cnovels | Introductions

[and also tends to lurk, but bursts out like the koolaid man when anyone mentions mo du]

An entirely legitimate approach!

Mo Du is definitely a popular one on this comm it seems! I really need to get back to Guardian.

Mo Du is SO GOOD. (Guardian, yes! *quivers*)

I wonder if anyone has the uncensored version saved somewhere... surely it still exists. I'll try asking some ppl I know

I have a habit, when I take on a new language, of using poetry for practice texts. My previous language was Japanese, and I got a couple books out of that. I'm getting a manuscript of Chinese poems ready for submission, hopefully over the summer.

Jiayou for the Chinese poems~!

Hi! I'm Rae, ve/ver/vis/verself or they/them pronouns. I'm very rarely on DW, but I'm excited for this community so I will try to be a bit more active. Mostly I hang out on mastodon.

I'm currently struggling my way through Zhang Gong'an in machine translation, because there isn't a full human translation yet but after watching A League of Nobleman, I needed more time with the characters. E. Danglars recently translated one of the extras and I have great hopes they're working on the full novel (please please please). I'm also about to start book two of Thousand Autumns.

I spend a lot of my time in MXTX fandom (all three novels). Outside of that, my favourite cnovel fluctuates, but Jing Wei Qing Shang and Evil As Humans are both strong contenders. Favourite author is also hard to say, because most webnovels are so long I can't actually get through too many in my spare time, but right now I'm very keen on Nian Zhong and Meng Xi Shi.

Apart from reading cnovels, I love reading other SFF and historical fiction, hobby coding (despite also coding for work), writing fanfic, and learning Mandarin Chinese.

I'd really like to have conversations here about a wider range of cnovels than in other spaces, and maybe meet new people with similar interests. :)

I really enjoy your Chinese poetry translations! Good luck with the manuscript!

Hi, I'm Phaeton! I haven't read much yet, I'm currently only collecting volumes of the danmei translations.

1. What are you currently reading?
Not really reading anything at the moment. I'm theoretically in the middle of the second volume of Liu Cixin's Trisolaris trilogy, but I'm not really in the mood for it. Which has nothing to do with the book itself, but more with the circumstances in which I was reading it last time.

2. What is your favourite cnovel?
So far I only finished one/two novels, but I really loved both of them - The King's Avatar and its prequel.

3. Do you have a favourite author?
Not yet!

4. What are your other hobbies and interests?
I'm currently mostly gaming Immortal Life and watching c-dramas. Other interests are Scotland and Scotch Single Malt.

5. What do you hope to see from this community?
I'm going to let myself be surprised. *g* Honestly, I'm at full capacity with my own comm, have barely the energy to read my dwircle, so I'll be a lurker at best. But I hope this community will be successful and fun!

Oh, I forgot to do this! Apologies in advance, I don't have the brain to read everyone else's right now, but I'd like to and I'll try to catch up.

I'm unforth (agender, aroace, 41, mother of two, white Jewish/atheist USAdian, any pronouns), I post on Dreamwidth from the account for the business I own, Duck Prints Press, which is an indie press that works with fancreators to publish their original work. I'm a fandom old, and I've been into danmei and cnovels since late 2019.

1. What are you currently reading? I just finished (re)reading MDZS, finishing the official translation, and I started (re)reading the official translation of 2ha vol. 5 yesterday. (I read both as fantranslations/mtl, now reading the full official). My next new-to-me read will be In the Dark by Jin Shi Si Chai.

2. What is your favourite cnovel? Mo Du by priest, hands down. (second is Tian Guan Ci Fu, third is 2ha, after that it gets fuzzier)

3. Do you have a favourite author? Gotta be priest.

4. What are your other hobbies and interests? uh. heck. this shouldn't be so hard to answer. reading in general, fibercrafts, whatever my kids are into at the moment (so mostly Minecraft rn), and various other things.

5. What do you hope to see from this community? Just more like-minded people to hang out with!!!

Edited 2024-05-11 13:42 (UTC)

oh hai!! this is unforth from Tumblr. I've been having so much fun with your last name polls, I'm happy to see you here!

amen on the "cnovels beyond just mxtx" part it drives me insane how many people get interested in MXTX stuff and just. stop there. There are so many amazing books and like yes I love TGCF especially but please I want people to talk to about OTHER books, too!!!

having read a fair amount of DMBJ, whenever I'm at it again I'm always just screaming at NPSS "PUT THE SHOVEL DOWN. STOP DIGGING. WE DO NOT NEED MORE PLOT HOLES." Lmao....

if you liked those two, may I offer you more priest?

*nudges this link to E. Danglars' wonderful translation of Mo Du in your direction... https://edanglarstranslations.com/modu *

Good to have you here~! I wanted to ask on fedi but didn't wanna pressure XD

(psst you can post/link your recent review too)

crossing my fingers and hoping for Zhang Gong'an by E. Danglars too.

Welcome! I'll be interested to know what you think of The Dark Forest if you ever finish it.

I just looked up Immortal Life and it looks interesting! Maybe I'll check it out too. What's your fav scotch? (I have very little knowledge but I did like what my friend let me try from his collection)

<3 I hope this comm will get to a point where it's self-sustaining in content but we shall see!

I mean, I definitely plan to continue reading at some point, but right now I always remember unpleasant stuff when I think about taking that book into my hands. I also plan on reading all those danmei novels I'm collecting, but I'm undecided what to start first. The one I'm most interested in is Thousand Autumns, and luckily the final volume should be out soon.

It's a fun game! Last time I gamed was 24 years ago, so it's a miracle that this one managed to lure me in. The mix of farming and xianxia did it for me. I'm on my second character now and closing in on 400 hours game time.

