We had great times. It was always better to part ways amicably.
Who wants to look like bitter exes? But guess what, even after 8 months since it aired last summer, Season 2 still stinks as freshly as it did months ago, and the bitter taste it left in our mouths is still as bad as ever.

This sentiment was apparently widely shared.

In the voting for the 2025 Top 10 IP Awards, what had probably been the top IP success story in 2023-24, sweeping almost every award there was, LYF S2 now ranked a miserable 15th in its category.

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Yes the sting never faded.
The desire to rewatch this drama did not happen even after nearly a year had passed.
Almost all my motivation to continue writing posts for this story died.

After the huge hit that accompanied Season 1, Season 2 just ended quietly and faded away. There was no further mention of a final proper concert with the singers of the drama OST, that vat of wine from October 2023’s ‘fanmeet’ does not look like it would be opened again.

Novel readers felt betrayed and disgusted to varying degrees.
Casual drama viewers felt confused because there was definitely something that did not feel right.
I wonder during their drama conference they held, did they realize or admit why Season 2 ruined Season 1? LYF was lucky that it had to be aired in two parts. I am sure that without the gap and time fans spent to engage with the story while waiting, this ( 39 + 23) 62 episode drama would have just been a drama that started off well but ended poorly, immediately put out of minds after its done.

THIS IS NOT A HATE POST FOR LYF. I love this story so much which was why I spent the time thinking about what went so wrong.
While they pretended Lost You Forever was such a success in their Conference held on Aug 8, 2024 and lavished praise on it, lets take a good hard look at what a future adaptation of LYF should never do again.

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Things really got clearer with enough time passing.

1

Storytelling was sacrificed for one supporting character.

Tong Hua sacrificed her drama and gave too much screen time to a supporting role.
Make that a ‘special’ supporting role. How ironic considering she is actually the screen writer.

I was finally watching The Story of Minglan for the first time thanks to a friend’s recommendation. What struck me was, in this 70+ episode story, there were times when the female lead, and the male lead, do not appear as often as we would come to expect.

The story went where the storytelling needed to go. We were not forced with sudden cuts and inserts of scenes just to increase someone’s airtime. The plot flowed logically and smoothly.

Its not that I want to sound like an anti of Tan Jianci and point out his name here. I am not introducing conspiracies over things we have no access to, like drama contracts, internal promises over investments or whatever.

I just want to say how things look like from our point of view purely as the drama audience who have read the novel.

In Season 1, the billing order was Yang Zi, Zhang Wanyi, Deng Wei, Tan Jianci, Wang Hongyi, Dai Luwa.

If you have been watching Cdrama for a while now, and at least paid a little attention to this huge issue called ‘Billing Order’ in C ent, you will come to the natural conclusion that Tan Jianci is the third supporting male lead. This fits his role in the story, because Xiang liu was an important character but he does not appear all that often in the novel.

Now in Season 2, the billing order has changed.
It was now mentioned in all platforms, news articles, in this order.
Starring Yang Zi, Zhang Wanyi, Deng Wei, Wang Hongyi, Dai Luwa and special starring Tan Jianci.
Even that conference news article, followed this marketing directive ：
杨紫、张晚意、邓为、代露娃、王弘毅领衔主演，檀健次特别主演。

While it looks like his billing importance dropped to the end, actually its to set him apart from the rest of the cast instead.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out all the episode thumbnail images in Netflix.
18 out of 62 thumbnails, how many is the ‘special lead’ Xiangliu? A whopping 30%!
Xiaoyao as the main lead has 9 closeups, including doubles.
Talk about 喧宾夺主 the guest overshadowing the owner.
Was this from drama production team or the Netflix team? I have no idea.

STORYTELLING

Why did I put this as the first reason how the storytelling was affected?

I’m not saying new scenes cannot be written for the drama, to balance the screen time and fill in some gaps for supporting roles. However, respect the source material and don’t steal, cut up, donate and transplant scenes and dialogue, sacrificing other characters for another?

One can’t add someone’s screen time without cutting another character’s time.
One also shouldn’t increase air time for no good reason.

Tushan Jing’s farewell food box became Xiangliu’s caring food box.

When they bid each other farewell after their boat gathering in Haoling, Tushan Jing had no idea if that would be the last time they ever meet again. He prepared a food box full of snacks that Xiaoyao loves, like duck feet, green plum wine etc

Instead, we see a seafood food box, prepared by Xiangliu’s seafolk friends while he appears as a woman to get close to Xiaoliu. It’s interesting to note that the food he prepared was not Xiaoyao’s favorite, but its seafood. Whether it was something he himself preferred, I don’t think the drama revisited this again.

The most inexplicable scene

Here’s a great example of adding screen time for no good reason.

Xiaoyao had been contemplating her life and feeling lost, in a white dress in the novel, as she sat by the cliff side looking out to sea as she used the seven days given by her father to decide if she would go through with her wedding to Fenglong.

In the drama, without any explanation, she was all dressed in red, like a bride, waiting for ‘destiny‘, as the actors were coached to say during marketing and interviews. Do they think the audience are fools?

This was all for Xiangliu to also get his ‘moment’ as a groom in red.
The worst fan-service scene offered in the drama has to be this scene.

This scene made Xiaoyao look weak and desperate, like she was ready for anyone to come along to ‘save’ her from a decision she had made for herself.

I also suspect this was also ‘inspired’ from an actual scene in the novel, where Xiaoyao was dressed in red as Tushan Jing’s bride, when she was lured out to sea by an assassin.

In that scene which was cut from the drama, Xiaoyao willingly risked her life for a very small hope that Tushan Jing is really where the assassin promised, and when she found out that it was all a lie, she was actually so sad over his death, that she was ready to join him in death ‘out at sea where he was’.

The drama completely cut out this scene, perhaps because showing Xiaoyao being so vulnerable mentally would make her look ‘weak’. But by cutting this scene out, we never got to see how ‘survivor’ Xiaoyao, who would do anything to stay alive before, was ready to give up living because she was so destroyed over Jing’s death. This vulnerability which spoke of the weight of her love for Jing, was eradicated in the drama.

Ironically, by cutting out this scene, they also cut out Xiangliu’s epic rescue of Xiaoyao, who had been dumped in a glass coffin into a whirlpool by the assassin.

However, the story continued in a way that Xiangliu was ‘compensated’ later on, by showing him ‘saving’ Tushan Jing from a sea monster, so it was at no loss to the demon after all.

Ruining the moment

Xiangliu was always butting into the main CP’s scenes.

The female lead is dancing with her love interest, and we had to intercut to see Xiangliu ‘dancing’ with his enemies.

In season 2, the audience finally got a long-awaited kiss between the main CP. They barely kissed for a minute in a far shot, and the drama cuts to see a close up Xiangliu’s reaction to feeling Jing’s kiss. This would not be the first time he felt their kissing, so why choose to butt in with his shot now? To get him some screen time?

Why make this romantic sweet moment about Xiangliu and his feelings?
Xiaoyao is finally blissfully happy but we had to be forced to see how Xiangliu is doing? How inconsiderate!

Just too many additional Xiang liu scenes

Here’s another issue of adding screen time without enough story to back it up.

Many Xiangliu fans were disappointed how the mighty general was practically a drunk hiding in his seashell in his free time.

Xiangliu. Always moping.

The drama even included extra lines from random sea monsters, referring to Xiang liu as ‘the king‘.

When Xiangliu had all his nine heads, he certainly had been no king of the sea. If he was, the Chenrong army wouldn’t have been starving and poor. There were so much resources in the sea, why didn’t Xiangliu manage to do anything with that over the centuries?

Xiangliu was the dutiful loyal foster son who would place his foster father’s wishes above his own. He would do anything to save the Chenrong army. However in the drama, Hong Jiang was shown to waver and question his own staunch beliefs and Xiangliu was the one who convinced him to stay on their ‘self destructive’ path.

It was clear in the novel that Xiangliu enjoyed life and wanted to live, except he was locked into his mission because of his loyalty to his foster father. For some reason, Xiangliu had to be the one who decides for them all that they should fight on and resist the new age of Cang xuan.

