Hi! I only just managed to post my comment on last week's post, but I'm trying to catch up properly, so here I am! Great choice of excerpts, and great questions. :D
Do you sympathize with Ghost Face?
He's the victim of Evil Worldbuilding™ too, so yes, absolutely!
How do you feel about the time travel storyline, and how does it compare to the drama version?
I can't tell yet; I'll need to see how it ends.
Would you also immediately buy ice cream if you suddenly ended up in the past?
Excellent choice, yes! Especially since the shop doesn't exist any more in the present; take that opportunity while you have it!:D
Are you as confused as Zhao Yunlan about what is true and what isn't?
YES!!!
And my notes:
the great sage Shennong had personally descended to the Mortal Realm
Since we've been talking about realms - descended from where? I'd normally assume from the Heavenly Realm, but all the gods seem to be running around in the Mortal Realm anyway ...
now he regurgitated what he'd heard back to the young King of the Gui. His retellings made sense only half of the time, as he was mostly doing it to dispel the boredom. But the young king was utterly ignorant and hung on every word that came out of Kunlun-jun's mouth. To him, Kunlun's bullshit was the truth of the world.
This gives me second-hand embarrassment, ouch. :( Poor Xiao-Wei, he deserves better.
Listening to Kunlun-jun taught him that it was inappropriate to proclaim those feelings aloud, so he tucked them away in his heart.
NOOOOO!!!!! Kunlun is so bad for baby!SW. :(
(I'm so glad the drama changed that completely, and had ZYL actually be good for YOHE!SW.)
Kunlun-jun's expression when he accepted these thirty-six teeth was very strange-even stranger than the necklace itself. It was as if he had a toothache and wanted to wince from the pain but was instead forcing his features into a peculiar smile, thanking the little king through gritted teeth. From his reaction, the young king concluded that he probably didn't like it very much.
Come on, Kunlun! Take it in the spirit it's given!
"I hold all the world's famous mountains and rivers in my hand, but what of it? They're nothing but a bunch of rocks and wild waters. Of all that I am, the only part worth anything may be my heart. If you want it, it's yours."
Awww! But honestly, I find Kunlun so inconsistent in his behaviour towards Xiao-Wei, he's veering wildly from judgmental and patronising to teasing to earnest and generous. It's giving me whiplash, it's a wonder Xiao-Wei isn't even more confused by everything! (If it actually did happen like that, which I assume it did.)
(And we're entirely back in "Kunlun is an adult, Xiao-Wei is a teen" territory, which I find unpleasant because it's so unbalanced ...)
The gui were not living beings, but in that instant, he could almost hear his own nonexistent heartbeat.
♥ ♥ ♥
Shennong said, 'If one doesn't die, doesn't perish, one cannot become a god.' I used to think he was spouting bullshit, but now, I'm finally starting to understand..."
"Tens of thousands of years ago, he and I were twin Kings of the Gui. There was no difference between us. And yet somehow, he managed to gain Kunlun-jun's-your-favor. Now, millennia later, one of us is within and one of us is without. One of us rots in jail and one holds the keys."
Yeah, can't blame Ghost Face for his resentment at all!
"Didn't Shennong borrow my soul fire? How did it appear later in the Place of Great Disrespect? And what do you mean, it set death itself ablaze?"
All excellent questions!
Ever since he'd confirmed that the "memories" he'd seen within the Great Divine Tree were fake, a suspicion had lurked in his mind. It wasn't as if just anyone could even go to the peak of Kunlun Mountain, never mind tamper with the Great Divine Tree itself. He could count the number of people who'd be capable of it with one hand. Since then, he'd pored over those memories countless times. The parts that had to do with his left soul fire were particularly unclear, and the parts that related to the fall of Buzhou Mountain were especially clunky and forced.
ZYL figuring things out is always fun! I wish we got to see into his head more often.
If any one person in that story hadn't played their part, things would've ended differently; that meant all their actions were directly connected to sequences of events that could be explained. Any one person, except Shennong.
Huh, fascinating!
He looked exactly like someone the mafia had sent to collect protection fees in exchange for not smashing the store.
LOLOLOL! :D
With just one look, Zhao Yunlan immediately felt deeply awkward-as anyone would in his shoes, realizing that their "wife" had privately met up with their dad eleven years ago.
And here's the source for the tea shop encounter between SW and ZXC in the drama, right?
Somehow, he still doubted that this was real. He was starting to get used to being lied to; at the rate things were going, he was going to become paranoid and suspect that everything was a lie.
Alas, this is exactly my problem with the novel: I don't know what's true, and so anything and everything is suspect, which makes it harder to engage with anything.
(This is also why I have so few comments on this. I feel like it's pointless to speculate or think too deeply on much of what's said because who knows if any of it is even real ...)
Version comparison: again almost no meaningful differences I could spot, but there's this:
When ZYL in the past glimpses his father from the ice cream shop, there's this bit that's ot in the official translation:
At the moment when he's eaten half of the shaved ice, his suddenly glimpsed a person. He immediately sat up straight, and, like a fox, extended his neck to look out from the ice cream shop window. Because the image of a "fierce handsome man eating shaved ice" was so eye-catching, several girls couldn't stop looking at him and thus, uncontrollably followed his gaze, extended their necks, and looked outside.
This resulted in forming a basketball team of meerkats.
