Summary: Lin Rulan suffers at the hands of her embroidery teacher, Wu Lian, and insists on suing him. Her friends and family, including her best friend, Meng Wan, advise that she cannot win, but Lin Rulan believes there must be justice in the world. Unable to convict Wu Lian, Lin Rulan takes her own life. Meng Wan swears to avenge her death and, seven years later, assembles a group of unlikely friends, each with their own grievances against Wu Lian. Together, they seek justice for the many innocent girls just like Lin Rulan.
Cast: Hu Yixuan as Lin Rulan, Wu Qian as Meng Wan, Qiao Zhenyu as Wu Lian, Li Jiahang as Liu Xin
Episodes: 24 +1 bonus (~45 min)
Character Rating: 5/5
Plot Rating: 4/5
Aesthetic Rating: 3/5
I was looking for a heavy drama and that's what this is. While there are many heartwarming moments, the story deals with sensitive issues. That said, I loved it. It wasn't perfect by any means but it was a fulfilling story about friendship and revenge. I think the ending brought it from a 4 to a 5 overall for me. Cdrama endings always suck, but I felt that the last episode was entirely appropriate. It is a story of unlikely acquaintances working to achieve an end, and once that is done, they return to their own lives. The bonus episode was the icing on the cake, and really drove home the theme they were unsubtly going for (it is literally written in the end text). All in all it was a good watch if you, like me, enjoy heavy dramas about smart people scheming, underscored with beautiful relationships.
One final praise I will give it is its brevity. Dramas like this tend to overstay their welcome but this did not. It ended right when it needed to and it ended beautifully. No notes.
Content Warnings: rape, murder, genre typical blood
Where to Watch: Viki, Youtube
All Jiang Cheng Ships Are Bad and You Should Feel Bad, a non-comprehensive list:
xicheng? Trying to upstage wx by taking the #1 eligible bachelor for your ugly #5 blorbo. As IF!
chengxian? Literal incest literally literally. Even more incestuous in MXY's body. That's THREE JL uncles?
zhancheng? Fiction is REAL and you are making your fugly slut into a HOMEWRECKER!!
zhanchengxian? Ummm first of all, everyone knows that fictional mlm only need a mommy (bottom) and daddy (top). What would he even do? 🙄
sangcheng? WWX barely even mentions NHS and JC interacting, and since he was gone for 9 months of the GSL lectures and then dead for 13 years, I think he'd know!!
mingcheng? What, just because he's tall and strong and WWX teases JC about NMJ? Great OTP, idiot. He's not even in the top five eligible bachelor list.
chengyao? Infidelity much?? Or are women not REAL to you?
chengsu? WHY ARE YOU OBSESSED WITH BREAKING UP THEIR MARRIAGE?? Also she has like two lines of dialogue, they have clearly never spoken before. 🙄
3zuncheng? More like JC's healing bussy. Which is NOT healing, FYI.
chengqing? Well Wen Qing is canonically a lesbian who's repulsed by men. Sooo lesbophobic.
chengning? Get your necrophiliac hands OFF my uncomplicated sweet baby Wen Ning!!
chengxuan? Oh my god, do you not even care about Jin Ling!
rencheng? LAN QIREN IS AROACE. PROOF?? IT'S FUNNY. Aphobe much??
zhucheng? Oh my god, WZL is literally at work. I suppose you'd write JC harassing baristas, too?
chaocheng? This is double homewrecking.
zhuicheng? Barf!! In my version of the novel, JC constantly tried to murder every Wen survivor and said he'd eat a-Yuan!!
chengyi? It's sooo curious that you just recreated the chengxian dynamic without the real incest... Stealth chengxian shipper.
zhencheng? Who's Ouyang Zizhen?? Oh, right. AGE GAP!!!
xuecheng? Why would JC care about an orphan street kid with a lot of resentment? That's right... chengxian III: The Return.
OC/JC? Kind of telling that you had to make up a guy to ship with your blorbo... Unlike LWJ, who was specifically designed for WWX by the author, this is just sad.
it’s funny because yes, you CAN disable right click save, but it takes like an extra two seconds to get around it because of how images are displayed on websites. (technically you could also just screenshot but this gets you a real jpg)
for example, instagram has disabled right click save. here I am trying to save a picture of this girl with a pumpkin sweater, but I am thwarted by the lack of right click save!
to get around it, right click and go to “inspect” or “inspect element” (it’s called different things depending on what computer you’re using)
shimmy around the webpage code until you find the “src” bit. It will helpfully tell you when you’ve found it because the image, and only the image, will light up as if you selected it.
that source is the link to where the image is hosted on the website. click the link.
find the actual hosted image. right click on that.
I for one am glad that MXTX decided there wasn't enough foreshadowing to kill off Wen Ning forever and then have Jin Ling die at the temple and come back as a fierce corpse to protect everyone because I canNOT imagine being able to skip off onto their honeymoon after that.
anon I am sitting here literally making this face
because what the hell. What the HELL. You CANNOT just tell me that UNDEAD 8TH GRADER JIN LING was the initial concept and not provide info or receipts. You have dropped this information onto me like an anvil onto a Looney Tunes character.
How would that even work? Who would bring him back? If it’s WWX, why didn’t he bring back JYL the same way? Is the Jin sect being governed by a zombie now, or is JL stuck standing sentinel over his two zombie uncles in their zombie penalty box? Would he have died accidentally, or would JGY have straight-up killed him, in which case the follow-up question is why is JGY still around for LXC to stab instead of scattered in pieces because JC immediately drew and quartered him with his bare hands? Would LSZ have simply never found out anything more about his past? Would Wangxian have still fucked dubiously in the bushes right away under these circumstances? Anon please I am qi deviating this is the STUPIDEST POSSIBLE THING this is even worse than the donghua with QS’s curse nails and JC in seclusion.
Before I thought about other things about Wen Ning, the first thing I thought about was: "He must die!" "I want him to die!" The original plan was to let him be wiped out on the boat leaving Lotus Pier, but I wrote it there When I looked back, I felt that the foreshadowing was not enough, and there was no reason why he had to die? It would be very abrupt to write him dead, and it would look like he was being abused for the sake of abuse, so although I really wanted him to die, I had no choice but to give up. In the same way, little princess Jin Ling, he was also going to die, in order to defeat the big boss, he turned himself into a vicious corpse to replace Wen Ning. But since Wen Ning is not dead, there is no need for him to take over.
SO! word of god says this is what was supposed to happen but like HOW and WHY is left unclear and may only be known to mxtx herself!
Well yeah. You can put lemonade in it if you want to. Or use it as a spittoon. Or a paperweight. Whatever.
But when you’re not using it? When you have cleaned it and put it back in the cupboard? What is it then? That’s right. It reverts to being a gravy boat. Because that’s what it’s, as they say, “for.”
And when you take it out again and fill it with, idk, salsa verde, what will people say? They’ll say, “Oh, that’s a good use for a gravy boat.” No one ever says “how clever of you to use a salsa boat to serve gravy.” Because the boat defaults to gravy. That is the problem.
If I go to the store and ask for a raita boat, I get funny looks. If I ask for a gravy boat, they know exactly what I’m talking about. Fair? No. Fact? Yes.
Can you see that this is about what is a marked use and what is an unmarked use? Can you see that, friend orbisonblue? That this is not just about what I, personally, can do with my tableware, but what our society considers to be “normal’ sauce-serving practice, and what is “abnormal”? Can you?
