Looking back on the last few months

    So, things have been.

    Ahem.

    Yes, I know that's not proper grammar.  Or rather, it's very weird grammar.  (Technically, it's not totally wrong?  Things have indeed existed, which is basically what that means?  But's not phraseology that people would normally use.  Nor is the word "phraseology," but that's beside the point.  Actually, I'm not positive it's even a word, but this one character uses it in The Music Man, so...anyway.  Irrelevant.)

    My life has lately felt even weirder and more stagnant than ever.  Partially because I more than ever feel the need to hide in my house from the world, but it's definitely not just that.

    I had to buy a new computer because of the end of support for Windows 10.  And, as I believe I posted before, I absolutely HATE Windows 11.  To the extent that I've been putting off even turning on this computer so much so that one of my utility bills will be paid a day late and it took me a week to look at the results of the MRI I had done.  Also that this computer's battery emptied itself in the time between when I last turned it on and when I turned it on this morning.  (Though it also seems to have turned itself on at some point without my permission to download updates, which 100% should not be possible, but as soon as I plugged it back in and turned it on, it started installing updates.  I looked over all its settings as soon as it finally turned on (after it was done updating the stupid thing turned itself off again!) and didn't see anything authorizing it to turn on at random intervals to check for and download updates, but it apparently did so anyway.  (I think I'll put it on airplane mode before I turn it off, which will hopefully prevent it from doing that again.  Might not stop it from turning on and exhausting its battery, but it should prevent it from downloading anything when it's supposed to be off.))

    So, because of my new aversion to going online due to it requiring this overpriced hunk of junk (I didn't realize that the computer was named the Latin word for "conquered" because I was being targeted to be conquered by Microsoft!), I've been doing my writing on my old computer in airplane mode, because unsupported OS don't matter if the Internet can't touch ya! 🤣  (Ugh, those Windows 11 emojis are so ugly!  Why would they even make the emojis worse for the new OS?  Why would they even change them in the first place, for that matter!?)  Which means, of course, that getting any of what I've written onto the internet to, say, quote a passage in my blog, is suddenly somewhat tricky.  Unnecessarily tricky, in fact, considering that one of the changes to the way Blogger adds pictures to a post means that I can't add them on my phone anymore.  Also there's the fact that for some reason this computer has decided that I should not be allowed to access my own pictures on Blogger, nor even to upload new ones!  Thankfully, it turns out I can still add pictures by dragging and dropping (for the moment!) so I can still add pictures, but it's even more awkward than ever before.

    Anyway.

    What I've been writing lately has been (surprise, surprise!) another Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic.  Though I did at least get a little writing done on the rewrite of The Tablet of Destinies, but...ugh, it's such a mess.  It's actually really hard to rewrite it just because the current draft is such garbage.  It's much easier to just focus on writing pointless fanfic.

    I want to talk about this current fic now, blathering meaninglessly, as usual, but I think I'll put in a blocker line so the whole post won't go on the front page of the blog.

A thought about the juniors in Yi City

 Okay, so this post is going to contain a lot of spoilers for Mo Dao Zu Shi (aka The Untamed), so please don't read further if you haven't finished reading/watching it.  (I mean, I'm assuming no one would even want to read further if they're not the least bit interested in MDZS...)  This is relating to a background element of the Yi City arc, in the context of the revelations made at the end of the novel.

Various MDZS-related thoughts

     So...a week ago Monday, I started rereading MDZS.

    Like, I actually did nothing else on that Monday except read MDZS; no internet, no TV, no games, nothing but reading.  I thought reading a gay romance novel from China in which two tyrannical dictators and a couple more would-be tyrants were thoroughly defeated was a good way to show my spite and disgust at something else that was happening in the real world that day.

