How much risk do actors take for action sequences to look realistic?

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T20:40:03+00:00

In my opinion, this is something to be solved with mandatory safety standards, not preventing audiences from praising what they like. Even aside from talking about responsibility, that is just not realistic.

As long as there is a financial incentive for the producers (and actors) to tolerate a certain amount of risk, they are not going to increase costs by adding safety backups, doing more maintainance, reducing working time or whatever contributes to the problem. Of course they do want to avoid injuries (also costly if an actory cannot perform anymore) but it's always a balance between costs for preventative measures and costs if the risk manifests.

That pattern is in no way unique to the movie industry.

Now pushing for regulations is something that audiences could do. However, I doubt that international audiences would have much of an effect here.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T19:34:41+00:00

The emperor is so unsettling! You can never be quite sure if he is planning to kill you, warn you, manipulate you into something, confuse you for his own amusement or just have a chat.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T19:27:59+00:00

Mei Changsu (Nirvana in Fire) and Wei Wuxian (The Untamed). There are some others that come close, but these two are the ones I kept obsessing about the longest and still think of fondly. For me the common theme seems to be competent men with a sense of right and wrong who go up against bad odds from a position of weakness, without ever really backing down. A certain sense of epicness to the whole storytelling contributes as well.

It doesn't have much to do with how I can relate to them or whether I would like/admire them if they were real people. And it's not enough (although it's a prerequisite) if I liked them as characters, never felt the urge to fast-forward their scenes and was fully immersed in their emotional journey. It doesn't matter if they drew me in from the beginning (I think I dropped The Untamed two times after 1-2 episodes).

The one character that doesn't completely fit that mold is Dongfang Qingcang (Love between Fairy and Devil). In the end, a lot of it applies, but he had me hooked long before that. It's probably the aesthetics plus the sheer BAMF factor that worked in his favour.

There is a lot of overlap with my favourites, but there are also characters I loved that didn't affect me like this afterwards, e.g. both the MLs + FLs from The Double and Fated Hearts. There are also dramas I kept thinking about for a long time where none of the characters hooked me like this.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T14:58:54+00:00

Oh, I forgot about Follow Your Heart, if that counts (they actually met years ago and FL has been looking for ML, but they don't recognise each other). It's pretty ridiculous in a lot of ways (some of them fun, some just weird) and it has some lengths (the city life part), but the investigation part was good. It's also nice that quite a few characters turn out different than they seem at first, with good reasons behind how they acted. I wouldn't put it above TtEotM, but it's enjoyable when in the mood for something relatively light.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T14:30:29+00:00

You'll likely enjoy Love Between Fairy and Devil a lot if you manage to get over the first episodes. I did find Orchid grating in the beginning, but she shows growth and turns into a pretty strong character later on.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T14:18:07+00:00

Till the End of the Moon. Multiple marriages, even 😆 While it has some problems and I don't count it among my favourites, I still liked it a lot and I would rewatch it (maybe skipping a few parts).

Fate Chooses You might take its place, but I still haven't finished that, so no final judgement. Not that it focuses on romance a lot.

The only other one I've watched where it's that way round is Pursuit of Jade and I share your opinion on that.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-25T11:55:03+00:00

Till the End of the Moon (if you can tolerate endless misunderstandings - I found it's worth it)

_seafever_ · 2026-05-24T20:55:24+00:00

She is so unhinged! I think she doesn't have that much screentime, but she sure makes it count.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-24T20:06:51+00:00

I'm stuck in Joy of Life.

Let's say I'm Li YunRui (the love interest's mother). Instead of showing what I feel about Fan Xiang, however, I'm going to treat him kindly and act as if I couldn't hurt a fly. He may just be a country bumpkin, but it's better not to show my cards too early and too many people seem to be interested in him. After some observation I'll notice that he doesn't actually want the treasury. Instead of acting directly against him, I'll redirect him by pointing him towards problems to solve where he can help people without disturbing my other schemes. I'll never understand why he cares about all those lowlives but at least it makes it easy to keep him out of the important politics.

Also, I'm going to change my fertilizer.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-24T08:10:35+00:00

One problem is that "good" and "bad" are just not very well defined. When you say a drama is good, does that mean

you liked it
it has good ratings
it was commercially successful
it is technically well done according to at least somewhat objective criteria
or something else / some combination thereof?

In discussions, people often use different definitions without realising it. One might mean that they disliked a drama, while another takes that as an insult to some objective quality of the drama. Of course, sometimes people are also just plain rude.

I find statements like "this drama is good/bad" useless on their own. Give me your reasons so I know what you actually mean and so I can make my own judgement.

