- ‘Because he’d been drifting along the Luo River, and it was the season when it was filled with thin ice, he was given that name. Luo Binghe—‘ this, you don’t footnote? No, come back here, is his name THIN ICE? If his name is THIN ICE I’m fuckin rioting
- Superborb says: i'm dead, no it means "icy river" (actually it is the word for glacier, but i think you're supposed to read it as the constitutive parts here)
- To be fair tho nothing could be more in the spirit of this novel than to have a giant argument with this novel
- ‘Here at the conference, Luo Binghe fell victim to Shen Qingqiu’s scheming, and fell into a crack in the boundary’ is it a *scheme*, or is it just ‘Binghe go whoosh!’?
- ‘Prior to her death, she let her son off the lone ship she’d birthed him on’ if she’d only planned ahead she could have birthed him on like 6 ships
- ‘Don’t misunderstand, Shen Yuan didn’t enjoy degrading himself.’ w o w you have got a LONG novel ahead of you kiddo
- I'm gonna need a BIG old explanation of Saintly, Saintess in the context of xianxia bc I feel like that does not map at all onto English usages of the term
- How rich IS Shen Yuan's family, that he's a THIRD SON and they had a daughter after? Like did they pretend to all be farmers what HAPPENED here
- In svsss ppl get called their swords' names as a professional title, but in MDZS only Wanyin does. Unless Wangji the qin counts? Is that a Thing in xianxia or?
- Here we are in chapter 3, and I still want a good explainer on sword glare and Killing Intent as a function of gaze. Actually Molly K has explained to me there was an entire discrete model of the mechanism/properties of Gaze in the early modern era, which shows up in Shakespeare. Thus it's not very surprising that another culture would have divergent phenomenological models (especially in its Medievalism), because even our internal conception of this has changed hugely in the last few hundred years.
- I didn’t quite get it just from the donghua, but this ch 4 thing directly substitutes the charmed leaf for the lost pendant, Watsonian-accidentally and Doylist-on purpose shifting Shen Qingqiu into the vacant throne of Binghe’s Oedipal mom-shaped Neediness.
- And though Binghe can’t know it, Qingqiu is gambling with his own life (via the still uncertain mechanics of the b point threshold) to protect him from harm—strongly paralleled with his mom and the protective pendant
- Would the system actually kill Shen Yuan like this, or does the system need him?
- It’s also (productively, I think) not clear that another transmigrator in Shen Yuan’s position would be as TAKEN with Binghe as he is. Yuan firmly believes it’s a function of Binghe’s protagonist status/the world, but Yuan also lies to himself/rationalises shit away constantly.
- Psychoanalytic readings of SVSSS when?
- How does Shen Yuan even know how to get dressed in Shen Qingqiu’s complex pseudoMedieval clothes? In the absence of explanations, I will believe Yuan has done embarrassing Cosplay as Binghe in the past.
- Verity says 'hanfu revival', so he does not need to have gone to these tragic places, in his life.
- 'who would be able to guess that this was Qing Jing Peak’s miserable flower bud that had been ravaged by winds and rains for many years.' maybe Shen Yuan's internal monologue is less HI KIDS IM GAY in Chinese? if not I'm judging him for not having his gay awakening A LOT sooner
- Yuan sweetie you're going to need a word choice that is a lot less--whatever this is. 'miserable flower bud'. Even people on the international space station know you're gay.
- I'd prefer a different word for the lap-desks than just desks, because we've already established Qingqiu's siting in a carriage but Desk in English is almost universally a big stationary piece of furniture, so it generated some whiplash re blocking
- Super fucking awkward that Yue Qingyuan didn't reassign the skinner demon quest when Qingqiu fell ill, given people could have died in the interim. Is that a character note for him or part of how the world works?
- (It wouldn't happen that way because Yuan the new sort-of-protagonist is sick, so *nothing* can happen until he's ready to Quest.)
But maybe I'm supposed to view the Peaks more as Graciously Deigning to Help than as civil servants?
- "The System: 【Warning…】
Shen Qingqiu: “Warning rejected. I wasn’t OOC.”
The System: 【‘Shen Qingqiu’ would never do anything to alleviate Luo Binghe’s troubles. Verdict: OOC level 100%.】
Shen Qingqiu said, “Have you carefully examined this character’s complicated state of mind? Of course he would never if it was purely to alleviate Luo Binghe’s troubles. But right now my goal is to not disappoint Ning Yingying as her Shizun. Ning Yingying is my dearest little disciple, and she pleaded with me, how can I let her plea be for nothing?”
The System: 【…】
Shen Qingqiu: “So my actions are completely in line with ‘Shen Qingqiu’s’ character’s logic. Your warning is invalid!”
With the exchanges from the last couple of days, he’d gradually figured out several working methods. The System had rules, but these rules were not rigid. Since that was the case, then it left leeway for bargaining.
As expected, for the time being the System couldn’t think of an argument for deduction. Soaring with gratification, Shen Qingqiu couldn’t help a laugh."
So this is interesting as it positions Yuan's critical ability to read the text&construct arguments as a key survival skill in-world, &on a meta level Yuan's critical engagement is what's rewarded with transmigration, coupled with his investment&empathy
- You could arguably read this situation as SO plastic that different things retroactively become Always True of this world as SQQ sells them. He pulls his reading off, and suddenly SQQ was never trying to get with Ning Yingying, tho before the transmigration that wasn't the case
- (A random example that may or may not have been true of OG SQQ, just--can they change what happened pre narrative by selling a convincing lived present? My instinct is no, but you could argue otherwise?)
- 'Especially Shen Qingqiu, who already had some fondness towards the male lead. He was very fond of how the male lead killed decisively, and of how black-and-white and clear-cut he was with his kindness and hatred.' does SQQ admire decisiveness bc HE is ambivalent?
- He could also like how driven/purposive Binghe is because at 17-25, however old he actually is rn inside this body, he has no clear DIRECTION
- That’d be interesting bc death/outwitting the novel/the Peak Lord gig/Binghe himself arguably give Yuan the opportunity his situation (I think it IS situation, rather than character, even w/out illness fanon) didn’t to do something meaningful/find out who he is or could be
- I don’t think the problem was just Financial Comfort, I think he was so estranged from his genuine desire/caught up in performativity he spent his time reading books he believed he hated, like that Proust line about when you’re planning to ACTUALLY do anything unironically?
“For what other lifetime was he reserving the moment when he would at last say seriously what he thought of things, formulate opinions that he did not have to put between quotation marks, and no longer indulge with punctilious politeness in occupations [that] he declared at the time to be ridiculous?”
- Shen Yuan has such an estranged relationship with his own desire that he can’t tell who or what he wants, or even process other people wanting him. He’s painfully self-aware, but then it just cuts off as a weird self protective thing. I don't think that's unrelated, I think the lampshading-as-personality makes a lot of sense and is also talking back to the narrative mechanisms of novel-writing and criticism.
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Re: Chapters 1-5
Date: 2021-02-01 12:36 am (UTC)- ‘Because he’d been drifting along the Luo River, and it was the season when it was filled with thin ice, he was given that name. Luo Binghe—‘ this, you don’t footnote? No, come back here, is his name THIN ICE? If his name is THIN ICE I’m fuckin rioting
- Superborb says: i'm dead, no it means "icy river" (actually it is the word for glacier, but i think you're supposed to read it as the constitutive parts here)
- To be fair tho nothing could be more in the spirit of this novel than to have a giant argument with this novel
- ‘Here at the conference, Luo Binghe fell victim to Shen Qingqiu’s scheming, and fell into a crack in the boundary’ is it a *scheme*, or is it just ‘Binghe go whoosh!’?
- ‘Prior to her death, she let her son off the lone ship she’d birthed him on’ if she’d only planned ahead she could have birthed him on like 6 ships
- ‘Don’t misunderstand, Shen Yuan didn’t enjoy degrading himself.’ w o w you have got a LONG novel ahead of you kiddo
- I'm gonna need a BIG old explanation of Saintly, Saintess in the context of xianxia bc I feel like that does not map at all onto English usages of the term
- How rich IS Shen Yuan's family, that he's a THIRD SON and they had a daughter after? Like did they pretend to all be farmers what HAPPENED here
- In svsss ppl get called their swords' names as a professional title, but in MDZS only Wanyin does. Unless Wangji the qin counts? Is that a Thing in xianxia or?
- Here we are in chapter 3, and I still want a good explainer on sword glare and Killing Intent as a function of gaze. Actually Molly K has explained to me there was an entire discrete model of the mechanism/properties of Gaze in the early modern era, which shows up in Shakespeare. Thus it's not very surprising that another culture would have divergent phenomenological models (especially in its Medievalism), because even our internal conception of this has changed hugely in the last few hundred years.
- I didn’t quite get it just from the donghua, but this ch 4 thing directly substitutes the charmed leaf for the lost pendant, Watsonian-accidentally and Doylist-on purpose shifting Shen Qingqiu into the vacant throne of Binghe’s Oedipal mom-shaped Neediness.
- And though Binghe can’t know it, Qingqiu is gambling with his own life (via the still uncertain mechanics of the b point threshold) to protect him from harm—strongly paralleled with his mom and the protective pendant
- Would the system actually kill Shen Yuan like this, or does the system need him?
