Chapter 126 - Only You Are Possessed Of Such Charm
"Now I know that Gege's artistic dreams are not unfounded delusions of grandeur. You will one day be able to produce works that will make the world marvel. I want to stay here forever, not just for my own enjoyment, but in the hope that I can fill this 160-year gap soon and accompany you to realise your dream." Qiuchen says sincerely, his eyes full of determination.
"You know how to butter me up."
Yuan Ge avoids Qiuchen's passionate gaze, refocuses his attention on the collection and says, "I'll divide them into different drawers by region then. You see, America, Europe, Asia, and then each drawer is roughly ordered chronologically so that you can find them as easily as possible. For example, the Asian section is larger and it's further subdivided into different regions such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan and Korea, South East Asia, India and so on. There are also these extra drawers, all sorted by awards won, and this one below is our academic analysis …"
Seeing how Yuan Ge meticulously sorted through the huge collection and explained everything to him in detail, Qiuchen is so grateful that he doesn't know what to do. Yuan Ge also notices that Qiuchen is very perceptive and is able to understand almost everything he has been taught, which is a great relief to him. Seeing how quickly he has progressed in his studies every day, Yuan Ge wonders if he doesn't need to sleep at all.
"What did you put in these three drawers? Gege forgot to tell me about them."
Rong Qiuchen points to the three drawers in the far corner, which are stacked with various hard drives marked with letters and followed by specific instructions written in a foreign language.
"They're, uh …" Yuan Ge looks embarrassed, "Chenchen, are you of the legal age of majority or not?"
"How is it that Gege always fails to remember that I am twenty-two years old. How can I be underage?"
"So, as a hot-blooded college graduate, you must have watched porn, right?" Yuan Ge cleared his throat and explained awkwardly. Seeing that Qiuchen still looked confused, he said even more sheepishly, "That, uh, is similar to the ancient … Chungong Pictures[1], only that they are not just pictures, they are moving pictures, so that, uh, the level of realism … probably is a bit more, uh, explicit …"
"But there are so many hard drives here. According to what Gege said earlier, a small box can store thousands of movies, and since there are so many hard drives, could it be …"
"Stop, stop! Let's not discuss my rather uh, kinky collection and tags, shall we?" Yuan Ge put his hand on his forehead and sighed helplessly, "Chenchen, you're a good, innocent boy. It's better not to understand..."
"But what about in this drawer?"
Qiuchen's long and slender fingers pull open another drawer below. Yuan Ge rushes forward and grabs the large hard drive labelled "Worldwide Restricted Films" from his hand, shoving it back and closing the drawer firmly.
"The movies here are even more outrageous than those just now, and they're something even adults shouldn't watch! It's what we directors use professionally to discover and study human nature …"
"Human nature?" Qiuchen glances at the drawer with the porn and restricted movies and a third drawer below it and finally swallows the question he was about to ask.
***
For two days in a row, Yuan Ge has been in his home office studying the script of "A Journey in Brocade". Apparently, when this million-word novel is condensed into a film, many of the plot lines become incoherent, especially the emotional thread of the story. How does Chu Jiliang, the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, whom he is to play, go from being buddies to having romantic relationships with all three men closest to him?
Holding the original novel while tossing and turning under the covers, Yuan Ge becomes more and more confused as he reads.
This Meatball really deserves the title of "Goddess of Flesh", a woman who has the guts to write about sex in such an explicit way! The uncensored scenes of passion in the book are so intense that they will make a man blush. But how do such intense emotions happen? Girls are always fond of using the phrase "I don't know where love comes from, but I just fall into it deeply", but as a rational person, Yuan Ge is not willing to accept such an unexplainable emotion.
Admittedly, most male love stories written by women are still largely fantasy-based, focusing too much on aesthetics and lacking a sense of reality, which is probably the hallmark of so-called "danmei" works, or "boy's love". But since King Guan wanted to adapt it into a film, with an S+ script and a lot of big names in the industry, Yuan Ge figured that he wouldn't tolerate a purely female perspective. Therefore, if he were to play the role well, he had to understand the key emotional points.
But … but he just can't make sense of these key emotional points!
Yuan Ge is tossing and turning in bed, desperately trying to figure this out. Between two men, it's easy to understand why they vow to live and die together, and why they would treat each other as confidants and not betray each other, but how can there be such a turning point where brotherly love suddenly turns into romantic love?
When he wrote the play Qingqing, everything seemed to flow naturally. Perhaps because of Rong Qing's special identity as an opera singer, he feels that he should be influenced by social customs of the time and liked men naturally. And since he was an unworldly boy, he was probably lured into it before he understood what homosexuality meant. But Chu Jiliang is different. He is the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guards, so how can he not even want his newly married princess but wanting a man instead?
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[1] Chungong Picture is a type of Chinese erotic art, similar in style to the Japanese shunga tradition of art of the same period.. Translated literally, Chungong means Spring Palace, referring to the crown prince's palace, and "spring" is a common euphemism for sex in Chinese.