AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!! Zhèng YèChéng 鄭業成 has a guest role reprising his character from Love of Thousand Years 三千鴉殺 (The Killing of 3000 crows)!!!!! Dà-Chéng!!! My beloved Fù JiûYún 傅九雲!!!
And Zhang Lì 張儷! I like her a lot! She was so cool in LùoYáng 風起洛陽!
And some fun for the DMBJ/The Lost Tomb bunch: Liú XuéYì 劉學義 as the ML, Chén ChûHé 陳楚河 and Bái Shù 白澍 as supporting cast.
A coup took place in my brain's parasocial bubble last night, dà-Chéng stopped by in a dream, all charm and smile, fake-pouting and complaining that I've been neglecting him lately (and kicking YáoYao out) 😆.
Then I woke up to this nice photoshoot so I felt compelled to move a drama of his up my watch list and started binging An Oriental Odyssey 盛唐幻夜. If that's what the Universe wants me to do... Who I am to refuse appreciating Zhèng YèChéng's good acting, very nice original voice and handsome face? 🤭
I picked this drama because of Zheng Yecheng as Fu Jiuyun - and he didn't disappoint in the slightest. There's something about his acting that makes everything he does on-screen feel natural. And as much as I'm usually not into alpha males, there's just something so very... sensual about him asserting his dominance that it makes my heart go all doki-doki.
I wasn't always on board with what Qin Chuan was doing, oftentimes I didn't like it, but I understood where she was coming from and I did appreciate her tenacity, her determination to avenge her people and then her helplessness when she realized that her people didn't want any revenge, they just wanted to move on and live peacefully if at all possible, that her efforts weren't really needed/appreciated because her people needed her to help them rebuild, not run around, playing avengers.
My favorite relationship in this drama was the friendship between Fu Jiuyun and his immortal friend Mei Shanjun. He was Fu Jiuyun's best friend, his confidante, his healer, his ride-or-die. And it was glorious.
There were several moments that made me cry really hard:
When Xiao Bai, Fu Jiuyun's mirror, sacrificed himself to save him and Qin Chuan and Fu Jiuyun kept it from Qin Chuan, telling her instead that Xiao Bai was just sleeping, sleeping peacefully, and they shouldn't wake him up.
When Xuan Zhu sacrificed herself. I didn't like her. Actually, I pretty much hated her throughout the drama but I did understand her feeling inadequate, always not good enough, always lost in Qin Chuan's shadow. Her death was really sad.
When the Spirit Lamp was lit and Mei Shanjun realized that it meant that Fu Jiuyun was about to die. The way he turned away from the lamp and so very slowly looked at Fu Jiuyun who was already starting to disappear, turning into ash as he was burning up. And then, when the lamp was extinguished, the way Mei Shanjun screamed Fu Jiuyun's name.
When Fu Jiuyun died, turning into these motes of light bit by bit while ignoring the pain of burning alive to watch Qin Chuan sleep for the last time.
When Qin Chuan realized that Mei Shanjun lied to her and Fu Jiuyun wasn't coming back, that Mei Shanjun only relegated Fu Jiuyun's "dying message" to her, asking her to wait for Fu Jiuyun's return, to force her to live because it was what Fu Jiuyun would've wanted, for her to live.
What I really loved was that Qin Chuan's and Mei Shanjun's grief for Fu Jiuyun was treated as equal. Mei Shanjun cried as much and was devastated as much by Fu Jiuyun's death as Qin Chuan. A friend's grief wasn't treated here as something less.
The ending though was rather confusing and I had to look up what it actually meant in the explanation of someone who read the book. It was rather... head-tilting. I guess they counted on everyone knowing the book?
Comparable to: Jun Jiu Ling (cdrama) ; Love and Redemption (cdrama)
Where to start with this Xianxia drama. The scenery is quite breathtaking gorgeous and the characters are written pretty well making the acting okay. I love Zhao Lu is silly dramas, serious dramas she sometimes miss the marks in and in this she’s ‘meh’. Despite that, nothing will make the up for the all over the place storyline. It starts off with a couple of episodes in not that bad, a tad bit complicated to follow but eventually easy to fall into. Unfortunately with each episode going forward the writers seemed to add in more confusing aspects with more unnecessary storylines making it harder to follow. For me the glue that was holding everything together was the chemistry between the main leads.
