Chen Ling and Qi Luo centric Mars meta...
I was having a discussion with fivil during the course of which I realized that Mars is one of the very few dramas that actually has a sex scene in it (not an explicit one, but still).
And I think it’s actually one of the really rare stories that needs it. Because sexuality and approach to it is, oddly enough, a really really important part of the story.
This is most obvious, of course, in the case of Qi Luo. QL, after the repeated rapes by her stepfather (I still cannot believe they addressed this in a twdrama. Good for them) is obviously someone who’s not only locked her sexuality away and threw out the key, but she is someone so incredibly traumatized when the drama starts that she can’t even bear to interact with boys in any fashion at all.
She is terrified of Ling/dislikes him in the beginning (and it’s a vague general dislike that she shares for the rest of the world) when he does nothing more than politely asks her for directions. After all, this is the girl who used to pray every day that no one speak to her in school.
And yet, paradoxically, part of the reason she is OK with Ling at the very start, enough not to shut him out is that he is so open about everything, sexuality included. I am thinking of that bit at lunch where he is trying to talk to her and she is staying silent so he jokes whether she would like him to open her mouth with his tongue (um, Vic honey. I am quiet all the time. Want to come over?) He is totally a boy!slut. But it’s all open, on the surface, nothing hidden. She knows where she stands. Everything out in the open (well, not his issues but that’s a matter for another discussion) and he doesn’t treat her as a weirdo but an attractive girl, but also his attentions are so good-naturedly out there that she doesn’t have to worry about him pouncing for real. It’s just talk he’ll do with anyone and if she doesn’t take him up on the offer, he’ll find someone else and he is not really pursuing her. In fact, she sees how protective he is of her.
He is not like her stepfather or that teacher (as she tells him). She is terrified of ‘normal’ because she’s seen what horrible things it can hide. With someone like Ling, it’s not hidden at all and the very fact that he doesn’t lie or pretend, that all the weirdness is out there so she knows what to expect, makes her feel safe. And of course, as we later find out that a part of her is drawn to Ling precisely because of the violence, because he is acting out what she so much wants to do, to her tormentors, in her head. Tong Dao might assume she is Ling’s good angel and he is right. He is also right that if she were to disappear Ling would go full blown psycho (even at the very end, when Ling says he wouldn’t get revenge on Tong Dao, I don’t know. It’s tremendous growth that he can even think that but I think he really would snap in some horrifying way if QL died). But, in some ways Tong Dao is very wrong as she has an enormous deal of darkness in her. After all, she is the one who wants the stepfather dead, and it is Ling who stops.
And as she falls in love with Ling, she begins to open up. Emotionally but also physically. Let’s talk about emotions first. Part of the reason she is so adamant about not giving Ling up (when Qing Mei threatens her and tells her she will smash her hand and so QL won’t be able to paint, QL replies that it’s only her right hand and she can teach herself with her left) is because he really is the only connection to humanity and to feeling normal she has. She has so few outlets that she is desperate to keep this. And of course, through being with Ling, through letting in another person, finally feeling secure to feel, she begins to let others in as well: Da Ye, Qing Mei, etc. I love that she will always be an introvert, the reserved one (just as you’d never expect to see her in a miniskirt). But she is so much more functional at the end.
But she opens up physically, too. I am thinking of all the kissing and hugging and the amount of physical contact, which must be such a novelty to her (the scene that kills me is when she later tells Ling that he is the first person she’s kissed because through everything, she’s never been kissed.)
And I think it really culminates with the sex scene (and significantly, the sexuality thing is not really addressed again except in normal fashion of her waking him up in the morning or his father asking about kids blah blah). It’s so crucial that she is the one who makes the first move, because after knowing of her rape, there is no way Ling would make the first move. And I find it really significant, the way she phrases her request: to take her back to the time before she was 16 (which is when she was raped). For her, making love with Ling is really reclaiming herself, fully freeing herself from her trauma, being fully who she is supposed to be, every aspect.
Because I think that is the crucial thing: for her, sex itself is made clean again, and she herself is physically made whole because she is doing it with someone whom she loves and who loves her back. It doesn’t have to be a shameful, dirty, painful thing. And so she doesn’t have to feel shameful and dirty and painful. I love that Ling is so attuned to her that when she closes her eyes he realizes she is beginning to freak out and tells her to open her eyes and look and see that it’s him (GUUUUUUH. *dies*) Or that he tells her he’s never seen anything more pure than she is when she starts freaking out she is dirty…
But I think it’s the look on her face at the end that kills me the most: it’s this total surprise that wow…this can be good.
