#just me and pleco and death

[ihazyourkitty]

TW: animal death.

There is something that truly perplexes me about people who say cetaceans, esp orcas, are ill suited to captivity. In this case I’m referring specifically to people who are otherwise pro-zoo, but then anti-cap when it comes to cetaceans.

As evidence, they will point to things like necropsy reports, stillbirths/miscarriages, infections, injuries, stereotypic behaviors, etc, or they’ll talk about infrastructure problems that can occur, or whatever. Now, it’s not that these things aren’t concerning, or that there aren’t lessons to be learned from them. There is always room for improvement, and constant vigilance is a good thing. What perplexes is this: what do they think these sort of records would look like for species most people would typically associate with doing well in captivity?

Because I think they’d be surprised to learn that such records, on the whole, would be pretty comparable to many other species most people are perfectly fine with keeping in captivity.

Horses are a good example. They are a domesticated species, yes, but they are still prone to things like stereotypic behaviors, to say nothing of the abuses that can/do occur in horse sports. One could easily, easily, weaponize these sort of things to argue why horses should not be in captivity, and in some ways they'd be right. Some of the common practices employed in the horse industry would be utterly unacceptable if applied in a zoo/aquarium context, but people accept it with horses because "it's a domesticated species and that's just how it's always been done." So? That doesn't make it right.

A better example though, in my opinion (at least in that I have more firsthand experience with this) is fish. How well do you think fish, on the whole, fare in captivity, particularly in the pet trade?

There are species of fish you'll commonly see in pet stores that SHOULD NOT keep as pets. Most of society agrees that big cats should not be pets because very few people are qualified to care for one. Oh, but those baby red bellied pacu for sale? Bala sharks? Clown loaches? Common Plecos? Arrowanas?

Each of those species, Pacu especially, will get massive, and in fairness some pet stores will not sell them to people who are not prepared to deal with that. To be clear, I have massive respect for these kinds of responsible vendors.

However, this myth still persists in many other circles: "fish will only grow to the size of their tank." No. You will either stunt its growth (which indicates poor husbandry), or it will continue to grow, and then what? People will either scramble to rehome a massive fish, or just set it loose in local bodies of water, wrecking havoc on the ecosystem.

"Here, buy this pleco, it will clean up all the fish poop in the tank!" Bro.... Don't. Make. Me... HURT YOU!!!! What do you think happens when the pleco poops? Oh, I'm sorry, did you think their poop just magically disappears!? You think they're gonna be healthy on a diet of fish poo they don't want to eat, supplemented by minimal algae?

FEED YOUR PLECOS A PROPER DIET, AND CLEAN YOUR DAMN FISH TANK YOURSELF!

Also, there are many fancy, ornamental fish in the pet/aquarium trade that are mainly, if not only, acquired via wild collection. For species whose numbers and wild habitat are already in a delicate state, you can imagine the kind of conservation implications this has, to say nothing of how stressful it can be to fish acclimating to captivity.

By the way, how long do you think goldfish can live? Ask the average person. Not long, they'll say. Their lifespan is 10-15 years in the right conditions. How many goldfish sold as pets will make it that long? Incredibly few.

But even in professional, accredited aquarium settings, welfare issues don't just go away. They're better, but I've still observed necropsies that were just gnarly. Necrotic ovaries due to egg binding, parasites, impactions, cancer, chronic fungal, viral, or bacterial infections.... things that we only have so much power to treat, both because fish are incredibly good at masking symptoms until it's too late, and also because fish medicine is still in need of a lot of research. A lot of fish husbandry deals with managing water quality, as it's often poor water quality that leads to disease, and there are some species that are just simply incredibly sensitive to even the smallest fluctuations.

I've also seen perfectly healthy fish get gruesomely cut up because the mesh to the intake pipe got a hole in it and sucked up someone who got too close. I've seen/know of severe aggression issues, stereotypic behavior, broken jaws due to swimming into the walls after kids hit the glass, poor breeding outcomes, things breaking overnight leading to elevated temperatures and hypoxic conditions in the morning, overfeeding, scoliosis, major deformities likely caused by disease or malnutrition, entire tanks dying off due to toxic contaminants in the water... I could go on.

And I want to be clear, these are not normal, every day occurrences. Far from it. I'm purposely highlighting the extremes. Professional aquarists (good hobbyists even), bust their butts to prevent these problems, or fix them before they get worse. Like other animal keepers, they do incredible work. Yet even the best captive fish habitats will still have problems. Fish will die, sometimes horribly, simply due to the the limitations of care we can provide, normal wear and tear on equipment, or even just as the natural byproduct of the mortal world we live in. Frankly, this is the reality for every animal we have in human care. It is not so simple as good or bad. Welfare is a continuum that can change over time due to a variety of factors beside just outright neglect.

To be clear, it is sad to read what has gone wrong with cetaceans in captivity. There are noteworthy welfare issues that have historically occurred. Early captures of orcas in particular were horrific and wrong. No, I'm not against keeping cetaceans in captivity provided that they are properly cared for, but I do think there are plenty of perfectly valid complaints to made about the industry.

Still, given what I've seen in just the few years I've worked with fish, I honestly can't help but wonder if the common narrative that's been built around cetaceans isn't just weaponized transparency that maximizes shock value. I could just as easily spin a similar narrative around fish, while purposefully ignoring all the progress that's being made, to effectively argue why many of them shouldn't be in captivity (and yes I do think there are some fish species that should not be in captivity).

But none of this would make the headlines like it does for cetaceans, because you know... "they're just fish." This mindset utterly drives me up the wall.

Welfare for the noble cetacean is more important than welfare for the fish, because something something, "cetaceans are intelligent and sentient!" something something...

Hot take: sentience is not, in and of itself, a welfare standard, particularly since what makes an animal sentient or not is a loaded topic that's hard to define. Animal welfare is animal welfare, regardless of whether or not you're treating a dolphin or a shrimp. Excusing poor welfare for a supposedly non-sentient species sets a bad precedent, in that it excuses substandard care for species less like us. How egotistical and anthropocentric of us. How incurious and disrespectful to approach animals in this way.

But because most people see fish as dumb, ornamental props, it's fine to, for example, put them in the same habitat as the Commerson's dolphins in SW Aquatica and laugh as said dolphins constantly harass them.

The Russian Whale Jail sparked international outrage (deservedly so), but the common housing conditions pet stores employ every day for goldfish or betta fish? Totally fine.

So yeah... when I see someone who is otherwise pro-cap say "I'm fine with keeping these other animals in captivity, but not cetaceans..." even though the issues they highlight with cetaceans will still exist in other animals they're perfectly fine seeing in human care.... it's puzzling to say the least.

[vynegar]

lost in translation (ch 10)

a (non-exhaustive) list of differences or cultural references i noted down for the translation of chapter 10 while watching the chn and eng versions side-by-side. previously i did the same thing for chapter 9.

disclaimer: i am not fluent in chinese, so keep in mind that there will be mistakes. feel free to let me know if you have questions, concerns, or comments.

overall: not too much stood out to me. after looking back on my comments on ch 9, i guess there was less awkwardness in this chapter's translation since i didn't really make a notice things like clunky grammar or sentences. i feel like most of these examples are more like fun facts or nitpicking rather than things i really feel like i need to correct.

rhinoceros horn

心有灵犀一点通, or just 心有灵犀, is a well-known idiom that uses the rhinoceros horn as a metaphor. the idiom definition from the pleco dictionary app:

(idiom) hearts which beat in unison are linked; hearts linked as one, just as the proverbial rhinoceros communicates emotion telepathically through his single horn (idiom); fig. two hearts beat as one

so it can be used to describe people who are connected or very in sync. and here's the description of the rhino horn, also from a pleco definition:

magic horn (i.e. rhinoceros horn with its threadlike white core, mentioned in old texts as having a high sensibility)—heartbeat in unison 身无彩凤双飞翼, 心有灵犀一点通。(李商隐《无题》) Shēn wú cǎi fèng shuāngfēi yì, xīn yǒu língxī yīdiǎn tōng. For bodies no fluttering side by side of splendid phoenix wings, | Between hearts the one minute thread from root to tip of the magic horn. (The second line is often quoted as meaning a meeting of minds.)

the white threadlike core connecting each end of the horn is why it's used as a metaphor for connection; considering this imagery, having the horn hold the wick of a candle also makes perfect sense.

i know the story focused on the role of the rhinoceros horn in 异苑 "Bizarre Gardens", but i'm not familiar with the work so i won't try to add beyond the game's explanation :') i'm just noting the reference that i was aware of

10-1

no issues with the translation, but there's a bit of wordplay in the chinese version. translated more literally, it would be something like "and once the round was over, the pawn [棋子] simply became something to be discarded [弃子】." the bolded words are near-homophones, both pronounced "qizi" with just a difference in tone.

