halfcactus

Fanvid set to Mao Buyi's 借/Borrowing: In which Luo Weizhao borrows bits of everything to keep Pei Su safe and warm.

Clips were sourced from eps 1–27, with major spoilers for up to episode 16.

CW: flashing lights at around 1:00

Watch on YouTube

Also on: AO3 / Tumblr

( Translation notes )

Luo Weizhao/Pei Su + physical contact + UST (clips sourced from eps 1-21):

Watch on YouTube

Also on: AO3 / Tumblr

There's one wrong frame in this but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Me:
Why does it take me a full week just to watch 2 episodes

Also me:
*stops watching every 5 mins to make gifs and vids*)

A fanvid about Pei Su's grief about his mom, with clips sourced from eps 1-15 of Justice in the Dark and a lot of emphasis on the lyrics. It's set to the Taiwanese song Mercy Mercy, Green Tara of Thousand Flowers by Collage, which I've been obsessed with since I first heard it. (Here's a journal page I did on the lyrics last year!)

Watch on YouTube

AO3 / Twitter

~Process~ video of the first 20 seconds (concept VS final)... Looking at it now I'm realizing that the "burning" transition in the draft version was better but oh well!!! I'm kind of happy with how the type turned out because it was so ugly at first that I got determined to finish this vid just to overwrite the memory of ugliness that kept playing in my mind lol. I've sorted out Resolve's subtitle issues btw! I just have to right-click the Timeline and set the timecode.

Watch on YouTube

The lyric translation was adapted from the band’s own English translation; most of my changes were in the service of making them more self-explanatory (since there's a lot going on onscreen) and recontextualizing them for the characters/video clips.

And in the process of handling the text I not only felt closer to it, I also discovered that in Taiwanese Hokkien

language things

个 is a traditional character, and means the same as in simplified Mandarin; apparently Taiwanese, which uses traditional script, recognizes 个 and 個 as separate words, with 个 (pronounced eh) being the general counter word, and 個 (pronounced ke) being a counter for months.

My mind was so blown by this discovery before it hit me one day later that this is probably also true in my dialect (in the sense that I have heard ko as a counter word for month, ie. chih-ko geh for "one month"), I'm just too illiterate to understand what's happening lololol.

Anyway I documented everything! The original Taiwanese lyrics, the band's translation, my edits (not all of them justifiable).( all under the cut )

1.

The tree across my window had its first full bloom of the year, the first along its street to turn gold. It shed its flowers two days later, of course, but it felt special, like it was just for me hehe. And hopefully it will bloom several more times before summer ends. :")


2.
It was a long weekend for us and I had so many plans for it: catching up on sleep, catching up on Justice in the Dark, finishing I Am Setsuna, finishing all the episodes/movies I started and forgot to continue, journaling, etc... So far the only thing I've managed to do was game a little, GIF a lot, and finally sub ZXC's latest song, which confirmed for me that Resolve has been misbehaving as far as subtitles are concerned... I should probably check if there are any later versions but I'm afraid that any potential update might make the program stop working!?!?




3.
I actually have been having a lot of complicated thoughts about Anglo cfandom since Justice in the Dark has me drawn back into various fandom spaces (mostly because I dump my GIFs on Tumblr and Twitter) after a long time of only being present on Youtube which was its own can of strangeness.

The drama itself has been... fine. I'm not the best judge because I watch raws (bc there's a provider that has added CN subs... And sometimes it's nice to read bullet comments haha) and can only understand so much... And I'm not particularly invested in the adaptation's plot... And I skip-watch all the parts that stress me out... It tracks fairly close to the novel, but I'm not sure how cohesive it is to an audience who is unfamiliar with the original—a lot was obviously cut (in the sense that scenes are conspicuously missing), and a lot of transitions feel janky, but the emotional storyline between Pei Su and Luo Weizhao has been kept intact. Their relationship is progressing at a different pace, which for me is interesting? For now, at least! Like it's sad that the gay got cut out, but I don't mind this version where Pei Su is still some level of antagonistic towards LWZ (not yet flirting), maybe because I'm just a casual Modu fan. XD

(A little nervous about seeing any SEA rep here since I remember mentions of it in the audio drama, but I'm not sure the universe has a concept of SEA, other than being filmed there.)

Zhang Xincheng's acting seems to be well received across various audiences, but I'm weirdly... indifferent to it (the reception). I guess it's not that weird when I've seen (and have been following) most of his body of work and I tend to avoid the fandom/Weibo side of things; from my POV, watching his performance in a drama he filmed four years ago and was partially released two years ago feels more like a puzzle piece sliding into place... Like obviously I think he was cast well and put a lot of effort to build a character that is more interesting than usual... I just don't do fandom the same way anymore, I guess? My relationship with cdramas has changed, idk. Still enjoying! But from a quiet and more neutral distance. ^^;

Watch on YouTube

CW: fast-moving motion / glitch effects, and some flashing lights.

One last Cdrama Gotcha for Gaza video - this one's a treat for llonkrebboj who requested Murderer!Fei Du in Justice in the Dark (the ill-fated cdrama adaptation of Silent Reading/Mo Du), which to me is really just an excuse to make a compilation of ZXC's microexpressions and play around with Capcut's effects. One of the text transitions makes the text dreadfully pixellated, so note to self: never use that again lol. I wish I could have made a gifset of these clips, but *gestures at broken Photoshop*

For my own reference, the fonts I used were BOOWIE and a script font whose name I can't remember but starts with an A.