#what about tian ya ke lol

[minsarasarahair]

Whenever people are allergic to see a mild/morally good version of the original complex morally questionable character from Danmei, I'm like "If its too vanilla or not too evil for you, blame the adaption? Not people who like it?"

They are fine with The Untamed's Wei Wuxian erasing his flaws from the novel? But when it comes to Jiang Cheng, Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu. They are not even downright evil. Just morally questionable. No, I'm not excusing their actions especially Qi Ye's Zhou Zishu. I just find it weird why they refused to acknowledge the character's soft side that actually existed in original material? I'm too jaded to expect perfect faithful cdrama adaption so I'm good as long as they get what I care about the character. To Jiang Cheng, his connection with Wei Wuxian and Jin Ling are still a big deal in The Untamed that's why I still like it. I don't really care if he's softer than the original. I don't like his new connection with Wen Qing though because guy is too aroace for me. To Wen Kexing; his hatred, his ghost valley's crimes and affection for Zhou Zishu are still there even if he gone back to the right track when he avenge his parents, reduced to shidi role and I hate his miscommunication. To Zhou Zishu; his Tian Chuang's crimes and his love for Jiuxiao are still present in Word of Honor even if its toned down. Sure, he's softer but he's still masculine in his own way. I especially like his Hobo Axu because the Tian Ya Ke ZZS is strong in that one. I'm not fond of immortal ending and WOH Zhou Zishu's naiveness toward Wen Kexing tho. They are all imperfect portrayal of my favorite characters but I still like them.

What matters to me is I can still see the fragments or small similarities that I like from their original self despite the drastic changes. I just treat it like I'm watching Disney's adaption of Grimms' Fairytales. You Yao's Lou Zhu is also like that. A morally questionable character in the novel but became a hero figure in donghua adaption. Actually everyone in You Yao novel are antiheroes, not only him lol The donghua team understand his deep connection with Zuo Yunqi so they even made sure they are reunited in the ending that's why I forgave them with the changes. Ghibli's adaption of Howl's Moving Castle is also a good example and I still like it. Tbh there's no perfect adaption and sometimes it just depends if I vibe with them or nah. Simple as that.

[cairoscene]

G, A, Y, S, E, X,

KSDJHGASJKD I LOVE YOU

G. Do you remember your first OTP, if so who was in it

i'm pretty sure i answer this and/or questions about my first fandom differently every time bc i can never really remember or isolate things before a certain point. really i wasn't ever In Fandom before like 2019 but i had obsessions long before that. in reality i think it was probably damen/laurent from captive prince, which i read when it was a web serial way back in the day

A. Your current OTP(s)/OT3(s)/OTX(s)

i'm going to answer this more broadly than DC and say vashwood (trigun), garashir (ds9), thanzag (hades), lamen (see above), and hualian (tgcf)

Y. What are your secondhand fandoms (fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)

oh excellent questions. my fandoms-in-law atm are word of honor/tian ya ke, yuwu, hades, some cdramas, figure skating, better call saul lol, you and judy, and the locked tomb—tho i consider myself "in" some of these fandoms even tho i'm not actively posting about them or making content for them

S. Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

i don't really know what this question means lol but i've done a few headcanon posts already so i'll let those stand on their own as a representation of the sick places my brain goes

E. Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what

oh yes lol. my crack is what i'm best known for in DC i think, with my email fic where all of the batfam have to sign a form regarding poison ivy's sex pollen. and also my social media au about what gotham twitter would look like, born entirely out of my lovehate relationship with twitter. fandom could use more crack tbh

X. top 5-10 characters who are yoUR PRECIOUS BABIES AND YOU WILL DIE DEFENDING THEM

laurent of vere

xie lian

vash the stampede

jason todd

keith. v*ltr*n.

this list is baring my ass so much rn. christ.

send me ABC fandom asks

[bristolsketches]

Back to my flower portraits~

Prints etc are available on my Redbubble (bristolsketches) now! Direct link is in source

[cytharat]

9 books I intend to read in 2022

I was tagged by the lovely @danhoemei thank you!!

I don’t really make plans or keep To Read lists because there’s so much to read and so little time so I usually just pick up whatever I’m in the mood for at that moment, but here's at least some of the stuff I am either currently reading or want to read at some point, hopefully this year :’D

1) maybe? possibly?? re-read Tian Ya Ke (Faraway Wanderers, by Priest) because it’s been a while and it’s probably even better the second time around since there’s bound to be stuff that I’ve missed before, especially now after reading Qi Ye too

2) continue reading Tai Sui, also by Priest

3) Yu Wu (Remnants of Filth) by Meatbun. A while ago people on twitter were all over this one so I’m curious what the fuss is about haha

4) re-read at least parts of Zhen Hun (Guardian, Priest) simply because I feel like revisiting them idk

5) continue reading Lie Huo Jiao Chou (Drowning sorrows in raging fire, Priest again), but since the translation is still in progress I can only gobble up each new chapter as they come out and hope for the best

6) Qian Qiu (Thousand Autumns) by Meng Xishi. I just see it everywhere and the fanart is so good??

7) How to read Chinese Poetry: A guided anthology by Cai Zong-qi. I’m 100% serious lmao but the book isn’t exactly cheap so I’m thinking of gifting it to myself for my birthday next month, as a treat

8) almost forgot! but I also still need to finish Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong (SVSSS) by mxtx. Am enjoying it a lot though, probably even the most out of the three? Maybe because it’s a bit more light-hearted ... well. until it isn’t, of course, lol

9) I honestly don’t know. Suggestions? Then again I’m not even sure I’ll manage to get through those other eight so maybe I shouldn’t be overambitious lmao

tagging uhhh @pharawee @hudsini @sugarbabywenkexing @trashwarden and idk, anyone else who wants to do it? Feel free to ignore ofc, as always <3

[rigelmejo]

i read this thing on reddit about a person who read through 200 japanese novels. first they were N1 (but they think what they did could have worked for an N3 learner), then they started mainly with books for children/teens like 青い鳥文庫 novels with a lot of furigana, then books for a bit older, then general novels and some nonfiction, eventually adding the last 20 or so as audiobooks. they said by books 20-50 they had to look a lot of words up still but the reading was flying by, and by books 50-100 books still required frequent word lookups but were effortless feeling to read. 

they personally looked up Every unknown word (so minimal learning *only* by context - which tbh is helpful with japanese and chinese where u sometimes need lookups of new characters period just to learn the reading even if u can figure out the word’s meaning in context). they did not mention how long the average novel they read was, but i know for the series mentioned above (the easier novels) are about 300 pages long. 

so maybe roughly 60,000 pages for around 200 novels. and maybe for the 20 book threshold where reading started flying by, 6,000 pages. (also i absolutely commend them on how much they read because even in english i cannot read that many books especially in such a short time period, and reading in a language you’re learning tends to start at a slower speed, and so just generally SUCH a huge reading achievement is impressive).

if i assume maybe chinese progress is similar to japanese reading progress, i wonder how close i am to the 6,000 page threshold of ‘20 books’. A priest novel is about 3.5 pages a chapter. I will just estimate 3 (3.5 pages is the length of a digital page length estimator, but their chapters are like 5-20 pages in my print novel versions). So i’m going to estimate probably 3 pages for the webnovel chapters i’ve read. i’ve read like 200 chapters of some pingxie fanfics, maybe 140 chapters of other stuff (finished xiao wangzi, some kids cats stories, some sci fi short stories, some saye, some tian ya ke, etc). and then about 100 pages of guardian (i’ve Reread those pages multiple times lol but i’ll just count 1 read through since i’ve read many of these multiple times). So 340 chapters*3 pages = 1020 pages of chinese read, 1120 total adding guardian. 

rip i am still SO far from even 6,000 pages. (Which in a way is funny, because if i JUST buckled down and committed to reading through the novels I start, I would easily be in the 4000s pages by now, just because tian ya ke etc are like 500 pages each then stuff like guardian is 800 pages, silent reading is even longer, sha po lang and can ci pin maybe be 1200 pages, the pingxie fics i like are easily 500-800 pages, the dmbj novels aren’t long but combined they’ve got to be like 6000 words minimum all on their own for the first several or so). 

