#and i really like looking at the chinese side of fandom!!! i've been translated into chinese twice now

[freisende]

Qiang Jin Jiu (The Ballad of Sword and Wine) Truly Mesmerizing!

Qiang Jin Jiu (The Ballad of Sword and Wine) by Tang Jiu Qing, has officially been taken and published by Seven Seas Publishing.

将进酒 Qiāng jìn jiǔ, which literally means 'let's drink wine', is translated as "The Ballad of Sword and Wine" in the official English translation. I've been rolling myself on the bed for the few days I first read this because of how aesthetic and tantalizing the title translation is. I love it so much.😤❤

Ever since the 1st volume came out, it has stirred big fuss over the fandom because of Xiao Chiye's expression and sexy body lmao.🤭

Not mentioning Shen Zechuan is as beautiful as ever..😏✨

And it has again been made a big fuss because the 2nd volume cover is revealed today--

A truly, different vibe and color palette used compared to the 1st volume! ✨✨

For me personally I really love the way Xiao Chiye's eyes is overlapped with Meng (Xiao Chiye's bird pet) which makes Chiye's vision even more sharpened and overwhelming.

Meanwhile, Shen Zechuan's eyes just practically seems ready to draw out your fear-- if we readers really read and take adventure in this 2nd volume. Truly menacing, but I love it!!!❤❤

It looks like Zechuan will kill us if we dare snatch a glance at Chiye omg 🤣🤣

Moreover, Zechuan wears the red robe as his position keeps pushing up. Oh geez, he's truly suitable with white and red! ❤✨

Read the first sentence of the synopsis🫣😳❤️

And Chiye's hand that wants to hug Zechuan's waist 🙈💖

The arts were done so beautifully by St.✨✨

Now look at the comparison of both of our protagonists, because it's really amazing!!!😔💖

If the first volume is the introduction of the angst and drama in Qiang Jin Jiu, it's as if the 2nd volume practically welcomes readers to indulge and take part in the story.🤭

Look at the symbols on the side of the books! ❤

Vol. 1: His sword, yes very beautiful

Vol. 2: Flowers, of course!!

Please read Qiang Jin Jiu if you haven't because you will feel how the dynasty's political stuffs going on; merge yourself with the imagination of Chinese history and the adventures of Shen Zechuan and Xiao Chiye in achieving their goals!!🤭💕

P.S. also prepare your mental because it's really going crazy especially in this second volume book mwehehe🤧✨

Let's support the authors too by buying the official books if you can.

[meikuree]

20 questions for fic writers

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

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

answers below:

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

about 45, across my two accounts

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

~130,000 words across > 3.5 years

3. what fandoms do you write for?

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

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

sidewalk reinventions [nimona (2023), gen]

the runaround [SNK, pieck/yelena]

blood to gold [SNK, pieck/hange]

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

small foreign faction [SNK, pieck/yelena]

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

sidewalk reinventions [nimona (2023), gen]

the runaround [SNK, pieck/yelena]

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

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

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

5. do you respond to comments?

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

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

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

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

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

the sun coming out.

8. do you get hate on fics?

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

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

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

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

no :(

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I'm aware of!

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

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

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

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

the original:

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

[…]

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

and the translations:

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

[…]

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

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

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

14. whats your all-time favorite ship?

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

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

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

16. what are your writing strengths?

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

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

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

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

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

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

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

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

19. first fandom you wrote for?

snk/attack on titan.

20. favorite fic you've ever written?

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

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

template:

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

3. what fandoms do you write for?

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

5. do you respond to comments?

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

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

8. do you get hate on fics?

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

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

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

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

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

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

16. what are your writing strengths?

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

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

19. first fandom you wrote for?

20. favorite fic you've ever written?

[iapetusneume]

so i don't go here, but you seem really into warhammer right now, so tell me about your favorite wh40k fic you've done. pick something you are particularly proud of.

For this, I went only with my one-shots.

I was torn between Actions Speak Louder Than Words and The Gift of the Rope. I'm going to go with the former, as I think the story behind writing it is probably a bit more interesting.

This story is my most... well, pretty much everything of my 40k fics, besides subscriptions. Most kudos, most comment threads, most hits, most bookmarks. It has since been translated into Chinese (with my blessing). And let me tell you, I had so much anxiety writing this story.

See, the 40k fandom has an exchange at Christmastime, and it's named after a holiday in canon that happens around the same time, called Sanguinala. It's a really wonderful time because it's one of the few 40k-exclusive exchanges, and a lot of people participate who don't usually do exchanges. Among the many amazing writers and artists, participating in this exchange is one of my favorite artists in the fandom. And I thought to myself "Becky, what are you going to do if you get them for your assignment?" And I was like "haha there are like 30 people participating, what are the odds?"

So you can guess what happened. I got them for my assignment.

For the prompts, they had three options. I was only really familiar enough with one of the prompts, so I knew immediately what I was going to write.

So in canon you have these 18 demigod-like characters, called primarchs. And they had a civil war (the sides referred to Loyalist and Traitor) and some of them died and some of them turned into daemons and some of them have gone MIA.

And since you don't go here, I'm going to give you the extreme cliffnotes version of why their prompt was a big deal.

Fast forward 10,000 years. There's only 1 known Loyalist primarch in the current canon for a while who is awake and active... until very recently. A second one is no longer sleeping MIA, and these two primarchs have a history. They are, in fact, 2/3rds of my favorite triad, and the triad is one of my absolute favorite romantic relationships in the fandom.

And whether or not one ships them, so much of the fandom is looking forward to them seeing each other again. We don't know when it's going to happen - but we're hoping that it'll be in a novel in the near future.

40k, in terms of writing fic, is a fandom on the smaller side. There have been a few fics written about this supposed reunion, but I think there were only two when I wrote mine? And the ones written were not smutty, and my fic was going to be smutty.

And my anxiety was getting really bad, and I had writer's block. I'm not as current about a lot of the events in "the present" of 40k. I was afraid to get something wrong.

So, in my last ditch attempt to get inspiration, I picked up the novel that had recently been released that talked about the primarch who recently returned. And its one of the best books I've read for 40k. And I found out later that the author is queer, and it is obvious that he crammed as much queer subtext as he possibly could.

And the very end of the epilogue was what I needed to start writing.

My anxiety didn't vanish because I was writing, but at least I was making progress. Which at this point there was less than a week left before assignments were due. I did not have time to second guess myself. Two friends in the fandom were pre-readers for me, and reassured me it was good.

And I submitted my assignment on time, but it wasn't a version I was super happy with. But then I had a week more to come up with a better ending and edit my submission.

Christmas came around, and the recipient loved it.

This fic deals with aging, and I compare and contrast what we-the-readers once saw them as, to their new reality. How it might manifest. And as their bodies have changed, so have they. They've been through so much, and no one really understands what they're going through but each other.

This fic also gave be a massive confidence boost in regards to my writing, and how I engage with the Canon. 40k is hundreds of novels, with plenty being contradictory. And then there are the things one ignores because its dumb. And then all the AUs one writes because one's favorite character died, and yes I understand the narrative significance, but I love him and want him to be happy. ANYWAYS. My knowledge of current events in the canon were not great, and I knew the recipient knew a lot more than me. That didn't stop them from loving my story.

40k is really unlike any series I've written for before. When I wrote for anime/manga, I could say "this is based on [x] version." When I wrote for Dragon Age, I could say "this is only off of the games," and people would understand the scope. 40k is so nebulous, I'm still honestly figuring it out. And I sometimes wonder if the desire to "know the canon" is a barrier to entry for other writers.

I took a giant chance with this story, and I'm still feeling the benefits.

[astromechs]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @thecasualauthor18 ; thank you!

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

it looks like i've got 77 right now

2.  What's your total AO3 word count?

180,976

3. What fandoms do you write for?

most of it is marvel and star wars, have a modest collection for the peacemaker tv series, and then side trips into other things!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

this might be all i ever wanted (all i ever wanted to happen to me) — 226 kudos

whatever happens (happens to the both of us) — 172 kudos

we've come a long, long way together — 171 kudos

why don't you close your eyes and reinvent me — 170 kudos

feeling's running straight to my bones — 132 kudos

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

i really need to get better about this, because i have been slacking bad lol; i love each and every one and appreciate them so, so much, but i get flustered and then i forget to reply and i'm a hot mess ghfdjks

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

i think i tend to favor open/ambiguous endings, more than outright angsty ones? probably almost paradise, though; the one time i acknowledged mcu gamora died and she was still dead at the end of this, so that was depressing by my standards. also my two canon compliant rogue one fics because i mean... gestures to what canon compliant means.

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

obviously that time rick astley saved the world in that fic of mine from 2009.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

shoutout to that one weirdo who left me anon hate over... checks notes... carol danvers and jessica drew kissing. i even had to report that to ao3 because it was legit harassment, and for what.

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

i did a calculation recently and like 2/3 of the fics i've published in the past two years have been smut. oops.

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

i do love inventing ships out of nothing and making you all see my vision — so while a lot of what i've published on that front has been confined to comic characters who've never interacted before, i do have more in my head.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i'm aware of......

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! anything that's worth my love (is worth the fight) was translated into chinese, and that's still, like, the neatest thing that's ever happened to me.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

i've played around with sharing universes with friends and swapping ideas! and a couple of co-written series we dabbled in.

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

honestly? yeah, it's rebelcaptain. straight up. what you've all witnessed this year is the culmination of 1) my pandemic character arc of having zero shame of what i fling to my ao3 account anymore, and 2) that particular pandora's box getting reopened thanks to andor getting released at the end of last year because being insane about them has lived in me like a sleeper agent since 2016.

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

ugh unfortunately the marvel cosmic star wars au will probably never get done

16. What are your writing strengths?

getting into character's heads and having the reader experience their emotions, maybe? idk maybe tension between characters, sexual or otherwise? maybe smut? maybe humor?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i hate titles so much. hate hate HATE. song lyrics are my life hack for that.

also what is a plot

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

if i don't know the language, i'm not confident i'm going to get it right, so i usually just take the comics approach of < words go here > if this ever comes up.

19. First Fandom you wrote for?

i wrote some unhinged star wars prequels (specifically anidala) fics in high school, and i also started writing unhinged matrix fics around that time. no, none of you will see any of those.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

keep whatever it is (that's compelling you on) — because it's the culmination of a story that had lived in my head for years but i didn't think i was skilled enough to carry out, so i was proud i finally wrote it

Going On An Adventure 🧜‍♂️ by peaceluvr69 — is my comedic magnum opus tbh and i made myself laugh stupid the entire time i was writing it, so that has to count for something

here's hoping we collide — i really do genuinely love how this story turned out 🥹 to the point that i actually keep thinking about making a branch universe off of this to give that jyn and that cassian from five years prior to rogue one more chances to know each other and also be... prickly little assholes in a funny way, because they're funny. i imagine the hell they'd raise together and it warms my heart.

tagging (no pressure!): @quarantineddreamer ; @frostbitepandaaaaa ; @sgtjamesrogers ; @ezracomehome ; @luciechat ; @rebelrainfall

[blocksruinedme]

ask anything? :D we talk empires n aus stuff a lot in the discord already so Im gonna ask: what were the best (and worst. if youre feeling the urge to be spiteful :3) parts of your last fandom before this? and what are the biggest difference, and similarities, between it and ur current mcyt fandoms!

Alright let's go. The fandom is The Untamed/Mo Do Zu Shi, and I will love it forever. If you've seen long hairedtruly beautiful chinese twinks in long robes in swords, it's probably then. the original source is a web novel written by an anime fic author, and I'm really into the live action version (there's also animated, comic, audio drama)

It caused me to learn a LOT about chinese culture language. Like, a lot, I tried Mandarin for a bit on duolingo but I can't even explain how much I learned about history, food, culture, forms of address, poetry, just, so much. The fandom is full of fancy smart bitches, one of my fave tumblrs is someone who majored in ancient china, and the analysis etc was just chef's kiss amazing. i wouldn't be doing chinese brush painting, and that's bringing me a lot of joy, i've never done visual art before.

I would not have learned so much about culture if it wasn't for my very tightknit group chat. I mentioned I'm on a plane to see friends? It's one of them & their spouse (who i've known since college) and one of the other people in the groupchat, who only knows them because I watched the untamed and introduced my friends. last spring us and the 4th member of the gc went on vacation together. I'm the only person who is fully monolingual, and the only one who isn't an immigrant or child of immigrants from taiwan. I've learned so much about so much of those experiences, and I didn't consider myself ignorant before, but you really need to get to know someone to understand some things (as much as you can without living it

the fic is FUCKING AMAZING. idk how many unread bookmarks i have of fic that is professional publication quality - partly because some of the authors are pro writers. I've been lucky to get to read a loooooot of fic by professional writers, cause my fandoms and ships overlapped. There is so much fic, closer to 100k than 50k i think.

i bonded with other friends by getting on calls and watching with them. i was maybe pushy lol. sadly i'm not gonna try and get anyone into mcyt

canon queer canon queer like deeply canon queer like there are extensive sex scenes in the novel and the entire thing is a gay/bisexual love story it's so good IT'S SO GOOD I CRIED SO MUCH IT'S SO GOOD. SOB SOB SOB.

xue yang my insane psycopath blorbo fuck i love him i got a painting printed on canvas hanginf over my bed.

the canon is closed. the script is a script and the actors are actors and nothing like feeling weird about the crossover can ever happen. i never got as much as i wanted with my side character blorbos but it is what it is.

Downsides

tha canon is closed ;-) I'll never get more than my 50 episodes, unless

Some drama and.... discourse has become such a loaded term. But sometimes you have things like conflict that comes up between the feelings and desires of chinese diaspora and jewish people about how things are portrayed in fic, right? And it's not fighting over nothing, it's (afaik) not fighting to fight, not fighting for clout or because you want to look cool or because you're unhappy with your life and think lashing out will help.

Also, there is fighting to fight and for clout etc. If I ever see top/bottom discourse again it will be too soon, i've got enough of that to last till the heat death of the universe

translations, man. translation is an art and i am glad to know so much more about translation but it's so frustrating to know you'll never really get it, and to try and tell people things like "i know he sounds very brusque but he's speaking ina. very fancy linguistic register and sounds fancy to the other people, and the way he said all those sentences there and they were all four characters long, that's poetic and significant and and and"

I was not inspired to write in general, I wasn't getting ideas. That wasn't notable because I've never ever ever written regularly, i wrote one yuletide fic a year for awhile, i old wrote novely. I am not someone who pops into a new fandom and writes 6 fic in 2 months cause that's the kind of thing that've done in other fandoms. this is insane. And now that i have the writing bug... well, the fic is so amazing, and plentiful, i'm not going to get much attention. i just wrote an exchange fic, my first time writing in the fandom, because my mcyt fic writing encouraged me. I am glad i did it, i made my recipient happy, and it will never get as many kudos as my least popular mcyt fic. I think it has 8, and I'm happy to get that. Here's the thing, i have so many things i *can* do with my creative energies, and multiple that i do to reach and touh other people, and i'm not going to prioritize things where i know I'm not good enough to get read. It's not that i'm choosing writing vs nothing because i want people to read it, i'm choosing writing vs. other things

Comparisons

Okay i think a lot can be pretty obvious from what I said above. We don't have that much fic, we don't have canon smut, afaik we don't have pro authors - not that you have to be pro to be good! or that all pro authors are good! but they usually are pretty good.

other people i knew irl or from my long fandom past got into it. i would get ao3 fic notification from people and eagerly check to see if they'd gotten dragged in. i do not expect that to ever ever happen here. i have ventured far away from the fandoms of my past!

For me... I was a pretty normal age in the untamed fandom, and i am wicked old here. I'm an elder millennial. When I was in my 20s I met fans in their 50s, including at cons that make it really real. I don't see any reason people should drop interests cause they age??? It's bizarre and incomprehensible to me and I always wonder how people will feel when they age. I don't think there's anything inherently childish about this source, and i am happy to talk to younger people, but it's different when you know you're at a similar level of life stuff, and the privileges that come with age. i try to be careful and aware of this with my interactions with younger people. power imbalances etc and i think i do a good job. (my fandom before the untamed, that i was much more casual about, was other youtube and that was maybe even younger?)

The canon! oh my god! LOOK AT THIS SHIT. I majored in media studies and focused on fandom and what was at the time new media and this is... y'all if i was in college now i would be writing desperately about this. As a media studies person, as a larper, as someone who is obsessed with watching the ways people can express themselves and connect and stuff grow... fuck man. SMPs????? fuck yeah!!!!!! gah!!!!! catch me sober and i can be more coherent.

connecting with people has been slower, but it's picking up. <3

the untamed had so few female charaters. empires being so female is just so amazing to me, and i *am* working on f/f, it's just. the problem is jimmy, okay? no women throw themselves at jimmy, it's not *my* fault.

i can't fucking vid it. i just. can't. i can't draw and i never finished any vids for the untamed but i have so many unfinished ones. i'm not a great vidder but i love it, and not even having the possibility... it makes me sad a lot, actually. but i need facial expressions and more dynamic footage.

in conclusion fandom is great. before the untamed i hadn't been seriously into fandom in years, i've always been in and out. it was insane how into it i got. i started watching as i recovered from major surgery, and was still deep in the pandemic blues.

mcyt has unlocked creativity in me I never ever ever expected. i'm an elder millennial and i started reading fic when i was 12 and fic writing was never gonna be my thing. in 2021 i beta read over 100k words to contribute, in 2022 i started podficcing to have some creative expression of my own. my therapist and i talk about it all the time (i've been with her since i was 19, we talk about everything, and fyi what you love can say things about what's up with you and therapists know that, talk about your blorbos). I've determined i'm not getting an answer anytime soon. The medium is a lot, right, but it's more. I don't know, but I fucking love writing like this, the satisfaction, the fact that i made someone *cry* with my silly cave ranchers fic. I've made people cry a lot with my larp writing, but that intended to make them cry, not something i wrote in a fever dream in one day.

So thank you everyone who is part of my experience, it's been really great and i hope to keep being so happy and fulfilled and encouraged in my creativity etc!

"hope that's what you wanted". i am only ever concise due to extensive editing lol :)

[hua-fei-hua]

not using chinese for a long time then just suddenly using it again is surprisingly interesting. it's been a good while since i've spoken but i can still understand what's being said (unless its in any other dialect cause that just sends everything down the drain, amirite?)

one time i was trying to bring one of my friends to after school math tutoring w/me bc my friends n i knew she’d get that teacher next year since she was gonna take calc, and so she had to call her mom n tell her what was up, but she wasn’t really sure how to explain it bc she herself wasn’t fully sure what was going on, so she handed the phone to me to explain in mandarin and so i just kind of fumbled my way through going “uhhh yes. yes. stay at school. study math. yes.” (which was made a lot harder by the fact that i just cannot hear things through the phone very well ;__;)

and then after the fact my friend hung up and said, “my mom said you sound cute” ASDFHASDFA

most of my friends speak some mix of canto and english with their parents, so they walked into mandarin thinking “pff this is gonna be easy” and then just immediately perished, partly bc as you said, “any other dialect sends everything down the drain” but also bc the teacher was this old senile man that not even the native speakers from china understood what he was rambling on about

also at my summer job last year i was the only counselor who spoke any chinese, which threw me off so hard, so i just ended up hanging out with the international kids all the time. from my experiences, fifth grade boys from china tend to be the worst. they got better when they found out i was chill and, despite appearances, still very culturally chinese. they taught me 混血, which is probably the most useful thing for me bc i don’t look asian lmao. kids from taiwan seemed to be consistently very sweet; they’d always crowd around me and ask where my mom was from and come to me first out of all the other counselors despite having pretty good english understanding -w-

going off to college, i did find a little clique of international girls from china n taiwan, and very very consistently they said i sound very very cute!! wow aww so cute!!! and it seems to be kind of agreed upon that i have a “very cute japanese accent”??? i’m still not sure where that comes from

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hunxi ive a question please. Re: your twt book vaguing post tags-using diacritcs for transliterated Chinese names is bad. i fully accept that as you said its Othering and for sure we need to not do that. But like for they help give an idea of pronunciation so im wondering if theres something else i should be doing for that now....like how exactly should i work out how things should sound instead??

hey anon! sorry, should clarify — I'm not against the use of diacritics to denote pronunciation of Mandarin characters at all! I was specifically whinging about the use of diacritics for a Chinese name in an English novel that never otherwise 1) brought up any other Chinese names or 2) used diacritics or any other foreign language markers/scripts elsewhere in the (checks notes) 300+ pages despite its ostensibly "international" scope (I mean there was some French in there but there are so many English loanwords from French that a ç really doesn't count okay)

my particular beef with the use of diacritics to denote names in Chinese emerges wholly from the context I usually see it in: predominantly, a text where the language surrounding the transliterated diacritics is uncritically in English. it's like. So why are you putting diacritics on the obviously Chinese name? What authenticity do you think it lends you? Who are you performing it for? Not a native Chinese speaker, that's for sure — for starters, most native Chinese speakers don't bother with diacritics in script (in fact, much of fan/internet culture deliberately leans on the ambiguity of meaning by using homophonously interchangeable words, or the pinyin without any sort of identifying markers beyond just context). secondly, diacritics are plain annoying to type, so most bilingual speakers I've seen who want to denote tone just place a number after the pinyin, like 妈 ma1 麻 ma2 马 ma3 骂 ma4

and heck, I spent a few years in the Anglophone side of Sinology, and it's not even academic standard to use diacritics when rendering the pinyin of relevant Chinese characters, so like. what is a dark academia fantasy novel that otherwise never brings up anything remotely Chinese trying to prove with its usage of diacritics, beyond accidentally but undeniably participating in the ongoing practice of othering Chinese language, culture, and bodies?

because I feel like it must be said, I have nothing against AO3's tagging system that occasionally uses diacritics in character names/tags on Chinese-language fandoms. those diacritics are there and remain there for reasons beyond what I'm complaining about in this post, including but not limited to site infrastructure and fandom linguistic drift. this post is NOT about that particular corner of AO3 discourse, and please don't take it as such

I guess I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to engage with Chinese as a language and Chinese-ness as a nebulous element in English-language fiction and fanwork. for example, we can look at fandom's increasing vocabulary of untranslated, transliterated Chinese terms. people often leave honorifics like 宗主 zongzhu / sect leader or 公子 gongzi / young master untranslated now, which was most certainly not the case, hm, two years ago. heck, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I had a direct hand in increasing the proliferation of casual untranslated/transliterated Chinese in Anglophone fandom. at the same time, I do wonder about the motives of style and when/why certain terms are chosen to remain untranslated. for me, it's always been a matter of language and rhythm — again, I watch all of these shows in Chinese with Chinese subs, so quite frankly I don't even know what an English translation should sound like until I scribble one out. the sounds and rhythms of the language are so fundamental to how I engage with these texts that I occasionally find myself writing fic or dialogue or even meta bilingually, to get the cadence and tone of what I'm trying to say right in my head, before I go back and re-translate those words, phrases, even entire sentences into English

this is not to say that the rhythms and sounds of voice and language are unimportant to the viewer who isn't fluent in Chinese — they certainly are, which is precisely why watching these shows can be such a powerful language-learning supplement. but the fact remains that a Chinese-fluent viewer engages with the linguistic fabric of these texts in a different manner than a non-fluent viewer. this isn't a flex, or judgment, or a bid for superiority — merely a critical acknowledgement of a difference in perspectives

where it gets really interesting and thorny, though, is the production of non-Chinese fanwork for a Chinese text. I'm thinking primarily of the points brought up in this phenomenally thoughtful meta on chinoiserie and international MXTX fan production that I'll never forgive for beating me to the punch of using chinoiserie as a theoretical framework for engaging with contemporary Chinese media BUT I'm getting distracted. these are the lines that feel particularly relevant:

... as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people?

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

and of course, the line that haunts my most liminal, linguistically-porous hours:

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese?

neither I nor the author of this meta intend for our posts to be call-outs for Anglophone fandom, but both of us are definitely interested in how and why Anglophone creators engage with the essentially Chinese elements of these texts. I think about the many months during which people asked me to come up with personal names, courtesy names, titles, alternate names for at least half the cast of CQL. it was, I concede, fun at first — like a scavenger hunt, a logic puzzle, and trivia rolled into one. how could I leverage my proficiency in language and paltry knowledge of literature (and somewhat better knowledge of literary databases on the internet) to scheme my way into a richly-textured name based on a specific set of circumstances laid down by an anonymous ask in my inbox? but as time went on, the whole process felt more tedious and exploitative than anything, so I stopped doing it. even now, I still take emotional/psychic damage from whenever someone, even a friend, especially a friend, asks me to help them with Chinese naming. if your fanfiction is written in English, and is intended for an English-speaking audience, what does it matter if this title or courtesy name or personal name has an actual, translated equivalent in Chinese? how and why has this name-based ornamentalism become the unspoken standard for a nebulous kind of 'authenticity' in Anglophone fanfiction?

perhaps it is because language, with our electronic dictionaries and language-learning apps and the ever-present Google Translate, often ends up becoming the most accessible aspect of Chineseness — easier to look up a word or several than it is to try and track down a Real Live Chinese Person who can answer questions about cultural norms and etiquettes, histories and values. at the same time, when a writer’s research begins and ends at this superficial level, I can’t help but read it as tokenization, as ornamentalism, a way of telegraphing an authenticity that nevertheless feels cheap and flimsy in my hands

and that’s another crucial aspect of it — in my hands. I, as a person who operates at the particular nexus of privileges, experiences, and expertise that I do, have particular standards. as a reader, I cannot be mollified or hoodwinked by a cursory paragraph generalizing the principles of “Eastern thought” (I’m back to vagueing this book again), because I know this shit and I absolutely will be the reader to point out the fact that this erases the plethora and diversity of the manifold schools of Chinese thought alone, which doesn’t even get into Japanese philosophy or the mind-bending acrobatics of Buddhist reception, and this paragraph leaned on the most basic, essentialized, Orientalized understanding of a singular principle of something that one might be able to identify as Daoism, if all one knew about Daoism was the yin-yang symbol. what I’m TRYING to say in this already overlong post is that I recognize that I am a single, subjective person with extremely personal preferences, and I hardly believe that my preferences should be generalized outwards into fandom norms or cultural practices. I mean, it’d be neat if they were, but I don’t pretend I’m infallible enough for that to occur unproblematically. I just think that we could all stand to think about the complex crosscurrents of modernity and history, (neo)imperialism and (post/de)colonialism, language and engagement, fandom and fan production, ornamentalism and Orientalism

I've wandered very, very far afield from where this post started, which was vagueing a book that has little to nothing to do with cnovel/cdrama fandom, but tl;dr anon there's absolutely nothing wrong with diacritics in language learning, I just get real touchy when I suspect the usage of diacritics as an exoticized linguistic ornament in Anglophone texts

[four-loose-screws]

Hello! Firstly, I'm new to your blog, and I'm really glad I found it! I appreciate what you do, and it's great to see the changes made between regions!

Secondly, if it's okay, could you translate Hubert and Byleths A Support? I hear there's actually a difference in the support depending on the gender of the player, and I'm interested to see the version between Hubert and a female Byleth!

Thanks for introducing yourself! :) There hasn't been much going on recently as I had to go missing for a while, but I hope you've still found plenty of interesting posts around here, in the time its taken for me to respond.

EDIT: So I originally referenced the Fandom Fire Emblem Wiki for Byleth / Hubert's support conversations, which provides the exact same conversation for both f!Byleth and m!Byleth, so I based my wording on that assumption. However, a fantastic anon pointed out that the localization actually did choose a more direct translation, and retained the f!Byleth and m!Byleth differences present in the Japanese version of the A support. My original text is below the updated version, for archival purposes.

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

So this answer takes a super interesting twist I did not expect at all!!

First, what you heard is very much correct - just on a small scale, in the very last line of Hubert's. Otherwise, the two A supports are identical.

However, the unique line in the f!Byleth version lost a couple layers of meaning, because... here's the part that takes this from a standard answer to a fascinating one... you wouldn't know the full context unless you know a very specific Chinese mythological story!

I didn't know it either, actually, until I Googled the Japanese words used in the support.

The 'birds' Hubert speaks of were originally not just any birds. They referenced the story of the 比翼の鳥, hiyoku no tori. (Note that is the Japanese word, I don't know any Chinese and can't provide the Chinese pronunciation.) It tells the tale of 2 birds, 1 male and 1 female, each with only 1 eye and 1 wing. They cannot fly unless they are side by side, and so they are always together.

As a quick Google image search can convey, the birds are sometimes depicted as clearly being separate birds, other times they are so close together they look more 1 bird with 2 heads.

The term came to have a second meaning of "happily married couple," so Hubert did not say anything uncommon by comparing him and Byleth to the birds.

Who would have guessed this poetic line was even more so in the Japanese? It hurts to see this stuff lost in translation, but it only serves to prove that people with blogs like mine provide a necessary service! ...As necessary as providing deeper information into mass media can be, anyway.

I included my own translation as well, which does work well enough on my blog because I get the luxury of translator's notes, unlike video games.

Note that the wording is awkward because I kept the Japanese and English word order side-by-side, as I tend to do with very short translations. It's fun to do when I can manage it.

Localization:

f!Byleth:

Hubert: Heh. I've already dedicated my life to Lady Edelgard. To throw my lot in with you is inconceivable. But if I had two lives to give... I might devote one of them to you. We could be a couplet of birds, flying alongside the sovereign of Black Eagles...

m!Byleth:

Hubert: Heh. I've already dedicated my life to Lady Edelgard. To throw my lot in with you is inconceivable. But if I had two lives to give... I might devote one of them to you. Not as master and servant, but as equal partners.

JP f!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 黒き鷲の王に付き従って飛ぶ、(Flying and following the king of the Black Eagles,) 比翼の鳥のような二人に……。▼(the two of us like the hiyoku no tori...)

JP m!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 主君と従者として、とはまた異なる…… (As something yet different from master and servant...) 対等の仲間として。▼ (As equal partners.)

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

Original text of my response, saved for archival purposes:

So this answer takes a super interesting twist I did not expect at all!!

First, what you heard is very much correct - just on a small scale, in the very last line of Hubert's. In localization, f!Byleth line was cut and merged with the m!Byleth line.

This is probably because the f!Byleth line couldn't translate directly at all unless... here's the part that takes this from a standard answer to a fascinating one... you know a very specific Chinese mythological story.

I didn't know it either, actually, until I Googled the Japanese words used in the support.

The story is of the 比翼の鳥, hiyoku no tori. (Note that is the Japanese word, I don't know any Chinese and can't provide the Chinese pronunciation.) It tells the tale of 2 birds, 1 male and 1 female, each with only 1 eye and 1 wing. They cannot fly unless they are side by side, and so they are always together.

As a quick Google image search can convey, the birds are sometimes depicted as clearly being separate birds, other times they are so close together they look more 1 bird with 2 heads.

The term came to have a second meaning of "happily married couple," so Hubert did not say anything uncommon by comparing him and Byleth to the birds.

The localizers could have still made the comparison that Hubert and Byleth would be like lovebirds, or be a happily married couple... but since the originally intended meaning could translate only to the players who happen to like both Fire Emblem and traditional Chinese stories, it's just as valid to merge the two supports I think.

I included a translation as well, which does work well enough on my blog because I get the luxury of translator's notes, unlike video games.

Note that the wording is awkward because I kept the Japanese and English word order side-by-side, as I tend to do with very short translations. It's fun to do when I can manage it.

Localization:

Hubert: Heh. I've already dedicated my life to Lady Edelgard. To throw my lot in with you is inconceivable. But if I had two lives to give... I might devote one of them to you. Not as master and servant, but as equal partners.

Keep reading

JP f!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 黒き鷲の王に付き従って飛ぶ、(Flying and following the king of black eagles,) 比翼の鳥のような二人に……。▼(the two of us like the hiyoku no tori...)

JP m!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 主君と従者として、とはまた異なる…… (As something yet different from master and servant...) 対等の仲間として。▼ (As equal partners.)

[theji]

Things Yizhan Made Me Do

It's BXG Day today! 🐢💛

To commemorate the occasion, I thought of making a list of 13 out-of-character things that I've done since falling into the fandom. (OK I'm a bit late I meant to do this sooner, the day is ending soon in a couple of hours).

1. Start a blog

And a public one, no less. I had a blog when I was in my teens but that was private, like a personal diary. My day job already involves writing so off-work I would usually like to indulge in mindless activities. Now, here I am, maintaining a Yizhan blog. I have not even used Tumblr prior to this but I'm enjoying it now, rambling about our fav boys. Writing is not a chore if it's about them.

2. Join a fandom

I joined a boy band fan club once upon a time, some 15 years ago, but I was never as invested in it as I am now with Yizhan. Back then it was just buying some merch, attending their concert/autograph sessions, listening to their songs. Apart from work, dog mum duties, personal relationships, other hobbies like kombucha brewing, most of my free time is now spent on the fandom. My Netflix account is crying. There is just so much to do and catch up on (I'm not complaining). I also enjoy interacting with and learning from other bloggers here. Antis are no fun and some industry news/developments/hate messages are upsetting but ultimately, you curate your own fandom experience. And I choose positivity and rationality.

3. Indulge in RPS

I don't ever 'ship'. What is 'ship'? 😆 I was always a dutiful audience, just enjoying whatever drama series and moving on after that. I started with CQL like most people and I didn't even notice/like GGDD until much later. Didn't even set out to 'ship' anyone but now I'm a self-professed turtle. SZD is SZD, and anyone can see something special between them if you keep an open mind. I wrote about my SZD reasons here previously. That said, GG & DD are individuals, each with their own successful careers. They come first, the ship comes second. That I'm very clear of.

4. Use Chinese apps

Gosh, my phone and tablet are now full of Chinese apps. I used to have only WeChat cos I needed it for work but now I have Weibo, Oasis, Douyin, WeTV, MangoTV, Youku, etc. Some of them are not even available in the app store so I had to find alternative sources to download them. haha..I even have paid membership for some of these apps. And now, browsing Weibo daily becomes a routine. If you wish, you can just get stuck browsing Weibo for a long long time. It's entertaining.

5. Read fan fic

I only started about 6 months ago but now I'm hooked and fics are largely the only thing I read these days, apart from news. But I only read Yizhan or WangXian fics (p.s. calling for fic recs of other pairings!) I know some might have different feelings about fan fics but to me, I really just see them as fiction, with characters (and sometimes traits) bearing similarities to GGDD. Similarly, I separate the platform from the incident so I have no problems going to A03 despite GG's incident. I just enjoy seeing the characters named XZ/WYB having happy endings in many different timelines and universes. While most of the fics I read are explicit (by design), I don't use them as tools to play out certain fantasies or to think of GGDD in a sexual manner. In fact, I really hate fics that have little substance and just go into the explicit parts without plot development. I like those with interesting premises too, like one I read recently where XZ is a serial killer and WYB is a police officer investigating the case but also in love with him. I do have plans to share my list of fav fan fics some time down the road so keep an eye out for it!

6. Willingly read Chinese

Yes, Chinese may be my mother tongue but I don't use it much in daily living unless I have to. I also find it tedious to read Chinese cos the characters are just so squashed together. If I have a choice, I will always pick English. But now, I read so much Chinese from my daily weibo browsing. I even read fan fics in Chinese! Who am I? On the plus side, I think my Chinese comprehension and translation skills improved. I also picked up some internet lingo used by Chinese netizens, which are pretty interesting like doi, 🐮🍺, 🖍. My all-time fav is yyds.

7. Act like a cougar

In real life, I have always maintained that younger men are childish. At least those I have encountered. But look at me now, fangirling over two younger men (I am closer in age to GG, but still..). I even jokingly call them my 'China Boyfriends'. I look at them very respectfully most of the time.

8. Buy merch

Seriously, once you start, you can't stop. At least that was what happened to me, although I'm still quite selective when it comes to supporting their endorsements. I usually go for consumables like food, cosmetics vs collectibles cos I'm more practical. Also, GG says to support their merch within reasonable means so that's what I'm doing. Just buying things that I'm interested to try and not because it has their faces or names slapped on it. In a way, this suits me cos I like trying new brands and stuff anyway.

9. Keeping a Yizhan archive

Photos, weblinks, videos, songs, fan fics list..my phone is full of these things now. I think my Yizhan photo gallery is only second to the folder with my dogs' pictures. But how can you resist when we are blessed with new pics of them almost every week?

10. Camp for livestreams

I'm lucky I live in the same time zone as the boys so I don't have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to watch something. But that's the thing, being in the same time zone sometimes make me feel like I HAVE to watch that thing live because, why not? Why wait? Not shy to admit that I once watched a live programme in the middle of work but I made sure I finished what needed to be done. I think so long as we don't let these livestream schedules run our lives, there's no harm in camping for them.

11. Watch c entertainment

I am one of those who used to pass over Chinese productions, simply because it's a Chinese production. Not in a scoffing manner but I'm just genuinely not interested in them nor the celebs. I was more of a US/UK production kind of person, occasionally Korean/Japanese. Now, I'm learning to enjoy them although I just watch those with GGDD in them. No energy to follow other Chinese celebs anyway. The other programme I'm contemplating watching even if it doesn't have them in it is Who's the Murderer (GG was only in one of the cases) cos I like the premise. On the flip side, now my sis and partner keep making fun of me cos to them, all I do now is "watch China shows". That is so not true. Or is it?

12. Write fan mail

I wrote a letter to GG once. A long-ass letter. I hope he read it. That's all I'm gonna say. 🙈 hahahahaha

13. Desire to visit China

China was never on my list of to-visit places. Just wasn't interested. I have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou a few times in the past for work but even then, I never felt the urge to revisit for leisure. Now, I wanna visit GG and DD's home town, visit Chongqing to see the graffiti wall with Bobii Zanbii on it, eat mala hotpot and try out their sauce recipe, attend BXG events, dine at the CQL restaurant... Watching TTXS also made me realise that there are many beautiful places in China with natural landscapes and all that. I used to be clouded by my disdain for the regime and some behaviour of its citizens but now, I recognise that the country is separate from the regime or a smaller group of poorly behaved citizens. China is a beautiful country and I would love to visit some day. I will fly over immediately on my own if someone gives me tix to ADLAD!!

Well, I hope some of these things resonate with you. Feel free to share the OOC things that Yizhan made you do.

Once again, Happy BXG Day! 🐢💛🐆🐇🐷🌶🦁🍑🐶🍍🛹🎋

[tundrainafrica]

Thank you for translating and correcting the most dumbest mistranslations (in history) in the manga (you're a real blessing to this fandom, thank you from the bottom of my heart 🙏🏻).

I bet there are even far more (maybe even worse) translation mistakes. I really hate the english version of snk (anime and manga), that's why I've decided not to waste my money on this shit show! What a farce!

Why are we LHs constantly being robbed of canon material, which was written and drawn by Isayama himself? I feel like no one is on our side. Not Kodansha, definitely not Wit and I'm afraid Mappa won't do us justice either and they will just continue cutting off scenes, mistranslating and misinterpreting every important LH scene. And all of that just for the sake of getting money out of the fujoshis (just look at that sickening guidebook), it's freaking disgusting.

I really thought I'll be buying everything from the snk merch including the manga, the anime, those guidebooks, spin-offs and everything else. But hell NO!

I really feel robbed and let down and I've completely lost hope we'll ever get ANY sort of recognition.

Tbh, the only one I was angry about was the 'Omaera' and 'you' issue because I honestly think most translators in the right headspace wouldn't have made that mistake and literally they're being paid to do that.

And the English translation was the only one that messed it up. correct me if I'm wrong but is it just me or is English the only language without a plural you? I was double checking all the translations, the chinese, the spanish, the japanese and they all used a plural you, the English was the only one that messed up and they had an alternative, they could have fixed the translations with 'you all' but yeah, because of that issue, there were arguments over who Levi was referring to.

Translation is a complex thing though and my translations aren't perfect. I change a lot of sentences and word usage to get an emotion or a context across. I don't translate literally usually and I go through the dojins really fast when I read them so I know I may have overlooked stuff.

And I don't think anyone's translations are perfect. I have been obsessed with books and I've read multiple translations. I even watched Trese in Tagalog, English and Japanese just to see what people were changing and what words they were using to keep context. A lot of stuff get lost in translation because sometimes the right words just don't exist in the language or the literal translations are extremely awkward. In English, there are no different you's depedning on how intimate we are with a person. We don't have strict rules of speech that would vary depending on who we're talking to.

So it's inevitable that translations will be a shit show at times, I hope they don't affect anyone's interests in the show though. Translators work really hard to churn out subs on time.

I've worked with subs before, they're a pain in the ass lmao.

[inessencedevided]

The Untamed, episode 42 - watching notes

I was up playing partygames over discord until 3 am yesterday, so I didn't get to watch another episode. I complained about it to my friends, which in turn made them complain that I sounded like I would rather watch my "gay chinese fantasy show" than spent time with them. I contemplated saying yes, but decided to keep my friend instead :D

And we were currently in the middle of a confrontation with Jiggy (as I've been informed he's called ... what? ^^) who apparently murdered his son to keep some secret, which with how this shows is going, I wouldn't be surprised is them going full game of thrones and ... you know what I'm talking about

Oh right, Su She is there

He's the Jin Zixun to my wei Wuxian. As in, I can never remember his name or why I should care 🤷‍♀️

(But thus time I DO remember who he is. That is, after lwj said his name ^^)

I'm so sure that jgy hit all evidence by now, btw

Okay, no. his wife is still there

Su She might be an asshole but his hair piece is gorgeous :D

What does it say about me that my first thought about that dagger was COOL!!! 😱😱😱

How dare you take Wen Qing's name in vain! 🤬

😱

I thought she'd stab him!!! Not herself :'(

I'm a bit surprised that with 5 cultivators in the room, no one does more to save her

Oh, JGY is a damn good actor!! I mean we knew that before, but now his apparent confusion and grieve for his wife seems even more (dare I quote lwj?) shameless

Lan Xichen, i know you love him but ...

Fun fact: In German, we call fake tears "Krokodilstränen". Literal translation: "crocodile tears"

That's what this is 😐

Especially about the nie Mingjue

Poor Nie Huaisang 💔💔💔

"Taking the head. Who in the world would have done such an insane act?" GEE, I WONDER ...

Sorry, I still find jgy fascinating, but this is so uncomfortable to watch, knowing at least part of what really happened 🙈

Lord, give me the power to murder people with one gaze like Lan Wangji 🙏

This whole conversation is so supremely uncomfortable

I'm still unsure if Jin Guangyao really doesn't suspect that "Mo Xuanyu" isn't who he says he is or if it's just a very convincing act 🤨

Favourite trope: Hanguang Jun, Yiling Laozou's knight in shining armour

First of all: Hot

Second of all: Lwj internally: DON'T YOU DARE FUCKING TOUCH HIM I ONLY JUST GOT HIM BACK AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN MADE OUT YET

probably

Also, for a split second there, you saw Jiang Cheng leap forward with a real look of concern on his face, like his first instinct was to help wwx himself 🥺🥺🥺

HE'S USING SUIBIAN AGAIN!!!

This feels so huge! 😱

I'm weirdly emo about a sword rn :')

His cover is blown of course

And him and Jin ling just had a good relationship :(

NHS, JL and JGY: How could it BE that this is Yiling Laozou???

Meanwhile Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng

"With the right kind of sacrifice, it can safe one who was seriously injured." Is this another instance of "we can't say this it's necromancy because censors, but y'all damn well know this is necromancy because no one falls down a cliff and then lies there "seriously injured" for goddam 16 years"?

I'm all teary eyed at lwj not even hesitating to flee with wwx :')

Jin Ling 💔🥺

Fuck you Jin Guangyao for playing at his pain!!!

Omg they're as good as holding hands!!! 😭😭😭

Of course, wax is pushing lwj away, OF COURSE. Self-sacrificing idiot!

That mask reveal was *chef's kiss* the drama! The gasps! The ... long-suffering "here we go again look" from lan Xichen :D

I LOVE IT WHEN LWJ SPEAKS UP!!

"You're wrong."

So simple. Yet saying so much: "I kniw him. I trust him. I chose this."

And OF COURSE Wei Wuxian gives him another way out

BUT THESE TWO FINALLY GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER AND COMMUNICATE THEIR THOUGHTS! FINALLY!

"Did you believe in me back then?" YES, I WAS JUST TOO AFRAID TO SAY IT,SO MY CONCERN CAME OUT AS ANGER 😭😭😭

And the single logged bridge again 😭😭😭 I adore that metaphor! And I love that they chose to show us the flashback. Because last time, wwx and lwj parted, took different roads so to speak, one the one of defiance, the other the one of orthodoxy. Neither wanted to part ways, but neither probably thought that they had much of a choice. But they did have a choice and they made it. And lwj has already expressed his regret over that. So here he is again, using his second chance without a thought.

Because lwj believes that wwx is right, MORALLY, so he will go against his clan, reputation be damned, and stand with the man he loves ... finally. He'll choose what they both believe to be right and walk with him "until it's dark" :')

And THAT'S WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS SO MUCH!! It's not just that "oh they're so cute and they compliment each other so well, they must be soulmates uwu". Most of all they share a common morality!!!

I'm so goddamn amazed at this ship! This is not I was thought I was getting when I boarded it, but goddamn it I'm loving the ride! 😭😭😭

And .. just, the look in Lan Wangji's eyes ... they have 50 swords drawn on them, but guessing from the look on his face and the softness of his gaze they might as well be at their wedding 😭😭😭

He looks like a man entirely at peace with his decision :')

Just ...

Look

At

THEM!!!

They're holding hands in that last shot!!!! 😭😭😭

I'm absolutely floored at how utterly beautiful this scene is! "Romantic" seems too insignificant to describe it. It feels more like 42 episodes worth of love and pining and misunderstandings coming to their natural conclusion

My heart is so full right now guys :')

Very nice of these 50 people to wait for their moment to pass before attacking. Very considerate 😁

"Are we going to fight or not." "Too much talking" I WANT 50 EPISODES OF THESE TWO BICKERING!!! 😭😭😭

Jin Ling :'(

Noooo

No

Noooo

I don't know who my heart is bleeding for more here

Jin ling doesn't deserve to have to shoulder his parent's and uncle's pain :'((

All this supporting each other when injured? That's the good stuff

And those flashbacks ... wwx finally FINALLY realizes that lwj never hated him for his actions, he was afraid for him :')

Tbf,the guy has a sliiiight communication issue 😐

That quote about how lwj is at his side now that everyone else despices him!! That's it THAT'S THE SHIP!!😭😭😭

Oh, lwj took him back to cloud recess

I'm surprised he was allowed to, tbh

Ooh, so Mo Xuanyu knew something!

And... someone else must now know about him?

Also, I didn't realise that wwx still had a cut from the curse

I gotta take a moment to scream about HOW UTTERLY DOMESTIC AND AT EAS THESE TWO NOW ARE WITH EACH OTHER!!! 😭

XICHEN!!!

I should have known that the OG wangxian shipper would support them

But he still trusts Jin Guangyao. Not that I'm surprised

It's so weird to see anyone on this show in trousers btw 😅

"You're more than I can handle." Lol ^^

"You trust Master Wei, while I trust Jin Guangyao." Oh boy ...

I feel like this might be more of a confrontation than these two brothers had in their entire lives

Love me some detective-wwx

Poor Xichen 😔 he doesn't want to believe it

Somehow, wwx with a white underrobe makes me think "that's what he looks like when he and lwj accidentally swab robes" :D

Uuuh! The restricted section forbidden chamber!

So ... jin Guangyao somehow got this piece of music from the lan library?

But he's good! He's really good! He consistently uses others weaknesses and prays on them so that they act in a more extreme manner, but not so much that others would suspect foulplay. Case in point: nie Mingjue's death by anger and (more recently) the way he played towards Jin ling's feelings.

Aaaand another rather abrupt end in the middle of a conversation. That's one thing this show does not do well 😅

Anyway, I'm not complaining this episode send my shipper heart (BECAUSE I'M SO DWEP DOWN THIS RABBIT HOLE AT THIS POINT) fly with joy!!

@sweetlittlevampire @fandom-glazed @elenirlachlagos @allhailthedramallama @luckymoony @kyrrahbird @i-love-him-on-purpose 🖤💙🖤💙

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

Yo, no hurry with this, but I was wondering how do you feel about Mo basically abandonning Buzzcut (also fandom refers to him as Cuntou but I've never seen Ox do so?) for He Tian and the boys. We all want Mo out of She Li's grasp, but Buzzcut clealy looks up to Mo, who has protected him in the past- without Mo, will he be okay? Will She Li blame/punish Buzzcut, or use him to get to Mo and reel him back in? Does Mo resent Bz slightly, or regret standing up for him, because of how She Li subsequen

Hello, dear anon!

Oh, interesting questions and ideas! I don’t think I have talked about Buzzcut in my answers before. I personally like his character and think that for a long time, he has been the closest thing MGS has had for a friend.

I tend to switch between the two nicknames but for this answer, I will stick to Buzzcut. Some fans call him Cun Tou because it translates to “shaved head/buzzcut” in Chinese. Kind of like people were calling MGS “Hong Fa” aka “red hair” before they knew his name.

“how do you feel about Mo basically abandonning Buzzcut for He Tian and the boys”

Hmm. I get what you mean by this - and from my fanon point of view, I feel you - but as far as canon is concerned, I don’t know if MGS has abandoned Buzzcut. It’s a bit unclear to me how much they hang out outside of school, to begin with, but it seems he still spends time with the gang at school. He is just being dragged around by HT, JY, and ZZX these days in his free time.

I also doubt Buzzcut feels like he’s been left behind. It probably seems weird to him that these people are suddenly acting like Boss’s friends. The most I think he feels about it is slight confusion, should he protect his bro’s honor, and that HT is kind of scary but also cool. But I doubt he’s feeling hurt by having these other people around or thinks that much of it.

However, as I said, I kind of feel your sentiment from a fanon point of view. To us, Buzzcut easily comes across this sweet kid who’s playing a scary delinquent. The way he calls MGS his “boss” and “bro” makes him adorable instead of intimidating. He looks up to MGS, and that makes us feel for him because now MGS has these new people around him. He is not a bad kid but it feels like Buzzcut is a part of the world MGS shouldn’t associate with anymore.

But I would be hesitant to say the canon versions of the characters really feel that deeply about it. They’re just bros.

“Will She Li blame/punish Buzzcut, or use him to get to Mo and reel him back in?”

This would be an interesting idea! I could definitely see SL both take his anger and frustration out on someone and also try to take advantage of MGS’s good heart to reel him back in line. Damn. Now I wish something like this would happen in the comic and the boys would have to solve it somehow.

What would the solution and outcome of that be, though? Would HT defend Buzzcut because he’s MGS’s friend and because he hates it when people lie SL are messing with people? It would interestingly bring out his role as the hero again. Would this be when MGS actually asks HT to help him instead of trying to solve it himself? Would HT figure out a way to destroy SL or get rid of him so he won’t have to keep confronting him? Scare him so bad that he won’t try anything anymore? Use his family’s power?

For some reason, I can’t really see Buzzcut becoming a part of their group of four. I wouldn’t mind it per se but it would feel kind of random to me. I’m also not sure if Buzzcut felt like joining them, either. Again, I doubt he feels that deeply about MGS’s friendship with the others.

In this regard, I would love to know more about Buzzcut, actually. How did he end up joining SL’s gang? What is his home life like? Does he have people who care about him in his life? Or is this gang business merely him being a kid in high school and a way to be with his friends? Without knowing more about him, I’m leaning more towards the latter. Despite being under someone like SL, I think Buzzcut is a rather carefree kid.

“Does Mo resent Bz slightly, or regret standing up for him, because of how She Li subsequently treated him?”

Another interesting notion and something I have sometimes thought about, too. MGS did get hurt for something stupid Buzzcut had done. (He did take the money, not just thought about it.) He stood up for Buzzcut but ended up suffering the punishment instead.

I could understand it if MGS had resented Buzzcut after that but I’m not sure if MGS is really like that. It’s unclear if he was friends with Buzzcut prior to the piercing incident but I think he could have stood up for Buzzcut even if they weren’t that close. MGS had a very kind heart, and it was difficult for him to watch someone struggling or being treated cruelly. (He still has a kind heart, it’s just buried deeper.) So, instead of resenting Buzzcut, I think he was more just relieved he hadn’t gotten hurt. I think he resented more SL than Buzzcut after that.

But overall, it would be very interesting to see how MGS and Buzzcut together feel about the whole piercing thing.

“Do you think He Tian is jealous  (not as a love rival, but a close friend Mo is open and honest with) and why befriend Mos friend to show Mo he cares?”

I’m not sure how “open and honest” MGS is with Buzzcut, but I do think that HT would easily feel jealous of that. HT is already showing his immature side regarding this when Buzzcut tried to protect MGS as his bro (ch. 314):

I wouldn’t go as far as saying HT minds MGS having friends but he definitely wants to be MGS’s number one. In everything. He wants MGS to rely on, not anyone else. He wants to defend MGS’s “honor”, not his “underlings”.

Overall, I don’t think HT is that interested in Buzzcut’s existence. For the most part, he seems indifferent about him, but I would imagine that changes in a heartbeat if Buzzcut came in his way. To be honest, as much as I don’t mind HT’s possessive side, this kind of possessiveness always annoys me in fictional characters. When HT acts cold towards Buzzcut or when pushed him down like without any concern, it...kind of rubs me the wrong way. It gives me that vibe that no one else matters besides MGS, and people who have done nothing wrong get treated coldly or rudely.

I most definitely join you in wishing that things will stay good for Buzzcut. He looks like a good, even a little sweet kid at heart, and it’s endearing how he sees MGS as his big bro. Hopefully, we will one day learn more things about him.

Thank you for your interesting questions, dear anon!

[specialability]

This is by far the most popular post I've ever had (lmao) so I thought I'd pull out a few of the tag replies. Tumblr's lack of threaded commenting makes this unnecessarily annoying...

@jiggit

#hmmmmmmm i think it would be fun and cool to look at tyk alongside zen cho's the order of the pure moon reflected in water#because that one has been described BY the author as fanfic of a wuxia drama that doesn't exist#which brings me a little bit to the extent to which i agree with this (and OP this is a great discussion topic tbh)#the definition of the wuxia genre here is a little bit narrow and specifically pinpoints the kind of wuxia that jin yong made popular#(and later himself also satirised in the duke of mount deer/deer and the cauldron)#the order of the pure moon reflected in water turns to a side of wuxia that is part of why it's such an enduring genre:#historical oppression of chinese people#which while it's set in a secondary world (in that places mentioned are not real) it is very much inspired by real malayan emergency histor#(and subsequent malaysian chinese concerns etc which is a huge part of why this book is so important to me as stuff my family lived through#the order of the pure moon reflected in water IS about the hero's journey but it's not the same hero's journey that chengling is on#there's a similar kind of narrative found in kung fu wing chun for example#(whose pacing as a movie is flawed but w/e i love it to hell and back)#where the story opens with a girl seeking to help her cousin get away from the bully magistrate's son and she uses kung fu to do it#but her sifu has escaped the destruction of the northern shaolin temples & the forces that engendered that extermination catch up w to them#now once again i agree with op (especially love the conclusion of the original post!)#but in early shl days a number of people pointed out that wkx and zzs feel like gu long protagonists#and gu long's style of wuxia is entirely different from jin yong's but no less important to the genre#older jaded protagonists are no stranger in gu long's work & i think that's also interesting to keep in mind bc it expands on this reading#so while i do think that tyk in no way goes as far as rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead#(tho i note that i have only read the ummmmmmm piecemeal early english fan translation of tyk)#i do think this is a fascinating and meaty lens to use as a way to dig into tyk (to mix my metaphors)#(i will also say that tyk and shl are entirely different canons in my mind tho i have conflated them a bit here)#(author zen cho if in the unlikely but non-zero chance u are reading this pls know u remain my absolute favourite seasian author ever)#天涯客#山河令#q#the order of the pure moon reflected in water

You're right to guess that the only "real" classic wuxia novels I've read are Jin Yong's Legend of the Condor Heroes 😅 Definitely not an expert on that angle. It's interesting to know someone else has taken the "fanfic of a story that doesn't exist" angle explicitly. I will always find it frustrating that I can't read Chinese fandom's speculation and meta because I am sure there are lots of things I'm missing.

@beansofm

#this is delightful!!#i love this analysis so much!!!#that's why the whole drama between 5 clans doesn't even feel that important#and why i love zzs as a character#but yeah priest's writing style is fascinating#like qi ye also has this out of the box idea of finding love in someone other than your fated soulmate and maim character essentially#trying really hard to avoid his fated soulmate as best as he can because screw fate and screw narrative#woh#*main not maim😅

Qi Ye is definitely even more explicitly about a character trying to subvert their own fate/narrative. At the risk of pushing the metaphor too far, Jing Qi living multiple lives that just keep repeating the same patterns is similar to how an stage actor knows their character is going to die every time they play the part. Simply following the script isn't enough, he has to actively change things behind the scenes while superficially keeping the story the same. This of course can probably be said of most isekai/reincarnation stories.

@baek1nho

#this is so cool!!!#i've thought about it before but you're so right!!#even in woh how wenzhou are really extras in that ep 15/16 hero's conference#tian ya ke

It's been so long since I watched WOH I forgot about this, but you're totally right.

Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I wrote an 800 word essay about TYK as a meta-narrative. Voilà.

"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." – Jessica Rabbit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

One of the things I think many fans of Tian Ya Ke like about it is that, unlike the tv drama, it is something of a satire or deconstruction of the wuxia genre. If you are familiar with the usual wuxia tropes (of which I am by no means an expert) it becomes clear how Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are merely side-characters in what normally would be Zhang Chengling's Hero's Journey. Wen Kexing should, as the mastermind of the plot that killed Zhang Chengling's family, be the manipulative and enigmatic final boss. Zhou Zishu should be the scruffy old retired martial arts master who reluctantly takes the young hero under his wing – and then conveniently dies in order to encourage the hero to come of age. Instead of following this usual track, we are shown the scandalous underbelly of the conventional wuxia narrative – which I think Priest really digs into with Tai Sui (so go read it!!!).

As a result, TYK often reads like really good fanfiction of a novel that doesn't exist. You know the type, some author's 150k magnum opus on two side-characters that in canon have barely any depth and the fanfic author goes on to add so much new characterization and world-building that it feels like an entirely different work. The kind of fanfic that makes the source material look lacking by comparison.

But it was reading lianzi's translated chapter 15 that made me look at the narrative from a different perspective as a post-modernist piece. If you've read Hamlet you're familiar with the idea of a play within a play. But then there is another play, Rozencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, which is Hamlet from the perspective of two minor side-characters mostly taking place "off-stage". And that's really what TYK reminds me of. You know those two old muppets who sit in theatre box seats and always make snide remarks about whatever the other muppets are doing? That's where Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are situated.

In this Chapter 15 scene they are quite literally seated on the balcony watching Cao Weining fail to pay his dinner bill while making commentary and bickering. Zhou Zishu inserts himself into the narrative by paying Cao Weining's bill, and when Cao Weining comes up to the balcony to introduce himself Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu intentionally start acting like heroic figures from fiction. As I imagine it: the camera was originally only on Cao Weining, but then the camera pans up to see the pair on the balcony and then the camera follows Cao Weining up to the balcony bringing the narrative with it. Once the camera arrives on the balcony Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are effectively "on stage" now and have to act the part.

Thinking about this scene reminded me of many other scenes where Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu are simply standing to the side and watching the action. Two obvious examples are outside the Scorpion's brothel and Liu Qingqiao's death, but there are also other smaller scenes where Zhou Zishu alone intentionally removes himself from the frame, like when Wen Kexing and Ye Baiyi fight. I imagine the stage where the spotlight is on Liu Qingqiao as she struggles to fight for her life, while Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing are in the wings, covered by darkness, whispering to each other. They don't quite have the powers of breaking the fourth wall and become fully self- or genre-aware, but they definitely have a cynical insiders perspective on the wuxia story they have become a part of. The themes of acting and wearing masks is a common one in the whole novel, especially the differences between how people are in public vs in private. But all of this gives the novel a voyeuristic tone at times.

Zhou Zishu already chose to leave the stage of the capital city, and although he got sucked into Zhang Chengling's story he could disappear from this new stage at any moment. Wen Kexing more actively plays his role up until the bitter end. In the end, Wen Kexing is supposed to reveal his True Identity and be killed by Zhang Chengling, allowing both of them to fulfill revenge for their families. This is the ending that Wen Kexing imagined for himself, and that's the part he knew he was playing. That's why it's so touching when he asks Zhou Zishu if it's okay that he survives. If it's okay that he selfishly violates the rules of the narrative.

Then they choose to leave the stage completely. Once off the stage (in the Extras) they can act like whoever they want. The only way to live freely is to quit the main story. And acting like a good person is pretty much as close as you can get to being a good person, regardless of how your character was written.

[namelessarcher]

To the prologue anon: I've cleared everything including Salem and my current gameplay isn't affected. Who knows if some Servants may be affected once Arc 2 actually comes out tho. I think we're fine, though. Honestly, the only things in FGO that are affected (in my observations) are that Da Vinci has gone missing and My Room is dark and doesn't have any music.

Ah yes! I’ve heard that from various other people.

I’ve been scrolling through a lot of tweets, I can’t really read Japanese, but ended up on the Chinese side of the fandom and so far it looks like our servants are fine and something about Holmes predicting all of this and safeguarding our servant’s saint graphs away? 

Something about how people from Mage association are upset with Guda for ruining their… chances??? about… something?

Yeah I’m not a reliable translator nor do I know if the sources from the tweets are reliable. AHAHA.

[theji]

我的世界守则 The Rules of My World: An Analysis

I came across this video while browsing Weibo last night. It was taken during Yibo's rehearsal for his 'The Rules of My World' performance. I've listened to the song countless times and I like it, the rhythm and all, and the dance. But as with many rap music, I don't pay attention to the lyrics. I suddenly realised I don't really know what the song is talking about, save for the few phrases that stood out. That sparked my interest and inspired today's post. I had previously done some analysis of Zhan's songs, so it's Yibo's turn.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional translator or lyricist. And obviously I'm not Yibo nor do I know him personally, so I can't say for sure what the song is really about. The following analysis is purely based on my personal interpretation. It has CPN components. Please skip if you don't believe that BJYXSZD.

'The Rules of My World' is the 2nd song that Yibo penned the lyrics to himself. The fact that he wrote the lyrics is significant and makes the song worth analysing. 2019's 'Wu Gan' was more 'inward-looking'; about Yibo expressing his own thoughts on navigating the entertainment industry. To me, 'The Rules of My World' is him making a statement, a stand, at the same time, he's sending a message to those he cares about - GG and his (real) fans. Yibo released this song on 30 Dec 2020. The timing is interesting cos it like he's summing up his sentiments based on the events that took place during the year. To outsiders, 2020 was a good year for Yibo. He had many endorsements, projects, high exposure, his commercial value rose. But in CPN reality, 2020 was terrible for so many reasons. GG's incident, him being overworked, crazy fan wars and antis etc etc..anyone who cares about Yibo would be delusional to think he had it good last year.

欢迎你们来加入我的世界 (You're welcome to join my world)

入场券上面有正义的光源 (There's a light of justice on the admission ticket)

DD is giving fans an open invitation to enter his world, to understand him as a person and not just an idol. And he also hopes that his world can bring some light to the fans' world, to bring some positivity, encouragement and guidance to them.

此生面对严厉又仁慈的一切 (In this life we'll face harshness but also kindness)

轻松一点，我们一起度过黑夜 (Just relax, together we'll overcome darkness)

In the entertainment world (or life in general), there will be ups and downs, criticisms and compliments. Regardless of what may come, we can overcome any challenges together. Darkness here could also refer to the antis who seem determined to bring GGDD down. This could be a message to fans - to tell them that they don't always have to rush to defend him, and they don't need to retaliate (aka fan wars). It could also be a message to GG, to make a stand of solidarity and to reassure GG that DD will face any challenges alongside him.

新的征途 (A new journey)

愚蠢的，不好相处 (These fools, they aren't easy to get along with)

愚蠢的，不会打住 (These fools, they won't stop)

但衬托明天更耀眼的路 (But they will set off a brighter path for tomorrow)

It was said that DD matured considerably after the 2*7 incident. Took up more responsibility, became more focused on his career and mindful of future advancements etc. Started to take on more serious acting projects and to shift his career trajectory towards something more sustainable and less 'idol'. The new journey could be a reference to this new path. The fools - the antis, those against GGDD - may have caused damage but their actions have also sparked off DD's desire to do better and to find his footing in the entertainment industry. He now has a clearer view of what he wants, the path he wants to take.

我是我的样子 (This is how I am)

我生来就固执 (I was born stubborn)

讲自己的故事 (I'll tell my own story)

活独特的气质 (Living my unique self)

Follow me, 找到自己的价值 (Follow me, find your own value)

不去迎合别人活 才会觉得有意思 (Life is interesting if you don't cater to others)

我的世界不退让 (It's my world I won't give in)

我的世界不退让 (It's my world I won't give in)

Here, DD is being assertive. This is me, I follow my own rules, I'll make my own decisions, I'll forge my own path, I won't be influenced, I won't give up on my beliefs. So antis, capitalists etc can f*ck off.

It could also be seen as an advice to his fans - to follow his lead and live their own lives. This is also something that GG has repeatedly said to fans - to focus on their own lives, personal relationships, studies, careers etc. Don't devote so much time on chasing idols, online fan wars etc.

阳光耀眼 (The sun is dazzling)

乐观地，走向前 (Just move forward with optimism)

阳光耀眼 (The sun is dazzling)

无所谓，多危险 (Doesn't matter how dangerous it is)

阳光耀眼 (The sun is dazzling)

这是我的世界 (This is my world)

我世界的守则，不许你诡辩 (These are the rules of my world, I won't allow any sophistry)

I see this as DD's words of encouragement, to himself and to GG. Despite all the challenges and hardship, darkness will pass and the sun will come out eventually. And it's shining brightly, there is hope left in this world, there's is much to look forward to. So don't fear, be brave and forge ahead.

Sophistry: the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving

Poor DD is always hit with industry rumours, about him dating his co-stars etc. Last year, someone even made a false police report against him. Just look at the number of statements his company had to put out. There have also always been ongoing rumours about rivalry between GGDD, tales of backstabbing etc, especially in 2020 at the height of the incident. DD is saying that this is his life, his world. No one knows better than the both of them. So to those who don't know better but continue to spew nonsense about his life and relationships and spread hate, know that I don't care about your antics, they don't hurt me but I won't tolerate them as well.

在我世界行走 (Walking in my world)

什么人生主题你透露 (What kind of life theme do you envisage)

是胆大勇猛所向披靡 (Is it to be bold, courageous and invincible)

或胆小逃避钻进壳里 (Or to be timid and escape into your shell)

喧闹倾诉众人party (Is it to pour out your troubles at a rowdy party)

寂寞相思不停地哭泣 (Or to cry silently non-stop out of loneliness and love-sickness)

都欢迎你来我这里 (All are welcome)

只要跟从自己的内心 (So long as you follow your heart)

跟限制和噪音 说一声 bang bang (I'll say 'Bang Bang' to restriction and noises)

怪兽都退散 (Monsters, be gone)

What kind of person am I in your eyes? The cool guy or soft sweet babie Yibo? Here, DD is acknowledging that the public has many different perceptions of him, and fans love different personas of him and he's ok with that. But if you love him, then let him be. Don't try to restrict him, don't quarrel or force him into a certain mould of your preference. He won't hesitate to shoot the haters (monsters) down.

迈出轻盈的步伐 (Take a light step forward)

一声令下 (With a single command)

来宣布 告别孤勇 (To announce a farewell to having to fight alone)

On this new path, with a new-found realisation of what he wants, DD is clear of what he wants to achieve and he is no longer burdened by fear, uncertainties etc. Both GGDD now have each other by their sides, they share a common purpose as they navigate the intricacies of the entertainment industry together and work their way to the top. And I think this is something that we're seeing more in the fandom since end 2020 - GGDD seemingly becoming more bold in their actions and messages they put out (silent or otherwise).

想要做盘旋的龙 (Wanna be a hovering dragon)

还想做懒散的虫 (Or a lazy worm)

别打扰我 走开 没空 (Don't bother me, go away, I have no time for that)

In public, DD is that proud and confident king. He's not a pushover. But behind the cameras, he just wants to chill and relax (and play games). Please don't bother me, give me some privacy to lead my own life, don't tell me what I can or cannot do.

Cue DD's message. He meant it.

Follow me, 找到自己的价值 (Follow me, find your own value)

不去迎合别人活 才会觉得有意思 (Life is interesting if you don't cater to others)

我们永远不退让 (We will never give in)

我们永远不退让 (We will never give in)

This is a repetition of the earlier verse but what has changed is the last 2 lines. From <It's my world I won't give in>, DD now says <We will never give in>. This was actually the first thing that sparked off my CPN, and hinted to me that this song concerns GG in some ways. Who's We? We all know how GGDD almost always use the word 'we' in their CQL promo interviews and bts, as though they come as a package and all views represent both of them as a entity. This also echoes the earlier sentiments - both of them, after the 2020 incident, have developed a steely resolve. They won't let the antis or challenges or societal views hold them back anymore. Their world, their rules. They will fight for their rights and what they believe in, and they are determined to reach their goals.

阳光耀眼 (The sun is dazzling)

乐观地 走向前 (Just move forward with optimism)

阳光耀眼 (The sun is dazzling)

无所谓 多危险 (Doesn't matter how dangerous it is)

阳光耀眼 (The sun is dazzling)

这是我的世界 (This is my world)

我们的世界不会被改变 (Our world will never be changed)

Again, similar to the above 'we' example. From this part of the song onwards, DD is referring to them both. The last line could also be viewed as an affirmation of GGDD's commitment to each other. Whatever is it, our relationship will not change. We will go through it all together.

Don‘t stop, get it, get it

Let me see you work up on it

Don’t stop, get it, get it

Let me see you all up on it

Let me see you work up on it

Don‘t stop, get it, get it

Don't stop

Hey

I interpret this as DD's words of encouragement to GG. Like don't stop fighting, continue to work hard towards your (our) goals. Go for it, you can do it!

在我的世界 (In my world)

本能很关键 (Instinct is the key)

坚持自己 (Stay true to yourself)

就是你们的世界 (It is your world)

DD's parting words to fans: to stay true to oneself, to build and enrich your own worlds, to fight for your goals, like how he is trying.

Well, I had fun working on this. Maybe I'll do Wu Gan another time. Reminded me of literature class during my schooling days, although I never did Chinese literature back then. Feel free to share your thoughts on the song with me. =D