phoenixfrost

Try to read some reviews to understand the story better. This is a low-budget drama that achieved high-budget-level success due mainly to the star power of its male lead but this made me appreciate low-budget dramas that are not pressured to rake in money through glossy cookie-cutter productions, The story is told in a simple but deep manner, unlike the bombastic style of many dramas with higher budgets. The story is encapsulated by its title, Unchained Love, contrasting oppression and obsessive love against love that seeks the freedom, happiness and survival of a loved one.

The female lead is supposed to be around 16 years old, tricked into becoming a concubine of an old emperor by a conniving stepmother who is empowered by a husband who sees his illegitimate daughter only as a bargaining chip. As a childless widow of a dead emperor, the FL is forced to be a tribute lady, that is, to be sacrificed to die to accompany the emperor in the afterlife. Imagine yourself as a 16-year-old girl, about to be sacrificed with approval from your own family who would benefit from your death as a tribute lady. Other tribute ladies just cried their eyes out. The FL, as young as she was, tried to find ways to save her ass (she attempted to cut her hanging cloth), at the same time trying to make sure her attendant did not end up impoverished when she did die. When she survived, she effusively tried to flatter her savior, clueless as to what she was supposed to do in such circumstance. It was actually a funny scene depicting her wit. She is intelligent and knows that being female and young in the court, her best bet to survival is by not posing a threat to more powerful people. So, she pretends to be silly and lazy and avoids being involved in palace intrigues.

But when she is presented with an opportunity to do something, she rises to the occasion, like when she helped Xiao Duo hide the young crown prince from the empress. The ways she dealt with the kidnapping attempts are also brilliant, not to mention funny.

This is a low-budget drama that achieved high-budget-level success. While Dylan Wang's star power may be the main reason for its unexpected success, the drama has charms that might actually be attributable to it being a low budget drama. For example, its ending is poetry in motion, capturing freedom from oppression in a simple and raw depiction that is actually more powerful with its simplicity. A high-budget drama would more likely have featured a crowd-pleasing cheesy and gaudy ending rather than an artistic one. Unfortunately, it appears a lot of cdrama viewers mistake glossy and bombastic with class.

So you’d rather have an unrealistic perfect cookie-cutter FL who never makes mistakes? One of the charms I found with this drama is its unique and flawed characters that led me through unexpected, thus more fascinating, storylines.

The ending is one of my best parts of the drama. It was poetry in motion; the leads running towards freedom while the sources of oppression, the emperor and the Futu tower where tribute ladies meet their doom, are collapsing/burning. It summarized what the drama and the title, Unchained Love, are about - oppression and freedom from it. This is a low-budget drama and the ending made me respect dramas that are not pressured to please the audience hence are able to deliver an artistic ending instead of a bombastic and hollow one

My 2-cents about her purported reasons for pursuing him which are (1) to show her ex-bf that she matters more than his new gf's uncle's cars and (2) to use him for the online magazine:
I beileve she developed a crush on him when she pretended to borrow his power bank, but she lied to herself. I think, deep down, there was only one reason she decided to pursue him - only for love. Her inability to be truthful to him about her reason is typical Shu Yi - lie when confused. I agree, Shi Yan is no saint either. He also has his flaws that can also be frustrating. The layered misunderstandings make this drama a web of fascinating, frustrating and funny moments.

No wonder you are feeling the drama strongly. Personal experience heightens your connection to it. You're on point about Shu Yi - she's both frustrating and fascinating. And that's one thing I love about this drama. It certainly has fantastic elements, like a CEO falling in love with an office girl, but it's quite realistic in its portrayal of its female lead. Her flaws are presented raw, without any filter that can make her appear less flawed. So we can really feel Shi Yan's frustration with her lies and self-centeredness. At the same time, feeling his frustration also makes us admire even more how much he loves her, overlooking her flaws. I was also reminded of how "love is blind". But it also made me wonder whether it's not so much blindness as love conquering any negative feelings of the lover towards the loved one. And love making the lover more patient with the loved one.

I love reading your comments about this beloved drama. I can sense you are really feeling it. The analogy of the dying sparkler and what he meant by pinching her at the stable add dimensions to my memory of it, making me want to watch it again 😊

Exactly, you can't depend on online ratings, not while there are YXHs as well as rabid antis (who senselessly push ratings down) and fans (who can blindly push ratings up).

One thing YXHs do is emphasize a flaw of a drama. They keep harping on that flaw until all the viewers think of is that flaw. There are other cdramas that have plagiarism issues but not thrashed like TMOPB. There's another service YXHs provide, which is to lift a drama/actor up. So, that's one problem when a drama has high rating. We can't anymore be sure whether that drama was scored cleanly, without being lifted up by YXHs/water armies. That's why it's unreliable. That's why I don't depend on online scores anymore to decide whether to watch a drama or not. I watch a few episodes instead and decide on my own.

Same thing happened to Unchained Love. Three days with no new episodes is too much for some viewers. iQiyi's scheduling is horrible. Instead of having no episodes some days, why couldn't they shorten the schedule instead, that is, keep the episodes coming daily and end it earlier. I'm really curious why iQiyi tortures viewers.

Douban score is what viewers give to the drama like the MDL rating. The most popular cdrama of all time is Eternal Love/Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms with over 50 billion views as of 2018 but its Douban score is just 6.6. It was much lower before, when it just came out. Like MDL, Douban may be manipulated by fans and antis. Several cdramas that are very popular have very low Douban ratings because of antis. Also, in China, there are so-called YXHs which are netizens who are paid to blacken or not blacken dramas and actors. These YXHs blackmail studios and when the studios don't pay up. they blacken the dramas or actors. A high Douban score is now for sale. If you want your drama to have a high Douban score, you pay YXHs not to blacken it. Since the proliferation of these YXHs, Douban scores have become unreliable.

I take Shu Yi's lack of propriety as another manifestation of her marching to the beat of her own drum. She is not wont to stand on ceremony. Mr. Feng and Shi Yan, both with High EQ, know this about her and accept her eccentricity. After all, it doesn't hurt anybody. I'm sure, in the future, when she has to be proper Mrs Shi, like if she's entertaining Shi Yan's business associates and their wives, she'll learn 😊

Only For Love is one of 5 cdramas cited for having scorching chemistry:
https://www.soompi.com/article/1664800wpp/5-c-dramas-with-couples-that-have-scorching-chemistry

More than their scorching chemistry, I love how Bai Lu and Dylan Wang have the same humor. Their Douyin vid below is so outrageously funny. What makes it funnier is how they're trying not to laugh 🤣
https://x.com/dramapotatoe/status/1798312891843739708/

I watched a little of WLIS but got drawn to some interesting dramas in Netflix, like Dark and The OA, hoping to find another story like TB. I don't know what it is about TB that resonated with me so much. Probably because it expressed what I've been thinking about our planet, that it's a miracle, an oasis in the midst of a violent and ever active and changing universe. Yet not only don't we show our appreciation for it by taking care of it dearly, but we are abusing it.

Dylan's eyes are gorgeous and precious. Some envious antis are trying to throw dirt at them but they miss the point entirely. They're focused on the physical, inventing or exaggerating flaws much the same way antis have been inventing and exaggerating flaws of this drama. But his real beauty lies inside - his beautiful heart and soul that shine through his face and eyes.

