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spockandawe · 1 year

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Here we go! I have some smaller books to share as well, but I've been absolutely VIBRATING with excitement to share a BIG one, and I'm going to indulge myself and post that today, then figure out words for the rest. Because I bound a new cnovel. Check it out, guys, I bound jwqs/clear and muddy loss of love :D

Let me indulge myself and backtrack a little! First, these are quarto books, so they're short. But I think these average a little under 500 pages each, and jwqs is a LONG book (my beloved), and this adds up to a total eleven inches of lesbians. More like twelve once they're in their cases. It's over a million characters in Chinese and I think the English translation comes in somewhere around 890k, it's HUGE

Making these books was SO FUN, I hadn't read jwqs and still haven't, and will probably read on my phone when I do. I don't have any exciting photos of the typesetting, but I knew this was an imperial succession story, and that made me nervous, those stories don't always click for me. Well, the process of typesetting and adding footnotes for this beast definitely confirmed that I'm going to have a good time with this thing when I have the time to read it, but there was also so much going on that only the vaguest of spoilers sank in. I went into an absolute FRENZY of typesetting, and after I printed, cut and folded it, well. That was one afternoon of sewing. You're looking at the reason I'm scrambling to make up a few hours of missed work, hahaha

After that, I needed cases. At the very beginning of march, I received a shipment of some FASCINATING bookcloth. It's called Duo, and it's made by layering a thin gauzy fabric of one color over paper of a different color. Depending on the combos, you get a really cool range of color-shifting effects. And they've gone out of production! But I was part of a group order to get some of the goods, and hadn't yet finished a new project. Reader, I went for it.

That purple and green is bananas!!!! It's so hard to photograph, this midnight picture of a few cases is one of my most successful attempts to capture the full range up close. Originally I'd been thinking of trying to evoke imperial gold, but I figured this was still the kind of drama and luxury suited the book, and also something something the hidden colors suited Qi Yan's character. I tied it back a little to the imperial gold with the endpapers, then titled them in silver foil, since the endpapers had silver in them.

But once the books were made, I felt like it wanted something... more. Something like a BOX!

And me, I chase novelty. A set this large would be tricky for anything clamshell, but a slipcase for all seven would leave books tipping all over if it was wide open, but putting walls between slots would be demanding in terms of precision and would risk similarly-sized books getting stuck in the wrong slots. Then I remembered learning about slipcases where you could put in a little insert to support the weight of the text block, and the concept SNAPPED into place.

Colors aren't going to photograph well at midnight, but I made the supports using the scraps and off-cuts from my endpapers, to tie it back into the bindings. The back of the case is lined in more of the duo, and the walls are lined with a faux leather bookcloth I like a lot, it feels buttery smooth and seemed like a good neutral material to tie the papers and bookcloth together. I listened to some of the DEEPEST layers from the nine-hour conspiracy theory iceberg video while I was working on this, haha, it was a TRIP.

And in the end, each of the supports is sized to comfortably sit in the smallest of the volumes, and evenly spaced, so I believe it will take the books in any order with no problems. It's easy to grab the books without having to cut notches into the walls to grab them from. And even though weight is less of an issue for quarto sizing, the books in here have their weight supported no matter what angle the box is at! I'm so, so pleased with how this concept worked out and definitely plan to do more with it in the future.

So there we are! Jing Wei Qing Shang! I had such a fabulous time with this project, and I'm so excited to get to share it with all of you. The story was fun to work with, the bindings and box were fun to make, and everything here came together just as well as I could possibly have hoped. I'm so proud of this, and incredibly, incredibly excited to show it to you!

#crafts #bookbinding #box making #oh boy what is this story tagged #jwqs #jing wei qing shang #clear and muddy loss of love #I'll pick one to stick with later 😂#long post/#so proud of this one!

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n1ghtfurys · 5 days

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Google translate

More könig fluff just because

You're sitting on your sofa, watching a shitty hallmark movie and eating a chinese take-away. You're so engrossed in this shitty movie; this girl has just missed her flight and ends up running into her crush from highschool. Typical hallmark but sometimes you just need something silly and mindless.

König on the other hand doesn't care, even a little bit about the movie. Not when you're sitting next to him, looking so perfect. So angelic. You're not even doing anything, just eating and watching a movie. You're not wearing anything special, just one of his old t-shirts and a pair of shorts he can't see because of how big his top is on you. The situation is so mundane but he can't drag his eyes back to the screen. (Looking back on it you imagine he had little pink hearts in his eyes.)

“Ich liebe dich.” He says it before he even processes it, you've been seeing each other for three months but he's still so thankful he said it in German and not English.

“Hm?” You turn to him and tilt your head to one side but he just smiles and shakes his head. You don't think much of it so you shuffle until you're comfortably nestled into his side before you go back to the movie. The smile on his face grows less forced as he traces his fingers up and down your arm. Even if you didn't understand what he said, it's true. He does love you.

Years later you decide to learn German. For many reasons, most of them being if you ever did have kids you want to be able to understand them when they speak to König.

König originally thought nothing of it, encouraged it even because how cute would you be speaking to him in German.

That is until you come barreling down the stairs shouting for him like he'd done something terrible.

When he sees you round the corner it looks like you're on a mission for his head. “I can't believe you!” You jab your finger into your chest as you speak. “You never told me!”

He looks so confused as you repeatedly jab him in the chest.

You realise he might not be getting that you're not all that upset with him, not really, so you figure you should tell him the phrase you just learnt. “Ich liebe dich.” Saying it doesn't seem to make him any less confused but he takes hold of your hand the next time too go to jab him.

“You said it to me. Ages ago, but I didn't hear properly.” You smile watching him fidget with your engagement ring.

“You let me believe that I told you I loved you first.” You jab him once more for good measure. “But you just said it in a language I didn't know.” Your mock serious face dissolves into a goofy smile as you see him relax.

“I can't believe you didn't tell me.” You whisper to him as he lifts you off the ground. A habit he's developed since he prefers not having to lean down so far for a kiss but you've gone quite fond of it so you don't mind.

“I can tell you now.” He smiles as he says it. “Ich liebe dich.”

You can't help but pull him in and kiss him. You feel him smiling against your lips.

“You're so fucking sneaky.” You try and fail to sound serious, not that either of you mind. He never really expected you to remember it but knowing you did makes his cheeks warm, even after all this time.

And now you're gonna be his wife.

#konig x wife #konig cod #konig #könig x reader #könig #könig cod #konig fluff #cod fluff

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celaenaeiln · 5 months

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it’s a me a 12 am anon . my girlfriend and i had a discussion abt how odd it is that the fandom views and stereotypes the batfam like

dick is romanian and has more fem related traits and somehow it translates into him being a dumb womanizer or just an annoying mother hen?

jason grew up in the streets, i think its popular to hc him as hispanic? idk but jts odd how ppl do that and also think hes an angry heartless brute

cass gets that “badass asian dragon lady” archetype (tbh im not sure what it is but my gf is passionate abt it so like im confident she’s right)

tim?? somehow ive seen wasian hcs for him but the boy is autistic right? somehow a stereotype i see for him is like “weird and socially awkward but super smart” which . i dont think thats right .

steph is adhd right? i think? also falls into the dumb “waffles r my only personality trait” stereotype and uts just a tiny bit odd dyou see it?

damian (and by extension talia) gets done dirty a lot i think i dont .yeah

nyways sorry its been a while <3 would llve to hear ur thoughts n opinions

hey again!!

Batfam fanon is...not great. And it's things like this that remind me why I kinda avoided this fandom until I couldn't.

Dick

Dick is Romani and is canonically more feminized but the dumb womanizer thing is really getting on my nerves. First of all, he's one of the smartest characters, ever. The comforting thing about Dick is that he never loses.

The reason I love reading Dick Grayson runs is because I can read about his thought process, the way he analyzes, how he single-handedly solves crime like it's nothing.

Batman (1940) Issue #703

Secondly he's not a womanizer. He literally has a mental break down at the thought of dating or even kissing someone he isn't in love with. He's never, ever, ever going to sleep with someone he doesn't have atleast some level of romantic attraction to because he feels it's inherently wrong and canonically frowns upon that behavior when others do it.

The mother hen thing - I gotta admit is kinda accurate. He really loves his family and friends and takes care of them really well. He always makes time to sit and listen to all of them with all their problems and helps them solve it so that's fine.

Jason

The hispanic thing - what the actual heck. Literally why? Jason's "hispanic" fanon background along with Tim's "asian" background comes from a wider problem where society has become disillusioned by the same ethnicity for all characters and wants for diversity and representation in the media. I actually do believe in greater representation but not here. When people make Jason hispanic due to his street backstory, they're attempting to diversify canonically white characters but accidentally reinforcing and perpetrating damaging stereotypes about particular ethnicities. Because his background has drugs, poverty, and crime - you want Jason to be Latino? Can you possibly make things worse? And Jason being an angry heartless brute. Not even adding to the stereotype, Jason was not like that. Jason originally started off as troubled but excited kid. He was happy about fighting criminals and having a home and getting food. As he grew older, the more criminals he fought, he came to a realization that people weren't going to change which is when he started getting more violent and angry with them. He didn't do it because he was some sort of psychopath, it's because he cared a lot about the effects these criminals were having on innocent people. Because he can relate. His anger has nothing to do with his supposed "hispanic" background which is still - ?!?!? Why is this even a thing.

Cass

I don't really have anything to say about Cass being that archetype because tbh I kinda think of her like that too. She's exceptionally good at fighting, she's chinese, and she's the strong and silent type. I'd love to hear more about what your gf thinks about it though.

Tim

Again about Tim being Asian. No where near as damaging as Jason being classified Hispanic but also why? He's asian because he's smart? Because he's good at computers? C'mon the stereotype is boring. Isn't it exciting when you watch a movie or show and the Indian guy isn't an IT specialist? Or when the Chinese girl has neon highlights and loves partying? Or when the Japanese girl is rocking combat boots? The best way to appreciate diversity is actually letting ethnic characters have diverse personalities and talents. On a side note, there is not nearly enough celebration of already canonically diverse characters like Roy's navajo heritage or Jessica Cruz's latina one. Isn't it ironic how we're making racialized characters based on stereotypes because we believe there should be more diversity but ignoring canonically ethnic ones. Literally noone talks about Cass connecting to her Chinese side or the fact that she has dyslexia but we're readily jumping on the Asian Tim Drake train.

Autistic Tim Drake I can see where they're coming from because Tim sometimes has a hard time connecting to people. Like he sometimes misses social cues. And to be fair this theory actually has more credibility than some other ones because I don't know if I'd pass that off as awkwardness. But it also may be due to lack of human interaction. Tim's parents left him alone for long periods of time which he gleefully used to track robin and batman at night. I don't have a problem with this one because Tim may actually be inadvertently written as autistic at times so I guess it wouldn't be that far off canon.

Steph

People with ADHD are typically impulsive, don't focus on one thing for too long, and have a lot of energy which is very much like Steph.

Batgirl (2009) Issue #10

But mostly she just has a sense of humor. Which - like the case with Dick - because of course people can't be multifaceted, fandom generally takes for stupidity.

