anhsn

Yes almost all historical dramas are centered around fl that's the reason i didn't like POJ and some others shows and my other complain is that some audiences ignores many problems in fl they can do anything and people think they are strong but they easily label ml a red flag for any anything he do ( I'm not talking about this show )

Even from a female viewer's perspective, I find this kind of writing disturbing.

I enjoyed the earlier scenes where he was a leader of men, gave rousing speeches to the soldiers about their shared brotherhood and deflected their praise of him back on to them, saying they each deserved their share of any rewards. There was a lot of dignity in those scenes.

I’m all for women’s empowerment in storytelling. I want female leads who are intelligent, ambitious, flawed, resilient, and capable of driving their own arcs. But I don’t want that empowerment to come at the expense of the male lead. A female lead can absolutely shine without the writers humiliating, neutering, or dumbing down the male lead just to make her look stronger. Strength isn’t a zero-sum game. Her competence doesn’t require his incompetence her agency doesn’t require his passivity her moment in the spotlight doesn’t require turning him into a simp, a or doormat

The Road to Splendor is a good example of how this can work. The female lead still got to shine she had her own goals, struggles, wins, and emotional depth but the male lead wasn’t reduced to a spineless worshipper or a plot device. He kept his dignity, his flaws, and his own arc. Their dynamic felt like two fully realized people existing in the same story, not a queen and her servant. That’s why it worked. These two things a strong female lead and a well written male lead can coexist.

Welcome to what it's like to be a woman for the past few thousand years of storytelling and literally every other mainstream media in the present anyway...!

As a male viewer, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m going to be much more cautious about starting C-dramas written or directed by women. I know it’s not fair to generalize, and I’m not saying every female writer or director does this, but I’ve noticed a recurring pattern that really frustrates me in the second half, the male lead often gets humiliated, stripped of his dignity, or turned into a one-dimensional simp whose only purpose is to chase, apologize to, and worship the female lead. It stops feeling like romance and starts feeling like punishment. Lin Jinqi is a perfect examplehe had potential and presence early on, but by the back half he was reduced to a pathetic, groveling simp, and honestly it is hard to watch. It killed my investment in the story. So from now on, I’ll be avoiding any C-drama written or directed by a woman unless I hear that the male lead is actually treated like a character and not just a punching bag for the plot.

There is a reason this drama dropped in rating. Feminist BS.

Episodes 1 to 27 are almost perfect television. The writing is tight and gripping, the kind that makes you cancel your plans and binge until 3 a.m. The male lead is sharp and calculating, and he commands every scene. The story builds real stakes.
But from episode 28 onwards, something clearly went wrong in the writers' room. I don't know if they changed writers, but whoever wrote episode 28 and beyond seemed to have an agenda. I have never seen a male lead get assassinated like this in a C-drama. They took a brilliant, strategic general and turned him into a simp.
From episode 28 to 40, he basically begged the female lead. He chased her, pleaded with her, and bent over backwards for the smallest crumb of affection. It was exhausting to watch. This was a man who outsmarted his enemies on the battlefield and in the court, reduced to a lovesick puppy with no backbone.
It gets worse. She made him quit his job as Capital Commander. He gave up his position, his power, and his ambitions, and the show presented it as romantic growth. It wasn't. It was the complete destruction of everything that made him interesting.
I hate how they weakened the male lead in the second half. They stripped away his authority and his dignity, scene by scene, until he was barely a shadow of the man from episode one.

I don't know about others, but for me it's the culmination of a genuine failure of the writing that's been there since about episode 20. In earlier episodes it was fine. For this romantic section, we've seen the ML affirm again and again his feelings for the FL. The FL is by nature a more private and secretive person, so I don't expect some weird loveydovey scene. What I want is one scene - one moment - where we are allowed to see that the FL is acknowledging to herself that she's accepting this man for herself.... not enduring, or suffering or putting up with or settling... but taking him as Her Man, not just because her parents had originally chosen him, but as a woman, freely, for herself, for her pleasure, for her children.
I feel this is not well communicated here; in fact, it's treated like an afterthought at a time when a woman's sense of agency in this respect is rarely seen to be exercised. The writers should have realized that including such a scene is the ultimate celebration of living well for a woman like Lanxiang, but they didn't make it happen.
IMO you can't make this oversight into my fault as a viewer. The writers just didn't focus enough on portrayal of the emotional development of the character at a time when it was vital to do so.

You know, even though I adore the unique stories of these women freeing themselves from the shackles of the patriarchy, and love the way this drama portrays women in general, I feel that the story has lost direction in the last couple of episodes. And the time skips make it really hard to understand. The pacing seems off.
We were also definitely robbed of the kiss scene. They consummated their marriage, but why?? Why did Lanxiang suddenly bring her walls down and accept him? Thus far, her attitude towards him has just been a guarded mutual respect between husband and wife, so why the sudden change?? What happened in the last 2 years?? What was even the purpose of this whole "distance makes the heart grow fonder " business if they aren't going to show it? And even if they didn't show it, what the hell was that kiss scene???
I understand that the purpose of this drama is not romance, but even still, after 39 episodes of seeing them change, grow, and love, we deserved some emotional payoff. Their atoms briefly shared magnetic fields for like 0.01 seconds, and BOOM, baby. Like ok boy, whatever you say.
I also hate that she didn't tell him her secret. What, she warned him to not become a pawn to be discarded?? Great point, but not really necessary here.

