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im losing my fucking mind my coworker admitted that she was worried about going I nto the office while sick with a “flu” (covid symptoms) and when i said “well you could always wear a mask like i do” she was like “well i don’t want to do that”
i can’t with this fucking irresponsible and frankly selfish mindset of “I need to work while sick and go into the office, oh well” what is wrong with people
really aiming for the full jjwxc reader experience with joyful reunion (相见欢) and attempting to go dig through 11 years of the author’s weibo posts to find a sex scene that isn’t on jjwxc because censorship and that’s where readers in the jjwxc comments say the scene is posted
“how do you know there’s a sex scene” well it’s in the seven seas translation but also the author did this in the text of the webnovel
unfortunately i can’t get anything on the author’s weibo to load earlier than feburary 2018 because weibo just starts loading the same few posts on a loop every time i try to load more so now i’m asking myself if i’m committed enough to this bit to make a weibo account to see if i need to be a logged in user to go back to posts that are more than eight years old
“why do you want to read the sex scenes badly enough to go to all this trouble if you’ve read the ones in the english translation” because i want to expand my chinese vocabulary into the words and phrases used in gay erotica, obviously
update: have spent the evening attempting to track down this elusive sex scene. there are still recent internet discussion posts claiming that the sex scene is floating out on the internet somewhere but nobody is linking to anything directly, and i forgot that a lot of chinese websites/apps refuse to work if you’re not in china, which is not helping. i may have to give up on this for now because i’m worried that i’ll wind up reading spoilers if i keep going through internet discussion posts about this webnovel.
really aiming for the full jjwxc reader experience with joyful reunion (相见欢) and attempting to go dig through 11 years of the author’s weibo posts to find a sex scene that isn’t on jjwxc because censorship and that’s where readers in the jjwxc comments say the scene is posted
“how do you know there’s a sex scene” well it’s in the seven seas translation but also the author did this in the text of the webnovel
unfortunately i can’t get anything on the author’s weibo to load earlier than feburary 2018 because weibo just starts loading the same few posts on a loop every time i try to load more so now i’m asking myself if i’m committed enough to this bit to make a weibo account to see if i need to be a logged in user to go back to posts that are more than eight years old
“why do you want to read the sex scenes badly enough to go to all this trouble if you’ve read the ones in the english translation” because i want to expand my chinese vocabulary into the words and phrases used in gay erotica, obviously
really aiming for the full jjwxc reader experience with joyful reunion (相见欢) and attempting to go dig through 11 years of the author’s weibo posts to find a sex scene that isn’t on jjwxc because censorship and that’s where readers in the jjwxc comments say the scene is posted
“how do you know there’s a sex scene” well it’s in the seven seas translation but also the author did this in the text of the webnovel
unfortunately i can’t get anything on the author’s weibo to load earlier than feburary 2018 because weibo just starts loading the same few posts on a loop every time i try to load more so now i’m asking myself if i’m committed enough to this bit to make a weibo account to see if i need to be a logged in user to go back to posts that are more than eight years old
really aiming for the full jjwxc reader experience with joyful reunion (相见欢) and attempting to go dig through 11 years of the author’s weibo posts to find a sex scene that isn’t on jjwxc because censorship and that’s where readers in the jjwxc comments say the scene is posted
“how do you know there’s a sex scene” well it’s in the seven seas translation but also the author did this in the text of the webnovel
really aiming for the full jjwxc reader experience with joyful reunion (相见欢) and attempting to go dig through 11 years of the author’s weibo posts to find a sex scene that isn’t on jjwxc because censorship and that’s where readers in the jjwxc comments say the scene is posted
recently got into joyful reunion by fei tian ye xiang (same author as dinghai fusheng records) and the description on the seven seas website does not do it justice, because i never in a million years would have expected "kid raised by his dead mother's abusive family gets whisked away by a guy who promises that his dad will show up eventually" to turn into "guy gets his identity stolen, keeps hanging around with assassins, falls in love with one of them, repeatedly compares love interest to his dad"
also i read this first from the official seven seas english translations that have been published so far and then went back to jjwxc because i don't want to wait for the last two english volumes to get published and the jjwxc reader commentary continues to delight. it's truly a shame that it's not something that makes sense to include in the english translations, partially because there's not really a reasonable way to get permission from commenters to include in an english translation, but also because they're often full of slang/puns that don't easily translate into english anyway.
also another thing that i really enjoy about being able to (kind of) read the chinese version is seeing things that get lost in translation due to the way that written chinese works, where there's multiple ways to write a pronunciation. it opens up soooo much wordplay, some degree of which is still probably lost on me because i'm still learning the language.
this addition brought to you by: duan ling's choice of pseudonym being wang shan, where wang (王) means "king/monarch" and shan (山) means "mountain," which is a reference to his given name ling (岭). and then he makes it into this flowery detailed thing (that i very much enjoy) about the visual construction of the characters being harmonious anytime someone asks him about it. (i love you duan ling you're making the most of a horrible situation.)
(i actually didn't pick up on that wordplay on my own despite looking up the characters that make up someone's name every time someone new is introduced and only realized thanks to the commentary from some jjwxc readers.)
recently got into joyful reunion by fei tian ye xiang (same author as dinghai fusheng records) and the description on the seven seas website does not do it justice, because i never in a million years would have expected "kid raised by his dead mother's abusive family gets whisked away by a guy who promises that his dad will show up eventually" to turn into "guy gets his identity stolen, keeps hanging around with assassins, falls in love with one of them, repeatedly compares love interest to his dad"
also i read this first from the official seven seas english translations that have been published so far and then went back to jjwxc because i don't want to wait for the last two english volumes to get published and the jjwxc reader commentary continues to delight. it's truly a shame that it's not something that makes sense to include in the english translations, partially because there's not really a reasonable way to get permission from commenters to include in an english translation, but also because they're often full of slang/puns that don't easily translate into english anyway.
recently got into joyful reunion by fei tian ye xiang (same author as dinghai fusheng records) and the description on the seven seas website does not do it justice, because i never in a million years would have expected "kid raised by his dead mother's abusive family gets whisked away by a guy who promises that his dad will show up eventually" to turn into "guy gets his identity stolen, keeps hanging around with assassins, falls in love with one of them, repeatedly compares love interest to his dad"
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
sorry boss i can't work today i have to lie on the floor and think about two people being linked on a soul level and still having no idea that their pining is mutual because they're so bad at communicating and then making stupid self-sacrificial and potentially world-ending choices as a result
thank you teenage me for deciding to study chinese so that i can lose my goddamn mind about a webnovel nearly two decades later without having to wait months for the rest of the english translation to be published
update: am now 95% of the way through this and thoroughly enjoying it still! there are sooooo many tropes that i enjoy and did i mention that i want to study xiang shu like a bug? the in-app reader commentary continues to be delightful and full of puns on character/object/place names. i continue to improve my chinese, even though most of what i'm picking up from this is pretty literary and/or archaic due to the genre. definitely going to read the english translations as they become available, though (partially out of curiosity for how some things got translated but also out of wanting to have a reference for what the english-language fandom is going off of).
unfortunately my brain DID hit a saturation point the other day and decided that "no we don't understand any of this now" which is a new experience. it seems to have passed now, but i've been spending a significant amount of my (sadly limited) free time/energy reading this webnovel over the last few weeks and i did not realize that my brain would do that to me.
i?? finished?? reading a whole-ass 822,889-character long webnovel??????? holy fucking shit
and loved every minute of it, for the record
ok wtf happened to tumblr that this text post now has the “mature” content label
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
sorry boss i can't work today i have to lie on the floor and think about two people being linked on a soul level and still having no idea that their pining is mutual because they're so bad at communicating and then making stupid self-sacrificial and potentially world-ending choices as a result
thank you teenage me for deciding to study chinese so that i can lose my goddamn mind about a webnovel nearly two decades later without having to wait months for the rest of the english translation to be published
update: am now 95% of the way through this and thoroughly enjoying it still! there are sooooo many tropes that i enjoy and did i mention that i want to study xiang shu like a bug? the in-app reader commentary continues to be delightful and full of puns on character/object/place names. i continue to improve my chinese, even though most of what i'm picking up from this is pretty literary and/or archaic due to the genre. definitely going to read the english translations as they become available, though (partially out of curiosity for how some things got translated but also out of wanting to have a reference for what the english-language fandom is going off of).
unfortunately my brain DID hit a saturation point the other day and decided that "no we don't understand any of this now" which is a new experience. it seems to have passed now, but i've been spending a significant amount of my (sadly limited) free time/energy reading this webnovel over the last few weeks and i did not realize that my brain would do that to me.
i?? finished?? reading a whole-ass 822,889-character long webnovel??????? holy fucking shit
and loved every minute of it, for the record
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
sorry boss i can't work today i have to lie on the floor and think about two people being linked on a soul level and still having no idea that their pining is mutual because they're so bad at communicating and then making stupid self-sacrificial and potentially world-ending choices as a result
thank you teenage me for deciding to study chinese so that i can lose my goddamn mind about a webnovel nearly two decades later without having to wait months for the rest of the english translation to be published
update: am now 95% of the way through this and thoroughly enjoying it still! there are sooooo many tropes that i enjoy and did i mention that i want to study xiang shu like a bug? the in-app reader commentary continues to be delightful and full of puns on character/object/place names. i continue to improve my chinese, even though most of what i'm picking up from this is pretty literary and/or archaic due to the genre. definitely going to read the english translations as they become available, though (partially out of curiosity for how some things got translated but also out of wanting to have a reference for what the english-language fandom is going off of).
unfortunately my brain DID hit a saturation point the other day and decided that "no we don't understand any of this now" which is a new experience. it seems to have passed now, but i've been spending a significant amount of my (sadly limited) free time/energy reading this webnovel over the last few weeks and i did not realize that my brain would do that to me.
i?? finished?? reading a whole-ass 822,889-character long webnovel??????? holy fucking shit
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
sorry boss i can't work today i have to lie on the floor and think about two people being linked on a soul level and still having no idea that their pining is mutual because they're so bad at communicating and then making stupid self-sacrificial and potentially world-ending choices as a result
thank you teenage me for deciding to study chinese so that i can lose my goddamn mind about a webnovel nearly two decades later without having to wait months for the rest of the english translation to be published
update: am now 95% of the way through this and thoroughly enjoying it still! there are sooooo many tropes that i enjoy and did i mention that i want to study xiang shu like a bug? the in-app reader commentary continues to be delightful and full of puns on character/object/place names. i continue to improve my chinese, even though most of what i'm picking up from this is pretty literary and/or archaic due to the genre. definitely going to read the english translations as they become available, though (partially out of curiosity for how some things got translated but also out of wanting to have a reference for what the english-language fandom is going off of).
unfortunately my brain DID hit a saturation point the other day and decided that "no we don't understand any of this now" which is a new experience. it seems to have passed now, but i've been spending a significant amount of my (sadly limited) free time/energy reading this webnovel over the last few weeks and i did not realize that my brain would do that to me.
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
sorry boss i can't work today i have to lie on the floor and think about two people being linked on a soul level and still having no idea that their pining is mutual because they're so bad at communicating and then making stupid self-sacrificial and potentially world-ending choices as a result
thank you teenage me for deciding to study chinese so that i can lose my goddamn mind about a webnovel nearly two decades later without having to wait months for the rest of the english translation to be published
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
sorry boss i can't work today i have to lie on the floor and think about two people being linked on a soul level and still having no idea that their pining is mutual because they're so bad at communicating and then making stupid self-sacrificial and potentially world-ending choices as a result
hi hello im not dead i've been touching a lot of grass recently (or. well. metaphorical grass i guess, since i spend most of my time indoors lmfao) for Reasons that may or may not continue on for a while (who knows? not me!) and i just popped in to say that one of the things that i've been spending my time doing is reading dinghai fusheng records (定海浮生錄), by which i mean "only three out of six volumes of the english translation were published when i read it and i got so into it that i decided that i couldn't wait for the rest of the english translation to be published and i've been slowly making my way through the original version published on jjwxc despite not being fluent or even really at an advanced level of chinese" and i'm putting the rest of this under a "read more" cut because it's getting long since i'm feeling kind of feral about it
i've been relying on readibu to help get through this, because my vocabulary isn't up to par (although it's getting MUCH better since i've spent so much time reading this lately), but it can't read jjwxc chapters behing vip paywalls correctly for some reason (which their support team is aware of), so i've been toggling between the jjwxc and readibu apps to read this. something that's been a delight to discover is the way that fans can put commentary on a paragraph in the jjwxc app, and it's often extremely funny commentary where readers do things like give the characters nicknames that are usually puns on their actual names or titles and i am learning some cute internet slang from this, too.
also this has the interesting side effect where my chinese vocabulary is even more skewed than it was before where now i know the names of various ethnic groups that lived in and around modern-day mongolia (i think???) that haven't existed in centuries and terminology around exorcism (in the context of chinese culture/mythology, not the priest/bible stuff from western culture) and yet i can still barely navigate the jjwxc app or understand the notifications and update messages it sends me
anyway i'm a little ways into where the third volume of the english translation is and am picking up on stuff that i didn't pick up the first time around. whether that's because of a difference between the version currently on jjwxc and the english translation, or if it's due to me needing to go much more slowly and carefully because i'm not fluent in chinese, or if it's just normal "didn't pick up on foreshadowing the first time around" stuff. i am probably going to get through the whole thing before volume 5 comes out in a few months (i am 43.2% of the way through, according to the jjwxc app), although we'll see how i do once i get far enough into this where i'm past the part that i've read the english translation for, since familiarity with the plot/characters so far is definitely helping cover a lot of the linguistic gaps.
im feeling feral about this in a way where i am mentally composing the chen xing/xiang shu "oblivious pov character versus love interest who is Barely Keeping It Together" fanfiction in my head, even though i'm experiencing some sort of block when it comes to actually getting the words out on paper. like. i can't possibly be the only person who's looking at this dynamic going "godddddd the pining while fucking potential of these two." i am a huge sucker for the "we have some vaguely psychic/magical connection that gives us a way to read each other on a deeper level than verbal or non-verbal communication and yet somehow we are terrible at communicating our feelings" trope. poor xiang shu is really Going Through It while chen xing is like "why do people keep thinking we're together when all we do is fight" (my guy, it's called bickering and it's happening because you both want to fuck SO BADLY and you are the only person who hasn't figured it out yet).
i am definitely not in a place where i'm ready to come back swinging into anything online, but yeah, definitely feral about this webnovel in a way where it compelled me to log into tumblr for the first time in months to ramble about it because i'm enjoying it so much and it feels so fucking cool that my chinese is at a point where i'm able to get through a webnovel (with dictionary help)
some dinghai fushen records specifics with spoilers up through part of vol 3 of the english translation that im particularly feral and want to scream about, in no particular order:
everything with cheluofeng, because "you are my family and i love you more than anyone in the world but i don't love you the way you want me to and it's breaking both our hearts" speaks to me as an aromantic person, even though it's obviously not exclusive to aros
as an extension of that: thinking about xiang shu's rationale (at least part of it) for not telling chen xing how he feels as "i've been on the receiving end of someone else's unrequited romantic feelings and it was awful and tore us both apart, i love chen xing too much to do that to him"
f e r a l, i tell you
xiang shu is like. barely holding it together in vol 3. it's sooooo good
chen xing's growing awareness that xiang shu is not going to take the whole "the position of the space rocks at my birth say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing well just as xiang shu starts questioning the little comments chen xing keeps making about "running out of time"
chen xing: guess i'm gonna burn my life force out powering the heart lamp so that xiang shu can be supernaturally strong and fight demons :) i'm not going to think too hard about why i'm afraid of him finding out about this :)
bonus angst: xiang shu having lost everyone else he's ever loved
bonus bonus angst: in the way xiang shu's dad and cheluofeng died
bonus bonus bonus angst: xiang shu's role in both of those events
chen xing: *gets kidnapped* xiang shu: i have to go get him so that i can yell at him for ditching me
chen xing, multiple times: xiang shu and i are pressed together really tightly, this erection digging into my thigh surely has nothing to do with me, he must just have an excess of yang energy or something idk
chen xing, that time they were sharing a bed while naked because they got drenched in a rainstorm and didn't have anything else to wear: this isn't the first time we've shared a bed, why is my body reacting this way, why can't i be normal about this
(my guy, you ARE being normal about it!!! you're Having A Moment and you both have wanted to fuck so badly for months!!!)
