Untitled

[missisjoker]

My final review of Veil of Shadows: total garbage.

I know some of you will claim that the show is all visual and translates the story through feelings and emotions but let’s be real for a second here. This isn’t an art gallery, it’s a tv show. Strong visuals can’t replace basic storytelling , and symbolism can’t replace coherent structure and character development.

Characters have interesting ideas behind them, but those ideas never get explored. There is no character development, storylines are abandoned or wasted, random choices than make no sense.

The only character with more or less consistent is Ji Ling, everyone else is just a stand in and a tool to propel his “suffering”.

We are supposed to sympathize with Ji Ling prime and completely forget his cruel killing of puppet Ji Ling, and brush the puppets death as insignificant because he wasn’t real. But if his suffering doesn’t matter because he is a construct, neither does Lu Wuyi’s or Li Jie’s or even Ji Ling’s himself. The show picks and chooses when death and suffering matter, and when they don’t- which is unacceptable.

Visuals are garbage too. Aside from costumes and a few good looking picture perfects it looks cheap and trashy, total downgrade from FoF.

The plot is a collection of plot holes, tropes, queerbaiting and misogyny.

The only reason the show did somewhat ok was thanks to Jiu Jingyi’s clout and Tian Jiarui’s stellar performance.

It’s clear as day now why GJM allowed all those pictures and videos of the shooting to leak, and why the screenplay was leaked a year before premiere. He was simply covering his ass, as he knew nobody would watch the trainwreck of the show otherwise.

[littlepagodatree]

I have the impression that a lot of this show’s hype comes from people pretending there’s depth and meaning where there really isn’t any. Acting as though a genuinely badly written show is somehow deep and evocative makes them feel smart and media‑literate, and that illusion seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Plenty of viewers also conveniently ignore massive character flaws and straight‑up awful or unreasonable behavior, as long as it fits the narrative they’ve personally decided to defend.

[missisjoker]

Guo jiming spent most of VoS emphasizing how lonely and tragic and mentally drained Ji Ling prime was, while he was the fake long Shen for a hundred years, while being surrounded by friends and subordinate. But then, when he recultivated back to life for a THOUSAND years, ALONE, he showed zero signs of any mental instability or even sadness, or anything? How is this even possible?

And then Lu Wuyi… that girl got stuck in the past in a body of a doll, unable to speak, move or do anything- for DECADES- and her loneliness never got a second of attention??

And y’all call this brilliant writing? Seriously???

[littlepagodatree]

As I said on X, Guo Jiming is incapable of writing a convincing, coherent story from start to finish. What he does instead is create stand-alone scenes, and then tries to piece them together with filler information. And fails miserably.

This is why his shows are aesthetically pleasing (although I'd argue Veil of Shadows was horrendous, even aesthetic-wise), but make little to no sense, and are riddled with plot holes.

[phantom248]

I cannot understand why Prime Ji Ling (yes, prime, deal with it) was imprisoned by Yuan Wuhuo.

I mean I get why but HOW?

Prime Ji Ling was a fox saved by Chi Wen. Chi Wen, the supposed respected dragon, who had ties to Shi Lin sect. And Yuan Wuhuo, a member of Shi Lin sect. He imprisoned Prime Ji Ling right in that sect? Where were others? Where was Bai Ze? Where was Chi Wen? Are you saying no knew or cared for a fox they themselves saw imprisoned solely because he chose to heal people but couldn't save one person for valid reasons?

What kind of writing is this?

And even the why is so stupid I cannot explain. If he was such a loving bro who wanted his bro to survive, the hell are you doing bringing him with you on an extremely dangerous mission. You wouldn't even be alive without prime Ji Ling's help, what gave you the right to imprsion him?

[littlepagodatree]

I'm certain we will get a half-cooked explanation in the last few episodes.

I am curious, did Chi Wen knew and choose not to intervene? If so, he's not the merciful dragon deity he was portrayed as.

And Yuan Wuhuo suffers from the same poor, surface-level writing as every other major character in this drama does. He is pitiful, miserable, and unlikable.

[littlepagodatree]

@martybaker

You are free to like the storytelling level of a toddler book if you want, but do not presume to tell other people to shut up just because you don't like it when they call you - or the writing - out.

And do not presume to reduce someone else's valid criticism - especially if it is a native-speaking audience - to "passive-aggressive attacks on your poor self".

[fiftysevenacademics]

People are making the same kinds of criticisms of Veil of Shadows that they made of Fangs of Fortune: simplistic writing, plot holes, recycling of ideas, etc. My take is the same as I had during FoF.

