you know... a tragic ending is okay sometimes. and it's okay.... for the main male lead... to be a bad person.

the ending of ep 19 was exactly what i wanted for this story (cx confessing, xy killing herself when she couldn't bring herself to kill him). it was deeply tragic, but befitted the narrative and themes that had been set since the very beginning. i hate a tragic ending when it's set up simply just for tragedy's sake, to make people cry at the end. it cheapens every character and theme more often than not. a tragic ending must be EARNED, it must be what the characters deserve, the story that the writer is trying to tell!

then i looked online and saw some ppl saying it got real stupid after that and i got scared and stopped watching. i got too emotionally invested in this drama and had too much shit going on in my life to see it get utterly ruined by shit writing and these show runner's complete inability to write a genuinely terrible ml so i just put off the ending. today, with no pressing deadlines or things to do the next day, i decided, in a great fit of self harm and delusion that maybe it might not be so bad to finish this show. i was wrong.......... i was saur wrong...................... it was worse than i could've imagined. so awful. like, genuinely top ten c-drama betrayals of all time. not even top ten, this has made my personal top 5, if not, TOP 3. you mean to say.... that the most incredible confrontation.... with these two very complex and well written trauma bonded siblings....... with the greatest acting of yang zi's and zhang wanyi's career thus far (i am making a bold assumption i've never seen anything else these two have been in)................ was an illusion? the emotional climax and critical point for both characters, in particular for cang xuan's character arc, for the CORE OF THE STORY.... what everything has been building up to since episode 1.......... was all just a dream? A DREAM????????????/ ARE YOU FR FR??????????

here's the deal. in general, the plot of season 2 is a mess. i can understand that due to certain regulations for series length, things had to get moved around or cut or whatever so i get it. as always, the plot writing of cxs has never been great. i talked about this a lot in my review of the first season but this shit just continues in the second. the show is not a political one, nor is it a military one.... it is a purely character and relationship driven story. HOWEVER, politics are critical to cx's character development, but clearly the writers don't give a shit, resulting in it feeling like cx's wins as emperor are unearned. season 1 already had grandpa just giving him the throne, season 2 is just all these other countries just GIVING him their countries. like what do you mean he's just such a great guy and there's like no rebels, everyone willingly joins his empire, there's minimal bloodshed, and he treats the citizens all wonderfully so they love him?>!??!?! it's such bs, like actually an insult to the intelligence of the audience. and i don't know too much about this as a non chinese citizen but like......... definitely at times i got this uncomfortable distinct feeling that i was watching ONE china propaganda LMAOOOO and therefore, cx HAS to be a good emperor who never abused his power ever lmao. like stop TELLING me how great it is that he unified chin- i mean DAHUANG and show me how this is a grand improvement from before. show me how this echoes the actual history of china like the warring states or three kingdoms or whatever where there was non stop bloodshed, military generals of various small countries held all the power and were tearing each other apart and oppressing the common ppl, many of whom were war refugees in the hands of military might. establish that THIS is the chaotic world that we live in, AND THEN cangxuan stepped in and united everyone, ending the blood shed. then i would feel like i could believe that cx is not only a good emperor, but a necessity for the stability and peace of the entire country. but no..... they could not write that story because they cannot spare even a tiny shred of consideration for politics or military...... so cangxuan is just unrealistically a benevolent ruler who wins ppl over by being nice to them. the thing was this show DID show us the lives of the common ppl in the first 20 episodes and they were FINE and HAPPY.... in fact their lives were what xy aspired to and created for herself. in what world would these ppl willingly be conquered by a foreign force???? insanity. delusion. and that's what leads to it feeling like uncomfortable propaganda or censorship or something, because the proof of him being a Good Emperor pivotal to the nation is shoehorned in.

