#i know that some chinese words mean different things when written in english (because we don't add the stress in writing)

[iwant-fuitgummi]

new genshin oc!! peizhi, a fluff-fleece goat adeptus from chizhang wall ^^

[feroluce]

On Sampo's name (ALL of his names!)

I feel like everyone who's a fan knows the meaning of Sampo's full name by now- the sampo was a legendary item that could magically make endless supplies of gold, flour, and salt, all priceless items at the time! So it works perfectly for a scammer businessman like Sampo. ☆

"Koski" is the Finnish word for "water rapids" which might seem kinda random but actually makes sense for him, since Aha and the Masked Fools are also referred to with water terms:

This kind of analogy isn't specific to only Aha and the Masked Fools, but it does still tie them together. So water rapids fits perfectly! Sampo wants to stir the pot! He likes to shake things around and spice things up! He's taking that stagnant pool and turning it into water rapids! It would actually explain his ridiculous hair color, too; a dark blue wave tipped with white foam haha

EDIT: an amazing contribution from @ricochetlovebombs, who heard it from hoyolab user Rattaboy. If you interpret his first and last name together, instead of separately like I did, you would get something like "money river."

In other words, Sampo's name literally means CASH FLOW SKXJMDMDMD

What I really wanted to talk about is his drag alias name, though, Brughel Poisson, because to me that's where it gets really interesting.

So like in the English version, Sampo goes by Brughel Poisson when he's in disguise. Searching for just "Brughel" itself doesn't seem to get you much at first: a Flemish and Dutch Renaissance painter named Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who was famous for his landscapes and peasant scenery, especially Hunters in the Snow and The Blue Cloak.

He's referred to as "the Elder" because he had a son also named Pieter Brueghel (the Younger), and he began a long line of painters, all named Brueghel. Some of them did original work, and many of them created reproductions of the Elder's art to sell. The Elder was also famous as a printmaker. All of this is hilarious when you remember that Sampo is an infamous counterfeiter and has sold a relic called the Parallel Universe Printer JSKZJSMD

There is also something called Brueghel's Syndrome, named after one of Brueghel's paintings called De Gaper, which pictured a man yawning widely. It's a condition that causes the mouth to open and gape uncontrollably, twisting a person's countenance into a distorted mask of their usual face.

Tumblr doesn't have a way of censoring pics like twitter, so for the sake of the medically squeamish, I'm just showing De Gaper here. But if you look up Brueghel's Syndrome, you can find pictures of actual patients, some of whom really do make faces resembling Aha's comedy and tragedy masks!

In the Chinese and Japanese versions, his alias last name is a lot more silly- In those, "Sampo" is phonetically written as "san-bo" and "san-po." And in disguise, his last names are phonetically written as... "Bo-san" and "Po-san." The Chinese version uses different tones, but still. This smug asshole seriously just decided to write his own name backwards and called it a day NDMKXMDMD

In the English version, Poisson itself is kind of a reused Hoyo asset- it's also the name of Navia's fishing village in Genshin Impact. Which is a really silly name for a village, because it literally just means "fish" in French smzjxkdkdk but!

Again, more water imagery. And in English, if something is suspicious, we say that it's "fishy," which is perhaps the most fitting association yet for someone as shady as Sampo ☆

And for a good while I thought that was the only connection. But then. My beloved @hydrachea, who is an actual native French speaker, dropped this on me right after April Fool's Day:

Poisson is literally the word you use to pull an April Fool's prank.

[dark-raven-feathers]

Ok. I don't really know if this will make any sense but I have a bone to pick with how most Asian countries teach English.

Because here's the thing: English is an alphabet. Sounds obvious, right? Most Asian languages then, are written down in a logographic form, which just means characters representing entire concepts and words.

So with that information, tell me. How do you think people, specifically the native speakers, learn to write down these logographies? I'm a bilingual speaker (and a shoddy writer, there's a reason for this I'll get to) of Chinese and English. I know how you learn the logographies: rote memorization. You write each symbol down, over and over again, until it's seared into the flesh of your brain.

Now, remember how I said I'm a shoddy writer in Chinese? Because I learned how to write English first, I'm not used to having to memorize every single word, individually. English, as an alphabet, just means you have to memorize each of the different clauses and special cases that make up the words, and even then you can mostly sound out what you're writing.

So then we come back to my initial problem with teaching English in Asia. Because the native speakers are used to just memorizing all the words and leaving it that, they assume the same applies to English. It does not. You cannot apply the logic used for logographic systems to an alphabet, because it doesn't work. You can't just memorize that the letter A makes an /ah/ sound, because the letter A could also make an /Ae/ sound, or even a nasally /ah/ sound instead of a breathy one. You can't just memorize that 'I before E except after C' because this rule doesn't always apply. It does not work.

Yet this is how the majority of English is taught in Asian schools. Learn to say 'Hello, good morning', and then repeat the sentence five times over until you have it committed to memory. What will you do then, when someone says 'Hey! Morning!'? Do you know that it means the same thing? No, because you didn't memorize it.

Oh, some may tell you that 'noo I learned it perfectly in school! Look, I can write English and speak it fine now!'. But that's after repeated exposure to the language.

And this is in no way trying to make problems with accents or blooming creoles/pidgins like Singlish. This is trying to make a problem with how English, an alphabet language, is taught in a logographic-logic format.

[solkatti]

orv hangul and hanja for names, ■■, and modifiers

here’s a compilation of names/modifiers/■■ for the main characters of orv in korean! for those curious or who would like a resource of some kind.

admittedly my korean is quite bad. i mean that in the sense that i have a lot of trouble reading and cannot speak it (i’m. learning.) but i cross checked through the namuwiki, what i could parse of the novel in korean, and someone who actually speaks it, though she hasn’t read orv. so if there are any corrections you notice please let me know.

please note that this post will contain major spoilers for orv up until the ending of the epilogue. if you have not finished the entire novel yet, close tumblr and finish orv, even if only one person watches this world.

here we go!

i lied. put your clothes back on. i’m going to talk about the korean language

A note on how Korean names work for those not familiar: there are two alphabets in Korean, hangul and hanja. Hangul is the phonetic alphabet of Korean, created to improve literacy in the 1440s. Hanja is character based, derived from Chinese. When you write something in hanja, you can always spell it out in hangul. If you’re familiar with Japanese kanji ↔ hiragana, it’s kind of like that. (한글이 더 낫습니다!! 만세!!!) Hanja isn’t widely used nowadays.

How this relates to ORV is that, when you name someone, you select hanja characters. Hanja is more specific written language than hangul, because words just sound the same sometimes. With a phonetic alphabet, like the roman alphabet that we use, you figure out the meaning from context. (ie. read/reed/rede).

For an example in Korean: (독자) dok-ja.  When you write or say 독자, without context, you wouldn’t be able to tell if it means  ‘single son’(獨dok子ja), or  ‘reader’(讀者dokja). Hence the fight between lee sookyung and kdj’s father selecting what hanja would comprise kdj’s name. Though both sound the same, they have different meanings. You can have two names spelled with the same hangul, but mean completely different things in hanja. This will impact character names!

ok now here’s the post for real

KIM DOKJA

name:

김독자(hanja: 金獨子) 'Single Son', as opposed to (讀者/독자) 'Reader'   

김/kim is the most common last name in all of korea. it means gold, but it was probably selected more because of how common it is rather than any meaning.

■■:

永遠(영원) "Eternity"

終章(마지막 챕터) "Final Chapter"

modifiers/also known as:

The Ugliest King - 가장 못생긴 왕

Demon King of Salvation - 구원의 마왕

Watcher of Light and Darkness - 빛과 어둠의 감시자

Prisoner of the Constrictive Headband  - 긴고아의 죄수

Oldest Dream - 가장 오래된 꿈

bonus:

‘idiot’ - 멍청이

‘fourth wall’ - 제4의 벽

‘nebula’ - 성운

kim dokja’s company - 김독자 컴퍼니

HAN SOOYOUNG

name:

한수영

we don’t know the hanja for hsy yet. anything i write here would be speculation, but the possible options are pretty funny. might make a post on that later

■■:

끝나지 않는 이야기 "Never Ending Story"

modifiers/also known as:

Black Flame Empress - 흑염여제(黑炎女帝)

Black Flame Demon Ruler - 흑염마황(黑炎魔皇)

Director of the False Last Act - (거짓 종막의 연출가)

Architect of the False Last Act - (거짓 종막의 설계자)

bonus:

i thinks this is somewhat common knowledge within the orv community now, but when you type in korean on an english keyboard, the placement of letters doesn’t correspond to the same sound you would make in english, but instead based on korean standard use.

so when you type out tls123, you wouldn’t get ㅌㄹㅅ123, but you get 신123(’god123’)

han sooyoung’s party - 한수영 파티

YOO JOONGHYUK

name

유중혁(hanja: 劉衆赫)

yoo/유/劉/‘kill’

joong/중/衆/‘crowd (of people)

hyuk/혁/赫/’bright/radiant'

modifiers/also known as :

Supreme King - 패왕

Iron Blood Supreme King - 파천검희

Puppet of the Oldest Dream - 위대한 모략

Secretive Plotter - 은밀한 모략가

The Great Plotter - 위대한 모략

bonus:

‘sunfish’ - 개복치

kkoma/’runt’ - 꼬마

thanks for re(de/ad/ed)ing! i’m interested in doing the rest of the characters too but i figured these three would be the heaviest hitters. please feel free to add on anything else, i’m also interested!

[tapwrites]

Using Other Languages in Prose

When a character speaks words from another language, it can be difficult to know how to represent that in the prose. Let's look at various ways of handling this.

The first thing is to figure out what language the narrator is theoretically speaking in. Say for example the book is written in English. The narrator could be a Chinese person, who only speaks Chinese. So then the conceit is that the entire book has been "translated" into English, so that the English reader can understand it.

If then a character in that story speaks Chinese, that too would be "translated" in the same way and end up as English text. Because that's how everything else Chinese is being handled within the book.

Now, what happens if a character speaks a language the narrator doesn't understand? How should that be handled?

Now a Spanish character appears and speaks in their native tongue. This is different from the language the narrator speaks, so it shouldn't simply be translated.

Ana waved and spoke excitedly in a foreign language, presumably Spanish.

You could write it like this, with the narrator not even quoting what was said, because they don't even know how to parse out the words.

Correct (and incorrect?) translations provided by Google Translate. 😅

"¡Hola!" she called across the airport. "¡Es un placer conocerte finalmente!"

Or you could quote what was said entirely. If the language isn't the same as the translated language--in this case English--then it will still come across as being a different language.

In this case English and Spanish both use the Latin alphabet, so the reader can have some sense of what the dialogue sounds like, even if they don't understand what it means. They may even be able to guess at what some of it means, if there are words that are similar in their language.

If the language uses different characters--for example Japanese vs English--you could use the regular Japanese here.

"あなたの母はどこですか?" Hana said.

Though unless the reader can read that language, they won't be able to "hear" what the character says. But there are ways of writing that can still be phonetically sounded out by the reader, even if they don't understand the language.

For example, Japanese has "hiragana" and "katakana" characters which represent sounds, and can be used to sound out English words for Japanese readers. And we can use something called "romaji" to sound out Japanese words for English readers.

"Anata no haha wa dokodesu ka?" Hana said.

You may need to do something similar for things like complex names whose pronunciation is not easy to figure out from the spelling.

She laughed. "No no, my name is Siobhan. Say it with me--Shiv... awn." Greg did his best to say it back to her. Siobhan shrugged and clapped him on the shoulder. "Close enough I guess... Graaaig!" she said, saying his name strangely in jest.

Something else to remember is, if the reader can read that language themselves, they won't have the feeling of being unable to understand what was said, as the narrator or viewpoint character does.

So if you don't want to the reader to be able to understand the dialogue at all, just narrate that another language was spoken as before.

Another caveat is, if that other language is English--or whatever the book's language is for the reader--this wouldn't work at all. It would be assumed to spoken in Chinese, the same as everything else. In which case, it may be wiser to not quote the speech, and just narrate that they said something in another language.

If the speaker uses a mixture of a non-understood language and an understood language, you could separate them like this.

Shi looked bewildered. "I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish." "Oh lo siento mucho..." she said. "I've been practising my Mandarin, and then forgot to use it! How are you, Shi?"

Mark the other language using italics, for example. Or perhaps put the dialogue inside brackets?

Though, this would probably get quite confusing if English was used as this other language. Because you've got the "translated" book English, next to the not-translated English that the viewpoint character doesn't understand but is just in italics for some reason.

Not really sure what you could do in this case, but hopefully you'll be able to avoid such a situation in your writing? 😅

This is especially useful when a simple word is thrown in from their mother tongue.

"How long has it been, mi amigo?" Ana said, throwing her arms around him.

Here, it doesn't matter too much if the reader does or does not understand the Spanish--the main meaning of the dialogue is written in English. As in, the character said it in Chinese, which was then "translated" by the narrator for the benefit of the reader.

It can be tricky to talk about this stuff clearly, but when you read it in a book it can be fairly intuitive if done well--honest! 😅

Now what if the viewpoint character--Shi in this case--actually understands Spanish? How could you convey that?

Well it would be very confusing if it was simply "translated" by the book without comment. So what else could we do to indicate it's being spoken in a different language but Shi understands what was meant?

Let's rewrite an earlier example:

"¡Hola!" she called across the airport. "¡Es un placer conocerte finalmente!" (It's a pleasure to finally meet you!)

We could simply give the translation after the dialogue, as if the viewpoint character is adding an editorial note to help the reader out. Then we can mark that in some way--with brackets, or italics. Almost like having subtitles in a film!

However you do this, think about it like you're teaching the reader the rules of how your prose works. "Brackets means the translation of a piece of dialogue." If it's clear enough, they'll catch on pretty quick, and then follow along just fine. But if you use brackets for one thing, just be careful not to use it for other things as well or the rule won't be clear in their minds and intuitive.

In some situations you might even get away with showing something that hints at what was meant--the viewpoint character's thoughts, or something else.

"¡Hola!" she called across the airport. "¡Es un placer conocerte finalmente!" "Nice to finally meet you too!" Shi replied in Chinese with a grin. Ana laughed. "Oh lo siento mucho... I've been practising my Mandarin, and then forgot to use it! How are you, Shi?"

The fact he responded that way indicates that he understands what was said, and that Ana said something similar to "Nice to finally meet you."

The reader can pick up on things like that. But even if they don't, the meaning of what she said isn't vital to the story or anything, so that's probably fine.

This could be done in a different way though. You could simply outright say that the character is speaking in a different language.

"Hello!" she called across the airport, in Spanish. "It's lovely to finally meet you!"

So here the narrator is translating from this new language.

Characters could even be conducting a whole conversation in the other language. But you probably don't want to say over and over again "She said this in Spanish, then he said that in Spanish..."

Shi shifted to Spanish too. He'd been practising, and looked forward to speaking to Ana in her own tongue! "He- Hello? Ana," he said, sheepishly. Ana beamed at him. Shi chuckled, and muddled through another sentence. "My... name is... Shi!"

You could have whole scenes where everyone is mainly speaking Spanish, using this method. Even whole chapters, perhaps! Just remember to let the reader know if you go back into Chinese or any other language. You may want to give them a little reminder here and there too, of what mode they're currently in so they don't get confused.

[szarolina]

Hiii! I’d also like to take up Japanese, but beyond memorizing the Hiragana and Katakana characters I’m not exactly sure how to proceed with vocab and learning Kanji at the same time.

Do you have a plan/sources that you stick to? I also like how your sheets are organized! Did you do them yourself?

Hi there! ♡

First of all I should stress that my experience may be slightly different since I was learning Japanese via university course, with help from a tutor. However, I'll try to answer the best I can.

Get a textbook. It will provide you a structure and introduce to basic grammar points in suitable order, together with kanji and vocabulary. My knowledge isn't very broad here, because we used a specific series in class which is Minna no Nihongo (probably one of, if not The most common one). The significant disadvantage is that it's written entirely in Japanese, so not exactly the best for total beginners who don't have exercises explained by a teacher BUT there's also an English book "Translation and Grammar notes" which, as it says, includes translations of dialogues, texts, example sentences, etc. + vocabulary lists for every chapter alongside very neatly explained grammar points and grammar structures, so I can't stress enough how profitable it is to get it too. Apart from these, I also came across a kanji book. Fortunately, pdfs can be retrieved from google (hit me up if you're interested and have problems with finding them). I've also seen praising reviews of Genki, I looked it through and apparently also have everything what one could expect from a regular textbook, just better divided on different grammar/vocabulary/reading/so on parts than Minna and, unlike MnN, it's written in English.

About kanji and vocab. You probbaly noticed that things like nouns, verbs, adjectives and such are often written with kanji, so it may seem a natural move to learn all these kanji at once while learning vocabulary. I'm saying - not exactly. The good thing is that for the beginning you can write new words only in hiragana (or katakana) memorize them, and later "match" kanji to them (not like in mandarin chinese, yes, i'm looking at you mandarin). For example, you found out that "to study" is べんきょう する (benkyō suru). It's ok to write it this way and later replace "べんきょう" part with kanji (勉強する). We did it at the course, I had been knowing only hiragana writings for maaaany words and only after some time introduced kanji to them, gradually. Otherwise I would end up having to learn hundreds of kanji early on and I'd definitely feel discouraged by that.

About kanji and readings. It somehoew refers to what I wrote above. Don't memorize ALL possible readings of a kanji without using them in practice. For example, according to a dictionary kanji 人 "human, man, person" has five different readings: ジン, ニン, ひと, り, と. It looks like kun/on readings soup. What's a better way? You learnt that "person" (人) is pronounced ひと. Or "population" (人口) is じんこう (see ジン reading here?). Wait, that's better - "doll/puppet" which is にんぎょう (人形). You see my point?

Summing it a bit up, when making a vocabulary list, firstly write words in hiragana/katakana and if you at some point learn a kanji for some of these words, replace them using that kanji. When learning kanji themselves, sure, learn how to write them, stroke by stroke, even memorize their basic meanings, however, if learning pronounciation (readings), add a word, two, three containing these kanji alongside the full reading.

I'm planning to make a kind of masterlist of resources I personally use but for now I can recommend dictionaries like jisho (online) or kanji dictionary (Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary). For extra grammar explanation "Tofugu" and "Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese" websites or a book "Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" are good sources. The sheets you're asking about I made myself. Kanji are from class and featured in Minna books, verbs as well but mostly taken from another Kodansha book. Like I wrote, I'm going to list everything in a separate post so just give me a moment to compile it :)

Sorry for the lenghty answer, not sure if that's what you expected but I hope I helped!

[aventurasdeunatortuga]

Zhijiang

Well so I’m a bit behind on things and there have been some minor mishaps, so I’ll update you on the last week over the course of three posts. Here’s part 1.

On Sunday I was supposed to go from Fenghuang to Lijiang, which involved taking a bus to the train station, taking a train two towns over, and getting a cab to the airport to catch my flight. Needless to say that did not happen.

I underestimated how long the bus ride to the train station was and got on the wrong bus initially which made it all take longer. I got to the train station 1 minute before my train was meant to leave and missed it. At that point my flight was going to leave in 2 hours and I was 90 minutes away by car. I tried to get a cab but no one was willing to take me that far.

I sat on a bench for a while in defeat and then picked myself up and dusted myself off to figure things out. I went to the ticket office at the train station to try to get a new train ticket, the train station employee was super helpful and even though he had no English and my Chinese is rudimentary at best he didn’t give up and kept on trying to help me until we figured out a solution. He found me a train ticket to another destination that wasn’t as close to the airport but the train was leaving immediately and maybe I could figure out a cab from there. I was very grateful for him, I don’t blame people for taking one look at me and saying sorry I can’t help because it really isn’t fair of me to expect them to help me when I don’t speak their language and communicating with mobile translators is very difficult and clunky and time consuming. So I’m very grateful to people who take the time and have the patience to help silly old me.

I made it on the train, and got to the neighboring town of Huaihua. Which was still one town away from where the airport was. At that point my flight was in 90 minutes and I was about an hour away from the airport in optimal conditions. The train station was enormous and when I told the cab driver I was going to the airport he laughed and laughed.

That’s when the real fun started.

He drove me for a couple of minutes, when I asked him how much it would be to go to the airport, and he did finger guns which is definitely not a unit of currency. Then he pulled over on the side of the road and asked which airport I was going to.

I kept repeating again and again which airport I was going to and showing him on the map and showing him the address in Chinese but he was for whatever reason just not understanding at all. Maybe I was pronouncing it wrong or had the wrong Chinese characters written down or I don’t know. Chinese tones always get me, there are 5 different ways to pronounce every vowel sound which completely changes the meaning of the word (shí means is, shì means 10, etc. so pronouncing something wrong totally changes your meaning). We were pulled over for nearly 10 minutes until we figured it out.

Then he drove for about 5 more minutes and decided it was time for a lunch break. So he pulled over and went in a restaurant and ordered food. I mean, he did ask me to join and if I wanted anything. I think I made him mad with my frantic 不要不要！我要去在机场现在！(No! No! I want to go to the airport now!) so he got his order to go and drove off. My flight was at this point leaving in 45 minutes and we were 35 minutes away.

Then we saw the construction workers. The freeway was closed for construction. So we turned around and took a detour. The driver just kept on asking me again and again “为什么你不回说汉语吗” (why don’t you speak Chinese), which I mean, fair question.

We made it to the airport 8 minutes after my flight had left, which, given all the mitigating factors, was actually very impressive.

So there I was in this tiny airport in the town of Zhijiang, which I had never heard of before today. I was the only person in the airport besides the employees and they told me there were no more flights today and asked what my plans were. There was literally nothing around for miles besides cornfields.

So I just started crying and saying I don’t know.

The Zhijiang airport staff are actual angels and they huddled together and whispered amongst themselves for a solid ten minutes and then told me to come with them. It took 4 staff members, many phone calls, and nearly an hour of going back and forth with phone translators but they were able to figure out how to get me on a flight the next day, a hotel for the night, and a ride to and from the hotel to the airport. I am so so grateful to them, they definitely could have just left me there to figure it out myself. They didn’t even work for the airline, they were just airport staff.

So I got to the hotel in downtown Zhijiang. It goes to show just how huge of a country China is that Zhijiang is considered a very small town no one really knows about and yet it was definitely at least the size of Portland if not bigger. The airport staff had managed to score me a room at one of the nicest hotels in town for about $35. It was definitely one of the fanciest hotels I have ever stayed in. Complete with automatic curtains, one of the biggest tvs I have ever seen, and a Japanese heated smart toilet. It was also overlooking an enormous river and waterfront promenade type area.

I enjoyed the hotel for a while, watched TV, and ate convenience store snacks. Then in the evening the waterfront area started coming to life so I went out to explore. The river was so wide and calm, I’d never seen such a still, clear river before. There were people swimming back and forth across it. I dipped my feet in for a while and people watched. When the sun went down the city lit up. Like literally.

Apparently in Zhijiang every night there is a coordinated light show all along the entire riverfront, all the buildings synchronize their lights to light up along with it accompanied by classical music. It lasts for about 4 hours and even included a fog machine at one point. The path and the stairs and the bridge were all lit up in rainbow lights while people took their evening walks. Kids were swimming in the river and playing with bubbles and old ladies were doing zumba and tai chi. It was very idyllic and beautiful. The waterfront area itself reminded me so much of Portland with the river and the bridges but it was so much livelier and full of life. It was really cool.

The next morning I made it to Lijiang without a hitch. Even though this stopover in Zhijiang was unexpected I ended up really enjoying it and was glad for the experience. I’ll update soon with more about Lijiang.

[fullofsunsetwhispers]

Hi! I love your blog, thank you so much for keeping the fandom alive, i just joined this year!

I want to ask you if you think Omi has reading disability, dyslexia? I want to hear what other people the the fandom think. Cause it feels like he has, and to me all four of the monks have ADHD, they just fit the charts.

Hello there! Oh my gosh, thank you for such nice words! Well, I’m here to infodump and throw ideas here and there sometimes with additional drawings, so knowing some folks pay attention to it makes me really glad and it encourages me to post more.

As for your question, usually, I’m not into coming up with disabilities’ headcanons mostly because of my fear that I can get something wrong. However, since you come to me with such a request I’ll try my best to present my outlook on the matter. I may be oblivious to some things so anybody who reads this post – please correct me if something may sound disrespectful/ improper/ or simply wrong from the scientific point of view.

If that’s cleared up, let’s move on to Omi’s dyslexia. Ok, I see your point – cheeseball surely shows some tendencies that may be attributable to such a condition. The most notable one is present in every episode, that is Omi’s failed slang. When someone corrects his mistakes his reactions vary from acknowledging it was something ‘off’ with the word choice/order or simply he refuses to accept the correction, brushing the issue off by telling the others ‘that makes no sense’.

The most troublesome thing in assessing whether it’s a case of dyslexia is the fact we don’t know how advanced Omi is in his native language.

But my assumption is - he has already accomplished fluency in Chinese. He can read and understand what is written and he can talk about it without making mistakes. The additional issue is that monks most probably communicate with each other in English so Omi has to translate the contents of the scroll to his friends.

To my understanding, a dyslectic person has problems in:

dividing words into syllables

spelling

phonetics (they can't differentiate similar sounds, hence the word they want to pronounce may turn out to be a word with a different meaning)

there may occur an evident overactivity, speech defects, writing words in reverse, no ability to apply interpunction rules in writing

there may occur some neurologic problems such as memory loss, and dysfunctional space orientation( for example confusing the left side with the right). Sometimes the easiest puzzle game can't be completed.

and the matter of our discussion: inability to understand idioms. We may also include the inability to understand jokes, math, and reading a-loud.

