*This is a follow-up post to the video analysis on Jiuchen from the drama Love and Destiny. Yeah, “analysis”.
**SPOILERS ahead.
If I could describe my sentiment toward the character Jiuchen in one word, it would be: complicated.
While Zhang Zhen’s acting is on a different caliber from the rest of fantasy actors, Love and Destiny slowly, slowly drives itself to a point that even Zhang Zhen’s beautiful face cannot save the character anymore. In this post, I will briefly attempt to delve into his character and not hit the bottom of the pool because this is not a very deep one.
Jiuchen is the leading man of the drama Love and Destiny. Why this drama was made or why its male lead was written this way, we cannot be sure. But we can be certain of one thing: Jiuchen is not a character, but a walking bag of tropes and contradictions, all the tropes that are somehow believed to be able to make him better than the other male leads of this genre, and to charm the drama’s target audience. However, once we look past the strong performance presented by Zhang Zhen, it becomes clear that Jiuchen’s character was never given the courtesy of realism.
He has no hobbies, no interests, no ambitions, no personality traits that we can identify with, and ultimately no human struggles. His whole story revolves around protecting his woman and the world — a concept seen in most fantasy romance dramas and barely developed here. We do not get to see anything about his work beyond his advertised powers or why he chose to become what he is. Got an iron suit of armor? At least show us how it’s made.
Jiuchen is just a powerful being who knows everything about everything. The end. And how is this proved? By making everyone around him either oblivious or incompeten.
Was it his choice to become a God of War? Was the responsibility thrust upon him? Is he bored with his job or is he silently finding thrill in what he does but doesn’t care to express it? Is he looking to improve his skills or would he just like to retire? After 60 episodes, all we get from this character is that he has no passion for anything whatsoever, and the final verdict is: we don’t know this character at all.
There has been many male leads of this kind in other C-dramas, but I don’t believe I have ever come across one that is as plain as Jiuchen.
Yehua (Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms) is also a romance-focused character, but at least we are shown his tragic childhood, his mommy issues (maybe…), his reckless nature, and his thing with black outfits; Yuwen Yue (Princess Agents) is a little too perfect for what he is but at the very least we get to see his work in a little more detail and to some degree, the drama presents a solid reason as to why he goes about with his lips sealed; Bai Zihua (Journey of Flower) desires to protect both the world and the woman he loves, but the point is that he has ambitions, which creates a legitimate struggle for him that is both character-driven and plot-driven.
What does Jiuchen show us? That he cannot talk to the female lead because that’s exactly what the drama needs to create conflicts and that he loves her oh-so-much. Jiuchen is hailed to be an undefeatable god of war, but at no point during the entire drama does he show strategic talents or good leadership. Jiuchen is said to have lived for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and has led soldiers into many battles, but it seems his only solution to every problem is to run into it head-first and alone. Jiuchen is said to be an experienced fighter, but he freezes mid-fight and stare at his love interest for the most unjustified reasons.
Is he a dream boyfriend? Maybe so. But honestly speaking, people, would you really want to date someone whose only interest is you? Someone who fails at everything except being with you? And don’t answer too soon, because he even fails at being a man who respects his beloved’s free-will and basic rights. There are no layers to his character, only his devotion to Lingxi (female lead) and what is given on a surface level. Some flashbacks about a war, some angsty scenes of him walking around, and that’s quite it.
While Zhang Zhen is efficient in making us feel the emotions with his performance, none of Jiuchen’s struggles are fleshed out and given the appropriate screen time to effectively convey the intended depth in his character and an explanation to his choices.
For a powerful, noble, and long-lived god he is introduced to be, Jiuchen tends to make impulsive decisions that lack both compassion and intelligence. For a male lead with “weaknesses” the writer obviously wanted to present him as, he is unrealistically perfect.
Flaws?
The biggest mistake Jiuchen ever makes is his refusal to discuss anything with Lingxi (ever) and taking away her right to decide what to do with her life. But then, he succeeds in bringing her back to the immortal world and giving her a lift in magical powers; in the end, despite how he makes the same mistakes by abandoning her and going off to fight evil himself, he defeats the big bad villain anyway and is once again (immediately) forgiven by Lingxi. Note that it was not strategy or experience that enables Jiuchen to win, but brute force, which means as long as the writer says he wins, he wins. Not lesson needs to be learnt to overcome any obstacle. So, what are the struggles here, exactly? Should we even care whenever a character is said to die or get hurt in this drama?
