My Journey To You:

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.

Because love no matter what overpowers death

"In this world people hate me, fear me, rely on me, admire me. But she is the only one that loves me. I`m full of thorns and only make her sad. I`m a jerk. But she is a fool, she knows I`m that bad but she makes excuse to forgive me and holds me tight even if it hurts." " Everything in the world is fate except love."

Fun facts about MJTY

The surnames of those who are in the Back Hill build together an idiom 风花雪月, «four opposites of love». Although hieroglyph 锋 in word "Wufeng" is different from one in this idiom (​风), they are homophones that equally sound fēng (and as we all remember, Wufeng is the mastermind of the last three saber techniques out of twelve used by the Back Hill, sooooo...🐱‍👤).

2. The names of Wufeng ranks build together an idiom 魑魅魍魉, «demons and monsters of the Martial World». These hieroglyphs actually mean three types of mythological Chinese monsters, not four: chī, mèi, and wǎngliǎng. In the last word a syllable wǎng (魍) sounds like wáng (王), which means "prince", so there are four princes of cardinal directions in Wufeng. The hieroglyph 魉 (liǎng) includes the phonetic key 两 (liǎng) as one of its elements, which means "a pair". And, as we know, Wufeng has got two bosses of the highest rank 🐱‍👤.

3. The names of those who live in the Front Hill are 宫商角徵羽, the pre-Tang dynasty names of tones in the pentatonic musical scale. The pentatonic scale is famous among musicians as something good for improvisation because all of these tones sound harmonically in any combination. Also, in the Confucian tradition these five tones were credited with a magical effect on society, at which gōng corresponded to the emperor, shāng - to ministers, jué - to the people, zhǐ - to affairs, and yǔ to material resources.

Maybe it all supposed to have a deep meaning and to symbolize something. Maybe it didn`t. Anyway, there are just fun facts.

Li Lun, a villain I feel for (Pt. 2/4)

So, by the beginning of the drama LL says that he wants to kill all of ZYZ’s new friends. In fact, he just likes talking. He says: “Let’s kill ZYZ’s friends starting with Baize Goddess, like the previous time” so the viewer thinks he killed previous goddess off, but later we learn that he didn't do it. Even if he has a perfect opportunity to kill someone of ZYZ’s new friends without ruining his own schemings, he does pretty nothing to achieve it. He just stands and talks. Because he doesn’t really want to kill anyone, including ZYZ. He wants to attract ZYZ’s attention and to make ZYZ stop ghosting him.

Li Lun speaks to Big Bad in Mask while possessing a courtesan. Meanwhile, he lends Truth Eye to Ao Ying so she could see his true self.

LL joins hands with Big Bad in Mask, not knowing he was the one who tortured demons in that bloody dungeon (yeah, LL is not the smartest guy of the Universe). By doing it he tries to achieve his own goals. First, he wants to break free from his custody, and second, he wants to get attention from ZYZ, who ignores him.

In order to break his chains LL works as matchmaker for ZYZ and his girlfriend, so they could fall in love with each other and find and unite pieces of Baize token, because only if the token is intact, it can be broken and its spells can be dissipated. He is not a saint, so he kills some folks (by possessing them or just because) and tricks other demons into helping him, although he is said to value his own kind more than anything. It means he goes through break-up with ZYZ so badly, that even his principles fade into the background for his anger and pain. Or it’s just another script flaw.

Li Lun behaves himself very much as a ghosted ex-boyfriend (in fact, he is), and I understand him well. He goes through stages of acceptance: throws himself from denial (ZYZ is no better than me, why don't you treat him the way he treated me?) through anger (ZYZ, I’ll kill your friends and make you suffer!) to bargaining (Why does he find you better than me? What if you would be like me, would he still love you?).

To talk about his feelings with someone, he uses the only way to leave his dark lifeless place of imprisonment, which is possessing others. At first, this ability and an omnipotence of it looks intimidating, but later we learn that he cuts his lifespan by a half each time he does it, so his need to talk to someone is very desperate. (Later, LL says that it was his way to enjoy the world and freedom but GJM never showed us such a use of this LL's ability). ZYZ knows that destroying LL’s leaves (through which he possesses bodies) will hurt Li Lun, yet he does it anyway, and LL kinda... enjoys it bitterly. As if the fact of him being not ignored by ZYZ is more important that his wellbeing. It's miserable and pathetic, but understandable.

