-You both meeting after she saves you from a horrendous shipwreck, the very same where you assumed you’d lose your life. Instead, you were met with the gaze of an angel looking back at you as you came back to the land of the living
-You both spending days explaining each other’s world to the other. She finds walking on feet so slow, and you can’t really argue with her when you see how she soars through the water.
-Sensual make-out sessions in steady waters under a brilliant night sky. The scales covering her body shimmer beneath the tapestry of stars above you both. Now and again, she’ll nibble your bottom lip with her sharp fangs.
-Her taking you to secluded caves and spots only known to her kind. Now and again, you spend evenings reading her poetry to her in caves covered in gemstones that light the entire space with but a ray of sunshine. She admires you as she lays her head on your lap while her body floats in the water below.
-The worlds of land and sea being connected through your love for each other. Soon a treaty is signed between your crew and her clan, a relationship that is quite fruitful for all sides.
-Reaching the point in your relationship where she feels comfortable giving you a mark of scarification native to her clan and all those connected to it. It’s a painful process, but the significance isn’t lost on you.
-Her bringing you brilliant treasures lost to the ocean’s touch and the passing of time.
-Her kiss giving you the ability to breathe underwater temporarily. You spend hours exploring the world lost to your kind, welcomed by creatures whizzing past you and vegetation as tall as trees.
-You French braiding her beautiful long hair
-Her having a call that can only be registered by you. Regardless of how far you are from one another, you will always find each other
-Her having the ability to clone herself temporarily. She and her clones enjoy “engaging” with you in all kinds of ways in your more intimate moments.
-You being able to hear her call at a frequency most humans cant once you’ve truly bonded. No matter how far you both are, her call keeps you connected and always leads you back to her
-Her ensuring you and your crew are safe from even the deadliest sea creatures. Her kind holds a lot of power throughout the seven seas and its inhabitants. If there’s any chance of you or your crew falling overboard, you’re safely brought back to shore by any nearby creatures.
-Her being extremely ticklish around her gills, you often send her into long giggle fits as she feigns annoyance and hits you with her tail.
-Legends written about your relationships across the seas. Poems and songs are sung about the beautiful pirate and her stunning maiden, covered in mini prism-like scales.
I am reading MDZS trying to pretend that I do not speak Chinese and have little to no knowledge of Chinese culture, while at the same time matching what I feel when reading MDZS in English to what I felt when reading MDZS in Chinese. Any time I see something that doesn’t flow well or that doesn’t match my original feelings, I make a note. Any time I encounter something that I think will trip up my non-Chinese friends (师叔 shishu?), I make a note.
I love this story, and I don't expect my non-Chinese friends to remember the 5+ different things that Lan Xichen is called, so I have made a lot of notes. Here they are:
haven’t seen anyone else mention this here but seven seas is unionizing. there’s been a lot of discussion of the problems with the official eng tl of the mxtx books and it seems at least somewhat likely that the work environment described in the full statement has something to do with the state of the final product. anyways, regardless of what media properties 7S distributes that you’re familiar with, this is a huge step for a publishing/distribution/TL house and i hope other workplaces facing similar issues in the industry are able to follow suit
So for those who, like myself, no longer have x/twitter and perhaps weren't aware, Seven Seas has come under fire again due to a recent licensing announcement.
On February 21st, Seven Seas announced that they had secured the rights to license the Kinnporsche novels into the English language:
This announcement was met with both positive and negative reaction; the negative focusing mainly on two points. The first being that Daemi, the authors for the original Kinnporsche novel, were already under fire for their behaviours and treatment towards an actor in the KP drama, among other questionable behaviours.
But the other main negative reaction stemmed not from the novel or authors that were licensed, but towards Seven Seas themselves.
Kinnporsche is the first Thai BL novel of this kind to be licensed under the Seven Seas name. Yet Seven Seas has caused upset because, despite coming from a different country entirely, they have still decided to brand Kinnporsche as a danmei title.
Many fans took to social media explaining why this was an incorrect thing to do, yet rather than listening to them as well as both the Chinese and Thai communities, they instead decided to edit their websites definition on what danmei means:
For those that perhaps aren't already aware, danmei as a genre specifically applies to Chinese works. It does not apply to any other outside country - and that includes Thai.
It isn't just China that has a unique name for their male/male genre novels. In Japan, similar titles can be called yaoi. Thai takes inspiration from the Japanese name for this genre, often referring to their works as Y.
"Although the term boys-love, or its abbreviation “BL”, is more prevalently used internationally to denote the genre, it is more commonly referred to as waai (วาย) or “Y” in Thai. This term is derived from the first letter of the Romanized spelling of the Japanese expression for the genre yaoi. The term waai functions as an adjective and can be added, according to Thai grammar, after any media formats, such as siirii waai (“Y” series), niyaai waai (“Y” novels), kaatuun waai (“Y” comics). So, the next time you encounter “Y” alongside any Thai series, you will now be able to recognize it as belonging to the BL genre." (source)
While boys' love is the overarching umbrella for all these genres, it is both important and respectful to refer to the genre name of the given country of origin for a novel. Seven Seas has chosen not to do this, and instead has decided to band everything together under the danmei umbrella. This is both wrong and misleading.
If Seven Seas wants to publish such works under a more open branch, they'd be better rebranding under the boys' love term. But they won't, due to the success they've already achieved from their past releases of Chinese danmei. It isn't fair to other Asian, non-Chinese releases to not be referred to by their own title of the genre. Many of these potential new releases we're seeing are the first to come from certain countries - do they not deserve the same respect upon release as others?
I've been in fandom a long time - long enough to see the Japanese yaoi genre grow from being something rarely known in the west to something that's grown hugely popular. I've been here from the beginning of these danmei releases in the past recent years. While seeing how reintroducing stories to new audiences can come with its own difficulties and growing pains, we've come far along enough in the years that there is little excuse for Seven Seas not to show more care and respect when it comes to the way they handle these things; especially given how they've already received backlash in the past with their danmei releases when it's come to concerns over translation, treatment of translators and their work, the decline in quality vs. the rise in time between volume releases, as well as arguments that they don't always do the required research into licensing a title beforehand.
Don't get me wrong, I love that Seven Seas is bringing some of our favorite titles over to us. I just wish that the people behind them cared a little more, especially when it comes to these sorts of things which could very easily be rectified/researched into in the first place.