How's the pandemic going?

[darkemeralds]

So far so good here, at least in terms of not catching the virus. But we're all going a bit nuts in our respective homes.

To pass the time, I've been through The Untamed several times and will probably make at least one further foray--that's just how rich and complex the story is. For variety, I've also absorbed Guardian, a modern-setting fantasy involving an upper world rather like ours, and an underworld where dwell alien beings who wield dark energy. The title refers to the job of the lead character, Zhao Yunlan, in investigating and stopping incursions by underworld beings into upper world. It's kind of a police procedural with magical objects, snake-people, cat-people, twins...and epic love between our Chief and a mild-mannered university professor whose True Nature hides behind his dorky round glasses. Oh, and genuinely terrible special effects. But loads of charm.

The charismatic star of Guardian has gone on to play the lead in Detective L, basically Sherlock in Shanghai in 1930, with a tweed-clad female Watson and some great costumes and sets. So now I'm watching that.

Last night, in I think it was episode 7, a character uttered a sentence exactly word for word from my Mandarin Chinese 1 super-basic language lessons: 我不明白你说什么。Or, in Pinyin, Wǒ bù míngbái nǐ shuō shénme, which means "I don't understand what you're saying."

But I DID! It was so cool!

I hope everyone's staying safe and healthy.

Comments

[umadoshi]

Boni is a multitalented wonder. *^^* (And devastatingly good at persuading people to watch things.)

I have two Twitter accounts, and the feed for the locked fannish one is also heavily centered on c-drama fandom (which means my to-watch list will only ever grow exponentially!). I similarly appreciate the respite from the political hellscape. >.< But the Guardian fandom is also a fantastic combo of friendly and blazingly enthusiastic.

AFAIK rageprufrock has only written two Guardian fics, both long enough ago that I suspect there won't be more, but they're both marvelous (surprising no one) in very different ways from each other. They're also both novel-verse, not drama-verse, now that I think about it.

I hope you find things you enjoy! ^_^

[darkemeralds]

"...novel, you say?" she asked hopefully.

[umadoshi]

"...novel, you say?" she asked hopefully.

Yes! ^_^ It's even fully fan-translated as of last month! (I haven't actually read the entire thing myself--for a long time it wasn't translated past chapter...75 or so? Out of 106...so I read what there was last summer and haven't started my [re]read since it was completed.) There are still some people working on smoothing it out (I'm not involved, so I don't know what the actual plan is), but it's there!

If you weren't aware that there's a novel (I may be misinterpreting your comment? If so, ignore the rest of this reply!), you should know that it's vastly different from the drama, unlike the MDZS/CQL situation where the book and drama are still clearly the same story. Essentially nothing about the Guardian novel meets Chinese censorship standards, so the drama is more of a massive AU than an adaptation. Zhu Yilong and Bai Yu did a breathtaking job of retaining the heart of the characters/their relationship (and they're why I'm fannish about the drama, whereas I enjoy the novel a lot), so there's more emotional resonance with the original than there has any right to be, given the situation.

(I'm not great at short comments, even with strangers. ^^;)

[darkemeralds]

No, you read me perfectly! That was me hoping you'd point me to a translation.

It's amazing to me how LONG these Chinese novels are. It took me weeks to get through MDZS. They really do seem to read like fanfic--in the best way. I gather that they're "webnovels," making them something like long fics posted on AO3 or Wattpad, but the fact that they get made into TV series, with high production values and huge stars--it just blows me away. When will Hollywood get on board with this obviously wildly successful approach to pleasing audiences?

I've downloaded the novel and am busy converting it to .mobi and sending it to my Kindle.

Thank you so much! (I like long comments--and hey, we share a couple of fandoms, so we're no longer strangers. :))

[umadoshi]

No, you read me perfectly! That was me hoping you'd point me to a translation.

Oh, good. ^_^ I was pretty sure about the hoping for a link, but not sure if you'd known the novel existed or not, and I didn't want to over-explain if you already knew.

I'm theoretically reading Heaven Official's Blessing (same author as MDZS), because many, many people I know love it, but it is SO long. At least four or five times longer than MDZS, IIRC, and divided into...five books? (I'm not sure if that's meant to be more like "here are five distinct novels" vs. the western sci-fi/fantasy doorstoppers that are one giant novel internally subdivided into five "books".) And unfortunately I think I've bounced out of it, which wasn't really helped by knowing at least a couple of people who're like, "I love it so much now, but I didn't really bond until around book 4..."

Thank you so much! (I like long comments--and hey, we share a couple of fandoms, so we're no longer strangers. :))

^_^ Hooray, then! And I hope you enjoy the Guardian novel!