A Dream within a Dream

amazing" SCRIPT "!!!???

Review for Dream Within a Dream 🌙🎭

I absolutely loved every single moment of this drama! Every episode left me ecstatic and craving for more. The performances were outstanding—Liu Yuning (as Heng/7th Prince) and Li Yitong (as Yimeng) were simply incredible, with undeniable chemistry and emotional depth. Her sister Yiting also impressed me in every scene—she’s fierce, sharp, and never fails to amaze!

The storyline is full of unexpected twists that keep you on edge and excited for the next episode. Even the supporting roles were brilliant—each actor brought life to their character and made the world feel so real and layered.

Now, onto the characters I felt strongly about:
😠 I absolutely despise Chancellor Gao—Heng’s uncle. Manipulative, power-hungry, and just plain evil!
💖 But I adore Consort Gao—Heng’s mother. She’s so sweet and warm, especially in how she dotes on Yimeng.
🤔 Yimeng’s father, the Minister of War, totally confuses me—one moment I think he supports Heng, the next I’m not so sure.
😤 And don’t get me started on the Emperor! He was unnecessarily cruel to his own son, Heng. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated every time he appeared!

Overall, this drama gave me all the feels—love, anger, hope, and heartbreak.
Highly recommended for those who enjoy layered plots, emotional depth, royal intrigue, and incredible acting. 🤩💝🌟

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One of My Most Anticipated… and Biggest Letdowns

I’m officially done with this drama. Tapped out. Clocked out. Logged off. The first few episodes? Insane—in a good way! I was hooked. SYM had my sympathy too—she read the novel, saw the original SYM’s fate, and did what any self-aware queen would do: run from NH like her life depended on it (because it kinda did).

But as the episodes went on… oof. I kept thinking, “Surely SYM will grow after all this truth starts raining down on her,” but no. It’s like the truth was the rain, and SYM brought an emotional umbrella and noise-cancelling headphones. Girl wants an explanation from NH, but the second he opens his mouth, she’s like, “Shhh.” Ma’am??? You asked!!

And don’t even get me started on the logic—she supposedly hates NH but can’t recognize LSL’s voice or eyes? We’re not in a Scooby-Doo mystery; it’s literally the same guy. I kept watching, hoping something would click for her. It didn’t. What did click was my “exit drama” button.

Honestly, I only stayed this long because I was invested in SGH and SYT. Their chemistry was doing more for me than the main couple. Sorry not sorry. I love LYN and LYT, but this drama just wasn’t it. I know some folks will say “it gets better,” but I can’t keep watching out of hope and caffeine.

Anyway, no hate—just my opinion. If you love it, I love that for you 💅

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The friendship is the best part of the drama

I get that this is a romantic comedy but the most beautiful part of the drama is the friendship between Nan Heng and his peers.
The female lead is written beautifully. I can understand that many people don't like her but she is supposed to be a flawed character who is about self preservation and preservation of her family. She has fear of losing which generally doesn't allow her to freely love because love is for the brave.
However, you see a lot of growth in her by episode 30.
As for LYN, I liked his performance here more than Prisoner of beauty if we consider acting. His eyes have been more expressive here and it has helped me root for his character.
I have to admire the second lead/grey character here for being able to successfully make me hate him. I think he could have been a little bit subtle in his hateful gaze but its okay because the script is about three way stabbing 💀 and his acting is in line with that kind of script.
The female lead is a natural at comedy and she didn't seem like she was trying too hard with slapstick humor.
Overall, i liked it better than similar themed dramas like Love game in eastern fantasy.

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A Good Premise Wasted

Despite the drama's premise not being that unique, its first episode really caught my attention with all the comedic stuff that happened.

So even if I wasn't that interested in watching cdramas anymore these past few years, I decided to give this a try.

But before I start, I want to say first that I really like the transmigration genre and I've already read/watched a lot under it. This is one reason why I tried watching this drama in the first place because most transmigration genres have quite the same premise but a lot of the stories I've read make something unique about it along the way. So I watched "A Dream Within A Dream" carrying this expectation. But yes, as apparent in my ratings, I was disappointed. And I dropped it.

