Novel Fans and Donghua Fans Sanctuary

 Major:

Uuuuughhhhh.  That's a punch to the gut.  That's literally one of my favorite scenes in all of DD.  I was just describing it in the comments section.  Tai Tan's test followed by his unswerving loyalty to TH and TS in spite of what happened to the four sects was soooo moving.  

:( A lot of the characters have turned into characters by name only with very little of their actual personalities in them. Even Dugu Bo pales heavily to what I’ve come to except and he’s my favorite character. 

I just saw your comment and agree completely. He and his family have lost their impact but again, I feel like this entire S1 has been sacrificed in a way for S2. All this set up would make the second season good but lol what a waste! The characters are all a pale imitation of what they actually are like. Have you met Sword Douluo cos lol he’s a joke in this as well. Literal joke.

I've gotten so behind that I'm better off waiting for the end sigh...

 Singularity:

It really seems like nobody's scary in this version. Tang San isn't scary, Grandmaster isn't scary, Chen Xin (Sword) isn't scary, Dugu Bo isn't scary, nobody's scary. None of them were scary all the time in the novel but u definitely got the feeling they could and absolutely would bring the pain if you crossed them. I get that Tang San needed to be nerfed cuz OP but it really feels like they nerfed EVERYBODY.

It just seems like Wang Juan doesn't know how to utilize the cultivation system really well to build up the world outside of directly showing it on screen. No one mentions Titled Douluo at all in the series unless they're immediately relevant to the plot, so they're not intimidating at all because they're not hyped up nearly to the degree of the novels and donghua. The new viewers also have no idea just how important Titled Douluo are until the screenwriter shoehorned that line from XG about Du Gu Bo appearing and not knowing who he is. There's a lot of last second shoehorning of lines, now that I think about it, right before an event happens. Of course, only we would know that. Also ironic, they mention that there aren't many Titled Douluo in the Du Gu Bo entrance scene, and yet they don't know who he is despite his personality really not giving too many shits. The amount of random name dropping of Soul Land vocab words right before a big scene makes the script feel so amateurish. It's like Wang Juan got so caught up in his own story that he forgot he's in DD. 

The story tries very hard at being comedic and serious at the same time and it doesn't flow all too well. Comedy and characters idling around lasts too long, so most of the serious scenes end up feeling very rushed when it comes to transitioning into them because there's no time for build up or proper building of context imo.

 Singularity:

The problem is that Wang Juan tried to apply the same formula to this script, adding in mysteries and complexity that didn't previously exist, which makes it feel much less natural. Meanwhile the central cultivation/team battle aspect is done in a pretty mediocre and half-hearted way because that's just not what he's interested in. I think that maybe Wang Juan should stick with political/mystery stories and not cultivation stories. 

Exactly. To people like us, it's pretty obvious Wang Juan does not care about the cultivation aspect, despite it being basically part of the title of the IP and synopsis, which new viewers wouldn't understand. I mean, he went ahead and added a crap ton political conspiracy stuff right from the get go that doesn't exist in the novels. It's why before, I mentioned new viewers will never be able to grasp how the cultivation or tactics truly works in the drama. Instead, we basically just have another run of the mill political drama with pretty colors. In my opinion, it just shows that Wang Juan doesn't really care about this genre nor how big the IP was. 

Talking about it like this just makes me feel like it's one of those situations where a person is too old and doesn't understand the appeal of Shounen anime plots and the like. I only say this because he dumbed down the cast into super cookie cutter character archetypes compared to how they actually are. Then he's apparently also known as someone who kills off likeable characters? So that already gives me flags that he enjoys "darker" and I guess more grounded story settings, so "edgy" in a sense. I mean he introduced that characters can die in the first arc of DC in Nuo Ding by killing the bully, which doesn't happen in the novel. That was an immediate red flag to me, that he might've not cared to adapt himself to the source material, but forcefully adapted the source material to him, which takes huge ego imo. 

I personally haven't watched too many dramas because of time, but I personally would think that some of the King's Avatar screenwriters would've done much better simply because in that drama they actually tried very hard imo to explain tactics, mechanics, and etc. which would've been perfect here. I didn't read the source for that, I knew about it from the donghua, and as a gamer, I could tell they were definitely trying to flesh out the mechanics in the drama. 

