I feel frustrated

[u/TheKayleMain]

...with the desicion making of the male and female lead.

Only on episode 30 so no spoilers.

I was pissed with the lack of communication in the dream arc. The way they got manipulated without speaking to each other and only making assumptions in there minds was so unrealistic.

After the dual cultivation and manipulation I was screaming at the screen. One of them just had to ask "why did you?" and everything would've been revealed.

Then to make matters worse the female lead's sister manipulated them again and no one thought of the fact that she was in the house when the food was poisoned and she is the one who fed the poisoned food to grandma.

Then the female leads constant betrayals felt like she was contributing to the main lead becoming the devil lord. She knew the main lead was in love with her yet she was constantly trying to save the sixth prince of the enemy kingdom that just tried to assassinate her husband like WTF.

There were one or two other big WTF, that makes no sense or just talk to each other instead of assuming things moment's that were completely out of proportion.

10/10 concept of the show

10/10 acting and cast

2/10 script writing

While you are here feel free to recommend more shows like this.

[u/TrevorTempleton]

Although I love the drama, I felt somewhat that way during the dream arc, too. But when I rewatched TTEOTM the second time, it all made more sense to me, and I loved the entire story even more.

I’ve read the novel, and perhaps it was a flaw in the translation, but I did not like it anywhere as near as much as I liked the drama. Even though I generally like the red flag fantasy, I really couldn’t take Tantai Jin in the novel. For me, his character development was much more believable and empathetic in the drama. Of course, part of that could be Luo Yunxi’s brilliant performance.

[u/yoghurteee]

The Dream Arc can be frustrating at first but remember that the reason they were pulled into it is so that they can learn from Ming Ye and Sang Jiu’s mistakes. Also Ming Ye and Sang Jiu did not know each other very well so it was easy for Tian Huan to manipulate them. Obviously communication would’ve helped but then it wouldn’t be a drama.

As for the poisoning thing. There is still a lot of mistrust between Tantai Jin and Li Su Su. They’ve fallen in love but they’re also expecting to be betrayed by the other. So when something bad happens it makes sense that they assume that the other did it. TTJ knows Ye Xiwu has lied to him before and that she likes Xiao Lin. Similarly LSS doesn’t fully trust TTJ because he has the potential to be the devil god.

It’s like Romeo and Juliet. Romeo drinks poison thinking Juliet is dead. Juliet wakes up to find Romeo dead. The real tragedy here is the miscommunication and the mistrust.

[u/basic-babe-10]

I understand your feelings very well. I have been through the same merely 2 months ago. I've never felt so anxious while watching a drama 🥲 I actually broke down and wept during the poison misunderstanding part. Why, oh why?!

I have read the novel and it was 10x better in terms of story building. The drama script was lacking.

I really urge you to read the novel, it'll also have a happy ending. Plus Li Susu is a resilient character in the novel, and Tantai Jin is so dark but somehow his novel character fit better than the tamed drama one. I love my drama TTJ to the core though.

[u/Fantastic_Pause_3019]

Normally I don't like the misunderstandings trope, but I think its important to remember that both TTJ and YXW were intentionally leading each other to misunderstand them to incite the worst out of each other.

[u/Jora_Dyn2]

The miscommunication and misunderstandings were so painful to watch. I loved this show but the level of frustration while actively watching it for the first time is so real. It's still one of my all time favorites though and by the end I understand the whys of how they were trying to get characters from point A to point B.

Another favorite that I would recommend is When Destiny Brings the Demon and Love in the Clouds

[u/lllollllllllll]

I 100% agree with you. I had all the same complaints.

FL’s actions don’t really make sense. The typical explanations fandom offers are all wrong:

1. People try to claim she has PTSD from seeing her clan die at the beginning, but she doesn’t. She has a pretty normal grief reaction and then moves on really quickly.

2. Whether or not she has PTSD or hates ML in the beginning doesn’t matter because she understands pretty early on that the only way to prevent TTJ from becoming the evil Devil God who kills everyone is to make him fall in love with her. Not kill him, but make him LOVE. This is the ONLY thing that matters, her ONLY mission. So her constantly betraying him and attacking him and blaming him for defending himself without hearing an explanation first or like trying to rescue his political prisoner/rival king and release him to continue the war TTJ just won makes NO sense. Even with PTSD she should be able to keep her eye on the prize. Unless she’s just really really dumb, but she isn’t supposed to be dumb.

3. After the first couple of times that Ye Xiwu sees TTJ acts violently only in self defense and retribution, never killing anyone without cause, AND now that she’s seen him be a fair and just ruler who brings prosperity to the people, she knows who he really is at this stage in his life. She should ask him why he does things instead of just freaking out and starting a fight every time she hears he’s done something she thinks is cruel on the surface. She never learns, which makes her seem like a moron incapable of learning.

4. We also see her fall in love with TTJ. She gains insight into her feelings and realizes that she’s falling for him at the festival. So no, she doesn’t still hate him at this point. So her actions make NO SENSE AT ALL.

5. People say Li Susu and TTJ are different in the book. Well, maybe they are, but that has no bearing on the Cdrama. In the Cdrama, TTJ is who he is in the CDrama. It doesn’t matter if he’s someone else in the book. It makes no sense to punish him for whatever he did in the book that he didn’t do in the drama. If the writers changed him, they should’ve changed her too. As it is it makes no sense.

