Sol1056

Well, let's just say there's a lot of places in the story that could've stand to be edited. And by "edited", I mean "you could've told this part in 20 minutes, not an episode-plus." It's beautiful eyecandy with superb atmosphere (what Guo does do, very well), but it's also a very self-indulgent story. At least Guo kept MJTY moving along, but here he keeps putting on the brakes to linger.

I suspect the "added more episodes" wasn't because the story's that big, but because he couldn't bear to kill any of his darlings. And by "kill his darlings," I don't mean his characters. I mean all the parts he loves best, with no regard as to whether this serves the story. The *only* time a story might require a 15-minute tragic backstory about a barely-onscreen minor character is if there's info/clue in that backstory to push the plot forward AND that clue is discoverable by at least one of the major characters and *only* via that backstory. If the backstory ends and the major characters discover the clue after through different/unrelated means, the backstory was a darling.

At some point, I hope someone does an edit of this show where all the tangent darlings are edited down (if not out). My guess is the show would be about seven episodes shorter, the story would move three times as fast... and the plot holes twice as obvious. (Hopefully that kind editorial soul will find a way to also do a better bgm while they're at it.)

But of all of the above, and our first introduction to the little brother is him shifting into a woman's shape, and sitting down next to the Big Bad. And since I can't shake that we've seen multiple instances of demons changing their appearance, and the story never answered whether little brother got reincarnated, that instead this whole thing is pathos entirely for the sake of pathos. So we're being pushed to weep over this horrible situation -- repeatedly! -- and there's not one hint of that shifting-scene implied.

So little brother has decided to present as female and assist the Big Bad, which requires a ton of explanation right there. What does little brother -- as a relatively new and powerless demon -- have to offer the Big Bad?

OR:

The entire episode and the repeated emotional and psychological punishment on PSJ... was all a falsehood (inside the story), with zero value in the story line (outside the story). I'm not seeing how it's pushing the plot forward (especially since the story's just regurgitating variations on the same argument) -- and I'm left with the impression all these emotional scenes amount to basically blaming a strong female for being so strong.

I mean, I have to ask: why wouldn't the old demon just say, "yeah, here's what happened with your brother, then he became a demon, you killed him for it, he's gone." The fact he's being all mysterious and oblique also requires a ton of explanation. What does the demon gain from withholding that info? He's 100K years old, you'd think he has about as much interest in human lives as we do in the daylong lifespan of fruit flies.

More importantly, this is fiction. Every character should have a motivation (yes, even the no-name waiter has a motivation: do his job so he gets paid). Even if it's not stated explicitly, we should be able to intuit it. Alternately, the story needed a subtle nod to the 'demon cannot tell the truth unless they're at death's door' rule. In which case: if this guy is telling the truth, then the internal rules of the story's universe just got broken.

Unless, of course, it's actually the Big Bad pretending to be this guy... in which case, there are plenty of ways the Big Bad could toy with them. Using that time to make me watch a woman badgered into thinking her strength was her failing is just barely one step up from insisting a female character's rape was necessary for the story.

/rant

See if I have this right:
1. Little brother become a demon and murdered people, or vice-versa. Story says, "he was shot b/c he was demon," but personally I would've thought "because he was a cold-blooded murderer" was the bigger problem, here.
2. Autopsy confirms this, and his body is buried. (So was he reincarnated? The story's very good at not actually saying.)
3. We get brother/sister moment. Then another. And another. Oh, and a flashback.. or three? I lost count. I understand the desire to milk this pathos as much as possible, but really, this episode needed beaucoup editing. We got the point already.
4. And then we get a lecture from a super-old demon (hello there!) who somehow manages to not only provide non-answers, but to also twist it around into being the sister's fault.