10-3

the number four is seen as unlucky in chinese culture (and other east asian cultures) since its pronunciation sounds like the word for "death". by extension, the number 14 is also unlucky, which is why prankster started the "ghost" appearances on the 14th floor of the building.

general note on translation; a lot of times in the narration, short descriptors are lost in the process of chn -> eng, probably since the full translation would make the sentence a bit unwieldy. usually it's not super important or the the meaning that it carries is made redundant through other context. for example, in 10-3, when they're discussing the culprit of the mischief in the office:

this contains the phrase "artem, who [the culprit] hates". this could be considered redundant through context (because why else would someone be targeting artem in this way?) but in eng, they don't specify this as it does in the original text.

another example in 10-5 when they confront the fortuneteller:

there were a few adverbs dropped from the translation in this section. i picked this one since it had the most change; in chn, she casually glances over it, but in eng, she "inspects" it which sounds much more thorough.

10-13

陆景和一改刚才冷峻严肃的模样，直接不顾形象地斜坐在会议室的长桌上。 Marius changes from his cold demeanor from earlier, and he sits down at the long table in the conference room with no regard for his image.

i... feel like the meaning got flipped to its opposite meaning and it's so puzzling that i'm still wondering if i'm just interpreting it wrong?? hence my typing out the chn text too, so other people can check it as well. i even tried a few different machine translations but this is still my conclusion. anyway, if my analyses so far are correct, this would be the second time that marius's personality becomes a bit harsher after the eng translation (it happened before in ch 9).

10-21

If it weren't for the fact that the copy [of the report] was still there and that it was something I had only mentioned to Artem, I would have thought that he had long since known what I was planning to do next.

also a sentence flipped to basically the opposite meaning, to the point that i doubt myself, but i think this time it's because the sentence is a bit long with a lot of confusing negatives

10-26

When visiting Brigid Gries:

You: Yeah, gege's right! Don't worry, you'll be fine! // [Brigid's writing:] "Thank you, shushu and jiejie" // Without stopping to tease that "shushu", you and Artem exchange a glance.

this is another situation with ways of addressing people in chinese; please check my comments on the scene in chapter 9-14 if you want an explanation of the terms.

rip rosa. you tried xD but looks like artem can't escape the shushu/uncle allegations 😔 and Brigid even called rosa "older sister" right in front of them both... ice cold.

also this time, jerome is just himself shushu

now switching scenes to vyn:

on second thought this might be too trivial, but whatever, we're already here and i have the screenshot and i'm a vyn blog. basically in chinese, vyn "looks up at Matthew Richter with a smile that's not quite a smile." that's pretty much the most literal definition of the phrase, and since it's vyn we can probably already assume that the smile wouldn't be a simple happy one, but yeah. now the last one!

I have decided that I want to become a hero. No, that's not right. It's not that I want to…

revised version leads more naturally into his next sentence as he explains himself. this is actually a nice transition since i'm going to mention this scene again in another post about ch 10, so stay tuned!! and thanks for reading, let me know what thoughts you had about this or the chapter ^^

[gravitasmalfunction]

Ashes of Love rewatch, or what I missed first time around as a cdrama virgin

Episodes 7-10

2019 me: I wonder what the word for "demon" is, they keep using it a lot but I can't recognise it. 2024 me: *looks up "demon" in Pleco* oooh yeah that'll do it

Jinmi's near-death scene after the gang takes down Qiongqi is heaps funnier when it's not the first time one has ever seen the dying-dramatically-in-one's-lover's-arms bit

This is why it's so important for Evil Stepmothers to have a career instead of being stuck at home inside the palace.

Actually a lot of this rewatch is turning out to be trope bingo, for all the things I had no idea at the time were tropes. Like Jinmi's little interlude with Frost Flower in her sea of emotions. That's you inside the weird ice prison, Jinmi!

Demon Realm is important because it gives my eyes a rest. Heavenly Realm is full of glare it's almost painful

Oh hey check out THIS extremely formative setting!

POSITION PERFECT - Charming cottage with unbeatable cliffside location - be quick, this beauty will not last!

Runyu did have a little speech about how he's been very careful not to make mistakes at court, and another about how he's been very lonely, but I was unaware that Eldest Son of Heaven (Suffering) was a whole trope and on first glance the bit where he helps Jinmi hide out in the Mortal Realm is like, oh that's nice, they're friends :3

Just the simple happy smile of a man having a nice cup of tea with a pal in the Mortal Realm, nothing to see here. Right?

Wrong! This is a boy who has Abandoned Himself to Hedonism and Depravity!

Imagine a generic straight-A college student, then imagine that same college student accidentally falling into their first all-weekend bender and it's a doozy, drinking, cocaine, stealing cars, getting kicked out of casinos, etc etc. Now, take that degree of departure from normal programming and multiply it by, ooh, a million? And now we're sort of close to the scale of the difference between Normal Runyu and the Runyu who is leaving work early to set Jinmi up in a Mortal Realm crash pad, with a new outfit and a fake name. While sipping tea and smiling and telling her she looks good in the new clothes. As the Eldest Prince (Assigned Scapegoat At Birth) he is not allowed to have a nice time, ever, so as he is currently having a nice time, he will be going to jail for a billion years for it later. That's just xianxia science!

[glumblogs]

驚悚旅行團[無限流]｜Thriller Tour Group [Unlimited Flow]

Wah~ it's been a bit since I last read this web novel, and I'm really excited to dive back in, this time (hopefully) fully committed to reading the story in its original Chinese form. I'm hoping to track my progress with several other novels I plan to read in Chinese on this blog, and I'll play around with different post formatting as I figure things out.

For now, I will go with the following format for my list of Unfamiliar Words and Transliterated Names and Places:

繁體 (traditional)｜简体 (simplified, if it's different)｜Romanization

[part of speech] English translation any extraneous notes from me Context: sentence where the phrase or transliteration is found

English translations will be either from me or from Pleco, a Chinese dictionary software! Please bear with me as my list of unfamiliar words will most likely be very very long, with many phrases in a row coming from the same sentence... My Chinese skills are close to nonexistent and I am thus a disgrace to my ancestors, but sometimes it is what it is.

I'll figure out other formats for other things later, like maybe reviews or just general thoughts or character lists or a rough timeline or theories!

Before I begin, I would like to note that some of my translations for transliterated names, places, chapters, etc. will come from the translation on Chrysanthemum Garden by FleurDeLys. They and their amazing editors and proofreaders (Editors: Alysia, Kat. Proofreader: Yuzu (past), Junyans) do such a fantastic job with the English translation of the story, and that's actually where I came across this novel first!

The English description below is also by the very wonderful FleurDeLys and co.!!

List of Links:

You can find the Novel Updates page here.

And support the author here!

