#Shaopeng Chen

[morganstuart]

Jiang Wen and "Twinkling Eyes"

It's been a hot minute since I made one of my "Books on Baze" posts about my research and reading on the works of Jiang Wen. Fortunately, I've found a fascinating book that's new to me, and I wanted to share some Jiang Wen goodness.

The following quote about the film Lotus Lantern (1999) is from the book The New Generation in Chinese Animation by Shaopeng Chen (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021):

"This is the first time that Chinese cinema animation has had a domestic all-star voice cast, including Xu Fan as San Sheng Mu, Jiang Wen as Erlang Shen, Ning Jing as Gamei and Chen Peisi as Sun Wukong...

"At the top of the film stars, I want to mention the role of Jiang Wen in the whole production process. Jiang Wen, as 'China's most famous movie star', is also distinguished by his low husky voice. As mentioned earlier, in this film he plays Erlang Shen, who is characterized by a cold and autocratic voice and dry laugh. According to Chang Guangxi, Jiang Wen was reading Erlang Shen's character design sketches when he was in the recording studio. Suddenly Jiang made a bold suggestion: '[I]s it possible to recreate Erlang Shen's appearance based on my face? Look, small but twinkling eyes and sparse but domineering eyebrows (Jiang Wen's facial features)....' Chang adopted Jiang's idea, in other words, the final image of Erlang Shen is the animated Jiang Wen. Internationally, it is very common for the design of cartoon figures (both animation and comics) to be inspired by real people."

Here is the accompanying illustration:

[conscbgb]

Zi Xiang in his badass mode 😎

[theside-b]

Shaopeng & Zixiang: Undying love declarations, strengthening of family bonds, talks about marriage and potential dowry

Jonathan & Xinjia: Embezzlement, sex as financial compensation, workplace harassment as foreplay

Shuhe & Jessica: Deception is an act of endearment, lesbian things are happening here

And there is Nat Chen with a gangster subplot

[dramalove247]

Favorite Things: See Your Love

Shows should not be allowed to have this much cute and fluffy. They set the bar way too high, even for fiction! The focus on being seen, embraced, and loved unconditionally tells a really beautiful and touching story and we love it more than is healthy.

This show made us laugh and cry. Below are some of our favorite moments and posts we found on tumblr (spoilers ahead):

Going to start with the ending because we CAN NOT with this scene. This show had so many devastatingly beautiful and romantic moments that we are overly obsessed with. And then they gave us this. The way they see each other and love each other completely and unconditionally is everything. I don't love you in spite of who you are, I love you because it's who you are. FJHHSOIYOIHWKNW!!! Too many feelings!

We love translation posts and this one by @thisonelikesaliens compared the translations of this one phrase on different platforms. We agree that Gaga won on this one! Too funny!

This scene made us choke! Thanks for the GIFS @pointlesscandies

This edit post by @theside-b was so HILARIOUS!!! 🤣 It lives rent free in our brain now.

This scene. Their faces. We were completely destroyed. Had to share these GIFS from @tokkistuff

It's what makes you YOU 😭😭😭 I'm not crying, you're crying! Thanks for the GIFS @taeminie

First @theside-b made us laugh with their hilarious edit, and then made us cry with these beautiful GIFS. This entire conversation was everything. Love this show so much.

This scene was 🥰. But this post by @hughungrybear made us 😂

Some of us have to do mental/emotional gymnastics when dubcon is part of a story. We're not sure being intentionally mislead is much better, but it was definitely a surprise and we'll admit, the scene was a little funny and @pointlesscandies post made me laugh!

Did you love it as much as we did? What were your favorite things?

[avorbl]

Favorite QL Characters 2024

I got tagged by @bengiyo to share my favorite QL characters from this year. Starting with the ones that also belong to last year:

Liu Daren - VIP Only

The actors and the managers - I Became the Main Role of a BL Drama

Karan - Cherry Magic

Kasuga - She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat

Hayama Asami - 25 Ji, Akasaka de

Madoka - Don't Care for an Old Man's Underwear!

Thanwa - Knock Knock, Boys!

Takara - Takara's Treasure

Isumi - Sugar Dog Life

Mishima Futoshi - Smells Like Green Spirit

Chen Junjie - The Nipple Talk

Haru - Let's Eat Together Aki and Haru: More Please!

Of the currently still airing series:

Jiang Shaopeng, See Your Love

Touki - Fragrance You Inherit

Sun - Caged Again

Punlee - Your Sky

As honourable mentions because this is getting quite long

Fukaya Kai - Perfect Propose, Kor - City of Stars, Wei Qian - Unknown, Haruna Keita - Living with him, Itim - Live in Love, Xiao Mei - First Note of Love, Jeong Su - Latex

I am tagging @easterndelights, @benkaben, @catsundmaus, @itmoveslikejagger Please share your favourites if you want to and have the time.

[bunni-bun]

every time i get my 8 seconds of nat chen in this show, i feel alive* once more 😌 (*batshit crazy)

that said, i've been making steam kettle noises over how utterly fucking precious shaopeng and zixiang are like stooopppp, they are so sweet, they give my heart wings 🥺 zixiang learning sing language for shaopeng and shaopeng being so happy and more open now to him, what if i cried?????? WHAT IF I CRIED???!?!! 😭

and of course, shout out to our murder couple jon and xinjia, world's hottest everything and world's worst assassin lmaoooooo 😆 we love knife play in this house 😌🔪

[roiqin]

CORE ONE - Let Me Love G EP release

《孖》 《All 4 Ya》

qq | netease | kuwo | kugou | apple music 

[rqs902]

CORE ONE - 仲夏宣言 (Let’s Ride) MV

Cui Shaopeng, Su Yuhang, Xu Fangzhou, Chen Yunong

[shao-haofan]

[INFO] Core One <Let Me Love> EP now available

Tracklist:

核心令

最强拍

Stream to support: Spotify, iTunes, Netease, QQ, Kugou, Kuwo

[theowlsmask]

190116 | Core One photo shoot

[y-uyan]

trainee rankings as of feb 22

Li Wenhan 

Jia Yi

Guan Yue

Chen Youwei

Hu Chunyang

Lian Huaiwei

Yao Chi

Shi Zhan

Yao Mingming

Li Zhenning 

Xia Hanyu

Deng Chaoyuan

He Changxi

Lin Mo

Hu Wenxuan

Chen Tao

Xu Bingchao

Wang Jiayi

Shi Mingze

Xu Longhan

Feng Junjie

Zhou Shiyuan

Ye Helin

Chen Sijian

Wu Zelin

Wu Chengze

Wang Zhe

Anthony

Xu Fangzhou

Wang Xinyu

Sun Zelin

Li Zonglin

Gu Landi

Shao Haofan

Ding Feijun

Yin Shi

Manny

Hu Jiahao

Deng Bin

Zhan Yu

Qiu Bohan

Wang Yi

Che Huixuan

Zhuo Yuan

Shen Qunfeng

Lin Yuzhi

Zhou Chuanjun

Lin Zheyu

Bo Yuan

Fu Hongyi

Wen Yechen

Su Yuhang

Li You

Ye Ziming

Kou Cong

Yao Bolan

Yang Ning

Chen You

Chen Yunong

Cui Shaopeng

Qi Zhihao

Wen Kaiwei

[theside-b]

Shaopeng & Zixiang: Shakespearean love story; class divide as obstacle; orchestral music with strings whenever Nat Chen appears

Jonathan & Xinjia: Tsundere levels are off the charts; mpreg implications

[theside-b]

Awww See Your Love, I'm going to miss your weird and crazy energy. This finale really encapsulates the best (and worst) of the show, but if there was one thing that was consistent throughout the series, it was that unique Taiwanese flavor.

The final episode makes it clear that we are watching at least three different shows at once: a sweet romance between Shaopeng and Zixiang, an odd couple comedy with Feng Jie and Xin Jia, and a barely there sapphic storyline with Jessica and Shuhe. All with varying degrees of success. I'll start with my least favorite and go up from there: Whatever happened with Feng Jie/Jonathan was fun, I really had a good time with them, especially in the early rounds with the ridiculous assassination attempts and cat and mouse game they had going, but as time went on and the script didn't have much room for them and simply didn't know how to integrate Xin Jia into the main story, they lost the spark (I was a bit disappointed that we got the answer to what really happened in their "first night", I wish it had been kept a mystery).

We had Jessica and Shuhe for about three weeks - and 5 minutes of screen time - but it was enough to show clear potential, we never get saphic storylines in Taiwanese BL shows, so I was pleasantly surprised by their natural chemistry, the writing done for them was highly beneficial, avoiding some of the traps usually seen with this kind of characters. So it's a shame we didn't get more out of them, there was clearly a lot of potential here.

Now for the crème de la crème: Shaopeng and Zixiang… it was just… dare I say "perfect" might be the word for them. The writing, the direction, the craftsmanship behind the show, it was clear that the series revolved around them, and both actors stepped up to the plate and delivered easily two of the best performances in the genre. And I will single out Shaopeng's Jin Yun: simply the best acting of any Taiwanese show in 2024 (would go as far as to say one of the best in general television of the past year). Playing a deaf-mute character is no small challenge, but having a disabled character like him as the protagonist elevated everything, and in the hands of a lesser actor it could have been a disaster. Fortunately, he was more than ready, and while Raiden Lin's Zixiang did some heavy lifting, it was Shaopeng who kept the story moving forward.

This show was always deceptively cute and wacky. It often hid what it was trying to say behind silly visual gags and cartoonish sound effects, luring viewers into a false sense of security before delivering emotional punches that left everyone reeling.

With mixed results, I would say; many felt that the attempted assault scene with Shuhe was jarring and unnecessary — about that particular moment, I was a bit surprised that the audience was surprised, because Taiwanese shows often have a certain violent aspect to them, no matter how unassuming a show may be, and considering that we are talking about the team behind Kiseki: Dear to Me, it was to be expected.

If there was one aspect that never really clicked for me, it was the gangster subplot involving our beloved Nat Chen. Whatever they were trying to do here really felt disconnected from everything else and that is saying something, because the whole show was hanging by a thread.

After a series of shows that offered a very different taste (Unknown, The Only One, First Note of Love), this one goes back to Taiwanese BL roots and shares so much DNA with its direct predecessors (Be Loved in House: I Do, Plus & Minus, Kiseki) that it was somewhat refreshing. And after some stumbles and poorly conceived characters, Shaopeng stands as one of the greatest, if not the best, disabled protagonists a BL show has ever had.

(Also, where is my Taro and Kai cameo???)

[roiqin]

CORE ONE - Let Me Love N EP release

《Let Me Love》 《洛神》

qq | netease | kuwo | kugou | apple music 

[roiqin]

CORE ONE members’ new weibo header and profile photos

[roiqin]

CORE ONE 《Let Me Love C》 teaser