Dang, does WHD have that much clout in the industry now - that he can have things added to the script? (I mean…
No, thank you. In order to do that, I would have to state what those negative rumors are.
The people here that know me, know I have zero tolerance for fandom wars. This is a space I use to talk about stories, narratives, characters, themes - and how all of those are conveyed and evolve.
Getting into a discussion about the actors outside of their craft is not an activity I will participate it.
I simply wanted to point out how brilliant it was to confront those rumors using the story-telling of a drama he was in. It really highlights why I value Story so much as a method of communication.
Dang, does WHD have that much clout in the industry now - that he can have things added to the script? (I mean I guess so, since he set a historical record for 33 brand investments before airing). Smart PR move, allowing a shot at his Mandarin pronunciation in the script.
Pretty bold actually - they made his real world persona an embodiment of all the negative rumors and talk that have been circulating around him.
Subtler in it's meta than Romance of Tiger and Rose and Egg and Stone, yet still managing to communicate that subtlety through a towering and unchecked surplus. The story itself can't tell if it is supposed to be a parody or a hard lean into tropes with the excessive budget to back those tropes. There is something delicious about the director deliberately choosing this space.
Never has hyper-melodrama been this perfect. Over-exaggerated. Disgustingly self-involved and it’s addictive. Excess has never been this exhilarating
Fu Zhou’s Escape Hatch/Our Happy Ending Theory (Super Short)
So, Ryan is always adjusting his backpack and playing with his outfit’s chains. At first, I thought this was just character development - to express Mu Sheng’s impatience, aggressiveness and hyper-active mind. But then I realized he is always fiddling with and spinning the Exact. Same. Chain. I can’t recall a time when it is shown in a close-up, so I will be stalking it from now on to see what the charms on it depict. I think that is his way home to the real-world. He plays with it constantly, since he got stuck here 3 years ago and as he slowly lost himself to the role of Mu Sheng and his memory of the real world (Ugh - it is so hard to tell when he is embodying Mu Sheng and when he is Fu Zhou) the habit stayed.
Hi EclecticJello!! Glad to see you again in another drama. I love your theories!
Amy! Hey! How is life? I am not that active this time around, as I am in the middle of another project. I will have to binge to catch up either tomorrow or the day after and jump right to the half-time round-ups.
Historiography Just Got Real Theory (Post Episode 6) (Short)
So, this is the conflation of 3 separate threads of thought:
1. My immediate suspicion of the “history” we were presented of Mu Qingshi defeating the Resentful Woman and “healing the sky with his body” - which feels like such a specific wording, I feel it will have to come into play at some point.
2. My slow dawning realization that the Goddess Mei and the Resentful Woman are one in the same and that history split her in two. (First Mu Sheng thinking that the image of the Goddess Mei looked familiar [one would hope his mother looks familiar] and then Mu Yao saying her story was the only myth or legend he would listen to as a child [Episode 5].)
The Goddess Mei is how humans remember her before she had her heart broken. The Resentful Woman is who they have labeled her (not realizing they are the same person) after Mu Qingshi used her to steal the Mountain and Sea Map and then married another woman. (And remember “after the catastrophe people feared demons,” which means before it, they did not.) The same narrative, but collective memory split the Before and After into different identities.
Once upon a time, she loved love. She wanted it for all people. And when her chance for it came, she took it with an open heart. One is not born a Resentful Woman. One becomes a Resentful Woman.
And a Resentful Woman she will stay (for now?). She has never been given a chance to heal. Day in and day out, the world comes to her in their prayers, asking her to bless their marriages. Imagine what 900 years of being asked to swallow your feelings and celebrate what you no longer trust in can do to a person. Could she even leave her bitterness if she tried? It is ingrained now.
3. In Episode, 6 Liu Fuyi’s master sends him a return origami bird with a message to stay with the Mu siblings, despite the Mountain and Sea Map being destroyed. The voice is a man’s voice.
And if humans were able to turn the Goddess Mei into the Resentful Woman in their minds, who is to say they couldn’t turn a 9th Level demon into a folk hero whose descendents are revered in their minds?
Someone like, say - Mu Qingshi?
(On a fun side note: This means Mu Sheng’s mother has blessed his relationship with Ling Miao Miao, as they released a lantern to her at the festival)
1 
The people here that know me, know I have zero tolerance for fandom wars. This is a space I use to talk about stories, narratives, characters, themes - and how all of those are conveyed and evolve.
Getting into a discussion about the actors outside of their craft is not an activity I will participate it.
I simply wanted to point out how brilliant it was to confront those rumors using the story-telling of a drama he was in. It really highlights why I value Story so much as a method of communication.
Pretty bold actually - they made his real world persona an embodiment of all the negative rumors and talk that have been circulating around him.
Never has hyper-melodrama been this perfect. Over-exaggerated. Disgustingly self-involved and it’s addictive. Excess has never been this exhilarating
I can’t recall a time when it is shown in a close-up, so I will be stalking it from now on to see what the charms on it depict. I think that is his way home to the real-world. He plays with it constantly, since he got stuck here 3 years ago and as he slowly lost himself to the role of Mu Sheng and his memory of the real world (Ugh - it is so hard to tell when he is embodying Mu Sheng and when he is Fu Zhou) the habit stayed.
I am not that active this time around, as I am in the middle of another project. I will have to binge to catch up either tomorrow or the day after and jump right to the half-time round-ups.
1. My immediate suspicion of the “history” we were presented of Mu Qingshi defeating the Resentful Woman and “healing the sky with his body” - which feels like such a specific wording, I feel it will have to come into play at some point.
2. My slow dawning realization that the Goddess Mei and the Resentful Woman are one in the same and that history split her in two. (First Mu Sheng thinking that the image of the Goddess Mei looked familiar [one would hope his mother looks familiar] and then Mu Yao saying her story was the only myth or legend he would listen to as a child [Episode 5].)
The Goddess Mei is how humans remember her before she had her heart broken. The Resentful Woman is who they have labeled her (not realizing they are the same person) after Mu Qingshi used her to steal the Mountain and Sea Map and then married another woman. (And remember “after the catastrophe people feared demons,” which means before it, they did not.) The same narrative, but collective memory split the Before and After into different identities.
Once upon a time, she loved love. She wanted it for all people. And when her chance for it came, she took it with an open heart. One is not born a Resentful Woman. One becomes a Resentful Woman.
And a Resentful Woman she will stay (for now?). She has never been given a chance to heal. Day in and day out, the world comes to her in their prayers, asking her to bless their marriages. Imagine what 900 years of being asked to swallow your feelings and celebrate what you no longer trust in can do to a person. Could she even leave her bitterness if she tried? It is ingrained now.
3. In Episode, 6 Liu Fuyi’s master sends him a return origami bird with a message to stay with the Mu siblings, despite the Mountain and Sea Map being destroyed. The voice is a man’s voice.
And if humans were able to turn the Goddess Mei into the Resentful Woman in their minds, who is to say they couldn’t turn a 9th Level demon into a folk hero whose descendents are revered in their minds?
Someone like, say - Mu Qingshi?
(On a fun side note: This means Mu Sheng’s mother has blessed his relationship with Ling Miao Miao, as they released a lantern to her at the festival)