我是真的蠻喜歡這本書。我覺得故事講的非常好，主要角色衛洵的想法跟普通人的想法有點不同，很能令人笑。故事的作者也很認真的做好自己的研究，描述摸個地方的歷史和景色時，都會先在網上查資料，做好準備後才開始寫。真的很佩服她。

另外一個原因可能是這是唯一一本我和媽媽一起讀的故事。那時候，我想練習我的中文，但是我水平真的不足哈哈，所以需要請媽媽來幫我。我們讀到一部分，遇到了一個詞「崩潰」。直到現在，我讀中文讀的非常非常斷斷續續的，令媽媽感覺很煩。所以從這時起，如果我連續幾個字都讀不出來，媽媽就會說我讀的中文真的有可能導致她崩潰。

於是，「崩潰」這個詞成為了我最喜歡的詞語哈哈。

Novel Descriptions:

中文簡介：

生命即將終結之際，衛洵被捲入一場驚悚靈異的旅程中。

在這裡，��驚喜發現，自己不光能延長生命，還可以感受到最喜歡的疼痛！

對此，無痛症患者衛洵表示－非、常、滿、意！

--

【旅客們好！歡迎來到湘西土家族苗族自治州，我是你們的導遊，現在我將向大家分發湘西趕屍體驗券，請一定保管好，不要損毀】

神秘導遊的聲音緩緩在列車中響起，掌控著每一名旅客的生死－－

【否則在接下來的行程中，你會死於非命～】

天主

醉美湘西，藏北探秘，京郊殯儀館，死亡撒哈拉　 冰島生存，土司王墓，金字塔謎，岡仁波齊，沉淪大西洲

問：如何才能在神秘恐怖的極限旅行中存活下來？ 答：跟衛導的團！信衛洵，得永生！

有人愛衛洵愛的如痴如狂，有人怕衛洵怕的要死要活。 但所有人拼了命，也想要擠進衛洵領隊的旅團。　 成為史上最強導遊，衛洵終將會是希望，也是信仰！

English Description:

Nearing the end of his life, Wei Xun was dragged into a thrilling and supernatural voyage.

Here, he was surprised to find that he could not only prolong his life, but also experience the feeling of pain that he loved!

In this regard, Wei Xun, the patient who was suffering from analgesia, responded—I am extremely satisfied!

--

[Hello, tourists! Welcome to Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. I’m your tour guide. Now I’m going to distribute the Xiangxi corpse experience coupon to you. Please store it somewhere safe and don’t damage it.]

The mysterious tour guide’s voice rings slowly on the train, controlling the life and death of every passenger——

[Otherwise, you will die on the subsequent parts of the tour~]

The other people were tourists, but Wei Xun had become a tour guide!

Intoxicating Xiangxi, The Heavenly Road of Tibet, Beijing Suburb Funeral Palace, The Pharaoh’s Pyramid, Meili Snow Mountains, Deadly Sahara, surviving in Iceland, sinking into depravity in the Atlantis……

Q: How can one survive in a tour jam-packed with mystery and terror?

A: Join the tour group of Tour Guide Wei! Believe in Wei Xun and live forever!

Some crazily loved Wei Xun, while others were crazily afraid of Wei Xun. But all of them tried their best to squeeze into Wei Xun’s tour group. As Wei Xun aims to become the strongest tour guide in history, Wei Xun will become their hope and belief!

[meichenxi]

Books, novels and literature in Chinese

For looking up your favourite novels on 百度百科!

小说 xiǎoshuō - novel / fiction / CL:本[běn],部[bù] 作者 zuòzhě - author / writer / CL:個|个[gè] 作品 zuòpǐn - work (of art) / opus / CL:部[bù],篇[piān] 名称 míngchēng - name (of a thing) / name (of an organization) 文学 wénxué - literature / CL:種|种[zhǒng] 题材 tícái - subject matter 连载 liánzǎi - serialized / published as a serial (in a newspaper) 正文 zhèngwén - main text (as opposed to footnotes) / main body (of a book) 完结 wánjié - to finish / to conclude / completed 平台 píngtái - platform (e.g. social media, publishing) / terrace  类型 lèixíng - type / category / genre / form / style 原创 yuánchuàng - original, originality / creativity / innovation 发表 fābiǎo - to issue / to publish 主角 zhǔjué - leading role / main character 角色 juésè - role / character in a novel / persona / also pr. [jiǎo sè] 章节 zhāngjié - chapter / section 出版 chūbǎn - to publish / to come off the press / to put out 目录 mùlù - catalog / table of contents / directory (on computer hard drive) / list / contents 内容 nèiróng - content / substance / details / CL:個|个[gè],項|项[xiàng] 简介 jiǎnjiè - summary / brief introduction 人物 rénwù - person / character (in a play, novel etc) / protagonist / CL:個|个[gè] 介绍 - jièshào - to introduce (sb to sb) / to give a presentation / to present (sb for a job etc) / introduction NB: I used mandarinspot.com/annotate to make this vocab list. It’s a really useful resource that lets you copy and paste a list of characters and automatically gives you the pinyin or zhuyin in ruby characters above the text. You can also control for HSK levels by adding a vocabulary list and English definitions (with pinyin by the side, rather than above) below the annotated test for HSK1+, HSK2+ all the way up to HS6+, or alternatively you can do it for all words. This is excellent if you want to have an estimate of new words. You can also delete items from the vocab list and then copy and paste or print it. 

[youhavehitawall]

So I just wandered in off of the rest of tumblr (I saw a picture of a Cars-universe road train, and that got all my attention right away). What is this "Backwater Downs" thing?

anon i think you are my New Favourite Tumblr Person , so welcome! there is no way to explain this shortly so please settle in. (and excuse how long it took me to answer, i tried to pare this down as much as i could and failed)

Backwater Downs is one of several "expansion packs" to canon that i've been developing. It runs concurrent with the movies and also with "The Carbecue AU" (Carbecue focuses on expanding canon characters, while the Downs is for OCs) It takes place in one of the remote opal-mining communities, vaguely inspired by the Grawin opal fields near Lightning Ridge. BWD is significantly more remote, though, and relies almost entirely on a road train for their living resources! Aggie, or Augustus, is the road train in question. She’s a Kenworth C510, and she spent many years hauling hundreds of tonnes out of large pit mines further north, before “retiring” to the lighter work of transporting livestock and living goods through the outback. She’s found a home in Backwater Downs specifically, and often chooses to stay there in the wet season instead of returning to dock in Alice Springs. Her nickname “Aggie” refers to the machine used to separate opals from dirt and clay, which is what she does during her downtime there! She’s mostly very quiet, but she has a razor sharp wit and she uses her time on the road to study. She probably has like seventy university degrees now. The Downs has less than fifty cars in the region, most of which I've developed, but there are three guys i talk about constantly:

Regiment 'Reg' Blitzborough, a rusted out semi/racing coupe cross who grew up in the military with his father. Reg is intelligent and passionate, and the town appreciates his jack-of-all-trade work, even if he’s stubborn and annoyingly overbearing as well. He’s partially deaf from his service, and he has chronic pain from the mixup of heavy truck gear and lighter racer parts being incompatible. He also smells like diesel and old swampy water, and keeps a pleco in his cabin to keep the algae down. (he refills his cabin every year. Because he’s also stark barking mad.) His father Michael briefly retired in BWD when Reg was a bitlet, but has since passed. Michael had the disposition of a brick wall and the only thing he ever loved was his son. Reg has a small convoy of trucks that helped raise him and that he considers parental figures, but he’s withdrawn from them all since Michael’s death. He also has two siblings and two nephews, which he only found out very recently. "Ratchet" is a ‘58 Plymouth Fury with a Cadillac DeVille cross, and used to play both sides of the Law before being gravely injured in a high-speed chase. The resulting damage gives him some mobility issues and has rendered him mute, so he communicates in a bird-whistle version of Morse code, and a fairly vague version of sign language (cars do not have hands you see). He’s ironically verbose and has an excellent eye for detail, but often misses social cues and so comes off as bitchy or aggressive. He’s been accused of “maladaptive behavioural tendencies” and “post-traumatic stress disorder” but he’s not quite ready to accept that damage yet. He can have trouble distinguishing reality. Most days, he works for Leo Curbjumper in the “Club in the Scrub” (a real place!) as a waitress. He’s won most attractive BWD resident every year since first arriving, and has all the locals under his tires. He also has four brightly-coloured siblings that swore to kill him on sight if he ever set a tread in America again, and several nieces he's never had the chance to meet. "Austin" is a ‘51 Hudson Hornet and the official Health and Safety Manager for BWD. He lets Reg do most of his work, instead focusing on his massive archival project of pretty much everything to ever exist. He specialises in personal records - war diaries, stories told around the campfire, anything and everything. He’s a fantastic liar and good at keeping his mouth shut. Austin believes in the Story, and in Names, and things like the Soul. He has a very thick southern Minnesota accent, mixed with the dozen other places he’s lived. He’s quiet but competitive, cheerful, and infuriatingly stubborn, and his favourite animal is the turbo-chicken. He used to be part of Ratchet's family but the whole murder thing applies to him too. He can play the drums!

