Skibbies

ummm I don't think it's translated into english and it was never published online, so you can't easily find machine translated ver either. If you can read chinese, it's available on wechat read 微信读书 under 陪你到世界之巅. If you can understand mandarin but not read chinese, there's audiobook version of it. (technically you have to buy the book in the app, but when you first join the app, it gives you like a month membership? should be enough to finish the book, there's ways to earn free book coins which can be used to purchase books there too)

they are by different plaforms though, one is Youku and one is WeTV. Tencent specifically shot for summer release for max profit, I think it would have been better as mid-July release which is beginning of summer vacation but it's all said and done. The lanes and game play are best explained in I think Gank Your Heart's novel (the drama doesn't explain it that much) IMO, a mangotv drama from 2019.

youtube's app is youtube, iqiyi on there is just a channel, this is iqiyi's official app oversea. it should be available in the US. You can watch certain dramas for free on there, but it's limited time (depends on whether it's broadcasting). For older dramas, you might need a subscriptions. Some of the subtitles are kind of terrible apparently, but the more popular dramas' subs should be serviceable.

the first ep wasn't very good imo, I think it got funny in ep 2, but if it's not for you, it's not for you :3

ge ge is used as affectionate nickname here. you call anyone older than you ge ge or jie jie when you are younger, once you are older, not so much anymore, it's more one syllable ge or jie. However, with idols, fans often call them ge ge (sometimes it's little brother/sister or even daughter and son lol, depends on the person and what kind of fan they are), it makes idol seem closer to you. Even in other dramas where there's no idol/fan relationship, they might use ge ge as an affectionate nickname for boyfriend. Sheng sheng didn't use it for her ex because she never saw him as a boyfriend + ML is more unique that way.

you could try other steven dramas maybe? My huckleberry friends (down to earth friendship focused youth drama) or Young Blood (adventure mystery series with cute ensemble cast)

ep 2 ~ ep 5 :) they swap again later though.

hey, basically it's because the entire plot (novel AND the drama) is huge copypasta of real life chinese league of legends pro league (LPL). Starting from its name, it's a reference to WE's retired player (s2 ~ s5?) WeiXiao's old username. The name is a cute story about his ex. WeiXiao literally means smile or smiling, which is inspiration for FL"s username.

ML and FL are gobble of multiple players, skill levels and stuff are more usual novel setup so I can handwave that, but the whole short + nickname reference + FL's last name Tong is clear reference to a real person. All the team names and some of the player names (like Ming god is reference to clearlove7, his real name is Ming Kai so he's called Ming god) are either nicknames from LPL circle or really lazy switch up like player letme is letyou in the novel, or G2 is G4. It's not that you can't use inspiration from real life, but when there's so much copypasta, it's little uncomfortable, especially when even match scores are copied, and matches techniques are too (you can handwave techniques are just common techniques...but have some originality yknow?)

A lot of people actually treated it like a fanfic when it was serialising, but the author refuse to admit that it's based on anything. She got into a fight with bunch of WE fans because WE fans had a phrase for support of their team at their matches, and she thought it was from her novel, It was not. Her fans seem to think that LOL/LPL would be unknown without her, which is ridiculous even 5 years ago when this was seriaising. It's also kind of gross to have WE named yqcb (yi qun cai bi, a bunch of losers basically) when the novel name, ML's nickname (Cheng Ge), FL's username are all reference of WeiXiao.

On top of that, it's fairly disrespectful of multiple players in general. Someone was referenced and novel said he played rigged match, when in reality, he didn't (he might have been involved with betting though). RIgged matches are huge no no in esport, so it feels like smearing someone in real life? clearlove7 (who's nickname Ming god is used by ML's teammate) is mocked for stuff he didn't do, maybe the author doesn't like these players, maybe she thinks it's funny to put random rumours in, but it feels kind of wrong when you can link it to real people you know? Moreover, faker, one of most well respected LOL players is an antagonist. Someone that bullies teammates just so he can have total control over the team, which is gross? It's totally ok to have antagonist and not smear them?

The drama itself have FL's ex say he'd play a rigged match for her in ep 1, I think someone just abandoned their match to be with their girlfriend in later episodes? Then there's the fact that the starting couple of episodes have them all doing other stuff, everything but training, when in reality, the players train minimum 12 hours. I mean, it's a romance drama, so yeah can't game all day, but at least make an effort? Why did the FL seem reluctant to train by the way, she knew what she signed up for? Even without all the copypasta issue, I think gamers would have yelled at the drama for the lack of professionalism.

