gwennie call

on another thread they were saying it's bad contouring, so idk.
I tried to watch a few episodes of Marry Me, and not only is the summary, once again, a mess, but now I've seen it all! At some point they must have realised/thought that the FL looked washed out without lip-colour and they couldn't do reshoots, so guess what they did - I still can't believe it, and I saw it with my own eyes: they tried to put a dark-pinkish filter over her mouth, THAT IS, THE THING THAT MOVES THE MOST IN HER FACE. So every single shot looks like she has lipstick smeared over her teeth.

Yes, I realised that when I was watching Dance of the Phoenix, only for Wang Hao Xuan, who was playing the (vaguely villanous) second male lead, and I was like, his costumes have more tulle and chiffon than I'd expect for a guy in these xianxia dramas, let alone a bad guy!
I guess it's cheaper nowadays because of synthetics, but in the past (even the fantasy past) it would only be for the rich (if at all).
If you want to see amazing hanfu on a guy there's Wen Ke Xing (Simon Gong) in Word of Honor, oh lord. He has like 5 different outfits, each with different layers and they all have weight, and look real.

The only humour is a bit of comic relief at the very beginning. After that it’s pretty much straightforward romance/palace drama/harrowing tragedy.

I did like Touba Yu a lot - but I did think that towards the end he became a stereotypical villain ( and it annoyed me because IRL he wasn’t).

The one thing I found unforgivable was that when those guys drugged everyone and were going to rape and kill Weiyoung, he just waited instead of rescuing her straightaway. I know, he wanted to be her obvious hero, but that was effed up.

Touba Yu? General Chiyan? The other Touba brother? Wasn’t there also one of the Li family who was a total creep? Those guys from Song who tried to spoiler spoiler spoiler?

I saw it as pretty much an equal opportunity assholes drama, just the women hid it better.

I know right! At one point, 80% of the Emperor’s lines were: “LI WEIYOUNG!!!! “

Ok, got to know before I get hooked - though the first episode pretty much did that already - does this have a happy ending? Like, I don't need 5 couples etc, just that it doesn't end like Hamlet (spoiler for Hamlet: "they're dead, Dave. They're all dead.")

I love Dumas! In fact, one of the reasons I loved Nirvana in Fire so much was that it reminded me so much of the Count of Montecristo! I will give it a try

I think so - it's when Chu Wanning dreams of being chained up and there's a weird Mo Ran who makes him an offer and then grabs him and kisses him (also , we know it's not a dream, it's a previous life thing), then Chu Wanning dreams of slapping him and when Mo Ran 2.0 wakes him up, he slaps Mo Ran, lol..
The bit where Taxian Jun pushes CW to his knees is kind of implied in the novel - pretty sure we don't see it, but Taxian Jun says that's what he's gonna do.

I've just found some amazing cosplay/roleplay on twitter (originally on tiktok) - am I the last to see this, one of the scenes which will never (ever ever) make it to Immortality, but now I don't need it to: https://twitter.com/Xianlezu/status/1432384557643354112?s=20

Faraway Wanderers (Priest); I'm reading one called Golden Stage at the moment.

I'm curious - did you ever manage to finish it? I think I watched one or two episodes before dropping it because I couldn't get invested in any characters - also I was watching on youtube and the subs were just making me cry; in between not being able to connect with any character and not understanding what they were saying, I just gave up.
Downthread you mentioned Secret of the 3 kingdoms - is it worth it? I don't need these dramas to be historically accurate, in fact, sometimes I like it if they aren't (real life kind of a bummer when you're talking about historical events!)

Ah. Now that's making me think twice about watching. It's ruined a couple of shows for me - for example in The Dance of the Phoenix it was literally a plot point; though I was only watching for Wang Hao Xuan anyway, so I managed to skip a lot of it.

They won't? That's awesome!

been trying to watch Unique Lady to feed my Gong Jun cravings but it's so, so stupid.
Might rewatch Sleuth of Ming Dynasty - tried to watch something else with Darren Chen in it, but after hearing his actual voice in Sleuth, it's really hard to get used to a voice actor doing the dubbing.

Thanks! I thought it might not be literal but I wanted to make sure!
Especially as in some cases the subs contradict each other!
Not in this case, but in ZZS line in Ep 1: in one he says ‘I’ve been a beggar for three years and I’m better than the emperor!” And in another verson the sub says : “If Someone was a beggar for three years they wouldn’t even know the emperor changed!”
That’s not the same thing at all!

So true! I just wanted to make sure it was a general Chinese idiom , and not something specific to Word of Honor /Tiānyá kè

yess! thank you so much, that helps me a LOT! So, the subs usually say God or heaven, but the actual character is 佛 fo, meaning Buddha. So it's derived from Buddhist texts or is Buddha just used as shorthand for 'going to heaven'?

Yeah! I didn't want to get Xue Yang, because of, you know, the crazy - but SONG LAN? Probably because I didn't wanna give my kidney

DAMMIT I got Song Lan. That's not gonna play well with my userpic.