#circ talks

你一天长珩长 长珩短，你满脑子除了长珩还有什么？

Utterly untranslatable. I despair.

DFQC is pretty good at wordplay and, um, I guess you could call it figurative speech. The occasional proverb will appear in his dialogue to devastating effect (eg, eg, eg). He's a smart guy, and it shows in his speech patterns, even if "clever" isn't one of his main character traits. His diction has a certain force of imagery and pithiness to it.

The dialogue above is from Episode 10, after he shows her the new Simingdian he built, and she begs to be let go to Shuiyuntian. Xiao Lanhua says something to the effect of, "I'll never tell anyone of your whereabouts. Even if Changheng-xianjun himself asks."

Dongfang Qingcang blows up, accusing her of being obsessed with Changheng.

All day long, it's 长珩长 长珩短 with you. Is there anything other than Changheng in your brain?

To understand the untranslated part, you have to break Changheng down into its component parts: The first, 长 cháng, means "long." The second, 珩 héng, is a jade ornament thing. This one isn't that important, it's just the second character in his name. The last character in the untranslated part is 短 duǎn, meaning "short."

Put together, the six characters are pronounced cháng-héng-cháng cháng-héng-duǎn: "Changheng long, Changheng short." Meaning, of course, "Changheng, Changheng all the time (do you ever talk about anything else)." Except he played on the 长 cháng character to do it, giving it a pleasing rhythm to the ear!

A;LSDJF;LASJLDFKA;LF

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line, then tag 10 of your favorite authors! 

Tagged by @circumference-pie in this post.

(Order: last updated, descending, year is the year I started writing the fic)

1. Hitomi and Nami sat at the Sunday breakfast table drinking their last tea. (Phantom Thief for Ran, 2020, #wip # dcmk #cat‘s eye)

2. The half-naked girl on the screen stirred. When she opened her eyes, they were unfocused; after a moment, they focused, flickered around the semi-dark room and widened at the camera for a moment. (Bait, 2021, #dcmk)

3. It’s the beginning of lunch break. Sonoko lets Ran’s mobile glide into the pocket of her school uniform. (Christmas Gift, prompt fic, 2020 #dcmk)

4. Sonoko sees Ran fall and crumble. Her opponent stops in mid-kick and looks at the referee in confusion. He hadn’t touched her? (You‘ll always have my back, #dcmk, #wip, #noir involvement planned, 2019)

5. She notices the blood on the snow first. Impact, blood, … She has been shot. (On the roof, 2020, #dcmk)

6. Hitomi was annoyed with her sisters. They kept bringing up the crush sub-inspector Asaya had on the male persona she had used to scout out their last heist. (Waking up, #cat‘s eye, #noir, #wip, 2020)

7. Takizawa Yui had agreed to add one more native speaker to the group of older foreign students on the Halloween rally for politeness’ sake. After two hours of it, she started to wonder if that had been a good idea. (Halloween in Tokyo, Halloween prompt exchange fic, 2020)

8. The heart monitor was beeping regularly, slow, Sera could hear it even through the closed door while a female officer frisked her. (Baited, #dcmk, 2020)

9. “I’m home” Kirika announces as she comes home from school. She throws her Karate Gi into the dirty linen. (Second Showdown, #dcmk, #noir, #wip, 2018)

10. Sera Masumi bangs the door behind her, starts down the steps, and stops. Hastily she turns and locks the door. Key in hand, taking two steps at a time to get away, she nearly runs into a dark shadow suddenly appearing at the foot of the stairs. (These are the days, #dcmk, #noir, #wip (really, I plan to finish that!)

11. (I‘ll skip that one, NSFW from the first sentence)

12. Vorsichtig bewegt sich Anke den steilen Weg zum Rosenfelser Hafen entlang. Heute, bei Vollmond, ist das eigentlich ein Kinderspiel - sie kennt die Strecke auch in tiefster Dunkelheit - aber die helle Nacht macht es auch wahrscheinlicher, entdeckt zu werden. (Entscheidung vor Ferienbeginn, a fix-it fic to Schreckenssteiner Vol 27, written sometimes in the 1990ties)

13. Jill scans the dance floor idly. The room is packed with dancing women. No one stands out. She holds her glass up to the bartender, who creates another nearly virgin Mai Tai for her. (In the Locket, #dcmk, #charlie‘s angels original series, 2018)

14. Sabrina looks up from her coffee as two people pass her table, bickering loudly. They sit down in the next niche. The women looked like Ran? (The gift of friendship, #dcmk, #charlie‘s angels original series, 2018)

Huh, 13 fics started since 2018, that’s quite a lot. A few one shots. Mostly series that tend to run on repeat in my head. Seems like I tend to jump straight into an action scene most of the time? I like writing present tense. And I tend to throw all my favorite characters together, never mind the timelines.

Favorite line? No. 5

I am here with a podcast episode recommendation: a journalist and an anthropology professor spend an hour talking about the 追星 culture in China today — how it differs from fan culture a generation ago, how it’s closer to love than worship, the “logic” of fan behavior, and the quantification and measurement of everything — all liberally sprinkled with their own 追星 experiences.

I found it an entertaining overview of a culture I was already peripherally acquainted with. (Also, they name-drop Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo fairly early on. I giggled when they mentioned a wave of “popular dangai” circa 2019.)