I'm going to stop myself here because otherwise it'll never end but thats the basics!!! (also sorry it took four months to answer, in my defense i thought it was only three weeks)

[rigelmejo]

I just found thus series of famous stories but "in vernacular" as I was browsing the 儿童故事 section of a site

And wow! This is the first time I've been able to read The Monkey King and follow it! I also put it through zhtool to check difficulty and it's 1.9, which to us means it's a bit easier to read than 盗墓笔记 and a bit harder to read than 小王子, it's on the easier side overall. These vernacular versions are about as hard as kids books for 8-11 year olds like the 笑猫日记 series or 梦幻小公主 series, so quite readable if you're past the stage of graded readers in chinese but webnovels for older teens and adults still have a frustrating amount of unknown words.

I'm also curious if this version of Dream of The Red Chamber has as many bi people as the original story has. On the one hand if it's mainly a simplified language story then it would retain that. On the other hand, it definitely parsed down the chapters so a lot was probably cut out, and in addition if the target audience was kids then I don't know what they may have felt an audience need to cut or change (such as less deaths or violence or intense political details potentially, or less queerness etc many things could fall under the umbrella of things cut for simplification and target audience... I read a Pleco graded reader of The Butterfly Lovers and... that story could've kept a lot more lets say lol ToT).

Anyway, I recommend checking them out! If you feel like this reading level range and want to look into these stories more, a vernacular simplification is going to be a bit more approachable than original form. However, there are graded reader forms of these stories, so with simplification to the stories either way I'm not sure if these have much more detail than a graded reader (though at the very least these seem longer).

西游记白话文 Journey to the West Vernacular

三国演义白话文 The Three Kingdoms Vernacular (note there's a lot of similar adaptations)

红楼梦白话文 Dream of Red Chamber

Also feel like mentioning it again, while I don't prefer Microsoft Edge pretty much any other time, I do really like it for reading. Especially on my phone. It has a Read Aloud tool that has the nicest TTS I've ever heard, so I can read along to audio, replay lines and words. It also has the usual click-translation feature all mobile internet browsers seem to have, and a quick setting to change the text size to larger making reading easier on the eyes. For reading chinese I've noticed for me at least it makes the visuals easier on me and it's got the best TTS hands down (I wish Pleco and Moonreader could be set to use Microsofts TTS cause it sounds so much better than other TTS by magnitudes). If you install Microsoft Word app on your phone (or have it on your computer), you can also just paste any text into Word to use the Read Aloud feature because it's also in Word. On the computer it has a lot of nice visual aids like highlighting only the paragraph or sentence it's Read Aloud going through, like changing between like 7+ very good TTS voices based on your preference.

[xiyao-feels]

In this post I'm going to argue that the common position that LXC did not know JGY was going to kill the Wen he had with him in episode 23 is wrong. I think the evidence that he did know is considerable, and in fact the only evidence against that position is the framing which casts JGY executing them as being extremely evil. Although LXC and JGY's exchange after the sect leader discussion (the "Am I the evil?" exchange) is often taken as additional evidence that this is JGY's moment of no return on his journey to Evil, I think this is due to a misinterpretation of the exchange, which I will also argue below.

In Part 1, I show that LXC has unambiguously agreed to a plan which involves the execution of at least some Wen, and therefore the central question is whether he was expecting the particular group of Wen JGY brings in with him to be spared; I also argue that he has plausibly agreed to have even certain non-combatants killed. In Part 2, I contrast them with the Wen Jin Zixun is killing to argue that they are not, and also present the evidence that LXC has also agreed to the killing Jin Zixun is doing. In Part 3, I consider the lack of motive JGS has for having JGY, behind LXC's back, kill Wen he explicitly agreed with LXC he would spare. In Part 4, I discuss the "am I the evil" exchange, and in particular argue that the "evil" NMJ is opposed to is not JGS, as seems to be a common assumption, but the Wen. I conclude by examining the remaining evidence and arguing that it is insufficient to overcome the rest of the evidence.

Part One: What to do with the Wen remnants?

In episode 23, as WWX and LWJ discuss things, we hear distressed cries accompanied by calls of Kill them! and Kill them all! (This starts at about 17:47.) We are told that people are capturing the remaining Wen, and it is very clear what they are doing with the Wen once they catch them.

The next scene is JGS, NMJ, and LXC discussing what to do with the remaining Wen, joined partway through by JGY. I encourage you to watch it (link); it lasts from 18:09 to about 22:40 on YouTube. I have also transcribed the dialogue (including the dialogue from the 'am I the evil?' exchange), both English and Chinese, in a post here; the post also includes my attempt at summarizing the whole conversation. However, as the conversation does encompass more than just the plan about what to do with the remaining Wen, I am now going to summarize the discussion of that particular issue below.

JGS is initially pro- the capturing, and implicitly the extermination, of all the remaining Wen. LXC argues for letting the defenseless remnants—note, not the ones who can defend themselves—go. NMJ is initially on JGS' side, but relents in the face of LXC's disappointment and also argues they should let them go. JGS counters by reminding them of the threat the remaining Wen would pose should they get hold of the Yin Iron. NMJ bows and says that "Clan Leader Jin has thought about it very thoroughly" (金宗主所虑甚详); to my eyes he appears to be prepared to concede on the matter, but I freely admit that we don't actually know, as the conversation takes a slight detour and this is not resolved. We return to the issue of the Wen when JGY enters with his captured group of Wen and LXC asks him for his opinion. JGY suggests that they confine and monitor "the old, weak, and young"* as long as they stop making trouble, while those who killed a Sunshot cultivator will be executed; at LXC's prompt he provides a possible location for such confinement. NMJ observes brusquely that JGY is "really familiar with it" (你倒熟悉) (in context I think this is about JGY's knowledge of Wen places). LXC announces that they should do as A-Yao suggests; it is somewhat ambiguous in the scene whether he gets agreement, as NMJ leaves angrily rather than reply when JGS and LXC look at him, but as subsequent events seem to follow along JGY's suggestion, we can surmise that agreement was in fact reached.

*老弱妇孺. As ever, I don't speak Chinese; however Pleco gives 'the old and weak' for 老弱 and 'women and children' for 妇孺. In context, I think it is fairly clear that 'women' would not include, say, the Wen equivalent of Madam Yu, fighting cultivators with good cultivation power, who besides would probably have killed a Sunshot cultivator and thus would be sentenced to death.

I wish to point out a few things about this exchange. First, the default plan without LXC's interference is apparently to simply kill them all. Second, at no point does anyone including LXC argue in favour of sparing the Wen who aren't defenseless; if LXC were a Wen, it seems likely that he would be on the chopping block due to his cultivation power and martial prowess. Third, the plan LXC agrees to here /very explicitly/ includes killing some of the captured Wen. There is no way I can think of to interpret the conversation in any other way. At no point does LXC agree to a plan which involves sparing all of them.

I'm hammering this point home because I think it is often overlooked. If the agreement is that all the remaining Wen are going to be spared, then obviously if any Wen are still killed this is a betrayal of that agreement. But that's clearly not the agreement that's reached! The fact that some Wen are killed is therefore not sufficient to constitute a betrayal of that agreement; the question becomes whether the Wen we see JGY kill are in a group protected by that agreement.

