QueSeraSera

Honestly, same. And the further they went into their relationship, the worse his behaviour got. I would've honestly been happy with the novel ending at Flora exploring new love and growing personally and professionally in another city while Luke is miserable and wallowing in their past while sitting on his high horse.

He did have his moments and he was a great teacher and driving force for Flora but I always felt that his bad always outweighed his good.

In comparison, I am absolutely in love with the drama Luke and honestly, it does feel like a new character sometimes 😅 I feel like everyone loves a messy, arrogant, toxic character until they encounter one in real life

Not really a matter of perspective when Luke quite frequently mused about how Flora isn't as pretty or charming as the other women around him or in his life. He can definitely get better women, but her strange adherence to etiquette, behaving in ways that doesn't fit with this century draws him in so he wants to see how this goes. And this line of thinking is quite frequent especially in the early days when they're together.

They got together in the first place because Flora supposedly forgot the keys to her house but it was actually Luke who hid them to create an opportunity and it was a wild and messy beginning. Not to mention, he's not exactly mindful or soft around her. Once they're playing a game, I think rock paper scissors? can't remember but the winner gets to flick the losers forehead. Luke wins and flicks Flora's forehead so hard she goes blank for a second and it's described as slightly swollen. Not to mention, he quite frequently makes Flora feel degraded and lashes out at her, especially when he feels angry over Flora stepping out of his boundaries.

There were many moments when I personally wanted to get inside the book and kick that guy out of this planet for all that he has put her through.

I mean, there's a reason Flora cried in front of everyone but Luke when they were in a relationship because the first time it happened, he made her feel so small and kinda worthless really that she always held it in around him and only let lose when she was alone or with other people. I'd say a good 30-40% percent of the novel actual explores Luke's side of the story and there's a good chunk of his own internal critique and disbelief over his relationship and behaviour around Flora.

One of the side stories is even dedicated to Luke's parents' story of how they first met, got married, till the time they had Luke. So that does put things more into perspective than the current track. I feel like you should read the book once, it will definitely fill in a lot of gaps and help make more sense of Flora's behaviour.

I'm not talking about Luke being emotionally constipated and expecting Flora to constantly understand him. I'm talking about how they made Luke rude but misunderstood rather than rude and arrogant.

And I literally finished the novel yesterday because I could not understand where Flora was coming from. Because yes, that's her boss, their relationship has a power imbalance and he isn't exactly the brightest bulb when it comes to relationships but apart from the bag-gate, Luke has been pretty consistent in his pursuit and openness about seeing Flora.

And changing characters for adaptation is fine. Happens all the time. However, with the changes in Luke's character, they should've also made Flora a little more verbose and proactive in order to balance the scales.

Because right now, this storyline places Flora in a position where she comes out to be the non-comitmental party while Luke looks like the one doing all the pursuing.

This journey is both Luke's and Flora's because while she gets stronger as the time goes, he gets more vulnerable. But if you don't balance out your characters, the burden of being wrong will always be placed on one, usually the woman, even though it is a culmination of both their mistakes and missed chances.

The comments above are are going off on how they don't understand why Flora is being touchy about going on an expensive vacay and making things difficult for Luke plus it's been all over my tl since ep11 because Luke is simply being emotionally constipated and not able to communicate properly, but they can't understand where Flora's extreme reactions are coming from. This is where the context comes in because they toned down Luke but kept Flora's reactions pretty much the same.

Yo they really whitewashed Luke and basically provided no explanation for the fact that it was he who said no feelings involved, only Fridays and in the beginning she was literally camping out in the guest bedroom and that upped level of awkwardness for Shang Zhitao until she started internalising her feelings.

Not to mention, Luke was wayyy more disparaging of her, which reflected in her view of herself and basically made her passive and non-confrontational in their relationship cauz she basically felt that she wasn't pretty or good enough. By making Luke more lovesick and the whole bouquet thing a misunderstanding, while still keeping the Shang Zhitao feeling like a mess, it feels more like she's overthinking things and basically downplaying her entire turmoil in this entire situation.

Context matters and the people who have not read the novel might not feel like Shang Zhitao is in the right cauz look, it was a misunderstanding, he came back early for her and even declared his relationship status to his friends. Whereas she over thought the whole thing and unilaterally assumed the worst 🙄

I do like that drama Shang Zhitao is more proactive and stands her ground but they should've either had her ask about the flowers, and then when Luke would give his cutting one liner it would give more context to the situation or they should've kept the flowers bit as is i.e. Luke deliberately buying flowers for that lady cauz she asked him to :/

They better not make this into a one-sided thing cauz I can already see the Shang Zhitao hate train coming in from a mile away and it is not fair to my girl 🥺

yeah, that's basically the theme of their relationship in the first half. one is too proud to ask and the other is too passive to demand an answer. they do grow up in their relationship, but it's going to be a painful journey :/

No I haven't 😭😭 Seems to be an original song for the drama or only available on chinese platforms :/

Does anyone know what's the song used in the trailer?? I'm losing my mind over it cauz Shazam just gave up 😭

Gosh it was so long ago but I can still remember the absolute ragebait that the sister was. The bad guy gaslights the sister into essentially throwing her brother under the bus and she's more than happy to help. I think it was actually the FL's brother who was driving but she takes the blame onto herself or something like that. But the brother feels guilty and ends up becoming a monk to atone. So yeah, the FL's family suffers the worst, despite having no fault, and at the end they get a yeah we're sorry and all is well. It was the ML's parents who were indirectly (but I'd say directly) responsible for this whole mess and not a scratch on them. Only redeeming character is the ML's friend who pretends to be his GF but she's really his friend and I'd actually would have loved to see a drama focused on her rather than whatever this was 😅

Ohh really? That's interesting!

Thanks for letting me know ^^

Wait, wasn't this drama based on a novel?

Does anyone have the name of the novel? Or the link?

OMG yasss thank you so much!! I just saw your msg and yes, bilibili gives me trouble too so the Tumblr link is godsent! Now I can finally understand what's going on 🥳

Wait what!!! Do you have the link? I only saw the terrible subs version and it haunts me to this day 😭

Samee l legit couldn't understand some of the middle episodes and had to resort to manually translating the hardcoded Chinese subs in some of the middle episodes 🥲

At least it's available 🥲 are the subs any better tho?

Thanks! Ikr trying to find and episodes and then understand what they were saying was such a task but the 1st episode had me hooked, especially the leads and their interactions 🥵 Hopefully Viki or someone else picks it up with good subs cauz I wouldn't mind a re-watch 😀

It would've been so much better had the Empress Dowager been revealed to have not been the Emperor's bio mom and she wanted to put her own child (maybe the antagonistic brother who is her long lost son swapped for the actual child) but ended up accidentally killing her own daughter. So now she wants revenge for putting her son and daughter in danger... The reveal was so blindsiding even the SIL went oh dang lol But yeah kinda forgot the FL had loose screws and a love for playing dead at the last scene 🤣

Hello, do you upload under a specific channel name on Dailymotion? If so, can you please drop the channel name? The Ko-fi page isn't opening for me and keeps redirecting to the homepage

IKR 🤣🤣 I thought I clicked on the wrong drama for a sec because the whole thing was so random and out of the blue. Not to mention the empress dowager switch was just huh? really? okay moving on lol ngl tho I almost fell for the 2nd omg FL dead scene cauz I was on a random Cdrama sad ending spree and the FL proudly displaying her hu xin was an absolute winning moment for me 😁

Yass unhinged and unbothered my fav combo ^^