#1983 stunt

[multisnapshott]

King Kong on the Empire State Building: The 1983 Stunt That Shocked New York

In 1983, New Yorkers were stunned to see a massive King Kong figure clinging to the Empire State Building once again. Nearly 50 years after the iconic 1933 film first introduced the image of the giant ape atop the famous skyscraper, a promotional stunt brought Kong back to life in a spectacular—and controversial—fashion. The Stunt That Took Over Manhattan On April 6, 1983, a towering inflatable…

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

anytime Johnny gets a scheme in his head the others push it SO hard bc the thing is if it was JOHNNYS idea darry can't be mad about it <3

[contac]

[babylon38ad]

Carrie Frances Fisher & Tracey Eddon on location for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (83)

[of-fear-and-love]

Jackie Chan fights using a bicycle in Project A / A計劃 (1983)

[aiiaiiiyo]

[heroesriseandfall]

Introduction to Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, April 1990

Introduction by Dennis O'Neil for Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (1990 collected edition)

Transcription below the cut/readmore.

INTRODUCTION by DENNIS O'NEIL

Robin was gone. We needed a new Boy Wonder. There had been two previous Robins. The original first appeared less than a year after a new costumed hero called Batman made his debut in DETECTIVE COMICS #27, to instant success. Some time within the next eleven months, his creators, artist Bob Kane and his writer-collaborator Bill Finger, decided to give their dark, obsessed hero a kind of surrogate son, Robin, who was hailed on the cover of DETECTIVE #36 as “the sensational character-find of 1940—Robin, The Boy Wonder.” Over the next 40 years, Batman’s fortunes varied: always, however, Robin was at Batman’s side.

He served a couple of functions. If Batman were real (and it may shock some of our more avid readers to learn he isn’t), and if he were the grim, obsessed loner he is often portrayed as, Robin, with some help from Batman's faithful butler Alfred, would keep him sane; a man whose every waking hour is focused on the grimmest aspects of society, who is unable to release the effects of seeing his parents murdered, whose life is an amalgam of sudden violence and lonely vigilance, would soon skew into a nasty insanity if he did not have someone to care for, someone to maintain a link with common humanity. But Batman is, of course, not real. (My apologies to avid readers.) He isn’t exactly a fictional character—more on that shortly—but he does not and could not exist as a living, breathing human being. That doesn’t make Robin any less useful: he serves the same functions in the Batman stories as Watson served in the Sherlock Holmes canon and the gravedigger serves in Hamlet: like Holmes’s faithful doctor, Robin is a sounding board, a person with whom the hero can have dialogues and thus let the reader know how brilliantly he’s handling matters and like the gravedigger, he occasionally provides a bright note in an otherwise relentlessly morose narrative.

Which is why I was a trifle uneasy when we—the editorial staff of DC Comics—decided to let our audience decide whether he would live or die. It came to be known in our offices as the “telephone stunt.” We had a character, Robin, the readers didn’t seem terribly fond of. This wasn’t the original Robin, the “character-find of 1940”; that Robin was Dick Grayson and he had graduated from sidekick to bona fide hero who fronted a group of evil-fighting adolescents, The Teen Titans. In 1983, it was decreed that Robin should grow up and assume a crime-fighting identity of his own—become his own man, as befitted the leader of the mighty Titans. He left Batman’s world to assume the name, costume, and persona of Nightwing. Gerry Conway and Don Newton replaced him with a second Robin, Jason Todd, whose biography was virtually identical to that of Dick Grayson. Why not? Gerry and Don were not trying to innovate, they were simply filling a void. The assignment they were given was simple: Provide another Robin. Quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

