Xu Si
+ Xu Si is the less exciting character between our two leads. yup, he is cool but he has less adversities stacked against him.
+ I am wondering what his arc would be
+ So here is a guy who seemed to have nothing but success in his life. because of this, he is convinced that his mindset is the right one.
+ one pov is that he simply does not prefer the stress of running a business (his mom was probably really stressed and was not around much while he was growing up), or, he just disregards the opinion of the elders that managing/growing a business yourself is a nobler endeavor than just financing developing businesses (these are all shared by his mom, jiang hu's dad and aunt yue). will the growth be in the form of acknowledging/appreciating the efforts of his mother by experiencing the hardships real time through jiang hu?
+ he says he wants to put value in inefficient companies - now there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion, so i cannot see where the growth would come from that
+ a more dramatic conflict could be between love and career. do you choose the managing director position over the future mother of your children? this does not fit the confucianist temper of c-dramas though so i dont see it playing out. as one of his co-investors said, career and family life are EQUALLY important
+ so maybe xu si's character development matches his personality. the weight is more cerebral than emotional, which is ok, but not dramatic
+ is it is his cold hearted computations? is the drama saying that efficiency does not come without compassion? that founders are not kpi machines and thus dealing with them requires some leniency and understanding? yup, this could be an arc, and even if it a serious one in the financial sector that runs the world, it does not make for a compelling character development
regarding this, this is currently the most obvious arc for him. he is shown to be very calculated, when his actions do not make sense on the surface, it is because he is actually serving a deeper (more nefarious) goal beneath. he is a guy with plans a-z with z actually being the real plan all along.
as set up, we have ex gf, who consistently tells audiences that xu si was ruthless with her when they were together, no softening of the blows, no excuses; rationality is the name of the game and the only acceptable result is profit
he was like this even with jiang hu in the beginning. was he insulted when she mistakes him for a junior secretary? no. he takes her money, buys a burger and plot to run her father's obsolete shoe factory to the ground.
and then we see him start to soften up. that's ok, he has a hidden agenda for teng yue anyway. but then we see him start to make contradict himself and make excuses. he told his boss he just needs a majority stake on teng yue, so why does he help jiang hu with operations? okay, maybe to increase teng yue's evaluation for a latter sale. xu si continues to manufacture justifications, to maintain an image of himself as a rational investor. what cannot be denied, is that delila has come for xu si's samson.
but can you see xu si, humanity is not separate from profits. they only separate when stakeholders refuse to be kind. value could be created both from viciousness and consideration.
anyway, but baoxing boss could see differently, right. a dollar today is greater than a dollar+ tomorrow and xu si could be forced to choose between keeping teng yue for jiang hu or keeping his career
+ he does serve a lot in the romance department though, so I'll stop complaining haha
