Vespertyne29

I paid for Express on Tencent, but I am NOT getting 2 episodes per day. It looks like I am just getting the episodes 24 hours early. Previously I am pretty sure I got the regular episode and then an express episode, so 2 every day. But now it's just one a day. The airing schedule of this drama is driving me nuts, because I am absolutely enthralled by it and can't stand the waiting!
So I've watched 25 episodes total.

Now I'm reminded of how frustrating I find it to watch currently airing dramas - and this one is 40 episodes, so I won't get the batch of the last 5 or 6 episodes for weeks still! But I can't wait. I have to keep watching! Love this drama.

Was this a translation error? Because he doesn't seem to be married in the drama, and he was not married in the novel, except to Yining in her first life, so he's a widower when he meets Luo Yining.
I actually replayed that line several times, because I was like "what?"

Is it possible it's an error in translation and he really said something like "You tried to force me to marry you" instead of "you forced me to marry you?" Kind of like how the Cdramas always say "I was assassinated" instead of "someone tried to assassinate me." Which drives me nuts.

I WANT to love this drama because I absolutely adore Liu Xueyi and think he's gorgeous, and I also loved the FL in The Double. (which I loved).

But I am having a hard time paying attention while watching this drama. It's been a struggle to keep my interest up during almost every episode other than maybe the first 2.

I admit that I've been very busy with work lately, and so I've been tired and sleepy when I've watched after heading to bed. But I've dozed off so many times that I realized when I started episode 10 or 11 that I had no clear idea of what was going on in this drama, and I needed to rewatch almost from the beginning. But I don't want to.

Not sure whether I will try to keep going, drop permanently, or put on hold until I feel up to a nice long binge.

💯👏👏👏👏👏

you can see, though, that they’re trying to make him sympathetic. So in the drama his brother locks him up - maybe is even responsible for the injury to his eyes? - when he’s helpless, and that’s when he meets Yining. So if, like in the novel, he killed his brother, there would be some semi-understandable reason. Bit in the novel he hates his brother, who apparently claimed credit for a battle that Jiaxue actually won, and he wants to be the son who inherits, so he kills him. I think he also frames someone else for the murder. He is just hateful in this drama. No sympathy from me.

yes, that’s what I’m hoping for. just a red herring.

Thank you!

I won copies of The Hobbit and the LoTR trilogy for having the highest English grades in the 8th grade. Read all of the LoTR novels at least once a year until I law school and then work. Now it's more like every 3 to 5 y years. The other novels I reread constantly are Dorothy Dunnett's The Lymond Chronicles. I love fantasy and I love well researched historical fiction. And Francis Lymond of Crawford is my favorite fictional male character ever! He wins over Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Aragon!

It may have been in one of her live videos, but I can't find it. The comments about Zhang Wan Yi looking/being the same as in his last 2 dramas is in the one where she's talking about upcoming dramas and it's one of a list of them.