She's not dumb, she's just fun. I guess the waffle thing is because of human beings' pathological need to classify everything into categories and fanon likes to run with dumb blonde for Stephanie which really ticks me off. People can not be a gloomy avenger and still be smart. She solves her crimes and has a laugh while doing it and still pulling off the -

Batgirl (2009) Issue #12

Damian

Where do I start. What is even happening to him? Not in fandom necessarily but canon. What is DC doing???

#rant post #dick grayson #nightwing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #cassandra cain #black bat #stephanie brown #batgirl #damian wayne #fanon vs canon #cl 12 am anon asks #thanks for the ask!

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slugtranslation-hypmic · 7 months

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Hi Slug! If you've listened to the full songs in the new EP, have your opinions of the trailers changed? Also, the new dramas are HEAVY, so if you've listened to them, I'm curious to know what you thought of them. As always, thanks for the translations!

I like listening to Hypmic music on shuffle during workouts, so I've most of the new songs in full by now. I don't think my opinions have changed majorly. I really enjoy Black and White, and Move Your Body Till You Die is a phenomenal work of art.

As for the drama tracks... truth be told, I haven't even listened to the one that came out in April, so I'll read through some TLs now and record thoughts below the cut:

No One Lives Forever, translation courtesy of shinseimcd on Twitter

"Anti-Party of Words faction" Huh, like a government faction? I'm surprised the PoW allows other political parties or at the very least open dissenters. There was talk in some chapters of the manga of them punishing protesters, not to mention the way they crushed the TDD rebellion in its primacy. Either way, interesting, and I hope we learn more about this as time goes on.

Ichijiku and Nemu baking together is really cute lol

I love the way Ichijiku's whole personality shifts around Otome. Gap moe (????)

It's a cool tidbit that Nemu tends to prefer plainer outfits, as that tracks with how she dresses in TDD. Also, Nemu and Ichijiku shopping together is kind of bittersweet, since Ichijiku is clearly using Nemu as a replacement figure for her deceased sister...

Ichijiku secretly wanting to fall on the cute side of the cute/elegant spectrum is a pretty classic trope but a fun detail that's been hinted at already, since we've seen that she keeps a bow collection.

??? Rei's lab is on Battleship Island? Ohhhhhhhhh this is why Twitter was blowing up with controversy right after this track released... The IRL Battleship Island was home to forced labor of Korean and Chinese citizens during the twentieth-century push of Japanese imperialism which was later, iirc, denied in part or totally by the Japanese government to immense international backlash. Using this as a setpiece for Hypmic is oddly provocative, and I can't think why the writers would want to do that. On a much lighter note, this is also a headscratcher to me because isn't this a UNESCO World Heritage Site? The whole point of that is conservation, and I don't think building a clone lab counts as conservation... Unless they're implying the clone lab was built prior to the 1950s? Hm. Let's not go down this rabbit hole.

"I would like all of the True Hypnosis Mics. As well as all the Amemura clones." Oh? Are there more still alive? I thought Honobono ordered the death of the last remaining three... Well, that scraps a piece of writing I was working on LOL

"Your biometric data is required to access the mic storage facility" So how did the PoW get in?

Her? Heart stop beating? Oh for fuck's sake, is Rei's wife also in a coma? How many fucking characters are in a coma in this series... Whichever mfer invents a device that restores people from comas with no significant brain damage will make a fortune in this universe

"And I won't try anything funny." I do not believe this for one instant

Hmm, the framing of Otome planning this and the way she brushed past talk of countermeasures for the anti-PoW faction implies that Rei is heading this faction.

Oh, so they couldn't get past the biometric locks after all, I see.

I strongly dislike the idea of thirty clones for thirty mics and the nonchalance in which Rei goes, "Yeah, I'll ship them off to Chuuouku" like they're a parcel and not human beings, but that's my personal bone to pick w/ this character and setting.

I was intrigued by the notion of the PoW holding caucuses, implying there's some sort of democratic process in terms of choosing their own party members or positions, but the JPN audio doesn't specify that exactly.

"We no longer require the cooperation of Jakurai Jinguji." I know that this took like four years in real time, but in terms of the Hypmic universe... I mean, Jakurai didn't even do anything for them, did he? He went through all that moral dilemma for nothing, as far as I can tell. (I get that it sets up the reconciliation with Ramuda, but that's it? Seriously?) That's disappointing to roll it back so quickly.

"During the Division Rap Battle, the people of our nation will be focused on the tournament, giving us the opportunity to use the True Hypnosis Mics to mind hack the Anti-Party of Words faction who stand in our way, ultimately pulling them over to our side." Otome always has the most batshit plans. God bless. A consequence of her needing to drive the plot forward is that she'll say some of the truly silliest things I've ever heard. What a complete misappropriation of government funds lol. Also... is this stating there are only 30 dissidents (????), or can the True Hypmics brainwash more than one person at a time?

"Once that is complete, we will move on to other countries. And when we have taken over the world, then, in the true sense of the word, peace through the power of words will be achieved." LMAO? I'm sorry, this isn't very considerate of me, but in my initial impressions of this, I am well and truly gobsmacked. What in the actual fuck. How many clones will die for this? How much money will it cost? How does she think she stands any chance at governing so many people across such an area, even with a downsized population after WWIII? Homie... Never change, Hypmic, you are the wildest.

I can't believe Ichijiku is so whipped she's willing to go along with an absolutely nonsensical plan for world domination. Ma'am, Otome is not going to fuck you, and even if she is, it's not worth it! Ma'am!!! I'm sorry, I'm being petty and not giving this a lot of in-depth thought but LORD this is a trip on first read.

A FUCKING CLONE UPRISING AT THE HANDS OF REI? HAHAHAHAHA.

"World domination, huh, what a joke." Man after my own heart.

I'm actually quite interested in how this "mics are disabled forever" thing works. I guess the mics have a kill switch in them? I vaguely recall someone saying that in the manga years and years ago... Oh yeah, it was Ramuda in TDD 12. Huh, interesting if that was intentional foreshadowing (I'm not sure if I want to be that charitable). At any rate, can't everyone in the room just get new mics? Or does it affect their speakers and such too? I'm curious how that works, like if you build an affinity with a certain mic or some nonsense.

"looks like we won't be having any Division Rap Battles from here on out." Ah, and this is why the other half of Twitter was up in arms like "No more DRB??? End of Hypmic??" I guess.

The Block Party tracks are quite long, and since it's getting rather late for me, I'm going to leave off here for the moment. I'd like to continue this at my next available opportunity... WHAT a ride. Not sure when that will be, but I will add to this with a reblog when I can. And I know it's been months since this track came out, but I would love to hear other people's thoughts. I wasn't around much when it first launched, so I missed most of the commentary on it.

#not a translation #asks #hypmic asks

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zzzzzestforlife · 4 months

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day 10 of 30 // take-out coffee, go! ☕

요즘 난 포드캐스트들은 좋아요. 언어들 공부, 쓰기, 와 친구들 대화. 다는 좋아요. 어제에 스트레스 풀기 포드캐스트를 들었어요. 여러분, 요즘 무슨 좋아요? (lately i like podcasts. studying languages, writing, and conversations with friends. i like it all. yesterday i listened to a stress-relieving podcast. everyone, what do you like these days?)

❤️ we're on a roll with the actual meditations it seems 👀 i think it's because i started doing them in the morning when i'm naturally sluggish because by the end of the day, i. cannot. sit. still.🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️ TOO MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED and idk, it feels like i need to physically process or something 🤷‍♀️

📝📝📝 i was going to focus on Japanese today, but i only made that decision last night because i was scared of Chinese for some reason 😂 so i made myself do Chinese lessons instead and it wasn't too bad! but for some reason i failed the unit exam the first time and had to retake it to pass 🙃 whatever, i know that i know it, i just have mad testing anxiety 😭

❤️ journalled outside but it was too cold to stay out too long so i had to come back inside many times or risk frostbite 🥶

🥰🥰 it's been a while since i've done a full-body workout (rowing is my preferred exercise for this), i really enjoyed it thanks to my workout music!! and if i do it fast enough, it also becomes cardio, hehe

📚 almost halfway through All Creatures Great and Small 🤠 my eyes feel better today so i was able to read for myself today instead of just listening to the audiobook!

language learning recommendations 🙊

loved this video from BuzzFeed Japan. it's an all-Japanese conversation between a foreign-born Japanese and Japan-born foreigner 🎌 i didn't understand everything but it was very interesting to listen to from a language learning perspective and a cultural learning perspective ☺️

also highly recommend this video that goes over the 140 Chinese characters that make up 50% of the language. was really surprised by how many of them i knew and even knew well! 😇 it's encouraging me to keep going and learn more!

i also love this Korean podcast channel! not only can i learn a bit and practice listening, but it's just very relaxing 🙈 my favorite thing is if there's any vocabulary you didn't understand the first time, she repeats the story with the vocabulary words translated in-sentence!

aaaand another Kimono Mom short because there is nothing better than learning to speak Japanese from a toddler who is also learning to speak Japanese 🐣

中文：最近我喜欢podcasts。学语，写，和朋友们说话。这些都喜欢啊。昨天我听缓解压力podcast。大家，最近你什么喜欢吗？

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diedikind · 17 days

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Hua Cheng's Affections toward Xie Lian (An Analysis Written from 2022 to the Present)

*reflecting back on it now, it seems that i jumped through so many hoops just to arrive at a fairly obvious conclusion, but i had fun with the process, and this has been sitting in my drafts for way too long to just be discarded in the end, so here goes nothing.

Inciting Incident

In January 2022, shortly after finishing TGCF, my brain decided to be contrarian. Thus, Argument A was born.

Argument A

It is disrespectful to oneself for Hua Cheng to live solely for Xie Lian. Life is one's own, yet he lives it for someone else. In response, I thought of a counterargument: If not for Xie Lian, Hua Cheng would have died long ago, so his life is essentially a debt owed to Xie Lian. We call this rebuttal Argument A’. In response to Argument A’, I also thought of a refutation, which, long story short, can be summed with the analogy: just because a firefighter saved you in a fire doesn't mean you have to live your life for them. Argument A still stands.

(my ultimate goal is not to defend any given argument but to find a coherent explanation, so I will be repeatedly countering my own arguments.)

Argument B

In May 2022, my friend T, after hearing Argument A, said that although she hasn't read TGCF, she watched a Chinese video essay of a character named Kimimaro in Naruto (which I haven't seen), which she believes closely resembles Hua Cheng's character core. I have transcribed and translated the video script:

【After a battle, [Kimimaro] didn't know why he was alive until he saw a flower blooming in a weed-filled swamp. Kimimaro suddenly became angry: "Why does it bloom here where no one can see?" He wanted to destroy the flower, just as he wanted to destroy himself. Then, a voice came from behind: "Living doesn’t always have to have meaning, but continuing to live might allow you to find something meaningful. Just like you found that flower, I found you." The speaker was, of course, Orochimaru, a friend of orphans. In the pale fog, Kimimaro's world suddenly became colorful.】

From then on, Kimimaro began to live for Orochimaru. However, Orochimaru seems to be a villain. Later, during a fight with the main characters, one of them called Gaara commented:

【"Have you been brainwashed? So shallow."】

Kimimaro didn't think so.