Because she couldn't read minds, ergo, when her brother chose a shortcut to support her, she's to blame. For not stopping him earlier? For not being less superior? For killing him on the grounds of being a murdering demon? Hell if I know. But it's a subtly misogynistic twist, to put a guy's failings on his sister's shoulders. I mean, literally, he was weak, while she was strong. Clearly if only she'd been less strong, he would've have suffered so much. And then she refused to forgive him for being a demon -- the thing her family's hunted for generations -- or for being a murderer, so she's the one who owes the apology?

Note: this isn't the first time I've picked up misogynistic notes of this in Guo's work, but this time it's not even trying to be subtle.

(And don't even get me started on how the terms aren't made explicit. Japan, Korea, most of the West: when the devil/demon offers an exchange, the details are stated clearly. You can see this in expressions like, "if you're going to have your revenge, first dig two graves." No one signing their soul away is in any doubt what'll happen to their soul, is my point. But here, the demon says there's a price, but doesn't bother giving the terms. What you have here is a contract, and folklore in many, many places sees this is 'each party should know what they're getting, and what they're paying.' Frankly, I'd love a story in which a demon plays fast and loose like this one, and gets taken to court for it.)

I'm on ep9 and this subplot is {edit} frustrating me so much [/edit] right now.

So we're two for two, in terms of TJR's role in a story. I have a feeling GJM's going to put this kid into a box (typecasting him, that is). TJR seems to have the chops to do more than 'tortured angsty wuxia-esque hero with a quick temper and fierce fighting skills'. If he's going to have a long career, he needs to move into roles that demand more than just staring balefully while being very pretty doing it.

yes, four-fifths charming, one-fifth rascal!

We've all seen the "must lean over the FL to guide her brush" calligraphy scene, but anyone else here getting the sense that directors have discovered it's somehow 4x as romantic if the one doing the leaning is ZWY?

How does that saying go? "Every accusation is a confession"? Definitely fits here.

Now if only we didn't also have to listen to a song end, silence for several lines of dialogue, and then the start of a new unrelated song. It's like the production team took a mix CD, didn't bother turning on the fade-in/fade-out options, and set it to play... and that silence was just about the right length usually left blank between songs on a disc. I'm just sayin'.

Ep6: now that's how you're supposed to do a dream sequence. We get context for ZYC's trauma, and he doesn't just defeat the source of the trauma. He resolves at least some part of the trauma, and thus changes as a character. Dream sequences that just hint at things while most of the details are cloaked in fog are just eyecandy filler. Unless a scene results in a character's growth or the progression of the plot, they're just time spent that amount to nothing (other than eyecandy, that is). This isn't advanced screenwriting, either. It's just become rare to see a drama do it properly.

If there's no composer listed in an episode's closing credits, it means they probably choose from a selection of canned music. As in, pre-made (not always for a specific show), and either royalty-free or already-paid-for by the studio or production company. If that's the case, if you're lucky, the music will be listed in the credits. (Just because you don't have to pay royalties doesn't mean you don't have to credit, generally speaking.)

Short version: good luck, but you may be setting yourself for mission impossible.

Oh, you're absolutely right. I was just finishing up the last scenes of ep5, and the long rather melancholy (and frankly not entirely clear in terms of motivation or timeline) story + backstory get sad violins, then abrupt funny music, then tense music, then sad violins... and it just seems to me, you can carry the sad music through all of it, it just needs to be toned down to be more subtle. That'd create the space for tension-breaking moments followed by more tension.

JoL is one of my favorites for taking what's clearly pre-made musical pieces, connecting them by subtle bgm during conversations, and then letting the music come to the foreground in the scene's ending emotion. It does that well on the tango/upbeat music, but also on that haunting melody that rises into a lingering note. Those two motifs were re-used regularly, but rarely as a "here's how you should feel" and more of "now that you feel gut-punched, we're gonna drive it home with this melody." That's what I mean by trusting the audience to already feel the emotion you're evoking, letting them have the space to feel that, and using music to then extend it, draw it out, to amplify what we already feel. But that does take a lot of trust in the audience to meet you there, and sometimes I get the strong impression that's what Guo isn't able to do.

Just food for thought. At this point, I'd just be happy if the music stopped doing mid-scene thematic swerves. Le sigh.

Ah, that's how Guo does his bgm in every work I'm seen from him. Honestly, I'm not sure whether it's because Guo has no patience for a musical theme that works as a through-line (let alone character-based motifs), just won't spend the money on a composer with the skills to do that, or won't spend the money on sound engineers who'd have a clue about musical motifs, even if the music's pulled from a royalty-free CD... or he can't allow space for the audience to figure things out. Guo is good at getting his actors to all speak as if they mean twenty other things, but he's not so good at knowing which of those things should be hints the audience could puzzle out.

And given how his endings often feel disjointed (especially the 11th-hour abrupt reversals), I suspect on some level he knows his stories can't hold up on their own. He holds the storyline in a death grip because I think he's aware clues might help viewers figure out which plotpoints go nowhere, existing solely to increase tension and confuse us, but amount to nothing (that way lies frustrated audiences who drop a show). Makes sense he wouldn't want a musical motif for fear it'd give something away (ie, when character D shows up, you hear melody P).

Or it's a far simpler reason: he assumes his audience is too stupid to know how to feel if he didn't supply cue-cards. As if a sad scene requires sad music so we know it's sad -- and if there's sudden humor, we'd never know it unless the sad music immediately quit and was replaced by happy music. I personally suspects it's a combination of at least the last two: he avoids musical motifs, prefers to keep the music simplistic and on-the-nose, because anything with more depth might give the viewers clues as to where things are really going (or that they're not going anywhere at all).

the continued sly references to him being a monkey seemed wrong at first -- surely someone so powerful must be yet another dragon -- but the whole "chaos follows you" is textbook monkey trait. And it's like every now and then he breaks his cool-and-powerful facade to show he's hiding his playful inner dork.

Sometimes I think I'm hearing the actor's own voice, and sometimes I think it's just a really good VA's mimicry. I'm pretty sure that's TJR's own voice, but what about Neo or CDL? Anyone with better ears who can tell?

No, I meant as in progressing to the point of actually discussing marriage. Although now that you mention it, she's acted the same way with 3rd brother. Could be she grew up affection-starved and/or touch-starved? What I can't tell is whether she's ignorant of the ramifications, or just chooses to ignore them. Food for thought.

No, the flashback makes it pretty clear: SZ had forced FL to the cliff, FL had fallen but was holding on to the edge. LJX arrives, and his dismissive "it doesn't matter, it's just a girl" was clearly audible to FL, from the way it's framed. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason she let go was *because* she'd heard him say that, and concluded he wouldn't be bothered to save her, anyway. So she might as well let go (of the cliff physically, and of him emotionally).

Okay, the irony runs deep, here. In ep24's flashback, when LJX tells the Song girl "You forced me to marry you [by using your family's power]. When I wasn't willing to do so, you joined hands with [insert enemy name here] to harm me. You think I'd submit and join [your family] willingly, when you back me into a corner?"

I mean, seems to me you could take this exact quote, change a few names, and it'd be entirely believable that if things go the way they're going, FL will end up spitting these same words in LJX's face.

Sorry, I hear "lovers" and can't help but think of the modern meaning (as a romantic way to say "they had sex"). I get the impression they were first friends, but with the potential for romance. However, she had to know anything more required family permission... so I expect she still kept him a little at arm's length, not sure if her father would disagree just to be a jerk.

I mean, the guy never even knew her real name, which seems like a minimum for any real intimacy. (Did she even know his?) Then again, if he had known her identity, he would've gone straight to her family with some story and sealed a marriage agreement that'd kick in the moment she resurfaced. Until he showed up and pissed off the entire family, he might've had a good chance the family would be delighted with his rank, even if she wanted him thrown out the nearest high window.

"Clarifying the past doesn't change the present." Excellently put.