#三体

[wangmiao]

Yu Hewei as Shi Qiang in Tencent's THREE-BODY | 三体 (2023) Episode 1.30 (Kun's 77/∞ Three-Body gifsets)

[electricsoul-rpg]

Netflix's 3 Body Problem

I tried watching Netflix’s American adaptation of Three Body problem. I watched five episodes and boy, is it painful.

(Full disclaimer: I really liked the Chinese adaptation by Tencent, I read the book after I watched the drama, and I am a European of Chinese descent, so I am definitely biased.)

The general whitewashing and westernization of the story is already pretty bad. Why take a Chinese story if you’re going to make it so blandly American?

Everyone is horny and thinks about sex, relationships based on ideals are reduced to attraction and sex. Everyone is so vulgar and crass. IQ seems very low.

Ye Wenjie. What did they do to Ye Wenjie. She’s a brainless horny fanatic woman now. And Shen Yufei is replaced by a generic unhinged lady. All the scientists seem supremely dumb.

White characters explain or emphasize things in Chinese, for Chinese people, when their Mandarin is bad. Not gibberish bad, but still pretty bad. Please just use English, your white actors clearly can’t speak Chinese. Your Chinese characters can understand and speak English. Don’t hurt our ears like this. It might be cool and exotic for the average Western audience who doesn't understand Mandarin but it’s cringe and painful for us.

A small thing but since I lost my father a few months ago, it struck me pretty hard. What was that altar in Clarence Shi’s house? Just two big pricey candles and one stick of incense? This is so cold and lifeless. Where is the FOOD??? The drinks??? The flowers/plants??? You're calling your wife and you're leaving her starving and depressed!

(For info, a normal small home ancestor altar should look more like this. As you can see : FOOD. Take care of your ancestors!)

The cast and setting is supposed to make this adaptation more "international"...but two British dudes decide everything when, in the novel and the Chinese adaptation, it is truly an international decision and an example of global cooperation. Five Oxford alumni of different skin color does not make this more international!

And so so so so many more things that are wrong. I feel like there is not a single Chinese brain cell in this.

All in all, I did not expect anything good, but I am still disappointed. It is so bland. No build-up. No mystery. No menace. No ambiance. Nothing. Everything is said straight to your face. They must think the audience is stupid, I guess.

Watch the Chinese adaptation

Did you like the ideas behind the Three Body Problem, either the book or the Netflix series? Are you ok with reading subtitles and watching something not in your language? Are you ok with seeing something set in another culture, with another culture's codes, not simplified and westernized for your sake? Are you ok with not being able to binge-watch it in one weekend? Are you ok with more complex characters, a slower-paced plot? Then try the Chinese adaptation. It's on Youtube and Viki, with subtitles. Legal and free.

[prans-micellar-water]

I must not get angry at the netflix three body problem adaptation. Hating a new adaptation just because it’s different is the little death that brings total destruction. I will face the casting choices. I will permit the anglicization to pass over me and through me. And when I have watched the final episode I will turn my inner eye upon the tumblr 3 body problem tag to revel in the reactions of the other. Where the loathing has gone only a ‘meh it was fine’ will remain.

[vapor-phenomena]

[stan-rabelais-et-diderot]

Small thoughts on the Netflix Three Body Problem adaptation

"We are making it international" they say. They replaced all the international collaboration of world leaders that we see throughout the books with... two British dudes, deciding, alone.

They actually managed to make it less international than the book. They perverted the very themes Liu Cixin brings to his books, about group mentality & collaboration versus the individuals by completely removing all group mentality.

They made Ye Wenjie a unrecognizable shell of herself. Her back is not held up straight. See an old Ye Wenjie cursing, sloushing, moving to England. Is it really Ye Wenjie? It bothers me so much.

They "simplified" the science to a point where nothing is explained, nothing can make it through any kind of analysis of the logic of the things shown & the actions taken.

The futurist headsets we are shown imply that either

1° the Trisolarians are able to send sizable physical objects [which they can't, they can & have sent us two protons].

2° the Trisolarians shared schematics of advanced techs to the ETO for them to develop the headsets, but that's is the one thing they would never do, as their entire plan rely on humans having less advanced tech than they do & not being able to advance it any further.

I thought it was gonna be lesser than the Tencent show. I didn't expect it to be so utterly lacking on all front. "The" boat" scene, the one they spent a 25% of the budget on in the Tencent show, happened in episode 5 & because we know the budget difference between the Netflix show & the Tencent show, we know Netflix didn't use their budget right.

The misguided belief that somehow an American show could show the cultural revolution better to an American audience than a Chinese show can, because of the censorship in China (that though real they clearly do not understand the function & scope of), when they didn't feature a fifth of the storyline the Tencent show did, just in term of the events that took place. What they showed was midly violent & shocking to be sure, but not very accurate to the content of the book. The narration was all wrong. I'll just give small examples:

on the stage when they condemn Ye Wenjie's father (with microphones in front of a huge audience???) they keep saying "lies", which makes no sense, that's not the logic, the charge is propaging western propaganda, upholding Western values, capitalist way of thinking, not lying (I wrote a end of page note to explain that point).

they call Ye Wenjie comrade during her time at the Red Coast (in the book & in the Tencent show her status as a political dissident & therefore NOT a comrade is emphasized).

