ponnu

thank you :)

What has the drama having 2 MALE LEADS have anything to do with having fewer important female characters? Even if it was a love story b/w a man and a woman and there still was not enough female characters in a 50episode drama I would have said the same...

Male character or female character doesn't matter, if I find that a character lacks something then I will say it... It's not solely reserved for female characters... There are plenty of dramas that I dropped due to irritating male leads... Lwj is a male character and I told my disappoint towards his character as well... Jgy and wy are male characters and I said what I like and dislike about them as well...
I have watched 50 episodes of this drama and I have made it pretty clear in my review that my review is solely based on the drama and I haven't read anything related to the books and I might to have enjoyed it the way fans of the book did... I made those points perfectly clean at the start of the review...I also made it extremely clear that even though I watched the entire drama and I liked the entire story, I didn't feel any emotional connection towards any character... There were a lot of scenes were moving the story was given more importance than to absorb what just happened... The best examples is the death of Yulin... Even before I could absorb the fact that Yulin died, wwx already fell of the cliff... There were a lot of scenes like this which only made me want to see what's happening in the story rather than invest in the characters.... If I didn't wait and obseve each character then the drama didn't made me feel interested in doing so...

i watched the drama simply because it had such a high rating and i had zero knowledge of wuxia to have a pre-set conviction or prejudice towards anything in this drama... also if i had any sort of problem with BL content i would simply dont watch it... if i am not interested in a certain genre or have a problem watching something that i dont feel right i simply wont watch it...

you seem to have not read the conversation i had with shortcircut.. it was her who came up with wwx being clueless and not me... i said i find him more thoughtless than clueless because of some of the actions...
she said something about 'you like mianmian' from the novel and i simply said mianmian didnt had any scenes with lwj or wwx in the drama that can be interpreted as flirting and IF WANTED some scenes b/w wwx and wq can be seen as flirting rather than any scenes with mianmian... i never said wwx or wq were flirting around...

also just because a show is written by a female doesnt mean she will only show strong female characters... the heirs was written by a female writer and the female lead was crying for more than half of the drama and getting dragged around by both the male leads...

there is one thing that i didn't miss at all and that is yibo's acting... he was so robotic that i gave extra attention to lwj to see some sort of expression on his face... there were scenes where he was simply uttering dialogues and was looking in a different direction than the person he was having a conversation with... i always see people justifying the lack of acting skills of an actor by saying he is playing a cold character who has a problem expressing himself... also most of the times this kind of cold characters are given to people with limited acting skills unless there is a major change in the character afterward... i can give examples of actors that managed to bring emotions even while playing cold emotionless characters but someone said not to bring other drama names into this...

also if i havent watched the entire drama i wouldn't be having so many questions regarding the drama...

i have written plenty of good things about the drama in my review and even gave a 10/10 for the story but it seems like you only saw the things i disliked about the drama... i personally didnt bring up any of the things i didn't like about the drama on this comment session and didnt even intended to have a conversation about it... i only used the comment session to clear my doubt and it was someone else who brough up what i wrote in the review...
it seems like the hardcore fans of this drama cannot handle the fact that someone else don't find this to be flawless and a masterpiece as they do...

i find Yulin to be weak because she has no say or was never shown to have any interest in what's happening in the clan or whatever was going on in the drama apart from showering love towards JC and WWX... she became relevant only when jc and wwx needed her... after JC came into power, she could have shown to be more involved in political aspect of the clan and helping in rebuilding the clan... her mother clearly had a strong position in the clan... she clearly had that in her to play an important position in the clan as she wasnt very meek or shy when she defended wwx in the forest... that scene showed she had potential but wasnt explored...
i am not asking for abundance of female characters but bare minimum... after the flashback there was not even one single important female characters...
you know your defense on lack of female characters can also be used to justify racist or homophobic film makers for not representing people of colors or gay characters in dramas/movies... they can also say quality over quantity and get away with it...

i wasnt underwhelmed with the cinematography.. i dont even remember mentioning cinematography in my review.... in fact i appreciated the technical aspects of the drama... i always appreciate the technical aspects of chinese dramas esp the vfx... its the makeup i had problem with... for instance in the first episode the mo clan get one of their hands possessed and the hand makeup looked like it was copied from a 70s or 80s horror movie... then the over use of foundation on some characters...

as i told in the review even though i liked the overall story and finished watching all the 50 episodes in 2-3 days and didnt feel like it dragged anywhere it still didnt made me emotionally invested in the characters which is the reason why i gave the story a 10/10 but other aspects an average rating... i only fast-forwarded the fight scenes and the once where they play the music... at one point i wanted to know what happened after the flashback so i went and watched an episode after the flashback and thats when i skipped some episodes and watched the present day i went back and watched all the episdoes... i didnt skip a single episode...
i fast-forwarded way more in empress ki ( even skipped some episodes) but i still got emotionally invested in a lot of characters and even felt bad for some of the bad guys... that didn't happen for me with this one...

i do agree that yunli had a great impact on jc and wwx and i loved their relationship but apart from being a loving sister, she didnt had anything else to do... considering there are only 2 major female characters they should have given her more depth... even her love story with jzx looked half-baked...
the show really lacks female characters... it would have made sense if the night hunting thing was solely for men but its not... i cannot remember any other drama with so fewer female characters...

i remember jin clan staying silent when wen clan attacked everyone else and when wwx was arguing in the court with the jin head i thought he will bring it up and question their morality... but literally no one brought that up and the rest of the clan even agreed to put jin clan as the head... technically someone like the lan clan should have been chosen as the head considering they are the clan with least extremism and cleanest image...

