WK1

Esther, I read your comments and all the exchanges with the others before I make mine. So that I will not jump to wrong conclusions. And, because you have yet to finish the drama, it is entirely reasonable for you to feel the way you do about the main lady. Especially, if you were expecting her to be one dimenional.

Please be patient and I will explain things to you to the best of my ability and I will try to do so without making any specific reference to later episodes, so that it will not spoil your joy of watching those episodes. My key assumption is that you do want to continue watching. You just find some of the actions by the main lady not quite what you expected.

Here we usually call the main lady Changge (CG), which is her name.

Since every drama is more or less a story, I will try to explain things through the eyes of the screenwriters, the people who wrote the storyline for this drama. This is a fairly complex drama, compared to many others out there. Many of the actions are embedded in history. And many of the characters in this drama are very complex. Complex in that they do not carry with them a single motive or single purpose in life. As they journey through life, their motives changed, as ours sometimes do when we journey through ours.

For many of us here, that is what charmed us to this drama. The complexities of the story line, the complexities of many of the characters.

So, you were wondering, why did Changge save the same people who killed her family? That person is Li Si Min, her second uncle. By then, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty. She has yet to give up her desire to kill him, let me assure you. Right till almost the last few episodes, she still wanted to kill him. Here is where complexities come in.

After she helped to defend that city against the Ashile tribe, and she saw the governor of that city giving up his life for the sake of the ordinary citizens of that city, the first significant change in her life took place. She saw how war can take the lives of the people you love and care for; she also saw how people (like the governor) can give up their lives in order to save his fellow Tang citizens.

So, she had to balance two motives in her life. The desire to take revenge, and the desire for the greater good, which is the people of Tang, of which she is one.

When the Khan plotted to kill her uncle, she had to put one motive on top of the others. Saving Tang was more important than her personal motive of revenge. She felt that her uncle would make a good Tang Emperor. She did not want any harm to come to Tang. Revenge can wait. This is what went through her mind: Let me try to save my uncle first, because my uncle cares for the people of Tang, the same way the governor of that city cared for its people. And my uncle is a good military strategist. He can save Tang from the Ashile troops.

Anyway, she felt disgusted that the Khan was a sneaky person.

So, what does this tell us? Was she selfish? Hardly. She put aside her personal interest. In ethics, we sometimes call this, for the greater good. For the greater good of the Tang people, of which she is one, she put aside her personal motive of revenge temporarily. If she was selfish, she should just let the main man (here we call her Ah'sun or AS for short) shoot his arrow and kill her uncle. The Eastern Turkic Khaganate will overrun Tang and entire China will come under their rule. The Ashile troops were already very near to Chang'an, which was the capital city of the Tang Dynasty.

Hopefully that explanation can convince you that she is not selfish and she does consider the impact of her action and its consequences on others. That even at this stage, at episode 26, she already reset or reprioritised her goals.

Next issue. Is she smart thus far? Some of her moves were not. Because, at this moment, and perhaps even at the end, she was still learning from her mistakes. But we do need to bear in mind. At this point in time, she was just a little girl. Perhaps just about 15-16. Still trying to learn who she can trust, and who she cannot.

Yet, if you look at the evidence, lots of things tell us, she is far from being stupid. Her quick thinking helped to defend that city from Ashile troops for long periods of time. Her military wit caused the deaths of so many of their soldiers, they wanted to kill her in Episode 15. If not for AS, she would have been dead, by episode 15.

Here is where the beauty of this drama comes in. The screenwriters wanted to embed a love story in the midst of all this warfare between Tang and Ashile troops. A love story between enemies. A Tang princess and a grassland general. An impulsive girl, at this moment, with a more thoughtful and experienced war general.

For many of us here, we knew AS admired Changge, right from episode 1, when Changge helped her side beat the opponent. And then her ability to escape from her persuers further cement that admiration. By episode 5, admiration turned to adoration when, at the riverbank, he found out that Changge was a girl

She did not know it yet, but all of his actions after the river bank, show to us that he had already fallen in love with her. He shot at her shoulder, instead of her heart that will surely kill her. He accepted her negotiation offer in episode 15, not because those terms were favourable to his troops, but because that is only way he could keep her alive and by his side.

Keep watching and you will see their love story unfold before your very eyes. You will see her grow smarter. By the final few episodes, you will see that she is smart enough to save the man who saved him so many times. Smart enough to see through the evil schemes of the main villain in this drama. She will also show us the power of forgiveness in healing broken relationships. That endless rounds of revenge and killings will just harm innocent people who become collateral damage.

You will be charmed, as so many of us here are, by the unique relationship of this couple. That he will never force anything on her. Letting her grow at her own pace. Respecting her decisions at every turn of event, and guarding her physical safety even if it meant putting his own life in danger. And she, in turn, will reciprocate in her own unique ways. The most touching would be to leave behind all the people she loved, places she was most familiar, one in particular that still housed her mother's memorial tablet, and followed him to the grasslands.

Congrats to Reba and all her supporters!

The dancing scene, yes, the part where Changge's group joined in the competition, I do agree that they could have done it live. Changge was given a very nice mask to wear, and Dilraba is a very dancer. All those movements we saw in animation, she can easily perform a live version. Why didn't they do a live version? Was it too difficult to film, cause those people to jump from high up? They could have used wires. Maybe it would have delayed the filming and they just ran of time and thought that filming the other scenes was more important?

