Sol1056

yes but how awesome that the emperor was picking up on it, and is already thinking of finding a way to marry them off together!?

I was thinking it referred to the role of scapegoat, but if you think of how goats can get into everything (and will eat anything) with zero remorse, maybe it's in the sense of being stubborn, a little foolish, and being the center of attention? just my guess.

so does TML stand for Third Male Lead or something else?

what is TML? third ML? then who's the (first) ML?

lol that would be a first! normally games want you to take the hardest possible route (and there's nothing "easy" about having to grow your own vegetables, roasting peanuts, or not just making wine but also distilling it!) but nope, this one wants you to take the easy way out and hope by kissing up to some official you'll be rewarded enough to win the game?

yeah, the original (transmigration) story doesn't quite map very well to the idea of an actual quest-and-rewards style of game, but I'll keep rolling with it.

there are many things I do like (even love) about this series, but speaking as a dev, this seems like an utterly unwinnable game. every single time, no, EVERY single time Man'er gets money, the game rearranges things so it's stolen by someone, and iirc only once (with the stolen wine) has she ever recovered any of her losses. like, sure, the reward should be high for a difficult quest, but this isn't difficult, so far it's damn near impossible.

that's actually what lowkey pisses me off with almost every episode, that setting aside Man'er, the ML & SML, the family, the villagers, the bandits, anything funny/heart-warming/peaceful, I still cannot see how this game could ever be won. it's written (so far) to be unwinnable.

My working assumption is the various animal characters in the story are her family & friends in the game, and the daikon/bái luóbo/white radish is her eventual romantic pick. She's the only human character, the rest are all animals, so the fact that there's a single vegetable character stands out to me.

I'm not sure what kind of connotations there are in China for someone being a "white radish", though, so I'm probably missing a cultural in-joke. Same probably goes for the animal characters, since it'd probably help to know the Chinese connotations to associate an animal with the character (ie "crazy like a fox" or "loyal as a dog").

thank you!

Does anyone know the name and/or artist for the opening & closing songs? Or youtube links (if available)?

The impression I've gotten of the screenwriter is someone who's confident and pretty deft with the material -- because the whole reason for going through this madness was laid out in a very compact and understated scene at the beginning: FL's father won't pay for her tuition, and neither will her mother, so if she wants to continue with college studies, it's on her to come up with the money. And since the scene before that made clear that if she goes through the entire game scenario she gets a major bonus, her circumstances mean she has to put up with this or she won't have another year in college.

It's not necessarily a death sentence, but it is in a cultural way. Being exiled means when you die, you'll die a thousand miles from any family, so you end up a hungry or wandering ghost, which is a fate worse than death for much of China's history. And if your family doesn't have the money or means to retrieve your body, your afterlife will be a horrible place.

This is also the reason that a lot of Chinese immigrants to the US, from mid-1800s to early-1900s, would always arrange some way to have their bodies sent back to China to be buried with their family. Only the poorest or those unfortunate enough to have broken w/their families (or been disowned) end up buried in town graveyards, in the days of the wild west. Dying alone in a foreign land pretty much cut you off completely in the afterlife.

it's starting to feel like a red herring. I mean, if that neck-grabbing move is a classic maneuver from Wufeng, doing it is pretty much putting up a neon sign to say HI I AM SPY THANK YOU which is just... I kind of lose fear of an antagonist if they're that obvious. I hope there's another explanation and it's just coincidence (with the result of making YWS even more paranoid? idk), but who knows.

I actually felt like that was one time where GZY was basically admitting that when it comes to seeing layers in a puzzle, that GSJ is pretty much the family's go-to guy.

Yet the story GSJ was believing is really kind of ridiculous, on the face of it: SGQ was losing against Wuji but then Wuji apparently turned her back on SGQ and purposefully stabbed herself in her own back (how? by walking backwards onto a flexible sword designed to slash, not stab?) -- I mean, really, it kind of beggars belief. What would Wuji get out of stabbing herself? Between the two, Wuji's story sounds more plausible, seeing how it doesn't require she also have eyes in the back of her head to get herself stabbed by a super-bendy sword in exactly the right place to badly injure (but not kill!) her.

So GZY was twigging on that, and I don't blame him for being baffled as to why GSJ wasn't seeing the same and ten steps ahead in figuring it out. GZY (from what I've gathered) is only a year or two older than GYZ, maybe just past twenty, while GSJ is at least eight (maybe even ten) years older. GSJ is far more experienced and wily, so for GSJ to just swallow that story does feel like he's suddenly turning a bit stupid.

After all, GSJ's role in the family is to investigate these things with a detached and clinical eye -- and GZY is right to call out that GSJ seems to be failing in that regard. It's not that GZY is better or worse regarding his own bride, it's that GZY *and* the rest of the Gong family rely on GSJ (not GZY) to be the first to find, reveal, and attack at the first sign of suspicion.

GZY's point is basically that GSJ has one job, and at that moment it didn't look like he was doing it.

Actually I'm pretty sure Zeng's already made an appearance, we just didn't see his face (but we did hear his voice). It was in the flashback to GZY getting into the back hill as a child. And given the child-version of Tong Zi not only recognized GZY but also seems to have a long-standing liking for him, my working guess is that Tong Zi ages backwards -- the older he gets, the younger he looks. It's wuxia; stranger things have happened.

that would be an excellent turnaround, but as that would probably be GSJ's area, and if he had that info, he would've pulled it out of his hat already. Frankly, I'm thinking the best resolution is for the Gong family to stop hiding away in their private retreat and join the rest of the (martial) world -- which is why I think GZY's father had such hopes for GZY, b/c GZY isn't afraid of (and to some degree is fascinated by) the outside world (maybe?).

while I'm as on the edge of my seat as (most) everyone else here, am I the only one getting the impression that the Gong family makes swiss cheese look good? I mean, how many wufeng operatives have infiltrated the place?

They're both based on the same trope. I can name a half-dozen Hollywood movies that predate both that consist of "woman in (usually high-powered or high-wage) high-stress job leaves the big city for small town life in the country, has a meet-cute with a (either seemingly unemployed or possibly in the trades) man, and the guy's always popping up whenever the heroine runs into trouble. Pretty sure you can't plagiarize a cliche, but I guess netizens will find reasons to complain regardless.

Ah, yeah. Actually that was who my mind went to, since brides are usually one of the few outsiders who'd enter the family (from what I've gathered). And no, haven't seen her in eps 4 or 5, pretty sure. Although I think the "mei" token was a plant by SGQ to throw off the investigators. She's already demonstrated being quite handy at smuggling other stuff in, so why not her token as well?

Probably not the step-mom, though, since she died when Ziyu was a child -- and it was only recently that the spy resurfaced long enough to send a message about the upcoming bride selection. So it has to be someone who was alive within the past 2-3 years, roughly.

Fingers crossed! because the drama has me hooked, so I am really really wanting this one not to get yanked and leave us all hanging.