anyway, as usual i would love to copy someone else’s study plan and see if it works for me. in part because i usually do really well with such study plans - it motivates and challenges me, and i like to “prove” i can do what someone else did, and “prove” if it works or not. (for example, when i started chinese i copied a guy who did 2000 most common chinese words Ben Whatley memrise decks then dived into reading using a click dictionary, and i did exactly what he did lol - i added some extra stuff, and certainly there were better materials i could’ve used instead but just used what he used... but it worked! his study plan worked! so i was ultimately happy i’d tried it and that it had worked for me too! i wish i had a japanese study plan i could brute force that manageably). so i very much would LIKE to brute force read through X pages or X books in chinese (or japanese one day) and see if it works. i mean... in theory it should. its just intensive reading that the poster above did. look up every unknown word as you read, and its proven to work its just extremely intensive work (very mentally draining at first until there’s less unknown words).

so of course, i prefer to read extensively instead. and learn primarily from context instead of from definition lookups. in part because i am lazy and don’t like ‘clicking’ i am so lazy lol that i really don’t want to be taken out of the reading-flow focus. and in part because i tend to remember much better when i have to “figure out and guess” what something means like a puzzle... when i look up words i don’t remember them unless i do it 3-10 times. but when i figure it out based on what i’m guessing the word means? i learn it within 1-3 times of seeing it, maybe after seeing it 5 times at most if the first few times i could get away with ignoring the word instead of trying to figure out what it means. so i learn meaning much Faster when doing it the ‘through context’ way. reading extensively also means less breaking your reading flow constantly, which helps me because i have poor focus to begin with and often need breaks already. 

however... if i’m reading extensively instead of intensively, there’s a few problems that crop up. 1. I cannot replicate that poster’s study plan, because i’m not doing the same reading type. so it may take me MORE books to get the same reading level skill, because i’m doing something different (or it may take less books, or the same amount of books, its simply unknown). 2. with a language like chinese it means guessing the hanzi readings too if i’m not using a dictionary... which is fine until i transfer from reading to listening. right now it only hangs me up because i’ll guess say “hun” for the reading of a hanzi with a similar radical, then try to look up a really frustrating word by typing in pinyin and finally realizing darn the hanzi is actually pronounced “hui” and thats why it wasn’t showing up. basically, it means the pronunciation gets even LESS reinforcement and correction than if i was looking it up 5-20 times every single time i saw the word until i finally remembered it. That’s a big reason i do a lot of “reading extensively while letting text to speech play” or just listening to audiobooks generally too. Because i like to get as much listening reinforcement of new words, so i hopefully remember their correct pronunciations to an extent even though i’m not looking it up constantly. 

i would love to say that i’d change my study plan, and start reading intensively mainly to copy the person who made that post, and see how my progress goes. but knowing me... its not going to be happen, i’ll be lucky if i can just get myself to read more in general. (fun fact about me... even an english comic it takes me 30 minutes to read 17 pages, and that’s a comic not a novel with paragraphs, in english... i read even slower in other languages... despite having a fast reading level in college where i must’ve just sped read skimmed a lot). on top of things... i am barely reading right now, i can just get myself motivated to read a bit of chinese manhua... but that’s a wayyyy lower “word count” and language density than actually pushing through novels. 

but if anyone else would like to make a goal of more reading? i’ll join you! and if anyone else would like to test what the poster did, with more specifically intensive reading (or u vary it like me and do mostly extensive reading), i’d love to know how it goes! if you want to share progress as you go!

any thoughts? any of you read X books or X pages and think at a certain point reading with no dictionary got easier/faster?

[starberry-cupcake]

The Chinapuri finale and its montage aka censorship who?

I decided to do all of this in one post and read more, so that the 95% of my followers who are uninterested on this particular drama/source material can easily skip it. Here are 7 relationships showcased in the montage ranked and 2 bonus (a family relationship and an extra). 

Note: I’ll speak about the relationships as they were portrayed, whichever the form of relationship chosen to display in this version. Also, I’m glad that everyone was aged up in this version, kinda wild but very much appreciated that some of these actors are my age or somewhere around there lol 

#7 Lu Xia (Echizen Ryoma) and Qi Ying (Ryuuzaki Sakuno) 

This drama was a bit more romantically-inclined in terms of these two than the anime/manga was, but some of that may be also influenced by them giving their version of Sakuno more room (which yay!) and having them be older. 

For this to stand alone as a drama, it was a needed step, I believe. I found Lu Xia to be more vulnerable than Ryoma, he doesn’t feel quite as ~cool~ and it doesn’t take away from the character that he has moments showing internal struggle (in tennis as well as at home). These two were sweet and adorable, which gave the drama probably more of an expected appeal for a wider audience, to make it stand on its own as a drama and not only an anime adaptation. 

#6 Yan ZhiMing (Inui Sadaharu) & Liu Lian (Yanagi Renji) 

Kinda mad they didn’t do this for Fuji (Zhuo Zhi) and Saeki (Zuo Xiaohu) but they did good with these two. I didn’t know at first why they started to build up their relationship so early, but it ended up being a good emotional plot point during their match, which is, as we all know, a determining factor in Seigaku’s (Yu Qing) win against Rikkai (Hai Guang). 

I don’t remember being as invested in their match in the anime as I was here, maybe I was just too focused on the Fuji match at that time, but what they did to build that game as a decisive point in the season finale was so well developed, I was impressed. 

#5 He XingLong (Kawamura Takeshi) & Ya JiuXin (Akutsu Jin) 

This is a relationship that can get complicated and even problematic if handled incorrectly. Akutsu’s journey through the anime is pretty long and takes a while for him to be on a healthier place, but the added element of aging the characters could have gone really wrong here if they had done him exactly as in the anime or manga. I think they did pretty well with the time they were given, showing his turmoil and learning curve. 

XingLong was allowed to have a more in-depth journey being older and about to graduate, it made more sense for him here to think about his career at this stage and added the gravity of this being THE moment to decide whether to keep pursuing the sport or take over his dad’s restaurant (they even adapted the type of food they cook to match the cultural impact of the family-owned business, which was great). 

I think the two complemented each other really well and worked interestingly together, in a way I didn’t think the drama was gonna give them time to do, so I’m really pleased. 

#4 Qiao Chen (Momoshiro Takeshi) & Zhang BaiYang (Kaidoh Kaoru) 

My younger self is thriving with this one being included tbh. These two were so much fun in the anime, two rivals and opposites that represented the future of the team upon their elders leaving. 

I was surprised to see them so focused here, because it’s not a relationship most adaptations put emphasis on (their loss), but it paid off immensely by the time their game against Bunta and Jackal (Jin WenTai & Ke Jie) came around. 

Kaidoh is a tough one to adapt most times, and they did him so well in this one, I think this is my favorite live action Kaidoh in any adaptation, and I’ve watched a whole bunch of tenimyu in my day. They really captured the ambiguity of his character, how he balances a tough exterior with a sensitive core. Qiao Chen maintained his feelings for Xu Xingzi (Tachibana Ann) but that didn’t stop them from showing these two every time they could. 

#3 Mu Siyang (Tezuka Kunimitsu) & Ji Jingwu (Atobe Keigo) 

Oh, these two. Hyotei (Xing Yao) wasn’t featured as much as one would probably expect (I’m a Fudomine fan and with Yu Feng I got more than I even was expecting, but I admit Hyotei is a riot and I always live my best life when they show up). Still, they did the Tezuka/Atobe match justice and then some. 

Mu Siyang was incredibly compelling as Tezuka, and had a vulnerability to him that made me worry for his health more than I probably did for his anime counterpart. Maybe also the fact that he was older than his anime version yet looked younger than him made it sink more that his injury was something to worry about. I wish we had time to include anime!Tezuka’s issues with yips with Siyang, because I know the drama would have pulled it off, but that was further down the line in the story. Maybe for a season 2. 

Anyway, the Atobe/Tezuka game is one of the best games in tenipuri history and the drama knew it. The game felt like it earned its gravity with the development of both Siyang’s injury and Ji Jingwu’s determination to play against him. Then they sprinkled the camp on top, as the anime does, with Ji Jingwu paying for his every expense and calling him to get updates, which is 100% canon compliant imo. 

I feel like Ji Jingwu didn’t have enough room to be as much of Atobe as he could be, but then again, that’s not easy for anyone to pull off. Not even Kato Kazuki can do Junichi Suwabe as well as Junichi Suwabe.  

