Yidenia

She was reasonably out of her element, while he's a fish that returned to his water. There are naturally a lot of rules in the military and a lot of etiquette among the nobles which were not relevant to the common people. In fact, this was how they maintained the class divide; peasants and commoners were gaslighted into feeling "stupid" because they weren't immersed in this environment and didn't automatically know how to conduct themselves. In this show it was done in a more wholesome manner because FL is a sweetie and everyone understood, but in real life she would have appeared to be even more of a bumbling fool. She's actually been portrayed very intelligently during this segment, asking the sort of logical questions that had the nobles around her scrambling to patch up the holes in their deception. She didn't believe their explanations because she was gullible, she believed them because she's humble, and the explanations were more likely than the idea that she had been unknowingly married to a freaking Marquis all this time.

He used to be less skillful and I think people retained that impression of him. I for one think he’s improved leaps and bounds. When he’s in a role he is nothing like his usual derpy self lol

I didn’t mean her personality wasn’t a good fit; clearly it was within the confines of the novel. I just meant in the real world statistically a social status gap, whether in terms of prestige, education, or finances, which in this case would be all three, is an independent risk factor for domestic abuse, even accounting for other variables. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still shipping the main leads, but I just meant in the real world she had a better chance of a lasting relationship with someone who is more of an equal. Right now, there’s just so much disparity between her and the Marquis due to her lack of education and lack of immersion in his society. If this were a real life scenario, even if their relationship starts off sweet, there’s a high chance of adultery and emotional neglect once she loses her looks, or even before.

I feel like the show did tease that too. But China isn't like Europe. You don't have automatic claim to your parent's titles unless you are in line for the throne, and even then there's a limit (to give an example, during the Three Kingdoms period one of the heroes, Liu Bei, was a direct descendant of the Emperor who was his great grandfather. He was dirt poor and had to make a living selling woven straw shoes and the other pretenders during that period used to mock him for being common; no one took his surname as proof of the Mandate of Heaven.) A Marquis like Xie Zheng, who isn't even of imperial blood, DEFINITELY wouldn't be able to just transfer that title to his son, his son would have to pass the same bureaucratic exam as everyone else (albeit with all the amenities that his high-ranking father can afford, so obviously being privileged has its benefits). It's not a perfect merit system, but it's better than Europe's peerage system, and your own, actual upbringing matters much more than bloodline. Families absolutely could and have lost their titles and influence within one generation (even without committing crimes) simply because the offspring didn't qualify to enter the imperial court. FL doesn't even know how to read. As far as the ancient Chinese are concerned, she's a commoner. She and ML are honestly not a great match if we're talking social background. I think that's why the old guy was included in the story and there was that apprenticeship/tutelage business, because as she is, she's genuinely not good enough to be a Marquis' wife.

Does anyone besides me think that the leader of the gang would have also made a pretty good CP for FL? Honestly would have made more sense in many ways if we're being realistic. He's not as powerful as a freaking Marquis, but the two of them are more equal in upbringing and there wouldn't be this huge difference in social status, which actually leads to more domestic abuse in real life. The facial hair makes him look sus, but he's not BAD-looking, treats her with respect, plus he has a loyal gang all willing to die for her. The only thing missing right now is chemistry, but they actually look good together lol

Honestly I'm just confused. I'm not SEA but I've met plenty and literally none of them look like that, so I don't even get why he brought up SEA in the first place, let alone what about that drawing reminded him of being born there. I actually didn't think it was a bad drawing for someone under the stress of being on a reality show and having to whip something up, and likely not cultivating the skill beforehand. The eyes are nice and long, the lips are pillowy, the proportions are obviously cartoonish but it's a cartoon drawing, hello? Like there weren't any ugly features, necessarily, it just wasn't an A+ drawing. As a casual viewer I would have thought it was an attempt to draw someone good-looking, so it's weird to me that people were like "he mentioned SEA because it looks ugly and he thinks SEA people are ugly" because it doesn't actually look ugly to me, just beginner. ZLH actually went to Florence, Italy (you can find his vlog on youtube) where a professional Italian artist drew a portrait of him that was way more racist, of course that drawer wasn't a celebrity so no one cared.

