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People will literally be doing anything on ao3

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English has different words for mouse and rat but in Chinese they're both the same creature (laoshu) so I asked my mom well how do you differentiate between mice and rats. She, clearly having never felt the need to do so, was like uhh big laoshu and little laoshu I guess. Then I went online to see how the difference between (the English words) "mouse" and "rat" was being explained to CN->EN learners and there are numerous articles delving deep into the analysis. Bigger vs smaller, indoors vs outdoors, cute and favorable connotations vs evil and ugly, tail length, fear factor, emphasis on the fact that you cannot call it a "computer rat." Much thought is being expended on this little mystery of the English language

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More Sha Po Lang because I have been Changed by it.

Here's Gu Yun and Chang Geng approaching their retirement era. Please pray for my fingers, that dragon robe was definitely something to draw!

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Just finished my Sha Po Lang re-read and now my life is empty. I miss them so much ah

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Li Lianhua saving a bird with the last of his energy.

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What is personal space?

光·渊 JUSTICE IN THE DARK · 2025

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The last art of the year 💜 Gu Yun with his flute pisses bullfinches off

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I may have to inconvenience you a bit.

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the trick for enjoying a new video game is avoiding the internet’s opinion on it 

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Because of the way Pei su's shoulder shifts when LWZ stands up I am convinced LWZ grabbed Pei su's hand

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Don't mind me I'm just making a Very Random Checklist (will continue updating this. Few are confirmed! Only speculation! Only speculation! Only speculation!)

Pei su holds and examines LWZ's hand in the car (end of ep 10)

Push and pull outside LWZ's car in front of Pei su's mansion (ep 13)

LWZ sees Pei su's scars on his chest (ep 13)

LWZ guiding Pei su's hand over to rinse the bowl (ep 14)

LWZ breakdown holding Pei su after the bomb (ep 15)

LWZ: "he's the person I must hang onto" (ep 15. Unsure)

LWZ feeding Pei su honey (ep 16)

LWZ blowdrying Pei su's hair (ep 16)

LWZ and Pei su texting each other (ep 17)

Pei su picking up LWZ after work and LWZ getting mad that Pei su slept inside the car with the windows closed and heat on (ep 17)

LWZ making Pei su wearing long underwear (ep 17)

LWZ making Pei su wash the vegetables (ep 17)

LWZ and Pei su eating dinner and talking about shiniang (ep 17. Unsure)

Pei su picking LWZ up from work (ep 18. Unsure)

LWZ scolding Zhang yifan for attempting bribery (ep 19)

Pei su conversing with Mu xiaoqing in the kitchen (20. Unsure)

LWZ pushing Pei su against the wall when Pei su tries to leave and asks what Pei su means by "people like me" (ep 20)

LWZ flicks Pei su's forehead (ep 24)

LWZ asking Pei su why his hand is so cold outside the hospital (ep 20. Unsure)

LWZ realizes Pei su has a fever (ep 25)

Fever dream. Young Pei su's mom gives him a hint for the basement door password (ep 26. Unsure)

Alternative shots of the hypnosis scene of Pei su lying on the couch (ep 26. Unsure)

Pei su: "shixiong, if you were a girl...." (ep 26)

Deleted text from Pei su to LWZ: Pingdiguo and I will be with you forever (ep 27)

LWZ checking Pei su's pulse in the closet (ep 28. Unsure)

LWZ while carrying Pei su:"Let's go home" (ep 30)

Pei su grabbing LWZ's sleeve (ep 30. Unsure)

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idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

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everyone trying to minimise their intake of microplastics is going to be so mad when we invent the blood filter that can extract it and everyone who was plasticmaxxing gets a cool toy made from their poison blood as a souvenir

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People will claim to be a fan of some thing and then hate all of the themes and motifs and story lines and plot lines and protagonists and antagonists like man I don’t think that you actually like it here

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Look, I'm on the spectrum myself, so I totally get the impulse to try and logic things out, but if I see one more most that's like "neurotypical people are crazy because explaining to them why their emotional reactions are irrational doesn't cause them to stop experiencing those emotions" – buddy, that doesn't work on anybody. I'm willing to bet real money it doesn't even work on you. The problem you are experiencing is that you have chosen a deescalation strategy with a zero percent success rate.

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.. However, Boya felt that he still wasn’t a real guqin virtuoso and could not bring to the perfection of guqin performance and use it to freely express his feelings. Knowing about his thoughts, Boya’s teacher brought him on a boat to Island Penglai in the East Sea, leaving him to appreciate the natural view and listen to the sounds of the waves. .. A strange and wonderful feeling emerged, and Boya found myriads of harmonious and melodious music from the nature swirling in his mind. He took out his guqin and began to play, blending the beauty of nature into his music. Boya experienced an unprecedented inner feeling. His teacher told him, “Now you got it. You have mastered the real virtuosity of the instrument by learning from nature.” .. When Boya was playing by the water one day, he told his attendant, “As I’m playing the qin today, the sounds are exceptionally clear. I believe someone is listening. Find that person please.” The attendant quickly brought a woodcutter. Full of enthusiasm, Boya played the musical instrument for him. When Boya played a piece conveying the magnificence of high mountains, the woodcutter exclaimed: “Wonderful! Sounds of towering peaks… magnificent and dignified, like Mount Tai!” Boya then played a piece depicting the vigor of rushing water, the woodcutter responded, “Wonderful! Vast and mighty… like great rivers and boundless oceans!” Overwhelmed with joy, Boya said, “Intimate friend! You are really my intimate friend!” That woodcutter was Zhong Ziqi. —Dr. Lunlun Zhou after Lü Buwei 吕不韦 (300-235 A.D.), excerpt from 'From the Ancient Melody “High Mountains and Flowing Water” to the Development of Guzheng and Artistic Realm of the Harmony Between Heaven and Man', emphasis and small change to Boya's name mine

A note on the translation under the cut:

Those who are familiar with my gifs know that when I include subtitles with the scenes, I prefer to keep many of the original Chinese terms in place of a translated version. This requires more cultural and linguistic study on my part as well as on those's who will get to see the gifs, but it also ensures a more complete picture of the source material, as translation is always also a transformation.

In the same vein, I wanted to try and recapture the clever layering that is taking place in this scene, and that is unfortunately getting lost when you are only drawing from the translated subtitles. I have relied on a handful of references to hopefully respectfully portray the cultural context and literary metaphors. In my opinion is this one of the key scenes of the show, not only in respect to Wenzhou's relationship and the way they lay some of their soft sides bare to each other, but also in regards to their character journeys. It elegantly combines casual landscape watching with an important talk about the future and an underlying dialogue about hopes and dreams, as well as recealls the conflict of their personal circumstances. This scene essentially foreshadows what lies ahead, and I wanted to see if I could portray it somehow in a single gifset.

Due to this goal, I have taken some measure of artistic liberty when retranslating. Specifically, the idioms of zhiyin and zhiji that I have added in the background text as poetic additions are not meant to be taken as an alternative, more literal translation to those same idioms reappearing in the dialogue, but rather a more lyrical transfer of concepts that works complimentary to it. I wanted to offer a poetic version that would also speak to those other layers of the scene, without overshadowing it.

"High mountains and flowing water. Soulmates/zhiyin like that are hard to find," was retranslated to "The beautiful landscapes are vast. The few who understand your music are hard to find."

"The world itself is not important. What's important is meeting your soulmate/zhiji," was retranslated to "The beautiful landscapes are not important. What's important is to meet someone who truly understands you."

All mistakes are my own. Please refer to the list down below for the sources and translations I relied on. Well-meant corrections in case I terribly fucked up in my pursuit of artistic expression are always welcome!

List of references:

"方才成就了一段高山流水的佳话 / It just became a conversation about high mountains and flowing water": Google Translate, The Chinese metaphor of High Mountains, Flowing Water from 'From the Ancient Melody “High Mountains and Flowing Water” to the Development of Guzheng and Artistic Realm of the Harmony Between Heaven and Man' on guzhengmaster

"高山流水，知音难觅 / High mountains and flowing water. Soulmates like that are hard to find": Viki Rakuten ENG subs by the Honorable Team with a small change by me to respectfully keep with the theme; "High mountains and flowing water" as in the original, rather than "Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi", which was what the Viki team settled on to bridge the cultural gap.

"高山流水，知音难觅 / The beautiful landscapes are vast. The few who understand your music are hard to find": What does 高山流水，知音难觅 mean? on the HiNative forum, The meaning of the term Zhiyin from ‘The Legend of Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi’ on the Hubei China Archive

"山河不足重，重在遇知己 / The beautiful landscapes are not important. What‘s important is to meet someone who truly understands you": What does 山河不足重，重在遇知己 mean? on the HiNative forum, The meaning of the term Zhiji by @hunxi-guilai

The complete subtitles, with these few noted exceptions, are taken from the ENG TL by Viki Rakuten's Honorable Team.

Please also note that I have left out a significant part of Boya's and Ziqi's tale, as the post was getting too long and I wanted to keep the focus on the main event. But I highly recommend checking out the full version if you haven't already!

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New Star Trek headcanon just dropped: Geordi and data regularly hang out in the dark and Geordi sometimes forgets that people need light to see