I think at this point I am sure everyone is aware about the scandals that surround Guo Jingming (in terms of plagiarism, poor treatment of actresses, and shitty writing)... but I decided to give VOS a chance because of 3 reasons in the following order:
1. Chen Duling
2. An interesting main cast, that initially promised that all 4 characters would be equal participants
3. The Aesthetic
The last GJM drama I watched was MJTY (which I never finished tbh) but even in that show I had enjoyed the dark aesthetic that he seems to bring to all his shows... unfortunately.... aesthetics is all this man has going for him
This might be more of a ramble than an essay but I am genuinely so frustrated at how this show played out, and it's annoying to see viewers watching and talking about this show with their eyes closed... I know media literacy is dead, but we need to resuscitate it ASAP
The Story...?
Initially, the concept of various demon hunters + 2 nine-tailed foxes solving the same mystery while distrusting one another, was very intriguing... it sets the scene, introduces us to the mechanics of this fantasy world, their individual powers, and the dynamics between them... but for a good 5 episodes the plot is lost on us
Eventually, we learn that oh the dragon deity is trying to reclaim his powers from various demons, who are being manipulated by the Big Bad because HE wants to free his body from imprisonment (as in his body is imprisoned by a dragon's body lol)... and the whole "Only a Dragon can kill a Dragon" concept that seems to haunt the show
I found the story easy enough to follow, but they began to lose me post-illusion arc... The illusion arc sets up Wu Shiguang to be the centrepiece of the story, he's the long lost 10th dragon who is fated to bring peace to the world... but afterwards the story starts revolving around Ji Ling/Fake Chi Wen, and seems to fall apart around that time
Prior to the illusion both Shiguang/Wangyan and Wuyi/Ji Ling have a "foxes keep flirting" back-and-forth, where Shiguang would become flustered but Ji Ling seemed to enjoy it (until he went back to acting like Chi Wen and then suddenly he was stoic).... in the illusion, all of them are forced to act like couples... while Lie Jie gets some half-baked sibling storyline
The route they took for Wuyi/Ji Ling seemed unbelievably childish which could be attributed to the fact that the characters they played were young... but I could not bring myself to care about them because the build-up between them was rushed, and their story together seemed to occur over a handful of days... so when they come out of the illusion it's like okay y'all were fake kissing and romancing for a month max idky you expect me to act like this something earth-shattering relationship and betrayal... The only reason Wuyi becomes obsessed with him is because she's told that he's her fated one, and we get that one moment between the two of them from years ago...
On the other hand, Shiguang/Wangyan get pulled into the role of his adoptive parents, they spend literal decades together raising a child together, despite their severely limited screentime, we are able to see scenes where we see their relationship progress from purposely flirting + prude to them becoming pillars for one another, we watch them age together, and witness their gruesome and heart-wrenching deaths in the illusion.... that's why when the illusion ends the relationship between them seems fraught because how do you reconcile being married for multiple decades to modern day where you were both playing each other.... (also UNRELATED but if Bai Ze and everyone could see what was happening in the illusion, does this mean they saw Wangyan/Shiguang doing it raw.....) But my point is the relationship/story between them holds so much more weight .... despite the lack of runtime
Which leads to my next point, that for a show with only 29 episodes you think they would've carefully allocated screentime to flesh out the plot, but we spend an insane amount of time in the illusion arc itself following Wuyi/Ji Ling that forget Wangyan/Shiguang... Li Jie's story becomes forgotten, and it continues to spend more than 30 minutes of run time on those two so by the time we get to the Han Ba storyline, the plot is rushed and the holes are massive....