Wang Juan absolutely does have a fan base, I like to call him the "idol" screenwriter due to this. They are also mindless drones as you could see in Douban recently as they flooded it with the script is amazing, you are just too dumb to see it. I was actually surprised Xiao Zhan fans were supporting it because of the support drama at all costs crede but actually they were the brainless ones. If the show had failed, and everyone, including them said the script was amazing, then it wouldn't be Wang Juan who was blamed. I wonder who it would have been 🙄

I am not sure that Wang Juan doesn't know how to write cultivation, I think the answer lies precisely in what his fans said. I think he finds this type of theme brainless and beneath him so he changed everything to fit what he sees as "smart". Too bad anyone who has watched TV in the past years has seen much more complex and intelligent writing. 

I can't lie and say I am not worried about his twist. It should naturally end with Tang Hao, and it absolutely is a dazzling display of the splendor of cultivation. But if he thinks cultivation is beneath him, he will go for something else. Probably the dream, trying to "shock" the audience. 

 Singularity:

JOL is actually one of my favorite dramas of all time, probably top 2 right behind NiF1 and I'd agree that the DC script is much weaker. I've read both novels too. I think the distinction is that JoL (both the drama and the novel) is pretty light on the cultivation part, it's really more of a political thriller. Scheming and mysteries are the core, the fighting /cultivation aspect is incidental, ppl fight to achieve political goals. Wang Juan pretty much ignored the cultivation aspect and focused on the political/machination aspect and it works well.

100% agree with everything you commented. JoL (and coincidentally Nirvana1) are some of my only 10s out of all the cdramas I've watched. It had an excellent adapted screenplay and extremely well acted cast along with a great pace/flow and directing (although some of the lighting was iffy at parts but that's excusable, lol). Wang Juan definitely tried to apply the same sort of formula he used with JoL to Douluo and I can't really fault him for it bc of how successful JoL was/is, but unfortunately, Douluo's more political-heavy stuff doesn't make an appearance right from the start. I don't know if it's because Douluo isn't "brainy" enough since I'm not Wang Juan and he said in his Weibo post that he actually did put in a hidden plot-line from the start so I don't think it sounds like he is underestimating or thinking that the source material is "under him", so to speak. To be really blunt and honest, he just failed at adapting Douluo. It happens. A lot. I guess it's one of the first times he's missed the mark so terribly. 

Also, the humor that worked so well in JoL was largely because of the cast of actors (Guo Qi Lin is a cross-talker and he's basically his character IRL). It won't translate well to every drama and it certainly didn't here. Nothing against Oscar's actor because I actually like him (and Oscar) but it's probably a two notches too high on the cringe scale to be funny.

 OniBro:

That's basically what I was getting at. With all the praise going on for him and how he's treating DD, it very much seems like he sees this stuff as beneath him, or not intelligent enough to pull interest. So since he has his own echo chamber now, he sort of feels justified and empowered to change things because "his taste is oh so refined and he knows what works and what doesn't," especially with a title like The Industry's Conscience, jeez.

To be fair, he basically started his Weibo post off saying that he accepts ALL criticisms and complaints as a writer since that's par for the course with his job. The tone he used in his post and the manner in which he wrote the entry wasn't bad, actually? He wasn't putting anyone down, rather he was actually kind of like teasing fans and faux-pleading with them to stop guessing his plot bc some of them were kind of close-ish to getting it right and he didn't know to do if they did since he doesn't think he could think of another twist esp with S2 in the works. I assume he means he's at least got a rough draft/plan for what he wants for S2 and either wrote it when he did S1 or has an outline. Also, he said he's 100% open to discussion but he's waiting till the series finishes airing since (like us here) not everyone will finish it at the same time with it airing on TV, VIP and normal Tencent. 

Not to sound like a defense attorney, rofl but I know sometimes that the tone doesn't come across well in translations and his Weibo post wasn't actually rude. Still think he failed  with this script and even with a "hidden plot" I don't see any salvaging.