Development?
Jiuchen has none. His way of dealing with conflict remains static throughout. And no, a sudden thirst for kissing is not development.
He claims to love and respect Lingxi when she returns from her trial, but still treats her like he did thirty episodes before. His powers, despite having been affected by the lack of a heart (literally), still function whenever he needs them to, which makes this challenge fall flat.
Jiuchen is never truly tested and he is the idealized version of the most generic brand of male love interest in fiction. He exists to fulfil a fantasy; and watching him, it’s too fulfilling that it is not even fulfilling anymore.
In short: if Jiuchen feels like a version of Moyuan (Yehua’s twin in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms) in a fan-fiction to you, it’s because he probably is. Watching the drama, there’s no escaping the fact that Jiuchen was written to blatantly contrast Yehua’s (and possibly even Bai Zihua’s) failures. Protect the woman and the whole world, and do it better than any male lead that came before – this is Jiuchen’s only purpose of existence, and the explanation to why the gender stereotypes his character reinforces are so obvious.
Now, let’s talk about a bigger mess in Love and Destiny, which is…
THE ROMANCE ITSELF
Well, they are adorable. But unfortunately, that’s just Zhang Zhen and Ni Ni, not Jiuchen and Lingxi.
Watching this drama a second time in order to write these analyses, I constantly question the pairing of Jiuchen and Lingxi.
They have absolutely nothing in common except for the fact that they are both not evil and the external pressures that are placed on them – Lingxi with her mysterious energy, and Jiuchen with his I-have-to-protect-everyone thing. Then, there is that “bubbly woman who breaks the mysterious man” trope. I get it, it is an appealing story-telling device, but not if it is the only justification for their relationship.
The answer to the question “how do the lead couple connect?” in this drama is this:
The girl happens to be in the same place with the male lead one night, discovers that the guy is freezing up, therefore understands his pains and is now the woman for him; and because the guy is the only one who knows of the mysterious energy the girl carries, the only one powerful enough to offer her a solution, and because she doesn’t want to do anything except to be with him all day long anyway, he is now the perfect fit for her.
Sounds like a mess? Yes. Unfortunately, that is the explanation to Jiuchen and Lingxi’s relationship. They have no other connection.
Actually, there is another explanation: he bumped into her when she was a baby younger and she bumped into him later on.
So… Destiny?
Yes, people love to point to the fact that Lingxi is the the only woman who understands Jiuchen’s pain and treats him like a man, unlike other female characters who treat him like a perfect god, to justify this unbalanced power dynamic. But here’s the thing: this trope is seen in nine out of… eight romance fictions out there. A female lead who has nothing else to offer and no life goals is usually the one who “understands the powerful man’s pain”, is the carrier of some mysterious energy, and maybe a secret heiress to some immense fortune that she doesn’t want because she’s too pure to care about all of it. Therefore, I should hate to break it to you, but Lingxi isn’t special.
On top of it all, their so-called romance is, at the core, Paternalistic Chivalry. But that is a topic for another post.
It is remarkable how dramas like The Story of Minglan or Ruyi’s Royal Love treat female characters much better than Love and Destiny — a romance fantasy where the context does not place so much restriction on gender equality.
IN CONCLUSION – I am aware that Love and Destiny is not meant to be complicated. But hey… the 8.3 rating on Douban got me thinking that maybe there’s something profound waiting to be discovered. And so I set out to analyze the male lead…
Well… I probably shouldn’t have.
But once again, I did have a good time with this drama even while shredding it apart; and I am genuinely grateful that Zhang Zhen is the one who carried out the role of Jiuchen, because, in the hands of a less experienced actor, it could have been a lot worse.
“Too fulfilling that it’s not even fulfilling anymore” …….. Epic😂
😂😂
Without CC and NN to give it so much emotional depth? I mean I love this show so much but without them, it wouldn’t work at all.
But anyway, Jiuchen told Lingxi he was boring and the show showed us there was no doubt about it.
Yehua paints, Jiuchen doesn’t. He also doesn’t play the zither, or the flute. I’m sure he doesn’t make poetry either. They never even showed him holding a pen.
Out of all the four arts, he plays go and that I think was only because it’s a strategic game helpful to his career.
He doesn’t eat or even sleep. He’s never shown lying down unless sick. What did he do the morning after? He sat in another room away from her and I really had to chuckle at that part, even right to the end, there was no waking up in each other arms for Jiuchen. And in a way it was foretelling because while he sacrificed for Lingxi but at a moment where he could be said to be vulnerable, he kept himself away from her.
