Olive4213

Since human beings are, like every other member in the animal kingdom, descendants of other human beings, one after the other after the other--for millennia--we all have relatives who came before us who were deficient in some way. Some of us even have ancestors who were monsters. (I watched a documentary, recently, produced by the granddaughter of one of America's most notorious (now dead) criminals, where she talks about the agony of being his granddaughter--the confusion and terror she experiences because she carries his genes.) This is what it would be like if your great, great grandfather was a Nazi, or a slave trader--or George Washington. You, their descendant, have nothing to do with their awfulness or their greatness.

Shaming (or praising) people for who their grandparents are, or what they might have done, is ignorant nonsense.

Finishing my 3rd rewatch of this show, and it won't be the last time I watch it. I love it every time. It's measured, moody and dark and under the surface, there's a lot--I mean A LOT going on. Every time I watch it, I find new things to hate about Lee Seo Yeon, the ML's ex-wife: a terrifyingly manipulative, sadistic, yet disturbingly detached woman who stays alive by torturing her husband (now ex-husband). Every person in the show is damaged in some way.

The story isn't told in a linear way, and I think it's unnecessarily confusing. It shouldn't take a 2nd or even a 3rd viewing before you figure out what the heck is going on. (Maybe that's just me being slow, though.)

(The name of the main music track is "Milonga with Lover". It's beautiful. Look for it on YT.)

I like this and will probably finish it (finishing dramas is getting harder and harder to do because they're all becoming so similar and mediocre) but is anyone else noticing that hairpins, hair jewelry and wigs are getting out of hand--especially the hairpins that hang out and seem to defy gravity? It's becoming so distracting . . . must be a nightmare for hairdressers to install on actors' heads--to say nothing of how awful it must be to wear them.

Please put this under the spoiler tag.

Thippy, the proprietor of that website, is a treasure and one of the very, very few Thai subbers still providing translations of Thai content. Let us please, please, protect her by putting the URL of her website under the spoiler tag.

Never mind. I looked it up. Yeah, I don't want any of that, either.

The heck is "aura farming"?

You're right, but the whole "bread and circuses" thing is not unique to China. Every country's government--some more so than others, of course--tries to distract its citizens from paying attention to what they're doing. This has been going on since ancient times. The trick is, the government gets its citizens to cry over or fight about meaningless, useless things (in the US, it's "culture" wars, among other things) so they won't notice that their individual rights and personal freedoms are collapsing while the government also empties people's wallets.

Yes. Always styled like this.

I'ma try to keep watching this, but the FL's big, red lips keep distracting the hell out of me. Even when she's half drowned and then pulled out of the water--eyeliner and red lips still in place. When she talks, nothing on her face moves.

Years ago, say like before 2015--before you were born, we took the word "retarded" out of our vocabulary because we thought this was no way to speak to each other. We were kinder to each other then, and capable of grace.

Well, okay, but I didn't say any of that. He can have any and all political views he wants and he's free to write them somewhere. Other people are free to decide, based on what he writes, that he's a dick. In the US, that's just typical Twitter crap. In S Korea, he can sue. I don't think it's more complicated than that, is it?

I can respect that speech laws vary, depending on country of origin--more strict or less so. South Korea's speech laws are stricter than the United States, although the enforcing of them tends to depend a lot on how much money someone has to go after people who libel them online (or elsewhere, of course).

That said, he's sort of a giant weenie if he uses the law and his money to protect himself from being called out for being a dick.

You can never be sure why a character is wearing something--you have to consider the stylist (and whatever bribes the stylist may have taken), the producer(s), the director, the budget, and other factors that may not be related to the character, the story or anything else. This is true of every drama, not just Cdramas, but especially Cdramas.

This is the silliest non story I think I've ever read. She used a stand-in? For tea drinking scene? How fucking dare she?

It's charming, but her hairstyle is . . . something worse than . . . holy shit, it's really horrible.

So much fun. And so satisfying. I'll wait a bit and then watch the whole thing again.

This is a drama that might have been a favorite re-watch, but it sort of kills itself after the leads get together. I'm at episode 30, and the subplots aren't contributing anything. Every time I que the show up to finish it, I'm like . . . . nah.

Drama is not so much slow as measured, taking its time (perhaps too much of it) to tell a fairly interesting story about an extended family torn apart by an old trauma. And it's also about ink making, which is best understood or appreciated by understanding the importance of the industry in ancient China. Whether or not it delivers on the historicity of the both the industry and the dynastic context is best determined by historians.

Which is my best way to say I can almost forgive the complete--and by complete, I mean absolute zero--absence of chemistry between the leads, who aren't even believable as friends, let alone romantic partners. Their relationship has about as much energy as a flat tire.

No wonder it's been irking me. You're absolutely right.