Tantai Jin Apologist

It's been a while since I updated this thing with actual blogging stuff rather than images from games I've played. I've been so busy on the projects-within-a-project I mentioned in this post, I was too focused on that to update.

So, update.

I finished the transparent PNGs I'd been working on. I did all the character designs from the back of the 7seas books, & most of the illustrations (basically if there was a clear enough outline of a character or characters without stuff in the way, I did it). I also did illustrations from the Russian translation, though not as many as I'd have liked, as there were some that were only available as a poorly-taken photo b someone using their phone where they couldn't even keep the whole image in shot. A bunch of the Russian chibi illustrations were already in transparent form, & a few others hat were in decent quality proved trickier to do than I'd like, but I did do one, of my boy Xiang Fei. There were also some promotional/merch illustrations that I found (I basically went browsing the wiki & snagged any official art that looked suitable). As for MDZS, I didn't do any illustrations from the books aside from the few I'd needed for the fanfic covers, because the art style wasn't suited for cutting out. I did find some promo/merch stuff to do though. MDZS is way better served with transparent images anyway, so I don't feel the need to force myself.

I was going to start posting them, but then I went to the Turner Prize exhibition & took loads of photos that I want to share. There are too many transparents to go in one Tumblr post (I believe the max is 30), so I'd need to pace them out (not too close together that it felt like flooding the tags, but not too far apart that I get sidetracked in between), & since the art photos will also need to be spread over multiple posts, I would probably get thrown off whatever schedule I set myself for posting them. Yeah, you can cue posts on Tumblr, but I'd still have to manually post them here on DW, with Tumblr used to host the images, & variations on formatting necessary for the different platforms, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So the transparents will hopefully start getting posted in a few days. In the meantime I've been organising the downloaded fics (both mine & others'), splicing together series into one fic (I tend to read them all together so why pretend otherwise), & tweaking metadata. This step has been more involved than expected (bit of a theme with this whole thing) as I've found myself doing plenty of editing to the works themselves. Not the actual stories, obviously, but downloaded epub versions of Ao3 fics display a little weirdly. You've got a random page with a the title in text & a bunch of tags, then you go to the next section & only then do you get the proper title & author & what the story is about. It's weird. Also I got sick of accidentally opening a tag when tapping to open the settings/navigation & it decided I'd tapped too close to a link. So I've been editing each fic in Sigil/Page Edit & stripping out the links. And in order to make this easier on myself, I've removed some entirely because they're not relevant to me (I'm not using them to search & filter, & I don't require warnings - I just want a quick rundown to remind me which fic it is that I'm considering reading, alongside the summary). I also moved the proper title & author, as well as the summary, to the top of the tags page (left the link to the original fic in place though), & moved any relevant pre-fic notes just below the tags, so it's all in the same section & in the right order, & then delete the original summary page. So, one section for the title, summary, tags, & notes, & then into the fic. I also went through the fics & added horizontal lines between any chapter notes & the chapter itself, & deleted a lot of chapter notes that are not useful ('sorry for the late update!' or 'i went back & edited a mistake in a previous chapter' are pointless when the fic has been completed for 5 years). In the case of my fics, I went & deleted a bunch of such no-longer-relevant notes from the actual posted fics themselves, because I can. Also, some notes the author seems to be arguing with dumbasses with zero literacy., & I'm not one of them, so it's just annoying. Also content warnings just feel condescending most of the time. Oh, really? Bad Stuff happens in a fanfic based on The Book Where Bad Stuff Happens? You don't say.

Another thing that happens with epub downloads of Ao3 fics is that it keeps all the original tags as metadata tags. I want to be able to organise & filter by tags, but Ao3 tags are not quite what I need as a system just for browsing epubs. These are all fics I know & like enough to have downloaded. I don't need to filter out tropes & genres I despise, I don't need warnings, & I don't want to deal with 50 tags that all basically mean the same thing (eg. an SVSSS System reveal, a MDZS Golden Core reveal, & secret identity reveal, are all basically the same trope with a different hat). Also one of my primary motivations in picking a fic to read is length (do I want something of epic length to get lost in? do I have not have the time to spare to risk getting lost in a story, so just want something short that scratches an itch? something in between?). And there's no way of seeing that at a glance in an ereader without opening each one & checking, so I needed a way to categorise by length.

So I've been working out my own little tagging system, very broad & simplified (too many tags for too specific things means I'll just forget most of them & the whole system will fall apart).

Next up is to find a good ereader app to read them on my phone. I usually just use Google Play Books to read my epubs, as it's already on there & works fine. But I want to keep fanfic separate, & would like something with a tagging system. I've seen Moon Reader recommended, so I'll give that a shot.

Progress so far:
- Make the last few covers/banners for my fics.
- Finish the transparent PNGs
- Post the transparent PNGs I've been working on.
- Make a fic rec post. I've been meaning to do that for a while, but this is a neat excuse. I can rec my faves while offering the covers to anyone else that wants to use them.
- Splice together series fics into a single fic & tweak any metadata for the epub files.
- Add the fics to an ereader app.

Tried reading Mistaken Era, currently being filmed as a drama (Cuo Shi Lu), translated by Dobytranslations, & while it was an excruciatingly slow start (the time travel element is front & centre in the description, & it doesn't kick in until chapter 14), I was enjoying it. However the translation I was reading (along with the other 3 I could find) was MTL. It wasn't too bad at first - the occasional strangely-phrased sentence that was clearly an idiom, a minor character from a night hunt in the first few chapters having their name switched from Bai to White in a few instances when the machine failed to realise that was a name that should not be translated. But gradually issues started to accumulate.

- Wei can be a homophone for Wei, apparently. Yeah, thanks.

- A character was described as perching on a 'stone stele', which apparently isn't wrong as a translation as such as it does mean 'vertical piece of stone with writing on' (which is an accurate description) according to an online dictionary, but is not in common usage & an alternate meaning is the core of a plant stem, which is what my phone's dictionary went with, making for confusing reading. Then a few paragraphs later it was translated as 'stone tablet', which works better, but then it's back to stele again.

- Sects had a different name on pretty much every mention, going from a pinyin transliteration, to an English translation, to a completely different English translation. Items got translated completely differently, often nonsensically so.

- Characters tussled over what, based on context, were spiritually refined pills, which were translated variously as Golden Core or Golden Dan, both singular terms, as well as being crappy translations.

- ML's mother constantly referred to as a "Femme Fatale". Which is a character trope, not an actual thing. It's very clear they meant huli jing (since she was described as a fox demon at least once). I kept imagining a very vampy woman in a 1930s film noir outfit, smoking a cigarette, wandering around fantasy ancient China.

That might have still been something I could deal with in a different book, & if there'd been some effort to proofread. For instance, in Salted Fish Ascension (Live Long & Prosper) it was still easy to follow when sect names & characters' titles switched between English & pinyin because there were only 3 major sects which were all distinct from one another, & a fairly straightforward plot, so it was obvious what was being referred to from context (additionally, that MTL had actual humans keeping it somewhat coherent). Hell, that same site did a decent enough job of How Dare You?!, which was more chaotic, but centred on a relatively small cast. But here, the plot is more complex, with 2 different time periods, misunderstandings & deception, so sects & items getting different names on each mention & incoherently translated idioms makes for a confusing mess.

Bailed 21 chapters in, slightly more than 10%. I'll watch the drama when it comes out, but I can't be doing with the book until an actual person translates it.

A few months ago I made a post giving my impressions of volume 1 of the official English publication of Devil/Demon Venerable Also Wants to Know. But until now the post has, apparently, been incomplete.

The preview pictures on the product page showed a bunch of smudgy rectangles above the picture of the cover. It resembled a dust jacket, but paperbacks don't generally have those, & the design was weird. When I saw other people posting photos of their orders, their book had that as a cover, so I just shrugged & figured it was exclusive to Haitang's official retailer Nebelland. Kind of annoying for other retailers to use the same photos & not explain this, but whatever.

Well, fast forward to a few days ago & out of the blue I get an email from Travelling Man apologizing for a missing dust jacket with my order, & that Haitang sent out a bunch without them, & replacements have finally arrived. Which was quickly followed by another email with tracking information.

I've added the pics to the original post.

Went to see this, & loved it. It was so funny & sweet. And they did a great job with the mystery - I did not figure it out.

Apparently it's based on a book (according to a friend who read it in the original German years ago). It looks like the first & second books in the series are available in English, so I'll have to give them a go. There's a third, but it just came out in German a few weeks ago, so I guess I'll have to wait for the translation.

Probably should feel bad for the lamb & mint pasty I had to eat afterwards though oops

I've been reading The Daily Life of Mei Furen Doting On Her Husband. I hated the drama version (Moonlit Reunion), but I liked the concept, & the novel sounded fun, so I gave it a shot. It started off so cute! And very chill. Any time something happened where you think 'Oooh, this looks like a threat! How will they defeat this?' & then it gets dealt with in the next chapter because the leads are just that badass, so they can go back to being cute together (& so FL can go back to torturing anyone who talks shit about the ML). The title really did sum it up. FL was way less obnoxious than she was in the drama.

