Beneath the Brim

danmei main. 30+. they/them, queer. Read pinned post before following/sending asks 🔞 minors don't follow 🔞. icon by @orogenese.

[beneaththebrim]

Pinned: read before following

Hi, I’m brim!

My twitter

My AO3

I write fic and meta for danmei (and occasionally baihe) fandoms.

Here is my carrd. You may want to read the ‘about me’ section before following, but the main things are: this blog is 18+, DO NOT FOLLOW IF YOU ARE A MINOR, and, this blog is NOT SPOILER-FREE.

Besides that, the carrd has a list of my fics, metas, and reference materials.

I generally keep my askbox open, although sometimes I do take a while to answer.

Took a fandom break for a while but 《莲花楼》 dragged me back in. It looks like a lot of people who are more knowledgeable than me have already written a lot of good meta over the past year, so idk if I’ll get into the meta game there. I’m brainrotting pretty heavily though, so open to fic prompts! I ship the OT3, with a special weakness for dihua.

In general, this stuff is all a hobby, and I’m more likely to respond/respond at length to things I find personally interesting (certain characters/dynamics/themes, whatever)

I feel like this should go without saying, but please be polite--also, I may not take well to asks that bash characters/dynamics/themes that I like.

I’m not taking TGCF or SPL asks anymore. It’s been too long since I’ve read the novels and I don’t have in-depth knowledge of them anymore.

Please don’t ask me to rank/compare things (ie, “who are your favorite couples?” “which author do you like better?” etc.). Sometimes I rank things if I find it fun to do so, but a lot of the time I don’t like stirring up shit.

I generally don’t want to give away too much personal information--if it’s not already in the ‘about me’ section of my carrd, I probably won’t talk about it.

Other miscellaneous stuff:

Follow/Unfollow/Block freely! We all have our own thresholds for engagement, don’t worry about it

I block pretty liberally on twitter, though I like to be more discerning on this account. However, I am more interested in enjoying my time in fandom than in amassing popularity.

[baiwu-jinji]

I've been reading this monograph called Chinese Dreams by Eric Hayot which is my favourite thing rn, and it talks a lot about different approaches of translating classical Chinese poetry and the philosophies behind them. In one chapter, the book gave three completely different translations of the same poem by three professional writers/translators. I want to share them here and I'm curious to hear which version people find to be the best/feels the most authentic:

1.

Green grows the grass upon the bank, The willow-shoots are long and lank. A lady in a glistening gown Opens the casement and looks down. The roses on her cheek blush bright, Her rounded arm is dazzling white; A singing girl in early life And now a careless roué's wife … Ah, if he does not mind his own, He'll find someday the bird has flown!

2.

Blue, blue is the grass about the river And the willows have overfilled the close garden. And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth, White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door. Slender, she puts forth a slender hand And she was a courtezan in the old days, And she has married a sot, Who now goes drunkenly out And leaves her too much alone

3.

Green, green, The grass by the river-bank. Thick, thick, The willow trees in the garden. Sad, sad, The lady in the tower. White, white, Sitting at the casement window. Fair, fair, Her red-powdered face. Small, small, She puts out her pale hand. Once she was a dancing-house girl, Now she is a wandering man's wife. The wandering man went, but did not return. It is hard alone to keep an empty bed.

[fwoopersongs]

So I said at first that option number one reads best to me offhand, but on second thoughts I wanted to know what the original poem was like and then look at these renditions again. So here's the version I would share with someone who has watched a Chinese period costume drama at least ONCE in their lives.

青青河畔草 - green, green is the grass by the riverbank

by Unknown (202 BCE - 220 CE), second of the Nineteen Old Poems

青青河畔草 鬱鬱園中柳 qīng qīng hé pàn cǎo yù yù yuán zhōng liǔ Verdant is the grass by the riverbank, luxuriant, the willows in the garden.

盈盈樓上女 皎皎當窗牖 yíng yíng lóu shàng nǚ jiǎo jiǎo dāng chuāng yǒu Graceful is the lady there on the upper floor, luminous before the window -

娥娥紅粉妝 纖纖出素手 é é hóng fěn zhuāng xiān xiān chū sù shǒu lovely in her rouge and powder, delicate fingers on her fair hand extended.

昔為倡家女 今為蕩子婦 xī wèi chàng jiā nǚ jīn wéi dàng zǐ fù Once the daughter of a performing House, now the wife of a wayfarer -

蕩子行不歸 空床難獨守 dàng zǐ xíng bù guī kōng chuáng nán dú shǒu a wayfarer who has not returned, with an empty bed hard to mind alone.

Side note: Wondering what a house which allows one to stand at the window to both be seen by the passers by outside and observe the garden would look like, I looked for Han dynasty tomb rubbings and grave good miniatures as examples. Here is one excavated in Henan!

(Source)

The first translation with its vaguely medieval - or at the very least trying for amorphously historical imagery through words like glistening gown, casement, roué - seems to be adapted for readers who have never watched a cdrama in their lives and cannot imagine what a Han dynasty setting might look like. The translator probably swapped out the context for a more localized feel to their own culture’s historical settings... Making every sentence’s middle and end rhyme was a little silly and creates this funny sing-song effect when read aloud, but then so is the unserious tone of the original and the doubled words in its first three lines has a similar effect. Anyway, I’m not a fan of the localisation, but it was interesting to see the scene transplanted thus.

It was amusing to see 盈盈, which elsewhere in the Nineteen Poems is indeed used as a descriptor for the silver river (aka the milky way), envisioned by the translator as ‘glistening’ here. They also might have understood it in the brimming/overflowing sense and associated it with her figure as they pictured her ‘rounded arm’. There’s no other logical explanation and place to derive it. 纖纖 can only mean slender! I also don’t believe ‘careless roué’ is the description for a 荡子 in this context, but can understand the choice.

Overall I appreciated ‘Ah, if he does not mind his own, / He'll find someday the bird has flown’ the most because it shows his own understanding of the poem (It’s a Han Dynasty suggestive pop song and he knows it!). And locking in is always a fun choice to make when translating!

The second one is a piece of work…🤣 I’m not sure it can be called a translation because it has remixed nearly every line, but not quite in a manner creative enough to be considered derivative? They’re writing an AU where ‘the mistress’ is a lonely little nightingale in a cage with a drunken owner by funhouse mirror style paraphrasing. Unlike the first one, I can’t tell what they’re going for at all here? It’s like someone gave them one of those word by word lists of definitions of each sentence for beginners, and they cherry picked what they liked to construct a story. Taken as a translation, what a mess! LOL. Downvote! Downvote! 

Special callout to the most choices of choices, ‘Blue, blue is the grass…’, ‘courtezan’ spelled with a z (it’s giving 1700s) and ‘a sot’. 

The only quarter point for effort I’ll give is for the bending over backwards to nod at the original’s structure xD 青青 blue, blue / 鬱鬱 willows, overfilled (????) / 盈盈 mistress, midmost / 皎皎 white, white (really????) / (娥娥 line was skipped entirely -0.25pts) / 纖纖 slender, slender hand. 

What to say about the third one. 

I mentioned the word-for-word for learners earlier, this is like that, except certain ‘definitions’ seem completely pulled from thin air, with no corresponding words in the original. ‘Sad, sad’ is an invention. ‘Casement’ is an invention.

It’s not trying to be a creative work, but it’s also not being entirely faithful.

Overall, directionless and the worst of the lot!

[lilithsaintcrow]

"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — Th

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t

[spockvarietyhour]

Google Chrome Secretly Downloads Huge Local AI Models

Google Chrome automatically installs local neural network components on user systems via default configurations. The browser downloads a 4GB

Procedures for disabling it

[valtsv]

of course i know the difference between yaoi and yuri. yuri is when two female praying mantis fall in love but can never embrace because if they did instinct and tradition would dictate that they bite each other's heads off in an act of mutually assured destruction. yaoi is when two male deer lock antlers while fighting and get tangled together, dooming at least one of them to die and the other to the choice to either die with them or pull away and carry the weight of the responsibility for their death as a part of them for the rest of their life.

[theburialofstrawberries]

so interesting to read a somewhat complimentary view of fandom / fujoshis omg....