however, emotionally, most of the show continues to be great! i absolutely loved seeing cx deal with the emotional effects after becoming emperor. cx thought that power was the answer to having everything taken from him. when he finally gained that power, he had to face the emotional devastation that it would never return the happiness and innocence of his childhood. however, like many traumatized people, instead of accepting this, he went straight back to trying to find the answer to his happiness or healing in the wrong places. it became clear that his incestuous obsession with xiaoyao is not true, romantic love. because to him, xy is a symbol of his innocence and happiness. the only time he ever felt whole and safe. a time that was destroyed by the deaths of his parents and family. he believes that the answer to his pain lies with her, that if he gets together with her and is with her forever, then he will be happy. just like he wanted as a little boy, because he is still that little boy. he does not truly love her, because if he did, he would respect her first and foremost as a human being. he would let her leave his palace, and leave his side to live the commoner life as a male doctor w tsj that she clearly desires. instead he forces her back to his side again and again, manipulating her and finally, if this show was good, killing tsj. but the past can never be returned to, and i wanted cx to learn this lesson the hard way. i wanted this obsession, the objectification, cruelty and pedestaling to make him pay the greatest price by losing xy for good. it was why the fucking dream confrontation was so satisfying! it was everything his narrative had set up from the beginning, culminating in him absolutely losing his mind and going totally feral with pure emotion, the opposite of his usual cold and calculating and repressed self. i like, still can't get over how great that scene is because we just really don't get that kind of thing very much with idol dramas. seeing the way yang zi couldn't stop screaming in absolute horror after he confessed to her was actually bone chilling. like, it made me uncomfortable, sick and disgusted and sympathetic in a way that an idol drama has NEVER made me feel. the fact that they erased this scene, rewrote it so that he was not the one to kill tsj but it was CRXY instead????? ok so now it's just MISOGYNY????? when she was ALso a pretty well written character and they just made her BEYOND STUPID. and ALLLLLL of this.... was just grandpa showing him what COULD HAVE HAPPENED.... destroying everything we've built up towards, fucking up cx, xy AND crxy all at once. for WHAT???? because yall are just too scared to make cx a bad person???? guess what, HE IS!!!!!!!!!?????? he is a severely fucked up, traumatized, toxic, manipulative freak in love with his fucking sister like????? LET HIM BE BAD OH MY GOD. just fucking let him be bad!!!!!!! that's how i like him because it's GOOD FUCKING WRITING. and even if it WAS crxy there was not a single moment where cx got the blame because it's also fundamentally his fault for driving crxy CRAZY by being the MOST NEGLECTFUL HUSBAND OF ALL TIME. like even then they couldn't write that well!!!! and then they wrote us into this stupid ass hole where he couldn't punish her for political OR personal reasons because csfl died for her essentially so then xy can't even take revenge but also she DOESN"T EVEN TRY to and then magically crxy has a change of heart and wants to be a good queen and then xy doesn't even question WHYYY crxy would kill tsj even tho it makes NO SENSE because she has no motivation to kill tsj or xy and since xy is supposed to be SMART would that not naturally lead her to the conclusion that crxy wanted something from their deaths and that therefore cx had feelings for her but no xy doesn't use her brain or do any investigating so WHY!!! why write this conflict at all w csfl and xiaoyao not being able to take revenge! her feeling miserable because EVERYONE knew crxy killed tsj except for her?? what was the point of all this???? UGHHHHHHHHHHh. like disappointed isnt strong enough of a word to describe how i felt about this ending. it was beyond stupid and pointless and stole xy of all agency because if they used LOGIC that would mean even more conflict and cause MOre problems and they didn't care about that or have time to deal with it. so xy is magically just gonna give up on her revenge because whatever, even tho we know that even if tsj returned, based on who she is as a character, she would NEVER let the murderer get away with it. remember when she wanted to fuck up a'nian for bullying lao mu and chuanzi??? BRO.

