Morwen

I liked both dramas, but Love on the Turquoise Land had a budget that The Seven Relics of Ill Omen clearly lacked, especially when it comes to cinematography and special effects.
Love on the Turquoise Land also has more mature main characters and characters in general, while the main characters of The Seven Relics of Ill Omen are mostly Teenagers and young adults.
Both deal with really dark themes at times.

Personally, I liked Love on the Turquoise Land better (Dilireba and Chen Xingxu had incredible chemistry), but it's just a matter of personal taste, I guess.

Yes, absolutely agreeing with you here!

It's been a while since I've watched such a well-paced, smartly written drama with such excellent acting and chemistry and so, so much more depth to it than I initially thought.
I rarely give 10 stars but there's really nothing about this drama for me to criticize, it's just brilliant until the very last second, so.
Kudos to the whole team!
(And especially to Cheng Lei and Wang Churan, who are absolutely on fire in this one.)

Finished the drama on the weekend and had a lot of fun with it!
I really loved the mix of genres, even though I understand it might not work for everyone. But it's rare to see a truly unique drama, and this drama was certainly unique with its themes and the way the story was told.

The characters were interesting and I loved the group and relationship dynamics. Apart from Fei Qiming and Lu Xiaoyu I didn't know any of the actors, but they were all great. (I especially liked Shao Zhuang who played Feng Buhai, who I thought was a truly fascinating character.)
What I also really liked was that the characters don't immediately become friends but take their time to get to know and trust each other. The slow development of how they turn into team mates that can blindly rely on each other felt very natural.

The heists/schemes got increasingly more complex and I was surprised by how political it later became.
The ending left me very intrigued and I'd love to see a second season! Especially since the gang really grew on me.

I did a bit of research on the group of creatives behind the drama. Apparently they've worked together for a really long time and their first big project ("Moral Peanuts") from 2010 was heavily inspired by shows like "Hustle" or "Leverage", which is probably why the group dynamics and the execution of some of the characters' schemes in "The Mirage" reminded me a bit of those TV shows.

Absolutely loving this drama, but why are the subtitles so abysmal starting from episode 20? I hope it won't stay that way until the end.

Sounds great, please do that! :)

I don't want to post any links here because I think MDL has a rule against that, plus I don't want to contribute to the problem. iQIYI is still the safest (and only actually legal) option.

I see.
I'm currently doing this on Tumblr, actually, because I love the drama so much.
But there's still the problem that a lot of people watch shows illegally instead of paying money for a subscription (and a 1-month-subscription for iQIYI really isn't that expensive). =/

Interesting! Do you know if they did? (Considering that all episode have be released at once.) The Douban rating at least is quite high, that might help.

And as we all know, XWY never hurt a fly in his life.

Not to mention he explicitly said in the bonus episode that he's only interested in the military parts of governing, while XWJ should handle everything else.
So how exactly is XWJ inferior to him as a ruler?

Thanks for this, now at least this part makes more sense to me.

I always thought it was pretty risky to pin the hopes and survival of an entire nation on the wits and longevity of a single person. It makes much more sense to me that there were more factions/options in case he failed.

Posting here what I already wrote on Tumblr.

The ending left me strangely unsatisfied.
I love how there's some long overdue ass-kicking for most of the last episode; that part made me cheer a lot. But I hated that very last confrontation between Huai'an and the Tiemo king. It was simply not necessary and did do nothing for the narrative. Why not have the king die together with YFS and let his last meeting with XHA be the one at the residence before? I would have been totally content with Huai'an dying in that kitchen in the end. It would have been quiet and lonely and tragic—but so was his character. Not everyone has to go out with a bang.

And the bonus episode was not helpful either. It felt out of character, especially for Xiao Wenjing. Like. What the hell was that. That's not what your storyline was for. Your story arc set you up to rule.
And that bit at Yulong Ridge? Just ... why? You're ruining a perfectly good drama ending is what you're doing.

Anyway. This would have gotten a higher rating from me because this was still a really well-produced drama with excellent acting, but man, my suspension of disbelief has its limits.

Personally, I found this reasoning very questionable.
Humans can adapt to the harshest surroundings and still thrive as a culture, there are many around the world who did and still do and all they usually want is to be left in peace.
Also the whole "children born in winter don't survive" shtick, as if they have no control over when children are born. Why put your women repeatedly through something that has no future AND that could potentially endanger their health and lives (as a pregnancy does), when you can do the math yourself and easily find the best time of the year to stick your naughty parts in them.
That bit made me kind of mad.

I've enjoyed this drama immensely in the last few days. It's dark, it's smart, and though most characters are completely off their hinges in one way or another, there's always enough humanity left in them to make you both care about their struggles and be fascinated by them.

The story unfolds in a way that makes watching it very addicting and most episodes end on a bit of a cliffhanger, too, so this has my absolute top priority right now.

Anyway, excellent drama and excellent acting by everyone involved, couldn't recommend it more.
I'm so glad Cheng Yi's year ends with such a banger of a drama.

Same. 😂
I may have despised her character in Romance on the Farm, but her acting was SO, so good.

This should at least get an 8.6

They have good chemistry and become close pretty quickly.
So you decide.

I suppose there will be a time skip at some point.
Since a bunch of Zhangs are involved in this, some of them will still be alive when Wu Xie starts his adventures many years later.

The cinematography of this drama is so beautiful, I can't stop making screenshots.
https://www.tumblr.com/morweneledhwen/801406835847528448/screenshots-from-love-on-the-turquoise-land-ep?source=share
So many shots that look like an artwork.

Exactly, that's why the manipulation of the ratings makes me so angry. I mean, yeah, MDL is a fan site, but it still has a massive amount of users and a lot of them pay attention to the rating.
Like, one of my favorite dramas ever is Tientsin Mystic (both seasons) from the same director.
The second season in particular got a rating that makes it look like it's not worth watching and that annoys me so much. There's barely anyone I can talk to about this drama because most people just haven't seen it.

No. But looking at the age groups primarily down voting these dramas, I don't think they have much experience with these things.