Saffy88

Yes it is!

I agree - I think Zhou Ye is great - continuing her promising trajectory from Word of Honor, where her charcter was also at times awkward but that was how the character was supposed to be. And I think Neo is also not bad - am reading that part where he brings her food and it is quite true to the novel. And they're such a cute couple.........there's a lot to be said for characters who reveal their backstories to each other at the start - no need for unnecessary angst and scriptwriters painting themselves into corners they can't get themselves out of.

Loving Zhou Ye so far. She’s developing very promisingly since her debut in Word of Honor. Love that she plays the plucky kickass heroine so well - hope this couple gets a good ending. They are really quite cute together. Now if only someone had controlled the CGI designers a bit more - what’s with the terrible Shrek imitations etc?

Yes there are certain angles where he reminds one of Xiao Chan - I got the same feeling when I watched him in A Girl Like Me too. But he is cute in his own right :)

So far so good if you ignore some of the strange comical cgi creatures :)

Great to see Zhou Ye kicking ass (literally) again - she’s living up to the promise she showed in WOH.

A few eps in - so far so good. Great fight scenes, everyone is smart and logical..............fingers crossed this continues.

Ummm you're right - even tho' YXW/LSS is sort of back on track in terms of character, the way everyone got to ep 28 was messy and clumsy, negating our sympathy for her. Again back to terrible scriptwriting. I wasn't as moved by the main couple as I was by PR and YQY in this latest ep.

Over the weekend I was binge watching The Diplomat on Netflix and the writer(s) of TTEOTM could learn so much from there. The main couple there is also full of angst since the husband lies all the time to the wife and she has to guard against him all the time privately and professionally. The conflict but also the undeniable intimacy is so cleverly spelled out........

It also struck me that YXW/LSS character just comes across as a young girl too inexperienced to cope with the mission and with her feelings for TTJ. She can't and won't trust him and doesn't seem to have any sense of how he will move against his enemies, even believing that he will sacrifice her on the tower...........tsk tsk.

It ain't cdrama without the good ol' spitting/vomitting blood...........😄

You should mark this as spoiler..........

In spite of the dreaded angst in Ep 28, I thought it was great. YXW/LSS finally back on track and able to achieve what she set out to do without hesitation. And in their own way without the pyrotechnics, the scene between PR/YQY was really so touching..........

Definitely conspicously absent..............

Yups TTEOTM's writing has again reminded me that one really needs to temper expectations for highly-anticipated cdramas in case they stumble or press the self-destruct button halfway thru............

Fingers crossed it approaches NIF's level of storytelling too...........

Yes, it was the biggest surprise hit of that year. Before WOH no one was paying much attention to ZZH and GJ and no one imagined that the 2 of them could pull off such amazing performances. And it's not just them, the screeenwriter who was a complete noob produced such a gem of an adaptation from the original material by Priest; the directors , the producers worked miracles on such a low budget etc etc.

Yes I think if am not mistaken the Neflix ones have the little extras. If not they are probably on Viki.

Also please be aware that ep 36 is not the end. There's a short epilogue which completes the series wonderfully and is completely swoon-worthy and sparked whole essays from mesmerized fans. They had filmed a couple of versions I think - sad ending, happy ending etc. And I think they were too nervous to put it together as part of the actual official series, cos that really would not have passed censorship. I believe only Viki carries it now officially.

Here's the complete ep 36 + 37 in a fan-edited version by Schimofinnie: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1owRFOCd5T3FzgvMHBGn4TB-TfRFGmNyz/view?usp=drivesdk

You'll find that and a lot of useful resources on the discussion page of the WOH MDL page.

Remember to look out especially for all the things that the actors actually said and which viewers could figure out by lip-reading vs what was over-dubbed. For eg in ep 6 just before the big flirt-fight on the lake and reveal of ZZS's face - WKX says to him there's no need to act like a tough hero and he doesn't have to be embarassed cos he carried him away, ZZS says something rude in the voiceover in Mandarin, but what the actor actually said on film was "Actually, wasn't it the beauty (ZZS) who rescued the hero?"

Unfortunately due to a number of things that happened following WOH's insane strastopheric popularity - this included the ZZH scandal; government crackdown on big tech companies (Youku is owned by Alibaba); government realising that oops, they let something like WOH pass censorship - all planned BL series filmed in the wake of WOH are currently in cold storage including LYX's Immortality. We have no idea when, if ever they'll be allowed to air.

Poor ZZH - I became a complete fangirl due to him. But he was taken down in a vicious frenzy in 3 days in 2021 and became persona non grata after photos emerged of him in front of the Yasukuni shrine in Japan. He's now making a sort of comeback in his singing career, but he's still basically 'canceled' in cdramaland. They even scrubbed him out of Nirvana in Fire where he was the younger version of Hu Ge's protagonist, Lin Shu. 😪

Excellent choice! WOH is simply sublime! Actually when it was being aired we were all on tenterhooks wondering if it was going to be yanked or re-edited cos we just couldn't believe it got past the censors. We were also warning each other here on MDL to not be too excited and point out all the risque elements in case the censorship board caught on.

To our infinite surprise, Youku instead edited it over and over again to add even more great stuff though possibly only for the international audience. Those were the most incredible weeks watching WOH air. Basically post-production never ended and Youku would tell fans things like if memberhsip of the Youku channel hits xx thousand we will release another Easter egg for you etc - they just kept tweaking it, and finally when it was sold to Netflix etc, we knew it was safe and would forever be there for us.

You should also go and watch Avenue X's videos on WOH - if she didn't pull them after the ZZH scandal. In it she analyses the hidden meanings and what the actors are really saying on film as opposed to what was overdubbed.............there are infiinte layers to the script and the imagery, and oh soooo many naughty things in the script :)

WOH is a supreme example of what magic can happen with the right brilliant writer and good director(s). The writer for TTEOTM should apprentice under WOH's writer.

Yes happy for most of them and a pretty reasonable ending. You'll probably have a second male lead syndrome too for Joe Xu's character.

More than a spanking.............needs to go to some writer's bootcamp. Or go become apprenticed to scriptwriters of WOH, Nirvana in Fire etc.

Agreed. No need to compare and contrast too much with xianxia though - they're differently good and as viewers we're all the richer for having access to all these productions. I did find the last eps of Goblin overly painful for the ML, but awesome AOS deserves every accolade.

If you want to venture out of the fantasy genre in cdrama you can also try some fun ones that have popped up lately like Miss Chun is a Litigator and there's also Imperial Coroner. There's some great eye candy to be seen in Maiden Holmes. If you're a fan of wuxia or stories with elements of wuxia you can try the sublime Word of Honor, Sword Snow Stride, Joy of Life. And there's also the very highly-rated Dream of Splendor.

I actually like it more for Willam Chan and Joe Xu and of course we have a very young blur GJ :) Maggie Huang is also really brilliant in it and I feel like she almost upstages Liu Shi Shi cos she's soooo cool. It's one of the few costume cdramas where you don't have the cliched trope of women mindlessly trying to outbitch each other over a man and instead are civilised and willing to compete openly and honourably.