okay onto xiaoyao. as a character, xy felt like more of an after thought this season, since it was primarily about cx's character arc. and in truth, as soon as she genuinely accepted tsj as her partner, her character arc was over, because that is what this story has always been about. tsj is not particularly lovable to me as a character, but he is a symbol for healing, the correct path to take after trauma, as a foil to cx. i was really disappointed by what happened in the last season, and the way that they handled tsj's family issues and sexual assault. however, this season did actually make up for it somewhat. seeing xy come to terms with her own wrong doings and truly grow was actually powerful for a fl. usually when we follow the fl in a drama, since she is the protagonist, we tend to just go along w her actions as the right thing or reasonable thing to do from her perspective. but this scene w tsj showed that it wasn't true, that in fact, she should've worked together with her partner instead of essentially testing him to fail her and disappoint her, as she believed all people would eventually. personally, i felt that she could've done more to make it up to tsj afterwards, but she fought and they worked together to take down tsh and ffyy, which was good enough. from then on, i really wanted her character's final move to be leaving behind her trauma bonded relationship w her brother that was stunting her growth and happiness. which like, ofc she still does at the end, but it was deeply unsatisfying. i wish there had been any acknowledgment that cx was holding her back and they were bad for each other. which ofc, was had in the dream sequence and then promptly erased. the other reason i liked that ending, was that through trying to kill cx, she had agency, and when she couldn't do it, through her suicide, xy still had agency. by taking this away from us, instead, it just feels like xy is defanged and just goes along w the big moves that cx and xl make until the end where she doesn't even take revenge on crxy and just gets her happy ending. and im sorry.... having cx admit his incestuous feelings to xy and her accepting them is just really gross and uncomfortable for me. i get that culturally, chinese ppl value blood and patrilineal lineages SO much that as long as they don't share a last name it isn't considered incest but that is CRAZY to me as a modern day american and cx and xy are very much siblings who grew up together and xy's acceptance of his feelings and not immediate fear and disgust like in the dream sequence (which is again WHY the dream is the superior real ending to me) is just really weird and throws me off the whole show. i wish they stuck the landing w our female lead and gave her a truly satisfying ending, but whatever, it was fine.

i don't really have much to say about tsj because he is more of a symbol than a character and his inability for most of the series to stand up to his evil ass patrilineal confucian family is not completed in a satisfying way either. While it is clear to me that he was xy’s number 1 choice, i see other viewers primarily wanted her to be w xl which is the antithesis to the show but also i can understand. tan jianci is a better actor than deng wei LOL has more chemistry w yz and is also able to deliver A+ sexual tension! like... ofc they made xl so cool that people can't actually receive the theme and message of the story. but whatever!!! my take on xl is that he is a well written character who never changes lol. he valorized giving his life to a useless cause fed on nothing but pride and nationalism and he got what he wanted. so in a way it was a happy ending for him, but ultimately deeply sad because he asked for every bit of heartbreak he went through. others, and certainly the writer, see him as noble to a fault and deserving of respect. i do not share these values, so to me, he is just stubborn and pitiful but i do think he is quite well written and i appreciate him. i will always wish that his plotline was better written and the writers gave a fuck about the military instead of just how cool it looks. it is easy for me to find him stubborn and stupid because i don't believe that what he's fighting for is worth it!!!!!!! i wish that they showed me more of his relationship w his father and the soldiers, that they were truly brothers in arms, the people he loved who died in battle, or died for him... that chenrong was worth fighting for. if they strengthened those relationships, gave literally anyone else in the army NAMES and showed that his loyalty to them was actually worth it, then he would make a far greater impact to me. instead everyone else in the army distrusts him and hates him for being a yao and he only has his father like WHAT.......... make it make sense!!!!!!!

all in all, this drama's greatest shortcomings are its inability to care for or write politics or military plot that is as complex or even just as supportive as its characters deserve. season 2 is much of the same of season 1, but even more messy and roundabout in some ways, and ultimately capped with the most insane retconning rewrite that was never concluded in a way that made even a lick of sense. the ending was a gross insult to the original author, to the characters, the actors, everyone who worked on this show and their audience. i will never forget the absolutely fire first arc in qingshui town. the one time i cried this season was when we got to meet old sang tian'er. qingshui town was when the show felt fresh and gold, down to earth while still exploring the complexities of trauma and dating post trauma. i will always be thankful for the first 20 episodes..... i too, like tsj and xy would like to return there........