expect viewers to still enjoy it?? The miscommunications… the whole scene where Ming Ye divorces her…. I have never felt so insulted that I was expected to watch this and feel anything other than pure offense. This makes YBC indirectly causing XL’s death look like HIGH ART.

cw sexual assault

And THEN oh my god… something that NO ONE seems to want to talk about but HELLO??? The CONSENT ISSUES???? Did everyone’s morals FLY OUT THE WINDOW??? And I don’t just mean Sang Jiu and the writers I mean the AUDIENCE??? I don’t care if the narrative is saying it’s okay and it’s romantic actually because Ming Ye loves her and was into it… the point is that he could not consent in that state!! AND THEN…. they had the GALL to make SJ take care of him while he’s blind SECRETLY so that he doesn’t know it’s her, and she licherally says ‘he would never forgive me if he knew it was me’ ??!!!! So they KNOW that it’s wrong and they STILL WROTE IT?? Imagine if the genders were reversed and a woman’s rapist is taking the opportunity while she’s blind and injured to get close to her, lying and pretending to be Not her rapist ex husband…. it is literally just so emotionally violent, the grossest violation of a human being’s basic boundaries, respect and ability to make any kind of informed decision. Literally just imagine if she wasn’t a cute girl and picture the most cringe, pathetic incel stalker LMAOOOO. It doesn’t matter WHO it is when the action itself is the grossest violation!!! This show was always doomed to fail at portraying LSS and TTJ’s relationship in the first place since the entire core of their relationship is a struggle of good vs evil, but the writers have no concept or understanding of what that even means. They only know ‘bad people hurt people and by hurt we only know to mean cause physical pain or kill.’ Like I honest to god felt sick watching these episodes... Anyway even if the rest of the show was just mid-bad this arc puts it into atrocity territory, and it would’ve been SO easy to cut out because it was sooo inconsequential, out of character, RANDOM, and didn’t need to happen for any reason other than to set up some lore. They could’ve made TTJ and YBC change through CHARACTER WRITING…. this DID NOT need to happen.

Otherwise the plot is choppy, many pacing issues, general stupidity that is only good for un-critical mindless viewing. You just really can't take it seriously. Many people had issues w the ending and said it was terribly edited but I honestly didn't even really see much of a difference. I don't give a shit abt TTJ or LSS because they are poorly written and I'm not convinced by them or rooting for them, so I felt nothing by the end. The fact that TTJ dies and it's a BE after pretending to be evil to get LSS to kill him is simply just proof that the show is continuing its road of straightforward plot led thoughtless storytelling. They just followed their own rules and didn't try to do anything different, just the boring usual shit.

Anyway, that’s it for all my gripes. Sorry y’all like so much but it’s so stupid and mid/bad, only worth watching if you can put aside your brain fully (which I kind of needed since Real Life is Hard) for the pure entertainment of many dramatic things happening, and tbh the real reason people like it and TTJ so much is because of Luo Yunxi’s extremely expensive and unnatural face and they get off on him getting tortured to varying capacities. This show is just beautiful manhua man torture fetish hours, endless epic drama w no substance and the ppl who like it THIS much had their brains rotted by Luo Yunxi juice.

Ok that’s it, don’t @ me I don’t care.