So, it seems as if only overactivity and inability to understand idioms track in Omi's case. I can also add confusing lefts and rights and directions whatsoever but as far as I can remember Omi can tell lefts and rights in battle. Only when he uses directional words in a conversation, he utters something like 'upside up' 'I won't let you up' etc. As a consequence, we can assume Omi can't grasp the metaphoric and idiomatic meanings, but I would not take that for granted either. Because we have Master Fung's sayings, Chase's riddles and not to mention that official language presented in old scrolls and... aren't they metaphorical to some extent too???? And on top of that Omi proved he can say a lot of puns to their enemies to mock them.

Y'know, I'm no expert but the fact there is so little evidence in the show isn't helping either. It's a cartoon - rather old cartoon and who would have thought about proper representation back then?

This analysis can't go further until I tackle the issue of dyslexia and bilingualism. In one source, it is said if the child is dyslectic it is almost certain it would show these symptoms also in learning L2. However, the other source states bilingualism enhances many abilities such as problem-solving as well as the capacity to analyze different aspects of language (a skill that is needed for reading and writing). And tbh if Omi has dyslexia this clearly applies to him. Because I get the impression he's also fluent in English and he figured out the rules quite successfully (apart from idioms and some phrases, of course).

I've made a list of Omi's mix-ups.

I smell bad = stink

in your head = in your face

it’ll be cold, dude → Kimiko says ‘cool’

rutted timing = rotten timing

remove the led = get the lead out

push your arm = i’m pulling your leg

piece of pie = piece of cake

skating = surfing the Net

obtain game = you’ve got game

peace on = peace out – saying goodbye

check me in my friend – check me out

dilly our dallies – dilly dally

it’s time we get to the top of this – (the bottom of this)

but you’re going up – he means you’re going down (you must be defeated)

event turning - turn of events

do we look as if we were born next week? - last week

I’m in heat – No Omi you’re on fire!!!

I’m very much top-tip – correct – tip-top

I won’t let you up = I won’t let you down

Jermaine: You must be tripping! Omi: I’m not taking a trip!

I order you to spill your internal organs – spill your guts

The luck is spitting on us = the luck is shining on us

blond leading the blonde = blind leading the blind

we punish their watches = clean their clocks

you’re gonna chew on that sentence =you’re gonna eat those words

Oh that thing is very icy – very cool

spoon over the wu = fork over the wu

The majority of mistakes are the result of Omi confusing English phonemes OR he uses synonyms to compensate for a lack of the appropriate word. However, what is interesting, is his word choice in several instances relies more on imagery and association. For example, in 'The luck is spitting on us' Omi associated shining with the way light can cover all of our bodies, just like the spit. 'the thing is very icy or heat-fire? - the same elements that remind Omi of the feeling of coldness or warmth but used in a more metaphorical sense. My boy may have made a mistake but he was close anyway. Spoon instead of the fork? They are both kitchen appliances. Tripping and trip? Almost the same words but with the -ing ending so in this instance Omi couldn't recognize the category of the word (verb vs noun). What I'm trying to say, Omi has developed a certain pattern that only he can understand to make his communication slightly better and I'm proud of these attempts.

So, I totally agree with flycotte these speech patterns are connected with dyslexia. Omi mixes the phonemes (rutted vs rotten or blond vs blind), and confuses the order of elements in phrases. The top for him is the bottom, so he also confuses directions, and sometimes he adds to the words wrong prepositions.

But you know? he makes those mistakes IN ENGLISH. Omi is quite young, so what if these errors arise because he can't accustom to L2 yet? I've read somewhere that for Chinese speakers English is difficult to learn. You have to switch from the pictorial alphabet to the English one. Reading problems in L2 acquisition arise due to inability to match sounds to letters accurately. If you're Chinese and want to learn English you have to develop an entirely new sound-letter mapping. Omi is rather a fast learner but what I admire about him is his dedication to learning and I hc he would practice writing in English for hours. I really like the last sentence from that article because it sums up Omi's approach to being understood by others

'You don’t need to have perfect grammar in order to communicate. In the beginning, making yourself understood is what counts.'

In Omi's case, he mastered the grammar but slang and minimal pairs are yet to be learned. Taking into account English isn't his first language, he's doing good.

On another note, I do believe Omi's failed slang is to some extent attributable to that there are no Chinese equivalents of these phrases/sayings. Or Omi has never learned the Chinese slang expressions because of the fact before meeting with Raimundo, Clay and Kimiko he has never left the temple? Considering how Master Fung speaks in a formal manner along with Master Monk Guan, you kind of see where Omi picked it up from soooo maybe Omi overuses English Slang expressions to appear more knowledgeable (and impress) his friends!

The last thing I wanted to analyze is his handwriting. He wrote one and only letter in the show so let's focus on that.

As you can see, Omi isn't confident enough with lowercase letters. He prefers to write in uppercase, in some places he's not sure how to divide words, and sometimes letters are too close to each other. More drastic errors are the lack of the pronoun (I think 'I must leave would be more correct) and that weird line that is supposed to replace 'R' in some words (orderR and futuRe). Omi also forgot about the letter 'i' in 'friends'. Overall, Omi tries to remain punctuation but my little dude could've made a couple of shorter sentences instead of one long one.

This piece of writing could belong to a dyslexic child but I wonder if I saw the same message in Chinese (and most importantly knew Chinese) and compared it with the letter written in English, would there be the same amount of mistakes?

So, yeah I would rather opt for the possibility ‘Omi isn’t dyslexic. He’s in a process of learning English and his errors are failed attempts to recreate a more ‘lively, casual’ type of speech.’ However, there are, in fact, many hints he might be dyslectic as well. In fact, it's a matter of his motivation and the guidance of his fellow monk friends whether he manages to eliminate these speech/writing habits. The results of his efforts will all be revealed in Omi's adulthood but since there won't be any XS continuation with the main cast as adults we can only speculate.

To wrap things up, Omi is one determined fella who tries his best. Dyslectic or not, he takes learning very seriously so I do believe he will keep on improving his English in the same way he's fixated on improving himself as a warrior regardless of his disability. In fact, that would hype him up even more to be better at expressing himself.

[meichenxi]

Classical Chinese Lesson 2: Subject-predicate vs topic-comment structure in modern Mandarin

This is written for my Classical Chinese series, but focuses on modern Mandarin! So you don’t need to be following that series to get something out of it :D 

(As ever, I am learning. If you see a mistake, please point it out and I will change it!)

A knowledge of what is the topic and what is the comment is hugely helpful in reading Classical Chinese, but before looking at our first stencils: let’s have a look at what those words actually mean. First, though, we need to talk about English grammar so we can understand just how Classical Chinese differs so much.

Subject  + predicate structure

The syntax (way a sentence is put together) of English and other Indo-European languages in its most basic form can be summed up as subject + predicate. Very oversimplified, that's the pronoun/noun/whatever that is doing the verb, and then everything else. So:

[I] am supposed to be learning Korean.

[My dog] ate my homework. 

[Me and my pocket Discord friends] watched all 12 hours of Lord of the Rings.

[The professor in the tweed jacket] accused me of plagiarism.

The thing in the brackets is the subject, and everything else is the predicate. The predicate can be made up of loads of stuff: a verb (watched), an object (all 12 hours of Lord of the Rings) or even a sort of equals relationship (I = supposed to be learning Korean). It can also be relatively simple (I) or relatively complex (the professor in the tweed jacket).

I said above that the subject as the thing doing the verb is oversimplified, and that's because things can get a bit more complicated than that. Look at the following sentences.

[The homework] was eaten by the dog.

[The film] scared my step-sister.

[He] is twenty-six.

[It] rained. 

In the first sentence who is doing the verb? Well, the dog. The dog's eating the homework - the homework isn't doing anything, it's just sitting there being eaten. It's the dog that is doing something, but the homework is still the subject of our sentence. How do I know? 1) Because it's in 'subject position', which in English is the first position, and 2) because we could say 'the homework was eaten' and that still makes sense - 'by the dog' is extra information. That’s. That’s still confusing. 

The second sentence probably seems very normal. But when you think about it a bit more: the film isn't doing anything. It's just existing. My step-sister is the one who is feeling fear, and who is scared by it - that's really all on her, not on the film. Some languages treat these types of verbs and subjects differently to the other ones above.

In the third sentence, 'is' really works just like an equals sign. It doesn't mean 'to exist' in the same way that it does in the sentence 'I think, therefore I am'. It just means he = twenty-six. 

In the fourth sentence: what rained? The sky? What rained??? What is going on???

The notion of the subject in English is so important that even when there is no subject, we have to put one in. So we can't just say 'rained'. We have to put in a dummy subject pronoun, 'it', to make the grammatically correct 'it rained'. The sentence does not work without it. 

The reason I'm drawing your attention to this is because all of these different types of subjects are actually doing very different things. If you were to draw a syntax tree for all the last four sentences, they'd be very different. But they are all completely necessary in English. You can get rid of any other part of the sentence if you do a bit of linguistic gymnastics: if you look at the dog example, you can say 'The homework was eaten'. But we cannot get rid of the subject. 

(For all you astute people out there: this is why in linguistics we make a distinction between the agent [the thing actually doing the verb in the world regardless of the sentence structure], the patient [the thing in the real world that has the verb done to it], and the subject [the thing that takes the place of a subject in a sentence, regardless of whether it is experiencing the verb, doing it, being done to, or whatever else]. How languages order these doesn't always match up to what we're used to in English.)

NB: the subject in subject-predicate languages does not always have to be overt. In languages like Spanish or Italian that have very sexy inflectional morphology, you don't need to add the subject because the verb conjugation makes it extremely clear who is doing what. So I don't need to say yo tengo calor, literally 'I have heat' = 'I am hot', I can just say tengo calor, because tengo HAS to be 'I'. It can't be any other pronoun, because the verbs would conjugate differently. These languages are called pro-drop languages. This just means they are completely chill with not having an overt subject all the time. It does not mean, however, that they are not subject-predicate languages. They are. 

The way that Classical Chinese is structured is completely different from this. Let's look at this now!

Topic + comment structure

In many languages, the biggest division in the sentence and the most basic is not subject + everything else, but rather the topic of the sentence and a comment on that topic. This is the case in Classical Chinese, and much of Modern Chinese too. It's also the case and much clearer because of particles in Korean and Japanese (though I don't have as in-depth a knowledge of those languages, so please take what I say with a pinch of salt). 

What does that actually mean?

First, you establish the topic. The topic is whatever you are talking about. Let's take the example of the homework. The homework is what is important: it's what you're explaining to your teacher. So the sentence would be like:

As for my homework...the dog ate it. 

'As for my homework' is the topic, and 'the dog ate it' is the comment. If you wanted to be even more specific, you could say 'As for my homework, it was the case that my dog ate it.' 

This is an incredibly flexible sentence structure, because it enables us to place whatever we want to talk about at the beginning of the sentence. You can see that a lot of the examples above that have different orders in English can be simplified in this order:

As for me, I'm supposed to be learning Korean. 

As for my sister, she was scared by the film. 

As for last night, we watched all 12 hours of LOTR. 

You can see pretty quickly, however, that some of these sentences can be changed to give emphasis to different parts. Let's take the Discord LOTR sentence:

As for last night, we watched all 12 hours of LOTR. > the topic is 'last night'. This is perhaps answering the question 'What did you do last night?' or maybe talking about what you did on many evenings, and then specifying 'But last night, we did this.'

As for all 12 hours of LOTR, we watched them last night. > here the topic is different. Now we're talking about LOTR! Maybe somebody was talking about those films, and we added that we watched them last night. Or maybe - because the function of these topic-comment sentences is often to stress or provide contrast in some way - we watched some other film on Thursday, but LOTR (not any other film, LOTR) last night. 

As for me and my Discord friends, we watched all 12 hours of LOTR last night > now the topic is me and my Discord friends! So maybe some other people watched some other film or did something else, and we want to say: ok, but this is what we did. 

You can see that this topic-comment structure is hugely flexible, and allows for a lot of nuance that is expressed differently in the language in question. There’s a lot more to it in Classical Chinese, Japanese and Korean - a lot more nuances - but that’s enough for our purposes, since modern Chinese doesn’t mark the topic and comment explicitly. 

Topic-comment in modern Chinese

One of the most common mistakes learners (learners = me) make is following the subject-predicate structure too closely, because it’s not something people are really usually told about. Like many things in Chinese grammar, it appears superficially similar to English and other European languages - so similar that at the beginning you just go, ok, cool, these are the same. But despite superficial similarities the two languages structure information in fundamentally different ways. A lack of understanding of this difference will create Chinese that, no matter how great your tones are and how wide your vocabulary is, probably doesn’t sound very natural. 

The most wonderful (most annoying) thing about the topic-comment structure is that you don't have to specify the topic if it's already clear. 下雨了- what’s raining? It doesn’t really matter. 都挺好 - I don’t need to specify 我们都挺好 / 他们都挺好. If the topic is clear - and the topic and the grammatical subject are often the same thing - you can just drop it. This is clearest of course in languages like Korean and Japanese where you have specific particles marking the topic and/or the subject but I'm not really qualified to talk about those - and it also applies to Chinese. (Actually, you can drop pretty much anything that is already clear in Chinese.) This is how you end up with sentences in Chinese that are structured like this:

TOPIC + COMMENT + COMMENT + COMMENT + COMMENT + COMMENT + ...

and so on. These sentences are notoriously hard to translate to English, because the topic or subject isn't repeated in each clause. This type of structure is very common in longer essays or literature. 