Before we look at these Wen, however, I want to look at the scene after JGY kills the Wen. Once again, we see LWJ and WWX discussing things. They are interrupted by cries and pleas from a group of the remaining Wen (at 26:56), who are being chased down and killed by Jin Zixun. It's hard to get a decent picture, but to my eyes they do indeed look like the old, the weak, and the young:

Moreover, WWX explicitly identifies them as such. "These are women, children, and old men. Are they also evil?" he asks, and the phrase is 老弱妇孺—the same phrase JGY used to identify those to be confined and monitored in the previous scene.

Is Jin Zixun's killing a betrayal of the agreement, then? But consider his reply:

It's Clan Leader's order that anyone who has concern with Yin Iron should not be alive. Nie-zongzhu and Lan-zongzhu also agreed. Does Jiang clan have any questions? 宗主有令 凡是跟阴铁有关的人 一个都不能留 聂宗主和蓝宗主也同意了 难道你们江氏还有什么疑问吗

Jin Zixun explicitly says that NMJ and LXC agreed to the killing of anyone who "has concern with Yin Iron," regardless, it seems, of whether they have power in themselves or no. It's not impossible Jin Zixun is lying; however, while he is certainly intent on provoking WWX, he does not seem to be worried about being caught in deceit, and indeed LWJ who is right there does not contradict him or seem to doubt him. Moreover, to the best that I can recall this does not come up again, as we might expect it to if Jin Zixun is in fact deceiving them; and while these Wen who know something about Yin Iron may be 老弱妇孺, they are nevertheless reasonably viewed as a threat, and it seems a fairly natural extension of the agreement we see the clan leaders reach. I'm not saying Jin Zixun would never lie, or anything, but there doesn't seem to be any indication that he's lying about LXC's agreement, while there is evidence that he's not.

Therefore, from the evidence available, it is entirely unambiguous that LXC has agreed to a plan that involves killing any Wen who have killed a Sunshot cultivator; I don't think there's any plausible interpretation other than 'execution' of what would happen to the old, weak, and young if they didn't stop making trouble, and again that's part of the plan we explicitly see him agree to; and it seems likely that he agreed to the killing of old, weak, and young Wen who "have concern with Yin Iron."

At this point I wish to pause to make a note. It seems likely that people will feel uncomfortable with LXC doing this and indeed perhaps with LXC in general because he did this; this is entirely understandable, and I'm not at all saying otherwise. However, I think it's important to note that LXC's intervention /is an improvement over the status quo/. If he had not intervened, the Wen would simply all have been killed. Yes, it's an awful and unjust agreement, and you could argue he should never have taken part in the discussion; but if he hadn't, the Wen would all have been killed. It is his willingness to "play the game" that saves lives.

(You could of course argue that he should have devoted himself to saving them entirely, by force if necessary. This has been discussed in other places and by many different people; for here I will simply say I do not think it was a viable option.)

Part Two: Which Wen?

It is clear, then, that LXC has agreed to the killing of at least some Wen. If we accept Jin Zixun's account, then even if the Wen JGY has executed are "the old, weak, and young," then that is not sufficient evidence to say that they were in the group that should have been spared! However, I think we can do better than that. To my eyes, they do not look like "the old, weak, and young":

While it is true that they are not all e.g. wearing Wen cultivator uniforms, from what I can see they all look like strong young men and women. Contrast Jin Zixun's group, which generally looks more elderly and contains a child! Moreover, while Jin Zixun runs his victims down with bow and arrow on the open road, the people JGY kills are heavily guarded, surrounded by men holding swords on them the whole time. I realize this is to some extent a matter of personal judgement, but honestly, especially combined with the contrast with Jin Zixun's group, they do not at all look to me like they are in the group that was agreed would be spared. If you disagree with this, I hope you will at least agree that they are not /unambiguously/ part of the group that was agreed would be spared; that is, it is open to debate.

Part Three: Motive

If the visual evidence is insufficient, let us turn to another question: why would JGY kill these people if he'd just proposed to LXC to spare them? The answer to that is in some sense obvious—he'd be doing it because his father wanted it—but that simply moves the question back another level. Why would JGS want JGY to kill these people, and in such an obvious manner, if he'd just agreed with LXC he would spare them?

I legitimately cannot think of a good explanation. His central goal is to progress on obtaining the Yin Iron, and to make sure no one else gets their hand on it—but the arrangement they agree to serves him just fine for that. We know he does in fact spare some of the Wen, so it's not the case that he is simply pretending to spare any of them while having them all killed. If he wants to reduce the number of people he's sparing for whatever reason, I suppose he might have JGY kill some of them—but we don't have any evidence he does want that, and why would he have JGY do it in such a public manner? They still haven't left Nightless City—they haven't even had the Banquet yet—and it's the middle of the day and there is blood on the steps:

So, what, he wants to come to an agreement with LXC and then betray it immediately for some random reason, and also do it in a way LXC is likely though not guaranteed to find out about??

In the interests of considering all the options, and the recognition that CQL does not always care about logistics when it's hitting emotional beats, perhaps we can say that the easily-discoverable nature of this is not meant to be taken literally. But there's still the problem of what motive JGS has to do this—and more than that, the question of the significant motive he has not to.

Consider the situation at the beginning of the discussion: NMJ is in agreement with LXC, united against JGS. By the end of it, LXC is readily agreeing with JGY, and NMJ is in some disgruntlement - and not even in a way that seems particularly directed at JGS! From JGS' perspective, it's very much a desirable outcome, and indeed we can see he appears quite pleased with it.

Endangering this gain would therefore have to bring some significant gain in return. And… what is there? NMJ might approve of killing the Wen but he wouldn't approve of telling LXC you're going to spare someone and then immediately killing them. If this were found out, it would entirely reverse the effect of the agreement, and you would have Lan and Nie together against the Jin—exactly what JGS doesn't want! And it's worth remembering that at this point they haven't even sworn the brotherhood oath yet, that's a few scenes on, so it would be an extremely stupid time to endanger LXC and JGY's rapport. JGS is absolutely an asshole, but he's specifically a power-hungry asshole, and especially in CQL a clever and focused power-hungry asshole; he's not going to randomly endanger political gain just because he wants to be Evil.

Part Four: Am I the evil?

I think that part of the reason for the belief that JGY killed the Wen is this exchange, or more specifically a common misinterpretation of this exchange. You can watch it here, from 22:39 to 23:45 (to 24:08 If you want to watch the blood on the steps); I have also transcribed the dialogue, both the Chinese and the YT English subtitles, into another post here.

In this exchange, LXC tells JGY not to take NMJ's behaviour to heart; it's simply that he "resents the evil and favours the good,"* and that he's simply worried that JGY has "made the wrong choice." It's honestly not clear to me if this is supposed to hit in English quite the way it does—is LXC talking about a specific, individual wrong choice JGY has made? However it does seem to be usually interpreted as this, and moreover, specifically as NMJ thinking JGY has made the wrong choice /in becoming JGY/, in becoming Jin Guangshan's recognized son and aligning himself with the Jin. In this understanding of events this criticism of JGY is then validated by his killing the Wen—look, he's being evil, just as NMJ said!

There is a problem with this version of events, however. NMJ dislikes JGS, to be sure, and disapproves of him and so forth, but I don't think he thinks he's evil or particularly disapproves of JGY working for his dad JGS qua JGY working for his dad JGS. It's worth noting that in MDZS, at least, NMJ releases MY from his obligation to him and sends MY to JGS with his letter of recommendation! But there is someone NMJ hates, or rather someones: the Wen. His antipathy towards JGY at present isn't based on JGY working for JGS; it's based on JGY having recently worked for WRH. Even in CQL, remember, in episode 27 NMJ speaks up against LXC and JC's defense of WQ and WN, notably aligning himself with JGS on the matter (link). Thus his displeasure that JGY is "really familiar" with Wen places. NMJ would not be impressed with JGY executing Wen he had agreed with NMJ and LXC not to execute, but killing captured prisoners, even non-combatants, is not something NMJ considers inherently evil. To be clear, I am not trying to make NMJ out as uniquely bad for this! This is true of most people in his society, and while NMJ is absolutely unusually principled, that doesn't mean his principles are the exact modern-day principles we might like him to have.

When LXC talks about "the evil," he is not talking about JGS; rather he is talking about the defeated Wen. His stutter in response to Am I the evil? makes much more sense in this light. It would be a much more obvious return from JGY, and indeed fairly close to an insult from LXC, if LXC meant that JGS—whom JGY had just aligned himself with, and who also is /JGY's dad who just recognized him/—were evil; on the other hand, if LXC is simply referring to NMJ's well-known hatred of the Wen, then JGY taking it seriously—as either a serious question about his own evil, or a question about whether NMJ now feels the same hatred towards /him/—is more understandably an unexpected conversational move.

Considering the exchange in this light, I think we should not see it as suggesting that JGY's next action is betraying LXC. If NMJ's hatred is based primarily on JGY's previous association with the Wen,† if anything to me the effect is to parallel JGY doing awful things under WRH with JGY doing awful things under JGS; in either situation, he is much constrained. I don't insist on that interpretation, of course, but I do think the "evil" here is very much the Wen and not JGS, and that this complicates the idea that this is the show telling us that JGY is Evil Now.

†There is the captain killing too, but he clearly does not wholeheartedly condemn JGY for it previous to meeting him in Sun Palace, and even expresses some concern for him in the interim; JGY's work with the Wen is much more significant here.

Conclusion

To sum up, then: LXC very explicitly agrees to a plan that involves killing some of the captured Wen; there is also evidence that he may have agreed to killing some of the non-combatants among the captured Wen, and I think it likely. Regardless of this last, I think the visual evidence (especially in contrast with the Wen Jin Zixun kills) suggests that the Wen JGY has executed are in the group LXC explicitly agreed to have killed. Moreover, I think that the common interpretation of the Am I the evil exchange as telling us that JGY is Evil now is flawed, and that it therefore doesn't suggest that JGY's next actions are evil beyond, like, the evil of executing captured prisoners even as part of an approach that saves some of them.

There is the matter of the framing of the execution; it does certainly suggest that JGY is doing something awful. My answer to this is twofold. First, that JGY is indeed doing something awful. Executing captured prisoners is bad! Like, I am not blaming him for not reforming society from the ground up, here, and I do tend to think it's the only option that he had, but that doesn't mean it's not a shitty option.

Second, that the show sometimes frames JGY's actions as Evil in a way that's not really justified by what's presented. If you consider the Burial Mounds flashback in episode 43 for example (link), then we see JGY being presented as evil when he is, objectively, being helpful and helping protect LWJ's reputation. His telling LWJ that LQR is there to pick him up is framed as worse than LQR having LWJ beaten is. I am not, to be clear, saying that framing can't be legitimate evidence; of course it can. Nevertheless, I think it's worth considering the issues around JGY's presentation in CQL more generally, and especially to consider whether the framing alone is sufficient to conclude that he is betraying an agreement with LXC, rather than simply executing captives, especially in the light of the evidence against this.

As a final note, I want to note that I suspect part of the reason for this take is the general reluctance to believe that the characters we like could be doing something bad/something we disagree with. With LXC, this very often tends to result in the belief that he didn't know JGY was doing bad things, despite the mass of evidence against this position; with NMJ in particular, I cannot count the number of times I have seen people simply assume that he is obviously against the destruction of the Wen. This falls into the intersection of both, reassigning the target of NMJ's hatred from the Wen, who have our sympathy, to JGS, who decidedly does not; and making it such that LXC is ignorant that JGY is going to have those Wen executed, because how could he speak with JGY so warmly beforehand otherwise? But NMJ hates the Wen, and will go on to position himself with JGS, against LXC!, against them; and LXC is indeed willing to treat JGY with warmth despite his doing awful things, as in CQL we will see him be warm with JGY at the Phoenix Mountain Hunt despite JGY having (due to the wishes of his father) ordered captured Wen out in front of the targets. Neither of them have, for example, CQL LWJ's exact set of beliefs.

*恩怨分明嫉恶如仇. Generally I hate to post about my thoughts on the translation, but I do think it's worth noting here that from what I can tell this seems to be two phrases, 恩怨分明 and 嫉恶如仇. For 恩怨分明, Pleco gives "know clearly to whom to show gratitude and against whom to feel resentment"; for 嫉恶如仇, however, it gives "hate evil like an enemy; abhor evil as one's deadly foes". This is the phrase that gets translated as "absolutely couldn't stand wrongdoings" in ch 30 (link), when WWX is wondering why LWJ didn't just go kill XY (ER translation):

Wei WuXian found this a bit strange. Although Lan WangJi looked as if he didn’t care about anything, from Wei WuXian’s past experiences with him, he absolutely couldn’t stand wrongdoings, possibly even more than Nie HuaiSang’s brother. Back then, the LanlingJin Sect had some dishonest ways of doing things, and Lan WangJi never bothered to be subtle about them. Even until now, he always refused to go to their sect’s Discussion Conferences. If two cruel massacres happened, the news would’ve probably spread over the entire cultivational world and Lan WangJi definitely wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to them. Why did he not go and give Xue Yang what he deserved?

Taming Wangxian gives it as "he hated evildoers to the core" (link), and MDZS Translation gives it "someone who hated evil with a vengeance" (link).

It's also 嫉恶如仇 that JGY repeats, rather than 恩怨分明. The Viki subtitles, for what it's worth translates this portion of the exchange as follows:

LXC: Brother Mingjue is precisely someone who is clear about kindness and grudges, and abhors evil as one's deadly foe. He's just worried you've gone down the wrong path.

JGY: "Abhor evil as one's deadly foe…" Am I exactly that evil then?

As ever, I am open to correction on this matter.

ETA: on the matter of Zixun, I think madtom's point is right; I replied here.

[fishproblem]

ohhhh fishblr. yesterday was hard. trigger warning for all sorts of death, I suppose. a really fucking sad story below the cut.

my across-the-hall-neighbor and dear friend from NYC passed away last week. it was awful, and unexpected, and completely tragic in a sad, quiet way.

as the inspiration for (and only check on) his ill advised and not always responsibly-executed passion for the aquarium hobby, it landed on me to deal with his aquariums yesterday. he felt very “bigger is better” about fish. He also had no idea what he was doing. He loved his pets though. He just wasn’t terribly well equipped. His family didn’t even know where to begin with the fish, but they knew they were important and they needed to get cared for. I haven’t seen him in months. we haven’t been neighbors since I moved back to providence a year ago now. I got up at 6:30 yesterday to get into Brooklyn to meet his family at the apartment at 11.

there was a lot of loss. less than i thought there might be, but it was really excruciating. by the time I walked in yesterday, it had been two weeks since he’d been admitted to the hospital. his 75 gallon african cichlid tank was in pretty good shape. one dead fish, the rest very hungry. but they ate happily and did well. the fish in his 55 gallon were good too. i think the cichlid in there is a jack dempsey, and it was with a black catfish looking cyprinid that i couldn’t ID.

the smaller tanks fared less well. he was weird with moving fish around sort of unnecessarily, and with getting incompatible fish and putting them in small holding tanks to buy time to figure it out. one 10 gal held a single african cichlid, what looks like a gold spotted pleco, and the rotten bits of another fish. a 20 tall held only a blue phantom pleco. i’ll get it out of the way now - i’m heartbroken because that fish didn’t make the trip home.

the last smaller tank held more unidentifiable (probably another african cichlid) remains, and some sort of more common pleco. I think a female bristlenose.

I emptied the smaller tanks and did water changes on the bigger ones while i waited for my friend’s family to decide what they wanted to do. one of his sisters wanted to keep all his fish, but wasn’t sure what she could fit. I spent hours in his apartment breaking things down, clearing out dead fish remains, assessing the living fish. I moved the bristlenose into the 75 gallon with the cichlids. I started acclimating the other two plecos to clean water.

the temp in the blue phantom’s tank had been about 90 degrees.

my friend’s sister decided she could fit a 55 gallon into her apartment. the cichlids and the one pleco all fit in there. so i broke down the 55 and the 75, and i moved all the fish into a 40 gallon tote. we loaded up the car with the tank, stand, fish, and supplies.

