lierdumoa | Fannish Life Update

My new fannish obsession is the Untamed/陈情令. It's been wildly different from my usual fandom experiences.

Typically a new fannish obsession means I'm inhaling fic like air. But it turns out I'm very strongly opposed to this fandom's romantic fanon, to the point that the only fanfic I've liked has been gen. I've never been this emotionally invested in a fandom and simultaneously so uninvested in reading its fanfiction.

I've watched the show on three different streaming platforms, each with different subtitle translations, and that inspired me to start learning Chinese on duolingo. Suzvoy told me last week that lots of her Untamed twitter mutuals are doing this as well. I guess covid-19 quarantine is the perfect opportunity to both marathon a new show and to start learning a new language.

I've always meant to learn some Chinese. Both of my parents are part Chinese. Neither of them speak Hakkanese, which is the dialect their Chinese predecessors spoke, so the only part of my Chinese heritage that really got passed down was the food. I'm learning Mandarin, because I don't even know how I'd go about learning an obscure dialect like Hakkanese without spending money, and also because a big part of what's motivating me to learn is my desire to watch Chinese and Taiwanese gay romances without subtitles and understand the nuances that get lost in translation.

I've been getting lots of songvid ideas,

but getting vid ideas is different since I got a music degree. Now whenever I find a "great vid song" my first inclination is to make a cover version of the song, rather than vid the song directly, because I can't stop thinking of all the ways I could re-orchestrate the song so it's more stylistically suited to the show I want to vid.

I've taken that to another level with this fandom. I'm not only orchestrating cover versions of vid songs, but I've also been translating songs into Mandarin Chinese.

Here's a WIP of my cover of "I Think We're Alone Now": [google drive mp3 link] [vocal arrangement pdf].

I'm also working on a cover of "Freaks" by Timmy Trumpet & Savage (the song from the When Mom's not Home meme). More of a filk than a straightforward cover. I changed the lyrics to fit the Untamed series narrative, and my arrangement uses Chinese instruments.

I commissioned tumblr acquaintance @hunxi-guilai to assist with the translations.