HeadInTheClouds:

A hug is in order.

LOL! Thank you! I felt that hug ;_; <3

 solarlunareclipse:
This post attempts to compile a list of events in 长相思 (Lost You Forever) that occurred during a full moon

Wow. A major effort, and very nicely organized. Well done. 


 solarlunareclipse:
Xiang Liu saved Xiao Yao from an assassination attempt in the East Sea the day after the full moon when Xiao Yao said her vows to the moon. If Xiao Yao’s story about the last time she saw Jing before he disappeared is true, then she saw Jing on a full moon night.

I think this description might benefit from a minor tweak for accuracy, as XL did not save XY the day after the full moon. He saved her the same night as the full moon (the night when XY said her wedding vows to the moon).

The scene where XY mentions TSJ planning their wedding and sings towards the ocean after the moon rises occurs the next evening. 

On the night of the full moon:

  • XY says her vows to the full moon
  • XY is lured to the ocean by the seagull demon, locked in a glass coffin, and nearly obliterated by the whirlpool
  • XL saves XY from the whirlpool and XY sees his true demon form
  • XY stops XL from leaving, XL drinks blood from her neck, and XY falls alseep in XL's arms
  • XL roasts a fish for XY to eat
  • The moonlight made XL look etheral
  • XL and XY flew on Mao Qiu all night, looking for the seagull demon and Miao Piu

The day after the full moon:

  • XL, XY and Mao Qiu find the seagull demon's ship along with the seagull demon, Left Ear and Miao Piu (who is unconscious)
  • XL faces Left Ear while the seagull demon runs away
  • Mao Qiu catches, kills, and eats the seagull demon
  • XY and Left Ear clean the seagull demon's blood off the deck
  • XY finds a shaded spot on the ship to sit and eat with Left Ear
  • Left Ear mentions FFB and later agrees to become XY's bodyguard
  • Under a blue sky, XY goes to sleep
  • XL wakes XY up and asks her who she thinks tried to kill her, and tries to convince her to live
  • The sun sets and the moon rises

The night after the full moon:

  • XY mentions TSJ planning their wedding for the night of the full moon
  • XY sings towards the ocean
  • XY says she still feels like TSJ might come back at the next full moon
  • XY gives XL her wrist so he can heal and he drinks her blood again

So maybe change the description to something like this?

Xiang Liu saved Xiao Yao from an assassination attempt in the East Sea on the night of the full moon. The next night, on the seagull demon's ship, Xiao Yao tells Xiang Liu about the last time she saw Jing before he disappeared. If that story is true, then she saw Jing on a full moon night.


Edit: Striking the inaccurate text. solarlunareclipse's clarification is below.

 liddi:
I think the key to AU adaptations is "inspired by". That way, fans have a far lower expectation of faithfulness to the original work.

Weirdly, in this very hypothetical, probably-will-never-have-any-real-world-applicability scenario, we were talking about alternate universe adaptations where we wanted to see some differences / unfaithfulness to the novel. So in that unusual context I feel like the issue isn't so much about how much faithfulness is expected and more an issue of... when the changes are made, will they be the kinds of changes we want to see / the kind of changes that would feel like a value-add? Or would they be changes we wouldn't want to see / the kind of changes that feel like they make the story worse and less satisfying?

 liddi:
-- Vol 3 Ch11 (Chapter 44)

Thank you for the translation!


 liddi:
You're right. 都一样 here means "It makes no difference", not that Xiang Liu and Fangfeng Bei are the same to her. 

And thank you for confirming! ^^

 HeadInTheClouds:
That's it! I'm sending you to the corner for a time-out, liddi. Was this supposed to help nathsketch's feels better? 'Cause I don't think it works too well. And it's not making me feel better. Do you have to used the word 'dead' like that :-(? I though Meng Jue's ending was bad, TH one-up herself with XL's ending. At least with Meng Jue, there's hope that he's out there somewhere.

Oh no. Should I have changed the word to "no more" instead? Would it have helped ease the pain? But you're right. I didn't feel that much better when I penned those words (sorry @nathsketch!), but was trying desperately to cling on to some sliver of a silver lining.


 HeadInTheClouds:
Ah! The connumdrum for XL's fans. We loved him because he is honourable, selfless and all the the things you listed above. But, we also railed against him for the exact same things. Can't he just be a little less of those things - not abandoned them altegether, but just dial them back a smidge? Is that too much to ask?

YES. It would certainly be a salve to the gaping wound, but would we be hurting so much in the first place? Sometimes I wonder whether the reason I find it so hard to move on is because he gave all of himself to those he loved and cared for, and left nothing for himself, even though ironically, to him, giving of himself to fulfill the hopes and wishes of those he loved is equivalent to fulfilling himself. 

