ten years late but finally tried to remember some notes and ramblings i wanted to make for roads orz
zhang jiale’s siblings are all also named jia-somethings bc i headcanoned that jia is the generational name, so everyone in his generation has that character. for the crazy chinese family trees this is a neat way to figure out who’s who (under the bold assumption that anyone actually remembers who’s who). plus, it saved me time thinking up names /insert discord joy emoji here
the ‘le’ character in zjl’s name can also be pronounced as ‘yue’, so when one of his cousins suggested passing zjl off as zhang jiayue, it could have happened! even his id would agree to it, as iirc there’s no pinyin on the chinese id card
with the travelling part i legit spent so much time googling travel times between cities and places to visit... zhang jiale is living my fantasy of travelling around china, just with more emotional baggage, and im lowkey jealous. on one hand, going places, on the other hand, ouch.
speaking of emotional baggage, delving into zjl’s character was just. somewhere in between wanting to give him a blanket and a hot chocolate, and knowing it would slide off him like water. all i can say is he has much better mental fortitude than me, i’d have called it quits after s5 or s6 at the latest. writing his slow, slow recovery was cathartic and draining at once
side note: i really adore fics where the author slowly wrings the emotions from you until you’re left emotionally bruised all over, so to everyone whose comments suggest i pulled off even a fraction of that - thank you so much!
as this got written it spiralled wildly out of control... i still remember when i thought it would be a nice calm 7k at best. good times. at one point it was a running joke between me and a friend to call it the “have you reached harbin yet” fic bc i just. could not reach harbin (my self-identified halfway point of the fic)
at least 30% of this fic is just me revelling in imagery, and that’s probably a conservative estimate. as you’ve probably guessed, i love imagery! the more strangely-fitting the better, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. (probably not a good thing to love imagery this hard but /shrug)
shengji is a popular card game that is too complicated for me to explain, just know my degree of love with it is similar to my degree of love for mahjong. aka: with all my heart, even though i suck at it.
zjl and ljy’s conversation in nanjing is one of the very few pieces that made it out from the first plan (i’d like to say first draft, but i edit as i go so my first draft is my second draft is my final draft...) everything else went through an enormous amount of me dithering on it. go ljy!
i will probably never stop loving chinese bathhouses. they are so extra. i love them so much. they also tend to be more crowded than i portrayed because i have never found a bathhouse with the changing area empty enough two people can have a shouting match there, but artistic liberties exist for a reason
having long hair in northeast china is a uniquely terrible experience. everything gets stuck in it. everything.
trying to figure out how old both of them were by the lunar and standard calendars is not an experience im keen to have again
the new year’s gala is an experience everyone needs at least once in their life, it’s like the most bizarre mix of some fabulous costumes that took all the budget and the shitty costumes left behind and some absolutely ridiculous song-and-dance routines and comedy sketches and ads and a pouring of nationalism over the entire thing and it’s just. an experience.
dazzling spring and spring enchantment - dazzling spring is 浅花迷人, spring enchantment is 浅花入迷. at least 100% of the people zjl and szp dungeoned with thought they were partners.
*shakes bblue* how could you make... such good characters.... bblue why...