In the official translation, the talisman ZYL swallows while following his father is one of the ones he drew while he was blind; in the fan translation it's this instead:
The talisman was drawn by Chu Shuzhi. Chu Shuzhi was so poor that all he had left was self-confidence, and he thought of himself as incredibly cool. He claimed that this talisman would be more than effective even if it was to be used to investigate the romantic relationships of the great ancient gods.
Even though Zhao Yunlan thinks he's full of bullshit, he couldn't help but put his hopes on the talisman.
While ZYL is following his father down the tree, there are two bits that aren't in the official translation. First this:
He knew that the person he was following was not his pompous father but a scum who dared to use the body of a living person to go down to Huang Quan.
And then a reference to Shen Wei:
There was sense in Shen Wei's recommendation that he leave as quickly as possible. It definitely wasn't a great experience for a living person to walk the Huang Quan road.
no subject
Do you sympathize with Ghost Face?
He's the victim of Evil Worldbuilding™ too, so yes, absolutely!
How do you feel about the time travel storyline, and how does it compare to the drama version?
I can't tell yet; I'll need to see how it ends.
Would you also immediately buy ice cream if you suddenly ended up in the past?
Excellent choice, yes! Especially since the shop doesn't exist any more in the present; take that opportunity while you have it!:D
Are you as confused as Zhao Yunlan about what is true and what isn't?
YES!!!
And my notes:
the great sage Shennong had personally descended to the Mortal Realm
Since we've been talking about realms - descended from where? I'd normally assume from the Heavenly Realm, but all the gods seem to be running around in the Mortal Realm anyway ...
now he regurgitated what he'd heard back to the young King of the Gui. His retellings made sense only half of the time, as he was mostly doing it to dispel the boredom. But the young king was utterly ignorant and hung on every word that came out of Kunlun-jun's mouth. To him, Kunlun's bullshit was the truth of the world.
This gives me second-hand embarrassment, ouch. :( Poor Xiao-Wei, he deserves better.
Listening to Kunlun-jun taught him that it was inappropriate to proclaim those feelings aloud, so he tucked them away in his heart.
NOOOOO!!!!! Kunlun is so bad for baby!SW. :(
(I'm so glad the drama changed that completely, and had ZYL actually be good for YOHE!SW.)
Kunlun-jun's expression when he accepted these thirty-six teeth was very strange-even stranger than the necklace itself. It was as if he had a toothache and wanted to wince from the pain but was instead forcing his features into a peculiar smile, thanking the little king through gritted teeth. From his reaction, the young king concluded that he probably didn't like it very much.
Come on, Kunlun! Take it in the spirit it's given!
"I hold all the world's famous mountains and rivers in my hand, but what of it? They're nothing but a bunch of rocks and wild waters. Of all that I am, the only part worth anything may be my heart. If you want it, it's yours."
Awww! But honestly, I find Kunlun so inconsistent in his behaviour towards Xiao-Wei, he's veering wildly from judgmental and patronising to teasing to earnest and generous. It's giving me whiplash, it's a wonder Xiao-Wei isn't even more confused by everything! (If it actually did happen like that, which I assume it did.)
(And we're entirely back in "Kunlun is an adult, Xiao-Wei is a teen" territory, which I find unpleasant because it's so unbalanced ...)
The gui were not living beings, but in that instant, he could almost hear his own nonexistent heartbeat.
♥ ♥ ♥
Shennong said, 'If one doesn't die, doesn't perish, one cannot become a god.' I used to think he was spouting bullshit, but now, I'm finally starting to understand..."
Time to link this meta by
"Tens of thousands of years ago, he and I were twin Kings of the Gui. There was no difference between us. And yet somehow, he managed to gain Kunlun-jun's-your-favor. Now, millennia later, one of us is within and one of us is without. One of us rots in jail and one holds the keys."
Yeah, can't blame Ghost Face for his resentment at all!
"Didn't Shennong borrow my soul fire? How did it appear later in the Place of Great Disrespect? And what do you mean, it set death itself ablaze?"
All excellent questions!
Ever since he'd confirmed that the "memories" he'd seen within the Great Divine Tree were fake, a suspicion had lurked in his mind. It wasn't as if just anyone could even go to the peak of Kunlun Mountain, never mind tamper with the Great Divine Tree itself. He could count the number of people who'd be capable of it with one hand. Since then, he'd pored over those memories countless times. The parts that had to do with his left soul fire were particularly unclear, and the parts that related to the fall of Buzhou Mountain were especially clunky and forced.
ZYL figuring things out is always fun! I wish we got to see into his head more often.
If any one person in that story hadn't played their part, things would've ended differently; that meant all their actions were directly connected to sequences of events that could be explained. Any one person, except Shennong.
Huh, fascinating!
He looked exactly like someone the mafia had sent to collect protection fees in exchange for not smashing the store.
LOLOLOL! :D
With just one look, Zhao Yunlan immediately felt deeply awkward-as anyone would in his shoes, realizing that their "wife" had privately met up with their dad eleven years ago.
And here's the source for the tea shop encounter between SW and ZXC in the drama, right?
Somehow, he still doubted that this was real. He was starting to get used to being lied to; at the rate things were going, he was going to become paranoid and suspect that everything was a lie.
Alas, this is exactly my problem with the novel: I don't know what's true, and so anything and everything is suspect, which makes it harder to engage with anything.
(This is also why I have so few comments on this. I feel like it's pointless to speculate or think too deeply on much of what's said because who knows if any of it is even real ...)
Version comparison: again almost no meaningful differences I could spot, but there's this:
And then a reference to Shen Wei: