gwennie call

Man, I am loving this show. I know it's all been released, but the subbed version is up to 25, and with every episode I just love it more. And it's not really about the food! I mean, the cooking montages are great, but it's the story, the social interactions, the family relationships that are so interesting - it's such a refreshing change that there's no princes and princesses: we have common people, living their everyday lives , and it's such fun to watch.

I love Xiaomai so much, and her relationship with YuHuai is a fricking jewel , a breath of fresh air - no pining, no endless misunderstandings to break them up, I just can't say enough about it. (don't get put off by the summary - I don't know where they got 'quarrelsome lovers' from)

Thanks! now I know what to watch instead of flailing around aimlessly with the 50 side stories!

I must agree, to be honest. The colours are so bright and the costumes are sooo stylized that after a while it gets tiring. Re the characters, it's not that I have a massive problem with the Jerk Male protagonist, just when it goes on for too long that it gets annoying. And then all the side stories and characters - the Emperor, the Empress, the Consort, her family etc etc. Also, fairly typical toxic mother-in-law. The only thing which kept me going as far as I did, was Yujin's three concubines and their relationship with the General - unlike the usual backstabbing , it looked really cool and fun. But then we get all the side characters and I got bored.

I 've watched quite a few episodes, then I got bored with all the side characters and side stories and skipped over a chunk - and all of a sudden Ye Zhao's pregnant? When did they go from him saying "I hate you" to them actually consummating the marriage? I mean, I went back, and watched a few more, and I'm still not there, and now we've started with the story with the enemy kingdom, and I just want to see Yujin and the General get busy, ffs! Is it when they went to handle the flood relief? Do me a big favour and tell me which episode, PLEASE!

Here's the link to it on novel updates: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-husky-and-his-white-cat-shizun/

Please read the warnings which the translator has kindly put in the table of contents, as pertaining to each chapter which needs warnings. The summary of the series (and, I'm 100% sure, the series itself) is highly selective when it comes to the events of the novel.

Wow, really? That would indicate that they only watched a couple of trailers rather than the whole show - Wei Ying Luo works like a DOG for a lot of the series, only gets her 'promotion' to save MingYu who was being tortured to death, and even then is in continuous danger from the other concubines.
Also, I thought they would like the idea that the Emperor is so easily manipulated that she talks him out of sex not once but twice, and only sleeps with him on her own terms, when she's ready.

I love that you mentioned her revenge, because it fuels her all the way through:

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW

like in the last episode the disgraced Empress realises that Wei Ying Luo set a trap for Prince He, and she goes "It's still about this? It's been 24 years and it's still about your sister?"
The satisfied smile on WYL's face gave me life.
I also love the way it refutes the (generally Western) idea that revenge is wrong and it'll destroy you too in the end - WYL ends up with the man she gradually fell in love with, she's got kids (ie. didn't die in childbirth as she feared) and she's the Empress in all but name, as it was explained to us more than once that 'Imperial Noble Consort' is the same thing without the title.

I also love the way that with the traps WYL sets, it's all a matter of choice for the people who fall into them - they could choose NOT to do crazy/evil shit, but they just keep on doing it, and then she's got them.

I want to watch this - I'm there for any c-drama when two people in love do more than just stand in the same area code with showers of petals falling on them (just let them at least kiss, FFS) - but I'd like to register my formal protest against this English title. Who do I write to (only half-joking)?
Look I put up with Nirvana in Fire (which has nothing to do with the story and makes no grammatical sense), The Romance of Tiger and Rose, Lovely Swords Girl (does she even pick up a sword?) and many others. I put up with MDZS becoming The Untamed because it's relevant to the story and it is a fricking GREAT TITLE, and I wasn't too perturbed when I found out that not only does Chen Qing Ling mean something completely different, it's also really impossible to translate.

But this? We could have had "The moon shines on my heart" / Bright Moon Shines on My Heart? And we got "The Love by Hypnotic", which (a) sounds like a cheap knockoff perfume and (b) makes no grammatical sense in English. Because 'hypnotic' is an adjective, you need 'hypnosis', and then The Love by Hypnosis is not only horribly literal, it is also rapey.

From now on, I'll have to step up my Chinese learning (I am at the very, very beginning) and refer to this as 明月照我心

I tried to finish this, I really did - I like time-travel drama a lot - but wow, did it suddenly shift from a really funny romantic comedy to a really painful "ancient China sucks, and let me show you why and how, in detail!"

NGL, as someone who relies on the English subs, the drama started losing me when there were suddenly no subs on youtube, and when I looked for it on other sites, they were hilarious word salad, making me laugh during scenes when the Male Lead stabs the Female lead three times, I mean, WTF. (in the preceding scene , bandit leader had just told male lead "he is on the other side of the foreskin". TMI, dude).

