mukkanna

I started reading the novel the other day. The being slow to anger and abnormally genteel behavior is Su Muyu's original character setting. Other characters comment on it frequently, both in the novel and the drama; you can knock the novel writer/screenwriter, but knocking an actor for acting out the character accurately seems both petty and misguided. You mention you like the animation; I actually dropped the animation because Su Muyu's face was both abnormally blank (like you mention about the live action) and then at times so randomly expressive it seemed out of character for someone who's described by other characters as being "serious to a fault" and "no fun." Reigning it in like Gong Jun has been seems much more cohesive to me.

So far Su Muyu seems to be a 3-dimensional character who has some conflicting settings, and we'll have to see if the script/actor/director are able to meld those settings together into a coherent person. I'll have to watch till the end to decide on a final performance score.

Also, if everyone is the caricature of a "proper" rough and tough assassin that you're describing, there won't be any space for different characters. That would be so boring to watch 20 people with the same personality fighting each other...not sure I'd be able to keep watching that even with the awesome fight scenes.

Dashing Youth is the prequel about when Baili Dongjun and Sikong Changfeng are young. Blood River comes in between and focuses on the Dark River assassin group, mainly Su Muyu and Su Changhe. And Blood of Youth is about the next generation, the kids of the people from Dashing Youth.

Look up conversion disorder.

Not all aphasia is due to stroke.

Her symptoms line up completely with depression/anxiety, which is apparently what the doctors who actually saw her diagnosed. So maybe not worth conjecturing about vaccine injuries and projecting.

To be fair, people don't always look their age, and Asians are infamous for that. I'm also Asian, and when I was home for the summer in college with my sister who's 5 years younger, the mailman asked me if I went to the local high school. When I said no and she said yes, he asked me if I went to the local middle school...I was 23.

Chinese are used to looking at other Chinese. It's very possible they'd clock her as her actual age, or even older due to styling.

I can't believe how stupid and childish FL is. Does she get better later or should I just give up now?

Ah, I thought you liked character analyses, and I like to discuss plots and characters. Since you think I over-analyze things, I'll stop involving you.

The fact that he's privileged doesn't make him smart. It makes him believe, based on previous life experiences, that he can get away with things that would get other people killed. And then he DOES get away with those things, which reinforces that behavior. For example, he took a eunuch hostage and stormed the palace but then the emperor actually listened to what he had to say and everything turned out to his satisfaction; he was willing to die to get a word in, but not only did he not die, the emperor actually wanted to investigate! So then next time, why shouldn't he do similar things? Why not punch princes and tell the emperor to his face that you've lost faith in him? These tactics seem to work! And in the drama, these things actually do continue to work... Now that I think about it, maybe his "bull in a china shop" routine helps him. This emperor is so suspicious that he wants to bury his empress with him as a "just in case." People who are scheming, cunning, and think ahead are probably the exact people he'd behead, given the opportunity.

Short list of hot-headed people: Lu Zheng, Lu Ming, General Yan, all the Ding army soldiers, Gu Yu, and Duke Ding are all people who are depicted as more reckless and hot-headed. I'm not saying any of them are dumb, per se. You can be smart and still choose to do reckless things. They're straightforward people and are people of action. But you can see in multiple instances where they're egging him or each other on to rebel, storm the capitol, jail break, take this opportunity to "cutting motion" Wei Ting Yu, etc etc. And often in those instances Song Mo is the one saying "wait, let's see what happens first." Gu Yu just knows he can get away with anything, so he seems to feels no need to control his impulses. And Duke Ding...my conjecture is that because he has that relationship with the emperor, he feels he is supposed to do what's right when the emperor is wrong (because that's what the emperor tasked him to do back then when he gave him the ruler).

I think Song Mo might actually be younger than Dou Zhao. Maybe bad casting of their younger selves? I agree, her styling is more mature...I wonder if that might be on purpose. She is, after all, a person who either lived or dreamed an extra life, and is essentially a 30s-40s person in a 23-year old's body. I guess if you add the extra years from her current life, that's 30s-40s + 16. Whereas in this case, Song Mo has no memories from his previous life and seems to be maybe 20?

But story-wise she could never choose Ji Yong. Especially in the case where he set up Dou Ming, he couldn't even seem to understand why she was mad about it. They're definitely not on the same wavelength the way she and Song Mo are. On Dou Zhao's part, her feelings for Ji Yong seem to be consistently platonic. I honestly think she never even considered him as a romantic partner.

Perhaps you're not an anti-fan but think about this: saying people at a healthy weight are too skinny and look sick is not as supportive as you seem to think. And for my comparison...what I'm saying is, people don't have to be "ripped" to be stronger than the average. Also this is pretty much the build that's described in the actual novel, so you can't even say he doesn't physically fit the role. I'm neither a fan nor an anti-fan either, but I just don't like seeing people get criticized for looking how they look when there's absolutely nothing wrong with how they look.

