Skibbies

Technically there's 3 places they could have ended this and it's sad ending, open ending and happy ending, i think it worked out pretty well.

....because it's a youku drama LOL. I'm guessing Youku might be looking into making international platform instead of selling their dramas to other platfroms due to success of WoH but that's just a guess.

Oh, and there's no politics involved about before and afterhand either is there, damn. I think it might be cos they want everyone to have positive image of Li Shimin? I mean, it's like the biggest thing he did that could be considered "wrong". But your average Chinese doesn't seem to care honestly, he's the most beloved emperor out of all of them in my experience, surpassing Ying Zheng and Liu Che.

I'm curious how they handled Xuanwu, do you think they did a decent job? I'm most interested in that part because most Tang dramas kind of skim over the bit. (...I'm surprised they kept Li Shimin's name.....you know...lol)

No it wouldn't be, if you look at the person he's based on.

Word of Honor is fully subbed if you subscribe to Youku, there's a discussion page about it.

untranslated, I read it in chinese, http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=2364872

Historical are generally bit longer, TRP's length is from 2018 when long dramas was still popular, and it's already been cut down (So is Palace of Devotion rip). Anyways, it does say suggest (and they've been suggesting since around late 2018) so it's not a hard rule, the salary thing is a hard rule though.

Unfortunately big names sell dramas, that's why they used them, the ramification for terrible acting for awfully high salary doesn't show up till a year or two or even three years after they invest in a project. The drama market has calmed down, LeTV going backrupt, then tighter hold on historical dramas on primetime, then salary rule + episode limit put quite a damper on the market. Last year already saw effects of it, most of the dramas that made a splash (positive splash) had decent script, and several of them were under 30 ep. The shift away from tv to watching on platform + rise of people watching dramas on tiktok + pandemic put more damper on it, so this year's tv ratings are all absolutely absymal, webdrama statics so far are mostly alright, most dramas that have sort of splash so far have all been partially invested by the streaming platforms.

A small note, salary over 100m isn't really possible anymore since they've been cracked down, the height of that was around 2016/2017 just after internet giants poured into the drama market which resulted in bunch of other well off businesses investing in dramas so it jacked up everyone's prices. There's evidence (annual reports from production companies usually) that second tier or third tier (depending on how you categorise them) actors could get 80m, that's how ridiculous it was.

These days there's specific rules, the newest one say total actor salary can't be more than 40% of budget (thank god, there's still some money left over for the drama itself), and main cast's salary can't be more 70% of the total (idk what count as main cast though). On the same document, it also mentions that it strongly discourage "fillers" in dramas, suggests less than 40 ep for dramas and encourages dramas to be 30 ep or less. (thus all the recent 30ish ep dramas I guess, it's long enough for platforms to air them in a month for vip + on demand, but not too long)

Happy to share my useless trivia knowledge from strolling cnet too much :P

Both Chinese Paladin dramas I mentioned actually featured Hu Ge hahaha, on cnet, the first one is consider pinnacle of xianxia dramas, despite the fact it was heavily criticised by game fans at the time, I think all the kids that grew up with the drama but not the game got their nostalgia goggle on. It's actually decently adapted though, and fairly well told story despite the love triangle. Chinese Paladin 3 is vastly different from the game and I've been told absolutely inferior so LOL, the love polygons were real annoying but it was kind of neat to see A list actors and actress in one drama, and it fused in enough taoism that I liked it for that.

I wouldn't really trust NU for tagging to be honest, since it's probably tagged by users who are equally confused. I see low fantasy xianxia as xianxia anyways because you can totally tell a story set in xianxia world without it being about powerful people I guess? I think Xuanhuan includes Xianxia so it's not wrong per se. The thing with cultivation novels is...they are all super long, and they are basically level up and fight antagonists, I think one of NU forum's resident fav few years ago I Shall Seal the Heaven is one but WAY TOO LONG OMG.

MXTX locked the book so you can't see it anymore, but TGCF is tagged as xianxia xiuzhen (it's one tag, xiuzhen is cultivation) rather than dongfang xuanhuan (eastern xuanhuan), so I'm pretty sure MDZS is tagged as it too. It's definitely most often refer to as a xianxia novel.

TU is xianxia but low magic xianxia, and lean towards the xia (chivalry) rather than the xian (gods/immortals), it's closer to Chinese Paladin (2005) and Chinese Paladin 3 (2009?) and its entire game series than the recent ones focused on immortal realms. Chinese Paladin is very wuxia adventurey but it has immortals + cultivation (and daoism, which is sorely missed in recent xianxia dramas). It could also be a xiuxian/xiuzhen (cultivation) one because they use concept of core, but TU's focus isn't really on levelling. It can definitely be argued that it's Xuanhuan, because that's literally fantasy with eastern twist, I think it's a bigger genre that also contain xianxia but that's just me. The thing is xianxia existed before xuanhuan really became a thing so it's just...a separate genre lol. Xuanhuan technically goes under fantasy too but it's too big of a genre LOL. (Xuanhuan's term came from Huang Yi, who's a wuxia author lmao)

I found it kind of difficult to distinguish between the three. In my experience, the web novels aimed at male audience that's tagged as xianxia are usually xiuxian/cultivation novels, while the female audience ones (and thus most of the dramas you see recently) are focused on "xian" than "xia", I legit don't recall any BG novels that's focused on xia (and they all end up being romance centric so eh), you can find cultivation novels too but they are rarer. Xuanhuan from my limited experience fuse eastern and western concepts and use levelling up terms that are new and made up, like Ever Night. if it's completely western, it's Xihuan/Qihuan/Mohuan which is just fantasy (western fantasy/fantasy/magic fantasy, the three are used almost interchangibly). There's bunch of subgenres under cultivation but I don't read them enough to get them LOL.

Oh yeah I know about that, I was really surprised when I first saw it, but it make sense. They don't promote their dramas as much and their dramas are definitely mostly low budget. I like a lot of dramas that iqiyi invest/produces, but......they had.....140 dramas last year (in total, not just stuff they invest in i think), when mangotv had like 30 dramas. iqiyi i only remember maybe 20 of your shows off top of my head so i most definitely probably never saw 1/3 of your shows!

Hunan specifically sacrificed ratings for some popular variety shows and made them web variety shows and exclusive to get it started. Their inhouse dramas also get the chance to air on Hunan TV if they get lucky. Hunan is also the most trendy of all the tv stations, they started airing the popular "idol dramas" before everyone else, they started broadcasting popular high rating dramas every summer, they were the biggest stations besides CCTV 20 years ago and they were reigning king till last 5 year or so. Of course they have lot of issues too, but so do the internet giants. Jiejie last year got them lot of members that it was almost youku level for awhile, and then the show crash and burned LOL (but still most popular variety show of the year!)

I'm pretty sure Gank Your Heart only got a rating because of WYB lol, and I think I watched it because it made a splash in esport community (negative one, but it turned positive when one teams used a technique mentioned in the book for fun and people got over the fact it's a romance drama with romance tropes LOL)

because it's a mangotv drama LOL, a lot of mango dramas just finish airing without rating, the platform is too small (half the size of youku? and youku is smaller than iqiyi and wetv) and a lot of its subscribers use it to watch variety show rather than dramas. The mini reviews and reviews don't look too promising to be honest...

roll around bilibili and weibo for a bit. I want to rec you awakening age but it's more serious drama and not sure if you can get into it l o l. (actually, probably better to line it up after qin empire)

It's all up in the air, previously the rule applied to tv dramas, 2019 (70 years of PRC) didn't have prominent historical from late Aug till Nov when Joy of Life showed up, but first quarter's tv dramas was lackluster anyways LOL, and webdramas gaining prominence so it probably apply to both tv and webdramas. iirc, the rumour mill have producers rushing to air historical dramas in first quarter (or at least before May) so it sounds about right. CPC's anniversary is July 1st, National day is Oct 1st, so November could be possible for historical?

The streaming platforms also have those short small budget historical dramas that might not be affected because they don't actually get the promotional banners. Aside from historical, there's a number of police/military dramas starring popular actors that's been highly anticipated that'll likely air in May or June (Li Yifeng's, Yangyang's, Chen Xiao & Wang Yibo's off top of my head). iirc Yangyang and Dilireba's You Are My Glory (modern romance) is rumoured to be summer. Likely because the male lead works in aerospace now that I think about it lol. So there's still fair amount of dramas international audience might be interested in.

saturday, there's 33 ep right now, and you should see one ep a day till saturday.

*shrug* i'm mostly speculating. even if they unlock it, i don't think it'd drop that far down so it's a good score regardless.

he named his daughter nianxiang 念湘, which means in memory of a xiang ;___; oh you precious child.

I also want to note that he didn't marry Gao xiaolian, His disciple calls her Gao shigu, which imply that Gao is Chengli's shijie or shimei (so they share the same shifu)