seasofflames

There's only 10 episodes total. When the episodes delayed was happening, for some reason MDL pushed it up to 12 episodes. The finale aired on Feb 1, 2025.

the first attack happens end of ep 20 (cliffhanger meeting) into ep 21 first 10 or so minutes. it has lasting character development consequences. It was used against her/ she was reattacked by different person, /set up end of 22 into 23 so that she'd killed her attempted attacker #2.

It's so interesting though that that line from Xijun can cause such big discussion or hate towards her when pretty much the next ep, it was a non issue, both with no one really drawing any attention to it and the team continue with their discussion and speculation and both LLF and SWM deciding that none of the ppl in the group can be considered LY's murderers. Maybe it just didn't make that big of an impact for me because I just continued on to the next episode and didn't have to wait or be on a cliffhanger lol.

It isn't forever good bye between Li Wu and Shu Tang. Before she left, she did say she has things she wants to do and she'll be back when she's done them. Which I think is also a fitting part for Shu Tang's story as well since for the past 11 or so years, she's lived on someone's term and following other people's orders with thoughts on only finding her sister and revenge for her father. Now she's free, paid her debt to Li Dong Fang as well. And being just a simple housewife also isn't something that's natural or satisfying for her at the moment. might change when she's finished seeing the world, who knows.

Heroes (2022) https://mydramalist.com/67855-say-hero-who-is-hero

Overall, I really enjoyed the drama. The plot, the aesthetics, the acting, and characters. A few things about its conclusion though. Some of the dissatisfactory reviews that I’ve seen was on the truth about Lan Jue's father & Moluo Village being covered up in the end and how even straight-laced Zhang Ping bended to hide the real truth with a few believing it contradicted the core theme of the drama and made the main leads seemed out of character. However, while it was a little disappointment to not see the Dowager Empress be explicitly tied to any of the crimes she committed and Lan Jue’s father and Moluo Village to be explicitly cleared of the crimes they were accused of on-screen, Lan Jue and Zhang Ping’s actions made sense. They were never going to support Gu Qing Zhang’s plan for revenge the way that he did it. Perhaps if he had come to them a year previously, near the start of the drama then he might have gotten a Lan Jue who had been willing to do anything to clear his father’s name on board, at least the reveal the truth part, but the moment he mentioned anything about inciting chaos that would lead the the deaths of who knows how many innocent people, Gu Qing Zhang would still have lost them like he did at the end of the drama.

Additionally, Zhang Ping and Lan Jue’s final decision didn’t come out of nowhere. At the beginning we get Zhang Ping who is all about figuring out the truth and then *revealing * the truth no matter where or when, no matter who gets hurt from it. And he's told that by multiple people multiple times. Zhang Ping's journey is just as much about learning that the world is not all black and white, clean and simple like in his stories as it is about his original goal of pursuing the truth. In the end Zhang Ping still got to the truth of what happened in the past, but he's also learned to see the potential collateral damage, beyond just the present moment.

As for Lan Jue, at the beginning we have a character who is willing to do whatever it takes to clear his father's name. He's made some questionable choices that went against his morals and the teachings of his father & teacher, and bending the rules was acceptable. In the end, Lan Jue still got his goal of learning the real truth about his father and prove at least to himself that his father wasn't a traitor. But just like Zhang Ping, he also learned to consider the collateral damage and not sacrifice innocent people in the pursuit of his /justice/ revenge, and he definitely struggled with this throughout the drama - his unhinged episodes where he really made an attempt to sacrifice Zhang Ping and when Gu Qing Zhang first made his offer for Lan Jue to join him before Lan Jue had his nightmare about his father reminding him to not abandon his teachings. (side note, the fact that Lan Jue is such a well-done flawed character where we saw him willing to go dark and against his morals to accomplish his goal to clear his father’s name before that when he sided with Gu Qing Zhang over Zhang Ping after the stabbing of the “empress,” there were definitely a moment of uncertainty of “is this really happening” that kept me on the edge of my seat!)

By the end, both Zhang Ping and Lan Jue learned the truth about their families' past that they've been seeking, but they also didn't let the past buried them the way that Gu Qing Zhang did. Just like the lesson that Zhang Ping's Sifu was trying to impart on him when he went home following the episode 15 fallout with Lan Jue, a lesson which Zhang Ping also verbally confirmed to his Sifu that he understood. They learned to make peace with the past and live for the present and the future. Which you know, to live for the future, you want to make sure there is a future to live for, so ensuring that the world doesn't go into chaos with the indiscriminate deaths of innocents, what Gu Qing Zhang's plan would resulted in. So there was a natural progression to Lan Jue’s and Zhang Ping’s final decision to not reveal the truth from 30 years ago about the switched princes because of the harm it would do to all the innocent people who had nothing to do with the situation. And before all the hate for them being out of character can start, we’ve seen this course of action before too, where the version of the truth Lan Jue and Zhang Ping told to outsiders didn’t quite match up to the actual truth that they discovered.

