Read-in-Progress Wednesday

[geraineon]

This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

Comments

[geraineon]

i'm sorry for the delay again orz

nothing new from me, except, PLEASE GO ARCHIVE/SAVE YOUR AUDIO DRAMAS.

I didn't realize some will be taken off maoer and lots have already been taken off manbo (fml I never did figure out how to retrieve my account there). It's supposed to be a temporary thing, but well, who knows.

[halfcactus]

Is there another wave of Maoer cuts? ;__; I remember them taking down danmei ADs years ago and then putting edited versions back up. I really regretted not getting Sha Po Lang and Sa Ye back then... Like the uncut versions are still accessible on other sites (and to users who purchased them before the takedowns), I just prefer to access ADs through Maoer. ;___;

[geraineon]

Yeah, I got messages in my maoer that SPL, global examination, AWM: PUBG, Mo Du are all gonna be temporarily taken down. And that's because I bought them...

I am gonna try to save whatever I can.

[halfcactus]

Oh you're right there was a notif! It doesn't appear to affect users who have already purchased the respective audio drama (we can still access the version we "purchased") but it's not a bad idea to back up whatever we have while we can still access them! I have a few random Mo Du + Little Mushroom + I Ship My Rival X Me eps archived but I'm just so lazy and my filekeeping was so disorganized I gave up lol especially since certain types of content (gacha extras) appear to be mobile-only and I'd have to screenrecord. Thanks for the heads-up!

[geraineon]

I haven't been working as hard as I should in archiving but I'm hoping to get all the stuff I have notifications about downloaded... so far, I've only done Global Examination s1. There is so much Mo Du that I am feeling a little tired just thinking of downloading it orz

[llonkrebboj]

Thank you so much for highlighting that and sharing the method!!!! Recieved the alerts for Modu (I got seasons for the major injury bits 😚) and Don't Be Too Insightful. Going to start saving *everything*.

[geraineon]

<333

[halfcactus]

I read the first chapter of 風之咒 The Wind Spell the (ongoing) dark fantasy baihe mermaid manhua and I have successfully drawn other people in with screencaps of their first meeting + the legendary oyster-licking scene.

Image

If anyone has recs to similarly short manhua by other artists, I'd be interested! Other ones I've liked are 燈神 The Djinn (< 10 chapters) by 深海巨狗 and 堤防 Embankment (oneshot) by Yao-Ching Tseng.

[geraineon]

That's beautiful!

[lee_bella]

I'm currently reading Zhichu's infinite flow novels, Survivorship Bias (幸存者偏差[无限]), starring two somewhat unhinged main characters. Lots of mind game. The style of the sub-scenarios is pretty similar to the escape room reality show that Zhichu created for her showbiz novels I Only Like Your Made-up Persona and Fanservice Paradox, albeit bloodier.

[duckprintspress]

Oh, interesting... I liked how Zhi Chu wrote the escape room stuff in I Only Like Your Made-Up Persona (which is published in English as Rose and Renaissance, btw)...

[lee_bella]

Yeah, Zhi Chu is great at writing escape rooms. Survivorship Bias isn't all about escape rooms, but there's definitely a lot of scheming and mind game in the story.

I didn't know the official English title for I Only Like Your Made-up Persona is Rose and Renaissance. It makes sense if you read the novel, I guess...

[duckprintspress]

With that emphasis in Survivorship Bias, I'll have to check it out sometime.

Yeah, I was surprised about the name change (it took me a minute after reading your post to remember that was the actual title) but the new title does make sense contextually.

I liked Rose and Renaissance best when it was doing the games at the beginning.

I liked it least once they were together and everything was set and there were 200+ pages of redundant, repetitive extras lmao. how many times am I gonna read these guys playing Werewolf??

It's the only Zhi Chu I've read so far but I'd def read more.

[lee_bella]

20+ extra chapters is definitely too much. I still ended up reading all of them anyway...

[duckprintspress]

saaaaaame

tho I took breaks, like, I started another book, then read one extra, then read something else, then read a couple extras...

[aurumcalendula]

I'm still enjoying Dragon Subjugation Incantation! I liked seeing more of Yun Xuan and Meng Zhou in chapter 89, although Highlight for spoilers! *I suspect that their subplot will end in tragedy.*

I'm going to miss having regular updates for Begging the Heavens in Vain, but I appreciate the translator giving a heads up that it's going on hiatus.

I'm mostly through the second volume of Love Between Fairy and Devil - I'm liking it, but I think I prefer the first volume. I'm very curious how the drama compares to the novel (especially as the plot seems significantly different from what I've osmosed re: the former).