In the beginning, I was really enjoying this series. However, after the marriage of the FL/ML, I became more and more annoyed. Why? I felt the FL was reduced to being petty and disrespectful. For me, her ongoing behavior started feeling self-righteous in nature. And, the fact that there are so many episodes with this behavior made it boring for me. I've stopped watching the series, but may resume once the final three episodes are available. Sigh.....

I wish some of her maids or Jiucao tell her in details of so much LXY went through looking for her when she got kidnapped and all the hassles he went through...so she could know the truth and take it easy on him.

He has always respected her for her intelligence and bravery. Those are actually the qualities he fell in love with in Lanxiang. What has changed, or is slowly changing, is that all that respect and love is increasing day by day. And he genuinely wants her to order him around like a wife should with her husband. That’s why he keeps insisting that she ask him for things without overthinking, and sometimes he even does things for her because he knows she needs them and knows he can help. She has every right to ask him because he is her husband.

That’s what marriage means. You don’t balance it like a balance sheet, keeping track of who did what for whom. You depend on each other for the things you can’t handle on your own. That goes both ways—that’s called supporting each other.

And I think this is something Lanxiang needs to understand as well, which she clearly doesn’t right now, but I hope she does in the future. Because right now, she is constantly balancing everything in her head, which leaves her husband with almost no chance to actually talk things out with her. They really need to start talking at this point, especially because they didn’t exactly start their marriage like a normal couple in the first place. And let’s be real, this marriage isn’t going to dissolve by any means at this point. They are bound to each other now, and Jinqi is not some sort of monster—he is genuinely a nice guy. She just needs to see that.

Ep.31: It's incredible to me how much this drama has derailed to the point I cannot recognize the FL, ML or the crux of the story arcs anymore. It's all jingoist propaganda for weak-minded female audience, who want to pretend that men are the root of all of women's problems, that as progressive as ML was shown in the earlier part of the show, he is now a ridiculous emasculated immature loser who just has to accept every weird thing his wife does or says, where even servants are acting like they own the house he lives in while he is tiptoeing around them. And HE is the one who has to be taught lessons by the virtue-signalling on-an-invisible-pedastal FL who can do no wrong.

FL who began as a girl with a remarkable tragic backstory & life journey, incredible brilliance & will power & energy & laughter - & the drama IS her life story - stopped having a fully functioning brain, she hasn't picked up any signals about anything, since she became a commoner. She hasn't shown any capacity to be empathetic to anyone other than drama's self-serving agenda to show women as perennial victims.

For me this story was always about her & the strength of her experience as a noble & slave & commoner. Unfortunately, the drama doesn't know how to write her as a woman, a friend, a lover, a wife or a daughter, unless she is giving a speech about feminism or how the world is cruel towards women & how she will save everyone.

It's especially ridiculous because she has not been shown being angry towards HER OWN DAD & GRANDPA, for what happened to the women & children of her family. She is shown walking in her parent's house & she does not realize for once that her male members were responsible for the upheaval - I know some of commenters said Confucian ideals would've made it impossible for them to 'go against their conscience' BUT a little bit of self-reflection from FL about how she ended up where she ended up would've been useful. She does not like the Lins, it's very obvious, she doesn't like ML, it's very obvious, she doesn't remember any act of kindness (& frankly drama has pummeled ML so much he is unrecognizable now). Lins are the bad guys - people who chose to live & save their families, men who didn't want women of their family to become whores are bad guys.

I don't want to get into the semantics of various scenes, because MDL commenters pick one or two lines & start bashing whoever makes a post that isn't praising the drama or cast, but now FL wants to write plays, which she wouldn't have been able to do even as the wife of an imperial scholar. She was rude to ML's elders (those Lin grandparents) whose only crime was to not support her Shen family - but expects ML to fall over himself and any sword just to please her.

FL & ML are no longer well-rounded characters. And that's not all - most of the guys introduced in this drama are bad, every rich person introduced in this drama is bad.

FL is now a petty small-minded loose cannon. She has been reduced to a robotic avenger. She has had zero open conversations with ML about their marriage, his past relationships, her past relationship, & the house she has ended up in - which would've revealed ML's point of view too, along with allowing FL to reveal bits of her former self & trauma indirectly. There is zero compatibility & communication between them at every level. How is it possible that a smart quick-on-her-feet servant could work with 'master' but cannot do so as his wife? The drama is unbalanced & is not even pro-women, it's pro-victimhood, it's about showing one woman coming to the rescue of other women. She is the only one who knows what is right, knows how to go about it (or the female servants know what is right). This is juvenile writing at its best.

And for all of the 'female empowerment' mumbo jumbo, this 47-episode drama needed a MALE LEAD to get female viewers to watch it - none of the people commenting on MDL would've watched the female-only cast for 47-episodes, if they didn't have cute boys fawning over their every move. That is how shallow this drama really is.

A very old hit J-drama Oshin did not feature a single guy (& who Oshin ended up with wasn't really a good husband, so he didn't have much screentime, even though she remained married to him till his death) & Oshin became a successful franchise owner showing Japanese business & cultural evolution after WW1.

All that ATC does is show that Chinese dramas don't know how to write women look good, without making men look bad.

Dropping this drama.

I am already catching Tombitis from watching=the first eight episodes. LOL