Mei Changsu + Fave Quotes

mei changsu + fave quotes

I’ve noticed lately that it’s often Americans who leave tags like “I don’t even care if it’s made up” on posts I make that are not particularly unbelievable, but are pretty specific to my way of life or corner of the world (like the one about the cheese vendor). It reminds me of that tweet that was circulating, that said Americans have a “medieval peasant scale of worldview”—I mean, if you don’t want to be perceived this way by the rest of the world maybe don’t go around social media saying that if a cultural concept or way of life sounds unfamiliar it must be made up?

It’s the imbalance that’s annoying, because like—when I mentioned having no mobile network around here I had people giving me info about Verizon to fix my problem. I post some rural pic and someone says it must be somewhere in the Midwest because the Southwest doesn’t look like this. My post about my postwoman has thousands of Americans assuming it’s about the USPS. On my post about my architect there’s someone saying “it’s because architecture is an impacted major” and other irrelevant stuff about how architecture is taught in the US. This kind of thing happens so so so often and I’m expected to be familiar with the concepts of Verizon and the Midwest and impacted majors and the USPS and meanwhile I make a post about my daily life and Americans in the notes are debating like “dunno if real. it sounds made up”

Going online for the rest of the world means having to keep in mind an insane amount of hyperspecific trivia about American culture while going online for Americans means having to keep in mind that the rest of the world really exists I guess

Farewell my concubine (1993)

dir. Chen Kaige

starring. Leslie Cheung, Zhang Feng Yi & Gong Li

leslie cheung photographed at cannes film festival, 1993

sounds good

hello everyone I'm having too good of a time with 《禁止存档》 Save Files Forbidden by 年终 so I'm planning to bring everyone else down with me into the death swamp :)))

tag will be "(corrosive) bog days of summer" because it's been 90 degrees for about a week straight now and even I, a 铁打的Californian, am beginning to melt a little

general premise under the cut, but let me just take a moment to say that neither the title nor the summary on jjwxc prepared me for the ultimate genre of this book (workplace comedy between two people who are so aggressively responsible that they've tricked themselves into thinking they're just friends)

ok ok so in chapter 1: your main character is one of the best players in this post-apocalyptic immersive video game, but he’s decided that after ten years, it’s time for him to retire after this one last mission

the video game — corrosion — is famous for 1) not being a PVP video game, but more collaborative (teams work together to help purify a corrupted apocalyptic wasteland), and 2) not allowing save files. If you die in this video game, you’re out of the running for the rest of your life. so the fact that our main character has been in this for ten years is genuinely very impressive

anyway! he’s like. well I’m outta here after this mission, I’m gonna go find my internet friend who I’ve been in love with this entire time and confess to them. I’m prettttttyyy sure that my internet friend is a quiet, logical girl who moonlights as our team strategist via chat, but if they're a guy I’m not opposed to trying it out!

ofc complications in last mission results in him doing a ~ great heroic sacrifice ~ and so he ends up flinging himself into a corrosive death bog, whereupon he's like. ah well, we had a good run! time to go back to the real world and confess to the love of my life

and as he sinks into the corrosive death bog he’s like. hey. hey wait a minute. why isn’t the death sequence loading

anyway he wakes up in chapter 2 like “godDAMMIT I’m still stuck in this stupid game. I’m gonna sue the hell out of this video game company” and goes off to find some NPCs who’ll help him contact customer service

he finds some NPCs. he walks up to them like "hiiiiiiii so I don’t know what bug in the system is preventing me from logging out but I’d really appreciate it if y’all—" and then they open fire on him

TURNS OUT!!! he is now video game monster to everyone. more specifically, he is now a walking death bog (jazz hands)

MEANWHILE FROM THE INTERNET FRIEND’S PERSPECTIVE

first of all, he is a man. this is a danmei novel after all

second of all, he is the? (a?) high general of post-apocalyptic human civilization. of course he is, but more importantly this also explains why he’s good at strategy

third of all, he’s talking to his ex-girlfriend (who is a lesbian; they were dating to get both their families off their backs, and now that their families want them to get married they’ve broken up). and high general man is like “hi so something definitely went wrong with the love of my life. I’m gonna go look for him. in the meantime I need you to do some investigation”

and she’s like “I canNOT believe you made me ditch my date for this. fine” and as she walks out the door he stops her and is like “remember. whatever you do. make sure that when you interact with the players, that they don’t realize that their world is the simulation, and the world they think is a video game is actually reality” and she rolls her eyes at him like “yeah yeah don’t die” and walks out

SIKE

THIS IS A POST-APOCALYPTIC SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

and it keeps going from there :)))))))

Close-up clip of "I am what I am". How fitting for the Hong Kong concerts. 💖

2 fancams of the song in full, no close-ups though. I'm sure more fancams will follow.

fancam 1

fancam 2

clip

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