They are not siblings and blood related but we called them as childhood friends that meet again after a long time.
Why does that matter? It only matters in your head. You're taking something that is neither here nor there, neutral and you're making it into something bad. So, recognize that it's only in your head and stop throwing your hang ups at other people who don't share them.
1. They aren't truly together until the final episodes. (eps. 28 they start dating)2. There was no breakup, because…
Your 5. sounds like you think the ML truly loves the FL but the FL doesn't truly love the ML because she had a boyfriend during the six years they were apart. What kind of proof is that? He went away and didn't come back so she had a couple of tester boyfriends at college and after but they obviously didn't stick. Because she truly loves the ML and didn't give up on seeing him again even though he seemingly abandoned her. I'm reading a double standard for women in your 5. and wish to shake my finger at you. Bad. Very bad. :-)
the bottom-up POV premise is cool, but the drama gets into a car crash halfway through, wakes up with amnesia,…
The drama gives multiple POV though. It's not just a bottom-up view.
And I think the point of that is to suggest that real, lasting change comes out of grounded experience and gradual shifts in the way that all people think. It doesn't come from any kind of sudden, violent class struggle from only one sector or element in society.
Minds, mores and legal frameworks must change and that doesn't happen through any kind of singular, coercive upheaval.
It's hitting me just now, about half way through my rewatch, that, the Shen tragedy sends LX on a detour in her life but, essentially, she ends up back in the fate that she started with.
It's a very fruitful kind of detour though ... for her and for everyone else in her life.
When we meet LX, she's an intelligent, well-educated, considerate, somewhat passive young woman ... with the kind of distant grace and elegance that would be cultivated in a woman of her class.
We find out that she is betrothed to the Lin family who want the marriage to happen soon even though LX's mother wants to keep her home for a few more years of relative freedom ...
And then she is briefly exposed to a family of slaves which prompts her to ask her father how a person becomes a slave. He gives her the definition of slave and describes what a slave should be to a woman of her standing in life. And she accepts that saying "I understand" when he hasn't really answered her question and she clearly doesn't understand.
But then ... very suddenly, she becomes a slave and learns the real answer to her question.
And then ... she earns her freedom as a person; as a commoner and as a woman who gets those two extra, unmarried adult years with her family ... where she is free to be a mostly independent woman ... free to be herself, free to live her own self-determined, happy life.
Before she gets hauled back into the life she was fated to have in the first place.
Only she's become a very unusual person because of the detour. She knows what it is to live as a slave, a commoner and as a wealthy person and she know, also first-hand, what it is to be a free woman, a free, extremely well educated woman who is also braver, bolder and more outspoken. And everyone around her feels the benefits of this.
She puts her book education into effect along with her real life education in order to directly help and inspire the people in her life and in order to write plays that touch and inspire people in society at large. She becomes someone who can slowly but surely make real change over time.
After those years of real life learning and freedom, she loses that rebellious spark of joy and once again becomes the elegant somewhat distant person she started out to be. It's a persona that's fit for the madam of a large wealth family to wear.
But, even after the detour, she keeps speaking, creating and writing.
Anyway, it makes for some stunningly beautiful symmetry and some equally great storytelling.
i stopped watching after their wedding episode. anyone else feels like FL suddenly had a personality change? they…
She didn't have a reason to be cold or resentful when she was a Lin family maid. She didn't blame them for anything that had happened. Plus she had the survival and earn freedom projects which would have suffered if she felt and showed or behaved in negative ways.
Later, after the marriage, though? Her hard earned freedom is stolen. Her happy life has been ended. She's separated from the people that she loves. And there's no way out. No divorce ... and no suicide ... ever. So, who wouldn't be depressed and angry and cold and resentful?
It's not a personality change. It's a forcefully imposed total life change that she can never escape. After a brief show of anger she slips into iciness and resentment. She tries to maintain the most important thing that had begun to give her life a joyful purpose (writing operas). And then she has to find a way to live with her new situation. To accept what she didn't and would never choose.
The joy is gone. Acceptance and a different kind of happiness have to be established. And this is entirely consistent with her previously established character. She's wild grass remember? She finds a way to adapt.
Acceptance is her only choice and to do that, as the new young madam, she has to emphasize different parts of herself that she hadn't needed to use before. She's reverting in a way, to being more like the young Shen woman she was born to be; cool, calm, considerate, graceful, wise, strong but also a bit more distant as per her new elevated position in life.
