mukkanna

In my opinion, I don't think this is true of DZY. I'm not sure if you noticed this, but the amount of time DZY spends looking just a little too long at LMX: slim to none. In contrast, she spends quite a lot of time looking at HY or glancing at him when he's not looking. Sometimes when she's looking at HY she looks a little stunned (so basically, HY is "stunning" to her!). She doesn't spend any time admiring LMX. Looking at him with affection, yes...but not in a "if I had to spend the rest of eternity looking at you I'd be totally fine with that" sort of way.

I suggest you delete this post. She's an actress, if you don't like her that's fine, but it's not nice to insult people who never did anything to you.

Both could be true, maybe? There was high childhood mortality back then.

To be fair though, Han Ye has been committing acts of heads-must-roll treason since childhood and then basically lying to him daily for like 10 years... His suspicion of Han Ye comes pretty late, considering :D

Main leads happily married at the end of the novel.

He doesn't exist in the novel.

Yes, fictional country and fictional dynasty. I read historical dramas are also not looked well upon in Chinese censorship...

DZY both in the drama and novel is someone who operates in two modes:
Default Mode: "I'm in control, I'm not afraid of anything, and I'm going to win!"
Panic Mode: "Did I have a plan before? Whatever, I'll think about it after I do whatever crazy thing I'm about to do!"

Panic Mode DZY seems to be activated when people she cares about are in danger of losing their lives. It's 100% amygdala hijacking and is a 100% realistic thing that happens even to smart people.

This is one of the main differences between Han Ye and Di Ziyuan, who are otherwise both strong, smart, capable people. Di Ziyuan becomes a person with extremely questionable judgment when someone she loves is threatened (the one we saw leaping off the cliff without a second thought, like...what was her plan? She had no plan because she was in fight-or-flight mode). Han Ye, either by nature or by nurture, never seems to get amygdala hijacking probably because he's a very calculating person (using your higher brain tends to override amygdala hijacking). He just becomes a scarily calm but still calculating person--the one we see cutting down the left minister and then later just chilling in jail, sending Luo Mingxi to clean up the rest of the situation, and nonchalantly eating his lunch while covered in blood...

100%. Even the character used for China (中国) means "the middle kingdom" or "the center state."

I think there's guilt, but also uncertainty about how the other person truly feels about them, and I think at some level they believe they don't deserve each other. Specifically, each of them thinks that, deep down inside, the other one hates them. The main barriers are more emotional than political. To be together, they need to completely clear the air.

Han Ye feels guilty that he couldn't do more, and he's been atoning for that his whole life. But he also believes that she blames him (and based on both novel and drama Di Ziyuan's words and actions, she does, in fact, blame him). At the same time, Di Ziyuan feels that in forcing Anning to send the Dowager to her death, she contributed to Anning's death (and obviously the Dowager's death). Since she knows that Han Ye loves his family so much, how can he not blame her for that? Even if he tells her he doesn't blame her and he understands why she had to do what she did, she'll only chalk that up to "Han Ye is so kind to lie to me."

In his heart, Han Ye believes that Luo Mingxi is a more suitable person to be at Di Ziyuan's side: there won't be any emotional baggage because there was never enmity between them. Even though he knows she cares about him, she also never denied hating him. Since that's the case, Han Ye knows he should let her go for her own happiness, but he's too emotionally entangled himself to fully let go.

And for Di Ziyuan, she destroyed Han Ye's family and overturned his life. After all that, could Han Ye ever forgive her? Instead of facing him, she'd prefer to avoid the issue entirely by being the rejector, not the reject. Her behavior just reinforces what Han Ye already believes: that at some level, she blames and hates him, and that nothing he has done or could ever do in the future would change that. Her tendency to go to Luo Mingxi for emotional support also reinforces his belief that Luo Mingxi is a better match for her. So then to help her leave without regrets he tells her lies like "of course I'll be too busy to think of you," which is too close to rejection for her liking, so she doubles down on her rejection of any contact with him in the future whatsoever, which just confirms what he already thinks he knows...

Sadly, this kind of emotional entanglement is so true to life. Maybe they need counseling ;p

Yes, LMX ate all her dark edges :D

They seem to disallow any challenges to authority. In this case, even if the emperor is wrong, no one is allowed to actually rebel. Because DZY in the book was basically a rebel, she likely wouldn't be allowed to have a happy ending. LMX's being the person pushing rebellion and DZY saying "No, Han Ye will be a good emperor later, just let it go" allows DZY to have the option of a happy ending later.

I feel they did better than I expected :) Though to be fair, my range of expectations was from (1) dumpster fire, "adaptation" only in name to (10) faithful novel adaptation. I thought the most likely scenario would be (4): good parts interspersed with things that make no sense at all and make me pull my hair out because the otherwise smart characters suddenly became idiots for no apparent reason due to "filler" content written by people with sub-par intellect. After the first episode I actually lowered my expectation to (2): maybe they at least kept the character settings kind-of-sort-of? I'd still watch it because at least there's eye candy and good acting skills, and I'd still have fun rolling my eyes and poking fun at why the IQ fluctuates so much ;p

So far this seems like 7-8 for me: ML and FL are doing better than I expected, acting-wise; both leads are still smart; they've kept a lot of the iconic events; overall the major emotional lines, character traits, and character relationships are true to the book, with the glaring exception of Luo Mingxi. In retrospect I probably should have seen that coming. Luo Mingxi is China-censorship-fall-guy, the character without whom the whole drama probably wouldn't have passed censorship.