After the illusion arc, Wangyan is imprisoned by the Big Bad and Shiguang approaches Ji Ling to ask for help with freeing her... but somehow even that turns into focusing on Ji Ling/Wuyi when the rescuse mission was meant for Wangyan... during this Ji Ling makes a double cross deal wiht the Big Bad to help Shiguang turn into a Dragon, after which Ji Ling would kill Wangyan to make Shiguang mentally unstable so the Big Bad could possess him??? Holy Convoluted MF PLOT
Han Ba's storyline would have had more impact if we were given time to sit with it (ignoring the plot hole where Han Ba could just write lol)... in the end we learn that his lover's fiancee somehow knew everything but we are just forced to assume someone told him his fiancee was having a fling with a demon who lives in the tree in her courtyard.... I say all this to say, GJM really expects us to fill in crucial details because he's too busy following Wuyi/Ji Ling around
The rewind arc also was frustrating to watch, and partly it may be that I did skip through it, because honestly... I was never invested in Wuyi/Ji Ling... but initially when we are led to believe that Wuyi rewound time to save Wangyan, that had me tuned in... but no actually that was just a fakeout because she only ever meant to save Ji Ling.... imagine how tired we are.... literally Ji Ling this Ji Ling that
AND THEN!!!! The big lead up to Shiguang getting possessed is SO UNBELIEVABLY LACKLUSTRE.... Wangyan doesn't die, but gets knocked out by a dumb rock?? Absolutely pathetic pay off... because GJM decided that he'd rather use the whole 'loved one being possessed upon the death of their soulmate' storyline for fucking Wuyi/Ji Ling instead!!! Because suddenly, despite Ji Ling's effort and self-sacrifice, fucking Wuyi still gets possessed by the Big Bad bc she's mentally unstable now!!! How ridiculous is it, that everything that was set-up to be Shiguang/Wangyan's plotline turned into Wuyi/Ji Lings!
Anyways one thing leads to another, story ends with everyone dead but not really? Memories missing but not really... but the story quickly falls apart in the last quarter, and it's largely due to the fact that there are a hundred convenient coincidences, but not a lick of decent stroytelling! Because what do you mean, actually Ji Ling has an internal demon dragon because he's so lonely that can suddenly rewind time, but then also the Star Stone can also rewind time!!! Why couldn't that have been done earlier, why do any of this when all of this could've been avoided using this mechanisms earlier!!!!!!!
The Characters
The current scandal is that, all four actors: Chen Duling, Zeng Shunxi, Tian Jiarui, and Ju Jingyi had equal billing which I perceive as they are equal main characters with equal importance... but past Ep 5 that quickly becomes untrue
Ji Ling/Fake Chi Wen/Yuan Xizai (?100 yrs old)
He was everything to GJM, poor blind foxy boy, poor blind weak brother to Yuan Wuhuo, powerful false dragon deity with the power of multiple demons indebted to him... the prospect of being a cheerful pure-hearted fox who swallows a dragonscale to shoulder the burden of the world could be soo intriguing and devastating if it wasn't for the fact that... we were constantly reminded of it, majority of the runtime is spent on his story... even when the story starts off with the focus on someone else it ends up being about him... imagine how TIRED WE ARE!!! WE GET IT!!! HOW TRAGIC!!!!
It wouldn't be an issue, if the show was painted to be about him and his journey specifically.... instead the first handful of episodes catfish you into believing this will be 4 equally important storylines, intertwined within one another... instead this turns into a story about Ji Ling, and forces everyone else to be supporting characters.... yes his character is complex, and yes his story is tragic.... but at the same time it feels undeserved.... GJM got some obsession with Tian Jiarui that he living out through his shows
Lu Wuyi (?50 yrs old)
A nine-tailed fox from the Formless Moon sect, who is introduced as flirtatious and detached.... who is revealed to be the Frankenstein's monster of the Big Bad, who is an amalgamation of all the nine-tailed foxes in the sect... Wu Wangyan's youngest sect sister, where the Big Bad altered both her and Wangyan's memories to make it seem like Wuyi has always existed when in reality she just hosts a piece of the Big Bad's soul and is used to control and collect information for the Big Bad (unbeknownst to her)...
Her character fell flat for me because who is she outside of the people around her? Wangyan/Ji Ling... that's all who she exists for... she doesn't appear to have her own character motivations... Even later on when she has some sort of reservation with blood/violence it seems disingenuous because this whole concept is established quite clearly with Wangyan earlier on, how her aversion to violence propels her to turn against her sect.... One might argue that Wuyi technically has Wangyan's heart (which would have been so endearing in the hands of a better writer) so maybe that's why, but I don't think that's fair to Wuyi as a character... because once again... lazy writing...
