The Watermelon

Thanks for all the informative posts!!!

I thought that was a bug at first! And so many other people did, too! I ended up contacting weibo customer service to ask whether other people can pin music on someone else's weibo profile, like a tagging system? And they replied that only the owner of the weibo account can put music on their front page. Other people asked too and got the same answer so it really was him. I...don't know what to say except that I totally support him in whatever tf he's doing 😂

Here's a compilation of other people asking customer service. We all got the same answer. There should be even more because so many people asked to confirm. Customer service must've been so confused 💀

For those who don't know, Zhang-Laoshi the madman himself confused everyone last time when some poor, innocent fan visited his weibo and found out that he pinned his Happy Camp duet with GJ on his weibo's front page. It was filed under his "music works" and it was first on the list before all his other actual works 😂

Here's a vid:

It's even funnier because it literally says LLD version on the title and album art but he didn't give a shit and pinned it on his profile anyway. (Actually it even also said JunZhe on the cover which is ??? even more ???? ?? He really lives up to his chaos gremlin reputation)

Here's a closeup of the album art lol

tl: [LLD] JunZhe Happy Birthday Song

He took it down that same night it was found out, probably because it got a lot of attention. Nobody really knows how long it was up there before it got noticed. But the peace didn't last for long because a few days later people found out that he pinned another song. This time it was his and GJ's Tian Wen duet from their Ace vs Ace appearance 😂 It's also first on the list like the previous one. He put it up there on June 26 and it's still there! You can go on his profile and have a listen~

At the end of the day, it’s about equal pay. It’s about Disney not thinking that because they’re a multi-billion dollar conglomerate they’re allowed to bully their actors into taking less than they were promised. It’s about protecting actors who are not white A-List Hollywood stars with the means to endlessly fund expensive lawyers from the same exploitation in the future. 

Until more information is released, I’m standing with Scarlett. You can’t really claim that you support professional women to demand what they’re worth and promised and then be like, “except her, she’s doing fine as is”. Even if her motivations were entirely selfish, or she doesn’t win, it’s highly likely at this point that with her big name, a lot of other actors are going to come forward.

Disney is legally obligated to meet the letter and spirit of its contractual obligations. Scarlett is alleging that Disney has failed to do so, perhaps intentionally. This is a breach of contact and likely tortious. She has the right to sue for damages. People should get the benefit of what they bargained for in their contractual agreements. People should not cheat other people.

Scarlett held up her end of the contract and apparently made a great movie. She claims that the contract was for theatrical release only for the first 90-120 days, because she negotiated a percentage of box office receipts as part of her compensation. Her complaint alleges that *the bulk of her compensation* was this back end percentage of revenue.

Previous Marvel movies had exclusive windows of at least 82 days, and 117 days on average. And people would pay to see the Marvel movie multiple times, so that’s more ticket revenue.

By releasing simultaneously on Disney+, Disney lured many new subscribers, and got them to pay $30 more to watch black widow, and its stock price rose, which increased compensation for Disney executives. This also cannibalized theatre box office receipts, including no one going to the theater multiple times, reducing Scarlett’s compensation. So Disney both made more money for itself AND had to pay Scarlett less money.

Disney needs to pay her all of what she’s owed. She is suing for intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract.

Only a person as wealthy as Scarlett can afford the astronomical legal fees that it will cost to sue Disney. Millions of dollars, easily. And she might lose the lawsuit because Disney has very tough lawyers and uses very aggressive legal tactics. Only a person as wealthy as Scarlett can afford to gamble on millions in legal fees and know she might lose.

Only a person as successful as Scarlett has potential monetary damages that make it worth spending all that money on legal fees, because she could recover way more money than it costs her to bring that lawsuit. One article said she’s potentially looking at $60m in damages.

Only a person as successful as Scarlett can afford to piss off Disney, which owns basically everything, and potentially get blacklisted by other major studios. Could a less prominent actor risk their career with this sort of lawsuit? No. Could anyone else in that movie? No.

I wanted to ask if things have calmed down on Weibo for Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun. I try to stay away from fan controversies but I’m a bit concerned about Zhang Zhehan (okay, I lie its more than a bit. I kinda freaked out after that light heat stroke) and I keep worrying about the stress all this will add on him and JunJun…. Thank you!

asjkdhdbssvdhs I only have beef with toxic fans! we're on the same side! 😂

Unfortunately not yet. Still lots of comments from antis and hotsearches filled with malicious posts popping up once in a while. Hate to say it but this will probably go on for a while. There's not much we can do since this whole thing seems to be capital backed. If there's cash and investors involved it's no use fighting back. Only thing we can do is keep quiet and report as much nasty comments as possible.

