Deirdre19

I feel exactly the same. The CGI and the main leads' acting were superb, but the plot felt so repetitive and not engaging at all. They made it quite impossible to sympathise with the FL so in the end I couldn't care less if there got together or not.

On some pages every second comment is about the dreamy eyes/smile/face/whatever of some pretty boy. The rest are praises of the (non-existent) stellar acting and the rating is totally inflated despite the plot holes, annoying side-characters and cliched script.
At least for LoA people are actually discussing the plot.

People have down-rated episodes that haven't even aired yet. I really don't understand this huge amount of hatred towards this drama. If you don't like it, just don't watch it.

Half of it was spent on hot water and bathing accessories for the Fake 😂

They butchered TTEOTM in the sense that they cut away so many scenes that there no longer was any character development, especially for the FL.

Considering how dumb and ignorant she was, she really didn't need any help in getting herself killed. From what we've seen of her in the drama I'm quite amazed that she managed to survive this long at the Northern border.

That's quite possible. Both ML and SML are cold types, so any romance would be slow to develop. If instead of swoony cliched romance we get a lot of fight scenes and some clever scheming I will be very happy.

I usually have to stop and rewind the important scenes. I watch them once to read the subtitles and once to see people's expressions. Concentrating only on the subtitles a lot of the subtle acting goes missing...

The people just skipping through are usually the ones who end up complaining about missing info and supposed plot holes because they missed half the dialogue with all the details. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

True. I get the impression some people just aren't listening to the dialogues... It was quite clear why this cannot be revealed to the public.
But I think that HY has another reason why he cannot tell DZY about this right now. Given how cold DZY is towards him at the moment, telling her at this moment would sound a bit like begging her to like him. He may be kind, but he also has his pride so he wants her to like him for himself, not because she is grateful.

Swearing is caring 🤣

Hahaha, I would absolutely hate to see all the dramas dumbed down until even the last person doesn't need to use any brain capacity to follow it. Preferably while holding down the FF button...
Just having to watch attentively and use your brain while watching doesn't mean there are plot holes.
When it comes to the brain, it's use it or lose it 😉

Well, if you read the comments on this page carefully, quite a few of these points have already been raised and more or less clarified.

The CP had to deal with the prime minister urgently to shut him up, so there wasn't any time to investigate or alert other people. Also, if you listen to what the CP explained to WS in ep. 31 his plan always was to kill the guy regardless of the WS issue in order to force an investigation into his collusion with Northern Qin.

The CP didn't directly tell LMX that WS was kidnapped (this would have made it seem like a personal issue and there wouldn't have been a large-scale investigation) but he told him indirectly by saying that WS had evidence in his favour. He trusted LMX to be intelligent enough to figure it out and he was proven correct in the end.

It's not shown how the minister knew about WS's true identity (maybe novel readers know more...) but I don't think this is a big issue. Even a blind chicken may find a few grains sometimes.

Regarding the 30k-strong "army" I don't think they are on the court's radar because they are pirates in a faraway province. They aren't a regular army in the conventional sense.

I have quite a different take of the things that LMX said to CP. I don't think that he was seriously trying to compare anything or diminish what he has done himself, but he wanted to give the CP some recognition for what he has done. He is, in his usual coded fashion, thanking the CP for saving DZY's brother. She doesn't know so she cannot express these feelings and even if she did, she would be able to say it at this moment in time, so LMX is speaking for her. And maybe he also feels a bit guilty about laying into the CP in one of the previous episdes.

Already? What are you going to do in the coming episodes??

I was relieved to see that at the beginning of ep. 30 people finally start to notice that Wen Shuo is missing. LMX's elves are finally back from their vacation so that he could investigate events from 10 years ago in just half a day. Impressive!
I've noticed that lately we are getting a lot more inner monologues by the main characters to let viewers know what they're thinking/planning. It's something that was badly missing in the earlier episodes. This surely adds a lot more depth to the characters.
And the Fake gets to sail off into the sunset with her dumb bodyguard. Quite undeserved, but at least she's gone.
Princess Anning is really turning into a joke. Every time she complains that there are too many leak or says "I am a general of Jing" while the top-spy stands right next to her I want to laugh out loud. Was this irony intended? I really don't get it how this woman could lead an army into battle. And the way she finally confronts her spy was just as dumb. She knows that he is easily her equal in martial arts and devious as hell. Why not set him up when she has backup. That would have been strategic thinking worthy of a general.

So eps. 30 and 31 were rather sad but still pleasant to watch. It's good to see that the drama is picking up speed and no longer wastes screen-time on irrelevant stuff.

What plot holes are you referring to?

It gets a lot better around ep. 21/22. Don't be put off by all the negative comments. We only rant because we care. If it was really bad I would've dropped it a long time ago.

Good actors can completely blank out the crowd around them and just live in their character. Some method actors don't come out of their role for the whole duration of the filming. How do you think stage actors are playing their roles? They cannot quickly pop out to fill up on eye-drops.
These people are, however, on quite another level than most of the singers/models /idols turned actor that we get to see in C-dramas.