Wu Wangyan (?1000 yrs old)
One of the oldest members of the Formless Moon Sect, introduced as cunning, composed, flirtatious, and powerful... revealed to be working with Fake Chi Wen against her sect because she is tired of the violence and schemes, and hopes to carve her own path... While shown to be cunning and a liar, she is revealed to be quite caring... the Han Ba storyline shows that despite her mission, her emotions with the people around her were real.... the way she comforts Wuyi when they find out Wuyi hasn't always existed... because that's her sister!! Her emotional intelligence was so!!! She's a well-rounded character, who has motivations outside of the relationships around her which can't be said for other female characters (*cough wuyi *cough*)
We learn that she was put under spells by the Big Bad to massacre Wu Shiguang's tribe... and the way that puts a twist on their relationship was so juicy.... because they both know she did it against her will, but at the end of the day... it's his tribe's blood on her hands... yet they are able to work through it and solidify what they mean to one another... When she's about to sacrifice her spiritual tail, because she doesn't want to forget their time together but she also doesn't want to put him in danger... and also doesn't involve Wuyi in it because once again.... she wouldn't want to put her in danger either
I truly did enjoy her character, given she is centuries old, she's mature but can be a little silly (especially when she interacts with Shiguang)... but GJM truly did destroy her character, she was no longer the powerful fox, instead she was constantly out for the fight or missing in action... After the final, where she gets smacked around by the Big Bad I started questioning everything because what do you mean the Big Bad is thousands of years old but so is she??? She should be able to go toe to toe with the Big Bad for longer than she did!! Instead, we get her sacrificing herself at the end bc GJM couldn't have a female character be powerful and fight the villain when the men are there I guess
Wu Shiguang (?100 yrs old)
Introduced as a demon hunter, who comes from the Flood Dragon Tribe, who wants to kill the Dragon deity because he thinks that he's responsible for his tribe's massacre... He's shown to be stoic but a little goofy, and introduced to be immensely powerful in his own right with his prayer bead weapon... and later discovers he's the 10th and final dragon left on earth, and has to collect dragon power to become an actualized Dragon God
Aside from Lie Jie, he seems to have the least amount of screentime which did him a disservice... While we get multiple episodes of Ji Ling and how pathetic and sad his story is... we don't even get 5 minutes of Shiguang coming to terms that he is a dragon, and that his 9 older brothers created him before sacrificing themselves.... Even when Shiguang goes to talk to Chi Wen's remnants it's about fucking Ji Ling!!!!!!!!! (don't even get me started on that, ur telling me Chi Wen been around????? he could've been approached for advice this whole time???) We don't see him and Ji Ling have meaningful conversations about where the two of them stand now???? Like it's so odd... that GJM doesn't develop any of the relations between the male characters outside of them fighting side by side.... but bitches love talking about how the yaoi is there.... is the yaoi in the room with us rn
You can't be mad that Shiguang didn't toast to Ji Ling after Ji Ling died, because he has no relation to Ji Ling... Ji Ling was too busy diving in Wuyi's cooch to give a fuck about anyone else or cultivate a relationship with anyone else let along Shiguang...
Even when fighting together Shiguang is quickly nerfed to being needed to be saved by Ji Ling constantly, because once again... this show could be called Veil of Ji Ling.... Which imo was so counter-intuitive to what we knew about him as a character, like this is the same character who cut off an arm and a leg to be with Wu Wangyan in their final moments at his weakest, what do you mean that as the realized Dragon God he wouldn't be able to deflect the Big Bad's attack near the end?? And that he'd need Ji Ling to step in... Just pathetic work by GJM all around
Everyone Else
Lie Jie: man don't get me started on this bullshit, so he is actually Ji Ling's older brother, but not because that brother died and Ji Ling adopted his visage, but then also Lie Jie is part butterfly demon with the obsession to protect Ji Ling but the other butterfly demon is obsessed with killing Ji Ling to free him from the suffering of being the fake dragon deity.... and his end is pathetic because Ji Ling no longer existing he still has that obsession that consumes him and that is how he will spend his mortal life
Shilin Sect Members: straight sausage fest minus the one woman who ends up being the first one to die EL OH EL... GJM hates women sm it's crazy... it's insane how the Shilin Sect members get names and brief backstories, but only the ones that got a dick.. because even for the one female member we meet, her story revolves around her junior brother and how she dies to protect him
Formless Moon Sect: we know nothing about any of these women, not their names or their backstories... at the end one of the foxes sacrifices herself and we learn her name but the death means nothing.... none of their deaths mean anything because at the end of the day GJM hates women :)
The Conclusion
The CGI which was actually well done the first half, quickly turned into shit.... the costuming also got worse.... bro straight canned it and I think the ending is what really put the nail in the coffin... Ji Ling is somehow resurrected, goes back in time to kill the Big Bad right after he creates Wuyi... but then Ji Ling pulls Wuyi into the timeloop tunnel he's in which means a new timeline has been created where Wuyi no longer exists... Shiguang somehow remembers everything, but since Wuyi no longer exists... I assume the whole Xiao Wei case never happens, so Wangyan never meets him... but aside from that, in this timeline it appears the Ji Ling doesn't exist either.... and if the previous is true... then how does Lie Jie exist? Because it was established, that his existence hinges on Ji Ling's..... so Lie Jie's ending is him with this aching obsession that has nowhere to go....
