Skibbies

oh yeah definitely, NRTA is always super vague and nonspecific so you have to keep guessing, it's really annoying and gross.

Are you talking about Yanxi being pulled? It + Ruyi got pulled for its subgenre (gong dou? palace fighting?) Maybe it's all the poisoning people and abortions??? LOL. but Legend of Zhenhuan survived? It's kind of mystifying. idk how this kind of bitch fighting is more toxic than the bitch fighting on cctv (national tv) dramas, sometimes those dramas have really terrible plot (not writing, just underlying values), I think cctv doesn't have to go through NRTA though, so maybe it's that.

The novel had Xiao Qi overthrow the Ma family at the end, and they weren't as incompetent as they seem in the drama since they don't get much screentime. Most importantly, Zitan isn't as annoying, he's just a tragic figure, born into the wrong family at the wrong time. He's more suited to be a son of minister rather than a prince, by the time he ascended the throne, XQ had effective control of most of the court, so he was just a puppet. XQ didn't change much except for less ambition.

Awu was rather different, she was innocent and naive at the start, but few chapters in, she finds out she was traded away by her family, and she vows to help XQ because he cares for her and his interest aligns with hers. She ends up arranging other people's marriages and plot against other people for her/XQ's interest, just like her family did. She became rather good at the game that she once detested. She's not ruthless though, and she still have soft spot for family and Zitan so it's pretty human.

It's not really a novel I love, but I could still appreciate its themes at the end of day, power corrupts + sacrifices and tragedy while vying for power + power couple that manage to steady their country in tumult times. There's a lot of tragic undertone in the novel, it simply mentions but doesn't elaborate on Wang Lin's first love and forced marriage or Empress' first love, powerlessness of Zitan, Wanru's self sacrifice, Emperor's negligence of Zilv, Yuxiu's affection that's never returned, General Song's death etc. The drama kept most of it, but it's amongst bunch of boring plot I've seen before so it's not popped out most of the time.

I totally understand they can't just overthrow the dynasty. I did fully expect the otp to be regents though, maybe reluctant regents since they lost all their ambition. I guess Wang Su sort of works here, but it doesn't feel the same. It's perfectly okay for Awu to reluctantly scheme and plot things and just let Zitan die and still be a good person, it wouldn't trigger NRTA. Maybe the writers simply over self-censor, or this is the only kind of FL they know how to write, I wouldn't be surprised considering all the familiar tropes they liked to employ. Honestly, I think they could have given us start on some reform or showing that there's some changes in court that means the future is hopeful, rather than this.

Oh yeah, the novel also had way better female supporting characters, I'm pretty annoyed with how much they set up Empress + Wanru + Wang Qian + Su Jiner to be absolutely awful. I know they needed more meat to the plot and some bits are from the novel, but there's just too many shitty plot and too much time focused on them!

Because both of those arcs are drama original lol. The first half had original scenes and characterisations/setups but the story trajectory still sort of followed the novel more or less, Wang Lin is the best part of the drama and I'm glad he stuck around or it would have been unsalvageable.

They really should have just kept Ode to Shangyang as a title. I can't believe I finished this drama.

The chinese title have nothing with to do with ggs1, the english title is probably in case people miss this spinoff.

As for this drama. treat it as an unrelated drama with same names will be for the best. (treat it like JoL and My Heroic Husband maybe) The career is different so team dynamic is bit different, the characterisations are bit different too, since some of the characters retain their novel personality (Ai Qing/appledog and Shen Zhe/grunt for example) compared to GGS. The timeline also doesn't quite match up even if I can vaguely trace it.

GGS the novel is technically the romance spinoff of Gun/HSY. This one's source novel is the main story, but its core plot (all the gaming bits and flashback) was taken and fused into GGS. So this drama adapted the remaining bits they didn't adapt + its prequel + romance, and added some original bits. So a lot of people have hard time reconciling the two and expecting something fairly different from what the drama is.

they are out for vvip/on demand.

yeah it's mostly due to comparison and there's significant characterisation and cast change, when some of the characterisation + events are straight from the novel that s1 ommitted, ah well. I haven't seen the ending yet, but i rather like the otp to be honest, little iffy on the slow start (too much romance for me honestly LOL)

the drama was filmed last year, same time as SSS, it's by the same production company, thus some of the familiar supporting characters.

they dropped 8 ep on the first day, 2 eps after, then they added wednesday to the update schedule, so that's why you have 20.

Pretty sure they did it on purpose to cash out on JoL while waiting for SSS and JoL s2, SSS should come out at the end of the year, JoL s2 is still waiting to be filmed. Both Xinli (production company) and yuewen (ip holder) purposely do this for ip development purposes. I'm pretty sure tencent didn't expect this to be popular considering its investment level isn't that high, but it ended up being popular anyways.

Anyways, just pass on it and wait Sword Snow Stride with Zhang Ruoyun :)

it's regular release schedule for a webdrama, they just didn't utilise the chinese new years period well when they should have. do you need subs, if you don't, there should be all episodes out today, since vvip/on demand ep get the last 10 ep in about 3 hours. if you do, come back in a week or two.

Ai Qing is meant to be 3 years older, the actress they cast last time is technically the right age but she looks too old (she looked kind of old next to Hu Ge who's several years older than her so eh), her characterisation was off last time too.

I do find the pacing little on the slow side, and i'm not a fan of this director, but i still like the drama alright, probably because I like Ai Qing more than Tong Nian (Yang Zi is great, the drama made TN better, but she still frustrated me when she basically revolved around the ML)

yes, tencent started it but iqiyi, youku and mangotv all do it with their dramas. the platforms are using price discrimination to maximise their profit.

the plot is fairly predictable but scorpion in bed is pretty specific, i'm guessing deja vu, sincet the book is pretty different from the drama too mhm.

no, not a remake. it does use a lot of common tropes though so might be that?

yes

ggs 2 is a bigger project than his other dramas though, wait unrequited love is decent ip but the novel is difficult to adapt, it's also one of the more promising projects for li yitong. Lower expectation is just better in general i think.

this one might be to maintain popularity in face of all the new dramas coming out, dt appledog's time might be from it losing popularity, they should have gave more updates during chinese new years for that one,

I haven't seen navi/nan wei appear in this series yet, but afaik Dimash is not involved with this drama. The person that portrayed navi/nan wei in GGS is Mohammadjavad Estilaf from Iran, he's popular regular from Hubei TV's Informal Talks (it's a variety show about cultural differences of different countries) and occasionally do cameos in dramas.