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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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I’ve got several asks about BJYX supertopic’s recent battle for the top CP ranking. I’ve meant to answer them the way they’re asked, but the answer gets long. Dear Anons ~ please forgive me for splitting the answers into multiple posts!

As with everything I’ve said about CPs, they’re mostly my limited observations—unlike history and news, it’s impossible to find articles about any of this that pass journalistic standards. Therefore, please consider the following to be my personal impressions and ramblings, and as usual, everyone please feel free to point out mistakes and add your own thoughts!

Everyone probably knows already, but the new drama that has brought waves to the Weibo’s CP ranking list is Word of Honour (山河令, which I will abbreviate to WoH), and the CP pairing is known as Lang Lang Ding (浪浪釘, LLD). I haven’t watched this drama yet but as a Wuxia (and slash) fan, it is on my to-watch list. Nonetheless, I’ve been watching the developments surrounding the popularity of the drama and the CPs, and I think I can make the posts long enough just with these observations alone. (I’m incredibly long winded :D )

For the CP competition, I think it’s important to point this out: the LLD supertopic is a mixed character-CP and real-person-CP supertopic, unlike the YiZhan supertopics (BJYX, ZSWW, LSFY) that are real-person-CP only. This means comparing LLD and the YiZhan supertopics is really … comparing apples and oranges, especially when WoH is still airing (and therefore providing fresh candies for the character CP with every new episode). I therefore wish this kind of popularity competition doesn’t take root in the international fandom; it’s … a bit silly to me, really. It makes little sense.

That said, however, I understand why c-turtles are fighting so hard for the #1 CP spot. C-ent (as is true with many other aspects in the country), numbers and ranking are everything. That 20(?), 40(?) minutes during which BJYX supertopic fell to #2 the first time already made “news” headlines that claimed that WoH had surpassed The Untamed (TU)—an even stranger comparison, if one thinks about it. BJYX, technically speaking, doesn’t have anything to do with TU. It’s a GG/DD real person CP.

But it doesn’t matter—numbers are numbers, and they talk to c-ent watchers, the commercial interests looking for their most promising future investments. The perceived power of c-turtles hinges on them and by power, I mean both fan power and spending power, which are almost synonymous terms in c-ent. Many of you have probably seen those charts that rank the popularity of c-ent entertainers by how much goods, in monetary value, they’re able to sell. How much do the c-turtles contribute to these monetary values? Are they, as a collection of fans, worth keeping, worth wooing?

The notion that only the fan’s spending power means something may cause unease in many i-turtles—and it is, indeed, a very cold-hearted assessment, as it implies that fans are little more than living wallets to be emptied. My observations have been that such a notion doesn’t bother c-turtles for the most part and, IMHO, they’re being realistic for their sociopolitical environment. They also respond to this notion accordingly—while it is difficult to tease out the exact percentage of turtles among Gg and Dd’s active fans (fans that make major purchases goods and merchandises), c-turtles have previously demonstrated their ability to contribute a substantial fraction (in the 10s of percent) of money spent on Gg and Dd. As these splits are only very occasionally visible to the public, the CP ranking likely serves as a constant reminder of c-turtles enormous fan/spending power — without which, Gg and Dd’s popularity will also take a hit.

In that sense, c-turtles are fighting for their right-to-exist. Remember when I talked about the “traditional” thinking that CPFs < solos, and that one CPF = one (loyal) solo lost? This means c-turtles must be able to demonstrate their ability to offer something that the solos cannot, and more importantly, that their offer will not come in any other name. If c-turtles proved last year that they wouldn’t change their name to solos, then this year they’re set to prove they’ll not change their name to LLDs or other CPFs.