Xiangliu dies off-screen in the novel, but I found it was at least acceptable to add his death scene in the drama.

This additional scene however…

Tushan Jing can play the zither, Cang xuan can play the zither ( in novel ), Chenrong Xinyue can play it too, so how can Xiang liu be allowed to miss out?

Was this scene intended to be comical?
While Xiaoyao was thinking again of Tushan Jing and missing him, along comes Xiangliu with his live singing as he suddenly displayed his ‘ability’ to play the zither as well.

In the novel, Tushan Jing got drunk at Cang xuan’s inauguration celebrations and played the zither but due to budget cuts, there was no such ceremony. It became a simple drinking scene between Xiaoyao and Cang xuan.

But Xiangliu got his cringe worthy scene. Who thought it was a good idea?

Xiaoyao’s adoring eyes said it all.

The most disturbing extra scene

Finally, the controversial scene which never happened in the novel but forced into the drama.

Xiangliu’s disrespectful kissing of a ‘married woman’ while she was passed out, grossed out many viewers. It certainly made Xiangliu look so cowardly with regards to his true feelings, because he can only do such things when she didn’t know.

Xiangliu became the ‘perfect’ saint who saved everybody

He saves Xiaoyao. He saves Tushan Jing.

Drama even shows him setting his mount free.

In the novel, Xiangliu had kept Tushan Jing away from Xiaoyao for an unspecified period of time before reviving him at last when it seemed like the rebel army had no further hope of winning. This was not explicit but we can imagine that there was no way a tasty immortal like Jing would be floating at sea with so many people looking for him, monsters ready to eat him, for a total of six years, only for Xiangliu to locate and ‘rescue’ him.

So it made sense that Xiangliu and his merfolk had intercepted and took Jing before he could be found by his own people. Even when Xiangliu saw how much Xiaoyao was suffering with her loss, even to the point of being willing to give up on living, but he chose to let her grieve instead of returning Jing to her. This Xiangliu in the novel, clearly placed Hong Jiang and his own army before his own personal feelings for Xiaoyao. His identity was clear and it made sense for his actions of always putting his army first.

Xiangliu had also used Xiaoyao as a last ditch attempt to kill Cang Xuan, placing her directly in harm’s way by risking her life. By guiding her to the truth that Cangxuan had killed Tushan Jing, he also had an indirect hand in pushing Xiaoyao to her eventual death. All these never happened now that the story had been changed. Fenglong became the one who told Xiaoyao who killed Jing.

In the drama, the cold, calculating general of the Chenrong army is gone. Instead we have a weak shadow of his novel self.

Laughable story plot:

Xiangliu had just tried to assassinate Cang xuan, but Cang xuan’s Queen was so ready to drug and deliver her own sister back into his hands.

In the novel, she only brought the shell bed to Mount Jade in order to save Xiaoyao’s life, not deliver her sister to him like a food service.

Xiangliu had to sneak into Mount Jade, fight off the two demons which the drama had no budget for, while he healed Xiaoyao one last time. In the drama version, the ‘audience’ to witness his efforts was upgraded to literally two Queens.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Apparently in this drama, VFX shots are also expensive and part of a fixed budget, so adding to one person’s shot, especially in this series, meant the scenes of other characters would suffer.

Xiaoyao’s cherry blossom petal count would fall drastically from Season 1 to Season 2.

Her father’s love to wrap around Xiaoyao, turned out very scant indeed.

When it came to Tushan Jing’s proposal, it would appear that there was no more budget for a romantic cherry blossom forest scene. It was even made to become a failed proposal instead.
We CP fans can’t have anything nice!

By the time our drama CP had their reunion in the penultimate episode, there was no budget for even a single ambience petal, even though it was written in the script, that Xiaoyao and Jing ran towards each other in a flurry of falling petals.

What was robbed from the proposal scene, was not even used here instead.
Yaojing CP fans got nothing. Not even one flying petal.

But once again, Xiangliu got plenty of budget for his additional scenes, which never appeared in the novel.

Xiangliu’s final battle scene was given a total of nearly 8-10minutes, packed with lots of special effects and manpower.

