sifeng

Loved the article!
My personal recs:
- (High School) My Huckleberry Friends
- (College) Put Your Head on My Shoulder
- (Contemporary) Love is Sweet
- (Thriller/Crime) Kidnapping Game
- (Thriller/Crime)The Bad Kids
- (Wuxia/Political) Nirvana in Fire
- (Wuxia/Political) Joy of Life
- (Wuxia/Political) Young Blood (SOOO GOOD and SOOO UNDERRATED)
- (Wuxia) Legend of the Condor Heroes
- (Wuxia) Bloody Romance (underrated)
- (Xianxia) Love and Redemption
- (Harem) Legend of Zhen Huan
- (Historical) Goodbye My Princess
- (Historical Romcom) The Romance of Tiger and Rose
- (Republican) Tientsin Mystic
- (Republican) The Disguiser

but his acting has gone from 0 to 100. He's so much more lovable and goofy in this drama! Tbh in ALSB and Go Go Squid he's so boring. He just stands there looking good and like... just so boring. Here he actually has a personality! And wow I used to think he was just really handsome but this drama made me realize he has a lot of talent as an actor too!

1. NiF is objectively the pinnacle of the best drama so to compare any drama with that and use it as an excuse that the inferior drama is worse is simply wrong. In addition, NiF's genre and GMP's genre are pretty different so even comparing the two of them doesn't really make sense.
2. You say their actions make no sense but would you try to help someone that emotionally abuses you? It's human nature for us to want to naturally avoid people who slap us, lie to us, betray us, killed our grandfathers etc etc. That doesn't make one selfish, it only makes one human.
3. You are also judging LCY as if he were your average human, which he is most definitely not. This man is revenge-thirsty, power-hungry, and mega messed up. The rules for human morals don't apply to the palace. It's not that he cannot share the world's burdens with XF, it's that he believes in order to secure her safety, he literally cannot. Like, physically cannot. It's not that there is an obstacle of intelligence blocking their communication, it's that LCY WILL NOT communicate his problems at all because he believes that if he does so XF will be in danger. This is made veryyyyy apparent in the show.
4. What is up with people and thinking you have to be bad-ass in order to be strong if you're a female? Frankly that's a little sexist. Strong females exist in people who don't let themselves be bossed around, but they don't necessarily have to boss around others. They don't have to scheme all day long in order to be constituted as strong, they simply have to have their own identity and sense of independence. XF has power right now, and even she is in danger, she cannot see that, so why should she fight for power in the court? She has absolutely no reason to. Her marriage already solidified the political alliance and so at this point her only goal is to not get killed.
5. Perhaps Yanxi has made people believe that in the palace, one HAS to fight for power in order to survive. But look at the ones who do fight, Gao Guifei, Xian Fei, Shun Pin, they all have objectively bad endings. What about Qing Pin? Isn't she at a pretty high rating without having to do anything? Besides, XF's place is very different from Wei Yingluo or Sheng Minglan's. She doesn't HAVE to fight for power. So why should she place her life in danger (the one thing she has to protect) in order to gain something she doesn't need? You may say, she puts her life in danger all the time when she leaves the palace! But she needs freedom. This is a girl who spends her days riding horses along the vast desert. The dark suffocation of the palace makes freedom a necessary goal for her.
6. Now, it's not even selfish for her to go back to Xi Zhou anyways considering that the country that she is trying protect by marrying into the Li Dynasty is literally abolished.
7. I understand that XFG points to [X]iao [F]en[g] but in order for your communication to be more kindly in the future, I will say that most people simply choose to use [X]iao [F]eng or [G]u [J]Ian, it just make more sense that way.
8. Yes, it is certainly very selfish to cry when you realize the sole person you trust in the palace turns out to have betrayed your trust and used you to kill your own grandfather. Certainly very selfish, you should obviously go and help them destroy your entire country! (Sarcasm, if you can't see). Here's the thing, XF is spoiled, because she's a goddamn princess. But as I've said, she's not selfish, she helps her friends and strangers as well. And again, intelligence doesn't only come in the form of plotting and scheming, that strikes very "you can only be smart if you're good at math". And, even more so, a character doesn't need to be smart to be strong or a good person. XF crying and screaming at LCY after regaining her memories is not selfish or stupid. It makes complete sense. If you cannot see why I suppose we don't need to argue anymore.
9. XF has morals, she is kind, she grows to learn selflessness and you can clearly see that when she distances herself from LCY after he begins to literally publicly berate her. Again, I tell you, she's a princess who used to receive the affection of every single person in Xi Zhou. Of course she's going to be mad that he is humiliating her in front of everyone! Wouldn't you be mad if someone that you really liked decided to talk about how stupid you were and how much they disliked you? Yeah, sure she's naive, but she's been sheltered her entire life - of course she's naive.
10. Putting it simply, you simply cannot expect that two people that have backgrounds similar to LCY and XF act like people from another show. To expect XF be as bad-ass as WYL or Zhen Huan is simply incorrect because they come from vastly different households, and have vastly different situations.
11. Lastly, to call a girl selfish because she wants to escape abuse is really cruel. No wonder our society is so messed up today.