It's intriguing that Dylan excels in nuanced acting where emotions are obscured from clearly showing on actors' faces and eyes, but in real life he is all out, no inhibitions whatsoever. Maybe that's why he is so outgoing and carefree in real-life; he is releasing all those emotions he is keeping a tight lid on when acting. Conversely, maybe that's why he is so good at nuanced acting; because he doesn't need to overact or be showy with his emotions when acting because he is already doing that in real-life 😄

Hmm, I smell some juicy information in your comment. If you don't mind letting me know, may you message me which actor you are referring to? 😃

so cute! 🤣

I just read something so cute and funny, I'd like to share it:
"Dylan Wang is so handsome the name 'Wang Hedi' has become synonymous to 'handsome' in China. A photo of a handsome cat with a caption of 'Wang Hedi of the cat world' got around a million likes in Douyin, one of the top 3 apps in China" 🤣🥰

Thanks, @Mistral, for posting this. It made my day 😃

Me too. I noticed the following about MDL ratings:
- dramas that don't have many rabid fans and antis (those who score 10 and 1) tend to be rated fairly accurately. For example, Nirvana in Fire and Eternal Love (Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms) are great dramas that deserve their high ratings
- dramas with many rabid fans have higher than deserved ratings
- dramas with many rabid antis have lower than deserved ratings

There is a discussion topic about ratings, for those interested:
https://mydramalist.com/discussions/cuo-liao/121285-who-still-believes-in-douban

I also don't care much for Yi Yang. But his interactions with Shu Yi enhanced my understanding of the complicated female lead, showcasing her friendly and patient nature as well as her professionalism. He was agressive and stalkerish. But she never got angry with him or burned bridges with him professionally. Another girl moping about her sorry love life would have driven him away when he showed up at her house. But she patiently showed him around her town. This is possibly another proof that she was shedding off her self-centeredness. Though she was hurting inside, she was able to shove her pain aside to be nice to a friend. And she could have used Yi Yang to get over Shi Yan. But she didn't do that.

The Yi Yang character served to prove that Shu Yi truly loves Shi Yan. YI Yang is good-looking, an enterprising young man, and a highly successful CEO. In short, a great catch. To top it off, he does not hide the fact that he is crazy about her. Had Shu Yi not loved Shi Yan, she would have turned to the very available and willing Yi Yang the moment she and Shi Yan encountered relationship problems. But throughout her dealings with Yi Yang, she never showed any emotion more than friendship towards him. This shows her loyalty to Shi Yan.

The Yi Yang character also served to show that Shi Yan truly loves, respects and supports Shu Yi. When Shu Yi told Shi Yan that Yi Yang confessed to her and that Yi Yang insists on being interviwed by her, Shi Yan gave the decision up to her, telling her that as a beautiful girl, she will not run out of admirers and he cannot keep her away from men. He hopes her bright light will keep going brighter and his, too, so they'll be bright together, keeping everybody else out. When Yi Yang challenged Shi Yan over Shu Yi, Shi Yan told him Shu Yi is not a bargaining chip and he will let her choose. (my heart is melting! these scenes remind me why I keep rewatching this drama 🥰)

Yup, the challenge in the three-body problem is the near impossibility of predicting the pattern of the movements of the three bodies against each other and the planet, Which is why my solution is to deal with the problem outside the box. Instead of trying to predict the pattern of movements, why not try to deal with the bodies separately? During stable eras, aren't the locations of the bodies stable relative to the planet? Can't the Trisolarians then say, place monitors on the bodies, so they can be warned when a body is coming their way next time and try to knock it out of the way? Of course, this can lead to Trisolaris encountering a chaotic era instantly, but they go through chaotic eras anyway outside their control. Entering a chaotic era while experimening ways to fix the problem is infinitely more productive and within their control.

Not just you, for a lot of viewers too. One good thing about Shanshan though, she and Shu Yi really care about each other. Before Shu Yi found her romantic heart, their friendship shows that self-centered Shu Yi, who was a coldhearted girlfriend to her first boyfriend, is actually capable of genuinely loving another person, not just her parents. Shu Yi's good heart is also shown in how she never blamed Shanshan for the many stupid advice the latter gave that almost cost her the love of her life. In the end, Shu Yi took reponsibility for her actions. This sense of accountability plus a forgiving nature promise a happy married life for her.