I am five minutes into Ancient Love Poetry and this girl just turned all the lower gods at a matchmaking ceremony gay!
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I am ten minutes in and a teacher just got to enforce an attendance policy?!! This is definitely not America.
And he got to throw two kids off a balcony to teach them a lesson? This is definitely the wet dream of American teachers (jk but if you’re in education you know we are allowed to dream!).
The sexy dude from In Blossom is in this too? And he plays a swaggy adorable asshole? Be still my heart!
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15 minutes in - the visuals of the god realm are talking my breath away! The three old gods are hysterical and their sibling energy is strong.
Ancient Love Poetry & The Last Immortal - connection post
Warning: Contains spoilers for the first series so skip post if you haven't watched it and do not want to be spoiled.
Ancient Love Poetry - Origin of Yuan Qi
Once upon a time, there were three realms - god realm, immortal realm and demon realm (no human realm yet).
In the god realm, the most respected are the four true gods - born from heaven and earth and are responsible for the peace of the three realms. Two of those true gods are Bai Jue (the god of fire) and Shanggu (the goddess of chaos). But destiny became their enemy when Shanggu had to make the sacrifice to save the world from the Tribulation of Chaos.
The god realm was destroyed and the human realm eventually came to be.
Broken hearted, Bai Jue spent tens of thousands of years collecting what was eft of Shanggu's soul. Eventually, Shanggu was born as Houchi, a goddess disrespected for her weak power (who unknowingly possesses Shanggu's sealed power and memory inside of her).
Now this part is the spoiler. Even if Shanggu is alive as Houchi, the Tribulation of Chaos is still meant to come to pass. Bai Jue, unwilling to see Shanggu die again, painfully endured dividing his original being into two for the purpose of possessing the power of chaos which would let him suffer the Tribulation of Chaos in replacement for Shanggu. One split created Bo Xuan who watched Houchi grow up, staying by her side, guiding and protecting her before disappearing one day. The second split is Qing Mu who fell in love unconditionally and eventually became Houchi's husband.
Qing Mu and Houchi's marriage and union is what led to Houchi's pregnancy. They fought for love even if they knew that their time together was limited. They had both long learned that they possess the true god's spirit inside them, and when the spirit awakens, they would disappear.
It happened that Qing Mu disappeared first, which led to Bai Jue's return. This Bai Jue acted that Qing Mu is no longer a part of him, deliberately hiding his love from Houchi and Yuan Qi. With enemies all around and with his power still weak, he pretended to abandon them, even going as far as to remarry just to give Houchi a push to forget him.
Secretly, he disguises himself to spend time with Yuan Qi, using the form of Feng Ran (Houchi's friend). He also secretly comes to watch over Houchi/Shanggu and Yuan Qi as they sleep. So Yuan Qi had been spending time with him without knowing it's his father who was with him.
All this is because Bai Jue had always intended to sacrifice himself in the Tribulation of Chaos and he knew there was no going back. He did not want Shanggu to experience the thousands of years of pain he had endured for losing his beloved.
So this cute kiddo is Yuan Qi from Ancient Love Poetry. Qi in his name means 'abandonment', a name given by his mother (Houchi who had no memory of Shanggu).
Yuan Qi's character is playful, smart, curious, bold, daring and cunning enough to be manipulative. But he also learns easily and is innocent with a pure heart. He likes to know how magic weapons came to be and likes disassembling them to study how they are built. He looks like his father but has his mother's temper. He has a strong sense of doing what is right, and would bravely apologize and make amends if he knows he's in the wrong. He also doesn't like it when the people around him are sad, so he tries to cheer them up.
He is the only child of true gods, and is considered the other true gods' nephew. He possesses the power of chaos (same as his mother). He is also very much spoiled. 😂💙
Before he sacrificed himself in the Tribulation of Chaos, Bai Jue finally visited Yuan Qi as himself. Yuan Qi was mad at him for his abandonment but he eventually gave in. They did the things that Yuan Qi loves (like spending time in the human realm, eating good food, gambling, playing with toys, etc). It surprised Yuan Qi how his father knows what he likes and perhaps (just maybe), he also realized then that the Feng Ran who did all those things with him was actually his father in disguise.
Bai Jue also tried to explain to Yuan Qi that death is something that comes to everyone. It is not something horrible, even if it's your own death or the death of someone you love. It's just like flowers blooming and drying. It hurts a lot at first, but the pain lessens with time. He told Yuan Qi that to sacrifice oneself for the ones one loves and for the world is a good thing. Yuan Qi listened to these but he didn't really understand it completely.
When Shanggu learned Bai Jue's true intentions and sacrifice, he was already dead. Shanggu knelt in front of the ancestral god for 500 yrs to plead for Bai Jue's return. At that time, they knew that a new god of fire is to be born and she is desperate to have it be Bai Jue. She was kneeling even when Yuan Qi bid her goodbye because it's been decided that he'd be taken as a disciple in Daze Mountain.
This kid Yuan Qi grew up to be this cute guy from The Last Immortal. They hid his true origin and gave him the name Gu Jin.