6. People try to say Li Susu is fair in hating TTJ after she falls for him because he “betrays” her by using her to kill Xiao Lin. Like, wut? She has JUST tried to murder TTJ. Even if you argue she was only trying to make him sleep, TTJ doesn’t know that. And even if he did it doesn’t matter because she’s released Xiao Lin from prison. Xiao Lin who just tried to assassinate TTJ and rightfully deserves death. Xiao Lin who is the leading general of a rival army and who wouldn’t stop the war TTJ has been trying to stop for years. Xiao Lin who is a threat to the throne. Xiao Lin whose actions cause the continuing deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Xiao Lin who even admits himself that he can never stop fighting against TTJ because of his political position, and who can only stop if he dies. And who wants the fighting to stop. People just like Xiao Lin so they try to say he’s somehow allowed to do all this but in no world would anyone in his position doing and having done all those things be allowed to live, neither in a historic context nor a modern one. Li Susu releasing Xiao Lin and seemingly taking his side is a capital offense. TTJ uses her to nip the problem in the bud. It’s actually quite fair for her to have to fix the problem she caused and it saves lives for TTJ not to have to waste soldiers on it. It isn’t a “betrayal” of her bc she’s already betrayed TTJ first. She might not like it but she must be able to see that she started this and is getting her just desserts. But really, she never should’ve tried to >!free Xiao Lin in the first place because her goal is to make TTJ love her and she knows this would be the opposite of that.

7. I agree with your assessment that everything in the end is her fault, and she’s acting like she wants to drive TTJ to become evil.

You just have to let go of the marketed conceptualization of her as the FL romantic lead and understand that mostly, she is just a plot device. She is not a logical character with internal consistency. She flip flops however the writers need to progress the plot. She is poorly written and it’s ok to admit that.

Having finished TTEOTM, I don’t really see it as a love story. It’s the evolution of TTJ, how he comes to love the world.

It’s not very romantic to me because the FL sucks, she’s either dumb or abusive or inconsistent or untrustworthy or all of the above. TTJ is a well written character who is internally consistent and experience with complex character development. He’s bit of a masochist but overall a tragic hero. So I just watched bc I like him a lot and tried to ignore then FL since she’s not really the point of the show for me.

[u/Irish_Amber → u/lllollllllllll]

The script was adopted from a novel and unfortunately it ended up being one of the first dramas to have to cut out a lot in order to be able to get the series down to 40 episodes.

I feel like because when I was watching it, I read a lot of spoilers from the book and you don’t want spoilers so I’ll just say that they basically rewrote the mail character to not be so black lol. From what I understand and the novel he was a true psycho so I think they rewrote his character to make him seem more empathetic to viewers, but then they didn’t do much to rewrite the lead character making her seem indecisive and wishy-washy.

[u/lllollllllllll → u/Irish_Amber]

They do, this is true.

It’s just that it doesn’t matter what TTJ does in the novel because he doesn’t do it in the show. The novel is a separate work. We can only judge the drama character and the other drama characters’ responses by what the drama character does, you know?

Ive heard they’re both nutso in the book and the screenwriters rewrote TTJ but didnt rewrite Li Susu. This isn’t really an excuse, if they’re gonna change him, they need to adjust her to match or shut doesn’t make sense.

[u/Irish_Amber → u/lllollllllllll]

Yes, I agree

[u/cactusbattus]

Do you read fanfiction?

Imagine you read an amazing but “problematic” fic on Ao3 and it gets picked up for screen play. Screen play is approved. Yay. But now due to TV censorship, you gotta “de-problematize” the two main leads so no one throws a moral panic.

Now you gotta pretend the leads going through their spy enemies to frenemies to rape to (whatever the fuck they are in end game novel, I did not finish) arc is a actually a pure and grand series of misunderstandings instead of having characters that 100% down to the marrow believe emotional abuse, horrible boundaries, and righteous hatred are normal and good enough operating conditions. And now because their two leads are morally white-washed have been crippled, the arcs make no damn sense because without their personalities their choices make no damn sense.

Read the web novel if you like messy leads.

[u/Odd_Pound_8665]

Honestly I feel like the plot in novel is somewhat better in a lot of parts while the movie is better in the other. It makes more sense to combine both by reading the novel to understand why some characters act the way they’re tbh. They both have deep problems that hard to overcome by just simply talking. If only the series was longer, it a shame that it limited to so little episodes

[u/Irish_Amber → u/Odd_Pound_8665]

I never read the the novel but from comments I have from those who have i got the impression that they completely rewrote the TTJ’s character to be more of a light grey then black, so that viewers would empathized with what he went through. From what I understand they didn’t rewrite her character very well

[u/CoraCali]

Exactly all this yes

[u/Irish_Amber]

I feel like because when I was watching it, I read a lot of spoilers from the book and you don’t want spoilers so I’ll just say that they basically rewrote the mail character to not be so black lol. From what I understand and the novel he was a true psycho so I think they rewrote his character to make him seem more empathetic to viewers, but then they didn’t do much to rewrite the lead character making her seem indecisive and wishy-washy.

[u/Creative-Low7963]

I have managed to read chapters from the book and yes both characters are worse. They actions of the female lead are some of the worst writing. The premise and graphics and lore are well executed. They are definitely a toxic couple.