okay okay so im watching woh right, and there were two scenes where characters lost their guan (the headpiece men are seen wearing). and it got me thinking about the md/zs donghua and that scene on the pier where lawnji knocks off jc's guan (in front of his ancestral hall too btw)

gao chong lost his during an altercation while he was being accused of crimes (which he was innocent of) and then wen kexing removed zhuo jing's guan after accusing him of the crimes he committed. furthermore, removing a guan is essentially saying that person is unworthy, that they are criminal and unfit to rule etc etc.

also from historical kdramas i watched, the noblemen who are punished for the crimes they committed are stripped of everything and have their hair let down, and its the same wrt to historical cdramas too.

so, for the donghua team to have lwj remove jc's guan in the finale (and also lets his hair come loose), which never happens in the novel mind you, there really isn't any good faith interpretation of that scene. its very clear what the donghua team wants us to think abt jc's character, and considering the only "crime" jc commits is.... being "against" wwx... it wasn't justified in the slightest.

you could see it as if he did it unintentionally but from how everything was set up, from how lwj looked at jc, how he spoke, I'm not giving no benefit of a doubt. it rly just makes wwx and lwj's characters look even worse than they did in the novel. not even jgy or wrh or wc got that level of disrespect and they were the actual VILLIANS. i find it insane jc got such abhorrent treatment when the worse thing he did was get rightfully mad when those two snuck into his ancestral hall w/o his permission.

i see fans try to justify it but it really was overkill to do that to jc's character, no matter how much of an asshole he was, he never did anything so heinous to be humiliated like that. it was disgusting, and it left a bad taste in my mouth even when I didn't understand the full cultural context behind it.

i know im not chinese so i cant speak too much on this matter but this is simply what I observed from watching these east asian historical dramas and how they portray these things.