Dongfang Qingcang / 东方青苍: The origins of this name are hotly contested, and to be honest the only hypothesis I remember is the Azure Dragon of the East. East being "Dongfang," and the dragon itself being alternatively called "Qing long" and "Cang long." (x)
Haotian Tower / 昊天塔: The tower where DFQC was imprisoned in, in both media. There's no Haotian Tower in mythology, but "Haotian God" is one of the names of the emperor of heaven. (x)
Ninth You / Jiuyou / 九幽: One name for the mythological netherworld, the capital city of the Moon Tribe in the drama. The capital city of the devil tribe in the book. (x)
Sansheng / 三生: The name comes from the "Three Lives Stone" (sansheng shi 三生石), which represents a lot of things in Chinese tradition, but probably the most salient being a rock in the underworld near the Oblivion River. In the novel universe, the rock is graffitied with the names of the ones the dead passing by wished to see most. The stone seems to have transformed into human form in the first book of the series, succinctly titled Sansheng, which tells the love story between Sansheng and Moxi, the novelverse God of War. (x)
Siming / 司命: A folk god, and usually male, who oversees human fates. In the CLJ novel she is responsible for writing the Fate Books. (x)
Xirang / 息壤: Mythological self-expanding-and-growing soil. Although it plays a key role in the book, it only appears in a throwaway line in the drama, when Changheng suggests building XLH a new body out of it. (x)
Mythology/literature/history -> drama
Chengying Sword / 承影剑: One of the ten famous swords of China, in historical and literary tradition. From the Spring and Autumn Period. (x)
Chonghua / 重华: Chonghua is the given name of a legendary emperor of China. (x)
Haotian Matrix / 昊天阵: "Haotian God" is one of the names of the emperor of heaven. (x)
Hellfire / 业火: A Buddhist concept, the fires of karma. (I'm pretty vague on what it actually is and where it exists.) In the book, DFQC's powerful fire is usually just called "raging flames" (lieyan 烈焰), and it's red instead of blue. (x)
Liyuan / 澧沅: Li and Yuan are two of the four big rivers that flow through Hunan. Coincidentally, also the names of two of the four rivers that flow into Shuiyuntian, that flooded when DFQC broke the pearl. (x)
Love Tree / Seven-Emotions Tree / 七情树: The name "seven-emotions tree" comes from the phrase "seven emotions and six desires," (qi qing liu yu 七情六欲). The exact emotions and desires this refers to differ based on school of thought. (x)
Lord Dong / 东君: A deity often paired with Yunzhong-jun as one of the two primordial gods. Seems to be a sun deity. His name literally means "Lord East." (x)
Lord Yunzhong / 云中君: A god from mythology, often paired with Lord Dong as one of the two primordial gods. Sometimes interpreted as a woman. (x)
Oblivion River / Wang Chuan / 忘川: A river in the land of the dead. To cross it, you must first drink a soup that makes you forget your past lives. (x)
Qu Shui / 曲水: Literally "winding waters," the name of Xiao Run's pageboy might come from the upper-class drinking game "Qu Shui Liu Shang" 曲水流觞, in which players "wait by a winding stream and compose poems before their cups full of rice wine float down to reach them." His nickname Ququ'r is phonetically very similar and means cricket. (x x)
Return to Ruin Realm / Guixu Zhi Jing / 归墟之境: "Guixu" was a place far to the east, that every body of water eventually emptied into. The characters break down into "return (to)" and "ruins." The "Zhi Jing" makes it "Region of Guixu" or "Guixu Area." (x)
Tai Sui / 太岁: A folk deity, but not necessarily evil. (x)
Xuanwu God / 古神灵玄武: Xuanwu is a constellation representing a tortoise-snake spirit. (x)
Xunfeng / 巽风: His name most likely comes from the "xun" trigram of the Eight Trigrams, of which the element is wind, or "feng." (x)
Yingzhao / 英招: Legendary creature that has the body of a horse, the face of a man, stripes like a tiger, and wings of a bird. Not like our waddling ball of fur at all. (x)
Yunmeng Lake / 云梦泽: One of the largest lakes in China in ancient times, now mostly nonexistent. (x)
Book -> drama
Bone Orchid / Gu Lan / 骨兰: It has more of a dried-vine aesthetic in the book.
Chidi Nüzi / 赤地女子: The god of war of the heavenly realm, in both media. DFQC's nemesis and the object of A'Hao's obsession.
Dayu Battalion / 大庾兵: Only mentioned once in the drama, along with the Tieyu Battalion 铁羽兵, as forces that Shangque has mobilized in response to Xunfeng's insurrection. Dayu's the name of DFQC's adorable (to me) pet sky/sea serpent.
Destruction of Heaven / Ruins of Ten Thousand Heavens / Wan Tian Zhi Xu / 万天之墟: A formless place where Siming can be found, in both the drama and the book. The book series further specifies that the Destruction of Heaven sits above the Three Realms and the Endless Desolate City (无极慌城 wu ji huang cheng) below.
Dieyi / 蝶衣: Ronghao's loyal right-hand woman is also present in the book.
Fairy Execution Platform / Zhu Xian Tai / 诛仙台: Where Changheng is to be executed after talking back to Yunzhong. In the book this was a platform over a mass of the book equivalent to evil qi/suiqi, which XLH was cast off from, almost getting eaten alive by the evil qi.