【At that time, he had no family, no goals, only the despair of not knowing why he should live. It was Orochimaru who gave him hope and dreams. Even if the end of that dream was destruction, at least, he had lived for it. Kimimaro, merging with his bones, burst out of the darkness, roaring: 'It's not brainwashing!” On the brink of death, he climbed out of despair time and again, desperately wanting to live, because he fought for the most important person to him, his own dream. The giant bone spear grew larger in Gaara's eyes, at such a distance, survival was impossible. But blood dripped onto a white flower, and Kimimaro's already crippled body stopped forever in the final moment.】

My friend T argued, just like Kimimaro, Hua Cheng considered Xie Lian as his dream, which was his own choice, and that means he respected himself immensely. We will call this Argument B.

Argument B reminds me of a scene in The Great Gatsby: Gatsby stands on his dock, reaching for the green light on Daisy's dock across the water. The green light symbolized Daisy and also represented Gatsby's American Dream. Gatsby didn't actually love Daisy; he loved what Daisy represented, a dream, and Gatsby was "great" because he was celebrated for his pursuit of that dream. Similarly, Kimimaro didn't love Orochimaru, because for him, Orochimaru had transcended being just a person and had become his dream.

There are two problems with Argument B.

First Problem:

Argument B erodes Hua Cheng's love for Xie Lian. If Hua Cheng purely considers Xie Lian a dream, then love loses any explanatory power. Just as Xie Lian can still persist in his dream of saving the common people despite feeling repulsed by then and wanting to destroy the world, so can Hua Cheng pursue the dream of Xie Lian without loving him. This narrative leaves no room for love as an explanatory variable.

Second Problem:

Argument B positions the relationship between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian on unequal ground. Usually, when we say someone is our dream, we refer to a concept or an object, like your dream of getting into Harvard. When a person becomes a dream, it seems to disrupt the balance of grouping people with people and objects with objects, turning Xie Lian into a "prize" for achieving a dream, objectifying him. Or perhaps "objectifying" isn't the right word here, perhaps the connotation of "conceptualizing" or "idolizing" would sound better. In the original text, Hua Cheng says two seemingly contradictory statements, "(I am willing to be your stepping stone,) but I know you won't" and "to fall from grace is also you." It seems contradictory because if Hua Cheng really knows "you won't [become the next white-clothed calamity]", then "to fall from grace" is no longer you. (ah, this sounded much more coherent in Chinese. i don't have access to the English version so I can only provide my own translations.) Upon reflection, these two statements aren't contradictory. The solution is to define "you" as Xie Lian's true self, a noun, and any other 'type of you' is just an adjective, so even a 'calamity' you is just a phase, a temporary adjective, which will eventually pass, and Xie Lian will ultimately return to his true self, the 'you'. Therefore, Hua Cheng is willing to wait forever and is willing to ignore the wishes of calamity!Lian to clear the path and kill Lang Ying for him because he knows when Xie Lian returns to his true self, he will regret it, he "knows you won't [really become the next white-clothed calamity]," he believes in the Xie Lian in his mind, the noun, the concept, even if real-time evidence contradicts it (calamity!Lian). He has faith in his god, he has faith that his dream is worth it. This belief in a dream is based on a form of idolisation. And this idolisation, whether for Hua Cheng or Xie Lian, is unfair. The unfairness to Hua Cheng comes from the absolute power that Xie Lian holds over him as his god; the unfairness to Xie Lian comes from his "objectification". Argument B places their relationship on unequal footing.

There are three solutions to the second problem.

The first solution is proposed by the YouTuber @杨初九 (we will call her 99) in an email correspondence on February 15, 2023. The basic idea is that although Xie Lian has power over Hua Cheng, he does not abuse it. Here is the translation of the email content:

"I think it's true, their relationship is indeed unequal, and this would typically be problematic in most couples, but it isn't for me. The reason is Xie Lian. Xie Lian treats Hua Cheng with immense respect, with careful consideration, almost to the point of being humble. If Xie Lian were just a bit more excessive, this couple wouldn't work. So, to me, it feels like they both step back and maintain an unspoken understanding. For Xie Lian, it's: 'I know I am very important to San Lang, so I must not use this as leverage, I step back to give him more space.' This subtle balance of mutual unspoken understanding between them is absolutely brilliant!"

I agree. To supplement, I would like to add two quotes from canon:

【With a sword in one hand and a flower in the other, it symbolizes "possessing the power to destroy the world, yet retains a heart that cherishes flowers."】

【Humans ascend to become gods, and gods, relative to humans, are predecessors, mentors, and guiding lights, but not masters.】

Therefore, even though Xie Lian has absolute power, he never abuses it.

The second solution is from a thread I came across by @/danylanzhou on twi. To put it simply, Hua Cheng has to be the dom. If he were the bottom, the relationship would be unequal. Being the dom is the only way he can balance the power difference between him and Xie Lian, though my friend T finds this argument absurd.

The third solution addresses Xie Lian's "objectification" and comes from one of my own metas: 【As Xie Lian's most devoted follower, he never expects any reciprocation from Xie Lian. Although Xie Lian is his dream, he does not care whether this dream can be 'realized.' He does not let his satisfaction depend on any external rewards that his god might provide, although naturally, he would be happier if Xie Lian acknowledged him. The main point is that he does not use this as his motivation. Instead, he treats Xie Lian well and strives to make himself strong to protect his god.】 This means that Hua Cheng does not view Xie Lian as a "prize" for achieving his dream, because he does not covet the result of realizing this dream. Rather, it's the sweet care he shows in the process of pursuing his dream that fulfills his self-realization.

Then, the second issue is resolved, and Argument B is left with only the first issue: Where has the love gone?

@碧影沉潭（we will call her Cat）commented: "You think that only dreams stem from an independent self, while love is dependent and considerate of others. So, you feel that if Hua Cheng loves Xie Lian because he sees him as a dream, then he has his own independent personality, he is not pitiable, not a lapdog. But if Hua Cheng sees him as a dream because he loves Xie Lian, then he is a lapdog. But following this train of thought, I think, doesn't that mean love = lack of self? (hmmm...) It's like saying only individual dreams are personal, while love is necessarily dependent. If love doesn’t consider the other's feelings, then it's not dependent, which objectifies the other, and that’s not true love..."

Almost, not exactly what I think, but Cat summarized the main dispute between Argument A and Argument B.

Argument C

Setting aside all discussions about dreams, Hua Cheng's autonomous choice is not a dream. His autonomous choice is to love Xie Lian as a person.

On one hand, Argument C resolves the issue in Argument A of Hua Cheng lacking his own personhood, and on the other hand, it resolves the issue in Argument B of lacking love.

However, Argument C has a fatal flaw. Because the epilogue states, "This is a story about dreams," because Xie Lian says, "If you don’t know how to continue living, then consider me as your reason to live," because it is written in the text, "This person truly regards him as a god" (Chapter 179), because Hua Cheng says, "If your dream is to save the common people, my dream is solely you," because there is a line, "And I will forever be your most devoted believer," and so many other mentions of dreams and godhood. This is a book about dreams. You can't avoid talking about dreams.

Argument D

Still in February 2023, Cat said, the underlying logic is that both 'dreams' and 'love' produce dopamine in the brain. You are happy pursuing dreams, and you are happy loving someone. Being happy is all that matters.

99 responds in an email: 【Having studied psychology in my undergraduate years, I didn't believe in love either, and supported the idea that love just boils down to chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. The mystery of love is gone in an instant, and humans seem to become a machine. Now I might have a new perspective, that is, chemical substances might just be the physical manifestations of the thing we call love, but they are not love itself. Love is a more complex thing, beyond physical manifestations, and there must be immeasurable mental representations.】

I concur to the end of not settling with a reductionist approach and calling it a day. Otherwise, all human behaviour could technically just be reduced to neurotransmitters in the brain and hormones in the body etc. etc., which would make this debate meaningless. I believe we should work with the phenomenology of these things, which is to say, the names we give and the labels we attach to them: 'dream' and 'love'.

Argument E

Perhaps the author feels that on the surface level, dreams and love are the same thing. Dream = Love.

The problem with Argument E: A person can persevere with their dream without love, and can love someone without making them their dream. I do not think that dreams and love can be conflated at the surface level.

Argument F

@那面鏡紙 (we will call her Mirror) suggests that there is a causal relationship between love and dreams. Because Xie Lian loves the common people, he wants to save the common people. Because Hua Cheng loves Xie Lian, Xie Lian becomes his dream. Hua Cheng fell in love with Xie Lian first, and therefore made him his dream.

This is refuted similarly to Argument E. Additionally, I think there was a clear trigger for Hua Cheng to consider Xie Lian as his dream, which is the moment when Xie Lian said, "If you don't know how to continue living, then live for me." It was from that moment that Hua Cheng made up his mind to give his life to Xie Lian, and to regard Xie Lian as his dream. This choice was not driven by his love for Xie Lian; he was just over ten years old at that time, and I don't believe he understood love. Otherwise, we would be treading dangerous territory ahem. Even if Argument F reverses the causality, saying that Hua Cheng loved Xie Lian because he considered him as a dream first, I still don’t think it's valid, and it's even less persuasive than the earlier statement that love leads to the dream.

Here's an interlude of a translated conversation with Mirror from 2023, consider it a quick summary of the content discussed so far.

Me: Argument A states that it's disrespectful to oneself for Hua Cheng to live his life for Xie Lian, as it's his own life.

Me: The rebuttal to Argument A says that it's justified because he owes it to him.

Me: But Argument A stands its ground because if say a firefighter saves your life it doesn't necessitate that you have to live for them.

Mirror: thanks for simplifying lol

Me: lol Then Argument B states that it's not about Hua Cheng disrespecting himself, but about Hua Cheng having the 【autonomy to choose】 Xie Lian as his 【dream】, which actually shows Hua Cheng's self-respect. So B basically refutes A.

Me: Argument C says that it indeed is Hua Cheng's autonomous choice, but what he chooses is not to treat Xie Lian as a dream but to 【love him as a person】.

Me: The rebuttal to Argument C says that the entire story emphasizes dreams, so we can't ignore the notion of dreams.

Mirror: Yes, but I think the two of you have different definitions of dreams.

Mirror: Cat started off talking about C, but you are talking about B

Me: Right, because I feel that there are too many classic quotes in this book revolving around dreams, so you can't dismiss this concept.

Mirror: Is this what you mean? You think that Hua Cheng didn't know what to live for, and Xie Lian just so happened to say that line, so Hua Cheng naturally took him as the reason to live, he was obeying an order and too lazy to find a real reason to live, and it's not that Hua Cheng truly fell in love with Xie Lian, because the reasons for love aren't sufficient.

Me: No, it's not like that.

Me: It's that Hua Cheng was in so much pain that he wanted to die, then Xie Lian said you can consider me the meaning of your life, so Hua Cheng made the 【autonomous choice】 to treat Xie Lian as his dream (it's not that he was obeying an order nor was he lazy, it's because he 【autonomously chose】). Hua Cheng's pain hasn't disappeared, but now, because of the existence of his dream, he has the 【courage】 to face this pain, he has the sense of purpose to continue struggling and living on.

