Skibbies

there was map when they first mentioned it, and the ling was jinling's ling (one of its old names), oh yeah i forgot about chuhan but yes that's wuhan.

nanjiang could be whole bunch of things, it's usually not guangxi, it's usually yunnan or guizhou in most stories, but here western guangxi would fit too.

i pictured beilian as northern something just cos of bei LOL. oh found a lian prefecture (old name) in ningxia! could be in that region. there's a lianjiang in guangdong but it's too south i think, but if north is beihai in guangxi, that would make sense. them moving from the seaside to mountains in guangxi make sense too, it's close enough. and since zhang qishan is in changsha, it would make sense he would want the lands closeby?

oh yeah there's a baise city in guangxi, that could be bailejing's namesake, it's northwest of guangxi!

you are welcome! :D for funsie, nanling is probably nanjing, guangchuan is guangzhou, they mention beilian (mo yungao's influence) but i can't figure that one out.

guangxi? from them mentioning shi wan da shan 十万大山 which is an actual mountain in guangxi. it could also reference the border between guangxi, guizhou, hunan where miao people reside.

no no, the drama is called the lead/protagonist 主角, it's also about traditional art, qin qiang (a type of opera in shaanxi province)

it's unfortunate the 2 year hard episode limit (there were push for it for 5 years before that) hit yang zi's two dramas hardest.

the episode limit was lifted late last year, there's been two dramas, sword into plowshares and the lead that have been 40+ episodes this year, they are both longer than the heir as well.

that guy think zhang haiyan is a traitor (he said it when they started fighting).

haiyan kept him around cos he thought he might be sent by shifu to test/help him. he's short on time so he sorta need the help, and he was waiting to see what the guy wanted. also cos he might be bored.

haiyan blabbed a lot, i took it as narrative wise, he needed someone else around to explain plot points to audience. in story, i guess he might have been fishing for info (since haiyan didn't know much about the beaurau or about his shifu, since he was surprised that shifu lived longer than expected. that other guy probably know more than him)

one of zhang qishan's people apparently

he's older in the drama actually, haiyan calls him shi xiong

they do! and their arc is over I think, I quite like the next arc if that helps.

ah yeah Bao Jianfeng def don't seem 25, but they never stated clearly what his age is, so I handwaved it, since the other casting issues were bigger lol.

Bai Shu's child is adopted I think? She mentioned it at some point, if adopted, why adopt her. If not (suspecting she's lying or I imagined that adopted line), yeah what's the deal with that? I would accept it if she or Ge Wenjun needed someone else to keep Ge Wenjun's attention, but GWJ seem to have pretty good relationship with the kid? It's so strange?

I can sort of buy Bai Shu's mum panicking over the video, she probably didn't know better. Similar to them panicking over them killing someone, and convinced they did and ran off. *sigh* If it was half way sensible plot, I wouldn't be so annoyed. I watched Light of Dawn earlier the year, and it also start with dead body and flashback, there were some issues with it, but that mystery part was better than this, just bit convoluted.

Totally agree that I thought they would show why Xiaoming married Liu Xiaoran, apparently they filmed some more cute/romantic scenes of the couple but cut it out, I don't need those! I was hoping it'd tell me WHY, I had suspected it was financial or pragmatic reasons (travelling abroad + marrying a professor which is a respectable career) but neither really fit tbh. also, even though I never really liked Liu Xiaoran, I enjoyed Ni Ni and Bao Jianfeng's interactions, I suspect cos he might have improv some of the funnier scenes LOL. I def enjoyed it far more than with Zhou You, I get that's culmination of relationship with He Yuqiong but the story is cliche without a twist and I didn't care for the adult actor pairing, so 5 ep was entirely unnecessary to me, 1 would be enough.

Xiaoming is frustrating to watch but I actually rather like her being very biting and bitter towards her mum, since her mum is the same way to her, they are both far nicer to other people. I def expected she would learn to appreciate her mum and hold back biting remarks or learn to be less impulsive and clueless (bub, you met Bai Shu at her grave, why were you so surprised when she told you she's not the real Bai Shu???) as she grew up, but it seems like she didn't.

I had originally suspected Bai Shu got sexually assaulted or something, but turns out no? I mean her controlling mum tend to do a number of emotional damage, but not to this extent. I think if she found out that it was her birth mum that they "killed", it would work but she didn't know. The adopted daughter thing seem like a random red herring too? I don't really get Zhang Fang's one sided crush, and his adult actor def didn't help.

The suspense plot is apparently drama original so I never expected it to be as good as the complicated coming of age part, but this was absolutely absymal omg, not just bunch of red herring and leads that went nowhere, Bai Shu have to repeatedly tell Li Meng to read the damn book, but also why last minute target switch?! I mean you could have at least foreshadowed birth mum a bit? Like random lingering shadow, strange spying angles (that could be attributed to controlling Ge Wenjun even), but no, just bam? This is huge no no in suspense???

I think you missed some bits of dialogue. It was He Yuqiong's mum on the other side of the wechat account, she has been sending money to his mum, that's when she got invited for food sometimes. I also don't think there was miracle recovery of mum, her last scene was in hospital. If she was fully recovered, she should be with brother and uncle li, but it just show two of them, so I think it's open end.

I agree the suspense is shoddily written, but it's drama original I believe. I think the drama have been weird mash of genre to begin with and not done too well, so I don't think it's an ending issue tbh.

oh no, he plays a minor support character in SSS, not a younger ver of ZRY haha. I think it's bit slow at the start too, cos it takes a while to setup. I have fair amount of beef with the pacing and directing of that show, but JOL reniuon reminded me of it (the scriptwriter are the same for the two dramas).

did you watch SSS? That also have ZRY and Han Haolin!

yeah I don't think I really like any of the 4 kids' adult cast's chemistry with each other? Ni Ni with her family and Liu Xiaoran are decent I guess, even though Ren Xiaoming is really questionable at times.

I've seen Zhou You before in other dramas and I'm actually often annoyed by his characters lol. I think it didn't help that adult He Yuqiong get the more downer and "realistic" hardship bits rather than the more optimistic and somewhat carefree bits.

Oh yes yes I forgot about Liu Xiaoran, he mostly gets away for it cos he didn't have a younger actor and it doesn't really specify his age so I assume he's at least 25 when he first appears.

I'm more or less ok with Liu Mintao's acting here I think, she's over the top but I feel that's what the production team want? Since the characterisation and camerwork sort of pose her as big bad for most of the time.

I'm honestly surprised 2/3 of the drama were child actors haha.

I honestly don't really care for zhou you even though he's decent at acting, I don't think they could get ZRY considering the limited screentime, but I'm sure they could get some other small time actor that look more like Han Haolin.

I'm sure they casted adult actors first but whose bright idea was it to cast zhou you or zhang fang's actor omg?! also liu yase and na yi (bai shu's adult and teen actress) also look nothing alike, whyyyyy??? (heard na yi is part of director yang yang's company but ahhh whyyyyy)

i think they casted the adults first, i'm actually surprised they kept the child actors for 2/3 through.

kind of I think, in the sense that they show the present as hook and the past sort of show the how and whys?

I sort of understand wanting to focus on less familiar historical figures, you have more artistic liberty with it, but yeah I really want to see everyone else, heck, I'd definitely take Guo Rong or Feng Dao as protag, it'd be far more interesting.

Wuyue's plot is fine by itself, if you threw this bit into madeup dynasty, it'd be pretty cool too. But setting it against such an interesting and chaotic period, I'm more interested in the chaos. I also get that the contrast against chaotic times with peaceful is to pop out Qian Hongchu's latter decision, but definitely still not as interested. I had this issue with Heroes (2024), I was really salty I didn't get to the late Qing chaoticness in the background.