magicmau5 - Tumblr blog

[magicmau5]

The last line about pasta just about killed me, I was laughing so hard.

[magicmau5]

BL Novel: When the Emperor Dresses as a Wealthy Man's Wife

I want to recommend the novel called "When the Emperor Dresses as a Wealthy Man's Wife [The Past Wears the Present]" (当皇帝穿成豪门男妻［古穿今］) by Róng Shuǐ (榕水). The author is listed differently on the two websites I saw it on, so I'm not entirely sure if I listed the correct author or not.

It's about an emperor (MC, shou) from a previously unknown dynasty called Dasui who transmigrates into the modern era as the unloved and unfortunate wife of a jewelry company president (ML, gong). His husband looks exactly like the prince who loved him in his last life, but his husband has no memories of his past life and doesn't have the same personality.

This story actually has a lot of angst in it (ಥ_ಥ), so if you don't like that, you probably don't want to read it. It also has a lot of sweet moments, which balances out the negative emotions.

The MC is always being targeted by his in-laws, and the ML is always being targeted by his own relatives, so there is a lot of intrigue in the plot. I found this story to be very interesting, and I recommend it to anyone who likes BL that can handle some angst.

This is a novel without an English translation, either official or fan-based. I read it at (free) https://www.shubaow.net/23_23261/ and it's also available at (paid) https://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=3702323.

Instead of using the Google Translate website to MTL it, I just read it using the Chrome browser which automatically translates webpages in foreign languages.

[magicmau5]

Seven Seas Entertainment is going to announce another BL novel this week! Here is the Reddit post where I heard the news from:

If you've never heard of them, they published Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's books.

[magicmau5]

I saw an interesting post on Twitter today about a residence in Heaven Official's Blessing that belongs to Hua Cheng (the ML). Apparently Paradise Manor is also a euphemism for orgasm:

https://twitter.com/miska_za/status/1526972114254823437?t=qmBnBhin_WGwT-iUAJldyg&s=19

[magicmau5]

I just finished reading the BL novel called "The First Son of the Entertainment Industry" (娱乐圈第一公子) by Yu Zi Cheng Shuo (与子承说). It's a cultivation novel set in the modern world. The MC is a cultivator in another world who dies in a battle, and transmigrates to the modern world where he is a struggling actor. The ML is a famous rich second generation, the vice president of a large business group. I really liked the plot of this novel, the intrigue and conflicts are interesting. Although it's shounen ai, and slow burn, it's still good. I read it the Chinese raws at https://www.shubaow.net/17_17342/ , using the Chrome browser to automatically translate it.

[magicmau5]

Last night I started reading a really addictive and wonderful BL supernatural/mystery novel called "Feng Shui Masters Are Internet Celebrities" (Chinese: 风水大师是网红) by Drunk or Not (Zui You He Fang, Chinese: 醉又何妨). It's so good that I couldn't stop reading and didn't sleep at all.

It's set in a modern world where the supernatural exists but only a few know about it. Those who are aware of the supernatural include warlocks (which are like the legendary cultivators except they're proficient in spells and feng shui), demons, monsters, ghosts and more.

The MC and ML are both warlocks. The MC is something of a popular internet celebrity who has a Weibo (popular social media website/app in China) account dedicated to the metaphysical, and is also a graduate student studying Chinese.

In the beginning, the MC is astranged from his family and friends because a powerful half-demon and his human accomplices poisoned him with a Gu (if you're unfamiliar with what that is, see Wikipedia) that can force him to kill everyone close to him. This kind of Gu poison also controls him so that he's unable to tell anyone he's been poisoned. When he was attacked, his mother tried to save him but was killed. In his last life, he died before he could reunite with his loved ones and couldn't find justice for the death of his mom.

After he is reborn, he gains a mysterious prophetic ability. If someone is in danger of being killed by a supernatural being, and he is is capable of saving them, a cryptic Weibo post in eerie red font will appear and @ his feng shui master/metaphysical expert account. The warning messages are time stamped at the time of death of the individual but appear on his Weibo feed before the time of death. After he saves the person, Weibo credits him with points that can be exchanged with things he needs the most, like a cure for his Gu poison.

The ML is your typical cold and unapproachable guy who is only gentle to the MC. He's the director of a special department in the police force in charge of investigating supernatural crimes. When he first appears in the novel, he finds evidence of a spell that the MC used to save someone from being crushed to death by a falling statue. From his reaction to this, it's immediately evident that he misses the MC very much. When the MC is cured of the Gu poison, the reunion scene between the two is really touching. After that, the MC begins to help solve supernatural crimes with the ML. When the MC's identity as the feng shui master internet celebrity is exposed, the two are often photographed together and netizens create a CP (ship) for them. One day, the ML sees some embarrassing CP fanfiction about him and the MC, and he realizes he's in love with him.

I'm currently at the awkward point in the novel where the ML has a burning unrequited love for the MC. It's a little painful to read. I'm pretty sure this novel has a happy ending, but it's still hard to read about the ML's deep longing for a romantic relationship with the MC.

If you want to read it, to my knowledge there is no official or fan-based English translation for this novel yet. I'm using the machine translation function of the Chrome browser to read the Chinese raws at https://www.shubaow.net/11_11573/. The MTL is not bad, and I think you'll definitely enjoy it if you choose to read it. If you read it, tell me what you think!

[magicmau5]

I'm almost finished reading "After Ten Thousand People Suspected of Being a Jerk and Marrying a Big Boss" (万人嫌作精和大佬联姻后) by Jin Yu Qi Nei (金玉其内). It's something of a dog blood/melodramatic BL novel about a boy (MC, shou/uke) who was abducted as a child for superstitious reasons. The family who abducted him believed that if they used him as a source of luck, their family would be prosperous and flourish for generations to come. However, in order to achieve their goal, the feng shui master they hired told them they should poison him to make him weak and stupid, and lock him up so that he couldn't leave. So for five years, he was poisoned and confined to the attic. Finally, after learning his family were not related to him and hated him, he committed suicide by jumping out the fourth floor window.

That's just the beginning of the story. The main story is about his life after he is reborn to an earlier time, before he was locked up. In order to escape being confined to the attic, he used the knowledge acquired in his last life to negotiate a contract marriage with a wealthy and powerful man (ML, gong/seme). In exchange for the information, the man would protect him, enact revenge on the family that abducted him, and help him find his biological parents.

Although their marriage is based on a contract, and the contract stated that they would divorce after a year, the two eventually fall in love and decide not to divorce. The process of falling in love with each other is painful to read because the ML is rumored to have a "white moonlight" or person he's always been in love with. Although this is not true, the MC is too shy and awkward to ask the ML about the truth. I have to say that although the process of him falling in love with the ML is full of angst, it's also more satisfying when the ML finally realizes he loves the MC.

The MC is very temperamental in beginning, because in his last life everyone including the servants would always bully him mercilessly. He's also emotionally vulnerable and has something like PTSD from being abducted and cruelly abused by the people who were supposed to love him. I think that this story is very interesting and worth reading because of all the intrigue and conspiracies.

I read it on https://m.shubaow.net/246/246721/ which is the mobile version of the website. The desktop version is https://www.shubaow.net/246_246721/. It's in Chinese, so when I read on my laptop I use the Chrome browser because it has a function to translate the website without needing to open a separate tab for a translation website. If Chrome detects that the website is in a foreign language, a Google Translate popup will open automatically and you just have to click which language to translate it to.

[magicmau5]

I was browsing yaoi manga on Amazon and found one I haven't heard of before, Onmyoji and Tengu Eyes: The Spirit Hunters of Tomoe (volume 1). The art looks really good, and the plot seems interesting:

"Paranormal incidents heat up when two mysterious men cross paths in Tomoe, a small town in Hiroshima with a long history of supernatural encounters.

Misato Miyazawa is a strikingly beautiful young man with a troubled past. Born to a distinguished family of onmyoji—specialists in divination—Misato is no stranger to the occult. That’s why he jumps at the chance to join the Abnormal Disaster Unit in Tomoe’s Town Hall Crisis Management Division, a unit more commonly known as The Spirit Hunters.

Enter Ryouji Karino, a fiery, handsome man with peculiar green and silver eyes. Working as a freelance monk and raised by a man claiming to be a tengu, Ryouji is by no means an average citizen. When he finds Misato in a sticky situation, he ‘kindly’ steps in, and the mismatched pair end up living together.

What dark mysteries will unravel before them as they attempt to confront paranormal happenings under the constraints of government rules?"

It's out (in English) on June 27. But on Amazon, it's only going to be published in Kindle edition... I don't know if should I order it. Any opinions? I personally prefer to collect printed mangas instead of digital versions.

You can pre-order it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09R3NPVDS/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_RX281HEWHAJ8B4VSP84T?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

[magicmau5]

A few months ago, I pre-ordered the fourth volume of Solo Leveling manhwa on Amazon. And look what just arrived in the mail! I'm excited to read it. I've read the light novel and loved it but stopped reading the fan translation of the manhwa when I heard it got an official English translation. Now I own all the published volumes currently out now.

[magicmau5]

Last night I started reading Animal Love Letters (Chinese: 动物情书) by Li Lanlan (Chinese: 梨蓝蓝), a sweet, fluffy BL novel about a guy who can talk to animals (MC, shou/uke) who has long been in love with a famous actor (ML, gong/seme). The MC is very shy and cowardly when it comes to love, so he writes cheesy love letters and has his cute pets deliver them to the ML. But the MC is so popular that he frequently receives love letters from fans, so he just assumes the MC's love letters are fan letters. Later when the two finally get together, the ML uses the MC's sister as a shield and tells the public he's going out with her. I honestly don't like that, but maybe it's more realistic if you consider how conservative Chinese society is still. Actually, if a famous Hollywood actor went public as gay he might also lose a lot of fans and work opportunities. Sigh. Anyway, I'm really enjoying reading this. It doesn't have an English translation, so I'm using Google Translate to directly translate each web page. You can read it at https://m.shubaow.net/8/8524/

The author is prolific, and they've published 14 BL novels and 1 non-BL novel available at that website. I'll probably try out a few later when I finish this one. You can find the list and reading links at

https://m.shubaow.net/author/%E6%A2%A8%E8%93%9D%E8%93%9D

There are close to 5,000 other danmei/BL web novels on shubaow.net (and they're all free) so you can probably find a lot of good stuff to read there. However, I found that sometimes the website miscategorized GL/yuri/shoujo ai and some heterosexual romance novels as BL/danmei. Usually the GL novels have a GL label in the title but not always. If the description includes key words like "sister", "girl", "princess", etc it's most likely not BL. But if you like GL or het romance it won't be an issue!

[magicmau5]

I just ordered four BL books on Amazon, continuations of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's famous works. Three are the second volume, but I was also able to pre-order the third volume of TGCF. MDZS seems to be published at a slower rate. Anticipating!!!

[magicmau5]

Are there any official English translations of Mu Su Li's (Chinese: 木苏里) novels? People who like BL are familiar with Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (the author of MDZS, TGCF, and SVSSS) but imho Mu Su Li is even better. Mu Su Li wrote Copper Coins, First-Class Lawyer, etc:

[magicmau5]

Anyone on the LINE app and likes to read books? I have a LINE group chat focused on discussing novels. Anyone interested is welcome to join, just scan the QR code below in the LINE app. Looking forward to new members!

[magicmau5]

I want to know if they make Attack on Titan reusable pads...also, I used to use reusable pads previously and really liked them so I will probably buy some simple black or red ones.

I JUST FOUND THE CUTEST AND MOST USEFUL ANIMAL CROSSING RELATED ITEM!!!!

THESE REUSABLE MENSTRUAL PADS HAVE 5 SUPER ABSORBENT LAYERS

WITH TWO BUTTONS TO GIVE YOU THE OPTION TO FASTEN IT TIGHTER

AND A REUSABLE WATERPROOF POUCH TO STORE YOUR USED OR UNUSED PADS WHEREVER

FREE SHIPPING WITHIN USA!! CONS? THERES ONLY 25 PACKS PRODUCED AT A TIME!!! 

PS You bleed on the black bamboo fiber part and not on your favorite villagers!

[magicmau5]

The really funny thing is:

1. I'm pretty old (30s)

2. Yes, I have an old Yahoo email account that I haven't checked in years...

3. I'm not a scammer, at least don't identify as one LMFAO

I am sorry,

What is OneID?

oh jesus christ

OneID was a Yahoo scheme. I'm not sure how much I can reveal here, but given that Marissa Meyer is long gone and this water is very much under the bridge, it doesn't really matter. What happened was probably one of Yahoo's worst and most nefarious efforts to bring Tumblr into the Yahoo ecosystem:

So, you ever go to a website and it allows you to sign up for the service and create an account using your Google, or Apple, or Facebook login? That's called Third Party Authentication. What it does is it uses your valid account on a website that has a strong authentication process to prove that you're a unique human being.

You log in to these third party sites (i.e. Google) via their authentication process, they (Google) return a unique token to the website (whatever site is using the third party auth). The token can be verified again to confirm it says "yes, this person's legit", and the website uses this process to authenticate/create your account with their service.

This is kind of hard to explain without getting technical, so you can compare it to, say, using your passport to verify your identity when you try to open a bank account. The bank trusts the passport, provided by a another institution, as verification that you are who you claim to be.

Anyways, Yahoo saw that Google was providing 3rd Party Authentication, and since they're Google's biggest competitor (ha!) they assumed people want a Third Party Authentication service from Yahoo too! Sign in to your favorite websites, using Yahoo!

So they made OneID! OneID was the name of their Third Party Auth. And they wanted all of their internal properties to use it, including Tumblr. The thing is, it only works if you have a Yahoo email address. Not a lot of people on Tumblr have yahoo email addresses. So, to make it easy for Tumblr, they had it set up so that when you use OneID to create a brand new account on Tumblr, you're given a Yahoo email address too! Who wouldn't want that?!

Well, Tumblr users didn't. At least that's what Staff assumed because Tumblr was, well, a bunch of teens and young adults who were net-savvy enough to not be caught dead using Yahoo anymore. Moreover, the sign-up process for OneID was, uh, way more rigorous than Tumblr.

To sign up for Tumblr, you need an email address, a password, and you have to tell them your age. Not your birthday, just your age. That's all Tumblr has ever needed, and was all they ever wanted to ask for from a user. The age was necessary because of laws about using the internet under the age of 13, and of course verifying if you're over 18 (because Tumblr had porn at the time).

To sign up for OneID, though, you had to, well, provide your Yahoo email address, or choose the name of your new Yahoo email address that was about to be bestowed upon you. You needed a password of course. And you needed to provide your date of birth. And your phone number. And, of course, most importantly, your gender. Male or female, please.

Staff took one look at this and saw the shitstorm coming down the mountain. Yahoo wanted your gender for marketing purposes, of course, but Tumblr knew that their users wanted to be as anonymous as possible. Moreover, OneID drops a "male or female?" gender check at signup and anyone who fell outside the gender binary was going to be angry. Staff did not want to anger its generally more progressive userbase than Yahoo's (old people? scammers?).

So, two problems:

1. Tumblr had to use OneID, they didn't have a choice

2. It was going to require all this extra info from new users

3. Yahoo wanted to force existing Tumblr users who signed up to use Tumblr with the regular registration process to re-sign up for Tumblr using OneID

It quickly turned into three problems.

Staff dug their heels in, hard. This was a herculean coordination between high-level stakeholders in the engineering organization, run of the mill engineers, marketing people, support staff, trust and safety, anyone who could find a reason to slow this project down or block it stepped in.

After months of going back and forth, Staff managed to convince Yahoo not to require a phone number for the OneID process, but Yahoo insisted on the gender check. So they compromised by providing a third, "fill in the blank" option where you could type in whatever gender you wanted. By this time, engineers had slowed the progress as much as they could, but enough work was done so that it was ready for initial, internal testing.

I was working on the testing part. Myself and other engineers ensured that the OneID on Tumblr internal test was going to be extremely rigorous! And it would take a while. I mean, it's gotta be secure, it's user authentication, right? First thing we noticed: it was broken as hell. I wish I could remember the technical details, but, at this point it's been too long. Myself and other engineers coordinated massive bug hunts, encouraging as many people within the company to test it as much as possible. You know, to be extra sure it worked properly, and to find as many bugs as they could.

The process found tons and tons of bugs, of course. One of the more curious ones was this: we noticed that if you set your gender as "female", or set your gender as the "fill in the blank" option, you'd get the same type of posts recommended to you during the Tumblr onboarding process. We asked Yahoo why this was happening, and it turned out that they just treated all accounts that chose the "fill in the blank" option as "female" on the backend. Great job, Yahoo. No one would have noticed that. And no, it was never fixed. It was considered "working as expected".

After a drawn-out testing process and more bugfixing, it was finally approaching production readiness. Keep in mind that, during this whole time, Staff was begging leadership not to do this. There were regular, very critical questions about OneID at All Team meetings where David Karp had to force a smile and talk about how great OneID will be for Tumblr. This project was Marissa Meyer's pet project and, ultimately, Staff could not stop it.

The last-ditch effort to block this was to suggest we roll out OneID slowly, using an A/B test, and compare how many people completed accout registration for Tumblr via OneID, vs how many completed account registration for Tumblr via the existing registration process. Can you take a guess as to what the results were?

OneID's new account signup (aka conversion) rates were abysmal. This resulted in more setbacks, negotiations, and tweaks on Yahoo's end to try to encourage users to finish the sign up process. But the users who ended up in the test bucket where they were forced to sign up with OneID never showed better conversion rates.

Then, one day, on slack, after much anticipation and rumors, our Director of Engineering made an announcement to everyone in the org:

"Yahoo authorized us to remove OneID from Tumblr".

We got drunk that day.

[magicmau5]

Sent a Valentines Day gift to a friend who likes Red Velvet lol. She was pretty happy. Btw I got the merch from AliExpress and the card from Amazon.

[magicmau5]

For anyone else who likes Attack on Titan, this (link) is the funniest thing ever: When Carla isn't home🎺 by 朝比奈たいよう on Pixiv