We did what we could to promote it since it dropped out of nowhere without prior notice, but most of the credit really goes to the random passerbyes that gave it a chance and shared clips on weibo and douyin. The most famous one was a GIF of Wen Kexing sitting on the wall fanning himself in episode 2. It went viral and made so many people look into the show.

And of course there was the scene of Wen Kexing complimenting Zhou Zishu's...sword.

People were very impressed with how hard they went in with the romance, especially since they left no room for doubt about the nature of Wen Kexing's relationship with Gu Xiang. The reason viewers were surprised with this, is because dangai dramas always have "safety nets". For example, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty's added female lead and The Untamed's Wen Qing. The protagonists don't actually end up with the women but there's enough tension and hints that suggest attraction. People initially expected the same thing for Gu Xiang until the inn scene where Wen Kexing went dad mode when he caught her on her "date". This encouraged people to watch the show as it was airing instead of waiting for reviews after the finale, because they were confident enough with what they had seen so far that it won't pull a sudden het romance.

About eight episodes in and viewers were complimenting the quality of the script, mostly that the pacing was very good and the dialogue was clever. WOH's producer, Ma Tao, was initially told to remove the poetry from the dialogue because it might confuse viewers but she declined and said that the audience can always try to learn. Chinese dramas are plagued with dumbed down scripts, so this a big deal. This helped attract audiences beyond the usual scope of danmei fans, and must be part of the reason why a surprisingly large (compared to other danmei adaptations) percentage of WOH viewers are men. The CEO of weibo also watched it by the way 😂

When people first talked about the casting, much of the criticism was focused on ZZH, but there were also those who had seen GJ's previous dramas and said that he always has little to no chemistry with his costars. This was brought up again during the early episodes of WOH, because lots of people remarked that GJ was like a completely different actor with ZZH. Eventually, people who initially had misgivings gave it a chance and WOH debuted on douban with a rating of 8.2 (for comparison, dramas usually debut with a 6 or lower)

It wasn't always smooth sailing, though. There was a certain large fandom that was not happy with WOH's good reception. GJ and ZZH were not popular to begin with and there were like 60 of us progenitor llds, we literally had no way of fighting against them and it was hell for us during the first week with all the hate against GJ and ZZH, accusations of copying and plagiarism, etc etc. Eventually, rumours started circulating that they were planning on mass reporting WOH to get it taken down. This pissed off the danmei community in general who just wanted to watch the damn show and they helped fight back. Things only settled and people felt that the show was safe when a state sponsored newspaper published a positive article about WOH, praising it for bringing back the wuxia genre for the younger generation.

That fandom was still causing trouble, but it was easier to tune out knowing the show was safe. The show's reputation kept getting better and the rating climbed from 8.2 to 8.3. Episode 12 was the one that propelled the ranking to 8.6 because of the "basking in the sun" scene.

The other half of the class were told, “you can make only one pot”. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.

But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.

All the best quality pots were in the ‘quantity’ group.

The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) - they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the ‘quality’ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but they’d had no further practice at actually making pots.

The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you won’t improve, because how can you improve on perfect?

Quick reminder to everyone on here to not go on weibo for fandom, especially if you're new to the platform. GJ and ZZH have been the target of antis and mass organized attacks for a while now, and we're hoping that once the remaining dangai dramas of 2021 finally air that these attacks will lessen. The environment we have on weibo takes years of getting used to. It's not just fans that cause trouble, but also companies and investors stirring shit for personal gain. Trust me, don't go there. It will only upset you.

So on 7/14, ZZH went to Hengdian to film a variety show for IQIYI and long story short, he attracted some unwanted attention for his wardrobe choices. The hanfu he wore for the variety was also worn before by a certain actor-idol and his shoes were from a brand that is being endorsed by another actor-idol.

For the purpose of not pissing off people, we'll hide the two actor-idols under the codenames Actor A and Actor B. So ZZH wore the same hanfu as Actor A and some of his fans camped in the comments section to shade him, but that was nothing in comparison to what happened after. Shit only really hit the fan when Actor B's fans got involved. Basically what started out as a tussle between fans devolved into something much more sinister after the other side brought up politics and questioned ZZH's loyalty to his country. I cannot stress enough how dangerous that is, especially at this time when the CCP is celebrating their 100th year anniversary and nationalism is supposed to be at its peak. Politics is no joke in China, and slanderous comments like that could land people in very real trouble, especially people in the public eye like celebs. And this snowballed from there, with ZZH's weibo account being bombarded by nasty comments, ranging from petty remarks about his looks to dangerous political accusations.

