TaliaToo

And he could sing!

It takes a lot to get drunk.

Ahhh. It happens. Hope the next one gives you the pleasure!

Sure. I spent decades carving a magic ice snowball with a come get my heart mermaid to a merman for my friend too. It was just a friendship message, no big deal. Why choo misunderstand me like dat and go dress in red and sit on that seashell? It's not what choo think!

ahaaa...ahaaa....ahaaaa.... XL's slow BeeGees bgm.

In Season 1, CX felt XL sucking on WXL's neck and assumed some kinky things were happening....

Oh now we're talking about LLTG, my Other Passion, heh. Let me first say something about Wu Lei and Zhao LuSi as actors. Wu Lei was a child star who was also 22 (WXY's current age) in LLTG. It was, I think, his second "serious" kiss scene and the BTS showed he was a bit shy about it. He was famous for probably the best Chinese drama of the last ten years, the epic Nirvana in Fire, which ranks #1 on many, many people's list, including mine. His child/manchild role in that drama was amazing and showcased his acting and martial arts abilities. Back to LLTG, he played a character totally opposite of Su Guo Gong--he was neither sensuous or sophisticated. In fact, he was the epitome of a soldier who had spent most of his life fighting--not much family manners, very arrogant (as General, he was probably king among his men), totally badass when it came to treating enemies. Duke Su was a more civilized version of Ling BuYi. The only time Ling BuYi ever soften was for his Niao Niao.

Now, as for Lu Si, as an actress, she is totally unafraid of looking ugly while crying or being angry (something a few actresses won't do). As she grew more in control of her career, she has started to make suggestions to the directors, improving on scenes with dialogue and shot changes (got this via BTS). Her one thing that made her my favorite actress (OK, two things, because her comedic timing is priceless) is she is unafraid of taking on different roles. Like I said, she hasn't tried a WJY-edgy revenge-biotch role yet, but it might be the coming Pearl Girl. I have not read that novel, so not sure.

Back to LLTG character, Shao Shang. She was also the antithesis of the clever and educated Xue Fang Fei. Her ability to fight back was purely physical using her naturally imbued engineering smarts, which was what made LLTG a delight. Shao Shang had been starved and humiliated over and over, but she would not be beaten down when it came to those who bullied her.

Now to the book itself. Whereas the author of The Double loved language and double entendres, this author LOVED playing with symbolism and names. For example, Ling BuYi literally could be the clue out there for everyone--he is BU (not) Yi. LOL. Also, Shao Shang string is the seventh string on the qin and it's called the Military String (and thus is strong enough for General Ling BuYi). That her mother nicknamed her Niao Niao was just hilarious because obvious her mother wanted a docile, gentle, sweet daughter and Shao Shang was none of that, LOL. There are more fun examples of this author's name playing as well as different symbols throughout the novel that the drama picked up on and I was able to enjoy.

Anyway, both dramas are indeed masterpieces. LLTG, however, was done when it was feasible to break the dramas up into two seasons and air them back to back (before new rule of not allowing that), thus it could expand a lot more on the characters' growth and journey. Even so, the powers-that-be made the director cut out ten episodes in the second "season," which made the last five episodes suffer greatly. So many things are out of the director's control these days.

One thing hilarious about the directors of both dramas--LLTG's director was like the Father Shipper of the characters, LOL. He was constantly trying to get Wu Lei to kiss Lu Si a little bit more intimately and every time he succeeded, he would jump up and down in glee (so funny in the BTS). NOT SO for the extremely conservative director of The Double, who just seem to be shy about skinship.

Lastly, Zhao LuSi would be FABULOUS paired with WYZ. She is known for being able to squeeze every drop of chemistry juice from her male stars (and, except for one, I totally agree). Lu Si, in all her roles, need a very strong ML to pair with her or she would eat him up, acting-wise. I believe, after watching WYZ as Duke Su, he would have a good time acting with Lu Si. She is funny (so is he), loves to be goofy, jokes around on the set but is also very good at her craft. She is also very savvy on her media platforms and WYZ would have lots of fun doing daily Douyin/Insta/Youtube shorts with her. You know what? I would love to see LuSi do the ultimate revenge FL by the author of the Double--Malicious Empress--and have WXY as the ML for this one too. It would also be a challenge for him because the ML here is totally opposite of Duke Su.

Sorry for this long post! You started it, ha.

I believe the OP was trying to pinpoint the exact moment that she told him face-to-face, which never quite happened. The closest was in front of the grave. But, overall, yes, he knew from the very beginning.

She was very obviously telling him who she was while standing with him in front of the grave. First she eulogized herself, then she eulogized Jiang Li and lamented that she failed to protect her.