Me: But I don't think dreams and love are the same thing.

Mirror: well no sht cuz they have different names

The Most Reasonable Explanation

Ultimately, I believe the most reasonable explanation is inspired by Argument G.

Argument G

Mirror proposed the parallel development theory. Dreams and love are two separately developing entities.

Indeed, dreams and love are two distinct qualities. These two do not have a direct sequence or causality between them but develop along two different trajectories. However, these trajectories are not entirely parallel as Argument G claims; they intersect and twist together. This makes it easy to confuse Hua Cheng's feelings for Xie Lian, defining Hua Cheng's dream as an extreme form of love. The term 'obsession' in English, is originally 执念, but when translated from English back to Chinese, becomes '痴迷' (infatuation). Infatuation implies affection, while obsession does not. Obsession could even be hatred. He Xuan has an obsession with Shi Wudu, but there is no infatuation, no affection. Similarly, love is love, having a dream does not necessarily involve love, and a dream is a dream. A dream is not an extreme form of love.

Thus, Hua Cheng's feelings for Xie Lian have two threads.

First, the dream.

This is a story about dreams, a story between a believer and his god. "If you don't know how to keep living, then live for me." "Your Highness! Did you hear that? In my heart, you are a god! The only god, the true god! Did you hear?" "It doesn't necessarily matter if others are disappointed, I don't care. But for some people, just the existence of someone in this world is hope itself." "To die in battle for you is my greatest honor." "If your dream is to save the common people, then my dream is only you." "I will forever be your most devoted believer."

Hua Cheng's dream began with "live for me." From then on, he would fight for Xie Lian, die for him, shout out for him in the scene of a hundred swords piercing the heart to empathetically bear his pain together, he would go through ten years of hell in Mount Tonglu, digging out his own eyes for Xie Lian because he didn't want to hurt mortals, because saving them was Xie Lian's dream.

Second, love.

A stunning glimpse, a sinking through hundreds of lifetimes. "To witness the one you love being trampled upon and being powerless to help. To realize that there's nothing you can do, that is the most painful thing in the world." "I have a beloved still in this world." "When I like something, nothing else can fit in my heart, I will always remember." "My beloved is a brave noble of golden branches and jade leaves."

When Hong Hong'er first laid eyes on Xie Lian, he was attracted by his beauty and elegance, entranced, and fell off the city wall. But that wasn't love, it was a child's admiration for a gege. Or perhaps, as @baiwu-jinji said (translated):

BWJJ: I think Hua Cheng initially fell for Xie Lian perhaps because of Xie Lian's... maternal gentleness. That's why later on he treats Xie Lian as a wife, right? The search for a wife in men often has traces of an idealized imagination of their mothers, haha.

Me: hahaha maternal gentleness

BWJJ: I really think so! Like that scene where Hua Cheng falls from the city wall and Xie Lian catches him, just like a mom cradling her baby, even that posture I feel is like many statues where Mary is holding baby Jesus, hohoho. And then later in the palace, Hua Cheng throws himself into Xie Lian's arms and cries, it's that kind of seeking maternal comfort feeling.

Later on, Xie Lian rescued Hong'er from Qi Rong's sack, and when Mei Nianqing called him a star of calamity that brings misfortune to all, Xie Lian told him, "You're not, you're not," and Hua Cheng was moved by his gentleness. Hua Cheng witnessed Xie Lian's kindness, witnessed his bravery. Ultimately, the land of tenderness became his enlightenment; it turns out he harboured such improper thoughts towards his god! But this was not because he made Xie Lian his dream, it was because Xie Lian was Xie Lian.

Because there are two threads, this explains some of Hua Cheng's seemingly contradictory actions.

Regarding the respect of wishes. Love is about complying with the other's wishes. Thus, when Xie Lian said not to kneel, Hua Cheng stood to worship. But dreams are selfish. The dream is Hua Cheng insisting on calling him "Your Highness" even after Xie Lian has clearly asked him not to, because "Your Highness is always Your Highness", the dream is Hua Cheng telling Lang Qianqiu the truth about the massacre of the Gilded Banquet, no matter how much Xie Lian struggled to keep it a secret.

Regarding gods and humans. Humans are to be loved. Hua Cheng can see Xie Lian's complexity, treating him as a person of flesh and blood; this is the component of love. In the course of the discussion, many people tried to convince me that Hua Cheng's feelings for Xie Lian are (only) love, emphasizing that Hua Cheng always sees Xie Lian as a person. Yes, that's correct, but in Hua Cheng's heart, Xie Lian is also a god, the only god, the one true god. This is the component of the dream.

Love is about sinking helplessly, it's uncontrollable, it's the loss of free will; but a dream, that's a conscious choice, a pursuit in one's life, the creation of meaning to make sense of one's suffering, the hope for living. Treating someone as a dream, deifying that person, doesn't make Hua Cheng and Xie Lian's relationship unequal. Xie Lian has "the power to destroy the world without losing the heart to cherish flowers," he "is a predecessor, a mentor, a beacon, but not a master," and Hua Cheng does not consider Xie Lian a mere "reward." Hua Cheng's love gives Xie Lian the space to be human. Dreams and love cannot be simplified down to dopamine on a basic level, and on the phenomenal level, they are also not the same thing. Moreover, dreams and love do not have a direct causal relationship; one can have dreams without love, and one can have love without treating the loved one as a dream – these are two independent threads, but they are closely connected, intertwined together.

and with that, i conclude this discussion in 2024.

#hualian #hua cheng #xie lian #tgcf #heaven official's blessing

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lordmartiya · 3 months

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@mlbfemslashfebruary My (late) entry for day 14, dedicated to the weirdly fascinating pairing of Lila and Marinette. Set early in season 4, here's the first half of "Trust and Secrets Are to Be Treasured".

It was bad enough for Marinette that she had a cold, and had to skip school and the date with Luka. But to have Lila, of all people, bring her the homework? Get in her room while she couldn’t keep her away from her secrets?

“You do realize your mom will kill me if I try anything funny, right?” Lila said, almost as if she had read her mind. Or just her expression. “You say anything, and she demonstrates on me how a Monk’s Spade technique can be applied to a baker’s spatula.”

“How do you know about that?” Marinette asked, worried about how much her worst school enemy knew about her family.

“She did it on live television during the debacle with Jagged Stone, and then I looked up what Chinese weapon resembles a spatula the most. But let’s talk about sweeter things… Like these bugie I’ve brought you. They’re my favorite bakery good.”

For a moment, Marinette feared the food the other one was offering her was poisoned. Then her mind translated the food’s name, and she realized Lila Rossi was literally feeding her lies, and admitted she liked them.

“Seriously?” she asked as she involuntarily chuckled. “That was worse than Chat Noir’s puns.”

“Thank you. Though I suspect you’d like my truth better.” was Lila’s reply as she produced an envelope. “Here I have a handwritten list of all the false claims I’ve made and other bullshit I’ve pulled since I came to Paris, including a few things you would never suspect, and an USB drive with evidence, all to be used as needed.”

“What?! What are you trying to pull?”

“I’ve simply realized I fucked up. Deeply. Did you know I collaborated with the big bad butterfly man willingly, twice? All knowing I can easily take the idiot down and “save Paris”… And then that jackass’ stunt in New York nearly destroyed the world, twice. And I found out he got Shanghai destroyed by accident, though Ladybug fixed that. That’s when I realized the mess I’m getting myself into just to get back at the spotted near-nudist” once again Marinette cringed at her costume being practically painted on “and panicked. I was this close turning my hair in a wig and abusing embassy resources to create myself a few fake identities when I realized there was a better way, just give my leash to someone I can trust not to abuse it. That is, you.”

Marinette blinked as she processed the situation. To quote Chloé it was utterly ridiculous… But it made sense. It was even flattering that Lila trusted her so much. Still, she had to ask something.

“Why do you hate Ladybug so much?”

“Because she nearly destroyed me out of jealousy. I mean, remember my famous interview? I expected Alya to hold on it for a few days and then verify it with Ladybug, allowing me to reveal I had pranked the entire school… And then It was published on the same day. How many chances that Alya could be stupid enough to publish it without checking? And I even helped her getting some information I had stumbled upon and she was looking after on that day… Right as I was flirting with Adrien. Clearly she saw it and went to Alya to confirm it and then humiliate me, only for Adrien’s reaction not being what she expected and changing her plans.”

Marinette had almost no answer to that, not after what she had done with Kagami out of jealousy. Except that “Alya becomes an idiot whenever Ladybug is involved. Enough she thought Chloé was her even after she was saved by Ladybug on live television.”

“And how was she supposed to know it wasn’t a Lucky Charm decoy? At the time it was still plausible. But nevermind that. I hope I’m proven wrong… And trust you to keep the secret until it becomes necessary to stop me.”

“Ohhh…Kay. I’ll do it. What about Adrien?”

“There’s billions of people on this planet, I’m not going to obsess on one of them that already has a girlfriend. I think I already told you that once. And speaking of them… I’ve heard Andrè the Ice Cream Man let you choose your own magic ice cream, and it was orange and green like my favorite outfit?”

At that, Marinette blushed. She also swore to get even with whoever told Lila about that.

#miraculous ladybug #lilanette #miraculous #lila rossi #miraculous lb #ladybug #tales of ladybug and chat noir #marinette dupain cheng #mlbfemslashfebruary

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the-monkey-ruler · 2 months

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What exactly happens after someone dies? I was reading and some say that the soul wanders around for a few days (a limited number of days) and then goes to the underworld to be judged? or how does the process work? And what aspects intervene so that soul can reincarnate again? This also happens with the souls of the Yaoguai, and animals? I remember that it is possible for someone to put the soul of the dead into a recently deceased so that they can live again in one of they first jttw chapters, but I don't remember why this action was done or what king of the underworld.

What exactly happens after someone dies?

In most cases that I'm familiar with they go straight to the underworld to wait their judgment. From there depending on their karma they are either stay in the underworld to live out their good/bad karma or they are going right into their next life.

I was reading and some say that the soul wanders around for a few days (a limited number of days) and then goes to the underworld to be judged?

Maybe. I know some other legends do have it that spirits linger but there isn't really a set time that I'm familiar with or anything. The best I can say is that they do eventually go to the underworld.

or how does the process work?

Depends on what you are reading really. Sometimes there are certain details depending on which story or even which dynasty you are looking at. Reincarnation was from Buddhism that integrated more into Chinese mythos as time went on so kinda depends if you are looking at a story with more Buddhist mythos or Daoist mythos scattered within.

And what aspects intervene so that soul can reincarnate again?

I'm not sure what you mean by aspects but I guess maybe you mean their karma? What I've always been told is that if they have horrible karma or committed a certain crime they will be punished in one of the many hells, depending which crimes you commit. You stay down there as long as you need to but once your karma is evened out then you are permitted to go back into the reincarnation cycle. And even then you might be turned into an animal and still have to work your way up to human. Or you might go straight to human-life and just live a horrible life already planned out.

There are circumstances of people just not having enough karma in general to be humans and thus get turned into animals in their next life, but they still have to work to be a human. It's not always about karma but perhaps some other force that has them revert back to animal/plant form to regain energy if they have been hurt in their human life.

This also happens with the souls of the Yaoguai, and animals?

Everything has a spirit, from the rocks to the plants to the animals to humans. Or rather qi/spirit energy. However, it is best to translate it but all things are made from the same thing so to speak. Spirits or Soul are made from this energy and either gain energy or loose energy depending on where they are in the reincarnation wheel. Humans have the most energy and thus are prime for cultivation since they were able to make it to the human domain. Animals, plants, and maybe even objects have less energy and thus need to gain good karma so they can be reborn as humans one day so to speak. They are there because they need to heal/gain energy for when they move on to the next life.

Yaoguai are animals, plants, or objects that skip the step to gather good karma and be reborn as humans, rather, than cultivating in their animal/objects stage and gaining a human-form. Their goals are to be as human as possible and in a lot of cases immortal as well due to their extensive training. Since they are technically cheating the system this is considered bad and they have to be either killed or turned back into their natural form to live out the rest of their life.

I remember that it is possible for someone to put the soul of the dead into a recently deceased so that they can live again in one of they first jttw chapters, but I don't remember why this action was done or what king of the underworld.

Funny enough this was considered a mistake on Yama's part as he looks at the paperwork and sees that this particular soul wasn't supposed to die yet. Due to this paperwork error, he does give this soul a second chance and brings them back from the dead, however, the book does state that it won't tell how since this is an unusual circumstance and it shouldn't be repeated again.

King Yama was the one to give the order after seeing that their lives were supposed to be much longer in the book of life and death. This was a successful transfer, most likely as it had the blessing and order of the ten kings and thus wouldn't be considered the same as possession since the Dead Wife wasn't possessing the dead body but rather being gifted the body of the deceased to live out the rest of her moral life. It is a strange circumstance but it is possible is there is some errors in the death-processing system.

Would suggest you look at yourself what implies a 'ghost' and see how different legends have an effect on what it could mean.

#anon ask #anonymous #anon #ask #journey to the west #jttw #Chinese mythos

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hunxi-after-hours · 1 year

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Hi Hunxi!!🥰 I just finished the first The Poppy War book and wanted to ask your opinion about something. Tho I loved it — exhilarating action, drug-fueled avatar assumption, rekindled ancestral rage and all — one thing bothered me a lot. As a native Chinese speaker (tho studying in the states, yay) I instinctively recognized much of the historical analogues + literary references, which made it all the more offputting to see place and people names like Nikara, Khurdalain, Venka & Kesegi. (1/2)

These names seem insanely incongruous with the Chinese landscape depicted, especially when contrasted with the 蘇妲己, 姜子牙, 哪吒, Fang Runin and other more obviously/culturally mandarin ones. Some of them (ex. Nikara and Kesegi) even sound vaguely Japanese which is so ironic given the history the book draws on. I’m not trying to nitpick but they literally kept pulling me out of the reading experience. Just wondered whether you had any thoughts on that? Hope you have a great 2023💕 (2/2)

hi anon! this is a fascinating question, because R.F. Kuang's deliberate decision to make the naming conventions in The Poppy War trilogy inconsistent (i.e. rather than all Mandarin-derived, or all made up) actually has a lot of layers of thought and craft to it on a metafictional level that tbh I never thought of until this ask??

Kuang has made no secret of the fact that the trilogy places 20th century Chinese history in a Song Dynasty-esque setting; her characters have direct counterparts in Chinese history, literature, and culture (most notably, Fang Runin being a reception of Mao Zedong). that being said, despite the fairly obvious expies in the world of The Poppy War (Nikara for China, Hesperia for the UK, etc etc), the series still remains fundamentally secondary-world fantasy

the genre distinction is important here: R.F. Kuang deliberately chose to write secondary-world fantasy, not historical fantasy. maybe she didn't want to deal with research and historical accuracy (unlikely, given her methodology in Babel). maybe she wanted to dig her hands into Song Dynasty aesthetics (extremely valid of her). maybe she wanted to be inspired by history but not bound to it, as remixing historical events into secondary-world fantasy reads differently from rewriting historical events and changing the course of history. maybe situating the violence and the war crimes of the narrative in a secondary world was critical for her writing process (she has, I believe, mentioned in interviews how in many ways The Poppy War was born out of her negotiating generational trauma and academic research). I don't know for sure! she might've said so in an interview, maybe not. the point is, The Poppy War trilogy is secondary-world fantasy, and that matters on a fictional and metafictional level

if you'll let me, er, quote myself here for a bit:

Particularly in the Chinese tradition, there are three thousand years of thinkers, philosophers, essayists, poets, novelists, and satirists that contributed to the culture. There are schools of thought that metastasize and spill over into squabbling branches that snipe at each other for subsequent centuries; there are critics and scholars and libraries full of annotations buried in intertextual commentary. Faced with this unwieldy, ponderous inheritance, each author working with the Chinese tradition has to choose—how much of the tradition will they lay claim to, to reimagine and reinvent?

Language, history, and culture are so inextricably bound together in any culture or civilization that borrowing a single element from the Chinese tradition—worldbuilding, literary references, character names, genre tropes—necessarily involves translation both figurative and literal. On a linguistic level, how do you render terms that lack an English counterpart? On a cultural level, how do you do justice to the tiny details and customs that form the fabric of a familiar-unfamiliar world? For secondary-world silkpunk like Ken Liu’s epic trilogy The Dandelion Dynasty, Liu files off the serial numbers on ancient Chinese schools of thought, pitting Ruism, Daoism, and Legalism against each other under different names (cheekily, he renames the Confucius figure “Kon Fiji” and comments on his stuffy rigidity), while Chinese poems such as Liu Bang’s 《大风歌》 Da Feng Ge / Song of Great Wind cameo in his text as the lyrics of “mournful old Cocru folk tune[s].” Layered through translation and one degree removed from their original sources, Liu’s reception of the Chinese tradition takes the historical Chu-Han contention as a springboard into a secondary-world fantasy epic that veers sharply away from its historical analog by the second book.

In contrast, R.F. Kuang calls directly upon classical thinkers and characters by name in The Poppy War. Though likewise set in a fantastic secondary world, The Poppy War sees its protagonists studying recognizable Chinese classical thinkers like Zhuangzi and Sunzi in school, while legendary figures like Su Daji and Jiang Ziya from 《封神演义》 Feng Shen Yan Yi / Investiture of the Gods (a 16th century Ming Dynasty novel) walk the earth as unspeakably powerful shamans. In doing so, Kuang angles her trilogy towards an explosive confrontation between history and modernity, science and magic, the rigidity of a traditional past and the mutability of a devastating future.

so! while The Poppy War clearly and lovingly borrows aspects of its worldbuilding and construction from Chinese history, literature, and culture, I think R.F. Kuang’s decisions to break away from, for lack of better phrasing, making the world “too authentically Chinese” in the series is critical to the text’s role as a diasporic reception of Chinese history, literature, and culture. the things that are familiar are familiar. the things that are unfamiliar are deliberately unfamiliar. the story may resemble Chinese history, but it is not Chinese history

being able to make this distinction frees Kuang to do much more exploration in the series, both in terms of following the implications of intensely destructive, magical drug-powered warfare as well as experimenting with “what if” scenarios that are absent from or adjacent to actual 20th century Chinese history. I don’t think it’s an accident that the characters and names that are most distinctively Chinese (Su Daji, Jiang Ziya, and to an extent Nezha) are the ones that are most associated with history, tradition, an older world order. meanwhile, characters with “less Chinese” names (Chen Kitay and Fang Runin, since in no conceivable variation of Chinese I know would “Runin” ever be abbreviated as “Rin” yet here we are) are the young generation, the receivers and remixers and destroyers and recreators of the very traditional culture that Kuang borrows for her worldbuilding. Kitay, Rin, and Nezha in the narrative inherit the Chinese literary and historical tradition, and over the course of the trilogy, they rewrite it in blood as Nikara limps into the modern day

I also think it’s worthwhile to point out that Kuang’s Nikara — fantasy China if you will — is very conscious of its diversity and colorism. colorism deeply shapes Rin’s childhood and resentment towards the world around her; other characters like Altan Trengsin and Chaghan Suren are deliberately and distinctively not Han. in diversifying the naming of The Poppy War world, Kuang destabilizes the image of a monolithic, Han-only (fantasy) China in a powerfully receptive, diasporic, and postcolonial manner

all of which is to say: I agree with you! the naming definitely pulled me out of the narrative when I was reading it too, but I think the choice to do so was intentional on R.F. Kuang’s part, since examining the naming as a level of worldbuilding and craft yields a lot of metafictional nuance and value

#hunxi book tag #the poppy war trilogy #R.F. Kuang

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stirringwinds · 1 year

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Hi! I saw some of your hws China thoughts lately and they were really fun to read, it's always especially interesting to see takes from other sino related people 😆 Do you think Manchu(ria) would be a separate figure (from Wang Yao) during the Qing dynasty, or do you think the Jurchen tribes would've just been absorbed along the way? People always have such different takes on it so I'm curious to know your thoughts.

hey, thanks for this question! :-) i do enjoy thinking about yao's characterisation, even more so in relation to other nations. this is my view of it:

i'm personally inclined to see manchuria as a separate personification during the qing dynasty (though i admittedly haven't developed a detailed idea of their character/personality). i've previously written scenes in the aftermath of the opium wars where yao was at the signing of the treaty of nanking (for example)—but i see it as a situation where yao is rather being ordered around by manchuria (and the humans think yao is a qing official). my thought process is that while the manchu rulers may have adopted certain aspects of han chinese culture to bolster their legitimacy with the wider population, they still held real power, retained certain customs, influenced chinese dressing (the cheongsam) and even tried imposing some of their cultural norms on the entire population. the queue hairstyle for men, and less successfully, the attempt to ban foot-binding for women (that's one thing where i'm "really? you guys should've already cut that bullshit out centuries ago" @ the ancestors 😔). so, to me this is very far from a situation where a nation dies.

in my view of chinese history, there have been times when yao, as an empire, (like rome or persia) has ended or absorbed other nations. the southwards expansion of the han dynasty, for example: the disappearance of the "baiyue" tribes, through conquest, settlers and sinicisation (the totality of that cultural conquest always struck me—that we don't even know what they called themselves today). the conquest of vietnam is one instance where that didn't happen—and even more so for qing china, where manchuria is the one calling the shots. and i don't see a nation adopting some aspects of another nation's culture = death precisely because all cultures change. there's that joke classicists have made about "did the romans conquer greece, or did the greeks conquer rome?" given how much they adopted greek culture aesthetics but we wouldn't say "the romans were not a distinct cultural entity" either. naturally, there are big differences between the qing and roman empires, but most empires weren't above adopting some customs of those they conquered—it's indeed often how successful incorporation worked.

it's also about characterisation and narrative choices for me too; imo yao saw the opium wars as a doubled humiliation. being subject to the "western barbarians"—while being ruled by other "barbarians"; yao's pride is one thing that is stubborn, and he'll cling to the shreds of it. my immediate thought is that if manchuria isn't a separate character, a lot of this narrative loses the force; when it comes to how i'd translate the history into interactions between all these eldritch beings. this is especially when i'm thinking of the subsequent anti-qing movements; and how folks like sun yat-sen laid the blame for china's downfall at the hands of western empires on the manchu ruling dynasty and even characterised them as a colonial force ultimately hobbling china's progress (even if of course, irl history is more complex and there were manchu officials/figures who supported republicanism and the end of the regime). so in this context, to me it's best represented as a multi-layered power struggle between yao, manchuria and of course all the other western nations.

so overall, while history can always be interpreted and translated into hetalia many ways, and i wouldn't say there's a definitive "right" or "wrong" criteria when translating it into whether a hetalia personification dies or endures— personally, it makes the most sense for me if manchuria is a separate character during this era for all the abovementioned reasons. nations after all, aren't states, with all that strict international legal criteria about what a "legitimate" state is—but imagined communities. hetalia personifications are that idea extended further— given flesh and incarnated by the dreams, beliefs and imagination of humans: they're fluid and ambiguous—but also resilient, because it's not so easy to kill an idea.

