The thread is open.
@GB, I’m watching two kdramas (“To My Beloved Thief” and “Undercover Ms. Hong”) concurrently so I know I’m spreading myself too thin here.
But we’re expecting a big snowstorm this weekend so if we don’t lose power, I may just able to juggle all these shows, including “Love Between Lines” and “Shine on Me.” 🤞
To folks affected by this winter storm, stay indoors and stay warm! Remember to use your weather common sense.
Let’s enjoy the show.
Re the cold — last night I watched the Italian/Netflix adventure (PG, a turn of the 19th/20C century adventure-story classic for kids) Sandokan, Prince of Pirates, just for the vistas of tropical seas and beautiful ‘prahus’.
The very air in my environs felt warmer.
I am not sure if the actual ships were authentic, but have never dipped into SE Asia naval history.
My Page is so far just an ML watch… I always suspect the ‘now I am in a novel’
plot to be a cover for mediocre acting…
Oh Golly Wow @pkml3 … another thread for the Show I’m watching!!💐 Thanks a heap!!💐 😁😊😇
@IB, I’m glad you’re on board with this show, mediocre acting or not.
To tell you the truth, the first episode did not grab me … it might have been that the acting was not convincing. I stopped and went back to try it again. It was the ludicrous situation with the sanitary napkins that got me.
I guess I just want to see how preposterous the show can become.
The ML is nice to look at and I did like him in “Love Between Lines”. The FL in the 2 modern day romances (both with Wang Zi Qi) managed those many full blown kiss scenes with aplomb.
At the moment it’s just going to be the in between watch while waiting for Episodes of “Idol I.”
Jumping into Episode 6 …
SPOILERS
It looked too contrived and silly at first, but an interesting twist has come up. FL discovers how to raise the ‘romance’ rating for herself by using the spoilt brat 3rd wheel female 2nd Lead.
LOL she’s even giving Spoilt Brat advice on how to get the guy!!!
Back in Episode 1, … (with the help of AI smoothening out the sentences)
SPOILERS
The setup suggests that the entire series could unfold like a long dream of the female lead, Lin Huan Er. The biggest clue is of course Zhu Meng Meng (a name that sounds like a foggy, immersive dream, or something looping, a dream within a dream).
In the real world, Lin Huan Er is a live streamer. The broadcast we watch features her scathing review of the novel “Bye, Wild Weasel”, in which she criticises its old-fashioned views on love. She takes particular issue with the female protagonist, who shares her name, being written as someone who sacrifices herself for a man, depends on love for meaning, and exists mainly to win a man’s heart.
During a PK battle, her opponent Ai Qing (whose name literally means “romantic love”) claims to be a love expert, promoting tactics such as using cute pets and physical closeness to build trust and intimacy. Huan Er openly mocks these outdated ideas. Among her viewers is Gao Hai Ming, who seems captivated by her, and surprised by her question of which man in the novel is actually worth loving.
He is visibly unsettled when her livestream is abruptly cut, leaving only Ai Qing on screen. When Huan Er storms into the room demanding to know who ended her broadcast, Hai Ming fixes his gaze on her. He asks what answer she would give to the question of whether any of the male characters are truly worth loving, but Huan Er merely tells him to watch her livestream. He watches her leave with a small smile.
In her next broadcast, she uses a pager and a model aircraft as metaphors for unhealthy relationships. The pager, she explains, is inconvenient and lifeless, unable to function without the telephone. Women, already providers in the workplace, should not be reduced to “pagers” in relationships, passively waiting for men to initiate everything.
A viewer comments that she might feel differently if she were the novel’s female lead. Huan Er insists she is nothing like the character, aside from sharing the same name. Her repeated rejection of love as life’s defining purpose seems to trigger something unseen and supernatural.
Just before being pulled into a parallel world, she criticises the model aircraft beloved by the novel’s hero, calling it fragile, high-maintenance, and easily broken, much like love itself.
The Long Dream begins? At that moment, she is transmigrated into the book and finds herself in 1999, tasked with getting Gao Hai Ming to propose to her. Only by completing this quest can she return to her own reality.”
To her chagrin, she soon discovers that everything she once mocked must now be confronted and obeyed, under the rigid rules of the “game,” enforced by an authoritative Pager. It plays out like a fiendish dream of comeuppance for her disdain toward the book’s old-fashioned, trope-laden romance.