[geraineon]

Are you reading the official tl for Love Between Fairy and Devil? How's the tl?

[aurumcalendula]

Yep! It reads pretty smoothly to me.

[duckprintspress]

uh... crap... what am I doing? ummm...

* 我和我对家 by PEPA - I'm inching up on the quarter-way-through point! At this rate I MIGHT finish it by the end of the year, lmao. I'm enjoying it! I spotted one really fun difference between the Chinese novel version and the manhua adaptation, and now that we're out of the backstory/self-reflection focused early parts, I feel like I'm following what's going on better. I've definitely been speeding up a little, like, instead of a page taking 10 minutes it's more like 7 or 8 minutes now. Still slow af but improving!

* The Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh-Chin - I haven't been feeling great so I'm not making much progress on this, but I did (finally) start it. I think I need a family tree chart to keep track of all these cousins, lol.

* Astrolabe Rebirth by Fei Tian Ye Xiang - because I have illness brain, I needed something much dumber and easier than Dream of the Red Chamber, and this was on my TBR and stand-alone so I grabbed it and I'm almost 50% done already. It's... fine? Definitely less mature than FTYX's other works I've read, it shows that this was written before most of the others. A lot of the time it feels more like a detailed outline than an actual fleshed-out story; with more room to breathe I think it'd really shine. As it is, it's still interesting, lots of interesting worldbuilding and character stuff going on. I'm looking forward to finding out more about wtf is actually going on.

If I finished Astrolabe Rebirth and still don't have the brain to really focus on Dream of the Red Chamber, I'll be launching into Yuwu/Remnants of Filth by Meatbun Doesn't Eat Meat, since I now have all 7 English volumes...

[larryhammer]

Family trees for Red Chamber is totally necessary. A good translation will have a few.

[duckprintspress]

My copy has, like, a little table in the front? But it's definitely not adequate. I'm thinking I'll hunt a full thing down online. Maybe print it out and use it as a bookmark.

[anne]

I dropped Glory, but I might go back to it, idk. As someone with RSIs I couldn't keep reading the ML spoiling his cutie the MC with excessive practicing. That's not a devastation arc I feel like reading.

So instead I found a version of Kaleidoscope of Death that somehow didn't get taken down! It's not the best translation ever, but it gets the point across. I'm trying to decide if I like it enough to buy six Rosmei volumes, due to both money and shelf space being finite. It doesn't have the silly censorship-related "this is just a video game ruined by evil capitalists from Piaoliangguo" XD but it also doesn't have the ridiculous chemistry between Xia Zhi Guang and Huang Jun Jie, so it's a tossup. (I think the real ship in Spirealm is XZG/Longing tbh)

[geraineon]

The Rosmei volumes are very pretty but I don't remember the translation quality. At some point, I really should watch Spirealm

[larryhammer]

I did continue with Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage, because the translation quality did improve, eventually -- by chapter 40 it's more like a painful literalism or grammar error every other paragraph, instead of multiple per paragraph. However, comma, my library coughed up a copy of Sarah Beth Durst's latest, so Rebirth is on pause.

[geraineon]

Good to hear that the translation improves over time. Literalism/grammar error is unfortunately a very common issue with fantl...

[larryhammer]

I can deal with ordinary levels of translation roughness, but the beginning of this was ... really, REALLY rough.

[llonkrebboj]

Due to work stress driving me batty xD I put Panguan on pause and pulled out a comfort read - 不要学坏[娱乐圈] by 一丛音 | Don't Get Corrupted [Entertainment Industry] by Yi Cong Yin, about a guy with severe social anxiety who (fortunately) gives off super aloof and cold vibes, flailing around as an actor in the entertainment industry to chase his dreams (i.e. his idol).

Meanwhile the new kobo is wonderful!!!! (RIP LIBS 🥺😭) I got a stylus for it to use for annotations and highlighting, and it works just like a notebook now.

I need to think of a name for her 🤔

The black and white bb was Libs, named for his model Libra 2, because I had a lot Tang related books and Tang poetry filed - Li Bai, and because he was my mobile library.

[halfcactus]

Sorry about work but I’m glad you’re happy with your ereader! 👀 at stylus + notebook functionality

Someone in this comm was also talking about 不要学坏 just last week hehe the “comfort read” status is intriguing me

[dayadhvam_triad]

Sorry if you mentioned this earlier somewhere and I missed it, but what new Kobo model are you using? I've been thinking about getting a proper ebook reader... (I stopped using my old B&N Nook years ago and have just been reading them via laptop or phone since then)