Skibbies

Good luck on your chinese history class :D wiki'ing background history for dramas is always pretty fun, especially for dramas that takes it seriously rather than using it as just a backdrop.

In Han, eunuchs were used to balance power of empress's family 外戚. I didn't even realised this till I watched this really cute donghua on bilibili 如果历史是一群喵/if history was a bunch of cats?, which is 5mins/ep and goes through chinese history starting from legendary times. It's english subbed on bilibili too, idk if they went back to sub the first 8 ep on youtube but the rest are def eng subbed. The series is just finished Three Kingdoms period, so we are up to chaotic times of Eastern Jin + Northern and Southern dynasties. It has manhua, and apparently that's much more detailed but I haven't read it.

Yeah I'm interested to see how emperor handles things later.

Late Tang period is like this, as was Late Han and Late Ming, but Late Tang looks like when they were most powerful. I was wiki'ing the emperors trying to figure out everyone's relationship. ML's great grandpa is Mu Zong who had three kids that became emperors. Jing Zong (killed by eunuch at 17 after 2 years), Wen Zong (under house arrest and got sick and died after failing to kill powerful eunuchs/Gan Lu incident), Wu Zong (died from immortality pill poisoning). Xuan Zong were their uncles and was put on the throne by eunuchs, they picked him because he was pretending to be mentally unstable and they thought he'd be easy to control.

Princess Xi Ping, ML's mum is Wen Zong's daughter. The Gan Lu incident was referenced in the first episode (and ep 21). The ministers that supported the emperor's operation were killed under the name of them "rebelling", 1000+ people died due to this. So basically Xuan Zong can't really just lop their heads off. Jing Zong was too young and murdered, Wen Zong tried and failed, Wu Zong I think sucessfully lessend their power a bit but he died too young (in this early 30s, after just 6 years of an emperor). This emperor historically also lessen their influence as well. (He's just four years older than Wu Zong by the way, despite being a generation older)

The reason is because after An Shi Rebellion (100 years before the drama's time and about where my general knowledge of Tang ends LOL), emperors didn't quite trust the Jie Du Shi anymore, but also couldn't really take the power away from them fully. They needed military that they can control, but they don't have trusted generals, so eunuchs were given power to control the armies, then they got more and more powerful. It's why 玄宗 gets mixed reviews on him being an emperor. Everyone think he lived for too long, his early life was fantastic in terms of achievements but An Shi Rebellion completely changed the course of Tang dynasty and partially influenced the rest of dynasties. Song feared giving powers to generals (also due to how Song was found), Ming & Qing was heavily into retaining power in the hands of emperor.

supposingly netflix bought it so just waiting for it to release, it just finished its broadcast in china.

This one, Find Yourself got some criticism for characterisations and criticism for its second half. I really liked this FL and how she handle conflicts and rough situations. But if you got time for both, watch them both?

it's just a re-edit version, so watch the one you are watching if you haven't finished it.

It's price discrimination. iqiyi actually introduced two tiered vip system last year, regular vip and vvip, vvip lets you watch the fast track episodes. Chinese viewers have yelled and screamed at the platform for better half of 2019 and early 2020 but has grow accustom to it by now. VIP are still ahead of non vip, which by the way is the still the majority of these platforms' users, the vvip people are small small subset of vip members.

The dramas actually lose viewcount if they get advance episodes because a portion of viewers will jump to pirate site to watch the drama and never come back. But the platforms are really really desperate to recoup money, ANY money.

This drama was notable for having NO advance episodes in the airing calender despite it being a tencent only drama when it was first released, it did really well first week so they changed the schedule and introduced advance episodes, and that's actually when tencent gave it in site promotion. In site promotion that the drama sorely needs since it has no well known cast and relatively low marketing cost. The marketing cost was raised after it started airing, reviewers came into play in second week, weibo trending was also second week. Despite the advance episodes, the viewcount are still better than last week's, likely because it's still getting new viewers, so it's still upward trajectory.

I don't think it'll stay in top 10, youku's viewcount is generally lower than the other two platforms. Lower than expected (for a hit drama) viewcount doesn't really stop it from being a hit, since it's a BL drama, and those tend to make hit actors.

no she's little box cos she keeps dying lmao, you turn into a box when you die in the game.

the game in the novel is PUBG, the drama one only model parts of it on it, a lot of it is made up, esp since some parts make no sense (why is there a place where they can just sit there and chill, this isn't mmo?)

this was the FUNNIEST fight i've seen in ages, the best part is they put up a table for zzs for a cent, best solution. zzs actually have a little stair/chair thing he's sitting on in one but somehow that doesn't count as a extra piece i guess.

i don't mean to impy you did, just clarifying it's a subgenre so there's quite a lot of stories that's similar ;)

sorry zheng shuang, i looked it up, looks like chinese ghost story? she had a huge surrogacy scandal (she did it in US but it's illegal in China so all her apperances have been banned i think?)

Gu man is not the only one, or first person to write mmo novels, it's a subgenre, she did write it pretty early (2008, drama in 2016), and made it more popular with non gamers/general public though. this one's source novel was written after mmo novels phased out and esport novels started becoming popular, it's probably classed as esport due to pubg, but it uses mmo novel tropes.

you're my glory's premise does sound fairly similar to this, this one's source novel actually started first, it's probably for the best it aired first, otherwise there's probably people screaming about copycat and stuff. you're my glory's focus and style is little different too, the characterisation and theme is bit more down to earth.

It's not a Yu Zheng problem, Zhao Ge was filmed before or around the time Yanxi was filmed. Yu Zheng's soft ban is a 2021 thing, and it affected other dramas. Court Lady is his and they managed to release it (surprisingly soon I might add), but it has very little promotion and Yu Zheng is very unlike himself since he didn't post anything related to Court Lady so the entire team is just laying low.

CGI her face, they've done that with a different drama (to replace Zhao Lixin after he made a problematic comment about sino-japanese war). Or you cut the character out (rumour to to happen to another drama with Zhao Lixin), but Park Min Young is a lead I think so that doesn't work? Qin Empire 3 had an actor that had a drug problem, so replacement actor had to act in front green screen and CGI'ed in, he stuck out a lot, it was filmed in 2011 and released in 2017 though, so these days I think CGI face is more likely. One of ZS's drama is being replaced by Peng Xiaoran I think? (Goodbye My Princess' FL)

Fan Bingbing has a drama that's stuck in development hell cos the ML had a sexual assault allegation case, they got someone else to reshoot scenes, then FBB got caught with tax evasion and it's just too costly to do more damage control and try to recoup its insanely high production cost (it was filmed during drama investment bubble + high salary time)

分桃 fentao https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%88%86%E6%A1%83
龙阳 longyang (one of the protagonist of the story appears in the serious political drama Qin Dynasty Epic, but you basically miss it if you are unfamiliar with the phrase, he only appears for few minutes anyways)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BE%8D%E9%99%BD

Li Shimin's actual history is SUPER overpowered and kind of almost sue-ish/seem like he has protag halo. start commanding army at 16, blitz through battles so fast that his dad struggle to give him new titles when he's 21 (?), emperor at 27. Love his empress so so much that he never considered other kids as candidate for the throne, took care of two young kids when empress died. He was pretty forgiving towards rebellion too, there were multiple of them, and he just exiled his kids. Anyways, that's a tangent and have nothing to do with gay lol, I just like Li Shimin a lot.

It's always weird when this happens in Tang because there's fair few powerful princess during that time, ah well

I always took for granted that it's real LOL, I watched a really really serious political drama about Li Shimin and that one had it too! but Chen Xin was a woman. Why is Li Chengqian a kid by the way, when Leyan is a teen lol?

There's three commonly used phrases historically that reference gay, it's used in dramas often enough that I learnt them as a kid, before I was 10, they are all related to rulers (two kings from warring states period, and a han emperor).

Tangent, Court Lady that's broadcasting now has a crown prince and his male lover. He's a supporting character, but most dramas that feature Li Chengqian as a crown prince have his lover usually, so it's just taken for granted. (He's Li Shimin's son so he kind of pops up in most Tang dynasty dramas honestly).