Xiang Liu and You (Yes, You)

 luv2bafangurl:

@Nathsketch: congratz for you XL doll. He is so adorable.

Thanks Luv! How have you been? We haven't seen you here for a while. Are you watching anything new?

 luv2bafangurl:

And lastly ladies the theme song of TJC movie I Miss You, sung by Karen Mok. How sweet it is that they casted together in his first movie and now she sings his new movie theme song and gives him her support. Finger cross they’ll do duett of this song to promote the film. The movie is not my cup of tea, but for TJC I’ll watch everything ;-)

https://youtu.be/zD3wi9cz7lk?si=nlQxHKn-e6hbsNUM

Yes, this is so adorable. They couldn't have chosen a better person to sing this song!

I can't wait to see this movie, only the little we've seen so far from the teasers can already show how good it is when Tan is part of a project that can showcase his acting abilities. I just wish it could also be released in theaters internationally. This needs to be seen on a big screen.

 luv2bafangurl:

And lastly ladies the theme song of TJC movie I Miss You, sung by Karen Mok. How sweet it is that they casted together in his first movie and now she sings his new movie theme song and gives him her support. Finger cross they’ll do duett of this song to promote the film. The movie is not my cup of tea, but for TJC I’ll watch everything ;-)

https://youtu.be/zD3wi9cz7lk?si=nlQxHKn-e6hbsNUM

I knew this was going to be a tear jerker movie, but man, this looks like a TEAR JERKER movie that will require a whole box of kleenex.  Even Karen Mok is crying during the song.  I'm going to need a viewing of Love Me Love My Voice to recover this.

 nathsketch:

Yes, this is so adorable. They couldn't have chosen a better person to sing this song!

I can't wait to see this movie, only the little we've seen so far from the teasers can already show how good it is when Tan is part of a project that can showcase his acting abilities. I just wish it could also be released in theaters internationally. This needs to be seen on a big screen.

I was thinking the same thing.  That this will certainly showcase Tan Jian Ci's acting abilities -- hopefully enough to gain recognition for him around awards time -- or at least bring him to the attention to some movie producers and directors.

Picking Karen Mok was perfect.  According to this video, not only was she one of the leads, who worked alot with Tan Jian Ci, in his first movie, but apparently she did the OST song for Zhang Jing Yi's first movie.

https://youtube.com/shorts/HjHbu9QPXIk?si=z1g5ycurkmg8u-nC

There was some video and pics last year of Tan Jian Ci reunion with Karen Mok -- I wonder if that was for this song?  I'll see if I can find them.

 nathsketch:

Ahahahahaha this 100%!!

After Love Me, Love My Voice, I proved to myself that there's nothing of his that I won't watch. It's like going to the gym regularly, we start building up resistance to the pain hahahaha

Ha!  I'm going to be hugging a box of kleenex in one hand and LMLMV with me other hand after this movie.  I think that's one reason why I like LMLMV, cause Tan Jian Ci's character isn't tortured and rejected repeatedly -- AGAIN.  sob

 luv2bafangurl:

I love me bit of gossip too. Can you pls tell more about what happened ?

Long ass post ahead :-)

There's a fandom war between DW's fandom and ZY's fandom, ostentatiously over an interview ZY made where she was asked which one of the 4 male leads from LYF she would pick. She picked Feng Long. The issue is that in her reasoning for why she didn't pick Jing, she commented that there are times when he listens (or is it obeyed?) his family too much. This had DW's fans up in arms. The Vietnamese DW's fans think that this comment shows that she doesn't understand the characterization of Jing (i.e. she's slandering this fictional character). They gave this in-depth analysis showing why she is wrong, which I won't go into here because it's irrelevant to their behaviour. Apparently, these people have never heard of having different opinions. And even if she "misinterprets" this character, turning this into some reason to attack her is bloody whack. I don't know if these are Jing's fans who have since become DW's fans or DW's fans who had taken to protect their idol to such an extreme that they won't even accept criticisms against the character that he plays, but this behaviour is insane.

What I've also read is that the two fandoms have been at each other for a while, and the interview was just an excuse. The gossip is that DW's team is deliberately doing this to generate attention and used ZY's fandom to create "heat" for themselves. The aim is supposedly to show DW's fandom power and perhaps to use it to help him negotiate top billings in some of his upcoming projects. There's also talk that some or one of his major fan accounts have announced that they won't support LYF 2 and they won't "played" with Tencent anymore either. Also dragging in the director of LYF and the author of the novel accusing them of not understanding Jing etc. I don't know if any of this is impacting the release of LYF 2.

I don't frequent Weibo, and my understanding of Chinese Idol fandoms and their inner working is not the deepest. I know that there is a symbiotic relationship between these idols/idol wannabes, the idol's team and the fandom. I don't go for any of this over-the-top stanning and don't advocate for any kind of bullying of these strangers. However, I find it a bit disingenuous to brush off criticisms of the idols on the basis that he/she isn't responsible for his/her fandom and team's behaviour. His team are acting on his behalf to help his career are they not? If you are happy to benefit from your fandom and team's actions, then you don't get to absolve yourself of criticisms when their actions reflect badly on you. You want to use the piper, but don't want to pay the price? Come on now, that's not how this world works. This just makes you look like a free-loader who is happy to accept the credits when things turn out good, but won't accept responsibility when it turned to shit.

I want to say that I'm curious about the working of C idol fandoms because this is not the first time something like this happened. This isn't about targeting DW. As I said, I do not advocate for bullying behaviours or crazy stanning.

 HeadInTheClouds:

There's a fandom war between DW's fandom and ZY's fandom, ostentatiously over an interview ZY made where she was asked which one of the 4 male leads from LYF she would pick. She picked Feng Long. The issue is that in her reasoning for why she didn't pick Jing, she commented that there are times when he listens (or is it obeyed?) his family too much.

I think part of 'outrage' is Yang Zi said Jing was 'suitable to live with,'  instead of saying that he was the love of her life that she couldn't live without and that is the super greenest of flags of perfection, ad nauseaum ... literally.  And this exactly what Tong Hua said in the interview that Jingers keep throwing in our face, but they ignore it.  Tong Hua said that XY got what she wanted / worked for, a COMPANION.

It was truly madness.  It was so bad, that the official weibo for LYF issued a statement saying they were the only official source of info for the show, cause YaoJing was dragging in a weibo for fans of the novel.

Then it came out that someone connected to DW's team in some way had actually issued a public call to attack, and they had been planning it for a while.  And then things got really ugly with personal attacks on the actors.

 HeadInTheClouds:

There's also talk that some or one of his major fan accounts have announced that they won't support LYF 2 and they won't "played" with Tencent anymore either. Also dragging in the director of LYF and the author of the novel accusing them of not understanding Jing etc. I don't know if any of this is impacting the release of LYF 2.

I really think that this mess started way earlier, like even around the celebration concert -- cause there were rumors about DW was being difficult about attending.  And there definitely was something going on when he was the only one of the LYF cast that didn't attend the Tencent Awards ceremony.  That's when I figured out that his next two shows were at IQiYi, and thought that might have something to do with it.  Others have pointed out in some of the promo and awards season, Deng Wei name was missing, or they chose stills that didn't haven't Jing in them.

So, I'm not surprised that some of his fans are now trying to trash the show and Tencent.

 HeadInTheClouds:

However, I find it a bit disingenuous to brush off criticisms of the idols on the basis that he/she isn't responsible for his/her fandom and team's behaviour. His team are acting on his behalf to help his career are they not? If you are happy to benefit from your fandom and team's actions, then you don't get to absolve yourself of criticisms when their actions reflect badly on you. You want to use the piper, but don't want to pay the price?

I definitely can see that.  I do think some stuff starts just from fans arguing, but that seems to die out rather quickly.  This latest eruption has been going on for almost two weeks now, since before Lunar New Year.  It also looks bad, because Deng Wei came out with a video to calm his fans down when they were mad at his studio / team for not managing him 'properly' and getting him appearances during the end of year award season.  Yet, he can't come out and tell his fans to stop attacking Yang Zi and Tencent and LYF and it's crew?

And if actors don't, then the government and weibo, or the law will do so.  Latest I read was that two big name accounts, one for Deng Wei and one for Yang Zi, were handed 'gagging penalties' for the fanwar.  Not sure exactly what gagging penalties means, but it doesn't sound good.

 Badgal1995:

I don’t know well stats about her popularity but I think Reba is really popular in China. I feel she has an big international fandom too. It's clearly not the same level as JJY anyway.

She's probably one of the top female liu liang in the industry. Hers and ZY's fandom seems to consider each other rivals - one is known for her beauty, but limited acting ability; the other is the opposite. 

 Badgal1995:

Maybe she’s going to let it go but seems her fans don’t want after some changes in the script to favor male lead role. If the rumors are really true, I hope she won't give up after the ruin of TLOA, especially since she has decided to take another direction in her career to focus only on genres that win awards to be recognized.

Dilireba always comes across as really easygoing; she doesn't seem to have a lot of ambitions when it comes to her acting career. Easy going may not be the best thing to be in this cut-throat business. With this whole billing issue, if you just give in, subsequent co-stars will start to think that they can pull the same shit and climb on your head. There appeared to be a spate of female stars who had to deal with this billing crap from younger, male co-stars lately. 

 Badgal1995:

I don’t want to say we don’t care about butchering eve but I only need to see this out forgodsake :((‘

What happens with WIK is not in our hands; I guess we can only hope that we'll be able to see it in whatever form it can be released.