#2 Bai ShiYan (Yukimura Seiichi) & Tian ZiLong (Sanada Genichirou) 

So, it’s tough to feel for Rikkai (Hai Guang) at this point of the story. You learn about Yukimura’s health and it’s difficult, but you just met them and the first impressions haven’t been great. 

However, the relationship between Sanada and Yukimura has always been something pivotal for the way the team is constructed (they were named that way for a reason, two parts of a same hero and all that) and they sustain the team in a way other teams don’t have to. They are the mom and dad of the team, the coaches, the leaders and the pillars. They have a balance of severity and permissiveness, of strictness and instinct. They are like a couple who has been married for 25 years. 

How on Earth, I asked myself, will they achieve that with censorship on the way? I don’t know, but they did it, the mad bastards. 

It really does come through 100% the importance of their relationship and the way in which the captain’s health affects the team and, more than anything, their vice captain. It reaches a crescendo during the final match, before ShiYan’s operation, and they manage to pull it off with the time they have. 

Also, their scenes are like shot for a contemporary romance drama and I appreciate that vibe. 

#1 Tang JiaLe (Kikumaru Eiji) & Chi DaYong (Oishi Shuichiro) 

Oh boy. Look. I still own Golden Pair merchandise from my Days, ok? These two hold a special place in my heart. I saw actors who portrayed them grow up, succeed and pass away, sadly. I still sing Depend On Me sometimes. There is a cheerful vibe with these two, a sense of overcoming obstacles and finding balance, I don’t know. Fuji is my favorite character but these two are special in their way. 

This freakin’ drama just went full on Golden Pair. The level of content was off the charts. The moment they came on the screen, the second they talked about their doubles, it was already setting the tone of how deep their relationship was going to go. I am a bit amazed that they avoided to get closed down for this ngl. And I appreciate the risk because it paid off.

They have a body language communication that is captured in every shot. Even when they’re not the focus of the scene, they’re close, touching or holding each other, arms around each other, hands on each other’s shoulders, grabbing each other’s clothes. When they fight, that language changes drastically, and the distance they take feels intense and cold. You go through it with them and the team shows it as well. There’s an entire episode I had screencaps of and never posted when the team falls apart because they do. 

My favorite part, though, ironically, isn’t what they did with them together but what they did with them apart. They took time to develop them as individual characters with their own issues, their fears, their worries and weaknesses. They were allowed to be flawed and wrong and have to mend their ways. 

What really got me and impacted me deeply was the fact that they chose DaYong to talk about mental health. They gave room to speaking about the physical implications of anxiety disorders and about how self esteem issues can give more magnitude to ongoing issues with your mental health. Again, the age of the characters being changed helped add a depth to some issues that get developed with more intensity in a drama of this kind, and the way in which it takes TIME to get resolved, it isn’t a one episode thing, it’s an underlying issue that spans the season...*chef’s kiss* 

Even though there’s a specific tenimyu incarnation of these two that I hold dear and will always remember fondly, I think that Xu Ke and Zhu ZhiLing are the most successful and best portrayed live action Golden Pair I’ve ever seen. 

Bonus that was in the montage but it’s specifically about a family relationship: The Zhuo Bros

I have said Fuji has always been my favorite and his relationship with Yuta as an older brother (albeit he’s not the eldest sibling like me) is one I always felt close to. 

In the anime, the two have a rocky relationship that gets developed throughout, but the drama is very good at establishing not only Zhuo Yu’s (Fuji Yuta) self esteem issues, the subsequent use of that Guan Yue (Mizuki Hajime) does and Zhuo Zhi’s (Fuji Syusuke) attempts to breach the gap between the siblings, they also use it to develop Zhuo Zhi’s character and his reticence to show weakness. 

It’s tough to get Fuji towards a place of vulnerability without breaking character, but they used family and the care he provides to his brother as a point to further his story, and I appreciate that a lot. They managed to build Zhuo Zhi up with this sibling bond as one of his core elements, and that gave a lot of dimension to his games and his character. 

Bonus that wasn’t in the montage but I’m including in some capacity: Mu Siyang (Tezuka Kunimitsu) & Zhuo Zhi (Fuji Syusuke) 

I thought these two deserved a place in the list, even if they weren’t grouped much in the montage, because the drama did make them share moments together that I feel gave more depth to their characters. 

There was a very interesting moment in which they showed Mu Siyang and Zhuo Zhi establishing their differences when approaching tennis, and how serious Mu Siyang is about taking the team to victory. I think that strengthened the character as a captain to me, in a way that shows it rather than tells it, and allowed for his guidance to still be present when he wasn’t physically there. His determination ultimately influenced Zhuo Zhi to take things more seriously, and that was a pretty interesting development to see. 

All in all, I should, at some point, go and do a serious review for MyDramaList but I wanted to leave in my blog how much I appreciated this adaptation. I wasn’t expecting much and I was delivered everything.

[ruanbaijie]

I got tagged in a bunch of tag games recently but I’ve been putting the off for a loooooonnnnggg time because a certain drama (hint: the abbreviation is three letters long, the last character rhymes with “ring”) has been occupying every single second of my free time (눈_눈)

but now that I have some pockets of time to spare! I’m just gonna club all the tag games together into a monster post ( ` ω ´ )

a big thank you to everyone who tagged me!!!!! (*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡

tag game #1

tagged by @tiesanjiao @sillyfanturtle

recreate your blog’s aesthetic as a drink 🍸

make one here

this one was so fun! the number of choices omg I was spoiled and I took so long to decide which to go with lol. I don’t really know what this monstrosity is??? I just picked these for the pinks/ muted reds and greens

but my irl aesthetic is more something like this below. and my dumb gothic-loving ass thought that background was a graveyard and it took me a closer scrutiny to realise it’s a bar... (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)

tag game #2

tagged by @linglynz

I don’t know what this one’s called, but I guess it’s something along the lines of recreating a mouse here! 

I’m... boring. hanyi’s motto in life, probably: make it black. there are little devil horns but they’re black too so they’re blending in...

tag game #3

tagged by @yibobibo 

You can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. Put your favourite playlist on shuffle and list the first ten songs then tag ten people! No skipping!

OHO favourite playlist you say........ okay I’ll have to find one of my favourites that has at least 10 songs ahaaa

SHI-KI (Atsushi Suemitsu) - from Shiki (this remains one of my favourite instrumental anime soundtracks to date it’s just so damn atmospheric and good)

Tian Wen (Liu Yuning) - from Shan He Ling (well...)

Ai Shang (Xiao Shi Gu Niang) - from Goodbye My Princess

Enigma (After Journey) - from My Roommate is a Detective

Chi Qing Zhong Instrumentals with Vocals Version (Deng Lun) - from Qing Ya Ji (*cough cough cough*)

Eau de Vie (Atsushie Suemitsu) - from Shiki

Huo Shui (Shu Linzuo) - from The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty

Chi Qing Zhong (Deng Lun) - from Qing Ya Ji

Be Ok (I’ll) - from Zombie Detective

Warriors (2WEI & Edda Hayes)

yeahhh I listen to a lot of soundtracks

tag game #4

tagged by @livenarrator​

post the top 10 songs you’re currently vibing to

pretty similar to the one above! but here are another 10 anyways ehe

Bridge of Fate (Wang Leehong & Tan Weiwei) - from The Great Wall

Sheng Er Wu Wei (Wang Ziyi) - from S.W.A.T.

