#xiaoshuo

[dem-khuya]

a list of urgent campaigns (1/?)

i've received a large influx of requests to support campaigns that require so much more attention than they have received. i've tried to support as many as i can, but combined with my monthly expenses i can't afford to send anymore and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

please send anything that you can to the following people who have reached out to me personally in tumblr's messaging system. these are a few among the very many that require assistance and aid in the midst of the horrifying conditions wrought by the occupation.

all of them have been vetted i believe if you check their tumblr you will see it

CLOSE TO THEIR GOALS

@falstine-yousef88 GFM (linked) is $38,826 / $40,000. please help him afford winter clothes for his young son.

@abood-gaza9 GFM (linked) is $36,673 / $40,000. please help as he is newly married and wants to escape the war with his wife.

VERY FAR FROM GOALS

@ibrahimhussiin2 GFM (linked) paypal (linked) is $50,948 / $100,000. please help him afford winter necessities for his family including his daughter with down syndrome.

@monisfamily2 GFM (linked) is $8,413 / $41,300, please help this family afford cancer treatment. @hanangaza8 GFM (linked) is $14,630 / $100,000, please help this family evacuate their three young children (all less than 10 y/o).

[fiftysevenacademics]

Wuxia is a popular Chinese literary genre, also known as wuxia xiaoshuo (武 侠小说, literally “martial arts fiction”). The genre consists of three components: wu (武, “martial arts” or “the arts of fighting”), xia (侠, “knighterrant”), and xiaoshuo (小说, “fiction”) (Ni 1980). Rooted in the spiritual and ideological traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, wuxia stories feature the adventures of a warrior xia and his/her skills in martial arts, as well as the themes or principles of xia (e.g. chivalry, altruism, justice, and righteousness). An important aspect of wuxia is its setting, known as jianghu (江湖, literally “rivers and lakes”), that is, an alternate society created by xia in opposition to the authority (Chen 2010, 108). This alternate society finds a concrete form in “the complex of inns, highways and waterways, deserted temples, bandits’ lairs, and stretches of wilderness at the geographic and moral margins of settled society” (Hamm 2005, 17). Jianghu also refers to a semi-Utopia where xia punishes evil and exalts goodness out of their chivalric imperative to “carry out the Way on Heaven’s behalf” (Chen 2010, 109). Classics such as Water Margin (or Outlaws of the Marsh) and Journey to the West solidified wuxia as a genre, with the former establishing “the literary formula emulated by later writers whereby righteous men choose to become outlaws rather than serve under corrupt administrations” (Teo 2015, 20) and the latter being “a source for supernatural elements in contemporary wuxia literature” (Rehling 2012, 73). Dang Li (2021) The Transcultural Flow and Consumption of Online Wuxia Literature through Fan-based Translation, Interventions, 23:7, 1041-1065, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2020.1854815 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2020.1854815

[sam4samina-blog]

Other Fantasy Subgenres:

Anthropomorphic Fantasy: anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics, languages, behaviors, and motivations to an entity other than human. This something may be an inanimate object, natural phenomenon, or (and this is most often the case) animals.Watership Down

Arabian Fantasy:  It is an old and traditional sub-genre that has seen a resurgence in the modern era. It is a sub-genre steeped in history and if not always mythic, then at least fable-like��which makes it an incredibly rich sub-genre. There are often stories within stories. Jinns, ghouls, sorcerers, real people and geography mixed with the legendary and fictional.Throne of the Crescent Moon

Bangsian Fantasy: Bangsian Fantasy is a sub-genre primarily concerned with the afterlife and specifically with the exploration of the afterlife. The sub-genre gets its name from author John Kendrick Bangs. Bangs wrote stories about the afterlife and the supernatural, but with a humorous style. Bangs is not the first writer, nor the last, who wrote stories like these, but his work gave the sub-genre shape. A common feature of Bangsian Fantasy is the inclusion of dead famous people and mythological characters. These stories tend (though not always) to have a genial tone. There are three main categories that Bangsian stories fall into: ghosts stuck in the living world, living people stuck in the world of the dead, and people who have died in a Heaven (or Hell). Heroes in Hell

Christian Fantasy: It is a sub-genre that utilizes and/or explores Christian ideas and themes. The religious elements can be deliberate and overt, but they can also be sub-textual and even allegorical.The Chronicles of Narnia

Celtic Fantasy: Celtic Fantasy encompasses all fantasy stories that drawn on Celtic legends and lore. The setting of most Celtic Fantasy is a medieval or ancient world. Some common elements: pagan religions, druids, matriarchal societies, romance, tragedy, strong ties to the natural world. Celtic Fantasy has a bit of a bad rap with strong literary and historic types because of its fictionalizing of real legends, cultures, societies, and peoples. Some even describe the sub-genre as escapist.The Little Country

Dragon Fantasy: 🐉Temeraire

Fantastique: Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre that overlaps with science fiction, horror, and fantasy. The Fantastique is defined in large part by its peculiar ambiance. There is tension both within the narrative and within the reader. It is a literature that does not offer resolution but instead unsettles the reader. At its core is the supernatural (or the unknown, or the impossible) and its intrusion upon the natural (reality, or what has been accepted as reality). The Magic Skin

Futuristic Fantasy: Futuristic Fantasy does seem a bit oxymoronic. But, as the genre has grown and evolved the future no longer belongs to just the Sci Fi writers.The Sword of Shannara

Military Fantasy: The Military Fantasy sub-genre has a descriptive name, but that does not mean all Fantasy stories with military elements are part of this sub-genre. Military Fantasy is specifically about military life and may focus on a solider or a group who is part of a military.Chronicles of the Black Company

Shenmo: Gods and demons fiction is a subgenre of fantasy fiction that revolves around the deities, immortals, and monsters of Chinese mythology. The term shenmo xiaoshuo, which was coined in the early 20th century by the writer and literary historian Lu Xun, literally means "fiction of gods and demons".The Journey to the West

Swashbuckling Fantasy: Swashbuckling Fantasy is most easily described as a fantastical adventure. With plenty of energy and witty retorts, this sub-genre is meant to entertain. There are action sequences, witty dialogue, camaraderie, the chance for glory, and some romance thrown in. On Stranger Tides

Vampire Fantasy: Vampire Fantasy is known for its strong supernatural elements and undertones of blood, sex, and death. However, as the sub-genre has developed even these characteristics have changed.The Historian

[dem-khuya]

gym, work, read, study, gym, work, read, study, gym, work, read, study... trying to fish out empty spaces of time so spend with my baby brother that's adjusting to middle school, making a stronger effort to hang out w my mom, looking for local organizations / book clubs that i can contribute to once time allows and already planning where i'll pour my efforts once i'm finished with grad school...

i blank out when i look at my computer screen nowadays and i feel so disconnected from the ppl i used to know online, all the friends i made and i used to be so close to.

idk what this feeling is, if it's good, if it's bad, if it's just a phase, or if i'm just growing! i don't like how callous i feel like i'm being. it's so hard for me to feel at home in online communities anymore and it's so strange to say and think this when just 6 months ago i was very much an active part of one

[sadgirlluyin]

diary of li shi

spring rain is nonstop today—just the endless sound of dripping. outside my window the sky is serene and dull and the winds blow mournfully by my ears. i’m sitting quietly with the dark, my thoughts drifting in waves, and i’m dissatisfied and i’m unhappy. 

it was on this day last year that my friend li shi left, and spring is already back, with the same cold rain and bitter winds, but who knows what’s become of her dimples. they were like two wan pear blossoms.

the doctor said that li shi died from heart failure. i think she did die because of her heart, and not her body. she left a diary, it proves i'm right, and i guess i’ll share from it now—

[rigelmejo]

I’ve been mentioning HeavenlyPath, its a wonderful site that has a great FAQ for learning to read chinese and how to go about the process here: https://heavenlypath.notion.site/Reading-Tools-Tips-and-FAQ-b4d287ad630c439fb8978d33b06c1b00

Within the article it mentions some things I’d like to point out:

Reading apps that work well for learning chinese are Pleco’s reading tool section (probably the best single app for reading/looking up chinese words), and Readibu (links to a lot of webnovels for easier browsing). There’s also more free options listed, including ones for computers instead of phones/tablets. I’ll add that Mandarinspot.com has a good free copy/paste Annotation Tool which can include pinyin for beginners (and can be bookmarked to use on any site by going to the site then clicking the bookmark), the app Idiom is free and works as well as LingQ, zhongwen extension is a good quick click dictionary for browsers, and in a pinch you can just use Google Translate on phones or computers by highlighting a word/sentence and clicking ‘translate’. MTLnovel.com has traditional chinese text raws it can show directly under Machine Translated novel text if you make a free login, and that’s the quickest way to make a rough parallel text if you want to have a rough ‘english translation’ already made and handy. bearlang.app is a new site that popped up that can generate line by line translations (it’s using deepl or google translate based on MTL quality) and is also a quick way to make a rough parallel text translation ahead of time.

If you don’t know what to read: go to HeavenlyPath’s site book lists and browse by genre and difficulty then follow their links to read the novels, go to qidian.com, jjwxc.com, or go to novelupdates.com (where people link to novel translations) and find novels of shows you’ve seen and liked/linked similar novels/people’s rec lists they’ve made and copy the chinese name then paste into a search engine with “小说在线” xiaoshuo(novel) zaixian(online). You’ll quickly find a site hosting the novel you’d like to read (which is often just qidian or jjwxc). You can then use your reading click-definition extension, google translate, mandarinspot.com, Pleco etc to read. To read in something like Readibu, copy the url of the novel then click the + sign for “New Bookmark” in Readibu and paste into there to read in the Readibu app. 

If you want to read a print novel you already have or bought: open Google Translate (then use Camera and aim at physical book page or Import from a picture you took of a page) or Google Lens app (and click Translate in the lower left then aim at physical book page), or use Pleco’s OCR reader. Google Translate/Lens will work in a pinch but not be super great translations, Pleco’s OCR will work better but be more sensitive to needing a decent image. If the book is not too much higher than your reading level, try to type the hanzi by guessed-pinyin or use the ‘write’ option on your phone’s chinese keyboard or Google Translate’s ‘write’ input option to get the hanzi for the unknown words on your phone. Then you can copy/paste and look up the words in the place you find easiest. Another alternative is to find an existing english translation of what you are reading (either an official print translation or someone’s translations linked on novelupdates.com) and just compare to the translation as you read the chinese when you get lost.

HeavenlyPath’s FAQ gives example reading samples for each of it’s difficulty levels it uses to rate novels. I highly recommend reading through this section to figure out where you’re current extensive reading level, intensive reading level, and reading pain level would be. The FAQ also mentions that if you’ve been reading a while your vocabulary may no longer line up to their ratings and to HSK levels (which I found to be true for me), so to gauge each new text based on amount of unique characters and how many unknown words you’re running into after that first couple chapters of new-story-introduction. 

Again, HeavenlyPath’s novel links list can be found here: https://heavenlypath.notion.site/Webnovels-Books-29ee006777bd4d9fbbd0ea5eb29ec514

For myself, I find I am mostly reading at their Upper Intermediate Level, some novels at that level are easy for me to extensively read and others would give me a decent amount of new words but not more than probably 10 a chapter. For the Intermediate level, some are easy for me and some are hard and it depends on genre because where my vocabulary is weak my reading level for that genre is bad lol (so its still useful to read some Intermediate stuff). And it looks like for me, pushing into Advanced novels would put me into ‘intensive reading’ where I run into a lot more unknown words (and some would put me into reading pain). Which matches my experience: I can read a few ‘advanced’ level novels that I’ve already learned a lot of words from (which i guess dmbj would be maybe and zhenhun definitely is), but new novels like 破云 I can only follow maybe the main idea of what’s going on and everything else is a pain for me to parse unless I’m using a dictionary. 

[moonwaif]

Came across this undergraduate honor's thesis written by Rachel Leng of Duke University, publicly available on the Penn State digital database, CiteSeerX. I haven't finished reading the whole thing yet but so far, it's pretty interesting:

Abstract

This thesis considers Comrade Literature (同志文 学 tongzhi wenxue), a genre of contemporary Chinese homosexual (tongzhi) fiction, as it has emerged on the internet in Mainland China. Although Comrade Literature first emerged in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s, it was only after the mid-1990s with the advent of the internet that these gay-themed fiction were disseminated online in Mainland China. There are now hundreds and thousands of stories designated as “Comrade Novels ” (同志小 说 tongzhi xiaoshuo) archived on various Chinese websites. This thesis contends that online Comrade stories are not simply an expression of an underground Chinese gay culture; they are complex cultural texts with deeper meanings as a site of queer resistance facilitating the intersection of homosexual and heterosexual subjectivities. In addition to providing a catalyst for the local tongzhi subculture, Comrade fiction in Mainland China capitalizes on new media platforms to present same-sex desire to the broader public. A close analysis of four online Comrade stories focuses on the representation of male same-sex relations, turning a critical eye to the logics of these texts as tongzhi write out of a heteronormative milieu. The three chapters in this thesis will each examine distinct aspects of . . .

[dem-khuya]

see column 225 on the vetted gaza evacuation fundraiser spreadsheet

last donation was 10 days ago. please match my 25$ CAD. if everyone who has reblogged donated 25$, they'd almost be halfway to their goal right now.

PLEASE HELP My Family ,My son Hamza with multiple food allergies .. survive in Gaza

My name is Abdulrahman Al-Abadla. I live in the southern part of Gaza City. I'm trying to raise funds to survive these difficult times. Like many others, my house was bombed. My family of 3 members : Hamza has multiple food allergies ,struggles to eat, needs constant monitoring and hospitalization My wife and I. I plead to you .. PLEASE DONATE Every Dollar can help us out of our misery ! vetted by @nabulsi

The situation is extremely tough, especially with the high cost of living for me, my wife, and my sick son. He needs special food and if found it is very expensive . I've been working as a Graphic Designer for 13 years, but due to the war, I can't work and lack the necessary resources (electricity, internet, suitable workspace). I lost all of my life savings,my hopes,our home to this war My wife created the gofundme .. we haven't had any donations at all !

I heard that this platform helped a friend of mine a lot ! PLEASE HELP US !! THANK YOU SO MUCH Behance: here. Socials: here.

[dem-khuya]

reading this interview with yiyun li and as each year goes by i find her so unbearable. all these chinese and vietnamese diaspora writers that hate their country for communism or whatever share one thing in common and it’s that they can only remember their homeland as a place that cannot possibly have changed or evolved in the decades they’ve left. or that their homeland is somehow lesser or stagnant without their brilliant liberal minds.

it’s also telling tht li has so much to say about the “oppressive” and “authoritarian” apparatus that is the ccp but says nothing anywhere nearly as scathing about the us govt. or the west at all! the way she refused to allow her works to be translated into chinese is so extremely elitist and ugly and filled with self-loathing. what an annoying, anti-intellectual, capitalist sellout.

[xianxia-novels]

Taoists practice in this life, and Buddhism practice in the afterlife! The Tao is on this shore, the Buddha is on the other shore, and the man is in the middle! The spirit boat is not on this shore, not on the other shore, not in the middle! …https://a.pineapplenovel.com/

[danishmiilk]

FUCKING HELL CHINESE ONLINE XIAOSHUO WRITERS YALL HAVE POSSESSED ME IM WRITING LIKE IM ONE OF YOU <//3

“那个——”

青年停下了脚步，疑惑地看了看她：“叫我吗？”

不叫你叫谁。

[dem-khuya]

please please donate to this. the last donation was 27 days ago. if everyone who has reblogged so far had donated 25 euros each dima would have met her goal by now. can anyone match me?

edit: this has already been vetted on the gaza evacuation fundraiser list see line 190.

🚨🚨 Urgent!

This is Dima Nabahin, l'am 25 years old. I have no brothers nor sisters. I was living alone in gaza after I lost my father when he was injured in 2014 war on gaza. I was living with my mother till 2019, when she passed away, so from that time I am living alone in gaza.

I started to overcome what happened in the past, but my life completely destroyed since 7th of October

2023. I faced unimaginable challenges due to the ongoing war in the Gaza. unfortunately I lost My home that I was living in in northern Gaza, and also My parents home that I was living in with them in my childhood until they passed away. I was displaced from day one of this genocide. My life now is miserable.

Unfortunately, this plight is shared by many other Palestinian families living in the same area, but in my case l have no one that can help me, Throughout the months of relentless genocide, I suffered from constant fear and repeated, exhausting displacement that you cannot imagine without having experienced it.

Every donation will help me to survive.

