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Guess who is my fav in "The Legend of Shen Li"

I'll be honest: I couldn't break through "Shen Li" when it was ongoing because main heroes' dynamics and character traits are absolutely not my cup of tea, but tumblr sold me something like BL with this guy, so, in the drought period in c-dramaland, I decided to give it another try. And guess what? There were absolutely no BL vibes, but the guy turned out to be my type, so I kinda enjoyed watching.

But if I just enjoyed it, there will be no this post, of course. So, let's talk about Mo Fang.

The guy is a son of a bad guy, who was from his infancy raised with the thought that he is amongst enemies and has to avenge his father. Let's stick to this thought: he was groomed to avenge his father in extremely patriarchal society where filial piety is more important that one's life.

But still, even if he was groomed to hate them all as traitors, he was still able to pay attention to kindness and bravery of the main heroine and it made him like her.

So, he grew up with this inner conflict: on the one hand, he is here to avenge his father, it's a very important task in Ancient Chinese setting; on the other hand, to avenge his father he has to betray those around him, who are good people and nice to him.

And, more painfully, he has to betray the love of his life, the Princess he is serving under.

There are two types of unrequited love in cinematography: in Western culture, love turns a villain to the light side and makes them sacrifice themselves for the sake of their love as an act of repent; in Eastern culture, inability to let go of desires leads the character to their doom and everyone accuses them of this weakness post mortem. But this drama combines these two approaches.

Mo Fang's love for the Princess pushes the story forward - him saving his love ruin the bad guys' plan, and his final sacrifice helps the main heroes to win. As if he is a Western villain.

On the other hand, everyone - form the characters to the screen writer - accuses him of being weak and making the wrong choices as if he had free will and was one of those traditional Chinese xianxia villains who made their wrongdoings because of their obsessions. In reality, the guy was groomed for a thousand years to kill them all (and still was not eager to do it), he was possessed by the evil spirits for the half of drama, he wanted to die for the half of the drama in order not to be the weapon of the bad guys (but the bad guys didn't allow him to die). Through the comparison of Sheng Li & her Father and Mo Fang we see that a monster who was raised in love can be a good person, and a normal person who was raised by a villain can fall lowly. And the latter still tried to get out of this abyss.

The only free will he has is his choice to fight against teachings of his groomer, to take back the control over his possessed body in order to save the main heroine and to die in order not to make more troubles to the mains. Still, the main heroine says that he is unredeemable and other characters pay absolutely no attention to his fate and don't take into account the bad guy he is possessed with.

The mains consider his suicide as an act of setting himself free, which is meh. I find this philosophy of "if you are weak, no matter if this weakness is the result of circumstances or it's the prison of your own mind, it's better for you to die" awful. You need to fight your doom and to do impossible, to defy heavens and death itself (and then you become the main hero of the story) or to die trying (and then no one will shred a single tear for you, because only winners count). But I will. I will shred tears. Because everyone deserves the second chance. Thank you, all the dramas that allow it to happen.