As someone who has read a lot in the transmigration genre, I noticed a few flaws during the first few episodes. Still, I decided to not mind them much (?) because the comedy really bought me🫠

It was too funny so I thought it'd be a waste to judge it early. Plus, the actors and actresses, especially Liu Yuning and Li Yitong, were really good, and I especially loved SYM's voice. To add, I also heard that this drama aims to be female-centric and wanted to rally against those prevalent male-centric dramas who only use females as stepping stones.

I get it, I get the goal. So my expectations were quite high, but the flaws kept on piling up. I'll enumerate some major flaws I noticed that made me ultimately drop it.

1. During the first episode. SYM kept on dying. However, despite dying countless times, her character didn't seem to show the slightest bit of trauma. But of course, the comedy covered for this. However, what I really didn't get was the fact that she was afraid to die ONCE while following the script's plot instead of dying MULTIPLE TIMES by not following the script. And what bothered me more about it was that she did not once consider to find a way to GET OUT of the world. She only ever thought of GOING AGAINST the script. The drama made her seem like a very relatable heroine at first, she didn't seem that relatable when not once did she consider that there might be a way out of the world by just following the script. Anyhow, despite noticing this, I expected them to fill this hole in the next few episodes. But still no. And that leads me to the second flaw.

2. The show that wanted to be "female-centric" ended up providing the biggest irony they could attempt. Man, I was expecting more character development from the female lead, but instead of her gaining the spotlight, others took the stage. After that? FL became like a supporting character while the ML takes center stage. Istg, in the middle episode, FL doesn't even have much of a screen time. This really made me think that I might've expected too much from this. I could mention a lot of transmigration manhwas that gave this female-centric theme justice like Beware the Villainess, For My Derelict Favorite, It's Time to Change the Genre, My In-laws are Obsessed with Me, and my two fav in the genre, Surviving Romance and Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess. This drama doesn't even come close to all of these.

3. Nan Heng's character. Although I really came to like him (Liu Yuning's unique charisma was a big contribution), I couldn't help but notice another hole in his character. As the show went on, he ended up becoming the "good person." I know, this isn't necessarily bad. That's the reason why I came to like him too. Still I couldn't help but think that this character became too shallow after the show portrayed him as the "good person." I wish they could've explored his character deeper, he had a lot of potential. But instead, they made him only look like a deeply misunderstood person, a very typical ML. They could've shown more about his personality, just like how the author from the danmei "Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know" very meticulously showed how complicated of a character Wenren E (the ML) was. This novel did portray Wenren E as a deeply misunderstood character, but at the same time, he was not a completely good person. But well of course, Wenren E was the lead so the author had more time to explore his character. Nonetheless, they could've done the same to Nan Heng without stealing FL's spotlight. At least, the author from "Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess" managed to do that with Callisto's character. So in the end, I simply think that the drama could've added more substance to Nan Heng's character and they could've still done this despite being female-centric. So my conclusion was that this was just lazy storytelling.

4. But, if Nan Heng's undeveloped character portrayal alone already disappointed me this much, then the me who was expecting for a very relatable female lead and an extremely well-crafted character development for her had my final straw during the middle episodes. Man, she didn't even have much screen time, and with the meager screen time she had, no character development happened at all, absolutely nothing. And I just couldn't help but notice how selfish she truly was. I mean, I totally understand how she only sees the "people" around her as only characters made through words on a script. Yeah, I get that. But isn't it common human nature to develop affection when we stayed long enough in a place? I mean, she even fell in love with LSL, one of the "characters" btw, so why can't she see the other people around her as "people"? Up until the middle episodes, despite realizing that she loves LSL, she still doesn't care about the other people in that world. She only came to care about SYT because she felt understood by her. So in the end, another lazy storytelling. The FL I was looking forward to seemed to become an FL I'd definitely hate if I continue on with this. Hence, my decision to drop the drama once and for all.

