give me a pen, I'll draw the world

[extrapenguin]

1. A bit under a day left to sign up for worldbuildingex. Come play? There are three Guardian sign-ups already!

2. Speaking of Guardian, I was diving into linguistic material, and the fact that the YOHE people all speak modern Mandarin is just WTF. Proto-Sino-Tibetan is only from 6k to 9k years ago, so even if we stretch that a bit, Shen Wei et al on the Upper Yangtze would be more likely to be saying "s.na" instead of "hǎo". (Meanwhile, their distant neighbors on the Caspian Steppes would be going “kērd ágʰnutor moi, dʰgʰmónm̥ éku̯ons ágontm̥ u̯idn̥téi”.)

3. 音阙诗听 continues being a gift. They just released a song for solar term 24 out of 24 (though they're missing 1, 2, and 5 – couldn't find them anywhere on the internet), and this solar term's song, 大寒 (Great Cold) has grown on me. I've been translating them for my personal entertainment, just so I get some idea of what they're about, and I think this is about a person who considers herself a hero ("let a big wave cleanse [all the world]") but with some tension about whether this is real, or if this is just a TV drama. That said, I do prefer the more upbeat ones, like 寒露 (Cold Dew), which is probably about sodding off from civilization to the jianghu to follow one's desires.

Comments

[china_shop]

and the fact that the YOHE people all speak modern Mandarin is just WTF.

Blame the spaceship? I mean, their clothes and weapons aren't exactly paleolithic either. ;-) (That's interesting, though, about what languages were spoken when.)

[extrapenguin]

I know, Haixing seems to be operating on some odd notions of what time is and how long people will be remembered (there are portraits of Ma Gui on the walls! portraits!!!! with a time depth twice that of the earliest attested names of people we know!!), so the Hallows must've done something. Anyway, translator microbes. And obviously they did brain surgery on Shen Wei so he'd speak modern Mandarin. (And then be completely baffled in the wormhole about how he had no fucking clue what anyone was saying in YOHE?)

[china_shop]

Anyway, translator microbes.

Yesss!!

there are portraits of Ma Gui on the walls! portraits!!!!

Highly accurate portraits, nonetheless!! Otoh, there are also four people (that we know of) who've lived since Ma Gui's time, plus canon time travel, so. I just have to keep reminding myself that Haixing ≠ Earth -- it just has a lot of coincidental similarities.

[extrapenguin]

Otoh, there are also four people (that we know of) who've lived since Ma Gui's time,
I mean, technically, yes, but Shen Wei was preoccupied taking a nap and somehow I doubt Ye Zun or Da Qing would expend much effort painting portraits of Ma Gui, which just leaves Zhang Shi. I suppose it'd be an "everyone pls notice sempai" moment of epic proportions...

[china_shop]

Yes, I presume it was Zhang Shi -- maybe when he and ZXC were running the SID, or when they moved up to the DoS, on their way to the Xingdu Bureau? But there could be other people who've also lived that long, via various misadventures, and we just don't know about them...

[extrapenguin]

I'm now imagining the Hallows as a Ma Gui fanboy club who kept alive a bunch of portrait artists and historians to ensure he would be remembered. ...did they grassroots a cult for him? Is Ma Gui the Haixing equivalent of Buddha/Jesus/etc? (That would actually be a decent, albeit cracky, fic idea. Hm. Free for good home? *g*)

[china_shop]

Hee!

The more I think about it, the more I think the portrait could just as easily have been painted by Shen Wei as Zhang Shi, though. The Envoy could have presented it to Haixing as a gesture of friendship when he first started working with the SID, with the subtext of "I knew and fought alongside your ancestors"...?

[extrapenguin]

I mean, i guess, though idk if Shen Wei has any skill in oil-painting. And it'd be very OOC for him, but now I want something where he goes "yes, the most importantest person for winning the war was actually Kunlun, so have 10 000 pictures of him" and Zhao Yunlan spends years low-grade baffled by his uncanny resemblance to the legendary war hero...

[maggie33]

I really like both of those songs, thanks for the links. I'm going to hunt for more now. They are really great to listen while I'm working. :)

[extrapenguin]

Both of the links should go to their YouTube channel, which has some but not all of the songs, as well as some songs from outside the solar terms series. (The autumn and winter ones are there, but a chunk of the spring and summer ones are missing, even if they can be found elsewhere on YT.) I would have to check on my desktop, but 谷雨 at least was good.