This is *not* going to become a habit

[flemmings]

I'm not a member of 31_days so I'm posting my double drabble here.

Title: The lion I am proud to hunt
Day: 1st February: "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"
Fandom: Woxinchangdan
Characters/Pairing:: Gou Jian, Fu Chai
Words: 200

So there he is, Helu of Wu's youngest son. Son indeed- bumptious, arrogant: waving his challenge outside Yue's Great Hall, demanding to meet Yue's prince face to face. Ambitious too: trying to show up his older brother, obviously. Not likely, my friend. How small you look from the throne up here. How small your chances are of sitting on a throne of your own. It's almost a pity... Someone who'd barge in here with only five guards and his own confidence to keep him alive is more of a man than any prince of Wu: more, certainly, than Wu's goatish King.

So there he is, the man who's running Yue now. Finally some progress, even if I have to talk up to him twenty feet above my head. What do you need that distance for, prince? The regent of Yue has a face like a statue. Everyone says it-- 'he gives nothing away', 'no-one knows what he's thinking." But I do. Bad move, my friend. Your face, if I was close, would confuse me, but from down here I can see how you hold your body. It tells me exactly what I wanted to hear: you, I know, will fight.

Only the original series should be in character. Only the original series should be in character. Only the original series should be in character.

And *do* goats in China have the same connotations as here? All I could find in that line was doves, which is an odd thing to call King Helu.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

*claps hands* - I do like it. Well done!

The icon fits so nicely as well. ^_____^

It's made my weekend for sure. Short and sharp observations. How it should be I think!

[doire]

I know nothing of the original, but, still, I liked that.

[incandescens]

I do like that!

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent insight into what was going on in their heads, which played on their faces more than in their words.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

How odd. I'm utterly incapable of reading Gou Jian or Fu Chai's faces at all; and Fan Li isn't easy. By contrast, Helu, Wen Zhong and Chancellor Wu are open books, Difference in acting styles or difference in characterization?

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

The eyes and the set of the mouth are what I look for, except with Uncle Ming, whose mouth gives away nothing will not think bad thoughts, no; Hu Jun is quite able to emote when required. Gou Jian looks through and down at Fu Chai, while Fu Chai isn't quite looking up to anyone.

I hope the snow has been good to you! Are you planning to do a prompt daily?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thank you, the snow has caused a slight achiness in the left ribs (which is too bad because there's more out there that I go to remove now.) And no, certainly not a prompt a day. I scared myself quite badly enough doing that one ('Is this right? What happened in that scene? Was that the first time Fu Chai came to Yue or the second?' The relevant DVD is now on the other side of the Atlantic, of course.)

Also there are impatient dragons waiting in the wings and I must record their conversation before I forget what they're saying.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

Do take care! hopefully the snowfall will also have allowed you to catch up on your watching? The drabble is exactly right, IMHO.

Also, rasetsunyo likely knows a lot more about this than me, but that sort of incontinence in the elderly (and in the young) is represented by the wolf i.e. Helu in modern parlance would be a 老色狼, literally "old lustful (also "colour", same connotation as Mishima's 禁色 and the same as the first word of Lust, Caution's Mandarin title) wolf". "Wolfish" is a word I associate with his expression, words and intentions, too.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

hopefully the snowfall will also have allowed you to catch up on your watching

Oddly not. However much I cherish the idea of being safely snowed in with nowhere I need to be, curled up on the sofa with my books and DVDs, what in fact I did was go out twice to shovel the neighbourhood sidewalks (since no one else does and they turn into ice fields otherwise.) And then on coming home it was somehow imperative that I vacuum the downstairs and clean the bathroom and wrestle with my perfect prince addressing his less than perfect uncle to give him advice without seeming to do so. After which the drabble was child's play.

Helu is very wolfish, English sense, yes; but sexually he's a goat. I wonder no one calls him on it, oldest son aside; and I wouldn't call that anything but the most sideways mention. Are there no Old Testament prophet types in China, who stalk into a king's chambers and denounce him before his courtiers as an incestuous adulterer?

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

wrestle with my perfect prince addressing his less than perfect uncle to give him advice

Ah, so. Shall we soon be seeing this as well? *_*

sexually he's a goat.

Randy old, yes. I suppose using 老色狼 would be rather OOC in the context of the series dialogue and as paleaswater points out, "goat" is much more appropriate when writing in English. I imagine when he was younger and could obviously be on the prowl without constraints of age etc his behaviour could have been more predatory.

I wonder no one calls him on it...denounce him before his courtiers as an incestuous adulterer?

Seems that the only one with enough cojones clout to even publicly question Helu's behaviour is WZX, and we've seen what his ideas of propriety/the rights of kings/status of women are...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Shall we soon be seeing this as well? *_*

(groans) Not soon. In the works and stalled for three years. Now I finally have it plotted out it's looking to be a monster novella. Maybe it'll go faster than it has been, but I'm not optimistic.

The idea of Helu being more predatory than he is in age literally makes my blood run cold.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Ohh that's lovely! (I need a squeeing icon)

And *do* goats in China have the same connotations as here? All I could find in that line was doves

AFAIK goats don't have the same sort of connotations in Chinese as in English. They're pretty neutral animals. Chinese usually doesn't do animal comparisons. Scratch that, it does, but not in the sense of calling a person an animal, more in terms of adjectives and verbs/adverbs. Say a treacherous person would be called a snake in English, but in Chinese the person is said to be 蛇蝎心腸 heart like snakes' ad crabs' or some combination of snake, crabs and rats. Only exceptions I can think offhand are pig and fox. Although WZX did call Bo Pi a rat at some point but it's not commonly used in modern speech, not down south here at least.

Though dove does seem odd. The only things I've heard the Yues call Helu are 爲老不尊 uhh "does not conform to notions of acceptable behaviour for the aged," always derogatory; and 老贼 lit. old thief. "Old scoundrel" I suppose except no one says scoundrel any more.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Webpage says the dove in China is considered foolish and lascivious. Mh, fine. But what would the Chinese equivalent be of 'can't keep it in his pants'? (I bet mandarin doesn't say that, but somehow I feel Cantonese might. Unless 爲老不尊 / not conforming to acceptable behaviour for the aged means exactly that.)

Are the connotations of pigs and foxes the same here and there, then? Gluttony and cunning respectively? though somehow I got the feeling pigs are a bit better regarded by the Chinese than by Europeans. Do foxes have any of the magical other worldly and mischievous connotations that they do in Japan?

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

In this context, 爲老不尊 means exactly that.

Gluttony/stupidity and cunning respectively yes, though I can't say how much of it is traditional and how much is imported Western attitudes. The pig is a symbol of prosperity and fecundity so it's auspicious to have a child born in the year of the Pig, but all the same when someone calls you one it is not a compliment.

Foxes, yes, quite similar to the kitsune. 狐狸精 fox spirits are supposed to manifest as beautiful temptresses; so much so that it's an epithet for the mistresses who lure men away from their domestic comforts and virtuous wives, for example.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

On second thought it might really be inherent attitudes. 豬朋狗友 pig and dog friends means friends who are bad influences. And foxes are always thought to be sly.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

How rude to the dogs. Though I gather China isn't a madly dog-loving culture like England or France. What's the image of dogs there anyway? People keep calling other people dog's heads in Judge Dee, but that's all I know.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Oh, dogs have the worst connotation in China. When you see dog in Chinese in reference to a person you should generally substitute 'that cur'. Slavish and fawning. Pigs are less associated with gluttony than with stupidity. If you call someone a pig you're calling them stupid, not a glutton. Wolves generally mean a lecher, though in certain phrases it also refers to a treacherous person. 爲老不尊 is an extremely ladylike way of calling him a lecher. It's like how ladies in the fifties would say, "she's in the family way".

But I think when you write in English you should use the animal with their English connotation, not Chinese. Usually it's the language that determines the immediately association the metaphor. When you used the word goat above a lecher is exactly what I thought of. If you had used wolf, which is what the Chinese would have called him, I would have made an immediately different association in English, of someone who's predatory and cruel.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

In LRD we use pigs to denote gluttony in Mandarin too. Probably a Western import, that part.

[incandescens]

And _now_ I know what this refers to. Oh yes. Lovely.

(Have just watched episodes 1-3 this afternoon.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of subtitles and a lot of politics in one afternoon.

[incandescens]

Sunday afternoon, with my knitting to keep me from feeling too lazy. :)