13 Fireflies

白日提灯

OMG yes to all. For a while I thought I was crazy for not quite agreeing with a lot of the glowing comments but you've completely summed up my thoughts. BOTH characters need to be very well built and developed for them to work well as a couple. Not hating on Bai Lu. I think she's a gorgeous woman, and she is doing her job, it's all about the writing and the flow of the story.

my HuHuo lives on in my heart lol

Most fans are loving them together though. I think it's easy to kind of fill in the gaps with their own CP feels gathered from past projects or headcanons. I've also noticed a trend with those who read the novel and also seem to patch things up in their heads with scenes and feels from the book.

Yes, agreed! Now you're making me want to watch Word of Honor lol. Love and Redemption is still on my PTW list. I love that it feels like it's got an epic scale and there seems to be a lot of battles and court politics intermixed with fantasy elements. The entire exchange of the 5 senses is giving me angst just thinking about it. Ugh....imagine a totally smitten CXX in regular armor. It's not fully confirmed that it's his but It's been rumored by pretty credible entertainment insider accounts. It only just got put out there yesterday so it's super early in the process. We'll see.

I like that they're doing something different with the whole Dunhuang / Feitian style but I find there was a reason behind the whole demure pastel aesthetics that have dominated xianxia since the mid 2010s. Some of this alternate look is pretty, some of it can look a bit garish. It's sort of like when something sounds good in theory but when you actually execute it it's not quite right.

Yeah, sadly I'm not feeling the chemistry either, partly because we need more banter, more sweet moments that aren't just shot like a montage. The romance isn't allowed to breath. There's a lot of telling vs. showing going on that's probably related to all the heavy cuts. At the moment it feels more like those older xianxias that were very male oriented, like Chinese Paladin 3 where the action and adventure are given more importance than the romance. The one couple I've felt chemistry between is the fox girl with the FL's brother.

I feel like at the moment it's kind of a support group lol

And here's a second one: "The setting of this book is very touching! The powerful "ghost king" CP who possesses human beings and pretends to be a weak woman is full of mysteries, cunning, and laughing young generals.

The story begins when the hero and heroine meet in the pile of corpses. The heroine is the king of ghosts in Xiumu, and found that the sword worn by the hero is exactly the Delusion-breaking Spirit Sword made by the heroine's uncle more than 300 years ago. Due to his identity, he used means to follow the hero closely to find out, only to find that this legendary candidate for the office of the literati who came from a family of literati was like an onion. She is the only person who can let her have the five human senses! What kind of story will unfold between the fateful encounter, the "ghost king" and the general?

The ghost king is the only evil ghost who can marry humans and reproduce. The heroine's father is the ghost king of the previous generation. The heroine was born as an evil ghost and had a wonderful human life, so I miss the time of being a human being very much. There are actually no five senses. After the death of the heroine's parents, the protagonist's young country is suspicious, and the heroine crosses the ghost world with her powerful abilities and becomes the new ghost king who is frightening.

It is very enjoyable, with my favorite supernatural elements, and the heroine starts with the ceiling strength, coupled with the unfathomable mystery of the hero, the suspense is very strong, of course, the rivalry between the hero and heroine is a feast for the eyes."

@Bloemetje22
I found a couple of reviews for Lantern by Day, it's a bit wonky with the machine translation but it helps:

The story has two war lines: the main one is the war of resistance against the foreigners on earth, and the war of revenge and elimination of evil in the ghost world.

The hero and heroine get closer and closer in these wars and are attracted to each other. The heroine, as a powerful "ghost king", actually has no sense of taste, touch, color and other five senses, the world of evil ghosts is gray and dull, only black and white, she is attracted by the vivid and living colors of the hero, wants to try the taste of earth, decided to trade with the hero to meet any of his requirements in exchange for five senses, ten days to exchange a sense.

The hero was attracted to the heroine from the beginning, pitying her and loving her, in order to give her a taste of earth, voluntarily exchanging five senses, his only wish is to be able to call the "ghost king" (heroine) by her real name, Simu, ha, what a beautiful name!

The plot of the story is very full, the whole is the theme of the war of the broken, the war scenes depicted huge and spectacular, between life and death between the yin and yang, the smallness of human beings, war son cruelty, are well portrayed; taking into account the temple of the court, and father and son affection, are written in detail. Several supporting characters are also very well written.

In short, this is a good story, let people happy, let people worried, let you and the main man as in love with the "Lord of the Ghost King", of course, and love the main man! This is my favorite male lead this year, bar none! Very nice sweet love story, a little bit of small abuse Yee Yee, the whole thing is very touching, the more you read the more you like!"

It's still just a rumor though...as far as we all know, she's single

it's his fault for being such a handsome tease

It's because the characters in TSL were given a lot of depth and traits that made it very easy to see them as "real" if that makes sense. Tantian Jin is a decently written character and I think Leo is doing a good enough job with him, but virtually every other character is underdeveloped.

ZRN = Zhang Ruonan.
The Lantern By Day story seems to be a sort of xianxia/wuxia mix because it does seem to contain some magic and all I remember reading is that he's a general who chases after the girl quite a bit. I'll see if I can find a proper summary and machine translate it.

The magnolia ones xD...I mean both were hot tbh but I prefer him in dark colors. Also...I don't eeven want to stop. I give up haha

Sadly, I doubt it. No one knows how the algorithm works, but it takes into account multiple things such as ratings, number of comments, reviews, recommendations, etc. Looking at other completed 8.8 dramas such as Love and Redemption and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, I think the "Completed" rating would have to cross well over over 8.9 to be able to drag the overall rating up. It wavers between 8.86 and 8.87. I also think it would need more than 100 reviews (currently only 89, which makes one of my eyes twitch because we're so close).

It is. I was debating why exactly I was having issues which led me to put the two FL's Yetan and Li Su Su through a technical character analysis, and that explained part of my problems with that drama. It's watchable but, in short, Yetan is a better written character. Won't sit here and write a long essay on writing craft and why that is, but I'm having issues caring at all about the other FL. Having said that, TTEOTM is watchable...it's just sloppy, and it honestly goes well beyond the editing.

I honestly expected it to be so boring, but it's legit so entertaining. It's extremely well paced and directed imho. CSI China but with rich hot lawyers lol

The weibo posts are doing wonders for my soul because oh god...he's so much fun.

Oh really? I thought ZRN was like 99.99999% confirmed at this point. I wasn't aware she's going to be filming something else. This drama is seriously supposed to start production this month. Honestly the rumors surrounding it are making me dizzy and even a little pissy. Literally just three days ago it was almost certainly Esther and then bam, back to ZRN. the original FL. It's headache inducing.