It’s actually the other way round. He helped her with the shoe strap, touching her foot. His heart rate went up to 143 during the game. He was all staring at her dance moves. LOL DiDi has a big crush, calling her Beauty instead of jiejie. During BTS interviews, he kept insisting she saw him topless (in that scene) when in fact she was in the trailer. She reminded him of that and then he brought up the waterfall scene. DiDi wanted acknowledgment that she saw his muscles LOL. 😂

Great review’ I want a blog going through each important scene. lol.

Yes, that book was my heart-book ten years ago and I loved Xiang Liu as my top fave C-novel book of all time but it's too depressing this year and I don't feel like going through all the angst I went through reading it LOLOL. So, back to watching The Double for me!

I knew it would do well.

Welcome to our obsession ha ha

Yes, when I rewatch (which is often!), I watch Episode 1, then skip to Episode 5 and I'm all happy! But I also rewatch the scene where she sent the basket of rags to Ling BuYi and he figured out the clue she was giving him and like Duke Su, he realized how clever his girl was, haha.

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. lol. I'm saving the link in Favorites forevah!

But in the novel, didn't she hear CX whispered XY's name during their bedtime? She thought she'd imagined it at that time....

Give Love Like The Galaxy a try. The set up is different, yet feels similar. The ML is a duke/general, powerful with two bodyguards who are brothers who are similar to the Jis. The ML, though smart, is different from Duke Su in the sense that he is just not a family/talky kinda guy, having spent many, many years at war. Our heroine, Cheng ShaoShang is very different from The Double's FL. Because she was left behind by her generals/parents who went to war, her grandmother and aunt had basically bullied her and left her uneducated. However, she is a skilled "engineer" and shows how smart she could have been had she gotten the schooling Xue FangFei had :). I love LLTG, which came out in 2022 and it is in my top 5 of my Best Drama list. Maybe this drama might interest you. If you start, just a quick note--this drama has more family stuff going on in the first five episodes before it settles on Duke Ling BuYi's and Cheng ShaoShang's courtship. Those episodes show how bullied CSS was before LBY's appearance in her life. Cheers!

Yes, they made the most equal partners intellectually in all C-Dramas and I love how they sparred and then slowly fell in love through their sparring LOL. He did "save" her and she did ask him quite a number of times, but she was never shy of taking advantage of anything to survive as well as to achieve her goal of revenge. She was honest enough to tell him at one point then he was going lose a lot (meaning she was going to ask as much as possible) and he understood, telling her that he could afford it. He later brought it back in a later episode that "she might afford to lose (everything for the sake of vengeance) but he could not (because she was the one thing he did not want to lose)." It is their conversations/dialogue through this whole drama that made it what it is.

Now, since you brought up Zhao LuSi...she is my girl. I've followed her since her very early days. She debut about the time WJY became the IT girl for Yanxi Palace. LuSi was able to slowly climb up in popularity by playing sassy characters, with a certain cunning, but she did it with a very humorous and girl-next-door facade. WJY's characters had never had this aspect; WJY excels in giving her characters a calculating demeanor.

However, I believe LuSi is currently the more rounded actress. When I first watched her, she was the villainess in Untouchable Lovers. That was one role she had never returned to because she then hit it big with her following projects, but it showed me she was capable of doing more than the faces she portrayed in Romance of Tiger and Rose and Love and Immortality. You could see the turning point when she chose to play the shy princess in The Love Ballad, displaying something different again. And then, in one quick leap, she was Bai FengXi, showing her ability to play that kind of character before morphing into ShaoShang of LLTG. In these big roles, she certainly showed a few more cards up her sleeve than WJY. And what's more, I'm betting she might give WJY a run for her money in edgy heroines with the upcoming Pearl Girl. What say you? :).

But, back on topic, WJY and WXY definitely created a memorable couple in The Double. I'm a total fan for this CP!

We are told XXF is a Cai Nue. A Cai Nue (Talented Woman) in Ancient China is rare and XXF is the most talented of her district (where her father was magistrate). A Cai Nue could write, do caligraphy, play the qin, paint/poetry, play chess and was basically very, very smart. XFF suppressed her talents and personality for her husband, who wanted to be a court scholar. You'll see in flashbacks how XFF hid a lot of her intelligence by giving hints and using offhanded pointers to help her husband achieve his goal (passing his test, getting a writing assignment done, giving him a script idea). The idea of XFF slowly (and deliberately) suppressing herself is also shown with the selling off of all the things that made her unique--her qin is one of the examples. The final act of selling the pendant, with her nickname (and civet emblem), was her total loss of ego/self.
The XFF that came back alive was the real XFF. Her ex, SYR, did actually kill his wife that night because that woman was gone.