[victusinveritas]

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014. The best Iranian vampire skater film you didn't know you were missing. The soundtrack doesn't miss either.

[violentoffender]

[redfagdiver]

I wanna be scrubbed I wanna be scrubbed I wanna be scrubbed I wanna be scrubbed I wanna be scrubbed I wanna be scrubbed I wanna b

[its-not-a-pen]

brushing up on the calligraphy -_-

[its-not-a-pen]

good news! all the ink stayed INSIDE the inkwell this time at least

[its-not-a-pen]

[its-not-a-pen]

WHO THE FUCK IS HUA CHENG???

[its-not-a-pen]

[magekrove]

finished the pic i`d started at the end of 2024 lmao

[drchucktingle]

some VALENTINES DAY CARDS for the buckaroos. tag a bud who proves love

[m-carrick]

being a hater is so fun until you see someone who is a hater 80% of the time and then you're like christ i hope i dont sound like that person and you stay on your best behaviour for 3 days

[beneaththebrim]

Brim's favorite albums of 2025

Look, look, I know it's February, but. I spent a lot of time on this okay.

HEALTH - CONFLICT DLC [harsh, cold, and catchy, a pained and personal wail at these dark times] Featured song: BURN THE CANDLES

Yasmine Hamdan - I remember I forget بنسى وبتذكر [heart-wrenching Arabic folk pop, a catalogue of all the shades of helpless grief] Featured song: I remember I forget بنسى وبتذكر

Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out [unparalleled flow, meditative swagger, an instant hip-hop classic] Featured song: Chains & Whips

Anna von Hausswolff - Iconoclasts [a bombastic soundtrack to divine tragedy] Featured song: The Whole Woman

Two Way Mirrors - Endure [ambient music that evokes the face of a long-dead chthonic deity, music to feel small to] Featured song: They Found Your Rotting Head (In A Peat Bog)

jhg - Far West Synthetic [spacey, lush vaporwave, stretching and squeezing in cold nostalgia] Featured song: Cesium

Maud Zeinoun - For the Waves I Rode / And the Ones That Broke Inside Me [artsy experimental darkwave, blissful stretches of Lynchian synth and smokey tradgoth vocals] Featured song: We Were Never Forever, After All

Alabaster DePlume - A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole [anarchic introspective freak jazz] Featured song: Invincibility

Provoker - Mausoleum [bleak but catchy sentimental post punk] Featured song: Another Boy

Platform8 - Platform8 [ambient synthwave, ghostly and rumbling] Featured song: Fly

james K - Friend [idiosyncratic dreampop/ambient techno] Featured song: Play

Gwenno - Utopia [ethereal yet jaunty Welsh dreampop] Featured song: Y Gath

Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory [lounging folk bops about death] Featured song: Afterlife

The Cosmic Tones Research Trio - The Cosmic Tones Research Trio [vibey celestial jazz] Featured song: Ba Hi Yah

Fragrance - Kintsugi [warm and gentle darkwave] Featured song: Gone, Vanished

Chance the Rapper - STAR LINE [topical hip hop bops steeped in the spirit] Featured song: Drapetomania

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power [blackgaze at its peak, marrying warm and cold] Featured song: Doberman

FKA twigs - EUSEXUA Afterglow [juicy, moody hyperpop] Featured song: Stereo Boy

Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer [blissful y2k-core electronic] Featured song: D.I.S.

DEBBY FRIDAY - The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life [freaky smooth dance pop] Featured song: 1/17

Mareux - Nonstop Romance [sexy sleazy post-punk] Featured song: Ébène Fumé

Symbion Project - Tryptych [cinematic, introspective ambient] Featured song: New Resignation

Dead Pioneers - PO$T AMERICAN [cheeky, hard-hitting Indigenous punk] Featured song: PO$T AMERICAN

clipping. - Dead Channel Sky Plus [rapidfire cyberpunk noir hip hop] Featured song: Mirrorshades pt. 1

Milliken Chamber - Hyperphantasia [cold, bright, minimalist darkwave] Featured song: Bottom of the World