I laugh bitterly thinking back on how Tushan Jing was ‘killed off’ in less than 3minutes, and all the secret guards of Tushan Clan combined with Tushan Hou’s assassins would number less than 20.

Also, the final battle fighting scene made NO SENSE.

The six headed form of Xiangliu is his ‘true demon form’. If we see that creature, Xiangliu should no longer be there ‘in person’. Yet, the drama kept the actor there as if they are afraid people can’t remember who is playing Xiangliu?

I could tell that the drama team really wanted to milk that scene for all its worth, in the hopes of ‘moving’ audiences with the epic and ‘heroic’ death of Xiangliu.

Honestly they should have skipped that ridiculous bridegroom shot in the previous episode, because this was actually poetic enough for him to be dying covered in blood, in white robes finally stained red with blood.

Sadly, the story plot had lost its way for a while while they struggled to give Xiangliu everything.
I never could understand why it was so important to Xiangliu to fight for the Chenrong army, because the drama would rather show him moping for Xiaoyao, than show his camaraderie with his troops. Also, Xiangliu emphasized to Xiaoyao on the beauty of life, while he chose death at every possible crossroad.

Leading the remnants of the Chenrong army into certain death for ‘glory’ seemed hollow and empty and they couldn’t convince me otherwise no matter how grand they make that final scene.

Sidenote, I was also rather surprised from a neutral political standpoint, that a drama from China should be daring enough to paint resisting ‘unification’ as something to be admired. lol

THE FLYING MOUNTS

In the story, Xiaoyao also rides often on Tushan Jing’s mount, Lili 狸狸.
There was no other mounts in the story available to other characters, not even to Cangxuan, who also rode on ‘sky horses’ and Xiaoyao who had her own harrowing experience falling off a mount in what should have been an exciting scene in Season 2.

Is this to make Xiangliu more outstanding from the rest of the cast?
Was there just not enough budget to go around?

I can’t help wondering, if another character needed this sky horse if Xiangliu did not get to do it first, would it have been written out of the drama?

Later on in Season 2, FangFeng Yingying would be shooting from a Skyhorse as well, but she was reduced to just doing in from the ground.

Other characters just get to mention their mounts.

“The people searching for Tushan Jing under the sea, holding the luminated pearls was like stars in the sky.”

We see like six small boats looking for him in the drama.

Six small boats of people and of course, Xiangliu.

OSTs

Not even OSTs are spared.

In season 1, we have Yang zi singing a love theme with Tan Jianci that already had professional singers 胡夏, 张紫宁 performing 偏爱人间烟火.
Has other dramas marketed a not-main CP this hard before? Do share if you know any.

In season 2, Xiangliu sings the love song that Xiaoyao’s father sang to her mother.
Why this connection or opportunity? Only the production team knows.

What I am trying to say is, a supporting character supports.
Don’t try to steal the limelight.
Don’t 偷樑換柱, stealing what is not yours.

So what if a corps de ballet was very talented? If the person oversteps the mark and tries to dance better than the prima ballerina, what is going to happen to the entire production?

2

No half measures.

Just as we have learnt in Breaking Bad, we should not take half measures.

What should have been a very powerful Cang Xuan’s character defining moment in Lost You Forever, was destroyed by chickening out in the last arc and did not let him do what he did in the novel.

Instead, in order to ‘showcase’ the actors’ acting/screaming skills, the team used a ‘fake out’ to force that scene into the drama, to poor effect.

First off, the scale of the entire scene was not there.
We sorely feel the lack of the drama budget again.

This epic scene between the two leads, which should have involved a dramatic escape on Skyhorses, many guards, Xiaoyao drawing her bow and hitting Cang xuan’s skyhorse, then his hair knot with her arrows, fell very flat with a simple dagger ‘tango’ fight with two people in small room and stopped by just six people.

Did we ever feel that Xiaoyao would be in mortal danger here?
Cang xuan screaming for his guards ‘not to hurt her’ felt out of place and ridiculous.

Chenrong Xinyue took the ‘fall’ for the killing of Tushan Jing in Cang xuan’s place.
In the novel, she had tried to assassinate Xiaoyao twice – both clever attempts never made it into the drama.