In 1986, Max Allan Collins inherited the Batman writing assignment and told his editor he had an idea for an improved Jason Todd. Make him a street kid, Collins said. Make his parents criminals. Have him and Batman on opposite sides at first. Sounded fine to the editor and, since DC was in the middle of a vast, company-wide overhaul of storylines anyway, Collins was told to go ahead. I was the editor; I did the telling. And I’d do it again, today. Collins’s Robin was dramatic, did have story potential. But readers didn’t take to him. I don't know now, and will probably never know why. Jason was accepted as long as he was a Dick Grayson clone, but when he acquired a distinct and, Collins and I still believe, more interesting backstory, their affection cooled. Maybe we—me and the writers who followed Collins—should have worked harder at making Jason likeable. Or maybe, I guessed, on some subconscious level our most loyal readers felt Jason was a usurper. For whatever reason, Jason was not the favorite Dick had been. He wasn’t hated, exactly, but he wasn’t loved, either. Should we write him out of the continuity? It didn’t seem like a bad idea, and when we thought of the experiment that became the telephone stunt, Jason seemed the perfect subject for it. The mechanics were pretty simple: we put Jason in an explosion and gave the readers two telephone numbers they could call, the first to vote that Jason would survive the blast, the second to vote that he wouldn't.

It was successful—oh my, yes. We expected to generate some interest, but not the amount or intensity we got. As soon as the final vote was tallied���5271 for Jasons survival, a deciding 5343 against—the calls began. For most of three days, I talked to journalists, disc jockeys, television reporters. We got a lot of compliments. They ranged from a critic’s liking our stunt to the participatory drama of avant garde theater to the brilliant comedy team of Penn and Teller expressing mock envy that we beat them to “the kill-your-partner-900-number scam.” But then came the backlash, ugly and, to me at least, totally unexpected: one reporter claimed that the whole event had been rigged—that, in fact, we had decided on Jason’s demise ahead of time and staged an elaborate charade; a teary grandmother said that her grandchildren loved Jason and now we’d killed him; several colleagues accused us of turning our magazines into a “Roman circus.” Cynical was a word used. And exploitive. Sleazy. Dishonorable. Wait a minute, I wanted to reply. Jason Todd is just a phantom, a figment of several imaginations. No real kid died. No real anything died. It’s all just stories—

I would have been wrong. Batman, and Superman, and Wonder Woman and their supporting casts are quite a bit more than “just stories” if, by “stories,” we mean ephemeral amusements. They’ve been in continuous magazine publication for a half-century, and they’ve been in movies, and television shows, and in novels, and on cereal boxes and T-shirts and underwear and candy bars and yo-yos and games—thousands of ventures. For fifty years. Fifty years! Although the circulation of our magazines is relatively modest, these characters have been so enduring, so pervasive, they have permeated our collective consciousness. Everybody recognizes them. They are our post-industrial folklore and, as such, they mean much more to people than a few minutes’ idle amusement. They’re part of the psychic family. The public and apparently callous slaying of one of their number was, to some, a vicious attack on the special part of their souls that needs awe, magic, heroism.

We had promised to abide by the telephone poll, and we would. But within a few days, it became apparent that we’d have to begin growing another Robin. We had forgotten that Batman exists outside the pages of our comics, is not the exclusive property of DC’s editorial staff; because he is both popular and imperishable, hundreds of others have some legitimate interest in him (not the least of whom are the readers who, for one reason or another, had missed the voting.) Our medium may have kept him alive, but others have added immeasurably to his success. When we began hearing from them, the consensus was that a Batman without a Robin wasn't quite a Batman. I wasn’t surprised. Nor did I disagree, particularly. So our problem became: how to create Robin III without generating the hostility that plagued poor Jason. Dick Grayson was the answer. If, as we thought, readers felt Jason had somehow usurped Dick’s place, then we should link the new Robin to Dick—give Robin III his predecessor’s stamp of approval. One writer had done almost all of the Dick Grayson material DC had published for a decade: Marv Wolfman, co-creator (with George Pérez) of the New Teen Titans. That made Mary the first, and really only, choice to undertake the task of giving Batman a new helper. And if we were using Marv, why not have some of the story happen in the pages of THE NEW TITANS, which he was already writing, and thus be able to take advantage of the very considerable talents of Marv's collaborator on the Titans, George Pérez? George volunteered to co-plot the story with Mary and do layouts on the TITANS episodes, and editor Mike Carlin enlisted Tom Grummett and Bob McLeod to complete George's graphics work. I asked the regular BATMAN artists, Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo, to handle the BATMAN issues. Finally, we chose a name for Robin III—Tim Drake—and, after a couple of editorial conferences, six gifted gentlemen retired to do what they do best.

