cnovels | Free-For-All Friday

geraineon posting in

Time for free for all Friday, a day for random chit-chat!

Do you want to talk about the other novels you are reading or find a read-along partner? Practice your Chinese? Request for fics? Ask for beta readers? Just talk about your day?

Go right ahead!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

geraineon

I am watching the Glasgow WorldCon and there's one session on "Unpacking Chinese female SF." It's on Sunday. Will summarize it here when I'm done then~

Anyone else participating/watching worldcon? Turns out there's an online ticket for online only participation! Here's the program: https://guide.glasgow2024.org/

From:

anehan

Looking forward to your summary!

From:

anne

I finished Evil as Humans. The translation made it something of a slog, and I gave up on understanding the Other Side stuff, but Ge Tingting made it all worthwhile!

Now I'm reading How to Survive as a Villain, and enjoying myself very much.

From:

geraineon

Ge Tingting is great! Yeah, I wish there's a better tl for Evil As Humans... but that's what we have I guess! Do you think you'll be reading more Nian Zhong works?

From:

anne

Probably eventually? But I have a very large stack of things I want to get to first. (The rest of Thousand Autumns! Peerless! Tai Sui! And so on)

I wish more translators wanted native-English betas. I could help *so much*.

From:

geraineon

idk what's the etiquette about offering, but my sense is that a lot of translators use this as a way to practice, and having it out there to be checked/corrected by someone they have no relationship with is an uncomfortable thing to do. In Evil As Humans's case, it's edited MTL, so I don't know how much better it can get even if the language and flow is cleaned up even more.

I am excited for any titles you pick up next. I love all those novels in your parentheses!

From:

anne

Yeah I'm not rude to people. I'm just wishing they would ask somebody.

From:

shipperslist

I'm dragging my feet with Devil Venerable; haven't opened my Kindle in a week. *sigh*

To distract myself, rec me transmigration/system novels! I loved SVSSS and would like to read something similar. I'm not interested in het but don't care if it's M/M or F/F. Please and thank you!

From:

aurumcalendula

Have you read Dragon Subjugation Incantation? It kinda reminds me of SVSSS at points. It's only translated up to chaper 51 so far, but I'm really enjoying it so far!

From:

shipperslist

Thanks for the rec! I'll add it to my pile.

From:

geraineon

If Devil Venerable is not enjoyable, it's perfectly okay to drop! (I am a huge supporter of dropping if it's not sparking joy) I'm a little sad it's not working out for you, but eh, different people, different taste.

Similar in terms of humor, or similar in that it's a transmigration novel?

From:

shipperslist

I know I can drop it but I'm also stubborn lol.

Similar in terms of humor, or similar in that it's a transmigration novel?
Yes. 😁

From:

geraineon

If after having met the ensemble cast, Devil Venerable is still not fun, I don't think it'll change as you continue because that's a huge reason why I love it XD

I just took a look at my reading list and huh, I don't think I read a lot of humor actually. So I don't have recs for humor + transmigration into a book. How to Survive as a Villain is a fun series but it has a tone shift halfway through from humorous to tragic.

From:

shipperslist

Part of the reason for my annoyance is that the quality of the translation isn't very high and the proofreading leaves a lot to be desired...

From:

geraineon

Unfortunately, that's ... a lot of the fan tl out there ahaha. My brain has learnt to edit as I read.

From:

shipperslist

Awesome. 😶

I mean, if it was a MTL, I’d get it. But it was made by a human and proofread by three people—I guess I just expected the bare minimum like running it through a grammar program or something.

From:

hazevi

I've come to realize whenever I think about the court politics/historical genre I tend to compare new stuff I consume to both Nirvana in Fires (Langya Bang) and Stars of Chaos (Sha Po Lang). If you ask what about QJJ it's because I haven't read QJJ in its entirety (that thing intimidates me lol). I think these three are the pinnacle of court politics for me, and they also have the added bonus of having great female characters. Nihuang and Xia Dong in NiF1, Meng Qianxue, Lin Xi and Xun Anru in NiF2, Chen Qingxu in SPL.

Anyways, something that I definitely would like to see more in all c-novel genres (or scriptwriting, I guess) would be female ministers in the literati in historical novels. Going through most genres I think we are now getting female general/princesses in power more and more, ie. Nihuang in Nirvana in Fire 1, or Li Rong in The Princess Royal but there seldom are women in power who aren't generals/princesses (or maybe empress dowagers? idk). Note: I also love both of these types of characters, but I think there are more than a handful of them.

I think given the restrictions of historical setting based novels and actual Chinese history it's understandable that there aren't a lot of these female minister characters. But still, if any authors would like to write an alt historical universe based novel where there's vague gender equality and women are allowed to enter court politics, I'd very MUCH like to see strong female characters that climb to high ranks among the literati ministers due to their ability to be able to deal with domestic policy or something like that, I feel like it's very underexplored!

All of this came from the fact that I recently read a novel with one of these characters; I need that story to marinate a little and then I'll probably go crazy over said character haha.

Recently reading a lot of historical has just made me sorely aware of the fact that I'm very lacking in translation skills to do historical novels well/efficiently so that's something that I'm planning on working on for the rest of this year and maybe first half of next year? We'll see. If anyone wants to exchange ideas on this I'd be willing to~

Hope everyone has a great week!

From:

aurumcalendula

This reminds me that I really need to check out Langya Bang once I finish QJJ!

Anyways, something that I definitely would like to see more in all c-novel genres (or scriptwriting, I guess) would be female ministers in the literati in historical novels.

I would love to see more characters like that too!

From:

hazevi

🤝🤝

From:

geraineon

more female ministers will be awesome!

All of this came from the fact that I recently read a novel with one of these characters

Which novel is that?

Feel free to make a top level post about exchanging ideas/working together for historical novel translations! I think that will get more eyes on it. Hope you have a great week too~

From:

hazevi

The novel is《山川月》, or The Moon Above These Lands (my working translation title) by Su Xian, a baihe court politics novel! I will definitely also be posting more about this novel myself later down the line but digesting this novel has been something given it's 1.2 million character length so it will take some time.

it's link is
here !

From:

geraineon

Court politics!! /vibrates in excitement

... 1.2 million character length. wow, how many chapters is that

From:

aurumcalendula

I finished my QJJ volume 1 reread as well as the collection Angelwings. w/r/t the latter, the short stories were very hit and miss for me, but I'm glad I read them.