I haven't seen the latest episodes yet... Still have work! People just don't have the decency to get sick on their own time... But my main concern at this point is how they handle certain events without making certain people look suicidal/stupid/emo. We shall see :D

I suspect part of the problem here is that the screenwriters aren't as smart as the characters are supposed to be. They can't think of things a smarter person would do because they're not smart enough...and the things they think are reasonable (because they're not that smart) a smarter viewer will poke all sorts of holes in.

Not sure how smart screenwriters are, but maybe really smart people go into different careers.

The novel writer is at least smarter than the screenwriters...but even that has some plotholes.

No, I mean that ML started acting when he was a child; probably his most famous role as a kid was when he was in Nirvana in Fire as a teenager. So in many ways, the C-drama industry watched him "grow up." I wonder if it's like watching your kid getting it on with an older girl to them?

Don't be mad, it's bad for your health! Just consider the drama an alternate universe with similar but not identical characters and events :) It helps with the cognitive dissonance. Also helps to limit expectations...a lot of emotional distress (both in dramas and reality!) comes from the distance between what you expected and reality.

I suspected some major changes from the trailers and character profiles released:
- Luo Mingxi had a lot more screentime. No way his novel time would fill in all that. And Luo Mingxi never left the capitol in the book till the end, but he's apparently in the Northwest, so there's some major plot changes
- Who is this "Mo Bei" with Anning? They must have eliminated that other couple and Shi Zhengyan and gave her a traitorous backstabbing love interest...
- Mo Shuang does NOT look like a heroic, badass female, so her storyline must be 50%+ changed for the worse. Maybe because she's a "foreigner" and foreigners can't be heroic or badass or likeable in China??
- Linlang knows martial arts what? Her part is already 100x bigger than the book if they bothered to give her martial arts.
- Di Chengen has a male bodyguard? Who has an actual name? Her role is bigger than in the novel...

So after seeing all that I decided I would lower my expectations to:
- Moderately smart FL and ML (they did better than this)
- Anning's probably an idiot (...remains to be seen)
- Di Chengen is gonna be a lot more annoying (yep, but only because she had more scenes)
- Luo Mingxi is going to cause drama between FL and ML, and they're going to have to add some scenes to try to show why he could even remotely compete for FL's affection (yep and yep)
- Mo Shuang is going to be the stereotypical whiny innocent and useless princess (also remains to be seen)

So now I'm having fun seeing if my previous predictions will come true. So far, one big thing I didn't see coming was that Luo Mingxi is as dark as he is. I'm suspecting he'll have a bad ending due to China censorship rules...I can't see them letting anyone who plots rebellion end well, even if the rebellion is for a good reason.

I really need to watch the last few eps, I love to compare and contrast O.O Darn work!

I read it's because ML was a child actor. There were also some papers that censored/blurred out his nipples in a shirtless shot a couple years ago...China can be really astounding sometimes.

This is still only 39 eps though, and was originally planned for 40. I don't doubt there was some whitewashing and censorship happening. I feel like China just shoots their dramas in the foot constantly!

I'm enjoying it thoroughly :) If it's annoying you, try watching something you enjoy more.

I don't think he was frustrated and angry. In fact, I think he very quickly calculated the best course of action, and out of the (bad) options that he had, picked the one that looked best for Wen Shuo. This is why after killing the minister, he said that the only person the minister could drag down to hell was him...he'd already thought about the consequences.

Option 1: Let the left minister blab all the secrets in public. Wen Shuo gets dead, Anle probably gets dead. Han Ye won't get dead because he can prove the left minister was a traitor all along, and anyway his father will protect him.

Option 2: Kill the left minister. Wen Shuo is still kidnapped, but maybe not dead. Anle is still fine. Han Ye can wriggle out of it by proving that the left minister was a traitor all along, but he needs to do it in a way that won't draw the emperor's attention to Wen Shuo. And he doesn't know if the left minister had a fail-safe. After all, the left minister confronted him, and Han Ye doesn't know what evidence he has, or who he may have entrusted it to. Whatever it was that the minister found, the emperor could also find if he investigates. The only people he can trust with Wen Shuo's secret is Di Ziyuan and Luo Mingxi, and he knows Di Ziyuan is giving him the cold shoulder. Additionally, Luo Mingxi is the minister of justice and would be in charge of official investigations; it's an obvious choice. We know Jili showed up at Luo Mingxi's place instead of accompanying the crown prince to chase the minister. For Luo Mingxi to make it there before all the action went down, Jili must have left while Han Ye was still in pursuit... This is probably the only path he sees to save Wen Shuo without risking his being executed afterwards.

This is what I think would make the most sense from where Han Ye was standing. Still haven't managed to watch today's episodes yet though...need a block of 1.5 uninterrupted hours...