BUT, if you liked WYL that much I feel like you should watch Young Blood! The FL there is badass and just all around amazing! I guess you want to watch more high action or scheming things so yeah, GMP, a show that relies on complex characters with flaws, beautiful sets and costumes, and powerful chemistry between actors might not do it for you. I would say Joy of Life is good too but if you want to see another NiF. I guess Young Blood and JoL wouldn't make the cut. Only other one that could compare is Zhen Huan (Empress in the Palace). If you liked Yanxi definitely check out Zhen Huan!

He is very smart and definitely strong, but also definitely not a good person.

Disagree but fine. I guess if you skipped to the end you wouldn't see the character development but it surely is there. Actually, there is character development for the ML in literally just the first episode, but the FL's arc stretches the entire show. But if one wishes to watch a show with two perfect angels as leads with no flaws whatsoever than yes, GMP is probably something you should avoid. But if you want a tale of complexity, betrayal, angst and melodrama, one hundred percent go check it out. IT's also visually stunning so...

Thank god that wasn't in the drama. What is up with cnovels and the romanticization of sexual harassment? That is not okay. Ugh, I really like some cdramas but still, some very borderline sexual harassment stuff happens in so many of them and people just brush them off as cute flirting. No, that's not flirting and you should probably run away if someone does that to you.