For a very short while our FL was free to be bolder; to do as she pleased and really be her more exuberant self. In retrospect she wouldn't have had those years if she were still a Shen marrying a Lin. And lord knows it doesn't last long enough. She's devastated to lose it. But then she's back to the more dutiful fate that would have been hers anyway. Young Madam Shen/Xu/Lin, and all the other women of the day, didn't have choices except to adapt and fit the role they were born to. The need to marry is the main thing that constricts them all.
Anyway, if you watch her personality change, you see that she's only changing in order to accept and fit the life she's allowed to live. And her personality is much the same towards the end as it was to start. Only there was that moment where she experienced a different life and a respite for a couple of years where she was as free as a woman could be.
It's funny actually because at the very beginning her mum says she would liked to have delayed her marriage for a couple of years so she could stay at home and be relatively free ... which, of course, didn't happen .... only it did happen ... but later with her second set of parents.
Anyway, I think you should finish the drama. She becomes the graceful woman she was born to be; different but still spectacular in her own way. And I think you might enjoy that. The story ends well.
Did you put it in a review as well? I enjoyed reading it and think that other people would benefit from it too. You could edit for length a bit. After a few days you get distance and it's easier to see what to keep and what not to. Actually, you undoubtedly know this. But there are hectic and calm days as well as long and short attention spans out there ... even though most of those words are keepers, imho.
If you consider how many episodes and hours they had to work with ... and the number of years that needed to be covered ... isn't it understandable that there are a lot of time skips? The drama would have to be much much longer if those time skips had to be filled in with detail.
I'm so tired of this question. We've answered it a thousand times. And it all depends on how you define romance.…
I agree. I'm just tired of arguing the evidence for it to everyone who doesn't see it and agree with us. Aren't you a bit tired of it too? So many complaints about the FL when she's such a lovely character
How is the romance in this? Forefront or barely existent?
I'm so tired of this question. We've answered it a thousand times. And it all depends on how you define romance. Risk seeing some spoilers and scroll down to find the thousand answers.
Basically, there's a tragedy and this is the story of it's aftermath for the only person who survives it. It's a woman's life story in all of it's aspects. Not revenge. It's about how she survives and tries to live a good life. There's a fated love story in it but it's not her whole story by any means and ... well, it's not the kind of romance that you're used to seeing in every other c-drama.
I just rewatched ep1 again (slowly and carefully this time) and ...
It's a real gut punch isn't it? But, you know, it sets up the whole drama, right down to details and things about LX that people kind of forget after the story gets underway.
This really is a drama about the aftermath of a tragedy; the life of the sole survivor. Even the e1 OST lyrics make it clear that she must absolutely become and live as another person to stay alive and journey towards the day when she can be reunited with her mother and family in the next life. She's being driven by the need to see them again.
In fact, she's been totally wrecked up by what has happened to her. In some ways, she's frozen in that moment, at that age. But she has to live on so that she doesn't betray the sacrifices that her mother, the Shen family, LangXian and the Xu family have all made for her.
So, the audience may forget the priorities that have been burned into her, as the story widens out to involve the other characters ... but JL/LX never does. Maybe we don't fully realize it, but e1 makes her character and her mission pretty clear. She is definitely a different kind of heroine. Uniquely shaped by her upbringing, her early life and this incredible tragedy.
Hi. Been a while since I've written any comments under a series but feeling a bit perplexed I thought I should…
Does it matter @PHenrietta? Nobody can tell what is your cup of tea better than you can. And nobody else can tell if you just aren't in the mood for this right now. Or maybe there's just some little thing about it that's stuck for you that may or may not evaporate in a month or six. If I were you, I'd trust my gut and put it off for awhile to see if you feel differently at a later date. If you trust other people's opinions, you'll just get an earful both ways from those who like it and those who don't.
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And I think the point of that is to suggest that real, lasting change comes out of grounded experience and gradual shifts in the way that all people think. It doesn't come from any kind of sudden, violent class struggle from only one sector or element in society.
Minds, mores and legal frameworks must change and that doesn't happen through any kind of singular, coercive upheaval.
It's a very fruitful kind of detour though ... for her and for everyone else in her life.
When we meet LX, she's an intelligent, well-educated, considerate, somewhat passive young woman ... with the kind of distant grace and elegance that would be cultivated in a woman of her class.
We find out that she is betrothed to the Lin family who want the marriage to happen soon even though LX's mother wants to keep her home for a few more years of relative freedom ...
And then she is briefly exposed to a family of slaves which prompts her to ask her father how a person becomes a slave. He gives her the definition of slave and describes what a slave should be to a woman of her standing in life. And she accepts that saying "I understand" when he hasn't really answered her question and she clearly doesn't understand.
But then ... very suddenly, she becomes a slave and learns the real answer to her question.
And then ... she earns her freedom as a person; as a commoner and as a woman who gets those two extra, unmarried adult years with her family ... where she is free to be a mostly independent woman ... free to be herself, free to live her own self-determined, happy life.
Before she gets hauled back into the life she was fated to have in the first place.
Only she's become a very unusual person because of the detour. She knows what it is to live as a slave, a commoner and as a wealthy person and she know, also first-hand, what it is to be a free woman, a free, extremely well educated woman who is also braver, bolder and more outspoken. And everyone around her feels the benefits of this.
She puts her book education into effect along with her real life education in order to directly help and inspire the people in her life and in order to write plays that touch and inspire people in society at large. She becomes someone who can slowly but surely make real change over time.
After those years of real life learning and freedom, she loses that rebellious spark of joy and once again becomes the elegant somewhat distant person she started out to be. It's a persona that's fit for the madam of a large wealth family to wear.
But, even after the detour, she keeps speaking, creating and writing.
Anyway, it makes for some stunningly beautiful symmetry and some equally great storytelling.
Later, after the marriage, though? Her hard earned freedom is stolen. Her happy life has been ended. She's separated from the people that she loves. And there's no way out. No divorce ... and no suicide ... ever. So, who wouldn't be depressed and angry and cold and resentful?
It's not a personality change. It's a forcefully imposed total life change that she can never escape. After a brief show of anger she slips into iciness and resentment. She tries to maintain the most important thing that had begun to give her life a joyful purpose (writing operas). And then she has to find a way to live with her new situation. To accept what she didn't and would never choose.
The joy is gone. Acceptance and a different kind of happiness have to be established. And this is entirely consistent with her previously established character. She's wild grass remember? She finds a way to adapt.
Acceptance is her only choice and to do that, as the new young madam, she has to emphasize different parts of herself that she hadn't needed to use before. She's reverting in a way, to being more like the young Shen woman she was born to be; cool, calm, considerate, graceful, wise, strong but also a bit more distant as per her new elevated position in life.
For a very short while our FL was free to be bolder; to do as she pleased and really be her more exuberant self. In retrospect she wouldn't have had those years if she were still a Shen marrying a Lin. And lord knows it doesn't last long enough. She's devastated to lose it. But then she's back to the more dutiful fate that would have been hers anyway. Young Madam Shen/Xu/Lin, and all the other women of the day, didn't have choices except to adapt and fit the role they were born to. The need to marry is the main thing that constricts them all.
Anyway, if you watch her personality change, you see that she's only changing in order to accept and fit the life she's allowed to live. And her personality is much the same towards the end as it was to start. Only there was that moment where she experienced a different life and a respite for a couple of years where she was as free as a woman could be.
It's funny actually because at the very beginning her mum says she would liked to have delayed her marriage for a couple of years so she could stay at home and be relatively free ... which, of course, didn't happen .... only it did happen ... but later with her second set of parents.
Anyway, I think you should finish the drama. She becomes the graceful woman she was born to be; different but still spectacular in her own way. And I think you might enjoy that. The story ends well.
Or read some comments. We've been over this territory a thousand times.
Basically, there's a tragedy and this is the story of it's aftermath for the only person who survives it. It's a woman's life story in all of it's aspects. Not revenge. It's about how she survives and tries to live a good life. There's a fated love story in it but it's not her whole story by any means and ... well, it's not the kind of romance that you're used to seeing in every other c-drama.
This really is a drama about the aftermath of a tragedy; the life of the sole survivor. Even the e1 OST lyrics make it clear that she must absolutely become and live as another person to stay alive and journey towards the day when she can be reunited with her mother and family in the next life. She's being driven by the need to see them again.
In fact, she's been totally wrecked up by what has happened to her. In some ways, she's frozen in that moment, at that age. But she has to live on so that she doesn't betray the sacrifices that her mother, the Shen family, LangXian and the Xu family have all made for her.
So, the audience may forget the priorities that have been burned into her, as the story widens out to involve the other characters ... but JL/LX never does. Maybe we don't fully realize it, but e1 makes her character and her mission pretty clear. She is definitely a different kind of heroine. Uniquely shaped by her upbringing, her early life and this incredible tragedy.
It's truly powerful stuff.