Chang Geng X Gu Yun “Sha Po Lang/Stars Of Chaos”

Still reading 病案本 Bing An Ben (Case File Compendium). I’m on chapter 106 (out of 254) now. And I can totally see why Meatbun needs another 148 chapters. I have no idea how she is going to resolve the basic romance, much less the mafia murder mystery treachery conspiracy thing.

Instead of thinking of this book in terms of Plot Arcs, I’m thinking of it in terms on Intractable Relationship Arcs.

(Minor spoilers under the cut.)

So, ch 1 - 51: Xie QingCheng and He Yu hate each other. They get thrown in every romance trope imaginable, but they both hate each other. It’s cute. I’m enjoying it.

Ch 52: oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. I don’t see how they are going to come back from this. Oh no.

Ch 54 - 87: So… I guess this is… something? I mean, at least one of them is appreciating the other one now. There’s a lot of sugar to read. And bitter. Ugh. This is not healthy.

Ch 88 - 101: Finally, some mutual respect. Sort of.

Ch 102: 23,730 words. This scene was 23,730 words. I’m physically and emotionally exhausted just reading this chapter. I think I Really Like It. And now they like each other! Yay!

Ch 103: Wait — Xie QingCheng doesn’t want to continue with liking each other? But… we read 101 chapters just to finally get to a mutually consenting kiss! And then another 23,730 words of consensual kissing ☺️ (kinda 😏).

Ch 104 - ?: It’s great that He Yu is finally self-aware, but how in the world is He Yu going to get Xie QingChen to ever Talk to him again?!?!

This is why there is a mafia murder mystery, isn’t it? Because without fresh corpses and the threat of imminent death, there is no way to move their relationship forward. Or sideways. Or any way at all.

Man. This story is such a roller coaster. I’m pulling my hair out.

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

Congratulations to WYB for being Chanel brand ambassador, a long time collaboration. It is, as it should be.

Cr: 星川的绿

Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?

Researchers have discovered ancient Roman concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated self-healing. Applying this knowledge toward modern cement production, they hope to improve the material’s environmental impact.

This is soooooo interesting. The Romans were the ancient world’s materials-technology engineers par excellence: this is just another example of it. 

“I named this cat Lan Zhan. Why? Because...whenever I say to him ‘Lan Zhan, it’s haishi*.’”

*haishi (亥时) - between 9pm and 11pm

(douyin)

Mongolian Dancing. ❤️

one of the deans in beijing dance academy rehearses with students

杀破狼 Stars of Chaos

My Seven Seas translation live-blog has begun!

(It accompanies my Occasional Yelling Into the Void live-blog of my Chinese re-read of 杀破狼.)

Note #1:

The appendixes are Awesome. Really well done for cultural and world-specific context.

If you don’t know the story yet, I suggest Skipping the Character Guide until at least the end of the first arc (too many spoilers)(just finish the Prologue), and skip the Location Guide (too boring).

Start with the Name Guide on page 434.

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Vol 2, Notes 6, pages 263 - 333

This novel is really too beautiful.

"Adoptive father" is usually the guy who takes care of you after your own parents die; but here, the "adoptive father" is someone that the young people took in to take care of in his old age.

I like how in the Chinese formatting, Priest just ends the previous paragraph with "... ..." and then starts the next one with "Until the easterly winds of change..."

This sounds weird to say, but I really like the formatting and syntactical style of all the Chinese novels I've read.

... 一条漆黑的阶梯舌头凭空垂下来...

I got confused with "staircase unfurled", since staircases don't move.

The end of the staircase is likened to a tongue, 阶梯 舌头, and, of course, tongues unfurl.

More translation confusion: in Chinese, 阶梯 doesn't distinguish between a solid staircase and, say, a rope ladder; and the (online) text 凭空垂下来 translates to "hangs down, out of nothing," kind of like "appears out of thin air" except it's hanging, so, "from nowhere."

矿物. I had the worst time trying to translate this. It is, officially, "ore," but Violet Gold is a liquid whereas "ore" is a solid.

I gave up and just wrote that little note that 矿物 means "thing that you have to mine out of the earth," regardless of its physical state.

I really liked those paragraphs that aren't in this version.

So, those 7 paragraphs:

Everything metal that was on Gu Yun had been taken away, but that didn't mean that Gu Yun was at the end of his tether / didn't have options available.

He had a secret skill -- when he and Shen Yi were little, they used to play a game in the marquis's compound, "who can steal pieces off the puppets the fastest." Two wild children -- when they had nothing else to do they would get together to study how to disassemble the puppets guarding the marquis's entrance. There was one time when Shen Yi didn't dodge fast enough, and when he was being naughty the puppet mistook him for an enemy and hit him so hard that he was thrown up to the roof and his little life almost ended. Of course, Gu Yun was not able to escape a beating from the old Marquis.

The blood-lesson (beating) did not help Gu Yun gain any memory (learn from his mistake), and instead he became even more bold. The two of them repeatedly studied for a long time -- they were sure that there must be a special/secret/expert method, to be like those slight-of-hand pickpockets and pull a piece off the puppet as they passed by.

In the end, they discovered that, yes, there were pieces that could be taken off, but only parts of the mask or the piece on the elbow where the label/mark was, those types of non-critical parts, so Gu Yun's unrivalled skill had never had a chance to be demonstrated.

But, now it looked like it could be used.

The first day that the puppet delivered food, Gu Yun stealthily (eyes quick hands fast) reached out his hand, hooked and pulled, and easily removed the rusty label-plate from the puppet's elbow ----

He sharpened that plate on a rock, used it pry open his handcuffs, then finally did a big lazy stretch. Afterwards, he cut a piece of his bedsheet and braided it into a rope, caught a little rat, and at every meal he would save two mouthfuls of food to feed it, and play with it when he had nothing else to do.

top: More edited-out lines :( If Priest didn't want us to fall in love with these lines, why did she give them to us in the first place :(

"...resist heaving a sigh and spinning the metal plate he was playing with like a pinwheel."

bottom:“ 他还不如每天嫌我给他捣乱呢。” which the translators did a fine job translating, but I like "giving him trouble" more than "getting on his nerves". 捣乱 is, literally, "pound/beat disorder," so you can see how it suggests more "messing things up."

I find it very interesting that a typical (I think? I'm not really that well-read) form of address for a high-ranking Senior Official is 爱卿, which I think translates better to “My dear Senior Official ..." rather than "subject".

一视同仁 "treat all alike." Which means that the old marquis treated his dumpling-sized son the same as he treated everyone else (though he did finally relent to hold his little son's hand).

"谁要是这时候给我热俩烧饼，我就把谁娶回家” In Chinese, it's really easy to avoid numbered and gendered language. In this sentence, the word "谁" "whoever/someone" works in both parts of the sentence.

top: A little bit was added.

bottom: Same as last time. The Chinese is very symmetrical: "Whoever is afraid to die is the first to die."

We are getting close to the end.... :)

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

I found some useful information (and a lot of similarly-obsessed fans) about Your Name Engraved Herein on this Reddit page. In case you want just a little more content, a little bit of analysis, here it is!

https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/kjk1ga/seven_secrets_you_need_to_know_about_your_name/