Sol1056

now if only someone would get her a real camera! 😀

Was the rumor about Demon hunter's romance airdropping from a credible source?

Does anyone else feel like the big bad isn't all that big? I don't mean in terms of threat, I mean in terms of the shadow he casts over the story. He's not a super-powered demon, he's literally just Some Guy. He doesn't appear to have significant bureaucratic rank (goal: destroy enemies in court, gain the king's favor, etc) or significant merchant value (goal: corner the market, crush competition). He's literally just Some Guy with a creepy fixation. His motivation is fuzzy at best, and while it's cliched, the "I'll do anything to achieve ____!" is at least a handy shortcut for the story to tell us what the big bad is after and possibly also some hint of why.

I'm just finding it very, very hard to get all that stressed out when I don't have the least clue what's at stake. I mean, even the show itself went, hey! horrible catastrophe affecting all these people! and then promptly spent 20+ minutes in flashbacks, long slow conversations, and weeping. When even the story can't be bothered to get all up-in-arms over something, I don't see why I should, either. Le sigh.

Part of the reason, I think, that I just can't find it in my to sympathize with LL is because he never seems to play any note other than he had such a hard life, tried so hard, everyone hates him, blah blah blah -- when he's not trying to convince everyone else they'd do the same in his place. To quote that famous line from B99: "Cool motive. Still murder."

could you pls put this behind a spoiler tag? ty

thank you!

*bows* I'm here all week! Try the veal!

I don't know if he wrote the dialogue, but I wouldn't be surprised if he introduced that (in explaining his vision) as the fulcrum of the story. Like you said, it's really the first time we get the driving theme of the story, as articulated by the two primary archetypes (the demon possessing a human vs the human who's becoming a demon). Those kinds of main-theme-moments don't come organically, at least ime; more often, that's where the story was first conceived, and good writing means the story is crafted to flow organically into and out of that point.

If that was his fulcrum, then it's probably a scene that got a LOT of attention. (Besides, some directors are known to change dialogue to what they think sounds/works better, so who knows.) What also stands out is the music, lighting, pacing, and framing are all so much cleaner... not even an abrupt awkward shift between musical themes. Which also makes me think of the scene when WX wakes ZY and he thinks he's still dreaming -- it's the first time I could think of that a potentially comic moment did _not_ get immediate comic music, but continued with the melancholy musical theme. I'd bet that's another of the origin scenes, too.

The guy (5th young master?) who shows up in ep21, is that the same guy who took off with a box of pearls about a dozen episodes before? I'm not good at remembering faces, so he looks familiar but hell if I know if it's from this drama or some other drama. Help?

Oh, she's getting paid, but not by the production companies. She's monetized herself on YT (which afaik does pay for ad time linked to a channel, no idea if wiebo does the same or to the same level). Basically, the more vitriol she can spew, the more people will watch, because everyone loves a train wreck and nothing sells like antagonism and conflict.

So yeah, she's making money, but it's probably entirely thanks to the people who tune in to see how low she'll go this time.

Q for all you fellow writers: did anyone else get the sense from that road-side one-on-one between LL and ZYC that it's the Most Likely Origin for the story? As in, a scene Guo had in his head, with time to finesse the exchange into a full scene... and the rest of the story is just the process of getting to that point?

Every story seems to have an inspiration point, whether it's specific dialogue or visual. "I had the image of a lone woman walking through the desert..." "I kept hearing two people arguing, and one of them shouted about 'ending the train'..." And so on. Sometimes you only have a suspicion you've hit that scene, other times, you can't miss it, thanks to all the attention lavished on it. Or in the case of that specific scene in FoF, dialogue that's suddenly smooth, beautifully eloquent, and (most importantly) non-repetitive, with a clear progression through the argument to a chef's-kiss end point.

No one else? Just me? (Not a surprise if so!)

I meant the final question/answer, the one about "learning from Duanwu in the modern workplace". I know the bit about Gen Z uses idioms that require a good footnote to explain, but her comment about Duanwu is there in the middle. What would be the correct(ed) translation of that final exchange?

