AyeshianD

Who is Zhuge Liang?

The princess royale's final arc - The princess and strategist had already agreed to marry between themselves, they just needed everyone else's buy-in.
By being the only one willing to save her, and doing it publicly in that manner, her mom was bought in.
Her Emperor brother becomes irrelevant so his buy in isn't needed.
Her prior engagement ends with the Li family's treason.
Then the strategist was left alone with the princess in her room while in the palace, somewhat undressed (fewer layers since she's in bed recovering), and he's declaring everyone else was dismissed, he'll care for her himself going forward.... this is an impossible breech of propriety without the critical life saving element of the fire/cpr scenario. It would only happen if he had been accepted by the royals as her future prince consort.

Someone else recommended it too... Is it a HE or a forever yearning story?
I can't tell from the MDL bio...

Exciting, I haven’t seen some of these 😁 thanks for the recs!
Love between lines & my page in the 90s I saw this year.
I plan to see a journey to love soon, and I’ll look up the rest.

😅 people feel too strongly on here… it’s like they can’t understand that we all won’t have the exact same experience since we have unique preferences.
Nothing about discussing shows should ever be serious enough for attacks… on the show or its viewers.🙄

I hope the experience didn’t taint WIFTY for you… even if it ends up not being a top ranker, I don’t think it would be a complete waste of your time. The main CP are still entertaining

I decided on benefit of the doubt and asked what was interesting because I really hope that’s not where their comment was coming from… would have made more sense for them to scroll on by than to be ridiculously narrow minded in a response to me, the obvious watcher of any romance.

Even if I could claim that half the shows I’ve watched are BL, it still wouldn’t be relevant to my thoughts on PoJ… so there must be something else that’s interesting…

My top two spots are still occupied by You Are My Glory and WIFTY… with how much I love them, I look forward to a drama that can challenge them!

I really enjoyed Hidden Love, it’s on my faves list too… though devotion that has a HS girl boarding a flight and making up scary stories about a potential predatory bf when she arrives… she was soooo far gone 😅. But I love that she wasn’t a romantic thought to him till she at least aged up.

If you like the far gone/ deeply devoted girl trope, you’ll enjoy WIFTY… feelings are reciprocated sooner, plus there isn’t an underlying tension of “jailbait” if she makes it obvious before being an adult. The ML doesn’t have a backstory as rough as HA’s, but there’s still enough to make you root for him. I’d love to hear what you think after rewatching 🙂.

I’ve seen Lighter Princess as well…struggling to remember it now though….Thanks for the recs!

Yes to The Double, which I liked. I rank it at a similar level to Princess Royale and Prisoner of Beauty. Blossom still overshadows them to me.

I started New Life Begins this year, but paused because I’m currently taken with the female generals trope for costume dramas. I’ll get back to it after I finish Legend of Female General and Shadow Love.

I forgot about Story of Kunning Palace actually… haven’t seen it. I was watching the other Bai Lu modern drama that aired around the same time. Is it focused on harem drama? I generally prefer FLs outside the palace…

Thanks for sharing more about it, I may be able to handle it after watching a bunch of fluff (I tend to look for something with more depth). I’ll give it a try 🙂

Yes to First Frost & Shine On Me (both really good), nervous about Light Beyond the Reed - the focal topic is so heavy to me, I may end up even more stressed... think it may be on my undecided list.

😂 fair question! Not as much as I should 😫.
I've been watching for years though. I was keeping track on Excel before I decided to start an MDL account instead.
I have a high pressure job and use dramas to de-stress (watching, listening & reading subtitles makes it impossible to also think about work). Thus far it works better than traditional therapy! 😜

What's the interesting part?

"Half" depends on which list you're looking at... the one with just the most recently updated 10 items, or the "currently watching" or "watched" lists... I can't claim to have watched >100 BLs yet, so trending under 20%.

If you're open to the genre, there are some really good shows there too - Let Free the Curse of Taekwando made my 10/10 list. There are a few others that are between 9.5 and 8.5/10 to me:
Korean - The Eighth Sense, Time of Fever, Love for Love’s Sake
Chinese / Taiwanese - Stay With Me, Unknown, Kill to Love
Japanese - School Trip: Joined a Group I’m not Close To, Our Youth, Eternal Yesterday
Thai - Only 12%, Not Me, I Told Sunset About You & I Promised You the Moon

Let me caveat by saying I'm a romance junkie, which may be why I enjoyed PoJ so much; they didn't loose sight of the romance while still giving the characters depth and purpose outside of romantic love. Other 10s on my list:

1) When I Fly Towards You

2) You are My Glory

3) Lovely Runner

4) Let Free the Curse of Taekwando

For costume dramas: Blossom, Fated Hearts, Perfect Match, Love like the Galaxy are my next highest ranked - 9/10.

Do you have any recs?

🤣🤣🤣

Of the 584 shows I've watched, Pursuit of Jade is the 5th to get a 10/10 rating from me.
I do think production should have included the extended version of the post-bath scene in the official airing. I saw it on twitter, it was chef's kiss! Even without it, fabulously done!

Seriously, this was a wonderful experience. Laughed, cried, swooned, vexed, rolled my eyes, sneered... every reaction with this one. It wasn't too much of anything and it delivered everything... family/friendships, romance, action, investigative mystery, toxicity... the reality that extreme circumstances outside your control can trigger anyone's villain arch. Also, the real culprits don't always feel the consequences of their actions to our satisfaction. But sometimes, they do (Song Yan 😜).

I've seen dialogue questioning the positioning of the ML and downgrading the later half of the story. I don't agree with the criticism (clearly). We saw Changyu's progression arc to conclusion. The same can be said for the ML, we got to see different sides of him, without the story becoming just about him. Personally, I didn't need more episodes to flesh the story out, or to even deliver more romance, I was well fed.

Secondary characters delivered yearning/toxicity/idiocy/manipulation so well. Even the kids were delightful! I'm so glad they have eachother to process everything they went through...

I rarely watch shows while they're airing, but I was getting too many spoilers to keep waiting, so I binged up to ep28, then watched the rest as it aired (first on Netflix, then on iQiyi to finish up). The conclusion was so well wrapped up that i can't even say i have regrets about it ending. I enjoyed my time in their world, and there's nothing else to show/tell me really... the alternate concept was already greedy.

I can only hope I get to experience another 10/10 series.

EP 9 - I burst out laughing at the last shot of Duang's face. After how emotionally charged the scenes leading up had been, his joy at the issued challenge... 😂😂.
These boys are too cute.
The actors have done a convincing job with these characters.

This may be a generational gap, because long before prompts, my generation would write discredit, credit sentences, so i would never automatically attribute "that's not X, that's Y" phrasing to AI... if anything, AI learned to position things that way by studying our writting patterns. If that was your tell, the immediate assumption that it must be AI is misplaced. If anything it's indicative of not being present prior to easily accessible internet.

This drama is so good I binged 28 episodes in 3 days. Considering real life responsibilities, it means I'm severely sleep deprived. Now that I've watched ep 29 and 30, I don't know what to do with myself until tomorrow... perhaps catch up on the aforementioned responsibilities... but i feel like i need something fluffy to drag myself out of the story...
This is why i don't like watching whil it's airing. I get too preoccupied when the story is good 😫

I dont think I've ever cared less about a second couple...

1) there’s no getting together while they’re in school. They’re students for 29 of the 30 episodes.
2) no breakups
3) not really since there’s no actual dating going on, but it seems that way for some of it, then you realize it’s just a new friendship, not a love interest
4) no, actually there’s a tragedy
5) no
6) no

I laughed, I smiled, I cried desperately. What a ride!