After watching the entire drama and feeling disappointed by the end, I remembered my very lengthy part 1 analysis and decided to post it here. It's interesting how much of my fears back then were realized in part 2. Give it a read if you're interested in my initial thoughts back then...

I'm reading the novel (never been so thankful for forcing myself to learn how to read mandarin after college) and although the production team/director's doing a brilliant job, for the most part, at respecting the source material and bringing justice to its world/characters, they do falter a bit when it comes to the FL (female lead) and several other female characters (mainly the minor antagonists).

The FL in the novel is not only brilliant and nuanced (author's very talented at crafting badass, 3 dimensional heroines), but her spirit's also an educated time traveler who was from modern times. This makes it completely believable that she's so knowledgeable in many different fields, yet lacks the ability to read archaic texts that's a staple amongst the nobility (she can read the majority of vernacular text).

In addition, since the novel FL never received parental love either before or after she transmigrated, she possesses a cynical attitude towards the world and tends to place herself in the role of an observer, rolling her eyes and poking fun at the shenanigans happening around her. Even with this jaded attitude, she still values sincerity and shows warmth to those who are genuinely kind to her.

This is a heroine who possesses high intelligence (has a flair for strategy and mechanics), practicality, wit, and dry humor all rolled up in one. She's the kind of relatable, mature, calm and collected heroine I dream about reading in a romance!

Her ultimate goal is to become independent and carefree, so many of her actions reflect that objective. All of her decisions are carefully weighed/considered in order to avoid being trapped in a life where she's unable to express her true self.

Due to censorship, the time travel aspect of our FL's character was stripped away and the director/script writers had to think of ways to best preserve the novel FL's attributes in a way that makes sense within the drama. Luckily, they retained most of her intelligence/street smarts, caution, and cynical attitude even when it stretches drama world logic from time to time, especially when it comes to her extensive vocabulary despite being truly uneducated.

The director also gave her some immature attributes since the drama her is no longer an older spirit inhabiting the body of a 15 yr. old (13 yrs. in the novel). Her cynicism/distrust is due to being neglected by everyone including her parents and yet, because of her young age, she still yearns for motherly affection. She treats people who are kind to her with equal fervor/warmth, but sometimes goes too far when exacting revenge on those who wrong her. Despite all this, the drama FL was still established as someone mature for her age due to being abandoned by her parents and raised by an aunt-in-law who's a viper. Lacking a proper parental figure, she had to wise up and fend for herself.

And up until recent episodes, I've been ecstatic at the way the drama creators have been faithfully showcasing the novel FL's nuances and character growth. Everything from her relationships with the people around her to her witnessing the atrocities of war contributed to her character growth. For the majority of part 1, the drama's been very successful at developing her into a believable, flesh and blood character.

One of my favorite scenes was the bridge incident because it allowed the FL to display flaws while staying true to her character. Her mistakes and subsequent stubbornness make her more human and yet, her character's actions were completely believable. Nothing she did was inconsistent with her character setup.

Everything I've seen for the majority of the first 27 episodes has led me to believe that the production crew's intentions are to faithfully adapt the novel's story/characters to the best of their ability. After reading parts of the novel, I approved of most of the changes in part 1 as they were all done in an effort to either streamline or elevate the drama.

However, there are some changes I didn't care for like the increasing amount of bitch drama (esp. the one in the palace involving all the princesses ganging up on the FL, effectively turning her into a damsel who had to be saved by our swoon-worthy ML) in the later part 1 episodes which weakened the FL and made all the other minor female characters into one-note caricatures instead of characters with nuance.

This amplifying of drama for drama's sake approach was even extended to the FL's mother in the earlier episodes. In this case, the writers added several scenes of mother-daughter drama that didn't exist in the novel. But similar to the later bitch drama, the additional mother-daughter drama doesn't really add anything of substance and becomes very repetitive.

Fortunately, the mother, unlike the one-note palace females, is actually a nuanced and 3-dimensional character when she's interacting with everyone else who's not her daughter. There are many scenes with other people that showcased her badass, intelligent, and introspective side, which effectively added more dimensions to her character. However, this doesn't extend to the majority of scenes with her own daughter, the FL.