And to talk about vulnerability, JC was showed to let his hair down only twice, once was when he had his power sealed, another time was when he begged Lin Mo to let him stay.
I also find that the show give you enough hints and world building to establish who Jiuchen was as a character though. GOWs are disposable in this world, there were 4 Demon Lords and 4 GoW. It had always taken a GoW’s life to rid the world of a Demon Lord. His whole life was single purposed. First arc was basically a war time soldier dealing with peace time, suffering through PTSD until he find another purpose again which was saving Lingxi without letting the Demon Lord out.
He had a tragic background, a strict childhood but these things didn’t matter because the guy is so old, he couldn’t possibly be shown holding on to his issues forever because in this show, bad things happen to people who don’t let go. Also this is the show where the premise is what if the gods are gods instead of being plagued with human fallibilities. So if you accept that premise, it’s basically a show about choices and what if good people had to pass tests and had to consistently make the right choices then it works.
It worked for me because well there are plenty of shows with tortured characters who made fucked up choices because of their tragic backgrounds already so I actually found this refreshing.
This is getting too long, I might go back when I have time. But, I don’t think Jiuchen is meant to be Moyuan’s fanfiction, I think he was meant to be DongHua.
Very old powerful god? Very young goddess who was his maid for a while? The massive boulder in Jiuchen’s bedroom which symbolized how he is as stable and immutable as a rock?
What if that old powerful rock god is not conveniently out of the actions at crucial moment leaving the younger guy to pick up the slacks?
Hi JoanP, thanks for stopping by and we appreciate your feedback!
We’re not sure when Jiuchen told Lingxi he’s boring, but maybe he did😁.
But assuming that he’s written to be boring, we’ll say that a boring person doesn’t necessarily equal a boring character, not if the trait is acknowledged and given proper elaboration. You can totally have a CHARACTER who is a boring PERSON but still make him interesting by letting him develop along with the story.
In Jiuchen’s case – yes, logically you can argue that he’s too old and has seen everything about everything already, so why bother giving him likes or dislikes? Makes sense.
But we don’t see it as a factor that contributes to his personality, it’s rather an excuse not to give him a personality, and to make sure that his only interest is Lingxi.
As we mentioned above, Jiuchen’s only quirk is “he who loves both Lingxi and the world”, everything else is only seen on a surface level, all of his plans turn out to be successful, his only “weakness” is that he can’t stay away from Lingxi – these things make him an idealized male lead who’s extremely unrelatable (at least to us) and we find it impossible to sympathize with him.
He doesn’t have to make crappy decisions that screw up other people’s lives, but he doesn’t have to be so statically infallible, either.
Nope, it wouldn’t have worked as well without Zhang Zhen and Ni Ni 🙂
I couldn’t agree more with Joan’s analysis. I was nodding all along while reading. I found that Jiu Chen was sort of a take on Dong Hua more than Mo Yuan. Jiu Chen’s immutability is precisely what makes him so interesting. He admits to Ling Xi that he’s boring. He’s such a high and lofty Immortal he’s almost beyond reach. Duty is all he exists for and that’s made clear, that he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. The way Ling Xi breaks through that barrier is one of the best examples of this trope I’ve ever encountered. It helps that there was so much humor in the drama to offset Jiu Chen’s seriousness. And even though we don’t get a ton of exposition on Jiu Chen’s past, we do know he lost his parents to demons when he was really young and took on the oath to hunt demons and protect all living things when he was a child, which means he’s lived in deep repression all his long life. He’s been lonely and isolated from a very young age and his teacher admits to being very strict on him.
The first time Ling Xi and Jiu Chen meet in the Ice Chamber, is actually a pretty great metaphor for their relationship. He’s literally frozen and she wakes him up and gets his heart pumping again.
This drama actually has some very interesting themes and layers when you look at it closely, and it’s the first drama where the decisions Immortals make can be scrutinized as real moral dilemmas. It has the best representation of a mortal trial I’ve seen, with real consequences and a true exploration of what reincarnation means and whether the life of a mortal being is less or more important than that of an immortal. Lin Mo feels like her own person, not just a plot device and you do wonder about the consequences squashing her life will have for those who’ve grown to love her.
