missnymeria

I really hope that Xu Feng knows he's marrying Jin Mi and is ok with it then (as in he has already forgiven her in his heart). If he goes through the ceremony believing it's Sui He, I don't know how they can recover from such a blunder.

I think Wuji is possibly my favorite C-Drama hero of all time. I just loved how smart, ruthless, powerful and devoted he was. Plus Fuyao has one of the best scripted romance I've ever seen in a drama. There's none of the "well they're the OTP so you'd better believe in it people" superficial foolishness going on. The writers really build up everything so well that you can't help but be bowled over by the intensity of their romance. You really understand how Wuji goes from being fascinated by Fuyao, to being willing to give up his position and then to being ready to sacrifice his life for her. And all the while he was being hounded by his Master to kill her because she would supposedly bring about the end of the world. But he always believed in her and never ever let her down.

Whereas in many dramas (and Ashes has now unfortunately become one of them) it's just Boy sees Girl, Boy likes Girl. BOOM. OTP alert, people. Ship it like there's no tomorrow and don't ask too many questions when things start getting questionable!

And yeah, lol at Su Su's eyes compared to Ashes. But in a way it made it easier for TMOPB to have a successful romance. Ashes was doomed from the moment Jin Mi stabbed Xu Feng imo. I firmly believe it was a writing mistake in the original novel and didn't fit the character of Jin Mi as it was previously written. And you just can't come back from such a huge mistake.

But then they managed to make it even worse by making Xu Feng himself unworthy of JM.

No hope anywhere.

It had started out so well though. That's what's truly hard to digest.

I didn't really mind the time spent on the princess at first because to me it seemed necessary to set up Xu Feng's future Demon Realm arc properly but there's really no need to spend so much time on her now.

On the other hand, watching her is less aggravating than watching Xu Feng being an entitled a**hole so I guess I'd rather have that than the non-stop killing of Xu Feng's character the writers forced on us.

You're right, by the time Jin Mi sacrifices herself for him, he will not deserve her. And it does indeed seem that we'll jump straight from her being wronged and abused to her accepting him 5000 years later. There's simply no time to properly start a redemption arc before her death. It's going to be "oops, my bad" when she dies and then Xu Feng moping until he finds her again. I'm not even sure they'll touch on his atrocious behavior from the Demon Realm like what happened in the book.

Does he really actually confesses his love to Sui He? Or does he just express thankfulness for what he thinks she has done for him?

What?!? He uses Jin Mi's petal to create a gift for SH? That might be the worst and most unforgivable thing he has done. I'm done with him and his unending stupidity.

Thank you! That makes sense. They're young for gods but much older and experienced than Jin Mi then.

"So What" indeed :)

Well said. I agree with everything you say about Xu Feng. Like we mentioned before, the only way to save this mess is if it's revealed that he only pretended not to believe all the warnings about SH so that she would bring her guard down until he was ready to make his move.

But that's really not what I'm getting from the show. It seems to be more along the lines of him genuinely feeling thankful and liking her as a person. Trying to repay her "kindness" by giving himself to her. Which is just...no. Yuck. Especially at the very end of the drama when there is still 0 convincing romance established between the leads at this point: Pre-wedding, Jin Mi was under the unfeeling pill's influence. Even if it did crack during their mortal trial, she was never fully free to love. Post wedding, Xu Feng hates the heck out of her and tries to move on. How is that a great romance? The real romance will actually really start when Jin Mi is reborn but by then the drama will be over. So the joke is on us I guess.

I wish I had known the story before investing so much time and care into this drama. I wanted to stay away from spoilers and shot myself in the foot this time. Lesson learned.

But I could somewhat forgive the romance aspect of the drama going off the rails if at least they had made Xu Feng a smart, consistent character.

It makes me want to rewatch dramas such as Fuyao or TMOPB which feature MLs that remain frighteningly smart and competent from start to finish. Xu Feng seems like a clueless emo teen next to Wuji and Ye Hua.

Come to think of it, this is exactly what I will do while waiting for Ashes to be fully subbed. The only difficult thing will be to pick which one to rewatch!

Re-bath scene. It doesn't look as if it is from a dream but I don't know if it will be in the drama or not.

I'm actually glad that scene is a dream because it wouldn't have made sense to have them reconcile right before XF goes off to marry SH.

Only 2 things can save this drama for me now:

1*Things go the way you mention and there's a big confession/reveal on his part.

Or (preferably AND though ^^)

2*He actually manages to forgive Jin Mi before she dies, making her death even more devastating for him and at the same time compensating the viewer for enduring his stupidity of the past episodes.

From what we're seeing now, both are pretty unlikely but you never know...

One thing I'm doing for sure though is not watching any new episode until the drama is over and fully subbed. I'm so frustrated with the direction the story has taken that I need to know I can watch the remaining episodes all in one go and get to the HE whenever I want. It's too aggravating to watch one episode a day when all we get is 40 minutes of side stories, clueless and abusive Xu Feng and moping Jin Mi. At the end of the 40 minutes you're left with nothing but the feeling of having wasted your time and you have to wait 24 or 48h to get your next 40 minutes of torture. Watching everything at once is less frustrating because you know you're going to get a closure for everything without having to wait and wonder how the heck they're going to save this mess.

Chances are slim indeed.

Did you see what happened during the kiss scene? They didn't show us that XF knew he was kissing Jin Mi. He truly seems drunk and out of it and we get 0 reaction from him once JM leaves, just him passing out again. All they had to do was show a us a short clip of him opening his eyes and making some sort of facial expression after JM left. It would have taken all of 2 seconds of screen time. As it is, if we only go by what the drama has shown us, he genuinely thinks he's kissing SH.

