PLT | Chapter 4

Clout-Chasing

Zhou Chenyu laughed shamelessly. “No need, no need. You have one, I have one, everybody has one.”

Yan Chao let out a helpless sigh.

He was truly defeated.

Utterly defeated.

He could not be bothered to deal with Zhou Chenyu anymore. With a dark expression, he climbed out of bed. The moment he turned on his phone, Weibo automatically popped up a new notification.

…Why the fuck was it that haunting Zhou Chenyu again?

Zhou Chenyu: When two vases run into each other, who’s clout-chasing off whom? [cat] // Official Weibo of Second Role: When a xiangsheng actor and a sharp-tongued celebrity host swap professions on a variety show, what kind of sparks will fly from their “same-stage verbal showdown”? Zhou Chenyu, Yan Chao

Yan Chao: ???

Of course he knew Zhou Chenyu was only following the production team’s instructions and going through the routine of reposting the official announcement Weibo, but that line he added…

Fine, self-mockery was one thing, but why drag somebody else into it too?

Who wanted to be a vase together with him?

Alright, fine, he knew Zhou Chenyu was joking, but were they even that close?

They had only known each other for one day, okay?

It really was not that Yan Chao was petty. If Zhou Chenyu had said that line in private, Yan Chao would not have cared at all.

The problem was that Yan Chao knew very well that both he and Zhou Chenyu had plenty of fans. Yesterday, when the production team had suddenly posted that dual official announcement format, both sides’ fans must have first been startled, then started muttering to themselves:

What do I do, gege is going on a variety show to sell CP with another man. I wonder what the other side is like. Will they shamelessly cling, bundle, hype, frame, or smear my gege? What do I do, I’m so worried…

As a variety show host who always stood at the forefront of internet culture, Yan Chao understood those little fangirl thoughts inside and out.

In a situation where the two of them had not yet shown the public any kind of good diplomatic relationship, for Zhou Chenyu to post a Weibo like this, sounding so familiar while directly poking at the most sensitive attack points of both sides’ fandoms, was basically…

Him being afraid the fans would not start fighting.

If Yan Chao had not already gotten used to Zhou Chenyu’s personality, then if it had been someone else doing this, Yan Chao would absolutely have silently snarked in his heart, what kind of seductive little scheming bitch is this?

He sighed and silently opened Zhou Chenyu’s Weibo comments.

After scrolling past the first few controlled comments like “gege charge on,” the latest comments were, sure enough, already full of smoke from battle.

“If you want so badly to be a vase, go do it by yourself. What’s with dragging other people into it?”

“Huanyu TV’s pillar, a twenty-three-year-old gold-medal mc, please get to know him first, okay? Before calling someone else a vase, why don’t you first look at what achievements you even have yourself [hehe]. What achievements could a vase penggen even have? His achievement is probably just latching onto an excellent dougen [laugh-cry].”

“What’s wrong with Yan fans? We’re just a tiny washed-up xiangsheng nobody. We don’t dare clout-chase your China’s number one mc, please let us off [grin].”

“Our Xiao Zhou was just making a joke. Can your side stop getting so triggered so easily?”

“Running under someone else’s Weibo to throw tantrums everywhere, the way Yan fans go around starting fights is seriously disgusting [grin].”

“Oh my god, the celebrity personally came down to throw shade, and Yu fans can still bite back and say we’re the ones starting fights? The sisters who do xiangsheng really are different, wow, so good at turning black into white [thumbs-up].”

…

Yan Chao only read a few before he started feeling dizzy. Sure enough, everything was developing exactly the way he had expected.

He could not help looking toward Zhou Chenyu, who was sitting in the living room. Since he was the kind of person with no scheming mind at all, Yan Chao could not be bothered to beat around the bush with him and just asked directly, “Did you post that Weibo yourself?”

Zhou Chenyu raised his head, looking puzzled. “If not me, then who? You posted it for me?”

Sure enough. It looked like his team did not have much of a manager’s instinct for handling Weibo either.

Yan Chao sighed. “That Weibo of yours sounded way too familiar.”

Zhou Chenyu smiled when he heard that. “Really? But weren’t you already calling me that in the lounge? Returning courtesy for courtesy.”

Yan Chao had not expected him to still remember that incident in the lounge, and inwardly he felt even more speechless.

Then he heard Zhou Chenyu say again, “Wasn’t everyone just joking around? You actually took it to heart?”

Yan Chao shook his head helplessly. “Whether I take it to heart or not isn’t important. What’s important is whether other people take it to heart. Didn’t you see the comments under your Weibo?”

“I actually didn’t.” Hearing that, Zhou Chenyu reached for his phone, planning to take a look at his own Weibo comments.

Yan Chao quickly stopped him. “Alright, alright, no need to look.”

There was fighting and chaos everywhere, and never mind how ugly it looked, with all that messy fandom slang, he probably would not understand it anyway.

Zhou Chenyu obediently put down his phone. “Good timing. I get a headache every time I read comments.”

Yan Chao lowered his head and went back to scrolling through Weibo. Fortunately, Zhou Chenyu’s post had only been up for a short while, so both sides’ fans were still only engaged in small-scale verbal sparring. Otherwise, if the show had just been officially announced and already broken into a huge fight, it would have looked far too ugly.

At the moment, the only solution was for Yan Chao himself to step in and claim Zhou Chenyu, this dumbass, so that he could temporarily calm the flames of war that were just about to ignite.

Yan Chao thought for a moment, then reposted Zhou Chenyu’s Weibo.

Yan Chao: Who ended up together?[doge] // Zhou Chenyu: When two vases run into each other, who’s clout-chasing off whom? [cat] // Official Weibo of Second Role: When a xiangsheng actor and a sharp-tongued celebrity host swap professions on a variety show, what kind of sparks will fly from their “same-stage verbal showdown”? Zhou Chenyu, Yan Chao

For no reason at all, he had been dragged into sinking together and turned into a vase. Forget snapping back, now he even had to take the initiative to claim that title and help this man save face.

Being stuck with a show guest like this, Yan Chao felt bitter inside.

Then Zhou Chenyu’s careless voice sounded by his ear again. “But that’s my own Weibo, so why care what other people say?”

It sounded extremely reasonable. For a moment, Yan Chao actually had no answer.

Fine, this dumbass was not afraid of being cursed, so that was that, but if they were going to sell CP, then no matter what, it ought to at least look a little like a selling-CP kind of thing.

Sure enough, the moment Yan Chao posted that Weibo, the flames in the comments instantly died down quite a bit.

But with both celebrities suddenly acting like one happy family so quickly, the fans all realized that the overall trend of them selling CP was already set in stone, and that even bigger fights later would be unavoidable.

Zhou Chenyu lifted his head and looked at Yan Chao’s helpless expression, finally realizing something. “Did your fans get mad because I called you a vase?”

Yan Chao sighed. “Your fans aren’t exactly calm either.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “But wasn’t I praising you for being good-looking?”

Yan Chao looked at the serious expression on his face. He did not seem to be joking at all, and it was simply unbelievable. “So you actually think vase is a compliment?”

Forget a word like “vase.” Every time Yan Chao saw people praising him with things like “a face blessed by the ages,” his mood felt a little complicated.

As a host, as long as your features were upright and proper, that was enough. At the end of the day, it was a profession where you made your living with your mouth, not with your face.

The more people praised how good-looking you were, the more it indirectly proved that your actual professional ability was not that good, or at the very least did not match your looks.

And a xiangsheng performer not only had to rely on his mouth, he also had to know how to make people laugh, so he ought to have even less of an idol burden than a host. For someone like Zhou Chenyu, whose face was too good-looking, when he made funny faces and acted goofy, it was inevitable that he would not seem quite as funny, and the comedic effect could easily be discounted.

What was more, he was a penggen, and he did not have many lines to begin with. Standing behind the table, people only looked at his face, so getting mocked as a “vase penggen” was inevitable too.

Because of that, Yan Chao had naturally assumed that Zhou Chenyu must absolutely loathe the fact that the whole internet mocked him as a “vase penggen.”

Who would have thought Zhou Chenyu would say, “Whether it’s performing xiangsheng or being a host, at the end of the day, in our line of work, isn’t it all just for the sake of making you laugh? No matter what you rely on, as long as you can make the audience happy and make the audience like you, isn’t that your skill?”

Yan Chao looked at him in some surprise. He saw that Zhou Chenyu still wore that flamboyant, unconcerned smile, and for a moment, it was actually rare that Yan Chao found himself unable to argue back.

Yan Chao fell silent for a while, deciding to skip over this somewhat disharmonious little episode from early in the morning. Just as he walked toward the living room, he saw Zhou Chenyu jerk his chin toward the dining table. “Breakfast’s already ordered. It just got delivered. Eat it while it’s hot.”

Yan Chao paused, thinking that although this roommate’s mouth really was irritating, as a person he was actually fairly thoughtful.

Subconsciously, he glanced at the table. Soy milk and youtiao, as expected, the standard setup of a trueborn Beijing young master, no matter where he went, he never changed his tastes.

Then he saw Zhou Chenyu sit down across from him. “So? Isn’t gege very virtuous?”

Yan Chao looked at him helplessly. “Would it kill you to be a normal person?”

As Zhou Chenyu ladled him a bowl of soy milk, he muttered, “You’re so young, and yet you’re dead and lifeless all day long. I crack a couple jokes with you and you already think I’m abnormal.”

Yan Chao sighed. “Don’t you get tired of making so many jokes every day onstage?”

Just like how the best comedians were often depression patients in private, people in this line of work actually all had a bit of split personality to some degree. Onstage, you had to keep smiling at all times and be responsible for making everyone happy. After enough time passed, that was always exhausting. So once they stepped offstage, it was inevitable that their personalities would become withdrawn, that they would not want to talk and would not like to fool around.

This was not just Yan Chao’s personal issue. The colleagues around him were basically all like that. In front of the camera, they were smiling brightly, lively and cheerful big stars. The moment the camera turned, they immediately could not squeeze out even half a smile.

He had naturally assumed that xiangsheng performers were more or less the same. Who would have thought that Zhou Chenyu, onstage at least, was playful while steady, but offstage there was only the playful part left.

It made Yan Chao unable to stop wondering whether this person had done nothing but grow to the age of twenty-five on the outside, while in reality he only had the IQ of a fifteen-year-old.

Then he heard Zhou Chenyu say, “If a person gets to the point where he can’t even be bothered to joke around in life, then how stifling would that kind of life be?”

When he said that, the tails of those peach blossom eyes of his lifted slightly, revealing an easy, teasing smile, and without realizing it, Yan Chao’s heart gave a tiny stir.

Yan Chao stared at the person before him in slight surprise. For one brief moment, for the first time ever, he felt that what this dumbass was saying actually made a bit of sense.

Footnotes:

[1] Xiangsheng : A traditional Chinese comedic performance art centered on banter, timing, wordplay, role interplay, and live audience response.

[2] Penggen : The supporting role in xiangsheng, often functioning as the straight man who responds to and sets up the dougen’s humor.

[3] Dougen : The comic-leading role in xiangsheng, usually responsible for driving the jokes and punchlines.