All my fandoms have been a huge letdown

[cashew]

So, was out of town visiting a friend for two weeks. Haven't been able to check in with DW due to only having a phone and trying to type on phone browser is...less than ideal. Over the course of the two weeks, ended up binging on the third season of 《唐诡》(aka Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty), a semi-fantastical mystery drama set in, you guessed it, the Tang Dynasty.

Firstly, I genuinely enjoyed Season 1. Is it something I'd recommend? Eh... only in the context of current period dramas are shit and this one is semi-passable and uses decent grammar that doesn't feel "too modern" all the time. The mysteries are somewhat entertaining and despite the semi-fantastical setting (there is a heavy reliance on "weirdness" that isn't always explainable), the show definitively states ghosts are not real, which is kind of important in a good mystery. But also animals don't work like that, but whatever, I've given up hope when it comes to accurate portrayal of animal behavior in fiction. 😓

Secondly, despite my enjoyment, the show is not without problems and there are very, very many cringe moments. Yet, because it's directed at a domestic audience and unapologetically Chinese, I just keep giving the show a pass for the cringe. Like, is it xenophobic against foreigners? Yes. On the other hand, given the last 150 years of Chinese history...it's also kind of understandable why the xenophobia exists.

Thirdly, the latter seasons get worse and worse. Second season was mildly enjoyable if featuring way too many cryptids. Third season, which I just finished binging these past weeks while out of town, was... well, it's kind of straight up bad. None of the set up were paid off in a satisfactory manner, the main characters got sidelined for one-shot characters, plus the mysteries leaned way too hard on the horror aesthetic and just didn't have any real mystery pacing. The final arc was so deeply disappointing I'm still trying to find the words to properly describe how much it fails at being a mystery.

And yet.

Despite everything, despite all the crap, I suspect I'm going to end up watching season 4 and 5 (which have already been announced). I mildly hate myself for it. This is clearly my new fandom, but I'm so resentful, because it started off strong enough that I had hopes it will improve. Instead, what I got was an increasingly terrible series that simply cannot sustain the expectation of success.

This is possibly why I've been diving into D&D. Because despite my general dislike for D&D settings and annoyance with a lot of the game mechanics, at least I can take as little or as much as I want from the source material and simply do my own thing with it. And honestly, I just never expected solo D&D to take so very long. But also, because I needed a change of pace because working on my own game has been feeling a bit like running in a hamster wheel.

Sometimes I question my decision making.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

I can't remember the last time I actually sat down and watched a TV show. They seem like a huge time investment for really uncertain payoff. Also, the guys I see on shows nowadays just don't do it for me anymore. Haven't seen anyone who's ticked my XP the way 焦恩俊's characters once did. =P

For that 唐诡 show, were there changes on the production side that caused the sudden change in quality? Or did it just get successful and so the investors started sticking in their own pet actors to get a slice of the pie, hence the sudden turn around to focus on one-shot supports? This kind of stuff often features in showbiz related CNovels I've read, but I'm never sure how actually true to reality it is.

[cashew]

Re: 焦恩俊
...how many decades ago was this? 😝 Also, really? There's like so many ridiculous pretty boys in Xianxia and none of them could tick the boxes? 😝

Re: 唐诡
Season 3 changed directors, which could partially explain the sudden quality drop. But mostly it felt like the show writers probably just ran out of ideas for their characters past season 1 and everything thereafter was maintaining a "business as usual" kind of blandness for the main cast, leaving character arcs/growths only available for the one-shot characters. But 5-6 episodes is hardly enough time to cover a satisfying character arc, so it just ends up deeply unsatisfying.

Honestly kind of a shame, because the main cast has developed a really good chemistry after filming together for 4 years (a rarity in C-drama), but all that chemistry is left unused and we only really get a glimpse of it through the blooper/b-reel snippets (which seems to be the main source that's feeding the fandom).

[tanithryudo]

LOL, I have dated myself there, haven't I?

As for pretty boys... I dunno, I've only sporadically seen snippets and photos of various wuxia/xianxia shows since the 00s and none of them had anyone who enticed me to actually watch more. *shrug*