I respect your opinion but I have some problems with it:
1. No. It's not a communication problem at all. It's not that he doesn't know how to communicate, it's that he cannot. If he shows his love to her then she's going to be the target for every single one of his enemies, and he has a lot of them.
2. Why would Xiao Feng know what LCY is dealing with? May I remind you that this is ancient China. Females back then did not have power, like at all. They don't participate in politics.
3. You really think that Xiao Feng, a princess who is literally cherished by every single person on the planet, would be able to see the dark side of her grandfather? This is a teenage girl mind you. Also, back in the Xi Dynasty, she literally could do whatever she wanted all the time, so why not in the Li Dynasty? She is spoiled, yes, because you know what characters are supposed to have FLAWS! They aren't supposed to be perfect tools that everyone wants to become! She doesn't know how dangerous court politics are because she doesn't participate in them and because when she does see political happenings in her old country, they are sugar-coated for her. Also, in her eyes LCY probably isn't acting weird at all. He always seemed to like Zhao Sese more than her, and now that it looks like XF has taken Sese's spot as the crown princess, obviously he'd hold some sort of anger towards her. For XF, who sees relationships simply and thinks people act how they want to act, this makes total sense. Here I will repeat: she is spoiled and naive. This makes sense because she's a princess, she's been brought up with everything given to her, she gets whatever she wants. But, does that make her a bad person? No. She helps others, constantly. Her not helping LCY because she thinks he hates her and because she couldn't possibly understand what he's going through doesn't make her a bad person. Sure, it makes her naive, but look at your friends. Do you constantly think that they're hiding a second side from you and every move they make is actually the exact opposite of what they want to do? No! As you can see, XF doesn't hide what she thinks, so it's natural that she doesn't think other people do. Looking beyond XF, the other princesses and even Sese don't understand what LCY is going through because ladies back then weren't allowed to participate in politics! And, given their status as high ladies who are practically guaranteed safety and power (though they are also tools for political alliances), they don't really need to care.
4. Not going to lie, that point about the war and suicide was so incomprehensible to me that I cannot even form an argument. But, if you're saying Xiao Feng running away from her husband who betrayed her (several times), killed her grandfather, killed her good friend, and also played her with her mind all the time makes her selfish... well, fine. How was she supposed to know that Li Chengyin would wage war to get her back? She isn't even sure whether or not he loves (or even likes) her! But her suicide isn't her taking the short path (please don't ever call suicide that), it's that she has realized that she is responsible for this issue (which she partially is, but I would assume her brother understanding that LCY literally emotionally abused his sister played a role too), and is taking responsibility. She's no longer selfish, but selfless. Honestly, she's pretty selfless in general. She marries LCY for political alliance reasons and she doesn't even try to fight for power nor degrade Sese.
5. Lastly, I have no idea why you say XFG because her name is just Xiao Feng. If you're going to abbreviate it, it's XF. I don't even know who GXN is (Gu Jian?)
6. I respect your opinion, but I just need to tell you that you are looking at things like you assume XF looks at things. There may be a cube placed in front of you but you only see the square. The other dimension which you did not see is the context, and the skill of storytelling and characterization.
But again, it's not a perfect show, it's not NiF 2.0 so I respect that you dislike it. (Sorry if this was rude but GMP is one of my fav dramas and to see it get shitted on is like an attack on my heart. It's real issues lay in pacing and plot holes but still... it's so visually stunning!)

He's not a good person and that's a fact. But, if you want to watch a show that admits that the ML is flawed and doesn't try to defend that or disguise it, then GMP is absolutely perfect. Complex characters are everywhere and the melodrama and tragedy is top notch. But if you want to see Sifeng 2.0 then no, this is probably the opposite of that. The ML of GMP is probably one of the most complex characters in idol cdramas, but that is also why he's probably one of the worst MLs (morals wise).

Okay I get your points but let me offer a few points for your consideration. They do actually have directors (you can tell that they aren't directing the scenes themselves in the BTS clips. Ma Su and Wen Zhengrong were kind fo assisting in the direction but the actors weren't the ones that were doing the directing). Episode four was really quite bad for all 4 of the judges, but I think Chen Kaige and Er Dongsheng's comments in episode 1 relating Chen Youwei were actually very helpful. Maybe a little too harsh, but it was a good slap back into reality. And they did give actual advice. One pet peeve I have is that a lot of the times the things they point out as flaws are subjective (e.g. CKG saying Sun Qian shouldn't have lost her drunken state so quickly. One could argue for the opposite.) But for example, Zhang Dada acting like a thief (which I totally see) was pretty objectively visible and I think they did a good job pointing that out. Overall, I just think they spend more time fighting than commenting which is soooo annoying because they could be helping a lot more (as someone who has watched the first season I have to say I'm very disappointed because last season they at the very least actually gave criticism and sometimes advice). Here's the thing about playing just one scene from a movie or drama, this is a variety TV show and I doubt the judges are being paid enough to literally write out 24 scripts that are completely original. And they also would want in these scripts that there is an emotional climax (you'll see most of the clips are the most dramatic moments). To try to to write a short performance with a full story + characterization + emotional climax + conclusion and repeat that 24 times is a really long process. They choose the most popular shows and movies so we know what's happening, and if we can buy that these people are the characters it's all the more surprising and noteworthy for their talent. It's true that they probably won't be able to match up to the original solely because there's not enough build-up or familiarization or whatever, but there's still good performances (which show deep understanding of character + good acting + natural ability) and bad performances (which either show flawed understanding, objectively bad acting, or just something very fake). It seems to be the easiest way.