The dialogue is only one texture in a lush landscape of imagery, sound, and mood. It’s not even always the main or most important storytelling vehicle, although it is the one that’s the easiest to pick on because we’re all naturally much better at picking apart language, looking for logical inconsistencies and sloppiness than we are at interpreting storytelling through other means. Plus, this is what most educational systems train us to do, and calling out someone’s allegedly poor writing is rewarded on social media.

But I think that both these shows are influenced more heavily by manga/graphic novels, anime, and games than by novels or other text-dominated formats. I think of the dialogue as being similar to the much more compact language you see in those media, where much of the story is told through images. I’m not super familiar with manga or anime but I’ve seen enough to know that the writing tends to be quite different from the more complex, nuanced writing I’m more familiar with.

The other thing has to do with plot holes and motivations and characterization, and if those things are super important to you, you probably don’t like either of these shows, because both of them are told the way myths are told, through symbolism, where things often don’t make sense.

Why can/can’t a character do a certain thing when in fact it would be better/worse to just do another thing? Who knows! In myths around the world, gods, supernatural beings, and even people do things that don’t make rational sense but the story is powerful and told for generations anyway. Since both these shows are based on myths and mythological beings, it's a good way to so it.

One reason stories told like this work is because they can mean different things in different contexts, and make the audience feel different things each time they connect the symbols in different combinations. Dreams are like this, too, and they are also able to give us strong feelings that are, in fact, the whole meaning of the dream.

FoF and VoS are both stories told through images, sounds, and words that advance a sequence of moods in the viewer. Of course Guo Jinming uses the same motifs and parallels in both these shows! They are companion shows, not quite original and sequel, but complementary and occurring in the same universe– we are meant to connect them. I don’t demand something entirely different from an author every time. In fact, if I like an author, I hope that I will get more of what I like about them in everything they do. Every artist has a trademark style and recurring images and motifs.

In FoF, the characters are vivid and endearing because we are meant to love the characters and care deeply about their relationships because we know in advance that they are all doomed. If we didn’t care, didn’t see a hundred ways they could try to avert disaster, there would be no tragedy. In VoS, the characters are confusing because we are meant to feel destabilized and unnerved by the slipperiness of identity, caring about a character only to question our feelings, grasping endlessly at threads of meaning only to have them pulled out of our hands. How will this end? I don’t know but it will probably hurt.

[littlepagodatree]

@martybaker

This is a tv show, not a graphic novel. Visuals do not replace dialogue or well-written plot no matter how much you excuse it.

I do agree though, visuals and trauma dumping are the only two things guo jiming excels at.

I think we reached a consensus at this point - instead of treating guo jiming works as actual stories with well-thought-out narratives and deep, well-designed characters, we instead should treat them as atmospheric photoshoots, and nothing more.

[fiftysevenacademics]

People are making the same kinds of criticisms of Veil of Shadows that they made of Fangs of Fortune: simplistic writing, plot holes, recycling of ideas, etc. My take is the same as I had during FoF.

The dialogue is only one texture in a lush landscape of imagery, sound, and mood. It’s not even always the main or most important storytelling vehicle, although it is the one that’s the easiest to pick on because we’re all naturally much better at picking apart language, looking for logical inconsistencies and sloppiness than we are at interpreting storytelling through other means. Plus, this is what most educational systems train us to do, and calling out someone’s allegedly poor writing is rewarded on social media.

But I think that both these shows are influenced more heavily by manga/graphic novels, anime, and games than by novels or other text-dominated formats. I think of the dialogue as being similar to the much more compact language you see in those media, where much of the story is told through images. I’m not super familiar with manga or anime but I’ve seen enough to know that the writing tends to be quite different from the more complex, nuanced writing I’m more familiar with.

The other thing has to do with plot holes and motivations and characterization, and if those things are super important to you, you probably don’t like either of these shows, because both of them are told the way myths are told, through symbolism, where things often don’t make sense.

Why can/can’t a character do a certain thing when in fact it would be better/worse to just do another thing? Who knows! In myths around the world, gods, supernatural beings, and even people do things that don’t make rational sense but the story is powerful and told for generations anyway. Since both these shows are based on myths and mythological beings, it's a good way to so it.

One reason stories told like this work is because they can mean different things in different contexts, and make the audience feel different things each time they connect the symbols in different combinations. Dreams are like this, too, and they are also able to give us strong feelings that are, in fact, the whole meaning of the dream.

