grapejuice

We see him as a baby at the beginning of ep21 and then I think we've seen him twice since then as an older child ... when JQ returns to Jinling in ep39 and in this last episode with his sister in ep41. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong. He was an infant in a cradle when his mum was selling lotus seeds and now he is a beautiful boy who is part of the business while they are selling lotus roots.

TY for writing all this. My problem with not understanding your first comment is that I can't quite tell what your point of view is. Are you sympathetic to LX and understand her behaviour towards JQ and now, after ep 36 and 37, you think people who were angry with her should now not be angry? Or were you angry and now you feel she's reversed herself by doing a good thing for JQ by burning the evidence?

She definitely had her reasons for being angry and keeping him at a distance. I never had a problem with her approach although I know some people thought she went too far. But by burning the evidence, she has shown loyalty to JQ for doing something that she would have done too. She doesn't side with or ever want to trust an emperor. So, with JQ bravely committing treason by helping the former CP escape she's seeing something she approves of in him and so she starts to warm up a bit and side with him too.

Do I have it right now? I don't want you to feel that you have to spend a lot of time on this it's just that someone honestly wanted to understand what you meant when they couldn't get it. I often read things that I just don't get but don't always spend the time to ask for clarification. It's goodwill on my part but I don't want to push or tax you because of it.

Because ... it's the weeeeekend !!! And our leads are on the same page now, both treating each other wel for good reasons.

Any ideas about why Young Madam and Master Lin were not at the double wedding of their two maids and one right hand man? I looked for them in the crowd and they were no where to be seen.

Maybe there was no time (or shooting schedules didnt allow it) and Nanke is already a free man but are Gangtan and XiaoLian also freed? I know the permission scene was exceptional and the customs of the day wouldn't allow the nobles to be too big a part of the big day ... but I was expecting/hoping for more ... with dowry gifts and a proper send off and indentures if necessary.

And I hope that we don't lose these women too soon. We don't see them as much anymore but the FL needs them and I, personally, will miss them if they move on (even, selfishly, I will still miss them if they go on to better things as well. Shame on me.)

We must stick together at times like this. So, ty for putting me on alert. I wouldn't have been ready without your reminder. :-)

The idea of young men dreaming of growing up to be husbands and fathers ... made me literally LOL. It occurred to me that I would never even have imagined such a thing. We'd have to find ourselves in something like an alternate, maybe scifi universe for that to happen.

I agree that this drama is eliciting frustration because we want to see romantic love for the leads but we might not be getting it and we're seeing a lot of other possibilities we don't normally need to consider in ral life or most other dramas.

Maybe sticking points, that are revealed by that kind of frustration , reveal something about our expectations being out of kilter with reality and it takes a real literary work to show them to us or ... make us really feel them when we thought we already knew.

Prepare ice packs, stat !!! Methinks your prediction is good. Someone once showed me that if you put spoons in the freezer, that helps too. And the ridiculously priced kleenex with the talc powder in it. And heavy concealer.

So many things to prepare alongside the coffee or other beverage (depending on time zone) and popcorn. :-)

Just a quick and innocent question but does MDL have an algorithm that will catch the word rape? Or are we just not using it anymore for some reason I haven't caught up with yet? Cuz it's an unpleasant word but we need something that is more explicit than sexual assault when sexual assault also covers so many lesser crimes with the one umbrella. Pls help me with the brain not registering stuff.

Oh my. Sounds like some seriously high melodrama !!!
Thx for sharing.

Do I dare ask what's up for tomorrow? I thought it would just be about her identity and the preview looks like Madam Lin may perish.

Ok. Got your point. That's more than enough emotion for one episode.

But there's no more than that, right? You haven't seen any other hints or teasers for tomorrow ... pls?

What kind of character growth did he manage that resolution with? People are incredulous that the ML here could do it and he surely has worked hard to pull it off.

Have you seen or read Lost You Forever? This main author wrote the novel and the screenplay for that drama too and there are definite similarities in the scope and detail she masters there as well. There have been many authors, I think, who can write a sprawling historical novel with complex character, pervasive themes, morals and messages in the form of social and political as well as personal commentary. But to be able to do the same thing in screenplay form for a visual medium that also meets the standards of a censor and an audience from across a diverse country and an even more diverse world? ....
What an incredible achievement.

