#The Rise of Ning

[dangermousie]

This is the most gloriously snobby thing ever.

It is giving me these vibes:

PS So far, this drama is a super fun mix of The Double, LLTG and an off-off-brand Minglan and I am enjoying it hugely.

[highlynerdy]

*MIC.DROP.*

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

The Rise of Ning

[pippin-pippout]

Oh to be a goose in a historical cdrama

[nitzysays]

The Rise of Ning (2024) — ep. 19

[paleturtlecherryblossom-blog]

Thoughts on Rise of Ning, Pt 2

Now that I’m through like 14 episodes of The Rise of Ning (and I’m having a amazing time), again I want to harp on the changes from the novel, and how I feel they’re logically executed:

First! LU JIAXUE! Even in the novel, he is an incredibly compelling character and in the drama, the actor brings out a fantastic intensity that makes it even better. The shot where Yining is arguing with him to spare her Third brother, and you see her whole face and just his jaw, but then the twitches of his jaw and lips convey SO MUCH repressed emotion, ahhh I was having a lot of fun.

The interesting thing about him for me (at least in the novel) is that he’s not exactly the typical scumbag ex-husband/lover you find in reincarnation/rebirth stories. He was genuinely very good to Yining when they were together, and in many other settings, he could be the endgame male lead after one key misunderstanding gets resolved, and I would cheer for him. In fact, the author did write an alternate universe extra where Yining doesn’t meet Luo Shenyuan and remarries Lu Jiaxue! 

So the romance in the novel is very context dependent; it works out because Yining meets Shenyuan in a setting filled with family struggles, slowly grows to rely on him more than anyone else and gives him her ultimate trust. All of this leads up to her falling in love with him, and this is never in doubt, even when she clears her misunderstanding of Lu Jiaxue (this relieved me a lot lol). 

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I just really like stories where characters falling in love for the second time dont have their first love be portrayed as ‘not really love’ or ‘loved a person unworthy of it’. Because in the novel, while I was all for Luo Shenyuan, I couldn’t say Lu Jiaxue was a scumbag who deserved to be dumped quickly. Also those two are very similar in terms of their ruthlessness and capacity for obsession, so I agree with @dangermousie, they should fuck it out. (they do it via court politics, but the direct version would be great to ;) )

So in the novel, Yining has an older sister (from the same mom Gu Minglan), who’s married off to a duke household. This sister of hers is very fierce and capable of defending her to her shitty dad (who’s unchanged across both versions, sigh). And her stepmom is actually not so cool in the novel, she is equally kind to Yining, but she doesn’t have much say. In this aspect, I much prefer Lin Hairu’s character in the drama, which I guess they derived by combining the novel! Older sister and the novel! Lin Hairu.

The change also makes sense, because in the novel, Yining only stays on in the main residence after her mom dies because of her elder sister marrying into a powerful family. In absence of this, and given that Lin Hairu would have married in only years later, it makes sense that Lady Qiao schemed to send her off to a country estate.

Also because Yining stays on the estate and grows up with Luo Shenyuan, Old Lady Luo is also, I think, a bit more accepting of him than in the drama, Again, it makes sense, in the novel, she is aware she is dying and she makes a deal with him: he gets legitimate status, and Yining gets his protection. In the drama, this logic doesn’t apply, because the grandma is looking for a suitable husband for Yining to protect her, and also she isn’t in immediate danger of dying anymore. So whether he can get added to the family registry really would require Yining to put a fair bit of thought into it. Also at this point of time in the novel, Shenyuan is the only adult son of the Luo second branch, so even shitty dad will grasp at straws to elevate his reputation. 

[da-man-si]

Lu Jiaxue has a bad day

Exhibition-1

Damage Taken-20

Exhibition-2 because NEVER BACK DOWN NEVER WHAT

Damage Taken-30

Exhibition-3 because he ain't a weak bitch

Damage Taken-50

Alexa, play clown music.

Total Damage Taken-100, Player out.

He was evidently out because he didn't appear again for the rest of the episode. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers everyone.