Ye Wenjie says, "how awesome would it be if China was the first [country to make contact with aliens]" unironically, not in front of the political commissioner asking for something, just enthousiastically. Before she sells out the planets to the Trisolarians.

The inconsistencies are not only baffling deviations from the source materials that display a complete lack of comprehension of Ye Wenjie as a character, as well as an astonishing disregard for the accuracy of the ideology of (Mao-area) communism & the history of Maoist China. They didn't show a lot of content, they could have avoided making such basis mistakes. Given that they kept saying they would not shy away from it, they could have done a better job showing how it was. The Tencent show did a very good job showing how bad it was, in a accurate way. What really pisses me off is that I keep seeing press pieces saying that the Netflix version won't censor "the part of the story taking place during the Cultural Revolution" like the Chinese one like it's such a plus, a reason to watch the American version, by implying to the readers the Tencent version is heavily censored, when in reality the Tencent version spend a lot more than on it than the Netflix one.

Disclaimer, I'm not Chinese, it's not my culture, I don't know the history beyond what a French anarchist who had grounds to dislike French Maoist knows about Maoism, but you don't have to know much to know there is no viewing that time positively, I know how horrrible & damaging the Cultural Revolution was,

And the Tencent show showed that quite well! The political rhetoric fallacies, the bureaucracy, the hypocrisy, how miserable everything is, is shown very well: it's very close to the book.

Censorship does exist & what we know of the shadow-y rules of NRTA is that they wouldn't allow a lot of graphic violence, nudity, sex, ghosts (or BL since 2021...) et caetera, but it's dishonest to pretend that the topic of Cultural Revolution is a taboo that cannot be spoken about, as if the current administration has a positive view on it & would therefore not allow it to be criticized.

The politics of the Cultural Revolution are clearly presented negatively, at length, in the Tencent show, more broadly & accurately than whatever nonsense Netflix did, even if they didn't show one piece of it, a very graphic violent scence which is instead visually & auditorily implied in a short flashback.

NB: "Lies, all lies!". This was so weird to hear for me. Because in French activism we know the ideologies from communism to socialism, going to marxist-leninism & trotskysm to maoism. We still disagree & use the same rhetorics & the same arguments, the culture has changed very little. So my best guess it that "Lying is bad" is a cultural value that the creators cramed it without realizing that it's really not universal, becausee they don't understand communism on any level (they didn't have to make up anything, they just had to keep to the content of the book...)

I don't know if "lying" is a big deal in China, but I know it's not a big deal in my culture & in a Marxist/communist political context, lying is just not "a thing".

They are a lot of charges you can get in a political tribunal (the one I've been party were just verbal affairs). For example, indivualist behavior, liberalism/imperialistic thinking, deceiving the masses with xx propaganda [so they don't revolt when they would if they knew the truth], aspiring to bourgeois comfort [that can mean profiting of other people's labour, not doing enough or not wanting to sacrifice your life for the cause], the worse ones is obviously treason or being counterrevolutionary (working against the revolution). Maoism famously had the three principles one of which being lack of self-criticism (self-reflection so you can do better).

Lying, on this other hand, is not a political charge. It sounds ridiculous.

[f1lmilton]

so i'm halfway through the netflix three body problem and.... unpopular opinion but i really like it?? and this is coming from someone who read the original series in chinese + watched the tencent series version. i think that this adaptation does such a good job addressing key points in the series and even though they condense characters, all the important points are there and it's not too draggy. i understand that one main reason why a lot of people don't like it is because it's "white-washed", but i mean, the original series is literally a story about humanity???? if they're gonna write a whole show based on ALL 3 BOOKS, it can't just be set in china and have all the characters be chinese if it's about saving humanity right...

[evelynpr]

Chinese Tencent version: In the cold mountains of painful labor they shared knowledge and food, nurturing fondness and trust despite their circumstances.

British Netflix version: In the cold mountains of painful labor they shared some ideas ig, held hands, and started making out in a tent. This clearly shows how they form a genuine trusting bond despite their circumstances.

[xinyuehui]

Xu Bingbing, 10 in 1 multifunctioning assistant which requires only one(1) salary!

[huaschengs]

Three Body (Episode 1)

[jinian-ginias]

Process and final

[wangmiao]

@asiandramanet creator bingo - free choice

First 4 episodes of Three-Body (2023) | 三体 in 8 colors to celebrate the one year anniversary of the first airing day (2023/01/15) of episode 1 to 4 (Kun's 72/∞ Three-Body gifsets)

[diamantdog]

so true king

[bahoreal]

ye wenjie + incorrect quotes

[xieyaohuan]

I know the Tencent San Ti/ 3 Body show could not include any grand Cultural Revolution scenes because it had to walk a pretty tight line to avoid accusations of engaging in historical nihilism, but to me, episode 11 of the Tencent show is in a way more devastating than the visuals we get in the opening scene of episode 1 of the Netflix show (where we see a full-blown struggle session).

