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Mar. 3rd, 2023 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOn the strength of its first half alone Love Like the Galaxy jumped more or less to the top of the list of cdramas I've seen; now that we've seen the whole thing, the second half falters a bit for me but has some real charm points nonetheless.
Cheng Shaoshang, the heroine of Love Like the Galaxy, is the teen daughter of a military family who's being raised by her obnoxious grandmother and abusive aunt and as a result has learned nothing appropriate or educational for her class and station and everything about how to secretly scheme for revenge on people who are mean to you. (She has also learned how to be an engineering genius, but that's a happy accident.) At the beginning of the drama, her parents return after fourteen years at war; Shaoshang promptly stages a dramatic fainting spell to illustrate how poor her treatment has been while they were gone; her father falls for it immediately while her mother, used to training new recruits on the battlefield, equally immediately sees through the charade and is like Well! Can't Endorse This Behavior!
The relationship between Shaoshang and her mother soon develops into an ongoing battle of wills, as Shaoshang's mother struggles to make up for lost time in the only way she knows how -- With Great And Unhelpful Military-Style Discipline -- while Shaoshang, deeply resentful that her mother seems to be constantly furious at her for the result of her own abandonment, doubles down on schemes and bids for independence. Meanwhile, the rest of the family (Shaoshang's extremely affectionate father, brothers, and sweet cousin Yang Yang who is constantly and unhelpfully put in the position of being The Good One as compared to Shaoshang) are all broadly on Team Shaoshang in this fight, which has the effect of annoying her mother even more while not in any way preventing Shaoshang from constantly going on rants about how nobody loves her in this world and she can only look out for herself and then setting out to deliberately push her mother's buttons even harder.
Something I kept saying togenarti and tenillypo while we were watching is that the relationship between Shaoshang and her mother in the first half of the drama felt like it was being given the treatment that most dramas give the central romance -- the camera is determined to show how much Shaoshang's mother loves Shaoshang and how absolutely dogshit she is at expressing it and how much she is fucking up about it, while keeping both of them deeply sympathetic at all times. Usually only the romantic hero gets this edit, so the fact that instead we are seeing a beautiful middle-aged woman sneak around pining for glimpses of her daughter while pretending she doesn't care at all is very exciting to me!
Then we got to the back half, which is much more focused on the romance and the broader political plot, and at one point Shaoshang goes on an extended rant about her love interest is just like her mom and I felt very vindicated in my read, lol.
Technically speaking Shaoshang actually has three love interests, all of whom she's engaged to at different points in the drama, but the main one is Ling Buyi (played by the same actor who played Fei Lu in Nirvana in Fire.) Ling Buyi - the emperor's favorite adopted son on a mission to get justice for his murdered family - is ALSO scheming, vengeful, and under-socialized, and falls in love with Shaoshang at first sight upon witnessing her plot to get her mean uncle arrested. They share many hobbies, including talking at great length about how alone they are in this world and how as a result they had no choice but to singlehandedly attempt [elaborate secret revenge scheme] while hordes of parental figures trip over themselves in attempting to aggressively support them.
I have no objection to this romance and I LOVE much of how the major conflict plays out, which turns on Shaoshang's anger that Ling Buyi repeatedly asks for her to trust him enough to allow him to help with her problems, while keeping major secrets from her and refusing to let her in on his; what a great reason to dump someone! but the romance also pulls Shaoshang increasingly into court politics, which means that her family is in the story much less, and as by this point I was deeply attached to her entire family I kept wanting her to just go home and hang out with them again. (She does occasionally, but not nearly enough! That said, the best arc in the back half is the one where her father gets accused of treachery and the whole family gets sent to prison but Shaoshang is technically excused from going to prison because of her engagement, and she tries to go with them anyway and her mom refuses to allow it, and you know it's because she loves her so much but Shaoshang experiences it as rejection AGAIN, and then the whole family gets some extended prison bonding time; truly superb.)
However, in recompense, the court politics arc does give us the Emperor and his sweet Empress and mean concubine. The mean concubine and the Emperor were childhood sweethearts and the Empress was a political marriage and everyone including their horrible children is constantly trying to use this to pit them against each other for court faction reasons and they are constantly, wearily having to explain that in fact they are extremely fond of each other ... the concubine never wanted to be Empress ... it would be so much work and she would have to attend all the court functions instead of showing up for five minutes to be incredibly rude and then leave again ...
