Um wow that was a lot of notifications this morning.
If you’re here for Trails/Kiseki related posts, most of it should be under #kiseki posting and either its respective game title or character name. I am trying my best to keep this place spoiler free but I cannot swear by it entirely.
If you are here for MXTX literature, it’s under #mdzs jp bookclub.
日本語OKです。日本語能力試験第二級合格なのですが受験勉強についてお問い合わせになってはご遠慮ください。受験が苦手ですもの。
Comparative table of contents (Now moved to a new website)
Major threads master post
Proposed edits to the 7S translation (WIP)
Willing to translate back issues of PASH! if anyone's got scans/photos to volunteer.
If you want to watch an amateur Japanologist work with classical japanese and literary chinese, #self imposed classical chinese crash course is where the struggle bus departs from. I will also be putting up #hashtag wokashi for classical japanese more specifically and #self imposed modern chinese crash course as a separate struggle bus lines. One day I’m hoping that my Mandarin will be good enough to do secondary source research, but until then, it’s level grinding on children’s books.
In light of the current AI sell out, original posts are being migrated to: https://blog.spikyhair.club/croptoptux
I can also be found on Dreamwidth under Croptoptux and AO3 under CroptopTuxedo (fics are locked down. Please log in to view.)
RIP Anthony Stewart Head, an incredible actor, musician, singer, LGBTQ+ ally and activist, devoted girl dad, and father figure to many of us as we grew up.
people who learned about greek mythology due reasons that DONT involve having read percy jackson at 12 freak me out, like what the FUCK was going on in your life that you found out that zeus turned into a pigeon to woo his wife like HOW
Aight so last year I finally got into Ace Attorney and I shared my insanity on my priv. I was shook, I think by the time phoenix got tasered at the police station and no one cared, and friends informed me his insane injuries keep getting WILDER.
So, I started to keep a list in my notes app. here it is.
they were NOT kidding
NOTE: Spoilers for all 6 main AA games, and there's a separate section for the Layton crossover
due to popular demand, and physical size difference, I brought “The Story of the Stone” vol 1-2, trans David Hawkes with me to read between customers.
And with that, I present to my beloved internet weirdos, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Hong Lou Meng, aka Shitou Ji, by Cao Xueqin
Considering the first vol of the translation came out in 1973, the decision to use pinyin and the level of details Hawke laoshi goes into in order to explain how to pronounce this stuff is both rather meticulous and laudable. Four whole pages, friends!!
a thought: is Jia Baoyu destined to be a Hikaru Genji-adjacent fuck boy? A man who, in his vanity, does not dream of labor?
does the fact that his surname jia3 賈 is homophonous with jia3 假 “false” mean that he is supposed to embody some sort of antithesis? (If so then there has to be a “zhen” family at some point who do what would be considered rightious.)
due to popular demand, and physical size difference, I brought “The Story of the Stone” vol 1-2, trans David Hawkes with me to read between customers.
And with that, I present to my beloved internet weirdos, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Hong Lou Meng, aka Shitou Ji, by Cao Xueqin
Considering the first vol of the translation came out in 1973, the decision to use pinyin and the level of details Hawke laoshi goes into in order to explain how to pronounce this stuff is both rather meticulous and laudable. Four whole pages, friends!!
due to popular demand, and physical size difference, I brought “The Story of the Stone” vol 1-2, trans David Hawkes with me to read between customers.
And with that, I present to my beloved internet weirdos, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Hong Lou Meng, aka Shitou Ji, by Cao Xueqin
Considering the first vol of the translation came out in 1973, the decision to use pinyin and the level of details Hawke laoshi goes into in order to explain how to pronounce this stuff is both rather meticulous and laudable. Four whole pages, friends!!
"christian characters in movies are poorly written because the writers are atheist" "atheist characters in movies are poorly written because the writers are christian" stop fighting. all human experience is poorly written in movies because the writers are californian
I’m 25 pages from the end of the Legend of the Condor Heroes and I feel like I need to over explain why the 2025 film is NOT a good introduction to the world of Jin Yong.