And now you say we can't even tell how they actually look because of all the makeup and filters...okay, so much of this story he's been beaten up/wounded/poisoned and a lot of time given pale makeup, so why did you say he looks sick and underfed in the first place?

But I agree, this seems to be a pointless conversation. You have your mind made up and new information or points of view seem to be pointless. I'll stop following this. Have a great day!

So we're talking about an actor in an idol drama, not an actor in a martial arts movie. What are we expecting? But my point is that martial arts practitioners come in every shape and size. You don't have to be a behemoth to be strong. And I think in modern society it's hard to get real fights--those are called assault and battery!

Yes, I understand how BMI works and the all the caveats associated. There's no need to argue about it with me nor educate me about its pros and cons. I could tell you about criteria for diagnosis of cachexia and malnutrition of various kinds, but you seem educated enough that you could look it up if you don't know it already. My professional opinion still stands: he's at a healthy body weight, and has no evidence of malnutrition. There are other actors and actresses that I would agree with you on, but not this one. Since you mentioned it, I looked up his stats, and his BMI is solidly 20. Body morphology, given his build, cannot produce a variation of more than 15lbs to push him into the underweight category.

Also, my build is smaller and less muscular than this actor. Yet I have carried a 35 lb child on my back for hours multiple times on rough terrain. I ran, walked, and climbed up and down rock formations with the child on my back. The child's weight is definitely less well distributed than armor would be. I have no special training and I don't work out other than the several miles I walk every day at work. Just pointing this out since you seem to feel it's impossible for a person of this actor's build to carry that amount of weight. Cheers!

Here I must truly disagree. While I don't know what his "natural build" is, he's not underfed and probably also works out. He has muscles, no sign of muscle wasting nor malnutrition. I'm a person who when I see a normal weight person, I think they're skinny because I live in a country where there's an obesity epidemic. My colleagues and I all joke that when we see a person who's actually in the recommended body weight category, we think they have weight loss issues until we actually do the math and realize they're normal... Both ML and the actor who plays Wu Shan have muscles. I see a lot of naked people, including people who have muscle wasting or malnutrition, in my line of work. Li Yun Rui doesn't look sick, medically speaking.

Real life martial artists...I'm thinking about Bruce Lee, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan, Jet Li...none of them look super huge?

I wanted to add another point--the main problem I see with Ji Yong as a love interest for Dou Zhao is that his temperament is abnormal and he takes everything lightly, including extremely serious topics. Because of this, even until the very end, Dou Zhao was unsure whose side he was really on and how far he would really go in pursuit of his ambition. He can be so practical that he can come off as cruel or uncaring (i.e. "your grandma is going to die anyway, might as well make the most of your time" or "why don't you just totally abandon this person you care about since they will have a bad ending so you don't get dragged down too?"). He's essentially demonstrated to her repeatedly that he will abandon any "lost causes" and that for him, the ends justifies the means...today he cares about her and prioritizes her, but what about tomorrow?

As a person who was discarded by her father, step-mother, sister, and husband in her first life, how can she choose a person like that? And how would she choose him over Song Mo, a man who has shown that he will disregard everything, including his own reputation, life, conscience, and even humanity for the people he cares about? In Dou Zhao's shoes, there's no contest. Song Mo provides her with ironclad emotional security and surety of where she stands, while Ji Yong keeps her guessing where she weighs on the scale. This certainty is demonstrated very well during the bandit attack when she prevents firing a signal to alert Song Mo because she 100% knows he'll take action to protect her regardless of the consequences for him. And he in turn proves that even when he knows it's a trap, he'll step into it willingly to protect her if that's what it takes. Song Mo and Dou Zhao predicted the other person's actions with 100% accuracy in this case. They understand each other very well.

That's very personal. What kind of stuff do you like? Hard to say without knowing what kinds of things you enjoy watching/find interesting.

Respectfully, carrying the drama implies everything else was poorly done and that it wouldn't have succeeded without her. I think the director and screen writer deserve the awards. Meng Ziyi did a good job here but I don't think she carried this drama.

I finally got around to watching this one, and I agree with a lot of your analysis. The only point I really disagree on is the characterization of Song Mo. He's actually very intelligent, as demonstrated many times by his ability to see through other peoples' plots. So how did he turn out the way he did in the first life?

- He was, essentially, raised by the military. Everyone he knows acts swiftly and sometimes even on instinct. Compared to...actually, while typing this I realized that 100% of the other people in Duke Ding's army are all more hot-headed than him. He's always the voice of reason saying "Nah, there's something more to this, let's have patience" while everyone around him is urging him to attack this, raid that. Even his uncle, who is his ultimate hero and role model, is a hothead who does what he thinks is right even when it's a seriously heads-will-roll situation. Whipping Duke Ying for being late with supplies, opening the granary when it's clear that the emperor's intention is to let his son the crown prince play the hero...he even says to there's no time to be waiting for people to make themselves look good, so it's clear that even though he KNOWS, he actively decides to proceed with the head-rolling path anyway. It's even shown that he was about to, in public, straight up refuse the emperors' reward of the double swords and humiliate him for no reason other than that it didn't occur to him to try to save the emperor's face.
- Add this to the fact that he's grown up surrounded by the highest ranks of nobility. His best friend is Gu Yu, a person who goes around beating up officials and assaulting noble sons with impunity. Yes, he got sent to jail (at his demand, probably). But the guards immediately opened his cell door and let him walk around and do whatever he wanted as soon as he opened his mouth. Song Mo later punches both princes and gets away with little more than an "are you crazy?" He's the successor of Jiang Mei Sun, who is, essentially, the emperor's best friend, a person who previously held the same position that Lu Zheng and Lu Ming had when the emperor was young. Even in the first life when he was clearly harboring traitorous thoughts and eventually wiped out both royal heirs, what took him out was the villains--not the emperor. He's used to privilege and a level of impunity and access that most people don't have. He is shown to capitalize on the emperor's feelings in the second life, so he clearly has the ability to manipulate others and use this privilege to his own benefit.
- He is never completely blinded. Even when he was so sure of his beliefs in the first life that he overthrew the entire court, when he received a hint that he was on the wrong side, he didn't just dismiss it. And not only did he investigate it, he went as far as to dispatch soldiers to ambush and kill the villains just in case he really was on the wrong side. He is very consistently shown in both lives as a person who will take new information and act on it without bias. A much more common emotional reaction would have been to say "I can't possibly be wrong about everything, so these are lies!"

But something I think this drama did very well was to show how someone with this background and this character could have different endings. In the first life, my conjecture is that the emperor did, in fact, doubt Jiang Mei Sun's loyalty. It had been 15 years, enough time to change a person. And Jiang Mei Sun had just opened the granary despite knowing that the emperor wanted the credit of providing relief to go to the crown prince, directly going against the emperor's own wishes. In court, villainous officials are slandering him and planting doubt. He is in control of 53,000 men who--as it's shown in both lives--will happily overthrow the emperor for him. The only thing preventing them from doing so is Jiang Mei Sun's loyalty, which is now in question. In poor health, the emperor wants to secure his loyalty for the crown prince, so decides to toss him in jail so the crown prince can "save" him. At this time, Duchess Ding goes around securing support from other nobles and powerful people to try to save Jiang Mei Sun. This is exactly the wrong move at the wrong time and shows he has the support of much of the court. And if the emperor has eyes and ears anywhere near the Ding army, then he'll know that they're willing to march on the capitol at any time to rescue their general. At this point, I think the emperor might feel he has no choice but to take out Jiang Mei Sun and brand him as a traitor. From there, the conclusion is what you see in the first life. Song Mo sees there is no justice or righteousness in this court and wants to clear his name; the only way he can see to do that is to overthrow this emperor who not only perpetrated the crime but painted loyal men as traitors and executed their families and force him to confess to the world what he had done. The only faction that wants to overthrow the emperor is Prince Qing's faction. So the butterfly effect of Dou Zhao, who had memories from the first life and who knew what had happened to Jiang Mei Sun before, telling Song Mo "Gathering support is usually the way to go, but this time it's going to backfire. Why don't you try maligning him in court instead?" was the lynchpin. But it would never have worked if Song Mo wasn't the kind of person who would take any information--even from an apparent enemy--into account. It's still hard, because all the evidence he's seeing with his own two eyes points towards a massive cover-up backed by the emperor himself (which is because the emperor is, in fact, backing a massive cover-up).

As the drama goes on Song Mo becomes more measured and thoughtful. But, he's no longer surrounded by an echo chamber of people more hot-headed and impulsive than himself. I think one of the major things I liked about this drama is that we can trace how the character traits of each person could lead to the outcomes they got in each life, and how seemingly small changes can alter the course of fate. The weird writer guy kept saying she needed to collapse the mountain to change the course of the river, but a river's course can also change one brick at a time.

I wouldn't consider this wuxia. It's more of an imperial court-based drama. The first half has a lot more action than the second half. No magic or fantasy-type elements. Lots of politics and people with personality disorders. I would say the plot is personality-driven, so it's the kind I like. I also think they did a great job weaving in all these characters to the frame of the storyline. Events change, but the core of the character doesn't, and that's why people end up the way they end up...there's only one exception I can think of, and the reason for that one is completely believable. I also like the relationship the main couple has. So far my favorite 2024 drama, though I haven't finished watching my 2024 list yet.

I think that's actually more realistic. People with personality disorders never think they're wrong. They feel completely justified--it's the world that's wrong!