I had the blue phantom and the gold spot together in clean water at this point. both were active and looked good.

We drove to her house and i set up the 55 with the cichlids.  The jack dempsey and black mystery fish would be coming back with me to just figure out what to do with them. my dad’s building a pond this year. it would be cool to keep the jack dempsey in a holding tank and let him hang in the pond in the summer. still no idea what the black fish is, but it’s jumpy as hell.

an hour into the three hour drive home, the blue phantom is on its back gasping. there’s nothing i can do. the water feels cold. i try to slowly warm it up with hot water from the dunkin donuts at the rest stop. it seems to work for a while. but by the time i got home at 3:30am it looks either dead or in shock. i tried acclimating it to my 30 gallon tank and putting it in. it fell to the bottom of the tank, on its belly, not moving, but i couldn’t (wouldn’t) tell yet for sure if its dead. i felt like it was though. by this morning i was sure.

the mystery black fish is a black shark. one of my friend’s bad decisions. it’s going to need a 200 gallon tank. it jumped out of the rubbermaid bin and onto the floor twice last night. i didn’t sleep because i was listening for it. i covered the bin after the first time with saran wrap, taped on tight. i heard the fish jump into it once, twice, then a third time. and i hear it hit the ground. it jumped through the fucking plastic wrap, tore a hole right through it jumping from a water level a foot below. i moved it to a tiny holding tank with a tight lid. its looking fine today, but i need a solution asap. 

I can’t just bring them to the pet shop. I need to know they’re going somewhere they’ll be safe forever. I wish I had the space to keep them. The black shark and the dempsey shouldn’t even be sharing a tank at this point though. I’m glad I could help his family, but this is a really hard way to mourn my friend. I blame myself fully for what happened to the blue phantom, and it was such a special fish. I hope the gold spot acclimates well. I hope I figure out how to keep the two monsters for the time being.

[caseyfm]

𝗖𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗘𝗗 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗙𝗢𝗥 @rorycollins​ 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧: for once i genuinely do not have a clue... i said “casey talk sweetie” and this is what we got.  𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘: the police station 

As Casey traipses over to the seat next to Rory’s, there are a good three questions of his own that immediately spring to mind. Are you doing alright? Really the worst question as he already feels he half knows the answer. Secondly, you didn’t want to question me like that after Blaire’s death, did you? Technically it wasn’t him being questioned and it technically wasn’t her doing the questioning but in the aftermath of feeling under a similar level of scrutiny after Blaire’s death - it feels a little bittersweet either way. Knowing now that Lux’s death might have been at the hands of their mayor but also uncovering a heap of secrets that may have best been left in the past. It’s not Rory’s fault that he has too much empathy for Hargrove. Or playing Hargrove, anyway. Then selfishly, what is it like? To have just a peek into a parent’s past where he could only make up stories about what might have happened to his birth father. 

But by the time he actually opens his mouth, none of them come out and instead: “Y’know, there’s this guy in Grape who sells fish out the back of his car. All kinds you can’t get at the pet store. Angelfish... zebra pleco... those little red and white ones. Pretty sure they’re for people with those big aquariums who don’t wanna pay, like, ridiculous amounts of money to get them legally. And I figure, y’know, with the right work ethic and if I can sustainably source the little guys I could totally be that guy. I could totally be the fish man of Cherry.” What? “Uh...” He clears his throat, “don’t s’pose Rocky’s looking like he’s gonna get out of here any time soon, huh?” 

[thestonelady]

Dude I’m sorry I hate statistics homework too 😕

But I’m glad your doing good! I hope school gets better for you and you get to do stuff you enjoy more! 😋 and Oh My Gosh! Belo is so cute! 💙 such a handsome boy🤗 Cats just do what they want to huh? 🤣

Cinder is good, she’s just her mischievous self 😂 she likes to try to steal things from me when she thinks I’m not looking, caught her trying to pull papers from my binder once. As for the fishies they are growing, the pleco has either befriended the goldfish and koi or he’s decided he doesn’t have to fear them anymore and can now steal their food. 🤣

I've been doing great other than school. At risk of talking you to death I’m excited that I found plants I can grow without killing (cacti and succulents) 🤣 before my aloe plant was my only survivor after various flowers over the years 😅 I think it was a mix of overwatering (I fixed that this time, with a weekly timer and pots with drainage + reduced watering) as well as sunburn the sunlight is so direct and hot where I am that I’ve lost orchids and even (surprisingly) a hybiscus to sunburn. But my succulents and cacti seem to love my house and the grow light. I even bought a neglected Golden tower cactus and got brought it back and I’ve managed to get two of my succulents to start to flower. I was freaking out over the rose tipped because the bud growth was flipped over but I found out that’s just from the flower bud weight. (Sorry for the ramble)

Hi again! 🤗

Firstly, thank you, I hope the same for you 💕

Secondly, yes, cats do whatever they want 😂

LOL Cinder, the cutest little thief in the world 😍 Irene (Sins of London MC) would be proud 🤭

And ofc the fishies 🥰 soooo prettyyy

Glad you found plants that you can grow without killing them 😅 I myself currently have this one:

It's a pumpkin 😅 and it's for Botany class. Tho it's not the first time I am growing a pumpkin! As a kid I once raised one and it had the biggest 🎃 in the entire garden 😅

Your cacti/succulents look great! RIP to the orchids and hibiscus tho 😅

Don't apologise for rambling! I am glad to hear from you 🤗

Thank you for the ask and feel free to send more! 💙💜

[waterskies]

Hey I think tumblr ate this the first time around, so:

Hellooooooo I got a big tank (160 gallons!!!) And have not decided what to put in it, so I'm reaching out to the internet! Here's the tank:

Image ID: an empty 160 gallon glass aquarium, approximately 2.5 feet tall, 3.5 feet wide, and 2 feet deep, on a wooden stand. The tank is outside, with a camping chair perched on top for scale. End ID.

I'm researching, don't worry, I'm not about to fill it up and sentence some fish to certain death with inadequate filtration or anything but I'm just... More motivated when I have a goal, you know? So. I got this tank for free, it is basically a windfall, and it's functional and came with a biofiltration tank and sump (goes in the stand), and I just... Need stocking suggestions, basically. What is possible? What would be fun? I'm so excited.

Lucky you getting a tank that big for free! I have always wanted one that size. Hmm as for stocking there is a lot you can do with a 160 gal. If it were up to me I would totally do a heavily planted tank. I'm not into the bigger or more aggressive fish, but I'd do something like a community set up. Perhaps a shoal of rainbowfish such as the boesemani rainbow, which is stunning when fully mature. Or maybe a group of pearl gourami. I know they are kind of a small fish for this tank but I have been in love with emperor tetras lately. For bottom dwellers I think that synodontis schoutedeni are super cute if you dont want to go with some sort of corydoras. I'd even be tempted to put in a vampire shrimp or two. Probably good idea to have some sort of algae eater too right? I've always thought that zebra plecos look nice but they can be pricey, at least they are where I live. So I'd probably just go with the siamese algae eater, otocinclus, or bristlenose pleco or a bunch of amano shrimp. Twig catfish is another option but I've read that large water changes can really stress them out.

But yeah that's a few of my ideas! I hope to see some photos or videos of this tank when it's all set up!

[gravitasmalfunction]

Ashes of Love rewatch, 中文不是我的本国语

Episodes 10-19

Philosophers argue about what constitutes a "good" death, but xianxia has known for ages that it's disintegrating into a cloud of glitter in the arms of your beloved

Completely normal best friend behaviour.

PUN TIME: Runyu and Jinmi pop out to an inn to get breakfast. Xiao-er (小二, "little two") for "waiter" is clear in context but "little three" is not, and Pleco (bless you, Pleco) reveals 小三 means mistress or other woman. Hence the ladies at the other table take offence to Jinmi calling for a slut to take her breakfast order (she just thought she was being polite indicating her place as third in the queue!).

LIKE and LIKE-LIKE: Runyu knows perfectly well that Jinmi doesn't mean like-like when she says she likes (xihuan) him and scandalises the floral fairies, who are busy accusing him of carrying on a romance with Jinmi, just like Xufeng is. He saves her from getting in trouble that first time by asking if she likes other people such as the Moon Immortal and so on, but he turns around later and uses her words, specifically xihuan, against her when constructing the appearance of a romance between them in front of her new dad. Bad dragon!

Jinmi herself is taking second place to her background reveal over these few episodes, and Xufeng barely appears except to stand around slump-chested and moping about Jinmi not understanding his feelings. Runyu at least gets there is a big gap in Jinmi's understanding of the world, but he doesn't know that underneath all the layers of seals and elixirs, Jinmi does reciprocate Xufeng's feelings. After all, she's just that nice to everyone!

Episode 15 in particular is hard view for me because poor Jinmi is at the centre of attention but she's reduced to being a symbol rather than a person. Runyu is busy putting her in the arranged marriage box, the Water Immortal and Heavenly Emperor are both trying to be her dad and by extension rank themselves as her dead mother's best beloved. And Xufeng, who should know better and supposedly loves her best, is still hung up on her understanding his feelings to the exclusion of caring about anything else that is happening in Jinmi's life. ("She was cuter when she was a grape (sigh)" MOON IMMORTAL I WILL SLAP YOU TOO I STG)

Heavenly Empress, save me. Save me, Heavenly Empress. Oh, wait:

You accuse Mother? You accuse her of the evil? Oh! Guilt trip for Xufeng! Guilt trip for one hundred thousand years!

Did not notice first time around but is super obvious now: Xufeng and Suihe really clomp around, don't they? Maybe it's a bird thing

PUN TIME: Pleco again helping me out with the missing half of the Suihe/suihe pun. Moon Immortal claims he only has one tail out instead of 8 or 9 because he doesn't want to look ridiculous like a peacock, or suihe. Hence we get a crossdressing joke with Jinmi picturing Moon Immortal dressed up as Suihe (he looks fab, btw). The pun is that suihe roughly translates to a sheaf of wheat ears.

First time viewer me had no idea what death flags were, but now I see them everywhere:

Probably means nothing.

E.g. Wind Immortal comforting Water Immortal by telling him there's lots of time still to be Jinmi's dad and hang out with her: oh shit, that's a death flag.

Can an immortal overdose on Night Rattan? We can only hope.

Jinme must be sent to the Mortal Realm to experience suffering before she can get her promotion (she will experience decades while only a few days pass in the heavenly realm) -> average professional development course

[elizabethleestorms]

So last night I noticed Thanatos (my beta fish) wasn’t acting like himself. Just listless. This morning before leaving for work I found that he had passed away... in with Thanatos was Kilgharrah the pleco. And Kilgharrah had started eating Thanatos.

So I had to have a quick burial before my little brother woke up and saw but as sad as I am about Thanatos (he made the trip from Florida to Colorado and survived and was sassy about it) I did find a little humor.

Thanatos is the god of death.

So Kilgharrah fucking ate the god of death and the images it brings make a me giggle a bit.

[leatherbookmark]

oh hey, this sex scene has some things changed/added too

i’m not done with reading yet, so there might be more changes after that (although i don’t think so?) but between wwx asking “does it feel good inside me” and him going “lan zhan you’re dooone for what would your uncle say if he knew you’re fucking before marriage? ;p” there’s a whole scene that’s honestly... kinda cute lol?

basically, wwx asks “does it feel good inside me?” and lwj -- who was either “stupidly straightforward” (japanese meaning) or “dull” (chinese meaning of 愚直) in love, didn’t know how to get along with others and wasn’t particularly talkative, answers by biting wwx’s lips and thrusting harder.

then, wwx goes “lan zhan, lan zhan lan zhan lan zhan -- i really love you to death! i’m yours, i’m only yo-- wait, be more gentle!”. then he tears up again, “as if he was so happy that he went round to sadness”, and asks lwj again to please be gentle, this place is sensitive, don’t just go all out on me, if you do it too hard you’ll break me i’m just a little birthday boy etc etc, THEN (honestly one of my favourite moments, WHAT an absurd man)--

“lan zhan, you’re really the best, not only you’re such a beautiful little thing, you play the qin so well, your calligraphy skills are top notch, you’re a strong and skilled cultivator, you’re so good in bed, why are you so irresistible, how can i not love you--”

poor lwj says nothing, and the narration notes that wwx has been born shameless but also had the property of getting more excited the more shameless nonsense he spouted. lol

then he spreads his legs (meekly, submissively, etc etc) and goes on, basically telling lwj to fuck him more and deeper, come inside etc -- lwj does fuck him deeper indeed, to which wwx is back at his little birthday boy act, nonono, help, that’s not what i meant, this is too much. lwj’s like YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW and wwx once again spreads his legs, once again in a meek/docile way, and eggs lwj on like “gege, lan-gege, i’m going to die, you’re KILLING ME, i’m sorry i’m sorry, this is my first time, please be gentler” to which lwj’s like well ARE you really asking for mercy or doing that on purpo-- STOP moving your hips

wwx goes “someone heeelp pleasee, hanguang-jun, i won’t do it agaaaain” etc etc, lwj kisses his tears and says with audible difficulty that he’s being serious, wwx should stop doing this because he won’t be able to control himsef, that it’s SCARY and he’s sorry. wwx, seeing this, softens in his heart and says “don’t apologize. and if you break me... i really want you to break me”

and then we’re back to the “omg lan zhan you’re done for!” thing, except instead of “…I have long since been like this.”, lwj says “we've already bowed three times” (とっくに三拝した).

i think the original chinese is 早完了 which, since my chinese skills are 50% gtrans and 50% wiktionary/baidu/pleco, doesn’t tell me much lmao. 完了 is “finished, concluded, done, over” and 早 is “early; fast” so the meaning is like “it’s too late/it’s done” but what? what’s already happened? who knows, it’s context city now!

i looked it up on tt, and japanese users are... having problem with it as well lol;;; apparently there was an interview where mxtx said they did bow three times, i think a screenshot is here and it seems she said it happened AFTER they fucked? (生命大和谐 aka “an undescribable scene” gfkjhgjfskg) but do we count the bathtub or the grass as their first time? i think she mentioned adding it in the edited version, but if she did, then i either didn’t notice it or forgot about it OTL;; also, at the end she said “everyone can imagine how it went on their own, it was probably wwx being wild” which. mxtx for god’s sake please. this japanese fan has a whole thread about this mystery, and mentions “we’ve already bowed three times”, “i’m already done for” and “we’re already done for”. hm.

EDIT: AH WAIT I KNOW.

wwxは一旦振り返ると、もう一度 江枫眠夫婦の位牌に向かって真面目に数回地面に頭をつけて拝礼してから、lwjと一緒に立ち上がった。

Wei Wuxian turned around for a moment, once again bowed a couple times facing the Jiang Fengmian and his wife’s tablets, and left together with Lan Wangji.

this one? are we supposed to assume lwj bowed here as well... mxtx you are the master of leaving things unsaid in a frustrating way

[silencingthedrums]

Fishblr, help me out. The had three cories and two bushy nose plecos die mysteriously in the last week. Ammonia and Nitrite have been at zero for weeks, nitrate has been at 5 over the same period, so I assume the tank is properly cycled. pH is high, around 7.6, but these fish have all lived happily in this tank for months. I use wood and seachem buffer to keep the pH stable.

No signs of disease, no weird behavior, just sudden death. All the other fish look fine. What am I dealing with here?

The tank is 45 gallons, planted. No CO2 injection as of yet. Remaining stock are: 5 cories, 3 Bolivian Rams, 7 danios, 8 diamond neon tetras, and 1 Amano shrimp that just reappeared today after a 2-month absence. All recent deaths have been bottom feeders.

Is my tank cursed, or..?