Vespertyne29

ha! I don't mind admitting I'm shallow - part of my love of Asian dramas is watching talented BEAUTIFUL people! And yes, like you, I do want a HE, although I will watch a SE as long as the death (always of the ML) is absolutely necessary for continuity in the story, and never, ever, EVER some gratuitous bullsh*t thing the director thinks will generate more buzz on social media. (I am still annoyed with the way the director of The Double tried to mess with the ending, and I was laughing when I heard the director of Snow Fall - which could have been an amazingly awesome vampire story - actually closed his Weibo account because people were hating on him so much for what he did to a very popular novel!!)

And also, I tend to see a lot of repetition in plots for EVERY drama (it's so bad in Kdramas that I have practically stopped watching them. It is also an issue in Cdramas but my preference is wuxia dramas, so I still watch and enjoy them).
Because there are so many, many repetitions of the same themes, for me it comes down to how well the (common, familiar) story is told. That includes a good screenwriter and director, good styling and costumes, and talented actors who can give me believable characters. The leads' on-screen chemistry is also a huge factor - in a series of stories that are very similar - the way the leads (and hopefully major support actors) bring the characters to life and make the characters and their romance compelling and believable, is what sets a drama apart from the many, many dramas that come out each month.

This lead actors in this drama are doing a great job IMO - this is a drama that I can't wait for each episode to come out, and I don't skip a second (I actually usually end up dropping dramas that I feel compelled to skip or FF repeatedly. If I am interested, I never skip, although I confess that I am sick and tired of the latest trend of bloating every episode with repetitive flashbacks that do nothing to advance the story, but only unnecessarily lengthen the episodes with useless filler).

Looking at this drama specifically, not that much time has passed in the drama. It's not like Yining has been back at her home for years. I'd guess a year or less has passed. And still a lot has happened.

Also, the drama producers/writers have been forced by ridiculous, annoying, senseless CCP policies to significantly alter the novel's story to find a way around the reincarnation/transmigration of souls plot that was the core of the novel's story. We meet Yining in the novel when she is only 7 years old physically, but she is actually a woman who retains memories of her previous 17 years of life and her 2 decades as her sister in law's hairpin. It's not that she is some brilliant strategist - she's not particularly smart or inherently interesting in the novel. What makes her an unusual, interesting character is that she has years of life that she remembers, and although her rebirth into 7 year old Luo Yining's body takes her backwards in time, she knows a lot about what happens in the future, like the rise in power of Luo Shenyuan, even though she never met him in her prior life. (He would have been a child during her 17 years of life, and she was an inanimate object (jade hairpin) for the next 20 years, so only heard gossip and court news from her sister-in-law and her visitors.

So although Yining is only 7 when she meets Luo Shenyuan as her older half brother, she is mentally an adult woman who knows what he will become, and knows that she is not - as herself - related to him, although biologically she thinks he's her half brother, as she doesn't know the truth about her birth. Part of why she cultivates a close relationship with him is that from her prior life she knows he will become a very powerful man and can protect her. (See, the drama is so much better in making her a smart and interesting and capable young woman. She's weak and not very interesting in the novel, IMO.)

In the novel she is raised with the family, not in the "side yard," alone, and she is always her grandmother's favorite. Her grandmother doesn't find out about her birth until she is already dying, and because she knows Luo Shenyuan cares about Yining, she tells him the secret of her birth - although no one, including grandma, knows that her father is a Duke, but everyone who knows thinks he is a man of low birth, possibly a criminal hiding from the law. Grandma makes LSY promise not to tell Yining, and to take care of and protect her. This is all while she is still 7 years old. So although LSY loves her and thinks her chubbiness (she's a very plump child) and fat cheeks are adorable, she is 7 and he is in his late teens. At least 8 or 9 years older than her.
By the time she hits puberty he is finding himself attracted to her, but around the time it might become a problem, the discovery of her true father comes to light, and the Duke takes her away to be his daughter (the public story is that the duke left his motherless daughter to be raised by the Luo family. It is not public that her mother was the wife of Second Master Luo).

