nycfoodie

The Starry Love, but the romances (the primary & second couple get comparable time & billing) are expressed differently.

Already, eh?

This time you'll likely observe things that you may have missed or didn't make much sense the first time around.

Others will recommend more popular xianxia such as Love Between Fairy and Devil. So I'm going to offer a more hidden gem: The Starry Love.

Be patient and try & see at least 2 or 3 episodes before you make any judgment. The more you watch, the more you'll be pleasantly surprised by unexpected turns of events & character developments.

No worries, you weren't being rude. I wasn't insulted. I was just stating why I misinterpreted what you were saying originally.

As for your issue with the endings, I could suggest skipping them from now on. Easier said than done. Because by then, you've already invested too much to move on without knowing what finally happened.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

The part where you're (unnecessarily) shouting: "IS THIS A HAPPY ENDING? NO." kind of threw me off.

When you scream like that, people will tend to focus on your screaming and tune out the rest of what you're saying.

At the end of the day, aren't you contradicting yourself? On one hand, you assert that "china's [sic] regulations need to change or they will never make masterpieces cz of botched endings." But on the other, you suggest that "an extra episode for [explanation] would be a nice touch and it wouldn't be against their regulations."

So which is it? Both cannot be true.

If the former were true and that without "de-regulation," the ending could never be logically sound, then the latter which offers a quick & easy way to follow regulations & preserve the logical integrity of the ending is a nonsensical solution.

In turn, if the latter were true and there was a way to get around the regulations and still come up with endings that make logical sense, you just negated your former claim that China's regulations "NEED [my emphasis] to change."

Talk about being unreasonable & making no sense.

1) China has logical rationale behind their regulations;

2) China has already has made, is making & will continue to make masterpieces;

3) Unless you are a Chinese citizen or a member of the Chinese diaspora, you aren't a part of either the core or the secondary target audiences, which would make you & your opinions completely irrelevant to the C-ent industry;

4) If "happy" endings were necessary (& sufficient) prerequisites for masterpiece status, kindly explain ancient Greek tragedies, Shakespearean tragedies (such as Romeo and Juliet), Victorian Gothic Era literature/period pieces, 19th Russian epics (such as Dostoyevsky & Tolstoy);

5) Last but not least, the C-ent industry preference for open endings is more historically & culturally (as opposed to politically) based due to the Chinese (Buddhist & Taoist- influenced) traditional belief in the duality of nature, life & reality itself. That there exists no happiness without sadness (& vice versa), that only by embracing & enduring life as a series of never-ending cycles of pain & suffering can one attain true meaning, value & fulfillment (this is not necessarily "happiness," which suggests an hedonistic element). Hence the saying "Eat Bitterness," for better or for worse.


If you still stubbornly insist on "happy" endings with unicorns, rainbows & ice cream with sprinkles on top, try My Little Pony or Hello Kitty or Barney the Purple Dinosaur for your entertainment viewing pleasure. Speaking of "purple," BTS will do as well.

What is 19 years out of infinity?

Imagine 19 seconds of your life, and even then, it's still too much because any amount of time in infinite time is infinitesimally small.

Oh, I see.

Though "toxic" seems overly harsh to describe someone who's struggling with unresolved emotional issues.

By "toxic," do you mean in terms of contemporary Western liberal definitions of "toxic masculinity?"

Or something more real & literal such as the toxicity of India's "sacred" Ganges/Yamuna Rivers due to industrial sewage & human waste (public & open defecation)?

Depends.

If you have good taste, it's good.
If you have bad taste, it's not.

Or you could try figuring it out for yourself. But then again, you wouldn't have asked if you could figure things out for yourself, so let me kindly help you out.

1) Look at the MDL overall rating (est. time: 0.2-0.3 secs)

2) Read 2 or 3 MDL representative reviews (est. time: 2 to 3 mins)

3) Consult authoritative sources re: aesthetic taste in general (est. time: 2 to 3 days)

My suggestions include a) Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste; b) Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (esp Part 1 which analyzes aesthetics in particular); c) Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

For more holistic & relevant treatments of the subject, read Laozi's Tao Te Ching and Zhuang Zhou's Zhuangzi.

First of all, I never even gave my personal opinion about lotfg or abcdefg or any other acronyms that end with "fg."

Last of all, what part of "the only C-drama reviews I trust are my very own" do you need me to explain to you again?

