Honestly I'm only at episode 20 and my only question is what are the rules. I don't understand the rules of the…
As I said, the writing is completely lost... the writing tried to fix one thing from the novel, but then it caused cascading effects which the screenwriter was clueless on how to fix, and the thing you mentioned is one of them. It doesn't get better either. If anything, it gets worse as the story moves on and the writer has a deer in headlights feeling and totally forgets earlier plot points. I mean...
So totally deviating from the book at the end of the drama just to get it to cram conveniently into the old drama formula? Is the writer not confident that much?
They fell together into the pond... that sounds suspiciously like "The Trust" 😂Is this going to be a new trope…
For a lot of people, water represents souls, because water reflects the image of the person back to them. (Anthropology here). So for example, when you break a mirror and get 7 years bad luck, this was because the mirror reflects you, so then you are broken, but Romans also believed that everything renewed on 7 year cycles.
But you can see this in other cultures as well. River Styx, Japanese believing souls travel on water, etc.
Stories 1-3 are stories she wrote. The main storyline was a story he fashioned for her to get her to remember, weaving it with one of her stories to get her to wake up from her coma.
Thus the majority of the drama was a dream. Her powers were never real. But certain facts were true. - They did meet by him sticking a bookmark into her tales she wrote and meeting at the library--most of story 3 is true. - The romance scenes from the first story where the male lead of that missed the female lead were also true things that happened to them. - The story about the woods and so on, that was partially true as well, and they went into the woods together.
The main story, as she said, was mostly false. He's not a rich cold CEO. He's warm-hearted which is indicated in the second story when he sacrifices his ticket for her. The cat is true, though. But she picked him up as a kitten, he didn't own her.
Which means by the end of the story, you find out after her coma, she had been dating him for a while, and the story that was the most true was actually story 3. She's been in a coma.
This is under the story structure Dream Record which originated from the Ming Dynasty.
The novel FL had more edge to her. They kept the pettiness of the FL from the novel though.
Drama version, I'd call her acting childish, but not in reality, smart, but not clever like the novel. Petty and she still likes food, though they haven't shown the oil-faced yet. She's definitely not air-headed like the female protag of The Longest (disappointment) Promise drama. So she's a bit whiny, though supposedly faking it, rather than straight up annoying because she can't learn anything or apply anything she's learned in the previous trials. (See Longest Disappointment for that). So far, has passed the Mako Mori and Sexy Lamp test. Slower on the Bechdel test.
Novel FL is more clever than smart. She notices things and endures things because she has to. She's not at all childish. She's really petty and vengeful which is played for laughs, and she's more tolerating the male lead for most of the time. She puts up with him. She's also very, very slow to realize her feelings. Because she is so similar to the ML in personality in a lot of ways, she matches in IQ to the ML, but is slightly slower in EQ. In the novel, ML falls first and hard and you know this is true from their first fight, he really liked her, but she frustrates him by not noticing, so they end up bickering, and the more she fails to notice the harder they bicker. This dynamic is similar to Romance of the Tiger and Rose.
If you ever watched A Girl Like Me, the female lead of that is more similar to the FL of this novel. (Except in the second life of the novel which is straight up used to make fun of FLs in wuxia.) A good fighter, clever, a little petty, and tends to bicker, but be a bit slower emotionally. But FL of the book of this is more book smart too, and loves reading, etc and using it against the male lead.
The novel protag manages to pass the all the feminism tests very quickly.
Best part of the novel is the straight up bickering. It's some of the best I've read in the genre of hate you but don't want to admit I like you.
I don’t think there was one in the novel but the drama seems to be going towards that direction…
In the novel, there wasn't really one, he kinda popped up later in the second life in the novel, but didn't figure that big until later. There wasn't a SFL, though, not like this. There is a lot of moving around.
It's not following the book 1 for 1. There is a lot of moving things around. I'm a tad disappointed, tbh, because the book challenged a lot of the stereotypes of xianxia, but the drama does a lot of reinforcing of them?
In the novel, it spends a lot of time setting up that they had no connection to each other prior to fighting, and being so ignorant that they spend most of their time fighting before they start to realize that something is wrong they need to fix.
But they shuffled things around, so that's no longer true, but in doing so, it kind of feels like your typical xianxia rather than challenging it.
And I loved the petty bickering in the book too...
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1 
Tian Xi Wei has a very distinctive voice. Her real voice was in New Life Begins and First Love.
Official trailer.
But you can see this in other cultures as well. River Styx, Japanese believing souls travel on water, etc.
Thus the majority of the drama was a dream. Her powers were never real. But certain facts were true.
- They did meet by him sticking a bookmark into her tales she wrote and meeting at the library--most of story 3 is true.
- The romance scenes from the first story where the male lead of that missed the female lead were also true things that happened to them.
- The story about the woods and so on, that was partially true as well, and they went into the woods together.
The main story, as she said, was mostly false. He's not a rich cold CEO. He's warm-hearted which is indicated in the second story when he sacrifices his ticket for her. The cat is true, though. But she picked him up as a kitten, he didn't own her.
Which means by the end of the story, you find out after her coma, she had been dating him for a while, and the story that was the most true was actually story 3. She's been in a coma.
This is under the story structure Dream Record which originated from the Ming Dynasty.
Novel FL is more clever than smart. She notices things and endures things because she has to. She's not at all childish. She's really petty and vengeful which is played for laughs, and she's more tolerating the male lead for most of the time. She puts up with him. She's also very, very slow to realize her feelings. Because she is so similar to the ML in personality in a lot of ways, she matches in IQ to the ML, but is slightly slower in EQ. In the novel, ML falls first and hard and you know this is true from their first fight, he really liked her, but she frustrates him by not noticing, so they end up bickering, and the more she fails to notice the harder they bicker. This dynamic is similar to Romance of the Tiger and Rose.
If you ever watched A Girl Like Me, the female lead of that is more similar to the FL of this novel. (Except in the second life of the novel which is straight up used to make fun of FLs in wuxia.) A good fighter, clever, a little petty, and tends to bicker, but be a bit slower emotionally. But FL of the book of this is more book smart too, and loves reading, etc and using it against the male lead.
The novel protag manages to pass the all the feminism tests very quickly.
Best part of the novel is the straight up bickering. It's some of the best I've read in the genre of hate you but don't want to admit I like you.
In the novel, it spends a lot of time setting up that they had no connection to each other prior to fighting, and being so ignorant that they spend most of their time fighting before they start to realize that something is wrong they need to fix.
But they shuffled things around, so that's no longer true, but in doing so, it kind of feels like your typical xianxia rather than challenging it.
And I loved the petty bickering in the book too...