#hetalia #long post #hws china #hws manchuria #hope that makes sense!#this whole ask is right in the family history and i liked thinking about it

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writingwife-83 · 6 months

Text

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks for the tag @bg-sparrow this looks like fun! ☺️

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

260 (and rapidly going up, because there’s a bunch more one shots that are currently still in a multi-chapter and I’m working on posting them individually)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,528,192 😵‍💫

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly BBC Sherlock and Star Wars. But I’ve also written a fic for The Hunger Games, Loki show, Grantchester, Miss Scarlet and the Duke, and Wonder Woman.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

(I’m not gonna include the fic that technically comes in 4th place because that’s the multi-chapter of one shots which will eventually be deleted completely from AO3 once all the one shots have their own post)

I Told You So (sherlolly)

Alliance (reylo)

Half Agony, Half Hope (sherlolly)

Zephyr (sherlolly)

For Science (sherlolly)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Absolutely! There was only one time in my life that I said I couldn’t routinely do that, and that was at the height of popularity for I Told You So. I was posting it on AO3 and ffnet, and also posting the links on here, and I was getting feedback on all three platforms. Which was amazing! But it meant it was a bit much to keep up with. Other than that, I feel commenters deserve a response since they’re giving us writers the thing we want most. ❤️

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

For reylo probably I’m Ready to be Heartbroken and for sherlolly I think it’s a tie between You’re Dying and Congratulations, By The Way.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I truly couldn’t say because I’ve written sooo many with happy endings that Idk what would be happiest 😆

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I’ve gotten the very occasional slightly rude comment over the years, but not what I’d consider hate.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I never have and I don’t plan to. It’s just not something I want to do. And besides I think there’s always more than enough of that for those who want it. If anything, what tends to be lacking is a large selection of fics without that type of content.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Only think I’ve ever done is a Star Wars AU one shot for sherlolly called Balance.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, and I don’t know if I’d even want to know because that would be such a huge amount of stress and I’d probably be very limited in what I could do about it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I’m honored to say that I have! There might be one for I Told You So on ffnet… I can’t remember. But definitely on AO3 there’s a Russian translation of Zephyr and a Chinese translation of For Science

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, indeed! I’ve co-written two fics with @thisisartbylexie. Alliance for reylo, and Half Agony, Half Hope for sherlolly. Coincidence that those are also in my top 5 kudos? I think not.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

That’s super hard but if for no other reason than the duration of my creating, I guess I’d have to say sherlolly.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I don’t think I have an answer for this because the 2 WIP I have at the moment are ones I am definitely in the process of finishing.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think dialogue and internal descriptions for the character. And I guess describing things in a way that help the reader easily hear/see the scene in their mind, since that’s a comment I’ve gotten many times over the years.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Action and mystery. Ironic, given my fandoms lol. I am always so uncomfortable describing action scenes or situations where there’s a lot going on and it’s fast paced. And I absolutely would struggle if I had to come up with a mystery plot line!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

What an interesting question! I’m trying to think if I’ve ever even done this in a fic. 🤔 But I think it’s a great thing to include if the plot calls for it! If I did I’d ideally want to check with someone who is fluent in that language just to make sure I’m not being inaccurate.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

BBC Sherlock (for sherlolly) going on 10 years ago 🥹

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

I genuinely don’t think I can choose. Sometimes I try to when I get this question, but it really is a toss up between a few fics. There’s not one particular one that stands out from the others so much that I’d call it my favorite. But some of my faves are definitely in that list of my top kudos fics that I listed in question 4.

I’ll tag @musicprincess1990 @englandsgray @love-yellow-door @strawberrypatty and whoever else sees this post and feels like participating!

#20 questions for fic writers #this was fun!

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i-bring-crack · 4 months

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I would like to ask you some things about about solo leveling. Mainly liu zhigang and solo leveling ragnarok. I am aware that slr dropped his backstory but I don’t know where to find it and would greatly appreciate it if you were to direct me. It would also be amazing if you could tell me the chapter but its very unnecessary. I wanted to ask you this because of how informed you seem on the topic and I really like liu zhigang as a character. This is just a request and not necessary at all.

Thank you very much for listening to me,

Someone desperate for crumbs of their favorite sl character

Anything to feed desperate Liu Zhiganng fans such as myself! of course he was only revealed just recentlym along with his backstory on chapter 204 and onwards. Im still in the process of translating those chapters so i will give in only some rought translations over his backstory if you dont mind.

Sorry for the delay as well!

'He devoted his whole life to nothingness.' Liu Zhigang. China's Proud Six-Star Hunter. 'I've never learned to back down.'

China does not follow the world's standard hunter rating, but uses its own rating system. The more stars in front of the rank, the better the hunter, and the five-star hunters were the highest of their rank.

Except for one person. Liu Zhigang was the only one classified as an out-of-class hunter and was called a six-star hunter. Of course, the treatment was also on a different level from the five-stars. But no one could argue with his exceptional treatment. He had the power to do it. He was the true savior of the People's Republic of China, who reliably defended China in the midst of the chaotic upheaval. But. ‘...... So this time, too, I will not back down.'

Liu Zhigang was hiding a secret that none of the Chinese people knew, who boast a population of more than 1 billion people after a cataclysmic upheaval, know... "Do you think I, Liu Zhigang, will be eaten by the heart demon in me!"

He had been battling the Godhead of Itarim alone for more than two years. In order not to be eaten up on the mind.

* * *

After awakening as a Hunter, it didn't take long for Liu Zhigang to realize that the power he was given was different from others. Awakening, a mysterious power that suddenly arose within the body. He's heard from other Hunters that awakening their magic gives them a tremendous sense of uplift. But Liu Zhigang was different. ‘......It's still not enough.'

The moment the magic came, the sensation he felt was surprisingly empty. When people are so hungry, they end up not even feeling hungry. But when someone suddenly puts a piece of bread in his mouth, his hungry stomach begins to realize the terrible hunger that he had forgotten. 'I want power, I want power! More power!' And the intense hunger that Liu Zhigang felt, It would be exactly the same hunger that Thomas Andre, a national-level hunter had felt in his previous life. Unfortunately, Liu Zhigang was a little less fortunate than Thomas Andre. Someone had sensed the intense hunger he had been craving for and had come to him in the void of his heart, as if he had been waiting for it.

[Do you want power?]

‘......!’

[I'll give it to you if you want, a more powerful force.] Liu Zhigang couldn't help but be stunned. A mysterious voice whispered in his ear like a demon, and he knew exactly what was going on. 'Who are you?'

[What does the name matter, the important thing is that your vessel is big enough to accept me.]

‘......!’

Whoa!

In the first place, the voice didn't ask Liu Zhigang for permission. Suddenly, a new power from outer space began to flow into Liu Zhigang's empty vessel. At the same time, the hunger in his heart began to be satisfied, like a lie. But. There is no such thing as power without a price.

[So be willing to obey.]

‘......!’ Just like that, Liu Zhigang was awakened and reborn as an Apostle of Itarim.

‘...... Don't be ridiculous!' But there was something that even Itarim's godhead hadn't predicted. Liu Zhigang was a warrior who had walked the path of "nothingness" all his life. It was different from Thomas Andre, who had lived his whole life as a bastard by means of violence, and he had devoted his whole life to the Tao by placing the Tao at the center of his heart.

'I don't believe in God! My mind is all mine!"

[......!]

Liu Zhigang, who had been embracing the power of his entire body, gritted his teeth and managed to endure the forced submission. But the Itarim's godhead was not something a mere human could handle.

[Worship.]

[Praise.]

[Your faith.......]

'Shut up! Shut up! No matter who you are! I am...... I!'

Liu Zhigang instinctively resisted the desire to prostrate himself before the great power and worship it, gritting his teeth. A headache that makes you feel like your head is going to break. A stream of blood dripped down the corner of his clenched mouth. But at the same time, the emotions that surged up on Liu Zhigang's face were none other than "humiliation" and "self-righteousness."

Boom!

‘...... I am Liu Zhigang!'

[.......]

As a result, Liu Zhigang was not contaminated by Itarim's deity after all. No, it was still being polluted by the moment, but Liu Zhigang managed to resist the power. With the two long swords he had cultivated all his life, he entered the dungeon and began to kill the demons at will. In this way, he unleashed the power of the Itarim to take over his body relentlessly.

'Taeguk'

'Ewa Grafting'

"Competent Steelmaking" It was good to call it anything. As a way to keep his sanity, Liu Zhigang found the answer in the martial arts he had practiced all his life. Of course, the realm of the unity of knowledge and action cannot be attained by anyone, but Liu Zhigang desperately succeeded in it.

Aaa Kyaaaa

As he walked, countless beasts bleed to death. Liu Zhigang reversed the direction of the Itarim power flowing into him, constantly erupting out of his body. Guild? The forces that respect and follow you? He didn't have the energy to take it. It's been like that for two years. During that time, Liu Zhigang wandered restlessly across China like a madman, unleashing the power of Itarim against the demons.

Instead of accepting the overwhelming godhead within, he bounced it out. Even in my sleep, I couldn't let my guard down. Even in his dreams, he had to fight with Simma, who was looking for the moment to reveal his flaws. A thorough lonely road. Awful poisoning. In the process, he gained the sincere respect and support of a billion Chinese people and the ostentatious prestige of a six-star hunter, but it wasn't a good thing for him. He had only one interest. 'I will not be devoured by Simma, who wants to control my mind!'

That's how Liu Zhigang did. He had found a place full of demons and had become a monster wandering aimlessly. In particular, rather than a dungeon where many interests were intertwined, a dangerously neglected field-type dungeon was the perfect battlefield for him to run rampant to his heart's content. Even if it exists in another country beyond its borders. 'Siddharth Bachchan has been put in and there is still a field that he hasn't been able to capture?'

Liu Zhigang willingly crossed the border. Even India's S-rank Hunters have entered the 'Lok Taq Field'.

- Liu Zhigang invaded the Indian border alone!

-No, why-!

