achy breaky brain
I took notes while watching eps 19-22, but evidently that didn't work, so am mainly recording impressions. If only the other 22 chapters of the book tie-in were available online. Although several scenes are different/not in the series, and the scriptwriter/author 李森祥 (Li Senxiang) appears to have planned 50+ episodes.
- King = Country? King -> Country -> King? Whatever it is, you screwed up, Gou Jian. (though he doesn't sound terrifically penitent about it, or perhaps Uncle Ming's smooth literary tones make his reply and questioning of Fan Li sound too much like Richard II's let us sit on the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings speech.)
- Arguing about 礼 with a conquering warrior king shouldn't work, but.
- Melodrama really runs in Shi Mai's family. (that scene is much shorter in print and at least ends as expected.)
- OMG the surrender in the great hall! As rasetsunyo pointed out, Gou Jian leaves his sword at Fu Chai's feet (without kneeling as ordered) and takes the scabbard with him, throwing a parting shot straight through Fu Chai with his 媚眼. Deciphering my incoherent scribbles:
1)their love is so phallic symbolic!
2)parallel with Fan Li! (no doubt this time about the seme/uke roles)
3)I thought this was *the* sword of Gou Jian (as on wiki) since couldn't see markings clearly
Also to add to 2), possibly that Fu Chai's victory is incomplete (as a sword needs a scabbard): he may have the country but not its king('s surrender)
Then Fu Chai broke the blade >_<
- Fan Li/Wen Zhong are like an old married couple.
- Gou Jian's 不服 speech in the ancestral temple: 3rd person (the only time, IIRC, that he has done so unironically) since no one else can hear him, and now he definitely doesn't sound penitent or uke in the least.
- Reactions to the most beautiful woman of the time, whose attractions could sink a fish in shame and stun a swallow from the sky:
1) Is that who I think - oh OK it is.
2) How did she recover so fast? (another example of screwy editing)
3) Magical Girl Shoujo Transformation!Xi Shi complete with trilling tinkly music, almost-lisp and (to paraphrase someone's comment on Mick Jagger) childbearing lips
4) If she's a peasant, why can't she use a loom?
5) Maybe Fan Li is a bit too brusque, notwithstanding his overwhelming concern for king and country and understandable sorrow confusion at said king and queen playing matchmaker.
6) Gou Jian Ya Yu is still the prettiest.
- The music is getting on my nerves. (And was that a "Hallelujah" playing when Ya Yu retreats to her private chambers to cry alone after putting on a brave front for everyone?)
- Gou Jian being confessional is scary. And why does he keep entrusting the country to people whom he doesn't trust? Am liking Wen Zhong more and more.
- Holding hands to cross the river! helping each other up! carrying Xin Tian together! Gou Jian/Ya Yu 4EVA
- For some reason I wrote This series is really heavy on the SYMBOLISM at the start of ep 21, but neglected to elaborate: perhaps it was Fu Chai stepping on Gou Jian's head? Or possibly everything else that has happened thus far.
- Someone's stance was insouciant - think it was Gou Jian.
- I have never sympathised or empathised as much with Wu Zi Xu as in these 4 episodes.
- Insightful!Wangsun Luo, learning from and surpassing the master in some areas: the more incomprehensible Gou Jian is to Fu Chai, the more enthusiastic Fu Chai is to force his submission.
- Concentration camp tactics (especially moving rocks from point A to B and back) appear to have originated independently in China.
- Fu Chai, if you didn't make these promises in the first place, you wouldn't put yourself in a bind having to keep them. And if you think you won't 手软(or 心软, more accurately), you've got many more thinks coming.
- How does WZX try and fail to kill Gou Jian, let us count the ways:
1) Hei Yi
2) typhoid (didn't see the rose spots. Perhaps they meant typhus, also prevalent in such conditions. Not as contagious as the military doctor would have Yan Zhu believe, and generally not epidemic unless in a debilitated population, unlike Wangsun Luo's experience.)
3) tied up and starved (though Gou Jian initiated the latter)
- They must have had industrial strength bleach or were using lime very freely, everyone's smocks are unusually and variably clean despite presumably similar living and working conditions XD
- Fan Li/Gou Jian their love is so Bent strategic!
- One would think that Wu Zi Xu is more shrewd than to CONFESS ALL to Gou Jian, but perhaps the strain of too many failed assassination plots is showing.
(I need a Woxin icon, preferably one that says D'oh!)