It really was good at first. It had a lot of potential. But, the potential was once again gone to waste with lazy writing. These four points aren't even half of the things I wanted to point out, but they summed it all up. There's a lot of wasted potential here. The acting was so good. I liked Shagguan He's character. I liked the supporting casts too. And I really loved the main leads. I'm especially obsessed with SYM's voice. I wanted to continue watching, but I just can't, or else I'll end up hating this drama. So I'll just leave it there.

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if you like your female lead consistently dumb

A completely unserious, beautifully styled drama with transmigration. To be honest what interested me in this drama is Liu Yu Ning and his latest string of enjoyable dramas. His presence in this drama does not disappoint as the misunderstood but also ruthless male lead. His character development and the unraveling of his story are so enjoyable to watch that I was riveted to the screen every time he was on it. What starts as a comedic parody slowly unravels into a dramatic tale of misunderstandings defining a person and their struggle to escape the cage placed around them. And then it stays there for a long time. One misunderstanding after the next with absolutely no growth or sense in the characters.

The story revolves around Song Yi Meng that is a mediocre actress paired with an exceptionally popular and high maintenance male lead in a historical drama. While reading she is transported into the world of the script and forced to play out her character's devastating role. With her knowledge of the script she skimmed through and her steadfast desire to avoid the same miserable fate that is written for her character she does everything in her power to change the story and escape her fate. But the rules inside the script are different and major scenes will always be played out no matter how much she changes.

The story is told from both the female and male lead's perspective so as the viewer you know how misunderstood and villainized the male lead is and how incredibly biased and naive the female lead is which leads to a very frustrating watch. To be honest I keep waiting for the female lead to figure out how wrong she is so that I can actually like her but halfway through the drama and I still can not stand her character. She is determined to not have the miserable fate that is written for her character and I can sympathize with that plight but she has no character development or situational awareness. She always sees the male lead as the villain no matter what is revealed about him to her. My dislike of her likely stems from my obvious more interest in the male lead, Nan Heng, and my knowledge as the viewer of his actual character and struggles. While I know she doesn't know that yet I still get incredibly frustrated watching her continuous mistreatment of him and lack of character progression.

Satire style comedy is also not often in my wheel house so the comedy does not always hit here for me. I love Nan Heng and his band of martial arts brothers and their interactions and even the references to other popular works but there are many times where the comedy feels more cringe to me. Also the drawn out miscommunication and misconceptions does begin to feel tiresome. The overly ridiculous Eighteenth Prince and obnoxiously biased and cruel Emperor also make this a bit difficult to continue watching but I think once the truth is revealed it will make up for the frustrations. Liu Yu Ning carries this show on his shoulders with his gripping portrayal of Nan Heng and his desperate fight to survive.

Having seen well into three quarters of the drama and the female lead, Song Yimeng, is still behaving with the same misplaced and blatantly ignorant aggression toward the Nan Heng makes this something I can no longer recommend. The plot feels glacial and goes in circles with her making one stupid decision after another. Skip this drama and pick a better one.

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A fun watch, even more so if you are a seasonal cdrama watcher