I don't actually have a favourite, although I have a slight preference for portwood finishes. But I've tried so many different ones (next year will be my 30 year anniversary since I fell in love with Scotch Single Malt), and by now I mostly pick depending on my mood and on the season. I usually have always three different bottles open at a time (sweet, smokey, and something special), but I'm also a collector. Btw, I run the very quiet community

scotch_single_malt, and sometimes I post stuff, especially when I visited another distillery.

Glad to have you here!

Mo Du is def popular here it seems, haha

Priest's second-to-last novel (i.e. the one she released before this current one) 桥头楼上 (I don't think fandom has settled on a title translation on it, so I'm just going to go ahead and call it quite literally End of the Bridge, Top of the Tower) is gen, no romance, and wholly dominated by female characters. It's short, contemporary, very tightly written and does some interesting things with form. Also fully free-to-read on JJWXC! I'm not sure if there's any sort of fan translation out there though.

Edited 2024-05-11 20:45 (UTC)

Hello! I'm douqi and I started the

baihe_media comm. I also translate the baihe historical romance Purely by Accident (which I am close to finishing!) and some other odds and ends.

I'm currently between c-webnovels, but I just finished reading The Favourite by Da Ying, a baihe xuanhuan novel, and will shortly be starting on either Above the Fates by Si Bai Ba Shi Si, a corporate thriller, or Divination by You Jiao Yao Shui, a supernatural thriller (both of these are baihe novels).

At the moment, my two favourite c-webnovels are Ravenous (reviewed here), an urban fantasy novel, and The Creator's Grace, a near-future sci-fi thriller which has been licensed for publication in English by Rosmei (a fact about which I have Views).

My favourite webnovelist is Ning Yuan, author of the two abovementioned novels, who has been writing baihe for over 15 years across a wide range of genres.

As for hobbies and interests, other than translating and fansubbing, I also, er, read other books. I try to read two professionally-published books in English for every Chinese webnovel I read — it does wonders for maintaining a solid sense of what a sentence looks like in natural English!

Re: what I hope to see from this community: a space for more thoughtful discussions of c-webnovels, and also to see what other people are reading (I'm nosy). I read a niche genre and I read in Chinese, so sometimes that can get a bit isolating.

I am also, somewhat against my better judgment, a Jin Yong wuxia nerd (level of nerdery: read all the novels at least once, the major ones multiple times). I have a couple of introductory posts on Jin Yong and Gu Long, and would like to update and post them here if that's within scope for the comm.

Thanks for setting this comm up!

Thank you, I'll check it out!

Welcome! I'm glad to have you here <3

The Creator's Grace, a near-future sci-fi thriller which has been licensed for publication in English by Rosmei (a fact about which I have Views).

Oh, sf thriller!! That's right up my alley. Hm, did something happen with Rosmei? (since being off twitter, I haven't been keeping up with the going ons in localization issues)

I try to read two professionally-published books in English for every Chinese webnovel I read — it does wonders for maintaining a solid sense of what a sentence looks like in natural English!

Haha, I'm trying to do this too... I can feel my English slipping. The plan is to read another English book after I finish my current read.

I have a couple of introductory posts on Jin Yong and Gu Long, and would like to update and post them here if that's within scope for the comm.

Very welcome! Scope of the comm is basically, any novels originally in Chinese, haha. I'd love to read your introductory posts. My exposure has all been purely through TVB dramas.

Edited 2024-05-12 02:53 (UTC)

I love Thousand Autumns, so I'm excited and looking forward to you picking it up to read!

I keep telling myself I need to diversify my games but I've been stuck playing Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail for years, it's terrible.

Will check out the comm! Maybe expand my knowledge and start collecting myself~

Wait I didn't know she had another gen novel, this sounds perfect, thanks! I'm still waiting to finish She Belongs to Me before starting a new book (it's gonna take a while lol) but short + gen (or at least mostly gen) + all-woman cast in a contemporary setting is so relevant to my interests. Looks like it's mystery too! I think I can do 32 chapters of ~3-5k characters each......... I'm not confident in my reading ability but this seems worth a shot, thank you so much!!!!!!

I try to read two professionally-published books in English for every Chinese webnovel I read — it does wonders for maintaining a solid sense of what a sentence looks like in natural English!
This is so true lol (I had to rehabilitate my English by reading profic, after getting too used to fantranslation syntax) so I'm so happy to see translators doing this too. XD

I really like seeing your posts! I don't think I was really aware of how rich the cnovel landscape was until then.

Re: Rosmei - there have been some discussions over at baihe_media here:

https://baihe-media.dreamwidth.org/14675.html
https://baihe-media.dreamwidth.org/16669.html
https://baihe-media.dreamwidth.org/20039.html

I think the tl;dr would be:
1) low rates (which is typical for most licensed publishers, I think, though it still makes me sad)
2) very bad marketing - whenever they announce their baihe novels, they have absolutely no info about the author or the book, or even a summary of it. They have now hired a new translator to do the summaries after the backlash from this post lol

I keep hearing good things about Thousand Autumns, which is such a relief to me. I loved the donghua, and I'm looking forward to reading the novels, but I want to have the complete set of volumes in my hands before I start.

My nephew plays Genshin Impact and I watched him and his uncle play, and he would be delighted if I started playing, too. *g* I get being stuck on one or two games, though, same is currently happening with me and Immortal Life, after all. It's such a low stress game, despite the beginning, and farming really does play a huge role, so you can take your time with the plot. I spent 303 hours on my first character alone, and it was lovely!

*g* It's really very quiet over there. But I'm having fun with posting distillery tours, sometimes even with pics.

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