#i'm still watching for bai lu okay

[bebemoon]

little xue shitling slapped ning and yan lin fLEW over that table lmaooo

[mirageofadesert]

Looking back on my first year as a c-drama fan!

This year I fell - first down a flight of stairs - and then (because I couldn't walk properly for a few weeks) down a rabbit hole of cdramas!

In total, I have watched 28 dramas since May. I actually finished 17 of them. I re-watched 8 of them at least once. My most rewatched show is Till The End Of The Moon, followed by Love Is Sweet and The Untamed!

Shows I loved

Till The End of The Moon: This drama triggered my hyperfixation, and I still love it so much. Tantai Jin became my new obsession.

Love is Sweet: This one surprised me because I don't usually care for romantic dramas. It made me more open to different genres.

The Untamed: I watched this for the first time in 2019, and now I can appreciate it even more.

The Sleuth of Ming Dynasties: It took me several tries to get into the drama because the political setting was too complicated. I'm glad I didn't give up. Wang Zhi became one of my favorites!

New Life Begins: I was just looking for something light in between and was quite surprised how much I liked the show.

Things I learned as a newbie:

Cdramas are an acquired taste. Sometimes it's worth going back to a drama that you initially gave up on.

To avoid spoilers, it's best to skip the intro and especially the outro.

I love my characters unhinged.

Apparently it is okay to share leaks from filming.

Never believe anything that comes from yxh accounts.

Shippers are toxic in any fandom.

C-drama fans are a bit older than K-pop fans, but they can be just as unhinged and have trouble distinguishing between how to treat actors and the fictional characters they play.

My ADHD is better regulated when I watch shows in a foreign language while reading the subtitles. I don't get bored watching TV, which is rare!

Shows I dropped, and what I learned from it:

Hidden Love: I still don't like romances that have no significant plot beyond the relationship. Especially if I don't care about the characters at all.

Back from the Brink: Sometimes dramas that start well become an unwatchable, rage-inducing mess halfway through, and it's not worth sticking it out to the end.

Beauty of Resilience: I'm a character-driven audience. If the characters aren't compelling and the story isn't interesting, I don't care about the show.

Ashes of Love: I hate childish FL with baby voices and naive personalities. I need better written female characters. I'm on my 3rd attempt to watch this show and I only have a handful of episodes left, so I'll actually make it to the end (eventually).

I've dropped a lot more shows and actually watched some to the end that I didn't like very much in the end, but those are the ones I learned the most from.

What will stay with me:

Tantai Jin: I'm still obsessed with this character. He is everything I need in a fictional character.

Luo Yunxi: This will come as no surprise to anyone who follows me, but my obsession with TTJ soon extended to Luo Yunxi.

Bai Lu & Sun Zhenni: While I appreciate both of them as actors, it's their fun and uninhibited personalities that made me fall in love with them!!

Costumes: I adore the detailed costumes and hanfu styles, and do prefer costume dramas to modern ones.

Food & drinks: I'm now looking into more Chinese foot now and how to cook vegetables in more interesting ways. I also bought "moon cake stamps"... so wish me luck!

New online acquaintances: I have made some new friends online who I can fangirl with to my heart's content!

What I'm looking forward to in 2024:

I'm really looking forward to Luo Yunxi's upcoming dramas, Follow You Heart, Shui Long Yin and Immortality (🤡). I'm also looking forward to Sun Zhenni's first leading role!

There are still many dramas I want to watch, but haven't found the time for. Like A Journey to Love, Goodbye, My Princess, Nirvana in Fire, Then Miles of Peach Blossoms and The Blood of Youth.

I'm not sure what else I'll post here next year. Probably more reviews and content related to my favourite actors. Let's see if something triggers my hyperfixation soon!

Happy New Year!

[well-dressedwords]

My Picks: Top Dramas of 2023

This is really for me to refer back to when people ask me what to watch. In no particular order or category:

Meet Yourself - having leads that were already well-established in their adult lives and careers was sooo refreshing. And though my heart got utterly torn out in episode one, I was completely invested in seeing Xu Hongdou's journey through grief and back into truly living.

The Blood of Youth - I can't recall why I gave this a chance, but I am extremely glad I did. I possibly watched the whole thing 3 times from forcing friends to sit down with me, and I appreciate the humor and characters even more on re-watches. The only romance I remotely cared about was the tragic one, but that was okay because romance was not the point of the main plot.

The Trust - I had actually watched the animated version of this story, which is maybe the 2nd I watched all the way through, and I loved the live action as well. The lead actors did a good job playing each other, and the humor was a nice relief during a hard time of the year for me.

A Familiar Stranger - I think I finally am okay with short dramas because this one was so well done. I adored their relationship, and even despite how terrible the secondary couple could be, wished for them to have a happy ending (in another life). I considered watching My Journey to You for Cheng Lei alone after this performance, but just couldn't get through it.

