Skibbies

All and Xiao Mi were on the neutral side because they were neutral to Tong Nian, but they aren't to dt, so that's why it's different.

Novel-wise, she was 15, solo was 19, when Su Cheng showed up and just dumped a baby on to solo. He took up responsibility as he should have. But he didn't really discuss it with appledog at the time, he discussed it with HSY, talked about how to balance the team and baby and whether it's feasible or not. appledog felt betrayed and upset, and she couldn't really emotionally accept the situation so quickly either, so she quit the team on a whim.

to be fair, both FL and ex had good reasons for their decision. They weren't mature enough to handle it well but it's fairly understandable.

I think appledog is confident and independent when she's working in this drama too, it's just we don't see that a lot. People also have preconception about grunt, he's still mean-ish towards his teammates, Wang Anyu does play up his arrogance more but I think it works for grunt.

Honestly, grunt, appledog and gun are all the kind of people that's sweet towards their loved ones, but rather different with everyone else.

In the book, Solo doesn't. In the drama, I think it's a red herring, I hope not tbh, could do without love triangles.

webdrama only, it was pulled from airing on tv last minute. I don't think it would have been that high even if it aired, Jiangsu TV's base ratings is awfully low lately, and this drama meander a little in the beginning. amongst webdramas, it's #1 because most of the currently airing dramas (webdrama or tv drama) are kind of lackluster. so it's not living up to expectations for explosive popularity but it's not doing too badly either.

I get the impression she wrote the first script then the scriptwriter edited her script, cos i can see how she fused their Singapore meeting and first meeting in Korea. She vaguebooked on her weibo last year wishing production team would respect her work, hoping they would keep core romance and characterisation or something. People were guessingvif it was this or beautiful bones, considering beautiful bones manage to keep the two lifetimes despite difficulties, guessing it was this one. GGS had tons of direct from the novel lines, from all three of them.

she actually wrote squid while fish was still updating, the in story timeline almost matches the time she updates in the beginning XD. squid finished before fish finished, fish only like half way through (february versus may) while HSY isn't the main main character, dt and appledog are, HSY is still technically a lead, he's part of appledog's past, and part of esport legends, and the theme of the book have bit of passing the torch from one gen to another gen. (which is why i'm so mad they screwed up the last two matches in GGS).

appledog was also ooc in GGS, so her character change here is little hard to get used to. HSY is much more likeable in the drama because he's with Tong Nian most the time, HSY is surly with everyone else. Anyways they bought in someone else to adapt the script I think, I was really worried about it before it started, so I don't think that helped. I have no idea why they couldn't let MBFB do it when she's a professional scriptwriter, she was a scriptwriter before she became known as an author.

no, you don't need to watch that to watch this. you know plenty of background with 30 ep.

reasonably so for school novels? it'll get rec'ed if you ask for school novels, toss up if you don't specify. With You and My Huckleberry Friends's dramas did pretty darn well so i think that's why the author sold it so many times (i didn't even know you could split it like this? LOL) but none of the three version are by the company that made the aforementioned two dramas, so....they aren't doing too well. It's a book with lot of monologues, with misunderstanding and stuff, and supporting characters are in love polygon or really dumb romances, so it's just rough adapting it. movie might actually work since frustration are at minimal and you don't meander with side characters.

I watched You Complete Me because I liked the setup/characterisation of ML, SML and SFL (FL is alright too if you consider how dumb cdrama FL can be). HYT did ok to me, he got praises for My Roommate is a Detective but i heard it also crashed and burn so lol.

no the novel was about a fictional group shooting game aka esport. it mentions real games that the characters previously played starcraft 1, 2, warcraft, dota. dt was in singapore for a group game DoTA, appledog was there for a solo game, a racing game.

You Complete had perfect ending spot at ep 19 and ep 30, but then they didn't let's add in some love triangle and ruins everyone's characterisation, literally everyone :D

It's both a prequel and sequel since this drama spans over longer period of time (as does the novel it's based on)

5. in the novel she has 2 kids + an adopted daughter. In the drama, who knows. I can't answer 1, 3, 4 because they are different from the novel lol.

you don't need to watch the first one, this is a prequel and a sequel.

