melontea

Thanks for calling this out. I've also noticed that in the eyes of many drama fans, there's ALWAYS something wrong with a female lead. And it literally doesn't matter what kind of personality she has. I'm currently following three historical C-dramas with three completely different types of female leads, yet EVERY single one of them gets called annoying, spoiled, bratty and unlikable on this website.

Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but there's obviously a huge double standard here: You don't see them complaining about male lead personalities nearly as much.
These viewers have such high and narrow standards for female characters but male leads can be written in any way... and don't receive much, if any, criticism. In fact, they're often popular among fans even if they have stereotypical cookie cutter personalities. What's up with that?

Oh my god, it's airing in an hour 😲

Proactive female leads are very common in this genre. It wouldn't be funny if she wasn't shameless 😁

The summary says the FL is a domineering female CEO? That's pretty rare. Usually this sort of role is only played by male actors. I might check this drama out just because of the role reversal.

It just sounds like a case of cultural or generational differences.

Younger people are more open-minded towards revealing clothes than older people. And in some countries, women who wear revealing clothes are automatically seen as promiscuous, indecent and slutty. Perhaps you're from such a country? But I think in China, wearing shorts and miniskirts is really just a clothing style and it has nothing to do with a woman's personality or behaviour.

I found her naive and silly character in the first third of the story endearing instead of annoying. It was like watching a daughter grow up, lol. But if you generally dislike that type of character, you probably won't like her and the drama.

You misunderstood her comment. She said it COULD be garbage and she would still watch it because she likes the actors so much. She didn't say it IS garbage.

I swear I heard her own voice but then again, she didn't say a lot in the new trailer.

Zhao Lusi's voice sounds like her own to me, but she's using a different tone than usual because she's playing a more serious role this time. Did I hear wrong?

Poor FLs in historical web dramas. There are ALWAYS a few watchers who'll call her annoying and childish while they gush over the MLs 😅

There's literally no correlation between wearing short clothing and being too shy in relationships. No offence intended, but how did you come up with that? lmao

I just chalk this up to drama world logic because I don't know a single Chinese person who goes to the hospital or pharmacy due to a cold 🤷 They just drink hot water or tea and keep themselves warm, period. My guess is somewhere someone started this trope and now everybody's using it in their stories.

It depends. Sad ending if you like certain characters, bittersweet/happy for the leads.

Sad ending if you like certain characters, bittersweet/happy for the leads.

Thanks for your insight into Viki's behind-the-scenes. It sounds like the screening process for subbers is rather lax?

Viki subtitles have an incredibly positive reputation among drama fans, but I've noticed more than a few translation mistakes in several dramas. Making some mistakes is normal but sometimes it's obvious a subber didn't even get the basic meaning of a sentence. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to submit corrections for wrong subs.

I'd say it's not romance heavy in the typical sense but at its core, the plot does revolve around the main romance. It's also about family, friendship and politics.

You won't see cheesy "tripping over thin air and accidentally kissing each other" kinds of scenes. It's a more subtle and well-written romance. I enjoyed it a lot and hope you'll like it, too.

It's interesting you interpret SML's feelings for the FL as sincere. The reason I couldn't root for him in this love triangle was because I never got the impression that he loved her as a person.

They barely knew each other and didn't have a lot of interactions throughout the story, but he was obsessed with her right from the beginning on. To me, it seemed like the SML developed an idealized image of the FL because of the portraits of her he's been staring at all his life. Whereas the FL already had a well-established life and routine with her friends and beloved master at Nancheng Mansion, people who have become her second family.

I think it's understandable why she didn't really want to leave it all behind by choosing the SML and becoming an empress even though this was her duty as the daughter of the Cui family.

Some international watchers can understand without subtitles because they have a Chinese-speaking background or learned this language. And I'm guessing they know how to find and watch it on Chinese websites.

I watched it on YouTube. Another user posted the link in the first comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px0Fa8krmII

I watched a little without subs. The cold and haughty female lead seems interesting. Too bad it's just another 3 minute drama :(