 AH :
Wow. A major effort, and very nicely organized. Well done. 

Thank you for the compliment and thank you for reviewing!

 AH :
I think this description might benefit from a minor tweak for accuracy, as XL did not save XY the day after the full moon. He saved her the same night as the full moon (the night when XY said her wedding vows to the moon).

I thought the same thing as you, but blabla100 and H19279 corrected me. You can see H19279's post here. Here are some excerpts from right before Xiang Liu saved Xiao Yao.

Miao Pu grumbled “My Lady, why did you have to go to the East Sea in the middle of the night? Can’t Xiao Xiao have informed His Majesty, he dotes on you and lets you do whatever. If you wanted to go he would have allowed it. Why sneak around?”

...

The two strong winged horses flew nonstop and Xiao Yao fed them Jade Mountain stew to keep up their strength. They landed on an island in the East Sea around noon the next day. The two winged horses were spitting foam from exhaustion and could not be used to search over the sea lest they fall into the water from passing out.

-- Vol 3 Ch 10 (Chapter 43)

I had missed the part about them landing on an island in the in the East Sea around noon the next day.

Please let me know if you see anything else that would benefit from tweaking or correction.

 AH :

Weirdly, in this very hypothetical, probably-will-never-have-any-real-world-applicability scenario, we were talking about alternate universe adaptations where we wanted to see some differences / unfaithfulness to the novel. So in that unusual context I feel like the issue isn't so much about how much faithfulness is expected and more an issue of... when the changes are made, will they be the kinds of changes we want to see / the kind of changes that would feel like a value-add? Or would they be changes we wouldn't want to see / the kind of changes that feel like they make the story worse and less satisfying?

For me, "A Haunting in Venice" fits the AU adaptation you mentioned, because there is no relation between the original work and the film, apart from names and the detective. Does it improve on the original work? No. Does it matter? Not to me, because I accept it as totally unrelated to the source material, hence there is no question of butchering. Was it a satisfying watch? Hm.. am ambivalent about that part, but the point is it did not grate on this Agatha Christie fan, because it does not pretend to be something it isn't.

Novoland:Eagle Flag and LYF2 were examples I named where it claims to be adapted from the source novel, but (potentially) strays away from it too much for the original fans' comfort.

Another AU adaptation example I can think of would be the LYF/Healer mashup AU you mentioned. In that situation, in my mind, it would be a universe totally removed from the original sources.  And for me, it can work as long as the characters stay in-character. Fanfics are what-if scenarios after all, and excellent ones manage to sell that alternate scenario to the readers without them feeling that the characters are changed beyond recognition. Believability in the midst of unfamiliar or fantastical settings.

 solarlunareclipse:
I thought the same thing as you, but blabla100 and H19279 corrected me. You can see H19279's post here. Here are some excerpts from right before Xiang Liu saved Xiao Yao.

Miao Pu grumbled “My Lady, why did you have to go to the East Sea in the middle of the night? Can’t Xiao Xiao have informed His Majesty, he dotes on you and lets you do whatever. If you wanted to go he would have allowed it. Why sneak around?”

...

The two strong winged horses flew nonstop and Xiao Yao fed them Jade Mountain stew to keep up their strength. They landed on an island in the East Sea around noon the next day. The two winged horses were spitting foam from exhaustion and could not be used to search over the sea lest they fall into the water from passing out.

-- Vol 3 Ch 10 (Chapter 43)

I had missed the part about them landing on an island in the in the East Sea around noon the next day.

You are 100% correct. I was mistaken. That detail (really well spotted, as it's in a connecting scene that I often skip) does indeed confirm that XL saved XY from the whirlpool the night after the full moon. 

I should have remembered that, as there is also a related detail in a scene that I have re-read several times: while XY is sinking in the glass coffin, the sun gradually sets and the water turns dark. 

Seems like it's time for me to do a re-read to get refreshed on the details. 

-----

Chapter 43:

The crystal coffin slowly sank into the water.

Xiao Yao felt suffocated and couldn’t breathe, until the water seeped into the coffin and she could breathe like a fish returning to the water. Xiao Yao laughed wryly as she thought about this plan and how perfect it was, to kill her with no bloodshed and hidden in the depths of the ocean. Except the plan wasn’t perfect because no one knew that Xiao Yao couldn’t drown.

Because she drank the red jade plant wine, Xiao Yao was woozy and found it hard to think. As the coffin sank she thought she was going to die as well and was calmly facing death, except now she wasn’t going to die and felt like a free falling entity that couldn’t find an end to the fall.