the Implications of "why did i wake up in different bedding than we fell asleep in" the morning after that scene (surely there's fic answering that question on ao3 somewhere???? im not going to check until i've finished the novel bc spoilers)
something i picked up on the second time around that i missed the first time and is making me particularly insane right now: xiang shu picking up chen xing's teacup when feng qianjun is talking about how he met a girl and got engaged, which (if i'm interpreting this correctly) is a reference to a hu cultural norm where pouring someone a cup of tea means "i'm interested in marrying you, are you open to a courtship" and accepting the cup of tea means yes - why else would that gesture get mentioned in the narrative during a conversation about marriage when the pov character chen xing has no idea that it's a cultural norm for xiang shu!!! now i'm stuck with the mental image of xiang shu just like. stealing chen xing's tea all the time in a way that's kind of pointed but also completely lost on chen xing and everyone who witnesses this being able to tell that there's some sort of significance to it, even if they don't know what it is
theyre so obsessed with each other and chen xing has no idea
sooooo much reader commentary involves eating/drinking vinegar
the reader commentary around xiao shan is so funny bc people are referring to chen xing and xiang shu as his mom and dad (respectively) even though he's only like four years younger than chen xing and eight years younger than xiang shu and they keep talking about how he's basically a mini xiang shu
chen xing dropping the "you're destined to be my martial god protector" thing bc he can't bear the thought of asking xiang shu to leave his responsibilities to his people right around the time that xiang shu is like wait but now i want to do that bc youre so bad at keeping yourself out of trouble so SOMEONE has to do it and i want it to be me and i lose my mind anytime it seems like you might want someone else to do it or worse not have anyone do it at all
xiang shu turning out to be absolutely fucking loaded and making chen xing and feng qianjun lose their goddamn minds with how serene he is about pretty much putting a bank out of business because he decides to withdraw all of it at once to deposit it in their biggest competitor (feng qianjun)'s bank
accidentally stumbling upon the xiang family home and records and learning all sorts of plot twist goodies about xiang shu's maternal family, i really hope this gets explored more later on in the story
i know from the seven seas website that at least some of the 4th volume is around xiang shu trying to fight fate to get around the pesky "space rocks say i'm going to die when i'm 20" thing that chen xing has going on and boy oh boy am i looking forward to how well that goes
i can't believe this is only 50% of the story and god i hope my chinese is good enough to keep going by the time i hit the part where i haven't read the english translation so that i don't need to wait for the rest of the english translation to get published
i continue to be feral about this (i am now a few chapters into volume 4) and then it hit me that my options for going feral about this with other people in english-language fandom spaces will probably be limited until the remaining seven seas translations are published due to the fact that the majority of people in english-language fandom spaces will need to wait for the full english-language translation to be available to read this and also it's really a shame that the in-chapter reader commentary on the jjwxc app would be awkward to fit into the published english translation because a lot of it is so funny that i have had to set my phone down multiple times because i was laughing so hard and maybe the answer is "participate in chinese fandom spaces" but that's intimidating from both a cultural and linguistic perspective
shitty dinghai fusheng records high school au based on the first half of dinghai (i am 50.4% of the way through the webnovel) with my sole reference for high school being "usamerican high school 20 years ago" because "chen xing rescues xiang shu from detention and makes him join the drama club" is extremely funny to me and i can't stop laughing about it
sophomore chen xing is trying to keep the high school drama club from getting shut down and somehow he gets it into his head that he needs senior transfer student xiang shu's help because xiang shu is a) hot enough to be a star and b) strong enough to carry heavy set equipment around, so chen xing rescues him from detention one day (xiang shu ended up there because he skipped class too many times) and is like "you're going to be a part of the drama club, let me show you around" and xiang shu is like sure okay and ditches chen xing the first chance he gets.
