It all started with Song Yucheng and Cao Kun’s unhappy parting.
Cao Kun was no fool. Since he’d broken the pretence between Song Yucheng and himself, he had to show what he was made of to make Song Yucheng understand that he was not the kind of person who could be easily manipulated by Song Yucheng.
However, the evidence that Cao Kun has in his hands was something that Song Yucheng was afraid of. As Cao Kun had said, if Song Yucheng dared to wage a war of public opinion, then Cao Kun had nothing to fear. No matter how many friends Song Yucheng had, Picture Domain was now the leader of the entertainment industry.
They were too close, too intertwined.
Song Yucheng had to find a way to drag Cao Kun down so low that he’d be incapable of defending himself. If Cao Kun fought back and revealed his cards, he would really be sacrificing half of the film industry.
This was why Song Yucheng could only be patient. However, the last thing he needed was patience. Even if time was short, he could afford to wait until Cao Kun revealed his true colours.
So, in the next two weeks, Cao Kun and Song Yucheng reached a kind of equilibrium. More interestingly, Song Yucheng would occasionally go out with Cao Kun to socialise with him. Seeing their interactions, many people started to talk and wonder if Song Yucheng got on Cao Kun’s radar again. Otherwise, why would a “relationship drifter” like Cao Kun take someone along with him wherever he went?
But whether this intimacy was love or a wary caution, only Song Yucheng and Cao Kun themselves knew. As far as the public was concerned, the two of them gave off the feeling of a sort of reunification.
Song Yucheng and Cao Kun’s peaceful interactions were a rare opportunity for the industry to calm down a bit and settle. No one expected, however, that a small, quiet incident would suddenly erupt and become a time bomb for the entertainment industry, involving almost everyone.
It all started with a case of plagiarism.
Yang Qian, was a little-known screenwriter in his thirties. He had debuted over ten years ago, but he was a newcomer in the screenwriting world. He did have a group of fans who truly liked him but they were small in number and kept to themselves. Even so, Yang Qian had a good reputation in the industry and also produced work of good quality.
His weakness was that he was quiet and shy. He didn’t like to talk, and rarely stood out. He’d never accepted interviews, and he closed himself up to concentrate on writing his script, so he didn’t even have many friends in the industry.
However, though Yang Qian kept himself away from worldly affairs, people still went to find fault with him. Even Yang Qian himself didn’t know about it when this first happened.
It started with an official announcement from another entertainment company, from the sister of the CEO of Great Swan Entertainment. Her pseudonym was Tianqing, and she was going to be working as the screenwriter for a web series.
Generally, this was not a big deal. Tianqing had a big name backing her, but it was an original web drama after all and not a big deal, with no big brands and no big actor or actress names attached to it.
In order to support the sister, the CEO of Great Swan made a big move, saying that he wanted to promote it on the whole network. Tianqing’s original web drama was a hot topic right away.
Tianqing’s brother was a big CEO after all, so she did not have any famous actors, but the post-production and the director of the film had clout. It was a web drama, but the budget for it was like that of an actual full-length series.
This web series became a hot topic online very quickly.
The netizens found that though she was a newcomer, the screenwriting was unexpectedly deep. The language was juvenile, but the pacing was good. Plus, the main actors all did their best, so the drama turned out to be really quite good.
But as the broadcast went on, some clips caught the attention of some people. One of them happened to be a die-hard fan of Yang Qian. The more the fan watched, the more the fan felt like something was wrong. The fan wrote a post right away to express their doubts.
The title: The Plot of New Writer Tianqing’s Original Web Drama and Mr Yang Qian’s Old Work is Fascinatingly Similar.
The fan also specifically cited the five episodes and put them together for comparison with a script that Yang Qian had previously written, but not filmed.
It was a surprise to find that it was almost the same. The same plot, but with a different formula and a new name for the main character. What’s more, when he was writing it, Yang Qian had misused one line of dialect and had the main character pronounce it with an added “er” at the end of a word when real people of City B would not have added it. This mistake was also pointed out by some of his fans in City B, but Yang Qian was busy with other scripts at that time, so he didn’t have it changed.
The funny thing was that Tianqing had also copied the original mistake.
There were two other minor dialect mistakes like this so it was impossible for Tianqing to have made the same mistake as Yang Qian three times.
Hmm. Something was not right.
This fan of Yang Qian was considered a popular commentator on the film review forums, so the person had a few tens of thousands of followers.
The public was in an uproar.
“Seriously? Did Yang Qian write this script? But I’ve never seen it filmed before!”
“I read the comparison script. That penmanship and technique is indeed Yang Qian’s. And this little screenwriter named Tianqing really is suspicious.”
“But there’s no proof. Who can confirm that Yang Qian wrote the script first?”
Some of Yang Qian’s fans quickly went through Yang Qian’s blog posts and found all the relevant data when Yang Qian wrote this script.
One of the blog posts became definitive proof. It was a memoir called “Hutong” that Yang Qian referenced when he wrote the play. This memoir, however, went out of print thirty years ago. The one in Yang Qian had had been borrowed from his teacher. There was only one copy of it left in the whole of China.
Also, one of the scenes in Yang Qian’s script was unique to the old edition. But what a coincidence! Tianqing also had this scene in her script. However, based on Tianqing’s age, she would never have been able to access that memoir.
From all of that, it was obvious that Tianqing had copied Yang Qian.
At this point, even the netizens who did not know Yang Qian were all furious. There were copyright protections laws, and many people have considerable respect for originality. Plagiarism was the thing they hated most.
For 80 percent of the netizens, a screenwriter can have no talent and no good works, but he cannot plagiarise.
What was the difference between this kind of theft of others’ work and a shameless thief? Many people cried foul, and yelled about the injustice for Yang Qian.
“I can’t stand it. Can’t you just work hard as a screenwriter? Just do your own work as a screenwriter! How could she be so shameless as to rely on plagiarism to get popular?”
“I’m confused too. Isn’t that Tianqing supposed to be the sister of the CEO of Great Swan Entertainment? Even if they can’t write a good script they could hire some guy to write for them. It’s better than doing this. Plagiarism or whatever is just despicable!”
“I just want to give a shout out to Mr Yang Qian. It’s really too much! How much work and research did Mr Yang Qian put into this script? Now all his work’s been copied and made popular under someone else’s name!”
“The quality of what that Tianqing wrote is so different compared to Mr Yang Qian’s work.”
While this was going on, some of the veteran screenwriters in the screenwriting circles couldn’t help but come forward and say a few words of fairness. But no one expected that this protection of originality and the fight against plagiarism would lead to something else. And this was the big event which really rocked the entire industry.
Somebody wrote a question online. This script of Tianqing’s looked like a total copy of Yang Qian’s, but Yang Qian had only posted the first six chapters of the script on the internet. How had Tianqing gotten her hands on the rest of the script?
“Yang Qian’s wife! His wife cuckolded him! She cheated on him with the nephew of Great Swan Entertainment’s CEO!”
Holy shi*t! Could such a thing be true? All the netizens were shocked by this unexpected revelation.