Xiao Yao laid in the crystal coffin and looked at the fishes swimming around her. She tapped on the coffin and asked, “Have you guys seen Jing?”

The fishes were startled and swam off. Xiao Yao could only lay in the crystal coffin zoned out.

The sun set outside and gradually the water turned dark, as dark as ink. Many fishes glowed in the dark so the water was like a night sky filled with shooting stars. She wondered if Xiao Xiao arrived, whether Zhuan Xu was looking for her, if Miao Pu was crying. Xiao Yao suddenly remembered how angry Zhuan Xu would be, and what if he killed Miao Pu? Xiao Yao stopped laying there to enjoy the view and started to try and get out. But no matter how hard she pushed she couldn’t open the coffin.

Xiao Yao tried so hard to open the coffin but it wouldn’t budge, until she was all tired out and hungry. She suddenly realized that she might end up dying after all, not of drowning but of hunger. Xiao Yao rested for a bit before continuing to try and open the coffin.

Suddenly her instinct sensed danger. She looked around and there wasn’t a fish in sight, the colorful underwater was now pitch black. Xiao Yao felt the entire ocean shaking and she remembered the seagull demon saying how scary the ocean was under here. She suddenly remembered what Xiang Liu said before, that after he escaped from the slave death match ring, he almost died in an underwater tornado called a whirlpool. Xiang Liu may not have been that powerful then but something that almost killed him must really be super scary.

@solarlunareclipse

Thanks a lot for the moon analysys!!! I will definetely check everything out, the symbolism part of the story was always something that interested me a lot.  I never get bored of looking for clues and meanings, lol. 

Re-reading chapter 51 and there is that scene where AhNian went with the grand emperor to have a few drinks at the thousand year old bar, which made XY think that his dad is planning to reminiscence his past to her. Right after, XY took Jing to a restaurant and ordered a few xuanyuan dishes, while quietly eating. Is xuanyuan the place where she used to play with FFB? Anyway, that also made me remember of that scene with XY and grand emperor where he was drinking some not that great wine and XY thought that he is not actually drinking because of its taste, but because he misses the times that that wine reminds him of. I got even sadder for XY, now she has jing to rely on, yet she still misses FFB / XL, the same way Grand emperor spends his days missing and thinking of the past. 

 blabla100:

Re-reading chapter 51 and there is that scene where AhNian went with the grand emperor to have a few drinks at the thousand year old bar, which made XY think that his dad is planning to reminiscence his past to her. Right after, XY took Jing to a restaurant and ordered a few xuanyuan dishes, while quietly eating. Is xuanyuan the place where she used to play with FFB? Anyway, that also made me remember of that scene with XY and grand emperor where he was drinking some not that great wine and XY thought that he is not actually drinking because of its taste, but because he misses the times that that wine reminds him of. I got even sadder for XY, now she has jing to rely on, yet she still misses FFB / XL, the same way Grand emperor spends his days missing and thinking of the past. 

As I recalled from this chapter or maybe another one, I think XY thought to herself about the times she used to play with FFB while she was out with CX and Jing, trying to impress them with a her knowledge of good places to eat. 

 solarlunareclipse:
Xiang Liu took Xiao Liu to see the moon rise from the surface of the ocean on a night that likely had a full moon.

@Solarlunareclipse,

It's hard work to search for all the events with the moon in the book. Thank you for your summary of those moments.

I want to correct this event

 solarlunareclipse:
Xiang Liu took Xiao Liu to see the moon rise from the surface of the ocean on a night that likely had a full moon.

小六抬头看去,白雕驮着相柳从圆月中飞来,白衣白发,从九天飞下,若雪一般,轻轻地落在小六身旁。
Xiao Liu looked up and saw a white condor carrying Xiang Liu flying from the full moon. Wearing white clothes with white hair, descending from the heavens, like snow, they gently landed beside Xiao Liu.

— Vol 1 Ch 4 (Chapter 4)

This event was not the one that XL took XY to see the moon on the ocean. The excerpt corresponds to WXL's appointment with XL after the night when injured XL came to his room for healing and he drew charcoal on XL's face. During this appointment XL sucked WXL's blood while WXL gazed at the moon and later he shared his loneliness and the snake and 9-tailed fox demon story with XL. 

And I just found out that the event that all of us (by default) thought that it was full moon when XL took WXL to the ocean to watch the moon doesn't specify the as FULL MOON in the Chinese text.  This event happen in the last part of chapter 4, on Chuanzi's wedding day. 

没有多久,一轮明月,缓缓从海面升起,清辉倾泻而下,小六被天地瑰丽震撼,心上的硬壳都柔软了。

Not long after, a bright moon slowly rose from the sea, and its light poured down. Xiaoliu was shocked by the beauty of the world, and the hard shell in his heart softened.

 ............

天上那轮月,小六看着它,它却静静地照拂着大地 

That the round moon in the sky, Xiao Liu looked at it, but it was quietly shining over the earth

(Vol 1 Chapter 4)

In that event, the moon was describled as a bright round moon- 一轮明月 or  round moon - 轮月

Surprised! Surprised!

This event can happen on a full moon day or maybe around the full moon day

 plor20:
27 minutes ago
 blabla100:
Re-reading chapter 51 and there is that scene where AhNian went with the grand emperor to have a few drinks at the thousand year old bar, which made XY think that his dad is planning to reminiscence his past to her. Right after, XY took Jing to a restaurant and ordered a few xuanyuan dishes, while quietly eating. Is xuanyuan the place where she used to play with FFB? Anyway, that also made me remember of that scene with XY and grand emperor where he was drinking some not that great wine and XY thought that he is not actually drinking because of its taste, but because he misses the times that that wine reminds him of. I got even sadder for XY, now she has jing to rely on, yet she still misses FFB / XL, the same way Grand emperor spends his days missing and thinking of the past.


As I recalled from this chapter or maybe another one, I think XY thought to herself about the times she used to play with FFB while she was out with CX and Jing, trying to impress them with a her knowledge of good places to eat. 

@plor20,

The event that you recalled when XY thought to herself about the time she used to play and discovered places in Central Plains with FFB was in chapter 35. It was first fullmoon festival and XY took Jing and CX to Zjiyi and she showed them the BBQ restaurant which FFB had taken her. Both CX and Jing understood it. 

@Blabla100

I believe that the restaurant in chapter 51 that XY took Jing in Xuanyuan was also the place that FFB used to take her to during their time in XuanYuan. 

About the wine shop that White emperor frequently went to in Yuan Xuan, it served the wine with the taste of thounsands year back when Shao Hao met Qing Yang. Qing Yang was his only friend and he cherished him most in his life. (Once Prommised) 

@plor20

Yes, but I was referring to what XY thought of in chapter 41 in regards to Grand emperor's life change and the course of events from chapter 51. 

Chapter 41

"Xiao Yao sat on a stump and stared at this completely foreign White Emperor. Was he the same White Emperor who never smiled on Five Gods Mountain and even one cutting look could frighten an entire court of officials?

Jing finished cutting firewood and sat down beside Xiao Yao. She murmured “How did he become a completely different person? If Ju Mang and Ru So saw him now they would die from shock!”

Jing said “Perhaps he is back to being who he really was, the White Emperor that your Eldest Uncle Qing Yang met was probably just like this.”

“Perhaps!” There was plenty of good wine on Xuan Yuan Mountain but he wanted to drink cheap wine, it couldn’t be the taste but likely the memories he was seeking. Was that shop really over a thousand years old, and could he have drank there with her Eldest Uncle? "

Chapter 51

When Xiao Yao and Jing arrived at the blacksmith shop, neither the Grand Emperor nor Ah Nian was there. Miao Pu said the Grand Emperor took Ah Nian to that thousand year old rundown bar to drink. Xiao Yao chuckled “Looks like Dad is planning to tell Ah Nian all about his past exploits. Let’s not go interrupt them.”

The two strolled around the streets before Xiao Yao took Jing to a restaurant and ordered a few Xuan Yuan classic cuisine dishes.

Xiao Yao was quietly eating when seven or eight soldiers walked in and the leader gleefully yelled out “Shopkeeper, bring the best dishes and wine! Today I’m treating, anyone here is invited! Waiter, give every table wine to celebrate the Xuan Yuan Army’s great victory today!”

 blabla100:
Curious if anyone beside me ties XY's poisons to XL to her remark about how only if someone views life with her, the view has meaning.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

 

 blabla100:
Also, does her "dream" perfume hints to Shakespear's play, a midsummer night's dream? I haven't read this particular play, I am more into his tragedies, but checking the synopsys, I find quite a few things similar to what happened in chapter 32. XY running away with XL, XL's questions, the spell he put on her afterwards, her reply about how everything is not going to be ok. Is TH into shakespeare?

Hmm. I've never tied it to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. How do you see it tied in and what TH might want to say if there is parallel. TH is well-read, so I wouldn't be surprised if she was familiar with Shakespeare. 

I see the Dream perfume as tied in with the whole, he's not suitable to walk into a girl's dream things. Afterwards, she gave the perfume to Mao Pui who represented her and Mao Piu/Left Ear's relationship represented what she longed for with XL.