I Found Some Useful Information (and A Lot Of Similarly-obsessed Fans) About Your Name Engraved Herein

MDZS Volume 4 Annotations

Part 3, pages 89 - 151.

Some important (I feel) tonal tuning and a little more anti-slang.

More below the cut:

Here is Part 6 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, Appendix.

😍🥰😍 

↳ gif request for anon  ♡

I also just read Sha Po Lang! Those weapons and flying ships and wings have been in my head for months now - it’s lovely to see what they look like (according to idledee, which is gospel enough for me).

ive been reading sha po lang!

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

by Priest, translated by Seven Seas

Notes & Annotations List (by me)

I am truly impressed that Seven Seas had this translated. Major kudos to the translators. Maybe it’s just me and my not-advanced Chinese reading level, but I find the writing style of Stars/Priest-in-general to be extremely …. Juicy. Rich. Savory: if there is a 4-word phrase concisely describing something elaborately and with deep historical context, Priest will use that phrase. If Priest can refer to Character A in a manner that immediately conveys Character B's feelings and emotions about that Character A, she will use that reference style instead of any simple name or pronoun.

Sadly, none of those idioms or reference styles translate well into English.

For me, reading Priest in Chinese is like reading an epic story off a wall mural in an ancient temple, but add jewels and engravings and some filigree in precious metals, and maybe leave some imperial armor and weapons lying around to trip over while trying to decipher some crazy-long sentence punctuated only with commas, no periods or semicolons or even long dashes in sight. It's amazing, but sometimes exhausting, and especially exhausting if I finally puzzle my way through a truly difficult passage only to realize "Ah. Chang Geng is theorizing about the potential short vs long-term consequences of different types of monetary policy. Sarcastically."

Anyway, here are some notes. A few are literal translations that you would have gotten two sentences later; a few are of wordplay that I really enjoyed but which didn't survive translation. A fair number are translations that you could have looked up in the glossary, but, really, who wants to spend their time looking up "shifu" vs "shishu" for a minor unnamed character?

The more important notes are fun cultural references, and some really tricky translations that I tripped over so badly that I had to go back to the original and figure out how to explain in English.

(After reading Vol 2:) AND it looks like Priest edited and changed her work just a little bit for print translation, but I love her (pirated) online version so much that I really really want you to know what I read and how much I love it. So I added a few sentence back in.

Volume 1 (Volumes 2 and 3 and 4 below the cut)

Notes 1, pages 12 - 81

Notes 2, pages 86 - 146

Notes 3, pages 148 - 202

Notes 4, pages 203 - 245

Notes 5, pages 249 - 281

Notes 6, pages 288 - 414

Notes 7, pages 415 - end

Volume 2

Notes 1, pages 21 - 46

Notes 2, pages 48 - 62

Notes 3, pages 63 - 87

Notes 4, pages 90 - 144

Notes 5, pages 153 - 237

Notes 6, pages 263 - 333

Notes 7, pages 339 - 366

Notes 8, pages 370 - end

Volume 3

Notes 1, pages 1 - 84

Notes 2, pages 97 - 151

Notes 3, pages 152 - 265

Notes 4, pages 267 - 350

Notes 5, pages 358 - end

Volume 4

Only 24 notes for the entire book! All right here :)

Back to the Masterlist of all the books I'm making notes on.

THE UNTAMED SUMMARIZED

I’m doing my first re-read of Mo Dao Zu Shi, and would like to complain very publicly to a sympathetic audience that I Don’t Want to Read Song Lan’s Death again. It hurt the first time I read it, the first time I heard it on Audio Drama, the first time I watched it on CQL. (Now I skip that chapter in Audio Drama). I don’t want to experience it again; but I’m over halfway through ch 40 already and can’t abandon WWX’s POV via A-Qing.

I’m just looking forward to Drunk Lan Zhan #2. The promise of Drunk Lan Zhan will get me through this. Yes.

Hi,, I hope I'm not bothering you with this and I'm sorry if my English isn't good, I hope you can understand my questions. I've been thinking about this for a while now and I tried to find information online but I found nothing.

MDZS is the first Chinese Novel I've read and I still haven't finished it yet,,but I've heard about rumors that said that MXTX is in jail, because she sold copies of her books. The rumor isn't true, however it made me wonder something,, I know China's censorship on lgbt related stuff is really heavy and that's why the donghua and drama adaptations of MDZS and other bl works are censored, but I didn't know that authors couldn't sell their novels.