This plot eventually turns on the fact that the Empress never wanted to be Empress either and is reasonably a bit sad about the fact that her husband and his mean concubine are known for being very in love while she is stuck being the nice one AND constantly has to feel like a third wheel. On her deathbed, she tells the mean concubine that she has been her dearest sister and she hopes that in the next life they can be together forever, and then with her last words tells her husband that it's been real but she hopes that in the next life they do not meet. Mic drop! I am considering requesting Empress/mean concubine for Yuletide.
Some other comments:
- I did not think I would come around on the B love interest, a scholar who spends the first 30 episodes doing nothing but constantly negging Shaoshang, but in the last act he made an incredible turnaround; the C love interest is a perfect darling infant
- the drama is just chock full of mean girls whose whole personality is being mean to Shaoshang, and about a third of them get unexpected and compelling character arcs and another third of them spiral all the way downhill into murder and you simply cannot tell which ones are going to be which because the larval phase for all of them looks more or less the same
- Jiang Cheng's actor is there as the incredibly kind and filial but absolutely useless Crown Prince who doesn't clench his jaw once
I will close with a .gif of one of the first times Shaoshang and her mom are actually on the same page while getting joint vengeance on someone who has offended both of them. Look at them! Aren't they adorable?
Cheng Shaoshang, the heroine of Love Like the Galaxy, is the teen daughter of a military family who's being raised by her obnoxious grandmother and abusive aunt and as a result has learned nothing appropriate or educational for her class and station and everything about how to secretly scheme for revenge on people who are mean to you. (She has also learned how to be an engineering genius, but that's a happy accident.) At the beginning of the drama, her parents return after fourteen years at war; Shaoshang promptly stages a dramatic fainting spell to illustrate how poor her treatment has been while they were gone; her father falls for it immediately while her mother, used to training new recruits on the battlefield, equally immediately sees through the charade and is like Well! Can't Endorse This Behavior!
The relationship between Shaoshang and her mother soon develops into an ongoing battle of wills, as Shaoshang's mother struggles to make up for lost time in the only way she knows how -- With Great And Unhelpful Military-Style Discipline -- while Shaoshang, deeply resentful that her mother seems to be constantly furious at her for the result of her own abandonment, doubles down on schemes and bids for independence. Meanwhile, the rest of the family (Shaoshang's extremely affectionate father, brothers, and sweet cousin Yang Yang who is constantly and unhelpfully put in the position of being The Good One as compared to Shaoshang) are all broadly on Team Shaoshang in this fight, which has the effect of annoying her mother even more while not in any way preventing Shaoshang from constantly going on rants about how nobody loves her in this world and she can only look out for herself and then setting out to deliberately push her mother's buttons even harder.
Something I kept saying to
genarti and tenillypo while we were watching is that the relationship between Shaoshang and her mother in the first half of the drama felt like it was being given the treatment that most dramas give the central romance -- the camera is determined to show how much Shaoshang's mother loves Shaoshang and how absolutely dogshit she is at expressing it and how much she is fucking up about it, while keeping both of them deeply sympathetic at all times. Usually only the romantic hero gets this edit, so the fact that instead we are seeing a beautiful middle-aged woman sneak around pining for glimpses of her daughter while pretending she doesn't care at all is very exciting to me! Then we got to the back half, which is much more focused on the romance and the broader political plot, and at one point Shaoshang goes on an extended rant about her love interest is just like her mom and I felt very vindicated in my read, lol.
Technically speaking Shaoshang actually has three love interests, all of whom she's engaged to at different points in the drama, but the main one is Ling Buyi (played by the same actor who played Fei Lu in Nirvana in Fire.) Ling Buyi - the emperor's favorite adopted son on a mission to get justice for his murdered family - is ALSO scheming, vengeful, and under-socialized, and falls in love with Shaoshang at first sight upon witnessing her plot to get her mean uncle arrested. They share many hobbies, including talking at great length about how alone they are in this world and how as a result they had no choice but to singlehandedly attempt [elaborate secret revenge scheme] while hordes of parental figures trip over themselves in attempting to aggressively support them.