I’m just doing a Partial Recap, as and when I feel like it while waiting for work to come in. Here are some bits and pieces of Episode 2… with SPOILERS.
It was Episode 2 that sealed the deal for me. The saga of the sanitary pads had me in stitches. Even upon rewatch I still laughed out loud (LOLed).
The Irony of the Deliberately Botched Blind Date
Standing in for her BFF Meng Meng, Huan Er impersonates her friend on a blind date with one clear mission: leave such a disastrous impression that the date never wants to see MM again. However MM forgot to mention one tiny detail: the date’s name.
Determined to sabotage the evening, H Er goes full outlandish. She scans the date rudely, calls him “surprising,” and even drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant (LOL). None of it fazes him.
HM has obviously seen through her and decides to play along, calmly handing her more and more rope until she spectacularly hangs herself. He coolly declares them a match made in heaven. I love Huan Er’s priceless look of utter disbelief.
She starts to leave when he takes a phone call. To her utter horror, she hears him say his name is Gao Hai Ming: the very man she is supposed to secure a marriage proposal from, and the one she has just spectacularly burned her bridge with. She darts back at once, scrambling to salvage the situation and undo the outrageous lies she has just told, along with the disastrous impression she has left behind.
Now the FL is stuck devising increasingly desperate schemes to worm her way back into the ML’s good graces. Shenanigans ensue.
Later we hear HM’s assistant Luo Zhuo say that HM had spent more time with this blind date than any other before … if only H Er had done some homework to find out whom she was going to meet. She could have gone as herself and secured a good impression with HM. Too bad but so good for our entertainment.
EPISODE 2 Continued
SPOILERS
After the blind date debacle, the Magic Pager tells H Er that ML’s fondness level is now -50% Heheheh. I suppose that counts as disliking her???
She has to devise the most over-engineered, contrived “chance encounters”… to counteract this state of affairs.
First attempt: she blocks his car with a borrowed red sports car and plays the damsel in distress, claiming she needs a mechanic, clearly hoping this will naturally lead to spending time with him over coffee.
She daydreams about tripping and falling straight into his arms (the Ai Qing guru in Ep 1 did say physical contact was key). Reality, however, has other plans. He calmly dispatches his assistant, Luo Zhou instead.
Unwilling to be deterred, she physically shoves LZ aside and attempts the trip anyway, only for HM to turn what should have been a swoony fall into a neat spin-and-shove, redirecting her right back at the unfortunate Luo Zhou.
I have to hand it to her, H Er is never too humiliated to keep trying!!! Well, she is desperate to get home. HK’s gestures and how he stares at her should be romantic but he does them in a businesslike way and he’s totally not into her at all.
After this little episode the Magic Pager tells her that ML’s fondness level has dropped to -80% and continues to fall!
EPISODE 2 Continued
SPOILERS
Meanwhile, Meng Meng sits down with her publisher and, pitches her own life or more precisely her and Huan Er’s life and relationships. She describes a troubling situation: her friend Huan Er has suddenly gone off-script and developed a brand-new personality.
The publisher’s eyes light up. Brilliant! Instant manhua material. Meng Meng explains she’s already begun: a story about two girls, suspiciously similar to herself and Huan Er, complete with early plotlines and character design.
And so we tumble into a hall of mirrors. Is this a dream within a dream, a tale within a tale? Is a fictional girl writing fiction while trapped inside a very real book about herself? Or is there an unseen author somewhere, calmly writing her into writing herself?
Which leaves us with the final, deliciously unsettling question: are we watching the story she is creating, or the story that has already decided to create her? Heheheh.
EPISODE 2 Continued
SPOILERS
Undeterred, Huan Er launches her next scheme: a bunny for romance. Ai Qing did say a fluffy prop could spark romance. Minor snag: HM is allergic to fur.
As he starts sneezing, H Er offers him a tissue… except the Magic Pager gives H Er a gift by changing the tissue into a sanitary pad. Cue stunned and horrified silence. ML’s fondness level plummets to –100%, and the punishment protocol immediately boots up against H Er. I thought it was pretty unfair, but perhaps she should have found out first if HM together with furry animals was a good idea.
But we have a plot twist: after touching the pad (he is the legendary Sanitary Pad King, after all), HM becomes obsessed with its softness. He storms the supermarket, inspecting entire shelves of pads to identify the brand and buying many samples.
Huan Er, meanwhile, is less lucky, serving out her punishment by scrubbing toilets.
Huan Er’s quest mutates: from snagging a marriage proposal to landing a job with Gao Hai Ming. Magic Pager insists that if she can’t marry him, she’ll at least work for him to begin with, with a marriage proposal still in the offing.
Meanwhile, Letao: a baby-products agency is doing badly. Profits are falling. The board of directors refuses to innovate, and their “brilliant” solution? Partner with another company, Fuchuang… which really just means marrying off HM to Fuchuang’s daughter. Not exactly amazing corporate strategy!
HM, however has big ideas. He wants to launch Letao’s own line of feminine hygiene products. He makes a Proposal for the production of Sanitary Pads that is roundly criticised and dismissed.
EPISODE 2 Continued
SPOILERS
Huan Er’s next foray into fulfilling her quest is to attend a Letao job interview. Huan Er cuts her application shorter so that it becomes the first application form and she can cut queue. Once again HM sees that H Er is up to her tricks. Instead of it getting her kicked out, HM decides to interview her (to see what entertainment she might offer or to find out the brand of her sanitary pad?)
She isn’t even applying for an advertised job but with breathtaking audacity, declares that Mr Gao clearly needs an Admin Assistant, and that she knows him inside out.
Leveraging on her knowledge from the novel, she mirrors HM’s own thoughts on expanding beyond agency work into product development. Better yet, she has the unfair advantage of the 2020s: confidently predicting that the future lay in AI, big data, online shopping, and greater interconnections through the Internet.
Since HM comes on the scene and hears her surprising claims, she fails the interview. HM has gotten a good grasp of her determination and knows that she won’t leave. She’s invested too much energy into chasing him. The Magic Pager informs that the fondness level is +80% … rising from the abyss!
Determined not to give up, H Er goes to HM’s office. He’s not surprised.
She launches into apologies, citing “unavoidable reasons” for her weird behavior. H Er can’t explain that she’s from a parallel dimension, that he’s technically a fictional character, or that she’s literally trying to escape the book they are in. Instead, she opts for the next best excuse: “I’m looking for an exit… from an alien world.” Totally believable, not.
Naturally, HM has questions: “How did you find me at the aircraft museum/model shop? How do you know so much about me?” She is not allowed to give spoilers, so she insists she means no harm.
Before she can leave, HM wants to know the brand of the sanitary pad she had, but she’s out of pads LOL and then without batting an eye, she makes the mother of all requests of HM:
“Do you have a sanitary pad?” LOLOL
She realises the absurdity of the request and goes out to ask the Letao staff the same thing. She is confronted by silence: deafening, mortifying silence. Every Letao staff member: men and women alike turn away, pretending not to hear.
The moment stretches on until of all things, the Sanitary Pad King himself steps in. HM calmly hands over a packet of sanitary pads from the stash he’d bought with a perfectly straight face. The absurdity hits peak levels and I’m rolling on the floor.
The Magic Pager tells her and us that HM’s fondness level has increased to -50% and we hope we are finally getting somewhere!
@GB,
Episode 1 had a lot going on.
The female lead is Lin Huaner (LH). She’s an internet influencer featured on a live-stream to debate the merits of this romance novel “Bye, Wild Weasel.” Coincidentally (or not), the female lead in the novel shares her name.
Without mincing words, she trashes the book because the heroine is helplessly in love.
Unknown to her, the male lead is watching the livestream. He’s visiting the studio because he’s thinking of acquiring the company. He looks amused.
Then, while LH expounds her theory that love is to be avoided because a) it strips a woman of her agency, making her passively wait for affection from her man like a pager is dependent on a phone for messages, and b) it creates a fragile man, totally dependent on a woman to bolster him up, like the model airplane — which coincidentally again was the favorite toy of hero of the romance novel.
As soon as she says that, she’s transported back in time, to 1999 (I think) and in the novel itself.
Now, as if to punish her for panning the romance book, she finds that she’s trapped in game based on the book “Bye, Wild Weasel” with nothing but a pager to guide her out of it and return her to the real world.
Now, as if the set-up isn’t confusing enough, what boggles my mind is that the hero isn’t your typical corporate raider (like back in her real world). He’s a general manager of the Letao Group and his primary job is overseeing the production of feminine sanitary pads…you know, those things we use for menstruation.
Lol.
Like you, @GB, that’s the hook for me.
I want to see how this screenwriter will transform this guy into an ideal romantic figure when all I imagine when he appears on screen is “Always Ultra Thin with Wings for Extra Heavy Overnight Protection.”
Re. the blind date, @GB
This scene when LH went on the blind date for her friend/writer and met Gao Haiming (GH) was reminiscent of the hit kdrama “A Business Proposal.” On both occasions, the heroines tried to horrify the men with their outlandish words and conduct but the men turned the tables on them by deliberately ignoring their bizarreness.
Here, LH insinuates that he has a sexual dysfunction, so she offers him the oyster pie — and I had to laugh when she covers her mouth with her hand and her hand is holding the knife. It’s suggestive of his “severed” libido.
When LH bluffs GH that she was eight weeks pregnant, he says that it’s fine because his father wants him married with children before he can inherit the family empire. Lol. Never mind that the child isn’t his, theirs is a “match made in heaven.”
Of course, she does a 180 when she realizes who her blind date really is. Now the game starts in earnest.
And I agree, I wish LH had done research before going on the blind date. And I wish she was listening when the waiter address GH. But nope…she’s so recklessly insensible. Too bad for her, but too good for our viewing entertainment — just like you said, @GB.
@pkml3 and any folks who are watching …
SPOILERS Episodes 3-7
Episodes 3-7 bring in the tiresome Xie Wan Jun and despatches her just as quickly. The good thing is that where the romance is concerned, interactions between WJ and H Er, even nasty ones, seem to raise the Fondness Percentage in HM. H Er discovers this and cunningly takes advantage of this loophole.
We also get a plethora of schemes by H Er and even HM who are out to outmaneuver each other for their own separate goals. However in the area of getting out of an engagement with WJ, their goas are aligned. H Er helps out big time in telling HM’s Dad off and in pretending to be HM’s girlfriend with a fake kiss in front of WJ to end all possibility of WJ’s wanting to be engaged to HM.
Revenge comes in the form of WJ’s company, Fuchuang pushing Letao into a corner to give up 60% of their shares while stealing their core R&D team. However HM refuses to give up.
Interesting points: Policeman Tie Han is great at hitting his shooting targets but misses the mark or does not even try much to woo Meng Meng. My guess is that he does not think himself rich enough to meet up to her standards.
The other aspect of this is that HM is a good shot with pistol and arrow, and great at assembling model aircraft, but unlike his hobbies he is not free to hit his own targets or to fly to achieve his dreams. Huan Er is able to see this, which touches him.
The scenes I liked:
Huan Er gatecrashing the 30th Wedding Anniversary celebration. Loved the way she imitated Wan Jun by clinging on to HM’s arm and shaking him on the right while WJ was doing the same on his left. Poor guy. It worked to break WJ away from him and she helped him escape the party on her scooter.
The shenanigans H Er gets up to just to submit the proposal directly to HM. She hangs from a window cleaner’s gondola outside his meeting room with the proposal! I liked that this and the model jet plane she got HM to assemble led to ‘dates’ of sorts although those ‘dates’ were engineered by HM to get scandalous photos of them. (I wondered why she never took issue with HM about publishing her photo without permission, but in the end it was tit for tat since they used each other).
I enjoyed how H Er cunningly argued WJ into wanting the benefits of signing with her company for a 10-year PR contract, which put her in the very good graces of her boss.
Oh, and yes, the being glued chest to chest scene with HM was gold!!! We get to see some muscular bare chest until H Er decides to get him to keep his shirt on and cuts out a heart-shaped hole in it to separate them from each other LOL.
The way Huan Er told Dad Gao off for not know his own son’s needs or desires or not caring. And the fact that HM heard it all, how she defended him and did not take the money his dad had given her. Her merits soar in his estimation.
It was H Er to the rescue again when the Xies invaded his home to talk about an engagement between him and WJ. She runs over to pretend to be his girlfriend and put up a fake kiss scene with HM for WJ to witness.
I’m sure there are more scenes but I’ll stop here for now! We wait to see the scenes where HM does the the taking of the initiative for a change!!!
