KainCrisus

Yeah this would technically be his first xian xia. Before BOY and Moonlight Mystique, it looked like they were experimenting different hairstyles that fit him 😂. This was filmed before BOY and MM, and those 2 got released before this one.

I also didn’t recognize him. Whoever his make up artist/stylist has some skills or his acting skills is that good. I watched quite a few of his drama and didn’t even realize it was him until I searched it up. In some dramas, he looks ok, in some dramas he looked heavenly, and then in some dramas he just looks good.

Yeah filming was done in 2021, but original FL actress was involved in some tax scandal which delayed the release of the drama (she was being investigated for tax evasion). Then she was officially blocked by the government, so she can’t appear on mainstream tv. So they hired another actress to reshoot the scenes with green screen.

I wouldn’t describe a happy ending, would consider it a bittersweet ending

Nah - it did happen pretty early on. There was a few instances. Almost every time ex mom interacted with Guem myeong, was straight up I don’t like you, your fam doesn’t match our class, I don’t want you in our house, and stay away from my son. Like the girl wasn’t even able to have a proper meal without her getting insulted by the ex mom.
She really did not bother hiding her dislike toward geum myeong at all.

I think the big difference is that her ex’s mom actively made sure that Geum Myeong knows that she despised her. Like regardless of whether she was dating her son or not, she looked down on her and her fam. While Gwan Sik though didn’t like Picasso, he had nothing against the guy. He just wary about any guy that’s dating his daughter especially after seeing his daughter go through a heart break before. If Picasso was not dating his daughter, they probably would have been able to have normal conversations, if he walked in as a customer or a stranger. Also, while gwan sik was making it hard for Picasso, cause he’s questioning whether this guy is capable to take care of his baby daughter. Her ex mom, straight told I don’t want you anywhere near my home and the biggest difference, guem young backed Picasso, while her ex only kept telling his mom to stop, but not actually doing anything to get her accepted or standing up to his mom.

I think this is a drama that really hit home with a lot of people that have been watching dramas for a long time. This is a slice of life, yet also tells the tale of a story of the most realistic and possible life someone would be living. When I first started watching kdrama or any drama, I used to fall into the story for the passionate love thinking this was the kind of love I wanted. However over the years, it became very prominent that those kind of love only exist within in drama and chances of it happening is near zero. What I really wanted was a bittersweet love where someone is by my side to go through this long road called life till we reach the end of the road. which this drama offers. It’s so realistic and I know ae sun and gwan sik story exist somewhere in the world. Not everyone can understand their story, since we didn't exactly live in those ages where woman had much more restrictions than now. When I watch this, I see my mom/dad in ae sun and Gwan sik, which makes me want to cry so badly because so many elements of my life relate to their life. I see myself in geum young, the bratty kid that would be annoyed with their parents, yet wanting to make them proud. I even relate to her brother who was neglected, due to favoritism and what choices he made.


This is the shining point of this drama, it tackles so many elements of life that you cant help but relating to bits of it. Especially people who have been at the lowest of the social class. Because this is just so realistic it makes it so controversial, because life itself is controversial. There is no such thing as right or wrong choices, they are just choices in life, what determines is right or wrong is society and what comes out your life from those choices. There no doubt that there will be discussions about the character decisions like wow why didn’t they do that, well while this drama is as realistic to life it can get. It still is a drama, ae sun and gwan sik, survived because they received a lot of help along the way. While it didn’t resolve all their issues, it alleviated a lot of the burden, this is not true for all of people, most people just have to struggle through it. Such as how guem young got accused of stealing, there’s no nanny that will be there to get justice for you or karma that gets back at these people that take shortcuts in life. It is these instants that bring me back to that ahh this is drama land. I’m not denying that are good people that do good to other people, but the chances are very slim. At least I haven’t encountered one that would help without ulterior purpose or using it as a bragging right. Maybe my life is just a lot sadder than other, who knows there are people who receive help and have help others. I just never encounter that.

This drama is gem and I really recommend people to watch it, it’s like watching a reflection to yourself. If you can relate to some aspect, it would make you think about your life and what is it that is important to you. Right from ep 1, I knew I would be crying, now that I watched vol 3, I already know I’m gonna be balling at vol 4.

I believe the whole censorship started with a really famous drama called Scarlet Heart (Bu Bu Jing Xin) that came out years ago. It was about a girl in modern time transmigrating back to historical times and spoiler is that she was able to come back to modern time. Which was revealed that she had an accident and was left in a coma. The thing about this drama is that the historical facts that the drama covered was based on real history. The main girl falls in love with a prince and they have a very tragic romance. It is implied that she affected history for real.