[tomorrowsdrama]

Is it just me or are they speed running through all the web novel cliches in The Rise of Ning? In just the first three episodes we’ve had:

Evil Concubine framing the legitimate daughter for causing her miscarriage

Unfavored legitimate daughter returns in triumph by showing off her awesome skills

FL’s sister trying to steal her favorable arranged marriage

ML secretly helping FL

Concubine ruining FL’s reputation and scheming to force her into becoming a concubine

The trashiest of all trash dads who ever trash dad’ed

FL tricking her sister into meeting the arranged fiancé and having their father “discover” them

Concubine being in charge of the household accounts instead of the main wife

Concubine scheming to harm the grandma who protects FL

Scum bag dad being biased and not punishing concubine for trying to harm grandma

Main wife getting back control of the household management

The formula is pretty much - 1. present obstacle to FL 2. FL figures out clever way to solve the obstacle within the same episode. I don’t mind a fast paced drama. If I had to choose, I much prefer a shorter drama over a long drawn out drama. However, I hope they give the story and characters some room to develop and breathe. At this kind of pace, it is a bit hard to get invested in the characters. But I’m rooting for you The Double Borgias Minglan!

P.S. I think this is the first drama where the wily concubine looked older than the main wife 😆

[peach-blossoms]

i did worry that with drama taking so long to get yining’s birth secret out in the open, that we would not have enough time left to allow her feelings for san-ge to transition into romantic love more naturally since there’s also court politics to cover

…and i was right

do i still ship them? yes. are they still cute as buttons? yes. but thats mostly credit to our leads acting

san-ge acting a bit fast, i could understand, since hes been repressing feelings for a long while and his confession is def needed for her view to start changing. but after that, i need yining to have more inner turmoil and slower transition to romantic feelings instead of like 3 days

drama can’t even use the excuse of episode limit here for the rushing cause they certainly could have managed had they cut back on the other superfluous things like: less scenes of sixth sis and lin mao’ romance (i like them individually but not together), less repetitive scenes of lu jiaxu doing the same brainless things with worse and worse results (i much prefer novel ver whose obsession & actions made sense narratively), etc.

they could have also hastened evil aunts plot and get the birth secret out earlier. dont get me started on drama reinventing aunt into a second lady qiao (like how many women do we need to be jealous of yining’s mom?? and must we make all the luo children be motherless??), or how drama chose to make all these women so much crueller than in novel. that was one of the things i liked most about novel, is not letting these women’s schemes escalate into murder and orchestrating sexual assault against other women, and even allowing them to feel regretful if things take a wrong turn than what they intended (im all for allowing women to do crimes etc but premeditated murder isnt an easy reach for most and here it just seems excessive)

[dangermousie]

Gotta say, while I enjoyed The Double and it was a ridiculously beautiful drama, The Rise of Ning is so much more my thing in terms of characters, dynamics, vibe, ship, narrative etc.

I enjoy a lot of dramas but not that many feel like they are personally made for my preferences and this one does. I love everything about it, literally everything.

Perhaps it helps that I can actually imagine these people existing somewhere in reality while The Double characters all feel so incredibly operatic. Or because this narrative is not driven by revenge. (It’s rather like Minglan that way where yes FL brings down the evil concubine and ML wins over his evil family but it’s not the main focus and the lion’s share of the narrative.)

And the story and the characters are allowed to breathe. It feels like a costume cdrama version of a 19th century English novel and I love those. In fact, the vibes are rather Sword and Brocade (before it went into Costume CSI that is) and Minglan (tho of course not as good) and LLTG than The Double if I think about it.

I make all the Borgia sisterluster jokes because I am me, but the thing that draws me is not all the extraness but the lived in feeling and the nuances and the little moments and gestures.

If this keeps up, this is gonna join my Top 5 cdramas of 2024 with ShenLi, Heroes, Eternal Brotherhood and Joy of Life 2.

[mj220991]

Look at these beautiful posters!!!

@mercipourleslivres @dangermousie

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

Dear Prudence: I don’t think(?) I’m related to this family and there’s a girl that is nice to me and I think we can vibe. But she thinks (maybe incorrectly) that we are half siblings. Should I still ask her out?

[zefile]

The Rise of Ning EP01

[barananduen-blog]

Listen, CDrama networks:

If you're all going to dump everything on us all at once, and you still expect us to watch stuff, you're going to have to arrange it so that all cdrama fans all over the world have 4-day weekends.

Cuz the hours aren't mathing.

