dramanovellife

[dramanovellife]

hi! i've seen you mentioned some criticism before the release of woh but i'm a relatively recent fan, if you don't mind could you explain what happened?

WOH's casting was not well received, basically.

People are always dissatisfied with castings tbh, but the reaction to WOH's was especially negative. Simply put, people thought the two of them were "too manly" to star in dangai. Because GJ and ZZH are "too manly", they must be "too straight", and because they're "too straight" it must mean that acting in a love story with another man would be too difficult for them. Based on that very flawed assumption, people believed they would be too awkward to act out a proper romance with each other and so their chemistry would be nonexistent.

People were especially dissatisfied with ZZH because his image was very stereotypically manly (this is a "problem" because Zhou Zishu is a shou/bottom), he's had at least two girlfriends before and he's known for not performing fanservice with his costars.

GJ has actually starred in a BL before (an actual one, not censored) but it wasn't aired in China, so people only knew him through his het dramas. Like ZZH, his appearance did not fit fans' image of the character he was casted as.

It's not that people were particularly angry (TYK is one of priest's older and less popular books, so it doesn't have a dedicated fandom that would care enough to get angry) it's just that people took one look at the casting and immediately thought "there's no way that's going to work" and promptly noped out.

The show had only one scriptwriter (in cdramas, it's common to have at least two or three working on one script together) and she was a newbie, on top of that. When leaks came out, people thought the costumes were ugly which further solidified the "this will definitely flop" opinion about the show. The low funding and lack of sponsors did not help improve the show's reputation. People saw the early leaks and promotional stuff and said that it looked like GJ and ZZH didn't get along and secretly hated each other.

Only eight or so fanstations were set up for WOH at that time, while the other productions had at least twenty. I think h/yx had around sixty? And in polls conducted on weibo, WOH was almost always voted as the least anticipated dangai drama and the most likely to fail. No one paid attention to it. It seemed pretty chill on the outside because nobody cared, but the situation within the fandom was...messy.

It's very, VERY lucky that no one cared about them, because there were quite a few bad incidents involving toxic solo fans during filming. Simply put, GJ and ZZH's solo fans thought that the two of them seemed way too close. There was a GJ fangroup that ended up disbanding because the fans running it were so pissed (one of them apparently came up to GJ and argued with him over ZZH). There was also the incident of ZZH's fans saying really horrible things to him on weibo because his studio uploaded pics of him with GJ (one "fan" told him to go see a psychiatrist) that he ended up arguing with them before eventually deleting his weibo app. I remember at that time being super thankful whenever I see h/yx trending on weibo, because that means all the attention was still on it and not at whatever tf was going on with GJ and ZZH. The lack of attention was a blessing.

Anyway, things worked out in the end. The script ended up being one of the best in recent years, everyone fawned over the quality of the costumes, and people were quick to change their minds about the casting once they started watching. The lack of sponsors meant there were less greedy businessmen dipping their slimy, uncultured fingers into the production (that's why a lot of high budget cdramas are shit) and the production team had complete control of the creative process. And of course, the funniest thing has to be that the actors that people thought secretly hated each other ended up being the only popular dangai actors so far to support and protect each other instead of competing for fans and money.

#word of honor

[dramanovellife]

more wenzhou/LLD brainrot idk what the hell is going on anymore tbh: (PART THREE)

1. Jiangxi's Fire Department (from Zhang Zhehan's hometown) wished Gong Jun a Happy Father's Day on their official weibo. What is the context, you ask? It's likely a reference to one of Gong Jun's many nicknames within the fandom. And yes, the supposed "mother" is exactly who you think it is.

You'd think that after the end of all official promotions for WOH, their chaotic hometown weibo accounts would finally run out of excuses to make all these wild posts, but it's been months now. Apparently, peace was never an option.

2. ElleMen Magazine posted a feature about male celebrities and their "heart-thumping moves". For Gong Jun, they used his interactions with Zhang Zhehan as an example.

"In order to match the height of the other person, he lowers his head and slightly bends down. Just thinking about this picture, one's heart jumps out! For this, we have to cue Gong Jun. Although their height difference is just a few centimeters, he always bows his head everytime he listens to what Zhang-Laoshi has to say,"

"And the whole process is very natural, a completely subconscious reaction. During the recording of the variety show Ace Actress, Zhehan simply tapped Junzi and Junzi automatically lowered his head to listen to him,"

"Let's take a look at how the two usually look at each other. Well, the background music should be: "I smile as soon as I see you! Your elegant demeanor is so wonderful~"

If you have any questions don't even bother asking because nobody knows what the hell is going on.

3. Marie Claire's official weibo accidentally posted a photo of Zhang Zhehan in Gong Jun's supertopic. They realized their mistake half an hour later and corrected it, but it was too late and people were already clowning them in the comments section. #Marie Claire tags wrong supertopic trended on weibo.

People were trolling them nonstop in the comments, helpfully posting pictures of the two and pointing out "This is Gong Jun. This is Zhang Zhehan,"

Hundreds of variations of the same comment flooded the post's comment section. People were also tagging them in posts with the same joke. It seemed that Marie Claire's mistake managed to spawn a new meme.

Finally, to everyone's amusement, Marie Claire deleted their post. People assumed they couldn't take the thousands of people clowning them. Marie Claire, however, came back with a vengeance and straight up posted photos of GJ and ZZH together and captioned it "This is Zhang Zhehan, this is Gong Jun,"

Following the usual timeline of dangai dramas, everyone should be treating these two as "strangers" who should never appear in the same frame by now, but it seems that the brainrot is just too strong for these two.

c-ent industry: "ahahaha actually there are standards in place for things like this-"

everyone else: "YA'LL HEAR SUMN"

4. It seemed that Ifeng Entertainment caught a whiff of the newly spawned meme and decided to join in on the clownery. They tagged Zhang Zhehan's supertopic on a post calling him out for spraying sunscreen over his shades. They attached pictures of him, but one of those pictures was.......not like the rest.

Anyway, rules no longer apply. The brainrot has taken over. Everyone is confused. I'm confused. These people have all gone nuts.

#word of honor #cdrama #love these posts lol

[dramanovellife]

incorrect wenzhou quotes (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

#word of honor #cdrama #his face in the 3rd pic is gold ^^" so fitting lol #go go wkx #zzs better be ready for a 50 pages essay about how wonderful he is lol #actually i think 50 pages would be too little...

[dramanovellife]

incorrect wenzhou quotes (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

#word of honor #cdrama #hahaha he hasn't been trying hard enough lol

[dramanovellife]

Bizarre things that happened because of everyone in China having WenZhou brainrot: (WEDDING EDITION)

1. Wu Yuheng, Zhang Zhehan's company junior and the "brother-in-law" from the infamous Chuang incident that led to non-fans thinking that Gong Jun was married to someone name "Zhang-Laoshi", was interviewed during an event.

Q: "Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan helped garner votes for you in Chuang. After seeing this exhibit today, did you think of asking them to come visit as well?"

Wu Yuheng: "They cheered me on, so I want to cheer them on as well! I think they'll really like this exhibit too, because it's very beautiful and romantic inside,"

Fans, who couldn't believe they were hearing this shit: "THEY'LL LIKE IT BECAUSE IT'S ROMANTIC??? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?!!"

Alas, Wu Yuheng was not inclined to explain himself and moved on smoothly from the topic.

(There's a rumor that one of the Chuang contestants was caught breaking the "NO PHONES" rule just to watch WOH, and people suspect it's him because then it would at least explain the shipper brainrot)

2. Mobs of fans travelled to Suzhou for the concert to put up flower walls and other extravagant fan supports for Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan. It got to the point that random citizens of Suzhou who don't watch WOH, believed that a very popular LGBT couple was hosting their extravagant period-themed wedding in their city. The fact that hotels were, for some reason, giving out WenZhou posters to guests did not help curb this bizarre misunderstanding.

Confused WOH fans took to weibo to share their encounters of having WenZhou posters given to them while checking in their hotels, and run-ins with random aunties and uncles with the general sentiment from them being "How nice that this couple chose Suzhou for their wedding! It really brought a lot of young tourists to the city!!"

It was apparent that in this situation, no one was truly in the same wavelength, with WOH fans coming to Suzhou for a concert and random Suzhou citizens believing there was a wedding of the century going on, and the confusion on both sides was, for once, equal.

3. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, someone commissioned a drone display for Gong Jun, Zhang Zhehan and WenZhou, drawing in an enormous crowd of fans and non-fans alike. In the midst of the audience, however, there were 2 men who had a completely different idea of what the drone display was supposed to be for.