Fireworks Cool Easily (Jay Chou)

Diamond (Ha Hyun Woo) - from Itaewon Class

Yong Ye (Tan Weiwei) - from Ever Night

Awaken (Su Shiding) - from My Roommate is a Detective

Wu Bie (Jeff Chang) - from Tian Guan Ci Fu

Wu Ti (Hu Xia) - from Shan He Ling

Tian Ya Ke (Zhang Zhehan & Gong Jun) - from Shan He Ling

Gu Meng (Zhang Zhehan) - from Shan He Ling

and last but not least, tag game #5

tagged by @inessencedevided​

rules: create your own post and tag 9 people to get to know better or catch up with  

last song listened to: Tian Wen from Shan He Ling - because I was answering the tag game above alsdklflksdlkf (ง ื▿ ื)ว

last movie watched: The Yin Yang Master 2021 aka Shi Shen Ling - I got baited by (white) long-haired chen kun let’s just leave it at that

currently reading: just finished Po Yun by Huai Shang - IT’S SO DAMN GOOD PLEASE READ IT HUAI SHANG NEEDS MORE LOVE - next up probably 2ha reread

currently craving: travel - I think I’ve been saying I’ve been craving travel for the longest time now singapore is... damn small

current project: at work??? leisure project??? if it’s the latter, I probably have to get my ass cracking and start doing this week’s march gif challenge but I have Zero Inspiration (⇀‸↼‶)

current mood: pretty chill and relaxed bc finally I’m done with live giffing shl, but also nervous and ambivalent bc hyx is starting soon, and lastly excited bc tomorrow I’m gonna have my first bubble tea in three months (self-imposed diet, not related to any lockdown)

current wish: see “currently craving”

currently learning: nothing much?

something that makes you proud: how far I’ve progressed in giffing ever since january 2020 ฅ(^◕ᴥ◕^)ฅ

[mejomonster]

Im trying to avoid anything too specific from WOH because I have to wait on the subs but all of the gif sets you reblog are so pretty and I am just 😭😭😭 i wanna look at them and reblog them already (and like don't feel bad about that, curating my own dash and avoiding spoilers is entirely my own responsibility xD im just impatient because WOH is so good but waiting on the subs is the worse)

if u block the ‘word of honor’ tag i am still tagging all the woh posts at least ToT 

although idk if ur like me. but i saw plenty of spoilers on my dash and still really had no idea what was going on until i finished the show this weekend. so. i don’t think the gifs really encapsulate what u are about to watch! (u could do what i did and like them but not look at any of em until the show’s done being watched ToT that’s what i did cause i didnt wanna miss the pretty gifs and lose em lol)

also: if you have android or iphone, people put out guides on how to get youku app vip if you did want to watch the whole show now. i’m guessing you know that’s an option right? vip was i think 18 dollars or less for 6 months. i ended up doing that because i was afraid the show might not finish airing. but it clearly did, and has been basically pretty secure, so i’m fairly sure it will finish airing on youtube ^-^. (i generally prefer watching on youtube so i can watch on tv). the youku app also had a 1.50 dollar special bonus 7 minute ep that is like the ‘final ending’ and i watched that too. i’m hoping it will also, at the end, be uploaded to youtube (because it will be really awful if its an ending only watchable in some places ;-; )

but like. u can watch on youku app if ur impatient... they uploaded all eps with eng subs. its all up there to watch now for youku app vip. i forgot who made the guides for getting youku vip if u wanted, but they’re pretty easy to find and floating around. 

update: here’s some guides: https://mydramalist.com/discussions/tian-ya-ke/60635-how-to-subscribe-to-youku-vip

here’s one for android users: https://three--rings.tumblr.com/post/646296467825426432/youku-vip-how-to

the iphone one i used: https://mejomonster.tumblr.com/post/645744895316918272

the tumblr android one: https://mejomonster.tumblr.com/post/645794869677293568

[shijiujun]

Hi! feel free to ignore this, I saw an ask u answered a while back mentioning some novel reading difficulties on a scale of 1-10. You mentioned 天涯客 as 5, 默读 as 9, and SVSSS as like a 4-5. I was wondering if I could ask if you have any particular bl novel recs in that lower range? I'm learning, thanks 2 ur post started tian ya ke since u made it sound easier than I assumed! Its readable, just takes me a while per chapter ToT so I was curious what novels are also its level/a bit easier?

and if you saw my last ask lol, I was also curious how difficult you'd rate SCI, 镇魂, and 破云, 1-10? Maybe compared to Tian Ya Ke? They're novels I'm planning to read. I've read bits of 镇魂 and 默读 before, but wasn't really ready to handle reading much of them last I did so I just read pieces at a time. If 默读 is like a 9 then I'd like to read a few more novels I can push through before going back to it ToT

heya hmmm at the moment i really can’t think of any that’s simpler except maybe for Your Distance 你的距离 - if it’s historical it definitely ranks like 5 and above just by vocab alone, so your best bet are modern ones or school ones, those are infinitely easier to read. ermm i’m not sure if you’ve heard of these before but:

- 我和我的四个舞伴 by 娜可露露: A short & cute piece about a five-member pop star group which does fanservice in front of fans but are totally not close together in real life, and main guy is the leader of the group who ends up like chatting with someone he thinks is a girl (recommended by the youngest member of the group) who turns out to be the coldest member in the group. Leader is unaware that this is his team member’s number (as it’s his other phone number) and starts flirting with him online, so team member thinks leader likes him, and starts staring at him, and then leader who doesn’t know the ‘girl’ he’s chatting with is team member starts thinking “oh no does he like me” 

- 迪奥先生 by 绿野千鹤: I haven’t read this yet but it’s by one of my fave authors (the one who wrote qi wei shang) and I think there’s a vampire in this one, modern setting, and my friend loved it

- 碎玉投珠 by 巫哲: A piece set in 1988, where main CP are apprentices at some antiques or artisan product shop, and they fall in love, it’s pretty cute! And this is pretty popular like in the top 50s for Chinese danmei fans so far 

i haven’t read zhen hun so i can’t really say, but once again it’s priest, and having read 5 of hers and having headaches at all but one, i’d say zhen hun is no walk in the park either, especially because she interweaves world building and plot really intricately on so many levels.

so SCI’s premise is actually not difficult, but the issue is a lot of the psychological stuff can be a bit complex - er ya’s writing is not convoluted and pretty straightforward and you can try, but because it heads in a pretty far-fetched and sometimes not easily connected direction, you may get confused, plus there’s.. more than 400 chapters and 5 seasons of books at the moment

gosh i wouldn’t even recommend you start with po yun because... damn okay huai shang is not a complex writer in terms of language BUT they (she??) is a master at twists and subplots, PLUS because it’s heavily set in the drugs/narcotics world, the language and style of writing gets way more heavy than you expect - if you wanna try this, you may wanna try the manhua first to get a gist before diving into po yun - it’s like a makjang plot but more serious if you get what i mean 

[minsarasarahair]

My Danmei Experience based from this template in this twitter thread but I don't really read much nowadays especially this year so this is "my whole experience" in general. Not by year. If I really like something I tend to stay for a long while so its hard for me to get into new titles.

My intro to Danmei - Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)

Stole my heart completely - Tian Ya Ke (Faraway Wanderers)

Dark Horse - You Yao (Are You OK)

Surprised me - Sha Po Lang (Stars of Chaos)

My intro to danmei - Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)

My story in this one is I became a fan before the donghua even aired. You know me. I see Long haired bishie. I'll definitely check it out. I remember seeing the cool animatics and trailer featuring Wei Wuxian playing his flute. Its one of the first donghua teaser. I can't find it anymore though. If you know, you know. That's when I start to became interested in it. I just love how the story values other characters aside from the main couple. Everyone have their big roles for the story. I love especially the Yunmeng Shuangjie story. My favorite character is Jiang Cheng. My favorite Wangxian scene is mostly before Wei Wuxian's resurrection because I treasure their progress and them getting to know each other. I tone down my love for it now because of what the fandom has become. I swear I can talk about JC here freely during the 1st season of donghua but I don't know what happened after The Untamed. The MDZS tag became a war zone about who's the best ship or which one suffer the most as in someone will attack you just because you talk about your favorite character JC lovingly as if its a crime to like him(Sorry to say that I'm the type of story enjoyer who don't focus only in morally good characters because I appreciate character designs and how he was written like his body language) so I mostly focus my energy now to JC tag and shipping Xicheng. I dislike it when fandom is trying to erase Wangxian's flaws and use it as their weapon to demonize JC because what I like about Wangxian is their flaws in the first place.

