Lovers: XOXO [the guidebook]

💙/North: _harem (How Chinese harem dramas inspired Lovers: Boarding School)

WARNING: There is going to be talk of violence, torture, abuse, poor historical research, SPOILERS of all kinds, bad jokes, strong language, and an obvious love for trashy media in this article. Read at your discretion (or enjoyment IDGAF). 

Before you read on dear Reader, please watch this video clip (English captions are available) from the hit 2018 Chinese historical drama, Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略):

Pretty vicious right?

To give y'all context, Consort Xian (the one in purple) is basically rubbing it in Noble Consort Gao's (the injured one in gold) face that she was the one who planned the horrendous attack on her and that she was going to get away with it like the evil mastermind that she is. Now, to make things clear, Noble Consort Gao did do a lot of shit to a lot of people (especially to Consort Xian and her family) so technically the bitch deserved the brutal ending she received...but if you knew about the perilous and downright hostile environment in which these women had to live in, you might think differently about their circumstances and actions. 

(Gao was a bitch though--LIKE WHY YOU TRYNA KILL A MOTHERFUCKING BABY RIGHT AFTER HE WAS BORN LIKE WTF NOBLE CONSORT GAO. CONSORT XIAN WAS A SCARY BITCH TOO, MORE ON THAT HOE LATER.)

So I bet you're thinking: how does a story about vicious, scheming boarding school boys (and a serial killer English teacher) who want to bring each other to ruin over a girl relate to Chinese costume dramas about vicious, scheming imperial concubines who want to bring each to ruin over an emperor?

I made it really obvious in that sentence, didn't I? xD

Before you proceed any further, I want you to know that I wasn't thinking about Chinese harem dramas when writing Lovers: Boarding School. While I was writing the shit that all y'all came to know and love, I didn't think about where its ideas and themes could've originated from until I binged watched a bunch of Chinese harem dramas during quarantine and realized: SHIT. SO THIS IS WHERE MY IMMACULATE TASTE IN PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AND PETTY DRAMA CAME FROM! 

Now, I don't want to brag or anything, but I've been watching these ridiculously toxic dramas since I was a kid. Actually, when I was a kid I didn't know what the fuck was going on in those dramas because I knew fuck all Mandarin/Cantonese (sorry Dad) and I was a legit dumb ass until I got a life changing concussion from running up a wall in Grade 3. (For real though, I went from the dumbest kid in the class to the smartest after that concussion! Ask my mom :0)

All I knew about these Chinese harem dramas growing up was that my grandma watched them religiously, people talked a lot in them  (HURR HURR HURR I'M DOING THE SAME), someone got flogged or whipped at the end of every episode, and someone's fucking head ended up in a box at the end of a season/series. Oh, and that people dressed funny and the guys were all bald: