Skibbies

The douban score is lower than what i'd expect, but it's not actually that terrible, i expect it to be low 7 (Minglan while it was airing), but high 6 (Serenade of Peaceful Joy while it was airing) would make sense too. tRoP's issue is pacing (and not buying tv ratings lmao), its big story problem doesn't pop up till later, so people bothered by pacing will drop it early and not rate it, or they rate it on initial impression and never changed it. RN I skipped because I didn't like the novel, but the drama grab you pretty fast, and if you can get into it, you'll really like it. so both tRoP & RN are essentially niche dramas that happen to hit specific audience. I believe all these dramas started at 7ish.

Anyways, the score should rise when the drama finish, since a lot of people rate after they finish the drama, but I think there's complaints about pacing issues (or lack of ML) as well as usual criticism about simplistic schemes and plot holes and dumb tropes. It probably won't get very high though since romance focused historical rarely get too high, and the level of expectation for this drama was too high to begin with so people end up rating the drama lower than they might if this featured two nobodies.

there's a new update schedule, so tomorrow's vvip will get 10 ep dump, as will all subsequent thursdays. vip got 2 more update days, sat and sun, 2 ep/day, 5 days a week.

i think zzy should have picked a story about kickass empress tbh, like wu zetian, but could totally be fictional so it's easier to air. ahhh such a shame.

yeah having young kids make some of the story more believable and more heartbreaking. i keep thinking the drama is downplaying the tragedy of political marriages (not just otp's, everyone around her. like it's present, but it's cover up by all the messy relationship)

probably talking about the epilogue extra chapters.

Huang Xiaoming gets hate for picking CEO roles lol, largely due to the massive amount of bad dramas he end up doing and his affinity to CEO roles where he's too over the top. I haven't watched ANY of them, and liked him in NiF2, but he was the one reason a lot of people skipped NiF2.

Most tsundere MLs and CEO dramas that's being produced aren't played by A-listers, and they do get mocked. They are also held to less expectations because they are produced for an audience that just want some fluff after hard day of work. If it's TOO tropey and TOO stupid, it'll get complaints, otherwise you just click pass it if you don't care for it.

No doubt cnetizens are sexist and cdramas are hella sexist, god i have such a hard time finding a drama with a FL that isn't damseled and dumb for no reason, even rarer would be female supporting characters that aren't just stock archetypes. But people are aware of and do criticise dramas for Gary Stu/Jack Sue. case in point, NiF is super beloved, but its biggest criticism over and over again is how easily he overcomes his obstacles and that he's wee bit Jack Sue. JoL also get similar criticism (even though I think that world is more like aftermath of a Mary Sue). Web novels often come across sue'ish because protag halo is too strong, because that's how WN get popular, most people don't want down to earth realistic painful depiction of life, they want kickass stories.

I liked both the female leads and their supportive relationship :D it's why i finished the drama tbh

you can watch it till 20mins of the last episode and completely avoid the cliffhanger, it finishes the arc they are on.

several cast members are tied in other projects, the projected filming start would be march/april/may, it's possible that scriptwriter haven't finished the script but he should be done by now. post-production + NRTA + lining up for tv air slot is about a year. fastest for a modern drama is about 4 months.

there's actually rumour they got zhang xueying (21 at the time) to play younger version, but they wanted zzy to appear earlier so they cut her out. i haven't seen her work at all, but she was received fairly well for her performance in film + zzy liked her for a fair bit. it's entirely possible to cut the early content into 2 or 3 episodes (they are mostly drama original and aren't critical to the plot). I really don't think zzy would get as much criticism this way, because it's been done before, they do it a lot for dramas about emperors. it's not zzy that pulled me out of the drama the most in ep 1, it's her brother LOL

she just did what she wanted i guess. thankfully i passed on most of her dramas since they aren't my kind of dramas, so my impression of her are still from when she first got popular, she did pretty great in The Victim's Game recently!

they issued an official apology and changed it already (pulled the shot closer so you can't see) :P

tiger and rose. the otp doesn't even marry until like the end, so there's no reason for FL to be comparable to Awu.

One of the general's daughter, her parents died saving Awu...I think? I'm little fuzzy on the details. If it's the girl i'm thinking of, her name is Mu (?) qinzhi.

It's his breakout role i think? looks like he was also in brotherhood of blades 2, but i haven't got around to it yet and it's a movie, so that's even less time. He's in Snow Stride Sword which hopefully should air this year.

Joy of Life!! it's still not that much screentime though, but it's the role a lot of people and I noticed him in.

it's not actually suddenly, ruby lin got criticised ages ago, so did zhou xun in 2018 (and she filmed it in 2016?), zhao liying in legend of fei, zhang luyi in qin dynasty epic recently. I haven't actually seen aging make up for actresses for ages now that i think about it, but I'm 80% sure they get criticise too if they aren't aged properly. cnetizens are way more harsh on cdramas and they can criticise a drama from all angles, because they watch lot more dramas, and get bombarded by them more (overmarketing, clips, buzz around you, family/roommates watching it when you don't want to)

he doesn't. if there's a little girl, it might be their adopted daughter.

I'm talking about production values, scriptwriter is a real toss up, they sometimes pop up in big budget projects, sometimes they are in small budget ones, the scriptwriters credited are sometimes unhelpful too since there's uncredited scriptwriters. i haven't seen xiao chuo so I can't say but it's not just cinematography or costumes or special effects, directing is part of it too, wasn't xiao chuo's story criticsed too? okay you know what, i think most cdramas get their story criticised, cdramaland really really really needs good scriptwriters that aren't pulled and interfered by multiple parties (investors, directors, actors). when i said younger actresses, i was thinking the 95 kids (age range for Awu), the 85 actresses do have a shot at these projects, but a lot of them can't or don't care to give performance that match the level of investment, or the story have lot of issues.

that's the thing, zzy picked the novel despite it being 15 years old, despite her not being any age range of the character. i definitely think if this aired in 2019, it would be better, but it's still wee bit late to the market, that's not really a thing she might have been able to predict though, since it's hard to say how long pre-production took before filming started. the drama adaptation made it MORE tropey and added in more bits that doesn't make sense which is really annoying, oh well adaptations do this a lot. it wouldn't compete against minglan because it literally just finished filming when minglan aired. I don't really like minglan (story-wise and too many women infighting tbh), but i did watch it because it was first in its subgenre, so i guess in some way they combined the tropes in an interesting way?

i guess she just really didn't like the stuff you (and i for the most part) thought was okay? lol. clearly fresher ideas are more important to her i guess?

It's just her voice + the way she talks. It works in certain situations at times, but sometimes it's a little confusing. I haven't encountered scenes where it was super out of place yet, but I'm also way behind.

I really think it's an expectation thing, lots of people expect the drama to be more than it is (less tropey, smarter schemes) because a) zzy b) level of investment + production team. there's a bit of hierarchy system where movie stars > tv stars. zhang yimou specifically told zzy to not film tv series when she was young, i guess because tv production is much faster pace, so you have less time studying your character and actors are more likely to end up with routine acting. zzy as a mentor also told other actors to pick better scripts in acting variety shows, so when her own drama's story is only so so (or bad if you hate tropey dramas) by lot of people's standards, you get backlash. i don't really think zzy raised the bar for younger actresses, because.....they would have never gotten this level's project anyways.