Stole my heart completely - Tian Ya Ke (Faraway Wanderers)

I'm grateful to the Word of Honor drama for introducing me to this story. I really like the love story in this. When I said love story, I meant the found family troupe and romance. Both of it! I prefer the book more than WOH but WOH is still decent at least until episode 30 I guess lol. I hate the miscommunication part. I really let my guard down in this one because they said Wen Kexing is the stereotype character I hate the most (pleasure seeking character who frequently visits brothel) but surprisingly I find myself liking him despite how annoying he is. Zhou Zishu is the same. He's a supporting antihero-like character in Qi Ye (prequel) who did atrocious things that hard to forgive. I like both of them. And the fact that both of them is at their late 20s when their first meet. I love how they understand and communicate with each other like a normal person despite not really a normal person lol. They only become normal in the presence of each other and their beloved only disciple, Chengling. I also tend to lose interest to my ship after the confession phase and when they are going out but when it comes to WenZhou, I love imagining their married life. Also, did you know that WKX has already decided ZZS as his lifetime partner without even knowing ZZS true appearance in the book? Like he know ZZS has disguise but he can only imagine his own version of ZZS in his mind lol He's so in love with a hobo just simply because he love his company. I find that cute and heartwarming. I just love the contrast that they look indecent or explicit but they have surprisingly cute sides as couple. I like that they live their 2nd life without rewind button or having the choice to change your past choices. They decided to move forward despite how messed up their past are and even raised a morally good hero, Zhang Chengling who love them dearly. You can tell ZZS' life is no longer his but for WKX and Chengling.

Dark horse - You Yao (Are You OK?)

I found this one because of the donghua adaption in IQIYI knowing its just an isekai comedy donghua. I didn't know its gay and surprisingly has 4 canon gay CP! Imagine how surprise I was! Its very short but I find it interesting and had a hard time moving on from obsessing over it. Their romance is very subtle though but focus in pair's emotional connection. The donghua give them the WOH treatment where the character flaws are toned down. They are antiheroes and morally grey characters in the book. Anyway! What I like about it is it gives a different spin to transmigration genre and every CP play an important role to get across a message to the reader. For example, LouZuo aka the Medicine pair explore the conflicts between natives and outsiders (transmigrators). We have scheming Lou Zhu who only care about himself and have conscience for only selected people which is kinda understandable after knowing how the natives mistreated the outsiders like him from Zuo Yunqi's memories where outsiders are executed publicly just because of their advanced knowledge or jailed if they are useless. Then we have the natives travelling CP, Long Daxia and Qian Zhenduo who witnessed their own world get ruined by outsiders and by emperor that they trusted. Another CP known as the Poison pair, Prince Yu and Li Ke's story explore Prince Yu's revenge against the emperor and his regrets that he can't be a good person for Li Ke. Lastly, the bickering pair Fan Aiguo and Xie Liang from Sick chapter who originally share one body but later enjoyed the company of each other despite their differences. Their story explore the side of ordinary people who are trying their best to help others. So yeah, it has 4 sides of the story. I really love the message of the story where the villains are the people obsessed in escaping reality and we have MCs who treat the new unfamiliar world as their new reality. Its against the charm of Isekai genre. Isekai fantasy is usually story focus on escaping reality but in You Yao, the transmigrator characters don't treat the native people as characters. Instead of thinking about an exit, they adapt.

Surprised me - Sha Po Lang (Stars of Chaos)

My story about SPL is funny. I read it out of spite. MDZS gained puritans in the fandom so I'm like "I shall read the most problematic pseudo-incest age gap danmei with racism I don't agree with but sometimes we need to read problematic stuff to be aware and be a critique hoping there's no puritans here. Yeah, MC wearing a monocle is handsome too so why not?". Also, we have donghua VA of Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng for the SPL audio drama as besties here so its a win-win situation to me. I can finally see them living happily in different universe. I was really surprised because its not that problematic? Its problematic still but I imagined worse than this. Like Loveless or Junjou Romantica? That's my standard of worse? I think ChangGu is actually the most romantic Danmei couple I ever encountered that I actually like. I'm saying this as someone who's not into heavy romance story. The main couple has a very well-balanced dynamic, no power imbalance and definitely a power couple. Chang Geng who values Gu Yun's wish, conditions and dreams to the point of changing the country's system for his loved one who's a general is hard to accomplish yet he surprisingly did it? That's romantic to me! The politics and economics aspect are also interesting. Their story made me care about the world. The best selling point of this story for me is the growth of the MCs as a person, their feelings and relationship. Also the ancient China industrial revolution-steampunk setting! Its really one of a kind and something new. I like to believe that Gu Yun started dating Chang Geng out of pity and his platonic love for young Chang Geng. He only fell in love with him romantically when they exchange ideas for future. Like yes, he already care about Chang Geng in probably familial sense. He is his home after all. But loving and being in love are two different things. I like that the text made sure that Gu Yun didn't fall in love with the young Chang Geng but the adult Chang Geng who value his dreams that are hard to achieve.

[sarpazoa]

tw incest + abuse mention, spoilers for ep 16 and after:

yo fuck this fujo scriptwriter... i mean idk wtf i was expecting but i just watched these yt videos on “uncovering” what was actually said in shl when the actors were acting (pre-dubbing) bc apparently ppl have lip-read (?!) and figured out what was in the script at that stage. and like :^| yeah the original novel was prob fujobait but so many of the lines that were changed are so overtly sexual for no reason instead of just explicitly romantic like i thought it would be :^\ i genuinely liked the dialogue... obviously the nuances in wordplay and everything are really impressive (and inevitably go over my head bc i don’t know the language 😔) and with gong jun + zhang zhehan’s chemistry it’s rly a delight to watch but that was so. their romance is v much not subtext in the show which is rly cool but like did there have to be that many innuendos lol! why are u so fucking obsessed w how two fictional men have sex seek fucking help u homophobic weirdos... ugh

also i haven’t read tian ya ke and i don’t particularly feel a desire to do so even tho i’m obsessed w shl but apparently the side characters are much more developed in the show than in the book including the relationships that they have with other secondary characters some of which were invented for the drama. which brings me to what really made me uncomfortable: there were lines initially that implied scorpion king has a “romantic”/sexual relationship with his father, zhao jing (who i didn’t even realize was his adoptive father until the video designated it as a very important distinction. like im abt to start mauling u) that were dubbed over to not make this... dynamic 🤢... as apparent. and this was also a drama-only addition. like god wtf ! 

why is this kinda shit so fucking popular in these freak circles like why is incest so romanticized like this! it’s literally ridiculous there was no reason to add in this aspect to their already toxic relationship other than for fetishizing it as some taboo/”forbidden love” crap. seeing the lady talk about this in the video... it’s clearly not viewed by fujos (or whoever their target audience was for this) as scorpion king having been and continue to be abused by his father, and i don’t have enough faith in this scriptwriter to assume that this topic is going to be gradually explored in an authentic and meaningful way or something. i just hope xie’er kills him 

ik the actors (probably 😞) didn’t play their roles like that bc i saw smth abt zhao jing’s actor being disgusted at ppl sh*pping them on weibo BUT THEN growing to be supportive of it along w scorpion king’s actor LIKE Y R U LETTING UR BATSHIT FANS CONVINCE U THAT THIS IS OK... it’s just plain fucked up please just stick to ur initial instinctual response to this wtfdghdgjdshd like now that shl is super popular and the actors have gained a lot of recognition i know they have to maintain like a tolerant attitude to all of this crazy shit so their images are good but man i wish they’d just tell ppl off for this shit... zhang zhehan being asked in interviews what he thinks abt being called laopo/wife... and him just being like [sigh] whatever makes y’all happy like king i am so sorry. these fujo fans r a disease and maybe these adaptations should’ve never been created. we need to kill bl and gl labels and the ppl that write for them i’ve had enough i’m doxxing the scriptwriter and just completely eviscerating them i hope u reincarnate into a dung beetle

[13-blackbirds]

Oh I love these. Let's see: A, B, F, I, T, and U if it's not too many.

Yay!  Here we go (for this ask post):

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Edelgard/Claude (they own real estate in my brain so)

Word of Honor/Tian Ya Ke: Wen Ke Xing/Zhou Zi Shu (the most recent addition!)

