luckz

This show was really tedious to finish.
For me it was the last three episodes that were totally absurd, before I guess the plot could still have been saved (or explained).

Another special negative mention goes to the jump from ep20 to 21. Incredibly offensive.

Completely derailed plot, often with no semblance of logic, and hours of major scenes straight up missing / skipped.
So much "case of the week" filler stuff, yet so many major things left unexplained or shoved offscreen.

The possible couples are:
ML & FL (happens, married, etc)
FL & evil monstrous Wu Jun Ting (one-sided)
FL & other evil monstrous SML (one-sided)
ML & random rich girl (one-sided; later FL saves her life and she wishes them well at their wedding)
princess & camellia demon (mutual; sort of happens yet he sort of dies but still stays with her for life)
fox demon & flower demon (presumably one-sided)
wooden cultivator & fox demon (mutual, but doesn't happen; they ultimately go on separate paths)
ML's servant & FL's servant (may or may not be attracted to each other)
ML's cousin & snake lord (mutual on/off; open ended)


as pre-existing couple you also have the emperor and his two harmonious wives. they are endearing to watch, but the same actor left a 10x stronger impression as matchmaker/father style emperor in Love Like The Galaxy.

It's not exactly as poorly produced as say Back From The Brink, but there's a number of peculiar things and the plot just makes less and less sense.
On the Rugal scale, I'd rate it about 70% of a Rugal (where 100% is full-on nonsense).

This is (literal) rape until she (literally) aborts the child and is (literally) willing to die just to end his life too.

Really did not expect something this grisly out of semi-nowhere.

I've sure seen some shows with nonjudgmental "forced kissing until (typically) she likes it", but... (and this deserves an extra spoiler layer below...)

- SA trigger warning -

I thought https://kisskh.at/79467-hu-xin was very flawed but I think it delivers the FL you want.
And any of the shows with the 'female general' tag honestly: https://kisskh.at/search?adv=titles&th=19859&so=popular&or=desc
As well as https://kisskh.at/731967-a-journey-to-love , https://kisskh.at/717585-le-you-yuan

It's like Back From The Brink's adaptation then: adding an unnecessary lusty SML that nobody needed, adding an extra big bad (which in BFTB also kind of kills the "point" of the story quite a bit).

(But Gao Han is really cute here.)

IIRC it's transmigration but not any sort of xianxia, but maybe I'm remembering wrong.

On Netflix you would always have a lacking translation anyway. There's already a lot of harder to comprehend details in this one with the regular English subs.

The novel's name basically describes her as lazy/relaxed FL, so it's not quite like Back From The Brink or any of the many 'female general' shows.

This is probably as far as CN censorship allows it, or even further than I thought it would allow it.
https://kisskh.at/discussions/693413-xian-yu/144800-scripts-posted-by-official-wdbtd-accounts-but-is-not-in-the-drama gives you some more post-ending content, and some extra pictures and even a video of the silly second extra bit.

It's actually like 3 hours, but at least it's not painful to watch.

Y'know, several hours of a second lead tricking a main lead into thinking that they've been the other main lead all along. That stuff. You don't have that here.

Could award some extra points for the PDA quantity.

So he makes the whole drama less appealing for people with SuRongQing character allergy? :c

Since she "lost her cultivation/power" during confinement, she presumably wasn't able to.
And he was shown as fully aware that he was a "scoundrel", and desiring the FL for her being extraordinary and having unbending will.

This is a one-off limited series, or something with a possible S2?

I suspect that this show either had an incredibly low budget for their ambitions, or some parts of the production were very lazy or rushed. From all major dramas I've watched, this is the one with the worst production levels.

There are continuity errors, marks disappearing from shot to shot. Not only is the dubbing quality on the lower end, but there's little care put into lip syncing. Wildly inconsistent audio levels, with the viewer sometimes having to adjust their volume several times per episode. In one scene crew walks around in the background.

That's beyond issues with the plot, censorship, different magic colors by character/group not really making sense, etc.

For what it's worth ML acting does get better and FL ends up doing "the important stuff", unlike in other ML+damsel shows.

The CGI issues and flawed production you mention stay issues til the end.

Love Me, Love My Voice is the best Zhou Ye drama I've watched (recommending since it's not on your list).