Big_Red_1011

Understood. Thank you for the primer :)

Got it! So last stage is generally sponsors and advertisers. P.S. It must be harder for dramas not set in a modern day — cannot reference “999” ten times per episode 😁

Our hero is a bit of a Rogue character (in RPG sense) :)

Neither. He’s a smart fighter that picks and chooses his battles. In early stages, our hero starts off a bit weaker than his peers but he makes great use of skills/weapons/equipment. In RPG terms he may be a bit of a Rogue.

He also has max Luck and near-max Alchemy, 😆

Han Li’s Luck skill is at max level when it comes to drops 😆

Someone estimated donghua will finish in 2040, lol. So far it covered 1/6 or 1/5 of all chapters.

rating actually improved a bit. It started at 8.1-8.2, dropped to 7.9 and now is back to 8.2.

Question for novel/donghua experts: did NGW visit HL’s sect after events of Ep. 12 (she was considering that)? No one from her sect was at the mini-meetup/mahjong game.

MDL tag is wrong. There’s very limited romance in the source novel and, so far, it’s mostly true here. Some women are trying to woo/chase ML but he’s focused on cultivation. There’s an interesting dynamic with FL but she’s not in the same location geographically.

Thank you for the explanation about episode cut. I naively thought it was because regulators & platforms finally realized most dramas (especially, in modern setting) don’t need to be very long. More episodes just gives screenwriters opportunity to use tired tropes that make everyone frustrated. One of my favorites is “When I Fly Towards You” and it’s 24 half-hour episodes (so about the same length as 12-episode hour+ K-dramas).

Wow, I had read your review of Rebel Princess but didn’t realize it was sort of a vanity project for the main actress. Back to business: once a drama is complete and is soliciting funds pre-release, is it mainly about selling ad inventory/sponsorship or do existing stakeholders (studio/platform/early investors) try to hedge their bet by selling a share of the project?

Another candidate is this “scandal” from 5 years ago — headline: “Chinese Actress Yang Zi Slammed By Netizens For Donating "Too Much" To COVID-
19 Relief Efforts” [supposedly there was an agreed upon maximum donation amount for celebrities and YZ exceeded that] 😳

They are kind of like siblings, always teasing each other :)

Official YOUKU app

I bet they totally made merch with the mouse companion 🐭

I think people like the novel/donghua/drama in part because it’s like reading/watching a video game. Here we meet an NPC who makes things for us.

That’s going to go in the Hall of Fame of most ridiculous things ever. Another candidate — offline & online campaign accusing IU of being a spy for North Korea 🙄 🤡

The wedding is going to go great. Nothing bad is going to happen. Not all all 😒

Dumb question — who pays for the initial shooting and expenses? The platform? I am just learning about the business side of Chinese dramas. In the Western industry, shooting usually doesn’t start until financing is lined up. So it’s a sunk cost and the only reason for something to NOT get released is if a studio can get a tax break and make more money like that. For example, some superhero movies got permanently shelved because of that (studios took tax write-off). Very sad because everything had been completed and it’d cost $0 to release it.