And anytime LL tries to get some answers for his questions, ZYZ and his friends say something like “You don’t understand a thing, I won’t bother to explain, though.” or “We have friends and ZYZ is our boyfriend, and you are a lonely loser!”. How it supposes to help LL understand his wrongs? I have no idea.

Ghosting your ex is the sure way to make him a villain.

LL breaks free from his jail and destroys a “support beam” of the “wall” around demon ghetto. An accent on “I’m destroying the wall” is strange, because I can’t understand the gain demons will have when they aren't in their ghetto anymore (and it obviously should be). Would Great Demons even the scores of victims if not only humans would catch and torture demons but demons would also catch and torture humans, or what? However, it sounds pretty fair, as long as said Baize Goddess’ and ZYZ’s protection of demons consist in only preventing them from going outside their ghetto without passport, LOL.

Although LL is free from the seal, he is still dying from the fatal wound causing by ZYZ 8 years ago. His true body is smoldering slowly, so he has got not so much time left.

For plot purposes, the main heroes need to visit LL’s birthplace to get the last cup of magic water to fix Baize token and to restore a “support beam” of ghetto’s wall. What would a normal villain do, knowing about it? Yes, he would spill it. What does LL do? He, in fact, hands it over to the main heroes. Yes, stained, but LL was a student of Mountain God, too, so he could know that there is a way to restore the pureness of magic water, and the best way to destroy the token for good is to spill this water.

During their visit LL kidnaps ZYZ’s girlfriend (it is funny that the main heroes don’t notice it for something like first five minutes 😅) and has a phycologist session with her (in which she is a psychologist). They have a superstrange conversation, something like: LL: “ZYZ supposed to be my friend but ghosted me for no obvious for me reason and I’m hurt!”. WX: “Oh, it’s because you are a loser with no friends, ZYZ did everything right!”.

Then ZYZ and his current boyfriend come and LL tries once more to tell ZYZ that he is hurt, but ZYZ has absolutely no desire to talk to him or to explain to him something and acts like they were never boyfriends and LL is his archenemy.

So, they fight and ZYZ hurts LL with Everburning Wood once more, now deliberately. LL dies, and although ZYZ has red eyes at this moment he never thinks of LL again. So, LL is right: ZYZ is a hypocrite with double standards. It is such a contrast with the stories of the main heroes and ancient dragon gods, in which killing your friend for Higher Goals is a tragedy.

But there is a plot twist ahead!

Here is Part 1 Here is Part 3 Here is Part 4

Thoughts on TtEotM

Well... I didn't like it. LYX was marvelous, CGI, too, plot elements were pretty good changed to tie the story up (and the part with Ming Ye was better tied to the main plot than in the book), but still... I didn't like it. In the book it was the story about man without abilities to feel something, his "love" in the first part of the story was wicked and twisted, so the contrast with the second part was huge and palpable. TTJ was a monster and became a man, he turned from egoist who only wanted to survive no matter what to person who was ready to give away the most precious thing for him (his life) to make his beloved happy (it happened that saving the world was the thing that could make his beloved happy, so he sacrificed himself to do it). And his heroic deed was rewarded with resurrection and a normal life with his family and new-found home. The story in the drama has nothing to do with that. There is a poor boy (no monster at all!!!) who constantly suffers and wants to die, falls in love with the first person who treated him well and sacrifices himself for the world that was so unkind to him. It`s awful! I know that Chinese people love the idea that you should die for the greater good, but this philosophy is as far from my heart as Jupiter from the Earth. Maybe DFQC will remain the only one drama "villain" who's got the happy end. And that drama will stay my favorite.

Blossom 九重紫 (2024) Dir. Zeng Qing Jie – Ep. 1

BROTHER...WAKE UP...

E23 : My Journey to You | 云之羽 (2023) dir.Edward Guo

"Song Mo." "Since you knew my name, you would know how many corrupt officials and pirates I've interrogated. You could fake it to a certain extent because you know a little about those in the palace. But when it comes to finer details, your uneasiness gives you away."