Heaven Official's Blessing rewatch, first 6 episodes

Yes, I just finished this series and am already rewatching it. What can I say, it's enjoyable and I'm in need of a comfort rewatch. This is going to be a tough week at work, with people asking my department to perform miracles with hair straighteners when we could have just followed the directions of the disaster recovery we paid for me to take (this is on me, too: I am apparently a complete failure at convincing anyone to do anything that doesn't involve MARC data).

Those depressing thoughts aside: I'm enjoying this show even more the second time around, because I don't have to simultaneously concentrate quite so much on the subs (which I still think are terrible - even the first episode contains something like "Your dress is broken" rather than "Your dress is torn") and visuals.

Some notes:

• One of Xie Lian's assistants is horrified when he learns that Xie Lian only has one bed and that he and San Lang must therefore have shared a bed. San Lang, meanwhile, is on the sidelines looking incredibly smug.
• I think poor Ling Wen is the primary person keeping heaven functional. While all the other deities are bickering amongst themselves, she's the one keeping things organized and getting stuff done.
• If you put Xie Lian's assistants and their generals in a room together, I might be able to tell them apart. Separately, however, I can never remember who's who.
• I'm not sure if he does it due to a flash of jealousy or if it's just that San Lang doesn't feel like trying to get along with anyone who isn't Xie Lian, but I enjoy his attempts to rile up Xie Lian's assistants.
• I've now finished Book 2 of the novel, the long plague flashback and Hua Cheng's first interactions with Xie Lian, and several of the quickie flashback scenes in the animation now make a lot more sense. Like, that particular umbrella has a lot more significance than I realized. Also, San Lang might have been lying about the origin of Hua Cheng's name ("Crimson Rain Sought Flower") - another explanation seems to be that young Hua Cheng used to pick flowers for one of Xie Lian's statues on a daily basis.

I still have the Banyue stuff to rewatch, and I'm still not wild about it, but at least I have a few more San Lang and Xie Lian cute scene rewatches to look forward to. Based on what I've read of the novel, I've been trying to guess what Season 2 will be like, and I'm thinking it'll start with the gambling stuff (which is going to be great fun to see on-screen) and then move into a long series of flashback episodes that will be made somewhat bearable with Xie Lian and young Hua Cheng scenes. But ugh, I'm not looking forward to seeing Xie Lian suffer and angst over what to do about Yong'an's drought and the ensuing plague. It's too much like all the angst and suffering that eventually sucked out all my enjoyment of one of the author's other series, Mo Dao Zu Shi.