See my long reply above to @chanelboy

AvenueX has a channel on YouTube. Starting about 5 years ago, when I got into Kdramas and Cdramas, I found her channel. She is a highly intelligent, highly educated (university in China and then postgrad work at Oxford) woman who has an impressive knowledge of Chinese history and literature. She is very interesting. For example, she loved The Untamed, and taught herself to play the zither/guqin) so she could play the theme from The Untamed and other songs. She loved Word of Honor and did a video about the poems they used to show the relationship was far more than friendship (as it was in Priest's BL novel, Faraway Wanderers, that the drama was an adaptation of). After the drama Winter Begonia came out, she did a video on the history and style of the Peking Opera (aka Beijing opera). After Joy of Life came out, she did a total of three (IIRC) videos on the poems that Fan Xian drunkenly quoted at the emperor's banquet, with info about the poets and the style of poems, many of which were in a style that had a very exact format (like a Shakesperean sonnet, for example, which is 14 lines of iambic pentameter with an abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme, but the Chinese styles were possibly even more complicated. And some were set to music, although the tunes are long lost).
She worked in the Chinese TV/film industry, I believe as an editor, for a while, so she knows a lot about how dramas are made and edited, and is always very critical of the production values, which I personally could not care less about if the story is good, the dialogue is well written, the costumes and styling are attractive, and the acting is good. But it is interesting to hear her comments about filters, color grading, skin smoothing, CGI effects, and the voice actor dubbing.
AvenueX is how I know that almost all historical dramas are dubbed, and why they are dubbed, as well as the fact that many actors always use voice actors, even in contemporary dramas (China, unlike America and the UK, apparently doesn't care if their actors have good voices or have heavy regional accents or can't speak unaccented fluid Mandarin, which is what is used in all dramas. So they just hire professional voice actors to dub them. This has only very recently become disfavored, IIRC with new rules so that the actors have to pay for the voice actors to dub them (and dubbing is necessary because the scenes shot outside, as well as on noisy sets where they are filiming or building a new set just one set over). So these days, many actors are dubbing themselves, and we can hear their voices. (Both ML and FL are dubbing themselves in TRoN, and the leads dubbed themselves in The Double. OTOH, almost all dramas you see of Dylan Wang and Xu Kai are dubbed, both historical and contemporary, because they apparently have noticeable regional accents. Dylan used his own voice in a recent drama - which was not a good drama, and AvenueX named it as one of the three worst dramas of 2023 - and she heavily criticized his accent and said he should have been dubbed. (But she loved Dylan in LBFaD, which I think is definitely his standout role!).
Anyway, so much of what I learned about the making of Cdramas came from her videos, and up until the last yearand a half to 2 years, almost every drama she loved was one I also loved (she only has a handful of dramas that get her top level 3 goldmines rating. Like maybe 2, maximum 3, in a calendar year, and sometimes none at all).
But recently she dislikes and mocks everything, and has nothing good to say about the dramas, the costumes, the sets, the story, the acting, or the actors. She's started being very critical of the physical appearances of actors/actresses. Like someone being too old to play a part, or someone being too short to succeed. There are also some actors/actresses she just doesn't like - which is great when you agree with her, as I often do, but not so great if it's one of your favorites and you disagree with her opinion. I mean, not every actor I like is the greatest actor, but they are still watchable and sell the roles they play and choose interesting dramas and interesting characters.
Anyway, this is a very long post to praise AvenueX for her brilliance and the amazingly educational value of her videos, and to mourn the fact that she has become so negative and hyper-critical that it's no longer a pleasure to watch most of her videos, and I can no longer rely on her recommendations, which I used to do, always watching what she loved. and avoiding what she disliked. But now it seems she hates just about everything.

Ah, my first glimpse of Wang Zi Qi. Instant love! I love almost all of his dramas. Isn't he due for another one? I don't think I've seen him in anything since The Love You Give Me.
Imperial Coroner for Wang Zi Qi and Maiden Holmes for my first glimpse of Zhang LingHe. Definitely two amazing finds during that time period.

Interesting. I am the opposite - I want to read a novel before I watch a film or drama about the novel.
I am a huge fantasy fan, but was not familiar with GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series when I saw an HBO trailer for an upcoming drama (it was 13 months before the air date!), Game of Thrones. I immediately thought that I would really like the drama, so I set my DVR to record it whenever it finally appeared on HBO.
I watched the first episode the night it aired. The next day I bought all 4 of the available published novels. I read the first novel. Then I went back and watched the remaining episodes of the first season, which I had recorded on my DVR. Then I finished the next three novels and preordered the firth novel, which came out about a week after I finshed reading the others. But I'm so annoyed that GRRM hasn't finished the series (the last novel was published in 2011!) that I don't know if I'd even buy the next novel if he finally published it. Thankfully the HBO series answered a lot of questions and gave closure to the series. I hate when writers don't finish a series.

