aurumcalendula: Li Ningyu and Gu Xiaomeng from 'The Message' (2020) (Li Ningyu and Gu Xiaomeng)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
Title: 5 Out Of 6
Fandom: 风声 | The Message (2020)
Music: 5 Out Of 6 by Dessa
Summary: 'I ain't afraid of it'
Notes: Premiered at [community profile] vidukon_cardiff 2025!
Warnings: quick cuts and flashing lights, old film effects (sepia filter and random dark spots and lines) in some footage, violence, major character death

AO3 | bsky | DW | tumblr | YouTube
douqi: (gong qing 2)
[personal profile] douqi
(This isn't strictly about baihe but I'm posting this here anyway since I'll be using a couple of examples from baihe media.)

Let's say you're writing something inspired by or based on a c-novel. And you've come to the exciting part, which is choosing names for your characters. And you find yourself stuck.

Well, not to worry! We have a several-millennia-long tradition of poetry to assist us. All you have to do is this.

Take a line from a Book of Odes poem, or a Tang poem, or really any poem. Then pick out the name-like elements and smoosh them together. Voilà, you've got yourself a name.

Thus, from the Book of Odes the line 蒹葭苍苍, 白露为霜 (pinyin: jianjia cangcang, bailu wei shuang) (Legge's translation: 'The reeds and rushes are deeply green / And the white dew is turned into hoarfrost) gives us Bai Jianjia, which is suitable for either a refined young lady or a courtesan of the high-class, scholarly sort. Also from the Book of Odes, the line 昔我往矣,杨柳依依 (pinyin: xi wo wang yi, yangliu yiyi) (Legge's translation: At first, when we set out / The willows were fresh and green) gives us Liu Yiyi, also a good courtesan or high-class maidservant name (IMO the Book of Odes link might just about make it learned enough to be a young gentlewoman's name, but I don't usually like repeated-syllable names for upper-class or scholarly women, unless it's a nickname).

This trick is pretty commonly used in popular media. The drama version of The Message has a character named (or rather, re-named) He Jianzhu (何剪烛). This is clearly taken from the line 何当共剪西窗烛 (pinyin: he dang gong jian xichuang zhu) from Li Shangyin's poem 'Sending a Letter North on a Rainy Night'(夜雨寄北). The love interest from The Beauty's Blade is called Yu Shengyan (玉生烟), and so is a secondary character from the danmei novel Thousand Autumns, courtesy of the line 蓝田日暖玉生烟 (pinyin: lantian ri nuan yu sheng yan) from another Li Shangyin poem, 'The Brocade Zither' (錦瑟).

'But, douqi,' I hear you cry, 'what if I don't know any Chinese poetry or enough Chinese to know what are appropriate name elements to pick out of verses?'

Ah. Then I'm afraid this post will be of no help at all. Sorry.
aurumcalendula: Gu Xiaomeng (in red) and Li Ningyu (in white) dancing (dancing)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
This year's Festivids signups are open and a number of baihe fandoms were nominated!

Some of the fandoms that can be requested include Couple of Mirrors (双镜), The Evidence Tells (消失的痕迹), Intimates (自梳), The Message (风声), Moonlight Fills the Western Tower (月满西楼), and Soulmate Adventure (风灵玉秀)!
douqi: (couple of mirrors)
[personal profile] douqi
A couple of days ago, my random trawlings through the internet threw up this academic article which was recently published in the journal Continuum: 'The Production of Girls' Love Narrative in Couple of Mirrors (2021) Through Transmedia Storytelling in Contemporary China' by Wenqian Zhang and Peng Qiao. It's available open access via the journal's website here.

The abstract for the article is as follows:

There has been a relative dearth of scholarly discussions surrounding the production of girls’ love (GL) narratives in mainland China since the 2010s. This article offers an illustrative case study of a successful GL multimedia storyworld, Couple of Mirrors (CM), which unfolds across a webtoon, a novel, and a web series. First, this article scrutinizes the multilevel state regulation on queer content creation in different media formats. Second, we draw on Henry Jenkins’ canonical conceptualisation of “transmedia storytelling” to delineate the ways that the production of CM differs from the mainstream BL transmedia stories. Through a textual and paratextual analysis of official producers’ and fans’ participation, we argue that CM’s transmedia storytelling creates explicit GL elements through negotiation between market preferences, heteropatriarchal ideologies, and governmental censorship. In doing so, we show that CM represents a successful non-heteronormative cultural commodity within the mainland Chinese media market.
The authors look at the Couple of Mirrors drama and two of its adaptations, the novelisation and the manhua. The audio drama adaptation was released after they had submitted the article for publication, so that's not discussed. They situate this within the framework of transmedia storytelling and (what I found vastly more interesting) in the context of the various content regulation regimes governing different forms of media in China, which allow for different levels of explicitness and thus call for different strategies for presenting and engaging with the material.

I have serious doubts about the definition of 'baihe' they are using in the article (which is not at all congruent with my experiences of the 'baihe' category across various webnovel platforms), am more than ready for the field to refer to someone else other than Henry Jenkins on transmedia storytelling, have some doubts as to the authors' deep knowledge of the texts (for instance, they don't seem to be aware that the manhua went through an additional round of censorship some time after it finished serialising, nor when discussing the differences between the (more explicit) manhua and the drama and novelisation, do they mention the fact that the characters ACTUALLY FUCK, which seems to me to be a rather important detail), continue to be irritated at the focus on how fans interact with the texts rather than the actual texts themselves, and am somewhat unclear as to why they have made no comparisons to other read-as-GL full-length dramas (like The Message) or more explicit mini-dramas. Still, it's the first academic article to focus on Chinese GL that I'm aware of, and the discussion of the different content regulation regimes and their affordances does add clarity to my understanding, and potentially the fandom's collective understanding, of how these things work.
aurumcalendula: Gu Xiaomeng (in red) and Li Ningyu (in white) dancing (dancing)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
Anyone interested in looking at a fanvid draft for The Message?