FoF and VoS are both stories told through images, sounds, and words that advance a sequence of moods in the viewer. Of course Guo Jinming uses the same motifs and parallels in both these shows! They are companion shows, not quite original and sequel, but complementary and occurring in the same universe– we are meant to connect them. I don’t demand something entirely different from an author every time. In fact, if I like an author, I hope that I will get more of what I like about them in everything they do. Every artist has a trademark style and recurring images and motifs.

In FoF, the characters are vivid and endearing because we are meant to love the characters and care deeply about their relationships because we know in advance that they are all doomed. If we didn’t care, didn’t see a hundred ways they could try to avert disaster, there would be no tragedy. In VoS, the characters are confusing because we are meant to feel destabilized and unnerved by the slipperiness of identity, caring about a character only to question our feelings, grasping endlessly at threads of meaning only to have them pulled out of our hands. How will this end? I don’t know but it will probably hurt.

[littlepagodatree]

People have a right to criticize a poorly written show such as Veil of Shadows.

A sequence of styled, posed visual shots is not a substitute for an incomplete story, just as stand-alone heart-wrenching moments are not a substitute for a well-crafted plot. Aesthetic anguish is not character development.

Myths are symbolic but not arbitrary, there is always an inherent logic- that is lacking in guo jimings works.

Asking for plot to have logic is not western or eastern, many mangas and animes use abstract and symbolic devices while they also have a disciplined narrative.

If you value a string of atmospheric, posed shots over a well-developed story- it's your preference.

But expecting a tv drama to have a well-thought-out and written plot is a valid preference too.

As for the ending... its a guo jiming drama, so of course all heterosexual couples will have a bad ending.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I’m blindsided by authors using ai in their works. how can readers and writers tell if the writing is ai generated?

I’m gonna assume writers know whether or not their own works are ai because they either write them themselves or have ai write for them.

but as for readers (or writers who read other writers’ works), no, you can’t tell unless the writer themself says their works are ai generated. anything else is witch hunt, speculations and possibly wrongful accusations — all of which harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

so if at any point you think an untagged work is ai and if that bothers you, quietly click away. but you can never know for sure based on vibes. because everything ai writes, a human writer does. that’s what ai was trained on and what it was trained to mimic.

I’ve already talked more about this here, here, here. and more on my other blog @writingdose here and here.

[littlepagodatree]

You can notice certain telltale signs in some of the writing, such as short sentence stacking and usage of "not x not y but z" structures. But you have to be familiar with AI writing styles to be able to notice that.

[limitbreaker23]

My little rant about romance in dramas because VoS made me wanna rant. (People love different kinds of romances, there is no universal validity, there is only me talking to myself to get it out.)

See, I don't like when romance dramas make me sit through the dramatic parts and I should care, but I not only remain tearless but go like, "just find a new fox therapist boyfriend, it isn't that big of a deal, love."

Ji Ling wanted to do this, he's okay with the consequences for himself, let him end it like that.

Wuyi insists. Why? Why does she insist, what would they even talk about in their free time? We don't know. You can only wash bloody hands and mysteriously discuss flower metaphors so many times. There is plenty of dudes out there that will do that with you. What you want isn't a life with him, it's that he makes you feel special after you lived a lonesome existence. You want him alive, because then you're not lonely anymore. You had a sister, I know you forgot, but she is right there telling you not to do this either. That's just sad. Don't mess with time travel for a dude that is something vague like "great" and "kind".

It's a shallow romance that tells you they feel for each other, but they don't show it. There is no respect, there is not even any interest in learning about motivations. (Not that the main character has any motivation, only the side characters do, but "no particular order".) Love is so very effective as a story when it's strength. Even when your beloved dies, their love will have always touched you, stay with you, give you strength to go on.

If you lock your dear people up in time travel or caves so that they don't burn to ashes, you might very well turn into a Great Demon... or a deity, I assume.

Tian Jiarui getting meng'ed again.

[littlepagodatree]

You wax poetics about shallow hetero romances yet will praise the depths of Guo JiMing's writing, ideas, and homosexual subtext for the ships that suit your taste.

You can't have both.

[missisjoker]

You know guo jimings writing is piss poor when even his own actors criticize him for it 🤣

read and tell me which drama I’m talking about, VoS or FoF:

- male lead is the vessel for strongest power in the world

- protagonist is possessed by evil power and turned evil against his/her will

- to save female lead from dying, male lead sacrifices himself and becomes rain

- the protagonist is forced to kill the other protagonist at his / her request and bear the responsibility for it forever

- the protagonist ends up alone after killing the other protagonist, loses everyone or is separated from everyone even his loved ones and friends

- there is a protagonist’s childhood friend that is opposing everyone

When GJM can’t plagiarize other people, he plagiarizes himself, down to costumes.

