Sugar Baby’s Review Corner: Shining Just For You

Shining Just For You

Ye Ling Shuang is a young woman who can foresee great tragedies and disasters before they happen. Although she is pure of heart, her gift has become a curse – and she has been shunned by those who think she brings bad luck. Only a young and beautiful princess shows her kindness. But that same princess is given a deadly choice by the dastardly Emperor Gao of the Chao Kingdom. She must either marry him – or die. She refuses to give in to him, which gives him the excuse he needed to attack her people.

A conflict breaks out, whereby Ye Ling Shuang is taken prisoner. But she has now vowed to take revenge on the Emperor. And, using her talents, she wins freedom – and then promotion. Soon, she finds she has caught the Emperor’s eye. But he is not the only one who wants to win her heart: Wu Yu, a surviving prince of a clan that was all but wiped out by the Emperor, also loves Ye Ling Shuang. Although he finds it hard to express his love, he springs into action when he sees that the Emperor has fallen for the woman he loves. Will love cause the cruel Emperor to change his ways? Or is Ye Ling Shuang destined to be with the angelic Wu Yu?

mydramalist

You know I literally started this drama as a joke… I didn’t think I was going to continue it, much less finish it. I think it was the fact that it was only 25 episodes that made it seem less daunting than usual. I also didn’t even realize this was a fantasy historical until about episode ten or so because not even the wings were on Wu Yu did it click—my ass just thought that it was a fancy armor. EMBARRASSING as hell. I know. Anywho….

This drama wasn’t very engaging in the beginning and I really was not with how very obviously mismatched age wise our leads were. Also, I’ll be honest and tell you that I thought she was too pretty for him! I hate to be that person, but I enjoy my couples to be evenly matched. From a story standpoint.. sigh… okay so if we look at this from the synopsis to translation on screen, there are quite a few inconsistencies. This was supposed to be the story of a girl seeking revenge right?? WRONG. This was a story about a woman being in love with her best friend and doing everything in her power to get to her. Y’all she straight up used the Emperor to get to her. She literally told him to his face while he was declaring his love that the love of her life is Rui. She said and I quote:

“She was my obsession. Rui will always be my obsession because she’s worth it.”

Bai Lu

She went to the past and tried to change the whole course of events to prevent Rui from dying. She didn’t even notice right away that the Emperor had gone into the past as well. Like, I’m supposed to cheer for them as a couple? Please BFFR.

I found the scenes to be so disjointed and the story didn’t actually make sense. They tried a love triangle—wasn’t with it. They had side couples—wack. I was actually quite pissed about the young woman who got sacrificed for the second son by the way. So after I completed this drama it was bothering me that it just felt so incomplete and weird? I went down the rabbit hole and found out this drama was actually heavily cut and post edited because of the censorship rule and that’s when everything clicked. Like of course some of the scenes were disjointed. Of course the acting fluctuates. Naturally the CGI looked worse that a freaking CGI dinosaur from the 90s. It just made sense. I ended up feeling bad and decided to bare that in mind when it came to final rating.

I didn’t have a terrible time, I didn’t have a great time. At the core, there is only one thing you need to know about this drama and it is that Bai Lu is gay. She is a lesbian and they should’ve just ran away and fingered each other in holy matrimony. Sorry to you, Xiu Ming, but your Empress was in love with her best friend.

---