I think Xie Lian didn't turn into Jun Wu not only because he's truly kind, but more importantly because he doesn't really care about other people's opinions of him, unlike Jun Wu. While Jun Wu does everything perfectly to please everyone in exchange for everyone's love, appreciation, and worship, he invariably starts throwing his toys out of the pram whenever he doesn't receive the 100% approval and appreciation he expects. "I've done everything perfectly and try to be as perfect as possible for everyone to please you all, so why don't you love and worship me wholeheartedly? Without your approval, how would I know I'm good? I will punish anyone who doesn't love me as they should, by god I will punish you all!" is probably what goes on in Jun Wu's mind, and eventually he became a monster filled with resentment. While Xie Lian has reached this very zen state of mind where he's like "people don't like me? Welp, ig that's just how it is. Anyway -" And not hinging his self-worth on other people's approval is how he managed to maintain sanity and follow his inner moral laws.
Suffering from insomnia so here I go ranting again - I've been seeing this take floating around the fandom that "MXTX's works are a gateway to danmei because they're easy to follow and less complex, but once you've familiarised yourself with the gateway works, you'll go on to find harder and more sophisticated danmei." Actually most danmei works are equally easy for Chinese readers. We're talking about popular online fiction here, not some esoteric linguistic puzzle from Dream of the Red Chamber. By saying "equally easy" I'm also including books like QJJ - if you're a Chinese kid and a big reader, you've most likely read the four great classics before you've turned 15, so don't expect Chinese readers to find books like QJJ complicated. So this idea that "MXTX is the gateway because her books are easy" doesn't really hold up imo, as I do not find MXTX less sophisticated or less grown-up than other danmei works; different danmei authors have different strengths, that's all. MXTX is the gateway not because she's easy, but because she's popular enough in China for international readers to learn about her first among all the danmei authors.
1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.
2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.
3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."
4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.
5. If the words are Google's, this solidifies the position of universities who demand that all answers from AI are fully cited. If all the in-line citations now have to be (Google, 2026), that's going to make it obvious when someone's trying to use Google as a source. There's still the difficulty with people who are academically dishonest by trying to pass off the AI writing as their own.
6. 91% accuracy is officially too low to use as a source of references, which means the AI can't be used as a source of references either. This makes it less legitimate for such purposes than Wikipedia of all places (Wikipedia might need date/time proof of when it was accessed for the reference to be valid, but at least it is possible to prove the link existed at a particular date and time).
7. This will help encourage the rollout of courses on how to avoid AI search for students who need academic accuracy, because it's statistically not good enough to use.
8. This strengthens the case intellectual property authors have against Google in the EU, as this is proof that an intellectual property transfer took place.
I don't want to start a fight or anything so I'm not gonna reblog the post but as a MXTX fan I just have to disagree with this take lol. Since English readers' judgement of whether a danmei author is a good writer or not heavily depends on the translation, it really puts MXTX at a disadvantage. I was talking to @alliumms some time ago about how the wit and whimsy of TGCF's language is completely lost in the official translation - it's not necessarily the translator's fault because it's an almost intangible and untranslatable quality. I've never laughed so hard at anything in danmei as I laughed at Quan Yizhen and his gold bars. It probably wouldn't be half as funny if other writers told the story because half the humour is in the language itself, in the way MXTX phrased things (I should probably write a post about it some day). Priest's language may be more literary than MXTX's but it's certainly not as inventive and creative as MXTX's, and I personally think she doesn't have either MXTX's or Meatbun's ability to connect with readers because her writing can be really dry (sorry Priest for being so hard on you I still think you're a good writer).
@romchat your tags and other people's comments are starting to make me realise how problematic the official translation is and how much it might damage people's impression of MXTX's works💀 In the past I just thought it was an issue of MXTX's humour and quirkiness being lost in translation but at least the beauty of her langauge could still somehow come through, but then I see people calling her 3am taco bell to Priest's personal chef and I just start to doubt my reality 怀疑人生.
I suggest people read Ari's translation of MXTX's short story that MXTX wrote even way before her first novel and judge for yourself if this deserves to be called 3am taco bell.
I see ao3 as a library, because ao3 hosts millions of written works for people to visit and read. That’s what libraries do. But I get it that to some people, the library part may be more of a metaphor than a literal meaning for ao3.
But you have to be either clueless about what ao3 is shortened for and what the platform’s full name is, or on another level of stupidity to say archive of our own isn’t an archive pls lmao
And it’s not just the name, mind you. AO3’s main purpose is to archive transformative works. Archiving works is literally the only thing it does and was created for. Which just makes anon’s claim even funnier.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Librarian says yes, AO3 is a fucking library AND an archive. Does it have a curated collection of materials? YES, it’s library. Does that collection contain materials curated specifically in part for preservation purposes? YES, it’s an archive.
