Skibbies

this was the FUNNIEST fight i've seen in ages, the best part is they put up a table for zzs for a cent, best solution. zzs actually have a little stair/chair thing he's sitting on in one but somehow that doesn't count as a extra piece i guess.

i don't mean to impy you did, just clarifying it's a subgenre so there's quite a lot of stories that's similar ;)

sorry zheng shuang, i looked it up, looks like chinese ghost story? she had a huge surrogacy scandal (she did it in US but it's illegal in China so all her apperances have been banned i think?)

Gu man is not the only one, or first person to write mmo novels, it's a subgenre, she did write it pretty early (2008, drama in 2016), and made it more popular with non gamers/general public though. this one's source novel was written after mmo novels phased out and esport novels started becoming popular, it's probably classed as esport due to pubg, but it uses mmo novel tropes.

you're my glory's premise does sound fairly similar to this, this one's source novel actually started first, it's probably for the best it aired first, otherwise there's probably people screaming about copycat and stuff. you're my glory's focus and style is little different too, the characterisation and theme is bit more down to earth.

It's not a Yu Zheng problem, Zhao Ge was filmed before or around the time Yanxi was filmed. Yu Zheng's soft ban is a 2021 thing, and it affected other dramas. Court Lady is his and they managed to release it (surprisingly soon I might add), but it has very little promotion and Yu Zheng is very unlike himself since he didn't post anything related to Court Lady so the entire team is just laying low.

CGI her face, they've done that with a different drama (to replace Zhao Lixin after he made a problematic comment about sino-japanese war). Or you cut the character out (rumour to to happen to another drama with Zhao Lixin), but Park Min Young is a lead I think so that doesn't work? Qin Empire 3 had an actor that had a drug problem, so replacement actor had to act in front green screen and CGI'ed in, he stuck out a lot, it was filmed in 2011 and released in 2017 though, so these days I think CGI face is more likely. One of ZS's drama is being replaced by Peng Xiaoran I think? (Goodbye My Princess' FL)

Fan Bingbing has a drama that's stuck in development hell cos the ML had a sexual assault allegation case, they got someone else to reshoot scenes, then FBB got caught with tax evasion and it's just too costly to do more damage control and try to recoup its insanely high production cost (it was filmed during drama investment bubble + high salary time)

分桃 fentao https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%88%86%E6%A1%83
龙阳 longyang (one of the protagonist of the story appears in the serious political drama Qin Dynasty Epic, but you basically miss it if you are unfamiliar with the phrase, he only appears for few minutes anyways)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BE%8D%E9%99%BD

Li Shimin's actual history is SUPER overpowered and kind of almost sue-ish/seem like he has protag halo. start commanding army at 16, blitz through battles so fast that his dad struggle to give him new titles when he's 21 (?), emperor at 27. Love his empress so so much that he never considered other kids as candidate for the throne, took care of two young kids when empress died. He was pretty forgiving towards rebellion too, there were multiple of them, and he just exiled his kids. Anyways, that's a tangent and have nothing to do with gay lol, I just like Li Shimin a lot.

It's always weird when this happens in Tang because there's fair few powerful princess during that time, ah well

I always took for granted that it's real LOL, I watched a really really serious political drama about Li Shimin and that one had it too! but Chen Xin was a woman. Why is Li Chengqian a kid by the way, when Leyan is a teen lol?

There's three commonly used phrases historically that reference gay, it's used in dramas often enough that I learnt them as a kid, before I was 10, they are all related to rulers (two kings from warring states period, and a han emperor).

Tangent, Court Lady that's broadcasting now has a crown prince and his male lover. He's a supporting character, but most dramas that feature Li Chengqian as a crown prince have his lover usually, so it's just taken for granted. (He's Li Shimin's son so he kind of pops up in most Tang dynasty dramas honestly).

drop the episode and do nothing else, it looks like a low budget drama, the drama was actually filmed in 2017....

cdramas used to only have epic dramas at 40+ ep, your average drama are 30+ ep (some are 20ish), the long drama issue is a last decade thing, and episodes are getting trimmed down now. I think it's completely possible to finish and pace well at 36 ep.

historically he's probably bi, most dramas featuring this crown prince will have cheng xin (chen ji here?) as a plot point (even the srs political ones i watch), sometimes the character is played by women or the character is turned into a woman though.

rumour has it that some minor rebellion plot was cut, but it's mostly a rumour. 69 ep is def too long for story like this imo.

Rumour has it that this was originally a youku project (the early casting calls state so), at some point tencent came in and wanted to do a joint production tying it to "Game for Peace" which is basically a mobile version of PUBG, but that didn't happen for some reason. (I personally suspect maybe the CS:Go having to pull out of GGS incisdent scared them off. but that was a tv drama and this should have been webdrama? I suppose pre-production could have aimed for tv drama, ah idk) It end up being an iqiyi webdrama, but tencent joined in after it finished filming.

On the gaming bits, if you scroll down, a lot of people don't care for the gaming parts, and that's just how general public feel towards gaming dramas. So I think to ensure its reasonable success, they shifted the focus to romance-centric, thus all the almost met/almost recognise scenes that I find overdone. Initial casting for DJY is 32 years old, I think the actor they casted is bit too old, and they are playing up his interference + slight creepiness that I'm not a fan of.

I actually expected more esport novel tropes than mmo novel tropes before starting this lol, but i like mmo ones better anyways :D

GGS's douban rating is only smidge higher than Long Ballad, so it's really not that much difference. GGS is also a modern romance/esport drama, so that's what it's rated on, your issue with FL's characterisation is my issue with it too, but some people can handwave it, and that's fine.

Long Ballad has politics in it, and cnetizens will definitely criticise your drama over politics, Nirvana in Fire gets criticise for its simple politics, Qin Dynasty Epic got criticise for its portrayal of politics and it stuck reasonably close to history. The premise of the story doesn't actually help, I still think they should have dumped the story to a made up dynasty and would have save them lot of grief. By using Li Shimin and setting him + his advisors up as antagonists, it makes it hard for most Chinese to emphasis with the story from the get go. Li Shimin specifically won a lot of battles that gained Tang its landmasses, to most Chinese, Li Jiancheng was only crown prince because he was born first, and that's it. So couple that with kill or be killed scenario that the drama set this up to be, FL's initial revenge plot seem real silly.

Scathing reviews also talk about miscast of otp which affects chemistry of otp, again Leo being a child actor didn't help here, neither did the fact Changge was meant to be 15 and slight built with Han features, minor stuff to fans but big hurdle to non-fans and affect first impression a lot. (yes misogynism, ageism and ethnic discrimination is a thing amongst cnetizens, but I do think their criticism were valid here. Fans keep bringing up other actresses but they were criticise too, as were actors, so this is not just a hate on Reba thing) cnetizens are just scathing in general, so handwave it if it's your favourite drama. I like them because they filter out stuff for me, and lower my expectation for lot of dramas.

AvenueX said she's been surviving on 5 hour sleep for a whole month and she started dreaming it LOL, she just lives and breaths it.

yeah I'd assume the second round is different from first round, so promo content sounds about right.

I think the concrete number I saw from Huace's was 120mil? It's partial investment though, not sure they added in more later and there's no way to tell how much the other 3 put in (one of them is penguin film, wetv's subsidiary) It sounds too little to be tencent's S+, esp considering Huace's investment in Legend of Fei is 280mil, but.....all those manhua scenes.....mhmmmmmm.

yeah I'd assume the second round is different from first round, so promo content sounds about right.

I think the concrete number I saw from Huace's was 120mil? It's partial investment though, not sure they added in more later and there's no way to tell how much the other 3 put in (one of them is penguin film, wetv's subsidiary) It sounds too little to be tencent's S+, esp considering Huace's investment in Legend of Fei is 280mil, but.....all those manhua scenes.....mhmmmmmm.

The rumour mill is that for banner promo (the big header you see on front page), you need second round, and that's what Immortality failed (Winner is King failed the first time rip). A lot of Immortality's limited time products were slated for a spring release, but it didn't work out. WoH specifically gave it up apparently.

Sort of tangent rumour, supposingly if you are a TV drama, you submit to local NRTA for first round, and you can air on local channels (like Hunan finance or something) + air online, to air on provincial channels, you need second round and you submit to the head office. Legend of Fei, Rebel Princess and Long Ballad have all been noted to air on local channels because that bypass submitting to head office. BUT this conflict with the banner promo needing second round, maybe that's just for webdramas?

Long Ballad isn't doing too well tbh (considering its investment level + expectation), its schedule is regular tencent schedule isn't it? 3 days a week, it's been like that since 2019 summer (?) but they have a lot of historical dramas to air as well, Court Lady is slated for 15th, Zhou Dongyu and Xu Kai's xianxia +Yang Zi & Kris Wu's historical are supposingly on the list too, but again, just rumour mill. Long Ballad had been in rumour mill since Feb too so lol.

Re: new bl guideline, it's just rumour that they are tightening it, but they said that at the start of the year and they said it last year too. I'm not surprised at the possibility (youku is reeeeally toeing that line sometime) but the rumour come really often. (NRTA have a great knack of cracking down popular genres, that or they are responding to people reporting stuff, after all, people report kids cartoon for having colourful hair, it's wild)