[noveltw-blog]

文案簡介： 大城市內存在的廣告標語，電腦內存在的數字洪流，每一個地方，都離不開文字的表達。鐘瓷，一個身負文字操控能力的A級異能者，如何從一個默默無聞的小小黑客，變成問鼎世界最終奧秘的存在！  ⏬下載『小說迷』 搜尋『字字千金』 ⏬ 官網 http://app.noveltwo.com/ ⏬ 💝覺得好用別忘記分享哦💝

[sadgirlluyin]

dec 21

half a year has already passed since i last wrote anything here. i just feel like life at school is so monotonous. i eat, sleep, go to class like a zombie. the instructors put on a mask of morality, prance around and blather on like clowns, and we watch and listen like imbeciles, and it’s all so fucking boring. 

the library is crammed with orderly rows of books written by the ancients. i flipped open qu yuan’s “sorrow of parting,” read a few pages, and secretly thought he was hella dumb.......... he's so devoted, but does the king of huai even deserve it??

went home in the afternoon, even more depressed and lonely; at this point my mood was so darkly ineffable i couldn’t really make sense of it... recently i’ve been determined to use all my self-control to keep negativity from seizing my spirit, so i’ve thrown myself into the stacks of magazines on my desk preaching ~positive thinking~.

after dinner, i got a letter from guisheng in shanghai. it was only a couple lines long, but he really poured his heart out. he's been self-harming because he can’t find someone to call home. he’ll drink an entire bottle of brandy by himself in two days. he said the only time he can forget about shit is when he’s totally wasted.

sigh. poor kid! but tripping and falling into Feelings like this??? ok so he's set on this one true red light lighting his path, but it's also a target for thousands of arrows that are pointed right at it, and who can say for sure they’ll be the winner? 

like, i guess what i mean is that there are actually tons of girls like hailan in the world. but guisheng's never gonna get that. 

it was so hard to write a reply tonight. i racked my mind but still couldn’t find a single appropriate phrase to comfort him... really, when someone has hit this kind of low, it’s not like a few sentences will help much anyway

[rigelmejo]

finding comics and webnovels

real talk i do recommend reading chinese comics. if you’re hsk 3 level or up i would guess they’re probably at least starting to become comprehensible to you. and if you have a decent tolerance for ambiguity if you’re having fun, then they’ll probably be pretty fun even if you don’t look words up (but of course, please feel free to look words up). and, if you’re above hsk 4, they’re most certainly going to be pretty comprehensible for you. so have fun!

if you do happen to be a beginner i would suggest at first picking out things either surrounding topics you have decent comprehension of (so daily life with a lot of vocabulary you’re used to, or detective stuff if you’re used to case-fic words, or wuxia if you’re used to wuxia terms etc). or, i suppose, genres you would like to be able to read - if you plan to look up words and pick up a lot of new words. or stories you’ve already read once, or know of already. Like if you’ve seen the MDZS donghua or cdrama and want to read the manhua, etc.

You can either:

search online for some manhua comic sites, then there’s usually a wide selection of stuff to pick to read. (This is one site I’ve found: https://ac.qq.com/)

search weibo for manhua, or whatever content you’re looking for and start reading (some artists like Tamen de Gushi’s comic artists post art directly on weibo). I like to do this to find short stories, fancomics, and just look for new artists. 

search “comic title 在线” (for example, ‘他们的故事在线’). zaixian  在线 means ‘online.’ Or search “comic title 漫画在线“ (for example, ‘他们的故事漫画在线’). manhua zaixian - manhua online. A note that you might need to go through a few links to find the correct comic (sometimes a show, another comic, or a novel may show up instead if the title is common). So this works best when you know what comic you’re trying to find. This is what I tend to do the most, since I’m usually looking for specific comics. (This is also a good way to discover more comic sites, since the sites with the specific comic you’re searching for probably also have a lot of other ones).

I’d recommend either install a chinese keyboard (I use one on my phone), or use this or a site like this to convert your text to characters before you put in a search for a comic (https://www.pinyinput.com/?lang=en)

A note:

The search “title 在线 “ also works if you’re looking for novels. For example 魔道祖师在线. You could also use keywords like 小说 xiaoshuo (novel), 看 kan (look/read), and txt. For me, I’ve found that simply putting “title txt” gets me exactly the novel I’m looking for. Especially if I put “title author txt.” I would generally recommend putting the novel’s title and author in characters.

(Doing title+“txt” also sometimes can find some of the bigger chinese fanfics - I’ve tried to use it to find some daomubiji fanfics with occasional success., I need a better method for fanfics though).There’s a ton of webnovel sites online. And usually if you find one webnovel, the site it’s on will have a ton of categories on the top to look for other ones. In addition there’s also a lot of well known webnovel sites: http://www.jjwxc.net/ is a site that has a lot of well known danmei on it, https://www.qidian.com/ is a well known webnovel site (I’ve never personally used it but it’s pretty widely known).