The Scent of Time - I know "popular" opinion is that the ending ruins it, but as a writer, I can accept the different possible endings - the novel's version where she gets her peace and someone to be her loyal companion, as well as the dream ending where she will have to work again to make a life for herself with the prince. I will eventually make a post on my thoughts about it. But it made me fall deeper for Zhou Ye and excited to see other dramas with Wang Xingyue...

Story of Kunning Palace - I love Bai Lu. I haven't watched all of her dramas, but there's something about her that I really enjoy in the right story. I liked that Xuening was still flawed and so was Xie Wei, and yet this time all of her harem get (relatively) happy endings. I was also surprised by Liu Xiening's performance as the princess. In some respects she had more chemistry with Xuening than either Zhang Zhe or Xie Wei. Wang Xingyue, did you intentionally do two projects with this premise on purpose?? [Also, those aggressive kisses?!?! Zhang Linghe, I didn't know you had it in you.]

A Journey to Love - I haven't finished it as I only watch a few episodes per day, and I did spoil myself on the ending. I can accept it because there has been so much foreshadowing. I'm here for the mature relationship, the humor, the friendships, the princess (my god, the PRINCESS!) and to be baffled by people disliking Liu Yuning.

Honorable Mentions:

The Starry Love - I need to go back and watch the episodes I fast forwarded through... I was more invested in the older sister's love story initially. Nevertheless, this is one I will rewatch.

The Love You Give Me - not at the very top because the plot feels overused and there were too many plotholes for my writer's brain. But I love their chemistry and Quanquan was worth sticking it out for.

Provoke - After enjoying A Familiar Stranger I had to give this one a shot. There were so many scenes that really captured my imagination. The leads carried their roles so well. It's my first Republican Era show and I suddenly get the appeal. Also, I love Du Jingchuan as a villain. He's so good at being skeevy.

Exploration Method of Love - I struggled through terrible subtitles because I've dreamed about these actors in a drama together. Gao Hanyu grabbed me in Love is Sweet, and Song Yanfei was great in The Trust.

*Butterflied Lover - I've seen one episode because the rest is behind a pay wall... but I am determined to watch it!

*Hilarious Family - at times the humor felt forced, but other times it hit for me. It wasn't compelling enough for me to finish it (yet) though I am curious as to what the ending is going to be.

[icouldhyperfixatehim]

I'll give you three for the tv series game, if that's okay! (I watch a lot of cdramas too, so I chucked one in there as well.) Tv series: 1. Moonlight Chicken, 2. Cutie Pie, and 3. Word of Honor.

ooh fun, three so different, thank you!!

moonlight chicken

Favourite character: honestly so tough...but probably wen at a push 🤍

Funniest character: li ming

Best-looking character: challenge level impossible. alan.

3 favourite ships: jimwen, alanwen, heartliming

Least favourite character: gentrification. or heart's parents.

Least favourite ship: jimbeam. still narratively interesting though!!

Reason I started watching it: I mean. Earthmix and p'aof I wasn't going to miss it, and then the gifs started rolling in...🥰

cutie pie

Favourite character: opposite problem to mlc, i don't think i liked anyone enough to call them a fave lmao. lets say jay

Funniest character: the wee rat masquerading as a dog, i laughed every time it appeared god bless it 😂😂

Best-looking character: Jay again, perth looked absolutely bangin in this show

3 favourite ships: liankuea, nuersyn, anyone x the truth

Least favourite character: the other hia played by max whose name escapes me

Least favourite ship: yer man above and kundiao

Reason I started watching it: I liked zee in why r u and at that point hadn't seen him in anything else so thought I'd give it a whirl

word of honour

Favourite character: gu xiang 💔

Funniest character: ye bai yi. grumpy old fuck is a deep weakness of mine re character archetypes

Best-looking character: okay this hit a button for me bc i'm enchanted by how jing bei yuan looks like one of those beautiful fluffy moths (silk worm moth? the model of the venezualen poodle moth?) 😍

3 favourite ships: wenzhou, beauty ghost x tragicomic ghost, du pusa x qiao lu han (i know they hatefucked i just Know it)

Least favourite character: lovelace ghost

Least favourite ship: I didn't really buy in on gu xiang and cao ning until very close to the end and then my arse was ripped asunder

Reason I started watching it: the friend who told me about the untamed recced it as a follow up, and I had already been convinced of any further recs from her after she gifted the untamed to my unprepared but willing psyche

[eigwayne]

One of the things I do when I don't have the wherewithal for creative works, which is often lately, is work on a database spreadsheet for my C-drama watching. The scoring records are one sheet, and there's another for actor stats that I'm working on. Because after a while you start to recognize faces among the supporting roles and can't flippin' remember where they're from, or where you first saw them.