- It’s also (productively, I think) not clear that another transmigrator in Shen Yuan’s position would be as TAKEN with Binghe as he is. Yuan firmly believes it’s a function of Binghe’s protagonist status/the world, but Yuan also lies to himself/rationalises shit away constantly.
- Psychoanalytic readings of SVSSS when?
- How does Shen Yuan even know how to get dressed in Shen Qingqiu’s complex pseudoMedieval clothes? In the absence of explanations, I will believe Yuan has done embarrassing Cosplay as Binghe in the past.
- Verity says 'hanfu revival', so he does not need to have gone to these tragic places, in his life.
- 'who would be able to guess that this was Qing Jing Peak’s miserable flower bud that had been ravaged by winds and rains for many years.' maybe Shen Yuan's internal monologue is less HI KIDS IM GAY in Chinese? if not I'm judging him for not having his gay awakening A LOT sooner
- Yuan sweetie you're going to need a word choice that is a lot less--whatever this is. 'miserable flower bud'. Even people on the international space station know you're gay.
- I'd prefer a different word for the lap-desks than just desks, because we've already established Qingqiu's siting in a carriage but Desk in English is almost universally a big stationary piece of furniture, so it generated some whiplash re blocking
- Super fucking awkward that Yue Qingyuan didn't reassign the skinner demon quest when Qingqiu fell ill, given people could have died in the interim. Is that a character note for him or part of how the world works?
- (It wouldn't happen that way because Yuan the new sort-of-protagonist is sick, so *nothing* can happen until he's ready to Quest.)
But maybe I'm supposed to view the Peaks more as Graciously Deigning to Help than as civil servants?
- "The System: 【Warning…】
Shen Qingqiu: “Warning rejected. I wasn’t OOC.”
The System: 【‘Shen Qingqiu’ would never do anything to alleviate Luo Binghe’s troubles. Verdict: OOC level 100%.】
Shen Qingqiu said, “Have you carefully examined this character’s complicated state of mind? Of course he would never if it was purely to alleviate Luo Binghe’s troubles. But right now my goal is to not disappoint Ning Yingying as her Shizun. Ning Yingying is my dearest little disciple, and she pleaded with me, how can I let her plea be for nothing?”
The System: 【…】
Shen Qingqiu: “So my actions are completely in line with ‘Shen Qingqiu’s’ character’s logic. Your warning is invalid!”
With the exchanges from the last couple of days, he’d gradually figured out several working methods. The System had rules, but these rules were not rigid. Since that was the case, then it left leeway for bargaining.
As expected, for the time being the System couldn’t think of an argument for deduction. Soaring with gratification, Shen Qingqiu couldn’t help a laugh."
So this is interesting as it positions Yuan's critical ability to read the text&construct arguments as a key survival skill in-world, &on a meta level Yuan's critical engagement is what's rewarded with transmigration, coupled with his investment&empathy
- You could arguably read this situation as SO plastic that different things retroactively become Always True of this world as SQQ sells them. He pulls his reading off, and suddenly SQQ was never trying to get with Ning Yingying, tho before the transmigration that wasn't the case
- (A random example that may or may not have been true of OG SQQ, just--can they change what happened pre narrative by selling a convincing lived present? My instinct is no, but you could argue otherwise?)
- 'Especially Shen Qingqiu, who already had some fondness towards the male lead. He was very fond of how the male lead killed decisively, and of how black-and-white and clear-cut he was with his kindness and hatred.' does SQQ admire decisiveness bc HE is ambivalent?
- He could also like how driven/purposive Binghe is because at 17-25, however old he actually is rn inside this body, he has no clear DIRECTION
- That’d be interesting bc death/outwitting the novel/the Peak Lord gig/Binghe himself arguably give Yuan the opportunity his situation (I think it IS situation, rather than character, even w/out illness fanon) didn’t to do something meaningful/find out who he is or could be
- I don’t think the problem was just Financial Comfort, I think he was so estranged from his genuine desire/caught up in performativity he spent his time reading books he believed he hated, like that Proust line about when you’re planning to ACTUALLY do anything unironically?
“For what other lifetime was he reserving the moment when he would at last say seriously what he thought of things, formulate opinions that he did not have to put between quotation marks, and no longer indulge with punctilious politeness in occupations [that] he declared at the time to be ridiculous?”
- Shen Yuan has such an estranged relationship with his own desire that he can’t tell who or what he wants, or even process other people wanting him. He’s painfully self-aware, but then it just cuts off as a weird self protective thing. I don't think that's unrelated, I think the lampshading-as-personality makes a lot of sense and is also talking back to the narrative mechanisms of novel-writing and criticism.