For some reason, the drama turned her into a toxic mom who repeatedly criticized her daughter at every turn. It turned into a sort of pattern: Every time the FL does something, her mother would have some form of nitpick and would ignore anything she does right. This behavior kept repeating like clockwork until it begin to feel unnatural. It's almost as if the writing purposely handicaps the mother from dealing out any compliments to the FL, making this aspect of her character seem like a plot device that exists solely to make the FL feel unloved.

In the novel, the mother was much more reasonable, even if her relationship with the FL, similar to the drama, was never the best. There was never this repeating pattern of her criticizing the FL at every turn and she also suffered more consequences. For example, her mistake with the study table where she unfairly publicly shamed the FL actually resulted in graver consequences: The FL's father refused to speak to her for a few days and the aunt was more harsh. This led to her being more ashamed and self aware of her actions. She felt more like a person when dealing with her daughter in comparison to her version in the drama.

I also didn't like how the drama made the FL seem all flip-floppy after her blowup with the ML since right after she told him she didn't want him in her life, she immediately started reconsidering. No matter how nice he's been, it still doesn't change the fact that he practically forced her into an engagement out of the blue without consulting with her beforehand. She's a character who values free will and clearly hates being forced into doing anything. Due to his high-handed actions, she should only be at the "reluctantly accepting the engagement" phase. That montage that suggests she's falling for him already kind of felt unnatural and rubbed me the wrong way.

I'm now worried about the FL's love trajectory. I'm scared that the creators are purposely making her feelings for the ML more abstract so that they can take more liberties with her character in order to have the best of both worlds: Fanservice for the viewers while remaining faithful to the source material.

The montage of all the leads' closeup interactions at the end of season 1, however unnatural, clearly made it seem like the FL's reached some form of love revelation, but I heard that subsequent episodes have her regressing and taking the "unsure of her feelings" stance. This only hurts her character, making her out to be someone who's wishy-washy. And FLs who are indecisive about their feelings are one of my pet peeves in a romance. It's annoys the hell out of me if I see FLs telling the MLs how they want them out of their life one minute and then the moment they got what they asked for, they're all mopey and regretful -ugh...makes me want to slap them.

That montage immediately following the blowup, with the FL sprouting a lovestruck expression and then acting all giddy, came off as forced and completely out of character. It skated dangerously close to my pet peeve FL behavior scenario in a romance. And the fact that it was put in at the very end of part 1 makes it even more evident that the writers only did it to hook in viewers for part 2. They really failed to consider the bigger picture and how out of place it'll later become if they still intend to respect/follow the novel FL's overall character growth.

I just don't want the FL's love trajectory to turn into a complete mess only because the drama writers want to please everyone: Book lovers and casual viewers. You all know what happens when you try to please everyone, you end up compromising story integrity and pleasing no one. It seems like in order to both follow the novel love trajectory and please viewers, the writers decided to utilize the "dangling a carrot" approach when it comes to the FL's feelings: They give just enough fanservice/cutesy scenes (misleading viewers into thinking she's deeper in love than she really is) until they arrive at a major novel plot point where they then yank it all back, rolling with the novel FL's status quo, which then kind of clashes with the drama character changes that were tweaked for fanservice. Sigh...making character changes based on viewer response almost always leads to disaster due to the writing inconsistencies.

By attempting to have the best of both worlds, they're going to end up weakening the FL's overall character. Which is a shame, because nuanced, 3-dimensional FLs of this caliber are practically a unicorn in romantic dramas. It's especially rare because very few production companies even respect the source material of novels they buy. It still feels surreal that a romantic and well-written novel with a nuanced/lovable FL is even chosen to be adapted, let alone respected. So I really really want them to make use of the FL's potential and not let it go to waste. I'm just concerned about the warning signs I'm seeing and don't want this brilliant character to end up regressing, becoming unbaked.

