Skibbies

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).

drop the episode and do nothing else, it looks like a low budget drama, the drama was actually filmed in 2017....

cdramas used to only have epic dramas at 40+ ep, your average drama are 30+ ep (some are 20ish), the long drama issue is a last decade thing, and episodes are getting trimmed down now. I think it's completely possible to finish and pace well at 36 ep.

historically he's probably bi, most dramas featuring this crown prince will have cheng xin (chen ji here?) as a plot point (even the srs political ones i watch), sometimes the character is played by women or the character is turned into a woman though.

rumour has it that some minor rebellion plot was cut, but it's mostly a rumour. 69 ep is def too long for story like this imo.

Rumour has it that this was originally a youku project (the early casting calls state so), at some point tencent came in and wanted to do a joint production tying it to "Game for Peace" which is basically a mobile version of PUBG, but that didn't happen for some reason. (I personally suspect maybe the CS:Go having to pull out of GGS incisdent scared them off. but that was a tv drama and this should have been webdrama? I suppose pre-production could have aimed for tv drama, ah idk) It end up being an iqiyi webdrama, but tencent joined in after it finished filming.

On the gaming bits, if you scroll down, a lot of people don't care for the gaming parts, and that's just how general public feel towards gaming dramas. So I think to ensure its reasonable success, they shifted the focus to romance-centric, thus all the almost met/almost recognise scenes that I find overdone. Initial casting for DJY is 32 years old, I think the actor they casted is bit too old, and they are playing up his interference + slight creepiness that I'm not a fan of.

I actually expected more esport novel tropes than mmo novel tropes before starting this lol, but i like mmo ones better anyways :D