If the latter sounds a bit like a battlecry, it may be exactly that. Ever since the announcements of the long line of upcoming Dangai’s, ample inflammatory posts have been made on the platform to get c-turtles to “defect” to the new dramas, or predict that as soon as another pair of random, beautiful men start to throw candies on screen, c-turtles will promptly forget about Gg and Dd and join the fun. The latter, especially, can be quite insulting to read, as one can imagine. However, with c-turtles being a loosely connected group of millions, despite their apparent firm stance that they shall stay turtle, their underlying nerves that these “insults” may turn out to be true can also be felt — the worry that c-turtledom will haemorrhage when the next popular Dangai with enticing M/M CPs (character or real person) come along.

WoH, as the first drama that fits the criteria, is therefore a test— a test that many c-turtles likely view they must pass with flying colours to prove their point, to stand with their heads held high among those who do not care about BJYXSZD (not necessarily solos—many solos, BTW, have actually helped the turtles out this time); to show that turtles are not only every bit as loyal as other Gg and Dd fans, they’re not so … cheap as to take any random “industrial saccharine” (工業糖精; referring to ZQSG-free candies created solely to lure in fans) and walk away.

The reform of the BJYX supertopic (which now allows candy analysis and explains the sudden appearance of many old candies), the flood of BTS videos from almost every Zhan Jie previously involved with the YiZhan CPs, the temporary retaking of the top 3 CP spots by BJYX+ZSWW+LSFY ... can therefore be viewed as a rally of c-turtles. The message is: we’re not going anywhere. We’ve got enough candies that no other (M/M) CPs can hope to match in quantity, in quality.

(And the parade is indeed impressive.) (The reform also didn’t come out of thin air; there have been discussions about the supertopic’s candy sharing rules before.)

Some c-turtles have rightfully been concerned about how such a parade of candies can affect Gg and Dd. They point out that some candies should still remain 閱後即焚 (“burn after reading”, instant return to hiding after release like certain BTS videos); that at some point, c-turtles have to let go of their obsession of staying on top of the CP rankings. TU is already almost 2 years old, and being a little lower on the CP ranking list will take the heat off the YiZhan fandoms in the long run, incite less outside forces trying to fan the flames between the shrimps and the motors and the turtles.

The rules and guidelines of c-turtledom therefore remain a work in progress, and c-turtles, the millions of them, are still learning as they go.

Personally, I have faith in what will come. I also haven’t been too concerned about the candy parade, because most information is already out there for those who’re determined to find them — on Bilibili, Douyin, Zhihu etc. I spent some time talking about the Gg Assistant fic not with the goal of eliciting pain or panic, but rather, as a demonstration of why it has been the tradition of CPFs—not only the turtles—to play things very cautiously, with 閱後即焚 and 圈地自萌 (“to play within the circle”; ie, keep all information and candies within CPFs) being the default rules even after removing the “queer factor” from the discussion. Real person CPs have fate as one of their writers and so, unlike character CPs, their candies can have unintended, unpredictable consequences. As the YiZhan fandoms have now grown big enough that their candies can no longer be realistically well-contained, it may not be such a bad idea for especially the sensitive candies to return under the “jurisdiction” of the BJYX supertopic, so to speak. c-turtles can then gain better control of their comes-and-goes. Their narratives.

(CPN below.)

About narratives. @rainbowsky have previously written a thoughtful piece on the possible reasons the YiZhan fandoms have been allowed to thrive, and I’d like to add the following hypothesis—it may be a way to take pre-emptive control of the Gg/Dd narrative in preparation for the scenario where their relationship is exposed without their consent. Some i-turtles, I think, may have already gained a sense of how ruthless, cruel and above all, quick the c-ent rumour mill can be. If Gg and Dd get outed by a third party, chances are they won’t have time at all to create a fresh narrative, and the one that come out of the rumour mill will likely be … very ugly, containing every worst misconception people have against homosexual relationships. Whereas now, c-turtles already have a narrative at hand—the canon-fanon that, while c-turtles may not agree on every detail, is largely agreed upon on the important milestones. The supporting materials are also ready: the videos, the images, the voice and arrow guides on them.

For me, another interesting question is whether this c-turtle rally and parade of candies are truly necessary in the end.

I’m curious about what will happen to the LLD supertopic when WoH completes its airing. There’s really no precedence for this kind of a mixed character + real person M/M CP supertopic setup — the history of Dangai is short, of popular Dangai’s, even shorter.

Guardian (鎮魂), the first successful Dangai aired exactly a year before TU (in the summer of 2018), never had a dedicated CP supertopic (please holler if I got this wrong! I know there’re Guardian fans here ~ hello! *waves*). Discussions of Guardian’s CPs were found within the drama’s supertopic (剧版镇魂); the real-person-CP also never had its own name; its discussions were hidden under the character CP (巍瀾) tag.

Then came TU. Its real person CP (BJYX) split away from its character CP (WangXian) long before the airing for the drama—the birthdate of the BJYX supertopic was 2018/04/28 (TU’s airing date: 2019/06/27).

After TU, two Dangai dramas have already aired before WoH that seemed to have largely passed the attention of i-fandom: The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (成化十四年) and Winter Begonia (鬢邊不是海棠紅). Winter Begonia, in particular, was well received. Their character CPs never really took off, however, being conceived and perceived as more brotherhood than romance. Age also played a factor for Winter Begonia—Yun Zheng (尹正), known to many turtles as Dd’s motorcycle buddy, is 34, and Huang Xiaoming (黃曉明) is 43. The associated real person CPs also never became popular as a result; Huang Xiaoming’s famous marriage to a beautiful actress also meant that a real person CP was likely to be off the table for Winter Begonia from the start.

The best reference I can think of then, when it comes to speculating the fate of LLD, is therefore the fates of the CP supertopics of 2020’s summer hit, Love and Redemption (琉璃). I’ve talked about its character CP before; essentially, just days after the drama was done airing, the (het) character CP (初遇夫婦) was broken up and in a manner largely criticised as unnecessarily cruel to CP fans. Its supertopic closed immediately afterwards. The supertopic for the real-person-CP (冰橙汁) got to live, however, and is still active today.

The commercial forces behind WoH will likely break the character CP as soon as the drama is done airing; popular het and non-het character CPs in the recent years have gone through similar fates. What does this mean to LLD then? Does it mean the supertopic will be shutdown, since the drama itself already has its own supertopic? But what will happen then to its real-person CP, which has been incorporated within the LLD supertopic? Will the real-person CP be broken at the same time as the character CP to allow for immediate “purification” of real person CP fans into solo fans, to avoid future “headaches” like BYYX—a bound between the actors that cannot be severed—or 227 that, in the eyes of many passerbys, remains an issue of solo vs cpfs?

Only time will tell, and I very sincerely hope it’ll get a happy ending. Fans are made to love, and it saddens me every time to see them being severed from their loves, or pitted against each other especially when it’s clear it’s the social media platforms, the commercial interests behind the scenes — not just the production/media companies but the YXHs, the water armies — who will reap the benefits in the end. Personally, I feel no joy in seeing anyone’s favourites getting torn down, even if they aren’t my own. Gg and Dd’s safety — and the safety of every upstanding, hardworking c-ent entertainer like them — doesn’t hinge so much on their CP or solo or drama ranking, but whether their fans can refrain from bringing their conflicts into the public eye, from “occupying social resources”—ie, deflecting the public’s attention from the “core socialist values” the government intends it to focus on.

Fandom is big enough for us all.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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tiramisiyu · 3 years

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Tears of Themis: Main Story 4-12 Translation

Chapter 4 – Heart’s Fire: 4-1 / 4-3 / 4-5 / 4-6 / 4-8 / 4-9 / 4-11 / 4-12 / 4-13 / 4-15 / 4-17 / 4-18

Translation Masterlist: here

Video: 【未定事件簿】第四章《心火》剧情_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ干杯~-bilibili

Huang Haochu’s book room

In Huang Haochu’s book room, Lu Jinghe and I found lots of information about Zhang Zhuo’s case.

According to our speculations, Yuan Ting is most likely Zhang Zhuo’s son, as well as twins with Zhang Hao.

Lu Jinghe had his assistant think up a way to obtain Yuan Ting’s paternity test report from the private doctor to support our speculations.

As we waited, the two of us continued to look for clues in Huang Haochu’s book room, trying to unlock the password-protected folder on the notebook laptop.

Lu Jinghe: “Every person has a bundle of fire in their heart”... does this point to Van Gogh’s artworks?

MC: The sunflowers were Van Gogh’s masterpieces. I see that there are more than one sunflower pieces in the room. We should examine them.

BEGIN INVESTIGATION

On the left of the top of the bookshelf was placed a piece of art with grey-and-white sunflowers.

[15-Sunflower Painting] Front, Flowers

MC: This piece of art has 15 sunflowers.

Lu Jinghe: Among the pieces handed down from Van Gogh, there are three with 15 sunflowers.

Lu Jinghe: The original of this piece is kept in England. How about I bring you there to see when we get the chance?

MC: Sure. Going with you to check out an art exhibition sounds pretty interesting.

[15-Sunflower Painting] Back, Writing on the Bottom-Right Corner

MC: 7.9. It was finished on July 9th.

Lu Jinghe: Mhmm, if it was done in the same year, this piece of art was finished later than the piece we saw earlier.

On the right of the top of the bookshelf was placed a piece of art with grey-and-white sunflowers.

[12-Sunflower Painting] Front, Flowers

MC: This piece of art has 12 sunflowers. Though it’s grey and white, looking at the flower’s shape, they really do look like bundles of fire.

Lu Jinghe: Van Gogh liked rural scenes the best. He poured his enthusiasm for life into his works.

Lu Jinghe: He treated colour with unique persistence. If you have a chance to see the original for this piece, you’ll have a deeper understanding of this point.

MC: 12 flowers...does the password include 12?

[12-Sunflower Painting] Back, Date on the Bottom-Right Corner

MC: 6.23 - this piece should have been finished after the three-sunflower piece we saw earlier.

Lu Jinghe: The year isn’t written - we can only guess with this theory.

I lifted up the toppled-over art easel.

[Unfinished 5-Sunflower Painting] Front, Flowers

MC: This piece with sunflowers actually has colour, but it looks like it wasn’t finished. The background wasn’t painted.

Lu Jinghe: This piece… wasn’t painted by Teacher Huang. Or you could say, it wasn’t entirely drawn by Teacher Huang.

MC: How can you see that?

Lu Jinghe: On this piece, there are two kinds of completely different brush movement styles. Among them, one kind’s expertise was clearly not sufficient.

MC: This kind of thing can even be seen?

Lu Jinghe: Compared to other art mediums, strokes from oil painting are easier to discern.

Lu Jinghe: The draft of this painting should be done by Teacher Huang, but the part of the work with colour should have been done by someone else.

Lu Jinghe: It seems like this person’s time spent getting used to oil painting wasn’t long. They were hesitant when putting down strokes.

Lu Jinghe: Maybe they felt pressured from copying a large master’s work, or it could be…

I was listening to Lu Jinghe’s review, but he suddenly stopped speaking.

MC: What else could it be?

Lu Jinghe: Nothing. Either way, this piece wasn’t done by Teacher Huang.

Lu Jinghe: It’s a pity that the original of this piece was destroyed in the fires of war. I won’t have the chance to take you to see the original’s elegance.

[Unfinished 5-Sunflower Painting] Back, Writing on the Bottom-Right Corner

MC: There’s no time written on this piece. Instead, two English words are written.

Lu Jinghe: Maybe because it wasn’t finished…

Lu Jinghe: “To Theo”...

Lu Jinghe: Theo should mean Vincent Van Gogh’s little brother, Theo Van Gogh.

