MDZS Vol 3 Annotations, Part 3

More Evidence for How My Favorites are Evil (Geniuses)(but not really evil)

from 杀破狼 Stars of Chaos, Ch 57:

Gu Yun laments not being more decisive about obliterating (murdering) all the evidence that he had previously mostly obliterated; or he should have just collected the evidence and used it to stage a hostile takeover. Sigh. Oh well.

Chang Geng reassures LiaoRan that he won’t attack the emperor (not because being nice is the right thing to do, but) because it’s not the right time.

I’m sure there are plenty of other modern western stories where the main characters are grey, but I just can’t think of any other story where the non-villain-coded main characters are all “darn, I should have murdered that other person” and “don’t worry — I won’t murder until the time is right.”

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 1

Part 1 of 6, pages 1 - 45

I finished it! All of the Seven Seas English translation of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / MDZS / 魔道祖师！ I don’t know if I’m happy or sad. I think I need to listen to the ♥️Audio Drama♥️ again.

This volume flowed a lot more smoothly than Volume 4, but there are still a few places I tripped and had to look back at the Chinese. Here they are, plus an unhelpful comment about the inaccuracy of one of the beautiful illustrations:

More under the cut

Just in case anyone can’t remember the names of all the musical instruments.

This is a minor word-choice quibble, but here it is. I think LWJ limped, as he was not hobbled, just injured.

Re my note at the top of this page: I think it’s similar in Western culture (I know I’ve been steeped in xianxia maybe too deeply when I forget the culture that I’m actually living in), but in Chinese culture it’s especially important to greet people by name/title, especially when you first see them, and again when you separate. It’s a simple, sweet way to acknowledge that you see them and respect them and appreciate them and support them; if they need help with homework or with reaching a high shelf, you’re here to help; if you’re the one who gets help and gifts and tasty treats, then you’re showing that you appreciate everything about them (and you’re ready for more cookies).

Each time I walk into my house it’s like a game of hide-and-seek where I have to find each family member and declare my presence (and demand affection in return); and each time I leave I yell “I’m leaving!” from the door (because I’m late and must go quickly!) so that they know that I am no longer available to help, but I will miss them all and love them from afar.

The illustrations are gorgeous. I don’t know if they would be so gorgeous if JC was holding his little umbrella overhead, like in the text, but you must admit that it’s quite a flex that JC can beat up many people with Zidian while keeping his head and shoulders dry.

You all remember the family / martial-family nomenclature, right?

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

Terry Pratchett's 2001 Carnegie Medal Winner Speech

I’m pretty sure that the publicists for this award would be quite happy if I said something controversial, but it seems to me that giving me the Carnegie medal is controversial enough. This was my third attempt. Well, I say my third attempt, but in fact I just sat there in ignorance and someone else attempted it on my behalf, somewhat to my initial dismay.

The Amazing Maurice is a fantasy book. Of course, everyone knows that fantasy is 'all about' wizards, but by now, I hope, everyone with any intelligence knows that, er, what everyone knows...is wrong.

Fantasy is more than wizards. For instance, this book is about rats that are intelligent. But it also about the even more fantastic idea that humans are capable of intelligence as well. Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewellery into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting that the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic. In the book the rats go to war, which is, I hope, gripping. But then they make peace, which is astonishing.

In any case, genre is just a flavouring. It's not the whole meal. Don't get confused by the scenery.

A novel set in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881 is what– a Western? The scenery says so, the clothes say so, but the story does not automatically become a Western. Why let a few cactuses tell you what to think? It might be a counterfactual, or a historical novel, or a searing literary indictment of something or other, or a horror novel, or even, perhaps, a romance – although the young lovers would have to speak up a bit and possibly even hide under the table, because the gunfight at the OK corral was going on at the time.

We categorize too much on the basis of unreliable assumption. A literary novel written by Brian Aldiss must be science fiction, because he is a known science fiction writer; a science fiction novel by Margaret Attwood is literature because she is a literary novelist. Recent Discworld books have spun on such concerns as the nature of belief, politics and even of journalistic freedom, but put in one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer.

This is not, on the whole, a complaint. But as I have said, it seems to me that dragons are not really the pure quill of fantasy, when properly done. Real fantasy is that a man with a printing press might defy an entire government because of some half-formed belief that there may be such a thing as the truth. Anyway, fantasy needs no defence now. As a genre it has become quite respectable in recent years. At least, it can demonstrably make lots and lots and lots of money, which passes for respectable these days. When you can by a plastic Gandalf with kung-fu grip and rocket launcher, you know fantasy has broken through.

But I’m a humourous writer too, and humour is a real problem.

It was interesting to see how Maurice was reviewed here and in the US. Over there, where I've only recently made much of an impression, the reviews tended to be quite serious and detailed with, as Maurice himself would have put it, 'long words, like "corrugated iron."' Over here, while being very nice, they tended towards the 'another wacky, zany book by comic author Terry Pratchett'. In fact Maurice has no wack and very little zane. It's quite a serious book. Only the scenery is funny.

The problem is that we think the opposite of funny is serious. It is not. In fact, as G K Chesterton pointed out, the opposite of funny is not funny, and the opposite of serious is not serious. Benny Hill was funny and not serious; Rory Bremner is funny and serious; most politicians are serious but, unfortunately, not funny. Humour has its uses. Laughter can get through the keyhole while seriousness is still hammering on the door. New ideas can ride in on the back of a joke, old ideas can be given an added edge.

Which reminds me... Chesterton is not read much these days, and his style and approach belong to another time and, now, can irritate. You have to read in a slightly different language. And then, just when the 'ho, good landlord, a pint of your finest English ale!' style gets you down, you run across a gem, cogently expressed. He famously defended fairy stories against those who said they told children that there were monsters; children already know that there are monsters, he said, and fairy stories teach them that monsters can be killed. We now know that the monsters may not simply have scales and sleep under a mountain. They may be in our own heads.

In Maurice, the rats have to confront them all: real monsters, some of whom have many legs, some merely have two, but some, perhaps the worse, are the ones they invent. The rats are intelligent. They're the first rats in the world to be afraid of the dark, and they people the shadows with imaginary monsters. An act of extreme significance to them is the lighting of a flame.

People have already asked me if I had the current international situation in mind when I wrote the book. The answer is no. I wouldn't insult even rats by turning them into handy metaphors. It's just unfortunate that the current international situation is pretty much the same old dull, stupid international situation, in a world obsessed by the monsters it has made up, dragons that are hard to kill. We look around and see

foreign policies that are little more than the taking of revenge for the revenge that was taken in revenge for the revenge last time. It's a path that leads only downwards, and still the world flocks along it. It makes you want to spit. The dinosaurs were thick as concrete, but they survived for one hundred and fifty million years and it took a damn great asteroid to knock them out. I find myself wonder wondering now if intelligence comes with its own built-in asteroid.

Of course, as the aforesaid writer of humourous fantasy I'm obsessed by wacky, zany ideas. One is that rats might talk. But sometimes I'm even capable of weirder, more ridiculous ideas, such the possibility of a happy ending. Sometimes, when I'm really, really wacky and on a fresh dose of zany, I'm just capable of entertaining the fantastic idea that, in certain circumstances, Homo Sapiens might actually be capable of thinking. It must be worth a go, since we've tried everything else.

Writing for children is harder than writing for adults, if you're doing it right. What I thought was going to be a funny story about a cat organizing a swindle based on the Pied Piper legend turned out to be a major project, in which I was aided and encouraged and given hope by Philippa Dickinson and Sue Coates at Doubleday or whatever they're calling themselves this week, and Anne Hoppe of HarperCollins in New York, who waylaid me in an alley in Manhattan and insisted on publishing the book and even promised to protect me from that most feared of creatures, the American copy editor.

And I must thank you, the judges, in the hope that your sanity and critical faculties may speedily be returned to you. And finally, my thanks to the rest of you, the loose agglomeration of editors and teachers and librarians that I usually refer to, mostly with a smile, as the dirndl mafia. You keep the flame alive.

My new reading list! So far, I’ve got 杀破狼 done.

hunxi’s danmei awards 2.0! (aka 2022 edition)

Featuring the return of some categories such as:

Best Worldbuilding

Best Interrogation of Themes (aka the “Rent-Free Award”)

Best Moment That Wrecked Me (aka the Knifiest Award)

Best Beleaguered Side Character Award

Best Unreliable Narrator

As well as never-before-seen categories like:

Best Himbo

Most Brilliant Moment of Backstabbery

Most Ambitious Scope

Most Heartwrenching Line Delivery in an Audiodrama

…and more!

