RSMasterfade

Just a reminder that scriptwriters have far less power in the Chinese system when compared to their American counterparts. We can't assign blame without knowing the process by which they arrived at the final script. Did the scriptwriters do all the whitewashing for the ML (and messed up so much of the plot) because they thought that's the better story? was it because Tencent Video's data analysis team told them that's what the show's target audience prefer? was it because of censorship? or was it because Jeremy Tsui/his agency conditioned taking the role on whitewashing the ML? We just don't know.

I gave up Chong Zi the drama as it's such a mess but the novel Chong Zi is a completely different type of character than the drama Yetan (haven't read the source novel for TSL). Yetan's dream as a teenager is to be a void villain while Chong Zi's teenage dream is to forever remain a teacher's pet. The novel Chong Zi would not even kill a rabbit after turning 'evil' (and of course the novel Chong Zi has never grilled her shifu's pet fish - she refuses to kill a wild fish even when she's on the verge of starvation). The novel Chong Zi also has very little agency of her own after turning 'evil', just going along with Wang Yue's plan while saving as many innocent lives as possible.

Adapting source material whose central premise is forbidden love and removing the forbidden nature of the relationship without informing the audience early on is just bad faith. It's like adapting a BL novel and revealing half-way through the show that one of the leads is actually a woman disguised as a man. At least they should have the decency to show the viewers there's no such taboo in the first episode or two. I certainly wouldn't have bothered with the show had I known it's not forbidden romance.

I can certainly enjoy master-disciple romance in settings where such relations are not considered taboo. But I don't consider those to be of the same genre as master-disciple romance in settings where such romance is forbidden, because their central conflicts are completely different. In the case of Chong Zi the drama, they removed the central conflict of the source novel but kept the plot when the plot had been specifically written to bring out and resolve the conflict that they had just removed. The novel's story was force-marched from checkpoint to checkpoint in a very hamfisted manner to serve the forbidden romance. ML has to hurt FL again and again so his love can be borne of his guilt and overcomes his sense of morals. FL has to suffer again and again so she can turn to the dark side and end the master-disciple relationship and reset their power dynamics in order for the romance to proceed. Remove the forbidden love and you are left with angst for angst's sake.

It's a genre convention in these types of works that master-disciple relationship is considered taboo on the same level of parent-child incest. It's literally called 'master-disciple incest' by people in the setting.

As some commentators put it, there's only a thin line separating a master-disciple romance drama from an episode of Law & Society (a long-running crime documentary show in China). For me this show crossed the line with too much body contact and show of romantic affection initiated by Luo Yinfan. I get the second Chong Zi in the show is supposed to be an adult when she becomes Luo Yinfan's disciple, but that doesn't fully excuse his behavior as he's still her shifu. I'm aware they wanted do break from the cold and aloof shifu trope, but surely it's possible for a shifu to be warm without being flirty.

The drama version Luo Yinfan is now being called a 'psycho' on social media as he seems okay with openly flouting the taboo on master-disciple relationship. But that's not something for him to flout. The morality here has two layers. As a matter of conventional morality, in the setting of those stories both the disciple and the master are considered morally wrong for romantic (let alone sexual) conduct/initiative. But as a matter of critical morality, there is a clear moral asymmetry between the two parties. As Bai Zi Hua put it in the Journey of Flower (novel not drama), it's not wrong or shameful for Hua Qian Gu to love him, but everything wrong and shameful for him to love her back. You can't have a shifu semi-openly flirting with a disciple and say "look! what a rebel!". Just no.

The ML mutilated the FL in an extraordinarily grisly manner to prevent her from accessing any dark power during her imprisonment. I'm not going to describe it in any detail because that would make me sick.

I pity their children, really. They're going to get so traumatized when they find out.

Funny that the most upvoted review of the novel on Douban is titled "Between Bai Zi Hua and Luo Xuan there are 1000 Luo Yin Fan". Luo Xuan is the scum of a shifu from the Snow is Red.

It's almost certain that in the drama Luo Yinfan will not commit that unspeakable act of violence against Chong Zi like Luo Yinfan did in the second arc of the novel, which means the drama Luo Yinfan wins by default.

I'm generally of the type that supports every canonical couple if that's what they want, but when reading the bonus novel chapter about the main couple's married life I was like "girl! how can you let the hands that did THAT to you ever touch you again? how would your children feel if they ever learn their dad once did THAT to their mom?"

Overall I do like the novel better for its characterization though.

The drama really tried very hard to whitewash Luo Yinfan. There's a huge "anyone but Luo Yinfan" crowd among novel readers. If you want to enjoy the main couple's romance the TV version might be better.

In the novel after the orb’s destruction Min Yun Zhong sentences Chong Zi to execution by lightning for disrupting the cleansing of the demonic sword, but he leaves the final decision to Luo Yinfan and leaves the room with others to allow privacy for the shifu and the disciple.

