ASmith

Don’t be swayed by the ratings and watch if you were planning to🥰 Ratings is just as the plot jumps the shark post 18 so there’s some disappointment given how good the start was but it’s still a good show and well acted, just not a masterpiece.

In this instance tho, the rating is fair. Even as a CY fan, I can't give this show more than 8.5, and if I was objective and not a biased fan, this would be a 7.5 or a 7.

Music's lovely, acting is good, visuals are lovely, but the character consistency in everyone except Fugui plus the plot are a mess.

This is such a lovely summary of this show 👏😂

Yup, the haters attacked that poor show like crazy.

Yup. He’ll become a main character again at ep31.

The Journey of Legend I feel bad for its 7.9 because it’s actually good, but this one I can’t say I’m surprised, given the way the writing went in the second half.

Honestly I think he’s safe. He’s not typecast beyond that he tends to play principled leads who suffer a lot and end up dead or with bittersweet open endings and who slay in long hair and hanfu.

But the characters are basically all so different aside from that when it comes to personality and motivations and feelings that they’re differentiated completely in my head, there’s no way I’d mix up Sifeng with Fugui or with Qi Yan or with LLH or XQS.

I think he’s also safe from his career being affected by this. At the end of the day, investors invest for a reason, if it’s CY as the lead I can’t be the only person who will definitely check out at least 1 episode to see if it’s good and that’s usually as long as he needs to hook me and keep me around to the end.

Just hope he never works with this team of writers ever again, and I certainly won’t be touching anything done by this producer either.

Alas we can only blame QC and the very weird decision by the writers to bring a grief seed into it for no reason and waste 12 eps on filler 😭😭

Yup. It wouldn’t be so bad if the side leads were given actual plot or character development in their screen time, but since they’re only given fluff and filler they drag a lot, lol. They do their best but the writer of eps 18+ should be banned 😂😂

I think someone said it was possibly due to a google translate-esque job, and that the Chinese title is actually Heart of Sword, which is indeed a lot more fitting for this arc.

Right? At the least if the writers were going to stick in some silly seed she didn't even have in canon and kill off someone who didn't even die in canon, they should have made her rip it out and send it to him with a letter about how she trusted him in the fight and knew he wouldn't have the heart to kill her/didn't want to make him live with doing it, and she'd always be waiting for him in their next lives or smth. And she even picked his parent's special Pavilion to make him kill her in too. At this point I don't know what the writers were thinking either lol.

Agree, TJOL was fast-paced and an engaging run the whole way through for me despite its flaws, unlike poor old S&B where I was FFWDing bits in the second half.

As you say, QC is to blame. After a certain point, the number of times QC held an unconscious QT and monologued about how she was his alone while Black Fox complimented him for being so clever/horrible/handsome/ruthless was just so draining and annoying, lol, especially when QT's response when she found out about his lies and murders was basically always just "I'm telling you in a very firm voice for the nth time to stop being evil now, QC," while doing nothing to enforce, discipline, or check that she was being listened to, despite this having not worked every previous time she said it. And then the Bangle Episode, where she was like "Must hide that I'm meeting ML and lie about it/pretend not to know him, because I wouldn't want to hurt QC's feelings." Lol. So lacking in IQ and agency, poor QT.

Ah well. At least the bashing The Journey of Legend got resulted in CY getting one extra fan outta it, which is me. The way he went through all that and handled it was such a gentlemen. Hope he gets more projects, he's a brilliant actor 🥰

To quote your own post yesterday, without evidence, all this is speculation.

https://kisskh.at/60463-fox-spirit-matchmaker#comment-24107078

We don't know why these scenes were changed, or even if they were changed. To my knowledge, all filming was completed before the first FSMM title even aired. To speculate that the ML would be responsible for the editing choices and writing choices and not the studio is no more fair to him than the speculation that it's the studio's fault is to the studio.

At the end of the day, the producer, editor, and director chose to output the final product like this. We will never know why.

But it's slightly ironic that you are promoting objectivity to the studio, saying they may not have reshot or changed the script at all, while at the same time pinning the editing choices (that you don't even agree happened) on the actor. Blocked.

It is, as long as you keep your expectations nice and low.

Expect gorgeous aesthetics, beautiful music, and a principled lead who can fight well and doesn't waver from his determination to first find and then be true to his reason for cultivating and drawing his sword, and is willing to rebel against what he's told is right if his common sense is telling him otherwise. (For eps 1-17 also expect a beautiful, plucky spider who supports her person all the way and-- as the more vivacious of the two-- truly sells the romance between them, making you feel her devotion and love for him.)

Despite the above, however: Do not expect an epic, swoon-worthy romance between the male and female lead, fleshed out bad guys with nuanced reasons to be evil, or character consistency in anyone but the lead. Also do not expect a plot that makes sense.

Run with the vibe and appreciate the aesthetics, embrace the power of the FF button when side-arcs (or main arcs, depending who you're watching for) get too draggy is the way to appreciate this drama from start to end. Whichever of the couples you are watching for, they all get plenty of eps and screentime, so while that's a double-edged sword if you're not enjoying any, it also gives you multiple options for favorites and picking who in the show you want to watch.

1) Sad ending.
2) Side romance only. (No kisses and stuff between main leads.)

I think there’s a bunch of alternative realities and timelines established at the end of RMP as I remember reading something about how “in an alternate universe some version of us got a happy ending” happened. Maybe in this one Fugui beat the black fox so the couple in RMP will get their happy ending in this timeline, while Fugui and canon!QT will get their 50 years of happiness in RMP’s timeline. 👀

He's so charming, good or bad.
Only trouble would be I would be cheering for the villain, lol.

Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty I think

She always planned to give him her fire as the Soldier program was before he was even conceived, but because of some battles and stuff she was really low on power when he was born so she ended up having to give her life to do it (I think). So it wasn’t initially planned to be lethal but did end up being so to her.

Love and Redemption

plural. Cuz this should also be about 19-30, lol.