Wei Wuxian | Ep. 11

Still one of my favorite instrumental songs.

Our Shining Days - Review

This review is for the movie from 2017, not the TV series from 2019. I really enjoyed this. It’s silly (very silly), but it’s fun. If you’re a trained musician maybe close your eyes during those parts but I assume you do that anyway (other than for the guzheng player anyway, since the word is she can actually play). Pros:

Funny! It was properly funny for me

Largely focused on the musical angst rather than romantic angst

GREAT music

Generally enjoyable leads

Cons:

I mean, it is silly, so if you don’t like silly then that’s a con for you

Bad miming of the western classical music esp, if that bothers you (I tend to space out and just listen)

Female lead’s hair slightly bothered me most of the movie (but they didn’t give her a makeover, which I appreciate)

A little over the top in the school western vs Chinese instrument hierarchy, but that IS the point of the movie (the folk music department is literally behind a gate, which I found hilarious).

This was mainly on my watch list, because I figured the music would be good (I love a traditional instrument), and it turned out to be really enjoyable over all. Just a quick, fun watch. Most of the cons aren’t things that bothered me much, but I try to think about what might bother other people.

I just noticed there’s a flute/recorder part in that video and none of them play that… Luckily that stuff doesn’t really bother me if I’m enjoying the media.

I spent a fair potion of my formative years idolizing Frank Frazetta / his artwork. He gave hope to all those who didn’t look like modern-day wraith-thin models. Though you have to do a Lot of working out to look like His models. Time to go do some push-ups!

older lotr illustrations sometimes depict éowyn wearing ridiculously small armour. apart from the problem general sexualisation of the only female character (who really does anything), there’s another hilarious thought:

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

Spoiler alert. Maybe a little late 😉

Tracking Tadpoles

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

pdfdrive.com

病案本。Case File Compendium. 😢😢😭😭😭😭😭

There are still 60-some chapters left. Meatbun can’t just do this to her characters and then just… just… lead the crying fest for 60+ chapters, right? It has to get better eventually, right?

Right?!?

😭

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Vol 2, Notes 6, pages 263 - 333

This novel is really too beautiful.

"Adoptive father" is usually the guy who takes care of you after your own parents die; but here, the "adoptive father" is someone that the young people took in to take care of in his old age.

I like how in the Chinese formatting, Priest just ends the previous paragraph with "... ..." and then starts the next one with "Until the easterly winds of change..."

This sounds weird to say, but I really like the formatting and syntactical style of all the Chinese novels I've read.

... 一条漆黑的阶梯舌头凭空垂下来...

I got confused with "staircase unfurled", since staircases don't move.

The end of the staircase is likened to a tongue, 阶梯 舌头, and, of course, tongues unfurl.

More translation confusion: in Chinese, 阶梯 doesn't distinguish between a solid staircase and, say, a rope ladder; and the (online) text 凭空垂下来 translates to "hangs down, out of nothing," kind of like "appears out of thin air" except it's hanging, so, "from nowhere."

矿物. I had the worst time trying to translate this. It is, officially, "ore," but Violet Gold is a liquid whereas "ore" is a solid.

I gave up and just wrote that little note that 矿物 means "thing that you have to mine out of the earth," regardless of its physical state.

I really liked those paragraphs that aren't in this version.

So, those 7 paragraphs:

Everything metal that was on Gu Yun had been taken away, but that didn't mean that Gu Yun was at the end of his tether / didn't have options available.

He had a secret skill -- when he and Shen Yi were little, they used to play a game in the marquis's compound, "who can steal pieces off the puppets the fastest." Two wild children -- when they had nothing else to do they would get together to study how to disassemble the puppets guarding the marquis's entrance. There was one time when Shen Yi didn't dodge fast enough, and when he was being naughty the puppet mistook him for an enemy and hit him so hard that he was thrown up to the roof and his little life almost ended. Of course, Gu Yun was not able to escape a beating from the old Marquis.

The blood-lesson (beating) did not help Gu Yun gain any memory (learn from his mistake), and instead he became even more bold. The two of them repeatedly studied for a long time -- they were sure that there must be a special/secret/expert method, to be like those slight-of-hand pickpockets and pull a piece off the puppet as they passed by.

In the end, they discovered that, yes, there were pieces that could be taken off, but only parts of the mask or the piece on the elbow where the label/mark was, those types of non-critical parts, so Gu Yun's unrivalled skill had never had a chance to be demonstrated.

But, now it looked like it could be used.

The first day that the puppet delivered food, Gu Yun stealthily (eyes quick hands fast) reached out his hand, hooked and pulled, and easily removed the rusty label-plate from the puppet's elbow ----

He sharpened that plate on a rock, used it pry open his handcuffs, then finally did a big lazy stretch. Afterwards, he cut a piece of his bedsheet and braided it into a rope, caught a little rat, and at every meal he would save two mouthfuls of food to feed it, and play with it when he had nothing else to do.

top: More edited-out lines :( If Priest didn't want us to fall in love with these lines, why did she give them to us in the first place :(

"...resist heaving a sigh and spinning the metal plate he was playing with like a pinwheel."

bottom:“ 他还不如每天嫌我给他捣乱呢。” which the translators did a fine job translating, but I like "giving him trouble" more than "getting on his nerves". 捣乱 is, literally, "pound/beat disorder," so you can see how it suggests more "messing things up."

I find it very interesting that a typical (I think? I'm not really that well-read) form of address for a high-ranking Senior Official is 爱卿, which I think translates better to “My dear Senior Official ..." rather than "subject".

一视同仁 "treat all alike." Which means that the old marquis treated his dumpling-sized son the same as he treated everyone else (though he did finally relent to hold his little son's hand).

"谁要是这时候给我热俩烧饼，我就把谁娶回家” In Chinese, it's really easy to avoid numbered and gendered language. In this sentence, the word "谁" "whoever/someone" works in both parts of the sentence.

top: A little bit was added.

bottom: Same as last time. The Chinese is very symmetrical: "Whoever is afraid to die is the first to die."

We are getting close to the end.... :)

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

WHEN SANITY IS NOT HOME

Starring: DaGe, Director Nie, ErGe, and Yaomei.

Sorry, I can't breathe👻

It’s accurate.

Watching Guardian like:

I know. I already made one like that.

But it's funny.

Here is Part 4 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, pages 210 - 263.

https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4812237040521729#&gid=1&pid=6

Zhou Shen’s new photo shoot from the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival performance. 😍🥰

Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!