As I've previously said, when the Duke believes the only way to keep Yining safe is to marry her off, even though she is younger than girls are when they are married, that's when LSY offers to marry her. He supposedly agrees not to consummate the marriage until she is older, but he only manages to keep that promise for a few months - IIRC it's less than a year. She's not even 16 years old- I think she may be 14 when they marry.

These are all things that needed to be changed from the novel - either because of censorship policies and because modern audiences are not going to be able to get into a 13 or 14 year old girl getting married (to a man in his early 20s - might be a different situation if it was a Romeo and Juliet type story, where Juliet is 13 and Romeo is 16).

I personally think the drama is doing a great job with the adaptation. I love the smart, feisty, but ladylike Yining. I love the nicer, less morally gray Luo Shenyuan. I think the father actually has moments when he's half tolerable, but he's just hateful in the novel. I think the character who most resembles the one in the drama is Lu Jiaxue, and the "they fell in love when he was blinded and being held captive by his older brother and she was a lonely young girl who was starved for companionship, attention and love" is a very clever and effective way to get around the entire "they were married for a few years and then she was killed, and she thought he was the one who had her killed because he never let her know how much he loved her, and because she knew he was a very ambitious man who wanted power above all things, and she was not from a powerful or prominent family. So she completely believed that he was capable of killing her to make himself available to marry a woman of higher ranking and elevate his social and official position.

I will admit that in the drama, the reason she believed that he would kill her is a bit less defined. But she is very young when the two secretly meet, and the woman who pushes her off the cliff directly tells her that it was Jiaxue who sent her, and that he didn't love her, etc. Perhaps we are to think that he realized he had compromised her, and he'd promised to marry her, but he had changed his mind after falling for a different, more socially prominent woman. But as the "she was his prior wife and knew him well enough to think he was capable of killing people close to him (like his brother) in order to gain power" is not available as a plot device in the drama, there had to be a different explanation. And I think they did as well as they could. If this happened 3 years ago then she would only have been 13 or 14 years old. She was very, very young. So it makes sense in the context of the drama.

In conclusion, I like and am very entertained by the story the drama is telling. I love the characters of Yining and Luo Shenyuan and I love the way Ren Min and Zhang WanYi are playing the characters, and I am very much enjoying the expansion of the roles and personality development of the side characters like YiXiu and Lin Mao, who are adorable. I think the casting is great, and that definitely includes Ci Sha as Lu Jiaxue. He is killing his role - I love to hate him! I love the way the drama has let stepmother Lin develop as a character - she was fine in the novel but I love her in the drama. I don't remember Madam Chen at all from the novel, but as the ultimate, sociopathic villainess, she made Concubine Qiao sort of a red herring for the Most Evil Luo Relative and most dangerous to Yining.

So, overall, I am extremely pleased with everything that's happened so far, and with how this drama adaptation of the novel is going. As much as I loved The Double, I think the writers of Rise of Ning have ben more successful at editing out and retelling the reincarnation/transmigration story. It's pretty successfully done in The Rise of Ning.

Others may be unhappy or bored with it, but for me, it's one of the best dramas I've watched in 2024, and I personally have liked quite a few dramas this year - Blossoms in Adversity, The Legend of Shen Li, Are You the One, The Double, In Blossom, Joy of Life 2, The Princess Royal, and now Rise of Ning for wuxia/historical dramas. I also enjoyed Will Love in Spring and My Boss contemporary dramas, and I have also found quite a few delightful and fun mini-dramas, my favorites of which include The Killer is Also Romantic, Butterflied Lover, What's Wrong with My Princess, Order of the Sommelier and The Female General (ML is totally psycho, but he's the FL's psycho!)

I’m going to try The Sword and Brocade based on your rec, but I am also definitely going to rewatch Rebel Princess -it was so good!! ♥️

Yes! I loved it!

You may be right. I’d have to rewatch. It may be that concubine Qiao did try to kill Yining. But IMO she is ineffective and practically harmless compared to Madam Chen, who it looks like is the one who killed Yining’s mom, and tried to kill Yining and Qiao, and was considering killing Shenyuan and Lin Mao!