You’ll also see this all the time in more natural speech. If you want to translate a sentence like ‘I don’t think that what he said at the meeting yesterday was very appropriate’, you could say something like ‘I don’t think [he yesterday at the meeting said DE speech] was very appropriate’, but a more natural translation might be like ‘what he said yesterday at the meeting, I don’t think it was very appropriate’. Let’s find some random examples from Baidu (I’ve searched for 关��� because it’ll give us the right kind of complex sentence):

要讲关于自己的问题，对我来说并不容易 = lit. ‘want to talk about my own problems, to me it’s not easy at all’ > Talking about my own problems doesn’t come easily to me.

关于这份工作你有进一步的消息吗？= lit. ‘about this job, do you have further information?’ > Have you had any more information about the job yet?

昨晚关于印度的那个节目你看了没有？= lit. ‘yesterday about India that program, have you watched?’ > Did you see that program on India last night?

关于我们的决定，下周你会接到通知 = lit. ‘about our decision, next week you will receive notification’ > ‘You should receive notification of our decision in the next week’

You can see in all of these examples that the topic of the sentence - talking about my own probelms, this job, that program about India last night, our decision - comes first, followed by the comment. Even if simple modern Chinese sentences like 我喜欢你 ‘I like you’ don’t appear to follow the topic-comment structure as strictly as Japanese or Korean sentences, that’s mainly because of a lack of particles. More complex sentences are more likely to be structured like the above. 

Even simpler sentences can be structured in this way. All of these are from Chinese Grammar Wiki (you’d expect commas in writing):

不好意思，咖啡我都喝完了 - lit. ‘sorry, coffee I have finished drinking’  

票还有吗？- lit. ‘tickets are there any still?’

这个问题, 你一个人没办法解决 - lit. ’this problem you can’t solve alone’

那部电影, 看过的人都喜欢 - lit. ‘this film the people who watched it all liked’

他的事 ，我不想管那么多 - lit. ‘his business, I don’t want to be so involved’

These are all very natural sentences, and they all follow the topic-comment structure! Even if it’s not as clear as Japanese or Korean, this is key to sounding natural as second language learners of Chinese. 

It’s also *drumroll* incredibly important for Classical Chinese, which follows this structure much more closely than the modern language. 

Next time: how to mark topic-comment in Classical Chinese using particles, and what happens when the particles (woe unto me, you, etc) do not behave as they should! Because. Come on guys what did you expect. 

加油！

- 梅晨曦

[janecrockeyre]

scum villain is a greek tragedy disguised as a regular tragedy disguised as a comedy disguised as a danmei

this is going to be long, and this is only PART ONE.

a.k.a, Analysing the plot of Scum Villain’s Self Saving System through Aristotle’s Poetics, because I Have Mental Issues

Part One: Introduction and the Tragic Hero

Scum Villain’s Self Saving System is a tragedy disguised as a comedy, unless you’re Shen Yuan, in which case it’s a mixture of a romance and a survival horror. It's a fever dream. It's a horrible, terrible book that made me feel new undiscovered emotions when I finished reading it. 

The thing is... SVSSS shares characteristics with some of the most famous tragedies in the West, such as Oedipus Rex, Medea, Antigone, the Oresteia... if you haven’t read these, I’ll explain everything. But the gist of my argument is this: SVSSS is the perfect tragedy. In triplicate. 

Tragedy as a genre is old as balls and so it has meant slightly different things to different people over the last few thousand years. I'll be focusing on ancient Greek tragedy, which was performed at the yearly Festival of Dionysus in Athens during the 500-350s BC (give or take a hundred years). Aristotle, when writing about this very specific subset of tragedy, had no idea that one day Scum Villain would be written, and then that I would be using his work as a way to look at Shen Qingqiu’s Funky Transmigration Mistake. Anyway!

Greek tragedy greatly influenced European dramatic tradition. I have a lot of opinions about white academics idolising and upholding the classics as the "paragon of culture" but I'll withhold them for now. I have no idea if MXTX has read Greek tragedy or not, so don't take this as me saying they are writing it. 

In my opinion, tragedy is a universal human constant. We are surrounded by pain and hurt and none of it makes any sense, so we seek to process that pain through drama, art, literature, etc. We want to understand why pain happens, and how it happens, and try to make sense of the senseless. The universe is cold and cruel and random. Tragedy eases some of that pain. 

On that note: Just because I am analysing Scum Villain through a Greek lens doesn't mean that it was written that way. I'm pasting an interpretation onto the book when there's probably a very rich and deep history of Chinese tragedy that I just don't know about. If you ever want to talk about that, please, god, hit me up, I would love to learn about it!! 

Anyway, tragedy. MXTX is excellent at it! Mo Dao Zu Shi? Painful dynastic family tragedy. Heaven Official's Blessing? Mostly romance, but she managed to get that pure pain in there, huh? 

But in my opinion, Scum Villain holds the crown for the most tragic of her stories. MDZS was more of a mystery. TGCF was more of a romance. Neither of them shy away from their tragic elements. 

Scum Villain would fit right in between the work of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. How? Let me show you. Join me on my mystery tour into the world of "Aristotle Analyses Danmei..."

Part One: The Tragic Hero

What is a tragic hero? Generally, Greek tragic heroes are united by the same key characteristics. He must be imperfect, having a "fatal flaw" of some kind. He must have something to lose. And he must go from fortune to misfortune thanks to that fatal flaw. 

There are two (technically three) tragic protagonists in SVSSS and all of them are tragic in different but formulaic ways. Each protagonist has their own version of “hamartia” or a “fatal flaw”. 

Actually, hamartia isn’t necessarily a flaw - rather, it is a thing which makes the audience pity and fear for them, a careful imperfection, a point of weakness in the character’s morality or reasoning that allows for bad things to happen to them. For example, in Oedipus Rex, the king Oedipus has a “fatal flaw” of always wanting to find the truth, but this isn’t exactly a flaw, right? Note: this flaw can be completely unwitting, as we see with Shen Yuan. It can also be something that the protagonist is born with, some kind of trait from birth or very young. 

Shen Yuan

Shen Yuan’s “hamartia” is his rigid adherence to fate and his inability to read a situation as anything but how he thinks it ought to be. He believes that Bingmei will grow into Bingge, and it takes several years, two deaths, and some truly traumatising sex to convince him otherwise. 

Shen Jiu

Shen Jiu’s fatal flaw is his cruelty. It is his own sadistic treatment and abuse of Binghe which directly leads to his eventual dismemberment. This is kind of a no-brainer. Of course, it isn't all that simple, and as an audience we pity him for his cruelty as much as we fear it because we know it comes from his own abuse as a child. This just makes him even more tragic. Delicious. 

Luo Binghe

Luo Binghe’s fatal flaw is a complicated mix of things. It is his position as the “protagonist” which compels him to act in certain ways and be forced to suffer. It is his half-demonic heritage, something entirely out of his control, which sets in motion his tragic reversal of fortune when he gets yeeted into the Abyss. He also, much like Shen Yuan, has the propensity to jump to conclusions and somehow make 2 + 2 = 5. 

As well as having their respective “flaws”, all three protagonists match the rough outline of a good tragic hero in another way: they are in a position of great wealth and power. Even when you split the different characters into different “versions”, this still holds true. Yes, Luo Binghe is raised a commoner by a washerwoman foster mother, but his dad is an emperor and he also ends up becoming an emperor himself. 

Yes, Shen Jiu is an ex-slave and a victim of abuse himself, but Shen Qingqiu is a powerful peak lord with an entire mountain’s worth of resources at his back. 

Shen Yuan is a second generation new money rich kid. 

Bingge is a stereotypical protagonist with a golden finger. Bingmei is a treasured and loved disciple with a good reputation and a privileged seat by his shizun’s side. 

In a tragedy, having this kind of good fortune at the beginning of your story is dangerous. Chaucer says that tragedy is (badly translated into modern english) “a certain story / of him that stood in great prosperity / and falls out of high degree / into misery, and ends up wretchedly”. If we follow this line of thinking, a good tragedy is about someone who has a lot to lose, losing everything because of one fatal point of weakness that they fail to address or understand. 

If we look at Shakespeare, this is what makes King Lear such a fantastic tragic protagonist. He is a king in control of most of England, who from his own lack of wisdom and excess of pride, decides to split his kingdom apart to give to his daughters, favouring his murderous, double crossing progeny, and condemning his only actually filial daughter to death. He loses his kingdom, his mind, and his beloved daughter, all because of his own stupidity.

This brings us to:

Part Two: Peripeteia

This reversal of fortunes is called peripeteia. It is the moment where the entire plot shifts, and the hero’s fortunes go from good to bad. Think of it like one of those magic eye puzzles, where you stare at the image until a 3D shark appears, except you realise the shark was always there, you just couldn't ever see it, waiting for you, hungry, deadly, always lurking just behind that delightful pattern of random blue squiggles. 

Each tragic hero has their own moment of peripeteia in SVSSS, sometimes several:

Shen Qingqiu

In the original PIDW, SQQ’s peripeteia presumably occurs when he finds out that Bingge didn’t perish in the Abyss but has actually been training hard to come and pay him back. There’s really not much I’m interested in saying here - as a villain, OG!SQQ is cut and dry, and the audience doesn’t really feel any pity or fear for him. As Shen Yuan often mentions, what the audience feels when they see OG!SQQ is bloodlust and sick satisfaction. There is also the trial at Huan Hua Palace, which I will talk about in Shen Yuan’s section. 

Shen Yuan (SQQ 2.0)

One of SY’s most poggers moment of peripeteia is the glorious, terrifying section between hearing Binghe for the first time after the Abyss moment, and getting shoved into the Water Prison. 

“Behind him, a low and soft voice came: “Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu’s neck felt stiff as he slowly turned his head. Luo Binghe’s face was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.

The scariest thing about it was that the expression on his face was not cold at all. His smile wasn’t sharp like a knife. Rather, it showed a kind of bone-deep gentleness and amiability.”

This is the moment of true horror for Shen Yuan, because he knows what happens next: the plot unfurls before him, inevitable and painful, and he knows that death awaits him at Luo Binghe's hands (lol). Compare it with the bone deep certainty with which he faces his own downfall during the sham of a trial later in the chapter (I’ve bolded the important part):

“In the original work, Qiu Haitang’s appearance signified only one thing: Shen Qingqiu’s complete fall from grace. [...] Shen Qingqiu’s heart streamed with tears. Great Master… I know you’re doing this for my own good, but I’ll actually suffer if she speaks her words clearly. This truly is the saying “not frightened of doing a shameful deed, just afraid the ghost (consequences) will come knocking”!”

After the peripeteia is usually the denouement where the plot wraps up and the threads are all tied together leaving no loose ends, but because this tragedy isn’t Shen Yuan’s but the former Shen Jiu’s, it’s impossible to finish. 

Shen Yuan cannot provide the meaningful answers that the narrative demands because 1) he doesn’t have any memory of doing anything, and 2) he wasn’t the person who did them. Narratively, he cannot follow the same path as the former SQQ because he lacks the same fatal flaw: cruelty. 

This is why Binghe doesn’t kill him - because he loves him, rather than despises him. And this is why Shen Yuan has to sacrifice himself and die for Luo Binghe in order to save him from Xin Mo: because the narrative demands that denouement follows peripeteia, and SQQ’s fate is in the hands of the narrative. 

(Side note: I believe that this literal death also represents the death of OG!SQQ's tragic arc. The body that committed all those crimes must die to satisfy the narrative. SQQ must die, like burning down a forest, so that new growth can sprout from the ashes. After this, Shen Yuan's story has more room to develop instead.)

It must happen to show Bingmei that SQQ loves him too. And this brings us to Bingmei.

Bingmei

Bingmei has two succinct moments of utter downfall. The first is a literal fall - his flaw, his demonic heritage, leads his beloved shizun to throw him down into the Abyss. From his point of view, SQQ is punishing him simply for the status of his birth. He rapidly goes from being loved and cherished unconditionally, to being the victim of an assassination attempt. 

He realises that he is totally unlovable: that for the crimes of his species that he never had a hand in, he must pay the price as well: that his shizun is so righteous that no matter what love there was between them, if SQQ sees a demon, he will kill it. Even if that demon is Bingmei. 

The second moment is when SQQ dies for him. Again, from his point of view, he was chasing after a man who was struggling to see him as a human being. Shen Qingqiu’s death makes Bingmei realise that he has been completely misunderstanding his shizun: that SQQ would literally die for him, the ultimate act of self sacrifice from love: that SQQ loved him despite his demon heritage. 

Much like King Lear holding the corpse of his daughter and wailing in sheer grief and pain because he did this, he caused this, Bingmei gets to hold his shizun's cold body and cry his eyes out and know that it was his fault. (Kind of.)

(Yes, I’m bringing Shakespeare into this, no I am not justifying myself)

Maybe I'm a bit sadistic, but that scene slaps. Let me show you a comparison of scenes so you get the picture. 

Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following

KING LEAR

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so

That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!

I know when one is dead, and when one lives;

She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;

If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,

Why, then she lives.

[...]

 KING LEAR

And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there!

Dies

Versus this scene in SVSSS: 

Luo Binghe turned a deaf ear to everything else, greatly agitated and at a loss of what to do. He was still holding Shen Qingqiu’s body, which was rapidly cooling down. It seemed like he wanted to call for him loudly and forcefully shake him awake, yet he didn’t dare to, as if he was afraid of being scolded. He said slowly, “Shizun?”

[...]

Luo Binghe involuntarily held Shen Qingqiu closer.

He said in a small voice, “I was wrong, Shizun, I really… know that I was wrong.

“I… I didn’t want to kill you…”

PAIN. SO MUCH BEAUTIFUL PAIN. Yes, I know Shakespeare isn’t Athenian, but he was inspired by the good old stuff and he also knew how to write a perfect tragedy on his own terms. Anyway. I’ll find more Greek examples later.

This post was a bit all over the place, but I hope it has been fun to read. Part Two will be coming At Some Point, Who Knows When. This is a bit messy and unedited, but hey, I’m not getting paid or graded, so you can eat any typos or errors. Unless you’re here to talk to me about Chinese tragedy, in which case, please pull up a seat, let me get you a drink, make yourself at home.

ps: if you want to retweet this, here is the promo tweet!

[revenge-of-the-shit]

Writing Chinese characters set within Western worlds

If you don’t want to read it on tumblr, go check this out on medium or go follow me on instagram at @annessarose_writes!

Alright. You know what. I’ve seen plenty of stereotypes in fiction (and in social media) that are so incredibly pervasive I’ve seen many Chinese people within the western world internalize it themselves. So here’s a rough guide on writing Chinese characters in an English-speaking Western setting, written by me, a Chinese Canadian woman.

If you’re here to say something racist fuck off. Otherwise, welcome! This is not a comprehensive guide by any means. This is merely a brief overview based on my own experiences. My experience (as someone in North America) will differ from someone living in, say, Europe or South America. I’m not representative of every Chinese person because everyone’s experience is unique. So here were are.

1. Our names

Chinese names are usually written as follows: [family name] [name]. Let’s take a Canadian historical figure as an example: 黃寬先. In Chinese, it’s pronounced “Wong Foon Sien.” On Canadian documents — which are written [First name] [Last name], he’d be called “Foon Sien Wong.” He went by “Foon Sien” for most of his life. That’s his full “first name.” Nobody would call him Foon because that’s just half of his name (unless given permission). It’d be like meeting a stranger called Alex and calling them “Al” right off the bat. Sure, they could go by Al, but you don’t know that.

For those of us living in the Western world, some of us have both a Chinese name and an English name. In these cases, our Chinese name becomes our middle name in English (e.g. a character could be called John Heen-Gwong Lee).

For some people who immigrated to the Western world but were born in China, their legal name would be their Chinese name. Some choose to keep that name. Some choose an English name as their “preferred” name but keep their Chinese name on legal documents. It varies.

2. Parents & Stereotypes

There’s two stereotypes which are so pervasive I see it being used over and over in jokes even within Chinese (and, to a larger extent, asian) communities:

The [abusive] tiger mom and the meek/absent dad

Both parents are unreasonably strict/abusive and they suck

I have yet to see any fiction stories with Chinese parents where they’re depicted as kind/loving/supportive/understanding (if you have recommendations — please do send them my way). Not all Chinese parents are tiger parents. Chinese parents — like all parents — are human. Good god. YES, they’re human! YES, they have flaws! YES, they are influenced by the culture they grew up in!

That isn’t to say there aren’t parents like those tropes. There are. I know this because I grew up in a predominantly Chinese community where I had many a friend’s parent who was like this. Parents who compare their kids to the best kid in class. Parents who force kids into private lessons and competitions that the kid despises because the parents think it’s for the best. Parents who have literally called their kid a disappointment because they didn’t get 100%.

But please, also consider: there’s parents who support their child’s goals and who listen. Not all parents force their kid into the stereotypical trifecta of lawyer/doctor/engineer — I know of a good number who support their child in choosing the path they want. There’s parents who make mistakes and learn and try their best to support their child. So please, for the love of god, if you write a Chinese character, don’t reduce their parents to stereotypes.

3. Language & Learning

When I first read The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan, I was so excited to see a Chinese Canadian character in Frank Zhang. Finally, there was someone like me. Finally, there was representation in well-known western media.

While I do appreciate that RR added in Frank Zhang, it’s pretty obvious that he didn’t really know how to write a Chinese Canadian character. One of the most glaring examples: in The Son of Neptune, Frank reveals he can’t really read Chinese. In like, the next book (I think — it’s been a while since I read it), Frank is suddenly able to read Chinese because he “learned” it in two week’s time.

Nope. Nuh-uh. Learning Chinese is a pain, let me tell you. There’s thousands of different characters and it is something you need to devote a lot of time to learning (especially if you’re progressed past the best childhood years for learning a language). So if you’re writing about a Chinese character living in the western world, here’s what you need to know:

A character who was born and raised in the western world does not necessarily know how to read/write in Chinese.

If they were raised by their own family, the character would very likely know how to speak their own dialect. They’d be able to understand the language used in movies/TV and they sound like a native speaker, but they may not know how to use language outside of certain contexts (the term for this is heritage speaker).

They probably went to Chinese school. They probably hated it. Chinese school is usually universally hated and does not teach you jack shit other than a hatred for the place and a vague memory of learning how to read the language without actually retaining knowledge of what you learned.

Most of my friends who know how to read/write in Chinese learned from tutors, parents, or were born in China.

There’s two main types of written Chinese: Traditional (used by Cantonese speakers) and Simplified (used by Mandarin speakers).

There are MANY other dialects (which I don’t know much about). The most common ones are Mandarin (usually spoken by people from the mainland), then Cantonese (usually spoken by people from Hong Kong).

4. Fitting into the community

Usually, the story is one of two things: they’re the only Asian kid in the entire school, or they grew up in a predominantly East Asian community. Things to consider for both of these when you’re writing:

Growing up the only Asian kid

They’re “that Asian kid.” They’re different. They walk into a class and feel weird and out of place.

They bring food from home (usually ethnic cuisine) to school. Other classmates stare at it, make fun of it, demand what that strange food is.

“Where are you from?” “Here.” “No, like, where are you really from?”

“Your name is funny.”

People literally never getting the character’s name right.

And that horrible, horrible feeling: wishing that they were white so they could avoid all of this.

Growing up in a predominantly East Asian community

It’s not uncommon for Chinese cuisine to mix with other east Asian cuisines. For special occasions (or just for a casual night out), your character could very well go out to get some sushi, or go for some KBBQ, or get some Vietnamese noodles.

Screaming “AIYAA” at/with their friends unironically if they’re annoyed (I’ve done this a lot with Cantonese friends. Less so with Mandarin friends).

Slipping into Chinese for like, two words, during a mostly-English conversation to talk about food or some other topic that can’t be adequately conveyed in English.

Reading books by white authors and learning about white history and growing up thinking white names, white books, and white history is the norm and standard even though the community is surrounded by East Asian people.

When the character leaves this community, there’s a brief culture shock when they realize how sheltered they’ve been.

Things in common for both of these:

The character has grown up on ethnic cuisine. Yes, Chinese people do eat rice with many of our meals. Yes, boba (bubble) tea is extremely popular. No, rice isn’t the only thing we eat. No, not all Chinese people love boba (though as a Chinese person I admit this sounds sacrilegious to say…)

The character likely grew up watching film/TVthat originates from East Asia. It’s not uncommon to watch Studio Ghibli films. It’s not uncommon to watch Japanese or Korean shows with canto/mando dub (examples: Ultraman, Kamen Rider). If you want to see a classic Chinese film from Hong Kong that’s fucking hilarious, watch Kung Fu Hustle.

The character has felt or been told that they’re “too westernized to be Chinese, but too Chinese to fit into the western world.” They’re torn between the two.

5. General portrayal

It’s quite simple, really. We’re human. We’re regular people. We have regular hobbies like all people do. We’re good at some subjects and bad at others. We have likes and dislikes like all people do. So here’s a list of stereotypes you can avoid.

STEREOTYPES TO AVOID BECAUSE WE’RE REGULAR HUMANS AND WE DON’T FIT INTO A SINGLE COOKIE CUTTER SHAPE, DAMMIT.

The character is a maths whiz and perfect at all things STEM.

The character is a straight-A+ gifted/IB/AP student.

The character is the next coming of Mozart and is amazing at piano/violin.

The character’s free time is spent only studying.

The character is insanely good at martial arts.

The character is either meek and submissive or an explosive, dangerous force.

I’m not going to mention the other stereotypes. You know, those ones. The really obvious ones that make fun of and demonize (sometimes through multiple untruths) how we look and how we live our lives. You should know.

Of course, there are people who fit into one or more of these. That’s not the point. The point is: molding all Chinese characters to these stereotypes (which white media tends to do) is harmful and reductionist. We’re more than stereotypes.

—

6. Conclusion

We need more diversity in portrayal of Chinese characters. Reducing us into one-dimensional caricatures has done nothing but harm us — look at what’s happening now. This guide is by no means comprehensive, but I hope it has helped you by providing a quick overview.

If you want to accurately portray Chinese characters, do your research. Read Chinese fiction. Watch Chinese films/TV. Initiate a conversation with the community. Portray us accurately. Quit turning us into caricatures.

[yuyuntianyu]

[2HA analysis blog] To love you is torment but leave you I cannot

I wanted to write this (hopefully not-too-long) blog to give 2HA fandom a different perspective of the events in the past timeline. I noticed that there are many little things that could not be carried over to the English language. These little things can give more explanations to our characters’ actions so I hope sharing this would help the novel make more sense. This blog focuses on Taxian-jun and Chu Fei.

Warning: Spoilers ! ! ! Taxian-jun and Chu Fei are their own trigger warnings ! ! !

Despite the novel having 350 chapters, we really know little about what happened between Taxian-jun and Chu Fei besides the abuse and mistreatment and that little is relayed to us by the Most Unreliable Narrator of the Cultivation World - Mo Ran Mo Weiyu. If we only take Mo Ran for his words then a lot of his and Chu Wanning’s decisions told later on would seem irrational and almost silly. So let’s dive deep in the past so we can understand how the great cultivator Beidou Xian-zun could raise such a dumb husky since the events in the past would explain the more irrational decisions made by both main characters.

Given Mo Ran’s narrator is about as reliable as his character in the first 120 chapters, we have to look at other more subtle clues and some of them are due to cultural and linguistic differences.

1. I used to like you a lot

At his coronation day, Taxian-jun stated that he once greatly looked up to Chu Wanning and that he used to love and respect him dearly. Maybe I am reading into this too much but this is my theory: The flower could erase the memory itself but cannot erase the feelings associated with the memory. He had his memories of the good deeds Chu Wanning did for him erased but still remembered that he used to love and respect him. It doesn’t make sense unless it is indeed that the flower could not erase its host’s feelings. So throughout the novel, Mo Ran’s complicated emotions are complicated possibly because he could not remember how he came to have these feelings. Similarly, Hua Binan could mess with the undead Taxian-jun’s memory to a great extent but could not erase his obsession with Chu Wanning.

2. I gave you a new title

Chu Fei. 楚妃. In the Imperial Chinese harem hierarchy, “Fei” means consort and not concubine (嬪 “Pín"). Consorts were highly respected positions in the palace weidling much political power and were only seconds to the Empress Consort. Another major difference is a consort would be married to the emperor while a concubine would not. So if Taxian-jun had truly wanted to only humiliate Chu Wanning and keep him for the carnal pleasures (I am intentionally ignoring his breeding kink completely), he would keep him as a concubine but he gave Chu Wanning the Consort title and hid him from the world. At this point, Taxian-jun had almost lost Chu Wanning once and had spent a lot of effort to bring him back from the verge of death after hearing Chu Wanning’s apology so his anger might have softened a bit. Also, given that Chu Wanning is a man, having a legitimate offspring ( (I am still intentionally ignoring Mo Ran's breeding kink completely) is not an issue so although this is not clearly stated, I believe Taxian-jun wanted to force a relationship and somewhat proper marriage on Chu Wanning. Another hint of this is in an Extra chapter where Taxian-jun tried to get Chu Wanning a birthday gift. He recalled that in his past timeline, he had wanted Chu Wanning to give him something on his birthday as well and that he had wanted Chu Wanning’s heart.

3. Shizun likes to write letters and poems

On Book 3 Chapter 247, Chu Wanning sat down and wrote a few unsent letters to the people he used to know. He also wrote a few lines of poetry. In the first few lines taken from different literature works, he expressed his sense of helplessness and his wish to remain untainted despite the circumstances. The more important two lines are from a poem written by a real poet named Fàn Chéngdà ( 范成大) who lived in the 12th century Southern-Song dynasty. The two lines read:

“May I be like the stars, may you* be as the moon. Night after night, may we shine together side by side.” **

*In the original work, the character used instead of you is “jun” 君 (as in 踏仙君 Taxian-jun). 君 could mean king, emperor, lord, or gentleman ** This is my rough translation - I haven’t found an English version of this poem

These two lines are commonly used in romantic novels as a way to express one’s unchanging love and loyalty to another person despite the circumstances. He compared himself as the stars and wanted to remain by Taxian-jun whom he viewed as the moon. Chu Wanning wrote this to express his willingness to stay but he would never voice this out loud. In the next timeline, he did the same thing by quietly loving and caring for Mo Ran 1.0 despite the mistreatment and was content with never expressing his feelings vocally. Mo Ran was rather uneducated and thus could not fully comprehend these two lines and misunderstood that Chu Wanning was missing Xue Meng.

4. You are all I have left

In chapter 252, after Chu Wanning returned to The Red Lotus Pavilion, he found Taxian-jun already waiting for him. Taxian-jun told Chu Wanning about a dream he had and said:

“I am afraid I don’t resent you… I want to resent you… Otherwise, I…” “In the end, it’s just you and I”.

This is not the first time he expressed that Chu Wanning was all he had left or they only had each other. I believe that at this point, Taxian-jun might have somewhat believed Chu Wanning and recognized that his memories were missing. His words and behaviors seemed a lot more gentle and he mentioned they did have periods of time where their marriage was easier. I believe it was after this point. He told us about the numerous times he attempted to spoil his consort or expressed his affection through gifts, a trip outside the palace, goods, jewels, and even teaching Chu Wanning how to cook or personally taking care of Chu Wanning when he was sick. At one point, Taxian-jun expressed his wish for a more peaceful marriage with Chu Wanning through his breeding kink by saying that if they had children, perhaps they would be more civil towards each other.

Edit: I really wanted to go about this blog without having to refer to their particular taste in bed

5. Are you still mad?

This is a smaller detail but in the original text and the Vietnamese official translation, the way they talked to each other had a bit more of the “husband-wife” dynamic. Especially Chu Wanning ( l┐(︶▽︶)┌ ), the comment section said he sounded like when your wife is mad that you didn’t take out the trash but still says: “I’m not mad” and Taxian-jun, the husband, would come around and ask “Are you still mad at me?” after every fight.

6. I did not think you would really leave me.

On Chapter 99, Mo Ran recalled the fight between him and Chu Wanning after an assassination attempt. In order to convince Mo Ran to not go to Taxue Palace, Chu Wanning said:

“If you destroy Taxue palace, if you kill Xue Meng, I will die before you”.

Now the line “I will die before you” in my language is less of a suicidal ideation but more of a threat. It's used when a person already knows that they are important to the other person and is using their own death as a threat to make the other person do something. This line is thrown around a lot during heated arguments between people close to each other but they almost never mean it. (Even my mom said it numerous times before T_T . I personally think it’s manipulative). Therefore, it is understandable Taxian-jun did not take this line seriously and replied almost mockingly. After all, they had been married for almost a decade at that point, Taxian-jun probably felt somewhat comfortable that Chu Wanning would not do anything reckless. He could not foresee that Chu Wanning meant what he said and actually followed through with his words. I believe that if Taxian-jun had known that Chu Wanning was serious, Taxian-jun would not have gone to Taxue Palace. 7. Don't leave me, ok?

Then Chu Wanning died and Mo Ran spent two years alone. In those two years, we know he basically went insane because of grief, talked to a corpse everyday, and deep fried his Empress Consort. But strangely enough, Mo Ran 1.0 did not immediately mention this after being reborn although it was the main reason he committed suicide. And at that point, it had been well over a decade since Shi Mei faked his death in the past timeline, yet Mo Ran 1.0 seemed to still hold a lot of resentment towards Chu Wanning. Also, he said he could accept Shi Mei’s death but would never accept Chu Wanning’s. So honestly, it did not make sense to me the first time I read the novel and I believed Mo Ran resented Chu Wanning for a different reason.

The answer was first hinted at in chapter 9 when Mo Ran scolded the sleeping Chu Wanning. He called Chu Wanning a donkey hoof (lol) and this is actually an idiom to scold someone who is disloyal and unfaithful in love. The puzzles came together when the undead Taxian-jun showed up and immediately went after Chu Wanning (and not Shi Mei). He believed Chu Wanning used his death to hurt him and was angry at Chu Wanning for leaving him. This is the resentment Mo Ran 1.0 carried over to the next timeline. He hated Chu Wanning for abandoning him. This is solidified in chapter 262 by the undead Taxian-jun pleading to Chu Wanning:

“Don’t betray me” “Don’t leave me the second time. The first time you left, I could choose death as a relief. This time, even death is not an option any more… I won’t be able to bear it…”

So there it is! I hope this blog brings some new information and feel free to discuss! Let me know if you have any questions for me ＼(￣▽￣)／

Disclaimer: Plenty of this is my conclusion drawn from the already ambiguous original text and various translations. Unless Meatbun says it, it’s not canon. I am looking at the novel in three different languages so I might have made some mistakes. Pls forgive. Also, I am not making excuses for Mo Ran 0.5’s actions nor am I justifying the abuse in any way. Chu Wanning never said Mo Ran 0.5 was innocent of these crimes nor will I.

[catasstrophui]

About the pronunciation guide in the MXTX official EN books

I'm still staving off my knee jerk reaction, but I managed to gather my thoughts about the pronunciation guide in the MXTX official EN books. How it's going to go is disclaimer > what happened > is it that bad > how I feel > what else can be done.

Disclaimer

I'll do my best to be nuanced and neutral-ish about it, but seeing as this is relatively personal I'm also going to make sure I don't minimize myself and how I feel. Idk why you'd be looking for nuance on social media, but I do think there's a certain degree of responsibility that we have over the things we say in public. 

This isn't meant to denigrate the team of people who worked on the EN official translation or the people who have bought/are planning to buy the books, I'm not looking to yuck your yum. Please enjoy the things that make you happy, especially during the holiday season! 

I'm mostly neutral about the books, actually. Since I have the good fortune to be fluent in CN and as CN diaspora living in an Asian majority country, I have access to the traditional CN and simplified CN versions. CN people and diaspora are not a monolith as they are diverse with vastly different perspectives, so my experience is most likely not universal and I'm not trying to speak on behalf of anyone. 

What happened

So if you or your friends bought a copy of the MXTX EN official translation, you'll notice that the book contains a pronunciation guide so we can learn how to say the names of our favorite characters and places. They use English sounds and words to describe how these words should be pronounced, which at best is a fair approximation of the actual pronunciation, and at worst is unfortunately wrong. 

I have seen pronunciation guides like these in books like English fantasy novels and if I remember correctly [Language] for Dummies books, and I do think that they do serve the purpose they were written for, but I am curious why alternatives such as hanyu pinyin, the standardized romanization system I personally learned when I went to a Chinese medium school, bopomofo (zhuyin/kaopu I think?) which is another common CN learning system medium that uses symbols, or even the International Phonetic Alphabet (or other pronunciation guides like Wades-Giles) were not used. 

Is it that bad? 

Of course, EN and CN are vastly different languages and in many cases you'd be hard pressed to find the equivalent sound of a word in another language. It would be difficult for a non native speaker to pronounce sounds if they're not familiar with it or if they haven't encountered it before. It's normal to want to be able to say the names of people and places right, and fans of the work will be referring to the pronunciation guide to be able to do so. 

Unfortunately, some of it is wrong, and that means that people who are trying to learn will be relying on a source that isn't exactly correct. I do think it's a good thing to help people learn, and I think putting in effort is better than no effort at all, but does this approximation of pronunciation actually help, or does it spread misinformation that causes more harm than good? 

How I feel

For a lot of CN diaspora (I use this here because I am CN diaspora) the pronunciation of names is a sensitive, personal topic. I have an English name, a Chinese surname and a Chinese given name with two syllables, and some of my earliest memories involve me just not bothering to introduce myself with my Chinese name because I didn't think they would be able to pronounce it correctly, and I didn't think they would bother trying to do so in the first place. 

In fact, I've had my name made fun of or just dismissed outright because it was too much to deal with, and that did make me wonder why more difficult (to my younger self) names like Siobhan and Sean and Dean and Blaiyyid were pronounced correctly, but not mine. Am I not worthy of personhood too? 

Combine that with the complicated feelings surrounding knowing English because I come from a country colonized by British rule for centuries and being told that the English that I know is less than simply because I don't come from Australia, the US or the UK, and well. That knowledge that I am seen to be less than just because I don't fit into this specific niche box does kind of hurt. 

I haven't made fun of the pronunciation guide and I just don't really want to interact with the books in any way right now because my feelings are still too raw about it, but I do know people who make fun of the guide as a way to cope. If I don't laugh about it or maintain some distance in some way, I'll cry, actually, so I'm off social media for a bit until the book hype dies down. It would help a lot if there's a specific tag for the MXTX EN translation of the books, actually!

I do think that making fun of the guide feels different when it comes from a person who is CN or CN diaspora versus from a person who isn't - the thing is that this name issue is something that a lot of people live with, and it's not something I can step away from whenever it's convenient for me, and it doesn't feel great to have something that I can't and don't want to change about myself be made fun of. It's only funny when we're laughing together, and frankly, the pronunciation guide was actually pretty offensive and reminiscent of a lifetime of microaggressions stacked on top of each other for me. 

If you're making light of the situation, I do think it is your right to, but if you could spare a moment to consider how your friends feel about it, just to hold space for them if they need it, that would be really great, especially if you're non-CN. It's also perfectly valid to just not deal with it at all!

What else can be done

The thing is, I'm kind of baffled that this was the route chosen when there were serviceable alternatives like an introduction to pinyin or a QR code leading to an audio pronunciation guide. This pronunciation guide could have been left out and the readers who were invested would have found a way to find the correct pronunciation, since these works have live actions, donghua, audio dramas and a robust fan base to draw from. Google also has an audio pronunciation aid. 

I guess how I feel about this is that it's not enough to just have the intention not to offend - hurt is still hurt and harm is still harm, whether it's the feelings of people who have had their names erased and made fun of, or the feelings of people who rely on this guide to do better but unfortunately fall short through no fault of their own. 

For the record and just to cover all my bases, it doesn't make a difference to me if the pronunciation guide was okayed by the translator team or if it was written by someone who's CN or CN diaspora, this is just meant to be me getting how I feel out into the void - I'm not particularly interested in debating any of the points I've made here, but please be at least civil in the replies etc and keep in mind that CN people aren't a monolith and that they can and do disagree with each other.

I'd like to think that this pronunciation guide was well intentioned and done out of ignorance, probably because the alternative makes me really sad, but now that I've said it and it's out there, I think we can do better, even if it's not that deep for some of us.

From this Twitter thread

[pumpkinpaix]

Hello! Feel free not to answer this question if it is in any way too much, but I've been wondering about something concerning the "western" mdzs fandom. Lately, i have seen multiple pieces of fanart that use what is clearly Christian symbolism and sometimes downright iconography in depicting the characters. I'm a european fan, but it still makes me vaguely uneasy. I know that these things are rarely easy to judge. I'm definitely not qualified to do so and was wondering if you have an opinion

Hi there! thank you for your patience and for the interesting question! I’ve been thinking about this since i received this ask because it?? idk, it’s difficult to answer, but it also touches on a a few things that I find really interesting.

the short answer: it’s complicated, and I also don’t know what I feel!

the longer answer:

i think that this question is particularly difficult to answer because of how deeply christianity is tied to the western art and literary canon. so much of what is considered great european art is christian art! If you just take a quick glance at wiki’s page on european art, you can see how inextricable christianity is, and how integral christian iconography has been in the history of european art. If you study western art history, you must study christian imagery and christian canon because it’s just impossible to engage with a lot of the work in a meaningful way without it. that’s just the reality of it.

Christianity, of course, also has a strong presence in european colonial and imperialist history and has been used as a tool of oppression against many peoples and nations, including China. I would be lying if I said I had a good relationship with Christianity--I have always faced it with a deep suspicion because I think it did some very, very real damage, not just to chinese people, but to many cultures and peoples around the world, and that’s not a trauma that can be easily brushed aside or reconciled with.

here is what is also true: my maternal grandmother was devoutly christian. my aunt is devoutly christian. my uncle’s family is devoutly christian. my favorite cousin is devoutly christian. when I attended my cousin’s wedding, he had both a traditional chinese ceremony (tea-serving, bride-fetching, ABSURDLY long reception), and also a christian ceremony in a church. christianity is a really important part of his life, just as it’s important to my uncle’s family, and as it was important to my grandmother. I don’t think it’s my right or place to label them as simply victims of a colonialist past--they’re real people with real agency and choice and beliefs. I think it would be disrespectful to act otherwise.

that doesn’t negate the harm that christianity has done--but it does complicate things. is it inherently a bad thing that they’re christian, due to the political history of the religion and their heritage? that’s... not a question I’m really interested in debating. the fact remains that they are christian, that they are chinese, and that they chose their religion.

so! now here we are with mdzs, a chinese piece of media that is clearly Not christian, but is quickly gaining popularity in euroamerican spaces. people are making fanart! people are making A LOT of fanart! and art is, by nature, intertextual. a lot of the most interesting art (imo) makes deliberate use of that! for example (cyan art nerdery time let’s go), Nikolai Ge’s What is Truth?

I love this painting! it’s notable for its unusual depiction of christ: shabby, unkempt, slouched, in shadow. if you look for other paintings of this scene, christ is usually dignified, elegant, beautiful, melancholy -- there’s something very humanizing and humbling about this depiction, specifically because of the way it contrasts the standard. it’s powerful because we as the audience are expected to be familiar with the iconography of this scene, the story behind it, and its place in the christian canon.

you can make similar comments about Gentileschi’s Judith vs Caravaggio’s, or Manet’s Olympia vs Ingres’ Grande Odalisque -- all of these paintings exist in relation to one another and also to the larger canon (i’m simplifying: you can’t just compare one to another directly in isolation etc etc.) Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling the Angel is also especially interesting because of how its portrayal of its content contrasts to its predecessors!

or! because i’m really In It now, one of my favorite paintings in the world, Joan of Arc by Bastien-Lepage:

I just!!! gosh, idk, what’s most interesting to me in this painting is the way it seems to hover between movements: the hyperrealistic, neoclassical-esque take on the figure, but the impressionistic brushstrokes of the background AAA gosh i love it so much. it’s really beautiful if you ever get a chance to see it in person at the Met. i’m putting this here both because i personally just really like it and also as an example of how intertextuality isn’t just about content, but also about visual elements.

anyways, sorry most of this is 19thc, that was what i studied the most lol.

(a final note: if you want to read about a really interesting painting that sits in the midst of just a Lot of different works, check out the wiki page on Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, specifically under “Interpretation and Legacy”)

this is all a really long-winded way of getting to this point: if you want to make allusory fanart of mdzs with regards to western art canon, you kind of have to go out of your way to avoid christian imagery/iconography, especially when that’s the lens through which a lot of really intensely emotional art was created. many of my favorite paintings are christian: Vrubel’s Demon, Seated, Perov’s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Ge’s Conscience, Judas, Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc, as shown above. that’s not to say there ISN’T plenty of non-christian art -- but christian art is very prominent and impossible to ignore.

so here are a few pieces of fanwork that I’ve seen that are very clearly making allusions to christian imagery:

1. this beautiful pietà nielan by tinynarwhals on twitter

2. a lovely jiang yanli as our lady of tears by @satuwilhelmiina

3. my second gif in this set here, which I will also show below:

i’m only going to talk about mine in depth because well, i know exactly what i was thinking when I put this gif together while I can’t speak for anyone else.

first: the two lines of the song that I wanted to use for lan xichen were “baby, I’m a fighter//in the robes of a saint” because i felt that they fit him very well. of course, just the word “saint” evokes catholicism, even if it’s become so entwined in the english language that it’s taken on a secular meaning as well.

second: when I saw this scene, my immediate thought was just “PIETÀ!!” because LOOK at that composition! lan xichen’s lap! nie mingjue lying perpendicular to it! the light blue/white/silver of lan xichen in contrast to the darker robes of both nie mingjue and meng yao! not just that, but the very cool triangular structure of the image is intensely striking, and Yes, i Do love that it simultaneously ALSO evokes deposition of christ vibes. (baxia as the cross.... god..... is that not the Tightest Shit) does this make meng yao joseph of arimathea? does it make him john the evangelist? both options are equally interesting, I think when viewed in relation to his roles in the story: as a spy in qishan and as nmj’s deputy. maybe he’s both.

anyways, did I do this intentionally? yes, though a lot of it is happy accident/discovered after the fact since I’m relying on CQL to have provided the image. i wanted to draw attention to all of that by superimposing that line over that image! (to be clear: I didn’t expect it to all come through because like. that’s ridiculous. the layers you’d have to go through to get from “pretty lxc gifset” --> “if we cast nie mingjue as a christ figure, what is the interesting commentary we could do on meng yao by casting him as either joseph of arimathea or john the evangelist” are like. ok ur gonna need to work a little harder than slapping a song lyric over an image to achieve an effect like that.)

the point of this is: yes, it’s intentionally christian, yes I did this, yes I am casting these very much non-christian characters into christian roles for this specific visual work -- is this okay?

I obviously thought it was because I made it. but would I feel the same about a work that was written doing something similar? probably not. I think that would make me quite uncomfortable in most situations. but there’s something about visual art that makes it slightly different that I have trouble articulating -- something about how the visual often seeks to illustrate parallels or ideas, whereas writing characters as a different religion can fundamentally change who those characters are, the world they inhabit, etc. in a more... invasive?? way. that’s still not quite right, but I genuinely am not sure how to explain what i mean! I hope the general idea comes across. ><

something else to think about is like, what are pieces I find acceptable and why?

what makes the pieces above that reference christian imagery different than this stunning nieyao piece by @cyandemise after klimt’s kiss? (warnings for like, dead bodies and vague body horror) like i ADORE this piece (PLEASE click for fullview it’s worth it for the quality). it’s incredibly beautiful and evocative and very obviously references a piece of european art. I have no problem with it. why? because it isn’t explicitly christian? it’s still deeply entrenched in western canon. klimt certainly made other pieces that were explicit christian references.

another piece I’d like to invite you all to consider is this incredible naruto fanart of sakura and ino beheading sasuke after caravaggio’s judith. (warnings for beheading, blood, etc. you know.) i also adore this piece! i think it’s very good both technically and conceptually. the reference that it makes has a real power when viewed in relation to the roles of the characters in their original story -- seeing the women that sasuke fucked over and treated so disrespectfully collaborating in his demise Says Something. this is also!! an explicitly christian reference made with non-christian japanese characters. is this okay? does it evoke the same discomfort as seeing mdzs characters being drawn with christian iconography? why or why not?

the point is, I don’t think there’s a neat answer, but I do think there are a lot of interesting issues surrounding cultural erasure/hegemony that are raised by this question. i don’t think there are easy resolutions to any of them either, but I think that it’s a good opportunity to reexamine our own discomfort and try and see where it comes from. all emotions are valid but not all are justified etc. so I try to ask, is it fair? do i apply my criticisms and standards equally? why or why not? does it do real harm, or do i just not like it? what makes one work okay and another not?

i’ve felt that there’s a real danger with the kind of like, deep moral scrutiny of recent years in quashing interesting work in the name of fear. this morality tends to be expressed in black and white, good and bad dichotomies that i really do think stymies meaningful conversation and progress. you’ll often see angry takes that boil down to things like, “POC good, queer people good, white people bad, christianity bad” etc. without a serious critical examination of the actual issues at hand. I feel that these are extraordinarily harmful simplifications that can lead to an increased insularity that isn’t necessarily good for anyone. there’s a fine line between asking people to stay in their lane and cultural gatekeeping sometimes, and I think that it’s something we should be mindful of when we’re engaging in conversations about cultural erasure, appropriation etc.

PERHAPS IT IS OBVIOUS that I have no idea where that line falls LMAO since after all that rambling I have given you basically nothing. but! I hope that you found it interesting at least, and that it gives you a bit more material to think on while you figure out where you stand ahaha.

was this just an excuse to show off cool (fan)art i like? maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(ko-fi)

[akatsuki-shin]

I... I don’t often call out anyone specifically using social media before, but... I saw this among the reblogs in my first post about MXTX novels English release announcement and I feel that this is just too much...

I’m not going to tag this with the fandom tags because this is literally just my personal rant, and I don’t want unpleasant things to appear when people are happily browsing the tags.

I also censored the person’s blog name. It’s not like I want people to mass attack them.

But I do have some things I want to say about this kind of mindset.

And this is gonna be a long post, so I’ll cut it with "Read More” later below as not to disturb anyone’s browsing experience.

Why do they have to split the books into multiple volumes?

First, you do realize that the original Chinese version and other languages versions are also in multiple volumes that don’t always be published on the same date, right?

SVSSS has 3 volumes, MDZS has 4 volumes, TGCF has 5 volumes.

With the English release, both SVSSS and MDZS get +1 volume while TGCF gets +3 volumes.

Why you ask?

Have you ever considered how long a single Chinese word would be if written in alphabets?

The word “人” in Chinese only needs 1 (one) character, while in English it would translate to “P E O P L E” = 5 (five) characters.

The word “知己” in Chinese only needs 2 (two) characters, while in English it would translate to “C O N F I D A N T E” = 10 characters, or “S O U L M A T E” = 8 characters.

Now apply this to an entire novel. FYI, TGCF has more than 1 million word count in Chinese, so you can do the math by yourself.

I mean, just go watch the donghua or live action in YouTube. One single sentence in the Chinese sub is often translated to two or more lines in the English subtitle.

And have I mentioned that the English release will have:

Glossary

Footnotes

Character Guides

And I’m going to repeat this once again: In China and other countries that already get their official releases, it is also NOT always all released on the same date as a single set/box.

So yes, (not) surprise! For the Chinese release and official releases in other countries, you also often need to purchase multiple times, pay shipping fee multiple times, and wait for certain period of times until all volumes are released.

It doesn’t only happen to MXTX novels, it happens to almost all novels, be it danmei or not.

Why don’t they just wait for translations to finish and release it all at the same time/as a box set? Why the span of two years?

On my part, I already say above that in China and other countries that already get their official release, it’s also not always published all on the same date.

Other than that, I’m not an expert at book publishing, much less when the publisher is not from my own country. But maybe consider the following:

They’re releasing 3 (three) hugely popular IPs all at the same time. Maybe the preparations take more time and effort to ensure everything is flawless?

Since it is very rare (or maybe never, cmiiw) for danmei novels to be published in English, maybe the publisher is testing the market first? Because if they already release them as a huge bundle from the start and it somehow flops, the loss would be very big. If it works well, then good! Maybe for future danmei release, they will consider making a box set or releasing them within shorter timeframe. 

In terms of marketing, if they wait another 2 years to release it all at once, will the momentum still be there? You can say “so in the end it’s all about money”, but if not sales number and money, what else should the publisher expect to receive for their work? They’re already putting a lot of effort buying all three IPs from the Chinese publishers, proofread or even translate some from scratch, pay translators, editors, illustrators, printing companies, etc. If it’s not selling well simply because they release it at the wrong time, aren’t all these efforts going to be wasted? And you can bet there will be no more danmei published in English if their first try already flops merely because of losing the momentum.

Are there any other rules or regulations they need to comply that prevents them from releasing everything in one go? But once again, even in China and other countries, it is also not always all released in one go, so this argument is already invalid from the start.

But they make it so expensive like this!

I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’ve compared the prices to MDZS Japanese release + TGCF Thai release and... The price isn’t really that much different.

Btw, I’m using Google’s currency converter, in case anyone wants to know where does my calculation comes from.

Okay, so here’s MDZS Japanese version from CD Japan:

One volume of MDZS Regular ver. cost 1760 yen. This is 15,96 USD before shipping. There’s only like $4 difference.

There’s also the Exclusive ver. that cost 3660 yen (32,92 USD) but we’re not gonna talk about that because they’re basically making you pay for the bonus, which is some acrylic panels and illustration cards.

Now here’s TGCF Thai version from Sense Book:

Translation using Google Chrome page translate:

One volume of TGCF costs 360 baht. This is 10.77 USD before shipping. So there’s about $9.22 difference.

Again, notice the difference of word/sentence length in the Thai words and English alphabet.

"But there’s still difference in price and other releases usually gets merchandise!” - Correct me if I’m wrong, but the US is probably one of the most expensive countries in the world. Do you think the materials, printings, and manpower cost is the same with other countries? Especially compared to one in Southeast Asia.

“But it’s xxxx times more expensive than the original Chinese version!” - Excuse me, the original Chinese version doesn’t need to pay for translators, proofreaders and editors with multilingual skills, and purchase the IPs? If you think it’s more worth buying the Chinese version, then by all means go ahead.

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

Some last words...

I’m not looking down on those in difficult financial situation, but hey, I’m not filthy rich either? I come from a third world country and even if I’m a working adult, I’m still in working middle class + I got my parents to take care of. My country’s currency is literally just a tiny 0.000069 USD per 1 Indonesian Rupiah.

Every single fandom merchandise that you see me bought, either I’ve saved up for that or I sacrificed other things to buy that. I just don’t show the struggle to you guys because why should I? I’m just here to have fun about the fandom I love, not to flex my struggling financial condition.

These official English release of MXTX novels? All 17 books are going to cost me almost HALF of my monthly salary. But hey, I think it’s a good thing that they didn’t release it all at once, so that I can save up between months to purchase them all and plan my spending better.

If you feel the price is expensive, especially if you have to ship from outside North America, consider the following:

Book Depository provide free worldwide shipping

The books’ ISBN numbers are all available in the publisher’s website, just show it to you local bookstore and ask if they can order it for you

Plus, there are already hundreds of generous fans doing free giveaways in Twitter, even the publishers are helping to signal boost this. You can go and try your luck if you’re really desperate.

Lastly, I know how much love we all have for our favorite fandoms, but remember that fandom merchandise is NOT your primary needs.

You are NOT obliged to purchase any fandom merchandise if you can’t afford it and you should ALWAYS prioritize your primary needs.

Also, if you still want to read the fan-translations that are still available, alright go ahead. But remember that the translators themselves already said fan translations in English are now illegal. You can read it. We all consume pirated contents at one point. But don’t flex about it and diss the official release just because you can’t afford it.

I don’t know if the person who made that reblog tags are going to come at me or not, but even if they do, I literally don’t care. I’m not gonna waste my time arguing with someone with that kind of mindset and will block them right on the spot.

Also Idgaf if they call me out or talk behind my back, I literally don’t know them, so I don’t care.

End of rant.

[kolachess]

DMBJ Names and Honorifics Explained - Don’t trust the subs!

I’ve no idea if someone has already made such a post, but I really like explaining Chinese as it’s also good practice for me, so here we go.

If you are a non-Chinese speaker, you might have noticed inconsistencies in subs when referring to all the different characters. And / or that the names don’t seem to match up to the sound of the name. 

So here’s a little cultural and character guide to understanding DMBJ names.

Why are there so many names, nicknames, and honorifics for one person in a Chinese drama? To chalk this all up to nicknames is... grossly over-simplifying things. The thing with names / honorifics is very rooted in Chinese culture itself. Chinese culture is one heavily indexed on relations and hierarchy, so depending on your place in the ‘hierarchy’, whether it’s society or family, you will refer to each other as different things. As an example to illustrate complexity, where in English, ‘uncle’ refers to all male siblings of either of your parents, in Chinese, your father’s younger brother is addressed differently from your father’s older brother and also different from your mother’s brother. 

Chinese names and translation to English - Space? No space? Hyphens? Last name first?

So Chinese is a pictographic language. Each ‘character’ is one word, and one syllable exactly. Hence, you don’t need spaces or hyphens or anything in Chinese. Spaces and hyphens when romanized are purely for English speakers’ convenience. 

For example, in Chinese, the names would be written as wuxie, wusanxing, wangpangzi, etc. (And no such thing as capitalization either.) As a general rule of thumb, because for documentation purposes, the surname is separated out, Chinese people generally end up writing the given name all smushed together even if they are 2 words.

And yes, the surname always goes first. Other way is just... weird. Never happens.

Can you space out two words of a given name? Sure I suppose. Probably less seen.

As for hyphens with honorifics... sure? I’m not sure if smush together or hyphen is more official actually... 

What are Chinese names? How do people pick a name?

Unlike English names, Chinese people compose their names. Which means... you can have anything from names that have literary eloquence and deeper meaning，like ‘Wu Xie’, where ‘Wu’ is homonymous with ‘Without’ and ‘Xie’ means ‘Evil’, so Wu Xie’s name carries the meaning of ‘no evil’...

...to names that have little to no deep meaning and sometimes downright stupid sounding, like ‘Wang Pangzi’ which does indeed translate to Wang Fatty lol.

That’s why if you ask Chinese people to provide common Chinese names, they’ll stare at you blankly. Of course, that’s not to say there aren’t some popular names, given people sometimes name themselves after famous people and there are plenty of generic ones as well.

But this is also why, when meeting for the first time, you might hear a lot of people explaining how their name is written (i.e. with which word), because there are a looooot of homonymous words and it’s impossible to tell how write someone’s name without them ‘spelling it out’.

How do Chinese people call each other by name?

Most Chinese names (surname + given name) will form 2-3 syllables (very rarely there will be 4). 

General rule of thumb:

- Using someone’s full name is always generally acceptable (not to be confused with addressing them... that’s a whole different game).

- You never refer to someone with one syllable. Which means if their given name is only one syllable, you pretty much always say both surname + given name together (Hence why Wu Xie is always Wu Xie and never ‘Xie’). If their given name is two syllables, you might call them by given name only if you’re familiar. 

Of course, there are tons of ways to give people nicknames (more explanation below), so you might end up only using one syllable of someone’s name, but in conjunction with another prefix / suffix of sorts.

So yes, the subs say ‘Zhang’ for Zhang Qiling but that’s BS no one has ever referred to him as simply ‘Zhang’. And for that matter, no one ever refers to him as simply Qiling either, though that’s more out of habit than any rules of names. And finally, they rarely refer to him as Zhang Qiling at all... more explanation below.

Basic ‘prefix’ / ‘suffix’ / ‘honorific’ introductions relevant for DMBJ

These aren’t really prefixes and suffixes and honorifics. They’re simply words. But for sake of simplicity, let’s just treat them as that.

-ye (sounds like ‘yeah’) = ‘Grandpa’ of the generic ‘old man’ sense, but also ‘master’ or ‘lord’ to indicate status / respect. 

Example usage: Wu Sanxing (Wu Xie’s third uncle) - People like Pan Zi call him Sanye, which means ‘Third Master’. 

It can also be casually used by someone to refer to themselves in third person and indicate their ‘prowess’. Again, due to Chinese cultural relations, there’s a lot of emphasis on hierarchy, so people often humorously refer to themselves in third person with a title of more seniority (’this ancestor’ or ‘this old miss’). 

Example usage: Pangzi always referring to himself as Pangye. ‘Make way, Pangye is coming in clutch with the bombs!’.

-shu (sounds more like ‘soo’) = ‘Uncle’. This can be an uncle related, or not. 

Example usage: Wu Sanxing (Wu Xie’s third uncle). Wu Xie and his peers will generally call him Sanshu, because they’re of the same generation and need to call Sanshu with some level of respect. Of course, Sanye is also respectful, so certainly Pangzi can call him Sanye. But Pangzi calling him Wu Sanxing would be disrespectful. (Zhang Qiling on the other hand, technically can call him whatever since he’s the oldest haha).

-ayi (sounds like ‘ah-yee’) = ‘Aunt’. Similar as uncle. 

Example usage: Chen Wenjing (in Ultimate Note, Sanshu’s former girlfriend). You’ll notice Wu Xie addressed her as Wenjing-ayi. Of course, since she was a bit less familiar with them, and wasn’t always around, he and others will refer to her as simply Chen Wenjing... it’s complicated. The nuances of when it’s ok to leave off the suffix is an art form lol.

-ge (sounds like ‘guh’) = ‘older brother’. Can also be related or not. Can be used alone, or doubled up (which tends to be cuter).

Example usage: Huo Xiuxiu refers to Wu Xie as ‘Wu Xie-gege’ and Xie Yuchen as ‘Xiao Hua-gege’. Pangzi told Yun Cai (the girl he crushed on) to call him ‘Pangge’. And yes! This is the ‘ge’ in Xiaoge. More explanation below.

Xiao (sounds like ‘shall’) = ‘Small’ or ‘Little’. This is often used in creating a nickname and used first before a name.

Example usage: Wu Xie’s second uncle will refer to him as ‘Xiao Xie’. Wu Xie refers to Xie Yuchen as ‘Xiao Hua’, which translates to ‘Little Flower’ and is a nickname based off his stage name, Jie Yuhua. And yes! This is the ‘xiao’ in Xiaoge. More explanation below (because translating it as ‘little older brother’ makes no sense I know).

Lao (sounds like ‘lao’ lol) = ‘Old’. Similar usage as ‘xiao’.

Example usage: I think I remember Granny Huo perhaps referring to Wu Laogou (Wu Xie’s grandfather) as ‘Lao Wu’?  But also, yes, his actual name has that word too.

Numbers - Numbers are very commonly used in nicknames.

Er (sounds like ‘are’) = Two / Second.

San (sounds like ‘san’ lol idk) = Three / Third.

Hence why Wu Xie refers to his uncles as ‘Sanshu’ and ‘Ershu’. (And yes, their names themselves also conveniently carry the numbers...)

You’ll never say ‘one’ though. Instead, ‘da’ or big / large is used.

Names of the characters

Wow so only after all that can we begin to explain the many names... Let’s begin.

Wu Xie - Wu Xie is actually the most straightforward thank god. Most people will call him this, Zhang Qiling included.

AKA Tianzhen or even Xiao Tianzhen - This is nickname provided Pangzi gave him meaning ‘naive’ or ‘innocent’, and what Pangzi calls him most if not all the time. There’s a phrase in Chinese too called ‘tianzhenwuxie’ to mean innocent, carefree, and pure. The ‘wu’ there is a different but homonymous word with Wu Xie’s ‘Wu’, but the meaning and reference is clear (Chinese has looooots of homonyms and puns). This is also why that phrase ‘My lifetime, in exchange for you a decade of innocence and purity.’ from Zhang Qiling to Wu Xie is so heart-wrenching, because those last four Chinese words are ‘tianzhenwuxie’, a poetic play on his two names. 😭 

AKA Xiao Xie - Called by his second uncle, Wu Erbai

AKA Da Zhizi - Called by his third uncle, meaning ‘big nephew’. ‘Da’ here just means the oldest really. Wu Xie is Wu Sanxing’s oldest (but also only) nephew. And ‘nephew’ here too specifically refers to the son of your brother.

AKA Xiao Sanye - Called by Pan Zi, Bai Haotian (from Lost Tomb Reboot). Sanye here is in reference to how he dogs his third uncle’s footsteps all the time. And he’s the younger version so... there.

AKA Laoban or Wu-laoban - Called by Wang Meng, business partners because laoban means ‘boss’.

Zhang Qiling - Whew OK honestly, I don’t think of him as ‘Zhang Qiling’ much at all, because very rarely do any of the other characters refer to him as Zhang Qiling. Most of the time it’s...

AKA Xiaoge - This is what Wu Xie and Pangzi refer to him a lot as. Xiaoge literally translates to ‘little big brother’, but that meaning is weird in English. So don’t think of it that way. Xiaoge is just a generic term for a young guy. Like... ‘lad’? Lol. But he’s all mysterious and stuff so the generic term just stuck. This is also why in Tomb of the Sea, someone referred to Li Cu as ‘xiaoge’, because he was indeed a xiaoge. But in Wu Xie’s heart, there’s only one Xiaoge. ❤️

AKA Menyouping - The name of this ship! Pingxie! This is what Wu Xie referred to him mostly as in his first POV novel. It means ‘stuffy oil bottle’ and communicates the sentiment of ‘poker face’ or just someone with no expressions.

Note on Zhang Qiling: This name is actually a title rather than a name. Qiling is the title given to the Zhang patriarch responsible for handling the spirits of their ancestors... eh it’s complicated and warrants its own post if you want to know more.

Note on ‘Kylin’: I know this is what the official translations had it, but like... wtf. What, no. Like, idk what happened here, but this is a terrible mistranslation. ‘Kylin’ or ‘Qilin’ is the name of the mystical beast of which Zhang Qiling has a tattoo of, but it is two entirely different words from the ‘Qiling’. Don’t let the similarity in English spelling fool you. Completely different words. Some translator thought Kylin might market better probably. But... no. It’s just wrong. I have to do a double-take when I see people writing ‘Kylin’. Come on translators, have more faith in your English speaking audience. Fans can adapt! Don’t butcher the name for sake of marketability!

Wang Pangzi - Yes, ‘Fatty’ is the accurate translation haha. Most people refer to him as Pangzi, including Wu Xie and Zhang Qiling.

AKA Pangye - Referred to by Pangzi himself, but also sometimes people who are trying to suck up to Pangzi.

AKA Pangge - Referred to by his love interests.

Wu Sanxing - Wu Xie’s third uncle. See, I don’t even know what to call him by default because I’m not sure what the subs tend to say. 

AKA Sanshu - Wu Xie and his friends will call him this.

AKA Sanye - Pan Zi and other people in the industry will call him this.

Hei Yanjing - Again, I’ve no idea which name to use as his primary. Translates literally to ‘sunglasses’. Not technically ‘black sunglasses because that’s redundant’. See, even the spacing between his name here is unnecessary because this isn’t his official name, only a nickname. I don’t think we have his real name. But this version is generally called by most others I think?

AKA Hei Xiazi - This means ‘black blind person’, and is what Xiaoge refers to him as... and some others.

AKA Heiye - Just a more respectful reference. Called by Xie Yuchen.

Xie Yuchen - Called by Xiaoge and others less familiar.

Jie Yuhua - His stage name.

Xiao Hua - Called by Wu Xie, as it’s a nickname built off of his stage name.

Huaye - Called by Hei Yanjing and Pangzi, but more so out of humorous flattery than anything. 

.

.

Whew that was a lot. Just be glad this isn’t MDZS where people had courtesy names on top of all these names... I think I’ll stop there, but feel free to shoot me any questions about other characters!