Sure, Wangyan and Shiguang could probably rekindle their relationship, but imagine knowing that the woman in front of you has been you wife for decades but now you're nothing more than a stranger to her? And imagine being Wangyan and the supposed Dragon God is trying to tell you how you two are fated to be but it's like bro leave me alone idk you!! Imagine being Wangyan, who in the previous timeline was ready to sacrifice her spiritual tail to ensure she never forgot their time together, only to be resurrected into storyline where she forgets regardless!!
Ji Ling/Wuyi reincarnated.... no one cheered.....
But the plotholes are massive.... getting rid of Wuyi wouldn't be enough, because before she existed the big Bad implanted a piece of himself into Shiguang, so what happened with that? The oracle stone still exists and is said to have pieces of the Big Bad, so what about that?? Conveniently, no one discusses it, no one brings it up in the new timeline... and that's because no one remembers anything other than Shiguang :)
TLDR: GJM had a hard-on for Ji Ling.... decided to take storylines intended for other characters and use it for Ji Ling/Wuyi, and in turn relegated every other character to secondary/tertiary character... and plot holes bigger than the holes in GJM's brain
Also, I firmly believe that GJM took plotlines meant for Wu Wangyan/Wu Shiguang and plastered them onto Wuyi/Ji Ling... that's why they fall flat... because how is it that Wangyan was blind in the illusion arc, and when Wuyi cuts off her tail suddenly she is also blind.... when the two pairings are intimate one another, you can compare how the scenes are filmed and the emotion associated with them.... Wangyan/Shiguang's scene is able to show how deep their relationship goes because at that time they've been together for decades and shows how they are each other's equal... We see them in an equal state of undress, we see Shiguang help Wangyan undo his top!! Meanwhile, the Wuyi/Ji Ling scene was so half-assed, and almost awkward... why is Wuyi in a state of total undress while Ji Ling still got his night suit on.... the touches and looks just... the lighting?? For a show where every other character was pushed aside so these two could have their immature romance, what a FLOP
boulder the size of all seven continents just lifted from my chest thank you i savoured every single word.
among so many other things, i just dont think gjm knows how to write relationships, and not even necessarily romantic but any sort, at least to me. he's able to create the skeleton of what might make a dynamic compelling but is never able to actually give them any flesh, and they end up just staying "good(?) ideas" and nothing else. i also felt this way with mjty and fof, which made it very clear very quickly to me that it couldn't be anything But a writing problem.
the flowers and positivity surrounding his "always queer-coding his characters" (i lack a better way to word it without going straight to accusations) has always made me feel icky because i personally felt those dynamics were especially disingenuous/performative. i think it's much clearer when it comes to his attempts at depicting relationships between women (yes bc he hates them Hard); in vos, we are constantly told lu wuyi and wu wangyan love each other very much and we do get Some showing of this Incredible Sisterhood sometimes but it is Largely relegated when compared to their Much More Deep Intense And Emotional relationships with their respective men. overall, lwy and wwy actually spend More time apart than together, and so much of their overall relationship felt excluded or if/when they Are mentioned, often feels like an afterthought. i was so put off when it was revealed that lwy time-hopped a gazillion times to Actually save jiling when she initially made it about saving wangyan bc, oh! turns out when she says, "my jiejie is the only one who gets me and the only one who truly loves me," etc etc. she was Actually Talking ABout a MAn. never mind the part of the discussion about platonic and non-romantic relationships constantly being shown as if lesser than compared to romantic and sexual relationships, but in vos specifically it just felt like gjm was trying to Force Feed the audience how Great the lwy/jl relationship is without doing any groundwork to back that up. (and then the deux ex machina at the end makes it so that the girlsâ relationship never even existed to begin withâoh but itâs a happy ending bc thereâs hope they can still get with their man again đ§ââïž).