Once they’re alone (except Chu Bufu’s soul in the demonic sword), Luo Yinfan waives Min’s death sentence and instead sentences Chong Zi to imprisonment at Kunlun. Chong Zi refuses to accept this light punishment as letting her off so easily would be an abuse of power and she doesn’t want it to weight on Luo Yinfan (remember in the novel the first Chong Zi suffers from serious self-esteem problems and has an extremely unhealthy codependence relationship with Luo Yinfan). But Luo Yinfan also insists on not killing her.

Chu Bufu’s soul (still in the sword) then urges Chong Zi not to give up on her life and accept the lighter punishment. Chong Zi realizes that Chu Bufu is the only one who has always believed in her. She already regrets returning to Nanhua and wishes that she has chosen to stay forever with Chu Bufu in his Domain in the demon realm. So she walks toward the demonic sword and asks Chu Bufu to take her away. There’s no indication that she’s under any kind of influence from the demonic sword.

Luo Yinfan is then finally convinced that Chong Zi’s fate as the sword’s next host cannot be avoided without killing her. He draws his sword, then leaves the room to let his sword do the deed. Chong Zi dies alone in the room with the demonic sword in her arms. Luo Yinfan’s spell would have completely destroyed Chong Zi’s soul as well as her body so she could never reincarnate, but Chong Zi’s soul is saved by Chu Bufu when Chu Bufu’s soul leaves the demonic sword to shield Chong Zi. The Spies at Nanhua then takes Chong Zi’s soul, seals her memory and sends her to a new body (Wen Zi’s) without going through the normal reincarnation process.

The drama version is of course intended to whitewash Luo Yinfan by showing Chong Zi being clearly under the influence of the demonic sword and having her thanking Luo Yinfan. It also reduced Chu Bufu’s role. I rate the novel version as superior if only because Chong Zi is finally allowed some agency. After constantly getting manipulated/framed and letting others trampling all over her to stay with her shifu, this time Chong Zi has finally made a choice of her own: to be with Chu Bufu (even though she still loves her shifu) and suffers consequences of an action of her own choosing. In a way, I felt it was a coming-of-age moment for her, even though it’s her very last moment.

In case anyone is curious about how the first arc ends in the novel comparing to the drama...

Master-disciple romance is an established sub-genre in wuxia and xianxia, with the most famous work being Jin Yong's 1959 wuxia novel Shen Diao Xia Lv (Return of the Condor Heroes) where the ML is a student of the FL and calls her gugu (aunty) until their relationship turns romantic. The current crop of Xianxia male shifu - female disciple romance novels/shows descend from the 1997 Hong Kong wuxia TV series Xue Hua Shen Jian (The Snow is Red), but the Xianxia setting gives them the plot device of reincarnation so they can go through a lot of tragedies and still have a happy ending.

Drama adaptations of those works will have to sanitize the work to make it palatable to a broader audience. If the drama version of Chong Zi makes your skin crawl then the novel version is going to horrify you. In the novel the FL becomes the ML's live-in disciple when she's 10, and that's the thing about the Xianxia male shifu/female disciple subgenre. A typical work in the genre presents itself as about teacher-student romance, which is described as absolute forbidden in the setting, but the master-disciple relationship label works a proxy for what the work is really about: father-daughter incest. It's clever really, taking something we consider less forbidden in the real world, put it in a setting where it is considered as forbidden as father-daughter incest is in the real world, in order to let readers enjoy father-daughter incest with less guilt/repulsion.

One might think this's all terrible. How can people write and enjoy such things? But there are several genre convention working as guardrails to keep the genre from going into the completely immoral territory:
1. Shifu must care for the young FL while keeping a respectful distance. His actions should not be interpretable in any way as grooming the FL.
2. Shifu must be 'pure', i.e. no romantic/sexual relationship at all prior to meeting the FL, and does not plan on ever having a romantic/sexual relationship. The shifu must also look young - he might be over 1000 years old but he must look like he's in his early 20s.
3. Shifu must not be the one who initiate the romance. Shifu is allowed to develop romantic feelings for the FL only after learning FL's feelings for him.
4. Shifu must not express/act upon his feelings for the FL (if there's any) when she's his disciple or under his care/protection.
5. The FL will eventually become as powerful as/more powerful than her shifu and become his enemy. It's only after this transformation (upon which Shifu loses any authority he once has over his former disciple) that Shifu is allowed to express his feelings for the FL.

These convention/guardrails means the romance will have to be extremely slow-burn (at least from Shifu's side). Drama adaptations may want to make it faster paced by removing some of the guardrails, but they're doing it at the risk of crossing into the seriously immoral territory.

So far (up to ep14) the drama presented a very sanitized version of the novel's story. There are definitely upsides to this. Chong Zi in the drama didn't suffer from nearly as much violence as she suffered in the novel. She didn't get violated by desire demons and Wan Jie didn't torture her for months as he did in the novel. Hopefully Luo Yinfan in the drama would not do what he did to the second Chong Zi in the book. That was SO grotesque.