At this point Run Yu is the only well-written and consistent character.

I can't even really root for the main OTP anymore. They don't deserve each other.

I didn't mind the time they spent to develop Night to make him a better character until now when Xu Feng's character has become totally unredeemable because of his stupidity.

There was room for both Xu Feng and Run Yu to shine in this drama and they ruined it.

The switch plot sounds awful and totally ruins things, I agree.

What a mess. I remember the screenwriter writing a message of apology re-the lack of screen time for Xu Feng and she said that we could be looking forward to some great interactions between him and Jin M in the future. What a joke.

I still hold the faint hope that things are not as they seem and that Xu Feng will be revealed to have known more things than he let on, like in the novel. But it's getting harder and harder to believe with each episode of wasted opportunity.

That's so funny! And also dispiriting in a way because it kind of confirms that we will have to suffer through many episodes of Xu Feng being completely clueless. It's a total assassination of his character and it is ruining the drama for me.

I wonder what the actor thought when he saw the script for the last third of the drama because Xu Feng's character is the one that has suffered the most from lack of screen time, lack of agency, lack of development and now total lack of brain cells. Must have been tough to play a character that makes 0 sense anymore.

The way things are going, he's going to stay clueless until Jin Mi dies (probably at the very end of the second to last episode or even in the last one if they mess up the pacing of the story). Not encouraging at all.

Let's cross fingers things won't be that hopeless though.

Does anyone know how old Xu Feng and Run Yu are supposed to be? Is it ever mentioned ?

Thanks for the input everyone. At this point I will stop watching the drama until all the episodes are out.

It's going to feel both super rushed ( too few episodes left to tell the story properly) and draggy (taking too long to get to the main emotional plot points) so it's going to be very frustrating to watch only 1 or 2 episodes a day. And not the good kind of frustrating when you think "Where's the next episode?!? Can't wait, it's going to be so bomb!" It's going to be the "What?!? So and So still don't know and this hasn't happened yet?" kind of frustrating.

Xu Feng has every right to feel wronged by Jin Mi but the execution of his revenge lives a bitter after taste since, to me, it murders the character as it was written at the beginning of the drama. It's like what happens at the wedding: I couldn't buy that Jin Mi would do that. The unfeeling pill does not prevent you from feeling regular affection and does not erase all the years she's known Xu Feng. Both characters have a brain that they conveniently put on sleep mode when they go in revenge mode and it cheapens the story.

Does anyone know for sure how the Jin Mi/XuFeng/Sui He triangle is going to play out in the drama? Does Xu Feng genuinely want to move on with Sui He to show his gratitude or is he only doing it to hurt Jin Mi as much as possible?

I read in several comments that he seems to be blindly jumping onto the Sui He admiration train and if that's the case, with so few episodes left, it's going to be so frustrating to watch. Even without Jin Mi in the picture I wouldn't want him to naively focus on romance after having being betrayed in such a way. Boy has a revenge to plot. Why focus on romancing a girl you've never loved before before the big battle is won?

Does anyone has a super hard time accepting the romance in this drama ? I just can't take BZH's bullshit of always choosing the world and his dogdy principles over Little Bone and never trusting her.

It's even harder for me to root for this couple since I've watched this drama right after finishing the excellent Legend of Fu Yao in which the male lead never ever forsake the female lead despite being told time and time again that she will bring about the destruction of the world.

He's never careless about those millions of lives in the balance but he trusts that Heaven would not require the sacrifice of an innocent life to save the world and does his utmost to find a solution. If worst comes to worst he knows he will have to kill her and fully plans on following her in death but he believed in her until the end.

It's the total opposite of BZH. I would have appreciated JoF more if the drama had ended with the scene of Little Bones' death and had not tried to push the romance on us at the very end. It's one of the few dramas in which I wish the ML had not gotten the girl. He did not deserve her and her curse as she was dying was a fitting ending for him.

One thing I did appreciate is that Little Bone was finally fed up with his bullshit and did call him out on it, saying that it was unfair that she was considered as a monster although she had not harmed anyone while the supposedly saintly sect had done countless horrifying things and still thought themselves above anyone else.

So it was a very frustrating drama to watch, with a very frustrating ending. An ending that was not helped by all the obvious forceful editing. Episode 50 should have been spread in two episodes.

That's it exactly. It's because it's so good that we fear it getting ruined. If it was just meh from the beginning, we wouldn't be so invested.

Exactly! We do love our heroes remaining 100% faithful whatever the situation in dramaland.

MKT's reasoning is correct and if it were RL I would also approve if XF tried to move on with someone who loves him.

But when it comes to dramas, I'm pretty unreasonable in my OTPs :)

I think we can pretty much assume he will marry Sui He. The only thing we can hope for is for him not to be intimate with her.

That sounds reassuring ! I'm going into the story pretty much blind and haven't read the book. I feared that the scene was from a new life with maybe no memories of Jan Mi so he married SH and was happy with her (he does look tender in those few short clips).

Revenge totally makes sense and it would tie in nicely with the scene between the Empress and Sui He in which they say not to worry because XF would come to understand the necessity to marry for power.

Thanks! I would rather know in advance because my little heart can't take it ^^ I've been spoiled with previous dramas where the OTP can't even think about someone else. I'm enjoying Ashes so much so far that I hope it can join the ranks of my top 5 favorite dramas but this infidelity thing would push it back to "eye candy but don't get too invested" territory.

No, if I remember correctly, there was a brief scene of him leaning down to kiss a woman dressed in black lying on a bed. It looked like Sui He to me. But I might be mistaken. And it disappeared from the credits (don't remember if it was in the opening song or the end credits). Will need to rewatch the first episodes to be sure.