It was super enjoyable, right up until the halfway point, when it decided to pull out a de-aging trope. After stalling for a few days, I gritted my teeth & persevered, & thankfully it did get wound up pretty fast (though not fast enough). Things were fine for a few chapters, & we started getting hints of a side couple forming between a couple of other characters...

Then we got bodyswap. Every once in a while that trope gets done well enough for me to find entertaining, but it's rare. Still, it was pretty funny at first, & it seemed like this would be one of those rare instances. Except the reason behind their swapping was the FLs cousin leaving a cursed object as a gift for them. This cousin is a weirdo creep who is in love with the FL (which she knows), & has caused numerous problems for the couple, & was the cause of several threats they had to deal with earlier in the novel, which are mainly down to him trying to harm the ML so he can have the FL (his cousin, remember) all to himself. And she's just like 'Oh, you!'. Which is especially weird considering he's sought to cause harm to the ML, & the FL otherwise reacts to by tormenting or outright torturing people for, over way milder things. There isn't any attempt to justify it either, no 'Oh, he has his good side'. Nor are there any political or whatever reasons she can't kill him & make it look like an accident. His whole thing is he wants to fuck his cousin & causes problems over it, threatening the man she loves, &... nothing.

So they set out to find the cousin so he can change them back. And this is where things start to fall apart because it seems like the author can't remember stuff they've previously stated. They've received words that the cousin never made it to his home, so they retrace his carriage's journey, looking for him along the way, before eventually finding it, crashed. Thing is, before he left, FL gifted him with a cursed object that would turn him into a mouse or rat or something. But they're acting as if searching for a human, & no mention is made of searching for a small rodent, until after they found the carriage. Well, okay, maybe they didn't bother stating it but were sure they'd find him easily regardless.

Then they return to an inn, & suddenly a horrifying monster shows up, kidnaps the FL, declaring it's revenge for something the ML did in the past, & if he wants the FL back, then he knows where to come, & what to bring as a ransom, & leaves. Of course, since the bodyswap is still in effect, it's actually kidnapped the ML (in FL's body), leaving behind the FL (in ML's body), who has no idea what it wants or where it's gone. She should be frantic, right? Especially as they're both heavily depowered in each others' bodies (they've been working on mastering the array of powers they have to work with in the other's body, but it's obviously still new). Nope! She treats it as a minor inconvenience!

Fortunately - & conveniently - a cultivator for the ML's sect shows up, relieved to see the ML, telling 'him' that he has been called back to the sect & he's here to bring him back. Cool. FL can ask at his sect to find out what this monster is & what it wants. They'll know.

So they set out, but on the way they encounter a distress call from another cultivator from the sect. A family has been cursed. FL investigates & finds the cousin is responsible. Oh yeah fuck. Author needs to clear up this plot point - whoops, nearly forgot! He's hiding out in a corner of the estate, & she figures out where he is & goes to talk to him, telling him to remove the curse. He says, sure, waves a hand (or paw, as he's in the form of a rat), & tells he it's done, but will take some time to wear off. She just accepts that & leaves. No questions that he might be lying or setting up another trick or curse. Nothing. The cultivator who was accompanying her asks about the case they're meant to be working on, & she says it's been sorted & they should get back to the sect, so they go. Except... it's not sorted! She just asked the cousin to reverse the bodyswapping! They don't check in with the cursed family or anything, they just leave.

Okay, so they get back to the sect. FL-in-ML's-body is stared at because 'he' is acting OOC. Then the sect leader show up & yells about how dare the ML come back??? Wait, hold on, he was asked to come back! That guy showed up & told 'him' that he was being summed back????????? Huh???? Oooh, aha! This must be a plot point, right? It's going to turn out that the guy bringing him back was tricked in some way! Nope, it's just never mentioned. Another forgot something they just established. Again. Everyone is extra suspicious of how 'ML' is acting, so FL confesses about the bodyswap, & that she's his wife. Even though this explains the weird OOC behaviour, for some reason they find this even more suspicious, & tie him up, locking him in a room.