Spoiler-free bit
This drama had a tight storytelling and by that I mean, strong beginning, middle and ending. The story was cohesive and made logical sense within the context of the world building. The writing was on point; we had lovely character development and story progression. The OST was amazing and very pleasant to the ears. The acting was good; everyone did their job and had fun with it. Plot is unique in this sort f cdramas, and the story did go off-rails at times in the best way possible.
It’s not every day you get a cdrama where they make fun every possible trope that they could squeeze in. If you are someone who has watched plenty of cdramas this one is for you. If you aren’t familiar with the standard cdrmas trope that’s fine as well, some of the tropes used are very well know in every other media type.
Gotta love the way they made fun of love triangles and stereotypical melodramatic scenes. Oh and the creative way they use those tropes as “rules” and the ensuing comedic shenanigans that happen. “The ML must always save the FL” comes to mind.
SPOILERS!
A lot of people complained about the FL, about how annoying she was and how slow it was for her to trust ML and yes, it took a while and it dragged on more than necessary that said it made sense for her to take so long. However, story would have benefited if that had been shortened and we had more episodes with the main CP as a couple, or have the FL slowly start being nicer and work together with ML until finally giving in to her feelings. However what we had was a poor ML continuously chase after the FL despite being told “no” several times and go through several shades of heartbreak when the FL was not ready to give in yet and when she did give in it was cold turkey style.
That could have been handled better unless it was written this way on purpose to make fun of those specific tropes? Regardless once they got together, it was awesome.
Also, the poor second male lead. I might be the only that loves him. Typically I could care less about second male leads, but this is one of the few instances where I slowly learned to love him. I love what they did to the character, how he went from your stereotypical second lead to the big bad and it did not happen out of the blue. No, it happened step by step, we see how he slowly falls out of love with the FL, becomes very self-centered and obsessive in defeating the ML. It’s a slow fall at first until he hits rock bottom and no one can get him out of it, no, he wants to hit ever more rock bottom if it were possible. Love how he self destructed himself.
Also love the contrast between ML and 2ML. With ML, he always tried to reach out but was always pushed away and yet he stood firm in his convictions. On the other hand with 2ML, people reached out to him and he always pushed them away because they didn’t say or do what he wanted and when he tried to reach for someone, he would always end up pushing them away because of that reason.
It’s so very interesting to see how their positions flipped from where they started and how their choices shape their final outcome.
Also, it’s not every day a c-drama gives you FOUR endings without additional extra episodes to appease the enraged masses. You get your pick of favorite flavored tragedy or happy ending, so rejoice!

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Didn't live up to the hype

I always end up disliking dramas whenever they include a character travelling into a novel, so I was a little hesitant to start this show. But since it has Liu Yuning I couldn't forget about it. So I started watching it and initially fell in love with the story.

I starts out really funny and I was into it from the get-go. You follow Song Xiao Yu as she's preparing herself to play a character in an upcoming drama. She's attending the first meeting where they go over certain plotpoints of the drama and meeting the actor's needs. It's a first big role for Xiao Yu and she's excited to play the part until she actually reads the script at home. At that point she discovers how much of a disaster the script is. Her character is a doozy and dies in the end. Xiao Yu wishes she could rewrite the whole thing and make it better.
Which lands her into the story ans Song Yi Meng, the female lead who is destined to fall in love with Nan Heng the male lead and die at his hands. She's desperate to change her destiny and will stop at nothing to stay far away from those who want to eventually kill her.
But the scriptwriter has a different ending in mind and he will stop at nothing to bring Nan Heng and Song Yi Meng together. Even if that means forcing Nan Heng to protect Yi Meng with his life whenever she faces death.

At the start of the drama the story has a lot of humor. We watch Yi Meng go through many deaths after which time resets and she lands right back at the start. Her confidence and go-get-them attitude made me laugh multiple times and I loved watching her go through ups and downs while trying to make her way through the set plotlines. But after she met Nan Heng I started to get annoyed by her.
She turned into this narrowminded and shallow fool who couldn't see beyond her own selfish needs and never wanted to listen to anything Nan Heng had to say. I do understand some of her choices since Nan Heng was obviously hostile in the beginning but when he started to open up and warm up to her she still turned a blind eye and just wanted to get back at him by planning his assassination. The poor man gave his life and bled for her each time she did something truly stupid but we never saw her grow. After everything they went through together she still refused to believe or trust Nan Heng and stick to her own needs.
That's why I did not see the chemistry between the two main leads. I didn't understand why Nan Heng was so in love with her. I did see it a little between Yi Meng and Li Sixteen (Nan Heng's alter ego) and I guess that's why he fell in love but having Nan Heng fight for her hand in marriage the way he did, knowing that all she did was planning for his death was just stupid.

