Skibbies

ahhh missed you don't do too well with action and adventure, since you like zhang xincheng, if you are ok with modern romcom, try the day of becoming you too (leans heavy towards comedy, ep 1 is not indicative of its comedy)! oh if you liked my uncanny destiny, the same director + fl had a drama earlier this year, eternal love of the fox, I had lots of fun with it too!

you have ding yuxi as your profile pic, maybe nanyang mystery? if you want comedy+ensemble cast+adventure (very light romance), young blood? low budget romcom, leans heavy on the com, my uncanny destiny. if you are ok with modern comedy disguise as suspense, born with luck. hope you like some of them!

on he jianxi, I saw a clip of him saving zhang hailou by the sea, and the actor li huan read a letter from he jianxi to zhang hailou on his way to jinfan, I think that works pretty well as goodbye, shame he was cut out.

I believe in the book, his scenes essentially makes him sml, but since there's haixia in drama ver, he's bit redundant so his scenes got reduced i think.

qianjun appears first as a character, before the book existed, so i think it's just the way the drama string the arcs together is mhmm. I don't care for the romance either but considering xu lei really likes adding useless and eh romance, the limited screentime is blessing to me.

haiqi is part of the main family, the two ml were adopted. zhang haike, like zhang qishan is part of the family but not the main family.

info i gathered from series fans on xhs:
1. zhang haiqi is part of the main zhang family so he was able to save her.
2. he was cleaning up zhang family messes.

technically he wrote extras first, the arc we are in right now came first, as did the characters, then some other bit, then the southern archives as a book, but the book was unfinished.

he could totally do s2 of the 10 years they skipped, or a prequel, or just retcon stuff (as he does a lot, he did it here too). anyhow, i wouldn't believe him till i see it.

there was map when they first mentioned it, and the ling was jinling's ling (one of its old names), oh yeah i forgot about chuhan but yes that's wuhan.

nanjiang could be whole bunch of things, it's usually not guangxi, it's usually yunnan or guizhou in most stories, but here western guangxi would fit too.

i pictured beilian as northern something just cos of bei LOL. oh found a lian prefecture (old name) in ningxia! could be in that region. there's a lianjiang in guangdong but it's too south i think, but if north is beihai in guangxi, that would make sense. them moving from the seaside to mountains in guangxi make sense too, it's close enough. and since zhang qishan is in changsha, it would make sense he would want the lands closeby?

oh yeah there's a baise city in guangxi, that could be bailejing's namesake, it's northwest of guangxi!

you are welcome! :D for funsie, nanling is probably nanjing, guangchuan is guangzhou, they mention beilian (mo yungao's influence) but i can't figure that one out.

guangxi? from them mentioning shi wan da shan 十万大山 which is an actual mountain in guangxi. it could also reference the border between guangxi, guizhou, hunan where miao people reside.

no no, the drama is called the lead/protagonist 主角, it's also about traditional art, qin qiang (a type of opera in shaanxi province)

it's unfortunate the 2 year hard episode limit (there were push for it for 5 years before that) hit yang zi's two dramas hardest.

the episode limit was lifted late last year, there's been two dramas, sword into plowshares and the lead that have been 40+ episodes this year, they are both longer than the heir as well.

that guy think zhang haiyan is a traitor (he said it when they started fighting).

haiyan kept him around cos he thought he might be sent by shifu to test/help him. he's short on time so he sorta need the help, and he was waiting to see what the guy wanted. also cos he might be bored.

haiyan blabbed a lot, i took it as narrative wise, he needed someone else around to explain plot points to audience. in story, i guess he might have been fishing for info (since haiyan didn't know much about the beaurau or about his shifu, since he was surprised that shifu lived longer than expected. that other guy probably know more than him)

one of zhang qishan's people apparently

he's older in the drama actually, haiyan calls him shi xiong

they do! and their arc is over I think, I quite like the next arc if that helps.

ah yeah Bao Jianfeng def don't seem 25, but they never stated clearly what his age is, so I handwaved it, since the other casting issues were bigger lol.

Bai Shu's child is adopted I think? She mentioned it at some point, if adopted, why adopt her. If not (suspecting she's lying or I imagined that adopted line), yeah what's the deal with that? I would accept it if she or Ge Wenjun needed someone else to keep Ge Wenjun's attention, but GWJ seem to have pretty good relationship with the kid? It's so strange?

I can sort of buy Bai Shu's mum panicking over the video, she probably didn't know better. Similar to them panicking over them killing someone, and convinced they did and ran off. *sigh* If it was half way sensible plot, I wouldn't be so annoyed. I watched Light of Dawn earlier the year, and it also start with dead body and flashback, there were some issues with it, but that mystery part was better than this, just bit convoluted.

Totally agree that I thought they would show why Xiaoming married Liu Xiaoran, apparently they filmed some more cute/romantic scenes of the couple but cut it out, I don't need those! I was hoping it'd tell me WHY, I had suspected it was financial or pragmatic reasons (travelling abroad + marrying a professor which is a respectable career) but neither really fit tbh. also, even though I never really liked Liu Xiaoran, I enjoyed Ni Ni and Bao Jianfeng's interactions, I suspect cos he might have improv some of the funnier scenes LOL. I def enjoyed it far more than with Zhou You, I get that's culmination of relationship with He Yuqiong but the story is cliche without a twist and I didn't care for the adult actor pairing, so 5 ep was entirely unnecessary to me, 1 would be enough.

Xiaoming is frustrating to watch but I actually rather like her being very biting and bitter towards her mum, since her mum is the same way to her, they are both far nicer to other people. I def expected she would learn to appreciate her mum and hold back biting remarks or learn to be less impulsive and clueless (bub, you met Bai Shu at her grave, why were you so surprised when she told you she's not the real Bai Shu???) as she grew up, but it seems like she didn't.

I had originally suspected Bai Shu got sexually assaulted or something, but turns out no? I mean her controlling mum tend to do a number of emotional damage, but not to this extent. I think if she found out that it was her birth mum that they "killed", it would work but she didn't know. The adopted daughter thing seem like a random red herring too? I don't really get Zhang Fang's one sided crush, and his adult actor def didn't help.

The suspense plot is apparently drama original so I never expected it to be as good as the complicated coming of age part, but this was absolutely absymal omg, not just bunch of red herring and leads that went nowhere, Bai Shu have to repeatedly tell Li Meng to read the damn book, but also why last minute target switch?! I mean you could have at least foreshadowed birth mum a bit? Like random lingering shadow, strange spying angles (that could be attributed to controlling Ge Wenjun even), but no, just bam? This is huge no no in suspense???

I think you missed some bits of dialogue. It was He Yuqiong's mum on the other side of the wechat account, she has been sending money to his mum, that's when she got invited for food sometimes. I also don't think there was miracle recovery of mum, her last scene was in hospital. If she was fully recovered, she should be with brother and uncle li, but it just show two of them, so I think it's open end.

I agree the suspense is shoddily written, but it's drama original I believe. I think the drama have been weird mash of genre to begin with and not done too well, so I don't think it's an ending issue tbh.

oh no, he plays a minor support character in SSS, not a younger ver of ZRY haha. I think it's bit slow at the start too, cos it takes a while to setup. I have fair amount of beef with the pacing and directing of that show, but JOL reniuon reminded me of it (the scriptwriter are the same for the two dramas).

did you watch SSS? That also have ZRY and Han Haolin!