What is your interpretation on the bad kids?

I haven’t finished rewatching it so bare with me with what I thought, this is my opinion on chaoyang for now. I shall come back with more points abt other characters when I finish. 

Zhu Chaoyang 
•  The kid who you would assume to be the most innocent out of the three but it is the other way around. He is the most darkest and manipulative character and as well it is portrayed in an unreliable narrator point of view so we see how he tries to save his face a lot although he is the one who plotted everything from the start. 

• You would think he would have been the one who didn’t have anything to gain but he is the one who had the most to gain in the whole summer it happened.
- His father who neglected him and really didn’t care for him that much and only cared for his half blood sister jingjing. I feel like he is the core reason to why ZCY is like this because ZCY was wanting affection and to be noticed from his father as he was at the top of his class and year which is a lot of hard work and effort but you can see the father really brushed it off and doesn’t really acknowledge his grade that much compared to the dad of the daughter who got second place. It also shows that he only cared about his new family and didn’t want to know what’s up with his previous marriage as he planted a voice recorder asking his son if he knew anything about the death of his dear daughter. It can also be seen that the recorder was to show the step mum that his son wasn’t like she portrayed him & after he realised that his son knew abt the recording, he tried to be a better father in the end because he knew it was partially his fault his son ended up like this.
- His stepmum who treated him poorly and never let her husband give his child a dime of his money even though they are loaded. As well she raised her child to be bratty and always made out of her way to make her husband spend less time with his child.
- Pupu who witness ZCY killing jingjing by letting her hang off the balcony window and not saving her or that there was a possibility that he pushed her. We know at the end that she never said anything about it but he knew that he wouldn’t have a fresh start knowing she has dirt on him and could blackmail him anytime.
- Yan Liang, the one who cared for pupu and so if pupu ever said anything abt ZCY with the situation of jingjing, it wouldn’t end well as he could be ratting him out to the police.
- Dong Sheng who was really a puppet to Chaoyang. ZDS killed off ZCY witness, the people who he hated & someone who could harm him. ZDS is the same as ZCY, some may say that ZDS is more advance than ZCY but it’s the opposite because in the end he was the one that got out & got everything he wanted, the people who he hated out of his life and a fresh start to life.

• It is a question to whether ZCY was like this ever since he was born or that he grew up in an environment that made him like this. Either way, it seems that when he placed tests on his “friends” to see if they were trustworthy. Where he placed a hair strand between the cupboard door to check if his friends would steal his mothers expensive possessions. Which they didn’t but it shows that he never trusted them from the start & used them as a pawn on his chess board. He took it as an opportunity to get rid of the ppl he didn’t like.

• the theme of Ego
- can be viewed that he cares about his ego a lot because at the beginning around in ep 1, he asked his mum what his teacher told her privately about & his mum said not to worry too much. Could it be that he hates it when ppl say bad things behind his back? 

How others portray ZCY - something important to look at as he is an unreliable narrator & makes himself up to be a “good” kid.
• Very smart can study on his own aka top place in school
• Very introverted, doesn’t have any friends in school and the students don’t want to get close to him
- can be seen as there something is wrong with him in terms of his social skills. At least your classmates respects you to a certain extent
- They call him a hypocrite which I found interesting
• he can be viewed as someone very passive
- They (classmates) were gonna gang up and fight him after he didn’t pass down the answers but he just left
- He called his classmates in group one to help him clean but it can be seen that it’s only him doing it. He doesn’t do anything to fight it or get angry that they didn’t help him. If I was in his place where I had to clean up the whole classroom, I would get mad or experience some form of emotion. 
- if he didn’t push off jingjing and just watched her hang from the window before falling, shows him being very passive again

 precious:

Am currently watching this drama and it seemed a bit scary and confusing but after reading this I understood ZCY character

Yeah watching  it can be confusing but doing Reading and research helps clear a lot of the things that wasn’t explained in the show 

The storytelling was masterful - I like how it explored the themes of humanity, evil, morality, and did so in a very subtle manner. While I did think that there were some minor plot holes (ie. with the murders that Dong Sheng committed, he should have been more careful with fingerprints as it felt like he was getting away too easily), overall the drama is probably the best cdrama this year so far and will be one to remember for years to come!

Chao Yang - In one of the starting eps, an illustration of the wolf killing the 3 pigs and seems like this is pointing to Dong Sheng being the wolf but in reality it is really Chao Yang, because he's the only one who is surviving at the end of the drama (if you are choosing to believe that both pupu and yan liang died). At the end of the drama, viewers can see that Chao Yang is a master manipulator who slowly reveals how scary he really is - ie  he kept feeding lies to the police, when he found out that his dad was recording him secretly, rather than getting mad he went on to put on an ACT and manipulate his dad into feeling bad, and also when he kept lying to Dong Sheng and wasn't honest about the duplicated clip, etc. 

With that said, I think the drama tried to humanize him and make him a 'relatable' character esp at the beginning when we all think that he's being bullied and ostracized by his classmates. Looking back now,  it's probably Chao Yang who is alienating others and lacks the capacity to relate to others. I think this drama really makes you think about what makes a monster - the age old debate of nature vs nurture. Arguably monsters are not born, and you can see that his family environment has created trauma for him growing up - his neglectful and cold father, his rude step mom and step sister and finally his own mom who often leaves him alone for work and is overly controlling. On one hand you almost feel bad for Chao Yang and he's almost an anti-hero in the sense that you WANT to root for him and you want him to come clean at the end, but at the same time he manipulates those around him and almost shows a complete lack of remorse for what he did. Someone mentioned this under the comments but this is akin to a villian origin story - a deep exploration into the backstory of Chao Yang and his upbringing. Will be so interesting if the story extends to 10 years later and we see how Chao Yang has matured and grown into an adult; if he ends up being a serial killer like his predecessor Dong Sheng or if he somehow finds a way to crawl out of the dark hole of sociopathy.

Anybody know where was filmed? 

someone in the comment sharing this link, about the dark theory. and its so interesting. so i will share in here too.

https://cyn-lynn.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-bad-kids-review.html?m=1