The result seemed worthy of being collected between one set of covers, to be read as a graphic novel. We decided to do that and you’re holding the result. I hope you enjoy it. But please don’t think it’s the end of the Robin III saga. Dick Grayson’s lasted 50 years, after all, and Tim Drake does have his blessing.

Dennis O’Neil

April 1990

[teambyler]

Stranger Things 5 video! The Original Four are back! And more Byler hope!! =D

New Netflix video: "Behind the Scenes | Stranger Things 5 | On the Set of the Final Season | Netflix"

Finn Wolfhard: "I'm excited to have scenes with the original four." We are too!

Some commenters think Finn's talking about El, Lucas, Dustin and Mike from s1. COME ON... when Finn says it they immediately cut to this:

More evidence this will be a Will-centric season! Castle Byers, Will getting a vision.

Which is a callback to this scene from 2x1:

And what looks like a stunt double for Will as a kid falling into the Upside Down in 1983 (that's what kid Will was wearing... looks like an older person but this is because they wouldn't put a kid through a stunt like that). So we'll get extended flashbacks to his time in the Upside Down which will be central to s5's story!?!?

We'll see the jocks again. If Will's emotional journey is central to s5, will there be anti-gay bullying? Is that Chance? Also looks like Dustin got beat up. So anti-Hellfire bullying? Or both? Lucas thwarted the s4 hunting party so they're all gonna be in the bullies' sights:

It looks like, yes, Holly Wheeler will be in danger. Maybe she's taken into the Upside Down? They said they'd be echoing s1 themes...

Looks like El will be in the Upside Down confronting Vecna?

Also, I don't think we see a single shot of Mike and El together. When ST brings romantic couples closer, it's almost always through them facing danger together. Looks like Mike doesn't spend as much time with El, but we DO know who he's spending time with more this season... =)

Is this Mike and his sister having an emotional moment? First, YAY for the siblings acting like siblings again. Is Nancy supporting Mike through something difficult? (People are saying it's his relationship/breakup with El? Maybe! It could be parallel a s1 scene when they talked about their relationships. We'll see...)

It's noteworthy that we don't see Max in any shooting scene. They're clearly trying to avoid showing how early or how extensive her recovery from the coma will be... they're avoiding showing any big plot developments in these scenes. So as exciting as these glimpses are, they hide the big reveals this season!

Finally, is this Mike in his basement? Can't wait for scenes there! And remember Will might be living there this season =D

Oh and maybe he'll kiss this guy as they try to save Holly together, lol

-teambyler

[collapsedsquid]

There was also 1900 Special Services, which smoothed its own path to illicit gun permits by bribing an NYPD employee with cash and a color TV. Hoping to demonstrate the need for its business, the company also burglarized its own clients. Before long, the company’s headquarters was in large part outfitted with goods stolen from clients, including glassware, batteries, light bulbs, and plumbing supplies. One score involved stealing, per the testimony of a former employee, as much as three quarters of a million dollars’ worth of prescription drugs from a warehouse it guarded. But the company orchestrated its most daring stunt on May 20, 1980, when some of its workers zoomed down a Brooklyn highway in pursuit of a fuel tanker owned by a client, Sunmark Corporation. Once they pulled alongside the truck, the guards shot and struck its frame, forced it off the road, and hijacked it. The state’s 1983 report determined that, had the bullets struck the tanker itself, the entire thing would have exploded. It concluded with an urgent call for regulation: “The answer to the question, ‘Who is to guard the guards themselves?’ cannot be permitted to remain, as it is currently, ‘No one.’ ” (An oversight agency did exist at the time, but it employed just fifty-two investigators, who were tasked with overseeing not only guards but also private investigators, real estate brokers, hairdressers, and cosmetologists.)

Market efficiency, love to see it

[idsfantasy]

So, bear with me, this is gonna be a bit wild.

Setup (Things that we know from the games):

Fallfest had canonical appearances in 1970 and 1983

The FNAF 4 house can be seen on a hill overlooking the Fallfest 1983

A car that has purple aesthetics similar to the purple car of Midnight Motorist and Later That Night is there

Fallfest (as of 1983) seems to be a Carnival consisting of a barn (HW1 and HW2), a Carousal (HW2), and a Shooting Gallery (HW2)

Mystic Hippo and Carnie also fit the carnival theme (as fortune tellers were popular in carnivals and carnies... well, obvious), and both have Henry's animatronic hinged design.

Adjacently, several of the subtitles mention a 'Carnival Nurse' as well in the Patch game of HW2

Glitchtrap seems to be a handsewn costume that is implied to be William Afton's first official Spring Bonnie costume

Fredbear singing show was a thing in 1930's, with a dancing bear that would be around in Carnivals

Mrs. Afton has never been seen in-game or stories, barring the STAFF bot recreation in Security Breach (where she sits at the head of the table and William Afton looks like he's dressed as a carnival ring master), and possibly is represented by Clara in Immortal and the Restless, as well as maybe Balora.

Balora has the appearance of a Ballet Dancer, who also did tight-rope stunts in circuses and carnivals.

Clara sets her and Vlad's house on fire when she grows sick of Vlad's lies

The fire that hits the Carousal starts at the barn of Fallfest 1983 (and may be tied to the Shooting Gallery also going up in flames)

Charlie and Crying Child are both implied to have died in 1983

William Afton is British (I promise this will matter)

The Theory:

In 1930's USA, Fallfest has become a yearly tradition in Hurricane, Utah, headed by an average midwestern family who were popular in the town. This Fallfest included Fredbear, the dancing bear. This carnival would take place on their family farm, and included games in their own barn.

At some point in time, possibly 1970, an aspiring British showman - named William Afton - arrives from the UK to look for entertainment possibilities in Utah, where he met a woman (referred to as Clara for convenience) who was running Fallfest in the city as part of generations of her family, while also doing performances as a tight rope dancer.

He shortly married her soon after and had 3 kids: Micheal Afton, the Crying Child, and Elizabeth Afton.

Working at the Fallfest was an engineer named Henry Emily, who was building animatronics for the carnival, and worked with William to design the first of their characters: Spring Bonnie, Fredbear, and what would eventually be known as the Mediocre Melodies (and maybe Chica, Sun, and Moon as well).

The popularity of these mascot characters made the Aftons and Emily's a great amount of profit from each Fallfest and enough of a push to start their own Fredbear Diner, where William and Henry created the Springlock Suits/Animatronics.

TV shows were made, lunchboxes were made, masks were made, merch was doing good.

Over the years, rumors would surface of the mascots coming to life and stealing children, but they were baseless rumors. Still, enough to scare the Crying Child - who had seen his own father putting Henry into a suit for work - and likely may have inspired the idea of calling Fallfest a 'Spookfest' for Halloween by the public.

In 1983, Micheal Afton and his buddies (including Bonnie Bro/possibly Cassy's Dad) stuffed the Crying Child into Fredbear's mouth and put him into a coma, where he would eventually die from his injuries.

In 1983 of that year, William Afton - mad with grief and possibly rage/jealousy at Henry - found Charlie Emily (Henry's daughter) locked up outside. After luring her with the promise of help, he violently killed her in a rage and drove off.

In 1983, as Fallfest approached, William is confronted by Clara. Henry had his suspicions about his friend, and Clara had noted the timing of William getting home that day and how suspicious it was that they would both lose a child in the same year at the same place.

William refuses to admit to anything, gaslighting her, pointing out that there is no evidence. Their marriage goes rocky, both of them angry and grieving, and Clara notes how empty the house feels despite it still being full of people (William retreats into his work, Micheal is traumatized, and Elizabeth is too young to understand what is going on).

In 1983, during the Fallfest of 1983, Clara Afton finds evidence of William's murder of Charlie in the Barn setup for the patrons. Maybe it was a weapon. Maybe it was something led to her by the spirits or the Shadows of William's Dark Deeds. Maybe it was her son, saying 'It's Me' in a way only she could figure out.

Perhaps William is there, the two of them having one final confrontation.

In 1983, Fallfest, Clara sets the barn on fire in an attempt to kill herself and her husband. Out of shame? Out of anger? Out of fear if he tells her his plans for putting their dead son back together?

Maybe none of it. Maybe all of it.

