Skibbies

I didn't think it was possible to love the drama more, but reading the novel did make me love it more, despite the changes they made. It fully captured the essence of the novel and expanded it with its focus on the ensemble cast. Goddamn do I love these characters.

The first one is canon (to the drama and to the novel). There's two version because the latter was released first and let's just say it was received badly so they cut away the scene. (The director and production team actively kept tabs on Douban and posted there)

I get what you mean, especially since Yu Huai and Lin Yang are canonically friends in bookverse. (Zhou Mo in With You basically played what was suppose to be Lin Yang's role as a close friend who helps Yu Huan and he also compete with academically) The thing is, With You was written after My Huckleberry friends whereas the drama order is reverse. I digress.

It's probably just Yu Huai's actor Liu Hao Ran is too busy/expensive to do cameo on web dramas now after Nirvana in Fire II and presumably filming Novoland. Geng Geng (Tan Song Yun) cameo in a With You sequel movie that focus on Lu Xing He (it came out few months ago online) so idk what's up with her.

The characters are referenced, and more importantly, Xu Yan Liang, class 5's class monitor, the chubby guy shows up on multiple occasions. I think the schedule just didn't work out for the main characters to pop in as cameo, that or it's too expensive.

Not very much. There's what looks like one side crush for most of the drama, some light flirting between two other characters, but you get sort of romantic scenes between the two couple somewhere around episode 20. For the most part, the characters are friendly but not romantic towards each other. You can headcanon protective actions of characters but mhmm.

you are not the only one that thought of that set haha, although I haven't seen it. It make sense for that drama though because that's xianxia, whereas for this, it's just mildly confusing? wei kingdom is going to have a lot of original bits though which i'm suspicious about. The male lead was not what I expected but he grew on me...?

I watched the first two episodes. Interesting set design, SO MUCH WHITE. The pacing was faster than I expected (I skim read the first 1/4 of the novel and skipped to the end) but I guess when all the flowery description gets turned into background, that happens. I have no damn clue how this could last 50 episodes OR how they change the plot since time travel bits were removed. I'm curious, but idk if I'm curious enough to watch more.

If you can handle your regular average thriller or crime shows, this should be fine. Don't watch it full screen and watch it during the day if you need to?

Why oh why, drama. If you are going to dub Cantonese over Mandarin speakers, at least dub all of them. Why is a HK special force leader speaking Mandarin? Can you find someone who can dub with emotion too? Those dubbing took me right out of the drama. I was so ready to accept your bizzaro everyone has babelfish logic, but then you ruined it. Why not dub over Simon too?