Go heat your popcorn and melt some butter. Long post incoming.
I have now finished the Legend of the Condor Heroes (trans Anna Holmwood, Gigi Chang, and Shelly Bryant) and I need to tell you all that you absolutely need to read it. Huang Rong is incredible.
But now let me for a moment turn my attention to the 2025 film adaptation starring Xiao Zhan. (Guo Jing is leagues apart from Wei Wuxian but that’s a different post.)
THIS FILM IS A HIGHLIGHTS REEL STRUNG TOGETHER BY FAN FICTION.
This film is allegedly based on chapters 34-40 of the novel but that’s loosely at best. It’s mostly based on the last 150 pages of the book I just finished—which isn’t much considering that book is nearly 600 pages long. Spoilers for both the film and the ending of the novel.
The Jiangkang Incident of 1127 was just not well explained. If you were reading this novel as it was serialized, then you should know about it from history class. For waiguoren like me, there is Wikipedia.
Guo Jing is supposed to have traveled to China for a martial arts contest. This backfires almost immediately due to the entire rest of the plot. The Seven Freaks of the Jiangnan and Hong Qigong are elided over in a 90 second training montage. Hong Qigong is supposed to have an amputated right index finger in canon—this was not CGI’ed out (cinema sins counter dings). In reality this actually took the better part of 200 pages in book 2. The arc where we meet Duan Zhixing is like 250 pages in the middle of book 4, condensed into another seconds long montage. The entire arc where Huang Rong proves that it wasn’t Huang Yaoshi who was responsible for the deaths of 5/7 of the Freaks is another 150 pages in book 4 that’s just glanced over. Yang Kang is supposed to die at the end of that, but he’s not in the minor characters budget. On technicality, it is Ouyang Feng’s fault, ultimately, since it’s his bespoke poison that kills Yang Kang.
Ouyang Feng is kind of a Jin loyalist, but his personality is more like a moth to flame than he is actually loyal to Wanyan Honglie, the Sixth Prince.
Huang Rong uses a trick to sow discord among them. Thus, while Ouyang Feng is preoccupied with his own men, she manages to cut her restraints using a stone and escapes by leaping into the river. (wikipedia)
Is embellishment. It’s close enough to plausible based on what canon gave us to work with. This is Guo Jing’s story after all. What happens when Huang Rong is MIA is not his to know. What we do know is that Ouyang Feng spends at least 6 months tailing Huang Rong while she and Guo Jing are separated.
The trail of pinwheels thing NEVER HAPPENS. This is made up by the screenwriters.
Poisoned river NEVER HAPPENS. The screenwriters needed a way to introduce Tolui without 800 pages of backstory they elided over.
Guo Jing does return to the Mongol camp but that’s another 200 page nonsequitor complete with the conquest of Uzbekistan that the movie just pretends never happened because it’d be too obnoxious to try to get in the budget.
Any interaction between Genghis Khan’s daughter, who is called Hua Zheng in this film, and Khojin in the Holmwood et al translation, and Huang Rong is entirely fan fiction.
The Beggar Clan acting as a go between for Guo Jing and Interim Beggar Clan Leader in Hiding Huang Rong is canon, but it’s specifically with regard to the 1220 siege of Samarkand during the year Guo Jing is a Mongol General.
