To My Shore--Chinese/Thai BL, Gay-for-you, Dark Romance

Note: Mild Spoilers. This isn't a recommendation as much as a discussion on a show I enjoyed. Please feel free to comment below. I watched this on Viki. I've watched a ton of bl's over the past four-five years. Over three hundred! I love them.

Chinese bl's are the bomb. I am not kidding. Every singel Chinese bl I've seen has been really good in some way. They do a good job. This BL stuck with me for several days after I watched it. It's dark, in that one MC (Fan Xiao) is extremely manipulative and sets out with bad intentions for to "bring down" the other MC, You Shu Lang. YSL is a genuinely nice, well-adusted person. He's also not a pushover. As I watched this drama, I kept thinking--how much worse can Fan Xiao get? And how in the hell is he going to make this right? Because the things he does are truly unconscionable.

Fan Xiao is also seriously hot. He's younger than You Shu Lang, and he's powerful. YSL comes to his attention when he hits XF's car from behind. (Not a major accident. I can't even remember--it's possible that FX saw YSL before this and set it up.) Anyway, FX just doesn't like YSL because he's too nice, too successful, too good. FX has enough money to do whatever he wants, and he takes advantage of that. He has friends willing to help him. He goes in hard to ruin YSL, but he falls for him along the way. (And he wasn't gay to begin with.) When YSL began finding out everything FX had done, he was heartbroken. And there was no forgiving the man.

I'm curious to know how others felt when watching this. I don't like manipulative people (who does?) and I don't normally root for the red flag. But at one point early on, I found myself advising FX aloud on what he should do so YSL didn't find out one of the things he'd done, lol. I clearly wanted them to be together, even though I of course know a relationship can't be built on lies, etc. etc. I was so into it. And after YSL found out everything, I so wanted FX to redeem himself.

If this didn't have a happy ending, I don't know what I would have done. (I'd seen another Chinese bl recently that really didn't--at least not the kind of hea I like--and it was pretty upsetting to me. I'm such a baby.)

FX did some truly unforgivable things. Forgiveness didn't come easily, believe me. In fact, one of my criticisms is that I felt too much time was spent on the time of their break up. I am curious to know how other viewers felt about YSL forgiving him. (Honestly, though. It's a romance. Obviously, if a real person did these things, there probably would be no redemption for them. I don't know, though. What do you think???)