Lu Jinghe: He was the closest person to Van Gogh from birth, and was also his most loyal supporter.

Account Book for Black Market Transactions

In the bookshelf, when we were investigating the artworks, I noticed that the lattice of one of the shelf doors was a little strange.

When I accidentally bumped into the backplane of the lattice, it made a noise like I was knocking on the door of an empty cabinet.

MC: Could it be that there is something behind this cabinet…?

I felt along the edge of the backplane, and though I didn’t know what I’d hit, the back panel actually opened. Inside, there was a notebook.

MC: Is this… Leinster’s account book for the black market transactions?

Lu Jinghe: “Picture of Rafting in the East Lake”... so the original of this piece went into the black market.

MC: What, was this piece very famous?

Lu Jinghe: It is pretty famous, though not to the point where it’s known to all.

Lu Jinghe: In the past two years, there was a loan shark whose boss really liked this piece. He set a high asking price, wanting to buy it.

Lu Jinghe: That person offered a very high price for that piece on the artwork markets, but no one brought it out.

MC: Leinster sold a forgery of this piece to… Zhang Zhuo! It was actually Zhang Zhuo!

Lu Jinghe: Are you sure?

MC: It’s written very clearly in the account book, though it doesn’t record the buyer of the original piece.

Lu Jinghe: Now I finally understand why Yuan Ting made a trip down to Teacher Huang’s house.

MC: So you mean, Yuan Ting came here to find this piece? But what does he need it for - to burn it for Zhang Zhuo and his wife who’ve already died?

Lu Jinghe: That’s right. Because that loan shark’s boss was Zhang Zhuo’s creditor.

MC: So you mean, in spite of how the market value of “Picture of Rafting in the East Lake” isn’t that high…

MC: This piece, in the eyes of Zhang Zhuo’s creditor, is a piece that’s nearly impossible to find!

MC: If Zhang Zhuo gave this piece to the creditor from the beginning, could they possibly have prevented the tragedy where he committed self-immolation and lit the whole family on fire?

Lu Jinghe: Yep. It’s just a pity that the “Picture of Rafting in the East Lake” that Zhang Zhuo bought from Leinster was a fake.

Lu Jinghe: This also explains why Zhang Zhuo’s family was pushed for payment to the point of death, and why Yuan Ting was particularly resentful about Leinster’s counterfeit auction goods.

Lu Jinghe: Now, he wants to get the piece’s original, since he probably wants to resolve the knots in his heart before he leaves Stellis City.

Lu Jinghe: There are 10 digits for the folder password…

Lu Jinghe: The other paintings in the room don’t have anything to do with Van Gogh. Could the password be hidden in the sunflowers?

MC: If the password is 10 digits long, then it definitely points to the sunflowers.

ANALYSIS START

The password is hidden in the sunflowers, because…

Number of flowers: On the copied pieces of Van Gogh’s art, one piece of info that is clearly related to numbers is the number of flowers.

Dates on art pieces: On the copied pieces of Van Gogh’s art, one piece of info that is clearly related to numbers is the dates.

MC: Each sunflower piece has a date that the piece was made, and the number of sunflowers can also be clearly seen.

MC: I bet, if we arrange the number of sunflowers by the dates, we can get the file’s password.

Lu Jinghe: If we arrange by date, 3, 12, 15… the piece with 5 sunflowers wasn’t finished, so it’s obviously the last.

Lu Jinghe: 312155… there are only six digits.

MC: The fifth sunflower piece has that English bit, right - Theo.

MC: Plus, the password hint is a phrase from a letter Van Gogh sent to Theo. Of course, it’s “To Theo”.

Lu Jinghe: As expected, my lawyer is the greatest.

ANALYSIS END

Lu Jinghe entered “312155Theo” on the laptop. As expected, the folder opened.

Surprisingly, inside was just a simple file, nothing else.

#tot translation #tears of themis #weiding shijian bu #未定事件簿 #lu jinghe

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