Legend of Hei: Wu Xian & Lao Jun (platonic or shippy depending on the day really)

The Murderbot Diaries: Murderbot & ART (their ace/aro BROTP is so so excellent)

The Mandalorian: Din/Luke (lol at this one because I've only seen this series, the first two movies of the newest trilogy, and the standalone Hans Solo movie)

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

TBH, Edelclaude!  They don't have any supports in-game (a travesty!!!) and I was pretty firmly on the Edeleth train until my rarepair curiosity kicked in.  I can't remember which fic I stumbled across first on AO3 but it quickly went from "huh, they would have an interesting dynamic" to "oh, this hits a lot of my buttons" and "all of the fics for them are so excellent" to "well, I guess this ship will own a piece of my soul now". F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

I'm a fandom wanderer so I'll interpret "been in" loosely to mean that I always enjoy consuming the source material and will dip back into fandom to chill every so often and regularly go back to it for my comfort fics.  So in that sense, 15 or 16 years, for the Teen Titans animated series.  I added to my WIPs for them as recently as last year.

If we mean more strictly as in an uninterrupted period of time I was in a particular fandom continuously consuming/producing fanworks... probably about two years?  For Prince of Tennis (waaay back in the day) and xxxHOLIC (also very way back, which is not a coincidence.  oh to be a carefree teenager with so much time and mental energy again...)

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

No, I don't think so, but then again, I mostly lurk on tumblr and have curated my experience here quite narrowly.  I think in general I'm past the age where I engage with parts of any fandom that causes me stress so yeah, I'll like what I like and engage with those parts of it that make me happy and comfortable. T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Claude von Riegan is bisexual as hell.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

FE3H: Edelgard, to the surprise of exactly nobody.  Superficially, I adore the character design of a tiny Emperor wielding a huge-ass ax and kicking ass.  There's so much more to say if we were to go deep, but suffice to say she's such a strong character, but not like a Strong Female Protagonist(TM) where she shuns all affection and conflates strength with coldness/aggression.  I think that could have so easily been what she was (and I'm sure there is plenty of fandom discourse on that which I avoid like the plague) but instead we see her warming to people, showing affection, even if awkwardly, and in what she asks of Byleth you can tell that she genuinely cares about her Black Eagles.  In fact, her affection for her House mates is a constant thread in her characterization even through to the Fire Emblem Heroes versions of her.  Anyway, I love her.

Teen Titans (animated): Raven.  For many of the same reasons as Edelgard, actually, hahaha I have a type.  She's presented as antisocial and apathetic and even kind of mean at first, but she has good reasons to and she opens up a lot as she gets to know the team better.  She is also unbelievably powerful so yes maybe I also have a power kink.  

Haikyuu!!: Tsukishima Kei.  Now, for something different!  The exact moment I was like, "Him, he's my favourite" was when we realized that, for all his seemingly deep angst about volleyball being tied to his older brother, his older brother is SUPER well-adjusted and just.... lol Tsukishima you are a drama queen!!  He's such a troll but is also SO EASILY trolled.  I love my tsundere baby troll.

[underaswift-sunrise]

Good morning, your friendly neighborhood anon is back! (◕‿◕✿) Yes, I did finish Love and Redemption haha! For me, it always feels slow when I watch a new drama, and then a few days pass, and I’m finished with it and I’m like “I’m done???” Lol (゜。゜) I mean, to each their own! We all watch shows at our own pace! I try to watch them consistently so I don’t forget the plot haha or loose track, especially if I have no clue what’s going on LOL （⌒▽⌒） I don’t think, I just comment to the characters lol. “You fool” or “dude you screwed” lol! Oh man, girl, you’re in for an awakening on the things Si Feng does... I’m surprised he survived it all lol, but I’m just happy all the characters got the happy endings they deserved, especially after going through their own personal roller coaster rides of a journey, like yeesh haha! (´つヮ⊂) I’m sad to report I have not found my next drama obsession （；へ：）there’s so many to choose from, I just have NO CLUE. Ive actually recently finished Kingdom on Netflix and that was quite interesting. It’s a zombie period drama that is set around the Joseon era (1392-1910). After watching a few episodes, I’m like “those wooden doors ain’t gonna save you from that hoard of zombies” LOL. It was also interesting to see how corruption of the government played into a zombie apocalypse. I’ve seen you reblog posts about Word of Honor... may I ask what it’s about? Some of the characters look handsome (I obviously watch for the plot HAHA ⚈ ̫ ⚈). I hope you have a lovely day ~ ´͈ ᵕ `͈ ♡°◌̊

Lovely anon, hi!!! :D 💕

Oh maybe Word of Honor could be your next drama obsession? I’m pretty obsessed with it ahah xD The drama is adapted from the novel Tian Ya Ke by Priest! It’s about Zhou Zishu, who after leaving the organization he was leader of (at a great cost) meets the mysterious Wen Kexing and they become friends while trying to solve mysteries connected to a powerful object. I’m not the best at making summaries, and also I’ve only watched 7 episodes so far! 😆 I said “friends” because even though Tian Ya Ke is a BL novel the drama is obviously just bromance. But trust me, there are so many moments which aren’t straight at all! xD Jokes aside, it’s super entertaining and the characters are so interesting! Waiting for the next episode is a torture T_T I higly recommend it, Youku is providing English subs on their official Youtube channel! :D Current schedule is one episode a day, Monday thru Thursday!

I’ve heard of Kingdom! But I’m a bit meh about horror series/movies, unless the story is extremely good!! Would you recommend it? :D I watched a great historical kdrama on Netflix called My Country: The New Age! It’s awesome and kind of heartbreaking, but in a epic way! It still hasn't completely released me... But I can totally relate to not knowing which drama to choose next, I’m incapable of just looking at my watchlist and going in order ahahah xD I started Word of Honor because I had read about it and was excited but I didn’t expect it to come out so soon!! Definitely a pleasant surprise! 😍

Let me know if you start watching it or if you find some other good drama!! I wish you a nice and relaxing weekend 💜🥰 Thank you for your always sweet messages!!!

[rigelmejo]

Unrelated completely, regarding listening reading method:

I am genuinely so excited to test the listening reading method out wholeheartedly. When I looked up the method, few people were trying it with Chinese, and of the people I saw a lot were beginners with less vocabulary than I have which I think both made the task harder for them and made their progress look different than I imagine mine will.

For example, in my first attempts using listening reading method, I noticed I picked up a TON of words I could already read, and a TON of phrases I could already read but didn’t properly “chunk” until I heard them aloud. Whereas the beginners tended to document picking up entirely new words, and not understanding much of any paragraph for the first several chapters. Whereas again, because I had more vocabulary, my first chapters I listening reading method did I heard a TON of individual words/followed the main gist, and it took several chapters for me to start finally understanding full phrase chunks and sentence chunks together. I 100% think the listening reading method can work with mandarin, I just think since few people have tried it and shared the experience, I’m going to find out how much it can improve someone’s mandarin myself...

I saw people who did listening reading method with german, and Dutch, who like the creator of the method ended up going from 0 to B1-B2 listening and sometimes-reading* skill in 3-5 months (reading skill tended to depend on how much they focused on the actual text during target language audio/target language text portion). The people with the most success usually already had a foundation of several hundred or a couple thousand common words, and had seen some grammar summarized beforehand (both of which I have already done with mandarin). I’m extremely curious how far the listening reading method can take my reading skills specifically - since the method mainly improves listening, and reading is simply affected a bit as a consequence of picking up new words/reading target language text along with the audio during one of the steps. With Chinese I suspect I’ll have to do more Hanzi learning, and reading-only work like intensive reading, to supplement my reading skills. However I already do a lot of intensive reading, so maybe that will keep the skills relatively even.

I do know that only couple dozen hours of listening reading method already boosted my listening skills a TON. So listening reading method definitely improves listening skills, as it is intended to. The actual method suggests learners listen read through an entire novel in a week or two, then do another novel etc, at least 3 novels though potentially more - and redoing some novels again from the start if desired. For my kind of novels - like Guardian by Priest, that means 106+ chapters, 800+ pages, 30 minutes audio a chapter (53 hours for the English text-chinese audio portion, another 53 hours for the Chinese text-chinese audio portion, and lets say half as many hours to read it in English 26.5 hours). So that is 132.5+ hours to listen read to Guardian. The listening reading method assumes you do a few books, so let’s say around 3 books, 396 hours (roughly 400 hours). Well... no wonder people saw such improvements! 400 hours of listening to comprehensible input in a European language will get an English speaker quite far into learning. Most European languages according to FSI take around 600-750 hours for an English native speaker to learn. Listening reading method would fill a huge chunk of those hours, and if you focus on the reading portion too, then that should definitely at least be a solid foundation into B1 I can imagine.

