LanLan

The novel was a pretty fast read for me since it focused mostly on the two of them and their romantic development. It might be better to read after you've watched so you're not disappointed. The drama description above makes it seem like they did the reverse of the novel and focused more on the work aspects. In the novel, she decided to pursue him as revenge on her ex. All the cheesy pick up lines she would throw at him as he acted nonchalant to her, but still can't help himself from feeling intrigued even though he knew she was faking it was so funny and embarrassingly cringey. The casting is perfect though. I think BL and WHD really fit their characters. Even though he does look a little young in the face, he'll make up for it with his CEO aura.

I swear there's something new we haven't seen every day 🥲. She was sitting on his lap when they were in the carriage entering West Shu as fake husband and wife.
https://weibo.com/u/6617313414?refer_flag=1008085010_

Yeah, ML is really something lol. He kept her up for hours after this until she finally had to turn him down as he was placing kisses on her back to get her going again. The novel isn't explicitly written, it's more figuratively descriptive, but it was implied that in one of their sessions, he had her up against a mirror because he wanted her to see the faces she was making as he was seeing her. Another time, he turned down cherries that she picked only to make her eat them later and tasted them from her mouth himself. They finished a whole basket of cherries this way lol.

On the surface he seems like the typical cold CEO type, but he has this dry, sarcastic humor that he uses to tease FL whenever she throws all the flirty nonsense at him in her attempts at pursuing him. When he does the flirting himself, it's super swoony. I hope the screenwriter keeps this essence and I'm excited to see how WHD will portray him.

Yeah, I think there will be much adjustments to this since censorship is ruthless now. All romantic kiss scenes will be so watered down from now on 🥲

You can read more about it here:
https://www.scmp.com/abacus/culture/article/3028790/video-streaming-site-iqiyi-stops-displaying-view-counts-combat-click
But the short summary is: "So how will you know whether a video is popular? iQiyi’s solution is to replace view counts with a “Heat” index. It will be based on viewing behavior, sharing and other interaction -- as well as the “reputation, social influence and value orientation” of the videos."

Unchained Love is getting broadcasted on a Hong Kong TV network and the rumor going around is that it seems to have a higher number of episodes. Cnetz are holding their breath hoping for it to be the uncut version.

No, it just lost its momentum due to all the cuts making the second half choppy and decreased in storytelling quality. This is how I know to trust iQIYI's rating system to be a more valuable insight to a drama's quality over other platforms'. UL reaching over 9,000 was already such a feat that I'm okay it didn't reach 10K as most of those that do are really tough to compare to.

Not that I've seen. Mostly just fans getting excited they got to see it. It was shared from a private account so I think that's why they deleted it once it started spreading. This could also be the team's sneaky way of getting those scenes known without getting in trouble.

They better be prepared for this to be the norm for awhile for most of the romance dramas that were filmed before they had the new regulations and not released yet. I saw Wu Lei’s new modern rom-com got 2 episodes' worth of cuts made. XZ's The Longest Promise seems to be sitting in "who knows when it will ever air-ville". Xianxia teacher/student relationship is also under the microscope and I remember reading that it had to be sent back for another round of censorship trial back in December. So was GJ's Legend of An Le. There were some topics from cnetz around then that UL, TLP, and LoAL might have to battle each other in ratings because they were supposed to all air around the same time in Dec.

Version 2 of the fan edit posted below, but with the original soundtrack used in the drama version.
https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4862637436239901?from=old_pc_videoshow

Basically, FL got her fingers jammed in a door and ended up staying with ML for a week. This is in the much later chapters so there had been a lot of sexual tension built up between them up to this point. So the first night they slept together on the same bed, FL was snuggling ML which turned him on so much he almost did it with her. It was only when he accidentally put pressure on her injured hand that he stopped himself. She and her best friend talked about how they had slept on the same bed together, but nothing happened. So her friend said it's either 1) she's not enticing enough or 2) he can't do it (as in he can't get it up). For the next 6 days, FL basically tried to seduce him with all her different nighties to see if he would lose control and go for it, but nope, nothing happened. So by the last day, she pretty much gave up. Before bed, she forgot to close her laptop in his office where her WeChat convo with her friend was still opened. As she was chatting with her friend through her phone in the bedroom, the messages appeared at the same time on her laptop and ML was able to see everything they were texting. She told her friend she was going to bed early and the friend was like, you haven't been sleeping early in the last few days, are you going to finally do it tonight? She said no and the friend laughed at her saying she really does fail at being enticing. FL retorted it's not that she's not enticing, it's him that can't do it... and of course he saw it. This is when it gets intense because he comes into the bedroom and does this hot motion of taking off his tie and throws it on the bed. He tells her he was worried that he would accidentally get carried away and hurt her injured hand, not that he couldn't do it. Then he starts kissing her passionately and you know where it's heading. Although FL likes to push his buttons just to know she can, when he really acts on it she gets shy, so she is still kind of in shock that he's coming on so determinedly as things get heavier and he starts removing her clothes. Her fingers are almost fully healed by this point, but if she puts too much pressure on it, it still hurts. So as they're going at it, she also lost control and gripped his shoulder too hard and hissed in pain. This made him stop what he was doing and it seemed like the mood was killed and she asked if he was still afraid of hurting her hand. He then reaches over to the tie he took off earlier that's on the bed, grabs both her hands and pushes them above her head to tie her wrists together, then said, "Now, I'm not afraid anymore."

