Chapter 120 - "Me And The Emperor Compete For A Guard"
The live broadcast ended with a bang and Yuan Ge breathed a huge sigh of relief. Had his name not been mentioned repeatedly on the screen, this blockbuster film produced by King Guan would have remained just a distant dream for him. What on earth did it have to do with him, an unknown director in the domestic entertainment industry?
When Yuan Ge clicked on Du Jinghai's Quarro account, he found that his number of followers had suddenly increased by 200,000. It turned out that King Guan had released a detailed cast and crew list, and Du Jinghai's name was ranked first in the second camera crew! That was enough for him to brag about for months. No wonder he sounded so excited on the phone that his voice almost changed in pitch!
Yuan Ge continued to check the official account of Dragon Dreams and the accounts of the actors they had signed, and they had all seen considerable growth in their followers. So it seemed that they had all benefited from jumping on King Guan's bandwagon.
At last, he clicked on his own account - holy crap! What the hell is this? Overnight, Yuan Ge's TweeChat account had actually gone from having only 400,000 followers to 4 million! This surprised him to no end.
But the atmosphere in the comment section was foul, with many trolls engaging in a lot of unscrupulous speculation and vicious slander about his casting as the male lead. Yuan Ge remembered that the top-ranked hot search earlier in the day was "who the hell is Yuan Ge" - which was quite understandable, as King Guan Entertainment had nine "pillars" of its own, all of whom were big acting stars. And those veteran actors and actresses chosen for supporting roles were also household names and had won many acting awards. It would be strange if someone as unknown as him was cast as the male lead and not become the "what the hell" in the eyes of the public.
After a quick scan of the comments, Yuan Ge decided not to continue torturing himself by reading the details.
Luckily, browsing through the comment section wasn't entirely in vain. He followed up the discussion and found the original work, on which the film 'A Journey in Brocade' would be based - an original novel hidden in the column section of Bulabula, the popular video publishing platform. It was quite extraordinary, to say the least, that this IP had gained such fame. It was bizarre enough to publish a novel on a video site, but it also had such an outlandish and unorthodox title - "Me and the Emperor Compete for a Guard". The author, Meatball, was an online writer who lived overseas and earned his fame very early on. It was said that he had been writing since the beginning of the Danmei[1] genre in China. The author had been writing for many years without seeking fame or profit, refusing to sign contracts with specialized book publishing platforms. He wrote purely for the love of writing, and for the purpose of pursuing creative freedom. He was characterized by his R18 content, which was quite liberal and open in its style. His adoring fans respectfully referred to him as "The God of Flesh".
It was hard to say exactly how King Guan Entertainment had managed to acquire this IP. No wonder it had sparked such fierce discussions this time around - a billion-yuan blockbuster adapted from a Danmei work that was laden with R18 content - this alone was an industry first and enough for netizens of all walks of life to debate until the end of time!
Yuan Ge had never been one to follow the crowds. He did not judge people by their appearance, so naturally he would not judge a book by its title either. He quickly scanned the synopsis of the original work, flipped through a few random chapters, and found that the novel was quite well written, with adequate research into the historical content involved, great world-building, rigorous logic, and vivid characterisation. The writing style was a mix of seriousness and lightheartedness, with a sense of humanity in its humorous language. The most impressive feature of the writing was the strong sense of imagery it created, as if viewed through a camera lens, which was undoubtedly crucial for its adaptation into a screenplay.
With a general understanding of the original work, Yuan Ge felt somewhat more reassured. As a director who often wrote his own scripts, he understood very well that "the script is the foundation of a play". No matter how splendidly Arthur Guan had just made the prospect sound, if he, a nobody, was to take the lead role in this billion yuan production, if he did not do as much homework as possible, put in more effort to familiarise himself with the original work and analyse the script before shooting began, then all his performances would be reduced to an airy, impractical pavilion without a foundation. This was why this book was what he needed to focus on during his holidays.
But looking at other people's stories, he couldn't help but feel sorry for his own belated film 'Qingqing'. He wondered when the film would attract high enough attention to enable it to resume filming.
He was completely lost in his own thoughts when Yuan Ge suddenly heard his name being called downstairs. He dropped what he was doing and went downstairs to see what Rong Qiuchen needed. When he arrived in the kitchen, he saw the boy standing by the cooker, making congee and some other dishes while calling "Yuan Ge Yuan Ge" and chatting happily with the little robot beside him.
"You keep calling 'Yuan Ge Yuan Ge', I thought you were calling me."
What Yuan Ge minded more was actually the little robot's response, "Your humble son is here. What is your Majesty's command?"
Rong Qiuchen looked pleased to see him coming down, "Have you forgotten that Brother Puppet has taken your name and I am now calling you Gege? But since Gege is here, please sit down, breakfast is ready."
--------------------
[1] Danmei is a genre of literature and other fictional media originating from China which features romantic relationships between male characters. The male same-sex romance genre of "boys' love", or BL, originated in Japanese manga in the early 1970s, and was introduced to mainland China via pirated Taiwanese translations of Japanese comics in the early 1990s. The term danmei is borrowed from the Japanese word tanbi ("the pursuit of beauty"), and Chinese fans often use danmei and BL interchangeably.