This drama was such a hit, it lead to people (mostly girls) committing suicide cause they wanted to back in time. Afterward this drama was taken down and any drama afterward should not contain any elements of travel back in time or rebirth/reincarnation. Of course though, it’s not like all drama that are banned from these elements, it’s mainly the mainstream ones that have stricter rules since it’s being broadcasted to a much larger audience. Also, since this drama was based on real history, there was some rules, where dramas can not deviate from real history if the characters are based on real historical people. If it is planning to deviate, the drama would have to change the character names.

Lol no the colors definitely do stand out. I was fine with it, but I watched some reviewers definitely say the colors gave them the headache. This director is known for his usage of Big lights and weird/headache inducing camera angles ( refer to kunning palace) which probably contributed to the headaches. In this drama he toned it down XD.

Should also add some other XianXia dramas
Till the end of the moon (Bai Lu main lead)
Immortal Samsara
Love and redemptions
Ashes of love
Ten miles of cherry blossom

To that list - it has the same setting which is xian xia. You could also watch the related drama to moonlight mystique.

Ancient Love Poetry (Parent)
The last immortal (related)

The main characters in this story are supporting/side characters in ancient love poetry. Each drama made their own changes and can be its own standalone. For this drama specifically they made a lot of changes so back story will not connect back to ancient love poetry. Though apparently someone spoke about the novel and it seems like the drama story plot is better than the novel in my opinions. Espically in terms of ending.

Ooof hopefully we’ll be able to see more of his works. I’m not sure how much Moonlight Mystique boosted his popularity, I’m hoping it boosted it enough to give him better scripts. His previous works, it’s not that his acting is bad, just didn’t get good scripts.

Anyone knows if he has anymore work lined up? As far as I know, all his current works are done filming and waiting to pass inspection or editing phase to be aired. They just wrapped up pull string last month. However, don’t really see any future works that he has planned for this year, maybe blood of youth 2?

Ikr, but this kind of hair style is pretty rare in xian xia, they mostly do hairtie up. Though he has an upcoming modern drama (Qi Gen Xin Jian) with shoulder length here and he looks cool there.

His singing voice is good, but he be ruining people idea of him singing well XD.

LOL especially when he was acting all cute. In the novel, he was crossdressing as girl, which made total sense. However a dude saying those lines to another dude, pretty sure the censorship team wasn't gonna let that go

Lol I took a second to think whether I missed some details? Mary Sue? Didn't she lose her dad in like the most terrible way, and she realized the harsh reality of things. As far as I know she made a good number of mistakes up till episode 8. She was the only human among the demons and cultivators, no power or anything. She messed up, when she begged fan yue for the flower to save her dad. Which saved her dad momentarily, but she didn't realize the consequences and didn't under the human heart when seeing her dad recovered would cause the towns people to do. Her dad knew the consequences and took all the burden to keeps the townspeople safe and her. In a way, you can say she pushed her own dad to that outcome. With the guilt, blame, and anger, not a lot of people can keep a sane mind seeing their dad die that way. She did and she didn't kill any of towns people, but she could no longer look at them the same way.

Most importantly, she understood she's weak and strived to get stronger. She tried to get stronger the fastest way which ended up bring harm to herself. The only reason why she was still safe and healthy was because of ML (Fan Yue). The story made sure to make that was known. It even emphasized that while she had him, when he was hungry for revenge just like her he wanted to get strong, but he had no one to protect him, which is why he ended up with the curse that could kill him. Through up to episode 8, I don't think she ever really solved anything herself without ML (Fan Yue) help, and she understands that point. ML even pointed out to her that her little smarts won't really help her at all. The only reason why she was able to do what does without worry is because she knows that ML has her back. He gave her his promise to keep her safe and she trust that promise. Also, she has the emotionless stone in her, she basically has the most powerful defense out of everyone lol. Anytime anyone tried to harm her, the emotionless stone basically blast them away. ML knows she still naive and clueless to world, and while hes keeping her safe, he also make sure she knows that she is extremely weak to the point that she would get killed or get harmed if hes not there.

Their romance is very equal as @Padakiki said, they are both willing to sacrifice for each other. They both understand that point and try to hide informations from each other, because they know what the other side is going to choose. The chemistry was insane and I definitely developed a huge rush on the ML actor (Ao Rui Peng). I think his character was really what brought out this story, his love was so pure, so selfless. I would definitely recommend watching beyond episode 8

Sorry went on bit too much in details, but thats my take on it. However, I do agree with the take on Bai Lu characters, this really doesn't feel much different from the other characters Bai Lu had taken on, and while there are some minor differences, but not really anything that stands out immediately to me. However it is also because of this, I can say she acted Bai Shuo/Xing Yue extremely well.