I actually have way more problems with the character of Ling Xi than I do with Jiu Chen’s. Ling Xi gets by on the sheer charisma and personality of Ni Ni but I did have issues with how she couldn’t manage to stand her ground and caves to Jiu Chen yet again even when we presume she’s finally grown into a woman. Renouncing her position as State Master to become his wife was very regressive. I can appreciate that not all women are meant to lead or even want to lead, but I do feel that she could have stood her ground a bit more firmly instead of deciding she was just too bored and lazy to assume any responsibilities and that going back to Jiu Chen was all she wanted. He seems to love about her that she’s submissive, young, sweet and sexy, but keeps making decisions for her over and over again and you can just tell this is never going to change. All he knows is how to be paternalistic, and I get why. That’s who he *is* as a the mighty God of War and protector of all realms, but Ling Xi needs to find a way to challenge that every step of the way and it feels to me like in the end she just throws in the towel because she’s just so crazy about him.
I still ADORE this drama and think it deserves all the views and accolades it can get, and perhaps its imperfections are part of what make it so addictive. Zhang Zheng and Ni Ni totally made this show. Their chemistry is off the charts, and that alone is worth the price of admission. They go together like milk and cookies. They sizzle the moment they’re on screen and you can tell it’s inherent to them. Their easy dynamic off-screen bleeds onto every scene and finding that perfect chemistry is rare as hell.
I’ll stop there because I could go on and on about this drama and never shut up.
Sorry, *Zhang Zhen
Hi Elle! Thanks for visiting this post. And don’t worry, we love rants😀
Agreed with you completely about Lingxi.
About Jiuchen, we honestly don’t see any resemblance between him and Donghua. Yes, they’re both ice-blocks who fall for sunshine girls, but that’s also 99% of male leads in romance stories.
Donghua’s character is much better fleshed out: he’s outwardly cold, but loves to play pranks, appreciates good food, makes private jokes, he’s also a snob, etc. There’s a lot you can say about him without mentioning his love life or the fact that he is “responsible for the world”. The story is not perfect at all, but Donghua does have some legitimate potentials.
Jiuchen has no likes or dislikes, and most importantly, no preferences or beliefs — that’s our biggest qualm. If you have a 60- ep drama but all you can say about its male lead is that “he loves his woman and he loves the world”, then this character needs some work.
If “duty is all he exists for” and he “carries the weight of the world on his shoulders”, then show the viewers his work, what he does to maintain his strength and mental capacity besides beautifully meditating. Create conflict to demonstrate his intelligence.
He doesn’t have to be interesting, but if he is NOT, then elaborate on it. There are many characters written to be plain but turn out to be extremely interesting to follow because the writers explore them well.
To say that a character is boring and then leave him to be boring for the rest of the story is… pretty easy to do.
Yes, we agree that a character’s core should be immutable, but the CHARACTER should have development, should grow from experience. Jiuchen does not. (Again, easy to excuse because he’s-100,000-and-something years old.) It’s not Lingxi’s job to change Jiuchen, he himself should have evolved from his paternalistic chivalry. But he does not. Perhaps because his writer didn’t believe his controlling nature to be a flaw, but a romantic trait instead?
He’s a “lofty immortal beyond reach” with no interests, who is somehow only touched by this simple, ordinary woman with no goals in her life and also no hobbies or interest. That is why we say Jiuchen’s purpose is to fulfil a fantasy, and this fantasy is pretty overdone at this point, TBH.
Yes, Zhang Zhen and Ni Ni are a great pair of actor/actress. And in the end, their performance make up for a lot of flaws.
Thank you for your rant and for reading ours🤗🤗
What bugs me most is how Jiu Chen refused to leave Amo alone in the mortal trial when he knew he could be messing up her life. For a god of war who’s always in control and has fought in so many battles, he’s kind of dumb when he needs to be smart. I know it’s supposed to be romantic or whatever but it just seems like a really convenient trope and it rubs me the wrong way.
And speaking of the trial, why couldn’t they have let Amo fall in love with the other guy instead? Then when she came back, there could’ve been more internal struggle and then Ling Xi’s love for Jiu Chen would’ve been more convincing. Ling Xi’s older sister fell in love with someone else during her trial too but she ended up picking Yun Feng as her eternal partner instead.
Agreed on the paternalistic chivalry. It drives me crazy when these guys in dramas do stupid noble things only to hurt the people who care about them and then they get away with it.
Hmm… good point about Lingxi’s older sister. It’s pretty puzzling that she’s not a goddess yet given the standards to become one in this universe. She’s the one who learns a lot throughout and has done many selfless deeds in both the immortal and the mortal world.
