This article is from the WeChat public account: Poison Eye (ID: DomoreDumou), author: Ding Dan, editor: Zhao Butong, the title picture is from: "Snow in the Sword Line"
The episode of "Knife Row in the Snow" is over, and the results are conclusive. The network broadcast volume is more than 5 billion, and it can still be played; the Douban score is less than 6 points, and the anger is difficult to balance.
Wuxia heavy play is the default evaluation standard in the hearts of the audience, in the early publicity, "wuxia" and "jianghu" are the high-frequency words used in "The Sword Line in the Snow", which covers up the strong mysterious color of the original work. As a result, until the end of the series, it still did not get rid of the controversy of "playing like slow motion".
Director Song Xiaofei said that "the higher the level, the more unclear the tricks", hoping to use cinematic thinking to shape an IP drama, some drama reviews said that "The Knife Line in the Snow" obviously chose the latter between "realism" and "freehand", these explanations have been difficult to shake the evaluation of the play's "martial arts like children's play".
In addition to martial arts fans, there are also fans of the original "Sword Line in the Snow". The novel of the same name of more than 4 million words has been touted as a "masterpiece" in the online literary industry, and many fans have long been looking forward to cross-border adaptations, and the main creative team and producer of the drama version are the same as the 2019 blockbuster drama "Qing Yu Nian", which amplifies this expectation. However, after the broadcast of "Knife Line in the Snow", the anger of book fans spread to various discussion occasions.
QQ read the original comment page, common "by the TV series disgusted to, come back to review" and other complaints, the original author of the Beacon Theatre Princes' Weibo is also dissatisfied with the adaptation of the readers gathered, as early as the broadcast soon, there are fans reprimanded the author: "Do you know how many jianghu children were angry with insomnia this night!" Worthy of those of us who really like books in the snow? ”
Weibo comment by the original author @ Beacon Theatre Princes
For any original novel, casting will always be the first to touch the reader's nerves, and the changes to a large number of characters in the drama version of "The Knife In the Snow" have made the fans of the original work dissatisfied, especially the appearance, personality and behavior of the heroine Jiang Ni in the play are far from those depicted in the book. Changes in action moves, scene restoration, and plot structure are also considered to have lost the charm of the original.
But if you open the bullet screen on the video platform, sometimes you can see "I'm sorry, I haven't seen the original, I think it's very good" Brush brush across the screen, and the original powder is tit-for-tat, lasting several minutes.
Online novels and IP adaptations, originally born from the same root, did not expect to fry so quickly.
1. Is "disrespecting the original work" the original sin?
In addition to the intuitive "playing" and "casting" discomfort, there are many reasons why fans of the original work play a star.
As a "male frequency cool text", "The Knife Line in the Snow" still sets the opening "Golden Three Chapters", and the protagonist who returns from the journey tired and shouts out "Little Two on wine", and then enjoys thousands of pursuits as a son of the world, which can also be classified as the "playing a pig and eating a tiger" routine commonly used in online texts. But then the author did not continue to portray the protagonist Xu Fengnian according to the common routine, he exported as "dirty", a series of words and deeds were rude and arrogant, frivolous to the maids, and had no respect for his father, and the reader's first impression may not be "substitution" but "disgust".
Because of this, the transformation of the big responsibility of taking on the responsibility of Beiliang (changed to "Bei starling" in the play) later made the characters more three-dimensional. The final chapter of the novel still has two sounds of "little two, on the wine", covering up a kind of intoxicated epic feeling. But the series erases the protagonist's inner drive from the start.
"Xu Feng was very selfish at the beginning, he never had great ambitions, and being a stupid boy was purely enjoyable, even more outrageous than Jia Baoyu." Reader Xiao Xiao mentioned in the dialogue with poison eyes, "I watch the TV series very awkwardly, if the front is set up too high, the back circle will be very tired, so that he has no character arc at all, and the motivation to accept Beiliang is not strong enough, inexplicable." ”
In the drama version of "The Knife Line in the Snow", Xu Fengnian is more like a "warm man", repeatedly emphasizing that he is "the first in the world", but in fact, "more than twenty beards have not been touched", this contrast makes the original character label appear empty and embarrassing. Not only that, the TV series also showed his heart and mind early, exposing the conspiracy to assassinate himself layer by layer, and the external performance was "to hide the clumsiness", not like the book "to save his life", which brought a sense of distance to some viewers.
"I can't find his motivation for life." Another reader, Xiao Fan, told Poison Eye, "For example, he was going to challenge Wang Xianzhi (the first master in the setting), I thought how hard I would practice, and the result was only a plug-in." Xu Fengnian's struggle seems to be a kind of 'Versailles', and the subsequent growth will be boring. The fact that the key plot of the original work was not reasonably restored also made him dissatisfied, "For example, the death of Lao Huang should be a desolate story of a hero ending, but it is too bland. ”
However, the first step in film and television adaptation is often to reshape the characters, and the reasons behind it are often objective factors. The transformation of "scumbags" into "warm men" is also a transformation that many male frequency novels have to face.