Lambrini Girls - Who Let The Dogs Out [neurodivergent gen z riot grrl] Featured song: Cuntology 101

Franz Ferdinand - The Human Fear [playful bouncing pop rock] Featured song: Audacious

Ali Sethi - Love Language [ghazals go to the club] Featured song: Tera Sitam

FKA twigs - EUSEXUA [wispy, blissy electronic] Featured song: Perfect Stranger

Tom Jarmey - Daybreak [lowkey ambient electronic] Featured song: Waterslides

Credit Electric - SALVATION [moody mumbling free jazz] Featured song: HEX

JB Dunckel & Jonathan Fitoussi - Mirages 2 [lush and chill electronica] Featured song: Karakoum

Preoccupations - Ill at ease [sludgy and cynical post punk] Featured song: Bastards

Mooncloud - 9 Point Cay [fuzzy, tropical electronica] Featured song: Kokoriki

I listened to more stuff but cut it off at the point where re-listening to certain albums became more of a chore than a delight. So, landed on these!

[zishuge]

Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023) | Ep. 20

[cardassian-vole]

star trek: deep space nine s4e05 "rejoined" / "good luck, babe!" by chappell roan

everyone clap and say hooray for my lesbian awakeninggg

[lesbianbreadwhore]

legally obligated to reblog this every time it crosses my dash

[beneaththebrim]

i am still working on my 2025 album ranking, but it's comin along

[beneaththebrim]

i caved and started watching the hockey yaoi

big moment for wolf parade fr fr

[sweetfirebird]

Free Federal tax filing in the US

So Intuit Turbo Tax, from my understanding, have been lobbying forever for congress to eliminate the federal free federal tax filing system and so this White House removed Direct File. Direct File is currently "closed" for the 2025 tax year but says to check back for the 2026 tax season.

TaxAct (Free File) says it's coming back in 2026 with "updates" for eligible people. No idea what that means.

In addition, Turbo Tax is now using Chap GPT for its tax advice chat. So if you have questions, you will have to deal with a machine that lies to you. You're paying for that! And all your information in the chat will likely be fed into OpenAI. Fun!

Anyway, I know other tax prep services have probably also been lobbying, but Turbo Tax is the big one, so fuck them in particular.

There are some free tax filing platforms you can use if your income is less than a certain amount per year or if your filing is a simple one. (most people have simple ones). The income eligibility is often like, if you make less than 84k a year.

One of these free tax filing platforms is FreeTaxUSA which offers free federal filing and free filing for *some* states. (I always have to pay for my state tax prep but it's like $30). There are other such services, I just can't remember their names right now.

I am not affiliated with these services or anything. And I am not an accountant. (If you can afford an accountant though, use an accountant. It usually saves you money.) I am just a working class poor who hates Turbo Tax. You can look up some of the other platforms. The IRS website used to offer links to some alternative sites, but I couldn't find them in a quick search just now.

I hate these people. They took even that little bit of help away.

Anyway. You can also prepare your taxes yourself for free if you feel like doing all the paperback. The IRS does still have to provide you with the forms. But if you don't know what you're doing, that is a hassle and a half.

Another alternative: some towns or counties will have volunteer tax prep services. These are generally for lower income people and you do often need to make appointments. These preparers are not accountants. They are often volunteers using basic tax prep software just like the Turbo Tax and HR Block employees use.

Yet another alternative: if you use a credit union, see if they offer tax prep services. Usually, this is only for members and for lower income people/families.

Also, some banking apps offer free tax prep services for simple returns.

If you (or a loved one) are in AARP, or are in the US military or a veteran (or a family member, I think?) you can look up free tax prep services for the elderly or through the DoD.

Also some employers will offer tax services. (And estate planning services, just fyi.) Some colleges do this.

[hostilemakeover]

The IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and the Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) programs prepare tax returns for free for qualif

People who generally make $67,000 or less

People who generally make $67,000 or less

Limited English-speaking taxpayers

The IRS's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) programs offer free basic tax return preparation to qualified individuals.

VITA sites offer free tax help to people who need assistance in preparing their own tax returns, including:

- People who generally make $67,000 or less

- Persons with disabilities

- Limited English-speaking taxpayers