The interesting thing is, for Mars the whole point is sex with love is the good thing. The rest? Blah. Just look at Ling. He is all about meaningless fun sex before Qi Luo. He would never force a girl or even chase one that’s not interested and he is very into having the girls have a good time as well, but the whole point is, his whoring around is a symptom of some of his problems: he doesn’t want to make emotional connections. He doesn’t want to feel, to be vulnerable, to open himself up to loss again (I bet part of the reason he ran as fast as he could from Qing Mei is because she wanted to get serious). In his extravert, gregarious way, he has walls even thicker than Qi Luo. But that’s the whole role reversal in effect in their relationship: loving him makes her able to open up physically. Loving her makes him patient about this with her. And makes him incapable of being with others (physically, no less!!!) Because it’s all about being able to connect.
You know what I find interesting? You’d never think so from the first ep, but the outgoing daredevil Ling is much more messed up and fragile than Qi Luo. The results of her trauma are very very visible: withdrawal from the world, lack of interaction, almost pathological shyness.
Ling, when we first meet him, appears to be a fun extravert, popular if a trouble-maker. But as we get to know him, we see that his demons are so much much worse even than Qi Luo’s. One doesn’t get locked away in a mental institution for nothing.
Ling is terrified. He isn’t terrified of physical things (though he is not an adrenaline junkie. He loves riding motorcycles because he loves the feeling of speed and freedom not for the adrenaline rush). But he is afraid of himself: he is afraid of losing his mind (with good cause), he is afraid of the kind of person he is. If Qi Luo has loathing for her sexuality (or her lack/presence thereof), Ling things of himself as completely unworthy as a human being. He thinks he is useless academically yes. And a failure as a son and brother, true. But what really is the crux of the problem is that he thinks of himself as a monster. This is something Tong Dao latches on. There is an enormous potential for darkness in Ling. I love that the drama doesn’t gloss it over. He is the guy who almost shot someone when he was a kid, he used to get into these completely awful fights which made Domyouji’s seem like mild temper tantrums (and before his committal they were getting worse and worse) and he is the one who almost chokes Tong Dao and stubs a cigarette out on his hand.
But that is why he needs Qi Luo. Qi Luo has seen him at his worst or knows of his worst actions and still loves him, and still believes in his goodness. In fact, she never lets him put himself down even as an offhand joke. Qi Luo loves him for him, not for the image he might project or because he’s cute or whatever. Just as QL is sometimes puzzled as to why he’d want to be with her, you can tell that a part of Ling is permanently astonished that someone who is ‘good’ and knows him so well actually continues to love him.
If Ling is Qi Luo’s ticket to normalcy, to interaction, Qi Luo is likewise a ticket to sanity for Ling.
He is someone who grew up in a horrible unstable environment, with a crazy mother and a father who tried to be distant. His almost pathological dependence on his brother, as they were sent away from family while still kids, is understandable but considering what Sheng was like, only led further down to trouble. Sheng is what really screwed Ling up, I think. Not just the suicide (though that is horrific enough) but because Sheng used Ling as his ‘id’ to act out his revenge fantasies/bad side, an outlet to everything the model son could not do, but he also would prevent Ling from developing a separate healthy identity. Just look when Ling tried (in high school).
I think Qi Luo is the first person Ling has who both loves him and cares for him (in many ways, from the most physical: she takes care of him when he’s sick and I realize that no one probably has before, or she cooks from him and he says that he doesn’t remember his mom but she’s unlikely to have cooked. I love that she makes him a silly, pink, ‘hello kitty’ lunch box and he looks at it and grins and is totally happy and you can tell that’s when he really thinks he wants to marry her), but she is also the first person in his life who loves him without manipulation or hidden motive and expresses her love as support and wanting what makes him happy for him. He has worth in someone else’s eyes for the very first time as a person, not an expression of something, or a symbol or what not. And I think that allows him to discover stability in himself.
Stability and tenderness. So much tenderness. The scene that really stays with me on rewatches is a very little one. It’s where she is alone at home and he knows she is afraid (though he doesn’t know why) and he stays by her bed the whole night, keeping her company, only to leave quietly in the morning.
And there is protectiveness. Part of the reason Ling is first drawn to Qi Luo is not just her painting which makes him think of his mother, but it's because, at his base, Ling is a very protective person. Sheng has twisted that, one of Ling's best qualities, but it's still there and he's found another outlet for this, only this time she is worthy. Just as he is worthy of her trust.