there was no peaceful way because wwx fought for the wen siblings too late... i thought the first thing wwx would do after defeating the wen clan would be to make sure the wen siblings are safe... that was kind of out of character of wwx who is very loyal towards people... it took him to see wen qing right in front of his eyes to think about them... wwx, jc and yulin lived at the mercy of the wen siblings for months and wen qing not just gave shelter to them but even helped with the golden core transplantation...
the remaining wen clan were used as slaves by the rest of the clan and wwx could have easily asked for the wen siblings for the jiang clan and kept them in a safe place till everything settles down...
i guess they did that to move forward the plot... wwx not thinking about the wen siblings for so many months was a plot hole...

i think he gave up his core because he loves jiang chang and cannot see him being so lifeless and not because he owned the jiang clan.. jc put himself as bait to save wwx being caught and yulin saving wwx from the sword were purely their love for wwx... none of the 3 thinks about themselves when it comes to saving the other... wwx didnt know jc got his golden core crushed because he tried to save wwx.. if he did then he would have gone through the same guilt and would have lashed out at jc the same way jc lashed out at him after knowing the truth... jc also hid this truth the same way wwx hid the truth about the golden core...
jc from the start never approved of wwx's impulsive decisions and he is someone who always abide by the law... he wasnt kissing up the ass of higher up... he was just thinking about his entire clan as a clan head before blindly following wwx's decisions... whatever decision he makes has a direct effect on the entire clan.. the entire wen clan had to pay the price for what their clan head and his sons did.. same way the entire jiang clan would have to face the consequence if jiang chang openly supported wwx and his decisions...
he clearly had no problem with wwx taking care of the wen clan till wen ning killed his brother in law...
jiang chang as a person is indebted towards the wen siblings but as a clan head he cannot give any sort of help towards wen siblings as he has to take into consideration of his entire clan's feelings...

i guess the reason why jgy could insert guilt inside wwx when he tried to manipulate him and jc at the end was because a lot of wwx's decisions were impulsive and thoughtless... he was highly respected when he used his powers to kill the head of wen clan but one of the major reasons why the rest of the clan leaders started getting irked by him is his attitude... he could have been polite and asked the rest of the clan to forgive the wen siblings... he could have explained it to them on how the wen siblings helped the jiang clan and he can guarantee to keep the wen clan on check since he is so powerful... but instead he took the rebellious turn from the start... he never tried the peaceful way.... he never really thought about the wen siblings till he saw wen qing on the street and that was months after the defeat of the wen clan and jiang clan already rebuilt lotus pier...
he is very smart but not very clever...

i will pick the error one... lol
because they give the exact timeline of wwx studying black magic, staying with the wen clan and other stuffs...

this is one drama where its rating was constant throughout the run and didn't decrease after it finished airing...

wwx being clueless as in with lwj or his overall character... if its his overall character then i think he is more thoughtless than clueless... he does whats right at the moment and dont think of the consequences or after effect of his actions... like he simply left with the wen clan to the barial mountain without thinking about jiang cheng or his importance in the jiang clan...

in the drama i cannot think of any scenes were lwj or wwx had any kind of scenes with mianmian which can be interpreted as flirting or showing interest... they dont even seem to be that close except everyone thinking mianmian is a sensible character... i think some scenes b/w wwx and wen qing could be seen as sort of flirting if we want to... apart from one scene were wwx is said to be a flirt there is no scene were he is shown to be actively flirting...

i guess its because the drama fleshed out the side characters so well, is the reason why i didnt feel the drama was dragging anywhere...

thank you so much :)

13 years since wwx died makes perfect sense considering the flashback happened 16 yrs ago...
i think the makers did a good job by not juggling b/w the past and present because it will confused poeple who are new to wuxia dramas or those who havent read the novel esp since all the characters look and dress the same way even after 16 years... it would have been hard to differentiate b/w the past and present...

i guess since you have read the novels you have a better view of lwj as a character but for me who is watching it for the first time without any prior knowledge about the story, lwj as a character didnt impress me much or rather got overshadowed by other characters... he did showed some kind of emotions after the flashback but it still fell flat to me... even when he is having a conversation it looked like the actor is talking to thin air... i did felt that lwj was more invested the relationship but i couldnt feel any sort of liking or disliking towards his character... may be its because lwj didnt had anything going on for himself... almost all of his actions and change were directly or indirectly connected to wwx whereas wwx as a character had an existence outside of his relationship with lwj... he had a lot going on in his life which didnt had anything to do with lwj... its like lwj felt like the female lead of a male oriented drama who is just there to give emotional support to the male lead and uplift him when he is down... i hope you get what i want to say... in short he didnt feel like one of the main leads out of the 2...

nope... i am not big on reading... i am a movie/drama person...

that also makes sense but i dont remember any scenes b/w sushe and jin zixun were he insults sushe... if sushe simply hated arrogant guys like jin zixun who were born into important families according to sushe lwj was the most arrogant one... he didnt put any curse on him out of hatred...

i think it physically affected sushe as well because he looked very weak in the last scenes and jgy was giving him medicines...
having holes in the body is surely gonna hurt...

the timeline shown in the drama is also quite confusing... wwx was shown to be dead 16 yrs ago but the flashback also started 16 yrs ago... the lan seminar, defeating the wen and all that happened till wwx died might have at least took 2-3 yrs if not more... so they should have shown the entire flashback story as 19-20yrs ago...

that kind of makes sense but why would anyone use a curse that will have the same effect on the one who put the curse esp someone as selfish as sushe? su she put that curse on jgy's cousin 16 yrs ago and he is still suffering from it that means there wasnt even any cure to it...