I understand it's really frustrating to watch someone cave in to a evil man's demands, but I feel your analysis is a bit extreme. Both approaches have their drawbacks. Defiance is not the greater virtue when you have no plan and other lives are on the line. Furthermore everyone has limits, even men, and having them does not make you weak. Changyu had plot armor and was the protagonist. The truth is, realistically after going over the cliff, she should have died already, or at least become quadriplegic, which would render her completely unable to perform the rest of her feats throughout the series. Tree branches are not air bags, they are stabby-stabby especially when they SPLINTER, and there's a reason you can absolutely beat someone to death with a wooden stick. We're all willing to overlook this major logical fallacy in the plot proceedings because we adore Changyu so much, but the fact is she's actually been the stupid one that's really only saved by Main Character Syndrome and her deux ex machina martial arts abilities. Even with her "training" from her dad, do we seriously think that even a super-strong girl has the ability to outdo multiple trained soldiers who presumably practiced sparring on a regular basis? Fighting isn't just about strength, and battling multiple people with hands and swords with longer reach than your tiny dagger is very different from slapping pigs with no hands and no weapons for that matter. After the story already Game of Thrones other major supporting characters, it's not like we had any guarantee that simply being strongwilled would allow Qian or her son to survive the situation. She doesn't know martial arts, she's also got PTSD from her past, and she doesn't have any follow up with any winning strategy once she's successfully angered her captors, so she can't just brute force her way through an entire estate armed with staff and servants actively working against her. From the way she's portrayed, Qian was always the more "feminine" of these two characters. Changyu was practically a superman in a woman's body, she can handle a lot of things the masculine way because she can run fast and she can hit hard, but Qian does not have such assets, she has to make do with what a lot of women had to at the time. When you are NOT stronger than your enemy, nor can you outrun them because they can run faster than you, you have to endure some humiliation while you look for less obvious opportunities. This is less satisfying, but it doesn't mean a person is weak. A person is only weak if they give up when they can still fight. Qian has not. She simply CANNOT fight back with the same methods as Changyu. Arguably she's even stronger than Changyu because she didn't have the same things going for her, yet she rebelled once already to provide her son a safer environment to grow up in, and she's still watching for a way to do so the second time.

So she was supposed to have medicine in addition to guasha, I guess. Guasha is still completely unnecessary at this stage but the book also wanted a steamy scene lol

I don't mean scratch as in ripping skin. I mean if you have any itchy skin and you scratch to relieve it, just that is actually more traumatizing than the guasha. If you ever itched at your nose or rubbed your eyes, that's actually more traumatizing than this guasha.

You do do it over and over in the same area. It still doesn't hurt. I've had it done before and I've also done it before to others. Again, the redness isn't because it hurts, it's because there was pathology and also the skin just looks red after doing this. Redness does not equal pain. You can have very red skin, even dark red, without there being any pain involved. Guasha and cupping are both known to scare westerners because of how dramatic they look. Both are supposed to be painless when done right, but the color does not tell you whether the process had been painful or not, because they always look red. As for the FL twitching, she does have other reasons to be in pain. She should have had like 80 fractures and internal bleeding from the tumble she took, and even if she didn't, just the chafing on her skin abrasions where she was leaning onto his shirt would have caused her to twitch. Those would have hurt more exquisitely than this stupid coin.

Actually the Chinese medicine in the show isn't accurate because guasha is not intended for deep, penetrating pathology. It's really only meant for superficial and milder pathology. By the time the illness is deep inside, as the blind woman suggested, guasha isn't sufficient; you need to ingest herbs for that. It makes no sense to use guasha on the body's surface to expel the cold from the core when you can just drink warming draughts that heat you from the inside out. If the patient's really unable to drink because they're unconscious or something, you still wouldn't use this method; there's moxibustion where you can light mugwort and that would funnel heat straight into your meridians. There's also just soaking in a hot bath, though if the patient had frostbite you're actually not supposed to heat them up too fast or you can cause necrosis and it's bye-bye to various body parts; FL wasn't shown to have that but she should have. They wanted to make the scene romantic and lighting mugwort would have caused all sorts of smoke and blocked our view, even if the cast and crew managed to ignore the smell, so they went this route instead, but the problem is the approach is wrong altogether, not that the approach would have been painful.

It only hurts if your skin is tender for some reason (like there's a rash) or you're doing it very VERY wrong. If you've ever scratched yourself for an itch, you've done it harder than this coin. The redness is just a reaction to the skin getting stimulated, it doesn't need to be that severe for it to be quite red, especially if you have a lot of toxin buildup on the inside. The whole point is to allow the skin vessels to dilate and release it from within the body.

It doesn't hurt. It's basically like a back scratch, except more methodical. In real life you often do it with oil to make it glide better. The redness is just from the skin reacting to being stimulated. Your own nails would do more damage than that coin. If you've ever scratched yourself anywhere at all, you're doing it harder than that coin.

The yaoguai mask looks so derp 😅 I think it's the same mask as the one in Blossoms in Adversity, just painted over so it doesn't look exactly identical. That guy in the other show looked so derp too. Who's actually afraid of these things? The people who are scared of clowns? Because it's so clownish, if the folks you're trying to intimidate are not scared of clowns then you won't look scary, you'll just look like an idiot 🤡

I normally don't like child acting in cdramas but this director really has chops, the kids practically steal the show more than the adults 😍😍😍

What does this prove, exactly? And I gave it a rating with 0/40 episodes watched so I don't see what you're trying to show me.