And it’s my dream that someday our public library catalogs will be able to organize content the way AO3 can.
Went down the rabbit hole of fandom discourse on danmei translation and saw this reddit comment that's probably representative of people's gripe with all the modern language used in MDZS:
It had me a bit confused though because if Wei Wuxian isn't supposed to sound "American", what's he supposed to sound like? A Victorian gentleman? An Elizabethan court jester? Just don't expect him to sound Chinese when you're already reading an English translation.
WWX speaks modern words because that's what he does in the Chinese original - this is what I find fascinating about these Chinese internet fictions, which is that they're often an interesting blend of poetic literary/classical Chinese and modern day internet slangs and idiomatic humour. I grew up reading tons of serious literary fiction so I find this especially refreshing. One of the main goals for online fiction writers is to keep their readers engaged and hooked, and a story written entirely in literary Chinese would be too much of a slog that might make readers lose interest. This is why even in the works of authors like Meng Xi Shi who tend to use formal/literary language, there're still plenty of modern day slangs and quips strewn about.
For me the best example of this blend of the classical and the slangy is probably 2ha. I think I once wrote a post that mentioned that Meatbun literally used the Chinese translation of the English idiom "carrot and stick" in 2ha which is set in fantasy ancient China. The idiom is common enough in modern day Chinese so most Chinese readers probably won't even notice but this is so interesting to me.
Okay, so... this is one of my favourite scenes in the donghua, and on a rewatch with wulian on the brain, I couldn't help thinking: WHAT IF, that long, wistful look in Xie Lian's face is not just the usual yearning, but because that moment reminded him of someone?
(By the way, I discovered later that the song that plays in this scene is called "recollections of old dreams (忆旧梦)"😭)
I'm not sure fandom babies understand how much info they generally get on fics on AO3. Especially the ones who complain about certain kinds of content. TIME WAS YOU COULD NEVER KNOW IF THERE WOULD BE SHIT YOU DIDN'T LIKE IN FICS.
Like, okay, take this header from a fic I loved in LotR fandom back in 2002, on the LotR forum/website I preferred:
That provides... essentially no info on what's actually in the fic, y'know? It's 6 chapters and appears to mostly be about Frodo and Pippin, and it's rated G, but other than that, take a risk, right?
Or take this header on Livejournal for a fic I posted in 2008:
This was actually an extremely in-depth fic header at the time. There were a lot of people who didn't bother adding notes, word counts, or even characters of focus. "Warnings" was an optional entry, and I only bothered adding it bc the fic had significant spoilers for an episode that had aired recently. There are other things I'd tag on it now, but those weren't "tagged" at the time by most people.
I'd show off an FF.net header but I can't actually get the site to load tonight.
Like, it was controversial that a fic challenge community I was in on LJ in '07 or so took down a fic someone submitted because they didn't warn for sexual assault. Because we had no rule about being required to warn.
And some of y'all bitch that AO3 allows thoroughly-tagged content that you can easily avoid and not accidentally read, and if you accidentally read it bc it's not tagged, you can REPORT it????
Nah. Fuck that and fuck you. AO3 should not censor content posted to it, but I have not seen a fic in YEARS that doesn't have more info about the content of a 100 word drabble than I would've ever given for a 4k word fic back in the day. Not because I specifically had bad habits, but because WE DID NOT PROVIDE THAT INFO AT THAT TIME.
Sorry just. I saw something earlier today being critical of AO3 and just. Y'all don't understand how good you have it. You really really don't. And on the one hand I'm glad that you always had this quality of tagging, but on the other fuck you for acting like it's not fabulously thorough for asking if there's common triggers in it.
I can get FF to load, grabbed you some headers of varying complexity. (Chose to pick some ATLA fics because that's what I was reading in 2008, but don't remember what exactly I read because I refuse to log in, so these are chosen at random.)
Tons of pairings. Which ones? Read to find out I guess! (Dangerous in the days of ship wars)
Summary lists the main pairings, which is more than you'd often get.
Note that this one warns you for "Dark Zutara" but you have ZERO idea from this description what that dark could entail. You'd have to open the fic to find out, hoping that there was an authors note.
OP feel free to perform more analysis, or request a specific fic/fandom. FF dot net may be slow but I can force my way through.
These examples are also not only tagless, but come from before tags were invented. Like as a concept on the internet, as something regular people use. They did not exist yet. Filters did but only barely, and for fic they were next to useless without tagging or some other elaborate system that, guess what, AO3 was eventually the one to come up with. They did not invent tags, but they figured out a way to use them that made the filtering mean something. AO3 is the only reason it's even possible to be this nitpicky about content, and to complain about the very thing that allows you to be this much of a purity cop is the height of folly.
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