mukkanna

If it follows the novel, the romantic interest should be Bai Hehuai. However, Zhou Munan's works are primarily targeted towards the male audience, so the romance takes a backseat (similar to The Blood of Youth, where ML had a romantic partner but that relationship took like 30 minutes of screen time).

All this MDL drama seems silly. Can't we all just watch if we enjoy and drop if we don't? All these Chinese actors and actresses seem to have haters. There are some actors and actresses who aren't that good, to be sure, but often they can still find roles they shine at, if only because their acting style fits the role. I don't understand why people want to judge the actor themselves and not whether they did a good job in a particular role. For example, I'm in the middle of watching Coroner's Diary currently, and I find that (so far) I'm not a fan of ML's acting there, as I think he's too expressive for the character--but I think he did well in TBOY, which was filmed before Coroner's Diary, because that character is an expressive and somewhat naive person. Still, I'm not making a final judgment yet because it's my own preconceptions about what a "prince" and "general" should act like, and there may well be some story developments later on that will shed some light on why he doesn't have the decorum and gravity I normally expect in these roles. He does seem to be sort of a rebellious child with a poor relationship with the Emperor, and that may explain it.

It's really a pet peeve for me when I see people criticizing actors and actresses for accurately playing the completely boring and stone-faced character/socially awkward character with poor eye contact/character pretending (badly) to be someone or something they're not/overly dramatic character they were assigned. Dramas and novels everywhere are full of these tropes.

The colors seem to be fine watching on Youku's Youtube channel on my computer. Maybe your screen settings?

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.