Vespertyne29

This drama actually made me frustrated because of how wonderfully it started, and how sadly it descended downhill just after the mid-point.

It started out a visual delight, with gorgeous cinematography, showcasing the beautiful costumes, against the lovely snowy cityscapes. So many stunning tableaus for the viewers. The lead actors were lovely, and for the first time I was enamored with GWG. He's not usually my "type," but here he made an undeniably striking "vampire," despite being stripped of 99% of all the traditional erotic traits of a vampire, thanks to the odd and seemingly randomly chosen themes banned by Chinese censorship standards.

But after all the wonder of the first 10-12 episodes, it began to falter when the 3 main characters all but disappeared from the story, and the poorly written "villain" LYL hogged the screentime in every episode, barely adding anything to the story.

By the time the drama hit the last 10 episodes, the censorship-forced rewriting of the source novel's plot became nonsensical, with 70% of the screentime being spent on the OTT villain LYL, and ended in the totally gratuitous killing off of the ML. It was infuriating and just downright depressing to see a director ruin yet another drama by trying to go for "deep" (I guess) instead of following the drama's plot and satisfying conclusion.

I am sad for what might have been. I'm, tired of this. Almost every period drama I've watched this year ends up with this type of bullsh*t gratuitous death ending - often when the source material (novel) has a HE already built in - because the director thinks that it's fun to screw over fans, or that somehow the BE or OE will make the drama more popular (or get more hits) on social media. The Double, Journey to Love (which should be called Journey to Death), and now this. It's ANNOYING.

Well, I had high hopes for this drama and loved the first 15 or so episodes.

After watching - or rather fast forwarding through way way too many scenes of L YL and/or LYL and JJX, - I decided to skip from episode 20 to the last 10 minutes to see if it did, in fact, head where I thought it would.

After watching the last 10 minutes I decided I didn’t even care enough to go back and watch episodes 21 through 24.

As usual, the director ruined the drama, mostly by the ridiculous amount of time spent on LYL and the actor’s OTT performance, which I am sure he was directed to do, but it was still annoying and unwatchable. (And seriously - did we really need to see scenes of him and JJX sitting at a table while he eats an ENTIRE PLATE of dumplings?? Does the director have a fetish about food porn? So many scenes that were neither visually interesting nor offering any plot or character development).

I’ll chalk this one up as having some gorgeous cinematography and lovely acting by the leads, but ultimately becoming repetitive and boring, giving too much screen time to a badly written, rather ridiculous villain, and gratuitously killing off the ML when the novel had a HE.

When the poster uses ML she means MiLan, not Male Lead. She refers to all characters by their initials.

Same. It's so annoying. But once Mr. Mo said that Situ's mother's death meant that only one person at a time could possess the stone's power, and Situ's mother faded and died after she passed it to Shen, then I immediately saw that as a foreshadowing of the end of the drama: She would use the stone to save MiLan and this meant he only had a very limited amount of time left to live. It kind of ruined the drama for me.

I HATE the way Chinese directors take HE novels and turn them into BE or OE. They just did it with The Double.

Cdramas are the only Asian dramas that I want to KNOW the ending of the drama before starting it. And sadly, using the novel to predict the ending is not valid. The directors ENJOY showing a happy ending and then adding 10 to 30 additional minutes to turn the show into a tragedy, with the ML either clearly dead, or most likely dead, but with a fuzzy, fantasy-type very short scene that is one of those "is it a dream or is it real?" situations. It's the STANDARD rather than the exception in wuxia/xianxia fantasy Cdramas.

See my comment above. It seems like the forced-censorship changes to the basic plot of the novel may very well change the ending from HE to SE.

I am just up to the first half - maybe third - of episode 15, and already can't help but think a SE is the probable outcome of this drama,, which would be inconsistent with the ending of the novel, per those here who have read it.

This is super annoying, and an all-too-common habit for Cdramas: in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the show, the director jettisons the novel's HE and goes for the "tragic" ending, which I suppose may generate a much stronger reaction from fans than a HE would. This almost inevitably means the ML gets killed off, or there is a last-minute scene that makes it likely, but perhaps not 100% certain, that the ML has died. You know - is it real or is it the FL's wishful imagination? Only the director knows for sure. And the 4 or 5 minute "extra," that is often available to fans is never part of the official episodes of the drama, and so will not be available on other platforms that carry the drama. (Just watch The Double on Viki or Netflix - no sign of that extra "epilogue" that mirrors the book ending. I think Viki did have the extra short episode of Word of Honor, that made that "it totally NEVER HAPPENED in Priest's novel" death of Wen Kexing more like how the novel ended, but it was still very "is this real or a dream?" type of short clip.

Anyway, to get back to Snow Fall - it's that nugget of information that dropped when Shen took Situ and MiLan to the fortuneteller Mr. Mo's house after escaping from the train. Situ told Shen that after his mother killed all Shen family and then revived Shen with the stone that was kept around Situ's neck, and they left (or were kicked out of) the Shen manor, Situ's mother got weaker and weaker and then died, - something that should not happen to an immortal vampire/monster.

When Shen shared this information with Mr. Mo, Mo immediately deduced (and told Shen) that the stone could only give power to one person at a time, and once that person ( ie Situ's mother) used the stone to give those powers to another person, then the person who gave the powers would lose the powers and eventually die.

So that means that - I believe very unlike the book - Shen is currently the only possessor of the stone and its power, and if he uses it (which I presume he will to save MiLan), then his powers will start to fade and he will die in a few years, just like Situ's mother did after she used t he stone to bring Shen back to life.