Fu Jiu Yun is an immortal deity who falls in love with a mortal woman with whom he longs to have a relationship. Plenty powerful yet unable to win her heart, he finds himself following her through a thousand years and ten different mortal incarnations, but to no avail.
Then she is reborn as a princess, giving promise to things being different. And indeed they will be since an evil-minded prince and a group of demons from a neighboring realm hatch a devious plan to destroy the princess. The plot succeeds in wiping out her family and devastating her realm in the process. By taking on the form of her maid Ah Man, she cleverly escapes from her foes.
Determined to exact revenge upon those who wronged her, she invites Fu Jiu Yun to help her, eventually forming a love bond. But destiny dictates that their romance may be short-lived, forcing them to make difficult decisions that will forever impact their lives and those of the princess’ subjects.
Main cast :
Zheng Ye Cheng as Fu Jiu Yun
Zhao Lu Si as Di Ji/ Qin Chuan
My thoughts on this drama :
Yet another Xianxia drama… It is my "péché mignon", my guilty pleasure. I do like those beautiful men with their long shiny hair… I'll be honest, I only stayed for Zheng Ye Cheng. That kid is a treat. Beautiful. Good actor. Very expressive. And his character here? The biggest flirt ever. Damn, I'm still suffering from second-hand embarrassment! For once, the main female lead, played by Zhao Lu Si, is not too annoying. She even got some badass in her, a nice change. The story is on the original side, but we still find many of the usual plots, common to this kind of dramas. The OST is beautiful, that is a good point as well. All in all, not a memorable show, but I enjoyed it the time it lasted. I'll still watch the "behind the scenes" videos for a long time because as I said, little YeCheng is a treat!!!
do u know that even the size of the different size of vegetables at another country amazed me because from where i came from they are all smaller and scrawnier
The scene where Xiao Bai died to save Fu Jiuyun and Qin Chuan... The one where Jiuyun lied to Qin Chuan and told her that Xiao Bai was just sleeping... The one where Qin Chuan discovered that the mirror that Jiuyun showed her wasn't Xiao Bai... The one where Jiuyun finally told her that Xiao Bai died and also how he died, "He died to save us. He had no regrets..." I bawled. I honestly bawled... Xiao Bai loved Jiyun so much.
the great irony of early one piece antagonists believing zoro was the actual captain and using luffy as a puppet ... oda really threw us a bone and curb-stomped it right in our faces. yes, zoro could be a captain in his own right. yes, zoro could match luffy in strength. yes, zoro knows this perfectly well. and you know what? he chose luffy two years ago, and he will continue to choose luffy again and again. roronoa zoro, the pirate hunter, who followed a wannabe pirate with a nonexistent crew on a whim because luffy brought him his swords and made a half-assed attempt at a bargain. zoro, who made a vow to never lose again on both his and luffy's honor. zoro, who told luffy he'd make him commit harakiri if he got in the way of zoro's goal, only to turn around and be willing to sacrifice his dream if it means that luffy reaches his. zoro, who stood in place and took luffy's pain and told a warlord to take his head instead of luffy's, who got down on his knees before his supposed rival and begged mihawk to mentor him so that he could return strong enough to protect his captain. zoro, who has conqueror's haki- a natural born leader- but chooses to stay at the right hand of a man he has deemed greater than himself.
and the thing that luffy fears most? being alone. being rejected. being left behind. and what should have been his foil- the pirate hunter to his pirate king, the nonbeliever to his divine, the king of hell to his sun god- instead becomes his first and most devout follower; the one who demands to follow him to hell and back. oughhhggg i'm sick to my stomach
watching xianxia is so fun because usually when i'm halfway through a drama and i want to reblog things, i have to be really careful when going through the tag and not look too closely at anything to try not to accidentally spoil stuff that happens later
but when i watch a xianxia drama and go through the tag i'm totally fine even if i look at everything because absolutely none of it makes any goddamn sense out of context. like i find gifsets of the main characters getting married. in one they're getting married to other people and in another they're getting married to each other. twice. then i find gifsets of those same characters dying in five different ways. in one scene one is dying in the other’s arms. in the next scene they’re dying together. someone straight up disintegrates into glitter. and i still have no idea if any of them end up alive or dead or married or alone or what on earth happens at the end