From the very first case with the murder of the dancer, the version of the truth that everyone knew about and was officially accepted by the higher ups in-verse was that it was done by the pipa player mistress of Lan Jue’s political rival. Lan Jue and Zhang Ping, and in turn the audience, figured out who the actual real murderer was and she got her own punishment for her crime, but it was never officially redressed in-verse to anyone else because if that version of the truth had been revealed, Lan Jue’s political rival who he had implicated in that case would have been released and would been a reoccurring challenge for our main leads the rest of the drama, but that didn’t happen. We also saw it with the case of the stolen phoenix head. We and Lan Jue & Zhang Ping figured out the actual truth of who stole the head and why, but story that was revealed and accepted was that the phoenix head flew away on its own and found by the Emperor, no one stole it, hard to believe but accepted. It wasn’t a surprise one-time course of action at the end where the story told didn’t match the exact truth.

Additionally, there was some of the gripe from people who didn’t like the fact that the nonroyal blood emperor remained on the throne. So you want the mass murderer on the throne? Who only intends to abdicate once he's crowned to create even more chaos for the common people? Over the "imposter" who has shown to care for the wellbeing of the common people, who when confronted with the possibility that he wasn't of royal blood said it doesn't matter, it was still his duty to do good for his fellow countrymen, whether he was the emperor or a commoner? Who is more worthy to be a leader of the country goes beyond just having royal blood, especially when the Emperor Wang Xuan himself was an innocent party in all of this as well. Baby Wang Xuan didn’t ask to be involved in all this baby switching business only to grow up in the company of an emotionally neglectful mother, yet he still turned out to be a good person who cares for others

Yes, I do wished the Dowager Empress's crimes were revealed and Lan Jue's father & Moluo Village's crimes were more explicitly cleared, but not so the whole world could go into chaos. While it wasn't done in the same vein that Gu Qing Zhang wanted, we DO get that the crimes against Lan Jue's father were cleared from the brief comments between Lan Jue and Xu Dong. And if Lan Jue's father was no longer labeled a traitor, it certainly isn't a stretch to think that Zhang Ping's Emperor bestie wouldn't have also cleared and gotten justice for Moluo Village without the Dowager Empress there anymore trying to oppose everything the Emperor did. And I felt like they did leave a hint of this possibility of revealing the truth about happened 20 years ago without the need to reveal the switched princes situation of 30 years ago. Like a reference to if Lan Jue's father wasn't the original traitor who leaked military secrets 20 years ago, then that leaker was probably the Dowager Empress. So they still could have gotten her on that for the reason why she wanted Lan Jue's father and the villagers of Moluo killed.

So while yes, the drama could have use some more time to develop and flesh out some plot points so that they're not just alluded to, it certainly wasn't "a mockery of justice” that some viewers are getting their pitchforks out over. And it definitely wouldn’t have made sense for Lan Jue to side with Gu Qing Zhang and for Gu Qing Zhang to have gotten what he wanted when a part of what he wanted was the indiscriminate murder of innocent people in the chaos that he fully intended on carrying out, even without the poisonous red mist bit. I know that Gu Qing Zhang is a complicated, tragic character and Wang Duo did a great job portraying him and his unhinged sad tragedy, but doesn’t mean that he was going to get what he wanted nor should he. The fact that he murdered so many people whether directly or through manipulating others to carry out the act BEFORE the red mist finale meant that it was a very low chance he was going to make it out of drama alive, much less with what he wanted.

Just a note on timeline, Gu Qing Zhang didn't spend over a decade as Lan Jue's very close friend. They were close friends for maybe 1 year a decade ago before Gu Qing Zhang disappeared from Lan Jue's life after drinking the poisoned wine.

He has been acting in movies. He's been in at least 17 released movies from the time when this drama aired to date. So if you want your Eddie Peng fix, you have to watch movies, not dramas.

Since he said "[his] pride made him misunderstood [Ryeon] and did those foolish things", I took it to mean that when Joong Gil found out she had committed suicide, before he knew who Ryeon was to him, his pride was hurt thinking that she'd worked with him closely all those years and managed to fool him. I mean he said as much when he confronted her, saying that she lied to him. And the "foolish things" he did was used the Reaper's Guaranteed to prevent her from saving Choi Hiu. So Joong Gil saving Ryeon from Mr. Ha was him swallowing his pride and misplaced anger at Ryeon to right his wrong so to speak.

