once again

roa, she/her, 01

[chenlesdaisy]

posting my cdrama miis here too lmao

[chenlesdaisy]

started love beyond the grave and what really strikes me is that both leads are happy as heck 😭

[chenlesdaisy]

rewatching bia and remembered I made a chart of all the hua babies bc I couldn't keep track of them. is the presentation the most ideal? no,,, but I was just very inspired back then and I'm too lazy to change it now 😭 but yeah, I really needed this. It's still readable I think

[chenlesdaisy]

Idk if it would be viable, but it would've been cool if they went for a politician route for the grand princess. maybe she could be regent? she grew up in the palace, she is well read and knowledgeable, and has no problem saying things as it is. she is kind and reasonable, and wants to do better for her country. if we're doing a female general for changyu and im assuming dowager empress for qianqian, then why not also a female regent for qi shu?

[chenlesdaisy]

wait did I miss something 😭 why are they reconciled? what happened? did they fr just kiss and make up like that 😭

[chenlesdaisy]

would love more qi shu, yu qianqian or changning, could do with a bit less of anything related to the sui bothers and also unfortunately the pig slaughtering squad kinda overstayed their welcome

[chenlesdaisy]

okay but am I the only one confused about why there is this fight for the throne? isn't there already an emperor? 😭

[chenlesdaisy]

I kinda hate the fandom making Seo Yul into a pushy second male lead when he literally is not and that's why I like him 😭 "he fell in love with her three times" well no, he fell in love with her ONCE ,and his nostalgia is the reason he carried that love throughout the next two encounters he had with her. He cares about her because of their time together in Danhyanggok, that was the love part. But after that, he never confessed to her or anything like that, he recognized that she wanted to be with Jang Uk and he tried to help them by protecting them in the ways he knew. And in the end he was burdened by regrets because he was unable to let go, he blamed himself for her running wild and killing Jang Uk, that's why he wanted to get rid of her. He is haunted by the girl he met in Danhyanggok. None of his interactions with her prior to realizing that Jin Buyeon is naksu indicates romantic love, similarly to the crown prince. It's about the closure! Part 1 ripped apart every single ounce of it, and it left all of them in really uncertain places in terms of their relationship

[chenlesdaisy]

I've been trying to make a four bamboo masters edit for a while, but I'm so uncreative. does anyone have any suggestions I can steal 😭 this is like the wip base for concept 1, but the other one i considered was one character at a time with dialogue for each one, or one with a choose your character concept for a video game. my issue is that I can't find many scene packs of this drama so I'd have to download the episodes myself which means I end up never making it 😭

[chenlesdaisy]

Okay so I finally finished generation to generation. Between about ep 6 and 16 I kept telling myself I would drop it, because it really wasn't catching my attention with anything, but I didn't have anything better to watch, so I ended up having it in the background. And it did get a lot better!

visually, the shots were beautiful, but the composition and editing was janky and jarring, throwing you around with little forewarning. This was particularly the case for the early episodes, but did get better as the show went on. At least it was less noticeable. The ending brought it back though, and in the final ep I had no idea what was going on. I get that they wanted to make it look like something had happened, but it was just a confusing way to do it, only for them to give a random and quick solution with no sacrifice.

the show definitely wanted a quick start, which makes sense, but it made it feel slightly rushed, without much direction. once the story took shape, the pacing felt more comfortable, but generally not ideal.

Nothing about the six sects intrigued me, and I found their backwards rhetoric completely unconvincing. It was no surprise who turned out to be the bad guys, and the way they warped cai pingshu's image to justify their bloodlust was just sick. They made it so her sacrifice didn't actually mean anything. Same with cai zhao's punishment. Her being whipped is no longer a sign of her wayward behavior, it's just the action of villains. Which is always the issue when the leaders of a structure and community are the villains. It negates the things they do in the name of justice. It becomes so that it would've been true justice to kill them from the beginning.

I liked the cai family though. They had principles. Especially ning xiaofeng. Would've love to see more of the cai family, just hanging out. they were so tolerant with cai zhao and mu qingyan, i wonder what they felt about getting a live in demon cultivator son in law. also why did we get nothing about mu qingyan giving his spiritual power to cai zhao 😭 did i miss something. what did that accomplish, besides giving them a way to easily save him

While I think the story of passing troubles from generation to generation is very interesting, I never found it in myself to care for any one of the previous generation. Even cai pingshu and mu zhengyang didnt particularly hook me.

Ultimately the main characters were the reason I kept watching. I definitely felt conflicted when it came to their romantic relationship, but it was an engrossing journey nonetheless. cai zhao turned out to be a very resolute character, willing to stand by her actions and words, and mu qingyan had a heartbreaking desperation to him. i think the show should've dedicated a bit more time to specifically their romantic dynamic, because it did feel like he was chasing her way more than she maybe liked 😭 her seeing him while getting whipped, even if it was a goodbye, was a beautiful scene though. Said a lot about her and how much she cared for him that she smiled through it. I think that's the issue. The way they acted after reuniting after that one year time skip could've been more dramatic. She cried way more about her master than mu qingyan during that final battle scene, which makes sense bc he wasn't dead, but I'd at least show her being worried about him taking a stab wound for her 😭 actually, both of them got wiped in that fight. it was just brutal.