Guo Jing does at one point discuss wanting to go home with his mother, Li Ping, but this is well after he spends over a year as a Mongolian General on the western frontier. Li Ping hasn’t had any lines since book 1 so it was nice to see her have a couple pages. However, what prompts their conversation isn’t simple homesickness. It’s supposed to be Genghis Khan’s secret orders. Li Ping is the one who prompts Guo Jing to commit treason. He does get reported shortly after that, but his punishment is swift—he’s not supposed to get locked up for days on end. While they’re in Genghis Khan’s ger with the execution team, Li Ping gets arrested along with Guo Jing, gives him a speech about sticking to his principles, breaks his rope bonds and then stabs herself. That’s all fine and dandy as hitting a plot point, but the entire line of logic to justify it is completely borked. Furthermore, it’s not Princess Huazheng who helps him escape in that scene with his mother’s corpse. It’s actually a combination of Tolui and Jebe, a Mongol General we first meet in Chapter 4, when Guo Jing is 6-years-old. Jebe is paying back a 1000 page/14 year old debt here. Khojin’s actually the reason Guo Jing and Li Ping got captured in the first place—she ratted Guo Jing out to her father to use as leverage to make him stay in Mongolia and marry her!
We also completely elide of the Contest at Mount Hua that Jin Yong has been hyping for literally 1200 pages, or the several months where Guo Jing thought Huang Rong was dead and how much remorse he felt about kung fu, so when we finally get to the big climactic battle sequence, Ouyang Feng is not supposed to be there. This entire kung fu sequence is entirely pasted in. Granted there are several sections where Guo Jing does fight Ouyang Feng, this isn’t one of them. If I had to venture a guess, it’s probably more inspired by the fight at the Tower of Mist and Rain. The fight that Guo Jing had with Ouyang Feng on Mount Hua is actually one where he does stand his own but Ouyang Feng is not in his right mind. Ouyang Feng is not driven insane by the Nine Yin Manual alone. In book 2, he captures Guo Jing and forces him to transcribe the manual but Guo Jing, on Hong Qigong’s advice, purposefully transposes words and omits things. The copy of the Nine Yin Manual Ouyang Feng has been studying from is supposed to be a fake, but he captured Huang Rong specifically to get her to spit out the interpretation of a Sandskrit chapter as translated by King Duan in that 90 second montage we skipped over. By all accounts, Huang Rong has been stringing him along for months, and the bullshit she had been drip feeding him about the Sanskrit chapter of the Nine Yin Manual caused him to qi deviate, and do all of his signature kung fu moves in reverse. He doesn’t even using his Exploding Toad kung fu on Mount Hua! As cool as that fight scene is in the film, it’s not canon. Everything in the town where they go to the city walls and low key start ordering the civilian army around is canon. Guo Jing successfully fakes out the Mongol Army under Tolui’s command. However, the whole thing ends abruptly after Guo Jing and Huang Rong sneak into the Mongol camp that night and overhear a messenger tell Tolui that the Great Khan is ill and wants to see his favorite son one last time. According to the novel, in a near throwaway line, the little citadel of Qingzhou does get hit by the Mongol army at a later date several months in the future, when Guo Jing isn’t there to defend it. The Legend of the Condor Heroes’ final scene is a conversation about heroism in both the novel and the film but the contents and the emotional weight of these conversations are like night and day. In the film—I don’t remember quite exactly anymore, it’s been several months—but in the book, it’s about the weight of great deeds versus the sins that build them. Yes, you unified the hundreds of tribes of the steppes and have an empire so vast that it takes a year on horseback to go from end to end, but was that mountain of dead bodies worth it? Guo Jing asks the Great Khan. I think the conversation that Genghis Khan has with Quo Jing is more reminiscent of the monologue Guo Jing has with himself between burying his mother and the contest at Mount Hua, but again, I would need to rewatch this.
Overall, if you want to step into the world of Jin Yong, either pick up the novels or a long TV drama. Preferably one that’s at least 50 episodes. I haven’t gone down the drama rabbit hole myself, so I don’t know what to recommend.
I must reiterate that this is the first novel in a trilogy, and at a length that makes Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables look like a bargain bin paperback.
I’m 25 pages from the end of the Legend of the Condor Heroes and I feel like I need to over explain why the 2025 film is NOT a good introduction to the world of Jin Yong.
Go heat your popcorn and melt some butter. Long post incoming.
