And of course reading between the lines can be difficult if you don't have enough background knowledge about what's being glossed over, which I feel like I often don't.
SAME. Sometimes I don't even know where the lines to read between are, and other times I don't know if I'm reading the right things between them...

and also character-driven, which isn't something I would have really predicted
I don't know if I chose exactly the right word, but I guess I mean the interest of getting to "know" each of them so that relatively ordinary events/actions are fun to watch because you can think "yeah, he would say that," or conversely notice how someone who started out withdrawn is now more affectionate with the others in passing, and so on.
(and yeah, "irrepressible" is an excellent word for Li Hao!)

I just recently went through a deck of Anki cards for learning all the Chinese provinces, so I'm enjoying that I can now actually visualize how spread out all the places they came from are!
that sounds like a fun deck! and yeah, they are pretty widely spread in origins. (I have to say I put up Jiang Dunhao for coming from Bole, Xinjiang, the hinterland's hinterland, and making a name for himself in the east...).

"Needs [X] like a fish doesn’t need a bicycle" is a great phrase. XD
Isn't it? It's funny how these things slip through the language barriers; Li Hao can also be heard saying 世界上没有免费的午餐!