The only one I see is We TV which is Women's Entertainment (ICK! NEVER!!). I have an iPhone but I also looked on Google Playstore and only see the same US We TV app.
Are you in the US?

I don't have the WeTV app - the one in the apple store doesn't seem to be the one I need. And I can't figure out to pay for their channel on YouTube.
Where do you watch WeTV (in English)?

I just looked at the app store again, and if I run WeTV search, it shows Tencent Video as "WeTV Official App in US" So, that's Tencent.

Thanks - I love reading these novels.

If you know of a completed version of The Double (Marriage of the Di Daughter), please give the link! I'm reading a decent translation that - after 5+ years - isn't even halfway through the novel, and found a horrible auto translation that is such a struggle to make sense of that I can find no pleasure in reading it.
I really want to read that novel!

Is the novel on MDNovels?

I loved Legend of Shen Li. Almost dropped it over the silly animated bird she was during the first episode or 2 but kept watching and it's one of my recent favorites as far as the story and the acting.
I'm looking for encouragement to keep watching Kill Me Love Me. So you are saying keep watching, right?

I may be wrong, but I don't recall Concubine Qiao ever trying to kill Yining. She tried to ruin her reputation, she tried to hurt her relationship with her father, and she was a conniving, mean woman to everyone. But the one incident where Yining's life was actually in danger (the boulders being pushed down the mountain to bash the carriage they were in and drugging the horse so it would panic) was not something Quian ordered. That was her brother, and she was stewing and worrying about it.

Now Madam Chen - I think she's a sociopath. But I don't think she was a very important character in the novel. I don't remember much about her.
In the novel, though, the other daughters are much lesser characters. There is no romance between the princess's son and YiXiu, or between Lin Mao and YiXiu. I dont' think she was a fat foodie, either. Those seem to be details added to the drama so there will be other couples to add interest.

It actually wasn't. But for the novel, Yining is 7 years old for the first 50 or so chapters. Of course she knows that she is not really Yining - she has her memories of her prior life , and she knows future events like that Luo Shenyuan will be the top scholar and will eventually become a very powerful, very high-ranking court official.
The grandmother finds out that Yining is not her son's daughter, then dies shortly thereafter, and tells Lu Shenyuan on her deathbed, making him promise not to tell anyone and to always take care of and protect Yining.

It's after that when the Duke finds out that she is his daughter, and he comes to announce it and take her away.

Later in the drama, when she is maybe 14, she needs to marry to protect her from Lu Jianxue. LJX's nephew - who is the first person to recognize the young Yining as the reincarnation of LJX's wife, who he adored when he was a small child, wants to marry her, but it's revealed that he has a young woman in a brothel who he has impregnated, and so Luo Shenyuan talks the Duke into letting him marry Yining. She is under the age of marriage at the time, so he even promises (her, maybe also tells the duke but I can't remember) that he won't consummate the marriage until she is older. But after some time - maybe close to a y ear - he can't wait any longer.

I think it's around chapter 62 or 63 of the novel when the readers finally find out that Yining and Shenyuan are not related, but she is so much younger than him that he loves her as a child when she is 7-8. I believe the grandmother also dies when Yining is still 7, so that's her age when Shenyuan finds out about her birth, and then she finds out a few years later when the Duke claims her as his daughter.

I think the drama is much better by making her older from the start and not having a third of the drama with her being 7 years old! And also by having Luo Shenyuan finding out pretty early in the drama that they are not blood relatives.

I have started Story of Minglan 4 times, and I just can't get past the first few episodes. I never actively decided to drop it - I just got interested in other dramas and somehow didn't watch the next chapter.

It is HIGHLY recommended by several of my friends who have excellent taste and usually -but not always - like the same dramas I do. So I gave it another try recently, and got all the way to the episode where the young girls and boys hit their teenage years, and are in school

Well, one look at the ML and other "boys," and I dropped the drama yet again. I mean, all the "teenage" boys studying in their school looked like they were 40 years old! I just totally lost interest. It was too weird and took me out of the drama completely. The actresses and FL looked age appropriate, like young 15- to 18-year-old girls, but the actors looked like they were the girls' fathers and uncles! And to me personally, the ML was not at all attractive.