I was just kidding around. Obviously, dramas cannot review fans.

But since you brought it up, so what if you work at MDL's NYC headquarters?


I grew up & currently live in NYC and had no idea MDL even existed until a year or two ago and didn't know it even had a physical location in NYC (or at all) until a minute or two ago.

And what makes you qualified to work at MDL as "certified" reviewer? Do you have to take the CDRAMAT & enroll in Graduate School of Cdrama Arts & Sciences or something?

Last but not least, the only C-drama reviews I trust are my very own, and even so, only with a grain of salt...

But does lotfg say @carstel's romance is "mehh" (the additional "h" is a nice touch) at best? And what about abcdefg? What does abcdefg say about @carstel's romance?

It's okay to come up with your own opinions. It's not so okay to come up with your own definitions & randomly redefine terms to better spin your narrative

Anything "not top tier" is "meh," huh?

Are you a jet-setting billionaire? A Nobel Laureate or Fields Medalist? An Olympian or world-class athlete? An international celebrity "idol," perhaps?

Or are you "meh at best?"

How exactly would MDL "ensure" (let alone enforce) these policies?

If a MDL viewer claims s/he's watched at least half of this or that drama, did s/he or didn't s/he?

What counts as "watching?" Does playing the drama @1.5X speed count as watching? 2X speed? 3X?

Is fast-forwarding or skipping parts allowed? What if the viewer were dozing off or multitasking? Does s/he have to rewatch?

Should all reviews carry equal weight? Should reviews based on watching 50% of a drama carry as much as those based on 75% or 100%? Should the reviews of viewers who've watched 2 or 3 dramas in their
lives carry as much weight as those who've watched 20 or 30, even 200 or 300 dramas?

Speaking specifically of C-dramas, should the reviews of those who know little or no Chinese language, history, culture & customs, etc. count as much as those coming from a native Chinese, Chinese diaspora member, or Chinese expert?

Should the C-drama reviews of K-drama/K-pop migrants (& other assorted "koreaboos") matter as much or at all, given their possible (conscious & unconscious), more Western & Westernized, Netflix-oriented biases against Chinese language, cultural beliefs, customs & way of life? Reflected upon what they see as an antagonistic geo-political system & society? Via the focus of government "censorship?"

I'm only scratching the surface here. But in light of these things, any & all opinion ratings (including MDL's) are inherently & indubitably biased. This built-in flaw is a feature, not a bug.

"Fake baby voice," huh?

Do you mean something like the Western (especially American) phenomenon of "uptalking?" This occurs when the "uptalker" makes statements as if he/she/they were asking questions (usually by raising the pitch of the last syllables of those statements), so they basically sound like 10 or 12 year-old California "Valley" girls.

Western (cis) women and LGBTQIA+ community members frequently do this. Even professionals in professional settings. Are these highly educated, affluent, powerful & privileged Western women or gay men (among others) BY DEFINITION incapable & incapacitated from being & becoming "strong and motivated" leaders?

Yes or no? Why or why not?

For everyone's sake, I hope you keep it!

Oh, I see.

Maybe, try seeing each & every episode for what it is, in & of itself. If & when you reach the point at which you no longer find it worth your while, you'd save yourself not only a lot of time, but also from a lot of disappointment.

"Disappointing" is a relative, not absolute term. Something is disappointing or not disappointing only relative to your anticipations & expectations.

Try to see things (not necessarily talking about this drama in particular) with an open mind & heart w/o preconceived notions & emotions. You'd be pleasantly surprised to see your prior disappointment magically disappear! You may still not love, or even like what you see, but you definitely won't be disappointed by it.

It's a very polarizing drama, mostly due to differential expectations, especially between those from two opposing camps (those novel readers that expected a more literal adaptation vs those who didn't either read the novel or particularly how about how it was adapted).


I 'm guessing about one-third of fans love the drama with most of the two-thirds having mixed feelings about it & the rest absolutely hating it.

So you have a relatively high rating, with a bunch of "mid" reviews.


Neither general ratings nor general reviews (no pun intended) should mean much for you individually.

See for yourself & come up with your own personal ratings & reviews.

The romance is too much for the critics, but not enough for the admirers.

I could take or leave romance, but I still got something out of the drama because I tried to see it for what it is instead of what I wish & expect it to be.