That’s what I thought too.
Love the Iron Man reference lol
Thanks😂
This guy is so freakin blank and boring that in the end I root for them to break up, then at least there would be some real conflict.
Good idea, they should have separated for longer so Jiuchen could learn something😄
Hi all,
I think this was my first Chinese drama, so I can’t understand the comparisons you made with other dramas, but I think you were a bit too harsh on your judgement, especially when you wrote: “He has […] no human struggles that the viewers can relate to […]”.
In my opinion, Jiuchen’s struggle is the most tense of the whole show, the only one that keeps going from the first episode to the last one. I believe that what Jiuchen tries to do is to save Lingxi in order to save himself from being the all-duty God of War. What matter is that he tries to fulfill this personal aim in accordance with his public duty to contrast the demons, but against the written rules on contrasting demons. In other words, Jiuchen struggles to keep harmony between private and public: it is THIS conflict that keeps the whole story moving until the very end.
I think this is clearly detectable by Chinese viewers, because the conflict between public duty and personal feelings has probably been the most important dilemma for generations of Chinese official and literates, as represented by the long-lasting myth of Qu Yuan.
How does his struggle start?
You ask “Is he bored with his job or is he silently finding thrill in what he does but doesn’t care to express it? Is he looking to improve his skills or would he just like to retire?”.
I agree with you on the fact that there’s a lack of explicit information on Jiuchen’s state of mind when he comes back from Changsheng Hai. Something clearly has changed but what, why and how it’s not explicit. We just know that he’s troubled.
However, I think this is consistent with the character’s psychology: since he is the way he is, at this stage they couldn’t make him able to express his feelings himself.
In the initial episodes, information comes mostly from people talking about what his world was like before Changsheng Hai. The story of Lieyi, for example, is necessary to explain who is Zhonghao, why is so important for the Yuan family to hide the truth etc, AND to understand what Jiuchen has lived before that battle. Then, we have his own memories: there are clues of him fearing to become a demon himself: at the end of episode 7 this is showed quite explicitly.
The symbolic construction of the story based on taoist principles supports this interpretation, I think.
In fact, the Mount Youdu battle is a turning point where life and death reach their maximum/minimum expression: it is the apex of the Demon Lord’s power and its falling point, while life starts flourishing again.
The meeting of Lingxi and Jiuchen there represents the contradiction embedded in the Mount Youdu battle: the victory of life for all beings means death for the protector of life Jiuchen, because he killed so many, and he himself dies. On the other side, Lingxi is the new life that harbours the root of death.
So, when Jiuchen is back from Changsheng Hai, he’s acting as the protector of life, but he is in the death realm, he embodies death: in the initial episodes, Jiuchen constantly recalls that he personally killed his closest friends (Yuan Zheng, Lieyi), and his difficulty in letting go his sorrow is widely displayed. Moreover, he keeps freezing every time he recalls the battle.
Actually, the nature of his element also highlights that his moral character has something wrong: ice is blocked water. In taoist philosophy water is considered the element that best represents the perfection of moral character, because IT FLOWS and always finds its way through accordingly with the overall situation. In Jiuchen, at the beginning, the water DOES NOT FLOW AT ALL.
So, I concluded that he is not enduring to be a no-mercy God of War anymore.
Another metaphor of this inner contradiction displayed throughout the show is that every time he tries to save Lingxi, the only way he finds is to kill her, and when he prevents her death, he risks to die instead. On the same level, the fact that he ends up in the demons’ realm in the last episode is an appropriate ending that closes his cycle interrupted at the Mount Youdu battle.
As you correctly pointed out in the analysis of Lingxi, her role is just that of providing him a complementary element to support his growth process and to help him develop his conflict. In fact, these two characters are complementary both on the private and on the public level:
1) Lingxi has fire as element, while Jiuchen has (iced) water;
2) Lingxi is pure life that harbors the root of death, while Jiuchen is the death that protects life.
Because of Lingxi, Jiuchen MUST change his stance as God of War: since Yuan Zheng and Lieyi became demons, he had a good reason to kill them, but Lingxi is completely innocent. Not only innocent: she was actively good to him, so it is morally unacceptable for him to kill her. He explains this explicitly to his master in the cave, by citing a few lines from the “Mugua” ode, from the Odes of Wei of the Classic of Odes, used to express deep gratitude and long-lasting friendship. To this, he adds: “that kid was kind to me. All that is happening to her is my fault. How can I abandon her now?”. With these lines Jiuchen states the debt of gratitude he has with Lingxi. If he accepts to kill her, the sense of being the protector of life itself is going to be completely lost.
