cashew | I'm honestly baffled by how I got sucked into 珏砚 shipping (Reply)

So all this started with me trying to find a silly period drama show to distract myself from the absolute shit show that is HSR plot and writing. I just wanted something to distract me from the horrible script and drag me out of my obsession with 景元, who is still ridiculously amazing of a character but is saddled with an absolutely batshit terrible story. Anyway.

So, 《君子盟》 was...good and terrible in the worst of ways. It started off so very, very good. Despite being set in a fake dynasty that is obviously inspired by the Tang dynasty (with anachronistic shiny things, such as porcelain and stir fry, thrown in under the excuse of "fake dynasty"), the grammar was really good. A very nice mix of classical and vernacular Chinese that gave it a very "archaic" feeling without being rigidly classical to the point that no one without a degree in college level Chinese can understand. Plus, the plot was quite fun and the mysteries were engaging. Even the "water magic that allows instant access into a person's mind" didn't detract from the mystery solving, because the detective still had to put together all the evidence and logically deduce what happened.

On top of that, there's the cute interaction between 兰珏 and 王砚, who are adorbs. Just adorbs. And then there's poor 张屏, the detective of the show, trying to figure out why the two guys are messing with him so hard when all he wants to do is find out the truth. Anyway, it was all fine.

And then episode 15 happened. The moment when the story seemed to go "oh wait, there are BL fangirls watching this show so we better shove some really ill-fitting BL tropes into the story". So for two episodes, the story meandered away from mystery solving and into some weird personal drama that went exactly nowhere. Meanwhile, the cinematography continued to trudge on, acting as if the plot made sense while giving some great moody shots and a really well acted argument sequence between 王砚 and 兰珏. Like, the scenario itself is nonsense, but the characterization somehow still made complete sense given the BS scenario the show was trying to sell the audience.

Then, the show bounced back and acted as if nothing happened and went back to mystery solving. Characters ran the treadmill and got off, then awkwardly began cooperating to solve mysteries again. And just when the story seemed to get back on track, suddenly out of nowhere, a fourth main character drops into the story and it's like WTF just happened? And there's a pseudo-love triangle between 兰珏、张屏、辜清章 (the new guy), while 王砚 gets written out of the story and the story goes from being reasonable to complete utter melodrama.

Both my friend and I were completely confused by WTF is happening with the story that was originally focused on a different trio and suddenly this loser of a new guy comes in to kick out the much cooler, much more interesting old guy and it's like...there's only 7 episodes left out of a total of 29 and the story suddenly wants us (the viewers) to be invested in a completely new character?!

Long story short, after the TV show, I tried to read the novel, failed to get very far when I realized the novel is a completely different animal. So I put the novel down, went to read a bunch of fic and watched a bunch of music videos, decided to try again and read the 王砚 short story first, which was...just as horrible of a mystery as the main novel, but 王砚's characterization seems to mostly stay the same even if his backstory is completely turned around. So, I go back to trying the read the main novel and it's like...well, that was completely different and bad in its own unique way.

Let's just say that our supposed "main character" 张屏 often goes missing for five to ten chapters at a time. 兰珏 is supposedly "being shipped" with 张屏, but like...they barely share scenes together. Meanwhile, 兰珏 somehow still manages to have cute interactions with 王砚, but in a completely nonsensical way, because...uh, why are the two of you flirting with each other when 兰珏's child is kidnapped? WTF is happening? Also a dungeon with stone pushing puzzles is involved.

Oh, and apparently the one element that got kept from the novel into the TV show adaptation was that 兰珏 and 辜清章 were soulmates who shared a bed together. But in the novel 辜清章 is dead, so like...that ship is sunk. Not that anyone cares about that ship anyway because 辜清章 is basically an NPC with no personality and only shows up in one story arc. And did I mention 兰珏 and 王砚 both have wives and children? Ok, a dead wife in 兰珏's situation, but the point is the man married fast and had a kid and... What I'm trying to get at is that while the story has some "BL vibes", there has not been, at this point where 264 chapters have been published (the work is still in progress), any indication of an actual BL ship. The closest novel canon ever got to BL shipping was a dead soulmate from ten years ago. This does not an interesting ship make.

I would say that the "NO CP" tag is very, very appropriate. This really isn't a BL work. At least it's no more "BL" than a lot of otome games out there, where they might throw in some scenes that have BL flavor, but no actual BL.

...and I'm getting off topic.

The point is, somehow, I got sucked into reading this terrible novel (it sucks both from a mystery standpoint and from a shipping standpoint, there is nothing satisfying) because of my ship, 王砚×兰珏, and I just...don't understand how I got here. It's horrible. The TV show gives just enough to get me sucked into the shipping, but it's so very unsatisfying because the last third of the story completely falls apart at the seams. The novel throws out not an insubstantial amount of fodder for my ship, but it'll ultimately amount to nothing because the author obviously doesn't want to canonize any of the "hinting" she's doing, plus she seems to forget her main character every so often to tell the story from basically everyone else's PoV except the main character's. Also, the murder mysteries are mixed in with some kind of government conspiracy and inane in-law drama for the co-lead 兰珏.

What I'm trying to say is this:

I cannot understand how this novel can get popular enough to be picked up for a TV show, if only because the novel satisfies exactly nothing for the reader. It's a terrible mystery. It's too uncommitted to satisfy BL shipping. The story seems to swing wildly between mundane murders to government conspiracies to inanity of uptight in-laws with no real focus and literally spends 40+ chapters following a one-shot character without any input from our main character, co-lead, or major supporting cast members.
Somehow, through this mess of a novel, 王砚×兰珏 still managed to be the most shippable. I mean, I know I'm influenced by the TV show, but the novel is not selling me on 张屏 when he literally goes missing for 10 chapters or more per mystery arc. And whenever 王、兰、张 show up in a trio, 张屏 turns into air and shows zero personality.
I don't really want to get into ship wars, because people are gonna ship what they're gonna ship; but I genuinely cannot understand what is satisfying about the 兰珏×张屏 ship. But even more boggling is the 兰屏 shippers who insist on showing up in every 砚兰 music video to crow about their "canon" ship. How do these girls not understand fandom shipping has nothing to do with whether the ship is "canon"? There is no "winning" the ship war. Canonizing a ship will not magically generate more love for said ship. (Not to mention no ship got canonized anyway, so...wut?)
I maintain this is not a 耽改 series. If anything, the TV show seemed to throw in more bait fodder than the original novel had because it knows that shit sells, but the way the story was set up, it didn't seem to be written with the target of BL audience in mind. And if I'm wrong and the intention was to target that particular consumer group, well...good god, someone give those investors a quick run down of how BL works, because this...this ain't it.

I'm not even sure what I should tag this. I think this is just me wondering how the fuck I went from wanting a distraction from HSR to getting sucked into reading a really shitty web novel for a ship that isn't even canon but is deeply cute. Gah.

Yet, despite all this bafflement I'm suffering right now, 王砚×兰珏 is 1000% more satisfying than anything HSR gave me. FFFFFF.