AleksandraSucur

we'll miss it. ML standinf, kicking and fighting still feels unreal

Highlights of eps today. If you are not updated and do not want to be spoiled do not read what follows.
1. the wheelchair crashed bravely fighting with ML against unreasonably high number of assassins sent (by Muyang) to kill a "cripple". The assassins even formed a guarding encirclement form, totally unrealistic. But necessary for dramatic purposes. To let us (=the audience) go of that wheelchair, to make that wheelchair die as a hero, as a martyr and ofc. to make everybody knows ML is BACK ON HIS FEET (although we knew that already) and to make ML brag at every corner his wife cured his legs.
2. Duke Hua finally personally appeared saying more than 2 sentences. Now we know he wasn't only ML's former superior but was a friend of FL's grandpa and knew her when she was a little...
3. the irritating element in the plotline also successfully trown herself in front of the ML's sis-in-low's carriage. Nobody (=the audience) is happy about her but I don't think she'll get a lot of screentime or affect...
4. ... A'Yao's-A'Li's relationship. Beyond any reasonable doubt, these two love each other.
5. A personal thing which doesn't interest anybody: The cicadas bursting my eardrums and the damn hot summer landscape around me totally correspond to the account Ye Li's is giving in the drama, she even sounds like a heroine from the worlds' narrative and dramaturgical classics. I totally feel for and with her, although I am counting number of days (now it's 3) when I'll jump into the sea. She wanted a glance on her man that time, but I am not the less in my desire to throw myself into the sea, surviving the heat and the noise of cicadas reminding me: it's time to go to the sea!
6. the villain trio finally starts to make some sense. ED used Muyang as a tool to survive and get the power. Muyang used the ED to justify his wrongdoings. But she doesn't want him to be himself (ie. the criminal), she wants him to arise (her words: to grow) from that condition to smth more conciliating and noble. Good luck with that, lol
7. Muyang sent his son to eliminate his subordinate from talking and sent an assassin to kill the son. Although I think the Qin boy survived, he stupidly obeyed this villain's orders. No problem with him killing that corrupted man in prison, but he killed a prison guard along the way...

That was truly a fun moment. She wants so hard to get rid of him, yet he sticks to her so hard. 😂😂😂
Btw., I also think QC isn't dead. The problem is that now he has done smth truly bad (I don't refer to the corrupted minister), he killed a prison guard.

I agree, and I've tried to explain the reason for that below

To calm your irritation, I can only say this one can hardly compare to the bi*** in POB, bc that one was so intense in her manipulations, that I've actually found her more interesting to watch than the FL when that storyline started to show certain flows. They are both certainly (unreasonably) convinced they are able to turn the tides in the loving relationship between the leads and determined to do so, having their own personal agendas, but this Su girl seems not to possess hard and soft power the noseless lady had.
Besides, the noseless lady had wider range of utility in that plotline than this one can possibly have in TFJ plotline.
Nevertheless, the Su girl can still irritate to a certain degree. If we can pardon her for being a trigger the Ye Li's jealousy, she will complicate the story (trying to kill the foreign princess framing our dear Ye Li) in a way we don't desire, bc the pending issues are many and heavy and what we (=the audience) want to see are not some new troubles, but those old issues cleared and resolved.

No, MJL is in some hideout of the Red Fox.
As for the ruins, it was an intentional cut and camera shift deception. The moment cpt. Li stepped into the academy, what we saw wasn't the interior of the academy but the (burnt) courtyard and then the messy study at MJL's mansion in the capital where FL's stepsister was sorting books...

