okay it's been a couple days and i'm not quite so mad about that terrible essay i had to peer review anymore. here's some discussion of some cnovels i've been reading! since that and watching shows (and talking with my friends intermittently) is basically what i do for chinese now rather than concerted study, since my literacy is back at a more-than-functional level now. sticking this all below the cut in case it gets long ^-^
first off what i've mainly been reading has been 诛佞 by 流鸢长凝 (ending traitors by liu yuan chang ning). i am, possibly predictably, very much someone who enjoys "historically flavoured" (古风) novels, but most of the ones i've poked away at have been more recent releases, so i picked this one up because it represents a (slightly) older spate of novels in the f/f cnovel sphere, having been serialised in 2016. it's also one of the shortest things i've been reading, so i'm about 60% through at the moment (i've been reading it on and off for a couple months, but at a very piecemeal pace since my autumn and winter quarters were both incredibly hectic). the basic plot is that the minister of the treasury, a certain gu qingtang, requests the youngest princess' hand in marriage (yin ning). gqt is the adopted son of a significant minister in the court, whose faction is running roughshod over the emperor and more or less in control of the government. gqt is also a transmigrator and a woman in disguise, which adds an extra layer of complication to everything. it's definitely a bit more "dated" than some of the other things i've read in terms of how it deals with certain plot points, but the characters are compelling and the dynamic between the main couple is interesting, and the politics are clearly thought out with a lot of intention. it's also not super long, only about 250k characters, which can't be said for some of the other things i've been reading haha.
clocking in at the longest work i've been reading is 女捕 by 藏匿于人 (female constable by cang ni yu ren), a juggernaut of a wuxia novel that's almost two million characters (only off by about 250k). this is the one i've read the least of, because the chapters are relatively long—and i do most of my weekday reading before i go to bed, which isn't super conducive to getting through 5k+ at a time. but i'm a fan of wuxia generally, and i've been eying this one to read for a while (in fact i've wanted to read it ever since about 2024, which was when my literacy was improving), because it's such a landmark in the f/f genre, where wuxia is generally less popular than in the m/m genre. i'm about half a dozen chapters in (of...300+ TT_TT) but it's structured somewhat similarly to a procedural, which is another genre i'm rather attached to (for reasons that are embarrassing to get into here, because my taste is bad), so it's rather interesting once i do manage to sit down and actually read some.
third is 焚情 by 宁远, which is currently being translated into english by douqi (under the title "to embers we return"; the literal title is something more like "burning passions"). this was actually the first cnovel i ever bought (i was rather leery of buying anything previously because i hadn't found anything that i was in love with yet), and it was a birthday gift to myself...last year. at almost 900k, this one's rather long too, but only about 180 chapters. i'm only about twenty chapters in (another case of "hard to read long chapters when i'm dozing off" combined with "i've been so unbelievably busy on about five different fronts at once consistently up until about a month ago"), but it's a scifi-historical epic, concerning a fictionalised version of the tang dynasty that also has high tech capabilities, and a biotechnical threat called the "black box virus" and the mystery surrounding the lost memories of one of the two main characters. i haven't read very far in as i've mentioned, but i've really enjoyed what i have read! ning yuan is a staple of the modern f/f cnovel genre, and while i'm not necessarily in love with her style of prose, it's very functional and gets the job done.
next we have 莺归 by 桃花酥饼 (oriole's return by tao hua su bing)! this one i've had saved for a while but never really got around to it—it's a currently fairly short, ongoing novel. i picked it up because i really want to like the infinite flow genre, so i chose the first thing that looked interesting. it's definitely not on my "main reads" list in terms of what i usually wind up reading at night, but i've read some of it! (about 20k, probably? it's about 180k total at the moment.) it's sort of the odd one out on my list in terms of it being a lighter read, but it's always nice to have something to fall back on when i'm too wiped for anything more complex.
then there's 刺墓 by 肥宅快乐兽 (piercing the tomb by fei zhai kuai le shou), which is a tombraiding/wuxia intersection, so unsurprisingly catnip for me. i've shamefully also not read much of this (only about 10/270 chapters, 750k total), but from what i recall last time i read some, it was funny! it's also sectioned into a number of arcs, which is good for me because i love stories that have stories in them that are connected by some common thread.
finally, and the only m/m novel on this list, 论救错反派的下场 by 凤羽涅, or mistakenly saving the villain by feng yu nie. i actually read about 40% of the novel from a fantl before i could read decently, but i wound up getting busy and then by the time i remembered it again, it had been picked up for official english release, and i didn't want to pay for that and i realised i could just read it independently. this one, from what i recall, was a mixture of comedy and gut-wrenching emotions due to the way it takes the premise of "cultivators and immortals who are far more capable than the average human and who don't necessarily have any reason to feel compassion towards said average humans" present in xianxia settings and follows it to its logical conclusion (which involves a lot of slavery and abuse of power, generally speaking).
so yeah! that's what i've been reading lately (more or less, anyway). my ideal goal is to finish at least three things this year, which will be an advancement on last year's numbers, which were like...one and a half. oops.
