How is the FL in this series? Has her acting improved? Does she still pout? 8.3 rating is good so I might give…
She's actually pretty decent in this drama, but your tolerance towards her acting might vary. I suspect alongside her acting improvement they also had a better director, and it really shows.
I wonder if the twin is trapped in the Nuva stone that the protector was trying so hard to get to revive CH. Your…
Yeah I don't think they foreshadowed it. IIRC when they spoke about twins before it was only in relation to the Jin twins, and we didn't find out about the whole Moluo Divine clan all having twins until this very lifetime.
Ok, the whole "twin" thing is probably the first part of this whole drama, I have found to be completely unnecessary…
I suspect the twin is our explanation for how the Heavenly Emperor got his weird dark smoke powers, because that's always been one of the persistent mysteries of the drama so far.
Really funny how Yan Hui made Tian Yao write the most dramatic divorce agreement I've ever heard and then he looked somehow more devastated when she burned it later than when he wrote it
You must be the only one who feels sorry for that lunatic lol.And we're less than halfway through the story. There's…
For all the scenes they added from her POV they compressed her backstory with LMS of all things, which was probably the thing that would've benefitted the most from expansion and had the most to lose from being compressed.
The main problem I've been having with this change (and it might be too early to call this quite yet) from one…
So she gets to grab at him but doesn't actually get to have him suffer a consequence for stabbing her in the cave, wonderful. 10/10 so much better.
Notice all those examples are yes, protective roles, but also support ones which aren't uncommon to be given to women while their male counterpart is assigned the more direct and physically involved protective roles like fighting to defend.
The problem lies in that in the novel those roles were reversed, with Yan Hui getting to be mostly physically involved and direct with her protective role while being emotionally supportive when needed and Tian Yao playing support to Yan Hui by caring for her and teaching her new techniques and eventually getting to be more physically involved.
It was a reversal of classic gender roles to for once have the woman be more powerful than the man and the man plays the more supportive role but no I guess putting them back into traditional gender roles was somehow supposed to be better (?).
The main problem I've been having with this change (and it might be too early to call this quite yet) from one…
The argument isn't that she's been made less important, it's that she's getting less focus by the narrative because its electing to focus on Tian Yao instead. She's still the female lead but the choices of the drama have effectively uprooted her by reassigning her subplots or straight up skipping ahead in some of her arcs (she was sympathetic to the spirits/demons in the novel but due to her lingering allegiance to Chen Xing Mountain she was reluctant to commit to it, the drama makes her 100% sympathetic right off the bat). It's also straight-up defanged her. Novel Yan Hui was absolutely incensed that Tian Yao stabbed her in the heart the first time and left his ass in the underwater cave.
Also, that scene where she protected him from the Shebushi monster? A scene from the novel. It's quite telling that the only scene I can think of so far where she protected him in terms of might was lifted from the novel and basically never pops up again because the power dynamics of the leads have changed.
Tian Yao having simple motives in getting his body back and revenge on Su Ying isn't really the problem since you could boil down any of the characters down to simple motivations. Bai Xiaosheng? Get a xian-spirit couple for whatever Fu Yin wants. Huan Xiaoyan? Revenge for her Phantom sect. (Drama) Yan Hui? To help Tian Yao get his body parts back (and maybe court him on the side). Motives are there to drive the character forward so the plot keeps moving, they don't need to be super complicated.
The thing with Tian Yao's novel characterization is that its not poor, it's just not very dynamic. He's consistent as a character, he has depth, and he does develop, but his arcs move at a glacial pace compared to everyone else and he's not as easy to like as his drama counterpart because he's less of an unambiguously good person.
With regards to the changes to Yan Hui, I said its still early in the drama. Things could change if they manage to rebalance the subplots and character focus but nothing to do but wait and see.
Also the point of the Ling Xiao and Yan Hui/Su Ying and Tian Yao parallel wasn't to be necessarily a romantic one. It was "this person I trusted deeply betrayed and horribly maimed me". Ling Xiao was never a viable love interest for Yan Hui, but also trying to shift this parallel onto Tian Yao is kinda weird because its the emotional impact of someone who was essentially her parental figure that gave her a home letting her down vs. a guy she's known for maybe under a year. Like you step away to think about it and it just ain't it.
So I'm going to write something down which I've been thinking for quite a while, but first I wanted to see how…
The main problem I've been having with this change (and it might be too early to call this quite yet) from one novel-reader to another, is that this expansion? change? of Tian Yao's character has come at the cost of Yan Hui's character.
To contrast Tian Yao's passivity and general enduring attitude, Yan Hui was extremely reactive and took action. Naturally, as this type of character, she drove a lot of the novel plot. It focused on her struggles, her arcs, and her relationships as more immediate subplots while Tian Yao's (much like him) were in the background kind of marking the progression of the novel arcs. So the novel comes off as very Yan Hui-centric, considering she gets the lion's share of the more explosive and visible character arcs while Tian yao sort of simmers along at his own pace.
What this drama has been doing so far is that its been electing to shift the focus away from Yan Hui and focus on Tian Yao instead.
By that I mean a lot of the story's subplots so far (which as I said were mainly Yan Hui-driven in the novel) were essentially nixed or redistributed to Tian Yao. Yan Hui can no longer see ghosts, so rescuing the spirits in Yongzhou is redistributed to Tian Yao when he already has a subplot there in the form of his dragon horns. Yan Hui is now abandoned by her parents as opposed to them just being dead, so she has no hometown and instead Tian Yao takes her to what's effectively his hometown with Dragon Valley. She's no longer one of the top disciples at Chen Xing Mountain, so now her power is tied to Tian Yao and his Heart Protection Scale (to exactly what extent remains to be seen) so she's barely even functioning in her role as HIS protector, which was the whole basic premise of the story, and it strips her of her agency in events like being expelled from Chen Xing Mountain.
They also seen to have gotten rid of something I thought was interesting in the novel, in that the novel put in a lot of work to bring Yan Hui down to a point where she'd personally understand Tian Yao's trauma. Her relationship with Ling Xiao mirrored that of Su Ying and Tian Yao's in that they were both betrayed (or thought to be in Yan Hui's case) and then horribly maimed by the one they cared about. It's partially why a lot of the novel is focused on Yan Hui, because it's essentially catching her up to where Tian Yao is at.
In the drama I'm not QUITE sure what they're doing with this? In that they seem to have redistributed the parallel of Ling Xiao giving Yan Hui a taste of what Tian Yao went through with Su Ying to Drama! Tian Yao occupying that role for Drama! Yan Hui instead with the stab? But then we also have the punishment at Chen Xing Mountain scene and a lack of buildup for how important Ling Xiao is to Yan Hui in the drama so... what the hell is going on?
To conclude, I'm not opposed to Tian yao getting more subplots and generally being more active as a character, esp since it's kinda not fair to Hou Minghao to just have him effectively trail Zhou Ye around until the final fourth of the story. The main problem is the execution. Unless the second half of the drama is super Yan Hui centric, they've really poorly balanced out the character subplots and focus for the drama, and essentially sacrificed the focus on Yan Hui's character in favor of focusing on Tian Yao.
and you know the worst? is that for tianyao yanhui would have given heart scale protection if he asked
Thats deeply ironic because that mirrors an implication in the novel, that Tian Yao might've given Su Ying the scales she wanted of his own volition if she asked when he still loved her.
they said she has 90% left in the drama ? I don't think her state is that bad
Ling Fei in the subtitles said "[Su Ying] already exhausted 90% of [her] powers because of Lu Musheng" so unless they scrambled the translation she should indeed only have about 10% of her power as of episode 16.
Writer, actor, youku all release explanation but the problem is the execution of the scene. It's heartless and…
I said this in one of the discussion chats, ik that the star spell he put on her is protecting her from harm or something (not 100% clear on what it does) but IMAGINE if she died from fucking cracking her skull on the ground after he flew away. Fictional logic doesn't care but danger from hitting your head after you pass out is real.
Haaaahh... if there's one bright side to this it's that the editing for this stab scene was a lot better. It actually felt like he stabbed her suddenly as opposed to teleporting into the position like in ep. 5.
So true. It wasn't the stabbing as he had done so before, it was his expression, his lack of communication and…
"couldn't predict she will fall on the ground" Yeah because people are well known for staying upright after suffering severe wounds like a stab to the heart. /s
"They come flocking to my corner, crying 'freedom Haoxuan, please!' and do I help them? Yes i do :)"
Notice all those examples are yes, protective roles, but also support ones which aren't uncommon to be given to women while their male counterpart is assigned the more direct and physically involved protective roles like fighting to defend.
The problem lies in that in the novel those roles were reversed, with Yan Hui getting to be mostly physically involved and direct with her protective role while being emotionally supportive when needed and Tian Yao playing support to Yan Hui by caring for her and teaching her new techniques and eventually getting to be more physically involved.