3

Xiaoyao’s story missed the marks

Xiaoyao also lost crucial parts of her character and story because of these plot changes.

The biggest change throughout the entire story, was how much Xiaoyao loved Tushan Jing since the beginning. There was so many small details that were easily shot without increasing budget due to new sets or visual effects, but the drama decided to cut them all out anyway.

Xiaoyao’s intelligence was also impacted in the drama.
Due to so many cut scenes which had shown her amazing tenacity to survive her second assassination attempt by Xinyue, as well as her own detailed investigation into who killed Tushan Jing, Xiaoyao is now portrayed as a weak, somewhat foolish person who had to be spoon-fed information in order to realize the truth in the drama.

Xiaoyao never did manage to come ‘full circle’ since her actions did not become ‘canon’ in the drama since they are just part of a possible karmic illusion.

She was supposed to show how she grew out of her dependence, when she finally knew what it meant to love another person. From her desire to have someone accompany her for life, to being willing to live alone without even her last pillar of support – Cang xuan, because he killed Jing.

In the novel, Xiaoyao tried to kill Cang Xuan to avenge Jing’s death, and in failing to bring herself to do it again when she calmed down, she could no longer live with herself and instead chose death.

After she had been revived, she decided to stay at Mount Jade, just to escape from Cang xuan, rather than forgive him for what he did to Jing.

The previous set-up in the dialogue in season 1 no longer mattered, since the story had been changed now and things never happened.

Xiaoyao might have thought that before she really understood how much she would come to love Tushan Jing, but in the end, she placed Jing above all else.

In the drama due to the plot changes, she not only did not kill herself with the poisoned flowers, she was merely brought to Xiangliu at Mount Jade after he purposely drained her blood.

What should have been a powerful display of her love, to show that Xiaoyao now placed Tushan Jing above Cang Xuan, who was the main reason she never pursued anything beyond her friendship with Xiangliu; became a bland monologue, consisting of rather naive plotting which Xiaoyao would never need to carry out or pay any price for.

4

Cang Xuan can’t even be a good King anymore

The novel Cang xuan might not be a good husband but he was definitely a great leader.

In the drama, Cang xuan’s capabilities were being called into question, when his Queen was able to try to kill his beloved ‘sister’ and Tushan Jing right under his nose without him being aware of it, and even his work ethics became questionable now.

Cang Xuan became a stalker.

In the novel, he was a very good emperor, great at his job. He was always busy working, so he missed out on going to meet his aunt again for the last time. Drama forced the change so he did not miss that ‘event’. Cang Xuan was also very free, always hovering over the main CP.

It became a joke at how often Cang xuan is lurking in the shadows watching Xiaoyao and Jing.

Even Cang xuan’s wife started stalking them lol

5

Tushan Jing donated his wealth, his story arcs, his visual effects shots

Tushan Jing had given his wealth generously to help Cang xuan in his bid for the throne. He also took big risks to give humanitarian aid to Xiangliu and his starving army.

I have not seen a second male lead character, who is actually the female lead’s OTP, being abused to this extent.

Ever since Season 1, his scenes and his actual lines had been subtly given to Xiangliu.
Even the many dialogue with Wen Xiaoliu that was with Shiqi, was given to her scenes with Xiangliu.

In the novel, both Cang xuan and Xiangliu acknowledged that it was very difficult for Tushan Jing to break his engagement, but the drama removed all those parts, instead added lines for Xiaoyao to blame him for being ‘indecisive’, portraying Jing as weak and incompetent.

Xiaoliu was far kinder to Shiqi in the novel. She never threw the things he prepared for her, like the heating stove and the wisteria pancake. In the drama, some viewers even thought that she treated him like a servant sometimes, and it was very uncomfortable to see how abusive Xiaoliu / Xiaoyao got, how much she took him for granted.

But at least in Season 1, Jing’s mistreatment was not so obvious.