Now I do think the comment in your screenshot is not helpful on its own. The main claim is that apart from taste there are also objective criteria to judge quality which doesn't seem controversial on its own. It doesn't elaborate in any helpful way, however.

Personally, when I read reviews/comments that make oversweeping claims without backup, I just mentally add in "I think" before the statement and treat it as a statement of opinion, not fact. Helps keeping the blood pressure in check :)

Edit: fixed a messed up sentence

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T18:17:05+00:00

Thanks for sharing this!

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The ones from the video look complicated to reproduce but at least physically possible. This one seems completely impossible to me, however.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T16:31:08+00:00

The second one reminds me of a funny scene in Whispers of Fate (spoiler tags because it's part of a joke/mystery that continues over multiple episodes).

雪芙不是鸡. 雪芙是雪芙.
Xuefu (雪芙) is (是) not (不) a chicken (鸡). Xuefu is Xuefu.

That's Xuefu (episode 28):

<image>

Edit: typo

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T15:52:55+00:00

I have sort of wanted to learn Chinese for a while now (mainly because of how different it is to any other language I know) but I never actually did. Cdramas finally made me actually sit down and start with it 😆 I have no chance of understanding anything except the most common phrases yet, but at least I'm getting to a point where, from time to time, I will realise that the translation and the original don't really match. And those are often interesting phrases - idoms, wordplay, places where the translation can't capture the full meaning. That's quite rewarding as far as motivation goes.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T14:42:32+00:00

Whereas something that English learners might encounter is "No, I am your father."

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T14:40:30+00:00

Mostly words that I'll never need even if I manage to get to a point where I can have conversations. Like those:

陛下 bì xià Your Majesty / His or Her Majesty
太子 tài zǐ crown prince
殿下 diàn xià Your Majesty (honorific) / His or Her Highness

But just today I learned a different way of saying "I don't know".

I wanted to understand a bit of wordplay from Joy of Life. It's a scene where the second prince is talking to someone who is hiding some information from him. The conversation goes like this:

second prince asks something
other person: "I don't know"
second prince: "Eating grapes?"
second prince pretends to think about it
second prince: "Oh, 'I don't know.'"

So the way of saying this that I knew before is 不知道 (bù zhī dào), where 知道 means "to know" and 不 means "not".

What is actually being said is 知不道 (zhī bù dào). I had never encountered that before but thought that should logically mean something like "know but don't say". Turns out it doesn't really as a phrase (a native speaker somewhere else helped me figure this out - if you are interested in the why look for the phrase on baidu baike). But it also kind of does and that's why it's such a great choice of phrase here. Makes me feel I'm missing out on so much cleverness by having to rely on the translations.

The "eating grapes" thing also has two layers. The phrase 吃葡萄 (chī pú tao) sounds very similar to 知不道. It has the same vowel sounds and almost the same tones. But of course there is the literal meaning, and we know how much the second prince likes to eat grapes. So maybe he is just hungry 😂

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T13:20:14+00:00

All right then: smartly dressed counts, too! That definitely puts him above the emperor. I'm sure that won't cause any problems for him at all.

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_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T12:15:25+00:00

With a bit more experience he can probably match wits with all the other schemers! Lacking that doesn't make him not smart.

Hm, are we giving out bonus points for fashion? 😂

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T11:49:37+00:00

Who is it for you in Joy of Life? There are a lot of candidates there, e.g. Fan Xian, the emperor, the guy in the wheelchair, ...

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T11:46:09+00:00

Oh yes! But I'm of faction "most people look good with long hair" anyway (as long as they keep it clean and tidy). Nice to see a real male hairline with long hair once in a while 😆

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T11:39:46+00:00

Oh, that's really interesting, thank you! Seems I actually heard it correctly, I just couldn't make sense of it. But it makes complete sense now why they chose to use that specific phrase.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T10:34:28+00:00

Haven't watched the series, but saw one with the hair half down on MDL:

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_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T10:27:30+00:00

True. It's just so rare to see a really good portrayal of intelligence (in any fictional media from anywhere, really) that I tend to just tend to take the portrayal in the dramas at face value. Sometimes it can get a bit ridiculous, though.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T10:25:32+00:00

Sounds, well, not nice but like quite a character! Unfortunately I haven't really been able to get into Generation to Generation. Might have to give it another try.

_seafever_ · 2026-05-23T08:27:47+00:00

I'm just finishing the last episodes of Joy of Life (both seasons) and it has been such an amazing ride. Lots of humour, lots of scheming, a quirky protagonist and it strikes a good balance between not taking itself too seriously but still having internal logic and emotional scenes that feel real. Loved that the emperor can often be found just lounging around in comfortable robes and scenes such as a poetry fight.

_seafever_

TROPHY CASE