#yknow the co-lead. also i have so many weird analytical thoughts that have no answers about just the shift in directing

[shiegra]

super brief thoughts on Li Su Su

I feel like I ragged a little on her in the last post and I want to clarify - I find both her book and show counterparts fascinating. While I do love the uneasy-frenemy banter in the books between Li Su Su and Tantai Jin, where they always know the other is up to something and all their repartee has the edge of a knife even as they grow to have a strange understanding and twisted fascination of the other deeper than anyone else’s -

The narrative as it stood, this serial oft-travelogue in that subgenre of batshit action and over the top characters, would have been harder to sell on screen. I think they made an excellent choice to focus on Tantai Jin as a more complex, nuanced character and build up his personal journey. While the webnovel’s fast pace and action could carry the roadtrip adventures as they meandered back to main plot, both budget and the need for consistent overarching story structure complicate that for show.

(I also think this politely avoided some incredibly Unfortunate Implications regarding people with antisocial personality disorders due to the in-your-face allegory lol.)

In doing so they had to change up her character, and possibly played it safe due to genre conventions leaned into her directness to keep the plot moving. (Given the care and energy with which they fleshed out the two biggest secondary female characters.) But it’s also fascinating to me because even her lighter show characterization feels like it’s calling back to book characterization - but book characterization from the second dream, of her younger mischievous fairy self before the weight of apocalypse crushed her into what she is in the opening of the book.

(Plus on just a personal level maybe partly due to early fandoms I had and neglected female characters there, female characters with somewhat messy writing but who are so fascinating to explore the implications and potential layers of are like catnip to me.)

#TEOM meta #im still not sure this is coherent but i KNOW that if i put it in drafts again to write better later it will DIE there lol so #im trying to actually post things im excited to write and think about instead of everything dying on the vine because it's not 'perfect' #believe me it is wild to hear myself say 'i think they made the right choice in shifting the main protagonist to the male lead from FL' #but it really was and although LSS ended up a little simplified with less time devoted to her changing complex emotions she's still #yknow the co-lead. also i have so many weird analytical thoughts that have no answers about just the shift in directing #e.g. in early scenes with the flat composition of her contemplating him on the ice and him on the ice where i feel like the tone doesn't #quite come through. is it meant to convey a creeping sense of callousness that peaks in the whipping? #but she COULD act that - we see it in others scenes - so the combination of her sitcom acting and the shot composition and music #it feels like she was directed to act the scenes very very casually and thus leaving it tonally jarring in a sort of fascinating way #anyway i think this adaptation is kind fo amazing there's so many points where they tease out book themes and threads #and weave them back in to a different point in the story (bcs of compression) where it ends up MAKING MORE SENSE??? #SO fun to just chew on with my brain as someone who read the book and enjoyed it with critiques and has been enjoying the show a lot as #well just also with some critiques. just genuinely really cool and exciting to dig into the writing craft of it or at least try