Kokuto:
According to the 2023 Douyin Annual Report Xiang Liu is the second most popular (hashtagged?) male character, behind Zhang Song Wen's Gao QiQiang. While the most popular female character was Xiao Yao. Hmmmmm.
https://x.com/ForCdrama/status/1752720417729769529?s=20
And this is after they've already cut out quite a bit from the novel to downplay him!! It doesn't look like any other male characters from LYF made the to 10. I thought DW's Jing was also really popular so I'm surprised not to see him on there.
Kokuto:
Lol! That Anderson Cooper gif is perfect! And YES. It's been interpreted in art and film quite ... hawtly.
Yes. Vampire and blood-sucking have a long history of being sexually, and erotically coded. So it's not surprising for Tong Hua to describe the blood-sucking scene causing physical arousal.
Kimiya78:
Well one of you guys here once told me to extricate myself from XL obsession pit TBH I been trying to do so far though wasn't efficient.
Didn't I warn you? And you haven't even read the book. It's worse when you read the book.
Some of us have been here since August. I don't know if that's comforting to you or not, but at least you're not alone :-). Unfortunately, I have no advice to offer you. I asked the very same question 1 month or so ago, and here I still am :-)