At the same time, because of Lingxi, Jiuchen CAN change his way of living: metaphorically the fire melts the ice; ideologically, Lingxi offers Jiuchen a new way of understanding life. In fact, she sees life as something that can be lived and protected (life as cause and consequence), instead of life as something that must be protected and refused (life as cause and death as consequence), and this helps him to find a new way to perform his duty. His ability to harmonize his public duty (be the perfect God of War, choosing life as cause) and his private agenda (save Lingxi, choosing life as consequence) is what prevents Jiuchen’s feelings to become an inner demon that would lead him to bad actions (as happens to Jingxiu instead).
The arc where Jiuchen falls in love with Lingxi and he’s finally able to change his perspective (episodes 15-19) is closed by the long dialogue in the cavern between Jiuchen and his master (episodes 20-21): I see it as a “teenager experience” where he finally says: “I’m choosing my own path”. This new, original path, is, precisely, embracing the yin (he’s is the death realm, and he must accept it and go with the flow) in order to take life as cause and consequence, heading back to yang.
This is why he falls for her. On the psychological level, I think this is very appropriate, and far more complex than the motives that push Lingxi to fall for him.
Coming to the love story, I believe that it makes sense only as a whole, if we watch the two characters going down two parallel paths in opposite directions, learning from one another how to be more lively and impulsive (Jiuchen) and more mindful and responsible (Lingxi).
This interpretation, in my opinion, is revealed again by symbols. During the mortal trial, in fact, they “exchange” their elements: Jiuchen gets the fire burning instead of the stone of Nüwa and Lingxi’s element becomes water. This is made clear by constantly linking her with water (he throws her body to the mortal realm through water; when she’s adopted it rains, her first trial is to be thrown in the lake, she goes to live near the sea…), and by making Siming saying it explicitly when he practice divination for her (episode 32). Jiuchen slowly starts behaving like fire, making impulsive decisions, and he learns to face his own frailties, while Lingxi becomes quiet and with a great inner strenght, like water. All the fuss they make about the Mount Zhuwu made plain with just one Kunwu sword blow (episode 25) seems to me as a way of highlighting this change in the character, with an impulsivity increase and an improper anger outburst.
In the third part, they get their elements back and both their characters are more balanced, since they learnt something from the other. It is at this point that we have the real love story, and the cycle starts again with the couple Jiuchen-Lingxi (full life) against the one Jingxiu-Yuan Tong (full death).
It is the last time that Jiuchen must confront private and public. It’s the first time he could definitely share the burden, since Lingxi became High Goddess, but he choses not to do so. Why?
I agree with you that it is for keeping the tension high, but I also found this part consistent with the character’s psychology.
In fact, people raised with a strong sense of duty usually find it very difficult to share burdens or to delegate. They can’t help but sacrifice themselves even when they know they’re making a mistake. What I found interesting, here, is that in Jiuchen’s mind the public good disappears and now he finds himself struggling with two private loyalties: the one to Lingxi and the one to his Master. If you look at it in this perspective, the choice to sacrifice himself is the only one that enables him to save both people.
In fact, at the end of episode 58, the oath he took as a kid is juxtaposed to the promise he made Lingxi, showing that now he’s feeling that this two promises are on the same level to him, and so he can’t choose to let one down.
I think this time Jiuchen’s mistake is not the same as before (when he’s actually paternalistic, I agree), but only immature. This time what he’s failing to understand is that they can be strong as a couple. This is underlined by Lingxi, just after discovering he’s in the Fuling Abyss, when she says he (wrongly) assumed she would have stopped him, and by the fact that in the end the only way to defeat Jingxiu is precisely working together.
In any case, as I wrote before, his “death” in the last episode seems appropriate to me, since his “symbolic arc” should have a closing in the dark where it started, while Lingxi should find herself completely in the realm of life.
My last point is about the relationship Jiuchen has with duty, that in my opinion recalls a widespread psychological struggle experienced by many young Chinese people in the last decades.
You asked: “Was it his choice to become a God of War? Was the responsibility thrust upon him?”
My answer is: both.
