- #1
Wonderful character development so far, and particularly good dialogue and interactions.I really appreciate how real a lot of the dialogue feels, particularly the casual cursing and banter -- thinking about reading the raws later to see the OG version. Not just cliché romance lines or "cold silent possessive ML"s; these characters really do fit the setting they've been given, and sound like teenage/YA guys just f*cking around or giving each other shit. There are a lot of other novels where I wonder if the teen boys are actually supposed to be teen boys based on how they always speak, and although those novels usually have characters with better living environments and family backgrounds, it still feels moderately unreal. That's certainly not the case here.I saw it mentioned that Jiang Cheng's cursing sounds a lot more aggro/not banter-like in the EN TL compared to the raws, but I don't think it's really the case. I haven't read the raws, but a lot of the TL still gives me the "hey bro, f*ck you, you s*upid bastard lmao" feeling. Very casual and familiar.A little bittersweet from the very beginning.Each character, including the side characters, has their own background that you can slowly start seeing bits and pieces about. Even while the story is centered around the MCs, the world around them is still there for the taking. There might be a lot of studying scumbags, but there aren't so many pointless idiots there for a grand faceslap. They don't win everything, and there are limits to success, even when they put in some effort and try, but sometimes the journey is more important than a first place medallion.Edit: Listened to some audiobook recs of the original CN raws (past the EN TLs of up to 117), and they're pretty damn good. Also some of the radio show, which is genuinely great.