Damn he sooooo fine. I don’t know how I slept on this gem. I watched a few dramas where he was in (a female student arrives at the imperial palace, blood of youth and when he starred as a guest in as beautiful as you) and he never stood out to me. MM really brought out all his good qualities.

Now I’m going back in his previous dramas and it seemed like they were experimenting with what he looked good with, and it seems in MM they finally found what fits him and they went hard. He looks so ethereal in MM. I liked him in blood of youth, but when watching MM, idk how I didn’t noticed it was him XD.

His acting is not bad either, I hope he keeps getting good scripts and I’m looking forward to his upcoming dramas. His upcoming drama roles are looking very interesting! I also look forward to him dubbing his own characters in the future, I watched him say the lines during the behind the scenes and it sounds good. I think it was better than the dubber, his voice is very versatile and he can manipulate it, plus when he was speaking he added his interpretation of the tone the character has, which differed from the dubber in my opinion.

Yeah from what it seems, they are pretty much done with historical roles, at least the ML Li Geng Xin is, when he acted in Legend of Shen Li, he said that will probably be his last one and he’s getting too old for this.

Like even if they do act in historical role, probably less heavy in martial arts and more restriction

This should be the sequel for princess agent, so there should be romance. I am saying this based on the novel plot, the remaining half of the story is very heavy on politics/war but also on romance. Like compared to princess agent, there was more, which is why there was more anticipation for it, cause we finally get to see chu qiao and ML romance have more progress. Though for real this FL is too young, this drama is very hyped up and chu qiao is not easy character to act out, I wonder if they are using her as young chu qiao again, cause I don’t really have high hopes that their acting is comparable to Zhao Li Ying. She has a pretty high bar to beat.

The ZXY was definitely a damsel in distress saving. But I don’t think the second bro marriage was, JYY (FL) was voluntary willing to marriage ML second bro. Though there were circumstances behind it, latest preview revealed FL needed something from Yan Fam to save her mom, she made a conscious decision as an woman to use her marriage in exchange for what Yan Fam has to offer. Hence there was the scene where she said she was willing to marry second bro. What YJL saved her out of was a loveless and uncomfortable marriage as a “concubine”. I’m not too sure of the wording during the scene but there is a difference between concubine and wife, and I’m pretty sure it was concubine. He couldn’t offer what Yan family is offering, so he offered himself as a groom. It was also to save her reputation. Though It was still her decision whether to marry his bro or him.

There’s probably a comprised later where her deal with Yan family is still holds up even if she marries YJL, and she’ll end up working for yan fam. While Yan fam would use her to keep YJL under control/tied to the fam. So in a way they didn’t really get anything out of it, what FL got was YJL by her side supporting her. And not some dude who’s only using her.

I believe they did actually married when she gets kidnapped. In some spoiler scenes you can see her hairstyle changed. In Ancient China, there a different hair styles used to indicate whether your single woman versus married. I’m not an expert on those hair styling, but judging by how the hair styling changed, she probably did marry him. Probably not a glamorous wedding, which might be at the end to make up for it. There is a spoiler scene of him in a wedding outfit, I think.

The scene was ZXY was in the novel, this scene the script writers kept. Though idk how it happens in the drama. In the novel, it showed how much ZXY slowly got up to that point of obsession. The novel and drama are like totally different plots so don’t know what they kept and what they didn’t keep. Like I think ZXY novel really focused on maniac ZXY a lot and in went into his inner working. But they changed a lot of plot, so dk what to expect. The scene of ML brother marry FL was a new addition, which definitely made it interesting.

Yeah definitely agree with you on that. This is how I think of it, you ever had a drama you really like and it got like less attention than you believe it deserves? Yet some other drama you didn’t like as much got more attention than it did. In a way these douban, heat index serves as publicity to the drama. Like when you search for drama, the most popular is what shows first. Like when you search up a drama, what do you first see, the rating. Some people get deterred by low rating.

There are tiers for how much funding a Chinese drama has and there a probability some dramas you watched that was a low budget funding. Which usually means people that worked on the drama don’t get paid as much and the promotion for the drama is gonna pale in comparison to those that have s tier funding. This drama specifically had almost no promotion, so it’s basically like an achievement for it to even get that high index. It mean much more publicity for the drama and actors, which also means better scripts for actors/actresses in future and means their effort for filming this drama paid off.


As for America - I think it’s rotten tomatoe, st least that’s what I see is referenced all the time