[paleturtlecherryblossom-blog]

My thought on the Rise of Ning, Pt 3

I finished 24 episodes of The Rise of Ning, and I wanna add in my two cents about the storyline so far, which, considering that I wake up everyday at 6 am to catch up on, is pretty damn good XD:

I was very pleased they adapted a scene of Lu Jiaxue observing Yining’s calligraphy and noticing that it bears a heavy similarity to Luo Shenyuan’s. This is an often emphasized point in the novel, given how prized a skill calligraphy was for scholars/officials back then, the fact that Yining can replicate his style is indicative of how very close they are. Now whether that’s a sibling thing or not, is anyone’s guess ;) hehehe

At this point, many of the drama plot lines are very different from those in the novel. But the one thing that the drama preserves in full glory, despite all the plotline modifications, is the sheer depth of Luo Shenyuan’s yearning for Luo Yining! And it’s just so!!! The way she is his most important consideration, the detail with which he prepares everything for her in the event of his death, and the extreme passion he is clearly repressing every moment sitting next to her… I’m so very satisfied, I’m giving five stars just for this alone.

Another thing this drama does excellently is to more subtly portray Yining’s extreme levels of attachment to him: the way in all her visuals of the future, he is eternally just accompanying her, reading to her, living with her (girl has truly never accounted for a possible future husband and sister-in-law in all these dreams lolol), her headlong jump into the river to avoid implicating him, even though she has to have heavy trauma of falling off high places… Also her keenness in noticing all the girls who are trying to marry him, while he couldn’t care less. (Also I daresay her determination to matchmake for him is also her oblivious way of staking a claim on her San-ge)

Also, shame they made Lu Jiaxue and Zhao Mingzhu adoptive sibling, putting them on the same generational level. This is because there is a point in the novel where our hot pining Marquis Lu becomes Yining’s godfather without having a clear idea of who she is, and the way he manipulates that seniority is truly a delicious read.

Notably the drama ALSO preserves the forceful and unpleasant aspects of his obsession with regaining Yining; in the novel, he truly cannot conceive that she has a whole life and family she will protect above him. Also in the novel, Yining is reborn in the Luo family after twenty years as a wandering spirit, so by that time, she mostly moves on from her romantic attachments to him, though she does blame him for her death. The blaming for death section is there in the drama, but here I feel that Yining's primary feeling towards him is raw fear, which also biases me firmly against Lu Jiaxue rn.

 Now I’ll begin my usual rambling commentary on plot changes lol. They’ve quite significantly changed Daoyan’s character here, enough that he’s basically a whole new person. While this makes sense with the drama plotline of reopening the Chen Jiuheng case, that’s not a plotline found in the novel. Novel! Daoyan is an eccentric monk who is also a military genius. My first read of him in the novel was that he was very ruthless, but tbh it’s more of that he is unaffected by emotions and is exceedingly practical, and in this he contrasts both Lu Jiaxue and Luo Shenyuan, who have an obsession with Luo Yining in common. So that’s a dynamic we are probably not going to see, oh well.

With regards to the side plot of Luo Yixiu and Lin Mao… I somehow don’t really care for it? Sure, with regards to my personal life, I believe in marrying a person you sincerely like, but in a feudal context like in this drama… it honestly feels a bit out of place. The princess’ son is genuinely a pretty good choice for her, given that he cares for her, has an odd personality that is not likely to take concubines later and has a pretty reasonable mother! Also I just instinctively dislike Lin Mao for always lecturing her about her weight and giving her weird weight loss medicine! Even if she says she likes Lin Mao, it comes off more as a childish infatuation than anything else.

Now that I’ve gotten started on this, novel! Lin Mao is actually shown to have a crush on Luo Yining, which no one except Shenyuan ever takes seriously. He does propose marriage, only to be turned down pretty firmly, and he goes off to a border region. Throughout the novel, he is portrayed as a playful individual who keeps wriggling in and out of sticky situations. He eventually does make his name by securing disaster relief for the border but throughout the novel AND the drama so far, he’s the kind of person I may want to have a short summer romance with, but never the kind of person I can depend on for a steady life. And that is kind of a very important criteria for marriage for a noble lady in those times!

Anyway moving on, regarding the plotline of Gu Minglan’s death, it is not a mystery in the novel: she forces herself to give birth to Yining prematurely, so that Yining’s parentage is not suspected. In a way, the novel portrays her as a very sensitive woman deeply conscious of the social taboos of her time, after Yining is conceived, giving birth to her is the only thing that keeps her tethered to life. 

The drama alters Gu Minglan’s character to be more self-reliant and thus adds in an element of intrigue to her death. I feel this is primarily driven by the fact that they will only reveal that Yining isn’t the garbage Luo Second master’s blood daughter much later in the drama, but this reveal actually happens pretty early in the novel. And THEN all the courtyard intrigue takes place when Yining joins her blood related paternal family (I don’t wanna spoil this, but maybe you guys will guess who it is anyway). In the drama plot, the intrigue continues to happen in the Luo family, after all, as a main character, you NEED to have some family member scheming to kill/ruin/wrong you always. 

