HIStory3: Faça Valer a Pena (2019)

I wanted to wait until I had processed the ending of this drama before reviewing it. The emotional investment I had in these boys and their story stopped me from writing down coherent sentences at first. But here we are, a week later!

For the first few episodes, we see a fairly regular (and wonderfully done) set-up between an A+ student with a poor background and a rebel with a soft heart. I must say, I really fell head over heels for both boys and how soft they are with each other. How much happier Shigu became after gradually letting Haoting inside his heart and life. Haoting shouting from the rooftops how much he loves Shigu...

The promising flow of this story was what disappointed me and resulted in a lower score overall after the last episode aired. Having Shigu die, off camera, and fast forward 6 years felt like a cheap trick for making the audience cry. An ending can be sad without being disliked. This was just bad writing.

Why not let Shigu be sick from the get-go and let the audience experience them fighting-perhaps even losing the fight, but alongside them? Why not show us what happened on that god-awful day and watch Haoting pick up the pieces of his life and move on? Both would have been a lot more powerful in my opinion. And both Wei En and Juan Zhi could have carried that as actors.

I think the decision to take Hao Ting's incredible love for Shigu and make it so he seems stuck at 18, broken and unable to move on, too much. The LGBTQ community has had enough of those sad and useless endings, dramas don't have to be lifelessons. They don't have to have the shock-factor this writer aimed for. Sure, we were shocked. But also pissed off. And I was unable to even talk about it because I was so upset that a poor boy who finally found love and warmth got ran over by a car we didn't even see. One of Haoting's lines at the end even insinuates he'll go climb the highest mountain in the world and die there to be with Shigu again. Healthy image for queer romance? I think not. Sometimes it's okay if dramas wrap everything up in a little bow, making people happy can be just as powerful as making them cry.

I guess in the end, this was not what I signed up for when I started this and therefor I cannot stop my emotional reaction of giving it a lower rating. I do wish for the actors involved to get more work and recognition through this, as it is thanks to their performance that the ending hurt so much and the happiness made my heart soar.

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I was originally going to write a review by episode but instead, I am going to do a review on a grand scale and by certain issues either addressed by the show itself or issues people had with the show.
I, first of all, have to say that it was possibly the worst ending I have seen if any show I have watched (including Game of Thrones and GOT is the worst ending for me up until this), I am never watching anything that the writer is in charge of ever in my life, I mean I will personally be checking who the writer is because of her. Like I was wondering what nonsense of an ending that was. Like I hate the fact people try to cover it up by saying it is real life or realistic (and I would be addressing it in my review).
The show started a fun, I mean Xiang and his dumb ass friends being the cool and popular kids, then the nerd that the coolest kid in school falls for but then the story is very not cliché.
Starting this out, I know everyone first had an issue with Sun Bo and his behavior (stalking and assault) but I would like to remind people that he is kind of meant to be a dumb, naïve and impulsive teenager who is kind of falling in love for the first time and doesn't know what to with himself. I am not saying what he did was all right by any standard but understand that this was the first point being driven.
Also, still on Sun Bo, the next thing people highlighted a lot was the age difference and being in high school. Now I am quite happy that everyone is taking Pedophilia more seriously but at the same time, we should realize that countries differ and laws in those countries are not the same as what it is in our countries. Now, I was rubbed the wrong way but when I checked and I saw that the age of consent and majority in Taiwan is 16, I couldn't do anything more about it but move on, this is their country and these are their norms.
Now moving on, things I loved about the show in generality
1. The true representation of LGBT acceptance: Hao Ting Parents, The Gang, and Finally Lu Zhi's family. The showed different reactions to LGBT youth around the world as it happens. Some people just naturally accept LGBT youth especially because of their humanity and personhood and that was represented in the gang, others don't accept it but rather tolerate it for one reason or the other and that was Hao Ting's parents and the last class per se are those that are straight-up homophobic and cut LGBT people out of their lives that was Lu Zhi's granddad. I loved the fact that they represented all these in the show, which is more than a lot of them BLs give us.
2. That age gap should not be a determinant in a relationship (when the people involved are off legal age). Our societies tend to treat age gap as something that should be almost non-existent and that one party is taking advantage of the other but I love that MODC showed that sometimes, real love doesn't care about age as far as you are meant to be together, you would work out.
3. I loved the fact that they didn't revolve the story around Hao Ting struggling to accept that he was in love with a guy (although I didn't particularly like the I am not gay just in love with him trope we often see but whatever). Like it was very straight forward, he suspected he had feelings for Xi Gu and rather than fighting it as we often see, he accepted them and moved forward on and most importantly, he didn't cheat on his girlfriend per se, he broke up with her before properly chasing Xi Gu.
4. I love that consent wasn't forgotten per se in the terms of Xi Gu and Hao Ting. I was scared at several points that with the type of temper Hao had, he would overstep boundaries with Xi but he was honestly patient and surprised me a lot.
5. Sex scenes, now I get a lot of people did not particularly like this, but I like the realism to the sex scenes because most BLs tend to was to Fetishize gay people but they didn't do that here, plus I mean they are high school students, sex tends to be on their minds a lot.
6. The acting and production value were all phenomenal, I hated Hao when he made Xi miss the exam, I cried with Xi when he lost the scholarship, I felt all of the naivety of Sun and his jealousy, like the actors delivered and the quality was insane, to say the least bit. I felt everything, rejoiced with them, laughed with them…. That is what acting is meant to do emote properly, I even felt the ending particularly because of Wayne
7. The portrayed the mistake we have all made as high school students properly, from cruelty, meanness, etc.
8. Character development was great and natural compared to other shows
9. I loved Hao Ting and Sun Bo's friendship, it was beautiful to the end