And then the deaths. I gave up around the time when Junior Shen died with an arrow to the back and two scenes later Our Heroine is having cooking hijinks in the village. Sorry, done.

You put in words exactly what I felt, especially in the beginning, re the " evil exaggerated caricature in the first half", because I really struggled to continue once I realised that the seemingly evil priest was exactly that - an evil priest. We got a whole lot of backstory to justify it, but when we were shown the flashbacks the result was still the same: even as a kid he was bad to the bone, and that sort of character is just dull.

The best part of NiF was that the main villain was not an evil outsider, someone who's 'not one of us' - the main villain was the emperor himself, a classic example of the monstrous father who eats his young, the worst case scenario of "what if we made our good buddy all-powerful and he was crazy?" (I felt so bad when Marquis Yan told Mei Changsu why he wanted to kill the Emperor - how he and Lin Xie worked and sacrificed and killed to make him emperor, and he turned around and destroyed them.)

So yeah, once that was over I was pretty glad.

Everything else was pretty great, even the cinematography and production values, though I feel they maybe skimped on the costumes a little? Ehh? I just didn't like what they were putting Pingjing into - those high collared things were not doing it for me.

I enjoyed it, and any nitpicks I have I'll save for my review!

So, I watched about 5 episodes, sort of? Then I came here to see if who I thought was the female lead (Yu Ran) became any less annoying at any point? And discovered a whole other flavour of trainwreck, lol. So, I think I'm done.
The thing is, visually, this is so effing amazing - cinematography, color grading, sets, etc. And the storyline seemed fairly linear and seemed to make sense - apparently because I watched until it started flailing all over the place! (Also, the trailer is super-misleading, IMO). I might watch a few later episodes to see what happens to Asule (m'boy! so sweet and also badass sometimes!).

I've been looking for a comment about this for so long - ever since I saw the scene without subs, and waited for the subs in the hope they'd somehow fix it.
Just why, seriously. I don't know what's worse, the scene itself or the funny hijinks preceding and following it.
I get that he was testing her, but there were a million ways to test her besides that. All he needed to do was lock the doors on her and say he was off to kill Pei or someone, and see how she couldn't smash her way through. Seriously, WTF.
Like you're saying, it ruined the drama for me - and doesn't she say later that it was her fault? Wow. Just wow.

I know it's three years later but I 100% agree - I don't know if it's a fault of the official youtube uploads of the series (and it may very well be - in one episode an entire scene was missing, and then the subs for it were over the ending scene and the closing credits), but I feel some emotional beats were missed, especially towards the end.
I mean, does Jingyan never apologise for having believed everything the handmaiden told him? Was the big reunion scene between Jingyan (finally knowing who MeiChang Su really is) and Lin Shu just a "here's the pearl I promised you 13 years ago"? I mean, I appreciate the economy of scenes - it doesn't drag - but there were things I wanted that never happened.

LOL! I just watched a five minute youtube clip and I'm done! Although they need to get better at writing subtitles - at some point it sounded like he was accusing her of having an affair with his father, who's now dead (I got that much). Unless that's really what he said, in which case EEK.

But I thought he was in it also, and he entered the 'dream / script world 'when he had the car accident, he just forgot? I read that somewhere (I think in a yt comment - I've watched eps 19-20 without subs and in some places I really didn't get what was going on.

lol, good question! I notice no-one's answered - maybe it hasn't happened yet (and the drama's on episode 45!)!!

Your review was great and very informative! Also, I got that impression watching a five-minute clip on youtube, can't imagine watching 48 (!) episodes with the plot going around in circles.

Yes, my personal rating was a fraction lower than the rating I gave S1. and the reasons are all in the ending:

- first of all, you decide the baby is cured, and you don't check on the kid in 8 years? 8 years??? I mean, I love you Seo Bi, my queen, but no way you almost drowned that kid like you did for Cho Hak-ju, because it's the only way to get the worms out. So now the 8 year old king has zombie worms. Good job, everyone.
- second, I kind of hated the ending with the cool chick with a whip or whatever - was kind of rolling my eyes for that one.
I still loved it, and I desire season 3 to be filmed as soon as possible!

Noooo! He's a bad guy again? Why do they keep giving him these roles? Is it the cheekbones? Oh, I know, he's good at it, but still! I want to see him play, if not the hero (yes the hero!), then the co-lead or something!

Know him mainly from his performance as Xue Yang in The Untamed. I really think he did a great job with the material he was given, and managed to bring to life a character who could easily have become a stereotypical cartoon villain. I felt sympathy for him in the web series, while I didn't in the original book, which is credit to the actor!