Your tags on the letterbox reviews post T.T I feel exactly the same, relationships, studies, everything....
This show is truly something!
It's really something I would want to talk about in a mega meta/essay/discussion whatever (suiban! Eheh... Hey I'm funny, I'm hilarious!)
But. Since this was a shitty day and my last braincells went to sleep, you'll have to listen to my ranting.
I think this show is very special. It connects to people in a way I've never experienced before (and I was always addicted to stories).
It presents you characters who grow on you, makes you understand them deeply, and then destroys and rebuilts them.
It puts them in impossible situations and we see them take choices that shapes the story and the fate of the people around them.
We see how even when you take all the right choices, even when you become stronger and protect all the people you love and never stop caring for them and always follow your moral compass, things can go bad.
We see how the characters influence each other fate and we completely understand how much only in the last episode.
We see how even the bad guys, the ones who cause the most terrible tragedies, can be a loyal friend (lover EHM EHM) and care for someone.
We see how who could become a good person in the right moment at the right place with the right person, had to become the worst to have a piece of the life he deserves.
We see how even in the worst situations, the people who love each other do everything to stay toghether.
We see how the promises made with every intention of maintaining them, gets broken and not because the characters don't do everything they can to mantain them.
We truly see how "everyone has their own problems".
We see all the sides of the stories and we stand there, without words, shaken, understanding for the first time how the moral isn't black and white, how every person is a universe itself and how in the end, there are even real villains in the story?
(Apart from Jin Guangshan. He really sucked. Point)
We witness the view we have of the world destroyed and we're destroyed with it.
But then we build something new, little by little, with a new understanding of the world, with new eyes, and even if we're still lost, we have a better idea of where we are going. Of where we want to go.
Personally, I felt an immediate connection with Wei Ying since the first episode. In the beginning, he was the main reason I decided to continue the drama (I was at a very low point at the beginning of watching it and I didn't really want to start anything new).
I was familiar with the jokes in the worst moments, with being the ridiculous one, the annoying one. I was familiar with the bright smiles and silent cries and the roll eyes and the "how much do you talk??"
But it was watching his journey that I realized for the first time my self esteem issues. I was never really aware of them, not until I saw others pointing out and gets worried/angry at Wei Ying for the kind of things I also do.
I followed all his journey and by the end of episode 33 I was destroyed. Completely.
But then the story continues. He comes back. He goes to investigate with Lan Zhan and he finds out sooo much about his relationship with Lan Zhan, about all the things he missed 13/16 years before. He starts to understand more about himself too. About what happened. About the things he wouldn't be able to stop, about the people he loved and how things can change so much.
I'm not really good at explaining it, but I started to grow with him. I started to understand more and more about myself, but also to pay more attention to things I missed. And how much I found out I was missing!
I also found myself be able to be again passionate about learning, and to understand what person I want to become, what are the things I want to learn and the things I want to do. After years of nightmares about social interactions (my classmates, with all due respect, sucked) I found myself in a brilliant and lively environment, I found two beautiful people who are now my beloved friends. And I learned how to recognise when my self esteem and trauma problems arrive and how to face them.
I found again the beauty of the little things and a new meaning to the life that was starting to appear so empty.
As I said, to properly talk about this matter you would need a totally woken up me, with more than a single, little, tiny, shy braincell at work. But your question made me feel the need to rant more about it, because I feel you, and I wanted to share with you something more of what I said in those tags. Hope this rant (that is WAAAYYY longer than I expected) wasn't so terrible to read (and I also hope it had some sort of meaning at the end)