I like that this Series has more than 1 twist along the way (I’m counting it as 2 and a half twists for now).
They are organic in that the shifts come from the plot and contribute to it. The biggie comes towards the end. I expected H Er to get back to her own time in reality… but…
The series has completed airing in China, I believe, however we have to wait for the last 4 episodes.
@pkml3 and All Who Read this,
I’ve finished this series and may return to it for a fuller review later. For now, here are a few thoughts the drama prompted. One thing I’m always reminded of is how effectively dramas convey cultural and social ideas. This one, in particular, raised a few interesting points.
A) Both this show and Love Between Lines place noticeable emphasis on not just working hard, but also knowing when to slow down and recharge. In LBL, the leads regularly spend hours immersed in a virtual-reality game. In My Page, the male lead relaxes by assembling model aircraft and going shooting with a friend. At one point, he even tells the female lead she should have gone motorbike riding (there’s also a brother-sister pair who do this). He actually says that work isn’t our entire life. It feels like a gentle reminder to viewers – maybe especially Chinese audiences – to remember how to take a break.
B) I was struck by the portrayal of the modern China’s mindset, particularly from the 1990s onward, about developing strong domestic industries. Through Gao Hai Ming, we can see how and why China is the innovative production power house it is today.
This drama highlights domestically produced, high quality products and controversially, the usually ‘unmentionable’ sanitary pad takes centerstage. However there were earlier dramas promoting domestic aircraft production, and space exploration. Together, they show the country’s determination to rely on its own capabilities rather than foreign suppliers, and a growing confidence that “Made in China” stands for quality without excessive cost.
C) There been a noticeable trend in recent C-dramas where the female lead (rather than just the male lead) is savvy, independent, confident, and proactive. She isn’t afraid to initiate relationships or face challenges head-on. In this show, the female lead was especially impressive for the many creative ways she tried to get noticed, even when she was ignored, blocked, or outright rejected. She was the one putting in the effort, taking the initiative, and coming up with plans and ideas, to the point where she nearly outshone the male lead. The very fact that the ML was so into offering women good quality hygiene products, starting with sanitary pads, is illustrative of this shift in balance and the greater focus on the ‘strong’ female character.
In the end, the balance worked because the ML was smart in his own way too. The same dynamic can be seen in Love Between Lines, Love in the Clouds, A Dream Within a Dream, and Shine on Me, where both leads are portrayed as capable, intelligent, and well-matched rather than following the old passive-FL, dominant-ML formula.
D) Now that we’re safely past 2025, the drama invites us to look back with some amusement at the fears surrounding the Millennium Bug and technology at the turn of the century. Y2K exposed how dependent we are on computers, but this show takes that anxiety further through the “Magic Pager.” Acting like a stern game-show judge, or even a god, it drags the female lead into a book, sets the rules, resets time, metes out punishments or rewards, and transports her without consent. She has no choice but to comply or face unknown consequences.
The drama might be offering a cautionary note: if our dependence on technology goes unchecked, we may end up taking instructions from machines not just in technical matters, but even in matters of the heart!
@GB and other viewers-my final thoughts on My Page in the 90s- a somewhat cynical take
The pager is the system?-deaf to others’ agency. Did he write the book? THen she has lost all narrative control over her own life exactly how she criticized the original character in the novel. I do not think this was the loop the creators wanted. I know the idea was that she would move from her cynical stance to falling in love, with all the emotional impact that has.
Was this some kind of loop? He experienced it first with her and then wrote the novel(or was it her friend, the cartoonist?). Tnen through an unknown mechanism she went into the novel which was the first time for her both to co create the story and/or to remember?. He returns before the time she goes back, hence he is there when she goes back, at the beginning of the show, somehow triggering her trip so that it actually happens and is not just his memory which he would not have if she never went into the novel.
It seems to me there is too much to infer about the transmigration mechanism, perhaps they want to do a sequel, as is suggested at the end.
Overall this drama had great ideas. I am just not sure the execution lived up to potential. I found the middle stretch of episodes to have pacing problems which caused me to detach emotionally from the characters so I feel less forgiving about the ending than I might have. If the drama had kept me engaged emotionally, I might have been able to go with the emotional meaning of the drama and not be caught up being critical of the transmigration mechanics.