So you guys will have to excuse me if I happen to go off on someone who accuses her of lazy or poor writing, right? She's a genius. No doubt. Just managing the sheer weight of it all must be so difficult and so exhausting.

Wow. This is an amazing comment. It sums this up so incredibly well. I was hoping to read something like this. So I think I will even keep and save it.

Love and marriage are many different things to different people with different needs and goals. Love comes in different flavors. it has many facets, and we see different aspects come out, more or less, in different situations that impose different kinds of constraints, different levels of constraint or maybe none at all.

The people themselves. Their stations in life, their class, gender and the roles they must play whether they like it or not. Identity. Societal roles. Family roles. Age. Career. Some can afford to make their own decisions with many options available. Others will have no options at all and what decisions are open to them.

And that's before you factor in the fact that families and individuals are different with different experiences in different eras that impose different political and legal constraints too. And religion. Oh my god, it's philosophies and dictates shape so many things as well.

Romantic love is a relatively simple thing when you think about the whole picture. And we all know that it really really isn'tso simple either. Mother nature gives us a treat but she is also manipulating us in a thousand ways to make sure that we perpetuate our species.

What a wonderfully, frustratingly complex world we live in.

And what a masterful job the writer has done to depict so much of that complexity through different characters ... as you've laid out for us so clearly.

Thank you !!! :-)

They only looked at it at the time as an aid to help find the guy who took her ... nobody was looking at the quality and then, I guess it went in the box. Quite sentimental of him to keep all those things :-)

Plus, I couldn't tell from his face whether he was impressed or pissed that she had played him and his mum in order to achieve the bargain she wanted to get for his daughters and herself. What's more, if he's pissed, is he pissed at her alone or at all the Lins who helped her namely LX and JQ. I'm not sure but he might wonder why they duped him and his mother instead of just his mother. So they won but a number of relationships may have been hurt in the process. Or not ... we'll wait to see.

It was a drawing she did very quickly to identify the first man who abducted her. She did it in seconds but only half ...and then Scholar Han finished the second half based on what she'd started (but hadn't finished before she was abducted the second time. LoL. If I'm remembering correctly.)

Anyway, now that he has time to really look at it, Jq is seeing that the part LX did was just as good or better than what was painted by the highly educated scholar who had placed 3rd on the national exam you need to pass to become a government official.

But she was supposed to have been born a slave who just got a few lessons from some nuns at a monastery.

Oh my. I wish you were right but have you read a third of the comments here? So many are not willing to watch characters behaving badly by today's standards because they had values from the past ... which kind of necessitates some kind of hybrid in modern dramas about historical times. People aren't willing to watch dramas that don't somehow challenge things that we wouldn't tolerate today. So they have to walk a line, I think.

Some of it is Buddhist. Sorry I just said this elsewhere so I hope I'm not repeating myself over and over to the same poor person. Anyway, cruelty is the antithesis of Buddhist values. Kindness and compassion are basic to a Buddhist ... Regardless of gender or class. So, what looks like modern feminism is also basic humanism. Meaning that many of LX's values can be seen as modern and feminist or they can be seen as historical and Buddhist. Inequities of all kinds are things that she questions and challenges whether it's about women or about slaves. Because the basics of kindness and compassion and the teaching of wisdom should apply and be available to everyone.

Some of the values are just Buddhist and not that modern ... Or they're both.

Oh I don't want to push you to rush. I'm just interested in what you think. Anyway, I hope the busyness is the right kind and your experiences in drama land are good too. Thanks to you as well. :-)

I do recognize your point and your feelings. I understand completely. In fact, I've felt that way about ML's in other dramas. And I worked as an advocate for women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. So, I would really love to hear what you think after you finish the drama. Will you get back to me?

The question of how to address issues like domestic violence is thorny to say the least. You don't want the cycle to continue. It can't. But if there is some real chance to permanently fix a bad situation, you should. Not everyone can just move on. Not everyone can change but what if some can?

I saw a youtube video not long ago. The man who recorded it had been raised in a racist home. His parents were beyond saving and so were most of his siblings but, this guy had a different set of experiences and a willingness/ability to see what he hadn't known and save himself. So he had done this video to share his experience and his learning with other people who had grown up as he did. It was the real deal. But the comment section was overrun with people condemning him for being a racist. And he took it down. And I couldn't stop thinking about that.

Anyway, I'm interested to see what you think by the time you get to ep 41 and 42.