Oh yes I forgot about that scene! Damn it just leak everything!! 😂

I love the change they made in this vs the version in the novel of their first time. My heart feels satisfied now, but would it be pushing it to ask for the full tub scene to be leaked too 🥹🥹

With all the new censorship rules happening, I wonder how they're going to film "that scene" in a way that will bring the emotional intensity of the novel onto the screen.

It seems the editor may have leaked it. I'm amazed how they paused in between for the cut lip makeup to be applied to then pick right back up and still kept the emotions going. Just the efforts that went into enacting this scene deserves for it to be shown. What a great New Year gift 🥰.
For anyone that can access weibo videos:
https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4862344090812475?from=old_pc_videoshow

I feel the same as you about the extra potential it could’ve had if it weren’t for the editing. One of these days when I have the time, I’m going to stitch all those cut BTS snippets and scenes into the actual episodes for the absolutely necessary scenes, which is almost everything after episode 16, just so I don’t have to use as much imagination if I rewatch 😄

Just imagine, someone out there, beside the director, has their hands on that complete uncut down version. Most likely the one who was tasked with editing. Lucky soul lol.

This is accurate. There are history books that write about eunuchs’ influence in ancient China. This article gives a good intro if you’re curious: https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/2155959/forbidden-city/life/chapter_02.html

I'm sure the experience of watching it in one go will be different. My mom binged the first 24 episodes continuously and didn't even notice if anything was cut when I asked her.

Unchained Love's collected data summary of achievements as of Jan 19th, 2023 in China.

Unchained Love stands as TOP1 for an A-level drama in the history of iQIYI, with an ad impression rate of 100% (all 36 episodes contained vip advertisements).
The drama has gained a S+ drama’s returns from the investment of an A-level drama.

Web data achievements of Unchained Love: (It had been online for 24 days as of 1/19)
-The most popular A-level drama in the history of iQIYI TOP1
-The first A-level drama from iQIYI to achieve 9,000 heat index, with highest to date(1/19) heat index of 9,057 with no recommendations (I’m assuming from their homepage)
-Yunhe’s list of online dramas for 11 days as TOP1
-Kuyun web broadcast popularity list for 19 days as TOP1
-iQIYI overseas version globally in TOP1: North America, Canada, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, as well as a few other regions
-TOP1 popularity in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan

Investment capacity
-iQIYI’s TOP1 drama with the number of brand endorsements
-Brand endorsements for the entire drama reached up to 21
-On the first day of broadcast, there were 6 ad placements throughout the opening and ending (this was why fans insisted that everyone watched through the intro and outro when they tried to pull up its heat index)

Word of mouth results
-Opening score of 7.3 on Douban with 10,000+ ratings (sadly it has dropped to 6.8 now)
-iQIYI officially certified dark horse drama
-China movie channel certified explosive drama

Online hot topic
-The 2nd iQIYI drama to break 9,800 popularity index on Maoyan in 2022
-TOP1 in all 8 web ranking lists during its first week of airing
-Vlinkage data surpassed 80 within 8 days
-Vlinkage data entered TOP1 within 9 days
-The winner out of 3 historical web dramas airing at the same time in December. Maoyan index reached TOP1 for 16 days
-Chinese TikTok’s web drama hot list for 3 weeks with 4.48 billion views of all episodes’ hashtags.
-TOP1 of Weibo’s influential drama list for 23 days
-TOP1 in Lighthouse network’s list of web drama discussion topics for 22 days

Popularity of Wang Heidi’s character, Xiao Duo
-CCTV certification [1 year] double traffic explosion
-Vlinkage personal index broke 9 for 22 consecutive days.
-Vlinkage highest index was 9.15
-Vlinkage personal index TOP1 for 17 days
-Vlinkage character to break 9 fastest in 2022
-WeChat index broke 100 million in 15 days, TOP1 actor
-Xiao Duo hashtags increased by 300 million views each day on Chinese TikTok
-Xiao Duo on popular character list for 21 consecutive days as TOP1 on Maoyan
-#wanghedifutuyuan# had 5 billion views and 20.51 millions discussions
-#wanghedixiaoduo# had 3.5 billion views and 16.66 million discussions
-During broadcast period, WHD’s Tiktok gained 1.6 million followers and TOP1 actor
-During broadcast period, WHD’s Weibo gained 660,000 followers, and TOP1 actor
-Baidu index’s peak actor TOP1 during its broadcast

I got these from a WHD's fan account so there wasn't any data for CYQ.