1 is the prequel and details forming and break up of team solo + dt meeting appledog, 2 is appledog joining SP and dt playing for K&K. GGS used the esport bit from 1&2, 3 is gun's romance spinoff. 2 starts before 3 and ends after 3. The robot thing is original because ctf isn't as exciting and they wanted to air on tv so esport is no go. The characterisation for some of the characters (at least appledog) should be closer to this version than GGS.

Unrequited Love's novel is frustrating too so that's just how the story goes, even though i haven't watched this version of the drama, because 40 ep + drama original bits + i didn't like the novel/previous version much. You Complete started well but it crashed and burn lol.

16 is day 5 of chinese new years lol. I do think they should have kept to the original schedule since it'd finish while everyone is on holidays. i guess they changed it to avoid vvip clashing with chinese new years eve (11th)? when everyone is busy. It's back to 3 days a week for vip and 6 ep in one go for vvip, so maybe vvip did ok and they are prolonging the drama airing?

Ooooh nice article! That's a lot of trends there that you summarised. I'm sort of surprised by Intense Love? but I guess it aired at the perfect time, since Romance of Tiger and Rose just aired, and it's a decent romance. Not enough people watched Hikaru no Go oh my gosh! but it has so many loyal and active fans since it got voted in this list, hahaha. 8.8 on douban, +0.5 since ending is real wild for douban.

I'm pretty happy about gender reversal trend, and all the quality thrillers, rise of shorter dramas due to webdramas being profitable which is a huge relief. Low conflict fluff dramas is nice too, I remember watching Love O2O and being so happy that it didn't really have misunderstandings. I want to note that I loved last year we had some female centric-dramas (Twenty Your Life On, Nothing But Thirty, Imperfect Love from earlier the year to just year end's Hear Her, Dear Missy and My Best Friend's Story), to Fighting Youth airing right now and I know there's couple more dramas waiting to air.

I watched way too much dramas last year tbh. My top 10 is probably fairly different from this list since I'm picky about romances. Let's see A Murderous Affair in Horizon Tower (thriller), Cross Fire (esport/friendship), Hikaru no Go (sport/friendship), We Are All Alone (best drama to see behind scenes of c-ent! ace FL), Bad Kids (thriller), Romance of Tiger & Rose (snarky historical romcom), Danger of Her (female centric thriller), Candle in the Tomb Lost Caverns (tomb raiding/adventure thriller I guess?), Tientsin Mystic 2 (republican thriller), With You/Together (anthology drama about the pandemic)

I also watched bunch of 2019 dramas, Joy of Life (historical adventure/politics?), Your Fukubukuro (episodic slice of life), Our Shiny Days (school/friendship, enjoyed both the movie and drama), Waiting For You in the Future (school/friendship), Goodbye My Princess (historical angst romance), then some really old historical dramas. I still have bunch of quality dramas in backlog though, like Winter Begonia, Fearless Whisper, Ancient Detective, Lovely Us, Love is Sweet.

Her brother request to accompany the girl getting married (and then got captured and used as hostages rip) so maybe the drama made her do it instead of brother. Her brother haven't been as relevant as I hoped so far (i'm bit behind though).

Completely different. i don't remember xiao qi being framed for zilong's death but I wouldn't be surprised, but he didn't fake his death at this point. He does do it later though so maybe they moved it.

Awu never goes back to Helan lol? she also never gets kidnapped again, i sure hope they don't do that. Someone else was sent for political marriage. The timeline is little different in the drama. By the time Helan Zhen becomes a king, she's either pregnant or already gave birth.

I actually think the meat of the story is battles + politics > wuxia, there weren't enough bits of wuxia in the novel. I don't think either otp are good choice for the otp, and the script will be real challenging to adapt, since all of the characters sound like larger than life legends, and that's hard to portray in drama.

anyways, the novel's romance bits are actually rather minimal lol, and you can't tell there's romance till near the end. You have to squint and specifically look for it for hints in the earlier bits. Both leads have more important things than romance for the most part, it's why i liked the novel despite its sue-ish characters. (the entire cast is sue-ish on purpose, it's meant to written like legends)