Naturally, the aftermath was by no means small. The Chinese government, which was well aware of his wanderlust, had done everything it could to prevent this from happening. Before the hunt was over, Liu Zhigang found the next hunting spot in the immediate vicinity, and took care of everything else. After all, there were countless hunting grounds in the vast Chinese mainland, and there were plenty of fields where Liu Zhigang could fight frantically until all his magic was exhausted. But this time, he couldn't stop it.

- Liu Zhigang finally crossed the border!

- Why didn't you stop him?

- You know what it means for a six-star hunter in China to cross the border!

- It turns into a diplomatic issue!

Chinese public opinion was seething. Many people had seen him crossing the border without permission, and the fact quickly reached the ears of the Indian government. This time, public opinion in India was also ignited.

- China's strongest hunter invaded India ?!

- Is China really going to war with India?

- There must be a Chinese conspiracy aimed at this from the beginning!

-What does it mean that there is a field with Siddharth Bachchan at the end of Liu Zhigang's path? Could it be that Liu Zhigang is tired of slaughtering demons and is aiming for Siddharth Bachchan!

-If China doesn't want war, then Liu Zhigang, who invaded India, right now...!

In fact, this was a situation that no one wanted. Of course, in the Internet community, there were some thoughtless people who were talking nonsense about taking over India on this occasion, but they were in the minority. Especially for the Chinese government, which tried to stop his progress at all costs on the border, it was almost frustrating. Liu Zhigang, the stubborn old man who had walked the path of martial arts all his life, was not a man who could be persuaded at all. In the end, they had no choice but to post Liu Zhigang's remarks on the Internet, which were recorded by the staff guarding the border.

- Are they worn as ornaments? Shall I take it upon myself?

Creepy.

At Liu Zhigang's words, the Chinese hunters who were trying to stop him from crossing the border hid their necks with thoughtful faces. The Loktak field, which Siddharth Bachchan is also struggling with, is getting bigger and bigger. And right above that is China. Apart from that, Liu Zhigang had his own cause. Before crossing the border, he fixed his sharp gaze on the camera and raised his voice.

- Tell the people clearly! I, Liu Zhigang, am not confident that I can prevent the accident that Siddharth Bachchan failed to prevent, so I will go to help him from now on. If you're not happy about that, you'll go take it upon yourself to catch it.

Of course, it was an obvious excuse and an excuse. He just wanted to get into the field where Siddharth Bachchan was struggling.

‘.....This is my limit.' After more than two years of holding on, he was growing weary of it. He had to find stronger demons as soon as possible, and unleash all his evil power to control his heart at all times.

"It really works." So in the end, Liu Zhigang had run into him. Someone who would be worth putting all your energy into. It's a sinister evil spirit with sinister steam blazing all over your body.

"Uh-huh! I can't believe there was such a strong demon beast! I'm glad you came here!" .

Greed.

[My lord]

Greed, who had been engaged in a skirmish with him, shouted at the late arrival of Suho. And at that moment, Liu Zhigang and Su Ho's eyes, which were far away from each other, met in the air. Liu Zhigang glared at Su Ho and snarled fiercely.

"What do you have to do with this evil spirit?"

“.......” He is in trouble. Suho's expression hardened at the sound of his murderous voice. It was Chinese.

------------------------------------------------

Hopefullly this settles a lot of his character here, and although the rest chapters go into detail (205 onwards) its just a bit sprinkled here and there and those chapters are sadly hidden behind a paywall (but dont worry ill still translate them since i have the chaps saved.) so far this is what ive gathered.

Liu Zhigang has practiced the way of the dao and swordsmanship for a long time.

Zhigang is only a six star hunter how due to his lost contact with the ruler.

Zhigang actually gets along with Thomas but with Siddhart he doesnt seem to spend time with him as much due to his personality(whic is a plot point in the current events of the series)

Zhigang has a strong mental capability. And has resisted the possesion of the Itarim the longest.

#solo leveling #Liu Zhigang #solo leveling ragnarok #chapter 204 draft #solo leveling ragnarok spoilers

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tofufei · 2 years

Text

Little Mushroom Audio Drama Trailer [ENG SUB]

Synposis from 猫耳FM:

Do not go gentle into that good night, do not peacefully surrender to extermination. Earth's magnetic field disappeared, mutated organisms invaded, the end of the world is near. A little mushroom from the Abyss makes its way into a human base on the search for the spore it has lost, and runs into The Arbiter Lu Feng. One human, one not, they meet at the end of the world and get to know each other, and together they walk into a future in which the only thing certain is uncertainty…

Ask anyone who has listened to Little Mushroom's audio drama and it is almost certain that they will tell you that it was one of the best produced audio dramas they have ever had the pleasure to experience.

You can find the whole thing - with English subs even - on 猫耳FM/missevan, so if this piece of media has ever been on your radar (and even if it hasn't!), let this be the sign that you should join this pit.

I haven't seen any translation of the trailer, so I took a stab at it. Excuse the violation of the maximum recommended CPS count, but there wasn’t much I could do about it... you might need to pause the video at times :P

Some notes on this translation under the cut.

Because I am both lazy and hate articulating my thoughts, this will not so much be me providing much actual insight on translation choices than just some disjointed notes on the back-translation process of Dylan Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle into that good night".

An overly literal back-translation of the Chinese poem:

不要温和地走入那个良夜。// Do not go gentle into that good night, 我们应在日暮之时燃烧。// We should burn in the hour the sun sets, 怒斥、怒斥光阴的消逝。// Rage, rage at the vanishing of time and light. 尽管智者深知黑暗终将到来。// Even if the wise are fully aware that darkness will inevitably come. 尽管他们的话语无法再迸发出闪电。// Even if their words are unable to make lightning burst forth again. 不要温和地走入那个良夜。// Do not go gentle into that good night. 在这悲哀的山巅。// Here, on the sorrowful mountaintop. 请用你的眼泪诅咒我、祝福我。// Please curse me, bless me with your tears. 不要温和地走入那个良夜。// Do not go gentle into that good night.

Notes on the Chinese translation of the poem:

The refrains (“Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”) basically map one to one to the English original, which makes it easily recognizable as Dylan Thomas’ poem

This makes the other changes feel very much like deliberate choices on the author's part, even if they do leave me puzzled

No references to the gendered figures (wise men, my father)

In the second verse, 尽管 is repeated for emphasis where it wasn’t in English

Why is the line 在这悲哀的山巅 so much shorter than all others? The original English poem has 10 syllables per line, but the Chinese one is…just whatever. No discernible structure here, only vibes

山巅 (mountaintop) where in the English it’s an unspecified “height” and can be read metaphorically, while here it is very much a physical location. (I mean, of course it could be read metaphorically as well in Chinese but there are many other words you could have chosen that do not have "mountain" in them.) Might or might not have been a deliberate choice referencing [spoiler] Base

I thought it prudent to back-translate the poem since there are some changes and they aren’t that minor.

Back-Translation process:

Pretended the original didn’t exist and translated it off the Chinese alone

Compared it to the original and modified it so that it still stayed 95% faithful to the Chinese while calling back to the original

Tried to keep the ABA rhyme scheme and felt powerful af when I managed to make the 2nd line in all the tercets rhyme

Squished or stretched the lines into 10 syllables, while still keeping as close to both Chinese and English as possible

Despair. Because at this point I should maybe just have used the original poem or gone for a freer translation, what am I even trying so hard for when this comes nowhere close at all to the original

What I ended up using in the subs of the AD Trailer, ABA ryhme scheme, 10 syllables per line if you squint*

不要温和地走入那个良夜。 // Do not go gentle into that good night. 我们应在日暮之时燃烧。 // We ought to burn the hour nightfall nears. 怒斥、怒斥光阴的消逝。// Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 尽管智者深知黑暗终将到来。 // Though the wise know darkness will bring its blight. 尽管他们的话语无法再迸发出闪电。 // Though their words no longer fork lightning fierce. 不要温和地走入那个良夜。 // Do not go gentle into that good night. 在这悲哀的山巅。// Here, on top of sorrowful mountain's height. 请用你的眼泪诅咒我、祝福我。 // Please, I ask, curse me, bless me with your tears. 不要温和地走入那个良夜。// Do not go gentle into that good night.

*and pronounce hour with 2 syllables

Some thoughts on translation choices, apparently:

Actually, the back-translating went quite smoothly and it really is just one line that unexpectedly turned out harder than expected. Or maybe I made it harder than it should have been, who knows. I might be prone to overthinking. It's 尽管智者深知黑暗终将到来 which I ultimately rendered as "Though the wise know darkness will bring its blight." Here, I ended up straying quite far from both Chinese and the original. This is also where I have to thank both @hardwareabstractionlayer and @fwoopersongs for talking translation choices with me.

Some other options here would have been "Though the wise know at last dark will alight" / "Though the wise know dark will come as it might" / "Though the wise know in the end dark is right", but none of them felt fitting. Either the line was not quite proper english, or it failed to convey the the inevitability of 终将到来, or it felt too much like a pale imitation of the original etc etc.

Usually, I am the kind of person who translates rather literally and doesn't take too many liberties. Here though, "blight" simply works absolutely amazing in the context of Little Mushroom. Credit for that suggestion goes to hal, who nailed two major story settings with it, despite not knowing much about the book except for whatever 2am thoughts I fling at her. You see, after the Earth's magnetic field disappeared, humans had to build an artificial magnetic field to protect themselves from deadly cosmic radiation and infected organisms. Due to the magnetic field, an aurora dances all over the globe. The moment that light vanishes, it means the magnetic field did too, which signifies the end of mankind. Dark *does* literally bring its blight. It's brilliant, really.

#mushroomposting #trying to vibe in this corner but I am just wiggling sadly #little mushroom #小蘑菇 #fei translates #also pls appreciate all the matching text effects. that took me way too many hours of my life

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the-bjd-community-confess · 1 year

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Long post but there’s been a lot of confessions lately about not being able to use Taobao. As a regular Taobao user wanted to give some input as to why people are perceiving the attitude of “you just need to figure it out” from current Taobao users and also why you might not really be missing out on much/trade offs of using it vs dealers.

First off in my experience Taobao really isn’t something you can handhold because there really isn’t a cut and dry solution to everything. If someone did make a very detailed end all be all comprehensive Taobao guide it would likely be research paper size and 95% of it would be troubleshooting as in “Trying b, c or d when a isn’t working”. The kicker is after trying all that it still might not work for you for whatever reason or it may work one time but not every time. It’s why looking at a few Taobao guides online isn’t enough and why a lot of people are still very confused even after giving it a few genuine tries.

Even using proxies like Bhiner isn’t easy as there are many potential issues such as:

-proxies don’t translate pictures and sometimes sellers only put text and buying details on pictures;

-some words don’t translate well or translate from Chinese at all;

-you have to research the correct word or phrase to find what you are looking for in Chinese to search the site as you can’t search in English and searching in or browsing in the proxy gives funky results at times;

-not everything on the site is even available for purchase at the time you might want to buy; sometimes the link won’t work in the proxy and you need to convert it (there are mobile, desktop and international link versions);

- sometimes the proxy changes word selections to tiny ass pictures and you have to put everything in the cart in various combinations (think color, size, version) on the agent site just to see what it is;

Among many other issues that may arise including figuring out is this really a new artist/shop or a new recaster. There is a lot of do-it-yourself legwork that is involved even when you are familiar with to using the site.