Cheng Lei

❤️

FL suffers from a particular psychological condition, that's why we all talk a lot about her. She is very cool and strong, but at the same time, extremely vulnerable, and the latter trait make us fear for her more than we fear for the ML, also bc she has already healed his condition (invalidity due to past injuries). But in terms of screentime, they are equal and the ML is just great. People in this section call him "our husband" and FL "our wife" as they (we) are participants in their husband-wife relationship and loving them both, that's how great are the script, direction, performance, visuals, bgm... I would recommend this drama to every person craving for a veeery original story in a fictional period drama genre. It has all the elements of a classic to be remembered for a long time

It's a spear, not a lance. Don't worry, neither did I knew the difference a short while ago 😂
A to your Q: she can't face the reality at her will. She developed a severe PTSD on Li mountain and her brain suppressed and rescripted the events connected with the trauma in her memory, bc just remembering would cause an unbearable pain. The deep brain (amygdala), prioritising the survival, erases the part of the memory connected with the painful event without "informing" the pre-frontex, thus the person isn't even conscious of it.

Her feelings were crystal clear when she told him the reason why she wanted his legs healed, how she depicted him when he was young, that image of his strength, vigour and intensiveness in her mind was an indirect confession of how she felt about him. What she described was... enrapture. Before that, when he was all down, she solemnly told him she intends to spend a life with him and to take care of his well being. Immediately after, she eliminated Lv vilain. She is a determined, protective and caring person who has things to do on her agenda and is still not completely open with him, but the reason why she is not bc she doesn't love him. In part it is due to her high state of alertness connected to her condition and in part is due to a habit: she is used to make decisions alone, brainstorming problems only with her imaginery friend.

imho, having read some of those comments, they have prejudices towards Ye Li because she is "mentally unhealthy" - convinced "mentally unhealthy" are unable to have perfectly normal feelings. I've tried to prove them it's completely untrue and that people (at least people with FL's type of disturb, caused by a trauma) actually could have deeper feelings and show extraordinary care for others, but it's like you've said: people believe what they want to believe.

we don't know when captain Li left Lishan. 3 years ago he got a job of chief guard at Ye mansion. I don't think he could have left the sealed mountain, he left earlier, probably at the time she entered.
As for the rest, even the most serious drama applies certain exaggerations for dramatic purposes. Besides, they don't sell her to us as a successful businesswoman, you are overstating. She even says the business doesn't flourish. She employed her senior from Lishan and he takes care of subordinates and business.

Well, this is not completely correct. She was diagnosed by the doctor ML consulted. His verdict was "heartbreak" due to "heavy shock". You can find this "diagnose" in many ancient textbooks, classical narrative and folktales all around the world. It's always that same term: heartbreak.

Actually, dissociative fugue and identity alteration are among those PTSD and DID symptoms largely treated in Classical literature: in King Lear, Edgar (who suffers from trauma caused by his murderous father) sees himself as another person, "poor Tom", a beggar possessed by demons, thing often quoted in manuals, while Ajax (in homonimous Sophocles tragedy, based on the story told in Odissey but without specific preceeding PTSD details) storms sheep and cows imagining they are Greeks who took Achilles's weapons, torturing them for many days without ever realising they were not even humans but animals. These and other examples from ancient literature, like Aeschylus's trilogy Oresteia, each one of the three dramas treating a different PTSD disorder, are very often quoted in scientific texts on PTSD.

MJL said she was a brilliant student, capable to learn everything.
We actually don't know for how many years she lived ALONE (bc we have no clue what happened and when exactly happened), we just know she lived on Li mountain for 8 years (since she was 12, MJL was 14 at the time) but we've seen she studied there from her childhood. I'm practising martial arts daily and explored different arts and styles, but I've started as an adult. I can pass all the levels and be a teacher, but I can't compare with eg. my son's skills (who is not as diligent as I am) in real combat, for a simple reason he started as a kid, has a better constitution, talent and a brain which was trained at the right age to "intercept" the moves (=the intention) of the opponent. When you learn martial arts as a kid, it's a game in which the kid's brain explores so many variables the adult learners don't even contemplate discarding them as "impossible". In my life, I've also met a few national or world champions of several martial arts: they've became the top very young, in their early 20s, practising for hours daily since they were children. The drama may have exaggerated FL's skills, but being trained since she was a kid and having such a good teacher, I don't find unbelievable she developed extraordinary skills.
And as I've said before, I'll personally be very disappointed if the drama turns to supernatural or ghostly explanations, undermining the highly logical explanations it offered till now. They've put such a care and effort to make this story flow, just to downgrade it with supernatural explanations?

it's ok, I'm glad if this helped to clarify. There are infinite comments here, you've probably missed mine or those of another commentator who is treating PTSD daily for work and confirmed that the disassociaton mechanism could be even stronger in real cases, bc the traumas were so hard people hit by them wouldn't survive if their (perfectly normal) brain didn't activate these - substantially defensive - mechanisms.

