Reading Record 47

 Finished reading Three Hundred Years of Longing, volume two, by Mu Su Li.

Again, the translator's choice to use Latin in place of certain names/titles is really bugging me.

Other than that, I'm greatly enjoying it.  The setting is a bit darker than usual--it's almost the post-apocalypse of a fantasy world, since the divine city and all the gods are dead, and fiends are wreaking havoc among the mortals--and yet the overall tone of the novel itself isn't particularly dark.  (It's much lighter than The Husky and His White Cat Shizun, for example!)

One thing I'm really noticing is how fast the story moves past certain things.  Like, one is used to finding an implication that character X used to do thing Y in the distant past, and then the implications are drawn out for half a novel or more, despite that the audience is 100% certain long before the "reveal" is made.  This is the opposite:  the implication is no sooner made than the characters guess it and the narration confirms it, and then the story moves on to something else.  So, the narrative accepts how quick the audience usually is and moves at the audience's speed!  This isn't the only danmei I've read that does that, so maybe it's common among web novels; after all, the ability to go back and reread as it's being posted is vastly different than the ability to go back and reread would have been in a serialized novel in a magazine or newspaper in the past.  (Hence why there might be a lot of recap in those massive 19th century novels that were serialized across months or a year or so...)  The one exception, of course, regarding the speed with which implications are confirmed is the feelings of the love interest for the protagonist.  Which are implied right there in the title of the novel, but of course won't be confirmed until who-knows-when.  (Typically, they're not confirmed in these novels until he's ready to act on them.  There have been a few exceptions among the danmei novels I've read but for the most part, they've tended to leave the main romance unspecified until they're either acted on or the protagonist is aware of them through other means.)

Oddly, there was a bonus story at the end of this volume.  Normally, bonus stories are left to be collected at the end of the novel.  Not sure why they put it here.  Unless it's actually referenced later on in the main novel.  (It takes place in the distant past, ya see.)  Guess I'll find out soon enough.  😆

Original language:  Chinese

And moving on...

I still haven't been posting my daily word count on a daily basis.  😅  But I suppose that doesn't matter in the slightest.

Anyway!  November writing challenge word counts...

So, the last day I posted my word count was the tenth, when it was 33379.

On the 11th, my total word count was 35362, so I only wrote 1983 words that day.

On the 12th, my total word count was 39127, so I wrote 3765 words that day.

Today, my total word count is 42783 (and it could have been more if I hadn't had to go run errands and such), so today I wrote 3656 words.  Which is at least consistent with yesterday, I guess?

Overall, I do not feel like I'm getting anywhere near as many words written as I would like, but...🤷🏻‍♀️  Suppose it doesn't matter.

Reading record 46

 Finished reading Three Hundred Years of Longing, volume one, by Mu Su Li.

Since it's volume one of four, I obviously can't say much about it as a story at the moment!  Except, I suppose, that it's a promising and intriguing start.  I'll be reading the next three volumes straight away, since I felt confident enough in the author after reading one of her other books earlier that I went ahead and waited to start this one until I had all four volumes.

Anyway, while I can't really say much about the story as a whole yet, what I can talk about is the translation/localization.  Two things in particular about it bothered me a lot.  (Also some lesser things where the translator used some odd choices for translating/approximating genre conventions.  For example, bags or pouches that can hold a vast (or even infinite) amount are common in xianxia fiction.  Most translators use the Chinese term, qiankun, and don't bother to translate it, letting the context and/or reader's pre-existing genre awareness do the heavy lifting.  This translator decided to use "bag of holding," which I feel like is probably a D&D copyrighted term, but maybe not.  🤷🏻‍♀️  It felt odd in this context, though, that's for sure.)

So, as to the things that genuinely bothered me.  First, some strange name choices.  A character came up at one point whose name was written in the English text as "Ayao."  Which made me go "well, that's weird!"  But I didn't do much more than that until much later, when a different character talked about her daughters "Ayuan" and "Atai" and then I was sure:  the translator decided to slam the prefix "a-" into the front of the names without the dash that indicates "prefix" rather than "actual syllable."  Normally, the use of this prefix has been "A-" in these official translations.  (Early on in my danmei fixation, I came across a fan information thing that talked about using a lower case "a" since it's not part of the name, and I personally liked that way and have been using it in my fanfic, but I have no idea if that's viewed as more or less "right" than the capital "A" version.)  But here they're slammed into the name, thus giving "Ayao" instead of the "A-Yao" you would see in other officially translated novels.  (Like MDZS, for example, which in fact does have a character called "A-Yao" by one of the other characters.)  Even more bizarre to me is the character whose name is being written as "Gao E".  What the heck does that "E" mean?  In all of these books that I've read, in all the name generators I've used, in the books of actual history I've looked at, I haven't seen any use of "E" as a Chinese name.  (I admit that this is of course a very small and limited sampling, and my genuine knowledge is minimal at best...)  I keep thinking it's maybe a weird attempt to make a name seem more pronounceable to the average English speaker?  Or something?  I can't understand it.  Not at all.

Second, and this is both easier and harder for me to understand, is that some names are translated...into Latin.  The city of the gods is being called Urbs Caelestia, and late in the book a character is mentioned who is called Rex Spiritus. This...this is just insanely bizarre to me.  I find it roughly impossible to believe that those terms were in Latin (or any other European language) in the original Chinese text of the novel.  It reminds me of the Netflix subtitles on The Untamed:  a few things got weird, classical antiquity term replacements, leading to the "Stygian Tiger Tally" (instead of "Yin Tiger Tally") or Lan Clan musical pieces being called "Resquiat" and "Absterge" ("Rest" and "Cleansing" in the Seven Seas translation of the novel) and so on.  These subtitles were, I believe, following the lead of an earlier fan translation of the novel, which is both and explanation and a total lack of an explanation at the same time.  It's just...it's a localization choice, so it's hard to say "that's wrong!" with any justification, but it's certainly distracting.  And I think I'd be happier with the translation as a whole if the translator hadn't made that odd choice.  But as long as "minor translation oddities" remains my only complaint, I'll be overall very satisfied with the novel as a whole!

Anyway.

Original language:  Chinese

And in the November Writing Challenge that I keep forgetting to post about...things have been weird.

When I last posted, my word count for the month was 19558.

That was Sunday morning, before I had written for the day.  That was a good writing day, in which I got to one of the scenes I had most been looking forward to writing in this crazy new fanfic.  My total went all the way up to 24185, making for 4,627 words written that day.

Then on Monday, I only got up to 25594, counting the big paragraph of planning that I jotted down right before bed.  A measly 1758 words.  😭  (Before those notes, it was only 1339!)

But thanks to those notes, I had a much better day today, and got up to 33379!  That means I wrote 7436 words today!  😆 (Would have done even better, since I didn't finish getting through those new notes today, only I had to stop to go see a movie.  Wildwood.  Very excellent!  Strongly recommend!)

And that's me caught up on my daily word count!  Time to start winding my brain down so I can eventually get to sleep.

Reading Record 45

 So, just finished reading Golden Terrace, volume 2, by Cang Wu Bin Bai.  Probably should have taken a lot longer to finish it, actually, but then the plot hit a point where I couldn't stop until I was sure things would be okay, and a half hour reading session turned into a two hour reading session.  😅

Anyway, as a much more grounded, political drama, this one is a subgenre that I don't usually read.  And I definitely forgot some of the finer details (and character names) from the first volume in the months in between reading them.  😰  Not sure if that is just "I have a terrible memory" or if that is totally normal and acceptable since I finished the first part in mid-July and have read 25 other books since then.  (More than that, really, since I don't count graphic novels and such with a full number...)  Plus I've played who knows how many games with engrossing stories, watched a lot of anime (two episodes before bed is part of my wind-my-brain-down-for-the-night routine), and done a lot of writing of my own, so my limited brain power is spread sorta thin, so maybe it's only to be expected that I'd forget things?  🤷🏻‍♀️

Well.  Anyway.

The tone of the second volume was a bit more military and less political than the first one, but otherwise there's not much to report that I didn't report the first time.  Not as fantastical as what I'm used to, but the characters, their relationship, and the story surrounding them were excellent and a satisfying read.  (And among the bonus stories was even one that let a tragic gay couple (who were never even seen "on screen" in the main novel) find a happy ending in another setting, which made me quite happy.  They deserved that happy ending!)

Hmm.  Did that count as a spoiler?  (Then again, would anyone even want to write an alternate setting in which a loving couple failed to find happiness a second time?  Seems like that would be torture for both the reader and the writer!)

Anyway, this record is mostly just for myself, so it's not like I need to say anything else anyway.

Original language:  Chinese

In other news(?), I have fallen behind in posting about my November writing challenge results.

When I last posted, my word count was 15536.  That was on...um...Thursday?  Yeah, Thursday.

So, on Friday, my total was 17704, meaning I wrote 2168 words on Friday.

Yesterday, my total was 19558, so yesterday I only wrote 1854 words.  😭  Failed to break 2k.  Pathetic.

Hopefully, today will be better, but who knows?  I keep slamming into walls in all my writing projects.  😭  (I'll hopefully remember to edit the results to the end of this post...hopefully.)

Reading Record 44

 So, yesterday I finished reading The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post, volume three, by Lv Ye Qian He.  (And considering volume two was in the Reading Record 10 post, I think I can forgive myself for any details I forgot in between them!)  Didn't want to post about it yesterday because of IWSG.

Anyway, final volume of the novel.  Did not disappoint.  😁

In the course of my new danmei obsession (if "new" is the right word for something that started in like 2022) I have now read three novels in which the main pairing is between a cultivation master and one of his pupils.  This one was by far the least questionable of the three.  (Unsurprisingly, actually.) For comparison's sake:

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System:  the protagonist died and was reborn as Shen Qingqiu, a villain in a particularly bad webnovel, which the protagonist had actively been griping about when he died.  (In fact, he basically died of rage at just how badly written Proud Immortal Demon Way was!)  To save himself, he decides to treat the original novel's protagonist, Luo Binghe (a student of Shen Qingqiu's), like a precious pearl, so that he won't want to rip all of Shen Qingqiu's limbs off, like he did originally.  This, of course, proves a little too effective, and Luo Binghe falls in love with him.  The "romance" is definitely the weakest part of the novel, and has a lot of questionable aspects to it, but the teacher-student aspect ranks much lower than some of the other aspects.

