Sol1056

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.

What actually puts it over the top (in terms of the intensity of experiencing) is that YZ pulls absolutely zero punches when it comes to physical scenes.

I've seen plenty of other FLs push a little with their wrist, and then just shake their heads, as if that's all the defense they could put up. It all feels very much like playacting. A little screaming, some wiggling, not a hair out of place.

Just like YZ cries with her entire body, she fights with her entire body, too. It was pretty clear to me whomever was that scene's antagonist (the SML, the servant) had to work damn hard to hold up their end. There's no sense of this being play-acting. I mean, I can't name a YZ fight/hurt scene where she comes out as fresh as she went in. There's hairs out of place, garments torn, a subtle new tension in how she stands. Her willingness to be present so physically and emotionally is what makes her scenes so raw and so much harder to handle.

And it's also why I usually feel like other dramas don't go as hard when it comes to FL abuse, in comparison. On paper, they do (and worse). But in terms of actually doing the scenes, very few FLs go that hard. That makes a lot of their stories have less impact in terms of trauma.

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When FL tried to do demonic magic, and she got black veins. The turtle's explanation was eternals need eternal-specific stuff, and because she's part-stone, she needs to stick with eternal stuff... so that's the medicine she used. And then used on FY. No wonder it's messed him up thoroughly -- if demon magic screws with an eternal, then of course eternal medicine would screw with a demon.

Of course, the possibility is the story just wants him to have amnesia -- and need him to be powered-down for this arc's resolution -- and figured his injury would cause all this, la la la magic clause. But I'm hoping FL figures out -- or at least raises the idea -- his current state wasn't from being harmed but from being cured.

Oh, and about the illusion. Supposedly, the guy's resentment is about his fate, yet he unrolls the story mostly from a fox POV; after all, three-quarters of his audience are playing the role of foxes. I mean, if his resentment was logical, he'd be focused entirely on Kunlun. They alone bear the responsibility for the whole tragedy. That's why I feel the real resentment that needed resolving wasn't his own anger. It was the foxes'.

Kunlun covered-up what happened and forgot about it, but the foxes never did. If there's a loophole anywhere to defeat the Cloud guys, I'm hoping it comes from the fox direction, as they're integral to the whole reason there was a barrier in the first place. But I guess we'll see. If you've read the novel, don't spoil me with answers! Leave me with this faint hope the writing is that good and will continue to be.

Putting in reply b/c the specifics are spoilers, but if you're waffling on whether to watch, I can at least say (as of ep12) the screenwriter/director/author/etc is really paying attention to the details. Though it doesn't look like anything's been made explicit, things make sense if you give it a little thought...

Uh, thanks for the sentiment, but no. I don't need to see every second of suffering to recognize a character's growth.

Never fear, I skip judiciously!

thank you!!

I've reached about halfway through ep6, and I have to ask: at what point do things start turning around? I'm just not in the right headspace to get engaged with a story that has to strip the heroine of everything and everyone. Someone just tell me where to skip ahead to, please?

Watching just the first three episodes and all I could think was that Bai Lu has come such a long, long way in her path as an actress. She started out decent enough, but the last few series (and especially this one) it's clear she's leveled up.

It does several spoilers, which stripped out some of the emotional kick of some scenes, which I personally don't appreciate. (I prefer openings like LBFAD or TPR where the images seem pretty but mostly meaningless until the story got to the point relevant to that image, and you realized what the imagery had been hinting at.) I mean, if nothing else, it really is safest to just have opening credits that are pictures of each characters, some nice music, title page, roll story.

But this is honestly the first time in all the dramas I've watched that a) it almost tops 3 minutes!!, and b) it's basically a repurposed trailer??? That last part boggles me. Like, did they spend so much money on the trailer they figured they'd get their money's worth on the CGI by using it as the opening credits? Cannot process.

Considering the maid's "my lady" is translated as "my wife", I wouldn't be surprised if an accurate translation is actually local gossip -- as in, gossip => go-between or mediator => magistrate. We need a local translator in here to tell us what's really being said!

bad. very bad. it's mango tv, after all.

These are all questions based on ep1's implied exposition. There's Lanling, who are immortals, wear light colors, and are ostensibly the "good" guys. There's Bright Moon, who are demons, wear dark/saturated colors and are ostensibly the "bad" guys. And then there's Cold Spring, who wear dark colors, and apparently dislike both Lanling and Bright Moon. (And then there's generic monsters who go around hunting humans, I guess those are low-level demons?)

So what is Cold Spring -- demons, immortals, something else? I mean, other than jerks.

The more I watch, the more it strikes me it was truly unusual for XXN to be upfront about who actually 'wrote' the poem. I was fully expecting him to take credit, which would've been the cliche. Nice to see at least one story subvert it.

They're two very different shows. JoL tells you from the very start that a) FX doesn't even know why he's here -- vs XQA who's aware of his entry, and b) FX is somehow very important to a lot of people, none of whom trust each other -- vs XQA who was a nobody but has befriended/impressed a lot of people who now consider him important. FX swims with sharks from the beginning, and he makes a lot more enemies than friends, while XQA starts with the catfish and works his way up to the sharks, and makes a lot more friends than enemies.

Of course it's possible some folk might enjoy one more than the other, because they appeal to two different kinds of tastes. Political machinations and a hell of a lot of double meanings cloaked in FX's sharp observations and pointed humor -- or a well-meaning albeit a little goofy XQA who's so disarmingly honest he probably wouldn't know a double meaning if it walked up and punched him in the face. That's playing to two very different audiences, or at the least two very different moods to be in while you're watching.