AllyNg

After reading the reviews and comments I decided not to watch this drama as I don’t think it will suit me current headspace. Thank you to everyone who reviewed and commented. It is very helpful.

This drama exemplified all the tropes I despise. What idiot spends three years married to a woman he ”loves” making her miserable by treating her with cold indifference. Then he finally admits he loves her and abandons her and p*sses off overseas leaving her miserable and desperate to find him, ultimately risking everything to be with him. The FL doesn’t speak for a decade or more to appease her mom, puts up with the husband’s awful treatment and then c Crawls around looking for him and chasing him half way around the world. WTF 🤬 Writers take note women want better role models. We r not doormats for emotionally abusive men or parents. Sorry for the rant, but this show really pushed my buttons .

Thanks for always posting the links. I always look for your comments

This series is a sad series of overused tropes. Can’t the writers have any original ideas.
FL has her priorities wrong and is a poor communicator
ML lead is childish and deliberately hurtful (I would NEVER forgive what he did)
Chen Xun is oblivious and pathetic
Zi Xin’s lies and manipulation are rewarded
Wei Xuan and GAO Ren are simply annoying
Only YiRan and

I find Lazygirltranslations.com really good. Better than usual AI auto translate.
https://lazygirltranslations.com/series/rebirth-of-a-star-general/

@Say-do. We see the characters through a different lens. Everyone is entitled to have their opinion and ours differ.
LJX did arrange to send her back if he was out of contact for a while. So therefore, IMO, he would rather have her return to LSY, whom he knew would take care of her, than be alone (assuming he was dead). Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t gone to battle or had returned. I agree that by this stage he had totally lost the plot.
LSY committed both work related killings and murder (eg the maid with the dog when he was young and the maid that tried to seduce him, who was beaten to death). Torturing and killing, even if it’s your job, is not something most people can do.
Bizarrely, the character I disliked the most was the father. Everything about him drove me nuts. I did like Lin Hairu too.
My husband read the original novel (not the English translation which is what I read) and he has a different view again on the characters, particularly Cheng Lang.

@Say-do. I stand by my original comment. IF FL knew at the outset that LJX didn’t murder her then she may have wanted to reunite with him and that would have been the end. . That doesn’t excuse his bad behaviour but thankfully he never did rape her or abort the baby and did return her to her family.
LSY was a manipulative control freak who murdered, tortured and lied to everyone. Also not a nice guy. He also had a bad upbringing but that’s also no excuse.
CL and Mao also deceived and manipulated her.
Basically everyone who “loved” her was not good.
It will be interesting to see who murdered her in the drama

@DefyingDestiny I agree. The way the drama is going Ci Sha/LJX is definitely the big villain. And, built for that role.

@Mstique. The Ml did “love” her. They all did in their own unique ways. I guess that all of the men who loved her were desperate to have such a pure and beautiful child. Even Lin Mao and Cheng Lang had their version of love for her. IMHO the Ml was a little bit disturbed. He had a torture room, spied on the FL for her “protection” and was insanely controlling. By today’s standards he was not a good guy.

Yes. There are three extra chapters at the end which were interesting.

Yes he definitely loves her. She is the only person he ever deeply and truly loves. Even his own children are seen as creatures who take her attention and time away from him. So it is a sick love IMHO

Yes, at 15, the legal age of the time. . LJX was a a son of a concubine and not expected to inherit the title or achieve scholarly success. He what seen her from afar and fell in love and persuaded h

I do agree with your assessment . I also think Zhang Wan Yi would struggle to show the passion and intensity required, even though I like him a lot. Ci Sha could pull it off. But, at the end of the day, the producers /director drive the path and style. They have to appeal to audience and censors. Most novels are to intense (s*xually) and too long to fit in 40 eps.

I guess because in the novel the FL (and the reader) started from the assumption that LJX had killed her. But that wasn’t true. He deeply loved her and never loved another. She fell in love with LJ X during their marriage and was very happy. In fact, from L JX’s perspective, Theblove of his life just disappeared and he was driven quite mad by that fact. He never touched another woman. I truly ended up feeling sorry for both of them.
By contrast, LSY was obsessed with her from the get go. He schemed and manipulated to ensure that she was tied to him. He promised her father and the Luo relatives that he wouldn’t touch her until she was 15 but he didn’t keep the promise and she was just 14 when he broke that promise and she gave birth at 14. She was more his possession than his partner or “ love”. Basically a manipulative gaslighter. Who was dreadfully cruel to others eg he killed a maid who tried to seduce him and fed another maid to his trained dogs.
LJX became cruel because he lost everything he loved. LSY was cruel from childhood (as per the novel).
Sorry for the long answer.

The changes in the drama detract from the key theme of obsession.. In the novel, every man who interacted with the FL wanted to posses her. They were obsessed. Even Cheng Lang, Lin Mao and other random characters. I am disappointed that the drama drama is not picking up on this. It is a major change . LSY didn’t love the Fl, he was obsessed with possessing her. To a really disturbing degree.

The first time I read the novel , cheered for LSY. The second time, I ordered how the FL would have reacted if she knew that LJX had NOT killed her. I think she would have felt differently. By the third reading I was completely supporting LJX over LSY.

@Slian, historical romance is the genre. I call them “whitewash” drama as they usually have a happy ending and are not based on actual historical figures. Also, if you can read Chinese then the native txt versions are so much better than the English versions.

It is more about the true identity of the FL. Not sure how the series will address it, however, in the novel the Gu MingLan was not assaulted by bandits but had some sort if relationship with the Duke of Wei. - a powerful general. He finds out she is his daughter and takes her in and she becomes his “concubine born” daughter. ML is always the son of Luo ChengZheng . So ML identity never changes.

Yes. The book was fabulous in terms of drawing out the way the FL inspired obsession in nearly every man who came in contact with her. If it had just left out the detailed intimate narrative it would have been better. I am not a timid reader but it made me rally uncomfortable. But excluding that the book was fabulous. The drama, tension and intrigue were well paced. cdrama Tv will keep it G rated. Are You the One (book) full of sensual passages but the tv show they barely touched lips.

The book should have been called Obsessions as all 3 male characters (LSY, LJX, CL) were totally obsessed with possessing and controlling her. It was also creepy that LSY married her and she had a baby while still only 14. That was underage even for that era and he had promised her family to wait. Regular references to him losing control and her being in pain or telling him to stop and just not wanting it are ignored by both LSY and LJX.