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun:  protagonist Mo Ran, having taken over the world, commits suicide and wakes up in his own teenage body, then proceeds to relive his life, and instead of coming to hate his teacher, Chu Wanning, as the ultimate enemy, he falls head over heels in love with him.  (Er, well, that covers at least a little hint of the earlier portions of the plot...this book is crazy long (it ends halfway through volume ten!) and the plot goes all over the place...)  There are so many unsettling aspects of both this book and the primary romance that I couldn't list them all even if they were all things I was willing to talk about on my blog!  Weirdly, the teacher-student aspect of the romance is so tame by comparison that it doesn't even make the top ten.  😰  I saw someone on discord describe this book as "not for the faint-hearted" and they were very right...

The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post:  protagonist Mo Tianliao dies after protecting his precious pet kitten from the forces that are causing his own death, but his spirit doesn't dissipate, and after three hundred years he manages to possess the divine Undying Tree, turning it into a new body for him.  Before he can resume his life, he has to join a cultivation sect to train up a bit...and the teacher he ends up studying under just happens to be his pet kitten, who has cultivated a gorgeous human body over the last three hundred years.  Again, there are some issues with their relationship (mostly the whole "pet kitten" issue), but since their teacher-student relationship was fake to begin with, it really isn't one of those issues at all!  This is, in fact, a pretty sweet and almost innocent novel...(aside from how many of the other cultivators are treating spirit beasts with full human sentience as essentially slaves...which is at least a practice the hero wants to put a stop to...)

So...yeah...why did I just spend so long talking about other books in this post...?

Hmm.

Well.  Anyway.

Uh.  Yeah.

Book was fun.  Will probably read again someday.  😊

Original language:  Chinese

In other news, my November writing challenge numbers for the last two days:

Yesterday's total was 12419

Today's total was 15536

Tuesday's total was 9689, so that means

Yesterday I wrote 2730 words and

Today I wrote 3117 words.

Seems like 2-3k a day has become my new norm?  Not great, but not terrible, either.

IWSG - What is "Good" Writing?

 

 So, lately I've been thinking about what makes a novel (or other work of fiction) "good."  And, by extension, what makes a work fail to be "good."

Thinking about the way works are discussed in various times, places and settings, it seems like maybe there are a variety of criteria one might judge.  Summing up my perception of those criteria...

Prose that is one or more of the following:

• Eloquent
• Clever
• Beautiful
• Entertaining
• Readable
• Erudite
• Etc.

Characters who exhibit one or more of the following:

• Entertaining
• Likable
• Deep
• Realistic
• Possessed of a notable growth across the course of the work
• Exhibiting a lesson to the reader
• Admirable
• Deplorable
• Etc.

A story that is one or more of the following:

• Instructive
• Educated
• Allegorical
• Filled with symbolism
• Possessing natural foreshadowing
• Neither too simple nor too complex
• Making a statement about humanity, the world, history, society, etc.
• Deemed "of value" (whatever that means)
• Etc.

Obviously, even those lists are filled with vagaries, redundancy, repetition and incompatibility.  Which is partially a symptom of the fact that I don't often think about what makes a work approved of as "good" and partially because it's been a very long time since I took a literature course.  😅

Part of the reason I've been thinking about this is because I know that any and all academic criteria would say that Frankenstein is a better book than Dracula (which I read for Halloween) and yet I also know that no matter how many times the choice is put before me to read one of those two books, I would always pick Dracula because it's much more pleasant to read, in addition to being considerably more satisfying as a story.

But by extension of all this, there's the fact that I long ago abandoned any pretense of pursuing the idea of making my own writing "good" by these social standards...and I kind of wonder if that makes me somehow a weakling or quitter or something.  Like, I have never written (and undoubtedly never will) anything I would want to share at a family reunion or tell former classmates about.  Is that a failing on my part, or just a reflection of my innate sense of inner privacy?

Is anyone else ever plagued by these kinds of questions?

November Writing Challenge '26, day 3

 Okay, so today's total is 9689 words.

Yesterday's total was 6673 words.

That means I wrote 3016 words today.

So...more than "on track" for 50k by the end of the month, but a sad showing in comparison to some of my early NaNoWriMo endeavors.  🤷🏻‍♀️

Kind of a pity that I ran out of steam when I did, though; the love interest is about to show up!  (And yet, I just couldn't keep going today, somehow...)

November Writing Challenge '26, day 2

 Today's total is 6673, from a shorter writing window than usual due to life stuff.

Yesterday's total was 3910.

So that means today I wrote 2763 words.

Not great, but not bad.  (So far, I'm having fun with putting an old-school vampire in an ancient China setting...)