Let's not get into stereotypical pink room, childish FL (common romance cdrama issue but jfc), why is she self depreciating too ahhh?! kind of jerky and outright rude at times ML and all the common romance dramas that I think they'd find issue with anyways. So basically, they just find it disrespectful to the industry, and it feels like the drama is just using industry as backdrop rather than caring about it (which it fully is). When the industry is literally bunch of young people's dreams, a whole lot of young people's fond memories, and there's some love story that didn't have a happy ending is all being used without consent, do you get why people are mad?

I think people against the drama should have some short pic noting why they are against the drama, it'd help people like you to understand. But in my experience, it's kind of complicated and twitter really isn't the place to talk about it. A lot of times people don't care anyways, so I guess that might be why some don't bother. I'm a single player game gamer, not one for MOBA gaming nor can I even claim to be an LPL fan when I've just watched few matches here and there. I'm mostly just a fan of gaming dramas and tired of popular cdramas having plagierised/problematic sources, so I passed on this. Hope this helped though! Feel free to ask questions.

the time travel ban was specifically due to someone (i think there might have been more than one..) suiciding cos they wanted to copy dramas or something (this was big news). cdramas don't need time travelling trope to make criticisms about stuff (two of the most well regarded serious historical cdramas are often taken to be criticism to modern china and they weren't made this decade), but it's true you probably can't get away with criticisng ccp with it.

I actually didn't think about concern of feminisation but that's possible. The reason is I'm pretty sure mostly cos they couldn't find something "scientific" to explain body swap. You can technically just handwave all of it as something something a meteorite did it, it's hilariously common in fantasy cdramas, but I guess they wanted to go for this route?

I actually like what they went with instead "aliens did it", novels tend to make me forgive more flaws in dramas, and you can essentially rerewrite it if you ever want a sequel. It's also somewhat more down to earth than you'd expect from the drama, which fits the drama to be honest.

it's essentially a marketing campaign that tied up bunch of unrelated dramas, the only thing they share in common are they are romcom? Some lean heavier on the rom, some on the com by the way. Similar to iqiyi's Light On campaign last year, which focus on thrillers.

Oh my gosh you are so sweet ahhhh. There's so much I love about the drama but I don't know how to talk about this without rambling at length or not spoilering the show. I end up watching 2.5 of the dramas I mentioned to you when you asked for ccp themed dramas, do you want a run down by the way? (since I'm too lazy to write a proper review for them oops) I might watch more lmao, before I start on the classic espionage dramas binge.

Yeah I'm talking about cdramas. I mostly refer to iqiyi and tencent dramas, youku and mangotv are much more likely to mess with their schedule in my experience. Mangotv are more likely to have vvip episodes earlier (saw one that started on day 2 lol) and they usually don't have subs. Youku is more likely to drag out their schedule, especially for non vip (iqiyi and tencent's non vip is about 6 to 8 weeks for 30 to 40 ep drama)

If you just dump all the episode at once, there's no time to generate buzz and hype up the drama. Dramas that dump all their episodes at once usually fade to oblivion domestically, so most big budget dramas will never do that since they can't price discriminate (non vip, vip, vvip determine how early you see the episodes) This didn't start this year, it started late 2019 and applied to almost every drama, and it's not related to covid at all.

If you follow a drama using non vip, it's usually 2-2-2 at fairly even pace, the extra eps for vip is specifically made to entice you into subscribing, the vvip is a way to entice vip users to pay extra just to get the epiodes a week earlier. (tencent tends to dump 6 ep-ish per week for vvip, but it lasts for 2 to 4 weeks, while iqiyi is usually more likely to dump 6 to 10 eps right at the end)

Hahahaha, I should have written this 3 months ago then! I definitely really like the various ideologies being presented (or mentioned) and everyone that debate fiercely about them are usually still pretty good friends around this time. Interestingly it reminds me of Warring States when it was 百家争鸣. Hope your mum likes it too :D

I've been sitting on writing a review for three months and started yesterday so I'm right on time! hahaha. Hope it helps a little, feel free to ask me questions too since I didn't know where to begin with my review OTL

I'm not surprised Tong Yao's character end up being like that, cdramas does it so often omg. rip *patpats* Rayzha was praised for Minning Town, and she was pretty well liked for Longest Day in Chang'an. She had mini scandal before Chang'an aired because she had postnatal depression (?) and was sensitive to some rude comments + sound criticism, but that's pretty much all water under the bridge I think. As for Dilraba, she's always been popular and also criticised a lot (for middling performance), her fans are on the more annoying side but I think that's side effect of being traffic actress.