The rating is always updated in real time. It's fed by members of the MDL community. As it is, most people understand it as the overall rating of the episodes that have aired so far, because it's clearly indicated that the show is not yet finished. There are ratings for individual episodes, but not the first ten episodes or the first 12 episodes as a whole. The reason the rating is open in the first place is for potential viewers to see what people think of the drama SO FAR. This is by no means the final rating, and even after the show is done, the ratings continue to change as more and more people view the drama and contribute their own verdict. People even go back to change their rating as their opinion on the show fluctuates.

It's absolutely premature to rate for the whole show. That's not what the current rating is and again, it won't stay the same. If you don't trust it, you can wait until the show finishes airing and look again, but for a lot of people this is actually very helpful and no, no one actually thinks this is for the whole series at this time

Just from the episodes that have aired, I'd say it's a fair rating. The rating has always been about just the episodes that have already aired and people understand it as such. If this series drops the ball towards the end, that rating will naturally go down. It was never reasonable to expect people to rate the whole thing before they've even watched it all.

I agree that it's a little extreme, more "dumb" than "naive" at this point, though I will argue that in a way it is kind of consistent because her family supported that other guy and his mom for so long, so from a background standpoint, if her parents were starting off that dumb, she's more likely to be less savvy about keeping trade secrets when confronted with a person who seems trustworthy. I can also sort of see how she might be incredibly overwhelmed by the pretty lady who looks so graceful and ethereal when she's a pork butcher, there's a little bit of that infatuation-at-first-sight going on here, which may render a normally clever person to do some pretty foolish things. Though I think if the script kept that in mind, they could have portrayed her regretting her dumb words as she speaks, or something along those lines. Ultimately I do agree that the show sort of lost track of her character for a bit there. Fortunately it's a minor blip in the grand scheme of things.

I didn't know she had another drama! Will definitely check it out!

And I agree, the fact that it's a Chinese production reassures me. Their censorship rules aren't perfect, but especially in cases like these, they are much more on point than the laissez-faire attitude western productions have. And I agree that western films have been very lackluster in their story-telling; it's all more for spectacle than to provoke thought, and you're almost too distracted by all the visuals to parse the contents of what was portrayed. Chinese dramas tend to have a similar palette, since they are obliged to use the same sets and costumes for budgeting reasons, so they don't rely so much on shocking visuals to draw in the viewer; for better or worse, the actors and the script have to carry the show.

A detective into the crime scene who can't reach out to any contacts outside and whose contacts aren't allowed to freely visit her, so basically she can't actually do her job. Does not make any sense at all. After this many years, the Emperor shouldn't expect her to be able to find anything worthwhile at the crime scene anymore. They've had like 15 years to erase any evidence that could point to who was responsible, even if they did not bother to clean up the rest of the mess. From his standpoint, his mercy was merely not killing her outright or imprisoning her in a standard cell. As a reward or even protection, it doesn't really track for me. Remember, she's trapped in there. This wasn't a way to spark her memories so that she can then report back what she's recalled. If she does have a PTSD flashback, she can't escape without his permission, and he's all the way at the imperial palace so she'd definitely suffer for a while before word even reaches him. I don't think he was hoping for her to find any answers. He was essentially locking her into the past, since she was so determined not to let go of it. It's a spiteful gesture tempered by the fact that he fond enough of her that he just didn't want to kill her himself. This is a common MO with Emperors or any person in positions of authority; they think they can go this roundabout way of hurting people and as long as it wasn't a direct order from them, they're not the one responsible, or it's a kindness somehow. These people don't even love their own children, how could they expect to even know what kindness is? This guy doesn't know. The show has established that his "love" is toxic and entitled. Throughout the show, he has never shown himself to truly care about Li Peiyi. He puts up an act after the fact, but he has never actually done anything to ensure she doesn't get hurt. In fact he even burned the Epstein's list of corrupt officials even though she DID get sexually assaulted and hurt. Shows how important she really has been to him. I don't think even Li Peiyi had any illusions as to how he truly feels.

I'm genuinely excited for Ai Mi, her first leading role! And for all of you folks worried about the age gap, Keira Knightly was 17 when she filmed Pirates of the Caribbean alongside Orlando Bloom who was 25-26 years old and that was Hollywood (apparently she had her mother with her at all the film shoots; I expect Ai Mi probably also had her mom alongside her) and I haven't heard anyone complain about that one. Cdramas tend to be less wild than Hollywood anyway, so I wouldn't write this all off as anything to be alarmed about just yet. I can see them doing it in a way where the two of them are just sweet rather than anything crazy. And Ai Mi's first leading role! I want to support her, she's such a great actress, and you know, it's acting. They can up the BGM and do slow-mo and stuff, or have Hou Ming Hao stare at a picture of Fan Bing Bing out-of-frame or someone older if he had to make eyes or something, it doesn't mean the actors are necessarily in an intimate position, though obviously it would be much better if such scenes are just excluded all together; I always felt that what they did with the Untamed, where the romance was metaphorically expressed or implied through set pieces rather than through the actor dynamics, was a trick ALL dramas should use more often, and this one seems as good as any to test it out.