I've seen women with PTSD. With a beahviour very much alike FL's (and who suffered maybe even more terrible traumas than FL, but I can't be sure about that bc we don't know precisely what trauma her brane erased and rescripted).

They mainly live normally their lives, maybe focusing a little be too much on every day activities one can may find cute or not... but there's one thing I found irrestibly charming - in real persons and in the fictional Ye Li character performed by this actress - is the vulnerability and innocence they manifest when smth recalls the trauma which triggered the disorder. In such situations, real persons trembles like a leaf, even if they've took the calming medication, they are weak and drop in your embrace just like the FL fell in ML's embrace after her grandma tried to kill her.

And believe me, they are completely capable to fall in love, to have friends, husbands and to take care of the loved ones, maybe even with greater zeal than normal persons. Besides, the symptoms of PTSD greatly regress in motherhood on their own, the thing which is also greatly studied and documented.

This will be... like the 20th times I'll repeat she doesn't have a split personality.

When FL "sees" master Zhu, she shows a symptom called identity alteration. It manifests or could manifest in several mental conditions. It shows up both in DID (Dissociative identity disorder, which is a scientific term for "split personality") and in PTSD.

The difference between these two conditions is difficult to distinguish from the symptoms, that's why other features must be contemplated, such as:
1. Time when it develops. While PTSD can hit any of us at any age, both in childhood or in adulthood, DID must develop in an early childhood (6-9 years)
2. Identity structure: while person with PTSD always feels like the same "self," even when distressed (just like Ye Li), person with DID experiences (=is aware of) two or more distinct personality states that control his/her behavior
3. Type of memory loss: PTSD person blocks out (erasing and/or rescripting) parts of the specific traumatic event, the DID person amnesia is pervasive, she or he has gaps in memory involving everyday events, personal details and skills that are habitually used when other "identity" takes control of the brain. Although one can argue that when she is Ye Li, she forgets she possesses martial skills, she doesn't live her everyday life under the idenitity of master Zhu, he appears in her vision, triggered only when she is in a mortal danger and as a separate person from her. Her brain rescripts that entire experience as "master Zhu came to save me", not bc she assumes the identity of master Zhu, but bc her brain had already erased (for the reason we don't know) from her memory the fact she knows martial arts and can save herself on her own.

She doesn't have a split personality, she just suffers from a heavy PTSD.

It isn't mentioned anywhere in the drama. I've offered you the arguments which were shown or mentioned in the drama on which I've reconstructed the dynamics and the timeline, the only logical sequence of the events.

Yes, I've said it would be logical Qin consort used the edict given her by the Yes to save the person she cared for so much. That's my opinion based on her apparently smart personality and aforementioned reconstruction. You stubbornly repeat yourself, so I suppose you don't get what I'm saying. Have a nice day/evening

Indeed, ED was not in power when Ding was captured, but she fought for the power with the CP. She said herself (to Qin): we fought with our lives. This "fighting for their lives" was mentioned by Muyang and convalidated by the words of consort Qin. In their contraddictorial versions of the events subsequent the emperor's death, only this sentence seems to appear in all three interpretations of events, so that must be true. But the fact there was a great power struggle, doesn't necessarily imply these (or some of them) didn't conspire beforehand, anticipating what to do after the emperor's death. The fact the fatty general Lu Chengfu, subordinate of Muyang, intercepted young MJL, son of the CP, who was escorted by Lishan guards from the academy to the Duke Hua (probably his maternal grandfather) "for protection" immediately after the emperor's death is another indicator there was a precise plan on Muyang-ED's side to take control over all possible rivals.
It isn't necessary to be in a material power to make certain things done. Especially if you have a plan hoe to take the power.