Thriller Paradise

Chapter 549: I am a Writer-Night of Revival (2)

Translator: Lonelytree

The familiar stage, the familiar set. The lighting operator unleashed more than enough effects to daze an elephant to start the premier of this show. In the darkened corner of the contestant’s area, the seven contestants of this return special including Feng bujue had taken their seats. The cameraman at camera 1 moved the camera at a certain rhythm to create a barely discernible sense of mobility.

With an order of the director through the ear mic, the live DJ played a background music with heavy tempo. The next second, the host showed up. Oscar was still that Oscar, today he wore a casual grey western suit and a pair of dark jeans. He had an ear mic in his left ear and a mic attached to his lips. Similar to all the previous episodes, he was not disturbed by the nightclub-like music but stopped heavily and securely to the centre of the stage. The spotlights focused on the host. Oscar looked into the camera and used his booming voice to read out the intro, “Welcome to… I am Writer! I am your host, Oscar!” Then he followed it up with a bow.

The lights then moved to shower over the viewers’ seat. Under the four cameras responsible for the audience seat started to move, when the moment the audience clapped and cheered, the cameras panned over This kind of opening the workers had repeated multiple times, they could do it in their sleep. Unless Oscar accidentally slipped on stage or it would done in one take.

“My friends in the studio, before the television and on the internet…” After the BGM of the intro, Oscar continued, “Today is a very special day.” He paused for a few seconds before slightly turning his body about, “Today, on the stage of I am Writer, we have gathered seven contestants… that we are very familiar with.” Here it was where the host’s professionalism shone through, his every little pause and movement were deliberate. When he spoke, Oscar had naturally walked back several steps to arrive at the spot in front of the contestants’ area.

“Ever since the first broadcast of I am Writer, we have together experienced 20 such nights.” Oscar continued, “During this period, our show has welcomed in total 26 writers, each with their unique style and personality.” He took a deep breath. “But in the end… there will only be 7 writers… who will get onto the final stage.” At this point, he raised his arm high at 45 degrees to point at the big screen. On top of the big screen 6 writers’ pictures showed up. Every one of their appearance and expression had been photoshopped to look like mafia member and their pennames were placed underneath their pictures. And next to the six pictures there was an empty frame and the empty frame had just a black shadow with a big question mark imprinted on it.

“Currently… we have already 6 contestants who have overcome multiple challenges to arrive at the hall of the finals but…” Oscar continued in his rising tone, “There is still an opening…” He waved his arm again to point at the contestants’ seats next to him, “And this opportunity would fall… onto which lucky contestant tonight?”

“Fire in the Night! Fire in the night!” Before the host even finished, there was a group of people already started their chant in the audience. Their chanting was even and loud and they reacted quickly, one couldn’t help but suspect they were hired professional cheerleaders. The other writers’ fans were tipped off to what they needed to do but they were too late and their supports were quite weak and generally overwhelmed by the cheers for Fire in the Night.

“I am Writer—the Return Special will…” Oscar made a sliding step, “…now begin.”

After Oscar announcement that, the live DJ and the lighting operator started another round of confusion-inducing actions under the director’s order….

Then it was time to introduce the contestants (similar to previous recording, the part where the host read out the sponsor and the advertisement was recorded separately so Oscar’s lines would sometimes sound disjointed). Oscar started with, “Alright, with no time to waste, let us see who are the contestants that we have with us on this ‘revival stage’ tonight…”

The light lit up above the seat of the first contestant, it showed a young man wearing a pair of glasses and on the fatter side.

“Our first contestant is Soda.” Oscar this time did not go into long introduction and did not read out the ‘main editor’s comments’. Because… due to the show’s everchanging format, this part had already been cut off and the latter episodes used instead subtitles to introduce the individual contestants at the bottom of the screen.

There were two main reasons for this change: one, since only one writer would be eliminated each episode so many contestants would show up repeatedly, there was no need to introduce them every time; two… the time saved could be used to plug in more advertisement.

“Our second contestant is Yamcha.” Oscar continued with his introduction and the lights above the contestant’s seat lit up following is order. Even though this contestant had the name inspired by a dragonball character but the writer himself looked like a rather weak young man, from the appearance, he looked less than 20 years old. In reality, Yamcha was indeed only 19. He started writing when he was in secondary school and dropped out in high school and threw himself into the industry fulltime. Last year, with a very popular Xuanhuan , he joined the ranks of first rate webists.

“Our third contestant is Spring Breeze of Anarchy blowing on the Land (shortformed to Spring Breeze from this point onwards).” Oscar continued. This contestant was an uncle about 40 with a black rimmed spectacle. His series of sci-fi s was very popular. Uncle Spring Breeze was a former journalist and then he became a freelance writer. Initially out of interest, he wrote a sci-fi that had about several ten thousand words but whenever he tried to post it to a publication company, he would be rejected. As a final resort… he turned to web serialization, but that was the turning point to his success…. And his penname was a product of a random name generator, because when he registered at the website, he did not believe he would get anything from it, he was just posting his story with the belief that ‘instead of letting this go to waste, why not share it online’…

“Our fourth contestant is Rose Saw.” This was a ‘personality-first writer’, she was famous for her extremely gothic writing style and appearance. Honestly… her work was not that popular and they had a very small reading base. But luckily she had a rich father who knew some people from the publication world… Just like that her strange writing was printed and sold, somehow getting some response from the public… Some critiqued her for pining without cause, some said she was misanthropic for no reason and others (mostly young teenagers) viewed her as their spiritual teacher. But regardless of the reason… be it criticism or praise, in today’s society where bad publicity was good publicity, her writing had carved out a niche of her own in the industry.

“Our fifth contestant is General Fei.” This was a young man about 27 or 28, his face was overly powdered with small eyes, slanted bangs and fashionably dressed, on appearance, he looked like a Korean boyband artist. He could be considered a senior in the industry, he had good-selling sales in both modern and xuanhuan genres, but he had not really gotten his big break. His rather simplistic writing ability and overused plot kept getting critiqued on, comments like ‘bad grammar, tons of fillers and increasingly lack of creativity’ was something he woke up to every day.

Oscar walked as he made his introduction before finally… he came to the last two seats. The arrangement of the seat for this round was based on the popularity online ranking, those with higher popularity would be arranged at the further back so Feng Bujue today was contestant number six. Honestly Feng Bujue really did not expect Brother “Soda” who was on the same episode as he was when he first came would have the least popularity among the seven of them. Even though it was already good enough to squeeze into top 7 from 20 eliminated writers, but this feeling was being the last… mustn’t have felt that good.

“Our sixth contestant is…” When Oscar came to Brother Jue’s seat, he even had a temporary eye contact with him, “Bujue.”

Two seconds later, Oscar turned and continued to the next. “and our last contestant… Contestant Number seven is Fire in the Night.” Earlier when he announced each contestant’s penname, there would be applause and cheers from the audience and the volume was accumulative so when it was Fire in the Night’s turn, it had reached the boiling point. Fire in the Night was a man about 30, he looked very unassuming but he was a God in the web world who came to his rise this year with a masterpiece in the modern genre, no one was even close to rivalling his popularity this year. The popularity of his work even overshadowed the works of the other first writers like Xuan Tian Zhong and Vegetable Fruit.

“Alright, according to normal rules…” After the audience quieted down, Oscar returned to the centre of the stage with a smile, “… Now will be time to name this episode but…” His tone changed, “This episode is rather unique because we already have a name.” he raised his name to the big monitor and indeed the monitor already showed the title ‘Night of Revival’.

“Therefore, we will skip the naming part this episode.” Oscar gave the camera a mysterious look, “And…” After he said this word, he gave a very long pause before adding, “…the change to this episode will involve more than this small segment, on this night of revival, we will see completely brand new rules!”

At this moment, DJ gave several sound effects and the light flickered to create tension.

“Ha ha… there is no need for everyone to worry.” Oscar chuckled. “How about this… since our contestants this time are all our old friends already, for the start of this episode, we will have them greet the audience and give us their thoughts on their return to the stage.”