The male lead actor was great, as usual. Her voice actor and perhaps her characterization /the directing interfered with the quality of her peformance, in my view.
I am not sure if I want a sequel or not.
@GB Thank you for all your posts about this drama.
I have been having the same thought about “made in China”. In fact I am now thinking about buying solar panels and would consider “made in China”(good product placement amid cautionary notes about snow on the rooftops with solar panels!) Not a worry for you though!
I find myself thinking about the nostalgia vibe as someone who was in her 40s in the 90s. Your point about the fear around the millenium bug is very apt. I remember that pager I had and how disruptive it was(just like in the drama). It did feel like it was controlling my life and demanding I act in a certain way–find a phone NOW and adress the problem that was inevitably at the other end of the phone.
There are many interesting threads in this drama and I feel like it was a worthwile watch albeit with some FFing in the middle.
Hi @MM, you’re most welcome and thank you too for your thoughts on this series. You’ve given me more to think about but I’ll do that a bit later.
I’ve yet to decide if I’ll write a partial review based on what I remember or whether I have time to rewatch enough so as to do a slightly fuller review (I do not purport to make it absolutely complete!)
Yes, there were times I felt that more editing could have been done… and conversely I felt that some parts might have been over-edited because a scene did not seem to have had a lead in and I was wondering why I was watching it suddenly.
I believe I liked the interesting or unexpected twists. Even the fact that the sought after Dr Wei was not the brother, but the sister. There was something there being said about gender stereotyping, perhaps.
Yes, many points to think about. I will consider reposting my last lot of comments in the WAWW thread for February. Let’s see how work, life and thoughts go!! Catch you again!
I also liked the Dr Wei being the sister and how the drama and the protaganists made that assumption. I went along with it as well. It is like the The Surgeon’s Dilemma(popular in the 7os) where a father dies in a car crash, the son is brought to hospital, and the surgeon says, “I can’t operate-that boy is my son!”
@pkml3, @MM, @IB
Having finished My Page and rewatched it to some extent, here are some of the parts that struck me.
SPOILERS
The 2nd Lead Romance
The question always is to what extent is the 2nd Lead Romance necessary. Could the 2nd OTP scenes have been reduced? Were they included just to beef up the number of episodes? In this series, although there were some 2nd OTP scenes that felt ‘draggy,’ I do not entirely begrudge them their own little series interspersed with the main romance, because they were the counterpoints to the main OTP from time to time.
Where Tie Han was slow to initiate pursuit of Meng Meng although she showed her interest in him, we had Huan Er forced to work her charms on Hai Ming although he had no interest in her.
Most noteworthy of course is that MM had no qualms going all out to love TH, even knowing that he would die. She wrote in her manhua and said to Huan Er that she wanted her characters to love fully without regrets.
This is juxtaposed against Huan Er who tried to avoid going all out in love, because she did not want to fulfill her quest too soon. She held back because she knew she would have to be separated from HM once he proposed to her. For his part, HM came to guess that they would be separated, but he still decided that it was worth going all out for love.
MM’s character and Huan Er’s own character were the kind of female characters that H Er despised. But she was forced to literally wear the shoes of the character and to be a friend of an idealistic friend to gain more perspective on romance.
We are given quite a lot of detail of Meng Meng’s romance with Tie Han, because they illustrate the possible trajectory of any romance. Being fictional characters, they could not avoid their end as it had been written. Theirs was indeed a matter of ‘fate’ since the Writer had the last say and this was an important point for Huan Er to accept. She could not keep trying to cheat the system/delay or ‘tempt fate’ by avoiding the proposal. In the end both H Er and HM agreed that what would be, would be. It applies to the fictional world as well as to ours.
To her credit, H Er then decided to face ‘fate’ head on. She took control by choosing the day when the proposal should take place. She returned to her own world, more mellow, with a greater depth of understanding and less hostility for the old-fashioned, cheesy romance.
Continued…
SPOILERS
The Writer
It is noteworthy that Meng Meng is a Manhua writer and that she writes about 2 female characters based on herself and Huan Er, but she is not the writer of this story that we are watching.
We saw in Ep 1, (in the 1st timeline) Hai Ming was interested in acquiring the social media streaming company that hired Huan Er as one of their permanent streamers. The day Huan Er first met HM was on 28th Feb 2025. However from his avid interest in her, he seems to have known her already. He was concerned when she said that none of the men in the book, ‘Goodbye, Wild Weasel,’ was truly worthy of being loved. He asked her if she believed that, but never heard her reply. Her reply was given only when she was sucked into the book, caught up in the quests and began to like HM for real (in the 2nd timeline).
On Rewatch, I finally caught the conversation that Huan Er had with the Magic Pager. When HM is in hospital after rescuing Ler Er from a crazed Ou Xiao Jue, H Er berates the Magic Pager. She guesses rightly that it was behind (it engineered) Ou’s kidnapping of Ler Er, because as a timid person he would not have had the guts to kidnap her sister.
H Er to the Pager: “You’re truly a vile, rotten system. They are living people. How could you manipulate everyone’s fate?” … “Even f you see them as fictional characters, you can’t be this heartless.”
This points to some evidence that the Magic Pager is the Writer of this tale. However this Writer lets its characters make their own decisions to change details of their lives, although the overall trajectory seems to be set.
Pager does not answer her directly but reminds her that she does not belong to the fictional world and does she not want to return to her own world? In other words, it’s doing her a favour by making Ou act up, so that she will have more time with HM.
H Er to the Pager: “What about what I’m experiencing now?”
Pager: “All here is a dream. Good or bad, it’ll vanish when you wake.”
When Huan Er does wake up, she finds herself in a 3rd time line on the 16th Feb 2025, before Gao HM had ever been to her streaming workplace. No one there has heard of him.
Continued …
The Writer Continued …
SPOILERS
However back in the book, HM had the Pager – the same Pager Huan Er had used in her streaming show when she ‘fell asleep’ and got sucked into the book. So the Pager was something from Huan Er’s world. He was able to use it to see Huan Er when they happened to be in the same spots at the same times in their own respective worlds.
What was interesting was that H Er could not bring back anything from 1999 except the written word ie the Secret Wonton Recipe hat HM had written on paper with a note to her, while the only thing from her world that remained in the books was the Pager that could communicate in text writing independently.
HM was determined to find a way to reach her world, and it took him years. Evidence of this was that he was wearing spectacles when they met again.
Perhaps he found a portal through the Pager to merge H Er’s world with his, or perhaps their world were never all that separated to begin with. This became a 3rd timeline because aside from him, the others from his world could not recognise H Er.
H Er and HM are reunited and remember everything they had been through, but we find that their story continues to be written by an unseen Writer, ie text gets typed (hence it is likely the Pager with a mind and will of its own, most unlike a true pager that depends on someone to send it a message). Huan Er does not realise that she’s a character who is being written about as well.
The text that appears on the screen:
This suggests that what characters consider their reality, is written by an external Writer, who allows their decisions/actions, to shape their stories. Also that it is by acting, that characters contribute to writing their own stories. They are both the authors and the characters written into life.
When we consider ourselves, to what extent are we protagonists in our own stories. What decisions or actions shape our lives? Is there a ‘higher Being’ who guides and directs our ultimate trajectory and do we disdain that possibility without realising that we might already be characters on a page?
What I liked…
SPOILERS
* There was no love triangle!!!
* ML is smart and figured out the truth which H Er was not allowed to reveal.
* The Main fictional characters are round.
* Thoughts are raised about several things (I mentioned a few above) but they may not be fully explored …
The attitude of Huan Er is bookended ie she starts off with and ends with the live stream PK against Ai Qing but her attitude has changed … which reminds us to be careful how we judge when we do not have the experience to judge with.
Huan Er had begun in the first timeline – without ever being in a serious relationship – dismissive of love as the necessity of life, and of female characters without agency and male characters who were unlovable. In her review of the book ‘Goodbye Wild Weasel’, she took issue that the ultimate goal of the female characters was to gain love even if she had sacrifice so much for it and was cheated upon. She deplored how the love in fiction was manifested in childish, cheesy ways.
However in the 3rd timeline, her live stream PK with Ai Qing shows how drastically her views had changed. She admits to having loved idealistically once and to believe in it now, even to the cheesy ‘retarded’ things couples would do to spend time together.
* When I began commenting, I did say that the whole series looks like it is a long dream of the FL, and it is generally true.
There are more, but I’ll stop here. 🙂