Their conversation, which was thankfully immortalized in a video:

"Zhou Zishu...Wen Kexing...these are celebrities? I thought this was for a marriage proposal?"

"Ah! These two are men?"

"Ohh two men,"

*WOH quotes flash in the sky*

"Ah? What does this mean? I haven't heard of this poem? I didn't learn this in highschool?"

"Aren't there any footnotes???"

*Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan's names appear*

"It's for these two men! Gong Jun.....and.....Zhang Zhehan......"

"Zhang Zhehan is a guy's name right?"

"Ohh so they're officially announcing??"

While innocent non-fans were brazenly discussing this so-called marriage, the actual fans looked on in both horror and fascination, and were left wondering whether they were living in an alternate timeline. They might be right.

4. And the final cherry on top of this very chaotic cake, was Mango Entertainment covering the post-concert banquet and posting this on their official weibo account:

Zhang Zhehan Gong Jun, Shan He Ling celebratory banquet. Whispering into each other's ear, singing the song "Love to Fight If You Want to Win"

Fans: "....what's with this suspicious wording?? Why does this sound like an actual wedding banquet???!!"

The concert being a wedding started out as a dumb joke from the fans and cast members themselves (notably Huang Youming) but I doubt anybody actually expected this level of chaos and clownery. Chen Zihan's trending wedding edit, Gong Jun's infamous Chuang incident, and Huang Youming's wedding table jokes....all of it led to this final moment of sheer confusion and I feel incredibly lucky to have witnessed the madness go down. Hail the WOH fandom experience.

#word of honor #cdrama #this whole confusion is hilarious #already saw how citizens thought the wedding of the century was being hosted there lol #wish I was there... #watched that reaction video to the drone performance a while ago lol still can't get over how funny it is

[dramanovellife]

Bizarre things that happened because of everyone in China having WenZhou brainrot:

1. The official Youku weibo account posting an original video-edit of Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan to promote Gong Jun's new firefighter show that Zhang Zhehan isn't even in. They edited together footage from the firefighter show and scenes from a totally unrelated film (the bravest) where ZZH acted as a firefighter. They even tagged both of them in the post.

People were confused. Youku took it down after three minutes. People were even more confused. Youku offered no other explanation.

2. Sichuan News tagging Zhang Zhehan on their weibo post, inviting him to "visit Gong Jun's hometown" and JiangXi News also tagging Gong Jun, inviting him to "visit Zhang Zhehan's hometown".

This has never happened before and people are perplexed. Again, no further explanation was provided.

3. For Gong Jun's firefighter show, his hometown Sichuan's Fireman Unit tagged him on their official weibo post to help promote it. Nothing strange about that, no, the weird thing is Zhang Zhehan's hometown JiangXi's Fireman Unit also promoted the show on their official weibo and tagged Gong Jun. Again, this show has nothing to do with Zhang Zhehan at all.

People are still wondering what the fuck is going on but have mostly given up on getting any kind of explanation.

4. Official public accounts for their respective hometowns Sichuan and JiangXi continue to roleplay as in-laws on weibo, to everyone's utter bewilderment. From tagging each other on random official posts to outright inviting the other hometown's "son" over. In Gong Jun's first Bilibili video, Sichuan Satellite TV posted a comment inviting Zhang-Laoshi over to Sichuan to play. And this roleplay extends to various versions of these official hometown accounts, from tourism accounts to weather report accounts.

And this is still going on, well after the concert and official promotions for WOH have come to an end. In fact, it might have gotten worse because instead of in-laws they're now acting like a married couple. For 5.20 (Chinese Valentines Day) the two hometowns collaborated to give away special editions of their newspapers, tagging and commenting on each other's post, affectionately calling the other 西西 and 川川. By this point, people are just rolling with it as if these public accounts calling each other pet names on social media is perfectly normal and not at all completely beffudling to those who don't know about WOH.

5. OK! Magazine doing the equivalent of a desperate fangirl piecing together random screenshots of two characters to make content for her rarepair ship. They took Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan's unrelated solo photoshoots and smushed them together, filling the Haidian Huangzhuang Station.

All I can say is...I have never had a fandom experience like this and I don't think I've ever seen such widespread support and adoration like this for a CP, and it's especially satisfying knowing how this casting was mocked and ridiculed throughout the whole production period because people claimed chemistry between the leads would be impossible 😂 Now people are clamoring just to see them in the same shot.

