#ep 23

like, here we are at the end of episode 23, about halfway through, and already linghu chong has the undying devotion of two beautiful women, one of whom is the inheritor of the big bad demonic sect; has widespread fame throughout the jianghu for his martial prowess; has encountered and befriended countless famed jianghu heroes; and has become the inheritor of not one but two all-powerful techniques, one of the sword and one of inner energy

if that doesn't sound like a modern empowerment fantasy, what does, honestly

but also...

he's broken-hearted about his exile from his sect. he's spent the past 15 episodes wandering aimlessly and drinking because he thinks he's bound to die anyway. his terminal illness, by the way, comes not from some malicious enemy but from a chance encounter with some foolish guys who injured him, then tried to save him with an improvised medical technique

since the beginning of the show he has had no overarching mission or goals, no found family he builds slowly, no slowly built convictions about how the world works. instead, it's mostly the opposite. his simplistic understanding of the world fell apart, and was replaced with... actually it hasn't been. he vowed to find the missing script of techniques and avenge his disciple brother's death but has made no actual moves towards doing so. if yue buqun hadn't abandoned him then kicked him out, he'd still be following his shifu around, apologizing and swearing to correct his ways

it's a bildungsroman, but the classic kind, full of confusion and anguish. in literature and Realism YA, it's still common, but in modern genre sff, modern romance, you barely see it. every protagonist has a dream, a mission, a goal, a revenge plot. even if their goal is to "avoid hardship and enjoy life" or simply "to survive", that's still a goal through which character decisions are simplified, streamlined

lmao "freaking nice"

and she was so angry and wanted revenge

but it was actually possibly (esp by romance logic) recoverable, if only the ML had been a completely different person than who he is

if he had explained that he had regretted and he tried to stop it, then went to save her life because of it, she just might have decided to let him live. he could have let her leave him, and then who knows! years would pass! maybe he'd randomly save her life again, maybe she would somehow learn something of his pitiful life story and let go of her anger. and then maybe... it's unlikely but, u know, it could happen for Romance Reasons

but instead he ... i mean, i made a list before of all the stuff he did. and yet all the personal injuries he's done her are not even on her mind now. it's his killing of zhao ming (and thus by her accounting eventually zhao li), and the way he treats all lives as disposable tools to threaten her with that she is fixated on. the deaths of her family and all the ways he has violated her are actually lesser concerns to her! it's not even what he has done now, but simply WHO he is that is completely unacceptable to her. as she says in ep 22:

in ep 23, we finally find out why he is so obsessed with her. he explains that he grew up basically without love and had to fight for survival in the palace, and then she came into his life and showed him care and concern blah blah blah, but i think more than that, the reason he is fixated on her is because she is the only person he has ever related to in any real way -- and that only because he saw hatred and a desire for vengeance in her. it's such a twisted projection of self from a person who has no understanding of other people as people. that is also why when he manipulates her verbally, it's always using emotions of anger, hatred, fear, because inspiring via anything positive is not in him. over time, we can see that he is making the tiniest baby steps towards understanding things she might like (going to her friend's funeral for instance), but he often doesn't follow through on the good impulses, while he almost always immediately follows those impulses up with some other terrible act

Murung Qingyi: I have a solution

SUSPICIOUS! Has Sunshine Brother been fooling us all along?

It's definitely the exact same picture I checked: