Here Is Part 6 Of My Annotations Of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, Appendix.

皮皮/pipi is one of priest's nicknames!

having a preference is totally understandable! i just think it's maybe a little unreasonable to accuse the 7s translators of missing/deleting sentences/paragraphs when they've stated upfront that the manuscripts that they're working from are different from what's been posted online. after all, it's not like they can go and arbitrarily add in the stuff that pipi deemed extraneous enough to delete while polishing her manuscript. 😅

I will fix my typed-annotations right now. Thank you!

It’s Zhou Shen 周深 Fashion Appreciation Time!

I desperately want to talk about Zhou Shen’s recent stage outfits. (I pulled all these photos from his official Weibo, link below.)

To begin: Zhou Shen is an angel. Witness!

He frequently wears white or pale pastels.

We often see him in fancy jackets with slacks for formal events …

(And those shoes!)

Though he’ll wear t-shirts and other casual outfits that make us smile and feel all the more that he’s an absolute sweetheart.

Sometimes he'll wear dark colors, too.

Anyway, I don’t usually see more than his head, his arms below the elbow, and maybe some lower leg. Very conservative dress. He is a Proper Chinese Idol for All Ages. A veritable Prince 😍

Which, of course, means I get all the more excited when I see, say, a V-Neck?!?!?

And let’s not forget how good Zhou Shen looks in black:

Hot 🔥 😍

Next, let’s talk about the outfits he’s been wearing for Melody Journey 《音乐缘计划》.

It’s nothing overly dramatic, but he’s been singing some rock- and party- songs, darker songs, and so he’s been dressing appropriately in darker colors,…

Here, he still has a black tie Over His Bare Skin to cover the deep V-neck to preserve his modesty. This is OK. (This was his outfit for 《颠倒之间》.)

And then they put him in a black tank top overlayed with a silky wine-red blouse that Does Not Fully Cover his arms and shoulders...

This shouldn't be such a big deal, but paired with all the buckles and the long red ribbon tied around his forearm, I feel a little bit scandalized. In a good way. (This was his outfit for 《MINE》.)

For 《蜂》, I thought that they had put him back in super-modest full-body coverings, ... and then I saw the inside of this knee. And his upper thigh. Wait -- those jeans aren't fully stitched! Every time he takes a step, some part of his thighs are exposed! Wha?!!?

And then No Sleeves at all! We can see his arms! All of his arms! And parts of his sides! And is he wearing ... a collar?!?! I’m clutching at my pearls now!

Zhou Shen singing 《荒芜之地》.

Needless to say, I am fully enjoying Melody Journey 《音乐缘计划》, and constantly laughing at myself that, in an age where so many pop singers wear, effectively, just lingerie; I am getting excited from seeing my favorite singer expose his arms.

Credit: all these pictures are all from https://m.weibo.cn/u/7478855230?jumpfrom=weibocom

Chinese Fashion doesn’t always make sense to me, but I gotta admit that I think it’s Really Interesting.

niche absurd fashion post

OKAY in response to this rb of my post here from @cansada-contenta​, i’ve decided to compile a bunch of stupid fashion i’ve seen on chinese singer(s) and loved in recent years. :DDDDD

as for that horrific blue sweater on xiao zhan, YO THAT’S EXACTLY THE KIND OF SHIT I’M TALKING ABOUT. most of these photos are of my good boy 吴青峰 during his time on singer 2019 bc his stylist did GREAT (also i only watch one (1) chinese reality singing show lol)

if you’d like to see most of these outfits in person (plus others I didn’t manage to find good pics of! gosh that violet trenchcoat outfit he’s wearing when he’s singing with jolin tsai at 49:11??? so good. jolin looks classy and he just looks like a DISASTER)  you can check out this compilation of all his songs on the season here! :D highly recommend, i love his voice ;~;

anyways, first, the spiritual cousin to that horrendous blue sweater number on xz:

hideous!! what the fuck is that!! looks like you cut up two sweaters and stapled them to the front of a white t-shirt and then paired it with some white slacks!! what!! horrible!! i love it so fucking much!

rest is under a readmore bc i got really quite carried away:

Keep reading

Dracula and Jonathan’s Tango - from The Polish National Opera production of ‘Dracula’.

With Choreography by Krzysztof Pastor and Music by Wojciech Kilar.

My new favorite passage describing a character is from ch 337 of 2Ha, describing Jiang Xi:

他的打扮永远让人觉得他在说：“我很有钱，欢迎来抢”，但是没有人抢得了他。

His style of dressing always led people to feel he was saying, “I am very rich. You are welcome to rob me,” but no was ever able to rob him.

他那张俊脸上好像也写着：“想睡我吗，我知道你想”，但没有人能睡得了他。

That handsome face of his also seemed to announce “You want to sleep with me. I know you want to,” but no one was ever able to sleep with him.

(Translations are mine. You can tell because they are very bad and don’t convey just how clever this passage is. Translating is hard!)

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Vol 2, Notes 8/8, pages 370 - end

The story is progressing!!!

“muttered into... ear" in Chinese here is 咬耳朵道, "bite ear said." Totally lets you know where Gu Yun is when he's talking to Tan Hongfei, yah?

Chinese for the entire 长庚 quote: 可惜没有长花容月貌，掷果盈车的大帅不肯要。

花容月貌 - flower appearance moon appearance (it sounds good in Chinese, trust me)

掷果盈车 - throw fruit fill carriage. There was this famously beautiful man name 潘安 Pan An (247-300 AD) who was so famously beautiful that when women saw his carriage coming, they would link hands and slow it down just to get a peak at him, and then they would throw flowers and fruit at him in appreciation, so that by the time he got home, his carriage was full of fruit and flowers. Famous Chinese Beauties <3

启明 Qiming -- Pleco: "Classical Chinese name for planet Venus in the east before dawn"

混账. Pleco: Noun. Vulgar. "scoundrel; bastard; son of a bitch"

But you can't say the latter two to Chang Geng, and I don't want to talk about body parts like that between Gu Yun and Chang Geng, so I think we should all read this as "Unreasonable Impudent Scoundrel."

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed learning about heel ropes and pills of immortality and historically significant hotness with me. I learn huge amounts of (Chinese and) Chinese culture every time I pick up a Priest book, and I hope you all can enjoy it as much as I do.

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 5

Here is Part 5 of my annotations of MDZS Volume 2, pages 280 - 318.

Zhou Shen Song Obsession of the week: 无问 No Matter.

Apparently this is a song written (lyrics) by oft-collaborator Mao Buyi for the movie 无问西东 Forever Young, starring Zhang Ziyi, Wang Leehom, and other people I should probably know but don’t. The movie looks beautiful, but it doesn’t look like it’s bursting with happiness, so…

Zhou Shen sang 无问 for Singer 2020 in one of their Quarantine Sessions (I think), against a plain white wall, wearing an oversized jacket that looked like it could slip off any moment; his hair was tousled and his eyes looked puffy and no one had touched up his eyebrows — he looked exactly like how a lover is supposed to look after a long night of sharing heartfelt feelings. He starts in a whisper that hooks into your heart like the scent of jasmine in the dark before morning, and then the song and his voice build into a spectacular dawn, then settle once more into the most intimate whisper imaginable. I can’t linguistically express how this song makes me feel, except Loved.

https://youtu.be/9bWNHPuCxr8

I hope you like it, too.

Lyrics have been translated, if you’d like to read.

how lan xichen says lan zhan’s name: ʷᵃⁿᵍʲⁱ

how wei wuxian says lan zhan’s name: 𝙇𝘼𝙉 𝙕𝙃𝘼𝙉

how lan zhan says wei wuxian’s name: 𝔀𝓮𝓲 𝔂𝓲𝓷𝓰

how jiang cheng says wei wuxian’s name: ẅ̷̛͚͔̟͓̜̯̮̹̞̊̌̏̍́̏̐e̴̢̜͎͚̝̘̿͛͒̔̏̈́͑̏̊͜i̴̩͎͓͒̐̔̍͌̀͌͝ ̸̘̳̀̈̈́w̶̧̻͑̅͂̇ù̸̡̝͖̤̙̯͍̾̂̈́͜ẋ̴̢̡̛̰̥̳̱̯̠͕̀i̶̺̟̒̊̕à̶̛̗͓̋̑̏̿̃͗͌n̴͙͇͍̯̂̕

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼 Vol 1, Notes 4

By Priest. Translated into English by 7 Seas.

My notes, pages 203 - 245.

Cultural notes, mostly, and a little commentary:

It’s slightly more derogatory in Chinese. The original is “…都不知道‘放虎归山’四个字怎么写。” which translates slightly more literally as “….but none know how to write ‘allow a tiger to return to the mountains’”

More under the cut.

It’s actually a really big deal that Gu Yun, this crass brawny military brat (commander), actually has excellent calligraphy, so excellent that people sell reproductions of it for children to learn from and the emperor himself wants Gu Yun’s calligraphy in the palace.

From asiasociety.org: In China, from a very early period, calligraphy was considered not just a form of decorative art; rather, it was viewed as the supreme visual art form, was more valued than painting and sculpture, and ranked alongside poetry as a means of self-expression and cultivation.

It’s a big deal. Gu Yun’s calligraphy shows that he’s an exceptional scholar and a good person.

滚 also means “boil” (boiling, roiling water) and “somersault / roll.”

I’m actually super ignorant of Chinese curse words. They all sound like nice normal words to me: your mom, somersault, ghost, death. I just yell 鬼！(ghost / monster) a lot when I’m grumpy.

Baby peacock! So cute!

Gu Yun may be crude, but he’s never sloppy.

More idioms. 天马行空 is one of my favorites. You can practically see the Heavenly Steed dancing and soaring from cloud to cloud, totally ignoring the Celestial Horse Keeper desperately trying to get it back into the paddock.

I wish we had more Cao Niangzi!

Shen Yi is actually a kind of superhero, developed from decades of dealing with Gu Yun and having to fulfill all of Gu Yun’s flippant (but totally deadly consequential) promises.

Sigh. No more hot nights out on the town for Gu Yun.

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist