Sol1056

My guess? So far, CY has been pretty consistent in being disinclined to marry. She wavered for a moment with LTG but snapped back to her previous position quickly. Their marriage is a royal edict, but she still had her dad withhold some of the family's assets, and it's pretty clear if that edict disappeared she'd be dancing all the way home.

And then we have that not-insignificant interlude between YSS and MN -- a lot of emphasis from both that YSS has loved many women but mention marriage and he flees. Their talk sounded like two former lovers repeating old hurts, but the place and timing (with CY present, if passed out) feels like the story version of past history closing so a new future can open.

My money's on CY being the one who hot-foots it out of there. He's not really someone you have meet the parents, y'know. No title, no rank, from the enemy country, and spends his days either spying or flirting with women. It'd make sense for his comeuppance to be someone doing to him what he's done to someone else.

which is why I personally think the wisest course is to smuggle YY out of there, along with the cash, and just leave both two paranoid irrational kings to themselves. le sigh.

fingers crossed she stays that way! (non-stupid, I mean)

Good editing (though still rather fast) but I suspect it was also two episodes cut down to like ten minutes? to reduce episode count. Or why not see more editing like that, where we only see the plot-movement scenes and not the extra stuff (preparing, scheming, getting away, etc)?

At the three-quarter point of ep27, I had to pause and make sure I wasn't seeing a preview for an upcoming ep. It moved like a recap! Though I wonder if that's where they decided to make the most cuts to achieve the ep count. If so, other than slowing it down just a bit, it was a savvy place to skip the details and just give us the results and just two quick scenes that show us who put things in motion: Ruyi with the dance & poison, LTG with manipulating the 2nd prince.

But we know Ruyi is a assassin of many faces, like we know LTG can manipulate things to his advantage, just like we know NYZ and his crew are badasses, so we can guess NYZ either carved the badge or one of his guys stole it. So there really wasn't a reason to show the full heist, because that's what would be truly repetitive.

I'm not sure I'd say NYZ is totally the perfect man (although he's close) b/c from the bit about the fake gold piece, he's got a sly sense of humor but that's hiding how he's also deeply damaged by his own experiences.

As for LTG, NYZ has already beat him down (easily) several times. The only thing left to get LTG to grow up was to try was to talk some sense into him. That did require a "do you have any clue how much women do *not* like immature boys? let me count the ways." Started of course with the awesome dunked-in-cold-water part. I replayed that part at least twice.

If that scene didn't exist, or it ended after the dunking, and then the story cut to LTG cooperating, I wouldn't have bought it. Just like the princess clearly wasn't buying LTG's sudden "good mood" act, either. It's too radical a change, too quickly, from someone who's been hella inflexible/obsessed. That scene was the necessary catharsis to make LTG drop the tantrums and start using his head.

But An King's reaction is so overboard that it could be the tipping point for his own council and/or generals. His son was clearly killed by someone who's not from Wu, but he wants Wu to cough up more money & suffer for the crime despite Wu having nothing to do with it? He doesn't have much leg to stand on. More like no leg to stand on!

The country's almost broke (hence the need for Wu money), and now he wants to incite war on two fronts: domestically with the (framed) tribe and externally with the Wu (again). Pushing him to make such crazy charges could be the first step in making him look like a king who absolutely needs to be deposed.

I absolutely want more dramas where ML sticks the obsessive SML's head (or the secondary antagonist's head) in a bucket of ice water. Many dramas could benefit from having a savvy and mature ML (or FL) stick someone's head in a bucket of ice water.

at least CY wasn't *completely* gone, even if no one expressed what I figured was kind of obvious: so if he's in a good mood, he's suddenly nice? and what happens when he's not in a good mood, he's back to being mr cruelty? that's a recipe for walking on eggshells in your relationship, so I'm glad she remains skeptical and ultimately still uninterested.

middle of ep27, is anyone else thinking the scene has the makings of subplot where the staff try to figure out if the Marquis has been replaced with an identical (and much nicer) twin?

Rewatching and I can't recall if the story ever gave an explanation for why the ML's parents were on the island (eps 2-3). It seemed like it was mentioned and never came up again. Did I miss the explanation (or even an implied one), somewhere?

