AleksandraSucur

I've been watching FP already, it's watchable but a little bit slow, it wasn't directed very well. Besides, on w.e. only one ep is released...
Have you checked Under the Moonlight, how's that one?

Oh, when that one will be released? I loved S1!!! 👌

I've dropped both, not for me...

The real question is... what we gonna all do on Sunday?

XQ was probably only a vessel where to hide the treasure for a certain period of time - which maybe served him to retrieve smth else - till the moment in which he would take it out from his son.

but there's no other person who could have been so close to put the secret treasure/luck of Dafeng into his body when he was a baby

I think they'll release express only on Saturday

There's only one truth in what you've said: "even haters were excited to watch" -you were obviously speaking for yourself 😂😂😂
"It was supposed to be a serious drama, but it came across as a comedy." This isn't true. The first genre mentioned for the classification of the drama is: "Comedy". Whoever checked the trailer before watching, knew it was a comedy and now, after 34 eps, we can calmly assert it is a great comedy, well mixed with other genres. Everybody is disappointed when a drama doesn't meet his/her expectations, but if you've expected smth different than what was largely announced, blame your dumbness, not the drama.
Writing, directing, performing and producing a great comedy - you look down upon - requires extreme seriousness and work, more than in many other genres (eg. sore fantasy as in Ever Night), Dylan Wang's acting is fully aligned with the character he plays: a salesman with great social skills, playful, funny and imperfect, but with a deep sense of justice and care for the people around him. He is thoughtful, streetsmart, perserverant and competitive. Although similar, Fan Xian is different from XQ, Zhang Ruo Yun's brilliantly performed that almost perfect and less social character, but who thinks a hero in a male-centred drama must be perfect, eg. in memorizing hundreds of Chinese classical poems? XQ is not perfect, he remembers two verses of each at the most, as most of the people does, btw., which makes him even more relatable. Hundreds of Chinese wuxia, gong'an, mythological and historical novel/short stories' heroes are not only imperfect but they are recognizable exactly for their flows, even when they're "full of sh*t", people just love them.
"A drama needs to start strong to keep viewers engaged". Actually, it started strong and keeps us engaged together with other viewers who broke the 30K heat index for a top drama.
If it didn't work for you and didn't keep you engaged, fine. Good riddance.

Ofc

Thw poetry contest (actually a dress rehearsal of poetry contest) was a deserved humiliation.
Nothing goes smoothly in real life, either, no matter how smart we are

if we agree on almost everything you've stated, I truly can't see what bothers you.
ad 3) ofc he "incited" her: because, your words "He mistook her as GP", these are your words. I'm not saying "if someone mistook you for someone else then you will let the misunderstanding continue as long as it benefits you", I've said she had tried hard to shift his loyalty, she didn't actually want the misunderstanding to continue, she just didn't come out with the truth, and that's what she has in common with the ML.

Btw., I don't like the actress, or more precisely, I don't like her voice. But her acting capabilities in this role made me forget what I see as a shortcoming in her performance, in general.
And I'll repeat: this character is very well written, she (the character) is prone to great sacrifices, well written (as the audience can understand), well directed and well performed

may be, but I doubt this emperor is definitely not his father 😂

How can you forget ML is lying... well, continuously? Lets forget he is Yang Ling, ok, within "the game" he has another identity, but when he goes to the brothel or recites (btw. plaragiarized, and even badly plagiarised, because he remembers just two verses of each) poems, he either uses his original name or the name of a fictional Jin Yong's character Chen Jinnan from The Deer and the Cauldron. Not to talk how he conceals his identity from the members of the Realm Sect - to the point he'd rather lie N°3 is his cousin than admit he lied.
He is a born manipulator, he is a salesman in "real life". Manipulation is not always a bad thing and not all the lies are meant to harm. Psychologists say that even a newborn baby is capable of manipulation: a baby is not crying because someone harms it, but because it's hungry and even if it isn't hungry or anyhow discomforted, it cries because it simply wants to be cuddled and have already "learnt" that - with crying - someone will show up and cuddle it. Parents also often manipulate and lie to their children for their own good (sc. "white lies") and so on...
FL lies were not meant to harm anybody and they were incited by ML himself. She wanted him to shift his (apparent - because that was ML's manipulation - if he knew he was in front of another princess, he would have pledged to her as well) loyalty towards GP in every possible way,

For the rest... yes, being ambitious is not a bad thing in itself, but Lin'an is ambitious, too, her problem was she - as a woman in a patriarcal society - projected that ambition too much on her brother. Untill ML explained her she should focus more on herself and what she wants for herself. Deep down, they are very similar (that's why I think they match each other), the only difference is... ML is more experienced 😁

Thanks to GotD, I've learned that haters aren't only vicious but also very stupid persons. To hate something or somebody can be understandable, to hate for no reason is not understandable, but to make a sensless hate so obvious as to downrate unaired episodes, could they be more stupid than this?

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." (A. Einstein)

I think the writer (I refer to the screenwriter, who adapted somewhat different relations between the ML and female characters in the original story) made perfectly clear why she was the way she was. Her mother and brother spoiled her greatly because they wished her to be childish, uninvolved and ignorant of court affairs - for a good reason: the emperor. Being such, spoiled and cheerful, she is the only child the self-centred emperor isn't wary of and doesn't intimidate. The emperor knows she acts before thinking, that's why he pardons her (and finds even amusing) for the "kept man" story.
Besides, she is not that spoiled nor stupid not to know that for XQ is better to obtain a noble status than a one chance pardon. Her initial lies were actually triggered by XQ's misunderstanding (and manipulative desire to get a backing from Grand Princess - thing Lin'an understood very well).
Combined with a personal growth we see after her best friend's death, which changes her focus from a superficial and unrealistic competition with her sister towards less superficial and more important things in life, we can only conclude that her character makes a lot of sense, therefore, it is well written.
Finally - but this is just my personal opinion - such a character is well matched with XQ's character, we feel she will literally sacrifice everything for persons she loves

Le mie più sentite condoglianze. Possa tuo padre riposare in pace

we have 12 eps left and imho no way to solve the open issues in this season independently of the original source and number of its books. That's why I think S2 is inevitable

Tnx. Now I'll brag like XQ.
Douban is not "the Holy Scriptures", as any other AI calculation method, it has its limits: "the rating mechanism of Douban movie simply calculates mean value of all users rating which does not take into account the emotional inconsistency between users rating and their comments. The mechanism fails to differentiate between the impacts on total scores and the movie reviews of different quality."
This isn't my opinion, this is the finding of two (Chinese) telecommunication engineering scholars regularly published in a (Chinese) scientific paper, I've already mentioned here https://mydramalist.com/702953-dafeng-garotan#comment-20177552
I'm actually not sure (I have no means to measure these things) how much the haters and the bots influenced that downrating, and how much it was influenced by a lacking mechanism.
But I was sure from the first few episodes this drama gonna be top entertaining: its comedy is hilarious, the templates used with balance and grain of salt, together with the impeccable direction and performance (the whole cast is brilliant, not only Wang Hedi, who nailed the "isekai" character), witty storytelling... this drama was destined to be a great hit, "no matter what it takes" (again quoting an Italian Mario Draghi.

Maybe she/he will miss us, who decided to stay and laugh, lol

I ship those two from their first bickering. Certain couples have more violent-passionate relationship, the two are a perfect match in that sense