In any case, the fire spread, engulfing the barn and hitting the Carousel and its occupants. Panic ensues as Fallfest goes up in flames, animatronics and games burning... and William Afton escaping with his life.

Clara, does not.

(Obviously this is all just a theory, but I wondered why Mrs. Afton seems to be simultaneously left out of the story beyond animatronic/cartoon parallels, and that at least one of those parallels had her burning their house down. Obviously a barn isn't a house, but it's interesting that we see the fire start at the barn in 1983, close to the FNAF 4 home, and Clara is the only female character who sets fire to a home.)

(Also, obviously, if one believes in the Mrs. Afton running Fazbear now - since the way it's structured is meant for family businesses - then this goes against that theory, barring William Afton also resurrecting her in some capacity but I don't want to get into that.)

I don't necessarily agree with certain things, and it's kinda hard for me to have opinions on other things since we don't have a ton of evidence for what happened there, but it's interesting to think about.

[junkyard-gifs]

Macavity's just going to knock Munkustrap flying, don't mind him.

And Munk is going to jump up to stand aggressively on his back. Totally normal behaviour. (You know, some stunts, I just can't imagine how you rehearse them safely.)

And just as Munkustrap thought he had Macavity more or less at kicking height... Victoria decided to use him to show Macavity that she can be big and scary too. Timing, woman!

Shiki production, Tokyo 1983.

Unless there are covers on: Shintaro Sonooka or Kenkichi Hamahata as Munkustrap, Yoshiaki Sugitani as Macavity, and Mamiko Yaesawa or Mami Nakai as Victoria.

@storyweaverofgondor

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 8 Matsuribayashi pt. 65

Seems unlikely that the two will send each other Christmas cards. Ooishi then thoroughly confuses the matter by sending a small package of handcuffs to Akane that says “thinking of you.”

I guess something about that line tickled me something fierce, I have five screenshots of this weirdly spread out through this scene. How old do you suppose Akane is? Is she mid-thirties like Takano and Irie? Does she consider herself an old person, or do you think she’s one of those manga characters who refers to themselves as “eternally seventeen?”

“Let’s get plastered Ooishi.” “Nah, I have to drive, don’t you?” “Nnnnnope, Shion’s taken some stunt driving classes, she’ll be driving.” Cut to Shion wearing her cool Drive jacket as she puts on her driving gloves. You’re mafia royalty Akane, I doubt you drive any where.

Sure is a good thing that Tomitake is none the wiser. Could you imagine the headache it would be if he was aware and suspicious of Takano potentially having ill-intentions?

You might recall back in part 42 I asked the question about whether in all of the other fragments if Takano and the Irie Institute are going to be shut down. That probably is the case, but I wonder how she takes the shut down order in these other fragments. In Minagoroshi pt. 17 we see Takano start Operation Doomsday, which included the murder of Tomitake. Only in Minagoroshi Takano didn’t seem all that hesitant or sad about having to take out Tomitake, she put out the feeler to see if Tomitake would be seduced to the dark side, but didn’t seem particularly bothered by the idea of having him killed. So it’s interesting to see that despite killing him at least seven times that we’ve seen that this time around she seems a bit more unwilling to kill him.

There is something about this whole line of thought that strikes me as strange. I’m once again asking you to go back far into the past; in Matsuribayashi pt. 3 Takano is startled awake from a nightmare remembering of her past in the orphanage. When this happens she’s at the mobile command center they used to execute the emergency manual/Operation Doomsday. Then shortly after we get the flashbacks before eventually seeing her meeting Hanyuu at the Furude Shrine before the Connecting Fragments again. So was that a separate variation of the operation? Was it yet another time Rika Furude tried, and failed to change her future? Or am I simply overthinking it, and it was some time prior to the events portrayed here, and it was something like a test run of the manual?

I really don’t understand why Takano’s character has changed so much in this chapter compared to what was shown in Minagoroshi. I suppose you could argue that this is a fuller more realized version of her character, since all that was shown in earlier chapters was really just small snippets of her personality. But I don’t know if I buy that, because every time someone ever mentioned her prior to this chapter it was always mentioned that whichever character is talking about her typically views her as a bit of an odd duck. One who always seemed to have an odd fascination with the history and so on of Hinamizawa. People were so aware of her personality quarks they knew about her penchant for writing fiction about the Hinamizawa parasite, only replacing the parasite for some other fantastical existence. I think it’s fair to assume that the things we see in the Connecting Fragments happen in nearly every version of 1983, concerning Takano at least.

