#pick up what we're putting down!!!!!

[pumpkinpaix]

Chapter Spotlight 4:

"Iterative Violence: English (mis?)Translations of Modao Zushi and Chen Qing Ling" by Chant Y. Ng

Describe your topic/chapter in one sentence/one meme/140 characters.

A work by any other translation would NOT smell as sweet!!! In fact!!!!

What drew you to this topic?

Hi yes it's me, your pal cyan, you may know me from such hit posts as 8k words of rage-crying about the translation of 知己 as soulmates (which is about translation as violence), or maybe that other one about translation as violence (shockingly, it's really about translation as violence), or perhaps even that other other one about how one might translate Lan Xichen's title— (you know, I think this one is also about translation as violence)

If there’s one thing you hope the fandom takes away from your article, what would it be?

I hope that people think harder about how impossible it is to translate a text, and that they choose to extend more grace and compassion to authors and translators alike. A translation is not a window but a painting. Also, I'm manifesting better pay and respect for the work of translation into the cosmos. Please consider this a memo I am posting on the great message board of the universe. Thank you.

What is your MDZS/CQL origin story? (i.e. how did you come to this text?)

Started watching, made some gifs, read the book. Had a breakdown. Bon appetit.

Favorite adaptation, if any?

Audio drama! The love, care and effort put into it continues to astound me. Sometimes, to get the sound of a dizi hitting the ground, you gotta throw a dizi on the ground, y'know?

If you were isekai-ed into MDZS/CQL, what sect affiliation would you choose and why?

Please let me live my life in peace, I am but a feeble scholar.

Most compelling relationship in the text?

Twin Jades!!!!

Chaotic one-sentence pitch to get your friends into MDZS/CQL?

*gripping you tightly by the shoulders* don't

If you could ask MXTX one question, what would it be?

你最近怎么样啊？

Anything to say to potential readers of the collection?

Thanks for checking us out! It's been a wild and unpredictable (four-year!!) ride but everyone worked very hard on their parts. Means a lot even if you're just here for our little promo. :) If you'd like a copy of my contribution for classroom use, please do reach out!

You can find Chant (cyan) here on Tumblr @pumpkinpaix.

(FAQ) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)

[deoidesign]

One of my first digital pieces (2010) versus one of my recent ones (2024)

We all start somewhere!

[humblefryingpan]

Do you think Gothel intended to parent Rapunzel when she took her or do you think it was gonna be a "there's a kid in my basement" kinda thing. Like I'm imagining baby raps calling her mama and her being like "fine I guess 😒" yk

[starscreambbymama]

Sooooooo

[danthropologie]

https://www.tumblr.com/cecoeur/761361960536309760/actually-not-to-reveal-my-insane-levels-of Apparently it probably is from 2018!

anon i was literally having a mental breakdown as you sent this 😭😭😭😭😭 i literally joked NOT TWENTY MINUTES AGO that he added that clip to say he's going back to red bull and like. literally he did. my third eye has never been more open in my LIFE HE LITERALLY DID

[running-in-the-dark]

I'm feeling like shit but hey at least I'm tidying up!! so that's something.

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

Have you noticed your style change over time?

Hi!! Thank you for the ask. <3

We haven't really noticed that, no -- we're aware our older fics don't read quite the same as our more recent ones, but we don't tend to notice the changes happening in real time and would struggle to pinpoint exactly what changed.

Part of that is plurality-related. We don't all write the same to begin with -- actually part of our editing process now, especially for longer projects, consists of getting as many of us rereading the text as possible (separately over a period of time and/or together at the same time), so we can smooth out differences where needed or (more rarely) exaggerate them when warranted (e.g. for added character flavour in subjective narration). In the past we didn't go through that Collaborative Smoothening step, and we did a lot less editing to begin with (we same-day wrote-and-published a lot), so many of our older works are more clearly One Guy's Writing. We can usually tell who based on the way they're written, but this isn't style evolution so much as like... us writing differently at baseline.

Part of that is that we have two types of approach to writing: either we write so rarely that too much time passes in-between for us to remember our previous writings clearly, or we write so often that any overall changes are too gradual for us to notice. Nowadays it's more the latter -- with the MelloNears, we've been writing/editing at least a few words every single day since November 1st, in mostly the same two AUs/series, so we're not really seeing the style evolution that is probably taking place because we're standing too close to see the big picture.

[fanfic/author ask game]

[cementcornfield]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjyaXnPu8Xi/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Someone get this man a daiquiri 🍹

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Kind of surreal to be pulling in slightly larger checks while not changing my spending habits so now I kind of have no excuse to not get myself a pressure cooker or the. the ultrakill blanket

[the-starlight-project]

I always voice act out loud when I read comics, so I started voicing Shadow different when he started panicking and I'm so happy to see I was right to do that. :)

How are you picturing Shadow’s voice right now? Is it higher?

Happy to hear I'm not alone in doing that very same thing! SB and I have pretty much the same opinion on Shadow's voice at the moment, and your instinct that it's higher is correct!

Why is that? I can't tell you just yet! But it's definitely paces higher than Sonic - or we - are used to!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

.

[1nm806]

Maybe Jack Kelly is someone with only one friend before Davey.

He's got people that are friendly with him, don't get him wrong. There's Medda (though she's more similar to a mother, now he thinks on it), Mush, Henry, Racetrack.. Any number of Manhattan newsies could fit the "friend" box. He's definitely their friend, but he's not sure they're his. They're good people, despite their annoying habits, but they don't know him. And isn't that what friends are all about? Aren't they supposed to know his past, his wants, his dreams, fears, likes, dislikes and more? Jack could tell you things about his friends. He could tell you any number of things. Henry doesn't like sleeping alone since moving to the lodging house, Mush runs warm and hawks the headlines with rolled up sleeves even in January, Race refuses to eat anything that hasn't been tried by someone else already. He even knows a few things about Spot Conlon. But he's not convinced that anyone but Crutchie could say the same about him. He wants to have close friends. Holding people tightly in his hold, his heart never wanting to let them go, making people notice and feel his absence with a heavy weight in their chest if he doesn't show up to get that days' papes. Having a heart that craves closeness so immensely that it's eating him up inside is colliding against his own brain that keeps instinctually deflecting away from any questions about his life, cutting people's concerns off with jokes or quips or insults. So when he's sat outside the theatre with Davey and Les Jacobs, the younger boy long since asleep on his brother, talking about his dreams of leaving New York, he falters for the first time since meeting the pair. He couldn't let Davey know everything about his goals, so he threw in a comment about his parents waiting out west for him, but as the other offers him some encouraging (if lightly teasing) words, he starts to accept that maybe, just maybe, he can say he has another friend.

[centipedve]

just reb– hi. just reblog'd your post made me wonder... french version of ioi... would five be named cinq? or english name kept cuz it's ~cooler~?

Probably Cinq! Since they named each other by number it'd be whatever language they were speaking/whatever language it's translated into. If Five were to be a name more so based on being given the birth name of Five or specifically finding the word Five cool then it'd stay as Five we think... Same with the ideologies, since they're named after concepts and not the words themselves, they'd probably be translated rather than preserved if a translation of an ideology is possible.

[crescentfool]

doing things outside of your usual is such a humbling experience...

[teaboot]

Sometimes I think a lot about my mom's cat

My mom's cat is a common domestic shorthair we found on the side of the road as a kitten

Regular cat, not a maine coon or one of those massive breeds. His mom was smaller than a loaf of bread

But in a sort of a Clifford The Big Red Dog situation, he grew super fast, and really really big, and took a super long time to stop growing

Worried that she was overfeeding him, she eased back his portions, but he stayed a massive round baby

When he started having kidney problems, she took him to the vet.

The vet took a look at him and said, "holy fuck, what are you feeding him", checked the nutritional listings on his chow, and told her "Yeah, maybe he's reacting badly to the amount of grain in this, try a meatier diet"

So my mom wound up special-ordering this specific high-protein prescription cat food made of like. Kangaroo meat or some shit that cost like sixty bucks a bag

And, as typical act two in an episode of House, he somehow got worse on the fancy specialized stuff that was supposed to be Primo Athlete Olympic Feline Blend

Like. WAY worse. His guts were inflamed and his kidneys were shutting down and he was all sore and HE WAS STILL HUGE, just miserable and sad

So shetook him back to the vet, where they had to help him pee (he was apparently close to bursting and had some kind of blockage too) and went "Yeah no this is NOT normal and we don't know what's going on, we're gonna do some tests but in the meantime you should go back to what he was eating before, at least that wasn't actively killing him" so she did

And he still wasn't great, but he also improved

And so they take his blood and do an ultrasound and a couple g's later she gets a call back like "this is gonna sound crazy, but we want you to put him on a low-meat diet. Just the least amount of protein and iron and shit. We need you to find the grainiest, filler-iest dollar tree kibble available and give him some of that bad bad shit"

And my mother is a woman of science. So she did

And he GOT BETTER

His energy picked back up, inflammation went down, he started drinking normally again, got back to pissing like a fuckin champion

And so it turns out that out of all the random ass freeway bonus cats we possibly could have scooped out of a ditch, WE got the one-in-a-million freak of nature with a SPECIFIC genetic defect that means a paleo protein free range diet is essentially poison and he THRIVES on cheap ass garbage

Like. He medically NEEDS junk food

I dont really understand how that works, but i cant argue with results.

If we had four of him, they'd outweigh my mom. And he's FINE

Also blind, but that's unrelated

Im not using him as a symbol or a metaphor or anything. I just keep catching myself thinking about my mom's Big Fucking Cat

[crossbackpoke-check]

i've been thinking a lot about the mojoe show, especially how i miss seeing them together and somehow, i stumbled on your blog and all your tags about them (joe in specific) speak directly to me!

no go on... what are the tags saying to you... come join the mojo(e) jojo hive mind...