ASmith

tbf it’s less terrible with fast forwarding the draggy bits (and absolutely all whiny creeper bro scenes). The CY parts are still good, it’s just he’s a minor support character for those middle 18-29 😭

Agree it’s crazy how a show as good as 1-12 was could go off the rails so completely 😭😭 I’ve made a mental note never to watch anything by the same director or writers ever again 🥶

Maybe wrong show? No one’s an assassin in this one 😅 Maybe this comment is meant for Blood River, or another show?

The cringe emotional scenes I cannot defend 😅 They do read kinda like the editing team ran out of time for the ADR in places, especially the anguished screaming ones.

No comments on the budget either 😅 I tell myself that ever since the government introduced rules that no more than 40% of the production budget could go to the actors (apparently it was getting to 50-80, not sure if that’s because on some contracts for some actors the agencies were collecting 90% of that, or some productions really did pay that well), that some budgets got possibly inflated post 2022, but that’s just my cynical suspicion, zero evidence 😂

Enjoy the bouncy landing for this one once you get there!

(I do get what you mean tho too that the support cast was a lost opportunity because so many were interesting but so few were properly fleshed out once their quest was over. Danged AI world building 😂)

I loved this show but snickered at the “two music videos” comment, like your not wrong, that is so valid 🤣🤣😂😂😂

(idk if it helps, but for me this was a semi parody where yes it was touching on those wuxia tropes you listed, but at its core it was about a (probably 30yo) author’s journey from completely controllingly writing his characters (whether for one character’s elevation as in ep, or for many as in up till when he ruins the UI) to stepping back and letting his characters write themselves and ultimately write them to the point where they can continue on existing in a world without the author/script. Their actions up till he leaves their world are necessarily following signposted quest markers placed by himself in ep1, but once he leaves, what next for them? For me things came full circle from ep1, as there it ended with everyone cheering XQS and him leading a world implicitly unable to continue without him (“please rule us for 1000 years and here’s the military token!”), and in ep40, the world is so self sustaining the main character can die and the author can leave, but the characters can continue singing and eating happy without him.)

Like yes it’s completely true they didn’t develop those points enough, but aaaat the same time, I don’t know that I could fully have taken meaningful relationships between XQS and allies or enemies seriously either knowing that the plot is scripted and largely following the quest markers he himself set up? Rather than a wuxia hero journey, “journey of a B-grade author whose books under his own name never took off stuck living an interactive novel he plotted badly for work-related reasons and that’s now being generated by AI according to his life choices (though forcing key plot markers), which he now needs to salvage by finishing the book and returning the world to the characters it belongs to without wrecking it too much” was where I saw his journey, as opposed to any genuine wuxia journey taking place 😂 Idk if it helps or not! (completely agree the Shan Guado fight at the start with the fisher guy was epic 😆🤩)

oops 12!

Just realized you’re not at the end 🥶🥶

All i’ll say is that it gets better, in that some wild plot appears post ep20, but it definitely shouldn’t be compared with MLC. CY’s fight scenes were just a bonus icing on a very epic cake in MLC; here, the icing is basically the point and the plot kind of primarily exists to string together beautiful fight scenes 😃

(Since he’s a player/writer immersively LARPing in a world generated by AI though that’s primarily an action game/interactive novel, it does make sense not to invest too much in plot, since it’s following plot markers r we saw him outline in the opening of ep1 (with some creative license permitted) so we already roughly know where things are going.)

But yeah, I can see how it would suffer if expecting the next MLC too 🥶 if you end up continuing, then hope you enjoy the rest of the show! It’s definitely one where the enjoyment depends a lot on enjoying good fight scenes!

Because he suffers beautifully and dies so well XD

Pretty sure it’s just a couple of “blink and you miss it” type 10-secondish flashbacks to the previous season, maybe the final ep and possibly one in the middle-ish when they’re explaining how bad black fox is 😅😅

I wish someone would just permanently kill some of the bad guys lol.

In the process of being filmed. Most likely will be being filmed for the next few months I think!

Given how quick everyone was to slam Douban for the 2.5 stars thing that turned out to be fake news on the VoA page, I would wait to hear it is him before accusing him or his fans. 😅😅 So many parties seem to be trying to make the two fandoms fight that I’m wary of anything that tries to inflame a fan war between the two.

hopefully those who did it will snitch on whoever paid them, or the money trail can be traced. 🙏

Nope but it’s still good. This one’s more of a political revenge-y kind of plot, but rather than solely focusing on power games, it touches on how people’s revenge arcs affect those uninvolved in them as well, and how people either can or can’t move on from the traumas that shaped them & trap them.

There is romance but of the “everyone knew they were married but them” style vibe for the eps 1-13 for the leads, as opposed to Prisoner of Beauty style “their gazes make lightning crackle” romance. No kisses for the leads, though the secondary main couples get kisses.

I watched it on Youku 😅

I didn’t notice any of those seven surviving his plans but maybe I missed one 👀

Playing devil's advocate, but I think the theory would be that if you assume it deserved a 7 or 7.5 (this is if; ratings will always be subjective, just like any kind of voting in a democracy) and you also assume that biased fans with blinkers on would automatically give it a 10 (because as fans, the enjoyment was 10/10 for them watching their favorite, it'd have to be truly terrible before they docked any stars), then the rating ought to be above what the show would be if only rated by passerby viewers, if being manipulated by fan votes more than haters.

If the rating is under what a passerby viewer would feel the show was, and this is despite ~20% fan votes dragging it up, then the ratings can be assumed to be skewed a tad more by haters than by the fans.

But like, I loved Guardians of the Dafeng, and I have a feeling that one suffered on Douban, and I remember Journey of Legend which I also loved opened with a lower Douban score than Sword and Beloved, and meanwhile Shine on Me apparently has like 7.4. Everyone's taste differs, and what they score for differs, so there's never going to be a "valid" score. For me, at this point, I just accept that my tastes do not align with Mainland China lol, and just get impressed with the sheer number there who do vote on Douban, cuz those numbers are always insane.

310k is a lot of voters 😵‍💫🤩❤️

Are there other sites than MDL that are good for rating & discussing shows these days, do you know? (ideally ones less susceptible to black water attacks than MDL is increasingly getting to be?)

can you recommend anywhere with decent subs? ;-;

Love and Redemption.

yup. insane. 😭