You don't have to have seen the drama, but the vid does spoil various parts of it (including that fates of the two leads). The vid has a number of quick cuts and there are a bunch of clips with old film style (sepia tinted with random black specks and/or lines) effects as well as ones with flashing lightning.
aurumcalendula: Gu Xiaomeng from 'The Message' (2020) (Gu Xiaomeng)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
I've now read the English translation of Mai Jia's The Message and seen (at least some of) the four adaptations. I'm glad I read the book, but tbh I enjoyed the 2020 and 2023 adaptations more than it.

(there's some spoilers for all of them (and the book) under the cuts)


The Message (风声) 2009 film:

Read more... )


Legends of the Message (风声传奇) 2010(?) drama:

Read more... )


The Message (风声) 2020 drama:

Read more... )


Phantom (유령) 2023 film:

Read more... )
aurumcalendula: Li Ningyu from 'The Message' (2020) (Li Ningyu)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
poster for the 2020 cdrama The Message

Set in mid 1941, five employees of the puppet government's Bandit Suppression Headquarters are tasked with finding a Communist spy amongst themselves. All of them, including their interrogators, have something to hide.

(38 × ~45 minutes)

mostly unspoilerly details )
aurumcalendula: close up of Yan Wei and Xu Youyi from the opening credits of Couple of Mirror (Yan Wei and Xu Youyi)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
I'm only up to partway through episode 25, but I'm really enjoying The Message (2020) so far!

I was putting off watching it for a bit because it's a little longer than most dramas I've watched and Highlight for spoilers/content notes! *I know Li Ningyu is going to die*, but I'm so glad I started it!

imho it's a really engaging spy thriller that's beautifully filmed overall. I love Gu Xiaomeng and Li Ningyu's chemistry and I'm looking forward to seeing how everything plays out!
douqi: (fayi)
[personal profile] douqi
I'm painfully aware that (1) this comm really needs a resource post on baihe audio dramas and (2) I really don't know enough about audio dramas to be the person to write it. If anyone wants to write such a post, please please please go ahead and do it! You'll have my eternal gratitude.

Fortuitously though, Fanjiao — the specialist platform for baihe audio content, itself a spin-off from the lesbian dating app The L (formerly Rela) — celebrated its fifth anniversary a few weeks ago, with a long video featuring 49 baihe voice actresses, so I've decided to shamelessly glom on to it and provide an introduction of sorts to audio dramas via sketching out the profiles of each VA featured and listing their major works. The list is set out below in more or less alphabetical order based on pinyin. The focus will be mostly on the Fanjiao-hosted dramas which each VA has participated in, but I will provide details of their voice work on other platforms and media where I'm aware of them.



The original video can be viewed on the Fanjiao Weibo account here. For ease of embedding, I've re-uploaded it to my YouTube account. There are currently no English subtitles because I, er, already have a very large backlog of things to translate, but if anyone is interested in trying their hand at subtitling it, you're very welcome to do so, and I'm happy to provide support!

VAs A to F )

VAs G to P )

VAs Q to X )

VAs Y to Z )

I previously made an excessively long Twitter thread on this topic with less textual detail but with voice clips and images, which you can read here.
douqi: (tan xu ling)
[personal profile] douqi
An initial version of this review was originally posted on my personal journal. I thought I might as well clean it up and cross-post it here.

Major spoilers for Reading the Remnants )

I read the Chinese original of this novel on Changpei. There are currently two partial English fan translations of the novel available, at least the later of which appears to be ongoing. These can be found here and here.
douqi: (couple of mirrors)
[personal profile] douqi
Let's start by getting an important point out of the way: there is, to date, no live action adaptation of a baihe novel which has already aired. The authors of the two most popular current-generation baihe novels, Miss Forensics (我亲爱的法医小姐, pinyin: wo qin'ai de fayi xiaojie) and Reading the Remnants (问棺, pinyin: wen guan), have indicated that they have been approached about possible live action adaptations, but both have turned down these advances due to concerns about the major plot and relationship changes that would be needed to allow the adaptations to air. However, a live action adaptation of the extra from the contemporary baihe novel Kissing a Gardenia (都什么年代了啊, pinyin: ou shenme niandai le a) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔), author of Reading the Remnants, has been filmed by an independent production team and is currently in post-production. This is projected to be a 30- to 40-minute film, and will air under the title When We Met (去年烟火, pinyin: qunian yanhuo; my preferred and more literal translation of the title is Fireworks of Yesteryear). The production team's Weibo account can be found here, and a subtitled version of their BTS reel can be viewed here. A live action adaptation of She Is Still Cute Today (今天的她也是如此可爱, pinyin: jintian de ta ye shi ruci ke'ai; also known as She Is Also Cute Today), the high school baihe manhua by Guo Si Te (郭斯特), completed filming in 2022, but at the time of writing, remains unreleased.

Mapping the landscape of GL live action is a complicated task, due to (i) censorship rules precluding mainland Chinese productions from being advertised explicitly as GL or baihe, meaning that the more ambiguous marketing tag of 'double female lead' is used instead; (ii) censorship rules meaning that any such production must rely heavily on subtext and coding instead of explicit displays of romantic affection or sexual interest; and (iii) the overlap between GL live action productions and what I think of as 'serious queer/lesbian cinema'. But I will do my best.

Full-length dramas )

Mini-dramas and short series )

Short films )

Special thanks to [personal profile] superborb for doing the thankless grunt work of proofreading and checking each link.

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