    I ended up getting partway into volume three of the official translation in that first day.  (They had just defeated the Xuanwu of Slaughter when I finally stopped reading and went to bed.)  So, in one day I got through about 2 and 1/3 volumes.  The remaining 2 and 2/3 volumes took me six more days to get through.  😅  (I.E., I finished on the following Monday.  Well, except some of the bonus chapters.  Those were still pending and didn't end up finished until yesterday.)  Admittedly, I barely even opened the book at all on Saturday because I ended up having to spend most of the day out of the house actually doing things.

    Anyway.

    Rereading the novel really jammed my face down into the reality that I have been doing a very bad job in trying to recreate the characters in my fanfiction.  (It also really forced me to notice how sloppy my memory was of various things about the novel, including that I had been convinced the Yi City arc ended in volume one when it was actually entirely in volume two.)

A Random (Fandom) Thought

     Okay, so back in April, I mentioned the fact that it had long been my assumption about/reaction to Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen that they were supposed to be a reflection of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, or more specifically that they actually are what most everyone else in the story sees when they look at Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji together:  an evil demonic cultivator harassing a pure and proper cultivator.  And that meanwhile Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen are also a reflection of the true relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, only one where the tragic ending remains in place, with no revival stepping in to reunite them.  (Okay, actually, looking at that post again, I didn't so much mention that as tangentially imply it.  But that was what I thought on reaching the later portions of the Yueyang sequence in The Untamed when I first watched it, that the three of them provided a double mirror of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.  Um, except at that time I didn't know that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen's story would end in tragedy. 😭)

    And I still do think that's the case, no question.  Those parallels are absolutely there.

    But in thinking about the chapter of my fanfic that went up yesterday, I realized that Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan serve as mirrors to another situation within the main plot of MDZS:  that of Wei Wuxian with Jiang Cheng.  (I mean, the clue's right there in their names, even!  Jiang Cheng and Song Lan are the only adult characters in the novel (as far as I can recall, anyway) who are consistently referred to by their birth names by the narrator.  Oh, uh, no, duh, there's also Wen Ning.  Okay, so that breaks the birth name part of the comparison a bit.  (And then there's Wen Xu and Wen Chao, whose only known names sure sound like birth names, but that makes zero sense all around unless the Wen Clan uses courtesy names differently from the other clans.))

    Let me sum up my thinking on this thusly.  Um, after a "read more" tag just in case somehow someone stumbles on this post who hasn't read (or watched) the whole story.  (Unlikely, I know, but...)

Does Netflix hate me?

 Last night, I logged into Netflix and saw a red "Leaving Soon" banner on the thumbnail for The Untamed.

I...

How can they do this to us?

First they took down Season One of Heaven Official's Blessing, leaving us with no option but to either never revisit it or to suffer through the unwatchable Crunchyroll/Funimation subtitles.  (This was likely forced on them by Crunchyroll/Funimation, of course, but still felt like a stab in the back anyway.)

And now they're going to take away The Untamed, too.

I know it's not the greatest adaptation around, and because of its runtime reading the novel is significantly faster than watching the whole show, but...I still love it anyway!

But they're taking it down.

Leaving us with only the ghastly Youtube subtitles.  The ones that use "childe" for "gongzi."  Despite that no one's used "childe" seriously since Lord Byron, and he was being purposefully archaic!

I kept saying it all through my rewatch, that we need a good and proper domestic Blu-ray release.

That has become even more important now.

If anyone happens to read this who has any social media accounts, please start sending social media messages to any company that seems likely to be willing to do a domestic Blu-ray release of The Untamed.  (My money, personally, would be on Shout Factory, as they do a lot of sentai, kaiju and I think also martial arts stuff, so they're used to working with subtitles on long projects.  Also to more niche releases.  (Someone also needs to get on them to convince Disney to let them do a Blu-ray release of The Owl House, too...)  But approaching Seven Seas (who handle the novel and the comic adaptation) and getting them to partner with a Blu-ray publisher of their choice would also work.)  Unfortunately, I don't have any social media accounts, and my heart problems (which coincidentally have been going nuts today) forbid me from even thinking of getting any.

