asphyxia

can't believe it's over!! fave case is still the one about the wu family because it was so tragic how many woman were commodified for riches and discarded when labelled as "promiscuous". it was satisfying to see the grandpa get the bad guys down and watching LPY + XHJ walking through his mechanism plans. sooo thrilling that i need to let it marinate for a while and forget all the details so i can rewatch

MDL drama ratings have never been that representative of the full audience. Sometimes I watch a 8.6-8.7 drama, and it ends up being trash while my fav dramas end up way lower in ranking. Most criticisms ive seen have been about how there are too many "random suicides", which i kinda disagree with 😅

dailuwa + bailu reunion reminds me of moonlight mystique!! personally I prefer this drama bc I feel like case solving dramas move at a thrlilling pace, does anyone have any good detective drama recs?

EPISODE 22 HAS ME IN TEARSS NOOOO, need to take a break before continuing iomg

i feel so bad for old xiao.. he saw his own daughter being broken by this extraction system so he broke it himself to save more people😭 😭 😭 😭

the lady wang story made me so sad... she was labelled as a manipulator simply for desiring freedom and fighting for it 😭😭

I think the romance develops so much more naturally when it's a subplot.. I wish more dramas did this bc usually the flirty scenes take away from my ability to enjoy the characters individually

i did not expect to see doomed yuri omg 😭😭😭😭

it's an ancient chinese timekeeping method, one "hour" is a mistranslation because a 时辰 is a two hour period. the zi hour is like 11pm-1am roughly

finally caught up but now i need to wake ughas fjaiosfjk
it's so chilling to know that there's always someone higher up is always puppeteering the criminals that are initially thought to be masterminds, they need to be locked upppp 😩

i think that look on the tower was him recognizing her from his past, but he's also reluctant to get close bc of that scene w/ his dad. it's clear that the dude did some sketchy shit and doesn't want her to investigate it, which is why XHJ has to keep his distance. still, the plot only moves forward if he follows his own judgment and works on cases at his own will

https://timesofmylife.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/what-my-father-said-about-chinese-new-year/
this is an example chart, each time (two-hour duration) corresponds to a chinese zodiac, hence why there are 12 "hours"

I actually have a lot of gripes w/ official subtitles, but I can acknowledge that it's difficult to translate stuff well without putting a wall of text. The characters in historical dramas always use 成语 / idioms that the english subtitles struggle to explain briefly. I would say it's less about speaking speed but more about translation inconsistencies. I wish there was some way around this too 🥀

i wish they put more cdramas on netflix like they did with this one, it's so much more convenient asjkhfuahkjwwfkja

so many of them are under huanyu loool

the emperor's actor is so employed, i swear i see him everywhere 😂😂

happy ending, leads end up together!

9.4, eyes were always peeled for the next episode, loved the cinematography and costuming too. only downside would be the intricacies of the ML-FL hierarchy. I would've preferred a bit more of explanation from the FL to the ML in her schemes, but her anger was also quite justified. it's hard to explain w/o spoiling, but overall it's the type of drama you want to see the end to!

FINALLY FINISHED OMG, totally loved it but i still have a few thoughts left (i might've missed some details)
1) to my knowledge, the third sister (yun e) played an incredibly minor role, she acted as a kiss-ass who would curry favor to whoever seemed to be "winning". i was curious if she would have any plots in the future or just lay low.
2) i kinda understand the complaints about the "unequal romance". i still loved the slowburn bc they didn't need to use a million cheesy theatrics to set the main leads together. however, it's hard to swallow that she didn't tell him about anything during the jiangyiqian situation. there are many instances where he's expected to read her mind/initiate everything, and her affection is only openly displayed when his life is near danger. i don't doubt her love for him, but a few more scenes that shows that she was actively openly up to him after the "left at the altar situation". her anger is justified, but it felt unclear as to when she was ready to help him again.
3) This is one of those rare dramas where I wouldn't mind 10 more episodes. Nothing felt dragged out, I simply felt like there were stories I wanted to learn more about. So much drama was packed into the last episodes that I wouldn't mind seeing a few more eps taking place in the duke arc. The second sister (yun xi) also deserved a bit more screen time during her "redemption arc" i feel.
4) as much as I know that the grandma's final scenes were meant to show that she accepts/acknowledges shanbao's place as new head of the house, it would've been interesting to see how she reacted to LJL coming back instead of one of the random men she chose for shanbao.

36 episodes and damn, it's over.. i need more !!! loved the inidividual plotlines of each sister, how nothing was ever too predictable, how i always felt compelled to click the next episode, off to the next cdrama 🫡

12-13 ish