pureggold

actually...female leads used to be the doormats in most older dramas, getting bullied and verbally abused by the mls, not to mention the ml changing gfs faster than he changed clothes, and it was lowkey romanticized back then. the entire "he fell harder" trope has only started getting into trend now, so i actually prefer the recent characterisation of mls bc atleast there's no double standard now that the fl has to be the only one who stays "pure" and devoted while the ml messes around w the entire town.

imbalance in dramas have always been a thing, except now its more for the female gaze while the older dramas were more male-gazey when toxic masculinity was a trend.

fun fact the scene with xiao liu and xixiao in the scooter wasn't in the script, it seems like they improvised that scene😂it was honestly so hilarious haha

a lot of things didn't make sense to me so i read the script for today's episodes and things became much clearer. what follows is basically what happens in the script, so if you haven't watched today's eps yet please don't read further as it contains spoilers.

lu xixiao explicitly asked zhou wan to unbutton her clothes so she could pose for him as a nude model, which is very different from the drama where he beat around the bush. when she's almost done unbuttoning, xixiao presses her against the wall and strangles her while yapping about wanwan betraying him. wanwan then asks what she can do to repay him for what happened back then, to which he says he'll let her enter the 2nd phase of the project on the condition that she becomes his assistant and takes care of him everyday until he gets tired of her. wanwan agrees out of guilt, believing she owes him this.

due to the scenes being cut, it seems the lines were also changed during dubbing, which is why we have literally no context to understand what was happening on screen. the editing choices are frustrating me a lot, i hope this is a one time thing. i dont want to read the script after every ep

he was basically asking her to be a nude model, and zhou wan didn't get it at first. she thought he meant a normal modelling job but once she realised what he meant, she actually started unbuttoning her shirt. they didn't show that scene clearly though, only her face was visible and everything below was blurry, probably a censorship thing. when she's almost done unbuttoning he pushes her back, and according to the script he was supposed to strangle her but i guess it didn't make it through censorship either so it got edited out.

the whole point of the scene was him pushing her buttons to make her miserable, except he didn't expect her to actually go along with it. him stopping her is probably meant to show he still has some respect for her but that's a pretty hard sell after he literally asked her to pose nude in the first place lol

actually never ending summer is a mango tv exclusive in china but archives and the first jasmine are airing locally on iqiyi and tencent. those platforms have hundreds of millions more active users, so their raw view counts are going to be way higher. plus, you have to look at the cast. archives has zhang xincheng and ding yuxi, and the first jasmine has bai lu. these are top tier traffic stars with massive fanbases that guarantee instant millions of views.

LHF is a diff beast on its own lol. its airing on CCTV 8 (the most watched tv channel in china) and streaming simultaneously on both tencent and iqiyi. the star power is also on another level.

when you actually adjust for the smaller platform and the cast's current status, never ending summer is doing pretty well for what it is. and douban score isnt a reliable metric for success either. look at the ratings for poj, it's sitting at 6.4 despite it being a major hit domesticcally and internationally.

it opened at #1 on satellite tv ratings which is a solid start, and the chemistry between bao shangen and zhou keyu has been getting a lot of love online, with people going crazy over specific scenes. the fireworks kiss basically broke weibo for a day. however, it's also receiving quite harsh criticism online.

there's this meme around here which is basically "watching while complaining." the closest western equivalent would be "guilty pleasure," but that doesn't quite capture it because people are doing it loudly and publicly on weibo while dragging the show in the same breath. it's being described as trashy, cringe, and addictive all at once.

it's that classic situation where half the audience is watching purely to complain, mostly the novel fans who feel like the adaptation gutted everything meaningful from the source and just kept the names. heat wise it's sitting around mid tier nationally and has already dropped a few spots from its peak, so it's not exactly a hit, but for a youth romance on mango tv it's holding its own.

bao shangen has this tag of "ip crusher," meaning she destroys beloved source material just by being attached to it. the label is largely unfair though, because she has no control over how a script is written or how faithfully an adaptation treats its source. novel fans are upset about how drastically the story was changed in the drama, and some of that backlash is attaching itself to bao shangen even though she didn't make those creative decisions. actresses always end up receiving the shorter end of the stick everywhere, unfortunately.

but yeah number wise the drama is doing okay, not a hit, but not a flop either.

using sa as a plot device to make the female lead miserable and using misunderstandings as a plot device are two different things, please don't lump the two together.
also, the "emotional buildup" in the novel wasn't even that deep to begin with. it was zhou wan going along with whatever lxx wanted out of guilt, that's it. the actual buildup only started when she began opening up to him and that could have been written without her losing her job or getting sa'd. the author just needed a reason for them to live together and have intimate moments, so zhou wan had to be made completely jobless and dependent on a'xiao for that to happen. it was a convenience device. removing it from the drama doesn't erase the buildup, it removes the most unnecessary and frankly the stupidest part of it.

i think you're extremely confused right now. you said the leads are still the same as they were 10 years ago and mentioned how fl loves him but is using him for her motives. so, my question is how is she using the male lead in the present?