#word of honor #cdrama #wth lol #they ship it so hard it's insane #the fandom must be loving it even if everyone else must be hella confused lol

[dramanovellife]

princess!

they’re playing a game and everyone (i mean everyone) gets a plaque with their specific number but the princess doesn’t need to hold his own… junzi helps! along with holding his own, his mic and his fan in the other hand. *such big hands* 😍

the princess doesn’t pick up anything he drops either in the BTS, it’s always gong jun, the nicest softest jellybean 

#word of honor #shl concert #cdrama #this is so sweet

[dramanovellife]

Gong Jun: Zhang-laoshi, even if I wanted to, I am physically unable to

#word of honor #shl concert #cdrama #those two are way too hilarious together lol

[dramanovellife]

This is so cute until...

Gong jun.... Are you ok my dude?

#word of honor #cdrama #hahahahha omg why is this so funny #poor wrist ^^"

[dramanovellife]

HERE IT IS LADS! THE ULTIMATE CULIMINATION OF ALL THOSE WEDDING JOKES 💀💀💀 AT THIS POINT I AM CONVINCED WORD OF HONOR AND ITS CAST IS JUST ONE MASSIVE FEVER DREAM

So Gong Jun was invited to Chuang2021 as a guest (he did a really good job by the way!! 🥺) and throughout the event he would occasionally bring up a certain "Zhang-Laoshi"

So here he's being asked who he would form a boygroup with if ever given the chance,

*btw he ONLY referred to him as Zhang-Laoshi throughout the event and never by his fullname! It's hilarious that the Tencent subbing team just automatically subbed it with ZZH's complete name. Why are they so sure it's ZZH, huh?? There must be tons of other Zhang-Laoshis out there 😂

What he said was, "和我最匹配的人也就只能是张老师了” and I'd translate it as "the person most compatible with me can only be Zhang-Laoshi" or "the best match for me can only be Zhang-Laoshi"

The term he used was 匹配 and it is LITERALLY

He basically called him his perfect match! 最匹配! GONG JUN PLS NOBODY WAS ASKING THAT! HE DID NOT HAVE TO GO THAT HARD! AND BTW JUST TWO PEOPLE ISN'T ENOUGH FOR A BOYGROUP?!!

Then, he specifically called out a trainee, Wu Yuheng, to tell him that he's going to support him, because Zhang-Laoshi sent him a hongbao when they were chatting the night before. Wu Yuheng is ZZH's junior from the same company!

HE'S PROBABLY WONDERING WHY THE GUEST MENTOR IS ESPECIALLY FAVOURING HIM LMAO

The rest of the members of his group were like "Thank you, Laoshi" but Wu Yuheng said, "Thank you, Ge" to him instead, so now Wu Yuheng's fans are referring to Gong Jun as "brother in law" asjksgsksg HELP

And now the funniest thing about all of this, and the whole point of this post, is that a lot of people who didn't watch Word of Honor and don't know about Wenzhou, thought that Gong Jun was married after watching Chuang 😂

I kid you not, there were A LOT of people who LEGITIMATELY thought that Gong Jun was married to this elusive, mysterious "Zhang-Laoshi" that he kept on talking about.

This was further exacerbated by the fact that the host, Deng Chao, also refers to his actual wife as Sun-Laoshi! Whenever he mentions Sun-Laoshi, everyone knows he's talking about his wife. So you can probably imagine what happened when Gong Jun also kept bringing up his own mysterious "Zhang-Laoshi" 💀

Him talking about Zhang-Laoshi a lot, plus the stacked rings on his ringfinger, his overall demeanor and choice of words, the hongbao and the special favour for a specific trainee, all led to this one glorious misunderstanding. The stars really aligned for this to happen and I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING 💀💀💀

Some of the comments were just absolute GOLD. Like saying that they felt that Gong Jun was really too much, constantly talking about his lover during the event! 😭 And some were going "well it must be his wife, otherwise he would refer to them with their full name and not just a vague Zhang-Laoshi as if he expects everyone to know exactly who that person is" and also "he really smiles a lot when talking about his lover huh" asjkdgsdhs HELP ME WHAT KIND OF SITUATION IS THIS 💀

This is.....unprecedented. Clownery at its finest. LITERALLY ALL OTHER FANDOMS CAN GO HOME. I'm still laughing at the sheer audacity and absurdity of it all. All of the shameless wedding jokes the fandom and the cast members have been making until now have been absolutely STEAMROLLED into fucking oblivion by none other than Gong Jun himself.