He was crafted by Tianzun to be the perfect God of War and he, as a kid, developed a strong sense of duty that was able to kill almost completely his personality. He was raised with only two concepts in mind, duty and filial piety. These are tightly intertwined, since the oath he takes as a child links his duty to fight relentlessy against the demons to the filial piety both towards his parents and his master.
He’s so controlled that he doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat, he drinks tea just because it would have been impossible for any Chinese to imagine a person without it; similarly, he drinks some wine because of etiquette (except in episode 58, where he drinks for “fun” with the guardian of Congjiyuan). From the 3rd episode, it’s quite easy to guess that he’s never had a woman, and he’s not used to laugh.
This psychological condition is showed continuously throughout the movie, and explained explicity by Yunfeng (episode 16), Jiuchen himself when talking with Qingyao during the mortal trial (so, he’s learning to express his feelings!), and Tianzun in the last dialogue with Jiuchen.
I add here that this last dialogue between Jiuchen and his master strongly reminded me of the phenomenon called “hope that one’s kid becomes a dragon” (wang zi cheng long) that followed the implementation of the one-child policy. It is characterized by the fact that all the family’s expectations fall on the only child, that needs to work hard to satisfy them, leaving aside his or her own personal expectations and… love (at least until university). Tianzun makes it clear more than ones, that Jiuchen is the only heir, the only “real” and “reliable” disciple he has.
Again, I think Chinese people strongly related themselves to Jiuchen’s struggles more than we can understand.
To sum up, I came to the conclusion that the whole story actually is about Jiuchen’s development. The real pity is that Lingxi’s character, as you wrote in your other analysis, is just a complementary tool that allows him to revolve around himself. At a first glance it seems that Jiuchen has no layers, while Lingxi is the one with the interesting life (2 deaths, psychological development, boost in status, etc), but you already noticed that Lingxi has no purpose other than being a complement to him.
Last considerations from the “diversity and inclusion” perspective:
1) I LOVED the Shisan character with her transgender identity, with its portrayal of prejudices and struggle for happiness. Her dialogues with Siming are multilayered and deal with gender stereotypes in general;
2) I appreciated a lot the space given to the everyday struggles of two characters with disabilities (Lingxi and Jingxiu). To have both leading characters with disabilities in a show that doesn’t deal with disability as a main aim is definitely very rare.
Sorry for the lengthy reply, and thanks a lot for your comments, that prompted me to reflect in depth on this show.
Hi there!
Thanks for the thorough feedback, we absolutely love long rants here😁😁.
I agree, everything that is labeled as “Jiuchen’s struggle” is there in the drama, and I see them too.
But the point about these “struggles” is that no matter what Jiuchen chooses in the end — be a god of war, be an impulsive teenager, be a great husband, be with Lingxi, abandon Lingxi, etc — there are no (real) consequences for him. Therefore, his “struggles” are invalid.
The drama is great at throwing trouble at Jiuchen, but none of it matters if his way of dealing with things doesn’t change and he ends up getting everything he wants.
I absolutely love the cultural and Taoist elements you pointed out about his characters, but I’m afraid there isn’t enough in the drama to back this up except for Zhang Zhen’s performance.
Using your example:
In the mortal land, you see Jiuchen and Lingxi’s influence on each other in a positive light; but for me, this is where Jiuchen shows he has no capability whatsoever and shouldn’t have been elected God of War in the first place. There’s no way an experienced war leader with hundreds and thousands of years in training could have thrown caution to the wind to that level and make the kind of mistake that he makes. Even if it’s as beautiful as you’ve put it: He’s starting to behave like fire.
Does he NOT know that the sooner Lingxi finishes her trial, the sooner she can come back? Does he… just not think when he’s around her? They can’t advertise him as this bada** fighter, but have him behave like a teenager and then say that it’s all because he’s in love for the first time.
Still, Lingxi passes the mortal test and Jiuchen’s plan succeeds.
In the end, once again, a leader with common sense would have known that he could not resolve everything BY HIMSELF, but once again Jiuchen picks this option and once again, he’s hailed as the world’s savior and Lingxi looks at him like a perfect god no one can match up to. And that’s the problem: none of the choices or their differences mean anything if the outcomes are the same, if the other characters’ reactions to them are the same.
If Jiuchen does something wrong, his master will come and help. If he dies, he’ll come back in 5 minutes. The resurrection thing in this drama takes away any suffering and solid development there could have been.
Plus, yes, the guy has no likes or dislikes, no quirks, no established habits, no preferences except “my superpower is limited, so should I let them die or should I let her die?”
