#sorry for weird capitalization i wrote it in a google doc and cant be fucked to type right or go back and change everything to be how i actu

[vampirebiter]

Hey what’s mdzs?

thank u for giving me an excuse to rewrite my big post i did a few weeks ago and im sorry for writing an essay for a 3 word ask 

its kinda a romance/supernatural/mystery/horror/drama/kinda tragedy story? 

13 years (or 16 if its the drama) before the start of the story one of the main characters, wei wuxian, died after getting real into necromancy and pissing off everyone in charge. he’s brought back from the dead and the story covers what happened leading up to him becoming the most hated man in the world and after he comes back it follows a supernatural/political mystery type thing. it also shows his romance (or ““friendship”” if its the drama (still called soulmates though)) with the second protagonist lan zhan. 

There’s the book which is 113 chapters long with 13 bonus chapters. This is what all the other versions are based on. It does have wei wuxian and lan zhan in a romantic relationship but the relationship is not very well written most of the time imo. It has good scenes here and there that i really love but it’s bl written by a straight woman who is very obviously homophobic and fetishy at best and at worst writing weird rape porn (seriously if you read the book do Not read the incense burner bonus chapters. The chapter between them, villainous friends, is perfectly fine but those two are so bad they literally almost made me stop liking any version of this story). The main story itself also has some consent issues with the romance every now and then and those scenes suck but i like the scenes that dont suck enough for it to kinda balance out. Not to make it sound like it’s okay that its written that way because like. It isn’t. I can just put up with it for the most part. 

I like the way the book has some of the story elements better than the other versions I’ve gone through so far but it has the issues with the romance like i said and the translation isn’t very good so it made it kinda a weird read for me. Overall i did like the book and will probably read it again eventually but it does have a lot of problems. 

There’s also an animated version (also officially on youtube), a comic (both of which are still ongoing), and two audio dramas (one in chinese and one in japanese which i think hasnt actually come out yet or just started coming out?). I haven’t finished any of these versions yet but I’ve gone through some. 

I’ve watched about 7 episodes of the animated version and tbh i dont really like it so far. I don’t like the art style, there’s been a handful of changes to the story that i just kinda don’t like very much and the characterization of pretty much everyone just feels kinda weird. To me it really feels like one of those shows with a target audience of 14 year old girls so if that is the case the fact that im a 20 year old gay man might have something to do with why it’s not really my thing. It’s not the worst show i’ve ever seen and it does seem like it’s mostly sticking to the book so far though. 

I’m barely into the comic but it’s fine so far. It seems like it’s going to follow the book pretty well and I’ll probably keep reading it. I like it’s art better than the animated one at least and so far it hasn’t changed any of the things that other versions have that i preferred in the book. 

I know nothing about the audio dramas but they’re out there and you can probably find them with subtitles on youtube or something. 

The drama (also officially on netflix and youtube)has a different name (the untamed) and diverges from the original story kinda a lot and doesn’t have the relationship be explicitly romantic but it’s still very gay and is still very much a romance imo. Tbh i actually think it handles some parts of their relationship better than the book since it doesn’t have the bl tropes or consent issues in the way. 

There’s a decent amount of structure and plot changes between the book and show, most noticeably a whole new storyline revolving around the wen clan and the yin iron, changing who invented demonic cultivation from wei wuxian to a show only character, and general changes with him being morally gray and a necromancer because of censorship issues. It also changes the order things happen in sometimes or has characters that weren’t involved in something be involved for some reason. Oh also if you do watch it as a first just know that the whole dumb second flutist thing is show only and it sucks lmao. Most of the changes are perfectly fine tbh they’re pretty much just to streamline the story or for censorship so i understand why most of them are there even if a handful of them i don’t like. 

It’s also got two spin off movies, the living dead and fatal journey. Living dead wasn’t very good tbh it kinda just felt like a rehash of an arc we’ve already seen but worse and not focusing on characters you actually know and care about. Points for giving the villain guy really good eyeshadow at the end tho. Fatal journey was pretty good though. I liked it.