Someone tell me I misread ZL's interview translation totally wrong, but this line (near the end) stuck with me, when ZL said of her character, "Take Duanwu, for example, even as the leading lady, she has it all but loses it all in the end." This does not bode well.

(Not to mention, I'm definitely tired of LYN's tragic dying streak. I really hope PoB someday sees the light, if for nothing else but so we can see LYN getting a happy ending!)

I do like how MS' weapon is a redux of Monkey's staff. And it's continued with LMM's divine/rainbow soul and MS' demonic/dark soul, plus LMM apparently one of the only who can snap MS out of his temper. Strong shades of Tang Sanzang keeping Sun Wukong in check... which come to think of it, altho Journey to the West is ostensibly 'going to get the sutras' its throughline is Monkey's evolution from wilful rebel into achieving Buddhahood. (Just like LGEF has story lines for each character, it's MS' storyline that's going through the biggest changes.)

In that case: who's Zhu Bajie (aka "Idiot Pig"), Sha Wujing (Sand Troll or River Demon), and Bai Long Ma (the Dragon Horse)... which I guess would be too much, playing the story that close to the original. Though I could see CC being the clumsy one whose plans usually backfire (a la ZB), and maybe (if I squint hard) MY being the dragon horse (in terms of leading the group forward) -- but I think that's probably stretching it.

Still, if I'm seeing the tropes right, I'm calling it here: the ending will include LMM getting a (written) text of some sort and/or MS becoming enlightened about the true nature of reality thanks to LMM's influence.

agreed. it's definitely gotten to be too much. I think the director is just in love with the visual of a single tear slowly dripping down someone's face. Strangely, the only time I've cried from only one eye is when something got under my contact lens. As of ep27, the waterworks are really starting to annoy me. It's like when comedians laugh at their own jokes, and suddenly it's unfunny for the rest of us. Except this was the tragic version, and the result was the only dry eyes in the house were mine.

Crying is a strong emotion, and if you use it for every damn scene, eventually it loses that punch and becomes, oh, look, more one-eyed glycerin tears.

*spits tea* OH THANKS FOR THAT VISUAL. 😂😂😂 you cruel cruel person.

But I also see it as a means to learn/analyze what's crafting a story vs breaking it, although I'm probably alone in that. Like, what would I have done to make this scene tighter? What clues could I have laid beforehand to make this reveal feel inevitable (and thus way worse)? Or: instead of making the main chars go stupid so the antags can follow them, how can I make the antags smarter to outwit the smart main chars? And so on.

I mean, it's whatever gets you through the night, eh.

(yeah, but I figured, better safe than angry fist-shaking!)

Then a well-written story would've had someone notice pretty quickly that ZY's radar isn't alerting any more. Even if they didn't realize *what* was wrong, knowing someone snuck up on Radar Demon would've told them *something* was wrong. (And that'd be when to throw in some good red herrings so they don't figure it out until it's too late.) Then we'd know the characters are fallible (ie ZY) but also smart enough to pay attention and catch details.

I feel like we're watching a rough draft, instead of something edited like you'd expect a production of this much investment to be.

It's in the editing that you re-read, realize the plot holes, and fill them. And it's also in the editing that you realize you've had character X say basically the same damn thing three times... like ep27, where swear to dog by the 3/4 mark I wanted to throttle the dragon/voice/whatever it was. That was a hell of a lot of repetition from a disembodied voice, on top of a hell of lot of long shots and slow dialogue that repeated or replayed stuff we'd either already figured out or had already been told.

A good solid edit would've caught all that, along with all the breaking of the world's rules -- *and* all the times the main characters had to be hit with stupid sticks for scenes or twists to work. (Not to mention, I thought the shapeshifter and LL/BJ were waiting at the gate for them? Did they get bored and go home? What's happening? I don't know and with each extended view of a character posed prettily while nothing happens, I'm having more and more trouble caring.

/writer rant