I think Immortality is a bromance type of drama. There is no FL at all. May not be shown so soon. The Golden Hairpin could be good. I checked out their comments section. Some fans of the drama have been waiting for months! I will pop to take a look too once it is out, since there is nothing good out there. After watching TLB, it is really a pain trying to look for a good historical Cdrama.

Chances are very high. At the moment, there is no drama as good as TLB

Your daughter likes activities that are usually preferred by boys, pretty much the same as Changge in TLB (archery, horse riding, war strategies). If so, she should really love TLB.

But the plotline in TLB can be quite complicated. Some of the scences, she may not understand. If she has finished watching and understand all the scences, why certain individuals do what, she is a very intelligent girl

What kind of drama are you looking?

Very true. Given the context, I don't think she cared how pretty she looked. The costume people did dress her appropriately. For the market, in order not too atttract too much attention. And then, she needed to push that cart to right outside DingXiang, as if a lady trying to delivery some mooncakes to someone in that fort (she would have said that, if she was indeed confronted by one of the soldiers in the fort).

The lower half of that costume must be lose, cause she needed to run. The top half must make her blend into the background, and not stand out.

So, back to the point made by Gracie. She was a mooncake seller at that market. What would a mooncake seller wear? Pretty much what she wore.

Got it. Think I will give it miss. Staying in this forum is quite sufficient for me. If you look at the number of comments here, the traffic is quite heavy. Discussion is fun, educational and healthy. But, I will keep it in mind. If I do feel the urge one day, I will message you.

Yes, it does really make his running scences kind of 'cute'. Yes, the impression of speed is there, both from the way he ran and camera movement during his running scenes. Audience must be convinced that he was determined to catch CG, and not play some kind of 'catch-me-if-can-game' with CG.

A number of individuals already asked why he needed to hold that 'skirt' up, it must be the weight. It does look heavy, if you were to put it side by side with what Shuyu was wearing most of the time (which was light blue, very thin material). Hao Du's was dark. Material looks thick. If he needed to fight during his job duties, thicker materials will give him better protection against non-lethal sword contacts.

What you said about getting back to the drama is so true. But don't worry too much about small digression. Here in this forum, if you are not already aware of it, after watching TLB, lots of GeSun fans. Short digression are usually forgiven. But you are right. Talking about the drama is more meaningful. Particularly for new comers to this forum.

I didn't know that. But I do know that Rejoice is a very popular brand of shampoo. Anyway, just about anything that she advertised for sells very well. And we all know why

This is definitely true!

Autumn, you have yet to finish watching the entire drama, am I right? Or you have?

Now that you mention, I do recall it was you who first posted about the broadcast in Korea. It was quite a while ago, I just lost track that it was you, and you did mention the date.

June 14 is not far away. In a month, we will know how well it performs in Korea. Someone here may have friends in Korea. We can post a comment here and those who know will surely respond

Not to worry. Many of us enjoyed the video. It is really funny

I see. If so, why would he make a video like that? And tie Chang'e to change? If he was not promoting Changge character in TLB, was he promoting?

I know Dilraba filmed a movie about Chang'e, the moon goddess (a movie that may never been shown, as it been in cold storage for such a long time), but Wu Lei is not related to that production, so he cannot be promoting that movie.

She was very young when her parents committed suicide. She did not see them doing it, which is good. So, over time, memorised of her parents' death will slowly fade away (unless someone keeps reminding her of it).

There are just too many characters in this movie. If they want to show what happened to all these people after E49, we will definitely need another 1-2 episodes.

I suspect they just ran of time. Tecent wanted to show another movie right after TLB. So, the sreenwriters just ended the story the way it did.

I am actually quite happy with the ending. If we keep expecting more and more scenes, it is really difficult to decide where to draw the line.

We can just wait and see where Xia Da wants to take the story in terms of focus and direction, once she settles the dispute with her former company.

Oh, yes, I do remember this scene. It was in animation. I thought I had missed out a live action scene showing this.

I think it must be you mentioned that this scene would have been incredibly difficult to shot in live action. Not possible for them to show real horses eating barbed wires. They would have had to CGI if they do not want to use animation. I think it would have been very expensive and time consuming to use CGI for such scenes like this. It was the pandemic last year, and I think they really wanted TLB to be shown around April 2021.

Even in animation, it already showed Changge extreme intelligence and fast thinking ability to use whatever resources they had to push the Ashile troops back during this fight sequence

Indeed we did have a few live action fight scenes. The one with CG going for revenge for A'Dou was very well choreographed. I think they used that in the trailer.

If they could do maybe 2 live action scenes for those epic battles, that would have been great. I also do not find the COVID excuse reasonable. But I must say, it saved them quite a bit of money. More importantly, it must have saved them lots of time.

The time factor could be important, cause any delay in filming and post production could delay the broadcast slot Tecent had already slatted for TLB.

All things considered, given that TLB was indeed filmed during the pandemic last year, and you could see many of them still wearing masks in many of the BTS, I am quite grateful that they gave us TLB that we saw.

If I remember correctly, TLBJunkie, you were the one who said TLB was imperfectly perfect?