This SUCKS.

To people who have read the novel - I am under the impression that in the novel, Shen and Situ are, in fact, vampires, who drink blood and are pretty much immortal. And that they also have the power to make other humans vampires, so creating a new vampire does not diminish their powers, or if it does, it's only temporary and doesn't result in death. I am also under the impression that the entire storyline of a meteorite that divided into 3 stones, giving power to 3 families who each received one of the stones, is something that is solely in the drama, to get by the censors who disallowed the more classic vampire myth. (I also understand that someone other Shen - Situ perhaps? - is the one who makes MiLan a vampire, and either he or someone else makes many more vampires in the novel). The drama hasn't really explained how Situ is a vampire. If his mother was only a vampire because of the stone, then was he born with that inherent power? It defies all vampire mythology and also doesn't make sense within the drama. He is clearly immortal and has even more power than Shen. He did not appear to have this power when he was a child, as he didn't appear to be able to save himself from the fire, or to bring Shen back to life.

So this censorship-forced major change to the plot in the novel seems to make Shen's death inevitable once he saves MiLan. Which, as I already said, SUCKS.

Anyone have a different interpretation of what Mr. Mo said about the stone and it's power? For those who read the novel, I assume all this stone business is completely fabricated for the drama, and did not appear at all in the novel?

Thank you!

And gloves.

And also add a lot of CCP propaganda, especially in the contemporary ones.

So many things are also just stupid - why no reincarnation or time travel or transmigration? It's not like most of these dramas aren't FANTASY anyway, so why ban these particular fantasy plots? And, of course, I hate the way they don't allow any LGBT characters at all, and a few years ago, after The Untamed and Word of Honor were such huge hits, they banded even an allegedly sanitized adaptation of any BL novel. I'm still fuming about IQIYI releasing the first 8 episodes of Priest's Mo Du/Silent Reading, then nothing more, then yanking down those 8 episodes.

I did notice, however, that the "20 year travel back in time and relive your life" in the recent "The Princess Royal" never explained or gave a "realistic" explanation for the time-travel in that drama. (In Scent of Time they made the FL's 10-year travel back in time story end up being just a dream she had while she was in a coma for 3 years. So I was expecting something - like the characters waking up on the day of their wedding after they both had the same dream of getting 20 years older and then being sent back to relive the 20 years, so having two different versions of how their future could go - to make the time travel issue be fictional, but nope. They just let it be, well, traveling back 20 years and doing your life over without the same mistakes.

They want to make Chinese super-soldiers. The censors made them cut out all Japanese stuff, so unlike (apparently) in the novel, LiYing is not a spy for the Japanese. He is working for the Chinese military guy.

Yes, I want to know as well. Is the novel online and in English? If so, what is it called and does anyone have a link?

I'd say not dying after you're "killed" half a dozen times is a pretty impressive power. Plus he moves like lightening, faster than can be seen with the human eye.

But the entire point of his character in this drama is that he does not want to kill. Not even to protect himself (since he can't die under normal circumstances anyway). It breaks his heart when he loses the struggle to suppress his constant craving for blood. He has developed superhuman control, so that he doesn't prey on humans, which is immoral and inhuman to him.

The other reason that he doesn't exercise his powers is because his enemies are using the 2 people he cares about in the world as hostages, threatening their lives in order to keep him under control.

But he does like her, doesn't he? He tells his sidekick/buddy that they have to stay away from her and her father because they are dirty. They've done Very Bad Things, including killing a lot of innocent people. It seems like he is a poor boy who turned to criminal life to make money, and he sees her as a rich girl who loves him when he doesn't deserve it.

I'm not trying to say he's a nice guy - I started wanting him to die immediately around the 3rd or 4th episode! I hate his obsession with Shen, and the way it makes him irrational and cruel

At first it looks like he's avoiding JingXue because he doesn't have any feelings for her. But later on in the drama, we see him standing outside her house staring at the windows of the room she's in, and he brought her a birthday present, but just sat out in his car staring at the house instead of going in. So there seems to be some kind of feelings there.

At least that's my read on it, although initially I thought the same thing as you and others. It's only later on, in the more recent episodes, that the director showed us the way he haunts her house, silently watching but never allowing himself to go to her that made me think he actually does have feelings for her.

same for me!

I was wondering how they were going to have a romance only because the way the FL was presented - her clothing and her doll and her hair - she looked like she was somewhere around 13 to 15 years old. But then we see she is treated like a child by her mother, and we find out that she's 18. (And considering how much her hair has grown in the last 3 or 4 episodes since she cut it, she may be 19 by now!

I've actually been wondering if the novel has the same homoerotic subtext that the drama does (IMO) with LiYing's obsession with Shen. It really feels more like obsession than grudge-hate.

I was surprised when I looked at the credits and saw that WinWin's character was considered a main role, along with the ML and FL, but Ryan Ren's role was a support role. RR has had WAY more time on screen than WW has.

This is the first time I've bought the express early in the drama - I'm used to it not being offered until they're ready to drop the last 5 to 6 episodes, and you pay and have immediate access to all the ending episodes.
This time there was an early express package that lets you get episodes 24 hours early, but it's still just once a day (or maybe it's one episode a day on Friday-Saturday-Sunday, and 2 per day on Mon-Thurs?

I agree. I'm really picky about my dramas, and I drop a lot and I don't like a lot of the romcoms that others love. But this drama immediately caught my attention, and I haven't been bored for one second so far.

What about Shen Zhi Heng? Is he going to bite it in the end?