Luckily, this is when the bodyswap wears off. So the ML escapes, collects the item he knows the monster wants, & sets out to where he knows he needs to go. Meanwhile, the FL finds herself in a weird pocket dimension place, with a bunch of servants who say they are there to look after her, apparently under the impression that their master must be taking her as a wife, as why else would she be here. Trying to figure out what's going on, she throws a party. The monster show up, angry, & threatening the FL, & the FL... folds like a piece of paper. Yeah, the badass FL Cat Master who has taken out powerful demons just goes 'uwu I'm sowwie!' & immediately gives up & waits to be rescued. Because baby.

Y'see, early on in the bodyswap, when a doctor was examining the FL's body, it was discovered she was pregnant. So now she can't do anything, because the baaaaaayyyyyyybeeeeeeey *gags*. Even though we saw the ML (in her body) practicing her shapeshifting abilities, which you'd think would put more stress on the foetus than anything. Nope, sorry! FL is now made of glass & can't do anything more that sit quietly & meekly. She doesn't even seethe privately about it, despite her character being set up as extremely stubborn & independent. She's tried nothing & is all out of ideas!

Yeah, I gave up at that point.

Been a busy week & I've barely managed time for anything, but I've finished How Dare You!? & loved it.

It was pretty much everything I'd been hoping it'd be. Fun & hilarious, & totally nailed the vibe & tone of the novel, & took excellent advantage of the ridiculousness of the scenario for comedic purposes. I was absolutely dying at the scene where Xiahou Dan is marching through the palace grounds while the team of eunuchs carrying the palanquin that he's supposed to be riding in scuttle along behind him, desperately trying to keep up. And the scene where they're 'texting' each other where Mr Bei is running to & fro carrying the messages between them was another highlight. The fight choreography was also way better than expected for a comedy that wasn't especially action-focused.

Particularly loved the Empress Dowager. She was deliciously evil & charismatic & must have been wearing her teeth down with all the scenery chewing she was doing. She stole every scene she was in & the actress was clearly having a fantastic time with that role.

I have a few thoughts on the ending...

( SPOILERS! Detailed summary of how the novel's ending compares to the drama's, & my thoughts on it. )

I still loved it, don't get me wrong. Absolute 11/10 drama, no question. Do not skip this because I'm being a little nitpicky. But considering how insanely faithful it'd been, & how funny & cute the novel version of the ending was, it felt like a weird choice, & I can't help comparing the two. If the drama was an original work & not an adaptation, or I'd watched the drama before reading the book, I'd be 100% fine but as it is, it's inevitable I'll compare the two versions & be a little 'aw c'mon!'.

I finished This is Ridiculous/How Dare You?! & loved it. I especially like the extras, where they Highlight for spoilers! *have an ending where they do go back to the modern world, but it happens long after the story has concluded, with the characters they've transmigrated into dying of natural causes after living a life together, a censorship-friendly ending for the drama to follow (even though they seem to have relaxed on that front lately) without making everything that happened seem meaningless*. Can't wait for the drama.

I gave The Wrong Way to a Demon Sect Leader a go, but unfortunately it proved a disappointment. It was very short (82 chapters plus 47 extras, with the epub I was reading coming in at around 200 pages), which is absolutely enough for writing a satisfying story if the author keeps the story tight & has a knack for characterisation even with minimalist prose. But the author here couldn't pick a struggle. The first part was funny while being light on plot (no time for that between the humour), & the rest tried to add a plot, which meant no time for jokes, & the plot itself had no foundation so it was just... stuff happens I guess. And none of the characters felt interesting because the characterisation was so bare bones, which left the couple with no chemistry & not feeling like a couple (they just... sort of got together at the end? I guess?). I finished the main story, but couldn't get too far into the extras. The translation that's actually good only did the main story, & the translation that covered the story + extras is... less good. It didn't feel worth pushing through as the extras seemed to be wanting to deal with loose ends, but the plot was so much nothing that I couldn't bring myself to care ('hey this character has gone mysteriously missing!' Uh you mean the random side character that had one line of dialogue in the main story? okay) enough to push through.

I breezed through Offering Salted Fish to Master (aka When Destiny Brings the Demon) in a few days, as it's a pretty short book. I was wondering how closely it matched the drama, & weirdly it was very close, but also not? There are a few differences like Highlight for spoilers! *the snake gaining human form much later & that form being a child, the whole thing with the ancient demon lord trying to regain a body not being a thing in the book, & the fake sect/settlement (though that's based on a scene in the book at least), & the baby that shows up as a character post-timeskip,* but mostly the drama stayed pretty close in terms of overall arc. If I didn't know any better I'd think someone watched the drama & knocked together a quick summary. It had some funny lines & it was nice reading the FL's thoughts on stuff, but ultimately I like the drama better, because the novel is definitely barebones & the drama filled in a lot.