And if the drama creators wanted to satisfy fans, there are others ways to put in fanservice without compromising character integrity. In the novel, I heard the FL gets engaged to the ML before the halfway point and that's when their romance really starts (the ML hardly showed up before this). Since they already changed this in the drama by tastefully adding in more interactions with the ML in a way that didn't compromise story integrity, they could have easily had the FL start falling (yet make it clear she's not "in love" yet) for the ML organically over the course of the engagement in the next several episodes.

At this point, they're learning how to operate as a couple after all and the FL can start appreciating him after getting to know him better. They can put in plenty of fanservice during this process and remain faithful to the source material since "starting to like someone" doesn't equate to deep love. This way, they can still keep the novel FL's character intact (novel FL doesn't fall deeply for the ML until much later, which is very true to the cynical/distrustful nature of her character) while pleasing fans with cute moments.

Point is, the production team already showed me in part 1 that they understand and respect the source material enough not to compromise story/character integrity. If they didn't care, they would have had the ML/FL interact much more in order to jumpstart the romance as quickly as possible. But they didn't go that route and respected the novel instead by focusing on the FL's story/character growth. Of course they couldn't ignore the ML completely, but the way they sprinkled scenes of him sporadically all worked in service of the story. It's almost the textbook example of what you would do with a major character that's completely absent in the first part of a novel.

They also weren't afraid of displaying the darker aspects of our leads. Because of all that care and respect, I'm now even more baffled/disappointed by their latest shenanigans. Why are they dropping the ball now by getting sloppy with the FL when the story's essentially about her growth and development? Ugh...I really really hope this is only temporary and the drama gets back on track!

Other than that, the majority of this drama, thus far, had been one full of nuanced characters, decent writing (being mainly faithful to the novel), and delicious buildup of tension between our leads (ML's proposal and subsequent carriage scene were the hottest); I had been hoping it would avoid resorting to cheap tactics/tropes that cater to the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, the latest episodes have been using some of my most hated drama tropes: Dumbing down the FL and other characters in order to elevate the ML and dialing up drama simply for drama's sake.

This has already happened during the palace bitch drama incident. In the novel, Wang Ling tried to ignore the FL (she'd been burned before and knew she wasn't a match for her) and it was the FL who first provoked her. The 5th princess wanted to avenge Wang Ling, but she never went further than kicking the FL's shoe before the ML intercepted. Even then, the FL's already thinking up a tactic to counter her so she probably never needed his help anyway.

But the drama somewhat weakened her and turned all the other females into plot device bitches who have nothing better to do than be the FL's foil all day, everyday. This was all in their attempt to set our FL up as the damsel in need of saving in order to elevate the ML's hotness. The hotness was achieved, but it came at the expense of all the other female characters. Our FL from the earlier episodes who effectively delegated orders, led around her subordinates, and held her own against the fake bandits wouldn't have needed saving in this particular incident. Sigh...

They didn't rely on this cheap trope in the first 20+ episodes, so why start now? Why are they okay with besmirching all of their hard work with the FL in almost half the drama? If this continues, these inconsistencies will turn her into more of a plot device than a nuanced character. None of her later brilliant feats will feel as natural if they keep sprinkling more of these "dumbing down the FL in order to emphasize the ML's appeal" moments in between. God, I hope this gets nipped in the bud soon!

Whew...I had a lot to say and needed to write it all out. It's been a while since I've been so obsessed with a drama and I desperately want it to stay its course to the very end. Fortunately, it's not too late and I hope the production team can resolve all this in a satisfactory manner instead of simply brushing it off as an isolated incident of stupidity where it's never mentioned again and the FL suddenly becomes smart again when the next plot point demands it.

I desperately want this drama to become a shining example of how incredible a book to screen adaptation can be when you make all the right decisions: Respecting the source material and staying mostly faithful, yet not being afraid to make changes when it better serves the drama and elevates the story.

I want this drama to join the ranks of my three all-time favorite dramas:

"Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" (successful adaptation that elevated the novel with my favorite romance of all time)

"Nirvana in Fire" (successful adaptation that's probably the most flawless drama amongst my top 3)

"Someday or One Day" (original script with an intriguing mystery almost flawlessly written and an epic romance)