My first time seeing him. He is doing a fantastic job making me hate his character. And he is very sexy! I want to see him in a lead role! But no way I can ship him with the FL in this drama! Even if she's wrong about him killing her (or trying to kill her in the drama version), he is still a Very Bad Man!

Agree. I think the acting in this drama is very good, love that the lead actors are using their own voices (dubbing themselves when needed), and I love the way Ren Min is bringing the character of Yining to life. Ditto for Zhang WanYi and Ci Sha. All of them are great.

I know that a lot is lost in translation when I read a Chinese novel that a bilingual fan has graciously translated (although some are quite good, with very helpful, detailed, and well researched translator's notes), but the novel was definitely not one of my favorite reads - I wouldn't have read it if the first chapter hadn't popped up as I was finishing the extra chapters of the Are You the One novel, and I initially thought it was another epilogue or a side story. I kept reading, but while the story was pretty interesting, the characters didn't really feel very real to me. Again, it may have been a translation issue, but I found Yining very flat and pretty boring. The Yining in the drama is a gazillion times more interesting, intelligent and proactive.

SPOLIER from novel: It wasn't. It's war hero Wei Ling, Duke Ying. He was injured and holed up at or near the temple where Madam Gu went when she was slandered and framed by Concubine Qian. His servant/bodyguard kidnapped Madam Gu to take care of Duke Ying. One of his medications caused him to lose control and sexually assault Madam Gu. He fell in love with her and wanted to marry her, but as she was already married, she disappeared. He didn't know her name and he spent years looking for her.

BUT, I will say that in the novel, there is no "impossible love" between the First Master Luo and Madam Gu. That is purely made up in the drama. But it would be pretty unacceptable if he and his brother's wife (Yining's mother) had an affair. And it would also be pretty bad if he raped his brother's wife and impregnated her. So I am hoping that they keep the story about the Duke. Not only does it make the blood relationship between Yining and Luo Shenyuan completely disappear (they would be first cousins if Yining's father were First Master Luo, so their relationship would be the same as the one between Yining and Madam Chen's son who just failed the exam), but it also elevates Yining's social standing far beyond that of the Luo family. And it also gets her out of that dysfunctional family where half the women and girls are trying to kill her!

I'm just curious as to why they added that storyline about First Master Luo falling in love with Madam Gu when they were children, but her being betrothed to Second Master because First Master already had a prearranged marriage set up with Madam Chen's family.

hahahahahahahaha!!

I agree. I hate his character, and he really has brought the complex Lu Jianxue gloriously to life. And I have to say, the actor is definitely sexy! I don't think this historical style is as flattering to him as it could be - I'd love to see him in a wuxia where he has long flowing hair, or a contemporary drama where he has longish hair. I'll bet he can be deliciously sexy and sweet in a romantic scene! (But not, of course, in this drama. He's eeeeeeeviiiiiillll!

I agree. Master Han doesn't know anything about YiXue. He just likes the fact that when he watches her enjoy food, he also, for the first time in his life, wants to eat, and enjoys eating the same dish as she is eating. I agree with YiXue - it's WEIRD, and most likely makes her uncomfortable. The princess, Han's mother, also just sees YiXue as a tool to use to benefit her son's health. She's not a person - she's more like an extremely rare medicinal herb or flower that only 2 or 3 people in the entire country possesses.
And I also think Lin Mao is adorable and fell in love with YiXiu for exactly who she is. She will be very happy with him, but miserable with Master Han.

Yes, the novel has a HE. When Yining needs to be married so she can be protected, Luo Shenyuan offers to marry her. At first it's platonic (because she's still so young), but it's not too long before they consummate the marriage and are a happy couple.
The novel is also slow - even slower, because Yining is 7 years old when the novel starts, and remains a 7 year old through over 60 chapters of the novel. She's still really young - 14 maybe? - when she marries LSY. Which is not big deal at the time, when 15 year old boys led troops into battle, and girls (and probably boys) were considered to reach adulthood when they turned 15. But I am glad that the drama starts out when she is already 16 or 17 and considered to be of marriageable age.