Takano was revealed to have a rather sympathetic side to herself when she talked to Rena about her troubles in Tsumihoroboshi. But, again, this was happening while she was in the midst of planning to execute the manual. So how much of her sympathy she showed to Rena then is up for debate I think, because with all the information that’s been given it’s unclear how much of that was just an act.

She should be unaware of the outside circumstances that are affecting this chapters June 1983, so she should be acting the same as she normally does. So the way that Takano is acting in regards to Tomitake, and her impatience with the Mountain Dogs just seems wildly out of character. Unless, and I believe I mentioned this earlier, Takano herself is infected with Hinamizawa Syndrome and is, unbeknownst to her, approaching terminal levels (Matsuribayashi pts. 33, 60, 62).

“Jirou-san, if someone were to try to assassinate you, what would be the easiest way to do it?” “Well, Miyo-san, probably an injection of a mystery drug that makes you kill yourself after being wrestled to the ground by other trained soldiers.” “Ara ara, what a specific way.” Then she just hits him in the head with a brick. Without wishing to reference old parts some more, there was that line ages ago where Tomitake remarks on Takano’s need to appear like a villain for some reason or other. Also, Takano, would this be a bad time to remind you that Tomitake has been aware and indeed used for some of your dark deeds? He seemed perfectly aware of your evil ways when you had the Mountain Dogs kidnap the grandson of the construction minister.

There’s this habit in a lot of writing that occurs where the villain of the work is given a tragic backstory in a bid to make them appear more sympathetic. I don’t particularly care for this device because it comes across to me as the author de-villainizing their villains. Even my beloved Umineko does it with the Golden Witch Beatrice, and I always think it’s some pretty weak sauce.

I don’t think this makes Takano more of a compelling character, it reads to me like a weak explanation to try to explain away the things that made her such an intriguing character at the end of Minagoroshi. Even during the Connecting Fragments, and basically up until right now I felt that she was a very strongly written character. Yes, she’s evil, she’s really quite irredeemable, but she was compelling. Having her go from a strongly convicted and self-assured character to this indecisive one is such an incredibly bad misstep that it’s astonishing to read. I was convinced for the longest time that I somehow missed something important that set this up that I reread scenes involving her character again. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything, yes she was a sad depressed drunk when they shut down her research and Nomura picked her up, but by the end of that encounter she had regained some of her fire and planned to make them all pay. Now though, just because she can’t find Tomitake she’s fallen into this deep depression, and will make further and further bad decisions.

I’ve said before that I find writing about Hanyuu and Rika to be a rather vexing prospect. Takano though, takes the cake because of how thoroughly her character gets ruined by the end of this chapter. Which is a shame, because she’s probably my favorite character in this entire series.

[vancruejovi]

Hey, any other Miami Vice fans know anything about this sweatshirt? I’ve had it for a good couple years now and I’ve always wanted to know more about it. I bought it off of eBay and it’s been my favourite piece of clothing I own since. (Don’t mind the little toothpaste stain lol, he’s been very well worn)

I think it’s from about 1983/1984 judging by the copyright date. It also says Universal City which is where Universal Studios is, and it says Licensed by Merchandising Corporation of America. My first thought is maybe this was merch for the Miami Vice Stunt Show? But that started around 1987 so it could just be that the copyright date is a red herring. No tag in it either.

I feel like I saw an advertisement for these a long time ago and I just couldn’t find them again. If anyone has any ideas let me know!!

[machetelanding]

Carrie Fisher and her stunt double, Tracey Eddon, relaxing between takes on the set of Return of the Jedi (1983)

[blackmoonlightexpress]

TTEOTM Creative Team: What else did they work on?

