telophase | (no subject)

Inexplicably, not one of you guys picked up on the footnote I left in the Giant Gin Post that read:

* I've read several stories so far in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling that deal with fox lovers who have a genuine attachment to their lovers but who also, at the same time, are slowly killing their lovers because every time they sleep with them, they draw away part of their life essence, as Taoist thought has it. [...] One is even a gay relationship, which is quite interesting, and would make a good yaoi manga. Hot mansecks! Lovers killing each other even as they make love! Reincarnation! Godawful puns made possible in the English language since the characters are named Huang and Wang, which I keep reading as Hung and Wang! Suicide! Corrupt officials! Drugs! Bisexuality! Date rape! Crossdressing! Bad poetry! And all in ten pages!

So as a result of the OVERWHELMING TIDE OF INDIFFERENCE inexplicably shown by my f-list, who would normally jump on this like a ferret on meth, I have experimented with not only an OCR program to translate the scans into readable text, but with InDesign to lay it out, and present you with...

~~Temporarily down, as I discovered I was missing a page that I SWEAR WAS THERE WHEN I UPLOADED.~~ Back up!

Cut Sleeve, (PDF approx. 350 KB) from Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, originally published in the 17th century.

It contains the text of the tale, plus the translator's notes explaining the references as well as putting forth why he thinks the bad poetry at the end is a parody of neo-Confucian prudery, and a list of references the poem is making.

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Heh, she's complaining that we found the Gin et al. discussion even more interesting than an authentic Chinese supernatural yaoi tale ... never satisfied, this one ... .

The story seems like a lot of fun, but I think maybe some text is missing? For example, p. 3 ends with the words " ... I know you are on friendly terms with Dr Qi. Would you please ask him for one on my behalf?’" and the next page picks up apparently in mid-sentence: " ... and clasped his hands together in a gesture of appreciation." This might be an artifact of my elderly Mac PDF reader, but you might want to check that out .. similar things occur between other pages as well.

Damn, looks like I'm missing a page there. Phooey. Will go see what I can do. :)

Yay! It's not a page, just a paragraph. :D Probably due to the conversion to PDF. Will have a corrected version up soonish.

OK, then, let me tell you where I found similar issues:

pp. 4-5

pp. 5-6

pp. 8-9

pp. 9-10

(I know, so picky ... .)

It's been re-upped!

Uh oh ... .

Lemme check this one out ...

Yeah, I caught those - like an idiot I hadn't noticed that the text was overflowing the frame. XD So I played with the spacing on them, because there was no way I was laying that entire thing out again.

Ahhh, this one looks good. Thanks! (That was quick!)

Yeah, took me two seconds to figure out the problem - oops, there's a little red overflow box at the bottom of all these pages! I don't think I have the chops to make it as a professional layout artist quite yet. XD

(Ideally I'd have figured out how to make the text overflow onto the next pages automagically and put it all in at once, but I had the pages all in separate files due to the OCRing anyway, so I just went with separate pages.)

It's been a way long time since I've used any real layout software ... I think it was still Pagemaker or something when I did. You had to label each frame as to which file it was supposed to contain, and weird things happened if you did them in the wrong order ... . The newsletters I've done in recent years were simple enough to kludge with MS Word.

I was able to do the comics on InDesign, but they didn't involve placing text. :) Well, I did place text on a few pages in back, but completely forgot what I did to make it flow. Ah well.

In my defense, I'm not through the arc yet and didn't read the post for SPOILERZ. More importantly: THANK YOU.

:D I've re-uploaded it, as there were errors in the first copy.

That shit is insane. Reminded me a lot of The Fox Woman, though.

There's a whole genre of these randomly weird Chinese stories, and a tradition stretching back for centuries. It's fascinating.

I watch too many chinese dramas to think about that story without my brain going places i'd rather it didn't.

BTW, Togari was good and has been posted on.

:)

Yeah - I saw it, but havne't had a chance to comment yet. :D

just letting you know it's good since you asked for feedback

Thanks! :D

OMG POEM.

<3

That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I'm still thinking "One-Eyed General!" to myself every few seconds and snickering.

Leading the charge to the rear gate of the barracks, no less! XD

Hmmm. I am really tempted to print and show this to my Chinese history professor. His dissertation was on male same sex relationships in ancient China.

Cool! He probably knows it already, in that case. XD just don't get me in trouble for distributing it, plzkthnx

I was hoping he did know about it, as I have some questions about the cut sleeve thing and some other things. I promise I would never reveal where I got it from XD

No prob! And let us know! XD

Awww, this is why we love you. XD

Because I supply you with your RDA of PURE HISTORICAL LITERARY CRACK? XD

nihilistic_kid is reading that right now--it sounds hilarious.

Best poem in the history of ever! XD

COMPLETE AND UTTER CRACK. XDXDXD I'm still laughing.

Thank you!

See, there's a loooong history of crack!fic in Asia! Manga/manhua/manhwa make so much more sense when seen in that light!