Sol1056

So she ended up as lead in one of the hottest dramas of Q4. I mean, playing second in a drama with semi-known actors versus a playing main alongside a blockbuster-maker like Esther Yu? I'd say she made a really smart choice.

wait, what does zhu xudan have to do with a story she's not in?

I got the impression from the start that 5th sister is completely and utterly spoiled (along with being the youngest and therefore with the highest chance of being immature). When the fake maids come calling, it's 3rd sister who slaps them, scolds them, and is about to throw them out when 5th sister joins in with the shovel. The real escalation isn't from 3rd, it's 100% from 5th, yet no one thinks to pull 5th aside with the admonishment that more fuel on the fire rarely helps, in the long run.

And yet it's okay the ML kicked a ball at a woman's head. Which as viewers we know she didn't deserve, but he wasn't thinking about that when he reacted. Especially when he's presented as such a smart and competent man.

Clearly Netflix is using someone else's subtitles, because there's an entire line in ep2 @ 21:46 that's just skipped. Fortunately an error in subtitles is a violation of the ADA, so hopefully Netflix will hop on that quickly.

This is true, but when you're dealing with an actress who's been in several historical pieces and dubbed herself, it's odd that this time she hasn't.

Did they dub LYX? She sounds completely different, and one of my favorite things about her is her natural voice!

She's a plot device: she does what the plot needs her to do.

(This doesn't mean she can't develop into a full character later, just that characters who switch moods with no discernible reason or warning are getting the plot device treatment.)

So is our evil wheelie guy a) FY's real brother, b) killed FY's real brother, c) has the same amnesia as the FL's sister? I'm assuming b, since we're already doing cruel-to-forgotten-sibling schtick. Seems kinda redundant to do it twice.

I'm catching up, and have gotten to ep22. Someone spoil me on a certain plot point, please.

I'm convinced there's something in her contract that requires she must have at least 3lbs of hair ornaments, a fully-styled wig, and flawless makeup at any given time, for at least 90% of the show's run. So if you see three minutes of her looking anything less than fully gussied up, just remember, this is eating into that 10% of non-done-up time, and there's just not that much of it to use every episode!

(and every time I'd made such a remark, I get a sinking feeling that probably *is* written into her contracts.)

I wonder if they're waiting for her 18th birthday to start filming.

ETA: hold on, there are shots in the gallery of what looks like filming, even if it's early filming. Or are those promo shots?

I know nothing of HTT's romantic history (or absence of it). I was illustrating the point of someone being aware of and sensitive to a colleague being a minor, using David Bowie and Jennifer Connolly of an example of it done right.

But the point remains: no matter how old the character is supposed to be, HTT was a minor at the time of filming, and I'm hoping that was respected.

Any time an antagonist starts into the "I'm doing this because I was abused/bullied/etc" with a long story of a horrible childhood followed by a detailed what, how, where, and when they carried out their plan... I'm all, cool motive, still murder.

And then I skip ahead 10sec at a time until I get to a frame where someone else is talking.

I think the older I get, the more willing I am to look for a reason to forgive than a reason to hate.

Plus I also know "raped" or "almost raped" is an old standby among male directors and producers. In this case, I could see them justifying it to underline her only ally (and her only hope) lies in the floral guy. To an awful lot of men (especially in still heavily-patriarchial societies like PRD), it's just a plot device, sorry if you were offended, etc.

That's made me really skeptical about judging a character by one act vs the rest of their actions/reactions. It's hard to tell this early whether he's a bad character, or just a badly-written one.

That's why I think he'll only ever get free if everyone else in his immediate family dies. I just don't see him as walking away, not without a truly strong push from an external source.

The point where I started to shift my opinion of him has to be the scenes where he rejects the princess (with damn good reason), and then tries to fight his parents about being forced to marry her and losing pretty thoroughly. That scene made it very clear his parents don't see him as a person, but as a pawn with no rights of its own.

I also don't feel like he's asking for pity in the latest episodes. More like he's trying to hold onto his personal dream of being acknowledge on the basis of his own smarts/ability, and not because the right person was bribed or married or kissed up to. From the start, he's been focused on the exam, which says to me he feels a prize has the greatest worth if you earned it. If a high-ranked athlete was told here's a gold medal, no need to compete, that can be soul-killing, and I see the same reaction in him.

But as always, there's a lot more to the story, so who knows, maybe he's been faking all along. Guess we'll have to see!

Oh, he's definitely morally ambiguous, thanks to that one scene. Honestly, he was already acting like a jerk (for his own reasons) but trying to rape her really felt like he'd gone super out of character. I mean, he does that and feels zero guilt, but then turns around and feels guilty when he sees her barely escaping from being killed?

I mean, there's still plenty of story, and maybe that scene will prove to be who he really is. But if he doesn't repeat that, then I'll consider that scene to be gratuitous trauma for the sake of seeing a strong female character get beaten up. (Repeatedly, really.)

He starts with the assumptions that a) no one could be as good as his lost love, b) anyone his parents chose was clearly in cahoots with them, and c) it was fine to wash his hands of all domestic issues. Those kinds of preconceptions made it impossible for him to recognize (let alone consider or even attempt) how an alliance with FL could benefit them both. If that lost love had held off for another year, I think he might've started falling for the FL by the end of the peony fiasco.

It was only starting to come into focus just how thoroughly his parents had trapped him, when he lashed out when the FL suggested a divorce. On first watch, I was like, okay, he really is a complete jerk. But as I kept watching, I realized that instead of asking a question (ie, "What do you think is the best way to solve this?") but instead going right to offering a solution ("Here's what we'll do") is just another version of "I'm deciding for you", in his perspective. She'd unwittingly found his internal hot button and stomped on it hard, and when that happens, few stay rational. You're now dealing in emotions that live so deep in your lizard brain, it wouldn't be wrong to say a person can go a little feral. And he did.

Despite that, he's not blind to how his family is circling around her, and he seems genuinely upset and disgusted when he learns how his parents have stolen from her. But he remains an antagonist, emotionally detached when she goes to the magistrate, I think in part because he's realized his lost love doesn't deserve his love anymore, now she's become capricious and cruel. (Who kills a bunny? What kind of horrorshow does that?) So he's in no-divorce mode, now that his parents want to push him into accepting divorce. He has no freedom to be proactive; he's in absolutely reactive mode.

So it's definitely to his credit that once he realizes her life's on the line, he does let her go. I mean, if we told this story from the SML's POV, it has the trajectory of a life that will end up being lived in quiet desperation. You can see where it started, where fate might've been changed, where that chance was lost, the point of no return -- and with her so-called death, his life also sort of ends. He's forced into a marriage, and this time he's not neutral about the wife, he's outright repulsed. Her machinations and his parents' greed, yet he's the one paying the price. All his hopes are being stripped from him, one by one throughout ep10. You can almost see him dying inside.

The only way he's getting out of this story alive, seems to me, is if that princess falls down the stairs and breaks her neck, his father chokes on a chicken bone, and his mother dies of the poxy. With all of them gone, he'd be able to take the exam, get that small magistrate position, and maybe find a wife who likes him that he also likes back. Fingers crossed there's a great die-off within a few episodes, and he can begin a redemption arc... away from our FL.

I've actually begun to pity the SML. With a little distance, it's not hard to see how his natural instincts and ethical mindset mean he probably would've been just fine doing well in the exams and ending up as some small county magistrate. In which case, having a wife from the merchant class would've been a benefit, since she'd have credibility with a lot of the town, not to mention bringing him a little down to earth and making him seem more approachable.

Spoilers in reply.