Chen Zihan with her top trending Wenzhou wedding edit? Huang Youming and his wedding jokes? Zhang Zhehan calling them the hottest couple? Well Gong Jun skipped wenzhou's wedding altogether and literally made people believe he was married to ZZH 😂 I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE

I just???? What is this cast even doing?????💀

#word of honor #no way is this serious hahahha #that's some comedy gold misunderstanding there

[dramanovellife]

GJ: Okay I have to hug Ah Xu

Director: NO. WEN. KE. XING. YOU. DO. NOT. FUCKING. HUG. HIM. BACK. ABORT. ABORT. ABORT. JUST HOLD HIM!!!

GJ: Ahhh… I get it now, I hug him

#word of honor #woh bts #cdrama

[dramanovellife]

There are a shit ton of unhinged moments in the Word of Honor concert, but the funniest for me was definitely Wang-Laoshi's "steal away Zhang Zhehan" agenda. The more you think about it the worse it gets, and it's just so fucking funny 💀

MC: Pick a person to bring with you to a deserted island!

Wang-Laoshi: Hmmm...I pick Zhehan!

Gong Jun: WHY??!!?!

Wang-Laoshi: Just 4 words! To Steal Another's Beloved! 😏

*crowd goes apeshit*

Zhehan was so embarrassed he muttered "wocao!" (fuck!) under his breath and had to turn away because he couldn't face the audience.

Worse, Gong Jun also turned away in embarrassment despite the fact that Wang-Laoshi never specified who he was stealing Zhang Zhehan from💀💀💀

And EVEN WORSE was that Wang-Laoshi specifically said Zhehan and not the character Zhou Zishu so GONG JUN WHAT ARE YOU EMBARRASSED ABOUT??? HE'S NOT EVEN TALKING ABOUT WENZHOU??? THIS IS NOT HELPING THE SITUATION AT ALL???

And the fact that they both turned away at the same time did NOT do favours for this already very awkward situation.

So the MCs (bless them) tried to do damage control and save the whole thing by desperately going: "Ahahaha! Actually Wang-Laoshi meant to say that Zhang Zhehan is EVERYBODY's beloved!! Right???! So he's stealing everyone's beloved!!!"

The MCs were so focused on trying to remove everyone's attention away from Gong Jun that they didn't even address the fact that Wang-Laoshi (who is a man) just declared that he would steal away Zhang Zhehan (who is also a man) onstage.

So in other words, this whole segment was literally this meme:

#word of honor #shl concert #cdrama #lol those MCs worked hard on damage control

[dramanovellife]

he’ll live like a lunatic

Someone asked Priest the following question 10 years ago (when she completed TYK)

Question: I’ve been wondering if little classmate Zhou died, would little classmate Wen turn the entire jianghu and court upside down?

Answer: No, he won’t. He’ll live crazily by himself, remember (Zhou Zishu) crazily for his whole life and finally, crazily find a place to have himself buried.

Although this is only Priest’s reply to her reader, it bears a heavy resemblance to a Ming dynasty poem. In the poem 《桃花庵歌》, there’s a line* that translates to “everyone in the world laughs at me for being crazy, I laugh at them for not being able to understand the meaning of life”. The only person who ever understood me in life is gone, so I can only live crazily to the end.

This is very much like the line WKX says in episode 18 to Chengling, “If there comes a day when your shifu is gone, I will also find a place just like this one to hide in, away from everyone.”

Source image + lines in Chinese behind the cut

Afficher davantage

#faraway wanderers #word of honor #suppose this is assuming zzs died in the book? cause wkx did say he was gonna burn and turn to ash together if zzs died

[dramanovellife]

behind the scenes: gong jun’s (best in the world) memory strikes again! 

#word of honor #cdrama #woh bts #haha gj pondering face and zzh's shocked one lol

[dramanovellife]

So ZZH has been touted as a kiwi by fans since he got his really short buzzcut, and in this game where everyone needed to give themselves a fruit alias, hahahaha it was the perfect opportunity

#word of honor #shl concert #love his gesture in the 2nd gif xD #and gj looks confused the whole time lol why #cdrama

[dramanovellife]

source

#word of honor #cdrama #omg I wish lol

[dramanovellife]

GJ's hands shaking as ZZH says "and i have a few words I want to say to Junjun"

#word of honor #shl concert #cdrama