There are like general case and plot conflicts that are fine. There are some love squares happening. At the beginning to about mid, our ML and FL are not together or even pursuing each other even though maybe about a 3rd of the way in, it's obvious the ML has developed feelings for the FL. FL was pursuing & with SML until about ep 18-20 out of 34. Then after that, we have a fake relationship btw the ML & FL that of course becomes more. After the break up, SML still pines after FL and through all this, the FL's sister is pining and after the SML. Oh and ML has a character that likes him but he very clearly rejects her.
And trigger warning for rape as plot devices, both male toward female character and a female towards male character. Again this link as good recaps for each episode of you want to be spoiled. https://cyn-lynn.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-autumn-ballad-recap-and-review.html

oh i know, I finished the whole drama. Thank you your thoughtfulness.
But drama-wise it was just really stupid to create unnecessary conflict in the last 20 minutes to separate them.

I know right! It was so stupid. Either they end the drama 20 min early and everyone is happy and dandy, even Liang Yi's mom. Or have Qiu Yan tell Liang Yi the truth and be with him when he's jobless, motherless, fatherless, and friendless, instead of leave him all by himself to deal with all of that.

absolutely! This is blog gives a really good recap for each episode https://cyn-lynn.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-autumn-ballad-recap-and-review.html

The last 20 minutes of the drama was one of the most stupidest thing I've ever watched and why I ended up giving it 7.5 instead of something higher.

Ruby Lin & Wallace Huo also acted together in Qing Shi Huang Fei in 2011 if you haven't seen that yet.

Ruby Lin & Wallace Huo also acted together in Qing Shi Huang Fei in 2011 if you haven't seen that yet.

Thank you for your reply! I finished the drama 2-3 days ago. Yes, fortunately it only lasted from end of 31 to 34, but so unnecessary. I felt like they should have brought Xing Ke Yao in from the start to deal with the sisters or just skipped it all together to spend more time on the issues that needed more time in the last 2 episodes instead. Again, thanks for your reply!

I came back to You Are My City and Fortress for the cuteness after yesterday’s heavy D.P Dog Day, not to be dragged into a weird scheme by the two new characters popping in trying to break up the main couple and scam Xing Ke Lei for emotion and money. LMAO the older sister thinking Mi Ka probably won’t have a smooth journey as Xing Ke Lei’s girlfriend because his older sister is too tough and harsh. Excuse you! That’s just because Xing Ke Yao doesn’t like you. She absolutely adores Mi Ka!

Also, this weird arc has switched me off of You Are My City and Fortress again. Like I know Mi Ka and Xing Ke Yao will be okay because they’re both very emotionally mature and have excellent communication skills, but I’m just not feeling the plot now.

We're heading into the last 9 episodes for the drama so how long does this arc last?

I finished 14 out of 16 episodes of Begin Again 3 and 6 out of 10 episodes of Begin Again 4 so far after watching a YouTube video of Jung Hae In guest starring a few days ago. 😅🙃

Before starting the full episodes, I accidentally read a comment that said that in season 3, the Family Band is better and has better chemistry than the Second Team (Dick2JukPaulTaeng) so I went in a little biased and was looking for the “why" even when I tried not to think about it to give both fair chances.

And after seeing both groups in action, I get the comment. Like when they were interacting just with each other, the Second Team’s chemistry was fine. They got along well with each other and there were good bonding moments all around. But when it came to the performances, that was when their chemistry was lacking.

Similar to how Paul Kim would always introduced them to the audience by saying that individually they are all singers and players and that they were teaming up for one week for the show, their performances emphasized that. They performed fewer group songs and they were a little more focused on the individual.

While with the Family Band, Lena and Henry, when they introduced the group, would just kept it simple by saying that they were singers from South Korea and they were experimenting or trying something out together. No need to introduce everyone individually and asked for applauses. The Family Band also performed more songs as a group as well. Even when the song has one main vocalist or a duet, the group would re-arranged it so most of the time, it became a group song with those not on main vocal or instruments harmonizing and adding background vocals. Overall, it just made the songs sounded fuller, and of course, all the EYE CONTACTS with each other that they do versus just closing their eyes or looking at the music sheets/audience that the Second Team and some of the other members of season 4 do more often. Which of course makes me kind of sad that the three other members of the Family Band (Lena Park, Kim Feel, and Lim Heon Il) weren’t in Begin Again 4 along with Soo Hyun, Hareem, and Henry. 😢

The Yin Yang Master (2021) with Chen Kun was just okay. Nothing to gush over. I don’t want to compare it to Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity because that’s not fair to either movie, but it’s kind of hard to not compare them. Just about everything of Dream was better in MY OPINION: the visual, OST, story. Probably the only thing of Yin Yang Master (2021) I prefer is Qing Ming’s character. Dream’s Qing Ming just kind of pales in comparison with Chen Kun’s Qing Ming badassery. Like don't get me wrong, the movie was not bad. But it was just okay...