Listening reading methods creator also tends to do these in 6-12 hour reading bursts per day - which I absolutely never do because I’m lazy and unable to focus on things for too long usually without switching things up. But like I’ve mentioned, even me just doing maybe 12 hours of listening reading method so far, in small 30 minute to 2 hour chunks, has been enough to make noticeable improvement in my listening comprehension. If someone is already intermediate and just wants to improve their listening skill, I think they’d see fast results like I have regarding their listening skill dragging up closer to their reading skill level.

When I read the listening reading method creators website, they sounded like 10 hours was about how long it took (for beginners in a language) to start parsing individual words and recognizing them, 30 hours to start hearing word chunks and phrases they could understand, and 60-100 hours to start comprehending a majority of the words.

I am therefore very curious what my rate of improvement will be. I do feel chinese study using the listening reading method at least for listening skills will see similar levels of improvement. I’m wondering if my listening skills will improve a bit faster, since I’m already past the “progress at 30 hours” mark expectations wise - I can hear many individual words, can hear many sentence chunks/phrases, and just struggle to follow some full sentences and catch brand new words until I’ve heard them several times. I do very much want to completely go through Guardian with this method - for many reasons lol. 1. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in english and I’ll have a chance to use that for study which is cool, 2. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in chinese and this makes it doable/more comprehensible for my current skill level (aka following along to the audiobook I will read at a less slow pace/comprehend more since the English will be fresh in my mind, compared to if I just read it extensively on its own), 3. Avenuex made a beautiful audiobook I adore and I’ll have an excuse to listen to it while actually comprehending everything since I’ll have the English and Chinese novel to look at while o read! So... once I’m through Guardian, I’ll be able to answer for myself what over 100 hours of progress doing the listening reading method produce, how well it works when using a book with a more complicated/high vocab style - which is sort of priest, reading challenge wise, and the kind of novel the listening reading method creator recommends using. Also, I’ll have read Guardian! ovo)/ and I will have read a full priest novel, so I’ll have picked up words by my favorite author that will hopefully make other priest novels easier to read (the same reason Tian Ya Ke may be helpful).

———-

Another thing people who have tried the listening reading method suggest doing first (particularly if studying a language much different than your native language, but for any language tbh). The creator of the method suggested: knowing a few hundred to a few thousand common words, and having looked at a grammar guide or overview prior. That’s something anyone who’s already a bit of a beginner, to low intermediate, probably has done or is doing. In addition, some people who have done this method suggested using something like sentence audio flashcards (in English and target language audio) and listening to them a few times, repeating them, until one felt comfortable with them. Generally common word/grammar ones, and you could do “listening reading” with those sentences too (reading them while listening to the audio). This would serve as a primer to learn the basics comfortably before going into listening reading novels. They suggested doing yjis would make the method work better - they got to B2 in Dutch in a handful of months of intensive listening reading by doing this beforehand and they think it helped a lot. While I think it’s not necessary, I do think of listening reading is hard, then getting a basis beforehand as a beginner and/or covering a easier basics common language material first will help. I use the Chinese SpoonFed Audio files which basically amounts to the same thing but no reading (if I used the flashcards still, it would include reading). So I do have some sentences/phrases/words I have a good listening foundation for already. Also, as mentioned, I do read, so for many common words and Hanzi I already can read them. I do think this advice is very good for beginners though, if they want to see noticable results sooner (versus 30-50 hours into listening reading before they start learning significant amounts - basically it just means they’d do 30-50 hours prestudy instead of basic common words/grammar, to make the listening reading initially less difficult). A total beginner could dive right into listening reading (just like my chaotic self first started to try to read Chinese knowing 500 words and brute forcing mdzs and guardian a few paragraphs at a time), it just means it’ll feel more difficult at first for a while, and they’ll be mostly learning basics for a while first before they build enough of a basis to comprehend more. Which is fine. It all just comes down to how much incompréhensibilty can you personally tolerate without giving up. The creator of the method? Can tolerate a TON. Me? I can tolerate a brutally large amount, surprisingly, but usually I need to comprehend had least the main idea and that’s a minimum of like 40-60% depending on which parts I’m comprehending. Most people will feel it’s unbearable until they can comprehend at least 80-90% (and I certainly PREFER material I comprehend that much of). And most people ideally are comfortable once they understand 95-98% (think reading a book in your native language with some unknown words you can figure out easily from context, or graded readers made to feel this easy with around this many unknown words for you to figure out in context, or maybe manhua/manga/comics once you’re a pretty decent intemediate level in a language etc).

[zzztomato]

Back

Lol, I’m back. 

I was really, desperately, in need of a place for me to write just about anything without getting judged or ridiculed by others. The thing is, the worst judge is me. Anytime I tweet or retweet anything, it just feels wrong.

The fact that I tend to talk about multiple topic in one time is something that I’m very much aware of. However, this is how my brain works these days. I do want to focus on one thing, and talk only about that. Then only I move to other topic. This is NOT what happens in my twitter.

Look. I’m a fan of various animes, c-dramas, danmeis, manhua, manhwas, mangas, you name it. SO following multiple accounts that specializes in the topic that they chose is very useful for me; I get to enjoy various updates at once, rather than hanging in just one topic and tiring myself while waiting for an update. Does this make sense? If it doesn’t, then be it. I myself will not be able to decipher the whole post later, you’ll see.

Anyways, I’m a HUGE fan of #shanheling these days. The world of c-dramas is kinda unexpected for me. I start by watching donghua (TGCF <3) and I was intrigued to read the danmei. Lo and behold, I fell in the danmei rabbit hole. Starting with TGCF, I start reading SVSSS and MDZS [because when you start with MXTX, the flow is for you to read her novels first then you venture out by yourself]. 

For MDZS, I started with the donghua first and I was not impressed at first but the story hooked me in. I start reading the manhua. Then I found out that it has a c-drama, The Untamed, or Chen Qing Ling, CQL for short. At this moment, I was thoroughly impressed by the way the story progresses so I said, why not? Boy, I was not ready for it.

You see, CQL set up is in xianxia world. Imagine my surprise when characters started to hurl their incantations from out of nowhere. Dammit, that caught me by surprise. I was not impressed and I stopped watching after 2 episodes  (=.=‘). I did say that I watched the donghua first, right? As always, the world of animation never seems out of place whenever something weird came up. I can just pass it all as, ‘well, it’s cartoon. it’s not real,’ kinda crap. But when real-life Wei Wuxian start using his spells or when Lan Wangji attacks using his guqin, my brain still hasn’t caught up with the story.

So I stopped watching although it was a widely famous and successful c-drama. Time passed and I found myself exploring more and more danmei. And I am slowly adding my knowledge on xianxia, wuxia world. Learning fun trivia and stuffs. Those really help on my understanding of chinese culture (although it is not comprehesive) but still, I am now enjoying those things that I found ‘weird’ before. I found my former self as weird now.

As I said before, I followed some accounts that specifically post on danmei updates. They start updating on a new drama, Shan He Ling, and adaptation of Tian Ya Ke by priest. I haven’t read the novel so I was not inclined to watch. After a course of few weeks, I saw a user tweeting a short cut of SHL from episode 2, if I’m not mistaken. Oh boy, I was instantly hooked. Wen Kexing in white hanfu, fanning himself from the top, watching Zhou Zishu... (rather, he’s watching how his schemes are going)

Me, watching this cut for the first time,’It was this moment that I knew, I f**ked up. I am now down the SHL hole!!’

It was a very short clip but it has convinced me to start watching. I LOVE every second of it. I’m not a huge fan of drama, most likely because it needs a huge amount of concentration and I have none of that. But episode 1 was intriguing. Then the iconic episode 2 just swept me off my feet. I binge watched the whole 12 episodes that was uploaded by Youku at the time. I am still watching, currently waiting for episode 31. I can say that I was very proud of myself that I discovered this gem.

Time and time again, the trivia regarding SHL just make me love the show even more. The fact that both Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan were not the first choice to act as Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu, respectively, blew my mind. They did a great job portraying the characters. When the characters are sad, I wept. and when they’re happy, I grinned so hard, lollll. Oh, and this drama have relatively low budget compared to other historical drama, a fact that I read from Chinese diaspora users on twitter. The team did their best with what they had. Tbh, the whole show was very beautiful; the scenery, the hinting, the way it was shoot. I should write another post on this.