Often some readers will be the male frequency network article protagonist and Wei Xiaobao analogy, Xu Fengnian in the book a total of "there are 6 women", and the early indulgence of Qinglou Hualiu, this image in the drama market is quite "politically incorrect", in 2021 female users are still the main force of drama viewing, aiyou Tengmang four major video platform female users account for more than 63%, costume dramas usually default to more female audiences.
The author of "Qing Yu Nian" has concluded that Shuangwen's character setting has two different directions: "One is to let the reader substitute into the 'dick silk' and follow the protagonist to counterattack." A substitute for 'noble prince', how refreshing. The rise of teenagers and the winners of life are more popular. In essence, Xu Fengnian should be the same as Fan Xian who "has 5 wives" in "Qing Yu Nian", "both attractive to women and also allows men to have a sense of substitution", "Snow in the Knife Line" is still following the past explosive success formula, but unfortunately this time it was not bought by the audience.
On the other hand, the reversal structure used by screenwriter Wang Ti in the play is not accepted by some fans of the original work. Some 1-star Douban reviews pointed out that the continuous puzzle reversal plus gag jokes are suitable for suspense dramas, not suitable for "Snow in the Sword Line", and its main line is originally around Xu Fengnian inheriting the throne to protect Beiliang, and the routine adaptation weakens the original style.
In more places, the drama's literary drama has received a lot of praise, Wen Wei Po will summarize the controversy surrounding "The Sword Line in the Snow" as "Literary Drama Online, Martial Arts Collapse", and a comment by the surging news bluntly said that "Wang Tian is still the first candidate for male frequency IP adaptation"... Gags and suspense puzzles can keep the plot of the TV series compact within a single episode, and it is still an excellent way to enhance the viewing experience.
Male novel adaptations are already scarce in number, and Wang Tian did not lose his front hoof this time. And the original fans' crusade made people realize that online novels stood up.
2. Web fiction, crawling out of the chain of contempt
The social wind review of online novels has come out of a "V" shape.
The well-known online writer Wandering Toad once recalled on Zhihu that there was no name for "online novel" at the earliest, only "fantasy novel", the industry summary was called "Fantasy Website Record", the predecessor of the starting point was "Fantasy Novel Association", "Everyone did not have the concept of being a network writer, and many authors could actually publish at that time." ”
In that "pre-online era", forums and websites only provided authors with new channels to publish articles, such as literary utopias built in virtual space. The content of the "net text" itself is still closely related to traditional literature, and under the early representative banyan tree, there were Li Xunhuan, Xing Yusen, Cai Jun, Annie Baby, Guo Jingming, Han Han, Rao Xueman and other writers who became popular in the future.
The utopia that is not tainted with the smell of money lasts for a short time, "because it is impossible to achieve income, a group of the best writers cultivated on the Internet have gone away quickly and published books." Chen Cun, the former artistic director under the banyan tree, once told the media. He helped run several online literature competitions on the website by relying on his connections in the traditional literary world, but he had to see that the young people he admired later denied the identity of "internet writers". "I posted at the time that online literature had passed its best. The period of the Pure Heart is disappearing too quickly! ”
In 2004, the acquisition of Shanda Group brought online literature into a new stage, and a number of websites such as Banyan Tree, Jinjiang, and Red Sleeve Tianxiang were subsequently acquired. The influx of funds has brought quantitative standards such as monthly ticket lists and recommendation lists within the platform, and has also expanded external monetization channels. Commercial online writing has quickly attracted a large number of newcomers to the industry, and in order to form a solid commercial chain, the traditional literary set of ideas that rely on inspiration and free creation also needs to be changed.
"Internet literature" gradually refers specifically to long-form novels serialized on the Internet, divided into male and female frequencies according to gender, and mysterious, urban, romantic, etc. according to the theme, and no longer refers to "literary works published on the Internet". What followed was a decline in overall quality, and the evaluation of online style fell to the bottom.
"China Reading News" did a "special edition of the Internet", scholar Zhang Yiwu said that "in the future there will be fewer and fewer writers, more and more writers", and the writer who has gone to traditional publishing because of online publishing even said: "Online literature has regressed into local literature." Writer Mai Jia said at the symposium on "The Literary Situation in the Internet Age": "99.9% of the current Online literature is garbage. ”
The reason for the "deviation" from traditional literature is well known to both the author and the reader - the amount of update. 5000-10000 words per day is not unusual for online writers, and it is impossible to take into account the quality of the text under high intensity, for "text coarseness", Chen Cun has a blunt analogy: "For example, you like dogs, but you can't measure rabbits by the standards of dogs." A person who writes so many words a day is not okay in itself. Fate dictates that online literature is such a thing. ”
The principle of "wen wu first, wu wu second" is not fully applicable in the online literary circle, and this industry has a harsh pyramid structure. Even the best of them have not been recognized by the mainstream of society for a long time, the first batch of authors with incomes exceeding 10,000 have shared with the media, an author's writing fee of one million still dare not tell his parents about his career, and another author, Butterfly Blue, will deliberately separate a few seats from other students every time he writes during college.