Take your time with AA, even a lot of cnetizens only end up watching it recently, it's being watched more than when it was airing lol.

that's how all platforms release their dramas, 6 or 8 ep dump at the beginning. it's 2 free ep + 6 vip ep, the update schedule is 2 at a time. There's 8 episode dump because it's on demand/vvip which started from summer 2019, and was mass implemented after Joy of Life (end of 2019).

The initial ep dump is to draw in audience, update 2 at a time, 3 days (or 4 if the drama is longer) to keep the audience. normally on demand/vvip starts on the third week, but this drama got it early, looks like iqiyi is desperate to grab more money from the audience. (on demand/vvip tanks the drama's viewcounts + discussion and thus popularity, but it gets money for the paltform and it's friendlier to binge watchers)

mhmm I see what you mean by putting the genie back in the bottle. She did struggle between "being hip and fashionable in Fujian" compared to her hometown being so "backwards" but she came to appreciate it. I agree on glossing over how she end up going back to Ningxia, but I actually took it for granted, since in 2010s, a lot of migrant workers end up moving back home to start their own business, or just find work there because it's developed enough for that. You get to be close to your family + escape the stress of big city. I actually would have been interested to see how they start up on vineyard and various promotion tactics to sell it, especially in days of streaming and such.

I loved Shuihua and I liked how she struggled in face of adversity, and she do her best with what she have and what she can, and I did like their more realistic relationship, but somehow I regularly forget about Defu (sorry bro). Maimiao wasn't put forward in front of Shuihua, Shuihua was nominated for best main actress and lost, when Maimiao (who had more screentime I think) was nominated for best supporting actress and won. I guess they thought Shuihua deserve to be nominated as main actress since she was THE most memorable character of the drama for most people.

LOL, Tong Yao's character in Nothing But Thirty was apparently very memorable. I liked her in Like a Flowing River 1, she's ML;s sister, and she shone despite having limited screentime. I think it was her amazing character than her performance though. She won best supporting for that role for Magnolia and got Golden Eagle award (which doesn't distinguish between main or supporting) for it, so she got lot of backlash THEN and got more NOW due to winning over Rayzha lol.

You finished it! Hooray! There's actually a standard mandarin dubbed version, but I think you lose out on the fun with that version XD My favourite arc was the mushroom arc and the education arc, since they were such vital part of poverty alleviation. By the way, the small village that half the drama is shot in was built from grounds up, the mushrooms were also planted for real, Daylight Ent really go as realistic as you can go when it comes with these things. Not huge on the closing arc, but I think I mentioned that already, and it was still kind of neat to see how much it had changed, and neat to compare how the kids see Xihaigu (fun adventurous place) vs the kids from beginning of the drama (a place they are trapped in).

Rayzha got nominated for Magnolia (one of the three big tv awards in China) for best main actress, but she lost out to Tong Yao for her roles in Nothing but Thirty (which I never watched but it was really popular and decently received critically). I really think it's due to her not having enough screentime, she would have been sure in for best supporting actress. Instead they put Huang Yao (Mai Miao, the girl that went to Fujian to work) down for best supporting (I think she had more screentime lol...), and she won the award. I actually really loved Maimiao too, since she was very relatable as a young girl that wanted to see the outside world, that wanted to break out from the poor village she grew up in. But she got grew up and she eventually did get the chance to see a different place, but eventually came back to home because there's no place like home, there was new found appreciation for her hometown + she bought back skills and ideas to help develop it. That was the story of many many migrant workers in 90s and early 00s. I liked Debao too for similar reason actually, Defu pales in comparison for me (even though his character was essential and he was always the person solving various problems they have).

there's multiple body swaps, the first lasted three episodes

yeah that confuses me sometimes, but I think it's somewhat explained in the dialogues? ML is on temporary hiatus due to "health issue" (made up from first body swap). Set up for ML seems like a popular idol but his schedule doesn't feel like it hahaha, guess they are nearly at the end of the group's life expectancy so they don't have as much work while prepping for solo debut. FL works with her bestie and as long as she brings back stories, it's ok (she also make up for it).