#ab-lyn-mine

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All Liu Yuning's costumes from The Truth S3

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The Truth decided for the third case of S3 that raver pirates at the 1990s goth club was the way to go, and who am I to argue with brilliance?

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Zhang Linghe pics from day one on The Trust S4

We met up! I took some photos of my brothers and sisters this time 📸 Today I'm watching #The Truth# !

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Zhang Linghe vlog for the first day of The Truth S4

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The Prisoner of Beauty is a strong romance drama and a poor political drama (spoilers throughout the review though hopefully relatively vague).

The first half gives us two incredibly competent characters, showing us they are genuinely smart, and actively problem solving. They are enemies in an arranged marriage forced to work together in ways that make them learn to truly respect each other. The main roles are very competently acted by Liu Yuning and Song Zuer as the leads Wei Shao and Qiao Man Man.

This slow burn romance is incredibly well done. I would absolutely recommend this show based on the romance alone. An excellent depiction of two people forced together in terrible circumstances coming to understand each other. The understanding turns to respect, which becomes affection, and eventually love. It is exactly as a slow burn romance should be, believable and emotional as it happens. Even better, much of the show's comedy is centered on the romance to very good effect. I found the way they came together to be incredibly compelling, very rewarding, and fantastically romantic. The time spent watching it truly worth it for this couple and these actors.

Also this is another show that I like how it deals with women as bargaining pieces for marriages. It looks at what it means for the woman. She does suffer but the show doesn't just give us that, it makes the story deal with it and acknowledge it. I feel like this show was written by a woman who was owed an apology, because there are some very good ones in here.

Unfortunately the rest of the show is kind of a mess. There's about four separate secondary plotlines, none of which gets the time it needs to develop and the villains are so comically bad that it's hard to take the threat they represent seriously. For the first half, the pacing raced along, every crap plan by the villains our heroes looked at and said "whew what crap plan, here is our very smart plan to counter it." And that was great but around the middle it started to meander.

Wei Shao's generals are a merry band of idiots who steal every scene they are in. Great comic relief, good emotional drama when called upon. But mostly they are just a delight.

Liu Duanduan does an excellent turn as Wei Shao's somewhat dissolute alcoholic cousin. The story sets up an excellent premise for him, good, well-developed relationships, makes him an interesting character. In the middle it gives him an incredible turn. And 90% of the rest of his surely interesting story happens off screen and we're told it later in a few sentences. Xuan Lu takes a turn as a queen without a country and is just not given much to work with. She can't quite pull off the scenery chewing needed for the garbage plot she's given.

The ending does give us most of what it should, our smart leads and their companions overcoming the worst bad guys. But it comes with cheap emotional shots. It's wildly compressed, the last five eps so crammed together they should have been ten. And there was space to do it (can't blame this on the ep # cap), especially if the mushy middle was tightened up. Ultimately the end doesn't live up to the promise of the beginning.

You could easily stop watching at about minute 29:30 of ep33 and just say "well that was a very wonderful romance I'm glad I watched it." The culmination of the romance through-line is just excellently done. But the romance is satisfyingly wrapped up at this point and seeing how many eps are left you can feel that the plot can't do anything but extra stress and possibly tragedy if it goes on. The ending isn't like completely tragic, it's just weirdly compressed and while it gets us satisfying outcomes it does so in the most unsatisfying of ways.

Still I'd say totally worth it for the main romance plot. (And the romance scene at about minute 28 in ep 32 made everything worth for me.  It flips a lot of what we expect from cdrama romance scene around and make it quite feminist. Especially given everything leading up to it. Does a bang up job of giving the female lead agency and choice, and WHEW Liu Yuning just really brings it.) But go in to it knowing the rest of the plot won't live up to the promise of the beginning or quality of the romance. An excellent show if you want a great romance. A terrible show if you want coherent political intrigue or villains with any depth at all. But I very much enjoyed it for what it did well and you might too.

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Sure there's mysteries to solve, but The Truth is really a show about a bunch beautiful people having the time of their lives while endlessly giving Zhang Linghe shit. I mean truly what more could one want?

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# Liu Yuning's 2025 Tour #Liu Yuning Shenzhen Concert

𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙯𝙝𝙚𝙣·𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙐𝙣𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮❹ "Traveling between the banks of the Milky Way" Through the picked up stardust, you can get a glimpse of all living beings in the parallel universe.

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You do not even need subtitles to enjoy the absolute delight of this clip from S3 of The Truth