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

[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!