Garanosekai

I mean the ring finger thing, I am pretty sure it is a Christian tradition, how did the King know this?

Yoona is perfect for this role. The FL needs a motherly aura in order for this to work, the plot requires it. Considering she has to capture the heart of the King, she needs to be beyond beautiful as well. So this role is literally created for her. On the other hand, the drama didn't give FL much to work with tbh, the conflict surrounds her because of her cooking skill, not because of her character. I think she already cooked, pun intended, pretty hard here, can't imagine to swap her with other actresses of her age.

True. The King first 4 eps is a different character from the rest of the episodes.

Being a King means he will get what he wants however he wanted it. In EP5, it is kind awkward to see his first reaction to our FL after the kiss incident is to ... apologize? I mean in East Asian palace, being touched by the King is the ultimate honor, at least from his perspective. So naturally, if our FL shows displeasure against such action, he should be baffled and angry, and accusing her being ungrateful. Apology will be the last thing in a King's mind, because that implies his courtship is somehow negative thing, which will never occur to a King, they are raised to be narcissistic.

The fact cooking nerd describes the FL 100% is kinda wild.

It is good it will end by end of next week. I will pick it up then.

Yes, 100%. Weirdly I think the writer understood the assignment perfectly in first 4 episodes. It is about unpredictability of the king. He can kill you torture you as he desires. One can say this is another beauty and beast story retell: the beast form is going to be more popular.

But what we get is a FL that knew the history but didn’t question it, besides the cooking competition, she didn’t think about her situation that much at all. She felt so insecure about targeted by the concubine, yet she refused to think her relationship with the King and reject Song Jae’s proposal? And we get the king to a point he felt more like a bratty rich families’ heir that Kdrama can’t seem to move away from. Almost innocent.

With how much time this drama left on its hand, I think it is going to be hard to salvage the plot at this point

Tbh even if it is a 16 episode drama, this will still way too much time spending on just one arc. As it seems it will be 5 episodes for the China vs Korea competition. And after episodes 9 we have 3 just to wrap it up? They will have at least 0.5 episode to resolve the time travel and back to future consequences. That leaves only 2.5 episodes for all the rest of the palace drama content. And we have so many characters left to explore. The concubine, the grandma, gong gil. Seems like a pretty daunting task.

Ngl, the pacing isn’t there after episode 4. First 4 episodes are just perfection. The 1st competition is perfect, so much drama and so intense and so much character development. And the interaction between FL and ML in first 4 eps is much better and chewy.

Regardless, the food reaction in today’s episode is gold. At least the comedic value is well served.

I really really hope them can get through the Chinese envoy storyline by ep8, for the love of God, I wouldn't predict this arc will be the MAIN plot of this drama.... Usually the Chinese envoy in Joseon is like the 1-2 episodes just to stir things up. Now we got 1/3 of the drama is about them ... doesn't feel right

This might be subtle and didn't bother me at all. But while other 'Chinese' characters are speaking in vernacular Chinese with a hint of Ancient sprinkle, especially the envoy himself, Bai Long straight up speaking in Classical Chinese like in pre-Qin style.

Same, it is basically a fetch quest.

I think the so called tyrant will end up not killing anybody unless it is for the sake of saving the FL lol

100% agree. What makes this drama interesting is that the king is a tyrant. So it presents a problem to the FL, that she can't fully trust him even though their attraction is undeniable. Eventually the king will change, well he has to, because he is the love interest, but honestly, I would hope the writer explore this a little more.

Thinking about it, ML is still the king in an ancient Confucian society, the hierarchy is going to be unbreakable from his perspective. I watched quite a lot of Korean historical drama in the past, 100 days my prince did really well in turning those misunderstanding of social status into comedy material.

For now, I think the writer is a little bit too eager to sanitize the king's image to make him more palatable to modern audience, which is understandable, but played quite safe IMO.

I mean is the ending open ended? Isn't it obvious? It just didn't show too much.

I think ep1-4’s pacing is perfect, ep5-6 emmmmmm, kinda slow?

ep1-2 set up the dynamic between two leads, then lead FL to the palace. 3-4 sets up the palace politics, all pretty information dense.

I really don’t think the Chinese envoy arch needs to 2 episodes long, let alone extending into next week. We need drama, DRAMA, that the king is a tyrant, he needs to be actually crazy and cruel from time to time, not cozy up to FL this quickly. FL is now already the center of attention in the palace, true she is in danger but the system has set up to help her already not actively work against her like in first 4 eps.

As a result I think the tension is loosing up quite a bit, hope they can recover from it and quickly get over this Chinese arc and get back to palace infighting and scheming

What is funny is that Yoona probably speaks better Chinese than all of those 'Chinese' characters lolll

Not at all. This is what annoys me, even Chinese people will not able to understand their lines.

Classical Chinese is a written language nobody actually speaks Chinese as they writes it. Make the matter worse, they did a really poor job for all but one actor (Bai Long, who is dubbed) pronouncing everything.

Honestly it is too distracting for me it harms the watchability

The Chinese they spoke is too hard to understand, and NF skipped subtitles but I need it lolll. I mean they can start speaking Korean that is fine

Grown up reading CN web novels (actually Hu Zhu Fu Ren published in print first), it is true most of them have sad endings. I realize it is a unique thing once I got out of the CN drama/novel lands, and it is shocking to see that rest of the world prefer otherwise loll.

Maybe there is something to a deep rooted Buddhist belief things remain at its best when you can't have it. I don't know, but it could have some cultural explanation behind ...

I read the novel years ago... If I remember correctly, the emperor is interested in Haishi, but that is about it. Master gave her (HaiShi) away willingly to the emperor because that is the only way she could live once her female identity is revealed. Plus he is eunuch in the novel, so he believed it was impossible between him and Haishi.

In the novel, the emperor didn't love anyone besides Zi Zan.

No in the novel, their relationship is tabooed. It is father-and-son, the daughter, then teacher and students, then lovers, and yes the ML is a eunuch, and the his relationship with the emperor is ... complicated to say the least. The readers to this day are still debating whether the homosexual theme is implied in the novel.

The novel's plot is crazy and convoluted, and the author's writing style, which laced with exquisite but exotic classic Chinese makes it all the more difficult to interpret...