Eh, I don't necessarily think anyone has gotten detrimentally worse totally because of the show but yeah some of the people I really liked last season are still stuck in mediocre productions (Zhang Zhehan! When will he get a good script?) I think some of the people from Guo Jingming's camp got some good scripts following (maybe not because of him but still, Jin Jing, PXR, HJJ are all getting a lot more scripts now). I also think Sun Qian and Zhang Haiyu are getting a lot more fans thanks to this show (yay!!) but yeah for like actors like Chen Youwei or He Changxi or Li Xirui or Tang Yifei, they aren't really benefitting from the show. If anything, the show is benefitting from them. So I guess it's a double edged sword, on one hand, you might get fame, but it may not necessarily be good fame.

Actually it was pretty public since he like asked this other actress to literally publicly publish bad things about his ex. And that actress posted receipts on Weibo (relating to their conversation which I guess she shouldn't have done but oh well) and it got into a big scandal. It's not his private life anymore if he chooses to drag his ex on social media.

Hey but at least later on the things become a little more accurate. I mean yes, He Changxi in S is very wtf, but many of the S and A actors do actually have acting ability. Of course, it's odd that some very talented people are still in B, and some mediocre people managed to get to A, but still, at least it's more accurate now. (In the first round they did mention that the casting people were grading them based on a multitude of factors, acting, fame, reputation, market value etc etc so they never said it would be solely based on acting anyways).

She wasn't that good this ep but the "My Dearest" clip was pretty good (she's from HK and she managed to learn an An Hui accent that fast! Amazing!) I saw someone say she was basically copying Zhao Wei, which is true, but it was still very emotional.

it's so sad too because I like so many of the actors here. Ugh, it's just to stir up drama. But, last year some of the good actors got more recognition due to participation (Wan Seng and Niu Junfeng come to mind), which is the only good thing, Let's hope the actual good actors this season can pull a Uno Reverse Card and get a place in the market once again.

Zhang Ming'en got into a pretty bad scandal earlier involving his ex Xuan Lu, which is why one of the casting directors was like "I wouldn't watch his shows because of all the rumors". If that hadn't happened I guarantee he would've at least been an A. I feel kind of bad for him, because he's not that bad an actor, but the makeup for Winter Begonia was terrifying. I literally couldn't finish the performance it was so terrifying.

Yes! That's why the good performances in this show are truly very amazing! And that's also why I don't think bad performances like this one are necessarily bad. First of all, neither had an experienced director telling them how to act, if an actual director was present, they would've told Chen Youwei to stop the aggressive hand shaking immediately. If you've watched the first season you'll understand what I mean since the performances got way better once the directors started to actually shoot the performances into short films. I suppose it's because actors got more takes to truly perform.

FL is one of the best actresses of the younger generation (pretty much universally agreed. She's won tons of prestigious awards for movies), but I think this is her first time doing xianxia so I don't know if she'll be as amazing as she is in movies. ML has okay acting skills, but imo he's not as good as Cheng Yi. Xu Kai has potential though, and he does look very good.

That's true, but honestly when I watched L&R's trailer and the trailers for all the big dramas for next year, I didn't really feel chemistry either. I guess we'll have to wait and see if the chemistry is good.

You might have to wait a year, but if you want to watch a drama that may be like L&R in quality, CGI and direction (same director) then put "Ancient Love Poetry" on your lists!

Veteran actress doesn't equal good actress. If you've been on social media than you know how much hate YM, DLRB and sometimes ZLY (Minglan was so good that I think the hate on her acting has died down substantially). Compare YM to Yang Zi and you see the difference. Hell, compare YM to Li Gengxi and you see a difference (and Li Gengxi only has two dramas out!) No one is saying ZLS is more famous than A-list actresses (and that's all A-list implies, not that they're good at acting, just that they are very famous), they are saying she has the ability to compete with them. And you know what? She does! She has the natural charisma, the comedic timing and a natural way to act. Also she's 20. She's freaking 20 and has only started acting like 3 years ago. Of course she's not going to have as much experience as someone who started acting 10 years ago. That's just how accumulation of knowledge via experience works.