halfcactus

Challenge #7: Make a list of fannish and/or creative resources.

Cfandom people are always looking for Chinese learning resources, so here is a list (with other links thrown in):
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Challenge #8 Talk about a current fannish project (fic, art, vid, crochet, funko pop village) (that you are creating or enjoying)
Not exactly fannish, but I'm trying to maintain a journal—and trying to keep reading cnovels so I have content to put on my journal (vocabulary lists). XD I meant to finish My Five Elements Lack You before LNY but I've been to preoccupied to sit down and read, oops.

And someone did an animatic of a Modu audiodrama skit (parody of a viral Korean video/meme) I subtitled/translated, though as usual, I can't look at my old stuff without critiquing them and wanting to claw out my face.

Audio with soft subs:



Animatic by liss:



Challenge #9: Rec Us Your Newest Thing.
Not really a "thing", but, well, my latest dog obsession is Manyu and only Manyu!!! I now understand solo/celeb stans because I felt a wave of crushing disappointment when her owner posted a photo of her little brother... Like, cute doggo, but that's not my baby :( :( :( I hope she's genuinely being treated well by her owners because she seems like such a sweet baby and I love her little face sooooo much.

I also started Fire Emblem: Three Houses last week + am trying to do Yoga with Adriene's January 30-day challenge without following her timeline, ie. just doing a video whenever I feel like it. I don't usually vibe with her videos but this series actually looks beneficial for my back, with different core focuses and an average video length of 18-20 minutes. We'll see if I can make it to the end! (I'm at Day 6 lol)


Challenge #10: Five Things
Five recent reads/watches (or attempts to):

Dungeon Meshi anime: fantasy anime about experiencing the cycle of life by cooking in the dungeon. Updates every Thursday, and it was a nice weekly unwinding ritual for 2 weeks, until I fell into the FE3H pit. I didn't make it very far into the manga, so I'm excited to see the rest of the story in the anime! IMO ep1 flew by too fast for the food and comedy scenes to be truly done justice, but ep2 was a bit smoother. I expect it to find its groove as it goes—even the manga took a couple of volumes to pick up momentum.

Frieren: another fantasy anime, one about mortality, outliving the people you love, and carrying the parts they left behind on your journey. I only got to see maybe 1.5 eps and the grief and pre-grief hit me pretty hard so I'm not super sure this is for me. It's very wholesome and soothing otherwise! The basic premise is life after saving the world.

I Told Sunset About You: 5-episode Thai BL drama, one that I remember a non-fandom friend recommending a few years back, long before the sequel existed. I think I only made it through half an ep because I couldn't multitask to it? XD But production values are very promising, and characters seem to be Thai Chinese, which is interesting to me!

長安三萬里 Chang'an (2023): Just watched this weekend, and will try to write about it at some point lol. tl;dr - This is a 3/5 movie for me.

The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have finally been released – and we have questions: stats and discussion roundup.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

3.5 - I liked the first half better than the second half where the plot escalates but everything still feels kinda simplistic and the baking becomes less defensive. :P But it's still a fun, charming book, one I would recommend IRL (for example, to my relative's teenage daughter who's not enjoying her father's fantasy novel recommendations). I was invested in the characters and their familiars.

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Nirvana in Fire (novel)
A groupread that started May 2022, lol. My not-so-live livetweet thread is here.

Overall, I think I prefer the drama over the novel for how it streamlined the novel, restructured the storytelling and added new dimensions, and for how well it brought the novel's characters to life, but the novel ending feels more right to me in terms of how it ends for Lin Shu. I liked how much more quiet the final showdown was, how the shadow of (highlight for spoilers) Tainainai's death continues to loom over Lin Shu, and for how Lin Shu smiles at the end:

(novel-ending spoiler) 放眼十万男儿，奔腾如虎，环顾爱将挚友，倾心相持。当年梅岭寒雪中所失去的那个世界，似乎又隐隐回到了面前。烟尘滚滚中，梅长苏地唇边露出了一抹飞扬明亮地笑容，不再回眸帝京，而是拨转马头，催动已是四蹄如飞的坐骑，毅然决然地奔向了他所选择地未来，也是他所选择的结局。

I do think that the drama lost some of Liyang's backstory, and Yujin's more obvious deftness, but their opaqueness in the drama made them interesting, still. However, I'm sad that we never got to see Meng Zhi hug MCS. >:(

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光渊 (Modu cdrama)

This has been quite the rollercoaster because I was trying to ignore the rumor about Modu cdrama being cleared to air and about to drop, which turned out to be true. Even more bizarre, the show dropped 8 episodes only a few hours after it was confirmed to have gotten its airing license!?!? And then it just stopped updating after that, LOL.

There's also been just a lot of friction about the cdrama on Twitter, and from what I could see, a lot of it was huge conversations about what people assumed of the cdrama adaptation, and not the actual cdrama adaptation. Now that it's been two weeks and all 8 eps have human-translated English subs, maybe it's calmed down a bit and people are assessing the actual show now!

Anyway my first impressions are that the cdrama does stick pretty close to the book! But also it feels to me that they had to cut out scenes or add new ones for the first case, and fill up the airtime, so the procedural aspects for the first 5 eps are really, really bad (especially episode 5). The character relationships and banter were preserved (these parts are still so fun and cute!), though, apart from the expected erasure of Luo Wenzhou as an openly gay man. The quality gap between eps 1-5 to eps 6-8 is quite huge.

I'm presently using the break to catch up on the audiodrama's final season and revisit the plot with fresh eyes. ♥

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Misc things

This is mostly a reminder for me, but:

Leonor Will Never Die (Filipino movie): coming to Netflix on March 17

Mula sa Buwan (Filipino musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac): streaming online for a limited time on March 20+.