That said, Can I expect at least SOME character development for alleged “messiah” Wu Shiguang or for Wu Wangyan? You know, the two supposed main leads? Or will they continue to be just tools for Ji Ling prime and li Wuyi misery?

Or for “tits out, brain empty” Li Jie? So far all he’s done was play a queerbaiting tool with one single thought in his brain, “long Shen”.

This should’ve been a 24 episode drama. Knowing guo jiming, last 6 episodes will be noting but unnecessary pain porn.

[missisjoker]

Oh, Chi Wen/Ji Ling Prime, what a delicious irony.

Remember what you said about puppet!Ji Ling?

He isn't real, he was made, he was just a puppet, he can't feel anything.

So why are you crying now?

By your own definition, Lu Wuyi is too, nothing more than a mere puppet. Her body was made from pieces of other foxes, her memories were installed by the Seprent, her face was molded to resemble a human girl that has been dead for millennia. Even her heart actually belongs to her sister. So why are you crying? She is just a puppet, incapable of feeling anything, right?

Also, by the same definition, Li Jie is a mere puppet too. Body made by the power of a demon, consciousness given by the same demon (accidentally). Hell, Li Jie is even LESS than puppet!Ji Ling because he doesn't even have the original person's memories!

[littlepagodatree]

Indeed, what an irony.

Woodenhead Ji Ling is still casting a long shadow over all of them, even so long after his death.

I would say it were a brilliant move by Guo JiMing to show us how wrong Long Shen/Chi Wen/Ji Ling's and Li Jie's attitude towards woodenhead Ji Ling was by forcing them to go through the same tribulations... But that would be giving him too much credit.

[missisjoker]

Spoilers for ep 18!

So, let me get this straight- old man Wuhuo goes into a cave to die, and gets eaten by the butterfly demons. His body is devoured, and then his consciousness gets eaten away and digested over the course of decades, piece by piece. While he is still conscious (because otherwise she wouldn't say "his will was unyielding"- that implies he was resisting, which means he was conscious). A slow, excruciating erasure of one's self. What a horrific way to die, holy crap. Eldritch horror.

That said, I don't get Long Shen/Ji Ling Prime's reaction.

He was just told that his bestie he allegedly loved and cared for was eaten and then tortured and slowly, very slowly consumed, and his only reaction is "Yes, he was stubborn."

That's it??? No flash of anger, no sign of anguish at the horrific fate of Wuhuo, nothing? Just this?

I went and rewatched the scene because I thought I missed something- but no. That's really it.

I know he is desynthesized at this point, but he shows plenty of emotions when Lu Wuyi is hurt, so he's not completely emotionless? What is this??

And no, the explanation that "he was playing a role while talking to JY, so he couldn't show emotion" doesn't fly, because she is not looking at him at this moment.

So why no emotion?

Mind you, Tian Jiarui is so good, he could've easily shown a flash of anger or sadness or anything else on Long Shen/Ji Ling Prime's face, really. Yet that face remains unperturbed.

[raspberet]

Veil of Shadows, ep.17

[littlepagodatree]

honestly it feels weird to see Chi Wen suddenly be all smiles like that. They've spent only what, 5 days in the prism? Too soon.

That said, I still keep wondering why he was so "lonely" and cold in the sect. He was pretending to be the Dragon Lord, yes. But that didn't stop him from talking to people? From enjoying life? Even if he didn't go outside of Shilin sect, he could've had friends and comrades within its walls. So, why? Seems so far that his isolation and coldness and sadness were purely self-inflicted.

He likely killed woodenhead Ji Ling out of jealousy, since Ji Ling enjoyed life and met a person who loved him, while Chi Wen wasn't allowed to have any of it. But as of right now, he is the person who restricted himself from the joys of life, when he didn't really have to.

[sleepytimegrrl]

Veil of Shadows (2026) Episode 07

[littlepagodatree]

Look at this gif set and tell me if that looks like love to you (Li Jie x Ji Ling).

I can't believe some people are still claiming Li Jie loves Ji Ling (the puppet) the same way he loves Long Shen/Chi Wen/Whatever his real name is.

[missisjoker]

[fiftysevenacademics]

I have nothing smart or insightful to say so I made this dumb bingo card instead.

[sleepytimegrrl]

Veil of Shadows (2026) Episode 08

[mutantfactor]

Veil of Shadows