Anyway, this meta is running insanely long so I better stop.
And I think it’s actually one of the really rare stories that needs it. Because sexuality and approach to it is, oddly enough, a really really important part of the story.
This is most obvious, of course, in the case of Qi Luo. QL, after the repeated rapes by her stepfather (I still cannot believe they addressed this in a twdrama. Good for them) is obviously someone who’s not only locked her sexuality away and threw out the key, but she is someone so incredibly traumatized when the drama starts that she can’t even bear to interact with boys in any fashion at all.
She is terrified of Ling/dislikes him in the beginning (and it’s a vague general dislike that she shares for the rest of the world) when he does nothing more than politely asks her for directions. After all, this is the girl who used to pray every day that no one speak to her in school.
And yet, paradoxically, part of the reason she is OK with Ling at the very start, enough not to shut him out is that he is so open about everything, sexuality included. I am thinking of that bit at lunch where he is trying to talk to her and she is staying silent so he jokes whether she would like him to open her mouth with his tongue (um, Vic honey. I am quiet all the time. Want to come over?) He is totally a boy!slut. But it’s all open, on the surface, nothing hidden. She knows where she stands. Everything out in the open (well, not his issues but that’s a matter for another discussion) and he doesn’t treat her as a weirdo but an attractive girl, but also his attentions are so good-naturedly out there that she doesn’t have to worry about him pouncing for real. It’s just talk he’ll do with anyone and if she doesn’t take him up on the offer, he’ll find someone else and he is not really pursuing her. In fact, she sees how protective he is of her.
He is not like her stepfather or that teacher (as she tells him). She is terrified of ‘normal’ because she’s seen what horrible things it can hide. With someone like Ling, it’s not hidden at all and the very fact that he doesn’t lie or pretend, that all the weirdness is out there so she knows what to expect, makes her feel safe. And of course, as we later find out that a part of her is drawn to Ling precisely because of the violence, because he is acting out what she so much wants to do, to her tormentors, in her head. Tong Dao might assume she is Ling’s good angel and he is right. He is also right that if she were to disappear Ling would go full blown psycho (even at the very end, when Ling says he wouldn’t get revenge on Tong Dao, I don’t know. It’s tremendous growth that he can even think that but I think he really would snap in some horrifying way if QL died). But, in some ways Tong Dao is very wrong as she has an enormous deal of darkness in her. After all, she is the one who wants the stepfather dead, and it is Ling who stops.
And as she falls in love with Ling, she begins to open up. Emotionally but also physically. Let’s talk about emotions first. Part of the reason she is so adamant about not giving Ling up (when Qing Mei threatens her and tells her she will smash her hand and so QL won’t be able to paint, QL replies that it’s only her right hand and she can teach herself with her left) is because he really is the only connection to humanity and to feeling normal she has. She has so few outlets that she is desperate to keep this. And of course, through being with Ling, through letting in another person, finally feeling secure to feel, she begins to let others in as well: Da Ye, Qing Mei, etc. I love that she will always be an introvert, the reserved one (just as you’d never expect to see her in a miniskirt). But she is so much more functional at the end.
But she opens up physically, too. I am thinking of all the kissing and hugging and the amount of physical contact, which must be such a novelty to her (the scene that kills me is when she later tells Ling that he is the first person she’s kissed because through everything, she’s never been kissed.)
And I think it really culminates with the sex scene (and significantly, the sexuality thing is not really addressed again except in normal fashion of her waking him up in the morning or his father asking about kids blah blah). It’s so crucial that she is the one who makes the first move, because after knowing of her rape, there is no way Ling would make the first move. And I find it really significant, the way she phrases her request: to take her back to the time before she was 16 (which is when she was raped). For her, making love with Ling is really reclaiming herself, fully freeing herself from her trauma, being fully who she is supposed to be, every aspect.
Because I think that is the crucial thing: for her, sex itself is made clean again, and she herself is physically made whole because she is doing it with someone whom she loves and who loves her back. It doesn’t have to be a shameful, dirty, painful thing. And so she doesn’t have to feel shameful and dirty and painful. I love that Ling is so attuned to her that when she closes her eyes he realizes she is beginning to freak out and tells her to open her eyes and look and see that it’s him (GUUUUUUH. *dies*) Or that he tells her he’s never seen anything more pure than she is when she starts freaking out she is dirty…
But I think it’s the look on her face at the end that kills me the most: it’s this total surprise that wow…this can be good.
