Firefly88

If a 25 year old is an auntie, how old are you...five? 🤣 Her comment is totally reasonable, nothing rude or offensive there. She thinks the drama has some issues, so what? We all have a different POV.

Very strict. They blacklist actors all the time. Every year, there are many dramas that never air because of a cancelled actor.

I hope he gets a better drama, he's a good actor but his dramas are always pretty average.

Well, overall I have to say this drama was very average. Mediocre acting, mediocre writing, mediocre editing. It's not bad, it's just not that great either. Unless you are a big fan of the leads, I would suggest there are much better dramas to invest your time in. 7.5/10.

Yes, he was involved in a scandal so they replaced his face with AI

Also, if she met up with Shanggu again, they could have given us a little post-Bai Jue resurrection peek into the Bai Jue and Shanggu happy ending like they did in Eternal Love of Dream where they had Bai Qian's wedding.

I also would have given Yuemi a worthy second suitor to make Tianqi sweat a bit hehehe

What scandal was that?

Precisely. It wasn't bad, it was good and the visuals certainly contributed significantly, the costumes and the CGI were very well done. But... it just wasn't as spectacular as I hoped it would be. I was hoping it would join my top 10 xianxias list, but instead it's just in the good/watchable range. Frankly, had it had a less popular cast especially Bai Lu, I wonder whether it would have achieved the same rating.

What I liked about ALP Tianqi was this duality in him of being very playful, mischievous and sweet with his family, cold and aloof in his godly position, and later wise and fatherly. I think they could have done so much more with that character if he had the backstory he had in ALP. He had a childish crush, made horrific choices with terrible consequences that changed everything, lost Yuemi, then lost Shanggu and his entire race and family and home. He spent 60,000 years alone in the demon realm with only Zihan. Then he found Shanggu again, that all came full circle, he matured emotionally and raised Yuanqi essentially as a single adoptive father, and later started taking responsibility for the god realm. I would have loved to see how that character could have evolved further. They could have done so much with a backstory like that!

I was hoping the soul trapped in Yuemi's statue would be freed and reunite with the soul fragment in her human incarnation. Tianqi could have lost his memories and become a mortal and fallen in love with Bai Shuo, then when they resurrect, I would want Yuemi to grow a backbone and reject him when she regains her memories because TQ messed around so much when she was last alive and really needs to atone. I would have liked to see her face Muguang's stone dragon form, and to be reunited with Shanggu.

There was so much potential for linking it with the parent story while building a new one...

IKR! I love me some angst. If I don't cry my eyes out a few times during a xianxia, it has failed lol. Then you wrap up all the misery with enlightenment and happiness at the end.

See, I would have preferred the backstory because it's more realistic and adds more depth. I also always felt that Tianqi's crush on Shanggu was quite childish. I always felt he confused his familial love for romantic love.) I think Liu Xueyi's Tianqi was more multidimensional, and it was great seeing how the loss of his family, Shanggu, Zihan, and then raising Yuanqi made him grow as a person. I think the growth of Ao Ruipeng's Tianqi from serious and cold to soft and caring was too small a transformation and happened too quickly for it to intrigue me. Then he stayed soft and nice till the end, and he felt like a support character rather than a main character.

I mostly don't like stories where the relationship is too smooth, especially not in a xianxia. For me a xianxia should have a lot of anguish, separations, misunderstandings and difficult experiences to make the couple grow and test tthem. I want to weep. I want chapters in their relationship where things change and they have to adapt. I want them to make bad choices and to atone.

My issue with the plot pace is it was repetitive with this whole Scoobydoo gang going to investigate a crime scenario over and over again for each contemplation. They gathered these contemplations from others rather than experiencing them firsthand. For me that would have been more meaningful.

I also kept expecting the human life arc to end. I really like xianxias with these clear arcs of being human, dying, going to the other realm or whatever. For me the whole prestory of Xingyue, Jingyuan and Moli was just placed in a big chunk near the end was just not elegant writing. It could have been dispersed or at the beginning or whatever. For me the build up was too long and then everything happened in the last 3 episodes. The writing could have been better. So much of what was going on was so predictable. It wasn't clever or witty.

What was so genius about ALP was how as a viewer you often didn't know what was going on. It took until the end to put all the pieces together. Also in other dramas like Love and Destiny or Eternal Love of Dream, you have these arcs in the middle where the character goes through major changes and when they come back to their original selves it has a big impact on their personality e.g. playful, sweet and naive Lingxi becomes quiet and serious Lin Mo and when Lingxi is reborn, she is a mix of the two. I like this kind of character development. This is why it would have been more interesting for me if the Xingyue to Bai Shuo link had been written differently. In the current context, she sees the backstory play out near the end and she's like Aha, so that's the backstory. It doesn't have any major changes to her personality. I also thought Xingyue was a very boring character. They could have done much more with that character to flesh her out, instead it was just so superficial like an afterthought.

Overall, this drama just didn't go deep enough for me. It was watchable, the visuals were very impressive, but the writing could have done more for me personally.

I loved The Starry Love. It's one of those dramas that is intended for a young audience, but you can still really enjoy as an older viewer without finding the YA themes cringeworthy. It has a wonderful blend of laugh out loud comedy (Chen Xingxu is hilarious), and really moving scenes.

As a big fan of Ancient Love Poetry, I have to say I am disappointed because they massacred the original world and mythology they had established in ALP and even The Last Immortal. Even though there were so many great things about this drama like the production, costumes, sets and CGI, I struggled to connect to the characters and story. I didn't like the flow of the plot. I also found Ao Ruipeng too meek and mild for my liking. Even as a standalone drama, for me it failed to really consume me heart and soul like other xianxias have. Maybe if I went in without expectations that the story would fit into the previous two parts, I would be able to appreciate it more.

Yep. These are upcoming:
A Moment but Forever (Liu Xueyi and Tang Yan)
Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Sword and Beloved (Cheng Yi and Li Yitong)
Love Beyond the Grave (Dilraba Dilmurat and Chen Feiyu)
Xiao Yao (Tan Songyun and Hou Minghao)

But have you watched the xianxias that have already been made?

Ancient Love Poetry
Love & Destiny
Eternal Love of Dream
Eternal Love
Ever Night
Till the End of the Moon
The Starry Love
The Flame's Daughter
Ashes of Love
Legend of Fuyao
Lost You Forever
Love between Fairy and Devil
Love and Redemption

TLI didn't get copyright

I thought they had got copyright for this adaptation, but why are they not using the original names like in ALP? Do you know? Also the plot background seems different. Are the original characters mentioned like Shanggu and Bai Jue?

Yuemi is Xingyue/Bai Shuo, Tianqi is Fan Yue/Jing Yuan

That was what was so great about Ancient Love Poetry as well. The plot was woven together really well. Very clever. Something mentioned casually in the beginning became a plot twist later. I just started Moonlight Mystique, it definitely has the ALP vibe so far.

Stalking should result in serious criminal charges and if appropriate, individuals should be sectioned because that degree of obsessive behaviour is more than criminal, it indicates a severe, untreated mental illness. Instead, their behaviour is normalised by toxic and obsessive fan culture.

Wang Xingyue looks older/ more mature than he really is!

His character is fairly pointless tbh except for a few funny scenes where he is flirting with the older version of the FL and it is witnessed by the investigator. Other than that, he gives the FL a lift a few times. He doesn't really have a big role. He likes the FL but it is one sided.