I have no objection to this romance and I LOVE much of how the major conflict plays out, which turns on Shaoshang's anger that Ling Buyi repeatedly asks for her to trust him enough to allow him to help with her problems, while keeping major secrets from her and refusing to let her in on his; what a great reason to dump someone! but the romance also pulls Shaoshang increasingly into court politics, which means that her family is in the story much less, and as by this point I was deeply attached to her entire family I kept wanting her to just go home and hang out with them again. (She does occasionally, but not nearly enough! That said, the best arc in the back half is the one where her father gets accused of treachery and the whole family gets sent to prison but Shaoshang is technically excused from going to prison because of her engagement, and she tries to go with them anyway and her mom refuses to allow it, and you know it's because she loves her so much but Shaoshang experiences it as rejection AGAIN, and then the whole family gets some extended prison bonding time; truly superb.)
However, in recompense, the court politics arc does give us the Emperor and his sweet Empress and mean concubine. The mean concubine and the Emperor were childhood sweethearts and the Empress was a political marriage and everyone including their horrible children is constantly trying to use this to pit them against each other for court faction reasons and they are constantly, wearily having to explain that in fact they are extremely fond of each other ... the concubine never wanted to be Empress ... it would be so much work and she would have to attend all the court functions instead of showing up for five minutes to be incredibly rude and then leave again ...
This plot eventually turns on the fact that the Empress never wanted to be Empress either and is reasonably a bit sad about the fact that her husband and his mean concubine are known for being very in love while she is stuck being the nice one AND constantly has to feel like a third wheel. On her deathbed, she tells the mean concubine that she has been her dearest sister and she hopes that in the next life they can be together forever, and then with her last words tells her husband that it's been real but she hopes that in the next life they do not meet. Mic drop! I am considering requesting Empress/mean concubine for Yuletide.
Some other comments:
- I did not think I would come around on the B love interest, a scholar who spends the first 30 episodes doing nothing but constantly negging Shaoshang, but in the last act he made an incredible turnaround; the C love interest is a perfect darling infant
- the drama is just chock full of mean girls whose whole personality is being mean to Shaoshang, and about a third of them get unexpected and compelling character arcs and another third of them spiral all the way downhill into murder and you simply cannot tell which ones are going to be which because the larval phase for all of them looks more or less the same
- Jiang Cheng's actor is there as the incredibly kind and filial but absolutely useless Crown Prince who doesn't clench his jaw once
I will close with a .gif of one of the first times Shaoshang and her mom are actually on the same page while getting joint vengeance on someone who has offended both of them. Look at them! Aren't they adorable?
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 04:43 am (UTC)How did he manage to pull that off?
(You should totally request Empress/mean concubine for Yuletide; I'm for it on the strength of your summary.)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 05:02 am (UTC)God I SO wanted more time with the family in the back half though. What we got was great! I just wanted 500% more of it.
Another thing I really liked about this show was how, on the one hand, it's much more a family story and romance and coming-of-age story than a political drama per se -- the Emperor is kind and indulgent! mostly! -- but on the other hand how much weight things like family obligation (to betrothals, to carrying on the family name, etc) and public opinion (in the spheres in which public opinion counts) matter. It's a balance that a lot of historical cdramas are playing with, of course, but this one struck a slightly different tone and balance than the others I've seen, and I liked what it did with it.
I have no more thoughts because I just need to watch this gif another 300 times. What a great moment that was.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 05:04 am (UTC)(the Empress kept being like 'I feel like I'm in your way, I'm so sorry that you were forced to have me as part of the marriage' and the concubine kept being like 'I'M NOT. I'M NOT. HOW MUCH MORE CLEARLY CAN I EXPRESS THAT I'M THRILLED YOUR HERE.')
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 01:51 pm (UTC)they are adorable, but why bother with the sleeves if they won't stay up?!
(also how did you even recognize JC's actor?!)
I will add it to the ever-growing list!
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 03:18 pm (UTC)Also, what a delightful review, you've definitely made me want to watch it!
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Date: 2023-03-04 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 01:52 am (UTC)(LET ME TELL YOU, I ALMOST DIDN'T. Look at this! Unrecognizable!)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 01:57 am (UTC)It was so much fun, I would truly love to hear your thoughts on it!
no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 07:02 am (UTC)(And lol yes, this show's dynamics are definitely, uh, variably subtle. Sorry, 66% of mean girls etc.)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-05 10:55 am (UTC)Just based on this review, Empress/mean concubine 4 lyfe!!!