Kill to Love
Sep. 8th, 2025 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkPosting about this C-drama because I have no friends who have watched it yet who I can scream about it with!!!
Kill to Love is a C-drama with explicit queer content because it's airing only in Singapore/internationally. My short review of the show (as of today, 11/12 episodes have aired) is that you can tell they had to compress a long novel into only 12 episodes, and the first few episodes don't do the best job of drawing you in because there's a lot of infodumping and time spent on characters who aren't the main leads (personally, I wish they had cut down the Huo Ying/Crown Prince storyline since I didn't care about their toxic relationship at all. Also didn't care much about the unrequited romance between Huo Ying and Shen Song). So, weirdly, the pace feels both too fast and too slow—too fast, because it's speedrunning the slow burn between the two leads, and too slow, because so much time is spent on other characters considering how short the show is.
But, ultimately, the acting, relationship, and chemistry between the two leads (Xiao Shuhe and Duan Zi'ang, played by Mi Jin and Zhang Zhexu) carries the show.
People have been joking that Duan Zi'ang entered his obsessed toxic era in episode 9, but while he does do bad things—starting a war just so he can see Shuhe again, kidnapping Shuhe, imprisoning and chaining him—it's also weirdly less toxic than a lot of hetero romances because you see how he was driven to desperation.
If Shuhe didn't insist on bearing a grudge against Duan Zi'ang for killing the brother who literally maimed and tried to kill Shuhe, and if Shuhe didn't refuse contact with North Ji and Duan Zi'ang's ambassadors, the war could've been avoided. (Duan Zi'ang literally says he would have been happy if they could have just written letters to each other.)
If Duan Zi'ang hadn't been running out of time due to the poison cutting his life short, maybe he wouldn't have resorted to such desperate measures to see Shuhe again.
It honestly is really tragic that Shuhe keeps carrying a torch for his awful brother (and it's certain that if Duan Zi'ang hadn't killed him, North Ji and South Hui would've gone to war anyway because he murdered the North Ji crown prince). And that Duan Zi'ang underestimated Shuhe's pride, which keeps him shackled to a throne and a duty that for most of his life, he didn't even want. We're running out of episodes for a happy ending, but I still hope they can reconcile?
I've tried to watch some hetero C-dramas, but I can't stand most of them. Granted, I have a very short attention span and don't watch a lot of TV for that reason, and the hetero C-dramas are always the ones that get like 40 episodes. But I hate the "ditzy female lead falls for brooding, threatening man" trope that's everywhere. I hate one love interest threatening the other unless they're both on equal footing, like soldiers on opposite sides of a war. What I love about the relationship in Kill to Love is how equal it feels. Neither romantic lead feels stupid, and both are exerting agency, both in the plot and in their relationship.
It still blows my mind to watch an uncensored queer C-drama, and not just because of the on-screen kisses. The fact that two men get to be vulnerable with each other and declare their love for each other ("In this whole world, you are the only freedom I want"—this is the height of romance, okay?) just feels so revolutionary. And again, both actors do a phenomenal job. Xiao Shuhe is perfectly brought to life as an even-tempered, poised, elegant prince who conceals his sadness and loneliness beneath his smiles. Duan Zi'ang is the fierce, fiery protector who is torn between conflicting loyalties and has such a softness for Shuhe.
I hate that China bans queer content and even punishes high-profile actors for taking on queer roles (so I really hope both Mi Jin and Zhang Zhexu go on to have amazing careers and this amazing show isn't held against them just because they play queer men). I loved The Untamed and can't imagine actors other than Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo in the lead roles, but it would've been even more amazing to have the love confessions in that show. Stories like The Untamed (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) and Kill to Love aren't gay porn—they're amazingly written stories of cultivation adventures/imperial intrigue that just happen to also feature central queer romantic relationships, and I wish people would recognize that.
Kill to Love is a C-drama with explicit queer content because it's airing only in Singapore/internationally. My short review of the show (as of today, 11/12 episodes have aired) is that you can tell they had to compress a long novel into only 12 episodes, and the first few episodes don't do the best job of drawing you in because there's a lot of infodumping and time spent on characters who aren't the main leads (personally, I wish they had cut down the Huo Ying/Crown Prince storyline since I didn't care about their toxic relationship at all. Also didn't care much about the unrequited romance between Huo Ying and Shen Song). So, weirdly, the pace feels both too fast and too slow—too fast, because it's speedrunning the slow burn between the two leads, and too slow, because so much time is spent on other characters considering how short the show is.
But, ultimately, the acting, relationship, and chemistry between the two leads (Xiao Shuhe and Duan Zi'ang, played by Mi Jin and Zhang Zhexu) carries the show.
People have been joking that Duan Zi'ang entered his obsessed toxic era in episode 9, but while he does do bad things—starting a war just so he can see Shuhe again, kidnapping Shuhe, imprisoning and chaining him—it's also weirdly less toxic than a lot of hetero romances because you see how he was driven to desperation.
If Shuhe didn't insist on bearing a grudge against Duan Zi'ang for killing the brother who literally maimed and tried to kill Shuhe, and if Shuhe didn't refuse contact with North Ji and Duan Zi'ang's ambassadors, the war could've been avoided. (Duan Zi'ang literally says he would have been happy if they could have just written letters to each other.)
If Duan Zi'ang hadn't been running out of time due to the poison cutting his life short, maybe he wouldn't have resorted to such desperate measures to see Shuhe again.
It honestly is really tragic that Shuhe keeps carrying a torch for his awful brother (and it's certain that if Duan Zi'ang hadn't killed him, North Ji and South Hui would've gone to war anyway because he murdered the North Ji crown prince). And that Duan Zi'ang underestimated Shuhe's pride, which keeps him shackled to a throne and a duty that for most of his life, he didn't even want. We're running out of episodes for a happy ending, but I still hope they can reconcile?
I've tried to watch some hetero C-dramas, but I can't stand most of them. Granted, I have a very short attention span and don't watch a lot of TV for that reason, and the hetero C-dramas are always the ones that get like 40 episodes. But I hate the "ditzy female lead falls for brooding, threatening man" trope that's everywhere. I hate one love interest threatening the other unless they're both on equal footing, like soldiers on opposite sides of a war. What I love about the relationship in Kill to Love is how equal it feels. Neither romantic lead feels stupid, and both are exerting agency, both in the plot and in their relationship.
It still blows my mind to watch an uncensored queer C-drama, and not just because of the on-screen kisses. The fact that two men get to be vulnerable with each other and declare their love for each other ("In this whole world, you are the only freedom I want"—this is the height of romance, okay?) just feels so revolutionary. And again, both actors do a phenomenal job. Xiao Shuhe is perfectly brought to life as an even-tempered, poised, elegant prince who conceals his sadness and loneliness beneath his smiles. Duan Zi'ang is the fierce, fiery protector who is torn between conflicting loyalties and has such a softness for Shuhe.
I hate that China bans queer content and even punishes high-profile actors for taking on queer roles (so I really hope both Mi Jin and Zhang Zhexu go on to have amazing careers and this amazing show isn't held against them just because they play queer men). I loved The Untamed and can't imagine actors other than Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo in the lead roles, but it would've been even more amazing to have the love confessions in that show. Stories like The Untamed (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) and Kill to Love aren't gay porn—they're amazingly written stories of cultivation adventures/imperial intrigue that just happen to also feature central queer romantic relationships, and I wish people would recognize that.
