phoenixfrost

Every episode has scenes that show how their relationship develops. You'll miss a lot if you skip scenes. The business talks serve to heighten the characters' dimensions. Through them you'll find out how intelligent and forward-thinking Shi Yan is, how intelligent Shu Yi is, how compatible they are in terms of intelligence, interests and values. By watching how Shi Yan stands up for a struggling start-up, you realize he's a loyal and dedicated nurturer. By witnessing how Shu Yi defends Shi Yan's principles when he was low-key insulted by a corrupt CEO, you'll realize why Shi Yan loves her so.

Skipping scenes will also be a deterrent to getting the feel of the characters and mood of the drama, especially the campy humor. If you are not able to get the humor, I doubt you'd appreciate this.

If you're not interested in the business talks and are planning to skip scenes, you might as well not watch the drama at all.

Only For Love is airing in a Korean platform right now and it's #1 in the platform!

https://x.com/bbbeee_my/status/1802609334578545018

There you go, it's clear what makes Dylan and Bai Lu stand-out in C-Ent. Their beauty comes from within 🥰 And that's the kind of beauty that can clobber any criticism of external physical flaws.

The speculation on the mean celebs are so close to mine! Well, I had three suspects based on what I had read on social media (before I swore off most of social media) but 2 of them are the same as reported.

They confessed to each other in ep 19

There are real eunuch characters in this drama. The ML's aide is one, and he has a romantic interest. The romance between the leads was based on a real-life scandal which is one reason this drama was strictly censored.

This drama was created before Dylan's popularity exploded in Love Between Fairy and Devil. There were no expectations about its performance. It is a low-budget drama which is probably why it dared to delve into taboo or unpopular themes such as an affair between a eunuch and a noblewoman as well as forgiveness instead of revenge. The artistic depiction as opposed to glossy, gaudy and bombastic touches of high budget dramas was actually what charmed me to this drama. Despite its low budget, this achieved high-budget-level success, performing better than many high-budget dramas. It is second only to The Knockout for the number of new subscribers to iQiyi.

try The Rational Life where he plays a sweet and fine young man.

i separate actors from their roles. For example, I loved Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility but didn’t like him in Harry Potter.

Kudos for being considerate to fans of dramas you don”t like. I try to do that too. When I don’t like a drama, I drop it quietly, I don’t even give it a rating, mindful that people have different tastes so I try not to ruin others’ enjoyment.

Had I depended on online scores for my drama selection, I would have missed a lot of my favorite cdramas that rated low on Douban like Princess Weiyoung and The Sword and the Brocade. Eternal Love also used to have a low Douban score but is climbing its way up. What I do now is watch the first few episodes and the last episode, if available, to decide whether to continue watching a drama through to completion.

These YXHs and similar entities that thrive on spreading fake news are choking social media to death. I have abandoned most social media except mdl and twitter. I'm staying on mostly to battle fake news.

Peter Ho was meant to play a disgusting psycho emperor. Since that was how you saw him, it means he did his job well, as what a good actor should do.

ikr? The story and characters are fascinating, unique and three-dimensional. Unfortunately, it seems cdrama fans prefer cookie-cutter stories and characters. I have gotten used to inaccurate drama scores, not only due to this preference of typical fans but also because of dirty politics in cdramaland where antis abound, rabidly rating down dramas of artists who are perceived as competitors of their favorites. Furthermore, a notorious breed of netizens called YXHs have popped up in China and probably has crossed to other countries. These maggots are paid to blacken or not blacken (for a price) artists and their dramas. So, I have stopped believing online drama ratings that are open to the general public. A lot of these ratings are too high due to rabid fans or too low due to rabid antis including paid netizens. Ratings that are just right are in the minority.

But no worries. This drama got its just reward. It is a low-budget drama that attained high-budget-level success. It is second only to The Knockout in terms of attracting new subscribers to IQiyi. And it’s among the most successful cdramas in 2023 that garnered more than a billion views during its run.

"Ambushed by her feelings" is indeed an apt description for her state of mind after meeting Shi Yan. She prides herself with being a career girl and probably never thought there would come a time when she would prioritize her heart over career. I love how subtly the drama showed her heart thawing. When the scandal about the shareholders in Shi Yan's company erupted, she was concerned about how Shi Yan was feeling, not giving a thought to how the news would affect her online magazine. The old Shu Yi would have had an opposite reaction. Distraugt over Shi Yan's coldness, she broke down at the office, in front of Yuling, of all people. Her emotions have totally taken over, making her ill.