One of the most terrifying abilities that authoritarian states have is to completely isolate a person from all relationships that were ever meaningful to them by forcing people to betray each other. When you've been singled out for criticism and attack, you don't just have to deal with denunciations launched against you by strangers or an anonymous state (which is terrifying enough), you have to listen as your colleagues, your friends, your parents, your children, your spouse, etc. all come forward and denounce you.

What the Tencent show manages to do is quietly build a relationship that provides two characters comfort in an otherwise extremely cold, hostile environment, and then take a hammer and shatter it to pieces. And that is some powerful stuff.

[amones]

仁慈，在宇宙的尺度上，空空荡荡。

[reaperlight]

Several Sentence Sunday

I was tagged by @kingofdarkness00

Here, have some crossover...

---

Mu Xing looked up from the book she was pretending to read while trying to stall for time but knew that was rapidly dwindling.

The library would close soon, and she was waiting--

"Hey uh, so you're on this thing too, right?" A too loud voice suddenly asked her in English.

"Huh?"

Xing jolted when the man approached her. She'd been on edge for several hours now.

He was a white man in a leather jacket with messy dark blonde hair. He was a bit short but with well defined muscles, like he worked out.

"Oh hi! I don't think we properly met. I'm Eddie Brock with the Daily Globe. We, I mean I was wondering if you could help me? See uh the Globe sent me here but I'm afraid, um, not too great with the language and I wanted to make sure I got this right--" he asked haltingly, going back and forth between English and Mandarin.

Ugh, Americans. They go to another country and expect everyone to accommodate them.

Still it was a welcome distraction considering--

"Did you know you're being followed?" The man asked softly in Mandarin.

She met icy blue eyes that were filled with genuine concern.

"That lady over, no, don't look. She's been staring at you for this entire time we've been here, like at least the last ten minutes--."

No, Xing well knew she was being watched, being followed by the one the man had noticed. It had been hours. But--

"How did you know?"

"Like I said, I saw your press badge, thought I recognized you from the conference. I'm a reporter too. I wanted to look at those same materials that you checked out but I couldn't help but notice--"

Now that he mentioned it, she remembered him--the foreign reporter who came in late to the presser looking lost. He was probably harmless... Or at the very least he probably was not working for THEM.

"...I'm just like getting really bad vibes about all this you know? Did you want us, I mean me to walk with you?"

Xing knew the woman very likely intended to kill her. Because she knew too much. But would they still try something with a potential witness around? It would likely just be delaying the inevitable and get this man killed as well.

She should try and get rid of him, or least give him an out.

"I um... I have a boyfriend."

"Oh uh... me too. I mean, I'm not looking for anything like that here. I just thought as like a professional courtesy. Safety in numbers, right?"

Xing swallowed "...They'll kill you too."

The man's jovial demeanor became serious.

How much was an act and just how much did he know?

Who was this man? Could she even trust him?

But given the situation she didn't really have another option.

"All the more reason not to leave you alone with her then. If it comes to it, I think I can take her..."

That bravado would likely get him killed...

"I believe she's killed before."

"Noted. Shall we?"

Well she tried. And admittedly she would feel better with company.

"Yes, let's."

As he accompanied her to the parking lot her misgivings returned--she sincerely doubted they'd care about one extra body...

"...You really don't want to get mixed up in all this, Mr. Brock, it's dangerous."

Xing couldn't help but notice how often the man often paused at odd intervals as if listening to someone respond before replying to her.

He said he had troubles with the language and true he often stumbled with pronunciation and yet it seemed he rarely stumbled with understanding her. Maybe he had a Bluetooth or a translator in his ear? That seemed likely given his tendency to mutter to himself in English. Either that or the man was disturbed--she hadn't entirely ruled that out either.

"You know they'll target you too..."

"It wouldn't be the first time." The man grinned, was it her imagination or were his teeth just a little too sharp?

"That's how we know we're doing our jobs right, as reporters?"

She liked him, despite herself, despite the warning signs. There was an inkling now. "Bad vibes" as Mr. Brock had called them that perhaps her companion was more dangerous thst the assassin who pursued her. She wasn't sure yet if that was a good thing or not but again she had little options at the moment.

Xing smiled back tightly, "...Your Chinese is truly atrocious."

"I know, I'm sorry. Our foreign correspondent, the really smart lady they usually send for these things, got sick with the flu. My bad for padding my resumé but I guess they really needed a body to send."

---

Tagging if you wanna do it...

@krisseratops @kitausuret

@pulchrasilva @ro-zden

@symbiotic-slime