#gray characters

Revenged Love

China - Romance

Staring: Zi Yu & Tian Xu Ning

Dumped by his girlfriend for being poor, Wu Suo Wei decides to get revenge by stealing her new wealthy boy friend. As a "straight" guy just pretending to be interested in the snake loving playboy Chi Cheng, Wu Suo Wei panics when he starts to develop actual feelings for a man and things get complicated.

This series is a mess of red flags with deliciously flawed, grey characters that all scheme and manipulate, and we loved it!!! Seriously, we got weirdly obsessed with these characters. And we weren't alone. We weren't alone in getting up early just to watch as soon as the newest episode dropped! Sleep was sacrificed for this series! Watching these messy people fall hopelessly in love with each other and then go through great lengths for that love was worth it! If you are good at doing mental gymnastics to ignore the stuff you don't like, there was a lot to love about this story and it delivered more than we expected. Just be prepared to be a little (or a lot) uncomfortable at times. And it will hurt too. But we loved it so much and it's definitely going to be a rewatch because apparently we like to torture ourselves and the bitter makes the sweet taste so much better!

Ending: Happy 😍🥰

Tears: So many feels. It hurt... a lot... and often.

Main Couple: Queer

Side Couple: Queer

Romance Scenes: What we got were brief but spicy little snippets. Way spicier than what you would expect from a Chinese BL, but a lot seems to have be left on the cutting room floor.

Flavor of Scenes: Lots of flavor, mostly suggested. Chi Cheng is kinky and experienced and Wu Suo Wei gets dragged along for the ride.

Heads up: SOOOOOO MANY! And multiple major trigger warnings. Below are the ones we managed to keep track of, but we surely missed some. Proceed with caution and do some research if you have any significant triggers.

animal fighting/death, "gift" of human, fat shaming, violence, implied/off screen gang rape, gender/queer stereotypes, homophobia, teacher/student/abuse of power, suicide/self harm, infidelity, cancer, death, kidnapping

part 1 & part 3

This show... it has hijacked our brains. Our biggest solace has been knowing we are not alone in our obsession! Sharing the experience has only made it more fun, so here are some of the posts we have enjoyed (spoilers ahead):

Only a little over half way through this series and we are properly obsessed. We love watching these manipulative, scheming red flags turn into the biggest whipped softies. We knew they were going to hurt us and we weren't wrong. So to soothe our wounds, we will revisit sweet and precious moments like this...

Here are some of our favorite posts so far (spoilers ahead):

Great > shot for being an accessory to Dome's death

Tyme> shot due to his vengeful scheme that got ithers hurt

Grandma >shot for just letting Tyme go on with his scheme

Predictions

Tonkla will probably be shot by Win because he has shot/killed 3 people for vengeance and you don't get away scot free in Thai shows. ( But I'm all for him getting 4 minutes power and living a happier life that way)

Korn will probably just be poor / left with no one or get shot by Ton kla

Great's parents > probably arrested or killed

Random business partner that just showed up and is killing Tyme and killed his family > will die somehow

Tbh I'm so out of touch with Canon and fanon these days 😪

But from when I was, I think it would have to be the whole Dumbledore's plan.

Everyone has written a fic where Dumbledore is this great puppet master when in reality he's just some guy with a bad plan, and the manipulation tactics of an out of touch war general from a war that no longer existed.

Like yeah what he did was shifty but he didn't plan this from Harry's birth, like he was making it up as he went lbh.

I always see some videos and posts about Pink Diamond and the ongoing discussion of people judging her for everything she has done. I must say that I love EVERY morally ambiguous character because, to me, only such characters truly represent humanity with 98% accuracy. Observing how people pass judgment on them demonstrates our capacity for hypocrisy. If you were to put a camera to record people's lives 24/7, you'd realize that not every decision they make during the day is the best one. If any of you have seen My Hero Academia, you might recall a statement made by Deku in the last season: "It's not just black and white. Most of the world is gray, filled with uncertainty and anger." So, every time I witness people criticizing morally ambiguous characters, I wonder if they would act differently in their shoes.

I had the opportunity to witness this happen when the Brazilian streamer Cellbit, the creator of Paranormal Order (an RPG game that has gained popularity outside of Brazil in recent months), forced his chat to confront their own biases. The Paranormal Order fandom, at least the Brazilian part, is known for its toxicity. So, Cellbit ran a spin-off called "Sinais do Outro Lado" and did something remarkable: he left the fate of ALL the characters on the table in the hands of the chat. Whether someone would live or die was entirely up to the chat. Without giving too much spoilers, it didn't end well. The amusing part is that people were constantly suggesting that player X or Y should have made different decisions to achieve a better outcome, but when the time came, they couldn't live up to their own words. Furthermore, I believe that if Cellbit hadn't designed that part with the expectation that the players would collaborate with the chat, everyone would have survived (if only you had seen the spam chat gave).