I've now finished Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know. I really wasn't kidding previously when I blamed my slow progress with this one on distractions from other media. Last week I was at 30% & now I've finished. I couldn't stop reading. I love how few fucks Wenren E gives, & the side characters were all entertaining.

Interestingly it seems there's going to be an official English translation, but it's from a small indie publisher where I may or may not have to just through a bunch of hoops to the point where it might be unobtainable for me, so we'll see.

So I finally finally got my hands on My Husband & I Sleep in a Coffin volume 1, two whole months after release. I have no idea what was going on but no UK booksellers had it in stock. Blackwells sold it on their website, but noted that delivery cost included delivery to the UK. Forbidden Planet also seemed to sell it, but they had it listed for sale before it was even released without listing it as a pre-order, so I'm thinking their website is just poorly set up. Even Amazon UK didn't have any, so you know it's serious when the bookshop killer can't get a book.

Anyway, I have it now, though I won't be able to read it yet, as I'm in the middle of Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know (which continues to be awesome), & I'm even stalled on that because my free time right now is taken up by Whispers of Fate & Powerwash Simulator 2, & before that it was Horizon Forbidden West taking up my time. My memory is shit & I'm not about to confuse myself by juggling too many sets of characters at once, so any commentary on the quality of the text itself & how it compares to the unofficial translation I'd checked out will have to wait.

But the actual physical book is right there in front of me. I can see it & touch it. And I have some thoughts on the quality & how it compares to previous releases I own. And hoo boy those thoughts are not good.

For reference I am using the 3 MXTX novels (I grabbed the 1st volumes of each for maximum fairness). I also have The Husky & His White Cat Shizun (which I hated, but that's not the point. Since I haven't got around to selling it yet, I have it available).

Cover

The MXTX book covers all have a matte background with glossy characters & foreground details, spine detail, as well as glossy title & author name text (SVSSS also has glossy panels on the back showing key characters). MH&ISiaC has a fully matte cover with just glossy title & author name text, & spine detail. I was ready to shake my head in disappointment, but this was the point where I remembered I still had 2ha stashed away in a box, so I dug that out & found it also only had the glossy effect on the cover text, so it's not a super new thing & I'm guessing 7S did the glossy detailing in an early blaze of enthusiasm before deciding to tone things down a bit. TBH, it's not a big deal & I can see how it was probably a hassle figuring out which details got the emphasis.

What is new & I am going to complain about, is that the cover no longer wraps around the book. The spine is solid black. And considering the blurb is in a box with a solid background, the artwork is way too covered up. (Technically 2ha also has a solid background box for the blurb, but it allowed details of the cover art to encroach into it, wrapping the text around this.) They did still have the full cover art just inside, but still. The cover lacks the little inner flaps too.

Title Font

This isn't necessarily reflective of any overall quality decline, because the various series all have their own title font designs, but this is... A Choice. It's giving shitty steampunk YA fantasy. Additionally this font is also used on the spine, unlike with previous books, where there was a standard font used, which allowed some uniformity in design across the various books while letting them have their own identity in the unique cover art that was visible on the spine.

Also, the pinyin title is no longer visible on the cover, or even on the title page (though that at least includes the title in hanzi). If you want to find what the book is called in Chinese without being able to read Chinese, you have to check the publishing details page. It's also in the pronunciation guide, but it doesn't tell you it's the title. I figured it was as I know this is standard with 7S releases, but I can see a newbie picking this book up in a bookshop out of curiosity & being confused.

Pages

The pages are so damn thin! You can see text, decorative details, & artwork through the page they're printed on! This isn't helped by the decorative details at the beginning of each chapter & at the top corners of each page being super think, elaborate, & printed with extra dark black ink (also printing the title on a blank page in between each chapter, in case you forget what you're reading, even though as with other 7S books, the title is at the top of each left-hand page, with the chapter title on the right), whereas previous books they made the chapter headers grey, kept the page decorations to thin lines. 2ha used little dog icons at the start of each chapter which are quite dark, but they were small, & the paper was decently thick.

And they want 18 bloody quid for this! I was fine paying the cost of the books because they had such a premium feel. This does not feel premium.

I really hope some of the lack of quality (the page thinness) is a side effect of whatever it was that caused supply shortages of this book, & they had to be less choosy about materials used, but I'm not sure I'm that optimistic.