Read-in-progress (not) 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:

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Comments

[geraineon]

Sorry this is late! This week has been a little crazy...

Reading wise, nothing. But I've been playing Where Winds Meet, which really feels like wandering in the jianghu in a wuxia novel.

Also, really bummed that Haitang (the publisher of English translated danmei and not that site where people post fiction) is such a disappointment in the way they treat translators and, well, everything, and that they hold the licenses to translate a number of titles I like. Sigh

[aurumcalendula]

I've been catching up on Begging the Heavens in Vain and To Embers We Return this week.

[douqi]

Re: Haitang — so awful. And what confuses is me is people in the fandom continuing to hype up their novels seemingly without a thought for how they treated their translators. Fandom solidarity is no longer a thing to be relied on I guess. Very frustrating that they got so many Jiang Zi Bei titles.

Evergreen tweet: “go to hell” is pathetic. it’s boring. “i hope your favourite novels get licensed by a disaster pub" is terrifying. it’s real, it could happen to you.

[douqi]

I started Home for the Funeral and while there have been some nicely creepy bits, it's not really moving much on the romance front at the moment (and this is a relatively short book, around 324K words).

[aurumcalendula]

It's a shame about Haitang! tbh the way they've acted has put me off buying any of their books, even though I've heard good things about various titles. I'm hoping they don't pick up licenses for titles I like.

[ehyde]

(not a cnovel) At this point I'm finishing *Daughter of the Moon Goddess* because I'm almost done and I want to see how it ends, and it's not *bad,* it's just . . . it's really not doing it for me. A late twist identity reveal made me reflect on how much I prefer secret identities when they're played with and the reader knows the reveal before the characters, so if anyone has any recs (cnovels or otherwise) that you think do a good job with identity porn, I'd love to hear about them!

(also not a cnovel) I bought "There is No Antimemetics Division" as a gift, not having read it, because I saw a rec from my local bookstore and realized it was by the same author who blew my mind with the one short story of theirs I read several years ago. I really want to read it but I put it in the mail already, so I'm waiting on a hold at the library now. Or I might seek out the webnovel version if that's still around ...

[halfcactus]

I need to play Where Winds Meet for the cat sidequest haha

And so sorry about your fav novels ;__;

[halfcactus]

I read uhhhh one chapter of the Mobius cnovel (the drama adaptation came out this year). I think I should give up on reading for the rest of the year haha but it was pretty interesting to see the drama / novel differences! I'm still halfway through the drama so I'm not super sure how much the drama diverges (with regard to the ML/FL relationship).

I did also try Where Winds Meet and concluded that mobile games (or games designed for it) aren't for me. ;___; Or maybe my gaming brain is just beyond rescue now. I like that it has story mode, at least!

[duckprintspress]

Thanks to three days of boring af fairly slow vending (that turned out okay monetarily, it just dragged at times) I was able to force myself to finish Dream of the Red Chamber! interesting book. I can see why it's a classic. At some point in the not-so-distant future (a few years maybe?) I'd love to read a more modern translation, and one that isn't abridged. Now that I've got all the characters straight I think I'd get more out of the beginning, too.

I also reread all of the I Ship My Rival x Me manhua... again... to celebrate that I finished the book in Chinese!! My version was censored so I wanted all the feels that are in the manhua, lmao.

And, to tide me over on Chinese reading until the new year, when I'm planning to start my next novel, I'm reading vol. 1 of the Copper Coins (by Mu Su Li) manhua. I've read it in English before and I have read the novel.

Re: my next Chinese novel read... anyone reading this... especially anyone with familiarity with how complex the material is in Chinese... do you think I should read Daomu Biji vol. 2 by Nanpai Sanshu (I don't own vol. 1 in Chinese) next, or Qianqiu Gaokao by Mu Su Li? I've basically decided it's between those two, based on what folks have told me about how each difficult is, but I keep waffling on which to do.

[lee_bella]

I would say language difficulty wise, Mu Su Li's Global Examination is easier to read than Daomu Biji. Global Examination's pacing is brisker, and the text is not as dense as Daomu Biji.

[lee_bella]

I finished The Ace Undercover is Forced to Become a Great Film Director (金牌卧底被迫成为大导演) by Tie Ma Juan Juan (铁马倦倦) recently. The story is exactly what it says in the title. A young retired undercover officer enters the film industry to make a living and help his former gang subordinates find a new lease in life. This novel has no CP. The film making portion of the story gets very technical at times. There are references to real life films, directors and film festivals. This story feels like a love letter to film making, and at the same time it criticises certain aspects of the film industry, whether it's within Mainland China or abroad.

