TaliaToo

This made laugh so hard.

LOL, thanks for such kind words! Let's look at this scene again. Beginning of Episode 17. At first, the conversation appeared to be their usual sparring--> "Have you ever told the truth?" "Well, have you?"

But.

One must look at what happened just before that. The Third Uncle basically just revealed a hidden truth--he confessed his love to a wooden post/his love, Jiang Li's mother. Thus someone told the truth while drunk.

So then our couple is left alone and Xue Fang Fei whirled around, drunk and happy about her success in finding the buyer's name. Duke Su looked on, realizing this was the real XFF being shown to him (drunk = truth) and was our boy in love with XFF. That. LOOK.

"You're drunk," he told her.

XFF came to him and threw off his umbrella. CUE MUSIC. Listen to the lyrics. If you'd read a previous post of mine, I wrote about the Chinese title and the OST--Inky Rain Amidst The Clouds (the post is up there in the Other Topics) and that the inky rain could be seen as SYR's ink/stain on her reputation. Throughout the drama, there's use of the umbrella by Jiang Li as if to protect herself from that rain. SYR was also seen walking in that inky rain without an umbrella.

In this moment, though, XFF threw away Duke Su's umbrella and declared, "I'm not drunk!" The rain was a different kind of rain here, cleansing (re: none of that odd opera makeup ala acting on XFF's face).

"You're so drunk you don't know what you're doing," said the Duke.

THE LYRICS: Remove my clothes and I won't regret.... (sex, also revelation....)

XFF said, "Xiao Heng." You know they communicated on another level when she called him Xiao Heng like that. LOL.

"A'Li," he countered.

"You're handsome," she whispered.
LYRICS: Some obsessions turn to ashes, there is only one remedy....

XFF confessed (dai biao, C-Drama style)/echoing her Uncle's drunken confession. Here, her "are you drunk" takes on special meaning. Xiao Heng was tempted, sooooo tempted.

But he told her, "I'm not drunk."
LYRICS: Do you know what it is to be drunk (with love)?

XFF pushed him away, "You're not a man! You can't even get drunk!" (He jiu to he bu chui! is a play of the usual Chinese idiomatic expression of che fan/eating rice and che bao je pao lah/finished eating and now you're running off for sex and sexual intimacy) She went on, "Have you ever told the truth?"

Now, here I'll admit to extrapolating through character analysis. We know A'Li is the more sexually experienced one between the two of them. She might be a tad frustrated here, I don't know, LOL:

Xiao Heng reverted back to Duke Su persona, "What about you? After drinking so much, aren't you also not telling the truth?"

That was such a weak counter that XFF immediately mocked him (even while drunk). "Thank you, DUKE SU! Thank YOU, DUKE SU! THANK YOU, DUKE SU!" Notice the sexy music has stopped and she'd also stopped calling him Xiao Heng. He was just Duke Su, interrogating her again.

CUE MUSIC. Now it's the pear song and XFF reverted back to XFF/JiangLi.

I'm not saying Duke Su didn't know what XFF wanted (he did call her shameless when they almost kissed) but I do believe he didn't know at that moment how to handle the real XFF vs XFFasJiangLi. The confession took him aback. So what did he do? He gave her another piece of his clothing to wear, Bwahahahahahaha. These two kids; they are too much.

I hope the above gave you something to think about when you rewatch the scene. It's really very well done.

Don't quote me on this but I've read/heard somewhere that if it's based on a real historical person/kingdom, then the script must not stretch the truth with too many alternatives. For example, Yanxi Palace and Ruyi were both banned for the former rewriting the whole background of Ling Fei and the latter for writing Ling Fei as the murderess of so many of the emperor's sons, as well as other crimes. I'm not sure how far one could "bend" the truth, but obviously these two dramas I mentioned did so much, the powers-that-be did not like it. From then on, many historicals used fake dynasties that look like real dynasties (the knowledgeable audience would know) and the emperors are based on a well-known one but since it's a fake kingdom, it's "okay." LOL. I cannot argue against Chinese logic, sorry. This is all from me hearing about it second- and third-hand, so don't quote me on it.

There will probably different alternative endings shot because this Director likes to play with close-ups. For example, there was an ending clearly showing WXY riding the horse in the last scene. He was in full gear in red, with the pendant by his side.

I have been watching multiple times too.

Government sez so.

Yes, they. Cut out ten episodes for LLTG. 😤

Not to me she doesn’t. She looks like she’s in her mid-20s.

Exactly!

I agree with you about how (esp. in the drama) he was always torn between being FFB and Xiang Liu :). For his men, he was always stealing food, breaking into compounds to steal medicine and food, negotiating to get food, You would think, after these 80 years??? he would figure out a better way, LOL.
And these days, with TSJ in the background being puppet master, all I want to do is break into Brady Bunch's Jan mode and go, "Jing, Jing, Jing!" Hee.

But Feng Long is in love with Cang Xuan! LOL

SEAL's Kiss of a Rose

Yes to #3. He'd always wanted but never dared take. This time, he dared, and with such a great cover too--so much embarrassment, they could have disappeared, FFB and her as an eloped couple. But gah. These pesky responsibilities....One of those heads of his must be the one with the guilty conscience. LOL

Not to mention those elongated headed Egyptian dynasties. 😂

It’s normal for first cousins to marry in those times and this is depicted in C-novels.

Hope you weren’t buried alive! 😂

IMO, the FL had chemistry with all her costars. Her chemistry with the ML was incredible; the fact these two could create such sexual tension with mere sexy dialogue and deep looks speak a lot about how crazy good their chemistry was. WJY also had quality intense scenes with her murderous husband; you could slice the tension be tween them with Su Guo Gong’s sword. Her emotional scenes watching her tortured father, her expression during the Qin competition, her emotional eloquence during the trial as well as the scene where she called out the 100 names show WJY’s versatility in delivering key climactic scenes in this drama.

Overall, this is not your usual idol drama, where you get the FL twirling around before ending half lying looking up at the ML for ten seconds while the music roars in the background. This is a slow burn intellectual drama where the two leads had the boldest flirtation going on in their dialogue while they politely drank tea or exchanged clothing items. 🙃

Also, Tong Er actress had to go back to school so the Director chose to kill off the character. It was stupid because there were other ways for this character to be away and survive!

Yes, he was. Esp. the candle kiss scene. Many readers went to his Weibo page to scold him. And then he was celebrating his wonderful end scene where he killed off the JIs, saying it was so good, and so many posters scolded him, he deleted that post LOLOLOL. He was the wu-kwei of his drama.

Quick reply (at work) for now: I'm reading the Malicious Empress now and it's good. I don't think like Deng Wei in the role at all but I'm sure his fans would disagree :).