From a “mortal” standpoint, he’s not really relatable. And again, people might argue that because he’s a god, his struggles shouldn’t be relatable. But isn’t the whole point of this romance to humanize Jiuchen?
Jiuchen carries all the fantasy-male tropes there are in the universe — cold guy, dark past, tough choices, no women before, waiting for an innocent ray of sunshine — and to me that backfires because the product is an unreachable fantasy.
It can easily be said that he has no personality because he was crafted to be a war god from youth as you’ve mentioned, but to me it’s more like an excuse for his lack of personality from his writers. Also, judging from his poor decisions, they must have picked the wrong guy because he’s not that great of a war god😂
Sorry if I was a little harsh, my group and I did enjoy this drama since the acting is still top-notch. I guess we just hold Jiuchen to different standards.
Glad we can agree on Lingxi’s character, though.
And yes, we love Si Ming and Shisan’s humor.😄
Thanks for your reply, not harsh at all, and in any case I love debate =D
I was brought up myself with a strong duty-related education and everything, and I really empathized with all the points you make on Jiuchen.
I related to his not having any hobbies, to his doing things by himself even when he knows it’s wrong. I also shared with this character the difficulty of being reliable while experiencing some “freedom” and forgetting “duty”. It took really a lot of time to me to find a new balance between being good at what I was very good and having some fun and hobbies. I really had a period when I moved to being the most reliable person ever to be totally unreliable, in a very similar way Jiuchen does in the mortal realm.
I agree with you that to be a leader you should be able to know your collaborators and to delegate the right task to the right people. But it’s also true that arrogant people like Jiuchen (you will agree that he’s terribly arrogant and keeps looking down everyone because he’s the top of the class) have this kind of shortcoming, they just look down on EVERYONE and they are AFRAID of delegating. This is another thing I learnt in my real life experience. It took a lot of time and a enough distress for me to learn to delegate the right task to the right person and to trust them.
So, maybe I’m the only viewer to feel this, but this character really mirrored many aspects of my personal experience. (And yes, I’ve been a boring person for a long time, and I’m still are, a bit! XD)
About the happy ending, I agree that is absurd. But to be honest it was refreshing to see that even if one is caught in the “Qu Yuan dilemma”, they can hope not to end up drowning themselves in a river. Better: that even if they try to drown themselves in a river, one can still be unsuccessful and have a second chance! XD
Aside our different opinion on Jiuchen, I liked a lot all your articles and videos on this show and it is a pleasure to discuss with you. =)
Since I discovered that watching (and adding subs to) C-dramas can be one of my few hobbies, I’ll keep following your posts and videos. Maybe we’ll have chance to discuss again on some show!
I wish you all a happy 2021! 😉
Yep, agreed on Jiuchen’s arrogance, especially towards the love of his life. He did share some things with his brother and Qingyao, but for some reason, never with Lingxi.
I can completely understand the real life problems you’ve brought up and wish the show could have gone more into details and allowed Jiuchen to experience the full cycle of mistake (in other words, hurt him more😂), Zhang Zhen is more than capable of delivering all the emotion complexity you’ve described.
Glad you enjoyed the videos and articles. Happy 2021! Be safe and well 😀
hmm… I agree with you that Jiuchen is the kind of male lead who will take all the burdens onto himself and sacrifice. But does he have to do it all the time? he can still be a noble god who want to sacrifice but not be dumb, you know
But that’s all he does, thinking that him dying is the best way to go about it. When you hold a position like Jiuchen, you should at least know how to discuss stuff with people and figure out who is best for what job. But the drama keeps forcing these noble sacrifices on him over and over again it’s frustrating
In reply to Sara Pilia’s excellent analysys. I believe you are correct about JiuChen’s character struggles and development being something very relatable to Chinese viewers.
As a Chinese viewer myself, I found JiuChen’s character was far more interesting and nuanced than Linxi’s. It resonated with me far more than Linxi’s character, which seemed more of a standard/typical FL development arc.
To be fair, I agree Jiuchen is still a walking mess of tropes!
A very good-looking mess of tropes.
Honesty I think both characters are crappy. Lingxi is pathetic for never having an opinion or a life of her own and following wherever her shenzun leads, Jiuchen bores me out of my head with his bland expression all the time. I know he’s supposed to be cold but there are other cold characters who are ten times more interesting. I’m only here for the hot kisses and I’m not ashamed for it 😂