lunar riviera

for starters, the main character’s name is “alberino bacchus” which i can’t even type without laughing, but everyone calls him al. THEY LITERALLY CALL HIM AL. every time the novel forces me to see both his names together i start yelplaughing. alberino bacchus should be serving as a low-level courtier under the house of medici but instead he’s a quantico-trained forensic examiner who lives and works in “westlake,” which could be—anywhere, really. it could be in ontario or utah or new south wales or spitalfields or some disneyland version of new hampshire. and what about al’s coworkers, you ask? why they’re named “olga moroz” and “bart hardy” of course. BART HARDY you cannot make it up, i keep having to put the book down to laugh in sheer delight.

equally charmingly, the ML’s name is “herstal armalight,” because “herstal” is definitely a given name for sure (in belgium) and because so many people are surnamed after semiautomatic rifles. but the best part, THE BEST PART, is that very early on (none of this is a spoiler btw, everyone’s introduced in chapters 1-2) there are brothers who are apparently important members of “a latino gang” and you’ll never guess what their names are, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS: richard norman and thomas norman. WHAT IN THE MS-13 IS GOING ON HERE (and they have the additional hendry cox advantage of being fully reversible!)

it's just so completely dazzling and wonderful to have that ongoing realization: this is literally what anglophones seem like to the average danmei author, just incoherently-named language-garbling white monsters who are basically cartoon characters, hollering and trampling around the world being implausible. i love it so much, it’s just like every time the spirealm takes a moment out of its plot to drag capitalism. like YES PLS ROAST US MY QUEENS. cf. also priest's glorious bored refusal in sha po lang to ever give "the western pope" 1) a name or 2) any kind of an ending. he's simply not that important or interesting. merely evil, in a hat, when needed, then goes away and conveniently dies (…maybe? we think? she doesn’t even really make that very clear).

extra bonus: realizing this is IDENTICAL to how all my cdrama fanfic reads, whether historical or contemporary, no matter how much research i think i’ve done into coastal fujian or dongbei or hangzhou, no matter how many baidu pages i’ve laboriously translated. i’m literally a tween from nebraska who makes up preposterous elaborate romantasy names having never been anywhere further than mall of america, who thinks people from new england have a british accent. humiliating. i am glorying in being dragged this hard. if i were dumb enough to try to write a cultivation novel it would read EXACTLY like this.

OH MY GOD YOU'RE A GENIUS??? also i'm a dumbass, i didn't think about ANY of that. WINE AND GUN!!!!! (also someone on bsky said, hilariously, that lavazza mercader is just when you name a character after whatever objects you can see when you look around your office) and also!! preorders for vol 2 were announced today which i'm SO hyped for, look at this pretty pretty cover! desperate to know what happens next with these weirdos (affectionate) #teamherstal

Some cast/show related stuff he shared:

They were told to read the novel first, and then read the script

He listened to a bit of the audio drama. XHY told him he shouldn't, as it will affect his acting and his interpretation to be too close to the audio drama. But XHY was also listening to it

The cast hung out before filming, during script reading & martial arts practice, but not really during filming as it was a very packed schedule

He and ZXC both ran a half marathon during the script reading time period

Some of them went to an old city to hang out and happened to see ZXC thereas well. The next day, ZXC told them that he biked back to the hotel from the old city. But it was 30RMB to park the bike, so he biked back to the old city, and walked back to the hotel, because he couldn't understand why he had to pay for the parking [this is the same story as what FXB said in the interview]

ZXC gave him a massage when he had knee pain from running. Yang xia saw them and said, "why is xincheng massaging you?"

They had 2 PDGs. They switched the first one when they changed filming locations

ZXC and FXB took turns treating everyone (ktv, sushi, etc)

When they switched to filming in qingdao, their hotel was only 5km away from where they worked. Everyday after filming, ZXC would run back to the hotel. The cast had a driver who would drive them back, and they saw him running once. XHY said, "this is why he's famous and we're not"

ZXC and FXB stayed at the same hotel, which had a gym. The rest of the cast were at a different hotel

There was one week where it was only ZXC and FXB one on one scenes. The rest of them sometimes went to watch

It's not common for executive producers to do this, but Yang xia was on set the entire time. She would point out when the acting is too much and tell them to tone it down a little (to ensure it would pass censorship). That's why everyone thought it would be able to air - everyone thought it was bromance enough (as opposed to romance)

Yang xia tried her best

They had a wrap up dinner. ZXC was filming another drama and they called him back for it. They had a draw and ZXC won first place. Xiao wu also won a prize ($)

Someone asked if they ship them, and he replied "it's our very own boss and the person he cherishes the most, of course we ship them"

He saw someone ship him with Zou feng

They had a reunion dinner last year in Beijing

If you belong to the human race, you go to the opera. If you don’t go to the opera, you’re not a human being. Pigs and dogs don’t listen to the opera. And are they human? They’re beasts! And where there’s opera, there’s work for us as actors.