Skibbies

he's not illegitimate, he has a different surname (his dad's), while sister has his mum's lol, largely for the surprise twist.

She stayed at home cos she's sickly, they sort of mention it as one off line in flashback. As for saying they are siblings, they do say it multiple times, he says who his parents are, the way xinyan reacts, and also what he calls grandpa/aunt (can't tell in subs though). Grandpa only have two daughters so it'd only make sense for Yan Xingchen to be brother of Zhuang Xinyan, cos otherwise he'd be son of antagonistic aunt.

I thought it went downhill in the third arc in general, esp the start, ep 27 had lots of repeat from ep 1 XD I did like the whole angle of Gao Qiqiang wouldn't necessarily exist and gotten so powerful without help from various departments of government. It's fairly critical of the failure of system (especially in the past :P), and not just bad guys grow out of thin air.

No one wins is the real reality and I actually like that, I think? Li Xiang tried to gather evidence, and he was essentially mentally tortured by the fact he's colluding, but he's also what I think the most regular people could do in a mess of grey. The only reason An Xi survives till the end is cos he *has* two higher ups "uncles" and complicated relationship with Gao Qiqiang, otherwise he would have been Lu Han (the young police who disappeared).

I did wish they kept Meng unchanged, since the plot would make more sense then, but the drama did go the route of "he unknowingly helped" which was better than he got off unscathed like I expected lol. The whole planting "trojan horse" (bribery money) to the inspection team (?) was nice touch too, it does illustrate why it's so hard for "good guys to win". Oh yeah, I also thought last two ep was okay? I thought it'd be boring and all the bad guys get caught, but it cricled back to karma, which I liked, and I loved the call back scene to first ep. I quite appreciated that they did several flashback to 2014/2015 too, because it made the last arc less boring, otherwise last few ep would just be twiddling our thumbs for two old dudes to do its job.

I LOVED Gao Ye so much, even though she appeared so little.

ooh thanks for info

omg that's a lot, is it 2 & 3 together.....? I have friends speculating from last year they didn't gather enough money to start, and I'm always afraid that xinli will start filming yet another project and they don't have enough investments *sigh*

it's announced but i wouldn't count on anything till you see them filming.

I'd use pandemic as an excuse too :P but since it's part of profit guarantee, that's kinda promising.

I honestly don't think the delay is due to pandemic tbh, it didn't stop the other dramas from filming. *sigh* we'll see in 3 months on the filming.

three body's viewcount and tv rating is absolutely underwhelming for a big drama, even not considering its IP. Knockout knocked *everything* out of the ballpark, it's explosively popular on all fronts and breaking records left and right. It basically dwarf all dramas post 2019, I'd say it's more popular than all the 2019 and 2018 popular dramas too.

They've been locking it to vip only for ages though I think. I think dramas in 2019 did at least, I don't remember 2018. Iqiyi used to have 2 weeks non vip, then from 2021, MHH specifically they started shortening the non vip sporadically to locking it the next day, which tencent has done so since 2019. Then end of 2021, Enemy (the show airing on cctv 8 before SSS) had a thing where it'd have non-vip ep locked as you go, e.g. when you are on say ep 9 and 10, it'd lock 3 and 4, forcing you to watch it on time or subscribe.

Homesick's 3 - 12 never had non vip too (first drama I've seen that did this). Knockout was straight up locked from ep 1 initially, then they followed Homesick. I think Youku tried to do this last year with Murder in Kairoutei and got yelled at so they changed it lol.

iqiyi have been playing with release schedule and non vip all of last year, and I think it gave them confidence that knockout was explosively popular and make them banks without any non vip. (there was zero ep for first few days then they unlocked first two, but non of the other ep were ever made available to non vip XD)

Oh yeah I think I saw snippets of Ken Liu's translation removing the more stereotypical/mild misogynistic language of Liu Cixin's, good job to him. I sort of can understand half of the technobabble in Chinese, but even when watching the drama, it's kind of wait what, I understood most of those words separately but I don't understand you when you put them together LOL.

No spoilers from latter books.

o: I didn't know book 2 had a different translator, I thought they were all translated by the same guy. I should probably read the book in english too after I actually read it in Chinese, all the technobabble flew over my head in Chinese, not that I think it'd help that much in English lol.

I'm watching the donghua which is based on book 2 and it definitely have some neat ideas. I think the donghua is going too slow to cover the whole book this season to be honest, which hopefully mean it'll motivate me to read :P Three body have been sitting on my reading list for so many years cos I read before bed and it's not exactly bedtime reading material.

omg I'm so sad, do you think they'll increase screenings later? I think WE2 is worth watching in theatre honestly. Ah well, otherwise I'm sure it'll show up online in March or April XD

I was forced to watch FRR with family, and didn't think it was worth the ticket price, the story is okay if you don't think too hard, Lei Jiayin gave stellar performance for his minor role though!

LOLOL, I'm sure they made it with 2 ep a day, and people watching only half paying attention (tv audience and younger audience that tends to play on phone or speed) in mind.

Speaking of fast track, I don't think they did too well on that front either rip. The discussion is finally back up a little with fast track and knockout being over, but I still see way more Wandering Earth 2 memes and dicussions, rip. (Watch the movie when you get an opporunity! I super loved it)

But they might need more budget for it, so they'll still filler :P

I agree about the pacing issue, but I don't think it'd be fixed to be honest, they stretch out the episodes to make the production cost worth it, I think.

To be fair, i think they went on too long with the analogies as well, this drama tends to over elaborate and repeat things in case you didn't get it the first 10 times.

I'm watching it, it's actually okay IMO, even though it c-net keeps criticising it. It's more accessible to the general audience/non-book fans actually, but it infodumps and spoils the entire first book in first five minutes.