Skibbies

I liked both the female leads and their supportive relationship :D it's why i finished the drama tbh

you can watch it till 20mins of the last episode and completely avoid the cliffhanger, it finishes the arc they are on.

several cast members are tied in other projects, the projected filming start would be march/april/may, it's possible that scriptwriter haven't finished the script but he should be done by now. post-production + NRTA + lining up for tv air slot is about a year. fastest for a modern drama is about 4 months.

there's actually rumour they got zhang xueying (21 at the time) to play younger version, but they wanted zzy to appear earlier so they cut her out. i haven't seen her work at all, but she was received fairly well for her performance in film + zzy liked her for a fair bit. it's entirely possible to cut the early content into 2 or 3 episodes (they are mostly drama original and aren't critical to the plot). I really don't think zzy would get as much criticism this way, because it's been done before, they do it a lot for dramas about emperors. it's not zzy that pulled me out of the drama the most in ep 1, it's her brother LOL

she just did what she wanted i guess. thankfully i passed on most of her dramas since they aren't my kind of dramas, so my impression of her are still from when she first got popular, she did pretty great in The Victim's Game recently!

they issued an official apology and changed it already (pulled the shot closer so you can't see) :P

tiger and rose. the otp doesn't even marry until like the end, so there's no reason for FL to be comparable to Awu.

One of the general's daughter, her parents died saving Awu...I think? I'm little fuzzy on the details. If it's the girl i'm thinking of, her name is Mu (?) qinzhi.

It's his breakout role i think? looks like he was also in brotherhood of blades 2, but i haven't got around to it yet and it's a movie, so that's even less time. He's in Snow Stride Sword which hopefully should air this year.

Joy of Life!! it's still not that much screentime though, but it's the role a lot of people and I noticed him in.

it's not actually suddenly, ruby lin got criticised ages ago, so did zhou xun in 2018 (and she filmed it in 2016?), zhao liying in legend of fei, zhang luyi in qin dynasty epic recently. I haven't actually seen aging make up for actresses for ages now that i think about it, but I'm 80% sure they get criticise too if they aren't aged properly. cnetizens are way more harsh on cdramas and they can criticise a drama from all angles, because they watch lot more dramas, and get bombarded by them more (overmarketing, clips, buzz around you, family/roommates watching it when you don't want to)

he doesn't. if there's a little girl, it might be their adopted daughter.

I'm talking about production values, scriptwriter is a real toss up, they sometimes pop up in big budget projects, sometimes they are in small budget ones, the scriptwriters credited are sometimes unhelpful too since there's uncredited scriptwriters. i haven't seen xiao chuo so I can't say but it's not just cinematography or costumes or special effects, directing is part of it too, wasn't xiao chuo's story criticsed too? okay you know what, i think most cdramas get their story criticised, cdramaland really really really needs good scriptwriters that aren't pulled and interfered by multiple parties (investors, directors, actors). when i said younger actresses, i was thinking the 95 kids (age range for Awu), the 85 actresses do have a shot at these projects, but a lot of them can't or don't care to give performance that match the level of investment, or the story have lot of issues.

that's the thing, zzy picked the novel despite it being 15 years old, despite her not being any age range of the character. i definitely think if this aired in 2019, it would be better, but it's still wee bit late to the market, that's not really a thing she might have been able to predict though, since it's hard to say how long pre-production took before filming started. the drama adaptation made it MORE tropey and added in more bits that doesn't make sense which is really annoying, oh well adaptations do this a lot. it wouldn't compete against minglan because it literally just finished filming when minglan aired. I don't really like minglan (story-wise and too many women infighting tbh), but i did watch it because it was first in its subgenre, so i guess in some way they combined the tropes in an interesting way?

i guess she just really didn't like the stuff you (and i for the most part) thought was okay? lol. clearly fresher ideas are more important to her i guess?

It's just her voice + the way she talks. It works in certain situations at times, but sometimes it's a little confusing. I haven't encountered scenes where it was super out of place yet, but I'm also way behind.

I really think it's an expectation thing, lots of people expect the drama to be more than it is (less tropey, smarter schemes) because a) zzy b) level of investment + production team. there's a bit of hierarchy system where movie stars > tv stars. zhang yimou specifically told zzy to not film tv series when she was young, i guess because tv production is much faster pace, so you have less time studying your character and actors are more likely to end up with routine acting. zzy as a mentor also told other actors to pick better scripts in acting variety shows, so when her own drama's story is only so so (or bad if you hate tropey dramas) by lot of people's standards, you get backlash. i don't really think zzy raised the bar for younger actresses, because.....they would have never gotten this level's project anyways.

eh, that one is a comedy. ML is also a prince too, princes don't usually lead armies in more serious dramas. FL didn't grow up to be a General's wife, she grew up as a spoilt princess, using that to criticise that drama is a little odd.

they gave Wanru, the maid, Awu's sister in law more scenes too and it's all messy drama, so i'm not super hopeful. I liked Hu Yao though, so I hope it's not another terrible female supporting character, since we have too many.

She's specifically General Hu's sister, Hu is one of Xiao Qi's subordinates. So they picked her on purpose, it's extra control.

tomorrow under vvip system, paying extra on top of subscription.

ahh no, awu's kidnapping was in the book, and Helan's troubling personality and actions make sense due to his background. i'm referring to the crown prince incident, that's not really necessary and it contrast against their later lovey-dovey relationship. i know it's probably to give Wanru a reason to be antagonistic, but it's just iffy? Especially since awu was a victim as well. There's the messy relationships and accidental sleeping together that I find ehhh as well.