Somewhere in the middle point (around episode 20) the drama also took a turn for the worst. The story became a mess and it was hard to keep up. When I saw then that the drama had 20 more episodes I got a little disheartened. I hoped it would become better again but sadly it ended as a big fail for me. The episodes 30 - 40 were unnecessary and I skipped most of the scenes, just wanting to get to the end and watch what would happen. They spend the last three episodes going back and forth in time, telling scenes from different angles, changing certain choices and ending up with and ending that really did not satisfy me.

I'm glad they added another ending after the credits which made it a little better but it still didn't really do it for me.

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A Dream Within A Dream is a funny parody of Chinese costume dramas. It skewers many typical historical drama tropes, such as Male Lead trying to kill Female Lead, OTC surviving falling off a cliff, and underwater kiss. Even the beautiful costumes in typical historial dramas merit a snarky comment. It’s fun trying to identify references to specific scenes and music from other dramas (e.g., Love Like the Galaxy, Till the End of the Moon, A Journey to Love, The Romance of Tiger and Rose). Viewers expecting logical progressions and likeable main characters will be disappointed because the drama turns even that on its head. For example, the "rules" of the script are openly inconsistent and the female lead is annoying as hell. You will not like this drama if you go into it with the usual drama expectations...or any expectations at all.

Liu Yuning, who is the Male Lead (hence the sign above his gate that says “Male Lead’s House”), seems to be a good sport because the drama makes fun of his roles in other dramas, as well as his modern day Male Lead actor image. I burst out laughing watching him cough out purple poison dust. It was such a contrast against the calculating and ruthless male lead characters he usually plays. And watching him become so mushily lovesick was tolerable if viewed as an exaggeration of the enemies to lovers arcs in countless other dramas.

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You just have to persevere! Haha

Like the title said, you just need some perseverance to finish this and perhaps you might find that the series is not that bad after all. Lol. Frankly, it gives almost, if not one of the best endings so far in the history of costume dramas. Lol. Apart from giving us a child by the end of it, the ending was so lovey dovey and satisfying to watch. Love it!

The plot. Well. It was quite a fresh theme, usually we just see the lead being transmigrate into the story and off they go taking the place of the character and there is that. However, in this, the element of transmigration is kept on being main focus in the plot until the end. It needs quite a while for me to enjoy it, especially since the FL seems to be quite focus on it and hard-headedly rejecting the ML because of it and it kills us as viewers and some might drop this halfway due to the frustration. Lol. But looking at it from the FL’s view, of course she would be quite hardheaded, i mean, the ML quite literally breaks her heart, used her, stab her in the back and screw her sister before making her a human swine (second time watching this being used after scum villain system lol), so it was quite understandable for her to refuse Nang Heng at first. But the plot also brings a lot of laugh as well. So many funny things happened and it was basically a comedy drama. Haha. However, the plot for CGH almost had me coughing blood in rage i swear to god that character irks me so much with no redemption until the end. I also would like to string the emperor’s feet to a torture device at first (he was basically the most unjust ruler and father so far in the history of emperor father) but at least he changed lol. Some plots was half baked like the plot of NH looking for Qianyu’s Army method for sword welding and i always find the plot having 2 different army in the capital doesnt make much sense, especially if the emperor’s army is not that established it seems

Nang Heng was Nang Heng, and of course LYN did splendid in his role as authoritative loving prince (and oh my, he was good at being those) who is secretly a puppy in disguise when in love. Lol. I did watch LYT before but it was in Glory of the Special Force, and her role there was not quite much, so basically this is my first drama of hers as FL, and tbh, she was almost a carbon copy of Bailu in my eyes, cant believe they look so much alike! Her acting is fine, she did well in comedy and crying scenes (even though Song Yimeng almost always cried while scolding NH during the sad scenes. Lol. Like Song Yiting and Shangguan He’s characters, it was refreshing not to have an annoying second FL, instead we got a smart and supportive one.

OST was of course chef kissed, especially the one of LYN’s. Totally keeping the vibe of the scenes each time. The costumes were all an eye candy, be it for the main leads or for the supporting casts, seems like they have a high budget for it. I especially like the costumes for Nang Heng, super luxurious and godlooking

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