Although Madam Chen’s character is more fleshed out here: her resentment is only human, considering that she loses her first son early and has to watch her husband harbor feelings for her sister-in-law, which is probably the highest level of social damnation for her, if it ever came out. Both in the novel and drama she is a person obsessed with maintaining ‘face’. In the novel, her first son is alive and well, and also her husband occupies a higher position than his brother. In the drama, she possesses neither of these comforts, and it’s not illogical that she plays a more vicious role. And the actress is also killing it; her expressions when no one is observing, do give off an ominous feeling.

[da-man-si]

This is going to be a long post.

I knew it already but MDL is no place for having civil discourse. I swear all the holier-than-thous who are offended and triggered by every damn thing that doesn’t fall inside the purview of their morality gather on that website. It’s like the Twitter of drama world.

Anyway, here are my two cents on Lu Jiaxue. He is a fucking intimidating and overbearing creep. He has no ounce of respect for personal space and no qualms with manhandling a girl almost half his size. He has violent tendencies and is evil. He has done evil things in the past and continues to do more evil things including the ones that are done to cover up the past evil things. He is no misunderstood antagonist. But does this mean that we cannot like him as a character? Or does liking him mean that there must be something inherently wrong with us? It’s a waste of time and energy to elaborately answer those questions, so I am not going to do that— because normal people with functioning brains already know the answer.

Back to Lu Jiaxue, I mentioned to @dangermousie that, in my opinion based on my observations so far, LJX’s character shows the sinister side of the “evil bad boy who is nice to only one girl and hates everybody else” trope when the perspective is changed. When he was blind and in captivity in his brother’s house, he found comfort and hope in Xu Meimei and fell in love with her. Xu Meimei was murdered, so the “only one girl” part of the above-mentioned trope is gone. What remains is “evil bad boy” and “hates everybody else”. That’s exactly what he has been doing, and by that I don’t mean that he goes around killing people because in comparison to the other extreme examples of this trope, he hasn’t ruthlessly killed people so far in the drama (he is still evil though) and is caring towards his nephew and his side kick guy.

He has been a brute with Yining and this is where the sinister side of that trope comes in because aside from Xu Meimei, he is going to be like this with others. I don’t think he is trying to get her to become his girlfriend/wife or anything. He is a freak and, I mentioned this as well to Mousie, he is able to sense a faint smell of Xu Meimei coming from the Luo house and is highly suspicious of Yining. The suspicions have progressively elevated during the course of the so far released 24 episodes, but he has never been sure (hence the call for Song Ziyue to be brought to the capital). And he is a dumb bitch for not telling Yining what exactly had happened back then at the cliff, because it doesn’t matter whether Yining is Xu Meimei or not, he should’ve told her, especially when she lied to him about her maid being the one who liked him back then. But the proud, egotistic and evil side of him won’t let him do that. That’s a skill issue and that’s all on him. This is why in this narrative and this set up, he will always be inferior to San Ge.

For all the bad things he’s done, to Chen Jiuheng, to Song Family, to Yining (not Xu Meimei) and to LSY, he must face the consequences. I am hoping for an ending where he is lonely and regretful. Regretful especially towards Yining because he lost her once before, then he couldn’t recognize her despite the suspicions, manhandled her and tried to harm her family. I want his ship to sink and I will sink with it, as I’ve said previously. He is such a would’ve, could’ve, should’ve character. As @renewedmotionforjudgment mentioned in their post (https://www.tumblr.com/renewedmotionforjudgment/764985411856744448/am-i-writing-au-canon-divergence-fanfic-for-the), there are lots of what ifs.

I am a basic girl who likes fiction and he is a fictional man, so I am going to say that despite the million toxic and alarming flaws, some of the things he does are simply delicious (to me)— Intimidating guy soft for one girl (Xu Meimei), exterminated the entire family of the girl who murdered his Meimei, learned how to make dolls because Meimei said so, has been making dolls religiously in her memory, has been searching for her for years refusing to believe she could be dead, his evil senior guy asks him to not fail again in their evil deeds but he comes home and the first thing he orders his subordinate is to bring the person who can confirm his Meimei is alive or not.

Overall, what I am saying is that I like this character. People on MDL playing morality police and attacking anyone who says even remotely positive things about LJX need to get off their high horse and touch some grass. That's all.