Https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4812237040521729#&gid=1&pid=6

I finally found an English-Language explanation of What Happened in the novel 镇魂 Guardian by Priest! It had been hidden in video…and I had refused to watch any reviews until I had finished watching the drama…

So! If you happen to be as confused as I was after reading (loving!)(confused loving!) Zhen Hun, here’s another person to commiserate with about how unfathomable (illogical) the plot of the novel truly is (but we still don’t care. We just want more WeiLan).

https://youtu.be/jfOH0kFvDuQ

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Volume 3, Notes 4/5, Pages 267 - 350

I had to look up this poem and its meaning. In essence, the poem is about revolution. Kicking out the old aristocracy and installing a new regime. Via nice, sweet poetry about birds flying away from Wang and Xie's homes (the "noble halls") into the homes of ordinary folk.

The nice Chinese 5-word version of "heads up their asses" is a much more elegant "顾头不顾腚" = attend to the head an forget the buttocks, as in "can only handle things coming from one direction".

Croaker is a type of small fish. 小黄鱼。

“若非烂到根里，恐怕也不会养出这种滚刀肉一样胆大包天的地方官。”

The "stubborn as cheap jerky" phrase is the translation of 滚刀肉, which is, broken apart, "rolling""knife""meat", like meat that is so sinewy and hard that it turns your knife instead of just letting itself be cut.

The "in their crooked ways" phrase is, I think, just an extra little modifier to help you understand that these difficult officials are not just stubborn, (and definitely not righteous,) but also crooked.

Pg 304: When I read this in English, it felt to me like the emperor was questioning if he himself still held power; in Chinese, it sounds to me more like he is stating that someone is trying to hide a really big secret, and he is questioning who that wrong-doer is.

"朕倒不知道这朝中是谁一手遮天了。"

Bad translation: "We (royal) do not know who in this court is using his hand to cover the sky." (一手遮天 One hand cover sky = "to hide the truth from the masses" mdbg.net)

Here is another place where the English confused me a little bit. Because, of course, it's really hard to translate.

方钦心里暗叹一声“扶不起来的东西”

Bad translation: Fang Qin sighed in his heart (he did the sigh entirely in his head, so no one actually saw him sigh), "hold him up and he still can't stand, that less-than-human thing."

Fang Qin is majorly disparaging Assistant Minister Lv here.

It's customary for older, retired men to put their bird in a carry-able size cage and then take it out on a walk to a local park or into the local wilderness, swinging the cage all the while so that the little bird can exercise its perching muscles and enjoy some fresh air. It's called 遛鸟, just like walking your dog is 遛狗。

The verb used here is 讹 é = error / false / to extort （mdbg.net), and where I have found elsewhere as "blackmail" or "cheat".

Sassy bird, yes?

"White Cut Chicken" is 白斩鸡 which is an amazing dish that we used to have every time we had banquet-style dinners at any Cantonese restaurant. It's super good. The only way I like to eat chicken. Very tender boiled chicken, served with a side of green-onion oil. Oh I'm getting hungry.

Top: Chang Geng is limping. His leg was hurt in the crash-landing.

Bottom: A 肚兜 is a cute hanky-sized bit of cloth with ties that go around the neck and the waist. It's meant to keep the belly warm. I usually only see little kids (like, babies and toddlers) in period movies wear them (and that's all they wear if it's warm enough).

If you watch the animated masterpiece Nezha 1979, a dudou is the only thing that Nezha wears from the time he emerges / is born until he kills his first dragon prince. You have to prove yourself as a dragon-killer before you get to wear pants.

They come in adult (woman) sizes, too, but that's for another day.

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

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!)

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.”

People on this website will really see others enjoy the complexity of an epic novel full of political intrigue longer than the entire LOTR trilogy featuring a canon gay couple who literally defy death to end up together and they’ll say “these fetishistic sickos only like the novel over the idol drama censored adaptation because of the existence of those, like four sex scenes and one dub-con kiss”. 

WangXian Kisses! 💖

by  도세 @DOSAE_ANIMATION (YT / IG / TWITTER / WEIBO) ※Permission to post this was given by the artist (©). Please do not repost, edit or remove credits. 

posting on twitter feels like throwing something you worked on for hours, days, weeks into a river, hoping it'll get swept out to sea for many people to experience, only for it to immediately crash into some rocks and explode. its gone now. if no one sees it in the 0.00003 seconds it exists on their timelines, no one ever will

posting on tumblr is like carefully placing your work in the middle of a dark abandoned factory, and slowly a bunch of weird little goblins manifest from the shadows and touch your work all over with their little raccoon hands and share it with each other. sometimes they find your thing again many years later and excitedly share it again

the weird goblins are much more enjoyable

Links are updated!

I finally connected and updated links between my Notes pages for Stars of Chaos!

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist

I hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

And let me know if anyone wants an Audio Guide to the names, like I did for Erha.

:)

This comic series is so much fun!

This really gives me hope that even though some people (🙁) can’t draw, they (we) can still make great content and brighten people’s days.

Go WangXian comics!

Wake up! Your legacy is in shambles!

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MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 4

Here is Part 4 of my annotations of MDZS Volume 2, pages 199 - 279.

(Silly as it may seem to you, I drink alcohol so rarely that "drinks" to me means "water / tea / soda". Conveniently, Chinese has a word for "alcohol" specifically.)