@HeadInTheClouds

Thank you for the melon. What a mess. I really don‘t understand the DW‘s fans reasoning to escalate the fan wars to show their power because imo it‘s only going to give their idol a bad rep in the industry. Other potential  costars are going to avoid working with him to not get dragged into messy fan wars. This messy fan wars also going to affect neutral spectator to view their idol negatively imo. Taking myself as an example, I never watch any Xiao Zhan works, so I don‘t know if he is a good actor or not, but hearing/reading about how extreme his fans are  from previous fan wars and some of their comments in other forum (let‘s say I don‘t like how they behave/write there) made me not that eager to watch any of his work anytime soon. 

I don't frequent Weibo, and my understanding of Chinese Idol fandoms and their inner working is not the deepest. I know that there is a symbiotic relationship between these idols/idol wannabes, the idol's team and the fandom. I don't go for any of this over-the-top stanning and don't advocate for any kind of bullying of these strangers. However, I find it a bit disingenuous to brush off criticisms of the idols on the basis that he/she isn't responsible for his/her fandom and team's behaviour. His team are acting on his behalf to help his career are they not? If you are happy to benefit from your fandom and team's actions, then you don't get to absolve yourself of criticisms when their actions reflect badly on you. You want to use the piper, but don't want to pay the price? Come on now, that's not how this world works. This just makes you look like a free-loader who is happy to accept the credits when things turn out good, but won't accept responsibility when it turned to shit.

Basically I do agree with you on this point. The question is, how much power does an actor actually has over his agency. From what I understand, often the actors themselves are completely under the thumb of his agent, from they don’t have any say in which project/endorsement they can take, their schedule, public image the should cultivate, etc. Even YZ, who is an established actress, has to film one or two xianxia dramas which were financed by her agency at that time. Her fans were in uproar at that time, because understandably they want her take the next level in her career by leaving the  idol dramaland and focusing more  on serious drama instead. Actors like TJC who apparently  has some say or even the one who chooses his projects are the exception in idol dramaland. Maybe @Atmosphere can enlighten us more on this point. In this case then the responsibility actually is more on the agency,  if it’s true that the actors are basically only the puppet and cash machine for the ppl behind the scene. I also read  somewhere, that the actor’s agency actually is behind or working really closely with the fans groups, from feeding them the actor’s schedule, ongoing casting in negotiation, promoting event/drama/products, etc. So basically directing/orchestrating the buzz on the actor and even using the fans to try to  influence the outcome of negotiation like the billing fans war between CZY and Diliraba recently. On the other hand there is always some really bad apples in every group, which the actor or his team can not control (and in this case I would say they are not responsible for those crazy people), but those extreme voices will disappear if no one feed them. As soon as it is becoming an organized attack from the fan base then I would say the agency (and/or the actor)should take responsibility as well because like you said, they can and should take action to deescalate the situation. 

@Kokuto

Latest I read was that two big name accounts, one for Deng Wei and one for Yang Zi, were handed 'gagging penalties' for the fanwar.  Not sure exactly what gagging penalties means, but it doesn't sound good.

I‘m guessing here that the gagging penalties from the gov might be something like freezing the actor‘s weibo and douyin‘s accounts, like they did before when another nasty fan wars happened between ZLY and her male costar (forget which actor) or the famous Xiao Zhan incident a couple of years ago. Quite smart actually to punish the idol to keep the fans in check. On the other hand this kind of punishment is actually quite unfair for the actor if he is really blameless in the mess or if the mess actually was instigated by anti-fans pretending to be the crazy fans of the actor to stir up trouble for him (we‘re going down into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory  now LOL)

Back to DW fans, this kind of extreme fans behaviour who even can‘t let other people criticizing the character their idol played is a whole new level of craziness ‚face palm‘. I can only pray that TJC fans community will stay in the sane world and doing only positive things to support him instead this kind of crazy acts. 

@HeadInTheClouds: don‘t forget to holler here, if you post your new essay on LYF, I would love to read it.

@HeadInTheClouds

Oooh! What bts dramas? Gossipy me would like to know :-)

Apparently in this VS, which runs for two consecutive days, the host singers and guest singers are divided into two groups which compete which each other for a couple of singing face off (rounds). The singer teams can only choose and divide the songs provided by the prod crew.  In TJC‘s team the available songs are the ones which are suitable for Duett or Solo but not really for group singing (trio like the one he had) and allegedly the host singers in his team were hogging the best suitable songs for themselves so the guest singer (TJC) was left with this only one song he sang as trio (they manage to put a good performance but you do get that the song should be actually sung as Duett, hence the awkward third wheel) and he only sang on one day of the VS (instead singing two songs on two days of the VS). 

There is BTS released by the prod crew trying to absolve themselves from this debacle (imo they stirred the pot by providing the song list, which is surely make problem in dividing them fairly), showing how the singers discussing, choosing and dividing the song  and how TJC graciously said he doesn‘t need to sing and pls don‘t mind him, but he did look sad saying those things. On the other hand I also heard that TJC had another schedule on the next day, so that’s why he can not participate in the second day of the VS and thus only sang one song.