SHL is depicted in wuxia world; a genre that I can adept to easily. There must be qi, kungfu, immortal masters but it is easier to digest in my opinion. Then again, I have learnt some very basic knowledge bout this by now, which is why this is such an enjoyable show. Although it is also because both wkx and zzs are very good looking, I can’t peel my eyes from them.

Now that I enjoy watching SHL, I decided to continue watching CQL. There are still some details that just make me itch watching it. From the woozy cut to very orchestrated movement of a group of people, I have learnt to actually prioritise the story, rather than these small things. So now I’m watching both CQL and SHL. I think it is not that I can’t watch c-drama, it is only that I was not a fan of the xianxia genre. Though if you throw me a xianxia danmei, I will gobble it all up as long as it has enough angst and BL.

Rambling on this topic is just very relieving for my poor heart. I do want to fangirl on my twitter but my knowledge is very shallow and I don’t have anyone that I know from the fandom. They seem really fun but also close-knit..? I’m aware that I can RT and maybe reply to their tweets but the second option makes me feel self-conscious; I have very very limited knowledge on the subject matter and what’s more, I didn’t really know the hidden context. What’s more, I haven’t even read TYK. My understanding come from SHL alone. I heard that SHL is a good adaptation and ofc it is vastly different from TYK.

That’s it for now. Maybe I will write a second part on my thoughts later.

[minsarasarahair]

What? I just realized both Word of Honor and Are You OK have 36 episodes in total!! I love both shows and books, okay? I'm checking WOH again because I'm thinking how their adaption is similar to Are You OK. Like how Zhou Zishu and Lou Zhu have questionable morals in the source material but was changed into somewhat Hero role model for the drama or donghua?

Tian Ya Ke (Faraway Wanderers) book: Antiheroes pair who understand each other, Someone who don't feel remorse in his crimes x Someone who avenge his parents for justice that turn him into monster Shan He Ling (Word of Honor) drama: Heroes who made mistake and trying to change their ways for better, Someone who's guilty of his crimes x Someone who avenge his parents but he did it in morally acceptable way

You Yao (Medicine) book: Antihero who only care about what benefit him x Son of a villain who aspire to become a hero just because he simply don't like his dad but later realized its his choice to be morally good for himself You Yao (Are You OK?) donghua: Coward Hero in denial who has character development x Son of a villain who aspire to become hero because its the morally right thing to do

Both pair have power imbalance if you look at them. WenZhou are Shidi and Shixiong in WOH. In Are You OK, not only LouZuo have 10 years age gap but they are also have master-bodyguard, childhood hero-aspiring hero and mentor-student dynamic. Though I think You Yao handle the communication part way better. Sure, both pairs have fight in the first half of story but Are You OK's LouZuo is in sync in the later part so it didn't became a continuous problem unlike WOH WenZhou.

Note: If you're not familiar with You Yao, it has a completed donghua and its a danmei with 4 gay couples but definitely not romance driven. Its still a love story but very plot driven. You get which are the gay pairs with implication but story don't really explore it much. The main story happened during Zuo Yunqi's teenage years and Lou Zhu is at his 20s but they are definitely the end game after story. In one of the extra story, they only meet again after 5 years of the the main story ending and they somehow developed a long distance but healthy relationship where they send letters to keep each other updated. Lou Zhu is actually very supportive of ZYQ becoming a good person despite Lou Zhu himself having questionable morals lol Like WenZhou to Chengling?

For example, when their partner is hiding something. Instead of hiding it from only one character, You Yao hide it to 3 people so they can talk to each other. All of them are sad that their partner are hiding something from them so they can relate. You know the feeling of failing an exam but when you found out your friends failed it too, you feel much better? Maybe that's why its easier to accept it while in WOH, I feel I'm betrayed by everyone together with ZZS?

When the secret was exposed instead of letting Zhou Zishu be angry because his anger is valid, the other supporting characters joined to defend Wen Kexing. Zhou Zishu said "I'm not asking you" to those characters because its between him and Wen Kexing. In Are You Ok, one of the character tell his problem alone. Lou Zhu let him talk and listen to him patiently. If you watch the donghua, you'll see Lin Kai looking at Lou Zhu when they heard Xie Liang's report but Lou Zhu gestured him to wait and let Xie Liang finish speaking first. Then he tell him to get the other 2 guys who have the same problem so he can explain what's going on to them in one go. I just love how considerate Lou Zhu is to their feelings of being left behind and sad to whatever's going on. He can interrupt them to be insensitive about it but he didn't do it. One of the thing that made me uncomfortable in WOH is the cast are laughing and celebrating except for Zhou Zishu. At least in Are You OK, the revelation scene is a serious matter. They are not laughing in this scene. Take note that these two scenario are not present in the original material.

Lastly, the scene based from original material that have consequences. Wen Kexing leaving for Ghost Valley and Zuo Yunqi leaving for Pangmen.

TYK: Wen Kexing say his farewell to Zhou Zishu that he need to go back to Mt. Fengya to fix things but assure he'll be back for Zhou Zishu's surgery. Despite that, ZZS was still worried because of what happened before with Liang Jiuxiao so he chase after WKX just in case. Zhou Zishu manage to save the wounded Wen Kexing at the right time before he was killed. WOH: Wen Kexing didn't explain his plans and actually hide things from Zhou Zishu just because he's afraid it will make Zhou Zishu worry. After Zhou Zishu learned Zhang Chengling found out WKX's true identity, he got worried so he chase after WKX. Wen Kexing probably planned it not expecting Zhou Zishu to get involved so the situation gone out of hand. Zhou Zishu after witnessing WKX's fake death, decided to throw away his life too and remove the nails on his body. They didn't expect ZZS will do this.

You Yao book: After Zuo Yunqi drugged the doctor and witnessed his dad dying in front of him since he gave him the antidote that killed his dad, ZYQ is at his wits end searching for a solution to Lou Zhu's problem and have no time explaining so he return to Pangmen hoping to get an answer. Lou Zhu learning what happened, he understood quickly where ZYQ has gone to and tell his people to look for him just in case. ZYQ was found and returned almost dying but he stated few words about a gift before losing consciousness. Lou Zhu knew exactly he's talking about ZYQ's first gift to him but he didn't know what he should do with it. He think deeply and think of the options available but later manage to figure out what ZYQ is trying to say. Later, they found out ZYQ can't do martial arts anymore as consequence yet he still choose to lead Pangmen to prevent his people from doing bad deeds and decided to be an expert in poison to help others by making antidote instead of using poison to harm others. Are You Ok donghua: After ZYQ drugged the doctor and learning from his dying dad the he might find the antidote that will not kill his dad in Pangmen, he left a note to Lou Zhu that he'll be back quickly before he gone to Pangmen. Lou Zhu was worried but he decided to put his trust so he order the people to get back to work and not to worry about Zuo Yunqi's sudden disappearance. ZYQ returned heavily wounded but not dying. ZYQ tells Lou Zhu that what he gave to Lou Zhu before he became his bodyguard might be helpful to their problem. He no longer can perform martial arts but that's fine because he became a nutritionist and transformed the Pangmen from bad sect to a good sect that sell medicine for good health.

In TYK, You Yao book and Are You OK donghua; you can still see the the different faces of trust of each pair except for WOH. I think WOH probably works more if Wen Kexing really almost died instead of faking his death and the stake after what happened is not that high aka ZZS removing his nails. I wish Wen Kexing tell him or Zhou Zishu understood quickly what Wen Kexing is trying to do. Zhou Zishu is dying as consequence so its understandable that its VERY painful to watch just because of wrong decision. Because Book Zuo Yunqi didn't also tell his plan to Lou Zhu so he has no choice but to trust Lou Zhu's understanding of him hoping he will figure it out on his own and Book Lou Zhu didn't fail him. So even if Zuo Yunqi didn't tell it to Lou Zhu he still has the "trust" that Lou Zhu will be fine on his own with few hints he left behind.

Other WOH and Are You OK similarities: Red and Blue Couple, Other one has pretty long white hair at the end of story, Has Secret ending (Yeah, I call the China Mainland only episode of You Yao a secret ending because International platform didn't have it)