So I started a sheet, with the rows as actor names and the column headers as shows I've seen. It's... very large. And very tedious to fill in. I cannot recommend this to anyone, ever. But it keeps me busy when I can't make myself function with anything else.

Now, I'm filling this in in order of the shows as I watched them- or my nearest guess because I forgot when I watched some things, especially for those actors I saw on Happy Camp or Chuang before I saw any of their shows (which was a lot, actually- I saw Cheng Yi, Tan Jianci, Bai Lu, Hou Minghao, even Zhao Liying on Happy Camp before I got around to any of their shows). So I'm only at King's Avatar, but I do have some stats. This does count the shows I've started but haven't finished yet, and the ones I've dropped, so not all of them are "actually seen in this show and can evaluate their performance", some are "I started a show they're in and fuck if I remember if I saw their part yet." But!

The people I've seen most so far are He Zhonghua and Zhang Fan at 10 shows each.

I've started 6 Xiao Zhan shows but only 5 for Wang Yibo, Wang Zhuocheng, and Meng Ziyi. Also at 5 is Huang Youming, Hei Zi, Liu Xueyi, Cheng Yi, Han Chenyu who is probably in all the Cheng Yi shows, Zhao Liying, Canti Lau, Ji Chen who has some DMBJ movies in there, and Dong Li Wu You, who is like fifteen, tops, but is in everything.

Liu Yuning's count is at 8 but at one point I was jotting down OST and writing contributions and then stopped because I was bored, so who knows (Nanpai Sanshu is at 9 because of the writing creds, with higher than expected but still incomplete numbers for Zhou Shen from soundtrack creds. No idea why Mimi Lee is at 5 but I like her so it's okay for now). Anyone in 72 Floors of Mystery or any movie that isn't an Untamed spin-off is messed up because I added variety shows and movies halfway through and haven't caught up yet. Happy Camp stats are a disaster.

Zhang Tianyang is at 7 shows, and that is most likely correct. He was in almost every show I watched last summer, lol~ He's my accidental darling.

[mejomonster]

Started who rules the world, have mixed opinions

I loved zhao lusi specifically in Romance of Tiger and Rose. In The Long Ballad I liked her, but her acting partner liu yuning (who is just exceptionally good) I think helped sell her scenes for me (and I'm not big on innocent princess girl anyway)

This shows mold for her I like. But I still find her acting a bit shallow, I can tell yang yang is the stronger actor, and it makes their scenes feel a bit odd to me. I wish something pushed her acting skills into improvement cause I know she's got potential, like how word of honor reallt helped gong jun show he can do Much More than his usual more limited range in romcoms. (Like.. Zhao lusi is doing okay as this like rough uncivilized girl, but it's the same mold as Xiao Zhans Wei Wuxian and he was clearly better at acting it, it's the same as Bai Lus mold in The Legends and Bai Lu was clearly better at portraying it, Crystal Yuan in Love and Redemption wasn't even uncivilized mold she was just very uncaring of social norms/politeness and she was also much stronger at portraying a wild freeness to her. Whereas zhao lusi feels like her pretty robes from costume design are Hurting her portrayal - which is not her fault- then on top of that she does the body language okay for her role, but her voice is so smooth which may be a different actor idk, and her Expressions are so controlled.... like if it turns out her character Bai fengxi is supposed to be controlled and even tempered than good job, but I get the impression Bai fengxi is supposed to be more like xiao xingchen in The Untamed... kind and level but also free from rules and sects and restraints and passionate in her beliefs, but she just doesn't have enough Energy. So likemmm it feels like her acting is just weaker. It's not entirely her fault, but I have a lot of actresses I have already been impressed by In xianxia and wuxia so like... it makes her acting something I'm even less personally lenient on since I've seen some Really good comparable performances.

The actual plot I've got mixed opinions on. I'm glad it's not demons/gods and just humans. I'm interested it's martial world and countries (more like word of honor rather than the untamed but more political players). I think the budget looks NICE ans it's so shocking to me how a couple years ago Eternal Love of Dream was considered good looking good budget. Cause this looks even better and i imagine its not even The Best cdramas can do right now. The choreography for fights looks good (not ideal but much better than The Untamed and fun to watch). However like... I tend to prefer cdramas with very distinct costume designs for diffetent groups to help you be less confused (Love and Redemption, The Untamed, Goodbye My Princess, Eternal Love, Love and Destiny all do great jobs with costume distinctions... and word of honor does to a decent degree once you're a few eps in). And tjis show so far has very few noticeable costume distinguishing features between groups. The only ppl I can distinguish are Bai fengxi in white and hei fengxi (sometimes) in black. And Hao chen seems to wear more normal people royal clothes instead of flowing robes like Bai and hei. Ans the one cruel sect look like literal Batmen. But everyone else is a mix I can't differentiate between with costumes. And with a big cast and several groups at play, it's a bit frustrating. Also... they hint Bai has a reason/misunderstanding as a reason she doesn't like Hei. I want to know it asap. Because currently it feels like 2 ppl with unexplained relationship and we started in the Middle of a show instead of the beginning. And I would love some context for WHAT their current relationship is so i can tell if it's changing or evolving. (Like how early eps of The Long Ballad establish who's cousins with a history, who worked for who, or The Untamed established Meng Yao was close to Nie Huaisangs sect before/as meng yao leaves it). I'm a bit frustrated that their starting point in the story right now is so vague. Also the plot world doesn't seem terribly special and unique yet. (I haven't seen many show of this type outside the 3 realms structure. But like word of honor felt very much like it was in a specific region, The Untamed felt very distinctly its own thing, Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang felt like it's own thing etc).

