#kinda got annoyed with cdramas the last few days

[verycharismaticdragon]

Tag 10 People You Wanna Get to Know Better

tagged by @mu-qingfang-stan-account ty <3

relationship status: single (as in "too scared to try finding someone to date considering the state of queer rights here rn")

favorite colors: *james pokemon voice* its lavender (but honestly purple in all shades. my life have improved immensely when i started dyeing my hair purple and getting clothes to match)

favorite food: this is so broad uh... if its sweet stuff I gotta go with ice cream because whatever u want. it got u. and if we are talking about proper meal foods i think i gotta say chicken. shes so versatile what cant she do

song stuck in your head: oughh i cycle thru so many... i guess Leia (Rondo cover) came up a lot in the last few days

last thing you googled: spelling of some word, dont remember which. i often do this bcus im not confident in my spellings, esp with longer words, because I only learned them visually and that doesn't necessarily mean all letters or in the right order. wait i think it was resurrect, i keep forgeting if its two "s"s or two "r"s in there (yes i googled it again to spell it rn)

time: 13:40

dream trip: listen this is just gonna be sad if i answer it, so lets not

last thing you read: I'm currently super mega slowly rereading Scum Villain - like, taking notes every page slowly - so that's been going for the past month or so. If we're talking finished, then pipi's You Fei.

last book you enjoyed reading: I did enjoy Fei a whole lot! As usual, I'm a sucker for priest's ability to entwine some absolute clownery with so much subtle (and sometimes not subtle) heartbreak. Also the more I hear from my friend who branches out into BG cnovels/cdramas the more I realize how special a female protagonist like Fei is.

last book you hated reading: a danmei novel that shall remain unnamed bcus it was recced by a mutual. meanwhile i regret finishing it. the plot was such a friggin soap opera. literally almost Every soap opera trope. i'm surprised nobody's clone showed up, it wouldnt have been out of place! the ship dynamic was good so i finished to get their happy ending but. kinda felt that it wasn't worth it in the end.

favorite thing to cook/bake: gotta be meringues, as long as you know the perfect time for your particular oven theyre literally SO easy to make. and tasty. I like making blini too but they are kinda stressful because you gotta stay on them the entire time.

favorite craft to do in your free time: cross-stitch, it's somehow just the right proportion of mindlessness and engagement for me

most niche dislike: there's this special kind of annoying fans that make me dislike thing that they are fan of literally just because it becomes associated in my mind with their annoyingness. (I don't know how to explain every nuance of how they are annoying, but most often it involves being shitty about something else, that I already like.) And it kinda pisses me off not just on its own, but also on behalf of the thing they are fan of. Like - it usually doesn't deserve my ire! it's literally just the fans, and only some specific ones! But I can't stop my brain from cringing at the sight of the thing. ugh. So: hate it when this happens.

opinion on circuses: im more interested in the aesthetic concept of circuses than in any real ones.

do you have any sense of direction: yeah im pretty good with it, both in "reading maps" way and in "understanding where things are located relative to each other and alternate routes/shortcuts" way

tagging: god please I always forget every single person I ever seen or talked to when it comes to tagging. Literally any of my followers, I'm interested, I wanna hear about u, if you'd like to do this say i tagged you and go off

#tag game

[sifeng]

What Makes a Guzhuang Drama Good?

As someone who has watched an adequate amount of guzhuang dramas, I feel like I’ve realized a pattern between the highly rated ones and low rated ones. Be warned, this is not an objective analysis, this is just my thoughts on what makes a guzhuang drama enjoyable and good.

The Two Types of Guzhuang Dramas

Loosely generalized, there are two different types of guzhuang dramas - epic dramas and what is called 沙雕剧 in Chinese which could be translated as comedic dramas (technically its more of a combination of silliness, stupidity and cuteness but comedic works.)

You can generally see a different between these dramas just based on a synopsis or one look at the first episode but here are a few differences between epic dramas and comedic dramas:

Epic dramas are usually longer. They typically have above 30 episodes because it is almost impossible to fit all of the storyline in such a small amount of episodes; with comedic dramas there isn’t really a plot so they often have 20-30 episodes. 

Epic dramas usually have higher budgets. This is not to say they have to have high budgets, but unlike comedic dramas which almost always have lower budgets, epic dramas often have higher budgets. 

Famous actors usually only act in epic dramas, never comedic ones. This is not true vice versa though.

Epic dramas usually have more characters.

Epic drama usually have more original songs.

Epic romances usually have these kinds of scenes:

Romance comedic dramas have scenes like these:

For some dramas the lines blur. For example, it’s clear to see that Eternal Love (双世宠妃) is a comedic drama and The Eternal Love or Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (三生三世十里桃花) is an epic drama. But take a drama like The Legend of Yunxi (芸汐传). It’s long so that belongs to “epic drama”, but the budget is low so that puts it with comedic dramas. It has relatively smaller actors and less characters, but has good songs and an epic storyline. It’s also not comedic. So where does it belong? I’ve decided it belongs to epic dramas. 

Let’s just take a look at the guzhuang dramas that have just broadcasted and categorize them to make this more clear:

To rate these two types of drama you have to make different criteria, as there is something fundamentally different about comedy and drama. 

My Criteria for Epic Dramas

Plot - 50%

Acting - 40%

Cinematography - 10%

Plot contains the plot, characters and script. The plot is obviously very important as epic dramas have 30+ episodes and if the plot sucks no one will dedicate all that time to a drama. Characters need to be realistic for the era the show is set in, or the genre it belongs to. The script is also important because if you’ve watched epic guzhuang dramas you know that the characters in those dramas don’t speak like people in modern day. 

Acting contains mostly acting ability but also chemistry between actors. Acting ability is extremely important in epic dramas because epics are often dramatic and tragic and even if the plot is amazing, if an actor cannot correctly portray an emotional climax, the entirety of the storyline is broken. Chemistry is very important in those epic romances like Goodbye My Princess (东宫), but as these shows don’t live solely on chemistry and cuteness, it isn’t nearly as important.

Cinematography is also very important. In some of the best epic guzhuang dramas, the scenery is beautiful! It helps add to the realism.

My Criteria for Comedic Dramas

Plot: 25%

Acting: 45%

Comedy/Cuteness: 30%

Plot here contains the plot, characters and script again. Even though these dramas are supposed to be simple and easy to watch, I still need it to have some sort of logic so it at least makes basic sense. Characters are also important because you actually want to root for them. The script here is not really important at all. As comedic dramas are geared towards the modern viewer, the jokes are much more modernized and there is much less historical speech. For example I actually need subtitles to watch stuff like Nirvana in Fire (琅琊榜), but I can watch The Romance of Tiger and Rose (传闻中的陈芊芊) while multitasking and still understand it. But, the plot does need to make the lead couple believable, so the script can’t be actually horrible. 

Acting contains mostly chemistry but also acting ability. Romance comedic dramas require us to want to ship the main couple and want to see them be in scenes together. But, if they have horrible acting ability, it also won’t be believable and we can’t really root for them.

The comedy and cuteness is obviously very important because we watch these types of dramas for that.

So What Makes a Guzhuang Good?

Obviously it would be best if plot, acting, characters etc were all good, but I think many dramas give up one certain aspect in order to make time for others. Guzhuang dramas need to stop using basic tropes for their females. Obviously starting out characterization with a trope is fine, but you have to build up their positive and negative traits, give them goals, a brain, a personality, and a reason for us to want to root for them. Why is Young Blood (大宋少年志) so successful despite low budget? (Well yes plot and acting but also) Good female characters! What about The Story of Yanxi Palace (延禧攻略)? (Besides cinematography and acting) Good female characters! Of course this isn’t the golden rule. An epic drama can be good without good female characters, but this is one aspect that (when done well) can instantly raise a dramas rating. (On another note, I really want to see that hero rescues beauty trope be reversed. I really want to see a beauty rescue a hero okay? I just feel like it has so rarely happened in guzhuang dramas but every single show has to have at least five shots of hero rescues beauty). 

For comedic dramas it’s not very easy to make it unanimously loved. I think the highest rated comedic drama on douban is an 8 (which is quite high but considering the highest epic drama of last decade was 9.3 there’s still some way to go). But, so long as actors are cute, chemistry is good, and romance is shippable, it’ll garner viewers and good ratings. But, many comedic dramas are often too trope heavy (one of the reasons why Tiger and Rose was so enjoyable for me was because it was surprisingly light on using tropes and clichés) which makes watching many in a row unbelievably difficult. When making comedic dramas people ought to try to create more interesting characters that aren’t so basic.

This also applies to epic dramas. I want to see more epic dramas try to dive deeper into morally grey characters. I loved Goodbye My Princess (东宫) because of many reasons, one of which was the complicated character of Li Chengyin which was really fun to analyze. As epic dramas are usually very long, they should take some time to focus on character development. Also for epic dramas, or dramas in general, scriptwriters really need to learn how to make sure the entire drama is good, not just a certain part of it. It’s too often to see a drama start out amazingly, but end with a less than satisfactory ending. 

For wuxia dramas: the fight scenes need to be good. Who is going to believe these are the strongest people on the jianghu if they can’t even hold a sword right? Stop using so much slo mo! One or two slow pans of a fight scene are super cool, but slow mo for everything is just lazy. 

Last piece of advice for epic dramas. The pacing for certain dramas need to be faster. Producers have to ask themselves: “does this drama really need 80 episodes?” Unless the answer, “most definitely yes” there is no need. Make the first episode at least somewhat interesting for I am an impatient person. I cannot get into a drama in which nothing occurs for the first ten episodes. But, don’t rush a drama too. I am currently watch Love a Lifetime (暮白首) and in the first two episodes I am so confused. Too much is happening without explanation. 

#cdrama #cdrama analysis #wow I thought this would be a good idea but it really isn't #some thoughts #kinda got annoyed with cdramas the last few days #wow this kind of sounds like a long rant