Saffy88

IKR? so far everyone remains consistently intelligent (or not) - no one suddenly becoming stupid overnight and the plot remains on track. The prince is always awesomely brilliant; Chu Chu is always down to earth and bloody good at her job and the supporting characters are all interesting in their own right.

Is the princess thing due to his perky butt and the way he can twirl around and carry off wearing the ancient costumes/skirts (esp during the concert)? Every time I watch Avenue X's WOH livestreams she comments about how the fandom in China is commenting on how his skirt apparently looks like it's got a Victorian bustle underneath and it's all down to ZZH's butt which he has had build up (muscle-wise) as part of the recovery physio for his knee...........I must admit I did pay extra attention to ZZH's butt after that - LOL!

The first wave of mountain people who watched the series via VIP access did comment a lot about it - as did the audience in China - they were not very kind to the scriptwriter. You can see some of our comments in Recent Discussions above. Look for ZZS and WOH ending. You're welcome to add your comments there too.

See link in Recent Discussions above

Lots of people feel the same about those last eps being rushed and compressed. There are some theories/ideas running around: a) the original series was slated for 45 eps but due to budget cuts got cut down to 36 hence the compression b) some say nevertheless they should not have so many plot holes for eg why does no one tell ZZS about the Plan? so maybe still the fault with the scriptwriter and production team c) was Xiao Chu the scriptwriter trying to shoehorn the plot into a Romeo & Juliet type scenario? etc etc
Regardless, this is what we have - for most of us the payoff is in ep 35 which is sublime. And ep 37 ties up everything. And for a first time scriptwriter Xiao Chu in my opinion still shows enough greatness and skill for most of the drama for me to overlook the problems of eps 31-34. I love ep 35. And I love the ending with ep 37 taking into account the hidden lines said by CL in ep 36 etc. For me, I mainly just remember ZZS becoming more and more loving and tender in those episodes and that is the main takeaway for me from those eps - so am happy.
For more info check out the discussions on the ending in Recent Discussions above.

Watch the special versions, the scenes are integral to the drama and are quite significant - they just added one extra scene to ep 6, ep 20 etc and I think lengthened another ep by just a few seconds of intense staring. Anyway I believe aside from ep 6 special version, the episodes on YT are already the edited versions so you would have to compare them with the ones on the Youku app or Viki to see the original versions.

Essentially youku has redefined post production cos it was neverending until the finale this week.

Extra scenes that were not in the original version on the youku app or broadscast in china. They turned it into a whole marketing thing telling fans they would get something special if subscribers to youku youtube reached 2 million for eg.

That was youku giving international fans special gifts/easter eggs.

Yes, she’s a bit blur, but still quite cute, and in her own field she is an expert. Really enjoying this drama.

It ended with all ends tied up. No hanging. No Season 2 either.

I think human beings just like to compare things - helps them puts things in context maybe or make sense of experiences. I think both are quite distinct and both have their merits and we're lucky to have them especially when it brings different audiences to the world of c-drama.

The most memorable love stories generally go to those lengths. But I've also always found Chinese lovers in period dramas depicted as very trigger-happy or cavalier about their mortality - they're ever so ready to die with /for the other - I always have the image of Maggie Cheung skewering herself to Tong Leung in the desert, after he allows her to kill him.....and I'm like "Really? There wasn't a better way to work out your relationship angst and philosophical differences?"

Also there's a theory that there are only really 7 stories in the world- 7 basic plot structures in all storytelling. And honestly with the prolificness of chinese novels, manga etc, inevitable that certain things get repeated, feels repeated.

Don't all love stories come down to willingness to sacrifice for the other at some point? :)

Ummm apologies then for posting about the wuxia/xianxia stuff but hopefully it will be useful for others reading this discussion.

However as Kai points out, WOH was indeed written earlier than CQL so then it comes down again to recycled storylines and conventions.

Even so, I still think WOH still retains a very distinct and different feel to TU mainly because of the 2 characters and their different life experiences. A secret service head /enforcer for a prince meets up with a PTSD'ed head of the valley of misfits and abandoned people......

Even without taking into consideration wuxia/xianxia again I feel that the whole feel of WOH is quite different from TU. The WOH protagonists when we first see them have lived and seen more. In ZZS case worldweary and ready to die; in WKX's case somewhat obsessed with revenge and wanting to take everyone down with him. They're at a very different stage of their lives than the protagonists in TU.

Adding on: Wuxia (武俠 wǔxiá) – literally means “Martial Heroes”. Fictional stories about regular humans who can achieve supernatural fighting ability through Chinese martial arts training and internal energy cultivation. Themes of chivalry, tragedy, revenge & romance are common.

Xianxia (仙侠 xiānxiá) – literally means “Immortal Heroes”. Fictional stories featuring magic, demons, ghosts, immortals, and a great deal of Chinese folklore/mythology. Protagonists (usually) attempt to cultivate to Immortality, seeking eternal life and the pinnacle of strength. Heavily inspired by Daoism.

If there are scenes which feel really similar it's because they're conventions in c-drama - for eg. I would be really hard pressed to think of a wuxia story or any story with just a smidgeon of wuxia, where the characters do not fall off a cliff (and they always, but always survive). The cliff scenes are practically baked in, part of the DNA.

Yes am making a wuxia/xianxia distinction here. And I think the whole feel of WOH and TU are different because of this distinction as well.

WOH is wuxia (grounded in the very mortal world, no demons, ghosts, spirits, gods and everything grounded/based/connected to the jianghu) whereas TU is closer to xianxia (more fantasy elements, supernatural elements, gods, immortals, spirits and so on). This is the most basic description. One can write whole essays about wuxia etc.

We recently had a whole discussion here as to what wuxia is all about and that a lot of viewers don't realize the very established conventions that are part of any wuxia story and even think that WOH plagiarized scenes, which it absolutely did not. Some of us have been watching wuxia since we were kids so we kind of know these things by heart so to speak - the same as when someone in the West goes to a pantomime and understands how that is supposed to work.

I will defer to other people here who are far more expert than me and hope they can chime in as well and share the links to the collection of wuxia elements in WOH and what wuxia is.

You can also watch Avenue X explanation about wuxia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUjL70Mg3os

For us wuxia fans, WOH has come as a godsend because it is such a great example of wuxia (albeit new wuxia).