Chapter 199: Ripping Off
She wasn’t really worried about rewriting the script as it would be impossible for Director Liu to do that due to funding problems, but it would still affect her reputation if the director deemed it was the scriptwriter’s problem.
And if her reputation was affected, it would be hard for her to work with big-scale production in the future, and her wages would drop drastically.
Even if the siblings did not bring the problem up to Director Liu, they might still talk about it online and other people would eventually learn about it, which would affect her reputation as well.
That was why she had to step in and talk it out with them.
What she was angry about the most was the fact that Tan Mo, a 15-year-old girl, was talking bad things about the script that she wrote.
“I remember that your brother told me that you’re 15 years old, right?” Yuan Qishan smirked. “What are you? A 9th grader or something? Aren’t you just a high schooler? Do you really think you know our history just because you studied about it in cla.s.s? It’s much more complicated than you think, little girl. This isn’t like reading something off a textbook!”
“You sure are a weird person,” Tan Mo sighed. “I’m just chit-chatting in private with my brother here. What does it have to do with you? I mean, yeah, we are talking about the script, but we didn’t mention anything about making changes to it. Aren’t you the rude one here who suddenly charged into our room and started accusing us? I’m just having a normal discussion with my brother here. Do we have to get your permission to do that?”
Tan Mo was just stating the facts, but it only angered Yuan Qishan even more.
“So, tell me then, which part of my script is wrong? And why can’t I get angry?” Yuan Qishan roared. “Who are you to tell me what to do? Do you really think Director Liu would accept my script if it wasn’t good? Why don’t you write one if you are that good? That’s what you are implying here, right? That you know our country’s history better than me? That you can write a better script than me?”
Yuan Qishan then turned to Tan Jinqi, “I hope you don’t bring your sister here in the future. Kids can be naive and disrespectful these days and do things that would embarra.s.s other people. She doesn’t get a pa.s.s just because she’s still a kid.”
However, Tan Jinqi wasn’t going to play nice with her and scoffed, “Seriously, look at how you are reacting just because you overheard someone discussing the problems in your script. How would you react when the drama premiers and everyone saw it? Do you think you can stop them from talking about it? If you can’t handle criticism like this, how are you going to handle the criticisms from thousands, even millions of people?”
“That’s not something you have to worry about!” Yuan Qishan scolded.
Seeing how high and mighty the scriptwriter was acting, Tan Jinqi was now curious as to where she graduated from. If Tan Mo was as naive as Yuan Qishan had said, then only a handful of people in the world would actually dare to say that they weren’t.
Just as Tan Jinqi was about to ask, Tan Mo b.u.t.ted in. “Well, it’s wrong to say that the script you wrote doesn’t have any historical theme to it…”
Yuan Qishan reacted with a scoff.
“I know that there are a lot of limitations in writing a script for a drama, and there’s no way that you guys are going to rewrite the whole thing just because of one single opinion. Heck, I ain’t that shameless to do that and affect everyone’s schedule,” Tan Mo said. Compared to the excited Yuan Qishan, the little girl was much more composed. “And who am I to affect the filming schedule, right? That’s why we are only having a casual conversation about it and nothing more.”
Tan Mo paused and continued. “That’s all it is, a casual discussion of the script that you had written. In my humble opinion, the history part of the script is too mediocre, but in terms of entertaining the viewers, I would say it’s perfect. But, if it’s about promoting the historical part of it, it might cause some misunderstanding among the viewers.”
“Mediocre? Entertaining?” Yuan Qishan laughed. “Little girl, don’t you know that we even hired a history PhD student from Beijing University as a consultant on this? Are you saying you are better than a PhD student? A 15–year-old girl? She’s more than enough to be called a specialist in this topic! Do you want to challenge her? Well then, be my guest!”
“A PhD student from Beijing University?” Tan Mo raised a brow, not surprised by the news as Tan Jinqi had already mentioned it. “Can I know her name?”
Tan Mo wanted to know as she could later ask Professor Tang why could a PhD student be so unreliable and made such a huge mistake for allowing Yuan Qishan to create such a historical inaccurate script.
“Why do you want to know? Even if I tell you, there’s no way you would know who she is,” Yuan Qishan mocked, thinking that there was no way a 15-year-old kid would be acquainted with a university student. “But, you will be shocked to learn who her professor is. Have you heard about Professor Tang? One of the best and most famous historians in our country? He’s the one who wrote the textbook you are reading in high school now. That’s her professor. She’s part of his research team.”
Tan Mo and Tan Jinqi turned to look at each other speechlessly. They had never thought that the PhD student would actually be someone Tan Mo was acquainted with.
Seeing that both Tan Mo and Tan Jinqi were speechless, Yuan Qishan thought that she had managed to scare them with the fact that the specialist they got was the student of a famous historian.
“Seriously, little girl, next time, think twice before you act. Do you really think that a high school student like you knows more about history than the student of a famous historian?” Yuan Qishan laughed.
“Could it be that Professor Tang recommended one of his students here for an interns.h.i.+p?” Tan Mo murmured to herself, but Tan Jinqi still heard it. She turned to her brother and whispered, “I’ll ask Professor Tang later if that’s the case. This student is literally doing a poor job and ripping the director off.”
After going through the list of students in Professor Tang’s research team, the only person she could think of that would do such a wicked thing was Shen Jingyi. After spending some time with the team, the rest of the team members seemed reliable enough in her eyes.
“Since Director Liu has invested a lot in this drama, if he really promotes it as a historical drama with extreme historical accuracy, the backlash would be intense when the viewers saw that the drama isn’t as accurate as he mentioned. It would affect Director Liu’s reputation,” Tan Mo chose to ignore Yuan Qishan and told her brother instead.
“It’s true that the production will suffer some loses if they were to rewrite the script,” Tan Mo continued, “But, it’s still better than the viewers leaving bad comments and having a low view count, right? Wouldn’t that cost even more? I’m sure that both the director and famous actors took this job because of how big the drama is projected to be, but if it’s a flop, it will affect their reputations and their future.”