The interesting thing is, for Mars the whole point is sex with love is the good thing. The rest? Blah. Just look at Ling. He is all about meaningless fun sex before Qi Luo. He would never force a girl or even chase one that’s not interested and he is very into having the girls have a good time as well, but the whole point is, his whoring around is a symptom of some of his problems: he doesn’t want to make emotional connections. He doesn’t want to feel, to be vulnerable, to open himself up to loss again (I bet part of the reason he ran as fast as he could from Qing Mei is because she wanted to get serious). In his extravert, gregarious way, he has walls even thicker than Qi Luo. But that’s the whole role reversal in effect in their relationship: loving him makes her able to open up physically. Loving her makes him patient about this with her. And makes him incapable of being with others (physically, no less!!!) Because it’s all about being able to connect.
You know what I find interesting? You’d never think so from the first ep, but the outgoing daredevil Ling is much more messed up and fragile than Qi Luo. The results of her trauma are very very visible: withdrawal from the world, lack of interaction, almost pathological shyness.
Ling, when we first meet him, appears to be a fun extravert, popular if a trouble-maker. But as we get to know him, we see that his demons are so much much worse even than Qi Luo’s. One doesn’t get locked away in a mental institution for nothing.
Ling is terrified. He isn’t terrified of physical things (though he is not an adrenaline junkie. He loves riding motorcycles because he loves the feeling of speed and freedom not for the adrenaline rush). But he is afraid of himself: he is afraid of losing his mind (with good cause), he is afraid of the kind of person he is. If Qi Luo has loathing for her sexuality (or her lack/presence thereof), Ling things of himself as completely unworthy as a human being. He thinks he is useless academically yes. And a failure as a son and brother, true. But what really is the crux of the problem is that he thinks of himself as a monster. This is something Tong Dao latches on. There is an enormous potential for darkness in Ling. I love that the drama doesn’t gloss it over. He is the guy who almost shot someone when he was a kid, he used to get into these completely awful fights which made Domyouji’s seem like mild temper tantrums (and before his committal they were getting worse and worse) and he is the one who almost chokes Tong Dao and stubs a cigarette out on his hand.
But that is why he needs Qi Luo. Qi Luo has seen him at his worst or knows of his worst actions and still loves him, and still believes in his goodness. In fact, she never lets him put himself down even as an offhand joke. Qi Luo loves him for him, not for the image he might project or because he’s cute or whatever. Just as QL is sometimes puzzled as to why he’d want to be with her, you can tell that a part of Ling is permanently astonished that someone who is ‘good’ and knows him so well actually continues to love him.
If Ling is Qi Luo’s ticket to normalcy, to interaction, Qi Luo is likewise a ticket to sanity for Ling.
He is someone who grew up in a horrible unstable environment, with a crazy mother and a father who tried to be distant. His almost pathological dependence on his brother, as they were sent away from family while still kids, is understandable but considering what Sheng was like, only led further down to trouble. Sheng is what really screwed Ling up, I think. Not just the suicide (though that is horrific enough) but because Sheng used Ling as his ‘id’ to act out his revenge fantasies/bad side, an outlet to everything the model son could not do, but he also would prevent Ling from developing a separate healthy identity. Just look when Ling tried (in high school).
I think Qi Luo is the first person Ling has who both loves him and cares for him (in many ways, from the most physical: she takes care of him when he’s sick and I realize that no one probably has before, or she cooks from him and he says that he doesn’t remember his mom but she’s unlikely to have cooked. I love that she makes him a silly, pink, ‘hello kitty’ lunch box and he looks at it and grins and is totally happy and you can tell that’s when he really thinks he wants to marry her), but she is also the first person in his life who loves him without manipulation or hidden motive and expresses her love as support and wanting what makes him happy for him. He has worth in someone else’s eyes for the very first time as a person, not an expression of something, or a symbol or what not. And I think that allows him to discover stability in himself.
Stability and tenderness. So much tenderness. The scene that really stays with me on rewatches is a very little one. It’s where she is alone at home and he knows she is afraid (though he doesn’t know why) and he stays by her bed the whole night, keeping her company, only to leave quietly in the morning.
And there is protectiveness. Part of the reason Ling is first drawn to Qi Luo is not just her painting which makes him think of his mother, but it's because, at his base, Ling is a very protective person. Sheng has twisted that, one of Ling's best qualities, but it's still there and he's found another outlet for this, only this time she is worthy. Just as he is worthy of her trust.
Anyway, this meta is running insanely long so I better stop.