Loved him marrying into luoying valley though. She gets to stay home, the place she loves, to do business, and he gets to be somewhere peaceful with her. Him twirling around in front of the mirror while she was making a business map was really cute and funny. I'm just really glad it was a happy ending. And that the old generation basically has been replaced with the new one

[chenlesdaisy]

the break up was so wholesome that I'm kinda back on the cai zhao x mu qingyan train. Like. I actually believe things can get better for them

[chenlesdaisy]

pursuit of jade is really good actually. the visuals are lovely, I'm invested in the characters, and the writing seems solid so far. my only complaint is that I don't get why everyone has such good hearing. no matter what is said, even if it's a whisper, someone else will overhear it 😭 people still hear the conversation from a different room, through walls, even from a different house lol

[chenlesdaisy]

I'm curious as to how generation to generation is gonna tackle the resolution of the lead relationship because so far they've resolved absolutely nothing. mu qingyan is still bulldozing his way around with no actual regard for cai zhao's values besides the ones he can use to manipulate her to stay. and cai zhao still has no intentions of staying with mu qingyan permanently, hardly ever entertaining his romantic advances. i do think that they care about each other, but they prove very well that love is not enough to sustain a relationship.

the world needs to change a lot if they ever want to continue anything with each other. the lives they want are so different. cai zhao won't be the mistress of a demonic sect, mu qingyan isn't going to give up all power and retreat to a peaceful luoying valley. at least cai zhao sees this. I'm not sure what mu qingyan intends, besides forcing his way onto her. but he can't have everything, and I kinda need him to get taken down a notch so he can understand that. I don't have a big issue with how he handles the fight against nie zhe or the six sects, but he obviously can't use warfare tactics in romance?

of course the main issue is that the six sects also are obsessed with enforcing their own agendas of what is good and what is evil. they manipulate and use cai zhao and what she symbolizes in the martial arts world as cai pingshu's successor, but mu qingyan is the same in a lot of ways. ultimately i think cai zhao needs to be the person to set the terms if they were to ever be together, and mu qingyan either shuts up and accepts it, or leaves and finds someone who actually is interested in his unhinged toxic behavior. cai zhao is not that person

[chenlesdaisy]

Generation to generation confuses me. I think the pacing, writing and even the composition of certain scenes are subpar and sometimes even tacky. Especially in the early episodes, events would just happen in a way that didn't feel natural at all. I also have little to no interest in the previous generation, and I can't tell any of the sect brothers apart 😭 Around ep 9 I told myself I would drop it, but I'm somehow still caught up. The supporting characters, specifically Lingbo, is not nearly as annoying as I feared she would be, 2nd ML hasn't done anything outrageous for me to hate, the ML is not the type of ML I typically enjoy watching, and yet he definitely has this unpredictably that makes him quite entertaining, but I think the main appeal for me is the female lead, Cai Zhao. Very specifically her mind. What does she really want to do? Who does she actually care about? How can she protect the people she chooses? And how does she deal with the fact that not only does she have a guy chasing her who has absolutely no chill, she also clearly loves him back, but she has no intentions of being with him or letting anyone know. I'm so curious what will happen to her when we reach the last drop. I believe her when she says she can't choose Mu Qingyan. But this is a romance drama. She is not in a comfortable spot, even if she tells herself this is what she wants and needs. One day she will reach her breaking point, and I'm really just sitting here anticipating, waiting for what it will be, and this fact alone keeps me watching.

[astralquill]

FRIENDLY RIVALRY season 2 IS IN DEVELOPMENT!!!

Our girls are coming back.

All we have to do is be patient 🙄.

[chenlesdaisy]

Really enjoyed how dare you. Overall a wonderful, entertaining and rather satisfying watch. The vibes were great, the humor was up my alley, the characters became so dear to me. I cried my eyes out whenever someone died. The OST was a highlight for me as well.

I think my only few gripes were that it spent a bit too much time with the scheming ministers, and the ending felt a bit strange. They took down xiahou bo too easily, and then it felt like nothing really concrete happened for the final two episodes. Also, the reunion in the modern world felt a bit detached from the rest of the drama. There was no natural connection. i think it's fair to assume they lived out their lives in the novel and then went back when they died or something, but we didn't get to see any of that. It's fine, it felt more like a bonus anyway, but yeah. a bit detached.

But overall, loved this. I'll give it 88/100

[chenlesdaisy]

rewatching this scene is so funny like. he's getting accused of stealing the map, not caring about getting revenge because he isn't a biological descendant of the mu clan, and getting likened to a demon. And the first time I watched it I felt so bad for him, like, miaomiao obviously destroyed the map, and yeah he isn't biologically related to mu yao but that doesn't make him less of a mu, and they're demon hunters so comparing him to a demon is too harsh, right? but now I know that mu yao was literally spot on 😭 he is the reason Miaomiao accidentally destroyed the map, and he doesn't care about the mu family, and he even is a half demon like. I thought she was so mean the first time but now I can't help but laugh. Especially at him pulling this pitiful act