pear

NOW THIS IS A MASTERPIECE I will rewatch

nothing can top this ever

Happy 3rd Anniversary to this masterpiece!! 🎉🥳🫶

Bai lu is wonderful in this! what a brilliant actor, love her!

I really hate when shows tell you over and over again how smart a person is only for them to REPEATEDLY be the stupidest most unobservant person in the entire show. looking at you Shen Zhi Li...looking at you.

She has been groomed. He has treated her differently from the first time we have seen them. Giving her different gift to other students. How long has she been her teacher and they used an older actress but really I think she is in her teens? The family put her in that position, and didn’t pull her out when they should have. You should read more on grooming as this is exactly the power dynamics it happens. She is a victim and unfortunately society always blames the woman.

Grooming didn’t start modern day it’s always been there. Him as her elder should not have approached her and given her special treatment. The wife weirded and people saw the attention but ignored it. It’s like when pastors abuse or groom children no one really steps in because they are respected. She didn’t like him out of nowhere it was his actions that lead to this, he groomed her. He is a trusted person and her family ignored it as long as it was beneficial until they wanted to marry her off to the emperor. They failed her, she is a victim.

I honestly don’t know how they managed to fail another novel adaptation so badly. I remember reading the novel last year, it was genuinely great, with solid political intrigue, beautiful romance, and just the right amount of angst. The drama failed in every aspect.

I don’t even want to get into the acting, casting choices, or makeup. I do think they could have done better, but the biggest disappointment is the plot. How do you take such a good novel and turn it into this? All the amazing romantic tension from the book is completely nonexistent in the drama. It’s sad and disappointing.

Of course the scriptwriters will get a backlash and criticism if the drama does poorly. A primary point of skepticism on platforms like Weibo is the background of the screenwriters. Some netizens have expressed concern that the writing team's past experience with short- form or idol dramas might struggle to balance the dense political scheming and deep power struggles required for an epic historical script. Fingers crossed 🤞
It is supposedly a compelling, high-stakes revenge and political-intrigue story centered on a tragic rebirth- a betrayed empress returning undercover as a palace maid. Because the script is a heavily repeated trope (rebirth/return under a fake identity for revenge), I'm interested to see if the script can bypass generic clichés and deliver authentic, high-IQ political warfare.
I would like to think the script tracks Miles's character, Xiao Jue (the 3rd Prince of Xiliang), rising from an unpopular underdog to an emperor who rules the world with the help of Qin Changge. According to early plot leaks, a massive emotional hook in the script involves Xiao Jue betraying his empress and burning her to death (she is caught in a deadly conspiracy under his reign), only for her to return under a new identity three years later to exact revenge. His relationship with Changge is apparently written as a dark, high-stakes romance rooted in mutual trauma, evolving from deep devotion to bitter betrayal, and culminating in a tense push-pull bloody dynamic when she returns three years later under a new identity for revenge. Netizens are expecting an intense, "dog-blood" (melodramatic) love-hate dynamic 😃

I'm highly anticipating how his usually calm and gentle aura will translate into playing a dominant morally grey, and calculating emperor. Having seen his performances in Flourished Peony and LBTG, I totally trust Wei Zheming can pull off the heavy emotional shifts required of the character.

The directing seems like it's trying to be like The Double, but with half the budget. Great cast, bad production.

They use too much face close ups with unspecific intentions. In The Double, they use it to heighten the intensity of line delivery and the emotion being conveyed, meanwhile in this drama they're using it everywhere that it just fell bland as the episodes go. The beginning arc in Shazhou was done well, but as the drama progressed, quality goes downhill especially the script and editing. They didn't make me sympathize when something happened to Fuzhi, and I don't feel excited for the romance. Even Chancellor Xu ended up so bland and flat in the last 10 episodes, his character reduced to a simple 'Anti-Meng Ting Hui' plot device. He has so much potential that I genuinely hate him at the beginning and wish for his downfall. But after the Flood arc, I don't even care since he become so 1-Dimentional.

I mourn for the lost of potential that the first 10 episodes promised to us 😔 now I'll just wait for CYZ and WJY other upcoming projects.

Seriously running away separately with the crooked villian to fight him separately? What happened to the smart witty Meng Ting Hui from Shozou? Who is this damsel in distress?