The willful spoiled kid grew up to be a righteous but still willful young man. Still innocent and forgiving. Still with a strong moral compass. Still brave and honorable enough to apologize and make up for his wrongdoings. Still caring for all beings in all realms and treats them equally. Still wishes his father had not left them. Kinder, and braver and even more honorable and just. He became exactly the guy that a water divine beast named A Yin would grow to love.
There is a lot more I want to say. But let's skip it for now.
But I made this post as I couldn't help it. Looking back on Ancient Love Poetry and having read Shen Yin, I finally have a deeper understanding of Yuan Qi and his choices.
In lots of ways, he truly resembles his father.
:)
P.S. Do pm if you want spoilers. I am literally bouncing from restraining myself and internally screaming. I wanna talk about the novel so bad hahahhaha.
well well friends, guess what has happened. yep. I’ve started a new drama, sped all the way through it without updating once 💀. I'm so sorry guys.
but anyway. THIS DRAMA. oh my god. when I first heard of it back when it first came out I thought it was just another version of ashes of love. I kept on seeing this drama pop up repeatedly on my news feed during the time it was airing as it was getting very very popular in mainland china, but still I left it alone.
then one day, a snippet from the drama autoplayed on my phone and dude, who doesn’t want to finally watch a female lead kick ass? so I watched it. and now I'm super attached to all the characters and now it’s one of my favourite shows.
more detailed review under cut
first of all, let's talk characters. at first I was expecting a mary sue story and was planning to drop it as soon as it got boring but dude, this is far from it. yes shanggu is the most powerful and the most gifted of all of the gods, but she suffers for it, and god she suffers.
I love her character development so much, she goes from spoiled, loud, wilful to so refined and responsible but at the same time just as fiery and wilful as before. she's amazing, zhou dongyu did so well playing her.
her second identity in her second lifetime is done well too, and the plot made it extremely clear that her second identity, houchi, was separate from her first. which was a theme that I really liked, I feel like dramas with reincarnations and gods and such don’t really put much attention on the god’s other identities and what means to have a consciousness but a body that isn’t yours. it made shanggu’s eventual reawakening in houchi’s body a tragic as well as a happy event.
baijue on the other hand, he was standard cold love interest, the more cookie-cutter i-will-die-for-love love interest, but I think what made him so enjoyable to watch was how diddly darn authentic his and shanggu’s interactions were. her falling in love with him, him falling in love with her was so natural and so endearing I can't with them- even her eventual disapproval of him was all on valid grounds, even if he had his own reasons. (don’t worry, they get back together at the end ;) )
I also adored his second lifetime’s identity as qingmu, he was so adorable and dorky, I miss him so much.
however, I had to knock it down to nine to account for the more trope-y characters, like the snow goddess for example. but there’s so many other much better characters I could mention, like tianqi and his character growth, wu huan and her path to villainy- and my favourite character in the drama, gu jun (sigh, he was such a legend. the best dad.) oh and yuanqi, the most adorable child to be played- ever.
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I kind of already mentioned acting already, but in case you’re worried about that, I think my 10/10 says it all for itself. zhou dongyu was perfect as shanggu and I liked how she wasn’t the conventional beauty like in most dramas. furthermore, she’s an experienced and pretty ‘serious’ actress who mainly acts movies so you guys can rest assured.
meanwwhile xu kai really raised my expectations for him. I knew him from watching The Story of Yanxi Palace, but didn’t really expect much from him as I didn’t really view him as a serious serious actor but more eye candy that producers try to sign because you know, his agency has money and will invest in any drama he is in. BUT. how wrong I was- he was so expressive with his eyes and all his inner emotions and his crying scenes- oh my god. I’m so sorry but. dude. they so good. they pretty.
anyway, on the whole, the cast was very solid and their acting was very very believable, a solid 10 for them all.
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next up, plot. I loved the plot of this drama so much, it had me hooked the whole way, all these plot twists, and all of these storylines had me crying several times, maybe just as much as the untamed, which is impressive, I know. some of these deaths I will never come back from (ahh im so sad).
Not to mention, it was also very funny, even if there were periods where I bawled my eyes out, it would eventually blow over (somewhat) and we would have a period of happiness which- oh god I really needed.
The plot of this drama was also generally quite solid, all of it pretty much made sense and the only major fault I could really find with it was how perfect the ending was? it was a little too happy- I'm sorry guys- that I didn’t really see the point of killing them all to begin with because I feel like it would have been a whole lot deeper if some just died and.. that was it.
it was also a little bit too forced because they brought back all the characters that they knew the audience wanted eg. gu jun but not the ones that would have come back if it followed the same vein of logic, eg. the snow goddess (who no one wanted back).
but anyway, I won’t complain too much. I want every single character back, we’ve suffered enough. and plus, this is just me being overly picky because it’s precisely because of its idyllic ending that it made it onto my comfort show list.
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finally, OMG, THE PRODUCTION. THE COSTUMES. beautiful, stunning, amazing, chefs kiss, the cgi was mostly perfect on the whole, except for a few blips but if the untamed was my standard, this is on point (im sorry the untamed, I still love you uwu). The fight scenes are honestly so cool and the cinematography- oh my god. It’s so good and so so so worth watching literally just for the production alone.
just check out these gifs. you cannot not convince me this is one of the most beautiful dramas of the year.