For those who are a bit underwhelmed by the summer drama options or still dreaming about TTEOTM! 😎

Kuk Kok Leung (Lead Director)

Kuk Kok Leung is a veteran director who started his career in Hong Kong's TVB. He's been nominated for the prestigious Magnolia Award and is known for wuxia and serious, warm-blooded historical dramas (he's adapted 7 out of 8 Jinyong novels). His works include...

Legend of the Condor Heroes (1983) as Assistant Director, with Felix Wong and Barbara Yung

The Duke of Mount Deer (1984), with Tony Leung & Andy Lau

Return of the Condor Heros (1983) with Andy Lau & Idy Chan

Legend of the Condor Heroes (2002) with Li Yapeng & Zhou Xun

Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (2003), with Hu Jun, Jimmy Lin, and Liu Yifei

Water Margin (2011), nominated for Magnolia Award

Cool Sword (2013), with Julian Cheung & Wallace Chung

The Patriot Fei Yue (2013), with Huang Xiaoming & Ruby Lin

The Stand-In (2014), with Wallace Chung

The General and I (2016), with Wallace Chung and Angelababy

He's also a frequent collaborator and producer on Johnny To films, including Election, Election 2, Mad Detective.

So you get the picture. He makes TV for men who are ready to bleed for their country. This all makes him a really interesting choice for TTEOTM (and tells you a bit about the ambition and creative vision of the producers), especially since all his more recent idol dramas were widely panned.

Wang Haiqi, Director & Action Director

We don't know too much about Wang Haiqi because TTEOTM is actually his directorial debut. He started his career in stunts and has worked as the action coordinator on Ashes of Love (2018) and Immortality (unreleased) alongside Luo Yunxi. He was also a stunts man/double in a bunch of Hollywood films, including Mulan (2020) and the Foreigner (2017) through the Jacky Chan stunts team.

He's responsible for most of the action/battle scenes in TTEOTM, and his experience working on films probably explains why the fight sequences are unusually cinematic for TV.

Luan Hexin, Art Director

Luan Hexin is a Magnolia Award nominated art director best known for Huanyu productions, including Story of Yanxi Palace, Winter Begonia, and Royal Feast. He's a serious art guy, as you can tell from this interview.

(Note: Huanyu is Bai Lu's management company. There is a rumor that Luan Hexin is part of Bai Lu's "dowry", but the parties have since clarified that Luan was brought in after she was cast.)

He's also an interesting choice, having never worked on costume fantasies before and better known for his authentic representation of the look and feel of bygone eras.

Huang Wei, Costume Designer

Huang Wei is one of the most sought-after costume designers working today, especially for xianxias. She started her career as a Vogue China editor and was in fact the person responsible for TTEOTM's Dunhuang-inspired aesthetics.

Her better known works include A Dream of Splendor (2022), One and Only (2020), Love O2O (2015), Back from the Brink (2023) as well as a bunch of highly anticipated dramas like Immortality and The Last Immortal. (The joke on Chinese internet is that there is an "expensive" vs. "cheap" version of Huang Wei costumes - her design can be much simpler on lower-budget productions.)

I'd like to think that after designing 40 mostly white costumes for Luo Yunxi in Immortality, she decided to go nuts on color with Tantai Jin.

Tsang Ming Fai, Makeup Designer

Tsang Ming Fai is a big name in the xianxia circuit. He and his team of “students" have worked on a large number of costume dramas, including Ashes of Love (2018), Love & Redemption (2020), Under the Power (2019), Noble Aspirations (2016), Sword of Legends (2014), as well as the... wait for it... unreleased Immortality and Luo Yunxi's currently filming drama Follow Your Heart.

He's sadly been receiving a lot of hate in fan circles over the heavy makeup in TTEOTM (which may or may not have been his call). What I do appreciate is his ability to help actors craft distinct characters with varied hair and makeup choices. For example you can distinguish between different Luo Yunxi characters and their personalities with Runyu's clean cut tie-back half ponytail (ethereal & straight laced), Tantai Jin's slightly brown hair, messy bangs and heavy eye shadow (dark & sickly), Chu Wanning's angular eyebrows and geometric hair puff (strict & proud).

He also excels at creating unusual, iconic looks even for side characters, e.g. Chen Yao's dark lipstick paired with gothic jewelry in Immortality and Chen Duling's retro updo in TTEOTM.