cassiopeiastars

Yes! Sa Ding Ding's vocals are gorgeous! I love her style of singing. I've never heard of Li Jian, so thanks for sharing the link to his song. This is something I'd definitely add to my own playlist :D

Jane Zhang and Yu Kewei are awesome singers. I don't think I've heard of Terry Lin though, any good recs for a first listen from him?

Edit: Assuming I found the right person, I listened to '單身情歌' and loved it.

I've listened to some Hu Xia but I don't think I have looked into Tan Weiwei. Will start with The Rebel Princess for my first listen of her works :)

I have some contenders and different ideas in mind for K-drama OSTs. Not too sure if I'll move forward with creating a Korean edition though. What are some of your favorite K-drama OST singers?

Jason Zhang is another great singer and his OST for 10 miles is beautiful! One of my first songs of his is "One Chance"

Yes! Sa Dingding sung two beautiful songs for "Ashes of Love," that beautiful ver of 'Unsullied' <3 I don't think I've heard many of her OSTs elsewhere though. I do listen to some Yisa Yu and recently gotten to learn of Hu Xia. I don't think I've heard of Huan Ling though.

oof I guess some things doesn't change much over time. Maybe we just don't hear about them much - depending on where we're located and how much we expose ourselves to different medias.

Thanks for writing such an intriguing read :)

There was one drama I started, just to peek at it, "Song of Youth" with Bai Lu. Where the slave gave up her biological daughter to protect her master's daughter. I thought that was just horrible but saw a comment saying that this does happen often historically. It took me a second to recover and move on

As someone who enjoys period and historical dramas, I never found ancient socio-cultural views hard to watch - even if some things don't sit well with me. Usually, I take things as a learning about history and different cultures when I watch dramas. I think for me, its when a drama is based on a true story/trying to be more serious & less of a "web drama" BUT has a lot of contemporary elements thrown in to appeal to the modern day audience. When that happens, I have a tough time taking certain things seriously.

Thank you so much for sharing. It's saved and I'll definitely watch it! I do love travelling and getting to know celebrities on a different level, so this show seems perfect. It'll be a perfect watch for a chill evening :)

Shi Shi will be in my Taiwanese OST Singers Edition! I didn't even know this was already scheduled if you hadn't comment! I couldn't pick the 3 greatest and a lot of these great OST singers overlapped for some dramas. So, I picked at least one of my favorites or popular dramas associated with the OST.

Woahhh Zhou Shen singing inside a cave sounds like it will be ethereal! I have to go check out that episode now! He's so wonderfully beautiful <3 I think out of all the OST singers, it was hard for me to pick which songs of his to feature/I liked best. They're all really good.

I usually listen to songs a lot more than drama watching. So much that I didn't know a lot of these songs were originally OSTs. It also makes it easy that I'm stuck in C-dramaland. But if I were to fall out of C-dramaland, it'll be hard for me to maintain these. XD

This came at a really good time for me. I've been drained from dramas and have been wanting to venture into more movies. I was already looking at some of these and your comments confirmed my thoughts on moving forward with them :)

Appreciate all your hard efforts to do these articles revisited editorials. A lot of fun articles were created before I joined MDL and this is a great way to revisit those articles. I thought the articles on Halloween costumes were a fun read and it would be cool to get an update of this for 2022 from a future writer. My favorite part of the article was the pumpkin carvings from each country though. They are so pretty and unique to each country!

Thanks so much for the recommendations along with notes for some of them! I already know that I may need to get someone to sit down and watch some of these with me XD

Thank you so much for sharing! <3 I already opened up the link and will most definitely dive into it soon. It doesn't look too long either :)

lol, "noble idiocy" can be a hit or a miss for me. Sometimes it makes it juicier, other times, I can do without it. In the sense of Jiu Ye and Jin Yu, he did pay the price. But I liked that his character pretty much held that sense of "responsibility" to do what's best. Not only did he push Jin Yu away, he also didn't allow himself to be involved in politics. So his consistency in his character made me like still like him.

As for Wu Ji, he is the sole reason why I adore this drama so much! He was quite overbearing at first (trying to pursue her and all) but it was hard not to like how devoted he is. All the good feelings from the show came rushing back as I'm typing this >< I actually did not know that his character is loosely based on an actual general nor have I read the novel. I've been getting back into reading lately and have been reading a bunch of Mo Bao Fei Bao novels. Now, I want to look to see if 'Ballad of the Desert' is translated online as well.

I love this article from the coloring to the suggestions - although, I've only seen one of them: Kingdom. There's so many on this list that I have been wanting to watch for years now, such as "Strangers From Hell" with Siwan and Lee Dongwook <3. The trailer gave me the creeps but got me so intrigued. Then there's "Sweet Home," "Save Me," and "The Devil Judge" where I've almost jumped into so many times. My now jelly bean heart can't take much dark theme stuff anymore - even if I'm enticed by them. I get all drained and so I nibble at it a little by watching clips and then back away each time. 😩 I'll do it one day though, I know I won't let myself miss out! I think movies are a good length for me though, so if you have any dark theme movie recs, do share.

it's not directly relating to the leads but the political aspect of harem drama plays an important part in the show. But I understand your dislike for it as harem dramas are really draining to watch

I usually watch dramas just for the joy of escapism but also enjoy analyzing themes when they're present as well. I love how well you put forth a seemingly simple plot device like cross dressing and expand it into something like this - it makes me appreciate the dramas you mentioned even more. Wonderful article, Shiro :)

Personally, I really enjoyed it - even though it doesn't have the most fleshed out writing. Probably, because I have some bias towards Eddie Peng. There are traits from our three leads that I liked. Despite her struggles, the female lead is quick witted and adapts quickly to her environment. Wuji was overbearing but loves with all his heart and knows where his position stand in court. Jiu Ye doesn't let his weakness slow him down and does things in hopes for a better outcome. There are flaws to the show with some things being plot-driven but the main thing is that if you don't like draggy love triangles or harem drama, you may not like it.