Chapter 14 Utter Confusion

Pei Zong patted his butt and left, leaving a bewildered Cui Geng with nothing to do but aimlessly flip through the comics of Hurricane Comics.

For Pei Qian, the current state of the entire "Inspiration Class" was completely in line with his expectations, proceeding according to the script. He had taken special care of Cui Geng, assigning this author, who was most likely to cause problems, to write about a subject with the lowest probability of success – a multiple insurance policy, one might say.

As long as Cui Geng could verify that this policy was feasible, Pei Qian could consider adding more authors to the "Inspiration Class" in the future, effectively undermining the development of Zhongdian Chinese Website.

As for Cui Geng, he was now in a state of deep confusion.

If Cui Geng had been given the choice, he would never have chosen this subject because he was neither good at it nor particularly interested in it.

As an author whose knowledge of European and American superheroes was limited to a few super IPs and who had not delved into the subject deeply, Cui Geng could not think of any reason why he could write a good superhero story.

But President Pei said that not understanding superheroes was actually an advantage, and that if he read more material and honed his skills, there would definitely be no problem.

Cui Geng thought about it again and again. Since it was President Pei's opinion, he still had to take it seriously.

Because in terms of creative work, President Pei was the real master!

Whether it was Tengda's games or movies, President Pei was actually in charge of them himself, controlling the overall direction. And these had been verified as very successful works.

President Pei's status in terms of creative work was much higher than that of their online novelists. Since President Pei said that Cui Geng was fine, it was possible that he really was fine.

"Could it be that I have some potential that I don't even know about?"

With this question in mind, Cui Geng decided to try his best on Hurricane Comics' superhero IP, as President Pei had requested.

As an important part of Tengda Group's IP, the "Inspiration Class" had, of course, prepared a large number of Hurricane Comics comics.

Cui Geng picked out a few of the best-selling ones, returned to his seat, turned on the reading light, put on his headphones, and played light music, then snuggled into his single sofa and carefully flipped through them.

...

Afternoon.

Cui Geng put the last comic he had brought aside and rubbed his temples with a bit of a headache.

He had been reading from morning until afternoon, and he had been thinking about the plots of these superheroes in his mind even while eating lunch. But the more he read, the more he felt that it was hopeless.

The more he understood, the more he could feel the difficulty of this task!

Because they were all comics, there was relatively little text information, so he flipped through them quickly. Cui Geng skimmed through a few of the best-selling comics and understood the general plot outlines, but his mind became even more confused.

"Hurricane Comics only accounts for 5% of the market share in the US and is constantly being crushed by the top two comic companies. It's definitely not without reason."

"Whether it's the superhero's persona or the story plot, the gap between them and the top two comic companies is very large."

"These stories, you can tell at a glance that they won't work!"

"Moreover, these characters and plots are not very suitable for the tastes of domestic readers. It can be said that they didn't learn the advantages of the top two comic companies, but they retained all the disadvantages."

"Writing about these IP characters, isn't this just looking for my own death..."

Cui Geng fell into deep melancholy.

Characters like Multi-Faced Man, Duke of Purgatory, Xenomorph, and Mechanical Policeman were already Hurricane Comics' most famous IPs. Although these IPs left a certain impression, they were already out of date.

Moreover, in Cui Geng's opinion, either the stories of these IPs were not very expandable, or the settings no longer conformed to the current aesthetic standards, so it was not easy to write derivative plots.

If these IPs were simply taken as game images and put into the game GoG, that would be completely fine; but if you wanted to write a story with them as the main characters that was attractive enough, that would be extremely difficult.

As for the other IPs, there was no need to mention them. They were all completely useless.

There were even many superheroes here that were benchmarked against the top two comic companies, such as a hero called "World Captain," which was obviously a knockoff. This kind of character should not be used even more.

If he really wrote about them, he was afraid that people would laugh their heads off.

In short, Cui Geng's head was pounding.

"Should I just muddle through?"

"Should I just choose an IP like Multi-Faced Man or Mechanical Policeman and just write a fan fiction to make do with it?"

"Although this kind of IP is very old and out of date, at least domestic readers still have some impression of it. It shouldn't be considered cheating manuscript fees if I just make do with it, right?"

After racking his brains for several hours without success, Cui Geng subconsciously wanted to choose the easy way.

But President Pei's face suddenly appeared in his mind, and he immediately dismissed the idea.

"No, absolutely not!"

"How could I have such an idea?"

"President Pei took special care of me, obviously attaching great importance to what I want to write and having high expectations!"

"How could I have the idea of fooling around? This would make President Pei so sad!"

"President Pei said that he doesn't require word count and that I should take my time and do a good job. If I gave up so quickly and rashly started writing, wouldn't that completely let down President Pei's expectations?"

"No, I have to think about it more carefully!"

"I have to show the same energy as when I analyzed the Tengda spirit with Wu Bin, carefully study the deep meaning behind President Pei's words, and find the only correct answer!"

"I should interpret President Pei's true intentions according to Tengda's internal interpretation methods!"

When Cui Geng wanted to give up, the Tengda spirit encouraged him again.

When Cui Geng and Wu Bin analyzed the Tengda spirit and wrote the Tengda Spirit Manual together, they had gained an in-depth understanding of the "Standard Ideas for Answering President Pei's Intentions."

This was a methodology led by Bao Xu, Huang Sibo, and Lin Wan and other company veterans, and constantly improved by other department heads, to figure out President Pei's real intentions.

Specifically, it meant deducing President Pei's true intentions through the content of President Pei's task assignments. This trick had been tried and tested in the game department, film department, and physical department, and had created many miracles.

Now, Cui Geng decided to put what he had learned into practice and apply it to his own creative work!

"What was the first step again? Oh, right, find the most illogical point in President Pei's words and then start analyzing..."

Cui Geng tried hard to recall President Pei's conversation with him in the morning.

In fact, President Pei didn't say much. He only said, "Superhero subjects can also be written for domestic readers," "Domestic readers don't necessarily have to like these superheroes," and "It's also possible to write these superheroes to death or half-dead."

"It sounds like President Pei is implying that I shouldn't use the traditional Western story structure to write superhero stories, but instead try to tell them in a way that domestic readers can accept..."

Cui Geng began to look up relevant information online.

Superhero movies are a part of cultural output and have a large market in China. Although Cui Geng hadn't paid special attention to them, he still had a complete understanding of some basic concepts.

Although superheroes have different abilities, personalities, and identities, most of them have similar characteristics:

They possess extraordinary strength, technical ability, or proficiency in related equipment in some aspect. Whether it is strength, wisdom, special abilities, or the power of money, they can all be included in this category.

They hope to uphold justice, are full of responsibility, will choose to stand up in times of danger, and do not need any reward.

They represent Western moral values to some extent, and generally do not kill people, but hand them over to the police and the law.

They generally have a secret identity to protect their friends and family. At the same time, they often have another identity in real life besides being a superhero, such as a reporter, student, or rich second generation.

They generally have a symbolic costume or prop.

Generally speaking, superhero stories are basically stories of good ultimately defeating evil: a super villain wants to do bad things, is discovered by a superhero, and after a series of twists and turns, the superhero defeats the super villain and maintains world peace.

Of course, with the development of superhero subjects, stories have also shown more and more patterns, and even some "anti-hero" characters who are both good and evil have appeared.

But still very few superhero stories deviate from the core of "good defeating evil," because if they deviate from this core, the audience may not buy it.

In a sense, superhero comics or movies, like online novels, are a mass-producible creative mode. Although the basic routines are constantly repeated, there will be many innovations in the details, and readers just like this formula, and they will still love to watch it no matter how many times it is repeated.

This is also why Cui Geng felt that he had no way to start writing: precisely because this is a mass-producible creative mode and is deeply rooted in Western cultural background, as Chinese people, there is a natural cultural barrier to this, so creating according to this standard process will never surpass the superhero stories created by Westerners.

This is not belittling oneself, but having a clear understanding of reality.

It's like asking a native Westerner to write a traditional Chinese wuxia story. No matter how much preparation he does, the final product will definitely "not have the right flavor."

Cui Geng frowned: "In other words, it's probably impossible for the story I write to sell to foreigners. It can only be aimed at Chinese people."

"President Pei did say that."

"But how exactly can it be sold to Chinese people?"

"President Pei seems to have done a lot of Western-themed content, and it seems to be very popular with Chinese people. How did President Pei do it?"

Cui Geng couldn't help but think of the game *Struggle*.

In fact, the game *Struggle* also has a completely Western story background. Everything in it, from the characters to the story, is based on the Western background, but domestic players like it very much.

Cui Geng carefully recalled the plot of *Struggle* and suddenly his eyes lit up.

"I understand!"

"President Pei's secret to creation is to observe Western stories from a Chinese cultural perspective, deconstruct them, tear apart the exquisite coat of Western literary works, and then fully expose its inner core!"