Fate Books / Mingbu / 命簿: The combination of these two characters seem to be an invention of the novel, and are records of the destinies of living people collected and administered by the land of the dead.
Fate Tree / Mingge Shu / 命格树: "Mingge," in both the novelverse and in the Love You Seven Times drama, are the stories high immortals (in CLJ's case, Siming) write to direct the fate of mortals. I'm not clear on the distinction between mingbu and mingge in the CLJ book.
Lucheng / 鹿城: In the book, a militarily important city of the Jin Dynasty, although the drama has styled it more into the Tang Dynasty, some thousand-plus years later.
Ronghao / 容昊: In the book, the wheelchair-bound master of the demon commerce city who's later revealed to be Chidi's obsessed student. We're not given the first character of his name in the book; it only ever calls him A'Hao.
Shangque / 觞阙: The name of the prime minister of the devil realm in the book, horrified by DFQC's erratic behavior while his body is being partially controlled by XLH. Show!Shangque's personality likely came from Dayu, Book!DFQC's overpowered flying serpent who follows him around like a loyal dog.
Shuofeng Sword / 朔风剑: "Cold northwest wind" sword, it's Chidi Nüzi's weapon in the book and the drama. It stays in sword form in the book, but becomes a geographical feature and a seal in the show.
Thousand Dreamland / Thousandfold Illusion / 千重幻境: A realm of endless very similar illusions that Ronghao/A'Hao tries to trap DFQC in to prevent him from finding XLH, in both media.
Xiao Lan Hua / Orchid / 小兰花: Our heroine!
Xie Wanqing / 谢惋卿: One of Chidi Nüzi's mortal incarnations in both media. However, in the book she is a general who's betrayed by the man she loves, an ordinary mortal, while XLH and DFQC watch.
Misc
Changheng / 长珩: Changheng's not in the book, but the book does have a troublemaker by the name of Changming 长命 who is DFQC's biggest "love rival" (he's like ten years old), and I wonder if the "Chang" part of Changheng's name comes from Changming.
Flying Fairy Pavilion / Life-Ending Pavilion / 飞仙阁: A reference to Xie Wanqing's real identity as the Fairy God of War. Also a euphemism for death.
Haishi / 海市: Conceptually, comes from the demon/nature sprite city, yaoshi 妖市, in the book. For the drama they got rid of the demon part and called it Haishi, Sea City.
Tongyun / 彤云: Xie Wanqing's maid, and an actual word that refers to red clouds or "dark clouds before snow." (x)
Xiao Run / 萧润: I'm not sure the Run part of his name is a reference to anything, but the Xiao is probably there to make the Xiao-lang wordplay work. (x)
Yannü 盐女 and Cangyan Sea 苍盐海: The "yan" is the same as in "Yannü." Which came first, I wonder? (The "cang" is the same as in Dongfang Qingcang.)
Sans Data
I do not know any special origins of, or was too lazy to look up:
a guide to people’s names, titles, and other forms of address in cang lan jue/love between fairy and devil
so for chinese media, i like knowing how to read and pronounce the characters’ names, but when trying to look up the names of the clj/lbfad people, i found the info i wanted rather hard to find. i wanted to know what characters made up their names! how to pronounce them! what their different titles and nicknames meant and what kind of people address them by those names! so i decided to try compiling this info myself, on a whim. it’s taken a HOT minute, and a Lot of scrubbing through the episodes, and it will probably need to be updated and edited as i go about rewatching the show (and improving my chinese :’) aha) but here’s what i got for now! feel free to message me if you have suggestions, edits, corrections, or requests :) hopefully some people find this helpful or interesting – i know some of the things i’ve included here are lost in translation in netflix’s english subtitles.
I just rewatched episode 28 of TTEOTM, specifically the scene where Ye Xiwu tells Tantai Jin he’s the Devil Lord and he goes “What the entire fuck are you talking about??” And I just… babe, are you genuinely THAT surprised? Did you think everyone had this dark inner monologue from a separate consciousness urging them to destroy the world and remake it in their image? Did you think your extremely potent demon powers were just a fun little fluke? Idk, I just think if it were me I’d be like “Ooooohhh, that actually makes a lot of sense.”
This is what happens when a man has no friends. He just assumes everyone else has an evil voice inside their head just like him.
But yeah, obviously he knew he was different. I guess there's just a big gap between 'I'm kind of fucked up and cursed' and 'I'm the human incarnation of the greatest evil in the universe.'
i was on an extraordinary you rewatch (just finished) & realized that before i transitioned to using this side blog as my main (esp for kdramas), i reposted a decent amount of stuff on my main account & i never tagged properly so if i want to see why i reblogged back then i would have to stalk my blog from october-november 2019 & early 2020
i loved it whenever haru and i changed the story together. i didn’t care if the story got twisted. i had the hope that i might be able to live. i thought the answer i could create in this world is to change my fate… but i became frightened of everything ever since haru disappeared. i tell myself that i should just live as an extra… but then i get really scared. i don’t want to die.
3. This drama is really not big on portraying the deity as benevolent, is it? I mean, the creator here is a step better than the one in Extraordinary You, but only just.
4. THE FUCK HIS ABUSIVE MURDERING FATHER WENT TO HEAVEN BECAUSE HE REPENTED ABUSING AND KILLING HIS KID THE FUCK.
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
areudirty
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
baratheonpilled
stormborns
janainaart