So my question is,, how does MXTX earn money if she isn't allowed to sell her works? She has already finished 3 Danmei novels, and her works are really popular, they even have manhua, donghua or drama adaptations. The adaptations have earned quite a lot of money, but since she's an anonymous writer, does part of it even go to her?

To make the drama, the donghua and the manhua, producers had to ask her permission, I think. So, since the adaptations are doing well, she should get part of the profit, but how does it work? If the Chinese Government really is against lgbt themed works, shouldn't they have done something about her?

I really love her works and I hope that she earns something since she is the one that created all of them. Thanks for considering my question!!

Hi both of you and welcome to the cnovel fandom! Quick intro of the author, MXTX uses a pen name like many webnovel authors, it’s the abbreviation of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu which literally means “Ink Fragrance, Copper [Money] Stench” (墨香铜臭). Fun fact, it’s her mother who coined that name. MXTX wished to pursue a major in literature during university but her mother wanted her to graduate in economy instead while keeping writing on the side, that way she would have the fragrance of ink in one hand and the stench of money in the other.

We also know that she is fairly young, she wrote Scum Villain while she was a university student and she started working on the outline of MDZS in her final year. Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official’s Blessing) is the third book she completed and a fourth novel is/was in the works, its provisional title is “No rest for the death god” and is supposed to be a supernatural story taking place in a modern setting.

MXTX is one of the most popular webnovel authors on Jinjiang Literature City, the webnovel platform, but her popularity also comes with a great many detractors. You’ve heard some of the malicious rumours circulating in the English-speaking side of the fandom, it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the outpouring of heated controversies in the Chinese side as the latter can have real-life consequences. There is a different nexus between the creator and the audience and the fandom culture is not the same either, it can be quite deleterious due to the tendency to report any content that one disagrees with.

Censorship in China is... ever-changing and nebulous. How severe it is depends on the medium. Nevertheless, gay literature (同志文学) does exist in China and it is distinct from danmei. I also want to nuance a bit the pervasive idea that anything lgbt is systematically and relentlessly censored in China. The reality is more complex than that and it would be dismissive of the hard-fought gains and visibility that Chinese lgbt activists have obtained these past two decades (some concrete examples: the work of the lgbt centre in Beijing or the pride festival in Shanghai). I don’t know if people are aware of this but lgbt dating apps are thriving in China, the most popular one, Blued, is also the largest lgbt social network worldwide. With that said, the official policy towards homosexuality is the three No’s: “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion”. A stance comparable to the “don’t ask, don’t tell”. It’s not explicit persecution but it manifests in the silencing of public discussion and the limiting media representation of homosexuality. In 2017, the top media regulator issued guidelines banning a number of things, this included obscene and violent content, homosexuality, superstitious pseudoscience (such as reincarnation or spirit possession). On top of that, there is also an ongoing crackdown on online pornography that gets increasingly intense. And that concerns everyone on the internet, it’s astonishing the lengths netizens will go to in order to circumvent the censorship, new slang is developed to refer obliquely to banned words, fanfics are published in image format to prevent text recognition, etc... The censorship might be increasingly prevalent but netizens push back with their resourcefulness. Pushing back is also not without significant risk. Perhaps you have heard of the case of the danmei author that received a severe jail sentence? A few Western media picked up on that and criticised the ruling that was deemed homophobic. Chinese reactions tell a slightly different story, the author's crime was not writing danmei, she was in fact accused of making a profit by illegally producing and disseminating pornographic material. I’m not too keen on the details but it seems she printed the books herself and sold them online. To some Chinese observers, the ruling was not discriminatory because she did break the law. To others, it was absurd because this law dates from an era when internet barely existed and it would have been much more laborious to mass-produce and share porn at that time. There’s a bit of truth in all these points of views. It’s also not disingenuous to say that lgbt content is more likely to be targeted than het content even if the charges are not directly lgbt-related.

Usually contracted authors of webnovel platforms have a more secure status. They get a fee from the purchase of VIP chapters as well as tips from the readers. Other sources of revenue arise when webnovels get popular enough to get the opportunity to be published through official channels or when adaptation rights are sold (I assume that the author receives a share of that deal but perhaps does not get any further financial gain from the adaptation or its merch).

To support the author, I would suggest purchasing TGCF on Jinjiang (guide) or buying the physical versions of her three novels in Chinese (shop, change to English with top-right world icon), the special boxsets of MDZS and TGCF come with tons of goodies!

Hope I could be of service and that my tirade was mildly informative ^^'

Here is Part 5 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, pages 264 - 341.