A few years later, the "King of Online Literature" award awarded the "Five Supreme Beings" and "Twelve Lord Gods". When the success was achieved, no one cared much about the days when the princes of the Beacon Theatre, the Silkworm Potato, and the Dreaming Machine were crowded in a shared house to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each other's works.
Literature is not a dream machine, money is, and commercial operation has slowly changed the status of online novels. In 2008, the online literary circle gave birth to the first online writer with an annual salary of one million, and also sold the first film and television adaptation rights, and the IP adaptation boom since 2015 gave birth to the dramas with more than 10 billion plays such as "Flowers and Bones" and "Langya List", and the copyright fee of the head IP gradually rose from more than 100,000 to 10 million, which increased by nearly 100 times in more than ten years.
Since the adoption of the paid subscription system, the creation of online novels has been simplified to "telling a good story", rather than pursuing the "literaryness" that is somewhat illusory in the eyes of the public, and the strong plot and strong routine writing method make it more advantageous than traditional literature when adapting. Since the popularity of the concept of "IP", online novels have been regarded as an important IP library and the source of several downstream entertainment products.
The improvement of status brought about by the change of the general environment has to a certain extent covered up the essence of online novels as "cultural fast moving consumer goods", and the ecology of author competition and the way of pursuing speed have not changed significantly compared with more than a decade ago. However, under the precipitation of time, the first few batches of works that stand out have also become "classics" in the memory of readers.
At the National Congress of the China Writers Association at the end of last year, the People's Daily asked Mai Jia's views on online literature, and Mai Jia suggested that online literature and traditional literature complement each other's strong points and complement each other' strengths, and should not stop at relying on Shuangwen to "please the contemporary", "In the face of time, it may easily lose weight." ”
3. Fans of the original, false confrontation
In the past, the princes of Beacon Theatre did not believe that literature was a youth meal, and when they entered the industry, they regarded writing as a 50-year career, but after a long story of three or four million words, they had to face the fact that the spirit was not as strong as before, "I can no longer reach the peak, there is really no way." ”
Even in his peak work "Knife Line in the Snow", there is still no lack of negative impacts brought about by the genre of online text. "Water injection" is almost inevitable under the diligent change, and it is the instinct of some online writers to describe something or a certain personality, followed by an expanded description ten times the ontology. For example, to write that Xu Fengnian has a "snow white spear falcon", it is necessary to add three hundred words to render how rare this bird is, write and pat the cheek of the supporting character Chu Lushan, you have to add a paragraph of how the character is official, how strange it is not disgusted with patting the face, these descriptions have no substantive effect on plot advancement and character shaping, but are just the habits cultivated by "subscribing to chapters".
Shortly after the end of "The Knife In the Snow", a comment published by the public account of the Peking University Internet Literature Forum said that "the pen cannot support the bustling world in his heart, often it is time to put it away, and it is impossible to put it out; it is complicated when it is simple, and it is more complicated when it is complicated", which represents the views of some readers of "old white" online texts. The Princes of Beacon Theatre once said that he was "more concerned about being able to produce paper books", but online literature does not wait for the author to be carefully crafted, "Every author I know wants to write better words... No one is wrong, everyone has their own complicated life. ”
In fact, many "big god" level authors have a transparent attitude towards their own works, in order to maintain the "sharp sense" of thinking, and urgently want readers to see, cat tired writing "Qing Yu Nian" relies on one breath: "Do not repair." I know that once I fix it, I will be finished. I don't even change the typo. In an interview, he interpreted the "value of online literature" as follows: "Just like all movies, TV series, variety shows, and the value of going to KTV to sing, going for a walk by the river, and going to see the stars, falling in love, driving around these things - just things to pass the time." ”
When authors are stripping away meaning, only fans of the original work are trying to give it more meaning.
Episode viewers do not judge an adaptation of a work based on how wonderful it is, whether it is serious literature or online literature, when they are adapted into a play, the merits and demerits can only be seen in the performance of the series. And online literature with heavy plots and settings is obviously more marketable. If you start from the perspective of the original work, let the adaptation bear the insult, it is somewhat sad.
The "2020 Annual Report on the Development of Chinese Online Literature" shows that the number of online IP adapted into film and television dramas, animations, games, and paper publications throughout the year is as high as 724, and this trend has also continued to 2022, "Qing Yu Nian 2" officially announced the project, and "Beginning" is being broadcast...
The latest Weibo post of Beacon Theatre is "The new version of the physical book of "Knife In the Snow" has been listed", and there are still a large number of readers in the comment area who feel that they are "wrongly paid", and they are constantly making voices that are doomed to not get a response.
This article is from the WeChat public account: Poison Eye (ID: DomoreDumou), author: Ding Dan, editor: Zhao Tongtong
This content is the author's independent view and does not represent the position of Tiger Sniff. Unauthorized reproduction is not permitted, please contact [email protected] for authorization matters
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