chen xing, opening the door to a store room that has an exit on the other side of it: and this is where we keep the set equipment [gets a phone call] oh sorry i have to take this xiang shu: you can leave me alone in this room while you take that phone call, i want to familiarize myself with all of this equipment chen xing: sounds good :) chen xing, coming back to the room five minutes later and seeing that xiang shu has vanished: that bastard! i can't believe he ditched me after i rescued him from detention!
somehow xiang shu is unable to let it go, though. probably because it's an excuse to get out of detention and also he finds chen xing compelling for some reason he hasn't figured out yet. i don't think chen xing wants to be an actor, i think he just wants to be a director or set designer or something, but he's really set on keeping drama club alive bc he thinks that arts and humanities are worth fighting for.
("did you choose the drama club because you were a drama club kid in high school?" no, i don't actually know anything about how high school drama clubs do/did work 20 years ago; i just think it's a really funny thing for the exorcism bureau to map to)
xiang shu doesn't really hang out with anyone else (his best friend che luofeng goes to a different high school) and he lives on his own because he inherited a bunch of money after his dad died a few months prior, so he doesn't need to worry about rent/food/etc (he transferred to chen xing's high school because after his dad died, he found out that he inherited a house in that district from his mom). meanwhile chen xing is struggling to make ends meet with the little money he inherited from his dead parents. he had a foster father (baili lun) who died at the end of his freshman year. no parental authority figure is necessary for them because they're both emancipated minors because chen xing is 15 and xiang shu is 17 and yes i did the math on when their birthdays are to figure out how old they probably are when the usamerican school year starts in august/september
feng qianjun is another senior who was in the drama club freshman and sophomore year but didn't want to deal with fighting to keep it from getting shut down (meaning that he didn't participate in drama club chen xing's freshman year) but he comes back because chen xing hunts him down and is like "we need you back" and he's like sure yeah i guess i can help out. feng qianyi graduated a few years ago but he was in the drama club back then and he keeps giving everyone intentionally bad advice.
xiao shan is a freshman whom chen xing takes under his wing for some reason and he immediately gets SUPER attached to chen xing. chen xing is like i can tutor you :) even though xiao shan doesn't really need it. xiao shan is repeatedly like "i'm not dumb" but then he keeps asking chen xing for homework help anyway.
xie an is the drama club advisor and sima yao is the principal who also wants the drama club to stay alive but the school budget isn't up to him. fu jian is somewhere. rival high school principal? maybe there are two schools in this district and they're both fighting to get funding for their respective drama clubs.
tuoba yan goes to that high school and is in their drama club but once he meets chen xing he keeps showing up at chen xing's high school instead until he finally gets up the courage to ask chen xing out. chen xing turns him down and is like "you should find someone at your own school to date" and tuoba yan stops showing up at chen xing's school after that.
the bad guys (shi hai and the undead sima princes) are the school board or whoever is in charge of the school district budget. sima wei is actually kind of chill and totally supports the arts, although he ultimately doesn't have much power to fight against the school board for some reason. fu jian is secretly making sketchy deals to try to get them on his side.
they need some sort of competition with fu jian's rival high school but idk what the drama club equivalent of a sports tournament is. maybe there's some sort of big regional competition for one-act plays. idk if that's a thing in real life or how it would even work, but it can be a thing in this au.
the drama club thing slowly grows on xiang shu just as chen xing is like "it was probably wrong of me to make him do this so i should tell him that it's fine if he has his own things to do after school" and xiang shu is like "no i'm staying because it keeps me out of detention" (he stopped skipping class because he found out that he'd get kicked out of the drama club if he kept that up so he doesn't actually have to go to detention anymore) (he's keeping this all a secret from chen xing, of course)
chen xing is constantly like "xiang shu should be a star because he's so hot and good at everything" with zero self-awareness of his own crush and thinks that xiang shu keeps turning red because he's angry when actually he's blushing bc he doesn't know how to handle chen xing's constant barrage of praise. he does actually get angry when chen xing gets condescending and assumes that xiang shu keeps skipping class because it's too hard (he kept skipping it because it's boring but he stopped doing that so that he could stay in drama club), though.
they have a drama club party at xiang shu's house a couple of months into the school year and che luofeng shows up all beat up because he got into a fight. chen xing is like "i got this, my foster dad trained me in first aid." after that, che luofeng keeps showing up to interrupt drama club stuff and initially chen xing is like "sure i guess we could use the extra help" until che luofeng starts getting Weird about xiang shu.
che luofeng: you should cast me as the romantic lead for xiang shu :) the fact that we might have to kiss on stage may or may not have anything to do with this suggestion chen xing: uhhhhh xiang shu, trying to shut this down before chen xing can get the wrong idea: you're not a student here, you can't be in our play
(zhou zhen isn't dead; he just moved away and that's why he and che luofeng broke up. che luofeng is like "hey xiang shu looks like i'm single again :)" and xiang shu blatantly ignores the implications in that phrasing. horrendously awkward vibes between them that will definitely result in a major blow-up at some point.)
xiang shu and chen xing basically start following each other around even though all they do is bicker. they have one class together (some elective that would result in a sophomore and senior being in the same class) and their classmates are all secretly placing bets on when they'll finally get together. all of their friends/acquaintences are Suffering for it.
eventually chen xing moves in with xiang shu bc xiang shu is loaded and opinions (bets) are split on whether or not it's because they're sleeping together. chen xing has no idea why people keep making this assumption because xiang shu doesn't even like him all that much! xiang shu wasn't nice about saying "you suck at taking care of yourself so you should move in with me" to chen xing when he found out that chen xing is living on his own and barely eating because he's stressed and the money he inherited is running out (this is after chen xing passed out in front of xiang shu bc he skipped too many meals)
except they live in rooms right next to each other and the walls are thin, which they both learn the hard way separately when they realize they can hear each other jerk off. neither of them is going to acknowledge this mutual voyeurism thing. chen xing is like "should i tell him? would that be more or less weird than letting it go on?" and then his dick makes the choice for him (say nothing). this goes on for a very, very, very long time by high school standards.
it still takes chen xing a while to figure out that he gets flustered when he sees xiang shu in various states of undress after xiang shu worked up a sweat doing whatever exercise stuff he's in the mood for (mma and bodyweight exercises and probably a bunch of other sports/activities that are considered extreme. if he's doing a team sport, it's something like rugby).
the shitty high school au equivalent of chen xing's "space rocks say i'm not going to make it past age 20" thing is probably that he thinks he's going to have to drop out of school after sophomore year for some reason and he wants to get the drama club thing sorted before he has to do that. xiang shu will have graduated at that point, but he WILL make sure chen xing is going to be able to stay in school bc chen xing likes school and wants to have the full High School Experience.
…although "the Full High School Experience" in a shitty high school au implies that there's going to be some sort of Big Dramatic Prom Night Confrontation because that's how 90% of high school romcom settings work and i have no idea what that is right now based on the first half of dinghai. maybe something that happens in the second half of the webnovel will map to that with the same vibe as the rest of this au. (no spoilers please i want to be surprised!!)