Failure Is Always an Option

Played the story quest for the collab today, and speaking as someone who only barely knows anything about the FSN side aside from the basic premises, I kinda liked it.

The story didn't go deep into the FSN side lore or anything, but did fill in bits of the HSR side lore. Length and pacing was ok to me. Some people complained about the silent film parts, but I wasn't too bothered since I was actually almost ready to play it without turning the voice volume back up. :p (I guess it's cuz none of my favorite characters were featuring.)

For the characterization, I can't say much about the FSN side, but from what I've read online, there weren't too much complaints about the them being OOC or anything, so I think the writers probably played it safe.

Of the HSR characters, I mostly want to mention that I liked Aventurine's parts. In my personal taste, he's much more likeable here than for most of the actual Penacony arc (understandable, since he was under a lot of pressure and trauma there). I also like the fact that it emphasized that for all that the IPC has a bad rep, Aventurine is very sensitive and respectful of other peoples free will. You'd think this is something obvious given his slave background, but all I could think of was the irony considering the vast amount of fanfic that has him cast as stalker/controlling bf/ignoring or denying consent (this is usually when he's in the top role). He also very obviously acts as the brain of the team in the story quest, which is another irony when I recall all the fics that cast him as a brainless beauty that relies entirely on luck (this is usually when he's the bottom). Just...eh.

Also nice thing is that we got one of the collab 5 stars for free: Archer plus his lightcone! (Well, the lightcone was due to meeting the criteria of making enough pulls on the concurrent Tribbie banner.) Similar to Dr. Ratio, it seems like the damage numbers for the freebie is pretty good too. Single target quantum element is also a role I don't already have filled, so double-yay. ^_^

Afterwards, there's not much I'm looking forward to up til the new March and Dan Heng. I don't have high hopes that they'll show up much in the next story patch either. So... it's gonna be a long wait.

Congrats for making world wide box office records all this time. I hear that it's finally finished its run yesterday. So now we start the wait for it to come online for streaming services. It's not gonna be the same as watching it on a big screen (and I never did get to see it on IMAX, boo T_T) but it's better than nothing.

That said, been browsing the various box office discussions in CN and US. Well, mostly CN because the topic has pretty much died off in the US aside from the really obvious anti-CN bots. Glad to see that the the tried and true adage of '人'红是非多 still holds true...lol.

So many haters dissing the movie for staying in theaters for "over half a year". Despite the fact there are 2 other movies also just leaving the theaters which were similarly finishing the 5 month run from the New Years bracket. But nobody cares about them. Or the fact that there is absolutely no other competition in the theaters this year, so what should theaters be kicking out its only money-maker be replacing it with? Feh.

And then there's the people claiming that the box office numbers are faked by a government conspiracy (these are usually voices from the US). Or are artificially driven up by propaganda urging the masses buying tickets as an act of patriotism (these are usually voices from CN). Quite the bit of historical revisionism going on. As mentioned before, I was following the CNY box office, and before the holiday period started, official state media were definitely helping promote some movies...but they were Creation of the Gods 2 and Condor Heros (both of which flopped *rolleyes*), not Nezha 2. Most serious prediction indicators had NZ2 making about ~30亿 (less than the total box office of Nezha 1, on the theory that it would be hit by sequelitis and the general "bad entertainment economy"). It was barely on the radar as a competitor by the other movies in that time bracket.

CCTV only started widely "promoting" Nezha after it started shattering box office records left and right. So in other words, state media belatedly hitched themselves onto this bandwagon after it had already strapped on boosters and took off. They were not the driving force behind its success. (IMO the "State" probably also had some of the conservative attitude of cartoons are for kids and only live action blockbusters are worth "backing"...but NZ2's success spoke for itself, and they still had KPI to fill. >.>)

And along the same vein, "patriotism" isn't the force behind it's success either. Because like with the 30e prediction, nobody was expecting it to make global records it did. Being proud of a Chinese film *after* it made said records, isn't the same thing as being the *cause* of said record. There's a thing called cause and effect; one comes before the other. *eyeroll*

Someone drew up this nice graph of Nezha 2's box office growth over time. As shown, it made the majority of its revenue during the holiday period up to 元宵.


Anyway, congrats again to Ne Zha 2. With those box office numbers, honestly it doesn't need to worry about the haters. Very obviously, the silent majority has already spoken with their wallets, and will likely do the same when Ne Zha 3 comes out.