Skibbies

You might want to rewatch the second half (I think?) of the arc, ep 8. The guy makes a passing comment to the girl that he forced her brother to "meet his guests" because she refused to. She was sitting on the bed and he was standing there after he forced her to stay. So I took that to imply that he assaulted her brother as well. (I thought of child prostitution when I saw that, but I don't think that was the case and it was just an allegory) I do believe they were both assaulted, since Meibao recounts the sexual assault to Wu Mingyue. She also mention that she fell in love with her step father, which correspond to the animated story as well.

They are in Chinese unfortunately. I didn't love the couple I did read, should have pulled some recs instead of clicking on random ones oops.

19 & 20 next monday, 21 & 22 next tuesday, 23 & 24 the following monday on WeTV.

no, the script is original, there's a novel being updated the same time as the drama. It does use lots of common tropes from various dramas and novels, the matriarch system is a subgenre in chinese web novels but I think this is the first time I've seen it in a drama?

and this one https://kisskh.at/23862-my-girlfriends-boyfriend according to douban. Looking forward to her future works :)

eng subs are ripped from wetv or it's subbed by viki volunteers, so 18 will come out today, 22 will come out next week and 24 the week after. Unless someone take the raws and sub them before next week.

Tencent China (so they don't have eng subs) started a buy last few episodes thing mid-last year, it went big with Joy of Life when they dropped vvip unannounced half way through the drama and was heavily criticised for it. That didn't stop all the webdramas airing this year all adopting it, regardless of popularity, rip. So it's ep 16 today for vip, and the rest you buy 3 yuan/ep (so 18? that's alrightish. JoL was about 50 for I think 20 episodes? and you still had to wait every week for three weeks lol)

1. she thought it was a dream, and it only fully sank in after she woke up from wedding night.
2. ? what, she did it for her sister, Yuanyuan? She wanted to prove to herself and to her sister that they aren't useless just because of their circumstances. It's frustrating that she's physically weak, but she's persistent.
3. she lost all her martial arts, she couldn't even throw a punch properly, weapons for her might just make it more dangerous for her.
4. she's in denial, she literally brushed aside all the accidental kisses and flirty interactions they had, because he's a FICTIONAL character to her, she even says it in the drama. In her views, he conquered third princess' country, it's not a good idea to fall in love. On top of that, she think she has to finish her original plot for her to wake up, so falling in love with him is like dooming yourself (and stealing him away thus dooming the mission).
5. he has bit of rose tint glasses when he couldn't figure out why she saved him from jail, so he assume she likes him. That strip away the initial antagonism, then she kept trying to get dragon bone for him, and he was incredibly touched. I think he fell in love through interacting with her, but yeah saving him helps a lot.

I understand being ticked up or frustrated by plot elements, but I think it's been pretty reasonable, and she never came across as stupid to me. e.g. she came up with the fake poison plot and manage to get: Han Shuo's guilt/sympathy (to ensure he want murder her), explanation for her weakness/lost of martial arts, avoid competing for Crown Princess, and little bit payback to HS, that's not stupid. She's naive, impulsive and fairly average in intelligence, but a lot of her actions come down to her trying fix the story, so it actively goes against what Han Shuo does, and that's fine, they all have their own agendas.

Maybe try Young Blood? Not really romance centric (although there's a bit), more friendship adventure-y, full of plot twists.
If romance isn't a priority, Joy of Life is a fantastic watch too for schemes and world building. (there's romance, but lots of people don't like female lead since everyone else is more interesting, but she's not the focus of the story anyways)

You are better off reading the wiki or something. Wen Yanbo made it to Chancellor in 104x and 105x. He died way later, in 1097, three emperors later.

nope, because it never happened in history and the drama tries to stick closer to it.

That doesn't mean the narrative had to make everyone a Renzong fangirl, the Empress deserved more respect (just by virtue of her being Empress) and her change wasn't as natural as it could have been. At the time, imperalism > patriarchy, by all standards, princess should NOT have been treated like that. She could have been treated that way if she wasn't liked or simply given up by the emperor due to pressure around (perhaps that's what happened in history), but that's inconsistent with what the narrative built up to. Western society wasn't really more open at the time because it was 102x to 106x, it sucks to be a woman all around.

oh tRoP had a lot of talking and not enough showing too, and the politics aren't impressive either. But its biggest problem is its source novel is about female lead going head to head against male lead, she ends up establishing her own kingdom amongst other things, it's just not very realistic historical. but the drama team wanted it to be closer to history and "proper", so they changed it, so you end up with some rather jarring scenes (female lead is like from a completely different drama for half the drama) They really should have did it from scratch, it might have worked better (although I don't think the scriptwriter is good enough tbh, since they couldn't balance book vs history).

I think my favourite recent political was probably Advisor Alliance? and Qin Empire II, which isn't all that recent come to think of it. The rest are all from decade or two ago. I loved Nirvana in Fire, but its actual politics is barely there, lots of scheming, won too easily at times, but damn I loved the characters and themes, it's a super idealistic world though.

I understand that it's a big deal back then, and I might think oh yeah that's a neat. That doesn't necessarily mean I find it interesting. They could have made it more interesting via presentation or pacing, or focus (if I was following one of the ministers?). I shouldn't find reading the wiki or a book more interesting than drama with really pretty costume and music yknow.

Actually I think I did liked that particular debate because it was short and you saw the result, and it said a lot of Empress Dowager, Emperor and the ministers. Oh yeah I'd probably liked it more if they abandoned the book, and used Song Shenzong as the protagonist :P Then they wouldn't have to reconcile with history vs novel, wouldn't screw up balancing and making the characters behaviour hypocritical or inconsistent, and there'd be far less harem stuff, since there's no princess to focus on. I think Shenzong is more interesting, and you also still get famous people parade :D

I hope you have lot more fun than me watching this :)
Yeah the director also directed Love Me if You Dare (butchered last arc) and When Snails Falls in Love (I think my favourite of his? ) The pacing issue isn't as apparent there since they are short modern mystery/romance dramas.

It's modelled partially after Dungeons & Fighter, a kMMO, but I substitute it with any MMO with minimal problem tbh. GYH's game is LOL, but some of the screens are DoTA I think.

for political scheming, try Nirvana in Fire, Advisor Alliance, and maybe Qin Empire: Alliance. for adventure dramas, try Young Blood (this is probably closest in tone to JoL).

Ode to Joy 2 and Love Me if You Dare are also pretty bad. I haven't seen the former, the latter had a pretty butchered plot that didn't make sense and IMO cringey romance, but I think still has high rating because of Wallace Huo's face. As for drama should cut out 1/3, I think that goes for most cdramas these days, I do find most of their production's work to be decent and do have proper plot.

As a huge fan of the deeply flawed tRoP, and didn't really like Minglan for too much catty women fighting but I still could appreciate it from afar, this drama is just not worth it IMO, I'm probably going to give it an abysmal rating.

The problem with the drama is it's focused on a rather mediocre emperor, but the narrative keep trying to build him up to be a great one, and he's just not. Occasionally it'll admit his flaws, but then it backpedals and give him all these excuses. It's absolutely true that his period had a lot of famous people, which was part of what kept me going for the initial boring phase. Famous people parade was fun, but the way politics works here is just a lot of talking, there's no scheming, it's day to day ministers fussing over minor things. I would be okay with that if I actually got to see result of them fussing, but we don't, you only get the talking! The actual major events were lot less exciting than I expected (battles + political reform)

They could have gone with showing prosperity and culture of the time, which Song dynasty is known for, and it does with some festivals here and there. I wish that was the focus, or the minister was the focus, but we got the emperor instead. Later the drama transitioned into all about harem drama, with some infuriating characterisation and too many scenes on certain supporting characters (hey Madame Jia). They clearly wanted to keep both history and novel relationship but couldn't balance both so people's behaviour were inconsistent, and the Emperor was outright hypocritical, to the point I started disliking him.

I shifted my focus to Empress early on, but she got way less interesting as it went on (and kind of inconsistent & frustrating). So I started following Huirou, who can be spoilt and have her issues, but she's the only one that tells it like it is, which this drama really needs. Too bad this isn't going to end well for her. I also kind of hate the drama seems to go against the novel's theme of criticising imperalism? I started reading the wiki while tracking time just so I could see when certain characters would go away and when Huirou would grow up, and I had more fun doing that!

Then there's the director's pacing problem (he had that in Minglan too, but his style could work with slice of life nature of Minglan), the editor's questionable editing (stop splitting your conflicts in half wtf, I don't want to watch harem stuff when I just got into the politics), and sometimes the actor's acting is not up to par either (sorry Wang Kai and Jiang Shuying. the older supporting characters are great though) It's not without merit, there's bits and pieces that's great, some frames or shots, certain dialogues, little bits of characterisation that humanise a character, but when your drama is only amazing in cuts, you have a huge problem.

honestly, imo, no not really. I'm hoping we'll see the princess' story, but the way this drama is going, it's fairly likely to make me rage. The drama is slow, lacks focus, tell and almost never show the politics, the editing is questionable at times, the harem drama is infuriating, I personally find the Emperor boring initially and kind of unlikeable at the moment. There's others that like the drama lot more than me, so I'll refrain from ranting, but it's just so much wasted potential and I'm spot on the target audience (fan of production company, protag, serious historical dramas).

oh my gosh, that's such high praise. I only knew like couple people's names and some basics. It's mostly thanks to wiki and name plates every time. I've also seen four of the first six ministers I mentioned in other dramas, so I'm not as face blind but I know that feeling XD This emperor had many well known ministers, poets and artists during his time, so it's kind of neat seeing them together. It's too bad the drama tends to mention people and events (battle, diplomatic mission, peace treaty) in passing.

I started matching up historical dates to events in the drama to track time because they kept changing the calendar year names so it was really hard to tell how much time had passed. (Think it was the Empress mentioning it's been 5 years since she married, and I was like WAIT WHAT??) I also wanted to see when older Huirou would pop up & when Consort Zhang would go away (ages away lol, especially since time is slower in recent episodes), there's fair amount real events to track, but it's very easy to miss since it's all in the dialogues.

I edited my list cos I forgot some details & I got the colours wrong so look at it again. They don't really mention people's position in the drama much unless it's a chancellor, which is for the best, cos I can't keep them straight. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.