I feel like I could moan about this for days, but I need to turn in and get a good night's sleep, since lack of sleep is one of the factors making my heart act so crazy.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed's spin-off movie Fatal Journey

     Because it's necessary for me to rewatch this, too, since I need a better grip (regrip?) on the Nie brothers and their ages and their relationship.  Also because I used the character Nie Zonghui, who was invented for the spin-off movie, because there aren't actually that many characters in the original story who aren't clan leaders and clan heirs, so why in the world would I pass up on a character I didn't have to invent myself?

    I am going to try to limit my notes to things actually useful for the editing of my fic this time, because otherwise this would end up a mile long.

    So, anyway, nothing but more rambling nonsense and spoilers below the read more tag.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 50!

     Last episode!

    Rambling and incoherent spoilers follow the read more tag.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 49

     Incomprehensible rambling and spoilers follow.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 48

     Weirdly, I got through the whole episode without feeling the need to take notes.

    About the only thing of importance for my fic that came up in the episode was when Wei Wuxian basically accused Jin Guangyao of having freed Xue Yang when he was being held prisoner at the Unclean Realm, which was answered in a very non-committal way.  But as Wei Wuxian didn't expressly say "you set him free" just "you started working with him back then," the reply--which was translated as "Kind of."--is less than helpful to me, and I am still left saying "so is he the one who set him free or isn't he?"

    I guess since I'm trying to revert him to the nuanced version from the book, who didn't turn evil until after the war was over, I should either go with "no, he didn't," or "yes, he did, but on the expectation that Xue Yang would go to Wen Chao and thus stop the attack."

    Probably the latter because that's a decision that makes sense in the moment.  Only then Xue Yang distracted him with suggesting the perfect way to get rid of his tormentor, and he listened, and...yeah, that could work.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 47

     Incomprehensible nonsense and spoilers follow.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 46

     Rambling and incoherent spoilers follow.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 45

     "Soul-Chaos Script."

    Uh...

    WTF is that supposed to be?

    😅

    Oh well.

    Spoilers and incoherent nonsense notes follow the read more tag.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 44

     Rambling spoilers and incoherence follow.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 43

     Rambling and incoherent spoilers follow the read more tag.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 42

     Very confused and astonished and possibly slightly panicked notes follow.  Spoilers abound,

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 41

     As always, random and incoherent spoilers follow the read more tag.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 40

     Wow, getting close to the end, now!

    Anyway, spoilers and incoherent rambling follow.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 39

     Mmm, more incoherent rambling and spoilers follow the read more tag.

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 38

     One thought before I start today's episode.  Regarding my confusion about Jin Zixun addressing Jin Guangshan as "shufu," which would mean his father was older than Jin Guangshan, perhaps it actually means that he's not Jin Zixuan's first cousin, but a second cousin.  I think I read that uncle/nephew style-terms are used in place of things like cousins once removed.  So if Jin Zixun's father is Jin Guangshan's first cousin, then Jin Zixun would still call him some variation on "uncle" rather than some form of cousin.  So that may be what was going on there.  In which case I might want to change the line I had about Jin Zixun's father being Jin Guangshan's younger brother.  Given that Jin Zixun is kind of the less-entertaining prototype for Qi Rong, it feels sort of wrong for him to be a more distant cousin, but....well, I guess I can add that to my list of things I need to ask an expert about.  😅

    Anyway.  Random incoherent spoilers follow.

    (Oh, and if you're looking for my IWSG post, it's here.)

Notes on my rewatch of The Untamed, part 37

     It's kind of funny that I'm finishing up the final volume of Thousand Autumns (which I mistakenly took to be "Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen: the novel" and thus had resisted reading for quite a while) right as I'm watching the Yi City arc of The Untamed.  At least, that's funny to me, anyhow.

    Rambling incoherence and spoilers follow.