This year’s candidates in the running:

《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu by 一十四洲 Yi Shi Si Zhou

《不小心救了江湖公敌》 Bu Xiao Xin Jiule Jianghu Gong Di by 六木乔 Liu Muqiao (有声漫画 audiomanhua season 1)

《无双》 Wu Shuang by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian by 光合积木 Voicegem, 吼浪文化 Houlang Studio, and 斗木獬编剧工作室 Doumuxie Screenwriting Studio

《师弟还不杀我灭口》 Shidi Hai Bu Sha Wo Mie Kou by 子鹿 Zi Lu

《默读》 Mo Du by priest

《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su

《海中爵》 Hai Zhong Jue by 七药 Qi Yao

《哏儿》 Gen’er by 南北逐风 Nan Bei Zhu Feng

《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang by priest

《金牌助理之弯弯没想到》 Jin Pai Zhu Li zhi Wan Wan Mei Xiang Dao by (nominally) 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang and (mostly) 传奇火箭队 The Legendary Rocket Team

(unmarked spoilers, including but not limited to these titles, under the cut. for introductions of these titles, click here. for last year’s danmei awards, click here)

Keep reading

For all the people out there who are dealing with insane amounts of pain on a regular and frequent basis.

One of my friends fixed her endometriosis by changing her diet according to a Tibetan Healer’s recommendation.

Another fixed her debilitating monthly pain by cutting one ingredient out of her diet on an acupuncturist’s offhand advice.

And another finally went to her normal usual western doc and got some hormonal medication that makes it so she doesn’t pass out from pain anymore.

There is a solution! Find your cure!

whenever i have those brutal searing being-dissolved-from-inside period cramps during school or work i pretend i am a viking warlord who has been stabbed in the abdomen but i killed the assailant so i’m the only one who knows im injured and i have to carry on normally til the end of the battle to keep up my mens morale

The Husky and His White Cat ShiZun v1

(English 7Seas version) Notes 2 of 2

Here are more notes from vol.1 of 2Ha!

Let's start it all off with a quick silly note.

In Chapter 1, the translators found a bunch of different words for "dog" - cur, mongrel, etc - whereas in Chinese it all was just phrases with the one word 狗。I thought it was a great translation.

Whereas here in Ch (page 184ish), the translators chose the one word "screw" while in Chinese we had all sorts of different euphemisms conveying various degrees of affection and marital harmony.

It's cute.

Here's another note on Language Use. 师尊/师父 as "Master" vs as "Teacher." Yes, the English term "master" fits as "the person who is very much higher in rank and teaches you stuff," but I feel like the Chinese ShiZun/ShiFu conveys a lot more obligation than "master." It's much closer to "teacher" or "father" than it is to "slave-holder."

(More notes and photos under the cut...)

It's the teacher's duty to make sure that their students are learning well. A teacher's reputation rests entirely upon their students' character and accomplishments. Students are supposed to trust their teacher as they would their own parent, and teachers are supposed to honor and live up to that trust.

Anyway, that's why on page 307 I crossed out "master" and wrote in "teacher," instead. Chu Wanning saw it as his duty to raise Mo Ran right, and if Mo Ran turned out wrong, it must have been Chu Wanning's fault. Yeah.

Anyway, here we are. Volume 1, page 184 - end.

      Bookshelf inserts

hey say that you can’t judge a book by its cover. But what if the cover alone can tell you the whole story? Welcome to the world of book nooks where creativity runs wild!

These hand-made creations will draw you into tiny places of wonder: from the hobbit hole to the Blade Runner-inspired apocalyptic alley or Lord of the Rings-themed door replica equipped with motion sensors.

This book nook my mother got on Ebay

A Magical bookshop in your own bookshelf

I made a booknook for a christmas gift, my inspiration was Blade Runner. It’s 11" X 6"

Not only are book nook inserts a fun way to train your creativity muscle, they can also be a solution to making reading great again. A recent study done by Pew Research Center showed that a staggering quarter of American adults don’t read books in any shape or form. The same study suggested that the likelihood of reading was directly linked to wealth and educational level. Add high levels of modern insomnia and full-time employment that leaves many of us drained at the end of the day, and the idea of opening a book seems unappealing, to say the least.

Now imagine yourself walking past a bookshelf full of these mini worlds—the dioramas of an alley. They catch your attention and you cannot help but see what’s inside. The pioneer of the book nook concept is the Japanese artist Monde. Monde introduced his creations to the Design Festa in 2018 and received overwhelming feedback. 178K likes on twitter later, Monde has become an inspiration to the aspiring arts and crafts lovers who join on r/booknooks to share their spectacular ideas.

Hobbit Hole

Design, print and paint a small shelf to decorate shelves

worlds hidden in a bookcase

A double wide endor inspired wilderness piece

Old Italy book nook

Diagon Alley booknook

Witch is watching you

Warhammer-style booknook

Creature from the Black Lagoon bookshelf monster

A booknook inspired by Les Miserables

source https://www.boredpanda.com/book-nook-shelf-inserts

I love this so much,  thank you!😊❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I watched that movie of Journey to the West! It was good. It didn’t register at the time that I was watching mpreg. But now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Ah? What do you mean mpreg is built into the setting of MDZS?

I mean exactly what I said. It's part of the setting. Mpreg is part of MDZS setting.

Or rather, mpreg is part of any and all xianxia or Chinese fantasy settings. Mpreg is not impossible... or even truly rare... in xianxia setting. There are at least three different regular ways for men to get pregnant in this kind of setting, even for low xianxia like MDZS.

Xianxia is Chinese fantasy. Cultivators cultivate until immortality. The upper level of cultivation, an immortal becomes a facet of reality and bends the world to their will. Some can even create an entirely new world wholesale. What's getting pregnant compared to that?

Sure, the setting of MDZS is low xianxia. But we know at the very least a lot of MDZS cultivators are at the Jindan stage. Do you know which stage comes right after the Jindan stage?

元婴 Yuanying. The common English translation for this stage is Nascent Soul. But its real meaning is nascent / origin child/baby/infant.

How does yuanying come about? Well, a cultivator at the end of Jindan stage will go through tribulation. If they pass through tribulation successfully, the jindan (golden core) in their belly will collapse and out comes a baby. This baby then takes over the task of the jindan, circulating the cultivator's chi and feeding off of it. The baby will grow alongside the cultivator's progress, eventually maturing and potentially becoming a separate person should the parent allows it.

(Game interface from a Chinese cultivation game)

This stage is very well documented in actual real-world ancient texts by Wu Liupai, dating back to the 16th century. It's not a modern concept made up for entertainment. It's part of actual real-world Daoist practices and beliefs.

...And xianxia is the brought up to eleventh fantasy version of real-world Daoism. Think about it.

So in truth, every single high-level Jindan stage cultivator in MDZS is just one stage and one successful tribulation away from getting preggo whether they want to or not. (Yes. Every single one of them. Not just Wei Ying or Lan Wangji, but also Jiang Cheng, Lan Qiren, Lan Xichen, Xiu Xingchen, Song Lan, Nie Mingjue... if he didn't die, etc... Not Jin Guangyao, though. He's too weak to get pregnant. Jin Zixuan, maybe)

You don't even have to be a cultivator or in a xianxia setting to get pregnant (whether you are male or female or whatever). Artificially induced pregnancy has been a thing in Chinese folklore since the Summer and Autumn period (BCE). Several different classics mention a fruit called 孕果 yunguo (Lit. Pregnant Fruit). This fruit bestows the ability to get pregnant to anyone who eats it, regardless of gender. Sexual activity with a man is still required, though. Can't make something out of nothing.

And the most famous and widely known in Chinese folklore: water from the River of Mother and Child 子母河. Anyone who drinks this water becomes pregnant, regardless of gender (or even species, actually). You know the most famous person who drank it? The monk Tan Sanzang... and his disciple Zhu Bajie (a male pig), and Sha Wujing (a male fish). It's been made into several TV series and movies. In one of those movie adaptations, Tang Sanzang even carried the pregnancy to term as he wasn't willing to terminate a life and saw this as an opportunity to experience the female side of life.

In the same story, Journey to the West, a rock was pregnant with Son Wukong and gave birth to him.

You have to remember this. Ancient Chinese didn't really think of pregnancy as a biological process requiring sperm and eggs like we do today. They thought of it as a concentration and condensation of qi (breath of the world) until the 'mother body' was saturated with fetal qi and gave birth.

Real-world folklore texts are chockful of such instances where things got pregnant with the breath of the world and gave birth. And that's just regular folklore, not the brought-up-to-eleven version that is xianxia.

Who does this picture belong to, please? I found it in my early MDZS searches, and it’s brought me joy every day so far 🥰