What I'm ambivalent about is how they changed the first Chong Zi's character. In the novel, the first Chong Zi suffered from severe abandonment issues and had very low self-esteem. Her parents died when she was five. Survived as street urchin thanks to a protection spell from Chu Bufu , only to have the spell disappearing when she was 10. Qin Ke, who protected at a key moment during their trial, was unavailable much of the time afterward. Her Shifu is an aloof loner. There's also the constant threat of being kicked out of Nanhua for having an evil aura. So yes it's perfectly natural that she would have abandonment issues. Being constantly reminded that she had an evil aura and ain't allowed to learn spells certainly didn't help with her self-esteem. As suggested in novel itself, to understand the first Chong Zi one only have to look at the demon snake Chong Zi took from Chu Bufu's domain to Nanhua. A creature of Darkness surviving as a pet in the world of Light, defanged and made powerless. Living a frightened, pitiful existence without dignity or self-worth.

Still, it's one thing if they change a character then write the show to fit the newcharacter, but what they did was changing Chong Zi's character without making necessary adjustments to her actions. One cannot just change the MC's character then go on to enact major events in book when the underlying motives for actors in the events are gone. In the novel Chong Zi carried out a lot of childish antics around Zizhu peak because she was an insecure 10 years old girl with abandonment issues trying to attract the attention of her aloof caregiver. One cannot just change the character to a self-assured teenager yet still had her act the same way. This applies even to something as central to the story as Chong Zi's love for Luo Yinfan, which in the novel grew out of her abandonment issues and her desire for a reliable and strong protector to take care of her. Take away those aspects of her character and the love makes little sense.

In the book, the only time I really liked Luo Yinfan was when he reacted with horror and rage when Chong Zi proposed to the Nanhua leaders to have her corporeal body destroyed and her soul sealed in a magic mirror so she could be allowed to stay in Nanhua. It was at that moment Luo Yinfan realized he had failed completely as a teacher, that he took in a spirited little girl and turned her into a woman who saw no value in herself. In the drama they had Chong Zi proposing exactly the same thing, except it made no sense when Chong Zi didn't suffer from low self-esteem and didn't have an unhealthy codependence relationship with her shifu. It's not something a confident woman who always talked back like drama version Chong Zi would ever agree to, let alone propose.

With all being said this show is far from the worst offender when it comes to messing up the source material. Still I suggest people who like angst-filled quasi-incest romance to go read the novel (can't attest to the quality of the English translation though). For people who wants an angst-free and non-incesty master-disciple romance to cleanse the palate, I'd suggest My Disciple Has Died Again (novel or manhua).

Zhang Binbin's character in Song of the Moon is a descendant of this show's main couple.

No, Chong Zi's character in the drama is completely different from the book, and the author did mention that characterization was different. Calling the drama Chong Zi 'cute' doesn't mean the author visualize Chong Zi as "young, naive and childish".

Oh I remember Wang Churan from Serenade of Peaceful Joy, who's about 10 years younger than the FL actress playing a character supposed to be about 10 years younger than the FL but ending up looking and feeling exactly the same age as the FL. She was such a miscast in that show.

I remember at least three secondary couples from the novel (four if you count reincarnations separately)

In the novel FL will get raped by a group of demons. I doubt it will be in the drama version but in the Journey of Flower drama there is a scene heavily implying FL is being raped, so it's possible they do something similar in this show.

You should harden yourself if you find getting beaten up by thugs is too much. I doubt they will put it in the show but in the novel (trigger warning)

Historically yes the princess did have an affair with Liang Huaiji, ran back to the palace after being caught drinking with him in private by her mother-in-law and made her father opening the gate of the imperial palace at night which caused a major scandal. After Huaiji was sent away and the princess was recorded as having made multiple attempts at suicide and threatened to burn down the imperial palace, and her father was forced to recall Huaiji. Pretty much what happened in the show.

Anyway I wouldn't question the princess's sexuality as China historically had different standards for masculinity compared to the West. By contemporary standard Huaiji (the fictionalized version from the novel, we know next to nothing about the historical Liang Huaiji) would be considered masculine due to his intelligence, education and mastery of the high culture. In the novel Huaiji was more or less described as almost approaching the contemporary masculine ideal even though he's castrated. Almost approaching because he has no chance at a "worthy" career, and a "worthy" career in service of one's nation is also part of the masculine ideal. That's the logic of the princess's tragedy: men fitting the contemporary masculine ideal (which was also her ideal for a spouse) would not marry a princess because marrying a princess meant forever forgoing one's political career. Lucky for her, she found someone who almost fit the ideal and who's completely devoted to her. Yet what makes Huaiji's wholehearted devotion possible, that he was her father's castrated slave, also doomed their relationship.