Try to read some reviews to understand the story better. This is a low-budget drama that achieved high-budget-level success due mainly to the star power of its male lead but this made me appreciate low-budget dramas that are not pressured to rake in money through glossy cookie-cutter productions, The story is told in a simple but deep manner, unlike the bombastic style of many dramas with higher budgets. The story is encapsulated by its title, Unchained Love, contrasting oppression and obsessive love against love that seeks the freedom, happiness and survival of a loved one.

The female lead is supposed to be around 16 years old, tricked into becoming a concubine of an old emperor by a conniving stepmother who is empowered by a husband who sees his illegitimate daughter only as a bargaining chip. As a childless widow of a dead emperor, the FL is forced to be a tribute lady, that is, to be sacrificed to die to accompany the emperor in the afterlife. Imagine yourself as a 16-year-old girl, about to be sacrificed with approval from your own family who would benefit from your death as a tribute lady. Other tribute ladies just cried their eyes out. The FL, as young as she was, tried to find ways to save her ass (she attempted to cut her hanging cloth), at the same time trying to make sure her attendant did not end up impoverished when she did die. When she survived, she effusively tried to flatter her savior, clueless as to what she was supposed to do in such circumstance. It was actually a funny scene depicting her wit. She is intelligent and knows that being female and young in the court, her best bet to survival is by not posing a threat to more powerful people. So, she pretends to be silly and lazy and avoids being involved in palace intrigues.

But when she is presented with an opportunity to do something, she rises to the occasion, like when she helped Xiao Duo hide the young crown prince from the empress. The ways she dealt with the kidnapping attempts are also brilliant, not to mention funny.

This is a low-budget drama that achieved high-budget-level success. While Dylan Wang's star power may be the main reason for its unexpected success, the drama has charms that might actually be attributable to it being a low budget drama. For example, its ending is poetry in motion, capturing freedom from oppression in a simple and raw depiction that is actually more powerful with its simplicity. A high-budget drama would more likely have featured a crowd-pleasing cheesy and gaudy ending rather than an artistic one. Unfortunately, it appears a lot of cdrama viewers mistake glossy and bombastic with class.

So you’d rather have an unrealistic perfect cookie-cutter FL who never makes mistakes? One of the charms I found with this drama is its unique and flawed characters that led me through unexpected, thus more fascinating, storylines.

The ending is one of my best parts of the drama. It was poetry in motion; the leads running towards freedom while the sources of oppression, the emperor and the Futu tower where tribute ladies meet their doom, are collapsing/burning. It summarized what the drama and the title, Unchained Love, are about - oppression and freedom from it. This is a low-budget drama and the ending made me respect dramas that are not pressured to please the audience hence are able to deliver an artistic ending instead of a bombastic and hollow one

My 2-cents about her purported reasons for pursuing him which are (1) to show her ex-bf that she matters more than his new gf's uncle's cars and (2) to use him for the online magazine:
I beileve she developed a crush on him when she pretended to borrow his power bank, but she lied to herself. I think, deep down, there was only one reason she decided to pursue him - only for love. Her inability to be truthful to him about her reason is typical Shu Yi - lie when confused. I agree, Shi Yan is no saint either. He also has his flaws that can also be frustrating. The layered misunderstandings make this drama a web of fascinating, frustrating and funny moments.

No wonder you are feeling the drama strongly. Personal experience heightens your connection to it. You're on point about Shu Yi - she's both frustrating and fascinating. And that's one thing I love about this drama. It certainly has fantastic elements, like a CEO falling in love with an office girl, but it's quite realistic in its portrayal of its female lead. Her flaws are presented raw, without any filter that can make her appear less flawed. So we can really feel Shi Yan's frustration with her lies and self-centeredness. At the same time, feeling his frustration also makes us admire even more how much he loves her, overlooking her flaws. I was also reminded of how "love is blind". But it also made me wonder whether it's not so much blindness as love conquering any negative feelings of the lover towards the loved one. And love making the lover more patient with the loved one.

I love reading your comments about this beloved drama. I can sense you are really feeling it. The analogy of the dying sparkler and what he meant by pinching her at the stable add dimensions to my memory of it, making me want to watch it again 😊

Exactly, you can't depend on online ratings, not while there are YXHs as well as rabid antis (who senselessly push ratings down) and fans (who can blindly push ratings up).

One thing YXHs do is emphasize a flaw of a drama. They keep harping on that flaw until all the viewers think of is that flaw. There are other cdramas that have plagiarism issues but not thrashed like TMOPB. There's another service YXHs provide, which is to lift a drama/actor up. So, that's one problem when a drama has high rating. We can't anymore be sure whether that drama was scored cleanly, without being lifted up by YXHs/water armies. That's why it's unreliable. That's why I don't depend on online scores anymore to decide whether to watch a drama or not. I watch a few episodes instead and decide on my own.