the same thing with the One Singular Only Female shilin sect member you mentioned where there is an actual scene after she croaks where wangyan is comforting that junior brother guy like, "dont cry she died doing what she loved: protecting her loved one" and the guy is like, "yeah she did mention you were her only demon friend" and wangyan was like No The One She Wanted To Protect Was You <3, like im supposed to gasp with tears in my eyes or something. woman sacrifices herself for a man, revolutionary stuff. i skim-watched that ep in a changing room while my mother was trying on clothes and i saw the exact face i made in the mirror, i dont think i could ever recreate that particular expression for the rest of my life.
gjm is so incredibly hetero-centric but queer-obsessed in the weirdest ways and i think that has everything to do with how much i know he secretly (not so) wants women dead. he gets away with the "yaoi" because it involves 100% men and he sort of gets away with the heterosexual bc it involves men somewhere but when it gets to the "WuhLuhWuh" it literally is just that, a keyboard smash.
and i think he was able to leverage some sort of plausible deniability kinda-maybe-like thing in his previous shows, where he could just mask it with the ensemble dynamics (especially in fof) but i think that made him overambitious w vos. i felt like he wanted to speedrun the couples' relationships in the illusion arc to get to a place where they can be considered Established already so he could start spamming his favourite angst tricks but it ended up making the couples feel very bare? like wwy and wsg got the "better" setting where they technically had "50+ years" to "develop" their romance compared to the other two, whose timeline was like, days(?) but bc the screen-time was divided like gjm had tjr in his walls with a gun trained on him, the 2wu pair had more or less half of their relationship montaged and flashback'd while we spend excruciating tedious time with jiling and wuyi. i ended up dropping the show halfway through but jiling and wuyi never stop feeling like insta-love to me. like you said, it seemed like they only got together bc they were "fated".
and this is just the tip of the iceberg orz. your essay was Very much warrantedâliked reblogged followed 5 stars on letterboxd.
recently i started watching a show i knew i was 100% going to hate simply because an actor i enjoyed was in it (she is a woman). prior to this i thought i was above parasocial relationships. the show is, as expected, as awful as i knew it would be but it was So Awful that my anger overwhelmed any possible satisfaction of being proven right. i was so aggrieved i found myself doing meaningless shit like liking hate tweets of the director online and shaking my fists at the sky as i cuss him out.
how is the average person able to watch a show where 99.9% of the cast are men (especially when their favs aren't even in itâyou're doing this with No incentives???). never mind the workplace abuse, you can really tell this man does not believe women should live given the writing gap between the female and male characters, and i am not saying the male characters are Well-written i mean that they are at least Written.
i did eventually drop the show but not before watching (i believe) 15 episodes first and that in itself has aggrieved me even more. i don't even use tumblr 300 days of the year but i am on here using it as a diary because i am So Aggrieved.
Really liked the fact that the title of house 'seclusion' became relevant and that ruyin got to kill her husband while chasing him around in the tunnels slasher style. You rarely ever see such cathartic endings given to a concubine. They are usually treated like the other woman but as we know she was married to him before his wife was and I feel like she deserves to get revenge on him too.
She was his knife to terrorize others for years so now it's only right that she gets to terrorize him with a knife.
Our hero almost died via hair pin by putting our heroine into a murderous rage. The same heroine who he knows has killed her foster parents via hair pin in a murderous rage
The female protagonist of the glory (2025) and the genuine vitriol I'm seeing in reaction to her motives and actions, painting her slow but inevitable descent into more and more monstrousness as she first tries to avenge her own childhood abuse and then her mothers murder, as anything other than a direct retaliation against the very monstrous misogyny and the countless patriarchal crimes committed against her and other women in her society, is a telling sign of poor literacy and an even bleaker lack of understanding of the wider social context that the story sits in. I've seen ppl being annoyed that she hasn't reciprocated the ML's obvious devotion to her, or the heart rending pleads by her adopted daughter/neice to be a loving mother, her threatening to harm innocents around her to achieve her goal of avenging her mothers death even at the cost of her own life as well as others as some of her many crimes. I think what's actually annoying most ppl is that nothing softens her, in fact every story beat, every tragedy, any scrap of affection she gets actually makes her sharper and more myopic in her goal. This is just ONE woman's reaction to abuse and constant tragedy. There are lots of stories of healing from abuse but this very clearly is not one of them. The catharsis she seeks will not be found in the dignity of forgiveness. Frankly I hope she burns it all to the ground
The various fandom reactions to The Glory are hurting me. Any show about the horrors inflicted upon women featuring a woman who has been transformed into a horror because of the horrors ALWAYS proves its own point via fandom reaction.
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