"she loves him too but doesn't mind using his feelings for her motives" is what you said.

i agree completely. she has been independent her whole life so being completely dependent on a'xiao would feel so... out of character for her. and financial stability was the one thing she desperately wanted and worked so hard for, i would be genuinely pissed at the writers if they make her lose the one thing she actually managed to achieve after all these years.

why does she have to go through a horrible experience just for their reunion to mean something? she doesn't need to be completely dependent on him or suffer for lxx to realize he doesn't resent her. what they actually need is zhou wan sitting down and telling him everything, the truth, all of it. that's what would actually fix things between them, not her going through more pain as some kind of catalyst for his realisation

she is literally keeping her distance from him so that he won't be involved in the process of her "revenge" against his family. care to explain how she is using his feelings for her motives this time?

i've been seeing a lot of negative comments about meng ziyi lately so i'm definitely going to follow her upcoming works more closely. the more people unfairly hate on an actress, the more it makes me want to support them :) i loved her in blossom but didn't really watch much of her work before or after that, but all her upcoming dramas look really interesting so i'm excited to see what she does next

i think viewers have a very rigid definition of love sometimes. people show and feel love in completely different ways and there's no single right or wrong way to love someone, minus the abusive kind for obvious reasons. i actually love that the male lead is so expressive and full of emotions despite everything he's been through his whole life. if anything it makes complete sense that he's still in love with her because she was the only person who ever brought him any real solace. when someone has lived through that much trauma, holding onto the one person who made them feel safe isn't weakness or delusion, it's just so human :)

did you not see her wipe her tears before turning towards him? okay maybe that small detail slipped past you but the scene where she walked away crying is hard to miss, it was literally in slow motion...💀

idol dramas mostly get treated differently on douban. there's this whole group of users who see the genre as basically an insult to chinese drama as an art form, the argument being that light glossy romances made primarily for commercial appeal drag down the overall quality and reputation of the industry. douban's user base tends to take this stuff really seriously and anything that feels too feel good or formulaic automatically gets side eyed from the start. first frost is sitting at 5.4, hidden love and poj at 6.4 on douban despite both being massive international hits, so its more like an audience mismatch on the platform. political, historical epics are what users tends to score highly. it feels unfair but it is what it is

"i'm only 18, what am i supposed to do?" — zhou wan

i think a lot of people are forgetting that both leads are just teenagers who grew up facing hurdle after hurdle. both of them barely had real paternal love growing up and that obviously shaped who they are and how they handle things, you can't hold them to the standards of fully formed adults when they never really had the chance to become one.

zhou wan didn't abandon him out of selfishness, she was emotionally manipulated into it by his grandfather who held all the power in that situation. she had little to no real choice and that context matters.

and yes, lxx accepting that date on impulse wasn't great and that girl didn't deserve to be treated like that, but he ended it just as fast as it started. he's a teenager acting out of hurt and confusion. cut them both some slack, they're kids doing their best with what they have.

and lastly, don't imagine yourself in zhou wan or xixiao's place and hold them to the standard of what you personally would have done. we haven't lived through what shaped them as people, we haven't experienced the events that made them who they are. we're not here to insert ourselves into their story, we're here to observe it

the breakup scene wasn't as sad as i expected it to be honestly, ke yu's acting didn't quite live up to what i was hoping for in that moment either. i don't know if the setting threw him off or made it harder to fully sink into the emotions but it just didn't land the way it should have. the phone call scene on the other hand was genuinely heartbreaking, you could feel the sadness from both leads so clearly. it makes me wish they had executed the breakup scene differently because the emotion was clearly there, it just didn't translate on screen the way it needed to

i really like the discussion space here. everyone feels free to share their opinions whether good or bad about the drama without a bunch of people hounding you for it. i think it's majorly bc neither of the leads are traffic stars yet and they don't have a dedicated hardcore fandom breathing down everyone's necks.

as much as i genuinely wish both actors a lot of success, i lowkey want the discussion spaces to stay like this. viewers should be able to criticize or praise a drama freely without 10 people jumping on you for it lmao. that kind of environment is honestly rare in discussion pages nowadays

oh god the booktok community reading this novel with haunting adeline expectations is actually sending me. of course it won't seem extreme to you guys, you're literally desensitized to unhinged content, but outside of that bubble his behavior was genuinely questionable. and the double standard is so real, if an unattractive man asked a girl to repay him with her body that would be called harassment immediately, no debate. just because he's a fictional pretty boy doesn't suddenly make it acceptable. he was written as a typical toxic male lead who gets redeemed by the female lead's love and that's fine, it's a trope, but you can acknowledge that while still enjoying it. admitting a male character did problematic things is not a personal attack on you, it won't kill you to be honest about it