As for GJ, he has a new drama airing right now and lots of people have noticed his lack of promotion for it. It's because when WOH was airing, GJ was very, very active in promoting it on his weibo, so people were quick to notice how much more indifferent his approach is for this one. He joins in official streams if he can, but not much else beyond that. His much more relaxed approach in the promotion of the new drama has been the topic of discussion for a while now (Nothing bad is being talked about that, no worries! People were just curious)

On 7/14, Actor B fans were trashing ZZH online and making really horrible comments that I won't even bother repeating here. The situation was really bad and getting dangerous. At the height of that mess, GJ chose that moment to promote his new drama on his personal weibo.

This dragged some of the negative attention away from ZZH, which unfortunately, landed on GJ instead. Then when a "hotsearch" meant to bring even more negative attention to ZZH came up, GJ immediately posted promos for his drama again. This time, it was him thanking firefighters for their service (his new drama is about firefighters)

You can probably guess how people interpreted this. He did not bother to promote the drama beyond what the platform required since the day it aired, so why suddenly choose to do it on his personal weibo now? Long story short, GJ's account was also bombed with hate comments from Actor B fans. Now both of them are on the receiving end of all the hate.

Take note, this all happened on 7/14 and it's still going on as of 7/16, almost nonstop. The thing is, the attacks are so well-organized and it looks like so much money was thrown in, based on the number of bought hotsearches we had to deal with. And not to mention the fact that they are actually doxxing people! Over fandom! Fandom wars are normal. They happen nearly everyday on weibo, but there should be a line somewhere on what can and cannot be done in such cases. Making slanderous accusations at such a sensitive time and doxxing only shows the intent of causing real damage to people. How on earth is this normal?

I have never been interested in celebs before, so my experience with fandom wars is limited only to these last few months. We've run into trouble with some fandoms, sure, but at most it was just an afternoon of petty comments being thrown at one another, but hardly anything beyond that. What is happening right now is on a whole other level that I've only ever heard about before but never actually experienced.

Anon I feel like your prompts keep putting me on the path to hell. I was so determined not to get sidetracked from a JunZhe fic that I'm writing (with an actual plot!) when this prompt just grabbed me by the vagina.

My mind went STRAIGHT to @pepgabbyiola's absolutely legendary fic Pretty Boy I am only mortal and the demon that possessed me even put in a mild smattering of plot. NOTE: It's different from your prompt in that JunJun is a physio and its mostly ZZH pining but spicy massage sex they do have

i said what i said. i wasn’t confused about saying it.

if i found out a woman had aborted a fetus because she found out that fetus had a disability that i have—disabilities that i have firsthand knowledge of being painful, difficult to live with, and often resource-intensive—i would not be angry with her. i would not feel like she doesn’t think people like me should not be alive (unless she actually said so).

fetuses are not little potential “you”s. projecting your own anxieties onto a woman’s abortion (”i wouldn’t have wanted to be aborted” is common reasoning in plenty of pro-life circles; it’s not better here) is invasive and nonsensical.

bodily autonomy isn’t conditional. you don’t know a woman’s exact reason for abortion and you don’t need to. women’s rights to abortion need to be protected, even if you feel icky about some potential reasoning behind an abortion, which you aren’t even fully privy to in the first place.

disabled people should always be in the care of people who have the resources and desire to take care of them. insisting that disabled children be born simply to ease your own moral qualms with abortion is frankly unethical in my opinion, resources are often very slim for disabled people. not to mention our quality of life is often just lower in general. you can argue all you want in the notes about “mild” disabilities but you aren’t the arbiter of what constitutes a mild enough disability to make an abortion terrible and immoral and shame-worthy. 

women aren’t vessels. regardless of how morally pure you feel your crusade is, they simply aren’t.

speaking as a disabled person, energy is literally always better spent on changing society—by increasing resources for caretakers and disabled people alike, speaking frankly about quality of life, correcting notions about what disabled people’s lives are like, punishing mistreatment of actual disabled people [not potential ones], and putting research into easing the pain/suffering of people as much as possible—than it is on getting mad about women getting abortions. and it isn’t just better spent that way, it’s just immoral to do the latter.

the spectacularly understated:

the inaccurate:

the weirdly “this sounds like a euphemism” ones:

the technically accurate but weirdly specific:

and the just plain baffling: