Liri's Archive

Love that even he can stand and walk small distances now, he still uses a wheelchair on the reg because he's far from fully recovered.

I think the entire sequence was so well-done, especially with Ye Li and her father. When we were shown that empty paper in Ye Li's hands, I think my heart broke too. Because after ALL of her efforts, it was proof he didn't really care about her mother and her (at least not as much as Ye family), and remained a coward.

Then, well. I did NOT expect a murderous granny who was pretending to have dementia to be the one behind her mother's death. I guess it tracks with how selfish her sons are... but I digress. Poor Ye Li got another severe shock, no wonder she completely lost it.

The scene with Xiuyao desperately calling out to her.. it says so much about Ye Li that what finally snapped her out of it was Xiuyao asking her for help. That entire sequence deserves long essays dedicated to it.

But that aside, the big question is: are we Not going to address the elephant in the room? The next morning sequence was Bizarre, to say the least. Ye Li acted as if Xiuyao didn't physically stop her from sending her grandma to hell herself the night before!

I thought she would at least offer an explanation, however false, but.. it seems like maybe she does not want to lie to him anymore? especially after their fight for this very reason, so maybe she resolved to not say anything at all..?

Also what was up with the scene with Ye Li's brother and the toad? There is definitely some significance there which I am missing.

One, she's willed herself into seeing something scary enough to distract her from whatever was the real terror (ie monkeys). Or to see a presence wonderful enough to distract her from the truth of an absence (ie her little maid). And the other is to compartmentalize so thoroughly and totally that a memory or event simply never happened.

But then we see Xiuyao informing her of her grandmother's death and the first thing that occurs to her is the tree and how it led to her demise. It was then I started to consider that maybe she did remember what happened, but doesn't want to acknowledge it.

Do you perhaps think she suppressed only some parts as opposed to the entire sequence? Like with her maid, she remembers her maid but not her death. So perhaps she remembers only that her grandmother was hit, not what followed.

first of all, i kind of love the vaguely supernatural elements that are sprinkled in. like is this divine justice for a lightning bolt to drop a branch from her mom's tree on the head of the woman who killed her mom at the exact right moment? i like that they're playing with the murkiness of that line throughout the drama.

but second of all!!!! when he sees her pick up the knife and advance on granny!

the way he can tell in a glance how she's even more messed up than usual! she's practically in a daze or craze and clearly doesn't even register that he's there when he calls out to her. until...

you can see the moment she hears him call her name and sort of starts to come to, but the thing that snaps her out of it is him saying his legs hurt!

when he holds his arms open for her!!!!!!!!!! and she collapses into him! the way he just keeps telling her it's okay!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When Ye Li is telling Mo Xiuyao why she hates Mo Jingli, the emphasis is on the disciples of Lishan who were collateral damage in the imperial powers struggles that Mo Jingli is a victim of. She tells us personal information about them, and while she is sympathetic to Mo Jingli's suffering, her focus is on the lives that he took with his decision. What is interesting though is that although she says she can't forgive him for what he did, she also doesn't paint him as the villain. We get the sense that she knows that he was also a victim of circumstance, and maybe even feels sadness that this is what their lives led to, but ultimately she just wants to part ways with him so they can live their own lives.

Mo Jingli doesn't even mention the disciples of Lishan. He focuses so much on his relationship with Ye Li when he was studying there, and then paints their separation as one of the many injustices that the Empress Dowager did to him. Where Ye Li's story was a tragedy of two people driven apart by cruelties beyond either of their control, Mo Jingli's story has a wronged hero, a villain, and the prize at the end of the line. And this fantasy is entirely self-centered. Not only does he not mention the disciples, he also doesn't mention the confession they made him sign, and barely even mentions Ye Li. He's entirely focused on his own suffering and his image as the wronged prince.

flirting with handsome husband

talking to dead people

making soup