PeachBlossomGoddess

That's a bit of a shame to hear that about ZZS in the drama vs the book but actually he is the character I find much more intriguing and interesting from the start. I find the eye for an eye trope too common a Wuxia motivator so even though WKX is interesting in many other ways, his primary motivator is less interesting for me. I also felt that Gong Jun overacted in the beginning and struck me as very oily it took me awhile to wash the grease off my face. I tend to prefer more subtle and nuanced performances, which I feel ZZH has delivered quite consistently. That said, they are both doing a superb job and are perfect foils for each other. I am solidly in the minority camp of preferring both ZZS/ZZH both in terms of character and actor but at this point WKX/GJ has grown considerably on me too.

For me, this is one of those legends where they disappear into the forest together never to be seen again. The end.
If you can't leave it at that, then it is fair to think he also dies shortly/6 months after she does. I have seen Chinese netizens speculate that Zhaixing actually succeeded in transferring the poison to herself, thus saving him - this is why she bled black when she was injured in the ending episode - I don't remember seeing that and it is too heartbreaking I don't want to go to rewatch it. But in either case, it would explain why you see him alone watching butterflies.

I suspect he already more or less figured it out.

They are from the Shenyi (miracle doctor) Valley, where Rong Xuan's wife is also from.

No - it is revealed from episode 18 onwards. I will put it below but don't open unless you really want to know it is a MAJOR SPOILER.

Neither.

Yes of course they should never do make a drama where there is dubious consent. I am just irritated at how long it is taking for it to be mutual.

Bless you for that - I thought I just wasted 20+ episodes....

There is only one downside to watching NIF which is you will go into a deep slump and dislike everything else after watching that.

Both protagonists are grey characters. And yes, he is behind some of the chaos but there are other villains.

That writer is a real prude and deserves to be smacked on the head. Princess Weiyoung they were a real couple and we didn't even get a kiss. Now my expectations are at zero for a kiss.

Yeah its a bit of a logic hole. The truth is another kid does not have to be a threat to her grandson's position and Lingyi was always going to re-marry/promote another concubine to be his legitimate wife. Shiyi is supposed to be protective of Luo family interest and grandson and I think she will be. After all they are a big family with many responsibilities, it is always good to have more than one son that can shoulder the responsibilities. I think Lingyi only started to avoid his other wives when he saw how paranoid and hysterical his first wife became over perceived threats to her son. He decided to avoid creating this competitive and hostile environment in his household. But with Shiyi he can see that she is not that kind of person and genuinely cares for his son. I guess her stepmom doesn't see this yet.

She is at least 18 by now - there was a 1 year mourning period for his first wife and it was her mother's 1 year death anniversary. While I generally agree with what you have said, I suspect they are delaying this natural evolution to toss in a third party love rival and go down another divorce (this time possibly real) arc. Which is gonna be a frustrating way to extend the plot bc you know we have to get to 45 episodes so...

While the latest scenes were cute and funny, I am getting a bit irritated. Idk what is going on with Shiyi but she is obviously into Lingyi, why is she being so coy? They are married for crying out loud!

my stomach still hurts... wipes tears.

He is devastated because 1. all the revelations makes him realize he may have f*-ed up big time and did some terrible things to some innocent people, 2. he is ashamed and doesn’t know how to confess the whole truth to ZZS - what happened to him subsequently and his ghost valley identity; 3. don’t forget ghost valley killed Chengling’s father and brothers; 4. Finally and worse of all ZZS said he is relieved and content to die and leave his responsibility to rebuild four seasons to WKS and CL. Poor guy his world is falling apart around him the shidi thing is not why.

China Literature paid Tencent 15.5bn for this in 2018 and they fell so far short of those targets that they had to write off 3.7bn of it so far. They are capped on their licensing fees (this is the revenue part) from Tencent to 1550mm (2021), 2000mm (2022) and 2400mm (2023). The profit target has now been revised to 300mm per year from 2020-2024 but capped at 500mm. Since they lost 100mm in 1H20, they gonna have to make 400mm from those shows you mention in 2H to make the target - seems difficult if you ask me. If they could only make 500mm with a Joy of Life kind of level of hit you can imagine its not gonna be that easy to meet the targets. Looks like those targets are set to help Tencent manage their losses more than anything.
NCM has a pretty good website:
https://www.ncmchina.com/

iQiyi is worse - they lost 7bn RMB last year and 27bn rmb the last 3 years in total! I think they will still lose about 3-4bn this year with the 25pct price rise.

Btw you should check out this YY - lots of skimpily clad young girls lip syncing some popular songs getting tipped huge amounts of money to chat with big tippers... while our platforms try to produce good content and all they do is print losses... I can't believe the censors are wasting time on dramas when there is all kinds of nonsense like that happening.

I think they should just ditch the advertising outside of product placement in drama and make everyone pay to view and go full turkey into the Netflix model. No more free content for anyone period. They actually can crack down on the illegal sites like dramacool but they just don't want to - their technology is much better than Netflix etc at prohibiting content theft. They don't do it because then all the non-paying (international) viewers will migrate onto their platforms and give them server issues. As it is they have 3x the no of non-paying domestic subscribers on their platform as they do paying subscribers. Which is fine bc advertisers pay for the cost of servicing these subscribers. But these are local products the advertisers are only targeting the China market so the platforms are happy to let the international non paying subscribers watch from ïllegal" sites. I am happy to pay to support the platforms but that is also why I don't get fussed about people watching from illegal sites either.

LoL - its my job, not really connections. I cover internet and media I have to talk to them regularly. Tencent hides their digital media numbers but they sold New Classics Media to China Literature (which is also owned by Tencent) a few years ago and China Literature just had to write off CNY3.7bn for the acquisition of New Classics Media. Which is the production company that produced Joy of Life which was the huge hit in 2019 and so they made over 500mm CNY in profit but last year they lost 100mm CNY in just the first half. If you look at the numbers you will get a sickening feeling about how unprofitable this business is... Chinese subscribers are spending much more money on this nonsensical YY and other short form video platforms but they won't pay for long form. I think its because they are so used to getting it for free they just don't want to pay.

The reason for that is some regions have rules and restrictions around the kind of content that gets distributed into those markets. For example, Muslim countries have their own set of censorship standards that the platforms have to navigate before making their content available. North America is also a very fussy place with a lot of regulation and since Alibaba and iQiyi have US listings, they don't want to run foul of US regulators. The other reason is the platforms license about half of their content from independent production companies. These licenses are based on regions and that is why sometimes people from certain regions are blocked. Usually that means someone else licensed it on an exclusive basis for that region or that the platform doesn't have enough subscribers in that region to justify the incremental licensing cost.