Acrobit12

My money is on the FL's master

I read the last chapter of the novel to decide whether to continue because for the most part I don't do bad endings. The novel is HE, at least for the main couple.

This is interesting enough so far and at least the young people are being played by young people. We will see what develops.

That ending was just perfect. I raised my rating half a point for that alone.

Legend of Hao Lan, stupid autocorrect

I might do that but the problem with old stuff is that I tend to get sucked in but have too much going on IRL and then my sleep suffers. But I might bite the bullet and start a long historical that I wanted to check out for a while like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Legend of Halo Lan.

The ML isn't necessary always "gentle" person but he has no martial arts and has to survive through his intelligence, while the FL is a martial artist. Plus Chen Xiao is the ML and he never disappoints in historical dramas.

The Ingenious One.

I will reserve judgement until this is done but right now I am watching because right now besides this and How Dare You!? there isn't anything else.

Well, propaganda in the arts is nothing new. Historically, most of great art is propaganda of some sort (at least it's one way of looking at it ;)). But the level of propaganda at the end of this drama was a bit too obvious for my taste. Which detracts not a bit from the great work of the creative team and the actors and the amount of new knowledge I have gained.

I would even go as far as saying I wish they had younger actors to play all tree mains and kept them around for a while longer. But it is what it is.

I certainly don't disagree with you there.

To be fair, it's not just the Chinese. There is a famous joke that to play Romeo, who was 14, you have to have at least 30 years of acting experience :).

I also felt the whole unity message was a bit over hammered and unnecessary. It obviously had an "angle". But I come from a background where historical dramas were often used for propaganda purposes so I tend to be sensitive to things like that.

It's been a really long time since I have seen a historical epic like this one. I have learned so much. Thank you to @PeachBlossomGoddess, @Salwa Nice and those who provided the information along the way. The cast was amazing, especially the veteran actors and the mains once they didn't have to pretend to be teenagers anymore.

How is it possible that people haven't heard about it? It's been all over the news here in the US for years? You are either interested in what goes on in the world or you are not.

Thank you, so interesting!

It almost looks like they ran out of $ for battle scenes at this point so they have to give us more fictional political plotting. I actually want more battle scenes, they are really well done here! The catapults are awesome.

I mean Taizhen wasn't his one true love. Sorry, I am an idiot, I just realized you meant the Song emperor, not his wife, the names sound too similar 😄! Yeah, statesmanship is all work and no play.

I assume the 14 kids weren't all hers and she was not his one true love like the drama shows. At least not according to Wikipedia. And people at the time didn't think in those terms anyway (hell, most people still don't think in these terms).