It was a reversal of classic gender roles to for once have the woman be more powerful than the man and the man plays the more supportive role but no I guess putting them back into traditional gender roles was somehow supposed to be better (?).
Also, that scene where she protected him from the Shebushi monster? A scene from the novel. It's quite telling that the only scene I can think of so far where she protected him in terms of might was lifted from the novel and basically never pops up again because the power dynamics of the leads have changed.
Tian Yao having simple motives in getting his body back and revenge on Su Ying isn't really the problem since you could boil down any of the characters down to simple motivations. Bai Xiaosheng? Get a xian-spirit couple for whatever Fu Yin wants. Huan Xiaoyan? Revenge for her Phantom sect. (Drama) Yan Hui? To help Tian Yao get his body parts back (and maybe court him on the side). Motives are there to drive the character forward so the plot keeps moving, they don't need to be super complicated.
The thing with Tian Yao's novel characterization is that its not poor, it's just not very dynamic. He's consistent as a character, he has depth, and he does develop, but his arcs move at a glacial pace compared to everyone else and he's not as easy to like as his drama counterpart because he's less of an unambiguously good person.
With regards to the changes to Yan Hui, I said its still early in the drama. Things could change if they manage to rebalance the subplots and character focus but nothing to do but wait and see.
Also the point of the Ling Xiao and Yan Hui/Su Ying and Tian Yao parallel wasn't to be necessarily a romantic one. It was "this person I trusted deeply betrayed and horribly maimed me". Ling Xiao was never a viable love interest for Yan Hui, but also trying to shift this parallel onto Tian Yao is kinda weird because its the emotional impact of someone who was essentially her parental figure that gave her a home letting her down vs. a guy she's known for maybe under a year. Like you step away to think about it and it just ain't it.
To contrast Tian Yao's passivity and general enduring attitude, Yan Hui was extremely reactive and took action. Naturally, as this type of character, she drove a lot of the novel plot. It focused on her struggles, her arcs, and her relationships as more immediate subplots while Tian Yao's (much like him) were in the background kind of marking the progression of the novel arcs. So the novel comes off as very Yan Hui-centric, considering she gets the lion's share of the more explosive and visible character arcs while Tian yao sort of simmers along at his own pace.
What this drama has been doing so far is that its been electing to shift the focus away from Yan Hui and focus on Tian Yao instead.
By that I mean a lot of the story's subplots so far (which as I said were mainly Yan Hui-driven in the novel) were essentially nixed or redistributed to Tian Yao. Yan Hui can no longer see ghosts, so rescuing the spirits in Yongzhou is redistributed to Tian Yao when he already has a subplot there in the form of his dragon horns. Yan Hui is now abandoned by her parents as opposed to them just being dead, so she has no hometown and instead Tian Yao takes her to what's effectively his hometown with Dragon Valley. She's no longer one of the top disciples at Chen Xing Mountain, so now her power is tied to Tian Yao and his Heart Protection Scale (to exactly what extent remains to be seen) so she's barely even functioning in her role as HIS protector, which was the whole basic premise of the story, and it strips her of her agency in events like being expelled from Chen Xing Mountain.
They also seen to have gotten rid of something I thought was interesting in the novel, in that the novel put in a lot of work to bring Yan Hui down to a point where she'd personally understand Tian Yao's trauma. Her relationship with Ling Xiao mirrored that of Su Ying and Tian Yao's in that they were both betrayed (or thought to be in Yan Hui's case) and then horribly maimed by the one they cared about. It's partially why a lot of the novel is focused on Yan Hui, because it's essentially catching her up to where Tian Yao is at.
In the drama I'm not QUITE sure what they're doing with this? In that they seem to have redistributed the parallel of Ling Xiao giving Yan Hui a taste of what Tian Yao went through with Su Ying to Drama! Tian Yao occupying that role for Drama! Yan Hui instead with the stab? But then we also have the punishment at Chen Xing Mountain scene and a lack of buildup for how important Ling Xiao is to Yan Hui in the drama so... what the hell is going on?
To conclude, I'm not opposed to Tian yao getting more subplots and generally being more active as a character, esp since it's kinda not fair to Hou Minghao to just have him effectively trail Zhou Ye around until the final fourth of the story. The main problem is the execution. Unless the second half of the drama is super Yan Hui centric, they've really poorly balanced out the character subplots and focus for the drama, and essentially sacrificed the focus on Yan Hui's character in favor of focusing on Tian Yao.
Yeah because people are well known for staying upright after suffering severe wounds like a stab to the heart. /s