So I think it's a permanent no-watch for me, although I may try again in the future, because so many people whose drama taste I respect just love it.

That's because the maids didn't know the identity of the man who is Yining's father. The Duke was badly wounded, and one of his soldiers or bodyguards found and kidnapped Madam Gu to take care of the Duke. But the maids only saw the rough soldier/bodyguard who kidnapped Madam Gu, and did not see the Duke. The just assumed the man was a bandit, and of low birth.
In the novel, that's what everyone, including the grandmother, thought. I have actually forgotten how Duke Ying discovers that Yining is his daughter, but when he finds out he goes to the Luo mansion to tell them that he's taking her away.
In the novel, he never sees her at his ducal mansion visiting his foster daughter - she doesn't go to the mansion until after he realizes that she is his daughter.
In the novel she has a tiny red mole next to one of her eyes, and the Duke has that same mole, so that's like the "DNA" clue! ha!

I am wondering how he will realize she's his daughter in the drama. I think he already saw her at his mansion, so it apparently isn't her resemblance to her mother that does it. Maybe he'll visit the Luo residence and somehow see a portrait of her mother. I thought at one point he would see the young woman who First Master Luo helped out, as she was Madam Gu's doppelganger, and remark on how much she looked like someone he had known, and then find out that she was almost identical in appearance to the late Madam Gu. But that young woman seems to have already disappeared from the plot of the drama.

Yes, and grandma almost certainly feels guilt over what happened to Madam Gu, and the way Yining has been treated by her father. So I think she felt a moral obligation to protect and love Yining for her mother's sake.

Exactly. It's like people think you only fall in love once in your lifetime, when you meet your "soulmate." When you get older, you realize that at different times in your life you fall in love with different people. Most people have been in love more than once in their lifetime.
Another thing to remember is that Yining met LJX when she was VERY young. She barely of marriageable age now (which back then was 15, but it's probably upped to 17 or 18 in the drama, for modern audiences), IIRC Yining and Lu Jiaxue met 3 years earlier, so let's say she was only 14. And she's a lonely, isolated girl getting attention for the first time. Any girl in her position would have developed a crush.

Well, the woman who pushed Yining off the cliff TOLD her that Lu Jiaxue sent her to kill her, so regardless of whether she heard what LJX said after she fell, her last impression of him was that he'd sent someone to kill her. So she is afraid of him and hates him.

It may have been in an episode that is an express, but they show him remembering being with her, and there is a scene where they have their arms around each other and she is leaning into him. It's definitely a romantic couple. They were not loves - she was way too young and he was disabled - but it was definitely a romance.
Of course in the novel he actually marries her, so all the romantic scenes are after they are married. They also have a normal marriage - it's not like they never consummated the marriage.
But of course, there was minimal physical contact between them in the drama because she was very young and they were not married. They had to cut out the reincarnation/transmigration because of censorship in the drama, so they just show it as a romance.

Also, it's clear that she didn't know him or anything about his evil deeds when she met him as a young teenager. She was living alone with a few servants, unloved and unwanted by her father or the Luo family. He paid attention to her, flattered her, teased her, and made her feel loved for the first time since her mother died.

She had no idea he was involved in corruption and embezzlement of military funds - which is strange to me since he is also military -or that he coldly murdered his older brother.

Also, he doesn't care at all about how Yining feels about him - once he determines she is the girl he fell in love with, he is ready to force her into marriage, kidnap her, whatever it takes for him to have her. HE also used her and put her life in danger when he was trying to lure LSY and the other scholars out after their attempt to stop him from murdering Daoyan. This is not "love" by any stretch of the imagination. It's more like an obsession with a young girl who was kind to him and admired him when he was at his lowest point. It's all about him.

Ah, so they are going to have grandma know before anyone, like in the novel? In the novel she finds out first, then tells Luo Shenyuan when she is on her deathbed, makes him promise to never tell anyone and to protect Yining, which he willingly agrees to do.
But I am actually relieved that LSY finds out early in the drama - it gives the audience much needed info to cheer on their relationship, since he and Yining have no blood relation at all, and so his feelings for her are not incestuous and creepy.