Xiang Liu and You (Yes, You)

This is why I don't have that many YaoLiu gifs. Aside from the neckbiting scenes, I don't have much. I feel bitter every time I try to make gifs for YaoLiu.

Re-reading this novel again after nearly 10 years, many of my opinions on it changed. This time around, I disliked Jing and found Xiao Yao annoying. My annoyance was at peak level last week, which resulted in this roasting. It was quite cathartic :-)

Warning! Semi-serious roasting ahead. If you are a fan of LYF and the various main characters in the novel you may want to skip. Please note that this is all in a spirit of fun. Please don't send dead threats because I roasted your fav :-). Highly Xiang Liu's biased opinions ahead.

 Elise:

Honestly, if Xiang Liu wasn't in this story, then this would've been another typical drama. Who wants to watch that fox try to solve his family drama? It's a snoozefest and like a boring soap opera.

Personally, Xiang Liu and his entire storyline are the brightest, if not the only memorable things about this story. The revealed in the epilogue was a masterful stroke by Tong Hua that upended the entire novel. I would argue that without Xiang Liu and that epilogue, LYF would have been just another romance novel, Tong Hua's solid writing style aside. Xiang Liu was the one that left readers talking and in a state of sadness when this novel was first released; and 10+ years later, he's still the one that generated the endless discussion.

CX is supposedly the male lead and the story is about his journey to unite the land. But the political and war plotting in this book is so amateurish that if you are reading it for that, you'll be asking for your money back. Games of Thrones this story ain't. And who is even discussing CX? The whole thing is just the backdrop for XY and her journey. Utterly forgettable!!

The "male love interest", Jing is ineffective and useless. He's touted as highly intelligent and yet couldn't resolve his family issues. Instead, he had to rely on our female lead to do that. Which isn't a problem, except for the fact that she had to resort to the "beauty trap" and "seducing" his brother for nearly a whole year. CX felt ashamed for "dangling" XY out to consolidate his political alliances, I wonder if Jing felt any sense of shame that the woman that he loves has to do this to help him. Let's not even talk about placing XY into the role of "side-chick", being a shitty friend to Feng Long, and hiring someone else to break up your "best friend" and ex-side-chick's wedding because you are too selfish and too cowardly to do it yourself. And the less that is said about his behaviour during the Plum Blossoms Forest and the whole 37 years of sleeping thing, the better for Jing's image. Utterly pathetic!!

And our female lead is not particularly compelling!! She is a passive participant in her journey; she sat around waiting for a man to sort out his sh*t so he can marry her; She doesn't have many goals/plans of her own (besides waiting for a man to marry her), even her involvement with the political machinations was passive - essentially used as a political tool for marriage alliance. Where's the agency, the drive? Scarlet O'Hara, she is not. Unfortunately, she isn't particularly likable either - willingly being a "side-chick", making a promise to man #1 while still semi-chasing after man #2, engaged to man #3 but sending a confession trinket to man #2. Forever dithering about because she's too cowardly to take decisive action. Neither compelling nor likable - well I supposed she is compelling if you like a hot mess. If you are looking for a story about a hot-mess with "sad childhood issues:", in search of a man to fix it all,  XY is your gal. Utterly pitiful!!!

Apparently, utterly pathetic + utterly pitiful = a healing love story!!! Much compelling-ness.

Lucky for the rest of us who are not into the trainwreck equation above, there's Xiang Liu to save the day!!! We'll just ignore Xiao Yao's clinging onto him, OK ;-).

If LYF is comprised of just those three above (don't forget CX;-)), we wouldn't be getting a drama adaptation. Those drama marketers know what they doing. They are going to dangle Xiang Liu out there like CX did with XY ;-). We're the fools for taking the bait, but we do it willingly because...look at him...

The End!!!

P.S. I actually think both Jing and Xiao Yao are quite pitiful. But since this is a roasting post, we'll save the sympathy for another time :-)

 HeadInTheClouds:

Warning! Semi-serious roasting ahead. If you are a fan of LYF and the various main characters in the novel you may want to skip. Please note that this is all in a spirit of fun. Please don't send dead threats because I roasted your fav :-). Highly Xiang Liu's biased opinions ahead.

I'd protect you with my life lol

 HeadInTheClouds:

CX is supposedly the male lead and the story is about his journey to unite the land. But the political and war plotting in this book is so amateurish that if you are reading it for that, you'll be asking for your money back. Games of Thrones this story ain't. And who is even discussing CX? The whole thing is just the backdrop for XY and her journey. Utterly forgettable!!

He's the male lead but no one's talking about him. Sad.... lol I'll be honest and say the main reason I like him is because he's the one that helped get that fox killed. That fox was gone for 7 chapters all thanks to Cang Xuan :)

Every time he's on screen and he sees XY with Jing, he reminds me of us ahahaha.

Gifs incoming!!!!

Surrounded....

Fireworks <3

He's like byeee, I don't have time for you. I've got other stuff I need to do.

 Elise:

My two faves fighting each other

Lmao I’m watching the show here through your gifs because I haven’t seen this hahahahahahahahaha

smiley XL