Things I hated
1. The ending and the writer
2. The fact that they did not properly develop some stories, which I guess was to keep the focus on the main story but still at least resolve them. Like the twin that appeared he had feelings for Xi Gu, we did not get the foundation of the feelings of what connection there was or how did it end up? Another was the guy that made the fake picture of Xi Gu to spite Hao Ting, like what happened to him or even the ex-girlfriend? Then the way they just threw away the Fujoshi?
Now to the controversial ending if you want to portray a real-life relationship or a realistic relationship, then break them up. I am not saying people do not die in relationships, they go off course, but in a world where people always try to tell LGBT people they can't have happy endings, this just drives the narrative because Xi Gu's death was pointless except for shock value and nothing else just break the couple up. I mean, what's more common - breaking up or being killed by a car (or a white truck of doom, for all we know)? Yes, way too many people die in accidents every year, but still... that's not what usually happens, fortunately. So, for me, the "that's life/that's a realistic portrait of life" argument falls a bit flat. My impression is that they didn't necessarily want to portray a "real life" situation, rather they wanted to shock and manipulate their audience, they wanted to present a "clever" twist, maybe because someone, someday, came up with the idea that tragedy equals depth and artistry. Then, secondly - do you know what hurts me the most? I realized it's not, contrary to my expectations, YSG's pointless death. It's how miserable XHT still is even 6 years after the tragedy. Even if he says "Yes, I'm over it", even if he has survived and tried to get on with his life (did he get a girlfriend, or am I wrong? I was in a daze for most of the episode, trying not to cry too much, so there are parts I'm not 100% sure about), even if he says he's ready to hike the Himalayas. He's still so deeply grieving that you just have to look at him to know he's living an unhappy life - he seems to be living only halfheartedly, only half-conscious... and that's heartbreaking, and that's what made me so devastated. I don't see much hope in this ending. It hurts so much because I cannot help but thinking that I would be just as lost in a similar situation. Finding love is so rare, and when you lose it like that... Thirdly, poor YSG. He drew the short end of the stick, didn't he? Was his purpose as a character just to tug at our heartstrings? Was his death just a cliched plot device contrived to squeeze out our tears (and how many of them!)? He, as a character, deserved better! Also, the doppelganger: was his purpose just to trick us in the preview of the last episode with a face that looked like a future YSG? So that people, seeing him, would think "No worries, here he is with a different hairstyle, so he's obviously still alive, maybe they just separated for a few years", just to be then shocked at the revelation? I can't help but feel that my emotions were being manipulated. And lastly - I'm kind of low-key angry with myself for letting myself being so emotionally involved in this drama. It's so silly to be this upset (feeling depressed, feeling there's no hope in this world, feeling like dark clouds are weighing heavy on my heart, crying!) because of a work of fiction.

I know I won't be able to go back to it - and what's worse than that for a drama? Even the forgettable ones are sometimes revisited. And even the soundtrack, that I loved, will be off-limits for the foreseeable future.

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