I think part of the reason it felt draggy to me was the amount of setup: introducing multiple characters and their conflicts, laying out the politics, setting up several misunderstandings, FL being born and promptly dying, ML being blamed for it, an interlude of raising an egg, and finally the FL back as a person.

A love story's start is when the leads meet, and for whatever reason, it just felt like slogging through a whole lot of setup before that point. Or maybe that I've developed a preference for stories that start in media res and you find out setup/backstory as the story unrolls.

All that aside, some stories start fast only to settle into a slog, while others start slow then the story breaks into a gallop. It's hard to tell the story's true pacing from only four episodes, and it's really the overall pacing that matters in the end, imo.

I thought that was already resolved, with the reveal that he worked as an official? We're meant to take that as "worked in the government", y/n?

Four episodes in, but it took some effort to get through the first two episodes, which felt strangely slow. I just can't put my finger on why, but they felt draggy to me. Or maybe it's that the director relied on audience excitement for ZLS's latest role to carry them over the slow opening.

Less impressed tho by how the story (so far) has handed several big power-ups to a character who describes himself as (and actually is) lazy, passive, and mostly here for the alcohol. Or maybe I've been lulled into contentment by cdramas with incredibly competent and-aware-of-it MLs and SMLs (LBFAD, MJTY, AJTL, LLTG, etc) -- and going back to "slacker who can't match the FL so the story has to ramp him up really fast with extra bonus points" is a bit of a letdown*.

Overall, though, ZLS is good at physical comedy, and brings life to even the most trite of storylines, so of course she's fine here. It just seems like (so far) the story hasn't brought anything new to the genre.

* A good story can break this trope, frex Alchemy of Souls. That show opens with a ML with zero power, but that never stops him from working his ass off anyway. it takes almost half the show for him to gain powers, but that's not from lack of trying.

If I turn the story around and make the king of wu the real center of the story, then it actually makes sense for him to be paranoid and suspicious. It's probably how most monarchs stayed alive, regardless of country. There's always someone in the wings waiting for your guard to drop long enough to depose you.

What I find particularly interesting in the past few episodes is seeing how Ying has been tested and passed, which story-wise makes sense; it's time for her to prove her mettle after 18 or so episodes of training and practice. And her meeting with the king was another test, this time of her conviction in the system she's doing her part to protect (returning this king to power).

But it also made for a powerful comparison, too: when the king hears about who's running things, he panics, and his panic is very much like Ying's panic when she's trapped in the courtyard between the two locked gates. But where the king wouldn't snap out of it until Ying grabbed him and called his name sharply, Ying got *herself* out of her panic by forcing herself to slow down, take a breath, and think about what An wanted to get out of the situation. You can see they're similar in panicking, but he spirals while she gets herself upright again.

Which is excellent case of show-not-tell in terms of both characterizations, but now I'm worried as to the rest of the episodes. Will the story keep up this pace and keep up this quality? Please don't let it fall apart in the last dozen episodes, please don't let it fall apart in the last dozen episodes...

Q: "How did you know I was here?"
I was totally expecting (or at least hoping) the answer would be, "I just followed the trail of dead bodies."

that entire scene was golden, and showed how/why anyone (starting with but not limited to LTG) should be very, very worried about NYZ in their midst. it's not just that he can fight but that he's got an astute and analytical brain that can take all the little hints and allegations, figure out what they really mean, and hold onto that insight until the right time to use it to his best advantage. truly killer.

I was thinking something more ridiculous for his personality, like "kindergarten teacher" or "makeup artist" ... altho come to think of it, him as a white sparrow is probably the height of ridiculous.

Hey, does anyone know the meaning of the idiom used in ep22, "Let's go put nails in the courtyard"?

that depends! it could be a euphemism in the original, or that the translator (or their AI helper) thought 'eccentric' was broad enough. it's a word with a lot of connotations & nuance, after all -- anything from 'always did his own thing' to 'refused to follow instructions' to 'unpredictable'.

would probably help if we could find someone with a good grasp of mandarin to tell us the actual word she said.

Cripes, LTG just finds more and more ways to be utterly unpleasant. I'm not sure I could really say he's coming unglued, since I suspect he was never glued down all that securely in the first place.