So if you are looking for this “ah-ha” moment it’s never really going to come. I’ve been using it for over a year and have made over 50 purchases with agents. You are just over a period of time going to get better at troubleshooting and being scrappy/resourceful enough to find what you need when things aren’t working. Even knowing the name of the clothing or wig maker or having a picture for image searching I STILL often enough have to spend hours searching Twitter, Weibo, etc to find their Taobao due to their store being named something different than the name they go by or Taobao giving me generic reverse image results.

I wouldn’t call anyone stupid or lazy for not being able to figure it. However, before you even think you might be missing out on much there are trade offs/disadvantages to using Taobao and shopping agents over dealers that I’ve noticed.

Unless you like organizing GOs for friends or you make a lot of doll item purchases yourself monthly there’s no real savings/advantage in using Taobao. Nearly everything you could want on there you can get from agents/dealers like New Cl0ver, Alice, Me0w Marts, Spac3BJD, D0llection or Moonlight (Moonlight if you are really desperate). I’d say the only things you are missing out on are custom wig commissions and buying small random items for pennys like doll hairnets, face masks and wig caps.

Plus you still have layaway with dealers vs coming out of pocket $50-250 per outfit with a proxy/agent. Just a note though the Chinese selling process is typically deposit and final payment. Some agents allow you to do deposit only initially but I would not trust them reminding you when to pay (because not all artists send out payment reminders). If you don’t pay on time you lose your money and the item (it’s happened to a friend of mine using spreenow). Dealers like Moonlight and SpaceBJD will send emails when the final payment is due and other dealers like Alice and New Clover allow layaway.

Not to mention some of those dealers have free shipping over a certain amount. With shopping agents you have to buy enough items to make international shipping worth it and within a certain period as they all need to come in around the same time to avoid item storage charges. Overall the dealer markup (with the exception of Moonlight) pretty much evens out the international shipping cost if you were just to get that one item with a proxy/shopping agent.

Most importantly though you have someone who is more inclined to help if there are any quality issues when you buy from dealers. Most shopping agents things come as-is, they take pictures for verification/storage purposes only and no returns. Bhiner took literally a picture of sunglasses with a lens popped out and didn’t flag as an issue (granted it was $2 so I wasn’t about to fight them over it). They’re not as inclined to work through issues since they only get paid on orders made and have ZERO relationship with the artist. Some shopping agents like 42agent actually charge you more if they have to write you a ton of messages about your item or work through issues. Superbuy actually makes you manually type in to confirm “no refunds” before they confirm your order in a lot of cases, if you don’t agree they reject the order.

Finally most shopping agents if they end up refunding you for whatever reason the amount doesn’t go back into your PayPal, it will go into your wallet on their site and you will have to pay a fee to get them to transfer it back to your PayPal account. The expectation is you will buy more with them rather than just getting the refund. Bhiner doesn’t even accept PayPal on items over $350 (if you buy a doll,etc) you have to do a bank transfer to their Chinese bank account. Btw it took me 4 days to figure out back and forth with them as they kept giving me the wrong bank info and thankfully transferwise won’t let you send money unless they can verify the receiving account or I would have been out of $600.

Not saying all this to discourage anyone from learning how to use Taobao. But just to give a reality check on what using it is like in the day to day and it isn’t easy even for the people who do use it regularly. I still use dealers often too when I want layaway or when I’m not buying much at that time.

Overall just saying all this cause it really isn’t Taobao users not wanting to share info and gatekeep. I know of others, including myself, who are more than happy to find a link for you or even share them without being asked. However it would be way too much work for someone to write some comprehensive guide when it might not even work for you and we are over here stumbling around ourselves still. The blind leading the slightly less blind at that point. This is why people who know how to use Taobao are more inclined to help if they know you are able to do some legwork too.

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #Community Confessions #Taobao #BJD Dealers #Shopping Services

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meikuree · 6 months

Text

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @chocochipbiscuit! thanks for the opportunity to ramble at length

tagging @acerinky @bothzangetsus @pretty-rage-machine @metamatar @leksaa90 @rose-gardens @liesmyth @themorikelife and anyone else who wants to join in! (template at the end)

answers below:

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

about 45, across my two accounts

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

~130,000 words across > 3.5 years

3. what fandoms do you write for?

used to be monofannish, but I began branching out after joining the multifandom exchanges scene (aka BFE).

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

sidewalk reinventions [nimona (2023), gen]

the runaround [SNK, pieck/yelena]

blood to gold [SNK, pieck/hange]

more than a grain of sand [SNK, mikasa/annie]

small foreign faction [SNK, pieck/yelena]

a different picture emerges when I sort these by top fics from 5 different fandoms:

sidewalk reinventions [nimona (2023), gen]

the runaround [SNK, pieck/yelena]

the crimson cusp of evening [JJK, gojo/geto]

docile, unkind, fraught [the locked tomb, harrowhark/ianthe]

the sun coming out [squid game, jiyeong/saebyeok]

5. do you respond to comments?

in short: yes, but it can take months (or - I'm looking at years now) due to real life.

sometimes I prefer to 'reply' by reading and commenting on commenters' fic in turn since it's easier for me to gush about others' writing than my own; this is also a partly a matter of self-consciousness, because it (personally!) feels narcissistic for me to talk on about my own fic in comments.

6. what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

plenty of fic I write is angsty, but I usually mix even total darkness with slants of hope or more often ambiguity. you rarely get a pure distillation of atmospheres or tones in my fic, by design or not. (I'm not super married to labels like 'angst' or fluff either because they’re convenient but can also be limiting and/or simplified boxing-in categories.) the fiercest calm or to walk along the edge probably takes the cake, however.

7. whats the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

the sun coming out.

8. do you get hate on fics?

no, luckily! i'm an unknown name but it also means I rarely attract unwanted attention.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

for sure. if you know my side account (which isn't much of a secret), you'll know exactly what kind. I'm transparent and unashamed of my id and like to revel in it. let's just say I like power dynamics, complicated and unconventional queer relationships, and older women.

10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written?

no :(

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I'm aware of!

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, and it's always flattering. <3 both my pieck/hange fics got translated into chinese: 从鲜血到黄金(blood to gold) and 和缓的修复(the slow mending).

I've translated Chinese fic into english and knowing what the translation process is like from the opposite direction, I'd consider my fic a translator's nightmare, so I'm grateful if anyone makes the attempt. I’ve read the translations and been amazed by the artistry, the linguistic agility in them. the translator was really skilled at carried across the nuances of the original text and adapted to differences in linguistic norms.

this might be cringe, but to quote an example (from the slow mending):

the original:

A fully uncharted ground. There’s no script for this, for a reconciliation between an erstwhile commander and a Warrior. But a meaningfulness to it all the same, perhaps: that here, at the world’s end, the ruins of everything they know, they can still reinvent themselves, and what they mean to each other—not as a clean slate, not as a forgettance of the past, but a desire to make something new of its wreckage.

[…]

Out upon the rudderless horizon, the sun is flaring like a wildfire, a thousand years’ worth of fury braided into its light. But they might survive this, after all: Hange feels hopeful, for the first time in a while.

and the translations:

这是一片全新之地。关于帕拉迪亚的指挥官与马莱战士的和解，完全没有既定的剧本。但这一切也许都有意义：在这里，在世界的尽头，在一切的废墟上，他们仍然可以重塑自己，以及他们对彼此的意义——不是纯白的新地基，不是作为对过去的遗忘，而是在残骸中创造新事物的热切希望。

[…]

在漫无边际的地平线上，太阳像野火般地燃烧着，光线中编入了千年的愤怒。但她们也许都能活下来：这段时间以来的第一次，韩吉感到了希望。

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

no, and I might be open to it if time and energy weren’t limiting factors.

14. whats your all-time favorite ship?

I'm a major multishipper and this is hard to answer. at the moment -- this is cheating because it's a gen relationship, not a ship -- zenin mai & zenin maki.

15. what's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

perhaps my pieck/yelena cosmic horror WIP, and other SNK ones (ymir/historia, pieck/hange) -- I'm not attached much to SNK any more.

16. what are your writing strengths?

i've joked that 80% of comments of my fic will invariably include one of these words: gorgeous, poetic, beautiful. the runners-up are 'incisive' and 'sharp'. this sounds braggy; I'm always flattered, and I'm just listing these because I think those are the immediate data points at hand for my strengths.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

dialogue, immediacy, and uh... this sounds glib, but tropey plots. plot in general. writing anything that cuts to the quick; my style tends to be somewhat repressed. writing long(ish) fic; my longest wordcount stands at 8.8k.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I've done this (for a fic for Zen Cho's Black Water Sister), for Hokkien, Bahasa Melayu, and Manglish. in line with the author’s original choice I avoided giving any glossaries or explanations. plenty of readers in the global south infer the meaning of foreign words/brand in Anglo-American settings all the time, from context. who’s to say the reverse can’t be done? I’m also not a fan of italicising foreign words and try to do the opposite: italicising English words instead. neither do I really enjoy any arguments that foreign media should be localized for Anglo-American palates; I prefer when something is specific to a culture instead of universalised, even if it may come off weird or incomprehensible.

romanisation’s a different matter. I’m fine with romanised dialogue for Malay and Japanese but with Chinese romanised dialogue (via hanyu pinyin) can be harder to parse — I’m fluent in Chinese and used to reading in Hanzi. this changes, of course, with dialects or other writing norms.

in the Chinese media/fiction I’ve read where English dialogue is what’s foreign instead, writers have written English dialogue wholesale (as in, in English words) without translating it into Chinese or translated it into Chinese.

I’m from an ex-British colony in Southeast Asia and how dialogue is conveyed and handled is one of those things that can indicate right away an author’s biases and assumed cultural defaults. even reading fic set in my or other southeast Asian countries by diaspora writers can feel strange if foreign dialogue (among other elements) is Pointed Out and made into an event; I prefer when many things that would be the default in people’s milieu here and simply baked into people’s worldviews can be written and let to pass without comment. in Black Water Sister my one petty comment is that the (Malaysian Chinese-American) main character’s initial cluelessness in Malaysia was jarring (and stereotypical), but I get that that’s part of the premise (and it was handled smoothly after). and of course, the universal bromide applies. no media ever has to cater to my taste, she typed in jest.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

snk/attack on titan.

20. favorite fic you've ever written?

hard to answer because i love most of the ones I've written for multifandom exchanges but some of my favourites are the sun coming out, a map of the broken world, and lantern-black, the pitch of light.

(not a coincidence perhaps that 2 of these were written for @bothzangetsus!)

template:

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

3. what fandoms do you write for?

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

5. do you respond to comments?

6. what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

8. do you get hate on fics?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you've written?

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

14. what's your all-time favorite ship?

15. what's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

16. what are your writing strengths?

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

19. first fandom you wrote for?

20. favorite fic you've ever written?

#meikuree talks #ask game #snk #pikuhan #saebyeong #zenin mai #zenin maki

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