No longer modern

… something I think Wash would swear by, just because it’s silly. It’s the equivalent of “By the Hammer of Thor!”. Yes, the Monkey King too has a staff that can change size at will. It weighs 13500斤 at full size.

For people who didn’t grow up with Journey to the West, one of the Monkey King’s actual names is Sun Wukong (in Japanese, Son Goku). He’s kinda like Chuck Norris.

Am now trying to translate “wacky” because I couldn’t find it in the English-Chinese Dictionary of American Idioms. Oh Wash.

If anyone has compiled an English-Chinese version of the English-English Dictionary of Jossian Idioms (aka Buffy Speak, Slayer Slang), please tell me.

incomprehensiblelentils replied to your post: That’s the deal

Before I remembered that we actually see Mrs. Tam in that episode, I dreamed up some headcanon that she was Chinese and so River and Simon were hapa (though personally I don’t see all the “Summer looks Asian!” at all but w/e. XD).

Regan Tam does sorta look like my mother… with red hair (lol early 90s perms)… if I squint. I don’t think “Regan” and “Gabriel” are unreasonable names for Chinese people, given the nostalgic feel of the ‘verse. I get that it’s easier to mentally retcon the Tams’ ethnicities because they only appear in a few scenes. So yeah, by all means, headcanon away. :)

One thing that really bugs me now about the first flashback of “Safe” is the mostly-English dialogue in the Tam household while Gabriel Tam reads—or at least is seen carrying—a Chinese-language newspaper. My parents find it hard to switch from reading English to Chinese and vice versa. YMMV. Of course, maybe the Tams try to switch it around to keep fluent? I just don’t know with the handling of bilingual people in this ‘verse, honestly. At this point, the newspaper just looks like decoration.

(Granted, maybe it is. It’s a deliberately archaic medium complete with vertical right-to-left text. Maybe it’s a luxury item for high-class folk on Osiris, while everyone else makes do with the Cortex.)

The flashback in “Safe” with young River and young Simon (I didn’t recognize Zac Efron until he opened his mouth—cue “you all look alike to me” joke) and their father. Gabriel Tam’s “deal” with his son—“dedicated sourcebox” for an exemplary career—is a common stereotype for Asian families, right down to the “brilliant doctor” bit.

(Of course, it doesn’t hold true for all families in real life, but my own family uses that phrasing a lot w/r/t grades and personal freedoms.)

It’s one of the little instances that makes me wonder whether the writers were acknowledging the Tams’ Chinese heritage, and putting a little dig in at “white people behaving like Asians”. For me, though, the potential funny is soured by the fact they missed the chance to cast actual Asian leads. :(

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I can’t believe I haven’t read Snuff yet—I wish I could just give my money to the Pratchetts, but no. What do you mean, the paperback comes out in June?

I also have wildly unlikely headcanon of Kaylee as ethnically non-Hàn, speaking a mix of English and not-Mandarin [what most people call “dialects” are, linguistically, separate languages], and being treated respectfully like a person, like a lead character with a history and desires and a future, despite her “pidgin” speech, colourful “ethnic” clothing, rural manners, and every other indicator that would place her surely in the “local colour” extras.

Despite this rather offensively vague description, if I actually write her I will do plenty of research.

Of course, this is wildly unlikely because there is an impossibly narrow window of what Chinese main characters are allowed to look like in Hollywood—which often as not excludes even Chinese actors, resulting in white leads—and anyone more “ethnic” or “colourful” is merely scenery. (Maybe with an option to upgrade to “butt of racist joke”.) -vomit-

A girl in one of my classes has the hair I think River Tam would have, if she were Chinese. It would be thick and flowing, but not willow-straight like the beauty ideal, and kinda coarse with silver strands, which I’ve only seen on a couple of boys before. River would be so beautiful as a Chinese actress (dodging all those stereotypes of Asian women, I dearly hope).

Plus, if they cast Simon too it would offer men-loving people a Chinese guy (who isn’t a martial artist) with his shirt off.

Casting suggestions, anyone?

Vespertine doesn’t have the thumping bass of earth-rocking, bedframe-breaking sex that club songs seem to promise. Yes, it’s about sex, love, intimacy, and other big terrifying things. But it’s oh so quiet.

Rustling bedsheets
Ambient whoosh of the motel A/C
Whispers
Conversations moving between speech and gesture
Rain
Saliva between teeth and lips - thanks Matmos
Shivering fluids
Everything in flux

Winter will bring a fringe of icicles outside my window
Stillness
Warm musk of sleeping bodies
Clarity and thoughts as sweet as melting snow
Hollow
Something pure
Resonant
Hello, Christmas morning is here
You are here

crowleyshouseplant:

“Reynolds” = Re4nao4 热闹 (a reasonable phonetic representation in Mandarin.) Means noisy, lively, and chaotic. That pretty much covers the situations Mal finds himself in.

(Now I have to use that in a fic. As in, “I was lookin’ for <liveliness> and, well, here you are!”)

Because my girlfriend seeks things out like The Human Centipede (which I have helped determine is technically more of a millipede) and Breaking Dawn to laugh at, I recently heard about an anonymous Good Omens fic in which a character ingests a tapeworm in order to lose weight (and Famine’s CHOW(TM) wasn’t good enough because…?). -headsplode-

My grandma had something like a tapeworm. At first she thought she was pregnant. The doctors couldn’t tell what was wrong. The painkillers weren’t helping. One day she thought she was dying of cancer. It was one of the only things to make her cry. And then hallelujah, she vomited this six-foot worm onto the sidewalk and was fine.

I don’t believe every instance of tapeworm infestation is like that uplifting bedtime story, but we’re talking EXCRUCIATING ABDOMINAL PAIN here. So, I would read the horror. But only if it’s as good as that.

flashandthunderfire:

here is how it goes:

• you can like literally whatever you want to like
• because this is fiction
• as long as you acknowledge that other people may be uncomfortable with it, and you need to respect them when they are.
• some things are genuinely problematic in and of themselves
• people can admit this, compartmentalize, and enjoy
• some people are too bothered by these aspects to do that
• both viewpoints are 100% valid

if, for example, you feel really personally grossed out by joss whedon’s handling of race on firefly, and it prevents you from enjoying the show

that’s legit

conversely, if you really enjoy firefly, and you’re like “yeah, there’s some gross racial stuff that needed to be addressed” but you still really dig the characters/the ships/the cool action scenes/etc

that is also legit

i’m pretty sure i missed some stuff but that basically covers it tbh

OMG THISTHISTHIS (not that I wouldn’t have the same reaction any other day, but I’ve particularly been thinking of race and Firefly recently, so. ALL MY FEELS)

平(ping) came up on my dash a couple days ago, and I got to thinking (again) about the use of Chinese in Firefly. I’m not a linguist, but my parents learned English as a second language and my grandmother, as a third (or maybe fourth) language. So that’s my experience with bilingual everyday speech.

Despite my limited first-hand knowledge, I’ve decided to write a Firefly fanfiction in Chinese. It’s going to “explain” the Unification War from an Alliance supporter’s perspective, and one possibility for the title is “只叫 ‘The Battle of Serenity Valley’” (“It’s Always ‘The Battle of Serenity Valley’”). As in, no-one calls it 宁静谷之战.

(There is at least one dead Chinese Browncoat in a deleted scene from Firefly’s original pilot, so you have to wonder. Or at least I do. What sorts of people fought for Independence? Were there holdovers from (romanticized) central principles of China vs. the U.S.A.?)