Come Season2, even the lines they added during the illusion scene, had Xiaoyao alluding to Tushan Jing as if he was an item she wanted.
The wording in mandarin was really problematic : one Tushan Jing. 一个涂山璟
The english subs were better in comparison to how it was actually worded.
Instead of ‘Why did you take him away from me?’ the actual line was ‘Why won’t you give him to him?’ 你为什么就不给我？which sounded like Jing was a thing, to be given to her as her reward.
These two cousins were looking at people like they are merely things? This was very cold blooded. The line would have been perfectly fine without that ‘one’ in it so why add it in, twice?

Considering the novelist was the drama screenwriter, it is really chilling to think that someone can betray and backstab her own drama CP in order to boost another.

The few scenes showingJing’s personality and charm, as well as his sweet romantic moments with Xiaoyao on display are mostly deleted in Season 2.
For more details, please read Tushan Jing’s fan guides.

In the novel, Jing was ‘killed’ right before their wedding and disappeared for nearly six years before his return, he was already gone for most of the episodes in Season 2.
Even so, his scenes and arcs still had to be ‘shared’ with Cang Xuan and Xiangliu.

Tushan Jing and Xiaoyao’s ‘pre-honeymoon’ trip, ended up being a mashup together with Cang xuan’s visit to Fenglong in the army camp.

There was also just no budget for Tushan Jing’s proposal scene, or yaojing’s sweet camping scene.

Tushan Jing who was also instrumental in helping Xiaoyao finally find closure with her parents and her adoptive father, was left out in the cold.

The King of Haoling and Jing had risked their lives to go with Xiaoyao into the burning desert, where she finally met her mother for the last time. Jing was supposed to have gotten her blessings to be with Xiaoyao. In the drama, Jing did not even get to meet her mother before she decided she held on long enough in that house for the past 400 years and can’t hold on another 30 minutes to meet the man her daughter had chosen to be with for the rest of her life.

Jing had been the one who went to Jiuli with Xiaoyao to return their ashes to Chichen’s hometown, and pay respects to her parents after they moved on in the burning desert, but in the end, only Cang xuan paid his respects with Xiaoyao while he just stood by the side. Xiaoyao never once pulled him over to ‘tell’ her mother about him either.
What kind of crappy writing is this?

Even Xiangliu got to pay his respects later on in an extra scene, which was never mentioned in the novel either.

Lack of budget and sets meant that Xiaoyao had to meet Xiangliu on the same exact beach where she was going to romance her boyfriend, one after another. Yet another scenes mash-up.

Adding this scene actually made me think that Xiangliu had always been right.
Xiaoyao saw him as a plaything.

Even the extremely important showdown scene where he fights for his life with Tushan Hou, was extremely poorly executed.

Where was Tushan Hou’s spirit tiger fighting with Tushan Jing’s Nine Tailed fox?
Even the amount of mist summoned here was rather pointless.
At this weak level, why even bother at all?
The summoned mist is as half hearted as the entire S2 of LYF.

Even the fog in S1 was better than S2’s version.

Let’s face it. Lost You Forever was a top student in the first semester, but it handed in a half-hearted final semester and now it just barely scraped through the exams.

Everything was lacking. It was as if the production team ran out of steam and budget. It was said that even the weak reunion scene for Xiaoyao and her mother was inserted at the last moment. The female lead herself was going to get her important scenes cut while so many additional, unnecessary scenes were filmed, complete with heavy visual effects shots, for the supporting character.

Story-wise, the men got to keep their hands ‘clean’.
Cang xuan was not guilty of killing Jing.
Xiangliu was not guilty of keeping the lovers apart.

Tong Hua had said in her interviews before, that Lost You Forever was a story about how Cang Xuan had lost Xiaoyao forever, because of his actions that pushed her away in the end. He lost her trust forever after trying to kill her love.

After the drama aired, some Xiangliu fans took to say that Xiaoyao had lost Xiangliu forever, so that was the reason for the title of the drama. From a storytelling pov, if that ended up as a possible conclusion, one can only reflect on what had transpired in the drama for it to have ended up this way.

In any case, this drama definitely Lost Us Forever, by releasing such a crappy second part.
For me, the Yaojing CP saved their final score into a pass. Even with the massive cutback of sweet romantic scenes, the chemistry of the actors saved the day.
They didn’t need much to make it work.

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The end.