A LOT of actors I know in this, they got a good cast lineup. I cant remember where I've seen the guy playing Han Chao in this but I love the actor and he looks GOOD in this.

I'm on ep 2 and its got okay pacing, okay fights, and mostly good acting performances so I'm giving it some time to ramp up. I think the world and characters may define themselves more uniquely in a good way if they get a little more time to flesh out.

[iginthepenguin]

One and Only - 周生如故

i'm back with another drama. i didn't plan to watch this drama but because of The Oath of Love postponement i decided to comfort myself with watching other cdrama. but turns out this drama exceed my expectation i should say. starring Bai Lu as Cui Shiyi and Ren Jialun as Zhousheng Chen. spoiler ahead this drama has a sad ending (which is smth i would usually avoid, im the happy ending team peeps) i didnt know that the ending would be like that, because while i haven't completed the drama, i watched the MV OST by Zhang Bichen and at the end of the MV, Shiyi was wearing a red wedding gown and she said "Zhousheng Chen, i'm here to marry you" obv i thought they would have a happy ending because of that. okay let's get started, the story is about a prestigious clans with typical politics during kingdom era. Shiyi has become mute due to the shock she had when she was young caused by the sudden news of her father has left her and she has been given title Crown Princess since she hasn't born yet, which means she is engaged with the Crown Prince (while watching this, i was kinda confused cause the Crown Prince is literally a kid and Shiyi's can be said as a teen) but later on the Crown Prince has changed cause of the Crown Prince has ascended the throne and become the Emperor while Shiyi's still the Crown Princess as the decree said. Shiyi's Uncle who's also the Grand Preceptor has to accept the decree because he got cornered after helping the Crown Prince ascended the throne overnight right after the late Emperor passed away, he was seen as the accomplishment of the Empress Dowager (the late Emperor concubine) but there's still a lot of schemes coming later on. the news of the late emperor has passed away was sent to the West State Military Camp that was led by Zhousheng Chen titled Nanchen King Jr. he just cameback victoriously from a war then was preparing to celebrate but shock by the news, Zhousheng Chen cried (his first crying scene) as he has taken the oath to not step into the Capital State after he left for West when he was child to protect the West and was scared by Liu's clan and the late Emperor cause he was in the line to step into the throne but he decided to gave his last name in order to break those thoughts and went to the West. Zhousheng Chen went back to the Capital State to send off his brother for the last time, but the Empress Dowager has a scheme with Shiyi's uncle, to push Zhousheng Chen enter the state and break his oath in order to prove his loyalty to the new Emperor, then he later on entered unarmed and again he swore to not get married nor have a child so there won't be any groundless rumour about him going to rebel and take over the throne. the Grand Preceptor asked Zhousheng Chen to take Shiyi as his disciples because there's smth to solve between his family and Zhousheng Chen's uncle. He hesitated but gave in to the Grand Preceptor. after he won another war, Shiyi went to the West and then pay a respect to her new master, but she fell in love with Zhousheng Chen at first sight when she first saw him from the city gate celebrating their victorious war. therefore the story of Shiyi's and the beautiful bone has begin.

as i mentioned, i preferred happy ending story and i love romance, this drama has left a deep impression. this kind of romance, affection i have never saw and felt before really has another level of romance. and altho the ending is sad on this drama, u can enjoy the sequel with same lead titled "Forever and Ever". both drama adapted from one novel titled "One Life One Incarnations : Beautiful Bones" by Mo Bao Fei Bao (一生一世美人骨).

find out the what’s going to happen next urself! cause it’s getting more interesting so if u guys haven’t watch it and plans to watch it, please do so! i hope u guys enjoy the drama like i did!

this drama has 24 episodes

overall it was very good.

thankyou for reading - spread love not hate❤~

and especially now stay safe and stay at home peeps🏠❤

*disclaimer* : this all are my personal opinion only.