[duckprintspress]

tbh not what I would have expected, so that makes it extra good to know! It'll also help that I'm more familiar with the story for Global Examination; I've only read Daomu Biji once, whereas Global Examination I've read the whole book once, and I've re-read what's out in English, and I've read the manhua (twice in English and once in Chinese). So at least for the early parts of the book, I know the general storyline pretty well.

...oh man, I just pulled it out. It's so long! This is gonna take me all year lmao.

[lee_bella]

The writing in Daomu Biji (2007) is closer to what you might see in a language textbook or published novels before smartphone was a thing. It's more verbose and descriptive. Global Examination (2018) reads more like the kind of web novels written with a "read it on your phone" mentality in mind -- shorter sentences and paragraphs, concise writing, etc. Even though both novels were first published on the web, the writing styles in 2000s and late 2010s are quite different. Web novels written in the 2000s were closer in style to genre fiction written in the 20th century -- it was the style that aspiring novelists at the time were emulating. Late 2010s web novels were steeped in web culture. By that time web novels had more or less evolved into its own thing with its own conventions.

[duckprintspress]

Oh, interesting. With that additional information, I'm now wondering which I'd actually find harder. Shorter sentences and paragraphs do sound a lot better, and I often struggle with long descriptive passages, but on the flip side I mostly study by reading things written more formally, as that's the primary type of practice readings in DuChinese. I tend to find things written more casually harder, especially if they use a lot of slang (though I wouldn't expect QQGK to use a lot of slang, unlike ISMM...) I've also done a lot of history readings, and two very long HSK6-level readings focused on archaeological stuff (the one I'm reading now literally introduced the work 盗墓 the other day, which made me laugh, like nope don't need that flashcard I've got that one down thanks lmao).

I've got both easily accessible (I already pulled QQGK out the other day after we talked about it), it might just make most sense for me to tackle the first couple pages of each and see how they feel. Hmm.

(and thank you again, I really find chatting with you about this stuff so so helpful.)

[lee_bella]

Yeah, I also think the best approach would be to try the first few pages of both and see how it goes.

(And no problem. I enjoy chatting with you about this topic ^_^)

[duckprintspress]

o7 pulled out DMBJ vol. 2!

I looked at the first few sentences of each; I'm leaning toward QQGK both because of what you said and because I definitely remember better what's going on in it, lol. :D

[geraineon]

Shudders. I wouldn't wish that on my worst fandom enemy...

[geraineon]

Yeah, right now Haitang is on my Absolutely Do Not Buy list. I hope the titles will get picked up again by other publishers for other regions...

[geraineon]

<3

I've been enjoying where winds meet a lot and I hope you'll be able to play it somehow.

[geraineon]

What's the story about?

[geraineon]

Just checked out Begging Heavens in Vain, and it seems intriguing. How political is it so far?

[geraineon]

Ah, when secret identity sorta just gets revealed like that, it sometimes can feel like an asspull... I don't have recs, unfortunately.

[geraineon]

Is it already different from the get go, re: Mobius?

Oh no. Is it the interface that's bad? And yeah, just do story mode! The story itself has been enjoyable so far.

[geraineon]

Did you enjoy it? And were there anything you find particularly interesting in terms of its critiques of the film industry?

[aurumcalendula]

It's pretty political. At the moment it's mostly focused on politics (Jiang Changbai becoming emperor, complications related to opening the Imperial exams to women, etc.) and the romance is very slowburn.

[lee_bella]

It's pretty good. I think movie buffs in particular will like this one a lot. The first half (where the MC, as a grassroots newbie director, starts at the very bottom, and has to work extra hard to get into the film industry) is stronger than the second half (where the MC has become too much of a Gary Stu as he helps reform the broken film industry system).

The story talks a lot about discrimination, whether it's film school grads looking down on self-taught film makers or racism (and there's a lot of it in the story, such as how the western world wants a slice of China's billion-dollor box office pie, but at the same time shows disdain towards the very people they want to get money from).

[douqi]

The anti-Hallmark Christmas movie story: a high-flying young woman returning to her mother's rural hometown, where she discovers the importance of love and family ties vs personal ambitions, but more importantly finds herself being hunted relentlessly by an eldritch force.

(wrote a review here.