I agree with your critique of his character, but Gu Jing's is also shallow with no backstory, and yet we like…
I don't know enough about Xuan Yu acting skills to agree or disagree in that regard, what I'm sure is that no matter who would play this character he would still have a hard time because the script is limiting. regarding Gu Jing, although we don't know a lot about him we do know enough to like him: he is polite and kind (he helped him when he was sick), he loves to cook and does it very well, he's responsible (he opened a restaurant), he's a boss (which is always impressive), we have empathy for him because of his horrible mother... all of those help us to relate to him and like him and it has nothing to do with his looks, I personally don't find him that attractive, to be honest
edit: also, we see how Liu Da Ren treats Gu Jing, he loves and respects him which makes us believe that he deserves respect and makes us also respect him.
the reasons we don't like Liu Li: 1. he's supposed to be the writer of 2 successful romance books based on his previous experiences, but we as the viewers, never had a glimpse of what he wrote so a big part of Liu Li's identity is completely missing - we don't know how talented he is, and we don't know what happened in his past. 2. he uses Gu Jing as inspiration for his third book but he acts as if he has no past experience - he acts very incent kind of like a child which makes the fact that he wrote 2 romance books pretty unbelievable. 3. due to 1 and 2 we can't understand why, in the love of god, Gu Jing would be in love with him.
so, we've left with a very boring and unrelatable character.
I watched only the first episode and I already love it, especially Wataru's acting, l usually find the actors in Japanese bl vary awkward and stiff, makes it look a little unbelievable, but here it's vary confident and free, it's vary refreshing, I hope to see more of this from Japanese actors.
I think Teena as the more experienced one should have known better, he knows that it's going to be Zouey's first…
hmm... I'm not sure if he understood he was wrong, I need to see more episodes before I decide if he's a good guy... but to be honest, they are the only couple that interests me right now
nah man because now I’m upset. I’m not upset at the drama or anything like it really good lol so don’t get…
I think Teena as the more experienced one should have known better, he knows that it's going to be Zouey's first time and he doesn't necessarily know how to use safe words, also, they weren't going to do anything spicy as far as we know and I feel like a safe word, in this case, is really unnecessary, I think "we should stop" is pretty clear. even if Teena wasn't sure, he should have stopped, and if Zouey didn't mean it he would say "No, I didn't mean it, please continue". It doesn't need to be more complicated than that, so... yeah, I think Teena is 100% guilty...
regarding Gu Jing, although we don't know a lot about him we do know enough to like him: he is polite and kind (he helped him when he was sick), he loves to cook and does it very well, he's responsible (he opened a restaurant), he's a boss (which is always impressive), we have empathy for him because of his horrible mother... all of those help us to relate to him and like him and it has nothing to do with his looks, I personally don't find him that attractive, to be honest
edit: also, we see how Liu Da Ren treats Gu Jing, he loves and respects him which makes
us believe that he deserves respect and makes us also respect him.
1. he's supposed to be the writer of 2 successful romance books based on his previous experiences, but we as the viewers, never had a glimpse of what he wrote so a big part of Liu Li's identity is completely missing - we don't know how talented he is, and we don't know what happened in his past.
2. he uses Gu Jing as inspiration for his third book but he acts as if he has no past experience - he acts very incent kind of like a child which makes the fact that he wrote 2 romance books pretty unbelievable.
3. due to 1 and 2 we can't understand why, in the love of god, Gu Jing would be in love with him.
so, we've left with a very boring and unrelatable character.